Bab Bab 22 · IN THE EMPORIUM

. IN THE EMPORIUM

“So last January, with the beginning of a snowstorm in the air about

me—and if it settled on me it would betray me!—weary, cold, painful,

inexpressibly wretched, and still but half convinced of my invisible

quality, I began this new life to which I am committed. I had no

refuge, no appliances, no human being in the world in whom I could

confide. To have told my secret would have given me away—made a mere

show and rarity of me. Nevertheless, I was half-minded to accost some

passer-by and throw myself upon his mercy. But I knew too clearly the

terror and brutal cruelty my advances would evoke. I made no plans in

the street. My sole object was to get shelter from the snow, to get

myself covered and warm; then I might hope to plan. But even to me, an

Invisible Man, the rows of London houses stood latched, barred, and

bolted impregnably.

“Only one thing could I see clearly before me—the cold exposure and

misery of the snowstorm and the night.

“And then I had a brilliant idea. I turned down one of the roads

leading from Gower Street to Tottenham Court Road, and found myself

outside Omniums, the big establishment where everything is to be

bought—you know the place: meat, grocery, linen, furniture, clothing,

oil paintings even—a huge meandering collection of shops rather than a

shop. I had thought I should find the doors open, but they were closed,

and as I stood in the wide entrance a carriage stopped outside, and a

man in uniform—you know the kind of personage with ‘Omnium’ on his

cap—flung open the door. I contrived to enter, and walking down the

shop—it was a department where they were selling ribbons and gloves and

stockings and that kind of thing—came to a more spacious region devoted

to picnic baskets and wicker furniture.

“I did not feel safe there, however; people were going to and fro, and

I prowled restlessly about until I came upon a huge section in an upper

floor containing multitudes of bedsteads, and over these I clambered,

and found a resting-place at last among a huge pile of folded flock

mattresses. The place was already lit up and agreeably warm, and I

decided to remain where I was, keeping a cautious eye on the two or

three sets of shopmen and customers who were meandering through the

place, until closing time came. Then I should be able, I thought, to

rob the place for food and clothing, and disguised, prowl through it

and examine its resources, perhaps sleep on some of the bedding. That

seemed an acceptable plan. My idea was to procure clothing to make

myself a muffled but acceptable figure, to get money, and then to

recover my books and parcels where they awaited me, take a lodging

somewhere and elaborate plans for the complete realisation of the

advantages my invisibility gave me (as I still imagined) over my

fellow-men.

“Closing time arrived quickly enough. It could not have been more than

an hour after I took up my position on the mattresses before I noticed

the blinds of the windows being drawn, and customers being marched

doorward. And then a number of brisk young men began with remarkable

alacrity to tidy up the goods that remained disturbed. I left my lair

as the crowds diminished, and prowled cautiously out into the less

desolate parts of the shop. I was really surprised to observe how

rapidly the young men and women whipped away the goods displayed for

sale during the day. All the boxes of goods, the hanging fabrics, the

festoons of lace, the boxes of sweets in the grocery section, the

displays of this and that, were being whipped down, folded up, slapped

into tidy receptacles, and everything that could not be taken down and

put away had sheets of some coarse stuff like sacking flung over them.

Finally all the chairs were turned up on to the counters, leaving the

floor clear. Directly each of these young people had done, he or she

made promptly for the door with such an expression of animation as I

have rarely observed in a shop assistant before. Then came a lot of

youngsters scattering sawdust and carrying pails and brooms. I had to

dodge to get out of the way, and as it was, my ankle got stung with the

sawdust. For some time, wandering through the swathed and darkened

departments, I could hear the brooms at work. And at last a good hour

or more after the shop had been closed, came a noise of locking doors.

Silence came upon the place, and I found myself wandering through the

vast and intricate shops, galleries, show-rooms of the place, alone. It

was very still; in one place I remember passing near one of the

Tottenham Court Road entrances and listening to the tapping of

boot-heels of the passers-by.

“My first visit was to the place where I had seen stockings and gloves

for sale. It was dark, and I had the devil of a hunt after matches,

which I found at last in the drawer of the little cash desk. Then I had

to get a candle. I had to tear down wrappings and ransack a number of

boxes and drawers, but at last I managed to turn out what I sought; the

box label called them lambswool pants, and lambswool vests. Then socks,

a thick comforter, and then I went to the clothing place and got

trousers, a lounge jacket, an overcoat and a slouch hat—a clerical sort

of hat with the brim turned down. I began to feel a human being again,

and my next thought was food.

“Upstairs was a refreshment department, and there I got cold meat.

There was coffee still in the urn, and I lit the gas and warmed it up

again, and altogether I did not do badly. Afterwards, prowling through

the place in search of blankets—I had to put up at last with a heap of

down quilts—I came upon a grocery section with a lot of chocolate and

candied fruits, more than was good for me indeed—and some white

burgundy. And near that was a toy department, and I had a brilliant

idea. I found some artificial noses—dummy noses, you know, and I

thought of dark spectacles. But Omniums had no optical department. My

nose had been a difficulty indeed—I had thought of paint. But the

discovery set my mind running on wigs and masks and the like. Finally I

went to sleep in a heap of down quilts, very warm and comfortable.

