<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h1>THE<br/> <br/> <span class="f18">PLATTNER STORY</span><br/> <br/> <br/> AND OTHERS</h1>
<p class="tp1">
<span class="f7">BY</span><br/>
H. G. WELLS</p>
<p class="tp2">
METHUEN & CO.<br/>
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.<br/>
LONDON<br/>
1897<br/></p>
<hr class="l2" />
<p class="tp1">
<span class="f7">TO</span><br/>
MY FATHER<br/></p>
<hr class="l2" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2><SPAN name="THE_PLATTNER_STORY" id="THE_PLATTNER_STORY">THE PLATTNER STORY</SPAN></h2>
<p class="cap"><span class="upper">Whether</span> the story of Gottfried Plattner is
to be credited or not, is a pretty question
in the value of evidence. On the one hand,
we have seven witnesses—to be perfectly exact, we
have six and a half pairs of eyes, and one undeniable
fact; and on the other we have—what is it?—prejudice,
common sense, the inertia of opinion.
Never were there seven more honest-seeming witnesses;
never was there a more undeniable fact than
the inversion of Gottfried Plattner’s anatomical structure,
and—never was there a more preposterous
story than the one they have to tell! The most
preposterous part of the story is the worthy Gottfried’s
contribution (for I count him as one of the
seven). Heaven forbid that I should be led into
giving countenance to superstition by a passion for
impartiality, and so come to share the fate of
Eusapia’s patrons! Frankly, I believe there is
something crooked about this business of Gottfried
Plattner; but what that crooked factor is, I will
admit as frankly, I do not know. I have been
surprised at the credit accorded to the story in the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</SPAN></span>
most unexpected and authoritative quarters. The
fairest way to the reader, however, will be for me
to tell it without further comment.</p>
<p>Gottfried Plattner is, in spite of his name, a free-born
Englishman. His father was an Alsatian who
came to England in the Sixties, married a respectable
English girl of unexceptionable antecedents, and died,
after a wholesome and uneventful life (devoted, I
understand, chiefly to the laying of parquet flooring),
in 1887. Gottfried’s age is seven-and-twenty. He
is, by virtue of his heritage of three languages,
Modern Languages Master in a small private school
in the South of England. To the casual observer
he is singularly like any other Modern Languages
Master in any other small private school. His
costume is neither very costly nor very fashionable,
but, on the other hand, it is not markedly cheap
or shabby; his complexion, like his height and his
bearing, is inconspicuous. You would notice, perhaps,
that, like the majority of people, his face was not
absolutely symmetrical, his right eye a little larger
than the left, and his jaw a trifle heavier on the right
side. If you, as an ordinary careless person, were to
bare his chest and feel his heart beating, you would
probably find it quite like the heart of anyone else.
But here you and the trained observer would part
company. If you found his heart quite ordinary, the
trained observer would find it quite otherwise. And
once the thing was pointed out to you, you too would
perceive the peculiarity easily enough. It is that
Gottfried’s heart beats on the right side of his
body.</p>
<p>Now, that is not the only singularity of Gottfried’s<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</SPAN></span>
structure, although it is the only one that would
appeal to the untrained mind. Careful sounding of
Gottfried’s internal arrangements, by a well-known
surgeon, seems to point to the fact that all the other
unsymmetrical parts of his body are similarly misplaced.
The right lobe of his liver is on the left
side, the left on his right; while his lungs, too, are
similarly contraposed. What is still more singular,
unless Gottfried is a consummate actor, we must
believe that his right hand has recently become his
left. Since the occurrences we are about to consider
(as impartially as possible), he has found the utmost
difficulty in writing, except from right to left across
the paper with his left hand. He cannot throw with
his right hand, he is perplexed at meal times between
knife and fork, and his ideas of the rule of the road—he
is a cyclist—are still a dangerous confusion.
And there is not a scrap of evidence to show that
before these occurrences Gottfried was at all left-handed.</p>
<p>There is yet another wonderful fact in this
preposterous business. Gottfried produces three
photographs of himself. You have him at the age
of five or six, thrusting fat legs at you from under
a plaid frock, and scowling. In that photograph
his left eye is a little larger than his right, and his
jaw is a trifle heavier on the left side. This is the
reverse of his present living conditions. The photograph
of Gottfried at fourteen seems to contradict
these facts, but that is because it is one of those
cheap “Gem” photographs that were then in vogue,
taken direct upon metal, and therefore reversing
things just as a looking-glass would. The third<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</SPAN></span>
photograph represents him at one-and-twenty, and
confirms the record of the others. There seems here
evidence of the strongest confirmatory character that
Gottfried has exchanged his left side for his right.
Yet how a human being can be so changed, short of
a fantastic and pointless miracle, it is exceedingly
hard to suggest.</p>
<p>In one way, of course, these facts might be
explicable on the supposition that Plattner has
undertaken an elaborate mystification, on the
strength of his heart’s displacement. Photographs
may be fudged, and left-handedness imitated. But
the character of the man does not lend itself to any
such theory. He is quiet, practical, unobtrusive,
and thoroughly sane, from the Nordau standpoint.
