Part 10

She had learned in this solitude to think aloud, gathering comradery from the sounds of her voice, and young Silas, growing tired of his playthings, came over to her knee. He looked up into her face gravely, trying to fathom her meaning. She laughed softly and lifted him to her lap. He was a lovely child; a little copy of Philip Kingsley in form and gesture; he had the same close-curling blond hair. He returned his mother's caress warmly, putting his stout arm about her neck and kissing her mouth, her cheek, again and again. Presently she undressed him, but she deferred the bed-going, enticing him, with surprise and frolic, to stay awake. She dreaded the silence that was to follow; the interminable loneliness of the slow night. But at last he went to sleep in her arms.

When she had tucked him away in his bed in an inner room and returned, she moved about restlessly, giving housewifely touches to things already arranged. "After all, it is the business," she said. "It must be--nearly always--the business. I am too exacting. I expect too much."

She reached the window and lifted her hand to draw the blind. But she started and dropped her arm, letting the shade spring back to the roller. Someone stood on the walk without. His long figure rose in the square of light which, blocked on the piazza, included the breadth of fence where he leaned. His dark, repulsive face was raised to her, and he seemed to fix her with his small, snakelike eyes. The next instant he dropped his goblin shape and shrank writhing away into the gloom.

She shivered and her fingers trembled when she reached again for the cord and drew the blind. She went into the hall and pushed the heavy bolt above the lock on the front door. When she had gone through the house and secured every door and window, she came back, still shivering, to the fire. "It is nothing," she told herself, and put her hand on the mantel, reassuring herself as a woman must when denied human support, "it was nothing. The man stopped a moment in passing, attracted by the light. I must have some--courage. But his face--was terrible."

Presently she went over to the piano and began to sound the keys; she struck loud, clarion chords, martialling forces to put down her fears. Her shaking fingers grew surer; she commenced to shape a bit of Wagner, and then a fragment of Schubert. That was the music she loved. She opened a folio of sonatas. She played with ease and skill and her frame swayed with a slight, rhythmic motion. Her soul was in her touch and in her eyes, grown large and misty. It was then her face was beautiful.

At last she turned a page and a loose sheet fluttered out. It was that sea song of Barry Cornwall's, that had been a favorite quartette in the old days aboard the _Phantom_. She began to play it, and presently her voice flooded the night.

"For the white squall rides on the surging wave, And the bark is 'gulfed in an ocean's grave, In an ocean's grave; in an ocean's grave."

Forrest, coming that way from his customary rounds of the mills, heard it, and the passion, the despair of it, held him at the gate. But he dropped his hand from the latch at the end and turned away. "There is nothing I can do for her." he told himself. "She is past feeling the solitude now. She is past being afraid."

*CHAPTER XIII*

*THE PRESSURE OF THE THUMB-SCREW*

The following night Forrest was seated near the open fire in his room off the store. His journal and ledger were on the table before him, and opposite Kingsley tilted his chair comfortably, and clasping his hands at the back of his head, lifted his glance to the lamp-lighted ceiling. He was smoking and looked a trifle bored.

"It amounts to this," said Forrest; "lumber has dropped to eight dollars a thousand and we've simply got to cut down expenses." He paused with his hands on the arms of his chair, his body slightly inclined forward, and looked at Philip with clear, stern eyes. "I am running the lightest possible force; I have dispensed with a bookkeeper and am doing his work nights. But here are still unpaid bills for machinery, saw-logs and towing; some weeks it even comes to a question of the wages of the men. I could, though, have met these demands better if I hadn't been so handicapped. For instance, in the matter of the _Corona_. I made out the bills of lading; I relied on the funds at a certain time and gave promises of payment. And then found out you had received the checks and had them cashed, and put most of the money to personal use. It not only places me in a difficult position but weakens the credit, the standing of the mills."

"I suppose so," said Kingsley, knocking the ashes carefully from his cigar. "I suppose so; I hadn't looked at it in that way. But the _Enterprise_ will be here in a few days and her shipment ought to make things straight."

