Donald was twenty-four and The Laird fifty-eight when the pair
returned from their frolic round the world--Donald to take up this
father's labors, The Laird to lay them aside and retire to The
Dreamerie and the books he had accumulated against this happy
afterglow of a busy and fruitful life.
Donald's mother and sisters were at The Dreamerie the night the father
and son arrived. Of late years, they had spent less and less of their
time there. The Laird had never protested, for he could not blame them
for wearying of a little backwoods sawmill town like Port Agnew.
With his ability to think calmly, clearly, and unselfishly, he had
long since realized that eventually his girls must marry; now
Elizabeth was twenty-six and Jane twenty-eight, and Mrs. McKaye was
beginning to be greatly concerned for their future. Since The Laird
had built The Dreamerie in opposition to their wishes, they had spent
less than six months in each year at Port Agnew. And these visits had
been scattered throughout the year. They had traveled much, and, when
not traveling, they lived in the Seattle house and were rather busy
socially. Despite his devotion to his business, however, The Laird
found time to spend at least one week in each month with them in
Seattle, in addition to the frequent business trips which took him
there.
That night of his home-coming was the happiest The Laird had ever
known, for it marked the culmination of his lifetime of labor and
dreams. Long after his wife and the girls had retired, he and Donald
sat in the comfortable living-room, smoking and discussing plans for
the future, until presently, these matters having been discussed
fully, there fell a silence between them, to be broken presently by
The Laird.
"I'm wondering, Donald, if you haven't met some bonny lass you'd like
to bring home to Port Agnew. You realize, of course, that there's room
on Tyee Head for another Dreamerie, although I built this one for
you--and her."
"There'll be no other house on Tyee Head, father," Donald answered,
"unless you care to build one for mother and the girls. The wife that
I'll bring home to Port Agnew will not object to my father in my
house." He smiled and added, "You're not at all hard to get along
with, you know."
The Laird's eyes glistened.
"Have you found her yet, my son?"
Donald shook his head in negation.
"Then look for her," old Hector ordered. "I have no doubt that, when
you find her, she'll be worthy of you. I'm at an age now when a man
looks no longer into the future but dwells in the past, and it's hard
for me to think of you, big man that you are, as anything save a wee
laddie trotting at my side. Now, if I had a grandson--"
When, presently, Donald bade him good-night, Hector McKaye turned off
the lights and sat in the dark, gazing down across the moonlit Bight
of Tyee to the sparks that flew upward from the stacks of his sawmill
in Port Agnew, for they were running a night shift. And, as he gazed,
he thrilled, with a fierce pride and a joy that was almost pain, in
the knowledge that he had reared a merchant prince for this, his
principality of Tyee.
V
Hector McKaye had always leaned toward the notion that he could run
Port Agnew better than a mayor and a town council, in addition to
deriving some fun out of it; consequently, Port Agnew had never been
incorporated. And this was an issue it was not deemed wise to press,
for The Tyee Lumber Company owned every house and lot in town, and
Hector McKaye owned every share of stock in the Tyee Lumber Company.
If he was a sort of feudal baron, he was a gentle and kindly one;
large building-plots, pretty little bungalows, cheap rentals, and no
taxation constituted a social condition that few desired to change. As
these few developed and The Laird discovered them, their positions in
his employ, were forfeited, their rents raised, or their leases
canceled, and presently Port Agnew knew them no more. He paid fair
wages, worked his men nine hours, and employed none but naturalized
Americans, with a noticeable predilection for those of Scotch nativity
or ancestry.
Strikes or lockouts were unknown in Port Agnew--likewise saloons.
Unlike most sawmill towns of that period, Port Agnew had no street in
which children were forbidden to play or which mothers taught their
daughters to avoid. Once an I.W.W. organizer came to town, and upon
being ordered out and refusing to go, The Laird, then past fifty, had
ducked him in the Skookum until he changed his mind.
