Poor Man's Rock

by Bertrand W. Sinclair

  CHAPTER IX

  The Complexity of Simple Matters

  The army, for a period extending over many months, had imposed a rigiddiscipline on Jack MacRae. The Air Service had bestowed upon him a lessrigorous discipline, but a far more exacting self-control. He was notprecisely aware of it, but those four years had saved him from being afirebrand of sorts in his present situation, because there resided inhim a fiery temper and a capacity for passionate extremes, and thoseyears in the King's uniform, whatever else they may have done for him,had placed upon his headlong impulses manifold checks, taught him thevital necessity of restraint, the value of restraint.

  If the war had made human life seem a cheap and perishable commodity, ithad also worked to give men like MacRae a high sense of honor, toaccentuate a natural distaste for lying and cheating, for anything thatwas mean, petty, ignoble. Perhaps the Air Service was unique in that itwas at once the most dangerous and the most democratic and the mostindividual of all the organizations that fought the Germans. It had highstandards. The airmen were all young, the pick of the nations, clean,eager, vigorous boys whose ideals were still undimmed. They livedand--as it happened--died in big moments. They trained with the gods inairy spaces and became men, those who survived.

  And the gods may launch destroying thunderbolts, but they do not lie orcheat or steal. An honest man may respect an honest enemy, and be rousedto murderous fury by a common rascal's trickery.

  When MacRae dropped his hook in Folly Bay he was two days overdue, forthe first time in his fish-running venture. The trollers had promised tohold their fish. The first man alongside to deliver reminded him ofthis.

  "Southeaster held you up, eh?" said he. "We fished in the lee off thetop end. But we might as well have laid in. Held 'em too long for you."

  "They spoiled before you could slough them on the cannery, eh?" MacRaeobserved.

  "Most of mine did. They took some."

  "How many of your fish went bad?" Jack asked.

  "About twenty-five, I guess."

  MacRae finished checking the salmon the fisherman heaved up on the deck.He made out two slips and handed the man his money.

  "I'm paying you for the lost fish," he said. "I told you to hold themfor me. I want you to hold them. If I can't get here on time, it's myloss, not yours."

  The fisherman looked at the money in his hand and up at MacRae.

  "Well," he said, "you're the first buyer I ever seen do that. You're allright, all right."

  There were variations of this. Some of the trollers, weatherwise oldsea-dogs, had foreseen that the _Blackbird_ could not face that blow,and they had sold their fish. Others had held on. These, who were allmen MacRae knew, he paid according to their own estimate of loss. He didnot argue. He accepted their word. It was an astonishing experience forthe trolling fleet. They had never found a buyer willing to make good aloss of that kind.

  But there were other folk afloat besides simple, honest fishermen whowould not lie for the price of one salmon or forty. When the _Arrow_drew abreast and stopped, a boat had pushed in beside the _Blackbird_.The fisherman in it put half a dozen bluebacks on the deck and clamberedup himself.

  "You owe me for thirty besides them," he announced.

  "How's that?" MacRae asked coolly.

  But he was not cool inside. He knew the man, a preemptor of Folly Bay, atruckler to the cannery because he was always in debt to thecannery,--and a quarrelsome individual besides, who took advantage ofhis size and strength to browbeat less able men.

  MacRae had got few salmon off Sam Kaye since the cannery opened. He hadnever asked Kaye to hold fish for him. He knew instantly what was inKaye's mind; it had flitted from one boat to another that MacRae wasmaking good the loss of salmon held for him, and Kaye was going to getin on this easy money if he could bluff it through.

  He stood on the _Blackbird's_ deck, snarlingly demanding payment forthirty fish. MacRae looked at him silently. He hated brawling,acrimonious dispute. He was loth to a common row at that moment, becausehe was acutely conscious of the two girls watching. But he was even moreconscious of Gower's stare and the curious expectancy of the fishermenclustered about his stern.

  Kaye was simply trying to do him out of fifteen dollars. MacRae knew it.He knew that the fishermen knew it,--and he had a suspicion that FollyBay might not be unaware, or averse, to Sam Kaye taking a fall out ofhim. Folly Bay had tried other unpleasant tricks.

  "That doesn't go for you, Kaye," he said quietly. "I know your game. Getoff my boat and take your fish with you."

  Sam Kaye glowered threateningly. He had cowed men before with thefierceness of his look. He was long-armed and raw-boned, and he ratherfancied himself in a rough and tumble. He was quite blissfully ignorantthat Jack MacRae was stewing under his outward calmness. Kaye took astep forward, with an intimidating thrust of his jaw.

  MacRae smashed him squarely in the mouth with a straight left, andhooked him somewhere on the chin with a wicked right cross. Either blowwas sufficient to knock any ordinary man down. There was a deceptivepower in MacRae's slenderness, which was not so much slenderness asperfect bodily symmetry. He weighed within ten pounds as much as SamKaye, although he did not look it, and he was as quick as a playfulkitten. Kaye went down, as told before. He lifted a dazed countenanceabove the cockpit as MacRae shoved his craft clear.

  The fishermen broke the silence with ribald laughter. They knew Kaye'sgame too.

  MacRae left Folly Bay later in the afternoon, poorer by many dollarspaid for rotten salmon. He wasn't in a particularly genial mood. The SamKaye affair had come at an inopportune moment. He didn't care to standout as a bruiser. Still, he asked himself irritably, why should he carebecause Nelly Abbott and Betty Gower had seen him using his fists? Hewas perfectly justified. Indeed, he knew very well he could have donenothing else. The trailers had chortled over the outcome. These werematters they could understand and appreciate. Even Steve Ferrara lookedat him enviously.

  "It makes me wish I'd dodged the gas," Steve said wistfully. "It's hellto wheeze your breath in and out. By jiminy, you're wicked with yourhands, Jack. Did you box much in France?"

  "Quite a lot," MacRae replied. "Some of the fellows in our squadron werepretty clever. We used the gloves quite a bit."

  "And you're naturally quick," Steve drawled. "Now, me, the gas hascooked my goose. I'd have to bat Kaye over the head with an oar. Gee, hesure got a surprise."

  They both laughed. Even upon his bloody face--as he rose out of his ownfish hold--bewildered astonishment had been Sam Kaye's chief expression.

  The _Blackbird_ went her rounds. At noon the next day she met VincentFerrara with her sister ship, and the two boats made one load for the_Blackbird_. She headed south. With high noon, too, came the summerwesterly, screeching and whistling and lashing the Gulf to a brief fury.

  It was the regular summer wind, a yachtsman's gale. Four days out of sixits cycle ran the same, a breeze rising at ten o'clock, stiffening to ahealthy blow, a mere sigh at sundown. Midnight would find the sea smoothas a mirror, the heaving swell killed by changing tides.

  So the _Blackbird_ ran down Squitty, rolling and yawing through afollowing sea, and turned into Squitty Cove to rest till night and calmsettled on the Gulf.

  When her mudhook was down in that peaceful nook, Steve Ferrara turnedinto his bunk to get a few hours' sleep against the long night watch.MacRae stirred wakeful on the sun-hot deck, slushing it down withbuckets of sea water to save his ice and fish. He coiled ropes, made hisvessel neat, and sat him down to think. Squitty Cove always stirred himto introspection. His mind leaped always to the manifold suggestions ofany well-remembered place. He could shut his eyes and see the old loghouse behind its leafy screen of alder and maple at the Cove's head. Therosebushes before it were laden with bloom now. At his hand were thegray cliffs backed by grassy patches, running away inland to virginforest. He felt dispossessed of those noble acres. He was always seeingthem through his father's eyes, feeling as Donald MacRae must have feltin those last,
lonely years of which he had written in simple languagethat had wrung his son's heart.

  But it never occurred to Jack MacRae that his father, pouring out thetale of those troubled years, had bestowed upon him an equivocalheritage.

  He slid overboard the small skiff the _Blackbird_ carried and rowedashore. There were rowboat trollers on the beach asleep in their tentsand rude lean-tos. He walked over the low ridge behind which stood PeterFerrara's house. It was hot, the wooded heights of the island shuttingoff the cool westerly. On such a day Peter Ferrara should be dozing onhis porch and Dolly perhaps mending stockings or sewing in a rockerbeside him.

  But the porch was bare. As MacRae drew near the house a man came out thedoor and down the three low steps. He was short and thick-set, young,quite fair, inclined already to floridness of skin. MacRae knew him atonce for Norman Gower. He was a typical Gower,--a second edition of hisfather, save that his face was less suggestive of power, less heavilymarked with sullenness.

  He glanced with blank indifference at Jack MacRae, passed within sixfeet and walked along the path which ran around the head of the Cove.MacRae watched him. He would cross between the boathouse and the rosesin MacRae's dooryard. MacRae had an impulse to stride after him, toforbid harshly any such trespass on MacRae ground. But he smiled at thatchildishness. It was childish, MacRae knew. But he felt that way aboutit, just as he often felt that he himself had a perfect right to rangethe whole end of Squitty, to tramp across greensward and through forestdepths, despite Horace Gower's legal title to the land. MacRae was awareof this anomaly in his attitude, without troubling to analyze it.

  He walked into old Peter's house without announcement beyond hisfootsteps on the floor, as he had been accustomed to do as far back ashe could remember. Dolly was sitting beside a little table, her chin inher palms. There was a droop to her body that disturbed MacRae. She hadsat for hours like that the night his father died. And there was now onher face something of the same look of sad resignation and pity. Herbig, dark eyes were misty, troubled, when she lifted them to MacRae.

  "Hello, Jack," she said.

  He came up to her, put his hands on her shoulders.

  "What is it now?" he demanded. "I saw Norman Gower leaving as I came up.And here you're looking--what's wrong?"

  His tone was imperative.

  "Nothing, Johnny."

  "You don't cry for nothing. You're not that kind," MacRae replied."That chunky lobster hasn't given you the glooms, surely?"

  Dolly's eyes flashed.

  "It isn't like you to call names," she declared. "It isn't nice.And--and what business of yours is it whether I laugh or cry?"

  MacRae smiled. Dolly in a temper was not wholly strange to him. He wasstruck with her remarkable beauty every time he saw her. She wasaltogether too beautiful a flower to be blushing unseen on an island inthe Gulf. He shook her gently.

  "Because I'm big brother. Because you and I were kids together for yearsbefore we ever knew there could be serpents in Eden. Because anythingthat hurts you hurts me. I don't like anything to make you cry, _miaDolores_. I'd wring Norman Gower's chubby neck with great pleasure if Ithought he could do that. I didn't even know you knew him."

  Dolly dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  "There are lots of things you don't know, Jack MacRae," she murmured."Besides, why shouldn't I know Norman?"

  MacRae threw out his hands helplessly.

  "No law against it, of course," he admitted. "Only--well--"

  He was conscious of floundering, with her grave, dark eyes searching hisface. There was no reason save his own hostility to anything Gower,--andDolly knew no basis for that save the fact that Horace Gower hadacquired his father's ranch. That could not possibly be a ground forDolores Ferrara to frown on any Gower, male or female, who happened tocome her way.

  "Why, I suppose it really is none of my business," he said slowly."Except that I can't help being concerned in anything that makes youunhappy. That's all."

  He sat down on the arm of her chair and patted her cheek. To his utteramazement Dolly broke into a storm of tears. Long ago he had seen Dollycry when she had hurt herself, because he had teased her, because shewas angry or disappointed. He had never seen any woman cry as she didnow. It was not just simple grieved weeping. It was a tempest that shookher. Her body quivered, her breath came in gasping bursts betweenracking sobs.

  MacRae gathered her into his arms, trying to dam that wild flood. Sheput her face against him and clung there, trembling like some huntedthing seeking refuge, mysteriously stirring MacRae with the passionateabandon of her tears, filling him with vague apprehensions, with astrange excitement.

  Like the tornado, swift in its striking and passing, so this stormpassed. Dolly's sobbing ceased. She rested passively in his arms for aminute. Then she sighed, brushed the cloudy hair out of her eyes, andlooked up at him.

  "I wonder why I should go all to pieces like that so suddenly?" shemuttered. "And why I should somehow feel better for it?"

  "I don't know," MacRae said. "Maybe I could tell you if I knew _why_ youwent off like that. You poor little devil. Something has stung you deep,I know."

  "Yes," she admitted. "I hope nothing like it ever comes to you, Jack.I'm bleeding internally. Oh, it hurts, it hurts!"

  She laid her head against him and cried again softly.

  "Tell me," he whispered.

  "Why not?" She lifted her head after a little. "You could always keepthings to yourself. It wasn't much wonder they called you Silent John.Do you know I never really grasped The Ancient Mariner until now? People_must_ tell their troubles to some one--or they'd corrode inside."

  "Go ahead," MacRae encouraged.

  "When Norman Gower went overseas we were engaged," she said bluntly, andstopped. She was not looking at MacRae now. She stared at the oppositewall, her fingers locked together in her lap.

  "For four years," she went on, "I've been hoping, dreaming, waiting,loving. To-day he came home to tell me that he married in England twoyears ago. Married in the madness of a drunken hour--that is how he putsit--a girl who didn't care for anything but the good time his rank andpay could give her."

  "I think you're in luck," MacRae said soberly.

  "What queer creatures men are!" She seemed not to have heard him--to bethinking her own thoughts out loud. "He says he loves me, that he hasloved me all the time, that he feels as if he had been walking in hissleep and fallen into some muddy hole. And I believe him. It's terrible,Johnny."

  "It's impossible," MacRae declared savagely. "If he's got in that kindof a hole, let him stay there. You're well out of it. You ought to beglad."

  "But I'm not," she said sadly. "I'm not made that way. I can't let athing become a vital part of my life and give it up without a pang."

  "I don't see what else you can do," MacRae observed. "Only brace up andforget it."

  "It isn't quite so simple as that," she sighed. "Norman's w--this womanpresently got tired of him. Evidently she had no scruples about gettingwhat she wanted, nor how. She went away with another man. Norman isgetting a divorce--the decree absolute will be granted in March next. Hewants me to marry him."

  "Will you?"

  Dolly looked up to meet MacRae's wondering stare. She nodded.

  "You're a triple-plated fool," he said roughly.

  "I don't know," she replied thoughtfully. "Norman certainly has been.Perhaps I am too. We should get on--a pair of fools together."

  The bitterness in her voice stung MacRae.

  "You really should have loved me," he said, "and I you."

  "But you don't, Jack. You have never thought of that before."

  "I could, quite easily."

  Dolly considered this a moment.

  "No," she said. "You like me. I know that, Johnny. I like you, too. Youare a man, and I'm a woman. But if you weren't bursting with sympathyyou wouldn't have thought of that. If Norman had some of yourbackbone--but it wouldn't make any difference. If you know what it isthat draws a certain man and woman t
ogether in spite of themselves, inspite of things they can see in each other that they don't quite like, Idare say you'd understand. I don't think I do. Norman Gower has made medreadfully unhappy. But I loved him before he went away, and I love himyet. I want him just the same. And he says--he says--that he neverstopped caring for me--that it was like a bad dream. I believe him. I'msure of it. He didn't lie to me. And I can't hate him. I can't punishhim without punishing myself. I don't want to punish him, any more thanI would want to punish a baby, if I had one, for a naughtiness itcouldn't help."

  "So you'll marry him eventually?" MacRae asked.

  Dolly nodded.

  "If he doesn't change his mind," she murmured. "Oh, I shouldn't say uglythings like that. It sounds cheap and mean."

  "But it hurts, it hurts me so to think of it," she broke outpassionately. "I can forgive him, because I can see how it happened.Still it hurts. I feel cheated--cheated!"

  She lay back in her chair, fingers locked together, red lips parted overwhite teeth that were clenched together. Her eyes glowed somberly,looking away through distant spaces.

  And MacRae, conscious that she had said her say, feeling that she wantedto be alone, as he himself always wanted to fight a grief or a hurtalone and in silence, walked out into the sunshine, where the westerlydroned high above in the swaying fir tops.

  He went up the path around the Cove's head to the porch of his ownhouse, sat down on the top step, and cursed the Gowers, root and branch.He hated them, everything of the name and blood, at that moment, with aprofound and active hatred.

  They were like a blight, as their lives touched the lives of otherpeople. They sat in the seats of the mighty, and for their pleasure ortheir whims others must sweat and suffer. So it seemed to Jack MacRae.

  Home, these crowded, hurrying days, was aboard the _Blackbird_. It waspleasant now to sit on his own doorstep and smell the delicate perfumeof the roses and the balsamy odors from the woods behind. But the roomsdepressed him when he went in. They were dusty and silent, abandoned tothat forsaken air which rests upon uninhabited dwellings. MacRae wentout again, to stride aimlessly along the cliffs past the mouth of theCove.

  Beyond the lee of the island the westerly still lashed the Gulf. Thewhite horses galloped on a gray-green field. MacRae found a grassy placein the shade of an arbutus, and lay down to rest and watch. Sunset wouldbring calm, a dying wind, new colors to sea and sky and mountains. Itwould send him away on the long run to Crow Harbor, driving through thenight under the cool stars.

  No matter what happened people must be fed. Food was vital. Men losttheir lives at the fishing, but it went on. Hearts might be torn, buthands still plied the gear. Life had a bad taste in Jack MacRae's mouthas he lay there under the red-barked tree. He was moody. It seemed astruggle without mercy or justice, almost without reason, a blindobedience to the will-to-live. A tooth-and-toenail contest. He surveyedhis own part in it with cynical detachment. So long as salmon ran in thesea they would be taken for profit in the markets and the feeding of thehungry. And the salmon would run and men would pursue them, and the gamewould be played without slackening for such things as broken faith oraching hearts or a woman's tears.

  MacRae grew drowsy puzzling over things like that. Life was a jumblebeyond his understanding, he concluded at last. Men strove to a godlikemastery of circumstances,--and achieved three meals a day and a squalidplace to sleep. Sometimes, when they were pluming themselves on havingbeaten the game, Destiny was laughing in her sleeve and spreading asnare for their feet. A man never knew what was coming next. It wasjust a damned scramble! A disorderly scramble in which a man could besure of getting hurt.

  He wondered if that were really true.