Christina Alberta's father

by H. G. Wells

“The swastika may be a coincidence,” said Christina Alberta. “Or you may have been drawing it on the edges of the newspaper. You do sometimes. And he may have seen it.”

“That does not account for the blue ground. He laid great stress on the blue ground. And there were other things; matters known only to me and your dear mother. I could not tell you them without telling you everything. And small things, entirely private to me. The name of my late grandfather at Diss. Munday his name was. It is sometimes difficult to argue about things although one may be absolutely convinced. And all this was mixed up with broken sentences about a great city and the two daughters of the western King and the Wise Man. And also he called me Belshazzar. Belshazzar seemed to drift in and out of his thoughts. ‘Come again to a world that has fallen into disorder.’ These are remarkable words. And then ‘Beware of women; they take the sceptre out of the hands of the king. But do they know how to rule? Ask Tutankhamen. Ask the ruins in the desert.’”

“Pah,” said Christina Alberta. “As though women have ever had a fair chance!”

“Well, anyhow, Mr. Hockleby has that written down.... And it seemed to me that this too applied to me, for because of my great fondness for your mother I had let so many years of my life slip away. He said many other things, Christina Alberta, richly suggestive things. But I have told you enough for you to understand what has happened. In the end Mr. Fenton came-to quite suddenly, much more suddenly than is usual in such cases, Mrs. Hockleby said. He sat up and yawned and rubbed his eyes. ‘Oh, Lord!’ he said, ‘what nonsense all this is! I’m going to bed.’

“We asked him if he felt exhausted. He said he was. ‘Absolutely fed up,’ were his actual words.

“We asked him if that was the end of his message.

“‘What message?’ he said. He had absolutely no memory of his communications at all. ‘Have I been talking?’ he asked. ‘This isn’t the sort of thing one ought to get up to. What sort of things have I been saying? Nothing objectionable I hope. If so I apologize. I mustn’t do any more of this sort of thing.’

“Mrs. Hockleby told him she had never met anyone with such a promise of great psychic power as he had, before. He said he was really very sorry to hear it. She said he owed it to himself to cultivate so rare and strange a gift, but he said That wouldn’t do for his people at all. The rain had stopped and he said he thought he would take a walk down to the Pantiles and back before turning in. Perfectly simple and natural he was from first to last, and rather unwilling. And he really did look tired out.”

“Didn’t he laugh once?” asked Christina Alberta.

“Why should he? He seemed a little afraid of what he had transmitted. The next day his Spare Part came. Mrs. Hockleby did her utmost to try to get him once more in the afternoon and develop his Communication, but he would not do so. He was full of questions about the ferry at Tilbury and the time of high tide. He would not even give us his name and address. When I spoke of sending Mr. Hockleby’s notes to the Occult Review he was suddenly quite alarmed. He said that if his name appeared in connection with them it might mean a very serious row with his family. He would not even allow us to put a Mr. F. from Cambridge. ‘Put quite another name,’ he said, ‘quite a different name. Put anything you like that does not point to me, a Mr. Walker, say, from London. Or something of that sort.’