The Man in the Twilight Part 23

The girl laughed.

"I hope so. But--" She held out her hand. "Thank you, Father," she said.

"I'll never be able to think of the things I'm set on achieving without remembering our talk--and the man I met in the forest. I wish--but what's the use? I've got to make good. I must. I must go on, and--do the thing I see. Good-bye."

Father Adam was holding the small gauntleted hand, and he seemed loth to release it. His eyes were very gentle, very earnest.

"Don't worry to remember, child. Don't ever think about--this time. It won't help you. You've set your goal. Make it. You will do the good things you fancy to do, though maybe not the way you think them. It seems to me that 'good' mostly has its own way all the time. You can't drive it. And the best of it is I don't think there's a human creature so bad in this world, but that in some way G.o.d's work has been furthered through his life. Good-bye."

For some moments the lonely figure stood gazing down the woodland aisles. The deep, s.h.i.+ning light of a great hope was in his eyes. A wonderful tender smile had dispersed the shadows of his ascetic face. At length, as the girl's figure became completely swallowed up in the twilight of it all, he turned away and pa.s.sed into the foliage shelter which was his home.

He was squatting on his box, and the small canvas bag containing his belongings was open beside him. Its contents were strewn about. He was writing a long letter. There was several pages of it. When he had finished he read it over carefully. Then he carefully folded it and placed it in an envelope, and addressed it. It was addressed:

MR. BULL STERNFORD, Sachigo, Farewell Cove, Labrador.

CHAPTER VII

THE SKANDINAVIA MOVES

Bat gazed up at the wooded ridge. They were standing in the marshy bottom of a natural hollow amidst a spa.r.s.e scattering of pine and attenuated spruce. Beyond the ridge lay the waters of the cove. And to the left the broad waters of the river mouth flowed by. It was a desolate, damp spot, but its significance to the two men studying it was profound.

Skert Lawton, the chief engineer of Sachigo, tall, loose-limbed, raw-boned, watched his superior with somewhat mournful, unsmiling eyes.

There was something of deadly earnest in his regard, something anxious.

But that was always his way. Bat had once said of him: "Skert Lawton's one h.e.l.l of a good boy. But I won't get no comfort in the grave if I ain't ever see him grin." There was not the smallest sign of a smile in him now.

"It's one big notion," Bat said, at last. Then he added doubtfully. "It comes mighty nigh being too big."

Lawton emitted a curious sound like a snort. It was mainly, however, an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of violent impatience. Bat turned with a twinkling grin, surveying the queer figure. His engineer was always a source of the profoundest interest for him. Just now, in his hard, rough clothing, he might have been a lumber-jack, or casual labourer. Anything, in fact, rather than the college-bred, brilliant engineer he really was.

Bat's doubt had been carefully calculated. He knew his man. And just now as he awaited the explosion he looked for, his thoughts went back to a scene he had once had with a half drunken machine-minder whom he had had to pay off. The man had epitomised the chief engineer's qualities and character, as those who encountered his authority understood them, in a few lurid, illuminating phrases. "You know," he had said, "that guy ain't a man. No, sir. He's the mush-fed image of a penitentiary boss. I guess he'd set the grease box of a driving shaft hot with a look. His temper 'ud burn holes in sheet iron. As for work--work? Holy Mackinaw!

I've worked hired man to a French Canuk mossback which don't leave a feller the playtime of a n.i.g.g.e.r slave, but that h.e.l.l-hired Scotch machine boss sets me yearnin' for that mossback's wage like a bull-pup chasin' offal. I tell you right here if that guy don't quit his notions there'll be murder done. b.l.o.o.d.y murder! An' it's a G.o.d's sure thing when that happens he'll freeze to death in h.e.l.l. It don't rile me a thing to be told the things he guesses my mother was. Maybe that's a matter of opinion, and, anyway, she's mixin' with a crop of angels who don't figger to have no truck with Scotch machine bosses. I guess a sight of his flea-bitten features 'ud set 'em seein' things so they wouldn't rec'nise their harps from frypans, and they'd moult feathers till you wouldn't know it from a snowfall on Labrador. But when he mixes his notions of my ma with 'lazy'! Lazy! Lazy! Gee! Why, if I signed in a half hour late from that b.u.m suttler's canteen, I guess it was only the time it took me digestin' two quarts of the gut-wash they hand out there in the hope you won't know it from beer. No, sir, 'lazy son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h'

from that guy is the talk no decent citizen with a bunch of guts is goin' to stand for."

