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26 - Wreckage - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells · Classic Sci Fi Books - Daily

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  Chapter nine Wreckage. And now comes the strangest thing in my story. Yet
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  perhaps it is not altogether strange. I remember clearly and coldly and vividly all
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  that I did that day, until the time that I stood weeping and praising
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  God upon the summit of Primrose Hill, and then I forget of the next
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  three days. I know nothing I have learned since that, so far from
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  my being the first discoverer of the Martian overthrow, several such wanderers as myself
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  had already discovered this. On the previous night. One man the first had
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  gone to Saint Martin's La Grande, and while I sheltered in the cabman's hut,
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  had contrived to telegraph to Paris. Thence the joyful news had flashed all
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  over the world. A thousand cities, chilled by ghastly apprehensions, suddenly flashed
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  into frantic illuminations. They knew of it in Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester,
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  Birmingham. At the time when I stood upon the verge of the pit,
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  already men weeping with joy, as I have heard, shouting and staying their
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  work to shake hands and shout, were making up trains, even as near
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  as crew to descend upon London. The church bells that had ceased a fortnight
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  since suddenly caught the news. Until all England was bell ringing. Men on
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  cycles, lean faced, unkempt, scorched along every country lane, shouting of
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  unhoped deliverance, shouting to gaunt staring faces of despair. And for the food
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  across the channel, across the Irish Sea, across the Atlantic, corn bread
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  and meat were tearing. To our relief, All the shipping in the world
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  seemed going London Wood in those days. But of all this I have no
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  memory. I drifted a demented man. I found myself in a house of
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  kindly people who had found me on the third day, wandering, weeping,
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  and raving through the streets of Saint John's Wood. They have told me since
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  that I was singing some insane doggerel about the last man left alive, Hurrah,
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  the last man left alive. Trouble as they were with their own affairs,
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  These people, whose name, much as I would like to express my
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  gratitude to them, I may not even give here, nevertheless, cumbered themselves
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  with me, sheltered me and protected me from myself. Apparently they had learned
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  something of my story from me during the days of my lapse. Very gently,
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  when my mind was assured again did they break to me what they had
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  learned of the fate of Leatherhead. Two days after I was imprisoned. It
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  had been destroyed, with every soul in it by a Martian. He had
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  swept it out of existence, as it seemed, without any provocation, as
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  a boy might crush an ant hill in the mere wantonness of power. I
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  was a lonely man, and they were very kind to me. I was
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  a lonely man and a sad one, and they bore with me. I
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  remained with them four days after my recovery. All that time I felt a
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  vague, a growing craving to look once more on whatever remained of the little
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  life that seemed so happy and bright in my past. It was a mere,
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  hopeless desire to feast upon my misery. They dissuaded me. They did
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  all they could to divert me from this morbidity. But at last I could
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  resist the impulse no longer, and, promising faithfully to return to them,
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  and parting as I will confess from these four day friends with tears, I
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  went out again into the streets that had lately been so dark and strange and
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  empty. Already they were busy with returning people. In places even there were
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  shops open, and I saw a drinking fountain running water. I remember how
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  mockingly bright the day seemed as I went back on my melancholy pilgrimage to the
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  little house at Woking. How busy the streets and vivid the moving life about
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  me. So many people were abroad everywhere, busied in a thousand activities,
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  that it seemed incredible that any great proportion of the population could have been slain.
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  But then I noticed how yellow were the skins of the people I met,
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  how shaggy the hair of the men, how large and bright their eyes,
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  and that every other man still wore his dirty rags. Their faces seemed
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  all with one of two expressions, a leaping exultation and energy, or a
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  grim resolution. Save for the expression of the faces, London seemed a city
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  of tramps. The vestries were indiscriminately distributing bread sent us by the French government.
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  The ribs of the few horses showed dismally haggard. Special constables with white
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  badges stood at the corners of every street. I saw little of the mischief
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  wrought by the Martians until I reached Wellington Street, and there I saw the
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  red weed clambering over the buttresses of Waterloo Bridge. At the corner of the
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  bridge, too, I saw one of the common contrasts of that grotesque time,
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  a sheet of paper flaunting against a thicket of the red weed, transfixed
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  by a stick that kept it in place. It was the placard of the
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  first newspaper to resume publication, the Daily Mail. I bought a copy for
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  a blackened shilling I found in my pocket. Most of it was in blank,
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  but the solitary compositor who did the thing had amused himself by making a
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  grotesque scheme of advertisement stereo on the back page. The matter he printed was
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  emotional. The news organization had not as yet found its way back. I
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  learned nothing fresh, except that already in one week the examination of the Martian
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  mechanisms had yielded astonishing results. Among other things, the article assured me what
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  I did not believe at the time, that the secret of flying was discovered
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  At Waterloo. I found the free trains that were taking people to their homes.
