Again David laughed uncertainly. “In a way I am in sympathy with you,” he said. “Although all through my life I have served money I have not been owned by it. You are not to suppose that men like me have not something beyond money in mind.”
The old plough maker looked away over McGregor's shoulder to where the leaves of the trees shook in the wind from the lake. “There have been men and great leaders who have understood the silent competent servants of wealth,” he said half petulantly. “I want you to understand these men. I should like to see you become such a one yourself—not for the wealth it would bring but because in the end you would thus serve all men. You would get at truth thus. The power that is in you would be conserved and used more intelligently.”
“To be sure, history has taken little or no account of the men of whom I speak. They have passed through life unnoticed, doing great work quietly.”
The plough maker paused. Although McGregor had said nothing the older man felt that the interview was not going as it should. “I should like to know what you have in mind, what in the end you hope to gain for yourself or for these men,” he said somewhat sharply. “There is after all no point to our beating about the bush.”
McGregor said nothing. Arising from the bench he began again to walk along the path with Ormsby at his side.
“The really strong men of the world have had no place in history,” declared Ormsby bitterly. “They have not asked that. They were in Rome and in Germany in the time of Martin Luther but nothing is said of them. Although they do not mind the silence of history they would like other strong men to understand. The march of the world is a greater thing than the dust raised by the heels of some few workers walking through the streets and these men are responsible for the march of the world. You are making a mistake. I invite you to become one of us. If you plan to upset things you may get yourself into history but you will not really count. What you are trying to do will not work. You will come to a bad end.”
When the two men emerged from the park the older man had again the feeling that the interview had not been a success. He was sorry. The evening he felt had marked for him a failure and he was not accustomed to failures. “There is a wall here that I cannot penetrate,” he thought.
Along the front of the park beneath a grove of trees they walked in silence. McGregor seemed not to have heard the words addressed to him. When they came to where a long row of vacant lots faced the park he stopped and stood leaning against a tree to look away into the park, lost in thought.
David Ormsby also became silent. He thought of his youth in the little village plough factory, of his efforts to get on in the world, of the long evenings spent reading books and trying to understand the movements of men.
“Is there an element in nature and in youth that we do not understand or that we lose sight of?” he asked. “Are the efforts of the patient workers of the world always to be abortive? Can some new phase of life arise suddenly upsetting all of our plans? Do you, can you, think of men like me as but part of a vast whole? Do you deny to us individuality, the right to stand forth, the right to work things out and to control?”