CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
REDWOOD'S TWO DAYS.
I.
So soon as Caterham knew the moment for grasping his nettle had come, hetook the law into his own hands and sent to arrest Cossar and Redwood.
Redwood was there for the taking. He had been undergoing an operation inthe side, and the doctors had kept all disturbing things from him untilhis convalescence was assured. Now they had released him. He was justout of bed, sitting in a fire-warmed room, with a heap of newspapersabout him, reading for the first time of the agitation that had sweptthe country into the hands of Caterham, and of the trouble that wasdarkening over the Princess and his son. It was in the morning of theday when young Caddles died, and when the policeman tried to stop youngRedwood on his way to the Princess. The latest newspapers Redwood haddid but vaguely prefigure these imminent things. He was re-reading thesefirst adumbrations of disaster with a sinking heart, reading the shadowof death more and more perceptibly into them, reading to occupy his minduntil further news should come. When the officers followed the servantinto his room, he looked up eagerly.
"I thought it was an early evening paper," he said. Then standing up,and with a swift change of manner: "What's this?"
After that Redwood had no news of anything for two days.
They had come with a vehicle to take him away, but when it becameevident that he was ill, it was decided to leave him for a day or sountil he could be safely removed, and his house was taken over by thepolice and converted into a temporary prison. It was the same house inwhich Giant Redwood had been born and in which Herakleophorbia had forthe first time been given to a human being, and Redwood had now been awidower and had lived alone in it eight years.
He had become an iron-grey man, with a little pointed grey beard andstill active brown eyes. He was slender and soft-voiced, as he had everbeen, but his features had now that indefinable quality that comes ofbrooding over mighty things. To the arresting officer his appearance wasin impressive contrast to the enormity of his offences. "Here's thisfeller," said the officer in command, to his next subordinate, "has donehis level best to bust up everything, and 'e's got a face like a quietcountry gentleman; and here's Judge Hangbrow keepin' everything nice andin order for every one, and 'e's got a 'ead like a 'og. Then theirmanners! One all consideration and the other snort and grunt. Which justshows you, doesn't it, that appearances aren't to be gone upon, whateverelse you do."
But his praise of Redwood's consideration was presently dashed. Theofficers found him troublesome at first until they had made it clearthat it was useless for him to ask questions or beg for papers. Theymade a sort of inspection of his study indeed, and cleared away eventhe papers he had. Redwood's voice was high and expostulatory. "Butdon't you see," he said over and over again, "it's my Son, my only Son,that is in this trouble. It isn't the Food I care for, but my Son."
"I wish indeed I could tell you, Sir," said the officer. "But our ordersare strict."
"Who gave the orders?" cried Redwood.
"Ah! _that_, Sir---" said the officer, and moved towards the door....
"'E's going up and down 'is room," said the second officer, when hissuperior came down. "That's all right. He'll walk it off a bit."
"I hope 'e will," said the chief officer. "The fact is I didn't see itin that light before, but this here Giant what's been going on with thePrincess, you know, is this man's son."
The two regarded one another and the third policeman for a space.
"Then it is a bit rough on him," the third policeman said.
It became evident that Redwood had still imperfectly apprehended thefact that an iron curtain had dropped between him and the outer world.They heard him go to the door, try the handle and rattle the lock, andthen the voice of the officer who was stationed on the landing tellinghim it was no good to do that. Then afterwards they heard him at thewindows and saw the men outside looking up. "It's no good that way,"said the second officer. Then Redwood began upon the bell. The seniorofficer went up and explained very patiently that it could do no good toring the bell like that, and if it was rung for nothing now it mighthave to be disregarded presently when he had need of something. "Anyreasonable attendance, Sir," the officer said. "But if you ring it justby way of protest we shall be obliged, Sir, to disconnect."
The last word the officer heard was Redwood's high-pitched, "But atleast you might tell me if my Son--"
II.
After that Redwood spent most of his time at the windows.
But the windows offered him little of the march of events outside. Itwas a quiet street at all times, and that day it was unusually quiet:scarcely a cab, scarcely a tradesman's cart passed all that morning. Nowand then men went by--without any distinctive air of events--now andthen a little group of children, a nursemaid and a woman going shopping,and so forth. They came on to the stage right or left, up or down thestreet, with an exasperating suggestion of indifference to any concernsmore spacious than their own; they would discover the police-guardedhouse with amazement and exit in the opposite direction, where the greattrusses of a giant hydrangea hung across the pavement, staring back orpointing. Now and then a man would come and ask one of the policemen aquestion and get a curt reply ...
Opposite the houses seemed dead. A housemaid appeared once at a bedroomwindow and stared for a space, and it occurred to Redwood to signal toher. For a time she watched his gestures as if with interest and made avague response to them, then looked over her shoulder suddenly andturned and went away. An old man hobbled out of Number 37 and came downthe steps and went off to the right, altogether without looking up. Forten minutes the only occupant of the road was a cat....
With such events that interminable momentous morning lengthened out.
About twelve there came a bawling of newsvendors from the adjacent road;but it passed. Contrary to their wont they left Redwood's street alone,and a suspicion dawned upon him that the police were guarding the end ofthe street. He tried to open the window, but this brought a policemaninto the room forthwith....
The clock of the parish church struck twelve, and after an abyss oftime--one.
They mocked him with lunch.
He ate a mouthful and tumbled the food about a little in order to get ittaken away, drank freely of whisky, and then took a chair and went backto the window. The minutes expanded into grey immensities, and for atime perhaps he slept....
He woke with a vague impression of remote concussions. He perceived arattling of the windows like the quiver of an earthquake, that lastedfor a minute or so and died away. Then after a silence it returned....Then it died away again. He fancied it might be merely the passage ofsome heavy vehicle along the main road. What else could it be?
After a time he began to doubt whether he had heard this sound.
He began to reason interminably with himself. Why, after all, was heseized? Caterham had been in office two days--just long enough--to grasphis Nettle! Grasp his Nettle! Grasp his Giant Nettle! The refrain oncestarted, sang through his mind, and would not be dismissed.
What, after all, could Caterham do? He was a religious man. He wasbound in a sort of way by that not to do violence without a cause.
Grasp his Nettle! Perhaps, for example, the Princess was to be seizedand sent abroad. There might be trouble with his son. In which case--!But why had he been arrested? Why was it necessary to keep him inignorance of a thing like that? The thing suggested--something moreextensive.
Perhaps, for example--they meant to lay all the giants by the heels!They were all to be arrested together. There had been hints of that inthe election speeches. And then?
No doubt they had got Cossar also?
Caterham was a religious man. Redwood clung to that. The back of hismind was a black curtain, and on that curtain there came and went aword--a word written in letters of fire. He struggled perpetuallyagainst that word. It was always as it were beginning to get written onthe curtain and never getting completed.
He faced it at last. "Massacre!" T
here was the word in its fullbrutality.
No! No! No! It was impossible! Caterham was a religious man, a civilisedman. And besides after all these years, after all these hopes!
Redwood sprang up; he paced the room. He spoke to himself; he shouted.
"_No!_"
Mankind was surely not so mad as that--surely not! It was impossible, itwas incredible, it could not be. What good would it do to kill the gianthuman when the gigantic in all the lower things had now inevitably come?They could not be so mad as that! "I must dismiss such an idea," hesaid aloud; "dismiss such an idea! Absolutely!"
He pulled up short. What was that?
Certainly the windows had rattled. He went to look out into the street.Opposite he saw the instant confirmation of his ears. At a bedroom atNumber 35 was a woman, towel in hand, and at the dining-room of Number37 a man was visible behind a great vase of hypertrophied maidenhairfern, both staring out and up, both disquieted and curious. He could seenow too, quite clearly, that the policeman on the pavement had heard italso. The thing was not his imagination.
He turned to the darkling room.
"Guns," he said.
He brooded.
"Guns?"
They brought him in strong tea, such as he was accustomed to have. Itwas evident his housekeeper had been taken into consultation. Afterdrinking it, he was too restless to sit any longer at the window, and hepaced the room. His mind became more capable of consecutive thought.
The room had been his study for four-and-twenty years. It had beenfurnished at his marriage, and all the essential equipment dated fromthen, the large complex writing-desk, the rotating chair, the easy chairat the fire, the rotating bookcase, the fixture of indexed pigeon-holesthat filled the further recess. The vivid Turkey carpet, the laterVictorian rugs and curtains had mellowed now to a rich dignity ofeffect, and copper and brass shone warm about the open fire. Electriclights had replaced the lamp of former days; that was the chiefalteration in the original equipment. But among these things hisconnection with the Food had left abundant traces. Along one wall, abovethe dado, ran a crowded array of black-framed photographs andphotogravures, showing his son and Cossar's sons and others of theBoom-children at various ages and amidst various surroundings. Evenyoung Caddles' vacant visage had its place in that collection. In thecorner stood a sheaf of the tassels of gigantic meadow grass fromCheasing Eyebright, and on the desk there lay three empty poppy heads asbig as hats. The curtain rods were grass stems. And the tremendous skullof the great hog of Oakham hung, a portentous ivory overmantel, with aChinese jar in either eye socket, snout down above the fire....
It was to the photographs that Redwood went, and in particular to thephotographs of his son.
They brought back countless memories of things that had passed out ofhis mind, of the early days of the Food, of Bensington's timid presence,of his cousin Jane, of Cossar and the night work at the ExperimentalFarm. These things came to him now very little and bright and distinct,like things seen through a telescope on a sunny day. And then there wasthe giant nursery, the giant childhood, the young giant's first effortsto speak, his first clear signs of affection.
Guns?
It flowed in on him, irresistibly, overwhelmingly, that outside there,outside this accursed silence and mystery, his son and Cossar's sons,and all these glorious first-fruits of a greater age were evennow--fighting. Fighting for life! Even now his son might be in somedismal quandary, cornered, wounded, overcome....
He swung away from the pictures and went up and down the roomgesticulating. "It cannot be," he cried, "it cannot be. It cannot endlike that!"
"What was that?"
He stopped, stricken rigid.
The trembling of the windows had begun again, and then had come athud--a vast concussion that shook the house. The concussion seemed tolast for an age. It must have been very near. For a moment it seemedthat something had struck the house above him--an enormous impact thatbroke into a tinkle of falling glass, and then a stillness that ended atlast with a minute clear sound of running feet in the street below.
Those feet released him from his rigor. He turned towards the window,and saw it starred and broken.
His heart beat high with a sense of crisis, of conclusive occurrence, ofrelease. And then again, his realisation of impotent confinement fellabout him like a curtain!
He could see nothing outside except that the small electric lampopposite was not lighted; he could hear nothing after the firstsuggestion of a wide alarm. He could add nothing to interpret or enlargethat mystery except that presently there came a reddish fluctuatingbrightness in the sky towards the south-east.
This light waxed and waned. When it waned he doubted if it had everwaxed. It had crept upon him very gradually with the darkling. It becamethe predominant fact in his long night of suspense. Sometimes it seemedto him it had the quiver one associates with dancing flames, at othershe fancied it was no more than the normal reflection of the eveninglights. It waxed and waned through the long hours, and only vanished atlast when it was submerged altogether under the rising tide of dawn. Didit mean--? What could it mean? Almost certainly it was some sort offire, near or remote, but he could not even tell whether it was smoke orcloud drift that streamed across the sky. But about one o'clock therebegan a flickering of searchlights athwart that ruddy tumult, aflickering that continued for the rest of the night. That too might meanmany things? What could it mean? What did it mean? Just this stainedunrestful sky he had and the suggestion of a huge explosion to occupyhis mind. There came no further sounds, no further running, nothing buta shouting that might have been only the distant efforts of drunkenmen...
He did not turn up his lights; he stood at his draughty broken window, adistressful, slight black outline to the officer who looked ever andagain into the room and exhorted him to rest.
