[adapted]

by
H. G. Wells

Buying orchids always has a bit of risk to it. You look at a small, dry, brown lump, and then you must rely on your own judgment, the auctioneer’s advice, or simply your luck—whichever you prefer.

The plant might be dying or already dead. Or it might be an ordinary purchase, worth the money you paid for it. But sometimes—because this has happened many times before—the lucky buyer watches as something new and surprising grows. Day by day, a different shape of petal appears, a unique color, or an unexpected pattern that looks like something else.

Pride, beauty, and profit all grow together on one delicate green stem, and maybe, just maybe, even immortality. Because if this new miracle of nature has never been seen before, it will need a new name. And what better name than the one of the person who found it? “Johnsmithia”! There have been worse names.

Perhaps it was this hope of finding something rare and wonderful that made Winter-Wedderburn attend so many of these auctions. That, and the fact that he had nothing else of real interest to do in life.

He was a quiet, lonely man, not very strong or energetic. He had just enough money to live without working, but not enough energy to find a serious job.

He could have collected stamps or coins, translated old books, made his own book covers, or studied tiny sea creatures. But instead, he grew orchids. He had one small but ambitious hothouse where he kept them.

“I have a feeling,” he said while drinking his coffee, “that something is going to happen to me today.” He spoke slowly, just as he moved and thought.

“Oh, don’t say that!” said his housekeeper, who was also his distant cousin. To her, “something happening” always meant something bad.

“You misunderstand me. I don’t mean anything bad… though I don’t really know what I do mean.”

After a short pause, he continued, “Peters’ are selling a new group of plants today from the Andaman Islands and India. I will go and see what they have. Maybe I will buy something special without even realizing it. That could be it.”

He held out his cup for a second serving of coffee.

“Are these the plants collected by that poor young man you told me about the other day?” his cousin asked as she refilled his cup.

“Yes,” he said, and then he fell into deep thought while eating his toast.

“Nothing ever happens to me,” he said after a while, speaking more to himself than to her. “I wonder why? So many things happen to other people. Take Harvey, for example. Just last week—on Monday, he found sixpence, on Wednesday, all his chickens got sick, on Friday, his cousin came home from Australia, and on Saturday, he broke his ankle. What a life full of excitement—compared to mine!”

“I think I would rather have less excitement,” said his housekeeper. “It can’t be good for you.”

“I suppose it would be difficult,” he said. “Still… you see, nothing ever happens to me. When I was a child, I never had accidents. As I grew up, I never fell in love. I never got married… I wonder what it feels like to have something happen to you—something truly remarkable.”

“That orchid collector was only thirty-six—twenty years younger than me—when he died. And look at his life! He was married twice and divorced once. He had malaria four times, and once he broke his thigh. He killed a Malay man once, and another time, he was wounded by a poisoned dart. And in the end, he was killed by jungle leeches. His life must have been very difficult, but also very exciting, don’t you think? Except maybe the leeches.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t good for him,” said his cousin firmly.

“Perhaps not.” Wedderburn looked at his watch. “Twenty-three minutes past eight. My train leaves at a quarter to twelve, so I have plenty of time. I think I will wear my alpaca jacket—it’s warm enough—and my grey felt hat and brown shoes. I suppose—”

He looked out of the window at the clear sky and the sunny garden, then glanced nervously at his cousin’s face.

“I think you should take an umbrella if you are going to London,” she said in a firm voice that left no room for argument. “You never know about the weather on your way back.”

When he returned, he was feeling a little excited. He had made a purchase. It was rare for him to decide quickly enough to buy something, but this time, he had done it.

“There are Vandas,” he said, “and a Dendrobe, and some Palæonophis.”

As he ate his soup, he looked at his new plants with admiration. They were carefully placed on the clean tablecloth in front of him. While slowly enjoying his dinner, he told his cousin all about them. It was his habit to relive his trips to London in the evening, for both his own enjoyment and to entertain his cousin.

“I knew something would happen today! And I have bought all of these. Some of them—some of them—I am sure, do you know, that some of them will be special. I don’t know why, but I feel just as certain as if someone had told me that some of these plants will be truly remarkable.”

He pointed to a dried-up root.

