MacLeod was not used to being summoned, except by high officials, and
then if the meeting would not advantage his cause, he was likely to take
a journey in another direction. But when Osmond's man invited him to go
down to the shack that morning, he had agreed with a ready emphasis, and
now walked along, smiling over the general kindliness of things. The
change of air after his sea voyage was doing him good, and he had been
able to command anew the sense of physical prosperity which had once
been his habitual possession. That forbade him morbid premonitions and
withdrawals relative to the bodily life. It hardly seemed possible, this
robust guardian declared, that anything should happen to him, save after
a very long period, when inevitable decay would set in. But in a
harmonious mood and prospect retreated so far that it might almost as
well not threaten at all. He had no doubt that when change fell upon the
aged, it was as beneficent in its approach as the oncoming of sleep. But
of these things he need not think, except as they might be brought to
his mind by the disasters of other people. Acquiesce in the course of
nature, said his philosophy, and refuse to anticipate trouble as
trouble. It could always be curbed or stamped out when it came. That
abounding certainty was a part of his power.
He found his way without difficulty. The neat rows of growing things led
him in from the road, and directing his steps toward the shack, where he
had understood Osmond lived, he saw a figure advancing to meet him, a
man in a blue blouse, like a workman, beating his hands together as he
came, to dust the soil from them. When they were at a convenient
interval, the man looked at MacLeod with a measuring gaze, and MacLeod
returned the challenge with what was, perhaps, too frank encouragement.
He put out his hand, but Osmond shook his head. He opened his two palms,
displaying them.
"I didn't expect you for a few minutes yet," he said, "or I should have
washed. I'm just out of the dirt. Come on down to the house. We won't go
in. There are some seats outside."
MacLeod knew at once, through the keen sense that served him in his
fellowship with men, that the excuse was a true one, yet that Osmond was
glad he had it to offer. He evidently had no desire to shake hands. That
seemed reasonable enough. The man was quite unlike other men in his
unstudied speech, the clear, healthy, and yet childlike look of his
eyes. It was as if, working in the earth, he had become a part of it.
When they were in the shade of the great oak tree by the house, each in
his rough chair, MacLeod stretched out his legs, with much enjoyment,
and offered his host a cigar.
"No, thank you," said Osmond. He felt briefly, and was ashamed of
himself for entertaining it, a childish regret that he did not smoke.
Every easy habit gave the man of the world an advantage the more. "Light
up," he said grimly, as MacLeod, after a questioning look which seemed
also a commiserating one, was about to return the case to his pocket. "I
like to see it--and smell it--rather."
So MacLeod brought out his pipe and did light up.
"I smoke very little," he explained. "That's the way to skim the cream.
It's the temperate man for flavors. Know that?"
Osmond, temperate in all ways from necessity, hardly knew how he should
have felt about it if desires and delight had presented themselves to
him as companions, not as foes. He pulled himself up, with an effort.
MacLeod's effect on him was something for which he was not prepared. The
man's physical fitness, his self-possession in the face of anything that
might be required of him, made hot blood in Osmond. There was no ground
for them to meet upon. Temperance of life in order to enjoy the more
keenly? Then, to be honest, he would have to confess that for him
temperance was his master, and that was a confidence he would not give.
There could be no easy commonplaces. He spoke bluntly:--
"I wanted to see you."
"I wanted to see you, too," said MacLeod cordially. "Of course I know
all about you. Peter talks about you by the yard."
Osmond's rebellious tongue formed the words, "I don't believe it." But
he did not utter them.
"You've worked out a mighty interesting scheme down here," MacLeod
continued, taking his pipe out of his mouth and looking about him.
"We have worked," said Osmond.
"It's like the older peasant life of Europe." MacLeod spoke rather at
random, seeking about for some thoroughfare with his crusty host. "A
sort of paternal government--"
"Not in the least," said Osmond. "My men are my neighbors. They work for
me and I pay them."
"Without discontent?"
"I hope so. If I found a man doing half time and grumbling, I should
kick him out."
"They don't combine?"
"We all combine. I get good work. They get good wages. It's a square
deal."
"Profit-sharing?"
"No, not exactly."
"It strikes me as a sort of community," said MacLeod. "Everybody at work
and everything in common."
"Now, why does it strike you that everything is in common? The place is
mine."
"Ah, my dear fellow!" MacLeod forgot the simplicity of the moment and
put on his platform voice. "Nothing is ours."
Osmond regarded him with a slow smile coming,--his perfect clothes, his
white hand, his air of luxurious equipment.
"Isn't it?" he asked ironically. "Well, it looks mighty like it. But I
haven't any data. I know what goes on inside my own fences. I don't know
much more. What do you want of Peter?"
"To-day?"
"Any time. All the time. He has joined your league. What do you intend
to do with him?"
MacLeod put his hands in his pockets and stretched his legs a little
farther. He regarded the outer circle of hills, and then brought his
gaze back over the pleasant rolling land between. Finally he looked at
Osmond and smiled at him in what seemed a community of feeling.
"My dear fellow," he said, "I am not considering the individual."
"I am," said Osmond, with an offensive bluntness. "I am considering
Peter. What are you going to do with him?"
"Your brother joined us of his own free will."
"Yes. But now you've got him, what do you want to do with him?"
"Isn't it of any use for me to tell you that when a man joins us, he has
passed beyond personal recognition or privilege? Outside our circle, he
is an individual; he counts. Inside--well, it is difficult to say what
he is. We want him then to consider himself one of the drops that make a
sea. The sea washes down things--even the cliffs. The drop of water is
of no importance alone. With a million, million others, it moves. It
crushes."
Osmond sat looking straight at him with eyes that burned. His hands,
hanging at his side, were clenched. He recognized the might of the man,
the crude physical power of him like an emanation, and he felt the
despairing helplessness of trying to move a potency like that. Cliffs
might be corroded by the sea; but a human force that respects no other
cannot be easily invaded. He spoke without his own will, and heard
himself speaking:--
"You haven't any soul!"
MacLeod was regarding him with as direct a gaze.
"What do you mean by that?" he asked, with a moderate interest. "Do you
mean I haven't any mercy, any kindness? Is that what you mean?"
It was not what he meant. It was the indwelling spirit such as he saw in
grannie, the mobile thing in Peter that, changing, blossoming in errant
will here and there as the sun of life bade it, seemed in one form or
another to proclaim itself undying. He shook his head.
"No," he said, "that's not what I mean."
A smile ran over MacLeod's face and moved it most delightfully.
"Well," said he, "if we're going to take inventories--have you a soul?"
Osmond shook his head again.
"I don't know," he answered.
"Well, then, what's the use of slanging me? If you're in the same box
yourself--Come, who has one? has anybody?"
Osmond thought then of Rose, and of the fire of the spirit playing over
her, that brightness he could neither classify nor define. Yet he must
believe in it.
"Yes," he said. "I have seen it."
"You have? And you think I'm exempt. Why?"
Osmond was not getting anywhere. MacLeod and his own ineptitude of
speech seemed to be forcing him into the solicitous fright of the
mother, bent on shielding her child from the wolf.
"You are too powerful," he said, and realized that he was using the
evidence Rose had given him, thought for thought.
"I hope so. I ought to be. I've got to overturn power."
"What's the use? You're a czar yourself. You're only another kind."
MacLeod looked at him thoughtfully, as if struck by the form of words.
"My dear fellow," he said, "is it possible you believe in the present
state of things? Do you want one man to possess everything and the next
man nothing?"
Osmond frowned his negation. MacLeod, unfairly it seemed to him, made
him feel young and inadequate to the matter. He had the eyes to see what
cause was just, yet he had not the equipment to maintain any cause at
all.
"What is the use," he essayed, "for you and men like you to head
revolts? It only means you are ruling instead of the rulers you
overturn. It will all be done over again. The big man will rise to the
top. The little man will go under. And in time you will have the same
conditions repeated. It's because you are not teaching love. You are
teaching envy and hate."
"How do you know I am?"
Osmond kept on as if he were speaking to himself, groping painfully for
what he found.
"You are not preaching good work. You are preaching revolt against
work--class hatred and discontent."
"Do you believe in non-resistance?"
"No."
"Do you believe in Midas, king of gold, swelled up with power, sitting
smiling on the throne he has forced others to build for him, and saying,
'I am not as other men are'?"
"No. But I believe in work. You mustn't take it out of a man, that
certainty that his own work is the greatest privilege he's got. Oh, you
mustn't do that!"
