FATHER AND SON
The Colonel paced the floor of his library with increasing anger as he
waited the return of Norman. Never in his life had his whole being
been so abandoned to incontrollable rage. He had always been a man of
fiery temper, but an iron will had held his temper in control.
His most intimate business associates had always found him suave,
persuasive, and genial in every hour of trial. Never once had they
heard a threat or an idle boast fall from his lips. He had the rare
faculty of beating his enemies in a fight in which no quarter was
asked or given, and coming out of it with his bitterest foe turned
into a friend. This was one of the secrets of his fortune--an
instinctive leadership among powerful men.
For the first time he realized that he had challenged the one man in
all his personal acquaintance about whose character he knew
nothing--his own son. For the first time he realized that they were
strangers. He had been absorbed in the big affairs of life. He had
taken the boy for granted. Since the death of his mother twelve years
ago, Norman had spent most of his time at school.
The Colonel had always been in command. His word had been law for so
many years, it brought him up with a disagreeable start to find that
the one man with whom his life was bound, and in whom his hopes
centred, could dare thus to defy and flaunt his wishes. It was the
most disgusting, enraging fact he had ever encountered. The longer he
confronted the situation the more furious and blind his anger became.
Elena had timidly entered the room, and stood watching him gravely
before she spoke.
"Has he returned from that woman yet?" the Colonel asked with sudden
energy.
"No, and I hope he will stay all day," she answered slowly.
"But he won't," the father snapped.
"I'm sure he will not," the girl sighed. "I don't like you to-day,
Guardie."
"You, too, side with these fanatics then?"
"No. I hate them--hate everything they say and do and stand for. I
loathe the very sight of them. But you were unfair to Norman."
"Unfair? How?"
"You allowed him the widest liberty to do as he pleased, think as he
pleased, associate with whom he pleased, and then all of a sudden you
sprang on that platform and insulted him before his invited guests."
"How could I dream that he would commit such an act of insane treason
before my very eyes?"
"You make no allowance for the spell of Barbara Bozenta's eloquence. I
don't like her, but she's a wonderful little woman, and I envy her her
power over men."
"I'll end this folly to-day," was the Colonel's firm announcement.
"I'm not so sure," Elena warned.
"I'll show you!"
She came close and laid her hand on the Colonel's arm.
"Will you promise me one thing, Guardie?" she asked, tenderly.
The anger faded from the strong face, and his voice sank low.
"I'm afraid I've never been able to refuse you anything, child. It's
on your account, I think, I'm most angry with Norman to-day."
"You promise?" she repeated.
"Yes, what is it?" he said, bending to kiss her smooth, white
forehead.
"Promise to put all anger out of your heart and talk to Norman as a
father, not as an enemy--won't you?"
"An enemy?" the Colonel slowly asked.
"Yes. I thought you were going to strike him once. It would have been
horrible. I never could have forgiven you for that. You've always been
my hero, Guardie--I never saw you give way to anger before. I don't
like it. You'll talk to him lovingly and tenderly as a father, won't
you?"
"Yes, dear, for your sake, I will," he answered.
"Then I'll tell him to come. I asked him to wait outside until I saw
you."
She turned and quickly left the room. In a moment Norman entered and
stood facing his father.
The Colonel flushed with anger at sight of the insolence with which
the younger man calmly surveyed him.
"Well, sir," the father said, at length, "have you nothing to say to
me after what has occurred to-day?"
"I was under the impression that you had something to say to me," was
the cool answer.
By an effort of will the older man crushed back an angry retort,
smiled, and said:
"Sit down, please--I've a good deal to say to you."
Norman threw himself lazily into a chair, and continued to watch his
father with a curious expression of half-amused contempt. The Colonel
stood in silence, evidently struggling with his emotions, and feeling
for the right word with which to begin.
Norman anticipated him.
"Honestly, now, Governor, just between us, don't you think you were a
little bit absurd to-day?"
"Absurd?" his father broke in with rising accent.
"Just a little childish about a piece of red, white, and blue cloth?"
"Perhaps so, my boy," was the answer. "Just about as absurd as you
were over the red rag you lifted in its place. Why did you do it?"
"On the impulse of the moment, to express my feeling of contempt for
war, and my faith in my fellow man."
"Exactly. So I acted on the impulse of the moment to express my
contempt for that crowd of fools and fanatics--my loyalty and faith in
my country."
"I can't understand how a man of your age, poise and pride, culture
and power, could be so foolish. A sixteen-year-old school-boy on the
Fourth of July, yes! But you----"
"Norman," the Colonel interrupted, in even tones, "I'm sorry I've been
too busy for us to get acquainted. It's time we began. It may
interest you to know that I, too, hate war--learned to hate it long
before your Socialist orator was born--learned it in the grim
University of Hell--war itself. Socialism has no patent on the hope of
universal peace. I am a member of a peace society. I have always
believed the Civil War should have been prevented. All the Negroes on
this earth are not worth the blood and tears of one year of that
struggle. Whether it could have been prevented God alone knows. When
it came I volunteered--a drummer-boy at fourteen--and marched to the
front beneath the flag you tore down to-day."
"I never thought of that, Governor--honestly, I never did!" the boy
exclaimed.
"I went in," the Colonel continued, "with my head full of silly
rubbish about the glory of war. When I beat the call to my first
charge, and saw the men I knew and loved shot to pieces, and heard
their groans and cries for water, I had no more delusions. I worked on
the field that night until twelve o'clock, helping the men who were
wounded--enemies as well as comrades. I learned the brotherhood of man
and the meaning of red blood in the big, tragic school of life, my
son. Many a boy in gray, whom I had fought, died in my arms while my
heart ached for his loved ones in some far-away Southern home.
