[adapted]

by
H. G. Wells

The night was hot and cloudy, the sky red at the edges with the leftover light from the summer sunset. They sat by the open window, trying to believe the air felt cooler there. The trees and bushes in the garden stood still and dark. Out on the road, a gas-lamp burned, bright orange against the soft blue of the evening. Farther away were the three lights of the railway signal under the lowering sky. The man and woman spoke to each other in quiet voices.

“He doesn’t know?” said the man, a little nervously.

“Not him,” she said crossly, like that also made her angry. “He thinks only about the factory and the cost of fuel. He has no imagination, no feeling for beauty.”

“None of these iron men do,” he said seriously. “They have no hearts.”

“He doesn’t,” she said. She turned her unhappy face toward the window. A far-off sound of roaring and rushing came closer and got louder; the house shook; they heard the metal noise of the engine. As the train passed, there was a flash of light above the track and a wild cloud of smoke. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight black shapes—eight trucks—passed over the pale grey of the hill, and then were suddenly gone, one by one, into the tunnel, which, with the last truck, seemed to swallow the whole train, smoke, and sound in one big gulp.

“This land was all clean and lovely once,” he said. “And now—it is like hell. That way—nothing but factories and chimneys throwing fire and smoke into the sky…But what does it matter? An end comes, an end to all this pain…To-morrow.” He said the last word in a whisper.

“To-morrow,” she said, whispering too, still looking out of the window.

“Dear!” he said, putting his hand on hers.

She turned quickly, and they looked into each other’s eyes. Her look softened when she saw him. “My dear one!” she said, and then, “It feels so strange—that you came into my life like this—to open—” She stopped.

“To open?” he said.

“All this wonderful world”—she paused, and spoke even more softly—“this world of love to me.”

Then suddenly the door clicked and shut. They turned their heads, and he jumped back in shock. In the dark part of the room stood a big shadowy shape—silent. They could just see the face in the dim light, with dark, unreadable spots under heavy eyebrows. All the muscles in Raut’s body became tight. When had the door opened? What had he heard? Had he heard everything? What had he seen? So many questions rushed through his mind.

The new person spoke at last, after a long, heavy silence. “Well?” he said.

“I was afraid I had missed you, Horrocks,” said the man at the window, holding tightly to the window ledge. His voice was shaky.

The large shape of Horrocks stepped forward out of the shadow. He didn’t answer what Raut said. For a moment, he stood over them.

The woman felt her heart turn cold inside her. “I told Mr. Raut that you might come back,” she said in a voice that didn’t shake at all.

Horrocks still said nothing and suddenly sat down in the chair by her little work table. His big hands were closed into fists; now they could see the fire in his eyes under his heavy brows. He was trying to catch his breath. His eyes moved from the woman he had trusted to the friend he had trusted, and then back to the woman.

By now, and for a short moment, all three of them half understood what was going on. But no one dared to say anything to let out the heavy feelings trapped inside them.

It was the husband’s voice that broke the silence at last.

“You wanted to see me?” he said to Raut.

Raut jumped when he spoke. “I came to see you,” he said, choosing to lie until the end.

“Yes,” said Horrocks.

“You promised,” said Raut, “to show me some good sights of moonlight and smoke.”

“I promised to show you some good sights of moonlight and smoke,” repeated Horrocks in a flat voice.

“And I thought I might find you tonight before you went down to the factory,” Raut went on, “and go with you.”

There was another pause. Did the man mean to stay calm? Did he really know what was going on? How long had he been in the room? Even when they heard the door, their positions… Horrocks looked at the woman’s face from the side, pale in the dim light. Then he looked at Raut and seemed to suddenly come back to himself. “Of course,” he said, “I promised to show you the factory at the right dramatic moment. Strange that I forgot.”

“If I’m bothering you—” Raut began.

Horrocks moved again. A new look suddenly came into the hot darkness of his eyes. “Not at all,” he said.

“Have you been telling Mr. Raut about all those differences of fire and shadow you think are so wonderful?” said the woman, turning to her husband for the first time, her confidence coming back, her voice just a little too high—“that awful idea of yours that machines are beautiful and everything else in the world is ugly. I thought he wouldn’t let you get away with that, Mr. Raut. It’s his big idea, his one discovery in art.”

“I am slow to find new things,” said Horrocks in a cold voice, cutting her off quickly. “But what I find…” He stopped.

“Well?” she said.

“Nothing.” And suddenly he stood up.

“I promised to show you the factory,” he said to Raut, and put his big, clumsy hand on his friend’s shoulder. “And you’re ready to go?”

“Yes,” said Raut, and stood up too.

There was another pause. Each one looked through the dim evening light at the other two.

Horrocks’ hand was still on Raut’s shoulder. Raut still partly thought this was all a small matter after all. But Mrs. Horrocks knew her husband better. She knew that cold sound in his voice, and the confusion in her heart began to feel like something truly bad. “Very well,” said Horrocks, and dropped his hand, then turned toward the door.

“My hat?” Raut looked around in the dim light.

