And he went off to sleep again.
“I’m in,” said the professor colloquially. “Shove around the pasteboards.”
She did
And she didn’t;
She would
And she wouldn’t;
O-o-o-o-o! BUT—!
began Frangipani, in a long, doglike wail, which drew curses from the four corners of the room. The cards were dealt and the bets began.
I stood watching them quite a while, amused at their patter. They were real, as I had learned to value men in the rough-and-tumble of life. It was Young America relaxing,—the need of a young nation to return to its play, to blow off steam after months of driven dynamic energy. Quite barbaric at bottom, perhaps,—but so understandable, to me! I liked the democracy of the group and its unconscious camaraderie. Yet, I could not help thinking how unrelated we were to one another,—to the present or to the future. And, as I stood there studying them—in my mind the menace that Magnus had voiced—I wondered how long we could stem the moving forces below that had the solidarity and the energy of determined rebels.
* * * * *
To-night, as I recall this first conversation with Magnus, my irritation dies away. I am not sure but what he has but stated in his own antagonistic way things which have been growing over me.
Democracy was a revolt against the leadership of a class when that leadership had grown weak and was no longer natural and genuine. But, if democracy cannot produce its own real leadership—if it can do no more than set in motion a mob—the leadership of that mob will be the leadership that surges out of the accidents of a stampede.
V
Four bells rang from the forecastle when I returned to my chair on the lower deck. Brinsmade and Magnus were breathing heavily. I enclosed my legs in the rug, burrowed my nose in my great coat, and sought sleep. Disturbed by the bustle of my arrival, the young woman at my side stirred in her sleep and moaned. The dream passed into a nightmare for, struggling suddenly against some grim horror of unreality, she burst into a cry: