Chapter 11

"Not less than thirty thousand. I'm going to make carbide. At least," he added with a short laugh, "if I don't, some one else will."

Belding drew a long breath. He had a swift and discomforting conviction that this man, whom he felt forced to admire, was going too fast. Around him were all the evidences that he had not gone too fast and there seemed to be unlimited support behind him. But yet--

The engineer grew very red in the face. "Do you think that's wise, sir?" he said with a tremendous effort.

Clark glanced up in astonishment and his expression grew rigid. "Just what do you mean, Belding?"

"I am sorry, sir. I know it sounds impertinent but I've a rotten feeling that things--that things--" He broke off in distress.

"I'll trouble you to finish your sentence." The voice was like ice.

"Don't misunderstand me," the young man went valiantly on. "It isn't for myself, it's for you."

"Why me?" Clark's glance softened ever so little at the thought.

"New schemes are piling up every day. We're not out of one before we're into another."

"We?" The voice had a touch of irony.

"Yes, sir, we--because I'm with you to the end, whatever that may be. I don't care if I go to smash and lose my job, but what about you? I don't want to be disrespectful, but if this company fails it's you that will have failed. I won't count except to myself. You're doing more now than ten ordinary men. Isn't there enough without that?" Belding pointed across the river.

Then, to the young man's amazement, Clark began to laugh, not riotously but with a gradual abandonment that shook his thickset body with successive convulsions of mirth. Presently he wiped his eyes.

"Sit down, Belding, but first of all, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You make a brilliant contrast with a group I know who had to bolster themselves up for days to get courage to say something of the same kind, and they were thinking of their own skins, not mine. Now I want to tell you something."

Belding nodded. His brain was too confused for speech.

"It really doesn't matter about me. Long ago I decided that I was meant for a certain purpose in this world. I'm trying to carry it out. I may reach it here--or elsewhere, frankly I don't know. But all I do know is that there are certain things here that I was meant to tackle and this new canal is one of them. If I go to smash it was intended that I smash, and that doesn't worry me a bit. I'm not working for myself, or even in a definite way for my shareholders, but I'm trying to adapt the forces and resources of nature to the use of man. Don't you see?"

"I think so." Belding began to perceive that he was caught up as a small unit in a great forward movement that encompassed not only himself but thousands of others.

"So once again, thank you for what you said. It was a bit of a job, wasn't it?"

"The toughest thing I ever tackled."

Clark's eyes twinkled with amusement. "I know it. Now, remember I don't want advice and if I smash--and I really won't smash--I don't want sympathy. It's the kind of balm I've no use for. Some people are so hungry for sympathy that they forget their jobs. And, Belding!"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm going to see you through, remember that. Now make me that map, and," he concluded with a provocative drawl, "don't forget how fortunate it is for you and me that water runs down hill."

Belding's mind was in a whirl. "There's one other thing," he said, "I've promised to build a cathedral for the bishop. Peterson has given the stone and--"

"I told him to," broke in Clark; "couldn't you guess that? He spoke to me about it. But understand that neither the bishop nor any one else must know it. I told them all except Ryan, and I didn't like to tread on his religious toes."

Belding laughed. "I should have guessed it. The thing was too easy, and Ryan came up to the scratch with the rest."

In September the pro-cathedral was completed. Belding, faithful to his trust, had made almost daily visits of inspection, when he often found the bishop seated on a half-cut stone and talking with evident interest to the workmen. It seemed that the big man's presence pushed the work along at top speed. On one occasion, a few days before the opening ceremony, the engineer was watching a mason laying the machicolated coping on the tower when the trowel slipped and dropped forty feet to the ground. Instantly there arose a stream of profanity from the top of that sacred edifice. Came a chuckle at Belding's shoulder.

"Unquestionably the effect of Ryan's cement, but it's going to hold our church together."

Glancing down, the mason caught sight of the black coated figure. His profanity ceased abruptly.

"Will you please throw me up that trowel, sir?"

The bishop laughed and the trowel gyrated skywards. "It makes me think of all that goes into the making of a church nowadays," he said thoughtfully. "By the way I wonder if my friend Mr. Clark will turn up next Sunday."

And Clark, to every one's surprise, did turn up, after most of St. Marys had seated themselves in the new oak pews. There was Dibbott, in carefully pressed light gray trousers, white waistcoat and a red flower in his buttonhole; Mrs. Dibbott in spotless linen, for the day was warm. Then the Bowers, the husband with his metropolitan manner acquired on frequent business trips to Philadelphia and converse with city capitalists, his wife in silk and a New York hat, at which Mrs. Dibbott glanced with somewhat startled eyes. Things had gone well with the Bowers. There were the Wordens, with Elsie and Belding, the latter accepting whispered congratulations on his work but wanting only a look which he could not draw from the girl beside him. Filmer was there, his black whiskers unusually glossy. He pulled at them caressingly and now and again cleared his throat, for he was to sing the tenor solo. At the door, Manson hung about till old Dibbott, glaring amiably down the isle, marched out and dragged the chief constable and his wife to a front seat. And last of all came Clark, who, slipping into a back corner, refused to move. Then the old bell ceased swinging in the new stone tower and the service began.