"Temporarily, yes. But see here, why can't you limit yourself to a salary? Say two hundred a month? If you could do this, and devote a definite time to work, I should know what to depend on, and we could pull through the year without calling on the Judge."

"Two hundred a month?" repeated Philip, and laughed.

"Yes. You know the Judge advised a regular salary."

"You seem to forget I have practically a half interest in this property."

"On the other hand, it is that I remember," answered Forrest dryly. "If the mills should go under it would bar me, of course, from another position of trust; but for you it would mean financial ruin."

Kingsley smoked for a brief interval in silence. Then he said, "I don't see the necessity of all this. There's Stratton, now, talks differently. He thinks I have a sure thing; that another year or two will see the opening of a great lumber traffic with the Orient. He calls Puget Sound the Gateway of the Pacific. I wish you could hear him."

"I have heard him," answered Forrest, again dryly. "But with me, his opinion doesn't count for much. To hold my faith a man has got to do the things he talks about. And Stratton isn't a man who works. In short, it's a problem where he gets his money. My friend Bates, of the Customs Service, has been in Victoria a good deal; he knows something about Stratton's family. His father, before he died, made a fortune in the fur trade, but his mother, who lived a rather smart life over there, spent it faster. Stratton is like her."

"He has taken up his father's business," said Kingsley warmly. "He is building a fine coasting schooner, now, to carry on an extensive trade, northward, with the Indians."

Forrest shook his head. "That's just it. A man dabbling spasmodically in furs, and living extravagantly most of the time about town, is hardly expected to have capital to invest in a fine steam-schooner."

Philip watched a puff of smoke rise and expand in blue haze above him. "I know what you're driving at," he said. "You're referring to his possible connection with a smuggling ring. Stratton told me all about it. There's nothing in it. Bates happens to have a grudge against him."

"Bates is hardly the man to satisfy a personal grudge in that way. He merely answered a question or two I asked him." Forrest paused and went on in a slightly deepened tone. "It seems to me incredible that you should let a fellow like Stratton manage you."

"Manage?" The Captain's chair came down abruptly on its front legs. "See here, even you can't say that, Paul. Stratton is my friend; I'm fond of him, but I do as I damn please."

Forrest was silent.

Kingsley rose to his feet and threw his cigar in the fire. "It's time I went up to the house," he said. "The crowd will be ready to go on to town, soon, and I've hardly seen Louise."

Forrest pushed back his chair and rose. "You agree, then, to the two hundred," he said quietly.

"Oh, come, you are worse than thumb-screws." He laughed a short, constrained laugh and looked at his watch.

"The Judge, you remember, takes it for granted."

"Oh, well,"--he ran his fingers swiftly through his close-cropped hair, and repeated the movement,--"I don't see how I can do it--but--I suppose so for awhile--yes."

He picked up his cap and started out through the store. Forrest followed him to the outer door. But there Philip stopped. "Come up to the house with me," he said, "and bring your violin. I've been telling them about you."

He stood jingling his keys in his pockets, and whistling in snatches, much like a schoolboy who tries to forget, yet remembers the unpleasant ending of a scrape, while Forrest went back to his room for the instrument.

It was a moonless night, but in the direction of the mills the burning slabpile brought out the lines of the bluff. It lighted the upper wharf and the great piles of finished or rough lumber. The whitewashed walls of the cabins reflected the glare. Everywhere, in the open doorways, seated on timbers or blocks in the vicinity of the fire, wherever there was protection from the north wind, or the flames threw heat, groups of workmen loitered. Suddenly Kingsley said, "I would like to see the whole thing dumped into that slabfire."

Forrest put his hand on Philip's shoulder. Both stopped and the light shone on the manager's face. The laugh lurked in his eyes, and the lines about his mouth softened. "And you'd like to see me at the bottom of the heap."

"I'm sick of these mills," said Philip petulantly. "I hate the place."

"And me. Come, say so."

