The Speculative Fiction of Mark Twain Read online

  “All right, then; cornered; let it stand at that. Whenever you happen to think of an argument in support of it, I shall be glad to hear about it.”

  He did not like that very well, and muttered something about my being a trifle airy. I retorted a little sharply, and followed it up by finding fault with him again for playing tricks on Turner. He said Turner called him a blatherskite. I said—

  “No matter; you let him alone, from this out. And moreover, stop appearing to people—stop it entirely.”

  His face darkened. He said—

  “I would advise you to moderate your manner. I am not used to it, and I am not pleased with it.”

  The rest of my temper went, then. I said, angrily—

  “You may like it or not, just as you choose. And moreover, if my style doesn’t suit you, you can end the dream as soon as you please—right now, if you like.”

  He looked me steadily in the eye for a moment, then said, with deliberation—

  “The dream? Are you quite sure it is a dream?”

  It took my breath away.

  “What do you mean? Isn’t it a dream?”

  He looked at me in that same way again; and it made my blood chilly, this time. Then he said—

  “You have spent your whole life in this ship. And this is real life. Your other life was the dream!”

  It was as if he had hit me, it stunned me so. Still looking at me, his lip curled itself into a mocking smile, and he wasted away like a mist and disappeared.

  I sat a long time thinking uncomfortable thoughts.

  We are strangely made. We think we are wonderful creatures. Part of the time we think that, at any rate. And during that interval we consider with pride our mental equipment, with its penetration, its power of analysis, its ability to reason out clear conclusions from confused facts, and all the lordly rest of it; and then comes a rational interval and disenchants us. Disenchants us and lays us bare to ourselves, and we see that intellectually we are really no great things; that we seldom really know the thing we think we know; that our best-built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows.

  So little a time before, I knew that this voyage was a dream, and nothing more; a wee little puff or two of doubt had blown against that certainty, unhelped by fact or argument, and already it was dissolving away. It seemed an incredible thing, and it hurt my pride of intellect, but it had to be confessed.

  When I came to consider it, these ten days had been such intense realities!—so intense that by comparison the life I had lived before them seemed distant, indistinct, slipping away and fading out in a far perspective—exactly as a dream does when you sit at breakfast trying to call back its details. I grew steadily more and more nervous and uncomfortable—and a little frightened, though I would not quite acknowledge this to myself.

  Then came this disturbing thought: if this transformation goes on, how am I going to conceal it from my wife? Suppose she should say to me, “Henry, there is something the matter with you, you are acting strangely; something is on your mind that you are concealing from me; tell me about it, let me help you”—what answer could I make?

  I was bound to act strangely if this went on—bound to bury myself in deeps of troubled thought; I should not be able to help it. She had a swift eye to notice, where her heart was concerned, and a sharp intuition, and I was an impotent poor thing in her hands when I had things to hide and she had struck the trail.

  I have no large amount of fortitude, staying power. When there is a fate before me I cannot rest easy until I know what it is. I am not able to wait. I want to know, right away. So, I would call Alice, now, and take the consequences. If she drove me into a corner and I found I could not escape, I would act according to my custom—come out and tell her the truth. She had a better head than mine, and a surer instinct in grouping facts and getting their meaning out of them. If I was drifting into dangerous waters, now, she would be sure to detect it and as sure to set me right and save me. I would call her, and keep out of the corner if I could; if I couldn’t, why—I couldn’t, that is all.

  She came, refreshed with sleep, and looking her best self: that is to say, looking like a girl of nineteen, not a matron of twenty-five; she wore a becoming wrapper, or tea gown, or whatever it is called, and it was trimmed with ribbons and limp stuff—lace, I suppose; and she had her hair balled up and nailed to its place with a four-pronged tortoise-shell comb. She brought a basket of pink and gray crewels with her, for she was crocheting a jacket—for the cat, probably, judging by the size of it. She sat down on the sofa and set the basket on the table, expecting to have a chance to get to work by and by; not right away, because a kitten was curled up in it asleep, fitting its circle snugly, and the repose of the children’s kittens was a sacred thing and not to be disturbed. She said—

  “I noticed that there was no motion—it was what waked me, I think—and I got up to enjoy it, it is such a rare thing.”

  “Yes, rare enough, dear; we do have the most unaccountably strange weather.”

  “Do you think so, Henry? Does it seem strange weather to you?”

  She looked so earnest and innocent that I was rather startled, and a little in doubt as to what to say. Any sane person could see that it was perfectly devilish weather and crazy beyond imagination, and so how could she feel uncertain about it?

  “Well, Alice, I may be putting it too strong, but I don’t think so; I think a person may call our weather by any hard name he pleases and be justified.”

  “Perhaps you are right, Henry. I have heard the sailors talk the same way about it, but I did not think that that meant much, they speak so extravagantly about everything. You are not always extravagant in your speech—often you are, but not always—and so it surprised me a little to hear you.” Then she added tranquilly and musingly, “I don’t remember any different weather.”

  It was not quite definite.

  “You mean on this voyage, Alice.”

  “Yes, of course. Naturally. I haven’t made any other.”

