A curious look passed very rapidly over Beckett’s face, but he saluted and went out. Durant made an abrupt gesture to Sadler, who nodded, and began, very rapidly and systematically, to examine every portion of the room, searching under the carpets, through the desk, under chairs, and behind the fine engravings on the walls. He lifted the telephone, delicately touched its underplate. He ran his fingers along baseboards, under windowsills, climbed on a chair to examine the fastenings of the blue velvet draperies at the windows. He tapped the walls, listened intently for hollow echoes. He pressed down heavily on the leather sofa, testing it. Then he shook his head at Durant. “So far as I can see, there’s nothing. Probably because the room isn’t used very much. No papers in the desk, no marks on the blotters.”
Then he went out and closed the door behind him. Durant listened, straining for a sound and saying a few words. Sadler returned, lifting his eyebrows questioningly. “I couldn’t hear your voice, so it’s soundproofed,” he said. “Hear me?” Durant answered with a shake of his head. He relaxed. “Found out anything about Beckett, Chard?”
“Nothing at all. We’ve been together for four years, in the Guard. He’s just what he seems to be. I’ve visited his family in Oregon—successful lumber merchants. He wanted me to marry his sister.” Sadler smiled again.
Durant said restively: “Sounds all right. But there’s something about him—Chard, you haven’t been stealing out to speak to your father at any time, have you? Nothing Beckett could put his finger on, or suspect?”
“No. I know, sir, that a man in your position can’t trust anybody, and I must remind the colonel that he, himself, told me that I wasn’t to trust him, either.”
Durant laughed. The door opened and Beckett, exuding good nature and efficiency, came in with a folder and laid it on Durant’s desk. Durant began to read, trying to find, again, some clue which would tell him why Sheridan was what he was. So far, the clue had evaded him. Sheridan was sixty. His father had been a professor of English Literature at Harvard, and had evidently enjoyed a fine reputation. His mother had been graduated from a now defunct women’s college. Sheridan was their only offspring, and, judging from the famous schools he had attended, they had cherished him. He was graduated from Harvard. An excellent student, apparently, and even of the genius type. Law at Yale. Those were the years of the Depression. Had that young man been tremendously moved at the plight of a destitute and desperate people? Durant considered this for an instant, then dismissed it as absurd.
Sheridan had married the daughter of a wealthy copper and aluminum fabricator and he had joined the legal staff which that manufacturer employed. Those were the days of strikes; President Roosevelt had not been able to restore any semblance of real prosperity to the nation. His regime had been strengthened and consolidated and made infinitely powerful by war. Sheridan’s father-in-law had extracted enormous profits from that war. Was that a clue? Durant mused. No, Sheridan was not a man to be disgusted by war. He had not served in that conflict, nor in the others that had followed; he had remained with his father-in-law the time, when he joined the FBHS. An even enough record; a smooth account of a success story. His relations with his wife were excellent. In private life, and in Government, he had proved able and even brilliant. His friends were many. Evidently he had made no enemies, except in the case of those he had prosecuted as head of the FBHS.
His wife had inherited a fortune, and as her father had been a member of the MASTS she had been permitted to keep the major part of that fortune. Her brothers were still engaged in the business. So, no poverty anywhere, in Sheridan’s history, no strife, no objective stress. Durant lay back in his chair, and thought. The clue to Sheridan, as Sheridan had, himself, said, was in his own nature. What was that “nature”? Something stirred uneasily in Durant’s memory, but refused to surface. What does it matter to me what he is? he asked himself. It’s no concern of mine. In less than twenty-four hours he’ll be dead.
Nevertheless, he wanted to know. This demand in himself was not mere curiosity; he believed that if he understood Sheridan he would know what motivated so many men like him in the service of The Democracy. It was necessary for the nation to understand such men so that they could be recognized immediately on appearance and rendered harmless.
The door opened silently, and Sheridan appeared. Durant said at once, to Beckett: “Stand outside, and see that no one interrupts us.” Was it his imagination, or did Beckett’s face really tighten, his eyes really narrow? It was just a fleeting impression, gone in an instant. Beckett saluted and went out, shutting the door after him. Sadler remained.
