by Various
No one who has never seen an automobile during a spasm of motor ataxy can have any idea of what I suffered. I held the middle of the way for a few yards, but just opposite Uxbridge Road Station I turned the wheel hard a-port, and the motor car overturned. Two men sprang from nowhere, as men will, and sat on its occiput, while I crawled into Uxbridge Road Station and painfully descended the stairs.
I found the platform empty save for a colony of sturdy little newsboys, whose stalwart determination to live filled me with admiration, which I was enjoying until a curious sibillation beneath the bookstall stirred me with panic.
Suddenly, from under a bundle of British Weeklies, there emerged a head, and gradually a man crawled out. It was the Artilleryman.
"I'm burning hot," he said; "it's a touch of--what is it?--erethism."
His voice was hoarse, and his Remarks, like the Man of Kent's, were Rambling.
"Where do you come from?" he said.
"I come from Woking," I replied, "and my nature is Wobbly. I love my love with a W because she is Woluptuous. I took her to the sign of the Wombat and read her The War of the Worlds, and treated her to Winkles, Winolia and Wimbos. Her name is Wenus, and she comes from the Milky Way."
He looked at me doubtfully, then shot out a pointed tongue.
"It is you," he said, "the man from Woking. The Johnny what writes for Nature. By the way," he interjected, "don't you think some of your stuff is too--what is it?--esoteric? The man," he continued, "as killed the curate in the last book. By the way, it was you as killed the curate?"
"Artilleryman," I replied, "I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little meat-chopper. And you, I presume, are the Artilleryman who attended my lectures on the Eroticism of the Elasmobranch?"
"That's me," he said; "but Lord, how you've changed. Only a fortnight ago, and now you're stone-bald!"
I stared, marvelling at his gift of perception.
"What have you been living on?" I asked.
"Oh," he said, "immature potatoes and Burgundy" (I give the catalogue so precisely because it has nothing to do with the story), "uncooked steak and limp lettuces, precocious carrots and Bartlett pears, and thirteen varieties of fluid beef, which I cannot name except at the usual advertisement rates."
"But can you sleep after it?" said I.
"Blimy! yes," he replied; "I'm fairly--what is it?--eupeptic."
"It's all over with mankind," I muttered.
"It is all over," he replied. "The Wenuses 'ave only lost one Crinoline, just one, and they keep on coming; they're falling somewhere every night. Nothing's to be done. We're beat!"
I made no answer. I sat staring, pulverised by the colossal intellectuality of this untutored private. He had attended only three of my lectures, and had never taken any notes.
"This isn't a war," he resumed; "it never was a war. These 'ere Wenuses they wants to be Mas, that's the long and the short of it. Only----"
"Yes?" I said, more than ever impressed by the man's pyramidal intuition.
"They can't stand the climate. They're too--what is it?--exotic."
We sat staring at each other.
"And what will they do?" I humbly asked, grovelling unscientifically at his feet.
"That's what I've been thinking," said the gunner. "I ain't an ornamental soldier, but I've a good deal of cosmic kinetic optimism, and it's the cosmic kinetic optimist what comes through. Now these Wenuses don't want to wipe us all out. It's the women they want to exterminate. They want to collar the men, and you'll see that after a bit they'll begin catching us, picking the best, and feeding us up in cages and men-coops."
"Good heavens!" I exclaimed; "but you are a man of genius indeed," and I flung my arms around his neck.
"Steady on!" he said; "don't be so--what is it?--ebullient."
"And what then?" I asked, when my emotion had somewhat subsided.
"Then," said he, "the others must be wary. You and I are mean little cusses: we shall get off. They won't want us. And what do we do? Take to the drains!" He looked at me triumphantly.
Quailing before his glory of intellect, I fainted.
"Are you sure?" I managed to gasp, on recovering consciousness.
"Yes," he said, "sewer. The drains are the places for you and me. Then we shall play cricket--a narrow drain makes a wonderful pitch--and read the good books--not poetry swipes, and stuff like that, but good books. That's where men like you come in. Your books are the sort: The Time Machine, and Round the World in Eighty Days, The Wonderful Wisit, and From the Earth to the Moon, and----"
"Stop!" I cried, nettled at his stupidity. "You are confusing another author and myself."
"Was I?" he said, "that's rum, but I always mix you up with the man you admire so much--Jools Werne. And," he added with a sly look, "you do admire him, don't you?"
In a flash I saw the man plain. He was a critic. I knew my duty at once: I must kill him. I did not want to kill him, because I had already killed enough--the curate in the last book, and the Examiner and the landlord of the "Dog and Measles" in this,--but an author alone with a critic in deserted London! What else could I do?
He seemed to divine my thought.
"There's some immature champagne in the cellar," he said.
"No," I replied, thinking aloud; "too slow, too slow."
He endeavoured to pacify me.
"Let me teach you a game," he said.
He taught me one--he taught me several. We began with "Spadille," we ended with "Halma" and "Snap," for parliament points. That is to say, instead of counters we used M.Ps. Grotesque and foolish as this will seem to the sober reader, it is absolutely true. Strange mind of man! that, with our species being mashed all around, we could sit following the chance of this painted pasteboard.
Afterwards we tried "Tiddleywinks" and "Squails," and I beat him so persistently that both sides of the House were mine and my geniality entirely returned. He might have been living to this hour had he not mentioned something about the brutality of The Island of Dr. Moreau. That settled it. I had heard that absurd charge once too often, and raising my Blaisdell binaural stethoscope I leaped upon him. With one last touch of humanity, I turned the orbicular ivory plate towards him and struck him to the earth.
At that moment fell the Fourth Crinoline.
III.
THE TEA-TRAY IN WESTBOURNE GROVE.
My wife's plan of campaign was simple but masterly. She would enlist an army of enormous bulk, march on the Wenuses in Westbourne Grove, and wipe them from the face of the earth.
Such was my wife's project. My wife's first step was to obtain, as the nucleus of attack, those women to whom the total loss of men would be most disastrous. They flocked to my wife's banner, which was raised in Regent's Park, in front of the pavilion where tea is provided by a maternal County Council.
My mother, who joined the forces and therefore witnessed the muster, tells me it was a most impressive sight. My wife, in a nickel-plated Russian blouse, trimmed with celluloid pom-pons, aluminium pantaloons, and a pair of Norwegian Skis, looked magnificent.
An old Guard, primed with recent articles from the Queen by Mrs. Lynn Linton, marched in a place of honour; and a small squadron of confirmed misogynists, recruited from the Athenaeum, the Travellers' and the Senior United Service Clubs, who professed themselves to be completely Mash-proof, were in charge of the ambulance. The members of the Ladies' Kennel Club, attended by a choice selection of carefully-trained Chows, Schipperkes, Whippets and Griffons, garrisoned various outposts.
The Pioneers joined my wife's ranks with some hesitation. The prospects of a world depleted of men did not seem (says my mother) to fill them with that consternation which was evident in my wife and her more zealous lieutenants. But after a heated discussion at the Club-house, which was marked by several resignations, it was decided to join in the attack. A regiment of Pioneers therefore, marching to the battle-chant of Walt Whitman's "Pioneers, O Pioneers!" brought up (says my mother) the rear.
The march of my
wife's troops was a most impressive sight. Leaving Regent's Park by the Clarence Gate, they passed down Upper Baker Street, along Marylebone Road into Edgware Road. Here the troops divided. One detachment hastened to Queen's Road, by way of Praed Street, Craven Road, Craven Hill, Leinster Terrace and the Bayswater Road, with the purpose of approaching Whiteley's from the South; the other half marched direct to Westbourne Grove, along Paddington Green Road to Bishop's Road.
Thus, according to my wife's plan, the Wenuses would be between the two wings of the army and escape would be impossible.
