The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth, Page 3

  CHAPTER THE SECOND.

  THE EXPERIMENTAL FARM.

  I.

  Mr. Bensington proposed originally to try this stuff, so soon as he wasreally able to prepare it, upon tadpoles. One always does try this sortof thing upon tadpoles to begin with; this being what tadpoles are for.And it was agreed that he should conduct the experiments and notRedwood, because Redwood's laboratory was occupied with the ballisticapparatus and animals necessary for an investigation into the DiurnalVariation in the Butting Frequency of the Young Bull Calf, aninvestigation that was yielding curves of an abnormal and veryperplexing sort, and the presence of glass globes of tadpoles wasextremely undesirable while this particular research was in progress.

  But when Mr. Bensington conveyed to his cousin Jane something of what hehad in mind, she put a prompt veto upon the importation of anyconsiderable number of tadpoles, or any such experimental creatures,into their flat. She had no objection whatever to his use of one of therooms of the flat for the purposes of a non-explosive chemistry that, sofar as she was concerned, came to nothing; she let him have a gasfurnace and a sink and a dust-tight cupboard of refuge from the weeklystorm of cleaning she would not forego. And having known people addictedto drink, she regarded his solicitude for distinction in learnedsocieties as an excellent substitute for the coarser form of depravity.But any sort of living things in quantity, "wriggly" as they were boundto be alive and "smelly" dead, she could not and would not abide. Shesaid these things were certain to be unhealthy, and Bensington wasnotoriously a delicate man--it was nonsense to say he wasn't. And whenBensington tried to make the enormous importance of this possiblediscovery clear, she said that it was all very well, but if sheconsented to his making everything nasty and unwholesome in the place(and that was what it all came to) then she was certain he would be thefirst to complain.

  And Mr. Bensington went up and down the room, regardless of his corns,and spoke to her quite firmly and angrily without the slightest effect.He said that nothing ought to stand in the way of the Advancement ofScience, and she said that the Advancement of Science was one thing andhaving a lot of tadpoles in a flat was another; he said that in Germanyit was an ascertained fact that a man with an idea like his would atonce have twenty thousand properly-fitted cubic feet of laboratoryplaced at his disposal, and she said she was glad and always had beenglad that she was not a German; he said that it would make him famousfor ever, and she said it was much more likely to make him ill to have alot of tadpoles in a flat like theirs; he said he was master in his ownhouse, and she said that rather than wait on a lot of tadpoles she'd goas matron to a school; and then he asked her to be reasonable, and sheasked _him_ to be reasonable then and give up all this about tadpoles;and he said she might respect his ideas, and she said not if they weresmelly she wouldn't, and then he gave way completely and said--in spiteof the classical remarks of Huxley upon the subject--a bad word. Not avery bad word it was, but bad enough.

  And after that she was greatly offended and had to be apologised to, andthe prospect of ever trying the Food of the Gods upon tadpoles in theirflat at any rate vanished completely in the apology.

  So Bensington had to consider some other way of carrying out theseexperiments in feeding that would be necessary to demonstrate hisdiscovery, so soon as he had his substance isolated and prepared. Forsome days he meditated upon the possibility of boarding out his tadpoleswith some trustworthy person, and then the chance sight of the phrase ina newspaper turned his thoughts to an Experimental Farm.

  And chicks. Directly he thought of it, he thought of it as a poultryfarm. He was suddenly taken with a vision of wildly growing chicks. Heconceived a picture of coops and runs, outsize and still more outsizecoops, and runs progressively larger. Chicks are so accessible, soeasily fed and observed, so much drier to handle and measure, that forhis purpose tadpoles seemed to him now, in comparison with them, quitewild and uncontrollable beasts. He was quite puzzled to understand whyhe had not thought of chicks instead of tadpoles from the beginning.Among other things it would have saved all this trouble with his cousinJane. And when he suggested this to Redwood, Redwood quite agreed withhim.

  Redwood said that in working so much upon needlessly small animals hewas convinced experimental physiologists made a great mistake. It isexactly like making experiments in chemistry with an insufficientquantity of material; errors of observation and manipulation becomedisproportionately large. It was of extreme importance just at presentthat scientific men should assert their right to have their material_big_. That was why he was doing his present series of experiments atthe Bond Street College upon Bull Calves, in spite of a certain amountof inconvenience to the students and professors of other subjects causedby their incidental levity in the corridors. But the curves he wasgetting were quite exceptionally interesting, and would, when published,amply justify his choice. For his own part, were it not for theinadequate endowment of science in this country, he would never, if hecould avoid it, work on anything smaller than a whale. But a PublicVivarium on a sufficient scale to render this possible was, he feared,at present, in this country at any rate, a Utopian demand. InGermany--Etc.

  As Redwood's Bull calves needed his daily attention, the selection andequipment of the Experimental Farm fell largely on Bensington. Theentire cost also, was, it was understood, to be defrayed by Bensington,at least until a grant could be obtained. Accordingly he alternated hiswork in the laboratory of his flat with farm hunting up and down thelines that run southward out of London, and his peering spectacles, hissimple baldness, and his lacerated cloth shoes filled the owners ofnumerous undesirable properties with vain hopes. And he advertised inseveral daily papers and _Nature_ for a responsible couple (married),punctual, active, and used to poultry, to take entire charge of anExperimental Farm of three acres.

  He found the place he seemed in need of at Hickleybrow, near Urshot, inKent. It was a little queer isolated place, in a dell surrounded by oldpine woods that were black and forbidding at night. A humped shoulder ofdown cut it off from the sunset, and a gaunt well with a shatteredpenthouse dwarfed the dwelling. The little house was creeperless,several windows were broken, and the cart shed had a black shadow atmidday. It was a mile and a half from the end house of the village, andits loneliness was very doubtfully relieved by an ambiguous family ofechoes.

  The place impressed Bensington as being eminently adapted to therequirements of scientific research. He walked over the premisessketching out coops and runs with a sweeping arm, and he found thekitchen capable of accommodating a series of incubators and fostermothers with the very minimum of alteration. He took the place there andthen; on his way back to London he stopped at Dunton Green and closedwith an eligible couple that had answered his advertisements, and thatsame evening he succeeded in isolating a sufficient quantity ofHerakleophorbia I. to more than justify these engagements.

