A DREAM OF ARMAGEDDON
The man with the white face entered the carriage at Rugby. Hemoved slowly in spite of the urgency of his porter, and even whilehe was still on the platform I noted how ill he seemed. He droppedinto the corner over against me with a sigh, made an incompleteattempt to arrange his travelling shawl, and became motionless,with his eyes staring vacantly. Presently he was moved by a senseof my observation, looked up at me, and put out a spiritless handfor his newspaper. Then he glanced again in my direction.
I feigned to read. I feared I had unwittingly embarrassedhim, and in a moment I was surprised to find him speaking.
"I beg your pardon?" said I.
"That book," he repeated, pointing a lean finger, "is aboutdreams."
"Obviously," I answered, for it was Fortnum Roscoe's DreamStates, and the title was on the cover.
He hung silent for a space as if he sought words. "Yes," hesaid 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 I never dispute.
"I suppose--" he hesitated. "Do you ever dream? I meanvividly."
"I dream very little," I answered. "I doubt if I have threevivid dreams in a year."
"Ah!" he said, and seemed for a moment to collect histhoughts.
"Your dreams don't mix with your memories?" he asked abruptly."You don't find yourself in doubt; did this happen or did it not?"
"Hardly ever. Except just for a momentary hesitation now andthen. I suppose few people do."
"Does he say--?" He indicated the book.
"Says it happens at times and gives the usual explanationabout intensity of impression and the like to account for its nothappening as a rule. I suppose you know something of thesetheories--"
"Very little--except that they are wrong."
His emaciated hand played with the strap of the window for atime. I prepared to resume reading, and that seemed to precipitatehis next remark. He leant forward almost as though he would touchme.
"Isn't there something called consecutive dreaming--that goeson night after night?"
"I believe there is. There are cases given in most books onmental trouble."
"Mental trouble! Yes. I daresay there are. It's the rightplace for them. But what I mean--" He looked at his bonyknuckles. "Is that sort of 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 thedrawn anxiety of his face. I remember now the look of his fadedeyes and the lids red stained--perhaps you know that look.
"I'm not just arguing about a matter of opinion," he said."The thing's killing me."
"Dreams?"
"If you call them dreams. Night after night. Vivid!--sovivid . . . . this--" (he indicated the landscape that wentstreaming by the window) "seems unreal in comparison! I canscarcely remember who I am, what business I am 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,is dead. Dead forever. I dreamt I was another man, you know,living in a different part of the world and in a different time.I dreamt that night after night. Night after night I woke intothat other life. Fresh scenes and fresh happenings--until I cameupon 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 anhour before me, the light was fading fast, and Fortnum Roscoe hasa dreary way with him. "Living in a different time," I said: "doyou mean in some different 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, whenI was dreaming, that is, but not now--not now that I am awake.There's a lot of things I have forgotten since I woke out of thesedreams, though I knew them at the time when I was--I suppose it wasdreaming. They called the year differently from our way of callingthe year . . . What did they call it?" He put his hand to hisforehead. "No," said he, "I forget."
He sat smiling weakly. For a moment I feared he did not meanto tell me his dream. As a rule I hate people who tell theirdreams, but this struck me differently. I proffered assistanceeven. "It began--" I suggested.
"It was vivid from the first. I seemed to wake up in itsuddenly. And it's curious that in these dreams I am speaking ofI never remembered this life I am living now. It seemed as if thedream life was enough while it lasted. Perhaps--But I will tellyou how I find myself when I do my best to recall it all. I don'tremember anything clearly until I found myself sitting in a sort ofloggia looking out over the sea. I had been dozing, and suddenlyI woke up--fresh and vivid--not a bit dreamlike--because the girlhad stopped fanning me."
"The girl?"
"Yes, the girl. You must not interrupt or you will put meout."
He stopped abruptly. "You won't think I'm mad?" he said.
"No," I answered. "You've been dreaming. Tell me yourdream."
"I woke up, I say, because the girl had stopped fanning me.I was not surprised to find myself there or anything of that sort,you understand. I did not feel I had fallen into it suddenly. Isimply took it up at that point. Whatever memory I had of thislife, this nineteenth-century life, faded as I woke, vanished likea dream. I knew all about myself, knew that my name was no longerCooper but Hedon, and all about my position in the world. I'veforgotten a lot since I woke--there's a want of connection--but itwas all quite clear and matter of fact then."
He hesitated again, gripping the window strap, putting hisface forward and looking up to me appealingly.
"This seems bosh to you?"
"No, no!" I cried. "Go on. Tell me what this loggia waslike!"
"It was not really a loggia--I don't know what to call it. Itfaced south. It was small. It was all in shadow except thesemicircle above the balcony that showed the sky and sea and thecorner where the girl stood. I was on a couch--it was a metalcouch with light striped cushions--and the girl was leaning overthe balcony with her back to me. The light of the sunrise fell onher ear and cheek. Her pretty white neck and the little curlsthat nestled there, and her white shoulder were in the sun, andall the grace of her body was in the cool blue shadow. She wasdressed--how can I describe it? It was easy and flowing. Andaltogether there she stood, so that it came to me how beautifuland desirable she was, as though I had never seen her before.And when at last I sighed and raised myself upon my arm sheturned her face to me--"
He stopped.
