The years of manhood. The panorama was a swiftly moving one now. Combinations and consolidations had followed closely one upon the other; brilliant and bewildering shiftings of the pieces on the chess board of his particular business. Other players had become confused in all these kaleidoscopic changes, some of which had seemed meaningless; but not Allison. Every shift left him in a position of more ruthless advantage, even in those moves which were intended only to create confusion; and he pushed steadily forward towards the one mark he had set; that there should eventually be none other in the field than himself! It was because he never flagged that he could do this. At no summit had he ever paused for gratification over the extent of his climb, for a backward glance over his fiercely contended pathway, for refreshment, for breath; but, with that exhaustless physical vitality inherited from his father and mental vitality inherited from his mother, he had kept his pace forward, plunging onward, from summit to still higher summit, and never asking that there might be one highest peak to which he could attain, and rest! True, sometimes he had thought, on the upward way, that at the summit he might pause, but had that summit been the highest, with none other luring him in the distant sky, he would have been disappointed.
So it was that he had come this far, and the roadway to his present height was marked by the cripples he had left behind him, without compunction, without mercy, without compassion. Bankrupts strewed his way, broken men of purpose higher than his own, useful factors in the progress of human life, builders and creators who had advanced the interest of the commonwealth, but who had been more brilliant in construction than they had been in reaping the rewards of their building. It was for Allison to do this. It had been his specialty; the reaping of rewards. It had been his faculty to permit others to build, to encourage them in it, and then, when the building was done, to wrest it away from the builders. That marked him as the greatest commercial genius of his time; and he had much applause for it.
Women. Yes, there had been women, creatures of a common mould with whom he had amused himself, had taken them in their freshness, and broken them, and thrown them away; this in his earlier years. But in his maturity, he had bent all his strength to a greater passion; the acquirement of all those other things which men had wanted and held most dear, among them acquisition, and power, and success. Perhaps it had been bad for him, this concentration, for now it left him, at the height of his maturity, with mistaken fancies, with long pent fires, with disproportionate desires. Bringing to these, he had the tremendously abnormal moral effect of never having been thwarted in a thing upon which he had set his mind, and of believing, by past accomplishment, that anything upon which he had set his wish must be his, or else every victory he had ever gained would be swept aside and made of no value. He must accomplish, or die!
He was without God, this man; he had nothing within him which conceded, for a moment, a greater power than his own. In all his mental imagery, which was rich enough in material things, there was no conception of a Deity, or of a need for one. To what should he pray, and for what, when he had himself to rely upon? Worship was an idealistic diversion, a poetic illusion, the refuge of the weak, who excused their lack of strength by ascribing it to a mysterious something beyond the control of any man. He tolerated the popular notion that there must be a God, as he tolerated codes of social ethics; the conventions which laid down, for instance, what a gentleman might or might not do, externally, and still remain a gentleman. In the meantime, if a man-made law came between him and the accomplishment of his ends, he broke it, without a trace of thought that he might be wrong. Laws were the mutual safeguard of the weak, to protect themselves against the encroachment of the strong; and it was in the equally natural province of the strong to break down those safeguards. In the same way he disregarded moral laws. They, too, were for the upholding of the weak, and the mere fact that they existed was proof enough that they were an acknowledgment of the right of the strong to break them.
There is a mistake here. It lies in the statement that Allison recognised no God. He did. Allison. Not Allison, the man, but the unconquerable will of Allison, a will which was a divinity in itself. He believed in it, centred on it all his faith, poured out to it all the fervidness of his heart, of his mind, of his spirit, of his body. He worshipped it!
So it was that he came to the consideration of the one thing which had attempted to deny itself to him. Gail! It seemed monstrous to him that she had set herself against him. It was incredible that she should have a will, which, if she persisted, should prove superior to his own. Why, he had set his mind upon her from the first! The time had suddenly arrived when he was ripe for her, and she had come. He had not even given a thought to the many suitors who had dangled about her. She was for none of them. She was for him, and he had waited in patience until she was tired of amusing herself, and until he had wrought the big ambition towards which her coming, and her impulse, and the new fire she had kindled in him, had directed him. She had been seriously in earnest in withholding herself from him. She was determined upon it. She believed now, in her soul, that she could keep to that determination. At first he had been amused by it, as a man holds off the angry onslaught of a child; but, in this last interview with her, there had come a moment when he had felt his vast compulsion valueless; and it had angered him.
A flame raged through his veins which fairly shook him with its violence. It was not only the reflex of his determination to have her, but it was the terrific need of her which had grown up in him. Have her? Of course he would have her! If she would not come to him willingly, he would take her! If she could not share in the ecstasy of possession which he had so long anticipated, she need not. She was not to be considered in it any more than he had considered any other adverse factor in the attainment of anything he had desired. He was possessed of a rage now, which centred itself upon one object, and one alone. Gail! She was his new summit, his new peak, the final one where he had planned to rest; but now his angry thought was to attain it, and spurn it, broken and crumbled, as had been all the other barriers to his will, and press ruthlessly onward into higher skies, he knew not where. It was no time now, to think on that. Gail first!
CHAPTER XXX
THE FLUTTER OF A SHEET OF MUSIC
Gail, in a pretty little rose-coloured morning robe, with soft frills of lace around her white throat and at her white elbows, sat on the floor of the music room amid a chaos of sheet music. She was humming a gay little song suggested by one of the titles through which she had leafed, and was gradually sorting her music for the yacht party; instrumental pieces here, popular things there, another little pile of old-fashioned glees which the assembled crowd might sing, just here a little stack of her own solos, nearby the rector’s favourites, between the two their duets. It was her part in one of the latter she was humming now, missing, as she sang, the strong accompaniment of the Reverend Smith Boyd’s mellow voice. She was more peaceful this morning than she had been for many days.
The butler came through the hall, and Gail looked up with a suppressed giggle as she saw him pass the door. She always had an absurd idea that his hinges should be oiled.