“Herr Professor Birnier—I am compelled—to—to apologise for …”
The voice failed and the haughty blond head turned away, unable to complete to the uttermost the greatest sacrifice he had ever attempted.
“Please don’t,” said Birnier comprehendingly. “I understand.”
And Birnier did comprehend; realised the small hell in zu Pfeiffer as a higher developed tabu did a childish tabu unto death. Zu Pfeiffer, white man, had been just as guilty of an attempt to commit murder at the suppositious inversion of a thumb of an idol as Bakahenzie; [pg 318] not an idol of wood but the projection of his subconscious desires. Zu Pfeiffer would sacrifice a million at the bidding of his Kaiser, whose divinity was the same myth, the projection of himself. Yet what had been Birnier’s object in undertaking all these pains and penalties but to study mankind in the making, the black microcosm of a white macrocosm; to aid them to a better understanding of themselves and each other? Was not Bakahenzie an embryonic zu Pfeiffer? How could one aid a zu Pfeiffer if one did not know a Bakahenzie?
From the saturnalia in progress outside came another swirl of sound seeming to lap mockingly against the motionless figure of zu Pfeiffer silhouetted against a green sky; and above him towered the idol leaning sideways.
As if in drunken laughter of the follies of black and white humanity! mused Birnier. Yet what am I doing? At the crook of a dainty finger am I, too, to bow to an idol? Am I to pity zu Pfeiffer and these children?… Savages! Good God, what am I?