A Chosen Few: Short Stories. Frank Richard Stockton
of its action, because there were people walking about the corridor who might at any moment come into the room; but, looking out of the window, I saw that the night was much clearer. The wind had dissipated the clouds, and the stars were shining brightly.
“If you will come up the street with me,” said I to Mr. Gilbert, “I will show you how this thing works.”
“That is just what I want to see,” he answered.
“I will go with you,” said my wife, throwing a shawl over her head. And we started up the street.
When we were outside the little town I found the starlight was quite sufficient for my purpose. The white roadway, the low walls, and objects about us, could easily be distinguished.
“Now,” said I to Mr. Gilbert, “I want to put this knapsack on you, and let you see how it feels, and how it will help you to walk.” To this he assented with some eagerness, and I strapped it firmly on him. “I will now turn this screw,” said I, “until you shall become lighter and lighter.”
“Be very careful not to turn it too much,” said my wife, earnestly.
“Oh, you may depend on me for that,” said I, turning the screw very gradually.
Mr. Gilbert was a stout man, and I was obliged to give the screw a good many turns.
“There seems to be considerable hoist in it,” he said, directly. And then I put my arms around him, and found that I could raise him from the ground.
“Are you lifting me?” he exclaimed, in surprise.
“Yes; I did it with ease,” I answered.
“Upon—my—word!” ejaculated Mr. Gilbert.
I then gave the screw a half-turn more, and told him to walk and run. He started off, at first slowly, then he made long strides, then he began to run, and then to skip and jump. It had been many years since Mr. Gilbert had skipped and jumped. No one was in sight, and he was free to gambol as much as he pleased. “Could you give it another turn?” said he, bounding up to me. “I want to try that wall.” I put on a little more negative gravity, and he vaulted over a five-foot wall with great ease. In an instant he had leaped back into the road, and in two bounds was at my side. “I came down as light as a cat,” he said. “There was never anything like it.” And away he went up the road, taking steps at least eight feet long, leaving my wife and me laughing heartily at the preternatural agility of our stout friend. In a few minutes he was with us again. “Take it off,” he said. “If I wear it any longer I shall want one myself, and then I shall be taken for a crazy man, and perhaps clapped into an asylum.”
“Now,” said I, as I turned back the screw before unstrapping the knapsack, “do you understand how I took long walks, and leaped and jumped; how I ran uphill and downhill, and how the little donkey drew the loaded wagon?”
“I understand it all,” cried he. “I take back all I ever said or thought about you, my friend.”
“And Herbert may marry Janet?” cried my wife.
“May marry her!” cried Mr. Gilbert. “Indeed, he shall marry her, if I have anything to say about it! My poor girl has been drooping ever since I told her it could not be.”
My wife rushed at him, but whether she embraced him or only shook his hands I cannot say; for I had the knapsack in one hand and was rubbing my eyes with the other.
“But, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Gilbert, directly, “if you still consider it to your interest to keep your invention a secret, I wish you had never made it. No one having a machine like that can help using it, and it is often quite as bad to be considered a maniac as to be one.”
“My friend,” I cried, with some excitement, “I have made up my mind on this subject. The little machine in this knapsack, which is the only one I now possess, has been a great pleasure to me. But I now know it has also been of the greatest injury indirectly to me and mine, not to mention some direct inconvenience and danger, which I will speak of another time. The secret lies with us three, and we will keep it. But the invention itself is too full of temptation and danger for any of us.”
As I said this I held the knapsack with one hand while I quickly turned the screw with the other. In a few moments it was high above my head, while I with difficulty held it down by the straps. “Look!” I cried. And then I released my hold, and the knapsack shot into the air and disappeared into the upper gloom.
I was about to make a remark, but had no chance, for my wife threw herself upon my bosom, sobbing with joy.
“Oh, I am so glad—so glad!” she said. “And you will never make another?”
“Never another!” I answered.
“And now let us hurry in and see Janet,” said my wife.
“You don’t know how heavy and clumsy I feel,” said Mr. Gilbert, striving to keep up with us as we walked back. “If I had worn that thing much longer, I should never have been willing to take it off!”
Janet had retired, but my wife went up to her room.
“I think she has felt it as much as our boy,” she said, when she rejoined me. “But I tell you, my dear, I left a very happy girl in that little bedchamber over the garden.”
And there were three very happy elderly people talking together until quite late that evening. “I shall write to Herbert to-night,” I said, when we separated, “and tell him to meet us all in Geneva. It will do the young man no harm if we interrupt his studies just now.”
“You must let me add a postscript to the letter,” said Mr. Gilbert, “and I am sure it will require no knapsack with a screw in the back to bring him quickly to us.”
And it did not.
There is a wonderful pleasure in tripping over the earth like a winged Mercury, and in feeling one’s self relieved of much of that attraction of gravitation which drags us down to earth and gradually makes the movement of our bodies but weariness and labor. But this pleasure is not to be compared, I think, to that given by the buoyancy and lightness of two young and loving hearts, reunited after a separation which they had supposed would last forever.
What became of the basket and the knapsack, or whether they ever met in upper air, I do not know. If they but float away and stay away from ken of mortal man, I shall be satisfied.
And whether or not the world will ever know more of the power of negative gravity depends entirely upon the disposition of my son Herbert, when—after a good many years, I hope—he shall open the packet my lawyers have in keeping.
[Note.—It would be quite useless for any one to interview my wife on this subject, for she has entirely forgotten how my machine was made. And as for Mr. Gilbert, he never knew.]
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