Selected Stories of H. G. Wells (43 page)

Old Yacob had a tenderness for his last little daughter, and was grieved to have her weep upon his shoulder.

“You see, my dear, he’s an idiot! He has delusions; he can’t do anything right.”

“I know,” wept Medina-saroté. “But he’s better than he was. He’s getting better. And he’s strong, dear father, and kind—stronger and kinder than any other man in the world. And he loves me—and, father, I love him.”

Old Yacob was greatly distressed to find her inconsolable, and, besides—what made it more distressing—he liked Nunez for many things. So he went and sat in the windowless council-chamber with the other elders, observing the trend of their talk, and said, at the proper time, “He’s better than he was. Very likely, some day, we shall find him as sane as ourselves.”

Then afterwards one of the elders, who thought deeply, had an idea. He was the great doctor among these people, their medicine man, and he had a very philosophical and inventive mind, and the idea of curing Nunez of his peculiarities appealed to him. One day when Yacob was present he turned to the topic of Nunez.

“I have examined Bogota,” he said, “and the case is clearer to me. I think very probably he might be cured.”

“That is what I have always hoped,” said old Yacob.

“His brain is affected,” said the blind doctor.

The elders murmured assent.

“Now,
what
affects it?”

“Ah!” said old Yacob.

“This,” said the doctor, answering his own question. “Those queer things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable soft depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of Bogota, in such a way as to affect his brain. They are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and his eyelids move, and consequently his brain is in a state of constant irritation and distraction.”

“Yes?” said old Yacob. “Yes?”

“And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure him completely, all that we need to do is a simple and easy surgical operation—namely, to remove those irritating bodies.”

“And then he will be sane?”

“Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen.”

“Thank Heaven for the Wisdom beneath it!” said old Yacob, and went forth at once to tell Nunez of his happy hopes.

But Nunez’s manner of receiving the good news struck him as being cold and disappointing.

“One might think,” he said, “from the tone you take, that you did not care for my daughter.”

It was Medina-saroté who persuaded Nunez to face the blind surgeons.

“
You
do not want me,” he said, “to lose my gift of sight?”

She shook her head.

“My world is sight.”

Her head dropped lower.

“There are the beautiful things, the beautiful little things—the flowers, the lichens among the rocks, the lightness and visible softness on a piece of fur, the far sky with its drifting down of clouds, the sunsets and the stars. And there is
you.
For you alone it is good to have sight, to see your sweet, serene face, your kindly lips, your dear, dear, beautiful hands folded together . . . It is these eyes of mine you won, these eyes that hold me to you, that these idiots seek. Instead, I must touch you, hear you, and never see you again. I must come under that roof of rock and stone and darkness, that horrible roof under which your imagination stoops . . . No, you would not have me do that?”

She shuddered to hear him speak of the Wisdom Above in such terms. Her hands went to her ears.

A disagreeable doubt had arisen in him. He stopped, and left the thing a question.

“I wish,” she said, “sometimes—” She paused.

“Yes?” said he, a little apprehensively.

“I wish sometimes—you would not talk like that.”

“Like what?”

“It’s your imagination. I love much of it, but not when you speak of the Wisdom Above. When you talked of those flowers and stars it was different. But now—”

He felt cold.
“Now ?”
he said faintly.

She sat quite still.

“You mean—you think—I should be better, better perhaps—”

He was realising things very swiftly. He felt anger, indeed, anger at the dull course of fate, but also sympathy for her lack of understanding—a sympathy near akin to pity.

“Dear,”
he said, and he could see by her whiteness how intensely her spirit pressed against the things she could not say. He put his arms about her, and kissed her ear, and they sat for a time in silence.

“If I were to consent to this?” he whispered at last, in a voice that was very gentle.

She flung her arms about him weeping wildly. “Oh, if you would,” she sobbed, “if only you would!”

“And you have no doubt?”

“Dear heart!” she answered, and pressed his hands with all her strength.

“They will hurt you but little,” she said; “and you would be going through this pain—you are going through it, dear lover, for
me . . .
Dear; if a woman’s heart and life can do it, I will repay you. My dearest one, my dearest with that rough, gentle voice, I will repay.”

“So be it,” he said.

And in silence he turned away from her. For the time he could sit by her no longer.

She could hear his slow retreating footsteps, and something in the rhythm of them threw her into a passion of weeping . . .

He meant to go to a lonely place where the meadows were beautiful with white narcissus, but as he went he lifted up his eyes and saw the morning, the morning like an angel in golden armour, marching down the steeps . . .

It seemed to him that before this splendour he, and this blind world in the valley, and his love, and all, were no better than the darkness of an anthill.

He did not turn aside to the narcissus fields as he had meant to do. Instead he went on, and passed through the wall of the circumference and out upon the rocks, and his eyes were always upon the sunlit ice and snow above.

He saw their infinite beauty, and his imagination soared over them to the things he would see no more.

He thought of that great free visible world he was to renounce for ever; the world that was his own, and beyond these encircling mountains; and he had a vision of those further slopes, distance beyond distance, with Bogota, a place of multitudinous stirring beauty, a glory by day, a luminous mystery by night, a place of palaces and fountains and statues and white houses, lying beautifully in the middle distance. He thought how for a day or so one might come down through passes, drawing ever nearer and nearer to its busy streets and ways. He thought of the river journey to follow, from great Bogota to the still vaster world beyond, through towns and villages, forest and desert places, the rushing river day by day, until its banks receded and the big steamers came splashing by, and one had reached the sea—the limitless sea, with its thousand islands, its thousands of islands, and its ships seen dimly far away in their incessant journeyings round and about the greater world. And there, unpent by mountains, one saw the sky—the sky, not such a disc as one saw it here, but a great arch of immeasurable blue, the blue of deeps in which the circling stars were floating.

