by M. P. Shiel
of which stood anEarly English house of pale brick with copings, plinths, stringcoursesof limestone, and spandrels of carved marble; and some distance from theporch a long table, or series of tables, in the open air, still spreadwith cloths that were like shrouds after a month of burial; and thetable had old foods on it, and some lamps; and all around it, and all onthe lawn, were dead peasants. I seemed to know the house, probably fromsome print which I may have seen, but I could not make out theescutcheon, though I saw from its simplicity that it must be veryancient. Right across the facade spread still some of the letters inevergreens of the motto: 'Many happy returns of the day,' so thatsomeone must have come of age, or something, for inside all was gala,and it was clear that these people had defied a fate which they, ofcourse, foreknew. I went nearly throughout the whole spacious place ofthick-carpeted halls, marbles, and famous oils, antlers and arras, andgilt saloons, and placid large bed-chambers: and it took me an hour.There were here not less than a hundred and eighty people. In the firstof a vista of three large reception-rooms lay what could only have beena number of quadrille parties, for to the _coup d'oeil_ they presented atwo-and-two appearance, made very repulsive by their jewels andevening-dress. I had to steel my heart to go through this house, for Idid not know if these people were looking at me as soon as my back wasturned. Once I was on the very point of flying, for I was going up thegreat central stairway, and there came a pelt of dead leaves against awindow-pane in a corridor just above on the first floor, which thrilledme to the inmost soul. But I thought that if I once fled, they would allbe at me from behind, and I should be gibbering mad long, long before Ireached the outer hall, and so stood my ground, even defiantlyadvancing. In a small dark bedroom in the north wing on the secondfloor--that is to say, at the top of the house--I saw a tall young ladyand a groom, or wood-man, to judge by his clothes, horribly riveted inan embrace on a settee, she with a light coronet on her head inlow-necked dress, and their lipless teeth still fiercely pressedtogether. I collected in a bag a few delicacies from the under-regionsof this house, Lyons sausages, salami, mortadel, apples, roes, raisins,artichokes, biscuits, a few wines, a ham, bottled fruit, pickles,coffee, and so on, with a gold plate, tin-opener, cork-screw, fork, &c.,and dragged them all the long way back to the engine before I could eat.
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My brain was in such a way, that it was several days before theperfectly obvious means of finding my way to London, since I wished togo there, at all occurred to me; and the engine went wandering theintricate railway-system of the south country, I having twice to waterher with a coal-bucket from a pool, for the injector was giving no waterfrom the tank under the coals, and I did not know where to find any neartank-sheds. On the fifth evening, instead of into London, I ran intoGuildford.
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That night, from eleven till the next day, there was a great storm overEngland: let me note it down. And ten days later, on the 17th of themonth came another; and on the 23rd another; and I should be put to itto count the great number since. And they do not resemble Englishstorms, but rather Arctic ones, in a certain very suggestive somethingof personalness, and a carousing malice, and a Tartarus gloom, which Icannot quite describe. That night at Guildford, after wandering about,and becoming very weary, I threw myself upon a cushioned pew in an oldNorman church with two east apses, called St. Mary's, using aBible-cushion for pillow, and placing some distance away a little tinlamp turned low, whose ray served me for _veilleuse_ through the night.Happily I had taken care to close up everything, or, I feel sure, theroof must have gone. Only one dead, an old lady in a chapel on the northside of the chancel, whom I rather mistrusted, was there with me: andthere I lay listening: for, after all, I could not sleep a wink, whileoutside vogued the immense tempest. And I communed with myself,thinking: 'I, poor man, lost in this conflux of infinitudes and vortexof the world, what can become of me, my God? For dark, ah dark, is thewaste void into which from solid ground I am now plunged a millionfathoms deep, the sport of all the whirlwinds: and it were better for meto have died with the dead, and never to have seen the wrath andturbulence of the Ineffable, nor to have heard the thrilling bleaknessof the winds of Eternity, when they pine, and long, and whimper, andwhen they vociferate and blaspheme, and when they expostulate andintrigue and implore, and when they despair and die, which ear of manshould never hear. For they mean to eat me up, I know, these Titanicdarknesses: and soon like a whiff I shall pass away, and leave the worldto them.' So till next morning I lay mumping, with shivers andcowerings: for the shocks of the storm pervaded the locked church to myvery heart; and there were thunders that night, my God, like callingsand laughs and banterings, exchanged between distant hill-tops in Hell.
