Chapter V
THE DEAD WORLD
I remember that we all sat gasping in our chairs, with that
sweet, wet south-western breeze, fresh from the sea, flapping the
muslin curtains and cooling our flushed faces. I wonder how long
we sat! None of us afterwards could agree at all on that point.
We were bewildered, stunned, semi-conscious. We had all braced
our courage for death, but this fearful and sudden new
fact--that we must continue to live after we had survived the
race to which we belonged--struck us with the shock of a
physical blow and left us prostrate. Then gradually the
suspended mechanism began to move once more; the shuttles of
memory worked; ideas weaved themselves together in our minds. We
saw, with vivid, merciless clearness, the relations between the
past, the present, and the future--the lives that we had led and
the lives which we would have to live. Our eyes turned in silent
horror upon those of our companions and found the same answering
look in theirs. Instead of the joy which men might have been
expected to feel who had so narrowly escaped an imminent death,
a terrible wave of darkest depression submerged us. Everything
on earth that we loved had been washed away into the great,
infinite, unknown ocean, and here were we marooned upon this
desert island of a world, without companions, hopes, or
aspirations. A few years' skulking like jackals among the graves
of the human race and then our belated and lonely end would come.
"It's dreadful, George, dreadful!" the lady cried in an agony of
sobs. "If we had only passed with the others! Oh, why did you
save
us? I feel as if it is we that are dead and everyone else
alive."
Challenger's great eyebrows were drawn down in concentrated
thought, while his huge, hairy paw closed upon the outstretched
hand of his wife. I had observed that she always held out her
arms to him in trouble as a child would to its mother.
"Without being a fatalist to the point of nonresistance," said
he, "I have always found that the highest wisdom lies in an
acquiescence with the actual." He spoke slowly, and there was a
vibration of feeling in his sonorous voice.
"I do NOT acquiesce," said Summerlee firmly.
"I don't see that it matters a row of pins whether you acquiesce
or whether you don't," remarked Lord John. "You've got to take
it, whether you take it fightin' or take it lyin' down, so
what's the odds whether you acquiesce or not?
I can't remember that anyone asked our permission before the
thing began, and nobody's likely to ask it now. So what
difference can it make what we may think of it?"
"It is just all the difference between happiness and misery,"
said Challenger with an abstracted face, still patting his
wife's hand. "You can swim with the tide and have peace in mind
and soul, or you can thrust against it and be bruised and weary.
This business is beyond us, so let us accept it as it stands and
say no more."
"But what in the world are we to do with our lives?" I asked,
appealing in desperation to the blue, empty heaven.
"What am I to do, for example? There are no newspapers, so
there's an end of my vocation."
"And there's nothin' left to shoot, and no more soldierin', so
there's an end of mine," said Lord John.
"And there are no students, so there's an end of mine," cried
Summerlee.
"But I have my husband and my house, so I can thank heaven that
there is no end of mine," said the lady.
"Nor is there an end of mine," remarked Challenger, "for science
is not dead, and this catastrophe in itself will offer us many
most absorbing problems for investigation."
He had now flung open the windows and we were gazing out upon
the silent and motionless landscape.
"Let me consider," he continued. "It was about three, or a
little after, yesterday afternoon that the world finally entered
the poison belt to the extent of being completely submerged. It
is now nine o'clock. The question is, at what hour did we pass
out from it?"
"The air was very bad at daybreak," said I.
"Later than that," said Mrs. Challenger. "As late as eight
o'clock I distinctly felt the same choking at my throat which
came at the outset."
"Then we shall say that it passed just after eight o'clock. For
seventeen hours the world has been soaked in the poisonous
ether. For that length of time the Great Gardener has sterilized
the human mold which had grown over the surface of His fruit. Is
it possible that the work is incompletely done--that others may
have survived besides ourselves?"
"That's what I was wonderin'" said Lord John. "Why should we be
the only pebbles on the beach?"
"It is absurd to suppose that anyone besides ourselves can
possibly have survived," said Summerlee with conviction.
