Chapter 18

The moments lengthened into hours and still he did not move. The sun showed its red disc through the lattice girders of the great bridge, and touched the flashing waters into gold. It was seven years since he had sat here first, and he looked expectantly about for the crested kingfisher. The voice of the river seemed unusually loud, and there was no drone from the works. He began to go over it all, but, desisting from sheer inability, pitched his attention on the rapids. Here, at least, was that which had no shadow of turning. Distinguishing the multitude of notes that lifted their booming uproar, he yielded to the sensation that he was in the midst of them, being carried to the sea.

To-night they seemed relentless, but that again was the reflection of his mood. If he was going down, Wimperley and the rest were going with him. Finally he was able, at some command from this tumult, to disassociate himself from the present and go back to the beginning. Retracing each step, he decided that, were a parallel occasion to arise, he would do the same again. He had listened to the voice of the hills and woods and water, rather than to the voice of Philadelphia, and this, he ultimately concluded, was right. There was no time to brood or forecast the future. What his soul craved was to be persuaded that it was justified up to this hour. Only thus could he find strength for that which was yet to come.

Carrying his solitary reverie still further, he was assured that it would be for him and him alone to find the way out. Wimperley and the others were able men as far as they went, but just as they had always loitered behind his imagination, so now would they be slow in deciphering the riddle in store. He had brought them in, and it would be left for him to bring others in also. Very easily he visualized what had taken place in Philadelphia, and the group in Wimperley's office stood out quite clearly. He felt no particular sympathy for them, nor did it appear that the responsibility was primarily his own because it was his brain that conceived the whole gigantic machine. They had acted according to their final judgment, so had he. With small and genuine investors the case was different, but Clark was well aware that Consolidated stock had been a favorite Pennsylvania gamble for years. As to his own employees, he knew that the works must ultimately go on and could not go on without them. This left only himself to be considered, and at the thought this extraordinary man smiled confidently. He was stranger to that fear which is based on uncertainty of one's own resources.

An hour after sundown he went home and, sending for Bowers, the two sat talking earnestly. For Bowers it had been a day of vicissitude which he was only partially competent to face. Rooted out of a small practice in a small village, and caught up in the sweep of irresistible progress, he had never had to fight for his point. The weight and momentum Clark put before him were too great for that. But now every angle of the Consolidated Company seemed to offer itself for frontal attack. He put this to his chief in justification of his own anxiety.

"It's been a matter of writs and injunctions all day. There are enough in my office now to paper the rail mill."

"Well, why should you worry?"

Bowers glanced up with surprise. "Eh?"

"You're doing your duty, you can't do anything more. But perhaps you feel chagrined at being associated with me in the present difficulty. You needn't expostulate,--I can quite understand it."

The lawyer turned a brick red. It was quite true. He had begun to look on this calamity as one for which he and Clark were both partly responsible.

"If you worry--and it's quite absurd that you should--your value automatically decreases. Has it occurred to you that, from now on, the importance of your position is vastly increased? We shall look to you more than ever. I dare not worry--there's too much to be done. You were our advisor, now you are our protector against unfair attack--and there'll be lots of it. What's more, Bowers, you are the only one who is sure of his money."

Bowers nodded. He began to feel more comfortable.

"What's going on in St. Marys?"

"Nothing much yet--they don't know what to get ready for. Filmer and the rest are sending out accounts they hope to collect, a good deal of property is on offer without any takers, but, at the bottom, I don't think the town is rattled. There's a sort of feeling that the works are too big to be wiped out."

Clark smiled gravely. He was aware that to the townsfolk the works had become part of the landscape, and, imaginatively, not much more. But just as they could not contemplate the obliteration of part of the landscape, so it was difficult to conceive permanent idleness at the works. It was a case of the immobility of the non-speculative mind, which is lethargic in hours of exaltation but comfortably steadfast in times of stress.

"Listen," he said earnestly. "There's an element in Ironville which may soon have to be controlled by force; but as to St. Marys what you've got to do is to spread the feeling that there's nothing like confidence to maintain business. Can't you see that if your office were knee deep in writs it doesn't affect you? You've got to remain the efficient, smoothly working, impersonal machine. So have I--and so has every one who takes the responsibility for the actions of those of lesser intelligence. Leaving out first and second causes--we're all doing just what we're meant to do, and it doesn't matter who or what meant it. Wimperley and the others will be up here soon, and regard me as a crazy idealist who inveigled them into building a house of cards. The heads of departments--at least some of them--will look at me and wonder how it was that I gave them any confidence in the future. Hundreds of creditors will consider me personally responsible because they have to wait for their money, and about two thousand Poles and Hungarians will want to kill me to gratify their sense of personal injury. On top of that, ninety-nine men out of a hundred will forget all about my seven years' work, and that I started with nothing, and will point to the Consolidated as an excellent example of misdirected energy. For a little while little men will smile with commiseration and say 'He did the best he could,' but," and here Clark's voice deepened, "only for a little while. Now, friend Bowers, where do I stand with you?"

