Barbarians Part 16

He had aged ten years in as many months.

Gray, the younger surgeon, kept glancing from time to time at Vail's pallid face, and the latter understood the professional interest of the younger man.

"You think I look ill?" he asked, finally.

"You don't look very fit, Doctor."

"No.... I'm _going West_."

"You mean it?"

"Yes."

"Why do you think that you are--_going West_?"

"There's a thing over there, born of gas. It's a living thing, animal or vegetable. I don't know which. It's only recently been recognized. We call it the 'Seed of Death.'"

Gray gazed at the haggard face of the older man in silence.

Vail went on, slowly: "It's properly named. It is always fatal. A man may live for a few months. But, once ga.s.sed, even in the slightest degree, if that germ is inhaled, death is certain."

After a silence Gray began: "Do you have any apprehension--" And did not finish the sentence.

Vail shrugged. "It's interesting, isn't it?" he said with pleasant impersonality.

After a silence Gray said: "Are you doing anything about it?"

"Oh, yes. It's working in the dark, of course. I'm feeling rottener every day."

He rested his handsome head on one thin hand:

"I don't want to die, Gray, but I don't know how to keep alive. It's odd, isn't it? I don't wish to die. It's an interesting world. I want to see how the local elections turn out in New York."

"What!"

"Certainly. That is what worries me more than anything. We Allies are sure to win. I'm not worrying about that. But I'd like to live to see Tammany a dead c.o.c.k in the pit!"

Gray forced a laugh; Vail laughed unfeignedly, and then, solemn again, said:

"I'd like to live to see this country aspire to something really n.o.ble."

"After all," said Gray, "there is really nothing to stifle aspiration."

It was not only because Vail had been gazing upon death in every phase, every degree--on brutal destruction wholesale and in detail; but also he had been standing on the outer escarpment of Civilization and had watched the mounting sea of barbarism battering, thundering, undermining, gradually engulfing the world itself and all its ancient liberties.

He and the young surgeon, Gray, who was to sail to France next day were alone together on the loggia of the club; dusk mitigated the infernal heat of a summer day in town.

On the avenue below motor cars moved north and south, hansoms crept slowly along the curb, and on the hot sidewalks people pa.s.sed listlessly under the electric lights--the nine--and--seventy sweating tribes.

For, on such summer nights, under the red moon, an exodus from the East Side peoples the n.o.ble avenue with dingy spectres who shuffle along the gilded grilles and still facades of stone, up and down, to and fro, in quest of G.o.d knows what--of air perhaps, perhaps of happiness, or of something even vaguer. But whatever it may be that starts them into painful motion, one thing seems certain: aspiration is a part of their unrest.

"There is liberty here," replied Dr. Vail--"also her inevitable shadow, tyranny."

"We need more light; that's all," said Gray.

"When light streams in from every angle no shadow is possible."

"The millennium? I get you.... In this country the main thing is that there is _some_ light. A single ray, however feeble, and even coming from one fixed angle only, means aspiration, life...."

He lighted a cigar.

"As you know," he remarked, "there is a flower called _Aconitum_. It is also known by the ominous names of Monks-Hood and Helmet-Flower. Direct sunlight kills it. It flourishes only in shadow. Like the Kaiser-Flower it also is blue; and," he added, "it is deadly poison.... As you say, the necessary thing in this world is light from every angle."

His cigar glimmered dully through the silence. Presently he went on; "Speaking of tyranny, I think it may be cla.s.sed as a recognized and tolerated business carried on successfully by those born with a genius for it. It flourishes in the shade--like the Helmet-Flower.... But the sun in this Western Hemisphere of ours is devilish hot. It's gradually killing off our local tyrants--slowly, almost imperceptibly but inexorably, killing 'em off.... Of course, there are plenty still alive--tyrants of every degree born to the business of tyranny and making a success at it."

He smoked tranquilly for a while, then:

"There are our tyrants of industry," he said; "tyrants of politics, tyrants of religion--great and small we still harbor plenty of tyrants, all scheming to keep their roots from shriveling under this fierce western sun of ours----"

He laughed without mirth, turning his worn and saddened eyes on Gray:

"Tyranny is a business," he repeated; "also it is a state of mind--a delusion, a ruling pa.s.sion--strong even in death.... The odd part of it is that a tyrant never knows he's one.... He invariably mistakes himself for a local Moses. I can tell you a sort of story if you care to listen....

Or, we can go to some cheerful show or roof-garden----"

"Go on with your story," said Gray.

CHAPTER XII

FIFTY-FIFTY

Vail began:

Tyranny was purely a matter of business with this little moral shrimp about whom I'm going to tell you. I was standing between a communication trench and a crater left by a mine which was being "consolidated," as they have it in these days.... All around me soldiers of the third line swarmed and clambered over the debris, digging, hammering, shifting planks and sandbags from south to north, lugging new timbers, reels of barbed wire, ladders, cases of ammunition, machine guns, trench mortars.

The din of the guns was terrific; overhead our own sh.e.l.ls pa.s.sed with a deafening, clattering roar; the Huns continued to sh.e.l.l the town in front of us where our first and second lines were still fighting in the streets and houses while the third line were reconstructing a few yards of trenches and a few craters won.

Stretchers and bearers from my section had not yet returned from the emergency dressing station; the crater was now cleared up except of enemy dead, whose partly buried arms and legs still stuck out here and there. A company of the Third Foreign Legion had just come into the crater and had taken station at the loopholes under the parapet of sandbags.

As soon as the telephone wires were stretched as far as our crater a message came for me to remain where I was until further orders. I had just received this message and was walking along, slowly, behind the rank of soldiers, who stood leaning against the parapet with their rifles thrust through the loops, when somebody said in English--in East Side New York English I mean--"Ah, there, Doc!"

A soldier had turned toward me, both hands still grasping his resting rifle. In the "horizon blue" uniform and ugly, iron, shrapnel-proof helmet strapped to his bullet head I failed to recognize him.

"It's me, 'Duck' Werner," he said, as I stood hesitating.... You know who he is, political leader in the 50th Ward, here. I was astounded.