He likes beer, and smokes moderately, takes walking
exercise daily, and has a healthily high estimate of
the value of his teaching. He has a good but
untrained tenor voice, and takes a pleasure in singing
airs of a popular and cheerful character. He is fond,
but not morbidly fond, of reading,—chiefly fiction
pervaded with a vaguely pious optimism,—sleeps
well, and rarely dreams. He is, in fact, the very
last person to evolve a fantastic fable. Indeed, so
far from forcing this story upon the world, he has
been singularly reticent on the matter. He meets
inquirers with a certain engaging—bashfulness is
almost the word, that disarms the most suspicious.
He seems genuinely ashamed that anything so
unusual has occurred to him.</p>
<p>It is to be regretted that Plattner’s aversion to
the idea of post-mortem dissection may postpone,
perhaps for ever, the positive proof that his entire<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</SPAN></span>
body has had its left and right sides transposed.
Upon that fact mainly the credibility of his story
hangs. There is no way of taking a man and
moving him about <em>in space</em>, as ordinary people
understand space, that will result in our changing
his sides. Whatever you do, his right is still his
right, his left his left. You can do that with a
perfectly thin and flat thing, of course. If you were
to cut a figure out of paper, any figure with a right
and left side, you could change its sides simply by
lifting it up and turning it over. But with a solid
it is different. Mathematical theorists tell us that
the only way in which the right and left sides of a
solid body can be changed is by taking that body
clean out of space as we know it,—taking it out of
ordinary existence, that is, and turning it somewhere
outside space. This is a little abstruse, no doubt,
but anyone with any knowledge of mathematical
theory will assure the reader of its truth. To put
the thing in technical language, the curious inversion
of Plattner’s right and left sides is proof that he has
moved out of our space into what is called the
Fourth Dimension, and that he has returned again
to our world. Unless we choose to consider ourselves
the victims of an elaborate and motiveless fabrication,
we are almost bound to believe that this has occurred.</p>
<p>So much for the tangible facts. We come now
to the account of the phenomena that attended his
temporary disappearance from the world. It appears
that in the Sussexville Proprietary School, Plattner
not only discharged the duties of Modern Languages
Master, but also taught chemistry, commercial geography,
book-keeping, shorthand, drawing, and any<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</SPAN></span>
other additional subject to which the changing
fancies of the boys’ parents might direct attention.
He knew little or nothing of these various subjects,
but in secondary as distinguished from Board or
elementary schools, knowledge in the teacher is, very
properly, by no means so necessary as high moral
character and gentlemanly tone. In chemistry he
was particularly deficient, knowing, he says, nothing
beyond the Three Gases (whatever the three gases
may be). As, however, his pupils began by knowing
nothing, and derived all their information from him,
this caused him (or anyone) but little inconvenience
for several terms. Then a little boy named Whibble
joined the school, who had been educated (it seems)
by some mischievous relative into an inquiring habit
of mind. This little boy followed Plattner’s lessons
with marked and sustained interest, and in order to
exhibit his zeal on the subject, brought, at various
times, substances for Plattner to analyse. Plattner,
flattered by this evidence of his power of awakening
interest, and trusting to the boy’s ignorance, analysed
these, and even made general statements as to their
composition. Indeed, he was so far stimulated by
his pupil as to obtain a work upon analytical
chemistry, and study it during his supervision of the
evening’s preparation. He was surprised to find
chemistry quite an interesting subject.</p>
<p>So far the story is absolutely commonplace. But
now the greenish powder comes upon the scene.
The source of that greenish powder seems, unfortunately,
lost. Master Whibble tells a tortuous
story of finding it done up in a packet in a disused
limekiln near the Downs. It would have been<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</SPAN></span>
an excellent thing for Plattner, and possibly for
Master Whibble’s family, if a match could have
been applied to that powder there and then. The
young gentleman certainly did not bring it to school
in a packet, but in a common eight-ounce graduated
medicine bottle, plugged with masticated newspaper.
He gave it to Plattner at the end of the afternoon
school. Four boys had been detained after school
prayers in order to complete some neglected tasks,
and Plattner was supervising these in the small
classroom in which the chemical teaching was conducted.
The appliances for the practical teaching
of chemistry in the Sussexville Proprietary School,
as in most small schools in this country, are characterised
by a severe simplicity. They are kept in
a small cupboard standing in a recess, and having
about the same capacity as a common travelling
trunk. Plattner, being bored with his passive superintendence,
seems to have welcomed the intervention
of Whibble with his green powder as an agreeable
diversion, and, unlocking this cupboard, proceeded
at once with his analytical experiments. Whibble
sat, luckily for himself, at a safe distance, regarding
him. The four malefactors, feigning a profound
absorption in their work, watched him furtively with
the keenest interest. For even within the limits of
the Three Gases, Plattner’s practical chemistry was,
I understand, temerarious.</p>
<p>They are practically unanimous in their account
of Plattner’s proceedings. He poured a little of the
green powder into a test-tube, and tried the substance
with water, hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, and sulphuric
acid in succession. Getting no result, he<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</SPAN></span>
emptied out a little heap—nearly half the bottleful,
in fact—upon a slate and tried a match. He held
the medicine bottle in his left hand. The stuff
began to smoke and melt, and then—exploded with
deafening violence and a blinding flash.</p>
<p>The five boys, seeing the flash and being prepared
for catastrophes, ducked below their desks, and were
none of them seriously hurt. The window was blown
out into the playground, and the blackboard on its
easel was upset. The slate was smashed to atoms.