"I have lived three-and-fifty years in this world. I have hadmother, sisters, friends, wife and daughters--all their faces, theplay of their faces, I know. But the face of this girl--it is muchmore real to me. I can bring it back into memory so that I see itagain--I could draw it 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 that beauty which is terrible, cold, and worshipful, like thebeauty of a saint; nor that beauty that stirs fierce passions; buta sort of radiation, sweet lips that softened into smiles, andgrave gray eyes. And she moved gracefully, she seemed to have partwith all pleasant and gracious things--"
He stopped, and his face was downcast and hidden. Then helooked up at me and went on, making no further attempt to disguisehis absolute belief in the reality of his story.
"You see, I had thrown up my plans and ambitions, thrown upall I had ever worked for or desired for her
sake. I had been amaster man away there in the north, with influence and property anda great reputation, but none of it had seemed worth having besideher. I had come to the place, this city of sunny pleasures withher, and left all those things to wreck and ruin just to save aremnant at least of my life. While I had been in love with herbefore I knew that she had any care for me, before I had imaginedthat she would dare--that we should dare, all my life had seemedvain and hollow, dust and ashes. It was dust and ashes. Nightafter 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 thesethings. It's emotion, it's a tint, a light that comes and goes.Only while it's there, everything changes, everything. The thingis I came away and left them in their Crisis to do what theycould."
"Left whom?" I asked, puzzled.
"The people up in the north there. You see--in this dream,anyhow--I had been a big man, the sort of man men come to trust in,to group themselves about. Millions of men who had never seen mewere ready to do things and risk things because of their confidencein me. I had been playing that game for years, that big laboriousgame, that vague, monstrous political game amidst intrigues andbetrayals, speech and agitation. It was a vast weltering world,and at last I had a sort of leadership against the Gang--you knowit was called the Gang--a sort of compromise of scoundrellyprojects and base ambitions and vast public emotional stupiditiesand catch-words--the Gang that kept the world noisy and blind yearby year, and all the while that it was drifting, drifting towardsinfinite disaster. But I can't expect you to understand the shadesand complications of the year--the year something or other ahead.I had it all--down to the smallest details--in my dream. I supposeI had been dreaming of it before I awoke, and the fading outline ofsome queer new development I had imagined still hung about me as Irubbed my eyes. It was some grubby affair that made me thank Godfor the sunlight. I sat up on the couch and remained looking atthe woman and rejoicing--rejoicing that I had come away out of allthat tumult and folly and violence before it was too late. Afterall, I thought, this is life--love and beauty, desire and delight,are they not worth all those dismal struggles for vague, giganticends? And I blamed myself for having ever sought to be a leaderwhen I might have given my days to love. But then, thought I, ifI had not spent my early days sternly and austerely, I might havewasted myself upon vain and worthless women, and at the thought allmy being went out in love and tenderness to my dear mistress, mydear lady, who had come at last and compelled me--compelled me byher invincible charm for me--to lay that life aside.
"'You are worth it,' I said, speaking without intending her tohear; 'you are worth it, my dearest one; worth pride and praise andall things. Love! to have you is worth them all together." And atthe murmur of my voice she turned about.
"'Come and see,' she cried--I can hear her now--'come and seethe sunrise upon Monte Solaro.'
"I remember how I sprang to my feet and joined her at thebalcony. She put a white hand upon my shoulder and pointed towardsgreat masses of limestone, flushing, as it were, into life. Ilooked. But first I noted the sunlight on her face caressing thelines of her cheeks and neck. How can I describe to you the scenewe had before us? We were at Capri--"
"I have been there," I said. "I have clambered up MonteSolaro and drunk vero Capri--muddy stuff like cider--at thesummit."
"Ah!" said the man with the white face; "then perhaps you cantell me--you will know if this is indeed Capri. For in this lifeI have never been there. Let me describe it. We were in a littleroom, one of a vast multitude of little rooms, very cool and sunny,hollowed out of the limestone of a sort of cape, very high abovethe sea. The whole island, you know, was one enormous hotel,complex beyond explaining, and on the other side there were milesof floating hotels, and huge floating stages to which the flyingmachines came. They called it a pleasure city. Of course, therewas none of that in your time--rather, I should say, is none ofthat now. Of course. Now!--yes.
"Well, this room of ours was at the extremity of the cape, sothat one could see east and west. Eastward was a great cliff--athousand feet high perhaps--coldly gray except for one bright edgeof gold, and beyond it the Isle of the Sirens, and a falling coastthat faded and passed into the hot sunrise. And when one turned tothe west, distinct and near was a little bay, a little beach stillin shadow. And out of that shadow rose Solaro straight and tall,flushed and golden crested, like a beauty throned, and the whitemoon 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 andvery minute and clear, but to the westward they were little boatsof gold--shining gold--almost like little flames. And just belowus was a rock with an arch worn through it. The blue sea-waterbroke to green and foam all round the rock, and a galley camegliding out of the arch."
"I know that rock." I said. "I was nearly drowned there. Itis called the Faraglioni."
"I Faraglioni? Yes, she called it that," answered the manwith the white face. "There was some story--but that--"
He put his hand to his forehead again. "No," he said, "Iforget that story."
"Well, that is the first thing I remember, the first dream Ihad, that little shaded room and the beautiful air and sky and thatdear lady of mine, with her shining arms and her graceful robe, andhow we sat and talked in half whispers to one another. We talkedin whispers not because there was any one to hear, but becausethere was still such a freshness of mind between us that ourthoughts were a little frightened, I think, to find themselves atlast in words. And so they went softly.
"Presently we were hungry and we went from our apartment,going by a strange passage with a moving floor, until we came tothe great breakfast room--there was a fountain and music. Apleasant and joyful place it was, with its sunlight and splashing,and the murmur of plucked strings. And we sat and ate and smiledat one another, and I would not heed a man who was watching me froma table near by.
"And afterwards we went on to the dancing-hall. But I cannotdescribe that hall. The place was enormous--larger than anybuilding you have ever seen--and in one place there was the oldgate of Capri, caught into the wall of a gallery high overhead.Light girders, stems and threads of gold, burst from the pillarslike fountains, streamed like an Aurora across the roof andinterlaced, like--like conjuring tricks. All about the greatcircle for the dancers there were beautiful figures, strangedragons, and intricate and wonderful grotesques bearing lights.The place was inundated with artificial light that shamed thenewborn day. And as we went through the throng the people turnedabout and looked at us, for all through the world my name and facewere known, and how I had suddenly thrown up pride and struggle tocome to this place. And they looked also at the lady beside me,though half the story of how at last she had come to me was unknownor 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 hadcome upon my name.
"The air was full of music, full of harmonious scents, full ofthe rhythm of beautiful motions. Thousands of beautiful peopleswarmed about the hall, crowded the galleries, sat in a myriadrecesses; they were dressed in splendid colours and crowned withflowers; thousands danced about the great circle beneath the whiteimages of the ancient gods, and glorious processions of youths andmaidens came and went. We two danced, not the dreary monotonies ofyour days--of this time, I mean--but dances that were beautiful,intoxicating. And even now I can see my lady dancing--dancingjoyously. She danced, you know, with a serious face; she dancedwith a serious dignity, and yet she was smiling at me and caressingme--smiling and caressing with her eyes.
"The music was different," he murmured. "It went--I cannotdescribe it; but it was infinitely richer and more varied than anymusic that has ever come to me awake.
"And then--it was when we had done dancing--a man came tospeak to me. He was a lean, resolute man, very soberly clad
forthat place, and already I had marked his face watching me in thebreakfasting hall, and afterwards as we went along the passage Ihad avoided his eye. But now, as we sat in a little alcove,smiling at the pleasure of all the people who went to and froacross the shining floor, he came and touched me, and spoke to meso that I was forced to listen. And he asked that he might speakto me for a little time apart.
"'No,' I said. 'I have no secrets from this lady. What doyou want to tell me?'
"He said it was a trivial matter, or at least a dry matter,for a lady to hear.
"'Perhaps for me to hear,' said I.
"He glanced at her, as though almost he would appeal to her.Then he asked me suddenly if I had heard of a great and avengingdeclaration that Evesham had made? Now, Evesham had always beforebeen the man next to myself in the leadership of that great partyin the north. He was a forcible, hard, and tactless man, and onlyI had been able to control and soften him. It was on his accounteven more than my own, I think, that the others had been sodismayed at my retreat. So this question about what he had donereawakened 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 has Evesham been saying?'
"And with that the man began, nothing loth, and I must confesseven I was struck by Evesham's reckless folly in the wild andthreatening words he had used. And this messenger they had sent tome not only told me of Evesham's speech, but went on to ask counseland to point out what need they had of me. While he talked, mylady sat a little forward and watched his face and mine.
"My old habits of scheming and organising reassertedthemselves. I could even see myself suddenly returning to thenorth, and all the dramatic effect of it. All that this man saidwitnessed to the disorder of the party indeed, but not to itsdamage. I should go back stronger than I had come. And then Ithought of my lady. You see--how can I tell you? There werecertain peculiarities of our relationship--as things are I need nottell you about that--which would render her presence with meimpossible. I should have had to leave her; indeed, I should havehad to renounce her clearly and openly, if I was to do all that Icould do in the north. And the man knew that, even as he talked toher and me, knew it as well as she did, that my steps to dutywere--first, separation, then abandonment. At the touch of thatthought my dream of a return was shattered. I turned on the mansuddenly, as he was imagining his eloquence was gaining ground withme.
"'What have I to do with these things now?' I said. 'I havedone with them. Do you think I am coquetting with your people incoming here?'
"'No,' he said. 'But--'
"'Why cannot you leave me alone. I have done with thesethings. I have ceased to be anything but a private man.'
"'Yes,' he answered. 'But have you thought?--this talk ofwar, these reckless challenges, these wild aggressions--'
"I stood up.
