The Project Gutenberg eBook of The inverted pyramid
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The inverted pyramid
Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair
Release date: December 12, 2023 [eBook #72392]
Language: English
Original publication: Toronto: Frederick D. Goodchild, 1924
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INVERTED PYRAMID ***
THE INVERTED PYRAMID
BY
BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1924
_Copyright, 1924,_
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_
Published January, 1924
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
"From the duality of man's nature and the competition of individuals
the life-history of the earth must in the last instance be a history
of a really very relentless warfare. Neither his fellows, nor his
gods, nor his passions will leave a man alone."
JOSEPH CONRAD.
The Inverted Pyramid
CHAPTER I
Item: one boy aged eighteen, name Roderick Norquay; one girl aged
fifteen, named Mary Thorn; one gaudy cedar dugout canoe got up in the
Siwash style of high-curving bow and stern, both ends grotesquely
carved and brilliantly colored in flaming red, blinding yellow,
piercing blue; one stretch of tiderace running swiftly between an
island shore and a forbidding rock-strewn point.
The tides of Fundy and the maelstroms of the Scandinavian coast have
been variously hymned since Jules Verne vulgarized holy science and
proved himself an unwitting prophet with Captain Nemo's submersible.
But there are tides and maelstroms on the Pacific seaboard as worthy
as these others, which have as yet no place in literature save
through the dull medium of admiralty charts and blue-bound North
Pacific pilot books. These sheets and tomes are thumbed and conned
by men nowise concerned with that color, form, and substance which
imparts magic to the written word. They seek therein only knowledge
of reef and shoal, of anchorages, currents, depths, for the safe
passage of their sea-borne keels.
Rod Norquay, sitting on the shore of Little Dent, waiting for the
flood tide to wax strong and the race of it through the choked pass
to grow swifter, found himself wondering why no poet had sung the
song of this swirling water; why no novelist had lovingly portrayed
this land as a back drop for his comic and tragic puppets? Why was
there no Iliad of the pioneers, no Human Comedy of men and manners
peculiar to the North Coast? If McAndrews sighed for a Burns to sing
the song of steam, so young Norquay found himself wishing that some
one with the gift of living words could catch and transfix the beauty
and majesty, the invisible yet pulsing spirit of his native land.
That it deserved a Homer and a Burns he did not doubt. Rod had been
reading Homer with his tutor that morning. Perhaps the thought in
his mind now was only the reflex of a question put then.
"Why should a fellow have to learn all about these frowsy old
Greeks?" he had demanded, as much in mild mischief, to scandalize his
tutor, as for any reason. Yet he was suddenly earnest when he
followed up this by saying, "It would be much more interesting to
read poetry about our own people. How they sailed this coast in
small ships, how they fought Indians and settled the country and
founded families, and all that sort of thing."
He could not quite comprehend when Mr. Spence shook his gray head and
gravely stated in a precise, tutorial voice:
"There is, my dear Rod, no epic literature dealing with the pioneers.
That is merely in the nature of things. It takes leisure and culture
to embody a tradition in language that will live. American
civilization has been too occupied with grasping material power, with
cutting trees and digging mines, making machinery and so on. This
country has tradition, but little culture. It is too young and
lusty, too new and crude--raw, one might say."
Rod Norquay had muttered "rats!" under his breath. He did not accept
as gospel all that his elderly tutor vouchsafed. Young? Four
generations of men had been born in the house where they sat. Its
stone walls had been fabricated by English masons who rounded the
Horn before the day of steam. Rod believed the Anglo-Saxon took his
culture with him--in so far as he possessed culture--wherever he
went. It was not something indigenous to the soil in which he
planted his roots.
At any rate that was a passing thought and Rod put it by as youth so
easily puts abstractions aside. His eyes rested critically on the
flooding tide, the line of current that poured with accelerating
speed through its narrow gate. Northward, up Cardero Channel, the
level was beginning to rise. Southward, where the four-mile
boomerang curve of the Euclataw Passage opened into the Gulf the tide
was falling fast. Vancouver Island, spreading its sinuous length
like a barrier against the Pacific, crowded the sea into the shape of
an enormous hourglass. Queen Charlotte Sound formed one bulb, the
Gulf of Georgia the other. An hourglass three hundred miles from
north to south. The Euclataw Passage was the neck, and the rapids
between Little Dent and Valdez was a constriction of this neck to a
span six hundred feet across, through which at the full strength of
the tidal flow the sea ran with hurrying feet and a loud, complaining
voice, as a mountain river hastens roaring over its stony bed.
Rod turned to the girl.
"It's running pretty good," he remarked. "Let's go, Mary."
She smiled assent. They got off the mossy rock. The green-bodied
dugout with its futuristic bow and stern rubbed against a shelf
convenient for embarking. The girl sat amidships, Rod in the stern,
squatting on their knees, paddles in hand. Forty feet out from shore
the water dropped with a murmur over a sunken ledge. It stood like a
low, green wall, curling over with a white-edged crest. In two hours
that murmur would rise to a thunderous roar, the low green wall would
be a man's height with hissing whirlpools below. Already the suction
was strong. The indraught took the canoe backward the instant they
let go the shore hold. They bent to the paddles, plying short, swift
strokes, won clear to the slack water well above the rapids and
pointed for the Valdez side.
Here the current, thirty fathoms deep, free of all obstruction, shot
through the Euclataws in a clear, straight line, pitching down in a
slant perceptible to the eye, a strip of smooth jade-green bordered
to right and left by eddies, whirlpools, white-tipped waves where
conflicting currents met and slashed up foam. The song of running
water crooned gently between wooded banks,--that song which would
presently fill the air with deep-toned antiphony to the whisper of
the winds.
"Now," Rod commanded. "Stow your paddle till I shout."
It was like a path between precipices, that strip of smooth,
swift-flowing water, after the first dizzy swoop at the overfall. A
boat length on either hand spun whirlpools. A sudden sheer of their
craft meant almost sure destruction. The guiding thrust of Rod's
paddle held the dugout true. Their breath came quickly. Their eyes
glowed. Their lips parted in a set smile, as if an alteration of
feature might destroy their equilibrium.
"Right," young Norquay said curtly.
The girl's paddle dipped with a sure, vigorous thrust. In the stern
Rod held his blade at an angle, like a rudder, and the dugout shaved
a whirling hollow in the vortex of which a drift log stood upended,
spinning like a top, going slowly down end-on in the suction.
"Steady."
She held her paddle poised again. The canoe came back to midway of
the green path. The Valdez shore flew by, stubs of trees, tall
cedars with lancelike crests and drooping boughs. A gull swooped
over them, crying. The swiftness made a cool breeze in their faces,
flung the girl's hair in a loose brown cloud about her head.
The high, carved bow dipped into broken water, among cross-surges.
They rode over "boils,"--deflecting currents that shot up from the
depths and broke into strange watery mounds with a sinister
muttering. They shipped a little spray, rolled uncertainly in this
agitation. Then they were through, floating in a great eddy that
swept them back toward Little Dent. They had shot the rapids.
Mary looked over her shoulder. They smiled at each other in perfect
understanding, and young Norquay thought:
"I'd like to take old Spence through. He wouldn't grin. Poor old
duffer, he gets all his fun second-hand--out of books."
Aloud he said, "We'd better get under the Dent shore before the eddy
carries us back among the swirls."
"Among the Devil's Dishpans, you mean," she laughed, keeping stroke
with him. "That's what daddy calls them."
"Good name," he grunted. "They're devil's something when they get to
spinning good. Paddle, Brownie. We're losing ground."
They got in under the weedy shore of Little Dent and worked up to the
overfall. They got ashore. Rod took a light line from the bow and
hauled. Mary held the canoe off with a slender pole. Thus they
worked their craft up over the jump-off and reached the northern side
of the small island where the flood tide parted and where its sweep
was slow. Then they reëmbarked and stood clear, paddling in a wide
detour until they drove into the straight current again and were
swept down like a gaudy arrow.
Close on their heels as they made the second voyage came a white
power cruiser, all agleam in the afternoon sun, her housework
varnished oak, bright flashes reflected off polished brass and
copper. She plowed down the green spillway, her bow wave spreading
like an ostrich plume. When Rod and Mary skilfully picked smooths in
the broken water and swung aside into the comparative calm of the
great eddy the white cruiser followed and hauled up close to them.
Out her pilot-house window a capped, red face grinned genially. On
her low after deck half a dozen people sat in wicker chairs, the
women in cool summer stuff, the men in flannels and colored sweaters.
A girl about Mary Thorn's age, a fair-haired, blue-eyed creature like
a bisque doll, stood with one arm around the slender signal mast. A
little below her a tall young man with the reddish-brown hair and
fine clear skin and grayish-blue eyes of the boy in the canoe leaned
over the pipe rail.
"Hello, everybody," Rod greeted casually.
His brother disregarded this.
"Better climb aboard and tow that thing," he suggested. "How did you
manage to get caught in the rapids?"
"We didn't get caught," Rod answered mildly.
"Then what the deuce are you doing in them?" Phil demanded.
"Oh, just running 'em for fun," Rod drawled.
"For fun!" One of the matrons on the after deck contrived a
horrified inflection.
Phil Norquay's brow wrinkled a trifle. He looked inquiringly down at
his brother. That youth gazed up at him with bland innocence.
"You'll be getting in among those big swirls if you don't watch out,"
Rod said to him. "Never mind about us."
Phil glanced, up and ahead, called an order to the man leaning out
the pilot house.
"You'd better----"
But his sentence to Rod was cut off, for that imperturbable youth
drove the dugout well clear of the power boat with a thrust of his
paddle, and Mary Thorn's blade dipped in unison. They pointed
straight for shore.
The launch swung in a short circle, gathered way, passed up the
channel. Rod steered the canoe over to Little Dent, caught a
drooping bough and held it against the streaming tide.
Mary looked after the white cruiser, turning now into Mermaid Bay.
"What a pretty girl that was by the mast. Who is she?"
"Oh, Isabel Wall. Sister to a girl Phil's got half a crush on," Rod
answered carelessly. "I don't think she's so pretty. Too
dolly-dolly. Shall we run 'em once more?"
"She looked pretty to me. She was so beautifully dressed," Mary said
thoughtfully.
"Oh, clothes," Rod answered disdainfully. "That's all the bunch
around our place does these days; doll up and look pretty. Come on,
let's shoot the shoots again."
"No. It's running too fast now. The boils are beginning to break in
the straight current," Mary said. "I want to go home."
"All right."
Rod let go the branch. They paddled against the eddy, crossed the
small stretch of broken water where a lesser flood poured in from
behind Little Dent, and slid down on the tide along the Valdez shore
to a point a mile inside the rapids. Facing north, looking across
the channel into Mermaid Bay, a planked float gave them landing.
Back from the beach an unpainted house of split cedar lifted in a
square of cleared land in the edge of virgin forest.
Mary sprang lightly to the float.
"What's the rush?" Rod asked, breaking a long silence. "What's wrong
anyway? What made you turn clam all at once?"
"Me?" she turned a pair of clear hazel eyes on him with every
indication of surprise. "Nothing. I have to pick some blackberries
for mamma before supper."
Rod sawed the paddle blade up and down in the green water streaming
under the float.
"Shall I come and help?"
"No," she said decisively. Then mockingly, "Thanks very much for
your offer of assistance, just the same, Mr. Norquay."
Rod smiled at her.
"All right," he acquiesced. "I'll go home, if you're going to be
haughty. Listen. If I can get away from that bunch to-morrow, I'll
bring my tackle and we'll hike up to the lake and get some trout.
Eh?"
"Maybe. If mamma'll let me."
"She will, if I ask her," he observed. "'By, Mary."
"'By, Rod."
He tied the gaudy dugout--which in its barbaric color scheme of Rod's
own devising was alternately a joke and a provocation to his
brothers--to the Hawk's Nest landing, after the lapse of an hour,
which hour he spent coasting under the western shore of Big Dent,
alone in the canoe, watching the herring flash in silver shoals among
the kelp, the scuttle of crabs over the shingle, the deep purple and
brick-red of starfish against flat rocks, in gazing up at a blue dome
arched over the hurrying tide and the encircling mountains. Vast
peaks, from the green-mantled cones near by, to distant pinnacles
lifting far above timber line and capped with everlasting white.
Rod did not consciously apply his intellect to considering his
environment. He felt it. It satisfied him, filled him with an
indefinable sense of well-being. His people for a hundred years had
filled their eyes with that and found it good. Against this
background they had lived and loved and died. No matter. Rod,
floating lazily in his canoe, was not looking backward,
introspectively considering if he were the sum of five generations,
each of which had contributed its quota to subduing a wild land to
its use and need, to its ambition as well as to its necessity, and
becoming one at last with that portion of the earth the first
Roderick Norquay had made his own and handed to his sons.
No, eighteen mercifully wears invisible blinkers, and Rod was no
exception. Life sat lightly on him. No emotional spur had as yet
been forged to rowel him with the barbed thrust of ambition, desire,
hot struggle, frustrated hopes and keen dissatisfactions, glows of
possession and achievement, dead ashes of loss, all the curious
patterns a man must weave with uncertain fingers in the tapestry of
his life. So far as Rod was concerned on this bright August day,
these things were not.
He walked up from the float toward a stone house with a warm red roof
of tiles sitting amid a reach of emerald grass and clumps of exotic
shrubbery against a background of magnificent native trees, his hands
in his trousers pockets, bare-headed, whistling.
CHAPTER II
The path Rod walked approached the house by a circuitous route. It
turned aside here and there like a leisurely pedestrian to skirt
red-trunked arbutus with oily-green leaves and clusters of unripe
berries, to curve around the base of massive firs that rose like dun
pillars in a blue-vaulted forum, to pass great fibrous-barked cedars
with drooping boughs wherein unseen squirrels chattered. Everywhere
grass clothed the ground, a carpet with green velvet pile, close
shorn. Stones great and small had been gathered in artless piles so
long ago that their granite nakedness was hidden under thick moss,
disguised with ivy, or bright with flowering plants, brilliant dabs
of color against vivid greens and somber browns. This walk brought
him at last to one end of a great stone house with wide, cool
porches, deep window recesses, a roof of tiles that glowed in the sun
like a cardinal's hat.
There were people sitting about on the porch, a dozen or more. Rod
greeted them without halting until he reached the corner. Then he
looked back over his shoulder. Through the trees on the parked slope
he got a flash of the racing tide. The voice of the rapids waxed
strong. Across the channel Oliver Thorn's weather-beaten house was a
drab spot on the forest's edge. Over the low shoulders of Valdez the
distant backbone of Vancouver Island cut the sky line into jagged
tracery. That three-hundred-mile wall which stopped the marching
surges from tropical seas loomed in a bluish haze out of which rose
high, conical peaks, far and white and faintly shining.
He skirted the house. If he had destination or purpose Rod was not
conscious of either as a definite urge. He was simply strolling.
But as he turned the corner he came upon a girl leaning on a parasol
and staring at some letters cut in a massive cornerstone where the
thick foundation rose out of the earth.
"Oh, Rod," she said. "Do answer about a million questions for me,
please."
"Have you got a list?" he asked.
"A list? Oh, no," she chuckled. "I'm still on an even keel."
"Nautically all right," Rod smiled.
He didn't know Laska Wall very well. He hadn't seen much of her.
She had only been at Hawk's Nest three days. Prior to that he had
heard more or less about the Walls. They were people who had lately
begun to cut quite a figure in Vancouver society. His brothers knew
them. Both Phil and Grove had pretty well monopolized Laska since
her arrival here. But what Rod had seen of her he liked. She was a
quiet girl, with a slow smile that wonderfully transformed a piquant,
delicately tinted face. Rod looked at her now admiringly. He
wondered if Isabel, the pretty, bisque-doll creature whose dainty
clothes Mary Thorn had remarked, would be like that when she was
twenty-one. He supposed so, since they were sisters, but he could
scarcely believe it. He detested Isabel. She giggled incessantly,
flaunted herself before him with an irritating archness, annoyed him
with her glib French, with numerous manifestations of what Rod
contemptuously termed (to himself) "kindergarten stuff." He was a
man,--in his own estimation. It was a trial, which he bore as a
gentleman, to be expected to act as Isabel's cavalier, merely because
they were the juveniles of this house party. Isabel was juvenile
enough, Rod admitted. He exempted himself from the charge of extreme
youth. But it was provoking to have every one else blandly proceed
on that assumption.
Perhaps that was why he warmed to this fair-haired young woman who
addressed him as an intellectual equal who could impart knowledge.
"What does that signify, Rod?" she asked, pointing to a group of
letters and figures graven deep in the stone.
"Oh, that's the cornerstone of the first course of masonry above
ground, of the first wing of the old house, built by the first
Norquay," Rod told her with a trace of pride that he covered by
assumed casualness. "Those are his initials. R.S.N. for Roderick
Sylvester Norquay. And the year."
"1809," the girl murmured. "A hundred years exactly. You know I
have always thought of this country as a semi-wilderness--the last
American frontier. How many generations, Rod?"
"We're the fifth from his time," he indicated the chiseled stone.
"Grove and Phil and myself and Dorothy. I don't know if you've met
Dorothy. She's married to a chap named Hale. Lives in Victoria."
"A century since that stone was laid by a man's hands," Laska
continued musingly. "Five generations. No, certainly I did not
imagine one would find any such well-established ancestral heritage
on this wild coast."
"What's a century?" Rod commented. "Greece and Egypt had
philosophers and poets and noble ruins when our ancestors were
wearing skins and killing their meat with clumsy spears."
The girl paid no heed to this.
"I knew this place was old the moment I stepped ashore," she
continued. "I knew it must have a history. Who was this first
enterprising Norquay, Rod? Where did he come from and how did he
pitch on this spot so long ago as the place for his baronial hall? I
wonder if you realize what a--an air of distinction this place has?
As if it were so well established that all the crudities had been
ironed out--an atmosphere like--well, of permanency and power."
"Well, it's home, and that's a good deal," Rod answered, a little
doubtful of too eager response. "I don't know about the power, but
it's permanent enough."
"You can hardly imagine other people dispossessing you and making it
_their_ home, eh?" Laska asked mischievously.
"No chance," Rod grinned at the suggestion. "I should say not."
"Tell me about the first Norquay," she wheedled. "I am sure it's
vivid history. What was he--great--great--"
"Great-great-grandfather," Rod supplied. "Have you seen the family
boneyard?"
She shook her head.
"I have seen most of the interior of the house. I have sat on the
porch and drank tea and stared at these wonderful mountains that
stick up everywhere, I have walked about on this lovely turf, in
these grounds that are like an English park--and marveled how it had
been made so beautiful. But I haven't seen the family boneyard. Is
that literal?"
The boy nodded.
"There have been quite a few of us born here at one time and
another," he said in his pleasant low-toned voice, "and buried here
finally. Come and I'll show you, Miss Wall."
"My name's Laska," she smiled at him.
"All right then, Laska," he agreed. "Odd name. I like the sound."
"R.S.N. Eighteen hundred and nine. _Hoc saxum posuit_. I've
forgotten all my Latin, Rod."
"_He placed this stone,_" Rod translated. "Come on. I'll show you
where the old chap's buried and tell you something about him."
Big Dent passes on map and chart for an island, by a geographical
laxity. But it is an island only for brief moments at an extremely
high tide. Otherwise it is a peninsular out-thrust, that helps to
choke the Euclataw Passage.
Big Dent was a mile wide and twice as long. From side to side and
from end to end it stood clothed in its ancient garment, the forest.
Everywhere lifted enormous firs in whose plumy crests had sighed the
winds that blew the first Norquay's trading vessel down Cardero
Channel, cedars that were lusty when Columbus crossed the Western
Ocean. For profit there had never been ax laid to tree on that
twelve hundred acres. On its northern extremity Big Dent remained
the natural forest of the region, a hushed jungle of devil's club,
salal brush, ferns that grew man-high, salmonberry, branchy dogwood,
vine maple. Out of this lesser growth the great trees rose in their
majesty, silent, immobile, brooding. The sun blazed on their lofty
heads. About their boles were silence and shade, a coolness at
midday heat, the commingled smells of moist, fecund earth and rotting
wood.
But all across the southern portion, the greater half of Big Dent,
the thickets had been cut away, the patriarchal trees freed of the
litter about their solidly planted feet, the sun let in, grass sowed,
so that the eye could reach far down wooded corridors and get
glimpses of sparkling sea; so that a Norquay or his guests could walk
abroad in those friendly places and observe--if they were minded to
observe--how man had imposed order and beauty upon the wasteful
processes of nature by sweeping away all the detritus of the arboreal
struggle to survive.
Leaving the house Rod and Laska walked a little way up the slope.
They came to a small square enclosed by a low wall of masonry, the
half-acre of the Norquay dead. A gate of grilled iron let them in.
A red cedar rose in the middle of the plot like an enormous brown
mast which had sprouted flat, feathery boughs that drooped as if
tired with the weight of long-borne years, and cast a deep shadow
over part of this burial ground. In this shaded portion uprose a
number of gray granite slabs, the native rock every Norquay had used
for such of his works as he wished to endure. Apart from these
simple slabs stood a row of uniform design: a headstone four feet
high, three feet wide; another, the width of the headstone and the
length of a tall man, laid flat on the earth. Ornamentation there
was none. Plain gray stone, worked to a smooth polish, briefly
lettered,--that was all. A few flower beds were let into the turf
between. A simple, unpretentious place in which plain men could take
their long sleep.
Rod stopped by the first of the larger headstones.
"This was the first of our family here," he said.
The girl looked down at the inscription.
RODERICK SYLVESTER NORQUAY
Born 1770
Died 1834
_His eye was not dim
Nor his natural force abated_
"This was his wife," Rod pointed. "The first white woman to live on
the Pacific coast north of California. That was his youngest son.
That was his eldest son, my great-grandfather. And that was his
youngest son, who was killed by the Chilcotin Indians on their second
raid. There's grandfather's wife, and a son and daughter. There is
my mother's grave. And over there is my oldest brother, who died
before I was born."
"How interesting," the girl murmured. "What an adventurous time
these first people of yours must have had."
"Rather," Rod agreed, "when you think of some of the things they had
to face. Still, by all accounts, they rather enjoyed themselves. It
never seems to have occurred to them to go elsewhere. There were
lots of men pioneered after Vancouver's first voyage, but all of them
except old Roderick seem to have come here to make a fortune in the
fur trade and go home to live on their gains. Old Roderick kept a
journal all his life. It's a queer matter-of-fact account of what he
did, mixed up with a lot of philosophic speculation on why he did it.
It appears that from the first time he dropped anchor in Mermaid Bay
to wait out a fair tide through the narrows, he had the feeling that
right here was the place to make a stand. He says quite frankly in
his journal that a few determined men could easily subdue the natives
and possess great estates. He says further that shortly after
letting go the anchor he saw a hawk fly from its nest in a great
tree, and he thought to himself that, by the grace of God and his own
resolution, he would some day build on this silent headland a stout
nest in which many a brood of Norquays should be hatched.
"Imagine a man who had crossed the Atlantic and rounded Cape Horn in
a hundred-ton sailing vessel on a fur-trading venture looking at a
savage coast and planning to found a family!"
"He had vision," Laska supplied.
"He needed to have, those days," Rod grinned. "The North Pacific was
a fur-trader's paradise, but it was several thousand miles from
anything like civilization. Old Roderick knew that well enough. He
knew a good deal about this region before he came here on his own
hook, you see. He happened out here first when Captain George
Vancouver made his voyage of exploration in 1792. He was a petty
officer on the _Discovery_. He had the journal habit, even in those
days. He tells about the surveys they made that year and the next.
The idea of this country--after he'd seen a lot of it--took such a
hold of him that three or four years later he got out of the British
navy, scraped up all the money he could beg and borrow, outfitted a
barque called the _Hermes_ and sailed for the Northwest to make a
fortune trading beads and brass wire and Sheffield knives to the
Indians for sea-otter skins.
"On that first voyage he got the idea of settling here. It evidently
grew on him, because when he came out the second time--the first
venture was a very profitable one--he brought a couple of dozen extra
men, artisans of different trades, and set up a trading post here
just as Captain John Meares tried to do at Nootka Sound a few years
earlier--you'll find a very interesting account of Meares and his
clash with the Spaniards over that post in Begg's 'History of British
Columbia.' Meares and Don Martinez between them very nearly got
Spain and Great Britain into war. Vancouver came out here to look
into that squabble as much as for anything else.
"But ancestor Norquay had this spot pretty much to himself. He
bought Big Dent from a local chief for six sheets of copper, an old
cutlass, and a pint of glass beads. Think of it! He built a
blockhouse of logs with a sixteen-foot stockade. His men cultivated
some land for vegetables. He had cattle and pigs and sheep--brought
'em out in the _Hermes_, like Noah with the animals aboard the Ark.
But fur-trading was the chief business. He traded for sea otter as
far north as Sitka. Here at home he got beaver, mink, marten,
whatever the Indians brought in. The Northwest Fur Company claimed
this territory. They were carrying on a big scrap with the Hudson's
Bay Company at the time. Finally the Hudson's Bay swallowed the
Northwest concern and got a free hand. They tried for years to make
all North America their private fur preserve. But they didn't scare
old Roderick off. Apparently he wasn't afraid of them. Too
well-equipped, I suppose, to be driven off.
"On his fourth voyage in 1804 he took a cargo of twenty-two hundred
sea otter which netted him fifty-six thousand dollars--so you can see
what the fur trade meant in those times. On that trip he made off
with the daughter of a country gentleman of Northumberland--he was
Scotch himself, you know--an English girl named Dorothy Grosvenor.
Her people considered him a low-class adventurer. So they took the
bit in their teeth, boarded the _Hermes_ and sailed away. Sounds
quaint. They brought out three or four families with them. The men
stationed here had mostly gotten Indian wives by that time. Dorothy
sailed with great-great-grandfather wherever he went with the barque
for three or four years. But their first child was born here on Big
Dent in 1807.
"The next year the Chilcotins came down. They're a fighting tribe
from the interior. They had a way of coming down a river to the head
of Bute Inlet, killing as many coast Indians as they could, taking
the loot and the young women back across the mountains. I suppose
they had heard of this white man who had lots of goods. So they
organized a surprise attack on Hawk's Nest, as it was already called.
"There was quite a scrimmage, by all accounts. The Chilcotins were
beaten off. We lost six men in the fight. Those small headstones
are for them," Rod indicated a compact row of graves.
"So the following year old Roderick, who had never given up for a
moment the idea of making this his permanent home, started the stone
house. He built one wing. His son added a wing. Grandfather can
tell you how he built the last addition, and another story, and how
he put on a roof of tiles in 1860 after the Cariboo gold rush.
"The Chilcotins pulled off another surprise party in 1826, but they
got such a hot reception they never tried again. By that time old
Roderick had two sons and two daughters. The youngest son was the
only man killed on our side. He led a party to destroy the Chilcotin
canoes while they were attacking the house. He was killed by an
arrow. But they smashed the canoes and only two Chilcotins out of
forty got away. In fact, they were spared to go back and tell the
rest of the tribe that it was bad medicine to molest the white men
who lived at Hawk's Nest.
"They understood that, evidently, because they never came back.
Although nearly twenty years later a brother of grandfather's was
stuck full of arrows one evening right down where our boat landing is
now. That killing was credited to the Chilcotins--in revenge. But
it wasn't a fight. It was pure assassination. However, that was the
last bloodshed here.
"The first fifty years of holding Hawk's Nest was altogether a pretty
lively affair. But they kept right on the job. In '59 gold was
found in the Cariboo and people rushed into B.C. by thousands. The
Hudson's Bay monopoly was broken. B.C. became a Crown colony. We
got title to our land. Grandfather began to operate in timber.
Confederation with the Dominion took place in '69 or '70, in my
father's time. There have been lots of changes in this country since
old Roderick came. But we're still here."
"You can quite truthfully say that you belong to one of the first
families, eh, Rod?" Laska bantered.
"Oh, well," he replied carelessly, "that's sheer accident. Nothing
to be cocky about. I didn't have any hand in the big doings."
"Still, it's something to live up to, don't you think?" she inquired
seriously.
"Perhaps. I don't know that it's on the cards for me to carry on any
particular tradition. Neither myself nor Phil. We're superfluous,
in a way. Of course we belong to the family, and all that sort of
thing. But we're only younger sons, after all."
"I don't quite understand," Laska wrinkled her brows. "What
difference does that make?"
"Quite a lot--to us," Rod grinned amiably. "You see, the original
Roderick had certain notions about money and property. He laid down
as a working principle for his heirs that the estate should never be
divided and portioned out to each generation. He said that the bulk
of it ought to remain compactly in one inheritance, for the benefit
of everybody concerned. He made various suggestions as to how this
should be carried out, but the main one is that the home place and
the bulk of the holdings shall pass into control of the eldest son.
We've proceeded always on that basis. Grandfather, in fact, when it
came his turn, converted the estate into a corporation. The control
is always vested in the eldest son. He owns the shares and carries
on the management. Seventy per cent of the net income goes to him.
The other thirty per cent of revenue is equally divided among the
rest of the children, whether there's one or a dozen, and is paid to
each for life as each attains his majority.
"Grandfather is really the king of the castle. He's eighty now and I
don't suppose he can last much longer. The governor is the active
manager. When the governor goes out, Grove takes over the whole
works. He'll live here. His children will probably be born here,
and his oldest son will be expected to carry on in the usual manner.
It's a pretty well-established family custom."
"What do the younger sons do?" Laska inquired. "The girls naturally
get married and go away with their husbands. But the younger sons?"
"Oh, we generally stick around," Rod said casually. "But once our
schooling is completed, we are at liberty to do what we please.
There's usually plenty of opportunity in connection with the family
affairs. We own a lot of timber and land along the coast. But when
a younger son wants to set up his own vine and fig tree he has to do
it elsewhere."
"I see," Laska looked thoughtful. "It's something like the old
English law of entail."
"Yes, except that it isn't a law. Merely a custom. You might call
it a family tradition. Any generation could depart from it, if they
wanted to."
They stood for a minute looking at the dull red of the tile roof
showing through the trees.
"Shall we walk around a bit?" Rod asked. "Or shall we go and have a
game of tennis before dinner?"
"Let's walk. I hate tennis when it's hot," she said frankly.
They closed the iron gate behind them and lounged along under the
trees.
"What became of the _Hermes_?" Laska asked suddenly.
"Went to the boneyard long ago," Rod replied. "Next time you're up
in the library look in that big glass case by the east wall. You'll
see old Roderick's charts and navigating instruments, sextant,
chronometers, so on. The binnacle and compass is on the
_Haida_--some of the old metal fittings, too. The old _Hermes_ was
all oak, brass, copper and bronze. Her figurehead stands in a corner
of the hall. You noticed it?"
"The wooden figure of a battered Neptune? I didn't know what it
was," Laska confessed.
Across the lawn as they strolled, there came presently a man in
flannels. When he came up to them it turned out to be Phil.
"The governor wants you, Rod," he said. "They're making medicine in
the library. I'll look out for Miss Wall."
"You'd better look out for yourself," Rod answered with brotherly
impudence.
If he had dreamed how close he came to the mark with this youthful
attempt at repartee, Rod would assuredly have kept silence. If there
were any one of his blood for whom Rod had a genuine unselfish
affection, it was this tall brother who stood smiling down at Laska
Wall. In the very nature of things Rod could not know that he had
just placed in Laska's hands a weapon to be used--however
unconsciously--against his brother, that anything he could say or do
should conceivably tilt the uncertain scales of a woman's decision.
So he grinned at his own sally and strode away toward the house,
whistling "Hey, Johnny Cope" and wondering carelessly why "they" were
making medicine and what his father could want of him so urgent that
Phil had been sent to command his attendance. So far as Rod was
concerned, his father's intentions and commands were usually conveyed
in the most casual manner. In the Norquay establishment the
authority of the head of the house was such that it never needed to
be peremptory.
The wide porch facing seaward was deserted when he came there. He
passed into a roomy hall, panelled in weathered oak to a ceiling
crossed with massive beams. He took the broad stairway two steps at
a bound, and turned more sedately into a big, low-ceilinged room
where every inch of wall space was given over to loaded bookshelves.
When he saw what councillors composed Phil's cryptic "they," Rod felt
for the first time a shadow of trouble in the offing.
His tutor, Mr. Arthur Spence, occupied one chair. Near him sat
Grove, the eldest son of the house, a true Norquay in physique,
long-limbed, wide-shouldered, with a more mature, slightly less
engaging countenance than his brothers, although he had the same
fresh coloring, the same reddish-brown hair and clear bluish-gray
eyes. Norquay senior sat with his legs crossed, a bulky,
well-preserved man. His years rode him lightly. He looked at his
youngest son in silence. No one but Rod, perhaps, would have felt
critical disapproval in that impersonal glance. None of the three
understood how impressionable to a look, a tone, the nuances of
personal atmosphere, an eighteen-year-old boy could be. Rod himself
did not realize the lightning-like quality of his own perceptions
where people were concerned. He had what he called "hunches." That
they invariably proved correct never aroused in him more than a
passing wonder.
"Sit down, Rod," his father indicated a chair.
The tutor and Grove arose, left the room. The fancy flitted across
Rod's mind that they constituted a jury which had deliberated and
given a verdict and now withdrew to permit the august judge to
pronounce sentence. He racked his brain for a misdemeanor, a
possible offence which merited paternal condemnation. He could
recall none. Yet there was an air of suspended judgment in the slow
puffing of his father's cigar, the judicial immobility of his manner,
in the very silence of that pleasant room with its massive furniture
and burdened shelves.
"I've decided it will be as well for you to enter McGill in the fall
semester," he said dispassionately, fixing his eyes on his son with a
slight obliquity of his brows. "Spence assures me you can easily
qualify for entrance. You will go down to Vancouver day after
to-morrow, get what clothes you need, then proceed to Montreal and
stay with your Aunt Maida until the University opens. Give you a
chance to meet a few people and get your bearings."
"Day after to-morrow!" Rod echoed.
"Yes," Norquay senior methodically deposited the ash from his cigar
in a brass tray. "And in the meantime--" his even, mellow tone took
on a slight acidity--"no more of this harebrained rapid-running with
that Thorn girl in that gaudy barge of yours. It may amuse you, but
it's hardly fair to the girl."
"Amuse me--well, it is good fun," Rod manifested a trace of
bewilderment. He had never been attacked from such an angle. "But I
don't see--unfair to Mary Thorn? D' you mean dangerous? We both
swim like fish, and you can't sink a dugout. I know enough about
swirly water not to run the rapids when it isn't safe."
"I wasn't thinking about the specific danger of drowning."
"What then?" Rod asked.
His father regarded him with a mild impatience.
"You're almost a man," he said impersonally. "It's time your taste
in feminine associations rose a little above the half-wild daughter
of a dreamy-eyed incompetent. Especially when it begins to attract
attention. You seem to have forgotten, the last two or three days,
that we have guests here."
"Oh, I see," Rod muttered. A flush crept up into his cheeks, as the
implication of his father's words and attitude drove home. He was
sophisticated enough to understand--and to resent--and to keep both
understanding and resentment to himself. But he could not wholly
conceal the small tempest that began to stir in him. He was dealing
with a man accustomed to dealing with men, with personalities, and
gauging them correctly for his own purposes. The boy's quick color,
the momentary flash in his eyes, brought an amused smile to the elder
Norquay's face.
"That's all," he said. "Most youngsters seem to find it necessary to
makes asses of themselves about some sort of female sometime early in
their careers. Don't be a common ass, Rod."
"I'll try not to, sir," Rod answered with as near an approach to
sarcasm as he dared, "for the sake of the family."
With that he left the room, conscious of a quickly gathered frown on
his father's face at this tonal shadow of irony. The Norquay
characteristic, as Mr. Kipling once mentioned of colonials, was one
of straight-flung words and few. This was not the first time Rod had
manifested a variation from family type in his mode of expressing
himself.
And as Rod strode down the hall to his own room he muttered to
himself: "That's Grove. The governor never would have thought of
such a rotten thing himself. Well, I may be an ass--but I'm not a
damned cad."
He snicked the lock on his own door, flung himself moodily into a
chair by the window. He felt a queer mixture of boyish anger and a
touch of forlornness,--as a colt that has had the run of wide
pastures must feel when it is first haltered and thrust into a stall.
CHAPTER III
Rod had come down a hall that had, like everything about Hawk's Nest,
a spacious air. It was high and broad. Dim light filtered into it
through stained-glass windows, fell in mellow patches on carpet so
thick and soft that he moved silent as an ancestral phantom,--which,
however, was no part of the Norquay tradition. Active, resourceful
men, and beautiful, gracious women had lived and moved and had their
being there. Those comfortable homelike rooms had seen their joys
and minor tragedies, births and deaths, quarrels and affections.
Some of them had left various monuments to their credit, chiefly in
the upbuilding and sustaining of the Norquay fortunes. But none, the
remembered and the forgotten, had ever returned in the spirit. It
was as if having lived their span they were content to let their
descendants have undisturbed possession.
Probably Rod was the only Norquay under that roof who had so clear a
vision of all that had preceded him, and so faint a comprehension of
his future. The normal youngster of that age is eagerly
forward-looking. He has no retrospect. He is full of impatient
hopes, dreams, desires, whenever he lifts his eyes beyond the
absorbing present. Rod deliberately refrained from lifting the
curtain of the future. When he went beyond the engrossing moment, he
looked backward over the history of his country and his family which
were so closely knit,--and he saw all the great adventures, the
exciting struggles, the foundation-laying and the slow purposeful
upbuilding, as something which had become a finished process before
he was born. He would spend hours mooning over his
great-great-grandfather's journal and feel a pang of regret that he
had not lived in those quickening days. They were gone. The land
was tamed. The Chilcotins would never again come raiding. The sea
otters were vanished along with the men who hunted them. The trading
vessel, square-rigged or fore-and-after, had given way to the steam
tramp. From Land's End to the Strait of Juan de Fuca was a
twenty-day voyage instead of thirty weeks. Law, order, custom molded
men now. The frontiers were charted and surveyed. What was the use
of being born with a spirit that chafed against the dull certainties
of a world in which everything was known, defined, reduced to a
formula? The world that Rod knew was like the Norquay
family,--static! So he summed it up. All the great deeds done, or
at any rate the necessity, the spur of doing removed beyond him.
Those silent shores to which Roderick Sylvester Norquay sailed with
Vancouver in 1792 were cluttered with grubby towns, marked off into
private areas for individual exploitation. Those inland seas which
they had explored and charted were speckled with vessels in the
lumber trade, the coal trade, coastal transport, fisheries. The
forests were falling under the axes of ten thousand loggers. There
was only the adventure, the struggle, the arid business of making
money. And no Norquay had a vital need of doing that. Their
forefathers had attended shrewdly to the acquisition of land and
timber when it could be had for the taking. The Norquays did not
need to make money. They had it. It came rolling in to them. They
could sit still or play; it was all one. Static! That was the term
Rod used.
That a capacity for thinking about such things in such fashion was
scarcely the normal intellectual equipment of an eighteen-year-old
youth did not occur to Rod. He had the singularly unboyish quality
of hoarding his thoughts, of living very much in a reflective world
of his own, which he shared with no one; which indeed he sedulously
masked from every one he knew, unless it was Mary Thorn. Even to
Mary he permitted only shy, stray glimpses of what sometimes crowded
his brain, as a concession to her confident belief in him, her
conviction that the most fanciful thing he could utter was at least
worth consideration merely because he saw fit to give it utterance.
Whereas any groping effort to encase an abstraction in words served
only to bring an amused look to the collective faces of his own
people. His father would lift heavy eyebrows in polite surprise.
Grove would laugh coarsely. Even Phil would look a little puzzled, a
little bored. Rod knew. He seldom made such experiments in
self-expression. But his mind would concentrate with burning
eagerness on a great variety of things. And sometimes his
conclusions saddened him without his knowing why.
This decree of banishment from Hawk's Nest in mid-summer provoked him
to sullen pondering in the quiet of his own room. He recognized
authority. Obedience was an observed tradition in that house. It
was not the fact of his being bundled off to a university that
troubled Rod. He had looked forward to that as a necessary and
perhaps delightful experience. It was the snap judgment which
hastened the date of this mental discipline--as if it were a penalty
inflicted on him for an offence--as if he were a small child caught
with his fingers in the jam pot.
So Rod, sitting with his elbows on the window sill looking out on the
tiderace streaming full flood between Valdez and Big Dent, seeing the
glassy green incline and the white flash of foam, wondered irritably
why his father saw fit to penalize him, to warn him in that
offensive, suggestive manner about Mary Thorn. There was no ground
for that. Rod knew his father as a fair-minded man, not much given
to moralizing, nor arbitrarily instructing his sons in ethical
problems. He wouldn't have issued a fiat like that without some one
stirring him up. Rod scowled. He could guess pretty well who had
done the stirring; who, being not too nice in surreptitious amours
himself, was inordinately jealous how the family dignity, the family
honor fared in his brothers' hands. Which was a very precise summary
of one phase of Mr. Grosvenor Sylvester Norquay. It wasn't a
flattering estimate of character and Rod kept it strictly to himself.
When he was small he had disliked Grove's high-handed style, his
tendency to domineer, an occasional outcrop of a brutal streak. As
Rod grew older that dislike became contempt, deep and abiding. A
queer feeling to exist between brothers. Yet not so rare.
A warning bell brought Rod out of his absorption. He dressed and
joined the others in the dining room.
It was a leisurely meal, unobtrusively ceremonial, after the
conventional fashion of those who have gained the privilege of
partaking of food as a pleasure, and not as a mere necessity. There
was nothing lacking. To dine at Hawk's Nest was the equivalent of
dining in the home of any cultivated person in New York, Paris,
London,--black broadcloth and planished shirt front, corsage that
revealed gleaming shoulders; snowy linen, polished silver, cut
flowers; conversation as an art; good food, wine, perfect service. A
black-coated man hovered discreetly behind the chairs, silently
anticipating every want.
Rod's eyes swept the table and came to rest on his grandfather. A
lean old patriarch with a thatch of hair white as the table cover, a
mustache waxed to spiky points, a thin curved nose between deep-set,
faded blue eyes. He was past eighty. He could still relish a glass
of port, find pleasure in sitting beside a pretty woman,--upon whom
he would bestow a blend of compliment and reminiscence. For now the
old man lived almost wholly in the past. When he walked slowly about
the grounds, leaning on his stick, he never spoke of what was to be,
only of what had been. Rod looked at him and wondered if he would
live as long and see so many changes. He was sitting beside Mrs.
Wall, a plump well-groomed woman of forty-five. Above the murmur
about the table Rod could hear him telling her of the gold rush to
the Cariboo in '58. He had a crisp incisive manner of speech. He
had been the first Norquay to attend McGill. He was an educated man,
almost a scholarly one, in spite of an active life. He had builded
well and widely on the fur-trading foundation.
"He was the last of the constructive period," Rod mused. "The
governor has merely stood pat. Grove will likely go backward. We're
a rum lot."
He had to give over these inturning reflections and be polite. He
was seated between Isabel Wall and a Miss Sherburne, a darkly
handsome creature whose fascinations were too precious to waste on a
mere youth. Miss Sherburne's profile slanted eagerly to the left,
toward Phil. But Isabel had no such reservations. Rod was nearest
her own age. He was fair game. He proceeded casually to divulge to
Isabel such information as she sought about running the rapids in a
canoe, about Mary Thorn. She appeared to have a considerable
curiosity about Mary. Presently Rod began to wish her deaf and dumb.
Outwardly he remained patiently courteous. It was a relief when
coffee and cigarettes ended the meal.
It took him some time to escape from Isabel. Normally he would not
have minded her chatter nor her appropriation of himself. But just
now his mind held tenaciously to something which had been nagging him
ever since that interview in the library. When he saw Phil give over
a palpable attempt to segregate Laska and saunter off toward the
float landing, he excused himself and followed.
They walked down the slope together, out on the slip, seated
themselves on a bench.
"Give me a cigarette," Rod demanded abruptly, as his first utterance.
Phil handed over his case. Rod lit one.
"Getting real devilish," Phil bantered.
"Was Grove aboard the _Haida_ when you came through the rapids this
afternoon? I didn't see him."
"Down below, I suppose," Phil replied. "I didn't notice. But he was
with us. Why?"
"I thought so. What a skunk he is. Yet in this family he's the
little tin god on wheels. He thinks everybody is as rotten as
himself, too."
"You shouldn't talk like that," Phil remonstrated mildly.
"It's true. You know it is."
For a second Phil said nothing to this.
"One can't go about shouting unpleasant truths," he observed then.
"What's wrong, anyhow?"
"I'm to be packed off to McGill day after to-morrow."
"But the term doesn't begin for weeks yet."
"Oh, I'm to visit Aunt Maida and explore the historic city which has
justified its existence by containing the seat of learning where my
forefathers absorbed the knowledge and culture which has enabled them
to lead such eminently successful and praiseworthy lives," Rod
drawled.
"Well, that's no great grief," Phil replied. "Nothing to get fussed
up over."
"It was generally understood I was to begin next year. I'm being
packed off as a punishment. It seems the family dignity is being
compromised by my running rapids in a dugout with a girl."
"Well?" Phil waited patiently.
"Grove put a bug in the governor's ear," Rod dropped allusion for
plain facts. "The governor wouldn't have thought of disciplining me.
Grove's a damned snob. He has his gang here. He thinks I ought to
spend my time entertaining them. He imagines it is a reflection on
him that I prefer to play with Mary Thorn. Out of his own messy mind
he takes it for granted--the governor would never of his own accord
have suggested that I was--that I might--oh, damn! I don't like
Grove's filthy insinuations, Phil. And I couldn't talk back to the
governor. If it weren't for all these people here, I'd beat Grove up
for his pains."
"You're hardly up to that yet," Phil smiled indulgently.
"Don't you fool yourself," Rod declared hotly. "I weigh a hundred
and fifty-five stripped. I'm as hard as a rock--and he's mush. You
know it, Philip. He's lapped up too much hard liquor, and dallied
too much with that woman he keeps in the Bute Street flat to--to
stand the gaff very long."
"Good Lord; nothing gets by you," Phil grunted. "How do you know
these things?"
"I have eyes and ears," Rod answered. "And I'm not asleep when I'm
in town. He had a little blonde in his harem last year. The latest,
I understand, is a voluptuous brunette. He has more light loves than
some people have servants. By jove, he's the last one that ought to
hint to the pater that _I_ need looking after."
"Maybe it was old Spence," Phil observed thoughtfully. "The three of
them were confabbing when the governor asked me to find you. Old
Spence is rather strait-laced, and you're his especial charge, you
know."
"No, Spence is only an echo," Rod said scornfully, "An echo of other
men's thoughts, books, history, languages. Old Spence is decent, and
he considers me so. Besides, he wouldn't talk himself out of a job
any sooner than he had to. There are no more Norquay children for
him to cram with predigested mental fodder."
Phil laughed.
"You certainly have a piquant way of expressing yourself, kid," he
smiled. "I don't think old Spence would let his job interfere with
his sense of duty if it were aroused. I imagine, too, that he is
slated for a pension after tutoring the three of us. I guess it was
our beloved brother who put you in bad. Does it matter so much?"
"I suppose not," Rod said reflectively. "Still, it does make me sore
to have him meddle like that. He's too fond of butting in and it's
always his own ax that wants grinding. Or else just pure cussedness.
I could run the rapids on every tide, and seduce a settler's daughter
every six months for all he personally cares. He doesn't care a hoot
what I do until some of his guests, I suppose, remark on my paddling
around in a canoe with a girl who isn't anybody and who wears shabby
clothes. Then he's all for class distinctions and a high degree of
personal purity. Huh!"
Rod's snort was eloquent, and Phil grinned in sympathy. His grin
faded with a suddenness that caused Rod to look up, curious as to
what had brought that swift change and sobering fixity of gaze to his
brother. Grove and Laska Wall had walked down to the top of the
bank. They stood thirty feet above tidewater, sixty yards distant,
the slanting sunbeams casting their shadows far across the grass.
Grove had one hand thrust in his trousers pocket. With the other he
gestured largely.
"Behold--these--my possessions," Rod interpreted sardonically. "Go
up and cut him out, Phil. She's too nice a girl to--"
"I wonder why they fall for him the way they do?" Phil muttered under
his breath; but Rod's keen ears heard.
"They don't know him, and we do," he said cynically. "He's there
with the smooth talk, and the pleasing manner, and the good
looks--and don't forget the possessions. That counts a heap with
most of the girls we know."
"Oh, shut up. You don't know what you're talking about," Phil said
roughly. And when Rod turned in surprise at this outburst, Phil rose
to his feet and stalked away up the gravel walk into the grounds.
Rod followed at a more leisurely gait. He bore no ill-will. His
dignity was touchy enough in respect of any affront from Grove. Phil
was privileged to be as brusque as he liked. There was never any
malice in what he said or did. Rod always gave Phil the benefit of
the doubt. He was only a little puzzled as he gained the house and
noiselessly made his way upstairs, to look over his fishing tackle
and then read himself into drowsiness.
Rod's forenoons had been given over to study under Mr. Spence, M.A.,
B.Sc. He found himself, in view of his near departure for academic
pastures, excused from this. He did not feel any particular
gratitude for the exemption. Mr. Spence, in spite of certain
classical prejudices, an insular sense of superiority to mere
colonials which twenty-odd years' residence under the Norquay ægis
had but slightly vitiated, had a faculty of making dry facts
palatable and interesting matters completely absorbing. Rod had a
mind like a sponge; Mr. Spence had supplied it rather deftly with
choice liquids. So Rod had none of the schoolboy's exultation at
seeing the last of his teacher. He merely wondered at a greater
liberty bestowed upon him when the family seemed unduly exercised
lest he plunge into mischief.
Thus having the whole day before him where he had counted only on the
afternoon, he swallowed his breakfast--which was a go-as-you-please
meal that kept the cook and butler busy from eight to
ten-thirty--took his fishing kit and paddled the lurid dugout into
the channel.
He glanced back at a piercing whistle from ashore. The distance was
too great for words to carry, but not for Rod to make out the
signaller as Grove. He waved a paddle and kept on.
"Probably wants to wish somebody on me to go fishing," Rod grunted.
"He knows I'd much rather go alone. No chance, old cockatoo. This
is my party."
He bounded light-footed as a cougar up the steps to a porch floor
pricked full of innumerable tiny holes from the sharp calks of
logging boots, walked without ceremony into a rather bare front room,
and when he found no one there to answer his casual "hello," passed
on to the kitchen. Mary and her mother were cleaning up the
breakfast things.
"I'm headed for the Granite Pool," he announced. "Can Mary come
along, Mrs. Thorn?"
"I expect she can," the girl's mother answered placidly, "if she
wants to."
But Mary shook her head. "You're too early. Lots of work to do yet."
"You can work when you can't do anything else," Rod said. "Come on.
Don't be a piker. You're only in Mrs. Thorn's way. Isn't she, Mrs.
Thorn? Isn't a girl a nuisance around a house? I'm sure you'd much
rather have a boy."
"I don't know about that," Mrs. Thorn smiled gently. "Mary's about
as good at most things as a boy. Isn't she?"
"Oh, sure--that's why I want her to go fishing," Rod grinned. "Come
along, Mary."
"If you want to go, child, never mind the work," Mrs. Thorn
encouraged in her soft, even voice. "There isn't enough to bother
any one."
"Perhaps Mr. Thorn will go, too."
Rod dropped his creel and vanished out the back door in search of the
head of the house.
Mrs. Thorn looked down on her daughter's brown head. She was a tall
woman, with more than a vestige of good looks, a certain grace of
carriage. Her skin was fresh, unwrinkled. Her voice had a pleasant,
throaty tone. An odd expression flitted across her face now, and
Mary, glancing up, caught it; a wordless, sympathetic understanding.
She rose on tiptoe to kiss her mother's cheek.
"Run on. Vacation will end soon enough. I don't suppose your father
will go," Mrs. Thorn said. "Better put up a lunch. The chances are
Rod didn't think of that."
"I thought of it," Rod came back in time to overhear, "but there was
no time. I had to make a get-away."
"Playing hooky?" Mrs. Thorn teased.
"Yes. From our honored guests. They can't do anything without being
personally conducted. And as it isn't my show, I'd rather let some
one else do the conducting."
In ten minutes they were swinging uphill from the narrows, on a path
that rose steeply through heavy timber, turning aside here and there
for great trees. They moved silently, saving their breath for the
climb. High overhead rifts of blue sky showed through interlocked
branches. Dew still clung to the bordering thickets. They walked in
cool shadow, on ground the sun never touched except in narrow shafts
because of that canopy of leaf and bough. They bore on up until they
came out on a height of land bare of timber, where only moss carpeted
the granite ridge. On their right Little Dent and Big Dent and the
twin Gillards lay like dusky green blobs in the shining race of the
tide. The red roof of Hawk's Nest was a flaming dot against paler
green. The channel below was a still paler shade. The mainland
receded to height after height, mountain after mountain, the farther
peaks faint blue cones on a ragged horizon.
"What a look. Air's clear as crystal this morning."
Mary nodded. They walked a hundred yards along the open backbone.
To the left blue-black water mirroring the shore trees, the distant
hills, walled on three sides with bold, ravine-split cliffs, gleamed
in a deep hollow. They plunged downward through dense thickets. The
patch discovered itself anew to their hurrying feet. In ten minutes,
panting a little with the speed of their descent, they stood on a
rock shelf thrusting into the Granite Pool, a little lake hidden in
the Valdez hills. There was neither inlet nor outlet. It was half a
mile broad, mysteriously fed by hidden springs, full of cutthroat
trout rarely disturbed in their aqueous heaven.
In the Granite Pool Rod Norquay and Mary Thorn had a special,
proprietary interest, quite apart from the fact that one side of
Oliver Thorn's land touched its shore, and elsewhere its cliffy
borders were ringed about by the Norquay holdings. Their interest
was not one of physical ownership. They had discovered it for
themselves. They were the first, so far as they knew, to cast a line
in those deep, still waters. They had given it a fitting name. Even
the trail, cleverly blinded, had been the work of their hands,
assisted by Mary's father. Except Indians and timber cruisers, a
ubiquitous and taciturn clan, few people knew that such a lake
nestled in the hills so close to the Euclataw. These two, who had
haunted it through the summers of four years, kept their knowledge to
themselves. The Granite Pool was their own; the way thereto and the
angler's joy therein a secret they refused to share. Oliver Thorn
humored them in this; it pleased him that two children should have
such a sanctuary. Rod evaded divulging the source of the baskets of
trout he carried home,--justifying himself by the sure knowledge that
if all Hawk's Nest knew, vandal parties under Grove's leadership
would invade trail and lake, make fish hogs of themselves in the
Granite Pool, profaning its beautiful solitude in the name of sport.
A raft was moored to the shelving rock. They got aboard and cast
loose, jointing up their rods as the raft drifted down on a patch of
lily pads among which faint splashes sounded intermittently, followed
by concentric ripples that spread away till they were lost on the
surface of the dark water.
"They're still feeding, thank goodness," Rod observed.
Mary nodded, busy with her gear. She rose, flicked a Royal Coachman
forty feet on her third cast and struck a twelve-inch trout.
Whereupon they both became galvanized by that curious suppressed
excitement which is a heritage from remote periods when man secured
his daily food with his own hands, or went hungry.
At four in the afternoon they had taken their leave of the Pool,
climbed to the ridge, and were sitting on a down tree trunk, looking
from that vantage at a steam tug far below with a great boom of logs
trailing astern. She passed through the lower rapids in the brief
slack. Rod's creel lay at his feet, heavy with their catch. He
watched the raft of logs move slowly up the channel. Then his eyes
turned to the girl, rested upon her with definite appraisal.
Rod had been looking at Mary Thorn more or less casually ever since
he was a leggy boy in knickers and she a slim elf in abbreviated
gingham dresses. But he had never been so conscious of her as now.
So late as yesterday he had regarded her without personal awareness
of sex. How was it, he wondered, that a few words from his father, a
cryptic hint or two, could make everything different? Nothing had
happened. Yet he knew that a different quality had entered their
companionship. A boy and a girl could play together without thinking
of themselves as male and female. A man and a woman couldn't. His
father had warned him that he was a man and should comport himself
accordingly. As if a man's natural instinct was to run amuck!
Perhaps that was the truth. Rod smiled uneasily at the notion. He
was not precisely an unsophisticated youth, but he could scarcely
comprehend that there is only a shadowy border between the frank,
sexless affections of childhood and the uneasy glow of maturing
passion. He had never nursed a libidinous thought about Mary Thorn.
And yet--
His eyes rested on her with a new sort of gauge. She sat staring
down Cardero Channel, her hands in her lap, not so much intent on
some distant object as deep in one of those long, thoughtful silences
into which she now and then retired,--a characteristic that Rod liked
because it was something he himself often did. Her hair was a brown
smoothness about her head, tied back with a narrow ribbon. She was
very pretty, Rod decided critically, prettier than any girl he knew.
But something more than superficial prettiness attracted him. He
didn't know what. It eluded him. She had a woman's bosom and neck.
Her body was made up of harmonious contours. Her expression, absent,
reflective, gave him the feeling that he looked at maturity and
wisdom. It surprised him to think that such an aspect of her had
never struck him before.
Looking at her, he suddenly felt a queer, constricted feeling in his
breast. He desired all at once to touch her, to rest his fingers
lightly on that delicately tinted skin. She would laugh at him. He
wondered if she would. He wondered what she thought about, locked up
in herself like that. What went on in her mind that brought tiny
puckers of concentration in her forehead? Was she as suddenly
acutely conscious of him, in a disturbing physical sense, as he was
of her? And he wondered futilely why he should be troubled by such
unaccustomed thoughts and sensations now, when so late as yesterday
they two had sprawled together on the mossy benches of Little Dent,
laughing and chattering like two boys bent on innocent adventure in
the world of boyish action.
Now there was certainly a mischief working in his blood that was not
innocent. He knew it. It made him quiver. There was a ferment in
his mind as well as in his body. Was this what Spence meant when he
discoursed solemnly on the arrival of youth at man's estate? The
pitfalls of uncontrolled passion. The ineradicable animal in man.
Spence always spoke of the most intimate relation between a man and a
woman in guarded terms. He conveyed the idea that it should be a
matter of rational choice,--on the man's side. Spence never
discussed the woman's part; he ignored the woman. The man, then,
according to the Spencian ethic, carried on his sexual life according
to his innate character. If he was inherently brutish he sought
sexual satisfaction promiscuously. The ideal, sanctioned by society,
therefore ethically sound, was love, matrimony, the ultimate family,
achieved progressively with mature deliberation to balance emotion.
