第22章 THE WRONG INCENDIARY(2)

A little farther on I found grass and pavement soaking and flooded,and the red and yellow flames repainted in pools and puddles.Beyond were dim huddles of people and a small distant voice shouting out orders.The fire-engines were at work.I went on among the red reflections,which seemed like subterranean fires;I had a singular sensation of being in a very important dream.Oddly enough,this was increased when I found that most of my friends and neighbours were entangled in the crowd.Only in dreams do we see familiar faces so vividly against a black background of midnight.I was glad to find (for the workman cyclist's sake)that the fire was not in the houses by the wood-yard,but in the wood-yard itself.

There was no fear for human life,and the thing was seemingly accidental;though there were the usual ugly whispers about rivalry and revenge.

But for all that I could not shake off my dream-drugged soul a swollen,tragic,portentous sort of sensation,that it all had something to do with the crowning of the English King,and the glory or the end of England.It was not till I saw the puddles and the ashes in broad daylight next morning that I was fundamentally certain that my midnight adventure had not happened outside this world.

But I was more arrogant than the ancient Emperors Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar;for I attempted to interpret my own dream.The fire was feeding upon solid stacks of unused beech or pine,gray and white piles of virgin wood.It was an orgy of mere waste;thousands of good things were being killed before they had ever existed.Doors,tables,walking-sticks,wheelbarrows,wooden swords for boys,Dutch dolls for girls Icould hear the cry of each uncreated thing as it expired in the flames.

And then I thought of that other noble tower of needless things that stood in the field beyond my garden;the bonfire,the mountain of vanities,that is meant for burning;and how it stood dark and lonely in the meadow,and the birds hopped on its corners and the dew touched and spangled its twigs.And I remembered that there are two kinds of fires,the Bad Fire and the Good Fire the last must surely be the meaning of Bonfire.And the paradox is that the Good Fire is made of bad things,of things that we do not want;but the Bad Fire is made of good things,of things that we do want;like all that wealth of wood that might have made dolls and chairs and tables,but was only making a hueless ash.

And then I saw,in my vision,that just as there are two fires,so there are two revolutions.And I saw that the whole mad modern world is a race between them.Which will happen first--the revolution in which bad things shall perish,or that other revolution,in which good things shall perish also?One is the riot that all good men,even the most conservative,really dream of,when the sneer shall be struck from the face of the well-fed;when the wine of honour shall be poured down the throat of despair;when we shall,so far as to the sons of flesh is possible,take tyranny and usury and public treason and bind them into bundles and burn them.And the other is the disruption that may come prematurely,negatively,and suddenly in the night;like the fire in my little town.

It may come because the mere strain of modern life is unbearable;and in it even the things that men do desire may break down;marriage and fair ownership and worship and the mysterious worth of man.The two revolutions,white and black,are racing each other like two railway trains;I cannot guess the issue...but even as I thought of it,the tallest turret of the timber stooped and faltered and came down in a cataract of noises.And the fire,finding passage,went up with a spout like a fountain.It stood far up among the stars for an instant,a blazing pillar of brass fit for a pagan conqueror,so high that one could fancy it visible away among the goblin trees of Burnham or along the terraces of the Chiltern Hills.