The constraint that Laurence had felt from the moment of meeting his long lost parent—for their parting rose up before him, the memory of a blow—had vanished. The old man had brushed it away, as soon as they were alone, by a quiet net statement.
"You mustn't think, Laurence, that I've come back to fasten myself on you. I shall stay here only a day or so. I have my own life, and I don't need anything from you."
"That isn't what I was thinking of—"
"I know, but this is what I want to say, it would be ridiculous for me to act as if I had any claim on you, after everything. I don't feel any, don't expect anything. Naturally you couldn't have any affection for me, I wouldn't have any place here, even if I wanted it. And I don't need any money. I just wanted you to understand it."
"Of course you have a claim—"
"No, no, I gave all that up a long time ago, cut off that sort of thing, by my own will, you know. I wasn't made for family life. Couldn't stand it.... Of course I know you have a grudge against me, and quite right. I didn't do my duty by my family, that's a fact. Should never have had a family."
They were sitting before a fire in the library. Theold man had refused the cigar Laurence offered, and was smoking a short black pipe.
"I suppose we all feel that way at times," said Laurence moodily.
"Yes, but most struggle along with it. I did, for a good many years, not very well, though. It was against the grain. I got caught in the wheel of things, it was grinding me to pieces."
"The wheel of things," Laurence repeated absently.
"Yes, and of course through a woman. They get us into it. Your mother was a good woman, I've nothing to say against her. I fell in love with her, that wasn't her fault, nor mine either.... But 'twas she led me to the priest, and then over to this country. She was of better family than me, you see, her father was a squire; and she had a great ambition to get on in the world and be genteel. When she saw I couldn't do it, she got bitter to me. Oh, it was all natural, she wanted her children to be well off, educated. You can remember how we lived, nobody could blame your mother, I didn't myself, but she made it hell to me. I wanted to be my own master and have time to think.... So I cut loose from it."
Laurence nodded brusquely, but frowned, gazing at the neat, gentle-voiced old man.
"'Twas wrong, of course," old Timothy went on reflectively. "From the usual point of view. But I can't say I'm sorry I did it. I've had time to look about me and to learn some things. I always had a thirst for learning—books and ideas—"
"Yes, no doubt! But perhaps you don't know how my mother lived!" said Laurence bitingly.
"I couldn't have bettered it," the old man replied tranquilly. "I couldn't really, Laurence. The drink had got hold of me, I'd have gone from bad to worse. I couldn't help it ... 'twas because my life was miserable, I was only a dumb brute, like an ox, just living to work, feed and sleep. 'Twas no life for a man."
"It wasn't a life for my mother, either, was it?"
"No, but women can stand it better than we can, they don't like it but it doesn't kill their souls.... I'd have drunk myself to death in a few years. 'Tis they get us into it anyway—they're bound to the wheel, and they draw us in. They think of food and clothing and being respectable. A man has got other things to think of—he can't spend his life feeding a lot of hungry mouths.... Nine we had, but they mostly died when babies, the better for them."
The old man leaned forward to shake the ashes out of his pipe, and smiling, he added:
"Of course I don't expect you to think anything but ill of me. You always took your mother's part, and 'twas right.... And now you've got a family of your own and done well by them, and you've got up in the world—you'll feel accordingly and look down on me, naturally."
"I don't look down—!"
"Oh, maybe not because of the money and the fine house, I don't mean that. But you're in the big machine, I'm not. You're a success, I've been a failure, from a social point of view—"
"Success?" said Laurence.
Sunk deep in the big armchair, his head bent forward, he stared at the fire from under his bent brows.
"Surely. You're a big man here, Laurence, I found out—you've made a fine name for yourself. You've got wealth too, a real lady and a beautiful one for a wife, three fine boys—and this house you live in, why, it's a palace."
There was a faint veiled irony in the old man's voice.
"Your mother would have been proud to see you, Laurence."
"But you're not, eh?" Laurence smiled aggressively. "You've got something else in your mind."
"Well—yes ... I don't care much for all this. I find a man needs very little to live, and all the rest is waste, so I think."
"You've become a philosopher," growled Laurence.
"Yes," the old man chuckled. "Long ago I took to the road. Since then I've never owned anything nor had any care for the morrow. I travel like the birds and pick up my living as I go."
Laurence made no comment but continued to gaze into the fire, sunk deep in reverie. He looked very tired; his whole big frame relaxed, his eyelids drooped.
But he was thinking—or rather, whole scenes from the past were flashing by him, things long forgotten, it seemed.... After a rather long silence he said dreamily:
"You know Pat was killed at Shiloh, I suppose?"
"I heard he was killed, yes—that is, I didn't know it till I got back here."
"And you didn't know my mother was dead, either—or what had become of me?"
"No, Larry, no—how could I?"
The old man filled his pipe again from a bag of tobacco that he carried in his pocket.
"Well, youarean old bird," said Laurence sardonically.
"Family isn't the only thing," was old Timothy's calm response. "'Tisn't even the main thing."
"Oh, what is, in your opinion?"
"Why, a man's work—his ideas."
"Work? I thought you didn't work."
"I don't work for a boss, or for a society that only wants to exploit me, and I haven't these many years. I've gone hungry rather, lived with the lowest andoffthem too, rather than that. Once I got out of that hell, I wouldn't go back into it, sooner starve.... But I work for what I'm interested in."
"And what's that?"
"The big change that's coming, Larry. The day when there'll be real freedom for every man."
The old man paused, then said abruptly:
"You're your mother's son. It's her blood in you that's made you go the way you have.... On my side we go another way. Far back my people were all rebels. Hardly a man of 'em died in their beds.... There's a bigger war coming in this country, Laurence, than the one you fought in. There you were on the right side of the fence, but now you're not—you've gone over."