Bowers got up and paced the terrace irresolutely, glancing now and then at the motionless, gray clad figure in the wicker chair. He was suddenly and profoundly moved. In the past he had seen but one side of Clark, and this sudden depth of feeling was startling. He knew that if he still took his chief as the crowd took him, Clark would not apparently be affected in any degree, but would only classify and finally put him away with his own kind.

"Don't think for a moment I'm making any appeal," went on the steady voice. "It really doesn't matter whether you believe in me or not. There's just one thing supremely important at the present time, which is my belief in myself. That's my anchorage--it always has been and will be. I don't consider that we owe each other anything, but just the same I would like to know where you place me."

Bowers had a swift vision of what he was seven years ago, and set it against what he was now. Then, with full consciousness of the complete confidence that was placed in him by Clark, he turned and held out his hand.

"I place you," he said a little jerkily, "just where you want to be placed."

Clark merely touched the extended fingers, but his face brightened and a smile crept into his eyes.

"I thought you did, but--" he added quizzically, "I had to work to find it out, didn't I?"

Bowers nodded. He felt like a field that had been plowed so deep that it would yield better than ever before. He reflected, too, that the experience gained in years of success should serve well in times of adversity.

"What's on the program?" he asked.

"The men will begin to drift in from the mines and lumber camps. Then it's a matter of sitting tight till they're paid off."

Bowers thrust out his lips. He had seen men come in from the woods with their pockets full of money, and that was bad enough, but without money--!

"I've had a talk with Manson who seems good for it, and the works will be under heavy guard. That's all we can do in the meantime. I'm going to Philadelphia as soon as possible."

"But not at once?"

Clark smiled. "No, not at once."

XXII.--THE MASTER MIND AT WORK

Bowers went thoughtfully home and; next morning, flung himself into his work with renewed courage. He had need of it--they all had need of it. There were now thousands who waited for their pay, and daily these ranks were swelled by others who drifted in from the woods. Hundreds of merchants began to refuse credit, though Filmer valiantly used all his resources. St. Marys was, in truth, stupefied, and when the first shock began to smooth itself out, the reality of the thing became grimly apparent, and then arose the first rumor of trouble in Ironville, that straggling settlement of shacks where dwelt the bone and muscle of the works.

To the Swede and Polander there was no suggestion of achievement in the vast buildings in which they labored. It was only the place where they earned their living. They worked amongst giant mechanisms beside which they were puny, but theirs was a life of force and strength which took from them the fear of anything that was merely human. Thus surprise changed to resentment, and resentment began to resolve itself into a slow and consuming anger. The works were dead, but in the main office the accounting staff was bending desperately over statements imperatively demanded by Philadelphia. The black browed Hungarians saw the lights at night, and felt that they were being played with by those more powerful than themselves. If a furnace man was discharged, why keep on these scribblers?

Outside St. Marys the news ran apace. Toronto papers dwelt on it, and the Board of Trade read it with regret mingled with thankfulness that Clark had embarked on no financial campaigns in their own city. Thorpe went carefully over the Philadelphia acceptances in his vault, and wondered what they were worth. To St. Marys set out a stream of representatives of various creditor companies, that filled the local hotels and journeyed out to the works and came back unsatisfied. Philadelphia dispatches were devoured, and the word "reorganization" was one to charm with. One by one, the Company's steamers slid up to the long docks, made fast and drew their fires, till it seemed that the works, like a great octopus, was withdrawing every arm and filament it ever had radiated, and was coiling them endlessly at its cold and clammy side. Yet, for all of this, it did not seem possible that the whole structure was tumbling, the structure on which so many years of labor--so much genius and enthusiasm--so many millions--had been lavished, until one afternoon a drunken Swede threw a stone into a butcher's window in Ironville and, putting forth a horny hand, seized a side of bacon and set forth, reeling, down the street. Two hours later the startled chief accountant, from a window in his office, saw a swarm of a thousand men surge through the big gates of the works and, trampling the guard, flow irregularly forward.

The mob spilt on, a river of big strong men, unaware of its own strength. They were not bent on willful destruction, but the whole mass was animated by an inchoate desire to find out something for itself. At the door of the rail mill stood the superintendent and his firemen, with drawn revolvers. The rioters liked these men because they worked with and understood them. They were not associated with the present trouble. So on to the administration building, where the office staff looked out, petrified with fear. Here, the mob decided, was another breed, so there commenced a hammering on the big oaken door and stones showered through the windows.

