by H. G. Wells
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
YOUNG CADDLES IN LONDON.
I.
All unaware of the trend of events, unaware of the laws that wereclosing in upon all the Brethren, unaware indeed that there lived aBrother for him on the earth, young Caddles chose this time to come outof his chalk pit and see the world. His brooding came at last to that.There was no answer to all his questions in Cheasing Eyebright; the newVicar was less luminous even than the old, and the riddle of hispointless labour grew at last to the dimensions of exasperation. "Whyshould I work in this pit day after day?" he asked. "Why should I walkwithin bounds and be refused all the wonders of the world beyond there?What have I done, to be condemned to this?"
And one day he stood up, straightened his back, and said in a loudvoice, "No!
"I won't," he said, and then with great vigour cursed the pit.
Then, having few words, he sought to express his thought in acts. Hetook a truck half filled with chalk, lifted it, and flung it, smash,against another. Then he grasped a whole row of empty trucks and spunthem down a bank. He sent a huge boulder of chalk bursting among them,and then ripped up a dozen yards of rail with a mighty plunge of hisfoot. So he commenced the conscientious wrecking of the pit.
"Work all my days," he said, "at this!"
It was an astonishing five minutes for the little geologist he had, inhis preoccupation, overlooked. This poor little creature having dodgedtwo boulders by a hairbreadth, got out by the westward corner and fledathwart the hill, with flapping rucksack and twinkling knicker-bockeredlegs, leaving a trail of Cretaceous echinoderms behind him; while youngCaddles, satisfied with the destruction he had achieved, came stridingout to fulfil his purpose in the world.
"Work in that old pit, until I die and rot and stink!... What worm didthey think was living in my giant body? Dig chalk for God knows whatfoolish purpose! Not _I!_"
The trend of road and railway perhaps, or mere chance it was, turned hisface to London, and thither he came striding; over the Downs and athwartthe meadows through the hot afternoon, to the infinite amazement of theworld. It signified nothing to him that torn posters in red and whitebearing various names flapped from every wall and barn; he knew nothingof the electoral revolution that had flung Caterham, "Jack theGiant-killer," into power. It signified nothing to him that every policestation along his route had what was known as Caterham's ukase upon itsnotice board that afternoon, proclaiming that no giant, no personwhatever over eight feet in height, should go more than five miles fromhis "place of location" without a special permission. It signifiednothing to him that on his wake belated police officers, not a littlerelieved to find themselves belated, shook warning handbills at hisretreating back. He was going to see what the world had to show him,poor incredulous blockhead, and he did not mean that occasional spiritedpersons shouting "Hi!" at him should stay his course. He came on down byRochester and Greenwich towards an ever-thickening aggregation ofhouses, walking rather slowly now, staring about him and swinging hishuge chopper.
People in London had heard something of him before, how that he wasidiotic but gentle, and wonderfully managed by Lady Wondershoot's agentand the Vicar; how in his dull way he revered these authorities and wasgrateful to them for their care of him, and so forth. So that when theylearnt from the newspaper placards that afternoon that he also was "onstrike," the thing appeared to many of them as a deliberate, concertedact.
"They mean to try our strength," said the men in the trains going homefrom business.
"Lucky we have Caterham."
"It's in answer to his proclamation."
The men in the clubs were better informed. They clustered round the tapeor talked in groups in their smoking-rooms.
"He has no weapons. He would have gone to Sevenoaks if he had been putup to it."
"Caterham will handle him...."
The shopmen told their customers. The waiters in restaurants snatched amoment for an evening paper between the courses. The cabmen read itimmediately after the betting news....
The placards of the chief government evening paper were conspicuous with"Grasping the Nettle." Others relied for effect on: "Giant Redwoodcontinues to meet the Princess." The _Echo_ struck a line of its ownwith: "Rumoured Revolt of Giants in the North of England. The SunderlandGiants start for Scotland." The, _Westminster Gazette_ sounded its usualwarning note. "Giants Beware," said the _Westminster Gazette_, and triedto make a point out of it that might perhaps serve towards uniting theLiberal party--at that time greatly torn between seven intenselyegotistical leaders. The later newspapers dropped into uniformity. "TheGiant in the New Kent Road," they proclaimed.
