The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

  CHAPTER XV. THE ACCUSER

  AS Syme strode along the corridor he saw the Secretary standing at thetop of a great flight of stairs. The man had never looked so noble. Hewas draped in a long robe of starless black, down the centre of whichfell a band or broad stripe of pure white, like a single shaft of light.The whole looked like some very severe ecclesiastical vestment. Therewas no need for Syme to search his memory or the Bible in order toremember that the first day of creation marked the mere creation oflight out of darkness. The vestment itself would alone have suggestedthe symbol; and Syme felt also how perfectly this pattern of pure whiteand black expressed the soul of the pale and austere Secretary, with hisinhuman veracity and his cold frenzy, which made him so easily makewar on the anarchists, and yet so easily pass for one of them. Syme wasscarcely surprised to notice that, amid all the ease and hospitality oftheir new surroundings, this man's eyes were still stern. No smellof ale or orchards could make the Secretary cease to ask a reasonablequestion.

  If Syme had been able to see himself, he would have realised that he,too, seemed to be for the first time himself and no one else. For if theSecretary stood for that philosopher who loves the original and formlesslight, Syme was a type of the poet who seeks always to make the lightin special shapes, to split it up into sun and star. The philosopher maysometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the finite. For himthe great moment is not the creation of light, but the creation of thesun and moon.

  As they descended the broad stairs together they overtook Ratcliffe,who was clad in spring green like a huntsman, and the pattern upon whosegarment was a green tangle of trees. For he stood for that third dayon which the earth and green things were made, and his square, sensibleface, with its not unfriendly cynicism, seemed appropriate enough to it.

  They were led out of another broad and low gateway into a very largeold English garden, full of torches and bonfires, by the broken lightof which a vast carnival of people were dancing in motley dress. Symeseemed to see every shape in Nature imitated in some crazy costume.There was a man dressed as a windmill with enormous sails, a man dressedas an elephant, a man dressed as a balloon; the two last, together,seemed to keep the thread of their farcical adventures. Syme even saw,with a queer thrill, one dancer dressed like an enormous hornbill, witha beak twice as big as himself--the queer bird which had fixed itself onhis fancy like a living question while he was rushing down the long roadat the Zoological Gardens. There were a thousand other such objects,however. There was a dancing lamp-post, a dancing apple tree, a dancingship. One would have thought that the untamable tune of some madmusician had set all the common objects of field and street dancing aneternal jig. And long afterwards, when Syme was middle-aged and at rest,he could never see one of those particular objects--a lamppost, oran apple tree, or a windmill--without thinking that it was a strayedreveller from that revel of masquerade.

  On one side of this lawn, alive with dancers, was a sort of green bank,like the terrace in such old-fashioned gardens.

  Along this, in a kind of crescent, stood seven great chairs, the thronesof the seven days. Gogol and Dr. Bull were already in their seats;the Professor was just mounting to his. Gogol, or Tuesday, had hissimplicity well symbolised by a dress designed upon the division of thewaters, a dress that separated upon his forehead and fell to his feet,grey and silver, like a sheet of rain. The Professor, whose day was thaton which the birds and fishes--the ruder forms of life--were created,had a dress of dim purple, over which sprawled goggle-eyed fishes andoutrageous tropical birds, the union in him of unfathomable fancy andof doubt. Dr. Bull, the last day of Creation, wore a coat covered withheraldic animals in red and gold, and on his crest a man rampant. He layback in his chair with a broad smile, the picture of an optimist in hiselement.

  One by one the wanderers ascended the bank and sat in their strangeseats. As each of them sat down a roar of enthusiasm rose from thecarnival, such as that with which crowds receive kings. Cups wereclashed and torches shaken, and feathered hats flung in the air. Themen for whom these thrones were reserved were men crowned with someextraordinary laurels. But the central chair was empty.

  Syme was on the left hand of it and the Secretary on the right. TheSecretary looked across the empty throne at Syme, and said, compressinghis lips--

  "We do not know yet that he is not dead in a field."

  Almost as Syme heard the words, he saw on the sea of human faces infront of him a frightful and beautiful alteration, as if heaven hadopened behind his head. But Sunday had only passed silently along thefront like a shadow, and had sat in the central seat. He was drapedplainly, in a pure and terrible white, and his hair was like a silverflame on his forehead.

