The Man Who Was Thursday, G. K. Chesterton [the gingerbread man read aloud TXT] 📗
- Author: G. K. Chesterton
- Performer: 1586170422
Book online «The Man Who Was Thursday, G. K. Chesterton [the gingerbread man read aloud TXT] 📗». Author G. K. Chesterton
“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 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. “Everything’s gone. I’m gone! I can’t trust my own bodily machinery. I feel as if my own hand might fly up and strike me.”
“When my hand flies up,” said Syme, “it will strike somebody else,” and he strode along the pier towards the Colonel, the sword in one hand and the lantern in the other.
As if to destroy the last hope or doubt, the Colonel, who saw him coming, pointed his revolver at him and fired. The shot missed Syme, but struck his sword, breaking it short at the hilt. Syme rushed on, and swung the iron lantern above his head.
“Judas before Herod!” he said, and struck the Colonel down upon the stones. Then he turned to the Secretary, whose frightful mouth was almost foaming now, and held the lamp high with so rigid and arresting a gesture, that the man was, as it were, frozen for a moment, and forced to hear.
“Do you see this lantern?” cried Syme in a terrible voice. “Do you see the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did not light it. Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind; you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the wit to find it.”
He struck the Secretary once with the lantern so that he staggered; and then, whirling it twice round his head, sent it flying far
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