The Rapids Part 23

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

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

Let's be honest--you both know we would."

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

"Come in," boomed a deep voice.

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

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

Something in her manner impressed him and he pushed back his chair.

"What is it?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Is it money?" she said slowly.

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

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

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

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

"Yes," he chuckled contentedly.

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

we can be so happy."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

XIV.--AN ANCIENT ARISTOCRAT VISITS THE WORKS

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

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

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

For five hours they paddled, then the last bend in the river and St.

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

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

"How," he grunted.

The canoe slid delicately forward till presently it floated in the tiny lock. Naqua said nothing, being seized by an enormous fear that clutched at her stringly throat and held her silent, but s.h.i.+ngwauk felt something stirring in his breast. Here, surrounded by the confused vibrations of the works, he resigned himself to ancient memories.

Putting out a brown hand he touched the rough walls, and at the touch the year rolled back. He saw himself a young man, the bow paddle of a great thirty-foot canoe that came down through the broken waters of the big lake to the rapids above, with the Hudson Bay factor enthroned in the middle, surrounded by the precious takings of the winter. He saw Ojibway faces, now long forgotten, and smelt the smoke of vanished camp fires. He saw the thirty-foot canoe lowered delicately into just such a lock as this, and automatically thrust out his own paddle to protect her tender tawny sides from the rough masonry. The hewn gates had opened when he floated out, and here were the gates looking non-understandably new, and with the adze marks still on the yellow timber.

Involuntarily he cast about for the blockhouse and found it hard by.

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

From the blockhouse window Clark had seen him since first the canoe approached the sh.o.r.e. With a curious thrill he had watched the old chief enter the tiny chamber and float motionless--a visitant from the past. So complete was the picture and so almost poignant the pleasure it afforded, that, loath to mar it, he had hesitated to approach.

Never had he conceived anything so intimately appropriate as this linking of bygone days with the insistent present.

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

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

Clark nodded, smiling. "Yes, me."

s.h.i.+ngwauk's eyes rounded a little. "Big magic," he said impressively and relapsed into silence.

"Hungry?" asked Clark presently.

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

"Much hungry," she croaked shrilly.

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

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