"'No,' I cried. 'I won't hear you. I took count of all thosethings, I weighed them--and I have come away.'
"He seemed to consider the possibility of persistence. Helooked from me to where the lady sat regarding us.
"'War,' he said, as if he were speaking to himself, and thenturned slowly from me and walked away.
"I stood, caught in the whirl of thoughts his appeal had setgoing.
"I heard my lady's voice.
"'Dear,' she said; 'but if they had need of you--'
"She did not finish her sentence, she let it rest there. Iturned to her sweet face, and the balance of my mood swayed andreeled.
"'They want me only to do the thing they dare not dothemselves,' I said. 'If they distrust Evesham they must settlewith 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 ofherself and me, the first shadow of the discovery that, seenstrongly and completely, must drive us apart for ever.
"Now, I was an older mind than hers, and I could sway her tothis belief or that.
"'My dear one,' I said, 'you must not trouble over thesethings. There will be no war. Certainly there will be no war.The age of wars is past. Trust me to know the justice of thiscase. They have no right upon me, dearest, and no one has a rightupon me. I have been free to choose my life, and I have chosenthis.'
"'But war--,' she said.
"I sat down beside her. I put an arm behind her and took herhand in mine. I set myself to drive that doubt away--I set myselfto fill her mind with pleasant things again. I lied to her, and inlying to her I lied also to myself. And she was only too ready tobelieve me, only too ready to forget.
"Very soon the shadow had gone again, and we were hastening toour bathing-place in the Grotta del Bovo Marino, where it was ourcustom to bathe every day. We swam and splashed one another, andin that buoyant water I seemed to become something lighter andstronger than a man. And at last we came out dripping andrejoicing and raced among the rocks. And then I put on a drybathing-dress, and we sat to bask in the sun, and presently Inodded, resting my head against her knee, and she put her hand uponmy hair and stroked it softly and I dozed. And behold! as itwere 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 vividmoments had been no more than the substance of a dream.
"In truth, I could not believe it a dream for all the soberingreality of things about me. I bathed and dressed as it were byhabit, and as I shaved I argued why I of all men should leave thewoman I loved to go back to fantastic politics in the hard andstrenuous north. Even if Evesham did force the world back to war,what was that to me? I was a man with the heart of a man, and whyshould I feel the responsibility of a deity for the way the worldmight go?
"You know that is not quite the way I think about affairs,about my real affairs. I am a solicitor, you know, with a point ofview.
"The vision was so real, you must understand, so utterlyunlike a dream that I kept perpetually recalling little irrelevantdetails; even the ornament of the book-cover that lay on my wife'ssewing-machine in the breakfast-room recalled with the utmostvividness the gilt line that ran about the seat in the alcove whereI had talked with the messenger from my deserted party. Have youever heard of a dream that had a quality like that?"
"Like--?"
"So that afterwards you remembered little details you hadforgotten."
I thought. I had never noticed the point before, but he wasright.
"Never," I said. "That is what you never seem to do withdreams."
"No," he answered. "But that is just what I did. I am a solicitor,you must understand, in Liverpool, and I could not help wonderingwhat the clients and business people I found myself talking to in myoffice would think if I told them suddenly I was in love with a girlwho would be born a couple of hundred years or so hence, and worriedabout the politics of my great-great-great-grandchildren. I waschiefly busy that day negotiating a ninety-nine-year building lease.It was a private builder in a hurry, and we wanted to tie him inevery possible way. I had an interview with him, and he showed acertain want of temper that sent me to bed still irritated. Thatnight I had no dream. Nor did I dream the next night, at least,to remember.
"Something of that intense reality of conviction vanished. Ibegan to feel sure it was a dream. And then it came again.
"When the dream came again, nearly four days later, it wasvery different. I think it certain that four days had also elapsedin the dream. Many things had happened in the north, and theshadow of them was back again between us, and this time it was notso easily dispelled. I began I know with moody musings. Why, inspite of all, should I go back, go back for all the rest of my daysto toil and stress, insults and perpetual dissatisfaction, simplyto save hundreds of millions of common people, whom I did not love,whom too often I could do no other than despise, from the stressand anguish of war and infinite misrule? And after all I mightfail. They all sought t
heir own narrow ends, and why should notI--why should not I also live as a man? And out of such thoughtsher voice summoned me, and I lifted my eyes.
"I found myself awake and walking. We had come out above thePleasure City, we were near the summit of Monte Solaro and lookingtowards the bay. It was the late afternoon and very clear. Faraway to the left Ischia hung in a golden haze between sea and sky,and Naples was coldly white against the hills, and before us wasVesuvius with a tall and slender streamer feathering at lasttowards the south, and the ruins of Torre dell' Annunziata andCastellammare glittering and near."
I interrupted suddenly: "You have been to Capri, of course?"
"Only in this dream," he said, "only in this dream. Allacross the bay beyond Sorrento were the floating palaces of thePleasure City moored and chained. And northward were the broadfloating stages that received the aeroplanes. Aeroplanes fell outof the sky every afternoon, each bringing its thousands ofpleasure-seekers from the uttermost parts of the earth to Capri andits delights. All these things, I say, stretched below.
