The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth by H. G. Wells
III.
No one knows what the Vicar made of the Giant Puff-Balls.
No doubt he was among the first to discover them. They were scattered atintervals up and down the path between the near down and the villageend--a path he frequented daily in his constitutional round. Altogether,of these abnormal fungi there were, from first to last, quite thirty.The Vicar seems to have stared at each severally, and to have proddedmost of them with his stick once or twice. One he attempted to measurewith his arms, but it burst at his Ixion embrace.
He spoke to several people about them, and said they were "marvellous!"and he related to at least seven different persons the well-known storyof the flagstone that was lifted from the cellar floor by a growth offungi beneath. He looked up his Sowerby to see if it was _Lycoperdoncoelatum_ or _giganteum_--like all his kind since Gilbert White becamefamous, he Gilbert-Whited. He cherished a theory that _giganteum_ isunfairly named.
One does not know if he observed that those white spheres lay in thevery track that old woman of yesterday had followed, or if he noted thatthe last of the series swelled not a score of yards from the gate of theCaddles' cottage. If he observed these things, he made no attempt toplace his observation on record. His observation in matters botanicalwas what the inferior sort of scientific people call a "trainedobservation"--you look for certain definite things and neglecteverything else. And he did nothing to link this phenomenon with theremarkable expansion of the Caddles' baby that had been going on now forsome weeks, indeed ever since Caddles walked over one Sunday afternoon amonth or more ago to see his mother-in-law and hear Mr. Skinner (sincedefunct) brag about his management of hens.
IV.
The growth of the puff-balls following on the expansion of the Caddles'baby really ought to have opened the Vicar's eyes. The latter fact hadalready come right into his arms at the christening--almostover-poweringly....
The youngster bawled with deafening violence when the cold water thatsealed its divine inheritance and its right to the name of "AlbertEdward Caddles" fell upon its brow. It was already beyond maternalporterage, and Caddles, staggering indeed, but grinning triumphantly atquantitatively inferior parents, bore it back to the free-sittingoccupied by his party.
"I never saw such a child!" said the Vicar. This was the first publicintimation that the Caddles' baby, which had begun its earthly career alittle under seven pounds, did after all intend to be a credit to itsparents. Very soon it was clear it meant to be not only a credit but aglory. And within a month their glory shone so brightly as to be, inconnection with people in the Caddles' position, improper.
The butcher weighed the infant eleven times. He was a man of few words,and he soon got through with them. The first time he said, "E's a goodun;" the next time he said, "My word!" the third time he said, "_Well_,mum," and after that he simply blew enormously each time, scratched hishead, and looked at his scales with an unprecedented mistrust. Every onecame to see the Big Baby--so it was called by universal consent--andmost of them said, "E's a Bouncer," and almost all remarked to him,"_Did_ they?" Miss Fletcher came and said she "never _did_," which wasperfectly true.
Lady Wondershoot, the village tyrant, arrived the day after the thirdweighing, and inspected the phenomenon narrowly through glasses thatfilled it with howling terror. "It's an unusually Big child," she toldits mother, in a loud instructive voice. "You ought to take unusual careof it, Caddles. Of course it won't go on like this, being bottle fed,but we must do what we can for it. I'll send you down some moreflannel."
The doctor came and measured the child with a tape, and put the figuresin a notebook, and old Mr. Drift-hassock, who fanned by Up Marden,brought a manure traveller two miles out of their way to look at it. Thetraveller asked the child's age three times over, and said finally thathe was blowed. He left it to be inferred how and why he was blowed;apparently it was the child's size blowed him. He also said it ought tobe put into a baby show. And all day long, out of school hours, littlechildren kept coming and saying, "Please, Mrs. Caddles, mum, may we havea look at your baby, please, mum?" until Mrs. Caddles had to put a stopto it. And amidst all these scenes of amazement came Mrs. Skinner, andstood and smiled, standing somewhat in the background, with each sharpelbow in a lank gnarled hand, and smiling, smiling under and about hernose, with a smile of infinite profundity.
