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