Читать книгу The Man in the Twilight - Cullum Ridgwell - Страница 7

Table of Contents

The grey, evening light was significant of the passing season. A chilly breeze whipped about the faces of the men at the fringe of the woods. They were resting after a long tramp of inspection through the virgin forests. It was on a ledge, high up on the hillside of the northern shore of the cove, where the ground dropped away in front of them several hundreds of feet to the waters below. Behind them was a backing of standing timber which sheltered them from the full force of the biting wind.

It was nearly a week since Bat Harker had returned from his mission to No. 10 Camp. He had returned full of satisfaction at the completion of his task, and comforted by the knowledge that the horizon of the mill had been cleared of threatening clouds for at least the period of a year. Then he encountered the ricochet of the blow which Fate had dealt his friend and employer.

It had been within half an hour of his return, while yet the stains and dust of his journey remained upon him, while yet he was yearning for that rest for his body to which it was entitled.

Bat had concluded the report of his journey, and the two men were closeted together in the office on the hillside. The lumberman had had no suspicion of the thing that had happened in his absence, and Standing had given no indication. Standing seemed unchanged. There had been the customary smile of welcome in his eyes. There had been the cordial handshake of friendship. Maybe Standing had talked less, and the searching questions usual in him had not been forthcoming. Maybe there was a curiously tired, strained look in his eyes. But that was all.

At the conclusion of his report Bat had bent eagerly forward over the desk which stood between them. His hard eyes were smiling. His whole manner was that of a man anticipating something pleasant.

"Say, Les," he cried, "guess you've maybe some news for me, too. It's more than a month since—and you were expecting—Things all right?"

Standing reached towards the drawer beside him, and as he did so there was a sound. It was a curious, inarticulate sound that Bat interpreted into a laugh. The other opened the drawer and drew out the folded pages of a letter. These he passed across the table, and his eyes were without a shadow of the laugh which Bat thought he had heard.

"Best read it," he said. "Take your time. I'll just finish these figures I'm working on."

It was the curious, cold tone that stirred Bat to his first misgiving.

He took the letter. There were pages of it. He set them in order and commenced to read. And meanwhile Standing remained apparently engrossed in his figures.

He read the letter through. He read it slowly, carefully. Then, like the other had done, the man to whom it was addressed, he read it a second time. And as he read every vestige of his previous satisfaction passed from him. A cold constriction seemed to fasten upon his strong heart. And a terrible realisation of the tragedy of it all took possession of him. At the end of his second reading he handed the letter back to its owner without comment of any sort, without a word, but with a hand that, for once in his life, was unsteady.

"That was in the mail Idepski brought," Standing said, as he returned the letter to its place, and shut and locked the drawer.

"You remember?" he went on, pointing. "He flung it down there. Just by the door. Yes, it was just there, because I stood against the door, and was only just clear of it."

He paused and his hand remained pointing at the spot where the mail bag had lain. It was as if the spot held him fascinated. Then his arm lowered slowly, and his hand came to rest on the edge of the table, gripping it with unnecessary force.

"Seems queer," he went on, after a while. Then he shook his head. "Think of it. Nancy—my Nancy. Dead! She died giving birth to my boy. And he—he was stillborn. Why? I—I can't seem to realize it. I—don't—" He paused, and a strained, hunted look grew in his eyes. "No. It's easy. It's just Fate. That's it. There's no escape."

He drew a deep breath and one lean hand smoothed back his shining black hair. Then his eyes came back to the face of the man opposite, and the agony in them was beyond words. After a moment their terrible expression became lost as he bent over his work. "I'm glad you're back, Bat," he said, without looking up.

"There's a hell of a lot of orders to get out. We're running close up to winter."

The lumberman understood. At a single blow this man's every hope had been smashed and ground under the heel of an iron fate. The wife, the woman he had worshipped, had given her life to serve him, and with her had gone the man-child, about whom had been woven the entire network of a father's hopes and desires.

A week had passed since Bat had witnessed the voiceless agony of his friend. A week of endless labour and unspoken fears. He knew Standing as it is given to few to know the heart of another. His sympathy was real. It was of that quality which made him desire above all things to render the heartbroken man real physical and moral help. But no opening had been given him, and he feared to probe the wound that had been inflicted. During those first seven days Standing seemed to be obsessed with a desire to work, to work all day and every night, as though he dared not pause lest his disaster should overwhelm him.

Now it was Sunday. Night and day the work had gone on. No less than ten freighters had been loaded and dispatched since Bat's return, and only that morning two vessels had cast off, laden to the water-line, and passed down on the tide for the mouth of the cove. At the finish of the midday meal Standing had announced his intentions for the afternoon.

"We need to get a look into the lumber on the north side, Bat," he said. "You'd best come along with me. How do you think?"

And Bat had agreed on the instant.

"Sure," he said. "There's a heap to be done that way if we're to start layin' the penstocks down on that side next year."

So they had spent the hours before dusk in a prolonged tramp through the forests of the Northern shore. And never for one moment was their talk and apparent interest allowed to drift from the wealth of long-fibred timber they were inspecting.

But somehow to Bat the whole thing was unreal. It meant nothing. It could mean nothing. He felt like a man walking towards a precipice he could not avoid. He felt disaster, added disaster, was in the air and was closing in upon them. He knew in his heart that this long, weary inspection, all the stuff they talked, all the future plans they were making for the mill was the merest excuse. And he wondered when Standing would abandon it and reveal his actual purpose. The man, he knew, was consumed by a voiceless grief. His soul was tortured beyond endurance. And there was that "yellow streak," which Bat so feared. When, when would it reveal itself? How?

Now, at last, as they rested on the ledge overlooking the mill and the waters of the cove, he felt the moment of its revelation had arrived. He was propped against the stump of a storm-thrown tamarack. Standing was stretched prone upon the fallen trunk itself. Neither had spoken for some minutes. But the trend of thought was apparent in each. Bat's deep-set, troubled eyes were regarding the life and movement going on down at the mill, whose future was the greatest concern of his life. Standing, too, was gazing out over the waters. But his darkly brooding eyes were on the splendid house he had set up on the opposite hillside. It was the home about which his every earthly hope had centred. And even now, in his despair, it remained a magnet for his hopeless gaze.

Winter was already in the bite of the air and in the absence of the legions of flies and mosquitoes as well as in the chilly grey of the lapping waters below them. It was doubtless, too, searching the heart of these men whose faces gave no indication of the sunlight of summer shining within.

"Bat!"

The lumberman turned sharply. He spat out a stream of tobacco juice and waited.

"Bat, old friend, it's no use." Standing had swung himself into a sitting posture. He was leaning forward on the tree-trunk with his forearms folded across his knees. "We've done a lot of talk, and we've searched these forests good. And it's all no use. None at all. There's going to be no penstocks set up this side of the water next year—as far as I'm concerned. I've done. Finished. Plumb finished. I'm quitting. Quitting it all."

The lumberman ejected a masticated chew and took a fresh one.

"You see, old friend, I'll go crazy if I stop around," Standing went on. "I've been hit a pretty desperate punch, and I haven't the guts to stand up to it. When it came I set my teeth. I wanted to keep sane. I reminded myself of all I owed to the folks working for us. I thought of you. And I tried to bolster myself with the schemes we had for beating the Skandinavians out of this country's pulp-wood trade. Yes, I tried. God, how I tried! But my guts are weak, and I know what lies ahead. For nearly six weeks I've been working things out, and for a week I've been wondering how I should tell you. I brought you here to tell you.

"I want you to understand it good," he went on, after the briefest pause. "I can't stand to live on in the house that Nancy and I built up. Every room is haunted by her. By her happy laugh, and by memories of the hours we sat and talked of the boy-child we'd both set our hearts on. I just can't do it without going stark, staring, raving mad. I can't."

"That's how I figgered. I've watched it in you, Les. Tell me the rest."

Bat chewed steadily. It was a safety-valve for his feelings.

"The rest?" Standing turned to gaze out at the house across the water. "If it weren't for you, Bat, I'd close right down. I'd leave everything standing and—get out," he went on slowly. "The whole thing's a nightmare. Look at it. Look around. The forests of soft wood. The township we've set up. The harnessed water power. That—that house of mine. It's all nightmare, and I don't want it. I'm afraid. I'm scared to death of it."

Bat moved away from the stump he had been propped against. He passed across to the edge of the ledge and stood gazing down on the scenes below.

"You needn't worry for me," he said. "It don't matter a cuss where or how I hustle my dry hash. I was born that way. Fix things the way you feel. Cut me right out."

The man's generosity was a simple expression of his rugged nature. His love of that great work below him, in the creation of which he had taken so great a part, was nothing to him at that moment. He was concerned only for the man, who had held out a succouring hand, and led him, in his darkest moments, to safety and prosperity.

Standing shook his head at the broad back squared against the grey, wintry sky.

"I didn't mean it that way, old friend," he said.

Bat swung around. His grey eyes were wide. His face seemed to have softened out of its usual harsh cast.

"But I do, Les," he cried. "You don't need to figger a thing about me. You're hurt, boy. You're hurt mighty sore. Cut me right out of your figgers, and do the things that's goin' to heal that sore. If there's a thing I can do to help you, why, I guess I'd be glad to know it."

For a few moments Standing remained silent. Perhaps he was pondering upon what he had to say. Perhaps he was simply gaining time to suppress the emotions which the selflessness of the other had inspired.

"Here," he cried at last, "I best tell you the whole story that's in my mind. I told you I've been figuring it out. Well, it's figured to the last decimal. You think you know me. Maybe you do. Maybe you know only part of the things I know about myself. If you knew them all I'd hate to think of the contempt you'd have to hand me. You see, Bat, I'm a coward, a terrible moral coward. Oh, I'm not scared of any man living when it comes to a fight. But my mind's full of ghosts and nightmares ready to jump at me with every doubt, every new effort where I can't figure the end. Years ago, when I was a youngster, I yearned for fortune. And I realised that I had it in me to get it quick by means of that crazy talent for figures you reckon is so wonderful. I got the chance and jumped, for it. But every step I took left me scared to the verge of craziness. When I hit up against Hellbeam I got a desire to beat him that was irresistible, and I jumped into the fight with my heart in my mouth. It was easy—so easy. Hellbeam was a babe in my hands. I could play with him as a spider plays with its victim, and when, like a spider, I'd bound him with my figures, hand and foot, I was free to suck his blood till I was satiated. I did all that, and then my nightmare descended upon me again. You know how I fled with Hellbeam's hounds on my heels. I was terrified at the enormity of the thing I'd done. I could have stood my ground and beaten him—and them. But moral cowardice overwhelmed me and drove me to these outlands. God, what I suffered! And after all I haven't the certainty that I deserved it."

Bat came back to his stump and stood against it while Standing passed a weary hand across his forehead.

"The happenings since then you know as well as I do. I don't need to talk of them. I mean, how I met and married Nancy, when she was widow of that no-account McDonald feller, the editor of The Abercrombie Herald!"

Bat nodded.

"Yes, sure, I know, Les. When you married Nancy an' made her thirteen-year-old daughter—your daughter."

"Yes. I'd almost forgotten. Yes, there's her girl, Nancy. She's still at school. Well, anyway, you know, these things, all of 'em. But what you don't know is that you—you Bat, old friend, are solely responsible for all the work that's being done here. You, old friend, are responsible that I've enjoyed seven years of something approaching peace of mind. You, you with your bulldog fighting spirit, you with your hell-may-care manner of shouldering responsibility, and facing every threat, have been the staunch pillar on which I have always leant. Without you I'd have gone under years ago, a victim of my own mental ghosts. No, no, Bat," he went on quickly, as the lumberman shook his head in sharp denial, "it's useless. I know. Leaning on you I've built up around me the reality of that original dream, with the other things I've now lost, and with every ounce in me I've worked for its fulfilment.

"Well, what's the logic of it all?" he continued, after a moment's pause. "Yes, it is the logic of it. You may argue that for seven years I've been doing a big work and there's no reason, in spite of what's happened, that I should now abandon it all. But there is. And in your strong old heart you'll know the thing I say is true—if cowardly. During seven years, or part of them, I've known a happiness that's compensated for every terror I've endured. Nancy's been my guardian angel, and the boy, that was to be born, was the beacon light of my life. My poor little wife has gone, and that beacon light, the son we yearned for, has been snuffed right out. And in the shadows left I see only the groping hand of Hellbeam reaching out towards me. In the end that hand will get me, and crush the remains of my miserable life out. I know. Just as sure as God, Hellbeam's going to get me."

The sweat of terror stood on the man's high forehead, and he wiped it away.

Bat flung a clenched fist down upon the tree stump.

"You're wrong, Les. You're plumb wrong. If it means murder I swear before God Hellbeam'll never lay hands on you. Hellbeam? Gee! Let him set his nose north of 'fifty' and I'll promise him a welcome so hot that'll leave hell like a glacier. As for his darn agents? Why, say, I want to feel sorry for 'em 'fore they start. Idepski's hating himself right—"

"I know," cried Standing impatiently. "I know it all. Everything you've said you mean, but—it won't save me. But we can leave all that. There's the other things. Why should I go on living here, working, slaving, haunted by the terror of Hellbeam? With my boy, my wife, to fight for it was worth all the agony. But without them—why? Why in the name of sanity should I go on? To beat the Skandinavians out of Canada's trade, and claim it all for a country that doesn't care a curse? To build up a great name that in the end must be dragged in the mire of public estimation? Not on your life, Bat. No, no. I'm going to cut adrift. I'm going to quit. I'm going to lose myself in these forests, and live the remaining years of my life free to run to earth at the first shot of the hunter's gun. It's all that's left me—as I see it."

"And all this?" Bat said, reaching out one great hand in the direction of the Cove. "An' that school gal 'way down at Abercrombie, learning her knitting, an' letters, an' crying her dandy eyes out for the mother who had to leave her there when she passed over to you? Say, Les, you best go on. Jest go right on an' I'll say my piece after."

Standing sat up. A deep earnestness was in the dark eyes that looked fearlessly into Bat's. He took the other at his word and went on. He had nothing to conceal.

"The mill? Why, I want to pass it over to your care, Bat," he said, permitting one swift regretful glance in the direction of the grey waters below them. Then he spoke almost feverishly. "Here's the proposition. I'm going to hand you full powers—through Charles Nisson. You'll run this thing on the lines laid down. If you fancy carrying on the original proposition of extension, well and good. If not, just carry on and leave the rest for—later. You'll be manager for me through Nisson. I shan't remove one cent of capital. I don't want Hellbeam's money beyond the barest grub stake. It'll remain under Nisson's guardianship for your use in running this mill. You'll simply satisfy Nisson. For the rest I shan't interfere. You're drawing a big salary now. Well, seeing I go out of the work, that salary will be doubled. That's for the immediate. Then there's the future. I've a notion. Maybe it's a crazy notion. But it's mine and I mean to test it. Here. We reckon to build up this enterprise for one great, big purpose. It was my dream to break the Skandinavian ring governing the groundwood trade of this country. It was work that appealed to my imagination. I wanted to build this great thing and pass it on to my boy. It seemed to me fine. Worth while. It was a man's work, and it seemed to me a life well spent. I had the guts then—with your support, and the support the thought of my son gave me. I haven't the guts now. The notion fired you, too. It fired you, and it'll grieve you desperately to see it abandoned. It shan't be abandoned. Once in the woods of this queer country I found a man—such a man as is rarely found. He was a man into whose hands I could put my life. And I guess there's no greater trust one man can have in another. He was a man of immense capacity. A man of intellect for all he had no schooling but the schooling of Quebec's rough woods. That man was you, Bat. I'd like to say to you: 'Here's the property. You know the scheme. Go on. Carry it through.' But I can't. I can't because one man can't do it. Well, the woods gave me one man, and they're going to give me another to take the place of the weak-gutted creature who intends to 'rat.' I'm going to find you a partner, a man with brain and force like yourself. A man of iron guts. And when I've found him I'm going to send him on to you. And if you approve him he shall be full partner with you in this concern the day that sees the Canadian Groundwood Trust completed, and the breaking of the Skandinavian ring. Do you follow it all? You and this man will be equal partners in the mill, and every available cent of its capital—the capital I made Hellbeam provide. It'll be yours and his, solely and alone. I—I shall pass right out of it. Hellbeam has no score against you. He has no penitentiary preparing for you. You are not concerned with him. Whatever he may have in store for me he can do nothing to you, and the money I beat him out of will have passed beyond his reach."

"And this man you figger to locate? You reckon to take a chance on your judgment?"

Bat's challenge came on the instant.

