When the engineer appeared, he went on, "We're going to do something
new. Townley will give you his end of it, and you work out the rest.
It's chemical engineering, so get any assistance you need. Give me
estimates of costs and say how soon the plant can be put up. Figure on
a hundred tons of sulphite pulp per day--dry weight. That's all."
The two went out, and he leaned back, pressing his finger tips hard on
his lids, and finding in the red blur that followed something that
soothed and rested his eyes. He was not one who sought out problems
and chased them to their solution, but rather one who perceived the
problem and, by singularly acute vision, perceived also the solution
just behind it. There were so many things that were overlooked by
others but presented themselves to him for attention, that he had long
since ceased to wonder why the world was full of men he considered
ineffectual. Now he ran rapidly over the existing situation,
marshaling his various undertakings in due order, when there sounded in
his head something that seemed like the tearing of a piece of cloth.
He drew a long breath, experiencing for the first time in his life a
sense of intolerable weariness. And then, suddenly he thought of Elsie.
It was strange that he should think of her now--there were so many
other and insistent things. Wimperley and the rest had come up to
congratulate him and gone away elated but at the same time puzzled that
he should regard the discovery with such apparent indifference. It was
true that creditors were becoming pressing, but the rail mill, it was
universally admitted, would pull the thing through. Now a reaction set
in and he longed for a little solitude. It lay in his mind that just
over the horizon was something more inviting than all that had taken
place.
An hour later he was in the bow of a big tug, heading down stream,
having left orders that he must not be disturbed. As the green
landscape slid by he gave himself over to retrospection, and his mind
wandered comfortably back through all the stages of the past years.
Surveying the folk of St. Marys, he concluded that only Filmer and
Bowers had been active supporters from the start. He would remember
that. Came a voice at his elbow. It was the master of the tug.
"Where to, sir?"
"A hundred miles from here there's a camping party. Find them."
They anchored that night in a long and narrow inlet where the trembling
reflection of the tug's funnel lay beside the mirrored tops of pine
trees that clung to the rocky shore. Ahead and behind was the open
lake. There was no sound but the twitter of sleepy birds and the honk
of a startled heron that winged its flight to solitudes still more
remote. Then Clark began to fish, and, just as he landed a five pound
bass, a girl's voice sounded clearly while a canoe floated round a
nearby point. Elsie was in it and alone.