XVI. THE DREAM OF TURNBULL
Turnbull was walking rather rampantly up and down the garden on a gustyevening chewing his cigar and in that mood when every man suppressesan instinct to spit. He was not, as a rule, a man much acquainted withmoods; and the storms and sunbursts of MacIan's soul passed before himas an impressive but unmeaning panorama, like the anarchy of Highlandscenery. Turnbull was one of those men in whom a continuous appetite andindustry of the intellect leave the emotions very simple and steady.His heart was in the right place; but he was quite content to leave itthere. It was his head that was his hobby. His mornings and eveningswere marked not by impulses or thirsty desires, not by hope or byheart-break; they were filled with the fallacies he had detected, theproblems he had made plain, the adverse theories he had wrestled withand thrown, the grand generalizations he had justified. But even thecheerful inner life of a logician may be upset by a lunatic asylum, tosay nothing of whiffs of memory from a lady in Jersey, and the littlered-bearded man on this windy evening was in a dangerous frame of mind.
Plain and positive as he was, the influence of earth and sky may havebeen greater on him than he imagined; and the weather that walked theworld at that moment was as red and angry as Turnbull. Long strips andswirls of tattered and tawny cloud were dragged downward to the westexactly as torn red raiment would be dragged. And so strong and pitilesswas the wind that it whipped away fragments of red-flowering bushes orof copper beech, and drove them also across the garden, a drift of redleaves, like the leaves of autumn, as in parody of the red and drivenrags of cloud.
There was a sense in earth and heaven as of everything breaking up, andall the revolutionist in Turnbull rejoiced that it was breaking up.The trees were breaking up under the wind, even in the tall strengthof their bloom: the clouds were breaking up and losing even their largeheraldic shapes. Shards and shreds of copper cloud split off continuallyand floated by themselves, and for some reason the truculent eye ofTurnbull was attracted to one of these careering cloudlets, which seemedto him to career in an exaggerated manner. Also it kept its shape, whichis unusual with clouds shaken off; also its shape was of an odd sort.
Turnbull continued to stare at it, and in a little time occurred thatcrucial instant when a thing, however incredible, is accepted as a fact.The copper cloud was tumbling down towards the earth, like some giganticleaf from the copper beeches. And as it came nearer it was evident,first, that it was not a cloud, and, second, that it was not itselfof the colour of copper; only, being burnished like a mirror, it hadreflected the red-brown colours of the burning clouds. As the thingwhirled like a windswept leaf down towards the wall of the garden it wasclear that it was some sort of air-ship made of metal, and slappingthe air with big broad fins of steel. When it came about a hundred feetabove the garden, a shaggy, lean figure leapt up in it, almost blackagainst the bronze and scarlet of the west, and, flinging out a kind ofhook or anchor, caught on to the green apple-tree just under the wall;and from that fixed holding ground the ship swung in the red tempestlike a captive balloon.
While our friend stood frozen for an instant by his astonishment, thequeer figure in the airy car tipped the vehicle almost upside down byleaping over the side of it, seemed to slide or drop down the rope likea monkey, and alighted (with impossible precision and placidity) seatedon the edge of the wall, over which he kicked and dangled his legs as hegrinned at Turnbull. The wind roared in the trees yet more ruinous anddesolate, the red tails of the sunset were dragged downward like reddragons sucked down to death, and still on the top of the asylum wallsat the sinister figure with the grimace, swinging his feet in tune withthe tempest; while above him, at the end of its tossing or tightenedcord, the enormous iron air-ship floated as light and as little noticedas a baby's balloon upon its string.
Turnbull's first movement after sixty motionless seconds was to turnround and look at the large, luxuriant parallelogram of the garden andthe long, low rectangular building beyond. There was not a soul or astir of life within sight. And he had a quite meaningless sensation, asif there never really had been any one else there except he since thefoundation of the world.
Stiffening in himself the masculine but mirthless courage of theatheist, he drew a little nearer to the wall and, catching the man ata slightly different angle of the evening light, could see his face andfigure quite plain. Two facts about him stood out in the picked coloursof some piratical schoolboy's story. The first was that his lean brownbody was bare to the belt of his loose white trousers; the other thatthrough hygiene, affectation, or whatever other cause, he had a scarlethandkerchief tied tightly but somewhat aslant across his brow. Afterthese two facts had become emphatic, others appeared sufficientlyimportant. One was that under the scarlet rag the hair was plentiful,but white as with the last snows of mortality. Another was that underthe mop of white and senile hair the face was strong, handsome, andsmiling, with a well-cut profile and a long cloven chin. The length ofthis lower part of the face and the strange cleft in it (which gave theman, in quite another sense from the common one, a double chin) faintlyspoilt the claim of the face to absolute regularity, but it greatlyassisted it in wearing the expression of half-smiling and half-sneeringarrogance with which it was staring at all the stones, all the flowers,but especially at the solitary man.
