A Dream Of Armageddon

: The Door In The Wall And Other Stories

The man with the white face entered the carriage at Rugby. He

moved slowly in spite of the urgency of his porter, and even while

he was still on the platform I noted how ill he seemed. He dropped

into the corner over against me with a sigh, made an incomplete

attempt to arrange his travelling shawl, and became motionless,

with his eyes staring vacantly. Presently he was moved by a sense

of my observation, looked up t me, and put out a spiritless hand

for his newspaper. Then he glanced again in my direction.



I feigned to read. I feared I had unwittingly embarrassed

him, 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 about

dreams."



"Obviously," I answered, for it was Fortnum Roscoe's Dream

States, and the title was on the cover.



He hung silent for a space as if he sought words. "Yes," he

said 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 mean

vividly."



"I dream very little," I answered. "I doubt if I have three

vivid dreams in a year."



"Ah!" he said, and seemed for a moment to collect his

thoughts.



"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 and

then. I suppose few people do."



"Does he say--?" He indicated the book.



"Says it happens at times and gives the usual explanation

about intensity of impression and the like to account for its not

happening as a rule. I suppose you know something of these

theories--"



"Very little--except that they are wrong."



His emaciated hand played with the strap of the window for a

time. I prepared to resume reading, and that seemed to precipitate

his next remark. He leant forward almost as though he would touch

me.



"Isn't there something called consecutive dreaming--that goes

on night after night?"



"I believe there is. There are cases given in most books on

mental trouble."



"Mental trouble! Yes. I daresay there are. It's the right

place for them. But what I mean--" He looked at his bony

knuckles. "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 the

drawn anxiety of his face. I remember now the look of his faded

eyes 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!--so

vivid . . . . this--" (he indicated the landscape that went

streaming by the window) "seems unreal in comparison! I can

scarcely 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 into

that other life. Fresh scenes and fresh happenings--until I came

upon 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 an

hour before me, the light was fading fast, and Fortnum Roscoe has

a dreary way with him. "Living in a different time," I said: "do

you 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, when

I 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 these

dreams, though I knew them at the time when I was--I suppose it was

dreaming. They called the year differently from our way of calling

the year . . . What did they call it?" He put his hand to his

forehead. "No," said he, "I forget."



He sat smiling weakly. For a moment I feared he did not mean

to tell me his dream. As a rule I hate people who tell their

dreams, but this struck me differently. I proffered assistance

even. "It began--" I suggested.



"It was vivid from the first. I seemed to wake up in it

suddenly. And it's curious that in these dreams I am speaking of

I never remembered this life I am living now. It seemed as if the

dream life was enough while it lasted. Perhaps--But I will tell

you how I find myself when I do my best to recall it all. I don't

remember anything clearly until I found myself sitting in a sort of

loggia looking out over the sea. I had been dozing, and suddenly

I woke up--fresh and vivid--not a bit dreamlike--because the girl

had stopped fanning me."



"The girl?"



"Yes, the girl. You must not interrupt or you will put me

out."



He stopped abruptly. "You won't think I'm mad?" he said.



"No," I answered. "You've been dreaming. Tell me your

dream."



"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. I

simply took it up at that point. Whatever memory I had of this

life, this nineteenth-century life, faded as I woke, vanished like

a dream. I knew all about myself, knew that my name was no longer

Cooper but Hedon, and all about my position in the world. I've

forgotten a lot since I woke--there's a want of connection--but it

was all quite clear and matter of fact then."



He hesitated again, gripping the window strap, putting his

face forward and looking up to me appealingly.



"This seems bosh to you?"



"No, no!" I cried. "Go on. Tell me what this loggia was

like!"



"It was not really a loggia--I don't know what to call it. It

faced south. It was small. It was all in shadow except the

semicircle above the balcony that showed the sky and sea and the

corner where the girl stood. I was on a couch--it was a metal

couch with light striped cushions--and the girl was leaning over

the balcony with her back to me. The light of the sunrise fell on

her ear and cheek. Her pretty white neck and the little curls

that nestled there, and her white shoulder were in the sun, and

all the grace of her body was in the cool blue shadow. She was

dressed--how can I describe it? It was easy and flowing. And

altogether there she stood, so that it came to me how beautiful

and desirable she was, as though I had never seen her before.

And when at last I sighed and raised myself upon my arm she

turned her face to me--"



He stopped.



"I have lived three-and-fifty years in this world. I have had

mother, sisters, friends, wife and daughters--all their faces, the

play of their faces, I know. But the face of this girl--it is much

more real to me. I can bring it back into memory so that I see it

again--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 the

beauty of a saint; nor that beauty that stirs fierce passions; but

a sort of radiation, sweet lips that softened into smiles, and

grave gray eyes. And she moved gracefully, she seemed to have part

with all pleasant and gracious things--"



He stopped, and his face was downcast and hidden. Then he

looked up at me and went on, making no further attempt to disguise

his absolute belief in the reality of his story.