"What I want to know," said the pale young man in the tea shop, "is whywe aren't getting any news of the young Cossars. You'd think they'd bein it most of all ..."
"They tell me there's another of them young giants got loose," said thebarmaid, wiping out a glass. "I've always said they was dangerous thingsto 'ave about. Right away from the beginning ... It ought to be put astop to. Any'ow, I 'ope 'e won't come along 'ere."
"I'd like to 'ave a look at 'im," said the young man at the barrecklessly, and added, "I _seen_ the Princess."
"D'you think they'll 'urt 'im?" said the barmaid.
"May 'ave to," said the young man at the bar, finishing his glass.
Amidst a hum of ten million such sayings young Caddles came to London...
II.
I think of young Caddles always as he was seen in the New Kent Road, thesunset warm upon his perplexed and staring face. The Road was thick withits varied traffic, omnibuses, trams, vans, carts, trolleys, cyclists,motors, and a marvelling crowd--loafers, women, nurse-maids, shoppingwomen, children, venturesome hobble-dehoys--gathered behind hisgingerly moving feet. The hoardings were untidy everywhere with thetattered election paper. A babblement of voices surged about him. Onesees the customers and shopmen crowding in the doorways of the shops,the faces that came and went at the windows, the little street boysrunning and shouting, the policemen taking it all quite stiffly andcalmly, the workmen knocking off upon scaffoldings, the seethingmiscellany of the little folks. They shouted to him, vagueencouragement, vague insults, the imbecile catchwords of the day, and hestared down at them, at such a multitude of living creatures as he hadnever before imagined in the world.
Now that he had fairly entered London he had had to slacken his pacemore and more, the little folks crowded so mightily upon him. The crowdgrew denser at every step, and at last, at a corner where two great waysconverged, he came to a stop, and the multitude flowed about him andclosed him in.
There he stood, with his feet a little apart, his back to a big cornergin palace that towered twice his height and ended In a sky sign,staring down at the pigmies and wondering--trying, I doubt not, tocollate it all with the other things of his life, with the valley amongthe downlands, the nocturnal lovers, the singing in the church, thechalk he hammered daily, and with instinct and death and the sky, tryingto see it all together coherent and significant. His brows were knit. Heput up his huge paw to scratch his coarse hair, and groaned aloud.
"I don't see It," he said.
His accent was unfamiliar. A great babblement went across the openspace--a babblement amidst which the gongs of the trams, ploughing theirobstinate way through the mass, rose like red poppies amidst corn. "Whatdid he say?" "Said he didn't see." "Said, where is the sea?" "Said,where is a seat?" "He wants a seat." "Can't the brasted fool sit on a'ouse or somethin'?"
"What are ye for, ye swarming little people? What are ye all doing, whatare ye all for?
"What are ye doing up here, ye swarming little people, while I'ma-cuttin' chalk for ye, down in the chalk pits there?"
His queer voice, the voice that had been so bad for school discipline atCheasing Eyebright, smote the multitude to silence while it sounded andsplashed them all to tumult at the end. Some wit was audible screaming"Speech, speech!" "What's he saying?" was the burthen of the publicmind, and an opinion was abroad that he was drunk. "Hi, hi, h
i," bawledthe omnibus-drivers, threading a dangerous way. A drunken Americansailor wandered about tearfully inquiring, "What's he want anyhow?" Aleathery-faced rag-dealer upon a little pony-drawn cart soared up overthe tumult by virtue of his voice. "Garn 'ome, you Brasted Giant!" hebrawled, "Garn 'Ome! You Brasted Great Dangerous Thing! Can't you seeyou're a-frightening the 'orses? Go _'ome_ with you! 'Asn't any one 'adthe sense to tell you the law?" And over all this uproar young Caddlesstared, perplexed, expectant, saying no more.