“Sit down, Sheridan,” Durant directed. Sheridan sat down on a leather chair, and simply waited with that remote and polite patience of his, a gentlemanly patience conferred on a rather boorish stranger. I must suffer the intrusion of this person, implied his attitude; very tiresome, but it must be endured, I suppose, for the sake of the amenities. Durant’s collar became warm.
He indicated the dossier on his desk. “I’ve been reading this again,” he said. “I wanted to reassure myself that no injustice had been done to you today.”
“Indeed,” murmured Sheridan. “Very kind of you, Colonel.”
“Aren’t you interested in my final conclusions?”
The gray eyebrows lifted quizzically. “I thought you came to your conclusion long ago, Colonel.”
Durant studied him, leaning back in his chair. He could find no immediate words.
“Perhaps I might be able to assist the colonel,” Sheridan said, gently. “The colonel is a young man. Faithful—shall we say?—to his faith. And a very young man. The colonel is puzzled; he won’t be puzzled when he is my age. In short, the colonel, who has studied my dossier very carefully, as only a lawyer would study it, or one with a lawyer’s mentality, is wondering why I am what I am. Is that correct?”
Durant felt both foolish and alarmed. “Yes,” he said, and his voice was unnecessarily loud.
Sheridan laced his delicate fingers on his knee. “I’m afraid the colonel, who I have heard is not an admirer of psychiatry, nevertheless has absorbed some of that science. He believes there is an explanation for all human behavior, that men are not born as they are but are made what they are by environment. He also believes in heredity. Now, may I ask the colonel if he found anything in my heredity or environment which has given him some food for conjecture?”
“No,” said Durant. He fought down sudden anger.
Sheridan studied the ceiling thoughtfully. “The colonel, who is a young man, can possibly have what used to be called a conscience. He has probably rationalized his subconscious emotions about me; he has probably said to himself that I must be destroyed. Yes,” said Sheridan softly, “he believes I must be destroyed, and that he must know what I am so that future generations may recognize my kind. Nevertheless, the colonel is not at ease. He subconsciously—quite subconsciously—wishes to be reassured that he was justified in condemning me.”
Durant’s face turned hot. He said unevenly: “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sheridan. Don’t you remember me? I’m just the Military. I’m just a steel-jacketed moron. You’re crediting me with emotions I don’t possess, and don’t understand.”
Sheridan gave him the friendly glance which a schoolmaster would give an obstinate but intelligent student. “I think the colonel understands,” he observed. “And I’m willing to assist the colonel in quieting his conscience.” He waited, then; as Durant did not speak, he continued: “I told the colonel before that I could never live in the environment he has sworn to restore, where there are conscience and other unnecessary emotional impediments to intelligent Government.”
“Why not?” blurted Durant involuntarily.
“Because,” answered Sheridan patiently, “that environment is an insane and impossible one, a fantastic dream which was never based on reality. It is not based on human nature. It is a religious concept, and man has never truly embraced any religious concept at all, not once, t
hrough all the ages. That ought to be clear evidence, even to a fool, that religion is antipathetic to man, alien to his nature, unnecessary for him. I, Colonel, am a realist. I was born a realist. There are only the weak and the strong in the world, whether living things are beetles, birds, fish, animals, or men.”
“Not a very original conclusion,” said Durant. “Beetles, birds, fish, animals and men discovered that long ago, ages ago. But a newer concept was given us, also a long time ago: that man is neither a worm nor a dog, a weasel, nor an animal only. He has a mind, an ego. He is aware of himself. Becoming aware of himself, he became aware of abstracts and his ability to reason in abstracts, something other creatures don’t possess. I won’t make you smile by speaking of the soul—”
But Sheridan interrupted, and his face was serious. “The colonel misunderstands me. I do believe in the soul.”
“Well—” began Durant. And then he stopped, and he remembered that strange experience he had had in his office, his knowledge that a tangible presence had moved close to him, a presence of incredible and absolute evil, utterly amoral, utterly omnipresent. He looked at Sheridan, and his volatile face paled.
