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Chapter the Fifth: Fanny Discovers Herself. Parts 9 and 10 · The Dream: A Novel

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  Section sixteen of The Dream, a Novel. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
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  please visit LibriVox dot org. The Dream, a Novel by H.
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  G. Wells. Chapter the fifth Fanny discovers herself, Parts nine and ten.
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  Part nine. It took me some time to get from the yard of
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  Thunderstone House to the office in which these inscriptions were displayed. Fanny had told
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  me to ask for mister Cheeseman. And when I had discovered and enter the
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  doorway up a flight of steps, which had at first been masked by two
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  large vans, I made this demand of an extremely small, young lady enclosed
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  in a kind of glass case. She had a round face and a bright
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  red button of a nose. She was engaged, I realized, slowly in
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  removing a foreign stamp from a fragment of envelope by licking the back of the
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  paper. She did not desist from this occupation, but mutely asked my business
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  with her eyes or ran amoyment. She asked, still licking, pardon oran
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  a mooyment. I'm sorry, I said, I don't get it quite must
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  be deaf, she said, putting down the stamp and taking a sufficient breath
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  for slow loud speech. Have you got an appointment? Oh? I said,
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  yes. I was told to come here today and see mister Cheeseman between
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  ten and twelve. She resumed her struggle with the stamp for a time.
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  Suppose you don't collect stamps, she asked, sinteresting obby, mister Cheeseman's written
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  a little and book about it. Looking for a job, I suppose may
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  have to wait a bit, will you philip that bit of paper there for
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  malty? We have to insist on pencil. The paper demanded my name and
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  my business, and I wrote that the latter was literary employment. Lordie,
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  said the young lady when she read it, I thought you was in for
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  the warehouse. I say, Florence, she said to another considerably larger girl
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  who had appeared on the staircase. Look at him ease after litterary employment,
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  she said the second young lady after one glance at me, and sat down
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  inside the glass box with the piece of chewing gum and a novelette just published
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  by the firm. The young lady with the button nose resumed her stamp damping.
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  They kept me ten minutes before the smaller one remarked, suppose I better
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  take this up to mister cheeseman float and departed with my form. She returned
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  after five minutes or so. Mister cheesman says, E can see you now
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  for one minute, she said, and led the way up a staircase and
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  along a pass sage that looked with glass windows into a printer's shop, and
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  down a staircase and along a dark passiage to a small apartment with an office
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  table, one or two chairs, and book shelves covered with paper covered publications.
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  Out of this opened another room, and the door was open. You'd
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  better sit down here, said the young lady with the button nose. Be
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  smith asked a voice, come right in. I went in, and the
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  young lady with the buttoned nose vanished from my world. I discovered a gentleman
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  sunken deeply in an arm chair before a writing table and lost in contemplation of
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  a row of vivid drawings which were standing up on a shelf against the wall
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  of the room. He had an intensely earnest, frowning red face, a
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  large broad mouth, intensely compro and stiff black hair that stood out from his
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  head in many directions. His head was slightly on one side, and he
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  was chewing the end of a lead pencil. Don't see it, he whispered,
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  don't see it. I stood awaiting his attention. Smith, he murmured,
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  still not looking at me, Harry Mortimer Smith Smith. Were you,
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  by any chance educated at a board school? Yes, sir, I said,
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  I hear you have literary tastes. Yes, sir, Then come here
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  and stand by me and look at these damn pictures there? Did you ever
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  see such stuff? I stood by his side, but remained judiciously silent.
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  The drawings I now perceived were designed for a magazine cover. Upon all of
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  them appeared the words the New World in very conspicuous lettering. One design was
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  all flying machines and steamships and automobiles. Two others insisted upon a flying machine.
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  One showed a kneeling, loin clothed man saluting the rising sun, which,
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  however, rose behind behind him. Another showed a planet Earth half illuminated,
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  and another was simply a workman going to his work in the dawn.
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  Smith said, mister cheeseman, it's you've got to buy this magazine, not
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  me, which of these covers, do you prefer it's your decision? Fiat
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  experimentum incorpore Willie meaning me, Sir, I said brightly. His bristle eyebrows
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  displayed a momentary surprise. I suppose we're all fitted with the same tags nowadays.
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  He remarked, which do you find most attractive? Those aeroplane things?
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  Sir, seemed to me to be shoving it a bit too hard, I
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  said, HM said, mister Gesman, that's what the sun says. You
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  wouldn't buy on that. I don't think so, sir. It's been done
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  too much. How about that globe too? Like an Atlas? Sir?
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  Aren't geography and travel interesting? They are, Sir, But somehow if they
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  aren't attractive, interesting, but not attract HM out of the mouths of babes
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  and sucklings. So it's going to be that labor chap there in the dawn?
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  You'd buy that? A Is this going to be a magazine about inventions
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  and discoveries and progress? Sir? Exactly? Well, the dawn's good,
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  sir, but I don't think that sort of labor de cartoon man is going
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  to be very attractive. Looks rheumatic and heavy, sir, why not cut
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  him out and keep the dawn bit too, like a slice of ham smith,
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  thin pink streaks. I was struck by an idea. Suppose, sir,
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  you kept that dawn seen and made it a bit earlier in the year,
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  buds on the trees, sir, and perhaps snowy mountains, rather cold
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  and far off. And then you put a hand right across it, just
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  a big hand, pointing, sir, pointing up, said mister Cheeseman.
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  No, sir, pointing forward, and just a little up. It would
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  sort of make one curious. It would a woman's hand, just a hand.
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  I think, sir, you'd buy that. I'm at it, sir,
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  if I had the money. Mister Cheesman reflected for some moments, chewing
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  his pencil serenely. Then he spat out small bits of pencil over his desk
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  and spoke, way, you say, Smith, is exactly what I've been
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  thinking, exactly. It's very curious. He pressed a bell push on his
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  desk, and a messenger girl appeared asked mister prelude to come here. So
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  you think you'd like to come into Thunderstone House, Smith, I'm told you
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  know a little about science already learn more. Our public's moving up to science.
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  I've got some books over there. I want you to read and pick
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  out anything you find interesting. You'll be able to find me a job,
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  sir, I said, I've got to find you a job, all right,
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  orders his orders. You'll be able to sit in that room there.
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  We were interrupted by the arrival of mister Prelude. He was a tall,
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  thin, canaverous man with a melancholy expression. Mister Prelude said, mister Chessman,
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  waving his arm at the cover of sketches. This stuff won't do.
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  It's to banal. We want something fresh, or something with a touch of
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  imagination. What I want to see on the cover is well, say,
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  a dawn, a very calm and simple scene mostly color, mountain range far
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  away, just flushed with sunrise, valley blue and still high dreamer clouds touched
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  with pink. See trees perhaps in the foreground, just budding spring motif and
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  mourning motif. See all a little faint and backgroundy. Then a big hand
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  and wrist across the page pointing at something, something high and far away.
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  See. He surveyed, mister Prelude with the glow of creative enthusiasm. On
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  his face. Mister Prelude looked disapproval. The sun will like that, he
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  said. It's the goods, said mister Cheeseman. Why not those flying machines.
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  Why not midges, asked mister Cheeseman. Mister Prelude shrugged his shoulders.
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  I've got no use for a magazine on progress without a flying machine or a
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  zeppelin. He said. Still, it's your affair. Mister Cheeseman looked a
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  little dashed by his colleague doubt, but he held to his idea. We'll
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  get a sketch made, He said, how about Wilkinson. They discussed some
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  unknown Wilkinson as a possible cover designer. Then mister Cheeseman turned to me.
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  By the by, here's a youngster. We've got to make use of Prelude.
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  We don't know what he can do, but he seems intelligent. I
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  thought we'd use him to sift some of those scientific books. What he likes,
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  they'll like. I can't read that stuff. I'm too busy, mister
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  Prelude surveyed me. You never know what you can do to you try,
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  he said, Do you know anything of science? Not very much, I
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  said, but I've done some physiography and chemistry and the little geology and read
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  a lot. You don't want to know very much, said mister prelude.
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  You're better without it. Here makes you Hybrow goes to tens of thousands,
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  but Crane and Newbery go to hundreds of thousands. Not that our brows aren't
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  rising some in this establishment educational and improving. We're going to be so far
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  as it's consistent with our profits. See that. Notice we lead all the
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  same cheesemen, said mister prelude. The thing that has sold, the thing
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  that sells them. The thing that's going to sell is the magazine with a
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  pretty girl on the cover, and the less costume, the better, consistent
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  with decency. Now Here, what's your name? Smith, sir Smith?
