and street dancing an eternal jig. And long afterwards, when Syme was
middle-aged and at rest, he could never see one of those particular
objects--a lamppost, or an apple tree, or a windmill--without thinking that
it was a strayed reveller 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
thrones of the seven days. Gogol and Dr. Bull were already in their seats;
the Professor was just mounting to his. Gogol, or Tuesday, had his
simplicity well symbolised by a dress designed upon the division of the
waters, 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 that on which
the birds and fishes-- the ruder forms of life--were created, had a dress of
dim purple, over which sprawled goggle-eyed fishes and outrageous tropical
birds, the union in him of unfathomable fancy and of doubt. Dr. Bull, the
last day of Creation, wore a coat covered with heraldic animals in red and
gold, and on his crest a man rampant. He lay back in his chair with a broad
smile, the picture of an optimist in his element.
One by one the wanderers ascended the bank and sat in their strange
seats. As each of them sat down a roar of enthusiasm rose from the carnival,
such as that with which crowds receive kings. Cups were clashed and torches
shaken, and feathered hats flung in the air. The men for whom these thrones
were reserved were men crowned with some extraordinary laurels. But the
central chair was empty.
Syme was on the left hand of it and the Secretary on the right. The
Secretary looked across the empty throne at Syme, and said, compressing his
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 in
front of him a frightful and beautiful alteration, as if heaven had opened
behind his head. But Sunday had only passed silently along the front like a
shadow, and had sat in the central seat. He was draped plainly, in a pure
and terrible white, and his hair was like a silver flame on his forehead.
For a long time--it seemed for hours--that huge masquerade of mankind
swayed and stamped in front of them to marching and exultant music. Every
couple dancing seemed a separate romance; it might be a fairy dancing with a
pillar-box, or a peasant girl dancing with the moon; but in each case it
was, somehow, as absurd as Alice in Wonderland, yet as grave and kind as a
love story. At last, however, the thick crowd began to thin itself. Couples
strolled away into the garden-walks, or began to drift towards that end of
the building where stood smoking, in huge pots like 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 the house, roared in its iron basket a
gigantic bonfire, which lit up the land for miles. It flung the homely
effect of firelight over the face of vast forests of grey or brown, and it
seemed to fill with warmth even the emptiness of upper night. Yet this also,
after a time, was allowed to grow fainter; the dim groups gathered more and
more round the great cauldrons, or passed, laughing and clattering, into the
inner passages of that ancient house. Soon there were only some ten
loiterers in the garden; soon only four. Finally the last stray merry-maker
ran into the house whooping to his companions. The fire faded, and the slow,
strong stars came out. And the seven strange men were left alone, like seven
stone statues on their chairs of stone. Not one of them had spoken a word.
They seemed in no haste to do so, but heard in silence the hum of
insects and the distant song of one bird. Then Sunday spoke, but so dreamily
that he might have been continuing a conversation rather than beginning one.
"We will eat and drink later," he said. "Let us remain together a
little, 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 were always
heroes--epic on epic, iliad on iliad, and you always brothers in arms.
Whether it was but recently (for time is nothing), or at the beginning 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 voice commanding valour and an
unnatural virtue. You heard the voice in the dark, and you never heard it
again. The sun in heaven denied it, the earth and sky denied it, all human
wisdom denied it. And when I met you in the daylight I denied it myself."
Syme stirred sharply in his seat, but otherwise there was silence, and
the incomprehensible went on.
"But you were men. You did not forget your secret honour, though the
whole cosmos turned an engine of torture to tear it out of you. I knew how
near you were to hell. I know how you, Thursday, crossed swords with King
Satan, and how you, Wednesday, named me in the hour without hope."
There was complete silence in the starlit garden, and then the
black-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 of
God."
The Secretary started up, and stood crushing his costly robe in his
hand.
"I know what you mean," he cried, "and it is exactly that that I cannot
forgive you. I know you are contentment, optimism, what do they call the
thing, an ultimate reconciliation. Well, I am not reconciled. If you were
the man in the dark room, why were you also Sunday, an offense to the
sunlight? If you were from the first our father and our friend, why were you
also our greatest enemy? We wept, we fled in terror; the iron entered into
our souls-- and you are the peace of God! Oh, I can forgive God His anger,
though it destroyed nations; but I cannot forgive Him His peace."