"But we noticed them only incidentally because of an unusualsight that evening had to show. Five war aeroplanes that had longslumbered useless in the distant arsenals of the Rhinemouth weremanoeuvring now in the eastward sky. Evesham had astonished theworld by producing them and others, and sending them to circle hereand there. It was the threat material in the great game of bluffhe was playing, and it had taken even me by surprise. He was oneof those incredibly stupid energetic people who seem sent by heavento create disasters. His energy to the first glance seemed sowonderfully like capacity! But he had no imagination, noinvention, only a stupid, vast, driving force of will, and a madfaith in his stupid idiot 'luck' to pull him through. I rememberhow we stood upon the headland watching the squadron circling faraway, and how I weighed the full meaning of the sight, seeingclearly the way things must go. And then even it was not too late.I might have gone back, I think, and saved the world. The peopleof the north would follow me, I knew, granted only that in onething I respected their moral standards. The east and south wouldtrust me as they would trust no other northern man. And I knewI had only to put it to 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 wayabout. I had so newly thrown off the incubus of responsibility: Iwas still so fresh a renegade from duty that the daylight clearnessof what I ought to do had no power at all to touch my will. Mywill was to live, to gather pleasures and make my dear lady happy.But though this sense of vast neglected duties had no power to drawme, it could make me silent and preoccupied, it robbed the days Ihad spent of half their brightness and roused me into darkmeditations in the silence of the night. And as I stood andwatched Evesham'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 questioningmy face, her expression shaded with perplexity. Her face was graybecause the sunset was fading out of the sky. It was no fault ofhers that she held me. She had asked me to go from her, and againin the night time and with tears she had asked me to go.
"At last it was the sense of her that roused me from my mood.I turned upon her suddenly and challenged her to race down themountain slopes. 'No,' she said, as if I had jarred with hergravity, but I was resolved to end that gravity, and make herrun--no one can be very gray and sad who is out of breath--and whenshe stumbled I ran with my hand beneath her arm. We ran down pasta couple of men, who turned back staring in astonishment at mybehaviour--they must have recognised my face. And half way downthe slope came a tumult in the air, clang-clank, clang-clank, andwe stopped, and presently over the hill-crest those war things cameflying 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 ourironclads are nowadays; they had never fought. No one knew whatthey might do, with excited men inside them; few even cared tospeculate. They were great driving things shaped like spear-headswithout a shaft, with a propeller in the place of the shaft."
"Steel?"
"Not steel."
"Aluminum?"
"No, no, nothing of that sort. An alloy that was verycommon--as common as brass, for example. It was called--let mesee--" He squeezed his forehead with the fingers of one hand. "Iam forgetting everything," he said.
"And they carried guns?"
"Little guns, firing high explosive shells. They fired theguns backwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to speak, andrammed with the beak. That was the theory, you know, but they hadnever been fought. No one could tell exactly what was going tohappen. And meanwhile I suppose it was very fine to go whirlingthrough the air like a flight of young swallows, swift and easy.I guess the captains tried not to think too clearly what the realthing would be like. And these flying war machines, you know, wereonly one sort of the endless war contrivances that had beeninvented and had fallen into abeyance during the long peace. Therewere all sorts of these things that people were routing out andfurbishing up; infernal things, silly things; things that had neverbeen tried; big engines, terrible explosives, great guns. You knowthe silly way of these ingenious sort of men who make these things;they turn 'em out as beavers build dams, and with no more sense ofthe rivers they're going to divert and the lands they're going toflood!
"As we went down the winding stepway to our hotel again, inthe twilight, I foresaw it all: I saw how clearly and inevitablythings were driving for war in Evesham's silly, violent hands, andI had some inkling of what war was bound to be under these newconditions. And even then, though I knew it was drawing near thelimit of my opportunity, I could 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 we walked out upon the high terrace, to and fro, and--shecounselled me to go back.
"'My dearest,' she said, and her sweet face looked up to me,'this is Death. This life you lead is Death. Go back to them, goback to your duty--'
"She began to weep, saying, between her sobs, and clinging tomy arm as she said it, 'Go back--Go back.'
"Then suddenly she fell mute, and, glancing down at her face,I read in an instant the thing she had thought to do. It was oneof those moments when one sees.
"'No!' I said.
"'No?' she asked, in surprise and I think a little fearful atthe answer to her thought.
"'Nothing,' I said, 'shall send me back. Nothing! I havechosen. Love, I have chosen, and the world must go. Whateverhappens I will live this life--I will live for you! It--nothingshall turn me aside; nothing, my dear one. Even if you died--evenif 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, tomake the life we were living seem heroic and glorious; and thething I was deserting something hard and enormously ignoble that itwas a fine thing to set aside. I bent all my mind to throw thatglamour upon it, seeking not only to convert her but myself tothat. We talked, and she clung to me, torn too between all thatshe deemed noble and all that she knew was sweet. And at last Idid make it heroic, made all the thickening disaster of the worldonly a sort of glorious setting to our unparalleled love, and wetwo poor foolish souls strutted there at last, clad in thatsplendid 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, theleaders of the south and east were gathering their resolve, and thehot answer that shattered Evesham's bluffing for ever, took shape andwaited. And, all over Asia, and the ocean, and the South, the airand the wires were throbbing with their warnings to prepare--prepare.