"You see, I had thrown up my plans and ambitions, thrown up

all I had ever worked for or desired for her sake. I had been a

master man away there in the north, with influence and property and

a great reputation, but none of it had seemed worth having beside

her. I had come to the place, this city of sunny pleasures with

her, and left all those things to wreck and ruin just to save a

remnant at least of my life. While I had been in love with her

before I knew that she had any care for me, before I had imagined

that she would dare--that we should dare, all my life had seemed

vain and hollow, dust and ashes. It was dust and ashes. Night

after night and through the long days I had longed and desired--my

soul had beaten against the thing forbidden!



"But it is impossible for one man to tell another just these

things. It's emotion, it's a tint, a light that comes and goes.

Only while it's there, everything changes, everything. The thing

is I came away and left them in their Crisis to do what they

could."



"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 me

were ready to do things and risk things because of their confidence

in me. I had been playing that game for years, that big laborious

game, that vague, monstrous political game amidst intrigues and

betrayals, speech and agitation. It was a vast weltering world,

and at last I had a sort of leadership against the Gang--you know

it was called the Gang--a sort of compromise of scoundrelly

projects and base ambitions and vast public emotional stupidities

and catch-words--the Gang that kept the world noisy and blind year

by year, and all the while that it was drifting, drifting towards

infinite disaster. But I can't expect you to understand the shades

and complications of the year--the year something or other ahead.

I had it all--down to the smallest details--in my dream. I suppose

I had been dreaming of it before I awoke, and the fading outline of

some queer new development I had imagined still hung about me as I

rubbed my eyes. It was some grubby affair that made me thank God

for the sunlight. I sat up on the couch and remained looking at

the woman and rejoicing--rejoicing that I had come away out of all

that tumult and folly and violence before it was too late. After

all, I thought, this is life--love and beauty, desire and delight,

are they not worth all those dismal struggles for vague, gigantic

ends? And I blamed myself for having ever sought to be a leader

when I might have given my days to love. But then, thought I, if

I had not spent my early days sternly and austerely, I might have

wasted myself upon vain and worthless women, and at the thought all

my being went out in love and tenderness to my dear mistress, my

dear lady, who had come at last and compelled me--compelled me by

her invincible charm for me--to lay that life aside.



"'You are worth it,' I said, speaking without intending her to

hear; 'you are worth it, my dearest one; worth pride and praise and

all things. Love! to have you is worth them all together." And at

the murmur of my voice she turned about.



"'Come and see,' she cried--I can hear her now--'come and see

the sunrise upon Monte Solaro.'



"I remember how I sprang to my feet and joined her at the

balcony. She put a white hand upon my shoulder and pointed towards

great masses of limestone, flushing, as it were, into life. I

looked. But first I noted the sunlight on her face caressing the

lines of her cheeks and neck. How can I describe to you the scene

we had before us? We were at Capri--"



"I have been there," I said. "I have clambered up Monte

Solaro and drunk vero Capri--muddy stuff like cider--at the

summit."



"Ah!" said the man with the white face; "then perhaps you can

tell me--you will know if this is indeed Capri. For in this life

I have never been there. Let me describe it. We were in a little

room, one of a vast multitude of little rooms, very cool and sunny,

hollowed out of the limestone of a sort of cape, very high above

the sea. The whole island, you know, was one enormous hotel,

complex beyond explaining, and on the other side there were miles

of floating hotels, and huge floating stages to which the flying

machines came. They called it a pleasure city. Of course, there

was none of that in your time--rather, I should say, is none of

that now. Of course. Now!--yes.



"Well, this room of ours was at the extremity of the cape, so

that one could see east and west. Eastward was a great cliff--a

thousand feet high perhaps--coldly gray except for one bright edge

of gold, and beyond it the Isle of the Sirens, and a falling coast

that faded and passed into the hot sunrise. And when one turned to

the west, distinct and near was a little bay, a little beach still

in shadow. And out of that shadow rose Solaro straight and tall,

flushed and golden crested, like a beauty throned, and the white

moon was floating behind her in the sky. And before us from east

to west stretched the many-tinted sea all dotted with little

sailing boats.



"To the eastward, of course, these little boats were gray and

very minute and clear, but to the westward they were little boats

of gold--shining gold--almost like little flames. And just below

us was a rock with an arch worn through it. The blue sea-water

broke to green and foam all round the rock, and a galley came

gliding out of the arch."



"I know that rock." I said. "I was nearly drowned there. It

is called the Faraglioni."



"I Faraglioni? Yes, she called it that," answered the man

with the white face. "There was some story--but that--"



He put his hand to his forehead again. "No," he said, "I

forget that story."



"Well, that is the first thing I remember, the first dream I

had, that little shaded room and the beautiful air and sky and that

dear lady of mine, with her shining arms and her graceful robe, and

how we sat and talked in half whispers to one another. We talked

in whispers not because there was any one to hear, but because

there was still such a freshness of mind between us that our

thoughts were a little frightened, I think, to find themselves at

last 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 to

the great breakfast room--there was a fountain and music. A

pleasant and joyful place it was, with its sunlight and splashing,

and the murmur of plucked strings. And we sat and ate and smiled

at one another, and I would not heed a man who was watching me from

a table near by.



"And afterwards we went on to the dancing-hall. But I cannot

describe that hall. The place was enormous--larger than any

building you have ever seen--and in one place there was the old

gate of Capri, caught into the wall of a gallery high overhead.

Light girders, stems and threads of gold, burst from the pillars

like fountains, streamed like an Aurora across the roof and

interlaced, like--like conjuring tricks. All about the great

circle for the dancers there were beautiful figures, strange

dragons, and intricate and wonderful grotesques bearing lights.

The place was inundated with artificial light that shamed the

newborn day. And as we went through the throng the people turned

about and looked at us, for all through the world my name and face

were known, and how I had suddenly thrown up pride and struggle to

come 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 unknown

or mistold. And few of the men who were there, I know, but judged

me a happy man, in spite of all the shame and dishonour that had

come upon my name.



"The air was full of music, full of harmonious scents, full of

the rhythm of beautiful motions. Thousands of beautiful people

swarmed about the hall, crowded the galleries, sat in a myriad

recesses; they were dressed in splendid colours and crowned with

flowers; thousands danced about the great circle beneath the white

images of the ancient gods, and glorious processions of youths and

maidens came and went. We two danced, not the dreary monotonies of

your days--of this time, I mean--but dances that were beautiful,

intoxicating. And even now I can see my lady dancing--dancing

joyously. She danced, you know, with a serious face; she danced

with a serious dignity, and yet she was smiling at me and caressing

me--smiling and caressing with her eyes.



"The music was different," he murmured. "It went--I cannot

describe it; but it was infinitely richer and more varied than any

music that has ever come to me awake.



"And then--it was when we had done dancing--a man came to

speak to me. He was a lean, resolute man, very soberly clad for

that place, and already I had marked his face watching me in the

breakfasting hall, and afterwards as we went along the passage I

had avoided his eye. But now, as we sat in a little alcove,

smiling at the pleasure of all the people who went to and fro

across the shining floor, he came and touched me, and spoke to me

so that I was forced to listen. And he asked that he might speak

to me for a little time apart.



"'No,' I said. 'I have no secrets from this lady. What do

you 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 avenging

declaration that Evesham had made? Now, Evesham had always before

been the man next to myself in the leadership of that great party

in the north. He was a forcible, hard, and tactless man, and only

I had been able to control and soften him. It was on his account

even more than my own, I think, that the others had been so

dismayed at my retreat. So this question about what he had done

reawakened my old interest in the life I had put aside just for

a 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 confess

even I was struck by Evesham's reckless folly in the wild and

threatening words he had used. And this messenger they had sent to

me not only told me of Evesham's speech, but went on to ask counsel

and to point out what need they had of me. While he talked, my

lady sat a little forward and watched his face and mine.



"My old habits of scheming and organising reasserted

themselves. I could even see myself suddenly returning to the

north, and all the dramatic effect of it. All that this man said

witnessed to the disorder of the party indeed, but not to its

damage. I should go back stronger than I had come. And then I

thought of my lady. You see--how can I tell you? There were

certain peculiarities of our relationship--as things are I need not

tell you about that--which would render her presence with me

impossible. I should have had to leave her; indeed, I should have

had to renounce her clearly and openly, if I was to do all that I

could do in the north. And the man knew that, even as he talked to

her and me, knew it as well as she did, that my steps to duty

were--first, separation, then abandonment. At the touch of that

thought my dream of a return was shattered. I turned on the man

suddenly, as he was imagining his eloquence was gaining ground with

me.



"'What have I to do with these things now?' I said. 'I have

done with them. Do you think I am coquetting with your people in

coming here?'



"'No,' he said. 'But--'



"'Why cannot you leave me alone. I have done with these

things. I have ceased to be anything but a private man.'



"'Yes,' he answered. 'But have you thought?--this talk of

war, these reckless challenges, these wild aggressions--'



"I stood up.



"'No,' I cried. 'I won't hear you. I took count of all those

things, I weighed them--and I have come away.'



"He seemed to consider the possibility of persistence. He

looked from me to where the lady sat regarding us.



"'War,' he said, as if he were speaking to himself, and then

turned slowly from me and walked away.



