Osmond

“ Osmond was looking away at the horizon, a whimsical smile coming about the corners of his mouth.
"Yes, Pete," he said. "But you paint your pictures."
"Now you own I'm right! Isn't it anything to move ten thousand men to throw down their tools and go on strike?"
"Well, by thunder!" Osmond had awakened. "Now you put it that way, I don't know whether it is or not. That phrase undid you. Lay down their tools? Show me the man that makes me take up my tools in reverence and sobriety, because good work is good religion. ”

“ Osmond had talked to Isabel about his renunciation, his indifference, the ease with which he dispensed with the usual aids to success; and all this had seemed to her admirable. She had thought it a grand indifference, an exquisite independence. But indifference was really the last of his qualities; she had never seen any one who thought so much of others. For herself, avowedly, the world had always interested her and the study of her fellow creatures been her constant passion. ”

“ Madame Merle observed without the point of interrogation.
“Why in the world should I, pray? Mr. Osmond has nothing the least solid to offer.”
Again Madame Merle was silent while her thoughtful smile drew up her mouth even more charmingly than usual toward the left corner. “Let us distinguish. Gilbert Osmond’s certainly not the first comer. He’s a man who in favourable conditions might very well make a great impression. He has made a great impression, to my knowledge, more than once.” ”

“ There were still large things in the world, strong loyalties, pure faithfulness. She felt like a warrior girded with a sword.
XXV
Osmond was sitting in his playhouse under the tree. He did not expect Rose to come, but he had things to think about, and in the playhouse he never felt alone. He was studying his own life as it had been and as it was. The past looked to him all submission and a still endurance. He marveled that a man could live so long and not look man's lot in the face. ”

“ No man would have been as unhappy as I have been."
Osmond smiled a little to himself, in grave communing. The uphill road of his life presented itself to him as a thorny way so hard that, if he had foreseen it from the beginning, he would have said it was impossible. But at the same instant he remembered where it had led him: he had come out into clear air, he was resting in this garden of delight. And she, too, was resting. He knew that with a perfect certainty.
"We have begun over," he warned her. "We don't have to remember. See the moon driving along the sky. We are going with her, fast. ”

“ MacLeod looked at him thoughtfully, as if struck by the form of words.
"My dear fellow," he said, "is it possible you believe in the present state of things? Do you want one man to possess everything and the next man nothing?"
Osmond frowned his negation. MacLeod, unfairly it seemed to him, made him feel young and inadequate to the matter. ”

“ Osmond was embarrassed; he found nothing to say; but Isabel remarked, promptly enough, that they had been in the act of talking about their visitor. Upon this her husband added that they hadn’t known what was become of him—they had been afraid he had gone away. “No,” he explained, smiling and looking at Osmond; “I’m only on the point of going.” And then he mentioned that he found himself suddenly recalled to England: he should start on the morrow or the day after. “I’m awfully sorry to leave poor Touchett!” ”

“ Osmond better,” said Erica, “for you know it seems very extraordinary to me that a clever scientific man can speak as he spoke tonight. I should like to know how you reconcile all the contradictions, how you can believe what seems to me so unlikely, how even if you do believe in a God you can think Him good while the world is what it is. If there is a good God why doesn't He make us all know Him, and end all the evil and cruelty?” ”

“ The solution of the mystery of King Osmond I impressed him as neither grotesque nor curiously mediæval. In all London the King of Trinadaro could not have found two men of readier mind to fall in with his project and pretensions. To play at being a king on a desert island, to have the means to make it all come true—why, thought Johnny Kent, and he knew O’Shea must instantly agree with him, any man worth his salt would jump at the chance. ”

“ The neat rows of growing things led him in from the road, and directing his steps toward the shack, where he had understood Osmond lived, he saw a figure advancing to meet him, a man in a blue blouse, like a workman, beating his hands together as he came, to dust the soil from them. When they were at a convenient interval, the man looked at MacLeod with a measuring gaze, and MacLeod returned the challenge with what was, perhaps, too frank encouragement. ”

“ Osmond kept on as if he were speaking to himself, groping painfully for what he found.
"You are not preaching good work. You are preaching revolt against work—class hatred and discontent."
"Do you believe in non-resistance?"
"No."
"Do you believe in Midas, king of gold, swelled up with power, sitting smiling on the throne he has forced others to build for him, and saying, 'I am not as other men are'?"
"No. But I believe in work. You mustn't take it out of a man, that certainty that his own work is the greatest privilege he's got. ”

“ I’ve nothing to say against them,” said Mr. Osmond, as he sat down deliberately on the stairs, for they were all in the house by this time. “It’s the people who live in them that I complain of. To send your guests to bed at eleven-thirty against their will, and to decline a simple game of billiards with one of them because you’re afraid to acknowledge that he’s the better player of the two—can this be your old English hospitality?”
“My dear Osmond, I will play you a game of billiards with pleasure, if your mind is so set on it,” said Lionel. ”

“ Osmond laughed a little.
"If you care so much as that, I'll tell you," he said, with a sudden harshness for himself in retrospect. "I go into the woods to think about life, my life, my difference from other fellows."
They sat down on the bench at the door, and a whippoorwill, calling, made the distance lonely. Peter had no answer for the truth he had evoked. It was too harsh. Only a woman could have met it, and that with kisses, not with words. ”

“ Now I have been near him again and I tremble."
"But as you picture him, he's all good, all benevolence. You could convince a man like that."
"Never! He hasn't any soul. He is this great natural force that radiates power."
"Power!" echoed Osmond. "No wonder he's drunk on it. I could go down on my knees and worship it."
"Not such as his!"
"Such as anybody's, so long as it is power."
For the first time she began to comprehend his mortal hunger.
"Don't you go over to him, too," she said jealously. "Peter is under his foot. So is Electra. If you go over, I shall be alone." ”