  She was softly stroking the kitten—and apparently in her right mind. I said cautiously, and with seeming indifference—

  “You mean you haven’t made any other this year. But the time we went to Europe—well, that was very different weather.”

  “The time we went to Europe, Henry?”

  “Certainly, certainly—when Jessie was a year old.”

  She stopped stroking the kitty, and looked at me inquiringly.

  “I don’t understand you, Henry.”

  She was not a joker, and she was always truthful. Her remark blew another wind of doubt upon my wasting sand-edifice of certainty. Had I only dreamed that we went to Europe? It seemed a good idea to put this thought into words.

  “Come, Alice, the first thing you know you will be imagining that we went to Europe in a dream.”

  She smiled, and said—

  “Don’t let me spoil it, Henry, if it is pleasant to you to think we went. I will consider that we did go, and that I have forgotten it.”

  “But Alice dear we did go!”

  “But Henry dear we didn’t go!”

  She had a good head and a good memory, and she was always truthful. My head had been injured by a fall when I was a boy, and the physicians had said at the time that there could be ill effects from it some day. A cold wave struck me, now; perhaps the effects had come. I was losing confidence in the European trip. However, I thought I would make another try.

  “Alice, I will give you a detail or two; then maybe you will remember.”

  “A detail or two from the dream?”

  “I am not at all sure that it was a dream; and five minutes ago I was sure that it wasn’t. It was seven years ago. We went over in the Batavia. Do you remember the Batavia?”

  “I don’t, Henry.”

  “Captain Moreland. Don’t you remember him?”

  “To me he is a myth, Henry.”

  “Well, it beats anything. We lived t
wo or three months in London, then six weeks in a private hotel in George Street, Edinburgh—Veitch’s. Come!”

  “It sounds pleasant, but I have never heard of these things before, Henry.”

  “And Doctor John Brown, of Rab and His Friends—you were ill, and he came every day; and when you were well again he still came every day and took us all around while he paid his visits, and we waited in his carriage while he prescribed for his patients. And he was so dear and lovely. You must remember all that, Alice.”

  “None of it, dear; it is only a dream.”

  “Why, Alice, have you ever had a dream that remained as distinct as that, and which you could remember so long?”

  “So long? It is more than likely that you dreamed it last night.”

  “No indeed! It has been in my memory seven years.”

  “Seven years in a dream, yes—it is the way of dreams. They put seven years into two minutes, without any trouble—isn’t it so?”

  I had to acknowledge that it was.

  “It seems almost as if it couldn’t have been a dream, Alice; it seems as if you ought to remember it.”

  “Wait! It begins to come back to me.” She sat thinking a while, nodding her head with satisfaction from time to time. At last she said, joyfully, “I remember almost the whole of it, now.”

  “Good!”

  “I am glad I got it back. Ordinarily I remember my dreams very well; but for some reason this one—”

  “This one, Alice? Do you really consider it a dream, yet?”

  “I don’t consider anything about it, Henry, I know it; I know it positively.”

  The conviction stole through me that she must be right, since she felt so sure. Indeed I almost knew she was. I was privately becoming ashamed of myself now, for mistaking a clever illusion for a fact. So I gave it up, then, and said I would let it stand as a dream. Then I added—

  “It puzzles me; even now it seems almost as distinct as the microscope.”

  “Which microscope?”

  “Well, Alice, there’s only the one.”

  “Very well, which one is that?”

  “Bother it all, the one we examined this ocean in, the other day.”

  “Where?”

  “Why, at home—Of course.”

  “What home?”

  “Alice it’s provoking—why, our home. In Springport.”

  “Dreaming again. I’ve never heard of it.”

  That was stupefying. There was no need of further beating about the bush; I threw caution aside, and came out frankly.

  “Alice, what do you call the life we are leading in this ship? Isn’t it a dream?”

  She looked at me in a puzzled way and said—

  “A dream, Henry? Why should I think that?”

  “Oh, dear me, I don’t know! I thought I did, but I don’t. Alice, haven’t we ever had a home? Don’t you remember one?”

  “Why, yes—three. That is, dream-homes, not real ones. I have never regarded them as realities.”

  “Describe them.”

  She did it, and in detail, also our life in them. Pleasant enough homes, and easily recognizable by me. I could also recognize an average of 2 out of 7 of the episodes and incidents which she threw in. Then I described the home and the life which (as it appeared to me) we had so recently left. She recognized it—but only as a dream-home. She remembered nothing about the microscope and the children’s party. I was in a corner; but it was not the one which I had arranged for.

  “Alice, if those were dream-homes, how long have you been in this ship?—you say this is the only voyage you have ever made.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember. It is the only voyage we have made—unless breaking it to pick up this crew of strangers in place of the friendly dear men and officers we had sailed with so many years makes two voyages of it. How I do miss them—Captain Hall, and Williams the sail-maker, and Storrs the chief mate, and—”

  She choked up, and the tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Soon she had her handkerchief out and was sobbing.

  I realized that I remembered those people perfectly well. Damnation! I said to myself, are we real creatures in a real world, all of a sudden, and have we been feeding on dreams in an imaginary one since nobody knows when—or how is it? My head was swimming.

  “Alice! Answer me this. Do you know the Superintendent of Dreams?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Have you seen him often?”

  “Not often, but several times.”

  “When did you see him first?”

  “The time that Robert the captain’s boy was eaten.”

  “Eaten?”

  “Yes. Surely you haven’t forgotten that?”

  “But I have, though. I never heard of it before.” (I spoke the truth. For the moment I could not recall the incident.)

  Her face was full of reproach.

  “I am sorry, if that is so. He was always good to you. If you are jesting, I do not think it is in good taste.”

  “Now don’t treat me like that, Alice, I don’t deserve it. I am not jesting, I am in earnest. I mean the boy’s memory no offence, but although I remember him I do not remember the circumstance—I swear it. Who ate him?”

  “Do not be irreverent, Henry, it is out of place. It was not a who, at all.”

  “What then—a which?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of a which?”

  “A spider-squid. Now you remember it I hope.”

  “Indeed and deed and double-deed I don’t, Alice, and it is the real truth. Tell me about it, please.”

  “I suppose you see, now, Henry, what your memory is worth. You can remember dream-trips to Europe well enough, but things in real life—even the most memorable and horrible things—pass out of your memory in twelve years. There is something the matter with your mind.”

  It was very curious. How could I have forgotten that tragedy? It must have happened; she was never mistaken in her facts, and she never spoke with positiveness of a thing which she was in any degree uncertain about. And this tragedy—twelve years ago—

  “Alice, how long have we been in this ship?”

  “Now how can I know, Henry? It goes too far back. Always, for all I know. The earliest thing I can call to mind was papa’s death by the sun-heat and mamma’s suicide the same day. I was four years old, then. Surely you must remember that, Henry.”

  “Yes. . . . Yes. But it is so dim. Tell me about it—refresh my memory.”

  “Why, you must remember that we were in the edge of a great white glare once for a little while—a day, or maybe two days,—only a little while, I think, but I remember it, because it was the only time I was ever out of the dark, and there was a great deal of talk of it for long afterwards—why, Henry, you must remember a wonderful thing like that.”

  “Wait. Let me think.” Gradually, detail by detail the whole thing came back to me; and with it the boy’s adventure with the spider-squid; and then I recalled a dozen other incidents, which Alice verified as incidents of our ship-life, and said I had set them forth correctly.

  It was a puzzling thing—my freaks of memory; Alice’s, too. By testing, it was presently manifest that the vacancies in my ship-life memories were only apparent, not real; a few words by way of reminder enabled me to fill them up, in almost all cases, and give them clarity and vividness. What had caused these temporary lapses? Didn’t these very lapses indicate that the ship-life was a dream, and not real?

  It made Alice laugh.

  I did not see anything foolish in it, or anything to laugh at, and I told her so. And I reminded her that her own memory was as bad as mine, since many and many a conspicuous episode of our land-life was gone from her, even so striking an incident as the water-drop exploration with the microscope—

  It made her shout.

  I was wounded; and said that if I could not be treated with respect I would spare her the burden of my presence and conversation. She stopped laughing, at once, and threw her arms
about my neck. She said she would not have hurt me for the world, but she supposed I was joking; it was quite natural to think I was not in earnest in talking gravely about this and that and the other dream-phantom as if it were a reality.

  “But Alice I was in earnest, and I am in earnest. Look at it—examine it. If the land-life was a dream-life, how is it that you remember so much of it exactly as I remember it?”

  She was amused again, inside—I could feel the quiver; but there was no exterior expression of it, for she did not want to hurt me again.

  “Dear heart, throw the whole matter aside! Stop puzzling over it; it isn’t worth it. It is perfectly simple. It is true that I remember a little of that dream-life just as you remember it—but that is an accident; the rest of it—and by far the largest part—does not correspond with your recollections. And how could it? People can’t be expected to remember each other’s dreams, but only their own. You have put me into your land-dreams a thousand times, but I didn’t always know I was there; so how could I remember it? Also I have put you into my land-dreams a thousand times when you didn’t know it—and the natural result is that when I name the circumstances you don’t always recall them. But how different it is with this real life, this genuine life in the ship! Our recollections of it are just alike. You have been forgetting episodes of it to-day—I don’t know why; it has surprised me and puzzled me—but the lapse was only temporary; your memory soon rallied again. Now it hasn’t rallied in the case of land-dreams of mine—in most cases it hasn’t. And it’s not going to, Henry. You can be sure of that.”

  She stopped, and tilted her head up in a thinking attitude and began to unconsciously tap her teeth with the ivory knob of a crochet needle. Presently she said, “I think I know what is the matter. I have been neglecting you for ten days while I have been grieving for our old shipmates and pretending to be seasick so that I might indulge myself with solitude; and here is the result—you haven’t been taking exercise enough.”

  I was glad to have a reason—any reason that would excuse my memory—and I accepted this one, and made confession. There was no truth in the confession, but I was already getting handy with these evasions. I was a little sorry for this, for she had always trusted my word, and I had honored this trust by telling her the truth many a time when it was a sharp sacrifice to me to do it. She looked me over with gentle reproach in her eye, and said—