At this, Hobbs, stricken with mortal terror, and oblivious of the girls who gathered around him, lost his head. There was no escape downstairs, but opposite his desk was a grated iron window that led on to an adjoining roof. Noting it desperately, he heaved up his soft body and made a plunge for safety. But such was his bulk that, though head, arms and shoulders went through, he stuck there, anchored in an iron grip.

"Help!" he called chokingly, "Help!"

The mob looked up and stared, when from the rear ranks came a bull-like roar of laughter. Then another burst out and another, till from the ground spouted a fountain of jeers, hoots and ridicule that reached the fat man as he hung suspended, with purple face and gesticulating arms.

Clark, in his office, waiting coolly for what might come, caught the change in the note of riot and, stepping into the next room, saw the legs of his comptroller brandished in the air. The rest of him was invisible, and still in the square outside rocked the booming shouts of Slavic and Scandinavian mirth. A moment later Hobbs was dragged back, with torn clothing, swollen neck and scratched body. Clark glanced at him contemptuously and went out. Then the doors opened, and he was on the front steps.

The mob saw him and held its breath. Few of them had ever been so near him before. He stood with a quiet smile on his face and a light in his keen eyes, and, in the momentary hush, began to speak. There was no fear in voice or attitude. The wind, blowing from the rapids, brought the echo of their clamor to the upper windows so that the accounting staff heard not a word, but the mob heard, and presently the big Pole laughed, just as he had laughed at Hobbs' distorted face suspended above him. It was contagious, and Clark, playing upon the mood of the moment, drove home his point.

The money was coming, and he himself would stay there till it came. In the meantime, the money would be slower to arrive if there was trouble, and that was all he had to say.

There followed a little hesitation, then an indefinite movement, and the crowd began to shuffle toward the shattered gates. As it dwindled Clark glanced over his shoulder and saw a man within twenty feet, both hands thrust eloquently into his bulging coat pockets.

"Thanks very much, Belding, I'm glad it wasn't necessary," he said crisply, and vanished inside the big doors.

The engineer knew better than to follow, but was bitterly disappointed. He had hoped for some word of comfort, but to not a single employee had Clark said anything of explanation. It was not his habit, and he looked to the intelligence of each man to carry him through. And this was typical of his invariable attitude toward those with whom he came in contact. He gauged them by the degree to which they contributed to the work on hand, and just now the only work on hand was that which none but himself could carry out. In personalities Clark was not interested, but identified them only by some very definite achievement he was able to hang round their necks like a label.

Belding saw to it that his own offices were guarded and walked to the head of the rapids. He felt numbed. If Clark had conceived the works, he himself had built them, and, as they grew under his hand, he felt that something of his own existence went forth with every stroke of a drill, and that a fragment of his brain lay in every course of masonry. Like all true engineers, he delighted in the physical expression of his ability, and here had been such an opportunity as few engineers ever realized. He felt not so much dejected as dumbfounded that so much skill and labor could be brought to a full stop just as it reached its permanent stride. In his eyes the figure of Clark had long achieved titanic proportions. Innumerable things had been demonstrated to be possible, and to be chief engineer of such an enterprise had been, thought Belding, all that any man could ask. It was true that in the fatigue of work he had often imagined that Clark was going too fast, but always the thing had been done. Now it seemed the ironical jest of the gods that a shade too much carbon in a steel rail should wreck the whole endeavor.

And there was Elsie. He had never been able to give her up. Against the glamour of his chief's personality he had nothing to put forward except a whole souled worship, and Elsie, it appeared, preferred the invitation of the older man's romantic career. Subconsciously, Belding decided that the thing was wrong and against nature, for he was marked by a certain simple belief in the general fairness of life. He clung to the doctrine of compensation, and held himself trustingly open to whatever good influences might reach him. Elsie was the highest influence of all. In Clark he had found a stimulus that nerved his brain to great accomplishments. But Elsie and Clark had together wounded his very spirit.

Clark, in the quiet of his private office, was thinking not of Belding or Elsie, but of the mob that had trailed so uncertainly out of the big gates. He had played for time and he had won--but that was all. Sooner or later, driven by the impossibility of living without pay, the mob would return, and in a less placable mood. He turned to the telephone. "I want Mr. Filmer." In a moment he was speaking to the mayor.

"What happened up here to-day is but a taste of what's coming. You'd better get out the militia, if Manson can't handle it. Bowers tells me I can do very little from a point of law, and we look to you for protection."

"The militia won't help you much." Filmer's voice was a little shaky. His son was in the militia, but he himself had never taken that body very seriously. It was a matter of uniform, a band and a field day or two in the year--that was all.

