CHAPTER XXII.
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.”
See you tomorrow for CHAPTER XXIII: IN DRURY LANE