All night Redwood remained at his window peering up at the ambiguousdrift of the sky, and only with the coming of the dawn did he obey hisfatigue and lie down upon the little bed they had prepared for himbetween his writing-desk and the sinking fire in the fireplace under thegreat hog's skull.
III.
For thirty-six long hours did Redwood remain imprisoned, closed in andshut off from the great drama of the Two Days, while the little peoplein the dawn of greatness fought against the Children of the Food. Thenabruptly the iron curtain rose again, and he found himself near the verycentre of the struggle. That curtain rose as unexpectedly as it fell. Inthe late afternoon he was called to the window by the clatter of a cab,that stopped without. A young man descended, and in another minute stoodbefore him in the room, a slightly built young man of thirty perhaps,clean shaven, well dressed, well mannered.
"Mr. Redwood, Sir," he began, "would you be willing to come to Mr.Caterham? He needs your presence very urgently."
"Needs my presence!" There leapt a question into Redwood's mind, thatfor a moment he could not put. He hesitated. Then in a voice that brokehe asked: "What has he done to my Son?" and stood breathless for thereply.
"Your Son, Sir? Your Son is doing well. So at least we gather."
"Doing well?"
"He was wounded, Sir, yesterday. Have you not heard?"
Redwood smote these pretences aside. His voice was no longer coloured byfear, but by anger. "You know I have not heard. You know I have heardnothing."
"Mr. Caterham feared, Sir--It was a time of upheaval. Every one--takenby surprise. He arrested you to save you, Sir, from any misadventure--"
"He arrested me to prevent my giving any warning or advice to my son. Goon. Tell me what has happened. Have you succeeded? Have you killed themall?"
The young man made a pace or so towards the window, and turned.
"No, Sir," he said concisely.
"What have you to tell me?"
"It's our proof, Sir, that this fighting was not planned by us. Theyfound us ... totally unprepared."
"You mean?"
"I mean, Sir, the Giants have--to a certain extent--held their own."
/> The world changed, for Redwood. For a moment something like hysteria hadthe muscles of his face and throat. Then he gave vent to a profound"Ah!" His heart bounded towards exultation. "The Giants have held theirown!"
"There has been terrible fighting--terrible destruction. It is all amost hideous misunderstanding ... In the north and midlands Giants havebeen killed ... Everywhere."
"They are fighting now?"
"No, Sir. There was a flag of truce."
"From them?"
"No, Sir. Mr. Caterham sent a flag of truce. The whole thing is ahideous misunderstanding. That is why he wants to talk to you, and puthis case before you. They insist, Sir, that you should intervene--"
Redwood interrupted. "Do you know what happened to my Son?" he asked.
"He was wounded."
"Tell me! Tell me!"
"He and the Princess came--before the--the movement to surround theCossar camp was complete--the Cossar pit at Chislehurst. They camesuddenly, Sir, crashing through a dense thicket of giant oats, nearRiver, upon a column of infantry ... Soldiers had been very nervous allday, and this produced a panic."
"They shot him?"
"No, Sir. They ran away. Some shot at him--wildly--against orders."
Redwood gave a note of denial. "It's true, Sir. Not on account of yourson, I won't pretend, but on account of the Princess."
"Yes. That's true."
"The two Giants ran shouting towards the encampment. The soldiers ranthis way and that, and then some began firing. They say they saw himstagger--"
"Ugh!"
"Yes, Sir. But we know he is not badly hurt."
"How?"
"He sent the message, Sir, that he was doing well!"
"To me?"
"Who else, Sir?"
Redwood stood for nearly a minute with his arms tightly folded, takingthis in. Then his indignation found a voice.
"Because you were fools in doing the thing, because you miscalculatedand blundered, you would like me to think you are not murderers inintention. And besides--The rest?"
The young man looked interrogation.
"The other Giants?"
The young man made no further pretence of misunderstanding. His tonefell. "Thirteen, Sir, are dead."
"And others wounded?"
"Yes, Sir."
"And Caterham," he gasped, "wants to meet me! Where are the others?"
