of several acres the snow lay deep, its pure surface broken only by
black tree-stumps. Farther back was a tangle of young wood, and beyond
this the primeval forest. At a distance of fifty yards from the cabin
the snow was discoloured, and Arthur recognised the bog-hole into which
he had stumbled on the previous night.
"There seems a lot of bog, and I don't see any apple-trees," he
remarked.
"That there bog's the best land you've got," Jim answered, "but it's
got to be drained. The apple-trees are in the bush somewheres; didn't
I tell you they've got growed up? You've got to start slashing that
bush. It's a job that must be done. And I don't see how you're to do
it all alone."
"Neither do I," said Arthur. "But if you'd help me, Jim, I think I
could soon learn."
"I ain't no fruit-rancher," he began again.
"Unless I'm mistaken, you're just what you choose to be," said Arthur.
"Name your own wage, Jim, and be my teacher."
"Well, I'll consider it," said the old man.
A couple of days passed, during which Arthur saw nothing of Jim. On
the afternoon of the third day Arthur saw his boat moving toward the
landing.
"I've been getting some things we'll want," said Jim. "You'll find 'em
put down to your account. I may as well tell you I've been drunk.
Maybe you won't want me now," he added with a grin.
"I'll take my chance on that, Jim."
"It's a thing what has to be," said the old man with a solemn roll of
his gray head. "I ain't no drunkard, understand. I'd think shame of
being that. But an occasional booze hurts no one, and is a necessity
of life. It kind of limbers up one's wits."
"We'll let it go at that," laughed Arthur.
And thus the articles of this strange partnership were settled.
From that day began a life of furious and unremitting toil. Days and
weeks passed unremarked in those Homeric labours; Arthur worked in
blinding sweat, with aching muscles; rose early in the biting cold,
plied the axe from morn to eve, and no sooner ate his rough evening
meal than he was fast asleep. A hundred times it seemed as if no human
organism could sustain the immense fatigue which he endured. As the
snow melted, his task became the heavier. There were tree-stumps to be
blasted, and the fumes of the blast left him with a splitting headache.
There was the bog to be drained, and he worked for hours to his knees
in water. There were trees to fell, to cut up into lengths for
building, and the rest to be burned. Yet amid it all he was conscious
of a growing sanity of mind and body. His hands, at first torn and
wounded by his toil, hardened to their task; his shoulders broadened,
his muscles grew supple, and on his cheek was the glow of health. A
curt word of praise from Jim seemed the superlative of approbation; to
hear him say, "Well, I guess you ain't no quitter," warmed him like a
draught of wine. And the mental transformation was not less definite
than the physical. The immediacy of his work, the constant need of
patience, caution, and alertness, the mere brute vigour of his life,
drove from his mind a hundred haunting ghosts. He had no time to
debate on thin-spun theories of the universe and life, and even social
problems sunk into insignificance. To see that a tree fell rightly, to
disengage a fertile soil from the neglect of ages, to drain the
bog--these were his problems, and he found them sufficiently absorbing.
He had got back to the primeval; work and sleep and work again, all
slowly issuing in a visible success--was not this the oldest and the
one divine task of man, pursued through countless centuries, and
furnishing the one solid base on which all human domination rested?
It might have been supposed that such a hard insistency of toil would
have dulled the finer faculties. In so far as these faculties depended
for their nourishment on books, no doubt they suffered; but they found
a new and more vital food in the scenes which surrounded him. The
inexhaustible surprise of sunrise and of sunset, the music of the
forest, perpetual as the music of the sea, the blue expanse of lake,
the wide array of snow-clad mountains--these and a hundred lesser
things, such as the magic wrought by shafts of light in the deep
shadows of the wood, trees glittering in a sheath of ice, moonlight
upon snow, fascinated and absorbed him. He had never guessed how
wonderful the world was. The laborious exercises of the human mind in
quest of beauty seemed a tedious absurdity compared with this opulence
of loveliness that met him everywhere. And he saw too that there is a
kind of wisdom deeper than any that is found in books, which flows in
upon the spirit which is in accord with Nature. Flanagan, with all his
crudity and ignorance, had something of this wisdom. He moved at ease
in his environment, envied no man, coveted no man's goods, brought to
each returning day a strength precisely equal to his task; and Arthur
asked himself if either religion or philosophy could produce a form of
life more admirable or more efficient. In these daily toils Jim was
his sole companion. They worked and ate together, and in the long
evenings sat in the warm cabin talking endlessly. To his surprise, he
found that the old man was an indefatigable reader, but of not more
than half a dozen books. The Bible he knew with thoroughness, and upon
it had built up theories of life which would have surprised the
theologians.
"Them Jews were like us," he would declare. "They stole a country and
drove the other people out. Like us with the Injuns, I guess. A dead
Injun is the only kind of Injun I've got any use for. Them Philistines
was a kind of Injun, by all I make out."
One story which he loved to discuss was the desire of Israel to have a
king. "What did they want a king for?" he would cry. "They'd got on
well enough without one, and they never had no luck after they'd got
one. They should have stuck to Samuel." And then he would go on to
recount all he knew about the wickedness of kings. "They'd never been
no good. They just sucked the people's blood, that's what they did.
Why, they wer'n't even soldiers, not nowadays--just dressed-up dolls.
Some day the world would get rid of them, and the sooner the better, so
said he. A pretty thing indeed that decent folk should pay taxes to
support such a rotten lot as they were."
The one poet whom he knew was Burns. He carried with him in the pocket
of his ragged coat an old leather-bound copy of Burns, with a brass
clasp, closely printed in blinding type upon a page nearly destitute of
margins. It was a tiny book, in size about three inches by two,
published within a few years of the poet's death. It bore signs of
hard usage: the cover was stained and polished by the touch of hands
that long since were dust; doubtless it had been carried in the pockets
of a race of humble men, read in swift glimpses behind the plough, as
like as not, within sight of the very hills the poet loved, or pored
over by eager eyes round peat fires in solitary clachans. It was safe
to say that a book so humble had never known the touch of hands polite;
its pages had been turned by clumsy fingers hardened with excessive
toil, and the faces that had stooped above it were plain and homely
faces, roughened with wind and weather. To this forgotten race of men
it had doubtless brought gaiety and hope, the brief vision of things
lovely and eternal, and above all the message of that inward liberty
which man never loses save by his own cowardice or folly. From the
soiled pages Jim Flanagan drew the same inspiration. They breathed
into him the pride of freedom, fed his fierce joy of independence,
helped him, as they had helped ten thousand others, to walk upright in
a world where an innumerable host of men bend their backs to the unjust
yoke and learn to cringe and crouch. As Jim recited the
well-remembered verses in this lonely hut at night, his voice trembled,
his eyes glowed, and all aspects of meanness and commonness fell from
him, leaving something that was intrinsically fine and great. That a
man so crudely ignorant as Flanagan should have anything to teach a
youth like Arthur appears absurd; yet so it was. What that teaching
was it would be difficult to state in words, but its effect was clear.
By its quiet assertion of undeniable qualities where they might be
least expected, a general sense of the worth of mankind was produced,
an essential worth, which was wholly independent of outward
circumstance.
As time went on, Arthur discovered also that his life was not nearly so
isolated as he had supposed. Scattered along the shores of the lake
were other men, like himself, engaged on a daring experiment of life.
One or two were sullen, unapproachable, apparently afraid lest their
dignity should be compromised by chance acquaintanceships, the kind of
men who carry into a new world all that is socially most narrow and
petty in the old. But these were the exceptions; among the rest there
was a real and kindly sense of community. Many of them were persons
interesting in themselves and in their histories. There were ex-army
officers, public-school and university men, even a musician--all, for
some cause or other, fugitives from the vain strifes of civilised life.
They never complained, they never thought of going back, they were all
full of hope about the future. They talked with buoyant faith of the
day when Kootenay Lake would be as well known as Geneva or Lucerne, and
when its shores, now clothed with darkling forests, would become one of
the gardens of the world. They pointed out how each year marked the
growing invasion of the orchard on the forest. And, whatever the hard
tasks of their life, they were clearly in love with it, desired no
better, and would not have exchanged it for anything that cities could
have offered them.
He found among these settlers a disposition toward mutual service,
notable in itself, and unique in his experience. A man thought nothing
of giving a day's service to a neighbour, of loaning him a team, or
helping him to build his house. Being all engaged on the same tasks,
each relied upon the other, expecting and assuming that the help given
to-day would be loyally returned when his own occasion came.
And, besides this, there was much mutual visiting, concerts, suppers,
dances--a free and simple hospitality, without elaboration or pretence.
The concerts might not have satisfied a Queen's Hall audience, and the
dances were but feebly illumined with the grace of woman; but all was
homely, honest, and sincere. And then the walk back along the narrow
trail, with the moon riding overhead, or beneath a roof of stars, each
keenly bright, and the fresh lake-breeze moving through the forest in
low-breathed symphonies--ah! this was life indeed! Often and often, as
he walked that trail at night, he opened his lungs to drink in the
crystal air that seemed a draught of life itself, and he thought with
commiseration of the herded life on city pavements, and thanked God for
his deliverance.
The spring came with melting snow and soft winds, and he began to
realise some progress in his work. When the new growth was cleared
away, he discovered a few hundred apple-trees of five years' growth.
"You're luckier than I thought," said Jim. "They're Spitzenbergs.
You'll get something from them this year, I guess."
Then June came with a rush of heat and light. A long procession of
days followed, the sky exquisitely bright, the hills clad in living
green, the lake sparkling like a floor of amethyst. And then the
winter once more, with its wonder of snow, and skies full of unearthly
splendour.
So two years passed, and at their close he saw the triumph of his
labour. The forest was pushed back by many acres; where the dense
undergrowth had thrived, there spread the level fields, with long rows
of budding trees; and the bog was a fertile garden. He had built
himself another house, more commodious than the first rude cabin. Upon
its walls hung the ranchman's usual pictures, coloured prints from
magazines; there was also a goodly shelf of books, and the photographs
of those he loved. Here he sat and meditated in the long summer
evenings. From Vickars he had received many letters, keen, witty, sad;
it seemed he was famous, after a London fashion, but his constant
complaint was that no one really listened to his message. Elizabeth
had written him even more frequently, and each letter had strengthened
the implicit bond between them. Love-letters they could not be called,
for love was rarely mentioned in them; but they were letters that only
love could write--they exhaled the very perfume of her heart. From his
father and his sister he had heard not a word. Latterly even his
mother's letters had become irregular, and he sometimes thought he
could discern in them an effort at concealment, as if she purposely
avoided something which her whole nature urged her to say.
He sat thus, thinking over all the past, upon a summer's evening, when
he heard Jim's tread upon the wood-path. Jim had been into Nelson upon
some errand in the afternoon, and had hurried back, contrary to his
custom, for there was some heavy work to be done upon the morrow.
"Well, Jim, any news?"
"Not as I know of. But I've got you a paper. It's the English _Daily
Mail_. You're always glad to see that."
"All right, Jim. Thank you. I'll look at it to-morrow."
Jim moved off to his own shack, and Arthur went into the house. It was
quite late, it seemed hardly worth while to light the lamp, and he was
about to get into bed in the dark, when the white outline of the paper
lying on the table attracted his eye.
"I may as well look at that," he thought; "I'm not sleepy."
He lit the lamp, and unfolded the paper. His eye wandered casually
over the crowded columns, finding little that was interesting. Then,
with a sudden chill of apprehension, his eye caught the name of
Masterman.
"The Affairs of the Amalgamated Brick Co.," the paragraph was headed.
"It has been long suspected that the affairs of this company were not
as prosperous as could be wished, but no serious complications were
expected until the close of last week. There were various unpleasant
rumours on the Stock Exchange late on Friday afternoon, and the stock
dropped rapidly. On Monday morning it became known that serious frauds
were charged against the company. The nature of these charges is not
yet ascertained, but we understand that warrants have been issued for
the arrest of Archibold Masterman, the chairman of the company, and
Elisha Scales, its secretary. If the allegations made against the
company are at all such as rumour represents them, very sensational
developments may be anticipated."
The blood rushed back into his heart as he read. His very being was
suspended.
"My God!" he cried. "I must go home at once!"
And in that cry all the old loyalties awoke, and, chief of all, the
son's loyalty to his father.
PART THREE
FATHER AND SON
XVIII
THE AMALGAMATED BRICK CO.
The offices of the Amalgamated Brick Co. were situated within a
stone's-throw of the Mansion House. London throbbed and roared around
them; on every side spread an intricate confusion of narrow and ancient
streets, inhabited by a host of nomadic men, who camped in them for a
few hours each day, filled them with clamour, and fled at nightfall.
The invasion began with the earliest light; then might be seen the
scouts of the advancing army, mere boys, whose fresh faces had not yet
acquired the London pallor or lost the mischievous vivacity of boyhood;
youths immaculately dressed in well-brushed common clothes;
narrow-shouldered men in shabby overcoats; oldish men, who walked with
eyes fixed upon the pavement, as if bowed with some unforgetable
humiliation, and, here and there, women, some mere girls, treading
briskly, others shawled and shapeless figures with battered bonnets,
charwomen, office scrubbers, and the like, all passing in an endless
stream, and swallowed up at last in these dim byways of the city.
Later on came another class of men, wearing better clothes, but whose
eyes were anxious; then well-fleshed and confident persons, who walked
upright with an air of authority; last of all, the magnates, fur-coated
and wearing diamond pins and studs, smoking cigars or cigarettes,
arriving in cabs or carriages, who were received in these crowded
offices with the silence which awaits the passage of kings. With their
advent began the real business of the day. At their glance every pulse
beat faster, every brain grew more alert, and the great wheel of
business revolved with electric speed, humming, throbbing, tumultuous,
till the very walls shook with its reverberations, and the whole city
became clamorous as a cave into which a fierce sea thunders. By noon
the tide was at its height; at four o'clock the ebb began; with the
earliest stars the invading host began the process of dispersal till,
by the time midnight had arrived, Tadmor in the wilderness was not more
silent or more solitary than this deserted city.
For centuries this daily invasion had gone on, and who shall say what
uncounted multitudes had fallen on the field of battle! For centuries
more it would go on, and always with the same history. Here was
achieved a perpetual immolation of mankind, a hopeless and unatoning
sacrifice. To this battlefield youth brought its energy, manhood its
virtue and its strength, womanhood its humble patience. To what
delusive trumpet-music had they marched, beneath what visionary
banners, with what far-off thrilling glimpses of golden heights which
they would never scale! To these thronged recruits in the regiments of
Mammon, experience brought no caution, age no wisdom. For the story
was always the same, the issue unvarying: first the baseless hope of
youth, then the long unfruitful patience of laborious manhood, lastly
the miserable despair of age. Happy those who fell early in the
struggle; they had the consolation of a might-have-been whose absurdity
was not detected, and they were spared the worst. Most miserable those
who lived on, until hope failed, each year became a new disability, and
at last they found themselves superseded, thrust out by a new
generation, discarded, and left alone with the spectres of want,
sickness, and the workhouse. A few survived, of course, and their
histories, passed from lip to lip, became the stimulus for fresh hosts
of foredoomed toilers. By luck, by fraud, by adroit use of
opportunity, by unscrupulous ability, by cruel and ruthless stratagem,
these few rose, climbed upon a holocaust of victims into power, and
became the battle lords of this inglorious field. None saw in them a
warning, multitudes offered them adulation; and they thus became new
lures for ignorant ambition. And so the endless martyrdom went on;
ever fresh hosts clamouring to sacrifice flesh and brain upon these
ignoble altars, with a fervour of fanaticism never equalled in the most
sacred causes of freedom or religion. Ah! not upon the snows of
Russia, the plain of Waterloo, or the heights of Gettysburg are found
the most dreadful battlefields of earth! The bloodiest of all
battlefields are in the heart of cities.
