and calculating man of affairs, but as something magnificently young.
Not only was he strong and solid but in his face there was at the
moment the deep lines of thought and suffering she had seen on the
countenance of McGregor. "It is strange," she thought. "They are so
unlike and yet the two men are both beautiful."
"I married your mother when I was a child as you are a child now,"
David went on. "To be sure I had a passion for her and she had one for
me. It passed but it was beautiful enough while it lasted. It did not
have depth or meaning. I want to tell you why. Then I am going to make
you understand McGregor so that you may take your measure of the man.
I am coming to that. I have to begin at the beginning.
"My factory began to grow and as an employer of labour I became
concerned in the lives of a good many men."
His voice again became sharp. "I have been impatient with you," he
said. "Do you think this McGregor is the only man who has seen and
thought of other men in the mass? I have done that and have been
tempted. I also might have become sentimental and destroyed myself. I
did not. Loving a woman saved me. Laura did that for me although when
it came to the real test of our love, understanding, she failed. I am
nevertheless grateful to her that she was once the object of my love.
I believe in the beauty of that."
Again David paused and began to tell his story in a new way. The
figure of McGregor came back into Margaret's mind and her father began
to feel that to take it entirely away would be an accomplishment full
of significance. "If I can take her from him, I and my kind can take
the world from him also," he thought. "It will be another victory for
the aristocracy in the never-ending battle with the mob."
"I came to a turning point," he said aloud. "All men come to that
point. To be sure the great mass of people drift quite stupidly but we
are not now talking of people in general. There is you and me and
there is the thing McGregor might be. We are each in our way something
special. We come, people like us, to a place where there are two roads
to take. I took one and McGregor has taken another. I know why and
perhaps he knows why. I concede to him knowledge of what he has done.
But now it is time for you to decide which road you will take. You
have seen the crowds moving along the broad way he has chosen and now
you will set out on your own way. I want you to look down my road with
me."
They came to a bridge over a canal and David stopped the horses. A
body of McGregor's marchers passed and Margaret's pulse began to beat
high again. When she looked at her father however he was unmoved and
she was a little ashamed of her emotions. For a moment David waited,
as though for inspiration, and when the horses started on again he
began to talk. "A labour leader came to my factory, a miniature
McGregor with a crooked twist to him. He was a rascal but the things
he said to my men were all true enough. I was making money for my
investors, a lot of it. They might have won in a fight with me. One
evening I went out into the country to walk alone under the trees and
think it over."
David's voice became harsh and Margaret thought it had become
strangely like the voice of McGregor talking to workingmen. "I bought
the man off," David said. "I used the cruel weapon men like me have to
use. I gave him money and told him to get out, to let me alone. I did
it because I had to win. My kind of men always have to win. During the
walk I took alone I got hold of my dream, my belief. I have the same
dream now. It means more to me than the welfare of a million men. For
it I would crush whatever opposed me. I am going to tell you of the
dream.
"It is too bad one has to talk. Talk kills dreams and talk will also
kill all such men as McGregor. Now that he has begun to talk we will
get the best of him. I do not worry about McGregor. Time and talk will
bring about his destruction."
David's mind ran off in a new direction. "I do not think a man's life
is of much importance," he said. "No man is big enough to grasp all of
life. That is the foolish fancy of children. The grown man knows he
cannot see life at one great sweep. It cannot be comprehended so. One
has to realise that he lives in a patchwork of many lives and many
impulses.
"The man must strike at beauty. That is the realisation maturity
brings and that is where the woman conies in. That is what McGregor
was not wise enough to understand. He is a child you see in a land of
excitable children."
The quality of David's voice changed. Putting his arm about his
daughter he drew her face down beside his own. Night descended upon
them. The woman who was tired from much thinking began to feel
grateful for the touch of the strong hand on her shoulder. David had
accomplished his purpose. He had for the moment made his daughter
forget that she was his daughter. There was something hypnotic in the
quiet strength of his mood.
