CHAPTER V. THE FEAST OF FEAR
AT first the large stone stair seemed to Syme as deserted as a pyramid;but before he reached the top he had realised that there was a manleaning over the parapet of the Embankment and looking out across theriver. As a figure he was quite conventional, clad in a silk hat andfrock-coat of the more formal type of fashion; he had a red flower inhis buttonhole. As Syme drew nearer to him step by step, he did not evenmove a hair; and Syme could come close enough to notice even in the dim,pale morning light that his face was long, pale and intellectual, andended in a small triangular tuft of dark beard at the very point of thechin, all else being clean-shaven. This scrap of hair almost seemeda mere oversight; the rest of the face was of the type that is bestshaven--clear-cut, ascetic, and in its way noble. Syme drew closer andcloser, noting all this, and still the figure did not stir.
At first an instinct had told Syme that this was the man whom he wasmeant to meet. Then, seeing that the man made no sign, he had concludedthat he was not. And now again he had come back to a certainty that theman had something to do with his mad adventure. For the man remainedmore still than would have been natural if a stranger had come so close.He was as motionless as a wax-work, and got on the nerves somewhat inthe same way. Syme looked again and again at the pale, dignified anddelicate face, and the face still looked blankly across the river. Thenhe took out of his pocket the note from Buttons proving his election,and put it before that sad and beautiful face. Then the man smiled, andhis smile was a shock, for it was all on one side, going up in the rightcheek and down in the left.
There was nothing, rationally speaking, to scare anyone about this. Manypeople have this nervous trick of a crooked smile, and in many it iseven attractive. But in all Syme's circumstances, with the dark dawn andthe deadly errand and the loneliness on the great dripping stones, therewas something unnerving in it.
There was the silent river and the silent man, a man of even classicface. And there was the last nightmare touch that his smile suddenlywent wrong.
The spasm of smile was instantaneous, and the man's face dropped at onceinto its harmonious melancholy. He spoke without further explanation orinquiry, like a man speaking to an old colleague.
"If we walk up towards Leicester Square," he said, "we shall just be intime for breakfast. Sunday always insists on an early breakfast. Haveyou had any sleep?"
"No," said Syme.
"Nor have I," answered the man in an ordinary tone. "I shall try to getto bed after breakfast."
He spoke with casual civility, but in an utterly dead voice thatcontradicted the fanaticism of his face. It seemed almost as if allfriendly words were to him lifeless conveniences, and that his only lifewas hate. After a pause the man spoke again.
"Of course, the Secretary of the branch told you everything that can betold. But the one thing that can never be told is the last notion of thePresident, for his notions grow like a tropical forest. So in case youdon't know, I'd better tell you that he is carrying out his notionof concealing ourselves by not concealing ourselves to the mostextraordinary lengths just now. Originally, of course, we met in acell underground, just as your branch does. Then Sunday made us take aprivate room at an ordinary restaurant. He said that if you didn't seemto be hiding nobody hunted you out. Well, he is the only man on earth, Iknow; but sometimes I really think that his huge brain is going a littlemad in its old age. For now we flaunt ourselves before the public.We have our breakfast on a balcony--on a balcony, if youplease--overlooking Leicester Square."
"And what do the people say?" asked Syme.
"It's quite simple what they say," answered his guide.
"They say we are a lot of jolly gentlemen who pretend they areanarchists."
"It seems to me a very clever idea," said Syme.
"Clever! God blast your impudence! Clever!" cried out the other ina sudden, shrill voice which was as startling and discordant as hiscrooked smile. "When you've seen Sunday for a split second you'll leaveoff calling him clever."
With this they emerged out of a narrow street, and saw the earlysunlight filling Leicester Square. It will never be known, I suppose,why this square itself should look so alien and in some ways socontinental. It will never be known whether it was the foreign look thatattracted the foreigners or the foreigners who gave it the foreign look.But on this particular morning the effect seemed singularly bright andclear. Between the open square and the sunlit leaves and the statue andthe Saracenic outlines of the Alhambra, it looked the replica of someFrench or even Spanish public place. And this effect increased inSyme the sensation, which in many shapes he had had through the wholeadventure, the eerie sensation of having strayed into a new world. As afact, he had bought bad cigars round Leicester Square ever since he wasa boy. But as he turned that corner, and saw the trees and the Moorishcupolas, he could have sworn that he was turning into an unknown Placede something or other in some foreign town.
At one corner of the square there projected a kind of angle of aprosperous but quiet hotel, the bulk of which belonged to a streetbehind. In the wall there was one large French window, probably thewindow of a large coffee-room; and outside this window, almost literallyoverhanging the square, was a formidably buttressed balcony, big enoughto contain a dining-table. In fact, it did contain a dining-table, ormore strictly a breakfast-table; and round the breakfast-table, glowingin the sunlight and evident to the street, were a group of noisy andtalkative men, all dressed in the insolence of fashion, with whitewaistcoats and expensive button-holes. Some of their jokes could almostbe heard across the square. Then the grave Secretary gave his unnaturalsmile, and Syme knew that this boisterous breakfast party was the secretconclave of the European Dynamiters.
Then, as Syme continued to stare at them, he saw something that he hadnot seen before. He had not seen it literally because it was too largeto see. At the nearest end of the balcony, blocking up a great part ofthe perspective, was the back of a great mountain of a man. When Symehad seen him, his first thought was that the weight of him must breakdown the balcony of stone. His vastness did not lie only in the factthat he was abnormally tall and quite incredibly fat. This man wasplanned enormously in his original proportions, like a statue carveddeliberately as colossal. His head, crowned with white hair, as seenfrom behind looked bigger than a head ought to be. The ears that stoodout from it looked larger than human ears. He was enlarged terribly toscale; and this sense of size was so staggering, that when Syme sawhim all the other figures seemed quite suddenly to dwindle and becomedwarfish. They were still sitting there as before with their flowers andfrock-coats, but now it looked as if the big man was entertaining fivechildren to tea.
As Syme and the guide approached the side door of the hotel, a waitercame out smiling with every tooth in his head.
"The gentlemen are up there, sare," he said. "They do talk and they dolaugh at what they talk. They do say they will throw bombs at ze king."
And the waiter hurried away with a napkin over his arm, much pleasedwith the singular frivolity of the gentlemen upstairs.
The two men mounted the stairs in silence.
Syme had never thought of asking whether the monstrous man who almostfilled and broke the balcony was the great President of whom the othersstood in awe. He knew it was so, with an unaccountable but instantaneouscertainty. Syme, indeed, was one of those men who are open to all themore nameless psychological influences in a degree a little dangerousto mental health. Utterly devoid of fear in physical dangers, he was agreat deal too sensitive to the smell of spiritual evil. Twice alreadythat night little unmeaning things had peeped out at him almostpruriently, and given him a sense of drawing nearer and nearer to thehead-quarters of hell. And this sense became overpowering as he drewnearer to the great President.
The form it took was a childish and yet hateful fancy. As he walkedacross the inner room towards the balcony, the large face of Sunday grewlarger and larger; and Syme was gripped with a fear that when he wasquite close the face would be too big to be po
ssible, and that he wouldscream aloud. He remembered that as a child he would not look at themask of Memnon in the British Museum, because it was a face, and solarge.
By an effort, braver than that of leaping over a cliff, he went to anempty seat at the breakfast-table and sat down. The men greeted himwith good-humoured raillery as if they had always known him. He soberedhimself a little by looking at their conventional coats and solid,shining coffee-pot; then he looked again at Sunday. His face was verylarge, but it was still possible to humanity.
In the presence of the President the whole company looked sufficientlycommonplace; nothing about them caught the eye at first, except thatby the President's caprice they had been dressed up with a festiverespectability, which gave the meal the look of a wedding breakfast. Oneman indeed stood out at even a superficial glance. He at least was thecommon or garden Dynamiter. He wore, indeed, the high white collar andsatin tie that were the uniform of the occasion; but out of thiscollar there sprang a head quite unmanageable and quite unmistakable, abewildering bush of brown hair and beard that almost obscured the eyeslike those of a Skye terrier. But the eyes did look out of the tangle,and they were the sad eyes of some Russian serf. The effect of thisfigure was not terrible like that of the President, but it had everydiablerie that can come from the utterly grotesque. If out of that stifftie and collar there had come abruptly the head of a cat or a dog, itcould not have been a more idiotic contrast.
The man's name, it seemed, was Gogol; he was a Pole, and in this circleof days he was called Tuesday. His soul and speech were incurablytragic; he could not force himself to play the prosperous and frivolouspart demanded of him by President Sunday. And, indeed, when Syme came inthe President, with that daring disregard of public suspicion which washis policy, was actually chaffing Gogol upon his inability to assumeconventional graces.
"Our friend Tuesday," said the President in a deep voice at once ofquietude and volume, "our friend Tuesday doesn't seem to grasp the idea.He dresses up like a gentleman, but he seems to be too great a soul tobehave like one. He insists on the ways of the stage conspirator. Now ifa gentleman goes about London in a top hat and a frock-coat, no one needknow that he is an anarchist. But if a gentleman puts on a top hat anda frock-coat, and then goes about on his hands and knees--well, he mayattract attention. That's what Brother Gogol does. He goes about on hishands and knees with such inexhaustible diplomacy, that by this time hefinds it quite difficult to walk upright."
"I am not good at goncealment," said Gogol sulkily, with a thick foreignaccent; "I am not ashamed of the cause."
"Yes you are, my boy, and so is the cause of you," said the Presidentgood-naturedly. "You hide as much as anybody; but you can't do it, yousee, you're such an ass! You try to combine two inconsistent methods.When a householder finds a man under his bed, he will probably pause tonote the circumstance. But if he finds a man under his bed in a top hat,you will agree with me, my dear Tuesday, that he is not likely even toforget it. Now when you were found under Admiral Biffin's bed--"
"I am not good at deception," said Tuesday gloomily, flushing.
"Right, my boy, right," said the President with a ponderous heartiness,"you aren't good at anything."
While this stream of conversation continued, Syme was looking moresteadily at the men around him. As he did so, he gradually felt all hissense of something spiritually queer return.
He had thought at first that they were all of common stature andcostume, with the evident exception of the hairy Gogol. But as he lookedat the others, he began to see in each of them exactly what he had seenin the man by the river, a demoniac detail somewhere. That lop-sidedlaugh, which would suddenly disfigure the fine face of his originalguide, was typical of all these types. Each man had something abouthim, perceived perhaps at the tenth or twentieth glance, which was notnormal, and which seemed hardly human. The only metaphor he could thinkof was this, that they all looked as men of fashion and presence wouldlook, with the additional twist given in a false and curved mirror.
Only the individual examples will express this half-concealedeccentricity. Syme's original cicerone bore the title of Monday; he wasthe Secretary of the Council, and his twisted smile was regarded withmore terror than anything, except the President's horrible, happylaughter. But now that Syme had more space and light to observe him,there were other touches. His fine face was so emaciated, that Symethought it must be wasted with some disease; yet somehow the verydistress of his dark eyes denied this. It was no physical ill thattroubled him. His eyes were alive with intellectual torture, as if purethought was pain.
He was typical of each of the tribe; each man was subtly and differentlywrong. Next to him sat Tuesday, the tousle-headed Gogol, a man moreobviously mad. Next was Wednesday, a certain Marquis de St. Eustache, asufficiently characteristic figure. The first few glances found nothingunusual about him, except that he was the only man at table who worethe fashionable clothes as if they were really his own. He had a blackFrench beard cut square and a black English frock-coat cut even squarer.But Syme, sensitive to such things, felt somehow that the man carried arich atmosphere with him, a rich atmosphere that suffocated. It remindedone irrationally of drowsy odours and of dying lamps in the darkerpoems of Byron and Poe. With this went a sense of his being clad, notin lighter colours, but in softer materials; his black seemed richerand warmer than the black shades about him, as if it were compounded ofprofound colour. His black coat looked as if it were only black by beingtoo dense a purple. His black beard looked as if it were only black bybeing too deep a blue. And in the gloom and thickness of the beard hisdark red mouth showed sensual and scornful. Whatever he was he was nota Frenchman; he might be a Jew; he might be something deeper yet inthe dark heart of the East. In the bright coloured Persian tiles andpictures showing tyrants hunting, you may see just those almond eyes,those blue-black beards, those cruel, crimson lips.
Then came Syme, and next a very old man, Professor de Worms, who stillkept the chair of Friday, though every day it was expected that hisdeath would leave it empty. Save for his intellect, he was in the lastdissolution of senile decay. His face was as grey as his long greybeard, his forehead was lifted and fixed finally in a furrow of milddespair. In no other case, not even that of Gogol, did the bridegroombrilliancy of the morning dress express a more painful contrast. Forthe red flower in his button-hole showed up against a face that wasliterally discoloured like lead; the whole hideous effect was as if somedrunken dandies had put their clothes upon a corpse. When he rose orsat down, which was with long labour and peril, something worse wasexpressed than mere weakness, something indefinably connected with thehorror of the whole scene. It did not express decrepitude merely, butcorruption. Another hateful fancy crossed Syme's quivering mind. Hecould not help thinking that whenever the man moved a leg or arm mightfall off.
Right at the end sat the man called Saturday, the simplest and the mostbaffling of all. He was a short, square man with a dark, square faceclean-shaven, a medical practitioner going by the name of Bull. He hadthat combination of savoir-faire with a sort of well-groomed coarsenesswhich is not uncommon in young doctors. He carried his fine clothes withconfidence rather than ease, and he mostly wore a set smile. There wasnothing whatever odd about him, except that he wore a pair of dark,almost opaque spectacles. It may have been merely a crescendo of nervousfancy that had gone before, but those black discs were dreadful to Syme;they reminded him of half-remembered ugly tales, of some story aboutpennies being put on the eyes of the dead. Syme's eye always caught theblack glasses and the blind grin. Had the dying Professor worn them, oreven the pale Secretary, they would have been appropriate. But on theyounger and grosser man they seemed only an enigma. They took away thekey of the face. You could not tell what his smile or his gravity meant.Partly from this, and partly because he had a vulgar virility wanting inmost of the others it seemed to Syme that he might be the wickedest ofall those wicked men. Syme even had the thought that his eyes might becovered up because they were too frightful to
see.
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare Page 6