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IN THE EMPORIUM

 

 

"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. 'He _must_

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."

 

CHAPTER XXIII

 


Date: 2015-01-02; view: 742


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