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The War of the Worlds
Chapter 24. THE MAN ON PUTNEY HILL
I spent the night in the inn at the top of Putney Hill, sleeping in a made bed since my flight to Leatherhead.
I won't tell the needless trouble I had breaking into that house.
Afterwards I found the front door was on the latch.
I won't tell how I searched every room for food.
I was almost in despair when I found a rat-gnawed crust and two tins of pineapple.
They were in what seemed to be a servant's bedroom.
The place had been already searched and emptied.
In the bar I afterwards found some biscuits and sandwiches that had been overlooked.
I couldn't eat the sandwiches, they were too rotten.
But the biscuits not only stopped my hunger, but filled my pockets.
I lit no lamps, fearing some Martian might come beating that part of London for food in the night.
Before I went to bed I had an interval of restlessness.
And I moved from window to window, peering out for some sign of these monsters.
I slept little, As I lay in bed I found myself thinking consecutively.
I don't remember doing that since my last argument with the curate.
During all the time in between, my mental condition had been a hurrying succession of vague emotional states or a sort of stupid receptivity.
But in the night my brain, helped I suppose by the food I had eaten, grew clear again, and I thought.
Three things struggled for possession of my mind, the killing of the curate, the whereabouts of the Martians, and the possible fate of my wife.
The first gave me no sensation of horror or remorse to recall.
I saw it simply as a thing done, a memory that was extremely unpleasant but without the quality of remorse.
I saw myself then as I see myself now, driven stepwise toward that hasty blow, a creature of accidents leading inevitably to it.
I felt no condemnation, yet the memory, static, unprogressive, haunted me.
In the silence of the night, I felt the nearness of God.
It came into the stillness and darkness.
I stood my trial for that moment of anger and fear.
I went back over every step of our conversation.
It started when I found him crouching beside me.
He pointed to the fire and smoke from the ruins of Weybridge.
He didn't care about my thirst, we had been incapable of working together.
Grim chance had taken no notice of that.
If I had known what would happen, I'd have left him at Halliford.
But I didn't know, and crime is to know and do.
And I set this down as I have set all this story down, as it was.
There were no witnesses, I might have hidden all these things.
But I set it down, and the reader must form his judgment as he'll.
By effort I put aside the picture of the body lying on the ground.
Then I faced the problem of the Martians and the possible fate of my wife.
For the Martians I had no information.
I could imagine a hundred things, and so, unhappily, I could for my wife.
And suddenly that night became terrible, I found myself sitting up in bed, staring at the dark.
I found myself praying that the Heat-Ray might have suddenly and painlessly taken her out of existence.
Since the night of my return from Leatherhead I hadn't prayed.
I had said prayers, fetish prayers, had prayed like a savage saying magic words when I was in extreme danger.
But now I prayed truly, pleading steadily and sanely, face to face with the darkness of God, Strange night!
Strangest was that, at dawn, I who had talked with God crept out of the house like a rat.
I was a creature scarcely larger, an inferior animal, a thing that for any passing whim of our masters might be hunted and killed.
Perhaps they also prayed confidently to God.
Surely, if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity.
Pity for those witless souls that suffer our rule.
The morning was bright and fine, and the eastern sky glowed pink, and was decorated with little golden clouds.
A road runs from the top of Putney Hill to Wimbledon.
On it were poor remains of the panic flood.
That flood must have poured toward London on Sunday night after the fighting began.
There was a little two-wheeled cart with the name of Thomas Lobb, Greengrocer, New Malden, with a smashed wheel and an abandoned tin trunk.
There was a straw hat trampled into the now hardened mud.
And at the top of West Hill there was a lot of blood-stained glass about the overturned water trough.
My movements were slow, my plans of the vaguest.
I had an idea of going to Leatherhead, though I knew that there I had the poorest chance of finding my wife.
Certainly, unless death had overtaken them suddenly, my cousins and she'd have fled from there.
But it seemed to me I might find or learn there where the Surrey people had fled.
I knew I wanted to find my wife, that my heart ached for her and the world of men.
But I had no clear idea how the finding might be done.
I was also sharply aware now of my intense loneliness.
