第107章

Thorpe looked up with a pitiful little smile that seemed to beg indulgence for what he was about to say.

"I was just thinking, dear.I used to imagine I was a strong man, yet see how little my best efforts amount to.I have put myself into seven years of the hardest labor, working like ten men in order to succeed.I have foreseen all that mortal could foresee.

I have always thought, and think now, that a man is no man unless he works out the sort of success for which he is fitted.I have done fairly well until the crises came.Then I have been absolutely powerless, and if left to myself, I would have failed.At the times when a really strong man would have used effectively the strength he had been training, I have fallen back miserably on outer aid.Three times my affairs have become critical.In the crises I have been saved, first by a mere boy; then by an old illiterate man; now by a weak woman!"She heard him through in silence.

"Harry," she said soberly when he had quite finished, "I agree with you that God meant the strong man to succeed; that without success the man hasn't fulfilled his reason for being.But, Harry, ARE YOU QUITE SURE GOD MEANT HIM TO SUCCEED ALONE?"The dusk fell through the little room.Out in the hallway a tall clock ticked solemnly.A noiseless servant appeared in the doorway to light the lamps, but was silently motioned away.

"I had not thought of that," said Thorpe at last.

"You men are so selfish," went on Hilda."You would take everything from us.Why can't you leave us the poor little privilege of the occasional deciding touch, the privilege of succor.It is all that weakness can do for strength.""And why," she went on after a moment, "why is not that, too, a part of a man's success--the gathering about him of people who can and will supplement his efforts.Who was it inspired Wallace Carpenter with confidence in an unknown man? You.What did it?

Those very qualities by which you were building your success.Why did John Radway join forces with you? How does it happen that your men are of so high a standard of efficiency? Why am I willing to give you everything, EVERYTHING, to my heart and soul? Because it is you who ask it.Because you, Harry Thorpe, have woven us into your fortune, so that we have no choice.Depend upon us in the crises of your work! Why, so are you dependent on your ten fingers, your eyes, the fiber of your brain! Do you think the less of your fulfillment for that?"So it was that Hilda Farrand gave her lover confidence, brought him out from his fanaticism, launched him afresh into the current of events.He remained in Chicago all that summer, giving orders that all work at the village of Carpenter should cease.With his affairs that summer we have little to do.His common-sense treatment of the stock market, by which a policy of quiescence following an outright buying of the stock which he had previously held on margins, retrieved the losses already sustained, and finally put both partners on a firm financial footing.That is another story.So too is his reconciliation with and understanding of his sister.It came about through Hilda, of course.Perhaps in the inscrutable way of Providence the estrangement was of benefit,--even necessary,for it had thrown him entirely within himself during his militant years.

Let us rather look to the end of the summer.It now became a question of re-opening the camps.Thorpe wrote to Shearer and Radway, whom he had retained, that he would arrive on Saturday noon, and suggested that the two begin to look about for men.

Friday, himself, Wallace Carpenter, Elizabeth Carpenter, Morton, Helen Thorpe, and Hilda Farrand boarded the north-bound train.

Chapter LX

The train of the South Shore Railroad shot its way across the broad reaches of the northern peninsula.On either side of the right-of-way lay mystery in the shape of thickets so dense and overgrown that the eye could penetrate them but a few feet at most.Beyond them stood the forests.Thus Nature screened her intimacies from the impertinent eye of a new order of things.

Thorpe welcomed the smell of the northland.He became almost eager, explaining, indicating to the girl at his side.

"There is the Canada balsam," he cried."Do you remember how Ishowed it to you first? And yonder the spruce.How stuck up your teeth were when you tried to chew the gum before it had been heated.

Do you remember? Look! Look there! It's a white pine! Isn't it a grand tree? It's the finest tree in the forest, by my way of thinking, so tall, so straight, so feathery, and so dignified.See, Hilda, look quick! There's an old logging road all filled with raspberry vines.We'd find lots of partridges there, and perhaps a bear.Wouldn't you just like to walk down it about sunset?""Yes, Harry."

"I wonder what we're stopping for.Seems to me they are stopping at every squirrel's trail.Oh, this must be Seney.Yes, it is.

Queer little place, isn't it? but sort of attractive.Good deal like our town.You have never seen Carpenter, have you? Location's fine, anyway; and to me it's sort of picturesque.You'll like Mrs.

Hathaway.She's a buxom, motherly woman who runs the boarding-house for eighty men, and still finds time to mend my clothes for me.And you'll like Solly.Solly's the tug captain, a mighty good fellow, true as a gun barrel.We'll have him take us out, some still day.

We'll be there in a few minutes now.See the cranberry marshes.

Sometimes there's a good deal of pine on little islands scattered over it, but it's very hard to log, unless you get a good winter.

We had just such a proposition when I worked for Radway.Oh, you'll like Radway, he's as good as gold.Helen!""Yes," replied his sister.