Tales of Space and TimeWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Science
Tales of Space and Time
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Science fiction, English
She became aware that he was preparing to lie down. She marked his
movements, perceived with astonishment how he adjusted his pillow with a
careful regard to comfort. He lay down with a sigh of contentment
almost. His passion had passed. He lay still, and presently his
breathing became regular and deep.
But Elizabeth remained with eyes wide open in the darkness, until the
clamour of a bell and the sudden brilliance of the electric light warned
them that the Labour Company had need of them for yet another day.
That day came a scuffle with the albino Whitey and the little
ferret-faced man. Blunt, the swart artist in scrapping, having first
let Denton grasp the bearing of his lesson, intervened, not without a
certain quality of patronage. "Drop 'is 'air, Whitey, and let the man
be," said his gross voice through a shower of indignities. "Can't you
see 'e don't know _'ow_ to scrap?" And Denton, lying shamefully in the
dust, realised that he must accept that course of instruction after all.
He made his apology straight and clean. He scrambled up and walked to
Blunt. "I was a fool, and you are right," he said. "If it isn't too
late ..."
That night, after the second spell, Denton went with Blunt to certain
waste and slime-soaked vaults under the Port of London, to learn the
first beginnings of the high art of scrapping as it had been perfected
in the great world of the underways: how to hit or kick a man so as to
hurt him excruciatingly or make him violently sick, how to hit or kick
"vital," how to use glass in one's garments as a club and to spread red
ruin with various domestic implements, how to anticipate and demolish
your adversary's intentions in other directions; all the pleasant
devices, in fact, that had grown up among the disinherited of the great
cities of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, were spread out by a
gifted exponent for Denton's learning. Blunt's bashfulness fell from
him as the instruction proceeded, and he developed a certain expert
dignity, a quality of fatherly consideration. He treated Denton with the
utmost consideration, only "flicking him up a bit" now and then, to keep
the interest hot, and roaring with laughter at a happy fluke of Denton's
that covered his mouth with blood.
"I'm always keerless of my mouth," said Blunt, admitting a weakness.
"Always. It don't seem to matter, like, just getting bashed in the
mouth--not if your chin's all right. Tastin' blood does me good. Always.
But I better not 'it you again."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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