"No one living, you know, knew what war was; no
one couldimagine, with all these new inventions, what horror war mightbring. I believe most people still believed it would be a matterof bright uniforms and shouting charges and triumphs and flags andbands--in a time when half the world drew its food supply fromregions ten thousand miles away--"
The man with the white face paused. I glanced at him, and hisface was intent on the floor of the carriage. A little railwaystation, a string of loaded trucks, a signal-box, and the back ofa cottage, shot by the carriage window, and a bridge passed with aclap of noise, echoing the tumult of the train.
"After that," he said, "I dreamt often. For three weeks ofnights that dream was my life. And the worst of it was there werenights when I could not dream, when I lay tossing on a bed in thisaccursed life; and there--somewhere lost to me--things werehappening--momentous, terrible things . . . I lived at nights--mydays, my waking days, this life I am living now, became a faded,far-away dream, a drab setting, the cover of the book."
He thought.
"I could tell you all, tell you every little thing in thedream, but as to what I did in the daytime--no. I could nottell--I do not remember. My memory--my memory has gone. Thebusiness of life slips from me--"
He leant forward, and pressed his hands upon his eyes. For along time he 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 manwho speaks to himself, "and they would have been nightmares.But they were not nightmares--they were not nightmares. No!"
He was silent for so long that it dawned upon me that therewas a danger of losing the rest of the story. But he went ontalking again in the same tone of questioning self-communion.
"What was there to do but flight? I had not thought the warwould touch Capri--I had seemed to see Capri as being out of itall, as the contrast to it all; but two nights after the wholeplace was shouting and bawling, every woman almost and every otherman wore a badge--Evesham's badge--and there was no music but ajangling war-song over and over again, and everywhere menenlisting, and in the dancing halls they were drilling. The wholeisland was awhirl with rumours; it was said, again and again, thatfighting had begun. I had not expected this. I had seen so littleof 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 waslike the man who might have prevented the firing of a magazine.The time had gone. I was no one; the vainest stripling with abadge counted for more than I. The crowd jostled us and bawled inour ears; that accursed song deafened us; a woman shrieked at mylady because no badge was on her, and we two went back to our ownplace again, ruffled and insulted--my lady white and silent, and Iaquiver with rage. So furious was I, I could have quarrelled withher if I could have found one shade of accusation in her eyes.
"All my magnificence had gone from me. I walked up and downour rock cell, and outside was the darkling sea and a light to thesouthward that flared and passed and came again.
"'We must get out of this place,' I said over and over. 'Ihave made my choice, and I will have no hand in these troubles. Iwill have nothing of this war. We have taken our lives out of allthese things. This is no refuge for us. Let us go.'
"And the next day we were already in flight from the war thatcovered the 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. Hetook no heed 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."
"South-west," he said, and glanced at me for a second. "Wewent in a boat."
"But I should have thought an aeroplane?"
"They had been seized."
I questioned him no more. Presently I thought he was beginningagain. He broke out in an argumentative monotone:
"But why should it be? If, indeed, this battle, thisslaughter and stress is life, why have we this craving for pleasureand beauty? If there is no refuge, if there is no place of peace,and if all our dreams of quiet places are a folly and a snare, whyhave we such dreams? Surely it was no ignoble cravings, no baseintentions, had brought us to this; it was Love had isolated us.Love had come to me with her eyes and robed in her beauty, moreglorious than all else in life, in the very shape and colour oflife, and summoned me away. I had silenced all the voices, I hadanswered 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 havebeen only a dream."
"A dream!" he cried, flaming upon me, "a dream--when, evennow--"
For the first time he became animated. A faint flush creptinto his cheek. He raised his open hand and clenched it, anddropped it to his knee. He spoke, looking away from me, and forall the rest of the time he looked away. "We are but phantoms!" hesaid, "and the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud-shadows andwills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days pass, use and wontcarry us through as a train carries the shadow of its lights--so beit! But one thing is real and certain, one thing is no dream-stuff,but eternal and enduring. It is the centre of my life, andall other things about it are subordinate or altogether vain. Iloved 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 livinglife with unappeasable sorrow, when it makes all that I have livedfor and cared for, worthless and unmeaning?
"Until that very moment when she was killed I believed we hadstill a chance of getting away," he said. "All through the nightand morning that we sailed across the sea from Capri to Salerno, wetalked of escape. We were full of hope, and it clung about us tothe end, hope for the life together we should lead, out of it all,out of the battle and struggle, the wild and empty passions, theempty arbitrary 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not' of the world. Wewere uplifted, as though our quest was a holy thing, as though lovefor another was a mission . . . .
