"What is the danger?
Where is the danger? There is danger overhanging, somewhere on the Line.
Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not to be doubted this third
time, after what has gone before. But surely this is a cruel haunting
of _me_. What can _I_ do?"
He pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped the drops from his heated
forehead.
"If I telegraph Danger on either side of me, or on both, I can give
no reason for it," he went on, wiping the palms of his hands. "I should
get into trouble, and do no good. They would think I was mad. This is
the way it would work:--Message: 'Danger! Take care!' Answer: 'What
Danger? Where?' Message: 'Don't know. But for God's sake take care!'
They would displace me. What else could they do?"
His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture
of a conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an
unintelligible responsibility involving life.
"When it first stood under the Danger-light," he went on, putting his
dark hair back from his head, and drawing his hands outward across and
across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, "why not tell
me where that accident was to happen,--if it must happen? Why not tell
me how it could be averted,--if it could have been averted? When on
its second coming it hid its face, why not tell me instead: 'She is
going to die.
Pages:
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171