Mr. Spence did not inform Rod that this ideal progression depended on
a great many uncertain factors. Perhaps he did not know. But Rod
had accepted his tutor for several years as an oracle on culture in
general, as well as in its specific branches, and it was difficult
for him to turn a deaf ear when the oracle spoke of ethics,--in spite
of the fact that Rod's own observation, the conclusions of a fairly
acute if youthful mind, stirred doubts.
He granted that Phil might pass muster. Grove wouldn't. He could
think of several men, young and old, within the Norquay orbit, who
wouldn't. But Grove was the most outstanding, because he had the
most intimate knowledge of Grove's personality and his surreptitious
amours, which had been overlapping each other ever since Rod was old
enough to understand such matters. If a reasonable state of personal
purity were necessary to the Spencian image of a gentleman, Grove
could not qualify. Yet Mr. Spence had as much respect for Grove
Norquay as Grove's world in general,--which was a great deal more
than either of his brothers held for him. Grove was clever. He was
handsome. He could be generous to his equals. His manner was beyond
reproach. Yet outside of his own class women were to Grove a
sporting proposition, to be pursued and captured for his sensual
gratification.
No, there was something lacking in the wisdom Mr. Spence had
attempted to impart. Mr. Spence distinguished sharply between love
and lust. He had explained the difference without making the
difference clear. Rod wondered which of the two had overtaken him
all unexpectedly, sitting beside Mary Thorn on a log. Which was it
that made his heart beat faster. Was it love,--blooming
precociously? Or was it the other thing, against which Spence had
warned him to be strong?
CHAPTER IV
Rod had come down the path with a club bag in one hand, talking
amiably with his father. He had seen his trunk put aboard the
_Haida_. Mrs. Wall, Laska, Isabel, Miss Sherburne, Grove, and three
or four other unattached young men and women who made up the house
party were on the float to see him off. They filled the quiet upper
bay with light talk and low laughter. Rod stood by the deck rail
chaffering with them. But his eye missed one figure. He had not
seen Phil since breakfast. Already the engineer was priming the big
motor. He could hear the hissing of air through open petcocks. And
old Phil hadn't come down to say "good-by, kid."
Rod's glance wandered to Grove, standing by Laska Wall, a fine
upright figure of a man in white flannels. And he wondered idly why
this elder son of the house should be like flint to his brothers'
steel without ever seeming aware of the hostile undercurrents he so
often aroused. Or perhaps he simply did not care. Perhaps he felt
such a complete assurance that the liking and loyalty of younger
brothers was a negligible thing.
Then, as the first deep bark of the exhaust waked a hollow echo in
Mermaid Bay, Phil came down with long, quick strides, dressed in a
gray suit, a bag in his hand.
There was a quick exchange of casual exclamations, a shaking of
hands. Phil stepped aboard.
"All right," he called to the deck hand. "Cast off."
The _Haida_ backed clear, gathered way as she turned into the
slackening tide. She slid past the Gillard light, lonely and
untended on its steel pillar. The narrow gorge of a canoe pass
opened behind the island. From a rocky point south of the pass and
the light a trail that Rod knew ran to Oliver Thorn's house. And as
Rod's eyes swept the shore, he marked a figure on the highest point
of this beach trail. He waved his hat. Something white fluttered
like a pennant in answer. Then the cruiser's way cut off Gillard,
the red roof of Hawk's Nest, and Mary Thorn on the trail. They
vanished behind the low, timbered hills of Valdez, and Rod turned to
his brother.
Phil sat on a skylight, his hands clasped over one knee, his eyes on
the streaming wake. But Rod knew he was not looking at the bubbles
in the wash, or at anything concretely visible. It was too much the
concentrated look a man bestows upon things afar, remote, but vivid
in the eye of the mind.
"Cheer up," he said abruptly. "The worst is yet to come."
"I wonder?" Phil replied absently. A faint smile replaced that set
expression. "I suppose the worst always is ahead--only unseen."
"What's up?" Rod demanded. "Why this last minute dash, and the
abstracted air?"
Phil stared at the deck.
"Do I show such outward signs of inner disturbance?" he inquired
whimsically. "If I do it was a wise move to leave. I didn't think I
gave myself away openly as a bad loser."
Rod said nothing. He waited. He knew his brother.
"Laska Wall's going to marry Grove," Phil said with a simulation of
casualness that would have deceived any one but Rod. "I had the
pleasure of wishing her much happiness last night."
Rod could think of nothing appropriate to say. He seemed to
understand quite clearly. And he couldn't feel anything but
resentment against a girl who, having a choice between the two,
preferred Grove. Laska fell a long way in his estimation in those
few seconds.
"Well," he ventured at last, "I should worry. She's a nice girl.
But there are plenty of nice girls."
"That's true enough," Phil sighed. "But the devil of it is, kid,
that I wanted this particular girl. And I can't seem to be cheerful
about some one else getting her. Maybe it sounds a bit crude, but
I'd almost rather it had been any other man I know. Grove's--well, I
pass him up. He doesn't play the game. But he gets by. I suppose
he always will. Even the governor, who isn't exactly a fool, and who
_is_ decent, can't see our worthy brother as he seems to us. Well,
that's another chapter. I'm not funking, but I think I'll get off
the Norquay band wagon pretty soon. I don't imagine things will seem
quite the same around the old place once Mrs. Grove is installed.
New brooms, you know."
"Maybe. I don't know. I can easily see where we might begin to feel
like intruders in our own home," Rod hazarded. "But what's the use
of crossing bridges before you come to 'em?"
"I think," Phil returned, "I've come to a rather important one."
He fell into moody reflection again. Rod leaned against the rail,
unwilling to break into this absorption. He knew Phil was smarting
under a hurt, the nature of which he could understand very well. And
he was hotly on Phil's side, a position he took instinctively
whenever Grove appeared as the protagonist.
That it was quite in order for Laska Wall to make her own choice
probably carried much less weight with Rod than with Phil. Nor was
Rod clearly aware that all his incipient clashes with Grove took root
in profound differences of character, rather than in any definite
invasion of his rights or Phil's by their elder brother.
There were crossed wires everywhere, he reflected. Why should Phil
want Laska so badly, and why should Laska prefer by far the lesser
man? These mysterious, passionate wants! Rod wandered idly if Mr.
Spence, comfortable in a deck chair, his nose in a red-bound volume,
could interpret these strange impulses of the flesh which could so
sorely try the spirit? He decided Spence could not. Young as he
was, Rod knew there were things in life that cannot be learned. They
must be felt, suffered mostly. Lessons in the school of
self-experience. Phil, he perceived, was getting a lesson, and
taking it seriously. His own turn would come.
He shrugged his shoulders. There would be a different atmosphere
about Hawk's Nest when he came home again. But Rod had already
encountered the philosophic maxim that change was the only constant
factor in a kaleidoscopic universe.
He went up forward, made himself comfortable in the bight of a coiled
hawser, let his mind dwell on what green fields and pastures new four
years on the Atlantic littoral might open to him.
While he pondered over the immediate future and what it might bring,
the _Haida_ plowed down Calm Channel, cleared the Redondas and stood
into the open Gulf, reeling off her fourteen knots per hour. Before
night he would be in Vancouver. In a week he would be in Montreal.
Beyond that Rod could not see, nor, as the sun filled him with a
drowsy lassitude, did he greatly care. For four years yet his life
would be ordered, directed; he would be a human sponge soaking up
knowledge, impressions, experiences common to a university career.
After that--
Rod sleepily declined to transform himself into a seer.
CHAPTER V
When the deck hands had dumped a trunk, a bag, a suitcase and sundry
bundles on the float and the _Camosun_ had backed into the stream,
Rod still stood looking about him, trying to mark changes and finding
none. He had been away almost two years. He might have been gone
only overnight for all the external difference in what he saw.
Time's scythe had mowed no grass, felled no trees, had left untouched
the bold contours of his native hills, had neither added to nor taken
away from the well-remembered tintings of sky and sea, the delicate
shadings of the green forest which seemed to hold its own on every
hand against the continuous onslaught of the logger. It was as if
the puny axes and saws of man could no more than make tiny openings
in that incredible stretch of coastal forest. Pygmies attacking a
giant in the vast amphitheater of the changeless hills!
Except for the stone house with a roof that gleamed like burnished
copper in its setting of lawn against the deep olive of massed
boughs, all that Rod Norquay could see by turning on his heel must
have been bared to his eye much as it was bared to the gaze of his
great-great-grandfather on the poop of the _Hermes_ in 1797. Earth
and water, air and sky. The changeless elements. Life was a flux,
but the hills endured, and the sea. Man could ravage the forests in
the name of industry. But the forest would grow again. Those high
aloof mountains, with glaciers clinging on their shoulders, held out
welcoming hands to Rod as they had seemed to welcome the first of his
name a century before. They would be there, flinging vast shadows at
sunrise and sundown, bearing their robes of dusky green and royal
purple and virgin white long after he was gone.
Rod felt a keen, deeply personal appreciation of this background. He
had looked at the Alps and the Pyrenees and the Highlands since he
last saw The Needles looming over Bute Inlet. And he loved his own
hills best. He did not care if that stamped him as a provincial.
There was something here that stirred him. His native fir and cedar,
the maples that flamed along the beaches in autumn, were dearer to
him than English oaks. The grassed area about Hawk's Nest, with
thick-trunked, lofty trees rooted in noble hundreds, was more
beautiful to him that the Forest of Fontainebleau. He was home, and
he had never imagined he would be so glad to get home. And he was
quite aware that it was neither persons nor things that filled him
with this keen satisfaction.
In four semesters he had listened to and taken part in many a
sophomoric discussion where Art and Beauty went on the dissecting
table. To himself he had once defined beauty as such perfection of
form, tone, color, expression, as touched human heartstrings to a
responsive vibration. It did not matter, he sagely decided, whether
this perfection lay in sculpture, architecture, painting, music,
literature, in the everlasting hills or the shifting scroll of the
sea. The sense of it, the response to it, wherever found, alone
differentiated man from the animals. The attempt, more or less
successful, to capture something of this beauty, to interpret it, to
visualize it in marble, in colors, in words, he took to be the
function of art. What art was he did not know. But beauty he could
see and feel. He smiled to himself now, recalling bits of discussion
between classmen about Art and Beauty. They could become so serious
over abstractions. Here a man could forget abstractions. He was
like his great-great-grandfather. _This_ fitted him as a glove fits
the hand.
He glanced across the channel. Oliver Thorn's weathered house stood
blended with the forest, the west wind trailing a blue pennant from
the chimney. Then he turned to meet Stagg, the butler, who had
recognized the single debarkee and come down to welcome him and see
about his things.
"Who's here, Stagg?" Rod inquired, as they walked up the path.
"Your grandfather, Mr. Rod, of course," Stagg answered. "Mrs. Wall,
Miss Isabel, Miss Monty Deane, Miss Joe Richston, Mr. Sam Deane, Mr.
Harold Collier of Seattle. Mr. Philip has taken them all down to
Rock Bay on the _Haida_. We're expecting Mr. Grove and some people
on his yacht for the week-end, sir."
Rod sought his grandfather in the library. He found the old man with
his chair by a French window opening on a small balcony, his thin
hands nursing a long-stemmed pipe.
Rod felt the firm pressure of his hand-clasp, wondered at the
extraordinary vitality of the man. From this same vantage he had
once fired a muzzle-loader at the painted Chilcotins. Down that same
channel his eyes had beheld the historic _Beaver_, the first steamer
to furrow the Pacific. He had seen the Anglo-Saxon and industry lay
the firm foundation of a new commonwealth. He had seen steam
supplant sail. And his eyes were keen yet, although he was
eighty-three and walked slowly, leaning on a stick.
"You've filled out," the old man eyed him critically. "Did you get
anything out of McGill besides girls and athletics? I understand you
are being noticed in sport. I take the queening for granted."
"Why, gran'pere," Rod laughed, "does it run in the family? I haven't
heard that the Norquays who attended McGill were outstanding
cavaliers."
He made a mental reservation about Grove. Echoes of that young man's
affairs still reverberated faintly along the St. Lawrence.
Grandfather Norquay smiled.
"In my day we were wild perhaps, but not wanton," he said. "I don't
know the present generation very well, my boy. But it has curious
aspects--what I see of it now and then."
"Are we much different from other generations, do you think?" Rod
asked.
"In certain features," the old man answered slowly. "Yes. Very
much. But I may be wrong--and it doesn't matter. I have seen a
great deal of change. Some things go on unchanged. Others--my
father, I recollect once--"
He went off upon a tangent of reminiscence. Rod listened, wondering
if there would come a time when he would sit with snow-white hair and
withered skin, telling his grandson of the now, which would then be
fifty years under the horizon of time.
He went downstairs presently to have a bite of lunch, then outside to
walk here and there. The warm June hush filled the parked spaces,
that languorous stillness with an undertone of humming insects
and--when one sat perfectly still to listen--the flutter and rustle
of foraging birds. Under the drowsiness invisible growth, vegetable
growth, responding vigorously to the warmth of sun on moist, fecund
earth. One could almost hear the murmur of countless inorganic
changes, expansions, all the old forms renewing themselves in the
appointed way.
Rod went about from spot to spot, observing the lilacs, the
rhododendrons, the bloom-hidden rockeries, all the fragrant beauty of
the grounds and the sanctuary of the massed woods running back of Big
Dent. He brought up at last on the float. He looked into a
commodious boat-house. His dugout, the brilliant paint a trifle
faded, sat on blocks, wide checks in the wood from long drouth. He
shoved it into the water, let it fill to soak and swell tight. Then
he took a rowboat and pushed out of the bay. A short run of tide
made a slow current in the channel. He was well pleased to feel and
smell salt water again, to have the sharp odor of kelp in his
nostrils, to sniff the aromatic pungence wafted by faint airs out of
the banked forest across the cool sea.
He had no particular purpose, no explicit destination. Perhaps for
that reason, or lack of it, he landed an hour or so later at Oliver
Thorn's float.
Your natural patrician is alone able to practice democracy without
condescension, to meet his fellows on any common ground available.
It made no difference to Rod Norquay that Oliver Thorn and his family
were completely outside the Norquay orbit socially, financially,
perhaps even intellectually,--although the last count was highly
debatable. It merely amused Rod to recall that Norquay senior had
once frowned on Thorn as a "dreamy-eyed incompetent." Rod knew these
people, no matter how or why. He knew them. He liked them. That
was sufficient.
And there was Mary besides, a stimulus to his adolescent curiosity.
He quite frankly wanted to see her again. She had been almost the
only real playmate he could associate with the later and most
important part of his youth. He had vivid and pleasant memories of
her, which had not grown less by two years during which she might
have died or married or gone to a far country, for all he knew.
There had been one or two stiff little letters, then silence. Rod
easily accounted for that. Too many things pressing in on them both.
Too acute a self-consciousness. Rod never thought of the manner of
their parting without a slight wonder at that queer surge of feeling.
He supposed it was the same with Mary Thorn,--a something that made
for restraint between them, that could not be overcome by letters.
He knew girls without number. He danced with them, rode with them,
drove them about in motor cars. Two years of Montreal and three
months in Europe had tremendously expanded his experience of
femininity. And Mary stood out against this background of girls like
an oil portrait among a group of half-tone prints.
Rod didn't attempt to account for this. He hadn't cast a sentimental
halo about her. His pulse did not quicken when he thought of her.
He simply remembered her vividly as a girl he knew and liked better
than all the rest. The nearest he came to an analysis of the "why"
was to wonder if it were not because he remembered Mary in her look
and words, in her person and manner, as supremely natural. He had an
ingrained dislike for the artificial. He had been born with that
predisposition. So had Phil. He liked to think that was a Norquay
characteristic. And the generation of girls and young women Rod knew
seemed like exotic flowers,--with their lipsticks and powder, their
exaggeration of speech, their startling frankness. They were easy to
admire. Upon occasion their provocative sex might trumpet a
challenge. But in the main rouge and talcum, pert slang, the
assurance of complete sophistication amused Rod without greatly
interesting him.
He took it for granted Mary would be at home. But the Thorn world
had moved as well as his own. He found Oliver Thorn sitting on the
porch looking over a newspaper. They shook hands. Mrs. Thorn came
out to greet him. And freshly she impressed Rod with a sense of
serenity, of kindliness, of a motherly quality he could not remember
in his own life.
"Where's Mary?" he asked.
"Still in town. She'll be home soon, though, I hope. She cut a year
in high school and entered the U.B.C. last summer," Mrs. Thorn told
him. "She's quite grown up, Rod. I don't believe you'd know her.
She's changed, like you."
"But I don't think I've changed much," Rod demurred.
"Of course you wouldn't see it yourself, but I can," Mrs. Thorn
smiled.
She went back into the house. Rod sat talking to Thorn.
Trout-fishing, the salmon run, timber, matters current along the B.C.
coast. Westward of the float a set of boomsticks enclosed a floating
mass of fresh-cut cedar in four-foot lengths, split to a
size,--shingle bolts for the mills.
Oliver Thorn had owned for years a square mile of the finest timber
on Valdez; magnificent fir close-ranked on the ridges, cool groves of
cedar in shadowy lowlands. He held it indefeasibly, under a Crown
grant. Rod knew that because he had once heard his father and Grove
comment impatiently on the man's clear title, and wonder why in his
circumstances he would neither sell nor cut the timber himself.
Grove had observed caustically that some one had blundered. That
particular stretch of woods was almost surrounded by the Norquay
holdings. His father had merely shrugged his shoulders. Rod
wondered idly now why a poor man did not turn those trees into useful
cash. He uttered a modification of this thought.
Thorn smiled.
"I follow the wise course of greater folk," he said musingly. "Your
people own miles and miles of timber, for instance. Yet they don't
fill the woods with loggers and market every stick that can be cut.
They log enough each year to bring in the necessary revenue. Isn't
that about it?"
"Probably. I really don't know the family policy about timber,
though."
"That's about it, I'd say," Thorn went on. "And mine, although it
looks like a lazy man's tactics, is much the same. I bought this
stretch of timber cheaply. By and by, when the time is ripe, I'll
log it off or sell it to a logger. I'm doing just what the founder
of your family did, Rod, and what your family continues to do. I'm
holding property that will steadily increase in value."
He stopped to pick up his pipe and put a match to it. Then he
continued in his slow, drawling voice.
"People have often thought me either a sluggard or a fool to sit
tight here, as I've done. Some men would throw a crew of loggers in
here, rip the heart out of this limit in a season, make twenty or
thirty thousand dollars, and go somewhere else to do the same thing.
Your pushing, bustling kind of man who doesn't see anything in the
woods but so many thousand board feet per acre--that kind of man
thinks I'm a damned fool."
"The fact is," he resumed, after a brief pause in this, the longest
speech Rod ever heard him make, "I have no expensive social position
to maintain, and I'm not keen to pile up a fortune. A reasonable
amount of work is good for my liver. But working under pressure,
driving other men, worrying over deals and prices and costs and
contracts is not only distasteful to me, but I'm not good at it. I
know because I did it for fifteen years. I not only didn't like it,
but I didn't make money."
"You see," he turned to Rod, with a deprecating sort of smile, "men
are born different. Some have a beak and claws to rend and tear, and
they do rend and tear with the best. Some are bound to kick and
gouge their way to the top of the dollar pile. For them that's the
real object in life. Others have great foresight to grasp a great
opportunity whenever it comes within reach. I imagine the first
Norquay was that kind of man. And finally there's the fellow like
me; more a dreamer than a doer; inclined to be contemplative rather
than actively constructive--or destructive; more apt to take pleasure
in seeing a tree grow than in cutting it down; able to work and plan
and think clearly in respect of his individual acts, but somehow
incapable of herding and driving and compelling other men to function
for him. That's me. I pioneered in logging here on the coast. I
was one of the first to introduce powerful machinery to handle this
big timber. I made a little for myself now and then. But mostly I
made money for some one else. And I got tired of going ahead under
full steam. My wants are simple. My family's wants are simple. A
reasonable amount of leisure. A reasonable amount of security. A
chance to read and think. Freedom from hurry and worry. That seemed
good enough for me. And this," he waved his hand toward the timber
banked thick on the slopes behind his house, "has given it to me for
several years. Each season I cut a few hundred dollars' worth of
cedar,--without making a dent in the total. Each year the value of
the stand increases. There's twenty-two million feet on my ground.
When I choose to sell, it will bring me enough for a decent living as
long as I'm likely to live, and something left over for Mary. That's
good enough."
Half an hour later Rod heard the _Haida_ whistle far down channel.
The tide had gone slack. He rowed back, a little keen to see Phil.
And as he crossed he looked back at Oliver Thorn's timber and thought
to himself that Thorn was doing precisely what the earlier Norquays
had done. He had shrewdly based his material security on possession
of a natural resource. There was no accident in Oliver Thorn's
ownership. The man had a sound design that differed in scope but not
in kind from the design whereby the Norquays had become what they
were and held what they had.
This was the man Norquay senior had termed a dreamy-eyed incompetent.
Rod smiled. It wasn't like his father to make blunders in estimating
men. Then he fell to thinking of Grove,--and he was not so sure of
the paternal judgment. Or, was it that his own distaste for his
elder brother blinded him to excellent qualities and abilities easily
visible to a father's eye?
CHAPTER VI
"When I went away you were talking about going on your own," Rod
said. "What kind of a twist have things taken here? You seem to be
pretty much the whole works now."
"Only by proxy," Phil answered. "Somebody has to be on the job more
or less. I don't mind so long as they give me a fairly free hand.
Matters here have become secondary in the Norquay scheme of things,
but they're still quite a handful for somebody."
"Loosen up," Rod commanded. "You weren't at all explicit in any of
your letters, and the governor confined himself mostly to checks and
a few casual admonitions. Has Grove quit Hawk's Nest for a career in
business? What does this trust company thing amount to?"
"Lord knows. Did you go and see the plant?"
"I wasn't interested. Seeing the governor was away I only stayed in
town overnight. I saw an electric sign in huge letters on a roof
downtown."
"The sign of progress. The oriflamme of a budding financier, a comet
flashing athwart the financial firmament," Phil intoned with ironic
inflection. "That's Grove. Hawk's Nest and timber was too cramped a
field for his vaulting ambition. He couldn't be satisfied with the
one-horse show that was started here a century back. Our brother is
by way of shedding a golden luster on the name, Rod."
Rod snorted.
"What's he after?"
"That's what _I_ ask," Phil replied. "Echo answers what? Money, is
one's natural answer. But that doesn't follow. He could live here
and run things in the same offhand manner that we're used to, and
have more money than he would ever need. There's always been a
surplus. Do you know what the income of this estate runs for the
last twenty-five years?"
Rod shook his head.
"Over a hundred thousand on the average. It could be doubled,
trebled, if one cared to go at the timber rough-shod. So it isn't
money," Phil continued. "The governor would have been perfectly
satisfied to turn everything over to him as soon as he married. On
the contrary, he persuaded the gov. to set him up in this blatant
money-grabbing scheme. Personally, I think private banking and trust
fund operations are just a glorified sort of pawnbroking. We've
always made our money out of productive enterprises. I can
understand Christ's indignation at the money changers. They're
damned parasites. Grove, however, has no such peculiar ideas. He's
become a man of affairs. The two years he spent in New York and
London financial circles have turned his head, I think. Talks in
millions. A wizard of finance. A wizard! Grove could always fool
women. He never fooled a man of keen perception--outside of his own
father. Grove's actually proud of this trust company thing, you
know. Nailed our name to his financial flag-pole. And he has
associated with him five or six of the shrewdest business buccaneers
on the coast,--Deane, Arthur Richston, Mark Sherburne, and his
father-in-law, John Wall. I don't like it, Rod."
"It's his funeral," Rod answered carelessly, "if they pluck him."
"I wasn't thinking about him," Phil drawled. "It's the rest of us.
We wouldn't like a smash. Maybe I'm pessimistic."
"What does the pater think of it?"
"Oh, backs him stoutly. Keeps all his loose change in the Norquay
Trust. Believes Grove is launched on a wonderful career. Maybe he
is. But I don't think our beloved brother has the necessary grip for
that sort of career. He loves power; he's the chesty sort. He
revels in big affairs. And I don't think he really knows what power
consists of, nor how skilfully and wisely to direct affairs."
"Did you ever like Grove, or trust him?" Rod asked bluntly. "Did you
ever get on with him?"
"No." Phil answered as bluntly. "I wouldn't admit it to any one but
you, old kid. But I don't. I never did. I never will. We'll
always be secretly at odds in everything."
"Same here. I wonder why?" Rod uttered reflectively. "Suppose we're
subconsciously resentful--jealous because he's first and entitled to
the lion's share?"
"No, no. Nothing so petty. It's fundamental. Grove looks like us.
But he _isn't_ like us, only outside. Inside he's different. They
can talk all they damn please about heredity, environment, cultural
influences. They don't account for some people. Grove's a snob at
heart. He's gross. He's a fairly clever--or cunning--good-looking
healthy animal, with a purely animal psychology under a veneer of
good manners. And I suppose one should view him with a degree of
tolerance, because he was certainly born what he is. But one doesn't
like that type of man as the chief representative of one's family."
"And you think the governor fondly imagines Grove is quite a decent
sort and plays the game like a gentleman--a bit masterfully, but
still according to Hoyle?" Rod mused.
"Absolutely." Phil frowned. "To me, that's the devil of it. He's
honest, the governor is, and a bit old-fashioned in some notions.
And he's fairly tolerant and pretty blind to certain obvious defects
of character close home. The fact is, old kid, he's rather proud of
his three sons. He'd wink at almost anything one of us did--in
reason. And Grove comes first. He simply can't see Grove with
critical eyes. It's quite natural, Rod."
Rod would have pursued the subject farther, but there now approached
them in a body, where they sat dangling their legs over the _Haida's_
cabin, their male house guests armed with gear for salmon fishing at
the upper narrows.
That evening, as they drew clear of a nook in Stuart Island at slack
water, a long, lean, cruising yacht, canopied, mahogany tenders
shining in boat chocks on deck, her bow wave curling out with a
hissing sound, swept by the _Haida_.
Young Deane's eyes followed her enviously.
"Classy packet that," he said to Rod. "I was out on her a couple of
week-ends. She's a dream inside. Fast, too; shows her heels to
everything in Vancouver Harbor."
Rod smiled. Grove's yacht interested him less than the owner. Grove
was expanding. Decidedly. Rod had a fanciful vision of his brother
as a balloon, swelling and swelling to the ultimate overstrain and
collapse. A whimsy, of course. Finance was profitable. Money bred
money. Yet it seemed strange that a Norquay could turn his back on
Hawk's Nest, its ordered comfort, its atmosphere of security, its
leisure and its peaceful beauty, to sweat over making a barrel of
money only to spend it on such costly toys. It was even more strange
to think that their father abetted and encouraged Grove in this
departure from the old accepted way.
"Makes this look like small potatoes, eh?" Rod found Phil grinning
at his elbow as they rolled in the _Kowloon's_ wash.
"Must be money in trust companies," Rod observed sardonically.
"That's bigger than the _Hermes_, which old R.S.N. sailed around the
Horn."
"I wonder what _he'd_ think of Grove?" Phil murmured.
"I wonder," Rod echoed.
He repeated that mordant query to himself in the course of the
evening. Grove brought a dozen people on the _Kowloon_, a further
installment of Deans and Richstons, and several young men and women
whom Rod met for the first time, but whose names were familiar enough
as people who were "somebody" in B.C. They had dinner aboard, but
afterward they took possession of Hawk's Nest, hauled a piano outside
and danced on the wide verandah or wandered over the grounds in
pairs. Rod detected a livelier tempo than had been common to Hawk's
Nest gatherings. They drank a little more freely than he remembered
as the usual thing there. By eleven o'clock two or three of the men
were quite comfortably "lit up." Rod noticed that, even before Laska
drew his attention to them.
"Young Deane and Tommy Richston are tight," she said amusedly. "Look
at their eyes. See how very solemn Tommy is."
They were sitting by an open window in the living room, watching the
glide and dip and sway of the dancing couples.
"Yes, rather," he replied. "Time to turn off the tap when the guests
get pickled."
"It won't hurt them," Laska remarked indifferently. "They generally
behave well. Isn't it lovely here, Rod? So clean and fragrant with
the woods all about and the sea at your door. I love this old place."
"You ought to," Rod smiled. "You belong to it now."
"Do I?" she said. "I hadn't thought of it in just that way."
It struck Rod that he might find it difficult to explain just what he
meant. He _felt_ that he belonged to this old gray house. Some
indefinable bond existed between him and it, something woven about
him by heredity, usage, affection, by the generations of his blood
who had belonged there before him. Could any one else feel that way
about Hawk's Nest? He didn't know.
He looked at Laska with frank admiration. She was one of them now,
in a special sense. One of the clan. She was a beautiful woman.
Her hair was the color of ripe wheat straw, her eyes a very dark
blue, luminous, expressive. She had grace and dignity. Rod had a
feeling that she must be innately kind and generous. He wondered why
in the name of God such a woman preferred a man like Grove to a man
like Phil.
"I hoped we'd live here," she said presently. "But Grove has to be
in town."
"Has to be?"
Rod could not help the inflection. Laska looked more keenly at him.
"Do you also disapprove of Grove?" she inquired.
"I also?" Rod countered. "I don't get you, sister-in-law."
"I don't really know you very well, Rod," she said softly. "But I'm
quite sure you're not stupid."
She eyed him with a tantalizing smile that made Rod uncomfortable.
"You're just as well pleased we don't live here, aren't you now?" she
went on. "And you aren't the only one with that attitude, are you?"
Rod considered a moment. He thought he understood her. And he
retaliated, in so far as his breeding permitted him to retaliate. He
had a retentive memory to draw on.
"I told you once that only the oldest son counted for much in this
family," he replied, with a short laugh. "You drew the lucky number.
Isn't that good enough?"
She sat silent for a few seconds.
"I am answered," she said briefly.
The subject ended there. Some one came to get Laska for a dance.
Rod, who was tired of dancing, a little bored with the high spirits
which had originated chiefly in various decanters, betook himself
upstairs to bed.
Something had gone wrong with Hawk's Nest. The old sense of
cohesion, of the family as a unit, seemed lacking. Rod missed that
atmosphere of solidarity. Until now he had in a vague fashion
regarded his brothers, his father and grandfather, his sister
Dorothy, the little groups of first and second cousins as links in a
chain. There might possibly be a weak link or two--he considered
Grove such a one--nevertheless it had been a chain forged of kinship,
common aspirations, interests, traditions. For each of them and for
all of the fairly numerous brood descended collaterally from that
adventurous fur-trader, Hawk's Nest and the Norquay estate had formed
a cherished background, a guarantee of certain rights and privileges,
a sure wellspring of reasonable opportunity to make the best of the
business of living.
Materially it was still that. But Rod had a curious impression of
the old spirit having subtly withdrawn, of them all having become
individualistic, separate entities with conflicting desires,
ambitions, both active and potential,--individual egos unleashed,
clashing, bent head-long on each his own ends, without regard to the
others.
He blamed Grove for this,--and his father for letting Grove make it
so. Grove was the disturbing element. He was turning everything
inside out. Rod didn't like the people Grove surrounded himself
with. He resented Hawk's Nest being subject at Grove's pleasure to
an invasion by free-drinking, slang-slinging people, whose pursuit
was not so much pleasure as excitement.
He grew drowsy in the midst of such reflections. After all, it
didn't matter much. Especially to him. Probably this crowd was not
much different from the general run of people who had money to spend
and time to burn. He supposed that he was hypersensitive, too damned
particular, finicky,--too infernally quick on the hair trigger of an
impression.
And so he fell asleep.
CHAPTER VII
Grove's guests danced, drank, sang, tennised, gossiped and played
cards during their waking intervals for forty-eight hours. Then the
white yacht fled down the sea lanes to bring her owner to his
mahogany desk on Monday morning rejuvenated by a quiet week-end at
his country house, as the social page of the Vancouver _Province_
duly chronicled.
Perhaps the item was correct enough in one particular. Possibly Mr.
Grove Norquay was rejuvenated, or refreshed. Quietness would not so
have restored his force. Next to display, Grove liked action.
Whatever else he might lack, he was endowed with abundant energy. He
was a big man, like most of the Norquays, handsome, with an engaging
manner. It was scarcely correct for Phil to say that Grove never
fooled men. If he did not fool them he had a faculty of influencing
them favorably to himself. That faculty had made men like Arthur
Richston and John P. Wall willing to let him stir the financial pot
in which their money bubbled as well as his own. A young man in
search of a career would not have commended himself to them simply by
reason of his search. Even with the Norquay prestige behind him he
would still need that indescribable quality which is called magnetism
for lack of a more definite term,--that personal power of suasion
which successful motor-car salesmen and old-world diplomats alike
exercise to secure signatures on the dotted line. Good men have that
persuasiveness, that ability to compel confidence, and bad ones also.
To which category Grove Norquay belonged it would be difficult to
say. There is the blind power of circumstance to consider.
In this year of our Lord, 1911, Grove was a brilliantly successful
young man in a city where success was most completely estimated by
the noise a man and his money made. Grove was as well satisfied with
himself as any young man could be whose career was assuming meteoric
aspects. Everything he touched turned out well. The Norquay Trust
Company seemed to exercise a hypnotic drawing power over investors
with loose funds. There was a speculative movement in land rising to
a climax in Vancouver, a something that was to assume gigantic
proportions in the following eighteen months. Already shoe clerks
were beginning to go without lunch to make payments on plots of land
in distant suburbs, and to go about their duties dreaming of the
quick turn-over and the long profit.
All of which, when it occurs in a seaport in conjunction with the
building of two transcontinental railway terminals, an expansion of
shipping, an upturn in mining and timber, breeds that phenomenon of
Western America, the "boom." Great is the confidence of the
participants,--and the entire community participates. For the time
being it is forgotten that whatever goes up must come down. It is a
great game while it lasts. Better than draw poker. Better than
playing the ponies. It is legitimate, respectable, as well as
thrilling. It isn't gambling. It isn't even speculation. It is
investment.
Of course a trust company with a well-defined and legally restricted
field of operations was not actively participating in this frenetic
exchange of land titles, notes, mortgages, options and hand-to-hand
agreements of sale. But the rapidity and number of such transactions
created a business which Grove's company absorbed so thriftily that
its growth shamed the furious beanstalk.
The Norquay Trust occupied the first two floors of a new building
named after itself, on the roof of which rose a steel skeleton
covered with incandescent bulbs, the sign Rod had marked on his
return.
Here Mr. Grove Norquay appeared to feel that he moved at last in his
proper sphere. He loved the sound and echo of huge sums, of
complicated transactions, of facing men over a massive desk and
deciding matters that involved much money. He liked noise,
action--it gave him a sense of power, of irresistibility--just as he
liked being master on his own yacht and host to a crowd of people who
talked a little louder and faster and drank a little oftener and
danced with a trifle more abandon than was really necessary. He
could have a "whale of a time" with a lively crowd, whether the party
was stag or mixed. On dead ones, either social or financial, Grove
wasted no moment of his valuable time. A man with money and a
sporting inclination, a woman with any pretensions to youth and
beauty, could be reasonably sure of Grove Norquay's
consideration,--at any rate for a time. He esteemed the good mixers
as the salt of the earth. But they had to be the "right" sort of
people. By his birth, training and antecedents Grove held himself
duly qualified to judge of that beyond dispute.
He was attempting to convey the weight of this mature judgment to Rod
one forenoon some days later. Rod and Phil had come down with the
_Haida_ to meet their father on his return from a trip South. A mild
curiosity to see Grove's shop had led Rod into the Norquay Trust
Building. Grove had shown him about and explained the scope of the
undertaking with what interested Rod as ill-concealed pride.
"I believe you're all puffed up about this thing," he said amusedly,
when they sat down at last in Grove's private office.
"Well, why not?" Grove conceded. "I organized it. It's a pretty big
show, and it's my show."
"After all, it's only a money-making scheme, isn't it? You don't
make anything or do anything, do you? You just handle sums of money
and grab off a percentage. Eh?" Rod said innocently. He was
thinking of Phil's phrase: glorified pawnbroking.
"Oh, tush--you don't understand." Grove dismissed that.
Then he proceeded to fraternal advice, slightly tinged with
remonstrance.
"Didn't I see you walking along Beach Avenue with that Thorn girl
after dinner last night? I understand she's down here going to
school."
"Probably you did," Rod answered indifferently.
Grove frowned.
"It's hardly the thing for you to cultivate her publicly," he
observed. "A fellow can't carry on these country kid acquaintances
in town. Aren't there girls enough in your own crowd for you to
stroll along the beach with?"
"Look here," Rod challenged earnestly, "with your record in the
female line you're barking up the wrong tree when you start advising
me to keep within bounds. My own taste and judgment are quite as
good as yours."
Grove eyed him coolly.
"_My_ record in the female line," he murmured. "I didn't know I had
one."
"No? You mean you didn't know I knew. Do you think I've been deaf,
dumb and blind for the last six years? Even if I had been, you must
remember you went to McGill before me. There are still a few
lingering odors of you on the campus, and in some of the downtown
joints."
"Well, well," Grove said cynically. "You aren't so slow as you seem,
after all. So far as Mary Thorn is concerned, your taste is good
enough--but your judgment is damned poor. I always told the pater he
kept you cloistered too much, Rod. If you have a crush on the Thorn
person, go to it. But do keep her out of sight. Saves talk. These
nobodies from nowhere always mess things up by trying to horn into
your own crowd if they get half a chance. You understand?"
Rod looked at him soberly.
"You're a piggy sort of creature, d'ye know it, Grove?" he said with
icy deliberation. "I sometimes wonder what induced Laska Wall to
marry you."
A faint tinge of color crept into Grove's face.
"I sometimes wonder myself," he said slowly, as if the thrust had set
him thinking. "However, that's beside the point. If I made an ass
of myself on certain occasions, that's no reason you should. Of
course," he waxed sarcastic, "if you are like Phil, a youth of
virginal purity, all I need to say is that it's advisable for you to
seek your chemically pure companionship in your own class, on the
streets or off."
"Your idea of virginal purity doesn't interest me," Rod said as he
rose. "If Phil and I happen to have certain ideas about common
decency which you can't understand, why, that's your misfortune. But
if you want to get along with me, eldest brother, you'll leave my
moral and social training alone. If you don't like my associates,
you can ignore them. Keep your homiletics for your customers."
"All right, kiddo," Grove agreed ironically. "You're a Norquay and
you can do no wrong. But I can tell you from experience, Roderick,
old kid, that these poor men's daughters generally figure on getting
something out of traveling with fellows like us. Believe me, they
do."
Rod didn't answer. He was angry, both at Grove's advice and
insinuation. In another second he would have been ready to blow up.
So he walked to the door. In a square mirror let into a panel he got
a glimpse of Grove, half-turned in his chair, looking after him with
a slightly puzzled expression.
Laska had asked Rod to luncheon at the house. Grove lunched at his
club. Phil had vanished about his own affairs after declining
Laska's invitation. He wondered if Phil suffered from constancy; if
love were a thing that endured beyond hope. He couldn't say. There
was a difference in Phil. But there was a subtle sort of change
manifest in everything Rod knew. At any rate he, himself, had no
reason to find anything but pleasure in lunching with his
sister-in-law.
So he went alone. He walked the twenty blocks that lay between the
downtown traffic roar and Grove's home in the West End, thinking of
his brother's cynical advice. In so far as it bore upon Mary Thorn,
Rod dismissed it contemptuously. He had met Mary by such chance as
brings people together in any town. She was on her way to keep an
engagement and he had walked with her the length of the beach along
English Bay. But Rod had foresightedly provided himself with her
telephone number. Now in a spirit closely akin to defiance he
stopped at a pay station and called her up. Yes, she was free that
afternoon. Yes, she would go for a walk with him.
Rod went on, more placidly. She was the same Mary Thorn who used to
run the rapids with him, but a little taller. She had attained
womanhood and bore herself accordingly. Rod had never been able to
make invidious class distinctions between himself and her. He
couldn't now. Along with Phil she had a place in his affection which
she had preëmpted long before either was aware of sex. Rod's active
and analytical mind had lately come to the conclusion that of all the
people young and old in this land of his birth there were only two
who could stir him to any warmth,--Phil and Mary. That puzzled him.
He supposed he must be an emotional freak. He had chums in Montreal.
He knew men, women and girls by the score here in Vancouver. He
regarded girls here and elsewhere with sophomoric condescension. He
never missed them when they were absent. And he had missed Mary
Thorn. How much he didn't realize until he met her again, after two
years. It was very odd. The emotional and intellectual experience
of twenty couldn't account for such facts.
Rod soon gave over trying. He found himself turning in at Grove's
gate, and Laska coming forward in a hall to greet him.
Late June had ushered in a burst of heat. Their luncheon was served
on a porch screened by wistaria. The purple clusters of bloom
scented the cool shade. A seven-foot ivy-grown wall enclosed the
grounds, shutting away everything but the neighboring upper stories
and the high, green timber of Stanley Park on the west. It was
almost as quiet there as in the woods. The downtown rumble was a far
surflike mutter that made a tonal background for the hum of bees
foraging in the wistaria.
Laska talked at intervals. She had grown up in Montreal. She asked
Rod about places and people there, grew briefly reminiscent about her
childhood. Curled in a hammock after luncheon, she was silent for a
time.
"Rod," she said abruptly, "when your father comes--he's due
to-morrow, isn't he?--do something for me, will you?"
"Of course," Rod answered. "What shall it be?"
"Suggest to him that it would be pleasant to have me up at Hawk's
Nest for a few weeks."
She regarded him thoughtfully, her lips slightly parted. Rod was
puzzled. He hesitated.
"Will you, Rod?"
"Certainly. But--but why don't you just come? Simply say you want
to--and come."
"It isn't quite so simple as that," she explained. "I couldn't go
unless your father rather made a point of it to Grove. Grove's
funny. He isn't at all keen on me going there, except when we cruise
up on a week-end. And I'd like to go there and stay awhile, quietly.
I'm fed up with Vancouver. I'm tired. I want to rest."
"You can't think what a giddy whirl we live in," she went on
presently. "Dinner parties, general hilarity; just one thing after
another. One has to go whether one feels up to it or not. One gets
so weary of it. Get your father to have me come to Hawk's Nest, Rod
dear."
Rod promised.
She went off on another tack after that. With a touch of malice she
brightly recounted the quasi-scandal pertaining to certain people in
their set, people Rod knew slightly. It seemed to afford her ironic
amusement.
"But," Rod observed in comment on a rather piquant anecdote
concerning a pretty widow and a man of family who cut a big figure in
local industry, "that's pretty raw if it's true. And if it's just
gossip, it's rotten nasty gossip."
"I shouldn't be surprised if it were quite true," she said
indifferently. "Some people do what they like. Others have to toe
the line. It's a queer, queer world, Rod."
He left about two-thirty. Striding up Robson Street to Mary's
boarding place, he shook off a half-formed impression that Laska was
bored and discontented, that she found the only world she knew a
rather hollow affair. There was a vague fretfulness about her. It
was just an impression. And it was not his concern. Mary Thorn was
decidedly his concern, for that afternoon at least. Laska, Grove,
the Norquay Trust vanished out of his mind at sight of Mary Thorn.
For, as he walked beside her along a street which led to the sandy
foreshore and green reaches of Stanley Park, Rod found himself
stirred by a strange procession of fancies. They trooped through his
mind, quickened his blood. What was there about a girl (a pretty
girl, but of no great beauty compared to other girls he knew) in a
white organdie dress, with a rather immobile face shadowed under the
floppy brim of a leghorn hat, to stir him so, to make him desire
nearness to her and to find that nearness disturbing? Rod's brain
registered flashes of himself holding her close, of her face smiling
into his,--unwelcome visions like that while his lips uttered
sentences about Montreal, continental Europe, books, plays he had
seen, such _pronunciamento_ generally as the conversation required of
a second-year university man who had been abroad.
"I wonder if this is the way a man starts in getting foolish over
some particular girl?" Rod thought to himself, "Or am I just like
Grove and some fellows I know?"
This while he told her of a quaint old place in Scotland, where he
had visited a branch of distant kin, the summer before.
Mary listened, talked in her normal quiet way, turning to him
occasionally with a smile that fluttered briefly across her face and
made her eyes light up.
There was no provocative suggestion about her. It was nothing she
did or said that stirred and puzzled Rod. It was merely herself, her
presence, a pleasant-faced girl with a low, throaty note in her voice
and a slender well-formed body which had a peculiar grace of
movement. Magnetic? That overworked term to define the indefinable.
What was there about her to stir a man so? Rod asked himself that
after he had said good-by to her at five o'clock.
And there flitted across his consciousness a faint, troublesome
perception of dynamic forces in human relations of which a man must
acquire knowledge empirically, concerning which all the textbooks are
silent.
Rod spent the months of July and August very much as he had spent all
the Julys and Augusts of earlier years. That is to say, he paddled a
canoe, swam, sailed, fished trout and salmon, made himself agreeable
to sundry guests, male and female. About Hawk's Nest no material
change appeared, however Rod might vainly wrinkle his brows over a
subtle transformation which he could not analyze, but which he felt
as a blind man feels the nearness of some insensate mass. He was
free from the tutorial direction. Mr. Spence had definitely retired
into a pensioned leisure, having done his full duty by this
generation of Norquays. Rod was twenty, his brain and his beard both
in training for manhood. He could lounge or play as he elected, come
and go as he desired.
Not so long before, measured by seasons, life had seemed to him the
simplest sort of affair. One took it perforce as it came. Certain
things were ordered, irrevocable; other things a matter of choice; a
few, a very few transitory phases of existence, a matter of chance.
McGill, Mary Thorn, Grove, his grandfather, and the old, old journal
of Roderick Sylvester Norquay began to make him question this
definitely limited philosophy of living. The element of chance
loomed larger. It even invaded the sacred precincts of choice.
He looked at Mary Thorn as they sat on the porch of her father's
house, as they ate a pocket lunch beside the Granite Pool with their
rods and creels beside them, as they slipped in the dugout alongshore
with the open diapason of the rapids welling up, and he wondered by
what necromancy of body or spirit she could so effortlessly set his
blood racing, drew his flesh toward her as a magnet draws steel,
until his resistance was stoutly tested. How? Why? Rod could
explain it simply,--but his explanation failed to satisfy. It rode
his imagination as something that transcended mere fleshly instinct,
which he understood well enough, of which in his sophisticated world
he had observed sundry manifestations.
Rod had once said to himself that the family had become static. He
had felt a regret for this grooved state; all the great adventuring
done; all the great efforts and endurings and activities
accomplished. Ease flowed about them in a wide stream. And Grove
was the fine flower of it all--a comet flashing across the local
heavens, with a tail of yachts, mistresses, vulgar display spreading
luminously behind him.
Grandfather Norquay sat in his chair by a sunny window or walked with
his stick slowly about the grounds,--a tall, spare, silent old man,
thinking his contained, regressive thoughts. Rod would look at him
and wonder. He would look at Mary Thorn and wonder. He would look
at Grove, when that kinetic gentleman marshaled his house parties
down the _Kowloon's_ gangplank, and wonder. Then he would entrench
in a library chair, fortified by cigarettes, and read the typed copy
of his great-great-grandfather's journal, and his wonder,--which was
no more than the vital curiosity of an inquiring mind--would turn
from the general to the particular.
He would lay down that hundred-year-old document, clasp his hands
behind his head, and strive to construct imaginatively for himself a
future based on the known factors of the present and the past.
Strangely enough he always came out of these spells of day-dreaming
with a sense of futility, with an envy of his forbears, with a
regretful sense of having been born too late. Romance might still be
a lusty godlet but he moved beyond Rod's ken. He would visualize old
Roderick on the poop of the _Hermes_, pistol in belt, peering out
from under a three-cornered hat, one eye on the beauty of a
mountainous, thick-forested coast, the other keenly on pelts of sea
otter and the profitable risks of barter with savages. Battles with
the sea, with a hostile environment, a fine courage, and a far,
future-piercing vision. Rod saw the log stockade ringed about by
painted Chilcotins, arrows flying, muskets cracking; the battle
fought and the dead buried; life continuing in armed watchfulness;
the slow weaving of the planned pattern.
"The old fellows had all this in mind," Rod murmured once. "Order
and security and well-being. I wonder if they saw everything so
firmly established that it has become rigid? That all the Norquays
can do now is to live and die like gentlemen. I wonder if old
Roderick would have been such a keen, far-sighted old blade if he
could have seen the fifth generation as it is? Maybe he would regard
us with pride. I wonder? Anyway, they had a whale of a time those
days. The Trojans and Spartans had nothing on them. And there has
been no Homer to write an Odyssey. No Iliad of the pioneers. The
epic of fur and timber and the conquering of a wilderness peopled
with savages. I wonder if I could?"
Rod nursed that idea from the f[oe]tal stage to a lusty infancy. He
bore it, still in its swaddling clothes, back with him to the
university when hot August wore into cool September, and the smoke
haze of forest fires vanished before the autumn rains.
He would never become a financial generalissimo like Grove. Unlikely
that he would ever be called upon to step into Phil's executive
shoes. Unless he voluntarily embarked upon a voyage toward some
material port, he would never have to buckle on armor and joust for
dollars in the commercial tourney. But--if he were able, if he had
the gift and the patience to develop it--he might do these
adventuring progenitors a service by making them live again for their
descendants--a generation, Rod held, deprived of romance and bold
enterprise, limited and circumscribed and in danger of stifling
spiritually in the midst of a material plenty.
This fascinating project in the field of creative effort he kept to
himself--even from Mary Thorn, who had always aided and abetted him
in fanciful undertakings, whose moods and reactions seemed
mysteriously yet infallibly to keep step with his own.
CHAPTER VIII
Time bridges many a gap in the life of a man, periods that have no
substance in them, no matter how occupied, how filled with minor
incident; stretches of days, months, years flow as unctuously as
syrup from a tilted spout, as straight and open as a white road
across a level plain. Then all at once comes a divergence, a break
in the flow, new vistas and compelling actions. Something leaps
lancewise at the heart or brain out of the peaceful monotony.
Something to be attained looms suddenly like a flame in the dark. Or
he finds himself catapulted into some unforeseen clash, tingling to
the shock of conflict.
Rod Norquay finished the formal education of a gentleman's son in the
next two years. He acquitted himself according to the family
tradition, escaping high honors without being plucked. He came home
in 1913 with a B.A., a few lettered sweaters, a miscellaneous
assortment of classical and scientific and philosophical odds and
ends imprinted on a fairly retentive memory,--and a half-formed doubt
of the utility or advantage of formal education. Having been
officially labelled as the finished product of the educational
machine he supposed that he would somehow be expected to justify the
pains and expense of the cultural process. But where or how he had
no idea. He was finished with school. He was home again.
Everything was as before. If he were trained for any specific
purpose, that purpose was as yet hidden from him. The desire to
write an epic novel scarcely qualified as a purpose. In the
outwardly simple but internally complicated affairs of the Norquay
establishment he was a superfluous unit. Apart from the family he
was, as yet, of less consequence than any logger on the Norquay pay
roll.
"What's the use of being brought into the world, fed, clothed, and
educated, if you're of no use or consequence to anybody?" he observed
to Mary Thorn. "Nobody needs me to help solve their problems. I
have none of my own--none that amount to much. That was all attended
to before I was born."
"You don't know how lucky you are," Mary retorted. "You can do
whatever you want to do. You've got everything that most men have to
struggle for all their lives--and then don't get."
"But I don't seem to want to do anything that amounts to a hill of
beans," Rod replied. "It's like a football game against a third-rate
team. No fun in a walkaway. I have the instincts of a--a--what
shall I say? Buccaneer? Pioneer? Adventurer? I don't see much
chance for anything but a money-making adventure. I don't need to do
that, even if it were to my taste. I couldn't get much kick out of
making two dollars grow where only one flourished. Can't you show me
a windmill or two, Mary?" he ended whimsically. "I'll mount
Rosinante and knock 'em over."
"Every avenue is open for you," Mary declared. "You can map out any
sort of career you choose."
"What, for instance?" he inquired. "There has to be a motive. Most
of 'em are financial. There's the law, and science, and the arts. I
don't warm up to a career as a matter of duty. I've talked to the
governor, seeking light in my darkness. He blandly observes, 'Suit
yourself, my boy. There's really no hurry,' and goes on reading his
book or paper, as the case may be. I'm inclined to believe the
radicals at school were right. They claimed that economic urges lay
at the root of all purposeful action in the world of affairs. Hence,
I lack the strongest motive of all to _force_ me to action."
"Haven't you any secret ambition of any sort whatever?" Mary inquired.
Rod reflected a second.
"Well, I won't commit myself," he replied. "Have you?"
"Yes," she answered demurely. "To be successful, beautiful and
beloved."
"Successful--what do you define as success?"
"Act of succeeding; consequence, issue, outcome or result of an
undertaking, whether good or bad," she laughed.
"Oh, hang Webster," he returned. "What's your real,
honest-to-goodness idea of success? What do you want most of all?
What do you want to do? What do you live for? What's your heart set
on as an objective?"
And Mary, sobered a little by the sudden earnestness of his tone,
could only shake her head.
"I'm not quite sure," she confessed. "There must be something over
the hill--but I don't know what it is."
"Funny," he ruminated. "We're both in the same boat."
"How absurd," she protested instantly. "You give me a pain, Rod.
Born to the purple and growling about it! In the same boat, indeed.
The only point of similarity is that we're both dissatisfied with
what--with what's in sight. You're sighing because no new worlds
beckon you to conquer. Everything's at your hand. All you have to
do is select your weapon and choose your field. All the prestige of
wealth, good family, is at your back. You go somewhere, you want to
do something; you mention your name; somebody says, 'Oh, one of the
Norquays,' and the way is made easy."
"What's the use of an easy road if there's nothing at the end of it?"
Rod asked impatiently.
"Oh, your breakfast must have disagreed with you," she flung back.
"I like a road that leads away to prospects bright and fair,
A road that is an ordered road, like a nun's evening prayer;
But best of all I love a road that leads to God knows where,"
Rod quoted. "Perhaps that expresses it best. If there is anything
in heredity the original Roderick's restlessness has cropped out in
me--without either his capacity or his opportunity for doing things.
Think of the resolution, the spirit of that old fish, the vision. He
saw far beyond himself. He must have had a dynamic energy. Whatever
he wanted he went after, tooth and toenail. And look at the
result--in the fifth generation--of his pains and planning. The
governor's idea of life is as rigid as granite: good food, efficient
service, genteel restraint in all things, taboos and forms of all
sorts. Grove's a glorified shopkeeper, with all a vulgar
shop-keeper's love of display. Phil's the official watchdog of the
family's material interests. And I'm a negligible quantity. Rum
lot. And I'm the only one who isn't perfectly satisfied with
everything. Even old Phil would just grin if I talked to him the way
I'm talking to you."
"He'd be right," the girl replied slowly. "You've got what
everybody's after,--ease, security, leisure. You aren't chafed by
anything sordid. You ought to realize how fortunate you are and be
satisfied. You find life pleasant. Isn't that good enough?"
"Why, yes, so far as it goes," Rod admitted. "Only nobody who gets
beyond purely superficial thinking is ever satisfied with mere
pleasantness. I'm not a cow to lie down in a clover field and chew
my cud forever."
"I give you up," Mary said. "You're a discontented pendulum."
"It's the fault of my education," Rod returned with mock humility.
"Education is a mixed blessing sometimes," Mary said in a tone that
brought him to surprised attention. "It shouldn't be bestowed
indiscriminately on those who can't live up to it, who can't gratify
any of the cravings and dreams that education breeds. Education, if
it's thorough, destroys too many illusions--illusions that one must
hold as realities, if one is poor, a nobody, and without a chance to
be anything else."
"Good Lord," he exclaimed, "you don't feel that way about it, surely?"
"Now and then--not always," she murmured. "It's like loving a thing
and hating it, too. There are times when Euripides, and Housman's
lyrics, and Thomas Hardy don't fit in with cooking and cotton
stockings--when poetic and artistic visions of what-might-be
tantalize like glimpses of a cloud-hidden moon. Why should one
sharpen one's perception of beauties that are beyond one's reach? I
should have been trained in domestic science or nursing, or selling
fripperies to rich women, instead of being put through the cultural
hotbed of a university. They meant well. But unless a girl has a
ready-made: social background, or a decided talent, the so-called
higher education is only a handicap."
"Oh, come now. Hardly," Rod protested.
"No? You don't know anything about people outside of your own
comfortable, spoon-fed class, Rod. That's the trouble. I do. I
know my own kind of people first-hand. Three years in the U.B.C. has
taught me something about your kind. I've been an outsider--looking
in. Money, clothes and manners. Manners are an asset; money is a
necessity. If you've got both you can go anywhere, do anything. If
you haven't, there's the deadline, and you can't cross. Pretty much
everything that a university training fits one for, especially a
girl, is across that deadline. It's rather depressing--sometimes."
Rod was dumb for the moment,--because he was not stupid, and he knew
what she said was true. He had seen the working out of those
unpleasant truths during his own university career. He knew
youngsters at McGill sweating and scraping through--boys with
steel-bright minds, struggling against the fearful handicap of
poverty. He had an inkling now of what old Mark Sherburne meant when
he ironically retorted to some one across a dinner table that he
didn't need brains--he could buy 'em by the gross. Rod hated the
idea of Mary Thorn being embraced in such a category. He reviewed in
one panoramic flash her situation and his own. He compared her with
girls he knew. Isabel Wall, for instance. Less mind--oh, much less.
Isabel was a doll-like creature still. An impractical, useless young
woman, even if highly ornamental. Clothes, dances, parties, sports,
and men about comprised Isabel's desire of and knowledge of life.
Yet she had everything money could buy. She had the entrée
everywhere.
Mary had neither money nor more than a glancing acquaintance with
those who had. He recalled with a touch of shame that although they
had played together from childhood, despite the fact that they had
lived within sight of each other for ten years, Mary had never set
foot within Hawk's Nest. And he had a swift, disconcerting vision of
how difficult it would be for her to get a foothold in the Norquay
circle,--or its equivalent.
It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. There was something rotten in such
an arrangement. In so far as this clear-eyed girl sitting beside him
was concerned, Rod felt that he must do something about it. Why, he
didn't pause to consider. He simply felt the compulsion to act, as
he would have been impelled to act if some unfairness had been
practiced toward himself.