"Even when from our boat we saw the fair face of that greatrock Capri--already scarred and gashed by the gun emplacements andhiding-places that were to make it a fastness--we reckoned nothingof the imminent slaughter, though the fury of preparation hungabout in the puffs and clouds of dust at a hundred points amidstthe gray; but, indeed, I made a text of that and talked. There,you know, was the rock, still beautiful for all its scars, with itscountless windows and arches and ways, tier upon tier, for athousand feet, a vast carving of gray, broken by vine-cladterraces, and lemon and orange groves, and masses of agave andprickly pear, and puffs of almond blossom. And out under thearchway that is built over the Piccola Marina other boats werecoming; and as we came round the cape and within sight of themainland, another little string of boats came into view, drivingbefore the wind towards the south-west. In a little while amultitude had come out, the remoter just little specks ofultramarine in the shadow of the eastward cliff.
"'It is love and reason,' I said, 'fleeing from all thismadness of war.'
"And though we presently saw a squadron of aeroplanes flyingacross the southern sky we did not heed it. There it was--a lineof little dots in the sky--and then more, dotting the south-easternhorizon, and then still more, until all that quarter of the sky wasstippled with blue specks. Now they were all thin little strokesof blue, and now one and now a multitude would heel and catch thesun and become short flashes of light. They came, rising andfalling and growing larger, like some huge flight of gulls or rooksor such-like birds, moving with a marvellous uniformity, and everas they drew nearer they spread over a greater width of sky. Thesouthward wind flung itself in an arrow-headed cloud athwart thesun. And then suddenly they swept round to the eastward ands
treamed eastward, growing smaller and smaller and clearer andclearer again until they vanished from the sky. And after that wenoted to the northward and very high Evesham's fighting machineshanging high over Naples like an evening swarm of gnats.
"It seemed to have no more to do with us than a flight ofbirds.
"Even the mutter of guns far away in the south-east seemed tous to signify nothing . . .
"Each day, each dream after that, we were still exalted, stillseeking that refuge where we might live and love. Fatigue had comeupon us, pain and many distresses. For though we were dusty andstained by our toilsome tramping, and half starved and with thehorror of the dead men we had seen and the flight of thepeasants--for very soon a gust of fighting swept up thepeninsula--with these things haunting our minds it still resultedonly in a deepening resolution to escape. Oh, but she was braveand patient! She who had never faced hardship and exposure hadcourage for herself and me. We went to and fro seeking an outlet,over a country all commandeered and ransacked by the gatheringhosts of war. Always we went on foot. At first there were otherfugitives, but we did not mingle with them. Some escapednorthward, some were caught in the torrent of peasantry that sweptalong the main roads; many gave themselves into the hands of thesoldiery and were sent northward. Many of the men were impressed.But we kept away from these things; we had brought no money tobribe a passage north, and I feared for my lady at the hands ofthese conscript crowds. We had landed at Salerno, and we had beenturned back from Cava, and we had tried to cross towards Taranto bya pass over Mount Alburno, but we had been driven back for want offood, and so we had come down among the marshes by Paestum, wherethose great temples stand alone. I had some vague idea that byPaestum it might be possible to find a boat or something, and takeonce more to sea. And there it was the battle overtook us.
"A sort of soul-blindness had me. Plainly I could see that wewere being hemmed in; that the great net of that giant Warfare hadus in its toils. Many times we had seen the levies that had comedown from the north going to and fro, and had come upon them in thedistance amidst the mountains making ways for the ammunition andpreparing the mounting of the guns. Once we fancied they had firedat us, taking us for spies--at any rate a shot had gone shudderingover us. Several times we had hidden in woods from hoveringaeroplanes.
"But all these things do not matter now, these nights offlight and pain . . . We were in an open place near those greattemples at Paestum, at last, on a blank stony place dotted withspiky bushes, empty and desolate and so flat that a grove ofeucalyptus far away showed to the feet of its stems. How I can seeit! My lady was sitting down under a bush resting a little, forshe was very weak and weary, and I was standing up watching to seeif I could tell the distance of the firing that came and went.They were still, you know, fighting far from each other, with thoseterrible new weapons that had never before been used: guns thatwould carry beyond sight, and aeroplanes that would do--What theywould do no man could foretell.
"I knew that we were between the two armies, and that theydrew together. I knew we were in danger, and that we could notstop there and rest!
"Though all these things were in my mind, they were in thebackground. They seemed to be affairs beyond our concern.Chiefly, I was thinking of my lady. An aching distress filled me.For the first time she had owned herself beaten and had fallena-weeping. Behind me I could hear her sobbing, but I would notturn round to her because I knew she had need of weeping, and hadheld 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, forI had no inkling of the thing that hung so near. Even now I cansee her as she sat there, her lovely hair upon her shoulder, canmark again the 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 my choice, and I will hold on to the end.'
"And then--
"Overhead in the sky flashed something and burst, and allabout us I heard the bullets making a noise like a handful of peassuddenly thrown. They chipped the stones about us, and whirledfragments from the bricks and 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--asthough she wanted to reach me--
"And she had been shot through the heart."
He stopped and stared at me. I felt all that foolishincapacity an Englishman feels on such occasions. I met his eyesfor a moment, and then stared out of the window. For a long spacewe kept silence. When at last I looked at him he was sitting backin his corner, his arms folded, and his teeth gnawing at hisknuckles.
