This meant the development of a new culture, one to be founded on the

American tradition of equality of opportunity. But culture was not

a weed that grew overnight; it was a leaven that spread slowly and

painfully, first inoculating a few who suffered and often died for it,

that it might gradually affect the many. The spread of culture implied

the recognition of leadership: democratic leadership, but still

leadership. Leadership, and the wisdom it implied, did not reside in the

people, but in the leaders who sprang from the people and interpreted

their needs and longings.... He went on to discuss a part of the

programme of the Citizens Union....

What struck me, as I laid down the typewritten sheets, was the

extraordinary resemblance between the philosophies of Hermann Krebs

and Theodore Watling. Only--Krebs's philosophy was the bigger, held

the greater vision of the two; I had reluctantly and rather bitterly to

admit it. The appeal of it had even reached and stirred me, whose task

was to refute it! Here indeed was something to fight for--perhaps to die

for, as he had said: and as I sat there in my office gazing out of the

window I found myself repeating certain phrases he had used--the phrase

about leadership, for instance. It was a tremendous conception

of Democracy, that of acquiescence to developed leadership made

responsible; a conception I was compelled to confess transcended Mr.

Watling's, loyal as I was to him.... I began to reflect how novel all

this was in a political speech--although what I have quoted was in the

nature of a preamble. It was a sermon, an educational sermon. Well,

that is what sermons always had been,--and even now pretended to

be,--educational and stirring, appealing to the emotions through the

intellect. It didn't read like the Socialism he used to preach, it had

the ring of religion. He had called it religion.

With an effort of the will I turned from this ironical and dangerous

vision of a Hugh Paret who might have been enlisted in an inspiring

struggle, of a modern yet unregenerate Saul kicking against the pricks,

condemned to go forth breathing fire against a doctrine that made a true

appeal; against the man I believed I hated just because he had made this

appeal. In the act of summoning my counter-arguments I was interrupted

by the entrance of Grierson. He was calling on a matter of business, but

began to talk about the extracts from Krebs's speech he had read in the

Mail and State.

“What in hell is this fellow driving at, Paret?” he demanded. “It sounds

to me like the ranting of a lunatic dervish. If he thinks so much of us,

and the way we run the town, what's he squawking about?”

I looked at Grierson, and conceived an intense aversion for him. I

wondered how I had ever been able to stand him, to work with him. I saw

him in a sudden flash as a cunning, cruel bird of prey, a gorged, drab

vulture with beady eyes, a resemblance so extraordinary that I wondered

I had never remarked it before. For he had the hooked vulture nose,

while the pink baldness of his head was relieved by a few scanty tufts

of hair.

“The people seem to like what he's got to say,” I observed.

“It beats me,” said Grierson. “They don't understand a quarter of

it--I've been talking to some of 'em. It's their d--d curiosity, I

guess. You know how they'll stand for hours around a street fakir.”

“It's more than that,” I retorted.

Grierson regarded me piercingly.

“Well, we'll put a crimp in him, all right,” he said, with a laugh.

I was in an unenviable state of mind when he left me. I had an impulse

to send for Miss McCoy and ask her if she had understood what Krebs was

“driving at,” but for reasons that must be fairly obvious I refrained.

I read over again that part of Krebs's speech which dealt with the

immediate programme of the Citizens Union. After paying a tribute to

Greenhalge as a man of common sense and dependability who would make a

good mayor, he went on to explain the principle of the new charter they

hoped ultimately to get, which should put the management of the city

in the hands of one man, an expert employed by a commission; an expert

whose duty it would be to conduct the affairs of the city on a business

basis, precisely as those of any efficient corporation were conducted.

This plan had already been adopted, with encouraging results, in

several smaller cities of the country. He explained in some detail,

with statistics, the waste and inefficiency and dishonesty in various

departments under the present system, dwelling particularly upon the

deplorable state of affairs in the city hospital.

I need not dwell upon this portion of his remarks. Since then text-books

and serious periodicals have dealt with these matters thoroughly. They

are now familiar to all thinking Americans.

XXV.

My entrance into the campaign was accompanied by a blare of publicity,

and during that fortnight I never picked up a morning or evening

newspaper without reading, on the first page, some such headline as

“Crowds flock to hear Paret.” As a matter of fact, the crowds did flock;

but I never quite knew as I looked down from platforms on seas of faces

how much of the flocking was spontaneous. Much of it was so, since the

struggle had then become sufficiently dramatic to appeal to the larger

public imagination that is but occasionally waked; on the other

hand, the magic of advertising cannot be underestimated; nor must

the existence be ignored of an organized corps of shepherds under the

vigilant direction of Mr. Judd Jason, whose duty it was to see that none

of our meetings was lacking in numbers and enthusiasm. There was always

a demonstrative gathering overflowing the sidewalk in front of the

entrance, swaying and cheering in the light of the street lamps, and on

the floor within an ample scattering of suspiciously bleary-eyed voters

to start the stamping and applauding. In spite of these known facts, the

impression of popularity, of repudiation of reform by a large majority

of level-headed inhabitants had reassuring and reenforcing effects.

Astute citizens, spectators of the fray--if indeed there were any--might

have remarked an unique and significant feature of that campaign: that

the usual recriminations between the two great parties were lacking.

Mr. Parks, the Republican candidate, did not denounce Mr. MacGuire, the

Democratic candidate. Republican and Democratic speakers alike expended

their breath in lashing Mr. Krebs and the Citizens Union.

It is difficult to record the fluctuations of my spirit. When I was in

the halls, speaking or waiting to speak, I reacted to that phenomenon

known as mob psychology, I became self-confident, even exhilarated; and

in those earlier speeches I managed, I think, to strike the note for

which I strove--the judicial note, suitable to a lawyer of weight and

prominence, of deprecation rather than denunciation. I sought to embody

and voice a fine and calm sanity at a time when everyone else seemed in

danger of losing their heads, and to a large extent achieved it. I had

known Mr. Krebs for more than twenty years, and while I did not care to

criticise a fellow-member of the bar, I would go so far as to say that

he was visionary, that the changes he proposed in government would,

if adopted, have grave and far-reaching results: we could not, for

instance, support in idleness those who refused to do their share of the

work of the world. Mr. Krebs was well-meaning. I refrained from dwelling

too long upon him, passing to Mr. Greenhalge, also well-meaning, but

a man of mediocre ability who would make a mess of the government of a

city which would one day rival New York and Chicago. (Loud cheers.) And

I pointed out that Mr. Perry Blackwood had been unable to manage the

affairs of the Boyne Street road. Such men, well-intentioned though

they might be, were hindrances to progress. This led me naturally to a

discussion of the Riverside Franchise and the Traction Consolidation. I

was one of those whose honesty and good faith had been arraigned, but I

would not stoop to refute the accusations. I dwelt upon the benefits

to the city, uniform service, electricity and large comfortable cars

instead of rattletrap conveyances, and the development of a large

and growing population in the Riverside neighbourhood: the continual

extension of lines to suburban districts that enabled hard-worked men

to live out of the smoke: I called attention to the system of transfers,

the distance a passenger might be conveyed, and conveyed quickly, for

the sum of five cents. I spoke of our capitalists as men more sinned

against than sinning. Their money was always at the service of

enterprises tending to the development of our metropolis.

When I was not in the meetings, however, and especially when in my room

at night, I was continually trying to fight off a sense of loneliness

that seemed to threaten to overwhelm me. I wanted to be alone, and yet

I feared to be. I was aware, in spite of their congratulations on my

efforts, of a growing dislike for my associates; and in the appalling

emptiness of the moments when my depression was greatest I was forced to

the realization that I had no disinterested friend--not one--in whom I

could confide. Nancy had failed me; I had scarcely seen Tom Peters that

winter, and it was out of the question to go to him. For the third time

in my life, and in the greatest crisis of all, I was feeling the need of

Something, of some sustaining and impelling Power that must be presented

humanly, possessing sympathy and understanding and love.... I think I

had a glimpse just a pathetic glimpse--of what the Church might be of

human solidarity, comfort and support, of human tolerance, if stripped

of the superstition of an ancient science. My tortures weren't of the

flesh, but of the mind. My mind was the sheep which had gone astray. Was

there no such thing, could there be no such thing as a human association

that might at the same time be a divine organism, a fold and a refuge

for the lost and divided minds? The source of all this trouble was

social....

Then toward the end of that last campaign week, madness suddenly came

upon me. I know now how near the breaking point I was, but the immediate

cause of my “flying to pieces”--to use a vivid expression--was a speech

made by Guptill, one of the Citizens Union candidates for alderman, a

young man of a radical type not uncommon in these days, though new to

my experience: an educated man in the ultra-radical sense, yet lacking

poise and perspective, with a certain brilliance and assurance. He was a

journalist, a correspondent of some Eastern newspapers and periodicals.

In this speech, which was reported to me--for it did not get into the

newspapers--I was the particular object of his attack. Men of my kind,

and not the Judd Jasons (for whom there was some excuse) were the

least dispensable tools of the capitalists, the greatest menace to

civilization. We were absolutely lacking in principle, we were ready at

any time to besmirch our profession by legalizing steals; we fouled our

nests with dirty fees. Not all that he said was vituperation, for he

knew something of the modern theory of the law that legal radicals had

begun to proclaim, and even to teach in some tolerant universities.

