The One Woman Part 37

Man would be guaranteed food, clothes, shelter and children, just as the chattel slave. There could be no inducement to work unless compelled to, and no man except an idiot would do a disagreeable task unless forced to do it. You must remember there could be no lawyers or bankers, preachers or orators. The chief occupation of your Labour Master would be the a.s.signment of people he didn't like to the hard, dirty jobs, and the granting of favourite tasks to such people as made themselves agreeable to His Majesty. Witness the master of the Russian Commune, who is notoriously the lord of all the wives of the village."

Overman was still a moment, and then growled from the depths of his being:

"I call this the lowest, the most degrading, the most b.e.s.t.i.a.l nightmare the human mind ever dreamed!"

Gordon waved him off with an eloquent gesture.

"You have a.s.sumed that a free commonwealth of G.o.dlike men and women would choose their worst units for their leaders."

"Nothing of the sort," he snapped. "I've supposed they would do the inevitable--choose the strongest man who looks like the majority and smells like the majority."

"A bad man would be removed," the dreamer quickly replied.

"What difference if your master be changed by an election now and then? All the worse. If I am to be a slave, I prefer the old chattel system with a master whose favour I could win and hold for life by faithful service. The old slaves often loved their masters. Could you love the Executive Officer of a Bureau for the Enforcement of Labour? Do convicts become infatuated with their keepers? To a.s.sa.s.sinate such a man would become a positive joy. How many years of such life would it take to crush out of the human soul the last spark of hope and aspiration and reduce man to a beast?"

"But we affirm the inherent divinity of man. You a.s.sume him to be a child of the devil."

There was another silence, and then the banker's brow wrinkled.

"Affirm. Yes, you fellows are all orators. You must affirm else the crowd will leave you. You never have doubts and fears. You always know. Only affirm a thing enough and never try to prove it, and thousands of fools will accept it at last as the word of G.o.d. That is the secret of the power of all demagogues and emotional orators.

The slickest horse-thief that ever operated in the West was a revivalist who migrated there with a tent. While he held the crowd spellbound with his eloquence, his confederates loosed the horses in the woods and got them to a safe place. Oratory is one of the cheapest tricks ever played on man, but an everlastingly effective one, because it is based on affirmation. Any man who is too hard-headed and honest to affirm a thing he don't know and can't know never leads a mob. They will only follow a man who speaks with the sublime authority of knowledge he does not possess."

While Overman was talking Gordon's brow clouded as he watched Kate's face flash with interest and a smile now and then play between her eyes and lips.

"We seem to be developing another orator," he slowly answered.

Overman pursed his lips.

"I haven't wasted so much breath in a long time. Your French programme stirred me. I wonder if you recalled the decline of the French nation in modern times, and its causes, in arranging for your conquest of France? A little while ago the Anglo-Saxon race numbered but a few millions, and the Latin ruled the world. Now the flag of the Anglo-Saxon flies over one-fourth the inhabitants of the globe, his army can withstand the combined armies of the world, his navy rules the sea, and his wealth is so great he could buy the entire possessions of the rest of mankind. Why? Because he developed the most powerful individual man in history, while other races have sought refuge in the herd idea of communal interests.

I noticed you never preach now from the old text, 'What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and forfeit his life?' Why save the world if you destroy man?"

But Gordon had ceased to listen to Overman. With his great blue-veined fist clenched on his chin and a new gleam of light in his steel-gray eyes he was watching his wife's face.

CHAPTER XXIV

COURTIER AND QUEEN

Overman was quick to detect the hostility of his friend's unusual silence, and hastily rose.

"Excuse me, old boy," he said, apologetically, "if I've hit too hard. I think the world of you in spite of your fool theories. You know that."

"Don't worry, Mark," he answered, carelessly. "I haven't been listening to you at all. I've been thinking of something else.

Life's too short to pay any attention to your big Philistine jaw."

The banker smiled.

"Well, you have the instrument handy with which Samson slew the Philistine."

"Yes, if you would only loan it to me. Goodnight."

When he had gone, Kate leaned back on the lounge and said with evident amus.e.m.e.nt:

"You forgot something in parting with your old schoolmate."

"Yes, I thought it quite unnecessary to tell him to drop in any time, unless you wish to let the front room."

A tremor of catlike fun slyly played about her mouth.

"And yet women have been called fickle. Mr. Overman was no college chum of mine."

"No; but he is evidently trying to make up for it now."

A low musical laugh seemed to come from the depth of Kate's spirit.

"And I thought I was pleasing you by neglecting my Bohemians and cultivating your powerful friend."

"Still it is not necessary to hang on his words with such melting interest," he said, with quiet emphasis.

She looked up sharply and a gleam of cruelty flashed from her blue eyes and struck the steel-gray in his. Beneath the quiet words of the man and woman there was raging the mortal struggle of will and personality, the woman in fierce rebellion, his iron egotism demanding submission.

"'Oh, I see," she purred, softly. "There is to be but one man-G.o.d, arrayed and beautiful, if I may quote your formula. There may be many women-G.o.ds in paradise. I saw Ruth in the Temple the first Sunday you spoke, hanging on your words as the voice of the Lord."

Gordon flushed and turned uneasily in his chair.

"I'd as well be frank with you, Kate. Overman is coming to this house too often. I was shocked beyond measure when I failed to find you in your accastomed seat on the Sunday of the dedication of the Temple. I was told you were in the gallery with him."

She straightened herself up suddenly.

"You took the pains to find that out?"

"Yes."

She fixed on him a look of scorn.

"And stooped to ask an usher instead of asking me? You, who boldly say to the world that I am your free comrade, the mate and equal of man?"

"An odd way you took to show comrades.h.i.+p in such an hour," he answered, doggedly.

"Am I a slave, to sit in solemn rapture at your feet and await your nod?"