Sheridan nodded. “I think the colonel comprehends now.”
The evil that invaded everything was always defeated, and always triumphed. The evil that was part of every man, but only a part in lesser or greater degree, in the majority. But the evil which was, in some rare men, supreme, unqualified. It was born in them as a perfect entity which did not admit the presence of any other emotion or motivation. Was that evil madness? Durant, who had once considered evil to be a form of insanity, no longer believed that. Sheridan was completely sane.
Durant leaned toward Sheridan and studied him with something like fear. He said: “One of my teachers once taught me that Man is noble, but men are ignoble, or worse. When Man becomes men, only, there emerges a universal paranoid state of mind that dwindles off into death or explodes in a suicidal catastrophe.” He did not know why he should speak like this to a man he had condemned to death, but something irresistible was urging him. “What do you say to that, Sheridan?”
Sheridan smiled at him pleasantly. “I was not mistaken in the colonel, I see. I’ve considered what the colonel has said. His teacher was quite correct, I must admit. Correct in a ‘moral’ or religious concept. But, may I remind the colonel that we, in this century, are a Society of Men, and that Man is an outlaw, an anachronism? It always happens. Men finally overcome man. Man never wins for very long, but he leaves behind him a trail of transcendental error, shining with stars, perhaps, but an error. There is no reality in it.” He shook his head. “What the colonel has called a ‘paranoid’ state of mind is neither paranoid nor deathful. It is pure reality, and can never be overcome by any theory or set of benign laws which are based on the nonexistent nobility of man’s personality.”
Durant felt cold and vulnerable. He protested: “Hitler thought that, and Stalin, and our present State, here in America, and tyrants thought that for thousands of years before! And they always were defeated.”
“And they always triumph, again and again,” said Sheridan, almost with compassion for this young fool. “And, some day, they will triumph permanently. Not in your generation, perhaps, nor in your children’s children’s generation. But eventually. Truth, you see, cannot help but establish itself.”
“Or evil?”
“It has many names,” said Sheridan indulgently. “Call it what you will.”
Durant examined his own fingers, his face dark, his forehead wrinkled. Then he said: “You told me you believed in the soul, Sheridan. So, death doesn’t matter to you, does it?”
“No, Colonel, it does not. For, you see, I know that men of my kind are born forever, preparing to kill you, you who believe in dreams and fantasies. Shall I say, to make it clearer, that what I am is forever born, and that you can do nothing about us? As an entity, I don’t know whether I shall exist after tomorrow; but as a reality, I shall always exist.”
A faint roar reached them even in this room, a sound like a rising and stormy sea. Durant ran to the window. The crowd outside had reached tremendous proportions; it overflowed the streets; its tentacles extended into other streets, into alleys. Someone had told the people that Sheridan was to die tomorrow. The snow blurred the multitude of faces below, but Durant could sense the crowd’s jubilation, their ecstasy. “Come here!” he cried to Sheridan. Sheridan rose without hurry and joined Durant at the window.
“Look down there,” said Durant, pointing. “The people. They know you have been condemned to death. Their enemy. They are overjoyed that one evil is going to be eliminated.”
Sheridan studied the crowds thoughtfully. Then he laughed, his soft, patrician laugh. “No, Colonel, you are wrong. For, you see, they created me; they gave me power. In the past, they’ve created thousands of other men like me, and made them powerful, and they’ll do the same in the future. They hate me because the thing which they made, and to which they gave authority, has injured and frightened them. Their uproar does not mean that they are hoping for freedom, and are beginning to detest slavery. It’s only an immediate and transitory thing. It’s even an ugly emotion, according to your concepts, for there’s nothing ‘virtuous’ or ‘sublime’ or ‘aware’ in it. That cry is the cry of the mob which killed the Gracchi, and Jesus and Socrates, the cry at the guillotine or at the gallows or at the auto da fé. The cry of purely emotional hatred, which can be directed at anyone.”
He touched Durant gently on the chest. “The same cry which was raised against your kind, Colonel.”
