London under the Wenuses.
I.
THE DEATH OF THE EXAMINER.
My first act on entering my house, in order to guard against any sudden
irruption on the part of my wife, was to bolt the door and put on the
chain. My next was to visit the pantry, the cellar, and the larder, but
they were all void of food and drink. My wife must have been there
first. As I had drunk nothing since I burgled the Kennington chemist's,
I was very thirsty, though my mind was still hydrostatic. I cannot
account for it on scientific principles, but I felt very angry with my
wife. Suddenly I was struck by a happy thought, and hurrying upstairs I
found a bottle of methylated spirits on my wife's toilet-table. Strange
as it may seem to the sober reader, I drank greedily of the unfamiliar
beverage, and feeling refreshed and thoroughly kinetic, settled down
once more to an exhaustive exposure of the dishonest off-handedness of
the external Examiners at University College. I may add that I had taken
the bread-knife (by Mappin) from the pantry, as it promised to be useful
in the case of unforeseen Clerical emergencies. I should have preferred
the meat-chopper with which the curate had been despatched in _The War
of the Worlds,_ but it was deposited in the South Kensington Museum
along with other mementoes of the Martian invasion. Besides, my wife and
I had both become Wegetarians.
The evening was still, and though distracted at times by recollections
of the Wenuses, I made good progress with my indictment. Suddenly I was
conscious of a pale pink glow which suffused my writing-pad, and I heard
a soft but unmistakable thud as of a pinguid body falling in the
immediate vicinity.
Taking off my boots, I stole gently down to the scullery and applied the
spectroscope to the keyhole. To my mingled amazement and ecstasy, I
perceived a large dome-shaped fabric blocking up the entire back garden.
Roughly speaking, it seemed to be about the size of a full-grown sperm
whale. A faint heaving was perceptible in the mass, and further
evidences of vitality were forthcoming in a gentle but pathetic
crooning, as of an immature chimæra booming in the void. The truth
flashed upon me in a moment. The Second Crinoline had fallen in my back
garden.
My mind was instantly made up. To expose myself unarmed to the
fascination of the Wonderful Wisitors would have irreparably prejudiced
the best interests of scientific research. My only hope lay in a
complete disguise which should enable me to pursue my investigations of
the Wenuses with the minimum amount of risk. A student of the humanities
would have adopted a different method, but my standpoint has always been
dispassionate, anti-sentimental. My feelings towards the Wenuses were,
incredible as it may seem, purely Platonic. I recognised their
transcendental attractions, but had no desire to succumb to them.
Strange as it may seem, the man who succumbs rarely if ever is
victorious in the long run. To disguise my sex and identity--for it was
_a priori_ almost impossible that the inhabitants of Wenus had never
heard of Pozzuoli--would guard me from the jellifying Mash-Glance of the
Wenuses. Arrayed in feminine garb I could remain immune to their
malignant influences.
With me, to think is to act; so I hastily ran upstairs, shaved off my
moustache, donned my wife's bicycle-skirt, threw her _sortie de bal_
round my shoulders, borrowed the cook's Sunday bonnet from the servants'
bedroom, and hastened back to my post of observation at the scullery
door.
Inserting a pipette through the keyhole and cautiously applying my eye,
I saw to my delight that the Crinoline had been elevated on a series of
steel rods about six feet high, and that the five Wenuses who had
descended in it were partaking of a light but sumptuous repast beneath
its iridescent canopy. They were seated round a tripod imbibing a brown
beverage from small vessels resembling the half of a hollow sphere, and
eating with incredible velocity a quantity of tiny round coloured
objects--closely related, as I subsequently had occasion to ascertain,
to the _Bellaria angelica_,--which they raised to their mouths with
astonishing and unerring aim in the complex Handling-Machines, or
Tenticklers, which form part of their wonderful organism.
Belonging as they undoubtedly do to the order of the Tunicates, their
exquisitely appropriate and elegant costume may be safely allowed to
speak for itself. It is enough, however, to note the curious fact that
there are no buttons in Wenus, and that their mechanical system is
remarkable, incredible as it may seem, for having developed the eye to
the rarest point of perfection while dispensing entirely with the hook.
The bare idea of this is no doubt terribly repulsive to us, but at the
same time I think we should remember how indescribably repulsive our
sartorial habits must seem to an intelligent armadillo.
Of the peculiar coralline tint of the Wenuses' complexion, I think I
have already spoken. That it was developed by their indulgence in the
Red Weed has been, I think, satisfactorily proved by the researches of
Dr. Moreau, who also shows that the visual range of their eyes was much
the same as ours, except that blue and yellow were alike to them. Moreau
established this by a very pretty experiment with a Yellow Book and a
Blue Book, each of which elicited exactly the same remark, a curious
hooting sound, strangely resembling the _ut de poitrine_ of one of
Professor Garner's gorillas.