"It makes even that old wretch of a grandmother look quite pleasant,"said Lady Wondershoot. "Though I'm sorry she's come back to thevillage."
Of course, as with almost all cottagers' babies, the eleemosynaryelement had already come in, but the child soon made it clear bycolossal bawling, that so far as the filling of its bottle went, ithadn't come in yet nearly enough.
The baby was entitled to a nine days' wonder, and every one wonderedhappily over its amazing growth for twice that time and more. And thenyou know, instead of its dropping into the background and giving placeto other marvels, it went on growing more than ever!
Lady Wondershoot heard Mrs. Greenfield, her housekeeper, with infiniteamazement.
"Caddles downstairs again. No food for the child! My dear Greenfield,it's impossible. The creature eats like a hippopotamus! I'm sure itcan't be true."
"I'm sure I hope you're not being imposed upon, my lady," said Mrs.Greenfield.
"It's so difficult to tell with these people," said Lady Wondershoot."Now I do wish, my good Greenfield, that you'd just go down thereyourself this afternoon and _see_--see it have its bottle. Big as it is,I cannot imagine that it needs more than six pints a day."
"It hasn't no business to, my lady," said Mrs. Greenfield.
The hand of Lady Wondershoot quivered, with that C.O.S. sort of emotion,that suspicious rage that stirs in all true aristocrats, at the thoughtthat possibly the meaner classes are after all--as mean as theirbetters, and--where the sting lies--scoring points in the game.
But Mrs. Greenfield could observe no evidence of peculation, and theorder for an increasing daily supply to the Caddles' nursery was issued.Scarcely had the first instalment gone, when Caddles was back again atthe great house in a state abjectly apologetic.
"We took the greates' care of 'em, Mrs. Greenfield, I do assure you,mum, but he's regular bust 'em! They flew with such vilence, mum, thatone button broke a pane of the window, mum, and one hit me a regularstinger jest 'ere, mum."
Lady Wondershoot, when she heard that this amazing child had positivelyburst out of its beautiful charity clothes, decided that she must speakto Caddles herself. He appeared in her presence with his hair hastilywetted and smoothed by hand, breathless, and clinging to his hat brim asthough it was a life-belt, and he stumbled at the carpet edge out ofsheer distress of mind.
Lady Wondershoot liked bullying Caddles. Caddles was her ideallower-class person, dishonest, faithful, abject, industrious, andinconceivably incapable of responsibility. She told him it was a seriousmatter, the way his child was going on. "It's 'is appetite, myladyship," said Caddles, with a rising note.
"Check 'im, my ladyship, you can't," said Caddles. "There 'e lies, myladyship, and kicks out 'e does, and 'owls, that distressin'. We 'aven'tthe 'eart, my ladyship. If we 'ad--the neighbours would interfere...."
Lady Wondershoot consulted the parish doctor.
"What I want to know," said Lady Wondershoot, "is it _right_ this childshould have such an extraordinary quantity of milk?"
"The proper allowance for a child of that age," said the parish doctor,"is a pint and a half to two pints in the twenty-four hours. I don't seethat you are called upon to provide more. If you do, it is your owngenerosity. Of course we might try the legitimate quantity for a fewdays. But the child, I must admit, seems for some reason to bephysiologically different. Possibly what is called a Sport. A case ofGeneral Hypertrophy."
"It isn't fair to the other parish children," said Lady Wondershoot. "Iam certain we shall have complaints if this goes on."
"I don't see that any one can be expected to give more than therecognised allowance. We might insist on its doing with that,
"I suppose," said Lady Wondershoot, reflecting, "that apart from thesize and the appetite, you don't find anything else abnormal--nothingmonstrous?"
