Hugo realized at last that there was no place in his world for him.
Tides and tempest, volcanoes and lightning, all other majestic
vehemences of the universe had a purpose, but he had none. Either
because he was all those forces unnaturally locked in the body of a man,
or because he was a giant compelled to stoop and pander to live at all
among his feeble fellows, his anachronism was complete.
That much he perceived calmly. His tragedy lay in the lie he had told to
his father: great deeds were always imminent and none of them could be
accomplished because they involved humanity, humanity protecting its
diseases, its pettiness, its miserable convictions and conventions, with
the essence of itself--life. Life not misty and fecund for the future,
but life clawing at the dollar in the hour, the security of platitudes,
the relief of visible facts, the hope in rationalization, the needs of
skin, belly, and womb.
Beyond that, he could see destiny by interpreting his limited career.
Through a sort of ontogenetic recapitulation he had survived his savage
childhood, his barbaric youth, and the Greeces, Romes, Egypts, and
Babylons of his early manhood, emerging into a present that was endowed
with as much aspiration and engaged with the same futility as was his
contemporary microcosm. No life span could observe anything but material
progress, for so mean and inalterable is the gauge of man that his races
topple before his soul expands, and the eventualities of his growth in
space and time must remain a problem for thousands and tens of thousands
of years.
Searching still further, he appreciated that no single man could force a
change upon his unwilling fellows. At most he might inculcate an idea in
a few and live to see its gradual spreading. Even then he could have no
assurance of its contortions to the desire for wealth and power or of
the consequences of those contortions.
Finally, to build, one must first destroy, and he questioned his right
to select unaided the objects for destruction. He looked at the Capitol
in Washington and pondered the effect of issuing an ultimatum and
thereafter bringing down the great dome like Samson. He thought of the
churches and their bewildering, stupefying effect on masses who were
mulcted by their own fellows, equally bewildered, equally stupefied.
Suppose through a thousand nights he ravaged the churches, wrecking
every structure in the land, laying waste property, making the loud,
unattended volume of worship an impossibility, taking away the
purple-robed gods of his forbears? Suppose he sank the navy, annihilated
the army, set up a despotism? No matter how efficiently and well he
ruled, the millions would hate him, plot against him, attempt his life;
and every essential agent would be a hypocritical sycophant seeking
selfish ends.
He reached the last of his conclusions sitting beside a river whither he
had walked to think. An immense loathing for the world rose up in him.
At its apex a locomotive whistled in the distance, thundered
inarticulately, and rounded a bend. It came very near the place where
Hugo reclined, black, smoking, and noisy, drivers churning along the
rails, a train of passenger cars behind. Hugo could see the dots that
were people's heads. People! Human beings! How he hated them! The train
was very near. Suddenly all his muscles were unsprung. He threw himself
to his feet and rushed toward the train, with a passionate desire to get
his fingers around the sliding piston, to up-end the locomotive and to
throw the ordered machinery into a blackened, blazing, bloody tangle of
ruin.
His lips uttered a wild cry; he jumped across the river and ran two
prodigious steps. Then he stopped. The train went on unharmed. Hugo
shuddered.
If the world did not want him, he would leave the world. Perhaps he was
a menace to it. Perhaps he should kill himself. But his burning,
sickened heart refused once more to give up. Frenzy departed, then
numbness. In its place came a fresh hope, new determination. Hugo Danner
would do his utmost until the end. Meanwhile, he would remove himself
some distance from the civilization that had tortured him. He would go
away and find a new dream.
The sound of the locomotive was dead in the distance. He crossed the
river on a bridge and went back to his house. He felt strong again and
glad--glad because he had won an obscure victory, glad because the farce
of his quest in political government had ended with no tragic
dénouement.
They were electrocuting Davidoff and Pletzky that day. The news scarcely
interested Hugo. The part he had very nearly played in the affair seemed
like the folly of a dimly remembered acquaintance. The relief of
resigning that impossible purpose overwhelmed him. He dismissed his
servants, closed his house, and boarded a train. When the locomotive
pounded through the station, he suffered a momentary pang. He sat in a
seat with people all around him. He was tranquil and almost content.