"But I knew the war had to be when once it was begun. I was fighting
for the flag I loved--and I grew to love it better than life. To you
it may be a bit of red, white, and blue bunting; to me it is the
symbol of truth and right, liberty and human progress.
"My people in western North Carolina were all slave-holders and loyal
to their state, except my father. He hated slavery, loved the Union,
and moved on westward before the war. I saw them bury him in the flag
you tore down to-day, my boy.
"Many a night I've lain on the ground looking up at the stars before
the dawn of a day of battle and seen visions of that flag flying
triumphant in the sky. I've seen the men who carried it shot down
again and again, and another snatch it from their dying grasp and bear
it on to victory.
"I grew not only to love it, but to believe in it with all the
passionate faith of my soul. I believe in its destiny, in its sublime
mission to humanity. The older I've grown and the more I've seen of my
fellow man, the wider I've travelled in foreign lands, the deeper has
become my conviction that our flag symbolizes the noblest, freest
ideal ever born in the soul of man; that we have but to live up to its
standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, and the kingdom of
human brotherhood is already here.
"After the war, I joined the regular army, not because I loved war,
but because there seemed nothing else for me to do at the time. I was
absolutely alone in the world. At twenty-five I was in command of a
company on the frontier. I had not been in battle since the end of the
Civil War, when suddenly I found myself surrounded by a horde of
hostile Indians, and I had to turn my machine guns on them and mow
them down. The slaughter was something terrific. As the last charge
was made I saw a young squaw retreat in the face of a withering fire,
walk backward facing our men, holding a bundle of something behind her
body. She fell at last, riddled with bullets. I rode up where she lay,
and found the bundle to be a little Indian baby boy. He was unhurt,
and stretched out his hand to me in friendly baby greeting. I found
the squaw quite dead, and discovered the child was not her own. She
was simply trying to save it for the tribe. I took the child and
educated him. But he went back to the free life of the plains. I found
him again, and made him the gamekeeper of our mountain preserves."
"You mean Saka?" Norman asked.
"Yes. That night as I lay in my tent I saw war as it is--a hideous,
savage nightmare. From that moment I hated the service, hated its
iron laws of discipline, its cruel machinery devised for suppressing
the individuality of its members. I saw that night a larger vision of
life. I made up my mind to create, not to kill--to build up, not to
tear down. I left the army and mastered mining.
"Your leather-lunged agitators say that I stole my millions from the
earnings of the men who worked for me. A more stupid lie was never
uttered. I invented improved mining machinery. I made deserts blossom
and gave employment to thousands of men who couldn't think for
themselves. I did their thinking for them, and set their tasks. I have
made millions, and have added tens of millions to the wealth of the
West."
"If labour is the creator of all wealth can one man ever earn a
million dollars?" Norman interrupted.
"Manual labour is not the creator of wealth. The brain which conceives
is the creator of wealth. The hand which executes these plans is
merely the automaton moved by a superior power."
"Yet nothing could be accomplished without it," persisted Norman.
His father lifted his hand with a gesture of command.
"We'll not discuss the theory of Socialism to-day, my boy. I grant you
have plausible arguments which skilful demagogues are using with more
and more efficiency. I don't object to your study of this subject. I'm
rather pleased at the serious turn your energies have taken. What I do
object to is your continued association with the kind of people who
made up that crowd to-day--people who make the agitation of the
revolutionary programme of the Socialists a daily profession, people
who are seeking to destroy modern civilization itself."
"You will have to come down to earth, Governor," Norman said, "in your
indictment of these people. The time has gone by when you can scare
anybody with a few high-sounding phrases. If modern civilization is
rotten, it ought to be destroyed, and who cares if it is?"
"The issue between us, my boy," the Colonel continued, gravely, "is
not an academic one. It is not open to discussion. Some of the people
you are associating with have criminal records. If they continue their
present wild harangues they will be shot down like dogs in the
streets. I cannot afford to have my name even under the suspicion of
sympathy for them, through you. Do you understand me?"
"I think I do," Norman replied, holding his father's steady gaze.
"You are my son and the heir of my fortune. But you must remember that
I am the master of this establishment."
"I am aware of that fact, sir," the boy replied, in cold tones.
"I trust that it will not be necessary, then, for me to repeat to you
my first positive order--that you will immediately sever your
connection with the Socialist Club, and never again appear in public
or private with the three people who were on that platform to-day."
"It will not be necessary for you to repeat your order," the young
athlete replied, with a curious smile and a slight tightening of the
lips.
"I thought as much."
Norman laughed, and the Colonel's eyes began to blaze.
"What do you mean, sir?" he sternly asked.
"That it will be unnecessary for you to repeat your order, for the
very simple reason that I'm a man. I've the right to do my own
thinking, and I propose to do it."
With a quick stride the Colonel confronted the young rebel, his breath
quick and laboured, his face aflame with unbridled rage.
"You dare thus to defy my wishes?"
"If you put it that way, yes."
The Colonel stepped to the door and opened it.
"You will obey my order or get out of this house never to enter it
again. Take your choice!"
"You mean it?" the younger man asked, with sullen emphasis.
"Exactly what I say," was the cold reply.
Norman turned without a word, seized his hat, and left the room. As he
reached the end of the corridor, and placed his hand on the front
door, his father's voice rang out suddenly:
"Norman!"
He paused, and looked back without taking his hand from the knob.
"You can't be such a fool!" the Colonel cried.
"It looks that way, Governor!"
He opened the door, softly closed it, and was gone.