第 二十六 章 · WRECKAGE.

. WRECKAGE.

And now comes the strangest thing in my story. Yet, perhaps, it is not

altogether strange. I remember, clearly and coldly and vividly, all

that I did that day until the time that I stood weeping and praising

God upon the summit of Primrose Hill. And then I forget.

Of the next three days I know nothing. I have learned since that, so

far from my being the first discoverer of the Martian overthrow,

several such wanderers as myself had already discovered this on the

previous night. One man—the first—had gone to St. Martin’s-le-Grand,

and, while I sheltered in the cabmen’s hut, had contrived to telegraph

to Paris. Thence the joyful news had flashed all over the world; a

thousand cities, chilled by ghastly apprehensions, suddenly flashed

into frantic illuminations; they knew of it in Dublin, Edinburgh,

Manchester, Birmingham, at the time when I stood upon the verge of the

pit. Already men, weeping with joy, as I have heard, shouting and

staying their work to shake hands and shout, were making up trains,

even as near as Crewe, to descend upon London. The church bells that

had ceased a fortnight since suddenly caught the news, until all

England was bell-ringing. Men on cycles, lean-faced, unkempt, scorched

along every country lane shouting of unhoped deliverance, shouting to

gaunt, staring figures of despair. And for the food! Across the

Channel, across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic, corn, bread, and

meat were tearing to our relief. All the shipping in the world seemed

going Londonward in those days. But of all this I have no memory. I

drifted—a demented man. I found myself in a house of kindly people, who

had found me on the third day wandering, weeping, and raving through

the streets of St. John’s Wood. They have told me since that I was

singing some insane doggerel about “The Last Man Left Alive! Hurrah!

The Last Man Left Alive!” Troubled as they were with their own affairs,

these people, whose name, much as I would like to express my gratitude

to them, I may not even give here, nevertheless cumbered themselves

with me, sheltered me, and protected me from myself. Apparently they

had learned something of my story from me during the days of my lapse.

Very gently, when my mind was assured again, did they break to me what

they had learned of the fate of Leatherhead. Two days after I was

imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every soul in it, by a Martian.

He had swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any

provocation, as a boy might crush an ant hill, in the mere wantonness

of power.

I was a lonely man, and they were very kind to me. I was a lonely man

and a sad one, and they bore with me. I remained with them four days

after my recovery. All that time I felt a vague, a growing craving to

look once more on whatever remained of the little life that seemed so

happy and bright in my past. It was a mere hopeless desire to feast

upon my misery. They dissuaded me. They did all they could to divert me

from this morbidity. But at last I could resist the impulse no longer,

and, promising faithfully to return to them, and parting, as I will

confess, from these four-day friends with tears, I went out again into

the streets that had lately been so dark and strange and empty.

Already they were busy with returning people; in places even there were

shops open, and I saw a drinking fountain running water.

I remember how mockingly bright the day seemed as I went back on my

melancholy pilgrimage to the little house at Woking, how busy the

streets and vivid the moving life about me. So many people were abroad

everywhere, busied in a thousand activities, that it seemed incredible

that any great proportion of the population could have been slain. But

then I noticed how yellow were the skins of the people I met, how

shaggy the hair of the men, how large and bright their eyes, and that

every other man still wore his dirty rags. Their faces seemed all with

one of two expressions—a leaping exultation and energy or a grim

resolution. Save for the expression of the faces, London seemed a city

of tramps. The vestries were indiscriminately distributing bread sent

us by the French government. The ribs of the few horses showed

dismally. Haggard special constables with white badges stood at the

corners of every street. I saw little of the mischief wrought by the

Martians until I reached Wellington Street, and there I saw the red

weed clambering over the buttresses of Waterloo Bridge.

At the corner of the bridge, too, I saw one of the common contrasts of

that grotesque time—a sheet of paper flaunting against a thicket of the

red weed, transfixed by a stick that kept it in place. It was the

placard of the first newspaper to resume publication—the _Daily Mail_.

I bought a copy for a blackened shilling I found in my pocket. Most of

it was in blank, but the solitary compositor who did the thing had

amused himself by making a grotesque scheme of advertisement stereo on

the back page. The matter he printed was emotional; the news

organisation had not as yet found its way back. I learned nothing fresh

except that already in one week the examination of the Martian

mechanisms had yielded astonishing results. Among other things, the

article assured me what I did not believe at the time, that the “Secret

of Flying,” was discovered. At Waterloo I found the free trains that

were taking people to their homes. The first rush was already over.

There were few people in the train, and I was in no mood for casual

conversation. I got a compartment to myself, and sat with folded arms,

looking greyly at the sunlit devastation that flowed past the windows.

And just outside the terminus the train jolted over temporary rails,

and on either side of the railway the houses were blackened ruins. To

Clapham Junction the face of London was grimy with powder of the Black

Smoke, in spite of two days of thunderstorms and rain, and at Clapham

Junction the line had been wrecked again; there were hundreds of

out-of-work clerks and shopmen working side by side with the customary

navvies, and we were jolted over a hasty relaying.

All down the line from there the aspect of the country was gaunt and

unfamiliar; Wimbledon particularly had suffered. Walton, by virtue of

its unburned pine woods, seemed the least hurt of any place along the

line. The Wandle, the Mole, every little stream, was a heaped mass of

red weed, in appearance between butcher’s meat and pickled cabbage. The

Surrey pine woods were too dry, however, for the festoons of the red

climber. Beyond Wimbledon, within sight of the line, in certain nursery

grounds, were the heaped masses of earth about the sixth cylinder. A

number of people were standing about it, and some sappers were busy in

the midst of it. Over it flaunted a Union Jack, flapping cheerfully in

the morning breeze. The nursery grounds were everywhere crimson with

the weed, a wide expanse of livid colour cut with purple shadows, and

very painful to the eye. One’s gaze went with infinite relief from the

scorched greys and sullen reds of the foreground to the blue-green

softness of the eastward hills.

The line on the London side of Woking station was still undergoing

repair, so I descended at Byfleet station and took the road to Maybury,

past the place where I and the artilleryman had talked to the hussars,

and on by the spot where the Martian had appeared to me in the

thunderstorm. Here, moved by curiosity, I turned aside to find, among a

tangle of red fronds, the warped and broken dog cart with the whitened

bones of the horse scattered and gnawed. For a time I stood regarding

these vestiges. . . .

Then I returned through the pine wood, neck-high with red weed here and

there, to find the landlord of the Spotted Dog had already found

burial, and so came home past the College Arms. A man standing at an

open cottage door greeted me by name as I passed.

I looked at my house with a quick flash of hope that faded immediately.

The door had been forced; it was unfast and was opening slowly as I

approached.

It slammed again. The curtains of my study fluttered out of the open

window from which I and the artilleryman had watched the dawn. No one

had closed it since. The smashed bushes were just as I had left them

nearly four weeks ago. I stumbled into the hall, and the house felt

empty. The stair carpet was ruffled and discoloured where I had

crouched, soaked to the skin from the thunderstorm the night of the

catastrophe. Our muddy footsteps I saw still went up the stairs.

I followed them to my study, and found lying on my writing-table still,

with the selenite paper weight upon it, the sheet of work I had left on

the afternoon of the opening of the cylinder. For a space I stood

reading over my abandoned arguments. It was a paper on the probable

development of Moral Ideas with the development of the civilising

process; and the last sentence was the opening of a prophecy: “In about

two hundred years,” I had written, “we may expect——” The sentence ended

abruptly. I remembered my inability to fix my mind that morning,

scarcely a month gone by, and how I had broken off to get my _Daily

Chronicle_ from the newsboy. I remembered how I went down to the garden

gate as he came along, and how I had listened to his odd story of “Men

from Mars.”

I came down and went into the dining room. There were the mutton and

the bread, both far gone now in decay, and a beer bottle overturned,

just as I and the artilleryman had left them. My home was desolate. I

perceived the folly of the faint hope I had cherished so long. And then

a strange thing occurred. “It is no use,” said a voice. “The house is

deserted. No one has been here these ten days. Do not stay here to

torment yourself. No one escaped but you.”

I was startled. Had I spoken my thought aloud? I turned, and the French

window was open behind me. I made a step to it, and stood looking out.

And there, amazed and afraid, even as I stood amazed and afraid, were

my cousin and my wife—my wife white and tearless. She gave a faint cry.

“I came,” she said. “I knew—knew——”

She put her hand to her throat—swayed. I made a step forward, and

caught her in my arms.