The War in the Air

The old gentleman let him talk for some time, and then remarked, in a tone of rapturous enjoyment: “Stone deaf,” and added, “Nasty things.”

A rosy-faced man in a straw hat claimed attention. “I DID save the front wheel,” he said; “you’d have had that tyre catch, too, if I hadn’t kept turning it round.” It became manifest that this was so. The front wheel had retained its tyre, was intact, was still rotating slowly among the blackened and twisted ruins of the rest of the machine. It had something of that air of conscious virtue, of unimpeachable respectability, that distinguishes a rent collector in a low neighbourhood. “That wheel’s worth a pound,” said the rosy-faced man, making a song of it. “I kep’ turning it round.”

Newcomers kept arriving from the south with the question, “What’s up?” until it got on Grubb’s nerves. Londonward the crowd was constantly losing people; they would mount their various wheels with the satisfied manner of spectators who have had the best. Their voices would recede into the twilight; one would hear a laugh at the memory of this particularly salient incident or that.

“I’m afraid,” said the gentleman of the motor-car, “my tarpaulin’s a bit done for.”

Grubb admitted that the owner was the best judge of that.

“Nothin, else I can do for you?” said the gentleman of the motor-car, it may be with a suspicion of irony.

Bert was roused to action. “Look here,” he said. “There’s my young lady. If she ain’t ‘ome by ten they lock her out. See? Well, all my money was in my jacket pocket, and it’s all mixed up with the burnt stuff, and that’s too ‘ot to touch. Is Clapham out of your way?”

“All in the day’s work,” said the gentleman with the motor-car, and turned to Edna. “Very pleased indeed,” he said, “if you’ll come with us. We’re late for dinner as it is, so it won’t make much difference for us to go home by way of Clapham. We’ve got to get to Surbiton, anyhow. I’m afraid you’ll find us a little slow.”

“But what’s Bert going to do?” said Edna.

“I don’t know that we can accommodate Bert,” said the motor-car gentleman, “though we’re tremendously anxious to oblige.”

“You couldn’t take the whole lot?” said Bert, waving his hand at the deboshed and blackened ruins on the ground.

“I’m awfully afraid I can’t,” said the Oxford man. “Awfully sorry, you know.”

“Then I’ll have to stick ‘ere for a bit,” said Bert. “I got to see the thing through. You go on, Edna.”

“Don’t like leavin’ you, Bert.”

“You can’t ‘elp it, Edna.”…

The last Edna saw of Bert was his figure, in charred and blackened shirtsleeves, standing in the dusk. He was musing deeply by the mixed ironwork and ashes of his vanished motor-bicycle, a melancholy figure. His retinue of spectators had shrunk now to half a dozen figures. Flossie and Grubb were preparing to follow her desertion.

“Cheer up, old Bert!” cried Edna, with artificial cheerfulness. “So long.”

“So long, Edna,” said Bert.

“See you to-morrer.”

“See you to-morrer,” said Bert, though he was destined, as a matter of fact, to see much of the habitable globe before he saw her again.

Bert began to light matches from a borrowed boxful, and search for a half-crown that still eluded him among the charred remains.

His face was grave and melancholy.

“I WISH that ‘adn’t ‘appened,” said Flossie, riding on with Grubb…

And at last Bert was left almost alone, a sad, blackened Promethean figure, cursed by the gift of fire. He had entertained vague ideas of hiring a cart, of achieving miraculous repairs, of still snatching some residual value from his one chief possession. Now, in the darkening night, he perceived the vanity of such intentions. Truth came to him bleakly, and laid her chill conviction upon him. He took hold of the handle-bar, stood the thing up, tried to push it forward. The tyreless hind-wheel was jammed hopelessly, even as he feared. For a minute or so he stood upholding his machine, a motionless despair. Then with a great effort he thrust the ruins from him into the ditch, kicked at it once, regarded it for a moment, and turned his face resolutely Londonward.

He did not once look back.

“That’s the end of THAT game!” said Bert. “No more teuf-teuf-teuf for Bert Smallways for a year or two. Good-bye ‘olidays!.. Oh! I ought to ‘ave sold the blasted thing when I had a chance three years ago.”

3

The next morning found the firm of Grubb & Smallways in a state of profound despondency. It seemed a small matter to them that the newspaper and cigarette shop opposite displayed such placards as this:

REPORTED AMERICAN ULTIMATUM.

BRITAIN MUST FIGHT.

OUR INFATUATED WAR OFFICE STILL

REFUSES TO LISTEN TO MR. BUTTERIDGE.

GREAT MONO-RAIL DISASTER AT TIMBUCTOO.

or this: WAR A QUESTION OF HOURS.

NEW YORK CALM.

EXCITEMENT IN BERLIN.

or again: WASHINGTON STILL SILENT.

WHAT WILL PARIS DO?

THE PANIC ON THE BOURSE.

THE KING’S GARDEN PARTY TO THE MASKED TWAREGS. MR. BUTTERIDGE TAKES AN OFFER. LATEST BETTING FROM TEHERAN.

or this: WILL AMERICA FIGHT?

ANTI-GERMAN RIOT IN BAGDAD.

THE MUNICIPAL SCANDALS AT DAMASCUS.

MR. BUTTERIDGE’S INVENTION FOR AMERICA.

Bert stared at these over the card of pump-clips in the pane in the door with unseeing eyes. He wore a blackened flannel shirt, and the jacketless ruins of the holiday suit of yesterday. The boarded-up shop was dark and depressing beyond words, the few scandalous hiring machines had never looked so hopelessly disreputable. He thought of their fellows who were “out,” and of the approaching disputations of the afternoon. He thought of their new landlord, and of their old landlord, and of bills and claims. Life presented itself for the first time as a hopeless fight against fate…

“Grubb, o’ man,” he said, distilling the quintessence, “I’m fair sick of this shop.”

“So’m I,” said Grubb.

“I’m out of conceit with it. I don’t seem to care ever to speak to a customer again.”

“There’s that trailer,” said Grubb, after a pause.

“Blow the trailer!” said Bert. “Anyhow, I didn’t leave a deposit on it. I didn’t do that. Still – ”