They dropped that subject as if it were a live coal, as if they had
both become suddenly wary of self-revelation. And as they continued
to speak casually of other things, Rod mentally registered the fact
that by some occult process they two, from their divergent poles,
seemed to converge always. Six months, a year, two years: the
separation in lapsed time didn't seem to matter. When they met again
they did not so much begin where they left off, as at once find
themselves on common ground, breathing a natural air of intimacy.
Girls in Rod's experience were either provocative, kittenish, silly,
or rare, lofty-minded creatures whose worship at the shrine of pure
intellect was almost an affectation. He had been in the last four
years so often between the devil of jazzy damozels and the deep sea
of the female highbrow, alternating between amusement and impatience.
Mary Thorn came nearest to qualifying as a chum, with the added
factor of an elusive personal charm.
They were sitting on the calk-punctured board steps of Oliver Thorn's
house. For a minute or two Mary's gaze turned on the slope that ran
up to the Granite Pool. Whenever Rod tried to analyze his liking for
her, he stressed that quality of self-containedness. She could think
her own thoughts as if he were not there. She was thinking them now.
He wondered what they were. He had a retentive memory; he was
tenacious of impressions. Looking at her, he wondered if she were
thinking of the day they sat on the log watching the rapids boil in
their pent channel; if she were thinking of that unpremeditated kiss.
Recalling it, Rod felt his heart quicken. And, as if some invisible
thread linked their minds for an instant, Mary's eyes turned to his
with a reminiscent gleam. A faint flush tinted her cheeks. She
looked away.
Rod covered her hand with his. She let it lie passive. The touch
warmed his blood, filled him with a quick glow. For a moment all the
world was shut away, all but himself and her and the hot sunlight on
the shining channel water.
He shook off that swift rush of emotion, startled, astonished, a
little dismayed. He sat testing the strength of his resolution,
wondering at the thing that stirred him so deeply, trying to grasp
its substance. Her hand was warm and soft. Faint tremors shook it
slightly.
"What a damned shame things are so badly arranged," he said. "Let's
fix 'em to suit ourselves, Mary."
She looked at him with a straight, unwinking gaze. Her mouth
quivered, then shut tight, lips compressed. The flush that had
tinged her creamy skin faded into a pallor on which tiny freckles
stood out across the bridge of her nose in pin-points of tan. She
tried to withdraw her hand. Rod's grip tightened.
"No," he said. "You can't get away."
"Don't be silly," she whispered. "I hate sentimental men."
"Am I?"
"Well, you're manifesting symptoms."
The color came back to her face with a rush.
"Perhaps you're right."
Rod's fingers relaxed. The words that hovered on the tip of his
tongue failed of utterance. Sentimental. It was like cold water on
him. He had rather prided himself on his freedom from sentimental
episodes.
"Yes, perhaps you're right," he repeated. "I'd have been asking you
to marry me in another breath. I have a mind to propose formally,
just to see how ruthlessly you would turn me down."
"The ruthless turn-down would come from another source--not from me,"
she answered somberly.
"You'd be marrying me," Rod repossessed himself of her hand, of both
hands, "not my family or my acquaintances. They don't count so much
as you think. We could have a whale of a time together, Mary.
You're the only girl I know that's real, honest-to-God girl. You
always were. I wonder if you have the same queer sort of feeling
about me that I have for you?"
"I expect I have," she owned. "I'm not a fool, or a liar, or
inclined to be evasive, Rod. I don't care for you in a cool, quiet,
calculating fashion. I'm not made that way, any more than you are.
But, oh, Rod, I've had a lot of unpleasant wisdom forced on me since
you went away four years ago. It won't do. It won't do!"
"Why not?" Rod demanded. "If we choose to say it will, who's to stop
us? We're ourselves, and living our lives is our own affair."
"Living our lives isn't just a matter of doing whatever a passionate
impulse may urge us to do," she answered slowly. "What do you
suppose your family would do and say when you announced your
intention of playing King Cophetua to the beggar maid?"
"Whatever they jolly well pleased," Rod growled his defiance.
"Besides I'm no king, neither are you a beggar. You exaggerate.
Surely you haven't so humble an opinion of yourself?"
"It isn't humility. Far from it," the girl flashed back. "I may
dislike the station in life in which it has pleased God to place me.
But don't ever think I'm humble or diffident about it, or myself, or
my people. Oh, no, Mr. Roderick Sylvester Norquay. But I don't wear
blinkers. I see a lot of things I used to be unconscious of. One of
them is that men like you are regarded as one class of beings, and
girls like me quite another. Isn't it so?"
Rod sat silent. He was clear-sighted enough to see what she meant.
His people--and by his "people" he embraced the whole category of his
class--would say quite frankly and emphatically that Mary Thorn
"wouldn't do." She wasn't anybody. She had never been anywhere or
met any one. In a courteous, matter-of-fact manner they would make
an issue of that. They would never countenance and accept Mary Thorn
without a tussle. He saw all that, but it did not seem to him vital
or final. And he merely sat silent while he sought cogent reasons to
show her why these harsh facts she mentioned did not matter so far as
they two were concerned. Why should they be governed by exterior
restraints, taboos, penalties, if they had a burning need of each
other?
He tried to put that into words. But the devils of perversity had
entered into Mary. He could not drive them out. He sat there
holding her hands, persuading, reasoning, pleading. He had a
conviction that emotionally some flame in her leaped to the
passionate fire within himself, and that she resisted only by some
intellectual force that was stronger than his own. He could master
her heart but not her will.
"What do you want out of life that we can't get together better than
if you go after it single-handed?" he demanded savagely, "Am I not
man enough for you? Why drag in class and money and all that sort of
thing. You know that doesn't count between us. We've got
something--there's something in us--that pulls us together. It was
there long ago when we were kids paddling around together. It's
grown stronger, through four years of almost complete separation.
The peculiar magic of that--whatever it is--begins to work as soon as
we come together. We don't have to tell each other. We know. Don't
we? Isn't it true?"
She nodded, lips parted, eyes bright, looking out over the channel as
if she saw more there than the running tide.
"Then," he continued, "if it seems good to us to plan a future in
which we shall be partners as well as lovers, why shouldn't we?"
"Too soon, for one thing," she said. "You're twenty-two, Rod; I'm
nineteen. I have another year in school. How do we know that what
we seem to want so badly to-day will satisfy us completely to-morrow?
And even if we were sure, we can't dodge facts. You couldn't just by
marrying me make me a Norquay, with all the rights, privileges, and
standing of the clan. Neither your family nor your friends would
accept me as one of themselves. Certainly not at first. Perhaps
never. Look," she continued sadly, "I don't know any one you know.
Your people don't know my people--don't want to know them. It would
be a struggle. You'd have to pull me up to your level, or be dragged
down to mine. They'd say you were marrying out of your class, and
they'd punish you in so many subtle ways. You knew Marty Graham,
didn't you? Have you seen him and his wife since you came back?"
Rod shook his head.
"I heard he cut school to get married. What about him?"
"You see, it works automatically," Mary said. "He married a girl I
knew rather well. She was a senior when I entered the U. They were
very much in love. Are yet, for that matter. But they're not very
happy about it. Marty's people accept her so grudgingly. His
friends have dropped him more or less. Marty had always been used to
plenty of money. His father gave him a job in the office at the
regular beginner's salary and cut off his allowance. His pay is less
than Grace herself is capable of earning. Marty's pride won't permit
her to work. She is clever and ambitious, and probably has more real
culture than some of the people who either patronize or snub her
because she's a nobody--her people are poor as church mice and rather
commonplace. The whole thing has got Marty's goat, and it's getting
Grace's. Marty can't see why he should be deprived of everything he
had been taught to regard as his right. Grace resents the way he's
being penalized for marrying her. She is proud, too, and the
invisible wall that's thrown up in her face hurts. I can see lots of
breakers ahead for them. In fact, they're in them now."
"Marty Graham's a nut," Rod declared. "Can't a man make his own way
without his people's backing, if he has to? You don't put me in
Marty's class as a husband, I hope."
"He's a nice boy," she sighed. "He can't adjust himself to a way of
living for which he had no training, that's all. After a while he'll
begin to see so clearly what he's lost by marrying out of his class,
as they say. Then the fat will be in the fire. They'll both suffer."
"But I tell you Graham's a nut. A footless ass. He always was," Rod
protested earnestly. "Don't his actions prove it? Would I grieve if
the family got rather miffed over me marrying the girl I wanted? Not
much. I'm not quite so dependent financially as he is, anyhow.
That's one of the good points about our affairs. There is no
arbitrary cutting off of my small share in the inherited income.
Even if there were, I'm quite sure we could play the game so they'd
have to take us at our face value--which is quite good enough. Why,
you chump," he tried to rally her, "is that all that worries you?"
"It doesn't worry me," Mary said straightforwardly, "because I'm not
going to be tied or bound, or tie you, Rod. I don't know where I'm
going, but I'm on my way--through school and whatever comes after. I
don't know whether my destiny leads to a job or a profession, to art
or dishwashing, but it must lead somewhere that I want to go, where
I'm qualified to go. I have to find out where."
"It leads here," Rod drew her up close to him for one unresisting
moment. "You know it does. I've often wondered if it did--but now I
know."
He kissed her. She rested against him a second or two, her eyes
shut, hot color flooding her smooth cheeks. Then abruptly she pushed
herself away, sat plucking with nervous fingers at the folds of cloth
across her knees.
"It doesn't lead there yet," she said shakily. "Perhaps not at all."
She rose to her feet. Rod followed up across the porch, cornered her
against the wall.
"You do love me?" he challenged.
"Yes."
"Then why don't you marry me?"
"Because I do love you, Rod," she whispered. "Can't you see? It
won't do. Oh, I can't explain. I haven't the words. But the
unanswerable logic of it is clear in my mind. I knew we'd come to
this. I've dreaded it. We can't go any farther. We'd both lose."
"That's not true. You know it isn't," he shook her roughly. "We're
both thoroughbreds. It isn't class that counts. It's character.
All the rest is just trimmings. If accident of birth made me a rich
man's son, is that any reason why I shouldn't make my own way and my
own place in the world if I have to choose between that and
conforming to class prejudice in so important a thing as picking a
wife? What sort of weak saphead do you think I am?"
"It's no good, Rod," she answered doggedly. "You simply don't
understand. You've never had any experience of poverty, of struggle,
of sordidness. You'd lose a lot that even money can't buy. And
after a while you'd begin to wonder if it were worth while. The
world well lost for love is a fine poetic fancy, but nothing more. I
tell you quite frankly I'm afraid of love. It brings pain. It
brings all sorts of bitter things to men and women, this mating
passion. I have an instinct about these things. I won't marry you.
I won't be carried away by any sort of feeling for you. I don't even
want to see you again. What's the use? Oh, what's the use of our
even thinking about it?"
She broke away from him with a wrench of her body. The door slammed
behind her. He heard the quick patter of her feet on the uncarpeted
floor. Then silence. Rod had a clairvoyant vision of her flinging
herself on her bed, of her shoulders shaking, of sobs strangled in
her throat. And he stood bewildered. What had seemed so simple had
become disastrously complex, bearing implications of grief and pain
and loneliness beyond his comprehension.
But there seemed a note of finality in that scene. He could not
break down her defences, tenuous as they were.
And so, his heart filled with a strange, heavy ache, Rod walked down
to his canoe and put out into the channel. Across the way the red
roof and gray gables of Hawk's Nest beckoned him home. Home,--where
there were no problems that could not be solved by the writing of a
check, Rod thought sardonically.
The inevitable reaction set in. A passionate resentment against Mary
Thorn began to burn in him. She was a fool, he said. He himself a
greater fool to abase himself before her.
But neither objurgation nor self-bestowed epithets could rid him of
that heavy feeling in his breast.
CHAPTER IX
On an afternoon a week later Rod sat in the library nursing a book, a
cigarette, and some curiously mixed reflections. A week-end party
had come and gone, leaving Laska, her maid, and a friend at Hawk's
Nest. Whereupon Phil had taken the _Haida_ and departed for a point
up the coast. The old restful quiet had succeeded that forty-eight
hours of good-natured glamor, the laughter and drinking and dancing,
in which Rod, morose and broody, seemed to detect an irritatingly
hectic note. He was glad they were gone, glad to see the _Kowloon_
clear of Mermaid Bay. Grove was getting beefier, more assertive,
more arrogant. He was so cocksure, so frankly contemptuous of things
and persons outside his own sphere.
Yet by all accounts Grove was becoming a reckonable power in the
affairs of B.C. There was a dash and sweep about his operations that
moved men to admiration. He had been tremendously successful in all
he undertook, far more so than Rod had believed possible. The
Norquay Trust Company was a three-ring circus and Grove was the
ringmaster. Lesser men and concerns leaped and curvetted when he
cracked his whip. He was fond of cracking the whip, Rod cynically
observed.
Rod eyed his father, sitting on the other side of a periodical-strewn
table. He wondered what his father thought of Grove now. But he
knew that his father was thinking of quite another matter,--for which
he was himself responsible. He continued to look at Norquay senior
with a mildly expectant curiosity. The library was the council
chamber of the family, the place chosen for edicts, discussions of
policy, admonition. From childhood Rod and his brothers had, so to
speak, taken their medicine in that pleasant book-lined room. His
father now bent a placid eye, slightly quizzical, on his youngest
son. Rod waited.
"I really don't see the necessity," Norquay senior remarked at last.
"Of course a gentleman need not necessarily be a drone. On the other
hand one doesn't need to do a laborer's work in order to acquire
knowledge of labor. You've finished school, of course. You have
seen a little of the world and as time passes you will undoubtedly
see a great deal more. Still, if you're keen on this, I'll speak to
Phil. He can give you charge of a camp."
"I don't want to take charge of a camp," Rod said. "I'm not
competent, for one thing. I'd either make a hash of it, or leave it
all to a foreman--which is not what I'm after. What I mean by going
into the woods is to go in and work; take over jobs as I master them.
I want to know all there is to be known about timber, from the
standing tree to the finished product."
His father continued to eye him.
"What's the idea for such thoroughness--this starting in at the
bottom and getting blisters and experience together?"
The root of this expressed resolve lay in a folio of notepaper on a
stool beside Rod's chair. But it was not a matter he could make
clear, or even discuss with his father. At least, that was how he
felt.
"I want to see the wheels go round," he answered lightly.
"Very well," his father agreed. "You shall. I'll speak to Phil.
He'll see that you get a job. I take it that's what you want."
"The job's incidental," Rod replied. "I've been thinking about this
for some time. I'm not dull. I have an idea I'll pick things up
quickly. I want to know something about timber, about methods of
handling it, about the men who actually do the handling. I want to
get it first-hand. Even a university training should be an advantage
in that."
"No doubt," Norquay senior permitted himself an indulgent smile. "If
you're so interested in timber, it's a wonder you didn't take a
forestry course. The Lord knows we need forestry experts in B.C."
"Why?" Rod inquired. It had no bearing on his purpose, but the
remark aroused his curiosity.
"To teach them how to get one prime stick to the booming ground
without destroying twice as much more," his father snorted. "To
inaugurate a campaign of necessary reforestation. Outside of two or
three concerns, logging in B.C. to-day is an orgy of waste. They're
skimming the cream of the forest, spilling half of it. Kicking the
milkpail over now and then, refusing to feed the cow they milk.
However, _we_ don't do that. I can show you limits we logged when I
was a young man that will bear merchantable timber by the time your
children are grown, my boy. But to get back to our sheep. You
surprise me. If you'd gone in for wild-eyed art, it would have
seemed more natural. I never could make you out, my son. You were
always a bit dreamy. Sure this isn't just a whim? Want to see what
makes the wheels go round, eh?"
"Precisely," Rod agreed. It was as far as he would go.
"Well, it won't do you any harm," his father rambled on, "and you may
acquire a useful technique. We are expanding more or less, in spite
of a conservative policy. Phil would undoubtedly appreciate a
second-in-command before long. He has his hands pretty full. On the
whole, I'm rather glad you've taken this notion. I won't last
forever, and I'd like to see you and Phil solidly established before
my mantle descends on Grove. Timber and land are good, solid
foundations."
"What about finance?" Rod asked idly. "That seems pretty gorgeously
productive, pater. Does it ever strike you that Grove may outgrow
the regulation Norquay mantle?"
"If he does, it will be because he has made a more capacious one for
himself," Norquay senior smiled complacently. "I imagine Grove's
well able to run his own show and live up to the Norquay tradition,
too. He has a genius for affairs."
"So it seems," Rod commented dryly,--and the "affairs" he was
thinking of were not the ones his father had in mind. "I wouldn't
fancy it myself."
"As a matter of fact, no youngster knows quite what he fancies," his
father drawled. "I had a fancy for the law and politics. Two years
of reading Blackstone and a term in the Legislature cured me of both.
Take your Uncle Mark. He was past thirty before he found his real
bent. Follow your natural bent, Rod, whatever it is. You have
plenty of time and backing. This beginning on the ground floor may
work out. Knowledge of any sort never comes amiss."
So that was settled.
When his father presently left the zoom Rod picked up and opened the
folio. He read over forty or fifty closely-written sheets, knitting
his smooth young brow over the phrasing.
"Won't do---only in spots. It's dead. I've got to breathe the
breath of life into these people. And I don't seem to know how."
He sprang to his feet, paced the floor.
"All I know is what somebody has told me, what I've read in books,"
he grumbled. "Cobwebby stuff. Pretty--lots of it--moving--but no
substance. All I got out of school was a mass of unclassified facts.
I'm crammed with 'em. I know what a lot of great men did--but not
how they did it--why they did it. And language. What's the good of
a 'steen-thousand-word vocabulary if you've got no peg to hang it on,
only the old pegs other people have used till they're all worn and
shiny? I'm like a man with a craving to paint beautiful things he
can see, with a whole box of color-tubes, and no idea how to apply
his colors to get the effects he wants. Or a finely made steam
engine all ready to run, greased and oiled and water in the boilers,
but no fuel to make steam. I don't know people, humanity, only one
kind. I don't know life; only one comfortable groove of it. I don't
know anything that really counts, except that I don't know much. I
wouldn't be stuck with this, if I did." He faced about, frowning on
the pile of written sheets. "I'd be able to make a thing go the way
I wanted it, whether it was a story or a girl. I can't do either. I
don't know how--and I've got to find out how. As long as I stay in a
nice, fenced pasture I never will find out. It's all too cut and
dried. Too many taboos. Too many fences. I've got to break
through. I'm too much like the pea in the pod--I am green, the pod
is green, all the world is green."
He sat down in a chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and lost
himself in concentrated thought.
The history of Rod's family was part of the history of his native
land, in so far as Anglo-Saxon occupancy had made history. The
Norquay foothold had been the first individual one established by a
white man on the Pacific between Spain to the south and Russia to the
north. That century and more of far-seeing purposeful struggle had
culminated in the possession of every material benefit men live and
work and sometimes vainly die to grasp. Blood had been spilled,
storms braved, great risks faced to win that security. To Rod, ever
since he could remember, these things had been real, vividly colored
episodes enacted under the auspices of the high gods of adventure.
He was imaginative, creatively imaginative. Old Roderick Sylvester,
the barque _Hermes_, the sea-otter trading, the bride who fled her
English home to fare into strange seas for love, the Chilcotins on
their bloody forays, the wooden blockhouse, the first course of
masonry, the vast influx of gold-seekers in the Cariboo rush of '58,
the completion of Hawk's Nest in all its comfortable
permanence,--these were not simply things he knew as part of his
antecedents. They were realities, as if they had happened but
yesterday under his own eyes. They moved him strangely, deeply. He
could reconstruct in his mind all that crowded century. In his
mind's eye all the men and women whose bones lay underground about
the great red cedar lived and moved and had being once more. He
could see them as clearly as he saw Phil and his father and Laska or
Mary Thorn.
He had been trying to capture those visions, those personalities,
those old stirring times so crowded with pregnant action. He had
been trying more or less earnestly for a year and a half. And he had
failed. He was aware of his failure. The human equation somehow
evaded him when he put pen to paper. He couldn't put his finger with
surety on the well-spring of human motive. He hadn't the key to
character. Rod had more than a casual acquaintance with literature
in two languages. He knew Balzac and O. Henry alike, Homer and
George Ade, De Maupassant and the Brontes, Flaubert and Anatole
France, Ibsen and Tolstoi and Gorky, Kipling and Hardy and Dickens
and Poe. He read these writers, and he saw that they created men and
women, creatures of pain and passion, even as God created them. He
perceived that they did it, that with deft strokes they clothed their
skeletons with flesh and blood and breathed the breath of life into
them, so that they strutted and sighed and fought with an
emotion-compelling intensity. But he could not do it himself. And
he passionately desired to catch and transfix those gorgeous pictures
his brain evoked from that pioneering past.
It could be done. It wanted doing. Rod had always wanted to do it.
Unconsciously he had been preparing for the task. He had meant to do
something like that ever since a day when he had laid down his book
and told his tutor that some one ought to write the Iliad of the
pioneers, an epic of the men and women who with vision and high
courage had tamed a wild land for their children's children, those
bold spirits who shrank from nothing by land or sea that promised a
reward for enterprise.
Rod thought he knew why there was no magic in his pen, why these
magnificent visions eluded capture. It was not a reasoned
conviction. He felt his lack instinctively. The first faint labor
pains of creative effort apprised him of his need: to plunge into the
agitated pool of life instead of viewing it from a distant eminence.
That was how the manner of life he had led from childhood struck him
now,--as a view from afar. Rod was sophisticated enough to realize
that his world was one exclusively occupied by a limited number of
fortunate people, holding their preëminence largely by sheer inertia.
Statistics, observation, his university delving in economics and
sociology, had informed him that for one very wealthy family there
were a hundred subsisting in various degrees of comfort, a thousand
but a step beyond poverty. Accident of birth, or inherent
superiority? How was he to know? How could he know unless he got
outside the fences, inhibitions, the unyielding rigidity of his own
class? It was rigid, Rod perceived; although that perception had
only become clear to him through Mary Thorn's eyes. It had a fetich
of superiority which might or might not be valid. Even aside from
that, how could he fathom things that were universal above and apart
from class and even race--men's hopes and fears and
aspirations--unless he established a contact with men? And Rod's
instinct, the wise, fundamental instinct of an unwarped nature, urged
him to make that contact first among the lowly, where the sweat and
strain was greatest. There was the raw material. The Norquays--a
little more perhaps than any of their circle--were the finished
product. Rod wanted to know the process--and the by-products.
That was why he chose the woods. It might be well to know timber.
But it was better to know men. And the way to know men was to live
among them, to work with them, to stand with them--if such a thing
were possible--upon a common ground. Afterward--he would know what
he knew.
So for himself Rod, at the age of twenty-two, defined the approach to
knowledge: through experience--plus imagination. And to him it
seemed that with the first rebuff life had dealt him, it had also
given him a clarified purpose, a definite mark to shoot at.
CHAPTER X
Rod found work in a logging camp a thing that tried his vigorous
young body to the utmost until he hardened somewhat to the task and
learned what every manual laborer must learn,--to strike a gait he
could hold all day and not one that sapped his energy in two hours.
He found a relief he had not expected in physical exertion. He could
stop thinking about Mary Thorn. He took to work as some men take to
whisky when a dumb ache oppresses them or some haunting memory will
not let them be. And Mary Thorn did haunt him so long as he could
look across from Hawk's Nest at that weathered cedar house. He told
himself that he was a fool to feel that way. But logic had nothing
to do with feeling. Irrational or not, it existed. Something in him
had burned up full flame. Love, the mating instinct, whatever it
was, had settled upon an object and refused to be directed elsewhere.
There was more than sex involved. He did not know precisely what
else, but he was sure of something above and beyond the urge of the
flesh, however strong that might be. Because he couldn't say to
himself that there were other girls and be consoled. Another girl
wouldn't do.
He couldn't rid himself of the notion that he and Mary Thorn were
made for each other. His mind went questing forward and backward and
verified the emotional prompting. They had been shaping their own
destiny for years. Or was it being shaped for them? He couldn't
decide. But he could trace some indefinable influence drawing them
together since childhood. There had always been a subtle pleasure in
being together, a community of personal interest, a flowing of
thoughts and feelings along the same channel that transcended the
material factors in their lives. The material factors were prying
them apart now. Rod saw that. He knew Mary's inflexibility once she
determined on a given course. He had beaten his will against that in
simple, childish matters. She would not be driven. She would walk
her own road. She had always been a silently determined, lovable
little devil, Rod told himself sadly. She was herself uniquely,
neither a pattern nor an echo, and he would have loved her for that
alone in a world where girls were very largely patterns or echoes,
armed for conquest in the arena of men with the sole weapon of their
sex.
Rod would say to himself that she was wrong, that money and caste and
social privilege made no difference. But his mind was too acute not
to see that she was right. Where he differed from her, what he
resented most was her conviction of the importance of these things to
him. That resentment kept him away from Mary Thorn as much as her
positive refusal. He was too much the youthful egotist not to
believe he could ultimately break that down. But he did not wish to
coerce her, even through her own affection, until he saw a breach in
the Norquay wall through which they could walk together.
Meantime he sweated through the last of a hot July. Phil had
obligingly supplied him with a "job."
"This working up from the bottom doesn't strike my fancy," Phil had
observed. "But if you're keen on it, old kid, have your way.
They're apt to give you a rather rough time, though."
Rod grinned at that. He stood now five foot eleven in his socks.
One hundred and seventy pounds of bone, muscle and nerves perfectly
coördinated. He had made every team in school that he tried for, and
he knew what it was to undergo discipline, to withstand punishment.
It only amused him (when it did not irritate)--this solicitude for
his comfort--as if he were something to be marked "fragile," "handle
with care," whenever he stepped outside his own well-ordered
environment, where rights and privileges and precedence were so
clearly defined they went unquestioned. His father's admonitions,
Grove's unsolicited counsel about girls, Phil's prudent objection to
his getting down to a logger's level. It was the first and only time
Rod heard Phil voice the old caste shibboleth. It surprised him, but
he made no comment. He had his own program. He did not mind what
they said so long as they did not actively oppose. And if the
loggers undertook to give him a "rough" time because he happened to
be the owner's son, he expected both to learn and teach in the
process.
His work began in a camp fifty miles northwest of the Euclataws, on
Hardwicke Island. For a month he worked as a bucker, following up a
falling crew to saw the felled trees into standard length logs. He
pulled all day on the end of a crosscut saw. The woods about him
resounded with the clink of axes, the whine of steel cable in iron
blocks, the shrill tooting of donkey whistles, the shudder and thrash
of great machines spooling up half a mile of twisted steel rope on
revolving drums, dragging enormous logs as if they were toothpicks on
a thread, shooting them down to salt water, whence by raft and
towline they passed to the hungry saws of the town mills.
Rod loved the cool green forest. It made him a little sad sometimes
to see it so ravished. Wherever the logger went with his axes and
saws and donkey engines he left behind a desolation of stumps and
broken saplings and torn earth. But Rod was no sentimentalist. He
knew that humanity does not survive by beauty alone. Timber is a
utility. It must serve its turn. Nevertheless the artist in him
suffered now and then at the havoc,--as a sensitive man turned
butcher may perhaps occasionally revolt at his killing trade, despite
the fact that man is a meat-eating animal.
In this first month Rod found little of note beyond hard work and
monotony. The camp was well-established, well-equipped, moving along
an efficient routine. The crew was disciplined and orderly. They
let Rod alone. Insensibly they seemed to realize that while he was
among them he was not of them, and they neither rode him nor made him
one of themselves. In this camp he learned something of logging
operations, but little or nothing of the logger that was new.
With the dog days, however, Phil transferred him to a new camp nearer
home, a new operation--lock, stock, and barrel--from the
gray-mustached logging boss to the cookhouse flunkys. They were
mustered on the Valdez shore a mile below Little Dent when Rod
joined. A hundred men, half a dozen donkey engines on floats, drums
and drums of flexible steel cable, scow-loads of lumber, tools, all
the machinery and personnel gathered for a raid on the fir and cedar
spreading over that hillside to the Granite Pool and beyond.
"You can get all the dope you want on logging here, and be at home
too," Phil pointed out. "This camp will run for years. We may have
to put in a railroad to reach the farther limits."
"Are you going to cut all this Valdez timber?" Rod asked.
"That's the idea, I believe."
"We seem to be speeding up all around for some reason," he remarked,
after a little. "I don't see why we should, but we are. This show
very near doubles our force."
Nor could Rod see why, but he suspected Grove's financial expansion
as the cause. Grove was shooting at millions. He talked quite
casually now of major and minor operations, as if he were treating
the body of commerce like a surgeon. The Norquay Trust was getting
its fingers into every industrial pie from which a money plum could
be extracted. Before the new camp had cut a stick Rod learned that
ground was being broken in Phillips Arm for a pulp mill capitalized
at two millions. The Norquay Trust was helping to finance the thing,
handling the pulp company's bonds. It was to furnish an outlet for
low-grade timber,--cheaply made newsprint. To Rod it seemed chiefly
an excuse for some financial juggling and to strip a lovely valley of
timber, to pollute a beautiful stretch of sea-floored inlet with
waste from sulphurous acid bleaching vats.
It was all one to Rod, a part of the inevitability of things. He
would have preferred to let Phillips Arm retain its beauty and
solitude, its forested valley a home for deer and bear and coveys of
grouse, its shining river the highway of salmon to their spawning
grounds. He would have cut the Valdez timber last of all, because he
liked to look south from Hawk's Nest on a slope of unbroken green.
But he had no voice in the matter. If they chose to strip the
granite ribs of the earth to their primal nakedness, not of necessity
but for an ambitious man's profit, he could only shrug his shoulders.
He had his own row to hoe. Rod was beginning to suspect that if
Grove were a throwback to some coarse, high-handed animalistic type,
he himself was something of a variation from the true Norquay strain.
Like did not always produce like.
Here about him work went forward with a swing. A dozen carpenters
wrought marvels of construction on shore, transforming raw lumber
into bunk houses, cook shacks, office, blacksmith shop, commissary.
The falling gangs kept intermittent shudders running through the
hillsides above, where they threw down their daily score of great
trees. The donkey engines hitched cables to stumps ashore, slid off
their floats, hauled themselves puffing and grunting into the shadowy
woods, black-bellied mechanical spiders drawing themselves along by a
thread of twisted steel wire. A pile-driver crew with a two-ton
steam hammer drove rows of sticks alongshore to enclose a booming
ground. Another crew built a chute from tide-water to the first
benchland. Men and powerful machinery directed with skill and energy
wrought this transformation. In two weeks logs were plunging down
the chute,--one hundred thousand board feet per diem.
It was all new; machinery from Washington shops--steel cable from
England--tools from Welland Vale--a logging boss from Oregon--men
from every corner of the earth. To Rod there was a dual advantage in
this. He saw the technique of preparation pass through every stage,
emerge from apparent confusion to orderly, foreseen results. On the
personal side he was merely one man in a crew. There were no old
hands to make it easier or harder for him because he was a Norquay.
The logging boss was a man with a reputation for getting out timber.
It was almost a religion with him. Rod marked him shrewdly. If Jim
Handy had any hopes or ambitions beyond so many thousand feet per day
brought to tide-water Rod never learned what they were. The man was
a human logging machine. Other men commended themselves to him only
in so far as they were efficient in the woods. To Handy, owners and
owners' sons were subordinate to the job itself. He was the most
perfect example of a single-track mind Rod Norquay had ever
encountered.
But the crew as a whole had no such limitations. Rod fitted among
them easily, discovering in himself new phases of adaptability,
finding in the conglomerate mass as many angles of human interest as
there are facets on a diamond. They were literate and illiterate,
talkative and silent, coarse and fine. The bunk house echoed with
everything from downright obscenity to analytical discussions of the
entire social order. One didn't, he perceived with some surprise,
have to graduate from a university to have ideas, to express them
comprehensively, to examine life critically in its spiritual as well
as in its material aspects. And out of the few who stood
intellectually head and shoulders above the non-thinking ruck Rod
came to know best and to like genuinely a man but two or three years
older than himself.
Andy Hall was a high-rigger, an expert on steel cable, the manner of
its placing, splicing, its capacity for strain, and its life in the
humming blocks. He was short and compactly muscular with sandy hair
and a clear blue eye that could be both quizzical and cold. His work
was his work. He was paid to rig cable, and he did so, and did it
well. But he was what he termed a class-conscious proletarian. Andy
flew no red flags. He kept his nose between the covers of a book
when he was through his work. But whosoever dragged him into
discussion was apt to encounter the deluge. He had convictions which
he voiced in unequivocal terms. His vocabulary was equally rich in
terse colloquialisms and pure English.
"Where did you go to school, Andy?" Rod asked him one Sunday morning.
They were lounging in the shade of a branchy maple left standing
beside the bunk house. Rod had been listening to Andy outline the
theory of evolution to an argumentative Swede with a Lutheran complex.
Andy grinned.
"School of experience," said he. "University of life and books.
Never graduated. Never will. Always be a student--gettin' plucked
now and then. No," he hunched up his knees and smiled amiably at
Rod, "I never had the advantage of being formally labelled as an
educated man. You're a McGill man, I understand. Find it helps much
on the job?"
"Not on the job as a job," Rod answered. "Still, it helps to give me
a certain slant at things which pertain to the job. For sheer
physical labor you might say a university training is waste. At the
same time--"
"What are you doing on the job, anyway?" Andy inquired with blunt
directness, although good-naturedly. "You don't have to. Why don't
you go play with the rest of the butterflies?"
"I want to see what makes the wheels go round," Rod repeated the only
reason he ever gave.
The high-rigger jolted him with his reply.
"We do," he said calmly. "Me and old Jim Handy, And the Christian
Swede, and Blackstrap Collins on the boom, and all these Danes and
Norskys and old rivermen from Michigan. We make the wheels go round
and the master class--to which you belong--lives soft off the
proceeds. It must be great to ride always on the band wagon, and to
feel the conviction that you are ordained by God to do so, eh? To
pop your whip and make the plug lean hard against the collar. What
would happen to you if they all balked?"
Rod clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back against the
maple trunk. He had finished a creditable week under an exacting
hook-tender. It was good just to rest, to look lazily up at a blue
September sky through quivering leaves. Sufficient unto the day--
"I don't know," he said unperturbed, "and right now I don't care a
hoot. Master class and serving class is all one to me at this
particular moment. However, I don't want to ride on the back of the
working class--as you put it, as the parlor radicals at school used
to declaim--without paying for my ride. I'm not quite so sure of
these economic fetiches as some of you fellows. A man can sell his
labor, if that's all he has to sell, without selling his soul to the
buyer. And that's what counts most. You can hire somebody to cook
your food and make your clothes and keep your house in order. But
you can't hire anybody to live your life for you, to suffer your
pains and dream your dreams. Rich or poor, a man must live his own
life. Maybe you fellows are right about the intensity of the class
struggle, about the importance of the economic basis being better
adjusted. But the fact remains that a man's existence is as much a
matter of purely individual longings and visions and strivings as it
is of getting his daily bread. It isn't all a matter of material
interests, Andy. You can't perfectly adjust human society on a
purely material basis. We're all egoists, most of us thoroughgoing
egotists as well. We all want to do and be for ourselves. That
seems to be fundamental. We can't help it. We're made that way.
And there is one thing the altruists and social reformers seem to
overlook, so far as the class struggle within any national group is
concerned: the crowd that has the greatest driving force, the most
cohesion, will always be in the saddle. It doesn't matter whether we
like this conclusion or not. If there is anything in evolution, in
the whole history of mankind, that is a fact."
"Good enough--you got something in the old bean, after all," Andy
smiled. "You will have light in your darkness when some of your
crowd are fumbling around bewildered, wondering what has happened to
them. Yes, you're dead right, Norquay. You put it very well. The
group with the greatest cohesion, the greatest driving force--it
isn't a question of moral judgments--it's a question of power. But
the real power lies in the men who do the world's work and the brains
that are hired by capital to direct the work. Only they lack
cohesion. If they ever learn the value of coöperation, of community
of interest--look out! Your crowd learned that lesson long ago.
It's a scream when you look at it cold-blooded. We cut down trees
and saw them into lumber and build houses--and you own the houses.
We build motor cars--but the men who build 'em seldom have one to
ride in. You know," he laughed amusedly, "when I look at our
industrial system in its entirety, it seems to me like a huge,
unwieldy machine that we've built up hit-and-miss, and the damned
thing is operating us instead of us operating it. Even the men who
are supposed to control it aren't sure they have the thing in hand.
Some day this machine will become so complicated it won't work at
all. You can hear friction squeaks in a good many of the joints now.
It's liable to break down."
"Then what?" Rod prompted.
"Then we'll have to devise a new industrial mechanism that will be
the servant of society and not society's master."
"How will you do it?" Rod asked.
"I don't know," Hall answered. "So far as America is concerned, the
present machine seems good for many generations--with a little
patching and lubrication. But sometime it will have to be done. It
will not be done by the group in the saddle. They're only interested
in maintaining the _status quo_. If it is done at all it will be
forced along by visionaries, damn fools like me, who dream of a
perfect, harmonious society of mankind--and get called names because
we talk about our dreams. Ain't it queer," his tone became tinged
with contempt, "that the man who has beautiful visions and translates
'em in terms of sculpture or music or painting or literature is
hailed as an artist, while the fellow who has an equally beautiful
vision of a human society strong and healthy, purged of poverty and
dirt and injustice, is frowned upon as a dangerous agitator? It's a
giddy world when you stand off and look. Eh?"
Rod nodded. He was more interested in Andy Hall than in Andy's
theories. Yet there was a bone in the meat of Andy's statement that
Rod's mind chewed on long after Andy had gone into the bunk house to
shave and take his Sunday bath in a washtub by the creek.
The man with a vision and a dream was never so comfortable as the man
who merely had an objective. But he had more within him to stay his
soul in the time of stress, Rod believed. Also it was a trifle
surprising to find so nimble-minded a youth as the high-rigger
working for a daily wage in a logging camp. True, his wage was six
dollars per diem, which was equal to the stipend of some professors
Rod knew. Nevertheless Rod considered that Andy, with his obvious
intellectual ability, was misplaced at manual labor, even labor that
called for a high degree of skill. He rather admired Andy's
radicalism. There was a stout honesty of conviction in him. Rod was
not go sure himself that all was for the best in the best of possible
worlds,--that comfortable illusion which sustains so many worthy
people.
When he pondered Andy's simile of the complex machine gradually
getting out of hand, proceeding to the ultimate smash, he couldn't
help thinking of Grove's accelerated pace. That was merely a casual
impression. Probably Grove had the levers firmly in hand.
He had half a notion to go fishing, to wet a line in the Granite
Pool. Or walk over the hill to Oliver Thorn's. Mary had probably
gone back to town now. Still--it was very pleasant to lie there
under the maple, to rest his body, to let his nostrils be titillated
by a smell of doughnuts frying in the cook house. He ought to drop
down on the slack and see Phil.
Thus Rod, resting against the earth, two days' growth of beard on his
chin, calked logger's boots on his feet, a gaudy mackinaw folded
behind his head, cogitated idly, drowsily, until at last he fell into
a doze from which the noon meal gong awakened him.
CHAPTER XI
The quality of persistence in the face of difficulties is one that
men are variously endowed with. Hope revives in some breasts sooner
than in others. To some the spur of a desire, a need, a conviction,
never ceases wholly to rowel them into action. They cannot for long
accept defeat or frustration as final. For such, the line of least
resistance is closed. Reason, logic, all the chances of success may
be against them, but they strive with infinite patience and
unflagging courage toward a given end.
Rod Norquay had quite clearly defined Mary Thorn as a given end.
Sometimes in analytical mood he took stock of his feelings about her
and marveled at the depth and intensity, the consistent urge of this
desire. A flare of impatience would burn up. He would be angry with
Mary awhile, then sorry for himself. It was, he held, a strange way
for a woman to feel--to love a man, to admit frankly that he
satisfied her ideal of a man, that her flesh yearned to his after the
law of nature--yet to fear, to hold back from the decisive step
because of---- What? Social differences? Rod dismissed them with a
gesture. They existed, but they did not matter. What then? An
unexplained reluctance to give up her freedom? Some undivulged
ambition? A secret desire to try her own individual wings before
they were clipped by marriage?
"You have some queer ideas about the business of living," he said to
her impatiently, one day. He had blazed a trail from the upper
workings on Valdez to join the path that ran from the Granite Pool to
Oliver Thorn's. He had made several journeys over that ridge before
Mary went back to town, sometimes in the evening, sometimes of a
Sunday afternoon. It was pleasant to see the momentary glow in her
eyes when he came in.
"I like you in mackinaw and calked boots, Rod," she said
irrelevantly. "Are you going to make a profession of logging?"
"I said you have some queer ideas about this business of living," he
persisted.
"No, you only think them queer," she said. "They're sound enough. I
don't want to make a blunder."
"You think marrying me might be a blunder?" he asked a little stiffly.
"I don't want to marry anybody, Rod," she repeated, a statement that
never failed to anger him. "Is it so important that one should
marry?"
"It's important to me," he said.
"Are you the only one whose will or desire counts?" she inquired.
"It isn't like you to take that position about anything."
"Mary, Mary, you know what I mean," he exclaimed. "Life doesn't seem
more than half-complete without you in the picture. When we were
kids playing together we lived from day to day. But we can't do that
now. I can't, anyway. I've either got to be sure of you, or give up
all idea of you. All this stuff that seems to stick you--my people
and money, and what they'll do to me in disapproval, and all that--it
doesn't really amount to anything. If I didn't know how you feel
about me I'd say it wasn't worth while combatting such fool
impressions."
"Ah. If you found yourself cut off from a great many things you
unconsciously value; deprived of things you've accepted as your
birthright, you'd begin to change your tune, I think. You wouldn't
be human if you didn't," Mary commented. "Anyway, that isn't all,
and you know it isn't, Rod," she broke out with unexpected heat.
"I'm not so sure as you are that marriage is an end in itself. It's
just a step. Probably instinct tends to drive a man and a woman into
each other's arms. It seems so. But I can see things ahead of us in
such a step that I rather shrink from. And what is just as
important, I happen also to see things ahead of me that I rather
anticipate, things I want to try and do. I want--oh, what's the use,
Rod? We don't get anywhere talking about this. Why can't we just be
friends and let it go at that?"
"Could you be just friends with me now?" he challenged.
And when the girl's fundamental truthfulness brought a thoughtful
look and a touch of color to her face Rod was answered without words.
It was like swimming upstream, he thought to himself, halting on his
way to look down on the tide roaring and foaming through its narrow
passage by Little Dent. Manhood wasn't proving quite the careless
easy way of his youthful fancy. It had sometimes seemed to him then,
with preternatural vision for a boy, that for well-born people the
chief trouble lay not in getting things they wanted, but in wanting
anything much. His life had seemed to him then a matter of absolute
certainties.
And it wasn't. Not by a long shot. He wanted Mary Thorn. He wanted
very much to write brilliantly and acceptably about his native land,
which he loved for its bigness and rugged beauty as well as for what
it had so generously bestowed on him and his. He could neither have
one nor accomplish the other. But he would! Oh, yes. He pursed his
lips and set his teeth upon that determination, as he lingered on the
ridge where the old trail pitched down to the Granite Fool on one
side and the new one slanted to the camp at tidewater.
The autumn haze hung like a diaphanous veil over mountains and
waterways. Vine maple and alder shone brick-red and pale gold in the
low ground. Hawk's Nest lifted its flaming roof across the channel.
He wondered if there were a week-end party there. He wondered how
they would look at him, these sons and daughters of the well-to-do,
if he came stalking up the porch steps in calked boots and Mackinaw
shirt. Rod smiled. Even Phil considered him a little too
thoroughgoing in his logging career. To the rest, to Grove's crowd,
it would simply be a joke. They all believed in work--in getting it
done, not in doing it--and most of them were a little tainted with
the idea that labor, especially such labor as is hard and poorly
paid, was the exclusive privilege of the laboring class. Rod, who
had learned a great many astonishing things in two months among men
who were not in the least dismayed by sweat and dust and noise, found
himself for the moment viewing Grove, the fast crowd Grove traveled
with, very much from the logger's point of view.
"If you neither feed yourself, nor clothe yourself, nor direct the
production of anything useful, nor create anything beautiful, what
the hell justification have you for existing?" Andy Hall had once
attacked the idea of a leisure class. He had outlined a theory of
the leisure class very much in the manner of Veblen. Then he
proceeded to attack it, first on moral grounds, then on the basis of
its social utility.
Rod found himself half in agreement just then. There was not and had
never been in his mind any doubt of the courage, energy, and
usefulness of the first Norquays. The original Roderick had reaped
for himself and his followers the reward of enterprise initiated by
himself. He had handed on his winnings. So far as Rod could see,
there was no great virtue in merely standing pat and holding
on,--resting on dead men's accomplishments. That was a bog he
determined his feet should never sink into. Grove, for instance, was
not standing pat. Yet curiously, he had always thought of Grove and
the Norquay Trust as a dubious undertaking,--dubious in character and
uncertain as to outcome. By all the conventional signs and tokens he
was wrong. Grove was certainly moving with purposeful intent. He
was a dynamo for energy. Already he was credited with stupendous
achievements. But to Rod that seemed a great deal worse than the
gentlemanly _laissez faire_ which his father had set as a standard.
"Oh, damn, I wish it were spring again," Rod muttered as he strode
down the hill.
Spring was at hand almost before he realized that the vernal equinox
had come and gone. But winter had to precede spring. In October the
fall rains broke in bitter earnest. The sodden drip of eaves lulled
him to sleep at night and greeted him on awakening. He went to work
in the morning with his fellows and trudged back at night soaked
through heavy clothing. The bunk house reeked with steam from sodden
garments festooned above a red-hot stove. Day and night, for weeks
on end, gray clouds and drifting mist hovered above the trees. Every
gully discharged a stream seaward. To step through a clump of brush
meant a shower bath. Everything a man touched, tools, gear, timber,
was damp and clammy cold. The thin soil squashed into mud under
their boots. The moss was saturated. The great firs dripped like
weeping giants. Even the old hands on the coast began to remark
profanely that there had never been such rains.
Yet the logs came down. The falling gangs went grumbling into the
wet thickets about the base of the trees they must fell. The
rigging-slingers and hook tenders cursed as they fumbled the slippery
cables. Donkey engineers scowled from beneath the tin shelter over
each machine. And Jim Handy prowled in oilskins from gang to gang,
silent, eagle-eyed, on the job. Rain or shine the timber came log by
log to the booming ground, the boom men with their pikes arranged it
in sections, and when the sections grew to a thirty-swifter raft, a
tug hauled in, hooked on her towline and the cedar and fir of Valdez
began its journey to the mills.
During those sodden weeks Rod Norquay put by all that he had ever
been. His work, that opus which had led him to forswear, however
briefly, the ease and comfort of Hawk's Nest, was laid away. Not
forgotten. He sat sometimes in the evening, dreaming. He had wanted
to see what made the wheels go round, to know how and why men labored
and endured privation, to see what life was like in the raw. And he
was getting insight with a vengeance. He saw men throw down their
tools in a passion and quit at a word. He saw new men reel drunkenly
down a steamer's gangplank and go to work next morning with aching
heads and bloodshot eyes. He saw a snap phrase bring a blow, a fight
to a finish. The whole panorama of the timber, trees, men,
machinery, shifted before his eyes that winter, gave him food for
thought as well as sometimes a flash of something that stirred his
pulse. For there were heroic moments, risks, long chances taken and
skilfully avoided. A flying limb, a snapped cable, a rolling log. A
man had to be alert. It was no place for a dullard. The logger had
his pride of calling. It was borne in upon Rod that only tried men
followed the woods. It was something of a satisfaction that he
qualified as one of them on the job.
It was not so regarded in the family circle, he discovered to his
secret amusement. Grove openly disliked the idea of any Norquay
mixing with the men. Norquay senior observed dryly that Rod need not
make quite so close a contact with logging and loggers. Phil frankly
invited him on different occasions to come in out of the wet.
At the Christmas shutdown, foregathered at Grove's house in town, Rod
noted the growing concern on his behalf. There was a hint of protest
in the jocular remarks about his devotion to logging as a vocation.
Grove's thinly veiled contempt, Laska's mild wonder that he should go
in for "that sort of thing" nettled Rod.
He sat back, appraising his father, his brothers, the friends of the
family, the train of people who came within range of his observation,
all well-to-do, all thoroughly insulated against material discomfort,
able to command and have their commands obeyed without question.
They were as supreme in their respective positions as Jim Handy was
on the Valdez job,--more so, because Handy's power was only delegated
to him, and these people Rod knew, wealthy merchants, financiers,
propertied magnates of various sorts, held their power in their own
individual right.
He wondered if they knew their power and how far the roots of such
power penetrated the social soil, if they had grasped it with clear
purpose and sure intent; and if they would have the resource and
determination to keep it when they were challenged by what they
called the "rabble"? Rod wondered. There might never be such a
challenge. Andy Hall doubted the possibility within several
generations. But Rod himself was not so sure. He had none of the
purblind middle-class hatred of and contempt for labor agitators,
those sometimes sincere and sometimes hypocritical mouthpieces of the
muddled aspirations of the wage-workers. Rod had a working knowledge
of economics, a trained understanding of cause and effect in the
world of industry, in the field of production and distribution. He
was without prejudice, and he knew what he knew. Men like Andy Hall,
when they did not claw up out of the class where they originated,
remained within it and festered. They could never be servilely
contented. They had too much force, too positive a character. Their
perception was too keen.
It amused Rod to speculate on how his father and Grove, the Deanes,
Walls, Richstons, _et al_ would fare if they were ever faced with a
situation in which they would have to black their own boots, prepare
and serve their own food, wear overalls instead of tailored clothes.
They couldn't. That was his cynical conclusion. They wouldn't know
how. And they had an attitude which could only be translated as
contempt for those who did know how. Somehow, by the grace of God,
or chance, or skilful management, they had become entrenched behind
material fortifications, their hands grasping the strings of an ample
purse. And from behind these fortifications they looked out with
narrowed eyes upon lesser folk.
That, it struck Rod all in a heap, was the thing that confronted Mary
Thorn when he talked to her of love and marriage. She had grasped
the essence of class distinctions. She doubted his--their--power to
overcome an idée fixé.
Whereupon he straightway hunted up the place where she boarded and
haled her forth to a show and afterward to supper in the Exeter
Grill, where he was most likely to encounter some of his own crowd.
His cogitations had put him in a defiant mood. He would show them.
He looked across the table into her eyes and wondered if she had
always been as keenly aware of the invisible fences about him as he
was fast becoming himself. Well, he promised himself lightly, some
of those fences were due to be smashed.
CHAPTER XII
Isabel Wall, the pert and pretty sister-in-law of Mr. Grove Norquay,
became at last the cause of Rod's first definite breach in the fences.
When summer full-blown came tripping on the heels of spring, Rod left
the Valdez camp for good. It had been a wholesome experience. One
year in the woods had shown him quite fully the technique of big
timber operations. It had shed an unreckoned light, moreover, upon
the nature and mental processes of the men who handled the timber,
which Rod was sure seldom appeared to the owners of the woods as a
matter of any particular importance. He knew himself duly qualified
as a practical logger. He was egotist enough to believe himself more
capable of getting results without friction than most logging bosses.
But he had not set out to qualify in timber so much as to get outside
the shell of his class and see how and why man in general functioned
both in and out of industry. He had covered the first phase that
occurred to him. His own individual job, his book, began to nag him
again, to assume form, proportion, to cry out for embodiment. So he
laid aside calked boots and Mackinaws for canvas shoes and flannels,
and took up the pleasant ways of Hawk's Nest when June brought the
first coho salmon into the rapids and a chair in the shade was a
comfortable thing.
Perhaps, as Phil put it in fraternal raillery, Isabel thought that if
one Norquay in the Wall family was a good thing, two would be better.
The truth is that Isabel suddenly became aware of Rod as a man and
characteristically sought to annex him by the usual methods. She had
finished her education in a presumably fashionable school on the
Atlantic seaboard that spring, coincident with Mary Thorn's
graduation from the University of B.C. Isabel's social experience
had been judicially expanded in the intervals of education. She was
twenty now, a sophisticated young person, accustomed to associating
with other sophisticated young persons of both sexes. She had seen
little of Rod except during summer vacations. For a year she had not
seen him at all. Now she seemed to discover him anew and to mark him
for her own.
Rod granted her uncommon charm. She was pretty and petite and
modish, and she spoke the current lingo with effortless facility.
But while she pleased his eye she failed to stir his blood. There
was a sufficient reason for Rod's immunity, which of course Isabel
did not know.
It became obvious that Isabel was in deadly earnest. And when it
became equally obvious to Rod that both families were complacently
agreeable to Isabel's maneuverings he grinned first, then grew sober
as the remedies he used to cure Isabel merely aggravated the disease.
It wasn't a simple flirtatious liking Isabel had for him. Rod was
too keen to make such a mistake. It seemed that this dainty
doll-like creature was capable of intense feeling and not too sure in
her control of the emotional disturbance. Rod began by being amused.
Then he felt sorry. In the end he grew a little alarmed over the net
result of being sympathetic. It is highly discomforting to a young
man to have a girl weep spontaneously on his chest, unless he
conceives it to be his special mission and blessed privilege to
soothe this particular damsel's tears. Isabel did that one evening
in the shadow of a hoary old cedar in Hawk's Nest grounds. She
couldn't help it, she said, after a long embarrassed silence during
which she dabbed the tears away. She was a fool and she knew it, but
it couldn't be helped. One wasn't responsible for one's feelings,
was one?
And Rod, with a little ache in his breast, a great deal of wordless
sympathy for Isabel, because he had for a long time suffered that
queer state of stifled longing, that seemed sometimes as if it would
drive him mad, agreed that one was not. They let it go at that.
Rod sat with elbows on the sill of his bedroom window late that
night, staring out over a moon-bathed landscape, silver barred with
black, where the shadows of great trees lay across the lawn. He
looked down a shimmering moon-path that seemed to offer a bright
highway across the channel where Mary Thorn lay sleeping,--if indeed
she slept. Rod wondered if something in her breast ever drove her to
a window to stare across the tide and think of him. She was home
now. He had his own sources of information. To-morrow he would see
her. To-night the querulous imps that make a man question his
destiny and desire bade him consider if he did well to let his heart
abide so constantly with Mary Thorn when there were other desirable
women to be had for the asking. Isabel, for instance? All clear
sailing. No questions asked or answered. The dual family blessing,
and any little material wants cheerfully attended to. On the
personal side,--well, he was flesh and blood, sexual tinder. When
Isabel put her face against his breast and sobbed in that stifled,
choking fashion he had been deeply moved, thrilled, conscious of her
physical nearness, the sweet fragrant odor of her tousled hair, the
trembling of her small, soft body. Wasn't that good enough? What
did a man want of a woman when he took her to wife?
Rod shook himself impatiently. What rot he had been thinking.
Whatever it was in Mary Thorn that so imperatively promised to fulfil
his every need, it didn't reside in Isabel Wall. He was sure of
that. He could let himself slide into a temporary infatuation with
Isabel--perhaps. He could conceive of possessing her. But he
couldn't behold her down a long vista of years playing the game
fairly and bravely, taking the cards dealt from the deck of life,
good, bad and indifferent, with courage and fortitude. He couldn't
picture Isabel doing that any more than he could picture her, _aetat_
sixteen, shooting the Euclataw Rapids in a dugout, eyes shining in
sheer ecstasy of swift movement, hair streaming in the wind. Isabel
would either have been frightened or wildly, dangerously excited.
That was as far as Rod carried his analogy. It was sufficient. He
had not tried his hand at creative fiction without a sense of
character, of form, proportion. He egotistically assumed that he
could accurately gauge personal values, that he did it intuitively as
well as rationally. If his prescience did not clearly account for
the depth and tenacity of his affection for Mary Thorn it quickly and
thoroughly disposed of Isabel as a substitute.
A light flashed from a window in Oliver Thorn's house. Rod rested
his chin on cupped palms. Unrest, longing blew through the spaces of
his being like a hot wind. The bright moon and the dusky woods
beckoned him into their restful silences, and the light across the
channel seemed to blink a message. It drew him like a magnet. Over
there his heart lay. If Isabel's unheralded breakdown had served no
other purpose, it had filled him with a wild impatience, revived a
fever that burned him. The madness of a lover's moon! The coursing
blood of youth clamoring for the fulfilment of life's promise,--life
that promises so much and often gives so little. The impulse to
translate dreams into realities. _Quien sabe?_
He rose and went softly downstairs and out a side door to the pale
emptiness of the lawn crossed with inky bands of shadow, and so
sauntering, head bowed and hands sunk deep in his pockets, presently
brought up on the float. The _Haida_ lay moored on one side, the
_Kowloon_ on the other. A profusion of canoes and rowboats lay
hauled out on the planks.
Rod stood awhile, like a man in two minds. His eyes lingered on the
moon-path. His ears took note of the lessening monotone between the
Gillard Islands on the east and the choked westward passage inside
Little Dent. A still night and a slackening tide.
He got into a dinghy, shipped the oars, rowed slowly out into the
channel. Halfway, an eddy setting toward the Valdez shore took him
in its sweep. He let the oars rest and lighted a cigarette, gazing
at the tranquil, silvery beauty.
"What a night," he whispered. "What a night for fairies and
mermaids--and lovers."
Then the current slid him into the deep shadow cast by the high
forested ridge behind Oliver Thorn's house, and as his boat touched
the float and he sat in a moment of indecision, a voice spoke softly:
"Hello, Rod."
He looked sharply over the float. The shadow of the hills lay on it
like folds of crepe. But in a moment he made out a dim figure. He
went over, still holding the painter in his hand. It was Mary,
wrapped in a gray coat, sitting on a box.
"I thought you'd be in your little trundle bed," he greeted her.
"Then why did you come?" she asked.
"I don't quite know. Just on the chance. I was restless. Moon
madness, maybe."
He sat down beside her. One hand shone white in the gloom where it
stretched on her knee. Rod possessed himself of that. He bent,
peering into her face. Her eyes glowed at him.
"All by your lonesome out here in the dark," he murmured. "How come,
Brownie? Did you sit yourself down here to put the come-hither on
me?"
She shook her head.
"Well, I came."
He put his arms around her, drew her close, felt her settle against
him unresistingly.
"Glad?"
She nodded.
A solitary loon lifted his harsh, complaining cry somewhere in the
shining channel.
"Calling his mate. And I've found mine. Or have I?"
He knew, or thought he knew. There was an attitude of surrender,
unmistakable, complete, that filled him with a strange delight. But
he wanted the verification of that voiceless pledge.
"I don't know. How can one account for a mood, a longing? I came
down here to sit in the moonlight. It was so radiant. Then after a
little the shadow crept out from shore, and it was just as if
something black and gloomy had settled over me. I felt small and
forlorn and lonely. And all at once I wanted you, Rod. I wished you
were here. I wanted you. And you're here. That's all."
"It's enough," he said tenderly.
CHAPTER XIII
The day following Rod drew his father into the library and bluntly
announced his engagement to Mary Thorn, also that the date of their
marriage was set for the first week in July, exactly one month ahead.
Norquay senior sat down, lighted a cigar. He did not precisely lose
his poise, but he was slightly staggered.
"Well," he said at last, "the younger generation is supposed to be
speedy but I didn't imagine you would ever step on the accelerator
like this. Why the mad haste? Can't you at least give us a chance
to get acquainted with the young woman?"
"We've had plenty of opportunities for acquaintance," Rod could not
forbear saying, "since she is a close neighbor, so to speak.
Besides, the family isn't marrying Miss Thorn, pater. I am. And I
have known her for several years."
"I suppose she's pretty," his father observed grimly. "Has she any
manners? Education? Ever been anywhere?"
Rod looked at him soberly.
"Are you trying to get my goat?" he asked. "If you want me to blow
up, polite insult is as good a way as any. I'm of age and a little
more. You took pains to educate me. You've granted at various times
that I have good taste in many things. I should be qualified to
choose a wife with--with the ordinary essentials."
"Perhaps I didn't put it very well," Norquay senior replied. "I
don't mean to adopt a toplofty hypercritical attitude. I may seem
unduly impertinent, my son, but marriage is important--in this
family, and to this family. A wife isn't something to be put aside
if she doesn't happen to suit. Remember, I've had no warning of
this. Therefore, naturally, the first questions that occur to me are
these: Is the girl such as we can accept into the family as one of
us? Is she a person our friends can meet as one of themselves? Have
you asked yourself this, Rod?"
"Yes," Rod answered. "Contrary to the general notion of what an
infatuated youngster does in such circumstances, I have. Or at least
I should certainly have done so if there had been any doubt in the
matter. To be quite candid, Mary Thorn has equally as good manners
and as much--if not a good deal more--education as any girl I know.
And about fifty per cent more discrimination in most things. If the
family and the family's set refuse to accept her at her face value,
that will be the privilege of snobbery. It won't make any difference
to me."
"Quite sure about that?"
"I meant it wouldn't make me hesitate. Of course, it would make a
difference," Rod amended. "I'm not a fool. But this girl means more
to me than merely pleasing my family and friends by what they regard
as a suitable match."
"You're fully determined on this?"
"Absolutely," Rod confirmed.
Norquay senior half-turned in his chair to look out the window. His
gaze crossed the channel, rested without change of expression on
Oliver Thorn's house.
"I can scarcely conceive of a suitable mate for a Norquay arising out
of such surroundings," he said gravely, "nor from such antecedents."
"I wonder if you know what you really mean by antecedents," Rod said
patiently. He had to force himself to be patient. He had warned
himself that he would have to encounter just such prejudice. It
grated on him, but he kept his temper in hand and his wits alert.
"For instance, you accepted Laska Wall as being quite worthy of the
most important of your three sons. And I am sure Laska is. But you
must know, pater, that if John P. Wall didn't have scads of money you
would never have tolerated the Walls. Mrs. Wall herself is only
passable. Wall is simply a keen, able money-grabber. His people
were nobodys--petty tradesmen. Wall's father kept a little
two-by-four shop in Toronto for twenty years. I learned that quite
by accident. And it is nothing against them. It simply happens that
in our more or less democratic West, Wall's daughters, having enjoyed
every advantage of easily and quickly acquired wealth, go everywhere
and are accepted. That being so, antecedents don't seem to carry so
much weight as you infer. I believe myself that they do; but not in
the way you mean. And though you may not credit it, Mary Thorn's
people are as good, able, pioneering stock as we are. Except that
they didn't take permanent root and acquire wealth."
"Acquisitive ability is a pretty good test of character, Rod," his
father commented. "It takes brains, initiative, determination,
sterling qualities to amass wealth and hold it. Your prospective
father-in-law doesn't exhibit those traits."
"No? You've tried to buy his timber holdings, haven't you? I heard
you confess irritably that you couldn't see why he would neither log
it off nor sell. Perhaps it never occurred to you that he is doing
precisely what we've done--on a smaller scale--acquire a natural
source of wealth and hold it, benefiting by the sure increase in
value. He has seventy thousand dollars' worth of timber there. He
makes it produce a reasonable living. When he lets it go, he will
have a moderate competence. He has managed to give his daughter a
university education. If he hasn't luxury, he has something he
values more--independence. That rather argues character, doesn't it?"
"The argument is yours, Rod. Special pleading. You'd have made an
excellent advocate. But suppose the worst. Suppose you find you
can't mix oil and water--you know what I mean--what then?"
"Well, then I won't be the first younger son of this house to break
away, to go on his own and make the best of things as he finds them.
Will I?" Rod asked.
"I'd be sorry to see you do that. It's so unnecessary. There's room
and plenty for all of us here. Of course, if you should elect to do
that, you have your inalienable income from the estate. But I'd much
prefer to see you and Phil together carrying on the upcoast end of
our affairs. I don't want to see my boys scattered. I may have a
selfish interest in keeping the family together. I should find
myself very lonely here with all my children gone."
"And you're afraid I'll ball things up by marrying a girl nobody
knows, and to whom people may not take kindly, eh?"
"That's about it, my son."
"Well, it's coming off on schedule, you may be sure of that," Rod
said tartly. "I think I love Hawk's Nest as dearly as any of us. I
have a pretty keen sense of what's due the family. I am perhaps a
little proud of belonging to it. I'd a little rather be a
great-great-grandson of that adventurous old fur trader than anything
I know. But I have only one life to live, and I propose to live it
according to my lights. I am not going to do anything that will
reflect on us. I merely intend to marry a poor man's daughter
because she seems to me the most perfect woman I know."
"You are quite determined?" his father asked again.
Rod answered him with a simple "Yes."
"At any rate there is no need for such haste, is there?" Norquay
senior continued, with a hint of petulance. "Next month is absurd.
Give us a chance to meet your _fiancée_, to get acquainted with her.
If she is to become one of the family, let's have a show at making
her feel that she'll be welcome. Incidentally, it will give you time
to think. A month's engagement is positively indecent."
"Time to think, pater?" Rod echoed. "I've had a solid year of
thinking it over. It has taken me a year to persuade Mary Thorn it's
the only thing to do. You want us to think it over--after twelve
months of thrashing it out from every conceivable angle. No. One
month from to-day. And there aren't going to be any frills. If you
are at all dubious about countenancing me in this, just say so and
I'll make my own arrangements. I'd be delighted to have you meet
Mary, and I'm sure you'll like her immensely, but if you have any
idea of adopting a 'to-be-examined-on-approval' attitude with her,
why I'll introduce her as my wife and we'll make the necessary
adjustments afterward."
Norquay senior smiled at his son's vehemence.
"I didn't dream you had so headlong a temperament, Rod," he said.
"Speaking for myself, I wish you had chosen differently. Still, I
concede you are well within your rights, and I am anxious to meet
this unexpected choice of yours. I'll be courteous and cordial. You
know that. But I can't promise that every one else will."
"If they aren't--" Rod shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I don't think
people will be downright stupid."
"If they aren't," his father continued judicially, "you can't
browbeat them into being so."
Rod agreed that this was obvious.
"In which case," his father said slowly, "I shan't be able to do
much. If people won't receive your wife, Rod, on terms of equality,
you can't shove her down their throats."
"You needn't be alarmed," Rod assured him stiffly. "I shan't try."
CHAPTER XIV
On the whole Rod considered that he came off very well in the matter
of breaking this news to the family. Laska, who was staying awhile
at Hawk's Nest, having a clear understanding of the situation,
bundled Isabel off to town at once and gallantly proposed that she,
herself, take Mary under her wing for the remaining four weeks. Rod
promptly vetoed this.
"Won't work," he said frankly. "You've never even met the girl.
She's much too clever to be fussed up by a burst of family interest
all at once. I'm not going to have you pitchfork her into a giddy
round before she has time to get her bearings. When we're married
and come home, I'll take it kindly if you will all be as casual as if
I'd married some girl we'd all known for years. No special efforts
at gaiety, please, at this stage of the game."
Laska agreed that might be good policy. She was frankly curious
about this girl Rod was going to marry. She was also well aware that
the slangy fast-stepping crowd which occasionally descended on Hawk's
Nest might make it difficult for a rank outsider thrown in their way.
As Rod's wife, Mary would partake of the family dignity. As a mere
_fiancée_ she would be fair game, especially for the younger women.
So matters stood as they were. The circumstances were fortuitous
enough. Grove was the one fly in the ointment,--an uncertainty as to
what he might do or say. And Grove had just betaken himself across
the Atlantic, cooking up some financial stew in London. Grove was
very jealous of his dignity. He was more arrogant than ever. Rod
anticipated a certain amount of minor trouble with Grove. Hence he
was as well satisfied that Grove was not present to inject the virus
of his distaste into the already dubious mind of their father. Phil
merely grinned and wished him luck.
"I don't know that I'd have had it turn out just this way if I'd been
the arbiter of destiny," Oliver Thorn said to him. "I hope you and
Mary will never be sorry. It's natural, I suppose--but natural
evolution sometimes has its pains and disasters. Why do you want to
go outside your own class to fall in love and marry?"
"Because I can't find what I want in my own crowd," Rod responded
blithely. "Neither can Mary," he added as an afterthought.
Old Thorn reflected on this.
"Maybe you're right," he admitted soberly. "I never thought of it
just that way before."
"And when it comes down to brass tacks," Rod went on, "the only
fundamental difference between my family and yours is a matter of
money. It's hardly right to classify us as belonging to a different
order."
"True enough," Thorn agreed. "Mary's people, her mother's and mine,
have had advantages, as they say. We didn't somehow manage to retain
a stranglehold on the sources of wealth, that's all. We've been a
restless lot. We've helped open up new territory from the
Alleghanies west. We've always been independent. But we never took
root for long. There are certain inherent advantages in taking root
in the right sort of soil," his gaze rested on the red roof beyond
the channel, "in taking hold and hanging on. With the prestige that
goes with money--pshaw!" he made an impatient gesture. "When I let
go this timber I'll have plenty to give two old people of simple
tastes a comfortable living as long as they live. I never thought
about money in connection with Mary before. Maybe she'll have a
tussle with some of your crowd. Still--give her a wardrobe and a
background--she has everything else--they'd all kowtow."
"My idea," Rod agreed blandly. "They will."
"Perhaps," Oliver Thorn sighed. "Still, she's got a handicap. If
the going gets rough, don't blame Mary. Blame me. I should have
foreseen something like this--and made preparation."
"Oh dammit," Rod said carelessly, "there isn't going to be any blame.
Mary has real class. You know it. I know it. If there are poor
simps on our visiting list who won't recognize it, why I'll just mark
'em off the list."
And so they were married.
Various people have various ideas about marriage,--ideas which
sometimes do and sometimes do not coincide with facts. Love is as
old as humanity. Marriage is an institution. Were this simply a
mendacious tale of romantic youth, one might close it here with a
sigh and the simple statement that they lived happily ever after.
One could leave the rest to imagination.
And so they were married--married!
Well, what of it? People do not cease to live after marriage. To
most it is only the beginning of their real being. So, one would
say, it should have been for Rod Norquay and Mary Thorn. One would
be right. They were possibly more fortunate than most. Home,
friends, the invisible aura of wealth, established position, lay to
their hand. They had nothing to face beyond the inevitable process
of adaptation to the intimacies of matrimony, to each other's
individual moods and tenses. This seemed no problem, since neither
they nor any other young man or woman passionately in love ever
recognized such a problem. Instinct triumphs; mutual taste smooths
the way for compromises in the clash of their separate personalities.
Poverty, unremitting struggle for an economic foothold, unwelcome
babies and frowsy domesticity withers many a fine flower of romantic
passion when it should still be brightly blooming. Rod and Mary had
before them no toilsome effort to keep the wolf from the door. Their
place in the sun was made and provided. They had but to eat, drink,
and be merry. Where could lie in wait for them the elements of clash
and struggle, of fear and hope, of stifled griefs and aching
disappointments,--all the sad travail and hard-won victories bestowed
upon men and women through the long procession of the years?
Go to, you say. Considering the circumstances they marry and live
happy ever after. That is the accepted formula.
Quite simple. But life is not an affair of formula. The simple
tends to become the complex. So the findings of science indicate.
So from time to time philosophers inform us. We don't pay much
attention, by and large, to either scientific or philosophic
fulminations. But occasionally one or the other, or both, utters a
workable truth. The dictum that even the simplest thing contains
within itself all the elements of the profoundly complex is one of
these basic truths.
Fate, Destiny, God, Chance, whoever or whatever rolls the dice of
events did not decree that Rod and his wife should come to their full
estate by way of teas and tennis, the secure comfort of Hawk's Nest
and the full social life open to the Norquays in town when they chose
to avail themselves of town. It didn't elect for Mary an absorption
into the younger matrons' set, immediate luxury and alternate boredom
and excitement. Nor for Rod a mixture of gentlemanly leisure, casual
attention to estate affairs and dillettante efforts at writing a
prose epic of pioneering times. No. Before they were born, forces
were shaping to jostle them out of this pleasant groove. Or was it
merely a careless roll of the dice? Who can say?
They returned from a brief honeymoon quite frankly absorbed in each
other, in the confirmation of the dreams and glamor of love,
exultingly triumphant in having achieved a perfect union of the
spirit as well as the flesh. They were welcomed to Hawk's Nest by a
hand-picked group of the family and intimates. Laska, Phil, their
father, their sister Dorothy from Victoria with two chubby sons, two
cousins from Montreal, an old school chum of Phil's with his wife.
For the time it seemed to Rod that his childish impression of family
solidarity, of complete and intimate understanding and support, which
had made so fine an atmosphere of home about the place, had been
restored in full force. As if the Norquay Trust Company and Grove's
hectic yachting parties, jazz and restlessness, the slow
disintegration of their unity had vanished into some place remote.
It was very pleasant for a week or so. Rod watched with mingled
pride and amusement the first cordial effort to be kind to his wife,
merely because she was his wife, evolve into a relieved acceptance of
her as quite one of themselves.
"One would think," he reflected, "that they had half expected her to
eat spinach with a knife."
Rod, of course, knew quite well that Mary's adaptation to this more
luxurious mode of living, a more elaborate manner, was no more
difficult for her than his own ready fitting-in to the life of a
logging crew. He had long ago learned that rubbing elbows with
people is the surest cure for self-consciousness; that the
fundamentals of good breeding are simple. There were a great many
people of his own kind who believed that good manners must
necessarily be the exclusive possession of the well-to-do. It had
never occurred to him before so strongly, but he saw now that most of
his own family and many of his friends took it for granted that to be
poor--as they defined poverty--meant that one had never been
anywhere, knew nothing, murdered the King's English, committed every
conceivable _faux pas_, and was naturally an impossible sort of
person.
It was a narrow creed; one that filled Rod with impatience. Those
who held to it most rigidly were least qualified to pass rational
judgment on any man or woman. Their knowledge of life was as limited
as that of the people they regarded as inferior.
"'Fess up," he bantered Dorothy, one day. "You were all very dubious
about the new Mrs. Norquay, weren't you?"
"Well, what do you expect?" his sister replied. "One doesn't
anticipate a combination of brains, beauty, and deportment from such
a source?"
"Why not?" he inquired innocently.
"Well, one doesn't," she replied. "I don't understand it yet.
Mary's a dear. She has never had any advantages, so to speak, yet
she fits in here as if she belonged. That's all I know about it."
"The fact of the matter is, Dot," Rod gave his own opinion, "that
girls like Mary Thorn are rare birds in any class, top or bottom. It
takes more than clothes and manners to make a real woman."
On the whole, Rod had every reason to be satisfied. It was not the
family custom to be demonstrative. They liked Mary. Perceiving that
she was a normal young woman of good taste and sound sense, they took
her to their bosom, figuratively speaking, without more ado. There
was a formal welcoming dinner to which Oliver Thorn and his wife were
asked as a matter of courtesy, and to which they came and acquitted
themselves with credit. Grandfather Norquay remarked afterward that
Mrs. Thorn was a very fine type of woman. Rod's father conceded that
Oliver Thorn was a more intelligent, better-informed man than he had
imagined. All of which was duly gratifying to Rod.
But this satisfactory state of affairs was broken into by Mr.
Grosvenor Sylvester Norquay in his most characteristic manner. He
came back from England in due course and steamed straight to Hawk's
Nest on the _Kowloon_. Contrary to his custom, he came alone, and he
arrived for some inscrutable reason in his worst temper and his most
disagreeable manner.
"Well," he said to Rod at the first opening, "you made a hash of
things for fair, didn't you? By Jove, I used to think you had taste
if not judgment. I perceive you have neither."
"Are you referring to my marriage?" Rod asked.
"Excellent guesser. You don't imagine I'm referring to the price of
logs or foreign exchange, do you?"
"Those are about the only matters you're qualified to pass on, and
I'm doubtful about even that," Rod said quietly. "That'll be about
all in that vein, elder brother. I know you don't like it--although
it's none of your business. I daresay you're going to cut up as
rough as you can on general principles. But another break like that
and I'll smash you. You may be the big noise in the Norquay Trust,
but dictatorial trust company methods won't work in the family. So
you'd better be a good dog and not growl or show your teeth. I'll
whip you if you do. I'm quite competent to do the job. If you think
I'm not, just go ahead and be insulting and act the snob and get
critical and sneer; the whole bag of tricks you put on when you want
to hurt anybody's feelings. I may not be able to prevent you. But I
can make you sorry. And I surely will. How would you like to go
back to town with two black eyes and your classical nose a bit off
center?"
Rod told him all this in an ordinary conversational tone. And when
he issued such a direct challenge, he was not merely letting a little
steam off his youthful chest. He had a feeling that the only way to
deal with Grove was to defy him,--to act first. The threat of
personal chastisement was perhaps Rod's only concession to a personal
animus. He meant precisely what he said. There was a definite limit
to what he would permit Grove to do and say, where Mary was
concerned. A dozen times in his life his hands had doubled into
fists against Grove--an involuntary action. He was--or he had
been--a little ashamed of this eagerness to do bodily damage to his
brother. Once, long ago, Grove's domineering tactics had roused Phil
out of his placidity, and Rod had felt his heart uplifted at sight of
Grove knocked sprawling with a single hearty punch. Not that Grove
lacked the fighting heart; he would have fought Phil to a finish then
and there, but for their father's scandalized interference. Grove
couldn't stand long in a losing fight; he couldn't take punishment;
that was a weakness both his brothers had fathomed long before.
And Rod had never forgotten that for weeks thereafter Grove was
politic, to say the least, in his invasions of Phil's territory. Nor
had Rod ever quite rid himself of the feeling that it would be a
pleasure to repeat such a chastisement with his own hands. They were
blood-brothers. There was even a profound physical likeness, except
that Grove ran slightly to beef. But they didn't think, or act, or
feel alike. They were antagonistic at every point where their lives
touched. And Rod did not mean, if he could help it, to let this
scowling elder duplicate of himself put a single spoke in the wheel
which promised to revolve so smoothly for Mary and himself.
It was so childish, Rod said to himself impatiently, when Grove left
him with an inarticulate growl, for him to take it that way. What
difference need it make to Grove whom his brother married? Grove was
the biggest toad in a puddle where big toads were common.
But it was the nature of the man to restrict the splashing to such as
he approved, if it were in his power. It was also the nature of the
man to be greedy of power, to exercise it arbitrarily if he could,
regardless of justice or even common sense.
For the class of people out of which Mary Thorn had sprung Grove
Norquay had only a disdainful recognition. They were the material
upon which such as he were ordained to thrive. Rod knew Grove and
Grove's crowd. Grove's dignity would suffer at their hands. Grove
would be maddened by jocular references to his new sister-in-law. A
hand-logger's daughter! How quaint of Rod! Grove would be as
disagreeable to Mary as he dared, as vindictive as he could. He was
made that way,--more vindictive over trifles than he would be over a
deadly wrong.
Rod wondered why their father had never been able to see the weakness
of this his son. Phil did. Phil had frankly expected a _débâcle_ in
Grove's financial operations. It hadn't come. He throve, waxed
great. Nevertheless, quoth Phil, in a moment of pessimism, a man may
successfully direct a great profit-making enterprise and still be a
poor specimen of manhood, a gross, self-centered, unstable egotist.
Rod agreed.
Mr. Grove Norquay tarried only two hours at Hawk's Nest. His visage
and manner were at no time genial. He acknowledged his introduction
to Mary in about as distant a fashion as he could effect. And having
had a wide experience in freezing undesirables, Grove could be
appallingly glacial when he tried. His iciness was wasted on Mary.
She merely smiled, gazed at him with bland unconcern. She was fairly
good at that. Thereafter, during a brief, general conversation Grove
took pains neither to address her nor to look at her, except for an
occasional appraising glance.
He exploded a small bomb in the vicinity of his wife after luncheon.
"We're going back within the hour," he said. His tone was brusque,
snappy.
"Must you go back so soon?" Laska inquired amiably. "It was hardly
worth the long run."
"I said '_we_,'" Grove bore hard on the pronoun. "If you have any
things to take, better have them got ready."
"But, good heavens, Grove, _must_ I go back to town on such short
notice? Has anything extraordinary happened?"
Laska was frankly astonished.
"Nothing has happened. But I'm afraid you must. I came especially
for you."
Laska looked thoughtful for a moment.
"Of course," she said dryly, "when one has promised to love, honor,
and _obey_, one hasn't much choice. I'll have my bags sent aboard.
Give a whoop when you're ready to leave."
She rose. Her gaze swept the faces of the others, came back to
Grove. It seemed to Rod that her glance flashed hostility at her
husband, although she was smiling. And in the same breath he caught
a queer flicker of expression on Phil's usually immobile face.
Undercurrents. Veiled swirls of feeling. Rod sensed them all about
him, as if a state of tension had been set up. That, he thought
irritably, was Grove's usual effect. If he were crossed, ever so
slightly, he proceeded at once to generate an atmosphere.
"He had to get at somebody so he takes it out on Laska," Rod said to
himself. "Snarly beast. If she'd been keen on going to town, he'd
have insisted on her staying here. Phil's sore. I wonder if the old
boy's still a little tender about Laska?"
The answer to that came within half an hour, when Rod had forgotten
the passing thought. He had gone out on the porch to smoke. There
was a recess behind a bulging window. There Rod found a chair. He
sat deep in his own mixed reflections. Phil turned a corner and
stood by a pillar, hands deep in his pockets. Just as Rod was about
to speak, Laska came out. She was hatted and gloved, carrying a
small bag.
"Good-by, old scout," she said whimsically. "It's been very pleasant
here the last few days. I thought I was going to get acquainted with
you all over again. But the oracle decrees otherwise. Will you come
and see me in town?"
Phil shook his head.
"Why not?"
"Always too busy," he said briefly.
"Of course," she agreed, after a pause. "How stupid of me to forget
that. Well, good-by."
They shook hands. Laska vanished around the house. Rod saw her
appear on the gravel walk, joined by Mary, Dorothy and the others.
He didn't need to ask why Phil was not with them to speed the
departing guest. The expression on Phil's face as he stood looking
after Laska told its own story. Rod understood. He was streaked
with the same vein of constancy to an affection, an ideal, a
conviction. He was supremely sorry for Phil--for them both.
"Five years," he thought, "and it hurts him yet. Laska knows it,
too. And she hasn't a shred of an illusion about Grove. Poor
devils. And they have to go right on playing the game."
There was a different sort of game afoot, however, the petty malice
of which was presently disclosed to Rod.
CHAPTER XV
Within the month events marched one upon the heels of the other as if
set in motion by some unseen intelligence working to an inscrutable
plan.
Dorothy left for her home in Victoria. Phil's chum and his wife
departed. The cousins returned to Montreal. Norquay senior betook
himself to town. Rod and Mary had Hawk's Nest largely to themselves,
with Phil coming and going on the _Haida_, his fingers lightly on the
pulse of the Norquay activities in the woods. And there was
Grandfather Norquay, who never left Hawk's Nest now, who sometimes
kept his room for days at a stretch, appearing only occasionally at
table for a meal. He was growing feebler, Rod noted. He walked
abroad now with two sticks instead of one.
So for a matter of ten days Rod and his wife were left pretty much to
their own devices. Time rested lightly on their hands. They were
still too engrossed in each other to count hours or days.
Then the _Kowloon_ slid into the landing one mid-afternoon. If Rod's
father had hand-picked a few people to welcome Rod and Mary home, so
Grove had selected his week-end guests for a purpose. If he had not
openly primed them, he must have indicated his attitude.
Rod got that impression at once. By dark, when they began to dance
on the roomy porch, this impression had grown to a certainty. Laska
hadn't come. With the lot Rod had only a casual acquaintance. They
were all some one or the children of some one, and like most of
Grove's friends, they were accustomed to a speedy pace.
Rod perceived that there was a compact to ignore Mary. It was too
pointed to be accidental. The women simply didn't see her. The men
were perfunctory. They were not rude. They were much too finished a
product for that. They simply didn't include Rod's wife in anything
that was said or done. But that was quite enough. A rapier in
skilled hands is as deadly as a spear.
Through that first evening Rod simmered. It was his home, the home
of his fathers. As matters stood, his rights and privileges there
were equal to Grove's. He knew he was under fire--platoon fire from
skilful ambush. And he couldn't shoot back. It didn't injure him.
But it did enrage him. It was so petty. Cheap malice. And stupid,
useless,--because Rod knew that Grove and Grove's friends could
neither make nor mar him socially or any other way. These people,
with their wealth, their modishness, their perfect assurance, were
after all only a certain clique. That portion of the Norquay family
which counted most had accepted Mary Thorn, at first out of common
courtesy and thereafter because they found her well worth acceptance.
The outer fringe of the Norquay connection would follow suit, and all
who knew them would be governed thereby.
But that knowledge did not lessen Rod's growing anger at such
tactics, nor still a little fear of the effect on Mary. This--this
sort of thing precisely--was what she had foreseen and feared and
shrunk from. It was only a passing phase, Rod knew. But he could
see that it rankled. She bore herself stoutly, as impassive as a
Chinese mandarin. No more than Rod himself would she or did she
retreat under fire. She did her duty as a hostess in a difficult
situation. But when they withdrew to their own rooms, at the end of
an interminable evening, she lay back in a chair silent and
thoughtful, while Rod spilled a vessel of wrath on his brother's head.
"Don't get fussed up about it, Rod," she said at last. "It doesn't
matter much, does it? If what I've seen of these people this
afternoon and evening is a fair sample of their normal behavior, I
wouldn't get on with them even if they wanted me to. I've overheard
more suggestive things and double-edged remarks in the last few hours
than I ever heard in all my life put together. If that's smartness,
I'll never be smart. I don't feel as if I'd been slighted. I'm glad
they didn't fall on my neck. I don't like them."
"Nor I," Rod growled. "Grove always did prefer damaged goods. But I
don't like them trying to put over anything like that on me--on us.
That's all. It's dirty."
"You can't do anything," Mary pointed out. "You can't challenge the
assembled company to bestow courteous attention on your wife under
pain of--what? If you even notice it, you'll only amuse them--make
yourself ridiculous."
"Certainly. That's why it's so damned annoying."
"Forget it," she smiled. "Come and sit down by me. What does it
matter?"
"I'll lock horns with him yet," Rod muttered.
Then, sitting on a hassock beside her with Mary's fingers weaving
tangles in his hair, Rod forgot his irritation.
It returned the following day. Grove moved about among his guests,
bland, courteous, engaging. He was at home in the polite raillery
that passes for wit in such gatherings, where open homage is paid
chiefly to the social trinity of food, liquor and dancing, and where
sex is no shrinking violet. Whenever his eyes met Rod's, Rod
detected a malicious sparkle. Grove was enjoying the situation. And
Rod yearned to make him smart for his petty, useless triumph. His
exasperation grew with his helplessness.
"Come on," he said to his wife at four in the afternoon. "You can
leave the dinner arrangements to Stagg. Let's go across the channel
and get the taste out of our mouths."
They had dinner at Oliver Thorn's.
"Funny," Rod thought, as he sat on the calk-splintered porch steps
watching the smoke curl and weave from the end of a cigarette.
"Funny what an atmosphere can do to you. 'Better a dinner of herbs
where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.' The ancient
wisdom is still wisdom. If Grove can pull off that sort of thing
whenever he likes, we'll have to leave Hawk's Nest. There's no
defence against it."
They rowed home at dusk. Phil had come back. The three of them sat
out on the porch and observed the merriment quickening to a livelier
tempo as the evening wore on. Phil made no comment for a long time.
"One would imagine," he observed at last, rather dryly, "that we
three were taboo. We don't seem to be very popular with this crowd."
"There's been about thirty hours of this semi-glacial period," Rod
informed him. "It's getting old with me."
"What about you?" Phil turned to Mary,
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I'm like the minister when he was kicked by the mule. I consider
the source," she said.
"Proper attitude," Phil said. "I've been taking notice. I know our
elder brother's pleasing little tricks. I wouldn't let it annoy me,
sister Mary. Grove often starts things he can't finish. I didn't
think he was quite stupid enough for this."
The _Kowloon_ departed early Monday morning. Thinking it over as he
watched her whip around the Gillard light, Rod decided that honors
were easy for the time being. But he very nearly determined to force
an open clash if Grove tried to carry it off again.
This clash, which Rod foresaw, and which he perhaps subconsciously
welcomed, was nearly due. They had Hawk's Nest to themselves, its
cool quiet rooms and corridors, the pleasant porches and grounds
bright with flowers and scented shrubs, its sweep of velvet lawn and
rolling acres of parked forest, where the great trees lifted plumed
heads to the sun. Into that blended atmosphere of peace and
permanence and beauty no jarring note came until another week-end
brought back the _Kowloon_. This time Norquay senior was home. Rod
sat back to see if Grove meant to carry on with his design of making
Mary's road as rough as lay in his power,--and also to see how their
father would take such obvious malice, if it were shown.
But Norquay senior missed all the calculated slights Grove and his
guests adroitly managed to put on Rod and his wife. It seemed to Rod
that they played up to Grove's lead with accomplished skill. It was
a new sort of game and Mary Norquay was "It." They found it amusing.
Or was it only that they were an ill-bred lot? Rod was not sure of
Grove's company, but he was sure of Grove. Grove saw to it, subtly,
that Rod should understand what he was driving at. Grove enjoyed the
situation. Rod's self-control didn't deceive him. He knew that Rod
was fuming inside. He took opportunity to let Rod know that he knew.
But something more fundamental brought matters to a head. Lacking
that, Rod would probably have ended by complete indifference to what
Grove and his friends did or said.
The _Kowloon_ was due to leave Monday afternoon. At ten in the
morning, Rod sat reading in the library. Phil was writing letters at
a desk in one corner. Norquay senior was walking in the grounds with
Mary. From his seat Rod could see the tall tweed-clad figure
sauntering beside his wife. His ill-humor vanished. That was answer
enough to Grove and his clique. He glanced indifferently up at
Grove's entrance. That gentleman didn't seem so gay and festive this
morning. He bit off a cigar end with unnecessary force and sat
smoking. He scowled. His eyes were a trifle glassy, the lids
reddened. Faint shadows showed beneath the lower lids.
"The morning after the night before sits heavier on him than it used
to," Rod thought cynically. "The pace is beginning to tell. Damn
fool."
He resumed his reading.
The butler came in.
"The foreman of the Valdez camp and two men want to see you, sir," he
addressed Phil.
"Send 'em here," Phil replied, without looking up.
Rod continued to read. There was nothing unusual in men from the
camps coming to Hawk's Nest with complaints or for instructions.
Disputes between men and logging bosses had been threshed out times
without number in that pleasant, book-lined room. The Norquay policy
had always been patriarchal.
Stagg ushered in Jim Handy and two men. One was Andy Hall. He
nodded to Rod with a genial grin. Handy looked fretful. His short,
white mustache stood out at the aggressive angle it always took when
things went wrong. All three had shed their calked boots and working
garments. They wore their town clothes. Above clean white collars
their faces were burned to the brown of weathered oak by summer sun
and hot winds.
"I got a strike on my hands," Handy announced to Phil. "They want
fifty cents a day raise all round. They want bathtubs. I expect
maybe they want regular hotel waiters to sling hash for 'em, too,"
Handy permitted himself a logger's witticism. "These two guys
represent the crew."
Phil turned to the loggers.
"Striking is rather a new kink in the logging business," he said
casually. "If you don't like the job, why don't you quit?"
"Quitting wouldn't change things," Andy Hall replied. "You want to
get out timber because it is profitable. We want to work because we
have to work for somebody. But we would like better working
conditions. Seems more reasonable to ask for 'em on the job than to
quit the job."
"Are you two a self-appointed committee?" Phil inquired.
"No," Hall assured him. "We were picked by the crowd to act as
spokesmen. A hundred and forty men can't all talk to a boss at once.
You can take it for granted we speak for the entire crew."
"All right, we'll take it for granted," Phil returned. "Just step
out into the hall for a minute or two. After I've had a word with
Handy you can state your case."
"You're foolish to waste time discussing anything whatever with these
fellows," Grove remarked, as the door closed on them. "I'd pay off
the works and have a new crew sent up. The bird that spoke is too
smooth-tongued for a logger. He's got agitator written all over him."
"Best high-rigger I ever saw," Jim Handy growled. "All loggers
agitates now and then."
Phil paid no attention to his brother's comment. He addressed Handy.
"When did they pull this strike?"
"This mornin'. They chewed the fat till midnight in the bunk house.
After breakfast not a man turned out. They wouldn't talk. They said
these two would talk for 'em. I've told you what they want. Fifty
cents a day raise. Six bathtubs."
"Bathtubs!" Grove snorted disdainfully.
"Short notice," Phil ruminated. "H'm. Have they been kicking?"
"Loggers always kicks," Handy grumbled. "They've been growlin' some.
I've told 'em they always got the privilege of quittin'. I've fired
three or four of the mouthy ones. When they all laid down at once, I
reckoned I'd better put it up to you."
"What do you think about it yourself?" Phil asked him. "Can you get
another crew together and go ahead?"
Handy shifted uneasily.
"I hear men's scarce in town," he said. "If I can dig up a crew, of
course I can go ahead. But no pick-up crew will get out as much
timber. Not for a month or two anyhow. Most of this bunch has been
on the job since the camp opened."
"We're paying standard wages," Phil observed. "If it were left to
you, Handy, would you give them the raise?"
"I don't know but I would," the logging boss brightened. "Cheapest.
One or two of the big Island camps have tilted wages. This crew can
sure get out timber. Breakin' in new men costs money."
"Just what have you told them?" Phil inquired. "If you haven't
stirred them up, I may be able to talk them out of it."
Handy grinned.
"I was darn careful not to stir 'em up. I know loggers. I'm a
logger myself. I didn't say much of anything. When I seen they was
set, I just said, 'Well we'll put it up to headquarters. I hire and
fire, but the owners sign the pay checks'."
"All right. Send those two in as you go out," Phil said finally.
"I'll see you down on the float after I get through."
Andy Hall and his companion entered.
"Tell me what you want," Phil said briefly, "and why you consider
yourselves entitled to it."
"We ask for fifty cents a day raise for every outside worker on the
job, from whistle-punks to hook-tenders," Wright voiced their
demands. "We ask for you to put in at least half a dozen baths,
tubs, or showers; showers would suit us best and they're easily
installed. That's all."
"Why go on strike at snap notice?" Phil complained. "Why didn't you
ask for these things? Does it seem to you that the way to get your
claims considered is to disorganize the work first and then make your
demands?"
Wright motioned to Andy Hall.
"You tell him."
"Mr. Norquay," Hall began quietly, "if you'd ever worked as a logger
in a logging camp you'd know that asking for changes doesn't bring
them about. There are a hundred and forty men in your woods on
Valdez. We are, if I say so myself, as skookum a logging crew as
ever was got together on the B.C. coast. And we have been asking for
these things. Jim Handy is your representative on the job. We
haven't anything against old Jim. He's as fair as the average woods
boss. But he has exactly the same idea as most employers--keep wages
down and prices up--get all the work possible out of the men. His
own job as foreman depends on getting results. For the last month
every time anybody has tried to talk to him about wages or camp
conditions, somebody has got fired. This particular crew is tired of
a take-it-or-leave-it basis of employment. That's why there's a
show-down. Neither of the things we ask for is unreasonable. It is
unreasonable to fire a man for wanting to talk about his wages and
the conditions under which he must live."
Phil eyed Andy Hall searchingly for a second or two. Grove had
twisted sidewise in his chair and glared at the logger with visible
displeasure.
"Let's take up the matter of the bathtubs," Phil resumed. "Why
should we supply casual labor with baths when there is a running
stream through the camp and the sea is at the door?"
Rod shifted in his seat. It sounded rather callous. He thought of
the unction with which he had heard worthy people declare that
cleanliness is next to godliness.
Andy shrugged his shoulders.
"I could easily justify bathing facilities on moral and sanitary
grounds," he said impassively. "I'll simply put it this way. Most
men prefer to be clean. If it's impossible for them to be reasonably
clean, they'll be uncomfortable. A man who is uncomfortable gets
discontented. A discontented workman is a poor investment. There
are a hundred and forty men coming out of your woods every night,
stinking with sweat and dust in the summer, plastered with mud in the
winter. There is one shallow wooden trough with tin washbasins and a
half-inch tap. We make shift with the creek and the salt-chuck in
summer. But a man who has done ten hours' hard labor in the woods
can't stand naked outdoors and bathe in cold weather."
"I never before heard of bathing as an issue in a logging camp," Phil
smiled. "Well, we'll concede the bathing facilities. We'll agree to
build a bathroom and install pipe showers with a hot-water supply."
"Now this raise in wages," he continued judicially, after a brief
pause. "I really don't believe we can go that far. We're paying the
standard wages--a fairly liberal scale, it seems to me. I suggest
that you go back and get the crew out to work on the understanding
that we'll adjust this claim for wages between now and next payday.
This strike is too much in the nature of a holdup. Wage questions
can't be settled offhand. Don't you think that would be the most
amiable way of ending the tie-up? The shower-bath matter will be
attended to at once."
Andy Hall shook his head.
"I'd like to be polite and agreeable," he said. "But I'm not acting
for myself as an individual, you must remember. The men threshed
this out pretty well before they took action. They won't move a
stick unless they get this raise. They've tried to talk to Handy and
Jim simply grinned and fired the men who insisted on talking. The
point is this. There is no such thing as a standard wage in the
logging industry. You are paying as much as most camps, more than
some, less than others. The International, on Vancouver Island,
employing over four hundred men, is paying what we ask. So are two
or three smaller concerns."
"And," Hall continued without heat, as deliberate as if he were
intoning a column of figures, "we are working under a foreman who is
a driver. That's nothing against Jim Handy. We're not sore on him.
A logging boss holds a boss's job by virtue of ability to get out
logs. But old Jim keeps a crew on its toes. If a man isn't up and
coming, he doesn't work long for Handy. We're putting more timber
per man per day into the booming ground than any crew on the coast."
"How do you know that?" Phil demanded sharply.
"We have made it our business to find out," Hall answered
imperturbably. "You know it's so--if you keep tab on your business.
That's why we want more money. We're earning it. We're entitled to
it."
"And," Wright put in, "if we don't get it, we're through. Nobody
wants to work on a job where he knows he's getting too much the worst
of the deal."
"We can, I suppose you know, pay you all off and get another crew,"
Phil reminded.
"And we can get other jobs," Hall replied unruffled. "But we'd both
be loser. No, that wouldn't benefit either party to this dispute.
You have a reputation for being fair, as fairness is reckoned in
logging camps. That's why you have efficient crews and a minimum of
labor trouble. We know we are entitled to what we ask. If we don't
get it, we'll be good and sure it isn't a question of the Norquay
Estate being unable to pay such wages and still show a profit. We'll
know the refusal is purely on the grounds of policy. And if a
logger's frank opinion is anything to you, you'll find it damned poor
policy."
Phil sat tapping his pencil on the desk, smiling a little to himself.
"Go down to the landing and wait for me there," he said. "I'll give
you a definite answer inside of half an hour."
The door closed on the two loggers. The three brothers looked at
each other.
"Cattle!" Grove broke out with quite unnecessary heat. "A mob like
that attempting to dictate to us."
"I'd hardly call two men a mob," Phil commented dryly. "It is
scarcely dictating for men to state the conditions under which they
are willing to work."
"Are you going to let them stick you up like that?" Grove demanded
unpleasantly.
"Your way of putting it is offensive, but I know what you mean," Phil
maintained his placidity. "I rather think I shall. I'm considering.
We can certainly afford to give them a raise. Handy is a driver. He
does get out--"
"It isn't a question of affording it," Grove broke in. "It's a
question of principle. You simply cannot afford to allow a crew of
dissatisfied loggers to imagine for a minute that they can tell you
how you're to run your business."
"Handy, as I said," Phil went on unheeding, "does get out timber."
"You mean," Rod supplemented, on the spur of an impulse, "he has the
faculty of keeping a crew going at top speed, and they get out
timber. Well, I can vouch for that, after twelve months under him.
If these fellows were paid on the basis of production, they'd get
bigger wages than they're asking. I made some calculations myself
from time to time before I left the camp. Hall's figures are
conservative. I got cost figures from the town office and reckoned
the output. That Valdez camp for six months straight put out twenty
per cent more timber per man than Hardwicke Island. I suppose you
know that?"
Phil nodded.
"That high-rigger is almost too clever to be a logger," he observed.
"Know anything about him, Rod? Notice the beggar's language? Most
reasoned and unemotional presentment of a case I ever heard a logger
make."
"He's a good man on the job. He has been there since the camp
opened," Rod prudently refrained from mentioning Andy's economic
heresies. He liked Andy Hall and he foresaw Andy marked as an
"agitator," that abused term which once tagged to a workingman makes
him anathema to most employers. "In fact, I'd say old Jim has a crew
it would be a pity to break up--if getting out timber efficiently is
any object--for so small a matter as fifty cents a day--and bathtubs."
"They never bathe," Grove sneered. "They don't look as if they did.
I never got close enough to smell 'em, but I suppose they don't mind
it themselves."
Rod sat silent. It struck him that Grove was thrusting at him. And
it struck him, too, how little either of his brothers knew about the
men they were discussing. They didn't discuss them as men, so much
as material,--a commodity, a necessary part of the producing
machinery which had the inconvenient quality of voicing its wants.
As if a donkey engine should protest against an overload. Rod
himself had got under the logger's skin. He would never be able to
think of them except as men, to deal with them otherwise. They had
their vices and virtues, but they were not impersonal machines. He
could not impart this knowledge, convey such an attitude and feeling,
to his brothers.
"First time I ever heard 'em kicking for baths," Phil grinned. "Did
you start a movement for cleanliness while you were among them, Rod?"
"It wasn't necessary," Rod assured him. "Most loggers like to be
clean if there's a chance. I bathed in the creek like the rest.
I've scrubbed myself off in a hand-basin in the winter. I didn't
think much of the inconvenience. I suppose because I knew I could
get away from it any time I wanted to. They can't. I'm for plenty
of baths, in every camp we run. It's only common decency."
"That's simple. I expect, on the whole, we'd better give them what
they ask without quibbling. I've always found it pays to keep 'em
reasonably satisfied."
"You'd better consult the governor before you commit yourself," Grove
said meaningly. "I'm opposed to it myself."
"My dearest elder brother," Phil shot back instantly with
exaggerated, icy politeness, "when you elected to pursue a career in
finance, the direction of the timber operations of the Norquay Estate
devolved on me. So long as I have the authority I shall use my own
judgment. Yours not to reason why--yours but to reap the profits
that accrue. You try putting your fingers in this pie and you'll get
them pinched. Do you get me?"
"You know," he went on sarcastically, after a brief silence, in which
Grove's face reddened perceptibly, "you really aren't in any
condition to give an impartial opinion on anything so early this
morning. Too heavy a hangover. Too many cocktails. Too much of a
muchness. You can't stand the pace the way you used to. You come
out of your morning bath grouching instead of singing. So leave the
loggers and logging to me. I have about decided to concede them both
points."
"_I_ would," Rod impulsively put himself on record. "Not only as a
matter of policy, but as a matter of simple justice."
"Oh, you," Grove turned on him. In his voice repressed fury and
utter contempt seemed to struggle for mastery. "One would naturally
expect _you_ to support any extravagant claim from such a source.
You fraternized with them. No doubt you find yourself quite
comfortable on terms of equality with them. Particularly since you
went the length of picking up a wife from among them. I have had
about--"
Rod got to his feet. Something in his face cut short Grove's
sentence.
"What you've had is not a patch to what you'll get," Rod said. "You
yellow dog!"
The open palm of his hand popped with a dull smacking sound on his
brother's mouth.
But characterizing a man as a yellow dog does not necessarily make
him one. Grove spat out the crushed cigar and bitter ashes and
lunged at Rod. He missed. While he was off balance, Rod knocked him
down.
He rose, stood one hesitant moment, hands up like a boxer, head
hunched between his shoulders. But when he rushed it was not to
strike, only to grasp.
"Don't let him get hold of you," Phil warned sharply.
Rod didn't need the warning. He knew Grove's strength, was aware of
his purpose. In school, Grove had been a hammer thrower, a putter of
the shot. He had never been beaten at his weight as a wrestler. And
though he was ten years past those athletics, he was dangerous still
at grips. Rod twisted aside, evaded his reach, struck and dodged,
struck and dodged again, quick sharp punishing blows that jerked
Grove's hands defensively up to guard his face. When he did that,
Rod put all his weight into a blow that would have ended the
scrimmage if it had reached Grove's jaw. It was deflected by his
forearm, smashed his ear. But it staggered him against a bookcase so
that broken glass fell with a tinkle. Rod followed up his advantage,
and Grove went down again.
Phil had his back against the door.
"It's locked," he announced calmly, in the brief time it took Grove
to rise. "May the best man win."
"The best man will win," Rod panted.
He tingled. A fine exultant feeling that he dealt justice in the
only adequate manner uplifted him. He had seldom fought in the
twenty-three years of his existence. He had never imagined it would
give him so keen a satisfaction to knock a man down. Yet it didn't
surprise him. He knew in that moment that for years he had been
longing to punish Grove as he intended to punish him now. Even in
that stress of passion his brain, the rational, critical part of him,
found time to wonder why so brutal an action seemed so eminently fit,
so natural, such a pleasure.
Grove came at him again, striking wild, blood trickling from his
mouth, from his nostrils. In the shift and exchange he trapped Rod
against a heavy chair. They grappled, went to the floor with a
crash. Grove's arm pinned him by the neck. Rod felt the other
seeking a crotch hold. He made a violent effort, broke loose, thrust
himself clear, bounded to his feet.
He had matched strength for strength and beaten Grove at his own
strong man's game. There was a thrill in that. He could break any
hold Grove could put on him. When he realized that, he dropped all
defense. He crowded within the scope of Grove's arms and struck as
hard and quickly as he could drive his arms, fists thudding against
Grove's body, over his heart, on his face,--until Grove's legs
buckled under him and he sank on all fours.
Rod stepped back, dropped his hands.
"Enough?" he asked briefly.
Grove nodded, voiceless. His face was an unsightly mess.
And as Rod opened his mouth to speak further, the library door
rattled, an imperative knock sounded. The voice of Norquay senior
demanded testily to know why the door was locked. Phil flashed a
look of mild dismay at Rod and turned the key. Their father walked
in.
CHAPTER XVI
From a folding chair on the after deck of the _Haida_ Rod looked back
at Hawk's Nest. The cruiser's screw churned up bubbles and foam
astern. Dent Island and the gray stone house with its red roof, the
pale green of grass and the duskier hue of the woods behind were
receding fast. They vanished altogether as they rounded the Gillard
light and stood away south.
"I was born there," Rod said simply. "I never went home but I was
glad to be there. I never left it before without being sorry to go."
"Aren't you sorry now?" Mary asked.
"No. Are you?"
"No," she said frankly. "It was lovely--it is lovely. Everybody was
good to me. I was quite happy there until--"
"Precisely. It's Grove's bailiwick when it comes to a show-down.
That being so, it's no place for us. I'm glad to be on the wing.
I'd rather paddle my own canoe than be a guest on somebody's ship.
It won't perhaps be quite so pleasant for you, old thing."
"The only unpleasantness I dread," Mary rejoined, "is your beginning
to wonder if it was worth while, after all. A lot of people aren't
going to be able to see me with a microscope, Rod. You don't seem to
get that yet. I can't play the game the way they do. They're so
chesty and cocksure. All their lives they've lived well, dressed
well, gone where they chose with perfect assurance, accepted by their
equals and deferred to by their inferiors. They have me at a
disadvantage. I don't speak their favorite shibboleths, or see life
from the same angle. I'm not sure," she hesitated wistfully, "that I
will ever want to. But it would be dreadful if you found that you
were being severely penalized for marrying out of your class, as they
probably put it. That's the only thing I have any reason to dread.
All the other possibilities," she made a quick inclusive gesture,
"being poor; making the most of a little, longing for the
unattainable, a great effort for a few simple pleasures--I know them
all. They aren't so very terrible. They don't frighten me. But for
you, because of me, to cut loose from everything and every one that
has made up your life and then begin to chafe under it--that does."
Rod glanced over his shoulder. The deck was empty. He put one arm
around her, shook her gently.
"I'll pull some caveman stuff on you," he threatened tenderly, "if I
ever hear you talk like that again. In the first place, you mean
more to me than anything or anybody. In the second place, nobody is
going to penalize me. They won't try. There's no real reason they
should. You'll see. While the governor is horribly annoyed about
what he calls a disgraceful quarrel, he doesn't even dream of blaming
you. He lays it to his sons' fiery tempers and shameful lack of
self-control. He'll cool off. And having known you, he'd never
dream of following Grove's lead. I know him. He's fair. If we
should happen to live in Vancouver this winter, and we care to go
out, you'll see that most of these high-flying friends of Grove's
will conveniently forget, and be very nice to us--because we are what
we are. There are enough people of some consequence to accept us as
such and the rest will follow suit. Oh, I know them. They're just
like sheep. That's a side issue. It can't make any difference to
us."
Mary snuggled her hand in his.
"I hope not," she murmured.
"It can't," he declared. "It wouldn't make much difference if it
worked out the other way. No," he grew reflective, "I'm like you. I
don't see things from the same angle as most of the sleek,
comfortably insulated people I know, nor do I want to. I want to
know where I'm going, and why. It isn't just enough to eat, drink
and be merry. I'm lucky in a material way, perhaps. I happened to
be well-born, and I've had security wrapped about me like a blanket.
Still, I doubt the value and permanence of a lot of things that many
people--my own people included--take for granted. I run true to
form, just as Grove does. Only I think his form is rotten. That's
why we don't hitch. I know we should have come to an open break
sometime, if you had never been a factor. I despise him because he
is what he is and does what he does. And he hates me because he's
impressionable enough to feel that contempt. Anybody or anything
that Grove can't dominate he dislikes. You know, I have a fancy that
he sometimes feels he's shoddy, and tries to bolster himself up with
the high-and-mighty pose. But after all that doesn't matter, either.
I'm what I am and I shouldn't be cocky about it, I suppose."
Rod sat silent, recalling that scene in the library. All the hot
anger had evaporated long ago. He was not sorry. No. But he was
sobered. It had given him food for thought. His mind was so made
that it fed upon, digested for good or evil, every crisis, each
outstanding event, the significance of whatever stirred him deeply.
Certain phases of a conversation with his father kept recurring to
him. Certain things had been said--some calmly enough--some with a
touch of passion. Rod thought again with impatience that his father
had a blind spot where Grove was concerned. But it didn't matter
much now. He had taken the only reasonable course open to him after
that encounter with Grove, the simplest, most dignified solution. He
could not remain at Hawk's Nest and preserve peace and dignity. He
recognized that there lurked in him an eagerness to clash with Grove
on almost any provocation. They were fundamentally antagonistic;
they had always been. The gulf between them grew wider as they
matured; the deep-rooted distrust and dislike of motive and action
became more profound.
"It's as well the break came," he said aloud. "It was bound to come
over something. I've simply been marking time. Now I can
do--whatever I can do. Both of us. We don't have to follow copy any
more. We can make our own copy. I rather like the idea."
"It listens good to me," Mary said gayly. And they smiled in
understanding.
"For the first time in my life I feel like a free man," Rod said
abruptly. "Isn't that queer? Free in the sense that I am absolutely
at liberty to work out my own destiny, in so far as any man can do
that."
Phil came up from below. He sat on the low cabin roof, dangling his
long legs.
"Well, children," he said cheerfully, "what's your program? Going to
stay in town awhile?"
"Not long," Rod answered. "We're going to resume our interrupted
honeymoon. For a month or so. After that--well, I'm not making any
cast-iron plans."
"When you get ready to do something, let me know," Phil remarked.
"This blow-up has sort of opened my eyes. It made me realize that
our family solidarity is badly shot. Grove feels his oats more and
more. If I weren't more or less passive, and if I didn't get a
certain amount of satisfaction out of carrying on the show--and
there's the governor to consider; he is a good sort--I'd quit. I may
have to by and by. I won't stand interference. If I have to drop
the reins, I'd like to take a whirl at something that might grow. We
could make a go of it in timber, I think. We both know our ground
there. I've got some money put aside. Think it over, Rod."
"I surely will. Only, as I said, I've no cast-iron plan. If you
want to make money, why not try finance? _Á la_ Grove. That seems
to be gorgeously productive."
"Finance. Huh!" Phil snorted. "I'd rather play poker. I don't want
so much to get something as to _do_ something."
"Andy Hall said to me once that the fundamental principle of modern
business is to do everybody and do 'em first," Rod drawled. "That
ought to give you scope enough."
They laughed. It was a quaint notion. As such it amused them.
Rod's expressed intention of resuming their honeymoon was based on an
impulse with which, when he defined it, he found Mary in complete
accord. She was no echo. So that with her interest assured he
proceeded to act.
A week later they debarked from a coastwise steamer on a float
landing before a logging camp halfway up Bute Inlet. They had
doubled on their course and come back to a point within thirty miles
of Hawk's Nest to go on a voyage of exploration and discovery, as Rod
whimsically defined their object. It was indeed a whim, based
soundly on appreciation of natural beauty, of dusky still forests, of
the sound of running water, the indefinable charm of wooded
loveliness in which they could move untrammeled together, that had
brought them here with a sturdy rowboat, a tent and bedding, fishing
tackle and a supply of food. Camp fires and wood smoke at twilight
amid these cathedral stillnesses that filled the untouched forest.
This was what they desired, for the time.
A fisherman's motor boat carried them across the inlet for a sum,
towing their loaded skiff astern.
"That's the place," Rod pointed. "Let us off here."
The fisherman chugged away. They sat in the boat, oars in hand,
gazing up at cliffy slopes where the forest opened about mossy
knolls, where ledges of bare rock barred the hillside, rising up and
up from a short reach of gravelly shore where tiny wavelets broke at
spaced intervals. The inlet ran northwest, curved away among high
mountains. Far above and on either side of this great arm of the sea
low hills rose to cliffs, cliffs ran up to precipices, and a jumble
of cliff, gorge, precipice and virgin forest lifted far above to
high, aloof peaks, domed with snow and studded with glaciers. The
afternoon wind was but a sigh. All that sweep of sea and mountain
range brooded in the sun as voiceless and changeless as when the
first Norquay sailed the _Hermes_ to Dent Island more than a century
before.
"This is something like, eh?" Rod murmured.
Mary nodded.
"It makes me _feel_," she said. "I can't quite express it. I might
if I had wings."
"I have a feeling too," Rod confessed. "But it's mostly one of
emptiness in my tummy. Let's get ashore and make a pot of tea. The
Hiding Place is just around the corner. Give way, men! I'll show
you a sight."
They turned a jutting point and met a slow outsetting current.
Against this Rod made his way straight for a cliff which, as they
drew near, opened like a great window chiselled in solid granite.
Through this the stream flowed, sluggish, deep, a pale-green
translucence between high, damp walls. Somewhere within rose the
monotone of a waterfall. The square framed broad-leaved maple tops.
Higher up the pointed crests of cedar and the tufted plumes of fir
stood sharp against the sky.
They rowed into the cleft, worked upstream between high,
flood-scoured walls. In that chasm the sun touched only for an hour
at noon. It was dark and cool. Mosses and maidenhair fern lightened
black crevices with streaks and clusters of green. There was a
beauty about this gloomy cleft floored with liquid emerald, but it
was not a beauty one wished to embrace or linger with too long,--too
cavernous, a little grim. Mary drew closer to Rod in that
hundred-yard passage. But she clapped her hands when the boat drew
clear. They came out into sunlight. They had passed through the
canyon as if it were a door which led to a tiny flat cupped in the
hills, all clear of dense forest, almost free from thickets, clothed
with bracken. The creek wimpled between low, gravelly banks.
Between two maples on one side stood a small cabin of split cedar.
Fireweed lifted blazing heads in a mass on one bank. A small grassy
plot surrounded the cabin and the two trees. Rod sidled the boat in
to the bank.
"Isn't this some little retreat?" he asked. "I came in here once
long ago when we were cruising up the Inlet. Only had half an hour
or so to spare. The crowd was in a hurry. I've always wanted to
come back and camp awhile. This creek comes out of a lake in the
woods about two miles inland. They say it's a gem. A trapper built
the cabin. He's supposed to have made a blazed line to the lake."
"Lovely, lovely," his wife murmured. "And this country of ours has
so many of these beauty spots. Sometimes I think we were so
fortunate to be born here, Rod. If one could paint this. If one
were a combination of Corot and Turner."
"Maybe one is," Rod commented genially. "How do we know what we can
do? We've never had a chance to try. But you'd have to splash this
'on a seven-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair.' There are
some things man can't reduce to his own dimensions; can't reproduce
in miniature. How could you get the effect of this? Lofty heights.
Sweeping distances. Big forests of big trees. It's all too--too
superlative. Nature was in the mood for a grand gesture when she
fashioned this part of the world, Mary mine."
They made camp under the maples after a look at the moldy cabin
interior. The stars came out to speckle a cloudless sky as they sat
over their evening fire. Before they turned into blankets spread on
a layer of fern and hemlock boughs, a moon sailed up from behind the
Coast range. It touched all the hills with a silver glow, filled
every hollow with ebony shade. They fell asleep to the lullaby of
falling water and wakened with the sun on their faces.
