The Doomsday Men

by J. B. Priestley

  “It’s Bendy,” shouted Jimmy, dancing with impatience. “Charlie, Charlie,” he yelled ineffectually into the blue, waving like a madman, “for Pete’s sake, do something, boy.”

  But what could he do? John MacMichael, having finished his prayer, gave a glance upwards, and then obviously decided to ignore the intruder, though they saw him descend for a moment from his rostrum, presumably to call down to his brothers below. But a moment later, he stood erect again, and now raising his voice because the plane was circling lower and making more noise, he asked them all to ignore it, for it could do nothing, and implored them to receive his blessing, for the hour had arrived. The old biplane went circling round in an unsteady bewildered fashion. Jimmy, joined now by Hooker, was waving and shouting to it, and the two armed men near them were uneasily dividing their time between their charges, whom they were telling to be quiet, and the approaching plane, which they threatened, as ineffectually as Jimmy had shouted to it, with their guns.

  The white figure on the tower now raised its two arms high, and at the sight of this first solemn warning, the watching crowd of brethren, most of them still huddled together on their knees, gave a shout.

  The plane turned and rose, as if its pilot had decided there was nothing he could do and was leaving them. Though Jimmy and Malcolm and Hooker could not have said what they had expected the plane to do, yet now their hearts sank, and Jimmy groaned. “Oh—Charlie—boy—for God’s sake!”

  Again, the white figure raised its arms, very high this time, and the responding cries of the crowd were louder still. And now Malcolm felt terribly afraid, and held Andrea, who had suddenly turned to bury her face in his shoulder, closely to him, praying hard that the vast coming terror would not find him a gibbering coward. But the plane was not leaving them. It had swung round sharply, with a sudden accelerated roar, then shot down like a great projectile. Poor Charlie Atwood, who had performed so many stunts for meagre pay, now did his last stunt for nothing, and perhaps saved the world. He sent old Bendy crashing into the nearest pylon, and as she splintered and flamed and he went to his death, the cables parted. No more electric current was flowing into the tower.

  Nevertheless, high above the burning wreckage, the white figure still raised its arms, to give the final signal, ignoring the confusion and tumult below. As the arms fell, it seemed as if the earth gave a shiver and then split. All the watchers were struck down as if by a hammer; the air went screaming above their prone bodies; the ground shuddered and heaved; and only half-conscious now they heard dimly the earthquake thunder of toppling buildings. It was indeed like the end of the world.

  Yet after some moments, which in their fear, darkness and utter confusion could not be reckoned by ordinary time, one after another they lifted their aching heads, and looked to see what had happened. The tower had vanished; the house itself was a ruin; and the steep slope behind was scarred and fissured, and still seemed to smoke like a battlefield. A vast cloud of dust was rising slowly above the head of the valley. The sky was thick and yellowed. The air was hard to breathe. From the ruins there came licking out a long thin tongue of flame, and now in the terrible silence, like that which accompanies a deeply ironic stare, they could hear the crackling of fire. Malcolm and Andrea, Jimmy and Hooker were shaken but not hurt, and those near them were also uninjured. But some of the brethren farther along the hill-side were still lying motionless. One of the guards who had been posted near the tower could be seen crawling out of the wreckage, bleeding as he came. Most of the others must have been killed. The three MacMichaels were buried in the ruins of their tower.