"I stood, caught in the whirl of thoughts his appeal had set

going.



"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. I

turned to her sweet face, and the balance of my mood swayed and

reeled.



"'They want me only to do the thing they dare not do

themselves,' I said. 'If they distrust Evesham they must settle

with 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 of

herself and me, the first shadow of the discovery that, seen

strongly and completely, must drive us apart for ever.



"Now, I was an older mind than hers, and I could sway her to

this belief or that.



"'My dear one,' I said, 'you must not trouble over these

things. There will be no war. Certainly there will be no war.

The age of wars is past. Trust me to know the justice of this

case. They have no right upon me, dearest, and no one has a right

upon me. I have been free to choose my life, and I have chosen

this.'



"'But war--,' she said.



"I sat down beside her. I put an arm behind her and took her

hand in mine. I set myself to drive that doubt away--I set myself

to fill her mind with pleasant things again. I lied to her, and in

lying to her I lied also to myself. And she was only too ready to

believe me, only too ready to forget.



"Very soon the shadow had gone again, and we were hastening to

our bathing-place in the Grotta del Bovo Marino, where it was our

custom to bathe every day. We swam and splashed one another, and

in that buoyant water I seemed to become something lighter and

stronger than a man. And at last we came out dripping and

rejoicing and raced among the rocks. And then I put on a dry

bathing-dress, and we sat to bask in the sun, and presently I

nodded, resting my head against her knee, and she put her hand upon

my hair and stroked it softly and I dozed. And behold! as it

were 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 vivid

moments had been no more than the substance of a dream.



"In truth, I could not believe it a dream for all the sobering

reality of things about me. I bathed and dressed as it were by

habit, and as I shaved I argued why I of all men should leave the

woman I loved to go back to fantastic politics in the hard and

strenuous 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 why

should I feel the responsibility of a deity for the way the world

might 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 of

view.



"The vision was so real, you must understand, so utterly

unlike a dream that I kept perpetually recalling little irrelevant

details; even the ornament of the book-cover that lay on my wife's

sewing-machine in the breakfast-room recalled with the utmost

vividness the gilt line that ran about the seat in the alcove where

I had talked with the messenger from my deserted party. Have you

ever heard of a dream that had a quality like that?"



"Like--?"



"So that afterwards you remembered little details you had

forgotten."



I thought. I had never noticed the point before, but he was

right.



"Never," I said. "That is what you never seem to do with

dreams."



"No," he answered. "But that is just what I did. I am a solicitor,

you must understand, in Liverpool, and I could not help wondering

what the clients and business people I found myself talking to in my

office would think if I told them suddenly I was in love with a girl

who would be born a couple of hundred years or so hence, and worried

about the politics of my great-great-great-grandchildren. I was

chiefly busy that day negotiating a ninety-nine-year building lease.

It was a private builder in a hurry, and we wanted to tie him in

every possible way. I had an interview with him, and he showed a

certain want of temper that sent me to bed still irritated. That

night I had no dream. Nor did I dream the next night, at least,

to remember.



"Something of that intense reality of conviction vanished. I

began to feel sure it was a dream. And then it came again.



"When the dream came again, nearly four days later, it was

very different. I think it certain that four days had also elapsed

in the dream. Many things had happened in the north, and the

shadow of them was back again between us, and this time it was not

so easily dispelled. I began I know with moody musings. Why, in

spite of all, should I go back, go back for all the rest of my days

to toil and stress, insults and perpetual dissatisfaction, simply

to save hundreds of millions of common people, whom I did not love,

whom too often I could do no other than despise, from the stress

and anguish of war and infinite misrule? And after all I might

fail. They all sought their own narrow ends, and why should not

I--why should not I also live as a man? And out of such thoughts

her voice summoned me, and I lifted my eyes.



"I found myself awake and walking. We had come out above the

Pleasure City, we were near the summit of Monte Solaro and looking

towards the bay. It was the late afternoon and very clear. Far

away to the left Ischia hung in a golden haze between sea and sky,

and Naples was coldly white against the hills, and before us was

Vesuvius with a tall and slender streamer feathering at last

towards the south, and the ruins of Torre dell' Annunziata and

Castellammare glittering and near."



I interrupted suddenly: "You have been to Capri, of course?"



"Only in this dream," he said, "only in this dream. All

across the bay beyond Sorrento were the floating palaces of the

Pleasure City moored and chained. And northward were the broad

floating stages that received the aeroplanes. Aeroplanes fell out

of the sky every afternoon, each bringing its thousands of

pleasure-seekers from the uttermost parts of the earth to Capri and

its delights. All these things, I say, stretched below.