  For a long time--it seemed for hours--that huge masquerade of mankindswayed and stamped in front of them to marching and exultant music.Every couple dancing seemed a separate romance; it might be a fairydancing with a pillar-box, or a peasant girl dancing with the moon; butin each case it was, somehow, as absurd as Alice in Wonderland, yet asgrave and kind as a love story. At last, however, the thick crowd beganto thin itself. Couples strolled away into the garden-walks, or began todrift towards that end of the building where stood smoking, in huge potslike fish-kettles, some hot and scented mixtures of old ale or wine.Above all these, upon a sort of black framework on the roof of thehouse, roared in its iron basket a gigantic bonfire, which lit up theland for miles. It flung the homely effect of firelight over the faceof vast forests of grey or brown, and it seemed to fill with warmth eventhe emptiness of upper night. Yet this also, after a time, was allowedto grow fainter; the dim groups gathered more and more round the greatcauldrons, or passed, laughing and clattering, into the inner passagesof that ancient house. Soon there were only some ten loiterers in thegarden; soon only four. Finally the last stray merry-maker ran into thehouse whooping to his companions. The fire faded, and the slow, strongstars came out. And the seven strange men were left alone, like sevenstone statues on their chairs of stone. Not one of them had spoken aword.

  They seemed in no haste to do so, but heard in silence the hum ofinsects and the distant song of one bird. Then Sunday spoke, but sodreamily that he might have been continuing a conversation rather thanbeginning one.

  "We will eat and drink later," he said. "Let us remain together alittle, we who have loved each other so sadly, and have fought so long.I seem to remember only centuries of heroic war, in which you werealways heroes--epic on epic, iliad on iliad, and you always brothersin arms. Whether it was but recently (for time is nothing), or at thebeginning of the world, I sent you out to war. I sat in the darkness,where there is not any created thing, and to you I was only a voicecommanding valour and an unnatural virtue. You heard the voice in thedark, and you never heard it again. The sun in heaven denied it, theearth and sky denied it, all human wisdom denied it. And when I met youin the daylight I denied it myself."

  Syme stirred sharply in his seat, but otherwise there was silence, andthe incomprehensible went on.

  "But you were men. You did not forget your secret honour, though thewhole cosmos turned an engine of torture to tear it out of you. I knewhow near you were to hell. I know how you, Thursday, crossed swords withKing Satan, and how you, Wednesday, named me in the hour without hope."

  There was complete silence in the starlit garden, and then theblack-browed Secretary, implacable, turned in his chair towards Sunday,and said in a harsh voice--

  "Who and what are you?"

  "I am the Sabbath," said the other without moving. "I am the peace ofGod."

  The Secretary started up, and stood crushing his costly robe in hishand.

  "I know what you mean," he cried, "and it is exactly that that I cannotforgive you. I know you are contentment, optimism, what do they callthe thing, an ultimate reconciliation. Well, I am not reconciled. If youwere the man in the dark room, why were you also Sunday, an offense tothe sunlight? If you were from the first our father and our friend, whywere you also our greatest enemy? We wept, we fled in terror; t
he ironentered into our souls--and you are the peace of God! Oh, I can forgiveGod His anger, though it destroyed nations; but I cannot forgive Him Hispeace."

  Sunday answered not a word, but very slowly he turned his face of stoneupon Syme as if asking a question.

  "No," said Syme, "I do not feel fierce like that. I am grateful to you,not only for wine and hospitality here, but for many a fine scamper andfree fight. But I should like to know. My soul and heart are as happyand quiet here as this old garden, but my reason is still crying out. Ishould like to know."

  Sunday looked at Ratcliffe, whose clear voice said--

  "It seems so silly that you should have been on both sides and foughtyourself."

  Bull said--

  "I understand nothing, but I am happy. In fact, I am going to sleep."

  "I am not happy," said the Professor with his head in his hands,"because I do not understand. You let me stray a little too near tohell."

  And then Gogol said, with the absolute simplicity of a child--

  "I wish I knew why I was hurt so much."

  Still Sunday said nothing, but only sat with his mighty chin upon hishand, and gazed at the distance. Then at last he said--

  "I have heard your complaints in order. And here, I think, comes anotherto complain, and we will hear him also."

  The falling fire in the great cresset threw a last long gleam, like abar of burning gold, across the dim grass. Against this fiery band wasoutlined in utter black the advancing legs of a black-clad figure. Heseemed to have a fine close suit with knee-breeches such as that whichwas worn by the servants of the house, only that it was not blue, but ofthis absolute sable. He had, like the servants, a kind of sword by hisside. It was only when he had come quite close to the crescent ofthe seven and flung up his face to look at them, that Syme saw, withthunder-struck clearness, that the face was the broad, almost ape-likeface of his old friend Gregory, with its rank red hair and its insultingsmile.

