"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 advertis.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sed 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 cuira.s.s, 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.