CHAPTER VII. “AT OUR PRICE?”
West of the city of Montreal were the works and the offices of John Grier. Here it was that a thing was done without which there might have been no real story to tell. It was a night which marked the close of the financial year of the firm.
Upon John Grier had come Carnac. He had brought with him a small statue of a riverman with flannel shirt, scarf about the waist, thick defiant trousers and well-weaponed boots. It was a real figure of the river, buoyant, daring, almost vicious. The head was bare; there were plain gold rings in the ears; and the stark, half-malevolent eyes looked out, as though searching for a jam of logs or some peril of the river. In the horny right hand was a defiant pike-pole, its handle thrust forward, its steel spike stabbing the ground.
At first glance, Carnac saw that John Grier was getting worn and old. The eyes were not so flashing as they once were; the lips were curled in a half-cynical mood. The old look of activity was fading; something vital had struck soul and body. He had had a great year. He had fought Belloc and his son Fabian successfully; he had laid new plans and strengthened his position.
Tarboe coming into the business had made all the difference to him. Tarboe had imagination, skill and decision, he seldom lost his temper; he kept a strong hand upon himself. His control of men was marvellous; his knowledge of finance was instinctive; his capacity for organization was rare, and he had health unbounded and serene. It was hard to tell what were the principles controlling Tarboe—there was always an element of suspicion in his brown and brilliant eyes. Yet he loved work. The wind of energy seemed to blow through his careless hair. His hands were like iron and steel; his lips were quick and friendly, or ruthless, as seemed needed. To John Grier’s eyes he was the epitome of civilization—the warrior without a soul.
When Carnac came in now with the statue tucked under his arm, smiling and self-contained, it seemed as though something had been done by Fate to flaunt John Grier.
With a nod, Carnac put the statue on the table in front of the old man, and said: “It’s all right, isn’t it? I’ve lifted that out of the river-life. That’s one of the best men you ever had, and he’s only one of a thousand. He doesn’t belong anywhere. He’s a rover, an adventurer, a wanton of the waters. Look at him. He’s all right, isn’t he?” He asked this again.
The timber-man waved the statue aside, and looked at the youth with critical eyes. “I’ve just been making up the accounts for the year,” he said. “It’s been the best year I’ve had in seven. I’ve taken the starch out of Belloc and Fabian. I’ve broken the back of their opposition—I’ve got it like a twig in iron teeth.”
“Yes, Tarboe’s been some use, hasn’t he?” was the suggestive response.
John Grier’s eyes hardened. “You might have done it. You had it in you. The staff of life—courage and daring—were yours, and you wouldn’t take it on. What’s the result? I’ve got a man who’s worth two of Fabian and Belloc. And you”—he held up a piece of paper—“see that,” he broke off. “See that. It’s my record. That’s what I’m worth. That’s what you might have handled!” He took a cigar from his pocket, cut off the blunt end, and continued: “You threw your chance aside.” He tapped the paper with the point of the cigar. “That’s what Tarboe has helped do. What have you got to show?” He pointed to the statue. “I won’t say it ain’t good. It’s a live man from the river. But what do I want with that, when I can have the original man himself! My boy, the great game of life is to fight hard, and never to give in. If you keep your eyes open, things’ll happen that’ll bring what you want.”
He stood up, striking a match to light his cigar. It was dusk, and the light of the match gave a curious, fantastic glimmer to his powerful, weird, haggard face. He was like some remnant of a great life, loose in a careless world.
“I tell you,” he said, the smoke leaking from his mouth like a drift of snow, “the only thing worth doing is making the things that matter in the commerce and politics of the world.”
“I didn’t know you were a politician,” said Carnac. “Of course I’m a politician,” was the inflammable reply. “What’s commerce without politics? It’s politics that makes the commerce possible. There’s that fellow Barouche—Barode Barouche—he’s got no money, but he’s a Minister, and he can make you rich or poor by planning legislation at Ottawa that’ll benefit or hamper you. That’s the kind of business that’s worth doing—seeing into the future, fashioning laws that make good men happy and bad men afraid. Don’t I know! I’m a master-man in my business; nothing defeats me. To me, a forest of wild wood is the future palace of a Prime Minister. A great river is a pathway to the palace, and all the thousands of men that work the river are the adventurers that bring the booty home—”
“That bring ‘the palace to Paris,’ eh!” interrupted Carnac, laughing.
“Paris be damned—that bring the forest to Quebec. How long did it take you to make that?” he added with a nod towards the statue.
“Oh, I did it in a day—six hours, I think; and he stood like that for three hours out of the six. He was great, but he’d no more sense of civilization than I have of Heaven.”
“You don’t need to have a sense of Heaven, you need to have a sense of Hell. That prevents you from spoiling your own show. You’re playing with life’s vital things.”
