Part 47 (1/2)

”It will be something to do, doctor, that will. Like taking hold of lightning. It will rack us body and soul; belief will strip us naked for a moment, leave us new-born and shaken and weak-as weak as Christ in the manger. And that day nothing can stand before us. Because, you see, we'll know what we want.”

The doctor stood for a moment as he had been, a large, dark troubled body rocking slowly to the heave of the deck beneath him. He rubbed a hand over his face.

”Utopian!” he said.

”Utopian!” Hallett repeated after him. ”To-day we are children of Utopia-or we are nothing. I tell you, doctor, to-day it has come down to this-Hamburg to Bagdad-or-Utopia!”

The other lifted his big arms and his face was red.

”You're playing with words, Hallett. You do nothing but twist my words.

When I say Utopian, I mean, precisely, impossible. Absolutely impossible. See here! You tell me this empire of theirs is a dream. I give you that. How long has it taken them to dream it? Forty years.

_Forty years!_ And this wild, transcendental empire of the spirit you talk about,-so much harder,-so many hundreds of times more incredible,-will you have us do that sort of a thing in a _day_? We're a dozen races, a score of nations. I tell you it's-it's impossible!”

”Yes. Impossible.”

The silence came down between them, heavy with all the dark, impersonal sounds of pa.s.sage, the rhythmical explosions of the waves, the breathing of engines, the m.u.f.fled staccato of the spark in the wireless room, the note of the s.h.i.+p's bell forward striking the hour and after it a hail, running thin in the wind: ”Six bells, sir, and-_all's well_!”

”_All's well!_”

The irony of it! The infernal patness of it, falling so in the black interlude, like stage business long rehea.r.s.ed.

”_All's well!_” the doctor echoed with the mirthless laughter of the d.a.m.ned.

Hallett raised himself very slowly on an elbow and stared at the star beyond the rail.

”Yes, I shouldn't wonder. Just now-to-night-somehow-I've got a queer feeling that maybe it is. Maybe it's going to be.-Maybe it's going to be; who knows? The darkest hour of our lives, of history, perhaps, has been on us. And maybe it's almost over. Maybe we're going to do the impossible, after all, doctor. And maybe we're going to get it done in time. I've got a queer sense of something happening-something getting ready.”

When he spoke again, his voice had changed a little.

”I wish my father could have lived to see this day. He's in New York now, and I should like-”

The doctor moved forward suddenly and quietly, saying: ”Lie down, Hallett. You'd better lie down now.”

But the other protested with a gray hand.

”No, no, you don't understand. When I say-well-it's just the sh.e.l.l of my father walking around and talking around, these ten years past. Prison killed his heart. He doesn't even know it, that the immortal soul of him has gone out. You know him, doctor. Ben Hallett; the Radical-'the Destroyer,' they used to call him in the old days. He was a brave man, doctor; you've got to give him that; as brave as John the Baptist, and as mad. I can see him now,-to-night,-sitting in the back room in Eighth Street, he and old Radinov and Hirsch and O'Reilly and the rest, with all the doors shut and the windows shut and their eyes and ears and minds shut up tight, trying to keep the war out. They're old men, doctor, and they must cling to yesterday, and to to-morrow. They mustn't see to-day. They must ignore to-day. To-day is the tragic interruption.

They too ask nothing but to wake up and find it isn't so. All their lives they've been straining forward to see the ineffable dawn of the Day of Man, calling for the Commune and the red barricades of revolution. The barricades! Yesterday, it seems to them now, they were almost in sight of the splendid dawn-the dawn of the Day of Barricades.

And then this war, this thing they call a 'rich man's plot' to confound them, hold them up, turn to ashes all the fire of their lives. All they can do is sit in a closed room with their eyes shut and wait till this meaningless brawl is done. And then, to-morrow-to-morrow-some safely distant to-morrow (for they're old men),-to-morrow, the barricades! And that's queer. That's queer.”

”Queer?”

”It seems to me that for days now, for weeks and months now, there's been no sound to be heard in all the length and breadth of the world but the sound of barricades.”

The voice trailed off into nothing.

To the doctor, charging slowly back and forth along the near deck, his hands locked behind him and his face bent slightly over his breast, there came a queer sense of separation, from Hallett, from himself, his own everyday acts, his own familiar aspirations, from the s.h.i.+p which held him up in the dark void between two continents.

What was it all about, he asked himself over and over. Each time he pa.s.sed the shadow in the companionway he turned his head, painfully, and as if against his will. Once he stopped squarely at the foot of the cot and stood staring down at the figure there, faintly outlined, motionless and mute. Sweat stood for a moment on his brow, and was gone in the steady onrush of the wind. And he was used to death.