  The eligible couple who were destined under Mr. Bensington to be thefirst almoners on earth of the Food of the Gods, were not only veryperceptibly aged, but also extremely dirty. This latter point Mr.Bensington did not observe, because nothing destroys the powers ofgeneral observation quite so much as a life of experimental science.They were named Skinner, Mr. and Mrs. Skinner, and Mr. Bensingtoninterviewed them in a small room with hermetically sealed windows, aspotted overmantel looking-glass, and some ailing calceolarias.

  Mrs. Skinner was a very little old woman, capless, with dirty white hairdrawn back very very tightly from a face that had begun by beingchiefly, and was now, through the loss of teeth and chin, and thewrinkling up of everything else, ending by being almostexclusively--nose. She was dressed in slate colour (so far as her dresshad any colour) slashed in one place with red flannel. She let him inand talked to him guardedly and peered at him round and over her nose,while Mr. Skinner she alleged made some alteration in his toilette. Shehad one tooth that got into her articulations and she held her two longwrinkled hands nervously together. She told Mr. Bensington that she hadmanaged fowls for years; and knew all
about incubators; in fact, theythemselves had run a Poultry Farm at one time, and it had only failed atlast through the want of pupils. "It's the pupils as pay," said Mrs.Skinner.

  Mr. Skinner, when he appeared, was a large-faced man, with a lisp and asquint that made him look over the top of your head, slashed slippersthat appealed to Mr. Bensington's sympathies, and a manifest shortnessof buttons. He held his coat and shirt together with one hand and tracedpatterns on the black-and-gold tablecloth with the index finger of theother, while his disengaged eye watched Mr. Bensington's sword ofDamocles, so to speak, with an expression of sad detachment. "You don'twant to run thith Farm for profit. No, Thir. Ith all the thame, Thir.Ekthperimenth! Prethithely."

  He said they could go to the farm at once. He was doing nothing atDunton Green except a little tailoring. "It ithn't the thmart plathe Ithought it wath, and what I get ithent thkarthely worth having," hesaid, "tho that if it ith any convenienth to you for uth to come...."

  And in a week Mr. and Mrs. Skinner were installed in the farm, and thejobbing carpenter from Hickleybrow was diversifying the task of erectingruns and henhouses with a systematic discussion of Mr. Bensington.

  "I haven't theen much of 'im yet," said Mr. Skinner. "But as far as Ican make 'im out 'e theems to be a thtewpid o' fool."

  "_I_ thought 'e seemed a bit Dotty," said the carpenter fromHickleybrow.

  "'E fanthieth 'imself about poultry," said Mr. Skinner. "O my goodneth!You'd think nobody knew nothin' about poultry thept 'im."

  "'E _looks_ like a 'en," said the carpenter from Hickleybrow; "what withthem spectacles of 'is."

  Mr. Skinner came closer to the carpenter from Hickleybrow, and spoke ina confidential manner, and one sad eye regarded the distant village, andone was bright and wicked. "Got to be meathured every blethed day--everyblethed 'en, 'e thays. Tho as to thee they grow properly. What oh ...eh? Every blethed 'en--every blethed day."

  And Mr. Skinner put up his hand to laugh behind it in a refined andcontagious manner, and humped his shoulders very much--and only theother eye of him failed to participate in his laughter. Then doubting ifthe carpenter had quite got the point of it, he repeated in apenetrating whisper; "_Meathured_!"

  "'E's worse than our old guvnor; I'm dratted if 'e ain't," said thecarpenter from Hickleybrow.

  II.

  Experimental work is the most tedious thing in the world (unless it bethe reports of it in the _Philosophical Transactions_), and it seemed along time to Mr. Bensington before his first dream of enormouspossibilities was replaced by a crumb of realisation. He had taken theExperimental Farm in October, and it was May before the first inklingsof success began. Herakleophorbia I. and II. and III. had to be tried,and failed; there was trouble with the rats of the Experimental Farm,and there was trouble with the Skinners. The only way to get Skinner todo anything he was told to do was to dismiss him. Then he would nib hisunshaven chin--he was always unshaven most miraculously and yet neverbearded--with a flattened hand, and look at Mr. Bensington with one eye,and over him with the other, and say, "Oo, of courthe, Thir--if you're_theriouth_!"

  But at last success dawned. And its herald was a letter in the longslender handwriting of Mr. Skinner.

  "The new Brood are out," wrote Mr. Skinner, "and don't quite like thelook of them. Growing very rank--quite unlike what the similar lot wasbefore your last directions was given. The last, before the cat gotthem, was a very nice, stocky chick, but these are Growing likethistles. I never saw. They peck so hard, striking above boot top, thatam unable to give exact Measures as requested. They are regular Giants,and eating as such. We shall want more com very soon, for you never sawsuch chicks to eat. Bigger than Bantams. Going on at this rate, theyought to be a bird for show, rank as they are. Plymouth Rocks won't bein it. Had a scare last night thinking that cat was at them, and when Ilooked out at the window could have sworn I see her getting in under thewire. The chicks was all awake and pecking about hungry when I went out,but could not see anything of the cat. So gave them a peck of corn, andfastened up safe. Shall be glad to know if the Feeding to be continuedas directed. Food you mixed is pretty near all gone, and do not like tomix any more myself on account of the accident with the pudding. Withbest wishes from us both, and soliciting continuance of esteemedfavours,

  "Respectfully yours,

  "ALFRED NEWTON SKINNER."

  The allusion towards the end referred to a milk pudding with which someHerakleophorbia II. had got itself mixed with painful and very nearlyfatal results to the Skinners.

  But Mr. Bensington, reading between the lines saw in this rankness ofgrowth the attainment of his long sought goal. The next morning healighted at Urshot station, and in the bag in his hand he carried,sealed in three tins, a supply of the Food of the Gods sufficient forall the chicks in Kent.

  It was a bright and beautiful morning late in May, and his corns were somuch better that he resolved to walk through Hickleybrow to his farm. Itwas three miles and a half altogether, through the park and villages andthen along the green glades of the Hickleybrow preserves. The trees wereall dusted with the green spangles of high spring, the hedges were fullof stitchwort and campion and the woods of blue hyacinths and purpleorchid; and everywhere there was a great noise of birds--thrushes,blackbirds, robins, finches, and many more--and in one warm corner ofthe park some bracken was unrolling, and there was a leaping and rushingof fallow deer.

  These things brought back to Mr. Bensington his early and forgottendelight in life; before him the promise of his discovery grew bright andjoyful, and it seemed to him that indeed he must have come upon thehappiest day in his life. And when in the sunlit run by the sandy bankunder the shadow of the pine trees he saw the chicks that had eaten thefood he had mixed for them, gigantic and gawky, bigger already than manya hen that is married and settled and still growing, still in theirfirst soft yellow plumage (just faintly marked with brown along theback), he knew indeed that his happiest day had come.

  At Mr. Skinner's urgency he went into the runs but after he had beenpecked through the cracks in his shoes once or twice he got out again,and watched these monsters through the wire netting. He peered close tothe netting, and followed their movements as though he had never seen achick before in his life.

  "Whath they'll be when they're grown up ith impothible to think," saidMr. Skinner.

  "Big as a horse," said Mr. Bensington.

  "Pretty near," said Mr. Skinner.

  "Several people could dine off a wing!" said Mr. Bensington. "They'd cutup into joints like butcher's meat."

  "They won't go on growing at thith pathe though," said Mr. Skinner.

  "No?" said Mr. Bensington.

  "No," said Mr. Skinner. "I know thith thort. They begin rank, but theydon't go on, bleth you! No."

  There was a pause.

  "Itth management," said Mr. Skinner modestly.

  Mr. Bensington turned his glasses on him suddenly.

  "We got 'em almoth ath big at the other plathe," said Mr. Skinner, withhis better eye piously uplifted and letting himself go a little; "me andthe mithith."

  Mr. Bensington made his usual general inspection of the premises, but hespeedily returned to the new run. It was, you know, in truth ever somuch more than he had dared to expect. The course of science is sotortuous and so slow; after the clear promises and before the practicalrealisation arrives there comes almost always year after year ofintricate contrivance, and here--here was the Foods of the Gods arrivingafter less than a year of testing! It seemed too good--too good. ThatHope Deferred which is the daily food of the scientific imagination wasto be his no more! So at least it seemed to him then. He came back andstared at these stupendous chicks of his, time after time.

  "Let me see," he said. "They're ten days old. And by the side of anordinary chick I should fancy--about six or seven times as big...."

  "Itth about time we artht for a rithe in thkrew," said Mr. Skinner tohis wife. "He'th ath pleathed ath Punth about the way we got thothechickth on in the further run--pleath
ed ath Punth he ith."

  He bent confidentially towards her. "Thinkth it'th that old food ofhith," he said behind his hands and made a noise of suppressed laughterin his pharyngeal cavity....

  Mr. Bensington was indeed a happy man that day. He was in no mood tofind fault with details of management. The bright day certainly broughtout the accumulating slovenliness of the Skinner couple more vividlythan he had ever seen it before. But his comments were of the gentlest.The fencing of many of the runs was out of order, but he seemed toconsider it quite satisfactory when Mr. Skinner explained that it was a"fokth or a dog or thomething" did it. He pointed out that the incubatorhad not been cleaned.

  "That it _asn't_, Sir," said Mrs. Skinner with her arms folded, smilingcoyly behind her nose. "We don't seem to have had time to clean it notsince we been 'ere...."

  He went upstairs to see some rat-holes that Skinner said would justify atrap--they certainly were enormous--and discovered that the room inwhich the Food of the Gods was mixed with meal and bran was in a quitedisgraceful order. The Skinners were the sort of people who find a usefor cracked saucers and old cans and pickle jars and mustard boxes, andthe place was littered with these. In one corner a great pile of applesthat Skinner had saved was decaying, and from a nail in the sloping partof the ceiling hung several rabbit skins, upon which he proposed to testhis gift as a furrier. ("There ithn't mutth about furth and thingth that_I_ don't know," said Skinner.)

  Mr. Bensington certainly sniffed critically at this disorder, but hemade no unnecessary fuss, and even when he found a wasp regaling itselfin a gallipot half full of Herakleophorbia IV, he simply remarked mildlythat his substance was better sealed from the damp than exposed to theair in that manner.

  And he turned from these things at once to remark--what had been forsome time in his mind--"I _think_, Skinner--you know, I shall kill oneof these chicks--as a specimen. I think we will kill it this afternoon,and I will take it back with me to London."

  He pretended to peer into another gallipot and then took off hisspectacles to wipe them.

  "I should like," he said, "I should like very much, to have somerelic--some memento--of this particular brood at this particular day."

  "By-the-bye," he said, "you don't give those little chicks meat?"

  "Oh! _no_, Thir," said Skinner, "I can athure you, Thir, we know far toomuch about the management of fowlth of all dethcriptionth to do anythingof that thort."

  "Quite sure you don't throw your dinner refuse--I thought I noticed thebones of a rabbit scattered about the far corner of the run--"

  But when they came to look at them they found they were the larger bonesof a cat picked very clean and dry.

  III.

  "_That's_ no chick," said Mr. Bensington's cousin Jane.

  "Well, I should _think_ I knew a chick when I saw it," said Mr.Bensington's cousin Jane hotly.

  "It's too big for a chick, for one thing, and besides you can _see_perfectly well it isn't a chick.

  "It's more like a bustard than a chick."

  "For my part," said Redwood, reluctantly allowing Bensington to drag himinto the argument, "I must confess that, considering all the evidence--"

  "Oh I if you do _that_," said Mr. Bensington's cousin Jane, "instead ofusing your eyes like a sensible person--"

  "Well, but really, Miss Bensington--!"

  "Oh! Go _on!_" said Cousin Jane. "You men are all alike."

  "Considering all the evidence, this certainly falls within thedefinition--no doubt it's abnormal and hypertrophied, butstill--especially since it was hatched from the egg of a normalhen--Yes, I think, Miss Bensington, I must admit--this, so far as onecan call it anything, is a sort of chick."

  "You mean it's a chick?" said cousin Jane.

  "I _think_ it's a chick," said Redwood.

  "What NONSENSE!" said Mr. Bensington's cousin Jane, and "Oh!" directedat Redwood's head, "I haven't patience with you," and then suddenly sheturned about and went out of the room with a slam.

  "And it's a very great relief for me to see it too, Bensington," saidRedwood, when the reverberation of the slam had died away. "In spite ofits being so big."

  Without any urgency from Mr. Bensington he sat down in the low arm-chairby the fire and confessed to proceedings that even in an unscientificman would have been indiscreet. "You will think it very rash of me,Bensington, I know," he said, "but the fact is I put a little--not verymuch of it--but some--into Baby's bottle, very nearly a week ago!"

  "But suppose--!" cried Mr. Bensington.

  "I know," said Redwood, and glanced at the giant chick upon the plate onthe table.

  "It's turned out all right, thank goodness," and he felt in his pocketfor his cigarettes.

  He gave fragmentary details. "Poor little chap wasn't putting onweight... desperately anxious.--Winkles, a frightful duffer ... formerpupil of mine ... no good.... Mrs. Redwood--unmitigated confidence inWinkles.... _You_ know, man with a manner like a cliff--towering.... Noconfidence in _me_, of course.... Taught Winkles.... Scarcely allowed inthe nursery.... Something had to be done.... Slipped in while the nursewas at breakfast ... got at the bottle."

  "But he'll grow," said Mr. Bensington.

  "He's growing. Twenty-seven ounces last week.... You should hearWinkles. It's management, he said."

  "Dear me! That's what Skinner says!"

  Redwood looked at the chick again. "The bother is to keep it up," hesaid. "They won't trust me in the nursery alone, because I tried to geta growth curve out of Georgina Phyllis--you know--and how I'm to givehim a second dose--"

  "Need you?"

  "He's been crying two days--can't get on with his ordinary food again,anyhow. He wants some more now."

  "Tell Winkles."

  "Hang Winkles!" said Redwood.

  "You might get at Winkles and give him powders to give the child--"

  "That's about what I shall have to do," said Redwood, resting his chinon his fist and staring into the fire.

  Bensington stood for a space smoothing the down on the breast of thegiant chick. "They will be monstrous fowls," he said.

  "They will," said Redwood, still with his eyes on the glow.

  "Big as horses," said Bensington.

  "Bigger," said Redwood. "That's just it!"

  Bensington turned away from the specimen. "Redwood," he said, "thesefowls are going to create a sensation."

  Redwood nodded his head at the fire.

  "And by Jove!" said Bensington, coming round suddenly with a flash inhis spectacles, "so will your little boy!"

  "That's just what I'm thinking of," said Redwood.

  He sat back, sighed, threw his unconsumed cigarette into the fire andthrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets. "That's precisely whatI'm thinking of. This Herakleophorbia is going to be queer stuff tohandle. The pace that chick must have grown at--!"

  "A little boy growing at that pace," said Mr. Bensington slowly, andstared at the chick as he spoke.

  "I _Say_!" said Bensington, "he'll be Big."

  "I shall give him diminishing doses," said Redwood. "Or at any rateWinkles will."

  "It's rather too much of an experiment."

  "Much."

  "Yet still, you know, I must confess--... Some baby will sooner or laterhave to try it."

  "Oh, we'll try it on _some_ baby--certainly."

  "Exactly so," said Bensington, and came and stood on the hearthrug andtook off his spectacles to wipe them.

  "Until I saw these chicks, Redwood, I don't think I _began_ torealise--anything--of the possibilities of what we were making. It'sonly beginning to dawn upon me ... the possible consequences...."

  And even then, you know, Mr. Bensington was far from any conception ofthe mine that little train would fire.

  IV.

  That happened early in June. For some weeks Bensington was kept fromrevisiting the Experimental Farm by a severe imaginary catarrh, and onenecessary flying visit was made by Redwood. He returned an even moreanxious-looking parent than he had gone. Altoge
ther there were sevenweeks of steady, uninterrupted growth....

  And then the Wasps began their career.

  It was late in July and nearly a week before the hens escaped fromHickleybrow that the first of the big wasps was killed. The report of itappeared in several papers, but I do not know whether the news reachedMr. Bensington, much less whether he connected it with the generallaxity of method that prevailed in the Experimental Farm.

  There can be but little doubt now, that while Mr. Skinner was plying Mr.Bensington's chicks with Herakleophorbia IV, a number of wasps were justas industriously--perhaps more industriously--carrying quantities of thesame paste to their early summer broods in the sand-banks beyond theadjacent pine-woods. And there can be no dispute whatever that theseearly broods found just as much growth and benefit in the substance asMr. Bensington's hens. It is in the nature of the wasp to attain toeffective maturity before the domestic fowl--and in fact of all thecreatures that were--through the generous carelessness of theSkinners--partaking of the benefits Mr. Bensington heaped upon his hens,the wasps were the first to make any sort of figure in the world.

  It was a keeper named Godfrey, on the estate of Lieutenant-ColonelRupert Hick, near Maidstone, who encountered and had the luckto kill the first of these monsters of whom history has anyrecord. He was walking knee high in bracken across an open space in thebeechwoods that diversify Lieutenant-Colonel Hick's park, and he wascarrying his gun--very fortunately for him a double-barrelled gun--overhis shoulder, when he first caught sight of the thing. It was, he says,coming down against the light, so that he could not see it verydistinctly, and as it came it made a drone "like a motor car." He admitshe was frightened. It was evidently as big or bigger than a barn owl,and, to his practised eye, its flight and particularly the misty whirlof its wings must have seemed weirdly unbirdlike. The instinct ofself-defence, I fancy, mingled with long habit, when, as he says, he"let fly, right away."

  The queerness of the experience probably affected his aim; at any ratemost of his shot missed, and the thing merely dropped for a moment withan angry "Wuzzzz" that revealed the wasp at once, and then rose again,with all its stripes shining against the light. He says it turned onhim. At any rate, he fired his second barrel at less than twenty yardsand threw down his gun, ran a pace or so, and ducked to avoid it.

  It flew, he is convinced, within a yard of him, struck the ground, roseagain, came down again perhaps thirty yards away, and rolled over withits body wriggling and its sting stabbing out and back in its lastagony. He emptied both barrels into it again before he ventured to gonear.

  When he came to measure the thing, he found it was twenty-seven and ahalf inches across its open wings, and its sting was three inches long.The abdomen was blown clean off from its body, but he estimated thelength of the creature from head to sting as eighteen inches--which isvery nearly correct. Its compound eyes were the size of penny pieces.

  That is the first authenticated appearance of these giant wasps. The dayafter, a cyclist riding, feet up, down the hill between Sevenoaks andTonbridge, very narrowly missed running over a second of these giantsthat was crawling across the roadway. His passage seemed to alarm it,and it rose with a noise like a sawmill. His bicycle jumped the footpathin the emotion of the moment, and when he could look back, the wasp wassoaring away above the woods towards Westerham.

  After riding unsteadily for a little time, he put on his brake,dismounted--he was trembling so violently that he fell over his machinein doing so--and sat down by the roadside to recover. He had intended toride to Ashford, but he did not get beyond Tonbridge that day....

  After that, curiously enough, there is no record of any big wasps beingseen for three days. I find on consulting the meteorological record ofthose days that they were overcast and chilly with local showers, whichmay perhaps account for this intermission. Then on the fourth day cameblue sky and brilliant sunshine and such an outburst of wasps as theworld had surely never seen before.

  How many big wasps came out that day it is impossible to guess. Thereare at least fifty accounts of their apparition. There was one victim, agrocer, who discovered one of these monsters in a sugar-cask and veryrashly attacked it with a spade as it rose. He struck it to the groundfor a moment, and it stung him through the boot as he struck at itagain and cut its body in half. He was first dead of the two....

  The most dramatic of the fifty appearances was certainly that of thewasp that visited the British Museum about midday, dropping out of theblue serene upon one of the innumerable pigeons that feed in thecourtyard of that building, and flying up to the cornice to devour itsvictim at leisure. After that it crawled for a time over the museumroof, entered the dome of the reading-room by a skylight, buzzed aboutinside it for some little time--there was a stampede among thereaders--and at last found another window and vanished again with asudden silence from human observation.

  Most of the other reports were of mere passings or descents. A picnicparty was dispersed at Aldington Knoll and all its sweets and jamconsumed, and a puppy was killed and torn to pieces near Whitstableunder the very eyes of its mistress....

  The streets that evening resounded with the cry, the newspaper placardsgave themselves up exclusively in the biggest of letters to the"Gigantic Wasps in Kent." Agitated editors and assistant editors ran upand down tortuous staircases bawling things about "wasps." And ProfessorRedwood, emerging from his college in Bond Street at five, flushed froma heated discussion with his committee about the price of bull calves,bought an evening paper, opened it, changed colour, forgot about bullcalves and committee forthwith, and took a hansom headlong forBensington's flat.

  V.

  The flat was occupied, it seemed to him--to the exclusion of all othersensible objects--by Mr. Skinner and his voice, if indeed you can calleither him or it a sensible object!

  The voice was up very high slopping about among the notes of anguish."Itth impothible for uth to thtop, Thir. We've thtopped on hopingthingth would get better and they've only got worth, Thir. It ithn'ton'y the waptheth, Thir--thereth big earwigth, Thir--big ath that,Thir." (He indicated all his hand and about three inches of fat dirtywrist.) "They pretty near give Mithith Thkinner fitth, Thir. And thethtinging nettleth by the runth, Thir, _they're_ growing, Thir, and thecanary creeper, Thir, what we thowed near the think, Thir--it put itthtendril through the window in the night, Thir, and very nearly caughtMithith Thkinner by the legth, Thir. Itth that food of yourth, Thir.Wherever we thplathed it about, Thir, a bit, it'th thet everythinggrowing ranker, Thir, than I ever thought anything could grow. Itthimpothible to thtop a month, Thir. Itth more than our liveth are worth,Thir. Even if the waptheth don't thting uth, we thall be thuffocated bythe creeper, Thir. You can't imagine, Thir--unleth you come down tothee, Thir--"

  He turned his superior eye to the cornice above Redwood's head. "'Ow dowe know the ratth 'aven't got it, Thir! That 'th what I think of motht,Thir. I 'aven't theen any big ratth, Thir, but 'ow do I know, Thir. Webeen frightened for dayth becauth of the earwigth we've theen--likelobthters they wath--two of 'em, Thir--and the frightful way the canarycreeper wath growing, and directly I heard the waptheth--directly I'eard 'em, Thir, I underthood. I didn't wait for nothing exthept to thowon a button I'd lortht, and then I came on up. Even now, Thir, I'm arfwild with angthiety, Thir. 'Ow do _I_ know watth happenin' to MithithThkinner, Thir! Thereth the creeper growing all over the plathe like athnake, Thir--thwelp me but you 'ave to watch it, Thir, and jump out ofitth way!--and the earwigth gettin' bigger and bigger, and thewaptheth--. She 'athen't even got a Blue Bag, Thir--if anything thouldhappen, Thir!"

  "But the hens," said Mr. Bensington; "how are the hens?"

  "We fed 'em up to yethterday, thwelp me," said Mr. Skinner, "But thithmorning we didn't _dare_, Thir. The noithe of the wapthethwath--thomething awful, Thir. They wath coming ont--dothenth. Ath bigath 'enth. I thayth, to 'er, I thayth you juth thow me on a button ortwo, I thayth, for I can't go to London like thith, I thayth, and I'llgo up to Mithter Benthington, I thayth
, and ekthplain thingth to 'im.And you thtop in thith room till I come back to you, I thayth, and keepthe windowth thhut jutht ath tight ath ever you can, I thayth."

  "If you hadn't been so confoundedly untidy--" began Redwood.

  "Oh! don't thay _that_, Thir," said Skinner. "Not now, Thir. Not with metho diththrethed, Thir, about Mithith Thkinner, Thir! Oh, _don't,_ Thir!I 'aven't the 'eart to argue with you. Thwelp me, Thir, I 'aven't! Itththe ratth I keep a thinking of--'Ow do I know they 'aven't got atMithith Thkinner while I been up 'ere?"

  "And you haven't got a solitary measurement of all these beautifulgrowth curves!" said Redwood.

  "I been too upthet, Thir," said Mr. Skinner. "If you knew what we beenthrough--me and the mithith! All thith latht month. We 'aven't knownwhat to make of it, Thir. What with the henth gettin' tho rank, and theearwigth, and the canary creeper. I dunno if I told you, Thir--thecanary creeper ..."

  "You've told us all that," said Redwood. "The thing is, Bensington, whatare we to do?"

  "What are _we_ to do?" said Mr. Skinner.

  "You'll have to go back to Mrs. Skinner," said Redwood. "You can't leaveher there alone all night."

  "Not alone, Thir, I don't. Not if there wath a dothen MithithThkinnerth. Itth Mithter Benthington--"

  "Nonsense," said Redwood. "The wasps will be all right at night. And theearwigs will get out of your way--"

  "But about the ratth?"

  "There aren't any rats," said Redwood.

  VI.

  Mr. Skinner might have foregone his chief anxiety. Mrs. Skinner did notstop out her day.

  About eleven the canary creeper, which had been quietly active all themorning, began to clamber over the window and darken it very greatly,and the darker it got the more and more clearly Mrs. Skinner perceivedthat her position would speedily become untenable. And also that she hadlived many ages since Skinner went. She peered out of the darklingwindow, through the stirring tendrils, for some time, and then went verycautiously and opened the bedroom door and listened....

  Everything seemed quiet, and so, tucking her skirts high about her, Mrs.Skinner made a bolt for the bedroom, and having first looked under thebed and locked herself in, proceeded with the methodical rapidity of anexperienced woman to pack for departure. The bed had not been made, andthe room was littered with pieces of the creeper that Skinner had hackedoff in order to close the window overnight, but these disorders she didnot heed. She packed in a decent sheet. She packed all her own wardrobeand a velveteen jacket that Skinner wore in his finer moments, and shepacked a jar of pickles that had not been opened, and so far she wasjustified in her packing. But she also packed two of the hermeticallyclosed tins containing Herakleophorbia IV. that Mr. Bensington hadbrought on his last visit. (She was honest, good woman--but she was agrandmother, and her heart had burned within her to see such good growthlavished on a lot of dratted chicks.)

  And having packed all these things, she put on her bonnet, took off herapron, tied a new boot-lace round her umbrella, and after listening fora long time at door and window, opened the door and sallied out into aperilous world. The umbrella was under her arm and she clutched thebundle with two gnarled and resolute hands. It was her best Sundaybonnet, and the two poppies that reared their heads amidst itssplendours of band and bead seemed instinct with the same tremulouscourage that possessed her.

  The features about the roots of her nose wrinkled with determination.She had had enough of it! All alone there! Skinner might come back thereif he liked.

  She went out by the front door, going that way not because she wanted togo to Hickleybrow (her goal was Cheasing Eyebright, where her marrieddaughter resided), but because the back door was impassable on accountof the canary creeper that had been growing so furiously ever since sheupset the can of food near its roots. She listened for a space andclosed the front door very carefully behind her.

  At the corner of the house she paused and reconnoitred....

  An extensive sandy scar upon the hillside beyond the pine-woods markedthe nest of the giant Wasps, and this she studied very earnestly. Thecoming and going of the morning was over, not a wasp chanced to be insight then, and except for a sound scarcely more perceptible than asteam wood-saw at work amidst the pines would have been, everything wasstill. As for earwigs, she could see not one. Down among the cabbageindeed something was stirring, but it might just as probably be a catstalking birds. She watched this for a time.

  She went a few paces past the corner, came in sight of the runcontaining the giant chicks and stopped again. "Ah!" she said, and shookher head slowly at the sight of them. They were at that time about theheight of emus, but of course much thicker in the body--a larger thingaltogether. They were all hens and five all told, now that the twocockerels had killed each other. She hesitated at their droopingattitudes. "Poor dears!" she said, and put down her bundle; "they've gotno water. And they've 'ad no food these twenty-four hours! And suchappetites, too, as they 'ave!" She put a lean finger to her lips andcommuned with herself.

  Then this dirty old woman did what seems to me a quite heroic deed ofmercy. She left her bundle and umbrella in the middle of the brick pathand went to the well and drew no fewer than three pailfuls of water forthe chickens' empty trough, and then while they were all crowding aboutthat, she undid the door of the run very softly. After which she becameextremely active, resumed her package, got over the hedge at the bottomof the garden, crossed the rank meadows (in order to avoid the wasps'nest) and toiled up the winding path towards Cheasing Eyebright.

  She panted up the hill, and as she went she paused ever and again, torest her bundle and get her breath and stare back at the little cottagebeside the pine-wood below. And when at last, when she was near the crestof the hill, she saw afar off three several wasps dropping heavilywestward, it helped her greatly on her way.

  She soon got out of the open and in the high banked lane beyond (whichseemed a safer place to her), and so up by Hickleybrow Coombe to thedowns. There at the foot of the downs where a big tree gave an air ofshelter she rested for a space on a stile.

  Then on again very resolutely....

  You figure her, I hope, with her white bundle, a sort of erect blackant, hurrying along the little white path-thread athwart the downlandslopes under the hot sun of the summer afternoon. On she struggled afterher resolute indefatigable nose, and the poppies in her bonnet quiveredperpetually and her spring-side boots grew whiter and whiter with thedownland dust. Flip-flap, flip-flap went her footfalls through the stillheat of the day, and persistently, incurably, her umbrella sought toslip from under the elbow that retained it. The mouth wrinkle under hernose was pursed to an extreme resolution, and ever and again she toldher umbrella to come up or gave her tightly clutched bundle avindictive jerk. And at times her lips mumbled with fragments of someforeseen argument between herself and Skinner.

  And far away, miles and miles away, a steeple and a hanger grewinsensibly out of the vague blue to mark more and more distinctly thequiet corner where Cheasing Eyebright sheltered from the tumult of theworld, recking little or nothing of the Herakleophorbia concealed inthat white bundle that struggled so persistently towards its orderlyretirement.

  VII.

  So far as I can gather, the pullets came into Hickleybrow about threeo'clock in the afternoon. Their coming must have been a brisk affair,though nobody was out in the street to see it. The violent bellowing oflittle Skelmersdale seems to have been the first announcement ofanything out of the way. Miss Durgan of the Post Office was at thewindow as usual, and saw the hen that had caught the unhappy child, inviolent flight up the street with its victim, closely pursued by twoothers. You know that swinging stride of the emancipated athleticlatter-day pullet! You know the keen insistence of the hungry hen! Therewas Plymouth Rock in these birds, I am told, and even withoutHerakleophorbia that is a gaunt and striding strain.

  Probably Miss Durgan was not altogether taken by surprise. In spite ofMr. Bensington's insistence upon secrecy, rumours of the great chickenMr. Ski
nner was producing had been about the village for some weeks."Lor!" she cried, "it's what I expected."

  She seems to have behaved with great presence of mind. She snatched upthe sealed bag of letters that was waiting to go on to Urshot, andrushed out of the door at once. Almost simultaneously Mr. Skelmersdalehimself appeared down the village, gripping a watering-pot by the spout,and very white in the face. And, of course, in a moment or so every onein the village was rushing to the door or window.

  The spectacle of Miss Durgan all across the road, with the entire day'scorrespondence of Hickleybrow in her hand, gave pause to the pullet inpossession of Master Skelmersdale. She halted through one instant'sindecision and then turned for the open gates of Fulcher's yard. Thatinstant was fatal. The second pullet ran in neatly, got possession ofthe child by a well-directed peck, and went over the wall into thevicarage garden.

  "Charawk, chawk, chawk, chawk, chawk, chawk!" shrieked the hindmost hen,hit smartly by the watering-can Mr. Skelmersdale had thrown, andfluttered wildly over Mrs. Glue's cottage and so into the doctor'sfield, while the rest of those Gargantuan birds pursued the pullet, inpossession of the child across the vicarage lawn.

  "Good heavens!" cried the Curate, or (as some say) something much moremanly, and ran, whirling his croquet mallet and shouting, to head offthe chase.

  "Stop, you wretch!" cried the curate, as though giant hens were thecommonest facts in life.

  And then, finding he could not possibly intercept her, he hurled hismallet with all his might and main, and out it shot in a gracious curvewithin a foot or so of Master Skelmersdale's head and through the glasslantern of the conservatory. Smash! The new conservatory! The Vicar'swife's beautiful new conservatory!

  It frightened the hen. It might have frightened any one. She dropped hervictim into a Portugal laurel (from which he was presently extracted,disordered but, save for his less delicate garments, uninjured), made aflapping leap for the roof of Fulcher's stables, put her foot through aweak place in the tiles, and descended, so to speak, out of the infiniteinto the contemplative quiet of Mr. Bumps the paralytic--who, it is nowproved beyond all cavil, did, on this one occasion in his life, get downthe entire length of his garden and indoors without any assistancewhatever, bolt the door after him, and immediately relapse again intoChristian resignation and helpless dependence upon his wife....

  The rest of the pullets were headed off by the other croquet players,and went through the vicar's kitchen garden into the doctor's field, towhich rendezvous the fifth also came at last, clucking disconsolatelyafter an unsuccessful attempt to walk on the cucumber frames in Mr.Witherspoon's place.

  They seem to have stood about in a hen-like manner for a time, andscratched a little and chirrawked meditatively, and then one pecked atand pecked over a hive of the doctor's bees, and after that they set offin a gawky, jerky, feathery, fitful sort of way across the fieldstowards Urshot, and Hickleybrow Street saw them no more. Near Urshotthey really came upon commensurate food in a field of swedes; and peckedfor a space with gusto, until their fame overtook them.

  The chief immediate reaction of this astonishing irruption of giganticpoultry upon the human mind was to arouse an extraordinary passion towhoop and run and throw things, and in quite a little time almost allthe available manhood of Hickleybrows and several ladies, were out witha remarkable assortment of flappish and whangable articles in hand--tocommence the scooting of the giant hens. They drove them into Urshot,where there was a Rural Fete, and Urshot took them as the crowning gloryof a happy day. They began to be shot at near Findon Beeches, but atfirst only with a rook rifle. Of course birds of that size could absorban unlimited quantity of small shot without inconvenience. Theyscattered somewhere near Sevenoaks, and near Tonbridge one of them fledclucking for a time in excessive agitation, somewhat ahead of andparallel with the afternoon boat express--to the great astonishment ofevery one therein.

  And about half-past five two of them were caught very cleverly by acircus proprietor at Tunbridge Wells, who lured them into a cage,rendered vacant through the death of a widowed dromedary, by scatteringcakes and bread....

  VIII.

  When the unfortunate Skinner got out of the South-Eastern train atUrshot that evening it was already nearly dusk. The train was late, butnot inordinately late--and Mr. Skinner remarked as much to thestation-master. Perhaps he saw a certain pregnancy in thestation-master's eye. After the briefest hesitation and with aconfidential movement of his hand to the side of his mouth he asked if"anything" had happened that day.

  "How d'yer _mean_?" said the station-master, a man with a hard, emphaticvoice.

  "Thethe 'ere waptheth and thingth."

  "We 'aven't 'ad much time to think of _waptheth_," said thestation-master agreeably. "We've been too busy with your brasted 'ens,"and he broke the news of the pullets to Mr. Skinner as one might breakthe window of an adverse politician.

  "You ain't 'eard anything of Mithith Thkinner?" asked Skinner, amidstthat missile shower of pithy information and comment.

  "No fear!" said the station-master--as though even he drew the linesomewhere in the matter of knowledge.

  "I mutht make inquireth bout thith," said Mr. Skinner, edging out ofreach of the station-master's concluding generalisations about theresponsibility attaching to the excessive nurture of hens....

  Going through Urshot Mr. Skinner was hailed by a lime-burner from thepits over by Hankey and asked if he was looking for his hens.

  "You ain't 'eard anything of Mithith Thkinner?" he asked.

  The lime-burner--his exact phrases need not concern us--expressed hissuperior interest in hens....

  It was already dark--as dark at least as a clear night in the EnglishJune can be--when Skinner--or his head at any rate--came into the bar ofthe Jolly Drovers and said: "Ello! You 'aven't 'eard anything of thith'ere thtory bout my 'enth, 'ave you?"

  "Oh, _'aven't_ we!" said Mr. Fulcher. "Why, part of the story's been andbust into my stable roof and one chapter smashed a 'ole in MissisVicar's green 'ouse--I beg 'er pardon--Conservarratory."

  Skinner came in. "I'd like thomething a little comforting," he said,"'ot gin and water'th about my figure," and everybody began to tell himthings about the pullets.

  "_Grathuth_ me!" said Skinner.

  "You 'aven't 'eard anything about Mithith Thkinner, 'ave you?" he askedin a pause.

  "That we 'aven't!" said Mr. Witherspoon. "We 'aven't thought of 'er. Weain't thought nothing of either of you."

  "Ain't you been 'ome to-day?" asked Fulcher over a tankard.

  "If one of those brasted birds 'ave pecked 'er," began Mr. Witherspoonsand left the full horror to their unaided imaginations....

  It appeared to the meeting at the time that it would be an interestingend to an eventful day to go on with Skinner and see if anything _had_happened to Mrs. Skinner. One never knows what luck one may have whenaccidents are at large. But Skinner, standing at the bar and drinkinghis hot gin and water, with one eye roving over the things at the backof the bar and the other fixed on the Absolute, missed the psychologicalmoment.

  "I thuppothe there 'athen't been any trouble with any of thethe bigwaptheth to-day anywhere?" he asked, with an elaborate detachment ofmanner.

  "Been too busy with your 'ens," said Fulcher.

  "I thuppothe they've all gone in now anyhow," said Skinner.

  "What--the 'ens?"

  "I wath thinking of the waptheth more particularly," said Skinner.

  And then, with, an air of circumspection that would have awakenedsuspicion in a week-old baby, and laying the accent heavily on most ofthe words he chose, he asked, "I _thuppothe nobody_ 'athn't '_eard_ ofany other _big_ thingth, about, 'ave they? Big _dogth_ or _catth_ oranything of _that_ thort? Theemth to me if thereth big henth and bigwaptheth comin' on--"

  He laughed with a fine pretence of talking idly.

  But a brooding expression came upon the faces of the Hickleybrow men.Fulcher was the first to give their condensing thought the concreteshape of words.


  "A cat to match them 'ens--" said Fulcher.

  "Ay!" said Witherspoon, "a cat to match they 'ens."

  "'Twould be a tiger," said Fulcher.

  "More'n a tiger," said Witherspoon....

  When at last Skinner followed the lonely footpath over the swellingfield that separated Hickleybrow from the sombre pine-shaded hollow inwhose black shadows the gigantic canary-creeper grappled silently withthe Experimental Farm, he followed it alone.

  He was distinctly seen to rise against the sky-line, against the warmclear immensity of the northern sky--for so far public interest followedhim--and to descend again into the night, into an obscurity from whichit would seem he will nevermore emerge. He passed--into a mystery. Noone knows to this day what happened to him after he crossed the brow.When later on the two Fulchers and Witherspoon, moved by their ownimaginations, came up the hill and stared after him, the flight hadswallowed him up altogether.

  The three men stood close. There was not a sound out of the woodedblackness that hid the Farm from their eyes.

  "It's all right," said young Fulcher, ending a silence.

  "Don't see any lights," said Witherspoon.

  "You wouldn't from here."

  "It's misty," said the elder Fulcher.

  They meditated for a space.

  "'E'd 'ave come back if anything was wrong," said young Fulcher, andthis seemed so obvious and conclusive that presently old Fulcher said,"Well," and the three went home to bed--thoughtfully I will admit....

  A shepherd out by Huckster's Farm heard a squealing in the night that hethought was foxes, and in the morning one of his lambs had been killed,dragged halfway towards Hickleybrow and partially devoured....

  The inexplicable part of it all is the absence of any indisputableremains of Skinner!

  Many weeks after, amidst the charred ruins of the Experimental Farm,there was found something which may or may not have been a humanshoulder-blade and in another part of the ruins a long bone greatlygnawed and equally doubtful. Near the stile going up towards Eyebrightthere was found a glass eye, and many people discovered thereupon thatSkinner owed much of his personal charm to such a possession. It staredout upon the world with that same inevitable effect of detachment, thatsame severe melancholy that had been the redemption of his else worldlycountenance.

  And about the ruins industrious research discovered the metal rings andcharred coverings of two linen buttons, three shanked buttons entire,and one of that metallic sort which is used in the less conspicuoussutures of the human Oeconomy. These remains have been accepted bypersons in authority as conclusive of a destroyed and scattered Skinner,but for my own entire conviction, and in view of his distinctiveidiosyncrasy, I must confess I should prefer fewer buttons and morebones.

  The glass eye of course has an air of extreme conviction, but if itreally _is_ Skinner's--and even Mrs. Skinner did not certainly know ifthat immobile eye of his was glass--something has changed it from aliquid brown to a serene and confident blue. That shoulder-blade is anextremely doubtful document, and I would like to put it side by sidewith the gnawed scapulae of a few of the commoner domestic animalsbefore I admitted its humanity.

  And where were Skinner's boots, for example? Perverted and strange as arat's appetite must be, is it conceivable that the same creatures thatcould leave a lamb only half eaten, would finish up Skinner--hair,bones, teeth, and boots?

  I have closely questioned as many as I could of those who knew Skinnerat all intimately, and they one and all agree that they cannot imagine_anything_ eating him. He was the sort of man, as a retired seafaringperson living in one of Mr. W.W. Jacobs' cottages at Dunton Green toldme, with a guarded significance of manner not uncommon in those parts,who would "get washed up anyhow," and as regards _the_ devouring elementwas "fit to put a fire out." He considered that Skinner would be as safeon a raft as anywhere. The retired seafaring man added that he wished tosay nothing whatever against Skinner; facts were facts. And rather thanhave his clothes made by Skinner, the retired seafaring man remarked hewould take his chance of being locked up. These observations certainlydo not present Skinner in the light of an appetising object.

  To be perfectly frank with the reader, I do not believe he ever wentback to the Experimental Farm. I believe he hovered through longhesitations about the fields of the Hickleybrow glebe, and finally,when that squealing began, took the line of least resistance out of hisperplexities into the Incognito.

  And in the Incognito, whether of this or of some other world unknown tous, he obstinately and quite indisputably has remained to this day....