CHAPTER XVIII
That night Tim Bennett’s lumberjacks began to drift in. There were Danes, Frenchmen, Irish, a sprinkling of Indians. They did not linger in Diversity, nor did they congregate, but passed quickly through with a cheerful air. There was exhilaration, anticipation, in their eyes, whether of Scandinavian blue or of aboriginal black. Old times were back again. For a moment a decadent age of which they despaired was returning to better manners, and there was to be a fight. Peavey handles! There was joy to be had from the very sound of it. In the morning a scattering of big men, predominantly Irish, got off the train and straggled away. In the afternoon another group arrived. They came so quietly, so unostentatiously, that Diversity was hardly aware of them. A full fifty were on hand—fifty fighting-men such as no other set of conditions has produced, men who fought and worked for the joy of it. A race of men who worked, not for pay, but because they loved the work, is worthy of chronicle. They live no more. Men whose highest wage was the knowledge that their camp or crew, or they individually, had done more and harder and better work than some other camp or crew or individual have resident in them something that should be handed down through time for other generations to admire. They possessed vices, but they were brief, flaming, roaring safety-valve vices, almost epic in themselves. For months they were accustomed to live austere, laborious, loyal lives in the ramps. Then for a day, a week, they appeared among their fellows, and their fellows received them and robbed them and plied them with liquor and directed their splendid energies into ways of debauchery. On the scales of justice the robust virtue of them outweighs their brief, primitive descents into the depths. They were men.
Tim Bennett reported to Jim Ashe. “They’re here, fair bustin’ with the thought of it. The taste of a fight is in their mouths and they’re rollin’ it under their tongues.”
“Good men?”
“Mr. Ashe,” said Tim, joyously, “I’d undertake to drive logs through hell with ’em—and the devil throwin’ rocks from the shore.”
“Any talk in town?”
“Not a peep. Them boys sneaked through like the shadow of a flock of hummin’-birds. They’re keepin’ quiet where they are without even a bit of a song. By night there’ll be so much deviltry penned up in ’ere lookin’ for a place to bust out, that when it does come Moran’ll think a herd of boilers is blowin’ up round him.”
“Go out, then, and keep them quiet. I’ll be along by ten to-night.”
It was not Jim’s intention to descend upon the Diversity Hardwood Company with his men blindly and to seize what might by good fortune fall into his hands. He had planned well, as a good general plans. Simultaneously he would strike at several points, so that in a single moment, if all went well, the machinery he needed to move logs would be in his hands. He was ready.
Satisfied he had done all he could do to make success certain, Jim went home to the widow’s to supper. He was excited. Appetite was lacking. He felt inside very much like a countryman descending for the first time in a swift elevator. It was not fear; it was not excitement; it was all the nerves of his body setting and bracing themselves, making ready to respond to strain.
He scarcely touched his food; sat silently reviewing his plans to make sure every point was checked up, that there would be no omissions, no mistake. The widow watched him out of the corner of her shrewd eye; Marie Ducharme watched him, too, less shrewdly, with a different sort of glance. Marie’s eyes were dark with much brooding; were circled by drab shadows drawn by the finger of mental anguish. If Jim had looked at her he would have seen again that hungry look with which she followed the departing train—but now it was bent upon himself.
The widow withdrew to the kitchen, not obviously, but with sufficient pretext. She sensed a quarrel; she saw in Jim’s silence and lack of appetite an ailment of the heart, not a business worry. She fancied Marie’s face spoke of willingness to be reconciled—and eliminated herself to give the difficulty a chance to right itself. Widows have a way of seeing more love-affairs than are visible to other eyes—more, in fact, than are in being.
Presently Marie spoke:
“Jim,” she said. It was the first time she had called him by his first name. “Jim, I want to go somewhere, do something, to-night. I want to get away from this house.”
Jim looked at her a moment, and she was hurt to see he was not thinking of her, had hardly understood her words. Perhaps she, too, had put on his silence the same interpretation as the widow.