Sunday answered not a word, but very slowly he turned his face of stone
upon 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 and free
fight. But I should like to know. My soul and heart are as happy and quiet
here as this old garden, but my reason is still crying out. I should like to
know."
Sunday looked at Ratcliffe, whose clear voice said--
"It seems so silly that you should have been on both sides and fought
yourself."
Bull said--
"l 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 to hell."
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 his
hand, and gazed at the distance. Then at last he said--
"I have heard your complaints in order. And here, I think, comes
another to complain, and we will hear him also."
The falling fire in the great cresset threw a last long gleam, like a
bar of burning gold, across the dim grass. Against this fiery band was
outlined in utter black the advancing legs of a black-clad figure. He seemed
to have a fine close suit with knee-breeches such as that which was worn by
the servants of the house, only that it was not blue, but of this absolute
sable. He had, like the servants, a kind of word by his side. It was only
when he had come quite close to the crescent of the seven and flung up his
face to look at them, that Syme saw, with thunder-struck clearness, that the
face was the broad, almost ape-like face of his old friend Gregory, with its
rank red hair and its insulting smile.
"Gregory!" gasped Syme, half-rising from his seat. "Why, this is the
real anarchist!"
"Yes," said Gregory, with a great and dangerous restraint, "I am the
real anarchist."
" 'Now there was a day,' " murmured Bull, who seemed really to have
fallen asleep, " 'when the sons of God came to present themselves before the
Lord, and Satan came also among them.' "
"You are right," said Gregory, and gazed all round. "I am a destroyer.
I would destroy the world if I could."
A sense of a pathos far under the earth stirred up in Syme, and he
spoke brokenly and without sequence.
"Oh, most unhappy man," he cried, "try to be happy! You have red hair
like 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 what
you are all of you, from first to last-- you are the people in power! You
are the police--the great fat, smiling men in blue and buttons! You are the
Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive that
does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken? We in
revolt talk all kind of nonsense doubtless about this crime or that crime of
the Government. It is all folly! The only crime of the Government is that it
governs. The unpardonable sin of the supreme 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 for being safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and
have never come down from them. You are the seven angels of heaven, and you
have had no troubles. 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
agony such as I--"
Syme sprang to his feet, shaking from head to foot.
"I see everything," he cried, "everything that there is. Why does each
thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing
in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a fly have to
fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole
universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council
of the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and
isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as
brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be
flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we
may earn the right to say to this man, 'You lie!' No agonies can be too
great to buy the right to say to this accuser, 'We also have suffered.'
"It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken
upon the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended from these
thrones. We have descended into hell. We were complaining of unforgettable
miseries even at the very moment when this man entered insolently to accuse
us of happiness. I repel the slander; we have not been happy. I can answer
for every one of the great guards of Law whom he 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 the
colossal mask of Memnon, which had made him scream as a child. It grew
larger and larger, filling the whole sky; then everything went black. Only
in the blackness before it entirely destroyed his brain he seemed to hear a
distant voice saying a commonplace text that he had heard somewhere, "Can ye
drink of the cup that I drink of?"
When men in books awake from a vision, they commonly find themselves in
some place in which they might have fallen asleep; they yawn in a chair, or
lift themselves with bruised limbs from a field. Syme's experience was
something much more psychologically strange if there was indeed anything
unreal, in the earthly sense, about the things he had gone through. For
while he could always remember afterwards that he had swooned before the
face of Sunday, he could not remember having ever come to at all. He could
only remember that gradually and naturally he knew that he was and had been
walking along a country lane with an easy and conversational companion. That
companion had been a part of his recent drama; it was the red-haired poet
Gregory. They were walking like old friends, and were in the middle of a
conversation about some triviality. But Syme could only feel an unnatural
buoyancy in his body and a crystal simplicity in his mind that seemed to be
superior to everything that he said or did. He felt he was in possession of
some impossible good news, which made every other thing a triviality, but an
adorable triviality.