"But we noticed them only incidentally because of an unusual

sight that evening had to show. Five war aeroplanes that had long

slumbered useless in the distant arsenals of the Rhinemouth were

manoeuvring now in the eastward sky. Evesham had astonished the

world by producing them and others, and sending them to circle here

and there. It was the threat material in the great game of bluff

he was playing, and it had taken even me by surprise. He was one

of those incredibly stupid energetic people who seem sent by heaven

to create disasters. His energy to the first glance seemed so

wonderfully like capacity! But he had no imagination, no

invention, only a stupid, vast, driving force of will, and a mad

faith in his stupid idiot 'luck' to pull him through. I remember

how we stood upon the headland watching the squadron circling far

away, and how I weighed the full meaning of the sight, seeing

clearly 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 people

of the north would follow me, I knew, granted only that in one

thing I respected their moral standards. The east and south would

trust me as they would trust no other northern man. And I knew

I 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 way

about. I had so newly thrown off the incubus of responsibility: I

was still so fresh a renegade from duty that the daylight clearness

of what I ought to do had no power at all to touch my will. My

will was to live, to gather pleasures and make my dear lady happy.

But though this sense of vast neglected duties had no power to draw

me, it could make me silent and preoccupied, it robbed the days I

had spent of half their brightness and roused me into dark

meditations in the silence of the night. And as I stood and

watched Evesham's aeroplanes sweep to and fro--those birds of

infinite ill omen--she stood beside me watching me, perceiving the

trouble indeed, but not perceiving it clearly--her eyes questioning

my face, her expression shaded with perplexity. Her face was gray

because the sunset was fading out of the sky. It was no fault of

hers that she held me. She had asked me to go from her, and again

in 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 the

mountain slopes. 'No,' she said, as if I had jarred with her

gravity, but I was resolved to end that gravity, and make her

run--no one can be very gray and sad who is out of breath--and when

she stumbled I ran with my hand beneath her arm. We ran down past

a couple of men, who turned back staring in astonishment at my

behaviour--they must have recognised my face. And half way down

the slope came a tumult in the air, clang-clank, clang-clank, and

we stopped, and presently over the hill-crest those war things came

flying 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 our

ironclads are nowadays; they had never fought. No one knew what

they might do, with excited men inside them; few even cared to

speculate. They were great driving things shaped like spear-heads

without 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 very

common--as common as brass, for example. It was called--let me

see--" He squeezed his forehead with the fingers of one hand. "I

am forgetting everything," he said.



"And they carried guns?"



"Little guns, firing high explosive shells. They fired the

guns backwards, out of the base of the leaf, so to speak, and

rammed with the beak. That was the theory, you know, but they had

never been fought. No one could tell exactly what was going to

happen. And meanwhile I suppose it was very fine to go whirling

through the air like a flight of young swallows, swift and easy.

I guess the captains tried not to think too clearly what the real

thing would be like. And these flying war machines, you know, were

only one sort of the endless war contrivances that had been

invented and had fallen into abeyance during the long peace. There

were all sorts of these things that people were routing out and

furbishing up; infernal things, silly things; things that had never

been tried; big engines, terrible explosives, great guns. You know

the 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 of

the rivers they're going to divert and the lands they're going to

flood!



"As we went down the winding stepway to our hotel again, in

the twilight, I foresaw it all: I saw how clearly and inevitably

things were driving for war in Evesham's silly, violent hands, and

I had some inkling of what war was bound to be under these new

conditions. And even then, though I knew it was drawing near the

limit 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--she

counselled 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, go

back to your duty--'



"She began to weep, saying, between her sobs, and clinging to

my 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 one

of those moments when one sees.



"'No!' I said.



"'No?' she asked, in surprise and I think a little fearful at

the answer to her thought.



"'Nothing,' I said, 'shall send me back. Nothing! I have

chosen. Love, I have chosen, and the world must go. Whatever

happens I will live this life--I will live for you! It--nothing

shall turn me aside; nothing, my dear one. Even if you died--even

if you died--'



"'Yes?' she murmured, softly.



"'Then--I also would die.'



"And before she could speak again I began to talk, talking

eloquently--as I could do in that life--talking to exalt love, to

make the life we were living seem heroic and glorious; and the

thing I was deserting something hard and enormously ignoble that it

was a fine thing to set aside. I bent all my mind to throw that

glamour upon it, seeking not only to convert her but myself to

that. We talked, and she clung to me, torn too between all that

she deemed noble and all that she knew was sweet. And at last I

did make it heroic, made all the thickening disaster of the world

only a sort of glorious setting to our unparalleled love, and we

two poor foolish souls strutted there at last, clad in that

splendid 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, the

leaders of the south and east were gathering their resolve, and the

hot answer that shattered Evesham's bluffing for ever, took shape and

waited. And, all over Asia, and the ocean, and the South, the air

and the wires were throbbing with their warnings to prepare--prepare.



