The War of the Wenuses by C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
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C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas >> The War of the Wenuses
Pondering on this news, I made for Parliament Hill, by way of West Hill
and Milfield Lane. On the top I paused to survey London at my feet, and,
to get the fullest benefit of the invigorating breeze, removed my hat.
But the instant I did so, I was aware of a sharp pain on my scalp and
the aroma of singed hair. Lifting my hand to the wounded place, I
discovered that I had been shaved perfectly clean, as with a Heat Razor.
The truth rushed upon me: I had come within the range of the
Mash-Glance, and had been saved from total dissolution only by
intervening masonry protecting my face and body.
To leave the Hill was the work of an instant. I passed through John
Street to Hampstead Road, along Belsize Avenue and Buckland Crescent to
Belsize Road, and so to Canterbury Road and Kilburn Lane. Here I met a
fourth newspaper boy loaded with copies of the _St. James' Gazette_. He
offered me one for seven-and-sixpence, or two for half a sovereign, but
it seemed to me I had read enough.
Turning into Ladbroke Grove Road I quickly reached Notting Hill, and
stealthily entered my house in Campden Hill Gardens ten minutes later.
BOOK II.
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 mass, 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
dispassionate, 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 succumb to them.
Strange as it may seem, the man who succumbs rarely if ever is
victorious in the long run. To disguise my sex and identity--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 quantity 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 buttons 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 space 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 attitude any longer; and applying my
mouth to the embouchure of the pipette, warbled faintly in an exquisite
falsetto:
"Ulat tanalareezul 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 Classical 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 classics, 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 sturdy 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 hoarse, 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?"
"That's me," he said; "but Lord, how you've changed. Only a fortnight
ago, and now you're stone-bald!"
I stared, marvelling at his gift of perception.
"What have you been living on?" I asked.
"Oh," he said, "immature potatoes and Burgundy" (I give the catalogue so
precisely because it has nothing to do with the story), "uncooked steak
and limp lettuces, precocious carrots and Bartlett pears, and thirteen
varieties of fluid beef, which I cannot name except at the usual
advertisement rates."
"But can you sleep after it?" said I.
"Blimy! yes," he replied; "I'm fairly--what is it?--eupeptic."
"It's all over with mankind," I muttered.
"It _is_ all over," he replied. "The Wenuses 'ave only lost one
Crinoline, just one, and they keep on coming; they're falling somewhere
every night. Nothing's to be done. We're beat!"
I made no answer. I sat staring, pulverised by the colossal
intellectuality of this untutored private. He had attended only three of
my lectures, and had never taken any notes.
"This isn't a war," he resumed; "it never was a war. These 'ere Wenuses
they wants to be Mas, that's the long and the short of it. Only----"
"Yes?" I said, more than ever impressed by the man's pyramidal
intuition.
"They can't stand the climate. They're too--what is it?--exotic."
We sat staring at each other.
"And what will they do?" I humbly asked, grovelling unscientifically at
his feet.
"That's what I've been thinking," said the gunner. "I ain't an
ornamental soldier, but I've a good deal of cosmic kinetic optimism, and
it's the cosmic kinetic optimist what comes through. Now these Wenuses
don't want to wipe _us_ all out. It's the women they want to
exterminate. They want to collar the men, and you'll see that after a
bit they'll begin catching us, picking the best, and feeding us up in
cages and men-coops."
"Good heavens!" I exclaimed; "but you _are_ a man of genius indeed," and
I flung my arms around his neck.
"Steady on!" he said; "don't be so--what is it?--ebullient."
"And what then?" I asked, when my emotion had somewhat subsided.
"Then," said he, "the others must be wary. You and I are mean little
cusses: we shall get off. They won't want _us_. And what do we do? Take
to the drains!" He looked at me triumphantly.
Quailing before his glory of intellect, I fainted.
"Are you sure?" I managed to gasp, on recovering consciousness.
"Yes," he said, "sewer. The drains are the places for you and me. Then
we shall play cricket--a narrow drain makes a wonderful pitch--and read
the good books--not poetry swipes, and stuff like that, but good books.
