"What are the obligations?" asked Thorpe after a little pause.
"Of all companies?"
"Of course."
"About two millions as nearly as I can get at them."
"And to us?"
Brewster handed over a slip of paper. "This is a copy of what I
forwarded yesterday."
The older man's brows cleared a little. The combined overdraft was
just over a hundred thousand, against which the bank held Philadelphia
acceptances which he knew would be met. He glanced over the statement
again.
"You've looked after this extremely well. Now what do you want me to
do?"
Brewster drew a long breath. "I don't want you to take my word for
anything, but come up and see for yourself. Go into the woods and up
to the mines and through the entire works--then come to your own
conclusions. It may be I'm too near the thing to get the right
perspective, but I give it to you as I see it."
Thorpe nodded. "I know you have and your branch has done extremely
well."
"Thanks." Brewster laughed. "That's due to the man we're talking
about."
"And supposing," put in Thorpe thoughtfully, "supposing the whole thing
were to go smash! What would you say?"
The other man's eyes rounded a little. "I'd say," he answered slowly,
"that even in that case the entire district would be in Clark's debt."
"Yes?"
"Because they know what's in the country now and how to get it out--and
they never knew that before."
"And the immediate future--what do you see that depends on?"
"Steel rails," said Brewster with conviction. "Will you come up?"
Thorpe did go up, and Clark, who knew that Brewster had been in Toronto
and conceived why, met them both at the works with a genuine welcome.
He felt, nevertheless, that his undertakings were to be analyzed with
cold deliberation.
At the end of two days Thorpe had seen them all--had peered into the
gray black bowels of the iron mine, watched Baudette denuding the
slopes of a multitude of hills--seen the stamps in the gold mill
hammering out the precious particles that were caught by great
quicksilver plates,--seen booms and train loads of pulp on their way to
St. Marys--seen the white spruce shaven of its brown bark and ground
and sheeted and loaded into the gaping holds of Clark's
steamships--seen the blast furnaces vomit their molten metal--seen the
rhythmic pumps and dynamos send water and light through every artery of
the young city--seen the veneer mills ripping out flexible miles of
their satiny wood--seen the power house on the American side making
carbide to the low rumble of thousands of horsepower, and seen the
electric railway that linked Ironville with St. Marys. And all the
time Clark had put forward neither arguments in his own favor nor any
request for credit, but only allowed these things to speak for
themselves, till, as the aggregate became more and more rounded and the
picture more complete, Thorpe perceived that here was something which
initiated by an extraordinary brain had now grown to such vast
proportions that it supplied its own momentum, and must of necessity
move on to its appointed and final result.
But Clark did not distinguish in either Thorpe or Brewster any
determining factor of his future. They would do what they were meant
to do, and play the game as the master of the game decided. They might
modify, but they would never create. His mind was pitched so far ahead
that it was beside the mark to attempt to influence men who, he
conceived, were not themselves endowed with any prophetic vision. He
had to deal with them and he dealt with them, and though he wondered
mutely at their abiding sense of the present and their apparent lack of
faith in the inevitable future, he descended from the heights of his
own imagination and parleyed in the bald and merciless language of
strictly commercial affairs.
It was at the end of his visit that Thorpe asked about the sulphur
plant.
Clark glanced at him curiously. The sulphur plant was so small a
fraction of the whole.
"There's a certain step in the process we have not perfected--that's
all. You don't believe in economic waste, do you?"
"No, certainly not--if avoidable."
"Well, I'm satisfied that this is avoidable. It is just as much a
mistake to allow water to run away when it might be grinding pulp, as
it is to drive sulphur into the air instead of catching and selling it.
You pollute the air, you kill the trees, you spend a lot of money, and
you waste the sulphur. Nature has a lot of processes up her sleeve
we've not realized as yet. This is one of them."
"Then this plant is a mistake?" Thorpe got it out with some hesitation.
Clark laughed. "Some of it--so far. I make plenty of mistakes, don't
you? It seems to me it's the proportion his mistakes bear to the
things that succeed which determines a man's usefulness. I don't
believe in the one who doesn't make them."
Thorpe grinned in spite of himself. "Perhaps you're right--but I'll be
glad to know as soon as you're rolling rails. When do you expect that?"
"In six months at the latest. I'll send you a section of the first
one."
The banker drove toward the station in unaccustomed silence. Presently
he turned to Brewster. "You were right and, by George! Clark is right
too, but we must not get our mutual rectitude mixed up. He's got to go
ahead, come what may, and we've got to help him all we reasonably can,
but with us our shareholders come before his. That's the point. He
may turn out to be a private liability, but in any case he's a national
asset. I want a bit of that first rail. Good-by!"
And Clark, after waving farewell at the big gates of the works, had
gone into the rail mill and stood in the shadow in deep contemplation.
He glanced at the massive flywheel, the great dominant dynamo and the
huge, inflexible rolls. At one end were the heating furnaces, their
doors open, and gentle fires glowing softly within to slowly raise the
temperature of newly set brick. Around him was the swing of work
directed by skilled brains, and machinery moved slowly into its
appointed place of service. It was a good mill, he reflected, for a
second hand mill. For all of this the place was dead--awaiting the
pulse of power and the unremitting supply of incandescent metal.
Glancing keenly about, he experienced again that strange sound as
though between his temples, and suddenly he felt tired. The thing was
good, very good. But he too wanted to see the lambent metal spewed
from between the shining rolls.
It was a notable day in St. Marys when the first rail was actually
rolled, and symbolical to many people of many different things.
Infection spread from the words to the town, till all morning there was
a trickling stream of humanity that filed in at the big gates and moved
on toward the dull roar of the mill. Even though the mass of folk in
St. Marys still failed to grasp the full significance of the event,
they saw in it that which put their one time Arcadia beside Pittsburg,
and invested their own persons with a new sense of importance.
Clark, watching the fruition of a seven year dream, felt thrilled as
never before. Here, in this heat and mechanical tumult, was being
forged the last link in the chain into which he had hammered his entire
strength and spirit. It was a good thing, he reflected, to make pulp
and ship it on his own steamships, but this was the biggest, deepest
and most enduring thing of all. Some men at such a moment would have
felt humble, but he recognized only the unfolding of an elemental drama
in which he played his own particular role. A few weeks later he
closed a contract with a great railway company for a million dollars'
worth of his new product, which he unhesitatingly guaranteed would live
up to the most exacting specifications.
The new plant had settled down to the steady drive of work when the
mayor of St. Marys, walking up the street in a mood of peculiar
satisfaction, saw just ahead of him the bulky form of the chief
constable. He stepped a little faster and laid a detaining hand on the
broad shoulder.
"Arrest yourself for a minute," he chuckled. "How's our town pessimist
feeling this fine morning?"
Manson glanced sideways. "I suppose you want to rub it in. Well, I
don't know that my opinions have changed very much."
"Takes more than a few thousand tons of rails to move you, eh? But
isn't Mahomet going to come to the mountain at last?"
Manson shook his head.
"If he doesn't the mountain will come to Mahomet--and crush him,"
continued Filmer gayly, then, his mood changing, "but honestly, old
man, why don't you drop your gloomy views? You've an excellent chance
right now, and, besides, they're getting rather amusing."
"I've a right to my own opinions."
"Naturally, we all have, but you don't act up to them--at least you
didn't."