I waited, unnerved and feverish, pulsing, in the dark and narrow hall
beside the flimsy rack where several coats and hats were hung. Once
before I had visited Krebs in that lodging-house in Cambridge long ago
with something of the same feelings. But now they were greatly
intensified. Now he was dying....
The woman was descending.
"He says he wants to see you, sir," she said rather breathlessly, and I
followed her. In the semi-darkness of the stairs I passed the three men
who had been with Krebs, and when I reached the open door of his room he
was alone. I hesitated just a second, swept by the heat wave that follows
sudden shyness, embarrassment, a sense of folly it is too late to avert.
Krebs was propped up with pillows.
"Well, this is good of you," he said, and reached out his hand across the
spread. I took it, and sat down beside the shiny oak bedstead, in a chair
covered with tobacco-colored plush.
"You feel better?" I asked.
"Oh, I feel all right," he answered, with a smile. "It's queer, but I
do."
My eye fell upon the long line of sectional book-cases that lined one
side of the room. "Why, you've got quite a library here," I observed.
"Yes, I've managed to get together some good books. But there is so much
to read nowadays, so much that is really good and new, a man has the
hopeless feeling he can never catch up with it all. A thousand writers
and students are making contributions today where fifty years ago there
was one."
"I've been following your speeches, after a fashion,--I wish I might have
been able to read more of them. Your argument interested me. It's new,
unlike the ordinary propaganda of--"
"Of agitators," he supplied, with a smile.
"Of agitators," I agreed, and tried to return his smile. "An agitator who
appears to suggest the foundations of a constructive programme and who
isn't afraid to criticise the man with a vote as well as the capitalist
is an unusual phenomenon."
"Oh, when we realize that we've only got a little time left in which to
tell what we think to be the truth, it doesn't require a great deal of
courage, Paret. I didn't begin to see this thing until a little while
ago. I was only a crude, hot-headed revolutionist. God knows I'm crude
enough still. But I began to have a glimmering of what all these new
fellows in the universities are driving at." He waved his hand towards
the book-cases. "Driving at collectively, I mean. And there are attempts,
worthy attempts, to coordinate and synthesize the sciences. What I have
been saying is not strictly original. I took it on the stump, that's all.
I didn't expect it to have much effect in this campaign, but it was an
opportunity to sow a few seeds, to start a sense of personal
dissatisfaction in the minds of a few voters. What is it Browning says?
It's in Bishop Blougram, I believe. 'When the fight begins within
himself, a man's worth something.' It's an intellectual fight, of
course."
His words were spoken quietly, but I realized suddenly that the
mysterious force which had drawn me to him now, against my will, was an
intellectual rather than apparently sentimental one, an intellectual
force seeming to comprise within it all other human attractions. And yet
I felt a sudden contrition.
"See here, Krebs," I said, "I didn't come here to bother you about these
matters, to tire you. I mustn't stay. I'll call in again to see how you
are--from time to time."
"But you're not tiring me," he protested, stretching forth a thin,
detaining hand. "I don't want to rot, I want to live and think as long as
I can. To tell you the truth, Paret, I've been wishing to talk to
you--I'm glad you came in."
"You've been wishing to talk to me?" I said.
"Yes, but I didn't expect you'd come in. I hope you won't mind my saying
so, under the circumstances, but I've always rather liked you, admired
you, even back in the Cambridge days. After that I used to blame you for
going out and taking what you wanted, and I had to live a good many years
before I began to see that it's better for a man to take what he wants
than to take nothing at all. I took what I wanted, every man worth his
salt does. There's your great banker friend in New York whom I used to
think was the arch-fiend. He took what he wanted, and he took a good
deal, but it happened to be good for him. And by piling up his
corporations, Ossa on Pelion, he is paving the way for a logical economic
evolution. How can a man in our time find out what he does want unless he
takes something and gives it a trial?"
"Until he begins to feel that it disagrees with him," I said. "But then,"
I added involuntarily, "then it may be too late to try something else,
and he may not know what to try." This remark of mine might have
surprised me had it not been for the feeling--now grown definite--that
Krebs had something to give me, something to pass on to me, of all men.
Indeed, he had hinted as much, when he acknowledged a wish to talk to me.
"What seems so strange," I said, as I looked at him lying back on his
pillows, "is your faith that we shall be able to bring order out of all
this chaos--your belief in Democracy."
"Democracy's an adventure," he replied, "the great adventure of mankind.
I think the trouble in many minds lies in the fact that they persist in
regarding it as something to be made safe. All that can be done is to try
to make it as safe as possible. But no adventure is safe--life itself is
an adventure, and neither is that safe. It's a hazard, as you and I have
found out. The moment we try to make life safe we lose all there is in it
worth while."