"Some got to the encampment during the fighting, Sir ... They seem tohave known--"
"Well, of course they did. If it hadn't been for Cossar--Cossar isthere?"
"Yes, Sir. And all the surviving Giants are there--the ones who didn'tget to the camp in the fighting have gone, or are going now under theflag of trace."
"That means," said Redwood, "that you are beaten."
"We are not beaten. No, Sir. You cannot say we are beaten. But your sonshave broken the rules of war. Once last night, and now again. After ourattack had been withdrawn. This afternoon they began to bombardLondon--"
"That's legitimate!"
"They have been firing shells filled with--poison."
"Poison?"
"Yes. Poison. The Food--"
"Herakleophorbia?"
"Yes, Sir. Mr. Caterham, Sir--"
"You are beaten! Of course that beats you. It's Cossar! What can youhope to do now? What good is it to do anything now? You will breathe itin the dust of every street. What is there to fight for more? Rules ofwar, indeed! And now Caterham wants to humbug me to help him bargain.Good heavens, man! Why should I come to your exploded windbag? He hasplayed his game ... murdered and muddled. Why should I?"
The young man stood with an air of vigilant respect.
"It is a fact, Sir," he interrupted, "that the Giants insist that theyshall see you. They will have no ambassador but you. Unless you come tothem, I am afraid, Sir, there will be more bloodshed."
"On _your_ side, perhaps."
"No, Sir--on both sides. The world is resolved the thing must end."
Redwood looked about the study. His eyes rested for a moment on thephotograph of his boy. He turned and met the expectation of the youngman. "Yes," he said at last, "I will come."
IV.
His encounter with Caterham was entirely different from hisanticipation. He had seen the man only twice in his life, once at dinnerand once in the lobby of the House, and his imagination had been activenot with the man but with the creation of the newspapers andcaricaturists, the legendary Caterham, Jack the Giant-killer, Perseus,and all the rest of it. The element of a human personality came in todisorder all that.
Here was not the face of the caricatures and portraits, but the face ofa worn and sleepless man, lined and drawn, yellow in the whites of theeyes, a little weakened about the mouth. Here, indeed, were thered-brown eyes, the black hair, the distinctive aquiline profile of thegreat demagogue, but here was also something else that smote anypremeditated scorn and rhetoric aside. This man was suffering; he wassuffering acutely; he was under enormous stress. From the beginning hehad an air of impersonating himself. Presently, with a single gesture,the slightest movement, he revealed to Redwood that he was keepinghimself up with drugs. He moved a thumb to his waistcoat pocket, andthen, after a few sentences more, threw concealment aside, and slippedthe little tabloid to his lips.
Moreover, in spite of the stresses upon him, in spite of the fact thathe was in the wrong, and Redwood's junior by a dozen years, that strangequality in him, the something--personal magnetism one may call it forwant of a better name--that had won his way for him to this eminence ofdisaster was with him still. On that also Redwood had failed to reckon.From the first, so far as the course and conduct of their speech went,Caterham prevailed over Redwood. All the quality of the first phase oftheir meeting was determined by him, all the tone and procedure werehis. That happened as if it was a matter of course. All Redwood'sexpectations vanished at his presence. He shook hands before Redwoodremembered that he meant to parry that familiarity; he pitched the noteof their conference from the outset, sure and clear, as a search forexpedients under a common catastrophe.
If he made any mistake it was when ever and again his fatigue got thebetter of his immediate attention, and the habit of the public meetingcarried him away. Then he drew himself up--through all their interviewboth men stood--and looked away from Redwood, and began to fence andjustify. Once even he said "Gentlemen!"
Quietly, expandingly, he began to talk....
There were moments when Redwood ceased even to feel himself aninterlocutor, when he became the mere auditor of a monologue. He becamethe privileged spectator of an extraordinary phenomenon. He perceivedsomething almost like a specific difference between himself and thisbeing whose beautiful voice enveloped him, who was talking, talking.This mind before him was so powerful and so limited. From its drivingenergy, its personal weight, its invincible oblivion to certain things,there sprang up in Redwood's mind the most grotesque and strange ofimages. Instead of an antagonist who was a fellow-creature, a man onecould hold morally responsible, and to whom one could addressreasonable appeals, he saw Caterham as something, something like amonstrous rhinoceros, as it were, a civilised rhinoceros begotten of thejungle of democratic affairs, a monster of irresistible onset andinvincible resistance. In all the crashing conflicts of that tangle hewas supreme. And beyond? This man was a being supremely adapted to makehis way through multitudes of men. For him there was no fault soimportant as self-contradiction, no science so significant as thereconciliation of "interests." Economic realities, topographicalnecessities, the barely touched mines of scientific expedients, existedfor him no more than railways or rifled guns or geographical literatureexist for his animal prototype. What did exist were gatherings, andcaucuses, and votes--above all, votes. He was votes incarnate--millionsof votes.
And now in the great crisis, with the Giants broken but not beaten, thisvote-monster talked.
It was so evident that even now he had everything to learn. He did notknow there were physical laws and economic laws, quantit
ies andreactions that all humanity voting _nemine contradicente_ cannot voteaway, and that are disobeyed only at the price of destruction. He didnot know there are moral laws that cannot be bent by any force ofglamour, or are bent only to fly back with vindictive violence. In theface of shrapnel or the Judgment Day, it was evident to Redwood thatthis man would have sheltered behind some curiously dodged vote of theHouse of Commons.
What most concerned his mind now was not the powers that held thefastness away there to the south, not defeat and death, but the effectof these things upon his Majority, the cardinal reality in his life. Hehad to defeat the Giants or go under. He was by no means absolutelydespairful. In this hour of his utmost failure, with blood and disasterupon his hands, and the rich promise of still more horrible disaster,with the gigantic destinies of the world towering and toppling over him,he was capable of a belief that by sheer exertion of his voice, byexplaining and qualifying and restating, he might yet reconstitute hispower. He was puzzled and distressed no doubt, fatigued and suffering,but if only he could keep up, if only he could keep talking--
As he talked he seemed to Redwood to advance and recede, to dilate andcontract. Redwood's share of the talk was of the most subsidiary sort,wedges as it were suddenly thrust in. "That's all nonsense." "No." "It'sno use suggesting that." "Then why did you begin?"
It is doubtful if Caterham really heard him at all. Round suchinterpolations Caterham's speech flowed indeed like some swift streamabout a rock. There this incredible man stood, on his officialhearthrug, talking, talking with enormous power and skill, talking asthough a pause in his talk, his explanations, his presentation ofstandpoints and lights, of considerations and expedients, would permitsome antagonistic influence to leap into being--into vocal being, theonly being he could comprehend. There he stood amidst the slightly fadedsplendours of that official room in which one man after another hadsuccumbed to the belief that a certain power of intervention was thecreative control of an empire....
The more he talked the more certain Redwood's sense of stupendousfutility grew. Did this man realise that while he stood and talkedthere, the whole great world was moving, that the invincible tide ofgrowth flowed and flowed, that there were any hours but parliamentaryhours, or any weapons in the hands of the Avengers of Blood? Outside,darkling the whole room, a single leaf of giant Virginian creeper tappedunheeded on the pane.
Redwood became anxious to end this amazing monologue, to escape tosanity and judgment, to that beleaguered camp, the fastness of thefuture, where, at the very nucleus of greatness, the Sons were gatheredtogether. For that this talking was endured. He had a curious impressionthat unless this monologue ended he would presently find himself carriedaway by it, that he must fight against Caterham's voice as one fightsagainst a drug. Facts had altered and were altering beneath that spell.
What was the man saying?
Since Redwood had to report it to the Children of the Food, in a sort ofway he perceived it did matter. He would have to listen and guard hissense of realities as well as he could.
Much about bloodguiltiness. That was eloquence. That didn't matter.Next?
He was suggesting a convention!
He was suggesting that the surviving Children of the Food shouldcapitulate and go apart and form a community of their own. There wereprecedents, he said, for this. "We would assign them territory--"
"Where?" interjected Redwood, stooping to argue.