They had no definite object beyond an impulse to be alone, to live
awhile in those peaceful solitudes, to fish or loaf or climb as the
spirit moved them. But that eagerness of spirit which has sent men
alike to the Poles and into equatorial jungles to look on the face of
new lands touched them both. They spent a day setting their camp to
rights after the fashion of the woodwise. Then they sought and found
the trapper's blazed line. It led them by dim marks through dense
thickets, across lowlands where cedars stood like brown columns
supporting the sky itself, their feet planted in thick mosses and
sunless shade, over fir-clad ridges where a west wind made a faint
sighing among branches a hundred feet above their heads, and brought
them at last out on the shore of the lake.
The numerous lakes bordering close on the heavily wooded, mountainous
coast of British Columbia have two characteristic features. They lie
in granite pockets with steep-to, rocky shores. Or they spread in
low basins shrouded in dense forest, and the margins of such lakes
are a marshy jungle. In either case they are difficult of approach.
One must clamber over jagged rocks, or work up through crabapple,
devil's club, and sedgy grass.
The Granite Pool on Valdez was one exception. This nameless lake
proved another. Rod and Mary came to it through a heavy stand of
cedar, massive old trees which had killed all the lesser growth in
their centuries of possession. No sapling grew there, or bush or
fern or vine. The level ground was carpeted with moss, which alone
could thrive in that sunless place. Over this soft footing Rod and
his wife walked by the little creek, flowing with faint murmurs in
its bed of worn pebbles, till they stepped suddenly out of that
semi-gloom into the brightness of open water rippling in the sun.
A low, gravelly beach at their feet; wooded points jutting into the
lake; an island lifting a green mound of trees a little distance
offshore; the lake itself bending away out of sight behind the base
of a great mountain five miles distant,--this they saw.
"You never know what you're going to find back in these hills." Rod
sat down on the gravel. "Let's sit and look. It's worth a look."
"If we just had a boat up here," Mary observed, after a little.
"We'll have one," Rod answered promptly. "I have an ax. There are
plenty of cedars. I can make a dugout of some sort in three or four
days. Let's move camp up here. There'll be trout umpty-inches long
in here, and I would like to see what's behind that mountain. We'll
certainly explore _this_."
He made good his word, in sweat and strain. It was not a light task
to shoulder-pack their food, bedding and tent over that pathless two
miles. Nor was the shaping of a rude canoe from a cedar log and the
hollowing of it by ax and fire so easy and simple as it seemed. But
they accomplished these things. And having done so, they viewed
their works with sinful pride, blessing the wilderness for what it
bestowed upon them.
They meant to stay two or three weeks. Their food was reckoned on
that basis. But they had been liberal in their estimate of supplies.
There were trout in lake and stream. The blue grouse hooted on every
hillside, and when they wanted meat they hunted these toothsome
birds. Three weeks lengthened to four, to five--six. It became an
amiable contest, a matter of achievement, to see how long they could
live off the wilderness. They were completely happy there. It was
as if some invisible barrier stood between them and the world of
their fellows, where griefs and pains and irritations, hopes and
fears and joys and ambitions ran their course. They did not know
what went on beyond the rampart of their seclusion. And they did not
care. They were too absorbed in what each day might bring forth as
it passed. They experienced deep, ecstatic satisfactions in the
simplest things. Rod began to work on his book again, in the
intervals of hunting, fishing, exploring. He would lift his head,
stirred out of concentration on imaginary things, at the sound of
Mary singing as she moved about certain tasks. And he would smile.
It was good; it was what he wanted. Peace to dream, to catch and
transfix incident, character, a colorful background for heroic
undertakings, as they mysteriously took form in his brain. To love
and be loved; to get something more out of life than just a leisurely
existence; to create something of worth above the measure of money.
He was aware that this was just an interlude. They would have to go
back to the business of living along more conventional lines. They
were both too much the normal product of society even to wish
complete withdrawal from their kind. That would only be an evasion.
But it was an experience they found to their liking. They promised
themselves to repeat it often.
"We're barbarians at heart," Mary said once. "Our so-called culture
is only skin-deep. Otherwise we couldn't sit over a camp fire and be
content. Nor lie in the sun on a mossy rock and feel that blissful
sense of complete well-being. People with instincts like those
should survive more or less complacently almost anything but loss of
freedom. What do shops and streetcars, cities and frontiers mean to
us here?" She waved a hand at the ring of mountains, the enclosing
forest. "People handicap themselves when they grow too civilized."
"I wonder if they do?" Rod mused. "Perhaps. I know people who would
be very uncomfortable here--where we have been quite at our ease. It
seems to be instinctive with us. We get quite a kick out of it too.
Maybe we're throwbacks. Why shouldn't hereditary impressions crop
out?"
"Maybe," Mary said reflectively. "By all accounts Roderick the first
was a man who didn't mind long journeys or isolation. He must have
felt at home here, or he wouldn't have made his home in a savage
country. Certainly it wasn't compulsory with him. You don't have to
throw back very far, Rod, to the self-sufficient type."
"And my people," she continued presently. "They were originally New
York--upstate, not Manhattan--before the Boston Tea Party. Then they
went across the Alleghanies. Then they went to Illinois. Then to
Minnesota. Both my grandfathers fought in the Civil War. When they
came back from that Minnesota was too crowded for them. With half a
dozen other families they trekked across the plains--in '67. They
drove their stakes in southern Idaho on the banks of the Snake.
Always restless. Always striking out into new territory. Wanting
elbow room. Determined to have it. Never taking root for more than
one generation. They went into virgin country with their cattle and
horses, their tools and rifles, and made homes where there had never
been homes. They didn't get rich, but they were always independent,
always competent to fend for themselves. Why shouldn't we have an
instinct for this, Rod? It's in our blood."
"Well, we'll do it again," Rod prophesied. "This is a good retreat.
We'll come back."
With that as a mark to shoot at when summer came again, they left the
Hiding Place one cool September morning. By the coasting schedule
Rod knew a steamer should touch at the logging camp across the Inlet
that afternoon. They were leaving reluctantly. Their supplies had
stretched to the elastic limit, but the limit had been reached. Time
had accelerated his pace. It seemed but yesterday that they had
come, in burning July. Now the mornings were touched with autumn
chill. The vine maples showed glints of russet, streaks of burnished
copper. The alders were growing yellow. Frost touched the leaves at
night. New snow had fallen on the high peaks. Rain threatened. It
was time to go.
They rowed across the inlet and tied up to the logger's landing. Two
men worked on the floating logs, making up a tow. Far in the woods,
in a deep valley, they could hear the toot of donkey engines. A
train rumbled out on a trestle, dumped five cars of logs with a
terrific splash. A clutter of raw, unpainted buildings stood about
the shore end of the trestle.
"I'll go see if the storekeeper knows what time the steamer's due,"
Rod said. "May be able to get a newspaper. Funny. So long as we
were in there, I never thought about papers. Old habits revive."
He walked the trestle ashore, disappeared among the buildings.
Presently he came into view again, walking slowly, an opened news
sheet in his hands, reading as he stepped from timber to timber.
Midway, still two hundred yards from the float, he sat down on an
abutting platform, and remained there, the paper before his face,
until the minutes lengthened to half an hour and Mary grew impatient.
She left the float. She neared her husband without him giving a
sign, so deep was his absorption. He only looked up when she spoke.
There was a strange bewilderment on his face, a look of mingled anger
and incredulity.
"Why, Rod," she exclaimed. "What is it?"
He thrust another paper at her.
"Read," he said. "The world's gone crazy. There's a war. There's
been war in Europe since early August. And we're in it up to our
necks. Read."
CHAPTER XVII
They sat side by side in the autumn sunshine, reading of places
drenched with blood,--Liége, Louvain, Charleroi, Mons, Cambrai,
Namur. The battle of the Marne was over. The prolonged battle of
the Aisne was at its height. Rod had commandeered every paper in the
camp. Page by page, column by column, they conned that incredible
account, piecing it out by inference, filling the terrible gaps by
vivid conjecture. There remained the primal fact that all Europe was
in arms, that men perished by thousands daily, that their own
countrymen were crossing the seas to fight.
"Phil's gone," Rod broke a long silence. "Says so here. He left for
Valcartier the other day."
He looked out over the inlet's benign face.
"He'd do that," he said absently. "They'd give him a command at
once. He's trained--went to Kingston."
He sat with hands clasped over his knees, silent, absent-eyed. And
Mary looked at him with a catch in her throat, filled with intuitive
foreboding. Words, of which each had a better command than falls to
most, failed them. They sat there wandering in the maze of their own
thoughts until the shrill whistle of the approaching steamer woke an
echo in the hills.
A day and a night on this slow-footed vessel brought them to
Vancouver. They passed through the Narrows at dusk, cleared Brockton
Point and stood up to the dusky wharves ranged below a vast haze of
reflected light. Roof signs twinkled in all the colored extravagance
electrical sign experts could devise. Looming high on a square
office building stood Grove's heraldry:
THE NORQUAY TRUST
Rod's upper lip drew in a curl. He could not exactly say why. It
was involuntary, instinctive. That sign offended him. The taxi that
wheeled them to the Vancouver Hotel passed the place, and Rod's lip
curled again at sight of the chaste illumination upon richly polished
mahogany revealed through immense windows of plate glass. Again in
their room that curious distaste for his brother's works came over
him at an advertisement of the Norquay Trust Company in one of the
evening papers he bought. It ran thusly:
Your country calls you. Before you go overseas put your affairs in
the capable hands of
THE NORQUAY TRUST COMPANY
Then he turned to the war news.
Wherever he went in the city for the next two days the war topic
hovered on men's lips. The streets wore the panoply of war in the
recruiting aspect. Troops drilled in parks, on playgrounds. Bands
marched abroad to stir men's blood. There was an edge of expectancy
in the air, for the _Leipsig_, the _Dresden_, the _Nuremberg_, and
two unknown battleships were loose in the Pacific. No one knew what
truth lay in the rumor that any hour might see their shells dropping
in the downtown section. There was nothing to stop them. They
outsteamed and outgunned any British Squadron in those waters.
Amid this ferment Rod walked the streets, bodily restless, uneasy in
his mind. For he had somehow none of the illusions about war that
carried many a young man lightly along the line of least resistance
in those hectic days. There was no glamor for him in a purely
military adventure.
He loved his native country. He was proud of it. It had bestowed
upon him a splendid heritage. He did not question a matter of duty.
With his temperament and traditions such a questioning was
impossible. But he revolted against being a pawn in the European
game. He could not muster up an excited, voluble hate of the enemy.
He did not respond so readily as some to the propaganda already
loosed so effectively. He wondered a little at the execration and
exhortation and invective that poured from the press, the pulpit, the
fulminations from every public speaker, the vixenish resolutions of
the women's societies. It was as if they were urging each other on
to a task for which few had much stomach. It perplexed Rod. If
one's country was at war, one must fight. That was plain to him as
two plus two. Why should all these non-combatants lash themselves
into such a fury over a European frontier, over the ancient feud
between the Teuton and the Gaul? It amounted to this in his mind: we
must fight because our statesmen have committed us to the task; but
we will not whip the German by foaming at the mouth. That's childish.
He met Andy Hall the second day. Before the _Province_ office on
Hastings Street there was always a crowd reading the bulletins posted
from time to time, studying the war map on which the positions of the
opposing armies were kept up to date by little flag-headed pins. The
curbstone Boards of Strategy functioned there. Knots of men held
heated discussion, or stood silently digesting news. There was a
sprinkling of the indifferent, the merely curious.
A man at Rod's elbow broke out:
"I'll go. Damn right I'll go--in the ranks of a regiment made up of
bankers, bond owners, and politicians. But I don't see them breakin'
their necks to sign up. Why should I? I never had nothin' but a
job, and poor ones at that. I ain't goin' to fight just for a job."
"Maybe you'll fight for that?" a voice taunted,--and with the words
came the sound of a blow, and then a scuffle and oaths. Rod turned
to look. The bystanders were parting two struggling men. Andy
Hall's freckled face glowed genially beside him.
"Even in these times the dissenter is with us," Andy indicated the
brawlers. "How are you?"
"So, so," Rod shook hands with the high-rigger. "Still working for
us? How did the strike pan out?"
"Oh, they got what they asked. I got fired as soon as old Handy
thought things had settled down. About two weeks later. I guess he
was afraid I might rib them up to ask for something else," Andy
smiled amiably.
"Oh, that was rotten," Rod sympathized.
"Fortunes of war," Hall observed lightly. "Don't do to criticize
your master's methods; not if you make your criticism so effective
that it costs them money. Then they say you're an agitator and they
can you off the job. The working man is mostly a sheep. The bosses
know that. When a fellow like me--who isn't a sheep, but who
understands and pities the sheep--sets out to show 'em how to get
better pasture, he either gets taken into the fold and becomes a
minor boss or he gets outlawed. Perfectly simple. You must not
disorganize a profitable industry by demanding better pay. Industry
doesn't like that."
"What do you think of this fracas across the pond?" Rod changed the
subject to one that was for him personally, at that moment, much more
important.
"Come and have a drink, and I'll tell you," Andy suggested.
They walked west to the Strand bar. Rod looked at his companion as
they stood ordering their liquor. The Strand was a far cry from the
usual haunt of the logger. He flourished in what Andy called the
"slave market" down on Cordova Street, a region of Semitic clothing
stores, cheap hotels, employment agencies where the woodsmen flocked
in hundreds, gathered in groups along the sidewalk, rioted in the
bars, or sought a job with empty pockets.
And Andy Hall was a logger from his head to his heels. That was his
trade, the only means of livelihood he ever practiced. But he did
not look the typical logger now. Apparently he did not follow the
average logger's cycle of a red-hot time in town as a reaction from
intensive labor in the woods.
"This fracas interests me more than you'd think, maybe," Andy
proceeded over his glass. "In the first place it was inevitable as
the result of the constant extension of spheres of influence--which
is merely a euphemism for control of certain markets. The world's
getting too small for the competitive system. Commercial interests
are bound to clash. Armies are the policemen of trade."
Rod smiled. It was not a new nor in any way revolutionary statement.
He had heard the same interpretation of world affairs, more subtly
expressed, in university classrooms.
"What's the navy?"
"The water patrol," Andy bantered.
"'Oh, the liner she's a lady
An' she never looks nor 'eeds.
The man o' war's 'er 'usband--'
"Out of the mouth of the greatest drum-beater in English letters I
answer you."
"It's a wonder you aren't away," Hall changed his tone abruptly.
"Your brother's gone. Or have you got better sense?"
"Sense? Is there any sense in a war?" Rod countered. "But we're in
it. If fellows like me won't go, who will?"
"You've said something," Andy replied quietly. "Leaving aside the
sordid causes of war, war itself is the most senseless pastime any
nation can engage in. There's a confusion of sentiments, a queer
mixture of anger and defiance, vindictive cravings for retaliation,
and hatreds that civilized men should have outgrown. An ingrowing
fever to see your own side win. Once the first gun pops, it doesn't
seem to matter _why_--any more than it matters to two men scrapping
what the scrap started over. What each wants is to whip the other.
But this particular war--commerce is at the bottom of it. You know
it. You're too wise not to know. Struggle for commercial supremacy
has started every war since the Crusades, and a few of the dynastic
rumpuses. This is a row over property rights, real or potential.
And as a member of the propertied class you have a vital interest in
it. The bird who started that fuss in front of the _Province_ wasn't
so far wrong. He has nothing to fight for--nothing worth fighting
for. You have."
"From a purely material point of view, certainly," Rod answered.
"But can't you see any more in it than that?"
"Should I?" Andy asked musingly. "Can there be an obligation of
service to one's country without one's country assuming some
obligation in return? And does one's country assume any obligation
toward such men as me? If it does I don't know what it consists of.
The man with nothing but his hands has few rights and no privileges.
What does the casual worker, the completely propertyless man receive
from his country that he should gladly cross the seas to die for it
on foreign soil? Can you tell me? I don't think you can. In that
sense one doesn't mean one's country geographically. These mountains
we call ours will stand unchanged, the forests will grow, the rivers
run to the sea, the salmon go up to the spawning grounds, the birds
will mate and sing, whether we win or the Germans, or if both sides
fight to the last man and the two races expire. So that really one's
country means Bill Jones and Sam Smith and Jack Robinson--human
society--the national unit. If Sam Smith, by skilful exercise of the
acquisitive instinct, acquires ownership of the hills and the forest,
and permits me and Bill Jones and Jack Robinson to work for him
whenever he can profitably use our labor, and has no responsibility
for our welfare at such times as he can't employ and pay us wages,
why should we shoot and kill, and be ourselves shot and killed in
defense of his hills and forests?
"That," Andy went on in his low, deliberate voice, "is one way of
looking at it, one way of putting it. I'm what they call a common
worker. So far as I know, my people have never been anything else
but workers, tied to a job because they knew nothing else. I've
never had anything but a job myself. I've dug up quite a lot of
assorted facts and a variety of knowledge out of books between hours
on the job. I've done quite a bit of thinking about what I've seen,
and heard and read. Every dollar I've ever had, the food I've eaten,
the clothes on my back--since I was nine years old I've earned 'em
all by sweat and aching flesh. By way of illustration I'll cite the
fact--with no personal reflection, you understand--that the Norquay
estate employed last year on its timber operations upward of three
hundred men. The net profits for the year run over two hundred
thousand dollars. That's what your country means to you. But that
means nothing to me. I have only myself, my energy, the strength of
my arms and a certain skill to sell. And you don't employ me because
I'm hungry or need clothes, or because I'm ambitious to better my
condition. Oh, no. You don't recognize me as having the slightest
claim on you for subsistence. You will only hire me at a wage where
my labor can be transformed into cash at a profit to yourself. In
slack times I can starve. It doesn't make any difference to you.
That attitude and practice is typical of the industrial system of
every civilized nation. I present you with the case of the
intelligent worker, when he analyzes his situation in and relation to
society. I ask you if we, who are the have-nots, should be proud and
glad--as they tell us we should be--to die for the perpetuation of
this state of affairs?"
Rod had an uncomfortable impression of the perfectly ordered and
smoothly moving world he knew being critically examined and condemned
by a dispassionate, impartial, and very acute intelligence. As Andy
Hall put it, there seemed no bond of common interest, of sentiment,
even of common justice to bind them together. Andy did not ask on
behalf of his class, nor of himself as an individual, "What is there
in it for us?" He only asked in moody accents, "Why should we, who
have only the shadow, sacrifice ourselves for those who have the
substance?"
Only a sophist could make other than one reply. And Rod was no
sophist. He was only an earnest and troubled youngster reacting to
the day and hour, according to the best traditions of the best of his
class. He felt that there was more to be said on the subject than a
laconic answer to Andy's "why?" There must be, or his world was a
sham, thriving on social usury, and patriotism was a farce. It did
not seem to Rod this could be possible. But he could not voice the
thing that was in him. It was an emotional certainty, not a reasoned
conviction. And he knew that as an impulsion to act the first was by
far the greatest driving force in all men.
"I don't know. A man,--each man--must answer that for himself," he
spluttered. "It's like this. We're all in the same boat. If
everybody stands on his rights and demands a readjustment of a faulty
arrangement of things before he will make a single defensive
move--we'll be whipped out of hand. In fact, it looks as if the
Germans had us staggering now. And I daresay two thirds of their
armies are made up of the working class of Germany--who seem to be
quite in accord with their masters' policy of conquest, or they
wouldn't put up such a corking fight. If you fellows as a class
refuse to meet them at their own game----" he threw out his hands in
an eloquent gesture.
"Hell, you think I'm so thick-headed I can't see both sides of the
fence?" Andy grunted. "I wasn't speaking for my own class. It's
speaking for itself every day--to the recruiting sergeant. I'm
speaking to you as a thinking, feeling individual who sees himself
being sucked into a whirlpool. I'm trying to point out to you in the
most rational manner possible what the real situation is. You can't
deny it. It exists. Why, if the bulk, even a working majority of
the damn fools that call themselves men, had a few glimmerings of
social and economic wisdom there wouldn't be any German or French or
Russian or British armies in the field. Only a few handfuls of
atavistic adventurers. I'm not by nature a humble, peaceful toiler.
I'd just as soon as not fight for anything that's worth fighting
for--and all the hard fighting isn't done with guns, either. All my
life I've seen the show run by arrogant, power-proud people who
aren't nearly so clever as they seem to be. They make a mess of
things too often to be really clever. And the rest of us growl and
knuckle down to our jobs. We're slaves, not so much to our masters,
as to our own inertia, our own lack of intelligence, slaves to the
common, well-nourished illusion that to get something for nothing is
the solution for all our difficulties. We merit contempt. No one
among the well-fed and the cultured who have never soiled their hands
with common work has more impatience with the bovine mass than some
of us who are of the mass. We lose faith in ourselves and our own
kind--but our masters never lose faith in us--in our docility to
fetch and carry. They know how to use us without our knowing how
it's done. They tell us now that the Germans threaten our lives, our
freedom, our country and its cherished institutions. That's true
enough. But we risk our lives daily in industry with very much less
freedom of choice in the matter than even primitive man had in
pursuing his food, clothing, and shelter. What cherished
institutions of ours are threatened that we should go five thousand
miles to fight in a quarrel between Russians, Germans and French?
"And still," Andy drummed on the polished bar with his finger tips,
"in spite of my reasoned convictions I find myself as much of a herd
animal as the rest. Logic tells me this row is the same old thing on
a larger scale--an affair in which the have-nots will do the fighting
as they do the work. But logic doesn't help me where I live, inside
of me, when I see fellows I know, fellows I like, getting ready to
go. The old tribal instincts that are stronger and deeper than
civilization and industry keep stirring up in me, nagging at me. The
flag--it's only a symbol. Patriotism, patriotic duty has only a
hollow sound when I hear the phrase used. And still--something gets
me--I don't know quite what it is--but it's there.
"It's a queer pass for me to come to," he finished whimsically.
"Wouldn't it be? Me to go and fight for things and people that I
don't believe in? Why should a man find his rational conclusions
upset by an emotion he can't define? I stood looking at the Gulf the
other day, and I thought how easy it would be for those German
cruisers that are reported off the West Coast to start slinging
shells in here. And the picture of 'em potting at us made me sort of
swell up and get all hot and angry inside. It's illogical and absurd
for me to feel that way about what's going on in Europe. And
still--there it is. Some of these days I'll find myself in the army
headed overseas. And I'll be wondering how in hell I got there.
How, I ask you, can a man who thinks as I do, _feel_ the way I do,
about this?"
But that was as difficult of answer as Andy's other question,--and
Rod was too deeply involved in a personal problem of his own, a
conflict between two powerful sets of feelings, to consider Andy's
psychological _impasse_. They had another drink and went about their
separate affairs.
For another forty-eight hours Rod stirred uneasily about the town.
He met his father by chance, talked with him briefly. He spent a
little time each day in one or the other of two clubs in which he
held membership. He and Mary went once to dinner at the home of a
classmate, married now and frankly unsettled by the war cloud. He
met other young men he knew. He missed a great many others, but he
knew where they were. He heard the one thing discussed in clubs, in
hotels, on the streets. People lived the war in public and private.
Rod wondered if they dreamed about it in their sleep, as he sometimes
did.
Between himself and Mary a singular constraint had arisen. It was as
if some impalpable substance enfolded them, sealing their lips upon
things they both felt and feared but could not embody in speech.
Where the unspoken thought had scarcely needed words, so perfect an
accord of mind had they attained, now each was locked in a separate
chamber of his soul, brooding inscrutably, wordlessly even when they
sat knee to knee by their room window or lay wide-eyed in the night,
flesh touching flesh, mute in the face of an ache to speak and be
understood.
Rod came in one evening after dusk. Mary had begun to dress for
dinner. She sat on the edge of their bed, hair down, a silver
slipper hanging idly from one hand. She looked at Rod when he came
in, a silent question, almost an appeal, and then her eyes dropped to
the floor.
"Dorothy is over from Victoria," she said tonelessly. "She
telephoned half an hour ago. Charlie has been offered a commission.
She's planning to go east with him and later across to London."
Rod sat down beside her, put his arms about her. His fingers stroked
her thick, soft hair.
"I have to go," he said quietly. "I've hammered it out for myself.
I can't keep out of it."
She laid her face against his breast. Her arms pressed tightly about
him. A little shudder shook her.
"Oh, Rod, Rod," she whispered. "I can't bear it. I've seen it
coming. We've just begun to live. And I'm going to have a baby."
He sat holding her close. She did not cry. She clung to him
silently. The slow heave of her bosom, the occasional shiver, that
desperate struggle for calmness, made him ache.
And he thought, with a slowly rising tide of bewilderment, of the
wholly inadequate preparation that had been bestowed upon them for
such a bitter sip of life's cup. For her a lonely childhood, an
education frugally achieved, and marriage. For him eighteen years of
a sheltered, tutored existence, four years of college, twelve months
in a logging camp, three months of inconceivable happiness--and the
war.
The Great War--which in five years was to bestow upon his country, at
the price of many lives and out-poured treasure, such priceless
victories as a scramble for oil and a squabble over debts!
CHAPTER XVIII
When men walk often in the shadow of death they rise superior to its
dread aspect, or they become indifferent to it, or they succumb to
its ghastly presence and welcome it as a relief from unendurable
suspense. Upon these emotional reagents all the heroism and
endurance and cowardice of humanity in war is based. And when the
shouting and the tumult dies the survivors sometimes find themselves
incredible of their survival in a world excitedly muttering the
shibboleths of peace,--peace, where there is only a truce. For the
dumb clods, led or driven, and the high-spirited adventurers did not
alone comprise the armies which the nations lately sent forth.
Willy-nilly, by outward compulsion or inner sense of duty, the
sensitive, the lovers of beauty, the humanitarian, the altruist,
those strange souls to whom disorder is an evil, justice a
passionately cherished dream, freedom the birthright of every
man,--they too wore khaki and were deafened by the guns.
Upon them, and they are no inconsiderable portion of this our
country's manhood, the war has left its mark. Not so much in the
scars on their bodies--for those are things men forget as easily as
women forget the pangs of childbirth--but in the more tenuous fabric
of their souls, in the processes of their intellect. Many question
the value of the ordeal,--judged by its results.
It was a questioning of this nature that troubled Rod Norquay on an
evening in January, A.D. 1919. He sat among civilians in a Canadian
Pacific smoking car while the Imperial Limited rolled westward
through a rainy night. He was on familiar ground again, the soil
where five generations of his blood had been nourished. The Coast
Range was far behind the train. On his right the Fraser River made a
pale shimmer in the darkness, with here and there the glowworm
running lights, the yellow window squares of a river boat. It was
good to be back, back to life that could be lived fully and freely,
not simply endured.
But it was not good for him, in those last homeward miles, to listen
to the talk that ran in the smoker. It was pitched to the same key
as had fretted him in Paris, in London, all the way across North
America,--boundaries, coal and iron, concessions, indemnities,
reparations. Europe, Asia, and Africa, the islands of the Pacific,
had been rearranged, parcelled out, in Rod's hearing in hotel lobbys,
in ship saloons, in railway coaches, day after day, by sleek,
middle-aged civilians, clever successful fellows who knew what was
what. He was sick of it. Was that the reality behind the war to end
war?
"Loot," he said to himself scornfully. "They can call it what they
like, but that's what they mean."
In the field even Fritz shot his looters when he caught them
red-handed. But in civil life, behind the rampart of a victorious
army, they had their eye on the loot. They couldn't see much else
that was worth consideration. This group in the smoker,--he had been
in the enforced physical intimacy of railway travel with them for
four days. They had been a trifle backward about approaching this
moody young man in a London-tailored uniform of the C.E.F. with three
thin gold stripes on his sleeve. They had respected his reserved
silence. But they had talked for his benefit. Short of stuffing his
ears with cotton he could not avoid hearing. And they talked
voluminously, sagely, on the political and economic aspects of the
war, and the peace that was in the making. Rod grew to hate them.
In his own mind he called them buzzards. Which is a measure of his
state of mind, for he was naturally courteous and tolerant toward his
fellow men.
He welcomed the dim turreted and domed outlines of Hasting Park. He
recalled the mustering and drilling there, the housing of men by
thousands in buildings designed for show cattle. By a curious
association of ideas he reflected that many of those men had been
butchered less mercifully than the stall-fed beeves once shown in
those barn-like structures, every time a battalion went up the line,
wherever bombing squadrons could locate trench or billet, whenever
enemy field guns could get the range.
Well, it was over. As the train slowed into the eastern portion of
the yards, creeping between the docks and the city, he had a
momentary, fantastic impression of having passed through a vivid
nightmare of four years' duration. Because all this was the same.
The Europe he knew had been torn to pieces, disfigured to strange
aspects. Here the North Vancouver ferries, the self-same vessels he
had ridden on, were scurrying back and forth across the Inlet,
passing each other in midstream. Masts and funnels of deep-sea ships
rose beside well-known docks. The rumble of downtown traffic; the
chaste pyramidic roof of the Provincial Courthouse pricked out with
ten thousand incandescent bulbs; the Moorish pile of the Vancouver
Hotel; the white monolith of the Burns Block; the arching crown of
the _World_ Building, all these were adumbrated in the thin hovering
haze of light reflected from a million windows, thousands of arc
lights, batteries of electric signs. Here were things he knew,
greeting his eyes as if he had been gone merely overnight.
He took a final stare, before the coach slid under the long platform
roof, at one familiar, flamboyant sign,
THE NORQUAY TRUST
Letters of fire, six foot high. He had never been able to look at
that glowing emblem of Grove's career without a touch of scorn. It
had been the last thing his eyes marked from the rear of a departing
troop train. That, like this, had been on a wet, windy night.
His lip curled now. But his physical inertia, his moroseness, that
appallingly critical inturning of his mind, vanished with the final
clutch of the brakes. Something flowed through him, warming him like
strong brandy. He relinquished his bags to a porter, passed eagerly
to the vestibule. He was no stray dog of war now, wistful and
lonely. Through the car window he had caught a glimpse of Mary's
face, upturned in the glare of a light. Beside her stood his father,
a tall, erect figure in a belted overcoat,--both smiling, expectant.
This was something like! The old things, the things that mattered.
It was worth something to come home like this--to this--he thought as
his wife's arms closed about his neck, and he cut off her glad,
little cry with his lips. His father threw dignity, reserve, to the
winds and pounded him on the back, while a score of familiar faces
pressed about him and hands reached for his.
Then the reaction,--the unmistakable warning from a body too greatly
abused.
"Let's get home," he said to Mary. "I'm getting wobbly. Good night,
everybody. See you all again soon," he waved to the welcoming group.
"Come on. I have to move. I must."
Mary slipped one arm through his, peering up anxiously. Rod's face
was white, strained, in the station glare.
"Never mind the bags. Well, we can tell a red-cap to send them out
by an expressman," he muttered. "Give me your arm, pater."
"What is it, Rod?" Mary asked anxiously.
"Tell you later. Keep walking--slow. Can't talk. Walk."
His voice sounded dull and heavy. Three abreast they moved across
the platform, stood a few seconds in an elevator, passed out over a
tiled floor and between the high fluted columns of the main entrance,
to a street where pools of water glistened, where the wet asphalt
shone black, and the air was full of rain lines driving before a
southeast gale. Norquay senior guided him through scurrying people
bent under umbrellas.
"Here's the motor," he said.
"All right. Got my wind back now," Rod smiled.
"Been sick?" his father inquired solicitously.
"No. Just temporary let-down after being more or less keyed up.
You'll see lots of fellows coming home like that, soon. Something
lets go now and then."
He lay back on the upholstering between them, happy to feel Mary's
hand pressed warmly close in his. In a few minutes the machine
turned in a short, curved driveway, stopped under a portico.
Norquay senior kept his seat.
"I'll see you to-morrow, Rod," he said. "Good night. Pleasant
dreams to both of you."
The house was strange to Rod. He knew, of course, the street and
number, but nothing more of the place where Mary had made her home
for more than two years. He followed her into a living room where a
fireplace glowed cheerfully, a simple, comfortable room. And they
stood in the middle of it for a few seconds with their arms about
each other, careless of their damp clothes, of Mary's hat tilted
askew, of all but the fact that they were together after being long
apart.
"Did you miss me?"
"Are you glad to be home?"
Needless questions. Fond and foolish questions. They laughed and
stood apart, threw off their heavy coats.
"Kid's asleep, of course," Rod said.
"Yes. Come, look."
She drew him through a short passage into a bedroom. A small tousled
brown head rested on a pillow. One hand clutched a dilapidated
woolly dog with luminous glass eyes, the other was thrown straight
out on the white counterpane, the chubby fingers relaxed.
"How the little beggar has grown," Rod whispered. "He looks like
you, Mary."
"Everybody says he's a perfect Norquay," she replied demurely. "So
there you are."
"We've been very lucky," Rod said quietly. "If I'd known the
situation was so critical at sea, I shouldn't have let you come home
when you did. The place you had in Chelsea--I went out to see it
before I left--for old times' sake. I hadn't been there since you
came home. There's a new house--at least, the upper story's all new.
I made inquiries. A Gotha dropped high explosives on it about six
weeks after you left."
Mary shuddered.
"Well, it's over," she murmured. "I cried all Armistice night--after
the joy-whoopings. Silly thing for me to do. Everybody here went
mad. Where were you?"
"Mopping up," he said grimly. "We didn't believe it at first. Then
we sat down and smoked cigarettes and drank tea, and wondered how
soon we could get home. God damn the war--and the war-makers!"
His voice choked with passion.
"Ss-sh, Rod!" she warned, and drew him out of the room, back to a
chair by the fire.
"I can't help it. That's the way I feel," he broke out again. "And
I feel that way like other men who've been through the big show,
because of the things we saw done and had to do ourselves. The
beastliness--the uselessness of it! And you don't realize the
uselessness of it until you come back into civil life and notice the
glib way people think and talk about it all; what the papers print,
and the preachers preach, and politicians cooking up their little
messes, and a group of white-whiskered old men at Versailles politely
quarreling over the distribution of the plunder. Only there isn't
going to be much plunder. They can't realize that. And they go on
threatening and haranguing and wrangling over coal and iron and oil
and indemnities, as if that was what we fought for. If it had
been--I wonder if it was? When I feel that it was I have to curse.
"I'm home," he put his face in his hands, "but I know so many that
won't come--good fellows--lots of 'em just kids--the pick of the
bunch--Phil, and Bill Fraser and Dan Hale--dozens of fellows I went
to school with--scores out of my own company. People prattle about
the supreme sacrifice, as if that were a reward in itself. Damn
them, they don't know what it means. I'm sick of all the saccharine
tosh I hear about the war. It may have been necessary, and necessary
jobs have to be done. But if the war-glorifiers at home were taken
out and given a sniff of gas and a dose of cooties, and left lying
about here and there for a few hours with part of one leg blown off,
they might change their minds about the soul-uplifting part of it."
He lay back in his chair, eyes smoldering, fingers locked together
for a minute. Then he smiled wanly.
"Listen to me rave," he said. "You mustn't mind. I get that way now
and then. You do, in the army. You have to bottle up so much. I am
glad the row's over, and I'm glad to be here, and I'd like to go up
to the Hiding Place with you and the kid and camp out till I forgot I
ever was in a war. I expect in time it will get hazy. Only I have
spells of thinking that Andy Hall was right. I wonder what became of
Andy."
"Who was he?"
"A logger who worked for us. Clever chap. Thought his own thoughts
about things, which isn't characteristic of loggers--or men in
general, I'm beginning to believe. By the way, your father and
mother are looking uncommonly well. But it struck me that the
governor had aged a lot. Notice it? Did it knock him all of a heap
when Phil went West?"
"No, he was rather quiet and sad for awhile, but with the casualties
running so high we'd all schooled ourselves to expect bad news of you
both any time," Mary said quietly. "Something _has_ worried him
lately. He's here a good bit. Takes Roddy out for a walk or drive
nearly every day. He's well, I think, but lately he's been moody."
"See anything of Laska?"
She shook her head.
"Very little. I don't see a great deal of people, Rod. Every one
has been lovely to me. But--I don't fit into the giddy pace. You
know, if you don't flutter prettily and with all your heart, you
don't make a hit with the butterflies. Since I came back from London
I've--I've just put in the time. You know--oh, we're a pair of
softies--but it is good to be together. We have played the game."
A Chinese boy brought in tea and cakes. Rod and Mary toasted their
feet at the blaze and sipped tea and talked. The windows that gave
seaward over English Bay shivered in their casings under the gusty
puffs of the storm wind. A chime struck ten.
"Is there a bedroom upstairs?" Rod roused himself out of a silence
to ask.
"Two. But neither is completely furnished. There are two nice ones
on the ground floor, which is plenty for us so long as we have no
guests. Why?"
"I would much rather sleep upstairs."
"Why?" Mary repeated.
"Doctor's orders," he answered lightly. "High altitude advised. Oh,
it's just a notion of mine. You'll have to humor me."
"It's easily arranged," she said. "I'll have Yick make up a bed.
You _are_ whimsical, though, Rod. What's back of the notion?"
He laughed it off. An hour later, feeling himself sink into sleep
with a delicious, pervasive sensation of contentment, his last
conscious reflection was a hope that he would never have to explain
what lay back of the notion. He felt Mary's arm resting across him.
Surely body and soul could be at peace henceforth.
Well on in the night he wakened with a familiar apprehension tugging
at his consciousness. His brain was quite clear. He knew what was
happening. It had overtaken him before. The thinking, reasoning
part of him, or perhaps the purely intuitive, urged that he rise and
fight off a paralyzing numbness that seized his feet, his hands, that
crept slowly upward and inward, chilling his flesh. Curious, he
thought, to die like that, to stand by and watch himself run down
like an unwound clock. He could hear the slow regular breathing of
his wife beside him. He could feel the even beat of her heart where
her breast pressed against his shoulder. His own heart had
stopped,--fluttered and stopped as he awoke. Would it begin again?
He lay waiting, feeling that numbness seize his limbs, feeling his
breathing grow more difficult.
He remembered what he must do. His will--that strange, detached
segment of his being that was cognizant of and superior to his flesh,
commanded him to rise at once if he would ever rise again. And by
some supreme effort of a body dying if not already dead he twisted
himself sidewise, set his feet on the floor, hauled himself erect by
a bedpost. Three steps to the door. Three steps from door to
staircase. He moved in blind obedience to the will to live, moved
with that clear, fantastic conviction of being already on the
threshold of death. No pulse, scarcely a breath; speechless. He
could not utter a sound. Only motor muscles moving obedient to that
imperative will, and that crystalline awareness of what was
happening. He had a reluctant shrinking from that picture. To
escape all that war could dart at him,--and to die of a cardiac
failure on the night of his homecoming. No, by God! Not if he could
reach those stairs!
He reached them. Felt with a torpid foot for the top step, held to
the balustrade with two unfeeling hands, went down _stamp_, _stamp_,
heavily, jarringly from step to step. His head swam. He suffocated.
But he moved. His mind functioned. His body obeyed his will. All
but his heart. That stood still, lay inert in his breast,--until he
was within four steps of the bottom. Then it fluttered, feebly at
first, tumultuously after a second, so that his breath came in quick
gasps and long sobbing sighs.
As he realized with a rush of thankfulness that he had won against
long odds, a switch clicked above, light flooded stair and landing,
and Mary came hurrying after him.
"What is it, Rod? What's wrong?" she whispered.
He found words to answer while he kept on _stamp_, _stamp_, to the
bottom. Those dead hands; blood congealed in them. He began to clap
them together. He stamped with his feet on the hall floor like a
horse in the treadmill.
"Heart stopped," he said weakly. "Been giving me trouble. Nothing
the matter with it. Just flutters and slows down. This time it
stopped. Had to get up and jog it on the stairs. That's why I have
to sleep upstairs. Been warned."
"I'll send for a doctor," Mary cried.
"Doctor--hell!" Rod's strength was coming back. The blood pounded
in his temples. He could breathe, speak without effort, although
weakly. "I've had the best men in Paris and London at me. They
don't know what's the matter. They say there's nothing the matter.
Heart's organically perfect but functionally weak."
He repeated it ironically to himself, that phrase of the medical
men--when he had got back to normal and was able slowly to ascend the
stairs with her help--repeated it silently while Mary sat wrapped in
a bathrobe, looking at him with troubled, anxious eyes.
He made light of it. It was nothing much. Very soon he would be
quite all right. He had been warned that he might have a recurrence,
and that he must when possible be on an upper floor when he slept,
because to move jarringly was imperative and he would not have
strength to climb. He stepped heavily from step to step and so
joggled his circulation back to normal. But that would soon wear
off. She was not to worry.
Thus he lied gently to ease her mind. He did not want to die like
that. He did not want death in any form to overtake him. No. The
possibility was sufficient to stir him deeply. He had seen death at
his elbow a hundred times in four years. He had done his part,
expecting that soon or late his turn would come. It was part of the
game. Life came to have little significance to men whose occupation
was destroying life and being themselves destroyed. It would have
been a simple matter to die in action; merely a moment of surprise,
of incredulity, then oblivion.
He had escaped death; he had escaped marring. Suffering he could not
escape, nor the sight of suffering that wrung him as deeply as his
own. He had never been able to steel himself against the sights and
sounds of pain. He had never been able to look indifferently on
other men's agony. And he _had_ grown indifferent to death. Men are
seldom afraid to die, to risk death. Yet with the acceptance of
death as an imminent chance there still flourishes the deep,
instinctive desire to live.
Rod wanted to live more than he had ever wanted to before. He had
come through the storm of war to this haven where he knew there was
for him peace and security and affection beyond most men's lot.
Yet it was touch and go. The nervous man, the keenly strung,
sensitive man, the thoroughbred will fight; he can die on his nerve.
But there is a breaking strain beyond which he cannot endure. Before
the continual impact of pain, death, horror and disgust, the sight
and knowledge of merciless destruction, of blind and calculated
killing, of flesh and blood ground up and poured into a bottomless
pit to narrow a salient or test a military theory, Rod had sometimes
wondered if something in his heart would burst; if something in his
brain would crack from that inner ache, a quivering sensitiveness
that drew his nerves tight as fiddle-strings, a going on by sheer
will, with his heart burning in hatred of the bloody muddle that
engulfed him and his fellows. His heart had been strained until it
weakened somewhere. That was all. He had not known what it was that
changed the nervous heart into a weak heart. Some time before the
Armistice he noticed the difference,--a slowing-down under excitement
instead of a quickening of his pulse. A feeling of discomfort at
night. A desire to get up, to walk about, to fight off a weakening
sensation.
Then the Armistice. And a night in a Paris hotel when he was a dead
man if it had not been for that imperative command of a mind that
willed a body to defy dissolution. He had stirred somehow that
sluggish heart into beating again, and he had called a doctor. Later
he consulted specialists.
They could tell him little; they could do less. His heart was
organically perfect but functionally weak. They all agreed on that.
It might stop any time. Nothing could be done. He would either die
very suddenly, or slowly his heart would strengthen, build new
tissue, be strong again.
He coaxed Mary to settle down. He lay there beside her in the dusky
room, where feeble shadows from arc lights swung by the roaring wind
made flickering patterns on the wall, and he thought something like
this:
Heart failure is failure of the heart to pulsate. Pulsation of the
heart keeps the blood circulating (mechanics applied to the body) and
the passage of the blood in and out of the heart keeps it pulsating.
When the heart stops beating the blood stops moving. Hence start the
blood moving and it must pass through the heart. The heart being
organically perfect would pulsate mechanically--until--or unless----
Would he ever dare sleep again? Over and over that polysyllabic
phrase repeated itself until he grew weary and his eyes closed in the
sleep he would have denied if he could.
Organically perfect but functionally weak!
CHAPTER XIX
At breakfast Rod was introduced to his son, Roderick Thorn Norquay,
who lacked a few weeks of being four years old. Born in London,
hurried home in 1917 when every unnecessary mouth England had to feed
brought her so much nearer want, Roderick junior had no memory of his
father. Rod marveled that two years could change a toddler into a
sturdy boy in knickers who could be tentatively intrigued by gold
braid, red tabs, and a shiny brown belt. They were both
self-conscious enough to afford Mary a smile at their guarded
approach to each other.
"It's funny to see you two," she said, when the youngster had marched
away in care of a nurse girl. "You're like boxers--sparring for an
opening."
"I suppose so," Rod returned. "I don't see the joke myself."
"Don't be so touchy, old dear," she wheedled. "You know what I mean."
"Not touchy." He smiled. "Just a bit off-color. We've missed such
a devil of a lot that we can't catch up with. Having to present
myself cautiously to my own kid reminds me of that. Four years
wasted--worse than wasted. And we're only two out of millions."
"Wasted?"
"Absolutely."
"Then you don't think it was worth the fight? Belgium, destroying an
arrogant militarism, saving the world for democracy, making further
wars impossible--all those high ideals?"
Rod looked at her. Her face was placid as a shaded pool,
expressionless. Her tone had been without accent--no key to her
faith in those matters.
"Just phrases. Useful phrases that served their turn. Who is so
naïve as to believe that now? Do you?" he asked without heat.
Mary smiled.
"No. But a great many people do. Or they say they do. They've gone
about mouthing those catch phrases so long they repeat them as a sort
of liturgic response whenever the war is mentioned. They respond to
all questioning, all criticism, with that formula."
"I daresay," Rod mused. "But nobody in the army has any such
illusions. I haven't had much chance to observe personally, but I
don't know any place where democracy is in good working order. We
certainly put a crimp in German militarism, but our own militarists
are in a very flourishing condition, especially in France. In fact,
a lot of men, from battalion commanders down to ranks, are beginning
to ask what we _did_ fight for. The few weeks I've been in civil
life haven't enlightened me. After passing through that long trance
of dirt, danger and drudgery, men do want to know. Some people,
quite a lot, regard it as some sort of spectacular game at which our
side won. They seem to be rather eager for the distribution of
prizes. And there aren't any prizes. I don't think there will be.
Nothing but bigger taxes, higher prices--a hell of a struggle to pay
the bill--labor demanding to know why, after having fought a war and
won it, they must come home and get to work and pay the bill. Oh, we
won the war right enough, but it's a Pyrrhic victory. The
significance of that long-drawn wrangle at Versailles doesn't seem
obvious to many people."
"People--people in the mass," Mary said scornfully, "are just sheep.
One big sheep says 'Baa!' and all the lesser sheep chorus 'Baa!'
defiantly or plaintively, as the case may be."
Rod laughed. He got up from his chair.
"Where's that club bag? Oh, I see it. That sheep thing reminds me.
I heard Andy Hall use that simile once, and I came across the same
observation in a book I bought on the train."
He came back to his wife with a volume in his hand.
"Have you seen this novel?" he asked. "If not you must read it.
Some one who knows this country and loves it and understands it has
been putting a lot of things very clearly and sympathetically in a
book. Some of it is real enough to have happened, and some of the
characters seem like people I know. There's truth and power in the
thing. There's a man or two in it who feels about the war and
political flapdoodle and tricky manipulation of affairs and a lot of
current skulduggery, very much as a good many able men I know feel
about it all. There is some corking good description, some fine
characterization, and some almost brilliant writing. Part of the
scene is laid on the B.C. coast. It's so vivid it made me homesick.
Have you seen it?"
He handed her the book. Mary opened it, let the leaves riffle
through her fingers, turned back to the title page.
"'The Swirl,'" she read. "A trifle reminiscent of Gissing's 'The
Whirlpool' but none the worse for that, I daresay. By Margaret
Pierce. Yes, I've read it," she said soberly, "read it over and over
till my eyes ached, and it seemed like words, words, words. You see
this happens to be my book, Rod."
"Eh?" he looked blankly at her.
"I wrote it," she explained. "Mary--diminutive of Margaret.
Pierce--what is the purpose of a thorn? Hence Mary Thorn--Margaret
Pierce. I didn't particularly like to camouflage my identity. But I
wanted to say a lot of things which coming from Margaret Pierce would
be considered on their merits, and which coming from Mrs. Roderick
Sylvester Norquay might arouse local misconceptions. I wanted to be
unhampered by family considerations. I wanted to express my inner
convictions about various aspects of life as it has been unfolding to
me for a long time. So I hoisted a _nom de plume_. It would be
strange if you didn't find a resemblance to persons and things and
people you know. Yet there isn't a photograph there--just traits and
habits of thought, inhibitions and passions that are common to
humanity in general. I'm not a propagandist. I don't know that this
book, or any other books I may write, has a message, unless it is the
oblique inference that stupidity and ignorance and intolerance are
more fatal than guns. I'm not so much concerned with isms as I am
with--well, with what Joseph Conrad meant when he wrote: 'Fashions in
monsters do change; but the truth of humanity goes on forever,
unchangeable and inexhaustible in the variety of its disclosures.'
You really think," she ended a bit hurriedly, "it's good?"
"Good?" Rod echoed. He sat down on the arm of her chair. "Of course
it's good. Didn't I come lugging it home as a find?"
He looked down at the imprint.
"New York, eh? Did you have any trouble placing it?"
"Well, yes--and no," she said. "One publisher wrote me saying that
it was work of a high order but he felt sure the time was scarcely
opportune for its publication--unless I cared to modify certain
passages which seemed to cast a doubt on the great moral forces
underlying the war. That's almost verbatim. Another said that he
personally enjoyed reading it very much, but was sure it would fail
to get a hearing in view of the present demand for tales completely
devoid of war atmosphere.
"It is amusing sometimes to try and trace motive and action," Mary
smiled. "A publisher wants to publish books that will sell. Nearly
every one is affected directly and indirectly by the war. Therefore
the publisher concludes people want to ignore the war, or that they
will uniformly recoil from a given aspect of the war, even if it is
an individual attempt to interpret some obscure phase. War isn't the
theme of this book. It's incidental, just as the war is
incidental,--one of humanity's growing pains. Anyway, I found a
publisher. And it's getting a hearing, he tells me. People _are_
reading it."
"You've found yourself," Rod said a little wistfully. "You've got
the vision, and the power to embody your vision so that it stands out
clear. I couldn't get it. I tried; I wanted to capture the
spaciousness, the drama, the unquenchable spirit of the pioneers.
And I couldn't. What I wanted to do seems mere inconsequential
romancing beside the vivid reality you've achieved. How did you do
it, wonder-woman? How do you know with such certainty what men think
and feel, and how they can be beasts and heroes, groping blindly
toward certain ends? Where did you get the astonishing grasp of
those obscure motives which so often actuate people? You ought to
write the history of the Norquay family, Mary. There's a theme for a
novel. First the pioneer adventurer, courageous, determined,
resourceful, infinitely patient about his foundation laying, seeing
clearly what he was about. Then his son following in his father's
footsteps. The grandson expanding upon the solidly laid groundwork,
elaborating the original plan, acquiring land and timber, increasing
the tradition of permanence. Then a generation that stands pat on
its hereditary past, accepting wealth and culture as a birthright,
things irrevocably bestowed upon a superior class, as a condition
fixed and final for all time. Last of all a generation where the
eldest son and heir is only a passionate, superficially glossed
animal, who expends his fierce energy on women and financial
undertakings, proving eminently successful with both. The second
son, the well-balanced, sound-minded one, killed in the war. The
youngest, a dreamy, sensitive youth, coming back from the war with a
cracked heart and most of his romantic illusions about great men,
great nations, and great idealistic undertakings knocked into a
cocked hat--with no task ahead of him worth an effort, with his
keenest consciousness that of a world where all stability has gone by
the board; a tired, disillusioned man who wants only to sit and
think, and to be grateful that if everything else seems pinchbeck
there's still a woman who is eighteen-carat gold to him. I don't
quite see how you would make a pattern out of such a snarl--but--"
He didn't finish the sentence. Mary's arms drew him down to her with
a fierce, protecting pressure. She held him, whispering tensely:
"What have they done to you? I can't bear to hear you talk like
that. It isn't true. Life hasn't gone sour. We mustn't let it. We
can make it good--we must. One daren't falter. One must not brood.
We're over the top of a long hill that has tried us both. Well,
then--'Courage, the devil is dead!' Eh, Roderick Dhu? Love's
_something_ to hold fast by, isn't it?"
CHAPTER XX
For a few days Rod went about a little, picking up threads of old
acquaintance with places and people. The uneasy consciousness of a
heart which might fail him at any moment troubled him now and then.
Once or twice he felt that strange faltering. But it did not
stop--not quite. He wondered if he had passed a crisis that first
night at home when he felt himself locked in a grapple with death
itself. And so he was very careful. It was easy to be apathetic, to
be completely acquiescent. Nothing, he thought, would ever again
make his heart swell with such repressed passion as the sights and
sounds of the western front, the carnival of non-combatants in Paris
and London, the bitterness with which for so long he had seen the
agonies and endurances and destructiveness of war as sheer
waste--blind, blundering waste, the offspring of cupidity wedded to
arrogant ignorance.
He wanted to forget what could not be changed. Here it was easy to
forget, at least to thrust it all into the background, now that he
was home. For a time he would rest. When his heart strengthened he
would take stock of his resources and move with determined purpose in
some direction, toward some as yet indefinite goal.
In the meantime, free from military discipline, interminable parades,
orders, red tape that fettered the hands of initiative and bound up a
man's mouth so that he needed only two phrases in his vocabulary,
"Yes, sir" and "No, sir," he went about in his native city observing,
noting, listening in clubs, homes, on the streets, in hotel lobbies
where he went to meet other men who had just come back.
If the landscape endured and the outstanding architectural features,
many things had changed, contrary to his first glad impression, were
still changing at an accelerated pace in this winter of 1919. In
four years and a half his native city, when he came to examine it
closely, presented a transformed physiognomy. Its lifeblood, people
and money, flowed in a heavier stream through complicated arteries.
Vancouver was bigger and better, he heard on every hand. New
industries, shipyards, shipping, more elaborate affairs. The war had
done a great deal for British Columbia, an elderly banker naïvely
remarked to him.
Rod conceded that it probably had. But it had also done something
"to" British Columbia. He couldn't say just what. It wasn't clear
enough in his mind. But he could feel it. Or perhaps it was only
himself. He could not be sure. He could dimly apprehend a
difference. His world was changed. Phil was dead. Grandfather
Norquay took his long sleep beside other dead Norquays in the plot at
Hawk's Nest. Grove flourished largely, a scintillating comet,
streaming across the moneyed spaces.
Rod sometimes paused after dark in some distant part of the city to
look at the flamboyant sign with a speculative interest, without the
old resentment, but with a shade of disapproval. Grove was become a
big man--Rod couldn't escape that conclusion--a big man in his chosen
field. Scarcely a day but some newspaper quoted him. He figured in
local print co-equal with the Peace Conference and the latest
authentic report of Lenine's death. Nearly nine years now of waxing
great in the financial firmament. Grove bade fair to win greater
fame and fortune than that old forebear of his who beat around the
Horn to found a family in the wilderness because the land filled his
eyes with pleasure and his soul with peace.
Would old Roderick have found pleasure and profit in discounting
notes, clipping coupons at so much per cent, buying and selling bonds
and mortgages, squeezing little debtors and bolstering up big ones
for a consideration? Rod smiled at the quaint notion.
But he had evidently underestimated Grove's capacity. Grove had his
community behind him. His finger was in every pie. His skill at
extracting plums was envied and admired.
"He's what they mean when they talk about the greatness of our
country," Rod thought cynically. "That sort of thing."
Oliver Thorn had sold his timber to the Norquay Estate and retired to
live in a cottage on the Capilano slope fronting on the city, where
he could, as he told Rod, spend his last years seeing the sun rise
from behind the Coast range and set behind the far, blue rampart of
Vancouver Island. John P. Wall, Grove's father-in-law, had made a
fortune in building wooden ships and another in airplane spruce.
Wall's youngest son had been killed overseas, but his eldest had been
too precious an asset to the community to risk his life in war.
Isabel was a beauty, still unmarried. (It seemed to Rod an
astonishing thing when Mary told him Isabel was her dearest friend.)
The Deanes and Richstons flourished, with one or two gaps in the
younger ranks. They had grown richer with the war, vastly more sure
of themselves, setting a pace in the social parade that lesser folk
found hard to follow.
There were two avenues open along which Rod could saunter to exercise
this detached observance of his own people: the homes which
automatically opened to him, and brief daily contacts with men
downtown. Socially things seemed a little more feverish, people just
a trifle keener in the futile pursuit of futile diversion, the
dancing just a little more frankly sensuous, the drinking a little
freer, the talk looser. If one couldn't or wouldn't keep the pace
one was "slow." It amused Rod and it vaguely troubled him. These
people seemed so remote from so many things of importance that
pressed close on them, matters that constituted both a warning and a
threat. Downtown it was worse. Uptown rested on downtown. The
economic link--the strongest link in the invisible chain--shackled
them together whether they knew it or not.
And downtown was frankly on the make, with the most shrewd and
far-seeing already privately dubious about a let-down in the swift
flow of affairs that followed the close of European hostilities.
Perhaps it had always been the same. He had not been aware how
consistently material, how harshly practical, the world of commerce
must be. But he couldn't get used to hearing them tot up Canada's
share in the reparations, the gloating on what enlarged African and
Asiatic possession meant to trade, their chesty pride in having swept
the Hun from the seas (as if they had done it in their office
chairs). He couldn't get used to that, because it was invariably
accompanied by an undertone of growling about confiscatory taxation,
enormous pension bills.
Here and there some elderly hardshell solemnly viewed with alarm
three items debited to the war: first, the growing demand of labor
for shorter hours, increased pay, and a voice in the conduct of
industries for which they furnished the motive power; second, the
Bolshevik upheaval in Russia which constituted a horrific menace to
the sacred rights of private property; third, the military strength
and insistent demands of France.
The war as a business proposition! Rod got up and walked away from a
group of men in a club who rather vindictively discussed these
important phases of the European _débâcle_. If that were
all--commerce--shipping--iron--coal--territory--indemnities. If that
were all! His heart wouldn't stand his talking to those bankers and
merchants and manufacturers and brokers as he wished to talk. He
left them. What was held as piracy and brigandage for the individual
became somehow the unchallenged privilege of a nation, if only the
scale of operations were large enough. The Barbary corsairs were at
least open in their deeds. They flew the Jolly Roger and their
victims walked the plank without ado. Nor did the pirates get their
fighting done by proxy and then grumble because they found it
expensive.
Yes the world, his world, had changed. Of all that he had known
through youth and early manhood only his wife--like the sea and the
mountains--remained steadfast, a desirable reality. Now, more than
ever, he was filled with gratitude and wonder that she had stood
loyal, devoted, staunch as a rock in the bewildering flux of a period
that seemed to him, in occasional somber moods, to have quickened the
disintegration of men and the cherished works of men to a degree that
made him apprehensive.
