“But what of the President?” asked Durant, exhilarated, and proud of himself.
“The President is the captive of the Military, as was the President before him. We flattered him that he had been hiding these very plans in his mind, long before we approached him. He has always had an affection for the Military, and he is toying with the idea of announcing himself as General Supreme of the Army of The Democracy. The Chiefs of Staff were not too pleased by this, but President Slocum is very excited and will probably succeed. After all, we have a new war, and news wars need resolute commanders. Quote, from President Slocum.”
“So—!” cried Durant, moving to the edge of his chair in his impatience.
“So, as of a week ago, the directives you have applied to the farmers, and the other directives against the MASTS and the bureaucrats, went into operation in all the other Sections. The country is seething. The pot is beginning to boil. The day and the hour are almost here. We must work even faster. We dare not let anything occur which will destroy all the work which has already been done, and we mustn’t minimize the danger.
“I understand,” Carlson continued, “that the farmers already have formed a League for Freedom, and the MASTS are holding impassioned secret meetings in every large city, and the bureaucrats, preoccupied with their disaster, are issuing fewer and fewer petty directives and regulations. There is not only a League for Freedom now, but a League for Free Enterprise as well as a League for Constitutional Liberty! Just think of it: bureaucrats forming a League of Constitutional Liberty!”
Durant burst into wild laughter. I started it, he thought. I started it!
The Carlson, as if reading his thoughts, said seriously: “You may have begun it, Durant, but the time was ripe. Ideas are never confined to one man. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been another Minute Man, somewhere, somehow.
“But let’s get on. The harsher directives you issued against the masses of the people have been adopted in other Sections, also. The docile mothers of children affected by those intolerable directives are maddened, in spite of decades of oppression. The people are awaiting a leader, or leaders. They’ll get them. It is only a matter of applying a little extra pressure here and there to precipitate a revolt. A bloody revolt,” added Carlson, looking at Durant with his cold eyes. “A revolt in which hundreds of nameless Minute Men will die. Including us.”
Durant became abruptly sober. He saw, now, completely, how frail was his possibility for survival. As the Military, hated by the whole country, he was the enemy which must be struck down first of all in any revolt. Somewhere, a Minute Man who hated him as the embodiment of all the anguish and tyranny of the country was waiting to kill him upon the giving of a signal; somewhere, a brute in the employ of the farmers, or the MASTS, or the bureaucrats, was sharpening a knife for him or oiling a gun. His life was in imminent peril. Today; tomorrow; next week. A month. A few months. Men like him, working desperately in the dark in the name of freedom, in every Section, would be murdered in the name of freedom.
Carlson said: “You’re not so expendable as yet, Durant. You must take every precaution against premature action. You must never be alone, even in your own room. Even then”—and Carlson smiled as if the thought amused him ruefully—“you can never be sure that one of your bodyguard won’t put a bullet in your back or a knife in your ribs. He may be a Minute Man, himself, having joined the Army to do exactly what he will do.”
Durant’s hard mind tightened stubbornly. I’ll survive! I’ll find a way!
“In this new uproar, secret as yet, but gaining momentum every day, the war is almost forgotten by everybody,” said Carlson. “Did you know, Durant, that we have friends in Europe and Asia, and in South America? They have been notified that when they hear that this nation is in revolt against its oppressors they can safely bring off revolts of their own. Durant, I think we can begin to hope. It may be fifty years before the world is completely free again, and civilized, and at peace. But it will come. We can be sure of that. And we have the consolation, even when we die, that we are the hidden saviors.”
Very good, thought Durant. But I shall see Maria again, and the children. If a new world was about to be born, he would be present at the birth.
“I am appointing two Picked Guards as your personal attendants. They have my orders, Durant, to guard you and never leave you alone for a single instant. And, Durant, they are not Minute Men.”
Durant was dismayed. The thought of having two Picked Guards constantly about him, even sleeping in his room and following his every footstep, horrified him. He was about to protest, feebly, when Carlson rose, indicating that the interview was over.
“Tonight,” said the Chief Magistrate, “I should like you to join me at dinner at the home of a friend. I will send a squad of the Picked Guard for you.”
Durant was driven back to the city by four silent Picked Guards. Two of them remained with him. His own men greeted the news with surly surprise. Grandon, especially, scowled, and turned away to hide the scowl. Even the news that Durant was now a colonel could not decrease the irritation of the junior officers.
Durant waited in his office, alone with the two Picked Guards. The autumn night pressed somberly against the windows, and the dark wind muttered ominously. Durant tried to work at his desk, but the presence of his Guards oppressed him. He glanced at his watch. It was half-past seven, but he was not hungry. It was not possible that Arthur Carlson had forgotten him. He looked at the Guards’ heavy and expressionless faces, and he wondered how many decent men they had killed with their truncheons and their guns. They looked back at him impassively. Rain began to beat on the windows, and it was loud and melancholy in the silence. Durant rustled some papers. But it was useless to attempt any work. A listlessness came over Durant, a conviction that all was hopeless. A thought swam through his mind like a silent fish through water: What did it matter, eventually, whether good or evil prevailed? Men lived and died, and they managed to survive, some way, under any system of government. Why did a few men invariably struggle to give the people ideals, to gentle them, to incline them to peace and justice and love? They never succeeded.
