Dennison Grant Part 33

"But how are you going to bring that golden age about?" Murdoch inquired.

"By education. The first thing is to accept the principle that wealth cannot be accepted except in exchange for full-measure service. You, Mrs. Transley--you teach your little boy that he must not steal. As he grows older simply widen your definition of theft to include receiving value without giving value in exchange. When all the mothers begin teaching that principle the golden age which Mr. Murdoch inquires about will be in sight."

"How would you drive it home?" said Y.D. "We have too many laws already."

"Let us agree on that. The acceptance of this principle will make half the laws now cluttering our statute books unnecessary. I merely urge that we should treat the CAUSE of our economic malady rather than the symptoms."

"Theoretically your idea has much to commend it, but it is quite impracticable," Mr. Squiggs announced with some finality. "It could never be brought into effect."

"If a corporation can determine the value of the service rendered by each of its hundred thousand employees, why cannot a nation determine the value of the service rendered by each of its hundred million citizens?"

"THERE'S something for you to chew on, Squiggs," said Transley. "You argue your case well, Grant; I believe you have our legal light rather feazed--that's the word, isn't it, Mr. Murdoch?--for once. I confess a good deal of sympathy with your point of view, but I'm afraid you can't change human nature."

"I am not trying to do that. All that needs changing is the popular idea of what is right and what is wrong. And that idea is changing with a rapidity which is startling. Before the war the man who made money, by almost any means, was set up on a pedestal called Success. Moralists pointed to him as one to be emulated; Sunday school papers printed articles to show that any boy might follow in his footsteps and become great and respected. To-day, for following precisely the same practices, the nation demands that he be thrown into prison; the Press heaps contumely upon him; he has become an object of suspicion in the popular eye. This change, world wide and quite unforeseen, has come about in five years."

"Is that due to a new sense of right and wrong, or to just old-fas.h.i.+oned envy of the rich which now feels strong enough to threaten where it used to fawn?" Y.D.'s wife asked, and Grant was spared a hard answer by the rancher's interruption, "Hit the profiteer as hard as you like. He's got no friends."

"That depends upon who is the profiteer--a point which no one seems to have settled. In the cities you may even hear prosperous ranchers included in that cla.s.s--absurd as that must seem to you," Grant added, with a smile to Y.D. "Require every man to give service according to his returns and you automatically eliminate all profiteers, large and small."

"But you will admit," said Mrs. Squiggs, "that we must have some well-off people to foster culture and give tone to society generally?"

"I agree that the boy who is brought up in a home with a bath tub, and all that that stands for, is likely to be a better citizen than the boy who doesn't have that advantage. That's why I want every home to have a bath tub."

Mrs. Squiggs subsided rather heavily. In youth her Sat.u.r.day night ablutions had been taken in the middle of the kitchen floor.

"I have a good deal of sympathy," said Transley, "with any movement which has for its purpose the betterment of human conditions. Any successful man of to-day will admit, if he is frank about it, that he owes his success as much to good luck as to good judgment. If you could find a way, Grant, to take the element of luck out of life, perhaps you would be doing a service which would justify you in keeping those millions which worry you so. But I can't see that it makes any difference to the prosperity of a country who owns the wealth in it, so long as the wealth is there and is usefully employed. Money doesn't grow unless it works, and if it works it serves Society just the same as muscle does. You could put all your wealth in a strong-box and bury it under your house up there on the hill, and it wouldn't increase a nickel in a thousand years, but if you put it to work it makes money for you and money for other people as well. I'm a little nervous about new-fangled notions. It's easier to wreck the s.h.i.+p than to build a new one, which may not sail any better. What the world needs to-day is the gospel of hard work, and everybody, rich and poor, on the job for all that's in him. That's the only way out."

"We seem to have much in common," Grant returned. "Hard work is the only way out, and the best way to encourage hard work is to find a system by which every man will be rewarded according to the service rendered."

At this point Mrs. Transley arose, and the men moved out into the living-room to chat on less contentious subjects. After a time the women joined them, and Grant presently found himself absorbed in conversation with the old rancher's wife. Zen seemed to pay but little attention to him, and for the first time he began to realize what consummate actresses women are. Had Transley been the most suspicious of husbands--and in reality his domestic vision was as guileless as that of a boy--he could have caught no glint of any smoldering spark of the long ago. Grant found himself thinking of this dissembling quality as one of nature's provisions designed for the protection of women, much as the sombre plumage of the prairie chicken protects her from the eye of the sportsman. For after all the hunting instinct runs through all men, be the game what it may.