After concluding their repast, the Wenuses, still unaware of my patient
scrutiny, extracted, with the aid of their glittering tintackles, a
large packet of Red Weed from a quasi-marsupial pouch in the roof of the
Crinoline, and in an incredibly short space of time had rolled its
carmine tendrils into slim cylinders, and inserted them within their
lips. The external ends suddenly ignited as though by spontaneous
combustion; but in reality that result was effected by the simple
process of deflecting the optic ray. Clouds of roseate vapour, ascending
to the dome of the canopy, partially obscured the sumptuous contours of
these celestial invaders; while a soft crooning sound, indicative of
utter contentment, or as Professor Nestlé of the Milky Ray has more
prosaically explained it, due to expiration of air preparatory to the
suctional operation involved in the use of the Red Weed, added an
indescribable glamour to the enchantment of the scene.
Humiliating as it may seem to the scientific reader, I found it
impossible to maintain a Platonic attitude any longer; and applying my
mouth to the embouchure of the pipette, warbled faintly in an exquisite
falsetto:
"Ulat tanalareezul Savourneen Dheelish tradioun marexil Vi-Koko for the
hair. I want yer, ma honey."
The effect was nothing short of magical. The rhythmic exhalations ceased
instanteously, and the tallest and most fluorescent of the Wenuses,
laying aside her Red Weed, replied in a low voice thrilling with kinetic
emotion:
"Phreata mou sas agapo!"
The sentiment of these remarks was unmistakable, though to my shame I
confess I was unable to fathom their meaning, and I was on the point of
opening the scullery door and rushing out to declare myself, when I
heard a loud banging from the front of the house.
I stumbled up the kitchen stairs, hampered considerably by my wife's
skirt; and, by the time I had reached the hall, recognised the raucous
accents of Professor Tibbles, the Classical Examiner, shouting in
excited tones:
"Let me in, let me in!"
I opened the door as far as it would go without unfastening the chain,
and the Professor at once thrust in his head, remaining jammed in the
aperture.
"Let me in!" he shouted. "I'm the only man in London besides yourself
that hasn't been pulped by the Mash-Glance."
He then began to jabber lines from the classics, and examples from the
Latin grammar.
A sudden thought occurred to me. Perhaps he might translate the
observation of the Wenus. Should I use him as an interpreter? But a
moment's reflection served to convince me of the danger of such a plan.
The Professor, already exacerbated by the study of the humanities, was
in a state of acute erethism. I thought of the curate, and, maddened by
the recollection of all I had suffered, drew the bread-knife from my
waist-belt, and shouting, "Go to join your dead languages!" stabbed him
up to the maker's name in the semi-lunar ganglion. His head drooped, and
he expired.
I stood petrified, staring at his glazing eyes; then, turning to make
for the scullery, was confronted by the catastrophic apparition of the
tallest Wenus gazing at me with reproachful eyes and extended tentacles.
Disgust at my cruel act and horror at my extraordinary habiliments were
written all too plainly in her seraphic lineaments. At least, so I
thought. But it turned out to be otherwise; for the Wenus produced from
behind her superlatively radiant form a lump of slate which she had
extracted from the coal-box.
"Decepti estis, O Puteoli!" she said.
"I beg your pardon," I replied; "but I fail to grasp your meaning."
"She means," said the Examiner, raising himself for another last effort,
"that it is time you changed your coal merchant," and so saying he died
again.
I was thunderstruck: the Wenuses understood coals!
And then I ran; I could stand it no longer. The game was up, the cosmic
game for which I had laboured so long and strenuously, and with one
despairing yell of "Ulla! Ulla!" I unfastened the chain, and, leaping
over the limp and prostrate form of the unhappy Tibbles, fled darkling
down the deserted street.
II.
THE MAN AT UXBRIDGE ROAD.
At the corner a happy thought struck me: the landlord of the "Dog and
Measles" kept a motor car. I found him in his bar and killed him. Then I
broke open the stable and let loose the motor car. It was very restive,
and I had to pat it. "Goo' Tea Rose," I said soothingly, "goo'
Rockefeller, then." It became quiet, and I struck a match and started
the paraffinalia, and in a moment we were under weigh.
I am not an expert motist, although at school I was a fairly good
hoop-driver, and the pedestrians I met and overtook had a bad time. One
man said, as he bound up a punctured thigh, that the Heat Ray of the
Martians was nothing compared with me. I was moting towards Leatherhead,
where my cousin lived, when the streak of light caused by the Third
Crinoline curdled the paraffin tank. Vain was it to throw water on the
troubled oil; the mischief was done. Meanwhile a storm broke. The
lightning flashed, the rain beat against my face, the night was
exceptionally dark, and to add to my difficulties the motor took the
wick between its teeth and fairly bolted.
