But sunset’s beauty made no appeal to the heart of Francis Gordon. It felt cold, the heart within him, heavy with the sorrows of the world. Sunsettings and sunrisings—beauties of inanimate senseless things—God’s mockeries at humanity! God? . . . The man laughed.
As if there were a God! He—whoever He might be—was no god, but a devil, a torturer. Yet men tricked themselves into this idea of godhead. Every cruelty in the world had been perpetrated in the name of some deity. The very Beasts in Gray wore His Name for device. And he, Francis Gordon, in the pride of his brain, had submitted to such trickery. For the sake of this fool-god, he had renounced the one woman.
In return for that renunciation, the fool-god had promised him the Power of Words. He was to write, to spend his life at this stupid desk. . . .
Meanwhile, men fought. . . .
He began to think of his own tiny share in that great fighting. Even there, he had not played a man’s part. Better to be one of those tortured men he had seen in the prison-camps of the Beast, than—a spy. Yes, a spy—it came down to that in the end. If only he had killed one Beast, killed it with his own hands, squeezed the life-blood from its foul throat. . . .
Now, thought of the Beast obsessed him. The horrors he had seen in the Land of the Beast danced uncleanly sarabands in his brain. And God, the gentle Jesus black-coated priests still whined about on Sundays, God permitted these horrors. . . . Better then, the old gods, Thor and Odin, whose priests dipped hands in blood and slew. . . .
A vast wave of hatred surged over the man’s soul. There could be no happiness on earth until the Beast was exterminated; male and cub and female, the Beast must perish. There must be one great killing! With fire and sword, men must traverse the Country of the Beast: not only the Beast, but all his works—his handiwork and his mind-work, the corrupting thought and the corrupting accomplishment—all these must be wiped out, the very memory of them be obliterated. . . . And after that, there should be no more gods, neither Jesus nor Jehovah, neither Thor nor Odin—only Men, men and women, walking a new clean earth, unafraid of any Beast or any god. . . .
In his hatred, it seemed to Francis Gordon as though Power had come back to him. In this great killing, words too might play their part. Not the words of any fool-god, but the words of a cripple—a cripple who knew that there was neither god nor devil, but only Man, man and the Beast. . . .
And suddenly a Voice spoke to Francis Gordon, a stern clear Voice from the heart of the sunset: “Thou Fool,” cried the Voice. “Thou blind Fool! If the Beast perish, man also perishes. For this is God’s Purpose.”
But the mind of the man answered the Voice out of the sunset: “There is no God. I, a cripple, am greater than any god. In mine own mind, have I renounced Thee. Thou art the Liar of the World. There is no god save Man.”