Comrades Part 11

"Honestly, now, Governor, just between us, don't you think you were a little bit absurd to-day?"

"Absurd?" his father broke in with rising accent.

"Just a little childish about a piece of red, white, and blue cloth?"

"Perhaps so, my boy," was the answer. "Just about as absurd as you were over the red rag you lifted in its place. Why did you do it?"

"On the impulse of the moment, to express my feeling of contempt for war, and my faith in my fellow man."

"Exactly. So I acted on the impulse of the moment to express my contempt for that crowd of fools and fanatics--my loyalty and faith in my country."

"I can't understand how a man of your age, poise and pride, culture and power, could be so foolish. A sixteen-year-old school-boy on the Fourth of July, yes! But you----"

"Norman," the Colonel interrupted, in even tones, "I'm sorry I've been too busy for us to get acquainted. It's time we began. It may interest you to know that I, too, hate war--learned to hate it long before your Socialist orator was born--learned it in the grim University of h.e.l.l--war itself. Socialism has no patent on the hope of universal peace. I am a member of a peace society. I have always believed the Civil War should have been prevented. All the Negroes on this earth are not worth the blood and tears of one year of that struggle. Whether it could have been prevented G.o.d alone knows. When it came I volunteered--a drummer-boy at fourteen--and marched to the front beneath the flag you tore down to-day."

"I never thought of that, Governor--honestly, I never did!" the boy exclaimed.

"I went in," the Colonel continued, "with my head full of silly rubbish about the glory of war. When I beat the call to my first charge, and saw the men I knew and loved shot to pieces, and heard their groans and cries for water, I had no more delusions. I worked on the field that night until twelve o'clock, helping the men who were wounded--enemies as well as comrades. I learned the brotherhood of man and the meaning of red blood in the big, tragic school of life, my son. Many a boy in gray, whom I had fought, died in my arms while my heart ached for his loved ones in some far-away Southern home.

"But I knew the war had to be when once it was begun. I was fighting for the flag I loved--and I grew to love it better than life. To you it may be a bit of red, white, and blue bunting; to me it is the symbol of truth and right, liberty and human progress.

"My people in western North Carolina were all slave-holders and loyal to their state, except my father. He hated slavery, loved the Union, and moved on westward before the war. I saw them bury him in the flag you tore down to-day, my boy.

"Many a night I've lain on the ground looking up at the stars before the dawn of a day of battle and seen visions of that flag flying triumphant in the sky. I've seen the men who carried it shot down again and again, and another s.n.a.t.c.h it from their dying grasp and bear it on to victory.

"I grew not only to love it, but to believe in it with all the pa.s.sionate faith of my soul. I believe in its destiny, in its sublime mission to humanity. The older I've grown and the more I've seen of my fellow man, the wider I've travelled in foreign lands, the deeper has become my conviction that our flag symbolizes the n.o.blest, freest ideal ever born in the soul of man; that we have but to live up to its standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, and the kingdom of human brotherhood is already here.

"After the war, I joined the regular army, not because I loved war, but because there seemed nothing else for me to do at the time. I was absolutely alone in the world. At twenty-five I was in command of a company on the frontier. I had not been in battle since the end of the Civil War, when suddenly I found myself surrounded by a horde of hostile Indians, and I had to turn my machine guns on them and mow them down. The slaughter was something terrific. As the last charge was made I saw a young squaw retreat in the face of a withering fire, walk backward facing our men, holding a bundle of something behind her body. She fell at last, riddled with bullets. I rode up where she lay, and found the bundle to be a little Indian baby boy. He was unhurt, and stretched out his hand to me in friendly baby greeting. I found the squaw quite dead, and discovered the child was not her own. She was simply trying to save it for the tribe. I took the child and educated him. But he went back to the free life of the plains. I found him again, and made him the gamekeeper of our mountain preserves."

"You mean Saka?" Norman asked.

"Yes. That night as I lay in my tent I saw war as it is--a hideous, savage nightmare. From that moment I hated the service, hated its iron laws of discipline, its cruel machinery devised for suppressing the individuality of its members. I saw that night a larger vision of life. I made up my mind to create, not to kill--to build up, not to tear down. I left the army and mastered mining.

"Your leather-lunged agitators say that I stole my millions from the earnings of the men who worked for me. A more stupid lie was never uttered. I invented improved mining machinery. I made deserts blossom and gave employment to thousands of men who couldn't think for themselves. I did their thinking for them, and set their tasks. I have made millions, and have added tens of millions to the wealth of the West."

"If labour is the creator of all wealth can one man ever earn a million dollars?" Norman interrupted.

"Manual labour is not the creator of wealth. The brain which conceives is the creator of wealth. The hand which executes these plans is merely the automaton moved by a superior power."

"Yet nothing could be accomplished without it," persisted Norman.

His father lifted his hand with a gesture of command.

"We'll not discuss the theory of Socialism to-day, my boy. I grant you have plausible arguments which skilful demagogues are using with more and more efficiency. I don't object to your study of this subject. I'm rather pleased at the serious turn your energies have taken. What I do object to is your continued a.s.sociation with the kind of people who made up that crowd to-day--people who make the agitation of the revolutionary programme of the Socialists a daily profession, people who are seeking to destroy modern civilization itself."

"You will have to come down to earth, Governor," Norman said, "in your indictment of these people. The time has gone by when you can scare anybody with a few high-sounding phrases. If modern civilization is rotten, it ought to be destroyed, and who cares if it is?"

"The issue between us, my boy," the Colonel continued, gravely, "is not an academic one. It is not open to discussion. Some of the people you are a.s.sociating with have criminal records. If they continue their present wild harangues they will be shot down like dogs in the streets. I cannot afford to have my name even under the suspicion of sympathy for them, through you. Do you understand me?"

"I think I do," Norman replied, holding his father's steady gaze.

"You are my son and the heir of my fortune. But you must remember that I am the master of this establishment."

"I am aware of that fact, sir," the boy replied, in cold tones.

"I trust that it will not be necessary, then, for me to repeat to you my first positive order--that you will immediately sever your connection with the Socialist Club, and never again appear in public or private with the three people who were on that platform to-day."

"It will not be necessary for you to repeat your order," the young athlete replied, with a curious smile and a slight tightening of the lips.

"I thought as much."

Norman laughed, and the Colonel's eyes began to blaze.

"What do you mean, sir?" he sternly asked.

"That it will be unnecessary for you to repeat your order, for the very simple reason that I'm a man. I've the right to do my own thinking, and I propose to do it."

With a quick stride the Colonel confronted the young rebel, his breath quick and laboured, his face aflame with unbridled rage.

"You dare thus to defy my wishes?"

"If you put it that way, yes."

The Colonel stepped to the door and opened it.

"You will obey my order or get out of this house never to enter it again. Take your choice!"

"You mean it?" the younger man asked, with sullen emphasis.

"Exactly what I say," was the cold reply.

Norman turned without a word, seized his hat, and left the room. As he reached the end of the corridor, and placed his hand on the front door, his father's voice rang out suddenly:

"Norman!"

He paused, and looked back without taking his hand from the k.n.o.b.

"You can't be such a fool!" the Colonel cried.

"It looks that way, Governor!"

He opened the door, softly closed it, and was gone.

CHAPTER VIII

THROUGH THE EYES OF LOVE