Carstairs said nothing, but watched him closely. He continued. "I say 'I never worry over other people's troubles,' you're the only man I've ever worried over; honestly, Carstairs, you appeal to me exceedingly. I've often wondered whether you're before your time or after, there is much of the noble savage about you. I regard you with awe, yet you can think. You use steam, and coal, and electricity; but you totally disregard men and women. This little globe is just a box of bricks, you and I are part of them—everything fits in—your duty here below is to look after yourself, to fill your little niche efficiently."
Carstairs spoke. "You do that best by considering carefully your true relation to other people, the real interdependence of every one, and the lubrication of sentiment. As an engineer you must know that only the truth endures."
"By Jove, that's true. 'Because right is right,' etc. As an individual you would shine, your conception of the truth is very exact and your ability to act up to it high. As an engineer you are good, but this is the age of states and municipalities, of diplomacy and intrigue; when men are judged for what they say, and not for what they do. Had my lot been cast among companies, instead of municipalities, I should have had to entirely alter my tactics. You can talk to a man and smile at him till you're blue in the face, but if he sees that your work don't pan out into tangible dividends, you've got to go. Municipalities don't put much on dividends, they like a smile and a loud voice. If socialism comes to pass, your type will die out and my type will flourish."
"God forbid."
"My dear chap, happiness is a condition of the mind, not of the body. I bet I've made more people happy by my smile, than you have by your work. Socialists are of two classes; wise men and fools (the same as everybody else), the wise men want to develop and get a good price for their natural powers of persuasion, the fools are sentimental idiots who propose to do away with misery by doing away with individuals and the slums. By Jove! the slums are about the happiest places, slum-bred people never commit suicide, when they feel depressed, they go in for murder, a much more healthy occupation. Garden mould is rotten-looking stuff, but the worms enjoy it, and if you take 'em out and put 'em in nice, clean cotton wool, they'll kick the bucket, and if there were no worms, there'd be no men, you know. At the present time, England is overflowing with people who want to put the worms in cotton wool. It's a question of religion; they have forsaken their Gods. I suppose there are some Christians in England, I haven't met them, probably they could be counted on the fingers of one hand. England is a pagan country still; your guv'nor is one of the best men I've met, but he's a pure pagan: I'd give a hundred to one in quids that if I slapped him on the right cheek, he'd instantly plug me in the left eye—and his entire congregation, also his Bishop, would back him up. The Englishman worships Thor, the magnified man with the sledge hammer; I'm a Dago, I worship those brainy old chaps who lived in the Pantheon; they took life easily in the sun, and hadn't a moral amongst them; I've rather a contempt for Thor, he never showed any great brain capacity, but simply slogged around blindly with a sledge hammer. It's a question of my Gods versus your Gods: A man's religion is what he bases the conduct of his life on, not which church he attends on Sunday: our stars were in opposition from the start, Carstairs, and the moving finger of Fate is approaching very rapidly to a blot—the elimination of a unit, with large-bore magazine rifles—and I don't think it'll be me."
He paused and gazed out over the sea.
Carstairs, watching him closely, was lost in admiration of the beauty of his profile silhouetted against the moon.
"The whole blooming world," he continued, "seems to be slopping over with a sticky sort of sentiment. The centre of gravity of civilization is becoming too high, it'll topple over presently. We have a new God 'The people' and the people are those thick-headed fools one passes in the street: the artizan, who makes things by the 'piece' (cheap and nasty), because he can't be trusted to act on the square otherwise; he gets more than his whack of the good things of life, and puts the surplus into beer and baccy; his 'missus' would like to keep a servant, and objects to bringing up kids. Then there's the middle class man, brought up with the ideas and the ambitions of an aristocrat, the physique of a clerk, and the ability of a navvy; his recreation is suicide: and the aristocrats, I suppose, are those wishy-washy young men, all nose and no chin, who loaf about the West End, and die of ennui. All due to excessive sentiment! Sentiment is far more dangerous than drink or drugs: in exceedingly small doses it adds to the flavour of life. Sentiment will get you out of a job quick enough, but it'll never damn well get you into one. You're my best friend, I honestly like you and admire you, but to-morrow I'm going to shoot you, afterwards I shall be intensely sorry—for precisely five minutes. Hullo! Who the devil is this?" His voice changed to a note of anger.
Carstairs turned and saw something crawling, creeping, sidling cautiously along the deck, like a dog that knows he's done wrong. It was the hunchback. He got close up to Darwen, crouching down, and held up his hands to view; the moon shone out suddenly from behind a cloud, and they saw in the sudden burst of light that the flesh was riven from hands and wrists as though they had been wrenched through something which was too small for them.
Darwen looked at him a moment, then, stooping down, struck him across the face with his flat hand. "You failed, and I have no use for failures; as an intelligence department Sam failed—and he's gone; as an executive, you have failed, too. What use are you?"