The Rapids Part 42

Wimperley nodded. "I thought you'd understand. You got us in, and now you've got to pull us out."

"And pull myself out too," said Clark dryly. "Thanks."

"Would you prefer that the works stay idle with you or get busy without you?" interjected Birch pointedly.

"When it comes to that--if it does--I'll let you know. In the meantime--?"

"Don't turn a wheel except for town utilities, and now we'd like to see Bowers. You probably don't realize what we've been through in Philadelphia. Consolidated isn't what you'd call gilt edged just now, and the corners are knocked off our reputation as business men. I just mention this in case you feel aggrieved."

Clark grinned suddenly. "I'm not worrying either about my stock or my business reputation. Your difficulty is that you don't see why any one else should pull through where we didn't."

Wimperley nodded. "There's something in that. What we've got now is the job of making Consolidated stock worth something--by earnings. It means cutting out the dead wood--our own dead wood, and I don't fancy the contract. It hurts to chop down the tree you helped to plant--but it's the only way out of it. There will probably be months before this machine will start up again, and move toward permanent success."

A day or two afterwards the two directors went back to Philadelphia, where they reported to Stoughton and Riggs that the screws were on tight. Save only the pumps and generators, not a wheel turned in the Consolidated. Birch's conclusion was that millions more were needed.

Consolidated stock settled down to a nominal value that fluctuated with conflicting reports of new capital having been found, but the whole affair was flat--indescribably flat. And meantime Birch--with the unprofitable burden on his shoulders--made pilgrimages to test the financial pulse, and for months returned empty handed.

In St. Marys it seemed that Arcadia might be reborn,--not the old time Arcadia with its sleepy village atmosphere, but a modern one in which folk made up their minds to live on the profits of past years. The car service was reduced, and half the street lamps removed. There were empty houses in the new streets, and the property which once pa.s.sed through Manson's hands could have been re-bought at the original price.

Filmer and the rest reduced their stock, while the whole overbuilt, overgrown town settled down to wait till, after a weary interval, Clark got off the train with two strangers and drove up to the big house on the hill. In half an hour Bowers, who was expecting them, completed the quartet.

It was an unusual group that gathered that night in the dining room.

Ardswell and Weatherby had spent a week in Philadelphia before Wimperley telegraphed Clark to come down. The story was plain enough.

The two Englishmen had come from London to hear it,--and it was told well. But Wimperley and Birch shared the belief that Clark, in the meantime, should be kept in the background, lest his hypnosis should envelop them as of old. They held him, as it were, a reserve store of influence to be used at the proper time, and it was not till the financial aspect of the affair was thoroughly digested that he was called in to play his appointed part.

Ardswell and Weatherby wanted to see whether the machine could be made to run commercially. That it was not so running was obviously the fault of those in charge, and Clark at once determined not to attempt to make former mistakes less glaring. The more obvious they were allowed to remain, the more easy their rectification. He was too much in love with the works to dodge this sacrifice, and yet could not conceive their continuing without him.

a.s.suming this onerous duty, he was perfectly aware that he dealt with minds of a new complexion. Instead of responsive Americans, he confronted two cool-blooded Britishers, to whom any show of spontaneity was out of place. They were on guard, and Clark knew it, and of all his achievements none stands out more prominently than his att.i.tude on the three days that followed. He became a Britisher himself. He a.s.sumed, quite correctly, that nothing would be accepted without proof.

Tramping about the works, they were accompanied by the superintendents of the various departments, to whom he referred the pointed questions that came so frequently in high-pitched, well modulated English voices.

What Clark said himself was very curt and to the point. The works, he decided, could talk for themselves. Coming last to the pulp mill, Ardswell ran an admiring eye down the long rank of machinery, ranged like sleeping giants in a dwindling perspective.

"I say," he remarked involuntarily, "I'd like to see the thing turn over. Could it be arranged?--at our expense of course," he added.

Clark nodded to the superintendent, who was close behind, and presently the day watchmen were twisting at the turbine gate wheels. A soft tremor ran through the building, growing steadily to a deep, hoa.r.s.e rumble as the ma.s.sive grindstones revolved faster. The floor vibrated in a quick rhythm, and in a few seconds came the full drone of work--that profound and elemental note of nature when she toils at the behest of man.

The faintest flicker of light stirred in the blue English eyes.

Ardswell had been walking from turbine to turbine. "Ripping!" he said.

"You might shut down now."

The t.i.tans dropped one by one into slumber. When the last vibration was stilled, he looked up with a new respect. "We might go ahead if you don't mind."

"Take a quarter of an hour first, and follow me."

They struck southward, and the Englishmen heard the boom of the rapids deepen till they came to the edge of the river at Clark's observation point. There was a strong easterly wind, and it caught at the snowy crests of the bigger waves, spinning them out like silver manes of leaping horses. These flashed in the sunlight, till, over the central ridge of water, the air was full of a fine, misty spray that hung palpitating and luminous. Here was a torrential life--born of the endless and icy leagues of Lake Superior.