"On mine, and—yours." Standing's eyes were full of a keen confidence. And Bat realised something of the sanity lying behind a seemingly mad proposition. "He'll own nothing until he and you have completed the work as we see it. To own his share in the thing he must prove his capacity. He'll be held by the tightest and strongest contract Charles Nisson can draw up."

Bat spat out his chew. He replaced it with a pipe, and prepared to flake off its filling from a plug of tobacco. Standing watched him with the anxious eyes of a prisoner awaiting sentence. With the cutting of the first flakes of tobacco, Bat looked up.

"And this little gal-child, with the same name as the mother who just meant the whole of everything life could hand you? This kiddie with her mother's blood running in innocent veins? She's your Nancy's daughter and I guess your marriage made her yours."

"She's another man's child."

Standing's retort was instant. And the tone of it cut like a knife.

Bat regarded him keenly. His knife had ceased from its work on the plug.

"That's so," he said after a while. Then his gaze drifted in the direction of the house across the water, and the expression in the grey depths of his eyes became lost to the man who could not forget that the remaining child of his wife was the offspring of another man. "It seems queer," he went on reflectively. "That woman, your Nancy, was about the best loved wife, a fellow could think of. She was all sorts of a woman to you. Guess she was mostly the sun, moon, an' stars of your life. Yet her kiddie, a pore, lonesome kiddie, was toted right off to school so she couldn't butt in on you. You've never seen her, have you? And she was blood of the woman that set you nigh crazy. Only her father was another feller. No, Les." He shook his head, and went on filling his pipe. "No, Les, this mill and all about it can go hang if that pore, lone kiddie is wiped out of your reckoning. Maybe I'm queer about things. Maybe I'm no account anyway when it comes to the things of life mostly belonging to Sunday School. But I'd as lief go back to the woods I came from, as handle a proposition for you that don't figger that little gal in it. You best take that as all I've to say. There's a heap more I could say. But it don't matter. You're feelin' bad. Things have hit you bad. And you reckon they're going to hit you worse. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're wrong. Anyway these things are for you, though I'd be mighty thankful to help you. You want to go out of it all. You want to follow up some queer notion you got. You reckon it's going to give you peace. I hope so. I do sure. The thing you've said goes with me without shouting one way or the other. It grieves me bad. But that's no account anyway. But there's that gal standing between us, and she's going to stand right there till you've finished the things you're maybe going to say."

For a moment the men looked into each other's eyes. It was a tense moment of sudden crisis between them.

"Well?"

Bat's unyielding interrogation came sharply. Standing nodded.

"I hadn't thought, Bat," he said. Then he drew a deep breath. "I surely hadn't, but I guess you're right. She's my stepdaughter. And I've a right to do the thing you say. Yes. It's queer when I think of it," he went on musingly. "When I married her mother the girl didn't seem to come into our reckoning. She was at school, and I never even saw her. Then her mother wanted her left there, anyway till her schooling was through. Everything was paid. I saw to that. But—yes, I guess you're right. It's up to me, and I'll fix it."

"The mill?"

"She shall have equal share when the time comes."

"When the whole work's put through?"

"Yes. And meanwhile she'll be amply provided for." Standing spread out his hands deprecatingly. "You see, we did things in a hurry, Bat. There was always Hellbeam. And my Nancy understood that. I wonder—"

Bat smoked on thoughtfully, and presently the other roused himself from the pre-occupation into which he had fallen.

"Does that satisfy?" he demanded.

Bat nodded.

"I'll do the darnedest I know, Les," he said in his sturdy fashion. Fix that pore gal right. Hand her the share she's a right to—when the time comes along. Do that an' I'll not rest till the Skandinavians are left hollerin'. That kid's your daughter, for all she ain't flesh and blood of yours, an' you ain't ever see her. And anyway she's flesh of your Nancy, which seems to me hands her even a bigger claim."

He moved away from his leaning post and his back was turned to hide that which looked out of his eyes.

"I'm grieved," he went on, in his simple fashion, "I'm so grieved about things I can't tell you, Les. I always guessed to drive this thing through with you. I always reckoned to make good to you for that thing you did by me. Well, there's no use in talkin'. You reckon this notion of yours'll make you feel better, it's goin' to hand you—peace. That goes with me. Oh, yes, all the time, seein' you feel that way. But—say, we best get right home—or I'll cry like a darn-fool kid."