The next night, in the middle of a prepared speech I was delivering to

a large crowd in Kingdom Hall there had been jeers from a group in

a corner at some assertion I made. Guptill's accusations had been

festering in my mind. The faces of the people grew blurred as I felt

anger boiling, rising within me; suddenly my control gave way, and I

launched forth into a denunciation of Greenhalge, Krebs, Guptill and

even of Perry Blackwood that must have been without license or bounds. I

can recall only fragments of my remarks: Greenhalge wanted to be mayor,

and was willing to put the stigma of slander on his native city in order

to gain his ambition; Krebs had made a failure of his profession, of

everything save in bringing shame on the place of his adoption; and on

the single occasion heretofore when he had been before the public, in

the School Board fiasco, the officials indicted on his supposed evidence

had triumphantly been vindicated--, Guptill was gaining money and

notoriety out of his spleen; Perry Blackwood was acting out of spite....

I returned to Krebs, declaring that he would be the boss of the city if

that ticket were elected, demanding whether they wished for a boss an

agitator itching for power and recognition....

I was conscious at the moment only of a wild relief and joy in letting

myself go, feelings heightened by the clapping and cheers with which my

characterizations were received. The fact that the cheers were mingled

with hisses merely served to drive me on. At length, when I had returned

to Krebs, the hisses were redoubled, angering me the more because of the

evidence they gave of friends of his in my audiences. Perhaps I had made

some of these friends for him! A voice shouted out above the uproar:--“I

know about Krebs. He's a d--d sight better man than you.” And this

started a struggle in a corner of the hall.... I managed, somehow, when

the commotion had subsided, to regain my poise, and ended by uttering

the conviction that the common sense of the community would repudiate

the Citizens Union and all it stood for....

But that night, as I lay awake listening to the street noises and

staring at the glint from a street lamp on the brass knob of my

bedstead, I knew that I had failed. I had committed the supreme

violation of the self that leads inevitably to its final dissolution....

Even the exuberant headlines of the newspapers handed me by the club

servant in the morning brought but little relief.

On the Saturday morning before the Tuesday of election there was a

conference in the directors' room of the Corn National. The city reeked

with smoke and acrid, stale gas, the electric lights were turned on

to dispel the November gloom. It was not a cheerful conference, nor a

confident one. For the first time in a collective experience the men

gathered there were confronted with a situation which they doubted their

ability to control, a situation for which there was no precedent.

They had to reckon with a new and unsolvable equation in politics and

finance,--the independent voter. There was an element of desperation in

the discussion. Recriminations passed. Dickinson implied that Gorse

with all his knowledge of political affairs ought to have foreseen that

something like this was sure to happen, should have managed better the

conventions of both great parties. The railroad counsel retorted that it

had been as much Dickinson's fault as his. Grierson expressed a

regret that I had broken out against the reformers; it had reacted, he

said,--and this was just enough to sting me to retaliate that things had

been done in the campaign, chiefly through his initiative, that were not

only unwise, but might land some of us in the penitentiary if Krebs were

elected.

“Well,” Grierson exclaimed, “whether he's elected or not, I wouldn't

give much now for your chances of getting to the Senate. We can't afford

to fly in the face of the dear public.”

A tense silence followed this remark. In the street below the rumble of

the traffic came to us muffled by the heavy plate-glass windows. I saw

Tallant glance at Gorse and Dickinson, and I knew the matter had been

decided between themselves, that they had been merely withholding it

from me until after election. I was besmirched, for the present at

least.

“I think you will do me the justice, gentlemen,” I remember saying

slowly, with the excessive and rather ridiculous formality of a man who

is near the end of his tether, “that the idea of representing you in

the Senate was yours, not mine. You begged me to take the appointment

against my wishes and my judgment. I had no desire to go to Washington

then, I have less to-day. I have come to the conclusion that my

usefulness to you is at an end.”

I got to my feet. I beheld Miller Gorse sitting impassive, with

his encompassing stare, the strongest man of them all. A change of

firmaments would not move him. But Dickinson had risen and put his hand

on my shoulder. It was the first time I had ever seen him white.

“Hold on, Hugh,” he exclaimed, “I guess we're all a little cantankerous

today. This confounded campaign has got on our nerves, and we say things

we don't mean. You mustn't think we're not grateful for the services

you've rendered us. We're all in the same boat, and there isn't a man

who's been on our side of this fight who could take a political office

at this time. We've got to face that fact, and I know you have the sense

to see it, too. I, for one, won't be satisfied until I see you in

the Senate. It's where you belong, and you deserve to be there. You

understand what the public is, how it blows hot and cold, and in a few

years they'll be howling to get us back, if these demagogues win.

“Sure,” chimed in Grierson, who was frightened, “that's right, Hugh. I

didn't mean anything. Nobody appreciates you more than I do, old man.”

Tallant, too, added something, and Berringer,--I've forgotten what. I

was tired, too tired to meet their advances halfway. I said that I had a

speech to get ready for that night, and other affairs to attend to,

and left them grouped together like crestfallen conspirators--all save

Miller Gorse, whose pervasive gaze seemed to follow me after I had

closed the door.

An elevator took me down to the lobby of the Corn Bank Building.

I paused for a moment, aimlessly regarding the streams of humanity

hurrying in and out, streaking the white marble floor with the wet

filth of the streets. Someone spoke my name. It was Bitter, Judd Jason's

“legal” tool, and I permitted myself to be dragged out of the eddies

into a quiet corner by the cigar stand.

“Say, I guess we've got Krebs's goat all right, this time,” he told me

confidentially, in a voice a little above a whisper; “he was busy with

the shirt-waist girls last year, you remember, when they were striking.

Well, one of 'em, one of the strike leaders, has taken to easy street;

she's agreed to send him a letter to-night to come 'round to her room

after his meeting, to say that she's sick and wants to see him. He'll

go, all right. We'll have some fun, we'll be ready for him. Do you get

me? So long. The old man's waiting for me.”

It may seem odd that this piece of information did not produce an

immediately revolting effect. I knew that similar practices had been

tried on Krebs, but this was the first time I had heard of a definite

plan, and from a man like Bitter. As I made my way out of the building

I had, indeed, a nauseated feeling; Jason's “lawyer” was a dirty little

man, smelling of stale cigars, with a blue-black, unshaven face. In

spite of the shocking nature of his confidence, he had actually not

succeeded in deflecting the current of my thoughts; these were still

running over the scene in the directors' room. I had listened to him

passively while he had held my buttonhole, and he had detained me but an

instant.

When I reached the street I was wondering whether Gorse and Dickinson

and the others, Grierson especially, could possibly have entertained the

belief that I would turn traitor? I told myself that I had no intention

of this. How could I turn traitor? and what would be the object?

revenge? The nauseated feeling grew more acute.... Reaching my office,

I shut the door, sat down at my desk, summoned my will, and began to

jot down random notes for the part of my speech I was to give the

newspapers, notes that were mere silly fragments of arguments I had once

thought effective. I could no more concentrate on them than I could have

written a poem. Gradually, like the smoke that settled down on our city

until we lived in darkness at midday, the horror of what Bitter had told

me began to pervade my mind, until I was in a state of terror.

Had I, Hugh Paret, fallen to this, that I could stand by consenting to

an act which was worse than assassination? Was any cause worth it? Could

any cause survive it? But my attempts at reasoning might be likened to

the strainings of a wayfarer lost on a mountain side to pick his way in

the gathering dusk. I had just that desperate feeling of being lost, and

with it went an acute sense of an imminent danger; the ground, no longer

firm under my feet, had become a sliding shale sloping toward an unseen

precipice. Perhaps, like the wayfarer, my fears were the sharper for the

memory of the beauty of the morning on that same mountain, when, filled

with vigour, I had gazed on it from the plain below and beheld the sun

breaking through the mists....

The necessity of taking some action to avert what I now realized as

an infamy pressed upon me, yet in conflict with the pressure of this

necessity there persisted that old rebellion, that bitterness which

had been growing all these years against the man who, above all others,

seemed to me to represent the forces setting at nought my achievements,

bringing me to this pass....

I thought of appealing to Leonard Dickinson, who surely, if he knew of

it, would not permit this thing to be done; and he was the only man with

the possible exception of Miller Gorse who might be able to restrain

Judd Jason. But I delayed until after the luncheon hour, when I called

up the bank on the telephone, to discover that it was closed. I had

forgotten that the day was Saturday. I was prepared to say that I would

withdraw from the campaign, warn Krebs myself if this kind of tactics

were not suppressed. But I could not get the banker. Then I began to

have doubts of Dickinson's power in the matter. Judd Jason had never

been tractable, by any means; he had always maintained a considerable

independence of the financial powers, and to-day not only financial

control, but the dominance of Jason himself was at stake. He would fight

for it to the last ditch, and make use of any means. No, it was of

no use to appeal to him. What then? Well, there was a reaction, or an

attempt at one. Krebs had not been born yesterday, he had avoided the

wiles of the politicians heretofore, he wouldn't be fool enough to be

taken in now. I told myself that if I were not in a state bordering on

a nervous breakdown, I should laugh at such morbid fears, I steadied

myself sufficiently to dictate the extract from my speech that was to be

published. I was to make addresses at two halls, alternating with Parks,

the mayoralty candidate. At four o'clock I went back to my room in the

Club to try to get some rest....

Seddon's Hall, the place of my first meeting, was jammed that Saturday

night. I went through my speech automatically, as in a dream, the habit

of long years asserting itself. And yet--so I was told afterwards--my

delivery was not mechanical, and I actually achieved more emphasis, gave

a greater impression of conviction than at any time since the night

I had lost my control and violently denounced the reformers. By some

astonishing subconscious process I had regained my manner, but the

applause came to me as from a distance. Not only was my mind not there;

it did not seem to be anywhere. I was dazed, nor did I feel--save

once--a fleeting surge of contempt for the mob below me with their silly

faces upturned to mine. There may have been intelligent expressions

among them, but they failed to catch my eye.

