IN THE MOONLIGHT
Angus Moraine flung down his pen impatiently. Leaning back in his chair he turned toward the sunlit window, gazing through it at the distant view of golden wheat as a man will who seeks relief from intolerable thought.
His thought was intolerable. It was growing more and more intolerable as the days passed and the time drew on when he must hand Deep Willows over to his successor.
All the best years of his life had been spent in the making of Deep Willows. All his energy, all that was best in him; these things had been given freely, without stint, without thought of sparing himself in the work, and he believed the result to be a worthy achievement.
But it was not yet finished. He doubted if it would ever be finished. He had dreamed his dreams, and those dreams had carried him into realms of such colossal fancy that he knew, if he lived to a hundred, the time would be wholly inadequate for the fulfilment of his ambitions.
The wealth which must inevitably come in the process of the achievement he had set himself was not the goal he desired to win. He admitted the use of such wealth, and knew that without it the rest must fall to the ground. But his dream was of achievement alone. He had no desire to be remembered for the fortune he had amassed. His absorbing passion was to be thought of, by coming generations, for an achievement unlike that of any other.
Deep Willows was the nucleus about which he had hoped to build his edifice. Vaguely he saw it the center of a world of wheat. He imagined the whole prairie lands of Canada clad in the golden raiment of a perfect wheat harvest. Not merely a farm, but a country of wheat, acknowledging a single control. Nor did it matter to him whose the control so long as his was the making.
This was his dream and now—he saw it fading before his very eyes at the whim of the man he had so long and so faithfully served. The thought of it was intolerable. Sometimes, even, rebellion choked all his friendship, all his loyalty to the man who had made something of the realization of his dreams possible.
But there was just one shadow of hope left to him. It was very slight, very vague, and he hardly understood whither it led, he hardly knew if it were worth serious consideration at all. But the feeling was there; nor would it be denied. If only he knew what far-reaching scheme, with regard to his wife, lay in the back of Hendrie's great head he might feel easier. But he did not know, and, until such schemes were put into practice, he was not likely to know. Still the fact remained; Mrs. Hendrie had been appointed his successor, and, since that appointment, she had fallen from her high place in her husband's regard, or, at least, was tottering on her exalted pedestal.
The thought gave him some slight satisfaction. If—if only something would happen in time. If—only. He felt at that moment he would willingly give half his possessions to be able to search the hidden recesses of Hendrie's secret thought and find out for certain—what was going to happen.