"No one living, you know, knew what war was; no one could

imagine, with all these new inventions, what horror war might

bring. I believe most people still believed it would be a matter

of bright uniforms and shouting charges and triumphs and flags and

bands--in a time when half the world drew its food supply from

regions ten thousand miles away--"



The man with the white face paused. I glanced at him, and his

face was intent on the floor of the carriage. A little railway

station, a string of loaded trucks, a signal-box, and the back of

a cottage, shot by the carriage window, and a bridge passed with a

clap of noise, echoing the tumult of the train.



"After that," he said, "I dreamt often. For three weeks of

nights that dream was my life. And the worst of it was there were

nights when I could not dream, when I lay tossing on a bed in this

accursed life; and there--somewhere lost to me--things were

happening--momentous, terrible things . . . I lived at nights--my

days, 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 the

dream, but as to what I did in the daytime--no. I could not

tell--I do not remember. My memory--my memory has gone. The

business of life slips from me--"



He leant forward, and pressed his hands upon his eyes. For a

long 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 man

who 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 there

was a danger of losing the rest of the story. But he went on

talking again in the same tone of questioning self-communion.



"What was there to do but flight? I had not thought the war

would touch Capri--I had seemed to see Capri as being out of it

all, as the contrast to it all; but two nights after the whole

place was shouting and bawling, every woman almost and every other

man wore a badge--Evesham's badge--and there was no music but a

jangling war-song over and over again, and everywhere men

enlisting, and in the dancing halls they were drilling. The whole

island was awhirl with rumours; it was said, again and again, that

fighting had begun. I had not expected this. I had seen so little

of the life of pleasure that I had failed to reckon with this

violence of the amateurs. And as for me, I was out of it. I was

like the man who might have prevented the firing of a magazine.

The time had gone. I was no one; the vainest stripling with a

badge counted for more than I. The crowd jostled us and bawled in

our ears; that accursed song deafened us; a woman shrieked at my

lady because no badge was on her, and we two went back to our own

place again, ruffled and insulted--my lady white and silent, and I

aquiver with rage. So furious was I, I could have quarrelled with

her if I could have found one shade of accusation in her eyes.



"All my magnificence had gone from me. I walked up and down

our rock cell, and outside was the darkling sea and a light to the

southward that flared and passed and came again.



"'We must get out of this place,' I said over and over. 'I

have made my choice, and I will have no hand in these troubles. I

will have nothing of this war. We have taken our lives out of all

these things. This is no refuge for us. Let us go.'



"And the next day we were already in flight from the war that

covered 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. He

took 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. "We

went in a boat."



"But I should have thought an aeroplane?"



"They had been seized."



I questioned him no more. Presently I thought he was beginning

again. He broke out in an argumentative monotone:



"But why should it be? If, indeed, this battle, this

slaughter and stress is life, why have we this craving for pleasure

and 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, why

have we such dreams? Surely it was no ignoble cravings, no base

intentions, had brought us to this; it was Love had isolated us.

Love had come to me with her eyes and robed in her beauty, more

glorious than all else in life, in the very shape and colour of

life, and summoned me away. I had silenced all the voices, I had

answered all the questions--I had come to her. And suddenly there

was nothing but War and Death!"



I had an inspiration. "After all," I said, "it could have

been only a dream."



"A dream!" he cried, flaming upon me, "a dream--when, even

now--"



For the first time he became animated. A faint flush crept

into his cheek. He raised his open hand and clenched it, and

dropped it to his knee. He spoke, looking away from me, and for

all the rest of the time he looked away. "We are but phantoms!" he

said, "and the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud-shadows and

wills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days pass, use and wont

carry us through as a train carries the shadow of its lights--so be

it! But one thing is real and certain, one thing is no dream-stuff,

but eternal and enduring. It is the centre of my life, and

all other things about it are subordinate or altogether vain. I

loved 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 living

life with unappeasable sorrow, when it makes all that I have lived

for and cared for, worthless and unmeaning?



"Until that very moment when she was killed I believed we had

still a chance of getting away," he said. "All through the night

and morning that we sailed across the sea from Capri to Salerno, we

talked of escape. We were full of hope, and it clung about us to

the end, hope for the life together we should lead, out of it all,

out of the battle and struggle, the wild and empty passions, the

empty arbitrary 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not' of the world. We

were uplifted, as though our quest was a holy thing, as though love

for another was a mission . . . .



