Margret Howth: A Story of To-Day | Page 9

a man, who, unconscious, simple as a
child, lived out the law of his nature, and set the world at
defiance,--Bysshe Shelley.
The Doctor, talking to her father, watched the girl furtively, took in
every point, as one might critically survey a Damascus blade which he
was going to carry into battle. There was neither love nor scorn in his
look,--a mere fixedness of purpose to make use of her some day. He
talked, meanwhile, glancing at her now and then, as if the subject they
discussed were indirectly linked with his plan for her. If it were, she
was unconscious of it. She sat on the wooden step of the porch, looking
out on the melancholy sweep of meadow and hill range growing cool
and dimmer in the dun twilight, not hearing what they said, until the
sharpened, earnest tones roused her.
"You will fail, Knowles."
It was her father who spoke.
"Nothing can save such a scheme from failure. Neither the French nor
German Socialists attempted to base their systems on the lowest class,
as you design."
"I know," said Knowles. "That accounts for their partial success."
"Let me understand your plan practically," eagerly demanded her
father.
She thought Knowles evaded the question,--wished to leave the subject.
Perhaps he did not regard the poor old school-master as a practical
judge of practical matters. All his life he had called him thriftless and
unready.
"It never will do, Knowles," he went on in his slow way. "Any plan,

Phalanstery or Community, call it what you please, founded on self
government, is based on a sham, the tawdriest of shams."
The old school-master shook his head as one who knows, and tried to
push the thin gray hairs out of his eyes in a groping way. Margret lifted
them back, so quietly that he did not feel her.
"You'll call the Republic a sham next!" said the Doctor, coolly
aggravating.
"The Republic!" The old man quickened his tone, like a war-horse
scenting the battle near at hand. "There never was a thinner- crusted
Devil's egg in the world than democracy. I think I've told you that
before?"
"I think you have," said the other, dryly.
"You always were a Tory, Mr. Howth," said his wife, in her placid,
creamy way. "It is in the blood, I think, Doctor. The Howths fought
under Cornwallis, you know."
The school-master waited until his wife had ended.
"Very true, Mrs. Howth," he said, with a grave smile. Then his thin
face grew hot again.
"No, Dr. Knowles. Your scheme is but a sign of the mad age we live in.
Since the thirteenth century, when the anarchic element sprang
full-grown into the history of humanity, that history has been chaos.
And this republic is the culmination of chaos."
"Out of chaos came the new-born earth," suggested the Doctor.
"But its foundations were granite," rejoined the old man with nervous
eagerness,--"granite, not the slime of yesterday. When you found
empires, go to work as God worked."
The Doctor did not answer; sat looking, instead, out into the dark
indifferently, as if the heresies which the old man hurled at him were

some old worn-out song. Seeing, however, that the school-master's
flush of enthusiasm seemed on the point of dying out, he roused
himself to gibe it into life.
"Well, Mr. Howth, what will you have? If the trodden rights of the
human soul are the slime of yesterday, how shall we found our empire
to last? On despotism? Civil or theocratic?"
"Any despotism is better than that of newly enfranchised serfs," replied
the school-master.
The Doctor laughed.
"What a successful politician you would have made? You would have
had such a winning way to the hearts of the great unwashed!"
Mrs. Howth laid down her knitting.
"My dear," she said, timidly, "I think that is treason."
The angry heat died out of his face instantly, as he turned to her,
without the glimmer of a covert smile at her simplicity. She was a
woman; and when he spoke to the Doctor, it was in a tone less sharp.
"What is it the boys used to declaim, their Yankee hearts throbbing
under their round-aborts? `Happy, proud America!' Somehow in that
way. `Cursed, abased America!' better if they had said. Look at her, in
the warm vigour of her youth, most vigorous in decay! Look at the
germs and dregs of nations, creeds, religions, fermenting together! As
for the theory of self-government, it will muddle down here, as in the
three great archetypes of the experiment, into a paling, miserable
failure!"
The Doctor did not hear. Some sharper shadow seemed to haunt him
than the downfall of the Republic. What help did he seek in this girl?
His keen, deep eyes never left her unconscious face.
"No," Mr. Howth