ᐸ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?ᐳ
ᐸsamples n="ENG19080"ᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19080925"ᐳThe men in the motor‑car looked anxiously in the direction of his dreamy gaze, and they saw that the whole regiment at the end of the road was advancing upon them, Dr. Renard marching furiously in front, his beard flying in the breeze.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080926"ᐳThe Colonel sprang out of the car with an intolerant exclamation.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080927"ᐳ“Gentlemen,” he cried, “the thing is incredible. It must be a practical joke. If you knew Renard as I do— it’s like calling Queen Victoria a dynamiter. If you had got the man’s character into your head—”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080928"ᐳ“Dr. Bull,” said Syme sardonically, “has at least got it into his hat.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080929"ᐳ“I tell you it can’t be!” cried the Colonel, stamping.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080930"ᐳ“Renard shall explain it. He shall explain it to me,” and he strode forward.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080931"ᐳ“Don’t be in such a hurry,” drawled the smoker. “He will very soon explain it to all of us.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080932"ᐳBut the impatient Colonel was already out of earshot, advancing towards the advancing enemy. The excited Dr. Renard lifted his pistol again, but perceiving his opponent, hesitated, and the Colonel came face to face with him with frantic gestures of remonstrance.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080933"ᐳ“It is no good,” said Syme. “He will never get anything out of that old heathen. I vote we drive bang through the thick of them, bang as the bullets went through Bull’s hat. We may all be killed, but we must kill a tidy number of them.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080934"ᐳ“I won’t ‘ave it,” said Dr. Bull, growing more vulgar in the sincerity of his virtue. “The poor chaps may be making a mistake. Give the Colonel a chance.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080935"ᐳ“Shall we go back, then?” asked the Professor.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080936"ᐳ“No,” said Ratcliffe in a cold voice, “the street behind us is held too. In fact, I seem to see there another friend of yours, Syme.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080937"ᐳSyme spun round smartly, and stared backwards at the track which they had travelled. He saw an irregular body of horsemen gathering and galloping towards them in the gloom. He saw above the foremost saddle the silver gleam of a sword, and then as it grew nearer the silver gleam of an old man’s hair. The next moment, with shattering violence, he had swung the motor round and sent it dashing down the steep side street to the sea, like a man that desired only to die.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080938"ᐳ“What the devil is up?” cried the Professor, seizing his arm.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080939"ᐳ“The morning star has fallen!” said Syme, as his own car went down the darkness like a falling star.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19080179"ᐳ“Comrade Witherspoon tells us,” resumed Gregory, “that he is not meek. Ah, how little he knows himself! His words are, indeed, extravagant; his appearance is ferocious, and even (to an ordinary taste) unattractive. But only the eye of a friendship as deep and delicate as mine can perceive the deep foundation of solid meekness which lies at the base of him, too deep even for himself to see. I repeat, we are the true early Christians, only that we come too late. We are simple, as they revere simple—look at Comrade Witherspoon. We are modest, as they were modest—look at me. We are merciful—”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080180"ᐳ“No, no!” called out Mr. Witherspoon with the velvet jacket.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080181"ᐳ“I say we are merciful,” repeated Gregory furiously, “as the early Christians were merciful. Yet this did not prevent their being accused of eating human flesh. We do not eat human flesh—”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080182"ᐳ“Shame!” cried Witherspoon. “Why not?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080183"ᐳ“Comrade Witherspoon,” said Gregory, with a feverish gaiety, “is anxious to know why nobody eats him (laughter). In our society, at any rate, which loves him sincerely, which is founded upon love—”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080184"ᐳ“No, no!” said Witherspoon, “down with love.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080185"ᐳ“Which is founded upon love,” repeated Gregory, grinding his teeth, “there will be no difficulty about the aims which we shall pursue as a body, or which I should pursue were I chosen as the representative of that body. Superbly careless of the slanders that represent us as assassins and enemies of human society, we shall pursue with moral courage and quiet intellectual pressure, the permanent ideals of brotherhood and simplicity.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080186"ᐳGregory resumed his seat and passed his hand across his forehead. The silence was sudden and awkward, but the chairman rose like an automaton, and said in a colourless voice—ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080187"ᐳ“Does anyone oppose the election of Comrade Gregory?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080188"ᐳThe assembly seemed vague and sub‑consciously disappointed, and Comrade Witherspoon moved restlessly on his seat and muttered in his thick beard. By the sheer rush of routine, however, the motion would have been put and carried. But as the chairman was opening his mouth to put it, Syme sprang to his feet and said in a small and quiet voice—ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080189"ᐳ“Yes, Mr. Chairman, I oppose.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080190"ᐳThe most effective fact in oratory is an unexpected change in the voice. Mr. Gabriel Syme evidently understood oratory. Having said these first formal words in a moderated tone and with a brief simplicity, he made his next word ring and volley in the vault as if one of the guns had gone off.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19080348"ᐳSyme stood up before any of the others. The instant of choice had come at last, the pistol was at his head. On the pavement before he could hear the policeman idly stir and stamp, for the morning, though bright, was cold.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080349"ᐳA barrel‑organ in the street suddenly sprang with a jerk into a jovial tune. Syme stood up taut, as if it had been a bugle before the battle. He found himself filled with a supernatural courage that came from nowhere. That jingling music seemed full of the vivacity, the vulgarity, and the irrational valour of the poor, who in all those unclean streets were all clinging to the decencies and the charities of Christendom. His youthful prank of being a policeman had faded from his mind; he did not think of himself as the representative of the corps of gentlemen turned into fancy constables, or of the old eccentric who lived in the dark room. But he did feel himself as the ambassador of all these common and kindly people in the street, who every day marched into battle to the music of the barrel-organ. And this high pride in being human had lifted him unaccountably to an infinite height above the monstrous men around him. For an instant, at least, he looked down upon all their sprawling eccentricities from the starry pinnacle of the commonplace. He felt towards them all that unconscious and elementary superiority that a brave man feels over powerful beasts or a wise man over powerful errors. He knew that he had neither the intellectual nor the physical strength of President Sunday; but in that moment he minded it no more than the fact that he had not the muscles of a tiger or a horn on his nose like a rhinoceros. All was swallowed up in an ultimate certainty that the President was wrong and that the barrel‑organ was right. There clanged in his mind that unanswerable and terrible truism in the song of Roland—ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080350"ᐳ“Païens ont tort et Chrétiens ont droit.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080351"ᐳwhich in the old nasal French has the clang and groan of great iron. This liberation of his spirit from the load of his weakness went with a quite clear decision to embrace death. If the people of the barrel‑organ could keep their old‑world obligations, so could he. This very pride in keeping his word was that he was keeping it to miscreants. It was his last triumph over these lunatics to go down into their dark room and die for something that they could not even understand. The barrel‑organ seemed to give the marching tune with the energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra; and he could hear deep and rolling, under all the trumpets of the pride of life, the drums of the pride of death.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19080390"ᐳ“I must protest, President, that the thing is irregular,” he said. “It is a fundamental rule of our society that all plans shall be debated in full council. Of course, I fully appreciate your forethought when in the actual presence of a traitor—”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080391"ᐳ“Secretary,” said the President seriously, “if you’d take your head home and boil it for a turnip it might be useful. I can’t say. But it might.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080392"ᐳThe Secretary reared back in a kind of equine anger.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080393"ᐳ“I really fail to understand—” he began in high offense.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080394"ᐳ“That’s it, that’s it,” said the President, nodding a great many times. “That’s where you fail right enough. You fail to understand. Why, you dancing donkey,” he roared, rising, “you didn’t want to be overheard by a spy, didn’t you? How do you know you aren’t overheard now?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080395"ᐳAnd with these words he shouldered his way out of the room, shaking with incomprehensible scorn.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080396"ᐳFour of the men left behind gaped after him without any apparent glimmering of his meaning. Syme alone had even a glimmering, and such as it was it froze him to the bone. If the last words of the President meant anything, they meant that he had not after all passed unsuspected. They meant that while Sunday could not denounce him like Gogol, he still could not trust him like the others.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19080397"ᐳThe other four got to their feet grumbling more or less, and betook themselves elsewhere to find lunch, for it was already well past midday. The Professor went last, very slowly and painfully. Syme sat long after the rest had gone, revolving his strange position. He had escaped a thunderbolt, but he was still under a cloud. At last he rose and made his way out of the hotel into Leicester Square. The bright, cold day had grown increasingly colder, and when he came out into the street he was surprised by a few flakes of snow. While he still carried the sword‑stick and the rest of Gregory’s portable luggage, he had thrown the cloak down and left it somewhere, perhaps on the steam‑tug, perhaps on the balcony. Hoping, therefore, that the snow‑shower might be slight, he stepped back out of the street for a moment and stood up under the doorway of a small and greasy hair‑dresser’s shop, the front window of which was empty, except for a sickly wax lady in evening dress.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG190801032"ᐳ“This is more cheerful,” said Dr. Bull; “we are six men going to ask one man what he means.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801033"ᐳ“I think it is a bit queerer than that,” said Syme. “I think it is six men going to ask one man what they mean.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801034"ᐳThey turned in silence into the Square, and though the hotel was in the opposite corner, they saw at once the little balcony and a figure that looked too big for it. He was sitting alone with bent head, poring over a newspaper. But all his councillors, who had come to vote him down, crossed that Square as if they were watched out of heaven by a hundred eyes.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801035"ᐳThey had disputed much upon their policy, about whether they should leave the unmasked Gogol without and begin diplomatically, or whether they should bring him in and blow up the gunpowder at once. The influence of Syme and Bull prevailed for the latter course, though the Secretary to the last asked them why they attacked Sunday so rashly.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801036"ᐳ“My reason is quite simple,” said Syme. “I attack him rashly because I am afraid of him.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801037"ᐳThey followed Syme up the dark stair in silence, and they all came out simultaneously into the broad sunlight of the morning and the broad sunlight of Sunday’s smile.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801038"ᐳ“Delightful!” he said. “So pleased to see you all. What an exquisite day it is. Is the Czar dead?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801039"ᐳThe Secretary, who happened to be foremost, drew himself together for a dignified outburst.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801040"ᐳ“No, sir,” he said sternly “there has been no massacre. I bring you news of no such disgusting spectacles.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801041"ᐳ“Disgusting spectacles?” repeated the President, with a bright, inquiring smile. “You mean Dr. Bull’s spectacles?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801042"ᐳThe Secretary choked for a moment, and the President went on with a sort of smooth appeal—ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801043"ᐳ“Of course, we all have our opinions and even our eyes, but really to call them disgusting before the man himself—”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801044"ᐳDr. Bull tore off his spectacles and broke them on the table.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801045"ᐳ“My spectacles are blackguardly,” he said, “but I’m not. Look at my face.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801046"ᐳ“I dare say it’s the sort of face that grows on one,” said the President, “in fact, it grows on you; and who am I to quarrel with the wild fruits upon the Tree of Life? I dare say it will grow on me some day.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG190801047"ᐳ“We have no time for tomfoolery,” said the Secretary, breaking in savagely. “We have come to know what all this means. Who are you? What are you? Why did you get us all here? Do you know who and what we are? Are you a half‑witted man playing the conspirator, or are you a clever man playing the fool? Answer me, I tell you.”ᐸ/pᐳ
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