CHAPTER XV
THE ACCUSER
AS Syme strode along the corridor he saw the Secretary standing at
the top of a great flight of stairs. The man had never looked so
noble. He was draped in a long robe of starless black, down the
centre of which fell a band or broad stripe of pure white, like a
single shaft of light. The whole looked like some very severe
ecclesiastical vestment. There was no need for Syme to search his
memory or the Bible in order to remember that the first day of
creation marked the mere creation of light out of darkness. The
vestment itself would alone have suggested the symbol; and Syme
felt also how perfectly this pattern of pure white and black
expressed the soul of the pale and austere Secretary, with his
inhuman veracity and his cold frenzy, which made him so easily
make war on the anarchists, and yet so easily pass for one of
them. Syme was scarcely surprised to notice that, amid all the
ease and hospitality of their new surroundings, this man's eyes
were still stern. No smell of ale or orchards could make the
Secretary cease to ask a reasonable question.
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 the Secretary stood for that philosopher who loves the
original and formless light, Syme was a type of the poet who seeks
always to make the light in special shapes, to split it up into
sun and star. The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; the
poet always loves the finite. For him the great moment is not the
creation of light, but the creation of the sun 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 whose garment was a green tangle of trees. For he
stood for that third day on which the earth and green things were
made, and his square, sensible face, with its not unfriendly
cynicism, seemed appropriate enough to it.
They were led out of another broad and low gateway into a very
large old English garden, full of torches and bonfires, by the
broken light of which a vast carnival of people were dancing in
motley dress. Syme seemed to see every shape in Nature imitated
in some crazy costume. There was a man dressed as a windmill with
enormous sails, a man dressed as 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, with a beak twice
as big as himself--the queer bird which had fixed itself on his
fancy like a living question while he was rushing down the long
road at the Zoological Gardens. There were a thousand other such
objects, however. There was a dancing lamp-post, a dancing apple
tree, a dancing ship. One would have thought that the untamable
tune of some mad musician had set all the common objects of field
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--
"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
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 sword 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.
