University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV.
A Catastrophe.

IT is well that providence keeps our
destiny under lock and key, dealing
it out only by morsels. The whole
of it, at once, would kill us. Suppose
a man, verging on the prime
of life, should chance to come
across his full-grown Biography?
It would not be pleasant reading, to
say it mildly.

I walked home that night, bewildered. The
sky was blanched with incessant lightning, and
dull peals of thunder broke in the far east, like
the sound of distant artillery. There was a fearful
gale, afterwards, I was told. A merchantman,

with all on board, went down at daybreak, on the
shoals off Gosport Light.

Spiteful drops of rain whistled by me before I
reached the door of my isolated abode. I hurried
through the grape-arbor, and had entered the
laboratory on the ground-floor, in the right wing
of the building, when an accident occurred to
which I cannot even now refer with composure.

When I reflect on the months of wasting toil and
the lavish outlay, rendered futile by a moment's
awkwardness, I am again plunged into despair.

A candle, with matches, always stood on the
laboratory mantle-piece, for my convenience. In
searching for these matches, which somebody had
removed, I inadvertently came in contact with the
Moon-Apparatus.

It tottered — and fell with a crash!

A sulphuric vapor immediately diffused itself
throughout the apartment, followed by an explosion
that shook the house from garret to basement.
With the flash and concussion, a keen
pain shot through my temples.

Then a darkness came over me.

This darkness must have covered a period of
several months; for when I escaped from it, there
was something in the singing of birds, and the
brushing of foliage against the casement, that told
of spring. I lay in my own chamber, and an old
woman was killing flies with a silk apron.

“What is the time — of year?” I asked faintly.

The woman came to the bedside, and looked at
me.

“Go to sleep.”

I shrunk from her, and turning my face to the
wall, tried to conjecture what had taken place.

I come home one October night from a walk
with Cecil.

I fall over something in the laboratory.

It explodes.

My head aches.

I open my eyes, and it is June! the flowers
growing, the robins singing, an old woman killing
flies. I could make nothing out of it.

When the Doctor came, — Dr. Molineux, of
the village, — he attempted, in a hesitating way,
to explain things. I had, he said, been taken
unexpectedly ill in my work-shop, where I was
discovered, one morning, by the person who
brought me my meals. I was found doubled up
among a confused mass of shattered cog-wheels,
steel pistons, copper cylinders, alembics, and glass
retorts. Somewhat battered and considerably senseless.
It was supposed that I had been stunned by
the explosion of some unknown machine, while
engaged in scientific experiments.

Here the Doctor gave a short dry laugh. I am
sure I don't know why. I had been long and
dangerously ill, he said.

“Non compos ment—” the Doctor paused
abruptly, and coughed. “But you are doing well
now, and will soon be a new man,” he added.

A new man? To be somebody else, the
antithesis of myself, would indeed be a comfort.

The remembrance of all that had happened
gradually dawned on me. Patience, patience. I
could only lie and think of Cecil, while the long
days, and the longer nights, dragged on.

Finally the Doctor gave me permission to walk
the length of our garden. I paced up and down
several times under the arbor, unconcernedly;
for the brownie nurse was on guard. My eyes
roamed off to the town. I could see the square
chimneys of Cecil's house, above the tree-tops, on
the other side of the bridge.

Watching my chance, I unlatched the gate
noiselessly, and stood in the open road.

The crisp grass scarcely bent under my tread,
as I stole swiftly away from my chaperone, who,
I am now convinced, was merely a harmless
lunatic.