He bit his nail suddenly, and stared at it.
"I carried her," he said, "towards the temples, in my arms--asthough it mattered. I don't know why. They seemed a sort ofsanctuary, you know, they had lasted so long, I suppose.
"She must have died almost instantly. Only--I talked to herall the way."
Silence again.
"I have seen those temples," I said abruptly, and indeed hehad brought those still, sunlit arcades of worn sandstone veryvividly before me.
"It was the brown one, the big brown one. I sat down on afallen pillar and held her in my arms . . . Silent after the firstbabble was over. And after a little while the lizards came out andran about again, as though nothing unusual was going on, as thoughnothing had changed . . . It was tremendously still there, the sunhigh and the shadows still; even the shadows of the weeds upon theentablature were still--in spite of the thudding and banging thatwent all about the sky.
"I seem to remember that the aeroplanes came up out of thesouth, and that the battle went away to the west. One aeroplanewas struck, and overset and fell. I remember that--though itdidn't interest me in the least. It didn't seem to signify. Itwas like a wounded gull, you know--flapping for a time in thewater. I could see it down the aisle of the temple--a black thingin the bright blue water.
"Three or four times shells burst about the beach, and thenthat ceased. Each time that happened all the lizards scuttled inand hid for a space. That was all the mischief done, except thatonce a stray bullet gashed the stone hard by--made just a freshbright surface.
"As the shadows grew longer, the stillness seemed greater.
"The curious thing," he remarked, with the manner of a man whomakes a trivial conversation, "is that I didn't _think_--atall. 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 dressingthat day. I know I found myself in my office, with my letters allslit open in front of me, and how I was struck by the absurdity ofbeing there, seeing that in reality I was sitting, stunned, in thatPaestum Temple with a dead woman in my arms. I read my letterslike a machine. I have forgotten what they were about."
He stopped, and there was a long silence.
Suddenly I perceived that we were running down the inclinefrom Chalk Farm to Euston. I started at this passing of time. Iturned on him with a brutal question, with the tone of "Now ornever."
"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 seemedto have suddenly awakened out of a great apathy, to have risen intoa sitting position, 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 clearlythat men were coming into the solitude and that that was a lastoutrage.
"I stood up and walked through the temple, and then there cameinto sight--first one man with a yellow face, dressed in a uniformof dirty white, trimmed with blue, and then several, climbing tothe crest of the old wall of the vanished city, and crouchingthere. They were little bright figures in the su
nlight, and therethey hung, weapon in hand, peering cautiously before them.
"And further away I saw others and then more at another pointin the wall. It was a long lax line of men in open order.
"Presently the man I had first seen stood up and shouted acommand, and his men came tumbling down the wall and into the highweeds towards the temple. He scrambled down with them and ledthem. He came facing towards me, and when he saw me he stopped.
"At first I had watched these men with a mere curiosity, butwhen I had seen they meant to come to the temple I was moved toforbid them. I shouted to the officer.
"'You must not come here,' I cried, '_I_ am here. I amhere with my dead.'
"He stared, and then shouted a question back to me in someunknown tongue.
"I repeated what I had said.
"He shouted again, and I folded my arms and stood still.Presently he spoke to his men and came forward. He carried a drawnsword.
"I signed to him to keep away, but he continued to advance.I told him again very patiently and clearly: 'You must not comehere. These are old temples and I am here with my dead.'
"Presently he was so close I could see his face clearly. Itwas a narrow face, with dull gray eyes, and a black moustache. Hehad a scar on his upper lip, and he was dirty and unshaven. Hekept shouting unintelligible things, questions, perhaps, at me.
"I know now that he was afraid of me, but at the time that didnot occur to me. As I tried to explain to him, he interrupted mein 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 asort 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. Thebrakes lifted their voices and the carriage jarred and jerked.This present world insisted upon itself, became clamourous. I sawthrough the steamy window huge electric fights glaring down fromtall masts upon a fog, saw rows of stationary empty carriagespassing by, and then a signal-box hoisting its constellation ofgreen and red into the murky London twilight, marched after them.I looked again at his drawn features.
"He ran me through the heart. It was with a sort ofastonishment--no fear, no pain--but just amazement, that I felt itpierce me, felt the sword drive 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 first rapidly, then slowly, and at last stopping with ajerk. Dim shapes of men passed to and fro without.
"Euston!" cried a voice.
"Do you mean--?"
"There was no pain, no sting or smart. Amazement and thendarkness sweeping over everything. The hot, brutal face before me,the face of the man who had killed me, seemed to recede. It sweptout of existence--"
"Euston!" clamoured the voices outside; "Euston!"
The carriage door opened admitting a flood of sound, and aporter stood regarding us. The sounds of doors slamming, and thehoof-clatter of cab-horses, and behind these things the featurelessremote roar of the London cobble-stones, came to my ears. Atruckload of lighted lamps blazed along the platform.
"A darkness, a flood of darkness that opened and spread andblotted out all 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! Greatbirds that fought and tore."