"No. No, I don't. But no doubt if this growth goes on, we shall findgrave moral and intellectual deficiencies. One might almost prophesythat from Max Nordau's law. A most gifted and celebrated philosopher,Lady Wondershoot. He discovered that the abnormal is--abnormal, a mostvaluable discovery, and well worth bearing in mind. I find it of theutmost help in practice. When I come upon anything abnormal, I say atonce, This is abnormal." His eyes became profound, his voice dropped,his manner verged upon the intimately confidential. He raised one handstiffly. "And I treat it in that spirit," he said.
V.
"Tut, tut!" said the Vicar to his breakfast things--the day after thecoming of Mrs. Skinner. "Tut, tut! what's this?" and poised his glassesat his paper with a general air of remonstrance.
"Giant wasps! What's the world coming to? American journalists, Isuppose! Hang these Novelties! Giant gooseberries are good enough forme.
"Nonsense!" said the Vicar, and drank off his coffee at a gulp, eyessteadfast on the paper, and smacked his lips incredulously.
"Bosh!" said the Vicar, rejecting the hint altogether.
But the next day there was more of it, and the light came.
Not all at once, however. When he went for his constitutional that dayhe was still chuckling at the absurd story his paper would have had himbelieve. Wasps indeed--killing a dog! Incidentally as he passed by thesite of that first crop of puff-balls he remarked that the grass wasgrowing very rank there, but he did not connect that in any way with thematter of his amusement. "We should certainly have heard something ofit," he said; "Whitstable can't be twenty miles from here."
Beyond he found another puff-ball, one of the second crop, rising likea roc's egg out of the abnormally coarsened turf.
The thing came upon him in a flash.
He did not take his usual round that morning. Instead he turned aside bythe second stile and came round to the Caddles' cottage. "Where's thatbaby?" he demanded, and at the sight of it, "Goodness me!"
He went up the village blessing his heart, and met the doctor full tiltcoming down. He grasped his arm. "What does this _mean_?" he said. "Haveyou seen the paper these last few days?"
The doctor said he had.
"Well, what's the matter with that child? What's the matter witheverything--wasps, puff-balls, babies, eh? What's making them grow sobig? This is most unexpected. In Kent too! If it was America now--"
"It's a little difficult to say just what it is," said the doctor. "Sofar as I can grasp the symptoms--"
"Yes?"
"It's Hypertrophy--General Hypertrophy."
"Hypertrophy?"
"Yes. General--affecting all the bodily structures--all the organism. Imay say that in my own mind, between ourselves, I'm very nearlyconvinced it's that.... But one has to be careful."
"Ah," said the Vicar, a good deal relieved to find the doctor equal tothe situation. "But how is it it's breaking out in this fashion, allover the place?"
"That again," said the doctor, "is difficult to say."
"Urshot. Here. It's a pretty clear case of spreading."
"Yes," said the doctor. "Yes. I think so. It has a strong resemblance atany rate to some sort of epidemic. Probably Epidemic Hypertrophy willmeet the case."
"Epidemic!" said the Vicar. "You don't mean it's contagious?"
The doctor smiled gently and rubbed one hand against the other. "That Icouldn't say," he said.
"But---!" cried the Vicar, round-eyed. "If it's _catching_--it--itaffects _us!_"
He made a stride up the road and turned about.
"I've just been there," he cried. "Hadn't I better---? I'll go home atonce and have a bath and fumigate my clothes."
The doctor regarded his retreating back for a moment, and then turnedabout and went towards his own house....
But on the way he reflected that one case had been in the village amonth without any one catching the disease, and after a pause ofhesitation decided to be as brave as a doctor should be and take therisks like a man.
And indeed he was well advised by his second thoughts. Growth was thelast thing that could ever happen to him again. He could have eaten--andthe Vicar could have eaten--Herakleophorbia by the truckful. For growthhad done with them. Growth had done with these two gentlemen forevermore.
VI.
