The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
Dr. Bull was bubbling over with laughter, swinging the sword in his
hand as carelessly as a cane. He jumped out of the car and ran across
the intervening space, calling out—
“Dr. Renard! Dr. Renard!”
An instant after Syme thought his own eyes had gone mad in his head.
For the philanthropic Dr. Renard had deliberately raised his revolver
and fired twice at Bull, so that the shots rang down the road.
Almost at the same second as the puff of white cloud went up from this
atrocious explosion a long puff of white cloud went up also from the
cigarette of the cynical Ratcliffe. Like all the rest he turned a
little pale, but he smiled. Dr. Bull, at whom the bullets had been
fired, just missing his scalp, stood quite still in the middle of the
road without a sign of fear, and then turned very slowly and crawled
back to the car, and climbed in with two holes through his hat.
“Well,” said the cigarette smoker slowly, “what do you think now?”
“I think,” said Dr. Bull with precision, “that I am lying in bed at No.
217 Peabody Buildings, and that I shall soon wake up with a jump; or,
if that’s not it, I think that I am sitting in a small cushioned cell
in Hanwell, and that the doctor can’t make much of my case. But if you
want to know what I don’t think, I’ll tell you. I don’t think what you
think. I don’t think, and I never shall think, that the mass of
ordinary men are a pack of dirty modern thinkers. No, sir, I’m a
democrat, and I still don’t believe that Sunday could convert one
average navvy or counter-jumper. No, I may be mad, but humanity isn’t.”
Syme turned his bright blue eyes on Bull with an earnestness which he
did not commonly make clear.
“You are a very fine fellow,” he said. “You can believe in a sanity
which is not merely your sanity. And you’re right enough about
humanity, about peasants and people like that jolly old innkeeper. But
you’re not right about Renard. I suspected him from the first. He’s
rationalistic, and, what’s worse, he’s rich. When duty and religion are
really destroyed, it will be by the rich.”
“They are really destroyed now,” said the man with a cigarette, and
rose with his hands in his pockets. “The devils are coming on!”
The men in the motor-car looked anxiously in the direction of his
dreamy gaze, and they saw that the whole regiment at the end of the
road was advancing upon them, Dr. Renard marching furiously in front,
his beard flying in the breeze.
The Colonel sprang out of the car with an intolerant exclamation.
“Gentlemen,” he cried, “the thing is incredible. It must be a practical
joke. If you knew Renard as I do—it’s like calling Queen Victoria a
dynamiter. If you had got the man’s character into your head—”
“Dr. Bull,” said Syme sardonically, “has at least got it into his hat.”
“I tell you it can’t be!” cried the Colonel, stamping.
“Renard shall explain it. He shall explain it to me,” and he strode
forward.
“Don’t be in such a hurry,” drawled the smoker. “He will very soon
explain it to all of us.”
But the impatient Colonel was already out of earshot, advancing towards
the advancing enemy. The excited Dr. Renard lifted his pistol again,
but perceiving his opponent, hesitated, and the Colonel came face to
face with him with frantic gestures of remonstrance.
“It is no good,” said Syme. “He will never get anything out of that old
heathen. I vote we drive bang through the thick of them, bang as the
bullets went through Bull’s hat. We may all be killed, but we must kill
a tidy number of them.”
“I won’t ’ave it,” said Dr. Bull, growing more vulgar in the sincerity
of his virtue. “The poor chaps may be making a mistake. Give the
Colonel a chance.”
“Shall we go back, then?” asked the Professor.
“No,” said Ratcliffe in a cold voice, “the street behind us is held
too. In fact, I seem to see there another friend of yours, Syme.”
Syme spun round smartly, and stared backwards at the track which they
had travelled. He saw an irregular body of horsemen gathering and
galloping towards them in the gloom. He saw above the foremost saddle
the silver gleam of a sword, and then as it grew nearer the silver
gleam of an old man’s hair. The next moment, with shattering violence,
he had swung the motor round and sent it dashing down the steep side
street to the sea, like a man that desired only to die.
“What the devil is up?” cried the Professor, seizing his arm.
“The morning star has fallen!” said Syme, as his own car went down the
darkness like a falling star.
The others did not understand his words, but when they looked back at
the street above they saw the hostile cavalry coming round the corner
and down the slopes after them; and foremost of all rode the good
innkeeper, flushed with the fiery innocence of the evening light.
“The world is insane!” said the Professor, and buried his face in his
hands.
“No,” said Dr. Bull in adamantine humility, “it is I.”
“What are we going to do?” asked the Professor.
“At this moment,” said Syme, with a scientific detachment, “I think we
are going to smash into a lamppost.”
The next instant the automobile had come with a catastrophic jar
against an iron object. The instant after that four men had crawled out
from under a chaos of metal, and a tall lean lamp-post that had stood
up straight on the edge of the marine parade stood out, bent and
twisted, like the branch of a broken tree.
“Well, we smashed something,” said the Professor, with a faint smile.
“That’s some comfort.”
“You’re becoming an anarchist,” said Syme, dusting his clothes with his
instinct of daintiness.
“Everyone is,” said Ratcliffe.
