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 descended12 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 tangle13 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 gateway14 into a very large old English garden, full of torches and bonfires, by the broken light of which a vast carnival15 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 beak16 twice as big as himself—the queer bird which had fixed17 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 tune18 of some mad musician had set all the common objects of field and street dancing an eternal jig19. And long afterwards, when Syme was middle-aged20 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 reveller22 from that revel21 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 simplicity23 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 sprawled24 goggle-eyed fishes and outrageous25 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 crest26 a man rampant27. He lay back in his chair with a broad smile, the picture of an optimist28 in his element.
One by one the wanderers ascended29 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 laurels30. 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 frightful31 and beautiful alteration32, 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 exultant33 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 scented34 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 homely35 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 clattering36, 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 whooping37 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 spoke38, 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—epic39 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 unnatural40 virtue41. 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 cosmos42 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.”
“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 reconciliation44. Well, I am not reconciled. If you were the man in the dark room, why were you also Sunday, an offense45 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 scamper46 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 mighty47 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 fiery48 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 sable49. 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.
“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 pathos51 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 unintelligible52 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 folly53! The only crime of the Government is that it governs. The unpardonable sin of the supreme54 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 isolation55 of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter56. 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 miseries57 even at the very moment when this man entered insolently58 to accuse us of happiness. I repel59 the slander60; 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 colossal61 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 entirely62 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 bruised63 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 conversational64 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 hopped65 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.
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1
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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veracity
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| n.诚实 | |
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frenzy
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| n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动 | |
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anarchists
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| 无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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anarchist
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| n.无政府主义者 | |
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orchards
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| （通常指围起来的）果园( orchard的名词复数 ) | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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gateway
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| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
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carnival
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| n.嘉年华会，狂欢，狂欢节，巡回表演 | |
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beak
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| n.鸟嘴，茶壶嘴，钩形鼻 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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18
tune
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| n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整 | |
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jig
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| n.快步舞（曲）；v.上下晃动；用夹具辅助加工；蹦蹦跳跳 | |
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20
middle-aged
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| adj.中年的 | |
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21
revel
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| vi.狂欢作乐，陶醉；n.作乐，狂欢 | |
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reveller
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| n.摆设酒宴者，饮酒狂欢者 | |
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23
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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24
sprawled
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| v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的过去式和过去分词)；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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25
outrageous
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| adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的 | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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rampant
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| adj.(植物)蔓生的；狂暴的，无约束的 | |
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28
optimist
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| n.乐观的人，乐观主义者 | |
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29
ascended
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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laurels
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| n.桂冠，荣誉 | |
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31
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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32
alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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33
exultant
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| adj.欢腾的，狂欢的，大喜的 | |
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34
scented
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| adj.有香味的；洒香水的；有气味的v.嗅到(scent的过去分词) | |
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35
homely
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| adj.家常的，简朴的；不漂亮的 | |
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36
clattering
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的现在分词形式） | |
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whooping
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| 发嗬嗬声的，发咳声的 | |
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38
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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39
epic
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| n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的 | |
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40
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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41
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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42
cosmos
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| n.宇宙；秩序，和谐 | |
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43
costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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44
reconciliation
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| n.和解，和谐，一致 | |
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45
offense
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| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
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46
scamper
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| v.奔跑，快跑 | |
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47
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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48
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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49
sable
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| n.黑貂；adj.黑色的 | |
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50
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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51
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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52
unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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53
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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54
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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55
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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56
dynamiter
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| n.炸药使用者（尤指革命者） | |
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57
miseries
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| n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 )；痛苦的事；穷困；常发牢骚的人 | |
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58
insolently
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| adv.自豪地，自傲地 | |
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59
repel
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| v.击退，抵制，拒绝，排斥 | |
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60
slander
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| n./v.诽谤，污蔑 | |
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61
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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62
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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63
bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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64
conversational
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| adj.对话的，会话的 | |
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65
hopped
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| 跳上[下]( hop的过去式和过去分词 )； 单足蹦跳； 齐足（或双足）跳行； 摘葎草花 | |
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