It was a day or so after this conversation--a day or so, that is, afterthe burning of the Experimental Farm--that Winkles came to Redwood andshowed him an insulting letter. It was an anonymous letter, and anauthor should respect his character's secrets. "You are only takingcredit for a natural phenomenon," said the letter, "and trying toadvertise yourself by your letter to the _Times_. You and your Boomfood!Let me tell you, this absurdly named food of yours has only the mostaccidental connection with those big wasps and rats. The plain fact isthere is an epidemic of Hypertrophy--Contagious Hypertrophy--which youhave about as much claim to control as you have to control the solarsystem. The thing is as old as the hills. There was Hypertrophy in thefamily of Anak. Quite outside your range, at Cheasing Eyebright, at thepresent time there is a baby--"
"Shaky up and down writing. Old gentleman apparently," said Redwood."But it's odd a baby--"
He read a few lines further, and had an inspiration.
"By Jove!" said he. "That's my missing Mrs. Skinner!"
He descended upon her suddenly in the afternoon of the following day.
She was engaged in pulling onions in the little garden before herdaughter's cottage when she saw him coming through the garden gate. Shestood for a moment "consternated," as the country folks say, and thenfolded her arms, and with the little bunch of onions held defensivelyunder her left elbow, awaited his approach. Her mouth opened and shutseveral times; she mumbled her remaining tooth, and once quite suddenlyshe curtsied, like the blink of an arc-light.
"I thought I should find you," said Redwood.
"I thought you might, sir," she said, without joy.
"Where's Skinner?"
"'E ain't never written to me, Sir, not once, nor come nigh of me sinceI came here. Sir."
"Don't you know what's become of him?"
"Him not having written, no, Sir," and she edged a step towards the leftwith an imperfect idea of cutting off Redwood from the barn door.
"No one knows what has become of him," said Redwood.
"I dessay '_e_ knows," said Mrs. Skinner.
"He doesn't tell."
"He was always a great one for looking after 'imself and leaving themthat was near and dear to 'im in trouble, was Skinner. Though clever ascould be," said Mrs. Skinner....
"Where's this child?" asked Redwood abruptly.
She begged his pardon.
"This child I hear about, the child you've been giving our stuff to--thechild that weighs two stone."
Mrs. Skinner's hands worked, and she dropped the onions. "Reely, Sir,"she protested, "I don't hardly know, Sir, what you mean. My daughter,Sir, Mrs. Caddles, '_as_ a baby, Sir." And she made an agitated curtseyand tried to look innocently inquiring by tilting her nose to one side.
"You'd better let me see that baby, Mrs. Skinner," said Redwood.
Mrs. Skinner unmasked an eye at him as she led the way towards the barn."Of course, Sir, there may 'ave been a _little_, in a little can ofNicey I give his father to bring over from the farm, or a little perhapswhat I happened to bring about with me, so to speak. Me packing in ahurry and all ..."
"Um!" said Redwood, after he had cluckered to the infant for a space."Oom!"
He told Mrs. Caddles the baby was a very fine child indeed, a thingthat was getting well home to her intelligence--and he ignored heraltogether after that. Presently she left the barn--through sheerinsignificance.
"Now you've started him, you'll have to keep on with him, you know," hesaid to Mrs. Skinner.
He
"Splash it about, Sir?"
"Oh! _you_ know."
She indicated knowledge by convulsive gestures.
"You haven't told these people here? The parents, the squire and so onat the big house, the doctor, no one?"
Mrs. Skinner shook her head.
"I wouldn't," said Redwood....
He went to the door of the barn and surveyed the world about him. Thedoor of the barn looked between the end of the cottage and some disusedpiggeries through a five-barred gate upon the highroad. Beyond was ahigh, red brick-wall rich with ivy and wallflower and pennywort, and setalong the top with broken glass. Beyond the corner of the wall, a sunlitnotice-board amidst green and yellow branches reared itself above therich tones of the first fallen leaves and announced that "Trespassers inthese Woods will be Prosecuted." The dark shadow of a gap in the hedgethrew a stretch of barbed wire into relief.
"Um," said Redwood, then in a deeper note, "Oom!"
