The War in the Air

" said Mr. Tom Small

it could keep on," s

ill gas-works with an eye that neither praised nor blamed. Above the clustering gasometers three unfamiliar shapes appeared, thin, wallowing bladders that flapped a

so to speak, when all London turned out to see a balloon go over, and now every little place in t

s," said Mr. Tom Smallways. "Three barrer-loads! What they dropp

they say,

call 'em ladies," s

in the air, and throwing gravel at people. It ain't what

they continued to regard the swelling bulks with expres

orld of obstinate and incessant change, and in parts where its operations were unsparingly conspicuous. Vicissitude was in the very soil he tilled; even his garden was upon a yearly tenancy, and overshadowed by a huge board that proclaimed it no

hink it could k

w that magnate ruled the country-side when it was country-side, of shooting and hunting, and of caches along the high road, of how "where the gas-works is" was a cricket-field, and of the coming of the Crystal Palace. The Crystal Palace was six miles away from Bun Hill, a great facade that glittered in the morning, and was a clear blue outline against the sky in the afternoon, and of a night, a source of gratuitous fireworks for all the population of Bun Hill. And then had come the ra

ep on," said Mr. Tom Smallways,

made up the pavement of the High Street, they levelled that up so that one had to go down three steps into the shop. Tom did his best to sell only his own excellent but limited range of produce; but Progress came shoving things into his window, French artichokes

angorous petrol trolleys delivering coal and parcels in the place of vanishing horse-vans, motor-omnibuses ousted the horse-omnibuses, even the Kentis

rt Smallways got

y to explain, was a

istol taken away from him by a real policeman when he was ten. And he learnt to smoke, not with pipes and brown paper and cane as Tom had done, but with a penny packet of Boys of England American cigarettes. His language shocked his father before he was twelve, and by that age, what with touting for parcels at the station and selling the Bun Hill Weekly Express, he was making three shillings a

k his goods out himself, and sought employers for Bert who did not know of this strain of poetry in his nature. And Bert touched the fringe of a number of trades in succession--draper's porter, chemist's boy, doctor's page, junior assistant gas-fitter, envelope addresser, milk-cart assistant, golf caddie, and at last helper in a bicycle shop. Here, apparently, he found the progressive quality his nature had craved. His employer was a pirate-souled young man named Grubb, with a black-smeared face by day, and a music-hall side in the evening, who dreamt of a patent lever

ntly that Tom and Jessie, who both had a natural tendency to be

is Bert," said Tom. "He

much," said Jessica, who had

at that; we'll be having 'em in March if things go on as t

gentleman's tie. He wasn't up to it--not

and Grubb going down to Brighton (and back)--heads down, handle-bars down, b

ead T

and pig-skin breeches, of foxes at Ring's Bottom, where now the County Council pauper lunatics were enclosed, of Lady Bone's chintzes and crinolines. Nobody heeded him. The world had thrown up a new type of gentleman altogether--a gentleman of most ungentlemanly energy, a gentleman in dusty oilskins and motor goggles and a wonde

he pined in vain at twenty miles an hour along roads that were continually more dusty and more crowded with mechanical traffic. But at last his savings accumulated, and his chance came. The hire-purchase system bridged a financial gap, and one bright and memorable Sunday morning

"When I was 'is age, I'd never been to London, never bin south of Crawley--never bin anywhere on my own where I couldn't walk. And nobody didn't go. Not unless they was

bin to Brighton,

Jessica sharply; "creering ab

ettling-down and losing its adventurous quality. Indeed, it is as true as it is remarkable that Tom was the first to observe the new development. But his gardening made him attentive to the heavens, and the proximity of the Bun Hill gas-works and the Crystal Palace, from whi

matograph, then Bert's imagination was stimulated by a sixpenny edition of that aeronautic cla

l Palace grounds, and obliged to dismount and watch it. It was like a bolster with a broken nose, and below it, and comparatively small, was a stiff framework bearing a man and an engine with a screw that whizzed round in front and a sort of canvas rudder behind. The framework had an air of dragging the reluctant gas-cylinder after it like a brisk little terrier towing a shy gas-distended elephant into

and turned to his

nes, pear-shaped monsters, even at last a thing of aluminium that glittered wonderfully, and that

lowed act

spapers or by cinematograph records. But it was brought home very insistently, and in those days if, ever one heard a man saying in a public place in a loud, reassuring, confident tone, "It's bound to come," the chances were ten to one he was talking of flying. And Bert got a box l

But they smashed. Sometimes they smashed the engine, sometimes they smashed the aeronaut, usually they smashed both. Machines that made flights of three or four miles and came down safely, went up the next tim

repeating his newspaper. "They pitch and the

ying slumped, even ballooning fell away to some extent, though it remained a fairly popular sport, and continued to lift gravel from the wharf of the Bun Hill gas-works and drop it upon deserving people's lawns and gardens. There were half a doz

hed elbows into ribs the world would not willingly let break, deeming themselves fortunate if they could see "just a little bit of the rail." Inaudible, but convincing, the great inventor expounded his discovery, and sent his obedient little model of the trains of the future up gradients, round curves, and across a sagging wire. It ran along its single rail, on its single wheels, simple and su

s, railways: and indeed every form of track for mechanical locomotion. Where land was cheap the rail ran along the ground, where it was dear the rail lifted up

say of him than that, "When he was a boy, there wasn't nothing high

distribution--the Home Counties Power Distribution Company set up transformers and a generating station close beside the old gas-works--but,

garden, which was still not built upon and unchanged, except for a couple of advertisement boards, one recommending a two-and-sixpenny watch, and one a nerve restorer. These, by the bye, were placed almost horizontally to catch the eye of the passing mono-rail passengers above, and so served admirably to roof over a tool-shed and a mushroom

rail cables at a height of a hundred and fifty feet above the water, except near the middle, where th

, one behind the other, which for some reason upset Tom dreadfully,

after a brief holiday spent in agitating for women's suffrage, she had been struck by the possibility of these reefs cropping up again under the water. She had set herself to verify this supposition by the use of the submarine crawler invented by Doctor Alberto Cassini. By a happy mingling of reasoning and intuition peculiar to her sex she found gold at her first descent, and emerged after three ho

. Pictures of flying and flying machines returned to the newspapers; articles and allusions increased and multiplied in the serious magazines. People asked in mono-rail trains, "When are we going to fly?" A new

s flying-machine model again, tried it in the yard behind the shop, got a kind of flight out of it, and

ear Nutfield, whither his motor-bicycle had brought him. There smoked and meditated a person in khaki, an engineer, who presently took an interest in Bert's machine. It was a sturdy piece of apparatus, and it had acquired a kind of doc

ORK," s

d they do," sa

ing's c

said Bert; "I shall

e long," said

generating into an amiable

ying," the soldier insi

seen it,"

mean real, safe, steady, controlled fl

n't see

. They got it right enough. You bet--our War Off

aken. He asked questions-

ten feet high, and inside that they do things. Chaps about the camp--now and then we get a pe

nd filled his pipe thoughtfully. Bert sat on the l

fighting'll

urtain does go up, I tell you you'll find every one on the stage--busy.... Such

m a bit,"

the disappearing inventor--the inventor who turns up in a blaze o

I 'ave,"

Wright Brothers out in America. They glided--they glided miles and miles. Finally they glided off stage. Why, it must be nineteen hundred and four, or five, THEY vanished! Then there was those people in Ireland--no, I forget their names. Everybody said they could fly. THEY went. They ain't dead that

repared to li

t society got hold

societ

r," he said, "there isn't a big Power in Europe, OR Asia, OR America, OR Africa, that hasn't got at least one or two flying machines hidden up its sleeve at the present time. Not one. Real, workable, flying machines. And the spying! The spying and manoeuvri

them, anyhow. Jest to help believing. I'll

" said the soldier, and led h

ith his cap on the back of his head, and a cig

Grubb, we been wasting our blessed old time. B

e coming of flying, occurred. People talk glibly enough of epoch-making events; this was an epoch-making event. It was the unanticipated and entirely successful flight of Mr. Alfred Butter

on of the ordinary aeroplane. The effect upon the observer was rather something in the nature of a bee or wasp. Parts of the apparatus were spinning very rapidly, and gave one a hazy effect of transparent wings; but parts, including two peculiarly curved "wing-cases"--if one may borrow a figure from the flying beetles--remai

istinguished member of most of the existing aeronautical associations. Then one day he wrote to all the London papers to announce that he had made arrangements for an ascent from the Crystal Palace of a machine that would demonstrate satisfactorily that the outstanding difficulties in the way of flying were finally solved. Few of the papers printed his letter, still fewer were the people who believed in his claim. No one was excited even when a fracas on the steps of a leading hotel in Piccadilly, in which he tried to horse-whip a prominent German musician upon some personal ac

who sleep on the seats of Trafalgar Square were roused by his buzz and awoke to discover him circling the Nelson column, and by the time he had go

lying secur

ility of flying to appreciate Mr. Butteridge at his proper value. He circled the University buildings, and dropped to within shouting distance of the crowds in West End Park and on the slope of Gilmorehill. The thing flew quite steadily at a pace of ab

outed; "B-U-T-T-E-R-I-D-G-E.-

g and patriotic cries, and then flew up very swiftly and easily into the south-eastern sk

ets upon that one day, than in the previous three months, and a County Council steamboat, the Isaac Walton, collided with a pier of Westminster Bridge, and narrowly escaped disaster by running ashore--it was low water--on the mud on the south side. He

le sore. I can't give you a word of talk. I'm too--done. My name's Butteridge. B-U-T-T-

g cameras and wearing bowler hats and enterprising ties. He himself towers up in the doorway, a big figure with a mouth--an eloquent cavity ben

ds and gesticulates with a

ce. Bert was excited, Tom kept calm and lumpish, but neither of them realised how their own lives were to be invaded by the fruits of that beginning. "P'raps ol

s fits." The next day it was clear the fits had been given even as he said: their magazine pages were black with hasty photographs, their prose was convuls

personality of Mr. Butteridge, and the extraordina

nce in packing and dispersing the rest. Sealed packing-cases went north and east and west to various pantechnicons, and the engines were boxed with peculiar care. It became evident these precautions were not inadvisable in view of the violent demand for any sort of photograph or impressions of his machine. But Mr. Butteridge, having once

e the diffi

ion, though, as a matter of fact, Butteridge had a height of six feet two inches, and a weight altogether proportionate to that. Moreover, he had a love affair of large and unusual dimensions and irregular circumstances and the still largely decorous British public learnt with reluctance and alarm that a sympathetic treatment of this affair was inseparable from the exclusive acquisition of the priceless secret of aerial stability by the British Empire. The exact particulars of the similarity never came to light, but apparently the lady had, in a fit of high-minded inadvertence, had gone through the ceremony of marriage with, one quotes the unpublis

fore the shrinking journalists--no uncle with a big watch and a little baby ever harped upon it so relentlessly; w

vate affair, Mr. Butter

do not care if I am up against the universal All. I am pleading the cause of a woman, a woman I lur

, but Puritanism, sorr, I abhor. It fills me with

view. If they had not done justice to his erotic bellowings and gesticulatio

teridge could be deflected for a moment from the cause of the lady he championed, then he talked chiefly, and usually with tears of tenderness in his voice, about his mother and his childhood--his mother who crowned a complete encyclopedia of maternal virtue by being "largely Scotch." She was not qu

ys going on

xampled opportunity to bellow and show off to an attentive world. Rumours of his real identity spread abroad. It was said that he had been the landlord of an ambiguous hotel in Cape Town, and had there given shelter to, and witnessed, the experiments and finally stolen the papers and plans of

rs, tempted by the impunity of the pioneers in this direction, had pledged themselves to pay in some cases, quite overwhelming sums to the first person to fly from Manchester to Glasgow, from London to Manchester, one hundred miles, two hundred miles in England, and the like. Most had hedged a little with

he secret of the practicable aeroplane in which, for all one could tell to the contrary, the key of the future empire of the world resided. And presently, to the great consternation of innumerable people, including among others Mr. Bert Smallways, it became apparent that whatever n

if he was an inventor-

bringing me Motherland the secret that would give her the empire of the world. And what do I get?"

s that do not snore and gurgle helplessly in paroxysms of plethora upon beds of formality and red tape! There are nations that will not fling away the empire of earth in order to slight an unknown man and insult a noble

mericans get hold of this," he said impressively to his brother, "the British Empire's do

ssica, in his impressive pause. "Everybody in Bun Hill seems

rt, disregarding the suggestion. "At

is head po

said Jessica. She turned briskly on Bert.

y quiet s'morning. Though all this danger to

t off your mind

oes and patriotic insecurity, that merged at last into a very definite irritation at the weight and