This couldn't be the reality of things, he assured himself. He had
somehow got them twisted. His vision and his understanding must be
askew. He had to stop pondering about it all. It was difficult for
him to do this. He had always been a thinking being. That faculty
had cursed him in France. On duty in trenches, in action, in long
lonely vigils, his mind had hammered him with insistent questions and
speculations on the why and the wherefore of human activities. Many
an answer that came like the answer to a sum saddened him. One
should not see too clearly.
He found it so now. But at least he, as an individual, was not too
deeply involved to stand clear of all this feverish hurrying and
scurrying to nowhere after nothing. There must be something a man
could do in the world that would bring him dividends in satisfaction
of accomplishment, as well as dollars. For him, because his forbears
had been both adventurous and far-seeing, there was no immediate
economic pressure. He had no great responsibilities, beyond himself
and Mary and their boy. If he needed more than the minor share which
he held in the Norquay estate, he could surely get it without bowing
his head and twisting his moral sense awry before the Moloch of
commerce.
The more he saw of town the more he desired to turn his back on it.
Not because it was town but because for so long he had had his fill
of noise and motion. To sit amid a great silence, the strange,
restful hush of a forest, in the shadow of great mountains,--that
calm, secure peace; to hear only the sighing of wind in high
interlaced branches, the muted song of running water, the whistle of
birds' wings,--that was his wish.
Practical wisdom forbade. There was really one place where he longed
to be with Mary and his son, and they could not go there. Hawk's
Nest was no longer his home. It was Grove's. His road and Grove's
diverged too sharply for him to go there even as a guest. Elsewhere
they could not find comfort at that season. It was a winter of sleet
and snow, of alternate frosts and rains. A half-sick man couldn't go
camping like a pioneer with a woman and a child. And it was not
camping as such that Rod longed for, he knew, as the spacious
background and comfortable security of his birthplace.
Whereupon, as a sensible man eschews the unattainable, he put it out
of his mind. In the spring,--he and Mary lay awake nights planning
what they would do in the spring.
He came home from one of these desultory excursions abroad a little
before dinner one evening.
"Your father has phoned twice since five o'clock," Mary told him.
"He asked to have you call him up when you came in."
Rod got his connection.
"You telephoned, pater," he said. "Was it anything of importance?"
"Well, yes. Can you come down to the club after dinner, Rod? If not
to-night, then by nine in the morning?"
"I'll come to-night. Say eight o'clock."
He hung up the receiver. As he got ready for dinner his mind was
divided between the playful squeals of his son romping in the living
room and the almost plaintive note in his father's voice over the
wire. Norquay senior had changed with everything else. He had aged.
Losing Phil had been a blow. But he was a proud man--and he had two
sons left. That grief had not put care lines in his face, or caused
the abstracted brooding into which he sometimes relapsed. Rod
understood, of course, that the war had completed the break-up of the
old family life at Hawk's Nest which Grove's embarkation on a career
had begun, or Grove's personality had begun. His father admitted
that he no longer cared to live at Hawk's Nest.
"One doesn't like to be alone all the time," he had put it quite
simply. "Too many ghosts haunt those corridors for an old man. And
at one's age one doesn't care to set up an establishment in town.
When any of the others find occasion in summer, I go to Hawk's Nest.
Otherwise I live at the club."
Yet the place was kept up. Stagg, the butler, his wife who ranked as
housekeeper, a cook, two maids, and two gardeners held a sinecure.
One could, Rod assumed, step in and find Hawk's Nest quite as of old.
He came back to his father. What bothered him? It couldn't be money
or affairs. The Norquay estate was rock-ribbed. Timber, land,
gilt-edged securities. It must simply be that he was getting old and
lonely. When a man is past sixty and all his life has been spent in
a well-appointed home, surrounded by a fairly numerous family and
still more numerous relatives, he can hardly reconcile himself to the
empty shell of a house, or the artificial atmosphere of even the most
elaborately appointed club. Rod felt sorry for him. But if Grove
hadn't failed to carry on the family tradition, Hawk's Nest would
still be the year-around rendezvous of the clan, as it had always
been. No effect without a cause. Rod put aside the thought that his
elder brother could be blamed for a great deal if one chose to be
critical.
His father sat smoking a cigar in a chair that commanded the club
entrance, and he led the way to his rooms as soon as Rod appeared.
He took some papers off a table and sat fussing with them. He didn't
seem inclined to talk at first, beyond a few casual remarks. Rod
waited. He knew his father. He felt that something was
coming,--something that rested with a great weight on the elder man's
mind. Since Rod came home there seemed to have arisen between them a
more keenly sympathetic understanding than had ever existed before.
It wasn't a matter of words. It was a feeling. Rod divined
intuitively that his father had some deep trouble to share with him.
He could not have defined any reason for this belief. It existed as
a belief. In that conviction he waited.
"Five years ago," Norquay senior began abruptly, "I looked forward to
sitting back with a pipe and slippers and a book while my sons
carried on in the old way. For a hundred and thirty years, to speak
precisely, we have gone ahead solidifying our position, doing well by
ourselves and all connected with us. We seemed--as a family--to have
acquired a permanence, a solidarity, beyond that of any family in
this province. We have become a sort of institution. We were here
first. Of the exploring adventurers, we were the first to take root.
You know the family history. We have helped to make this country
what it is. We have acquired a great deal of material power, yet I
do not recall that we have ever abused it. In each generation we
have had a lot of faithful service, and we have had it because we
have scrupulously observed some form of obligation to those who
served us. Men have trusted us as being persons entirely
trustworthy. We have not been Shylocks. We have not been arrogant.
We have never been greedy for more."
Five years earlier Rod would have assented, as a matter of course.
Now he stirred slightly in his chair, as his father paused, and
observed dispassionately:
"Would you include Grove in that last?"
"I am coming to Grove," Norquay senior answered. "To arrive at Grove
by a logical sequence is the reason for this summing-up of ourselves.
A few weeks before your grandfather died he said to me, '_My_ father
once prophesied that Hawk's Nest would some day hatch out an eagle.
What's the last hatching? Sparrows. Sparrows!' Quite apropos of
nothing. We hadn't even been talking. He grew very uncertain in his
mind at the last. A great age, Rod. Nearly ninety. He scarcely
comprehended the war. Grove was there with a house party. I think
their high spirits annoyed him. Sparrows!"
He contemplated the rug with a fixed frown.
"I wonder if he were right," he said at last.
"I must confess," he continued, "that I have spent my life in a state
of inertia compared to his, and to the energy his father worked with.
They were actively constructive. Looking back, I seem to have done
nothing but maintain a sort of _status quo_. Indeed, lacking any
necessity or any great personal ambition, with a disinclination for
politics, a distaste for anything in the way of business outside of
estate affairs, there seemed nothing upon which to expend great
energy. I've moved along pleasant lines of least resistance.
Looking back, it doesn't seem so satisfactory. Avoiding boredom,
keeping up a moderate revenue without being a taskmaster to
labor--that about expresses it.
"It seemed to me, however, that my sons must inherit some of the
abounding energy, the creativeness, that I somehow lacked. Your
eldest brother, whom you were named after, was a vigorous,
high-spirited boy. That venturesomeness resulted in his death at an
early age. That left Grove next in line. For many years I watched
the three of you develop from sturdy youngsters into young men.
Phil, it seemed to me, was something like myself. You were always a
puzzle, an odd sort of boy, somewhat given to precocious remarks and
unexpected actions. Lovable, but erratic, probably brilliant but not
entirely dependable, I used sometimes to say to myself: How wide one
can go of the mark.
"So you see it was natural that Grove, being the eldest, should be
looked to for able carrying on of that which has become a tradition
since old Roderick outlined his plan to hold compactly for the entire
family that which he had built up out of nothing himself.
"It is a good plan. I have no fault to find with it. The stability,
the working power of a large fortune is always depleted by being
broken into fragments by division among each generation. The Norquay
estate, as he outlined it in his journal, would be a tree ample
enough to shelter all under its branches, so long as the trunk was
kept intact.
"And it seemed to me Grove had all the qualifications to carry on
with honor and profit. He had personality. He had energy and
resource. He had ambition, which determined him on a career. I took
his ability for granted; his character as a sure inheritance. His
faults I conceded as the faults of lusty young manhood, minor
failings to be put away in the face of responsibility.
"Yet you and Phil never had such convictions about your brother.
Why?"
He paused on the interrogation.
"His weaknesses seemed fundamental. To us some of the things he did
were despicable. He did things we would have been ashamed to do.
Where his appetites and passions and desires were concerned, he had
no consideration for any one or anything, nor any scruple about what
he did if it suited him to do it--and it was in his power. That was
very clear to both Phil and myself. That was how he seemed to us.
We used to wonder why you never had any inkling of what we considered
his real character--or lack of it."
Rod was in no mood to be charitable, to mince words, to evade a frank
answer to the direct question.
His father pondered briefly.
"You were right and I was wrong," he observed sadly. "All wrong.
Phil put himself on record before he went overseas. He warned me not
to trust Grove too far. It angered me at the time. It made our
parting cool. That's one of my keenest regrets. He was right; you
were both right. How can a man make such a blunder in reading his
own son? Perhaps because he was his son, I have prided myself on a
knowledge of men, too. Ah, well."
He nursed his chin in one palm.
"The Norquay Trust is insolvent," he announced presently. "Gutted,
looted from within. It is about to topple over with a resounding
crash. I have an outline of the position here," he ruffled the
papers in his hand. "It seems incredible, but it is true."
"You're involved? The estate is involved, eh?" Rod asked calmly. It
seemed nowise incredible to him. It seemed, in fact, an entirely
logical outcome--unlimited power in uncertain hands, increasing
momentum, a grand smash. There was not a single element of the
unexpected. He had anticipated such a finale. So had Phil.
"Not technically. Not yet."
"Very well. Let it smash," Rod said indifferently. "Let him pick
himself up out the debris and take stock of himself. May do him
good."
"If that were all. But it isn't so simple," his father sighed.
"Don't you see, Rod? Our name, the prestige of the family, the
confidence of the public in us as well-known, wealthy people has been
the chief foundation on which this tottering Colossus was built. A
great many people of whom we never heard, as well as our friends and
families to whom we are related by blood and marriage, have put their
money into this. It means loss to all, complete ruin to many, I'm
afraid. If it were merely a question of Grove--"
He made a gesture of dismissal.
"But it isn't," he went on. "In the public eye and mind we stand or
fall as a family. We have a reputation for integrity. If one of the
family trades on that, the rest of us can't escape the consequences
of his acts. I gave Grove his head and encouraged him, and I can't
shirk my individual responsibility. I have no knowledge of a Norquay
ever shirking an obligation. I'm an old man. I may not have many
years left. I'll admit self-interest. I feel that I must straighten
this thing out so that no one will ever say with an angry sneer that
we saved our own skins after making a mess of theirs. The reason I
asked you to come and see me to-night was to know if you will stand
by me and help me see it through? It's got to be done."
"There's only one answer to that, isn't there, pater?" Rod said
slowly. "I've outgrown any active antagonism toward Grove. It was
more contempt than antagonism, except for the time he went out of his
way to annoy my wife. At the same time I wouldn't lift a finger to
save him from ever so hard a cropper. Only if you put it as
something to be done for the family reputation--that probably means
as much to me as it does to you. I'm willing to undertake anything I
can handle. No use banking on me too strong, though. I don't know
either business or finance."
"Half our wealth is in standing timber," his father replied, "and you
know timber. Phil told me that you knew more of logging and loggers
than he would ever learn. The woods will have to be our salvation.
That will be your job, Rod. You've been through a hard mill. I wish
you could have had a long rest. But this matter won't delay. I know
law and I know something of affairs. I have had accountants checking
up this infernal mess. Dorothy's husband has agreed to take charge.
It will take nearly all our available capital to plug holes. The
important end, the producing end, must be our timber. That I'll
leave to you. We must begin operations at the first break in the
weather. You'll have an absolutely free hand."
The ghost of a smile flitted across Rod's face. A free hand to
ravage and destroy the forest to make money which would be poured
like sand into a rathole! And he uncertain of any definite tenure on
life. What of his heart? That overstrained, vital part of
him,--which was organically perfect but functionally weak. A heart
that was slacking up now, so that he rose and paced back and forth
across the floor to stir it up.
"Well," he said at last, halting in his stride. "That's understood."
His father nodded.
"It may not be so bad as it seems," he said, with the first hopeful
note Rod had heard him utter. "Though I'm doubtful of quarreling
with figures. Grove hasn't been dishonest. That's the only
redeeming feature of the nasty mess. But his associates have. I
didn't think it of them. But I have moral if not legal proof of
their crookedness--cunning financial piracy on a considerable scale.
I may be able to make 'em disgorge, and I may not. They've feathered
their nests and left Grove, the poor fool, holding the empty sack.
The intent is to throw the thing into a receiver's hands. But I'm
prepared to checkmate that. There's to be a directors' meeting
to-morrow at ten-thirty. I'd like you to go with me. You may find
it illuminating. Suppose I pick you up on my way?"
"Why not drive out and have breakfast with us at eight or half-past?"
Rod suggested.
"Better still. I'll do that, thanks."
He had never been a demonstrative man. But he shook hands at the
door, and Rod's fingers were still tingling with the grip when he
walked down the stairs.
As the wheels of the retreating taxi crunched the gravel on his
driveway, Rod stood a moment with his foot on the first step. The
night was clear, tinged with frost. Above the city roofs that
curious lucence from a million lights dimmed the stars. And as his
gaze embraced the down-town silhouette he marked for the first time
from the house in which he lived the blazing sign of the Norquay
Trust, as if it were something from which he could not escape,--and
for a moment he was tempted to a childish shaking of his fist at that
glowing emblem of a corroded and tottering edifice.
CHAPTER XXI
Rod followed his father along a strip of thick carpet laid over a
floor tiled in precise geometric patterns, looking about him at the
dukes and duchesses of the counting room administering their high
estate of correspondence and ledgers. Delicately fingered
typewriters and computing machines woke faint, staccato tappings in
that lofty room. He passed a row of ground-glass partitioned
cubicles, each gilt-lettered with the name of some petty satrap of
higher degree than those without such privacy. There was a decorous
stir, an air of activity, persons moving about from desk to desk,
discreet consultation. If, as an institution, it was moribund, coma
had not set in. Or perhaps the stir and bustle was but the
accentuated flutter of a financial heart struggling to force
impoverished blood through a body approaching dissolution. He smiled
at the fancy.
The directors' room, specially fitted up for deliberate and august
discussion, opened off a mezzanine floor overlooking the main body of
the offices. Norquay senior led the way. They left their hats and
coats in a cloak room. Without ceremony, Mr. Norquay pushed open a
door and entered.
They were a few minutes early, but they were not first. Grove sat at
one end of a huge oval table, a massive creation of mahogany
surrounded by a dozen equally massive chairs. He was flanked by his
father-in-law and Arthur Deane.
The capacity for imagining a man in relation to his circumstances and
surroundings was one which neither war, wounds, nor the passage of
time had atrophied in Rod. This had given him a mental picture of
his brother as a haggard man facing ruin with some degree of
trepidation. He saw at once that this was a misconception. He
perceived the well-remembered features. A cigar outthrust from one
corner of Grove's mouth. There were faint, pouchy discolorations
under his eyes. He was older, and he showed his age. Otherwise he
had changed less than Rod expected. He had simply become a
thicker-bodied edition of his earlier self. Rod marked the familiar
malicious flicker in his eyes upon recognition, and wondered with an
inner sardonic amusement how Grove would take this invasion of his
holy of holies by a younger brother whose parting act had been to
inflict the severest bodily punishment Grove had ever suffered in his
life.
But Grove merely nodded with a casual "how d'do, pater," and a
careless "Hello, Rod," and motioned them to chairs. Thereafter he
sat quiescent. Only the too-frequent puffing at his cigar, an
occasional aimless movement of the hand resting on the table,
heralded a strain. Beside him John Wall sat with hands clasped over
his rotund paunch, impassive as a Chinaman. Deane pencilled
interminable figures on a pad.
At intervals other men came in. A hushed atmosphere seemed the most
outstanding quality of the high-ceilinged, beautifully paneled room.
Voices sank to discreet murmurings there.
A moon-faced clock against the north wall struck a soft, silvery
chime. Grove straightened up.
"Meeting'll come to order," he slurred the words. "This, as you
know, is a special meeting called to consider a difficult position.
I have a report and some figures for which I desire your attention."
He paused a moment to glance about the ring of faces,--faces with
bushy eyebrows and heavy jowls and many lines about the eyes, faces
ruddy, saturnine, bearded, mustached. Hard and watchful faces
converted by long practice into serviceable masks to hide feeling.
Save Rod and his brother, not one was under fifty. Wary old birds,
Rod thought, hard--hard as nails.
They represented collectively a sum in excess of ten millions.
Grove looked finally at Rod, then at his father. The tip of his
tongue flicked across his full lips.
"This is a directors' meeting," he said. "It is slightly irregular
for outsiders to be present. I--"
"If you can think of nothing more irregular than that, you may
proceed," Norquay senior broke in. "I desire my son to be present."
John P. Wall rumbled deep in his broad chest.
"'S all right. 'S all in the family, Grove. Go ahead."
Grove began to read from a cluster of typed sheets. Ponderous
phrases, heavy with the special terminology, the many-syllabled terms
in which commerce and finance wraps its meaning when it seeks formal
expression. Phrasing as difficult to the uninitiate as 'The Critique
of Pure Reason' is to the average freshman. Fundings, refundings,
liquid assets, unrealizable commitments, debit and credit balances,
mingled with references to the European situation, the New York
situation, exchange, debentures, interminable strings of figures. It
created a hopeless confusion in Rod's mind. There was so much
language and so many figures. It was not a living, colorful language
such as he cared for, such as could move him by its subtlety or
vigor. He gave over trying to follow Grove through the maze and
watched the faces of these men of affairs. Evidently it was clear
enough to them. He observed slight liftings of eyebrows,
communicative glances, fixed unwavering attention, comprehending
nods. But their faces remained Sphinxlike.
Grove finished. He leaned back in his chair. For a moment his guard
dropped.
"There it is," he snarled at them.
A short, full-bodied man at the lower end of the table said in a
pained tone:
"There is really nothing in that statement that we don't know, that
we haven't discussed. As a result of mismanagement and unfortunate
circumstances, the Norquay Trust Company is insolvent. The question
is, what are we, the board of directors, going to do about it?"
"Liquidate--liquidate, I say," rumbled a man whom Rod recognized as
the head of a well-known wholesale firm, a well-known man about
town,--a gentleman with a taste for old, very old Scotch whisky, and
a penchant for young, very young women. "Liquidate and be done with
it," he repeated ponderously.
"How are you going to liquidate a two-million-dollar liability with
assets of a million or less?" Arthur Deane inquired in his cold,
precise voice.
An old man across the table, with horn-rimmed glasses low on the
bridge of his nose, leaned forward.
"Is it as bad as that?" he inquired indifferently. "I wasn't sure."
"A careful analysis of the statement shows about that," Deane
answered.
"We've got to get out from under, that's all," Bartley Richston broke
into speech for the first time. He was quite unmoved, matter of
fact. "No use blinking facts. As a going concern the Norquay Trust
is on its last legs. How long," he demanded of Grove, "can you carry
on as you are? Suppose it got about that you're shaky and all these
four per cent, depositors demand their money? How long would you
last?"
"About half a day," Grove answered sullenly. "We can't stand a run.
Damn it, you know that, Richston. I've told you a dozen times in the
last month."
"Then a receivership is the only solution. A receivership and a
winding-up."
Grove sprang to his feet.
"By the Lord," he cried in a passion, and his fist struck the table
with a thud, "you shan't sink me like that. I tell you this thing
can be pulled through. You've all made a fat thing out of it.
You've got to back me up now. No use saying you can't. I know what
your cash balances are in bank--every one of you. I know what
Victory bonds you hold. This slump won't last. You've got to come
through."
"Be sensible, Norquay," Arthur Deane put in. "No use throwing good
money after bad. The war's over. The reaction's set in. The day of
the quick turn and the long profit is past. It is unfortunate--but
other concerns have gone bankrupt. It is not exceptional."
Burrows, the short, stout man at the lower end of the table, grunted
audibly.
"I make a motion," he said, "that our solicitors be authorized to
appear in court and ask for a winding-up order."
"Second the motion," Richston snapped.
"You shan't," Grove declared hoarsely. Tiny sweat-beads began to
stand out on his forehead. "What's got into the lot of you? You're
running to cover like a lot of whipped dogs. All the thing needs is
fifty or sixty thousand from each of us to carry on until the assets
that we hold recover value. What if the war is over? Timber and
mining and pulp and transportation go on. This isn't a corner
grocery to be closed up as soon as business slacks off."
"You are wrong," Richston informed him. "This business does not
differ essentially from the corner grocery--except in scope. It was
undertaken to make money. It no longer does so. Considering the
state its affairs have arrived it, it can never be made to do so.
Therefore let it be wound up--at once. We waste time in useless
talk. Let us agree on the motion, and act."
"Oh, yes, you're willing," Grove flung at him. "You've had a good
many slices out of the melon. What about our trust accounts? What
about our depositors?"
"Circumstances are too strong for us," Richston replied
imperturbably. "We can see now that accepting deposits was a
mistake. We should never have undertaken private banking. It's
unfortunate, I'll admit. I suppose there'll be a noise in the papers
and all that sort of thing. But it isn't criminal to fail in
business. Be sensible, Norquay. Step out of it as gracefully as
possible. You're not faced with ruin. No more are we. It would be
folly for us to get more deeply involved than we already are. Let it
go. What's the Limited Liability Act for?"
Sagacious nods animated the several heads. Grove towered above them
impotent, his face red with anger, shadowed by a trace of fear, his
look indicating momentary bewilderment at attack from an unexpected
quarter. There lifted a low confusion of voices. Several speaking
at once. Querulous complaining. Rumbles of mismanagement, muttered
disclaimers of responsibility.
Rod's father rose slowly to his feet. His thin, smooth-shaven face
betrayed no particular feeling. Only Rod, who knew the faintest
indication of his every mood, saw that his eyes burned, that there
was a repressed disgust and scorn in them. He rapped on the table
with his knuckles.
"Before you prematurely explode this well-laid mine," he enunciated
clearly, "I wish to make a brief statement. My son, whom you evince
a tendency to blame, is a heavy stockholder. I myself hold a limited
interest, but between us we do have control. I do not wish to offer
excuses for Mr. Grove Norquay. He bears his own responsibility. I
am aware, however, that there is other responsibility for the
insolvency of this concern. I have perfunctorily attended but few
directors' meetings. But I have my own sources of information. For
some weeks I have foreseen this move. It is just such an action as
might be expected of a group of men like yourselves. Yourselves"--a
bitter gibing note crept into his voice--"most of you liars, and half
of you thieves."
The masks dropped. Those various elderly, respectable gentlemen
gasped and rose to the attack. Their old voices, some thin and
reedy, some thick with indignation, were leveled at him. They
demanded apologies. They thumped the table. Their voices created a
hubbub.
"I will not be insulted."
"I demand a retraction."
"Anybody who says I'm a thief is a damned liar!" Etc., etc.
Rod sat back, an onlooker at this minor Bedlam. He was an outsider,
and looking in from the outside it made him, figuratively speaking,
just a little bit sick. If this sort of thing was the accompaniment
of big business and finance when it fell on evil days--He felt a mild
sort of disgust with these yammering old men. He perceived that most
of them were intent only on saving their financial hides. That they
were callously indifferent to what happened, so long as it did not
happen to them.
He marked also that Richston manifested no resentment at his father's
personal thrust. Deane muttered to himself. His face was flushed.
Richston only sneered, leaning back in his chair. Of them all John
P. Wall remained unperturbed, his hands folded over his abdomen,
blandly inert. And Norquay senior rested his finger tips on the
table and looked at the sputtering, the gesticulations, the commotion
he had aroused.
They subsided into mutterings. All but Burrows. He rose on his
stodgy legs.
"I shall not remain here to be insulted," he announced with a
ludicrous simulation of dignity.
"Sit down," Norquay senior's voice popped like a whiplash. And
Burrows, after an uncertain glance about him for moral support,
resumed his chair.
"I have not finished," Rod's father continued. "I am not going to
reason with you. I am going to talk to you in the only language such
men as you can understand, and be moved by. It is nothing to you
that a thousand innocent people may be partially or wholly ruined by
your manipulations. But it happens that my name is involved in this
as well as my son and my money. I tell you flatly that if you
proceed to sink this financial galleon which you built and launched
and sailed on profitable voyages, and now propose to scuttle since
there is no more chance for loot--I tell you if you do this, that
three of you sitting at this table face the penitentiary. And, by
God, I'll see that you go there!"
He stopped. A chilly silence, in which Rod could hear the sharp
intake and slow exhalation of breath, seemed to hold them all fast.
"There has been mismanagement. Yes. There have also been illegal
transactions, criminal acts. They were well covered, but I dug them
up. I have had able men looking into the affairs of this corporation
for some time. I repeat, if you throw it into involuntary
liquidation, I will put at least three of you behind the bars."
To Rod it was like having a box seat at a melodrama. Again the masks
failed these men. His father had stung them twice. First with an
insult, then with a threat. They looked furtive; they seemed
apprehensive. They remained silent, glancing sidelong at each other.
All but John P. Wall. He took out a cigar, lit it very deliberately
after biting off the end, while his gaze traveled slowly about the
circle of perturbed faces. His own remained placid.
"What do you propose then, Norquay?" he asked casually.
"That we assess ourselves proportionately to replace the funds which
have been--dissipated. Appoint a new manager. Replace this board of
directors and carry on until such time as this concern can be wound
up with every obligation discharged."
Wall shook his head.
"No," he said calmly. "Far as I'm concerned--not a bean. I'm
through. Let 'er crash."
Sheeplike they followed his lead. They seemed to gather courage.
Their money was their lifeblood. They would not spill it lightly.
Other people's money, perhaps. Not their own.
They gathered voice. They protested that no sensible man would try
to bolster up a tottering business. Why should they risk large sums
when they could avoid risk by merely stepping aside?
"I can't step aside," Norquay senior answered them quietly. "You
wouldn't understand if I told you why. So you refuse, then? Very
well. I have told you what will follow an enforced receivership. I
stand on that."
He kept the same position, fingertips resting on the polished wood,
staring at them with open hostility, frank contempt. He remained
silent after reaching this impasse.
"We are no more anxious for a receivership and a public outcry over a
whopping failure than you are," Bartley Richston declared. "But
neither are we to be stampeded into sinking more money. It would be
lunacy. Most of us see clearly that to go ahead simply means a
bigger smash later on. This is no matter for sentiment. We are
practical men and we see no sound reason for making tremendous
sacrifices. As an alternative I would suggest--since you seem to
think, contrary to our judgment, that the Norquay Trust can be
resuscitated--that you take it over, lock, stock and barrel,
yourself. You can have my interest. I'm satisfied my shares aren't
worth the paper they're printed on. Then you can use your own
resources to bolster it up, and if you succeed any profit or glory
will be your own."
"Very well," Norquay senior agreed, very gently and--to Rod--quite
unexpectedly. "I will accept your shares, and your resignations. In
the usual manner you will elect in your places such men as I name.
Not to-morrow, nor next week, but now--at once. It is quarter to
eleven. There are clerks and telephones. I shall be back at a
quarter to twelve.
"Remember," he concluded harshly, "I am a wealthy man and not given
to idle threats. If any of you at any time now or in the future
takes a step by word or deed to precipitate a crisis which I am
trying to avoid--then I step aside. The funds I propose to use in
clearing up this mess of your making I shall then devote to seeing
that such of you as I can reach shall get your just deserts for
certain disbursements in connection with this trust company."
He turned his back on them. Rod followed him out to the cloak-room.
They put on their coats in silence, walked out to the street where a
closed motor car waited at the curb.
"The Western Club," Mr. Norquay told the chauffeur.
"I need a drink badly," he said to Rod, "to take the taste out of my
mouth. Well, we're committed to a devil of an undertaking, Rod.
You'll have to begin ripping the heart out our timber as soon as
there's a break in the weather. It is our only salvation. I have
turned everything else into cash the last few weeks against this
emergency. I never believed we should ever get into so tight a
corner. We've got a fighting chance. That's all."
"I wonder," Rod's mind envisaged certain passages in his
great-great-grandfather's journal, "if it's as tight a corner as the
Chilcotins had us in once or twice? There have been tight corners in
the past, pater. Do you suppose we have lost our capacity for hard
fighting? Gone soft? Eh?"
His father glanced at him. "God forbid," he said quietly, and
relapsed into silence.
"It is my fault," he sighed, "I should have fathomed Grove long ago.
Blind, blind! He's eaten up with vanity. Fancies himself a Napoleon
on the field of affairs. They've played shrewdly on that. I can see
it now. He doesn't realize yet what they've done to him, nor how.
He's been bewildered for weeks--and still confident that if he could
get enough money he could carry it off. A fool and his money! Power
in weak hands. They made a tool of him, a common tool. And we've
got to pay through the nose. There's no choice--unless we get down
to their level and run to cover like jackals."
"If you have proof of criminal acts, why don't you club them with
that; _make_ them disgorge?" Rod asked.
The older man shook his head.
"Only as a last resort. I'm not really sure I could. Moral
certainty is not legal proof. There are moneys loaned to companies
that are really dummies. It's rather complicated, and they are very
clever. I hardly expected to make them contribute funds. The most I
hoped for was to frighten them away from a receivership, force them
out of the thing quietly. I shrink from a public scandal. They
wouldn't, if they felt personally safe. They could make Grove a
proper scapegoat. No, I've done the best that can be done."
The machine stopped before the club entrance. They went up to
Norquay senior's rooms, and he produced a decanter and glasses and a
siphon of soda.
He drained his glass and set it down. He leaned forward in his
chair, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands.
"I have a strange feeling of some crisis at hand," he said gloomily.
"I have taken the ultimate precaution. Their game is stopped, I'm
sure. Still--I have that uneasy feeling. I'm not a fanciful man. I
never took much stock in premonitions. Childish. Nevertheless--I
can depend on you absolutely, Rod? Eh? If anything happens to me
you'll see this thing through? Because there's no one else--you
understand how I feel about it, don't you?"
"Yes, pater," Rod said quietly. "I understand. But nothing's going
to happen to you."
"I'm an old man," his father said. "I can't stand much strain.
What's the time? We'd better be getting back."
Sometime during the luncheon hour the original shareholders and
directors of the Norquay Trust Company completed the last task they
would ever perform in that capacity at that great table. They took
their scowling faces one by one from the room. The final exit was
made by John P. Wall, rotund-bellied, imperturbable, unmoved to the
last.
He paused in the doorway to relight his cigar.
"Well, Norquay senior," he said casually, "I have to admire your
nerve--but your judgment is damn poor. A man may lose his money.
Only a bloomin' idiot gives it away."
CHAPTER XXII
The three, father and two sons, remained seated at the table without
speaking for a few seconds after Wall's parting shot.
Then Grove heaved a sigh.
"Well, that's finished," he said with a return of his old briskness.
"I can't say that I like the idea of draining the estate to protect
this concern. But it won't take me long to pull it out of the hole.
It's really better to have it entirely in our own hands. I didn't
believe that crowd would ever get cold feet and leave me in the
lurch. Good riddance."
"No," his father answered slowly, "it is not finished. I want your
formal resignation as president. I want an assignment of your entire
holding in this corporation. At once. When you have done that, it
will be finished, so far as you're concerned."
"Pater! For God's sake! Have you gone mad?" Grove's eyes bulged.
His mouth opened roundly. "You're not going to put me out?"
"That is precisely my intention."
"But you can't. Nobody knows this thing as I do. It won't run
without me. I made it, I tell you. The complexity of--"
"You made it!" his father said wearily. "What have you made of it?
A hash. A shaky, unwieldy thing that will fall to pieces if I don't
plaster it up with money. Listen to me, Grove."
He leaned forward, pointing an index finger pistol-fashion, and Rod
had an impression of hearing sentence passed on a delinquent, a
sentence from which there could be no appeal. He had never thought
of his father as a harsh, merciless man. He was harsh now. There
was an acid bitterness in his tone.
"Listen to me," he repeated. "You have had your head for nine years.
You have sunk a sizable fortune in this, and it is nothing but a
gutted shell. You have not only wasted your own money, allowed these
men to filch it from you, but you have taken the money of people who
trusted you and put it in jeopardy. Not because you were a crook or
a thief--but because you associated with crooks and thieves without
recognizing them as such. You should have known what constitutes
business integrity. You have disregarded the highest obligation of a
public trust. So you can't remain in control here. You should never
have been in control. That was my mistake--for which we must all
pay--all of us, do you hear? I should have seen through you long
ago. Your private life is a scandal and your public life a sham.
You're morally as well as financially bankrupt. You've misled me.
I've had to learn for myself about things. You can be of no service
in clearing up the mess you've made. I can't trust you. I have no
confidence in you. So you must step aside."
Grove's chin sank on his breast.
"You ought to give me a chance," he mumbled. "I've made mistakes.
Everybody does. But nobody can handle this thing without me."
Rod marveled at the fixity of this idea.
"No," his father repeated inflexibly. "From now on you make your own
chances. Charlie Hale will take full charge here. You will be at
hand for a few days to give him such information as he requires. But
you will have no authority. I want this attended to this afternoon.
At once. See that you do it immediately."
Grove rose. He slouched through the doorway, all the sprightliness
gone out of him. Rod felt a sudden twinge of pity. Grove had been
broken on his own wheel. Norquay senior sat staring blankly at the
table. A wistful sadness shadowed his face. It pained Rod. He was
an old man and Grove was his son,--and he had been proud of him. Rod
understood.
"Don't take it to heart so, pater," he tried to cheer him. "It'll
come out all right."
"The limits of human folly are only exceeded by human blindness," his
father answered moodily, "and sometimes it is a little difficult to
adjust one's vision to a merciless flash of light."
He sat tapping his fingertips on the polished wood.
"I really wanted you with me for moral support this afternoon, I
think, Rod," he confessed, with a faint smile. "I'm sure it has been
illuminating, if somewhat disagreeable. I think all the fireworks
are touched off. Now I shall be here all afternoon with my solicitor
attending to dry business matters. So I won't keep you. There are
certain things I want to talk over with you, but to-morrow or another
day will do as well."
Rod left the Trust building and walked along Hastings Street without
a definite aim. There was an uncomfortable heaviness in his breast,
a physical discomfort, which drove him to motion. And his brain was
busy in a detached impersonal fashion. All the battles were not
fought with guns and poison gas. Struggle seemed inherent in the
very process of living, no matter how one lived, what precautions one
took. Struggle was all very well,--until it became edged with pain
and bitterness. Prides, ambitions, frantic strivings for this and
that,--and defeats, reprisals, disasters close in their wake. He
wondered what Grove would do now. He wondered if this unstable
edifice of Grove's creation would go down in spite of all effort and
bury the Norquay family in its collapse. He ruminated upon Grove's
eagerly pursued career, slipping away now into sordid futility. A
matter of dollars. No question of honor or duty, no sacrifice for
anything resembling an ideal, no vision of usefulness to his family,
his friends, or his country had illuminated Grove's headlong way.
Grove had made a bid for neither respect nor affection in all his
dealings with men. Only power, the purely material aspect of power,
was a thing he valued. He had lost it. What would he do without it?
A brigadier reduced to a K.P.
Rod's most conscious desire, as he moved along a street sodden with a
drizzle of cold rain, was to be on the porch at Hawk's Nest, looking
at high, aloof mountains deep in winter snow, hiding their heads in
wisps of frost-fog, hearing the voice of the rapids lift up its
ancient song. He craved rest and quiet, a surcease of incessant
street noise, which was to him a faint echo of the sound and fury of
the Western Front. He wanted freedom from clash and struggle until
he could at least draw his breath and give his heart a chance. He
believed he was past a physical crisis, that his heart would
strengthen if he could withdraw from crowds and noise, from the swirl
of acquisitiveness which bred the mean passions of which he had that
day seen some manifestation. He didn't want to be chewed up in the
machine which had got beyond Grove's control. He wanted no hand on
those levers. Yet he seemed to see obscure forces thrusting upon him
tasks he shrank from.
On the surface it was simple enough. They couldn't let a smash come.
That was clear. To brace up that swaying structure unlimited funds
must be created out of the raw material they controlled, that which
had been the backbone of the Norquay estate,--those lordly firs which
clothed granite ridges and mountain sides, those ancient cedars that
masked gorge and hollow and swamp. That would be his job. One well
enough to his liking. Even the destruction of a thing Rod loved as
he did his native forest could have an element of the constructive,
too, if it were not dictated by a necessity born of human folly and
greed. Still, that couldn't be helped now.
It was a curious feeling of the Norquay Trust Company looming over
his personal life as it loomed over the adjacent buildings that
depressed Rod most. It seemed rather fantastic to imagine that as
threatening his peace and welfare, but the feeling was real.
He drifted along the street. People passed him singly, in groups, in
pairs, in little droves, hurrying or sauntering, rich and poor, men,
women and children, an endlessly flowing stream, of humanity. A
sprinkling of khaki showed among them. The majority were the last
sweepings of the draft not yet demobilized. Others, he saw at a
glance, were returned men. He wondered what they thought of it all
now they were back.
He was to have that question partially answered before long. Within
a block of the _Province_ office where he had last met him Rod
encountered Andy Hall. From the hand which grasped Rod's extended
one the index and second fingers were missing. He wore a
lieutenant's uniform; four wound stripes marked one sleeve. His
freckled face had lost some of the old ruddy color, but his eyes
flickered as brightly quizzical as in those days when he rigged
high-lead spars in the Valdez camp. Rod took this all in at a glance.
Where were you? What division? When did you get back? How many
times over the length and breadth of North America were those
questions being asked and answered in 1919?
"Months ago--last of September," Andy said. "The idea was that I
should bear a hand getting draftees into shape at Hastings Park,
since I was classified as unfit for front-line service. But I
haven't done much. Flu knocked me out in November. They'll can me
pretty soon, I hope. It's easy to get into the army, but hell to get
out, even when they don't need you any longer."
"The tribal instinct won out, eh?" Rod smiled. "For a downright
rebel you seem to have got on in the army."
"I'm still a rebel," Andy returned. "The war would have made me one
if I hadn't been before. Still, when you are fool enough to
volunteer for a job, you can't very well lie down on it. There were
times when I felt like it, though. It was a dirty job, eh?"
"Rather," Rod agreed. "Remember the time we had a drink in the
Strand and talked about the big show?"
Andy nodded.
"I was thinking about that as I came past the _Province_," he
drawled. "If it were worth while expressing an opinion, I'd say the
same--only more so."
"Let's stroll up to the Vancouver and sit down and gas awhile?" Rod
suggested.
They found comfortable chairs in a quiet corner of the great hotel.
Their talk covered Europe, politics, certain phases of trench
fighting, and came back at last from generalities tinged with
pessimism to the particular, to themselves.
"What are you going to do after you're demobilized?" Rod asked. It
was not, on his part, an idle question.
"I don't know." Andy shook his head. "I'll never sling cable again,
that's sure. You need all your fingers for that."
His eyes rested speculatively on the mutilated hand.
"Long before I lost my fingers," he continued, "I used to say to
myself that if I got out of it alive, I'd never work for any man
again--I'd never have anybody's collar round my neck. The army put
that into me. It jarred my old idea of men voluntarily coöperating
for the common good or any other purpose. The army--all the
armies--were made up of picked men. Eighty per cent. of 'em fell
into two categories; they had to be led, or they had to be driven.
If there was no one to lead or drive, they ran round in circles when
anything happened. So I made up my mind to be a leader or a
driver--to play the game the way the rest do, who manage to beat the
game. I was so damned sick of orders and discipline. Orders that
were stupid, or vicious, or simply issued as an exhibition of
authority. Discipline that went beyond its logical purpose of
securing cohesive action and became merely a whip to lash a lot of
tired unhappy men. Nobody minded the actual fighting so much.
That's what you were there for; you expected it; you got used to it.
You took your chances without making a fuss, even if now and then
your stomach sort of turned. No, the dirt and drudgery were worse
than the danger. And to a fellow like me the sight and sound of
fussy brass hats laying more stress on recognition of their rank and
dignity, the unanimity with which they implied that they were
_It_--hell, you know how everybody below the rank of a battalion
commander felt about that. They could do anything they liked to you,
say the worst they could think, punish you for somebody else's
mistakes. And you couldn't say a damned word. You couldn't even
look sour. That was insubordination. No. I didn't mind the war so
much--it was the army--the whole fabric of the military system.
"I passed up a chance at a commission in '15--because I was still too
class-conscious. But I grabbed the next chance. That's what I'm
going to do in civil life--grab chances. I don't know how, yet. I
don't think much. I'm still in the army, and in the army you're not
supposed to think. But I didn't run wild in France, except for brief
spells, so I've saved most of my pay. And I hear talk of a gratuity
to us heroes," he smiled broadly. "I'll probably come out with a
couple of thousand dollars. After that--well, you see before you a
man who has had a bayonet stuck through his leg, his carcass lightly
punctured with shrapnel, one or two faint whiffs of gas. None of
which did him more harm than to give him long spells of lying still
and thinking. And he thought himself into a condition of mind that
will prevent him from ever again working hard--for other people. No,
Norquay, I will never again labor faithfully to make two dollars
grow--for some one else--where only one grew before. I don't believe
I could feel the slightest obligation toward a job again, or an atom
of pride in doing a job well. You see, I can't lose sight of the
job-owners--I don't like 'em. I despise 'em. They got us all into
this mix-up. They called us to arms in the name of all the old gods
that man has been taught to reverence. And then they laid down on
us, and went to making money out of our necessities. No, whenever a
man offers me a job, I'll think of war contracts, of seventeen prices
for clothes and food, of the bonds they've salted away, of shoddy
boots and defective ammunition--and the fact that some of them are
secretly sorry the war is over and the big, easy money at an end.
No, I couldn't be loyal to a job, with all that in my mind."
"Fiddlesticks," Rod answered this last. "If I had a stand of timber
and I said to you, 'Here's a crew and machinery--go to it; you've got
a free hand,' you'd get it out for me as if you were getting it out
for yourself."
"Well," Andy hesitated, "if you bring yourself into it, that's
different. You don't come in any of the categories I mentioned, or
I'm very much mistaken. Operating a real job for a man you could
like and respect. That is different."
"You see, you haven't lost a capacity for loyalty," Rod pointed out.
"It's only been deflected. I understand that. Psychologically I've
traveled pretty much the same road you have. All that you say is
true. Only it isn't all the truth, Andy. Just one side of the
shield; the side that's turned to us; that's hard for us to get our
eyes off. Fellows like you and me are a little up in the air right
now. We feel like tramping savagely on the toes of a lot of smug,
comfortable persons. That wouldn't get us anywhere. Nor would it
change them--because they simply don't understand. What we'll
probably get down to after awhile--those of us who have a sense of
order and any touch of creativeness--will be some sort of activity
that won't set the world on fire or turn it into a Bedlam, but that
will possibly do some little good in the immediate radius of our own
activity. _Sabe_? A man has to do what he can, before he can do
what he wants."
"A man," Andy observed thoughtfully, "generally has to solve his
material problems before he can tackle spiritual ones. Yet the two
are interwoven. It's very difficult. I'm a rampant individualist,
by nature. Man is. But if you didn't have some check on
individualism the world would be a regular Kilkenny. Rampageous
individualism in big affairs is what started the big scrap. The same
thing will start another. It may even start hellish struggles
between individual exploiters here at home and the masses they're
keen to exploit. You can't have order and peace and security in a
society where everybody is straining every nerve to get what _he_
wants, and to hell with the other fellow. I'm no Utopian any longer,
but I do know that if evolution doesn't speed up the process of
industrial reorganization, there are going to be some corking rows,
and a lot of material and spiritual uncertainty for everybody. I may
not seem very consistent in what I say or do, but I'm consistent in
my perception of certain things. We've built up a complex mechanism
of affairs. The machine is our master instead of our servant."
Rod thought of the Norquay Trust Company as a vast creaking mechanism
exacting unrewarded service, sacrifice, claiming the vital substance
of himself, his father, the estate. Grove's Frankenstein creation!
"It may be so," he conceded. "But we are not yet automatons."
They continued to talk until the dusk of the short winter's day
closed in. When the lights began to blink along the street they
separated, Andy to his barracks, Rod to his home.
A taxi stand fronted the hotel, looking across Georgia Street. Rod
crossed the way. As he did so a newsboy passed crying "ex-x-x-truh"
in a shrill treble. In the distance he could hear other voices
wailing the same cry. The Peace Conference, a fresh outbreak in
Europe. Anything was possible in that welter of political, racial,
and economic antagonisms across the Atlantic. He beckoned the boy.
In the glare of a white-globed light standard he read the headlines:
PRESIDENT NORQUAY TRUST INSTANTLY KILLED
SHOTGUN ACCIDENTALLY DISCHARGED
CHAPTER XXIII
A northwest gale rattled a loose window in the library at Hawk's
Nest. Beyond that the house stood solid to the blasts, as solid as a
mountain mass of the granite that formed its walls. In the
surrounding woods branchy cedar and tall, plumed firs bent before
that gusty wind like bowed giants, giants that sighed in mournful
cadences. Rod stuffed a folded bit of paper between sash and frame
to silence the tremulous chatter of the wood.
He flattened his face against the pane for a few seconds. In the
dark where the wind lashed at everything as if the Borean gods were
in a towering passion, he could see faint, shifting flecks of
white,--wind-whipped seas breaking in the channel. In brief lulls he
could hear the rapids grumbling at full flood, the deep roar of
agitated waters softened by distance. He could mark under that black
canopy of sky a silver streak where straight current met back eddy in
a foaming line, and the devil's dishpans spun about deep vortices.
He went back to his chair before a glowing fireplace. It was near
midnight, and he was wakeful, his brain a simmering pot. A
succession of images trooped by; he couldn't stop them. Thoughts,
fancies, realities leaped out of nothingness, loomed before him,
vanished before the crowding army of their fellows; as if he were
engaged upon a review of the past and a projection of the future. He
could no more stop that procession than he could check the tide
roaring through the Euclataw Passage. It was as if he stood aside
and watched the entity that was himself performing this and that
action,--a single thread tracing a formless pattern in the warp and
woof of persons and things. He could see it all very clearly up to
the present. Beyond that the images were uncertain, tentative,
sometimes blurred.
His youthful sense of the family as a permanent, imperishable force,
in relation to which he as an individual was negligible, had been
wiped out of his mind. The colossal stature of the Norquays had
shrunk to his own dimension. The solid had become fluid, ready to
trickle through his fingers if he did not have a care.
Five years ago to-night he had been at Hawk's Nest in a breathing
spell from the Valdez camp. Out of all the permanences that
surrounded him then, he was now only sure of one,--Mary, his wife.
His grandfather was dead. Phil was dead, and Grove. Their father
was dying here to-night, while the northwester swept the coast.
Materially, their hold was now uncertain on all that had served to
make them what they were.
In a little while there would be only himself to make decisions, to
take action, to bear a responsibility for matters which no longer
involved merely himself or his immediate family but embraced people
he had never seen, would never know. Their welfare, resting in his
hands, burdened him with an oppressive weight.
Why should he shoulder this burden. He began to understand why men
here and there evade responsibility, or break down under it, when the
shadow of such responsibility loomed darkly over himself.
He had had no preparation for responsibility. He had lived--he
smiled at the platitude--a sheltered life. Except in one or two
isolated instances, such as his marriage, he had never been compelled
to make a momentous decision. His youth, with its romantic dreaming,
its fastidiousness which had made him shun such physical grossness as
Grove's, had been ordered and directed. So had his more formal
education. Even his four years in the army, except in unimportant
details, had never taken him into the realm of plan and execution.
He had simply been a cog in the military machine, obeying orders,
reissuing those orders to men bound to obey him, as he was himself
bound to obey others. Responsibility rested always in other hands.
He had been aware of that and fairly content to have it so.
But that was at an end. Very soon now, a matter of hours, when the
unconscious old man in a room down the hallway breathed out his tired
life he, Rod Norquay, would become the fulcrum and lever which should
move enormous weights. He would be faced by a necessity to take up a
task which offered little hope of reward save a sense of duty
performed. Other men's welfare, other men's money, other men's sins.
He could draw back from this, or see it through. He could evade it
or grapple it stoutly. But there it was, waiting for him to decide.
Grove had evaded, when he faced the incontrovertible result of his
handiwork. Or had he? No one would ever know. He had gone in
mid-afternoon from the Norquay Trust office to his home. He had
telephoned a friend to join him in a duck hunt at a gun club on the
Ladner flats, had arranged to pick up his friend. He had come out
from the house to the garage, bearing a shotgun, a bag and a shooting
coat, whistling as he came. He spoke to the chauffeur genially.
While the man attended to some detail of his machine the shotgun
cracked and Grove Norquay fell against the running-board. He was
dead before the man could cry for help.
And whether it was sheer accident, or whether he had killed himself
in a moment of despair at the muddle he had wrought, Rod could not
say. Publicly it went as a sad accident. But he knew what his
father thought. He knew, too, what rumors ran like sly foxes in the
street, rumors which did not have their origin in mere conjecture,
but which nevertheless would have brought Grove's financial castle
tumbling about their ears if his father had not been prepared.
Rod would never forget the crowd of people in the street an hour
before the Norquay Trust Company opened its doors. People well and
ill-dressed, shopclerks, business men, middle-aged women, people
whose motors were parked at the curb. They strove and pushed and
jostled for advantage, eager to be first, until policemen came and
herded them into line,--a line that extended a block and curved
around a corner up a side street like the tail of an uneasy,
muttering serpent.
All that forenoon and well past the luncheon hour they filed past the
paying tellers, presented checks, passbooks, demanding their money,
withdrawing accounts. As the cash boxes of the Norquay Trust emptied
into pockets that departed hastily through the front door they were
replenished by sheafs of Norquay estate currency withdrawn from other
banks in hundred-thousand-dollar lots.
From behind bronze grillwork Rod watched this scene. He marked the
nervous eagerness of these people over their money. They were
frightened, watchful, uneasy, until they had it in their hands. The
air was charged with hostile currents, with a tension that
communicated itself to department managers, the ledgerkeepers, the
tellers. One man made a five-hundred-dollar mistake,--and broke
under the strain. He sat in his cage and wept, and a murmuring that
was like a growl swept through the lofty, pillared room until he was
led away and another man took up his work of handing out cash.
Once Rod's father came to sit by him for a minute. He looked out at
the anxious faces, the people crowding forward, pressing eagerly up
to the wickets. After a little he said to Rod in a low, tense
whisper:
"The coward. The damned coward! He couldn't face the music."
About one-thirty the run tapered off. Every certificate of deposit,
every demand was met promptly, courteously. Human nature asserted
itself. An institution that could disgorge an enormous total and
still exhibit great bales of currency and gold behind each teller
_couldn't_ be shaky. Who peddled the story that the Norquay Trust
was broke, anyhow? Some damn fool. It was a false alarm. Fellow
that started it ought to be shot--scaring people like that--making so
much trouble. The Norquay estate's backing it. No chance of a
concern like that being in the hole. What you think? Eh?
They stood out on the curb, repeating things like that. Men turned
back at the very wickets. Some returned shamefacedly to redeposit
their money, only to be told politely that the Norquay Trust declined
to reopen closed accounts.
The ordinary cash depositors ceased from troubling long before the
closing hour.
"That's that," Charlie Hale grunted. "We've pretty well disposed of
the small fry. Fortunately a few big accounts can be met. And none
of the trust accounts are at our heads like a pistol."
That was the end of a salient demonstration. Routine resumed its
placid groove. Time and effort Norquay senior declared and his
son-in-law, whose profession was accountancy, agreed, would bring
order out of the chaos Grove had wrought.
Yes, he had somehow blundered into chaos. And no matter how many
other clutching fingers might have been dipped into the trust
coffers, Grove had failed to feather his own nest. His personal
estate included only his house and his yacht. There was no record of
his having ever withdrawn a dollar from trust funds, of receiving
more than a liberal salary. His assets didn't include enough cash to
bury him. Where, then, did the money go?
"Ask Wall, Richston, Deane--that crowd," Charlie Hale muttered, when
Rod put the question. "I may be able to tell you after awhile. A
few things look very, very fishy. The fact remains that half the
so-called assets are junk. There's no mistake about the liabilities.
If I can follow certain leads far enough, we may be able to make
somebody disgorge. But they're pretty clever. They seem to have got
Grove coming and going."
"You will have to get crews together soon," his father had told him
after Grove's funeral. "I'd put the first crew in on that Horn
limit. It's beautiful timber and easy logging. Also start up the
old Valdez camp. There are two or three limits on Hardwicke yet, as
well. In fact, timber's all we have left. I've hypothecated
everything else. I'll look after the town end. The woods will be
your field. The weather ought to break soon."
The weather had not permitted woods work. But the turn of affairs
had sent Rod and his wife and boy almost immediately to Hawk's Nest.
The elder Norquay urged them to go.
"That's the place for you," he said. "It's our home. It has always
been our home. It will be yours, Rod. You can consider it yours
now. When I feel my time coming, I shall want to be there too."
And his time had come, perhaps a little sooner than he expected,
perhaps not sooner than he wished.
"My life has been a failure," he said to Rod one day. "I might have
made a different man of Grove, if I hadn't been so comfortably secure
in the egotistic belief that to be my son was guarantee enough. Oh,
I've been blind with the sort of pride that goes before a fall. And
I was too harsh. He was proud too. I killed him myself, Rod."
He would talk like that, full of grief. And he would go on to speak
of expiation, of the obligation upon them to give a steward's account
of their trust.
"You see," he would repeat, "it was not simply Grove, but what Grove
represented, what he sprang from, that bred people's confidence. No
casual promoter, no fly-by-night financier could have induced that
simple trust on such a scale. People looked beyond him and they saw
something that was solid as a rock, that couldn't fail. We must live
up to that, somehow."
The library door opened. Mary beckoned silently.
"He wants to speak to you," she said in the hall.
But the momentary flash of consciousness lapsed before Rod reached
the bedside. He had been sinking for days. He was going out now,
like a guttering candle. A nurse stood at the foot of the bed. A
doctor stood, watch in hand, his fingers on the faint pulse. Rod
looked a question. The man shook his head. Rod sat down beside the
bed. To his quickened imagination the room seemed full of the
flutter of sable wings.
An hour later his father died.
CHAPTER XXIV
"I have seen some financial muddles in my time and some manipulation
that was on the borderline of pure theft," Charlie Hale said to Rod,
"but this is a little the worst mess I ever had to do with."
They were going over the situation in Hale's private office, which
had once been Grove's sanctum, sitting by the same table upon which
Grove had leaned his elbows long ago, when he remonstrated with Rod
for walking Beach Avenue with Mary Thorn. Beyond its walls the faint
murmur of voices arose, and the remote tapping of typewriters.
"Take this Spruce Supplies Limited for an example," Hale continued.
"One of the apparently honest failures that left the Norquay Trust in
the lurch. Spruce Supplies was organized by Richston and Wall.
There were other stockholders--all dummies. Once incorporated, Wall
and Richston apparently dispose of all interest in the company. Then
Spruce Supplies proceeds to issue three hundred thousand dollars'
worth of five-year, seven per cent bonds against their holdings,
which consist of timber limits, camp equipment, and logging
machinery, valued at seven hundred thousand dollars. The Norquay
Trust takes these bonds as security for a loan of three hundred
thousand, recommended and authorized by Wall, Richston, etc., in
their capacity as directors. The concern is supposed to create a
sinking fund to retire these bonds at maturity. They begin timber
operations with a flourish. For two years they pay the bond
interest. But after two years they cease payments. In the fullness
of time the Norquay Trust forecloses and acquires all the assets.
But, in my investigation of these assets, I discover that Spruce
Supplies operated on a tremendous scale while they did work. The
timber is practically all cut, the equipment is pretty well worn out.
The men who cruised the limits for me estimate seven or eight hundred
thousand dollars' worth of timber removed--prices went rocketing for
airplane spruce, you know. A liberal estimate of what we have to
show for three hundred thousand cash is less than sixty thousand in
real value.
"There were seven shareholders. Five owned two shares apiece. Two
are clerks who disappeared in the draft. Three are bond
salesmen--forty-dollar-a-week men. The two who owned the bulk of the
stock--well, one's a sort of confidential man in Richston's office.
The other was for ten years in Wall's employment. They're both out
of the country; with a few thousand dollars apiece, I imagine.
Dummies--pure and simple. You can guess who got the money. But you
can't prove anything. I doubt if you could take legal action against
those foxy old birds if you had proof that the pair of them looted
Spruce Supplies. It was ostensibly a legal transaction. The Norquay
Trust Company should have protected itself, you see."
"And that's only one of several such," Hale concluded. "They made a
milk cow of this business. They saw that funds were invested where
they would do the most good--for them. They simply made a goat of
Grove."
Rod stared at the figures on a sheet of paper before him.
"Liabilities practically four hundred thousand in excess of available
assets," he murmured. "That's a hump to get over. How long can we
reasonably expect to go on--I mean how much grace will we have to
meet everything without going into forced liquidation?"
"With a fair amount of revenue from some outside source--say eighty
or a hundred thousand every six months--we can go right along as
usual," Hale replied. "There's no immediate call for funds. All the
pressing obligations your father provided funds to meet. There's
only a dead loss that this concern can't shake off by its own
efforts. We can--we have--cut operating expenses to the bone. But
as a trust company we can't--legitimately--make money fast enough
ever to get even."
"There's only one outside source of revenue available, you know," Rod
reminded.
"Is it wise to go any farther?" Hale shifted uneasily. "You'll
beggar yourself."
"Between beggaring myself and beggaring other people, there doesn't
seem to be much choice."
"Do you consider yourself personally responsible for Grove's
actions?" Hale asked earnestly.
"You know what the governor's idea was," Rod answered. "Grove put
this over pretty much on the strength of the family standing. So we
were tacitly involved. We'll be a public stink if we sit back. We
aren't legally responsible; we are morally. That was his idea. I'm
inclined to agree."
"That's drawing it pretty fine," Hale responded. "Grove was his son.
Individually you are not to blame at all. It's easy to make a grand
gesture and go down. Heroic sort of thing. But once you're down
everybody'll walk on you."
"What are you getting at?" Rod demanded impatiently. "Do you want me
to cut and run with the swag--like a burglar? It amounts to pretty
much the same. I keep the estate intact, and these people all lose
their money. I don't quite see why you should try to dissuade me."
