Chapter 20 - Page 2

You have suffered and in your pain you think
me vile, but remember that for ages the virtue of to-morrow has been the
vileness of to-day. That which outstrips one, one calls vile. My virtue
lies in gaining my end. Pity for you would have been a crime for me. You
have suffered. And then? What are you to me? As I came among you I am
to-day; that is where I am triumphant and virtuous. I have succeeded.
When I came here I came into a world of--of shadows of men. What were
their passions, their joys, their fears, their despair, their outcry, to
me? If I had ears, my virtue was to close them to the cries. There was
no other way. There was one of us--your friend Fox, I mean. He came into
the world, but had not the virtue to hold himself aloof. He has told
you, 'One goes blind down here.' He began to feel a little like the
people round him. He contracted likings and dislikings. He liked you ...
and you betrayed him. So he went under. He grew blind down here. I have
not grown blind. I see as I saw. I move as I did in a world of ... of
the pictures of men. They despair. I hear groans ... well, they are the
groans of the dead to me. This to you, down near it, is a mass of
tortuous intrigue; vile in its pettiest detail. But come further off;
stand beside me, and what does it look like? It is a mighty engine of
disintegration. It has crushed out a whole fabric, a whole plane of
society. It has done that. I guided it. I had to have my eyes on every
little strand of it; to be forever on the watch."

"And now I stand alone. Yesterday that fabric was everything to you; it
seemed solid enough. And where is it to-day? What is it to you more than
to me? There stood Virtue ... and Probity ... and all the things that
all those people stood for. Well, to-day they are gone; the very belief
in them is gone. Who will believe in them, now that it is proved that
their tools were people ... like de Mersch? And it was I that did it.
That, too, is to be accounted to me for virtue."

"Well, I have inherited the earth. I am the worm at the very heart of
the rose of it. You are thinking that all that I have gained is the hand
of Gurnard. But it is more than that. It is a matter of a chess-board;
and Gurnard is the only piece that remains. And I am the hand that moves
him. As for a marriage; well, it is a marriage of minds, a union for a
common purpose. But mine is the master mind. As for you. Well, you have
parted with your past ... and there is no future for you. That is true.
You have nowhere to go to; have nothing left, nothing in the world. That
is true too. But what is that to me? A set of facts--that you have
parted with your past and have no future. You had to do the work; I had
to make you do it. I chose you