I remember being stopped by Grierson as I was going out of the side

entrance. He took my hand and squeezed it, and there was on his face an

odd, surprised look.

“That was the best yet, Hugh,” he said.

I went on past him. Looking back on that evening now, it would almost

seem as though the volition of another possessed me, not my own:

seemingly, I had every intention of going on to the National Theatre, in

which Parks had just spoken, and as I descended the narrow stairway and

emerged on the side street I caught sight of my chauffeur awaiting me by

the curb.

“I'm not going to that other meeting,” I found myself saying. “I'm

pretty tired.”

“Shall I drive you back to the Club, sir?” he inquired.

“No--I'll walk back. Wait a moment.” I entered the ear, turned on the

light and scribbled a hasty note to Andrews, the chairman of the meeting

at the National, telling him that I was too tired to speak again that

night, and to ask one of the younger men there to take my place. Then I

got out of the car and gave the note to the chauffeur.

“You're all right, sir?” he asked, with a note of anxiety in his voice.

He had been with me a long time.

I reassured him. He started the car, and I watched it absently as it

gathered speed and turned the corner. I began to walk, slowly at first,

then more and more rapidly until I had gained a breathless pace; in ten

minutes I was in West Street, standing in front of the Templar's Hall

where the meeting of the Citizens Union west in progress. Now that I had

arrived there, doubt and uncertainty assailed me. I had come as it were

in spite of myself, thrust onward by an impulse I did not understand,

which did not seem to be mine. What was I going to do? The proceeding

suddenly appeared to me as ridiculous, tinged with the weirdness of

somnambulism. I revolted, walked away, got as far as the corner and

stood beside a lamp post, pretending to be waiting for a car. The street

lights were reflected in perpendicular, wavy-yellow ribbons on the wet

asphalt, and I stood staring with foolish intentness at this phenomenon,

wondering how a painter would get the effect in oils. Again I was

walking back towards the hall, combating the acknowledgment to myself

that I had a plan, a plan that I did not for a moment believe I would

carry out. I was shivering.

I climbed the steps. The wide vestibule was empty except for two men who

stopped a low-toned conversation to look at me. I wondered whether they

recognized me; that I might be recognized was an alarming possibility

which had not occurred to me.

“Who is speaking?” I asked.

“Mr. Krebs,” answered the taller man of the two.

The hum of applause came from behind the swinging doors. I pushed them

open cautiously, passing suddenly out of the cold into the reeking,

heated atmosphere of a building packed with human beings. The space

behind the rear seats was filled with men standing, and those nearest

glanced around with annoyance at the interruption of my entrance. I made

my way along the wall, finally reaching a side aisle, whence I could get

sight of the platform and the speaker.

I heard his words distinctly, but at first lacked the faculty of

stringing them together, or rather of extracting their collective sense.

The phrases indeed were set ringing through my mind, I found myself

repeating them without any reference to their meaning; I had reached the

peculiar pitch of excitement that counterfeits abnormal calm, and all

sense of strangeness at being there in that meeting had passed away. I

began to wonder how I might warn Krebs, and presently decided to send

him a note when he should have finished speaking--but I couldn't make up

my mind whether to put my name to the note or not. Of course I needn't

have entered the hall at all: I might have sent in my note at the side

door.

I must have wished to see Krebs, to hear him speak; to observe, perhaps,

the effect on the audience. In spite of my inability to take in what

he was saying, I was able to regard him objectively,--objectively, in

a restricted sense. I noticed that he had grown even thinner; the flesh

had fallen away from under his cheek-bones, and there were sharp,

deep, almost perpendicular lines on either side of his mouth. He was

emaciated, that was the word. Once in a while he thrust his hand through

his dry, ashy hair which was of a tone with the paleness of his face.

Such was his only gesture.

He spoke quietly, leaning with one elbow against the side of his reading

stand. The occasional pulsations of applause were almost immediately

hushed, as though the people feared to lose even a word that should

fall from his dry lips. What was it he was talking about? I tried to

concentrate my attention, with only partial success. He was explaining

the new theory of city government that did not attempt to evade, but

dealt frankly with the human needs of to-day, and sought to meet those

needs in a positive way... What had happened to me, though I did not

realize it, was that I had gradually come under the influence of

a tragic spell not attributable to the words I heard, existing

independently of them, pervading the spacious hall, weaving into unity

dissentient minds. And then, with what seemed a retarded rather than

sudden awareness, I knew that he had stopped speaking. Once more he ran

his hand through his hair, he was seemingly groping for words that would

not come. I was pierced by a strange agony--the amazing source of which,

seemed to be a smile on the face of Hermann Krebs, an ineffable smile

illuminating the place like a flash of light, in which suffering and

tragedy, comradeship and loving kindness--all were mingled. He stood for

a moment with that smile on his face--swayed, and would have fallen had

it not been for the quickness of a man on the platform behind him, and

into whose arms he sank.

In an instant people had risen in their seats, men were hurrying down

the aisles, while a peculiar human murmur or wail persisted like an

undertone beneath the confusion of noises, striking the very note of

my own feelings. Above the heads of those about me I saw Krebs being

carried off the platform.... The chairman motioned for silence and

inquired if there were a physician in the audience, and then all began

to talk at once. The man who stood beside me clutched my arm.

“I hope he isn't dead! Say, did you see that smile? My God, I'll never

forget it!”

The exclamation poignantly voiced the esteem in which Krebs was held. As

I was thrust along out of the hall by the ebb of the crowd still other

expressions of this esteem came to me in fragments, expressions of

sorrow and dismay, of a loyalty I had not imagined. Mingled with these

were occasional remarks of skeptics shaken, in human fashion, by the

suggestion of the inevitable end that never fails to sober and terrify

humanity.

“I guess he was a bigger man than we thought. There was a lot of sense

in what he had to say.”

“There sure was,” the companion of this speaker answered.

They spoke of him in the past tense. I was seized and obsessed by

the fear that I should never see him again, and at the same moment I

realized sharply that this was the one thing I wanted--to see him. I

pushed through the people, gained the street, and fairly ran down the

alley that led to the side entrance of the hall, where a small group was

gathered under the light that hung above the doorway. There stood on the

step, a little above the others, a young man in a grey flannel shirt,

evidently a mechanic. I addressed him.

“What does the doctor say?”

Before replying he surveyed me with surprise and, I think, with

instinctive suspicion of my clothes and bearing.

“What can he say?” he retorted.

“You mean--?” I began.

“I mean Mr. Krebs oughtn't never to have gone into this campaign,” he

answered, relenting a trifle, perhaps at the tone of my voice. “He knew

it, too, and some of us fellows tried to stop him. But we couldn't do

nothing with him,” he added dejectedly.

“What is--the trouble?” I asked.

“They tell me it's his heart. He wouldn't talk about it.”

“When I think of what he done for our union!” exclaimed a thick-set

man, plainly a steel worker. “He's just wore himself out, fighting that

crooked gang.” He stared with sudden aggressiveness at me. “Haven't I

seen you some-wheres?” he demanded.

A denial was on my lips when the sharp, sinister strokes of a bell were

heard coming nearer.

“It's the ambulance,” said the man on the step.

Glancing up the alley beyond the figures of two policemen who had

arrived and were holding the people back, I saw the hood of the

conveyance as it came to a halt, and immediately a hospital doctor and

two assistants carrying a stretcher hurried towards us, and we made way

for them to enter. After a brief interval, they were heard coming slowly

down the steps inside. By the white, cruel light of the arc I saw Krebs

lying motionless.... I laid hold of one of the men who had been on

the platform. He did not resent the act, he seemed to anticipate my

question.

“He's conscious. The doctors expect him to rally when he gets to the

hospital.”

I walked back to the Club to discover that several inquiries had been

made about me. Reporters had been there, Republican Headquarters had

telephoned to know if I were ill. Leaving word that I was not to be

disturbed under any circumstances, I went to my room, and spent most of

the night in distracted thought. When at last morning came I breakfasted

early, searching the newspapers for accounts of the occurrence at

Templar's Hall; and the fact that these were neither conspicuous nor

circumstantial was in the nature of a triumph of self-control on the

part of editors and reporters. News, however sensational, had severely

to be condensed in the interest of a cause, and at this critical stage

of the campaign to make a tragic hero of Hermann Krebs would have been

the height of folly. There were a couple of paragraphs giving the gist

of his speech, and a statement at the end that he had been taken ill and

conveyed to the Presbyterian Hospital....

The hospital itself loomed up before me that Sunday morning as I

approached it along Ballantyne Street, a diluted sunshine washing the

extended, businesslike facade of grimy, yellow brick. We were proud

of that hospital in the city, and many of our foremost citizens had

contributed large sums of money to the building, scarcely ten years old.

It had been one of Maude's interests. I was ushered into the reception

room, where presently came the physician in charge, a Dr. Castle, one of

those quiet-mannered, modern young medical men who bear on their persons

the very stamp of efficiency, of the dignity of a scientific profession.

His greeting implied that he knew all about me, his presence seemed to

increase the agitation I tried not to betray, and must have betrayed.

“Can I do anything for you, Mr. Paret?” he asked.

“I have come to inquire about Mr. Krebs, who was brought here last

night, I believe.”

