patients had died, not of the poison, norof suffocation, but of hunger: for the doctors, or someone, had made thelong room air-tight, double-boarding the windows, felting the doors, andthen locking them outside; they themselves may have perished beforetheir precautions for the imprisoned patients were complete: for I founda heap of maimed shapes, mere skeletons, crowded round the door within.I knew very well that they had not died of the cloud-poison, for thepestilence of the ward was unmixed with that odour of peach which didnot fail to have more or less embalming effects upon the bodies which itsaturated. I rushed stifling from that place; and thinking it a pity,and a danger, that such a horror should be, I at once set to work togather combustibles to burn the building to the ground.
It was while I sat in an arm-chair in the street the next afternoon,smoking, and watching the flames of this structure, that something wassuddenly born in me, something from the lowest Hell: and I smiled asmile that never yet man smiled. And I said: 'I will burn, I will burn:I will return to London....'
* * * * *
While I was on this Eastward journey, stopping for the night at thetown of Swindon, I had a dream: for I dreamed that a little brown baldold man, with a bent back, whose beard ran in one thin streamlet ofsilver from his chin to trail along the ground, said to me: 'You thinkthat you are alone on the earth, its sole Despot: well, have your fling:but as sure as God lives, as God lives, as God lives'--he repeated itsix times--'sooner or later, later or sooner, you will meet another....'
And I started from that frightful sleep with the brow of a corpse, wetwith sweat....
* * * * *
I returned to London on the 29th of March, arriving within a hundredyards of the Northern Station one windy dark evening about eight, whereI alighted, and walked to Euston Road, then eastward along it, till Icame to a shop which I knew to be a jeweller's, though it was too darkto see any painted words. The door, to my annoyance, was locked, likenearly all the shop-doors in London: I therefore went looking near theground, and into a cart, for something heavy, very soon saw a labourer'sponderous boots, cut one from the shrivelled foot, and set to beat atthe glass till it came raining; then knocked away the bottom splinters,and entered.
No horrors now at that clatter of broken glass; no sick qualms; mypulse steady; my head high; my step royal; my eye cold and calm.
* * * * *
Eight months previously, I had left London a poor burdened, coweringwight. I could scream with laughter now at that folly! But it did notlast long. I returned to it--the Sultan.
* * * * *
No private palace being near, I was going to that great hotel inBloomsbury: but though I knew that numbers of candle-sticks would bethere, I was not sure that I should find sufficient: for I had acquiredthe habit within the past few months of sleeping with at least sixtylighted about me, and their form, pattern, style, age, and material wasof no small importance I selected ten from the broken shop, eight goldand silver, and two of old ecclesiastical brass, and having made abundle, went out, found a bicycle at the Metropolitan Station, pumpedit, tied my bundle to the handle-bar, and set off riding. But since Iwas too lazy to walk, I should certainly have procured some other meansof travelling, for I had not gone ten jolted and creaking yards, whensomething went snap--it was a front fork--and I found myself half onthe ground, and half across the bare knees of a Highland soldier. I flewwith a shower of kicks upon the foolish thing: but that booted nothing;and this was my last attempt in that way in London, the streets being inan unsuitable condition.
All that dismal night it blew great guns: and during nearly three weeks,till London was no more, there was a storm, with hardly a lull, thatseemed to behowl her destruction.
* * * * *
I slept in a room on the second-floor of a Bloomsbury hotel that night;and waking the next day at ten, ate with accursed shiverings in the coldbanqueting-room; went out then, and under drear low skies walked a longway to the West district, accompanied all the time by a sound offlapping flags--fluttering robes and rags--and grotesquely grim glimpsesof decay. It was pretty cold, and though I was warmly clad, the base_bizarrerie_ of the European clothes which I wore had become a perpetualoffence and mockery in my eyes: at the first moment, therefore, I setout whither I knew that I should find such clothes as a man might wear:to the Turkish Embassy in Bryanston Square.
