To most people Carnac’s candidature was a surprise; to some it was a
bewilderment, and to one or two it was a shock. To the second class
belonged Fabian Grier and his wife; to the third class belonged Luke
Tarboe. Only one person seemed to understand it--by intuition: Junia.
Somehow, nothing Carnac did changed Junia’s views of him, or surprised
her, though he made her indignant often enough. To her mind, however,
in the big things, his actions always had reasonableness. She had
never felt his artist-life was to be the only note of his career. When,
therefore, in the West she read a telegram in a newspaper announcing his
candidature, she guessed the suddenness of his decision. When she read
it, she spread the paper on the table, smoothed it as though it were
a beautiful piece of linen, then she stretched out her hands in happy
benediction. Like most of her sex, she loved the thrill of warfare.
There flashed the feeling, however, that it would be finer sport if
Carnac and Tarboe were to be at war, instead of Carnac and Barouche. It
was curious she never thought of Carnac but the other man came throbbing
into sight--the millionaire, for he was that now.
In one way, this last move of Carnac’s had the elements of a
master-stroke. She knew how strange it would seem to the rest of the
world, yet it did not seem strange to her. No man she had ever seen had
been so at home in the world of men, and also at home in the secluded
field of the chisel and the brush as Carnac.
She took the newspaper over to her aunt, holding it up. The big
headlines showed like semaphores on the page. As the graceful figure
of Junia drew to her aunt--her slim feet, in the brown, well-polished
boots, the long, full neck, and then the chin, Grecian, shapely and
firm, the straight, sensitive nose, the wonderful eyes under the
well-cut, broad forehead, with the brown hair, covering it like a
canopy--the old lady reached out and wound her arms round the lissome
figure. Situated so, she read the telegram, and then the old arms
gripped her tighter.
Presently, the whistle of a train sounded. The aunt stretched out an
approving finger to the sound. She realized that the figure round
which her arms hung trembled, for it was the “through” daily train for
Montreal.
“I’m going back at once, aunty,” Junia said.
..........................
“Well, I’m jiggered!”
These were Tarboe’s words when Carnac’s candidature came first to him in
the press.
“He’s ‘broke’ out in a new place,” he added.
Tarboe loved the spectacular, and this was indeed spectacular. Yet he
had not the mental vision of Junia who saw how close, in one intimate
sense, was the relation between the artist life and the political life.
To him it was a gigantic break from a green pasture into a red field
of war. To her, it was a resolution which, in anyone else’s life, would
have seemed abnormal; in Carnac’s life it had naturalness.
Tarboe had been for a few months only the reputed owner of the great
business, and he had paid a big price for his headship in the weighty
responsibility, the strain of control; but it had got into his blood,
and he felt life would not be easy without it now.
Besides, there was Junia. To him she was the one being in the world
worth struggling for; the bird to be caught on the wing, or coaxed into
the nest, or snared into the net; and two of the three things he had
tried without avail. The third--the snaring? He would not stop at that,
if it would bring him what he wanted. How to snare her! He surveyed
himself in the mirror.
“A great hulking figure like that!” he said in disapproval. “All bone
and muscle and flesh and physical show! It wouldn’t weigh with her.
She’s too fine. It isn’t the animal in a man she likes. It’s what he can
do, and what he is, and where he’s going.”
Then he thought of Carnac’s new outburst, and his veins ran cold.
“She’ll like that--but yes, she’ll like that: and if he succeeds she’ll
think he’s great. Well, she’d be right. He’ll beat Barouche. He’s young
and brave, careless and daring. Now where am I in this fight? I belong
to Barouche’s party and my vote ought to go for him.”
For some minutes he sat in profound thought. What part should he play?
He liked Carnac, he owed him a debt which he could never repay. Carnac
had saved him from killing Denzil. If that had happened, he himself
might have gone to the gallows.
He decided. Sitting down, he wrote Carnac the following letter:
DEAR CARNAC GRIER,
I see you’re beginning a new work. You now belong to a party that I
am opposed to, but that doesn’t stop me offering you support. It’s
not your general policy, but it is you, the son of your father, that
I mean to work for. If you want financial help for your campaign--
or after it is over--come and get it here--ten thousand or more if
you wish. Your father, if he knew--and perhaps he does know--would
be pleased that you, who could not be a man of business in his
world, are become a man of business in the bigger world of law-
making. You may be right or wrong in that policy, but that don’t
weigh with me. You’ve taken on as big a job as ever your father
did. What’s the use of working if you don’t try to do the big thing
that means a lot to people outside yourself! If you make new good
laws, if you do something for the world that’s wonderful, it’s as
much as your father did, or, if he was alive, could do now.
Whatever there is here is yours to use. When you come back here to
play your part, you’ll make it a success--the whole blessed thing.
I don’t wish you were here now, except that it’s yours--all of it--
but I wish you to beat Barode Barouche.
Yours to the knife,
LUKE TARBOE.
He read the letter through, and coming to the words, “When you come
back here to play your part, you’ll make it a success--the whole blessed
thing,” he paused, reflecting... He wondered what Carnac would think the
words meant, and he felt it was bold, and, maybe, dangerous play; but
it was not more dangerous than facts he had dealt with often in the last
two years. He would let it stand, that phrase of the hidden meaning. He
did not post the letter yet.
Four days later he put on his wide-brimmed panama hat and went out into
the street leading to the centre of the city. There was trouble in the
river reaches between his men and those of Belloc-Grier, and he was
keeping an appointment with Belloc at Fabian Grier’s office, where
several such meetings had taken place.
He had not gone far, however, when he saw a sprightly figure in
light-brown linen cutting into his street from a cross-road. He had not
seen that figure for months-scarcely since John Grier’s death, and his
heart thumped in his breast. It was Junia. How would she greet him?
A moment later he met her. Raising his hat, he said: “Back to the
firing-line, Miss Shale! It’ll make a big difference to every one
concerned.”
“Are you then concerned?” she asked, with a faint smile.
“One of the most concerned,” he answered with a smile not so composed as
her own. “It’s the honour of the name that’s at stake.”
“You want to ruin Mr. Grier’s chances in the fight?”
“I didn’t say that. I said, ‘the honour of the name,’ and the name of my
firm is ‘Grier’s Company of Lumbermen.’ So I’m in it with all my might,
and here’s a letter--I haven’t posted it yet--saying to Carnac Grier
where I stand. Will you read it? There’s no reason why you shouldn’t.”
He tore open the envelope and took the letter out.
Junia took it, after hesitation, and read it till she came to the
sentence about Carnac returning to the business. She looked up,
startled.
“What does that mean?” she asked, pointing to the elusive sentence.
“He might want to come into the business some day, and I’ll give him his
chance. Nothing more than that.”
“Nothing more than that!” she said cynically. “It’s bravely said, but
how can he be a partner if he can’t buy the shares?”
“That’s a matter to be thought out,” he answered with a queer twist to
his mouth.
“I see you’ve offered to help him with cash for the election,” she said,
handing back the letter.
“I felt it had to be done. Politics are expensive they sap the purse.
That’s why.”
“You never thought of giving him an income which would compensate a
little for what his father failed to do for him?”
There was asperity in her tone.
“He wouldn’t take from me what his father didn’t give him.” Suddenly an
idea seized him. “Look here,” he said, “you’re a friend of the Griers,
why don’t you help keep things straight between the two concerns? You
could do it. You have the art of getting your own way. I’ve noticed
that.”
“So you’d like me to persuade Fabian Grier to influence Belloc, because
I’d make things easy for you!” she said briskly. “Do you forget I’ve
known Fabian since I was a baby, that my sister is his wife, and that
his interests are near to me?”
He did not knuckle down. “I think it would be helping Fabian’s
interests. Belloc and Fabian Grier are generally in the wrong, and to
keep them right would be good business-policy. When I’ve trouble with
Belloc’s firm it’s because they act like dogs in the manger. They seem
to hate me to live.”
She laughed--a buoyant, scornful laugh. “So all the fault is in Belloc
and Fabian, is it?” She was impressed enormously by his sangfroid and
will to rule the roost. “I think you’re clever, and that you’ve got
plenty of horse-sense, as they say in the West, but you’ll be beaten in
the end. How does it feel”--she asked it with provoking candour--“to be
the boss of big things?”
“I know I’m always settling troubles my business foes make for me. I
have to settle one of them now, and I’m glad I’ve met you, for you can
help me. I want some new river-rules made. If Belloc and Grier’ll agree
to them, we’ll do away with this constant trouble between our gangs.”
“And you’d like me to help you?”
He smiled a big riverman’s smile down at her, full of good-humour and
audacity.
“If you could make it clear to Fabian that all I’m after is peace on the
river, it’d do a lot of good.”
“Well, do you know,” she said demurely, “I don’t think I’ll take a hand
in this game, chiefly because--” she paused.
“Yes: chiefly because--”
“Because you’ll get your own way without help. You get everything you
want,” she added with a little savage comment.
A flood of feeling came into his eyes, his head jerked like that of a
bull-moose. “No, I don’t get everything I want. The thing I want most in
the world doesn’t come to me.” His voice grew emotional. She knew what
he was trying to say, and as the idea was not new she kept composure.
“I’m not as lucky as you think me,” he added.
“You’re pretty lucky. You’ve done it all as easy as clasping your
fingers. If I had your luck--!” she paused.
“I don’t know about that, but if I could reach out and touch you at any
time, as it were, I think it’d bring me permanent good luck. You’ll find
out one day that my luck is only a bubble the prick of a pin’ll destroy.
I don’t misunderstand it. I’ve been left John Grier’s business by Grier
himself, and he’s got a son that ought to have it, and maybe will have
it, when the time is ripe.”
Suddenly an angry hand flashed out towards him. “When the time is ripe!
Does that mean, when you’ve made all you want, you’ll give up to Carnac
what isn’t yours but his? Why don’t you do it now?”
“Well, because, in the first place, I like my job and he doesn’t want
it; in the second place, I promised his father I’d run the business as
he wished it run; and in the third place, Carnac wouldn’t know how to
use the income the business brings.”
She laughed in a mocking, challenging way. “Was there ever a man didn’t
know how to use an income no matter how big it was! You’re talking
enigmas, and I think we’d better say good-bye. Your way to the Belloc
offices is down that street.” She pointed.
“And you won’t help me? You won’t say a word to Fabian?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “If I were a man like you, who’s so big, so
lucky, and so dominant, I wouldn’t ask a woman to help me. I’d do the
job myself. I’d keep faith with my reputation. But there’s one nice
thing about you: you’re going to help Carnac to beat Barode Barouche.
You’ve made a gallant offer. If you’d gone against him, if you’d played
Barouche’s game, I--”
The indignation which came to her face suddenly fled, and she said:
“Honestly, I’d never speak to you again, and I always keep my word.
Carnac’ll see it through. He’s a man of mark, Mr. Tarboe, and he’ll be
Prime Minister of the whole country one day. I don’t think you’ll like
it.”
“You hit hard, but if I hadn’t taken the business, Carnac Grier wouldn’t
have got it. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been some one else.”
“Well, why don’t you live like a rich man and not like a foreman?”
“I’ve been too busy to change my mode of living. I only want enough to
eat and drink and wear, and that’s not costly.” Suddenly an idea came
to him. “Now, if that business had been left to you, you’d be building a
stone house somewhere; and you’d have horses and carriages, and lots
of servants, and you’d swing along like a pretty coloured bird in the
springtime, wouldn’t you?”
“If I had wealth, I’d make it my servant. I’d give it its chance; but as
I haven’t got it, I live as I do--poor and unknown.”
“Not unknown. See, you could control what belonged to John Grier, if you
would. I need some one to show me how to spend the money coming from
the business. What is wealth unless you buy things that give pleasure to
life? Do you know--”
He got no further. “I don’t know anything you’re trying to tell me, and
anyhow this is not the place--” With that she hastened from him up the
street. Tarboe had a pang, and yet her very last words gave him hope. “I
may be a bit sharp in business,” he said to himself, “but I certainly am
a fool in matters of the heart. Yet what she said at last had something
in it for me. Every woman has an idea where a man ought to make love to
her, and this open road certainly ain’t the place. If Carnac wins this
game with Barouche I don’t know where I’ll be with her-maybe I’m a fool
to help him.” He turned the letter over and over in his hand. “No, I’m
not. I ought to do it, and I will.”
Then he fell to brooding. He remembered about the second hidden will.
There came upon him a wild wish to destroy it. He loved controlling John
Grier’s business. Never had anything absorbed him so. Life seemed a new
thing. The idea of disappearing from the place where, with a stroke
of his fingers, he moved five thousand men, or swept a forest into the
great river, or touched a bell which set going a saw-mill with its many
cross-cut saws, or filled a ship to take the pine, cedar, maple, ash or
elm boards to Europe, or to the United States, was terrible to him. He
loved the smell of the fresh-cut wood. The odour of the sawdust as he
passed through a mill was sweeter than a million bunches of violets.
Many a time he had caught up a handful of the damp dust and smelt it, as
an expert gardener would crumble the fallen flowers of a fruit tree and
sniff the sweet perfume. To be master of one of the greatest enterprises
of the New World for three years, and then to disappear! He felt he
could not do it.
His feelings shook his big frame. The love of a woman troubled his
spirit. Suppose the will were declared and the girl was still free, what
would she do?
As he set foot in the office of the firm of Belloc, however, he steeled
himself to composure.
His task well accomplished, he went back to his own office, and spent
the day like a racehorse under the lash, restive, defiant, and reckless.
When night and the shadows came, he sat alone in his office with drawn
blinds, brooding, wondering.