"Consider that the poison was so virulent that even a man who is
as strong as an ox and has not a nerve in his body, like Malone
here, could hardly get up the stairs before he fell unconscious.
Is it likely that anyone could stand seventeen minutes of it,
far less hours?"
"Unless someone saw it coming and made preparation, same as old
friend Challenger did."
"That, I think, is hardly probable," said Challenger, projecting
his beard and sinking his eyelids. "The combination of
observation, inference, and anticipatory imagination which
enabled me to foresee the danger is what one can hardly expect
twice in the same generation."
"Then your conclusion is that everyone is certainly dead?"
"There can be little doubt of that. We have to remember,
however, that the poison worked from below upwards and would
possibly be less virulent in the higher strata of the
atmosphere. It is strange, indeed, that it should be so; but it
presents one of those features which will afford us in the
future a fascinating field for study. One could imagine,
therefore, that if one had to search for survivors one would
turn one's eyes with best hopes of success to some Tibetan
village or some Alpine farm, many thousands of feet above the
sea level."
"Well, considerin' that there are no railroads and no steamers
you might as well talk about survivors in the moon," said Lord
John. "But what I'm askin' myself is whether it's really over or
whether it's only half-time."
Summerlee craned his neck to look round the horizon. "It seems
clear and fine," said he in a very dubious voice; "but so
it did yesterday. I am by no means assured that it is all over."
Challenger shrugged his shoulders.
"We must come back once more to our fatalism," said he. "If the
world has undergone this experience before, which is not outside
the range of possibility; it was certainly a very long time ago.
Therefore, we may reasonably hope that it will be very long
before it occurs again. "
"That's all very well," said Lord John, "but if you get an
earthquake shock you are mighty likely to have a second one
right on the top of it. I think we'd be wise to stretch our legs
and have a breath of air while we have the chance. Since our
oxygen is exhausted we may just as well be caught outside as in."
It was strange the absolute lethargy which had come upon us as
a reaction after our tremendous emotions of the last twenty-four
hours. It was both mental and physical, a deep-lying feeling
that
nothing mattered and that everything was a weariness and a
profitless exertion. Even Challenger had succumbed to it, and
sat in his chair, with his great head leaning upon his hands and
his thoughts far away, until Lord John and I, catching him by
each arm, fairly lifted him on to his feet, receiving only the
glare and growl of an angry mastiff for our trouble. However,
once we had got out of our narrow haven of refuge into the wider
atmosphere of everyday life, our normal energy came gradually
back to us once more.
But what were we to begin to do in that graveyard of a world?
Could ever men have been faced with such a question since the
dawn of time? It is true that our own physical needs, and even
our luxuries, were assured for the future. All the stores of
food, all the vintages of wine, all the treasures of art were
ours for the taking. But what were we to DO? Some few tasks
appealed to us at once, since they lay ready to our hands. We
descended into the kitchen and laid the two domestics upon their
respective beds. They seemed to have died without suffering, one
in the chair by the fire, the other upon the scullery floor.
Then
we carried in poor Austin from the yard. His muscles were set as
hard as a board in the most exaggerated rigor mortis, while the
contraction of the fibres had drawn his mouth into a hard
sardonic grin. This symptom was prevalent among all who had died
from the poison. Wherever we went we were confronted by those
grinning faces, which seemed to mock at our dreadful position,
smiling silently and grimly at the ill-fated survivors of their
race.
"Look here," said Lord John, who had paced restlessly about the
dining-room whilst we partook of some food, "I don't know how
you fellows feel about it, but for my part, I simply CAN'T sit
here and do nothin'."
"Perhaps," Challenger answered, "you would have the kindness to
suggest what you think we ought to do."
"Get a move on us and see all that has happened."
"That is what I should myself propose."
"But not in this little country village. We can see from the
window all that this place can teach us."
"Where should we go, then?"
"To London!"
"That's all very well," grumbled Summerlee. "You may be equal to
a forty-mile walk, but I'm not so sure about Challenger, with
his stumpy legs, and I am perfectly sure about myself."
