Holman Day

“We ’lowed he was caught, and we never thought we’d see Mike any more;
But he took and he kicked a bubble up, and he rode all safe to shore.”

—The “Best White-water Man.”

So it came about that once more, after a year had passed, Dwight Wade walked up the hill towards “Castle Cut ’Em,” where the sunlight shimmered upon grim walls. The mills along the canal screamed at him as he passed. His fancy detected derision in the squall of the saws.

A score of men plodded along with him—broad-backed, silent men who, now that they were under the frown of King Spruce’s citadel, muttered their forebodings to one another. Resentment and desperation had left their hearts open to the young man’s appeal when he urged a union against the tyrant. But now their reluctance hinted that their determination was built on some very shifty sands. He remembered the man who had declaimed a year before so stoutly, and had been turned aside from his purpose by a few words whispered in a corner.

And so it was without high hopes that Wade led the way into the broad stairway to the castle. He wished that the men would pound down their feet on those stairs so that King Spruce would know that they were coming as bold and honest men should come. But his little army tiptoed up, their heavy boots creaking as do the boots of decorous mourners at a funeral.

When he opened the door of the big general room his face did not show that he was disheartened. He had determined not to come to John Barrett as a mere petitioner. He was no longer allowing hope to soften the bitter business of demanding.

He saw the situation more plainly now than he saw it when he had bidden farewell to Elva Barrett in Pogey Notch. There could be no hope of truce between himself and John Barrett. By winning the love of John Barrett’s daughter, by possessing himself of the secret of John Barrett’s shame, he realized that he had committed offences that the pride of Barrett could not pardon. He had followed this by striking the first blow against the autocracy of King Spruce in the north country, and he was now appearing before King Spruce’s high chamberlain as the leader of the rebels whom his deed had spurred to rebellion.

In spite of his great love for Elva Barrett, he felt a sense of exaltation because he had the power to put that love behind him in his dealings with the man he had resolved to fight. It was a relief to convince himself now that Barrett was his implacable foe. Any other belief would have made him less courageous.

And when John Barrett, at sound of the tramp of many feet in the outer room, opened the door of his private office and stood framed there, Dwight Wade welcomed the spectacle of his antagonist. Barrett’s face was saturnine when he surveyed the group.

“I do not understand this, Mr. Wade,” he said. “You and I arranged a conference. But there was no arrangement for a general hearing.”

“The question of conditions on the Umcolcus is a question that takes in all of us who operate there, Mr. Barrett,” said Wade. “I’m present to answer to matters that can be charged to my individual responsibility, but the interests of all of us have a bearing on that responsibility, and we are here to have a fair understanding.”

Barrett stepped back, and motioned the young man to enter the private office.

“If you have come to speak for these men,” he said, “you may step in here, and we will see if we can arrange to have the directors meet them later.”

“Well, Mr. Wade,” he remarked, when they were alone, “so you have become a magnate in the north country in strictly record time!”

“Sarcasm won’t help us any in settling this matter!” cried the young man, warmly. “I can understand very well, Mr. Barrett, how you from your position look down on me in mine. But I have at least become some sort of a business man, and I—”

“You have become an almighty good business man,” declared the land baron, with such a ring of sincerity in his voice that the young man stared at him in sudden astonishment, “and in a little while we will talk business.”

“That is all I’m here to talk,” said Wade, the red coming into his cheeks.

When he had left the group of the lumbermen he noticed that some of them bent lowering looks upon him. They had seen other men invited apart and bought from their purpose. Wade wondered if the Honorable John Davis Barrett was not about to trade amnesty on the Blunder dam charge for betrayal of the men who had come at his back to “Castle Cut ’Em.”

Then a sense of shame at such suspicion came to him, as John Barrett began to speak:

“Mr. Wade,” said he, “you are more of a chap in every way than you were the last time you were in this office, but—you are still young.” From that moment the older man had the advantage. And yet Barrett was not calm. He sat down at his desk, and tossed his papers as he talked. His gaze wavered. His jowls hung heavy and flabby. The marks of his prostrating illness had not left him. But in the gloom of his face there was depression that did not arise from physical causes. Barrett’s bitter experience had drawn its black cloud around him. He pulled out the shelf of his desk, set his elbows upon it as though to steady his nerves, and faced Wade.

“Young man,” he began, “the way the world looks at those things—from the stand-point of some one who hasn’t been through the fire—I can afford to look down on you from my height as a moneyed man, and as something more in this State. An outsider might think so. But, by ——, you are the one that can look down on me, for you are square and clean!”

He would not allow Wade to interrupt.

“I haven’t called you in here to buy or bulldoze you. There is a matter between us that hasn’t been settled. I made you a promise on Jerusalem Mountain that I didn’t keep. I had excuses that seemed good to me then. They don’t look that way now. They didn’t look good to me when I got off my sick-bed at Castonia. Did Rodburd Ide tell you anything about my talk with the girl?”

“He told me, Mr. Barrett.”

The magnate plunged on desperately.

“I don’t think you’re dull, Mr. Wade, but you can’t understand what it meant to me when my child turned on me, spat in my face, and left me. It wasn’t merely the bitterness of that one moment—the blistering memory of it goes to sleep with me and wakes up with me. It’s with me in every look my daughter Elva gives me, though the poor child tries to hide from me that her old faith and trust have left her. I’m not going to whine, young man, but I’m in hell—in hell!”

His voice broke weakly. Then there was silence in the room. Wade heard only the yell of the distant saws and the shuffle of the woodsmen’s feet as they paced the big reception-hall of King Spruce.

Between the two men there was too much understanding for empty words of sympathy.

“Lane is dead,” blurted the millionaire, at last. “What will become of the girl?”

“MacLeod is to marry her. She nursed him through his sickness at Castonia; they love each other very sincerely, Mr. Barrett, and you need have no trouble about her future. Neither of them will ever trouble you; in fact, MacLeod asked me to say as much for him.”

Barrett was silent a long time, his gaze on the floor. He looked up at last, and his eyes shone as though a comforting thought had come to him.

“There’s one thing I can do. I’ve got money enough to make them independent for life. Be my agent in that, Mr. Wade, and—”

“I have another message from MacLeod. I have grown to know the man pretty well, and you’d best take my advice. He says it will be dangerous business for any man to put out a hand to him with anything in it.”

“You mean they won’t take a fortune when I am ready to hand it to them?”

“I mean it, Mr. Barrett. There are strange notions among some of the folks of the big woods. Your money is of no use. I advise you frankly not to offer it. At any rate, I’ll not insult MacLeod by being your messenger.”

The timber magnate whirled his chair and gazed away from Wade, looking into the depths of his big steel vault.

At the end of a few minutes Wade spoke to him, but he did not reply. When the young man accosted him again, after a decent pause, Barrett spoke over his shoulder without turning his face.

“The directors and myself will meet your party in the board-room across the hall in half an hour, Mr. Wade.”

It was not the voice of John Barrett. It was the thin, quavering tone of a man who was mourning, and wished to be left alone.

Wade went quietly away.

He was John Barrett once more when Wade saw him half an hour later at the head of the big table in the directors’ room. All the board was there except Britt.

The lumbermen whom Wade headed stood in solid phalanx at the foot of the room. There were no chairs for them. But they accepted this fact patiently.

Wade, a little in advance of his associates, looked into the face of the Honorable John Barrett, now impassive once more. But there was a strange gleam in the eyes. In the hush it seemed that the directors were waiting for Wade to speak—it was the coldly contemptuous silence of King Spruce ready to hearken.

The young man accepted this waiting as his challenge. He stepped to the lower end of the huge table; John Barrett arose at the other end, and bent forward, leaning on his knuckles.

“Gentlemen,” he said, his tone courteous, his air pacificatory, “Mr. Dwight Wade, of the Enchanted Lumber Association is here to-day to confer with us on those matters that have already been considered by us in executive session. I wish first, with your permission, to inform him on one point that we have already decided. My statement will enable us to avoid discussion of an unpleasant matter—I may say, an unprofitable matter.”

It was plain to be seen that Mr. Barrett was dominating this session, as he had undoubtedly dominated the preliminary session in which the sentiment of King Spruce towards Dwight Wade had been crystallized. Somehow the young man understood that the strange look in Barrett’s eyes meant reassurance.

“The destruction of Blunder Lake dam was a mistake,” continued Barrett, but without even a note of reproach in his voice.

“I am ashamed to have to fight that way for common rights that have been stolen,” said the young man. “It’s nasty fighting, and I don’t want to fight that way any more.”

“We don’t, either,” broke in a director, bluntly. “There’s no money in it.”

“A moment, gentlemen,” interposed Barrett, “I have the floor. I don’t propose to speak any ill of an associate—an unfortunate associate. I refer to Mr. Britt, who has for so many years been our executive in the north woods. But I can say frankly, as I have said to his face, that we have deplored some of his measures as unwise. We have tried to restrain him, but we have not been able to hold him back. Let us be charitable, gentlemen, and say merely that old-fashioned lumbering in this State has been conducted on wrong ideas. The manner of putting in Blunder Lake dam is a case in point. In compromising the present disputes between the timber interests and the other tax-paying interests of the State, I’ll be frank to say that the history of that dam would not be helpful. Prosecuting you, Mr. Wade, would entail going into the history of that dam. Therefore, we shall not prosecute you; and an arrangement has already been made by which you are purged of contempt of court in the matter of the injunction.”

He grew earnest.

“You have undoubtedly come here to tell us, Mr. Wade, that the woods are being butchered for immediate profit; that the present system of lumbering forces operators to use destructive measures. But we can’t enter into argument on that. We admit it. We have been slow about getting together to correct those abuses. We also admit that the time seems to have arrived when we must have a different system. I have been upon my timber tracts during the past year, and have received new light on a great many matters that I had not taken pains to inform myself on. I now view the situation differently, and my associates have coincided with my views.”

For the others it was merely a business confession of error, an appeal for compromise. To Dwight Wade, looking into the eyes of John Barrett and studying his strange expression, it was much more, and his heart beat quickly. “The whole situation will undoubtedly take a new aspect from now on. We propose, on our part, to leave the past just as it is; set mistakes against mistakes, gentlemen, and clean the slates.”

He straightened, dropping his air of confidential appeal.

“Next week, gentlemen, the convention of my party will nominate me to be the next governor of this State. I need not tell you that the nomination means election. I fully realize my responsibilities. I propose to assume them, and to execute them honestly. I declare here before my associates, as I shall later to the people of the State, that if I am elected I shall be a governor of the whole people, and not of any faction. Personally I shall be glad, Mr. Wade, to have you and all others interested come before the next legislature, present complaints and arguments, and let this whole matter be settled justly. You will find that you and your supporters, as well as we, have interests to protect against the demagogues. In the new conditions that are coming to prevail in public matters, those who manage to keep the full measure of their rights are exceedingly fortunate. Against those new conditions it is folly to fight. But in correcting abuses the pendulum sometimes swings too far. I think we can fairly ask you, Mr. Wade, and those operators who may follow your leadership, to join us in protecting what rightfully belongs to us—to all of us. You will understand that I am offering no hint of bulldozing nor inviting corrupt collusion. It has come to a time when we cannot afford to jeopardize our party or our property, and the safety of both is concerned in a full and frank settlement of this question of the timber lands.”

He gazed inquiringly at this young man who had come up to the fortress to fight, and now found fortress and foe dissolving like a mirage. There was but one manly attitude to take towards a public pledge of that sort.

“Mr. Barrett,” declared Wade, earnestly, “on that basis you have my honest co-operation.” He took his hat. There was no excuse for remaining longer in a directors’ meeting of the Umcolcus Lumbering Association. His head whirled with the suddenness of this new situation.

There was a general mumble of indorsement from the men massed at the rear of the room, but one of the group spoke out after a moment’s hesitation: “I’m glad to hear you talk of a square deal before next legislature, Mr. Barrett, but I can’t help rememberin’ that when some of us went up to the state-house two years ago, to see if we couldn’t get a few rights, we butted square up against a lobby that was handlin’ some fifteen thousand dollars of King Spruce’s money to beat us with, and to keep things right where they were.”

There was no mistaking Barrett’s sincerity now.

“Gentlemen,” he cried, “I have just been admitting that there have been mistakes made in handling this matter. I didn’t intend to go into details. It is not a pleasant task. But when I say that this matter shall have fair and square hearing in future, I mean it. And I pledge for myself and my associates—call us ‘King Spruce,’ if that means most to you—that not one dollar will be used by us in the next legislature, except for expenses of counsel and witnesses before the committees—the same legitimate expenses that you of the opposition will incur.”

There was no Thomas among them who could persist in the face of a declaration like that. They dispersed.

Barrett overtook Wade in the corridor, slipped his hand beneath the young man’s arm, and, without a word, led him back into the private office.

“I want to ask you a question, Mr. Wade,” he said, still holding him by the arm. “Once, in stress of feelings and under peculiar circumstances, I promised certain things and did not fulfil them. You therefore have a perfect right to be sceptical as to my good faith now. I ask you—are you?”

“No, Mr. Barrett, I am not,” returned Wade, with simple earnestness.

“Thank you, my boy!” His voice broke on the words. “When even a square and clean man gets to my age he begins to realize that the world is a bigger creditor of his than he had figured in the past,” he went on, after a pause. “In the last few months I have had some bills presented to me that have found me a miserable bankrupt in spite of what my vault holds. You know what my debts are. Linus Lane was right when he told me that my kind of currency couldn’t pay those debts. The dead have gone, leaving me their debtor; the living hold me their debtor still. My boy, when I realize what I owe and how useless that stuff is in there”—he shook his hand at the open door of the vault—“I loathe my money! You know what I owe to one child, and you have brought me word that I can never pay her. You know just as well what I owe to another child—I have taken from her most of her faith and love and happiness. Thank God, I can pay that debt in part, and I know the human heart well enough now to understand that I shall be paying the greater part.”

He left Wade abruptly, and walked to the window and looked down into the street. He beckoned to the young man without turning his head. Wade, coming to his side, saw Elva Barrett’s pony phaeton.

“I told my creditor to come here, and you see she is prompt,” said Barrett, with a wistful smile. “She has accepted what I offer in settlement of my debt, and I offer you my hand, and tell you, with all the earnestness of my soul, that since I have come to realize values I approve my creditor’s judgment. I have agreed to pay promptly on demand. Don’t keep her waiting.”

He pushed his “collateral” out into the corridor, and shut the door behind him.

Wade ran down the stairway, his hat in his hand, and came upon the sidewalk into the glare of the June sunshine. She was there! The silk of the phaeton’s parasol strained a soft and tender light upon her face, and her glorious eyes received him, coming towards her, as though into an embrace. He swayed a little as he crossed the sidewalk, for his eyes swam. And before he reached her he turned and cast one look back at the great building behind him. He seemed to want to reassure himself about something—to see solid bricks and stone—to convince himself that it was not a fairy palace in which he had so amazingly and suddenly found the full fruition of all his hopes.

“What have they been doing to you in the ogres’ den, Dwight, boy?” she asked, a ripple of laughter in her voice.

“I—I don’t know!” he stammered. “It all happened so suddenly. Take me away, sweetheart, where I can see a tree. I want to find my bearings once more!”

The pony trotted away demurely—so demurely that the girl surrendered one hand to him, and he held it tight-clutched between them, wordless, a mist in his eyes.

“Then it did astonish you, after all?” she ventured, breaking the silence.

For reply he pressed her hand. She was first to speak again.

“I know what a strange boy you are, Dwight,” she said, with a touch of humor in her tones. “For the peace of your soul for ever and ever, and the satisfaction of your pride, I want to tell you that my father offered me to you—I did not beg you from my father; but”—she hesitated and looked at him slyly—“I didn’t question the legal tender! Now that you are a business man, I suppose we ought to use business terms!”

But with his great love shining in his eyes, he pointed away from the staring houses, where the road wound on under the trees and the peace of perfect understanding lay beneath.

THE END

Footnotes:

Transcriber’s Note:

Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters’ errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author’s words and intent.