Part 33 (2/2)

He got up and went to the window. It was a dull foggy day, and there was frost on the ground. He stared outside for some moments.

”What, I repeat, stands in our way?”

”Well?”

”The Church, and a ma.s.s of superst.i.tions that we have inherited from the Old Testament. That's what stands in our way. We still attach more value to the Old Testament than to the New. The Scotch, for example, like the Jews.... Yes, of course.... What was I saying?”

He left the window and sat down once more before me, moving rather listlessly.

”Yes, Harden. Of course. That's what it is, isn't it? Do you remember--diddle--yes it was diddle, diddle----”

He paused and frowned.

”Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,” he muttered, ”Yes--hey, diddle, diddle, diddle--that's what it is, isn't it?”

”Of course,” I said. ”It's all really that.”

”Just diddle, diddle, diddle?”

”Yes--if you like.”

”That is subst.i.tuting diddle for riddle,” he said earnestly. He frowned again and pa.s.sed his hand across his eyes.

”Yes,” I said calmly. ”It's going a step up.”

I suppose about half an hour pa.s.sed before either of us spoke again after this extraordinary termination to our conversation. In absolute silence we sat facing one another and during that time I saw the blue stain growing clearer and clearer in Jason's eyes. At last he rose.

”It's very odd,” he said. ”Tell me, were you like this?”

”How do you feel?”

”As if I had been drunk and suddenly had been made sober. I will leave you. I want to think. I will go down to the country.”

”And your papers?”

”We must have a new Press,” he said, and left the room.

That same day the great railway accident occurred just outside London that led to the death of sixty people, many of them Immortals. Its effect on public imagination was profound. All dangerous enterprises became invested with a terrible radiance. Men asked themselves if, in face of a future of health, it was worth risking life in rashness of any description, and gradually traffic came to a standstill. Long before the germ had infected the whole populace all activities fraught with danger had ceased. The coal mines were abandoned. The railways were silent. The streets of London became empty of traffic.

Blue-stained people began to throng the streets of London in vast ma.s.ses, moving to and fro without aim or purpose, perfectly orderly, vacant, lost--like Sarakoff's b.u.t.terflies....

Thornduck came to see me one day when the reign of the germ was practically absolute in London.

”They are wandering into the country in thousands,” he remarked. ”They have lost all sense of home and possession. They are vague, trying to form an ideal socialistic community. What a mess your germ is making of life! They're not ready for it. The question is whether they will rouse themselves to consider the food question.”

”We need scarcely any food,” I replied. ”I've had nothing to eat to-day.”

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