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'Well, the next morning I went down the steep High Street, and found ayoung nun at the bottom whom I had left the previous evening with anumber of girls in uniform opposite the Guildhall--half-way up thestreet. She must have been spun down, arm over arm, for the wind waswesterly, and whereas I had left her completely dressed to her wimpleand beads, she was now nearly stripped, and her little flock scattered.And branches of trees, and wrecked houses, and reeling clouds of deadleaves were everywhere that wild morning.
This town of Guildford appeared to be the junction of an extraordinarynumber of railway-lines, and before again setting out in the afternoon,when the wind had lulled, having got an A B C guide, and a railway-map,I decided upon my line, and upon a new engine, feeling pretty sure nowof making London, only thirty miles away. I then set out, and about fiveo'clock was at Surbiton, near my aim; I kept on, expecting every fewminutes to see the great city, till darkness fell, and still, atconsiderable risk, I went, as I thought, forward: but no London wasthere. I had, in fact, been on a loop-line, and at Surbiton gone wrongagain; for the next evening I found myself at Wokingham, farther awaythan ever.
I slept on a rug in the passage of an inn called The Rose, for there wasa wild, Russian-looking man, with projecting top-teeth, on a bed in thehouse, whose appearance I did not like, and it was late, and I too tiredto walk further; and the next morning pretty early I set out again, andat 10 A.M. was at Reading.
The notion of navigating the land by precisely the same means as thesea, simple and natural as it was, had not at all occurred to me: but atthe first accidental sight of a compass in a little shop-window near theriver at Reading, my difficulties as to getting to any desired place inthe world vanished once and for all: for a good chart or map, thecompass, a pair of compasses, and, in the case of longer distances, aquadrant, sextant or theodolite, with a piece of paper and pencil, wereall that were necessary to turn an engine into a land-ship, one choosingthe lines that ran nearest the direction of one's course, whenever theydid not run precisely.
Thus provided, I ran out from Reading about seven in the evening, whilethere was still some light, having spent there some nine hours. This wasthe town where I first observed that shocking crush of humanity, whichI afterwards met in every large town west of London. Here, I should say,the English were quite equal in number to the foreigners: and there wereenough of both, God knows: for London must have poured many here. Therewere houses, in every room of which, and on the stairs, the deadactually overlay each other, and in the streets before them were pointswhere only on flesh, or under carriages, was it possible to walk. I wentinto the great County Gaol, from which, as I had read, the prisoners hadbeen released two weeks before-hand, and there I found the same pressedcondition, cells occupied by ten or twelve, the galleries continuouslyrough-paved with faces, heads, and old-clothes-shops of robes; and inthe parade-ground, against one wall, a mass of human stuff, like toughgrey clay mixed with rags and trickling black gore, where a crush as ofhydraulic power must have acted. At a corner between a gate and a wallnear the biscuit-factory of this town I saw a boy, whom I believe tohave been blind, standing jammed, at his wrist a chain-ring, and, at theend of the chain, a dog; from his hap-hazard pos
ture I conjectured thathe, and chain, and dog had been lifted from the street, and placed so,by the storm of the 7th of the month; and what made it very curious wasthat his right arm pointed a little outward just over the dog, so that,at the moment when I first sighted him, he seemed a drunken fellowsetting his dog at me. In fact, all the dead I found much mauled andstripped and huddled: and the earth seemed to be making an abortiveeffort to sweep her streets.
Well, some little distance from Reading I saw a big flower-seed farm,looking dead in some plots, and in others quite rank: and here again,fluttering quite near the engine, two little winged aurelians in thequiet evening air. I went on, passing a great number of crowded trainson the down-line, two of them in collision, and very broken up, and oneexploded engine; even the fields and cuttings on either hand of the linehad a rather populous look, as if people, when trains and vehiclesfailed, had set to trudging westward in caravans and