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  The first rush was already over there. Were few people the train,
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  and I was in no mood for casual conversation. I got a compartment to
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  myself and sat with folded arms, looking grayly at the sunlit devastation that flowed
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  past the windows. And just outside the terminus the train jolted over temporary rails,
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  and on either side of the railway the houses were blackened ruins. To
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  Clapham Junction, the face of London was grimy with powder of the black smoke
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  in spite of two days of thunder storms and rain. And at Clapham Junction
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  the line had been wrecked again. There were hundreds of out of work clerks
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  and shopmen working side by side with the customary navvies, and we were jolted
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  over a hasty relaying. All down the line from there the aspect of the
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  country was gaunt and unfamiliar. Wimbledon particularly had suffered. Walton, by virtue
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  of its unburned pine woods, seemed the least hurt of any place along the
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  line. The Wandle, the Mole, every little stream was a heaped mass
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  of red weed in appearance between butcher's meat and pickled cabbage. The Surrey pine
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  woods were too dry, however, for the festoons of the Red Climber.
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  Beyond Wimbledon, within sight of the line in certain nursery grounds were the heaped
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  masses of earth about the sixth cylinder. A number of people were standing over
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  it, and some sappers were busy in the midst of it. Over it
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  flaunted a union jack, flapping cheerfully in the morning breeze. The nursery grounds
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  were everywhere crimson, with the weed a wide expanse of livid colour, cut
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  with purple shadows, and very painful to the eye. One's gaze went with
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  infinite relief from the scorched grays and sullen reds of the foreground to the blue
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  green softness of the eastward hills. The line on the London side of Woking
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  Station was still undergoing repair, so I descended at Byfleet Station and took the
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  road to Maybury, past the place where I and the artilleryman had talked to
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  the Huzzahs, and on by the spot where the Martian had appeared to me
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  in the thunder storm. Here, moved by curiosity, I turned aside to
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  find among a tangle of red fronds, the warped and broken dog cart with
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  the whitened bones of the horse scattered and gnawed. For a time I stood
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  regarding these vestiges. Then I returned through the pine wood, neck high with
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  red weed, here and there to find the landlord of the spotted dog had
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  already found burial, and so came home past the college arms. A man
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  standing at an open cottage door greeted me by name. As I passed.
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  I looked at my head house with a quick flash of hope that faded immediately.
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  The door had been forced, It was unfast and was opening slowly.
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  As I approached it slammed again. The curtains of my study fluttered out of
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  the open window from which I and the artilleryman had watched the dawn. No
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  one had closed it, since the smashed bushes were just as I had left
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  them nearly four weeks ago. I stumbled into the hall and the house felt
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  empty. The stair carpet was ruffled and discolored, where I had crouched,
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  soaked to the skin from the thunder storm the night of the catastrophe. Our
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  muddy footsteps I saw still went up the stairs. I followed them to my
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  study and found lying on my writing table, still with the sullenite paper weight
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  upon it the sheet of work I had left on the afternoon of the opening
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  of the cylinder. For a space I stood reading over my abandoned arguments.
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  It was a paper on the probable development of moral ideas with the development of
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  the civilizing process. And the last sentence was the opening of a prophecy in
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  about two hundred years, I had written, we may expect. The sentence
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  ended abruptly. I remembered my inability to fix my mind that morning, scarcely
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  a month gone by, and how I had broken off to get my daily
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  chronicle from the newsboy. I remembered how I went down to the garden gate
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  as he came along, and how I had listened to his odd story of
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  men from Mars. I came down and went into the dining room. There
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  with the mutton and the bread, both far gone now in decay, and
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  a beer bottle overturned just as I and the artilleryman had left them. My
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  home was desolate. I perceived the folly of the faint hope I had cherished
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  so long. And then a strange thing occurred. It is no use,
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  said a voice. The house is deserted. No one has been here these
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  ten days. Do not stay here to torment yourself. No one escaped but
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  you. I was startled, had I spoken my thought aloud? I turned,
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  and the French window was open behind me. I made a step to
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  it and stood looking out, and there, amazed and afraid. Even as
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  I stood amazed and afraid were my cousin and my wife. My wife,
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  white and tearless. She gave a faint cry. I came, she said,
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  I knew new. She put her hand to her throat, swayed.
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  I made a step forward and caught her in my arms. End of Section
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  twenty six.