13. A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON
The man with the white face entered the carriage at Rugby. He movedslowly in spite of the urgency of his porter, and even while he wasstill on the platform I noted how ill he seemed. He dropped into thecorner over against me with a sigh, made an incomplete attempt toarrange his travelling shawl, and became motionless, with his eyesstaring vacantly. Presently he was moved by a sense of my observation,looked up at me, and put out a spiritless hand for his newspaper. Thenhe glanced again in my direction.
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, andthe title was on the cover. He hung silent for a space as if he soughtwords. "Yes," he said at last, "but they tell you nothing." I did notcatch 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 I never dispute.
"I suppose--" he hesitated. "Do you ever dream? I mean vividly."
"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. "Youdon't find 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 aboutintensity of impression and the like to account for its not happening asa rule. I suppose 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 dare say there are. It's the right place forthem. But what I mean--" He looked at his bony knuckles. "Is that sortof thing 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 Iam on...."
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, isdead. Dead for ever. I dreamt I was another man, you know, living in adifferent part of the world and in a different time. I dreamt that nightafter night. Night after night I woke into that other life. Fresh scenesand fresh happenings--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 hourbefore me, the light was fading fast, and Fortnum-Roscoe has a drearyway with him. "Living in a different time," I said: "do you mean in somedifferent age?"
"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 lotof things I have forgotten since I woke out of these dreams, though Iknew them at the time when I was--I suppose it was dreaming. They calledthe year 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 tellme his dream. As a rule I hate people who tell their dreams, but thisstruck me differently. I proffered assistance even. "It began--" Isuggested.
"It was vivid from the first. I seemed to wake up in it suddenly. Andit's curious that in these dreams I am speaking of I never rememberedthis life I am living now. It seemed as if the dream life was enoughwhile it lasted. Perhaps--But I will tell you how I find myself when Ido my best to recall it all. I don't remember anything dearly until Ifound myself sitting in a sort of loggia looking out over the sea. Ihad been dozing, and suddenly I woke up--fresh and vivid--not a bitdream-like--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.I did not feel I had fallen into it suddenly. I simply took it up atthat point. 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 forwardand looking up at 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 facedsouth. It was small. It was all in shadow except the semicircle abovethe balcony that showed the sky and sea and the corner where thegirl stood. I was on a couch--it was a metal couch with light stripedcushions-and the girl was leaning over the balcony with her back to me.The light of the sunrise fell on her ear and cheek. Her pretty whiteneck and the little curls that nestled there, and her white shoulderwere in the sun, and all the grace of her body was in the cool blueshadow. She was dressed--how can I describe it? It was easy and flowing.And altogether there she stood, so that it came to me how beautiful anddesirable she was, as though I had never seen her before. And when atlast I sighed and raised myself upon my arm 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 oftheir faces, I know. But the face of this girl--it is much more real tome. I can bring it back into memory so that I see it again--I could drawit or paint 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 ofa saint; nor that beauty that stirs fierce passions; but a sort ofradiation, sweet lips that softened into smiles, and grave grey eyes.And she moved gracefully, she seemed to have part with all pleasant andgracious things--"
He stopped, and his face was downcast and hidden. Then he looked upat me and went on, making no further attempt to disguise his absolutebelief in the reality of his story.
"You see, I had thrown up my plans and ambitions, thrown up all I hadever worked for or desired for her sake. I had been a master man awaythere in the north, with influence and property and a great reputation,but
none of it had seemed worth having beside her. I had come to theplace, this city of sunny pleasures, with her, and left all those thingsto wreck and ruin just to save a remnant at least of my life. While Ihad been in love with her before I knew that she had any care for me,before I had imagined that she would dare--that we should dare, all mylife had seemed vain and hollow, dust and ashes. It WAS dust and ashes.Night after night and through the long days I had longed and desired--mysoul had beaten against the thing forbidden!