"Well, then, yes, and you, since you are determined to put me through." He threw off Forrest's hand, and seeing the old watchman approaching on the branch walk, went a step to meet him. "I want you to go over to the cookhouse, Mason," he said, "and tell Sing to bring a little supper up. Take him down to the _Phantom_ and get a dozen of champagne from the port cabin locker. Here's the key."

He rejoined Forrest and they finished the distance in silence. But when they entered the parlor, where Kingsley's friends awaited him, his manner changed. "You must blame Paul for keeping me," he said lightly; "he was determined to talk. When he has a point to gain he has the grip of a vise; never lets go. You've simply got to yield through sheer weariness."

Every one laughed, and he crossed the room to seat himself beside the girl with a small blond head, who had accompanied him the previous day with a banjo. But his glance moved again and again to his wife. For the first time it nettled him to see another man interested in her. And Stratton was interested; Stratton, who was undeniably hard to please. It is the way of some men to appraise their wives according to the value placed on them by other men, and Kingsley began to make an inventory of her points; that was a nice flush in her cheeks, and he had nearly forgotten about that lighting of her dark eyes. And, too, that was a pretty way she wore her hair. Then he remembered how splendid it was unbound, for it rippled to her knees, and was soft as a black velvet cloak. And when she sang, presently, to the accompaniment of Forrest's violin, the Captain told himself she had never been in better voice. He resolved to be at the mills oftener; on the whole, if he had not just been forced into that miserable limit of two hundred dollars, he would like to set up an establishment over in town.

When she went from the room to consult Sing about that little supper, Philip followed her. She believed he had come to look in at little Silas, and she quietly threw open the inner door. The light streamed into the dark interior, showing the small white bed, the charming face of the sleeping child. There was a rosy glow on the round cheek, and one stout, dimpled arm, bared to the elbow, encircled his curly head.

Kingsley stood watching him a silent moment, then he put his arm around his wife and said softly, "He's all right; yes, he's fine. But he's been growing since I saw him; I hadn't thought it was so long. I must get home oftener. Do you know you were in great voice to-night; I never heard you sing so well."

"Yes?" she answered, smiling, "I am glad you think so. I sang for you."

"And this color in your cheeks; is it for me, too?"

"You know that I am glad to have you home."

He bent and kissed her. Her head rested an instant on his breast; he brushed his cheek against her hair. "You miss me, then, when I'm away?"

"Yes." She lifted her face. An intensity of expression that he had seen rarely, and always disliked, came over it; the force in her low voice jarred. Why couldn't she stay pleasant, as she had been there in the crowd. "I would do anything to keep you at home, Philip. Anything, if you would spend your evenings with me; your nights, as you used to."

His arm fell. "I thought you understood the outside business would keep me away," he said coolly. "I explained it at the first when you wanted to live here at the mills."

She moved a step away. Her heart cried, "It is not the business," but she said aloud, turning to him again with a smile, "A woman doesn't often reason; she only feels."

"That's the trouble; you feel too much; more than most women. When you are not serious, though, you are a very attractive woman."

She stood quite still, with her slender fingers locked, and that intensity growing in her eyes. "Do you know, Philip, sometimes I wonder how you ever could have cared for me; for the best that is in me is what you have overlooked. I should think,"--she paused and forced again that brave little smile,--"I should think that you might be--happier, if you had married a different kind--of woman."

At this he laughed. So she was a little jealous, that explained things, and of that flyaway, there in the other room. "There's the woman one marries," he answered lightly, "and the woman with whom one has a good time; they are seldom alike."

She was silent. There is nothing so cuts a proud and refined woman as the enforced knowledge of her husband's coarser grain; but her disappointment finds no expression; she covers her shame.

"But I don't blame you," he went on, still lightly, "I don't blame you; I don't deny you've had cause. I'm coming home oftener, after this, though; or, perhaps, before long, I can arrange to take a house in town. You would like that?"

"Yes. The loneliness is harder than I believed it could be; it wears on me. And I can't grow accustomed to the mill people. Last evening I saw a strange face at the window. It haunts me. I woke up in the night time, seeing it. It was--terrible. I have never been a brave woman, Philip. I am--afraid."

