The Man Who Could Work Miracles
Wells, H. G.
Published:1898
Type(s):Short Fiction
Source:
About Wells:
Herbert George Wells,better known as H.G.Wells,was an English writer best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds,The Invisible Man and The Island of Doctor Mor-eau.He was a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction,and pro-duced works in many different genres,including contemporary novels, history,and social commentary.He was also an outspoken socialist.His later works become increasingly political and didactic,and only his early science fiction novels are widely read today.Wells,along with Hugo Gernsback and Jules Verne,is sometimes referred to as"The Father of Science Fiction". Source: Wikipedia
It is doubtful whether the gift was innate.For my own part,I think it came to him suddenly.Indeed,until he was thirty he was a sceptic,and did not believe in miraculous powers.And here,since it is the most con-venient place,I must mention that he was a little man,and had eyes of a hot brown,very erect red hair,a moustache with ends that he twisted up,and freckles.His name was George McWhirter Fotheringay—not the sort of name by any means to lead to any expectation of miracles—and he was clerk at Gomshott's.He was greatly addicted to assertive argu-ment.It was while he was asserting the impossibility of miracles that he had his first intimation of his extraordinary powers.This particular argu-ment was being held in the bar of the Long Dragon,and Toddy Beamish was conducting the opposition by a monotonous but effective"So you say," that drove Mr. Fotheringay to the very limit of his patience.
There were present,besides these two,a very dusty cyclist,landlord Cox,and Miss Maybridge,the perfectly respectable and rather portly barmaid of the Dragon.Miss Maybridge was standing with her back to Mr.Fotheringay,washing glasses;the others were watching him,more or less amused by the present ineffectiveness of the assertive method. Goaded by the Torres Vedras tactics of Mr.Beamish,Mr.Fotheringay de-termined to make an unusual rhetorical effort."Looky here,Mr.Beam-ish,"said Mr.Fotheringay."Let us clearly understand what a miracle is. It's something contrariwise to t
he course of nature,done by power of will, something what couldn't happen without being specially willed."
"So you say," said Mr. Beamish, repulsing him.
Mr.Fotheringay appealed to the cyclist,who had hitherto been a silent auditor,and received his assent—given with a hesitating cough and a glance at Mr.Beamish.The landlord would express no opinion,and Mr. Fotheringay,returning to Mr.Beamish,received the unexpected conces-sion of a qualified assent to his definition of a miracle.
"For instance,"said Mr.Fotheringay,greatly encouraged."Here would be a miracle.That lamp,in the natural course of nature,couldn't burn like that upsy-down, could it, Beamish?"
"You say it couldn't," said Beamish.
"And you?" said Fotheringay. "You don't mean to say—eh?"
"No," said Beamish reluctantly. "No, it couldn't."
"Very well,"said Mr.Fotheringay."Then here comes someone,as it might be me,along here,and stands as it might be here,and says to that
tornado 302rlamp,as I might do,collecting all my will—Turn upsy-down without breaking, and go on burning steady, and—Hullo!"
It was enough to make anyone say"Hullo!"The impossible,the incred-ible,was visible to them all.The lamp hung inverted in the air,burning quietly with its flame pointing down.It was as solid,as indisputable as ever a lamp was, the prosaic common lamp of the Long Dragon bar.
Mr.Fotheringay stood with an extended forefinger and the knitted brows of one anticipating a catastrophic smash.The cyclist,who was sit-ting next the lamp,ducked and jumped across the bar.Everybody jumped,more or less.Miss Maybridge turned and screamed.For nearly three seconds the lamp remained still.A faint cry of mental distress came from Mr.Fotheringay."I can't keep it up,"he said,"any longer."He staggered back,and the inverted lamp suddenly flared,fell against the corner of the bar, bounced aside, smashed upon the floor, and went out.
It was lucky it had a metal receiver,or the whole place would have been in a blaze.Mr.Cox was the first to speak,and his remark,shorn of needless excrescences,was to the effect that Fotheringay was a fool. Fotheringay was beyond disputing even so fundamental a proposition as that!He was astonished beyond measure at the thing that had occurred. The subsequent conversation threw abs
olutely no light on the matter so far as Fotheringay was concerned;the general opinion not only followed Mr.Cox very closely but very vehemently.Everyone accused Foth-eringay of a silly trick,and presented him to himself as a foolish destroy-er of comfort and security.His mind was in a tornado of perplexity,he was himself inclined to agree with them,and he made a remarkably inef-fectual opposition to the proposal of his departure.
He went home flushed and heated,coat-collar crumpled,eyes smart-ing,and ears red.He watched each of the ten street lamps nervously as he passed it.It was only when he found himself alone in his little bed-room in Church Row that he was able to grapple seriously with his memories of the occurrence, and ask, "What on earth happened?"
He had removed his coat and boots,and was sitting on the bed with his hands in his pockets repeating the text of his defence for the seven-teenth time,"I didn't want the confounded thing to upset,"when it oc-curred to him that at the precise moment he had said the commanding words he had inadvertently willed the thing he said,and that when he had seen the lamp in the air he had felt that it depended on him to main-tain it there without being clear how this was to be done.He had not a particularly complex mind,or he might have stuck for a time at that
"inadvertently willed,"embracing,as it does,the abstrusest problems of voluntary action;but as it was,the idea came to him with a quite accept-able haziness.And from that,following,as I must admit,no clear logical path, he came to the test of experiment.
He pointed resolutely to his candle and collected his mind,though he felt he did a foolish thing."Be raised up,"he said.But in a second that feeling vanished.The candle was raised,hung in the air one giddy mo-ment,and as Mr.Fotheringay gasped,fell with a smash on his toilet-table, leaving him in darkness save for the expiring glow of its wick.
For a time Mr.Fotheringay sat in the darkness,perfectly still."It did happen,after all,"he said."And'ow I'm to explain it I don't know."He sighed heavily,and began feeling in his pockets for a match.He could find none,and he rose and groped about the toilet-table."I wish I had a match,"he said.He resorted to his coat,and there was none there,and then it dawned upon him that miracles were possible even with matches. He extended a hand and scowled at it in the dark."Let there be a match in that hand,"he said.He felt some light object fall across his palm and his fingers closed upon a match.
After several ineffectual attempts to light this,he discovered it was a safety match.He threw it down,a
nd then it occurred to him that he might have willed it lit.He did,and perceived it burning in the midst of his toilet-table mat.He caught it up hastily,and it went out.His percep-tion of possibilities enlarged,and he felt for and replaced the candle in its candlestick."Here!you be lit,"said Mr.Fotheringay,and forthwith the candle was flaring,and he saw a little black hole in the toilet-cover, with a wisp of smoke rising from it.For a time he stared from this to the little flame and back,and then looked up and met his own gaze in the looking-glass.By this help he communed with himself in silence for a time.
"How about miracles now?"said Mr.Fotheringay at last,addressing his reflection.
The subsequent meditations of Mr.Fotheringay were of a severe but confused description.So far,he could see it was a case of pure willing with him.The nature of his experiences so far disinclined him for any further experiments,at least until he had reconsidered them.But he lif-ted a sheet of paper,and turned a glass of water pink and then green, and he created a snail,which he miraculously annihilated,and got him-self a miraculous new tooth-brush.Somewhere in the small hours he had reached the fact that his will-power must be of a particularly rare and
pungent quality,a fact of which he had indeed had inklings before,but no certain assurance.The scare
and perplexity of his first discovery was now qualified by pride in this evidence of singularity and by vague in-timations of advantage.He became aware that the church clock was striking one,and as it did not occur to him that his daily duties at Gomshott's might be miraculously dispensed with,he resumed undress-ing,in order to get to bed without further delay.As he struggled to get his shirt over his head,he was struck with a brilliant idea."Let me be in bed,"he said,and found himself so."Undressed,"he stipulated;and, finding the sheets cold,added hastily,"and in my nightshirt—ho,in a nice soft woollen nightshirt.Ah!"he said with immense enjoyment."And now let me be comfortably asleep… "
He awoke at his usual hour and was pensive all through breakfast-time,wondering whether his over-night experience might not be a par-ticularly vivid dream.At length his mind turned again to cautious exper-iments.For instance,he had three eggs for breakfast;two his landlady had supplied,good,but shoppy,and one was a delicious fresh goose-egg,laid,cooked,and served by his extraordinary will.He hurried off to Gomshott's in a state of profound but carefully concealed excitement, and only remembered the shell of the third egg when his landlady spoke of it that night.All day he could do no work because of this astonishing new self-knowledge,but this caused him no inconvenience,because he made up for it miraculously in his last ten minutes.
As the day wore on his state of mind passed from wonder to elation, albeit the circumstances of his dismissal from the Long Dragon were still disagreeable to recall,and a garbled account of the matter that had reached his colleagues led to some badinage.It was evident he must be careful how he lifted frangible articles,but in other ways his gift prom-ised more and more as he turned it over in his mind.He intended among other things to increase his personal property by unostentatious acts of creation.He called into existence a pair of very splendid diamond studs, and hastily annihilated them again as young Gomshott came across the counting-house to his desk.He was afraid young Gomshott might won-der how he had come by them.He saw quite clearly the gift required caution and watchfulness in its exercise,but so far as he could judge the difficulties attending its mastery would be no greater than those he had already faced in the study of cycling.It was that analogy,perhaps,quite as much as the feeling that he would be unwelcome in the Long Dragon, that drove him out after supper into the lane beyond the gasworks,to re-hearse a few miracles in private.

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