From the corner I went, under cover of a thicket of trees and bushes, to the edge of Wimbledon Common, stretching wide and far.
That dark area was lit in patches by yellow gorse and broom.
There was no red weed to be seen.
And as I moved, hesitating, on the edge of the open, the sun rose, flooding it all with light and life.
I came upon a busy swarm of little frogs in a swampy place among the trees.
I stopped to look at them, learning a lesson from their strong determination to live.
And soon, turning suddenly, with an odd feeling of being watched, I saw something crouching among a clump of bushes.
I stood looking at it, I made a step towards it, and it rose up and became a man armed with a cutlass.
I approached him slowly, he stood silent and still, looking at me.
As I drew nearer I saw he was dressed in clothes as dusty and dirty as my own.
He looked, indeed, as though he had been dragged through a drain.
Nearer, I could see the green slime of ditches mixing with the pale drab of dried clay and shiny, coaly patches.
His black hair fell over his eyes, and his face was dark and dirty and sunken, so that at first I didn't recognise him.
There was a red cut across the lower part of his face.
"Stop!" he cried, when I was within ten yards of him, and I stopped.
His voice was hoarse from shouting and dust, raw with fever and strain.
"Where do you come from?" he said.
I thought for a moment, examining his dusty face and trying to place him.
"I come from Mortlake," I said.
"I was buried near the pit the Martians made about their cylinder. I have worked my way out and escaped."
"There's no food about here," he said.
"This is my country."
"All this hill down to the river, and back to Clapham, and up to the edge of the common."
"There's only food for one."
"Which way are you going?"
I answered slowly, my voice hoarse and uncertain, unsure of what I said.
"I don't know," I said.
"I have been buried in the ruins of a house thirteen or fourteen days. I don't know what has happened."
He looked at me doubtfully, then started, and looked with a changed expression.
"I've no wish to stay about here," said I.
"I think I shall go to Leatherhead, for my wife was there."
He shot out a pointing finger toward me, as if making an accusation.
"It's you," said he.
"The man from Woking. And you weren't killed at Weybridge?"
I recognised him at the same moment.
"You're the artilleryman who came into my garden."
"Good luck!" he said.
"We're lucky ones! Fancy you!" He put out a hand, and I took it.
"I crawled up a drain," he said.
"But they didn't kill everyone."
"And after they went away I got off towards Walton across the fields."
"But it's not sixteen days altogether, and your hair is grey." He looked over his shoulder suddenly.
"Only a rook," he said.
"One gets to know that birds have shadows these days. This is a bit open. Let us crawl under those bushes and talk."
"Have you seen any Martians?" I said.
"Since I crawled out."
"They've gone away across London," he said.
"I guess they've got a bigger camp there."
"Of a night, all over there, Hampstead way, the sky is alive with their lights."
"It's like a great city, and in the glare you can just see them moving."
"By daylight you can't."
"But nearer, I haven't seen them." He counted on his fingers.
"Five days. Then I saw a couple across Hammersmith way carrying something big. And the night before last." He stopped and spoke impressively.
"It was just a matter of lights, but it was something up in the air. I believe they've built a flying-machine, and are learning to fly."
I stopped, on hands and knees, for we had come to the bushes.
"Fly!"
"Yes," he said, "fly."
I went on into a little shelter of leaves, and sat down.
"It's all over with humanity," I said.
"If they can do that they'll simply go round the world."
He nodded slowly, eyes fixed on the ground as if expecting some terrible truth.
"They'll. But it'll relieve things over here a bit. And besides." He looked at me.
"Aren't you satisfied it's up with humanity? I'm. We're down. We're beat."
I stared, Strange as it may seem, I hadn't arrived at this fact.
A fact perfectly obvious as soon as he spoke.
I had still held a vague hope.
Rather, I had kept a lifelong habit of mind, he repeated his words.
"We're beat." They carried complete certainty.
"It's all over," he said.
"They've lost one, just one, yet they've made their footing good and crippled the greatest power in the world and walked over us."
"The death of that one at Weybridge was an accident, and these are only pioneers who kept on coming like green stars."
"I've seen none these five or six days, but I have no doubt they're falling somewhere every night, nothing's to be done, we're under, we're beat"!