Down a side road came a little string of solemn policemen, and threadeditself ingeniously into the traffic. "Stand back," said the littlevoices; "keep moving, please."
Young Caddles became aware of a little dark blue figure thumping at hisshin. He looked down, and perceived two white hands gesticulating."_What_?" he said, bending forward.
"Can't stand about here," shouted the inspector.
"No! You can't stand about here," he repeated.
"But where am I to go?"
"Back to your village. Place of location. Anyhow, now--you've got tomove on. You're obstructing the traffic."
"What traffic?"
"Along the road."
"But where is it going? Where does it come from? What does it mean?They're all round me. What do they want? What are they doin'? I want tounderstand. I'm tired of cuttin' chalk and bein' all alone. What arethey doin' for me while I'm a-cuttin' chalk? I may just as wellunderstand here and now as anywhere."
"Sorry. But we aren't here to explain things of that sort. I must arstyou to move on."
"Don't you know?"
"I must arst you to move on--_if_ you please ... I'd strongly advise youto get off 'ome. We've 'ad no special instructions yet--but it's againstthe law ... Clear away there. Clear away."
The pavement to his left became invitingly bare, and young Caddles wentslowly on his way. But now his tongue was loosened.
"I don't understand," he muttered. "I don't understand." He would appealbrokenly to the changing crowd that ever trailed beside him and behind."I didn't know there were such places as this. What are all you peopledoing with yourselves? What's it all for? What is it all for, and wheredo I come in?"
He had already begotten a new catchword. Young men of wit and spiritaddressed each other in this manner, "Ullo 'Arry O'Cock. Wot's it all_for_? Eh? Wot's it all bloomin' well _for_?"
To which there sprang up a competing variety of repartees, for the mostpart impolite. The most popular and best adapted for general use appearsto have been "_Shut_ it," or, in a voice of scornfuldetachment--"_Garn!_"
There were others almost equally popular.
III.
What was he seeking? He wanted something the pigmy world did not give,some end which the pigmy world prevented his attaining, prevented evenhis seeing clearly, which he was never to see clearly. It was the wholegigantic social side of this lonely dumb monster crying out for hisrace, for the things akin to him, for something he might love andsomething he might serve, for a purpose he might comprehend and acommand he could obey. And, you know, all this was _dumb_, raged dumblywithin him, could not even, had he met a fellow giant, have found outletand expression in speech. All the life he knew was the dull round of thevillage, all the speech he knew was the talk of the cottage, that failedand collapsed at the bare outline of his least gigantic need. He knewnothing of money, this monstrous simpleton, nothing of trade, nothing ofthe complex pretences upon which the social fabric of the little folkswas built. He needed, he needed--Whatever he needed, he never found hisneed.
All through the day and the summer night he wandered, growing hungry butas yet untired, marking the varied traffic of the different streets, theinexplicable businesses of all these infinitesimal beings. In theaggregate it had no other colour than confusion for him....
He is said to have plucked a lady from her carriage in Kensington, alady in evening dress of the smartest sort, to have scrutinised herclosely, train and shoulder blades, and to have replaced her--a littlecarelessly--with the profoundest sigh. For that I cannot vouch. For anhour or so he watched people fighting for places in the omnibuses at theend of Piccadilly. He was seen looming over Kennington Oval for somemoments in the afternoon, but when he saw these dense thousands wereengaged with the mystery of cricket and quite regardless of him he wenthis way with a groan.
He came back to Piccadilly Circus between eleven and twelve at nightand found a new sort of multitude. Clearly they were very intent: fullof things they, for inconceivable reasons, might do, and of others theymight not do. They stared at him and jeered at him and went their way.The cabmen, vulture-eyed, followed one another continually along theedge of the swarming pavement. People emerged from the restaurants orentered them, grave, intent, dignified, or gently and agreeably excitedor keen and vigilant--beyond the cheating of the sharpest waiter born.The great giant, standing at his corner, peered at them all. "What is itall for?" he murmured in a mournful vast undertone, "What is it allfor? They are all so earnest. What is it I do not understand?"
