The Rapids Part 11

"I am afraid that I am princ.i.p.ally conscious of the works, for the present at any rate."

The bishop sighed inaudibly, then the visitor felt a hand on his arm.

"The wisest of all men once said that 'by their works ye shall know them.' What better can I say to you?"

They parted a moment later, and Clark moved slowly down the plank walk.

He was apparently deep in thought. Opposite Fisette's cabin he halted as though to go in, but turned homeward. That night he stood long at the blockhouse window, listening to the boom of the rapids and staring at the ma.s.s of buildings of his own creation. They were alive with light and throbbing with energy. Below the power house the white water raced away from the turbines and down the tail race, like a living thing, to lose itself in the placid bosom of the river. Still further on rose the uneven outlines of still greater structures as yet unfinished, and the earth seemed, in the cool air, to be baring her ancient bones to his drills and dynamite. Still staring, he remembered the bishop's words and a strange thrill crept through him. These were his works, and how should he be known?

That night, too, there stood at another window another man who could just see the gleam of the rapids in the moonlight. Their softened voice came to him in stillness, and far across the water glinted the trembling reflection of electric light at the works. Slowly into his brain the dull vibration wove itself like the low murmur of invisible mult.i.tudes. Whatever might be his own effort or labor, this still reached him so often as he listened, as though it were a confused and unending appeal for help that would not be silenced. It was always there, compelling and well nigh immortal, and the persistent echo had long since entered into his heart where it stirred pitifully day and night. The bishop dropped on his knees and prayed that he might be made worthy for his work.

There were two others to whom the voice of the rapids came clearly that night as they sat on the edge of the judge's lawn. Belding was very much in love. Months ago he perceived that Elsie was designed to be some man's comrade, and for months he had been constantly aware of an oval face and dark brown eyes. He saw them whenever he peered through an instrument. But the only sign Elsie had given him was the spontaneous kinship of youth with youth.

At the garden party there was little opportunity for talk and he had eagerly accepted the judge's suggestion to spend the evening with them.

Now Elsie was beside him at the water's edge.

"I was up at the works again, with father, the other day. Aren't they wonderful?" she said, after a long pause.

"Perhaps--I don't often think of them that way, though."

"What a difference in two years!"

"I suppose so." Belding was tired and he didn't want to talk shop.

"I met Mr. Clark again, and he was charming."

"Was he?"

She laughed. "I gathered from you at the garden party that he was a woman hater."

"Did I say that?"

"Not exactly, but that he didn't care for women, he was too busy."

"He never mentioned one to me, except his mother."

"I can understand that," said Elsie very thoughtfully.

Belding felt a little restless. "You seem very interested."

"I am. I never met any one like him. He seems to be two men, or several all rolled into one. You admire him, don't you?"

"Yes, tremendously, but he scares me a bit sometimes."

"Why?"

"I have wretched moments in which it seems that he is riding for a fall. Things are going so fast, too fast sometimes--and besides, I'm tired."

She glanced at him swiftly, but in the glance he caught nothing of what he sought.

"If you're tired," she said slowly, "what about Mr. Clark? He's carrying the whole thing, isn't he, as well as creating it? Is that his piano in the blockhouse?"

The young man nodded.

"What does he play?"

"Nothing that I remember; he improvises. It rests him, I suppose."

"Has he many friends?"

"I don't know that he wants many."

"Then he sits there alone in the evenings and plays to himself,--I wonder if it really is to himself? Don't you believe that somewhere there must be some one he is playing to, and that it's for some one he's doing all that's going on?" Elsie spoke a little breathlessly and her eyes were luminous. "How old is he?"

"Perhaps between thirty-five and forty, I never asked--one doesn't ask him that sort of thing. He never struck me as being of any particular age."

"But you're going to follow him always, aren't you, and help to see him through? He's following something too."

"What's that?" said Belding a little stiffly.

"His star." The girl's voice was very soft. "Perhaps he'll never reach it, but that doesn't matter, if he follows it."

"Mr. Clark would differ with you there."

"Would he, I don't know. Perhaps I understand him better than you do."

Belding got up in swift discomfort. "It looks as if you did."

Her lips curved into a smile. "Don't go yet. Doesn't it seem as though all this were meant to be from the beginning, and isn't Mr.

Clark in the grip of something bigger than himself?"

"It's pretty big if he is."

"I know, but isn't he a prophet in the wilderness, the wilderness of Algoma, and he hasn't much honor except what a few of us give him?"

Belding looked at her strangely. This was a new Elsie, who seemed wistful--yet not for him. Her eyes were cloudy with thought and he had a curious sensation that he was at this moment far from her imagination. She turned to him.

"Take me out in your canoe, now."

He felt suddenly and inexpressibly happy. "Come along."

She leaned back against the cushions while Belding dipped a practiced blade in the unruffled stream. The night was clear and the sky studded with innumerable stars.

"Where to?" he said contentedly.

She waved a slim hand towards the rapids. "As near as you can, then round into the big bay."

He put his back into his work and the canoe shot forward, reaching presently those long foam-flecked swells that mark the foot of the turmoil. In ten minutes they were in the heel of the rapids and as far as Belding dared go with so precious a burden. Elsie felt the cold spray on her face and her eyes shone with delight. After a little she pointed northward and the canoe edged into the big bay that stretched below, the works.

The bulk of the pulp mill loomed darkly into the quiet air, and further up they could hear the rattle of machine drills hammering into the great sandstone ledges. Pa.s.sing the pigmy lock of the old Hudson Bay Company, they floated a hundred yards from sh.o.r.e and immediately opposite the blockhouse. Here Elsie lifted her hand, and Belding, with a queer feeling of resentment, backed water.