I found it open, and all the house, like most other houses, almostcarpeted with dead forms. I had been acquainted with Redouza Pasha, andcast an eye about for him amid that invasion of veiled hanums,fierce-looking Caucasians in skins of beasts, a Sheik-ul-Islam in greencloak, a khalifa, three emirs in cashmere turbans, two tziganes, theirgaudy brown mortality more glaringly abominable than even the Western's.I could recognise no Redouza here: but the stair was fairly clear, and Isoon came to one of those boudoirs which sweetly recall the deep-buriedinner seclusion and dim sanctity of the Eastern home: a door encrustedwith mother-of-pearl, sculptured ceiling, candles clustered in tulipsand roses of opal, a brazen brasero, and, all in disarray, the silkenchemise, the long winter-cafetan doubled with furs, costly cabinets,sachets of aromas, babooshes, stuffs of silk. When, after two hours, Iwent from the house, I was bathed, anointed, combed, scented, and robed.
* * * * *
I have said to myself: 'I will ravage and riot in my Kingdoms. I willrage like the Caesars, and be a withering blight where I pass likeSennacherib, and wallow in soft delights like Sardanapalus. I will buildme a palace, vast as a city, in which to strut and parade my Monarchybefore the Heavens, with stones of pure molten gold, and roughfrontispiece of diamond, and cupola of amethyst, and pillars of pearl.For there were many men to the eye: but there was One only, really: andI was he. And always I knew it:--some faintest secret whisper whichwhispered me: "_You_ are the Arch-one, the _motif_ of the world, Adam,and the rest of men not much." And they are gone--all! all!--as no doubtthey deserved: and I, as was meet, remain. And there are wines, andopiums, and haschish; and there are oils, and spices, fruits andbivalves, and soft-breathing Cyclades, and scarlet luxurious Orients. Iwill be restless and turbulent in my territories: and again, I will belanguishing and fond. I will say to my soul: "Be Full."'
* * * * *
I watch my mind, as in the old days I would watch a new precipitate in atest-tube, to see into what sediment it would settle.
I am very averse to trouble of any sort, so that the necessity for thesimplest manual operations will rouse me to indignation: but if a thingwill contribute largely to my ever-growing voluptuousness, I willundergo a considerable amount of labour to accomplish it, thoughwithout steady effort, being liable to side-winds and whims, andpurposeless relaxations.
In the country I became very irritable at the need which confronted meof occasionally cooking some green vegetable--the only item of foodwhich it was necessary to take some trouble over: for all meats, andmany fish, some quite delicious, I find already prepared in forms whichwill remain good probably a century after my death, should I ever die.In Gloucester, however, I found peas, asparagus, olives, and othergreens, already prepared to be eaten without base cares: and these, Inow see, exist everywhere in stores so vast comparatively to the needsof a single man, that they may be called infinite. Everything, in fact,is infinite compared with my needs. I take my meals, therefore, withoutmore trouble than a man who had to carve his joint, or chicken: thougheven that little I sometimes find most irksome. There remains thedetestable degradation of lighting fires for warmth, which I haveoccasionally to do: for the fire at the hotel invariably goes out whileI sleep. But that is an inconvenience of this vile northern island only,to which I shall soon bid eternal glad farewells.
During the afternoon of my second day in London, I sought out a strongpetrol motor in Holborn, overhauled and oiled it a little, and set offover Blackfriars Bridge, making for Woolwich through th
at other moreputrid London on the south river-side. One after the other, I connected,as I came upon them, two drays, a cab, and a private carriage, to mymotor in line behind, having cut away the withered horses, and using thereins, chain-harness, &c., as impromptu couplings. And with this noveltrain, I rumbled eastward.
Half-way I happened to look at my old silver chronometer of_Boreal_-days, which I have kept carefully wound--and how I can be stillthrown into these sudden frantic agitations by a nothing, a nothing, mygood God! I do not know. This time it was only the simple fact that thehands chanced to point to 3.10 P.M., the precise moment at which all theclocks of London had stopped--for each town has its thousand weirdfore-fingers, pointing, pointing still, to the moment of doom. In Londonit was 3.10 on a Sunday afternoon. I first noticed it going up the riveron the face of the 'Big Ben' of the Parliament-house, and I now findthat they all, all, have this 3.10 mania, time-keepers still, butkeepers of the end of