Everything was done as my wife had planned. The two detachments reached their destination almost simultaneously. My wife, with the northern wing, was encamped in Bishop's Road, Westbourne Grove and Pickering Place. My mother, with the southern wing (my wife shrewdly kept the command in the family), filled Queen's Road from Whiteley's to Moscow Road. My mother, who has exquisite taste in armour, had donned a superb Cinque-Cento cuirass, a short Zouave jacket embroidered with sequins, accordion-pleated bloomers, luminous leggings, brown Botticelli boots and one tiger-skin spat.
Between the two hosts was the empty road before the Universal Provider's Emporium. The Wenuses were within the building. By the time my wife's warriors were settled and had completed the renovation of their toilets it was high noon.
My wife had never imagined that any delay would occur: she had expected to engage with the enemy at once and have done with it, and consequently brought no provisions and no protection from the sun, which poured down a great bulk of pitiless beams.
The absence of Wenuses and of any sound betokening their activity was disconcerting. However, my wife thought it best to lay siege to Whiteley's rather than to enter the establishment.
The army therefore waited.
The heat became intense. My wife and her soldiers began to feel the necessity for refreshment. My wife is accustomed to regular meals. The sun grew in strength as the time went on, and my wife gave the order to sit at ease, which was signalled to my mother. My mother tells me that she was never so pleased in her life.
One o'clock struck; two o'clock; three o'clock; and still no Wenuses. Faint sounds were now audible from the crockery department, and then a hissing, which passed by degrees into a humming, a long, loud droning noise. It resembled as nearly as anything the boiling of an urn at a tea-meeting, and awoke in the breasts of my wife and her army an intense and unconquerable longing for tea, which was accentuated as four o'clock was reached. Still no Wenuses. Another hour dragged wearily on, and the craving for tea had become positively excruciating when five o'clock rang out.
At that moment, the glass doors of the crockery department were flung open, and out poured a procession of Wenuses smiling, said my mother, with the utmost friendliness, dressed as A.B.C. girls, and bearing trays studded with cups and saucers.
With the most seductive and ingratiating charm, a cup was handed to my wife. What to do she did not for the moment know. "Could such a gift be guileless?" she asked herself. "No." And yet the Wenuses looked friendly. Finally her martial spirit prevailed and my wife repulsed the cup, adjuring the rank and file to do the same. But in vain. Every member of my wife's wing of that fainting army greedily grasped a cup. Alas! what could they know of the deadly Tea-Tray of the Wenuses? Nothing, absolutely nothing, such is the disgraceful neglect of science in our schools and colleges. And so they drank and were consumed.
Meanwhile my mother, at the head of the south wing of the army, which had been entirely overlooked by the Wenuses, stood watching the destruction of my wife's host--a figure petrified with alarm and astonishment. One by one she watched her sisters in arms succumb to the awful Tea-Tray.
Then it was that this intrepid woman rose to her greatest height.
"Come!" she cried to her Amazons. "Come! They have no more tea left. Now is the moment ripe."
With these spirited words, my mother and her troops proceeded to charge down Queen's Road upon the unsuspecting Wenuses.
But they had reckoned without the enemy.
The tumult of the advancing host caught the ear of the Wonderful Wisitors, and in an instant they had extracted glittering cases of their crimson cigarettes from their pockets, and lighting them in the strange fashion I have described elsewhere, they proceeded to puff the smoke luxuriously into the faces of my mother and her comrades.
Alas! little did these gallant females know of the horrible properties of the Red Weed. How could they, with our science-teaching in such a wretched state?
The smoke grew in volume and density, spread and spread, and in a few minutes the south wing of my wife's army was as supine as the north.
How my wife and mother escaped I shall not say. I make a point of never explaining the escape of my wife, whether from Martians or Wenuses; but that night, as Commander-in-Chief, she issued this cataleptic despatch:
"The Wenuses are able to paralyse all but strong-minded women with their deadly Tea-Tray. Also they burn a Red Weed, the smoke of which has smothered our troops in Westbourne Grove. No sooner have they despoiled Whiteley's than they will advance upon Jay's and Marshall and Snelgrove's. It is impossible to stop them. There is no safety from the Tea-Tray and the Red Weed but in instant flight."
That night the world was again lit by a pale pink flash of light. It was the Fifth Crinoline.
IV.
