Twelve Stories and a Dream Read Free Page B

the completion of the machine,
and let the assumption that he was going to fly it take root and
flourish exceedingly about him. He even accepted anticipatory
compliments on his courage. And, barring this secret squeamishness,
there can be no doubt he found all the praise and distinction and fuss
he got a delightful and even intoxicating draught.
    The Lady Mary Elkinghorn made things a little more complicated for him.
    How THAT began was a subject of inexhaustible speculation to Hicks.
Probably in the beginning she was just a little "nice" to him with that
impartial partiality of hers, and it may be that to her eyes, standing
out conspicuously as he did ruling his monster in the upper air, he had
a distinction that Hicks was not disposed to find. And somehow they must
have had a moment of sufficient isolation, and the great Discoverer a
moment of sufficient courage for something just a little personal to
be mumbled or blurted. However it began, there is no doubt that it did
begin, and presently became quite perceptible to a world accustomed
to find in the proceedings of the Lady Mary Elkinghorn a matter of
entertainment. It complicated things, because the state of love in
such a virgin mind as Filmer's would brace his resolution, if not
sufficiently, at any rate considerably towards facing a danger he
feared, and hampered him in such attempts at evasion as would otherwise
be natural and congenial.
    It remains a matter for speculation just how the Lady Mary felt for
Filmer and just what she thought of him. At thirty-eight one may
have gathered much wisdom and still be not altogether wise, and the
imagination still functions actively enough in creating glamours and
effecting the impossible. He came before her eyes as a very central man,
and that always counts, and he had powers, unique powers as it seemed,
at any rate in the air. The performance with the model had just a touch
of the quality of a potent incantation, and women have ever displayed an
unreasonable disposition to imagine that when a man has powers he must
necessarily have Power. Given so much, and what was not good in Filmer's
manner and appearance became an added merit. He was modest, he hated
display, but given an occasion where TRUE qualities are needed,
then—then one would see!
    The late Mrs. Bampton thought it wise to convey to Lady Mary her opinion
that Filmer, all things considered, was rather a "grub." "He's certainly
not a sort of man I have ever met before," said the Lady Mary, with a
quite unruffled serenity. And Mrs. Bampton, after a swift, imperceptible
glance at that serenity, decided that so far as saying anything to Lady
Mary went, she had done as much as could be expected of her. But she
said a great deal to other people.
    And at last, without any undue haste or unseemliness, the day dawned,
the great day, when Banghurst had promised his public—the world in
fact—that flying should be finally attained and overcome. Filmer saw it
dawn, watched even in the darkness before it dawned, watched its stars
fade and the grey and pearly pinks give place at last to the clear blue
sky of a sunny, cloudless day. He watched it from the window of his
bedroom in the new-built wing of Banghurst's Tudor house. And as the
stars were overwhelmed and the shapes and substances of things grew
into being out of the amorphous dark, he must have seen more and more
distinctly the festive preparations beyond the beech clumps near the
green pavilion in the outer park, the three stands for the privileged
spectators, the raw, new fencing of the enclosure, the sheds and
workshops, the Venetian masts and fluttering flags that Banghurst had
considered essential, black and limp in the breezeless dawn, and amidst
all these things a great shape covered with tarpauling. A strange and
terrible portent for humanity was that shape, a beginning that must
surely spread and widen and change and dominate all the affairs of men,
but to Filmer it is very doubtful whether it appeared in