"I'm rather anxious to know just how far you will go with it," Hale
returned. "Suppose you change your mind when the going gets rough?
I've got involved in this myself through connection by marriage."
"What would you do if you were in my place?" Rod asked softly.
"I don't know," Hale twisted uneasily in his seat. "I'd hate to be
faced with such a decision, Rod. Your family has cut quite a figure
in this country for a long time. Hate to see it peter out. Money
_is_ essential. Without money," he made a gesture of dismissal. "I
went over the whole thing with your father. Probably take your last
dollar to see it through."
"Are you thinking about Dorothy's share of the estate?" Rod asked his
brother-in-law point-blank.
Hale didn't resent the question. He answered frankly.
"Well, yes and no. I wasn't a rich man to begin with and four years
in the army didn't improve my finances. Still, I can get by
comfortably on my profession. I didn't marry Dot for her income. It
would be convenient to have it continue. But that is not what
disturbs me. I don't like to think of the family fortune all shot to
pieces, the old place up the coast passing into the hands of some
damned profiteer--some pot-bellied swab who made a barrel of money
building useless ships or selling bacon to the government. The
rallying point of the whole clan will be gone. You'll be like a
feudal baron without a castle, without a single man-at-arms.
"Still, you see my position, don't you?" Rod persisted.
"Surely," Hale admitted. "I'm not dense--or unsympathetic.
_Noblesse oblige_. Only it's a pity. People won't care one way or
the other a year after it's over. Everybody's too busy whipping his
own particular devil around the stump. When your wife has to wear
cotton stockings and do her own cooking, the very people you're
protecting will only think of you with contemptuous pity."
"I would rather incur their contempt than my own," Rod answered that:
the last had stung him a little. "Well, I'll keep in touch.
So-long."
He went home, back to the rented house which they kept on for
convenience. Six weeks at Hawk's Nest had revived the old feeling of
its being the only place he could ever truly regard as home. That
fierce possessive pride rose stronger than ever in his breast when he
walked about the grounds, when he stood among those massive trees
rising in brown-trunked ranks over Big Dent, when he lay in his bed
at night and looked drowsily up at the high, beamed ceiling. It was
as permanent as the hills--or it should be made so. And it was his,
his own, to keep and pass on to another generation of Norquays--if he
could. If he could? There had never been a question of that nature
to harass a Norquay since the cornerstone was levered into place in
1809. If he could!
Why shouldn't he? It was simply assured. He had only to stand back
with his hands in his pockets, aloof, unmoved, while Grove's white
elephant died for lack of the nourishment he alone could supply.
Hadn't his father done enough? The figures had staggered Rod at the
time. Although every active productive undertaking of the estate had
stopped for the duration of the war, yet their fortune had not shrunk
appreciably. Not until Rod's father began to pour it into those
looted coffers. Every liquid asset, bonds, gilt-edged securities,
real estate,--all hypothecated to raise funds.
Hopeless to think of ever redeeming them. But there was still timber
which with labor and machinery he could transform into money. He
owned that clear of all encumbrance, thousands of acres of it, the
finest virgin timber on the Pacific coast. With Hawk's Nest and
standing timber he still had firm grasp of the old, comfortable
security for himself and all the collateral branches of the Norquay
clan.
Why should he voluntarily give that up?
To organize his forces, to live under the pressure of a struggle for
more and more revenue, to drive labor, to watch markets and prices
with a feverish intensity, to live and breathe and think in terms of
money and more money was hateful to him. To whip up a sick heart day
after day. Suppose it laid down on him? Who would carry on?
He looked back from his own doorstep at the square roof and the
skeleton sign of the Norquay Trust looming on the jagged downtown
skyline. It was like an inverted pyramid resting on his shoulders,
crushing him.
He walked through the living room with a glance. He knew Mary would
be upstairs where she had arranged a workshop for herself with a
desk, a shelf of books, a typewriter. She sat there making aimless
marks on the margin of a pad on which she had written a few sentences.
He had explained the situation to her roughly long ago. Now he sat
down to explain in detail, to outline his personal relation to an
inherited problem.
"There it is," he concluded. "What do you think? I can go through
with it, or I can let it go. It may beat me even if I do my best.
At most we'll only have Hawk's Nest and some machinery. I can hardly
hope to salvage more than that."
She looked at him for a second with an enigmatical smile.
"Why ask me, Rod?" she said finally. "You're going to do what one
would naturally expect you to do. You've made up your mind. You
don't really consider that you have much choice, do you?"
"No," he admitted. "I can't see that I have. I hate the job. I
don't like cutting my own throat. I don't like paying for a dead
horse that somebody else killed. But I simply can't do the other
thing."
"I don't like poverty," Mary said presently. "I've known comparative
poverty, though, and I'm not much the worse for it. I'm quite
confident that between us we could manage very well if we had nothing
but the clothes we stand in. One can sometimes turn dreams into
dollars. No, I'm not much afraid of anything the world can do to us.
Rod junior will manage to grow up into something of a man on
considerably less than 'steen thousand a year. If you feel that
something more vital to you than money is involved in this---- One
has to be guided in such matters by one's convictions. A profound
conviction, right or wrong, is a tremendous driving force. If you
throttle it to grasp a material advantage-- People do sometimes.
And they suffer for it."
She sat tapping the pad with her pencil.
"Queer complications crop up over such a question," she said at last.
"I wonder if you know that practically all my father's money is in
the Norquay Trust. The few thousands that are to keep him and mamma
in comfort while they live--all he saved out of a lifetime of work."
"Good Lord, no, I didn't know that," Rod said. "He didn't get it out
when the scramble was on?"
She shook her head.
"He laughed when I asked him. I did. I telephoned him when you told
me what was happening downtown. He hasn't even thought of revoking
the trust. You see," she explained, "he made a trust fund of it and
draws only the income. He said that people could make damned fools
of themselves on the strength of a rumor, but that he was sure
anything the Norquay family backed was as solid as Gibraltar."
"Well, you have there the key to why Grove shot himself, and to why
my father died of grief as much as of the flu," he said quietly. "It
may be a sinful pride, but by God it's a reality I have to abide by.
If we go down, we go down with our flag flying."
"But we won't go down," she said cheerfully. She came and put her
arms encouragingly about him. "We may lose materially, but there are
precious things that can't be taken away from us. Only you'll have
to be careful of yourself. You'll have to relax. You've been strung
up for weeks, brooding over this mess. I don't like that. You
mustn't. We'll play the cards we hold, and if we lose, why we'll
have played without cheating. Eh? Smile, Roderick Dhu."
"You're a jewel," Rod whispered. "I won't brood any more. Won't
have time. I'm going to get under way. May I have a man in to
dinner if I can get hold of him?"
"Half a dozen, if you like," Mary smiled.
They went downstairs. Rod called a regimental headquarters at
Hastings Park. He got some information there, and called another
number. Yes, Mr. Hall was in. In another minute Rod had him on the
wire. Yes, he could come out to the house.
In the broad mirror of Rod's imagination, as he sat waiting, there
stood forth successive images of what he meant to accomplish and how.
His mind had a faculty of projecting ways and means, not as skeleton
ideas, but as extraordinarily vivid pictures of the actual
proceeding. He meant to make Andy Hall a commanding officer, the
chief of his labor staff. His program took form in flashes, glimpses
of men, machinery, stretches of forest, booming grounds,--all
energized, dynamic. There was a simplicity that he appreciated in
such an undertaking. It was not a matter of finessing, of juggling
with pawns and tokens on the commercial chessboard. It was not an
affair or stratagems and artifice and cunning. It was honest
productive effort, men and machinery moving purposefully under a
directing force to supply human needs. He liked that aspect of what
he meant to do.
Hall was ushered in by Yick Sing. He was in civilian clothes, a
small bronze button in his left lapel. Rod led him upstairs to
Mary's den.
"How long since you were demobbed?"
"About two weeks," Hall answered.
"Good. I'm going to start a pretty extensive logging show. Will you
help me organize it?"
"Why pick on me?" Andy inquired languidly.
"I know you," Rod replied. "You know logging and loggers. I want a
man who will understand what I'm driving at; a man I can trust."
"How do you know you can trust me?"
"I don't know it. I feel it."
A queer expression flickered across Andy's face.
"A rebel like me?" he said. "You know what I think about your
class--you masters of my class. You people who have control of all
the sources of power. Who give us jobs or take them away, according
to the dictates of your interest. You understand and believe in
class distinctions, don't you?"
"I understand them, yes. But character is more important than class."
"What is character?" Hall demanded.
"Indefinable, in most cases. But it's recognizable. Whatever your
situation in life, without this thing we call character you're a dud.
It exists independent of class. A leisured environment, quickened
intelligence, liberal education, a tradition of uprightness, is
supposed to form it. But it crops out, regardless of all these
things. It's inherent in some people. It's an individual quality,
not a class hall-mark. But I'm getting away from the point. Your
social and economic theories have very little to do with your
individual function in society as it stands. You don't imagine
there's a working-class movement for general betterment on foot in
this country that will be imperiled by your working for me as a
well-paid assistant in a job I'm undertaking? Do you?"
Andy grinned broadly.
"Hardly. So long as industry supplies jobs at living wages,
everything'll be lovely. Give 'em jobs. That's all they want.
They're uncomfortable in their minds unless there's somebody to tell
'em what to do. Tchk!"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"A soggy lump of dough," he grumbled. "Still, such as they are, I
belong to 'em. I know what they're up against better than they do.
And I'm sorry for 'em, without being able to change things."
"You find your people, the workers," Rod said, "a soggy lump of dough
that the active brains of the world rather ruthlessly knead into such
shapes as they require. And I find greediness, thoughtlessness,
arrogance and waste outstanding features among a considerable portion
of my own class, which we agree controls and directs industry.
Neither of us likes the prospect, but what can we do about it? Not
much. We didn't create this state of affairs. But our actions are
shaped by it. Even if a certain humane instinct in us revolts at
being mixed up in an unseemly scramble where everybody is grabbing
what he can, we have to accept that condition. If we have to fight
for what we want--whether it's merely to exist or to pursue an
ideal--why not fight with the best weapon that offers? I'm offering
you a commission in industry instead of enlistment in the ranks.
It's neither philanthropy, nor a bribe on my part."
"You pay me a compliment," Andy said gravely. "It's true I know
logging and loggers. But I don't know that I'd make a good
boss--from the employer's point of view. It would not be possible
for me to drive men."
"I don't want to drive men," Rod broke out impulsively. "I want to
lead 'em, if it can be done. If I can give men just a little more
security in their jobs, a little better conditions under which to
work, a little more return in wages, that's more to them than all the
theory in a thousand books. So long as men must work for wages
they'll choose to work where they get the most for their effort.
That's the sort of condition I want to create. Circumstances compel
me to log for a profit like every other logger. But I'm neither a
hog nor a parasite. I'm willing to share profits with the men who
make them for me."
"All right, I'm your man," Andy said abruptly. "I never intended to
look at a pay check again. I can be a free and unfettered
beachcomber and make a living and still be my own boss. But this
looks interesting to me. If you don't like my style, or I yours, I
can quit on short notice."
"Yes," Rod smiled. "That's where you have the best of the bargain.
You can quit. I can't."
"That's rather stretching it a bit," Andy observed dryly. "I can't
see that."
"You will presently," Rod informed him.
He sketched for Andy's benefit the situation in which he stood, the
necessity for creating revenue, the obligation which he felt to rest
heavily upon him.
"If I can pull out in a couple of years with Hawk's Nest, some
machinery and a well-organized crew, I'll be lucky," he said. "If I
can do that, men and machinery is all I need to build up a permanent
structure of industry that will take care of my wants and the wants
of every man in the organization."
"Your own crowd will be saying what a damned fool you are," Andy
mused. "You're an idealist, Norquay. And I didn't think there were
any left. I didn't believe idealism existed as a practical working
force in any possible employer's mind. I'd got so lately that I
didn't think there was anybody left in the world to whom a square
deal meant anything but a convenient phrase. After all, that's what
you're after, isn't it? Trying to live up to your notion of what
constitutes a square deal?"
"Yes, I think that's about it," Rod agreed.
"Well, if you don't find the going too hard, if too many practical
difficulties don't trip you," Andy prophesied, "I'll say that if you
tackle the logging game in the same spirit you'll go a long way.
It's a damned scarce sort of spirit. The stupidest husky in the
woods can _sabe_ a square deal. This is going to be very
interesting. When do I start in, and what's the program?"
"I want you to begin to-morrow looking up a woods' boss and getting
together a crew. We'll shoot 'em up to the old Valdez camp, start
the falling gangs, and begin overhauling the machinery that's stored
at the old camp. There's a watchman in charge, and everything's in
good shape. We'll have to frame up a wage schedule. There will have
to be some renovating on the camp. All sorts of details arranged.
If you can meet me at the office in the Pacific Building about nine
in the morning, we'll tackle the first arrangements."
"I'll be there," Andy promised.
"Meantime," said Rod, "let's go downstairs where it's more
comfortable. If you have no other engagement you may as well stay to
dinner."
"Thanks, I will," Andy accepted. "You won't mind, I suppose, having
the cook serve square peas for me?"
They chuckled and so managed to dissipate the last trace of stiffness
between them. Rod considered that he had won a minor victory. He
knew that Andy Hall was one of those occasional beings who sprang
from obscure 'sources with brains, courage, a pertinacious diligence
in whatever he undertook, with infinite capacities for loyalty to
either a person or an idea; the sort of man who leads forlorn
proletarian hopes and is sometimes crucified by his own kind for
fighting their battles. He could trust Andy Hall. Rod would have
found it difficult to say, offhand, just why. But he knew that he
could. And he had to have about him men whom he could trust, men who
could understand that he was not simply another exploiter seeking
ruthlessly his own advantage.
It was easy for men like Hall to lubricate the wheels of industry, or
to set up frictions that produced minor disasters. Men like Andy
thought in terms beyond themselves, beyond their personal ends. They
rose up out of the low ground of their origins, looming above the
common ruck like tall trees above a thicket. Rod was very glad to
have Andy Hall's paid services. But he appreciated even more Andy's
instant grasp of a difficult situation met in the only possible
fashion.
A murmur of voices sounded in the living room. Rod was a trifle
surprised to see Isabel Wall's piquant face turn to him over the back
of a Chesterfield. She had been in the south all winter. Almost
five years had left Isabel unchanged in appearance, except that her
fair hair was thicker and bobbed in the prevailing mode so that it
stood out around her head like a fluffy aureole, making her seem,
with her big blue eyes and delicate pink-and-white skin, more like a
charming doll than ever. Rod's mind revived that embarrassing scene
under a high moon among the great tree shadows on Big Dent. He had
not seen Isabel since. She put out her hand now with frank
friendliness. It was all a little unexpected. Isabel so patently
belonged in the camp of the enemy. Yet she seemed very sure of her
ground here in his house, very much at home.
He introduced Andy to his wife, to Isabel, to a plump matron with two
chins and a positive, not to say emphatic manner of speaking; a Mrs.
Emmert whom Rod vaguely remembered.
He fell into conversation with Isabel, or rather Isabel talked and he
listened. Isabel prattled as of old. Rod lost himself in
speculation as to how any one could possibly talk so much and say so
little. It was an art. He came out of this semi-absorption. Isabel
ceased talking. Her face turned aside with a new quality of fixed
attention. Rod looked and became aware that Andy was speaking to
Mrs. Emmert with a bitter, gibing note in his usually pleasant voice.
The whimsical, good-natured expression of his face had vanished. His
face had hardened; his eyes had narrowed.
"You may consider it a notable distinction," he was saying. "But
possibly your son has his doubts."
The lady made a sound in the nature of a gasp.
"You see," Andy continued in that frozen tone, "people whose
knowledge of war is based on what they read in the papers don't know
anything about war at all. The front-line men do. Most of 'em don't
care to talk much about it. Being a person of no discrimination, I
do talk about it. There is no glory in war--particularly this
war--for the men who actually carry on the war. All the benefits of
this ruction (if there are any benefits, which I doubt) are derived
by people who stayed at home and did their patriotic duty by knitting
socks and buying bonds and selling supplies to the War Department.
You can't tell a soldier that it was anything but a dirty, dangerous
job which he hated."
"That's the most unpatriotic thing I ever heard," Mrs. Emmert
sputtered.
"I paid two fingers and a hole in one leg for the privilege of saying
things like that," Andy observed tartly. "They're true. Your
attitude is common enough. You've got one of these hermetically
sealed minds that conceives of war as some sort of international game
played by young men with guns; a game in which your son distinguished
himself by winning a medal. A medal!" he snorted,--and plunged his
good hand into an inner pocket.
"Look, madam," he said ironically. "Three of 'em, Military Medal,
Military Cross, _Croix de Guerre_. They don't give you these
trinkets for looking wise and talking about other people's patriotic
duty. They give them to you for killing men, as a rule. That's all
war is, just killing. For the stunt by which I earned this French
thing I should be execrated in any civilized community. And I didn't
do it to earn a decoration, nor in any spirit of heroism, I can
assure you. I was caught like a rat in a trap. I was responsible
for the lives of other men. I was frantic with rage and fear. I
won't shock you by describing what I did. It made me sick afterward.
I tell you I have a strong stomach and it made me sick to think about
it. And they gave me a medal. Pah!" he snorted contemptuously.
"People like you talking about the great privilege of having
participated in the war. You're as bad as the Germans. Go to some
slaughter-house and watch pigs and sheep die with squeals and bleats
and blood spurting out of their throats. Substitute men for pigs and
sheep, and you have war. Of course, if you have a butcher's
instincts, you take to it as a pastime."
Mrs. Emmert was evidently making one of those formal calls which do
not permit the visiting female to lay aside her wraps. She rose now,
fully caparisoned in her furs; and her dignity.
"I have never been so insulted in my life," she declared. "I
consider your remarks to be positively seditious."
And with that she swept majestically to the door,--not, however,
without a sidelong glance at Isabel Wall. That young lady, to Rod's
surprise merely smiled, shook her head, and murmured:
"Sorry. But it doesn't arouse my righteous indignation."
The door closed with a slam. Mary, who had risen, resumed her seat
and smiled. Andy Hall stood up. He pocketed the decorations. His
face was slightly flushed.
"I expect," he said, "I'd better be on my way. You see, when I come
across such persons, I blow up. I can't help it. I'm on one side of
the fence. People like that are on the other. When some
silk-upholstered fool starts drooling sentimental tosh about the war
and mouthing intellectual abc's as positive wisdom, I simply get
red-eyed. I don't really belong on your side of the fence, and I'm
just bone-headed enough to be glad I don't, if many people like that
graze in your pastures."
"Sit down, Andy, and be calm," Rod laughed. "There isn't any fence
so far as we're concerned. Sit down and have a cigarette. Dinner
will be ready soon. Forget the fat woman. She doesn't know any
better."
"Room for one more at the festive board?" Isabel inquired.
"Of course," Mary replied. "There always is."
"I wonder," Isabel turned her bland, childlike prettiness on Andy
Hall. "I wonder if Mr. Hall knows how fierce he looks when he is
angry? Is that an expression you cultivate in the army, Mr. Hall?"
"No." Andy replied with unexpected acidity. "I cultivated it to
protect myself against idiotic questioning by London flappers."
"Entirely useless here," Isabel said sweetly. "This isn't London,
and I'm not a flapper. Or at least, I'm a sort of a graduate
flapper, if anything."
Andy stared at her in some slight puzzlement.
"I'm afraid," he said more politely, "that I don't quite get your
drift."
"Oh, you will presently," she assured him with mock gravity. "It's
really important that you should. You see, you certainly did
browbeat Mrs. Emmert. And when I find a man browbeating my sex, I
consider it my duty to subjugate him."
"You speak a language I don't understand," Andy retorted,--but he
said it with a smile.
"I'd be pleased to teach you," Isabel replied demurely. "I'm sure
you wouldn't be a backward pupil."
Rod leaned over the back of a chair silent, amused. Mary sat on a
low stool, her hands clasped over her knees, egging them on with
brief sentences. And the other two, who had never seen each other
before, whose orbits were as diverse as the separate paths of the Dog
Star and Halley's comet, turned upon each other batteries of
light-hearted chaffing. They ended up on the Chesterfield together,
comparing their favorite drinks, dances and cigarettes, in all three
of which they seemed to have had a comprehensive experience. They
were at any rate congenial in banter. Mary drew her husband out of
the room on some pretext.
"Is that your revolutionary rigging-slinger?" she asked.
"Yes. He is going to be my superintendent of works."
"I like him," Mary said. "Apparently so does Isabel."
"Everybody who knows Andy Hall likes him," Rod informed her. "But
that little feather-brain is only interested in him as a new
specimen. She probably never encountered anybody quite like him."
"Feather-brain? You don't know Isabel," Mary declared.
"I know her better than you do."
"Oh, no," Mary smiled. "You may have known her longer. But not
better. Isabel outgrew the fluffy-ruffles stage while you were away
at the war."
CHAPTER XXV
Across the channel, in the green bank of timber bisected by the path
that ran from Oliver Thorn's old house to the Granite Pool, rose
white puffs of steam, intermittent, like sporadic geysers. Those
were donkey engines at work. They tooted shrill response to the
signal pull. The woods were full of prodigious shudderings and
rumblings. The powerful machines snaked fallen trees, sawn to
lengths, from where they were felled to the last splashing plunge
into the tidal booming ground close by a group of new camp buildings
not far from Oliver Thorn's abandoned house. A "sky line" lifted its
long, aerial cable far up that hill. Down this logs came at the rate
of two hundred a day. The shore was lined with floating logs, new
cut, exhaling the odor of pitch, a pleasant pungent smell. The
Granite Pool itself echoed the clack of axes and the thin twanging of
saws, and mirrored the downward swoop of great trees. The falling
crews were stripping the shores about the Pool, destroying its
seclusion, shattering its restful silence, obliterating its cool
shade. Farther east the Valdez camp, in which Rod had served his
apprenticeship, bit deep into these heavy woods. Three hundred and
fifty men, a dozen donkey engines, a logging railway in the making,
miles of steel cable were chewing the heart out of the forest. Far
beyond sight and sound of Hawk's Nest another crew slashed at the
last of their timber on Hardwicke Island.
There was no picking of prime trees and care to conserve the younger
growth, nor far-sighted culling of the forest crop. It was complete
destruction. Within the boundaries of each limit the earth was
stripped to its primal nakedness. Sky-line and high-lead gear ripped
strings of logs over the surface, plowing deep furrows in the scant
soil, tearing up saplings, shouldering aside rotten trunks and small
boulders, bursting into dusty clouds the dead snags in the way. When
the loggers shifted to a fresh stand they left desolation behind.
Timber great and small was money. Every stick landed in tidewater
went for something; number one export, number two, the broken cedar
for shingles, the poorer grades of spruce and hemlock for pulpwood
that the mills chewed up and spat forth in tons of news print.
Rod sat over his breakfast at Hawk's Nest one morning in early summer
of '19. The far, faint sounds of the machinery he had set in motion
reached now and then into that quiet room. But he was not thinking
particularly of this organized effort which filled the woods over
there with crashings and rumblings and whining cable. He was
watching the tall, somewhat stooped figure of the butler who had
served in that house ever since Rod could remember, and he was
thinking that in connection with this man he faced another of the
many disagreeable tasks he must perform.
He rose, walked to the door, turned back. It was no great matter,
and still---- Like a modern Atropos he must go on snipping threads.
If the hand that held the shears shook a little now and then, it
could not for that reason be stayed. He had not much choice. He was
too deeply committed.
"Come up to the library in a few minutes, Stagg," he said.
"Yes, sir."
Rod sat down by a window that overlooked Mermaid Bay. A Kern tug lay
against one shore beside a million board feet of Norquay cedar,
waiting for the fierce tiderace to go slack before she eased her boom
through the south narrows for the long Gulf tow. In a little while
she would pass out, dragging astern a brown comet's tail of
slaughtered trees.
His eyes turned back to the interior of the room, came to rest on a
portrait of his great-grandfather,--the Norquay who had prophesied
that Hawk's Nest would some day hatch out an eagle.
"Even an eagle could hardly hold his own against a flock of
buzzards," Rod muttered.
No. One slip was sufficient to invalidate, even to destroy such
families as his, in this day and age. Perhaps there had been a time
when people of the equivalent class would have seen in the Norquay
difficulty something besides a chance to participate in the loot.
Out of his intimate knowledge of the family history as revealed in
sundry documents and half-recalled conversations, Rod knew that every
Norquay, from the original Roderick down to his father, had put out
his hand and opened his purse to save other men from ruin, sometimes
out of friendship, sometimes out of generosity, often from a clear
sense of class interest. At least friendship and social intimacy had
bred something more than mere lip-fealty. Other generations did not
break bread and drink wine under each others' roofs to go forth
planning how they could filch each others' possessions. The
generation to which his father belonged would have understood quite
clearly the Norquay obligation in regard to Grove's blundering.
His, Rod's generation, didn't understand. At least, if it
understood, it cynically denied his code. It laughed at him behind
his back, looked with disbelief on the course he was taking. It was,
they held, purely quixotic to sacrifice so much, to risk all in
repairing a misguided man's folly. Childishness. What were
bankruptcy laws for? Why had sound commercial brains devised the
Limited Liability Act if not to save the enterprising bourgeois from
loss when one of his undertakings failed? What simpleton would
unhesitatingly accept a moral responsibility when no legal compulsion
existed?
Rod smiled grimly. He had become more closely acquainted with the
ethics of modern business. It struck him that if corporations were
in the nature of things soulless and dehumanized in matters of money,
that attribute tended to spread to individuals. He wondered if that
were possible. It was a disagreeable conclusion; one he hesitated to
accept. But he knew this: that both his father and himself had
aroused a strange combination of antagonism and contempt by merely
doing what they felt in honor bound to do.
The antagonism was the fiercer for being grounded in cupidity. It
smoldered under the surface, ready to blaze out if he left an
opening. There were those who would like to pick his bones. He was
aware of this attitude. It burgeoned forth in many aspects of his
affairs.
If he had looted the Norquay Trust within the law and let the plucked
victims pick themselves bewildered out of the ruin, while he sat back
with his share of the plunder and the great Norquay estate still firm
in his grasp, these contemporaries of his would have esteemed him as
a clever man, almost a great man, certainly a man with a genius for
affairs. A man of affairs; a man who could safely and expeditiously
get possession of large sums of money. What was the difference?
He might have been execrated by some who lost their money. The
losers, they said cynically, always squeal. But if he had shrugged
his shoulders and stood aside, his own class would have backed him to
a man. They would have rallied round his standard. They would have
upheld him in the press, socially, by every means within their power.
Their admiration would have been tinctured with envy. They would
have understood so clearly that genuine greatness was involved in
making such a coup and getting clear when the crash came. His own
people,--no, by God, the Walls and Deanes and Richstons were not his
kind of people, not one of the whole pushing caravan, the petty
tradesmen swollen to greatness with one generation of a rich
country's development, grown greater with exorbitant profits derived
from a war which had been fought for them but not by them. They were
Grove's kind of people. And Grove had been a--a----
Well, he didn't like to ponder on Grove. There was no encouragement
in that. He found his brother's memory depressing. Grove reminded
him of a joyous diver plunging headfirst into the troubled waters of
life and coming up, not with a pearl but with a handful of slimy
ooze. Grove, he reflected, would probably not have given a second
thought to discharging Stagg. And he was compelled to give several
regretful thoughts to that unfortunate necessity.
Stagg knocked and entered, stood waiting. Rod motioned him to a
chair.
"How long have you and Mrs. Stagg been with us?" he asked.
"Twenty-seven years next November, sir."
The man was proud of his length of service. It showed in his tone.
Twenty-seven years. Rod looked at him. He had been an infant in
arms when this man entered his father's service. For twenty-seven
years Stagg had waited on them and theirs, arranging their tables,
polishing their silver, serving their food, ministering deftly to
their every want, expressed or implied.
"Have you saved any money?" Rod pursued. He had no false delicacy
about asking such a question. He had to know whether he was about to
chuck a penniless man out into a world that would be far harsher to
William Stagg than Hawk's Nest had ever been, even in its most
exacting moments. Rod had been taught, not as a lesson but as a
principle of living, that faithful service begets an obligation. It
seemed to him a natural corollary. His instincts inherited,
acquired, however he came by them were more or less patriarchal.
"We've saved a good bit, sir."
"That's fortunate," Rod continued. "Because I shall have to close
this house. I shall have to let everybody go."
"Yes, sir," Stagg murmured. He clasped his fingers across his knees
and stared at the rug.
"I hate to do it," Rod went on. "But the way things stand, keeping
up this place is more of a drain than I can afford. For a time I'm
only a--a sort of steward of the Norquay estate. If I get out of the
hole with anything left, you shall certainly have the pension to
which you are entitled, Stagg. I'm acting under a very disagreeable
necessity."
"Yes, sir," the man nodded. "I've been hoping it wouldn't be
necessary, sir. Still, I've expected it."
"Oh, you have? How's that?"
"There's been talk, sir. It gets up here, sir, from town."
"Servants' talk?" Rod inquired.
"The kind of talk servants hears, sir," Stagg replied. "People are
saying that you are a fool to ruin yourself over the Norquay Trust
Company."
"I don't agree with them," Rod said impassively. "But they may be
right. What do you think about it yourself, Stagg?"
"I had eleven thousand dollars on deposit in the Norquay Trust, sir,"
Stagg returned calmly. "About all we've saved in a lifetime of work,
the missus and me. You can fancy what _I_ think, Mr. Rod."
"Eh? Well, I hope you got it out while the getting was good;
although it's reasonably safe if you didn't," Rod smiled. "Unless
the heavens fall or some such catastrophe occurs, the Norquay Trust
will pay interest and principal in full on every account before I
close its doors--which I intend to do as soon as I can turn our
timber into cash."
"I feel safe enough," Stagg assured him. "But you can imagine how I
would have felt if the Company'd failed, sir. So I'm bound to be
prejudiced in your favor. If you'll excuse me, sir, I've known the
Norquay family a long time, and it wouldn't have seemed natural for
it to let a thing like that happen. People like you, Mr. Rod, may
get in a hole; but you can't be kept there. You always get up
somehow. I'll be awfully sorry to leave. I really will. This place
is like home to me. I'll hope to come back as soon as you get things
straightened out, Mr. Rod."
Rod sat thinking for a few seconds.
"Thank you, Stagg," he said then, very gently. "I appreciate what
you have said. You seem to understand quite well some things that
other people, who should, don't see at all."
"Now," he continued, after a pause, "I want you to put everything in
order this week. Cover the furniture and put away china and silver
and linen and so on. Fix the house properly. It never was closed
before, but you will know what should be done. When you're finished
I'll pay you all off. Cook, I understand, has relatives living on
the other side of Valdez. The gardeners can work for me in the
woods, if they wish. The housemaids are flappers who haven't had
time to get attached either to us or the place. That'll be all,
Stagg. Thanks."
The man got up. He seemed to hesitate, took a step or two, stopped.
"May I ask if you're going to sell Hawk's Nest, sir?" he finally
blurted out.
Rod shook his head.
"No, Stagg. They may take it away from me eventually. But it is not
for sale."
"Thank you, sir. I couldn't believe you'd think of selling Hawk's
Nest, sir."
Stagg bowed and closed the door softly behind him.
CHAPTER XXVI
Sometimes Rod's heart troubled him so that he would turn in his
ascent of a hill to some part of the works and go down again, stamp,
stamp, joggling it from that enfeebled flutter back to its normal
beat. And afterward he would sit on a log for awhile, struggling
against a wave of depression. So much depended on him alone. He was
the mainspring. If he broke or ran down, the job must go unfinished;
people, his own people and many others, must suffer. And yet, when
he faced the prospect of going on and on like that, flogging a weak
heart to its work, keeping his brain alert to direct a big
undertaking and the mass of detail involved, making money and more
money and pouring it like water into an endless pipe, he felt a
profound weariness, an unutterable distaste for this game of
profit-creating which other men played with such gusto.
The sum that passed through his hands in any calendar month of 1919
would have been sufficient to give him everything he wanted for years
to come. He lived no better than his loggers. He was separated from
Mary most of the time. He became a peripatetic. Something always
required his presence in a camp, and immediately thereafter in
town,--some new phase of the timber market or the Norquay Trust
affairs.
"I'm almost a widow," Mary said to him once. "It's as bad as the
war. About all we get a chance to say to each other these days is
'Hello' and 'Good-by.'"
Some day there would be an end to that, of course. A clean slate and
a chance to draw his breath, to sit idly, contentedly, on the beach
while Rod junior hunted crabs among the rocks, to talk with Mary
about things that were not measured in money values.
He had never been hungry to grasp material substance out of life so
much as to understand life, the absorbing spectacle of the universe,
to fathom its strange manifestations of beauty and terror. All his
life he had loved the sight and smell of forests, the sound of
running water, the majesty of the hills. He had loved peace and
beauty and harmony. He loved them more than ever, but the beloved
trinity had vanished out of his days. He was become an engineer, his
hand on the levers, his ears full of the roar and grind of machinery.
Only for a few hours now and then in the privacy of his own home
could he achieve rest and content; or when for a moment he could
stand forgetful and look up at the mainland palisades, rising tier on
tier to far heights behind Little Dent and the Euclataws.
Yet in spite of struggling with a formidable task, irritating
problems, planning, directing, moving with sure purpose to an end the
value of which he sometimes doubted, he began to get little glows of
satisfaction when he was not too tired, more especially as that first
year closed and he knew that the heart which had been organically
perfect but functionally weak was regaining strength, slowly
attaining functional perfection once more. Perhaps that lessened his
moodiness, made him quicker to respond to external stimulus. He had
gone for a year on his nerve. He had followed a light that sometimes
seemed no more than a will-o'-the-wisp. With bodily soundness he
began to feel a touch of pride in the work of his hands and brain.
He had made no costly mistakes, either in men or tactics. It was
odd, he reflected sometimes, as he went about the workings, that
other men, corporations, were carrying on various private wars with
labor, and that he should be free of those clashes that arose so
often and so unexpectedly in the years following the war. It was
even more odd that he should be regarded with suspicion by these
other men and corporation heads for maintaining production without
strikes, disputes, clashes, antagonisms.
They had years of experience. He had started with more theory than
experience. He was beating them at their own game; largely, he
believed, because he came to it with a fresher point of view, a
policy based on an understanding, partly reasoned, partly intuitive,
of how the logger working for a day's pay feels about his work and
the man he works for.
For years before the war, loggers in B.C. coast camps had lived and
worked under conditions they were powerless to change. Any sort of
accommodation, any sort of food, the lowest wages they could be
compelled to accept; that was the logger's portion. The Norquay
camps had been better than most, but Rod knew they were bad enough.
The logger was hardy, strong, patient, skilful, by a process of
elimination.
The war changed conditions without changing the logger's essential
qualities. With labor scarce, with timber production a military as
well as an economic necessity, with organization in the air, the B.C.
logger took the whip hand. His memory was tenacious of old wrongs.
He did not ask, he demanded, and his demands were grudgingly conceded
because his employers were taking huge profits in airplane spruce, in
exportable fir and cedar, in shipbuilding material. And although the
timber market took little count of the Armistice, the employers did.
With the first demobilization, with the first infiltration of
discharged soldiers into the labor market, industrial war was
secretly declared. They set out to tame the militant logger who
thought that he was entitled to bathtubs, clean sleeping quarters,
grapefruit for breakfast if he desired it, and the maximum wage for
an eight-hour day.
But the logger did not tame easily. Individually he was a
wide-shouldered person with language and spirit to match the muscles
developed in the woods. He did not submit without a struggle.
Collectively he was organized to fight, and he fought with the only
weapons available. The season of 1919 was a period of disputes,
grievances, abortive wage cuts, strikes, sabotage, all that goes with
a labor war,--a war that in 1919 and well into the next year was a
series of lost battles for the employers and corresponding bitterness
on their part.
Into this troubled arena Rod Norquay had stepped with his pressing
need of continuous operation. He was wise and generous impulses went
with his wisdom. He believed that the logger was a simple man who
could be led where no man could drive him save under the sharp, spur
of acute need. He had believed that the logger was a man and not a
mechanism long before he took a year in the woods himself to see what
made the common man laugh, weep, fight, play, drink to debauchery and
rise sometimes to heroic proportion under stress. He had learned
then that man is not so completely the perfect product of class and
environment as he superficially seems. Mary Thorn had unconsciously
shown him that first. This one and that,--Andy Hall, Oliver Thorn,
old Jim Handy the logging boss, even Grove before the war and after,
and the crucible of war itself,--had taught him that however the
human unit is outwardly shaped by place and circumstance, each is
flesh and desire and a creature of passion.
So that it was impossible for him ever to regard his men as so many
tools to be used or laid aside as he willed. He was free of the
curious detachment of the captains of industry from the lesser ranks.
He neither locked himself in the ivory tower of the contemplative
spirit, nor fortified himself behind the golden wall of material
security. He remained a man in a man's world, directing and shaping
the cutting edge of his human tools without once forgetting their
essential humanity,--so that they admired him for his deftness of
touch.
He had been fortunate in his choice of Andy Hall. Even old Oliver
Thorn voluntarily came out of his retirement and directed one part of
his operations. Rod did not always know by what occult process he
judged men, but he made no mistakes in men. And men are always the
prime levers. Machines, powerful, complex, will not operate
themselves. They do not create themselves. If mechanism seems to
overshadow men, it is only because of a distorted sense of
proportion. Hands and brains come first; everything else in the
world of men is a by-product. The energy of hand and brain is as
necessary as directive force; without that energy, however rude,
uncouth, unskilled, there would be nothing to direct; and its reward
should be liberal and ungrudging, a right, not a concession. Until
Utopia comes in the millennial dawn men must exist under a social and
industrial system that is not the creation of a class or a period,
but is the slow growth of centuries. Under it the strong, the
acquisitive, the self-disciplined, the men of force and character
somehow get to the top. But having got to the top, being secure in
their power, if they were wise they neither despised nor trampled on
those at the bottom.
That was a creed which Rod Norquay, Andy Hall, and Oliver Thorn held
in common. These diverse men--Andy, a fiery proletarian rebel, whose
steel-trap logic picked fallacies and blunders wholesale in the
modern economic system, yet whose inherited instincts drove him to
fight with the clan when the clan went to war, and from which he had
returned with a touch of bitterness and a tinge of cynicism; Rod
himself, a patrician by birth, training, environment, a gentleman in
the amplest meaning of that much-abused term; Oliver Thorn, the
gentle, contemplative, kindly, shrewd old man--they shared that
conviction. It was more than a conviction; it was an article of
faith.
"I may be wrong. If I am it will break me instead of getting me what
I want," Rod had said to Andy in the beginning. "But this is my
idea: men will work faithfully if they are even reasonably satisfied
with their job. Men are still capable of loyalty even to a boss and
a job, although a lot of propaganda denies it, and the intellectual
radicals say it's a slave attitude. I don't mean to fall back on the
insincere platitude that the interests of the employer and employee
are identical. But I, as well as the men who will work for me, will
be faced with a condition, as somebody put it, and not a theory. So
long a& they must work for a wage and I must make a profit to keep
them employed, anything that will reduce possible friction is worth
considering on its merits. So we start on this basis; we forestall
agitation for better conditions by setting an example in the way of
conditions. We provide first-class living quarters. We serve the
best food available. We pay top wages, with the added inducement of
a bonus based on production. No man is to be fired for any sort of
economic heresy. They are free to do their own thinking, to express
their individual opinions about the outfit, about working conditions,
about industry in general. They can agitate and discuss any social
theory whatever without risking discharge. I don't care whether they
are Reds, Syndicalists, Socialists, Free Thinkers, Single Taxers,
theorists of any description whatever,--so long as they will devote
their working hours to doing the work. That's a general policy. I
think it will go. The surest way to breed fantastic theories is to
muzzle men through fear. The surest way to make men dissatisfied is
to be arbitrary over trifles. The coöperative commonwealth may be a
million miles away, but coöperation on the job with benefit to us
both is not an impossibility. I think that will work."
It did work. It had an effect beyond mere efficiency on the job. It
did away with inhibitions that bred sullenness. When a man was
well-fed, well-housed, well-paid, where it was easy for him to see
that he was regarded as a human being with certain rights and
privileges, an atmosphere of good feeling soon developed.
It became a mark of distinction to work for the Norquay estate.
Rod's fallers, buckers, loaders, his minor bosses, his donkey
engineers, began to take an active pride in what they did. They
boasted of what they could do, and made good their boasts. They
walked with a swagger. A good many of them called him by name when
he went among them. It dawned upon Rod finally that they liked him,
that they were working for him as no other logging crews on the B.C.
coast worked in those uncertain days when the union organizations of
wartime were fighting tooth and toenail to hold their own against
organizations of reactionary employers, who affected tremblingly to
see in the struggle for wages and hours the horrid specter of
Bolshevism.
In so much he gained success. Sometimes he would feel a profound
resentment because there loomed always the possibility of failure, of
collapse, of material ruin. With the estate intact he could have
tested, experimented in a field that interested him. He had no
illusions about industry, about the competitive scramble. He had no
visionary schemes for speedy remodelling of the economic structure.
But with the means to work, he could have worked with a sense of
security; he was quite sure that he could effect a change for the
better in a field he knew and force others to follow his lead.
It was not, he saw, political power or vengeance on a class that
labor cried out for. It was security of livelihood, a recognition of
their rights as human beings,--two things that were everywhere
acknowledged in theory but frequently disregarded in practice. If
political power, direct action, accentuated class struggle were the
only ways to secure these two essentials, as some held, then the
industrial clashes must go on, must grow more bitter. Rod not only
believed that society should, in its own interest, guarantee labor a
decent livelihood as its rightful share in mass production, but he
believed it could be done--he believed he could do it himself--he
believed it could be done in any industry--he believed that sometime
it must be done to avoid a greater evil.
The test of anything is its workability. Rod's policy worked, with
almost four hundred men on his pay roll. And if he had not been
compelled to pour his profits into that moribund Trust Company he
could have built up a reserve strong enough to carry his working
force over any possible non-productive period. At the worst now, he
could square the Norquay account with the world at large. But a
little thing might leave him with no resources whatever. And he
regretted that. He knew what he could do, if he once had a free hand.
That uncertainty bore on him hard. He was doing his best. His men
were doing their best. Logs came down to tidewater in a marvellous
flow, as if the trees were handled by intelligent automatons with
legs and fingers of steel. He had no labor difficulty that was not
solved on such occasions as it arose by a half-hour's dispassionate
talk over a table with the spokesmen of his crews. The walking
delegates of the Logger's Union approached him as confidently as if
he had been a member of the union.
But there was always that cursed pit into which he was flinging his
trees. It yawned bottomless. It loomed before him distressingly; an
Augean stable that he must clean. He had his weak moments, his hours
of utter discouragement. But he could neither stop nor turn aside.
Sometimes in the streets of Vancouver, after a checking up with
Charlie Hale in the Norquay Trust office, he would have the morbid
fancy that the deep traffic roar of the city was like the roar of the
rapids by Little Dent, and that he was in a frail craft shooting that
fierce economic tiderace to disaster in the financial whirlpools.
What a price to pay for one man's purblind ambition! He would look
back at the chaste white square of the Norquay Trust Building, at the
black iron skeleton of the great electric sign, and his lips would
mutter a curse.
CHAPTER XXVII
Late summer of 1920 pricked to utter collapse the prosperity balloon
which had been deflating ever since the Armistice. Europe still
stewed in the choice juices of local punitive expeditions, reparation
snarls, gyrating exchange, so that North American commerce lagged by
the way with heavy feet. Here and there industry somehow kept going.
It couldn't stop altogether, even lacking foreign markets. Crops
were sowed and reaped; people were fed; life went on. But capital
ventured timidly. Wages fell, even though commodities seemed
reluctant to cheapen. The stress came particularly hard on the
Pacific Coast. The bottom dropped out of the lumber market. A
thousand loggers walked the streets of Vancouver, hungry, bewildered,
as soon as their savings gave out. Only here and there a few
companies and individuals, fortunately situated, well-managed, or
filled with bowels of compassion for their men, were enabled to
continue. They could log cheaply. They were willing to risk a
little loss rather than disband crews and let machinery rust; and
they hoped for the upturn, the revival of "confidence," that talisman
which commends itself to Boards of Trade and Chambers of Commerce.
Rod owned his timber. He neither leased, paid royalty, stumpage, nor
interest on borrowed capital. It was choice timber, picked long ago
when his forefathers had the cream of coastal forests to choose from.
If a tree could be cut and sold at a profit by any one, he was the
one. So long as he could operate without loss, he meant to keep on.
He had to keep on, until the cost of production overtook the market
price.
And because he kept on along the lines he had laid down in the
beginning, he found himself in disfavor with people who had once
considered it a privilege to know a Norquay. He did not suffer from
that. They could not hurt him. If he had not been deeply troubled
because he saw the nearing end of his own rope, he would have been
amused.
To know that there were men who damned him heartily for paying labor
so much a day when labor could be had for less. To be aware that a
certain clique looked forward to the weight of the Norquay Trust
crushing him, and that there might be pickings on the bones, because
he was young and inexperienced in business. To be regarded as a
quixotic fool. To have certain men freeze up when he met them in
clubs, hotels, on coastwise steamers. To have others draw him aside
for earnest remonstrance. It was strange what an interest they took
in his welfare; how eager they were to point out that he was hurting
himself and demoralizing the labor market, making it hard for them to
readjust their business to changed conditions, to deflate properly.
Labor had to come down off its high horse and his tactics delayed the
unseating. And so forth. None of it troubled Rod.
He did not want their friendship. He set no store by their opinions.
He had been a solitary animal all his life, too self-contained for
superficial friendships. He had dreamed in and out of books as a
youngster while some of these others were already up and doing. As a
man he played a lone hand, acted with resolution, brooded over his
own problems, disregarded the non-essential.
He had his wife and his son. He had a given task to accomplish. He
had a friend or two to lean on if he needed to lean, Andy Hall,
Oliver Thorn, his brother-in-law who wrestled with the Norquay Trust
as the angel of the Lord wrestled with Apollyon. In the city office
he had two men he could rely on, two heirlooms, two old, very wise,
white-mustached men who had handled accounts, costs, sales, during
his father's régime and Phil's. And there was Stagg, the butler, and
his wife, who elected to remain at Hawk's Nest for the sake of house
room and a sentiment Rod understood, valued, was moved by. They
were, Stagg said, too old to go into service elsewhere. They had a
bit of money put by. Enough to live rent free, but not enough to
cope with the cost of town living. They would like to stay at Hawk's
Nest and keep it aired and dry, to care for such part of the grounds
as Stagg could keep from going to rack. Rod thanked them and let
them have their wish. It gave himself and Mary a room always ready
when they wanted to spend a day or two there, which they did at
times. It was pleasant to sit on those wide porches in blazing
August, to watch Rod junior prance across the lawn astride a stick.
Hawk's Nest was home in a very dear and intimate sense, even if it
could no longer be maintained in the old opulent state. Rod never
passed down the channel in the _Haida_ about his business without a
lingering, regretful look at that red roof glowing against a
background of green timber and great mountains.
There remained only one link--apart from his sister Dorothy who came
to Hawk's Nest each summer for a month, and in whose Vancouver home
the diminished Norquay clan gathered at Christmas--between Rod and
the numerous folk who had haunted that place in the old days, the
girls he had danced with, the young fellows who had been his
contemporaries. That link was Isabel Wall.
It seemed a strange friendship. He had always regarded Isabel with a
feeling of patient tolerance. She had fallen in love with him once,
in her doll-like fashion, to his great embarrassment. She appeared
to have no recollection of that episode. She seemed firmly attached
to Mary. Between them, diverse as they were, there did exist an
intimacy, an understanding, an affection that Rod was slow to fathom,
which he did not fathom at all until he began to take serious stock
of Isabel and discovered that for all her unchanged pink-and-white
prettiness, this diminutive person was really not at all the Isabel
Wall of his original conception.
It seemed to him in the beginning to be incongruous that his wife's
greatest, almost her only intimate, should be the frivolous daughter
of a man who, next to Grove Norquay, was chiefly responsible for the
evil days upon which the Norquay family had fallen. But because his
faith in his wife's judgment was a vital thing, he let that pass. If
at first glance it seemed incomprehensible it was an accomplished
fact. Isabel lived in his house as much as she did her own. She
seemed absolute mistress of her comings and goings. If she had once
had no mark to shoot at save dress and parties and men, she did not
seem to care greatly now whether she danced and played and flirted.
Yet she seldom uttered a serious thought. She remained a charming
irresponsible, given to slang and cigarettes. She descended upon
them in town, at the Euclataws, whether they were at Hawk's Nest or
in the logging camp on Valdez, when the mood took her. She was
always welcome. Isabel was a gloom-dispeller. Rod used to wonder at
first if she did not come chiefly for the joy she got in devilling
the life out of Andy Hall. But presently he found himself with a
sneaking fondness for Isabel and her quaint pertness. And when he
reached that stage and admitted it, Mary laughed.
"Isabel's a jewel, Rod. She's sound and sweet and true as steel.
She's been pampered and petted all her life. Yet it hasn't spoiled
her in any of the various ways in which that sort of thing does spoil
girls. She sticks to us because she says we're about the only real
people she knows. That tiny blonde head contains some very sound
wisdom. She hasn't many illusions left, and still she hasn't got
cynical or hard and calculating. Laska made a hash of her life and
has reacted accordingly. Their mother's hopelessly society-mad. Her
idea of heaven is to be presented at Court sometime. Bob drinks like
a fish and goes on the loose just as Grove used to do. Her father
knows only the money game and plays that to the exclusion of
everything else. The poor kid's only chance in the world, she says
herself, is to find and marry a man who can stand on his own feet."
Shortly after that conversation Rod went in search of a logging boss,
thinking, as he walked beside a chute in which hummed a steel "main
line" that quivered under the strain of a heavy load, of Isabel and
her astonishing metamorphosis. Or was it merely a cropping out of
something latent? Undeniably that did happen. By all the rules of
the game, Isabel should continue as she had begun, a butterfly, a
dainty parasitical creature who had never toiled, spun, or concerned
herself with anything but each day's pleasure as it came her way. He
hadn't credited Isabel with perception to fathom the futility of the
pursuit of pleasure as a life work, without duties, responsibilities,
or any creative passion. But he could understand her instinctive
revolt. He wondered what John P. Wall thought of this daughter who
found dissatisfaction in a life that was all pleasure and no purpose.
His errand took him far up into the workings. The daily routine of a
logging boss is an active one. The man Rod sought moved always ahead
of him, giving his overseeing eye to various spots where separate
gangs of men busied themselves with powerful and noisy machinery,
devoted to localized and violent struggle with logs of enormous
tonnage. A stranger to logging as it proceeds in the forests of the
Pacific Coast invariably gets a first impression of desperate effort
and grave danger in his approach to a donkey engine at work. The
black, round-bellied monster shudders and strains on anchored skids.
The inch and a quarter main line reels up on the drums with a grind
of gears, a behemothic sputtering of exhaust steam. Continuous
vibrations disturb the air and communicate themselves to the earth
over a wide radius. The cable runs away into the shadowy places of
the forest. It recedes therein, chattering, whining; it comes forth
dragging the huge sticks to the base of the sky-line pole; and the
logs go thence, dangling, sliding, gouging holes in the hillside: It
is all noise, effort, confusion, humming of lines, hiss of steam,
bull-blocks screaming; a deafening uproar until a stop signal brings
a hush that by contrast is solemn, as if that powerful machinery were
a heart that had suddenly stopped beating.
Rod found his man at last and returned. They were living in the old
Thorn house, taking their meals in a small room off the main
messhouse, where the crew bolted its collective food in occupied
silence, putting all its energy into the business of eating, and
reserving a free and unrestrained mode of conversation for the ease
of the bunkhouse. A steamer had touched and gone while he was
absent, passing north through the rapids on the afternoon slack. He
found Isabel Wall on the calk-splintered steps, teaching young
Roderick a whimsy she had picked up somewhere:
"Poor Robinson Crusoe!
What made the poor man do so?
He was a Robinson I know
But that's no reason he should crow.
I wonder why he Crusoe?"
She was making the boy letter-perfect in this. Andy Hall sat on the
step below her, smoking a cigarette in contemplative silence.
"They'll be through at Valdez to-morrow," he informed Rod.
"So soon? I thought they had a week to go."
"They made time," Andy commented tersely.
"Well, better load the working gear on floats and get it up here,"
Rod told him. "Have 'em begin on the cedar hollow."
"I put the fallers in there this afternoon."
Rod smiled. It was almost unnecessary to tell Andy Hall what should
be done. Sometimes it seemed as if Andy had a mysterious prescience.
Then Rod would recollect that they had discussed such a move long
before. Or it was the logical move which Andy merely anticipated.
In either case Andy always knew what he was doing, and why; nor did
he ever hesitate to take the initiative.
Rod leaned back in a grass chair, clasped his hands behind his head,
stared across the channel at the flash of the sun on the windows of
Hawk's Nest. Behind him, in a west-facing room, he could hear the
staccato of typewriter keys, tapping out the last chapter of Mary's
second novel. He wondered, if things had been different, if he would
have succeeded in that outlet. No, he decided. It would have been a
splendid thing to try. He had been eager to embody and interpret the
spirit of the pioneers. But he doubted now if he had the peculiar
creative gift of making words transform his imaginings into a reality
that would convey stark passion and stirring deeds. And Mary had
that gift, beyond a doubt; not only the inborn faculty of perceiving,
but the torturing necessity to transmit, to release through patient
drudgery at her chosen medium, that sense of life as a vast conflict
in which man struggles with his fellows, his gods, and his passions,
sometimes to victory and often to defeat.
No, he had the vision, the perceptive faculty, but not that uncanny
power to capture and pass it on. Such vision as he had must find its
outlet in action less subtle, more practical. He would never write
the stories he had dreamed; he knew that now. But Mary would; she
had her wings. He was proud of her flight. Only, sometimes, when
her work took her into a brooding remoteness, a spiritual detachment
that thrust not only himself but every material consideration
temporarily aside, he wondered if the artist could ever function
except as the supreme egotist, if the true artist must not by some
obscure compulsion subordinate everything to the imperative demands
of his art. Even so, he knew that he would rather have only such
portion of his wife as he could share than the most complete
possession--body, soul and brain--of any other woman he knew. Mary
would always understand. In any crisis she would always have courage
and confidence. She was his windward anchor. He loved her not for
what she did and said but for what she was--herself.
Young Roderick picked up a stick from one corner of the porch.
"Gotta go to work," he informed them gravely.
"What at?" Isabel inquired.
"Scalin' timber," he replied. He danced off down the path to the
beach, chanting:
"Poor Robinson Crusoe,
What made the poor man do so?"
Already incorporating the reality of his environment into the
child-world of make-believe. Rod smiled; he had done the same thing
himself, alone, happily, through just such hot, smoky, August days
long ago. The boy clambered over a heap of stovewood, measuring with
his stick, making marks on a bit of notepaper just as the scaler did
who walked the boom with pad and pencil and a six-foot scaling rule.
For a time the murmur of Isabel's and Andy's conversation accompanied
Rod's thoughts. He continued to stare across at Hawk's Nest. A
problem pressed him for solution, a question which involved closely
that gray house with its glowing roof of red tiles, from behind which
rose the conical top of the great cedar, in the shadow of which so
many Norquays took their last rest.
He was approaching a critical stage in his affairs. He did not know
how much longer he could carry on. Producing costs overtook market
prices, would soon pass them. Only by a foresighted contract with a
Puget Sound pulp mill had he kept going so long. In a month that
would expire. It could not be renewed on the same terms. The great
pulp plant in Phillips Arm which the Norquay Trust had financed and
which had never ground a ton of pulp until Rod forced it into
production, offered him prices he couldn't take on the wages paid and
hours worked. He wouldn't know where to turn soon, unless he
abandoned his present policy, cut wages to the bone, got into line
with the other employers. That seemed to him like a breach of faith.
He had made a fortune on the labor of his men already; that he was
poorer in funds than at the beginning did not alter the case. The
Norquay Trust had swallowed the profits. It would swallow a vast sum
yet before its appetite was glutted. It hurt him to think of these
men paying for Grove's mismanagement by lengthened hours and
shortened pay. Nor did he wish to shut down and wait a turn in the
market. A shutdown meant a cessation of revenue; that in turn might
precipitate the disaster he had struggled so hard to avert. It was a
very real difficulty.
He was stirred out of these reflections by a silence which had all
the effect of a disturbing sound. He came back to the immediate
present. Isabel still sat on the step, a dainty figure in a blue
sweater and pleated tan skirt, staring after Andy's retreating figure.
"Your right bower," she said complainingly, turning to meet Rod's
gaze, "is the stupidest man I know."
"You're a mile off the mark," Rod contradicted.
"He is," she repeated. "He's afraid of me."
"Andy Hall," Rod answered dryly, "is not afraid of anything or any
one, least of all a harmless person like you."
"He's in love with me," Isabel said coolly. "And he's so afraid of
me that he hasn't sense enough to see that all he has to do is to
hold out his hands and I'll fall into 'em like a--a ripe plum. Can't
you give him a hint, Rod?"
"Haven't you scalps enough at your belt without Andy's?"
"If I give him mine in exchange, that's fair enough," Isabel murmured.
"Do you really mean that?" Rod asked.
Isabel got out her cigarette case and deliberately blew smoke rings
before she replied.
"I don't know for sure," she said at last. "Sometimes I think so,
and again I'm not so sure. I could tell better if he'd ask me. It
isn't that I wouldn't like to. It's simply that I have qualms of
conscience sometimes about wishing myself on a man like that. I'm so
damned useless, Rod."
"I don't think that men as a rule love women and marry them on the
basis of their usefulness," he returned. "I'm certain Andy wouldn't.
I must say it's rather odd to see you taking that slant at it."
"Oh, yes," she drawled petulantly. "I suppose you've got me labelled
fragile, too. Just because a fellow's been brought up gilt-edged and
has acted accordingly, is she to be credited with neither heart nor
conscience, nor even common sense? I have come to the conclusion
that I don't want to be a canary in anybody's cage, Rod. When I size
up some of the horrible examples of how not to do it in my own crowd,
I get afraid. I'm twenty-six years old, Roderick. Does it never
strike you that a girl like me doesn't play a lone hand so long
without good reasons?"
"What's that got to do with Andy?" Rod inquired.
