The idea was stimulating, and very carefully he reviewed the situation as it there existed. His supporters were keen men in Philadelphia and the unexpected announcement of Fisette's discovery had electrified the market. Shares in all the allied companies touched hitherto unreached values. The more he thought the more he luxuriated in this new sweep of imagination, while intermittently there came to him the dull boom of blasting at the works.
Presently his mind turned to money and personal wealth. He had never given it much thought, and only seriously considered money in terms of what it could accomplish. Now he was receiving a very large salary and had, as well, holdings in shares of the various companies. He dwelt on the fact for a while, not that he had ever aimed at riches, but because his financial position was infinitely better than ever before. It would be easy, he reflected, to sell out, retire and live at ease. He chuckled audibly at the picture, realizing that if he stopped work he would die of a strangulated spirit.
Presently as he listened it seemed that the rapids took on a new pitch. He had remarked before that, varying with the direction of the wind, their call was not always in one great thundering diapason but sometimes in a gigantic hubbub made up, as it were, of the confused blending of many notes. Now, he imagined, he could discern them all—querulous, angry, contented, pleading, defiant, threatening and triumphant, and he perceived in them but the echo of changing human moods. To-day he distinguished chiefly a voice that was dominant and imperative.
Still in profound contemplation he surveyed the rapids' gigantic sweep, the proud and tossing billows shot through with sunlight and vibrant with speed. He made out those smooth and glistening emerald cellars into which the flashing river pitched to rise again in tossing crests. He followed back through the icy depths of the great lake stretching westward to hidden swamps in that vast wilderness where these waters were born, and shouting rivers down which they poured through silent pools and over leaping cataracts to Superior. He saw still another river that, growing in power and majesty, moved royally past the cities of men, healing, sustaining and inspiring. And, last of all, he perceived these waters of half a continent blend silently with the brackish tides and lose themselves in the eternal sea.
This translation of vision moved him profoundly, for it was the nature of his remote personality to be stirred more deeply by the revelations of his own soul than by anything extraneous to its strange reactions. Then gradually the voice of the river resolved itself into one clear and unmistakable summons. "Use me while you may. I shall flow on forever, while you have but a moment in eternity."
And this satisfied him.
He got up and walked slowly back, plunged in thought, but not of those who passed and touched their hats and to whom he was the personification of power. There was in his mind the talk he had with Wimperley, a few months before. "We're in your hands," he had said, "but there's a limit to what we can raise. Push on with work and don't forget about dividends."
Remembering it, Clark smiled. The dividends might be delayed a year or so, but when they came it would be in a flood like the rapids. At his office he found a telegram from the purchasing agent in the United States. Blast furnaces were under way, and, he reported, he had secured an option on a rail mill. It was not new, but could be had at once. To dismantle and reërect would save six months as against the time required to build a new one. This purchase would also save hundreds of thousands of dollars.
He pondered for some time, with Wimperley's remarks about dividends keeping up an irritating onslaught. He was aware in a strange but quite unmistakable way that this decision now to be made was in a quite positive sense more momentous than appeared on the surface. He hung over it, balancing the advantages of a new mill against a definite saving. It was not the sum about which he hesitated, but a touch of uncertainty as to just how much capital Wimperley and the rest could actually provide. Then suddenly he decided to be economical, even though a secondhand mill had obvious weaknesses.
In the next moment he rang for Belding. The engineer answered with a weariness daily becoming more settled, and which was only relieved by the spontaneous loyalty he had from the first conceived for his chief. Of late he never entered Clark's office without anticipating some addition to burdens he had already determined were too heavy for his young shoulders. But now, too, as always, he had no sooner closed the door and caught the extraordinary power in Clark's eyes than he was caught up in the grip of his chief's confidence and felt ready for the effort.