"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 scores and hundreds of
bedsteads, and beyond these I found a resting-place at last among a
huge pile of folded flock mattresses. The place was already lit up
and aggreeably 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 it. 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 and
showrooms 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 bootheels 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 on 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 'Dust to dust, earth to earth,' and
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 heaps
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 round 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 flat 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 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 some one shouting. I found
myself in my bedstead store-room again, and at the end 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 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."