Rose MacLeod Part 50

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 fellows.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.sify nor define. Yet he must believe in it.

"Yes," he said. "I have seen it."

"You have? And you think I'm exempt. Why?"