Latest / Man Who Was Thursday, A Nightmare (Dramatic Reading) / 07 - Man Who Was Thursday, A Nightmare (Dramatic Reading) by G K Chesterton

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07 - Man Who Was Thursday, A Nightmare (Dramatic Reading) by G K Chesterton · Man Who Was Thursday, A Nightmare (Dramatic Reading)

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The exposure. Such were the six men who had sworn
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: to destroy the world. Again and again sime strove to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: pull together his common sense. In their presence. Sometimes he
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: saw for an instant that these notions were subjective, that
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  Speaker 1: he was only looking at ordinary men, one of whom
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  Speaker 1: was old, another nervous, another short sighted. The sense of
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  Speaker 1: an unnatural symbolism always settled back on him again. Each
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  Speaker 1: figure seemed to be somehow on the borderland of things,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: just as their theory was on the borderland of thought.
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  Speaker 1: He knew that each one of these men stood at
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  Speaker 1: the extreme end, so to speak, of some wild road
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  Speaker 1: of reasoning. He could only fancy, as in some old
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  Speaker 1: world fable, that if a man went westward to the
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  Speaker 1: end of the world, he would find something, say, a
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  Speaker 1: tree that was more or less than a tree, a
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  Speaker 1: tree possessed by a spirit, And that if he went
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  Speaker 1: east to the end of the world he would find
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  Speaker 1: something else that was not wholly itself, a tower, perhaps,
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  Speaker 1: of which the very shape was wicked. So these figures
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  Speaker 1: seemed to stand up, violent and unaccountable against an ultimate horizon.
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  Speaker 1: Visions from the verge the ends of the earth were
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  Speaker 1: closing in talk had been going on steadily as he
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  Speaker 1: took in the scene. And not the least of the
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  Speaker 1: contrasts of that bewildering breakfast table was the contrast between
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  Speaker 1: the easy and unobtrusive tone of talk and its terrible purport.
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  Speaker 1: They were deep in the discussion of an actual and
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  Speaker 1: immediate plot. The waiter downstairs had spoken quite correctly when
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  Speaker 1: he said that they were talking about bombs and kings.
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  Speaker 1: Only three days afterwards, the Tsar was to meet the
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  Speaker 1: President of the French Republic in Paris, and over their
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  Speaker 1: bacon and eggs upon their sunny balcony, these beaming gentlemen
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  Speaker 1: had decided how both should die. Even the instrument was chosen.
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  Speaker 1: The black bearded Marquis, it appeared, was to carry the bomb.
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  Speaker 1: Ordinarily speaking, the proximity of this positive and objective crime
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  Speaker 1: would have sobered Syme and cured him of all his
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  Speaker 1: merely mystical tremors. He would have thought of nothing but
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  Speaker 1: the need of saving at least two human bodies from
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  Speaker 1: being ripped in pieces with iron and roaring gas. But
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  Speaker 1: the truth was that by this time he had begun
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  Speaker 1: to feel a third kind of fear, more piercing and
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  Speaker 1: practical than either his moral revulsion or his social responsibility.
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  Speaker 1: Very simply, he had no fear to spare for the
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  Speaker 1: French president or the Tsar. He had begun to fear
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  Speaker 1: for himself. Most of the talkers took little heed of him,
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  Speaker 1: debating now with their faces closer together and almost uniformly grave,
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  Speaker 1: save when for an instant the smile of the Secretary
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  Speaker 1: ran aslant across his face as the jagged lightning runs
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  Speaker 1: aslant across the sky. But there was one persistent thing
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  Speaker 1: which first troubled Sime and at last terrified him. The
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  Speaker 1: President was always looking at him, steadily and with a
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  Speaker 1: great and baffling interest. The enormous man was quite quiet,
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  Speaker 1: but his blue eyes stood out of his head, and
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  Speaker 1: they were always fixed on Sime. Sime felt moved to
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  Speaker 1: spring up and leap over the balcony. When the President's
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  Speaker 1: eyes were on him, he felt as if he were
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  Speaker 1: made of glass. He had hardly the shred of a
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  Speaker 1: doubt that in some silent and extraordinary way, Sunday had
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  Speaker 1: found out that he was a spy. He looked over
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  Speaker 1: the edge of the balcony and saw a policeman standing
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  Speaker 1: abstractedly just beneath staring at the bright railings in the
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  Speaker 1: sunlit trees. Then there fell upon him the great temptation
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  Speaker 1: that was to torment him for many days. In the
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  Speaker 1: presence of these powerful and repulsive men who were the
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  Speaker 1: princes of anarchy. He had almost forgotten the frail and
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  Speaker 1: fanciful figure of the poet Gregory, the mere esthete of anarchism.
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  Speaker 1: He even thought of him now with an old kindness,
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  Speaker 1: as if they had plagued together when children. But he
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  Speaker 1: remembered that he was still tied to Gregory by a
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  Speaker 1: great promise. He had promised never to do the very
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  Speaker 1: thing that he now felt himself almost in the act
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  Speaker 1: of doing. He had promised not to jump over that
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  Speaker 1: balcony and speak to that policeman. He took his cold
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  Speaker 1: hand off the cold stone balustrade, his soul swayed in
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  Speaker 1: a vertigo of moral indecision. He had only to snap
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  Speaker 1: the thread of a rash vow made to a villainous society,
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  Speaker 1: and all his life could be as open and sunny
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  Speaker 1: as the square beneath him. On the other hand, only
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  Speaker 1: to keep his antiquated honor and be delivered inch by
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  Speaker 1: inch into the power of this great enemy. Of mankind,
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  Speaker 1: whose very intellect was a torture chamber. Whenever he looked
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  Speaker 1: down into the square, he saw the comfortable policeman, a
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  Speaker 1: pillar of common sense and common order. Whenever he looked
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  Speaker 1: back at the breakfast table, he saw the President still
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  Speaker 1: quietly studying him with big, unbearable eyes. In all the
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  Speaker 1: torrent of his thought, there were two thoughts that never
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  Speaker 1: crossed his mind. First, it never occurred to him to
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  Speaker 1: doubt that the President and his counsel could crush him
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  Speaker 1: if he continued to stand alone. The place might be public,
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  Speaker 1: the project might seem impossible. But Sunday was not the
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  Speaker 1: man who would carry himself thus easily without having somehow
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  Speaker 1: or somewhere set open his iron trap. Either by anonymous
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  Speaker 1: poison or sudden street accident, by hypnotism, or by fire
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  Speaker 1: from hell. Sunday could certainly strike him. If he defied
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  Speaker 1: the man, he was probably dead, either struck stiff there
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  Speaker 1: in his chair, or long afterwards, as by an innocent ailment.
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  Speaker 1: If he called in the police, promptly arrested everyone, told all,
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  Speaker 1: and set against them the whole energy of England, he
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  Speaker 1: would probably escape, certainly not Otherwise, they were a balcony
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  Speaker 1: full of gentlemen overlooking a bright and busy square. But
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  Speaker 1: he felt no more safe with them than if they
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  Speaker 1: had been a boat full of armed pirates overlooking an
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  Speaker 1: empty sea. There was a second thought that never came
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  Speaker 1: to him. It never occurred to him to be spiritually
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  Speaker 1: won over to the enemy. Many moderns, inured to a
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  Speaker 1: weak worship of intellect and force might have wavered in
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  Speaker 1: their allegiance under the suppression of a great personality. They
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  Speaker 1: might have called Sunday the superman, if any such creature
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  Speaker 1: be conceivable. He looked indeed somewhat like it, with his
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  Speaker 1: earth shaking abstraction as of a stone statue walking. He
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  Speaker 1: might have been called something above man, with his large
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  Speaker 1: plans which were too obvious to be detected, with his
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  Speaker 1: large face which was too frank to be understood. But
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  Speaker 1: this was a kind of modern meanness to which Sime
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  Speaker 1: could not sink, even in his extreme morbidity. Like any man,
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  Speaker 1: he was coward enough to fear great force, but he
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  Speaker 1: was not quite coward enough to admire it. The men
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  Speaker 1: were eating as they talked, and even in this they
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  Speaker 1: were typical Doctor Bull and the marquis ate. Casually and
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  Speaker 1: conventionally of the best things on the table, cold pheasant
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  Speaker 1: or strasburg pie. But the Secretary was a vegetarian, and
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  Speaker 1: he spoke earnestly of the projected murderer of over half
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  Speaker 1: a raw tomato and three quarters of a glass of
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  Speaker 1: teeped water. The old professor had such slops as suggested
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  Speaker 1: a sickening second childhood. And even in this President Sunday
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  Speaker 1: preserved his curious predominance of mere mass. For he ate
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  Speaker 1: like twenty men. He ate incredibly with a frightful freshness
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  Speaker 1: of appetite, so that it was like watching a sausage factory.
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  Speaker 1: Yet continually, when he had swallowed a dozen crumpets or
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  Speaker 1: drunk a quart of coffee, he would be found with
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  Speaker 1: his great head on one side, staring at Sime. I
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  Speaker 1: have often wondered, said the marquis, taking a great bite
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  Speaker 1: out of a slice of bread and jam.
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  Speaker 2: Where there it wouldn't be better for me to do
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  Speaker 2: it with a knife. Most of their best things have
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  Speaker 2: been brought off with a knife, and it would be
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  Speaker 2: a new emotion to get a knife into a French
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  Speaker 2: president legging it around.
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  Speaker 1: You are wrong, said the Secretary, drawing his black brows, together.
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  Speaker 3: The knife was merely the expression of the old personal
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  Speaker 3: quarrel with a personal tyrant. Dynamite is not only our
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  Speaker 3: best tool, but our best symbol. It is as perfect
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  Speaker 3: a symbol of us as is incense of the prayers
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  Speaker 3: of the Christians. It expands. It only destroys because it broadens.
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  Speaker 3: Even so, thought only destroys because it broadens. A man's
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  Speaker 3: brain is a bomb.
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  Speaker 1: He cried out, loosening suddenly his strange passion and striking
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  Speaker 1: his own skull with violence.
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  Speaker 3: My brain feels like a bomb night and day. It
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  Speaker 3: must expand. It must expand a man's brain. I must
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  Speaker 3: expand if it breaks up the universe.
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  Speaker 2: I don't want the universe broken.
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  Speaker 1: Up just yet, drawled the marquis.
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  Speaker 2: I want to do a lot of beastly things before
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  Speaker 2: I die. I thought of one yesterday in bed. If
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  Speaker 2: the only end of the thing is nothing.
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  Speaker 1: Said doctor Ball, with his sphinxlike smile, it hardly seems
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  Speaker 1: worth doing. The old professor was staring at the ceiling
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  Speaker 1: with dull eyes.
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  Speaker 3: Every man knows in his heart.
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  Speaker 1: He said that nothing is worth doing. There was a
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  Speaker 1: singular silence, and then the secretary said.
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  Speaker 3: We are wandering However, from the point the only question
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  Speaker 3: is how Wednesday is to strike the blow. I take
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  Speaker 3: it we should all agree with the original note of
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  Speaker 3: a bomb. As to the actual arrangements, I should suggest
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  Speaker 3: that tomorrow morning he should go first of all to.
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  Speaker 1: The speech was broken off short. Under a vast shadow.
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  Speaker 1: President Sunday had risen to his feet, seeming to fill
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  Speaker 1: the sky above them.
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  Speaker 4: Before we discuss that, he said.
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  Speaker 1: In a small, quiet voice.
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  Speaker 4: Let us go into a private room. I have something
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  Speaker 4: very particular to say.
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  Speaker 1: Sime stood up before any of the others. The instant
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  Speaker 1: of choice had come at last. The pistol was at
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  Speaker 1: his head on the pavement. Before he could hear the
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  Speaker 1: policeman idly stir and stamp for the morning. Though bright
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  Speaker 1: was cold, a barrel organ in the street suddenly sprang
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  Speaker 1: with a jerk into a jovial tune. Sime stood up taut,
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  Speaker 1: as if it had been a bugle before the battle.
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  Speaker 1: He found himself filled with a supernatural courage that came
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  Speaker 1: from nowhere. That jingling music seemed full of the vivacity,
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  Speaker 1: the vulgarity, and the irrational valor of the poor, who,
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  Speaker 1: in all those unclean streets, were all clinging to the
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  Speaker 1: decencies and the charities of Christendom. His youthful prank of
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  Speaker 1: being a policeman had faded from his mind. He did
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  Speaker 1: not think of himself as the representative of the corps
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  Speaker 1: of gentlemen turned into fancy constables, or of the old
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  Speaker 1: eccentric who lived in the dark room. But he did
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  Speaker 1: feel himself as the ambassador of all these common and
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  Speaker 1: kindly people in the street, who every day marched into
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  Speaker 1: battle to the music of the barrel organ. And this
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  Speaker 1: high pride in being human had lifted him unaccountably to
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  Speaker 1: an infinite height above the monstrous men around him. For
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  Speaker 1: an instant at least, he looked down upon all their
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  Speaker 1: sprawling eccentricities from the starry pinnacle of the commonplace. He
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  Speaker 1: felt towards them all that unconscious and elementary superiority that
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  Speaker 1: a brave man feels over powerful beasts, or a wise
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  Speaker 1: man over powerful errors. He knew that he had neither
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  Speaker 1: the intellectual nor the physical strength of President Sunday, but
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  Speaker 1: in that moment he minded it no more than the
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  Speaker 1: fact that he had not the muscles of a tiger,
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  Speaker 1: or a horn on his nose like a rhinoceros. All
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  Speaker 1: was swallowed up in an ultimate certainty that the President
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  Speaker 1: was wrong and that the Barrel Organ was right. There
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: clanged in his mind that unanswerable and terrible truism in
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  Speaker 1: the song of Roland Paul's antoine e cretien andois, which
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  Speaker 1: in the old nasal French has the cling and groan
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  Speaker 1: of great iron. This liberation of his spirit from the
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  Speaker 1: load of his weakness went with a quite clear decision
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  Speaker 1: to embrace death. If the peace people of the Barrel
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  Speaker 1: Organ could keep their old world obligations, so could he.
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  Speaker 1: This very pride in keeping his word was that he
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  Speaker 1: was keeping it to miscreants. It was his last triumph
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  Speaker 1: over these lunatics, to go down into their dark room
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  Speaker 1: and die for something that they could not even understand.
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  Speaker 1: The barrel organ seemed to give the marching tune with
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  Speaker 1: the energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra,
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  Speaker 1: and he could hear, deep and rolling under all the
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  Speaker 1: trumpets of the pride of life, the drums of the
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  Speaker 1: pride of death. The conspirators were already filing through the
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  Speaker 1: open window and into the rooms behind Sime went last,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: outwardly calm, but with all his brain and body throbbing
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  Speaker 1: with romantic rhythm. The President led them down an irregular
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  Speaker 1: side stair, such as might be used by servants, and
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  Speaker 1: into a dim, cold, empty room with a table benches,
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  Speaker 1: like an abandoned boardroom. When they were all in, he
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  Speaker 1: closed and locked the door. The first to speak was Gogol,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: the irreconcilable, who seemed bursting with inarticulate grievance.
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  Speaker 3: Foo Foo, he.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Cried with an obscure excitement, his heavy Polish accent becoming
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  Speaker 1: almost impenetrable. You see you, nor hide you say? You
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  Speaker 1: show himself?
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  Speaker 2: It is or nothings. When you want talk importance, you
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  Speaker 2: run yourself in a dark box.
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  Speaker 1: The President seemed to take the foreigner's incoherent satire with
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  Speaker 1: entire good humor.
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  Speaker 4: You can't get hold of it yet, Gogol.
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  Speaker 1: He said, in a fatherly way.
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  Speaker 4: When once they have heard us talking nonsense on that balcony,
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  Speaker 4: they will not care where we go afterwards. If we
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: had come here first, we should have had the whole
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: staff at the keyhole. You don't seem to know anything
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  Speaker 4: about mankind.
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  Speaker 1: I die fo, then cried the pole in thick excitement,
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  Speaker 1: and I slay their op presses. I cannot for these
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  Speaker 1: games of gunzealment. I would smite thee tyrant in the
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  Speaker 1: open square.
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  Speaker 4: I see, I see.
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  Speaker 1: Said the President, nodding kindly, as he seated himself at
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  Speaker 1: the top of a long table.
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  Speaker 4: You die for mankind first, then you get up and
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: smite their oppressors. So that's all right. And now may
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: I ask you to control your beautiful sentiments and sit
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: down with the other gentlemen at this table. For the
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: first time this morning, something intelligent is going to be
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: said Sime, with.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: The perturbed promptitude he had shown since the original summons.
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  Speaker 1: Sat down first, Goggle sat down last, grumbling in his
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: brown beard about gombromise. No one except Sime seemed to
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: have any notion of the blow that was about to fall.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: As for him, he had merely the feeling of a
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: man mounting the scaffold with the intention at any rate
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: of making a good speech. Comrades, said the President, suddenly rising.
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  Speaker 4: We have spun out this farce long enough. I have
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: called you down here to tell you something so simple
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: and shocking that even the waiters upstairs, long inured to
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: our levities, might hear some new seriousness in my voice. Comrades,
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: we were discussing plans and naming places. I propose, before
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: saying anything else, that those plans and places should not
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: be voted by this meeting, but should be left wholly
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: in the control of some one reliable member. I suggest,
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: Comrade Saturday, doctor Bull.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: They all stared at him. Then they all started in
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  Speaker 1: their seats For the next words, though not loud, had
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: a living and sensational emphasis. Sunday struck the table.
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: Not one more word about the plans and places must
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: be said at this meeting. Not one tiny detail more
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: about what we mean to do must be mentioned in
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: this company.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Sunday had spent his life in astonishing his followers, but
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: it seemed as if he had never really astonished them
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: until now. They all moved feverishly in their seats, except Sime.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: He sat stiff in his with his hand in his
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: pocket and on the handle of his loaded revolver. When
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: the attack on him came, he would sell his life, dear,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: he would find out at least if the president was mortal.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: Sunday went on smoothly.
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: You will probably understand that there is only one possible
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: motive for forbidding free speech at this festival of freedom.
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: Strangers overhearing us matters nothing. They assume that we are joking.
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: But what would matter, even unto death, is this, that
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: there should be one actually among us who is not
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: of us, who knows our grave purpose but does not
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: share it.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Who the secretary screamed out suddenly, like a woman.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: It can't be, he cried, leaping the kunt.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: The President flapped his large blat hand on the table,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: like the fin of some huge fish. Yes, he said slowly.
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: There is a spy in this room. There is a
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: trader at this table. I will waste no more words.
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: His name.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Sime half rose from his seat, his finger firm on
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: the trigger.
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: His name is Gogol, said the president. He is that
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: hairy humbug over there who pretends to be a pole.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Gogel sprang to his feet, a pistol in each hand.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: With the same flash, three men sprang at his throat.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Even the professor made an effort to rise, But Sime
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: saw little of the scene, for he was blinded with
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: a beneficent darkness. He had sunk down into his seat,
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: shuddering in a palsy of passionate relief. End of Chapter
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: six