CHAPTER XX
The Dead and Dusty Past
Gower sat in a deep grass chair, a pipe sagging one corner of his mouth,his slippered feet crossed on a low stool. His rubber sea boots lay onthe porch floor as if he had but discarded them. MacRae took in everydetail of his appearance in one photographic glance, as a man will whenhis gaze rests upon another with whom he may be about to clash.
Gower no longer resembled the well-fed plutocrat. He scarcely seemed thesame man who, nearly two years before, had absently bestowed upon MacRaea dollar for an act of simple courtesy. He wore nondescript trouserswhich betrayed a shrunken abdominal line, a blue flannel shirt thatbared his short, thick neck. And in that particular moment, at least,the habitual sullenness of his heavy face was not in evidence. He lookedplacid in spite of the fiery redness which sun and wind had burned intohis skin. He betrayed no surprise at MacRae's coming. The placidity ofhis blue eyes did not alter in any degree.
"Hello, MacRae," he said.
"How d' do," MacRae answered. "I came to speak to you about a littlematter of business."
"Yes?" Gower rumbled. "I've been sort of expecting you."
"Oh?" MacRae failed to conceal altogether his surprise at thisstatement. "I understand you are willing to sell this place. I want tobuy it."
"It was yours once, wasn't it?"
The words were more of a comment than a question, but MacRae answered:
"You know that, I think."
"And you want it back?"
"Naturally."
"If that's what you want," Gower said slowly. "I'll see you in----"
He cut off the sentence. His round stomach--less round by far than ithad been two months earlier--shook with silent laughter. His eyestwinkled. His thick, stubby fingers drummed on the chair arm.
MacRae's face grew hot. He recognized the unfinished sentence as one ofhis own, words he had flung in Gower's face not so long since. If thatwas the way of it he could save his breath. He turned silently.
"Wait."
He faced about at the changed quality of Gower's tone. The amusedexpression had vanished. Gower leaned forward a little. There wassomething very like appeal in his expression. MacRae was suddenlyconscious of facing a still different man,--an oldish, fat man withthinning hair and tired, wistful eyes.
"I just happened to think of what you said to me not long ago," Gowerexplained. "It struck me as funny. But that isn't how I feel. If youwant this land you can have it. Take a chair. Sit down. I want to talkto you."
"There is nothing the matter with my legs," MacRae said shortly. "I dowant this land. I will pay you the price you paid for it, in cash, whenyou execute a legal transfer. Is that satisfactory?"
"What about this house?" Gower asked casually. "It's worth something,isn't it?"
"Not to me," MacRae replied. "I don't want the house. You can take itaway with you, if you like."
Gower looked at him thoughtfully.
"The Scotch," he said, "cherish a grudge like a family heirloom."
"Perhaps they do," MacRae answered. "Why not? If you knock a man downyou don't expect him to jump up and shake hands with you. You had yourinning. It was a long one."
"I wonder," Gower said slowly, "why old Donald MacRae kept his mouthclosed to you about trouble between us until he was ready to die?"
"How do you know he did that?" MacRae demanded harshly.
"The night you came to ask for the _Arrow_ to take him to town you hadno such feeling against me as you have had since," Gower said. "I knowyou didn't. You wouldn't have come if you had. I cut no figure in youreyes, one way or the other, until after he was dead. So he must havetold you at the very last. What did he tell you? Why did he have to passthat old poison on to another generation?"
"Why shouldn't he?" MacRae demanded. "You made his life a failure. Youput a scar on his face--I can remember when I was a youngster wonderinghow he got that mark--I remember how it stood like a ridge across hischeek bone when he was dead. You put a scar upon his soul that no onebut himself ever saw or felt--except as I have been able to feel itsince I knew. You weren't satisfied with that. You had to keep onthrowing your weight against him for thirty years. You didn't even stopwhen the war made everything seem different. You might have let upthen. We were doing our bit. But you didn't. You kept on until you haddeprived him of everything but the power to row around the Rock dayafter day and take a few salmon in order to live. You made a pauper ofhim and sat here gloating over it. It preyed on his mind to think that Ishould come back from France and find myself a beggar because he wasunable to cope with you. He lived his life without whimpering to me,except to say he did not like you. He only wrote this down for me toread--when he began to feel that he would never see me again--thereasons why he had failed in everything, lost everything. When I piecedout the story, from the day you used your pike pole to knock down a manwhose fighting hands were tied by a promise to a woman he loved, fromthen till the last cold-blooded maneuver by which you got this land ofours, I hated you, and I set out to pay you back in your own coin.
"But," MacRae continued after a momentary hesitation, "that is not whatI came here to say. Talk--talk's cheap. I would rather not talk aboutthese things, or think of them, now. I want to buy this land from you ifyou are willing to sell. That's all."
Gower scarcely seemed to hear him. He was nursing his heavy chin withone hand, looking at MacRae with a curious concentration, looking at himand seeing something far beyond.
"Hell; it is a true indictment, up to a certain point," he said at last."What a curse misunderstanding is--and pride! By God, I have envied yourfather, MacRae, many a time. I struck him an ugly blow once. Yes. I wasyoung and hot-headed, and I was burning with jealousy. But I did him agood turn at that, I think. I--oh, well, maybe you wouldn't understand.I suppose you wouldn't believe me if I say I didn't swoop down on himevery time I got a chance; that I didn't bushwhack--no matter if hebelieved I did."
"No?" MacRae said incredulously. "You didn't break up a logging ventureon the Claha when he had a chance to make a stake? You didn't show yourfine Italian hand in that marble quarry undertaking on Texada? Nor otherthings that I could name as he named them. Why crawl now? It doesn'tmatter. I'm not swinging a club over your head."
Gower shook himself.
"No," he declared slowly. "He interfered with the Morton interests inthat Claha logging camp, and they did whatever was done. The quarrybusiness I know nothing about, except that I had business dealings withthe people whom he ran foul of. I tell you, MacRae, after the firstshort period of time when I was afire with the fury of jealousy, I didnot do these things. I didn't even want to do them. I wish you would getthat straight. I wanted Bessie Morton and I got her. That was an issuebetween us, I grant. I gained my point there. I would have gone fartherto gain that point. But I paid for it. It was not so long before I knewthat I was going to pay dearly for it. I tell you I came to envy DonaldMacRae. I don't know if he nursed a disappointment--which I came to knowwas an illusion. Perhaps he did. But he had nothing real to regret,nothing to prick, prick him all the time. He married a woman who seemedto care for him. At any rate, she respected him and was a mate, livinghis life while she did live.
"Look, MacRae. I married Bessie Morton because I wanted her, wanted heron any terms. She didn't want me. She wanted Donald MacRae. But she hadwanted other men. That was the way she was made. She was facile. Andshe never loved any one half so much as she loved herself. She was onlya beautiful peacock preening her feathers and sighing for homage. Shewas--she is--the essence of self from the top of her head to her shoes.Her feelings, her wants, her wishes, her whims, her two-by-four outlook,nothing else counted. She couldn't comprehend anything outside ofherself. She would have made Donald MacRae's life a misery to him whenthe novelty of that infatuation wore off. The Mortons are like that.They want everything. They give nothing.
"She was cowardly too. Do you think two old men and myself would havetaken her, or anything else, from your father out in the middle of theGu
lf, if she had had any spirit? You knew your father. He wasn't a tameman. He would have fought--fought like a tiger. We might have killedhim. It is more likely that he would have killed us. But we could nothave beaten him. But she had to knuckle down--take the easy way for her.She cried; and he promised."
Gower lay back in his chair. His chin sunk on his breast. He spokeslowly, groping for his words. MacRae did not interrupt. Somethingcompelled him to listen. There was a pained ring in Gower's voice thatheld him. The man was telling him these things with visible reluctance,with a simple dignity that arrested him, even while he felt that heshould not listen.
"She used to taunt me with that," he went on, "taunt me with strikingDonald MacRae. For years after we were married she used to do that. Longafter--and that wasn't so long--she had ceased to care if such a man asyour father existed. That was only an episode to her, of which she wassnobbishly ashamed in time. But she often reminded me that I had struckhim like a hardened butcher, because she knew she could hurt me withthat. So that I used to wish to God I had never followed her out intothe Gulf.
"For thirty years I've lived and worked and never known any realsatisfaction in living--or happiness. I've played the game, played ithard. I've been hard, they say. Probably I have. I didn't care. A manhad to walk on others or be walked on himself. I made money. Money--Ipoured it into her hands, like pouring sand in a rat-hole. She lived forherself, her whims, her codfish-aristocracy standards, spending my moneylike water to make a showing, giving me nothing in return, nothing butwhining and recrimination if I crossed her ever so little. She made alap dog of her son the first twenty-five years of his life. She wouldhave made Betty a cheap imitation of herself. But she couldn't do that."
He stopped a moment and shook his head gently.
"No," he resumed, "she couldn't do that. There's iron in that girl.She's all Gower. I think I should have thrown up my hands long ago onlyfor Betty's sake."
MacRae shifted uneasily.
"You see," Gower continued, "my life has been a failure, too. WhenDonald MacRae and I clashed, I prevailed. I got what I wanted. But itwas only a shadow. There was no substance. It didn't do me any good. Ihave made money, barrels of it, and that has not done me any good. I'vebeen successful at everything I undertook--except lately--but succeedingas the world reckons success hasn't made me happy. In my personal lifeI've been a damned failure. I've always been aware of that. And if Ihave held a feeling toward Donald MacRae these thirty-odd years, it wasa feeling of envy. I would have traded places with him and been thegainer. I would have liked to tell him so. But I couldn't. He was a dourScotchman and I suppose he hated me, although he kept it to himself. Isuppose he loved Bessie. I know I did. Perhaps he cherished hatred of mefor wrecking his dream, and so saw my hand in things where it never was.But he was wrong. Bessie would have wrecked it and him too. She wouldhave whined and sniffled about being a poor man's wife, once she learnedwhat it was to be poor. She could never understand anything but asilk-lined existence. She loved herself and her own illusions. She wouldhave driven him mad with her petty whims, her petty emotions. Shedoesn't know the meaning of loyalty, consideration, or even an open,honest hatred. And I've stood it all these years--because I don't shirkresponsibilities, and I had brought it on myself."
He stopped a second, staring out across the Gulf.
"But apart from that one thing, I never consciously or deliberatelywronged Donald MacRae. He may honestly have believed I did. I have thename of being hard. I dare say I am. The world is a hard place. When Ihad to choose between walking on a man's face and having my own walkedon, I never hesitated. There was nothing much to make me soft. I movedalong the same lines as most of the men I know.
"But, I repeat, I never put a straw in your father's way. I know thatthings went against him. I could see that. I knew why, too. He was toosquare for his time and place. He trusted men too much. You can't alwaysdo that. He was too scrupulously honest. He always gave the other fellowthe best of it. That alone beat him. He didn't always consider his owninterest and follow up every advantage. I don't think he cared toscramble for money, as a man must scramble for it these days. He couldhave held this place if he had cast about for ways to do so. There wereplenty of loopholes. But he had that old-fashioned honor which doesn'tseek loopholes. He had borrowed money on it. He would have taken thecoat off his back, beggared himself any day to pay a debt. Isn't thatright?"
MacRae nodded.
"So this place came into my hands. It was deliberate on my part--butonly, mind you, when I knew that he was bound to lose it. Perhaps it wasbad judgment on my part. I didn't think that he would see it as an endI'd been working for. As I grew older, I found myself wanting now andthen to wipe out that old score between us. I would have given a gooddeal to sit down with him over a pipe. A woman, who wasn't much as womengo, had made us both suffer. So I built this cottage and came here tostay now and then. I liked the place. I liked to think that now he and Iwere getting to be old men, we could be friends. But he was too bitter.And I'm human. I've got a bit of pride. I couldn't crawl. So I never gotnearer to him than to see him rowing around the Rock. And he died fullof that bitterness. I don't like to think of that. Still, it cannot behelped. Do you grasp this, MacRae? Do you believe me?"
Incredible as it seemed, MacRae had no choice but to accept thatexplanation of strangely twisted motives, those misapprehensions, themurky cloud of misunderstanding. The tone of Gower's voice, hisattitude, carried supreme conviction. And still--
"Yes," he said at last. "It is all a contradiction of things I have beenpassionately sure of for nearly two years. But I can see--yes, it mustbe as you say. I'm sorry."
"Sorry? For what?" Gower regarded him soberly.
"Many things. Why did you tell me this?"
"Why should the anger and bitterness of two old men be passed on totheir children?" Gower asked him gently.
MacRae stared at him. Did he know? Had he guessed? Had Betty told him?He wondered. It was not like Betty to have spoken of what had passedbetween them. Yet he did not know how close a bond might exist betweenthis father and daughter, who were, MacRae was beginning to perceive,most singularly alike. And this was a shrewd old man, sadly wise inhuman weaknesses, and much more tolerant than MacRae had conceivedpossible. He felt a little ashamed of the malice with which he hadfought this battle of the salmon around Squitty Island. Yet Gower by hisown admission was a hard man. He had lived with a commercial sword inhis hand. He knew what it was to fall by that weapon. He had been hardon the fishermen. He had exploited them mercilessly. Therein lay hisweakness, whereby he had fallen, through which MacRae had beaten him.But had he beaten him? MacRae was not now so sure about that. But it wasonly a momentary doubt. He struggled a little against the reaction ofkindliness, this curious sympathy for Gower which moved him now. Hehated sentimentalism, facile yielding to shallow emotions. He wanted totalk and he was dumb. Dumb for appropriate words, because his mind keptturning with passionate eagerness upon Betty Gower.
"Does Betty know what you have just told me?" he asked at last.
Gower shook his head.
"She knows there is something. I can't tell her. I don't like to. Itisn't a nice story. I don't shine in it--nor her mother."
"Nor do I," MacRae muttered to himself.
He stood looking over the porch rail down on the sea where the _Blanco_swung at her anchor chain. There seemed nothing more to say. Yet he wasaware of Gower's eyes upon him with something akin to expectancy. Anuncertain smile flitted across MacRae's face.
"This has sort of put me on my beam ends," he said, using a sailor'sphrase. "Don't you feel as if I'd rather done you up these two seasons?"
Gower's heavy features lightened with a grimace of amusement.
"Well," he said, "you certainly cost me a lot of money, one way andanother. But you had the nerve to go at it--and you used better judgmentof men and conditions than anybody has manifested in the salmon businesslately, unless it's young Abbott. So I suppose you are entitled to winon your me
rits. By the way, there is one condition tacked to selling youthis ranch. I hesitated about bringing it up at first. I would like tokeep this cottage and a strip of ground a hundred and fifty feet widerunning down to the beach."
"All right," MacRae agreed. "We can arrange that later. I'll comeagain."
He set foot on the porch steps. Then he turned back. A faint flush stoleup in his sun-browned face. He held out his hand.
"Shall we cry quits?" he asked. "Shall we shake hands and forget it?"
Gower rose to his feet. He did not say anything, but the grip in histhick, stubby fingers almost made Jack MacRae wince,--and he was astrong-handed man himself.
"I'm glad you came to-day," Gower said huskily. "Come again--soon."
He stood on the porch and watched MacRae stride down to the beach andput off in his dinghy. Then he took out a handkerchief and blew his nosewith a tremendous amount of unnecessary noise and gesture. There wassomething suspiciously like moisture brightening his eyes.
But when he saw MacRae stand in the dinghy alongside the _Blanco_ andspeak briefly to his men, then row in under Point Old behind Poor Man'sRock which the tide was slowly baring, when he climbed up over the Pointand took the path along the cliff edge, that suspicious brightness inGower's keen old eyes was replaced by a twinkle. He sat down in hisgrass chair and hummed a little tune, the while one slippered foot kepttime, rat-a-pat, on the floor of the porch.
CHAPTER XXI
As it Was in the Beginning
MacRae followed the path along the cliffs. He did not look for Betty.His mind was on something else, engrossed in considerations which hadlittle to do with love. If it be true that a man keeps his loves andhates and hobbies and ambitions and appetites in separate chambers, anyof which may be for a time so locked that what lies therein neithertroubles nor pleases him, then that chamber in which he kept BettyGower's image was hermetically sealed. Her figure was obscured by otherfigures,--his father and Horace Gower and himself.
Not until he had reached the Cove's head and come to his own house didhe recall that Betty had gone along the cliffs, and that he had not seenher as he passed. But that could easily happen, he knew, in that milestretch of trees and thickets, those deep clefts and pockets in therocky wall that frowned upon the sea.
He went into the house. Out of a box on a shelf in his room he took themessage his father had left him and sitting down in the shadowy coolnessof the outer room began to read it again, slowly, with infinite care forthe reality his father had meant to convey.
All his life, as Jack remembered him, Donald MacRae had been a silentman, who never talked of how he felt, how things affected him, who neverwas stricken with that irresistible impulse to explain and discuss, torelieve his troubled soul with words, which afflicts so many men. Itseemed as if he had saved it all for that final summing-up which was tobe delivered by his pen instead of his lips. He had become articulateonly at the last. It must have taken him weeks upon weeks to write itall down, this autobiography which had been the mainspring of his son'sactions for nearly two years. There was wind and sun in it, and blue skyand the gray Gulf heaving; somber colors, passion and grief, an apologyand a justification.
MacRae laid down the last page and went outside to sit on the steps.Shadows were gathering on the Cove. Far out, the last gleam of the sunwas touching the Gulf. A slow swell was rising before some far,unheralded wind. The _Blanco_ came gliding in and dropped anchor.Trollers began to follow. They clustered about the big carrier likechickens under the mother wing. By these signs MacRae knew that the fishhad stopped biting, that it was lumpy by Poor Man's Rock. He knew therewas work aboard. But he sat there, absent-eyed, thinking.
He was full of understanding pity for his father, and also for HoraceGower. He was conscious of being a little sorry for himself. But then hehad only been troubled a short two years by this curious aftermath ofold passions, whereas they had suffered all their lives. He had got anew angle from which to approach his father's story. He knew now that hehad reacted to something that was not there. He had been filled with athirst for vengeance, for reprisal, and he had declared war on Gower,when that was not his father's intent. Old Donald MacRae had hated Gowerprofoundly in the beginning. He believed that Gower hated him and hadput the weight of his power against him, wherever and whenever hecould. But life itself had beaten him,--and not Gower. That was what hehad been trying to tell his son.
And life itself had beaten Gower in a strangely similar fashion. He toowas old, a tired, disappointed man. He had reached for material successwith one hand and happiness with the other. One had always eluded him.The other Jack MacRae had helped wrest from him. MacRae could seeGower's life in detached pictures, life that consisted of making moneyand spending it, life with a woman who whined and sniffled andcomplained. These things had been a slow torture. MacRae could no longerregard this man as a squat ogre, merciless, implacable, ready and ableto crush whatsoever opposed him. He was only a short, fat, oldish manwith tired eyes, who had been bruised by forces he could not understandor cope with until he had achieved a wistful tolerance for both thingsand men.
Both these old men, MacRae perceived, had made a terrible hash of theirlives. Neither of them had succeeded in getting out of life much that aman instinctively feels that he should get. Both had been capable ofhappiness. Both had struggled for happiness as all men struggle. Neitherhad ever securely grasped any measure of it, nor even much of content.
MacRae felt a chilly uncertainty as he sat on his doorstep consideringthis. He had been traveling the same road for many months,--denying hisnatural promptings, stifling a natural passion, surrendering himself toan obsession of vindictiveness, planning and striving to return evil forwhat he conceived to be evil, and being himself corrupted by thecorrosive forces of hatred.
He had been diligently bestowing pain on Betty, who loved him quiteopenly and frankly as he desired to be loved; Betty, who was innocent ofthese old coils of bitterness, who was primitive enough in her emotions,MacRae suspected, to let nothing stand between her and her chosen matewhen that mate beckoned.
But she was proud. He knew that he had puzzled her to the point ofanger, hurt her in a woman's most vital spot.
"I've been several kinds of a fool," MacRae said to himself. "I havebeen fooling myself."
He had said to himself once, in a somber mood, that life was nothing buta damned dirty scramble in which a man could be sure of getting hurt.But it struck him now that he had been sedulously inflicting those hurtsupon himself. Nature cannot be flouted. She exacts terrible penaltiesfor the stifling, the inhibition, the deflection of normal instincts,fundamental impulses. He perceived the operation of this in his father'slife, in the thirty years of petty conflict between Horace Gower and hiswife. And he had unconsciously been putting himself and Betty in the wayof similar penalties by exalting revenge for old, partly imagined wrongsabove that strange magnetic something which drew them together.
Twilight was at hand. Looking through the maple and alder fringe beforehis house MacRae saw the fishing boats coming one after the other,clustering about the _Blanco_. He went down and slid the old greendugout afloat and so gained the deck of his vessel. For an hourthereafter he worked steadily until all the salmon were delivered andstowed in the _Blanco's_ chilly hold.
He found it hard to keep his mind on the count of salmon, on money to bepaid each man, upon these common details of his business. His thoughtreached out in wide circles, embracing many things, many persons:Norman Gower and Dolly, who had had courage to put the past behind themand reach for happiness together; Stubby Abbott and Etta Robbin-Steele,who were being flung together by the same inscrutable forces withinthem. Love might not truly make the world go round, but it was atremendous motive power in human actions. Like other dynamic forces ithad its dangerous phases. Love, as MacRae had experienced it, was acurious mixture of affection and desire, of flaming passion and infinitetenderness. Betty Gower warmed him like a living flame when he let hertake possession of his thought. She was all th
at his fancy could conjureas desirable. She was his mate. He had felt that, at times, with aconviction beyond reason or logic ever since the night he kissed her inthe Granada. If fate, or the circumstances he had let involve him,should juggle them apart, he felt that the years would lead him downlong, drab corridors.
And he was suddenly determined that should not happen. His imaginationflung before him kinetoscopic flashes of what his father's life had beenand Horace Gower's. That vision appalled MacRae. He would not let ithappen,--not to him and Betty.
He washed, ate his supper, lay on his bunk in the pilot house and smokeda cigarette. Then he went out on deck. The moon crept up in a cloudlesssky, dimming the stars. There was no wind about the island. But therewas wind loose somewhere on the Gulf. The glass was falling. The swellsbroke more heavily along the cliffs. At the mouth of the Cove whitesheets of spray lifted as each comber reared and broke in that narrowplace.
He recollected that he had left the _Blanco's_ dinghy hauled up on thebeach on the tip of Point Old. He got ashore now in the green dugout andwalked across to the Point.
A man is seldom wholly single-track in his ideas, his impulses. MacRaethought of the dinghy. He had a care for its possible destruction by therising sea. But he thought also of Betty. There was a pleasure in simplylooking at the house in which she lived. Lights glowed in the windows.The cottage glistened in the moonlight.
When he came out on the tip of the Point the dinghy, he saw, lay safewhere he had dragged it up on the rocks. And when he had satisfiedhimself of this he stood with hands thrust deep in his pockets, lookingdown on Poor Man's Rock, watching the swirl and foam as each swell ranover its sunken head.
MacRae had a subconscious perception of beauty, beauty of form andcolor. It moved him without his knowing why. He was in a mood to respondto beauty this night. He had that buoyant, grateful feeling which comesto a man when he has escaped some great disaster, when he is suddenlyfreed from some grim apprehension of the soul.
The night was one of wonderful beauty. The moon laid its silver pathacross the sea. The oily swells came up that moon-path in undulatingfolds to break in silver fragments along the shore. The great islandbeyond the piercing shaft of the Ballenas light and the mainland far tohis left lifted rugged mountains sharp against the sky. From thesoutheast little fluffs of cloud, little cottony flecks white as virginsnow, sailed before the wind that mothered the swells. But there was nowind on Squitty yet. There was breathless stillness except for the low,spaced mutter of the surf.
He stood a long time, drinking in the beauty of it all,--the sea andthe moon-path, and the hushed, dark woods behind.
Then his gaze, turning slowly, fell on something white in the shadow ofa bushy, wind-distorted fir a few feet away. He looked more closely. Hiseyes gradually made out a figure in a white sweater sitting on a flatrock, elbows on knees, chin resting in cupped palms.
He walked over. Betty's eyes were fixed on him. He stared down at her,suddenly tongue-tied, a queer constricted feeling in his throat. She didnot speak.
"Were you sitting here when I came along?" he asked at last.
"Yes," she said. "I often come up here. I have been sitting here forhalf an hour."
MacRae sat down beside her. His heart seemed to be trying to choke him.He did not know where to begin, or how, and there was much he wanted tosay that he must say. Betty did not even take her chin out of her palms.She stared out at the sea, rolling up to Squitty in silver windrows.
MacRae put one arm around her and drew her up close to him, and Bettysettled against him with a little sigh. Her fingers stole into his freehand. For a minute they sat like that. Then he tilted her head back,looked down into the gray pools of her eyes, and kissed her.
"You stood there looking down at the sea as if you were in a dream," shewhispered; "and all the time I was crying inside of me for you to cometo me. And presently, I suppose, you will go away."
"No," he said. "This time I have come for good."
"I knew you would, sometime," she murmured. "At least, I hoped youwould. I wanted you so badly."
"But because one wants a thing badly it doesn't always follow that onegets it."
MacRae was thinking of his father when he spoke.
"I know that," Betty said. "But I knew that you wanted me, you see. AndI had faith that you would brush away the cobwebs somehow. I've beenawfully angry at you sometimes. It's horrible to feel that there is animaginary wall between you and some one you care for."
"There is no wall now," MacRae said.
"Was there ever one, really?"
"There seemed to be."
"And now there is none?"
"None at all."
"Sure?" she murmured.
"Honest Injun," MacRae smiled. "I went to see your father to-day about asimple matter of business. And I found--I learned--oh, well, it doesn'tmatter. I buried the hatchet. We are going to be married and livehappily ever after."
"Well," Betty said judiciously, "we shall have as good a chance as anyone, I think. Look at Norman and Dolly. I positively trembled forthem--after Norman getting into that mess over in England. He neverexactly shone as a real he-man, that brother of mine, you know. But theyare really happy, Jack. They make me envious."
"I think you're a little hard on that brother of yours," MacRae said. Hewas suddenly filled with a great charity toward all mankind. "He neverhad much of a chance, from all I can gather."
He went on to tell her what Norman had told him that afternoon on thehill above the Cove. But Betty interrupted.
"Oh, I know that now," she declared. "Daddy told me just recently.Daddy knew what Norman was doing over there. In fact, he showed me aletter from some British military authority praising Norman for the workhe did. But Daddy kept mum when Norman came home and those nasty rumorsbegan to go around. He thought it better for Norman to take hismedicine. He was afraid mother would smother him with money and insiston his being a proper lounge lizard again, and so he would graduallydrop back into his old uselessness. Daddy was simply tickled stiff whenNorman showed his teeth--when he cut loose from everything and marriedDolly, and all that. He's a very wise old man, that father of mine,Jack. He hasn't ever got much real satisfaction in his life. He has beenmore content this last month or so than I can ever remember him. We havealways had loads of money, and while it's nice to have plenty, I don'tthink it did him any good. My whole life has been lived in an atmosphereof domestic incompatibility. I think I should make a very capablewife--I have had so many object lessons in how not to be. My motherwasn't a success either as a wife or a mother. It is a horrible thing tosay, but it's really true, Jack. Mamma's a very well-bred,distinguished-looking person with exquisite taste in dress and dinnerparties, and that's about the only kind thing I can say for her. Do youreally love me, Jack? Heaps and heaps?"
She shot this question at him with a swift change of tone and anearnestness which straightway drove out of MacRae's mind everyconsideration save the proper and convincing answer to such intimatequestions.
"Look," Betty said after a long interval. "Daddy has built a fire on thebeach. He does that sometimes, and we sit around it and roast clams inthe coals. Johnny, Johnny," she squeezed his arm with a quick pressure,"we're going to have some good times on this island now."
MacRae laughed indulgently. He was completely in accord with thatprophecy.
The blaze Gower had kindled flickered and wavered, a red spot on theduskier shore, with a yellow nimbus in which they saw him move here andthere, and sit down at last with his back to a log and his feetstretched to the fire.
"Let's go down," MacRae suggested, "and break the news to him."
"I wonder what he'll say?" Betty murmured thoughtfully.
"Haven't you any idea?" MacRae asked curiously.
"No. Honestly, I haven't," Betty replied. "Daddy's something like you,Jack. That is, he does and says unexpected things, now and then. No, Ireally don't know what he will say."
"We'll soon find out."
MacRae took he
r hand. They went down off the backbone of the Point,through ferns and over the long uncut grass, down to the fire where thewash from the heavy swell outside made watery murmurs along the gravellybeach.
Gower looked up at them, waited for them to speak.
"Betty and I are going to be married soon," MacRae announced abruptly.
"Oh?" Gower took the pipe out of his mouth and rapped the ash out of itin the palm of his hand. "You don't do things half-heartedly, do you,MacRae? You deprive me of a very profitable business. You want myranch--and now my housekeeper."
"Daddy!" Betty remonstrated.
"Oh, well, I suppose I can learn to cook for myself," Gower rumbled.
He was frowning. He looked at them staring at him, nonplussed. Suddenlyhe burst into deep, chuckling laughter.
"Sit down, sit down, and look at the fire," he said. "Bless your soul,if you want to get married that's your own business.
"Mind you," he chuckled after a minute, when Betty had snuggled downbeside him, and MacRae perched on the log by her, "I don't say I likethe idea. It don't seem fair for a man to raise a daughter and then havesome young fellow sail up and take her away just when she is beginningto make herself useful."
"Daddy, you certainly do talk awful nonsense," Betty reproved.
"I expect you haven't talked much else the last little while," heretorted.
Betty subsided. MacRae smiled. There was a whimsicality about Gower'sway of taking this that pleased MacRae.
They toasted their feet at the fire until the wavering flame burned downto a bed of glowing coals. They talked of this and that, of everythingbut themselves until the moon was swimming high and the patches ofcottony cloud sailing across the moon's face cast intense black patcheson the silvery radiance of the sea.
"I've got some clams in a bucket," Gower said at last. "Let's roastsome. You get plates and forks and salt and pepper and butter, Bet,while I put the clams on the fire."
Betty went away to the house. Gower raked a flat rock, white-hot, out tothe edge of the coals and put fat quahaugs on it to roast. Then he satback and looked at MacRae.
"I wonder if you realize how lucky you are?" he said.
"I think I do," MacRae answered. "You don't seem much surprised."
Gower smiled.
"Well, no. I can't say I am. That first night you came to the cottage toask for the _Arrow_ I got a good look at you, and you struck me as afine, clean sort of boy, and I said to myself, 'Old Donald has nevertold him anything and he has no grudge against me, and wouldn't it be asort of compensation if those two should fall naturally and simply inlove with each other?' Yes, it may seem sentimental, but that ideaoccurred to me. Of course, it was just an idea. Betty would marrywhoever she wanted to marry. I knew that. Nothing but her own judgmentwould influence her in a matter of that sort. I know. I've watched hergrow up. Maybe it's a good quality or maybe it's a bad one, but she hasalways had a bull-dog sort of persistence about anything that strikesher as really important.
"And of course I had no way of knowing whether she would take a fancy toyou or you to her. So I just watched. And maybe I boosted the game alittle, because I'm a pretty wise old fish in my own way. I took a fewwhacks at you, now and then, and she flew the storm signals withoutknowing it."
Gower smiled reminiscently, stroking his chin with his hand.
"I had to fight you, after a fashion, to find out what sort of stuff youwere, for my own satisfaction," he continued. "I saw that you had yourScotch up and were after my scalp, and I knew it couldn't be anythingbut that old mess. That was natural. But I thought I could square thatif I could ever get close enough to you. Only I couldn't manage thatnaturally. And this scramble for the salmon got me in deep before Irealized where I was. I used to feel sorry for you and Betty. I couldsee it coming. You both talk with your eyes. I have seen you both whenyou didn't know I was near.
"So when I saw that you would fight me till you broke us both, and alsothat if I kept on I would not only be broke but so deep in the hole thatI could never get out, I shut the damned cannery up and let everythingslide. I knew as soon as you were in shape you would try to get thisplace back. That was natural. And you would have to come and talk to meabout it. I was sure I could convince you that I was partly human. Soyou see this is no surprise to me. Lord, no! Why, I've been playingchess for two years--old Donald MacRae's knight against my queen."
He laughed and thumped MacRae on the flat of his sturdy back.
"It might have been a stalemate, at that," MacRae said.
"But it wasn't," Gower declared. "Well, I'll get something out ofliving, after all. I've often thought I'd like to see a big, roomy housesomewhere along these cliffs, and kids playing around. You and Betty mayhave your troubles, but you're starting right. You ought to get a lotout of life. I didn't. I made money. That's all. Poured it into a rathole. Bessie is sitting over on Maple Point in a big drafty house withtwo maids and a butler, a two-thousand-acre estate, and her pockets fullof Victory Bonds. She isn't happy, and she never can be. She never caredfor anybody but herself, not even her children, and nobody cares forher, I'm all but broke, and I'm better off than she is. I hate to thinkI ever fought for her. She wasn't worth it, MacRae. That's a hell of athing for a man to say about a woman he lived with for over thirtyyears. But it's true. It took me a good many miserable years to admitthat to myself.
"I suppose she'll cling to her money and go on playing the _grandedame_. And if she can get any satisfaction out of that I'm willing. I'venever known as much real peace and satisfaction as I've got now. All Ineed is a place to sleep and a comfortable chair to sit in. I don't wantto chase dollars any more. All I want is to row around the Rock andcatch a few salmon now and then and sit here and look at the sea whenI'm tired. You're young, and you have all your life before you--you andBetty. If you need money, you are pretty well able to get it foryourself. But I'm old, and I don't want to bother."
He rambled on until Betty came down with plates and other things. Thefat clams were opening their shells on the hot rock. They put butter andseasoning on the tender meat and ate, talking of this and that. And whenthe last clam had vanished, Gower stuffed his pipe and lit it with acoal. He gathered up the plates and forks and rose to his feet.
"Good night," he said benevolently. "I'm going to the house and to bed.Don't sit out here dreaming all night, you two."
He stumped away up the path. MacRae piled driftwood on the fire. Then hesat down with his back against the log, and Betty snuggled beside him,in the crook of his arm. Beyond the Point the booming of the surf roselike far thunder. The tide was on the ebb. Poor Man's Rock bared itskelp-thatched head. The racing swells covered it with spray that shonein the moonlight.
They did not talk. Speech had become nonessential. It was enough to betogether.
So they sat, side by side, their backs to the cedar log and their feetto the fire, talking little, dreaming much, until the fluffy cloudsscudding across the face of the moon came thicker and faster and losttheir snowy whiteness, until the radiance of the night was dimmed.
Across the low summit of Point Old a new sound was carried to them.Where the moonlight touched the Gulf in patches, far out, whitecapsshowed.
"Listen," MacRae murmured.
The wind struck them with a puff that sent sparks flying. It rose andfell and rose again until it whistled across the Point in a steadydrone,--the chill breath of the storm-god.
MacRae turned up Betty's wrist and looked at her watch.
"Look at the time, Betty mine," he said. "And it's getting cold.There'll be another day."
He walked with her to the house. When she vanished within, blowing him akiss from her finger tips, MacRae cut across the Point. He laid hold ofthe _Blanco's_ dinghy and drew it high to absolute safety, then stood aminute gazing seaward, looking down on the Rock. Clouds obscured themoon now. A chill darkness hid distant shore lines and mountain rangeswhich had stood plain in the moon-glow, a darkness full of rushing,roaring wind and thundering seas. Poor Man's Rock w
as a vague bulk inthe gloom, forlorn and lonely, hidden under great bursts of spray aseach wave leaped and broke with a hiss and a roar.
MacRae braced himself against the southeaster. It ruffled his hair,clawed at him with strong, invisible fingers. It shrieked its fury amongthe firs, stunted and leaning all awry from the buffeting of manystorms.
He took a last look behind him. The lights in Gower's house were out andthe white-walled cottage stood dim against the darkened hillside. ThenMacRae, smiling to himself in the dark, set out along the path that ledto Squitty Cove.
THE END
By the author of "Big Timber"
NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE
By BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR
Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth.
* * * * *
He has created the atmosphere of the frozen North with wonderfulrealism.--_Boston Globe_.
Mr. Sinclair's two characters are exceptionally well-drawn andsympathetic. His style is robust and vigorous. His pictures of Canadianlife stimulating.--_New York Nation_.
Mr. Sinclair sketches with bold strokes as befits a subject set amidlimitless surroundings. The book is readable and shows consistentprogress in the art of novel writing.--_St. Louis Globe-Democrat_.
An unusually good story of the conflict between a man and a woman. It isa readable, well written book showing much observation and good sense.The hero is a fine fellow and manages to have his fling at a good manyconventions without being tedious.--_New York Sun_.
The story is well written. It is rich in strong situation, romance andheart-stirring scenes, both of the emotional and courage-stirring order.It ranks with the best of its type.--_Springfield Republican_.
* * * * *
LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Publishers
34 Beacon St., Boston.
Poor Man's Rock Page 21