Rose MacLeod

								

crowding me."
"What things?"
"Capital. Labor."
Osmond was silent a long time because he had too many things to say, all
of them impossible. He felt hot tears in his eyes from a passion of
revolt against the lad's wastefulness. He felt the shame of such
squandering. To him, all the steps in the existence by which his own
being had been preserved meant thrift and penury. He had conserved every
energy. He had lived wholesomely, not only for months, but unremittingly
for years. His only indulgences had been the brave temperate ones of air
and sleep; and with their aid he had built up in himself the strength of
the earth. And here was a creature whose clay was shot through with all
the tingling fires of life, whose hand carried witchery, whose brain and
eye were spiritual satellites, and he talked about painting by and by.
"What a hold that man has on you!" he breathed involuntarily.
Peter swept his little green nosegays into confusion and sat up. His
eyes were brilliant.
"Not the man," he said. "It's not the man. It's the facts behind him."
Osmond's thought flew back to one night, and a girl's reckless picture
of her father. It seemed now like a dream, yet it swayed him.
"What can you do for him?" he asked, forcing himself to a healthy
ruthlessness. "What have you done?"
"For Markham MacLeod? Nothing. What could I do for him? He has done
everything for me."
"What, Pete?"
"Opened my eyes. Made me realize the brotherhood of man. Why, see here,
Osmond!"
Osmond watched him, fascinated by the heat of him. He seemed possessed
by a passion which could never, one would say, have been inspired save
by what was noble.
"You know what kind of a fellow I've been: all right enough, but I like
pleasures, big and little. Well, when I began to listen to MacLeod, I
moved into a garret the poorest student would have grumbled at. I turned
in my money to the Brotherhood. The money I got for the portrait--maybe
I shouldn't have asked such a whacking big price if I hadn't wanted that
money--I turned that in to the Brotherhood. Would a fellow like me sleep
hard and eat crusts for anything but a big thing? Now I ask you?"
Osmond sat looking at him, and thinking, thinking. This, he understood
perfectly, was youth in the divinity of its throes over life, life
wherever it was bubbling and glowing. Always it was the fount of life,
and where the drops glittered, there the eyes of youth had to follow,
and the heart of youth had to go. The exact retort was rising to his
lips: "That was my money, the money you gave away. I earned it for you.
I dug it out of the ground." But the retort stayed there. He offered
only what seemed a blundering remonstrance: "I can't help feeling, Pete,
that it's your business to paint pictures. If you can paint 'em and give
the money to your Brotherhood, that's something. Only paint 'em."
"But you know, I've found out I can speak."
There it was again, the heart of youth on its new track, chasing the