I made him no answer, I sat staring before me, trying in vain to think of some opposing thought.
"This isn't a war," said the artilleryman.
"It never was a war, any more than there's war between man and ants."
Suddenly I remembered the night in the observatory.
"After the tenth shot they fired no more. At least, until the first cylinder came."
"How do you know?" said the artilleryman.
I explained, he sat silent for a moment and pondered what I had said.
"Something wrong with the gun," he said.
But what if there's?
They'll get it right again, and even if there's a delay, how can that change the end?
It's just men and ants, ants build cities, live, have wars and revolutions, and then go out of the way, which is what we are now.
They'll get it right again, and even if there's a delay, how can that change the end?
It's just men and ants, ants build cities, live, have wars and revolutions, and then go out of the way, which is what we are now.
"Yes," I said.
"We're eatable ants."
We sat for a long moment, looking at each other in troubled, silent understanding.
"And what will they do with us?" I said.
"That's what I've been thinking," he said.
"That's what I've been thinking, and after Weybridge I went south to see what was happening."
"Most people were screaming and exciting themselves, but I'm not fond of screaming."
"I've been near death once or twice, and I'm no ornamental soldier, at best and worst, death is just death."
"It's the man who keeps on thinking that comes through, and I saw everyone tracking away south, so I said, 'Food won't last this way."
"I turned right back. I went for the Martians like a sparrow goes for man. All round."
He waved a hand to the horizon.
"They're starving in heaps, running, stepping on each other."
He saw my face, and stopped awkwardly.
"No doubt lots who had money have gone away to France," he said.
He seemed to hesitate whether to apologise, met my eyes, and went on.
"There's food all about here."
"Canned things in shops."
"Wines, spirits, mineral waters."
"And the water mains and drains are empty."
"Well, I was telling you what I was thinking. 'Here's intelligent things,' I said, 'and it seems they want us for food."
"First, they'll smash us up."
"Ships, machines, guns, cities, all the order and organisation."
"All that'll go."
"If we were the size of ants we might pull through."
"But we're not."
"It's all too big to stop."
"That's the first certainty.' Right?"
I agreed, feeling the hopeless truth settle upon me like a heavy weight.
"It's. I've thought it out. Very well,"
"Then . Next. At present we're caught as we're wanted. A Martian has only to go a few miles to get a crowd on the run."
"I saw one, one day, out by Wandsworth, picking houses to pieces and searching among the wreckage."
"They won't keep on doing that," he said.
"As soon as they've settled our guns and ships and smashed our railways, they'll begin catching us systematically," he said.
"Picking the best and storing us in cages and things. Lord! They haven't begun on us yet, don't you see that?" he said.
"Not begun!" I exclaimed.
"Not begun."
"All that's happened so far is through our not having the sense to keep quiet, worrying them with guns and such foolishness."
"We lost our heads and rushed off in crowds to places with no more safety than where we were."
"They do not want to bother us yet, they are making their things, the things they could not bring with them."
"They are getting ready for the rest of their people."
"They must stop our blind rushing, we must arrange ourselves for the new state of affairs, for cities, nations, civilisation, and progress are over, we're beat."
"But if that's so, what's there to live for?"
The artilleryman looked at me for a moment.
"There won't be any more blessed concerts for a million years or so."
"There won't be any Royal Academy of Arts, and no nice little meals at restaurants."
"If it's amusement you're after, I reckon the game is up."
"If you've got any drawing-room manners or a dislike to eating peas with a knife or dropping aitches, you'd better throw them away."
"They aren't any further use."
"You mean."
"I mean that men like me are going on living."
"For the sake of the breed."
"I tell you, I'm grim set on living."
"And if I'm not mistaken, you'll show what insides you've got, too, before long."
"We aren't going to be killed off."
"I don't mean to be caught either, and tamed and fattened and bred like a thundering ox. Ugh! Fancy those brown creepers!"
"You don't mean to say."
"I do. I'm going on under their feet, and I've got it planned and thought out, for we men are beat and don't know enough."
"We've got to learn before we've got a chance, and we've got to live and keep independent while we learn, see, that's what has to be done."