Before they realized how the time had flown Linder was protesting that he must be on his way. At the gate Transley put a hand on Grant's shoulder.

"I'm prepared to admit," he said, "that there's a whole lot in this old world that needs correcting, but I'm not sure that it can be corrected.

You have a right to try out your experiments, but take a tip and keep a comfortable cache against the day when you'll want to settle down and take things as they are. It is true and always has been true that a man who is worth his salt, when he wants a thing, takes it--or goes down in the attempt. The loser may squeal, but that seems to be the path of progress. You can't beat it."

"Well, we'll see," said Grant, laughing. "Sometimes two men, each worth his salt, collide."

"As in the meadow of the South Y.D.," said Transley, with a smile. "You remember that, Y.D.--when our friend here upset the haying operations?"

"Sure, I remember, but I'm not holdin' it agin him now. A dead horse is a dead horse, an' I don't go sniffin' it."

"Perhaps I ought to say, though," Grant returned, "that I really do not know how the iron pegs got into that meadow."

"And I don't know how your haystacks got afire, but I can guess.

Remember Drazk? A little locoed, an' just the crittur to pull off a fool stunt like that. When the fire swept up the valley, instead of down, he made his get-away and has never been seen since. I reckon likely there was someone in Landson's gang capable o' drivin' pegs without consultin'

the boss."

The little group were standing in the shadow and Grant had no opportunity to notice the sudden blanching of Zen's face at the mention of Drazk.

"You're wrong about his not having been seen again, Y.D.," said Grant.

"He managed to locate me somewhere in France. That reminds me, he had a message for you, Mrs. Transley. I'm afraid Drazk is as irresponsible as ever, provided he hasn't pa.s.sed out, which is more than likely."

Grant shook hands cordially with Y.D. and his wife, with Squiggs and Mrs. Squiggs, with Transley and Mrs. Transley. Any inclination he may have felt to linger over Zen's hand was checked by her quick withdrawal of it, and there was something in her manner quite beyond his understanding. He could have sworn that the self-possessed Zen Transley was actually trembling.

CHAPTER XIX

The next day Wilson paid his usual visit to the field where Grant was plowing, and again was he the bearer of a message. With much difficulty he managed to extricate the envelope from a pocket.

"Dear Mr. Grant," it read, "I am so excited over a remark you dropped last night I must see you again as soon as possible. Can you drop in to-night, say at eight. Yours,--ZEN."

Grant read the message a second time, wondering what remark of his could have occasioned it. As he recalled the evening's conversation it had been most about his experiment, and he had a sense that he had occupied a little more of the stage than strictly good form would have suggested.

However, it was HIS scheme that had been under discussion, and he did not propose to let it suffer for lack of a champion. But what had he said that could be of more than general interest to Zen Transley? For a moment he wondered if she had created a pretext upon which to bring him to the house by the river, and then instantly dismissed that thought as unworthy of him. At any rate it was evident that his addressing her by her Christian name in the last message had given no offence. This time she had not called him "The Man-on-the-Hill," and there was no suggestion of playfulness in the note. Then the signature, "Yours, Zen"; that might mean everything, or it might mean nothing. Either it was purely formal or it implied a very great deal indeed. Grant reflected that it could hardly be interpreted anywhere between those two extremes, and was it reasonable to suppose that Zen would use it in an ENTIRELY formal sense? If it had been "yours truly," or "yours sincerely," or any such stereotyped conclusion, it would not have called for a second thought, but the simple word "yours"--

"If only she were," thought Grant, and felt the color creeping to his face at the thought. It was the first time he had dared that much.

He had not bothered to wonder much where or how this affair must end.

Through all the years that had pa.s.sed since that night when she had fallen asleep on his shoulder, and he had watched the ribbons of fire rising and falling in the valley, and the smell of gra.s.s-smoke had been strong in his nostrils, through all those years Zen had been to him a sweet, evasive memory to be dreamed over and idealized, a wild, daring, irresponsible incarnation of the spirit of the hills. Even in these last few days he had followed the path simply because it lay before him. He had not sought her out in all that great West; he had been content with his dream of the Zen of years gone by; if Fate had brought him once more within the orbit of his star surely Fate had a purpose in all its doings. One who has learned to believe that no bullet will find him unless "his name and number are on it" has little difficulty in excusing his own indiscretions by fatalistic reasoning.

