The Man in the Twilight Part 12

Oh, yes, there wasn't a thing going to break my hold until he was dead--dead. You got me in time to save me from wrecking my whole life.

And you got in at--the risk of your own. If I'd killed him all the things and purposes I've worried with since I left college would have been just so much junk; and I'd have drifted into the life of a b.u.m lumber-jack without any sort of notion beyond rye whiskey, and the camp women, and a well swung axe. You saved me from that. You saved me from myself. Well, you're real welcome to ask me any old thing, and I'll hand you all the truth there is in me. I'm an 'illegitimate.' I'm one of the world's friendless. I'm a product of a wealthy man's licence and unscruple. I'm an outcast amongst the world's honest born. But it's no matter. I'm not on the squeal. Those who're responsible for my being did their best to hand me the things a man most needs. Mind, and body, and will. Further, they gave me all that education, books, and college can hand a feller. More than that, my father, who seems to have had more honesty than you'd expect, handed me a settlement of a hundred thousand dollars the day I became twenty-one. I never knew him, and I never knew my mother. The circ.u.mstances of my birth were simply told me on my twenty-first birthday. I know no more. And I care nothing to hunt out those spectres that don't figger to hand a feller much comfort. The rest is easy. I hope I'm a feller of some guts--"

Father Adam nodded, and his eyes lit.

"Sure," was all he commented.

"Anyway, I feel like it," Bull laughed. "When I learned all these things I started right in to think. I thought like h.e.l.l. I said to myself something like this: 'There's nothing to hold me where I am.

There's no one around to care a curse. There's that feeling right inside the pit of my stomach makes me feel I want to make good. I want to build up around me all that my birth has refused me. A name, a life circle, a power, a--anyway, get right out and do things! Well, what was I going to do? It needed thinking. Then I hit the notion."

He laughed again. He was gazing in at himself and laughing at the conceits he knew were real, and strong, and vital.

"Say." He nodded at the prospect through the doorway. "There it is. This country's beginning. We don't know half it means to the world yet. Well, I hadn't enough capital to play with, so I resolved right away to start in and learn a trade from its first step to its topmost rung, and to earn my keep right through. Meanwhile my capital's lying invested against the time I open out. I'm going to jump right into the groundwood pulp business when the time comes. And out of that I mean to build a name that folks won't easily forget. Well, I guess you won't find much that's interesting in all this. It don't sound anything particularly bright or new. But for what it is it's my notion, and--I'm going to put it through. That's why I'm here. I'm learning my job from the bottom."

The decision and force of the man were remarkable. The conciseness of his story, and his indifference to the tragedy of his birth, indicated a level mind under powerful control. And Father Adam knew he had made no mistake.

"It's the best story I've heard in years," he replied, a whimsical smile lighting his dark eyes.

"Is it?"

Bull's smile was no less whimsical.

"Yes. You've guts of iron, boy. And I've been looking years for just such a man."

"That sounds--tough," Bull laughed, but he was interested. "What's the job you want him for? Are you yearning to hand out a killing? Is it a trip--a trip to some waste s.p.a.ce of G.o.d's earth that 'ud freeze up a normal heart? Do you want a feller to beat the laws of G.o.d and man? Guts of iron! It certainly sounds tough, and I'm not sure you've found the feller you're needing."

"I am."

Father Adam was no longer smiling. The gravity of his expression gave emphasis to his words.

Bull was impressed. His laugh died out.

"I don't know I'm yearning," he said deliberately. "Anyway I don't quit the track I've marked out. That way there's nothing doing. It's a crank with me; I can't quit a notion."

"You don't have to."

"No?"

They were regarding each other steadily.

"Here, it's not my way to beat around," the missionary exclaimed suddenly. "When you find the thing you need you've got to act quick and straight. Just listen a while, while I make a talk. Ask all you need as I go along. And when I've done I'd thank you for a straight answer and quick. An answer that'll hold you, and bind you the way your own notions do."

"That's talk."

Bull nodded appreciatively. The missionary let his gaze wander to the pleasant sunlight through the doorway, where the flies and mosquitoes were basking.

"There was a fellow who started up a groundwood mill 'way out on the Labrador coast. He was bright enough, and a mighty rich man. And he'd got a notion--a big notion. Well, I know him. I know him intimately. I don't know if he's a friend to me or not. Sometimes I think he isn't.

Anyway, that doesn't matter to you. The thing that does matter is, he set out to do something big. His notions were always big. Maybe too big.

This notion was no less than to drive the Skandinavians out of the groundwood trade of this country. He figured his great mill was to be the nucleus of an all-Canadian and British combination, embracing the entire groundwood industry of this country. It was to be Canadian trade for Canada with the British Empire."

Bull emitted a low whistle.

"An elegant slogan," he commented.

He shifted his position. In his interest his pipe had gone out, and he leant forward on his upturned box.

"Yes," Father Adam went on. "And, like your notion, it was something not easily shifted from his mind. It was planned and figured to the last detail. It was so planned it could not fail. So he thought. So all concerned thought. You see, he had ten million dollars capital of his own; and he was something of a genius at figures and finance--his people reckoned. He was a man of some purpose, and enthusiasm, and--something else."

"Ah!"

Bull's alert brain was prompt to seize upon the reservation. But denial was instant.

"No. It wasn't drink, or women, or any foolishness of that sort," the missionary said. "The whole edifice of his purpose came tumbling about his ears from a totally unexpected cause. Something happened. Something happened to the man himself. It was disaster--personal disaster. And when it came a queer sort of weakness tripped him, a weakness he had always. .h.i.therto had strength to keep under, to stifle. His courage failed him, and the bottom of his purpose fell out like--that."

Father Adam clipped his fingers in the air and his regretful eyes conveyed the rest. Then, after a moment, he smiled.

"He'd no--iron guts," he said, with a sigh. "He had no stomach for battle in face of this--this disaster that hit him."

"It has no relation to his--undertaking?"

"None whatever. I know the whole thing. We were 'intimates.' I know his whole life story. It was a disaster to shake any man."

The missionary sighed profoundly.

"Yes, I knew him intimately," he went on. "I deplored his weakness. I censured it. Perhaps I went far beyond any right of mine to condemn. I don't know. I argued with him. I did all I could to support him. You see, I appreciated the splendid notion of the thing he contemplated.

More than that, I knew it could be carried out."

He shook his head.

"It was useless. This taint--this yellow streak--was part of the man. He could no more help it than you could help fighting to the death."

"Queer."

A sort of pitying contempt shone in the younger man's eyes.

"Queer?" Father Adam nodded. "It was--crazy."

"It surely was."

The missionary turned back to the prospect beyond the doorway. But it was only for a moment. He turned again and went on with added urgency.

"But the scheme wasn't wholly to be abandoned. It was--say, here was the crazy proposition he put up. You see I was his most intimate friend. He said: 'The forests are wide. They're peopled with men of our craft.

There must be a hundred and more men capable of doing this thing. Of putting it through. Well, the forests must provide the man, or the idea must die.' He said: 'We must find a man!' He said: 'You--you whose mission it is to roam the length and breadth of these forests--you may find such a man. If you do--when you do--if it's years hence--send him along here, and there's ten million dollars waiting for him, and all this great mill, and these timber limits inexhaustible waiting for him to go right ahead. It doesn't matter a thing who he is, or what he is, or where he comes from, so long as he gets this idea--sticks to it faithfully--and puts it through. I want nothing out of it for myself.

And the day he succeeds in the great idea all that would have been mine shall be his.'"

As Father Adam finished, he looked into the earnest, wonder-filled eyes of the other.

"Well?" he demanded.

Bull cleared his throat.