very few words are needed to explain why london, a hundred years hence, will be very like it is now, or rather, since i must slip into a prophetic past, why london, when my story opens, was very like it was in those enviable days when i was still alive.
the reason can be stated in one sentence. the people had absolutely lost faith in revolutions. all revolutions are doctrinal — such as the french one, or the one that introduced christianity. for it stands to common sense that you cannot upset all existing things, customs, and compromises, unless you believe in something outside them, something positive and divine. now, england, during this century, lost all belief in this. it believed in a thing called evolution. and it said, “all theoretic changes have ended in blood and ennui. if we change, we must change slowly and safely, as the animals do. nature’s revolutions are the only successful ones. there has been no conservative reaction in favour of tails.”
and some things did change. things that were not much thought of dropped out of sight. things that had not often happened did not happen at all. thus, for instance, the actual physical force ruling the country, the soldiers and police, grew smaller and smaller, and at last vanished almost to a point. the people combined could have swept the few policemen away in ten minutes: they did not, because they did not believe it would do them the least good. they had lost faith in revolutions.
democracy was dead; for no one minded the governing class governing. england was now practically a despotism, but not an hereditary one. some one in the official class was made king. no one cared how: no one cared who. he was merely an universal secretary.
in this manner it happened that everything in london was very quiet. that vague and somewhat depressed reliance upon things happening as they have always happened, which is with all londoners a mood, had become an assumed condition. there was really no reason for any man doing anything but the thing he had done the day before.
there was therefore no reason whatever why the three young men who had always walked up to their government office together should not walk up to it together on this particular wintry and cloudy morning. everything in that age had become mechanical, and government clerks especially. all those clerks assembled regularly at their posts. three of those clerks always walked into town together. all the neighbourhood knew them: two of them were tall and one short. and on this particular morning the short clerk was only a few seconds late to join the other two as they passed his gate: he could have overtaken them in three strides; he could have called after them easily. but he did not.
for some reason that will never be understood until all souls are judged (if they are ever judged; the idea was at this time classed with fetish worship) he did not join his two companions, but walked steadily behind them. the day was dull, their dress was dull, everything was dull; but in some odd impulse he walked through street after street, through district after district, looking at the backs of the two men, who would have swung round at the sound of his voice. now, there is a law written in the darkest of the books of life, and it is this: if you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.
so the short government official looked at the coat-tails of the tall government officials, and through street after street, and round corner after corner, saw only coat-tails, coat-tails, and again coat-tails — when, he did not in the least know why, something happened to his eyes.
two black dragons were walking backwards in front of him. two black dragons were looking at him with evil eyes. the dragons were walking backwards it was true, but they kept their eyes fixed on him none the less. the eyes which he saw were, in truth, only the two buttons at the back of a frock-coat: perhaps some traditional memory of their meaningless character gave this half-witted prominence to their gaze. the slit between the tails was the nose-line of the monster: whenever the tails flapped in the winter wind the dragons licked their lips. it was only a momentary fancy, but the small clerk found it imbedded in his soul ever afterwards. he never could again think of men in frock-coats except as dragons walking backwards. he explained afterwards, quite tactfully and nicely, to his two official friends, that (while feeling an inexpressible regard for each of them) he could not seriously regard the face of either of them as anything but a kind of tail. it was, he admitted, a handsome tail — a tail elevated in the air. but if, he said, any true friend of theirs wished to see their faces, to look into the eyes of their soul, that friend must be allowed to walk reverently round behind them, so as to see them from the rear. there he would see the two black dragons with the blind eyes.
but when first the two black dragons sprang out of the fog upon the small clerk, they had merely the effect of all miracles — they changed the universe. he discovered the fact that all romantics know — that adventures happen on dull days, and not on sunny ones. when the chord of monotony is stretched most tight, then it breaks with a sound like song. he had scarcely noticed the weather before, but with the four dead eyes glaring at him he looked round and realised the strange dead day.
the morning was wintry and dim, not misty, but darkened with that shadow of cloud or snow which steeps everything in a green or copper twilight. the light there is on such a day seems not so much to come from the clear heavens as to be a phosphorescence clinging to the shapes themselves. the load of heaven and the clouds is like a load of waters, and the men move like fishes, feeling that they are on the floor of a sea. everything in a london street completes the fantasy; the carriages and cabs themselves resemble deep-sea creatures with eyes of flame. he had been startled at first to meet two dragons. now he found he was among deep-sea dragons possessing the deep sea.
the two young men in front were like the small young man himself, well-dressed. the lines of their frock-coats and silk hats had that luxuriant severity which makes the modern fop, hideous as he is, a favourite exercise of the modern draughtsman; that element which mr. max beerbohm has admirably expressed in speaking of “certain congruities of dark cloth and the rigid perfection of linen.”
they walked with the gait of an affected snail, and they spoke at the longest intervals, dropping a sentence at about every sixth lamp-post.
they crawled on past the lamp-posts; their mien was so immovable that a fanciful description might almost say, that the lamp-posts crawled past the men, as in a dream. then the small man suddenly ran after them and said —
“i want to get my hair cut. i say, do you know a little shop anywhere where they cut your hair properly? i keep on having my hair cut, but it keeps on growing again.”
one of the tall men looked at him with the air of a pained naturalist.
“why, here is a little place,” cried the small man, with a sort of imbecile cheerfulness, as the bright bulging window of a fashionable toilet-saloon glowed abruptly out of the foggy twilight. “do you know, i often find hair-dressers when i walk about london. i’ll lunch with you at cicconani’s . you know, i’m awfully fond of hair-dressers’ shops. they’re miles better than those nasty butchers’.” and he disappeared into the doorway.
the man called james continued to gaze after him, a monocle screwed into his eye.
“what the devil do you make of that fellow?” he asked his companion, a pale young man with a high nose.
the pale young man reflected conscientiously for some minutes, and then said —
“had a knock on his head when he was a kid, i should think.”
“no, i don’t think it’s that,” replied the honourable james barker. “i’ve sometimes fancied he was a sort of artist, lambert.”
“bosh!” cried mr. lambert, briefly.
“i admit i can’t make him out,” resumed barker, abstractedly; “he never opens his mouth without saying something so indescribably half-witted that to call him a fool seems the very feeblest attempt at characterisation. but there’s another thing about him that’s rather funny. do you know that he has the one collection of japanese lacquer in europe? have you ever seen his books? all greek poets and medi?val french and that sort of thing. have you ever been in his rooms? it’s like being inside an amethyst. and he moves about in all that and talks like — like a turnip.”
“well, damn all books. your blue books as well,” said the ingenuous mr. lambert, with a friendly simplicity. “you ought to understand such things. what do you make of him?”
“he’s beyond me,” returned barker. “but if you asked me for my opinion, i should say he was a man with a taste for nonsense, as they call it — artistic fooling, and all that kind of thing. and i seriously believe that he has talked nonsense so much that he has half bewildered his own mind and doesn’t know the difference between sanity and insanity. he has gone round the mental world, so to speak, and found the place where the east and the west are one, and extreme idiocy is as good as sense. but i can’t explain these psychological games.”
“you can’t explain them to me,” replied mr. wilfrid lambert, with candour.
as they passed up the long streets towards their restaurant the copper twilight cleared slowly to a pale yellow, and by the time they reached it they stood discernible in a tolerable winter daylight. the honourable james barker, one of the most powerful officials in the english government (by this time a rigidly official one), was a lean and elegant young man, with a blank handsome face and bleak blue eyes. he had a great amount of intellectual capacity, of that peculiar kind which raises a man from throne to throne and lets him die loaded with honours without having either amused or enlightened the mind of a single man. wilfrid lambert, the youth with the nose which appeared to impoverish the rest of his face, had also contributed little to the enlargement of the human spirit, but he had the honourable excuse of being a fool.
lambert would have been called a silly man; barker, with all his cleverness, might have been called a stupid man. but mere silliness and stupidity sank into insignificance in the presence of the awful and mysterious treasures of foolishness apparently stored up in the small figure that stood waiting for them outside cicconani’s . the little man, whose name was auberon quin, had an appearance compounded of a baby and an owl. his round head, round eyes, seemed to have been designed by nature playfully with a pair of compasses. his flat dark hair and preposterously long frock-coat gave him something of the look of a child’s “noah.” when he entered a room of strangers, they mistook him for a small boy, and wanted to take him on their knees, until he spoke, when they perceived that a boy would have been more intelligent.
“i have been waiting quite a long time,” said quin, mildly. “it’s awfully funny i should see you coming up the street at last.”
“why?” asked lambert, staring. “you told us to come here yourself.”
“my mother used to tell people to come to places,” said the sage.
they were about to turn into the restaurant with a resigned air, when their eyes were caught by something in the street. the weather, though cold and blank, was now quite clear, and across the dull brown of the wood pavement and between the dull grey terraces was moving something not to be seen for miles round — not to be seen perhaps at that time in england — a man dressed in bright colours. a small crowd hung on the man’s heels.
he was a tall stately man, clad in a military uniform of brilliant green, splashed with great silver facings. from the shoulder swung a short green furred cloak, somewhat like that of a hussar, the lining of which gleamed every now and then with a kind of tawny crimson. his breast glittered with medals; round his neck was the red ribbon and star of some foreign order; and a long straight sword, with a blazing hilt, trailed and clattered along the pavement. at this time the pacific and utilitarian development of europe had relegated all such customs to the museums. the only remaining force, the small but well-organised police, were attired in a sombre and hygienic manner. but even those who remembered the last life guards and lancers who disappeared in 1912 must have known at a glance that this was not, and never had been, an english uniform; and this conviction would have been heightened by the yellow aquiline face, like dante carved in bronze, which rose, crowned with white hair, out of the green military collar, a keen and distinguished, but not an english face.
the magnificence with which the green-clad gentleman walked down the centre of the road would be something difficult to express in human language. for it was an ingrained simplicity and arrogance, something in the mere carriage of the head and body, which made ordinary moderns in the street stare after him; but it had comparatively little to do with actual conscious gestures or expression. in the matter of these merely temporary movements, the man appeared to be rather worried and inquisitive, but he was inquisitive with the inquisitiveness of a despot and worried as with the responsibilities of a god. the men who lounged and wondered behind him followed partly with an astonishment at his brilliant uniform, that is to say, partly because of that instinct which makes us all follow one who looks like a madman, but far more because of that instinct which makes all men follow (and worship) any one who chooses to behave like a king. he had to so sublime an extent that great quality of royalty — an almost imbecile unconsciousness of everybody, that people went after him as they do after kings — to see what would be the first thing or person he would take notice of. and all the time, as we have said, in spite of his quiet splendour, there was an air about him as if he were looking for somebody; an expression of inquiry.
suddenly that expression of inquiry vanished, none could tell why, and was replaced by an expression of contentment. amid the rapt attention of the mob of idlers, the magnificent green gentleman deflected himself from his direct course down the centre of the road and walked to one side of it. he came to a halt opposite to a large poster of colman’s mustard erected on a wooden hoarding. his spectators almost held their breath.
he took from a small pocket in his uniform a little penknife; with this he made a slash at the stretched paper. completing the rest of the operation with his fingers, he tore off a strip or rag of paper, yellow in colour and wholly irregular in outline. then for the first time the great being addressed his adoring onlookers —
“can any one,” he said, with a pleasing foreign accent, “lend me a pin?”
mr. lambert, who happened to be nearest, and who carried innumerable pins for the purpose of attaching innumerable buttonholes, lent him one, which was received with extravagant but dignified bows, and hyperboles of thanks.
the gentleman in green, then, with every appearance of being gratified, and even puffed up, pinned the piece of yellow paper to the green silk and silver-lace adornments of his breast. then he turned his eyes round again, searching and unsatisfied.
“anything else i can do, sir?” asked lambert, with the absurd politeness of the englishman when once embarrassed.
“red,” said the stranger, vaguely, “red.”
“i beg your pardon?”
“i beg yours also, se?or,” said the stranger, bowing. “i was wondering whether any of you had any red about you.”
“any red about us? — well really — no, i don’t think i have — i used to carry a red bandanna once, but —”
“barker,” asked auberon quin, suddenly, “where’s your red cockatoo? where’s your red cockatoo?”
“what do you mean?” asked barker, desperately. “what cockatoo? you’ve never seen me with any cockatoo!”
“i know,” said auberon, vaguely mollified. “where’s it been all the time?”
barker swung round, not without resentment.
“i am sorry, sir,” he said, shortly but civilly, “none of us seem to have anything red to lend you. but why, if one may ask —”
“i thank you, se?or, it is nothing. i can, since there is nothing else, fulfil my own requirements.”
and standing for a second of thought with the penknife in his hand, he stabbed his left palm. the blood fell with so full a stream that it struck the stones without dripping. the foreigner pulled out his handkerchief and tore a piece from it with his teeth. the rag was immediately soaked in scarlet.
“since you are so generous, se?or,” he said, “another pin, perhaps.”
lambert held one out, with eyes protruding like a frog’s .
the red linen was pinned beside the yellow paper, and the foreigner took off his hat.
“i have to thank you all, gentlemen,” he said; and wrapping the remainder of the handkerchief round his bleeding hand, he resumed his walk with an overwhelming stateliness.
while all the rest paused, in some disorder, little mr. auberon quin ran after the stranger and stopped him, with hat in hand. considerably to everybody’s astonishment, he addressed him in the purest spanish —
“se?or,” he said in that language, “pardon a hospitality, perhaps indiscreet, towards one who appears to be a distinguished, but a solitary guest in london. will you do me and my friends, with whom you have held some conversation, the honour of lunching with us at the adjoining restaurant?”
the man in the green uniform had turned a fiery colour of pleasure at the mere sound of his own language, and he accepted the invitation with that profusion of bows which so often shows, in the case of the southern races, the falsehood of the notion that ceremony has nothing to do with feeling.
“se?or,” he said, “your language is my own; but all my love for my people shall not lead me to deny to yours the possession of so chivalrous an entertainer. let me say that the tongue is spanish but the heart english.” and he passed with the rest into cicconani’s .
“now, perhaps,” said barker, over the fish and sherry, intensely polite, but burning with curiosity, “perhaps it would be rude of me to ask why you did that?”
“did what, se?or?” asked the guest, who spoke english quite well, though in a manner indefinably american.
“well,” said the englishman, in some confusion, “i mean tore a strip off a hoarding and . . . er . . . cut yourself . . . and. . . . ”
“to tell you that, se?or,” answered the other, with a certain sad pride, “involves merely telling you who i am. i am juan del fuego, president of nicaragua.”
the manner with which the president of nicaragua leant back and drank his sherry showed that to him this explanation covered all the facts observed and a great deal more. barker’s brow, however, was still a little clouded.
“and the yellow paper,” he began, with anxious friendliness, “and the red rag. . . . ”
“the yellow paper and the red rag,” said fuego, with indescribable grandeur, “are the colours of nicaragua.”
“but nicaragua . . . ” began barker, with great hesitation, “nicaragua is no longer a. . . . ”
“nicaragua has been conquered like athens. nicaragua has been annexed like jerusalem,” cried the old man, with amazing fire. “the yankee and the german and the brute powers of modernity have trampled it with the hoofs of oxen. but nicaragua is not dead. nicaragua is an idea.”
auberon quin suggested timidly, “a brilliant idea.”
“yes,” said the foreigner, snatching at the word. “you are right, generous englishman. an idea brillant, a burning thought. se?or, you asked me why, in my desire to see the colours of my country, i snatched at paper and blood. can you not understand the ancient sanctity of colours? the church has her symbolic colours. and think of what colours mean to us — think of the position of one like myself, who can see nothing but those two colours, nothing but the red and the yellow. to me all shapes are equal, all common and noble things are in a democracy of combination. wherever there is a field of marigolds and the red cloak of an old woman, there is nicaragua. wherever there is a field of poppies and a yellow patch of sand, there is nicaragua. wherever there is a lemon and a red sunset, there is my country. wherever i see a red pillar-box and a yellow sunset, there my heart beats. blood and a splash of mustard can be my heraldry. if there be yellow mud and red mud in the same ditch, it is better to me than white stars.”
“and if,” said quin, with equal enthusiasm, “there should happen to be yellow wine and red wine at the same lunch, you could not confine yourself to sherry. let me order some burgundy, and complete, as it were, a sort of nicaraguan heraldry in your inside.”
barker was fiddling with his knife, and was evidently making up his mind to say something, with the intense nervousness of the amiable englishman.
“i am to understand, then,” he said at last, with a cough, “that you, ahem, were the president of nicaragua when it made its — er — one must, of course, agree — its quite heroic resistance to — er —”
the ex-president of nicaragua waved his hand.
“you need not hesitate in speaking to me,” he said. “i’m quite fully aware that the whole tendency of the world of to-day is against nicaragua and against me. i shall not consider it any diminution of your evident courtesy if you say what you think of the misfortunes that have laid my republic in ruins.”
barker looked immeasurably relieved and gratified.
“you are most generous, president,” he said, with some hesitation over the title, “and i will take advantage of your generosity to express the doubts which, i must confess, we moderns have about such things as — er — the nicaraguan independence.”
“so your sympathies are,” said del fuego, quite calmly, “with the big nation which —”
“pardon me, pardon me, president,” said barker, warmly; “my sympathies are with no nation. you misunderstand, i think, the modern intellect. we do not disapprove of the fire and extravagance of such commonwealths as yours only to become more extravagant on a larger scale. we do not condemn nicaragua because we think britain ought to be more nicaraguan. we do not discourage small nationalities because we wish large nationalities to have all their smallness, all their uniformity of outlook, all their exaggeration of spirit. if i differ with the greatest respect from your nicaraguan enthusiasm, it is not because a nation or ten nations were against you; it is because civilisation was against you. we moderns believe in a great cosmopolitan civilisation, one which shall include all the talents of all the absorbed peoples —”
“the se?or will forgive me,” said the president. “may i ask the se?or how, under ordinary circumstances, he catches a wild horse?”
“i never catch a wild horse,” replied barker, with dignity.
“precisely,” said the other; “and there ends your absorption of the talents. that is what i complain of your cosmopolitanism. when you say you want all peoples to unite, you really mean that you want all peoples to unite to learn the tricks of your people. if the bedouin arab does not know how to read, some english missionary or schoolmaster must be sent to teach him to read, but no one ever says, ‘this schoolmaster does not know how to ride on a camel; let us pay a bedouin to teach him.’ you say your civilisation will include all talents. will it? do you really mean to say that at the moment when the esquimaux has learnt to vote for a county council, you will have learnt to spear a walrus? i recur to the example i gave. in nicaragua we had a way of catching wild horses — by lassooing the fore feet — which was supposed to be the best in south america. if you are going to include all the talents, go and do it. if not, permit me to say what i have always said, that something went from the world when nicaragua was civilised.”
“something, perhaps,” replied barker, “but that something a mere barbarian dexterity. i do not know that i could chip flints as well as a primeval man, but i know that civilisation can make these knives which are better, and i trust to civilisation.”
“you have good authority,” answered the nicaraguan. “many clever men like you have trusted to civilisation. many clever babylonians, many clever egyptians, many clever men at the end of rome. can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?”
“i think you do not quite understand, president, what ours is,” answered barker. “you judge it rather as if england was still a poor and pugnacious island; you have been long out of europe. many things have happened.”
“and what,” asked the other, “would you call the summary of those things?”
“the summary of those things,” answered barker, with great animation, “is that we are rid of the superstitions, and in becoming so we have not merely become rid of the superstitions which have been most frequently and most enthusiastically so described. the superstition of big nationalities is bad, but the superstition of small nationalities is worse. the superstition of reverencing our own country is bad, but the superstition of reverencing other people’s countries is worse. it is so everywhere, and in a hundred ways. the superstition of monarchy is bad, and the superstition of aristocracy is bad, but the superstition of democracy is the worst of all.”
the old gentleman opened his eyes with some surprise.
“are you, then,” he said, “no longer a democracy in england?”
barker laughed.
“the situation invites paradox,” he said. “we are, in a sense, the purest democracy. we have become a despotism. have you not noticed how continually in history democracy becomes despotism? people call it the decay of democracy. it is simply its fulfilment. why take the trouble to number and register and enfranchise all the innumerable john robinsons, when you can take one john robinson with the same intellect or lack of intellect as all the rest, and have done with it? the old idealistic republicans used to found democracy on the idea that all men were equally intelligent. believe me, the sane and enduring democracy is founded on the fact that all men are equally idiotic. why should we not choose out of them one as much as another. all that we want for government is a man not criminal and insane, who can rapidly look over some petitions and sign some proclamations. to think what time was wasted in arguing about the house of lords, tories saying it ought to be preserved because it was clever, and radicals saying it ought to be destroyed because it was stupid, and all the time no one saw that it was right because it was stupid, because that chance mob of ordinary men thrown there by accident of blood, were a great democratic protest against the lower house, against the eternal insolence of the aristocracy of talents. we have established now in england, the thing towards which all systems have dimly groped, the dull popular despotism without illusions. we want one man at the head of our state, not because he is brilliant or virtuous, but because he is one man and not a chattering crowd. to avoid the possible chance of hereditary diseases or such things, we have abandoned hereditary monarchy. the king of england is chosen like a juryman upon an official rotation list. beyond that the whole system is quietly despotic, and we have not found it raise a murmur.”
“do you really mean,” asked the president, incredulously, “that you choose any ordinary man that comes to hand and make him despot — that you trust to the chance of some alphabetical list. . . . ”
“and why not?” cried barker. “did not half the historical nations trust to the chance of the eldest sons of eldest sons, and did not half of them get on tolerably well? to have a perfect system is impossible; to have a system is indispensable. all hereditary monarchies were a matter of luck: so are alphabetical monarchies. can you find a deep philosophical meaning in the difference between the stuarts and the hanoverians? believe me, i will undertake to find a deep philosophical meaning in the contrast between the dark tragedy of the a’s, and the solid success of the b’s.”
“and you risk it?” asked the other. “though the man may be a tyrant or a cynic or a criminal.”
“we risk it,” answered barker, with a perfect placidity. “suppose he is a tyrant — he is still a check on a hundred tyrants. suppose he is a cynic, it is to his interest to govern well. suppose he is a criminal — by removing poverty and substituting power, we put a check on his criminality. in short, by substituting despotism we have put a total check on one criminal and a partial check on all the rest.”
the nicaraguan old gentleman leaned over with a queer expression in his eyes.
“my church, sir,” he said, “has taught me to respect faith. i do not wish to speak with any disrespect of yours, however fantastic. but do you really mean that you will trust to the ordinary man, the man who may happen to come next, as a good despot?”
“i do,” said barker, simply. “he may not be a good man. but he will be a good despot. for when he comes to a mere business routine of government he will endeavour to do ordinary justice. do we not assume the same thing in a jury?”
the old president smiled.
“i don’t know,” he said, “that i have any particular objection in detail to your excellent scheme of government. my only objection is a quite personal one. it is, that if i were asked whether i would belong to it, i should ask first of all, if i was not permitted, as an alternative, to be a toad in a ditch. that is all. you cannot argue with the choice of the soul.”
“of the soul,” said barker, knitting his brows, “i cannot pretend to say anything, but speaking in the interests of the public —”
mr. auberon quin rose suddenly to his feet.
“if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, “i will step out for a moment into the air.”
“i’m so sorry, auberon,” said lambert, good-naturedly; “do you feel bad?”
“not bad exactly,” said auberon, with self-restraint; “rather good, if anything. strangely and richly good. the fact is, i want to reflect a little on those beautiful words that have just been uttered. ‘speaking,’ yes, that was the phrase, ‘speaking in the interests of the public.’ one cannot get the honey from such things without being alone for a little.”
“is he really off his chump, do you think?” asked lambert.
the old president looked after him with queerly vigilant eyes.
“he is a man, i think,” he said, “who cares for nothing but a joke. he is a dangerous man.”
lambert laughed in the act of lifting some maccaroni to his mouth.
“dangerous!” he said. “you don’t know little quin, sir!”
“every man is dangerous,” said the old man without moving, “who cares only for one thing. i was once dangerous myself.”
and with a pleasant smile he finished his coffee and rose, bowing profoundly, passed out into the fog, which had again grown dense and sombre. three days afterwards they heard that he had died quietly in lodgings in soho.
drowned somewhere else in the dark sea of fog was a little figure shaking and quaking, with what might at first sight have seemed terror or ague: but which was really that strange malady, a lonely laughter. he was repeating over and over to himself with a rich accent —“but speaking in the interests of the public. . . . ”
