The Rapids Part 22

"I'll trouble you to finish your sentence." The voice was like ice.

"Don't misunderstand me," the young man went valiantly on. "It isn't for myself, it's for you."

"Why me?" Clark's glance softened ever so little at the thought.

"New schemes are piling up every day. We're not out of one before we're into another."

"We?" The voice had a touch of irony.

"Yes, sir, we--because I'm with you to the end, whatever that may be.

I don't care if I go to smash and lose my job, but what about you? I don't want to be disrespectful, but if this company fails it's you that will have failed. I won't count except to myself. You're doing more now than ten ordinary men. Isn't there enough without that?" Belding pointed across the river.

Then, to the young man's amazement, Clark began to laugh, not riotously but with a gradual abandonment that shook his thickset body with successive convulsions of mirth. Presently he wiped his eyes.

"Sit down, Belding, but first of all, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You make a brilliant contrast with a group I know who had to bolster themselves up for days to get courage to say something of the same kind, and they were thinking of their own skins, not mine. Now I want to tell you something."

Belding nodded. His brain was too confused for speech.

"It really doesn't matter about me. Long ago I decided that I was meant for a certain purpose in this world. I'm trying to carry it out.

I may reach it here--or elsewhere, frankly I don't know. But all I do know is that there are certain things here that I was meant to tackle and this new ca.n.a.l is one of them. If I go to smash it was intended that I smash, and that doesn't worry me a bit. I'm not working for myself, or even in a definite way for my shareholders, but I'm trying to adapt the forces and resources of nature to the use of man. Don't you see?"

"I think so." Belding began to perceive that he was caught up as a small unit in a great forward movement that encompa.s.sed not only himself but thousands of others.

"So once again, thank you for what you said. It was a bit of a job, wasn't it?"

"The toughest thing I ever tackled."

Clark's eyes twinkled with amus.e.m.e.nt. "I know it. Now, remember I don't want advice and if I smash--and I really won't smash--I don't want sympathy. It's the kind of balm I've no use for. Some people are so hungry for sympathy that they forget their jobs. And, Belding!"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm going to see you through, remember that. Now make me that map, and," he concluded with a provocative drawl, "don't forget how fortunate it is for you and me that water runs down hill."

Belding's mind was in a whirl. "There's one other thing," he said, "I've promised to build a cathedral for the bishop. Peterson has given the stone and--"

"I told him to," broke in Clark; "couldn't you guess that? He spoke to me about it. But understand that neither the bishop nor any one else must know it. I told them all except Ryan, and I didn't like to tread on his religious toes."

Belding laughed. "I should have guessed it. The thing was too easy, and Ryan came up to the scratch with the rest."

In September the pro-cathedral was completed. Belding, faithful to his trust, had made almost daily visits of inspection, when he often found the bishop seated on a half-cut stone and talking with evident interest to the workmen. It seemed that the big man's presence pushed the work along at top speed. On one occasion, a few days before the opening ceremony, the engineer was watching a mason laying the machicolated coping on the tower when the trowel slipped and dropped forty feet to the ground. Instantly there arose a stream of profanity from the top of that sacred edifice. Came a chuckle at Belding's shoulder.

"Unquestionably the effect of Ryan's cement, but it's going to hold our church together."

Glancing down, the mason caught sight of the black coated figure. His profanity ceased abruptly.

"Will you please throw me up that trowel, sir?"

The bishop laughed and the trowel gyrated skywards. "It makes me think of all that goes into the making of a church nowadays," he said thoughtfully. "By the way I wonder if my friend Mr. Clark will turn up next Sunday."

And Clark, to every one's surprise, did turn up, after most of St.

Marys had seated themselves in the new oak pews. There was Dibbott, in carefully pressed light gray trousers, white waistcoat and a red flower in his b.u.t.tonhole; Mrs. Dibbott in spotless linen, for the day was warm. Then the Bowers, the husband with his metropolitan manner acquired on frequent business trips to Philadelphia and converse with city capitalists, his wife in silk and a New York hat, at which Mrs.

Dibbott glanced with somewhat startled eyes. Things had gone well with the Bowers. There were the Wordens, with Elsie and Belding, the latter accepting whispered congratulations on his work but wanting only a look which he could not draw from the girl beside him. Filmer was there, his black whiskers unusually glossy. He pulled at them caressingly and now and again cleared his throat, for he was to sing the tenor solo.

At the door, Manson hung about till old Dibbott, glaring amiably down the isle, marched out and dragged the chief constable and his wife to a front seat. And last of all came Clark, who, slipping into a back corner, refused to move. Then the old bell ceased swinging in the new stone tower and the service began.

It was all very simple and touching. Filmer's melodious tenor never sounded better and the bishop's talk was straight to the point. This pro-cathedral, built out of love and faith, he told them, linked the old days with the new. The labor of many, freely given, had gone into it--here his kindly gaze dwelt for an instant on the gray-coated figure in the corner--and it augured well for the future. From this building must spread the doctrine of charity and fellows.h.i.+p and courage.

It was but for a few moments that he spoke, and when it was all over the old bell rang joyously as though for a wedding. Belding tried to catch Elsie's glance, but she only flushed and watched the majestic figure of the bishop retire into the little vestry. He had a despondent impression that an impalpable barrier lay between them. On the way out they met Clark and the girl's eyes brightened miraculously.

"Isn't it a charming church?" she said.

Clark nodded. "It's very pretty. St. Marys owes a good deal to Mr.

Belding for this."

"He made the plans, I know, but think of all the people who gave the labor and the things to build it with."

Belding was about to blurt out that it was Clark who gave the things to build it with, but a swift signal imposed silence.

"I know, it's excellent. You have not been at the works lately."

"I was there last week."

"And I was in Philadelphia. I'm sorry."

She said good-by and, with Belding at her side, turned homeward, Clark looked after them curiously, his eyes half closing as though to hide a question that moved in their baffling depths.

The congregation dispersed slowly with the conviction that there had been created one of those memories to which in later years the reflective mind delights to return. Quite naturally, and as they often did, Mrs. Manson and Mrs. Bowers dropped into the Dibbott house with its mistress. Dibbott was already there. He was about to start on one of his official journeys, and just now was rooting things out of a back cupboard with explosive energy.

"Well," said Mrs. Bowers, folding her large, capable hands, "wasn't it lovely?"

The rumble of a street car sounded outside. "It revives old times,"

Mrs. Manson said softly, "but I don't believe we've changed much.

We're too bred in the bone."

"Do we want the old times back?" asked Mrs. Bowers, to whom the past years had been kind.

"For some things, yes, and for others, no. Living's a great deal more expensive, and my husband's income is just the same," put in Mrs.

Dibbott after a pause. "Taxes are up, and I'm not any happier though I suppose I'm better informed. John won't sell the place though he has been offered a perfectly splendid price, and it's noisy--but I like it, and there's the garden. Things don't happen to me--they just happen round me."

"And you, my dear," continued Mrs. Bowers with an inquisitive glance at the chief constable's wife, "what about you? Your husband's supposed to have done better than any one except Mr. Filmer."

The little woman flushed. She was perfectly aware that Manson was credited with making his fortune, and perhaps he had. But she had no knowledge of it. For a while she knew he was dealing in property, and then one morning he told her he had sold out. Her heart leaped at the news, for Manson in the past year or so had changed. Invariably austere, he had been nevertheless kind and considerate--but soon after the real estate venture ended he became only austere, to which there was added something almost like apprehension. And this in her husband was to her of intense concern.

"I can't say," she began a little timidly. "Peter has been telling me for months he's going to resign and live at ease, but it's always a matter of waiting just a little longer. I can't help longing for the old days. Perhaps there was less comfort but--" she added pathetically, "there was also less restlessness. I suppose I'm out of date."

"Did you see Mr. Clark to-day?" broke in Mrs. Dibbott, changing the subject with swift intuition.

"Yes, the first time he has been in church."