"And yet you can share in your father's exterminating vengeance as he
sweeps ten thousand redmen into their graves?"
"The case is different--the kitten never did any harm."
"The wrong is by no means all on the redman's side. But even if it were,
Christ said, 'Love them that hate you,' and as a Christian nation we
should not go out in vindictive warfare against even those who
despitefully use us. I haven't a very high seat in the synagogue. I have
a soldier's training for warfare, but I acknowledge the splendor of
Christ's precepts and try to live up to them. I always liked Grant's
position as regards the soldier. But more than that--I like these red
people. They are a good deal more than rude men. It is a great pleasure
to feel their trust and confidence in me. It touches me deeply to have
them come and put their palms on me reverently, as though I were
superhuman in wisdom, and say: 'Little Father, we are blind. We cannot
see the way. Lead us and we will go.' At such times I feel that no other
work in the world is so important. If human souls are valuable anywhere
on earth they are valuable here; no selfish land-lust should blind us to
see that."
As he spoke, the girl again felt something large and sweet and powerful,
like a current of electrical air which came out of wide spaces of human
emotion and covered her like a flood. She was humbled by the high
purpose and inexplicable enthusiasm of the man before her.
"I suppose you consider me cruel and heartless!" she cried out. "But I
am not to blame for being what I am."
"If you are not free, who is? You have it all--youth, wealth, beauty.
Nothing enslaves you but indifference."
She was thinking that Lawson had never moved her so, and wishing Curtis
were less inexorable in his logic, when he checked himself by saying: "I
beg your pardon again. I came to see your pictures, not to preach
forgiveness of sins. I here pull myself up short."
"I think you could make me feel personal interest in brickbats or--or
spiders," she said, with a quaint, relaxing smile. "You were born to be
a preacher, not a soldier."
"Do you think so? I've had a notion all along that I was a fairly good
commander and a mighty poor persuader; what I don't intend to be is a
bore." He rose and began to walk slowly round the walls, studying the
paintings under her direction. He was struggling with obscure impulses
to other and more important speech, but after making the circuit of the
room he said, as though rendering a final verdict:
"You have great talent; that is evident. What do you intend to do with
it? It should help some one."
"You are old-fashioned," she replied. "In our modern day, art is content
to add beauty to the world; it does not trouble itself to do good. It is
_un_moral."
"Perhaps I _am_ a preacher, after all, for I like the book or picture
that has a motive, that stands for something. Your conception of art's
uses is French, is it not?"
"I suppose it is; clearly, it isn't Germanic. What would you have me
do--paint Indians to convince the world of their sufferings?"
"Wouldn't that be something like the work Millet did? Seems to me I
remember something of that sort in some book I have read."
She laughed. "Unfortunately, I am not Millet; besides, he isn't the god
of our present idolatry. He's a dead duck. We paint skirt-dancers and
the singers in the cafes now. Toiling peasants are 'out.'"
"You are a woman, and a woman ought--"
"Please don't hand me any of that stupid rot about what a woman _ought_
to be, and isn't. What I am I am, and I don't like dirty, ragged people,
no matter whether they are Roman beggars or Chinese. I like clean,
well-dressed, well-mannered people and no one can make me believe they
are less than a lot of ill-smelling Indians."
"Miss Brisbane, you must not do me an injustice," he earnestly
entreated. "It was not my intention to instruct you to-day. I am
honestly interested in your pictures, and had no thought of renewing an
appeal. I was tempted and fell. If you will forgive me this time, I'll
never preach again."
"I don't say I object to your preachment. I think I rather like it. I
don't think I ever met a man who was so ready to sacrifice his own
interest for an idea. It's rather amusing to meet a soldier who is ready
to knock one down with a moral war-club." She ended with a mocking
inflection of voice.
His face lost its eager, boyish expression. "I'm delighted to think I
have amused you," he said, slowly. "It makes amends."
"Please don't be angry," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to be flippant."
"Your words were explicit," he replied, feeling at the moment that she
was making a mock of him, and this duplicity hurt him.
She put forth her sweetest voice. "Please forgive me! I think your work
very noble, only I can't understand how you can exile yourself to do it.
Let us go down; it is time for lunch, and papa is waiting for you, I
know."
It was unaccountable that a mocking tone, a derisive smile from this
chance acquaintance, should so shake the soldier and so weaken him, but
he descended the stair-way with a humiliating consciousness of having
betrayed his heart to a fleering, luring daughter of wealth.