The Dawn of All

by Robert Hugh Benson

  (I)

  All day long there had hung a strange silence over the city,unlike in its quality that ordinary comparative quiet of moderntowns to which the man who had lost his memory had become by nowaccustomed. He knew well by now the gentle, almost soothing, humof busy streets, as the traffic and the footsteps went over thenoiseless pavements, and the air murmured with the clear subduednotes of the bells and the melodious horns of the swiftervehicles; all this had something of a reassuring quality,reminding the listener that he lived in a world of men, activeand occupied indeed, but also civilized and self-controlled.

  But the silence of this inner quarter of Berlin was completelydifferent. Its profoundness was sinister and suggestive. Now andagain came a rapid hooting note, growing louder and moreinsistent, as some car, bound on revolutionary work, tore up somestreet out of sight at forty miles an hour and away again intosilence. Several times he heard voices in sharp talk pass beneathhis window. Occasionally somewhere overhead in the greatbuildings sounded the whir of a lift, a footstep, the throwing upof a window. And to each sound he listened eagerly and intently,ignorant as to whether it might not mark the news of some freshcatastrophe, the tidings of some decision that would precipitatehis world about him.

  As to the progress of events he knew nothing at all.

  Since that horrible instant when the door had closed in his faceand the Cardinal had gone again as mysteriously as he had come--nowthree days ago--he had heard no hint that could tell him how thingsdeveloped. He had not even dared to ask the taciturn servant inuniform who brought him food as to the fate of the old man.For he knew with a certainty as clear as if he had seen the dreadfulthing done, that his friend and master was dead--dead, as theRevolutionary Committee had said he would be, if he came with anymessage other than that of submission. As to the manner of his deathhe dared not even conjecture. It would be swift, at least. . . .

  Ten thousand thoughts, recurring and recurring, like picturesthrown on a wall, ran past his attention as the hours went by. Hesaw the gathering of armaments--the horizon tinged by thegathering war-vessels of the air--the advance, the sudden stormof battle, the gigantic destruction from these vast engines ofpower of which he had learned nothing but their ghastlypotentialities. Or he saw the advance of this desperate garrison,dispersing this way and that for their war upon the world--silentvessels, moving in the clouds, to Rome, to London, to Paris andVersailles, each capable of obliterating a city. Or he saw,again, the submission of the world to the caprice of thesedesperate children who feared nothing--not even death itself--whocrouched like an ape in a powder-magazine, lighted match in hand,careless as to whether or no themselves died so long as the worlddied with them.

  He formulated nothing; concluded nothing; he rejected everyconjecture which temporarily constructed itself in his almostpassive mind. He did not even yet fully understand that thequestion he had asked of himself months before--the question thathad tortured him so keenly--as to whether these Christians whoruled had not forgotten how to suffer--had been answered withdreadful distinctness. He just perceived that the young Romanprince had been gallant; that the old man had been more gallantstill, since those to whom he came had already proved that theywould keep their word. And now the third day was drawing to anend, and by midnight suspense would be over.

  The fog still hung over the city; but towards sunset it lifted alittle, and he raised his heavy head from his breast as he lay,half sitting, half lying, on the tumbled sofa and blankets onwhich he had slept, to see the red sunlight on the wall abovehim. It was a curious room to a man who had grown accustomed tomodern ways; there was a faded carpet on the floor, paper on thewalls, and the old-fashioned electric globes hung, each on itswire, from the whitewashed ceiling. He saw that it must be asurvival, or perhaps a deliberate archaicism. . . .

  The sunlight crept slowly up the wall. . . .

  Then the door was unlocked from the outside, and he turned hishead, to see James Hardy come smiling towards him.