Poor Man's Rock

by Bertrand W. Sinclair

  CHAPTER XII

  Between Sun and Sun

  Walking when he could, crawling on hands and knees when his legs buckledunder him, MacRae left a blood-sprinkled trail over grass and moss andfallen leaves. He lived over and over that few minutes which had seemedso long, in which he had been battered against broken rocks, in which hehad clawed over weedy ledges armored with barnacles that cut likeknives, hauling Steve Ferrara's body with him so that it should notbecome the plaything of the tides. MacRae was no stranger to death. Hehad seen it in many terrible forms. He had heard the whistle of theinvisible scythe that cuts men down. He knew that Steve was dead when hedragged him at last out of the surf, up where nothing but high-flungdrops of spray could reach him. He left him there on a mossy ledge,knowing that he could do nothing more for Steve Ferrara and that he mustdo something for himself. So he came at last to the end of that pathwhich led to his own house and crept and stumbled up the steps into thedeeper darkness of those hushed, lonely rooms.

  MacRae knew he had suffered no vital hurt, no broken bones. But he hadbeen fearfully buffeted among those sea-drenched rocks, bruised fromhead to foot, shocked by successive blows. He had spent his strength tokeep the sea from claiming Steve. He had been unmercifully slashed bythe barnacles. He was weak from loss of blood, and he was bleeding yet,in oozy streams,--face, hands, shoulders, knees, wherever thoselance-edged shells had raked his flesh.

  He was sick and dizzy. But he could still think and act. He felt his wayto matches on a kitchen shelf, staggered into his bedroom, lit a lamp.Out of a dresser drawer he took clean white cloth, out of anothercarbolic acid. He got himself a basin of water.

  He sat down on the edge of his bed. As he tore the first strip of linenthings began to swim before his eyes. He sagged back on a pillow. Theroom and the lamp and all that was near him blended in a misty swirl. Hehad the extraordinary sensation of floating lightly in space that wasquiet and profoundly dark--and still he was cloudily aware of footstepsringing hollow on the bare floor of the other room.

  He became aware--as if no interval had elapsed--of being moved, of handstouching him, of a stinging sensation of pain which he understood to bethe smarting of the cuts in his flesh. But time must have gone wingingby, he knew, as his senses grew clearer. He was stripped of his sodden,bloody undershirt and overalls, partly covered by his blanket. He couldfeel bandages on his legs, on one badly slashed arm. He made out BettyGower's face with its unruly mass of reddish-brown hair and two rosespots of color glowing on her smooth cheeks. There was also a tall youngman, coatless, showing a white expanse of flannel shirt with the sleevesrolled above his elbows. MacRae could only see this out of one corner ofhis eye, for he was being turned gently over on his face. Weak andpassive as he was, the firm pressure of Betty's soft hands on his skingave him a curiously pleasant sensation.

  He heard her draw her breath sharply and make some exclamation as hisbare back turned to the light.

  "This chap has been to the wars, eh, Miss Gower?" he heard the man say."Those are machine-gun marks, I should say--close range, too. I sawplenty of that after the Argonne."

  "Such scars. How could a man live with holes like that through hisbody?" Betty said. "He was in the air force."

  "Some Hun got in a burst of fire on him, sometime, then," the mancommented. "Didn't get him, either, or he wouldn't be here. Why, two orthree bullet holes like that would only put a fellow out for a fewweeks. Look at him," he tapped MacRae's back with a forefinger."Shoulders and chest and arms like a champion middle weight ready to gotwenty rounds. And you can bet all your pin money, Miss Gower, that thisman's heart and lungs and nerves are away above par or he would neverhave got his wings. Takes a lot to down those fellows. Looks in badshape now, doesn't he? All cut and bruised and exhausted. But he'll bewalking about day after to-morrow. A little stiff and sore, butotherwise well enough."

  "I wish he'd open his eyes and speak," Betty said. "How can you tell? Hemay be injured internally."

  The man chuckled. He did not cease work as he talked. He was using adamp cloth, with a pungent medicated smell. Dual odors familiar to everyman who has ever been in hospital assailed MacRae's nostrils. Whereverthat damp cloth touched a cut it burned. MacRae listened drowsily. Hehad not the strength or the wish to do anything else.

  "Heart action's normal. Respiration and temperature, ditto," he heardabove him. "Unconsciousness is merely natural reaction from shock,nerve strain, loss of blood. You can guess what sort of fight he musthave made in those breakers. If you were a sawbones, Miss Gower, youwouldn't be uneasy. I'll stake my professional reputation on hisinjuries being superficial. Quite enough to knock a man out, I grant.But a physique of this sort can stand a tremendous amount of strainwithout serious effect. Hand me that adhesive, will you, please?"

  There was an air of unreality about the whole proceeding in MacRae'smind. He wondered if he would presently wake up in his bunk oppositeSteve and find that he had been dreaming. Yet those voices, and thehands that shifted him tenderly, and the pyjama coat that was slipped onhim at last, were not the stuff of dreams. No, the lights of the_Arrow_, the smash of the collision, the tumbling seas which had flunghim against the rocks, the dead weight of Steve's body in his bleedingarms, were not illusions.

  He opened his eyes when they turned him on his back.

  "Well, old man, how do you feel?" Betty's companion asked genially.

  "All right," MacRae said briefly. He found that speech required effort.His mind worked clearly enough, but his tongue was uncertain, his voicelow-pitched, husky. He turned his eyes on Betty. She tried to smile. Buther lips quivered in the attempt. MacRae looked at her curiously. But hedid not say anything. In the face of accomplished facts, words wererather futile.