And none of them seemed to see, as he could do, the drink-soddenwretchedness of the painted women at the corner, the ragged misery thatsneaked along the gutters, the infinite futility of all this employment.The infinite futility! None of them seemed to feel the shadow of thatgiant's need, that shadow of the future, that lay athwart their paths...
Across the road high up mysterious letters flamed and went, that might,could he have read them, have measured for him the dimensions of humaninterest, have told him of the fundamental needs and features of life asthe little folks conceived it. First would come a flaming
T;
Then U would follow,
TU;
Then P,
TUP;
Until at last there stood complete, across the sky, this cheerfulmessage to all who felt the burthen of life's earnestness:
TUPPER'S TONIC WINE FOR VIGOUR.
Snap! and it had vanished into night, to be followed in the same slowdevelopment by a second universal solicitude:
BEAUTY SOAP.
Not, you remark, mere cleansing chemicals, but something, as they say,"ideal;" and then, completing the tripod of the little life:
TANKER'S YELLOW PILLS.
After that there was nothing for it but Tupper again, in naming crimsonletters, snap, snap, across the void.
T U P P....
Early in the small hours it would seem that young Caddles came to theshadowy quiet of Regent's Park, stepped over the railings and lay downon a grassy slope near where the people skate in winter time, and therehe slept an hour or so. And about six o'clock in the morning, he wastalking to a draggled woman he had found sleeping in a ditch nearHampstead Heath, asking her very earnestly what she thought she wasfor....
IV.
The wandering of Caddles about London came to a head on the second dayin the morning. For then his hunger overcame him. He hesitated where thehot-smelling loaves were being tossed into a cart, and then veryquietly knelt down and commenced robbery. He emptied the cart while thebaker's man fled for the police, and then his great hand came into theshop and cleared counter and cases. Then with an armful, still eating,he went his way looking for another shop to go on with his meal. Ithappened to be one of those seasons when work is scarce and food dear,and the crowd in that quarter was sympathetic even with a giant who tookthe food they all desired. They applauded the second phase of his meal,and laughed at his stupid grimace at the policeman.
"I woff hungry," he said, with his mouth full.
"Brayvo!" cried the crowd. "Brayvo!"
Then when he was beginning his third baker's shop, he was stopped byhalf a dozen policemen hammering with truncheons at his shins. "Lookhere, my fine giant, you come along o' me," said the officer in charge."You ain't allowed away from home like this. You come off home with me."They did their best to arrest him. There was a trolley, I am told,chasing up and down streets at that time, bearing rolls of chain andship's cable to play the part of handcuffs in that great arrest. Therewas no intention then of
killing him. "He is no party to the plot,"Caterham had said. "I will not have innocent blood upon my hands." Andadded: "--until everything else has been tried."
At first Caddles did not understand the import of these attentions. Whenhe did, he told the policemen not to be fools, and set off in greatstrides that left them all behind. The bakers' shops had been in theHarrow Road, and he went through canal London to St. John's Wood, andsat down in a private garden there to pick his teeth and be speedilyassailed by another posse of constables.
"You lea' me alone," he growled, and slouched through thegardens--spoiling several lawns and kicking down a fence or so, whilethe energetic little policemen followed him up, some through thegardens, some along the road in front of the houses. Here there were oneor two with guns, but they made no use of them. When he came out intothe Edgware Road there was a new note and a new movement in the crowd,and a mounted policeman rode over his foot and got upset for his pains.
"You lea' me alone," said Caddles, facing the breathless crowd. "I ain'tdone anything to you." At that time he was unarmed, for he had left hischalk chopper in Regent's Park. But now, poor wretch, he seems to havefelt the need of some weapon. He turned back towards the goods yard ofthe Great Western Railway, wrenched up the standard of a tall arc light,a formidable mace for him, and flung it over his shoulder. And findingthe police still turning up to pester him, he went back along theEdgware Road, towards Cricklewood, and struck off sullenly to the north.
