He sat on a log at the brink of the Cove one morning, in a burst of
sunshine as grateful as it was rare. He looked out at the mainland
shore, shading away from deep olive to a faint and misty blue. He cast
his gaze along Vancouver Island, a three-hundred-mile barrier against
the long roll of the Pacific. He thought of England, with its scant area
and its forty million souls. He smiled. An empire opened within range of
his vision. He had had to go to Europe to appreciate his own country.
Old, old peoples over there. Outworn, bewildered aristocracies and vast
populations troubled with the specter of want, swarming like rabbits,
pressing always close upon the means of subsistence. No room; no chance.
Born in social stratas solidified by centuries. No wonder Europe was
full of race and class hatred, of war and pestilence. Snap
judgment,--but Jack MacRae had seen the peasants of France and Belgium,
the driven workmen of industrial France and England. He had seen also
something of the forces which controlled them, caught glimpses of the
iron hand in the velvet glove, a hand that was not so sure and steady as
in days gone by.
Here a man still had a chance. He could not pick golden apples off the
fir trees. He must use his brains as well as his hands. A reasonable
measure of security was within a man's grasp if he tried for it. To pile
up a fortune might be a heavy task. But getting a living was no
insoluble problem. A man could accomplish either without selling his
soul or cutting throats or making serfs of his fellow men. There was
room to move and breathe,--and some to spare.
Perhaps Jack MacRae, in view of his feelings, his cherished projects,
was a trifle inconsistent in the judgments he passed, sitting there on
his log in the winter sunshine. But the wholly consistent must die
young. Their works do not appear in this day and hour. The normal man
adjusts himself to, and his actions are guided by, moods and
circumstances which are seldom orderly and logical in their sequence.
MacRae cherished as profound an animosity toward Horace Gower as any
Russian ever felt for bureaucratic tyranny. He could smart under
injustice and plan reprisal. He could appreciate his environment, his
opportunities, be glad that his lines were cast amid rugged beauty. But
he did not on that account feel tolerant toward those whom he conceived
to be his enemies. He was not, however, thinking concretely of his
personal affairs or tendencies that
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