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 ma.s.s, and further evidences of vitality were forthcoming in a gentle but pathetic crooning, as of an immature chimaera 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 dispa.s.sionate, 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 succ.u.mb to them.
Strange as it may seem, the man who succ.u.mbs rarely if ever is victorious in the long run. To disguise my s.e.x and ident.i.ty--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 quant.i.ty 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 b.u.t.tons 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 s.p.a.ce 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 Nestle 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 att.i.tude any longer; and applying my mouth to the embouchure of the pipette, warbled faintly in an exquisite falsetto:
"Ulat ta.n.a.lareezul 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 Cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sics, 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 st.u.r.dy 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 hoa.r.s.e, 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?"