He is right, and he is wrong, thought Durant desperately. Then, all at once, he was flooded by a strange quiet. “I have compassion on the multitude.” Christ saw; Christ forgave; Christ understood. And Christ knew that under all the hatred, all the horrible stupidity and ignorance and bestiality and evil in man, there lived the true reality: the divinity, like a secret kernel, there planted in beneficent soil could become a great and immortal tree. A tree of life, filled with fruit, airy with flowers, glittering in the sun.
Durant turned to Sheridan. He wanted to speak. But Sheridan’s ghostly eyes were laughing.
The young man moved away, his arms folded. He had forgotten Chard Sadler. Now, startled and bemused, he saw him. Sadler’s face was very stern, and his eyes were full of a sterner sadness. He smiled a little, after a moment; never had he looked so like his father.
“Perhaps the colonel might remember,” he said, “the old saying that the children of darkness are wiser in their generation than the children of light.”
“Yes?” said Durant.
“But the generation passes, too, and if men like Sheridan are born, again and again, as he says, the children of light also are born. Perhaps, one day, they’ll never die.”
He put his hand on his gun. “Just the same, sir, if you’ll permit, I’ll stay with Mr. Sheridan in his cell, until tomorrow morning. So nobody will disturb him, you see.”
Early December snow yellowed on the broken streets of Philadelphia, and melted in the gutters. A dull yellowish wind blew over the city; even the sky was juandiced, especially at night.
Durant was suffering from a particularly severe depression, a psychic listlessness. He adjudged some cases in the Military Court, meted out harsh sentences, for public effect, with the result that his melancholy became blacker day by day. His isolation had never seemed more terrible to him. He dared talk with no one. An intangible coolness, if not open hostility, settled down between him and his officers, with the exception of Sergeant Keiser. Keiser, he sometimes reflected, might be a fellow conspirator, but there was something about the man which he could not like. There was a sullen expression on young Grandon’s boyish face these days and, as Durant had become extremely unpopular with the local wealthy families, few invitations came to Edwards and Bishop. Durant knew that those families were his malignant enemies; before his directives against them he had ignored all their overtures. Since the directives, the
submerged but none the less savage hatred they had for him was a palpable thing which he felt when he accidentally came into contact with them. Finally, when he commanded Bishop and Edwards not to accept any further invitations, the hostility of the officers became manifest to him in surly side-glances and silence.
He dared talk with Dr. Dodge no longer, for fear that bringing him into his own presence, and into the presence of Sadler, the resemblance between father and son would soon be seen by others. He did not talk with Sadler, either, even when they were alone. He found it hard, indeed, to have any conversation with anyone.
There was also another reason for his misery. He remembered, from the days of his childhood, the happy anticipations of December twenty-fifth. He remembered the Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, the gleaming tree, the presents, the seasonal dishes, the laughter and gaiety and prayer and song. All these had been sucked down in the gray mud of universal proletarianism. In December it seemed to him that that mud was everywhere, on the faces of the people on the streets, under his fingernails, in his hair, on his clothing, in his food. And, worst of all, in his very soul.
He would think to himself: Can we really ever eliminate this horror from the spirits and memory and habits of the people? What of the young folk, who had known nothing but rough and shabby clothing all their lives, nothing but military despotism, nothing but the drabness of Americanized Communist philosophy, nothing but the worship of the State, nothing but oppression and materialistic indoctrination? All these had become a way of life to them; they probably could imagine no other type of existence, no other world. There was no spot on earth which had not been ravished, no smiling land of freedom anywhere, no rumor of any splendor or human dignity, by which they could make comparisons with their own nation. There was nothing they could emulate; they could restore no standards, for they had awareness of no standards but their own. They had been born in times of war, had lived in times of war, knowing nothing but war and regimentation. Beauty and peace and reverence and joy had never been part of their knowledge. Emancipated, what would they do? Cast adrift on their own responsibility, faced with the demand that they live like free beings, forced to meet the exigencies of individual enterprise, was it not likely they would be thrown into confusion and panic and fear?