Challenger was very much annoyed.
"If you could see your way, sir, to confining your remarks to
your own physical peculiarities, you would find that you had an
ample field for comment," he cried.
"I had no intention to offend you, my dear Challenger," cried
our tactless friend, "You can't be held responsible for your own
physique. If nature has given you a short, heavy body you cannot
possibly help having stumpy legs."
Challenger was too furious to answer. He could only growl and
blink and bristle. Lord John hastened to intervene before the
dispute became more violent.
"You talk of walking. Why should we walk?" said he.
"Do you suggest taking a train?" asked Challenger, still
simmering.
"What's the matter with the motor-car? Why should we not go in
that?"
"I am not an expert," said Challenger, pulling at his beard
reflectively. "At the same time, you are right in supposing that
the human intellect in its higher manifestations should be
sufficiently flexible to turn itself to anything. Your idea is
an
excellent one, Lord John. I myself will drive you all to
London."
"You will do nothing of the kind," said Summerlee with decision.
"No, indeed, George!" cried his wife. "You only tried once, and
you remember how you crashed through the gate of the garage."
"It was a momentary want of concentration," said Challenger
complacently. "You can consider the matter settled. I will
certainly drive you all to London."
The situation was relieved by Lord John.
"What's the car?" he asked.
"A twenty-horsepower Humber."
"Why, I've driven one for years," said he. "By George!" he
added. "I never thought I'd live to take the whole human race in
one load. There's just room for five, as I remember it. Get
your
things on, and I'll be ready at the door by ten o'clock."
Sure enough, at the hour named, the car came purring and
crackling from the yard with Lord John at the wheel. I took my
seat beside him, while the lady, a useful little buffer state,
was
squeezed in between the two men of wrath at the back. Then Lord
John released his brakes, slid his lever rapidly from first to
third, and we sped off upon the strangest drive that ever human
beings have taken since man first came upon the earth.
You are to picture the loveliness of nature upon that August
day, the freshness of the morning air, the golden glare of the
summer sunshine, the cloudless sky, the luxuriant green of the
Sussex woods, and the deep purple of heather-clad downs. As you
looked round upon the many-coloured beauty of the scene all
thought of a vast catastrophe would have passed from your mind
had it not been for one sinister sign--the solemn, all-embracing
silence. There is a gentle hum of life which pervades a
closely-settled country, so deep and constant that one ceases to
observe it, as the dweller by the sea loses all sense of the
constant
murmur of the waves. The twitter of birds, the buzz of insects,
the far-off echo of voices, the lowing of cattle, the distant
barking of dogs, roar of trains, and rattle of carts--all these
form one low, unremitting note, striking unheeded upon the ear.
We missed it now. This deadly silence was appalling. So solemn
was it, so impressive, that the buzz and rattle of our motor-car
seemed an unwarrantable intrusion, an indecent disregard of this
reverent stillness which lay like a pall over and round the
ruins of humanity. It was this grim hush, and the tall clouds of
smoke which rose here and there over the country-side from
smoldering buildings, which cast a chill into our hearts as we
gazed round at the glorious panorama of the Weald.
And then there were the dead! At first those endless groups of
drawn and grinning faces filled us with a shuddering horror. So
vivid and mordant was the impression that I can live over again
that slow descent of the station hill, the passing by the
nurse-girl with the two babes, the sight of the old horse on his
knees between the shafts, the cabman twisted across his seat,
and the young man inside with his hand upon the open door in the
very act of springing out. Lower down were six reapers all in a
litter, their limbs crossing, their dead, unwinking eyes gazing
upwards at the glare of heaven. These things I see as in a
photograph. But soon, by the merciful provision of nature, the
over-excited nerve ceased to respond. The very vastness of the
horror took away from its personal appeal. Individuals merged
into groups, groups into crowds, crowds into a universal
phenomenon which one soon accepted as the inevitable detail of
every scene. Only here and there, where some particularly brutal
or grotesque incident caught the attention, did the mind come
back
with a sudden shock to the personal and human meaning of it all.
Above all, there was the fate of the children. That, I remember,
filled us with the strongest sense of intolerable injustice. We
could have wept--Mrs. Challenger did weep--when we passed a
great council school and saw the long trail of tiny figures
scattered down the road which led from it. They had been
dismissed by their terrified teachers and were speeding for
their homes when the poison caught them in its net. Great
numbers of people were at the open windows of the houses. In
Tunbridge Wells there was hardly one which had not its staring,
smiling face. At the last instant the need of air, that very
craving for oxygen which we alone had been able to satisfy, had
sent them flying to the window. The sidewalks too were littered
with men and women, hatless and bonnetless, who had rushed out
of the houses. Many of them had fallen in the roadway. It was a
lucky thing that in Lord John we had found an expert driver, for
it was no easy matter to pick one's way. Passing through the
villages or towns we could only go at a walking pace, and once,
I remember, opposite the school at Tonbridge, we had to halt some
time while we carried aside the bodies which blocked our path.
A few small, definite pictures stand out in my memory from amid
that long panorama of death upon the Sussex and Kentish high
roads. One was that of a great, glittering motor-car standing
outside the inn at the village of Southborough. It bore, as I
should guess, some pleasure party upon their return from
Brighton or from Eastbourne. There were three gaily dressed
women, all young and beautiful, one of them with a Peking
spaniel upon her lap. With them were a rakish-looking elderly
man and a young aristocrat, his eyeglass still in his eye, his
cigarette burned down to the stub between the fingers of his
begloved hand. Death must have come on them in an instant and
fixed them as they sat. Save that the elderly man had at the
last moment torn out his collar in an effort to breathe, they
might all have been asleep. On one side of the car a waiter with
some broken glasses beside a tray was huddled near the step. On
the other, two very ragged tramps, a man and a woman, lay where
they had fallen, the man with his long, thin arm still
outstretched, even as he had asked for alms in his lifetime. One
instant of time had put aristocrat, waiter, tramp, and dog upon
one common footing of inert and dissolving protoplasm.
I remember another singular picture, some miles on the London
side of Sevenoaks. There is a large convent upon the left, with
a long, green slope in front of it. Upon this slope were
assembled a great number of school children, all kneeling at
prayer. In front of them was a fringe of nuns, and higher up the
slope, facing towards them, a single figure whom we took to be
the Mother Superior. Unlike the pleasure-seekers in the
motor-car,
these people seemed to have had warning of their danger and
to have died beautifully together, the teachers and the taught,
assembled for their last common lesson.
My mind is still stunned by that terrific experience, and I
grope vainly for means of expression by which I can reproduce
the emotions which we felt. Perhaps it is best and wisest not to
try, but merely to indicate the facts. Even Summerlee and
Challenger were crushed, and we heard nothing of our companions
behind us save an occasional whimper from the lady. As to Lord
John, he was too intent upon his wheel and the difficult task of
threading his way along such roads to have time or inclination
for conversation. One phrase he used with such wearisome
iteration that it stuck in my memory and at last almost made me
laugh as a comment upon the day of doom.
"Pretty doin's! What!"
That was his ejaculation as each fresh tremendous combination of
death and disaster displayed itself before us. "Pretty doin's!
What!" he cried, as we descended the station hill at
Rotherfield, and it was still "Pretty doin's! What!" as we
picked our way through a wilderness of death in the High Street
of Lewisham and the Old Kent Road.
It was here that we received a sudden and amazing shock. Out of
the window of a humble corner house there appeared a fluttering
handkerchief waving at the end of a long, thin human arm. Never
had the sight of unexpected death caused our hearts to stop and
then throb so wildly as did this amazing indication of life.
Lord John ran the motor to the curb, and in an instant we had
rushed through the open door of the house and up the staircase
to the second-floor front room from which the signal proceeded.
A very old lady sat in a chair by the open window, and close to
her, laid across a second chair, was a cylinder of oxygen,
smaller but of the same shape as those which had saved our own
lives. She turned her thin, drawn, bespectacled face toward us
as we crowded in at the doorway.
"I feared that I was abandoned here forever," said she, "for I
am an invalid and cannot stir."
"Well, madam," Challenger answered, "it is a lucky chance that
we happened to pass."
"I have one all-important question to ask you," said she.
"Gentlemen, I beg that you will be frank with me. What effect
will
these events have upon London and North-Western Railway shares?"
We should have laughed had it not been for the tragic eagerness
with which she listened for our answer. Mrs. Burston, for that
was her name, was an aged widow, whose whole income depended
upon a small holding of this stock. Her life had been regulated
by the rise and fall of the dividend, and she could form no
conception of existence save as it was affected by the quotation
of her shares. In vain we pointed out to her that all the money
in the world was hers for the taking and was useless when taken.
Her old mind would not adapt itself to the new idea, and she
wept loudly over her vanished stock. "It was all I had," she
wailed. "If that is gone I may as well go too."
Amid her lamentations we found out how this frail old plant had
lived where the whole great forest had fallen. She was a
confirmed invalid and an asthmatic. Oxygen had been prescribed
for her malady, and a tube was in her room at the moment of the
crisis. She had naturally inhaled some as had been her habit
when there was a difficulty with her breathing. It had given her
relief, and by doling out her supply she had managed to survive
the night. Finally she had fallen asleep and been awakened by
the buzz of our motor-car. As it was impossible to take her on
with us, we saw that she had all necessaries of life and promised
to communicate with her in a couple of days at the latest. So we
left her, still weeping bitterly over her vanished stock.
As we approached the Thames the block in the streets became
thicker and the obstacles more bewildering. It was with
difficulty that we made our way across London Bridge. The
approaches to it upon the Middlesex side were choked from end to
end with frozen traffic which made all further advance in that
direction impossible. A ship was blazing brightly alongside one
of the wharves near the bridge, and the air was full of drifting
smuts and of a heavy acrid smell of burning. There was a cloud
of dense smoke somewhere near the Houses of Parliament, but it
was impossible from where we were to see what was on fire.
"I don't know how it strikes you," Lord John remarked as he
brought his engine to a standstill, "but it seems to me the
country is more cheerful than the town. Dead London is gettin'
on my nerves. I'm for a cast round and then gettin' back to
Rotherfield."
"I confess that I do not see what we can hope for here," said
Professor Summerlee.
"At the same time," said Challenger, his great voice booming
strangely amid the silence, "it is difficult for us to conceive
that out of seven millions of people there is only this one old
woman who by some peculiarity of constitution or some accident
of occupation has managed to survive this catastrophe."
"If there should be others, how can we hope to find them,
George?" asked the lady. "And yet I agree with you that we
cannot go back until we have tried."
Getting out of the car and leaving it by the curb, we walked
with some difficulty along the crowded pavement of King William
Street and entered the open door of a large insurance office. It
was a corner house, and we chose it as commanding a view in
every direction. Ascending the stair, we passed through what I
suppose to have been the board-room, for eight elderly men were
seated round a long table in the centre of it. The high window
was open and we all stepped out upon the balcony. From it we
could see the crowded city streets radiating in every direction,
while below us the road was black from side to side with the
tops of the motionless taxis. All, or nearly all, had their
heads pointed outwards, showing how the terrified men of the
city had at the last moment made a vain endeavor to rejoin their
families in the suburbs or the country. Here and there amid the
humbler cabs towered the great brass-spangled motor-car of some
wealthy magnate, wedged hopelessly among the dammed stream of
arrested traffic. Just beneath us there was such a one of great
size and luxurious appearance, with its owner, a fat old man,
leaning out, half his gross body through the window, and his
podgy hand, gleaming with diamonds, outstretched as he urged his
chauffeur to make a last effort to break through the press.
