# "Timber"/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV
Two hours later Taylor stood alone before the hearth and looked about at that strange room. The walls were lined with shelves, and most of the shelves were heavy with books and pamphlets. The books were not the sort he had ever seen. There was little fiction, and that tucked in high places; some history, some other usual books, but these were all lost in row after row of technical volumes on chemistry, soils, and whole shelves of texts on silviculture. There were many works in French and German, all on forests and their products. The pamphlets came from every part of the country, from the Forest Service at Washington, from the offices of State Foresters, Tax Commissions and Congressional Committees. There was a set of books from the Bureau of Corporations, a set from Pennsylvania, one from Canada. A file of the Forestry Quarterly was placed next a row of copies of the Journal of Forestry, and below that was a set of technical forest papers from British India. A set of shelves was stacked with lumber trade journals, the backs of many checked with blue marks evidently indicating important references.
Then there were circular sections of tree trunks which had been polished until the rings stood out sharply. Except for size they all looked alike to him and he did not pause for long before them.
The wall in which the fireplace was set was without shelves and on it were hung curious charts. There was ​one map of Blueberry County with an area set off in a broken blue line. That, he thought, must be the forest, Foraker's Folly. It comprised nearly half of one township. There were charts which he could not decipher; they looked like statistical reports in graphic form, but the legends were in symbols and they yielded him no information.
The flat-topped desk was in poor order, but the accumulated papers bore no dust, evidence that they were much handled. There was an old swivel chair at the desk with the leather worn from its cushions. The remainder of the furniture was largely old-fashioned and of long service. He looked about the walls again scratching his chin in perplexity, and his eyes struck one other object which he had missed, a photograph in an oval frame. It was the face of a young man, and taken years ago. A flowing beard covered the expanse of shirt front, a mop of dark hair was brushed back from the brow. That brow was wide and, the eyes, though the reproduction was dulled by age, possessed the light of great intelligence. It was a good face, a sensitive face, the face of a kindly dreamer, and in it was something of the dignity which had been in the face of Helen Foraker as she talked with him outside the door.
He dropped into an armchair and stretched his feet before the fire.
Rain slashed across the windows steadily and the rising wind moaned in the trees, dropping now to a disconsolate murmur, growing again to a sob, and this cry of weather in pine tops struck a responsive chord of uneasiness in Taylor. Events of the last two days had created a growing doubt in him; the uncongeniality of ​his surroundings was depressing, and as he sat there the thought of Marcia recurred to him and for the first time his sense of obligation to her became conscious responsibility. She wanted the things that money could give; she trusted him to get them for her, and he was suddenly aware of the responsibility that devolves upon a man when he promises happiness to a woman.
He had been confident enough that this errand was but a brief preliminary step, that by it he would win his father's confidence, and that the remainder would be simple. Now he was not so certain. Difficulties might be ahead, and if he failed—He rose and paced the bear-skin rug. Money and how to get it! The goal and the problem of his kind! A door opened and Helen Foraker appeared. He stopped his pacing.
"We will eat now, Mr. Taylor."
He saw a table laid, with Aunty May and children standing by it. He saw, too, that when she bade him come to her board a portion of the indifference which had marked her was absorbed by a show of graciousness.
He entered the dining room.
"Mr. Taylor, this is Bobby Kildare and his sister Bessy."
The little girl, who was no more than three, advanced and courtesied gravely. The boy, twice her age, face shining from recent soap, grinned self-consciously as he put out a warm hand. Aunty May did not look at John, but busied herself with Bessy's bib. At first, there was a constrained silence about the table. Aunty May poured tea and gestured reproof to Bobby whose appetite was stronger than his sense of manners. Helen served and commented indifferently on the storm.
​"I understand you're interested in conservation. Miss Foraker," Taylor said.
Her gaze flashed to him as though she expected to find ridicule in his face, held a moment, and, not finding it, she smiled faintly.
"Most people who are doing what is usually called conservation work don't like the word. It suggests holding out, a setting apart. Growing new forests is what my father called national life insurance. They are not to be held out of use forever, but to be used when ripe and ready for market."
She spoke quickly with assurance, and yet with abstraction as one will who is accustomed to repeating a maxim for the unschooled.
"Your father was rather a pioneer in reforestation, I take it."
She nodded. "A pioneer in this country, at least. This is the first fairly big hand-grown forest we have."
"It surprised me. I had no idea it was so far along."
"Most people who stop in Pancake have little idea of what is here."
"I understand that. I heard about your pine on the way out."
"With embellishments, I presume?"
"Plenty," he laughed.
Silence. Helen spoke to the other woman and to the children, but displayed no inclination to talk further with Taylor, which nettled him. He cast about for another conversational entry and finding none urged:
"I'm interested. Where did your father get his idea? How long ago did he make his beginning?"
"Aunty May, give Bessy some more potato, will you?"
​"The idea came to him like all big ideas come to big men, I suppose," turning to John, "out of an appreciation of coming necessity. He had made some money in pine. He came on this tract a year or so after the last of the original pine was cut. It was naturally protected from the fires that always followed logging, by the river, swamps, hardwood and a chain of lakes, and no fire of consequence had been in here. He saw the seedlings coming up so thickly, knew that the land had produced splendid pine once, and believed it would again. He bought the piece, kept fires out, went abroad to see how Central Europe had grown its own forests, and put in the rest of his life making this land produce its second crop.
"That was in the middle seventies when he started. The growth is nearly fifty years old now. Foraker's Folly had become an old story and a stale joke to the locality, and very few people outside are interested enough to find out about it."
A burst of wind set the forest moaning.
"Your father had a great deal of courage," Taylor began and the girl looked up with something like appreciation. That died, however, when he added: "But that's a long time to wait for a return on your investment."
"Yes," she said, and in the response was marked coolness.
The outer door opened and Helen looked over her shoulder.
"What is it, Joe?"
The short man crossed the room and stood in the doorway, wet cap in his hands.
"Tell her," he said, "that Milt couldn't get any bacon from Raymer."
​The girl turned to Aunty May and said gravely:
"Milt couldn't get any bacon at the mill, Aunty."
The gaunt woman grunted and her eyes flashed.
"Tell him," she said, "that the baby trap needs a new stake an' I want it in by morning. I can't chase younguns all day long."
"Joe, the baby trap needs a new stake. Will you get it in tomorrow? " Helen asked.
"First" thing," promised Joe.
He waited a moment, then turned and went out.
Taylor looked at Helen and stole a swift glance at Aunty May. Nothing in their faces gave the key to this strange procedure. He stirred in his chair and smiled, and then attempted to start talk. He could not break the girl's reserve, however; he extended himself in the effort; she was coolly courteous, that was all. He could not make her respond and with his repeated failures his impulse to rouse her interest grew strong. He had the evening before him, he told himself; he would take her measure before he slept!
But there was no opportunity for that. When they left the table, Taylor lighted a cigarette and stood before the fire while the girl went to the telephone and for twenty minutes her talk was a jumble of queries, orders, comments which meant little to him: an inventory of lath was mentioned, the billing of cars of pulp wood, reference to a new band saw, memoranda hastily made, talk of a sick horse and regret that the man, Milt, must spend the night with the animal.
She hung up the receiver finally. She did not even look at Taylor but sat at the desk and lighted a student lamp which stood there.
​"I hope you won't think we're inhospitable," she said, as though it did not matter greatly what he thought, "but this is a busy time of year."
He felt himself flushing. This was dismissal with no opening for argument—and after he had planned to make this girl come to time. He found himself walking toward the stairway, muttering about letters he wanted to write, feeling driven out and inferior and furious. He watched the girl as he ascended. She was sorting papers rapidly and did not even glance at him, John Taylor, who knew all about women and who had dedicated this evening to making her regret that she had patronized him and been indifferent.