MY friend Glindersby is a changed man, and, for my part, I think it a change for the better. For the one thing that had always spoiled Glindersby for the company of sane men was his ever-recurring praise of the present age and its mechanical ingenuities. Though brought up to a noble old profession, he was one of those who are for ever crying up the marvels that we have of late brought into the world; he would subscribe to such things as Wonders of Modern Science or Engineering Marvels of the World, and could be found gloating over vilely-coloured prints of airships and electric lifts. Because there was a railway at Kamchatka or a telephone at Tangiers, he could not understand why all men should not be happy. In short, he was one of those latter-day fanatics who, in a kind of ecstasy, are always crying out to each other, ‘Look at Radium ...!’ and ‘What will they do next!’ and other phrases from their dark liturgy. This was Glindersby’s one failing, and it had, I knew, kept him from much good company. Now, I say, he is changed, for he seems to have lost his old damaging enthusiasm, and in the late hours of fireside confessional he has now begun telling a certain trumpery tale, a piece of hocus-pocus if there ever was one, to account for the change.
A short time ago, at the house of some friends, a cranky set, he was introduced to a Hindoo who had just arrived in this country, and who might be called Ram Dar Chubb. They said little to each other on that first evening, but a few days later they met in the street, and the Hindoo suggested that they should visit his rooms. Glindersby, suspecting that the other was feeling lonely in this new world of white faces and black streets, expressed his pleasure, and accompanied the hospitable Ram Dar up three flights of stairs. He was soon making himself comfortable in a sitting-room that seemed to contain nothing out of the common, with the exception of a large graven metal bowl and some Oriental knick-knacks on a small side-table. The two men quickly plunged into talk, and Glindersby, beginning with the difference between the Eastern and Western civilisations, was not long before he was declaiming—almost breathlessly—upon his favourite themes. Here at last he had found fit audience; Ram Dar was an ideal listener. And Glindersby rose to the occasion; telephones, telegraphy, airships, turbine engines, calculating machines, electric kettles, and a thousand other marvels were all his concern. There was no end to his talk of valves, pressures, and horse power. Very soon he had paraphrased the introduction and at least half a dozen chapters of Wonders of Modern Science and Engineering Marvels of the World, and his monologue soon became as highly coloured and altogether detestable as their monstrous prints. Looking sturdily across at the immobile brown face, he expanded, boasted, and bragged, until it might have appeared that he himself was ready at any time to bridge the Channel and irrigate the Sahara Desert.
Throughout this untimely rhapsody Ram Dar sat motionless, his attitude expressive of that eternal patience of the East which all Glindersby’s hearers ought to have had.
‘Conquest of Nature’s just begun,’ cried Glindersby, who by this time was almost dithyrambic, and talked in capital letters and dots as if he were one of Mr. Wells’ characters. ‘You’ve been standing still for thousands of years.... Stagnation!... Now we’re going forward.... Made bigger advance in last hundred years than in all the thousands before.... Wireless Telegraphy!... Aeroplanes!... Space annihilated.... Just beginning.’ And he leaned forward impressively: ‘What will it be in one hundred years’ time?... Or three hundred?... Or seven hundred?... Nature finally conquered.... All her forces harnessed..... Man.... Master of the World.... Stupendous buildings!... Marvellous machinery!... Fleets of Airships!... What wouldn’t I give for a peep into the Future!...’
‘You would look into the future?’ broke in his hearer, for the first time.
Glindersby was somewhat taken aback by this unexpected interruption. ‘I would give anything to see what we shall achieve,’ he cried, ‘only, of course, it’s—er—impossible.’
There was a flash of white teeth opposite. ‘No, it can be done,’ murmured Ram Dar, ‘Past, Present, Future! It is all an illusion. We have known these things a long time. You wish to look into the Future?...’ And he rose to his feet.
Still suspecting some pleasantry, the other forced a laugh, and stammered out: ‘Above all things.... Pity no way of doing it.... Final Conquest of Nature.’
By this time, the Hindoo had pulled forward the little side-table, on which stood the great metal bowl. To Glindersby’s astonishment, the latter was filled with a liquid blacker than ink, and had, fastened to the edge, several little pans, into which Ram Dar quickly poured a quantity of grey powder.
‘How far forward will you look, and at what place?’ asked Ram Dar as he proceeded to set fire to the little heaps of powder.