Archibold Masterman was one of those who had risen, especially since
the successful launching of the Amalgamated Brick Co. He had become a
personage sought for at civic dinners, known at clubs, and surrounded
by a clamour of more or less sincere flattery. From the windows of his
office he could see the gray roof of the Mansion House, and he never
looked that way without elation. Why should he not reign there? What
was there to prevent him moving at the height of civic glory? The
kingdoms of the world--his world--were spread before him, and the glory
of them, and he was eager to inherit them. Lord Mayor of London,
Member of Parliament for the city, knighthood, baronetcy--so ran his
dream, and he knew that it was not a foolish dream. Men less able than
himself had won these prizes. And he meant to have them in good time.
The truly great period of his life was just beginning. He had got the
world beneath his feet at last, and he meant to keep it there.
Extreme prosperity had had a softening influence upon the man; a harsh
critic might have called it a disintegrating influence. The mental
force was not abated, the alertness of his eye was not dimmed; but he
went with a looser rein. He rose later, sat longer at the table, and
had learned to rely upon subordinates. His suspicion, that sixth sense
of the man of business, was relaxed. The strong opiate of
self-sufficiency had begun to work in his veins. He was the conscious
conqueror, walking with uplifted head, and no longer closely watchful
of the way he trod.
With him Elisha Scales had risen too. The clerk, with his mean face
and crafty eyes, had proved himself indispensable. Masterman's dislike
for him remained, but use and contiguity had worn down much of his
original prejudice. He could not but admit his ability. Beyond that,
however, he did not care to go. He knew him to be adroit, patient,
obsequious, daring; but the inner springs of his character remained
inscrutable.
It was Scales who had really engineered the Brick Trust. The purchase
of the Leatham brick-yard had been but the first of a great number of
similar transactions. No sooner was the Amalgamated floated than it
achieved a miraculous success. There was a fortnight of frantic buying
by the public; gold poured into the treasury; the financial papers,
duly subsidised by copious advertisement, pushed the boom; and at the
end of three months the name of Masterman was enrolled among the great
magnates of modern commerce. His portrait appeared in the journals.
The story of his early struggles was adorned with legendary marvel.
Due stress was laid upon his piety: was he not the deacon of a church,
a man of strict morals, a man who might be safely trusted, a man of
solid character? And of all the baits that drew the public, perhaps
this was the most successful. The small investor rallied to him.
Humble folk in remote religious communities learned his name, discussed
his doings, and struggled for the chance to lay their savings at his
feet. If any word of warning reached them, it was disregarded. Six
per cent. is so much more attractive than four, that, when it is
guaranteed by the piety and genius of a Masterman, the voice of
prudence speaks in vain.
A few months of secret campaigning, a month of deafening publicity, and
behold the result--Scales flourishing in a house of new and expensive
furniture, the possessor of a carriage; Masterman enthroned in spacious
offices, from whose windows he beholds all the vanities of
earth--sheriffship, mayoralty, knighthood, and the like--moving
steadily towards him in a golden pageant.
Has the reader ever seen a balloon of paper, with a tiny light burning
in its centre, soar into the evening air? It is a pretty spectacle.
One wonders how so frail a thing can hold so perilous a force as flame.
We watch with astonishment its little lamp borne aloft, carried hither
and thither like a starry feather on the delicate tides of air, yet
always moving higher. Watch it long enough, and you will see something
else. Sooner or later there comes a flash of fire, a dim red spark,
visible for an instant, and where is the balloon? Its very fragments
are undiscoverable, and it is seen no more.
Masterman's balloon soared bravely in those first six months. Then
something happened which no sagacity could predict--a wind of war arose
suddenly, and the lamp showed dangerous flickerings.