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  And here's all these covers on the bookstall. And then I produced this,
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  which does he buy? This was the cover of the summer number of Newberry's
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  Story magazine, on which two young ladies in skin tight bathing dresses disported themselves
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  on a sandy beach. Smith goes for this, said mister prelude, triumphantly.
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  I shook my head. You mean to say that isn't attractive, said
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  mister cheeseman, turning in his cheer and pointing with his well chewed pencil.
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  I reflected, there's never anything about them inside, I said, got you
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  there prelude, said mister Cheeseman, not a bit. He bought six or
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  seven before he found that out, and most of them forget about it when
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  they read Inside Part ten. I found my introduction to Thunderstone House far less
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  terrifying than I had anticipated. It was gratifying to have come so near to
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  what mister Cheesman had thought about the magazine cover, and there were presently other
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  very reassuring coincidences of the same sort. I was immediately interested in the editorial
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  and publishing work that was going on about me, and my mind took one
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  of those forward strides that are characteristic of adolescence. I was still a boy
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  when I left mister Humburg. I had not been with Crane in Newbury six
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  weeks before. I perceived that I was a capable and responsible young man.
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  I began to form opinions rapidly, to write with confidence. Even my handwriting
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  suddenly grew up from a careless or over careful boys scrawl to a consistent and
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  characteristic script. I began to think about the clothes I was wearing, and
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  of the impression I made upon other people. In quite a little time,
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  I was writing short contributions to some of our minor weeklies and monthlies, and
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  suggesting articles and features, as we call them, to mister Cheeseman. The
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  eighteen shillings a week at which I started went up in a series of jerks
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  to three pounds, which was quite a big salary in those days for a
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  youngster not yet eighteen. Fanny took the keenest interest in my work and displayed
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  an extraordinary understanding of its conditions. She seemed to know all about mister Cheesman
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  and mister Prelude and the rest of my colleagues directly I mentioned them. One
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  day I was working in the room next to mister Cheeseman's with another youngster called
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  Wilkins, at a rather odd little job. One of the authors our firm
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  employed had written a long story for the story Reader's Paradise, and it had
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  been set up by the printers and passed for press before it was discovered that
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  in a careless moment, she had given her chief villain the name of a
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  very prominent lawyer, who unhappily also had a country house in a village almost
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  identical in named with a corresponding village in the story. The prominent lawyer might
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  see fit to consider this use of his name as libelous and make trouble for
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  us. So Wilkins and I were going through two sets of proofs, one
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  to check the other, and we were changing the name of the prominent lawyer
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  to an entirely different one whenever it occurred to brighten the task. We had
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  made a game of it. Each one raced down his galley proof and called
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  the name of Reginald Flake whenever he found it, and scored a point for
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  every name he called first. I was some points up when I heard a
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  voice in the passage that seemed oddly familiar to me. There all spread out
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  on my desk, sir, if you like to come into my room,
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  I heard mister Cheeseman say, fain knits, said Wilkins, it's the sun.
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  I turned round as the door opened and saw mister Cheeseman holding the door
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  open for a good looking youngish man with rather handsome regular features and a sort
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  of bang of brown hair over his forehead. He wore a pair of very
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  round, large spectacles with glasses tinted a faint yellow color. He met my
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  eyes in an expression of partial recognition, came into his and faded again.
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  Either he RECOGNI or he recognized the resemblance in me. He followed mister Cheesman
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  across the room, and he turned sharply, of course, he said,
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  smiling and returning a step or two towards me. You must be young Smith.
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  How are you getting on here? I'm working for mister Cheesman, mostly,
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  I said, standing up. He turned to mister Cheesman. Very satisfactory,
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  sir, quick interested. He'll do well here. I'm glad to hear
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  it. Very glad. Everyone has a chance here, and there's no favors,
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  no favors. The best man does the job. Glad to see you
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  among the directors. Whenever you care to come up to us, Smith,
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  I'll do my best, sir. He hesitated, smiled again in a very
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  friendly way, and went into mister Cheesman's room. Where are we, I
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  said, middle of galley thirty two score twenty two to twenty nine. How
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  do you know him? Asked Wilkins in a fierce undertone. I don't know
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  him, I said, suddenly hot and flushed. I've never seen him before?
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  Will he knew you? He's heard about me? Who from? How
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  the deuce should I know? I asked, with needless heat. Oh,
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  said Wilkins, and reflected. But he glanced at my troubled face and said
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  no more. But at the game of Reginald Flake he overhauled me and beat
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  me At the end of the book sixty seven to forty two, end of section sixteen