A Dream of Armageddon

H.G. Wells

The man with the white face entered the carriage at Rugby. He moved slowly in spite of the

urgency of his porter, and even while he was still on the platform I noted how ill he seemed.

He dropped into the corner over against me with a sigh, made an incomplete attempt to

arrange his travelling shawl, and became motionless, with his eyes staring vacantly.

Presently he was moved by a sense of my observation, looked up at me, and put out a

spiritless hand for his newspaper. Then he glanced again in my direction.

I feigned to read. I feared I had unwittingly embarrassed him, and in a moment I was

surprised to find him speaking.

I did not catch his meaning for a second.

"They don't know," he added.

I looked a little more attentively at his face.

"There are dreams," he said, "and dreams."

That sort of proposition I never dispute.

"I suppose--" he hesitated. "Do you ever dream? I mean vividly."

"I dream very little," I answered. "I doubt if I have three vivid dreams in a year."

"Ah!" he said, and seemed for a moment to collect his thoughts.

"Your dreams don't mix with your memories?" he asked abruptly.

"You don't find yourself in doubt; did this happen or did it not?"

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"Does he say--?" He indicated the book.

"Says it happens at times and gives the usual explanation about intensity of impression and

"Isn't there something called consecutive dreaming--that goes on night after night?"

"I believe there is. There are cases given in most books on mental trouble."

"Mental trouble! Yes. I daresay there are. It's the right place for them. But what I mean--"

He looked at his bony knuckles. "Is that sort of thing always dreaming? Is it dreaming?

Or is it something else? Mightn't it be something else?"

I should have snubbed his persistent conversation but for the drawn anxiety of his face. I

remember now the look of his faded eyes and the lids red stained--perhaps you know that

look.

"I'm not just arguing about a matter of opinion," he said. "The thing's killing me."

"Dreams?"

"You mean?"

"I died."

"Died?"

"Smashed and killed, and now, so much of me as that dream was, is dead. Dead forever. I

dreamt I was another man, you know, living in a different part of the world and in a

different time. I dreamt that night after night. Night after night I woke into that other life.

Fresh scenes and fresh happenings--until I came upon the last--"

"When you died?"

"When I died."

"And since then--"

"No," he said. "Thank God! That was the end of the dream . . . "

It was clear I was in for this dream. And after all, I had an hour before me, the light was

"I don't know what year it was. I did when I was asleep, when I was dreaming, that is, but

not now--not now that I am awake. There's a lot of things I have forgotten since I woke out

of these dreams, though I knew them at the time when I was--I suppose it was dreaming.

They called the year differently from our way of calling the year . . . What did they call it?"

He put his hand to his forehead. "No," said he, "I forget."

He sat smiling weakly. For a moment I feared he did not mean to tell me his dream. As a

"It was vivid from the first. I seemed to wake up in it suddenly. And it's curious that in

the dream life was enough while it lasted. Perhaps--But I will tell you how I find myself

when I do my best to recall it all. I don't remember anything clearly until I found myself

sitting in a sort of loggia looking out over the sea. I had been dozing, and suddenly I woke

myself there or anything of that sort, you understand. I did not feel I had fallen into it

suddenly. I simply took it up at that point. Whatever memory I had of this life, this

nineteenth-century life, faded as I woke, vanished like a dream. I knew all about myself,

knew that my name was no longer Cooper but Hedon, and all about my position in the

world. I've forgotten a lot since I woke--there's a want of connection--but it was all quite

clear and matter of fact then."

He hesitated again, gripping the window strap, putting his face forward and looking up to

me appealingly.

"This seems bosh to you?"

"No, no!" I cried. "Go on. Tell me what this loggia was like!"

"It was not really a loggia--I don't know what to call it. It faced south. It was small. It was

there she stood, so that it came to me how beautiful and desirable she was, as though I had

never seen her before. And when at last I sighed and raised myself upon my arm she turned

her face to me--"

He stopped.

"I have lived three-and-fifty years in this world. I have had mother, sisters, friends, wife and

daughters--all their faces, the play of their faces, I know. But the face of this girl--it is much

more real to me. I can bring it back into memory so that I see it again--I could draw it or

paint it. And after all--"

He stopped--but I said nothing.

"The face of a dream--the face of a dream. She was beautiful.

