Book the First - The Irruption of the Earthlings - Mr. Barnstaple Takes a Holiday

by H.G. Wells

　　Section 1

　　Mr. Barnstaple found himself in urgent need of a holiday, and he hadno one to go with and nowhere to go. He was overworked. And he wastired of home.

　　He was a man of strong natural affections; he loved his familyextremely so that he knew it by heart, and when he was in thesejaded moods it bored him acutely. His three sons, who were allgrowing up, seemed to get leggier and larger every day; they satdown in the chairs he was just going to sit down in; they playedhim off his own pianola; they filled the house with hoarse, vastlaughter at jokes that one couldn't demand to be told; they cut inon the elderly harmless flirtations that had hitherto been one ofhis chief consolations in this vale; they beat him at tennis; theyfought playfully on the landings, and fell downstairs by twos andthrees with an enormous racket. Their hats were everywhere. Theywere late for breakfast. They went to bed every night in a stormof uproar: "Haw, Haw, Haw--bump!" and their mother seemed to likeit. They all cost money, with a cheerful disregard of the factthat everything had gone up except Mr. Barnstaple's earning power.And when he said a few plain truths about Mr. Lloyd George atmeal-times, or made the slightest attempt to raise the tone ofthe table-talk above the level of the silliest persiflage, theirattention wandered ostentatiously....

　　At any rate it _seemed_ ostentatiously.

　　He wanted badly to get away from his family to some place where hecould think of its various members with quiet pride and affection,and otherwise not be disturbed by them....

　　And also he wanted to get away for a time from Mr. Peeve. Thevery streets were becoming a torment to him, he wanted never tosee a newspaper or a newspaper placard again. He was obsessed byapprehensions of some sort of financial and economic smash thatwould make the Great War seem a mere incidental catastrophe. Thiswas because he was sub-editor and general factotum of the Liberal,that well-known organ of the more depressing aspects of advancedthought, and the unvarying pessimism of Mr. Peeve, his chief, wasinfecting him more and more. Formerly it had been possible to putup a sort of resistance to Mr. Peeve by joking furtively about hisgloom with the other members of the staff, but now there were noother members of the staff: they had all been retrenched by Mr.Peeve in a mood of financial despondency. Practically, now, nobodywrote regularly for the Liberal except Mr. Barnstaple and Mr. Peeve.So Mr. Peeve had it all his own way with Mr. Barnstaple. He wouldsit hunched up in the editorial chair, with his hands deep in histrouser pockets, taking a gloomy view of everything, sometimes fortwo hours together. Mr. Barnstaple's natural tendency was towardsa modest hopefulness and a belief in progress, but Mr. Peeve heldvery strongly that a belief in progress was at least six years outof date, and that the brightest hope that remained to Liberalismwas for a good Day of Judgment soon. And having finished the copyof what the staff, when there was a staff, used to call his weeklyindigest, Mr. Peeve would depart and leave Mr. Barnstaple to getthe rest of the paper together for the next week.

　　Even in ordinary times Mr. Peeve would have been hard enough tolive with; but the times were not ordinary, they were full ofdisagreeable occurrences that made his melancholy anticipationsall too plausible. The great coal lock-out had been going on fora month and seemed to foreshadow the commercial ruin of England;every morning brought intelligence of fresh outrages from Ireland,unforgivable and unforgettable outrages; a prolonged droughtthreatened the harvests of the world; the League of Nations, ofwhich Mr. Barnstaple had hoped enormous things in the great daysof President Wilson, was a melancholy and self-satisfied futility;everywhere there was conflict, everywhere unreason; seven-eighthsof the world seemed to be sinking down towards chronic disorderand social dissolution. Even without Mr. Peeve it would have beendifficult enough to have made headway against the facts.

　　Mr. Barnstaple was, indeed, ceasing to secrete hope, and for suchtypes as he, hope is the essential solvent without which there is nodigesting life. His hope had always been in liberalism and generousliberal effort, but he was beginning to think that liberalism wouldnever do anything more for ever than sit hunched up with its handsin its pockets grumbling and peeving at the activities of baser butmore energetic men. Whose scrambling activities would inevitablywreck the world.

