THE VISION OF PHILIP DRU
Long before Philip had finished speaking, Gloria saw that he had
forgotten her presence. With glistening eyes and face aflame he had
talked on and on with such compelling force that she beheld in him the
prophet of a new day.
She sat very still for a while, and then she reached out to touch his
sleeve.
"I think I understand how you feel now," she said in a tone different
from any she had yet used. "I have been reared in a different atmosphere
from you, and at home have heard only the other side, while at school
they mostly evade the question. My father is one of the 'bold and
forceful few' as perhaps you know, but he does not seem to me to want
to harm anyone. He is kind to us, and charitable too, as that word is
commonly used, and I am sure he has done much good with his money."
"I am sorry, Gloria, if I have hurt you by what I said," answered Dru.
"Oh! never mind, for I am sure you are right," answered the girl, but
Philip continued--
"Your father, I think, is not to blame. It is the system that is at
fault. His struggle and his environment from childhood have blinded him
to the truth. To those with whom he has come in contact, it has been the
dollar and not the man that counted. He has been schooled to think that
capital can buy labor as it would machinery, the human equation not
entering into it. He believes that it would be equivalent to
confiscation for the State to say 'in regard to a corporation, labor,
the State and capital are important in the order named.' Good man that
he means to be, he does not know, perhaps he can never know, that it is
labor, labor of the mind and of the body, that creates, and not
capital."
"You would have a hard time making Father see that," put in Gloria, with
a smile.
"Yes!" continued Philip, "from the dawn of the world until now, it has
been the strong against the weak. At the first, in the Stone Age, it was
brute strength that counted and controlled. Then those that ruled had
leisure to grow intellectually, and it gradually came about that the
many, by long centuries of oppression, thought that the intellectual
few had God-given powers to rule, and to exact tribute from them to the
extent of commanding every ounce of exertion of which their bodies were
capable. It was here, Gloria, that society began to form itself wrongly,
and the result is the miserable travesty of to-day. Selfishness became
the keynote, and to physical and mental strength was conceded everything
that is desirable in life. Later, this mockery of justice, was partly
recognized, and it was acknowledged to be wrong for the physically
strong to despoil and destroy the physically weak. _Even so, the time
is now measurably near when it will be just as reprehensible for the
mentally strong to hold in subjection the mentally weak, and to force
them to bear the grievous burdens which a misconceived civilization has
imposed upon them."_
Gloria was now thoroughly interested, but smilingly belied it by saying,
"A history professor I had once lost his position for talking like
that."
The young man barely recognized the interruption.
"The first gleam of hope came with the advent of Christ," he continued.
"So warped and tangled had become the minds of men that the meaning of
Christ's teaching failed utterly to reach human comprehension. They
accepted him as a religious teacher only so far as their selfish desires
led them. They were willing to deny other gods and admit one Creator of
all things, but they split into fragments regarding the creeds and forms
necessary to salvation. In the name of Christ they committed atrocities
that would put to blush the most benighted savages. Their very excesses
in cruelty finally caused a revolution in feeling, and there was
evolved the Christian religion of to-day, a religion almost wholly
selfish and concerned almost entirely in the betterment of life after
death."
The girl regarded Philip for a second in silence, and then quietly
asked, "For the betterment of whose life after death?"
"I was speaking of those who have carried on only the forms of religion.
Wrapped in the sanctity of their own small circle, they feel that their
tiny souls are safe, and that they are following the example and
precepts of Christ.
"The full splendor of Christ's love, the grandeur of His life and
doctrine is to them a thing unknown. The infinite love, the sweet
humility, the gentle charity, the subordination of self that the Master
came to give a cruel, selfish and ignorant world, mean but little more
to us to-day than it did to those to whom He gave it."
"And you who have chosen a military career say this," said the girl as
her brother joined the pair.
To Philip her comment came as something of a shock, for he was
unprepared for these words spoken with such a depth of feeling.
Gloria and Philip Dru spent most of graduation day together. He did not
want to intrude amongst the relatives and friends of his classmates, and
he was eager to continue his acquaintance with Gloria. To the girl, this
serious-minded youth who seemed so strangely out of tune with the
blatant military fanfare, was a distinct novelty. At the final ball she
almost ignored the gallantries of the young officers, in order that she
might have opportunity to lead Dru on to further self-revelation.
The next day in the hurry of packing and departure he saw her only for
an instant, but from her brother he learned that she planned a visit to
the new Post on the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass where Jack Strawn and
Philip were to be stationed after their vacation.
Philip spent his leave, before he went to the new Post, at his Kentucky
home. He wanted to be with his father and mother, and he wanted to read
and think, so he declined the many invitations to visit.
His father was a sturdy farmer of fine natural sense, and with him
Philip never tired of talking when both had leisure.
Old William Dru had inherited nothing save a rundown, badly managed,
heavily mortgaged farm that had been in the family for several
generations. By hard work and strict economy, he had first built it up
into a productive property and had then liquidated the indebtedness. So
successful had he been that he was able to buy small farms for four of
his sons, and give professional education to the other three. He had
accumulated nothing, for he had given as fast as he had made, but his
was a serene and contented old age because of it. What was the hoarding
of money or land in comparison to the satisfaction of seeing each son
happy in the possession of a home and family? The ancestral farm he
intended for Philip, youngest and best beloved, soldier though he was to
be.
All during that hot summer, Philip and his father discussed the
ever-growing unrest of the country, and speculated when the crisis would
come, and how it would end.
Finally, he left his home, and all the associations clustered around it,
and turned his face towards imperial Texas, the field of his new
endeavor.
He reached Fort Magruder at the close of an Autumn day. He thought he
had never known such dry sweet air. Just as the sun was sinking, he
strolled to the bluff around which flowed the turbid waters of the Rio
Grande, and looked across at the gray hills of old Mexico.