XXV.
A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON.
The man with the white face entered the carriage at Rugby. He moved slowlyin spite of the urgency of his porter, and even while he was still on theplatform I noted how ill he seemed. He dropped into the corner overagainst me with a sigh, made an incomplete attempt to arrange histravelling shawl, and became motionless, with his eyes staring vacantly.Presently he was moved by a sense of my observation, looked up at me, andput out a spiritless hand for his newspaper. Then he glanced again in mydirection.
I feigned to read. I feared I had unwittingly embarrassed him, and in amoment I was surprised to find him speaking.
"I beg your pardon?" said I.
"That book," he repeated, pointing a lean finger, "is about dreams."
"Obviously," I answered, for it was Fortnum-Roscoe's _Dream States_,and the title was on the cover.
He hung silent for a space as if he sought words. "Yes," he said, at last,"but they tell you nothing."
I did not catch his meaning for a second.
"They don't know," he added.
I looked a little more attentively at his face.
"There are dreams," he said, "and dreams." That sort of proposition Inever dispute. "I suppose----" he hesitated. "Do you ever dream? I meanvividly."
"I dream very little," I answered. "I doubt if I have three vivid dreamsin a year."
"Ah!" he said, and seemed for a moment to collect his thoughts.
"Your dreams don't mix with your memories?" he asked abruptly. "You don'tfind yourself in doubt: did this happen or did it not?"
"Hardly ever. Except just for a momentary hesitation now and then. Isuppose few people do."
"Does _he_ say----" he indicated the book.
"Says it happens at times and gives the usual explanation about intensityof impression and the like to account for its not happening as a rule. Isuppose you know something of these theories----"
"Very little--except that they are wrong."
His emaciated hand played with the strap of the window for a time. Iprepared to resume reading, and that seemed to precipitate his nextremark. He leant forward almost as though he would touch me.
"Isn't there something called consecutive dreaming--that goes on nightafter night?"
"I believe there is. There are cases given in most books on mentaltrouble."
"Mental trouble! Yes. I daresay there are. It's the right place for them.But what I mean----" He looked at his bony knuckles. "Is that sort ofthing always dreaming? _Is_ it dreaming? Or is it something else?Mightn't it be something else?"
I should have snubbed his persistent conversation but for the drawnanxiety of his face. I remember now the look of his faded eyes and thelids red stained--perhaps you know that look.
"I'm not just arguing about a matter of opinion," he said. "The thing'skilling me."
"Dreams?"
"If you call them dreams. Night after night. Vivid!--so vivid ... this--"(he indicated the landscape that went streaming by the window) "seemsunreal in comparison! I can scarcely remember who I am, what business I amon ..."
He paused. "Even now--"
"The dream is always the same--do you mean?" I asked.
"It's over."
"You mean?"
"I died."
"Died?"
"Smashed and killed, and now so much of me as that dream was is dead. Deadfor ever. I dreamt I was another man, you know, living in a different partof the world and in a different time. I dreamt that night after night.Night after night I woke into that other life. Fresh scenes and freshhappenings--until I came upon the last--"
"When you died?"
"When I died."
"And since then--"
"No," he said. "Thank God! that was the end of the dream..."
It was clear I was in for this dream. And, after all, I had an hour beforeme, the light was fading fast, and Fortnum-Roscoe has a dreary way withhim. "Living in a different time," I said: "do you mean in some differentage?"
"Yes."
"Past?"
"No, to come--to come."
"The year three thousand, for example?"
"I don't know what year it was. I did when I was asleep, when I wasdreaming, that is, but not now--not now that I am awake. There's a lot ofthings I have forgotten since I woke out of these dreams, though I knewthem at the time when I was--I suppose it was dreaming. They called theyear differently from our way of calling the year... What _did_ theycall it?" He put his hand to his forehead. "No," said he, "I forget."
He sat smiling weakly. For a moment I feared he did not mean to tell mehis dream. As a rule, I hate people who tell their dreams, but this struckme differently. I proffered assistance even. "It began----" I suggested.
"It was vivid from the first. I seemed to wake up in it suddenly. And it'scurious that in these dreams I am speaking of I never remembered this lifeI am living now. It seemed as if the dream life was enough while itlasted. Perhaps----But I will tell you how I find myself when I do mybest to recall it all. I don't remember anything clearly until I foundmyself sitting in a sort of loggia looking out over the sea. I had beendozing, and suddenly I woke up--fresh and vivid--not a bit dreamlike--because the girl had stopped fanning me."
"The girl?"
"Yes, the girl. You must not interrupt or you will put me out."
He stopped abruptly. "You won't think I'm mad?" he said.
"No," I answered; "you've been dreaming. Tell me your dream."
"I woke up, I say, because the girl had stopped fanning me. I was notsurprised to find myself there or anything of that sort, you understand. Idid not feel I had fallen into it suddenly. I simply took it up at thatpoint. Whatever memory I had of _this_ life, this nineteenth-centurylife, faded as I woke, vanished like a dream. I knew all about myself,knew that my name was no longer Cooper but Hedon, and all about myposition in the world. I've forgotten a lot since I woke--there's a wantof connection--but it was all quite clear and matter-of-fact then."
He hesitated again, gripping the window strap, putting his face forward,and looking up to me appealingly.
"This seems bosh to you?"
"No, no!" I cried. "Go on. Tell me what this loggia was like."
"It was not really a loggia--I don't know what to call it. It faced south.It was small. It was all in shadow except the semicircle above the balconythat showed the sky and sea and the corner where the girl stood. I was ona couch--it was a metal couch with light striped cushions--and the girlwas leaning over the balcony with her back to me. The light of the sunrisefell on her ear and cheek. Her pretty white neck and the little curls thatnestled there, and her white shoulder were in the sun, and all the graceof her body was in the cool blue shadow. She was dressed--how can Idescribe it? It was easy and flowing. And altogether there she stood, sothat it came to me how beautiful and desirable she was, as though I hadnever seen her before. And when at last I sighed and raised myself upon myarm she turned her face to me--"
He stopped.
"I have lived three-and-fifty years in this world. I have had mother,sisters, friends, wife and daughters--all their faces, the play of theirfaces, I know. But the face of this girl--it is much more real to me. Ican bring it back into memory so that I see it again--I could draw it orpaint it. And after all--"
He stopped--but I said nothing.
"The face of a dream--the face of a dream. She was beautiful. Not thatbeauty which is terrible, cold, and worshipful, like the beauty of asaint; nor that beauty that stirs fierce passions; but a sort ofradiation, sweet lips that softened into smiles, and grave gray eyes. Andshe moved gracefully, she seemed to have part with all pleasant andgracious things--"
He stopped, and his face was downcast and hidden. Then he looked up at meand went on, making no further attempt to disguise his absolute belief inthe reality of his story.
"You see, I had thrown up my plans and ambitions, thrown up all I had everworked for or desired, for her sake. I had been a master man away there inthe north, with
influence and property and a great reputation, but none ofit had seemed worth having beside her. I had come to the place, this cityof sunny pleasures, with her, and left all those things to wreck and ruinjust to save a remnant at least of my life. While I had been in love withher before I knew that she had any care for me, before I had imagined thatshe would dare--that we should dare--all my life had seemed vain andhollow, dust and ashes. It _was_ dust and ashes. Night after night,and through the long days I had longed and desired--my soul had beatenagainst the thing forbidden!
"But it is impossible for one man to tell another just these things. It'semotion, it's a tint, a light that comes and goes. Only while it's there,everything changes, everything. The thing is I came away and left them intheir crisis to do what they could."
"Left whom?" I asked, puzzled.
"The people up in the north there. You see--in this dream, anyhow--I hadbeen a big man, the sort of man men come to trust in, to group themselvesabout. Millions of men who had never seen me were ready to do things andrisk things because of their confidence in me. I had been playing thatgame for years, that big laborious game, that vague, monstrous politicalgame amidst intrigues and betrayals, speech and agitation. It was a vastweltering world, and at last I had a sort of leadership against the Gang--you know it was called the Gang--a sort of compromise of scoundrellyprojects and base ambitions and vast public emotional stupidities andcatch-words--the Gang that kept the world noisy and blind year by year,and all the while that it was drifting, drifting towards infinitedisaster. But I can't expect you to understand the shades andcomplications of the year--the year something or other ahead. I had itall--down to the smallest details--in my dream. I suppose I had beendreaming of it before I awoke, and the fading outline of some queer newdevelopment I had imagined still hung about me as I rubbed my eyes. It wassome grubby affair that made me thank God for the sunlight. I sat up onthe couch and remained looking at the woman, and rejoicing--rejoicing thatI had come away out of all that tumult and folly and violence before itwas too late. After all, I thought, this is life--love and beauty, desireand delight, are they not worth all those dismal struggles for vague,gigantic ends? And I blamed myself for having ever sought to be a leaderwhen I might have given my days to love. But then, thought I, if I had notspent my early days sternly and austerely, I might have wasted myself uponvain and worthless women, and at the thought all my being went out in loveand tenderness to my dear mistress, my dear lady, who had come at last andcompelled me--compelled me by her invincible charm for me--to lay thatlife aside.
"'You are worth it,' I said, speaking without intending her to hear; 'youare worth it, my dearest one; worth pride and praise and all things. Love!to have _you_ is worth them all together.' And at the murmur of myvoice she turned about.
"'Come and see,' she cried--I can hear her now--come and see the sunriseupon Monte Solaro.'
"I remember how I sprang to my feet and joined her at the balcony. She puta white hand upon my shoulder and pointed towards great masses oflimestone flushing, as it were, into life. I looked. But first I noted thesunlight on her face caressing the lines of her cheeks and neck. How can Idescribe to you the scene we had before us? We were at Capri----"
"I have been there," I said. "I have clambered up Monte Solaro and drunk_vero Capri_--muddy stuff like cider--at the summit."
"Ah!" said the man with the white face; "then perhaps you can tell me--youwill know if this was indeed Capri. For in this life I have never beenthere. Let me describe it. We were in a little room, one of a vastmultitude of little rooms, very cool and sunny, hollowed out of thelimestone of a sort of cape, very high above the sea. The whole island,you know, was one enormous hotel, complex beyond explaining, and on theother side there were miles of floating hotels, and huge floating stagesto which the flying machines came. They called it a Pleasure City. Ofcourse, there was none of that in your time--rather, I should say,_is_ none of that _now_. Of course. Now!--yes.
"Well, this room of ours was at the extremity of the cape, so that onecould see east and west. Eastward was a great cliff--a thousand feet highperhaps, coldly grey except for one bright edge of gold, and beyond it theIsle of the Sirens, and a falling coast that faded and passed into the hotsunrise. And when one turned to the west, distinct and near was a littlebay, a little beach still in shadow. And out of that shadow rose Solaro,straight and tall, flushed and golden-crested, like a beauty throned, andthe white moon was floating behind her in the sky. And before us from eastto west stretched the many-tinted sea all dotted with littlesailing-boats.
"To the eastward, of course, these little boats were gray and very minuteand clear, but to the westward they were little boats of gold--shininggold--almost like little flames. And just below us was a rock with an archworn through it. The blue sea-water broke to green and foam all round therock, and a galley came gliding out of the arch."
"I know that rock," I said. "I was nearly drowned there. It is called theFaraglioni."
"_Faraglioni_? Yes, _she_ called it that," answered the man withthe white face. "There was some story--but that----"
He put his hand to his forehead again. "No," he said, "I forget thatstory.
"Well, that is the first thing I remember, the first dream I had, thatlittle shaded room and the beautiful air and sky and that dear lady ofmine, with her shining arms and her graceful robe, and how we sat andtalked in half whispers to one another. We talked in whispers, not becausethere was any one to hear, but because there was still such a freshness ofmind between us that our thoughts were a little frightened, I think, tofind themselves at last in words. And so they went softly.
"Presently we were hungry, and we went from our apartment, going by astrange passage with a moving floor, until we came to the greatbreakfast-room--there was a fountain and music. A pleasant and joyfulplace it was, with its sunlight and splashing, and the murmur of pluckedstrings. And we sat and ate and smiled at one another, and I would notheed a man who was watching me from a table near by.
"And afterwards we went on to the dancing-hall. But I cannot describethat hall. The place was enormous, larger than any building you have everseen--and in one place there was the old gate of Capri, caught into thewall of a gallery high overhead. Light girders, stems and threads of gold,burst from the pillars like fountains, streamed like an Aurora across theroof and interlaced, like--like conjuring tricks. All about the greatcircle for the dancers there were beautiful figures, strange dragons, andintricate and wonderful grotesques bearing lights. The place was inundatedwith artificial light that shamed the newborn day. And as we went throughthe throng the people turned about and looked at us, for all through theworld my name and face were known, and how I had suddenly thrown up pride,and struggle to come to this place. And they looked also at the ladybeside me, though half the story of how at last she had come to me wasunknown or mistold. And few of the men who were there, I know, but judgedme a happy man, in spite of all the shame and dishonour that had come uponmy name.
"The air was full of music, full of harmonious scents, full of the rhythmof beautiful motions. Thousands of beautiful people swarmed about thehall, crowded the galleries, sat in a myriad recesses; they were dressedin splendid colours and crowned with flowers; thousands danced about thegreat circle beneath the white images of the ancient gods, and gloriousprocessions of youths and maidens came and went. We two danced, not thedreary monotonies of your days--of this time, I mean--but dances that werebeautiful, intoxicating. And even now I can see my lady dancing--dancingjoyously. She danced, you know, with a serious face; she danced with aserious dignity, and yet she was smiling at me and caressing me--smilingand caressing with her eyes.
"The music was different," he murmured. "It went--I cannot describe it;but it was infinitely richer and more varied than any music that has evercome to me awake.
"And then--it was when we had done dancing--a man came to speak to me. Hewas a lean, resolute man, very soberly clad for that place, and already Ihad marked his face watching me in the breakfasting hall
, and afterwardsas we went along the passage I had avoided his eye. But now, as we sat ina little alcove smiling at the pleasure of all the people who went to andfro across the shining floor, he came and touched me, and spoke to me sothat I was forced to listen. And he asked that he might speak to me for alittle time apart.
"'No,' I said. 'I have no secrets from this lady. What do you want to tellme?'
"He said it was a trivial matter, or at least a dry matter, for a lady tohear.
"'Perhaps for me to hear,' said I.
"He glanced at her, as though almost he would appeal to her. Then he askedme suddenly if I. had heard of a great and avenging declaration thatGresham had made. Now, Gresham had always before been the man next tomyself in the leadership of that great party in the north. He was aforcible, hard, and tactless man, and only I had been able to control andsoften him. It was on his account even more than my own, I think, that theothers had been so dismayed at my retreat. So this question about what hehad done re-awakened my old interest in the life I had put aside just fora moment.
"'I have taken no heed of any news for many days,' I said. 'What hasGresham been saying?'
"And with that the man began, nothing loth, and I must confess ever; I wasstruck by Gresham's reckless folly in the wild and threatening words hehad used. And this messenger they had sent to me not only told me ofGresham's speech, but went on to ask counsel and to point out what needthey had of me. While he talked, my lady sat a little forward and watchedhis face and mine.
"My old habits of scheming and organising reasserted themselves. I couldeven see myself suddenly returning to the north, and all the dramaticeffect of it. All that this man said witnessed to the disorder of theparty indeed, but not to its damage. I should go back stronger than I hadcome. And then I thought of my lady. You see--how can I tell you? Therewere certain peculiarities of our relationship--as things are I need nottell about that--which would render her presence with me impossible. Ishould have had to leave her; indeed, I should have had to renounce herclearly and openly, if I was to do all that I could do in the north. Andthe man knew _that_, even as he talked to her and me, knew it as wellas she did, that my steps to duty were--first, separation, thenabandonment. At the touch of that thought my dream of a return wasshattered. I turned on the man suddenly, as he was imagining his eloquencewas gaining ground with me.
"'What have I to do with these things now?' I said. 'I have done withthem. Do you think I am coquetting with your people in coming here?'
"'No,' he said; 'but----'
"'Why cannot you leave me alone? I have done with these things. I haveceased to be anything but a private man.'
"'Yes,' he answered. 'But have you thought?--this talk of war, thesereckless challenges, these wild aggressions----'
"I stood up.
"'No,' I cried. 'I won't hear you. I took count of all those things, Iweighed them--and I have come away."
"He seemed to consider the possibility of persistence. He looked from meto where the lady sat regarding us.
"'War,' he said, as if he were speaking to himself, and then turned slowlyfrom me and walked away.
"I stood, caught in the whirl of thoughts his appeal had set going.
"I heard my lady's voice.
"'Dear,' she said; 'but if they have need of you--'
"She did not finish her sentence, she let it rest there. I turned to hersweet face, and the balance of my mood swayed and reeled.
"'They want me only to do the thing they dare not do themselves,' I said.'If they distrust Gresham they must settle with him themselves.'
"She looked at me doubtfully.
"'But war--' she said.
"I saw a doubt on her face that I had seen before, a doubt of herself andme, the first shadow of the discovery that, seen strongly and completely,must drive us apart for ever.
"Now, I was an older mind than hers, and I could sway her to this beliefor that.
"'My dear one,' I said, 'you must not trouble over these things. Therewill be no war. Certainly there will be no war. The age of wars is past.Trust me to know the justice of this case. They have no right upon me,dearest, and no one has a right upon me. I have been free to choose mylife, and I have chosen this.'
"'But _war_--' she said.
"I sat down beside her. I put an arm behind her and took her hand in mine.I set myself to drive that doubt away--I set myself to fill her mind withpleasant things again. I lied to her, and in lying to her I lied also tomyself. And she was only too ready to believe me, only too ready toforget.
"Very soon the shadow had gone again, and we were hastening to ourbathing-place in the Grotta del Bovo Marino, where it was our custom tobathe every day. We swam and splashed one another, and in that buoyantwater I seemed to become something lighter and stronger than a man. And atlast we came out dripping and rejoicing and raced among the rocks. Andthen I put on a dry bathing-dress, and we sat to bask in the sun, andpresently I nodded, resting my head against her knee, and she put her handupon my hair and stroked it softly and I dozed. And behold! as it werewith the snapping of the string of a violin, I was awakening, and I was inmy own bed in Liverpool, in the life of to-day.
"Only for a time I could not believe that all these vivid moments had beenno more than the substance of a dream.
"In truth, I could not believe it a dream, for all the sobering reality ofthings about me. I bathed and dressed as it were by habit, and as I shavedI argued why I of all men should leave the woman I loved to go back tofantastic politics in the hard and strenuous north. Even if Gresham didforce the world back to war, what was that to me? I was a man, with theheart of a man, and why should I feel the responsibility of a deity forthe way the world might go?
"You know that is not quite the way I think about affairs, about my realaffairs. I am a solicitor, you know, with a point of view.
"The vision was so real, you must understand, so utterly unlike a dream,that I kept perpetually recalling little irrelevant details; even theornament of a bookcover that lay on my wife's sewing-machine in thebreakfast-room recalled with the utmost vividness the gilt line that ranabout the seat in the alcove where I had talked with the messenger from mydeserted party. Have you ever heard of a dream that had a quality likethat?"
"Like--?"
"So that afterwards you remembered little details you had forgotten."
I thought. I had never noticed the point before, but he was right.
"Never," I said. "That is what you never seem to do with dreams."
"No," he answered. "But that is just what I did. I am a solicitor, youmust understand, in Liverpool, and I could not help wondering what theclients and business people I found myself talking to in my office wouldthink if I told them suddenly I was in love with a girl who would be borna couple of hundred years or so hence, and worried about the politics ofmy great-great-great-grandchildren. I was chiefly busy that daynegotiating a ninety-nine-year building lease. It was a private builder ina hurry, and we wanted to tie him in every possible way. I had aninterview with him, and he showed a certain want of temper that sent me tobed still irritated. That night I had no dream. Nor did I dream the nextnight, at least, to remember.
"Something of that intense reality of conviction vanished. I began to feelsure it _was_ a dream. And then it came again.
"When the dream came again, nearly four days later, it was very different.I think it certain that four days had also elapsed _in_ the dream.Many things had happened in the north, and the shadow of them was backagain between us, and this time it was not so easily dispelled. I began, Iknow, with moody musings. Why, in spite of all, should I go back, go backfor all the rest of my days, to toil and stress, insults, and perpetualdissatisfaction, simply to save hundreds of millions of common people,whom I did not love, whom too often I could not do other than despise,from the stress and anguish of war and infinite misrule? And, after all, Imight fail. _They_ all sought their own narrow ends, and why shouldnot I--why should not I also live as a man? And out of such thoughts hervoice su
mmoned me, and I lifted my eyes.
"I found myself awake and walking. We had come out above the PleasureCity, we were near the summit of Monte Solaro and looking towards the bay.It was the late afternoon and very clear. Far away to the left Ischia hungin a golden haze between sea and sky, and Naples was coldly white againstthe hills, and before us was Vesuvius with a tall and slender streamerfeathering at last towards the south, and the ruins of Torre dell'Annunziata and Castellammare glittering and near."
I interrupted suddenly: "You have been to Capri, of course?"
"Only in this dream," he said, "only in this dream. All across the baybeyond Sorrento were the floating palaces of the Pleasure City moored andchained. And northward were the broad floating stages that received theaeroplanes. Aeroplanes fell out of the sky every afternoon, each bringingits thousands of pleasure-seekers from the uttermost parts of the earth toCapri and its delights. All these things, I say, stretched below.
"But we noticed them only incidentally because of an unusual sight thatevening had to show. Five war aeroplanes that had long slumbered uselessin the distant arsenals of the Rhine-mouth were manoeuvring now in theeastward sky. Gresham had astonished the world by producing them andothers, and sending them to circle here and there. It was the threatmaterial in the great game of bluff he was playing, and it had taken evenme by surprise. He was one of those incredibly stupid energetic people whoseem sent by heaven to create disasters. His energy to the first glanceseemed so wonderfully like capacity! But he had no imagination, noinvention, only a stupid, vast, driving force of will, and a mad faith inhis stupid idiot 'luck' to pull him through. I remember how we stood outupon the headland watching the squadron circling far away, and how Iweighed the full meaning of the sight, seeing clearly the way things must_go_. And then even it was not too late. I might have gone back, Ithink, and saved the world. The people of the north would follow me, Iknew, granted only that in one thing I respected their moral standards.The east and south would trust me as they would trust no other northernman. And I knew I had only to put it to her and she would have let mego... Not because she did not love me!
"Only I did not want to go; my will was all the other way about. I had sonewly thrown off the incubus of responsibility: I was still so fresh arenegade from duty that the daylight clearness of what I _ought_ todo had no power at all to touch my will. My will was to live, to gatherpleasures, and make my dear lady happy. But though this sense of vastneglected duties had no power to draw me, it could make me silent andpreoccupied, it robbed the days I had spent of half their brightness androused me into dark meditations in the silence of the night. And as Istood and watched Gresham's aeroplanes sweep to and fro--those birds ofinfinite ill omen--she stood beside me, watching me, perceiving thetrouble indeed, but not perceiving it clearly--her eyes questioning myface, her expression shaded with perplexity. Her face was grey because thesunset was fading out of the sky. It was no fault of hers that she heldme. She had asked me to go from her, and again in the night-time and withtears she had asked me to go.
"At last it was the sense of her that roused me from my mood. I turnedupon her suddenly and challenged her to race down the mountain slopes.'No,' she said, as if I jarred with her gravity, but I was resolved to endthat gravity and made her run--no one can be very grey and sad who is outof breath---and when she stumbled I ran with my hand beneath her arm. Weran down past a couple of men, who turned back staring in astonishment atmy behaviour--they must have recognised my face. And half-way down theslope came a tumult in the air--clang-clank, clang-clank--and we stopped,and presently over the hill-crest those war things came flying one behindthe other."
The man seemed hesitating on the verge of a description.
"What were, they like?" I asked.
"They had never fought," he said. "They were just like our ironclads arenowadays; they had never fought. No one knew what they might do, withexcited men inside them; few even cared to speculate. They were greatdriving things shaped like spear-heads without a shaft, with a propellerin the place of the shaft."
"Steel?"
"Not steel."
"Aluminium?"
"No, no, nothing of that sort. An alloy that was very common--as common asbrass, for example. It was called--let me see--" He squeezed his foreheadwith the fingers of one hand. "I am forgetting everything," he said.
"And they carried guns?"
"Little guns, firing high explosive shells. They fired the guns backwards,out of the base of the leaf, so to speak, and rammed with the beak. Thatwas the theory, you know, but they had never been fought. No one couldtell exactly what was going to happen. And meanwhile I suppose it was veryfine to go whirling through the air like a flight of young swallows, swiftand easy. I guess the captains tried not to think too clearly what thereal thing would be like. And these flying war machines, you know, wereonly one sort of the endless war contrivances that had been invented andhad fallen into abeyance during the long peace. There were all sorts ofthese things that people were routing out and furbishing up; infernalthings, silly things; things that had never been tried; big engines,terrible explosives, great guns. You know the silly way of these ingenioussort of men who make these things; they turn 'em out as beavers builddams, and with no more sense of the rivers they're going to divert and thelands they're going to flood!
"As we went down the winding stepway to our hotel again in the twilight Iforesaw it all: I saw how clearly and inevitably things were driving forwar in Gresham's silly, violent hands, and I had some inkling of what warwas bound to be under these new conditions. And even then, though I knewit was drawing near the limit of my opportunity, I could find no will togo back."
He sighed.
"That was my last chance.
"We did not go into the city until the sky was full of stars, so we walkedout upon the high terrace, to and fro, and--she counselled me to go back.
"'My dearest,' she said, and her sweet face looked up to me, 'this isDeath. This life you lead is Death. Go back to them, go back to yourduty--'
"She began to weep, saying between her sobs, and clinging to my arm as shesaid it, 'Go back--go back.'
"Then suddenly she fell mute, and glancing down at her face, I read in aninstant the thing she had thought to do. It was one of those moments whenone _sees_.
"'No!' I said.
"'No?' she asked, in surprise, and I think a little fearful at the answerto her thought.
"'Nothing,' I said, 'shall send me back. Nothing! I have chosen. Love, Ihave chosen, and the world must go. Whatever happens, I will live thislife--I will live for _you_! It--nothing shall turn me aside;nothing, my dear one. Even if you died--even if you died--'
"'Yes?' she murmured, softly.
"'Then--I also would die.'
"And before she could speak again I began to talk, talking eloquently--asI _could_ do in that life--talking to exalt love, to make the life wewere living seem heroic and glorious; and the thing I was desertingsomething hard and enormously ignoble that it was a fine thing to setaside. I bent all my mind to throw that glamour upon it, seeking not onlyto convert her but myself to that. We talked, and she clung to me, torntoo between all that she deemed noble and all that she knew was sweet. Andat last I did make it heroic, made all the thickening disaster of theworld only a sort of glorious setting to our unparalleled love, and we twopoor foolish souls strutted there at last, clad in that splendid delusion,drunken rather with that glorious delusion, under the still stars.
"And so my moment passed.
"It was my last chance. Even as we went to and fro there, the leaders ofthe south and east were gathering their resolve, and the hot answer thatshattered Gresham's bluffing for ever took shape and waited. And all overAsia, and the ocean, and the south, the air and the wires were throbbingwith their warnings to prepare--prepare.
"No one living, you know, knew what war was; no one could imagine, withall these new inventions, what horror war might bring. I believe mostpeople still believed it would be a matter of bright uniforms
and shoutingcharges and triumphs and flags and bands--in a time when half the worlddrew its food-supply from regions ten thousand miles away----"
The man with the white face paused. I glanced at him, and his face wasintent on the floor of the carriage. A little railway station, a string ofloaded trucks, a signal-box, and the back of a cottage shot by thecarriage window, and a bridge passed with a clap of noise, echoing thetumult of the train.
"After that," he said, "I dreamt often. For three weeks of nights thatdream was my life. And the worst of it was there were nights when I couldnot dream, when I lay tossing on a bed in _this_ accursed life; and_there_--somewhere lost to me--things were happening--momentous,terrible things... I lived at nights--my days, my waking days, this lifeI am living now, became a faded, far-away dream, a drab setting, the coverof the book."
He thought.
"I could tell you all, tell you every little thing in the dream, but as towhat I did in the daytime--no. I could not tell--I do not remember. Mymemory--my memory has gone. The business of life slips from me--"
He leant forward, and pressed his hands upon his eyes. For a long time hesaid nothing.
"And then?" said I.
"The war burst like a hurricane."
He stared before him at unspeakable things.
"And then?" I urged again.
"One touch of unreality," he said, in the low tone of a man who speaks tohimself, "and they would have been nightmares. But they were notnightmares--they were not nightmares. _No_!"
He was silent for so long that it dawned upon me that there was a dangerof losing the rest of the story. But he went on talking again in the sametone of questioning self-communion.
"What was there to do but flight? I had not thought the war would touchCapri--I had seemed to see Capri as being out of it all, as the contrastto it all; but two nights after the whole place was shouting and bawling,every woman almost and every other man wore a badge--Gresham's badge--andthere was no music but a jangling war-song over and over again, andeverywhere men enlisting, and in the dancing halls they were drilling. Thewhole island was a-whirl with rumours; it was said again and again, thatfighting had begun. I had not expected this. I had seen so little of thelife of pleasure that I had failed to reckon with this violence of theamateurs. And as for me, I was out of it. I was like a man who might haveprevented the firing of a magazine. The time had gone. I was no one; thevainest stripling with a badge counted for more than I. The crowd jostledus and bawled in our ears; that accursed song deafened us; a womanshrieked at my lady because no badge was on her, and we two went back toour own place again, ruffled and insulted--my lady white and silent, and Ia-quiver with rage. So furious was I, I could have quarrelled with her ifI could have found one shade of accusation in her eyes.
"All my magnificence had gone from me. I walked up and down our rock cell,and outside was the darkling sea and a light to the southward that flaredand passed and came again.
"'We must get out of this place,' I said over and over. 'I have made mychoice, and I will have no hand in these troubles. I will have nothing ofthis war. We have taken our lives out of all these things. This is norefuge for us. Let us go.'
"And the next day we were already in flight from the war that covered theworld.
"And all the rest was Flight--all the rest was Flight."
He mused darkly.
"How much was there of it?"
He made no answer.
"How many days?"
His face was white and drawn and his hands were clenched. He took no heedof my curiosity.
I tried to draw him back to his story with questions.
"Where did you go?" I said.
"When?"
"When you left Capri."
"South-west," he said, and glanced at me for a second. "We went in aboat."
"But I should have thought an aeroplane?"
"They had been seized."
I questioned him no more. Presently I thought he was beginning again. Hebroke out in an argumentative monotone:
"But why should it be? If, indeed, this battle, this slaughter and stress,_is_ life, why have we this craving for pleasure and beauty? If there_is_ no refuge, if there is no place of peace, and if all our dreamsof quiet places are a folly and a snare, why have we such dreams? Surelyit was no ignoble cravings, no base intentions, had brought us to this; itwas love had isolated us. Love had come to me with her eyes and robed inher beauty, more glorious than all else in life, in the very shape andcolour of life, and summoned me away. I had silenced all the voices, I hadanswered all the questions--I had come to her. And suddenly there wasnothing but War and Death!"
I had an inspiration. "After all," I said, "it could have been only adream."
"A dream!" he cried, flaming upon me, "a dream--when, even now--"
For the first time he became animated. A faint flush crept into his cheek.He raised his open hand and clenched it, and dropped it to his knee. Hespoke, looking away from me, and for all the rest of the time he lookedaway. "We are but phantoms," he said, "and the phantoms of phantoms,desires like cloud shadows and wills of straw that eddy in the wind; thedays pass, use and wont carry us through as a train carries the shadow ofits lights--so be it? But one thing is real and certain, one thing is nodream stuff, but eternal and enduring. It is the centre of my life, andall other things about it are subordinate or altogether vain. I loved her,that woman of a dream. And she and I are dead together!
"A dream! How can it be a dream, when it drenched a living life withunappeasable sorrow, when it makes all that I have lived for and cared forworthless and unmeaning?
"Until that very moment when she was killed I believed we had still achance of getting away," he said. "All through the night and morning thatwe sailed across the sea from Capri to Salerno we talked of escape. Wewere full of hope, and it clung about us to the end, hope for the lifetogether we should lead, out of it all, out of the battle and struggle,the wild and empty passions, the empty, arbitrary 'thou shalt' and 'thoushalt not' of the world. We were uplifted, as though our quest was a holything, as though love for one another was a mission...
"Even when from our boat we saw the fair face of that great rock Capri--already scarred and gashed by the gun emplacements and hiding-places thatwere to make it a fastness--we reckoned nothing of the imminent slaughter,though the fury of preparation hung about in puffs and clouds of dust at ahundred points amidst the grey; but, indeed, I made a text of that andtalked. There, you know, was the rock, still beautiful for all its scars,with its countless windows and arches and ways, tier upon tier, for athousand feet, a vast carving of grey, broken by vine-clad terraces, andlemon and orange groves, and masses of agave and prickly pear, and puffsof almond blossom. And out under the archway that is built over thePiccola Marina other boats were coming; and as we came round the cape andwithin sight of the mainland, another little string of boats came intoview, driving before the wind towards the south-west. In a little while amultitude had come out, the remoter just little specks of ultramarine inthe shadow of the eastward cliff.
"'It is love and reason,' I said, 'fleeing from all this madness of war.'
"And though we presently saw a squadron of aeroplanes flying across thesouthern sky we did not heed it. There it was--a line of little dots inthe sky--and then more, dotting the south-eastern horizon, and then stillmore, until all that quarter of the sky was stippled with blue specks. Nowthey were all thin little strokes of blue, and now one and now a multitudewould heel and catch the sun and become short flashes of light. They came,rising and falling and growing larger, like some huge flight of gulls orrooks or such-like birds, moving with a marvellous uniformity, and ever asthey drew nearer they spread over a greater width of sky. The southwardwing flung itself in an arrow-headed cloud athwart the sun. And thensuddenly they swept round to the eastward and streamed eastward, growingsmaller and smaller and clearer and clearer again until they vanished fromthe sky. And after that we noted to the northward, and very high,Gresham's fighting machines h
anging high over Naples like an evening swarmof gnats.
"It seemed to have no more to do with us than a flight of birds.
"Even the mutter of guns far away in the south-east seemed to us tosignify nothing...
"Each day, each dream after that, we were still exalted, still seekingthat refuge where we might live and love. Fatigue had come upon us, painand many distresses. For though we were dusty and stained by our toilsometramping, and half starved, and with the horror of the dead men we hadseen and the flight of the peasants--for very soon a gust of fightingswept up the peninsula--with these things haunting our minds it stillresulted only in a deepening resolution to escape. Oh, but she was braveand patient! She who had never faced hardship and exposure had courage forherself--and me. We went to and fro seeking an outlet, over a country allcommandeered and ransacked by the gathering hosts of war. Always we wenton foot. At first there were other fugitives, but we did not mingle withthem. Some escaped northward, some were caught in the torrent of peasantrythat swept along the main roads; many gave themselves into the hands ofthe soldiery and were sent northward. Many of the men were impressed. Butwe kept away from these things; we had brought no money to bribe a passagenorth, and I feared for my lady at the hands of these conscript crowds. Wehad landed at Salerno, and we had been turned back from Cava, and we hadtried to cross towards Taranto by a pass over Mount Alburno, but we hadbeen driven back for want of food, and so we had come down among themarshes by Paestum, where those great temples stand alone. I had somevague idea that by Paestum it might be possible to find a boat orsomething, and take once more to sea. And there it was the battle overtookus.
"A sort of soul-blindness had me. Plainly I could see that we were beinghemmed in; that the great net of that giant Warfare had us in its toils.Many times we had seen the levies that had come down from the north goingto and fro, and had come upon them in the distance amidst the mountainsmaking ways for the ammunition and preparing the mounting of the guns.Once we fancied they had fired at us, taking us for spies--at any rate ashot had gone shuddering over us. Several times we had hidden in woodsfrom hovering aeroplanes.
"But all these things do not matter now, these nights of flight andpain... We were in an open place near those great temples at Paestum, atlast, on a blank stony place dotted with spiky bushes, empty and desolateand so flat that a grove of eucalyptus far away showed to the feet of itsstems. How I can see it! My lady was sitting down under a bush resting alittle, for she was very weak and weary, and I was standing up watching tosee if I could tell the distance of the firing that came and went. Theywere still, you know, fighting far from each other, with these terriblenew weapons that had never before been used: guns that would carry beyondsight, and aeroplanes that would do----What _they_ would do no mancould foretell.
"I knew that we were between the two armies, and that they drew together.I knew we were in danger, and that we could not stop there and rest!
"Though all those things were in my mind, they were in the background.They seemed to be affairs beyond our concern. Chiefly, I was thinking ofmy lady. An aching distress filled me. For the first time she had ownedherself beaten and had fallen a-weeping. Behind me I could hear hersobbing, but I would not turn round to her because I knew she had need ofweeping, and had held herself so far and so long for me. It was well, Ithought, that she would weep and rest, and then we would toil on again,for I had no inkling of the thing that hung so near. Even now I can seeher as she sat there, her lovely hair upon her shoulder, can mark againthe deepening hollow of her cheek.
"'If we had parted,' she said, 'if I had let you go--'
"'No,' said I. 'Even now I do not repent. I will not repent; I made mychoice, and I will hold on to the end.'
"And then--
"Overhead in the sky flashed something and burst, and all about us I heardthe bullets making a noise like a handful of peas suddenly thrown. Theychipped the stones about us, and whirled fragments from the bricks andpassed..."
He put his hand to his mouth, and then moistened his lips.
"At the flash I had turned about...
"You know--she stood up--
"She stood up, you know, and moved a step towards me--
"As though she wanted to reach me--
"And she had been shot through the heart."
He stopped and stared at me. I felt all that foolish incapacity anEnglishman feels on such occasions. I met his eyes for a moment, and thenstared out of the window. For a long space we kept silence. When at last Ilooked at him he was sitting back in his corner, his arms folded and histeeth gnawing at his knuckles.
He bit his nail suddenly, and stared at it.
"I carried her," he said, "towards the temples, in my arms--as though itmattered. I don't know why. They seemed a sort of sanctuary, you know,they had lasted so long, I suppose.
"She must have died almost instantly. Only--I talked to her--all the way."
Silence again.
"I have seen those temples," I said abruptly, and indeed he had broughtthose still, sunlit arcades of worn sandstone very vividly before me.
"It was the brown one, the big brown one. I sat down on a fallen pillarand held her in my arms... Silent after the first babble was over. Andafter a little while the lizards came out and ran about again, as thoughnothing unusual was going on, as though nothing had changed... It wastremendously still there, the sun high and the shadows still; even theshadows of the weeds upon the entablature were still--in spite of thethudding and banging that went all about the sky.
"I seem to remember that the aeroplanes came up out of the south, and thatthe battle went away to the west. One aeroplane was struck, and oversetand fell. I remember that--though it didn't interest me in the least. Itdidn't seem to signify. It was like a wounded gull, you know--flapping fora time in the water. I could see it down the aisle of the temple--a blackthing in the bright blue water.
"Three or four times shells burst about the beach, and then that ceased.Each time that happened all the lizards scuttled in and hid for a space.That was all the mischief done, except that once a stray bullet gashed thestone hard by--made just a fresh bright surface.
"As the shadows grew longer, the stillness seemed greater.
"The curious thing," he remarked, with the manner of a man who makes atrivial conversation, "is that I didn't _think_--I didn't think atall. I sat with her in my arms amidst the stones--in a sort of lethargy--stagnant.
"And I don't remember waking up. I don't remember dressing that day. Iknow I found myself in my office, with my letters all slit open in frontof me, and how I was struck by the absurdity of being there, seeing thatin reality I was sitting, stunned, in that Paestum Temple with a deadwoman in my arms. I read my letters like a machine. I have forgotten whatthey were about."
He stopped, and there was a long silence.
Suddenly I perceived that we were running down the incline from Chalk Farmto Euston. I started at this passing of time. I turned on him with abrutal question with the tone of "Now or never."
"And did you dream again?"
"Yes."
He seemed to force himself to finish. His voice was very low.
"Once more, and as it were only for a few instants. I seemed to havesuddenly awakened out of a great apathy, to have risen into a sittingposition, and the body lay there on the stones beside me. A gaunt body.Not her, you know. So soon--it was not her...
"I may have heard voices. I do not know. Only I knew clearly that men werecoming into the solitude and that that was a last outrage.
"I stood up and walked through the temple, and then there came intosight--first one man with a yellow face, dressed in a uniform of dirtywhite, trimmed with blue, and then several, climbing to the crest of theold wall of the vanished city, and crouching there. They were littlebright figures in the sunlight, and there they hung, weapon in hand,peering cautiously before them.
"And further away I saw others, and then more at another point in thewall. It was a long lax line of men in open order.
/>
"Presently the man I had first seen stood up and shouted a command, andhis men came tumbling down the wall and into the high weeds towards thetemple. He scrambled down with them and led them. He came facing towardsme, and when he saw me he stopped.
"At first I had watched these men with a mere curiosity, but when I hadseen they meant to come to the temple I was moved to forbid them. Ishouted to the officer.
"'You must not come here,' I cried, '_I_ am here. I am here with mydead.'
"He stared, and then shouted a question back to me in some unknown tongue.
"I repeated what I had said.
"He shouted again, and I folded my arms and stood still. Presently hespoke to his men and came forward. He carried a drawn sword.
"I signed to him to keep away, but he continued to advance. I told himagain very patiently and clearly: 'You must not come here. These are oldtemples, and I am here with my dead.'
"Presently he was so close I could see his face clearly. It was a narrowface, with dull grey eyes, and a black moustache. He had a scar on hisupper lip, and he was dirty and unshaven. He kept shouting unintelligiblethings, questions perhaps, at me.
"I know now that he was afraid of me, but at the time that did not occurto me. As I tried to explain to him he interrupted me in imperious tones,bidding me, I suppose, stand aside.
"He made to go past me, and I caught hold of him.
"I saw his face change at my grip.
"'You fool,' I cried. 'Don't you know? She is dead!'
"He started back. He looked at me with cruel eyes.
"I saw a sort of exultant resolve leap into them--delight. Then suddenly,with a scowl, he swept his sword back--_so_--and thrust."
He stopped abruptly.
I became aware of a change in the rhythm of the train. The brakes liftedtheir voices and the carriage jarred and jerked. This present worldinsisted upon itself, became clamorous. I saw through the steamy windowhuge electric lights glaring down from tall masts upon a fog, saw rows ofstationary empty carriages passing by, and then a signal-box, hoisting itsconstellation of green and red into the murky London twilight, marchedafter them. I looked again at his drawn features.
"He ran me through the heart. It was with a sort of astonishment--no fear,no pain--but just amazement, that I felt it pierce me, felt the sworddrive home into my body. It didn't hurt, you know. It didn't hurt at all."
The yellow platform lights came into the field of view, passing firstrapidly, then slowly, and at last stopping with a jerk. Dim shapes of menpassed to and fro without.
"Euston!" cried a voice.
"Do you mean--?"
"There was no pain, no sting or smart. Amazement and then darknesssweeping over everything. The hot, brutal face before me, the face of theman who had killed me, seemed to recede. It swept out of existence--"
"Euston!" clamoured the voices outside; "Euston!"
The carriage door opened, admitting a flood of sound, and a porter stoodregarding us. The sounds of doors slamming, and the hoof-clatter ofcab-horses, and behind these things the featureless remote roar of theLondon cobble-stones, came to my ears. A truck-load of lighted lampsblazed along the platform.
"A darkness, a flood of darkness that opened and spread and blotted outall things."
"Any luggage, sir?" said the porter.
"And that was the end?" I asked.
He seemed to hesitate. Then, almost inaudibly, he answered, "_No_."
"You mean?"
"I couldn't get to her. She was there on the other side of the temple--And then--"
"Yes," I insisted. "Yes?"
"Nightmares," he cried; "nightmares indeed! My God! Great birds thatfought and tore."