Her whole body trembled, overcome by the recollection of that face. But Kingsley laughed again. "Well, I don't wonder. For sheer physical ugliness, this crew Forrest has picked up might, almost to a man, dispute the palm. But Alice is coming; she'll show you pluck; she has it to spare. And we'll have that cruise through the islands. We'll make it a small family affair and take along little Si. Meantime Paul must see that the night watchman gives the house special attention, and I'll ask him to come in oftener with his violin."

*CHAPTER XIV*

*THE SALMON-TROLLERS*

"O-h, o-h, Mason, I hate to, but I've got to let you land him. He's a _wh-a-le_." She spoke softly; her eyes shone. She put the line in the old sailor's hands. "Now, now, Mason; oh, I don't mind a little water; that's all--right."

But it was a deluge, for the great salmon floundered first against her, almost in her lap, and then into the bottom of the skiff, at her feet. Mason bent to remove the hook, and Louise, in the bow, held little Silas over to see the big fish. "Mighty purty play; weighs all o' twenty pund; bet you a bottle."

"I believe it's a Chinook," said Alice.

The sailor's homely face glowed. He looked back to be sure the child's view was unobstructed. "Aye, sir, it's a Chinook, an' big's they make 'em. Bet you a bottle."

But the wager passed again unchallenged, and having met Louise's amused glance, Mason took up his oars abashed. Nothing but the excitement of landing that fish could have so loosened his tongue. He pulled a good stroke that brought them quickly to the shore. The wind came in long puffs from the north and the sea broke on the beach in a deliberate swell. The water was a cold blue, shading to brown in the shallows, for it was ebb-tide. They drew up to the float between the wharves and Mason steadied the boat while Alice lifted the baby out and, giving him to his mother, stopped to take a great bunch of flowering rhododendrons from high in the bow. Then he raised the salmon by the gills and stumped proudly ahead up the walk.

Alice looked at her sister and smiled. "There's a watch-dog you can trust," she said. "Yes, I mean it. He has a big, warm heart underneath, and little Si knows it, already."

"I think you are right," admitted Louise, "but it is strange it should have taken you hardly twenty-four hours to find it, while I have been months getting within speaking distance."

"I suppose," said Alice thoughtfully, "it's a way I have of wanting to utilize the material at hand. There's something, too, in meeting a man on his own ground. When you want to reach a sailor," and she laughed softly, "take a boat. Oh, Mason," she called, for he had made the turn up the branch walk to the house, "wait. Come around and weigh the salmon at the store."

She led the way, and the gloomy building seemed to gather a sudden radiance when she entered the door. Her face reflected a soft illumination from the showy pink flowers heaped in her arm. Forrest stepped down from his stool at the desk, and came outside the railing to meet her. Then, "What's that, Mason?" he asked. "You don't mean to tell me she really did catch a fish."

"Aye, sir,"--Mason stopped to put the salmon on the scales,--"twenty-two pund."

"That's so," said Forrest incredulously, "twenty-two and a quarter; well, for a Chinook that's a prize."

But the smile in her face died. Looking across the rhododendrons at him, it came over her again, as it had when she met him on her arrival the previous day, that he was losing his boyish color; that he was harassed and worn. "Don't you ever go fishing, Paul? Or cruising, or anywhere?"

He shook his head, smiling a little. "Hardly, this year. It's impossible to get away."

Little Silas, tugging at his mother's hand, drew her to the door. But Alice lingered. "Can't Phil Kingsley manage these mills yet, for even one day?"

He glanced in warning at Louise. "It takes us both," he answered quietly. "This milling business is pretty big; it reaches out; and he tends to the other end. But I'm all right. I like to work; I'm used to it. And I need it, lots of it, to keep me level-headed."

"You are that, but shall I tell you what I think, Paul Forrest? I think it's making you old, fast; or else, you are not well."

"Oh, yes, I am. But, I was up late last night; I was bothered some about a trial balance; that's all. I'm going to take this evening off. I want to try that accompaniment, if you will sing that new serenade for me."

