considerable proportion of his daydreaming to fantasies of conquest, or sometimes of self-immolation.
Sometimes he saw himself as a martyr.
Down in the smoky torture-chamber behind his everyday mind he stretched himself on an imaginary rack by the wild, leaping light of flaring flambeaux. The winches creaked; the ropes snapped taut and shrieked as they strained over the blocks. The torturers gasped and grunted as they threw their weight upon the windlasses. But he, the hero, made no sound, except for the snapping of his dislocated joints. He smiled quietly into the faces of the executioners. ‘Now will you talk?’ He only smiled. The Hooded Inquisitor made a sign. The torturers put out their strength. In the dancing torchlight the strong muscles of their shoulders and backs seemed to jump and tremble like imprisoned things that wanted to burst their way out. The agony was unbearable: yet he bore it. ‘Now will you give us the names of your confederates?’
He smiled. At last, as he lay dying (one of his legs had come off) the Inquisitor said to him in a voice of awe: ‘You’re an obstinate heretic, but by all His Saints, you are a
Sometimes — it depended upon his mood, which in turn depended upon the events of the day — he was riding into a conquered city upon a great white horse.
From head to foot he was encased in sombre, black armour. The lurid light of a blazing building writhed upon hauberk, gorget, and cuisse. His visor, thrown back, left uncovered his face, which was noble and proud, stern but pure. Behind him rode his Knights clad all in steel; and behind them marched his Men-at-Arms under a forest of gleaming spears. As he rode, thousands of the townsmen he had liberated came thronging about him, weeping with gratitude, fighting for one little bit of the dung of his horse which they would preserve as a holy relic.
‘_God bless the Liberator!_’ He rode on; stern, preoccupied. In the great castle taken from the Tyrant he sat upon a great velvet chair, magnificent in a robe of velvet blacker than night, embroidered with gold arabesques, and did justice. Cold and clean but terrible was the justice of the Liberator! The Baron Otmar starved the poor? Then let him be bound with silken cords and left to die of hunger in sight of a table laid with innumerable dishes of savoury meat … but give him a cup of water every day, so that he may live long enough to know the meaning of hunger.
The Baron Something had worked his vassals to death? Then let him be imprisoned in a cell in which there was a cage containing ten thousand starving rats and let this cage be devised so that only by the forward and backward movement of a stiff, heavy lever could the rats be prevented from escaping. Let him work
Again, he was the captain of a great liner. In the middle of one dreadful night, there was a grinding crash. The ship had struck an iceberg and was sinking fast. Women and children first! He brandished a big, blue revolver. Back there, you dogs, and let the women and children get into the boats first! A man — an enormous, handsome Greek god of a man, who had always showed off his superior muscles and weight — leapt forward, mad with panic. The revolver spat yellow fire, and the handsome face became, abruptly, like strawberry jam. All the other men stood, cowed, while the women and the children got into the boats. Everyone on deck got off. Only he, the captain, was left. ‘For God’s sake, Skipper, come down.’ No, the weight of one more passenger might sink the boat; he would go down with his ship. But as the boats pulled away (he could hear everybody saying that the captain was a saint and a hero) he heard a little whimpering cry. Somewhere a girl was imprisoned. He lifted beams of a ton weight, tore down barriers of broken iron, smashed bulkheads with a blow of the fist, and there she was, radiant and beautiful, but terrified. The fear of death was upon her. ‘There, there little woman…’ The shock of the collision had torn off all her outer garments. He took her on deck. The ship was settling. The boats had disappeared. ‘This is the end,’ he said. They locked in an unbreakable embrace as the ship went down… .
The Murderer was always thankful that he was not selfish like other men, and rejoiced in his social- mindedness. He could not meet a beggar in the street without giving away a coin or two and saying a few sympathetic words. He was a member of two or three societies devoted to the abolition of corporal punishment, and what not. He would have been among the first to protest against the use of pigs and goats in the atom-bomb test at Bikini. There were occasions when he saw himself as a great militant humanitarian. He was something of a Socialist. He knew that Good must be pitiless. In fantasy, he was the man who, with his own hand, cut to pieces the Justice of the Peace who ordered the birching of a small boy; and, although it was not expedient to say so, he saw Herr Hitler’s point. The pure man must be strong. Purity and strength are correlated. He must be like pure iron — malleable, yet the strongest thing in the world. Out of his malleability must be forged… for the sake of example a Knife … a Knife to cut the throat of Evil.
And then he was in a quiet town. Once again he was the Liberator — pure and passionate yet cold, a Leader, a god. Under the cover of the Law-Protected roofs — here, there, everywhere, waiting for his word — his legions waited. He gave the Word. From Ealing to Barking, from Enfield to Harrow, the mob arose. The screams of the evil-doers rose high above the thunder of applause. This was the Night of the Long Knife … and in due course he sat in judgement. Lisping, shrugging, gesticulating, shuffling, the Ringleaders of the Adversaries were brought before him. Should he kill them? Yes, but not immediately. They and theirs must be stamped out, stamped out utterly for ever. ‘Question them!’ and then he was looking down, while stretched upon a rack someone gibbered and told everything out of a bleeding mouth.
And later, there was peace in the world,
Here was his Ideal Man — the Leader. Sometimes he felt that, circumstances being favourable, he could have achieved such leadership. Then he saw himself walking along an interminable avenue of waving hands towards a great wreath-hung platform, while a hundred thousand voices thundered: ‘Hail, Peacemaker! Hail, Liberator!’ His face was even paler and more firmly set than usual as he climbed the steps. One lock of hair (the only good thing that ever dared to rebel against him) fell across his forehead. He let it stay where it fell, and raised a hand for silence. With one flick of the wrist he stilled that storm of approbation. Then he spoke, standing in a floodlight; the vast hall threw back thunderous echoes. Then his terrible, urgent voice dashed the echoes back where they belonged and silenced them. He was a tempest, a raging torrent. Two hundred thousand eyes were fixed in adoration upon his face. His wild, incandescent eyes were holding hypnotically the gaze of a multitude a hundred thousand strong. And how he talked! With what fire, with what passion! Whenever he paused for breath, the pent- up breath of the listening multitude let itself out in such cheering as had never been heard before in the whole history of the world. He raised a hand again. Then he continued. His arguments clamped down hard, inescapable… like the thumbs of a strangler. His phrases were incisive; they bit deep … like Spanish knives. And the end of the speech was the beginning of a new world….
Still, always, when the daydream had spent itself, he knew that he was not a leader of men; he remembered that he was shy of men. He knew that he would never shout his will into the face of mankind; because he shrank
