CHAPTER XX
A CLOUD OVER ROCKHAVEN
A man is happiest when he has most to do, and though a woman's faceintrudes upon his thoughts and he feels her smiles are all for him, itis life and action and the push forward toward success that interest himmost.
And so with Winn. He had come to Rockhaven to upbuild his fortune,believing himself in a fair way to do so. He had taken up his new lifeand care with earnestness and energy, putting his best thought into it,and not only carrying out his employer's instructions in letter andspirit, but in addition trying to make friends of those honest islandersand interest them in this new enterprise. The latter was not hard sinceJess, the oracle of Rockhaven, was on his side, and, in a way, sponsorfor him. Then, too, he had adopted their simple homely ways and, thoughnot a believer, attended church each Sunday. How much of this was due tothe occult influence of Mona's eyes, and how much to sympathy andinterest in the spiritual life of the island, is hard to say. Most ofthe men considered Sunday as a day of rest, and to some extent,recreation. A few accompanied their families to the little church, butmore spent the day lounging about the wharves, smoking and swappingyarns, and if a boat needed caulking, a net mending, or a new sailbending, they did not hesitate to do it. While all had sufficientreverence for the Lord's Day not to actually start out fishing, mostwere willing to get ready. And perhaps for good reason, for a livelihoodon Rockhaven was not easy to obtain and with them, as with mosthard-working people, the necessities of life displaced spiritualinfluences.
"It is a hard field to labor in," asserted the Rev. Jason Bush to Winnone day, "and I've grown old and gray in the work. We have a littlechurch that has not been painted but twice since I came here forty-oddyears ago, or shingled but once. We have no carpet, and the cushions inthe pews are in rags. I have taught this generation almost all they knowof books, and laid most of their parents away in the graveyard back ofthe meeting-house, and my turn will come before many years. We are poorhere, and we always have been and most likely always shall be, and attimes it has seemed to me the Lord was indifferent to our needs. Yourcoming here and this new industry has seemed to me a specialprovidence."
And Winn, thinking of the fifty shares of stock he had given this poorold minister, and the ten dollars dividend that must have seemed agodsend, felt his heart sink, for he had by this time come to realizewhy he had been told to donate this stock. And perhaps that fact gaveadded force to the parson's words.
And when, after Jess had advised him to lay off some of the men and hehad done so, a sort of gloom seemed to spread over the island. A few ofthe men took to their boats and fishing once more, and though Winn gaveout the plausible excuse that lack of demand for granite was the cause,the rest who were out of work now seemed a constant reproach.
Then, too, since his own ambition and hope received a setback he was notcontent. The growing distrust was a thorn in his side, in fact it wasmore than that; it was almost a certainty that his mission there wasnearing its end. To leave, he could not; to go ahead, he dared not, forany day he might be left in the lurch with no money to pay his men. AndFriday, when he usually received his remittances, was awaited with keenanxiety. When it came and a letter, slightly fault-finding in tonebecause he had sold no more stock for some weeks, and insisting that hemust go about it at once, Winn was not only irritated but disgusted.
"I am but a mere tool in their hands," he thought, "and they pay me todo their bidding, be it work or to rob honest people." And then Winn hada bad half-hour.
"Don't ye mind 'em," said Jess consolingly, when Winn had told him whatthey wrote, "but keep cheerful 'n' let 'em keep on sendin' money. It's along lane ez hez no turns 'n' ours'll come bimeby. Better write yerfriend 'n' git posted on what's doin'."
But this excellent advice had scant effect on Winn, for his ambition hadbeen chilled, his hopes seemed like to be thwarted, his mental sun in acloud, and the barometer of his spirits at low tide. Then the honestpeople here who had trusted him implicitly and who could ill afford tolose became a burden to his mind. Honest himself in every impulse, torealize that in the near future he might be cursed as a rascal onlyadded to his gloom. He dreaded to meet them lest they read the worrimentin his face, and especially the patient and hard-working Mrs. Moore, whodaily prepared his meals. To her the hundred dollars she had investedwas a small fortune, and then the kindly old minister whose long lifeof patient work for starvation pay had made him pathetic, and who hadconsidered this gift as coming from the hand of God--to feel that healso might join the rest in sorrowing hurt Winn. He dared not say a wordto any one except Jess, and what to do he knew not. At times he thoughtof going to them, one and all, explain the situation, and ask them tointrust him with their stock, when he would send it to the city to besold if possible. He even confided this impulse to Jess.
"No," replied that philosopher, "it ain't my idee to cross bridges tillye come to 'em, 'n' we'd best wait till we see which way the cat's goin'to jump. If wuss comes to wuss, an' 'fore I'd see ye blamed, I'll standthe loss o' every share ye've sold here."
This was some consolation to Winn, but did not remove his gloom.
Then Mona became a factor in his perplexity. He had tried to avoid herto a certain extent, but he could not avoid his thoughts, and deep inhis heart he knew that whatever bond of sympathy had come between themwas due to his own seeking. He had praised her playing, passed hours indelightful exchange of poetic thoughts and recital of old-time lore,pathetic, romantic, and altogether alluring, and this thrusting hispersonality, as it were, into the thoughts and life of this untutoredisland girl could have but one ending, and full well Winn knew what thatwas.
The next Sunday chance threw them together, for Winn, to escape hismood, if possible, had taken a long stroll over the island and up to thenorth village. Returning late in the afternoon, he found her sitting bythe old mill watching the tide slowly ebbing between its mussel-coatedfoundations. It was a spot romantic in its isolation, out of sight fromany dwelling and, in addition, of somewhat ghostly interest. Winn hadheard its history. It had been built a century ago and made useful forthe island's needs, but finally it fell into disuse and decay, its roofgone, its timbers and floor removed, its windows but gaping openings inthe stone walls and akin to the eyeless sockets and mouth of a skull.Then, too, the half-demented girl who years before had been foundhanging lifeless from one of its cross beams added an uncanny touch.Winn had felt its grewsome interest and once or twice had visited itwith Mona. And now, coming to it just as the lowering sun had reachedthe line of spruce trees fringing the western side of the harbor, hefound Mona sitting where they had sat one moonlight evening, idlywatching the motionless harbor stretching a mile away. She was notaware of his approach, but sat leaning against an abutting stone,looking at the setting sun's red glow on the harbor, a lonely, patheticfigure.
For a moment Winn watched her, and watching there beside this uncannyold ruin, lived the past two months over again like a momentary dream,and then drew nearer.
"Why, Mona," he said, "what are you doing here?"
"Nothing," she answered, straightening up and turning to face him, "onlyI did not know what else to do, and so came here." She did not disclosethe impulse which brought her to this spot, for of that no man,certainly not Winn, should be told.
"Well," he continued, with assumed cheerfulness, "I'm glad to have comeacross you, for I too have been lonesome and trying to walk it off. I'vehad the blues for a week or more now," he added, feeling that some sortof apology was due her, "and am not myself."
"And why?" she asked interestedly, turning her fathomless eyes upon him;"are you getting tired of us here, and wanting to go back to the city?"
"No, little girl," he replied, assuming his usual big-brother's tone andaddress, "I hate the city, as I've told you many times; but businessmatters vex me, and as you may have heard, I've had to lay off some ofmy men."
"Yes, I have heard," she answered quietly, her eyes still on him,"nothing happens here that all do not know in a few hour
s."
And Winn, with the burden of dread that like a pall oppressed him justthen, wondered how long it would take for all to hear what he or Jesscould utter in five words.
"Why did you come here, Mona, if you were lonesome?" he said, anxious tochange the subject. "It's the last spot on the island you should visitif lonely."
Mona colored slightly; "I always go to some lonely spot when I feelsad," she said, unwilling to admit the real reason for her coming here.
"And that is where you are wrong," put in Winn, forcing a laugh andseating himself beside her. "When I am blue I go to Jess or else take atramp as I did to-day," he added hastily.
Mona still watched him furtively and with an intuitive feeling that hewas concealing something. "I wish I knew how to play the violin," hecontinued, looking across the harbor to where a dory had just startedtoward the village, "it must be, as your uncle says, 'a heap o' comfort'when one is lonesome."
"It has been to him all his life long," she answered a little sadly,"and is now."
"And to you as well," he interposed, "it has helped you pass many a longhour, I fancy. Do you know," he continued, anxious to talk aboutanything except his present mood, "I've thought so many times of thatday I first heard you playing in the 'Devil's Oven,' and what a strangeplace it was to hide yourself in. You are a queer girl, Mona, and unlikeany one I ever knew. I wish I were an artist, I'd like to make a pictureof you in that cave."
Mona looked pleased.
"You would make a picture," he added, smiling at her, "that the wholeworld would look at with interest; I'd have you holding your violin andlooking out over the wide ocean with those sphinx-like eyes of yours,just as if the world and all its follies had no interest for you."
"And what is a sphinx?" asked Mona.
"A woman that no man understands," he answered carelessly. "There are afew such, and they are the only ones who interest men any length oftime."
"And am I like one of them?" queried the girl.
"Oh, no," he answered, "except your eyes, and they are absolutelyunreadable. Beyond them you are as easily understood as a flower thatonly needs the sun's smiles."
It was a bit of his poetic imagery faintly understood by Mona. "You mustnot mind my odd comparison," he continued, noticing her curious look,"it's only a fancy of mine, and then, you are an odd stick, as they usedto say up in the country where I was born."
"And so you were not born in the city," she said with sudden interest."What Uncle Jess has told me and what you have said has made me hate thecity."
"I thought you said once you envied the city girls who came here inyachts," laughed Winn.
"I might like to dress as they do," she answered, a little confused,"but not to live where they do."
"And what has that to do with where I came from," he persisted, "and whyare you glad I am country-born?"
"Because," she replied bluntly, "Uncle Jess says country-born people areusually honest and can be trusted."
Winn was silent, and as he looked at this simple island girl, sounaffected and winsome, a new admiration came for her. "Give her achance," he thought, "and she would hold her own with Ethel Shermaneven."
"That is true," he said aloud, after a pause, thinking only of his ownbusiness experience, "and the longer I remain here, the less I wish toreturn to the city. I feel as your worthy uncle does, and for goodreasons. With the exception of an aunt, who has made a home for me, thewomen whom I met there were not to be trusted, nor the men either. WhenI left the old farm I was too young to understand people, but now that Ido, I often long for the old associates of my boyhood, and if mybusiness here becomes successful, I shall never go back to the city."
A look of gladness lit up the girl's face.
"I feel vexed over my business," continued Winn, longing to confide histroubles to Mona and looking down into the dark mussel-coated chasm leftby the ebbing tide close by where they sat, "but I presume I shall comeout all right."
Then, as he glanced up at the roofless wall of the old mill just back ofthem, its window openings showing the dark interior, he thought of thegirl who, a century ago, had come there to end her heartache and whosestory was fresh in his mind.
"Come, Mona," he said tenderly, as a sigh escaped him, "it's time wereturned to the village, for I am going to meeting to-night with youand your mother." And all the long mile of sandy roadway that laybetween the mill and Rockhaven was traversed in almost unbroken silence.
Though far apart as yet, they were nearer to one another than everbefore.
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