He stood watching them from the entrance, Mason following with the salmon, while they crossed up the dock, then he went back to his desk. She had reached over the railing, in passing, to lay on his ledger a branch of rhododendron. He picked it up, smiling a little, and looked at it. No one else was in the store at the moment, and he touched the petals gently; his hand moved over the stiff, spiky leaves. "So," he told himself, "So, she has left me a bit of the woods. And she is like this plant; straight and self-reliant and independent like the stem; and with this same nice color of the blossom in her cheek." He laid the cool pink cluster against his own face; he pressed it with his lips. Then, suddenly, his whole frame began to tremble; his shoulders heaved. "I love her; I love--her," and he crushed the flower between his palms and threw it down. "My God, how can I help loving her?"

Two hours later, when Forrest had finished his rounds of the mills, he found her with Mrs. Kingsley at the burning slabpile. Mason, with his wooden peg planted firmly in the sawdust as a brace, steadied the baby on an inverted keg, and whirled chips into the fire for his amusement. The strong light brought out the indigo anchor tattooed on the sailor's big, rough hand. The young mother watched his maneuvers. She leaned with her elbow on a projecting shelf of lumber, and her head and throat were wrapped, Madonna-wise, in a black lace scarf. Alice was seated near her on a great fir block. The flames illumined her uncovered ruddy hair. She was interested in the efforts of a workman who, a little apart, but availing himself of the firelight, was mending a pair of jeans. Another patched a shoe, and farther still, a trio drew up an empty box, and converting it into a table, started a spirited game of poker. She commenced to hum a bit of the gypsy chorus from the Bohemian Girl; and as Forrest approached she looked up smiling, and took up the words. He seated himself by her. Louise's contralto caught the measure, and presently the harmony was rounded by his fine baritone. They sang on through all the familiar parts; the arias, duets, choruses; and once more the romance and mystery of the place and night gave setting to this man and spoke for him. The girl looked up absently to the trees on the bluff. High up a fallen hemlock, caught on a stony spur, reared its gnarled roots from the gloom. Had they not rested today on the brink of the canyon? Had they not threaded the windfall? And this sound of running water, was it not the near thunder of the Des Chutes?

At last the child grew tired and his mother took him away to bed. Forrest went down to the store for his violin, and Alice walked that way with him. "I want to speak to you about Louise," she said. "She tells me nothing, she is so proud, but something troubles her. You have noticed it?"

"Yes," he answered, "yes, I have noticed it; but I know she is a very sensitive woman. She would face any hardship from a sense of duty; it amounts to martyrdom. She exacts, also, considerable from others."

"Oh, I understand all that. Of course she came here to the mills because she thought she owed it to Philip. But he is seldom here. Is it really the business keeps him away?"

"Yes, it's business, sometimes, and--sometimes--well, if you must know, it's a gay crowd and a pleasant evening over in town."

"I was confident of it." She paused, ruffling her brows, then she added earnestly, "But you don't know what a security it is to me, Paul, to feel that you are here, and will take care of her."

He shook his head. "I will do what I can always, of course, but it's less than you think."

"It's more than you think. It's meeting the small emergencies of every day; sometimes through Mason or Sing; sometimes personally, in your quiet way. And it's tiding her through the slow evenings when you can; she loves your violin, and the practice will be a help to you both."

"All right," he answered, smiling, "I promise that much."

They had reached the store and she waited on the edge of the dock while he went in for his instrument. When he came back they lingered, listening to the swash and gurgle of the tide among the piers. "You always liked this," he said presently; "you must often miss the sea."

"Yes," she answered, "you don't know how I've missed it. Sometimes, I've wanted it beyond anything." She looked at him. In the semi-darkness of the not yet risen moon, his face seemed to gather paleness. It touched her as its strength never had. The maternal down in the depths of her stirred. "And of course," she added gently, "you know, Paul, I couldn't think of the Sound, or indeed of any of the old life here, and leave out you."