Dawn was breaking over everything in colours at once clear and timid;
as if 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 blew from
the sky; it blew rather through some hole in the sky. Syme felt a simple
surprise when he saw rising all round him on both sides of the road the red,
irregular buildings of Saffron Park. He had no idea that he had walked so
near London. He walked by instinct along one white road, on which early
birds hopped and sang, and found himself outside a fenced garden. There he
saw the sister of Gregory, the girl with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac
before breakfast, with the great unconscious gravity of a girl.
middle-aged and at rest, he could never see one of those particular
objects--a lamppost, or an apple tree, or a windmill--without thinking that
it was a strayed reveller 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
thrones of the seven days. Gogol and Dr. Bull were already in their seats;
the Professor was just mounting to his. Gogol, or Tuesday, had his
simplicity well symbolised by a dress designed upon the division of the
waters, 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 that on which
the birds and fishes-- the ruder forms of life--were created, had a dress of
dim purple, over which sprawled goggle-eyed fishes and outrageous tropical
birds, the union in him of unfathomable fancy and of doubt. Dr. Bull, the
last day of Creation, wore a coat covered with heraldic animals in red and
gold, and on his crest a man rampant. He lay back in his chair with a broad
smile, the picture of an optimist in his element.
One by one the wanderers ascended the bank and sat in their strange
seats. As each of them sat down a roar of enthusiasm rose from the carnival,
such as that with which crowds receive kings. Cups were clashed and torches
shaken, and feathered hats flung in the air. The men for whom these thrones
were reserved were men crowned with some extraordinary laurels. But the
central chair was empty.
Syme was on the left hand of it and the Secretary on the right. The
Secretary looked across the empty throne at Syme, and said, compressing his
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 in
front of him a frightful and beautiful alteration, as if heaven had opened
behind his head. But Sunday had only passed silently along the front like a
shadow, and had sat in the central seat. He was draped plainly, in a pure
and terrible white, and his hair was like a silver flame on his forehead.
For a long time--it seemed for hours--that huge masquerade of mankind
swayed and stamped in front of them to marching and exultant music. Every
couple dancing seemed a separate romance; it might be a fairy dancing with a
pillar-box, or a peasant girl dancing with the moon; but in each case it
was, somehow, as absurd as Alice in Wonderland, yet as grave and kind as a
love story. At last, however, the thick crowd began to thin itself. Couples
strolled away into the garden-walks, or began to drift towards that end of
the building where stood smoking, in huge pots like 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 the house, roared in its iron basket a
gigantic bonfire, which lit up the land for miles. It flung the homely
effect of firelight over the face of vast forests of grey or brown, and it
seemed to fill with warmth even the emptiness of upper night. Yet this also,
after a time, was allowed to grow fainter; the dim groups gathered more and
more round the great cauldrons, or passed, laughing and clattering, into the
inner passages of that ancient house. Soon there were only some ten
loiterers in the garden; soon only four. Finally the last stray merry-maker
ran into the house whooping to his companions. The fire faded, and the slow,
strong stars came out. And the seven strange men were left alone, like seven
stone statues on their chairs of stone. Not one of them had spoken a word.
They seemed in no haste to do so, but heard in silence the hum of
insects and the distant song of one bird. Then Sunday spoke, but so dreamily
that he might have been continuing a conversation rather than beginning one.
"We will eat and drink later," he said. "Let us remain together a
little, 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 were always
heroes--epic on epic, iliad on iliad, and you always brothers in arms.
Whether it was but recently (for time is nothing), or at the beginning 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 voice commanding valour and an
unnatural virtue. You heard the voice in the dark, and you never heard it
again. The sun in heaven denied it, the earth and sky denied it, all human
wisdom denied it. And when I met you in the daylight I denied it myself."
Syme stirred sharply in his seat, but otherwise there was silence, and
the incomprehensible went on.
"But you were men. You did not forget your secret honour, though the
whole cosmos turned an engine of torture to tear it out of you. I knew how
near you were to hell. I know how you, Thursday, crossed swords with King
Satan, and how you, Wednesday, named me in the hour without hope."
There was complete silence in the starlit garden, and then the
black-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 of
God."
The Secretary started up, and stood crushing his costly robe in his
hand.
"I know what you mean," he cried, "and it is exactly that that I cannot
forgive you. I know you are contentment, optimism, what do they call the
thing, an ultimate reconciliation. Well, I am not reconciled. If you were
the man in the dark room, why were you also Sunday, an offense to the
sunlight? If you were from the first our father and our friend, why were you
also our greatest enemy? We wept, we fled in terror; the iron entered into
our souls-- and you are the peace of God! Oh, I can forgive God His anger,
though it destroyed nations; but I cannot forgive Him His peace."
Sunday answered not a word, but very slowly he turned his face of stone
upon 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 and free
fight. But I should like to know. My soul and heart are as happy and quiet
here as this old garden, but my reason is still crying out. I should like to
know."
