CHAPTER VI
There was a window whereat an enterprising man by dodging two placards
and a calendar was entitled to view a young woman. She was dejectedly
writing in a large book. She was ultimately induced to open the window a
trifle. "What nyme, please?" she said wearily. I was surprised to hear
this language from her. I had expected to be addressed on a submarine
topic. I have seen shell fishes sadly writing in large books at the
bottom of a gloomy acquarium who could not ask me what was my "nyme."
At the end of the hall there was a grim portal marked "lift." I pressed
an electric button and heard an answering tinkle in the heavens. There
was an upholstered settle near at hand, and I discovered the reason. A
deer-stalking peace drooped upon everything, and in it a man could
invoke the passing of a lazy pageant of twenty years of his life. The
dignity of a coffin being lowered into a grave surrounded the ultimate
appearance of the lift. The expert we in America call the elevator-boy
stepped from the car, took three paces forward, faced to attention and
saluted. This elevator boy could not have been less than sixty years of
age; a great white beard streamed towards his belt. I saw that the lift
had been longer on its voyage than I had suspected.
Later in our upward progress a natural event would have been an
establishment of social relations. Two enemies imprisoned together
during the still hours of a balloon journey would, I believe, suffer a
mental amalgamation. The overhang of a common fate, a great principal
fact, can make an equality and a truce between any pair. Yet, when I
disembarked, a final survey of the grey beard made me recall that I had
failed even to ask the boy whether he had not taken probably three trips
on this lift.
My windows overlooked simply a great sea of night, in which were
swimming little gas fishes.