"You see, I had thrown up my plans and ambitions, thrown up all I had ever worked for or

desired for her sake. I had been a master man away there in the north, with influence and

property and a great reputation, but none of it had seemed worth having beside her. I had

come to the place, this city of sunny pleasures with her, and left all those things to wreck

and ruin just to save a remnant at least of my life. While I had been in love with her before I

knew that she had any care for me, before I had imagined that she would dare--that we

should dare, all my life had seemed vain and hollow, dust and ashes. It was dust and ashes.

Night after night and through the long days I had longed and desired--my soul had beaten

against the thing forbidden!

"But it is impossible for one man to tell another just these things. It's emotion, it's a tint, a

light that comes and goes. Only while it's there, everything changes, everything. The thing

is I came away and left them in their Crisis to do what they could."

"Left whom?" I asked, puzzled.

"The people up in the north there. You see--in this dream, anyhow--I had been a big man,

the sort of man men come to trust in, to group themselves about. Millions of men who had

never seen me were ready to do things and risk things because of their confidence in me. I

expect you to understand the shades and complications of the year--the year something or

other ahead. I had it all--down to the smallest details--in my dream. I suppose I had been

dreaming of it before I awoke, and the fading outline of some queer new development I had

imagined still hung about me as I rubbed my eyes. It was some grubby affair that made me

thank God for the sunlight. I sat up on the couch and remained looking at the woman and

rejoicing--rejoicing that I had come away out of all that tumult and folly and violence

before it was too late. After all, I thought, this is life--love and beauty, desire and delight,

are they not worth all those dismal struggles for vague, gigantic ends? And I blamed myself

for having ever sought to be a leader when I might have given my days to love. But then,

thought I, if I had not spent my early days sternly and austerely, I might have wasted myself

"Ah!" said the man with the white face; "then perhaps you can tell me--you will know if

this is indeed Capri. For in this life I have never been there. Let me describe it. We were in

a little room, one of a vast multitude of little rooms, very cool and sunny, hollowed out of

the limestone of a sort of cape, very high above the sea. The whole island, you know, was

one enormous hotel, complex beyond explaining, and on the other side there were miles of

floating hotels, and huge floating stages to which the flying machines came. They called it a

"I know that rock." I said. "I was nearly drowned there. It is called the Faraglioni."

"Well, that is the first thing I remember, the first dream I had, that little shaded room and

bearing lights. The place was inundated with artificial light that shamed the newborn day.

And as we went through the throng the people turned about and looked at us, for all through

the world my name and face were known, and how I had suddenly thrown up pride and

struggle to come to this place. And they looked also at the lady beside me, though half the

story of how at last she had come to me was unknown or mistold. And few of the men who

were there, I know, but judged me a happy man, in spite of all the shame and dishonour that

"The air was full of music, full of harmonious scents, full of the rhythm of beautiful

"And then--it was when we had done dancing--a man came to speak to me. He was a lean,

resolute man, very soberly clad for that place, and already I had marked his face watching

me in the breakfasting hall, and afterwards as we went along the passage I had avoided his

eye. But now, as we sat in a little alcove, smiling at the pleasure of all the people who went

to and fro across the shining floor, he came and touched me, and spoke to me so that I was

forced to listen. And he asked that he might speak to me for a little time apart.

"My old habits of scheming and organising reasserted themselves. I could even see myself

suddenly returning to the north, and all the dramatic effect of it. All that this man said

witnessed to the disorder of the party indeed, but not to its damage. I should go back

stronger than I had come. And then I thought of my lady. You see--how can I tell you?

There were certain peculiarities of our relationship--as things are I need not tell you about

that--which would render her presence with me impossible. I should have had to leave her;

these wild aggressions--'

"When?"

"When you left Capri."

"South-west," he said, and glanced at me for a second. "We went in a boat."

"But I should have thought an aeroplane?"

"They had been seized."

I questioned him no more. Presently I thought he was beginning again. He broke out in an

if all our dreams of quiet places are a folly and a snare, why have we such dreams? Surely it

was no ignoble cravings, no base intentions, had brought us to this; it was Love had isolated

us. Love had come to me with her eyes and robed in her beauty, more glorious than all else

in life, in the very shape and colour of life, and summoned me away. I had silenced all the

voices, I had answered all the questions--I had come to her. And suddenly there was nothing

but War and Death!"

I had an inspiration. " After all," I said, "it could have been only a dream."

"A dream!" he cried, flaming upon me, "a dream--when, even now--"

For the first time he became animated. A faint flush crept into his cheek. He raised his open

hand and clenched it, and dropped it to his knee. He spoke, looking away from me, and for

all the rest of the time he looked away. "We are but phantoms!" he said, "and the phantoms

of phantoms, desires like cloud-shadows and wills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days

to Salerno, we talked of escape. We were full of hope, and it clung about us to the end,

hope for the life together we should lead, out of it all, out of the battle and struggle, the wild

and empty passions, the empty arbitrary 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not' of the world. We

were uplifted, as though our quest was a holy thing, as though love for another was a

mission . . . .

"Even when from our boat we saw the fair face of that great rock Capri--already scarred and

reckoned nothing of the imminent slaughter, though the fury of preparation hung about in

the puffs and clouds of dust at a hundred points amidst the gray; but, indeed, I made a text

of that and talked. There, you know, was the rock, still beautiful for all its scars, with its

countless windows and arches and ways, tier upon tier, for a thousand feet, a vast carving of

gray, broken by vine-clad terraces, and lemon and orange groves, and masses of agave and

prickly pear, and puffs of almond blossom. And out under the archway that is built over the

Piccola Marina other boats were coming; and as we came round the cape and within sight

did not heed it. There it was--a line of little dots in the sky--and then more, dotting the

south-eastern horizon, and then still more, until all that quarter of the sky was stippled with

would heel and catch the sun and become short flashes of light. They came, rising and

falling and growing larger, like some huge flight of gulls or rooks or such-like birds,

after that we noted to the northward and very high Evesham's fighting machines hanging

high over Naples like an evening swarm of gnats.

"It seemed to have no more to do with us than a flight of birds.

"Even the mutter of guns far away in the south-east seemed to us to signify nothing . . .

"Each day, each dream after that, we were still exalted, still seeking that refuge where we

were dusty and stained by our toilsome tramping, and half starved and with the horror of the

dead men we had seen and the flight of the peasants--for very soon a gust of fighting swept

up the peninsula--with these things haunting our minds it still resulted only in a deepening

resolution to escape. Oh, but she was brave and patient! She who had never faced hardship

and exposure had courage for herself and me. We went to and fro seeking an outlet, over a

food, and so we had come down among the marshes by Paestum, where those great temples

stand alone. I had some vague idea that by Paestum it might be possible to find a boat or

something, and take once more to sea. And there it was the battle overtook us.

"A sort of soul-blindness had me. Plainly I could see that we were being hemmed in; that

the great net of that giant Warfare had us in its toils. Many times we had seen the levies that

had come down from the north going to and fro, and had come upon them in the distance

amidst the mountains making ways for the ammunition and preparing the mounting of the

guns. Once we fancied they had fired at us, taking us for spies--at any rate a shot had gone

shuddering over us. Several times we had hidden in woods from hovering aeroplanes.

"But all these things do not matter now, these nights of flight and pain . . . We were in an

open place near those great temples at Paestum, at last, on a blank stony place dotted with

spiky bushes, empty and desolate and so flat that a grove of eucalyptus far away showed to

"I knew that we were between the two armies, and that they drew together. I knew we were

in danger, and that we could not stop there and rest!

affairs beyond our concern. Chiefly, I was thinking of my lady. An aching distress filled me.

For the first time she had owned herself beaten and had fallen a-weeping. Behind me I

could hear her sobbing, but I would not turn round to her because I knew she had need of

weeping, and had held herself so far and so long for me. It was well, I thought, that she

would weep and rest and then we would toil on again, for I had no inkling of the thing that

hung so near. Even now I can see her as she sat there, her lovely hair upon her shoulder, can

mark again the deepening hollow of her cheek.

on to the end.'

He put his hand to his mouth, and then moistened his lips.

"She stood up, you know, and moved a step towards me--as though she wanted to reach

me--

"And she had been shot through the heart."

He stopped and stared at me. I felt all that foolish incapacity an Englishman feels on such

occasions. I met his eyes for a moment, and then stared out of the window. For a long space

we kept silence. When at last I looked at him he was sitting back in his corner, his arms

folded, and his teeth gnawing at his knuckles.

He bit his nail suddenly, and stared at it.

Silence again.

"I have seen those temples," I said abruptly, and indeed he had brought those still, sunlit

arcades of worn sandstone very vividly before me.

"It was the brown one, the big brown one. I sat down on a fallen pillar and held her in my

arms . . . Silent after the first babble was over. And after a little while the lizards came out

and ran about again, as though nothing unusual was going on, as though nothing had

changed . . . It was tremendously still there, the sun high and the shadows still; even the

shadows of the weeds upon the entablature were still--in spite of the thudding and banging

that went all about the sky.

"I seem to remember that the aeroplanes came up out of the south, and that the battle went

away to the west. One aeroplane was struck, and overset and fell. I remember that--though

it didn't interest me in the least. It didn't seem to signify. It was like a wounded gull, you

"And I don't remember waking up. I don't remember dressing that day. I know I found

myself in my office, with my letters all slit open in front of me, and how I was struck by the

absurdity of being there, seeing that in reality I was sitting, stunned, in that Paestum Temple

with a dead woman in my arms. I read my letters like a machine. I have forgotten what they

were about."

He stopped, and there was a long silence.

started at this passing of time. I turned on him with a brutal question, with the tone of "Now

or never."

"Once more, and as it were only for a few instants. I seemed to have suddenly awakened out

of a great apathy, to have risen into a sitting position, and the body lay there on the stones

beside me.

A gaunt body. Not her, you know. So soon--it was not her . . . .

"I may have heard voices. I do not know. Only I knew clearly that men were coming into

the solitude and that that was a last outrage.

"I stood up and walked through the temple, and then there came into sight--first one man

with a yellow face, dressed in a uniform of dirty white, trimmed with blue, and then several,

climbing to the crest of the old wall of the vanished city, and crouching there. They were

little bright figures in the sunlight, and there they hung, weapon in hand, peering cautiously

before them.

"And further away I saw others and then more at another point in the wall. It was a long lax

line of men in open order.

"Presently the man I had first seen stood up and shouted a command, and his men came

tumbling down the wall and into the high weeds towards the temple. He scrambled down

with them and led them. He came facing towards me, and when he saw me he stopped.

"At first I had watched these men with a mere curiosity, but when I had seen they meant to

come to the temple I was moved to forbid them. I shouted to the officer.

"He stared, and then shouted a question back to me in some unknown tongue.

He kept shouting unintelligible things, questions, perhaps, at me.

"I know now that he was afraid of me, but at the time that did not occur to me. As I tried to

explain to him, he interrupted me in imperious tones, bidding me, I suppose, stand aside.

"He started back. He looked at me with cruel eyes. I saw a sort of exultant resolve leap into

them--delight. Then, suddenly, with a scowl, he swept his sword back--SO--and thrust."

carriage jarred and jerked. This present world insisted upon itself, became clamourous. I

saw through the steamy window huge electric fights glaring down from tall masts upon a

fog, saw rows of stationary empty carriages passing by, and then a signal-box hoisting its

constellation of green and red into the murky London twilight, marched after them. I looked

again at his drawn features.

"He ran me through the heart. It was with a sort of astonishment--no fear, no pain--but just

amazement, that I felt it pierce me, felt the sword drive home into my body. It didn't hurt,

you know. It didn't hurt at all."

The yellow platform lights came into the field of view, passing first rapidly, then slowly,

and at last stopping with a jerk. Dim shapes of men passed to and fro without.

"Euston!" cried a voice.

"Do you mean--?"

"There was no pain, no sting or smart. Amazement and then darkness sweeping over

everything. The hot, brutal face before me, the face of the man who had killed me, seemed

"Euston!" clamoured the voices outside; "Euston!"

featureless remote roar of the London cobble-stones, came to my ears. A truckload of

lighted lamps blazed along the platform.

"A darkness, a flood of darkness that opened and spread and blotted out all things."

"Any luggage, sir?" said the porter.

He seemed to hesitate. Then, almost inaudibly, he answered, "NO."

"You mean?"

"I couldn't get to her. She was there on the other side of the temple-- And then--"

"Yes," I insisted. "Yes?"

"Nightmares," he cried; "nightmares indeed! My God! Great birds that fought and tore."