"Well, Bowers tells me that if we kill any one in protecting the place we'll have a nasty time of it, so it's up to you. If the local militia are no good, get some up from Toronto. I warn you they'll be needed. Ask Belding if you like, he saw it all."

He leaned back and began a cold blooded survey of the situation. He was not in any way desperate, but he turned involuntarily to the resources of his own brain for some solution. It was certain that no immediate help could be expected from Philadelphia. He was left quite officially and deliberately to stem the tide as best he could, and, in spite of the gravity of the moment, smiled at the thought that his directors leaned on him in their extremity. They did not know what to do, therefore he must know. Then suddenly his mind reverted to Semple, and he spent the next few moments in profound thought. "Get hold of Mr. Semple," he said to his secretary, "and bring him here."

In half an hour Semple appeared, flustered and a little pale. A visit to the works just now filled him with apprehension. It seemed like smoking in a magazine.

"What's the matter?" said Clark, smiling at his agitation.

Semple drew a long breath and, noting the thickness of the office walls, felt a little safer.

"That's what I was going to ask _you_."

"Only a slight difficulty that you will help to put right."

Semple stared with astonishment. The bottom had apparently fallen out of the works, but Clark was as cool as ever.

"Help?" he demanded, puzzled. Clark evidently did not stand to lose much in the smash. "You're holding these fellows, aren't you?"

"Yes, for the immediate present, but we'll have to do more. That's where you come in."

The member for Algoma was at sea, and said so.

"You represent the Government here," went on Clark, "and we've spent seventeen million dollars in these works. Do you see the conclusion?"

"No, I don't."

"Your government must help us over the stile. Just so long as those men remain unpaid, life won't be very safe in St. Marys."

Semple looked round apprehensively. "But my government doesn't live here. What have I got to do with it?"

"I don't know, but, by virtue of pressure you will exert, the Government must help. What's the Liberal majority in Ontario?"

"One. I'm it."

"Then you keep the Premier in power, and he's hanging on to power like grim death."

"But I don't see--"

"It's simple enough. If you settle this affair to the satisfaction of local people, you'll secure Algoma to the Liberal party, so long as that party wants it."

"By God!" said Semple, startled.

Clark apparently did not hear him. "There's another thing--to set those works in motion again will be the biggest advertisement any government in Canada ever had. It will swing the labor vote--it will secure the merchants' support." He paused, then leant forward and poured into Semple the full pressure--the accumulated effort of mind and spirit. "Ample security is available. I will make repayment the first obligation of the Company--it will forestall bonds and everything else. What I want, and what you will find for me, is only a fraction of the sum that has been put straight into this Province; and it's not much more than we have already paid in mineral and lumber dues and taxes."

"How much?" said Semple in a fascinated whisper.

"Two million dollars."

"But--"

"There aren't any buts."

"Do you owe that in wages?" Semple was aghast.

"Wages are only a small part of what must be paid at once."

"Where does Philadelphia come in?"

"Philadelphia," smiled Clark, "has left the entire matter to me in the meantime. They are making arrangements which may not be consummated for some months. We can thank a prominent American speculator for most of this. But the Province of Ontario owes us something. Doesn't it occur to you," he added slowly, "how your personal reputation will be affected?"

Semple blinked several times and very rapidly. "I'll wire at once," he said, with a long breath.

"You'll do nothing of the kind. You'll go down yourself this afternoon. You know your man, and I know him; and he knows the works. He's been here several times. Put the matter straight,--tell him that we are dealing with forces that can only be met in one way. It's either this, or destruction and bloodshed. I've asked Filmer to wire for troops. Mr. Semple, what you are about to make is a new move on the chessboard. Your man is shrewd enough to see it, and it's the new moves that win. This is not so much politics as economics--tell him that. I'd go with you--but I must not leave St. Marys just now. Wire me as soon as possible--you've just time to catch your train."

The color climbed into Semple's cheeks, and he went quickly out with his head up. Clark glanced after him and his lips twisted into a smile.

"I give him forty-eight hours. If it doesn't come by that--we'll ring down the curtain," he said to himself thoughtfully.

He went out and walked, for hours, through the deserted buildings. They were full of hollow mockery. Watchmen, posted by Belding at strategic points, glanced after him curiously. He seemed lonely and diminutive in this mechanical wilderness of his own creation. They wondered how a man felt in such a position as his at a time like this. He dared not go to the rapids, lest he read in their uproar some new and menacing note. He thought lingeringly of Elsie. She seemed far from this crisis, and at the same time curiously a part of it. Never did he feel more certain of the girl's affection than now, and it came to him what a refuge a woman's breast might be for a man in such case as himself. In the moment his forceful brain protested at the thought of refuge.