Does the past still live and not
in dreams alone? Justin thought
not till a strange decision took
him back to days he knew as dead.
_Until recent times the Devil, to give him his due, was a figure
of fear rather than of Hallowe'en fun. Nowadays, to most of our
enlightened citizenry, Satan is a device used by the clergy to keep
folk in line, or by a Goethe to create Faust. Consider then the
plight of a thoroughly sophisticated man of today who discovers
Old Nick to be not only real but deadlier by far than the horned
brimstone-breather of legend._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Fantastic Universe October-November 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Charles Justin paused briefly in the encroaching darkness to look at
the north front of the Old State House in Boston. He was engaged in the
process of walking home from his office on State Street to his house in
Louisburg Square.
The ancient building, he thought, with its palladian windows and gilded
lion and unicorn, still looked much as it must have when Paul Revere
engraved his crude but effective print of the Boston Massacre, back in
1773.
One of the things Justin loved most about Boston was the fact that so
much of the old town still breathed. Faneuil Hall, a few blocks behind
him, where James Otis and Sam Adams had roused the Commonwealth against
the crown, still did duty as a major market. Worshippers still paraded
on Sunday mornings to King's Chapel, Christ Church, the Old North
Church. Scores, perhaps hundreds, of twentieth-century Bostonians still
lived and worked upon the same broad planks of old T-Wharf that had
felt the measured tread of Gage's grenadiers.
Justin, born and bred in rawer if no more bustling Midwestern
surroundings, had felt a powerful tie with the old thus standing
alongside the new, a strong _déjà vu_, from his first glimpse, more
than twenty years before as a Harvard freshman. This, he had known
instinctively, was home for him. He had made it his home ever since.
The sense of the past was strong upon him this evening--perhaps,
he thought wryly, more strong than was proper for an executive
vice-president of the Ninth National Bank. As he scaled the slope of
Park Street on Beacon Hill he felt like a man born out of his proper
time.
Life and color and revolt had been strong in the little city of two
centuries ago. Men had thought and dreamed--and then had talked and
acted. Unlike their descendants, who seemed to have relapsed into an
everlasting featherbed of trustfundism.
Passing the gold-domed balustraded beauty of Bullfinch's classic New
State House, he wondered how the crest of the hill had looked when
John Hancock had lived there, in his magnificent Georgian mansion,
with its landscaped gardens and carriage house containing the
merchant-governor's gilded English coach.
Old Boston held Justin tightly in its grip even after he turned the
key in his own lock and entered his house on Louisburg Square. For the
house, if not quite Federalist, dated back to the early era of Clipper
Ship affluence. Fine white paneling, graceful mahogany banisters,
blue-and-gold silk wall covering of heavy Chinese silk, Sheraton
furniture, Revere silverware--all combined to retain illusion of a past
still alive.
Not until he walked upstairs was the illusion shattered. And again it
was not the room that shattered it--for graceful mantel above gently
roaring fire, fine old furniture and a pair of glowing Copley portraits
on the west wall maintained the dream.
It was the two persons awaiting him there that spoiled Justin's vision
of time past relived. Jack Fellowes joggled cubed ice in a broad-beamed
highball glass in front of the fire--as modern in his midnight-blue
dinner jacket and soft white shirt as the post-Freudian psychiatry he
practiced.
He said, "Ah, there, Charley, have a drink on you." Then, with a rueful
half-smile at Justin's wife, Marie, "You seem to have married the only
banker in history who works overtime."
In an ice-blue satin dinner gown Marie Chandler Justin was as brilliant
as a candle's white flame--and even less warm. She stirred faintly in
greeting to her husband, said, "You're late, Charles--you'll barely
have time to dress."
Justin reached for a drink that stood ready atop the red-lacquer
Chinese cabinet some ancestor of his wife's had brought from Canton. He
said, "Sorry, I forgot about the Iveson party. I don't think I'm up to
it tonight. You two will have more fun without me."
Marie pouted prettily, said, "But, darling, I'll have to explain to
everybody--and they'll all think the most horrible things."
"Let 'em," said Justin bluntly. He turned to Fellowes, added, "By the
way, how are you coming along with Marie's psychoanalysis?"
"These things take time," said Fellowes.
"So I understand," said Justin. Some devil prompted him to add, "I've
heard that some women wear out two or three psychoanalysts in a single
lifetime."
"Charles!" Marie looked warningly up from the pleats in her skirt.
"Really, Charles." Fellowes sounded hurt.
"Sorry," said Justin. He decided to jump the conversational track
before there was a wreck. "Henri Dubois visited me this afternoon."
* * * * *
"You mean the Golden Rule fellow?" the psychiatrist inquired.
"Interesting phenomenon of our times. What sort of chap is he?"
Justin thought back to the soft-spoken man who had sat in the white
leather armchair on the far side of his desk, the man who had asked him
for two million dollars to support his Missionist movement. He thought
back to the meeting in the Garden he had attended the night before--a
meeting attended by twenty thousand quiet intent hopeful people, by
many thousands more who had listened via loud-speakers outside in the
streets.
Henri Dubois did preach the Golden Rule, the ideals of cooperation
and humanity toward one's fellows, as the world's only salvation.
It wasn't quite that simple, of course--but the Golden Rule was its
essence, a Golden Rule to be practiced not merely in church on Sundays
but seven days a week.
And Missionism, as preached by Henri Dubois, was sweeping the country.
Dubois had received more than fifty thousand dollars in spontaneous
gifts from the lecture the night before--and before noon that day.
Yet he felt unable to spend it in support of his movement lest such
spending should lend aid to possible smears of fraud and graft later.
And Dubois needed two millions. He wanted the bank to use his huge
backlog of contributions as collateral on a loan.
"It will save you many times that sum," he had said, leaning forward
and resting a forearm on Justin's desk. "Consider--Missionism's
widespread adoption will mean cooperation rather than competition. It
will mean that, instead of wasteful conflict between selfishly warring
groups--say of contractors versus unions--you'll have voluntary union.
It will mean, to take a specific instance...."
Justin had been, was still, of more than half a mind to grant the
evangelist what he asked. For Missionism was catching on, would soon be
sweeping not the country but the world. Yet Corinne Forrester, Dubois'
woman, had come back later to ask Justin to refuse the loan.
Dark, slimly flamboyant, a smoker of dark Cuban cigarettes, Mrs.
Forrester was a factor to be reckoned with. She had left her
gloves--deliberately, he suspected--had returned for them and said,
"Mr. Justin, I have loved Henri Dubois for more years than I intend to
admit. Until recently he has loved me as well.
"Now, thanks to Missionism, I am losing him. I gave up a perfectly
good family and home and husband for Henri--but I cannot compete with
millions of rivals. I'm not an ingenue any longer and I am not the sort
of woman who can exist for long without a man."
"This hardly seems to concern--" he had begun.
And, dark eyes disturbingly fixed on his, she had said, "Mr.
Justin--you're not the sort of man who should live long without a
woman. There are a hundred little signs--restlessness, too-rigid
control, vast energy uncompensated." Then, rising, "I shall call you
tomorrow at five. And perhaps...."
Justin had been in a foul mood since. He came out of abstraction
to realise that Jack Fellowes had repeated his question about the
evangelist, said, "What sort of fellow is he? I'd say the oddest thing
about him is his very lack of oddities."
"Hmmm." Fellowes was definitely interested. "Did you get much
impression of repressive influences, Charley?"
"I'm no psychiatrist, Jack," said Justin, "but I'd say no. He was
quiet--yes. But he didn't have any trouble expressing himself. More
intellect than emotion-dominated."
"And you say you're no psychiatrist," said Fellowes. "Charley, if you
weren't a damned good one you'd never be able to hold down the job you
do at the bank."
"Can't you two talk anything but shop?" Marie asked irritably. She
stood up, added, "This dreadful Dubois man--I don't see why we have
to have reformers anyway. The world would be all right if some people
weren't always trying to change it."
"Change is the natural order," Justin said mildly.
"Only because men like this Dubois make it so," said Marie sharply.
And, to Jack Fellowes, "I'll be ready in five minutes."
Justin waited till she had left, then said, "You know, Jack, this is
charmingly old-fashioned. You and I having a drink together while the
woman who has us both in her clutches prepares for the evening."
The psychiatrist winced. "You know, Charley, you can be alarmingly
frank at times," he said. "That wasn't funny."
"I know it wasn't," Justin told him. "Nothing about Marie is ever
funny. She considers a sense of humor practically subversive. How _are_
you getting along with her--professionally?"
Fellowes shrugged, said, "Nowhere, professionally _or_ personally.
What's more I suspect you know it, Charley."
"Let's just say I guessed." Justin reached for the bottle to refill his
glass, added, "I know Marie. Since she has no intention of facing facts
you'll never get out of the batter's box professionally. Personally?
Well, she has no intention of giving me any grounds for divorce. Not
that I wouldn't appreciate some, Jack."
The psychiatrist said, "Charley, there's just one sort of human that
absolutely baffles a man in my profession--that's an absolutely sane
man."
"Oh, come, Jack," said Justin. "All sanity is relative."
"That's why it's so damned baffling when we find it." Fellowes lifted
his glass. "Here's to the one and only sane man I ever met."
Marie, coldly magnificent in ermine, with bits of silver-leaf
glittering in her blond hair, appeared in the doorway. She said, "Jack,
I'm ready." She didn't seem to mind at all that Justin wasn't going.