We argued out the point; but it was one on which we could never agree,
for he remained saturated with the old ideas of private property and
individualism. He maintained that there are no Rights of Man at all,
except his Right to what he can get and what he can keep. He even went
so far as to say that the true use of the Great Discovery should have
been to cause the incompetent, the idle, the hereditarily corrupt, and
the vicious to die painlessly.
"As to those who were left," he said, "I would have taught them the
selfishness of staying too long. When they had taken time for work
and play and society and love, they should have been exhorted to go
away of their own accord, and to make room for their children. Then we
should have had always the due succession of father and son, mother and
daughter; always age and manhood and childhood; and always the world
advancing by the efforts of those who would have time to work for an
appreciable period. Instead, we have"--he waved his hand.
I was going to reply, when suddenly a voice light, clear, and sweet
broke upon our astonished ears. 'Twas the voice of a woman, and she was
singing. At first I hardly listened, because I knew that it could be
none other than the child Christine, whom, indeed, I had often heard
singing. It is natural, I believe, for children to sing. But the Arch
Physician listened, first with wonder, and then with every sign of
amazement. How could he be concerned by the voice of a child singing
silly verses? Then I heard the last lines of her song, which she sang,
I admit, with great vigor:
"Oh, Love is worth the whole broad earth;
Oh, Love is worth the whole broad earth;
Give that, you give us all!"
"Grout," cried the Arch Physician, in tones of the deepest agitation,
"I choke--I am stifled. Listen! They are words that I wrote--I
myself wrote--with my own hand--long, long ago in the Past. I wrote
them for a girl--the girl I told you of at dinner. I loved her. I
thought never again to feel as I felt then. Yet the memory of that
feeling has come back to me. Is it possible? Can some things never
die? Can we administer no drug that will destroy memory? For the earth
reeled beneath my feet again, and my senses reeled, and I would once
more--yes, I would once more have given all the world--yes, life--even
life--only to call that woman mine for a year--a month--a day--an hour!"
The Arch Physician made this astonishing confession in a broken
and agitated voice. Then he rushed away, and left me alone in the
summer-house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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