Some plaster fell from the ceiling. No other damage
was done to the school edifice or appliances, and the
boys at first, seeing nothing of Plattner, fancied he
was knocked down and lying out of their sight
below the desks. They jumped out of their places
to go to his assistance, and were amazed to find the
space empty. Being still confused by the sudden
violence of the report, they hurried to the open door,
under the impression that he must have been hurt,
and have rushed out of the room. But Carson, the
foremost, nearly collided in the doorway with the
principal, Mr. Lidgett.</p>
<p>Mr. Lidgett is a corpulent, excitable man with one
eye. The boys describe him as stumbling into the
room mouthing some of those tempered expletives
irritable schoolmasters accustom themselves to use—lest
worse befall. “Wretched mumchancer!” he
said. “Where’s Mr. Plattner?” The boys are
agreed on the very words. (“Wobbler,” “snivelling
puppy,” and “mumchancer” are, it seems, among the
ordinary small change of Mr. Lidgett’s scholastic
commerce.)</p>
<p>Where’s Mr. Plattner? That was a question that<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</SPAN></span>
was to be repeated many times in the next few days.
It really seemed as though that frantic hyperbole,
“blown to atoms,” had for once realised itself. There
was not a visible particle of Plattner to be seen; not
a drop of blood nor a stitch of clothing to be found.
Apparently he had been blown clean out of existence
and left not a wrack behind. Not so much as would
cover a sixpenny piece, to quote a proverbial expression!
The evidence of his absolute disappearance,
as a consequence of that explosion, is indubitable.</p>
<p>It is not necessary to enlarge here upon the commotion
excited in the Sussexville Proprietary School,
and in Sussexville and elsewhere, by this event. It
is quite possible, indeed, that some of the readers of
these pages may recall the hearing of some remote
and dying version of that excitement during the last
summer holidays. Lidgett, it would seem, did
everything in his power to suppress and minimise
the story. He instituted a penalty of twenty-five
lines for any mention of Plattner’s name among the
boys, and stated in the schoolroom that he was
clearly aware of his assistant’s whereabouts. He
was afraid, he explains, that the possibility of an
explosion happening, in spite of the elaborate precautions
taken to minimise the practical teaching
of chemistry, might injure the reputation of the
school; and so might any mysterious quality in
Plattner’s departure. Indeed, he did everything in
his power to make the occurrence seem as ordinary
as possible. In particular, he cross-examined the
five eye-witnesses of the occurrence so searchingly
that they began to doubt the plain evidence of their
senses. But, in spite of these efforts, the tale, in a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</SPAN></span>
magnified and distorted state, made a nine days’
wonder in the district, and several parents withdrew
their sons on colourable pretexts. Not the least
remarkable point in the matter is the fact that a
large number of people in the neighbourhood
dreamed singularly vivid dreams of Plattner during
the period of excitement before his return, and that
these dreams had a curious uniformity. In almost
all of them Plattner was seen, sometimes singly,
sometimes in company, wandering about through a
coruscating iridescence. In all cases his face was
pale and distressed, and in some he gesticulated
towards the dreamer. One or two of the boys,
evidently under the influence of nightmare, fancied
that Plattner approached them with remarkable
swiftness, and seemed to look closely into their very
eyes. Others fled with Plattner from the pursuit of
vague and extraordinary creatures of a globular
shape. But all these fancies were forgotten in
inquiries and speculations when, on the Wednesday
next but one after the Monday of the explosion,
Plattner returned.</p>
<p>The circumstances of his return were as singular
as those of his departure. So far as Mr. Lidgett’s
somewhat choleric outline can be filled in from
Plattner’s hesitating statements, it would appear
that on Wednesday evening, towards the hour of
sunset, the former gentleman, having dismissed evening
preparation, was engaged in his garden, picking
and eating strawberries, a fruit of which he is inordinately
fond. It is a large old-fashioned garden,
secured from observation, fortunately, by a high and
ivy-covered red-brick wall. Just as he was stooping<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</SPAN></span>
over a particularly prolific plant, there was a flash
in the air and a heavy thud, and before he could
look round, some heavy body struck him violently
from behind. He was pitched forward, crushing
the strawberries he held in his hand, and that so
roughly, that his silk hat—Mr. Lidgett adheres to
the older ideas of scholastic costume—was driven
violently down upon his forehead, and almost over
one eye. This heavy missile, which slid over him
sideways and collapsed into a sitting posture among
the strawberry plants, proved to be our long-lost Mr.