"But it is impossible for one man to tell another just these things.It's emotion, it's a tint, a light that comes and goes. Only while it'sthere, everything changes, everything. The thing is I came away and leftthem in their Crisis to do what they could."
"Left whom?" I asked, puzzled.
"The people up in the north there. You see--in this dream, anyhow--Ihad been a big man, the sort of man men come to trust in, to groupthemselves about. Millions of men who had never seen me were ready todo things and risk things because of their confidence in me. I hadbeen playing that game for years, that big laborious game, that vague,monstrous political game amidst intrigues and betrayals, speech andagitation. It was a vast weltering world, and at last I had a sort ofleadership against the Gang--you know it was called the Gang--a sort ofcompromise of scoundrelly projects and base ambitions and vast publicemotional stupidities and catchwords--the Gang that kept the world noisyand blind year by year, and all the while that it was drifting, driftingtowards infinite disaster. But I can't expect you to understand theshades and complications of the year--the year something or other ahead.I had it all down to the smallest details--in my dream. I suppose I hadbeen dreaming of it before I awoke, and the fading outline of some queernew development I had imagined still hung about me as I rubbed my eyes.It was some grubby affair that made me thank God for the sunlight. Isat up on the couch and remained looking at the woman andrejoicing--rejoicing that I had come away out of all that tumult andfolly and violence before it was too late. After all, I thought, this islife--love and beauty, desire and delight, are they not worth all thosedismal struggles for vague, gigantic ends? And I blamed myself forhaving ever sought to be a leader when I might have given my days tolove. But then, thought I, if I had not spent my early days sternly andausterely, I might have wasted myself upon vain and worthless women, andat the thought all my being went out in love and tenderness to my dearmistress, my dear lady, who had come at last and compelled me--compelledme by her invincible charm for me--to lay that life aside.
"'You are worth it,' I said, speaking without intending her to hear;'you are worth it, my dearest one; worth pride and praise and allthings. Love! to have YOU is worth them all together.' And at the murmurof my voice she turned about.
"'Come and see,' she cried--I can hear her now--'come and see thesunrise upon Monte Solaro.'
"I remember how I sprang to my feet and joined her at the balcony. Sheput a white hand upon my shoulder and pointed towards great masses oflimestone, flushing, as it were, into life. I looked. But first I notedthe sunlight on her face caressing the lines of her cheeks and neck. Howcan I describe 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 drunkvero Capri--muddy stuff like cider--at the summit."
"Ah!" said the man with the white face; "then perhaps you can tellme--you will know if this was indeed Capri. For in this life I havenever been there. Let me describe it. We were in a little room, one of avast multitude 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, ISnone 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 feethigh perhaps--coldly grey except for one bright edge of gold, and beyondit the Isle of the Sirens, and a falling coast that faded and passedinto the hot sunrise. And when one turned to the west, distinct and nearwas a little bay, a little beach still in shadow. And out of that shadowrose Solaro straight and tall, flushed and golden crested, like a beautythroned, and the white moon was floating behind her in the sky. Andbefore us from east to west stretched the many-tinted sea all dottedwith little sailing boats.
"To the eastward, of course, these little boats were grey and veryminute and clear, but to the westward they were little boats ofgold--shining gold--almost like little flames. And just below us was arock with an arch worn through it. The blue sea-water broke to green andfoam all round the rock, and a galley came gliding out of the arch."
"I know that rock," I said. "I was nearly drowned there. It is calledthe Faraglioni."
"I Faraglioni? Yes, she called it that," answered the man with the whiteface. "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 satand talked in half whispers to one another. We talked in whispers notbecause there was any one to hear, but because there was still such afreshness of mind between us that our thoughts were a little frightened,I think, to find themselves at last in words. And so they went softly.
"Presently we were hungry and we went from our apartment, going bya strange 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 haveever seen--and in one place there was the old gate of Capri, caught intothe wall of a gallery high overhead. Light girders, stems and threadsof gold, burst from the pillars like fountains, streamed like an Auroraacross the roof and interlaced, like--like conjuring tricks. All aboutthe great circle for the dancers there were beautiful figures, strangedragons, and intricate and wonderful grotesques bearing lights. Theplace was inundated with artificial light that shamed the newborn day.And as we went through the throng the people turned about and looked atus, for all through the world my name and face were known, and how I hadsuddenly thrown up pride and struggle to come to this place. And theylooked also at the lady beside me, though half the story of how at lastshe had come to me was unknown or mistold. And few of the men who werethere, I know, but judged me a happy man, in spite of all the shame anddishonour that had come upon my name.
"The air was full of music, full of harmonious scents, full of therhythm of beautiful motions. Thousands of beautiful people swarmed aboutthe hall, crowded the galleries, sat in a myriad recesses; they weredressed in splendid colours and crowned with flowers; thousands dancedabout the great circle beneath the white images of the ancient gods, andglorious processions of youths and maidens came and went. We two danced,not the dreary monotonies of your days--of this time, I mean--butdances that were beautiful, intoxicating. And even now I can see my ladydancing--dancing joyously. She danced, you know, with a serious face;she danced with a serious dignity, and yet she was smiling at me andcaressing me--smiling and 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 hasever come to me awake.
"And then--it was when we had done dancing--a man came to speak tome. He was a lean, resolute man, very soberly clad for that place, andalready I had marked his face watching me in the breakfasting hall, andafterwards as we went along the passage I had avoided his eye. But
now,as we sat in a little alcove, smiling at the pleasure of all the peoplewho went to and fro across the shining floor, he came and touched me,and spoke to me so that I was forced to listen. And he asked that hemight speak to me for a little time apart.
"'No,' I said. 'I have no secrets from this lady. What do you want totell me?'
"He said it was a trivial matter, or at least a dry matter, for a ladyto hear.
"'Perhaps for me to hear,' said I.
"He glanced at her, as though almost he would appeal to her. Then heasked me suddenly if I had heard of a great and avenging declarationthat Evesham had made. Now, Evesham had always before been the man nextto myself 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, thatthe others had been so dismayed at my retreat. So this question aboutwhat he had done reawakened my old interest in the life I had put asidejust for a moment.
"'I have taken no heed of any news for many days,' I said. 'What hasEvesham been saying?'
"And with that the man began, nothing loath, and I must confess even Iwas struck by Evesham's reckless folly in the wild and threatening wordshe had used. And this messenger they had sent to me not only told me ofEvesham's speech, but went on to ask counsel and to point out whatneed they had of me. While he talked, my lady sat a little forward andwatched his 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 Ihad come. And then I thought of my lady. You see--how can I tell you?There were certain peculiarities of our relationship--as things are Ineed not tell you about that--which would render her presence with meimpossible. I should have had to leave her; indeed, I should have had torenounce her clearly and openly, if I was to do all that I could do inthe north. And the man knew THAT, even as he talked to her and me, knewit as well as she did, that my steps to duty were--first, separation,then abandonment. At the touch of that thought my dream of a returnwas shattered. I turned on the man suddenly, as he was imagining hiseloquence was 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 turnedslowly from me and walked away. I stood, caught in the whirl of thoughtshis 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,' Isaid. 'If they distrust Evesham 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 herselfand me, the first shadow of the discovery that, seen strongly andcompletely, 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 inmine. I set myself to drive that doubt away--I set myself to fill hermind with pleasant things again. I lied to her, and in lying to her Ilied also to myself. And she was only too ready to believe me, only tooready to forget.
"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. Andat last we came out dripping and rejoicing and raced among the rocks.And then I put on a dry bathing-dress, and we sat to bask in the sun,and presently I nodded, resting my head against her knee, and she puther hand upon my hair and stroked it softly and I dozed. And behold! asit were with the snapping of the string of a violin, I was awakening,and I was in my own bed in Liverpool, in the life of to-day.
"Only for a time I could not believe that all these vivid moments hadbeen no more than the substance of a dream.
"In truth, I could not believe it a dream for all the sobering realityof things about me. I bathed and dressed as it were by habit, and as Ishaved I argued why I of all men should leave the woman I loved to goback to fantastic politics in the hard and strenuous north. Even ifEvesham did force the world back to war, what was that to me? I was aman, with the heart of a man, and why should I feel the responsibilityof a deity for the 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 dreamthat I kept perpetually recalling little irrelevant details; even theornament of a book-cover 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 frommy deserted party. Have you ever heard of a dream that had a qualitylike that?"
"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 wouldbe born a couple of hundred years or so hence, and worried about thepolitics of my great-great-great-grandchildren. I was chiefly busy thatday negotiating a ninety-nine-year building lease. It was a privatebuilder in a hurry, and we wanted to tie him in every possible way. Ihad an interview with him, and he showed a certain want of temper thatsent me to bed still irritated. That night I had no dream. Nor did Idream the next night, at least, to remember.
"Something of that intense reality of conviction vanished. I began tofeel sure it WAS a dream. And then it came again.
"When the dream came again, nearly four days later, it was verydifferent. I think it certain that four days had also elapsed in thedream. Many things had happened in the north, and the shadow of them wasback again between us, and this time it was not so easily dispelled.I began, I know, with moody musings. Why, in spite of all, should I goback, go back for all the rest of my days to toil and stress, insultsand perpetual dissatisfaction, simply to save hundreds of millions ofcommon people, whom I did not love, whom too often I could do no otherthan despise, from the stress and anguish of war and infinite misrule?And after all I might fail. THEY all sought their own narrow ends, andwhy should not I--why should not I also live as a man? And out of suchthoughts her voice summoned me, and I lifted my eyes.
"I found myself awake and walking. We had come out above th
e PleasureCity, we were near the summit of Monte Solaro and looking towards thebay. It was the late afternoon and very clear. Far away to the leftIschia hung in a golden haze between sea and sky, and Naples was coldlywhite against the hills, and before us was Vesuvius with a tall andslender streamer feathering at last towards the south, and the ruins ofTorre dell' Annunziata and Castellamare 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 mooredand chained. And northward were the broad floating stages that receivedthe aeroplanes. Aeroplanes fell out of the sky every afternoon, eachbringing its thousands of pleasure-seekers from the uttermost parts ofthe earth to Capri and its delights. All these things, I say, stretchedbelow.
"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 Rhinemouth were manoeuvring now in theeastward sky. Evesham 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 takeneven me by surprise. He was one of those incredibly stupid energeticpeople who seem sent by Heaven to create disasters. His energy tothe first glance seemed so wonderfully like capacity! But he had noimagination, no invention, only a stupid, vast, driving force of will,and a mad faith in his stupid idiot 'luck' to pull him through. Iremember how we stood out upon the headland watching the squadroncircling far away, and how I weighed the full meaning of the sight,seeing clearly the way things must go. And then even it was not toolate. I might have gone back, I think, and saved the world. The peopleof the north would follow me, I knew, granted only that in one thing Irespected their moral standards. The east and south would trust me asthey would trust no other northern man. And I knew I had only to put itto her and she would have let me go.... Not because she did not love me!
"Only I did not want to go; my will was all the other way about. I hadso newly thrown off the incubus of responsibility: I was still so fresha renegade from duty that the daylight clearness of what I OUGHT to dohad 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 Evesham's aeroplanes sweep to and fro--those birdsof infinite 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 becausethe sunset was fading out of the sky. It was no fault of hers that sheheld me. She had asked me to go from her, and again in the night timeand with tears 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 toend that gravity, and made her run--no one can be very grey and sad whois out of breath--and when she stumbled I ran with my hand beneathher arm. We ran down past a couple of men, who turned back staring inastonishment at my behaviour--they must have recognised my face.And halfway down the slope came a tumult in the air, clang-clank,clang-clank, and we stopped, and presently over the hill-crest those warthings came flying one behind the 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 spearheads 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 commonas brass, for example. It was called--let me see--." He squeezed hisforehead with the fingers of one hand. "I am forgetting everything," hesaid.
"And they carried guns?"
"Little guns, firing high explosive shells. They fired the gunsbackwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to speak, and rammed with thebeak. That was the theory, you know, but they had never been fought. Noone could tell exactly what was going to happen. And meanwhile I supposeit was very fine to go whirling through the air like a flight of youngswallows, swift and easy. I guess the captains tried not to thinktoo clearly what the real thing would be like. And these flying warmachines, you know, were only one sort of the endless war contrivancesthat had been invented and had fallen into abeyance during the longpeace. There were all sorts of these things that people were routing outand furbishing up; infernal things, silly things; things that had neverbeen tried; big engines, terrible explosives, great guns. You know thesilly way of these ingenious sort of men who make these things; theyturn 'em out as beavers build dams, and with no more sense of the riversthey're going to divert and the lands they're going to flood!
"As we went down the winding stepway to our hotel again, in thetwilight, I foresaw it all: I saw how clearly and inevitably thingswere driving for war in Evesham's silly, violent hands, and I had someinkling of what war was bound to be under these new conditions. And eventhen, though I knew it was drawing near the limit of my opportunity, Icould find no will to go back."
He sighed.
"That was my last chance.
"We didn't go into the city until the sky was full of stars, so wewalked out upon the high terrace, to and fro, and--she counselled me togo 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 asshe said it, 'Go back--Go back.'
"Then suddenly she fell mute, and, glancing down at her face, I read inan instant the thing she had thought to do. It was one of those momentswhen one SEES.
"'No!' I said.
"'No?' she asked, in surprise, and I think a little fearful at theanswer to her thought.
"'Nothing,' I said, 'shall send me back. Nothing! I have chosen. Love,I have chosen, and the world must go. Whatever happens I will live thislife--I will live for YOU! It--nothing shall turn me aside; nothing, mydear 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, talkingeloquently--as I COULD do in that life--talking to exalt love, to makethe life we were living seem heroic and glorious; and the thing I wasdeserting something hard and enormously ignoble that it was a fine thingto set aside. I bent all my mind to throw that glamour upon it, seekingnot only to convert her but myself to that. We talked, and she clung tome, torn too between all that she deemed noble and all that she knewwas sweet. And at last I did make it heroic, made all the thickeningdisaster of the world only a sort of glorious setting to ourunparalleled love, and we two poor foolish souls strutted there atlast, clad in that splendid delusion, drunken rather with that gloriousdelusion, 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 Evesham's bluffing for ever, took shape and waited. And allover Asia, and the ocean, and the south, the air and the wires werethrobbing with 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 andshouting charges and triumphs and flags and bands--in a time when halfthe world drew its food supply from regions ten thous
and 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 stringof loaded 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 Icould not dream, when I lay tossing on a bed in THIS accursed life; andTHERE--somewhere lost to me--things were happening--momentous, terriblethings.... I lived at nights--my days, my waking days, this life I amliving now, became a faded, far-away dream, a drab setting, the cover ofthe book."
He thought.
"I could tell you all, tell you every little thing in the dream, but asto what I did in the daytime--no. I could not tell--I do not remember.My memory--my memory has gone. The business of life slips from me--"
He leant forward, and pressed his hands upon his eyes. For a long timehe said 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 speaksto himself, "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 thesame tone 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 andbawling, every woman almost and every other man wore a badge--Evesham'sbadge--and there was no music but a jangling war-song over and overagain, and everywhere men enlisting, and in the dancing halls they weredrilling. The whole island was awhirl with rumours; it was said, againand again, that fighting had begun. I had not expected this. I had seenso little of the life of pleasure that I had failed to reckon with thisviolence of the amateurs. And as for me, I was out of it. I was likea man who might have prevented the firing of a magazine. The time hadgone. I was no one; the vainest stripling with a badge counted for morethan I. The crowd jostled us and bawled in our ears; that accursed songdeafened us; a woman shrieked at my lady because no badge was on her,and we two went back to our own place again, ruffled and insulted--mylady white and silent, and I aquiver with rage. So furious was I,I could have quarrelled with her if I could have found one shade ofaccusation in her eyes.
"All my magnificence had gone from me. I walked up and down our rockcell, and outside was the darkling sea and a light to the southward thatflared and 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 nothingof this 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 coveredthe world.
"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 noheed of my curiosity.
I tried to draw him back to his story with questions.
"Where did you go?" I said.
"When?"
"When you left Capri."
"Southwest," 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 andstress IS life, why have we this craving for pleasure and beauty? Ifthere 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;it was Love had isolated us. Love had come to me with her eyes and robedin her beauty, more glorious than all else in life, in the very shapeand colour of life, and summoned me away. I had silenced all the voices,I had answered all the questions--I had come to her. And suddenly therewas nothing 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 hischeek. He raised his open hand and clenched it, and dropped it to hisknee. He spoke, looking away from me, and for all the rest of the timehe looked away. "We are but phantoms," he said, "and the phantoms ofphantoms, desires like cloud shadows and wills of straw that eddy in thewind; the days pass, use and wont carry us through as a train carriesthe shadow of its lights, so be it! But one thing is real and certain,one thing is no dreamstuff, but eternal and enduring. It is the centreof my life, and all other things about it are subordinate or altogethervain. I loved her, that woman of a dream. And she and I are deadtogether!
"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 caredfor, worthless 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 morningthat we sailed across the sea from Capri to Salerno, we talked ofescape. We were full of hope, and it clung about us to the end, hope forthe life together we should lead, out of it all, out of the battle andstruggle, the wild and empty passions, the empty arbitrary 'thou shalt'and 'thou shalt not' of the world. We were uplifted, as though our questwas a holy thing, as though love for one another was a mission....
"Even when from our boat we saw the fair face of that great rockCapri--already scarred and gashed by the gun emplacements andhiding-places that were to make it a fastness--we reckoned nothing ofthe imminent slaughter, though the fury of preparation hung about inpuffs and clouds of dust at a hundred points amidst the grey; but,indeed, I made a text of that and talked. There, you know, was therock, still beautiful, for all its scars, with its countless windows andarches and ways, tier upon tier, for a thousand feet, a vast carvingof grey, broken by vine-clad terraces, and lemon and orange groves, andmasses of agave and prickly pear, and puffs of almond blossom. And outunder the archway that is built over the Piccola Marina other boats werecoming; and as we came round the cape and within sight of the mainland,another little string of boats came into view, driving before the windtowards the southwest. In a little while a multitude had come out, theremoter just little specks of ultramarine in the shadow of the eastwardcliff.
"'It is love and reason,' I said, 'fleeing from all this madness, ofwar.'
"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 southeastern horizon, and then stillmore, until all that quarter of the sky was stippled with blue specks.Now they were all thin little strokes of blue, and now one and nowa multitude would heel and catch the sun and become short flashes oflight. They came rising and falling and growing larger, like some hugeflight of gulls or rooks, or such-like birds moving with a marvellousuniformity, and ever as they drew nearer they spread over a greaterwidth of sky. The southward wing flung itself in an arrow-headed cloudathwart the sun. And then suddenly they swept round to the eastward andstreamed eastward, growing smaller and smaller and clearer and cleareragain until they vanished from the sky. And after that we noted to thenorthward and very high Evesham's fighting machines hanging high overNaples like an evening swarm of 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 southeast 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,pain and many distresses. For though we were dusty and stained by ourtoilsome tramping, and half starved and with the horror of the deadmen we had seen and the flight of the peasants--for very soon a gust offighting swept up the peninsula--with these things haunting our minds itstill resulted only in a deepening resolution to escape. O, but she wasbrave and patient! She who had never faced hardship and exposure hadcourage for herself--and me. We went to and fro seeking an outlet, overa country all commandeered and ransacked by the gathering hosts of war.Always we went on foot. At first there were other fugitives, but we didnot mingle with them. Some escaped northward, some were caught inthe torrent of peasantry that swept along the main roads; many gavethemselves into the hands of the soldiery and were sent northward. Manyof the men were impressed. But we kept away from these things; we hadbrought no money to bribe a passage north, and I feared for my lady atthe hands of these conscript crowds. We had landed at Salerno, andwe had been turned back from Cava, and we had tried to cross towardsTaranto by a pass over Mount Alburno, but we had been driven back forwant of food, and so we had come down among the marshes by Paestum,where those great temples stand alone. I had some vague idea that byPaestum it might be possible to find a boat or something, and take oncemore to sea. And there it was the battle overtook us.
"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 northgoing to and fro, and had come upon them in the distance amidst themountains making ways for the ammunition and preparing the mounting ofthe guns. Once we fancied they had fired at us, taking us for spies--atany rate a shot had gone shuddering over us. Several times we had hiddenin woods from 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,at last, on a blank stony place dotted with spiky bushes, empty anddesolate and so flat that a grove of eucalyptus far away showed to thefeet of its stems. How I can see it! My lady was sitting down undera bush, resting a little, for she was very weak and weary, and I wasstanding up watching to see if I could tell the distance of the firingthat came and went. They were still, you know, fighting far from eachother, with those terrible new weapons that had never before been used:guns that would carry beyond sight, and aeroplanes that would do--WhatTHEY would do no man could foretell.
"I knew that we were between the two armies, and that they drewtogether. I knew we were in danger, and that we could not stop there andrest!
"Though all these 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 needof weeping, and had held herself so far and so long for me. It was well,I thought, 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 something flashed and burst, and all about us Iheard the bullets making a noise like a handful of peas suddenly thrown.They chipped the stones about us, and whirled fragments from the bricksand passed...."
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, andthen stared out of the window. For a long space we kept silence. When atlast I looked at him he was sitting back in his corner, his arms folded,and his teeth 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 theway."
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, andthat the battle went away to the west. One aeroplane was struck, andoverset and fell. I remember that--though it didn't interest me inthe least. It didn't seem to signify. It was like a wounded gull, youknow--flapping for a time in the water. I could see it down the aisle ofthe temple--a black thing 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 gashedthe stone 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 at all.I sat with her in my arms amidst the stones--in a sort oflethargy--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 forgottenwhat they were about."
He stopped, and there was a long silence.
Suddenly I perceived that we were running down the incline from ChalkFarm to Euston. I started at this passing of time. I turned on him witha brutal 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 menwere coming 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 ofthe old 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 towar
ds 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 Ihad seen 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 unknowntongue.
"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 onhis upper lip, and he was dirty and unshaven. He kept shoutingunintelligible things, questions perhaps, at me.
"I know now that he was afraid of me, but at the time that did notoccur to me. As I tried to explain to him he interrupted me in imperioustones, 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 ofexultant 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 thetrain. The brakes lifted their voices and the carriage jarred andjerked. This present world insisted upon itself, became clamorous. I sawthrough the steamy window huge electric lights glaring down from tallmasts upon a fog, saw rows of stationary empty carriages passing by, andthen a signal-box, hoisting its constellation of green and red into themurky London twilight marched after them. I looked again at his drawnfeatures.
"He ran me through the heart. It was with a sort of astonishment--nofear, no pain--but just amazement, that I felt it pierce me, felt thesword drive home into my body. It didn't hurt, you know. It didn't hurtat all."
The yellow platform lights came into the field of view, passing firstrapidly, then slowly, and at last stopping with a jerk. Dim shapes ofmen passed 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 faceof the man who had killed me, seemed to recede. It swept out ofexistence--"
"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 truckload 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 theTemple--And then--"
"Yes," I insisted. "Yes?"
"Nightmares," he cried; "nightmares indeed! My God! Great birds thatfought and tore."
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