“Go somewhere?” he said, vaguely, then flushed at his awkwardness. “I’m sorry, Marie. I was a long way off when you spoke. It was rude, wasn’t it? But I’ve had such a heap of things to think about these last days that some of them insist on hanging round outside of business hours. Has something happened? Any trouble with Mrs. Stickney?”
“No. No trouble. I just want to get away. I want you to talk to me and keep me from thinking about myself—and some things. I—I’m afraid tonight, Jim.”
Jim bit his lip boyishly.
“Confound it!” he said. “I simply can’t get away to-night. Business. But don’t I wish I could go with you some place—and talk to you. There are things I wanted to say to you the other night, Marie, that—well, I guess it took time for me to think of. I want to talk to you about the same thing, for I’ve been thinking about the same thing. I was too abrupt. You were right to give me the answer you did—but I’ve got some more arguments now, a lot of them.”
Marie’s face softened. How boyish, how eagerly boyish he was!
“You mustn’t talk about that,” she said, gently. “I can’t change. Your work is here. You’re tied to it. And I must get away from it—to stay. Can’t you understand? Don’t misunderstand me, Jim. It wasn’t to give you a chance to ask me to reconsider that I asked you to go out with me. No. No. It was to have you to talk to. To have the consciousness that I was with a man—a man who—was—a human being.” Her voice faltered. “I wanted you to say to me some of the things you have said before—about people being good, about the world being good, about faith and trustworthiness and honor. I don’t know those things, but I want to hear about them—to-night. Because I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid of—myself. I talked to you that first day we met—more than I should. So you know me. I am the same girl I was then, but I am not the same girl. Then I knew it would be possible for me to choose the—bitter way. To choose it deliberately as a way of escape. But I did not know then how bitter that way would be. Now I know I should not choose it deliberately, but be forced into it by—by myself.”
“You mustn’t talk that way, I won’t have you say that sort of thing about—my girl.”
“It’s true, and I am afraid. Can’t your business step aside for to-night?”
“It can’t, Marie. If it were an ordinary night or an ordinary matter that calls me, I would stay.” He stopped, considered. It was his nature to speak little of his affairs, to offer few confidences. To tell Marie the truth seemed his only honorable way of escape from the dilemma. “I’ll tell you about it,” he said, with sudden decision, “and you will understand.”
Then he told her, from the beginning in his father’s library. He described his difficulties, his war with the Clothespin Club, his bitterer war with Michael Moran. He told her what Moran had done and was seeking to do. He told her his measures of defense and of counter-attack, and particularly the plan for to-night. “And so you see,” he ended, “I must go.”
“Yes,” she said, slowly, “you must go. And Michael Moran has done those things? You must hate him!”
“Yes,” said Jim, “but not for what he has done to me. I hate him because—” He hesitated, unable to bring himself to utter the thought in connection with Marie.
“Because?” Marie questioned.
“Because,” said Jim, between his teeth, “he is planning and working to make you take the choice you have talked about without appreciating what you were saying.”
“Yes,” said Marie, her eyes shut as though to hide from her a painful sight—“yes, he is doing that. And I have known what I was saying, Jim. I know what I am saying now. I wish you could have stayed with me to-night, Jim. I’m afraid—afraid.” She arose and ran from the room.
When Jim left the house it was with a troubled mind. He did not understand Marie; she was not fathomable by him. The evening’s zest of adventure lay cold within him.
Shortly after eight o’clock he drove away from the livery barn. As he drove past the Widow Stickney’s street he glanced toward the house and saw Michael Moran entering the yard. What he did not see was Marie Ducharme leaving by the back way, hurrying as though pursued, making her way to the edge of town and beyond—beyond until she arrived at the hummock where she and Jim had first spoken. And there she crouched, looking off to the southwest where a silver gleam of the great lake was visible between the trees. It grew darker, but she did not move; dew fell upon her shoulders, chilling her; the lake breeze penetrated her thin garments, but she replied only with a shiver. Her hands were clenched on her breast. “Help me! Help me!” she whispered her soul crying to a Power outside herself.