Gottfried Plattner, in an extremely dishevelled condition.
He was collarless and hatless, his linen was
dirty, and there was blood upon his hands. Mr.
Lidgett was so indignant and surprised that he
remained on all-fours, and with his hat jammed
down on his eye, while he expostulated vehemently
with Plattner for his disrespectful and unaccountable
conduct.</p>
<p>This scarcely idyllic scene completes what I may
call the exterior version of the Plattner story—its
exoteric aspect. It is quite unnecessary to enter
here into all the details of his dismissal by Mr.
Lidgett. Such details, with the full names and
dates and references, will be found in the larger
report of these occurrences that was laid before the
Society for the Investigation of Abnormal Phenomena.
The singular transposition of Plattner’s
right and left sides was scarcely observed for the
first day or so, and then first in connection with his
disposition to write from right to left across the
blackboard. He concealed rather than ostended
this curious confirmatory circumstance, as he considered<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</SPAN></span>
it would unfavourably affect his prospects
in a new situation. The displacement of his heart
was discovered some months after, when he was
having a tooth extracted under anæsthetics. He
then, very unwillingly, allowed a cursory surgical
examination to be made of himself, with a view to
a brief account in the <cite>Journal of Anatomy</cite>. That
exhausts the statement of the material facts; and
we may now go on to consider Plattner’s account
of the matter.</p>
<p>But first let us clearly differentiate between the
preceding portion of this story and what is to follow.
All I have told thus far is established by such evidence
as even a criminal lawyer would approve.
Every one of the witnesses is still alive; the reader,
if he have the leisure, may hunt the lads out tomorrow,
or even brave the terrors of the redoubtable
Lidgett, and cross-examine and trap and test to his
heart’s content; Gottfried Plattner, himself, and his
twisted heart and his three photographs are producible.
It may be taken as proved that he did
disappear for nine days as the consequence of an
explosion; that he returned almost as violently,
under circumstances in their nature annoying to
Mr. Lidgett, whatever the details of those circumstances
may be; and that he returned inverted, just
as a reflection returns from a mirror. From the
last fact, as I have already stated, it follows almost
inevitably that Plattner, during those nine days,
must have been in some state of existence altogether
out of space. The evidence to these statements is,
indeed, far stronger than that upon which most
murderers are hanged. But for his own particular<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</SPAN></span>
account of where he had been, with its confused
explanations and well-nigh self-contradictory details,
we have only Mr. Gottfried Plattner’s word. I do
not wish to discredit that, but I must point out—what
so many writers upon obscure psychic phenomena
fail to do—that we are passing here from the
practically undeniable to that kind of matter which
any reasonable man is entitled to believe or reject
as he thinks proper. The previous statements
render it plausible; its discordance with common
experience tilts it towards the incredible. I would
prefer not to sway the beam of the reader’s judgment
either way, but simply to tell the story as
Plattner told it me.</p>
<p>He gave me his narrative, I may state, at my
house at Chislehurst, and so soon as he had left
me that evening, I went into my study and wrote
down everything as I remembered it. Subsequently
he was good enough to read over a type-written
copy, so that its substantial correctness is undeniable.</p>
<p>He states that at the moment of the explosion he
distinctly thought he was killed. He felt lifted off
his feet and driven forcibly backward. It is a
curious fact for psychologists that he thought clearly
during his backward flight, and wondered whether
he should hit the chemistry cupboard or the blackboard
easel. His heels struck ground, and he
staggered and fell heavily into a sitting position on
something soft and firm. For a moment the concussion
stunned him. He became aware at once of
a vivid scent of singed hair, and he seemed to hear
the voice of Lidgett asking for him. You will<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</SPAN></span>
understand that for a time his mind was greatly
confused.</p>
<p>At first he was distinctly under the impression
that he was still in the classroom. He perceived
quite distinctly the surprise of the boys and the
entry of Mr. Lidgett. He is quite positive upon
that score. He did not hear their remarks; but
that he ascribed to the deafening effect of the experiment.
Things about him seemed curiously dark
and faint, but his mind explained that on the
obvious but mistaken idea that the explosion had
engendered a huge volume of dark smoke. Through
the dimness the figures of Lidgett and the boys
moved, as faint and silent as ghosts. Plattner’s
face still tingled with the stinging heat of the flash.
He was, he says, “all muddled.” His first definite
thoughts seem to have been of his personal safety.
He thought he was perhaps blinded and deafened.
He felt his limbs and face in a gingerly manner.
Then his perceptions grew clearer, and he was
astonished to miss the old familiar desks and other
schoolroom furniture about him. Only dim, uncertain,
grey shapes stood in the place of these.
Then came a thing that made him shout aloud, and
awoke his stunned faculties to instant activity. <em>Two
of the boys, gesticulating, walked one after the other
clean through him!</em> Neither manifested the slightest
consciousness of his presence. It is difficult to
imagine the sensation he felt. They came against
him, he says, with no more force than a wisp of mist.</p>
<p>Plattner’s first thought after that was that he was
dead. Having been brought up with thoroughly
sound views in these matters, however, he was a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</SPAN></span>
little surprised to find his body still about him.
His second conclusion was that he was not dead,
but that the others were: that the explosion had
destroyed the Sussexville Proprietary School and
every soul in it except himself. But that, too, was
scarcely satisfactory. He was thrown back upon
astonished observation.</p>
<p>Everything about him was extraordinarily dark:
at first it seemed to have an altogether ebony blackness.
Overhead was a black firmament. The only
touch of light in the scene was a faint greenish glow
at the edge of the sky in one direction, which threw
into prominence a horizon of undulating black hills.
This, I say, was his impression at first. As his eye
grew accustomed to the darkness, he began to distinguish
a faint quality of differentiating greenish
colour in the circumambient night. Against this
background the furniture and occupants of the
classroom, it seems, stood out like phosphorescent
spectres, faint and impalpable. He extended his
hand, and thrust it without an effort through the
wall of the room by the fireplace.</p>
<p>He describes himself as making a strenuous effort
to attract attention. He shouted to Lidgett, and
tried to seize the boys as they went to and fro.
He only desisted from these attempts when Mrs.
Lidgett, whom he (as an Assistant Master) naturally
disliked, entered the room. He says the sensation
of being in the world, and yet not a part of it,
was an extraordinarily disagreeable one. He compared
his feelings, not inaptly, to those of a cat
watching a mouse through a window. Whenever
he made a motion to communicate with the dim,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</SPAN></span>
familiar world about him, he found an invisible,
incomprehensible barrier preventing intercourse.</p>
<p>He then turned his attention to his solid environment.
He found the medicine bottle still unbroken
in his hand, with the remainder of the green powder
therein. He put this in his pocket, and began to
feel about him. Apparently, he was sitting on a
boulder of rock covered with a velvety moss. The
dark country about him he was unable to see, the
faint, misty picture of the schoolroom blotting it out,
but he had a feeling (due perhaps to a cold wind)
that he was near the crest of a hill, and that a
steep valley fell away beneath his feet. The green
glow along the edge of the sky seemed to be growing
in extent and intensity. He stood up, rubbing
his eyes.</p>
<p>It would seem that he made a few steps, going
steeply down hill, and then stumbled, nearly fell,
and sat down again upon a jagged mass of rock to
watch the dawn. He became aware that the world
about him was absolutely silent. It was as still as
it was dark, and though there was a cold wind blowing
up the hill-face, the rustle of grass, the soughing
of the boughs that should have accompanied it, were
absent. He could hear, therefore, if he could not
see, that the hillside upon which he stood was rocky
and desolate. The green grew brighter every
moment, and as it did so a faint, transparent blood-red
mingled with, but did not mitigate, the blackness
of the sky overhead and the rocky desolations about
him. Having regard to what follows, I am inclined
to think that that redness may have been an optical
effect due to contrast. Something black fluttered<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</SPAN></span>
momentarily against the livid yellow-green of the
lower sky, and then the thin and penetrating voice
of a bell rose out of the black gulf below him. An
oppressive expectation grew with the growing light.</p>
<p>It is probable that an hour or more elapsed while
he sat there, the strange green light growing brighter
every moment, and spreading slowly, in flamboyant
fingers, upward towards the zenith. As it grew, the
spectral vision of <em>our</em> world became relatively or
absolutely fainter. Probably both, for the time
must have been about that of our earthly sunset.
So far as his vision of our world went, Plattner, by
his few steps downhill, had passed through the floor
of the classroom, and was now, it seemed, sitting in
mid-air in the larger schoolroom downstairs. He
saw the boarders distinctly, but much more faintly
than he had seen Lidgett. They were preparing
their evening tasks, and he noticed with interest
that several were cheating with their Euclid riders
by means of a crib, a compilation whose existence
he had hitherto never suspected. As the time
passed, they faded steadily, as steadily as the light
of the green dawn increased.</p>
<p>Looking down into the valley, he saw that the
light had crept far down its rocky sides, and that
the profound blackness of the abyss was now broken
by a minute green glow, like the light of a glow-worm.
And almost immediately the limb of a huge
heavenly body of blazing green rose over the basaltic
undulations of the distant hills, and the monstrous
hill-masses about him came out gaunt and desolate,
in green light and deep, ruddy black shadows. He
became aware of a vast number of ball-shaped objects<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</SPAN></span>
drifting as thistledown drifts over the high ground.
There were none of these nearer to him than the
opposite side of the gorge. The bell below twanged
quicker and quicker, with something like impatient
insistence, and several lights moved hither and
thither. The boys at work at their desks were now
almost imperceptibly faint.</p>
<p>This extinction of our world, when the green sun
of this other universe rose, is a curious point upon
which Plattner insists. During the Other-World
night it is difficult to move about, on account of
the vividness with which the things of this world
are visible. It becomes a riddle to explain why, if
this is the case, we in this world catch no glimpse of
the Other-World. It is due, perhaps, to the comparatively
vivid illumination of this world of ours.
