“Ah!” Graves stroked the back of his head reflectively, and stared vaguely away into space. “Failures!” he muttered... “Eh?... And to think of some of the fellows who’re on top!”
“It’s another form of selfishness, theirs,” Lawless replied. “They’ve gone for the one thing, and stuck to it. A single idea would never satisfy either you or me. One man takes Wealth for his mistress; another, being polygamous, goes for a bevy of mistresses that we may bring under a common heading—Pleasure. The fool pursues Ambition, and the sentimentalist his Ideal... And when it comes to the finish—as Rentoul says—who shall say which man’s skull it is he turns up?” Graves nodded assent.
“And yet,” he said—“a man’s talents... It seems rotten things should pan out like that. I was never a white-haired boy exactly, but I had ideas once of doing something... Rot, of course—damned rot! And queer, too, how ideas run to seed before they fruit. I tell you a man needs to be ever on the alert, watching his ideas to prevent the growth exceeding the vitality. We don’t prune and tend enough. We’re so proud of our ideas that we let ’em run up rank and weedy, till they seed before time. It’s the man with the strength of mind to nip the young shoots and exert patience who sees the fruition of his ideas.”
“I confess I don’t understand,” said Lawless, “how you came to allow all yours to seed. With men like those,” and he waved his hand in the direction of the swearing, noisy group hitching the mules to the disselboom with many loud and unnecessary oaths, “it’s easy of comprehension. But—”
Graves filled in the pause with a laugh. “Ah well!” he returned... “Who can say? The secret to the riddle lies in what you spoke of just now... I’m a polygamist.”
Chapter Eighteen.
Lawless stood in the sunshine and watched the departure of this strange aggregate of human limitation setting forth on its journey into the infinitudes. The clumsy waggon, drawn by its team of four mules, with the dirty faded hood of yellowish green shading the wain, bumped and rumbled over the uneven ground. The jingling of the harness, the creaking of the heavy wheels, and the loud and too frequent cracking of the long whip, struck separate and not inharmonious notes of sound in the stillness of the morning air. And above these sounds a strong voice rang out heartily:
“Good-bye, Grit.”