“That one was not identified. It might be a Palæonophis—or it might not. It could be a new species, or even a completely new type of orchid. And it was the last plant that poor Batten ever collected.”

“I don’t like the look of it,” said his housekeeper. “It’s such an ugly shape.”

“To me, it hardly seems to have any shape at all.”

“I don’t like those parts that stick out,” she said.

“I will plant it in a pot tomorrow.”

“It looks,” the housekeeper said, “like a spider pretending to be dead.”

Wedderburn smiled and looked at the root, tilting his head to one side.

“It is certainly not a very nice-looking thing. But you can never judge plants by how they look when they are dry. It might grow into a very beautiful orchid. Tomorrow, I will be very busy! Tonight, I need to figure out exactly what to do with these plants, and tomorrow, I will get to work.”

After a moment, he continued, “They found poor Batten either dead or dying in a mangrove swamp—I don’t remember which—lying on top of one of these orchids, crushing it under his body. He had been sick for a few days with some kind of local fever, and I suppose he fainted. Those mangrove swamps are very dangerous. They say that every drop of blood was drained from his body by the jungle leeches. This might even be the very plant that cost him his life to collect.”

“That doesn’t make me like it any better.”

“Men must work, even if women cry,” said Wedderburn seriously.

“Imagine dying far from home, in a horrible swamp! Imagine being sick with fever and having nothing to take but chlorodyne and quinine! If men were left alone, they would just live on medicine and never take care of themselves properly. And to be surrounded only by terrible native people! They say the Andaman islanders are the worst kind of people—and even if they weren’t, they surely wouldn’t make good nurses since they don’t have the proper training. And all of that suffering—just so people in England can have orchids!”

“I don’t think it was comfortable,” said Wedderburn, “but some men seem to enjoy that kind of adventure. Anyway, the native people in his group were civilized enough to take care of his entire collection until his colleague, who studied birds, came back from the jungle. However, they couldn’t tell what kind of orchid this was, so they left it to dry out. And that kind of story makes these plants even more interesting to me.”

“It makes them disgusting! I would be afraid that they still carry some of the malaria from the jungle. And just think—a dead body was lying on top of that ugly thing! I never thought about that before. That’s it—I can’t eat another bite of my dinner!”

“If you want, I will take them off the table and put them on the window seat. I can still see them just as well from there.”

Over the next few days, he was very busy in his small, hot greenhouse, working with charcoal, pieces of teak wood, moss, and all the other special things needed to grow orchids. He felt like he was having an exciting and eventful time.

In the evenings, he would talk to his friends about his new orchids, and again and again, he mentioned his feeling that something unusual was going to happen.

Some of the Vandas and Dendrobium orchids died under his care, but soon, the strange orchid began to show signs of life. He was thrilled and immediately took his housekeeper away from her jam-making to show her, the moment he noticed it.

“That is a bud,” he said. “Soon, there will be a lot of leaves here, and these little things sticking out are aerial roots.”

“They look like little white fingers coming out of the brown,” said his housekeeper. “I don’t like them.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. They look like fingers trying to grab you. I can’t explain it, but I just don’t like them.”

“I’m not completely sure, but I don’t think any orchid I know has aerial roots quite like this. Maybe it’s just my imagination. Look, you see how they are a little flat at the ends?”

“I don’t like them,” said his housekeeper, suddenly shivering and turning away. “I know it’s silly of me—and I’m very sorry, especially since you like the plant so much. But I can’t stop thinking about that dead body.”

“But it may not be that exact plant. That was just a guess of mine.”

His housekeeper shrugged her shoulders. “Either way, I don’t like it,” she said.

Wedderburn felt a little disappointed that she didn’t like the plant. But that didn’t stop him from talking to her about orchids in general—and this orchid in particular—whenever he felt like it.

“Orchids are such strange plants,” he said one day. “They can surprise you in so many ways. You know, Darwin studied how they reproduce and discovered that the entire shape of a normal orchid flower is designed to make moths carry pollen from one plant to another. But there are some orchids that don’t work that way. Some of the Cypripediums, for example—there are no known insects that can fertilize them, and some of them have never even been found with seeds.”

“But then how do they grow new plants?”