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.
These generous folk, though severely harassed by their own anxieties,
took me in and cared for me. I was a lonely man and a sad one, and they
bored me. In spite of my desire to give public expression to my
gratitude, they have refused to allow their names to appear in these
pages, and they consequently enjoy the proud prerogative of being the
only anonymous persons in this book. I stayed with them at the Bath Club
for four days, and with tears parted from them on the spring-board. They
would have kept me for ever, but that would have interfered with my
literary plans. Besides, I had a morbid desire to gaze on the Wenuses
once more.
And so I went out into the streets again, guided by the weird Voice, and
_viâ_ Grafton Street, Albemarle Street, the Royal Arcade, Bond Street,
Burlington Gardens, Vigo Street and Sackville Street, Piccadilly, Regent
Street, Pall Mall East, Cockspur Street and Whitehall, steadily wheeled
my way across Westminster Bridge.
There were few people about and their skins were all yellow. Lessing,
presumably in his _Laocoon_, has attributed this to the effects of sheer
panic; but Carver's explanation, which attributes the ochre-like tint to
the hypodermic operation of the Mash-Glance, seems far more plausible.
For myself I abstain from casting the weight of my support in either
scale, because my particular province is speculative philosophy and not
comparative dermatology.
As I passed St. Thomas's Hospital, the tullululation grew ever louder
and louder. At last the source of the sound could no longer be
disguised. It proceeded without doubt from the interior of some soap
works just opposite Doulton's. The gate was open and a faint saponaceous
exhalation struck upon my dilated nostrils. I have always been
peculiarly susceptible to odours, though my particular province is not
Osmetics but speculative philosophy, and I at once resolved to enter.
Leaning my bicycle against the wall of the archway, I walked in, and was
immediately confronted by the object of my long search.
There, grouped picturesquely round a quantity of large tanks, stood the
Wenuses, blowing assiduously through pellucid pipettes and
simultaneously chanting in tones of unearthly gravity a strain
poignantly suggestive of baffled hopes, thwarted aspirations and
impending departure. So absorbed were they in their strange
preparations, that they were entirely unconscious of my presence.
Grotesque and foolish as this may seem to the infatuated reader, it is
absolutely true.
Gradually from out the troubled surface of the tanks there rose a
succession of transparent iridescent globules, steadily waxing in bulk
until they had attained a diameter of about sixteen feet. The Wenuses
then desisted from their labours of inflation, and suddenly plunging
into the tanks, reappeared _inside_ these opalescent globules. I can
only repeat that speculative philosophy, and not sapoleaginous
hydro-dynamics, is my particular forte, and would refer doubtful
readers, in search of further information, to the luminous hypothesis
advanced by Professor Cleaver of Washington to account for the
imbullification of the Wenuses.[1]
Never shall I forget the touching scene that now unfolded itself before
my bewildered eyes. Against a back ground of lemon-coloured sky, with
the stars shedding their spiritual lustre through the purple twilight,
these gorgeous creatures, each ensphered in her beatific bubble, floated
tremulously upward on the balmy breeze. In a moment it all flashed upon
me. They were passing away from the scene of their brief triumph, and I,
a lonely and dejected scientist, saw myself doomed to expiate a moment's
madness in long years of ineffectual speculation on the probable
development of Moral Ideas.
My mind reverted to my abandoned arguments, embodied in the article
which lay beneath the selenite paperweight in my study in Campden Hill
Gardens. Frenzied with despair, I shot out an arm to arrest the upward
transit of the nearest Wenus, when a strange thing occurred.
"At last!" said a voice.
I was startled. It was my wife, accompanied by Mrs. Elphinstone, my
cousin's man, my mother, the widow of the landlord of the "Dog and
Measles," Master Herodotus Tibbles in deep mourning, and the
Artillery-man's brother from Beauchamp's little livery stables.
I shot an appealing glance to the disappearing Wenus. She threw me a
kiss. I threw her another.
My wife took a step forward, and put her hand to my ear. I fell.
[Footnote 1: Cleaver in a subsequent Memoir [Sonnenschein, London, pp.
xiv., 954, 20 in. x 8-1/2, price £2 2s. net] has made out, reluctantly
and against the judgment of his firm, that the basic material of the
globules, the peculiar tenacity of which was due to some toughening
ingredient imported by the Wisitors from their planet, was undoubtedly
that indispensable domestic article which is alleged to "save rubbing."]
APPENDIX A.
APPENDIX A.
My mother, whose vigilance during the Wenuses' invasion has been
throughout of the greatest assistance to me, kept copies of the various
papers of importance which commented upon that event. From them I am
enabled, with my mother's consent, to supplement the allusions to
contemporary journalism in the body of my history with the following
extracts:--
The _Times_, or, as it is better known, the Thunder Child of Printing
House Square, said:
"The Duke of Curzon's statesmanlike reply in the House of Lords last
night to the inflammatory question or string of questions put by Lord
Ashmead with reference to our planetary visitors will go far to mitigate
the unreasoning panic which has laid hold of a certain section of the
community. As to the methods by which it has been proposed to confront
and repel the invaders, the Duke's remark, 'that the use of dynamite
violated the chivalrous instincts which were at the root of the British
Nature,' called forth loud applause. The Foreign Secretary, however,
showed that, while deprecating senseless panic, he was ready to take any
reasonable steps to allay the natural anxiety of the public, and rising
later on in the evening, he announced that a Royal Commission had been
appointed, on which Lord Ashmead, Dr. Joseph Parker (of the City
Temple), and Mr. Hall Caine, representing the Isle of Man, had consented
to serve, and would be dispatched without delay to Kensington Gardens to
inquire into the cause of the visit, and, if possible, to induce the new
comers to accept an invitation to tea on the Terrace. By way of
supplementing these tranquillizing assurances, we may add that we have
the authority of the best scientific experts, including Dr. Moreau,
Professor Sprudelkopf of Carlsbad, and Dr. Fountain Penn of
Philadelphia, for asserting that no animate beings could survive their
transference from the atmosphere of Venus to that of our planet for more
than fourteen days. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the members of
the Royal Commission may be successful in impressing upon our aërial
visitors the imperative necessity of a speedy return. In these
negotiations it is anticipated that the expressive pantomime of Dr.
Parker, and Mr. Hall Caine's mastery of the Manx dialect, will be of the
greatest possible assistance."
To the _Daily Telegraph_ Sir Edwin Arnold contributed a poem entitled
"Aphrodite Anadyomené; or, Venus at the Round Pond." My mother can
remember only the last stanza, which ran as follows:
"Though I fly to _Fushiyama_,
Steeped in opalescent _Karma_,
I shall ne'er forget my charmer,
My adorable _Khansamah_.
Though I fly to Tokio,
Where the sweet _chupatties_ blow,
I shall ne'er forget thee, no!
_Yamagata, daimio_."
A shilling testimonial to the Wenuses was also started by the same
journal, in accordance with the precedent furnished by the similar
treatment of the Graces, and an animated controversy raged in its
correspondence columns with reference to mixed bathing at Margate, and
its effect on the morality of the Wenuses.
A somewhat painful impression was created by the publication of an
interview with a well-known dramatic critic in the periodical known as
_Great Scott's Thoughts_. This eminent authority gave it as his
unhesitating opinion that the Wenuses were not fit persons to associate
with actors, actresses, or dramatic critics, and that if, as was
announced, they had been engaged at Covent Garden to lend realistic
verisimilitude to the Venusberg scene in _Tannhäuser_, it was his firm
resolve to give up his long crusade against Ibsen, emigrate to Norway,
and change his name to that of John Gabriel Borkman. A prolonged sojourn
in Poppyland, however, resulted in the withdrawal of this dreadful
threat, and, some few weeks after the extinction of the Wenuses, his
reconciliation with the dramatic profession was celebrated at a public
meeting, where, after embracing all the actor-managers in turn, he was
presented by them with a magnificent silver butter-boat, filled to the
brim with melted butter ready for immediate use.
APPENDIX B.
APPENDIX B.
My mother has obtained permission from the Laureate's publishers to
reprint the following stanzas from "The Pale Pink Raid":--
"Wrong? O of coarse it's heinous,
But we're going, girls, you just bet!
Do they think that the Wars of Wenus
Can be stopped by an epithet?
When the henpecked Earth-men pray us
To join them at afternoon tea,
Not rhyme nor reason can stay us
From flying to set them free.
* * * * *
"When the men on that hapless planet,
Handsome and kind and true,
Cry out, 'Hurry up!' O hang it!
What else can a Wenus do?
I suppose it was rather bad form, girls,
But really we didn't care,
For our planet was growing too warm, girls,
And we wanted a change of air.
* * * * *
"Mrs. Grundy may go on snarling,
But still, at the Judgment Day,
The author of _England's Darling_
I think won't give us away.
We failed, but we chose to chance it,
And as one of the beaten side,
I'd rather have made that transit
Than written _Jameson's Ride!_"
THE END.
PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER