"It's a bad plan, my good fellow, to talk as you've been doing," the officer said, slowly walking up and down, his hand on his sword-belt, and putting a degree more of stiffness into his rigidly erect carriage. "Dangerous theories.... It's incomprehensible to me that a man of your station in life should plot against our government, against our country—as if conditions here were not the best to be found anywhere! As if anyone who wanted to couldn't become rich in this country! You people get a few ideas out of anarchist literature, and lose your heads over them. All that stuff comes from your old and rotting Europe. It has no possible application in a country like this, where every man has a chance, where no one need go hungry, where no one can complain of injustice...."
Monsalvat, who was staring hard at the orator, started, then looked his amazement. Surely the man was joking! But no, he was perfectly serious, and perfectly convinced. Monsalvat then remembered having heard this identical speech a hundred, a thousand times before. Worse than that, he remembered having written those very words himself! It was not likely that he would be convinced by all this, nor attempt an answer. Even the Chief of Police was aware of that, and ended the interview. Before dismissing Monsalvat, however, he made him read a social law which he was formulating. Monsalvat glanced through it and took himself off, honoring the officer with the slightest of bows.
Although the incident was trifling, it depressed Monsalvat. It made clear to him what he had become in this last year he had lived through. Standing in that room at Police Headquarters, observing the chief's attitude towards him, interpreting the mere fact of his being thus summoned, he saw clearly both what he had been, and what he had ceased being. Before, he had had position, money, a flattering reputation, friends. Now he had nothing; he was but a poor devil, at the mercy of the police. And all for what? What had he accomplished in a year? He had lifted three or four women out of the gutter, taught a few men to read—but what did that signify in the infinite sea of human misery and ignorance? Monsalvat was strong in his convictions and in his moral health, strong with love of the good, strong in gentleness and pity; but now doubt was for the moment stronger than he, and he knew the all-permeating bitterness of temptation. In a moment of moral weakness he thought of giving up this hopeless task, of returning to his own world, and to his former station in it. A sadness, as vast as the universe, chilled his heart, and soul, and mind. He was wandering alone and forgotten in a ghastly wilderness; and this loneliness in the death-like, icy solitude of the world was too frightful to endure. He had sought out this life he was leading for the good of others; he had given what he had to others; he had devoted himself to his task, with joy and faith, with physical and moral courage; but now he broke down, for his whole life seemed a failure; he wept for that Monsalvat of whom he had hoped so much, not knowing that the strongest falter on their way and that such weaknesses are but a respite, a halt, giving renewed strength to go on with the day's march!
CHAPTER XIX
That same afternoon, while Monsalvat was wrestling with his doubts, Nacha was on the way to Belgrano to see Julieta.
Tormented by her anxieties, the slow progress of the street-car racked her nerves. She would never get there! And now it was stopping again! She looked angrily at the woman who dawdled cumbersomely in getting on or off. Didn't they care how long they took? Why were they so fat? Two or three men near her attempted to flirt, but Nacha's contemptuous eyes discouraged them. At the end of the first half hour she bought a newspaper, but when she tried to read it, she found that she did not understand a word. She made repeated efforts to fix her attention on the police news. At the end of two or three phrases, a line perhaps, her mind jumped to other things. Then she realized that she was not reading and began again, with the same result. At last she tossed the newspaper away.
The car had now reached streets where there was little traffic, and went more rapidly. At the end of an hour, it had arrived at Belgrano. Nacha got out and walked along silent avenues that were well shaded by fine trees. In her nervous haste she almost ran past pretty villas, with their flower-filled gardens, that spoke of peace and comfort. Over some of the streets the trees formed an arch and the air was sweet with perfume. Only the footsteps of an occasional passer-by broke the silence of this suburb, apparently the home of calm and contentment. But Nacha could not yield to this atmosphere. Grief and terror drove her relentlessly on.
Julieta was working in Belgrano in a shop on Cabildo Street. Like Nacha, she earned very little; but her expenses were slight, for she was living with friends who accepted only a small sum in payment for her room and board. Before concluding arrangements with the husband and wife, people from her home town who had known her family, she told them the kind of life she had led up to that time. The wife hesitated a moment; but the husband, who was a militant Socialist, declared in a loud voice, with sweeping gestures and oratorical phrases, that there were no prejudices in his home, that he considered it a duty to contribute to the moral regeneration of anyone who needed it!
While Nacha waited for Julieta to come home, the Socialist and his wife chatted with her while their brood of children flocked around with staring eyes. The man's countless questions distracted her a little from her worries. But it required a great effort to attend to what he was saying. Every once in a while her expression grew blank, and her eyes opened wide as though she were in a paroxysm? of fear.