Short Fiction by H. G. Wells

Author:H. G. Wells
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Science fiction, Short stories, English
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2019-02-15T21:08:50+00:00

A Story of the Days to Come

I The Cure for Love

The ex­cel­lent Mr. Mor­ris was an Eng­lish­man, and he lived in the days of Queen Vict­oria the Good. He was a pros­per­ous and very sens­ible man; he read the Times and went to church, and as he grew to­wards middle age an ex­pres­sion of quiet con­ten­ted con­tempt for all who were not as him­self settled on his face. He was one of those people who do everything that is right and proper and sens­ible with in­ev­it­able reg­u­lar­ity. He al­ways wore just the right and proper clothes, steer­ing the nar­row way between the smart and the shabby, al­ways sub­scribed to the right char­it­ies, just the ju­di­cious com­prom­ise between os­ten­ta­tion and mean­ness, and never failed to have his hair cut to ex­actly the proper length.

Everything that it was right and proper for a man in his po­s­i­tion to pos­sess, he pos­sessed; and everything that it was not right and proper for a man in his po­s­i­tion to pos­sess, he did not pos­sess.

And among other right and proper pos­ses­sions, this Mr. Mor­ris had a wife and chil­dren. They were the right sort of wife, and the right sort and num­ber of chil­dren, of course; noth­ing ima­gin­at­ive or highty-flighty about any of them, so far as Mr. Mor­ris could see; they wore per­fectly cor­rect cloth­ing, neither smart nor hy­gienic nor faddy in any way, but just sens­ible; and they lived in a nice sens­ible house in the later Victorian sham Queen Anne style of ar­chi­tec­ture, with sham half-tim­ber­ing of chocol­ate-painted plaster in the gables, Lin­crusta Walton sham carved oak pan­els, a ter­race of terra cotta to im­it­ate stone, and cathed­ral glass in the front door. His boys went to good solid schools, and were put to re­spect­able pro­fes­sions; his girls, in spite of a fant­astic protest or so, were all mar­ried to suit­able, steady, old­ish young men with good pro­spects. And when it was a fit and proper thing for him to do so, Mr. Mor­ris died. His tomb was of marble, and, without any art non­sense or laud­at­ory in­scrip­tion, quietly im­pos­ing—such be­ing the fash­ion of his time.

He un­der­went vari­ous changes ac­cord­ing to the ac­cep­ted cus­tom in these cases, and long be­fore this story be­gins his bones even had be­come dust, and were scattered to the four quar­ters of heaven. And his sons and his grand­sons and his great-grand­sons and his great-great-grand­sons, they too were dust and ashes, and were scattered like­wise. It was a thing he could not have ima­gined, that a day would come when even his great-great-grand­sons would be scattered to the four winds of heaven. If any­one had sug­ges­ted it to him he would have re­sen­ted it. He was one of those worthy people who take no in­terest in the fu­ture of man­kind at all. He had grave doubts, in­deed, if there was any fu­ture for man­kind after he was dead.

It seemed quite im­possible and quite un­in­ter­est­ing to ima­gine any­thing hap­pen­ing after he was dead. Yet the thing was so,

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