“ Her notion of the aristocratic life was simply the union of great knowledge with great liberty; the knowledge would give one a sense of duty and the liberty a sense of enjoyment. But for Osmond it was altogether a thing of forms, a conscious, calculated attitude. ”

“ 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 glow, whatever it might be, the marsh-lamp or star. Osmond shook his head.
"I don't know, Pete," he owned. "I don't know. I'm out of the world. I read a lot, but that's not the same thing as having it out with men. But I feel a distinct conviction that it's every man's business to mind his own business." ”

“ Do I get that from him?"
"It is because you are young," said Osmond. "And because you are beautiful and the world ought to be yours—to put your foot on it."
The passion of his voice recalled her.
"No," she answered humbly. "Not to put my foot on anything. No! no! no! Playmate," she added, "you are the dearest thing in all the world."
The voice laughed out harshly. The man was lying prone at full length where she could not see him, his hands upon the earth he loved, his fostering, yet unheeding mother that had saved his life for her own service. ”

“ Madame Merle waited. “It will amuse you.” There was nothing crude in this rejoinder; it had been thoroughly well considered.
“If you say that, you know, I believe it,” said Osmond, coming toward her. “There are some points in which my confidence in you is complete. I’m perfectly aware, for instance, that you know good society from bad.”
“Society is all bad.”
“Pardon me. That isn’t—the knowledge I impute to you—a common sort of wisdom. You’ve gained it in the right way—experimentally; you’ve compared an immense number of more or less impossible people with each other.” ”

“ It hardly suggested wealth: only comfort and beauty, the grace that comes of long devotion, the loving eye, the practiced hand. Somebody's heart had been put into it. This was the labor that was not hired. He had a strong curiosity to see Osmond, and yet he could not ask for him because Madam Fulton had once written him some queer tale of the man's sleeping in the woods, in a house of his own building, and living the wild life his body needed. One thing he learned now: Osmond's name was never out of his grandmother's mouth. ”

“ Every one’s a charming person nowadays. Even I’m a charming person; don’t laugh, it has literally been said. As for Osmond, he has always appeared to believe that he’s descended from the gods.”
“You may say what you please,” said Madame Merle, who had listened to this quick outbreak none the less attentively, we may believe, because her eye wandered away from the speaker and her hands busied themselves with adjusting the knots of ribbon on her dress. “You Osmonds are a fine race—your blood must flow from some very pure source. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Her soft little fingers had a peculiarly tender touch as she patted his cheek and toyed with his hair, arranging the blond curls into a mass of ringlets. She would thus keep her fingers busy for an hour or more, and never seemed to tire. The dark eyes would have the same glad sparkle at the end as at the beginning, and Osmond seemed to enjoy the performance as well as the little ones. On several occasions he had stretched himself out upon the carpet when the serious bright-eyed sprite would lift the fair head and pillow it in her lap and while toying with his hair would put him to sleep. ”

“ Madame Merle had made him a present of incalculable value. What could be a finer thing to live with than a high spirit attuned to softness? For would not the softness be all for one’s self, and the strenuousness for society, which admired the air of superiority? What could be a happier gift in a companion than a quick, fanciful mind which saved one repetitions and reflected one’s thought on a polished, elegant surface? Osmond hated to see his thought reproduced literally—that made it look stale and stupid ”

“ Osmond was not getting anywhere. MacLeod and his own ineptitude of speech seemed to be forcing him into the solicitous fright of the mother, bent on shielding her child from the wolf.
"You are too powerful," he said, and realized that he was using the evidence Rose had given him, thought for thought. ”

“ Osmond kept his ironic smile of unbelief.
"You are not the man," he said. "You would not believe in it. You wouldn't live it. You are very powerful. But your mastery wouldn't serve you. That's where you can't pretend."
"Now where have you got your idea of me?" MacLeod was looking at him sharply. "You never saw me before to-day. Yet your idea was already formed before I came down here. Who's been talking to you?"
Osmond had entrenched himself at last in his customary reserve.
"You are a public character," he said indifferently.
"Has Peter been talking about me?" ”

“ King Osmond I was an elderly gentleman of a singularly guileless disposition, and the notoriety attending his unique project had caused him to be surrounded by persons who knew precisely what they wanted. Of these the vanished minister of finance, Baron Frederick Martin Strothers, of the brisk demeanor and the red waistcoat, had been a conspicuous example. It was a rare piece of good fortune for the amiable monarch that there should have come to his aid two such hard-headed and honest adventurers as O’Shea and Johnny Kent. ”

“ MacLeod continued, taking his pipe out of his mouth and looking about him.
"We have worked," said Osmond.
"It's like the older peasant life of Europe." MacLeod spoke rather at random, seeking about for some thoroughfare with his crusty host. "A sort of paternal government—"
"Not in the least," said Osmond. "My men are my neighbors. They work for me and I pay them."
"Without discontent?"
"I hope so. If I found a man doing half time and grumbling, I should kick him out." ”

“ Dering. It was hardly the work of a minute to possess myself of the keys. In another minute the dressing-case was opened and the ring my own. Mr. Osmond’s portmanteau stood invitingly open: what more natural than that I should desire to turn over its contents lightly and delicately? In such cases I am possessed by the simple curiosity of a child. I was down on my knees before the portmanteau, admiring this, that, and the other, when, to my horror, I heard the noise of coming footsteps. ”