That's where men like you come in. Your books are the sort: _The Time
Machine_, and _Round the World in Eighty Days, The Wonderful Wisit_, and
_From the Earth to the Moon_, and----"
"Stop!" I cried, nettled at his stupidity. "You are confusing another
author and myself."
"Was I?" he said, "that's rum, but I always mix you up with the man you
admire so much--Jools Werne. And," he added with a sly look, "you _do_
admire him, don't you?"
In a flash I saw the man plain. He was a critic. I knew my duty at once:
I must kill him. I did not want to kill him, because I had already
killed enough--the curate in the last book, and the Examiner and the
landlord of the "Dog and Measles" in this,--but an author alone with a
critic in deserted London! What else could I do?
He seemed to divine my thought.
"There's some immature champagne in the cellar," he said.
"No," I replied, thinking aloud; "too slow, too slow."
He endeavoured to pacify me.
"Let me teach you a game," he said.
He taught me one--he taught me several. We began with "Spadille," we
ended with "Halma" and "Snap," for parliament points. That is to say,
instead of counters we used M.Ps. Grotesque and foolish as this will
seem to the sober reader, it is absolutely true. Strange mind of man!
that, with our species being mashed all around, we could sit following
the chance of this painted pasteboard.
Afterwards we tried "Tiddleywinks" and "Squails," and I beat him so
persistently that both sides of the House were mine and my geniality
entirely returned. He might have been living to this hour had he not
mentioned something about the brutality of _The Island of Dr. Moreau_.
That settled it. I had heard that absurd charge once too often, and
raising my Blaisdell binaural stethoscope I leaped upon him. With one
last touch of humanity, I turned the orbicular ivory plate towards him
and struck him to the earth.
At that moment fell the Fourth Crinoline.
III.
THE TEA-TRAY IN WESTBOURNE GROVE.
My wife's plan of campaign was simple but masterly. She would enlist an
army of enormous bulk, march on the Wenuses in Westbourne Grove, and
wipe them from the face of the earth.
Such was my wife's project. My wife's first step was to obtain, as the
nucleus of attack, those women to whom the total loss of men would be
most disastrous. They flocked to my wife's banner, which was raised in
Regent's Park, in front of the pavilion where tea is provided by a
maternal County Council.
My mother, who joined the forces and therefore witnessed the muster,
tells me it was a most impressive sight. My wife, in a nickel-plated
Russian blouse, trimmed with celluloid pom-pons, aluminium pantaloons,
and a pair of Norwegian _Skis_, looked magnificent.
An old Guard, primed with recent articles from the _Queen_ by Mrs. Lynn
Linton, marched in a place of honour; and a small squadron of confirmed
misogynists, recruited from the Athenaeum, the Travellers' and the
Senior United Service Clubs, who professed themselves to be completely
Mash-proof, were in charge of the ambulance. The members of the Ladies'
Kennel Club, attended by a choice selection of carefully-trained Chows,
Schipperkes, Whippets and Griffons, garrisoned various outposts.
The Pioneers joined my wife's ranks with some hesitation. The prospects
of a world depleted of men did not seem (says my mother) to fill them
with that consternation which was evident in my wife and her more
zealous lieutenants. But after a heated discussion at the Club-house,
which was marked by several resignations, it was decided to join in the
attack. A regiment of Pioneers therefore, marching to the battle-chant
of Walt Whitman's "Pioneers, O Pioneers!" brought up (says my mother)
the rear.
The march of my wife's troops was a most impressive sight. Leaving
Regent's Park by the Clarence Gate, they passed down Upper Baker Street,
along Marylebone Road into Edgware Road. Here the troops divided. One
detachment hastened to Queen's Road, by way of Praed Street, Craven
Road, Craven Hill, Leinster Terrace and the Bayswater Road, with the
purpose of approaching Whiteley's from the South; the other half marched
direct to Westbourne Grove, along Paddington Green Road to Bishop's
Road.