It was all very simple and touching. Filmer's melodious tenor never sounded better and the bishop's talk was straight to the point. This pro-cathedral, built out of love and faith, he told them, linked the old days with the new. The labor of many, freely given, had gone into it--here his kindly gaze dwelt for an instant on the gray-coated figure in the corner--and it augured well for the future. From this building must spread the doctrine of charity and fellowship and courage.

It was but for a few moments that he spoke, and when it was all over the old bell rang joyously as though for a wedding. Belding tried to catch Elsie's glance, but she only flushed and watched the majestic figure of the bishop retire into the little vestry. He had a despondent impression that an impalpable barrier lay between them. On the way out they met Clark and the girl's eyes brightened miraculously.

"Isn't it a charming church?" she said.

Clark nodded. "It's very pretty. St. Marys owes a good deal to Mr. Belding for this."

"He made the plans, I know, but think of all the people who gave the labor and the things to build it with."

Belding was about to blurt out that it was Clark who gave the things to build it with, but a swift signal imposed silence.

"I know, it's excellent. You have not been at the works lately."

"I was there last week."

"And I was in Philadelphia. I'm sorry."

She said good-by and, with Belding at her side, turned homeward, Clark looked after them curiously, his eyes half closing as though to hide a question that moved in their baffling depths.

The congregation dispersed slowly with the conviction that there had been created one of those memories to which in later years the reflective mind delights to return. Quite naturally, and as they often did, Mrs. Manson and Mrs. Bowers dropped into the Dibbott house with its mistress. Dibbott was already there. He was about to start on one of his official journeys, and just now was rooting things out of a back cupboard with explosive energy.

"Well," said Mrs. Bowers, folding her large, capable hands, "wasn't it lovely?"

The rumble of a street car sounded outside. "It revives old times," Mrs. Manson said softly, "but I don't believe we've changed much. We're too bred in the bone."

"Do we want the old times back?" asked Mrs. Bowers, to whom the past years had been kind.

"For some things, yes, and for others, no. Living's a great deal more expensive, and my husband's income is just the same," put in Mrs. Dibbott after a pause. "Taxes are up, and I'm not any happier though I suppose I'm better informed. John won't sell the place though he has been offered a perfectly splendid price, and it's noisy--but I like it, and there's the garden. Things don't happen to me--they just happen round me."

"And you, my dear," continued Mrs. Bowers with an inquisitive glance at the chief constable's wife, "what about you? Your husband's supposed to have done better than any one except Mr. Filmer."

The little woman flushed. She was perfectly aware that Manson was credited with making his fortune, and perhaps he had. But she had no knowledge of it. For a while she knew he was dealing in property, and then one morning he told her he had sold out. Her heart leaped at the news, for Manson in the past year or so had changed. Invariably austere, he had been nevertheless kind and considerate--but soon after the real estate venture ended he became only austere, to which there was added something almost like apprehension. And this in her husband was to her of intense concern.

"I can't say," she began a little timidly. "Peter has been telling me for months he's going to resign and live at ease, but it's always a matter of waiting just a little longer. I can't help longing for the old days. Perhaps there was less comfort but--" she added pathetically, "there was also less restlessness. I suppose I'm out of date."

"Did you see Mr. Clark to-day?" broke in Mrs. Dibbott, changing the subject with swift intuition.

"Yes, the first time he has been in church."

"He's not interested in us," announced Mrs. Bowers, with the manner of one who delivers an axiom, "not a little bit. St. Marys happens to be the town near the works, and we happen to be the people in it, that's all."

Mrs. Dibbott's flexible fingers curved and met. "Why should he be? We haven't done anything for him, except allow him to shoulder the town debt. And there isn't a woman alive who means anything to him, in one sense. He's in love--but with his work. There's no room for one of us, and, if he had a wife we'd only discuss her like a lot of cats. Let's be honest--you both know we would."

The others laughed and went their way, Mrs. Bowers to the big house near the station. It had a new porch and an iron fence and was freshly painted. In former days it never suggested personal resources as it did now. A little later Mrs. Manson turned into the gravel walk that led to the small stone annex of the big stone jail. Instead of going upstairs, she stopped at her husband's office and knocked, as she always did.

"Come in," boomed a deep voice.

Manson was at his desk and still in his Sunday best. He had taken the flower out of his buttonhole and laid it on a printed notice of the next assize court. She stood looking at him, their faces almost level--such was his great bulk.

