_No guilt!_ he asked himself.
How could he be sure?
Had Madison been a villain or a benefactor?
There was no way, he knew, that anyone could be sure.
Not yet, at least. Not so shortly after. And now perhaps there’d never be any way to know. For the human race had been set so firmly in the track that had been engineered for it, it might never deviate. For the rest of his days he’d wonder about the rightness and the wrongness of this deed he’d done.
He’d watch for signs and portents. He’d wonder if every piece of disturbing news he read might have been averted by this alien that now lay upon the floor. He’d come fighting out of sleep at night, chased by nightmares of an idiot doom that his hand had brought about.
He finished polishing the railing and walked to the door. He polished the knob most carefully and shut the door behind him. And, as a final gesture, he untied the shirt tails.
There was no one in the lobby and no one in the street, and he stood looking up and down the street in the pale cold light of morning.
He cringed against it – against the morning light and against this street that was a symbol of the world. For there seemed to him to be a crying in the street, a crying of his guilt.
There was a way, he knew, that he could forget all this – could wipe it from his mind and leave it all behind him. There was a path that even at this hour led to comfort and security and even, yes, to smugness, and he was tempted by it. For there was no reason that he shouldn’t. There was no point in not doing it. No one except himself stood either to gain or to lose.
But he shook his head stubbornly, as if to scare the thought away.
He shifted the maul from one hand to the other and stepped out to cross the street. He reached the car and opened the back door and threw the maul in on the floor.
And he stood there, empty-handed now, and felt the silence beating in long rolls, like relentless surf pounding through his head.
He put up his hands to keep his head from bursting and he felt a terrible weakness in him. He knew it was reaction -nerves suddenly letting go after being taut too long.
Then the stifling silence was no more than an overriding quietness. He dropped his hands.
A car was coming down the street, and he watched it as it parked across from him a short distance up the street.
From it came the shrilling voice of a radio tuned high:
‘… In his note to the President, refusing the appointment, Enright said that after some soul-searching he was convinced it would be better for the country and the world if he did not accept the post. In Washington, foreign policy observers and the diplomatic corps are reported in a dither. What, after all, they ask, could soul-searching have to do with the state department?
‘And here is another piece of news this morning that is likewise difficult to assess. Peking announces a reshuffling of its government, with known moderates taking over. While it is too early yet to say, the shift could result in a complete reversal of Red China’s policies-‘
The radio shut off abruptly and the man got from the car. He slammed the door behind him and went striding down the street.
Harrington opened the front door and climbed behind the wheel. He had the strangest sense that he had forgotten something. He tried to remember what it was, but it was gone entirely.
He sat with his hands clutched upon the wheel and he felt a little shiver running through his body. Like a shiver of relief, although he could not imagine why he should feel relief.
Perhaps over that news about Enright. he told himself. For it was very good news. Not that Enright was the wrong man for the post, for he surely was the right one. But there came a time when a man had the right and duty to be himself entirely.
And the human race, he told himself, had that same right.
And the shift of government in China was a most amazing thing. As if, he thought, evil geniuses throughout the world might be disappearing with the coming of the dawn.
And there was something about geniuses, be told himself, that he should remember. Something about how a genius came about.
But he could not recall it.
He rolled down the window of the car and sniffed the brisk, fresh breeze of morning. Sniffing it, he consciously straightened his body and lifted up his chin. A man should do a thing like this more often, he told himself contentedly. There was something in the beginning of a day that sharpened up one’s soul.
He put the car in gear and wheeled it out into the street.
Too bad about Madison, he thought. He was really, after all, a very decent fellow.
Hollis Harrington, final gentleman, drove down the morning street.