Part 4 (1/2)

I was right every time. Soames was only not sure whether the men and women were hairless or shorn. ”I hadn't time to look at them very closely,” he explained.

”No, of course not. But--”

”They stared at ME, I can tell you. I attracted a great deal of attention.” At last he had done that! ”I think I rather scared them.

They moved away whenever I came near. They followed me about, at a distance, wherever I went. The men at the round desk in the middle seemed to have a sort of panic whenever I went to make inquiries.”

”What did you do when you arrived?”

Well, he had gone straight to the catalogue, of course,--to the S volumes,--and had stood long before SN-SOF, unable to take this volume out of the shelf because his heart was beating so. At first, he said, he wasn't disappointed; he only thought there was some new arrangement.

He went to the middle desk and asked where the catalogue of twentieth-century books was kept. He gathered that there was still only one catalogue. Again he looked up his name, stared at the three little pasted slips he had known so well. Then he went and sat down for a long time.

”And then,” he droned, ”I looked up the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' and some encyclopedias. I went back to the middle desk and asked what was the best modern book on late nineteenth-century literature. They told me Mr. T. K. Nupton's book was considered the best. I looked it up in the catalogue and filled in a form for it. It was brought to me. My name wasn't in the index, but--yes!” he said with a sudden change of tone, ”that's what I'd forgotten. Where's that bit of paper? Give it me back.”

I, too, had forgotten that cryptic screed. I found it fallen on the floor, and handed it to him.

He smoothed it out, nodding and smiling at me disagreeably.

”I found myself glancing through Nupton's book,” he resumed. ”Not very easy reading. Some sort of phonetic spelling. All the modern books I saw were phonetic.”

”Then I don't want to hear any more, Soames, please.”

”The proper names seemed all to be spelt in the old way. But for that I mightn't have noticed my own name.”

”Your own name? Really? Soames, I'm VERY glad.”

”And yours.”

”No!”

”I thought I should find you waiting here to-night, so I took the trouble to copy out the pa.s.sage. Read it.”

I s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper. Soames's handwriting was characteristically dim.

It and the noisome spelling and my excitement made me all the slower to grasp what T. K. Nupton was driving at.

The doc.u.ment lies before me at this moment. Strange that the words I here copy out for you were copied out for me by poor Soames just eighty-two years hence!

From page 234 of ”Inglish Littracher 1890-1900” bi T. K. Nupton, publishd bi th Stait, 1992.

Fr egzarmpl, a riter ov th time, naimed Max Beerbohm, hoo woz stil alive in th twent.i.th senchri, rote a stauri in wich e pautraid an immajnari karrakter kauld ”Enoch Soames”--a thurd-rait poit hoo beleevz imself a grate jeneus an maix a bargin with th Devvl in auder ter no wot posterriti thinx ov im! It iz a sumwot labud sattire, but not without vallu az showing hou seriusli the yung men ov th aiteen-ninetiz took themselvz. Nou that th littreri profeshn haz bin auganized az a departmnt of publik servis, our riters hav found their levvl an hav lernt ter doo their duti without thort ov th morro. ”Th laibrer iz werthi ov hiz hire” an that iz aul. Thank hevvn we hav no Enoch Soameses amung us to-dai!

I found that by murmuring the words aloud (a device which I commend to my reader) I was able to master them little by little. The clearer they became, the greater was my bewilderment, my distress and horror.

The whole thing was a nightmare. Afar, the great grisly background of what was in store for the poor dear art of letters; here, at the table, fixing on me a gaze that made me hot all over, the poor fellow whom--whom evidently--but no: whatever down-grade my character might take in coming years, I should never be such a brute as to--

Again I examined the screed. ”Immajnari.” But here Soames was, no more imaginary, alas! than I. And ”labud”--what on earth was that?

(To this day I have never made out that word.) ”It's all very--baffling,” I at length stammered.

Soames said nothing, but cruelly did not cease to look at me.

”Are you sure,” I temporized, ”quite sure you copied the thing out correctly?”