Caterham snatched at that concession. He turned his face to Redwood's,and his voice fell to a persuasive reasonableness. That could bedetermined. That, he contended, was a quite subsidiary question. Then hewent on to stipulate: "And except for them and where they are we musthave absolute control, the Food and all the Fruits of the Food must bestamped out--"
Redwood found himself bargaining: "The Princess?"
"She stands apart."
"No," said Redwood, struggling to get back to the old footing. "That'sabsurd."
"That afterwards. At any rate we are agreed that the making of the Foodmust stop--"
"I have agreed to nothing. I have said nothing--"
"But on one planet, to have two races of men, one great, one small!Consider what has happened! Consider that is but a little foretaste ofwhat might presently happen if this Food has its way! Consider all youhave already brought upon this world! If there is to be a race ofGiants, increasing and multiplying--"
"It is not for me to argue," said Redwood. "I must go to our sons. Iwant to go to my son. That is why I have come to you. Tell me exactlywhat you offer."
Caterham made a speech upon his terms.
The Children of the Food were to be given a great reservation--in NorthAmerica perhaps or Africa--in which they might live out their lives intheir own fashion.
"But it's nonsense," said Redwood. "There are other Giants now abroad.All over Europe--here and there!"
"There could be an international convention. It's _not_ impossible.Something of the sort indeed has already been spoken of ... But in thisreservation they can live out their own lives in their own way. They maydo what they like; they may make what they like. We shall be glad ifthey will make us things. They may be happy. Think!"
"Provided there are no more Children."
"Precisely. The Children are for us. And so, Sir, we shall save theworld, we shall save it absolutely from the fruits of your terriblediscovery. It is not too late for us. Only we are eager to temperexpediency with mercy. Even now we are burning and searing the placestheir shells hit yesterday. We can get it under. Trust me we shall getit under. But in that way, without cruelty, without injustice--"
"And suppose the Children do not agree?"
For the first time Caterham looked Redwood fully in the face.
"They must!"
"I don't think they will."
"Why should they not agree?" he asked, in richly toned amazement.
"Suppose they don't?"
"What can it be but war? We cannot have the thing go on. We cannot. Sir.Have you scientific men _no_ imagination? Have you no mercy? We cannothave our world trampled under a growing herd of such monsters andmonstrous growths as your Food has made. We cannot and we cannot! I askyou, Sir, what can it be but war? And remember--this that has happenedis only a beginning! _This_ was a skirmish. A mere affair of police.Believe me, a mere affair of police. Do not be cheated by perspective,by the immediate bigness of these newer things. Behind us is thenation--is humanity. Behind the thousands who have died there aremillions. Were it not for the fear of bloodshed, Sir, behind our firstattacks there would be forming other attacks, even now. Whether we cankill this Food or not, most assuredly we can kill your sons! You reckontoo much on the things of yesterday, on the happenings of a mere scoreof years, on one battle. You have no sense of the slow course ofhistory. I offer this convention for the sake of lives, not because itcan change the inevitable end. If you think that your poor two dozen ofGiants can resist all the forces of our people and of all the alienpeoples who will come to our aid; if you think you can change Humanityat a blow, in a single generation, and alter the nature and stature ofMan--"
He flung out an arm. "Go to them now, Sir. I see them, for all the evilthey have done, crouching among their wounded--"
He stopped, as though he had glanced at Redwood's son by chance.
There came a pause.
"Go to them," he said.
"That is what I want to do."
"Then go now...."
He turned and pressed the button of a bell; without, in immediateresponse, came a sound of opening doors and hastening feet.
The talk was at an end. The display was over. Abruptly Caterham seemedto contract, to shrivel up into a yellow-faced, fagged-out,middle-sized, middle-aged man. He stepped forward, as if he werestepping out of a picture, and with a complete assumption of thatfriendliness that lies behind all the public conflicts of our race, heheld out his hand to Redwood.
As if it were a matter of course, Redwood shook hands with him for thesecond time.
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