# "Timber"/Chapter 14

CHAPTER XIV
Milt Goddard returned from Pancake that night, bringing letters for Taylor.
Sitting on the deacon's bench in the men's shanty John opened them. One was from his father. The address was typewritten, but within was a scant page of Luke's scrawl. It had been years since the old man had touched pen to paper for his son and that fact was thrilling!
"You are crazy to talk of that much pine. It can't be done. Don't believe everything they tell you up there just because you're a gullible cub. I'm sending Rowe to Pancake Monday night just to see how big a fool you are. Your mother is well. Yours, etc. L. Taylor."
John breathed deeply and smiled and scratched his head and re-read the crabbed sentences. Beneath their crustiness was genuine interest, a willingness, after Luke's manner, to take him seriously at last, an indication that the favors he had asked two months before and which had drawn only a cruel trick now were his.
Yesterday he would have tried to calculate the profit that might accrue to him from Luke Taylor's aid; tonight he saw only in that note a promise that the burden on Helen Foraker's shoulders would be lightened. She had helped him, she had shaped him—she had taught him; and now, perhaps, he could repay some of that obligation.
He could not know what waited just over the horizon of time!
The other letter was in a smudged, scrawled envelope, ​addressed in pencil and posted from Pancake. He opened it absently. The message had been written on rough tablet paper. It read:
"John Taylor Sir Well are you going to settel or will i have to seu you My damages is not Grate but unless i am paid 1000$ I will law you out of the county Yrs respy. Chas Stump esq."
He frowned over this. Goddard came in and he showed it to him. Milt laughed in the superior manner he had adopted toward Taylor, but condescended to say:
"Miss Foraker has a stack of 'em a foot high. Everybody who comes here from outside or anybody who has any property here gets those from Charley. He'll be around to see you."
Taylor had not been at the mill an hour the next morning when Charley Stump appeared, pushing his safety, that guilty look in his watery eyes.
"Hello, Mr. Taylor," he said, halting at a distance.
"Hello, Charley."
"Fine weather, ain't it?"
"Right."
John was copying from a tally sheet and paid no more attention to the old man until he had finished. Then he turned and looked squarely at him. Charley's hand caressed the bent handle-bar and his old eyes shifted uneasily.
"Your logs is turnin' out good, Mr. Taylor?"
"Fairly well."
"That's fine. You like it here, Mr. Taylor?"
"You bet, Charley!"
"Well—that's good," falteringly, as though he had started to say something else.
​"Was there something you wanted to say to me, Charley?"
"Oh, no; I just dropped by to see your logs. I'd been over sooner only I ain't got my tires yet," pointing at the rope-bound rims.
John walked away smiling. Charley was so meek and casual after his preemptory threat.
It was mid-afternoon when Helen, driving her Ford home from Pancake, saw a pea-green roadster attempt to swing into the road from one of the lesser trails which came in from the north. The car was driven by a girl and both car and driver were out of place there. The motor bellowed, the sand flew from the rear wheels, spinning tires ate through the sod hub-deep into the earth and stopped. Helen swung her car out of the road, ran around a stump, over a half-rotted log and stopped in the road again beyond the big car.
Marcia Murray was out, looking petulantly at the plight of her car when Helen came up.
"They call these roads!" she exclaimed. "All day long I've been wandering over these plains and trying to get right directions. How you people manage to get about is more than I understand."
Helen stooped to see better the position of the rear wheels.
"We drive light cars," she said simply. "And we get used to these roads." She looked at Marcia, immaculate, blonde, flushed, with fury in her eyes. "Where were you going?"
"To Pancake. How far is it from here?"
"About eleven miles."
"Are you sure?"
"No."
​Marcia sniffed. "You're the first person I've met today who wasn't sure, so perhaps you are right"
Her haughty manner did not impress this girl in the khaki skirt and laced boots, Marcia perceived. She experienced misgiving as though this other disapproved of her and as though that disapproval mattered. She was not accustomed to being made uncomfortable by the opinions of strangers. The flush in her face mounted as she watched Helen, who had dropped to her knees to look under the stalled car.
"You're in deep, but I think I can get you out."
"You can get help?"
"I could, but it isn't necessary. Let me take a pull on your car."
"With that?" looking disdainfully at the rattle-trap roadster.
"Yes."
Helen went to her and came back with a shovel. She did not look at Marcia and said nothing and this further nettled the girl. She stood back, however, smoothing the skirt over her hips, and watched Helen shovel sand and turf from about the rear wheels. She did the work quickly and without any evident effort or awkwardness.
"There"—drawing off her gloves and shaking sand from them. "Now we'll try."
A rope was forthcoming from the box on her car. She backed in close and made it fast.
"Start your motor," she said. "I think the two of us can manage it."
The engine sputtered, the gear of the Ford whined, the slack came out of the rope, the big car bellowed, both sets of driving wheels tore at the earth and the heavy ​car crawled forward, following the smaller between stumps and around through the brakes until it was again in the road.
"You're not headed for Pancake now," Helen said when the motors stopped. "It's the other way, but you can turn around if you're careful not to cut through the sod."
"You'll let me pay for this, of course."
Marcia produced her purse, but Helen would not accept money, though Marcia was insistent.
"Well, it was very kind of you, anyhow. You'll take my thanks, won't you?
"Perhaps the person I am looking for is not just in Pancake; that is his address, but there's a mill somewhere near here?"
"Yes, on a little further."
"I'm looking for a Mr. Taylor. Do you know of him?"
Helen eyed Marcia with a new interest. "I'm working for Mr. Taylor and I am going to talk with him as soon as I get home. He will be at my house."
"Oh"—rather slowly. "How much further is that?"
"Not far. If you want to you can follow me—"
"That's very kind of you," icily.
Marcia was appraising this woman, now, as her identity seeped into understanding, and the personal inadequacy she had felt gave way to its sister emotion: resentment. It was with this girl John was working, it was to her he had referred with such significant repression in his letters. Marcia's flush came back as she followed the rattling Ford over the swells and into Foraker's Folly.
At the door of her own house Helen stopped and got down.
​"I have some things to look after," she said. "Mr. Taylor is in there, or will be shortly. Won't you go in?"
Marcia's thanks was curt. She ran up the steps, breath quickening, and paused with her hand on the knob and watched Helen join Black Joe and move toward the nursery. Then she opened the door and stood looking in.
John was at Helen's desk, loose papers about him, lumber quotations clipped from a Detroit newspaper propped against a book, figuring on a pad of blank paper. He had heard the approach of Helen's noisy car; he had not heard the soft breathing of the big roadster, so when the door opened he believed it was Helen returning and did not look up at once, but only grunted an abstracted greeting. When no step sounded he raised his eyes.
For a moment he sat in motionless amazement, and then his pencil dropped to the blotter.
"Marcia!" he cried, and there was in the word a ring of gladness which was eloquent, as he beheld the trim girl, cool and clean and representative of all that had been desirable—a few short weeks before. "Marcia!" Amazement was there as he rose slowly, bewildered at seeing her there. He stopped about the corner of the desk, moved toward her and stopped. "Marcia?" A faltering question, reflecting all the doubt, a crystallizing of all the change that had come into his heart, a troubled echo of the truth that had come to him last night as he stood alone under the pines.
For a moment they were so, a dozen feet apart, the man's face a study in conflicts, the girl's intent, alert as it pried and probed with the incisiveness of her kind.
"John," she said lowly. "John?"
He moved forward and she put out both hands to him, ​her eyes questioning, before the calculation which flickered in their depths; he took her hands and halted. Just that: took her hands in his and stopped.
They stood, and he felt her tremble.
"John—aren't you going to—kiss me?" Her voice was exquisite pathos mingled with fright and misgiving, fright and misgiving which were well balanced; almost too well balanced.
He released one of her hands and his fell to his side limply.
"No, Marcia," shaking his head slowly. "I'm not—today."
She drew back then, a hand at her throat.
"John? John! You aren't glad to see me?" in a breathless whisper; and then, voice mounting, "John! What is it?"
He turned away, thrusting his hands into his pockets, staring gloomily through a window.
"A mistake," he muttered.
"Mistake?"
"Yes, a ghastly, miserable mistake!" he cried, facing her again, throwing his hands wide. "I'm at fault, Marcia. The blame in it rests on me. I've been selfish, indecisive. I've changed and said nothing to you about change. If you hadn't come here today I might have come to you with this—or I might have let matters drift—I don't know."
He swallowed drily and looked down at her. She seemed smaller than ever, seemed more lovely, more fragile than she ever had before; her blue eyes were wide with fright and her lips parted in bewilderment, and that bewilderment was genuine. His brows drew together with the pain of hurting her, but the change of weeks had ​come to this rushing conclusion and there could be no evasion, no more delay.
"I was honest enough with you in the beginning," he went on. "I'll ask that for myself: credit for being sincere. I was off my head about you, I was ready to promise anything to you, ready to do anything for you—and I was wrong."
His voice dropped and he let his hand which had been lifted drop, too.
"Wrong?" she asked. "Just where—? Just how?—" Her voice was a bit steadier, that amazement was going from her face; a glint of craft was there.
"In everything—from you to saw-logs!"
Her eyes narrowed, just perceptibly.
"And what have I done?" she asked, "What—to make this difference?" She was steeled, as though her question invited accusation.
He shook his head. "That's the devil of it: you've done nothing." She stirred, as in relief. "It's all on me, Marcia." He did not see the leap of triumph in her eyes or the settling of her mouth. "I—made love to you and promised many things—which I can't fulfill."
The girl stepped forward quickly.
"John, there's some terrible misunderstanding here," she said hurriedly, resting a hand on his arm. "You frighten me, but I know it's a misunderstanding!" She pressed a hand against her lips as though to crowd back a sob but her cool, clear eyes showed no such distress.
"You're miserable; you're making a mountain of—nothing. There has been some good reason for your—for what might seem to other people like your neglect of me, I know."
​She waited a moment and when he did not look at her, shook his arm gently.
"Everything has been going so splendidly for you, dear! Your father can't keep his pride to himself. He tells everybody about you. He's ready to help you—the world is before you, John—
"Promises?" She laughed nervously. "The only promise you made me was happiness and that happiness is yours to give me—for the asking."
She paused, smiled wistfully, and Taylor looked down at her again.
"No, Marcia, I can't give you the happiness you want," he said evenly. A flicker of hostility showed in her eyes. "There's such a difference in the happiness that you wanted and the happiness—you see, I'm not the John Taylor I was when I left you," very earnestly. "I've changed in the things I want and respect and because of that I've changed in almost every thought and impulse. I couldn't help this change if I wanted to; I'm not trying to crawl out of a mighty uncomfortable position; I'm telling you facts.
"The John Taylor who came up here started to make a fortune for you, to give you happiness in the terms of possessions that you could see and touch. That isn't possible any more. I can't do that—even after I've promised to do it—I didn't come to Windigo yesterday because I knew that some such thing as this would have to be said, though I didn't admit it even to myself until last night—and I didn't want to hurt you—I've tried to hide from the fact that the next time we saw each other—I'd have to ask you to—cancel our contract—"
"I don't understand," she said coolly and drew back.
​"I scarcely understand myself, Marcia. I don't want to make money. I would like to have money, but I've lost all interest in starting out to make a fortune as a first objective—"
"No one wants money; they want what it will buy."
"Not even that," shaking his head. "I—I'd like to do a little something for a lot of people. I'd like to be of a little service, I think. I'd like to put my mind and body and what little money I may be able to get from my father behind an idea which is going to count for many people—not just for me. I'd like to put in the best years of my life—just doing that."
"Go on; you're becoming interesting," with a tinge of irony.
"You see, I have my chance to do that in this forest, this pine. I've written you about it. You won't understand if I try to tell you all, but I'll say just this: it's an adventure in putting back into the hands of men the forests that men took away. I told you about Thad Parker's wife—you've seen this country. My father helped make the Jim Harrises and the Thad Parkers possible; he helped lay waste to this country and did nothing to put back what he had taken.
"I used to believe that my father's fortune was something for me to use. I never considered the fact that the devastation which made that fortune worked a hardship on any one else. I've come to understand that now, and I've come to think that maybe the job before me is to undo some of the damage my father did; to put back some of the things he took away. He wouldn't understand that, of course. It would make him furious. No matter; he won't have to know, but I'm going to ask him ​to help me do just that job. I won't put it in such terms, but I won't deceive him. I can't promise him any great profit; I can't even promise him his money back; I don't know, yet, how much I will need, but I want him to take a chance with me and I think he will. He is sending Phil Rowe to Pancake to look It up and he'll be here tonight—"
"And what has this to do with me?" There was defiance in the movement of Marcia's head and John looked at her rather startled by her evident wrath.
"Only this—that I can't offer you anything of what you want."
"And what else?" she waited. "That I'm—no longer satisfactory?"
"Please don't put it that way," he begged. His voice trembled and his face was drawn with suffering, because he hurt her. "We wouldn't have anything in common, Marcia; I couldn't give you what you wanted—and with you unhappy, where would I find happiness? It would be wretched for both of us. Don't you see that?"
"Yes, I see," she said and laughed again. She drew off her gloves nervously, with anger showing in the sharp little jerks of her hands. "You've changed, yes! And because you've changed, you assume the right to make me ridiculous in the eyes of my friends, to humiliate me, to delude and deceive me and make me suffer."
"Oh, Marcia—"
"You're not dumb, John Taylor! This isn't any sudden change in you; there's nothing spontaneous about it; it's deliberate and planned and I am—the deluded virgin!"
He tried to interrupt, but she stormed on, voice unsteady. "That is what it amounts to! You made love to me ​furiously; you were extravagant in your promises. I believed and promised to be your wife—you have it in your power to make good these promises, but you have forgotten that I and others may think that you owe something to me regardless of—this change in you! Wait a minute! I'm not through!" Taylor dropped his hands limply and listened. "All my closest friends, all your best friends, those who know the most about us, those who had our confidence, knew that I had given my word to marry you. They talk about you and gush over the way you have developed, when all they want to know is why you've changed in your attitude toward me—the cats! They held up all their plans yesterday to see if you would come, and when you didn't they tried to say that they were sorry, when I knew that they felt that it served me right for trusting you at all.
"There's another thing: How it affects me, here," a hand on her breast. "I put my trust in you; you made a solemn compact and now, on a whim, you ditch me—because you don't want to make money! Because you want to become a sort of evangelist, you begin by trampling a girl's heart and making her a laughing stock. Have you no pride, John Taylor? Have you no shame?"
Her questions stung like the bite of a leash. He could not know what went on in her cool little mind, could not know the meanness of her own heart at that moment. For him, who believed he had known women, Marcia had been worthy of his trust; for him she had been sweet and gentle, honest and without guile. He could not know of the nights she had been with Phil Howe, playing him, holding him at once aloof and her prisoner; he could not guess the tensity and intelligence with which she had ​followed the varying favor of old Luke. He could not know the secret plans she had made in heartlessness and mercenary calculation, the deceptions she had practiced, could not know the scorn she had for the first manhood and idealism that ventured into his letters. But this he could see and know—that instead of hurting this girl he had stirred a terrible temper; that instead of crying out to him in suffering she talked to him of her position, of what he could do for her if he would! Pride? Shame? Had he neither?
"I have pride, Marcia; I have shame. I have too much pride to lie to myself, to go through with this bargain which was to have meant much happiness. Now—I could never bring you happiness. It is better to see failure ahead than to walk blindly into it. By foresight—there is perhaps chance of another start. Shame? Yes, I have shame! The only greater shame that could come to me would come if I dodged this thing today—and went through with something infamous." He moved forward, not just steadily, and towered over her, looking into her face with a scrutiny which would not be evaded. One of his hands worked slowly as though he clutched for some saving condition. For a breathless moment they stood silent, giving one another stare for stare.
"I have changed and you have changed, Marcia. I—I never thought you had claws! I was prepared to break your heart today—and pay the penalty to my own conscience, all because of my mistake. I paid that penalty here in this room only a moment ago. I suffered as I never thought a man could suffer, because I was acting the cad, because I thought I was—hurting you. There's one thing I want to ask you, and I want you to be as ​honest with me as I have been with you. If I had come to Windigo yesterday, if I had told you that I could never bring fortune, if I had asked you to keep your promise under those circumstances, would you have taken me?"
She did not answer. She tried to tear her eyes away from his, tried to move, but she was helpless in the grip of his earnestness. A door opened and Helen Foraker stepped into the room, saw them and halted in surprise.
"Please excuse me," she begged. "I heard no one and thought you had gone out."
She started to withdraw, but Marcia checked her.
"Don't go," she said and laughed. She began drawing on a glove, covering the white, well shaped, well tended hands. "There isn't place for two of us here, it seems. I'm going—to make room for you, Miss Foraker."
She drew back and her eyes ran the length of Taylor's body, resting on his face with a blaze of fury. Her lip curled over her even teeth as she said: "This, I suppose, may be the ending of the first lesson!"
She turned toward the door.
"Wait!" he said sharply, and caught her wrist, swinging her about to face him.
"You haven't answered me—under those conditions, what would you have said?"
As she shook off his clasp she smiled again and her chin went up. "What would I have said?" She laughed, with the laugh of a victor. "Why, you poor fool, I'd have laughed in your face!"
The screen door banged behind her. As she jumped to the seat of the roadster he stood looking after her, arms limp at his side, breath quick. The motor started, the car backed and swung and with a bellow as of ​contemptuous rage it struck into the road which led out of the forest.
John turned slowly toward the doorway in which Helen had appeared. She was gone, the door closed. He stared blankly at it.
"Fooled!" he muttered. "So—I was the dupe! It wasn't the man—but what he could give!" He put a hand over his eyes and laughed weakly. "And I humbled myself—I crawled on my belly—but, by God!" hand dropping from his eyes, "I went through with it! I didn't hedge!"
He stared again at the closed door through which Helen had come to see and hear and through which she had gone again. He stepped forward, a half dozen quick strides.
"Helen!" he cried—"Helen!"—and stopped and waited. No reply, and he breathed again. "No—not now," he said. "Lord, no! Not now—not the chance of another mistake!"