The Moving Finger had written off another five minutes or so when police were suddenly active and sections of the crowd lunged uncomfortably; way was being made for the passing of an official car—and in the backward swirl of packed humanity Theodore was thrust one way, Phillida and the Rathbone boy another. For a moment he saw them as they looked round and beckoned him; the next, the swirl had carried him yet further—and when it receded they were lost amongst the drifting, shifting thousands. After ten minutes more of pushing to and fro in search of them, Theodore gave up the chase as fruitless and made his way disconsolately to the Westminster edge of the crowd.... Phillida, if he knew her, would stay till the stroke of midnight, later if the spirit moved her; and she had an escort in the Rathbone boy, who, in due time, would see her home.... There was no need to worry—but he cursed the luck of what might be their last evening.
For a time he lingered uncertainly on the edge of the pushing, shuffling mass; perhaps would have lingered till the hour struck, if there had not drifted to his memory the evening at Vallance’s when Holt had declared this night to be impossible—and when Markham had “made it war.” And, with that, he remembered also that Markham had rooms near by—in one of the turnings off Great Smith Street.
There was a light in the room that he knew for Markham’s and it was only after he had rung that he wondered what had urged him to come. He was still wondering when the door opened and could think of no better explanation than “I saw you were up—by your light.”
“If you’d passed five minutes ago,” said Markham, as he led the way upstairs, “you wouldn’t have seen any light. I’m only just back from the lab—and dining off biscuits and whisky.”
“Is this making any difference to you, then?” Theodore asked. “I mean, in the way of work?”
Markham nodded as he poured out his visitor’s whisky. “Yes, I’m serving the country—the military people have taken me over, lock and stock: with everyone else, apparently, who has ever done chemical research. I’ve been pretty hard at it the last few days, ever since the scare was serious.... And you—are you soldiering?”
“No,” said Theodore and told him of the departmental prohibition.
“It mayn’t make much difference in the end,” said Markham.... “You see, I was right—the other evening.”
“Yes,” Theodore answered, “I believe that was why I came in. The crowd to-night reminded me of what you said at Vallance’s—though I don’t think I believed you then.... How long is it going to last?”
“God knows,” said Markham, with his mouth full of biscuit. “We shall have had enough of it—both sides—before very long; but it’s one thing to march into hell with your head up and another to find a way out.... There’s only one thing I’m fairly certain about—I ought to have been strangled at birth.”
Theodore stared at him, not sure he had caught the last words.
“You ought to——?”
“Yes—you heard me right. If the human animal must fight—and nothing seems to stop it—it should kill off its scientific men. Stamp out the race of ’em, forbid it to exist.... Holt was also right that evening, fundamentally. You can’t combine the practice of science and the art of war; in the end, it’s one or the other. We, I think, are going to prove that—very definitely.”
“And when you’ve proved it—we stop fighting?”
Markham shrugged his shoulders, thrust aside his plate and filled his pipe.
“Curious, the failure to understand the influence on ourselves of what we make and use. We just make and use and damn the consequence.... When Lavoisier invented the chemical balance, did he stop to consider the possibilities of chemical action in combination with outbursts of human emotion? If he had...!”
In the silence that followed they heard the chiming of three-quarters—and there flashed inconsequently into Theodore’s memory, a vision of himself, a small boy with his hand in his mother’s, staring up, round-eyed, at Big Ben of London—while his mother taught him the words that were fitted to the chime.
Lord—through—this—hour
Be—Thou—our—guide,
So—by—Thy—power
No—foot—shall—slide.
... That, or something like that.... Odd, that he should remember them now—when for years he had not remembered.... “Lord—through—this—hour——”
He realized suddenly that Markham was speaking—in jerks, between pulls at his pipe. “... And the same with mechanics—not the engine but the engine plus humanity. Take young James Watt and his interest in the lid of a tea-kettle! In France, by the way, they tell the same story of Papin; but, so far as the rest of us are concerned it doesn’t much matter who first watched the lid of a kettle with intelligence—the point is that somebody watched it and saw certain of its latent possibilities. Only its more immediate possibilities—and we may take it for granted that amongst those which he did not foresee were the most important. The industrial system—the drawing of men into crowds where they might feed the machine and be fed by it—the shrinkage of the world through the use of mechanical transport. That—the shrinkage—when we first saw it coming, we took to mean union of peoples and the clasping of distant hands—forgetting that it also meant the cutting of distant throats.... Yet it might have struck us that we are all potential combatants—and the only known method of preventing a fight is to keep the combatants apart! These odd, simple facts that we all of us know—and lose sight of ... the drawing together of peoples has always meant the clashing of their interests ... and so new hatreds. Inevitably new hatreds.”
Theodore quoted: “‘All men hate each other naturally’.... You believe that?”
“Of individuals, no—but of all communities, yes. Is there any form of the life collective that is capable of love for its fellow—for another community? Is there any church that will stand aside that another church may be advantaged? ... You and I are civilized, as man and man; but collectively we are part of a life whose only standard and motive is self-interest, its own advantage ... a beast-life, morally. If you understand that, you understand to-night ... Which demands from us sacrifices, makes none itself.... That’s as far as we have got in the mass.”
Through the half-open window came the hum and murmur of the crowd that waited for the hour.... Theodore stirred restlessly, conscious of the unseen turning of countless faces to the clock—and aware, through the murmur, of the frenzied little beating of his watch.... He hesitated to look at it—and when he drew it out and said “Five minutes more,” his voice sounded oddly in his ears.
“Five minutes,” said Markham.... He laughed suddenly and pushed the bottle across the table. “Do you know where we are now—you and I and all of us? On the crest of the centuries. They’ve carried us a long roll upwards and now here we are—on top! In five more minutes—three hundred little seconds—we shall hear the crest curl over.... Meanwhile, have a drink!”
He checked himself and held up a finger. “Your watch is slow!”
The hum and murmur of the crowd had ceased and through silence unbroken came the prayer of the Westminster chime.
Lord—through—this—hour
Be—Thou—our—guide,
So—by—Thy—power
No—foot—shall—slide.
There was no other sound for the twelve booming strokes of the hour: it was only as the last beat quivered into silence that there broke the moving thunder of a multitude.
“Over!” said Markham. “Hear it crash?... Well, here’s to the centuries—after all, they did the best they knew for us!”