  "Gregory!" gasped Syme, half-rising from his seat. "Why, this is thereal anarchist!"

  "Yes," said Gregory, with a great and dangerous restraint, "I am thereal anarchist."

  "'Now there was a day,'" murmured Bull, who seemed really to have fallenasleep, "'when the sons of God came to present themselves before theLord, and Satan came also among them.'"

  "You are right," said Gregory, and gazed all round. "I am a destroyer. Iwould destroy the world if I could."

  A sense of a pathos far under the earth stirred up in Syme, and he spokebrokenly and without sequence.

  "Oh, most unhappy man," he cried, "try to be happy! You have red hairlike your sister."

  "My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world," said Gregory."I thought I hated everything more than common men can hate anything;but I find that I do not hate everything so much as I hate you!"

  "I never hated you," said Syme very sadly.

  Then out of this unintelligible creature the last thunders broke.

  "You!" he cried. "You never hated because you never lived. I know whatyou are all of you, from first to last--you are the people in power! Youare the police--the great fat, smiling men in blue and buttons! You arethe Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soulalive that does not long to break you, only because you have never beenbroken? We in revolt talk all kind of nonsense doubtless about thiscrime or that crime of the Government. It is all folly! The only crimeof the Government is that it governs. The unpardonable sin of thesupreme power is that it is supreme. I do not curse you for being cruel.I do not curse you (though I might) for being kind. I curse you forbeing safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and have never come downfrom them. You are the seven angels of heaven, and you have had notroubles. Oh, I could forgive you everything, you that rule all mankind,if I could feel for once that you had suffered for one hour a real agonysuch as I--"

  Syme sprang to his feet, shaking from head to foot.

  "I see everything," he cried, "everything that there is. Why does eachthing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each smallthing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does afly have to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fightthe whole universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in thedreadful Council of the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may havethe glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting fororder may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the reallie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so thatby tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, 'Youlie!' No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to thisaccuser, 'We also have suffered.'

  "It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been brokenupon the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended fromthese thrones. We have descended into hell. We were complaining ofunforgettable miseries even at the very moment when this man enteredinsolently to accuse us of happiness. I repel the slander; we have notbeen happy. I can answer for every one of the great guards of Law whomhe has accused. At least--"

  He had turned his eyes so as to see suddenly the great face of Sunday,which wore a strange smile.

  "Have you," he cried in a dreadful voice, "have you ever suffered?"

  As he gazed, the great face grew to an awful size, grew larger than thecolossal mask of Memnon, which had made him scream as a child. It grewlarger and larger, filling the whole sky; then everything went black.Only in the blackness before it entirely destroyed his brain he seemedto hear a distant voice saying a commonplace text that he had heardsomewhere, "Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?"

  * * *

  When men in books awake from a vision, they commonly find themselves insome place in which they might have fallen asleep; they yawn in a chair,or lift themselves with bruised limbs from a field. Syme's experiencewas something much more psychologically strange if there was indeedanything unreal, in the earthly sense, about the things he had gonethrough. For while he could always remember afterwards that he hadswooned before the face of Sunday, he could not remember having evercome to at all. He could only remember that gradually and naturally heknew that he was and had been walking along a country lane with an easyand conversational companion. That companion had been a part of hisrecent drama; it was the red-haired poet Gregory. They were walkinglike old friends, and were in the middle of a conversation about sometriviality. But Syme could only feel an unnatural buoyancy in his bodyand a crystal simplicity in his mind that seemed to be superior toeverything that he said or did. He felt he was in possession of someimpossible good news, which made every other thing a triviality, but anadorable triviality.

  Dawn was breaking over everything in colours at once clear and timid; asif Nature made a first attempt at yellow and a first attempt at rose.A breeze blew so clean and sweet, that one could not think that it blewfrom the sky; it blew rather through some hole in the sky. Syme felt asimple surprise when he saw rising all round him on both sides of theroad the red, irregular buildings of Saffron Park. He had no idea thathe had walked so near London. He walked by instinct along one whiteroad, on which early birds hopped and sang, and found himself outsidea fenced garden. There he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl withthe gold-red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast, with the greatunconscious gravity of a girl.