　　Night and day now, Mr. Barnstaple was worrying about the world atlarge. By night even more than by day, for sleep was leaving him.And he was haunted by a dreadful craving to bring out a number ofthe Liberal of his very own--to alter it all after Mr. Peeve hadgone away, to cut out all the dyspeptic stuff, the miserable, emptygirding at this wrong and that, the gloating on cruel and unhappythings, the exaggeration of the simple, natural, human misdeedsof Mr. Lloyd George, the appeals to Lord Grey, Lord Robert Cecil,Lord Lansdowne, the Pope, Queen Anne, or the Emperor FrederickBarbarossa (it varied from week to week), to arise and give voiceand form to the young aspirations of a world reborn, and, instead,to fill the number with--Utopia! to say to the amazed readers ofthe Liberal: Here are things that have to be done! Here are thethings we are going to do! What a blow it would be for Mr. Peeveat his Sunday breakfast! For once, too astonished to secreteabnormally, he might even digest that meal!

　　But this was the most foolish of dreaming. There were the threeyoung Barnstaples at home and their need for a decent start inlife to consider. And beautiful as the thing was as a dream, Mr.Barnstaple had a very unpleasant conviction that he was not reallyclever enough to pull such a thing off. He would make a mess ofit somehow....

　　One might jump from the frying-pan into the fire. The Liberal wasa dreary, discouraging, ungenerous paper, but anyhow it was not abase and wicked paper.

　　Still, if there was to be no such disastrous outbreak it wasimperative that Mr. Barnstaple should rest from Mr. Peeve for atime. Once or twice already he had contradicted him. A row mightoccur anywhen. And the first step towards resting from Mr. Peevewas evidently to see a doctor. So Mr. Barnstaple went to a doctor.

　　"My nerves are getting out of control," said Mr. Barnstaple. "I feelhorribly neurasthenic."

　　"You are suffering from neurasthenia," said the doctor. "I dreadmy daily work."

　　"You want a holiday."

　　"You think I need a change?"

　　"As complete a change as you can manage."

　　"Can you recommend any place where I could go?"

　　"Where do you want to go?"

　　"Nowhere definite. I thought you could recommend--"

　　"Let some place attract you--and go there. Do nothing to forceyour inclinations at the present time."

　　Mr. Barnstaple paid the doctor the sum of one guinea, and armedwith these instructions prepared to break the news of his illnessand his necessary absence to Mr. Peeve whenever the occasionseemed ripe for doing so.

　　Section 2

　　For a time this prospective holiday was merely a fresh addition toMr. Barnstaple's already excessive burthen of worries. To decideto get away was to find oneself face to face at once with threeapparently insurmountable problems: How to get away? Whither?And since Mr. Barnstaple was one of those people who tire veryquickly of their own company: With whom? A sharp gleam of furtivescheming crept into the candid misery that had recently become Mr.Barnstaple's habitual expression. But then, no one took much noticeof Mr. Barnstaple's expressions.

　　One thing was very clear in his mind. Not a word of this holidaymust be breathed at home. If once Mrs. Barnstaple got wind of it,he knew exactly what would happen. She would, with an air ofcompetent devotion, take charge of the entire business. "You musthave a _good_ holiday," she would say. She would select some ratherdistant and expensive resort in Cornwall or Scotland or Brittany,she would buy a lot of outfit, she would have afterthoughts to swellthe luggage with inconvenient parcels at the last moment, and shewould bring the boys. Probably she would arrange for one or twogroups of acquaintances to come to the same place to "liven thingsup." If they did they were certain to bring the worst sides of theirnatures with them and to develop into the most indefatigable ofbores. There would be no conversation. There would be much unreallaughter, There would be endless games.... _No_!

　　But how is a man to go away for a holiday without his wife gettingwind of it? Somehow a bag must be packed and smuggled out of thehouse....

　　The most hopeful thing about Mr. Barnstaple's position from Mr.Barnstaple's point of view was that he owned a small automobile ofhis very own. It was natural that this car should play a large partin his secret plannings. It seemed to offer the easiest means ofgetting away; it converted the possible answer to Whither? from afixed and definite place into what mathematicians call, I believe,a locus; and there was something so companionable about the littlebeast that it did to a slight but quite perceptible extent answerthe question, With whom? It was a two-seater. It was known in thefamily as the Foot Bath, Colman's Mustard, and the Yellow Peril.As these names suggest, it was a low, open car of a clear yellowcolour. Mr. Barnstaple used it to come up to the office fromSydenham because it did thirty-three miles to the gallon and wasever so much cheaper than a season ticket. It stood up in the courtunder the office window during the day. At Sydenham it lived in ashed of which Mr. Barnstaple carried the only key. So far he hadmanaged to prevent the boys from either driving it or taking it topieces. At times Mrs. Barnstaple made him drive her about Sydenhamfor her shopping, but she did not really like the little car becauseit exposed her to the elements too much and made her dusty anddishevelled. Both by reason of all that it made possible and byreason of all that it debarred, the little car was clearly indicatedas the medium for the needed holiday. And Mr. Barnstaple reallyliked driving it. He drove very badly, but he drove very carefully;and though it sometimes stopped and refused to proceed, it did notdo, or at any rate it had not so far done as most other things didin Mr. Barnstaple's life, which was to go due east when he turnedthe steering wheel west. So that it gave him an agreeable sense ofmastery.

　　In the end Mr. Barnstaple made his decisions with great rapidity.Opportunity suddenly opened in front of him. Thursday was his day atthe printer's, and he came home on Thursday evening feeling horriblyjaded. The weather kept obstinately hot and dry. It made it none theless distressing that this drought presaged famine and misery forhalf the world. And London was in full season, smart and grinning:if anything it was a sillier year than 1913, the great tango year,which, in the light of subsequent events, Mr. Barnstaple hadhitherto regarded as the silliest year in the world's history.The Star had the usual batch of bad news along the margin of thesporting and fashionable intelligence that got the displayed space.Fighting was going on between the Russians and Poles, and also inIreland, Asia Minor, the India frontier, and Eastern Siberia. Therehad been three new horrible murders. The miners were still out,and a big engineering strike was threatened. There had been onlystanding room in the down train and it had started twenty minuteslate.

　　He found a note from his wife explaining that her cousins atWimbledon had telegraphed that there was an unexpected chance ofseeing the tennis there with Mademoiselle Lenglen and all the restof the champions, and that she had gone over with the boys andwould not be back until late. It would do their game no end of good,she said, to see some really first-class tennis. Also it was theservants' social that night. Would he mind being left alone in thehouse for once? The servants would put him out some cold supperbefore they went.

　　Mr. Barnstaple read this note with resignation. While he ate hissupper he ran his eye over a pamphlet a Chinese friend had sent himto show how the Japanese were deliberately breaking up what was leftof the civilization and education of China.

　　It was only as he was sitting and smoking a pipe in his little backgarden after supper that he realized all that being left alone inthe house meant for him.

　　Then suddenly he became very active. He rang up Mr. Peeve, told himof the doctor's verdict, explained that the affairs of the Liberalwere just then in a particularly leavable state, and got hisholiday. Then he went to his bedroom and packed up a hasty selectionof things to take with him in an old Gladstone bag that was notlikely to be immediately missed, and put this in the dickey of hiscar. After which he spent some time upon a letter which he addressedto his wife and put away very carefully in his breast pocket.

　　Then he locked up the car-shed and composed himself in a deck-chairin the garden with his pipe and a nice thoughtful book on theBankruptcy of Europe, so as to look and feel as innocent as possiblebefore his family came home.

　　When his wife returned he told her casually that he believed he wassuffering from neurasthenia, and that he had arranged to run up toLondon on the morrow and consult a doctor in the matter.

　　Mrs. Barnstaple wanted to choose him a doctor, but he got out ofthat by saying that he had to consider Peeve in the matter andthat Peeve was very strongly set on the man he had already in factconsulted. And when Mrs. Barnstaple said that she believed they_all_ wanted a good holiday, he just grunted in a non-committalmanner.

　　In this way Mr. Barnstaple was able to get right away from his housewith all the necessary luggage for some weeks' holiday, withoutarousing any insurmountable opposition. He started next morningLondonward. The traffic on the way was gay and plentiful, but by nomeans troublesome, and the Yellow Peril was running so sweetly thatshe might almost have been named the Golden Hope. In Camberwellhe turned into the Camberwell New Road and made his way to thepost-office at the top of Vauxhall Bridge Road. There he drew up.He was scared but elated by what he was doing. He went into thepost-office and sent his wife a telegram. "Dr. Pagan," he wrote,"says solitude and rest urgently needed so am going off LakeDistrict recuperate have got bag and things expecting this letterfollows."

　　Then he came outside and fumbled in his pocket and produced andposted the letter he had written so carefully overnight. It wasdeliberately scrawled to suggest neurasthenia at an acute phase. Dr.Pagan, it explained, had ordered an immediate holiday and suggestedthat Mr. Barnstaple should "wander north." It would be better tocut off all letters for a few days, or even a week or so. He wouldnot trouble to write unless something went wrong. No news wouldbe good news. Rest assured all would be well. As soon as he had acertain address for letters he would wire it, but only very urgentthings were to be sent on.

　　After this he resumed his seat in his car with such a sense offreedom as he had never felt since his first holidays from his firstschool. He made for the Great North Road, but at the traffic jam atHyde Park Corner he allowed the policeman to turn him down towardsKnightsbridge, and afterwards at the corner where the Bath Roadforks away from the Oxford Road an obstructive van put him into theformer. But it did not matter very much. Any way led to Elsewhereand he could work northward later.

　　Section 3

　　The day was one of those days of gay sunshine that werecharacteristic of the great drought of 1921. It was not in the leastsultry. Indeed there was a freshness about it that blended with Mr.Barnstaple's mood to convince him that there were quite agreeableadventures before him. Hope had already returned to him. He knew hewas on the way out of things, though as yet he had not the slightestsuspicion how completely out of things the way was going to takehim. It would be quite a little adventure presently to stop at aninn and get some lunch, and if he felt lonely as he went on he wouldgive somebody a lift and talk. It would be quite easy to give peoplelifts because so long as his back was generally towards Sydenham.and the Liberal office, it did not matter at all now in whichdirection he went.

　　A little way out of Slough he was passed by an enormous grey touringcar. It made him start and swerve. It came up alongside him withouta sound, and though according to his only very slightly inaccuratespeedometer, he was doing a good twenty-seven miles an hour, ithad passed him in a moment. Its occupants, he noted, were threegentlemen and a lady. They were all sitting up and looking backwardas though they were interested in something that was following them.They went by too quickly for him to note more than that the lady wasradiantly lovely in an immediate and indisputable way, and that thegentleman nearest to him had a peculiarly elfin yet elderly face.

　　Before he could recover from the eclat of this passage a car withthe voice of a prehistoric saurian warned him that he was againbeing overtaken. This was how Mr. Barnstaple liked being passed. Bynegotiation. He slowed down, abandoned any claim to the crown of theroad and made encouraging gestures with his hand. A large, smooth,swift Limousine availed itself of his permission to use the thirtyodd feet or so of road to the right of him. It was carrying a fairload of luggage, but except for a young gentleman with an eye-glasswho was sitting beside the driver, he saw nothing of its passengers.It swept round a corner ahead in the wake of the touring car.

　　Now even a mechanical foot-bath does not like being passed inthis lordly fashion on a bright morning on the open road. Mr.Barnstaple's accelerator went down and he came round that corner agood ten miles per hour faster than his usual cautious practice.He found the road quite clear ahead of him.

　　Indeed he found the road much too clear ahead of him. It stretchedstraight in front of him for perhaps a third of a mile. On the leftwere a low, well-trimmed hedge, scattered trees, level fields, somesmall cottages lying back, remote poplars, and a distant view ofWindsor Castle. On the right were level fields, a small inn, anda background of low, wooded hills. A conspicuous feature in thistranquil landscape was the board advertisement of a riverside hotelat Maidenhead. Before him was a sort of heat flicker in the air andtwo or three little dust whirls spinning along the road. And therewas not a sign of the grey touring car and not a sign of theLimousine.

　　It took Mr. Barnstaple the better part of two seconds to realize thefull astonishment of this fact. Neither to right nor left was thereany possible side road down which either car could have vanished.And if they had already got round the further bend, then they mustbe travelling at the rate of two or three hundred miles per hour!

　　It was Mr. Barnstaple's excellent custom whenever he was in doubtto slow down. He slowed down now. He went on at a pace of perhapsfifteen miles an hour, staring open-mouthed about the emptylandscape for some clue to this mysterious disappearance. Curiouslyenough he had no feeling that he himself was in any sort of danger.

　　Then his car seemed to strike something and skidded. It skiddedround so violently that for a moment or so Mr. Barnstaple lost hishead. He could not remember what ought to be done when a car skids.He recalled something vaguely about steering in the directionin which the car is skidding, but he could not make out in theexcitement of the moment in what direction the car was skidding.

　　Afterwards he remembered that at this point he heard a sound. Itwas exactly the same sound, coming as the climax of an accumulatingpressure, sharp like the snapping of a lute string, which one hearsat the end--or beginning--of insensibility under anaesthetics.

　　He had seemed to twist round towards the hedge on the right, but nowhe found the road ahead of him again. He touched his accelerator andthen slowed down and stopped. He stopped in the profoundestastonishment.

　　This was an entirely different road from the one he had been uponhalf a minute before. The hedges had changed, the trees had altered,Windsor Castle had vanished, and--a small compensation--the bigLimousine was in sight again. It was standing by the roadside abouttwo hundred yards away,