That night Tim Bennett’s lumberjacks began to drift in. There were
Danes, Frenchmen, Irish, a sprinkling of Indians. They did not linger in
Diversity, nor did they congregate, but passed quickly through with a
cheerful air. There was exhilaration, anticipation, in their eyes,
whether of Scandinavian blue or of aboriginal black. Old times were back
again. For a moment a decadent age of which they despaired was returning
to better manners, and there was to be a fight. Peavey handles! There
was joy to be had from the very sound of it. In the morning a scattering
of big men, predominantly Irish, got off the train and straggled away.
In the afternoon another group arrived. They came so quietly, so
unostentatiously, that Diversity was hardly aware of them. A full fifty
were on hand—fifty fighting-men such as no other set of conditions has
produced, men who fought and worked for the joy of it. A race of men who
worked, not for pay, but because they loved the work, is worthy of
chronicle. They live no more. Men whose highest wage was the knowledge
that their camp or crew, or they individually, had done more and harder
and better work than some other camp or crew or individual have resident
in them something that should be handed down through time for other
generations to admire. They possessed vices, but they were brief,
flaming, roaring safety-valve vices, almost epic in themselves. For
months they were accustomed to live austere, laborious, loyal lives in
the ramps. Then for a day, a week, they appeared among their fellows,
and their fellows received them and robbed them and plied them with
liquor and directed their splendid energies into ways of debauchery. On
the scales of justice the robust virtue of them outweighs their brief,
primitive descents into the depths. They were men.
Tim Bennett reported to Jim Ashe. “They’re here, fair bustin’ with the
thought of it. The taste of a fight is in their mouths and they’re
rollin’ it under their tongues.”
“Good men?”
“Mr. Ashe,” said Tim, joyously, “I’d undertake to drive logs through
hell with ’em—and the devil throwin’ rocks from the shore.”
“Any talk in town?”
“Not a peep. Them boys sneaked through like the shadow of a flock of
hummin’-birds. They’re keepin’ quiet where they are without even a bit
of a song. By night there’ll be so much deviltry penned up in ’ere
lookin’ for a place to bust out, that when it does come Moran’ll think a
herd of boilers is blowin’ up round him.”
“Go out, then, and keep them quiet. I’ll be along by ten to-night.”
It was not Jim’s intention to descend upon the Diversity Hardwood
Company with his men blindly and to seize what might by good fortune
fall into his hands. He had planned well, as a good general plans.
Simultaneously he would strike at several points, so that in a single
moment, if all went well, the machinery he needed to move logs would be
in his hands. He was ready.
Satisfied he had done all he could do to make success certain, Jim went
home to the widow’s to supper. He was excited. Appetite was lacking. He
felt inside very much like a countryman descending for the first time in
a swift elevator. It was not fear; it was not excitement; it was all the
nerves of his body setting and bracing themselves, making ready to
respond to strain.
He scarcely touched his food; sat silently reviewing his plans to make
sure every point was checked up, that there would be no omissions, no
mistake. The widow watched him out of the corner of her shrewd eye;
Marie Ducharme watched him, too, less shrewdly, with a different sort of
glance. Marie’s eyes were dark with much brooding; were circled by drab
shadows drawn by the finger of mental anguish. If Jim had looked at her
he would have seen again that hungry look with which she followed the
departing train—but now it was bent upon himself.
The widow withdrew to the kitchen, not obviously, but with sufficient
pretext. She sensed a quarrel; she saw in Jim’s silence and lack of
appetite an ailment of the heart, not a business worry. She fancied
Marie’s face spoke of willingness to be reconciled—and eliminated
herself to give the difficulty a chance to right itself. Widows have a
way of seeing more love-affairs than are visible to other eyes—more, in
fact, than are in being.
Presently Marie spoke:
“Jim,” she said. It was the first time she had called him by his first
name. “Jim, I want to go somewhere, do something, to-night. I want to
get away from this house.”
Jim looked at her a moment, and she was hurt to see he was not thinking
of her, had hardly understood her words. Perhaps she, too, had put on
his silence the same interpretation as the widow.
“Go somewhere?” he said, vaguely, then flushed at his awkwardness. “I’m
sorry, Marie. I was a long way off when you spoke. It was rude, wasn’t
it? But I’ve had such a heap of things to think about these last days
that some of them insist on hanging round outside of business hours. Has
something happened? Any trouble with Mrs. Stickney?”
“No. No trouble. I just want to get away. I want you to talk to me and
keep me from thinking about myself—and some things. I—I’m afraid
tonight, Jim.”
Jim bit his lip boyishly.
“Confound it!” he said. “I simply can’t get away to-night. Business. But
don’t I wish I could go with you some place—and talk to you. There are
things I wanted to say to you the other night, Marie, that—well, I
guess it took time for me to think of. I want to talk to you about the
same thing, for I’ve been thinking about the same thing. I was too
abrupt. You were right to give me the answer you did—but I’ve got some
more arguments now, a lot of them.”
Marie’s face softened. How boyish, how eagerly boyish he was!
“You mustn’t talk about that,” she said, gently. “I can’t change. Your
work is here. You’re tied to it. And I must get away from it—to stay.
Can’t you understand? Don’t misunderstand me, Jim. It wasn’t to give you
a chance to ask me to reconsider that I asked you to go out with me. No.
No. It was to have you to talk to. To have the consciousness that I was
with a man—a man who—was—a human being.” Her voice faltered. “I
wanted you to say to me some of the things you have said before—about
people being good, about the world being good, about faith and
trustworthiness and honor. I don’t know those things, but I want to hear
about them—to-night. Because I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid of—myself. I talked to you that first day we met—more than I
should. So you know me. I am the same girl I was then, but I am not the
same girl. Then I knew it would be possible for me to choose the—bitter
way. To choose it deliberately as a way of escape. But I did not know
then how bitter that way would be. Now I know I should not choose it
deliberately, but be forced into it by—by myself.”
“You mustn’t talk that way, I won’t have you say that sort of thing
about—my girl.”
“It’s true, and I am afraid. Can’t your business step aside for
to-night?”
“It can’t, Marie. If it were an ordinary night or an ordinary matter
that calls me, I would stay.” He stopped, considered. It was his nature
to speak little of his affairs, to offer few confidences. To tell Marie
the truth seemed his only honorable way of escape from the dilemma.
“I’ll tell you about it,” he said, with sudden decision, “and you will
understand.”
Then he told her, from the beginning in his father’s library. He
described his difficulties, his war with the Clothespin Club, his
bitterer war with Michael Moran. He told her what Moran had done and was
seeking to do. He told her his measures of defense and of
counter-attack, and particularly the plan for to-night. “And so you
see,” he ended, “I must go.”
“Yes,” she said, slowly, “you must go. And Michael Moran has done those
things? You must hate him!”
“Yes,” said Jim, “but not for what he has done to me. I hate him
because—” He hesitated, unable to bring himself to utter the thought in
connection with Marie.
“Because?” Marie questioned.
“Because,” said Jim, between his teeth, “he is planning and working to
make you take the choice you have talked about without appreciating what
you were saying.”
“Yes,” said Marie, her eyes shut as though to hide from her a painful
sight—“yes, he is doing that. And I have known what I was saying, Jim.
I know what I am saying now. I wish you could have stayed with me
to-night, Jim. I’m afraid—afraid.” She arose and ran from the room.
When Jim left the house it was with a troubled mind. He did not
understand Marie; she was not fathomable by him. The evening’s zest of
adventure lay cold within him.
Shortly after eight o’clock he drove away from the livery barn. As he
drove past the Widow Stickney’s street he glanced toward the house and
saw Michael Moran entering the yard. What he did not see was Marie
Ducharme leaving by the back way, hurrying as though pursued, making her
way to the edge of town and beyond—beyond until she arrived at the
hummock where she and Jim had first spoken. And there she crouched,
looking off to the southwest where a silver gleam of the great lake was
visible between the trees. It grew darker, but she did not move; dew
fell upon her shoulders, chilling her; the lake breeze penetrated her
thin garments, but she replied only with a shiver. Her hands were
clenched on her breast. “Help me! Help me!” she whispered her soul
crying to a Power outside herself.