When the engineer appeared, he went on, "We're going to do something new. Townley will give you his end of it, and you work out the rest. It's chemical engineering, so get any assistance you need. Give me estimates of costs and say how soon the plant can be put up. Figure on a hundred tons of sulphite pulp per day—dry weight. That's all."
The two went out, and he leaned back, pressing his finger tips hard on his lids, and finding in the red blur that followed something that soothed and rested his eyes. He was not one who sought out problems and chased them to their solution, but rather one who perceived the problem and, by singularly acute vision, perceived also the solution just behind it. There were so many things that were overlooked by others but presented themselves to him for attention, that he had long since ceased to wonder why the world was full of men he considered ineffectual. Now he ran rapidly over the existing situation, marshaling his various undertakings in due order, when there sounded in his head something that seemed like the tearing of a piece of cloth. He drew a long breath, experiencing for the first time in his life a sense of intolerable weariness. And then, suddenly he thought of Elsie.
It was strange that he should think of her now—there were so many other and insistent things. Wimperley and the rest had come up to congratulate him and gone away elated but at the same time puzzled that he should regard the discovery with such apparent indifference. It was true that creditors were becoming pressing, but the rail mill, it was universally admitted, would pull the thing through. Now a reaction set in and he longed for a little solitude. It lay in his mind that just over the horizon was something more inviting than all that had taken place.
An hour later he was in the bow of a big tug, heading down stream, having left orders that he must not be disturbed. As the green landscape slid by he gave himself over to retrospection, and his mind wandered comfortably back through all the stages of the past years. Surveying the folk of St. Marys, he concluded that only Filmer and Bowers had been active supporters from the start. He would remember that. Came a voice at his elbow. It was the master of the tug.
"Where to, sir?"
"A hundred miles from here there's a camping party. Find them."
They anchored that night in a long and narrow inlet where the trembling reflection of the tug's funnel lay beside the mirrored tops of pine trees that clung to the rocky shore. Ahead and behind was the open lake. There was no sound but the twitter of sleepy birds and the honk of a startled heron that winged its flight to solitudes still more remote. Then Clark began to fish, and, just as he landed a five pound bass, a girl's voice sounded clearly while a canoe floated round a nearby point. Elsie was in it and alone.
XVII.—THE GIRL IN THE CANOE
She stared at him with undisguised astonishment. "Good evening," he laughed. "Here I am!"
The girl grew rather pink. "Isn't it wonderful that you really found us?"