"Even when from our boat we saw the fair face of that great

rock Capri--already scarred and gashed by the gun emplacements and

hiding-places that were to make it a fastness--we reckoned nothing

of the imminent slaughter, though the fury of preparation hung

about in the puffs and clouds of dust at a hundred points amidst

the gray; but, indeed, I made a text of that and talked. There,

you know, was the rock, still beautiful for all its scars, with its

countless windows and arches and ways, tier upon tier, for a

thousand feet, a vast carving of gray, broken by vine-clad

terraces, and lemon and orange groves, and masses of agave and

prickly pear, and puffs of almond blossom. And out under the

archway that is built over the Piccola Marina other boats were

coming; and as we came round the cape and within sight of the

mainland, another little string of boats came into view, driving

before the wind towards the south-west. In a little while a

multitude had come out, the remoter just little specks of

ultramarine in the shadow of the eastward cliff.



"'It is love and reason,' I said, 'fleeing from all this

madness of war.'



"And though we presently saw a squadron of aeroplanes flying

across the southern sky we did not heed it. There it was--a line

of little dots in the sky--and then more, dotting the south-eastern

horizon, and then still more, until all that quarter of the sky was

stippled with blue specks. Now they were all thin little strokes

of blue, and now one and now a multitude would heel and catch the

sun and become short flashes of light. They came, rising and

falling and growing larger, like some huge flight of gulls or rooks

or such-like birds, moving with a marvellous uniformity, and ever

as they drew nearer they spread over a greater width of sky. The

southward wind flung itself in an arrow-headed cloud athwart the

sun. And then suddenly they swept round to the eastward and

streamed eastward, growing smaller and smaller and clearer and

clearer again until they vanished from the sky. And after that we

noted to the northward and very high Evesham's fighting machines

hanging high over Naples like an evening swarm of gnats.



"It seemed to have no more to do with us than a flight of

birds.



"Even the mutter of guns far away in the south-east seemed to

us to signify nothing . . .



"Each day, each dream after that, we were still exalted, still

seeking that refuge where we might live and love. Fatigue had come

upon us, pain and many distresses. For though we were dusty and

stained by our toilsome tramping, and half starved and with the

horror of the dead men we had seen and the flight of the

peasants--for very soon a gust of fighting swept up the

peninsula--with these things haunting our minds it still resulted

only in a deepening resolution to escape. Oh, but she was brave

and patient! She who had never faced hardship and exposure had

courage for herself and me. We went to and fro seeking an outlet,

over a country all commandeered and ransacked by the gathering

hosts of war. Always we went on foot. At first there were other

fugitives, but we did not mingle with them. Some escaped

northward, some were caught in the torrent of peasantry that swept

along the main roads; many gave themselves into the hands of the

soldiery and were sent northward. Many of the men were impressed.

But we kept away from these things; we had brought no money to

bribe a passage north, and I feared for my lady at the hands of

these conscript crowds. We had landed at Salerno, and we had been

turned back from Cava, and we had tried to cross towards Taranto by

a pass over Mount Alburno, but we had been driven back for want of

food, and so we had come down among the marshes by Paestum, where

those great temples stand alone. I had some vague idea that by

Paestum it might be possible to find a boat or something, and take

once more to sea. And there it was the battle overtook us.



"A sort of soul-blindness had me. Plainly I could see that we

were being hemmed in; that the great net of that giant Warfare had

us in its toils. Many times we had seen the levies that had come

down from the north going to and fro, and had come upon them in the

distance amidst the mountains making ways for the ammunition and

preparing the mounting of the guns. Once we fancied they had fired

at us, taking us for spies--at any rate a shot had gone shuddering

over us. Several times we had hidden in woods from hovering

aeroplanes.



"But all these things do not matter now, these nights of

flight and pain . . . We were in an open place near those great

temples at Paestum, at last, on a blank stony place dotted with

spiky bushes, empty and desolate and so flat that a grove of

eucalyptus far away showed to the feet of its stems. How I can see

it! My lady was sitting down under a bush resting a little, for

she was very weak and weary, and I was standing up watching to see

if I could tell the distance of the firing that came and went.

They were still, you know, fighting far from each other, with those

terrible new weapons that had never before been used: guns that

would carry beyond sight, and aeroplanes that would do--What they

would do no man could foretell.



"I knew that we were between the two armies, and that they

drew together. I knew we were in danger, and that we could not

stop there and rest!



"Though all these things were in my mind, they were in the

background. 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 fallen

a-weeping. Behind me I could hear her sobbing, but I would not

turn round to her because I knew she had need of weeping, and had

held 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, for

I had no inkling of the thing that hung so near. Even now I can

see her as she sat there, her lovely hair upon her shoulder, can

mark 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 all

about us I heard the bullets making a noise like a handful of peas

suddenly thrown. They chipped the stones about us, and whirled

fragments 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--as

though she wanted to reach me--



"And she had been shot through the heart."



He stopped and stared at me. I felt all that foolish

incapacity an Englishman feels on such occasions. I met his eyes

for a moment, and then stared out of the window. For a long space

we kept silence. When at last I looked at him he was sitting back

in his corner, his arms folded, and his teeth gnawing at his

knuckles.