“I wonder how much you’ve got out of it all, father,” Carnac remarked with a smile. He lit a cigarette. “You do your job in style. It’s been a great career, yours. You’ve made your big business out of nothing.”
“I had something to start with. Your grandfather had a business worth not much, but it was a business, and the fundamental thing is to have machinery to work with when you start life. I had that. My father was narrow, contracted and a blunderer, but he made good in a small way.”
“And you in a big way,” said Carnac, with admiration and criticism in his eyes.
He realized that John Grier had summed him up fairly when he said he was playing with life’s vital things. Somehow, he saw the other had a grip upon essentials lacking in himself; he had his tooth in the orange, as it were, and was sucking the juice of good profit from his labours. Yet he knew how much trickery and vital evasion and harsh aggression there were in his father’s business life.
As yet he had never seen Tarboe—he had been away in the country the whole year nearly—but he imagined a man of strength, abilities, penetration and deep power. He knew that only a man with savage instincts could work successfully with John Grier; he knew that Grier was without mercy in his business, and that his best year’s work had been marked by a mandatory power which only a malevolent policy could produce. Yet, somehow, he had a feeling that Tarboe had a steadying influence on John Grier. The old man was not so uncontrolled as in bygone days.
“I’d like to see Tarboe,” Carnac said suddenly. “He ain’t the same as you,” snapped John Grier. “He’s bigger, broader, and buskier.” A malicious smile crossed over his face. “He’s a bandit—that’s what he is. He’s got a chest like a horse and lungs like the ocean. When he’s got a thing, he’s got it like a nail in a branch of young elm. He’s a dandy, that fellow.” Suddenly passion came to his eyes. “You might have done it, you’ve got the brains, and the sense, but you ain’t got the ambition. You keep feeling for a thousand things instead of keeping your grip on one. The man that succeeds fastens hard on what he wants to do—the one big thing, and he does it, thinking of naught else.”
“Well, that’s good preaching,” remarked Carnac coolly. “But it doesn’t mean that a man should stick to one thing, if he finds out he’s been wrong about it? We all make mistakes. Perhaps some day I’ll wish I’d gone with you.”
Grimness came into the old man’s face. Something came into his eyes that was strange and revealing.
“Well, I hope you will. But you had your chance with me, and you threw it down like a piece of rotten leather.”
“I don’t cost you anything,” returned Carnac. “I’ve paid my own way a long time—with mother’s help.”
“And you’re twenty-six years old, and what have you got? Enough to give you bread from day to day-no more. I was worth seventy thousand dollars when I was your age. I’m worth enough to make a prince rich, and if I’d been treated right by those I brought into the world I’d be worth twice as much. Fabian was good as far as he went, but he was a coward. You”—a look of fury entered the dark eyes—“you were no coward, but you didn’t care a damn. You wanted to paddle about with muck of imagination—” he pointed to the statue on the table.
“Why, your business has been great because of your imagination,” was the retort. “You saw things ahead with the artist’s eye. You planned with the artist’s mind; and brought forth what’s to your honour and credit—and the piling up of your bank balance. The only thing that could have induced me to work in your business is the looking ahead and planning, seeing the one thing to be played off against the other, the fighting of strong men, the politics, all the forces which go to make or break your business. Well, I didn’t do it, and I’m not sorry. I have a gift which, by training and development, will give me a place among the men who do things, if I have good luck—good luck!”
He dwelt upon these last words with an intensity which dreaded something. There was retrospection in his eyes. A cloud seemed to cross his face.
A strong step crunching the path stopped the conversation, and presently there appeared the figure of Tarboe. Certainly the new life had not changed Tarboe, had not altered his sturdy, strenuous nature. His brown eyes under the rough thatch of his eyebrow took in the room with lightning glance, and he nodded respectfully, yet with great friendliness, at John Grier. He seemed to have news, and he glanced with doubt at Carnac.
John Grier understood. “Go ahead. What’s happened?”
“Nothing that can’t wait till I’m introduced to your son,” rejoined Tarboe.
With a friendly look, free from all furtiveness, Carnac reached out a hand, small, graceful, firm. As Tarboe grasped it in his own big paw, he was conscious of a strength in the grip which told him that the physical capacity of the “painter-fellow,” as he afterwards called Carnac, had points worthy of respect. On the instant, there was admiration on the part of each—admiration and dislike. Carnac liked the new-comer for his healthy bearing, for the iron hardness of his head, and for the intelligence of his dark eyes. He disliked him, however, for something that made him critical of his father, something covert and devilishly alert. Both John Grier and Tarboe were like two old backwoodsmen, eager to reach their goal, and somewhat indifferent to the paths by which they travelled to it.
Tarboe, on the other hand, admired the frank, pleasant face of the young man, which carried still the irresponsibility of youth, but which conveyed to the watchful eye a brave independence, a fervid, and perhaps futile, challenge to all the world. Tarboe understood that this young man had a frankness dangerous to the business of life, yet which, properly applied, might bring great results. He disliked Carnac for his uncalculating candour; but he realized that, behind all, was something disturbing to his life.
“It’s a woman,” Tarboe said to himself, “it’s a woman. He’s made a fool of himself.”
Tarboe was right. He had done what no one else had done—he had pierced the cloud surrounding Carnac: it was a woman.
“I hear you’re pulling things off here,” remarked Carnac civilly. “He says”—pointing to John Grier—“that you’re making the enemy squirm.”
Tarboe nodded, and a half-stealthy smile crept across his face. “I don’t think we’ve lost anything coming our way,” he replied. “We’ve had good luck—”
“And our eyes were open,” intervened John Grier. “You push the brush and use the chisel, don’t you?” asked Tarboe in spite of himself with slight scorn in his tone.
“I push the chisel and use the brush,” answered Carnac, smilingly correcting him.
“That’s a good thing. Is it yours?” asked Tarboe, nodding and pointing to the statue of the riverman. Carnac nodded. “Yes, I did that one day. I’d like to do you, if you’d let me.”
The young giant waved a brawny hand and laughed. He looked down at his knee-boots, with their muddied soles, and then at the statue again on the table. “I don’t mind you’re doing me. Turn about is fair play.
“I’ve done you out of your job.” Then he added to the old man: “It’s good news I’ve got. I’ve made the contract with the French firm at our price.”
“At our price!” remarked the other with a grim smile. “For the lot?”
“Yes, for the lot, and I’ve made the contracts with the ships to carry it.”
“At our price?” again asked the old man. Tarboe nodded. “Just a little better.”
“I wouldn’t have believed those two things could have been done in the time.” Grier rubbed his hands cheerfully. “That’s a good day’s work. It’s the best you’ve done since you’ve come.”
Carnac watched the scene with interest. No envy moved him, his soul was free from malice. Evidently Tarboe was a man of power. Ruthless he might be, ruthless and unsparing, but a man of power.
At that instant a clerk entered with a letter in his hand. “Mrs. Grier said to give you this,” he remarked to Carnac, handing it to him.
Carnac took it and the clerk departed. The letter had an American postmark, and the handwriting on the letter brought trouble to his eyes. He composed himself, however, and tore off the end of the envelope, taking out the letter.
It was brief. It contained only a few lines, but as Carnac read them the colour left his face. “Good God!” he said to himself. Then he put the paper in his pocket, and, with a forced smile and nod to his father and Tarboe, left the office.
“That’s queer. The letter seemed to get him in the vitals,” said John Grier with surprise.
Tarboe nodded, and said to himself: “It’s a woman all right.” He smiled to himself also. He had wondered why Carnac and Junia Shale had not come to an understanding. The letter which had turned Carnac pale was the interpretation.
“Say, sit down, Tarboe,” said John Grier. “I want to talk with you.”
CHAPTER VIII. JOHN GRIER MAKES ANOTHER OFFER
“I’ve been keeping my eye on you, Tarboe,” John Grier said presently, his right hand clutching unconsciously the statue which his boy had left with him.
“I didn’t suppose you’d forget me when I was making or breaking you.”
“You’re a winner, Tarboe. You’ve got sense and judgment, and you ain’t afraid to get your own way by any route.”
He paused, and gripped the statue closely in his hands.
Tarboe nodded. In the backwoods he had been without ambition save to be master of what he was doing and of the men who were part of his world of responsibility. Then John Grier had pulled him back into industry and he had since desired to ascend, to “make good.” Also, he had seen Junia often, and for her an aspiration had sprung up in him like a fire in a wild place.
When he first saw her, she was standing in the doorway through which Carnac had just passed. The brightness of her face, the wonder of her eyes, the glow of her cheek, had made his pulses throb as they had never throbbed before. He had put the thought of her away from him, but it had come back constantly until he had found himself looking for her in the street, and on the hill that led to John Grier’s house.
Tarboe realized that the girl was drawn towards Carnac, and that Carnac was drawn towards the girl, but that some dark depths lay between. The letter Carnac had just received seemed to him the plumbline of that abyss. Carnac and the girl were suited to each other—that was clear; and the girl was enticing, provoking and bewildering—that was the modelling fact. He had satisfaction that he had displaced Carnac in this great business, and there was growing in him a desire to take away the chances of the girl from Carnac also. With his nature it was inevitable. Life to him was now a puzzle towards the solution of which he moved with conquering conviction.
From John Grier’s face now, he realized that something was to be said affecting his whole career. It would, he was sure, alter his foot-steps in the future. He had a profound respect for the little wiry man, with the firm body and shrivelled face.
Tarboe watched the revealing expression of the old man’s face and the motions of his body. He noticed that the tight grip of the hand on the little statue of the riverman had made the fingers pale. He realized how absorbed was the lumber-king, who had given him more confidence than he had given to anyone else in the world. As near as he could come to anyone, he had come to John Grier. There had been differences between them, but he, Tarboe, fought for his own idea, and, in nine cases out of ten, had conquered. John Grier had even treated Tarboe’s solutions as though they were his own. He had a weird faith in the young giant. He saw now Tarboe’s eyes fixed on his fingers, and he released his grip.
“That’s the thing between him and me, Tarboe,” he said, nodding towards the virile bronze. “Think of my son doing that when he could do all this!” He swept his arm in a great circle which included the horizon beyond the doors and the windows. “It beats me, and because it beats me, and because he defies me, I’ve made up my mind what to do.”
“Don’t do anything you’d be sorry for, boss. He ain’t a fool because he’s not what you are.” He nodded towards the statue. “You think that’s pottering. I think it’s good stuff. It will last, perhaps, when what you and I do is forgotten.”
There was something big and moving in Tarboe. He was a contradiction. A lover of life, he was also reckless in how he got what he wanted. If it could not be got by the straight means, then it must be by the crooked, and that was where he and Grier lay down together, as it were. Yet he had some knowledge that was denied to John Grier. The soul of the greater things was in him.
“Give the boy a chance to work out his life in his own way,” he said manfully. “You gave him a chance to do it in your way, and you were turned down. Have faith in him. He’ll probably come out all right in the end.
“You mean he’ll come my way?” asked the old man almost rabidly. “You mean he’ll do the things I want him to do here, as you’ve done?”
“I guess so,” answered Tarboe, but without conviction in his tone. “I’m not sure whether it will be like that or not, but I know you’ve got a son as honest as the stars, and the honest man gets his own in the end.”
There was silence for some time, then the old man began walking up and down the room, softly, noiselessly.
“You talk sense,” he said. “I care for that boy, but I care for my life’s work more. Day in, day out, night in, night out, I’ve slaved for it, prayed for it, believed in it, and tried to make my wife and my boys feel as I do about it, and none of them cares as I care. Look at Fabian—over with the enemy, fighting his own father; look at Carnac, out in the open, taking his own way.” He paused.
“And your wife?” asked Tarboe almost furtively, because it seemed to him that the old man was most unhappy in that particular field.
“She’s been a good wife, but she don’t care as I do for success and money.”
“Perhaps you never taught her,” remarked Tarboe with silky irony.
“Taught her! What was there to teach? She saw me working; she knew the life I had to live; she was lifted up with me. I was giving her everything in me to give.”
“You mean money and a big house and servants and comfort,” said Tarboe sardonically.
“Well, ain’t that right?” snapped the other.
“Yes, it’s all right, but it don’t always bring you what you want. It’s right, but it’s wrong too. Women want more than that, boss. Women want to be loved—sky high.”
All at once Grier felt himself as far removed from Tarboe as he had ever been from Carnac, or his wife. Why was it? Suddenly Tarboe understood that between him and John Grier there must always be a flood. He realized that there was in Grier some touch of the insane thing; something apart, remote and terrible. He was convinced of it, when he saw Grier suddenly spring up, and pace the room again like a tortured animal.
“You’ve got great influence with me,” he said. “I was just going to tell you something that’d give you pleasure, but what you’ve said about my boy coming back has made me change what I was going to do. I don’t need to say I like you. We were born in the same nest almost. We’ve got the same ideas.”
“Almost,” intervened Tarboe. “Not quite, but almost.”
“Well, this is what I’ve got to say. You’ve got youth, courage, and good sense, and business ability, and what more does a man want in life, I ask you that?” Tarboe nodded, but made no reply.
“Well, I don’t feel as strong as I used to do. I’ve been breaking up this last year, just when we’ve been knitting the cracks in the building. What was in my mind is this—to leave you when I die the whole of my business to keep it a success, and get in the way of Belloc, and pay my wife so much a year to live on.”
“That wouldn’t be fair to your wife or your sons.”
“As for Carnac, if I left him the business it’d be dead in two years. Nothing could save it. He’d spoil it, because he don’t care for it. I bought Fabian out. As for my wife, she couldn’t run it, and—”
“You could sell it,” interrupted Tarboe.
“Sell it! Sell it!” said Grier wildly. “Sell it to whom?”
“To Belloc,” was the malicious reply. The demon of anger seized the old man.
“You say that to me—you—that I should sell to Belloc! By hell, I’d rather burn every stick and board and tree I’ve got—sweep it out of existence, and die a beggar than sell it to Belloc!” Froth gathered at the corners of his mouth, there was tumult in his eyes. “Belloc! Knuckle down to him! Sell out to him!”
“Well, if you got a profit of twenty per cent. above what it’s worth it might be well. That’d be a triumph, not a defeat.”
“I see what you mean,” said John Grier, the passion slowly going from his eyes. “I see what you mean, but that ain’t my way. I want this business to live. I want Grier’s business to live long after John Grier has gone. That’s why I was going to say to you that in my will I’m going to leave you this business, you to pay my wife every year twenty thousand dollars.”
“And your son, Carnac?”
“Not a sou-not a sou—not a sou—nothing—that’s what I meant at first. But I’ve changed my mind now. I’m going to leave you the business, if you’ll make a bargain with me. I want you to run it for three years, and take for yourself all the profits over the twenty thousand dollars a year that goes to my wife. There’s a lot of money in it, the way you’d work it.”
“I don’t understand about the three years,” said Tarboe, with rising colour.
“No, because I haven’t told you, but you’ll take it in now. I’m going to leave you the business as though you were going to have it for ever, but I’ll make another will dated a week later, in which I leave it to Carnac. Something you said makes me think he might come right, and it will be playing fair to him to let him run himself alone, maybe with help from his mother, for three years. That’s long enough, and perhaps the thought of what he might have had will work its way with him. If it don’t—well, it won’t; that’s all; but I want you to have the business long enough to baulk Belloc and Fabian the deserter. I want you for three years to fight this fight after I’m gone. In that second secret will, I’ll leave you two hundred thousand dollars. Are you game for it? Is it worthwhile?”
The old man paused, his head bent forward, his eyes alert and searching, both hands gripping the table. There was a long silence, in which the ticking of the clock upon the wall seemed unduly loud and in which the buzz of cross-cut saws came sounding through the evening air. Yet Tarboe did not reply.
“Have you nothing to say?” asked Grier at last. “Won’t you do it—eh?”
“I’m studying the thing out,” answered Tarboe quietly. “I don’t quite see about these two wills. Why shouldn’t the second will be found first?”
“Because you and I will be the only ones that’ll know of it. That shows how much I trust you, Tarboe. I’ll put it away where nobody can get it except you or me.”
“But if anything should happen to me?”
“Well, I’d leave a letter with my bank, not to be opened for three years, or unless you died, and it would say that the will existed, where it was, and what its terms were.”
“That sounds all right,” but there was a cloud on Tarboe’s face.
“It’s a great business,” said Grier, seeing Tarboe’s doubt. “It’s the biggest thing a man can do—and I’m breaking up.”
The old man had said the right thing—“It’s a great business!” It was the greatness of the thing that had absorbed Tarboe. It was the bigness made him feel life could be worth living, if the huge machinery were always in his fingers. Yet he had never expected it, and life was a problem. Who could tell? Perhaps—perhaps, the business would always be his in spite of the second will! Perhaps, he would have his chance to make good. He got to his feet; he held out his hand.
“I’ll do it.”
“Ain’t it worth any thanks?”
“Not between us,” declared Tarboe.
“When are you going to do it?”
“To-night—now.” He drew out some paper and sat down with a pen in his hand.
“Now,” John Grier repeated.
CHAPTER IX. THE PUZZLE
On his way home, with Luzanne’s disturbing letter in his pocket, Carnac met Junia. She was supremely Anglo-Saxon; fresh, fervid and buoyant with an actual buoyancy of the early spring. She had tact and ability, otherwise she could never have preserved peace between the contending factions, Belloc and Fabian, old John Grier, the mother and Carnac. She was as though she sought for nothing, wished nothing but the life in which she lived. Yet her wonderful pliability, her joyful boyishness, had behind all a delicate anxiety which only showed in flashes now and then, fully understood by no one except Carnac’s mother and old Denzil. These two having suffered strangely in life had realized that the girl was always waiting for a curtain to rise which did not rise, for a voice to speak which gave no sound.
Yet since Carnac’s coming back there had appeared a slight change in her, a bountiful, eager alertness, a sense of wonder and experiment, adding new interest to her personality. Carnac was conscious of this increased vitality, was impressed and even provoked by it. Somehow he felt—for he had the telepathic mind—that the girl admired and liked Tarboe. He did not stop to question how or why she should like two people so different as Tarboe and himself.
The faint colour of the crimsoning maples was now in her cheek; the light of the autumn evening was in her eyes; the soft vitality of September was in her motions. She was attractively alive. Her hair waved back from her forehead with natural grace; her small feet, with perfect ankles, made her foothold secure and sedately joyous. Her brown hand—yet not so brown after all—held her hat lightly, and was, somehow, like a signal out of a world in which his hopes were lost for the present.
She was dearer to him than all the rest of the world; and he had in his hand what kept them apart—a sentence of death, unless he escaped from the wanton calling him to fulfil duties into which he had been tricked. Luzanne Larue had a terrible hold over him. He gripped the letter in his pocket as a Hopi Indian does the body of a poisonous snake. The rosy sunset gave the girl’s face a reflected spiritual glamour; it made her, suddenly, a bewildering figure. Somehow, she seemed a great distance from him—as one detached and unfamiliar.
He suddenly felt she knew more than it was possible she should know. As she flashed an inquiry into his eyes, it was as though she said: “Why don’t you tell me everything, and I will help you?” Or, was it: “Why don’t you tell me everything and end it all?” He longed to press her to his breast, as he had once done in the woods when Denzil had been injured, but that was not possible. The thought of that far-off day made him say to her, rather futilely:
“How is Denzil? How is Denzil?”
There was swift surprise in her face. She seemed dumbfounded, and then she said:
“Denzil! He’s all right, but he does not like your Mr. Tarboe.”
“My Mr. Tarboe! Where do I come in?”
“Well, he’s got what you ought to have had,” was the reply. “What you would have had, weren’t you a foolish fellow.”
“I still don’t understand how he is my Mr. Tarboe.”
“Well, he wouldn’t have been in your father’s life if it weren’t for you; if you had done what your father wished you to do, had—”
“Had sold myself for gold—my freedom, my health, everything to help my father’s business! I don’t see why he should expect that what he’s doing some one else should do—”
“That Belloc would do, that Belloc and Fabian would do,” said the girl.
“Yes, that’s it—what they two would do. There’s no genius in it, though my father comes as near being a genius as any man alive. But there’s a screw loose somewhere.... It wasn’t good enough for me. It didn’t give me a chance—in things that are of the mind, the spirit—my particular gifts, whatever they are. They would have chafed against that life.”
“In other words, you’re a genius, which your father isn’t,” the girl said almost sarcastically.
A disturbed look came into Carnac’s eyes. “I’d have liked my father to be a genius. Then we’d have hit it off together. I don’t ever feel the things he does are the things I want to do; or the things he says are those I’d like to say. He’s a strange man. He lives alone. He never was really near Fabian or me. We were his sons, but though Fabian is a little bit like him in appearance, I’m not, and never was. I always feel that—” He paused, and she took up the tale:
“That he wasn’t the father you’d have made for yourself, eh!”
“I suppose that’s it. Conceit, ain’t it? Perhaps the facts are, I’m one of the most useless people that ever wore a coat. Perhaps the things I do aren’t going to live beyond me.”
“It seems as though your father’s business is going to live after him, doesn’t it?” the girl asked mockingly. “Where are you going now?” she added.
“Well, I’m going to take you home,” he said, as he turned and walked by her side down the hill.
“Denzil will be glad to see you. He almost thinks I’m a curse.”
Carnac smiled. “All genius is at once a blessing or a curse. And what does Denzil think of me?”
“Oh—a blessing and a curse!” she said whimsically.
“I don’t honestly think I’m a blessing to anybody in this world. There’s no one belonging to me who believes in me.”
“There’s Denzil,” she said. “He believes in you.”
“He doesn’t belong to me; he isn’t my family.”
“Who are your family? Is it only those who are bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh? Your family is much wider, because you’re a genius. It’s worldwide—of all kinds. Denzil belongs to you, because you helped to save him years ago; the Catholic Archbishop belongs to you, because he’s got brains and a love of literature and art; Barode Barouche belongs to you, because he’s almost a genius too.”
“Barouche is a politician,” said Carnac with slight derision.
“That’s no reason why he shouldn’t be a genius.”
“He’s a Frenchman.”
“Haven’t Frenchmen genius?” asked the girl.
Carnac laughed. “Why, of course. Barode Barouche—yes, he’s a great one: he can think, he can write, and he can talk; and the talking’s the best that he does—though I’ve not heard him speak, but I’ve read his speeches.”
“Doesn’t he make good laws at Ottawa?”
“He makes laws at Ottawa—whether they’re good or not is another question. I shouldn’t be a follower of his, if I had my chance though.”
“That’s because you’re not French.”
“Oh yes, I’m as French as can be! I felt at home with the French when I was in France. I was all Gallic. When I’m here I’m more Gallic than Saxon.
“I don’t understand it. Here am I, with all my blood for generations Saxon, and yet I feel French. If I’d been born in the old country, it would have been in Limerick or Tralee. I’d have been Celtic there.”
“Yet Barode Barouche is a great man. He gets drunk sometimes, but he’s great. He gets hold of men like Denzil.”
“Denzil has queer tastes.”
“Yes—he worships you.”
“That’s not queer, it’s abnormal,” said Carnac with gusto.
“Then I’m abnormal,” she said with a mocking laugh, and swung her hat on her fingers like a wheel. Something stormy and strange swam in Carnac’s eyes. All his trouble rushed back on him; the hand in his pocket crushed the venomous letter he had received, but he said:
“No, you don’t worship me!”
“Who was it said all true intelligence is the slave of genius?” she questioned, a little paler than usual, her eye on the last gleam of the sun.
“I don’t know who said it, but if that’s why you worship me, I know how hollow it all is,” he declared sullenly, for she was pouring carbolic acid into a sore.
He wanted to drag the letter from his pocket and hand it her to read; to tell her the whole distressful story: but he dared not. He longed for her, and yet he dared not tell her so. He half drew the letter from his pocket, but thrust it back again. Tell this innocent girl the whole ugly story? It could not be done. There was but one thing to do—to go away, to put this world of French Canada behind him, and leave her free to follow her fancy, or some one else’s fancy.
Or some one else’s fancy? There was Tarboe. Tarboe had taken from him the place in the business which should be his; he had displaced him in his father’s affections... and now Junia!
He held out a hand to the girl. “I must go and see my mother.”
His eyes abashed her. She realized there was trouble in the face of the man who all her life had been strangely near and dear to her. With impulsiveness, she said “You’re in trouble, Carnac. Let me help you.”
For one swift instant he almost yielded. Then he gripped her hand and said: “No-no-no. It can’t be done—not yet.”
“Then let Denzil help you. Here he is,” she remarked, and she glanced affectionately at the greyish, tousled head of the habitant who was working in the garden of her father’s house.
Carnac was master of himself again. “Not a bad idea,” he said. “Denzil! Denzil!” he called.
The little man looked up. An instant later the figure of the girl fluttered through the doorway of her home, and Carnac stopped beside Denzil in the garden.
CHAPTER X. DENZIL TELLS HIS STORY
“You keep going, Denzil,” remarked Carnac as he lighted his pipe and came close to the old servant.
The face of the toiler lighted, the eyes gazed kindly, at Carnac. “What else is there to do? We must go on. There’s no standing still in the world. We must go on—surelee.”
“Even when it’s hard going, eh?” asked Carnac, not to get an answer so much as to express his own feelings. “Yes, that’s right, m’sieu’; that’s how it is. We can’t stand still even when it’s hard going—but, no, bagosh!”
He realized that around Carnac there was a shadow which took its toll of light and life. He had the sound instinct of primitive man. Strangely enough in his own eyes was the look in those of Carnac, a past, hovering on the brink of revelation. His appearance was that of one who had suffered; his knotted hands, dark with warm blood, had in them a story of life’s sorrows; his broad shoulders were stooped with the inertia of long regret; his feet clung to the ground as though there was a great weight above them. But a smile shimmered at his mouth, giving to his careworn face something almost beautiful, lifting the darkness from his powerful, shaggy forehead. Many men knew Denzil by sight, few knew him in actual being. There was a legend that once he was about to be married, but the girl had suddenly gone mad and drowned herself in the river. No one thought it strange that a month later the eldest son of the Tarboe family had been found dead in the woods with a gun in his hand and a bullet through his heart. No one had ever linked the death of Denzil’s loved one with that of Almeric Tarboe.
It was unusual for a Frenchman to give up his life to an English family, but that is what he had done, and of late he had watched Junia with new eager solicitude. The day she first saw Tarboe had marked an exciting phase in her life.
Denzil had studied her, and he knew vaguely that a fresh interest, disturbing, electrifying, had entered into her. Because it was Tarboe, the fifteen years younger brother of that Almeric Tarboe who had died a month after his own girl had left this world, his soul was fighting—fighting.
As the smoke of Carnac’s pipe came curling into the air, Denzil put on his coat, and laid the hoe and rake on his shoulder.
“Yes, even when it’s hard going we still have to march on—name of God, yes!” he repeated, and he looked at Carnac quizzically.
“Where are you going? Don’t you want to talk to me?”
“I’m going home, m’sieu’. If you’ll come with me I’ll give you a drink of hard cider, the best was ever made.”
“I’ll come. Denzil, I’ve never been in your little house. That’s strange, when I’ve known you so many years.”
“It’s not too late to mend, m’sieu’. There ain’t much in it, but it’s all I need.”
Carnac stepped with Denzil towards the little house, just in front of three pine-trees on the hill, and behind Junia’s home.
“I always lock my door—always,” said Denzil as he turned a key and opened the door.
They entered into the cool shade of a living-room. There was little furniture, yet against the wall was a kind of bunk, comfortable and roomy, on which was stretched the skin of a brown bear. On the wall above it was a crucifix, and on the opposite wall was the photograph of a girl, good-looking, refined, with large, imaginative eyes, and a face that might have been a fortune.
Carnac gazed at it for a moment, absorbed. “That was your girl, Denzil, wasn’t it?” he asked.
Denzil nodded. “The best the world ever had, m’sieu’,” he replied, “the very best, but she went queer and drowned herself—ah, but yes!”
“She just went queer, eh!” Carnac said, looking Denzil straight in the eyes. “Was there insane blood in her family?”
“She wasn’t insane,” answered Denzil firmly. “She’d been bad used—terrible.”
“That didn’t come out at the inquest, did it?”
“Not likely. She wrote it me. I’m telling you what I’ve never told anyone.” He shut the door, as though to make a confessional. “She wrote it me, and I wasn’t telling anyone-but no. She’d been away down at Quebec City, and there a man got hold of her. Almeric Tarboe it was—the older brother of Luke Tarboe at John Grier’s.” Suddenly the face of the little man went mad with emotion. “I—I—” he paused.
Carnac held up his hand. “No-no-no, don’t tell me. Tarboe—I understand, the Unwritten Law. You haven’t told me, but I understand. I remember: he was found in the woods with his gun in his hand-dead. I read it all by accident long ago; and that was the story, eh!”
“Yes. She was young, full of imagination. She loved me, but he was clever, and he was high up, and she was low down. He talked her blind, and then in the woods it was, in the woods where he died, that he—”
Suddenly the little man wrung his fingers like one robbed of reason. “He was a strongman,” he went on, “and she was a girl, weak, but not wanton ... and so she died, telling me, loving me—so she died, and so he died, too, in the woods with his gun in his hand. Yes, ‘twas done with his own gun—by accident—by accident! He stumbled, and the gun went off. That was the story at the inquest. No one knew I was there. I was never seen with him and I’ve never been sorry. He got what he deserved—sacre, yes!”
There was something overwhelming in the face of the little resolute, powerful man. His eyes were aflame. He was telling for the first time the story of his lifelong agony and shame.
“It had to be done. She was young, so sweet, so good, aye, she was good-in her soul she was good, ah, surelee. That’s why she died in the pond. No one knew. The inquest did not bring out anything, but that’s why he died; and ever since I’ve been mourning; life has no rest for me. I’m not sorry for what I did. I’ve told it you because you saved me years ago when I fell down the bank. You were only fourteen then, but I’ve never forgotten. And she, that sweet young lady, she—she was there too; and now when I look at this Tarboe, the brother of that man, and see her and know what I know—sacre!” He waved a hand. “No-no-no, don’t think there’s anything except what’s in the soul. That man has touched ma’m’selle—I don’t know why, but he has touched her heart. Perhaps by his great bulk, his cleverness, his brains, his way of doing things. In one sense she’s his slave, because she doesn’t want to think of him, and she does. She wants to think of you—and she does—ah, bagosh, yes!”
“Yes, I understand,” remarked Carnac morosely. “I understand.”
“Then why do you let her be under Tarboe’s influence? Why don’t—”
Carnac thrust out a hand that said silence. “Denzil, I’ll never forget what you’ve told me about yourself. Some day you’ll have to tell it to the priest, and then—”
“I’ll never tell it till I’m on my death-bed. Then I’ll tell it, sacre bapteme, yes!”
“You’re a bad Catholic, Denzil,” remarked Carnac with emotion, but a smile upon his face.
“I may be a bad Catholic, but the man deserved to die, and he died. What’s the difference, so far’s the world’s concerned, whether he died by accident, or died—as he died. It’s me that feels the fury of the damned, and want my girl back every hour: and she can’t come. But some day I’ll go to M’sieu’ Luke Tarboe, and tell him the truth, as I’ve told it you—bagosh, yes!”
“I think he’d try and kill you, if you did. That’s the kind of man he is.”
“You think if he knew the truth he’d try and kill me—he!”
Carnac paused. He did not like to say everything in his mind. “Do you think he’d say much and do little?”
“I dunno, I dunno, but I’ll tell him the truth and take my chance.” Suddenly he swung round and stretched out appealing hands. “Haven’t you got any sense, m’sieu’? Don’t you see what you should do? Ma’m’selle Junia cares for you. I know it—I’ve seen it in her eyes often—often.”
With sudden vehemence Carnac caught the wrists of the other. “It can’t be, Denzil. I can’t tell you why yet. I’m going away. If Tarboe wants her—good—good; I must give her a chance.”
Denzil shrank. “There’s something wrong, m’sieu’,” he said. Then his eyes fastened on Carnac’s. Suddenly, with a strange, shining light in them, he added “It will all come right for you and her. I’ll live for that. If you go away, I’ll take good care of her.”
“Even if—” Carnac paused.
“Yes, even if he makes love to her. He’ll want to marry her, surelee.”
“Well, that’s not strange,” remarked Carnac.