“That’s my sewing basket,” said Mrs. Horrocks with a sudden burst of nervous laughter. Their hands touched on the back of the chair. “Here it is!” he said. She felt a strong urge to warn him quietly, but she couldn’t form the words. “Don’t go!” and “Watch out for him!” were in her mind, but the quick moment passed.

“Got it?” said Horrocks, standing with the door half open.

Raut stepped toward him. “Better say goodbye to Mrs. Horrocks,” said the ironmaster, his voice even more quiet and serious than before.

Raut jumped a little and turned. “Good evening, Mrs. Horrocks,” he said, and their hands touched.

Horrocks held the door open with a kind of formal politeness he didn’t usually show to other men. Raut walked out, and then, after a long look at her without words, her husband followed. She stood still while Raut’s light steps and her husband’s heavy ones, like high and low notes in music, went down the hallway together. The front door closed with a loud bang. She walked slowly to the window and stood there watching, leaning forward. The two men appeared for a moment at the gate by the road, passed under the street lamp, and were hidden by the dark shapes of the bushes. The lamplight showed their faces for just a second—only pale shapes that told her nothing about what she still feared, wondered about, and desperately wanted to understand. Then she dropped down into a crouching position in the big armchair, her eyes wide open and staring at the red lights from the factory fires that flickered in the sky. An hour later, she was still there, her body hardly moved.

The heavy stillness of the evening felt like a weight on Raut. They walked side by side down the road without speaking, and still silent, turned onto the cinder path that soon opened up a view of the valley.

A blue haze, part dust and part mist, covered the long valley and made it feel mysterious. Far away were Hanley and Etruria, grey and dark shapes, with a few golden street lamps and, now and then, a window lit by gas or the yellow glow from a factory still working late or a crowded pub. Out of the dark shapes, tall chimneys rose into the evening sky—many giving off smoke, a few with none during a time of “rest.” Here and there, pale patches and strange short beehive shapes showed where there were pot-banks or wheels. Black and sharp against the hot lower sky stood the towers of coal mines, where they dug up the shiny coal of the area.

Closer was the wide railway, where almost hidden trains moved around—there was steady puffing and rumbling, each move ending with a loud bang and a pattern of bumps, and now and then, white steam blew across the view. And to the left, between the railway and the dark hill beyond it, standing over everything, huge, black, and smoky with sudden flames, were the big cylinders of the Jeddah Company Blast Furnaces. These were the main buildings of the large iron factory where Horrocks was the manager. They looked heavy and frightening, always full of fire and bubbling hot iron, and at their base the rolling-mills rattled, and the steam-hammer hit with loud beats, throwing white iron sparks in every direction.

Even as they watched, a cart full of fuel was dumped into one of the huge furnaces, red flames flashed out, and a storm of smoke and black dust rose up into the sky.

“You certainly get some color with your furnaces,” said Raut, breaking the silence that had started to feel tense.

Horrocks grunted. He stood with his hands in his pockets, frowning down at the misty railway and the busy iron factory beyond, frowning like he was trying to solve a hard problem.

Raut looked at him and then looked away again. “Right now your moonlight scene isn’t quite ready,” he said, looking up. “The moon is still covered by the last bit of daylight.”

Horrocks stared at him like a man who had just woken up. “Last bit of daylight? … Of course, of course.” He also looked up at the moon, still pale in the midsummer sky. “Come along,” he said suddenly, and grabbing Raut’s arm, started walking toward the path that went down to the railway.

Raut held back. Their eyes met, and in that moment, they both understood many things their mouths almost spoke. Horrocks’s hand tightened, then let go. And before Raut noticed, they were walking arm in arm, one of them very unwilling, down the path.

“Look at the nice lights from the railway signals toward Burslem,” said Horrocks, suddenly talking a lot, walking fast, and holding Raut’s arm even tighter—“little green lights and red and white lights, all shining through the mist. You have a good eye for scenes, Raut. It’s fine. And look at those furnaces of mine, how they rise up as we go down the hill. That one on the right is my favorite—seventy feet tall. I packed it myself, and it’s been boiling happily with iron inside it for five long years. I’m especially proud of that one. That red line there—you’d call it a lovely warm orange, Raut—that’s the puddlers’ furnaces. And there, in the bright light, three black shapes—did you see that white flash from the steam-hammer just now?—that’s the rolling mills. Come on! Clang, clatter, hear it banging across the floor! Sheet tin, Raut—amazing stuff. Even glass mirrors can’t beat it when it comes fresh from the mill. And squish! there goes the hammer again. Come along!”

He had to stop talking to catch his breath. His arm was twisted around Raut’s with a painful tightness. He had rushed down the dark path to the railway like a man taken over by something. Raut hadn’t said a word, just pulled back with all his strength against Horrocks’s grip.

“I say,” he said now, laughing nervously but with a hint of anger in his voice, “why in the world are you squeezing my arm off, Horrocks, and dragging me along like this?”

At last, Horrocks let go of him. His mood changed again. “Squeezing your arm off?” he said. “Sorry. But you’re the one who taught me how to walk in that ‘friendly’ way.”