The day following Rod drew his father into the library and bluntly announced his engagement to Mary Thorn, also that the date of their marriage was set for the first week in July, exactly one month ahead.
Norquay senior sat down, lighted a cigar. He did not precisely lose his poise, but he was slightly staggered.
"Well," he said at last, "the younger generation is supposed to be speedy but I didn't imagine you would ever step on the accelerator like this. Why the mad haste? Can't you at least give us a chance to get acquainted with the young woman?"
"We've had plenty of opportunities for acquaintance," Rod could not forbear saying, "since she is a close neighbor, so to speak. Besides, the family isn't marrying Miss Thorn, pater. I am. And I have known her for several years."
"I suppose she's pretty," his father observed grimly. "Has she any manners? Education? Ever been anywhere?"
Rod looked at him soberly.
"Are you trying to get my goat?" he asked. "If you want me to blow up, polite insult is as good a way as any. I'm of age and a little more. You took pains to educate me. You've granted at various times that I have good taste in many things. I should be qualified to choose a wife with—with the ordinary essentials."
"Perhaps I didn't put it very well," Norquay senior replied. "I don't mean to adopt a toplofty hypercritical attitude. I may seem unduly impertinent, my son, but marriage is important—in this family, and to this family. A wife isn't something to be put aside if she doesn't happen to suit. Remember, I've had no warning of this. Therefore, naturally, the first questions that occur to me are these: Is the girl such as we can accept into the family as one of us? Is she a person our friends can meet as one of themselves? Have you asked yourself this, Rod?"
"Yes," Rod answered. "Contrary to the general notion of what an infatuated youngster does in such circumstances, I have. Or at least I should certainly have done so if there had been any doubt in the matter. To be quite candid, Mary Thorn has equally as good manners and as much—if not a good deal more—education as any girl I know. And about fifty per cent more discrimination in most things. If the family and the family's set refuse to accept her at her face value, that will be the privilege of snobbery. It won't make any difference to me."
"Quite sure about that?"
"I meant it wouldn't make me hesitate. Of course, it would make a difference," Rod amended. "I'm not a fool. But this girl means more to me than merely pleasing my family and friends by what they regard as a suitable match."
"You're fully determined on this?"
"Absolutely," Rod confirmed.
Norquay senior half-turned in his chair to look out the window. His gaze crossed the channel, rested without change of expression on Oliver Thorn's house.
"I can scarcely conceive of a suitable mate for a Norquay arising out of such surroundings," he said gravely, "nor from such antecedents."
"I wonder if you know what you really mean by antecedents," Rod said patiently. He had to force himself to be patient. He had warned himself that he would have to encounter just such prejudice. It grated on him, but he kept his temper in hand and his wits alert. "For instance, you accepted Laska Wall as being quite worthy of the most important of your three sons. And I am sure Laska is. But you must know, pater, that if John P. Wall didn't have scads of money you would never have tolerated the Walls. Mrs. Wall herself is only passable. Wall is simply a keen, able money-grabber. His people were nobodys—petty tradesmen. Wall's father kept a little two-by-four shop in Toronto for twenty years. I learned that quite by accident. And it is nothing against them. It simply happens that in our more or less democratic West, Wall's daughters, having enjoyed every advantage of easily and quickly acquired wealth, go everywhere and are accepted. That being so, antecedents don't seem to carry so much weight as you infer. I believe myself that they do; but not in the way you mean. And though you may not credit it, Mary Thorn's people are as good, able, pioneering stock as we are. Except that they didn't take permanent root and acquire wealth."
"Acquisitive ability is a pretty good test of character, Rod," his father commented. "It takes brains, initiative, determination, sterling qualities to amass wealth and hold it. Your prospective father-in-law doesn't exhibit those traits."
"No? You've tried to buy his timber holdings, haven't you? I heard you confess irritably that you couldn't see why he would neither log it off nor sell. Perhaps it never occurred to you that he is doing precisely what we've done—on a smaller scale—acquire a natural source of wealth and hold it, benefiting by the sure increase in value. He has seventy thousand dollars' worth of timber there. He makes it produce a reasonable living. When he lets it go, he will have a moderate competence. He has managed to give his daughter a university education. If he hasn't luxury, he has something he values more—independence. That rather argues character, doesn't it?"
"The argument is yours, Rod. Special pleading. You'd have made an excellent advocate. But suppose the worst. Suppose you find you can't mix oil and water—you know what I mean—what then?"
"Well, then I won't be the first younger son of this house to break away, to go on his own and make the best of things as he finds them. Will I?" Rod asked.
"I'd be sorry to see you do that. It's so unnecessary. There's room and plenty for all of us here. Of course, if you should elect to do that, you have your inalienable income from the estate. But I'd much prefer to see you and Phil together carrying on the upcoast end of our affairs. I don't want to see my boys scattered. I may have a selfish interest in keeping the family together. I should find myself very lonely here with all my children gone."
"And you're afraid I'll ball things up by marrying a girl nobody knows, and to whom people may not take kindly, eh?"
"That's about it, my son."
"Well, it's coming off on schedule, you may be sure of that," Rod said tartly. "I think I love Hawk's Nest as dearly as any of us. I have a pretty keen sense of what's due the family. I am perhaps a little proud of belonging to it. I'd a little rather be a great-great-grandson of that adventurous old fur trader than anything I know. But I have only one life to live, and I propose to live it according to my lights. I am not going to do anything that will reflect on us. I merely intend to marry a poor man's daughter because she seems to me the most perfect woman I know."
"You are quite determined?" his father asked again.
Rod answered him with a simple "Yes."
"At any rate there is no need for such haste, is there?" Norquay senior continued, with a hint of petulance. "Next month is absurd. Give us a chance to meet yourfiancée, to get acquainted with her. If she is to become one of the family, let's have a show at making her feel that she'll be welcome. Incidentally, it will give you time to think. A month's engagement is positively indecent."
"Time to think, pater?" Rod echoed. "I've had a solid year of thinking it over. It has taken me a year to persuade Mary Thorn it's the only thing to do. You want us to think it over—after twelve months of thrashing it out from every conceivable angle. No. One month from to-day. And there aren't going to be any frills. If you are at all dubious about countenancing me in this, just say so and I'll make my own arrangements. I'd be delighted to have you meet Mary, and I'm sure you'll like her immensely, but if you have any idea of adopting a 'to-be-examined-on-approval' attitude with her, why I'll introduce her as my wife and we'll make the necessary adjustments afterward."
Norquay senior smiled at his son's vehemence.
"I didn't dream you had so headlong a temperament, Rod," he said. "Speaking for myself, I wish you had chosen differently. Still, I concede you are well within your rights, and I am anxious to meet this unexpected choice of yours. I'll be courteous and cordial. You know that. But I can't promise that every one else will."
"If they aren't—" Rod shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I don't think people will be downright stupid."
"If they aren't," his father continued judicially, "you can't browbeat them into being so."
Rod agreed that this was obvious.
"In which case," his father said slowly, "I shan't be able to do much. If people won't receive your wife, Rod, on terms of equality, you can't shove her down their throats."
"You needn't be alarmed," Rod assured him stiffly. "I shan't try."
On the whole Rod considered that he came off very well in the matter of breaking this news to the family. Laska, who was staying awhile at Hawk's Nest, having a clear understanding of the situation, bundled Isabel off to town at once and gallantly proposed that she, herself, take Mary under her wing for the remaining four weeks. Rod promptly vetoed this.
"Won't work," he said frankly. "You've never even met the girl. She's much too clever to be fussed up by a burst of family interest all at once. I'm not going to have you pitchfork her into a giddy round before she has time to get her bearings. When we're married and come home, I'll take it kindly if you will all be as casual as if I'd married some girl we'd all known for years. No special efforts at gaiety, please, at this stage of the game."
Laska agreed that might be good policy. She was frankly curious about this girl Rod was going to marry. She was also well aware that the slangy fast-stepping crowd which occasionally descended on Hawk's Nest might make it difficult for a rank outsider thrown in their way. As Rod's wife, Mary would partake of the family dignity. As a merefiancéeshe would be fair game, especially for the younger women.
So matters stood as they were. The circumstances were fortuitous enough. Grove was the one fly in the ointment,—an uncertainty as to what he might do or say. And Grove had just betaken himself across the Atlantic, cooking up some financial stew in London. Grove was very jealous of his dignity. He was more arrogant than ever. Rod anticipated a certain amount of minor trouble with Grove. Hence he was as well satisfied that Grove was not present to inject the virus of his distaste into the already dubious mind of their father. Phil merely grinned and wished him luck.
"I don't know that I'd have had it turn out just this way if I'd been the arbiter of destiny," Oliver Thorn said to him. "I hope you and Mary will never be sorry. It's natural, I suppose—but natural evolution sometimes has its pains and disasters. Why do you want to go outside your own class to fall in love and marry?"
"Because I can't find what I want in my own crowd," Rod responded blithely. "Neither can Mary," he added as an afterthought.
Old Thorn reflected on this.
"Maybe you're right," he admitted soberly. "I never thought of it just that way before."
"And when it comes down to brass tacks," Rod went on, "the only fundamental difference between my family and yours is a matter of money. It's hardly right to classify us as belonging to a different order."
"True enough," Thorn agreed. "Mary's people, her mother's and mine, have had advantages, as they say. We didn't somehow manage to retain a stranglehold on the sources of wealth, that's all. We've been a restless lot. We've helped open up new territory from the Alleghanies west. We've always been independent. But we never took root for long. There are certain inherent advantages in taking root in the right sort of soil," his gaze rested on the red roof beyond the channel, "in taking hold and hanging on. With the prestige that goes with money—pshaw!" he made an impatient gesture. "When I let go this timber I'll have plenty to give two old people of simple tastes a comfortable living as long as they live. I never thought about money in connection with Mary before. Maybe she'll have a tussle with some of your crowd. Still—give her a wardrobe and a background—she has everything else—they'd all kowtow."
"My idea," Rod agreed blandly. "They will."
"Perhaps," Oliver Thorn sighed. "Still, she's got a handicap. If the going gets rough, don't blame Mary. Blame me. I should have foreseen something like this—and made preparation."
"Oh dammit," Rod said carelessly, "there isn't going to be any blame. Mary has real class. You know it. I know it. If there are poor simps on our visiting list who won't recognize it, why I'll just mark 'em off the list."
And so they were married.
Various people have various ideas about marriage,—ideas which sometimes do and sometimes do not coincide with facts. Love is as old as humanity. Marriage is an institution. Were this simply a mendacious tale of romantic youth, one might close it here with a sigh and the simple statement that they lived happily ever after. One could leave the rest to imagination.
And so they were married—married!
Well, what of it? People do not cease to live after marriage. To most it is only the beginning of their real being. So, one would say, it should have been for Rod Norquay and Mary Thorn. One would be right. They were possibly more fortunate than most. Home, friends, the invisible aura of wealth, established position, lay to their hand. They had nothing to face beyond the inevitable process of adaptation to the intimacies of matrimony, to each other's individual moods and tenses. This seemed no problem, since neither they nor any other young man or woman passionately in love ever recognized such a problem. Instinct triumphs; mutual taste smooths the way for compromises in the clash of their separate personalities.
Poverty, unremitting struggle for an economic foothold, unwelcome babies and frowsy domesticity withers many a fine flower of romantic passion when it should still be brightly blooming. Rod and Mary had before them no toilsome effort to keep the wolf from the door. Their place in the sun was made and provided. They had but to eat, drink, and be merry. Where could lie in wait for them the elements of clash and struggle, of fear and hope, of stifled griefs and aching disappointments,—all the sad travail and hard-won victories bestowed upon men and women through the long procession of the years?
Go to, you say. Considering the circumstances they marry and live happy ever after. That is the accepted formula.
Quite simple. But life is not an affair of formula. The simple tends to become the complex. So the findings of science indicate. So from time to time philosophers inform us. We don't pay much attention, by and large, to either scientific or philosophic fulminations. But occasionally one or the other, or both, utters a workable truth. The dictum that even the simplest thing contains within itself all the elements of the profoundly complex is one of these basic truths.
Fate, Destiny, God, Chance, whoever or whatever rolls the dice of events did not decree that Rod and his wife should come to their full estate by way of teas and tennis, the secure comfort of Hawk's Nest and the full social life open to the Norquays in town when they chose to avail themselves of town. It didn't elect for Mary an absorption into the younger matrons' set, immediate luxury and alternate boredom and excitement. Nor for Rod a mixture of gentlemanly leisure, casual attention to estate affairs and dillettante efforts at writing a prose epic of pioneering times. No. Before they were born, forces were shaping to jostle them out of this pleasant groove. Or was it merely a careless roll of the dice? Who can say?
They returned from a brief honeymoon quite frankly absorbed in each other, in the confirmation of the dreams and glamor of love, exultingly triumphant in having achieved a perfect union of the spirit as well as the flesh. They were welcomed to Hawk's Nest by a hand-picked group of the family and intimates. Laska, Phil, their father, their sister Dorothy from Victoria with two chubby sons, two cousins from Montreal, an old school chum of Phil's with his wife.
For the time it seemed to Rod that his childish impression of family solidarity, of complete and intimate understanding and support, which had made so fine an atmosphere of home about the place, had been restored in full force. As if the Norquay Trust Company and Grove's hectic yachting parties, jazz and restlessness, the slow disintegration of their unity had vanished into some place remote.
It was very pleasant for a week or so. Rod watched with mingled pride and amusement the first cordial effort to be kind to his wife, merely because she was his wife, evolve into a relieved acceptance of her as quite one of themselves.
"One would think," he reflected, "that they had half expected her to eat spinach with a knife."
Rod, of course, knew quite well that Mary's adaptation to this more luxurious mode of living, a more elaborate manner, was no more difficult for her than his own ready fitting-in to the life of a logging crew. He had long ago learned that rubbing elbows with people is the surest cure for self-consciousness; that the fundamentals of good breeding are simple. There were a great many people of his own kind who believed that good manners must necessarily be the exclusive possession of the well-to-do. It had never occurred to him before so strongly, but he saw now that most of his own family and many of his friends took it for granted that to be poor—as they defined poverty—meant that one had never been anywhere, knew nothing, murdered the King's English, committed every conceivablefaux pas, and was naturally an impossible sort of person.
It was a narrow creed; one that filled Rod with impatience. Those who held to it most rigidly were least qualified to pass rational judgment on any man or woman. Their knowledge of life was as limited as that of the people they regarded as inferior.
"'Fess up," he bantered Dorothy, one day. "You were all very dubious about the new Mrs. Norquay, weren't you?"
"Well, what do you expect?" his sister replied. "One doesn't anticipate a combination of brains, beauty, and deportment from such a source?"
"Why not?" he inquired innocently.
"Well, one doesn't," she replied. "I don't understand it yet. Mary's a dear. She has never had any advantages, so to speak, yet she fits in here as if she belonged. That's all I know about it."
"The fact of the matter is, Dot," Rod gave his own opinion, "that girls like Mary Thorn are rare birds in any class, top or bottom. It takes more than clothes and manners to make a real woman."
On the whole, Rod had every reason to be satisfied. It was not the family custom to be demonstrative. They liked Mary. Perceiving that she was a normal young woman of good taste and sound sense, they took her to their bosom, figuratively speaking, without more ado. There was a formal welcoming dinner to which Oliver Thorn and his wife were asked as a matter of courtesy, and to which they came and acquitted themselves with credit. Grandfather Norquay remarked afterward that Mrs. Thorn was a very fine type of woman. Rod's father conceded that Oliver Thorn was a more intelligent, better-informed man than he had imagined. All of which was duly gratifying to Rod.
But this satisfactory state of affairs was broken into by Mr. Grosvenor Sylvester Norquay in his most characteristic manner. He came back from England in due course and steamed straight to Hawk's Nest on theKowloon. Contrary to his custom, he came alone, and he arrived for some inscrutable reason in his worst temper and his most disagreeable manner.
"Well," he said to Rod at the first opening, "you made a hash of things for fair, didn't you? By Jove, I used to think you had taste if not judgment. I perceive you have neither."
"Are you referring to my marriage?" Rod asked.
"Excellent guesser. You don't imagine I'm referring to the price of logs or foreign exchange, do you?"
"Those are about the only matters you're qualified to pass on, and I'm doubtful about even that," Rod said quietly. "That'll be about all in that vein, elder brother. I know you don't like it—although it's none of your business. I daresay you're going to cut up as rough as you can on general principles. But another break like that and I'll smash you. You may be the big noise in the Norquay Trust, but dictatorial trust company methods won't work in the family. So you'd better be a good dog and not growl or show your teeth. I'll whip you if you do. I'm quite competent to do the job. If you think I'm not, just go ahead and be insulting and act the snob and get critical and sneer; the whole bag of tricks you put on when you want to hurt anybody's feelings. I may not be able to prevent you. But I can make you sorry. And I surely will. How would you like to go back to town with two black eyes and your classical nose a bit off center?"
Rod told him all this in an ordinary conversational tone. And when he issued such a direct challenge, he was not merely letting a little steam off his youthful chest. He had a feeling that the only way to deal with Grove was to defy him,—to act first. The threat of personal chastisement was perhaps Rod's only concession to a personal animus. He meant precisely what he said. There was a definite limit to what he would permit Grove to do and say, where Mary was concerned. A dozen times in his life his hands had doubled into fists against Grove—an involuntary action. He was—or he had been—a little ashamed of this eagerness to do bodily damage to his brother. Once, long ago, Grove's domineering tactics had roused Phil out of his placidity, and Rod had felt his heart uplifted at sight of Grove knocked sprawling with a single hearty punch. Not that Grove lacked the fighting heart; he would have fought Phil to a finish then and there, but for their father's scandalized interference. Grove couldn't stand long in a losing fight; he couldn't take punishment; that was a weakness both his brothers had fathomed long before.
And Rod had never forgotten that for weeks thereafter Grove was politic, to say the least, in his invasions of Phil's territory. Nor had Rod ever quite rid himself of the feeling that it would be a pleasure to repeat such a chastisement with his own hands. They were blood-brothers. There was even a profound physical likeness, except that Grove ran slightly to beef. But they didn't think, or act, or feel alike. They were antagonistic at every point where their lives touched. And Rod did not mean, if he could help it, to let this scowling elder duplicate of himself put a single spoke in the wheel which promised to revolve so smoothly for Mary and himself.
It was so childish, Rod said to himself impatiently, when Grove left him with an inarticulate growl, for him to take it that way. What difference need it make to Grove whom his brother married? Grove was the biggest toad in a puddle where big toads were common.
But it was the nature of the man to restrict the splashing to such as he approved, if it were in his power. It was also the nature of the man to be greedy of power, to exercise it arbitrarily if he could, regardless of justice or even common sense.
For the class of people out of which Mary Thorn had sprung Grove Norquay had only a disdainful recognition. They were the material upon which such as he were ordained to thrive. Rod knew Grove and Grove's crowd. Grove's dignity would suffer at their hands. Grove would be maddened by jocular references to his new sister-in-law. A hand-logger's daughter! How quaint of Rod! Grove would be as disagreeable to Mary as he dared, as vindictive as he could. He was made that way,—more vindictive over trifles than he would be over a deadly wrong.
Rod wondered why their father had never been able to see the weakness of this his son. Phil did. Phil had frankly expected adébâclein Grove's financial operations. It hadn't come. He throve, waxed great. Nevertheless, quoth Phil, in a moment of pessimism, a man may successfully direct a great profit-making enterprise and still be a poor specimen of manhood, a gross, self-centered, unstable egotist. Rod agreed.
Mr. Grove Norquay tarried only two hours at Hawk's Nest. His visage and manner were at no time genial. He acknowledged his introduction to Mary in about as distant a fashion as he could effect. And having had a wide experience in freezing undesirables, Grove could be appallingly glacial when he tried. His iciness was wasted on Mary. She merely smiled, gazed at him with bland unconcern. She was fairly good at that. Thereafter, during a brief, general conversation Grove took pains neither to address her nor to look at her, except for an occasional appraising glance.
He exploded a small bomb in the vicinity of his wife after luncheon.
"We're going back within the hour," he said. His tone was brusque, snappy.
"Must you go back so soon?" Laska inquired amiably. "It was hardly worth the long run."
"I said 'we,'" Grove bore hard on the pronoun. "If you have any things to take, better have them got ready."
"But, good heavens, Grove,mustI go back to town on such short notice? Has anything extraordinary happened?"
Laska was frankly astonished.
"Nothing has happened. But I'm afraid you must. I came especially for you."
Laska looked thoughtful for a moment.
"Of course," she said dryly, "when one has promised to love, honor, andobey, one hasn't much choice. I'll have my bags sent aboard. Give a whoop when you're ready to leave."
She rose. Her gaze swept the faces of the others, came back to Grove. It seemed to Rod that her glance flashed hostility at her husband, although she was smiling. And in the same breath he caught a queer flicker of expression on Phil's usually immobile face. Undercurrents. Veiled swirls of feeling. Rod sensed them all about him, as if a state of tension had been set up. That, he thought irritably, was Grove's usual effect. If he were crossed, ever so slightly, he proceeded at once to generate an atmosphere.
"He had to get at somebody so he takes it out on Laska," Rod said to himself. "Snarly beast. If she'd been keen on going to town, he'd have insisted on her staying here. Phil's sore. I wonder if the old boy's still a little tender about Laska?"
The answer to that came within half an hour, when Rod had forgotten the passing thought. He had gone out on the porch to smoke. There was a recess behind a bulging window. There Rod found a chair. He sat deep in his own mixed reflections. Phil turned a corner and stood by a pillar, hands deep in his pockets. Just as Rod was about to speak, Laska came out. She was hatted and gloved, carrying a small bag.
"Good-by, old scout," she said whimsically. "It's been very pleasant here the last few days. I thought I was going to get acquainted with you all over again. But the oracle decrees otherwise. Will you come and see me in town?"
Phil shook his head.
"Why not?"
"Always too busy," he said briefly.
"Of course," she agreed, after a pause. "How stupid of me to forget that. Well, good-by."
They shook hands. Laska vanished around the house. Rod saw her appear on the gravel walk, joined by Mary, Dorothy and the others. He didn't need to ask why Phil was not with them to speed the departing guest. The expression on Phil's face as he stood looking after Laska told its own story. Rod understood. He was streaked with the same vein of constancy to an affection, an ideal, a conviction. He was supremely sorry for Phil—for them both.
"Five years," he thought, "and it hurts him yet. Laska knows it, too. And she hasn't a shred of an illusion about Grove. Poor devils. And they have to go right on playing the game."
There was a different sort of game afoot, however, the petty malice of which was presently disclosed to Rod.
Within the month events marched one upon the heels of the other as if set in motion by some unseen intelligence working to an inscrutable plan.
Dorothy left for her home in Victoria. Phil's chum and his wife departed. The cousins returned to Montreal. Norquay senior betook himself to town. Rod and Mary had Hawk's Nest largely to themselves, with Phil coming and going on theHaida, his fingers lightly on the pulse of the Norquay activities in the woods. And there was Grandfather Norquay, who never left Hawk's Nest now, who sometimes kept his room for days at a stretch, appearing only occasionally at table for a meal. He was growing feebler, Rod noted. He walked abroad now with two sticks instead of one.
So for a matter of ten days Rod and his wife were left pretty much to their own devices. Time rested lightly on their hands. They were still too engrossed in each other to count hours or days.
Then theKowloonslid into the landing one mid-afternoon. If Rod's father had hand-picked a few people to welcome Rod and Mary home, so Grove had selected his week-end guests for a purpose. If he had not openly primed them, he must have indicated his attitude.
Rod got that impression at once. By dark, when they began to dance on the roomy porch, this impression had grown to a certainty. Laska hadn't come. With the lot Rod had only a casual acquaintance. They were all some one or the children of some one, and like most of Grove's friends, they were accustomed to a speedy pace.
Rod perceived that there was a compact to ignore Mary. It was too pointed to be accidental. The women simply didn't see her. The men were perfunctory. They were not rude. They were much too finished a product for that. They simply didn't include Rod's wife in anything that was said or done. But that was quite enough. A rapier in skilled hands is as deadly as a spear.
Through that first evening Rod simmered. It was his home, the home of his fathers. As matters stood, his rights and privileges there were equal to Grove's. He knew he was under fire—platoon fire from skilful ambush. And he couldn't shoot back. It didn't injure him. But it did enrage him. It was so petty. Cheap malice. And stupid, useless,—because Rod knew that Grove and Grove's friends could neither make nor mar him socially or any other way. These people, with their wealth, their modishness, their perfect assurance, were after all only a certain clique. That portion of the Norquay family which counted most had accepted Mary Thorn, at first out of common courtesy and thereafter because they found her well worth acceptance. The outer fringe of the Norquay connection would follow suit, and all who knew them would be governed thereby.
But that knowledge did not lessen Rod's growing anger at such tactics, nor still a little fear of the effect on Mary. This—this sort of thing precisely—was what she had foreseen and feared and shrunk from. It was only a passing phase, Rod knew. But he could see that it rankled. She bore herself stoutly, as impassive as a Chinese mandarin. No more than Rod himself would she or did she retreat under fire. She did her duty as a hostess in a difficult situation. But when they withdrew to their own rooms, at the end of an interminable evening, she lay back in a chair silent and thoughtful, while Rod spilled a vessel of wrath on his brother's head.
"Don't get fussed up about it, Rod," she said at last. "It doesn't matter much, does it? If what I've seen of these people this afternoon and evening is a fair sample of their normal behavior, I wouldn't get on with them even if they wanted me to. I've overheard more suggestive things and double-edged remarks in the last few hours than I ever heard in all my life put together. If that's smartness, I'll never be smart. I don't feel as if I'd been slighted. I'm glad they didn't fall on my neck. I don't like them."
"Nor I," Rod growled. "Grove always did prefer damaged goods. But I don't like them trying to put over anything like that on me—on us. That's all. It's dirty."
"You can't do anything," Mary pointed out. "You can't challenge the assembled company to bestow courteous attention on your wife under pain of—what? If you even notice it, you'll only amuse them—make yourself ridiculous."
"Certainly. That's why it's so damned annoying."
"Forget it," she smiled. "Come and sit down by me. What does it matter?"
"I'll lock horns with him yet," Rod muttered.
Then, sitting on a hassock beside her with Mary's fingers weaving tangles in his hair, Rod forgot his irritation.
It returned the following day. Grove moved about among his guests, bland, courteous, engaging. He was at home in the polite raillery that passes for wit in such gatherings, where open homage is paid chiefly to the social trinity of food, liquor and dancing, and where sex is no shrinking violet. Whenever his eyes met Rod's, Rod detected a malicious sparkle. Grove was enjoying the situation. And Rod yearned to make him smart for his petty, useless triumph. His exasperation grew with his helplessness.
"Come on," he said to his wife at four in the afternoon. "You can leave the dinner arrangements to Stagg. Let's go across the channel and get the taste out of our mouths."
They had dinner at Oliver Thorn's.
"Funny," Rod thought, as he sat on the calk-splintered porch steps watching the smoke curl and weave from the end of a cigarette. "Funny what an atmosphere can do to you. 'Better a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.' The ancient wisdom is still wisdom. If Grove can pull off that sort of thing whenever he likes, we'll have to leave Hawk's Nest. There's no defence against it."
They rowed home at dusk. Phil had come back. The three of them sat out on the porch and observed the merriment quickening to a livelier tempo as the evening wore on. Phil made no comment for a long time.
"One would imagine," he observed at last, rather dryly, "that we three were taboo. We don't seem to be very popular with this crowd."
"There's been about thirty hours of this semi-glacial period," Rod informed him. "It's getting old with me."
"What about you?" Phil turned to Mary,
She shrugged her shoulders.
"I'm like the minister when he was kicked by the mule. I consider the source," she said.
"Proper attitude," Phil said. "I've been taking notice. I know our elder brother's pleasing little tricks. I wouldn't let it annoy me, sister Mary. Grove often starts things he can't finish. I didn't think he was quite stupid enough for this."
TheKowloondeparted early Monday morning. Thinking it over as he watched her whip around the Gillard light, Rod decided that honors were easy for the time being. But he very nearly determined to force an open clash if Grove tried to carry it off again.
This clash, which Rod foresaw, and which he perhaps subconsciously welcomed, was nearly due. They had Hawk's Nest to themselves, its cool quiet rooms and corridors, the pleasant porches and grounds bright with flowers and scented shrubs, its sweep of velvet lawn and rolling acres of parked forest, where the great trees lifted plumed heads to the sun. Into that blended atmosphere of peace and permanence and beauty no jarring note came until another week-end brought back theKowloon. This time Norquay senior was home. Rod sat back to see if Grove meant to carry on with his design of making Mary's road as rough as lay in his power,—and also to see how their father would take such obvious malice, if it were shown.
But Norquay senior missed all the calculated slights Grove and his guests adroitly managed to put on Rod and his wife. It seemed to Rod that they played up to Grove's lead with accomplished skill. It was a new sort of game and Mary Norquay was "It." They found it amusing. Or was it only that they were an ill-bred lot? Rod was not sure of Grove's company, but he was sure of Grove. Grove saw to it, subtly, that Rod should understand what he was driving at. Grove enjoyed the situation. Rod's self-control didn't deceive him. He knew that Rod was fuming inside. He took opportunity to let Rod know that he knew.
But something more fundamental brought matters to a head. Lacking that, Rod would probably have ended by complete indifference to what Grove and his friends did or said.
TheKowloonwas due to leave Monday afternoon. At ten in the morning, Rod sat reading in the library. Phil was writing letters at a desk in one corner. Norquay senior was walking in the grounds with Mary. From his seat Rod could see the tall tweed-clad figure sauntering beside his wife. His ill-humor vanished. That was answer enough to Grove and his clique. He glanced indifferently up at Grove's entrance. That gentleman didn't seem so gay and festive this morning. He bit off a cigar end with unnecessary force and sat smoking. He scowled. His eyes were a trifle glassy, the lids reddened. Faint shadows showed beneath the lower lids.
"The morning after the night before sits heavier on him than it used to," Rod thought cynically. "The pace is beginning to tell. Damn fool."
He resumed his reading.
The butler came in.
"The foreman of the Valdez camp and two men want to see you, sir," he addressed Phil.
"Send 'em here," Phil replied, without looking up.
Rod continued to read. There was nothing unusual in men from the camps coming to Hawk's Nest with complaints or for instructions. Disputes between men and logging bosses had been threshed out times without number in that pleasant, book-lined room. The Norquay policy had always been patriarchal.
Stagg ushered in Jim Handy and two men. One was Andy Hall. He nodded to Rod with a genial grin. Handy looked fretful. His short, white mustache stood out at the aggressive angle it always took when things went wrong. All three had shed their calked boots and working garments. They wore their town clothes. Above clean white collars their faces were burned to the brown of weathered oak by summer sun and hot winds.
"I got a strike on my hands," Handy announced to Phil. "They want fifty cents a day raise all round. They want bathtubs. I expect maybe they want regular hotel waiters to sling hash for 'em, too," Handy permitted himself a logger's witticism. "These two guys represent the crew."
Phil turned to the loggers.
"Striking is rather a new kink in the logging business," he said casually. "If you don't like the job, why don't you quit?"
"Quitting wouldn't change things," Andy Hall replied. "You want to get out timber because it is profitable. We want to work because we have to work for somebody. But we would like better working conditions. Seems more reasonable to ask for 'em on the job than to quit the job."
"Are you two a self-appointed committee?" Phil inquired.
"No," Hall assured him. "We were picked by the crowd to act as spokesmen. A hundred and forty men can't all talk to a boss at once. You can take it for granted we speak for the entire crew."
"All right, we'll take it for granted," Phil returned. "Just step out into the hall for a minute or two. After I've had a word with Handy you can state your case."
"You're foolish to waste time discussing anything whatever with these fellows," Grove remarked, as the door closed on them. "I'd pay off the works and have a new crew sent up. The bird that spoke is too smooth-tongued for a logger. He's got agitator written all over him."
"Best high-rigger I ever saw," Jim Handy growled. "All loggers agitates now and then."
Phil paid no attention to his brother's comment. He addressed Handy.
"When did they pull this strike?"
"This mornin'. They chewed the fat till midnight in the bunk house. After breakfast not a man turned out. They wouldn't talk. They said these two would talk for 'em. I've told you what they want. Fifty cents a day raise. Six bathtubs."
"Bathtubs!" Grove snorted disdainfully.
"Short notice," Phil ruminated. "H'm. Have they been kicking?"
"Loggers always kicks," Handy grumbled. "They've been growlin' some. I've told 'em they always got the privilege of quittin'. I've fired three or four of the mouthy ones. When they all laid down at once, I reckoned I'd better put it up to you."
"What do you think about it yourself?" Phil asked him. "Can you get another crew together and go ahead?"
Handy shifted uneasily.
"I hear men's scarce in town," he said. "If I can dig up a crew, of course I can go ahead. But no pick-up crew will get out as much timber. Not for a month or two anyhow. Most of this bunch has been on the job since the camp opened."
"We're paying standard wages," Phil observed. "If it were left to you, Handy, would you give them the raise?"
"I don't know but I would," the logging boss brightened. "Cheapest. One or two of the big Island camps have tilted wages. This crew can sure get out timber. Breakin' in new men costs money."
"Just what have you told them?" Phil inquired. "If you haven't stirred them up, I may be able to talk them out of it."
Handy grinned.
"I was darn careful not to stir 'em up. I know loggers. I'm a logger myself. I didn't say much of anything. When I seen they was set, I just said, 'Well we'll put it up to headquarters. I hire and fire, but the owners sign the pay checks'."
"All right. Send those two in as you go out," Phil said finally. "I'll see you down on the float after I get through."
Andy Hall and his companion entered.
"Tell me what you want," Phil said briefly, "and why you consider yourselves entitled to it."
"We ask for fifty cents a day raise for every outside worker on the job, from whistle-punks to hook-tenders," Wright voiced their demands. "We ask for you to put in at least half a dozen baths, tubs, or showers; showers would suit us best and they're easily installed. That's all."
"Why go on strike at snap notice?" Phil complained. "Why didn't you ask for these things? Does it seem to you that the way to get your claims considered is to disorganize the work first and then make your demands?"
Wright motioned to Andy Hall.
"You tell him."
"Mr. Norquay," Hall began quietly, "if you'd ever worked as a logger in a logging camp you'd know that asking for changes doesn't bring them about. There are a hundred and forty men in your woods on Valdez. We are, if I say so myself, as skookum a logging crew as ever was got together on the B.C. coast. And we have been asking for these things. Jim Handy is your representative on the job. We haven't anything against old Jim. He's as fair as the average woods boss. But he has exactly the same idea as most employers—keep wages down and prices up—get all the work possible out of the men. His own job as foreman depends on getting results. For the last month every time anybody has tried to talk to him about wages or camp conditions, somebody has got fired. This particular crew is tired of a take-it-or-leave-it basis of employment. That's why there's a show-down. Neither of the things we ask for is unreasonable. It is unreasonable to fire a man for wanting to talk about his wages and the conditions under which he must live."
Phil eyed Andy Hall searchingly for a second or two. Grove had twisted sidewise in his chair and glared at the logger with visible displeasure.
"Let's take up the matter of the bathtubs," Phil resumed. "Why should we supply casual labor with baths when there is a running stream through the camp and the sea is at the door?"
Rod shifted in his seat. It sounded rather callous. He thought of the unction with which he had heard worthy people declare that cleanliness is next to godliness.
Andy shrugged his shoulders.
"I could easily justify bathing facilities on moral and sanitary grounds," he said impassively. "I'll simply put it this way. Most men prefer to be clean. If it's impossible for them to be reasonably clean, they'll be uncomfortable. A man who is uncomfortable gets discontented. A discontented workman is a poor investment. There are a hundred and forty men coming out of your woods every night, stinking with sweat and dust in the summer, plastered with mud in the winter. There is one shallow wooden trough with tin washbasins and a half-inch tap. We make shift with the creek and the salt-chuck in summer. But a man who has done ten hours' hard labor in the woods can't stand naked outdoors and bathe in cold weather."
"I never before heard of bathing as an issue in a logging camp," Phil smiled. "Well, we'll concede the bathing facilities. We'll agree to build a bathroom and install pipe showers with a hot-water supply."
"Now this raise in wages," he continued judicially, after a brief pause. "I really don't believe we can go that far. We're paying the standard wages—a fairly liberal scale, it seems to me. I suggest that you go back and get the crew out to work on the understanding that we'll adjust this claim for wages between now and next payday. This strike is too much in the nature of a holdup. Wage questions can't be settled offhand. Don't you think that would be the most amiable way of ending the tie-up? The shower-bath matter will be attended to at once."
Andy Hall shook his head.
"I'd like to be polite and agreeable," he said. "But I'm not acting for myself as an individual, you must remember. The men threshed this out pretty well before they took action. They won't move a stick unless they get this raise. They've tried to talk to Handy and Jim simply grinned and fired the men who insisted on talking. The point is this. There is no such thing as a standard wage in the logging industry. You are paying as much as most camps, more than some, less than others. The International, on Vancouver Island, employing over four hundred men, is paying what we ask. So are two or three smaller concerns."
"And," Hall continued without heat, as deliberate as if he were intoning a column of figures, "we are working under a foreman who is a driver. That's nothing against Jim Handy. We're not sore on him. A logging boss holds a boss's job by virtue of ability to get out logs. But old Jim keeps a crew on its toes. If a man isn't up and coming, he doesn't work long for Handy. We're putting more timber per man per day into the booming ground than any crew on the coast."
"How do you know that?" Phil demanded sharply.
"We have made it our business to find out," Hall answered imperturbably. "You know it's so—if you keep tab on your business. That's why we want more money. We're earning it. We're entitled to it."
"And," Wright put in, "if we don't get it, we're through. Nobody wants to work on a job where he knows he's getting too much the worst of the deal."
"We can, I suppose you know, pay you all off and get another crew," Phil reminded.
"And we can get other jobs," Hall replied unruffled. "But we'd both be loser. No, that wouldn't benefit either party to this dispute. You have a reputation for being fair, as fairness is reckoned in logging camps. That's why you have efficient crews and a minimum of labor trouble. We know we are entitled to what we ask. If we don't get it, we'll be good and sure it isn't a question of the Norquay Estate being unable to pay such wages and still show a profit. We'll know the refusal is purely on the grounds of policy. And if a logger's frank opinion is anything to you, you'll find it damned poor policy."
Phil sat tapping his pencil on the desk, smiling a little to himself.
"Go down to the landing and wait for me there," he said. "I'll give you a definite answer inside of half an hour."
The door closed on the two loggers. The three brothers looked at each other.
"Cattle!" Grove broke out with quite unnecessary heat. "A mob like that attempting to dictate to us."
"I'd hardly call two men a mob," Phil commented dryly. "It is scarcely dictating for men to state the conditions under which they are willing to work."
"Are you going to let them stick you up like that?" Grove demanded unpleasantly.
"Your way of putting it is offensive, but I know what you mean," Phil maintained his placidity. "I rather think I shall. I'm considering. We can certainly afford to give them a raise. Handy is a driver. He does get out—"
"It isn't a question of affording it," Grove broke in. "It's a question of principle. You simply cannot afford to allow a crew of dissatisfied loggers to imagine for a minute that they can tell you how you're to run your business."
"Handy, as I said," Phil went on unheeding, "does get out timber."
"You mean," Rod supplemented, on the spur of an impulse, "he has the faculty of keeping a crew going at top speed, and they get out timber. Well, I can vouch for that, after twelve months under him. If these fellows were paid on the basis of production, they'd get bigger wages than they're asking. I made some calculations myself from time to time before I left the camp. Hall's figures are conservative. I got cost figures from the town office and reckoned the output. That Valdez camp for six months straight put out twenty per cent more timber per man than Hardwicke Island. I suppose you know that?"
Phil nodded.
"That high-rigger is almost too clever to be a logger," he observed. "Know anything about him, Rod? Notice the beggar's language? Most reasoned and unemotional presentment of a case I ever heard a logger make."
"He's a good man on the job. He has been there since the camp opened," Rod prudently refrained from mentioning Andy's economic heresies. He liked Andy Hall and he foresaw Andy marked as an "agitator," that abused term which once tagged to a workingman makes him anathema to most employers. "In fact, I'd say old Jim has a crew it would be a pity to break up—if getting out timber efficiently is any object—for so small a matter as fifty cents a day—and bathtubs."
"They never bathe," Grove sneered. "They don't look as if they did. I never got close enough to smell 'em, but I suppose they don't mind it themselves."
Rod sat silent. It struck him that Grove was thrusting at him. And it struck him, too, how little either of his brothers knew about the men they were discussing. They didn't discuss them as men, so much as material,—a commodity, a necessary part of the producing machinery which had the inconvenient quality of voicing its wants. As if a donkey engine should protest against an overload. Rod himself had got under the logger's skin. He would never be able to think of them except as men, to deal with them otherwise. They had their vices and virtues, but they were not impersonal machines. He could not impart this knowledge, convey such an attitude and feeling, to his brothers.
"First time I ever heard 'em kicking for baths," Phil grinned. "Did you start a movement for cleanliness while you were among them, Rod?"
"It wasn't necessary," Rod assured him. "Most loggers like to be clean if there's a chance. I bathed in the creek like the rest. I've scrubbed myself off in a hand-basin in the winter. I didn't think much of the inconvenience. I suppose because I knew I could get away from it any time I wanted to. They can't. I'm for plenty of baths, in every camp we run. It's only common decency."
"That's simple. I expect, on the whole, we'd better give them what they ask without quibbling. I've always found it pays to keep 'em reasonably satisfied."
"You'd better consult the governor before you commit yourself," Grove said meaningly. "I'm opposed to it myself."
"My dearest elder brother," Phil shot back instantly with exaggerated, icy politeness, "when you elected to pursue a career in finance, the direction of the timber operations of the Norquay Estate devolved on me. So long as I have the authority I shall use my own judgment. Yours not to reason why—yours but to reap the profits that accrue. You try putting your fingers in this pie and you'll get them pinched. Do you get me?"
"You know," he went on sarcastically, after a brief silence, in which Grove's face reddened perceptibly, "you really aren't in any condition to give an impartial opinion on anything so early this morning. Too heavy a hangover. Too many cocktails. Too much of a muchness. You can't stand the pace the way you used to. You come out of your morning bath grouching instead of singing. So leave the loggers and logging to me. I have about decided to concede them both points."
"Iwould," Rod impulsively put himself on record. "Not only as a matter of policy, but as a matter of simple justice."
"Oh, you," Grove turned on him. In his voice repressed fury and utter contempt seemed to struggle for mastery. "One would naturally expectyouto support any extravagant claim from such a source. You fraternized with them. No doubt you find yourself quite comfortable on terms of equality with them. Particularly since you went the length of picking up a wife from among them. I have had about—"
Rod got to his feet. Something in his face cut short Grove's sentence.
"What you've had is not a patch to what you'll get," Rod said. "You yellow dog!"
The open palm of his hand popped with a dull smacking sound on his brother's mouth.
But characterizing a man as a yellow dog does not necessarily make him one. Grove spat out the crushed cigar and bitter ashes and lunged at Rod. He missed. While he was off balance, Rod knocked him down.
He rose, stood one hesitant moment, hands up like a boxer, head hunched between his shoulders. But when he rushed it was not to strike, only to grasp.
"Don't let him get hold of you," Phil warned sharply.
Rod didn't need the warning. He knew Grove's strength, was aware of his purpose. In school, Grove had been a hammer thrower, a putter of the shot. He had never been beaten at his weight as a wrestler. And though he was ten years past those athletics, he was dangerous still at grips. Rod twisted aside, evaded his reach, struck and dodged, struck and dodged again, quick sharp punishing blows that jerked Grove's hands defensively up to guard his face. When he did that, Rod put all his weight into a blow that would have ended the scrimmage if it had reached Grove's jaw. It was deflected by his forearm, smashed his ear. But it staggered him against a bookcase so that broken glass fell with a tinkle. Rod followed up his advantage, and Grove went down again.
Phil had his back against the door.
"It's locked," he announced calmly, in the brief time it took Grove to rise. "May the best man win."
"The best man will win," Rod panted.
He tingled. A fine exultant feeling that he dealt justice in the only adequate manner uplifted him. He had seldom fought in the twenty-three years of his existence. He had never imagined it would give him so keen a satisfaction to knock a man down. Yet it didn't surprise him. He knew in that moment that for years he had been longing to punish Grove as he intended to punish him now. Even in that stress of passion his brain, the rational, critical part of him, found time to wonder why so brutal an action seemed so eminently fit, so natural, such a pleasure.
Grove came at him again, striking wild, blood trickling from his mouth, from his nostrils. In the shift and exchange he trapped Rod against a heavy chair. They grappled, went to the floor with a crash. Grove's arm pinned him by the neck. Rod felt the other seeking a crotch hold. He made a violent effort, broke loose, thrust himself clear, bounded to his feet.
He had matched strength for strength and beaten Grove at his own strong man's game. There was a thrill in that. He could break any hold Grove could put on him. When he realized that, he dropped all defense. He crowded within the scope of Grove's arms and struck as hard and quickly as he could drive his arms, fists thudding against Grove's body, over his heart, on his face,—until Grove's legs buckled under him and he sank on all fours.
Rod stepped back, dropped his hands.
"Enough?" he asked briefly.
Grove nodded, voiceless. His face was an unsightly mess.
And as Rod opened his mouth to speak further, the library door rattled, an imperative knock sounded. The voice of Norquay senior demanded testily to know why the door was locked. Phil flashed a look of mild dismay at Rod and turned the key. Their father walked in.
From a folding chair on the after deck of theHaidaRod looked back at Hawk's Nest. The cruiser's screw churned up bubbles and foam astern. Dent Island and the gray stone house with its red roof, the pale green of grass and the duskier hue of the woods behind were receding fast. They vanished altogether as they rounded the Gillard light and stood away south.
"I was born there," Rod said simply. "I never went home but I was glad to be there. I never left it before without being sorry to go."
"Aren't you sorry now?" Mary asked.
"No. Are you?"
"No," she said frankly. "It was lovely—it is lovely. Everybody was good to me. I was quite happy there until—"
"Precisely. It's Grove's bailiwick when it comes to a show-down. That being so, it's no place for us. I'm glad to be on the wing. I'd rather paddle my own canoe than be a guest on somebody's ship. It won't perhaps be quite so pleasant for you, old thing."
"The only unpleasantness I dread," Mary rejoined, "is your beginning to wonder if it was worth while, after all. A lot of people aren't going to be able to see me with a microscope, Rod. You don't seem to get that yet. I can't play the game the way they do. They're so chesty and cocksure. All their lives they've lived well, dressed well, gone where they chose with perfect assurance, accepted by their equals and deferred to by their inferiors. They have me at a disadvantage. I don't speak their favorite shibboleths, or see life from the same angle. I'm not sure," she hesitated wistfully, "that I will ever want to. But it would be dreadful if you found that you were being severely penalized for marrying out of your class, as they probably put it. That's the only thing I have any reason to dread. All the other possibilities," she made a quick inclusive gesture, "being poor; making the most of a little, longing for the unattainable, a great effort for a few simple pleasures—I know them all. They aren't so very terrible. They don't frighten me. But for you, because of me, to cut loose from everything and every one that has made up your life and then begin to chafe under it—that does."
Rod glanced over his shoulder. The deck was empty. He put one arm around her, shook her gently.
"I'll pull some caveman stuff on you," he threatened tenderly, "if I ever hear you talk like that again. In the first place, you mean more to me than anything or anybody. In the second place, nobody is going to penalize me. They won't try. There's no real reason they should. You'll see. While the governor is horribly annoyed about what he calls a disgraceful quarrel, he doesn't even dream of blaming you. He lays it to his sons' fiery tempers and shameful lack of self-control. He'll cool off. And having known you, he'd never dream of following Grove's lead. I know him. He's fair. If we should happen to live in Vancouver this winter, and we care to go out, you'll see that most of these high-flying friends of Grove's will conveniently forget, and be very nice to us—because we are what we are. There are enough people of some consequence to accept us as such and the rest will follow suit. Oh, I know them. They're just like sheep. That's a side issue. It can't make any difference to us."
Mary snuggled her hand in his.
"I hope not," she murmured.
"It can't," he declared. "It wouldn't make much difference if it worked out the other way. No," he grew reflective, "I'm like you. I don't see things from the same angle as most of the sleek, comfortably insulated people I know, nor do I want to. I want to know where I'm going, and why. It isn't just enough to eat, drink and be merry. I'm lucky in a material way, perhaps. I happened to be well-born, and I've had security wrapped about me like a blanket. Still, I doubt the value and permanence of a lot of things that many people—my own people included—take for granted. I run true to form, just as Grove does. Only I think his form is rotten. That's why we don't hitch. I know we should have come to an open break sometime, if you had never been a factor. I despise him because he is what he is and does what he does. And he hates me because he's impressionable enough to feel that contempt. Anybody or anything that Grove can't dominate he dislikes. You know, I have a fancy that he sometimes feels he's shoddy, and tries to bolster himself up with the high-and-mighty pose. But after all that doesn't matter, either. I'm what I am and I shouldn't be cocky about it, I suppose."
Rod sat silent, recalling that scene in the library. All the hot anger had evaporated long ago. He was not sorry. No. But he was sobered. It had given him food for thought. His mind was so made that it fed upon, digested for good or evil, every crisis, each outstanding event, the significance of whatever stirred him deeply. Certain phases of a conversation with his father kept recurring to him. Certain things had been said—some calmly enough—some with a touch of passion. Rod thought again with impatience that his father had a blind spot where Grove was concerned. But it didn't matter much now. He had taken the only reasonable course open to him after that encounter with Grove, the simplest, most dignified solution. He could not remain at Hawk's Nest and preserve peace and dignity. He recognized that there lurked in him an eagerness to clash with Grove on almost any provocation. They were fundamentally antagonistic; they had always been. The gulf between them grew wider as they matured; the deep-rooted distrust and dislike of motive and action became more profound.
"It's as well the break came," he said aloud. "It was bound to come over something. I've simply been marking time. Now I can do—whatever I can do. Both of us. We don't have to follow copy any more. We can make our own copy. I rather like the idea."
"It listens good to me," Mary said gayly. And they smiled in understanding.
"For the first time in my life I feel like a free man," Rod said abruptly. "Isn't that queer? Free in the sense that I am absolutely at liberty to work out my own destiny, in so far as any man can do that."
Phil came up from below. He sat on the low cabin roof, dangling his long legs.
"Well, children," he said cheerfully, "what's your program? Going to stay in town awhile?"
"Not long," Rod answered. "We're going to resume our interrupted honeymoon. For a month or so. After that—well, I'm not making any cast-iron plans."
"When you get ready to do something, let me know," Phil remarked. "This blow-up has sort of opened my eyes. It made me realize that our family solidarity is badly shot. Grove feels his oats more and more. If I weren't more or less passive, and if I didn't get a certain amount of satisfaction out of carrying on the show—and there's the governor to consider; he is a good sort—I'd quit. I may have to by and by. I won't stand interference. If I have to drop the reins, I'd like to take a whirl at something that might grow. We could make a go of it in timber, I think. We both know our ground there. I've got some money put aside. Think it over, Rod."
"I surely will. Only, as I said, I've no cast-iron plan. If you want to make money, why not try finance?Á laGrove. That seems to be gorgeously productive."
"Finance. Huh!" Phil snorted. "I'd rather play poker. I don't want so much to get something as todosomething."
"Andy Hall said to me once that the fundamental principle of modern business is to do everybody and do 'em first," Rod drawled. "That ought to give you scope enough."
They laughed. It was a quaint notion. As such it amused them.
Rod's expressed intention of resuming their honeymoon was based on an impulse with which, when he defined it, he found Mary in complete accord. She was no echo. So that with her interest assured he proceeded to act.
A week later they debarked from a coastwise steamer on a float landing before a logging camp halfway up Bute Inlet. They had doubled on their course and come back to a point within thirty miles of Hawk's Nest to go on a voyage of exploration and discovery, as Rod whimsically defined their object. It was indeed a whim, based soundly on appreciation of natural beauty, of dusky still forests, of the sound of running water, the indefinable charm of wooded loveliness in which they could move untrammeled together, that had brought them here with a sturdy rowboat, a tent and bedding, fishing tackle and a supply of food. Camp fires and wood smoke at twilight amid these cathedral stillnesses that filled the untouched forest. This was what they desired, for the time.
A fisherman's motor boat carried them across the inlet for a sum, towing their loaded skiff astern.
"That's the place," Rod pointed. "Let us off here."
The fisherman chugged away. They sat in the boat, oars in hand, gazing up at cliffy slopes where the forest opened about mossy knolls, where ledges of bare rock barred the hillside, rising up and up from a short reach of gravelly shore where tiny wavelets broke at spaced intervals. The inlet ran northwest, curved away among high mountains. Far above and on either side of this great arm of the sea low hills rose to cliffs, cliffs ran up to precipices, and a jumble of cliff, gorge, precipice and virgin forest lifted far above to high, aloof peaks, domed with snow and studded with glaciers. The afternoon wind was but a sigh. All that sweep of sea and mountain range brooded in the sun as voiceless and changeless as when the first Norquay sailed theHermesto Dent Island more than a century before.
"This is something like, eh?" Rod murmured.
Mary nodded.
"It makes mefeel," she said. "I can't quite express it. I might if I had wings."
"I have a feeling too," Rod confessed. "But it's mostly one of emptiness in my tummy. Let's get ashore and make a pot of tea. The Hiding Place is just around the corner. Give way, men! I'll show you a sight."
They turned a jutting point and met a slow outsetting current. Against this Rod made his way straight for a cliff which, as they drew near, opened like a great window chiselled in solid granite. Through this the stream flowed, sluggish, deep, a pale-green translucence between high, damp walls. Somewhere within rose the monotone of a waterfall. The square framed broad-leaved maple tops. Higher up the pointed crests of cedar and the tufted plumes of fir stood sharp against the sky.
They rowed into the cleft, worked upstream between high, flood-scoured walls. In that chasm the sun touched only for an hour at noon. It was dark and cool. Mosses and maidenhair fern lightened black crevices with streaks and clusters of green. There was a beauty about this gloomy cleft floored with liquid emerald, but it was not a beauty one wished to embrace or linger with too long,—too cavernous, a little grim. Mary drew closer to Rod in that hundred-yard passage. But she clapped her hands when the boat drew clear. They came out into sunlight. They had passed through the canyon as if it were a door which led to a tiny flat cupped in the hills, all clear of dense forest, almost free from thickets, clothed with bracken. The creek wimpled between low, gravelly banks. Between two maples on one side stood a small cabin of split cedar. Fireweed lifted blazing heads in a mass on one bank. A small grassy plot surrounded the cabin and the two trees. Rod sidled the boat in to the bank.
"Isn't this some little retreat?" he asked. "I came in here once long ago when we were cruising up the Inlet. Only had half an hour or so to spare. The crowd was in a hurry. I've always wanted to come back and camp awhile. This creek comes out of a lake in the woods about two miles inland. They say it's a gem. A trapper built the cabin. He's supposed to have made a blazed line to the lake."
"Lovely, lovely," his wife murmured. "And this country of ours has so many of these beauty spots. Sometimes I think we were so fortunate to be born here, Rod. If one could paint this. If one were a combination of Corot and Turner."
"Maybe one is," Rod commented genially. "How do we know what we can do? We've never had a chance to try. But you'd have to splash this 'on a seven-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair.' There are some things man can't reduce to his own dimensions; can't reproduce in miniature. How could you get the effect of this? Lofty heights. Sweeping distances. Big forests of big trees. It's all too—too superlative. Nature was in the mood for a grand gesture when she fashioned this part of the world, Mary mine."