"What do you want?" shouted Turnbull.
"I want you, Jimmy," said the eccentric man on the wall, and with thevery word he had let himself down with a leap on to the centre of thelawn, where he bounded once literally like an India-rubber ball and thenstood grinning with his legs astride. The only three facts that Turnbullcould now add to his inventory were that the man had an ugly-lookingknife swinging at his trousers belt, that his brown feet were as bareas his bronzed trunk and arms, and that his eyes had a singular bleakbrilliancy which was of no particular colour.
"Excuse my not being in evening dress," said the newcomer with anurbane smile. "We scientific men, you know--I have to work my ownengines--electrical engineer--very hot work."
"Look here," said Turnbull, sturdily clenching his fists in his trouserspockets, "I am bound to expect lunatics inside these four walls; but Ido bar their coming from outside, bang out of the sunset clouds."
"And yet you came from the outside, too, Jim," said the stranger in avoice almost affectionate.
"What do you want?" asked Turnbull, with an explosion of temper assudden as a pistol shot.
"I have already told you," said the man, lowering his voice and speakingwith evident sincerity; "I want you."
"What do you want with me?"
"I want exactly what you want," said the new-comer with a new gravity."I want the Revolution."
Turnbull looked at the fire-swept sky and the wind-stricken woodlands,and kept on repeating the word voicelessly to himself--the word that didindeed so thoroughly express his mood of rage as it had been among thosered clouds and rocking tree-tops. "Revolution!" he said to himself. "TheRevolution--yes, that is what I want right enough--anything, so long asit is a Revolution."
To some cause he could never explain he found himself completing thesentence on the top of the wall, having automatically followed thestranger so far. But when the stranger silently indicated the rope thatled to the machine, he found himself pausing and saying: "I can't leaveMacIan behind in this den."
"We are going to destroy the Pope and all the kings," said thenew-comer. "Would it be wiser to take him with us?"
Somehow the muttering Turnbull found himself in the flying ship also,and it swung up into the sunset.
"All the great rebels have been very little rebels," said the man withthe red scarf. "They have been like fourth-form boys who sometimesventure to hit a fifth-form boy. That was all the worth of theirFrench Revolution and regicide. The boys never really dared to defy theschoolmaster."
"Whom do you mean by the schoolmaster?" asked Turnbull.
"You know whom I mean," answered the strange man, as he lay back oncushions and looked up into the angry sky.
They seeme
d rising into stronger and stronger sunlight, as if it weresunrise rather than sunset. But when they looked down at the earththey saw it growing darker and darker. The lunatic asylum in its largerectangular grounds spread below them in a foreshortened and infantileplan, and looked for the first time the grotesque thing that it was.But the clear colours of the plan were growing darker every moment. Themasses of rose or rhododendron deepened from crimson to violet. The mazeof gravel pathways faded from gold to brown. By the time they hadrisen a few hundred feet higher nothing could be seen of that darkeninglandscape except the lines of lighted windows, each one of which, atleast, was the light of one lost intelligence. But on them as they sweptupward better and braver winds seemed to blow, and on them the rubylight of evening seemed struck, and splashed like red spurts from thegrapes of Dionysus. Below them the fallen lights were literally thefallen stars of servitude. And above them all the red and raging cloudswere like the leaping flags of liberty.
The man with the cloven chin seemed to have a singular power ofunderstanding thoughts; for, as Turnbull felt the whole universe tiltand turn over his head, the stranger said exactly the right thing.
"Doesn't it seem as if everything were being upset?" said he; "and ifonce everything is upset, He will be upset on top of it."
Then, as Turnbull made no answer, his host continued:
"That is the really fine thing about space. It is topsy-turvy. You haveonly to climb far enough towards the morning star to feel that you arecoming down to it. You have only to dive deep enough into the abyss tofeel that you are rising. That is the only glory of this universe--it isa giddy universe."
Then, as Turnbull was still silent, he added:
"The heavens are full of revolution--of the real sort of revolution. Allthe high things are sinking low and all the big things looking small.All the people who think they are aspiring find they are falling headforemost. And all the people who think they are condescending find theyare climbing up a precipice. That is the intoxication of space. That isthe only joy of eternity--doubt. There is only one pleasure the angelscan possibly have in flying, and that is, that they do not know whetherthey are on their head or their heels."
Then, finding his companion still mute, he fell himself into a smilingand motionless meditation, at the end of which he said suddenly:
"So MacIan converted you?"
Turnbull sprang up as if spurning the steel car from under his feet."Converted me!" he cried. "What the devil do you mean? I have known himfor a month, and I have not retracted a single----"
"This Catholicism is a curious thing," said the man of the cloven chinin uninterrupted reflectiveness, leaning his elegant elbows over theedge of the vessel; "it soaks and weakens men without their knowing it,just as I fear it has soaked and weakened you."
Turnbull stood in an attitude which might well have meant pitching theother man out of the flying ship.
"I am an atheist," he said, in a stifled voice. "I have always been anatheist. I am still an atheist." Then, addressing the other's indolentand indifferent back, he cried: "In God's name what do you mean?"
And the other answered without turning round:
"I mean nothing in God's name."
Turnbull spat over the edge of the car and fell back furiously into hisseat.
The other continued still unruffled, and staring over the edge idly asan angler stares down at a stream.
"The truth is that we never thought that you could have been caught,"he said; "we counted on you as the one red-hot revolutionary left inthe world. But, of course, these men like MacIan are awfully clever,especially when they pretend to be stupid."
Turnbull leapt up again in a living fury and cried: "What have I got todo with MacIan? I believe all I ever believed, and disbelieve all Iever disbelieved. What does all this mean, and what do you want with mehere?"
Then for the first time the other lifted himself from the edge of thecar and faced him.
"I have brought you here," he answered, "to take part in the last war ofthe world."
"The last war!" repeated Turnbull, even in his dazed state a littletouchy about such a dogma; "how do you know it will be the last?"
The man laid himself back in his reposeful attitude, and said:
"It is the last war, because if it does not cure the world for ever, itwill destroy it."
"What do you mean?"
"I only mean what you mean," answered the unknown in a temperate voice."What was it that you always meant on those million and one nights whenyou walked outside your Ludgate Hill shop and shook your hand in theair?"
"Still I do not see," said Turnbull, stubbornly.
"You will soon," said the other, and abruptly bent downward one ironhandle of his huge machine. The engine stopped, stooped, and divedalmost as deliberately as a man bathing; in their downward rush theyswept within fifty yards of a big bulk of stone that Turnbull knew onlytoo well. The last red anger of the sunset was ended; the dome of heavenwas dark; the lanes of flaring light in the streets below hardly lit upthe base of the building. But he saw that it was St. Paul's Cathedral,and he saw that on the top of it the ball was still standing erect, butthe cross was stricken and had fallen sideways. Then only he cared tolook down into the streets, and saw that they were inflamed with uproarand tossing passions.
"We arrive at a happy moment," said the man steering the ship. "Theinsurgents are bombarding the city, and a cannon-ball has just hit thecross. Many of the insurgents are simple people, and they naturallyregard it as a happy omen."
"Quite so," said Turnbull, in a rather colourless voice.
"Yes," replied the other. "I thought you would be glad to see yourprayer answered. Of course I apologize for the word prayer."
"Don't mention it," said Turnbull.
The flying ship had come down upon a sort of curve, and was now risingagain. The higher and higher it rose the broader and broader became thescenes of flame and desolation underneath.
Ludgate Hill indeed had been an uncaptured and comparatively quietheight, altered only by the startling coincidence of the cross fallenawry. All the other thoroughfares on all sides of that hill were fullof the pulsation and the pain of battle, full of shaking torches andshouting faces. When at length they had risen high enough to have abird's-eye view of the whole campaign, Turnbull was already intoxicated.He had smelt gunpowder, which was the incense of his own revolutionaryreligion.
"Have the people really risen?" he asked, breathlessly. "What are theyfighting about?"
"The programme is rather elaborate," said his entertainer with someindifference. "I think Dr. Hertz drew it up."
Turnbull wrinkled his forehead. "Are all the poor people with theRevolution?" he asked.
The other shrugged his shoulders. "All the instructed andclass-conscious part of them without exception," he replied. "Therewere certainly a few districts; in fact, we are passing over them justnow----"
Turnbull looked down and saw that the polished car was literally litup from underneath by the far-flung fires from below. Underneath wholesquares and solid districts were in flames, like prairies or forests onfire.
"Dr. Hertz has convinced everybody," said Turnbull's cicerone in asmooth voice, "that nothing can really be done with the real slums. Hiscelebrated maxim has been quite adopted. I mean the three celebratedsentences: 'No man should be unemployed. Employ the employables. Destroythe unemployables.'"
There was a silence, and then Turnbull said in a rather strained voice:"And do I understand that this good work is going on under here?"
"Going on splendidly," replied his companion in the heartiest voice."You see, these people were much too tired and weak even to join thesocial war. They were a definite hindrance to it."
"And so you are simply burning them out?"
"It _does_ seem absurdly simple," said the man, with a beaming smile,"when one thinks of all the worry and talk about helping a hopelessslave population, when the future obviously was only crying to be rid ofthem. There are happy babes unborn ready to bu
rst the doors when thesedrivellers are swept away."
"Will you permit me to say," said Turnbull, after reflection, "that Idon't like all this?"
"And will you permit me to say," said the other, with a snap, "that Idon't like Mr. Evan MacIan?"
Somewhat to the speaker's surprise this did not inflame the sensitivesceptic; he had the air of thinking thoroughly, and then he said: "No, Idon't think it's my friend MacIan that taught me that. I think I shouldalways have said that I don't like this. These people have rights."
"Rights!" repeated the unknown in a tone quite indescribable. Then headded with a more open sneer: "Perhaps they also have souls."
"They have lives!" said Turnbull, sternly; "that is quite enough for me.I understood you to say that you thought life sacred."
"Yes, indeed!" cried his mentor with a sort of idealistic animation."Yes, indeed! Life is sacred--but lives are not sacred. We are improvingLife by removing lives. Can you, as a free-thinker, find any fault inthat?"
"Yes," said Turnbull with brevity.
"Yet you applaud tyrannicide," said the stranger with rationalisticgaiety. "How inconsistent! It really comes to this: You approve oftaking away life from those to whom it is a triumph and a pleasure.But you will not take away life from those to whom it is a burden and atoil."
Turnbull rose to his feet in the car with considerable deliberation, buthis face seemed oddly pale. The other went on with enthusiasm.
"Life, yes, Life is indeed sacred!" he cried; "but new lives for old!Good lives for bad! On that very place where now there sprawls onedrunken wastrel of a pavement artist more or less wishing he weredead--on that very spot there shall in the future be living pictures;there shall be golden girls and boys leaping in the sun."
Turnbull, still standing up, opened his lips. "Will you put me down,please?" he said, quite calmly, like on stopping an omnibus.
"Put you down--what do you mean?" cried his leader. "I am taking you tothe front of the revolutionary war, where you will be one of the firstof the revolutionary leaders."
"Thank you," replied Turnbull with the same painful constraint. "I haveheard about your revolutionary war, and I think on the whole that Iwould rather be anywhere else."
"Do you want to be taken to a monastery," snarled the other, "withMacIan and his winking Madonnas."
"I want to be taken to a madhouse," said Turnbull distinctly, giving thedirection with a sort of precision. "I want to go back to exactly thesame lunatic asylum from which I came."
"Why?" asked the unknown.
"Because I want a little sane and wholesome society," answered Turnbull.
There was a long and peculiar silence, and then the man driving theflying machine said quite coolly: "I won't take you back."
And then Turnbull said equally coolly: "Then I'll jump out of the car."
The unknown rose to his full height, and the expression in his eyesseemed to be made of ironies behind ironies, as two mirrors infinitelyreflect each other. At last he said, very gravely: "Do you think I amthe devil?"
"Yes," said Turnbull, violently. "For I think the devil is a dream,and so are you. I don't believe in you or your flying ship or your lastfight of the world. It is all a nightmare. I say as a fact of dogma andfaith that it is all a nightmare. And I will be a martyr for my faith asmuch as St. Catherine, for I will jump out of this ship and risk wakingup safe in bed."
After swaying twice with the swaying vessel he dived over the side asone dives into the sea. For some incredible moments stars and space andplanets seemed to shoot up past him as the sparks fly upward; and yet inthat sickening descent he was full of some unnatural happiness. He couldconnect it with no idea except one that half escaped him--what Evan hadsaid of the difference between Christ and Satan; that it was by Christ'sown choice that He descended into hell.
When he again realized anything, he was lying on his elbow on thelawn of the lunatic asylum, and the last red of the sunset had not yetdisappeared.