The Tyee Lumber Company owned and operated the local telephone company,
the butcher shop, the general store, the hotel, a motion-picture
theater, a town hall, the bank, and the electric-light-and-power plant,
and with the profits from these enterprises, Port Agnew had paved
streets, sidewalks lined with handsome electroliers, and a sewer
system. It was an admirable little sawmill town, and if the expenses
of maintaining it exceeded the income, The Laird met the deficit and
assumed all the worry, for he wanted his people to be happy and
prosperous beyond all others.
It pleased Hector McKaye to make an occasion of his abdication and
Donald's accession to the presidency of the Tyee Lumber Company. The
Dreamerie was not sufficiently large for his purpose, however, for he
planned to entertain all of his subjects at a dinner and make formal
announcement of the change. So he gave a barbecue in a grove of maples
on the edge of the town. His people received in silence the little
speech he made them, for they were loath to lose The Laird. They knew
him, while Donald they had not known for five years, and there were
many who feared that the East might have changed him. Consequently,
when his father called him up to the little platform from which he
spoke, they received the young laird in silence also.
"Folks--my own home folks," Donald began, "to-day I formally take up
the task that was ordained for me at birth. I am going to be very
happy doing for you and for myself. I shall never be the man my father
is; but if you will take me to your hearts and trust me as you have
trusted him, I'll never go back on you, for I expect to live and to
die in Port Agnew, and, while I live, I want to be happy with you. I
would have you say of me, when I am gone, that I was the worthy son
of a worthy sire." He paused and looked out over the eager, upturned
faces of the men, women, and children whose destinies he held in the
hollow of his hand. "My dear friends, there aren't going to be any
changes," he finished, and stepped down off the platform.
From the heart of the crowd a lumberjack cried, "Ya-hoo-o-o-o-o!" as
only a lusty lumberjack can cry it. "He's a chip of the old block!"
cried another, and there were cheers and some tears and a general rush
forward to greet the new master, to shake his hand, and pledge
allegiance to him.
When the reception was over, old Hector took charge of the homely
games and athletic contests, and the day's delights culminated in a
log-burling contest in the Skookum, in which the young laird
participated. When, eventually, he fell in the river and was counted
out, old Hector donned his son's calked boots and, with a whoop such
as he had not emitted in forty years, entered the lists against the
young fellows. In the old days in the Michigan woods, when burling was
considered a magnificent art of the lumberjack, he had been a
champion, and for five minutes he spun his log until the water foamed,
crossing and recrossing the river and winning the contest unanimously.
From the bank, Mrs. McKaye and his daughters watched him with
well-bred amusement and secret disapproval. They could never forget,
as he could, that he was The Laird of Tyee; they preferred more
dignity in the head of the house.
The McKaye family drove home along the cliff road at sunset. Young
Donald paused on the terrace before entering the house, and, stirred
by some half-forgotten memory, he glanced across the bight to the
little white house far below on the Sawdust Pile. The flag was
floating from the cupola, but even as he looked, it came fluttering
down.
Donald turned toward the McKaye flag. It was still floating. "The old
order changeth," he soliloquized, and hauled it down, at the same time
shouting to his father within the house:
"Hey, dad; fire the sunset gun!"
The Laird pressed the button and the cannon boomed.
"We've neglected that little ceremony since you've been away," he
remarked, as Donald entered the room. "'Other times, other customs,' I
dare say."
He hurried up-stairs to dress for dinner (a formality which he
disliked, but which appeared to please his wife and daughters), and
Donald took his father's binoculars and went out on the terrace. It
had occurred to him that he had not seen old Caleb Brent and Nan at
the barbecue, and he wondered why. Through the glasses, he could make
out the figure of a woman in the cupola window, and she was watching
him through a long marine telescope.
"There's my old friend Nan, grown to womanhood," Donald soliloquized,
and waved his arm at her. Through the glasses, he saw her wave back at
him.