"I'll tell you in words of one syllable and maybe you'll get it," she
retorted. "Some years ago, if you recall the occasion, I was very
much in love with your own distinguished self. I hope," she smile
impishly, "it doesn't embarrass you to be reminded. It doesn't me,
because I still think my judgment was good, even if I was out of
luck. I've been in love probably half a dozen times since. And I
always drew back at what the novelists call the psychological moment.
Why? God knows. I don't. Something lacking, I suppose. Perhaps in
spite of my giddiness I had a hunch that being in love with love
isn't quite the same as being in love with a person. Then the war
took all the likely ones away, and a good many of the best of them
didn't come back. And something has happened to those who did come
back. They're either so keen on the make they daren't take a girl
seriously, or--or they've gone bad; the bloom's off 'em. Not one of
them looks good to me. Nor the life they live. I hope I don't sound
preachy. But some people who are rotten with money--especially those
who've made it so fast they haven't had time to grow up to it--are
rotten with other things, too. I may look like what Andy calls a
charming, innocent parasite. I like to think of myself as charming.
My instincts at any rate are innocent. But I do object to the role
of parasite. I don't want to be one. I've never done anything
useful, even for myself, but that isn't saying I don't want to--even
if it's no more than to comfort and pet some man and hearten him for
whatever sort of job he has in hand. I've never worked, but that's
no sign I wouldn't if I knew where to start in. I'm not lazy, nor am
I too fastidious for workaday life. That's what it's got to do with
Andy Hall. I like him. I'd hate to tell you just how much; you'd
blush. And he likes me. I know that, although he's the best little
sentiment-represser I've come across. He's afraid of me, or he's
afraid of what I am. I mean I think he doesn't see me just as a
woman but as part of and more or less inseparable from a certain
background--a background he doesn't like and doesn't trust.
"You see," she went on more hurriedly, her voice becoming a little
uncertain, her eyes turned steadfastly on the swirls and foaming
overfalls the flood now made strongly in the rapids, "I get so
infernally lonesome and discouraged sometimes. I'm tired of froth.
I don't like the giddy pace most of 'em go. I don't want to be like
Laska, soured on everything, so that she lives on cocktails and
cigarettes and jazz. If she sits still long enough to think, she's
apt to cry. If I don't find myself happy in the jazz age, Rod, at
least I belong to it sufficiently not to be afraid or ashamed of my
own thoughts and feelings and desires. I'm a normal female person.
A woman can't escape the implication of a man, nor vice versa. Most
of 'em go it blind. I'm not made that way. I don't know why, but
it's a fact. Long ago I made up my mind that if I couldn't find the
real thing in my own crowd, I'd go outside, just as you did."
"And then," she made a little gesture with her hands, "remember the
day Andy showed Mrs. Hector Emmert his medals and made that
passionate little speech that she said was sedition? Well, I warmed
up to Andy Hall right then and there. Two years. I'm no nearer him
now. He holds himself in. He won't let go. What can I do?"
"I'll tell you," Rod said impulsively. "Andy doesn't know you. You
don't let go yourself."
"Fiddlesticks," she retorted. "Two years. I think I'm shamelessly
transparent."
"Two years? I've known you more than ten," Rod countered. "I've
learned more about you in ten minutes than I did in all the time
before. So imagine his handicap. You're a rich man's daughter.
You've had every social advantage. You belong to a class that taken
by and large Andy Hall not only dislikes but despises for its
stupidity and arrogance in so far as it deals with working people."
"Oh, yes, the well-known capitalist class," Isabel said impatiently.
"But you're one and he likes you."
"I come in a different category," Rod answered grimly. "I despise
the tin-horn capitalist whose only god is capital more than Andy Hall
does. It's part of a social theory with Andy. It's a personal feud
with me. I'm suffering from the manipulations of that type of
gold-digger. It has just about ruined me and has caused me to risk
all that several generations of honest, generous-minded men built up,
including a home many of us love--and a reputation for integrity
besides. But Andy happens to know me as a man apart from my present
dubious position as a capitalist. He doesn't really know you as a
woman. He may be in love with you. Probably is, because you are an
attractive little devil--"
"I thank you very much, kind sir," Isabel interrupted mockingly.
"But," Rod went on unheeding, "unless he were absolutely sure you
would, as Christ told the man who wanted to be saved, 'Leave all that
thou hast and follow Me,' a donkey engine couldn't pull a declaration
of any sort out of him. Don't you see? Andy's full of sinful pride.
He's class-conscious. He knows your kind of people better than you
do, and he knows they regard him as belonging to an inferior order.
He would chew his heart up and spit it out in little pieces before
he'd let any flirtatious daughter of the idle rich have it for a
curio in her collection. You've talked and laughed with him here in
our house. You call him Andy and he calls you Isabel. But remember
that he knows what manners are, and that being genial, even
pleasantly intimate to the point of plaguing him the way you do,
doesn't really mean anything. He's my trusted superintendent, and he
draws a corking good salary which he faithfully earns, but he knows
that wouldn't prevent a person like you from cutting him dead if he
met you in, say the Vancouver Hotel Dubarry Room, hanging on the arm
of, well, Sir Earnest Staples of Government House, Victoria."
"Never," Isabel protested. "I'm no snob."
"I didn't say you would. But it's been done. You've seen that sort
of thing pulled," Rod continued. "Andy knows he doesn't belong in
your crowd. What's more, he doesn't want to. He has seen quite
clearly from the outside what you've seen from the inside, and come
to the same conclusion. But he doesn't know you've arrived at such a
conclusion. I didn't know it myself. You poke fun at them, of
course. But you play the game with them right along, and you
camouflage your real attitude toward life with Andy, with me, with us
all. In fact, you'd have a hard time convincing any one, offhand,
that you ever had a serious thought in your life. So how do you
expect Andy to take you seriously?"
"But must one pull a long face and go about spreading the philosophy
of disillusion and appealing for sympathy?" Isabel protested. "I
can't help it if I'm mostly a cheerful idiot. How am I to make Andy
understand that--that I--that--"
She choked up. And Rod felt intensely sorry for her at that moment.
But he knew of no way to help.
"I said I'd tell you, and I'll try," he went on gently. "If you
really do love Andy Hall and want him, you had better sometime just
put your arms around his neck and tell him so."
Isabel looked away. A deep flush colored her white neck and spread
upward until it was lost in the roots of her yellow fluff of bobbed
hair.
"Oh," she whispered, "I couldn't do that."
"That's the best way," he said kindly. "Andy has all the finer
instincts. But he has a lot of inhibitions you don't know anything
about. I don't think you really understand class feeling, Isabel.
You seem to be free of it altogether. But it exists. Believe me, I
speak both from experience and observation. It is next to impossible
to build a bridge across a definite social gulf. You have to jump
it--from one side or the other. People are apt to deny this in a
supposedly democratic country. But it's truer than they think. You
put Andy in dress clothes and turn him loose in your own crowd, and
he'd get by with very little coaching. But he wouldn't stick. He'd
say it was shoddy. Which you and I and Mary are agreed it is. But
in contact with intellect, art, real achievement in the best sense,
Andy not only asserts his equality, but would get a glow of enjoyment
out of the association. Andy Hall's character is sterling, and
that's above any class distinction. If Andy really cares for you,
Isabel, I'd say you were justified in going to extremes to let him
know where _you_ stand."
"I can't go all the way myself," she whispered, and fell silent,
staring moodily over the channel waters. Then she got up and went
inside.
CHAPTER XXVIII
A day or two later Rod came back to that conversation.
"I keep thinking of Laska," he said to Isabel. "Is she really so
soured on things as you declared? Is she deliberately hitting the
high spots just for the kick there's in it?"
"I'll tell the listening world she is," Isabel replied.
"I wonder why?" Rod mused. "She's free, young, and well-off. At
least, she has all the advantages of wealth."
"Several whys," Isabel answered. "Her mind isn't healthy. It's
twisted, or tainted or something. She started out several years ago
with a lot of sentimental illusions. Matrimony, as she experienced
it, was--well, unsatisfactory. Laska backed the wrong horse in the
marriage race, and didn't discover it until too late. You don't mind
my saying that Grove was a good deal of a mucker in his private life?"
Rod shook his head.
"I'm not particularly sensitive about what you say of him."
"Well, it's true. Did you know that Laska was really in love, very
much so, with Phil?"
"I suspected it."
"She was always rather a queer fish," Isabel continued. "Good,
generous impulses mixed up with very uncertain ones. She liked them
both at first, about fifty-fifty, I think. She may have married
Grove simply because he asked her first. He did have a way of making
women like him--all kinds of women--for awhile. Perhaps the fact
that he was elected to be the biggest toad in the Norquay puddle
influenced her. I don't know. I'm sure she thought it a fine thing
to be mistress of Hawk's Nest and all it implied. Being chatelaine
of a place with dignity, the permanence of age, all the indefinable
things that Hawk's Nest makes you feel are part of it, must have
appealed to her. But when she found what she was really up against
as Grove's wife, how very different it turned out from the thing she
dreamed it would be, well, it was the most natural thing in the world
for her to look back longingly at Phil and to be intensely sorry for
herself. Self-pity is a very demoralizing sort of thing. Phil
looked like pure gold alongside what she'd chosen--no woman who lived
with one man and knew the other could help seeing and feeling that.
To know that she could have had Phil if she'd so chosen made it worse.
"Of course there was no turning back. It isn't done, you know--short
of open scandal, or a perfectly insufferable outbreak of some sort.
She had cooked her goose. In an extreme she might have divorced
Grove. But she couldn't possibly marry his brother afterward.
Nobody would have stood for that. So she just had to sweat. And
that makes any woman sour, or hard, or reckless.
"You know how Grove performed," Isabel pointed out. "He was a very
untidy person--morally."
Rod nodded assent.
"A man like that should never marry," Isabel continued sagely. "He
was like a small, very headstrong boy with toys. Women were toys.
When he got tired playing with one, he chucked her away and got
another. He did that before he married Laska, I suppose. As soon as
the novelty of her wore off he went right on--as usual. Everybody
knew it. No one could do anything about it. He was fairly adept at
keeping his affairs _de c[oe]ur_ out of sight. There were a few
explosions, to my personal knowledge. Then Laska finally settled
back into a state of contemptuous resentful indifference, and let him
go his own gait.
"But it made her suffer intensely, and it has given her a nasty taste
in her mouth--and she has all the conventional reactions. If she had
kids or work, anything real to take her mind off herself, she might
come back to normal. As it is, I shouldn't be surprised at anything
that sister of mine might do. She's all tension. She goes on
hitting the high spots because she's got to do something. It's
rotten, but so long as she can't get a kick out of anything else, why
I expect she'll go on. I don't mean that she's dabbling in muck.
Her instincts are fairly decent. But she's hovering on the ragged
edge."
"Pity, isn't it?" Rod commented. "One can't take people by the
scruff of the neck and set them right; even if one is sure of one's
own standards and profound wisdom, which no one ever really is. When
it comes to a showdown most of us have to dance according to our
bent, and pay the piper when he presents his bill."
"That's the devil of it; that inconvenient bill," Isabel said
lightly. "That's why I've got fussy about how and with whom I dance.
There's not much fun dancing alone, but there's nothing but grief in
dancing with a death's head wished on you for a permanent partner.
That," she confessed naïvely, "is one of the reasons I like Andy
Hall. You couldn't conceive of Andy being a bore, or a failure at
whatever he undertook--or cheating. I hate cheats. Even the
unconscious ones. And there's a lot of 'em about."
Rod forgot this under pressure of other things. It was all true,
even if unpleasant, and he had more pertinent affairs in hand, keener
problems that involved himself, people who were still entangled in
the Norquay Trust, the men in his employ who labored faithfully
because they had somehow acquired the assurance that he could keep
the wheels turning when other camps shut down. They seemed to
proceed on the assumption that being on the Norquay pay roll bestowed
upon them immunity from the paralysis that crept over the body of
industry.
To go on as he had begun was more than a material necessity. It had
become a matter of pride as well as a necessity. He had fashioned a
productive machine that worked now with automatic precision. But
without continuous operation this machine would fall to pieces with
his first task a little more than half-done, and his second task,
which had been forming in his mind nebulously from the
beginning--that of perpetuating this machine for the benefit of every
unit therein, himself included--receded into nothingness. He had no
philanthropic experiments in mind, but he did have an economic and
industrial theory which he believed would work. Unless he could
shake off the deadly weight of the Norquay Trust, it would crush him
financially. To disband the organization now would destroy what he
had been at great pains to create. His men wouldn't understand
failure. They would classify him as another false alarm, another
promiser who failed to perform unless it was to his own advantage.
He knew that once he got the white elephant off his hands, all he
needed was his men and machinery to go on indefinitely, to build up
slowly on a solid basis. But the price of continued and unquestioned
leadership was victory in this first battle. And the chance of
continuous progress to victory began to seem more remote.
The bottom had fallen out of everything. The brief post-war orgy of
production had run its artificial course. The industrial war babies
had died of inanition. Exchange that fluttered like a wounded bird
killed international trade. Europe was steeped in poverty. The
waste of war could not be repaired until the wrangles of peace
subsided. Instead of subsiding, the quarrels over peace became more
acute. While the politicians thrust and parried industry languished.
In the domain of timber only first grades and pulp wood commanded a
sale; and both on a falling market. The camps were shut down, the
mills were silent. Neither camps nor mills would operate unless a
profit seemed sure, a good safe margin. Few of them had the
incentive to go on, such as drove Rod Norquay. He had to go on so
long as he could clear a dollar, even fifty cents a thousand. He was
butchering his holdings, but every dollar that went into the Norquay
Trust brought him nearer a clean slate.
But even Rod's narrow margin was vanishing. Second-grade stuff
accumulated on his hands. He could only renew his pulp contracts at
a loss. And he was fighting to make good a loss. Unless he could
hang on for the turn in the market tide that must come-- His dilemma
was very real.
He could do two things. He could shut down. Six months'
non-production and he could say good-by to every hope of a passable
end to this adventure. Hawk's Nest and the ultimate sale of his
standing timber might square the Norquay obligation. It would leave
him picked to a skeleton. Or he could revise his established policy,
cut wages to the bone, drive labor with a whip, fight them when they
protested, go through the ugly stages of strikes, sabotage, hatreds,
clashes, diminished output; in a word precipitate the industrial
warfare which had made the coast a Bedlam for the single-track minds
on both sides. And that also would ruin him.
September brought him to the stone wall. He came back from a
business trip to town, depressed, uneasy. He knew that a good many
people would consider his scruples unfounded. But he hated to cut
wages. He had made such enormous profits on the labor of these men.
He knew it. He knew that they knew it. It was not the way an
employer should feel. It was not in line with the common conception
of property rights. Nevertheless that was how he felt. However he
came by it, his instinct was patriarchal. His men had become an
aggregation of human beings for whose welfare he was to a certain
degree responsible. He didn't know whether or not they shared such a
feeling. He was too sensible to expect that sort of response. But
certainly loyalty of a definite sort had manifested itself during an
unsettled period in complete absence of friction. They had never
made an unreasonable demand.
To keep going necessitated drastic reductions. Would they stand it?
Rod had very few illusions about men of any sort. They might not be
able to envisage what he did,--a permanent benefit to be derived by
all who stood by the ship if the ship weathered the storm. He could
not mislead them by promises. He was fundamentally incapable of
making promises he could not guarantee to keep.
He called Andy Hall into conference, explained in further detail just
what conditions they were faced with. In the midst of this he saw
Andy's attention waver, his eyes turn. Rod's gaze followed the
direction. Isabel Wall had been at the Euclataws two weeks. She was
walking now slowly along the beach, bare-headed, her yellow hair
glinting in the sun like spun gold, her skirt fluttering in the wind.
A queer expression hovered on Andy's face.
Rod uttered another sentence softly; asked a question. Andy did not
seem to hear.
"Damn it, never mind Isabel!" he broke out in exasperation. "Any
time you want her you can have her, so for God's sake come out of
that trance and listen to what I'm saying."
Andy glared at him, not so much in anger at the outburst as in sheer
amazement, tinged with hopeful eagerness.
"What did you say?"
Rod began where he left off.
"I heard _that_," Andy told him bluntly. "I know it anyway without
telling. I asked what you said about _her_."
"Oh, hell!" Rod threw up his hands. Then he got hold of himself.
Something in Andy's eyes--a curious illuminating recollection of
himself sitting in the stern of his canoe long ago, staring back
through a moonlit night at Oliver Thorn's house with a strange fever
in his blood, a dull ache in his heart.
"Lord, Andy," he said with rough kindness. "Does that knock you all
in a heap? You're not generally so slow." He paused an instant,
then repeated Isabel's own words. "If you weren't stupid you'd see
that all you have to do is to open your hands and she'll fall into
'em like a ripe plum."
Andy matched glances with him for ten silent seconds. Rod smiled
wearily. His impatience had burned out. Then a flush dyed Andy's
fair, freckled skin.
"Shoot," he said presently. "I'm listening."
Rod continued.
"Simple. Leave it to the men," Andy counseled. "Don't make any
arbitrary statements about either hours or wages. This bunch is
wiser to conditions in general than you'd think. Show 'em your hand
and give them the option of deciding what they want to do. Better
let me handle them myself. Will you back up whatever I say or do?"
"Yes, your judgment is as good as mine where they're concerned."
Andy wrinkled his brows for a minute.
"I have a hunch they'll stand for pretty nearly anything you want to
do, if they know your reasons," he said at last. "Be a pity to bust
up a crack crew. I think they kinda feel that way themselves. It's
a cut or a shutdown anyway."
Rod confirmed this.
"Well, we'll see to-night."
Hall went away. Rod watched him follow alongshore after Isabel.
They disappeared together over a mossy point. His glance came back
along the booming ground, followed the shore. Rod junior played on
the gravel with the small son of a hook-tender and the equally small
daughter of a high-rigger. A dozen houses where married men lived
with their families faced that strip of shore. Clothes fluttered
from taut lines. It neared five o'clock. Supper fires flung blue
pennants from various chimneys. Over in the messhouse a flunky sang
at his work and dishes clinked. From far up on the wooded slopes
came shrill whistle blasts, the throb of machinery, all muffled in
the deep cool forest over which was spreading a blight of raw stumps,
broken branches, a litter of destruction.
He went into the house. Mary sat with a few letters in her lap, the
gleanings of that steamer's mail. She looked up at him expectantly.
He shook his head.
"Can't tell yet where we'll come out," he said.
"It's getting to be a sort of a nightmare with you, isn't it, Rod?"
she said wistfully. "The whole thing."
"Oh, well," he replied absently, "another year, maybe sooner, it'll
be finished--win, lose, or draw."
He lit a cigarette, drew a whiff or two, sat with it forgotten in his
fingers till the stub burned him.
The long quitting blast went echoing up and down the channel. Men
came pouring off the hill. The supper gong clanged, a prolonged and
resonant metallic vibration, like an anvil under quick strokes of a
hammer. Rod and his wife and boy walked to the small dining room set
apart for their use. And still Andy and Isabel remained somewhere
beyond that mossy point jutting like a green tongue into the sea.
Not until Rod and his wife were back on the porch and the last logger
long since smoking in the bunk house amid a drone of talk did the
twain appear. Andy walked straight on to the camp. Isabel perched
herself on the top step. She regarded them with a heightened color,
an obvious repression, a look in her eyes as if she had beheld
wonders.
Mary looked after Andy, back at Isabel.
"I'll go along to keep you company," she suggested.
"I'm not the least bit hungry."
"Are you ill?" Mary inquired teasingly.
Isabel shook her head until the bobbed yellow hair stood out like an
aureole.
"I never felt better in my life," she declared.
"I shouldn't be surprised," Rod ventured, "if you acted on the
suggestion I made a few days ago."
Isabel looked blank for a second. Then she remembered.
"I didn't have to, Mr. Roderick," she said defiantly. "So there."
"Ah," Rod declared. "I perceive something has happened."
"Sagacious man," Isabel retorted. "Marvel of penetration, aren't
you? What do you suppose happened, now?"
"Tell us," Mary suggested. "You're bursting with something."
Isabel arose, spread wide her short skirt, made an elaborate curtsey.
"Dear friends, I wish to announce my engagement to Mr. Andrew Hall,"
she said with adorable whimsicality. "Wedding gifts of articles
useful in housekeeping on a small scale will be appreciated."
Then quite suddenly in the midst of her smiles a bright wetness
welled up in her eyes. Her lips quivered. Mary put both arms around
her.
"I'm gladder than any Pollyanna that ever blithered gladness," Isabel
blubbered from this shelter. "And I don't care who knows it. Say,
Mary, did it affect you this way?"
The two women disappeared within. Young Rod climbed on his father's
knee and demanded to be told the story of Paul Bunyan and his famous
camp in Michigan where the loggers were ninety feet high and
twenty-four feet across the shoulders, and the cook coasted over the
top of his kitchen range on roller skates of a morning to fry acres
of hot cakes for the breakfast of these lusty men. Young Rod grew
heavy-eyed listening to this gorgeous embroidery of fertile fancy on
commonplace facts and presently went his way to bed.
Rod sat alone on the porch in a twilight that filled his eyes with a
vista of pearl sky and purple hills, his ears with the song of the
rapids that had crooned him to sleep when he was little like his son.
There was a grateful hush, as if the mountains said their evening
prayers, and the smell of the forest mingled with the dank kelp smell
as the falling tide bared a weedy shore.
Andy's voice called to him in the dusk.
"Come on over to the office. There's a delegation to talk to you."
In the plain room where during working hours the bookkeeper cast up
the camp accounts four men sat at a table. They greeted Rod
pleasantly and came at once to the point.
"We've talked this over," one said. "Hall's told us how things
stand. We don't want a shutdown. We want to keep workin'. For
pretty near two years now we've set wages and hours. Whatever we
asked we got without any argument. Now that times are bad again,
we're willin' to leave it to you. We figure that eight hours is a
long enough day. You set the pay."
"That's good enough," Rod answered. "But the cut may jar you.
Things are at rock bottom. Nothing that we use, food, supplies,
machinery parts, has come down a nickel. It seems a shame to cut
wages, but unless timber prices go up, there's no choice."
"Uh-huh," one grunted. "How much of a cut do you figure will let you
get by?"
"Twenty per cent," Rod told them bluntly.
"Well, that _is_ pretty stiff," the chief spokesman commented.
"Still--we won't go back on our word. Times _are_ bad."
"I want to keep the outfit running," Rod said. "I can't do it on a
losing scale. I'll post up a new wage schedule to-morrow. If a turn
for the better comes, wages will go up again. I can't go any farther
than that."
"That's fair enough. Guess that's all. Good night."
They nodded and filed out. Andy and Rod stood looking at each other.
"I figured that was about the line they'd take," Andy said. "I
simply gave them the facts. Told them it was up to them whether the
camp shut down to-morrow--the best camp in the country. And that if
it did shut down for any length of time, it might never open again
under the same management. Then they barred me out of the meeting,
and chewed it over themselves. And there you are."
"Isabel came home manifesting unmistakable symptoms," Rod said
slowly. "This seems to have been your big day all around, Andy."
They shook hands on that.
CHAPTER XXIX
Through that disastrous autumn of 1920--when the logging camps of
B.C. were given over to watchmen and the sawmills were silent
storehouses of idle machinery, and the owners of both sat in clubs
and homes, cursing labor, the government, that vague entity called
the consumer who had mysteriously ceased to consume, raving about
confiscatory taxation, bewildered and resentful in the face of a
retrograde swing of the commercial pendulum--the Norquay machine
functioned without a single creaking joint, on into the winter season
through sodden weeks of mist and rain until a deep snow in January
buried the gear and froze the water pipes that fed the donkey
engines. Then even the hardiest logger was glad to stay indoors.
A certain percentage of the younger men, with good money burning
their pockets, went to town, victims of the inevitable reaction from
the grind of work. But most of the crew followed a wiser counsel and
stayed in the camp, played poker in the bunk houses, read books and
magazines, organized stag dances. Some of the married men built
float houses on rafts which could be moved when the camp changed, and
brought their families there to live away from rent and fuel costs in
town. Their joint efforts persuaded the provincial government to
establish a temporary school. So by degrees the camp began to take
on the aspect of a community.
The shutdown was comparatively brief,--five weeks. Then rains wiped
out the drifts, banished the frost. In the dripping forest where fog
wraiths hung like smoke among the tree tops, axes clacked, saws
whined, cables hummed, and the logs came down to the sea.
Where the logging industry in great part had stopped dead before the
barrier of unprofitable operation, Rod did not even slow down. It
was not a question of a profit. It was simply a matter of turning
trees into cash to replenish the plundered coffers of the Norquay
Trust. Every boom that sold in the market lessened somewhat his
obligations, once his men agreed cheerfully that a lowered wage was
better than idleness. The reddest radical among them believed in him
sufficiently to go ahead on the assurance that wages would
automatically keep step with prices for the product of their labor.
In few other organizations that Rod knew did such a feeling prevail.
Where it had play there was a minimum of dispute, a maximum of
production. But it was rare. His affairs took him into Vancouver a
great deal. He had kept up membership in a club to which his father
and grandfather had belonged. And in the club quarters which served
him as a hotel he came into casual contact with sundry pillars of
British Columbia industry. The amount of invective poured on the
head of things in general was a revelation.
These worthy gentlemen over their wine and cigars affected to believe
the State, the home, the nation, reeled to ruin before union wage
scales. The rancor in their voices when they spoke of working-class
demands amazed Rod sometimes. But as he listened, he perceived that
this rancor was impartially distributed over many things, upon the
government, upon taxation, upon affairs in Europe, upon the gaunt
specter of the Lenine-Trotsky régime; there seemed no end to their
grievances. And he perceived further that this uneasy spirit lay in
the fact that the sweeping tide of war prosperity had slacked
suddenly where they had childishly believed it would surge on to
greater heights,--and that this slackening was unprofitable. If the
stagnation kept up long enough, they must shrink to a lesser stature;
some to ruin. They were uneasy. Some, committed to great
undertakings, were palpably afraid.
If they could keep wages down and prices up! They did not say so
openly. They did not correlate the two objectives. They merely
brightened at any prospect of better selling prices for their various
products, greater demand, and frowned in distress over labor costs.
They said labor would have to come off its high horse, and they said
it with a good deal of unnecessary vehemence. Quite unanimously,
almost instinctively, they were bitter against any man who did not
agree with them.
They said, "Men won't work." That was a lie. Rod Norquay had proved
it. His men had worked; and he had in his crew a score of agitators
black-listed in other camps. No. Men who had seen war-time wages
easily over-lapped by war-time living costs would not work for a
driving employer under conditions arbitrarily dictated; not unless
the whip of necessity lashed them to the task. And when they had to,
inevitably they laid down on the job. That was the root of the
trouble.
"You could open your camps and start your mills tomorrow," Rod broke
into a conversation at his elbow one day, "if you'd base your tactics
on the fact that men are men and not beasts of burden. I'm doing it
and making money. I've done it right along. There's no magic about
it. I simply accept present-day conditions, instead of mourning for
the good old days when a logger was something less than a dog in a
kennel. The trouble with you people is that you're hogs by nature.
You're not satisfied to have your snouts in the trough. You want
both feet in."
He walked out on the street, leaving them insulted and indignant.
But he did not care. He was in one of his moods, in one of those
momentary surges of passion that overtake the hard-pressed man. He
saw everything in such moments with a distorted clarity. The motives
and aspirations of such men seemed mean beyond words. If it had been
possible for him to stay long at such a pitch of emotion, he would
have hated them as heartily as they hated him.
They did hate him. Chiefly because they distrusted him, because they
couldn't understand his motives. For a long time they had believed
that he was a fool about money, a sentimentalist who was sinking a
great fortune into a bottomless pit. Then because they saw no sign
of collapse, they credited him with ambitious schemes which aroused
their cupidity, and finally their antagonism when he continued to
play a lone hand and succeed where they, with their little
combinations, either failed or were afraid to run a risk of failing.
He would enter no arrangement designed to put labor in its place. He
would have nothing to do with employers' associations. He stood out
a lone figure, carrying on his shoulders the burden of the Norquay
Trust and in his hands a producing organization whose efficiency they
envied and could not duplicate by their methods.
All that winter Rod heard hints, snatches of conversation; he
watched, listened, made mental notes. He heard the complaining of
the pinched industrial barons. They blamed the war now. _C'est la
guerre!_
But it was not the war. They were reaping, all civilization was
reaping, only seed that had been sown long before the war. The
worthy bourgeois learned nothing; but he did forget many things.
Chiefly he forgot, or perhaps had never learned, that the war did not
create greed, ineptitude, blundering, injustice; the war didn't endow
man with a tendency to snatch at chestnuts in the fire and complain
loudly when he burned his fingers. It seemed to Rod utterly childish
to blame the war for individual or even national folly. The war had
its own burden of iniquity to bear. The war created nothing and
destroyed nothing that had its root in the human heart. At the worst
it had only deflected certain things, released pent forces and
passions.
He considered. Grove would have made as great a mess of his
ambitious schemes if no cannon had waked echoes in Flanders. He had
been a victim of his own weakness. A weak, vain man with great power
in his hands, and a group of strong, predatory men filching it from
him on the old principle that "he shall take who has the power and he
shall keep who can."
This was the law that seemed to rule modern industrial society.
Right has always rested on power; it cannot be otherwise. Very well
then. Let them live by the law. Rod could not help a sneer when he
saw these aspiring minor plutocrats wince as the shoe pinched them;
the shoe which they would have fitted on other feet without a qualm,
if they could.
Nevertheless the muttered growling of various influential persons
echoed in his ears now and then. He heard it directly. He noted the
effect of it in different aspects of his more or less complicated
affairs. There were influential cliques in Vancouver who took it as
a personal grievance that the Norquay estate--which was Rod
himself--would neither heed their Jeremiads concerning labor, nor
deviate from a settled policy.
It takes so little to arouse the ugly devils that lurk in men. They
tried to make a feud of what was only a feeling of irritation. They
attacked him. When they went that length, Rod struck back with
whatever weapon lay to hand, and he had not a few in his arsenal.
They couldn't hurt him; they could at most annoy. And so presently,
Rod, finding no cracks in his material armor through which a spear
could be thrust, ceased to be troubled by their futile activities.
He despised their stratagems, and mocked at them, and confounded them
with a waspish sarcasm whenever he encountered them in person.
Undoubtedly in that year he earned something close to hatred from a
certain group of men who five years earlier would have been aghast at
such a state of affairs.
About certain phases of this Isabel Wall kept him duly informed. But
in the spring of that year she married Andy Hall,--and was herself
immediately cast out from among the chosen people. Which
circumstance only moved Isabel to amused laughter. But it stirred
Rod and Mary to admiration. In this final step Isabel seemed ta have
burned all her bridges with a high heart. They were quietly married
and came to live with Rod and Mary for company's sake,--since the two
husbands were necessarily absent a great deal of the time.
Not long after that the last stick of the last Norquay timber on
Valdez, that noble stretch of fir and cedar Oliver Thorn had
husbanded so long, found its way to the boomsticks. When the first
crew was ready to shift its donkey engines and coils of cable, Rod
said to Andy Hall:
"Have that outfit loaded on floats. Take it over to Mermaid Bay and
make a high-lead setting a little back from shore to the right of the
landing. Better start getting these camp buildings over there too."
Andy stared at him.
"You're not going to cut that timber?" He waved a hand across the
channel, where the dusky forest massed behind the red roof of Hawk's
Nest.
"Why not?" Rod asked. He wondered if Andy shared a feeling that
stirred, he believed, in no breast save his own and Mary's.
"It's a damned shame," Andy muttered.
"No choice."
It was the simple truth. Rod looked across at Valdez often in the
next few weeks--perhaps to turn his eyes from the desecration at
hand. He did not expect any save himself to feel such a sentiment,
to feel a physical shrinking every time a faller lifted his
long-drawn cry of "Tim-_br-r-r-r_," and the sobbing swish of lofty
boughs sweeping in a great arc and the crashing thud marked another
tree prone. Valdez was a waste. Where living green had clothed the
hills there lifted stumps, torn earth, bald rock ledges. Desolation.
The Granite Pool lay in its cliffy hollow, bared to the hot eye of
the sun. The deer and the birds had withdrawn to the farther woods.
Animal life banished, vegetation destroyed. Barren. Bleak.
Ugliness spread over square miles. Soon Dent Island would be like
that. Hawk's Nest would stand bleak and bare on a stripped
promontory. If man were immortal, surely the troubled spirits of his
dead kinsmen must hover dumbly about the spot. But they were as
powerless as he.
He had walked out to see the first tree thrown down, and he had
overheard one faller say to his mate, looking up at the stone house
and lifting his face to sniff the sweet smell of lilac blown to him
across the lawns by a June breeze:
"By God, it's almost a crime to cut these trees."
But, as he had said to Andy Hall--no choice. Upon that twelve
hundred acres the trees stood bough to bough,--clean, straight, tall,
enormous of girth and sound to the core. From the level center of
the island an easy slope fell away to the water on every side. For a
mile back from Hawk's Nest to walk abroad was like walking in the
nave of a Gothic cathedral. Perhaps the Goths in their northern
fastnesses first saw those pointed arches in the lofty symmetry of
fir and pine. For a hundred years the Norquays had warred on the
thickets and undergrowth. They had cleared away the dead trunks and
the rotten windfalls. The floor of that forest was the floor of a
park. Bough to bough the trees stood in endless ranks. Man was a
pygmy among them. Dim aisles ran out into shadowy perspective. Only
on the southern fringe bordering the house and lawn had the forest
been thinned to let in sunshine and become clothed with grass. All
the rest was carpeted with moss.
No logging crew on the Pacific Coast ever put their gear into such a
logging chance. Twelve hundred acres of fir and cedar, few less than
four foot thick at the base, thousands that three men touching
fingertips could not span, clean straight trees that lifted a hundred
feet without a knot or limb, and another hundred above that bared
their heads to the sun. Their feet in perpetual shadow; their heads
upholding the sky.
Except on two or three hundred acres of jungle at the northern end
there was nothing in all that stretch to hamper a rigging-slinger
with his snaky cables. The fallers could lay a tree where they
wished. The high-lead gear could snatch the logs out at top speed.
Rod could imagine old Jim Handy, the human logging machine, looking
with glad eyes on such ground and such timber. Records would be made
there. Big days that the loggers would talk about in years to come;
days when more timber would go down to float within the boomsticks
than ever was moved by a crew of men between sun and sun.
And that was why they were there now. He had hoped to save a part of
this. But the pressure was too great. He had to have a given amount
of revenue within a given time. Only by this means could it be
secured. It was fortunate for him that he had this resource, doubly
fortunate that it would go out on a rising market; for 1921 marked
the turn of the tide.
All lost save honor! He smiled at the self-righteous expression. He
could strike an attitude and utter that worn phrase. It was true.
But was it valid,--either the attitude or the phrase? Yes, for
himself. He was throwing away every material advantage that men
live, work, fight for, plan and scheme and struggle to attain. And
he did not do it because it was a reasonable, logical course. He did
it to gain peace with himself, to retain his own self-respect. He
was so made that he could endure anything but the thought of meeting
an enemy and skulking away in the face of danger, of treachery to a
trust, of taking an unfair advantage. Yet there were times when he
felt that it was too great a price to pay for another man's blunder.
And then he would feel as if he had done something, or contemplated
doing something, of which he was ashamed. He began to realize that
the cheerful giver gives nothing of value compared to the glow he
gets in giving; and that the man who can cheerfully sacrifice his
dearest possessions has never yet been born.
They were living once more in the old house. For how long Rod did
not know and he tried not to think. The outcome was still uncertain;
and where uncertainty lingers so does hope. At least, it was very
pleasant to be there.
Late one afternoon when the Dent Island operation had got well under
way, a fog swept like a wet smoke through the Euclataw Passage. It
lifted, broke, opened and closed as if it were of two minds whether
to lay over the channel a veil of obscurity or disperse in torn
fragments. While it hovered and shifted thus uncertain, and the
tiderace in the rapids slacked, a white yacht nosed into Mermaid Bay
and felt her way alongside the float.
It was the _Kowloon_, come back like a ghost of other days. From the
porch Rod, Mary, and Isabel recognized her through the fog haze as
Grove's old yacht, which Laska had come into as the major portion of
her husband's estate, and sold to her father.
"I wonder if they've come to hold out the olive branch to an erring
daughter?" Isabel said lightly. "Dad might--possibly. Still, I
don't think he'd care to trespass on your bailiwick, Rod, even for
that."
"What has very likely happened," Rod shrewdly surmised, "is that
she's on her way somewhere north and has simply taken shelter on
account of the fog. This passage is dangerous in thick weather."
He sauntered away to the workings after a little. The _Kowloon_ was
of no interest to him, save as a reminder of old days. At the inner
end of the bay already a widening field of stumps lifted flat heads
among a litter of discarded tops and broken boughs over many acres.
With tools and machinery his loggers were eating into the heart of
that ancient forest as a mouse gnaws into a slice of cheese.
The fog lifted and closed intermittently. Rod came back in the
course of an hour to find a stout figure with a cigar jutting from
its teeth standing in the edge of the logging watching the high-lead
donkey spit smoke and steam and shudder under enormous strains.
John P. Wall greeted him impassively. His small gray eyes met Rod's
for a second, wandered off among the stumps, the dimly seen men, the
black iron monsters huffing and puffing, the reddish-brown logs
floating by hundreds in the bay, swept over the unkept grounds rank
with grass, the gray stone house casting a great shadow, and came
back to Rod.
"Damn shame to do this," Wall flirted one hand toward the untidy
logged-off ground.
Rod shrugged his shoulders.
"I'll give you two hundred thousand for Dent Island just as it
stands," Wall offered abruptly. "Take your outfit and go log
somewhere else. Two hundred thousand cash."
Rod looked at him. A hundred and fifty thousand would shift his last
burden. That was the maximum he could realize from his timber, if he
sheared Dent Island as a farmer shears his sheep's fleece in the
spring. And with the forest stripped, Dent Island had no money
value. It would consist only of an old stone house standing gaunt
amid a few acres of grass, its background a stony stump-littered
waste. Whatever associations Hawk's Nest had for him and his could
be less than nothing to John P. Wall. What stirred the man? Had his
iron bowels been moved to compassion? Was he obliquely trying to
make amends? Or did he think that by purchase he could put on the
intangible mantle the Norquays had woven about themselves in five
generations?
Rod smiled wanly.
"Why should you wish to buy Hawk's Nest at more than its market
value? Does your conscience hurt?"
"Conscience?" A flicker of expression crossed Wall's heavy face.
"No. Don't use it in my business. Took a notion to the place.
Always did like it. That's all. You're destroying it."
A glow of anger began to burn in Rod, and mixed with it a detached
wonder at the type of man before him. He could imagine Wall viewing
him with impersonal pity, and brushing him aside in pursuit of his
own ends. There was a pachydermous quality in the man. He couldn't
be hurt. He had no qualms. For him the world of humanity was not
made up of men and women who had good impulses or bad ones, wisdom
and folly, conditioned by many things. No, to him the world was made
up of two kinds of people; those who could get what they wanted and
those who couldn't. For Wall there were no fine distinctions, no
ethical hazards in which a man might lose his soul. The firm grasp,
the unrelenting hold, justified itself. Anything profitable was good
business; anything unprofitable was bad business. Rod looked at him
and wondered if Wall carried that remorseless philosophy into his
social life, his family life; if he applied it to his pleasure, and
in what degree. And if he did whether he found the balance in his
life's ledger to lie on the credit or the debit side.
"You're reckoned wealthy, aren't you?" Rod said to him. "Three or
four millions?"
"Something like that," Wall answered indifferently.
"I wonder if it has ever occurred to you that there are things money
can't get you?" Rod said quietly. "This place happens to be one of
those things."
Wall chewed his cigar, impassively reflecting. Rod turned away.
"Three hundred thousand," Wall said suddenly.
Rod shook his head.
"No use. I wouldn't sell Hawk's Nest any more than you'd sell one of
your ears. I was born here. My people have been born and lived and
died and are buried here. Very old-fashioned notion, of course, but
it happens to mean something to me. And please remember this, Wall.
If it had to pass out of my hands, you would be the last man in the
world I'd care to have hang up your hat here and call it home."
He left Wall to reflect on that.
A shrill blast from the high-lead donkey put an end to the day's
work. Men came stringing out of the woods. In twenty minutes more
the supper gong clanged.
As they sat at dinner Rod told Isabel of her father's offer. Isabel
smiled cynically.
"Don't ever think the idea of any sort of restitution occurred to
him, Rod," she declared. "He wouldn't even understand the idea of
such a thing. He has always admired this place, secretly longed to
have something like it, and he has discrimination enough to know he
couldn't create it in his lifetime. He'd buy Hawk's Nest like a
shot. He has dreams of founding a Wall dynasty, I really believe. A
place like this, made to order, with its history--why, he'd gloat
over it. The parvenu idea of acquiring prestige by purchase--by
proxy. I know I sound horrid, but it's true. He thinks the Norquays
have gone to seed. And that the Walls only require a proper
background to be somebody. It's amusing and sometimes almost
tragic--this social pushing, this itch to be thought something you
aren't, to make a big splash. Did he seem keen on it, Rod?"
"Rather."
"Mamma's been priming him," Isabel nodded. "I've heard her talk
about the possibility--since you've been supposed to be in deep
water. She thinks Bob's a perfect gentleman--even if his father
isn't quite--when Robert's merely a good little spender. Poor old
daddy. He's the best of the lot, because he just naturally can't
help being a ruthless old pirate, and he never held a grudge in his
life against any one who beat him at his own game. He's a bear at
making money and mom's a bear in society, and they've raised Bob and
Laska and me to be bearcats of one sort and another too. Some
combination."
Isabel applied herself to the salad for half a minute.
"Suppose you go aboard the yacht with me and I'll introduce you to
dad," she proposed mischievously to Andy.
"I have no objection," he returned calmly. "Neither have I the
slightest desire to meet your male parent--whose only merit in my
eyes is that he is your parent. I couldn't use him in my business,
and it's a cinch he couldn't use me in his."
"He might," Isabel teased. "He has lots of irons in the fire and
loads of money. You sure did marry money, Andy, old scout."
"Well, I have irons in the fire myself," Andy retorted imperturbably.
"And without any hankering for loads of money I expect to get all I
need."
The pair of them sauntered off after dinner, still facetiously
debating what they called the possibilities of a Hall-Wall entente.
Rod and Mary went out on the porch. The rapids murmured in a rising
key. Young Rod, who had learned to read under his mother's tutelage,
curled up in a chair with a book of fairy tales. The sun dipped
below the jagged backbone of Vancouver Island and the afterglow
lingered, a radiant tinge over the blurred slopes that lifted to high
mountains on the mainland shore.
About the head of the bay were clustered compactly the numerous
portable buildings of the camp,--bunk houses, messhouses, storeroom,
isolated small dwellings. A short slope bright with low salal brush
dipped to the water. On that gentle pitch numbers of the men often
clustered in the evening, sitting on their haunches, lying stretched
on their backs, spinning Rabelaisian yarns, Homeric tales out of
their woods experience, talking about their work, the war,
economics,--all the infinite variety of futile gabble and profound
wisdom that is embodied in a group of skilled men following a risky
outdoor calling. The Pacific Coast logger is no mere beast of
burden. He is master of an intricate technique as applied to the
handling of enormous timbers by powerful and complicated machinery.
The B.C. woods is no place for the sluggish of brain or hand.
Wall himself was heavily interested in timber and had been for years.
There were probably fifty men in Rod's crew who had drawn Wall pay
checks in their time. And there was not a man there but knew the
Wall camps and knew little good of them. They had an evil
reputation. Probably Wall himself had never seen the interior of a
single one of his camps. He had no personal interest in such
matters,--only in results. He got results through superintendents,
who in turn passed the buck to logging bosses. And these again,
because their jobs depended on high average production, drove without
mercy so long as they could hold the job. There was a sardonic
saying along the coast that every Wall camp always had three crews:
one coming, one going, and one on the job.
The loggers frankly hated Wall and all his works. Whereas they liked
Rod Norquay. Moreover, now in the third year of Rod's régime, very
nearly every man there understood the situation. They were for him,
to a man. Rod represented to them the very antithesis of everything
John P. Wall stood for. And no mean portion of Rod's crew were
intellectually capable and emotionally impelled to make out a very
black case against the John P. Walls of industry.
A little cluster gathered on this slope between camp and tidemark.
The cluster grew till the limited area was black with men in calked
boots and mackinaw clothing, men with unshaven stubble on their chins
and strong calloused hands. They sat and stood there without the
customary shouting and laughter. It seemed as if every man in the
camp had been drawn to look silently down on the white yacht.
The _Kowloon_ stretched her graceful length along the landing. Her
paint was like virgin snow, and from stem to stern she glistened with
brass and copper and varnished teak. On her forward deck two or
three of her crew in spotless white ducks leaned on the rail, looking
at the men ashore. Aft a gramophone exhaled the latest jazz. There
were guests present, and now that the fog had gone with the sun, they
were on deck, dipping and swaying and gyrating to the music.
Suddenly a man on the bank began to sing. A solitary voice, a rich
baritone, it cut across the canned syncopation and lifted with the
diapason of the rapids as a tonal background.
There was nothing strange in that. Men often sang there, soloists
and impromptu quartettes. They sang to amuse themselves, or because
they were happy, for any or all the reasons that move men to song.
It was not the fact of the man singing. It was his song.
"Ye sons of freedom awake to glory.
Hark! Hark! What myriads bid you rise."
The third line came with a volume that burst the evening hush like
the roll of drums. From a hundred-odd throats it poured in rhythmic
unison, with a passionate earnestness, and something akin to a threat.
"Your children, wives, and grandsires hoary,
Behold their tears and hear their cries.
Behold their tears and hear their cries.
Shall hateful tyrants mischief breeding
With hireling hosts a ruffian band
Affright and desolate the land,
While truth and liberty lie bleeding?
To arms, to arms! Ye brave.
The avenging sword unsheathe.
March on. March on. All hearts resolved
On liberty ... or death!"
The last word struck like the blow of a ponderous hammer falling on
muffled iron. Then silence,--as if it had been halted by some
invisible conducting baton which had welded that impromptu chorus
into a single harmonious whole to chant that old, old song of revolt
against oppression.
Who that has ever heard a marching regiment sing the Marseillaise but
knows the clang of its ending, like the snick of a breech-bolt or a
great sword clashed home in its scabbard.
No one moved. No voices lifted in words or laughter. Rod, sitting
with his chin in his palms, listened with a curious tension for a
break in that sudden hush. The massed group on the bank remained
immobile, very quiet, as if something profoundly sobering had come
over them.
And in the midst of this strange quiescence a gong struck faintly,
deep in the bowels of the _Kowloon_, and when the deckhands flicked
off the mooring lines she backed slowly out into the channel, out
into the gathering dusk, the jazz tunes stilled, her guests standing
quietly in a group by the after rail.
CHAPTER XXX
As the reaping machines pass over a field of wheat at harvest time
mowing swath after swath until there is nothing left but bristling
stubble, so the men and machinery under Rod's direction mowed the
forest, harvesting that great crop which the centuries had matured.
Day by day the logs poured into the booming ground. Week by week
tugs departed, towing enormous rafts. The mills chewed up these logs
and spewed them forth as squared timbers, in wide boards and narrow,
in beautifully finished materials out of which carpenters in far
cities fashioned roofs over the heads of other men.
To Rod these trees had been living things, dumb giants brooding over
the earth they shadowed. He had stood among them with a humbled
spirit. As a child he had moved in that silence and shade with a
strange awe, with a mysterious sense of possession and of being
himself possessed. A childish fancy? Perhaps. But it lingered
still, recurred often. He could imagine the spirit of the forest
putting forth a voiceless protest at all this havoc. He could
dismiss these fancies intellectually, but his mind was powerless to
put aside emotion. His brain could support action with the stern
logic of necessity; it could not always banish the pang from his
heart.
If it were sentimentality to regret ravished beauty he pleaded
guilty. He recalled the protest that burst from a million throats
when the cathedral of Rheims crumbled under shell fire. Here was
something as beautiful, as inspiring, as much a glorious monument of
the centuries as anything of wood and stone wrought by the hands of
man. Here was a majesty of form and a beauty of color man might copy
but could never surpass. It was being obliterated with considered
purpose.
Mary encompassed it in a sentence; with a sigh.
"It is like seeing a painting you have treasured in your home for a
lifetime ripped out of its frame, defaced, torn to bits by some
vandal."
Summer merged into autumn. September rains rolled up a veil of smoke
from scattered forest fires. The coast line emerged clear and sharp
from the blur. The maples put on their russet gowns. Equinoctial
gales harried the coast briefly and left still days shot through with
a waning sun. And whether in sun or storm the wheels on Dent Island
turned unremittingly. With sweaty bodies and untiring tools of steel
the loggers plied their trade. The booms accumulated and went their
way. Money poured in. From the material angle Dent Island was a
gold mine. But like mines that have been, the vein was pinching out.
On a day in October Rod saw the last of the great booms draw clear in
the wake of a steam tug. Before it was out of the Narrows he passed
it on the _Haida_, southward bound. Very soon now he could write
finis to another chapter in the sequence. Slowly, with a pent
eagerness, he was placing his levers to right the inverted pyramid.
He knew that before he returned the last tree would fall, would be
snatched seaward by the shuddering main line. His crew would gather
all their gear on the beach, coil the cables, blow down the donkey
boilers. But he would not be there for those obsequies. He had
other ghosts to lay.
He stood on the deck looking back. The _Haida_ had not yet cleared
the inner harbor. East and west the water front spread away for
miles in a darkness thickened by the city smoke, a black pall jeweled
with deck lights, emerald specks, ruby gleams, dots and squares of
yellow, brilliant lines of arc lights, scintillating, imprisoned
lightning. Behind that line of dusky wharves, where vessels from far
ports disgorged their freight with groaning cargo winches, rose the
banked and terraced lights of the town. Great electric signs blazed
on warehouse roofs, on every vantage point, proclaiming to all and
sundry that "Smith's Coffee," "Brown's Tobacco," "The House of
Jones," "Your Credit is Good," were epochal affairs, worthy to be
written in letters of fire against the sky.
But from that flaming galaxy one--that, like the name of Abou ben
Adhem, had been above all the rest--was missing now. It had greeted
the incoming mariner and the tired commuter on the grunting ferries
for twelve years. It would never glow again.
The Norquay Trust Company was no more. It was as dead as the man
whose futile ambition had given it birth. Its great seal would never
again be affixed to any document. With a deep personal satisfaction
Rod had wiped out its corporate existence. Legally, honorably,
painlessly, he had put it to death.
He stared over the rail. The hive! He seemed to hear the drone of
countless creatures armed with invisible stings which they plied upon
each other vindictively, unthinkingly, often without knowing what
they did, as they buzzed about their sustenance-seeking, marching
antlike in the streets, dumb swarms driven by instinct. Ants in the
streets, factories, shops, flies clinging in clusters upon motive
things of wood and iron called street cars. They came out of
nothing; they were bound nowhere. They desired only to be fed, to
sleep, to be amused; and their food, their slumber, their amusements
were not means to an end; they were the end in themselves. Spiders
in offices, banks, above the swarm, yet seeking only what the swarm
sought; spinning their webs, enmeshing material things beyond their
utmost need, themselves becoming enmeshed and destroyed--their souls
if not their bodies--in their own web.
The hive! The futile swarms buzzing in the market place. In a
moment of despondency he wished that he might never see it again.
He smiled in the dark, a grimace of utter weariness. Why couldn't he
think of them except as agitated insects? A mood--a mood.
His job--that job--was done. Looking back at the lucent glow above
the city, that lingered as an impalpable sheen in the sky after the
_Haida_ put the Brockton Point light abeam and the inner harbor was
shut away, he felt a sudden relief. His life was his own once more,
as much as any man's may ever be. He had shifted the weight off his
shoulders. He was going home. After that--
Well, he wasn't certain. He had a plan, a program. It might come to
something worth while. He hoped it would; he believed it would. If
he had little faith in the value of much that men struggled for, he
still believed in man. But whatever his future might be, it must be
one of action. He could never be passive. To dream without doing?
To contemplate, with contemplation as an end in itself? No. To be a
passionately interested bystander, critical, puzzled, sympathetic,
deprecating, uplifted or disgusted according to the momentary mood
and impression, to the winnowing of events through the sieve of his
intellect, but nevertheless a bystander aloof from the common,
troubled stream of life--he could never be that again. He doubted
now that he ever had been. He had only thought himself a watcher on
the bank. He had been sweeping along in the current unaware. It
couldn't be otherwise.
He was very tired. When the _Haida_ cleared the outer harbor and met
the full strength of a westerly swell in the Gulf he went below and
turned in.
Daybreak in Ragged Island Pass! A wave of light and color spanning
the Gulf, lighting up the snowy peaks oft Vancouver Island. A blend
of misty shores, gray-green sea, hills that faded from olive to
purple, from purple to delicate lilac and merged with the horizon as
faint blue patches far off, on the edge of things. Then the sun
stabbing in golden shafts through notches in the Coast Range, hunting
black shadows out of every gorge, touching each wave crest with a
sparkle. A morning breeze flicked the sea with touches of white, and
set the _Haida_ lurching, plunging, flinging fan-shaped bursts of
foam off her bows, arching iridescent sheets of spray in which small,
elusive rainbows gleamed.
At ten in the morning they ran the south narrows of the Euclataw with
the ebb an hour gone, rolling, twisting, yawing widely as they
sheered off wicked swirls and were shot at last on a straight current
between the two Gillards and into the mouth of Mermaid Bay.
The house was silent, empty. It was silent and empty enough at best,
its quiet corridors flanked by rooms that were never opened, in which
ghostly shapes of furniture stood in dim light like swathed mummies.
But the rooms they did occupy were empty. Rod went out quietly and
sat down on the porch steps. Here presently came Stagg in overalls,
his long dark face a healthy brown from self-appointed outdoor tasks.
"Mr. and Mrs. Hall and Mrs. Norquay went in the little launch on the
morning slack to see the rapids run, sir," he informed Rod. "They
weren't expecting you to-day."
Rod nodded. They had gone to watch the Devil's Dishpans spin, the
great boils heave roaring up out of that cauldron, to listen to the
loud song of pent waters released. He wondered idly if young Rod
would some day run those rapids for sport with a girl in a canoe as a
companion on the adventure, as he and Mary Thorn had done so long
ago. It _was_ long ago. He didn't trouble to cast up the years. He
had a feeling of being separated from that time by something more
profound, more significant, than calendar years.
He looked over at the camp. Figures of men moved about. Gangs were
stowing gear on the beach. Cold donkey engines stood dead on their
skids,--round-bellied monsters with smokeless stacks pointing
skyward. Miles of steel cable, main lines, haul-backs, high-lead
gear, skyline rigging lay about. At least he had his tools!
Tools--and the men to use them. Men with the bark on: the shock
troops of industry, a battalion under his hand, eager, skilful,
disciplined, confident in him. What more did he want?
Then his eyes turned slowly northward, regretfully. That was the sum
of his striving.
He had paid his debts. He faced the world with a great, empty stone
house and twelve hundred acres of worthless land; worse than
worthless, for its stony ribs, the melancholy stumps, the nakedness
and the waste bred an ache in his heart. It had been so beautiful,
and it was now so indescribably sad. Like a woman's lovely face
ravaged by smallpox. It was hideous and must remain so until the
kindly seasons clothed it anew with saplings which his grandchildren
might see as another forest of lusty trees. But he would never look
north toward the green palisades of the mainland without a touch of
sadness, a pang of regret for that stately forest destroyed to
preserve a tradition, to discharge an obligation, to live with honor
in his own sight.
Tradition, obligation, honor! Royal words falling into disuse,
uttered with an easy smile and facile lip service,--sound without
substance. But they had been more than words; they had been vital
things to other Norquays as well as to himself. They remained so to
Rod. He believed they held their old significance to many men, even
in a world that worshipped Mammon above all other gods.
One pair of weak hands could destroy so much. Power in weak hands
had torn down the work of four generations. But it could be rebuilt.
Like the saplings, he and his could grow slowly to the old stature.
Place and prestige could be grasped again, if he wanted them--if they
seemed worth reaching for. He was not sure he wished to grasp either
in the accepted sense.
He rose and walked out a little way, turned to look at the house.
That was built to endure. A pardonable pride, the glow of a fierce
possessive affection warmed him. Hawk's Nest would hatch an eagle
yet. Norquay children would still romp in those wainscoted hallways.
Some day it would come back to its old warmth and cheer, its comfort
and security. Its blazing windows would be a mark for vessels
running the rapids by night. The voices of friendly people would
ring there, and laughter and music, so that sadness would keep aloof
with its somber garments.
Rod did not see in detail how he should accomplish this. But he had
hope and courage. He knew what to avoid. He had been bitterly
schooled in the way of a world which had abandoned the old faiths to
pursue things. Nature had not fashioned him softly, even in
bestowing upon him the rare gift of perception. The blood in his
veins was the blood of men who did not suffer patiently at the hands
of their enemies. He had no wish for a beak and claws to rend and
tear. But he would sharpen his weapons and use them with a will on
the Walls and Deanes and Richstons of the world if they got in his
way. And he was confident that in such a battle he would never lack
followers who knew the fight was fair.
He wanted no great thing of life save such reward of industry,
initiative, ordered effort, as would turn this silent gray house into
some measure of its old aspect and atmosphere; so that when his time
came he could lie down content, knowing that for all that had been
given him in the way of affection, trust, service, he had given some
measure of return. His gods were not material gods. He did not wish
his children to worship at a material shrine. Comfort they should
have. Luxury they might desire and enjoy. But only if they gave
something in return. If he had been minded to inscribe a motto for
his house Rod would have written: "You cannot get something for
nothing--soon or late there is a price to pay."
He would like to leave Roderick Thorn Norquay something to carry on.
But what he most desired his son to carry on was chiefly such wealth
as he could carry within himself: an ideal of uprightness, a sense of
kinship with his native land, the perception that externals are only
the husks of life, a soul that would not quail before disaster or
swell too proudly if all the world lay at his feet.
Rod smiled over his musings. He was just turned thirty, and he stood
there thinking of what he should like to leave as the spiritual
heritage of his son. He had years and years and years ahead of him
yet, and task upon task.
He swung on his heel. His eye touched lingeringly on the waste land,
passed on to the men stowing the logging gear on the beach. Tools
were there, and energy--in abundance. It was enough.
"Three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves," Rod said to
himself whimsically. "We beat the average. It took us five."
And after a little reflective pause, he said aloud in a tone of
conviction:
"There's one thing to be said for shirt sleeves. They give a man
room to swing his arms."
THE END
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INVERTED PYRAMID ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
