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СКАЧАТЬ the island. No one would believe me, I was almost as queer to men as I had been to the Beast People. I may have caught something of the natural wildness of my companions.

      They say that terror is a disease, and anyhow, I can witness that for several years now, a restless fear has dwelt in my mind, such a restless fear as a half-tamed lion cub may feel. My trouble took the strangest form. I could not persuade myself that the men and women I met were not also another, still passably human, Beast People, animals half-wrought into the outward image of human souls; and that they would presently begin to revert, to show first this bestial mark and then that. But I have confided my case to a strangely able man, a man who had known Moreau, and seemed half to credit my story, a mental specialist — and he has helped me mightily.

      Though I do not expect that the terror of that island will ever altogether leave me, at most times it lies far in the back of my mind, a mere distant cloud, a memory and a faint distrust; but there are times when the little cloud spreads until it obscures the whole sky. Then I look about me at my fellow men. And I go in fear. I see faces keen and bright, others dull or dangerous, others unsteady, insincere; none that have the calm authority of a reasonable soul. I feel as though the animal was surging up through them; that presently the degradation of the Islanders will be played over again on a larger scale. I know this is an illusion, that these seeming men and women about me are indeed men and women, men and women for ever, perfectly reasonable creatures, full of human desires and tender solicitude, emancipated from instinct, and the slaves of no fantastic Law — beings altogether different from the Beast Folk. Yet I shrink from them, from their curious glances, their inquiries and assistance, and long to be away from them and alone.

      For that reason I live near the broad free downland, and can escape thither when this shadow is over my soul; and very sweet is the empty downland then, under the wind-swept sky. When I lived in London the horror was wellnigh insupportable. I could not get away from men; their voices came through windows; locked doors were flimsy safeguards. I would go out into the streets to fight with my delusion, and prowling women would mew after me, furtive craving men glance jealously at me, weary pale workers go coughing by me, with tired eyes and eager paces like wounded deer dripping blood, old people, bent and dull, pass murmuring to themselves, and all unheeding a ragged tail of gibing children. Then I would turn aside into some chapel, and even there, such was my disturbance, it seemed that the preacher gibbered Big Thinks even as the Ape Man had done; or into some library, and there the intent faces over the books seemed but patient creatures waiting for prey. Particularly nauseous were the blank expressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses; they seemed no more my fellow-creatures than dead bodies would be, so that I did not dare to travel unless I was assured of being alone. And even it seemed that I, too, was not a reasonable creature, but only an animal tormented with some strange disorder in its brain, that sent it to wander alone, like a sheep stricken with the gid.

      But this is a mood that comes to me now — I thank God — more rarely. I have withdrawn myself from the confusion of cities and multitudes, and spend my days surrounded by wise books, bright windows in this life of ours lit by the shining souls of men. I see few strangers, and have but a small household. My days I devote to reading and to experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy. There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I could not live. And so, in hope and solitude, my story ends.

      EDWARD PRENDICK

THE INVISIBLE MAN

       Table of Contents

       CHAPTER I. THE STRANGE MAN’S ARRIVAL

       CHAPTER II. MR. TEDDY HENFREY’S FIRST IMPRESSIONS

       CHAPTER III. THE THOUSAND AND ONE BOTTLES

       CHAPTER IV. MR. CUSS INTERVIEWS THE STRANGER

       CHAPTER V. THE BURGLARY AT THE VICARAGE

       CHAPTER VI. THE FURNITURE THAT WENT MAD

       CHAPTER VII. THE UNVEILING OF THE STRANGER

       CHAPTER VIII. IN TRANSIT

       CHAPTER IX. MR. THOMAS MARVEL

       CHAPTER X. MR. MARVEL’S VISIT TO IPING

       CHAPTER XI. IN THE “COACH AND HORSES”

       CHAPTER XII. THE INVISIBLE MAN LOSES HIS TEMPER

       CHAPTER XIII. MR. MARVEL DISCUSSES HIS RESIGNATION

       CHAPTER XIV. AT PORT STOWE

       CHAPTER XV. THE MAN WHO WAS RUNNING

       CHAPTER XVI. IN THE “JOLLY CRICKETERS”

       CHAPTER XVII. DR. KEMP’S VISITOR

       CHAPTER XVIII. THE INVISIBLE MAN SLEEPS

       CHAPTER XIX. CERTAIN FIRST PRINCIPLES

       CHAPTER XX. AT THE HOUSE IN GREAT PORTLAND STREET

       CHAPTER XXI. IN OXFORD STREET

       CHAPTER XXII. IN THE EMPORIUM

       CHAPTER XXIII. IN DRURY LANE

       CHAPTER XXIV. THE PLAN THAT FAILED

       CHAPTER СКАЧАТЬ