Thus, according to my wife's plan, the Wenuses would be between the two
wings of the army and escape would be impossible.
Everything was done as my wife had planned. The two detachments reached
their destination almost simultaneously. My wife, with the northern
wing, was encamped in Bishop's Road, Westbourne Grove and Pickering
Place. My mother, with the southern wing (my wife shrewdly kept the
command in the family), filled Queen's Road from Whiteley's to Moscow
Road. My mother, who has exquisite taste in armour, had donned a superb
Cinque-Cento cuirass, a short Zouave jacket embroidered with sequins,
accordion-pleated bloomers, luminous leggings, brown Botticelli boots
and one tiger-skin spat.
Between the two hosts was the empty road before the Universal Provider's
Emporium. The Wenuses were within the building. By the time my wife's
warriors were settled and had completed the renovation of their toilets
it was high noon.
My wife had never imagined that any delay would occur: she had expected
to engage with the enemy at once and have done with it, and consequently
brought no provisions and no protection from the sun, which poured down
a great bulk of pitiless beams.
The absence of Wenuses and of any sound betokening their activity was
disconcerting. However, my wife thought it best to lay siege to
Whiteley's rather than to enter the establishment.
The army therefore waited.
The heat became intense. My wife and her soldiers began to feel the
necessity for refreshment. My wife is accustomed to regular meals. The
sun grew in strength as the time went on, and my wife gave the order to
sit at ease, which was signalled to my mother. My mother tells me that
she was never so pleased in her life.
One o'clock struck; two o'clock; three o'clock; and still no Wenuses.
Faint sounds were now audible from the crockery department, and then a
hissing, which passed by degrees into a humming, a long, loud droning
noise. It resembled as nearly as anything the boiling of an urn at a
tea-meeting, and awoke in the breasts of my wife and her army an intense
and unconquerable longing for tea, which was accentuated as four o'clock
was reached. Still no Wenuses. Another hour dragged wearily on, and the
craving for tea had become positively excruciating when five o'clock
rang out.
At that moment, the glass doors of the crockery department were flung
open, and out poured a procession of Wenuses smiling, said my mother,
with the utmost friendliness, dressed as A.B.C. girls, and bearing trays
studded with cups and saucers.
With the most seductive and ingratiating charm, a cup was handed to my
wife. What to do she did not for the moment know. "Could such a gift be
guileless?" she asked herself. "No." And yet the Wenuses looked
friendly. Finally her martial spirit prevailed and my wife repulsed the
cup, adjuring the rank and file to do the same. But in vain. Every
member of my wife's wing of that fainting army greedily grasped a cup.
Alas! what could they know of the deadly Tea-Tray of the Wenuses?
Nothing, absolutely nothing, such is the disgraceful neglect of science
in our schools and colleges. And so they drank and were consumed.
Meanwhile my mother, at the head of the south wing of the army, which
had been entirely overlooked by the Wenuses, stood watching the
destruction of my wife's host--a figure petrified with alarm and
astonishment. One by one she watched her sisters in arms succumb to the
awful Tea-Tray.
Then it was that this intrepid woman rose to her greatest height.
"Come!" she cried to her Amazons. "Come! They have no more tea left. Now
is the moment ripe."
With these spirited words, my mother and her troops proceeded to charge
down Queen's Road upon the unsuspecting Wenuses.
But they had reckoned without the enemy.
The tumult of the advancing host caught the ear of the Wonderful
Wisitors, and in an instant they had extracted glittering cases of their
crimson cigarettes from their pockets, and lighting them in the strange
fashion I have described elsewhere, they proceeded to puff the smoke
luxuriously into the faces of my mother and her comrades.
Alas! little did these gallant females know of the horrible properties
of the Red Weed. How could they, with our science-teaching in such a
wretched state?
The smoke grew in volume and density, spread and spread, and in a few
minutes the south wing of my wife's army was as supine as the north.
How my wife and mother escaped I shall not say. I make a point of never
explaining the escape of my wife, whether from Martians or Wenuses; but
that night, as Commander-in-Chief, she issued this cataleptic despatch: