~ CHAPTER III. ~

The new light—We have dinner—Adams turns out to be a golfer—Coloured photographs—The pink room—The private theatre—I go to bed.

He motioned with his hand for me to precede him. I moved towards the door, which as usual opened at my approach, and we stood in a large well-appointed hall. It was very high, and seemed to be lighted in some way from the roof, which was a large white dome, planned in the same style as the other two rooms, but on a larger scale. The light—it was a bright electric white—seemed to be shed from all parts equally.

“Ah! you admire our light,” said my companion, seeing my look of wonder. “That is a capital contrivance. It is electric light behind that glass dome, and we have a wonderful little machine, so placed as to catch only daylight, which under the action of light, keeps up a quick rotation. It is connected with an electric current, and as the rotation gets slower, which it does naturally as the light fades, the current is gradually turned on. The slower it gets, the stronger the current and consequently the light. When it ceases altogether the artificial light is at its strongest, and is equal to daylight. So you see we have always the same light—there is no twilight indoors.”

I could not quite follow him, but it seemed to me that, when the one light faded, it quietly turned on the other light to take its place, which it really did. A very convenient arrangement, I thought. They are a wonderful people nowadays.

As we were still standing a gong sounded; it seemed to play a tune—what it was, I don’t know. I'm not at all musical—at least I wasn’t a century ago. Like old Dr. Todhunter, I only knew two tunes. Eh; what were they, did you say? One was “God Save the Queen,” and the other wasn’t, and I only knew it was “God Save the Queen” because I saw the people stand up. It’s a very funny thing, but they seem to have missed out the musical part of my composition: where my bump for music should have been, there’s a decided hollow instead. I remember once staying at a fashionable watering-place—if there is one thing I hate it’s fashionable watering-places—and that fashionable watering-place had a band. How I did hate that band! As soon as I got up it began to play, and it didn’t stop till I went to bed, and always the same tune, of course; “the other wasn’t,” except when it played “God Save the Queen.” Oh, yes, I knew it was “God Save the Queen,” because I saw the people stand, and I was always glad to hear it, as I knew it was the last. I got almost to know it—at least I thought I did, and one night I thought I’d show how clever I was, and stood up when I thought they had begun it; but it wasn’t, so, as I didn’t like to sit down again, I took my hat and went off. But to return.

“Ah! that dinner at last,” said Mr. Adams: “follow me.”

“But look here,” I said, “how about your people? They’ll wonder who the deuce I am!”

“Oh,” he said, “don’t trouble yourself on that score. I’ve only a sister who stays with me, and she is away just now, so we’ll have the whole place to ourselves.”

As he spoke he walked on to a square red rug at one side of the hall between two pillars. I did likewise, and we at once descended to the floor below.

We were now in a hall very similar to the one we had left. The walls, which were coated with a kind of enamel, had a dado of black at the foot which gradually shaded off into white towards the top. We crossed the hall and went into a large dining-room, where there was a table laid out. Mr. Adams motioned me to a seat, which I took, nothing loath, as I began to feel not a little hungry. The walls of this room were the same as the hall, only the colour was a dark bronze, getting lighter near the roof or dome. It was furnished with large heavy furniture, with an eye to comfort evidently, judging from the couches, settees, & c., with which the room abounded. There were also three large mirrors reaching from floor to ceiling on each of the three walls. The fourth was taken up by the window, which was almost the breadth of the room.

The table, which was round, was set for two, and there was a large fern in the centre, round which were some vases with white flowers that gave out a most delicious perfume. It all looked familiar enough, but after taking our seats my companion pressed a finger on the table, and immediately a gap yawned in front of us. The table seemed to be made of three concentric circular pieces, and the middle one sank down through the floor, leaving intact the outer one, which formed the edge of the complete table, and the “hub,” on which the flowers were. The “dumb waiter” portion presently reappeared, bearing two plates of soup on it.

“You see we don’t require servants to wait on us nowadays,” said Mr. Adams. “Two men manage the whole of my household. There are so many machines to minimise labour, that they have quite taken the place of servants, and our food, you know, is all sent in ready cooked.”

After we had finished our soup he pushed his plate in front of him, and I did the same. He again pressed the table with his finger; the plates disappeared, and up came the second course. So it went on through an excellent dinner, which I did full justice to. I must not forget to mention the drink. By our sides were placed two small syphons. When I first saw them I breathed a fervent prayer inwardly that it might not turn out that the people among whom I had come to life again were wholly given over to teetotalism. My fears were quickly allayed by my host saying:

“Try that champagne and tell me what you think of it.”

I did as he bade me, and found it a first-rate brand.

“No new invention about this,” I said, smacking my lips.

“No,” he replied; “the teetotalers have always been trying to palm off on us some new drink or other, but without success. We always come back to the old tipple.”

“You smoke?” queried my host, rising as we had finished dinner. “Very well, then; let us go into the smoking-room.”

We went across the hall into another room, smaller than the dining-room, but just as comfortably furnished, in which a cheerful fire burned. It was the first fire I had seen, and I asked him if this was the only one in the house.

“Yes,” he replied; “as a matter of fact it is. The rest of the house is heated by pipes and hot air, but I always have an old-fashioned fire in this room from choice. It makes a room so nice and home-like.”

We drew our chairs towards the fire, and he, pulling out a cigar case, offered me a cigar. I now felt more at home than I had done since I awoke among so many strange sights and novelties.

“It’s very odd,” I remarked, after a short silence, “that I am sitting here after lying for more than a century as one dead; and still more so that I distinctly remember all that happened on the last day of my former existence, as if it were indeed yesterday. Brown and his long putts, too. Oh, I simply threw away that match.” I was talking rather to myself than to my companion in thus musing on the past; but the effect on him was magical.

“Long putts!” he repeated after me in amaze. Then, starting forward in his chair, “Are you a golfer?” he asked, earnestly.

“Yes,” I replied, “I used to play a sort of decent game at times.”

“By Jove! Let me shake hands with you.” And he wrung my hand effusively.“A nineteenth-century golfer in this age! Ah! what luck has been yours! I think you’ll own it’s been worth living for when I take you round a bit. We’ll have a few new things in the golfing line to show you, or I’m much mistaken.”

“Indeed,” I said, “in my day they thought they had got golf almost to perfection. I suppose you still use the bulger?”

“The bulger?” he queried —“I have never heard of it.”

“Is it possible you never saw a bulger? I must bring it out. It’s a capital invention, though I don’t use one myself from principle. The face of the head is convex, and it matters not whether you heel or toe a ball, they always go straight. I reason that if you don’t hit a ball fair, you deserve to go off the line and get punished for it; so I’ve always stuck to the old straight face, and when I do pull a ball off the course, and lose the hole by it, I have the satisfaction of knowing I’ve acted up to my principles—though I am beginning, I’ll allow, to think it’s not much satisfaction after all, especially when it comes to handing over your half-crown. I think I’ll really have to take to the bulgers in the end.”

“Ah,” he said, smothering a yawn, as if he wasn’t much interested in the bulger, “I expect golf in your days and golf in ours are two very different things. We manage everything so much better nowadays. But you are fortunate in being under my roof, as I am the chief inspector of golf clubs. It is a government appointment, and that’s what the C.I.G.C. on my card stands for.”

“Indeed!” I said. “Are golf clubs under government?”

“Yes,” he answered, “I have about a hundred inspectors under me, and every club has to be examined and reported on once every three months. It is no easy matter, considering that almost every town in Great Britain has a golfing green. But to-morrow we will have a round on whichever course you wish. What ones used you to play on?”

“I know almost all the Scotch greens,” I answered, “and a few of the English.”

“Ah, then, I will show you something to­morrow,” he said, rising; “and in the meantime, if you have finished your smoke,   I will take you to a room which I think you will like. It is my sister’s taste, and she is very proud of it.”

He led the way along a broad passage or corridor, hung with large paintings—for so they seemed to me—with a heavy curtain between each.

“These are very fine paintings,” I remarked, admiring a large sea-piece. The colouring was very fine, and it seemed to be worked out to the minutest detail.

“These are not paintings, but photographs,” he replied “there are no such things as paintings now, coloured photographs have quite taken their place. I don’t believe there has been a picture painted for the last fifty years; nobody would buy one if there was: these are far better.”

They certainly were. You might have been looking through an open window at the view, so life-like it was.

“But these,” he went on, “are comparatively old-fashioned—we have got them to even greater perfection than that. I must show you my picture gallery—it is well worth seeing—but we’ll keep that for to­morrow; come along.”