  It was then as if the world, which had laughed at the warning messages of last night, was suddenly awakened by the final crash itself, or the air that had fled screaming from the valley had carried with it rumours of catastrophe; for within a few hours planes filled with reporters, cameramen, radio and news-film commentators, and the like, were roaring and circling over the ruins, and a host of cars were burning up the road through Barstow, which, distant though it was from the actual scene, now became the headquarters of the news campaign and found itself suddenly famous. All that night the world stared at its headlines and listened to its broadcast news in wonder and amazement that were clouded with a new apprehension. A shudder of fear went through the world as the commentators drew vivid and largely imaginary pictures of the narrow escape everybody had just had, as distinguished scientists, dragged out of their quiet sane laboratories into the shrieking arena of big news, talked of this possibility and that, as photographs of the ruined remote valley went jerkily across a myriad screens to the accompaniment of shouting voices explaining what had been attempted and what might have happened, those voices so hot with human interest and yet so strangely inhuman in their amplified mechanical excitement. Now that they were dead and gone, the three MacMichaels suddenly cast shadows that stretched menacingly across whole continents and oceans. Their sinister biographies blackened innumerable columns. Dubious dots to represent their faces were flashed from capital to capital. Thus as the arch-criminals of our time they towered while what remained of them on earth still lay beneath their own ruined tower. To end the world? Millions of men and women stared at each other, their minds busy with crashing images of destruction. For an hour or two, clouded by this vision of what might have been, the producers forgot to blame the distributors; the distributors forgave both producers and consumers; the industrialists and the bankers were at one; the farmers stopped disliking the city folks; men who worked in black coats made common cause with men who worked in overalls; associations of employers made light of trade unions; capitalist and proletarian remembered they shared the same earth; fascists and communists were haunted by the same vision; patriotic imperialists failed to salute the battle-torn flags waving above their dividends; foreign secretaries neglected the drafted agreements that nobody intended to keep; the Class Struggle, the Red Menace, the Fascist Will, the Jewish Problem, the German Destiny, the Failure of the New Deal, the Decadence of Britain, Japan Over Asia, Italy Over Africa, Stalin Over Russia, the Threat to Democracy, the Decay of Liberalism, the Collapse of Civilisation, all were temporarily forgotten, and for a few hours all the currents of prejudice and mistrust and fear and hate were dammed behind one gigantic barrier, and though men were haunted by this one dark vision of doomsday, somehow for that little time they breathed a larger and nobler air. It did not last long, of course, for we live in an eventful age and have a magnificent news service, and so, flinging a few last curses at the memory of those three insane brothers who had tried to destroy the world at one stroke, men returned to their ordinary tasks and thoughts, perhaps to destroy the world piece by piece.

  Towards the end of that insane day, which remained just as much a nightmare after the world had discovered that it was not to be destroyed, Andrea and the three friends fled from the scene, now rapidly turning into a vast garbage heap, lit by photographers’ flash-lights and raked through by newspapermen. Jimmy had had a bright idea, and packing them into Andrea’s big car had driven them himself, as fast as he could go along those narrow roads, with much blinding traffic coming into the valley, and with many stops when he was not sure of the way, over the dark mountains and under the wide glitter of stars, to another remote valley and a little ranch there, where there was as yet no hostess to look after them. But they were all still dazed and completely exhausted, and throwing themselves down anywhere they slept and slept, and were hardly fully awake when Mrs. Atwood herself arrived in the middle of the following afternoon. And there they stayed, telling their stories over and over again, under the peaceful sky, for many days. Mrs. Atwood, brighter of eye than ever, for even when she remembered Charlie her eyes were bright with tears, tears of pride as well as of sorrow, fussed happily over them; and she made Andrea, who was very quiet, very mournful, these days, and even kept aloof from the bewildered and unhappy Malcolm, answer all her questions so that the girl could not imprison herself in
her silent brooding. Malcolm wandered and wondered about the place, a pale, gloomy, handsome young man, asking himself what was to be done next. Jimmy and Hooker, sent off with smiles and nods by their hostess, mysteriously departed for Barstow and, after that, Los Angeles, to return with Jimmy’s baggage and a host of things for the others at the ranch.

  Now it was the morning after they had returned, a late October morning as clean as a new pin, with the little valley all smiling and the hills all sparkling and winking. Jimmy had gone off by himself in good time, taking his easel and paint-box to a little rocky knoll overlooking the ranch-house. Hooker was sprawling in a deck-chair under one of the cottonwoods, but not idling, for he never lifted his eyes from the notebook he held, a notebook that never seemed out of his hand now. Malcolm, becoming desperate, had implored Andrea to come into the sunshine with him and she had at last agreed, after being strongly urged to go by Mrs. Atwood, who pretended that she could do nothing round the place if they did not leave her to herself in the mornings, but seemed to be more full of smiles and nods and little secrets than ever. Indeed, when the lovers had gone, she appeared to be curiously expectant and kept looking down the road through the valley. She also took quite a number of peeps at Mr. Edlin, who could just be seen painting away on the hillside, but when she looked in that direction, the smiles and nods vanished, and it appeared then as if she were a bit anxious and a bit disappointed and in general rather puzzled by and dissatisfied with the distant Jimmy, so entirely absorbed up there.

  Slowly leaving the ranch-house, Andrea and Malcolm came up to Hooker under his tree. “What are you doing, Hooker?” asked Malcolm, with that touch of irritation often felt by the idle for the deeply employed.

  Before Hooker, coming out of his mathematical dream, could reply, Andrea looked hard at the notebook he was holding. “I’m nearly sure my uncle used to have that kind.”

  Hooker blinked a little. “This was one of your uncle’s,” he mumbled, looking rather shamefaced. “I don’t know if you remember, but I managed to get into his room, before the fire had reached that end of the house, and though it was all smashed up, I salvaged three of these notebooks of his. I’m trying to follow his tracks, because he only dropped a hint or two, that last night, about what he’d discovered. I haven’t got fairly on to them yet, but these notes of his look dandy to me. I never liked him, I guess, but—say, he was a great physicist.”

  “I’ve never asked before—though I suppose you’re tired of talking about it,” said Andrea, hesitantly, “but why was it such a failure then?”

  “He was too rushed. That’s the first thing. I don’t know why,” said Hooker thoughtfully, “though I might when I’ve been through these notebooks, but he felt compelled to hurry it on too quickly at the end. And then, of course, the current being cut off at the last moment, that upset all his calculations. What really happened, down there under the tower and way back under the hill itself, we don’t know yet, but as soon as they’ve cleaned it up a bit on the surface, I’m going to have a look. I’ve been given permission, officially, to investigate. That’s why I’m concentrating on these notebooks. And—boy—are we going to have something to tell ’em! Here, sorry, Andrea—I oughtn’t to be talking this way, I guess, to you,” he concluded lamely.

  Andrea shook her head and smiled rather wanly, then she and Malcolm walked slowly across the tiny pasture towards the hill away from the road and opposite to that on which Jimmy was sitting. They never noticed the little cloud of dust moving up the valley, and if they heard the distant sound of a car they were not sufficiently curious about it to turn round. But now they had begun to talk, after several despairing appeals from Malcolm, and as they talked they wandered towards a tiny clump of box-elder trees, which were almost as white and dusty above as the strange and ghostly desert holly scattered on the valley floor, but which seemed still to cast a friendly green shade. And here in this shade, they stopped.

  “You see,” said Andrea miserably, “I can’t marry you. I couldn’t marry anybody, but anyhow that’s not the point because I don’t want to. No, it’s not because of all the horrible talk and fuss, which I suppose may go on for ages. That’s bad enough, but it isn’t that.”

  “Well, what is it then?” cried Malcolm. “Is it—something about me?”

  “No, you idiot, how could it be?” she cried, smiling for once. “It’s me. Don’t you see, my—those three—as everybody says now—must have been mad. All three. And I believe my grandfather was queer too——”

  “That doesn’t matter,” said Malcolm sturdily. “You’re not off your head, except at this minute, and you’re never going to be.”

  “You can’t tell. And everybody knows that it runs in families. Even if I’m all right, suppose we—I—had some children—and they began to be queer?”

  “You know,” said Malcolm gently, following his own thought and not hers, perhaps deliberately, “those three—I suppose they were mad in a way—they’d got shut up inside themselves——”

  “As you tell me I do,” she put in, hastily.

  “No, not like that. They had somehow got themselves all shut in, so that they could only see everything from one point of view—I mean, they were different among themselves, of course, but each just saw everything from his own point of view—but there was a kind of grandeur—a sort of nobility—about them, quite different from ordinary lunatic stuff.”

  “There you go, you see—even you—talking about lunatic stuff. And whatever you may say, I’m one of them. One of them was my father—that seems very strange now, but after all it’s true—and the other two were my uncles.”

  She looked at him mournfully, and he tried to take it easily and smile but somehow he couldn’t. And there they stood, dumb and frustrated, in the middle of the shining day. They were silent for some time, just staring at each other, with the same melancholy little troop of thoughts going round and round in their heads.

  “No, Malcolm, it’s hopeless. I seem to have been saying that about one thing or another ever since we first met. But there it is. Still hopeless. However much I may pretend, or you pretend for me, I’m a MacMichael.”

  “Hey, what’s that you’re saying?”

  They swung round, and were surprised, rather annoyed. The intruder came up cheerfully.

  “Hello, Mr. Mitchell,” said Andrea, without enthusiasm, though trying to be friendly, “how do you come to be here?”

  “Oh!—I just wandered along,” said the bearded man, who still wore the same disreputable garments and the same surprising air of distinction in them. “Hallo, young man! You both seem to have recovered from your adventure pretty well. But now, young woman, I know I shouldn’t ask and it’s the height of bad manners and tactlessness, but would you mind repeating what you just said to this not very cheerful young man?”

  “If you must know,” said Andrea, not snubbing him unpleasantly, however, but rather as if she were showing poor Malcolm the strength of mind she had in the presence of this comparative stranger, “I was telling him I couldn’t marry him because I’m a MacMichael.”

  “Is that the only reason?” asked Mr. Mitchell, who appeared to think it amusing.

  “Golly—yes, of course,” she replied in a sort of fine confused mixture of enthusiasm, tenderness and misery.

  “Then go ahead, because, you see, you’re not a MacMichael.”

  “What?” And they shouted it together.

  “You’re not a MacMichael. You were Henry MacMichael’s step-daughter, not his own daughter. And your name’s really Mitchell.”

  “But you’re——”

  “No, I’m not your father, if that’s what you were going to say. I wish I was. I’m merely your uncle, your father’s brother. He died two years ago, in Peru. His name was Scott Mitchell—like me, a mining engineer. You see, my dear, we both wanted to marry your mother, whom we’d known sinc
e we were boys, and he—well, he was the lucky one, though poor Scott was never lucky long. He was a bit wild, never kept a dollar, and not long after you were born, your mother left him. I took Scott away, had to do something with him. There was a divorce, and then, while you were still a baby, Henry MacMichael became your step-father and insisted upon giving you his name. If your mother had lived, well she’d probably have told you herself—but she didn’t, and then there was nobody to tell you. My brother, who’d had dealings with the MacMichaels before and didn’t like them or their methods, wouldn’t come back here at all. But he knew I’d be coming back—and he asked me—it was about the last thing he ever said to me—to see what was happening to you, though I’d have done that without being asked. I’ve some things of his—old photographs and so on—that you’d probably like to have. And that,” he turned suddenly to Malcolm, in order to leave Andrea to herself a moment, “explains a little urgent conversation you and I had last week, not far from Jubilee Pass.”

  “I tried to act on your advice then,” said Malcolm happily, “and I’m still going to act on it.”

  “I’ll leave you to get on with it,” said Mr. Mitchell, twinkling away, and after giving Andrea a new avuncular smile, he showed them the very creased and stained back of his disreputable jacket, as he took it and himself back to the ranch-house, out of which a very impatient Mrs. Atwood, almost dancing with curiosity, suddenly appeared. But she did not remain long with Mr. Mitchell. After firmly introducing him to Hooker, and compelling that long lean young man to emerge from his notebook and be sociable, she tripped up the hill, ostensibly to tell Jimmy Edlin the news. On the way there she told herself not to be a silly woman, that she’d no right to feel disappointed with Jimmy, that they were all good friends and what more could she expect, and much more stuff of the same kind. And there he was, painting away like a real artist, his pipe stuck in his mouth but no smoke coming out of it, his broad face very red and moist, his eyes screwed up comically, an entirely unromantic figure to every possible person in the world except one. But she was remembering, though she didn’t want to at this particular moment, and felt it was downright tiresome of her to do so, the terrible afternoon—and who could believe it was only a week ago?—when he had put her in that plane beside poor Charlie and remained behind himself. Unromantic figure indeed! Just the right age and size and shape of a man!