"I come now to women, to your part," he said. "We will talk of the
thing I want to make you understand. Laura failed as the woman. She
never saw the point. As I grew she did not grow with me. Because I did
not talk of love she did not understand me as a lover, did not know
what I wanted, what I demanded of her.
"I wanted to fit my love down upon her figure as one puts a glove on
his hand. You see I was the adventurer, the man mussed and moiled by
life and its problems. The struggle to exist, to get money, could not
be avoided. I had to make that struggle. She did not. Why could she
not understand that I did not want to come into her presence to rest
or to say empty words. I wanted her to help me create beauty. We
should have been partners in that. Together we should have undertaken
the most delicate and difficult of all struggles, the struggle for
living beauty in our everyday affairs."
Bitterness swept over the old ploughmaker and he used strong words.
"The whole point is in what I am now saying. That was my cry to the
woman. It came out of my soul. It was the only cry to another I have
ever made. Laura was a little fool. Her mind flitted away to little
things. I do not know what she wanted me to be and now I do not care.
Perhaps she wanted me to be a poet, a stringer together of words, one
to write shrill little songs about her eyes and lips. It does not
matter now what she wanted.
"But you matter."
David's voice cut through the fog of new thoughts that were confusing
his daughter's mind and she could feel his body stiffen. A thrill ran
through her own body and she forgot McGregor. With all the strength of
her spirit she was absorbed in what David was saying. In the challenge
that was coming from the lips of her father she began to feel there
would be born in her own life a definite purpose.
"Women want to push out into life, to share with men the disorder and
mussiness of little things. What a desire! Let them try it if they
wish. They will sicken of the attempt. They lose sight of something
bigger they might undertake. They have forgotten the old things, Ruth
in the corn and Mary with the jar of precious ointment, they have
forgotten the beauty they were meant to help men create.
"Let them share only in man's attempt to create beauty. That is the
big, the delicate task to which they should consecrate themselves. Why
attempt instead the cheaper, the secondary task? They are like this
McGregor."
The ploughmaker became silent. Taking up the whip he drove the horses
rapidly along. He thought that his point was made and was satisfied to
let the imagination of his daughter do the rest. They turned off the
boulevard and passed through a street of small stores. Before a saloon
a troop of street urchins led by a drunken man without a hat gave a
grotesque imitation of McGregor's Marchers before a crowd of laughing
idlers. With a sinking heart Margaret realised that even at the height
of his power the forces that would eventually destroy the impulses
back of McGregor's Marchers were at work. She crept closer to David.
"I love you," she said. "Some day I may have a lover but always I
shall love you. I shall try to be what you want of me."
It was past two o'clock that night when David arose from the chair
where he had been for several hours quietly reading. With a smile on
his face he went to a window facing north toward the city. All through
the evening groups of men had been passing the house. Some had gone
scuffling along, a mere disorderly mob, some had gone shoulder to
shoulder chanting the marching song of the workers and a few, under
the influence of drink, had stopped before the house to roar out
threats. Now all was quiet. David lighted a cigar and stood for a long
time looking out over the city. He was thinking of McGregor and
wondering what excited dream of power the day had brought into the
man's head. Then he thought of his daughter and of her escape. A soft
light came into his eyes. He was happy but when he had partially
undressed a new mood came and he turned out the lights in the room and
went again to the window. In the room above Margaret had been unable
to sleep and had also crept to the window. She was thinking again of
McGregor and was ashamed of her thoughts. By chance both father and
daughter began at the same moment to doubt the truth of what David had
said during the drive along the boulevard. Margaret could not express
her doubts in words but tears came into her eyes.
As for David, he put his hand on the sill of the window and for just a
moment his body trembled as with age and weariness. "I wonder," he
muttered--"if I had youth--perhaps McGregor knew he would fail and yet
had the courage of failure, I wonder if both Margaret and myself lack
the greater courage, if that evening long ago when I walked under the
trees I made a mistake? What if after all this McGregor and his woman
knew both roads. What if they, after looking deliberately along the
road toward success in life, went without regret along the road to
failure? What if McGregor and not myself knew the road to beauty?"