It was then that a curious emotion took possession of Durant, without violence or anger or disgust. He felt it, and examined it, with surprise, and recognized it for what it was: pure hatred unadulterated by any personal passion or coloration. It was a hatred directed against everything and everyone, including himself. He was not appalled by it; he regarded it with curiosity, and felt its intense and concentrated power. It was a phenomenon, objective and subjective, a thing that was, disassociated from any human touch, unsoftened by shame. He recognized it as evil, and not actually part of his own personality; it was as substantial and real as a stone, existing alone and undiffused, having its own intellect and directions.
He glanced up, with growing surprise and excitement. The two Guards were looking at him. They appeared uneasy; they shifted on their feet, as they stood by the door. They could not look away from him. Had they felt the emanation of that pure, undistilled hatred of which Durant had suddenly became aware, that evil which had its own enormous mind? Durant was sure they had.
“What’s the matter?” he asked them abruptly. “Something frightened you?”
One of them stammered, and became red: “Why—why nothing, Colonel. I don’t know about Tim, here. But—but it was like a ghost, or something—come into this room.”
Yes, thought Durant, a presence. He tapped the papers on his desk with his pen. He remembered what he had been taught as a child, that evil was an actual and sentient thing in itself, an eternal spirit. The priests had called it Satan, Lucifer. They had said it was an entity, as God was an entity. He, Durant, had not accepted that when he had become a full man, and had smiled a little indulgently to himself. Evil, he had believed, was intrinsic in the human spirit, as good was also intrinsic. It was an abstract. Let simpler minds accept evil as outside themselves, against which they could battle more or less ineffectu
ally. Now, he was not so sure. Could it be possible that Lucifer did indeed “roam the world, going up and down ceaselessly through the night, seeking whom he might destroy?” Durant remembered that when this thing had touched him he had felt unemotional hatred and great power and invincibility.
Did the wicked men of the world, the tyrants and murderers and oppressors, know this presence very often? Was that their motivation, their guidance? Very mystical, thought Durant, trying to smile. The emotion had gone from him. Had he resisted it? Had something in him, inviolate and virtuous, turned it away? He could not flatter himself. He remembered that when it had been strongest, there had been no virtue in him at all, nothing but that hatred and strength. And there had been no guilt, no horror. Now he was oppressed; he felt emptied and undone and very tired.
A squad of Picked Guards arrived for him, thundering sharply on his door. He went with them into the chill and watery night. He sat in a car between his personal Picked Guards, and he saw that the other Guards drove in one car ahead of him and some in the car following him. The wet and broken streets shone in the light of a few feeble lamps. Few were about and these scuttled through wide puddles and stumbled over crumbling pavements. Durant’s oppression became almost unendurable.
The long red-brick procession of attached houses rushed by the windows of the car, streaming with water. Here and there a yellow light broke through the solid walls. Solitary soldiers patrolled, huddled in their coats miserably. They exchanged challenges at each corner, mechanically. Suddenly the cars halted. A detachment of soldiers appeared briskly; within their ranks straggled four beaten creatures, three men and a woman, and by the light of a street lamp Durant could see the blood on their faces. “Enemies of the people!” Durant leaned forward and studied them sharply, and he saw their ragged clothing, their pain and despair. This was not an unusual sight; it was very common in The Democracy. But all at once it had a strange significance for Durant, though he had seen similar things before.
He remembered that he had often been part of the spectators who watched the arrest and brutalization of men and women who had dared raise a cry against oppression and tyranny. He had kept his silence, as a Minute Man, while the rage roared in him and the hatred for the soldiers had become more grim and determined. If the prisoners died, their death only hurried the day when their fellows would be free to kill those who had killed. But now Durant looked at the soldiers, and suddenly he was filled with compassion for them, compassion because they had become murderers, compassion because they had lost their humanity, compassion because other men had made them beasts, and because they had accepted their beasthood without a struggle.
He glanced at the brutal Guards about him, and his compassion rushed out to them, also. He wanted to talk to them, for some overwhelming if obscure reason. He said: “I wonder what those—those criminals—have done?”
The Guard nearest him was surprised that the colonel had condescended to speak to him. He answered eagerly: “Hasn’t the colonel heard? It happened about two hours ago. Mr. Hugo Reynolds, of the FBHS, was murdered, and I guess they’re arresting people.”
Durant was very still. He saw, again, the little insignificant man in his little insignificant car who had been given a signal by Arthur Carlson that very afternoon, after Reynolds’s limousine had rolled away from Carlson’s house. He said, in a smothered voice: “Who did it? How did it happen?”
