“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. ’Hemust 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.”
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