Part 2 (2/2)

The American laughed. ”If I didn't, I guess I could learn. It can't be harder than playing the fiddle, and I've worried into that.”

He stopped a moment, and then announced quietly with the almost dramatic abruptness which usually characterized him: ”Anyway we'd make something of it. I'd put you in command of her.”

”I wonder what leads you to believe I would suit you?” said Jimmy reflectively.

His companion waved his cigar. ”Saw you packing lumber. You stayed right with the contract, though you'd never done the thing before. Know what the first few days are--I've been there. Stacked two-inch planks in Was.h.i.+ngton when I was seventeen and my strength hadn't quite come to me, and went home at nights walking double, with every joint in my body aching. Then they started me log-wedging, and that's 'most enough to break a weak man's heart. Still, I stayed with it, and now I'm drawing royalties on my swing-frame and gang-saw patents, and hold stock in several mills!”

This was, perhaps, a trifle egotistical; but then it was, or would have been in most other countries, somewhat of an achievement for one, who had commenced with the lowest and most brutal labor, to make himself patentee, manager and stockholder, while still a very young man; and Jimmy had met mail-boat officers who gave themselves a good many airs on the strength of possessing a refined taste in uniform tailoring and a prepossessing personality. Individually, he felt it was more reasonable to be satisfied with one's ability to invent and run a mill. Just then, however, the door opened, and another man came in. He wore a blue s.h.i.+rt which fell open at the neck for want of b.u.t.tons, and jean trousers which were very old and torn, and there were smears of oil and paint on his hands.

”I came to ask when you are going to saw me those fir frames, Jordan?”

he said.

”Take a cigar!” said the American, and turned to Jimmy, with a grin.

”Ever heard of Th.o.r.eau who lived at Walden Pond?”

Jimmy had, as it happened, read his book on board one of the mail-boats, though he scarcely would have fancied that Jordan had done so. The latter indicated the newcomer with a wave of his hand.

”Well,” he said, ”that's another of them, though he lives in a yacht and his name is Valentine. There are men--and they're not all cranks--who seem to think the life most other people lead isn't good enough for them.”

Valentine, who looked very different from any of the yachtsmen Jimmy had seen on the English coast or elsewhere, sat down, and the latter was a trifle astonished when he said, ”That wasn't why Th.o.r.eau went to Walden.

He was an abolitionist, and made Walden a station for running n.i.g.g.e.rs into Canada. Anyway, why does a man want to go into business and slave to pile up money, when he can have the greatest thing in nature for nothing at all?”

”What's that?” asked Jordan. ”It's not the young woman one may take a fancy to; she usually costs a good deal.”

Valentine laughed softly, and looked hard at Jimmy. ”Though you earn your bread upon it, I think you know. There's nothing in this little world to compare with the sea!”

Then he stretched out his hand for the cigar-box. ”I'll take two. It's the brand your directors use. Saw those frames to-morrow, or I'll come round and raise the roof for you. In the meanwhile, if you'll come along, Mr. Wheelock, I'll show you my boat.”

Jordan grinned at Jimmy. ”Better go along. You'll have to see her, anyway.”

The two went out and left him, and as they paddled down the Inlet past the endless ranks of climbing pines whose aromatic odors were heavy in the dew-chilled air, Valentine glanced at his companion.

”This world was made good, except the cities; but nothing was made much better than that smell,” he said. ”It doesn't put unrest and longing into you like the smell of the sea-gra.s.s and the sting of the powdered spray; there's tranquillity and sound sleep in it; and, too, it gives one comprehension.”

This was not what Jimmy would have expected from his companion, but he understood. In that deep rift of the ranges where no wild wind ever entered, and the sunlight called up clean, healing savors from the solemn pines, one could realize that there was a beneficent purpose behind the scheme of things, and that the world was good. Still, Jimmy usually kept any fancies of that kind to himself.

”The introduction seems familiar,” he said. ”I almost fancy I have heard something very much like it before.”

”It's quite likely;” and Valentine laughed. ”It has been said of several other things, including tobacco.”

”You come here often?”

”Usually to refit. It's quiet and clean; and I like Jordan. He's a man with a mind, and straight, so far as it can be expected of any one in business.”

”You don't follow any?”

<script>