The two strangers stared fascinated, and as Clark watched them he perceived that once more the ageless voice of the rapids was speaking to human ears, just as it had spoken to his own so many times--and years before. He waited patiently, while the river lifted its elemental message, and saw the color rise in English cheeks and the cold, blue English eyes begin to sparkle again. What were the drab records of Birch's ledgers, or even the monumental pile of nearby buildings, compared to this impetuous slogan? He stood silently, plunged in the psychology of the moment.

"How much power--total I mean?" said Ardswell presently, pointing to the ripping flood.

"Two hundred and forty thousand horsepower, at a minimum."

"By George!"

Silence fell again, till Weatherby, shaking the spray from his rough tweed coat, got up a little stiffly.

"I begin to understand a little better now," he said slowly with an eloquent glance.

The car was waiting for them by the little lock--and here at the block house the visitors displayed marked animation, Clark told them the story very simply as they rolled off up the hill for lunch.

"There's one man, the chief engineer, Belding--you met him at the head gates--that I would like to be remembered should we do business," he concluded very thoughtfully. "Belding was my first employee. I picked him up in St. Marys and he has stuck to it n.o.bly. I probably gave him far too much to do, but he never squealed; and there are other reasons."

Weatherby looked up. "That's the big, fair haired chap we saw go off in the canoe?"

"Yes."

"Well," put in Ardswell tersely, "it will probably all depend on yourself."

XXIV.--DESTINY

Up in the big bay that lies next the head of the rapids, Belding was drifting aimlessly. He was still obsessed with a sense of the hideous uselessness of effort, and wanted to be alone. At one time Elsie used to be here in the bow of the canoe, but now it seemed that Elsie had little thought for him. And yet he could have sworn that, two years ago, she loved him.

He began to paddle, with a sharp and growing resentment, and found a deep satisfaction in the thrust of his broad blade. Soon he was nearly half way across the river, and a mile down stream lifted the fabric of the great bridge. Slacking speed, he caught the pull of the current, and with it came a reckless impulse. No man had shot the middle of the rapids and escaped with his life. It was true that the Indians maneuvered their long canoes down close to the opposite sh.o.r.e with venturous tourists, but it was only a film of water that wound, bubbling, near the land. With the deep-throated rumble only half a mile away, Belding felt his pulse falter for a second, then pound viciously on. And in that second, with the bravado of early manhood, he threw discretion overboard, and set the slim bow of his Peterboro'

for the middle span. Twenty seconds, later he knew that he was about to run the rapids--whether he would or not.

Settling himself amids.h.i.+p, he gripped the thwart tight between calf and thigh and, resting the paddle across the gunwale, peered anxiously forward. His lips were a little dry, but he felt no fear. Being close to the water, he could not see the rapids themselves but only the first great, green curve, and below it the white tops of a mult.i.tude of waves. Then the middle span swept back overhead, he heard the river, split by the sharp piers, hissing along their rough sides and the canoe sailed like a leaf into the first smooth dip. Came the vision of a distant sh.o.r.e sliding by, and the lower reach with a ferry steamer halfway across, and Belding felt the canoe lift and quiver, while a green wave flung its white crest in his face. He came through rather than over it, and just below caught a glimpse of one of those dreaded cellars that hid themselves in this tumult. Here, at all costs, he must keep straight.

The canoe, with no way on, swooped giddily into the great, emerald pit.

There was a fleeting sensation of smooth, glittering, watery walls, till he was flung on and up into the backward foaming crest, and with a desperate effort wrenched the slim bow so that it took the rise head on. An instant followed in which the sky was blotted out, while on each side rose pyramids of bubbling foam that seemed to meet over his head, but between which he could see light and distance. The canoe, half full of water, was plucked onward, while Belding drew a long breath and searched the chaos in front of him.

Fifty yards down, opened a lane of green that curved beside and between two cellars, each deeper than the last. He knew instantly that he could not survive these, and, with every ounce of his strength, drove across the broken river to the head of the chute. Making it in the nick of time, he plunged in, with the water sucking at his thighs, and the sinews in his arms burning like fire. There followed a swift descent through cellars of dwindling depth, till he floated into the long, spume-flecked swells at the foot of the decline, where the canoe drifted sluggishly, full nearly to the gunwale. And here Belding leaned forward with his hands on her curved thwart, and pumped great gulps of air into his empty lungs. Presently he stared around. He was below the works of which he had seen nothing, and just opposite Clark's big house, whose roof lifted on the hill side a mile away. He had dared the rapids and come through safely, but Clark, he reflected, was engulfed.

Luncheon that day at the big house had been a silent affair, after which the three men went out on the terrace and examined the panorama that spread to the south. It was suggestive and inspiring. They had been voiceless for some time, when Clark moved restlessly.

"Shall we talk here, or go back to the office?"

"This is good enough for me," said Ardswell; "are you ready for business?"

"Certainly."

"And may I ask two questions first,--one is a trifle personal?"

"Please ask them, if you wish; I have no personal secrets."

"That's very decent of you. What I'd like to know is, first, what you found here when you arrived seven years ago, and, second, what your resources were at the time? You will not, of course, answer the last unless you wish."

Clark laughed almost boyishly. "Why I found only the rapids, and--I had no resources,--that is, except myself."