Poor Man's Rock

by Bertrand W. Sinclair

  CHAPTER XIII

  An Interlude

  At daybreak Peter Ferrara came to the house.

  "How are you?" he asked.

  "Sore. Wobbly." MacRae had tried his legs and found them wanting.

  "It was a bad night all round, eh, lad?" Peter rumbled in his rough oldvoice. "Some of the boys got a line on the _Blackbird_ and hauled whatwas left of her around into the Cove. But she's a ruin. The engine wentto pieces while she was poundin' on the rocks. Steve lays in the house.He looks peaceful--as if he was glad to be through."

  "I couldn't save him. It was done like that." MacRae snapped hisfingers.

  "I know," Old Peter said. "You're not to blame. Perhaps nobody is. Themthings happen. Manuel'll feel it. He's lost both sons now. But Steve'sbetter off. He'd 'a' died of consumption or something, slow an' painful.His lungs was gone. I seen him set for weeks on the porch wheezin' afterhe come home. He didn't get no pleasure livin'. He said once a bulletwould 'a' been mercy. No, don't worry about Steve. We all come to itsoon or late, John. It's never a pity for the old or the crippled todie."

  "You old Spartan," MacRae muttered.

  "What's that?" Peter asked. But MacRae did not explain. He asked aboutDolly instead.

  "She was up to Potter's Landing. I sent for her and she's back," Petertold him. "She'll be up to see you presently. There's no grub in thehouse, is there? Can you eat? Well, take it easy, lad."

  An hour or so later Dolly Ferrara brought him a steaming breakfast on atray. She sat talking to him while he ate.

  "Gower will have to pay for the _Blackbird_, won't he?" she asked. "Thefishermen say so."

  "If he doesn't in one way he will another," MacRae answeredindifferently. "But that doesn't help Steve. The boat doesn't matter.One can build boats. You can't bring a man back to life when he's dead."

  "If Steve could talk he'd say he didn't care," Dolly declared sadly."You know he wasn't getting much out of living, Jack. There was nothingfor him to look forward to but a few years of discomfort anduncertainty. A man who has been strong and active rebels against dyingby inches. Steve told me--not so very long ago--that if something wouldfinish him off quickly he would be glad."

  If that had been Steve's wish, MacRae thought, then fate had hearkenedto him. He knew it was true. He had lived at elbows with Steve allsummer. Steve never complained. He was made of different stuff. It wasonly a gloomy consolation, after all, to think of Steve as being betteroff. MacRae knew how men cling to life, even when it has lost all itssavor. There is that imperative will-to-live which refuses to be denied.

  Dolly went away. After a time Wallis came over from the cottage atCradle Bay. He was a young and genial medico from Seattle, who had justreturned from service with the American forces overseas, and washolidaying briefly before he took up private practice again. He hadvery little more than a casual interest in MacRae, however, and he didnot stay long once he had satisfied himself that his patient had littlefurther need of professional services. And MacRae, who was weaker thanhe expected to find himself, rested in his bed until late afternoonbrought bars of sunlight streaming through openings in the cloud bankwhich still ran swift before the wind.

  Then he rose, dressed, made his way laboriously and painfully down tothe Cove's edge and took a brief look at the hull of the _Blackbird_sunk to her deck line, her rail and cabins broken and twisted. Afterthat he hailed a fisherman, engaged him to go across to Solomon Riverand apprise the _Bluebird_. That accomplished he went back to the house.Thereafter he spent days lying on his bed, resting in a big chair beforethe fireplace while his wounds healed and his strength came back to him,thinking, planning, chafing at inaction.

  There was a perfunctory inquest, after which Steve's body went away toHidalgo Island to rest beside the bodies of other Ferraras in a plot ofground their grandfather had taken for his own when British Columbia wasa Crown colony.

  MacRae carried insurance on both his carriers. There was no need for himto move against Gower in the matter. The insurance people would attendefficiently to that. The adjusters came, took over the wreck, madeinquiries. MacRae made his formal claim, and it was duly paid.

  But long before the payment was made he was at work, he and Vin Ferraratogether, on the _Bluebird_, plowing the Gulf in stormy autumn weather.The season was far gone, the salmon run slackening to its close. It wastoo late to equip another carrier. The cohoes were gone. The dogsalmon, great-toothed, slimy fish which are canned for Europeanexport--for cheap trade, which nevertheless returned much profit to thecanneries--were still running.

  MacRae had taken ninety per cent. of the Folly Bay bluebacks. He hadmade tremendous inroads on Folly Bay's take of coho and humpback. He didnot care greatly if Gower filled his cans with "dogs." But theBellingham packers cried for salmon of whatsoever quality, and so MacRaedrove the _Bluebird_ hard in a trade which gave him no great profit,chiefly to preserve his connection with the American canners, to harassFolly Bay, and to let the fishermen know that he was still a factor andcould serve them well.

  He was sick of the smell of salmon, weary of the eternal heaving of thesea under his feet, of long cold tricks at the wheel, of days in somber,driving rain and nights without sleep. But he kept on until the salmonceased to run, until the purse seiners tied up for the season, and thefishermen put by their gear.

  MacRae had done well,--far better than he expected. His knife had cutboth ways. He had eighteen thousand dollars in cash and the _Bluebird_.The Folly Bay pack was twelve thousand cases short. How much thatshortage meant in lost profit MacRae could only guess, but it was apretty sum. Another season like that,--he smiled grimly. The next seasonwould be better,--for him. The trollers were all for him. They went outof their way to tell him that. He had organized good will behind him.The men who followed the salmon schools believed he did not want theearth, only a decent share. He did not sit behind a mahogany desk intown and set the price of fish. These men had labored a long time underthe weighty heel of a controlled industry, and they were thankful for anew dispensation. It gave MacRae a pleasant feeling to know this. Itgave him also something of a contempt for Gower, who had sat tight witha virtual monopoly for ten years and along with his profits had earnedthe distrust and dislike of a body of men who might as easily have beenloyal laborers in his watery vineyards,--if he had not used his power tohold them to the most meager return they could wring from the sea.

  He came home to the house at Squitty Cove with some odds and ends fromtown shops to make it more comfortable, flooring to replace the old,worn boards, a rug or two, pictures that caught his fancy, new cushionsfor the big chairs old Donald MacRae had fashioned by hand years before,a banjo to pick at, and a great box of books which he had promised toread some day when he had time. And he knew he would have time throughlong winter evenings when the land was drenched with rain, when thestorm winds howled in the swaying firs and the sea beat clamorouslyalong the cliffs. He would sit with his feet to a glowing fire and readbooks.

  He did, for a time. When late November laid down a constant barrage ofrain and the cloud battalions marched and countermarched along thecoast, MacRae had settled down. He had no present care upon hisshoulders. Although he presumed himself to be resting, he was far fromidle. He found many ways of occupying himself about the old place. Itwas his pleasure that the old log house should be neat within andwithout, the yard clean, the garden restored to order. It had suffered aseason's neglect. He remedied that with a little labor and a littlemoney, wishing, as the place took on a sprightlier air, that old Donaldcould be there to see. MacRae was frank in his affection for the spot.No other place that he had ever seen meant quite the same to him. He wasalways glad to come back to it; it seemed imperative that he shouldalways come back there. It was home, his refuge, his castle. Indeed hehad seen castles across the sea from whose towers less goodly sightsspread than he could command from his own front door, now that winterhad stripped the maple and alder of their leafy screen. There was thesheltered Cove at his feet, the far sweep of the Gulf--color
ed accordingto its mood and the weather--great mountain ranges lifting sheer fromblue water, their lower slopes green with forest and their crests whitewith snow. Immensities of land and trees. All his environment pitchedupon a colossal scale. It was good to look at, to live among, and MacRaeknew that it was good.

  He sat on a log at the brink of the Cove one morning, in a burst ofsunshine as grateful as it was rare. He looked out at the mainlandshore, shading away from deep olive to a faint and misty blue. He casthis gaze along Vancouver Island, a three-hundred-mile barrier againstthe long roll of the Pacific. He thought of England, with its scant areaand its forty million souls. He smiled. An empire opened within range ofhis vision. He had had to go to Europe to appreciate his own country.Old, old peoples over there. Outworn, bewildered aristocracies and vastpopulations troubled with the specter of want, swarming like rabbits,pressing always close upon the means of subsistence. No room; no chance.Born in social stratas solidified by centuries. No wonder Europe wasfull of race and class hatred, of war and pestilence. Snapjudgment,--but Jack MacRae had seen the peasants of France and Belgium,the driven workmen of industrial France and England. He had seen alsosomething of the forces which controlled them, caught glimpses of theiron hand in the velvet glove, a hand that was not so sure and steady asin days gone by.

  Here a man still had a chance. He could not pick golden apples off thefir trees. He must use his brains as well as his hands. A reasonablemeasure of security was within a man's grasp if he tried for it. To pileup a fortune might be a heavy task. But getting a living was noinsoluble problem. A man could accomplish either without selling hissoul or cutting throats or making serfs of his fellow men. There wasroom to move and breathe,--and some to spare.

  Perhaps Jack MacRae, in view of his feelings, his cherished projects,was a trifle inconsistent in the judgments he passed, sitting there onhis log in the winter sunshine. But the wholly consistent must dieyoung. Their works do not appear in this day and hour. The normal manadjusts himself to, and his actions are guided by, moods andcircumstances which are seldom orderly and logical in their sequence.

  MacRae cherished as profound an animosity toward Horace Gower as anyRussian ever felt for bureaucratic tyranny. He could smart underinjustice and plan reprisal. He could appreciate his environment, hisopportunities, be glad that his lines were cast amid rugged beauty. Buthe did not on that account feel tolerant toward those whom he conceivedto be his enemies. He was not, however, thinking concretely of hispersonal affairs or tendencies that bright morning. He was merelysitting more or less quiescent on his log, nursing vagrant impressions,letting the sun bathe him.

  He was not even conscious of trespassing on Horace Gower's land. Whenhe thought of it, of course he realized that this was legally so. Butthe legal fact had no reality for MacRae. Between the Cove and PointOld, for a mile back into the dusky woods, he felt free to come and goas he chose. He had always believed and understood and felt that area tobe his, and he still held to that old impression. There was not a footof that six hundred acres that he had not explored alone, with hisfather, with Dolly Ferrara, season after season. He had gone barefootover the rocks, dug clams on the beaches, fished trout in the littlestreams, hunted deer and grouse in the thickets, as far back as he couldremember. He had loved the cliffs and the sea, the woods around the Covewith an affection bred in use and occupancy, confirmed by the sense ofinviolate possession. Old things are dear, if a man has once loved them.They remain so. The aura of beloved familiarity clings to them longafter they have passed into alien hands. When MacRae thought of this andturned his eyes upon this noble sweep of land and forest which hisfather had claimed for his own from the wilderness, it was as if someone had deprived him of an eye or an arm by trickery and unfairadvantage.

  He was not glooming over such things this rare morning which had comelike a benediction after ten days of rain and wind. He was sitting onhis log bareheaded, filled with a passive content rare in his recentexperience.

  From this perch, in the idle wandering of his gaze, his eyes at lengthrested upon Peter Ferrara's house. He saw a man and a woman come out ofthe front door and stand for a minute or two on the steps. He could notrecognize the man at the distance, but he could guess. The man presentlywalked away around the end of the Cove, MacRae perceived that his guesswas correct, for Norman Gower came out on the brow of the cliff thatbordered the south side of the Cove. He appeared a short distance away,walking slowly, his eyes on the Cove and Peter Ferrara's house. He didnot see MacRae till he was quite close and glanced that way.

  "Hello, MacRae," he said.

  "How d' do," Jack answered. There was no cordiality in his tone. If hehad any desire at that moment it was not for speech with Norman Gower,but rather a desire that Gower should walk on.

  But the other man sat down on MacRae's log.

  "Not much like over the pond, this," he remarked.

  "Not much," MacRae agreed indifferently.

  Young Gower took a cigarette case out of his pocket, extended it toMacRae, who declined with a brief shake of his head. Norman lighted acigarette. He was short and stoutly built, a compact, muscular mansomewhat older than MacRae. He had very fair hair and blue eyes, and therose-leaf skin of his mother had in him taken on a masculine floridity.But he had the Gower mouth and determined chin. So had Betty, MacRae wasreminded, looking at her brother.

  "You sank your harpoon pretty deep into Folly Bay this season," Normansaid abruptly. "Did you do pretty well yourself?"

  "Pretty well," MacRae drawled. "Did it worry you?"

  "Me? Hardly," young Gower smiled. "It did not cost _me_ anything tooperate Folly Bay at a loss while I was in charge. I had neither moneynor reputation to lose. You may have worried the governor. I dare sayyou did. He never did take kindly to anything or any one that interferedwith his projects. But I haven't heard him commit himself. He doesn'tconfide in me, anyway, nor esteem me very highly in any capacity. Iwonder if your father ever felt that way about you?"

  "No," MacRae said impulsively. "By God, no!"

  "Lucky. And you came home with a record behind you. Nothing to handicapyou. You jumped into the fray to do something for yourself and made goodright off the bat. There is such a thing as luck," Norman said soberly."A man can do his best--and fail. I have, so far. I was expected to comehome a credit to the family, a hero, dangling medals on my manly chest.Instead, I've lost caste with my own crowd. Girls and fellows I used toknow sneer at me behind my back. They put their tongues in their cheekand say I was a crafty slacker. I suppose you've heard the talk?"

  "No," MacRae answered shortly; he had forgotten Nelly Abbott'squestioning almost the first time he met her. "I don't run much withyour crowd, anyway."

  "Well, they can think what they damn please," young Gower grumbled."It's quite true that I was never any closer to the front than the Dovercliffs. Perhaps at home here in the beginning they handed me a captain'scommission on the family pull. But I tried to deliver the goods. Thesepeople think I dodged the trenches. They don't know my eyesight spoiledmy chances of going into action. I couldn't get to France. So I did mybit where headquarters told me I could do it or go home. And all I havegot out of it is the veiled contempt of nearly everybody I know, myfather included, for not killing Germans with my own hands."

  MacRae kept still. It was a curious statement. Young Gower twisted andground his boot heel into the soft earth.

  "Being a rich man's son has proved a considerable handicap in my case,"he continued at last. "I was petted and coddled all my life. Then thewar came along. Everybody expected a lot of me. And I am as good asexcommunicated for not coming up to expectations. Beautiful irony. If myeyes had been normal, I should be another of Vancouver's heroes,--aliveor dead. The spirit doesn't seem to count. The only thing that matters,evidently, is that I stayed on the safe side of the Channel. They takeit for granted that I did so because I valued my own skin aboveeverything. Idiots."

  "You can easily explain," MacRae suggested.

  "I won't. I'd see them all in
Hades first," Norman growled. "I'll admitit stings me to have people think so and rub it in, in their polite way.But I'm getting more or less indifferent. There are plenty of realpeople in England who know I did the only work I could do and did itwell. Do you imagine I fancied sitting on the side lines when all thefellows I knew were playing a tough game? But I can't go about tellingthat to people at home. I'll be damned if I will. A man has to learn tostand the gaff sometime, and the last year or so seems to be my periodof schooling."

  "Why tell all this to me?" MacRae asked quietly.

  Norman rose from the log. He chucked the butt of his cigarette away. Helooked directly, rather searchingly, at MacRae.

  "Really, I don't know," he said in a flat, expressionless. Then hewalked on.

  MacRae watched him pass out of sight among the thickets. Young Gower hadsucceeded in dispelling the passive contentment of basking in the sun.He had managed to start buzzing trains of not too agreeable reflection.MacRae got to his feet before long and tramped back around the Cove'shead. He had known, of course, that the Gowers still made more or lessuse of their summer cottage. But he had not come in personal contactwith any of them since the night Betty had given him that new,disturbing angle from which to view her. He had avoided her purposely.Now he was afflicted with a sudden restlessness, a desire for othervoices and faces besides his own, and so, as he was in the habit ofdoing when such a mood seized him, he went on to Peter Ferrara's house.

  He walked in through a wide-open door, unannounced by aught save hisfootsteps, as he was accustomed to do, and he found Dolly Ferrara andBetty Gower laughing and chatting familiarly in the kitchen over teacupsand little cakes.

  "Oh, I beg pardon," said he. "I didn't know you were entertaining."

  "I don't entertain, and you know it," Dolly laughed. "Come down fromthat lofty altitude and I'll give you a cup of tea."

  "Mr. MacRae, being an aviator of some note," Betty put in, "probablyfinds himself at home in the high altitudes."

  "Do I seem to be up in the air?" MacRae inquired dryly. "I shall try tocome down behind my own lines, and not in enemy territory."

  "You might have to make a forced landing," Dolly remarked.

  Her great dusky eyes rested upon him with a singular quality ofspeculation. MacRae wondered if those two had been talking about him,and why.

  There was an astonishing contrast between these two girls, MacRaethought, his mind and his eyes busy upon them while his tongue utteredidle words and his hands coped with a teacup and cakes. They were theproduct of totally dissimilar environments. They were the physicalantithesis of each other,--in all but the peculiar feline grace of youngfemales who are healthily, exuberantly alive. Yet MacRae had a feelingthat they were sisters under their skins, wonderfully alike in theirprimary emotions. Why, then, he wondered, should one be capable ofmoving him to violent emotional reactions (he had got that far in hisself-admissions concerning Betty Gower), and the other move him only toa friendly concern and latterly a certain pity?

  Certainly either one would quite justify a man in seeking her for hismate, if he found his natural instincts urging him along ways whichMacRae was beginning to perceive no normal man could escape traveling.And if he had to tread that road, why should it not have been his desireto tread it with Dolly Ferrara? That would have been so much simpler.With unconscious egotism he put aside Norman Gower as a factor. If hehad to develop an unaccountable craving for some particular woman, whycouldn't it have centered upon a woman he knew as well as he knew Dolly,whose likes and dislikes, little tricks of speech and manner, habits ofthought, all the inconsiderable traits that go to make up what we callpersonality, were pleasantly familiar?

  Strange thoughts over a teacup, MacRae decided. It seemed even morestrange that he should be considering such intimately personal things inthe very act of carrying on an impersonal triangular conversation; as ifthere were two of him present, one being occupied in the approved teacupmanner while the other sat by speculating with a touch of morosenessupon distressingly important potentialities. This duality persisted infunctioning even when Betty looked at her watch and said, "I must go."

  He walked with her around to the head of the Cove. He had not wanted todo that,--and still he did. He found himself filled with an intense andresentful curiosity about this calm, self-possessed young woman. Hewondered if she really had any power to hurt him, if there resided inher any more potent charm than other women possessed, or if it were amere sentimental befogging of his mind due to the physical propinquityof her at a time when he was weak and bruised and helpless. He couldfeel the soft warmth of her hands yet, and without even closing his eyeshe could see her reddish-brown hair against the white of his bed coversand the tired droop of her body as she slept that night.

  Curiously enough, before they were well clear of the Ferrara house theyhad crossed swords. Courteously, to be sure. MacRae could not afterwardrecall clearly how it began,--something about the war and theafter-effect of the war. British Columbia nowise escaped the muddle intowhich the close of the war and the wrangle of the peacemakers hadplunged both industry and politics. There had been a recent labordisturbance in Vancouver in which demobilized soldiers had played apart.

  "You can't blame these men much. They're bewildered at some of thethings they get up against, and exasperated by others. A lot of themhave found the going harder at home than it was in France. A lot ofpromises and preachments don't fit in with performance since the gunshave stopped talking. I suppose that doesn't seem reasonable to peoplelike you," MacRae found himself saying. "You don't have to gouge andclaw a living out of the world. Or at least, if there is any gougingand clawing to be done, you are not personally involved in it. You getit done by proxy."

  Betty flushed slightly.

  "Do you always go about with a chip on your shoulder?" she asked. "Ishould think you did enough fighting in France."

  "I learned to fight there," he said. "I was a happy-go-lucky kid beforethat. Rich and poor looked alike to me. I didn't covet anything thatanybody had, and I didn't dream that any one could possibly wish to takeaway from me anything that I happened to have. I thought the world was akind and pleasant place for everybody. But things look a littledifferent to me now. They sent us fellows to France to fight Huns. Butthere are a few at home, I find. Why shouldn't I fight them whenever Isee a chance?"

  "But _I'm_ not a Hun," Betty said with a smile.

  "I'm not so sure about that."

  The words leaped out before he was quite aware of what they might imply.They had come to a point on the path directly in front of his house.Betty stopped. Her gray eyes flashed angrily. Storm signals blazed inher cheeks, bright above the delicate white of her neck.

  "Jack MacRae," she burst out hotly, "you are a--a--a first-class idiot!"

  Then she turned her back on him and went off up the path with a quick,springy step that somehow suggested extreme haste.

  MacRae stood looking after her fully a minute. Then he climbed thesteps, went into the front room and sat himself down in a deep,cushioned chair. He glowered into the fireplace with a look as black asthe charred remains of his morning fire. He uttered one brief word aftera long period of fixed staring.

  "Damn!" he said.

  It seemed a very inadequate manner of expressing his feelings, but itwas the best he could do at the moment.

  He sat there until the chill discomfort of the room stirred him out ofhis abstraction. Then he built a fire and took up a book to read. Butthe book presently lay unheeded on his knees. He passed the rest of theshort forenoon sprawled in that big chair before the fireplace,struggling with chaotic mental processes.

  It made him unhappy, but he could not help it. A tremendous assortmentof mental images presented themselves for inspection, flickering upunbidden out of his brain-stuff,--old visions and new, familiar thingsand vague, troublesome possibilities, all strangely jumbled together.His mind hopped from Squitty Cove to Salisbury Plain, to the valley ofthe Rhone, to Paris, London, Vancouver, turned up all sorts
ofrecollections, cameralike flashes of things that had happened to him,things he had seen in curious places, bits of his life in that somehowdistant period when he was a youngster chumming about with his father.And always he came back to the Gowers,--father, son and daughter, andthe delicate elderly woman with the faded rose-leaf face whom he hadseen only once. Whole passages of Donald MacRae's written life storytook form in living words. He could not disentangle himself from theseGowers.

  And he hated them!

  Dark came down at last. MacRae went out on the porch. The few scatteredclouds had vanished completely. A starry sky glittered above horizonsedged by mountain ranges, serrated outlines astonishingly distinct. Thesea spread duskily mysterious from duskier shores. It was very still, toMacRae suddenly very lonely, empty, depressing.

  The knowledge that just across a narrow neck of land the Gowers,father, daughter and son, went carelessly, securely about their ownaffairs, made him infinitely more lonely, irritated him, stirred up aburning resentment against the lot of them. He lumped them all together,despite a curious tendency on the part of Betty's image to separateitself from the others. He hated them, the whole damned, profiteering,arrogant, butterfly lot. He nursed an unholy satisfaction in having madesome inroad upon their comfortable security, in having "sunk hisharpoon" into their only vulnerable spot.

  But that satisfaction did not give him relief or content as he stoodlooking out into the clear frost-tinged night. Squitty had all at oncebecome a ghostly place, haunted with sadness. Old Donald MacRae wasliving over again in him, he had a feeling, reliving those last fewcheerless, hopeless years which, MacRae told himself savagely, HoraceGower had deliberately made more cheerless and hopeless.

  And he was in a fair way to love that man's flesh and blood? MacRaesneered at himself in the dark. Never to the point of staying his hand,of foregoing his purpose, of failing to strike a blow as chance offered.Not so long as he was his father's son.

  "Hang it, I'm getting morbid," MacRae muttered at last. "I've beensticking around here too close. I'll pack a bag to-morrow and go to townfor a while."

  He closed the door on the crisp, empty night, and set about gettinghimself something to eat.