Carnacs Folly | Page 4

In vain had his father endeavoured to induce him to
enter the lumber business; to him it seemed too conventional and fixed.
Yet, in his way, he knew the business well. By instinct, over the
twenty-five years of his life, he had observed and become familiar with
the main features of the work. He had once or twice even buried
himself in the shanties of the backwoods, there to inhale and repulse
the fetid air, to endure the untoward, half-savage life, the clean, strong
food, the bitter animosities and the savage friendships. It was a land
where sunshine travelled, and in the sun the bright, tuneful birds made
lively the responsive world. Sometimes an eagle swooped down the
stream; again and again, hawks, and flocks of pigeons which
frequented the lonely groves on the river-side, made vocal the world of
air; flocks of wild ducks, or geese, went whirring down the long spaces
of water between the trees on either bank; and some one with a fiddle
or a concertina made musical the evening, while the singing voices of
rough habitants rang through the air.
It was all spirited; it smelt good; it felt good; but it was not for Carnac.
When he had a revolt against anything in life, the grim storm scenes of

winter in the shanties under the trees and the snow-swept hills came to
his mind's eye. The summer life of the river, and what is called
"running the river," had for him great charms. The smell of hundreds of
thousands of logs in the river, the crushed bark, the slimy ooze were all
suggestive of life in the making. But the savage seclusion of the wild
life in winter repelled his senses. Besides, the lumber business meant
endless figures and measurements in stuffy offices and he retreated
from it all.
He had an artistic bent. From a small child he had had it, and it grew
with his years. He wanted to paint, and he painted; he wanted to sculp
in clay, and he sculped in clay; but all the time he was conscious it was
the things he had seen and the life he had lived which made his painting
and his sculpture worth while. It was absurd that a man of his great
outdoor capacity should be the slave of a temperamental quality, and
yet it was so. It was no good for his father to condemn, or his mother to
mourn, he went his own way.
He had seen much of Junia Shale in these years and had grown fond of
her, but she was away much with an aunt in the West, and she was sent
to boarding-school, and they saw each other only at intervals. She liked
him and showed it, but he was not ready to go farther. As yet his art
was everything to him, and he did not think of marriage. He was care-
free. He had a little money of his own, left by an uncle of his mother,
and he had also an allowance from his mother--none from his
father--and he was satisfied with life.
His brother, Fabian, being the elder, by five years, had gone into his
father's business as a partner, and had remained there. Fabian had at last
married an elder sister of Junia Shale and settled down in a house on
the hill, and the lumber-king, John Grier, went on building up his
splendid business.
At last, Carnac, feeling he was making small headway with his painting,
determined to go again to New York and Paris. He had already spent a
year in each place and it had benefited him greatly. So, with that
sudden decision which marked his life, he started for New York. It was
immediately after the New Year and the ground was covered with snow.

He looked out of the window of the train, and there was only the long
line of white country broken by the leafless trees and rail-fences and
the mansard-roofs and low cottages with their stoops, built up with
earth to keep them warm; and the sheds full of cattle; and here and
there a sawmill going hard, and factories pounding away and men in fur
coats driving the small Indian ponies; and the sharp calls of the men
with the sleigh bringing wood, or meat, or vegetables to market. He
was by nature a queer compound of Radical and Conservative, a victim
of vision and temperament. He was full of pride, yet fuller of humility
of a real kind. As he left Montreal he thought of Junia Shale, and he
recalled the day eleven years before when he had worn brass-toed boots,
and he had caught Junia in his arms and kissed her, and Denzil had had
his accident. Denzil had got unreasonably old