Masterman and Son Part 13

"What don't I understand?"

"What was in my thought."

"It's not a thing I'm at all anxious to understand," he retorted grimly.

"But you must. I won't be condemned unheard."

"But you condemned me unheard."

This was a shaft that drew blood. It was true, Arthur knew it to be true; he had taken the word of other people against his father.

"There were circ.u.mstances----" he began.

"Circ.u.mstances? Every fool pleads circ.u.mstances," Masterman interrupted. "Give it the right name, you that are so honest, and say lying gossip."

"No, it was not gossip, father."

And thereupon he went over the whole story of the illness of Vickars, his visit to Dr. Leet, and the doctor's angry denunciation of the builder of the Lonsdale Road houses as a scoundrel. He spoke with quiet force, and his father listened in perfect silence, but with averted face.

"Have you done?"

"Yes, father."

"Are you sure you've omitted nothing?"

"No, that is all."

"Well, now listen to me. Dr. Leet may be right or wrong in what he says--I don't know, and I don't care. The only thing I know is that when I built those houses I gave the best value I could at the price.

I've told you before that if I am paid a cheap price I give cheap work.

All the talking in the world can't upset that position--it's plain business."

"But if people die through the cheap work! O father, you can't mean what you say!"

"A good many people have lived in Lonsdale Road and haven't died. Your doctor is an old woman, telling fairy-tales. But even if he were right, I disclaim responsibility. I give the best value I can for the money; if people won't pay for things, they can't have them. _I_ didn't set the standards of business. They existed before me, and they'll exist after me. If I hadn't built those houses, some one else would have built them, and probably worse."

"But the dishonesty of it!" cried Arthur.

"Dishonest? Well, I'll admit that too, if you like. But whose dishonesty? Find me a business in London that isn't dishonest. It's London itself that is dishonest. It insists on having what it hasn't paid for, and won't pay for. It prefers shoddy because it's cheap. It has no right to complain of what it gets."

Arthur listened in appalled silence; before this brutally lucid exposition of what business meant, it seemed as though all his fine ideals of right and justice were so many burst bubbles. For a long moment it was as though he saw the world streaming past him, like a dark torrent thronged with dead faces, upon whose agonised pale lips was the eternal accusation of things as they are.

"Father, it can't be right!" he cried.

"There's a power of things isn't right in this world, as you'll find out some day. And talking won't put 'em right, either. But that brings me to what I wanted to say. It's about the thing you omitted to mention when you told me your story."

"What was that, father?"

"I'll tell you. You can show me what's wrong in my business, and now I'm going to show you something that's wrong in your conduct. If I told you you'd behaved like a sulky young whelp, you'd say I was unjust, wouldn't you? Well, that's just what you've done."

"Father----"

"Don't interrupt. You've had your say, and I mean now to have mine, and be done with it. If you'd come to me when this thing began to trouble you, I'd have talked it over with you frankly. But what did you do? You kept away from me. You did worse. You went about repeating what Dr. Leet said. You hadn't even the common decency to wait until you'd seen me. You hadn't even the grat.i.tude to recollect that I'd done the best I could for you, and was planning to do more.

You behaved just like a bad-hearted little boy who goes about letting folks think that his father is his enemy. That's pretty behaviour in a son, isn't it? But it seems that's the kind of son I've got. And for that I don't forgive you. You've made it clear that you and I can't draw together."

"I never meant anything of the kind."

"Never meant! What kind of excuse is that? It's what every slack-baked youth in the office says when he's played the fool. And when a youth can find nothing better to say than that, I fire him. And I'm going to fire you."

"I am entirely in your hands, father. I can see that I was wrong in not coming to you at once. What more can I say?"

"It's too late to say anything. You can't undo wrong by just saying you are wrong. The plain fact is, I can't trust you. There's only one end for it--you must go your way, and I mine."

There was a rough dignity in Masterman as he uttered these words which was profoundly moving. Had he been only angry, violent, or satirical, Arthur could have borne it. He would have been sustained by the justice of his cause. But now that very justice on which he had relied for strength broke beneath him like a rotten prop. He who had been so keen for justice was himself unjust. He saw himself--an implicit parricide, a child who had taken arms against his father. And he saw with a sudden agonised clearness of perception his father's nature, with its strange blending of rugged virtue and unscrupulous craft, its hard, indomitable fibre shot through by soft veins of tenderness, his public traffic with dishonour almost counterbalanced by his stern reticence under the early cruelties he had endured, and his honourable, stoical silence under their brutal ignominies--he saw all this, and he saw himself as weak, hysteric, foolish, crying out for justice in another, but blind to the folly of his own behaviour.

"I am sorry, father," he said in a broken voice.

"That's the first sensible word you've said to-night. Only, you see, it comes too late. You and me's got to part. Our roads lie different."

"What do you wish me to do, father?"

"I don't know. I want to think things over. You'd better go now."

And then with a sudden savage burst of anger, as Arthur left the room, he shouted after him: "You can take my compliments to Dr. Leet, and tell him he's a confounded interfering fool!"

But there was more of pain than anger in this violent dismissal.

X

THE FAREWELL

The night had fallen upon Eagle House. Arthur sat alone in his bedroom at the open window. A soft wind talked to itself in the branches of the big mulberry tree on the lawn; a few placid stars shone in the blue-black heavens, then the late moon like a yellow fire; a nested sparrow chirped contentedly beneath the eaves; and, like a solemn wash of waves upon a hidden beach, London moaned and murmured through all its vast circ.u.mference. Out of the deep night the Spirit of his own Youth arose, and sat beside him.

"Listen to me," said the Spirit. "I bring with me two swords--Faith and Courage. Gird them on."

But London laughed. A soft derision shook the leaves upon the mulberry tree, and the waves upon the hidden beach were scornful.

"You have your life to live. Live it," said the Spirit.

But the stars, like eyes, turned slowly toward him in despairing irony.

"How many millions have we heard say that," they whispered, "and each has been overcome in turn, and has sunk in nameless dust."

"You are not as the nameless millions," said the Spirit. "You are yourself, with your own right and power to live."

And at that the heavens moved, and an infinite procession of scarred brows and sad eyes, pa.s.sed by, and a mult.i.tude of lips whispered, "We said that once, but Life was too strong for us."

"Nevertheless, thou canst conquer Life," said the Spirit.