I sat up, strangely perplexed. For a moment, perhaps, I could not
clearly understand how I came there. My terror had fallen from me like
a garment. My hat had gone, and my collar had burst away from its
fastener. A few minutes before, there had only been three real things
before me—the immensity of the night and space and nature, my own
feebleness and anguish, and the near approach of death. Now it was as
if something turned over, and the point of view altered abruptly. There
was no sensible transition from one state of mind to the other. I was
immediately the self of every day again—a decent, ordinary citizen. The
silent common, the impulse of my flight, the starting flames, were as
if they had been in a dream. I asked myself had these latter things
indeed happened? I could not credit it.
I rose and walked unsteadily up the steep incline of the bridge. My
mind was blank wonder. My muscles and nerves seemed drained of their
strength. I dare say I staggered drunkenly. A head rose over the arch,
and the figure of a workman carrying a basket appeared. Beside him ran
a little boy. He passed me, wishing me good night. I was minded to
speak to him, but did not. I answered his greeting with a meaningless
mumble and went on over the bridge.
Over the Maybury arch a train, a billowing tumult of white, firelit
smoke, and a long caterpillar of lighted windows, went flying
south—clatter, clatter, clap, rap, and it had gone. A dim group of
people talked in the gate of one of the houses in the pretty little row
of gables that was called Oriental Terrace. It was all so real and so
familiar. And that behind me! It was frantic, fantastic! Such things, I
told myself, could not be.
Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far my
experience is common. At times I suffer from the strangest sense of
detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all
from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out
of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all. This feeling was
very strong upon me that night. Here was another side to my dream.
But the trouble was the blank incongruity of this serenity and the
swift death flying yonder, not two miles away. There was a noise of
business from the gasworks, and the electric lamps were all alight. I
stopped at the group of people.
“What news from the common?” said I.
There were two men and a woman at the gate.
“Eh?” said one of the men, turning.
“What news from the common?” I said.
“Ain’t yer just _been_ there?” asked the men.
“People seem fair silly about the common,” said the woman over the
gate. “What’s it all abart?”
“Haven’t you heard of the men from Mars?” said I; “the creatures from
Mars?”
“Quite enough,” said the woman over the gate. “Thenks;” and all three
of them laughed.
I felt foolish and angry. I tried and found I could not tell them what
I had seen. They laughed again at my broken sentences.
“You’ll hear more yet,” I said, and went on to my home.
I startled my wife at the doorway, so haggard was I. I went into the
dining room, sat down, drank some wine, and so soon as I could collect
myself sufficiently I told her the things I had seen. The dinner, which
was a cold one, had already been served, and remained neglected on the
table while I told my story.
“There is one thing,” I said, to allay the fears I had aroused; “they
are the most sluggish things I ever saw crawl. They may keep the pit
and kill people who come near them, but they cannot get out of it. . .
. But the horror of them!”
“Don’t, dear!” said my wife, knitting her brows and putting her hand on
mine.
“Poor Ogilvy!” I said. “To think he may be lying dead there!”
My wife at least did not find my experience incredible. When I saw how
deadly white her face was, I ceased abruptly.
“They may come here,” she said again and again.