I was aware for an instant of his penetrating, professional glance, the

only indication of the surprise he must have felt that Hermann Krebs, of

all men, should be the object of my solicitude.

“Why, we sent him home this morning. Nineteen twenty six Fowler Street.

He wanted to go, and there was no use in his staying.”

“He will recover?” I asked.

The physician shook his head, gazing at me through his glasses.

“He may live a month, Mr. Paret, he may die to-morrow. He ought never

to have gone into this campaign, he knew he had this trouble. Hepburn

warned him three months ago, and there's no man who knows more about the

heart than Hepburn.”

“Then there's no hope?” I asked.

“Absolutely none. It's a great pity.” He added, after a moment, “Mr.

Krebs was a remarkable man.”

“Nineteen twenty-six Fowler Street?” I repeated.

“Yes.”

I held out my hand mechanically, and he pressed it, and went with me to

the door.

“Nineteen twenty-six Fowler Street,” he repeated...

The mean and sordid aspect of Fowler Street emphasized and seemed to

typify my despair, the pungent coal smoke stifled my lungs even as

it stifled my spirit. Ugly factories, which were little more than

sweatshops, wore an empty, menacing, “Sunday” look, and the faint

November sunlight glistened on dirty pavements where children were

making a semblance of play. Monotonous rows of red houses succeeded one

another, some pushed forward, others thrust back behind little plots of

stamped earth. Into one of these I turned. It seemed a little cleaner,

better kept, less sordid than the others. I pulled the bell, and

presently the door was opened by a woman whose arms were bare to the

elbow. She wore a blue-checked calico apron that came to her throat, but

the apron was clean, and her firm though furrowed face gave evidences

of recent housewifely exertions. Her eyes had the strange look of the

cheerfulness that is intimately acquainted with sorrow. She did not seem

surprised at seeing me.

“I have come to ask about Mr. Krebs,” I told her.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “there's been so many here this morning already.

It's wonderful how people love him, all kinds of people. No, sir, he

don't seem to be in any pain. Two gentlemen are up there now in his

room, I mean.”

She wiped her arms, which still bore traces of soap-suds, and then, with

a gesture natural and unashamed, lifted the corner of her apron to her

eyes.

“Do you think I could see him--for a moment?” I asked. “I've known him

for a long time.”

“Why, I don't know,” she said, “I guess so. The doctor said he could

see some, and he wants to see his friends. That's not strange--he always

did. I'll ask. Will you tell me your name?”

I took out a card. She held it without glancing at it, and invited me

in.

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.”

I thought a moment.

“Yes, that's so,” I agreed. On the table beside the bed in company with

two or three other volumes, lay a Bible. He seemed to notice that my eye

fell upon it.

“Do you remember the story of the Prodigal Son?” he asked. “Well, that's

the parable of democracy, of self-government in the individual and in

society. In order to arrive at salvation, Paret, most of us have to take

our journey into a far country.”

“A far country!” I exclaimed. The words struck a reminiscent chord.

“We have to leave what seem the safe things, we have to wander

and suffer in order to realize that the only true safety lies in

development. We have first to cast off the leading strings of authority.

It's a delusion that we can insure ourselves by remaining within its

walls--we have to risk our lives and our souls. It is discouraging when

we look around us to-day, and in a way the pessimists are right when

they say we don't see democracy. We see only what may be called the

first stage of it; for democracy is still in a far country eating the

husks of individualism, materialism. What we see is not true freedom,

but freedom run to riot, men struggling for themselves, spending on

themselves the fruits of their inheritance; we see a government intent

on one object alone--exploitation of this inheritance in order to

achieve what it calls prosperity. And God is far away.”

“And--we shall turn?” I asked.

“We shall turn or perish. I believe that we shall turn.” He fixed his

eyes on my face. “What is it,” he asked, “that brought you here to me,

to-day?”

I was silent.

“The motive, Paret--the motive that sends us all wandering into is

divine, is inherited from God himself. And the same motive, after our

eyes shall have been opened, after we shall have seen and known the

tragedy and misery of life, after we shall have made the mistakes and

committed the sins and experienced the emptiness--the same motive will

lead us back again. That, too, is an adventure, the greatest adventure

of all. Because, when we go back we shall not find the same God--or

rather we shall recognize him in ourselves. Autonomy is godliness,

knowledge is godliness. We went away cringing, superstitious, we saw

everywhere omens and evidences of his wrath in the earth and sea and

sky, we burned candles and sacrificed animals in the vain hope of

averting scourges and other calamities. But when we come back it will

be with a knowledge of his ways, gained at a price,--the price he, too,

must have paid--and we shall be able to stand up and look him in the

face, and all our childish superstitions and optimisms shall have been

burned away.”

Some faith indeed had given him strength to renounce those things in

life I had held dear, driven him on to fight until his exhausted body

failed him, and even now that he was physically helpless sustained him.

I did not ask myself, then, the nature of this faith. In its presence it

could no more be questioned than the light. It was light; I felt bathed

in it. Now it was soft, suffused: but I remembered how the night before

in the hall, just before he had fallen, it had flashed forth in a smile

and illumined my soul with an ecstasy that yet was anguish....

“We shall get back,” I said at length. My remark was not a question--it

had escaped from me almost unawares.

“The joy is in the journey,” he answered. “The secret is in the search.”

“But for me?” I exclaimed.

“We've all been lost, Paret. It would seem as though we have to be.”

“And yet you are--saved,” I said, hesitating over the word.

“It is true that I am content, even happy,” he asserted, “in spite of my

wish to live. If there is any secret, it lies, I think, in the struggle

for an open mind, in the keeping alive of a desire to know more and

more. That desire, strangely enough, hasn't lost its strength. We don't

know whether there is a future life, but if there is, I think it must

be a continuation of this.” He paused. “I told you I was glad you came

in--I've been thinking of you, and I saw you in the hall last night. You

ask what there is for you--I'll tell you,--the new generation.”

“The new generation.”

“That's the task of every man and woman who wakes up. I've come to see

how little can be done for the great majority of those who have reached

our age. It's hard--but it's true. Superstition, sentiment, the habit

of wrong thinking or of not thinking at all have struck in too deep, the

habit of unreasoning acceptance of authority is too paralyzing. Some may

be stung back into life, spurred on to find out what the world really

is, but not many. The hope lies in those who are coming after us--we

must do for them what wasn't done for us. We really didn't have much of

a chance, Paret. What did our instructors at Harvard know about the age

that was dawning? what did anybody know? You can educate yourself--or

rather reeducate yourself. All this”--and he waved his hand towards his

bookshelves--“all this has sprung up since you and I were at Cambridge;

if we don't try to become familiar with it, if we fail to grasp the

point of view from which it's written, there's little hope for us. Go

away from all this and get straightened out, make yourself acquainted

with the modern trend in literature and criticism, with modern history,

find out what's being done in the field of education, read the modern

sciences, especially biology, and psychology and sociology, and try to

get a glimpse of the fundamental human needs underlying such phenomena

as the labour and woman's movements. God knows I've just begun to get

my glimpse, and I've floundered around ever since I left college.... I

don't mean to say we can ever see the whole, but we can get a clew, an

idea, and pass it on to our children. You have children, haven't you?”

“Yes,” I said....

He said nothing--he seemed to be looking out of the window.

“Then the scientific point of view in your opinion hasn't done away with

religion?” I asked presently.

“The scientific point of view is the religious point of view,” he said

earnestly, “because it's the only self-respecting point of view. I can't

believe that God intended to make a creature who would not ultimately

weigh his beliefs with his reason instead of accepting them blindly.

That's immoral, if you like--especially in these days.”

“And are there, then, no 'over-beliefs'?” I said, remembering the

expression in something I had read.

“That seems to me a relic of the method of ancient science, which was

upside down,--a mere confusion with faith. Faith and belief are two

different things; faith is the emotion, the steam, if you like, that

drives us on in our search for truth. Theories, at a stretch, might

be identified with 'over-beliefs' but when it comes to confusing our

theories with facts, instead of recognizing them as theories, when

it comes to living by 'over-beliefs' that have no basis in reason and

observed facts,--that is fatal. It's just the trouble with so much of

our electorate to-day--unreasoning acceptance without thought.”

“Then,” I said, “you admit of no other faculty than reason?”

“I confess that I don't. A great many insights that we seem to get

from what we call intuition I think are due to the reason, which is

unconsciously at work. If there were another faculty that equalled or

transcended reason, it seems to me it would be a very dangerous thing

for the world's progress. We'd come to rely on it rather than on

ourselves the trouble with the world is that it has been relying on it.

Reason is the mind--it leaps to the stars without realizing always

how it gets there. It is through reason we get the self-reliance that

redeems us.”

“But you!” I exclaimed. “You rely on something else besides reason?”

“Yes, it is true,” he explained gently, “but that Thing

Other-than-Ourselves we feel stirring in us is power, and that power, or

the Source of it, seems to have given us our reason for guidance--if

it were not so we shouldn't have a semblance of freedom. For there is

neither virtue nor development in finding the path if we are guided.

We do rely on that power for movement--and in the moments when it is

withdrawn we are helpless. Both the power and the reason are God's.”

“But the Church,” I was moved by some untraced thought to ask, “you

believe there is a future for the Church?”

“A church of all those who disseminate truth, foster open-mindedness,

serve humanity and radiate faith,” he replied--but as though he were

speaking to himself, not to me....

A few moments later there was a knock at the door, and the woman of

the house entered to say that Dr. Hepburn had arrived. I rose and

shook Krebs's hand: sheer inability to express my emotion drove me to

commonplaces.

“I'll come in soon again, if I may,” I told him.

“Do, Paret,” he said, “it's done me good to talk to you--more good than

you imagine.”

I was unable to answer him, but I glanced back from the doorway to see

him smiling after me. On my way down the stairs I bumped into the doctor

as he ascended. The dingy brown parlour was filled with men, standing in

groups and talking in subdued voices. I hurried into the street, and on

the sidewalk stopped face to face with Perry Blackwood.

“Hugh!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to inquire for Krebs,” I answered. “I've seen him.”

“You--you've been talking to him?” Perry demanded.

I nodded. He stared at me for a moment with an astonishment to which I

was wholly indifferent. He did not seem to know just how to act.

“Well, it was decent of you, Hugh, I must say. How does he seem?”

“Not at all like--like what you'd expect, in his manner.”

“No,” agreed Perry agitatedly, “no, he wouldn't. My God, we've lost a

big man in him.”

“I think we have,” I said.

He stared at me again, gave me his hand awkwardly, and went into the

house. It was not until I had walked the length of the block that I

began to realize what a shock my presence there must have been to him,

with his head full of the contrast between this visit and my former

attitude. Could it be that it was only the night before I had made a

speech against him and his associates? It is interesting that my mind

rejected all sense of anomaly and inconsistency. Krebs possessed me; I

must have been in reality extremely agitated, but this sense of being

possessed seemed a quiet one. An amazing thing had happened--and yet I

was not amazed. The Krebs I had seen was the man I had known for many

years, the man I had ridiculed, despised and oppressed, but it seemed to

me then that he had been my friend and intimate all my life: more than

that, I had an odd feeling he had always been a part of me, and that now

had begun to take place a merging of personality. Nor could I feel that

he was a dying man. He would live on....

I could not as yet sort and appraise, reduce to order the possessions he

had wished to turn over to me.

It was noon, and people were walking past me in the watery, diluted

sunlight, men in black coats and top hats and women in bizarre,

complicated costumes bright with colour. I had reached the more

respectable portion of the city, where the churches were emptying. These

very people, whom not long ago I would have acknowledged as my own kind,

now seemed mildly animated automatons, wax figures. The day was like

hundreds of Sundays I had known, the city familiar, yet passing strange.

I walked like a ghost through it....

XXVI.

Accompanied by young Dr. Strafford, I went to California. My physical

illness had been brief. Dr. Brooke had taken matters in his own hands

and ordered an absolute rest, after dwelling at some length on the

vicious pace set by modern business and the lack of consideration and

knowledge shown by men of affairs for their bodies. There was a limit

to the wrack and strain which the human organism could stand. He must

of course have suspected the presence of disturbing and disintegrating

factors, but he confined himself to telling me that only an exceptional

constitution had saved me from a serious illness; he must in a way have

comprehended why I did not wish to go abroad, and have my family join me

on the Riviera, as Tom Peters proposed. California had been my choice,

and Dr. Brooke recommended the climate of Santa Barbara.

High up on the Montecito hills I found a villa beside the gateway of one

of the deep canons that furrow the mountain side, and day after day

I lay in a chair on the sunny terrace, with a continually recurring

amazement at the brilliancy of my surroundings. In the early morning I

looked down on a feathery mist hiding the world, a mist presently to be

shot with silver and sapphire-blue, dissolved by slow enchantment until

there lay revealed the plain and the shimmering ocean with its distant

islands trembling in the haze. At sunset my eyes sought the mountains,

mountains unreal, like glorified scenery of grand opera, with violet

shadows in the wooded canon clefts, and crags of pink tourmaline and

ruby against the skies. All day long in the tempered heat flowers blazed

around me, insects hummed, lizards darted in and out of the terrace

wall, birds flashed among the checkered shadows of the live oaks. That

grove of gnarled oaks summoned up before me visions of some classic

villa poised above Grecian seas, shining amidst dark foliage, the refuge

of forgotten kings. Below me, on the slope, the spaced orange trees were

heavy with golden fruit.

After a while, as I grew stronger, I was driven down and allowed to walk

on the wide beach that stretched in front of the gay houses facing the

sea. Cormorants dived under the long rollers that came crashing in from

the Pacific; gulls wheeled and screamed in the soft wind; alert little

birds darted here and there with incredible swiftness, leaving tiny

footprints across the ribs and furrows of the wet sand. Far to the

southward a dark barrier of mountains rose out of the sea. Sometimes

I sat with my back against the dunes watching the drag of the outgoing

water rolling the pebbles after it, making a gleaming floor for the

light to dance.

At first I could not bear to recall the events that had preceded and

followed my visit to Krebs that Sunday morning. My illness had begun

that night; on the Monday Tom Peters had come to the Club and insisted

upon my being taken to his house.... When I had recovered sufficiently

there had been rather a pathetic renewal of our friendship. Perry came

to see me. Their attitude was one of apprehension not unmixed with

wonder; and though they, knew of the existence of a mental crisis,

suspected, in all probability, some of the causes of it, they refrained

carefully from all comments, contenting themselves with telling me

when I was well enough that Krebs had died quite suddenly that Sunday

afternoon; that his death--occurring at such a crucial moment--had been

sufficient to turn the tide of the election and make Edgar Greenhalge

mayor. Thousands who had failed to understand Hermann Krebs, but whom he

had nevertheless stirred and troubled, suddenly awoke to the fact that

he had had elements of greatness....

My feelings in those first days at Santa Barbara may be likened, indeed,

to those of a man who has passed through a terrible accident that has

deprived him of sight or hearing, and which he wishes to forget. What I

was most conscious of then was an aching sense of loss--an ache that

by degrees became a throbbing pain as life flowed back into me,

re-inflaming once more my being with protest and passion, arousing me to

revolt against the fate that had overtaken me. I even began at moments

to feel a fierce desire to go back and take up again the fight from

which I had been so strangely removed--removed by the agency of things

still obscure. I might get Nancy yet, beat down her resistance, overcome

her, if only I could be near her and see her. But even in the midst of

these surges of passion I was conscious of the birth of a new force I

did not understand, and which I resented, that had arisen to give battle

to my passions and desires. This struggle was not mentally reflected as

a debate between right and wrong, as to whether I should or should not

be justified in taking Nancy if I could get her: it seemed as though

some new and small yet dogged intruder had forced an entrance into me,

an insignificant pigmy who did not hesitate to bar the pathway of the

reviving giant of my desires. These contests sapped my strength. It

seemed as though in my isolation I loved Nancy, I missed her more than

ever, and the flavour she gave to life.

Then Hermann Krebs began to press himself on me. I use the word as

expressive of those early resentful feelings,--I rather pictured him

then as the personification of an hostile element in the universe that

had brought about my miseries and accomplished my downfall; I attributed

the disagreeable thwarting of my impulses to his agency; I did not wish

to think of him, for he stood somehow for a vague future I feared to

contemplate. Yet the illusion of his presence, once begun, continued to

grow upon me, and I find myself utterly unable to describe that struggle

in which he seemed to be fighting as against myself for my confidence;

that process whereby he gradually grew as real to me as though he still

lived--until I could almost hear his voice and see his smile. At moments

I resisted wildly, as though my survival depended on it; at other

moments he seemed to bring me peace. One day I recalled as vividly as

though it were taking place again that last time I had been with him;

I seemed once more to be listening to the calm yet earnest talk ranging

over so many topics, politics and government, economics and science and

religion. I did not yet grasp the synthesis he had made of them all,

but I saw them now all focussed in him elements he had drawn from

human lives and human experiences. I think it was then I first felt the

quickenings of a new life to be born in travail and pain.... Wearied,

yet exalted, I sank down on a stone bench and gazed out at the little

island of Santa Cruz afloat on the shimmering sea.

I have mentioned my inability to depict the terrible struggle that went

on in my soul. It seems strange that Nietzsche--that most ruthless

of philosophers to the romantic mind!--should express it for me. “The

genius of the heart, from contact with which every man goes away richer,

not 'blessed' and overcome,... but richer himself, fresher to himself

than before, opened up, breathed upon and sounded by a thawing wind;

more uncertain, perhaps, more delicate, more bruised; but full of hopes

which as yet lack names, full of a new will and striving, full of a new

unwillingness and counterstriving.”...

Such was my experience with Hermann Krebs. How keenly I remember that

new unwillingness and counter-striving! In spite of the years it has not

wholly died down, even to-day....

Almost coincident with these quickenings of which I have spoken was the

consciousness of a hunger stronger than the craving for bread and meat,

and I began to meditate on my ignorance, on the utter inadequacy and

insufficiency of my early education, on my neglect of the new learning

during the years that had passed since I left Harvard. And I remembered

Krebs's words--that we must “reeducate ourselves.” What did I know? A

system of law, inherited from another social order, that was utterly

unable to cope with the complexities and miseries and injustices of a

modern industrial world. I had spent my days in mastering an inadequate

and archaic code--why? in order that I might learn how to evade it? This

in itself condemned it. What did I know of life? of the shining universe

that surrounded me? What did I know of the insect and the flower, of the

laws that moved the planets and made incandescent the suns? of the human

body, of the human soul and its instincts? Was this knowledge acquired

at such cost of labour and life and love by my fellow-men of so little

worth to me that I could ignore it? declare that it had no significance

for me? no bearing on my life and conduct? If I were to rise and go

forward--and I now felt something like a continued impulse, in spite

of relaxations and revolts--I must master this knowledge, it must be my

guide, form the basis of my creed. I--who never had had a creed, never

felt the need of one! For lack of one I had been rudely jolted out of

the frail shell I had thought so secure, and stood, as it were, naked

and shivering to the storms, staring at a world that was no function

of me, after all. My problem, indeed, was how to become a function of

it....

I resolved upon a course of reading, but it was a question what books to

get. Krebs could have told me, if he had lived. I even thought once

of writing Perry Blackwood to ask him to make a list of the volumes in

Krebs's little library; but I was ashamed to do this.

Dr. Strafford still remained with me. Not many years out of the medical

school, he had inspired me with a liking for him and a respect for his

profession, and when he informed me one day that he could no longer

conscientiously accept the sum I was paying him, I begged him to stay

on. He was a big and wholesome young man, companionable, yet quiet and

unobtrusive, watchful without appearing to be so, with the innate as

well as the cultivated knowledge of psychology characteristic of the

best modern physicians. When I grew better I came to feel that he had

given his whole mind to the study of my case, though he never betrayed

it in his conversation.

“Strafford,” I said to him one morning with such an air of unconcern as

I could muster, “I've an idea I'd like to read a little science. Could

you recommend a work on biology?”

I chose biology because I thought he would know something about it.

“Popular biology, Mr. Paret?”

“Well, not too popular,” I smiled. “I think it would do me good to use

my mind, to chew on something. Besides, you can help me over the tough

places.”

He returned that afternoon with two books.

“I've been rather fortunate in getting these,” he said. “One is fairly

elementary. They had it at the library. And the other--” he paused

delicately, “I didn't know whether you might be interested in the latest

speculations on the subject.”

“Speculations?” I repeated.

“Well, the philosophy of it.” He almost achieved a blush under his tan.

He held out the second book on the philosophy of the organism. “It's

the work of a German scientist who stands rather high. I read it last

winter, and it interested me. I got it from a clergyman I know who is

spending the winter in Santa Barbara.”

“A clergyman!”

Strafford laughed. “An 'advanced' clergyman,” he explained. “Oh, a lot

of them are reading science now. I think it's pretty decent of them.”

I looked at Strafford, who towered six feet three, and it suddenly

struck me that he might be one of the forerunners of a type our

universities were about to turn out. I wondered what he believed. Of

one thing I was sure, that he was not in the medical profession to make

money. That was a faith in itself.

I began with the elementary work.

“You'd better borrow a Century Dictionary,” I said.

“That's easy,” he said, and actually achieved it, with the clergyman's

aid.

The absorption in which I fought my way through those books may prove

interesting to future generations, who, at Sunday-school age, when the

fable of Adam and Eve was painfully being drummed into me (without

any mention of its application), will be learning to think straight,

acquiring easily in early youth what I failed to learn until after

forty. And think of all the trouble and tragedy that will have been

averted. It is true that I had read some biology at Cambridge, which

I had promptly forgotten; it had not been especially emphasized by my

instructors as related to life--certainly not as related to religion:

such incidents as that of Adam and Eve occupied the religious field

exclusively. I had been compelled to commit to memory, temporarily, the

matter in those books; but what I now began to perceive was that the

matter was secondary compared to the view point of science--and this had

been utterly neglected. As I read, I experienced all the excitement of

an old-fashioned romance, but of a romance of such significance as to

touch the very springs of existence; and above all I was impressed with

the integrity of the scientific method--an integrity commensurate with

the dignity of man--that scorned to quibble to make out a case, to

affirm something that could not be proved.

Little by little I became familiar with the principles of embryonic

evolution, ontogeny, and of biological evolution, phylogeny; realized,

for the first time, my own history and that of the ancestors from whom

I had developed and descended. I, this marvellously complicated being,

torn by desires and despairs, was the result of the union of two

microscopic cells. “All living things come from the egg,” such had been

Harvey's dictum. The result was like the tonic of a cold douche. I began

to feel cleansed and purified, as though something sticky-sweet which

all my life had clung to me had been washed away. Yet a question arose,

an insistent question that forever presses itself on the mind of man;

how could these apparently chemical and mechanical processes, which the

author of the book contented himself with recording, account for me? The

spermia darts for the egg, and pierces it; personal history begins. But

what mysterious shaping force is it that repeats in the individual the

history of the race, supervises the orderly division of the cells, by

degrees directs the symmetry, sets aside the skeleton and digestive

tract and supervises the structure?

I took up the second book, that on the philosophy of the organism, to

read in its preface that a much-to-be-honoured British nobleman

had established a foundation of lectures in a Scotch University for

forwarding the study of a Natural Theology. The term possessed me.

Unlike the old theology woven of myths and a fanciful philosophy of

the decadent period of Greece, natural theology was founded on science

itself, and scientists were among those who sought to develop it. Here

was a synthesis that made a powerful appeal, one of the many signs and

portents of a new era of which I was dimly becoming cognizant; and now

that I looked for signs, I found them everywhere, in my young Doctor, in

Krebs, in references in the texts; indications of a new order

beginning to make itself felt in a muddled, chaotic human world, which

might--which must have a parallel with the order that revealed itself in

the egg! Might not both, physical and social, be due to the influence of

the same invisible, experimenting, creating Hand?

My thoughts lingered lovingly on this theology so well named “natural,”

on its conscientiousness, its refusal to affirm what it did not prove,

on its lack of dogmatic dictums and infallible revelations; yet it gave

me the vision of a new sanction whereby man might order his life, a

sanction from which was eliminated fear and superstition and romantic

hope, a sanction whose doctrines--unlike those of the sentimental

theology--did not fly in the face of human instincts and needs. Nor was

it a theology devoid of inspiration and poetry, though poetry might be

called its complement. With all that was beautiful and true in the

myths dear to mankind it did not conflict, annulling only the vicious

dogmatism of literal interpretation. In this connection I remembered

something that Krebs had said--in our talk about poetry and art,--that

these were emotion, religion expressed by the tools reason had evolved.

Music, he had declared, came nearest to the cry of the human soul....

That theology cleared for faith an open road, made of faith a reasonable

thing, yet did not rob it of a sense of high adventure; cleansed it

of the taints of thrift and selfish concern. In this reaffirmation of

vitalism there might be a future, yes, an individual future, yet it was

far from the smug conception of salvation. Here was a faith conferred by

the freedom of truth; a faith that lost and regained itself in life; it

was dynamic in its operation; for, as Lessing said, the searching after

truth, and not its possession, gives happiness to man. In the words

of an American scientist, taken from his book on Heredity, “The

evolutionary idea has forced man to consider the probable future of his

own race on earth and to take measures to control that future, a matter

he had previously left largely to fate.”

Here indeed was another sign of the times, to find in a strictly

scientific work a sentence truly religious! As I continued to read

these works, I found them suffused with religion, religion of a kind

and quality I had not imagined. The birthright of the spirit of man

was freedom, freedom to experiment, to determine, to create--to create

himself, to create society in the image of God! Spiritual creation the

function of cooperative man through the coming ages, the task that was

to make him divine. Here indeed was the germ of a new sanction, of a new

motive, of a new religion that strangely harmonized with the concepts of

the old--once the dynamic power of these was revealed.

I had been thinking of my family--of my family in terms of Matthew--and

yet with a growing yearning that embraced them all. I had not informed

Maude of my illness, and I had managed to warn Tom Peters not to do so.

I had simply written her that after the campaign I had gone for a rest

to California; yet in her letters to me, after this information had

reached her, I detected a restrained anxiety and affection that troubled

me. Sequences of words curiously convey meanings and implications that

transcend their literal sense, true thoughts and feelings are difficult

to disguise even in written speech. Could it be possible after all that

had happened that Maude still loved me? I continually put the thought

away from me, but continually it returned to haunt me. Suppose Maude

could not help loving me, in spite of my weaknesses and faults, even as

I loved Nancy in spite of hers? Love is no logical thing.

It was Matthew I wanted, Matthew of whom I thought, and trivial,

long-forgotten incidents of the past kept recurring to me constantly. I

still received his weekly letters; but he did not ask why, since I

had taken a vacation, I had not come over to them. He represented

the medium, the link between Maude and me that no estrangement, no

separation could break.

All this new vision of mine was for him, for the coming generation, the

soil in which it must be sown, the Americans of the future. And who so

well as Matthew, sensitive yet brave, would respond to it? I wished not

only to give him what I had begun to grasp, to study with him, to be

his companion and friend, but to spare him, if possible, some of my

own mistakes and sufferings and punishments. But could I go back? Happy

coincidences of desires and convictions had been so characteristic of

that other self I had been struggling to cast off: I had so easily been

persuaded, when I had had a chance of getting Nancy, that it was the

right thing to do! And now, in my loneliness, was I not growing just as

eager to be convinced that it was my duty to go back to the family

which in the hour of self-sufficiency I had cast off? I had believed in

divorce then--why not now? Well, I still believed in it. I had

thought of a union with Nancy as something that would bring about

the “self-realization that springs from the gratification of a great

passion,”--an appealing phrase I had read somewhere. But, it was at

least a favourable symptom that I was willing now to confess that the

“self-realization” had been a secondary and sentimental consideration,

a rosy, self-created halo to give a moral and religious sanction to my

desire. Was I not trying to do that very thing now? It tortured me

to think so; I strove to achieve a detached consideration of the

problem,--to arrive at length at a thought that seemed illuminating:

that the it “wrongness” or “rightness,” utility and happiness of all

such unions depend upon whether or not they become a part of the woof

and warp of the social fabric; in other words, whether the gratification

of any particular love by divorce and remarriage does or does not tend

to destroy a portion of that fabric. Nancy certainly would have been

justified in divorce. It did not seem in the retrospect that I would

have been: surely not if, after I had married Nancy, I had developed

this view of life that seemed to me to be the true view. I should have

been powerless to act upon it. But the chances were I should not have

developed it, since it would seem that any salvation for me at least

must come precisely through suffering, through not getting what I

wanted. Was this equivocating?

My mistake had been in marrying Maude instead of Nancy--a mistake

largely due to my saturation with a false idea of life. Would not

the attempt to cut loose from the consequences of that mistake in my

individual case have been futile? But there was a remedy for it--the

remedy Krebs had suggested: I might still prevent my children from

making such a mistake, I might help to create in them what I might have

been, and thus find a solution for myself. My errors would then assume a

value.

But the question tortured me: would Maude wish it? Would it be fair to

her if she did not? By my long neglect I had forfeited the right to go.

And would she agree with my point of view if she did permit me to stay?

I had less concern on this score, a feeling that that development of

hers, which once had irritated me, was in the same direction as my

own....

I have still strangely to record moments when, in spite of the

aspirations I had achieved, of the redeeming vision I had gained, at the

thought of returning to her I revolted. At such times recollections

came into my mind of those characteristics in her that had seemed most

responsible for my alienation.... That demon I had fed so mightily still

lived. By what right--he seemed to ask--had I nourished him all these

years if now I meant to starve him? Thus sometimes he defied me, took

on Protean guises, blustered, insinuated, cajoled, managed to make me

believe that to starve him would be to starve myself, to sap all there

was of power in me. Let me try and see if I could do it! Again he

whispered, to what purpose had I gained my liberty, if now I renounced

it? I could not live in fetters, even though the fetters should be

self-imposed. I was lonely now, but I would get over that, and life lay

before me still.

Fierce and tenacious, steel in the cruelty of his desires, fearful in

the havoc he had wrought, could he be subdued? Foiled, he tore and rent

me....

One morning I rode up through the shady canon, fragrant with bay, to

the open slopes stained smoky-blue by the wild lilac, where the twisted

madrona grows. As I sat gazing down on tiny headlands jutting out into

a vast ocean my paralyzing indecision came to an end. I turned my horse

down the trail again. I had seen at last that life was bigger than I,

bigger than Maude, bigger than our individual wishes and desires. I felt

as though heavy shackles had been struck from me. As I neared the house

I spied my young doctor in the garden path, his hands in his pockets

watching a humming-bird poised over the poppies. He greeted me with a

look that was not wholly surprise at my early return, that seemed to

have in it something of gladness.

“Strafford,” I said, “I've made up my mind to go to Europe.”

“I have been thinking for some time, Mr. Paret,” he replied, “that a

sea-voyage is just what you need to set you on your feet.”

I started eastward the next morning, arriving in New York in time to

catch one of the big liners sailing for Havre. On my way across the

continent I decided to send a cable to Maude at Paris, since it were

only fair to give her an opportunity to reflect upon the manner in which

she would meet the situation. Save for an impatience which at moments

I restrained with difficulty, the moods that succeeded one another as

I journeyed did not differ greatly from those I had experienced in the

past month. I was alternately exalted and depressed; I hoped and doubted

and feared; my courage, my confidence rose and fell. And yet I was aware

of the nascence within me of an element that gave me a stability I had

hitherto lacked: I had made my decision, and I felt the stronger for it.

It was early in March. The annual rush of my countrymen and women for

foreign shores had not as yet begun, the huge steamer was far from

crowded. The faint throbbing of her engines as she glided out on the

North River tide found its echo within me as I leaned on the heavy rail

and watched the towers of the city receding in the mist; they became

blurred and ghostlike, fantastic in the grey distance, sad, appealing

with a strange beauty and power. Once the sight of them, sunlit,

standing forth sharply against the high blue of American skies, had

stirred in me that passion for wealth and power of which they were so

marvellously and uniquely the embodiment. I recalled the bright day of

my home-coming with Maude, when she too had felt that passion drawing me

away from her, after the briefest of possessions.... Well, I had had it,

the power. I had stormed and gained entrance to the citadel itself. I

might have lived here in New York, secure, defiant of a veering public

opinion that envied while it strove to sting. Why was I flinging it

all away? Was this a sudden resolution of mine, forced by events,

precipitated by a failure to achieve what of all things on earth I had

most desired? or was it the inevitable result of the development of the

Hugh Paret of earlier days, who was not meant for that kind of power?

The vibration of the monster ship increased to a strong, electric

pulsation, the water hummed along her sides, she felt the swell of the

open sea. A fine rain began to fall that hid the land--yes, and the life

I was leaving. I made my way across the glistening deck to the saloon

where, my newspapers and periodicals neglected, I sat all the morning

beside a window gazing out at the limited, vignetted zone of waters

around the ship. We were headed for the Old World. The wind rose, the

rain became pelting, mingling with the spume of the whitecaps racing

madly past: within were warmth and luxury, electric lights, open fires,

easy chairs, and men and women reading, conversing as unconcernedly as

though the perils of the deep had ceased to be. In all this I found

an impelling interest; the naive capacity in me for wonder, so long

dormant, had been marvellously opened up once more. I no longer thought

of myself as the important man of affairs; and when in the progress of

the voyage I was accosted by two or three men I had met and by others

who had heard of me it was only to feel amazement at the remoteness I

now felt from a world whose realities were stocks and bonds, railroads

and corporations and the detested new politics so inimical to the smooth

conduct of “business.”

It all sounded like a language I had forgotten.

It was not until near the end of the passage that we ran out of the

storm. A morning came when I went on deck to survey spaces of a blue

and white sea swept by the white March sunlight; to discern at length

against the horizon toward which we sped a cloud of the filmiest and

most delicate texture and design. Suddenly I divined that the cloud was

France! Little by little, as I watched, it took on substance. I made out

headlands and cliffs, and then we were coasting beside them. That night

I should be in Paris with Maude. My bag was packed, my steamer trunk

closed. I strayed about the decks, in and out of the saloons,

wondering at the indifference of other passengers who sat reading in

steamer-chairs or wrote last letters to be posted at Havre. I was

filled with impatience, anticipation, yes, with anxiety concerning the

adventure that was now so imminent; with wavering doubts. Had I done the

wisest thing after all? I had the familiar experience that often comes

just before reunion after absence of recalling intimate and forgotten

impressions of those whom I was about to see again the tones of their

voices, little gestures....

How would they receive me?

The great ship had slowed down and was entering the harbour, carefully

threading her way amongst smaller craft, the passengers lining the rails

and gazing at the animated scene, at the quaint and cheerful French

city bathed in sunlight.... I had reached the dock and was making my way

through the hurrying and shifting groups toward the steamer train when

I saw Maude. She was standing a little aside, scanning the faces that

passed her.

I remember how she looked at me, expectantly, yet timidly, almost

fearfully. I kissed her.

“You've come to meet me!” I exclaimed stupidly. “How are the children?”

“They're very well, Hugh. They wanted to come, too, but I thought it

better not.”

Her restraint struck me as extraordinary; and while I was thankful for

the relief it brought to a situation which might have been awkward, I

was conscious of resenting it a little. I was impressed and puzzled. As

I walked along the platform beside her she seemed almost a stranger:

I had difficulty in realizing that she was my wife, the mother of my

children. Her eyes were clear, more serious than I recalled them, and

her physical as well as her moral tone seemed to have improved. Her

cheeks glowed with health, and she wore a becoming suit of dark blue.

“Did you have a good trip, Hugh?” she asked.

“Splendid,” I said, forgetting the storm. We took our seats in an empty

compartment. Was she glad to see me? She had come all the way from Paris

to meet me! All the embarrassment seemed to be on my side. Was

this composure a controlled one or had she indeed attained to the

self-sufficiency her manner and presence implied? Such were the

questions running through my head.

“You've really liked Paris?” I asked.

“Yes, Hugh, and it's been very good for us all. Of course the boys

like America better, but they've learned many things they wouldn't have

learned at home; they both speak French, and Biddy too. Even I have

improved.”

“I'm sure of it,” I said.

She flushed.

“And what else have you been doing?”

“Oh, going to galleries. Matthew often goes with me. I think he quite

appreciates the pictures. Sometimes I take him to the theatre, too, the

Francais. Both boys ride in the Bois with a riding master. It's been

rather a restricted life for them, but it won't have hurt them. It's

good discipline. We have little excursions in an automobile on fine days

to Versailles and other places of interest around Paris, and Matthew and

I have learned a lot of history. I have a professor of literature from

the Sorbonne come in three times a week to give me lessons.”

“I didn't know you cared for literature.”

“I didn't know it either.” She smiled. “Matthew loves it. Monsieur

Despard declares he has quite a gift for language.”

Maude had already begun Matthew's education!

“You see a few people?” I inquired.

“A few. And they have been very kind to us. The Buffons, whom I met at

Etretat, and some of their friends, mostly educated French people.”

The little railway carriage in which we sat rocked with speed as we flew

through the French landscape. I caught glimpses of solid, Norman farm

buildings, of towers and keeps and delicate steeples, and quaint towns;

of bare poplars swaying before the March gusts, of green fields ablaze

in the afternoon sun. I took it all in distractedly. Here was Maude

beside me, but a Maude I had difficulty in recognizing, whom I did not

understand: who talked of a life she had built up for herself and that

seemed to satisfy her; one with which I had nothing to do. I could

not tell how she regarded my re-intrusion. As she continued to talk, a

feeling that was almost desperation grew upon me. I had things to say

to her, things that every moment of this sort of intercourse was making

more difficult. And I felt, if I did not say them now, that perhaps I

never should: that now or never was the appropriate time, and to delay

would be to drift into an impossible situation wherein the chance of an

understanding would be remote.

There was a pause. How little I had anticipated the courage it would

take to do this thing! My blood was hammering.

“Maude,” I said abruptly, “I suppose you're wondering why I came over

here.”

She sat gazing at me, very still, but there came into her eyes a

frightened look that almost unnerved me. She seemed to wish to speak, to

be unable to. Passively, she let my hand rest on hers.

“I've been thinking a great deal during the last few months,” I went on

unsteadily. “And I've changed a good many of my ideas--that is, I've got

new ones, about things I never thought of before. I want to say, first,

that I do not put forth any claim to come back into your life. I know

I have forfeited any claim. I've neglected you, and I've neglected the

children. Our marriage has been on a false basis from the start, and

I've been to blame for it. There is more to be said about the chances

for a successful marriage in these days, but I'm not going to dwell on

that now, or attempt to shoulder off my shortcomings on my bringing

up, on the civilization in which we have lived. You've tried to do your

share, and the failure hasn't been your fault. I want to tell you

first of all that I recognize your right to live your life from now on,

independently of me, if you so desire. You ought to have the children--”

I hesitated a moment. It was the hardest thing I had to say. “I've never

troubled myself about them, I've never taken on any responsibility in

regard to their bringing up.”

“Hugh!” she cried.

“Wait--I've got more to tell you, that you ought to know. I shouldn't

be here to-day if Nancy Durrett had consented to--to get a divorce and

marry me. We had agreed to that when this accident happened to Ham, and

she went back to him. I have to tell you that I still love her--I can't

say how much, or define my feelings toward her now. I've given up all

idea of her. I don't think I'd marry her now, even if I had the chance,

and you should decide to live away from me. I don't know. I'm not so

sure of myself as I once was. The fact is, Maude, circumstances have

been too much for me. I've been beaten. And I'm not at all certain that

it wasn't a cowardly thing for me to come back to you at all.”

I felt her hand trembling under mine, but I had not the courage to look

at her. I heard her call my name again a little cry, the very poignancy

of pity and distress. It almost unnerved me.

“I knew that you loved her, Hugh,” she said. “It was only--only a little

while after you married me that I found it out. I guessed it--women do

guess such things--long before you realized it yourself. You ought to

have married her instead of me. You would have been happier with her.”

I did not answer.

“I, too, have thought a great deal,” she went on, after a moment. “I

began earlier than you, I had to.” I looked up suddenly and saw her

smiling at me, faintly, through her tears. “But I've been thinking more,

and learning more since I've been over here. I've come to see that that

our failure hasn't been as much your fault as I once thought, as much

as you yourself declare. You have done me a wrong, and you've done the

children a wrong. Oh, it is frightful to think how little I knew when I

married you, but even then I felt instinctively that you didn't love me

as I deserved to be loved. And when we came back from Europe I knew

that I couldn't satisfy you, I couldn't look upon life as you saw it, no

matter how hard I tried. I did try, but it wasn't any use. You'll never

know how much I've suffered all these years.

“I have been happier here, away from you, with the children; I've had a

chance to be myself. It isn't that I'm--much. It isn't that I don't need

guidance and counsel and--sympathy. I've missed those, but you've never

given them to me, and I've been learning more and more to do without

them. I don't know why marriage should suddenly have become such a

mockery and failure in our time, but I know that it is, that ours hasn't

been such an exception as I once thought. I've come to believe that

divorce is often justified.”

“It is justified so far as you are concerned, Maude,” I replied. “It is

not justified for me. I have forfeited, as I say, any rights over you. I

have been the aggressor and transgressor from the start. You have been

a good wife and a good mother, you have been faithful, I have had

absolutely nothing to complain of.”

“Sometimes I think I might have tried harder,” she said. “At least I

might have understood better. I was stupid. But everything went wrong.

And I saw you growing away from me all the time, Hugh, growing away

from the friends who were fond of you, as though you were fading in the

distance. It wasn't wholly because--because of Nancy that I left

you. That gave me an excuse--an excuse for myself. Long before that I

realized my helplessness, I knew that whatever I might have done was

past doing.”

“Yes, I know,” I assented.

We sat in silence for a while. The train was skirting an ancient town

set on a hill, crowned with a castle and a Gothic church whose windows

were afire in the setting sun.

“Maude,” I said, “I have not come to plead, to appeal to your pity as

against your judgment and reason. I can say this much, that if I do not

love you, as the word is generally understood, I have a new respect for

you, and a new affection, and I think that these will grow. I have

no doubt that there are some fortunate people who achieve the kind of

mutual love for which it is human to yearn, whose passion is naturally

transmuted into a feeling that may be even finer, but I am inclined

to think, even in such a case, that some effort and unselfishness are

necessary. At any rate, that has been denied to us, and we can never

know it from our own experience. We can only hope that there is such a

thing,--yes, and believe in it and work for it.”

“Work for it, Hugh?” she repeated.

“For others--for our children. I have been thinking about the children a

great deal in the last few months especially about Matthew.”

“You always loved him best,” she said.

“Yes,” I admitted. “I don't know why it should be so. And in spite of

it, I have neglected him, neglected them, failed to appreciate them all.

I did not deserve them. I have reproached myself, I have suffered for

it, not as much as I deserved. I came to realize that the children were

a bond between us, that their existence meant something greater than

either of us. But at the same time I recognized that I had lost my right

over them, that it was you who had proved yourself worthy.... It

was through the children that I came to think differently, to feel

differently toward you. I have come to you to ask your forgiveness.”

“Oh, Hugh!” she cried.

“Wait,” I said.... “I have come to you, through them. I want to say

again that I should not be here if I had obtained my desires. Yet there

is more to it than that. I think I have reached a stage where I am able

to say that I am glad I didn't obtain them. I see now that this coming

to you was something I have wanted to do all along, but it was the

cowardly thing to do, after I had failed, for it was not as though I had

conquered the desires, the desires conquered me. At any rate, I couldn't

come to you to encumber you, to be a drag upon you. I felt that I must

have something to offer you. I've got a plan, Maude, for my life, for

our lives. I don't know whether I can make a success of it, and you are

entitled to decline to take the risk. I don't fool myself that it

will be all plain sailing, that there won't be difficulties and

discouragements. But I'll promise to try.”

“What is it?” she asked, in a low voice. “I--I think I know.”

“Perhaps you have guessed it. I am willing to try to devote what is left

of my life to you and to them. And I need your help. I acknowledge it.

Let us try to make more possible for them the life we have missed.”

“The life we have missed!” she said.

“Yes. My mistakes, my failures, have brought us to the edge of a

precipice. We must prevent, if we can, those mistakes and failures for

them. The remedy for unhappy marriages, for all mistaken, selfish and

artificial relationships in life is a preventive one. My plan is that

we try to educate ourselves together, take advantage of the accruing

knowledge that is helping men and women to cope with the problems, to

think straight. We can then teach our children to think straight, to

avoid the pitfalls into which we have fallen.”

I paused. Maude did not reply. Her face was turned away from me, towards

the red glow of the setting sun above the hills.

“You have been doing this all along, you have had the vision, the true

vision, while I lacked it, Maude. I offer to help you. But if you think

it is impossible for us to live together, if you believe my feeling

toward you is not enough, if you don't think I can do what I propose, or

if you have ceased to care for me--”

She turned to me with a swift movement, her eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, Hugh, don't say any more. I can't stand it. How little you know,

for all your thinking. I love you, I always have loved you. I grew to be

ashamed of it, but I'm not any longer. I haven't any pride any more, and

I never want to have it again.”

“You're willing to take me as I am,--to try?” I said.

“Yes,” she answered, “I'm willing to try.” She smiled at me. “And I have

more faith than you, Hugh. I think we'll succeed.”....

At nine o'clock that night, when we came out through the gates of the

big, noisy station, the children were awaiting us. They had changed,

they had grown. Biddy kissed me shyly, and stood staring up at me.

“We'll take you out to-morrow and show you how we can ride,” said

Moreton.

Matthew smiled. He stood very close to me, with his hand through my arm.

“You're going to stay, father?” he asked.

“I'm going to stay, Matthew,” I answered, “until we all go back to

America.”....

PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Barriers were mere relics of the superstition of the past

Benumbing and desiccating effect of that old system of education

Conscience was superstition, the fear of the wrath of the gods

Conventionality was part of the price we had willingly paid

Conviction that government should remain modestly in the background

Everybody should have been satisfied, but everybody was not

I hated to lie to her,--yet I did so

I'm incapable of committing a single original act

It was not money we coveted, we Americans, but power

Knowledge was presented to us as a corpse

Marriage! What other career is open to a woman?

Meaningless lessons which had to be learned

Opponent who praises one with a delightful irony

Righteousness a stern and terrible thing implying not joy

Staunch advocate on the doctrine of infant damnation

That's the great thing, to keep 'em ignorant as long as possible

The saloon represented Democracy, so dear to the American public

They deplored while they coveted

We lived separate mental existences

We had learned to pursue our happiness in packs

What you wants, you gets

Your American romanticist is a sentimental spoiled child

End of Project Gutenberg's A Far Country, Complete, by Winston Churchill