What follows is the original ending to “The Country of the Blind,” published in
the April 1904 edition of
SM.

His eyes scrutinised the great curtain of the mountains with a keener inquiry.

For example, if one went so, up that gulley and to that chimney there, then one might come out high among those stunted pines that ran round in a sort of shelf and rose still higher and higher as it passed above the gorge. And then? That talus might be managed. Thence perhaps a climb might be found to take him up to the precipice that came below the snow; and if that chimney failed, then another farther to the east might serve his purpose better. And then? Then one would be out upon the amber-lit snow there, and half-way up to the crest of those beautiful desolations.

He glanced back at the village, then turned right round and regarded it steadfastly.

He thought of Medina-saroté, and she had become small and remote.

He turned again towards the mountain wall, down which the day had come to him.

Then very circumspectly he began to climb.

When sunset came he was no longer climbing, but he was far and high. He had been higher, but he was still very high. His clothes were torn, his limbs were blood-stained, he was bruised in many places, but he lay as if he were at his ease, and there was a smile on his face.

From where he rested the valley seemed as if it were in a pit and nearly a mile below. Already it was dim with haze and shadow, though the mountain summits around him were things of light and fire. The mountain summits around him were things of light and fire, and the little details of the rocks near at hand were drenched with subtle beauty—a vein of green mineral piercing the grey, the flash of crystal faces here and there, a minute, minutely beautiful orange lichen close beside his face. There were deep mysterious shadows in the gorge, blue deepening into purple, and purple into a luminous darkness, and overhead was the illimitable vastness of the sky. But he heeded these things no longer, but lay quite inactive there, smiling as if he were satisfied merely to have escaped from the valley of the Blind in which he had thought to be King.

The glow of the sunset passed, and the night came, and still he lay peacefully contented under the cold stars.

The following is Wells’s revised ending to the story, rewritten and published in 1939.

His eyes scrutinised the imprisoning mountains with a keener inquiry.

It occurred to him that for many days now he had not looked at the cliffs and snow-slopes and gulleys by which he had slid and fallen and clambered down into the valley. He looked now; he looked but he could not find. Something had happened. Something had occurred to change and obliterate the familiar landmarks of his descent. He could not believe it; he rubbed his eyes and looked again. Perhaps he was forgetting. Some fresh fall of snow might have altered the lines and shapes of the exposed surfaces.

In another place too there had been slopes that he had studied very intently. For at times the thought of escape had been very urgent with him. Had they too changed? Had his memory begun to play tricks with him? In one place high up, five hundred feet or so, he had marked a great vein of green crystal that made a sort of slanting way upward— but alas! died out to nothing. One might clamber to it, but above that there seemed no hope. That was still as it had been. But elsewhere?

Suddenly he stood up with a faint cry of horror in his throat.

“No! ”
he whispered crouching slightly. “No. It was there before!”

But he knew it had not been there before.

It was a long narrow scar of newly exposed rock running obliquely across the face of the precipice at its vastest. Above it and below it was weathered rock. He still struggled against that conviction. But there it was plain and undeniable and
raw.
There could be little doubt of the significance of that fresh scar. An enormous mass of that stupendous mountain wall had slipped. It had shifted a few feet forward and it was being held up for a time, by some inequality of the sustaining rocks. Maybe that would hold it now, but of the shift there was no doubt whatever. Could it settle down again in its new position? He could not tell. He scanned the distant surfaces. Above he saw little white threads of water from the snow-fields pouring into this new-made crack. Below, water was already spouting freshly at a dozen points from the lower edge of the loosened mass. And then he saw that other, lesser fissures had also appeared in the mountain wall.

The more he studied that vast rock face the more he realised the possible urgency of its menace. If this movement continued the valley was doomed. He forgot his personal distress in a huge solicitude for this little community of which he had become a citizen. What ought these people to do? What could they do? Abandon their threatened houses? Make new ones on the slopes behind him? And how could he induce them to do it?

Suppose that lap of rock upon which the mass now rested gave!

The mountain would fall—he traced the possible fall with his extended hands—so and so and so. It would fall into and beyond the lake. It would bury the lower houses. It might bury the whole village. It might spell destruction for every living thing in the valley. Something they ought to do. Prepare refuges? Organise a possible evacuation? Set him to watch the mountains day by day? But how to make them understand?

If he went down now, very simply, very meekly, without excitement, speaking in low tones and abasing himself before them. If he said: “I am a foolish creature. I am a disgusting creature. I am unfit to touch the hem of the garment of the very least of your wise men. But for once, I pray you, believe in my vision! Believe in my vision! Sometimes such an idiot as I can
see.
Let me have some more tests about this seeing. Because indeed, indeed, I know of a great danger and I can help you to sustain it . . .”

But how could he convince them? What proofs could he give them? After his earlier failures. Suppose he went down now, with his warning fresh in his mind. Suppose he
insisted.

“Vision. Sight.” The mere words would be an outrage to them. They might not let him speak at all. And even then if he was permitted to speak, already it might be too late. At the best it would only set them discussing his case afresh. Almost certainly he would anger them, for how could he tell his tale and not question the Wisdom Above. They might take him and end the recurrent nuisance of him by putting out his eyes forthwith, and the only result of his intervention would be that he would be nursing his bloody eye sockets when the disaster fell. The mountain might hold for weeks and months yet, but again it might not wait at all. Even now it might be creeping. Even now the heat of the day must be expanding those sullen vast masses, thawing the night ice that held them together. Even now the trickling snow-water was lubricating the widening fissures.

Suddenly he saw, he saw plainly, a new crack leap across a shining green mass, and then across the valley came the sound of it like the shot of a gun that starts a race. The mass was moving now! There was no more time to waste. No more time for pleas and plans.