Plattner describes the midday of the Other-World,
at its brightest, as not being nearly so bright as this
world at full moon, while its night is profoundly
black. Consequently, the amount of light, even in an
ordinary dark room, is sufficient to render the things
of the Other-World invisible, on the same principle
that faint phosphorescence is only visible in the profoundest
darkness. I have tried, since he told me
his story, to see something of the Other-World by
sitting for a long space in a photographer’s dark
room at night. I have certainly seen indistinctly
the form of greenish slopes and rocks, but only, I
must admit, very indistinctly indeed. The reader
may possibly be more successful. Plattner tells me
that since his return he has dreamt and seen and
recognised places in the Other-World, but this is
probably due to his memory of these scenes. It<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</SPAN></span>
seems quite possible that people with unusually keen
eyesight may occasionally catch a glimpse of this
strange Other-World about us.</p>
<p>However, this is a digression. As the green sun
rose, a long street of black buildings became perceptible,
though only darkly and indistinctly, in the
gorge, and, after some hesitation, Plattner began to
clamber down the precipitous descent towards them.
The descent was long and exceedingly tedious, being
so not only by the extraordinary steepness, but also
by reason of the looseness of the boulders with which
the whole face of the hill was strewn. The noise of
his descent—now and then his heels struck fire from
the rocks—seemed now the only sound in the universe,
for the beating of the bell had ceased. As he
drew nearer, he perceived that the various edifices
had a singular resemblance to tombs and mausoleums
and monuments, saving only that they were
all uniformly black instead of being white, as most
sepulchres are. And then he saw, crowding out of
the largest building, very much as people disperse
from church, a number of pallid, rounded, pale-green
figures. These dispersed in several directions about
the broad street of the place, some going through
side alleys and reappearing upon the steepness of
the hill, others entering some of the small black
buildings which lined the way.</p>
<p>At the sight of these things drifting up towards
him, Plattner stopped, staring. They were not
walking, they were indeed limbless, and they had
the appearance of human heads, beneath which a
tadpole-like body swung. He was too astonished
at their strangeness, too full, indeed, of strangeness,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</SPAN></span>
to be seriously alarmed by them. They drove
towards him, in front of the chill wind that was
blowing uphill, much as soap-bubbles drive before a
draught. And as he looked at the nearest of those
approaching, he saw it was indeed a human head,
albeit with singularly large eyes, and wearing such
an expression of distress and anguish as he had
never seen before upon mortal countenance. He
was surprised to find that it did not turn to regard
him, but seemed to be watching and following some
unseen moving thing. For a moment he was puzzled,
and then it occurred to him that this creature was
watching with its enormous eyes something that was
happening in the world he had just left. Nearer it
came, and nearer, and he was too astonished to cry
out. It made a very faint fretting sound as it came
close to him. Then it struck his face with a gentle
pat—its touch was very cold—and drove past him,
and upward towards the crest of the hill.</p>
<p>An extraordinary conviction flashed across Plattner’s
mind that this head had a strong likeness to
Lidgett. Then he turned his attention to the other
heads that were now swarming thickly up the hillside.
None made the slightest sign of recognition.
One or two, indeed, came close to his head and
almost followed the example of the first, but he
dodged convulsively out of the way. Upon most
of them he saw the same expression of unavailing
regret he had seen upon the first, and heard the
same faint sounds of wretchedness from them. One
or two wept, and one rolling swiftly uphill wore an
expression of diabolical rage. But others were cold,
and several had a look of gratified interest in their<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</SPAN></span>
eyes. One, at least, was almost in an ecstasy of
happiness. Plattner does not remember that he
recognised any more likenesses in those he saw at
this time.</p>
<p>For several hours, perhaps, Plattner watched these
strange things dispersing themselves over the hills,
and not till long after they had ceased to issue from
the clustering black buildings in the gorge, did he
resume his downward climb. The darkness about
him increased so much that he had a difficulty in
stepping true. Overhead the sky was now a bright,
pale green. He felt neither hunger nor thirst.
Later, when he did, he found a chilly stream running
down the centre of the gorge, and the rare
moss upon the boulders, when he tried it at last in
desperation, was good to eat.</p>
<p>He groped about among the tombs that ran down
the gorge, seeking vaguely for some clue to these
inexplicable things. After a long time he came to
the entrance of the big mausoleum-like building from
which the heads had issued. In this he found a
group of green lights burning upon a kind of basaltic
altar, and a bell-rope from a belfry overhead hanging
down into the centre of the place. Round the wall
ran a lettering of fire in a character unknown to
him. While he was still wondering at the purport
of these things, he heard the receding tramp of
heavy feet echoing far down the street. He ran
out into the darkness again, but he could see nothing.
He had a mind to pull the bell-rope, and finally
decided to follow the footsteps. But, although he
ran far, he never overtook them; and his shouting
was of no avail. The gorge seemed to extend an<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</SPAN></span>
interminable distance. It was as dark as earthly
starlight throughout its length, while the ghastly
green day lay along the upper edge of its precipices.
There were none of the heads, now, below. They
were all, it seemed, busily occupied along the upper
slopes. Looking up, he saw them drifting hither and
thither, some hovering stationary, some flying swiftly
through the air. It reminded him, he said, of “big
snowflakes”; only these were black and pale green.</p>
<p>In pursuing the firm, undeviating footsteps that
he never overtook, in groping into new regions of
this endless devil’s dyke, in clambering up and down
the pitiless heights, in wandering about the summits,
and in watching the drifting faces, Plattner states
that he spent the better part of seven or eight days.
He did not keep count, he says. Though once or
twice he found eyes watching him, he had word with
no living soul. He slept among the rocks on the
hillside. In the gorge things earthly were invisible,
because, from the earthly standpoint, it was far
underground. On the altitudes, so soon as the
earthly day began, the world became visible to
him. He found himself sometimes stumbling over
the dark green rocks, or arresting himself on a
precipitous brink, while all about him the green
branches of the Sussexville lanes were swaying;
or, again, he seemed to be walking through the
Sussexville streets, or watching unseen the private
business of some household. And then it was he
discovered, that to almost every human being in
our world there pertained some of these drifting
heads: that everyone in the world is watched intermittently
by these helpless disembodiments.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>What are they—these Watchers of the Living?
Plattner never learned. But two, that presently
found and followed him, were like his childhood’s
memory of his father and mother. Now and then
other faces turned their eyes upon him: eyes like
those of dead people who had swayed him, or
injured him, or helped him in his youth and manhood.
Whenever they looked at him, Plattner was
overcome with a strange sense of responsibility.
To his mother he ventured to speak; but she made
no answer. She looked sadly, steadfastly, and
tenderly—a little reproachfully, too, it seemed—into
his eyes.</p>
<p>He simply tells this story: he does not endeavour
to explain. We are left to surmise who these
Watchers of the Living may be, or if they are
indeed the Dead, why they should so closely and
passionately watch a world they have left for ever.
It may be—indeed to my mind it seems just—that,
when our life has closed, when evil or good is
no longer a choice for us, we may still have to
witness the working out of the train of consequences
we have laid. If human souls continue after death,
then surely human interests continue after death.
But that is merely my own guess at the meaning
of the things seen. Plattner offers no interpretation,
for none was given him. It is well the
reader should understand this clearly. Day after
day, with his head reeling, he wandered about this
strange-lit world outside the world, weary and,
towards the end, weak and hungry. By day—by
our earthly day, that is—the ghostly vision of the
old familiar scenery of Sussexville, all about him,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</SPAN></span>
irked and worried him. He could not see where
to put his feet, and ever and again with a chilly
touch one of these Watching Souls would come
against his face. And after dark the multitude of
these Watchers about him, and their intent distress,
confused his mind beyond describing. A great
longing to return to the earthly life that was so
near and yet so remote consumed him. The unearthliness
of things about him produced a positively
painful mental distress. He was worried beyond
describing by his own particular followers. He
would shout at them to desist from staring at him,
scold at them, hurry away from them. They were
always mute and intent. Run as he might over the
uneven ground, they followed his destinies.</p>
<p>On the ninth day, towards evening, Plattner heard
the invisible footsteps approaching, far away down
the gorge. He was then wandering over the broad
crest of the same hill upon which he had fallen in
his entry into this strange Other-World of his. He
turned to hurry down into the gorge, feeling his
way hastily, and was arrested by the sight of the
thing that was happening in a room in a back street
near the school. Both of the people in the room
he knew by sight. The windows were open, the
blinds up, and the setting sun shone clearly into
it, so that it came out quite brightly at first, a vivid
oblong of room, lying like a magic-lantern picture
upon the black landscape and the livid green dawn.
In addition to the sunlight, a candle had just been
lit in the room.</p>
<p>On the bed lay a lank man, his ghastly white
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</SPAN></span>face terrible upon the tumbled pillow. His clenched
hands were raised above his head. A little table
beside the bed carried a few medicine bottles, some
toast and water, and an empty glass. Every now
and then the lank man’s lips fell apart, to indicate
a word he could not articulate. But the woman
did not notice that he wanted anything, because she
was busy turning out papers from an old-fashioned
bureau in the opposite corner of the room. At first
the picture was very vivid indeed, but as the green
dawn behind it grew brighter and brighter, so it
became fainter and more and more transparent.</p>
<p>As the echoing footsteps paced nearer and nearer,
those footsteps that sound so loud in that Other-World
and come so silently in this, Plattner perceived
about him a great multitude of dim faces
gathering together out of the darkness and watching
the two people in the room. Never before had he
seen so many of the Watchers of the Living. A
multitude had eyes only for the sufferer in the
room, another multitude, in infinite anguish, watched
the woman as she hunted with greedy eyes for
something she could not find. They crowded about
Plattner, they came across his sight and buffeted his
face, the noise of their unavailing regrets was all
about him. He saw clearly only now and then.