“My last thoughts before sleeping were the most agreeable I had had

since the change. I was in a state of physical serenity, and that was

reflected in my mind. I thought that I should be able to slip out

unobserved in the morning with my clothes upon me, muffling my face

with a white wrapper I had taken, purchase, with the money I had taken,

spectacles and so forth, and so complete my disguise. I lapsed into

disorderly dreams of all the fantastic things that had happened during

the last few days. I saw the ugly little Jew of a landlord vociferating

in his rooms; I saw his two sons marvelling, and the wrinkled old

woman’s gnarled face as she asked for her cat. I experienced again the

strange sensation of seeing the cloth disappear, and so I came round to

the windy hillside and the sniffing old clergyman mumbling ‘Earth to

earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ at my father’s open grave.

“‘You also,’ said a voice, and suddenly I was being forced towards the

grave. I struggled, shouted, appealed to the mourners, but they

continued stonily following the service; the old clergyman, too, never

faltered droning and sniffing through the ritual. I realised I was

invisible and inaudible, that overwhelming forces had their grip on me.

I struggled in vain, I was forced over the brink, the coffin rang

hollow as I fell upon it, and the gravel came flying after me in

spadefuls. Nobody heeded me, nobody was aware of me. I made convulsive

struggles and awoke.

“The pale London dawn had come, the place was full of a chilly grey

light that filtered round the edges of the window blinds. I sat up, and

for a time I could not think where this ample apartment, with its

counters, its piles of rolled stuff, its heap of quilts and cushions,

its iron pillars, might be. Then, as recollection came back to me, I

heard voices in conversation.

“Then far down the place, in the brighter light of some department

which had already raised its blinds, I saw two men approaching. I

scrambled to my feet, looking about me for some way of escape, and even

as I did so the sound of my movement made them aware of me. I suppose

they saw merely a figure moving quietly and quickly away. ‘Who’s that?’

cried one, and ‘Stop there!’ shouted the other. I dashed around a

corner and came full tilt—a faceless figure, mind you!—on a lanky lad

of fifteen. He yelled and I bowled him over, rushed past him, turned

another corner, and by a happy inspiration threw myself behind a

counter. In another moment feet went running past and I heard voices

shouting, ‘All hands to the doors!’ asking what was ‘up,’ and giving

one another advice how to catch me.

“Lying on the ground, I felt scared out of my wits. But—odd as it may

seem—it did not occur to me at the moment to take off my clothes as I

should have done. I had made up my mind, I suppose, to get away in

them, and that ruled me. And then down the vista of the counters came a

bawling of ‘Here he is!’

“I sprang to my feet, whipped a chair off the counter, and sent it

whirling at the fool who had shouted, turned, came into another round a

corner, sent him spinning, and rushed up the stairs. He kept his

footing, gave a view hallo, and came up the staircase hot after me. Up

the staircase were piled a multitude of those bright-coloured pot

things—what are they?”

“Art pots,” suggested Kemp.

“That’s it! Art pots. Well, I turned at the top step and swung round,

plucked one out of a pile and smashed it on his silly head as he came

at me. The whole pile of pots went headlong, and I heard shouting and

footsteps running from all parts. I made a mad rush for the refreshment

place, and there was a man in white like a man cook, who took up the

chase. I made one last desperate turn and found myself among lamps and

ironmongery. I went behind the counter of this, and waited for my cook,

and as he bolted in at the head of the chase, I doubled him up with a

lamp. Down he went, and I crouched down behind the counter and began

whipping off my clothes as fast as I could. Coat, jacket, trousers,

shoes were all right, but a lambswool vest fits a man like a skin. I

heard more men coming, my cook was lying quiet on the other side of the

counter, stunned or scared speechless, and I had to make another dash

for it, like a rabbit hunted out of a wood-pile.

“‘This way, policeman!’ I heard someone shouting. I found myself in my

bedstead storeroom again, and at the end of a wilderness of wardrobes.

I rushed among them, went flat, got rid of my vest after infinite

wriggling, and stood a free man again, panting and scared, as the

policeman and three of the shopmen came round the corner. They made a

rush for the vest and pants, and collared the trousers. ‘He’s dropping

his plunder,’ said one of the young men. ‘He _must_ be somewhere here.’

“But they did not find me all the same.

“I stood watching them hunt for me for a time, and cursing my ill-luck

in losing the clothes. Then I went into the refreshment-room, drank a

little milk I found there, and sat down by the fire to consider my

position.

“In a little while two assistants came in and began to talk over the

business very excitedly and like the fools they were. I heard a

magnified account of my depredations, and other speculations as to my

whereabouts. Then I fell to scheming again. The insurmountable

difficulty of the place, especially now it was alarmed, was to get any

plunder out of it. I went down into the warehouse to see if there was

any chance of packing and addressing a parcel, but I could not

understand the system of checking. About eleven o’clock, the snow

having thawed as it fell, and the day being finer and a little warmer

than the previous one, I decided that the Emporium was hopeless, and

went out again, exasperated at my want of success, with only the

vaguest plans of action in my mind.”