There it was again, his hungry worship of achievement. It might even
have seemed to him that oppression was not much to bear if, at the same
time, a man had the glory of setting his hand to something and seeing it
prosper. MacLeod, who knew something about his life, but nothing of its
inward processes, began to feel that here was more than at first
appeared, and answered rather temperately,--
"I don't believe you know much about the general conditions under which
work is done. Work means to you Peter's painting a picture. Let it mean,
for example, a great many Peters in a mine delving all day for some smug
capitalist who wants to endow monuments to himself and get his children
into society. What then?"
What then, indeed? Osmond could not answer; but a moment later he said
again, tenaciously,--
"I don't want you to destroy the idea of good work."
"Well, now!" MacLeod spoke impatiently. He realized that here was not a
man whom his torrent of bloody facts would move, but who demanded also a
more persuasive rhetoric. "Well, now, you acknowledge the world is
upside down. Shall we leave it so?"
Osmond shook his head dumbly.
"Shall we say the great scheme counteracts its own abuses, and we won't
interfere? When an empire gets sufficiently corrupt, it tumbles apart of
its own rottenness? Or when we see just cause, shall we go to war?"
"Grannie has the whole secret of it in her hand." This he said
involuntarily, for he had no idea of talking to MacLeod about grannie.
But the subject had passed beyond their predilections of what was best
to say. "Science won't do it--war won't do it. Religion will."
"Ah! You are an enthusiast."
"No. But there is something beyond force and beyond reason."
"Religion, you mean."
"You can call it that. It is what has made that old woman up there at
the house live every day of her life as if she were the
multi-millionaire of the universe--without a thought of herself, without
a doubt that there is an inexhaustible reservoir, and that everybody can
dip into it and bring up the water of life. Sometimes when she told me
that--how rich we all are, if we only knew it--I used to see the
multitudes of hands dipping in for their drop--old wrinkled hands,
children's hands."
He was musing now, and yet admitting the other man to his confidence. It
was proof of MacLeod's charm that even Osmond, who kept his true self to
himself, and who started by hating a girl's oppressor, had nevertheless
fallen into a maze of self-betrayal. MacLeod spoke softly, as if he
recognized the spell and would not break it:--
"Yet, the Founder of her religion said, 'I came not to send peace, but a
sword.'"
"How do you know who the Founder of her religion is? I don't know it
myself. I don't know but she dug it out of the ground, or breathed it
out of the air. She has her sword, too, grannie has. You never saw her
licking a boy for torturing a rat. I have."
"What shall we do?"
Osmond roused himself a little from his muse.
"I read something the other day in a book--about the town of Abdera. I
suppose you know it."
MacLeod shook his head.
"In the town of Abdera they suddenly began to love one another, that's
all. They went round chanting, 'O Cupid, prince of God and men!'"
"Is that going to obviate all the difficulties?"
Osmond looked at him with dog's eyes, the eyes that seek and wonder out
of their confusion of incomplete knowledge.
"Every man would refuse to rest," he said, "while any other man was
hungry. They would all be humble, the rich as well as the poor. Now,
one's as cocky as the other. I don't know that the cockiness of the
ignorant is any more picturesque than the cockiness of the privileged."
MacLeod was smiling a little. These, he saw, were pretty dreams, but
hardly of the texture to demand destruction. They would fall to pieces,
in good time, of their own flimsiness.
"Do you believe in kings?" he asked idly.
Osmond glowed.
"I know it's a mighty pity not to," he said. "Some people have got to be
fostered chiefly because they have gifts. If you don't draw a little
circle round them, you lose the gifts maybe, and you certainly lose the
fun of adoring them. I'd like to be a soldier of Alexander--if I
couldn't be Alexander himself. But you'll never get anywhere smashing
round and yelling that one man's better than another because he works
with his hands. No! the man that brings peace will bring it another
way."
MacLeod regarded him for a moment curiously.
"But why," he said at length, "why won't you trust me to bring it
precisely that way?"
Osmond smiled faintly.
"No," he said, "you couldn't."
"But why? You say I am extremely powerful. You rather accuse me of it. I
am too powerful, in fact. Wasn't that what you said?"
"Yes."
"Well, why not trust me to administer your great awakening?"
Osmond kept his ironic smile of unbelief.