He wandered as far as Waltham, and then turned back westward and thenagain towards London, and came by the cemeteries and over the crest ofHighgate about midday into view of the greatness of the city again. Heturned aside and sat down in a garden, with his back to a house thatoverlooked all London. He was breathless, and his face was lowering, andnow the people no longer crowded upon him as they had done when first hecame to London, but lurked in the adjacent garden, and peeped fromcautious securities. They knew by now the thing was grimmer than theyhad thought. "Why can't they lea' me alone?" growled young Caddles. "I_mus'_ eat. Why can't they lea' me alone?"
He sat with a darkling face, gnawing at his knuckles and looking downover London. All the fatigue, worry, perplexity, and impotent wrath ofhis wanderings was coming to a head in him. "They mean nothing," hewhispered. "They mean nothing. And they _won't_ let me alone, and they_will_ get in my way." And again, over and over to himself, "Meanin'nothing.
"Ugh! the little people!"
He bit harder at his knuckles and his scowl deepened. "Cuttin' chalkfor 'em," he whispered. "And all the world is theirs! _I_ don't comein--nowhere."
Presently with a spasm of sick anger he saw the now familiar form of apoliceman astride the garden wall.
"Lea' me alone," grunted the giant. "Lea' me alone."
"I got to do my duty," said the little policeman, with a face that waswhite and resolute.
"You lea' me alone. I got to live as well as you. I got to think. I gotto eat. You lea' me alone."
"It's the Law," said the little policeman, coming no further. "We nevermade the Law."
"Nor me," said young Caddles. "You little people made all that before Iwas born. You and your Law! What I must and what I mustn't! No food forme to eat unless I work a slave, no rest, no shelter, nothin', and youtell me--"
"I ain't got no business with that," said the policeman. "I'm not one toargue. All I got to do is to carry out the Law." And he brought hissecond leg over the wall and seemed disposed to get down. Otherpolicemen appeared behind him.
"I got no quarrel with _you_--mind," said young Caddles, with his griptight upon his huge mace of iron, his face pale, and a lank explanatorygreat finger to the policeman. "I got no quarrel with you. But--_Youlea' me alone."_
The policeman tried to be calm and commonplace, with a monstrous tragedyclear before his eyes. "Give me the proclamation," he said to someunseen follower, and a little white paper was handed to him.
"Lea' me alone," said Caddles, scowling, tense, and drawn together.
"This means," said the policeman before he read, "go 'ome. Go 'ome toyour chalk pit. If not, you'll be hurt."
Caddles gave an inarticulate growl.
Then when the proclamation had been read, the officer made a sign. Fourmen with rifles came into view and took up positions of affected easealong the wall. They wore the uniform of the rat police. At the sight ofthe guns, young Caddles blazed into anger. He remembered the sting ofthe Wreckstone farmers' shot guns. "You going to shoot off those at me?"he said, pointing, and it seemed to the officer he must be afraid.
"If you don't march back to your pit--"
Then in an instant the officer had slung himself back over the wall, andsixty feet above him the great electric standard whirled down to hisdeath. Bang, bang, bang, went the heavy guns, and smash! the shatteredwall, the soil and subsoil of the garden flew. Something flew with it,that left red drops on one of the shooter's hands. The riflemen dodgedthis way and that and turned valiantly to fire again. But young Caddles,already shot twice through the body, had spun about to find who it washad hit him so heavily in the back. Bang! Bang! He had a vision ofhouses and greenhouses and gardens, of people dodging at windows, thewhole swaying fearfully and mysteriously. He seems to have made threestumbling strides, to have raised and dropped his huge mace, and to haveclutched his chest. He was stung and wrenched by pain.
What was this, warm and wet, on his hand?
One man peering from a bedroom window saw his face, saw him staring,with a grimace of weeping dismay, at the blood upon his hand, and thenhis knees bent under him, and he came crashing to the earth, the firstof the giant nettles to fall to Caterham's resolute clutch, the verylast that he had reckoned would come into his hand.