Human evolution -- Fiction; Polygamy -- Fiction; Science fiction
Writhing inwardly, twisting his hands, Truggles stared unseeing at
the room about him while he relived the agony of the past. He held
Margaret--how long, how many years had it been, since he had let
himself even think that name?--he held her in his arms and felt her
cool lips against his. He talked with her, he felt the closeness of
something infinitely good and right for him.
He lived again the angry, shouting interview when she stood with the
arm of the Brazilian, De Castro, around her shoulders and said: "I'm
sorry, Masefield. I like you and for a while I thought it was something
more. But I've found love with a man who's so far superior to either
of us that I still can't believe he's mine."
"That foreigner?" he shouted again, and tears sprang to his eyes as
they had then. "You turn me down for him? You think I'm inferior to
him?"
And again he lived through the shame of falling on his knees before
her, turning up his weeping face to her, imploring her to no avail. He
saw on her face and the Brazilian's face the pity, the scorn, before
they walked out together, leaving him to sob alone.
Truggles beat his hands helplessly on the arm of the chair. Of all the
hapless people he had tracked down and tossed to the ravening, outraged
contempt of the public, he had wanted most of all to conquer Forsythe.
He had wanted to see Forsythe cower and whimper, beg before they hung
him.
And Forsythe had won. What mattered it that he was leaving Marston
Hill? Truggles had thought that would be a victory, to make Forsythe
run away. But Forsythe was not going alone and hunted. He was taking
with him the woman he loved, who reminded Truggles of the clean beauty
of Margaret; the one woman who understood him as none of those others
could.
And the boy. Was it a defeat to a man to know that his son was greater
than he? Truggles knew it was not. A vision rose before him of a race
of men and women who walked among the clouds, who saw only beauty in
the world and looked down with sympathetic pity upon the poor creeping
humans below. The new race, greater than Truggles could even imagine
himself.
* * * * *
Truggles stirred, and awoke to his surroundings, bitterly. He would
have to leave Marston Hill himself. The people would not thank him for
arousing them against Forsythe. From them, he could expect only anger,
contempt, perhaps even....
There was a sudden rattling behind him. Truggles jumped to his feet,
alarmed, fearful, his heart beating fast. His apprehensive eyes
searched the room.
A paper moved in a corner. It was only a mouse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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