At other times the picture quivered dimly, through
the veil of green reflections upon their movements.
In the room it must have been very still, and
Plattner says the candle flame streamed up into
a perfectly vertical line of smoke, but in his ears
each footfall and its echoes beat like a clap of
thunder. And the faces! Two, more particularly
near the woman’s: one a woman’s also, white and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</SPAN></span>
clear-featured, a face which might have once been
cold and hard, but which was now softened by the
touch of a wisdom strange to earth. The other
might have been the woman’s father. Both were
evidently absorbed in the contemplation of some act
of hateful meanness, so it seemed, which they could
no longer guard against and prevent. Behind were
others, teachers, it may be, who had taught ill, friends
whose influence had failed. And over the man, too—a
multitude, but none that seemed to be parents
or teachers! Faces that might once have been
coarse, now purged to strength by sorrow! And
in the forefront one face, a girlish one, neither angry
nor remorseful, but merely patient and weary, and,
as it seemed to Plattner, waiting for relief. His
powers of description fail him at the memory of this
multitude of ghastly countenances. They gathered
on the stroke of the bell. He saw them all in the
space of a second. It would seem that he was so
worked on by his excitement that, quite involuntarily,
his restless fingers took the bottle of green powder
out of his pocket and held it before him. But he
does not remember that.</p>
<p>Abruptly the footsteps ceased. He waited for
the next, and there was silence, and then suddenly,
cutting through the unexpected stillness like a keen,
thin blade, came the first stroke of the bell. At
that the multitudinous faces swayed to and fro, and
a louder crying began all about him. The woman
did not hear; she was burning something now in
the candle flame. At the second stroke everything
grew dim, and a breath of wind, icy cold, blew
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</SPAN></span>through the host of watchers. They swirled about
him like an eddy of dead leaves in the spring, and at the
third stroke something was extended through them to
the bed. You have heard of a beam of light. This
was like a beam of darkness, and looking again at it,
Plattner saw that it was a shadowy arm and hand.</p>
<p>The green sun was now topping the black desolations
of the horizon, and the vision of the room was
very faint. Plattner could see that the white of the
bed struggled, and was convulsed; and that the woman
looked round over her shoulder at it, startled.</p>
<p>The cloud of watchers lifted high like a puff of
green dust before the wind, and swept swiftly downward
towards the temple in the gorge. Then
suddenly Plattner understood the meaning of the
shadowy black arm that stretched across his shoulder
and clutched its prey. He did not dare turn his head to
see the Shadow behind the arm. With a violent effort,
and covering his eyes, he set himself to run, made, perhaps,
twenty strides, then slipped on a boulder, and
fell. He fell forward on his hands; and the bottle
smashed and exploded as he touched the ground.</p>
<p>In another moment he found himself, stunned and
bleeding, sitting face to face with Lidgett in the old
walled garden behind the school.</p>
<hr class="l3" />
<p>There the story of Plattner’s experiences ends.
I have resisted, I believe successfully, the natural
disposition of a writer of fiction to dress up incidents
of this sort. I have told the thing as far as possible
in the order in which Plattner told it to me. I have
carefully avoided any attempt at style, effect, or
construction. It would have been easy, for instance,
to have worked the scene of the death-bed into a kind<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</SPAN></span>
of plot in which Plattner might have been involved.
But, quite apart from the objectionableness of falsifying
a most extraordinary true story, any such trite
devices would spoil, to my mind, the peculiar effect
of this dark world, with its livid green illumination
and its drifting Watchers of the Living, which, unseen
and unapproachable to us, is yet lying all about us.</p>
<p>It remains to add, that a death did actually occur
in Vincent Terrace, just beyond the school garden,
and, so far as can be proved, at the moment of
Plattner’s return. Deceased was a rate-collector
and insurance agent. His widow, who was much
younger than himself, married last month a Mr.
Whymper, a veterinary surgeon of Allbeeding. As
the portion of this story given here has in various
forms circulated orally in Sussexville, she has consented
to my use of her name, on condition that I
make it distinctly known that she emphatically contradicts
every detail of Plattner’s account of her
husband’s last moments. She burnt no will, she
says, although Plattner never accused her of doing
so: her husband made but one will, and that just
after their marriage. Certainly, from a man who
had never seen it, Plattner’s account of the furniture
of the room was curiously accurate.</p>
<p>One other thing, even at the risk of an irksome
repetition, I must insist upon, lest I seem to favour
the credulous superstitious view. Plattner’s absence
from the world for nine days is, I think, proved.
But that does not prove his story. It is quite conceivable
that even outside space hallucinations may
be possible. That, at least, the reader must bear
distinctly in mind.</p>
<hr class="l1" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</SPAN></span></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />