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The Dream Chapter the Fifth - Fanny Discovers Herself Parts 9 and 10 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Section sixteen of The Dream, a Novel. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: The Dream, a Novel by H. G. Wells. Chapter the
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  Speaker 1: fifth Fanny discovers herself, Parts nine and ten. Part nine.
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  Speaker 1: It took me some time to get from the yard
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  Speaker 1: of Thunderstone House to the office in which these inscriptions
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  Speaker 1: were displayed. Fanny had told me to ask for mister Cheeseman.
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  Speaker 1: And when I had discovered and enter the doorway up
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  Speaker 1: a flight of steps, which had at first been masked
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  Speaker 1: by two large vans, I made this demand of an
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  Speaker 1: extremely small, young lady enclosed in a kind of glass case.
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  Speaker 1: She had a round face and a bright red button
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  Speaker 1: of a nose. She was engaged, I realized, slowly in
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  Speaker 1: removing a foreign stamp from a fragment of envelope by
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  Speaker 1: licking the back of the paper. She did not desist
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  Speaker 1: from this occupation, but mutely asked my business with her
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  Speaker 1: eyes or ran amoyment. She asked, still licking, pardon oran
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  Speaker 1: a mooyment. I'm sorry, I said, I don't get it
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  Speaker 1: quite must be deaf, she said, putting down the stamp
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  Speaker 1: and taking a sufficient breath for slow loud speech. Have
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  Speaker 1: you got an appointment? Oh? I said, yes. I was
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  Speaker 1: told to come here today and see mister Cheeseman between
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  Speaker 1: ten and twelve. She resumed her struggle with the stamp
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  Speaker 1: for a time. Suppose you don't collect stamps, she asked,
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  Speaker 1: sinteresting obby, mister Cheeseman's written a little and book about it.
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  Speaker 1: Looking for a job, I suppose may have to wait
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  Speaker 1: a bit, will you philip that bit of paper there
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  Speaker 1: for malty? We have to insist on pencil. The paper
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  Speaker 1: demanded my name and my business, and I wrote that
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  Speaker 1: the latter was literary employment. Lordie, said the young lady
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  Speaker 1: when she read it, I thought you was in for
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  Speaker 1: the warehouse. I say, Florence, she said to another considerably
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  Speaker 1: larger girl who had appeared on the staircase. Look at
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  Speaker 1: him ease after litterary employment, she said the second young
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  Speaker 1: lady after one glance at me, and sat down inside
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  Speaker 1: the glass box with the piece of chewing gum and
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  Speaker 1: a novelette just published by the firm. The young lady
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  Speaker 1: with the button nose resumed her stamp damping. They kept
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  Speaker 1: me ten minutes before the smaller one remarked, suppose I
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  Speaker 1: better take this up to mister cheeseman float and departed
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  Speaker 1: with my form. She returned after five minutes or so.
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  Speaker 1: Mister cheesman says, E can see you now for one minute,
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  Speaker 1: she said, and led the way up a staircase and
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  Speaker 1: along a pass sage that looked with glass windows into
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  Speaker 1: a printer's shop, and down a staircase and along a
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  Speaker 1: dark passiage to a small apartment with an office table,
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  Speaker 1: one or two chairs, and book shelves covered with paper
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  Speaker 1: covered publications. Out of this opened another room, and the
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  Speaker 1: door was open. You'd better sit down here, said the
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  Speaker 1: young lady with the button nose. Bet Smith asked a voice,
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  Speaker 1: come right in. I went in, and the young lady
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  Speaker 1: with the buttoned nose vanished from my world. I discovered
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  Speaker 1: a gentleman sunken deeply in an arm chair before a
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  Speaker 1: writing table and lost in contemplation of a row of
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  Speaker 1: vivid drawings which were standing up on a shelf against
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  Speaker 1: the wall of the room. He had an intensely earnest,
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  Speaker 1: frowning red face, a large broad mouth, intensely compro and
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  Speaker 1: stiff black hair that stood out from his head in
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  Speaker 1: many directions. His head was slightly on one side, and
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  Speaker 1: he was chewing the end of a lead pencil. Don't
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  Speaker 1: see it, he whispered, don't see it. I stood awaiting
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  Speaker 1: his attention. Smith, he murmured, still not looking at me,
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  Speaker 1: Harry Mortimer Smith Smith. Were you, by any chance educated
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  Speaker 1: at a board school? Yes, sir, I said, I hear
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  Speaker 1: you have literary tastes. Yes, sir, Then come here and
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  Speaker 1: stand by me and look at these damn pictures there?
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  Speaker 1: Did you ever see such stuff? I stood by his side,
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  Speaker 1: but remained judiciously silent. The drawings I now perceived were
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  Speaker 1: designed for a magazine cover. Upon all of them appeared
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  Speaker 1: the words the New World in very conspicuous lettering. One
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  Speaker 1: design was all flying machines and steamships and automobiles. Two
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  Speaker 1: others insisted upon a flying machine. One showed a kneeling,
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  Speaker 1: loin clothed man saluting the rising sun, which, however, rose
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  Speaker 1: behind behind him. Another showed a planet Earth half illuminated,
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  Speaker 1: and another was simply a workman going to his work
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  Speaker 1: in the dawn. Smith said, mister cheeseman, it's you've got
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  Speaker 1: to buy this magazine, not me, which of these covers,
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  Speaker 1: do you prefer it's your decision? Fiat experimentum incorpore Willie
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  Speaker 1: meaning me, Sir, I said brightly. His bristle eyebrows displayed
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  Speaker 1: a momentary surprise. I suppose we're all fitted with the
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  Speaker 1: same tags nowadays. He remarked, which do you find most attractive?
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  Speaker 1: Those aeroplane things? Sir, seemed to me to be shoving
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  Speaker 1: it a bit too hard, I said, HM said, mister Gesman,
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  Speaker 1: that's what the sun says. You wouldn't buy on that.
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  Speaker 1: I don't think so, sir. It's been done too much.
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  Speaker 1: How about that globe too? Like an Atlas? Sir? Aren't
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  Speaker 1: geography and travel interesting? They are, Sir, But somehow if
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  Speaker 1: they aren't attractive, interesting, but not attract HM out of
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  Speaker 1: the mouths of babes and sucklings. So it's going to
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  Speaker 1: be that labor chap there in the dawn? You'd buy that?
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  Speaker 1: A Is this going to be a magazine about inventions
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  Speaker 1: and discoveries and progress? Sir? Exactly? Well, the dawn's good, sir,
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  Speaker 1: but I don't think that sort of labor de cartoon
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  Speaker 1: man is going to be very attractive. Looks rheumatic and heavy, sir,
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  Speaker 1: why not cut him out and keep the dawn bit too,
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  Speaker 1: like a slice of ham smith, thin pink streaks. I
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  Speaker 1: was struck by an idea. Suppose, sir, you kept that
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  Speaker 1: dawn seen and made it a bit earlier in the year,
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  Speaker 1: buds on the trees, sir, and perhaps snowy mountains, rather
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  Speaker 1: cold and far off. And then you put a hand
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  Speaker 1: right across it, just a big hand, pointing, sir, pointing up,
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  Speaker 1: said mister Cheeseman. No, sir, pointing forward, and just a
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  Speaker 1: little up. It would sort of make one curious. It
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  Speaker 1: would a woman's hand, just a hand. I think, sir,
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  Speaker 1: you'd buy that. I'm at it, sir, if I had
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  Speaker 1: the money. Mister Cheesman reflected for some moments, chewing his
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  Speaker 1: pencil serenely. Then he spat out small bits of pencil
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  Speaker 1: over his desk and spoke, way, you say, Smith, is
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  Speaker 1: exactly what I've been thinking, exactly. It's very curious. He
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  Speaker 1: pressed a bell push on his desk, and a messenger
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  Speaker 1: girl appeared asked mister prelude to come here. So you
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  Speaker 1: think you'd like to come into Thunderstone House, Smith, I'm
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  Speaker 1: told you know a little about science already learn more.
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  Speaker 1: Our public's moving up to science. I've got some books
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  Speaker 1: over there. I want you to read and pick out
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  Speaker 1: anything you find interesting. You'll be able to find me
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  Speaker 1: a job, sir, I said, I've got to find you
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  Speaker 1: a job, all right, orders his orders. You'll be able
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  Speaker 1: to sit in that room there. We were interrupted by
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  Speaker 1: the arrival of mister Prelude. He was a tall, thin,
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  Speaker 1: canaverous man with a melancholy expression. Mister Prelude said, mister Chessman,
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  Speaker 1: waving his arm at the cover of sketches. This stuff
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  Speaker 1: won't do. It's to banal. We want something fresh, or
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  Speaker 1: something with a touch of imagination. What I want to
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  Speaker 1: see on the cover is well, say, a dawn, a
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  Speaker 1: very calm and simple scene mostly color, mountain range far away,
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  Speaker 1: just flushed with sunrise, valley blue and still high dreamer
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  Speaker 1: clouds touched with pink. See trees perhaps in the foreground,
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  Speaker 1: just budding spring motif and mourning motif. See all a
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  Speaker 1: little faint and backgroundy. Then a big hand and wrist
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  Speaker 1: across the page pointing at something, something high and far away. See.
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  Speaker 1: He surveyed, mister Prelude with the glow of creative enthusiasm.
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  Speaker 1: On his face. Mister Prelude looked disapproval. The sun will
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  Speaker 1: like that, he said. It's the goods, said mister Cheeseman.
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  Speaker 1: Why not those flying machines. Why not midges, asked mister Cheeseman.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Prelude shrugged his shoulders. I've got no use for
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  Speaker 1: a magazine on progress without a flying machine or a zeppelin.
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  Speaker 1: He said. Still, it's your affair. Mister Cheeseman looked a
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  Speaker 1: little dashed by his colleague doubt, but he held to
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  Speaker 1: his idea. We'll get a sketch made, He said, how
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  Speaker 1: about Wilkinson. They discussed some unknown Wilkinson as a possible
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  Speaker 1: cover designer. Then mister Cheeseman turned to me. By the by,
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  Speaker 1: here's a youngster. We've got to make use of Prelude.
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  Speaker 1: We don't know what he can do, but he seems intelligent.
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  Speaker 1: I thought we'd use him to sift some of those
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  Speaker 1: scientific books. What he likes, they'll like. I can't read
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  Speaker 1: that stuff. I'm too busy, mister Prelude surveyed me. You
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  Speaker 1: never know what you can do to you try, he said,
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  Speaker 1: Do you know anything of science? Not very much, I said,
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  Speaker 1: but I've done some physiography and chemistry and the little
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  Speaker 1: geology and read a lot. You don't want to know
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  Speaker 1: very much, said mister prelude. You're better without it. Here
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  Speaker 1: makes you Hybrow goes to tens of thousands, but Crane
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  Speaker 1: and Newbery go to hundreds of thousands. Not that our
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  Speaker 1: brows aren't rising some in this establishment educational and improving.
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  Speaker 1: We're going to be so far as it's consistent with
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  Speaker 1: our profits. See that. Notice we lead all the same cheesemen,
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  Speaker 1: said mister prelude. The thing that has sold, the thing
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  Speaker 1: that sells them. The thing that's going to sell is
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  Speaker 1: the magazine with a pretty girl on the cover, and
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  Speaker 1: the less costume, the better, consistent with decency. Now Here,
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  Speaker 1: what's your name? Smith, sir Smith? And here's all these
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  Speaker 1: covers on the bookstall. And then I produced this, which
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  Speaker 1: does he buy? This was the cover of the summer
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  Speaker 1: number of Newberry's Story magazine, on which two young ladies
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  Speaker 1: in skin tight bathing dresses disported themselves on a sandy beach.
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  Speaker 1: Smith goes for this, said mister prelude, triumphantly. I shook
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  Speaker 1: my head. You mean to say that isn't attractive, said
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  Speaker 1: mister cheeseman, turning in his cheer and pointing with his
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  Speaker 1: well chewed pencil. I reflected, there's never anything about them inside,
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  Speaker 1: I said, got you there prelude, said mister Cheeseman, not
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  Speaker 1: a bit. He bought six or seven before he found
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  Speaker 1: that out, and most of them forget about it when
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  Speaker 1: they read Inside Part ten. I found my introduction to
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  Speaker 1: Thunderstone House far less terrifying than I had anticipated. It
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  Speaker 1: was gratifying to have come so near to what mister
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  Speaker 1: Cheesman had thought about the magazine cover, and there were
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  Speaker 1: presently other very reassuring coincidences of the same sort. I
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  Speaker 1: was immediately interested in the editorial and publishing work that
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  Speaker 1: was going on about me, and my mind took one
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  Speaker 1: of those forward strides that are characteristic of adolescence. I
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  Speaker 1: was still a boy when I left mister Humburg. I
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  Speaker 1: had not been with Crane in Newbury six weeks before.
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  Speaker 1: I perceived that I was a capable and responsible young man.
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  Speaker 1: I began to form opinions rapidly, to write with confidence.
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  Speaker 1: Even my handwriting suddenly grew up from a careless or
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  Speaker 1: over careful boys scrawl to a consistent and characteristic script.
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  Speaker 1: I began to think about the clothes I was wearing,
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  Speaker 1: and of the impression I made upon other people. In
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  Speaker 1: quite a little time, I was writing short contributions to
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  Speaker 1: some of our minor weeklies and monthlies, and suggesting articles
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  Speaker 1: and features, as we call them, to mister Cheeseman. The
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  Speaker 1: eighteen shillings a week at which I started went up
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  Speaker 1: in a series of jerks to three pounds, which was
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  Speaker 1: quite a big salary in those days for a youngster
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  Speaker 1: not yet eighteen. Fanny took the keenest interest in my
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  Speaker 1: work and displayed an extraordinary understanding of its conditions. She
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  Speaker 1: seemed to know all about mister Cheesman and mister Prelude
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  Speaker 1: and the rest of my colleagues directly I mentioned them.
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  Speaker 1: One day I was working in the room next to
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  Speaker 1: mister Cheeseman's with another youngster called Wilkins, at a rather
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  Speaker 1: odd little job. One of the authors our firm employed
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  Speaker 1: had written a long story for the story Reader's Paradise,
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  Speaker 1: and it had been set up by the printers and
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  Speaker 1: passed for press before it was discovered that in a
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  Speaker 1: careless moment, she had given her chief villain the name
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  Speaker 1: of a very prominent lawyer, who unhappily also had a
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  Speaker 1: country house in a village almost identical in named with
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  Speaker 1: a corresponding village in the story. The prominent lawyer might
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  Speaker 1: see fit to consider this use of his name as
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  Speaker 1: libelous and make trouble for us. So Wilkins and I
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  Speaker 1: were going through two sets of proofs, one to check
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  Speaker 1: the other, and we were changing the name of the
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  Speaker 1: prominent lawyer to an entirely different one whenever it occurred
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  Speaker 1: to brighten the task. We had made a game of it.
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  Speaker 1: Each one raced down his galley proof and called the
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  Speaker 1: name of Reginald Flake whenever he found it, and scored
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  Speaker 1: a point for every name he called first. I was
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  Speaker 1: some points up when I heard a voice in the
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  Speaker 1: passage that seemed oddly familiar to me. There all spread
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  Speaker 1: out on my desk, sir, if you like to come
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  Speaker 1: into my room, I heard mister Cheeseman say, fain knits,
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  Speaker 1: said Wilkins, it's the sun. I turned round as the
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  Speaker 1: door opened and saw mister Cheeseman holding the door open
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  Speaker 1: for a good looking youngish man with rather handsome regular
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  Speaker 1: features and a sort of bang of brown hair over
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  Speaker 1: his forehead. He wore a pair of very round, large
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  Speaker 1: spectacles with glasses tinted a faint yellow color. He met
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  Speaker 1: my eyes in an expression of partial recognition, came into
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  Speaker 1: his and faded again. Either he RECOGNI or he recognized
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  Speaker 1: the resemblance in me. He followed mister Cheesman across the room,
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  Speaker 1: and he turned sharply, of course, he said, smiling and
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  Speaker 1: returning a step or two towards me. You must be
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  Speaker 1: young Smith. How are you getting on here? I'm working
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  Speaker 1: for mister Cheesman, mostly, I said, standing up. He turned
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  Speaker 1: to mister Cheesman. Very satisfactory, sir, quick interested. He'll do
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  Speaker 1: well here. I'm glad to hear it. Very glad. Everyone
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  Speaker 1: has a chance here, and there's no favors, no favors.
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  Speaker 1: The best man does the job. Glad to see you
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  Speaker 1: among the directors. Whenever you care to come up to us, Smith,
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  Speaker 1: I'll do my best, sir. He hesitated, smiled again in
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  Speaker 1: a very friendly way, and went into mister Cheesman's room.
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  Speaker 1: Where are we, I said, middle of galley thirty two
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  Speaker 1: score twenty two to twenty nine. How do you know him?
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Asked Wilkins in a fierce undertone. I don't know him,
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  Speaker 1: I said, suddenly hot and flushed. I've never seen him before?
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  Speaker 1: Will he knew you? He's heard about me? Who from?
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  Speaker 1: How the deuce should I know? I asked, with needless heat. Oh,
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  Speaker 1: said Wilkins, and reflected. But he glanced at my troubled
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  Speaker 1: face and said no more. But at the game of
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  Speaker 1: Reginald Flake he overhauled me and beat me At the
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  Speaker 1: end of the book sixty seven to forty two, end
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  Speaker 1: of section sixteen