"Gone over? Gone over to what?"
"To the rich, to the capitalists, to the whole rotten system. You're a pillar of it now."
Laurence opened his eyes, looked interested.
"Do you think so, Dad?" he enquired, using for the first time the familiar address of long ago.
"Sure I think so!"
A pugnacious spark lit the old man's eye, his philosophic calm wavered.
"I'd been better pleased, Larry, if you'd stuck by your own class. It's men like you we need—you could have been a leader! But it's the old story, so soon as a man of ours shows the ability, the other side gets him—he goes after the fleshpots, and he's lost to us!"
"There are no classes in this country, you're thinking of the old world, Dad," said Laurence tolerantly.
"There's always two classes—them that have and them that want!" declared the old man curtly.
"You're for a class-war, then?"
"I'm for it!... Not for myself, thank God the day's long past, if it ever was, when I wanted anything for myself. But I belong to the Knights of Labour and I've travelled the country over, helping to organize here and there. I see the big fight coming. This country's changed. The rich get richer and the poor poorer. The big fortunes are piling up. You'll see ... you'll see."
"You're a true Irishman, Dad, always spoiling for a fight—always against the powers that be."
"And you come of the same stock, but you've gone back on it! Maybe you've sold yourself to the powers that be!"
"No," said Laurence coolly. "No man can say that of me. Look over my record, if you like to take the trouble. Ask what my reputation is.... You'll find I've stood for the poor and oppressed as much as you,or maybe more—I've fought many a poor man's case against a rich corporation, and won it too."
"Then how did you get all this?"
The old man waved his hand, clasping the stubby black pipe, and fixed a shrewd sparkling glance on his son.
Laurence laughed abruptly.
"Partly by inheritance, by investments, speculation sometimes, not by bribery or corruption!... But it seems rather funny to me that you should drop down on me this way, all of a sudden, and accuse me! Yes, by George, it's funny! Life is certainly amusing, at times."
"You mean I haven't any right to call you to account," said the old man placidly. "But I don't do it because you're my son—but because you're a strong man that was born of us and ought to have stayed with us."
"Us? You mean I ought to have been a day-labourer?... You're a fanatic, Dad.... If you were so anxious to have me go the right way, why didn't you stay and train me up?"
"It was weakness, I know, but, as I told you, I couldn't stand your mother, God rest her soul.... But of course I didn't see as much then as I do now. I've picked up some education, I've studied Marx and the Internationalists...."
"And you're for revolution. I see. But it won't come, not in this country, not anyway in your lifetime or mine, and then only slowly, by degrees.... Oh, I've looked into those things as well as you. Social questionsinterest me. I see the battle of opposing forces, and I'm on your side too, on the side of the advance, as I see it.But—it won't come by a sudden blow—not here. Little by little, as a man's frame changes. This country's built on the English model, little as you may like it, slow to change but yet changing.... And that's where I come in. Don't you see the cause needs a friend at court? You can batter away on the outside as much as you like, but you need somebody inside!"
"Maybe.... That wasn't what made you want to get inside, though, was it, Larry?" said the old man cynically.
"Oh, I don't know.... I don't know why I wanted to."
Laurence stood up, stretching his arms with a look of nervous fatigue.
"I promised the boys a game of billiards—come on up, will you?"
"All right, all right."
Laurence stood a moment with his back to the fire, looking about the room. Its length on two sides was filled nearly to the ceiling with books. There was Judge Baxter's private library in its stately bindings, and many of his law-books, huge bound volumes of reports, "commonplace" books filled with his neat crabbed writing, ponderous commentaries in calf. Laurence had done a good deal of work in this room....
"I wanted to count for something," he said absently. "Who doesn't?"
"Yes, but for what—that's the point! What's all this good for, that you've got? Loot!"
"I wanted," said Laurence, deep in his own thoughtsand oblivious of this condemnation, "I wanted—human happiness, more than anything. For myself, yes—and for other people.... I wanted life to be more interesting, richer than it was, with more pleasure in it.... Why not? Why can't it be?... I tried, here in this town—"
"Oh, I know!" broke in the old man impatiently. "Public improvements and all that. Suppose theyhavegot cement sidewalks and lots of trees? Suppose yedidgive 'em a library? I know they say you've done a lot for the town ... but you want to be a big man, the patron, the boss, and give it to 'em out of charity! That's the same old story, it doesn't interest me. Give the people justice, they won't want charity!"
"Justice!" murmured Laurence with an abstracted smile.
"Well, their rights, then, if you like it better. I don't mean the kind of justice that you deal them out, sitting up on your high seat!"
"I deal them out the best I can find," said Laurence gently. "The law gets re-made rather slowly, you know.... But I'll admit to you that I don't sleep well, the night after I've sentenced a man."
"I never thought to see that—you, Larry Carlin, sentencing people to prison!"
"No, I don't sleep well," said Laurence vaguely.
He rubbed his hand over his eyes and shrugged his shoulders with a look of weariness.
"Well, shall we go up?" he said shortly. "I'm mighty sorry, though, that you don't approve of me."
"Yes, yes, I understand!"
The old man laughed, and suddenly resumed his former manner, his placidity, with an ease that indicated long practice in adapting himself to shifting scenes and moods.
"You're not responsible to me, God knows.... To each his own life, and I'm not to be the judge of yours!... Anyhow, Larry," he added as they went toward the door, "you got what you wanted."
"Oh, yes—yes, I got it,—in many ways."
"And now you've got it—you wouldn't say now, as many do, that it's vanity and vexation of spirit?"
"Oh, of course!" Laurence laughed abruptly. "Still, when you go after a thing it's better to get it.... Then you can see what it's worth."