“The Future of the Race” watched him for a minute without moving, and suddenly he laughed. That laugh was a little hard noise like the clapping of two boards—there was not a single drop of blood in it, nor the faintest sound of music; so might a marionette have laughed—a figure made of wood and wire!
And in that laugh I seemed to hear innumerable laughter, the laughter in a million homes of the myriad unfed.
So laughed the Future of the richest and the freest and the proudest race that had ever lived on earth, that February afternoon, with the little green flames lighted in the grass, under a sky that knew not wind or sun—so he laughed at the pigeon that was calling for the Spring.
JUSTICE
XVIII
Justice
Thinking of him as he had looked, sitting there in his worn clothes, a cloth cap crumpled in his hand, leaning a little forward, and staring at the wall with those eyes of his that looked like fire behind steel bars; remembering his words: “She’s dead to me—I’ll never think of her again where I’m going!” I wrote this letter:
“Dear ——,
“From something you said yesterday, I feel that I ought to tell you that when you get to Canada you will not be free to marry again.
“I was present, as you know, when you told your story in the Police Court—a story very often told there. I know that you were not to blame, and that all you said was true. Owing to no fault of yours, your wife has left you for a life of vice. Through this misfortune you have lost your home, your children, and your work; and you are going to Canada as a last resource. You and she will pass the rest of your lives in different hemispheres. You are still a young man, strong, accustomed to married life; you are going where married men are wanted, to a country of great spaces and great loneliness, where your homestead may be miles from any other.