A dozen motor-buses towered up like islands in this flood, the
passengers who crowded the roofs lying all huddled together and
across eash others' laps like a child's toys in a nursery. On a
broad lamp pedestal in the centre of the roadway, a burly
policeman was standing, leaning his back against the post in so
natural an attitude that it was hard to realize that he was not
alive, while at his feet there lay a ragged newsboy with his
bundle of papers on the ground beside him. A paper-cart had got
blocked in the crowd, and we could read in large letters, black
upon yellow, "Scene at Lord's. County Match Interrupted." This
must have been the earliest edition, for there were other
placards bearing the legend, "Is It the End? Great Scientist's
Warning." And another, "Is Challenger Justified? Ominous
Rumours."
Challenger pointed the latter placard out to his wife, as it
thrust itself like a banner above the throng. I could see him
throw out his chest and stroke his beard as he looked at it. It
pleased and flattered that complex mind to think that London had
died with his name and his words still present in their
thoughts. His feelings were so evident that they aroused the
sardonic comment of his colleague.
"In the limelight to the last, Challenger," he remarked.
"So it would appear," he answered complacently. "Well," he added
as he looked down the long vista of the radiating streets, all
silent and all choked up with death, "I really see no purpose to
be served by our staying any longer in London. I suggest that we
return at once to Rotherfield and then take counsel as to how we
shall most profitably employ the years which lie before us."
Only one other picture shall I give of the scenes which we
carried back in our memories from the dead city. It is a glimpse
which we had of the interior of the old church of St. Mary's,
which is at the very point where our car was awaiting us.
Picking our way among the prostrate figures upon the steps, we
pushed open the swing door and entered. It was a wonderful
sight. The church was crammed from end to end with kneeling
figures in every posture of supplication and abasement. At the
last dreadful moment, brought suddenly face to face with the
realities of life, those terrific realities which hang over us
even while we follow the shadows, the terrified people had
rushed into those old city churches which for generations had
hardly ever held a congregation. There they huddled as close as
they could kneel, many of them in their agitation still wearing
their hats, while above them in the pulpit a young man in lay
dress had apparently been addressing them when he and they had
been overwhelmed by the same fate. He lay now, like Punch in his
booth, with his head and two limp arms hanging over the ledge of
the pulpit. It was a nightmare, the grey, dusty church, the rows
of agonized figures, the dimness and silence of it all. We moved
about with hushed whispers, walking upon our tip-toes.
And then suddenly I had an idea. At one corner of the church,
near the door, stood the ancient font, and behind it a deep
recess in which there hung the ropes for the bell-ringers. Why
should we not send a message out over London which would attract
to us anyone who might still be alive? I ran across, and pulling
at the list-covered rope, I was surprised to find how difficult
it was to swing the bell. Lord John had followed me.
"By George, young fellah!" said he, pulling off his coat.
"You've
hit on a dooced good notion. Give me a grip and we'll soon have
a move on it."
But, even then, so heavy was the bell that it was not until
Challenger and Summerlee had added their weight to ours that we
heard the roaring and clanging above our heads which told us
that the great clapper was ringing out its music. Far over dead
London resounded our message of comradeship and hope to any
fellow-man surviving. It cheered our own hearts, that strong,
metallic call, and we turned the more earnestly to our work,
dragged two feet off the earth with each upward jerk of the
rope, but all straining together on the downward heave,
Challenger the lowest of all, bending all his great strength to
the task and flopping up and down like a monstrous bull-frog,
croaking with every pull. It was at that moment that an artist
might have taken a picture of the four adventurers, the comrades
of many strange perils in the past, whom fate had now chosen for
so supreme an experience. For half an hour we worked, the sweat
dropping from our faces, our arms and backs aching with the
exertion. Then we went out into the portico of the church and
looked eagerly up and down the silent, crowded streets. Not a
sound, not a motion, in answer to our summons.
"It's no use. No one is left," I cried.
"We can do nothing more," said Mrs. Challenger. "For God's sake,
George, let us get back to Rotherfield. Another hour of this
dreadful, silent city would drive me mad."
We got into the car without another word. Lord John backed her
round and turned her to the south. To us the chapter seemed
closed. Little did we foresee the strange new chapter which was
to open.