Sunday looked at Ratcliffe, whose clear voice said--
"It seems so silly that you should have been on both sides and fought
yourself."
Bull said--
"l 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 to hell."
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 his
hand, and gazed at the distance. Then at last he said--
"I have heard your complaints in order. And here, I think, comes
another to complain, and we will hear him also."
The falling fire in the great cresset threw a last long gleam, like a
bar of burning gold, across the dim grass. Against this fiery band was
outlined in utter black the advancing legs of a black-clad figure. He seemed
to have a fine close suit with knee-breeches such as that which was worn by
the servants of the house, only that it was not blue, but of this absolute
sable. He had, like the servants, a kind of word by his side. It was only
when he had come quite close to the crescent of the seven and flung up his
face to look at them, that Syme saw, with thunder-struck clearness, that the
face was the broad, almost ape-like face of his old friend Gregory, with its
rank red hair and its insulting smile.
"Gregory!" gasped Syme, half-rising from his seat. "Why, this is the
real anarchist!"
"Yes," said Gregory, with a great and dangerous restraint, "I am the
real anarchist."
" 'Now there was a day,' " murmured Bull, who seemed really to have
fallen asleep, " 'when the sons of God came to present themselves before the
Lord, and Satan came also among them.' "
"You are right," said Gregory, and gazed all round. "I am a destroyer.
I would destroy the world if I could."
A sense of a pathos far under the earth stirred up in Syme, and he
spoke brokenly and without sequence.
"Oh, most unhappy man," he cried, "try to be happy! You have red hair
like 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 what
you are all of you, from first to last-- you are the people in power! You
are the police--the great fat, smiling men in blue and buttons! You are the
Law, and you have never been broken. But is there a free soul alive that
does not long to break you, only because you have never been broken? We in
revolt talk all kind of nonsense doubtless about this crime or that crime of
the Government. It is all folly! The only crime of the Government is that it
governs. The unpardonable sin of the supreme 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 for being safe! You sit in your chairs of stone, and
have never come down from them. You are the seven angels of heaven, and you
have had no troubles. 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
agony such as I--"
Syme sprang to his feet, shaking from head to foot.
"I see everything," he cried, "everything that there is. Why does each
thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing
in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a fly have to
fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole
universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council
of the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and
isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as
brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be
flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we
may earn the right to say to this man, 'You lie!' No agonies can be too
great to buy the right to say to this accuser, 'We also have suffered.'
"It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken
upon the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended from these
thrones. We have descended into hell. We were complaining of unforgettable
miseries even at the very moment when this man entered insolently to accuse
us of happiness. I repel the slander; we have not been happy. I can answer
for every one of the great guards of Law whom he 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 the
colossal mask of Memnon, which had made him scream as a child. It grew
larger and larger, filling the whole sky; then everything went black. Only
in the blackness before it entirely destroyed his brain he seemed to hear a
distant voice saying a commonplace text that he had heard somewhere, "Can ye
drink of the cup that I drink of?"
When men in books awake from a vision, they commonly find themselves in
some place in which they might have fallen asleep; they yawn in a chair, or
lift themselves with bruised limbs from a field. Syme's experience was
something much more psychologically strange if there was indeed anything
unreal, in the earthly sense, about the things he had gone through. For
while he could always remember afterwards that he had swooned before the
face of Sunday, he could not remember having ever come to at all. He could
only remember that gradually and naturally he knew that he was and had been
walking along a country lane with an easy and conversational companion. That
companion had been a part of his recent drama; it was the red-haired poet
Gregory. They were walking like old friends, and were in the middle of a
conversation about some triviality. But Syme could only feel an unnatural
buoyancy in his body and a crystal simplicity in his mind that seemed to be
superior to everything that he said or did. He felt he was in possession of
some impossible good news, which made every other thing a triviality, but an
adorable triviality.
Dawn was breaking over everything in colours at once clear and timid;
as if 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 blew from
the sky; it blew rather through some hole in the sky. Syme felt a simple
surprise when he saw rising all round him on both sides of the road the red,
irregular buildings of Saffron Park. He had no idea that he had walked so
near London. He walked by instinct along one white road, on which early
birds hopped and sang, and found himself outside a fenced garden. There he
saw the sister of Gregory, the girl with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac
before breakfast, with the great unconscious gravity of a girl.