He bit his nail suddenly, and stared at it.



"I carried her," he said, "towards the temples, in my arms--as

though it mattered. I don't know why. They seemed a sort of

sanctuary, you know, they had lasted so long, I suppose.



"She must have died almost instantly. Only--I talked to her

all the way."



Silence again.



"I have seen those temples," I said abruptly, and indeed he

had brought those still, sunlit arcades of worn sandstone very

vividly before me.



"It was the brown one, the big brown one. I sat down on a

fallen pillar and held her in my arms . . . Silent after the first

babble was over. And after a little while the lizards came out and

ran about again, as though nothing unusual was going on, as though

nothing had changed . . . It was tremendously still there, the sun

high and the shadows still; even the shadows of the weeds upon the

entablature were still--in spite of the thudding and banging that

went all about the sky.



"I seem to remember that the aeroplanes came up out of the

south, and that the battle went away to the west. One aeroplane

was struck, and overset and fell. I remember that--though it

didn't interest me in the least. It didn't seem to signify. It

was like a wounded gull, you know--flapping for a time in the

water. I could see it down the aisle of the temple--a black thing

in the bright blue water.



"Three or four times shells burst about the beach, and then

that ceased. Each time that happened all the lizards scuttled in

and hid for a space. That was all the mischief done, except that

once a stray bullet gashed the stone hard by--made just a fresh

bright surface.



"As the shadows grew longer, the stillness seemed greater.



"The curious thing," he remarked, with the manner of a man who

makes a trivial conversation, "is that I didn't think--at

all. I sat with her in my arms amidst the stones--in a sort of

lethargy--stagnant.



"And I don't remember waking up. I don't remember dressing

that day. I know I found myself in my office, with my letters all

slit open in front of me, and how I was struck by the absurdity of

being there, seeing that in reality I was sitting, stunned, in that

Paestum Temple with a dead woman in my arms. I read my letters

like 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 incline

from Chalk Farm to Euston. I started at this passing of time. I

turned on him with a brutal question, with the tone of "Now or

never."



"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 seemed

to have suddenly awakened out of a great apathy, to have risen into

a 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 clearly

that men were coming into the solitude and that that was a last

outrage.



"I stood up and walked through the temple, and then there came

into sight--first one man with a yellow face, dressed in a uniform

of dirty white, trimmed with blue, and then several, climbing to

the crest of the old wall of the vanished city, and crouching

there. They were little bright figures in the sunlight, and there

they hung, weapon in hand, peering cautiously before them.



"And further away I saw others and then more at another point

in the wall. It was a long lax line of men in open order.



"Presently the man I had first seen stood up and shouted a

command, and his men came tumbling down the wall and into the high

weeds towards the temple. He scrambled down with them and led

them. He came facing towards me, and when he saw me he stopped.



"At first I had watched these men with a mere curiosity, but

when I had seen they meant to come to the temple I was moved to

forbid them. I shouted to the officer.



"'You must not come here,' I cried, 'I am here. I am

here with my dead.'



"He stared, and then shouted a question back to me in some

unknown 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 drawn

sword.



"I signed to him to keep away, but he continued to advance.

I told him again very patiently and clearly: 'You must not come

here. These are old temples and I am here with my dead.'



"Presently he was so close I could see his face clearly. It

was a narrow face, with dull gray eyes, and a black moustache. He

had a scar on his upper lip, and he was dirty and unshaven. He

kept shouting unintelligible things, questions, perhaps, at me.



"I know now that he was afraid of me, but at the time that did

not occur to me. As I tried to explain to him, he interrupted me

in 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 a

sort 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. The

brakes lifted their voices and the carriage jarred and jerked.

This present world insisted upon itself, became clamourous. I saw

through the steamy window huge electric fights glaring down from

tall masts upon a fog, saw rows of stationary empty carriages

passing by, and then a signal-box hoisting its constellation of

green 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 of

astonishment--no fear, no pain--but just amazement, that I felt it

pierce 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 a

jerk. 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 then

darkness sweeping over everything. The hot, brutal face before me,

the face of the man who had killed me, seemed to recede. It swept

out of existence--"



"Euston!" clamoured the voices outside; "Euston!"



The carriage door opened admitting a flood of sound, and a

porter stood regarding us. The sounds of doors slamming, and the

hoof-clatter of cab-horses, and behind these things the featureless

remote roar of the London cobble-stones, came to my ears. A

truckload of lighted lamps blazed along the platform.



"A darkness, a flood of darkness that opened and spread and

blotted 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 the

temple-- And then--"



"Yes," I insisted. "Yes?"



"Nightmares," he cried; "nightmares indeed! My God! Great

birds that fought and tore."