He was thinking of America, that she was “bred right”; that some change might be upon her now, something akin to his own transformation. Was there a bond thicker than blood between America and the New Russia? Word had reached the field that Russia had put away her greatest devil in a day. A nation is to be reckoned with that makes her changes thus at a sweep. Had Russia not freed fifty million slaves at one stroke of the pen—that great emancipation of Alexander? And Russia now held the Earth's mighty energy of fecundity—an ultimate significance here; for this guest invariably comes before a people has reached its meridian, and not afterward.... His companions of the death cell were touching the truth; this dark suffering army was the Europe of the future—the Russian voice that would challenge America to answer brother to brother.
The folk songs were singing in his soul, and the lines of Abel's We Are Free, the friendships of Spenski and Samarc, of these in the room, and the love of Berthe Wyndham.
All had prevailed. The culmination was now. He thought of the actuality of to-morrow, but without terror, or blankness. It would seem that he were leaving all this; that America, Russia, friendship, the love of woman, were no longer his portion; yet he seemed closer than ever to them. It was as Fallows said, “These things are immortal.” Perhaps this very room, and this, the greatest of his days in the world, would be pictured by some one to come, as clearly and as magically as he saw it all now; by some young workman of the reconstruction, after the red horse of war was driven back forever.
He was sustained. The sense came clearly that nothing men might do could cause him harm. He felt even that his mother would some time know how well he had come to understand her at the last. Everything was answered by the mystic future. It was all there; all would be told.
“Why, to-morrow,” he exclaimed aloud suddenly, “why, to-morrow, we will laugh at today.”
They were about him. They seemed to understand all that had brought his words, as if they had followed his thoughts to the same apostrophe. ...He was laughing in the midst of them.
“I think it must have been the singing and all,” he said breathlessly. “It got away from me. It has all been too fine to-day. I don't see—I really don't—how I managed to earn it all.”
A step upon the stair, slow and heavy, a step that Peter Mowbray knew. The companion sentry had remained below at the street door, and now called to his fellow of the guard to open. ...Peter was abashed before his friend like a child that had disobeyed, and come to believe that he knew better than the father. It was Big Belt at midnight.
“I brought your shaving-tackle,” he said. “Hello, Peter.”
The face in the thin ray looked like polished metal.