Tempting Providence and Other Stories

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Skip to content Skip to search. Home This edition , English, Book edition: Physical Description p. Other Authors Austin, Sherry. Series Hippocampus press library of fiction. In these twelve stories, Thomas fulfills the promise of his earlier work and shows that he has become one of the leading figures in contemporary supernatural horror. This product was added to our catalog on Sunday 25 April, Mythos and Other Authors:: Recommended for readers who enjoy their weird fiction a trifle more cerebral than average. Customers who bought this product also purchased Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H.

I agree that there are laws of Nature governing alike in their wisdom the courses of the stars and the digestion of beetles. I believe in such laws and I revere them. But there is Something or Somebody stronger than Fate, greater than the world. If it is Something, I should call it the law of logical absurdity, or of absurd logicality, just as you please I can't express myself very well.

If it is Somebody, then it must be someone in comparison with whom our biblical devil and our romantic Satan are but puny jesters and harmless rogues. Imagine to yourself an almost godlike Power over this world, having a desperate childish love of playing tricks, knowing neither good nor evil, but always mercilessly hard, sagacious, and, devil take it all, somehow strangely just. You don't understand, perhaps?

Then let me illustrate my meaning by examples. Of course, this pitiful end was simply a mocking laugh, a derisive smile on the face of my mysterious Somebody.

But consider this tragic biography thoughtfully, putting aside all the explanations of learned people—they would explain it all simply in accordance with law—and I don't know how it will appear to you, but here I see clearly existing together this mixture of absurdity and logicality, and I cannot possibly explain it to myself. A great, a splendid figure. Desperate courage, and a kind of exaggerated belief in his own destiny. He always mocked at death, went into a murderous fire of the enemy with bravado, and courted endless risks in a kind of unappeasable thirst for danger.

And see—he died on a common bed, in a hired room in the company of prostitutes. It is as if each of these pitiful deaths by their contrast with the life, rounded off, blended, completed, two splendid beings. The ancients knew and feared this mysterious Someone—you remember the ring of Polycrates—but they mistook his jest for the envy of Fate.

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6. Tempting Providence?

There will be palaces, gardens, fountains The burdens now borne by mankind—slavery, private ownership of property, lies, and oppression—will cease. There will be no more sickness, disorder, death; no more envy, no vice, no near or far, all will have become brothers, And then He—you notice that even in speaking I pronounce the name with a capital letter—He, passing one day through the universe, will look on us, frown evilly, smile, and then breathe upon the world—and the good old Earth will cease to be.

A sad end for this beautiful planet, eh? But just think to what a terrible bloody orgiastic end universal virtue might lead, if once people succeeded in getting thoroughly surfeited by it! However, what's the use of taking such great examples as our earth, Napoleon, and the ancient Greeks?

I myself have, from time to time, caught a glimpse of this strange and inscrutable law in the most ordinary occurrences. If you like, I'll tell you a simple incident when I myself clearly felt the mocking breath of this god. I was travelling by train from Tomsk to Petersburg in an ordinary first-class compartment.

One of my companions on the journey was a young civil engineer, a very short, stout, good-natured young man: He proved a very pleasant companion. I have rarely seen anyone with such engaging manners. He at once gave me his lower sleeping-place, helped me to place my trunk on the rack, and was generally so kind that he even made me feel a little awkward.

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When we stopped at a station he bought wine and food, and had evidently great pleasure in persuading the company to share them with him. I saw at once that he was bubbling over with some great inward happiness, and that he was desirous of seeing all around him as happy as he was. And this proved to be the case. In ten minutes he had already began to open his heart to me.

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Certainly I noticed that directly he spoke of himself the other people in the carriage seemed to wriggle in their seats and take an exaggerated interest in observing the passing landscape. Later on, I realised that each of them had heard the story at least a dozen times before.

And now my turn had come. The engineer had come from the Far East, where he had been living for five years, and consequently he had not seen his family in Petersburg for five years. He had thought to dispatch his business in a year at the most, but at first official duties had kept him, then certain profitable enterprises had turned up, and after it had seemed impossible to leave a business which had become so very large and remunerative. Now everything had been wound up and he was returning home.

Who could blame him for his talkativeness; to have lived for five years far from a beloved home, and come back young, healthy, successful, with a heart full of unspent love! What man could have imposed silence upon himself, or overcome that fearful itch of impatience, increasing with every hour, with every passing hundred versts?

I soon learnt from him all about his family.

His wife's name was Susannah or Sannochka, and his daughter bore the outlandish name of Yurochka. He had left her a little three-year-old girl, and "Just imagine! He told me his wife's maiden name, and of the poverty they had experienced together in their early married days, when he had been a student in his last year, and had not even a second pair of trousers to wear, and what a splendid companion, nurse, mother, and sister in one, his wife had been to him then.

He struck his breast with his clenched fist, his face reddened with pride, and his eyes flashed, as he cried:. If you're in Petersburg I must introduce you to her. You must certainly come and see us there, you must, indeed, without any ceremony or excuse, Kirochnaya I'll introduce you to her, and you'll see my old woman for yourself. She was always the belle at our civil-engineers' balls.

You must come and see us, I swear, or I shall be offended. And he gave us each one of his visiting cards on which he had pencilled out his Manchurian address, and written in the Petersburg one, telling us at the same time that his sumptuous flat had been taken by his wife only a year ago—he had insisted on it when his business had reached its height.

Yes, his talk was like a waterfall. Four times a day, when we stopped at important stations, he would send home a reply-paid telegram to be delivered to him at the next big stopping-place or simply on the train, addressed to such and such a number, first-class passenger. And you ought to have seen him when the conductor came along shouting in a sing-song tone "Telegram for first-class passenger So-and-so. He tipped the conductors royally, and not the conductors only either.

He had an insatiable desire to give to everybody, to make people happy, to caress them.