Skert Lawton was known for a red-hot "burner," a "n.i.g.g.e.r driver." No doubt he was all this in addition to his brilliant attainments as an engineer. But the methods he applied to others he applied to himself.

And the whole of him, brain and body, was for the enterprise they were all engaged in. Bat had intended to goad the demon of obstinate energy which possessed the man, and he succeeded.

Skert flung out his hand in a comprehensive gesture.

"h.e.l.l!" he cried. "That's no sort of talk anyway. I've been weeks on this thing. And I've got it to the last fraction. Big notion? Of course it is. Aren't we mostly concerned with big notions? Here, what are you asking? An inland boom with capacity for anything over a million cords.

Well? It's d.a.m.n ridiculous talking the size of the notion. This hollow is fixed right. Its bed is ten feet below the bed of the river. It's surrounded with a natural ridge on all sides a hundred and fifty feet high. There's a quarter mile below the hollow and the river bank, and the new mill extensions are just to the east of this ridge. It's well-nigh child's play. Nature's fixed it that way. Two cuttings, and a race-way on the river. We flood this. Feed it full of lumber in the summer with surplus from the cut and you've got that reserve for winter, so you can keep every darn machine grinding its guts out. What's the use talking? Big notion? Of course it is. We're out for big notions all the time. That's the whole proposition. Well?"

Bat grinned at the heated disgust in the man's tone.

"Sounds like eatin' pie," he retorted aggravatingly. "The cost? The labour? Time? You got those things?"

"It's right up at your office now." Skert's eyes widened in surprise at such a question. "It's not my way to play around."

"No." Bat's eyes refused seriousness.

"Oh, psha! This is no sort of time chewing these details. It's figgered to the last second, the last man, the last cent. I brought you to see things. Well, you've seen things. And if you're satisfied we'll quit right away. I've no spare play time."

There was no pretence of patience in Skert Lawton. He had looked for appreciation and only found doubt. He moved off.

Bat had done the thing intended. He had no intention of hurting the man.

He understood the driving power of the mood he had stirred.

They moved off together.

"That's all right, Skert," he said kindly. "You've done one big thing.

An' it's the thing Bull and I want--"

"Then why in h.e.l.l didn't you say it instead of talking--notions?"

For all the sharpness of his retort, Skert was mollified. Bat shook his head and a shrewd light twinkled in his eyes.

"You're a pretty bright boy, Skert," he said. "But you're brightest when you're riled."

They had gained the river bank where booms lined the sh.o.r.e, and scores of men were rafting. They had left the water-logged hollow behind them, and debouched on the busy world of the mill. Ahead lay the new extensions where the saws were shrieking the song of their labours upon the feed for the rumbling grinders. It was a towns.h.i.+p of buildings of all sizes crowding about the great central machine house.

They crossed the light footbridge over the "cut in" from the river, and moved along down the main highway of the northern sh.o.r.e.

Both were pre-occupied. The engineer was listening to the note of his beloved machinery. Bat was concerned with any and every movement going on within the range of his vision. They walked briskly, the lean engineer setting a pace that kept the other stumping hurriedly beside him.

Abreast of the mill they approached a new-looking, long, low building.

It was single storied and lumber built, with a succession of many windows down its length. The hour was noon. And men were hurrying towards its entrance from every direction.

Bat watched interestedly.

"They seem mighty keen for their new playground," he said at last, with a quick nod in the direction of the recreation house.

The engineer came out of his dream. His mournful eyes turned in the direction indicated and devoured the scene. Then he glanced down at the squat figure stumping beside him.

"Guess that's so. But not the way you figgered when you got that fool notion of handing 'em a playhouse," he said roughly. "If you pa.s.s a hog a feather bed, it's a sure thing he'll work out the best way to muss it quick."

"How? I don't get you?"

There was no humour in Bat's eyes now.

"They call it a 'Chapel'," Skert said dryly. "They've surely got preachers, but they don't talk religion. Maybe that's sort of new to you, here. It isn't across the water where I come from. Guess you think those boys are racing out to get a game of checkers, or billiards, or cards, or some other fool play you reckoned to hand 'em to make 'em feel good." He shook his head. "They're not. They've turned their 'Chapel'

into a sort of parliament. Every dinner hour there's a feller, different fellers most all the time, gets up and hands 'em out an address. It's short, but red hot. The afternoon s.h.i.+ft in the mill is given up to brightening up their fool brains on it. And when evening comes along, and they've their bellies full of supper and beer, they get along to the 'Chapel' and they debate the address, handing out opinions and notions just as bellies guide 'em."

"And the addresses. What are they mostly? On the work? The trade they're working at?"