"You are not the man," he said. "You would not believe in it. You
wouldn't live it. You are very powerful. But your mastery wouldn't serve
you. That's where you can't pretend."
"Now where have you got your idea of me?" MacLeod was looking at him
sharply. "You never saw me before to-day. Yet your idea was already
formed before I came down here. Who's been talking to you?"
Osmond had entrenched himself at last in his customary reserve.
"You are a public character," he said indifferently.
"Has Peter been talking about me?"
"Yes. He speaks of you."
"But not in this fashion. Peter believes in me, over head and ears."
"Yes. He believes in you. I wish he didn't."
"Ah!" MacLeod drew a deep breath. "My daughter! Do you know my
daughter?"
The question was too quick, and Osmond quivered under the assault of it.
He felt the blood in his face. His heart choked him. And MacLeod's eyes
were upon him.
"Do you know her?" MacLeod was asking sharply.
"Yes," Osmond heard himself answering, in a moved voice. "I have seen
her."
MacLeod spoke with what seemed to the other man an insulting emphasis.
Yet Osmond had not time to calm himself by the reminder that he was not
used to hearing Rose spoken of at all as mortal woman. In his dreams she
was something more than that.
"My daughter," MacLeod was saying, "has an intemperate habit of speech.
If she has talked me over with you, she has inevitably made your
opinions. For Rose is a very beautiful woman. I needn't tell you that."
Then something strange happened to Osmond. He experienced a sensation
which he had accepted as a form of words, and had only idly believed in.
He saw red. A rush and surge were in his ears. And as if it were a
signal, known once but ignored through years of tranquil living, he as
instantly obeyed. He was on his feet, his fists clenched, and MacLeod,
also risen, was regarding him with concern and even, Osmond thought in
fury, with compassion. The red deepened into black and Osmond felt the
suffocation and nausea of a weakness MacLeod instantly formulated for
him.
"My dear fellow," he was saying, "sit down here. You're faint."
But Osmond would neither sit nor accept the cup of water MacLeod had
brought him from the pail left on the bench for the workmen. He stood,
keeping his grip on himself and battling back to life. Presently he was
conscious that Peter was there, calling him affectionately. Now again he
felt the blood in his face, the wetness of the hair above his forehead,
and he knew he was not the man he had been. MacLeod was speaking, in
evident solicitude.
"Your brother has had an ill turn. He's all right now, aren't you,
Grant?"
Osmond looked at him, smiling grimly. MacLeod seemed to him his foe not
only for the sake of Rose, but because the man, great insolent child of
good fortune as he was, represented the other side of the joy of fight.
Osmond almost loved him, because it was through him that he had been
inducted into a knowledge of that unknown glory. MacLeod picked up his
pipe from the bench, tapped it empty, and pocketed it. He gave them a
pleasant inclusive nod of fellowship.
"I'll trot along," said he. "See you at dinner, Peter."
"What was it, Osmond? What was it?" Peter was asking, in a worried
voice.
Osmond suddenly looked tired. He passed his hand over his forehead, and
put back his matted hair.
"Pete," he said, "I suppose it was a hundred things. But all it really
was, was the rage for fight, plain fight. But whatever it was, I've got
something out of it."
"What?"
"I know how men--other men--feel."
"Other men don't want to tackle one another, as a general thing, like
bulldogs."
"Oh, yes! they recognize the instinct. They're ready to stamp on it. I
wasn't ready. I'm glad to have met that instinct. It's a healthy old
devil of an instinct. I respect it."
Peter was staring as if he did not know him.
"What was it, Osmond?" he asked again.
Osmond shook his head and laughed.
"I'll wash my hands," he said. "I feel as if there were dirt on them and
the touch of clothes that are not mine." He stopped on his way to the
bench where there was a basin and towel for hasty use. "Pete," he said,
"you don't want to scrap a little, do you?"
He did not look like the same man. Light was in his face, overlying the
flush of simple passions. He looked almost joyous. It was Peter who was
distraught, older with a puzzled sadness.
"Don't!" he said. "Don't think of such devilment. There's no good in it.
Why, we get over that when we are under twenty--except in an emergency."
"Ah, but this is an emergency," said Osmond, coming out of his washing
with clean hands and a dripping face. "It was an emergency for me, if it
wasn't for him."