Morning was bewildered; and had somewhat braced himself in scepticism, as if the other were reading a fortune out of a cup.
“You’re one of them, and you’ve got a guardian—greater than ten of these militia press-agents. You don’t know it yet, but your stuff shows it; your life shows it. You try to do what you want—and you’re forced to do better. You’ll be kept steerage, as you call it,—kept down among men—until you see that it’s the place for a white man to be, and that all these other things—dinner-coats and expense accounts—are but tricks to cover a weakness. You’ll be held down among men until you love them, and would be sick away from service with them. You won’t be able to rest unless you’re helping. You’ll choke when you say ‘Brother.’ You’ll answer their misery and cry from your sleep, ‘I’m coming.’ You hear them with your soul now, but the brain won’t listen yet. You’ll go it blind for the under-dog—and find out afterwards that you were immortally right.”
Morning’s breast was burning. It was more the fiery flood of kindness than the words. He had been roughed so thoroughly that he couldn’t take words; he needed a sign.
“The time will come when you’ll hear your soul saying, ‘Get down among men, John, and help.’ You’ll jump. A storm of hell will follow you if you don’t. They’ll throw you overboard and even the whale won’t stomach you if you don’t. ‘Get down among men, John’; that’s your orders to Nineveh.”
The Californian changed the subject abruptly:
“They were good enough to give me a place with the first column, but I can’t see it quite. There’s going to be too much supervision. These Japanese are rivet-headed. I like the other end. New Chwang is still open. Lowenkampf is in command there. I knew him years ago in Vienna. Good man for a soldier—old Lowenkampf. He’ll take us in. Let’s go over——”
“I won’t be exactly ‘healed’ for a long stay. My money is coming here——”
“Let it pile up. I’ll stake you for the Russian picnic.”
Morning wanted it so intensely that he feared Duke Fallows might die before they got to Lowenkampf and New Chwang.... He was terrorized by this thought: “Fallows has somehow failed to understand about me not getting a column, and not being asked into the picture. When he finds out, he’ll change his mind....”
He wanted to speak, gathered strength with violent effort, but Fallows just now was restlessly eager to go below.