The Rapids Part 32

The bishop heard, rolled over on his back and, treading water, saw Clark's face. The lips were puffed out, the head bent back and he was splashing desperately.

"Hang on to it, I'm coming," roared the big man, and, laying his right shoulder forward; began to tear through the water. Like a tug he came, with a bubble of foam around his head, half his face submerged, his powerful arms and legs working like pistons. Such was the power in him that at each stroke his great body seemed to lift and fling itself forward, and behind him broadened a long, diamond shaped ripple that slid whispering to the sh.o.r.e. The next moment sounded a voice, as from a long way off:

"Put your arms straight out--rest your palms on my shoulders. When I turn, trail your body and don't try to do anything. That's it." The bishop was breathing hard, but not in any way distressed.

They moved toward the yacht and Clark felt beneath his hands the working of big, flexible muscles, and the buoyant surge of the practiced swimmer who glides with the minimum of effort and resistance.

In five minutes he was scarifying his skin with a rough towel and tingled with renewing circulation.

"You saved my life that time," he said earnestly.

The bishop pulled his shirt over his head. "Well, that's my business, isn't it? and I fancy it's about the only thing I can do for a man like you. Let's have some breakfast. I smell fish."

Clark, in spite of his late experience, ate as he seldom ate, for there were two things at which Indian Joe was a master--pilotage and cooking.

The visitor asked for more, silently deciding that his j.a.panese must go, being no such artist as this.

"You're using royal silver," said his host presently with a grin. "I bought this boat from the agent of a certain august personage for whom she had grown too small, and I got everything complete. She has a bronze propeller and copper rivets. I've got the royal burgee too, and fly it only on special occasions."

The other man smiled and nodded. It did not somehow seem strange to him to be using royal silver in a remote bay on Lake Huron. Something about the bishop made it appropriate. Then they lifted anchor and the Evangeline moved on under a climbing sun and over a laughing sea for ten miles till she nosed into a creaking dock and made fast. Just beyond was the settlement, from which the parson came hurrying down, followed by others. Clark looked at him, a lean, overworked man, with rusty clothes and joy in his face, and remembered for the first time in his life that here was one fashioned in all ways like unto himself.

"I'm off into the country to visit for a few hours," said the bishop, introducing him. "You can come if you like, but it's not a good road, and I would advise you to stay where you are. Joe will take you fishing and there is plenty to read in the bookshelf. I can recommend Henry Drummond or Marcus Aurelius. Good-by!"

He drove off in a rattling buckboard, and the woods swallowed him. A little crowd had gathered in the dock, glancing after the bishop and then down at the slender deck of the Evangeline. The stranger looked up at them, nodded and disappeared. Presently Joe stretched an awning over the long boom of the main mast, and Clark sat in the shade listening to the silence and surveying this isolated village. What, he wondered, could keep people in so forgotten a community, with its unpaved street, its straggling wooden houses, its background of unbroken bush. There was no water power, no big timber, and, from the look of the country, no mineral. He put the thought out of his mind with luxurious deliberation and tried to decipher why a man like the bishop should waste his time here when, without doubt, he could be a shining light in a great city. After a little the reason became clear, and, smiling to himself, he reached up for Marcus Aurelius.

They supped that night at the parsonage, where they yielded to the stark simplicity of new surroundings. The parson with his wife and children regarded the bishop with their eyes in which love and reverence were clearly mingled. At the stranger they looked a little insecurely, for the bishop had, that afternoon, told who he was. They had heard of him already, and in this remote village his person had been invested with mysterious powers. He was a force of which they read, rather than a living, breathing man, so that however he might try to talk affably and communicably, he found himself hedged about with a spiny growth of fame that the others made but little attempt to penetrate. His garment of authority and influence was too great. He was too big and didn't fit.

Later came service in the bare, wooden church, and for the second time he saw the prelate in robes of office. The sun was setting and its level beams filled the tiny edifice with a softened glow. Overhead the sky was like a benison, while the bishop spoke words of cheer and strength that went straight to the hearts of his congregation. He stood, as he always stood, in front of the chancel, a great figure in white and scarlet, with a deep mellow voice that seemed to dissolve in the hush of evening like a lingering caress. Clark, in his corner, sat motionless, touched as he had seldom been touched before. He began to see why the bishop spent his life in this wilderness.

Service done, the Evangeline moved out over a sea that was sheer, flat silver. Indian Joe sat motionless at the wheel, the spokes pressed lightly against his polished palm. At the engine room hatch a voiceless Scotchman smoked a contemplative pipe, and for the rest of it there was only the m.u.f.fled thud of the propeller, the subdued stroke of the engine and the whisper of split water at the yacht's knifelike stem. Clark did not speak. It seemed as the yacht slipped on, that he was exploring, a kingdom in which the population and their ways were hitherto unknown to him; a domain that was pathetic rather than poor--and remote from his scheme of things. He had given this phase of life no thought till the bishop introduced him to it, and was puzzled that both men and women could be so deprived of the salt of life and yet be apparently content. The bishop's voice broke his reverie.

"Did you ever consider how much those with imagination owe to those who have none?"

Clark started a little, then shook his head. "No, I haven't."

"Isn't it true?"

"It may be--but I don't see what there is to create any obligation."

"Well, you're discharging it every day. You create things primarily for yourself, but actually what you do is to create opportunities for others less endowed with imaginative power. And whatever may be the ultimate scope or result of your work at St. Marys, that is the highest service it will ever perform. And, by the way, my friends seemed a little afraid of you at supper, though I a.s.sured them you were perfectly harmless. Do you mind telling me if you got any impressions?"

"About the events of the day?"

"Partly. I'm wondering just what people like these suggest to a man of your sort. Is it all very drab and uneventful?"

"Well," said Clark thoughtfully, "it is something like that, isn't it?"

"I thought so once, but that's just what I don't now admit, and urge that this is a case where we should consider comparative values.

Satisfaction is not, after all, so much a matter of the size or quality of the thing that satisfies, as it is of the individual who is affected and his circ.u.mstances. Small joys go a long way on Manitoulin Island."

"But are people who live like this not conscious of any deprivation?"

"It's not so much that as it is wonder what it would be like to own certain things or comforts. You don't find much envy in the bush country, but you do find a lot of self-respect. I could tell you things about some Indian friends of mine that would clear your mind, if you happen to think that the only good Indian is a dead one. It seems to me that life in the open, even though a great part of it is spent in exposure and hardship, has certain spiritual compensations."

Clark nodded. "Perhaps."

"Put it this way; you deal with many kinds of men, but do you not always feel better disposed toward a simple soul, say like our friend Fisette, than toward some shrewd person who arms himself at every conceivable point?"

"Yes, I do."

"Well, that's what I feel about my people. Most of them are unarmed and they trust me, and anything I can do seems small in comparison to that trust. You've got a trust too, my friend."

Clark smiled. "That's what my directors lose no opportunity of telling me."

"But who or what is your Director?" asked the bishop, leaning forward earnestly. "You needn't be anxious, I'm not going to sermonize. Your Director is the same as mine, the great Force, call it what you will.

It drove me into the church and drove you to what you are, and our first trust is to ourselves--you'll agree with me there--and with that undischarged nothing else can be carried out. Just at this moment I wish I were as competent for my job as you are for yours."

"But, bishop, you're--"

The big man raised his hand. "Not a word, for tonight I feel like Browning's Bishop Blougram who 'rolled him out a mind long crumpled, till creased consciousness lay smooth.' It does me good to rub out the wrinkles occasionally. Now tell me, looking back at the last few years in St. Marys, do you appreciate what you've done?"

"I haven't had much time to look back," said Clark thoughtfully. "The opportunity was there and I took it, then I was fortunate enough to enlist the necessary support. Since that time the district seems to have responded to every conceivable need, and we have been able to fall in step with a natural scheme for developing natural resources, that's all."

The bishop shook his head. "Not quite: it's a great drama you're enacting up there, with the rapids for a setting. They run through it all, don't they?--the changeless, elemental background before which man climbs up on the stage, makes his bow, enacts his part and gives place to some one else. You are sending out mult.i.tudes of influences that will never be determined or traced to their result. You once told me that it all began when you overheard a conversation in a train."

"Yes," Clark paused, then added with a laugh, "an example of the importance of small things. You've made your point, bishop."

"Thank you, but I've never been able to decide whether a thing is small or not. Some of the things that you and I prize very highly may actually be of small account."

For a while Clark did not answer. Ever since coming on board the Evangeline he had been conscious of a new atmosphere, tenanted by the spirit of her master, and of a new language which, though its tones were familiar, seemed to be the vehicle of a novel wisdom and understanding. He was impressed with the utter candor of his host, but chiefly with his superlative sympathy with all men. The visitor fell under the influence of a benign nature which, intensely human in all its attributes, proffered its solace to all alike. It was, he concluded, the life function of the bishop to give himself in royal abandonment.

He did not often put himself in the place of other men, but that night, after the Evangeline had slid into a moon spilt harbor amongst the hills, and the bishop explained that he had come here because poor people were apt to overtax themselves in entertaining, the visitor lay on the c.o.c.k pit cushions and stared long at the starry sky. Nothing important was to be attached to this trip, and yet he felt it to be momentous. He knew he would always remember it, and that the memory would hereafter a.s.sert itself in unexpected moments. He admitted being influenced by the bishop and yet felt equipped for all that he had to do without any such influence. But there crept over him the slow conception that life might unexpectedly change, and that under hitherto unimagined conditions he might turn to these hours for the comfort of remembrance.

Three more days of missionary work and the Evangeline turned homeward, Clark took the wheel for an hour, with the bishop beside him.

"I hope," said the latter, "that the trip has been a success for you?"

The amateur pilot gave an involuntary start. The question pitched his mind forward to the works, and he realized that for five days he had forgotten all about them.

"It has been a very great pleasure to me," went on the prelate quietly.

"I'm apt to have too much broadcloth and not enough gray tweed in my life. Most of us are in the same case, and one's love of one's work does not suffer by an interest in other things."

"My dear sir, I've benefited enormously. I'm a new man and ready for anything--even the worst." How little did he dream that at that very moment Lachesis was spinning her invisible web.

"Ah! that's what we must always be ready for--or the best, which is sometimes the same thing. Keep her to port a little."

The yacht rounded a long point and came in sight of the works, while Clark experienced a throb of thankfulness that his host had attempted no missionary work on him. He was as good as his word. There had been no proselytizing.

As the vessel reached the dock, they said good-by, each ready to do his job over again, and Clark, with his hand enveloped in the warm clasp, realized much of the secret of the prelate's life, which was no secret at all but just the benignity of a great and tender soul. He stepped over the yacht's side and glanced at his secretary who advanced to meet him with a telegram in his hand, noting that the young man's face was pale and his eyes unusually brilliant.