“Yes?”
“It’s that place over there; it has got into my blood. I declare to God that I am the last man in the world to sentimentalize, but that horror is killing me, and I must act—I must do something—even if I have to go into the middle of the Place de la Concorde and shout it aloud. I shall shout it aloud. I’m not made so that I can stand seeing a thing like that in silence.”
Berselius sat with his eyes fixed on the carpet; he seemed abstracted and scarcely listening. He knew perfectly well that Adams was acquainted with the affair at the Silent Pools, but the subject had never been mentioned between them, nor was it now.
“That missionary I met on the return home at Leopoldsville,” went on Adams, “he was a Baptist, a man, not a religion-machine. He gave me details from years of experience that turned my heart in me. With my own eyes I saw enough——”
Berselius held up his hand.
“Let us not speak of what we know,” said he. “The thing is there—has been there for years—can you destroy the past?”
“No; but one can improve the future.” Adams got up and paced the floor. “Now, now as I am talking to you, that villainy is going on; it is like knowing that a murder is slowly being committed in the next house and that one has no power to interfere. When I look at the streets full of people amusing themselves; when I see the cafés crammed, and the rich driving in their carriages; the churches filled with worshippers worshipping a God who serenely sits in heaven without stretching a hand to help His poor, benighted creatures—when I see all this and contrast it with what I have seen, I could worship that!”
He stopped, and pointed to the great gorilla shot years ago in German West Africa by Berselius. “That was a being at least sincere. Whatever brutalities he committed in his life, he did not talk sentiment and religion and humanitarianism as he pulled his victims to pieces, and he did not pull his victims to pieces for the sake of gold. He was an honest devil, a far higher thing than a dishonest man.”
Again Berselius held up his hand.
“What would you do?”