"Peter," she said gravely, "I want to talk to you."

Something in her manner impressed him and he pushed back his chair. "What is it?"

"We don't seem to have much time to talk nowadays."

"There's no reason we shouldn't."

"That's just it--but we don't. Now I want to ask you something and, Peter, you mustn't put me off--as you always do.

"It's about ourselves," she went on, with a long breath, "but principally about you--and it concerns the children. Everything's changed and you're not what you used to be and something has come between us. I don't feel any more that we're the most important things in your life--as I used to."

He shook his head grimly. "You're all more important than ever, if you only knew it." Manson had a faint sense of injustice. It was for them he was wading through depths of anxiety. "You're shortly going to get the surprise of your life," he added with a note of triumphant conviction.

"Is it money?" she said slowly.

He nodded. "Yes, a pile of it."

"I don't want any more money, Peter, I'd sooner have you." The little woman's voice was very pleading.

"Look here, Barbara," he exploded, "I've made nearly thirty thousand dollars out of real estate. I got the money, you understand, but the game was too stiff and took too much time, so I put that and what else I could raise into stock--in Toronto. I've already made twenty thousand more, that's fifty, and the last twenty was without any effort or time on my part. I've only got to leave it alone for another year, and I'll pull out with an even hundred thousand and retire and devote the rest of my time to you and the children. Isn't that fair enough?"

"Do you say that you have already made fifty thousand dollars?" She was staring at him with startled and incredulous eyes. The sum staggered her.

"Yes," he chuckled contentedly.

She put her arms around his neck. "Then, Peter," she implored, "stop now. It's enough--it's marvelously more than I ever dreamed of. Oh! we can be so happy."

He shook his head. "I've set my mind on the even hundred. Can't you stand another year of it?"

"I can, but not you," she implored. "You don't know how you've changed. Peter, I beg you."

"I've got to leave that fifty where it is to make the next," he said with slow stubbornness. "I'll be the only man in St. Marys who was wise enough to make hay when the sun shone. You needn't be frightened for me."

"I'm frightened for myself," she answered shakily. "Won't you do what I ask? Sometimes," she ventured with delicate courage, "sometimes a woman can see furthest--though she doesn't know why."

"A year from to-day you'll thank me for sticking it out," came back Manson stolidly.

"And if it shouldn't turn out as you expect," she replied with a look that was at once sudden and profound, "you'll remember that I begged and you refused."

The door closed noiselessly behind her and Manson stared at his desk with a queer sense of discomfort. Consolidated stock had moved up buoyantly on the news of the discovery of iron, and he had established for himself with his Toronto brokers the reputation of a shrewd operator who worked on the strength of inside information. In front of him were Toronto letters asking that his agent be kept informed of developments at St. Marys. It pleased him that this had been achieved outside his own town and without its knowledge, and he saw himself a man who was vastly underestimated by his fellow citizens. But in spite of it all he was daily more conscious of a worm of uncertainty that gnawed in his brain. The thing was safe, obviously and demonstrably safe. Against his thousands others had invested millions with which to buttress the whole gigantic concern. And yet--!

XIV.--AN ANCIENT ARISTOCRAT VISITS THE WORKS

On a sunshiny day twelve miles down the river at the Indian settlement, old Chief Shingwauk, known in English as the Pine Tree, put on his best beaded caribou-skin moccasins and, motioning to his wife, moved slowly toward the shore where a small bark canoe nestled in the long reeds. A few moments later they slid silently up stream, the aged crone kneeling in the bow, a red shawl enveloping head and shoulders, her thin and bony arms wielding a narrow paddle with smooth agility. In the stern squatted Shingwauk, his dark eyes deep in thought.

Slowly they pushed up current, pausing now and again to peer unspeaking into the woods, every ancient instinct still alive, though ninety years had passed since the old man and his wife were unstrapped from the stiff board cradles in which they once swung mummy-like in long forgotten camps. Shingwauk, his broad blade winnowing the clear water, reflected that this journey had been contemplated for many months, since first he heard that strange things were being done at the big white water, and now it was well to see for himself, for the time was approaching when he would not see anything any more.

It was years since he had been at St. Marys and he was very old, so he worked up stream carefully, skirting close to the shore in the back water, hugging every point and sheering not at all into the strong current of midstream. Thus for hours the canoe floated like a dry leaf in the unruffled corner of a hidden pool, and in it the ancient pair, dry themselves with the searching seasons of nearly a hundred years.

For five hours they paddled, then the last bend in the river and St. Marys lay three miles ahead. Naqua, in the bow, reached up a withered hand, caught at an overhanging branch and their old eyes took in a scene familiar but yet strange. The sky line had changed, and up where the big white water crossed the river like a flat bar there was cause for wonderment.

