“Breaking my heart,” cried Boronowski passionately. “I come for help, and find only fair words. I ask for money for guns and munitions for the enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles, and they reply, ‘Oh, we can’t do that. Our Labour Party wouldn’t allow us to do that. But we’ll tell those naughty Bolshevists to leave you alone.’ So I return, my mission a failure. Oh, I play a very humble part. I do not wish to magnify myself. Those with me have failed. We are cast on our own resources. We are fighting for our new national life. And as the blood in our hearts and the thought in our brains cry ‘Poland, Poland,’ so shall the words be ever loud in our mouths. And look. If we did not cry out, who would listen to us? And we are crying our ‘Poland, Poland,’ in all the Entente and neutral countries—I, Boronowski, the most unimportant of all. Perhaps we are voices crying in the wilderness. But one Voice, once on a time, was heard—and revolutionized the world.”
The man’s voice, crying in the wilderness of the sordid Somers Town street, awoke at any rate a responsive chord in the sensitive creature by his side.
“Of course, I understand,” said he. “Forgive my idle speech. But I am in great personal trouble, and I spoke with the edge of my lips.”
Boronowski flashed a glance at him.
“Do you know the remedy? The remedy for silly unhappinesses that affect you here and here—” he swung a hand, touching forehead and heart “—the little things——”
“I’m damned if they’re little,” said Triona.
“Yes, my friend,” exclaimed the Pole, halting suddenly in front of a wilting greengrocer’s shop, and holding him by the lapel of his coat. “Procure for yourself a sense of proportion. In the myriad of animated beings, what is the individual but an insignificant atom? What are your sufferings in the balance of the world’s sufferings? Yes. Yes. Of course you feel them—the toothache, the heartache, the agony of soul. But I claim that the individual has a remedy.”
“What is that?” asked Triona.
“He must cast off the individual, merge his pain in the common sorrow of humanity. He must strip himself free of self, and identify himself with a great cause.”
A rusty virago, carrying a straw marketing bag, pushed him rudely aside, for he was blocking the entrance to the shop.