As they spoke, the white-haired horseman and his followers came
thundering from above, and almost at the same moment a dark string of
men ran shouting along the sea-front. Syme snatched a sword, and took
it in his teeth; he stuck two others under his arm-pits, took a fourth
in his left hand and the lantern in his right, and leapt off the high
parade on to the beach below.
The others leapt after him, with a common acceptance of such decisive
action, leaving the debris and the gathering mob above them.
“We have one more chance,” said Syme, taking the steel out of his
mouth. “Whatever all this pandemonium means, I suppose the police
station will help us. We can’t get there, for they hold the way. But
there’s a pier or breakwater runs out into the sea just here, which we
could defend longer than anything else, like Horatius and his bridge.
We must defend it till the Gendarmerie turn out. Keep after me.”
They followed him as he went crunching down the beach, and in a second
or two their boots broke not on the sea gravel, but on broad, flat
stones. They marched down a long, low jetty, running out in one arm
into the dim, boiling sea, and when they came to the end of it they
felt that they had come to the end of their story. They turned and
faced the town.
That town was transfigured with uproar. All along the high parade from
which they had just descended was a dark and roaring stream of
humanity, with tossing arms and fiery faces, groping and glaring
towards them. The long dark line was dotted with torches and lanterns;
but even where no flame lit up a furious face, they could see in the
farthest figure, in the most shadowy gesture, an organised hate. It was
clear that they were the accursed of all men, and they knew not why.
Two or three men, looking little and black like monkeys, leapt over the
edge as they had done and dropped on to the beach. These came ploughing
down the deep sand, shouting horribly, and strove to wade into the sea
at random. The example was followed, and the whole black mass of men
began to run and drip over the edge like black treacle.
Foremost among the men on the beach Syme saw the peasant who had driven
their cart. He splashed into the surf on a huge cart-horse, and shook
his axe at them.
“The peasant!” cried Syme. “They have not risen since the Middle Ages.”
“Even if the police do come now,” said the Professor mournfully, “they
can do nothing with this mob.”
“Nonsense!” said Bull desperately; “there must be some people left in
the town who are human.”
“No,” said the hopeless Inspector, “the human being will soon be
extinct. We are the last of mankind.”
“It may be,” said the Professor absently. Then he added in his dreamy
voice, “What is all that at the end of the ‘Dunciad’?
‘Nor public flame; nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human light is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos, is restored;
Light dies before thine uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall;
And universal darkness buries all.’”
“Stop!” cried Bull suddenly, “the gendarmes are out.”
The low lights of the police station were indeed blotted and broken
with hurrying figures, and they heard through the darkness the clash
and jingle of a disciplined cavalry.
“They are charging the mob!” cried Bull in ecstacy or alarm.
“No,” said Syme, “they are formed along the parade.”
“They have unslung their carbines,” cried Bull dancing with excitement.
“Yes,” said Ratcliffe, “and they are going to fire on us.”
As he spoke there came a long crackle of musketry, and bullets seemed
to hop like hailstones on the stones in front of them.
“The gendarmes have joined them!” cried the Professor, and struck his
forehead.
“I am in the padded cell,” said Bull solidly.
There was a long silence, and then Ratcliffe said, looking out over the
swollen sea, all a sort of grey purple—
“What does it matter who is mad or who is sane? We shall all be dead
soon.”
Syme turned to him and said—
“You are quite hopeless, then?”
Mr. Ratcliffe kept a stony silence; then at last he said quietly—
“No; oddly enough I am not quite hopeless. There is one insane little
hope that I cannot get out of my mind. The power of this whole planet
is against us, yet I cannot help wondering whether this one silly
little hope is hopeless yet.”
“In what or whom is your hope?” asked Syme with curiosity.
“In a man I never saw,” said the other, looking at the leaden sea.
“I know what you mean,” said Syme in a low voice, “the man in the dark
room. But Sunday must have killed him by now.”
“Perhaps,” said the other steadily; “but if so, he was the only man
whom Sunday found it hard to kill.”
“I heard what you said,” said the Professor, with his back turned. “I
also am holding hard on to the thing I never saw.”
All of a sudden Syme, who was standing as if blind with introspective
thought, swung round and cried out, like a man waking from sleep—
“Where is the Colonel? I thought he was with us!”
“The Colonel! Yes,” cried Bull, “where on earth is the Colonel?”
“He went to speak to Renard,” said the Professor.
“We cannot leave him among all those beasts,” cried Syme. “Let us die
like gentlemen if—”
“Do not pity the Colonel,” said Ratcliffe, with a pale sneer. “He is
extremely comfortable. He is—”
“No! no! no!” cried Syme in a kind of frenzy, “not the Colonel too! I
will never believe it!”
“Will you believe your eyes?” asked the other, and pointed to the
beach.
Many of their pursuers had waded into the water shaking their fists,
but the sea was rough, and they could not reach the pier. Two or three
figures, however, stood on the beginning of the stone footway, and
seemed to be cautiously advancing down it. The glare of a chance
lantern lit up the faces of the two foremost. One face wore a black
half-mask, and under it the mouth was twisting about in such a madness
of nerves that the black tuft of beard wriggled round and round like a
restless, living thing. The other was the red face and white moustache
of Colonel Ducroix. They were in earnest consultation.
“Yes, he is gone too,” said the Professor, and sat down on a stone.