The Greater Power

“Somebody has forgotten a bolt or a big spike,” said Gordon.

Wisbech felt inclined to hold his breath as he watched Nasmyth climb down the face of the trestle, but in another minute or two he was clambering up again with several other men behind him. There was another hoot of the whistle, and, as Wisbech glanced up the track, a great locomotive broke out from among the pines. It was veiled in whirling dust and flying fragments of ballast, and smoke that was grey instead of white, for the track led down-grade, and the engineer had throttled the steam. The engine was a huge one, built for mountain hauling, and the freight cars that lurched out of the forest behind it were huger still. Wisbech could see them rock, and the roar which they made and which the pines flung back grew deafening. Most of the cars had been coupled up in the yards at Montreal, and were covered thick with the dust that had whirled about them along two thousand four hundred miles of track, and they were still speeding on through the forests of the West, as they had done through those of far-off Ontario.

It seemed to Wisbech as he gazed at the cars that they ran pigmy freight trains in the land he came from, and he was conscious of something that had a curious stirring effect on him in the clang and clatter of that giant rolling stock, as the engineer hurled his great train furiously down-grade. It was man’s defiance of the wilderness, a symbol of his domination over all the great material forces of the world. The engineer, who glanced out once from his dust-swept cab, held them bound and subject in the hollow of the grimy hand he clenched upon the throttle. With a deafening roar, the great train leapt across the trestle, which seemed to rock and reel under it, and plunged once more into the forest. A whistle sounded–a greeting to the men upon the bridge–and then the uproar died away in a long diminuendo among the sombre pines.

It was in most respects a fortuitous moment for Wisbech’s nephew to meet him, and the older man smiled as Nasmyth strode along the track to grasp his outstretched hand.

“I’m glad to see you, Derrick,” said Wisbech, who drew back a pace and looked at his nephew critically.

“You have changed since I last shook hands with you in London, my lad,” he continued. “You didn’t wear blue duck, and you hadn’t hands of that kind then.”

Nasmyth glanced at his scarred fingers and broken nails.

“I’ve been up against it, as they say here, since those days,” he replied.

“And it has done you a world of good!”

Nasmyth laughed. “Well,” he said, “perhaps it has. Any way, that’s not a point we need worry over just now. Where have you sprung from?”

Wisbech told him, and added that there were many things he would like to talk about, whereupon Nasmyth smiled in a deprecatory manner.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait an hour or two,” he said. “You see, there are several more big logs ready for hauling down, and I have to keep the boys supplied. I’ll be at liberty after supper, and you can’t get back to-night. In the meanwhile you might like to walk along to where we’re getting the logs out.”

Wisbech went with him and Gordon, and was impressed when he saw how they and the oxen handled the giant trunks. He, however, kept his thoughts to himself, and, quietly smoking, sat on a redwood log, a little, unobtrusive, grey-clad figure, until Gordon, who had disappeared during the last hour, announced that supper was ready. Then Wisbech followed Nasmyth and Gordon to their quarters, which they had fashioned out of canvas, a few sheets of corrugated iron, and strips of bark, for, as their work was on the hillside, they lived apart from the regular railroad gang. The little hut was rudely comfortable, and the meal Gordon set out was creditably cooked. Wisbech liked the resinous scent of the wood smoke that hung about the spot, and the faint aromatic odour of the pine-twig beds and roofing-bark. When the meal was over, they sat a while beneath the hanging-lamp, smoking and discussing general topics, until Nasmyth indicated the canvas walls of the hut and the beds of spruce twigs with a wave of his hand.

“You will excuse your quarters. They’re rather primitive,” he said.

Wisbech’s eyes twinkled. “I almost think I shall feel as much at home as I did when you last entertained me at your club, and I’m not sure that I don’t like your new friends best,” he said. “The others were a trifle patronizing, though, perhaps, they didn’t mean to be. In fact, it was rather a plucky thing you did that day.”

A faint flush crept into Nasmyth’s bronzed face, but Wisbech smiled reassuringly as he glanced about the hut.

“The question is what all this is leading to,” he observed with inquiry in his tone.

Gordon rose. “I’ll go along and talk to the boys,” he announced. “I won’t be back for an hour or two.”

Nasmyth glanced at Wisbech before he turned to his comrade.

“I would sooner you stayed where you are,” he said. Then he answered Wisbech. “In the first place, if we are reasonably fortunate, it should lead to the acquisition of about a couple of hundred dollars.”

“Still,” said Wisbech, “that will not go very far. What will be the next thing when you have got the money?”

“In a general way, I should endeavour to earn a few more dollars by pulling out fir-stumps for somebody or clearing land.”

Wisbech nodded. “No doubt they’re useful occupations, but one would scarcely fancy them likely to prove very remunerative,” he said. “You have, it seems to me, reached an age when you have to choose. Are you content to go on as you are doing now?”

Nasmyth’s face flushed as he saw the smile in Gordon’s eyes, for it was evident that Wisbech and Laura Waynefleet held much the same views concerning him. They appeared to fancy that he required a lot of what might be termed judicious prodding. This was in one sense not exactly flattering, but he did not immediately mention his great project for drying out the valley. He would not hasten to remove a wrong impression concerning himself.

“Well,” resumed Wisbech, seeing he did not answer, “if you care to go back and take up your profession in England again, I think I can contrive to give you a fair start. You needn’t be diffident. I can afford it, and the thing is more or less my duty.”

Nasmyth sat silent. There was no doubt that the comfort and refinement of the old life appealed to one side of his nature, and there were respects in which his present surroundings jarred on him. It is also probable that, had the offer been made him before he had had a certain talk with Laura Waynefleet, he would have profited by it, but she had roused something that was latent in him, and at the same time endued him with a vague distrust of himself, the effect of which was largely beneficial. He had realized then his perilous propensity for what she had called drifting, and, after all, men of his kind are likely to drift fastest when everything is made pleasant for them. It was characteristic that he looked inquiringly at Gordon, who nodded.

“I think you ought to go, if it’s only for a year or two,” said Gordon. “It’s the life you were born to. Give it another trial. You can come back to the Bush again if you find it fails.”

Nasmyth appeared to consider this, and the two men watched him intently, Wisbech with a curious expression in his shrewd eyes. Then, somewhat to their surprise, Nasmyth broke into a little harsh laugh.

“That there is a possibility of my failing seems sufficient,” he said. “Here I must fight. I am, as we say, up against it.” He turned to Wisbech. “Now if you will listen, I will tell you something.”

For the next few minutes he described his project for running the water out of the valley, and when he sat silent again there was satisfaction in Wisbech’s face.

“Well,” said Wisbech, “I am going to give you your opportunity. It’s a thing I insist upon, and, as it happens, I’m in a position to do it more or less effectually. I have letters to folks of some importance in Victoria–Government men among others–and you’ll go down there and live as you would have done in England just as long as appears advisable while you try to put the project through. It is quite evident that you will have to get one of the land exploitation concerns to back you, and no doubt a charter or concession of some kind will have to be obtained from the Crown authorities. The time you spend over the thing in Victoria should make it clear where your capacities lie–if it’s handling matters of this kind in the cities, or leading your workmen in the Bush. I purpose to take a share in your venture, and I’m offering you an opportunity of making sure which is the kind of life you’re most fitted for.”

“I guess you ought to go,” remarked Gordon quietly.

Nasmyth smiled. “That,” he agreed, “is my own opinion.”

“Then we’ll consider it as decided,” said Wisbech. “It seems to me I could spend a month or two in this province very satisfactorily, and we’ll go down to Victoria together, as soon as you have carried out this timber-cutting contract.”

They talked of other matters, while now and then men from the railroad gang dropped in and made themselves pleasant to the stranger. It must be admitted that there are one or two kinds of wandering Englishmen, who would not have found them particularly friendly, but the little quiet man with the twinkling eyes was very much at home with them. He had been endued with the gift of comprehension, and rock-cutter and axeman opened their minds to him. In fact, he declared his full satisfaction with the entertainment afforded him before he lay down upon his bed of springy spruce twigs.

CHAPTER XIV

IN THE MOONLIGHT

There was a full moon in the clear blue heavens, and its silvery light streamed into the pillared veranda where Nasmyth sat, cigar in hand, on the seaward front of James Acton’s house, which stood about an hour’s ride from Victoria on the Dunsmer railroad. Like many other successful men in that country, Acton had begun life in a three-roomed shanty, and now, when, at the age of fifty, he was in possession of a comfortable competence, he would have been well content to retire to his native settlement in the wilderness. There was, however, the difficulty that the first suggestion of such a course would have been vetoed by his wife, who was an ambitious woman, younger than he, and, as a rule, at least, Acton submitted to her good-humouredly. That was why he retained his seat on several directorates, and had built Bonavista on the bluff above the Straits of Georgia, instead of the ranch-house in the Bush he still hankered for.

Bonavista had cost him much money, but Mrs. Acton had seen that it was wisely expended, and the long wooden house, with its colonnades of slender pillars, daintily sawn scroll-work, shingled roof, and wide verandas, justified her taste. Acton reserved one simply furnished room in it for himself, and made no objections when she filled the rest of it with miscellaneous guests. Wisbech had brought him a letter from a person of consequence, and he had offered the Englishman and his nephew the freedom of his house. He would not have done this to everybody, though they are a hospitable people in the West, but he had recognized in the unostentatious Wisbech one or two of the characteristics that were somewhat marked in himself, and his wife, as it happened, extended her favour to Nasmyth as soon as she saw him. She had been quick to recognize something she found congenial in his voice and manner, though none of the points she noticed would in all probability have appealed to her husband. Acton leaned upon the veranda balustrade, with a particularly rank cigar in his hand, a gaunt, big-boned man in badly-fitting clothes. It was characteristic of him that he had not spoken to Nasmyth since he stepped out from one of the windows five minutes earlier.

“It’s kind of pretty,” he said, indicating the prospect with a little wave of his hand.

Nasmyth admitted that it was pretty indeed, and his concurrence was justified. Sombre pinewoods and rocky heights walled in the wooden dwelling, but in front of it the ground fell sharply away, and beyond the shadow of the tall crags a blaze of moonlight stretched eastwards athwart the sparkling sea.

“Well,” said Acton, “it’s ’most as good a place for a house as I could find anywhere the cars could take me into town, and that’s partly why we raised it here.”

Then he glanced down at the little white steamer lying in the inlet below. “That’s one of my own particular toys. You’re coming up the coast with us next week for the salmon-trolling?”

Nasmyth said that he did not know what his uncle’s intentions were, but he was almost afraid they had trespassed on their host’s kindness already. Acton laughed.

“We have folks here for a month quite often–folks that I can’t talk to and who don’t seem to think it worth while to talk to me. Now I can get along with your uncle; I can mostly tell that kind of man when I see him. You have got to let him stay some weeks yet. It would be in one way a kindness to me. What makes the thing easier is the fact that Mrs. Acton has taken to you, and when she gets hold of anyone she likes, she doesn’t let him go.”

Nasmyth was content to stay, and he felt that it would be a kindness to his host. Acton appeared willing to fall in with the views of his wife, but Nasmyth fancied that he was now and then a little lonely in his own house.

“Both of you have done everything you could to make our stay pleasant,” Nasmyth declared.

“It was quite easy in your case,” and a twinkle crept into his host’s eyes. “Your uncle’s the same kind of a man as I am, and one can see you have been up against it since you came to this country. That’s one of the best things that can happen to any young man. I guess it’s not our fault we don’t like all the young men they send us out from the Old Country.” He glanced down at his cigar. “Well, I’ve pretty well smoked this thing out. It’s the kind of cigar I was raised on, but I’m not allowed to use that kind anywhere in my house.”

In another moment Acton swung round, and stepped back through an open window. He generally moved abruptly, and was now and then painfully direct in conversation, but Nasmyth had been long enough in that country to understand and to like him. He was a man with a grip of essential things, but it was evident that he could bear good-humouredly with the views of others.

Nasmyth sat still after Acton left him. There were other guests in the house, and the row of windows behind him blazed with light. One or two of the big casements were open, and music and odd bursts of laughter drifted out. Somebody, it seemed, was singing an amusing song, but the snatches of it that reached Nasmyth struck him as pointless and inane. He had been at Bonavista a week, but, after his simple, strenuous life in the Bush, he felt at times overwhelmed by the boisterous vivacity with which his new companions pursued their diversions. There are not many men without an occupation in the West, but Mrs. Acton knew where to lay her hands on them, and her husband sometimes said that it was the folks who had nothing worth while to do who always made the greatest fuss. But Nasmyth found it pleasant to pick up again the threads of the life which he had almost come to the conclusion that he had done with altogether. It was comforting to feel that he could sleep as long as he liked, and then rise and dress himself in whole, dry garments, while there was also a certain satisfaction in sitting down to a daintily laid and well-spread table when he remembered how often he had dragged himself back to his tent almost too worn out to cook his evening meal. On the whole, he was glad that Acton had urged him to remain another week or two.

Then he became interested as a girl stepped out of one of the lighted windows some little distance away, and, without noticing him, leaned upon the veranda balustrade. The smile in her eyes, he fancied, suggested a certain satisfaction at the fact that what she had done had irritated somebody. Why it should do so he did not know, but it certainly conveyed that impression. In another minute a man appeared in the portico, and the manner in which he moved forward, after he had glanced along the veranda, was more suggestive still. The girl who leaned on the balustrade no doubt saw him, and she walked towards Nasmyth, whom, apparently, she had now seen for the first time. Nasmyth thought he understood the reason for this, and, though it was not exactly flattering to himself, he smiled as he rose and drew forward another chair. He believed most of Mrs. Acton’s guests were acquainted with the fact that he was an impecunious dam-builder.

The girl, who sat down in the chair he offered, smiled when he flung his half-smoked cigar away, and Nasmyth laughed as he saw the twinkle in her eyes, for he had stopped smoking with a half-conscious reluctance.

“It really was a pity, especially as I wouldn’t have minded in the least,” she observed.

Nasmyth glanced along the veranda, and saw that the man, who had discovered that there was not another chair available, was standing still, evidently irresolute. Probably he recognized that it would be difficult to preserve a becoming ease of manner in attempting to force his company upon two persons who were not anxious for it, and were sitting down. Nasmyth looked at the girl and prepared to undertake the part that he supposed she desired him to play. She was attired in what he would have described as modified evening dress, and her arms and neck gleamed with an ivory whiteness in the moonlight. She was slight in form, and curiously dainty as well as pretty. Her hair was black, and she had eyes that matched it, for they were dark and soft, with curious lights in them, but, as she settled herself beside him in the pale moonlight it seemed to him that “dainty” did not describe her very well. She was rather elusively ethereal.

“I really don’t think you could expect me to make any admission of that kind about my cigar, Miss Hamilton,” he said. “Still, it would perhaps have been excusable. You see, I have just come out of the Bush.”

Violet Hamilton smiled. “You are not accustomed to throw anything away up there?”

“No,” answered Nasmyth, with an air of reflection; “I scarcely think we are. Certainly not when it’s a cigar of the kind Mr. Acton supplies his guests with.”

He imagined that his companion satisfied herself that the man she evidently desired to avoid had not gone away yet, before she turned to him again.

“Aren’t you risking Mrs. Acton’s displeasure in sitting out here alone?” she inquired. “You are probably aware that this is not what she expects from you?”

“I almost think the retort is obvious.” And Nasmyth wondered whether he had gone further than he intended, when he saw the momentary hardness in his companion’s eyes. It suggested that the last thing her hostess had expected her to do was to keep out of the way of the man who had followed her on to the veranda. He accordingly endeavoured to divert her attention from that subject.

“Any way, I find all this rather bewildering now and then,” he said, and indicated the lights and laughter and music in the house behind him with a little movement of his hand. “This is a very different world from the one I have been accustomed to, and it takes some time to adapt oneself to changed conditions.”

He broke off as he saw the other man slowly turn away. He looked at the girl with a smile. “I can go on a little longer if it appears worth while.”

Violet Hamilton laughed. “Ah,” she said, “one should never put one’s suspicions into words like that. Besides, I almost think one of your observations was a little misleading. There are reasons for believing that you are quite familiar with the kind of life you were referring to.”

It was clear to Nasmyth that she had been observing him, but he did not realize that she was then watching him with keen, half-covert curiosity. He was certainly a well-favoured man, and though his conversation and demeanour did not differ greatly from those of other young men she was accustomed to; there was also something about him which she vaguely recognized as setting him apart from the rest. He was a little more quiet than most of them, and there were a certain steadiness in his eyes, and a faint hardness in the lines of his face, which roused her interest. He had been up against it, as they say in that country, which is a thing that usually leaves its mark upon a man. It endues him with control, and, above all, with comprehension.

“Oh,” he said, “a man not burdened with money is now and then forced to wander. He naturally picks up a few impressions here and there. I wonder if you find it chilly sitting here?”

The girl rose, with a little laugh. “That,” she said, “was evidently meant to afford me an opportunity. I think I should like to go down to the Inlet.”

Nasmyth, who understood this as an invitation, went with her, and, five minutes later, they strolled out upon the crown of the bluff, down the side of which a little path wound precipitously. Nasmyth held his hand out at the head of it, and they went down together cautiously, until they stood on the smooth white shingle close by where the little steamer lay. The girl looked about her with a smile of appreciation.

A lane of dusky water, that heaved languidly upon the pebbles, ran inland past them under the dark rock’s side, and it was very still in the shadow of the climbing firs. On the further shore a flood of silvery radiance, against which the dark branches cut black as ebony, streamed down into the rift, and beyond the rocky gateway there was brilliant moonlight on the smooth heave of sea. The girl glanced at it longingly, and then, though she said nothing, her eyes rested on a little beautifully modelled cedar canoe that lay close by. In another moment Nasmyth had laid his hands on it, and she noticed how easily he ran it down the beach, as she had noticed how steady of foot he was when she held fast to his hand as they came down the bluff. With a curious little smile that she remembered afterwards, he glanced towards the shadowy rocks which shut in the entrance to the Inlet.

“Shall we go and see what there is out yonder beyond those gates?” he asked.

“Ah,” replied the girl, “what could there be? Aren’t you taking an unfair advantage in appealing to our curiosity?”

Nasmyth made a whimsical gesture as he answered her, for he saw that she could be fanciful, too. “Unsubstantial moonlight, glamour, mystery–perhaps other things as well,” he said. “If you are curious, why shouldn’t we go and see?”

She made no demur, and helping her into the canoe, he thrust the light craft off, and, with a sturdy stroke of the paddle, drove it out into the Inlet. It was a thing he was used to, for he had painfully driven ruder craft of that kind up wildly-frothing rivers, and the girl noticed the powerful swing of his shoulders and the rhythmic splash of his paddle, though there were other things that had their effect on her–the languid lapping of the brine on shingle, and the gurgle round the canoe, that seemed to be sliding out towards the moonlight through a world of unsubstantial shadow. She admitted that the man interested her. He had a quick wit and a whimsical fancy that appealed to her, but he had also hard, workman’s hands, and he managed the canoe as she imagined one who had undertaken such things professionally would have done.

When the shimmering blaze of moonlight lay close in front of them, he let his paddle trail in the water for a moment or two, and, turning, glanced back at the house on the bluff. Its lower windows blinked patches of warm orange light against the dusky pines.

“That,” he said, “in one respect typifies all you are accustomed to. It stands for the things you know. Aren’t you a little afraid of leaving it behind you?”

“I think I suggested that you were accustomed to them, too!”

Nasmyth laughed. “Oh,” he said, “I was turned out of that world a long while ago. We are going to see a different one together.”

“The one you know?”

“Well,” returned the man reflectively, “I’m not quite sure that I do. It’s the one I live in, but that doesn’t go very far after all. Now and then I think one could live in the wilderness a lifetime without really knowing it. There’s an elusive something in or behind it that evades one–the mystery that hides in all grandeur and beauty. Still, there’s a peril in it. Like the moonlight, it gets hold of you.”

The girl fancied that she understood him, but she wondered how far it was significant that they should slide out into the flood of radiance together when he once more drove the light craft ahead.