There came a clatter of horses and the sound of wheels, and LadyWondershoot's greys came into view. He marked the faces of coachman andfootman as the equipage approached. The coachman was a very finespecimen, full and fruity, and he drove with a sort of sacramentaldignity. Others might doubt their calling and position in the world, heat any rate was sure--he drove her ladyship. The footman sat beside himwith folded arms and a face of inflexible certainties. Then the greatlady herself became visible, in a hat and mantle disdainfully inelegant,peering through her glasses. Two young ladies protruded necks and peeredalso.
The Vicar passing on the other side swept off the hat from his David'sbrow unheeded....
Redwood remained standing in the doorway for a long time after thecarriage had passed, his hands folded behind him. His eyes went to thegreen, grey upland of down, and into the cloud-curdled sky, and cameback to the glass-set wall. He turned upon the cool shadows within, andamidst spots and blurs of colour regarded the giant child amidst thatRembrandtesque gloom, naked except for a swathing of flannel, seatedupon a huge truss of straw and playing with its toes.
"I begin to see what we have done," he said.
He mused, and young Caddles and his own child and Cossar's brood mingledin his musing.
He laughed abruptly. "Good Lord!" he said at some passing thought.
He roused himself presently and addressed Mrs. Skinner. "Anyhow hemustn't be tortured by a break in his food. That at least we canprevent. I shall send you a can every six months. That ought to do forhim all right."
Mrs. Skinner mumbled something about "if you think so, Sir," and"probably got packed by mistake.... Thought no harm in giving him alittle," and so by the aid of various aspen gestures indicated that sheunderstood.
So the child went on growing.
And growing.
"Practically," said Lady Wondershoot, "he's eaten up every calf in theplace. If I have any more of this sort of thing from that man Caddles--"
VII.
But even so secluded a place as Cheasing Eyebright could not rest forlong in the theory of Hypertrophy--Contagious or not--in view of thegrowing hubbub about the Food. In a little while there were painfulexplanations for Mrs. Skinner--explanations that reduced her tospeechless mumblings of her remaining tooth--explanations that probedher and ransacked her and exposed her--until at last she was driven totake refuge from a universal convergence of blame in the dignity ofinconsolable widowhood. She turned her eye--which she constrained to bewatery--upon the angry Lady of the Manor, and wiped suds from her hands.
"You forget, my lady, what I'm bearing up under."
And she followed up this warning note with a slightly defiant:
"It's 'IM I think of, my lady, night _and_ day."
She compressed her lips, and her voice flattened and faltered: "Bein'et, my lady."
And having established herself on these grounds, she repeated theaffirmation her ladyship had refused before. "I 'ad no more idea what Iwas giving the child, my lady, than any one _could_ 'ave...."
Her ladyship turned her mind in more hopeful directions, wigging Caddlesof course tremendously by the way. Emissaries, full of diplomaticthreatenings, entered the whirling lives of Bensington and Redwood.They presented themselves as Parish Councillors, stolid and clingingphonographically to prearranged statements. "We hold you responsible,Mister Bensington, for the injury inflicted upon our parish, Sir. Wehold you responsible."
A firm of solicitors, with a snake of a style--Banghurst, Brown, Flapp,Codlin, Brown, Tedder, and Snoxton, they called themselves, and appearedinvariably in the form of a small rufous cunning-looking gentleman witha pointed nose--said vague things about damages, and there was apolished personage, her ladyship's agent, who came in suddenly uponRedwood one day and asked, "Well, Sir, and what do you propose to do?"
To which Redwood answered that he proposed to discontinue supplying thefood for the child, if he or Bensington were bothered any further aboutthe matter. "I give it for nothing as it is," he said, "and the childwill yell your village to ruins before it dies if you don't let it havethe stuff. The child's on your hands, and you have to keep it. LadyWondershoot can't always be Lady Bountiful and Earthly Providence of herparish without sometimes meeting a responsibility, you know."
"The mischief's done," Lady Wondershoot decided when they told her--withexpurgations--what Redwood had said.
"The mischief's done," echoed the Vicar.
Though indeed as a matter of fact the mischief was only beginning.