He wrote on the back of the note, "Look for me at eight," and then, observing that the boy had not brought teddy along, he inquired solicitously for the health of the little pet.

"He's all right, but mother wouldn't let me bring him. Said I might lose him." The tone in which the last words were spoken implied just how impossible such a thing was. Lose teddy! No one but a mother could think such an absurdity.

"But I got a knife!" Wilson exclaimed, his mind darting to a happier subject. "Daddy gave it to me. Will you sharpen it? It is as dull as a pig."

Grant was to learn during the day that all the boy's figures of speech were now hung on the family pig. The knife was as dull as a pig; the plow was as rough as a pig; the horses, when they capered at a corner, were as wild as a pig; even Grant himself, while he held the little chap firmly on his knee, received the doubtful compliment of being as strong as a pig. He went through the form of sharpening the knife on the leather lines of the harness, and was pleased to discover that Wilson, with childish dexterity of imagination, now p.r.o.nounced it as sharp as a pig.

The boy did not return to the field in the afternoon, and Grant spent the time in a strange admixture of happiness over the pleasant companions.h.i.+p he had found in this little son of the prairies and antic.i.p.ation of his meeting with Zen that night. All his reflection had failed to suggest the subject so interesting to her as to bring forth her unconventional note, but it was enough for him that his presence was desired. As to the future--he would deal with that when he came to it.

As evening approached the horses began their usual procedure of turning their heads homeward at the end of each furrow. Beginning about five o'clock, they had a habit of a.s.suming that each furrow was obviously the last one for the day, and when the firm hand on the lines brought them sharply back to position they trudged on with an apologetic air which seemed to say that of course they were quite willing to work another hour or two but they supposed their master would want to be on his way home. Today, however, he surprised them, and the first time they turned their heads he unhitched, and, throwing himself lightly across Prince's ample back, drove them to their stables.

Grant prepared his supper of bacon and eggs and fried potatoes, bread and jam and black tea, and ate it from the kitchen table as was his habit except on state occasions. Sometimes a touch of the absurdity of his behavior would tickle his imagination--he, who might dine in the midst of wealth and splendor, with soft lights beating down upon him, soft music swelling through arching corridors, soft-handed waiters moving about on deep, silent carpetings, perhaps round white shoulders across the table and the faint smell of delicate perfumes--that he should prefer to eat from the white oilcloth of his kitchen table was a riddle far beyond any ordinary intellect. And yet he was happy in this life; happy in his escape from the tragic routine of being decently civilized; happier, he knew, than he ever could be among all the artificial pleasures that wealth could buy him. Sometimes, as a concession to this absurdity, he would set his table in the dining-room with his best dishes, and eat his silent meal very grandly, until the ridiculousness of it all would overcome him and he would jump up with a boyish whoop and sweep everything into the kitchen.

But to-night he had no time for make-belief. Supper ended, he put a basin of water on the stove and went out to give his horses their evening attention, after which he had a wash and a careful shave and dressed himself in a light grey suit appropriate to an autumn evening.

And then he noticed that he had just time to walk to Transley's house before eight o'clock.

Zen received him at the door; the maid had gone to a neighbor's, she said, and Wilson was in bed. It was still bright outside, but the sheltered living-room, to which she showed him, was wrapped in a soft twilight.

"Shall we have a lamp, or the fireplace?" she asked, then inferentially answered by saying that a cool wind was blowing down from the mountains.

"I had the maid build the fire," she continued, and he could see the outline of her form bending over the grate. She struck a match; its glow lit up her cheeks and hair; in a moment the dry wood was crackling and ribbons of blue smoke were curling into the chimney.

"I have been so anxious to see you--again," she said, drawing a chair not far from his. "A chance remark of yours last night brought to memory many things--things I have been trying to forget." Then, abruptly, "Did you ever kill a man?"

"You know I was in the war," he returned, evading her question.

"Yes, and you do not care to dwell on that phase of it. I should not have asked you, but you will be the better able to understand. For years I have lived under the cloud of having killed a man."

"You!"