“Then the doubt of self would come to him—the fear that he was wrong or insane. 'Berthe, it can't be that the crowds are wrong; that I am right—against all the crowds. It must be that I am insane.' He would suffer like one damned from that. Worse than all was the fear of his own Ego. He was more afraid of that than any other lion in the way. 'It isn't the cause, it's me—that wants to be heard. It's the accursed me that I am striving for—in agony to relieve. I merely use the Cause. All the time it is myself that I wish to make heard.' That would make him suicidal.
“I am only telling you these moods. He was a child, a playmate, the loveliest companion a girl ever had—seeing the beauty and analogy in all nature and outdoors—full of jest and delights. I just wanted to show you the other side——”
It was all of breathless interest.
“There came a day,” she added, as Peter watched her raptly, “when he did make himself heard, even as he dreamed....”
Peter thought of his reading the story—a boy at school, and was struck with the memory of its appeal to him in the light of the present.
“...The sustaining of his friends was taken from us at the last. They dared not come, of course. 'Berthe, little heart, it's all right,' he would say. 'You will have to go on alone, but the way will be shown you. You have the strength. You have been heaven and earth to me. I must go and leave you, but that's only a temporary matter. It will be hard—but it has been hard with me.... This is all right. It's good for what ails the world—but you are only a little girl! My God, I dare not think of it....'
“I remember the dawn and the cold rain and the stone buildings—and then to find the world's relation to his daughter. That had been spared before. He kept it from me, and there was such a sustaining from his friends and power. Those most concerned are slowest to learn exactly what the world thinks of them.... It did not come until afterward, and then it almost killed me. I was clinging to a sorrow almost sacred, and I found that the world saw only the shame and madness of my plight. I suddenly saw it in the eyes of the people—how they drew apart from me.... He had only wanted to make them better. He said that all evil was the result of men hating one another. He did not hate men, but predatory institutions, false fatherlands, and all slave-drivers. They hanged him for that hatred, but what was more shocking was to find that the people whom he loved and served were horrified at his daughter....”
It did not detract from Peter's ardor that his intellect was away for an instant in a rather skeptical study of Metz Wyndham's life. To Peter had come glimpses of the magnificent selfishness of this prophet of the people. Did all great men have such an ego? If their lives were closely examined would they all reveal, in their intimate and familiar relations, the most subtle and insidious forms of self-service? In fact, was not the mighty ego the source of their record-making in the world? ... Peter banished this rush of conjectures. Whatever the father, the whole art of the life of Metz Wyndham's daughter was the loss of the love of self.
“I feel before you,” he said, “as I once felt in the vineyards beneath Vesuvius.”
She smiled at him. “There are several ways to take that.”