Presently Shingwauk tapped the thwart with the haft of his paddle and they glided on, past the lower end of the town with its new houses and gardens, past a street car that moved like a noisy miracle with nothing to pull it, being evidently animated by some devil enchained, past Filmer's dock where years before Shingwauk and Naqua used to bring mink and otter and marten for trade; past other docks newer and larger and a town bigger than anything they had ever conceived, and opposite which sharp-nosed devil boats darted about or swung at anchor, across the deep bay that lay between the town and the big white water, till finally they floated near the block-house and Shingwauk's eyes, gazing profoundly at the massive proportions of Clark's buildings, caught the narrow stone lined entrance to the little Hudson Bay canal.

"How," he grunted.

The canoe slid delicately forward till presently it floated in the tiny lock. Naqua said nothing, being seized by an enormous fear that clutched at her stringly throat and held her silent, but Shingwauk felt something stirring in his breast. Here, surrounded by the confused vibrations of the works, he resigned himself to ancient memories. Putting out a brown hand he touched the rough walls, and at the touch the year rolled back. He saw himself a young man, the bow paddle of a great thirty-foot canoe that came down through the broken waters of the big lake to the rapids above, with the Hudson Bay factor enthroned in the middle, surrounded by the precious takings of the winter. He saw Ojibway faces, now long forgotten, and smelt the smoke of vanished camp fires. He saw the thirty-foot canoe lowered delicately into just such a lock as this, and automatically thrust out his own paddle to protect her tender tawny sides from the rough masonry. The hewn gates had opened when he floated out, and here were the gates looking non-understandably new, and with the adze marks still on the yellow timber.

Involuntarily he cast about for the blockhouse and found it hard by. He looked at his own hands--they were knotted and wrinkled; he scanned the twelve-foot canoe--it seemed small and hastily built of poor bark; he stared at the back of Naqua and reflected how bent and rounded it was instead of being straight and strong and supple; he glanced up and where once there stretched green bush and small running streams now stood things bigger than he had ever seen; he sniffed at the wind and, without knowing what it was, caught the sharp odor of metal and machinery. Last of all, he lifted his gaze straight into the eyes of a man who stood staring down from the coping of the little lock.

From the blockhouse window Clark had seen him since first the canoe approached the shore. With a curious thrill he had watched the old chief enter the tiny chamber and float motionless--a visitant from the past. So complete was the picture and so almost poignant the pleasure it afforded, that, loath to mar it, he had hesitated to approach. Never had he conceived anything so intimately appropriate as this linking of bygone days with the insistent present.

They stared at each other, Clark's keen features suffused with interest, Shingwauk's black eyes gazing lustrous from a dark bronze face seamed with innumerable wrinkles. His visage was noble with the proud wisdom of the wilderness and the unnamable shadow of traditions that went back through uncounted centuries of forest life. Clark, recognizing it, felt strangely juvenile. Presently Shingwauk, with some subtle intuition of who and what was the man who stood so quietly, waved his hand. The motion took in the works, the blockhouse, the canal, in short the entire setting.

"You?" he asked in deep, hollow tones.

Clark nodded, smiling. "Yes, me."

Shingwauk's eyes rounded a little. "Big magic," he said impressively and relapsed into silence.

"Hungry?" asked Clark presently.

The old chief did not reply, being too moved by strange thoughts and the rush of memory to feel anything else, but Naqua lifted a withered head in the bow.

"Much hungry," she croaked shrilly.

Clark laughed and signaled to the blockhouse, where the Japanese cook waited, peering from a window. Presently the latter came out carrying a tray. His narrow eyes were expressionless as he laid it on the masonry beside the canoe. Shingwauk glanced at him, puzzled over the flat, oriental features for a moment, and looked away. He seemed but a minor spirit in this great mystery. The old woman ate greedily, but her husband had no desire for food. He was experiencing a transition so breathless that it could but mark the day of his own passing. He waited till Naqua finished such a meal as she had never seen before, his face gaunt but his eyes large and profound with the shadow of unspeakable thoughts. Presently he dipped his blade in the untroubled water, and the canoe backed out of the lock.

"Boozhoo!" he said slowly, with one long look at Clark.

"Good-by! Come again."

The penetrating gaze followed the pigmy vessel as it dipped to the larger stretch of the bay, dwindling with the glint of two blades that flashed with clock-like regularity in the afternoon sun. Soon it reduced to a speck and was out of sight. Clark turned to his office, still contemplating the dignity of his visitor, the stark simplicity of this archaean aristocrat. How soon, after all, he pondered, might not he himself and his works look aboriginal beside the achievements which science had yet to unfold to the world? Then, glancing across the river, he stepped down to the dock and struck over in a fast launch.

XV.--CLARK CONVERTS TORONTO