WRECKAGE.
The general stampede that ensued on the publication of my wife's despatch is no fit subject for the pen of a coherent scientific writer. Suffice it to say, that in the space of twenty-four hours London was practically empty, with the exception of the freaks at Barnum's, the staff of The Undertakers' Gazette, and Mrs. Elphinstone (for that, pace Wilkie Collins, was the name of the Woman in White), who would listen to no reasoning, but kept calling upon "George," for that was the name of my cousin's man, who had been in the service of Lord Garrick, the Chief Justice, who had succumbed to dipsomania in the previous invasion.
Meantime the Wenuses, flushed with their success in Westbourne Grove, had carried their devastating course in a south-easterly direction, looting Marshall and Snelgrove's, bearing away the entire stock of driving-gloves from Sleep's and subjecting Redfern's to the asphyxiating fumes of the Red Weed.
It is calculated that they spent nearly two days in Jay's, trying on all the costumes in that establishment, and a week in Peter Robinson's. During these days I never quitted Uxbridge Road Station, for just as I was preparing to leave, my eye caught the title on the bookstall of Grant Allen's work, The Idea of Evolution! and I could not stir from the platform until I had skimmed it from cover to cover.
Wearily mounting the stairs, I then turned my face westward. At the corner of Royal Crescent, just by the cabstand, I found a man lying in the roadway. His face was stained with the Red Weed, and his language was quite unfit for the columns of Nature.
I applied a limp lettuce to his fevered brow, took his temperature with my theodolite, and pressing a copy of Home Chat into his unresisting hand, passed on with a sigh. I think I should have stayed with him but for the abnormal obtusity of his facial angle.
Turning up Clarendon Road, I heard the faint words of the Wenusberg music by Wagner from a pianoforte in the second story of No. 34. I stepped quickly into a jeweller's shop across the road, carried off eighteen immature carats from a tray on the counter, and pitched them through the open window at the invisible pianist. The music ceased suddenly.
It was when I began to ascend Notting Hill that I first heard the hooting. It reminded me at first of a Siren, and then of the top note of my maiden aunt, in her day a notorious soprano vocalist. She subsequently emigrated to France, and entered a nunnery under the religious name of Soeur Marie Jeanne. "Tul-ulla-lulla-liety," wailed the Voice in a sort of superhuman jodel, coming, as it seemed to me, from the region of Westminster Bridge.
The persistent ululation began to get upon my nerves. I found, moreover, that I was again extremely hungry and thirsty. It was already noon. Why was I wandering alone in
this derelict city, clad in my wife's skirt and my cook's Sunday bonnet?
Grotesque and foolish as it may seem to the scientific reader, I was entirely unable to answer this simple conundrum. My mind reverted to my school days. I found myself declining musa. Curious to relate, I had entirely forgotten the genitive of ego.... With infinite trouble I managed to break into a vegetarian restaurant, and made a meal off some precocious haricot beans, a brace of Welsh rabbits, and ten bottles of botanic beer.
Working back into Holland Park Avenue and thence keeping steadily along High Street, Notting Hill Gate, I determined to make my way to the Marble Arch, in the hopes of finding some fresh materials for my studies in the Stone Age.
In Bark Place, where the Ladies' Kennel Club had made their vast grand-stand, were a number of pitiful vestiges of the Waterloo of women-kind. There was a shattered Elswick bicycle, about sixteen yards and a half of nun's veiling, and fifty-three tortoise-shell side-combs. I gazed on the débris with apathy mingled with contempt. My movements were languid, my plans of the vaguest. I knew that I wished to avoid my wife, but had no clear idea how the avoiding was to be done.
V.
BUBBLES.
From Orme Square, a lean-faced, unkempt and haggard waif, I drifted to Great Orme's Head and back again. Senile dementia had already laid its spectral clutch upon my wizened cerebellum when I was rescued by some kindly people, who tell me that they found me scorching down Hays Hill on a cushion-tired ordinary. They have since told me that I was singing "My name is John Wellington Wells, Hurrah!" and other snatches from a pre-Wenusian opera.