END
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Not only was he strong and solid but in his face there was at the
moment the deep lines of thought and suffering she had seen on the
countenance of McGregor. "It is strange," she thought. "They are so
unlike and yet the two men are both beautiful."
"I married your mother when I was a child as you are a child now,"
David went on. "To be sure I had a passion for her and she had one for
me. It passed but it was beautiful enough while it lasted. It did not
have depth or meaning. I want to tell you why. Then I am going to make
you understand McGregor so that you may take your measure of the man.
I am coming to that. I have to begin at the beginning.
"My factory began to grow and as an employer of labour I became
concerned in the lives of a good many men."
His voice again became sharp. "I have been impatient with you," he
said. "Do you think this McGregor is the only man who has seen and
thought of other men in the mass? I have done that and have been
tempted. I also might have become sentimental and destroyed myself. I
did not. Loving a woman saved me. Laura did that for me although when
it came to the real test of our love, understanding, she failed. I am
nevertheless grateful to her that she was once the object of my love.
I believe in the beauty of that."
Again David paused and began to tell his story in a new way. The
figure of McGregor came back into Margaret's mind and her father began
to feel that to take it entirely away would be an accomplishment full
of significance. "If I can take her from him, I and my kind can take
the world from him also," he thought. "It will be another victory for
the aristocracy in the never-ending battle with the mob."
"I came to a turning point," he said aloud. "All men come to that
point. To be sure the great mass of people drift quite stupidly but we
are not now talking of people in general. There is you and me and
there is the thing McGregor might be. We are each in our way something
special. We come, people like us, to a place where there are two roads
to take. I took one and McGregor has taken another. I know why and
perhaps he knows why. I concede to him knowledge of what he has done.
But now it is time for you to decide which road you will take. You
have seen the crowds moving along the broad way he has chosen and now
you will set out on your own way. I want you to look down my road with
me."
They came to a bridge over a canal and David stopped the horses. A
body of McGregor's marchers passed and Margaret's pulse began to beat
high again. When she looked at her father however he was unmoved and
she was a little ashamed of her emotions. For a moment David waited,
as though for inspiration, and when the horses started on again he
began to talk. "A labour leader came to my factory, a miniature
McGregor with a crooked twist to him. He was a rascal but the things
he said to my men were all true enough. I was making money for my
investors, a lot of it. They might have won in a fight with me. One
evening I went out into the country to walk alone under the trees and
think it over."
David's voice became harsh and Margaret thought it had become
strangely like the voice of McGregor talking to workingmen. "I bought
the man off," David said. "I used the cruel weapon men like me have to
use. I gave him money and told him to get out, to let me alone. I did
it because I had to win. My kind of men always have to win. During the
walk I took alone I got hold of my dream, my belief. I have the same
dream now. It means more to me than the welfare of a million men. For
it I would crush whatever opposed me. I am going to tell you of the
dream.
"It is too bad one has to talk. Talk kills dreams and talk will also
kill all such men as McGregor. Now that he has begun to talk we will
get the best of him. I do not worry about McGregor. Time and talk will
bring about his destruction."
David's mind ran off in a new direction. "I do not think a man's life
is of much importance," he said. "No man is big enough to grasp all of
life. That is the foolish fancy of children. The grown man knows he
cannot see life at one great sweep. It cannot be comprehended so. One
has to realise that he lives in a patchwork of many lives and many
impulses.
"The man must strike at beauty. That is the realisation maturity
brings and that is where the woman conies in. That is what McGregor
was not wise enough to understand. He is a child you see in a land of
excitable children."
The quality of David's voice changed. Putting his arm about his
daughter he drew her face down beside his own. Night descended upon
them. The woman who was tired from much thinking began to feel
grateful for the touch of the strong hand on her shoulder. David had
accomplished his purpose. He had for the moment made his daughter
forget that she was his daughter. There was something hypnotic in the
quiet strength of his mood.
"I come now to women, to your part," he said. "We will talk of the
thing I want to make you understand. Laura failed as the woman. She
never saw the point. As I grew she did not grow with me. Because I did
not talk of love she did not understand me as a lover, did not know
what I wanted, what I demanded of her.
"I wanted to fit my love down upon her figure as one puts a glove on
his hand. You see I was the adventurer, the man mussed and moiled by
life and its problems. The struggle to exist, to get money, could not
be avoided. I had to make that struggle. She did not. Why could she
not understand that I did not want to come into her presence to rest
or to say empty words. I wanted her to help me create beauty. We
should have been partners in that. Together we should have undertaken
the most delicate and difficult of all struggles, the struggle for
living beauty in our everyday affairs."
Bitterness swept over the old ploughmaker and he used strong words.
"The whole point is in what I am now saying. That was my cry to the
woman. It came out of my soul. It was the only cry to another I have
ever made. Laura was a little fool. Her mind flitted away to little
things. I do not know what she wanted me to be and now I do not care.
Perhaps she wanted me to be a poet, a stringer together of words, one
to write shrill little songs about her eyes and lips. It does not
matter now what she wanted.
"But you matter."
David's voice cut through the fog of new thoughts that were confusing
his daughter's mind and she could feel his body stiffen. A thrill ran
through her own body and she forgot McGregor. With all the strength of
her spirit she was absorbed in what David was saying. In the challenge
that was coming from the lips of her father she began to feel there
would be born in her own life a definite purpose.
"Women want to push out into life, to share with men the disorder and
mussiness of little things. What a desire! Let them try it if they
wish. They will sicken of the attempt. They lose sight of something
bigger they might undertake. They have forgotten the old things, Ruth
in the corn and Mary with the jar of precious ointment, they have
forgotten the beauty they were meant to help men create.
"Let them share only in man's attempt to create beauty. That is the
big, the delicate task to which they should consecrate themselves. Why
attempt instead the cheaper, the secondary task? They are like this
McGregor."
The ploughmaker became silent. Taking up the whip he drove the horses
rapidly along. He thought that his point was made and was satisfied to
let the imagination of his daughter do the rest. They turned off the
boulevard and passed through a street of small stores. Before a saloon
a troop of street urchins led by a drunken man without a hat gave a
grotesque imitation of McGregor's Marchers before a crowd of laughing
idlers. With a sinking heart Margaret realised that even at the height
of his power the forces that would eventually destroy the impulses
back of McGregor's Marchers were at work. She crept closer to David.
"I love you," she said. "Some day I may have a lover but always I
shall love you. I shall try to be what you want of me."
It was past two o'clock that night when David arose from the chair
where he had been for several hours quietly reading. With a smile on
his face he went to a window facing north toward the city. All through
the evening groups of men had been passing the house. Some had gone
scuffling along, a mere disorderly mob, some had gone shoulder to
shoulder chanting the marching song of the workers and a few, under
the influence of drink, had stopped before the house to roar out
threats. Now all was quiet. David lighted a cigar and stood for a long
time looking out over the city. He was thinking of McGregor and
wondering what excited dream of power the day had brought into the
man's head. Then he thought of his daughter and of her escape. A soft
light came into his eyes. He was happy but when he had partially
undressed a new mood came and he turned out the lights in the room and
went again to the window. In the room above Margaret had been unable
to sleep and had also crept to the window. She was thinking again of
McGregor and was ashamed of her thoughts. By chance both father and
daughter began at the same moment to doubt the truth of what David had
said during the drive along the boulevard. Margaret could not express
her doubts in words but tears came into her eyes.
As for David, he put his hand on the sill of the window and for just a
moment his body trembled as with age and weariness. "I wonder," he
muttered--"if I had youth--perhaps McGregor knew he would fail and yet
had the courage of failure, I wonder if both Margaret and myself lack
the greater courage, if that evening long ago when I walked under the
trees I made a mistake? What if after all this McGregor and his woman
knew both roads. What if they, after looking deliberately along the
road toward success in life, went without regret along the road to
failure? What if McGregor and not myself knew the road to beauty?"
END
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