At the end of the corridor he ushered me into a room that I had never seen the like of before. I cannot do it justice in this description, I fear. To begin with, it was circular; the walls were of a colour shading off from a deep rose at the foot into pink at the top, the dome overhead being also of the latter colour, giving the whole room a warm, glowing tint. There was a thick round velvet mat in the middle of the floor, pink in the centre and getting darker towards the sides, while beyond that there was a margin of white marble. Couches of crimson velvet and white ivory were scattered about the room, and there was a most delightful odour of sweet violets all through the air.

Mr. Adams motioned me to a seat, and as I sat down a strange soft music seemed to fill the air.

“Ah!” I said, “this feels like the Arabian Knights.”

“Now,” said Mr. Adams, “how would you like to hear Marmaduke Kinmont, our famous comic actor. He is playing just now in London.”

“Very well indeed,” I replied; “but if he is there I don’t quite understand how we are to listen to him. You’re not humbugging, are you?”

“Not at all, my dear sir.” He moved across the room towards two large curtains which hung down from the ceiling. On his touching a button, these parted, falling away one on each side, and left exposed a large dark sheet of glass about twelve feet square. I watched with interest to see what would happen next. He touched another button, and at once the sheet of glass (or mirror, as I afterwards found it to be) was brilliantly lit up. A stage was represented upon it, and several figures moving about. He again touched a button, and the effect was miraculous. The figures were now heard speaking—you could follow their voices as if they were indeed as near as they were represented to be.

“Wonderful!’ I exclaimed, starting up. “How, in the name of all that is impossible, do you manage this?”

He returned across the room and sat down; I followed suit.

“It requires some explanation,’ he said, “but we will watch the play first.”

It was a funny piece of a type familiar enough even after the lapse of a century. One man, who was going to run away with another man’s wife, ran away with his own by mistake, and she for her part also thought all the while she was running away with quite another person. The play was very well acted, and you heard the laughter and applause of the audience as if you were in the theatre yourself. I was glad, however, when it came to an end, as I was anxious to hear my friend’s explanation.

“What do you think of it?” he asked.

“It is indeed wonderful,” I replied, “but I would like to understand how it is managed.”

“Well,” he began, “in the first place, that is a mirror we were looking at. In the theatre in London there is a small mirror placed, which reflects all that happens on the stage. In the theatre in this town there is also a small mirror, connected by a specially prepared wire (the nature of which I despair of making you understand in the present state of your knowledge) with the mirror in London and everything reflected on the one mirror is at once transmitted to the other, where it is again reflected on to a large mirror the same size as the stage in London, and just taking the place of the stage here. In the last transmission, however, there is a magnifying glass placed in front of the mirror, which makes all the figures life-size. For the sound the telephone, which I believe was in vogue in your day, but has been much altered and improved, is used; and the smallest sound in the one theatre is heard in the other as distinctly as in the first, even to the furthest off part of the gallery. This, which is a private one of my own—I have to pay a tax of two hundred pounds a year for it, by the way—is a reflection, so to speak, of the one in this town, and worked on the same principle; but, as you yourself see, it loses nothing through being second­hand, only it is on a slightly smaller scale.”

“It is the most wonderful invention I have yet seen,” I said, “though indeed each one to me seems more wonderful than the last.”

“No doubt,” he replied, “to you, being suddenly introduced to such startling innovations, they must seem strange. But to us they are nothing. We have been brought up with them, and think no more of them than you did of the telegraph, for instance. But come—it’s getting late, we must be off to bed.” And rising, he made his way to the door. I followed. When we were in the hall we stepped on to the lift—not the one we went down on, but another situated at the other side of the hall, which also worked between two pillars. At once we were on the floor above. He showed me to my room—the one I had dressed in—said I would find everything I wanted in it, explained how to fasten the door and turn off the light, and wishing me good-night, left me.

“Well,” I thought, “this has been a most eventful day. The year 2000, is it? I wonder if I’ll be back in 1892 to-morrow, or moved on perhaps another century or so. That chap Adams isn’t half a bad fellow, anyhow. Wonder what kind of a game he plays? Humph—going to teach me a thing or two, is he? We’ll see about that.” And so musing I took off my clothes, turned out the light, and got into bed. No sooner was my head on the pillow than I was fast asleep.

All original text and graphics on this site, as well as the particular layout and arrangement of text, graphic, and HTML elements, are © 2005-2006 by Steve Smith. All rights reserved: Neither this site nor any portion thereof may be copied or republished without the express consent of Steve Smith.