The pleased Guard, proud of being addressed by the colonel, was only too anxious to be informative. “Why, Mr. Reynolds was in his car, see, Colonel? It was getting dark, and it had just started to rain. Mr. Reynolds was going to his hotel. His car was turning a corner, and all at once, this car—a little old car—appeared kind of from nowhere, like it was in a big hurry. It hit Mr. Reynolds’ car, right in the middle, and when it did it exploded. It was full of dynamite, or something. Mr. Reynolds’ car was bullet-proof, like the cars of all the big fellers, and was reinforced against hand grenades, too. But the explosive was too much for it. Mr. Reynolds’ car and the little old car and the man in it went up together. Nothing left but a lot of blood and wreckage. Mr. Reynolds was killed, and so was his secretary and driver. They say it was something to see,” added the Guard, with relish. “Hole in the street like a bomb crater. Funny thing, though, there was nobody right in the vicinity, and so nobody else was hurt. Looked like it was all planned to happen so nobody else would get hurt.”
Durant thought of that little insignificant man who had gone resolutely and calmly to his death, knowing that it must be done. There had been no honors for him, and never would be. There had been no one to help him or give him courage. His help and courage had been in himself. Would I have been as courageous as that? Durant asked himself with humility. Even though I was often in danger, there was always the possibility of rescue or escape. At the very least, I knew I was not alone. But that anonymous little man had been alone, and his name had died with him, and it had meant nothing to him in the face of his duty.
So many would die for the death of the lethal Hugo Reynolds, innocent men and women who had long been under suspicion of secret and “subversive” activities. Durant thought: Hurry! Hurry! We must move faster if we’re to save the brave and decent among the people!—The soldiers and their prisoners had disappeared in the dark and windy distance. There was no end to the Hugo Reynolds. Hurry! Hurry! sang the wet tires of the cars. Now Durant was no longer oppressed, and there was no memory in him of the evil he had felt, himself, but only compassion. Something strange was rising in his mind, a new emotion, a startling idea.
The wind and the rain increased to a sudden violence of sound. Another voice added itself, autumnal thunder, and a glitter of lightning fled through the sky. The cars were passing through wider yet darker streets, impressive streets lined with fine old houses. Durant saw the huge bulk of what had once been a famous library. It had been transformed into a barracks for women conscripted by The Democracy to work in war plants, women imported from smaller cities from all the Sections. These women were under the special guidance of the Department of Women’s Welfare, of which Captain Alice Steffens was the local head. There was a nursery for the women’s children in the basement, but there were few children and the mothers rarely visited them, preferring to leave the care to nurses and teachers.
Years ago, Durant had watched his wife’s tenderness with her children, and her constant watchfulness, and her uneasiness when the boys were out of her sight. He had wondered about that large percentage of women in the war plants who bore their children indifferently, and abandoned them with actual eagerness to the hands of others. He had studied these women in the factories, and he then had had the answer. Almost uniformly, they were of a certain type, with large hard bodies, coarse-grained skins, rough loud voices and pulpy features, striding about in their big thick shoes and workmen’s blue overalls and shirts. They were brutes, with the anatomical outlines of the female figure, but with nothing else to distinguish them from men.
He had discussed it with his father, for he had been a much younger and more naïve man then, and his father had said thoughtfully: “It happened in Germany, Russia and America, this emergence of strong physical masculinity in a percentage of the women. It was like another sex. The women preferred working in masculine trades, and rushed to the factories, first voluntarily for a long time, and then by conscription, which they didn’t mind at all. It was the beginning of the era of the degradation of womanhood. Perhaps the emergence of this masculinized sex created that degradation or vice versa. It’s something one can’t tell, but it’s a fact that when this kind of woman emerged, Communism made great advances. The Church tried to do something about it, urging the women to remain with their children. But it was no use, with that breed of creature. They had no maternal instincts. First the factories, and then the armies—and they liked it. It was all necessary to them. They are the monsters bred out of Communism, and recreating it.”
From these women had come the vicious wardens of the women’s p
risons, for brutality came naturally to them. They officiated as members of firing squads, and enjoyed it. They also enjoyed the beatings they administered to their charges. They were forewomen in the factories, and were extremely efficient at forcing the fainting and exhausted female workers to final efforts. They were much extolled for their “patriotism” in the “war efforts.” They were the only women workers who were given extra rations of food and clothing. However, they rarely dressed becomingly; they preferred their big flannel trousers, which they stuffed into their rubber boots in the winter or into their leather boots at other seasons, their bulky shirts, their short square coats and the scarves which they pulled harshly over their heads and tied under their chins. They strode on the streets arrogantly, pushing and thrusting their way through crowds, their dull eyes fixed.
What shall we do with these animals, when the Republic is restored? thought Durant. They were even more dangerous than men, for they were instinctively of a totalitarian nature and could adjust only to a totalitarian system. Would it be necessary to pass laws to forbid the employment of women in factories in the future or their enlistment in the armed forces? World-madness had made them manifest. In an era of sanity they might disappear, as all anachronisms disappear when the environment becomes untenable to them.