  He closed his eyes again, only to get a mental picture of the _Arrow_leaping at him out of the gloom, the thunder of the swells burstingagainst the foot of the cliffs, of Steve lying on that ledge alone. Butnothing could harm Steve. Storm and cold and pain and loneliness werenothing to him, now.

  He heard Betty speak.

  "Can we do anything more?"

  "Um--no," the man answered. "Not for some time, anyway."

  "Then I wish you would go back to the house and tell them," Betty said."They'll be worrying. I'll stay here."

  "I suppose it would be as well," he agreed. "I'll come back."

  "There's no need for either of you to stay here," MacRae said wearily."You've stopped the bleeding, and you can't do any more. Go home and goto bed. I'm as well alone."

  There was a brief interval of silence. MacRae heard footsteps crossingthe floor, receding, going down the steps. He opened his eyes. BettyGower sat on a low box by his bed, her hands in her lap, looking at himwistfully. She leaned a little toward him.

  "I'm awfully sorry," she whispered.

  "So was the little boy who cut off his sister's thumb with the hatchet,"MacRae muttered. "But that didn't help sister's thumb. If you'll rundown to old Peter Ferrara's house and tell him what has happened, andthen go home yourself, we'll call it square."

  "I have already done that," Betty said. "Dolly is away. The fishermenare bringing Steve Ferrara's body to his uncle's house. They are goingto try to save what is left of your boat."

  "It is kind of you, I'm sure, to pick up the pieces," MacRae gibed.

  "I _am_ sorry," the girl breathed.

  "After the fact. Belting around a point in the dark at train speed,regardless of the rules of the road. Destroying a valuable boat, killinga man. Property is supposed to be sacred--if life has no market value.Were you late for dinner?"

  In his anger he made a quick movement with his arms, flinging theblanket off, sending intolerable pangs through his bruised and tornbody.

  Betty rose and bent over him, put the blanket back silently, tucked himin like a mother settling the cover about a restless child. She did notsay anything for a minute. She stood over him, nervously plucking bitsof lint off the blanket. Her eyes grew wet.

  "I don't blame you for feeling th
at way," she said at last. "It was aterrible thing. You had the right of way. I don't know why or howRobertson let it happen. He has always been a careful navigator. Thenearness when he saw you under his bows must have paralyzed him, andwith our speed--oh, it isn't any use, I know, to tell you how sorry Iam. That won't bring that poor boy back to life again. It won't--"

  "You killed him--your kind of people--twice," MacRae said thickly. "Oncein France, where he risked his life--all he had to risk--so that you andyour kind should continue to have ease and security. He came homewheezing and strangling, suffering all the pains of death withoutdeath's relief. And when he was beginning to think he had another chanceyou finish him off. But that's nothing. A mere incident. Why should youcare? The country is full of Ferraras. What do they matter? Men of nosocial or financial standing, men who work with their hands and smell offish. If it's a shock to you to see one man dead and another cut andbloody, think of the numbers that suffer as great pains and hardshipsthat you know nothing about--and wouldn't care if you did. You couldn'tbe what you are and have what you have if they didn't. Sorry! Sympathyis the cheapest thing in the market, cheaper than salmon. You can't helpSteve Ferrara with that--not now. Don't waste any on me. I don't needit. I resent it. You may need it all for your own before I get through.I--I am--"

  MacRae's voice trailed off into an incoherent murmur. He seemed to befloating off into those dark shadowy spaces again. In reality he wasexhausted. A man with his veins half emptied of blood cannot get in apassion without a speedy reaction. MacRae went off into an unconsciousstate which gradually became transformed into natural, healthy sleep,the deep slumber of utter exhaustion.

  At intervals thereafter he was hazily aware of some one beside him, ofsoft hands that touched him. Once he wakened to find the room empty, thelamp turned low. In the dim light and the hush the place seemedunutterably desolate and forsaken, as if he were buried in a crypt. Whenhe listened he could hear the melancholy drone of the southeaster andthe rumble of the surf, two sounds that fitted well his mood. He felt astrange relief when Betty came tiptoeing in from the kitchen. She bentover him. MacRae closed his eyes and slept again.

  He awakened at last, alert, refreshed, free of that depression which hadrested so heavily on him. And he found that weariness had caught BettyGower in its overpowering grip. She had drawn her box seat up closebeside him. Her body had drooped until her arms rested on the side ofthe bed, and her head rested on her arms. MacRae found one of his handscaught tight in both hers. She was asleep, breathing lightly, regularly.He twisted his stiffened neck to get a better look at her. He couldonly see one side of her face, and that he studied a long time. Prettyand piquant, still it was no doll's face. There was character in thatfirm mouth and round chin. Betty had a beautiful skin. That had beenMacRae's first impression of her, the first time he saw her. And she hada heavy mass of reddish-brown hair that shone in the sunlight with adecided wave in it which always made it seem unruly, about to escapefrom its conventional arrangement.

  MacRae made no attempt to free his hand. He was quite satisfied to letit be. The touch of her warm flesh against his stirred him a little,sent his mind straying off into strange channels. Queer that the firstwoman to care for him when he crept wounded and shaken to the shelter ofhis own roof should be the daughter of his enemy. For MacRae could nototherwise regard Horace Gower. Anything short of that seemed treason tothe gray old man who had died in the next room, babbling of his son andthe west wind and some one he called Bessie.

  MacRae's eyes blurred unexpectedly. What a damned shame things had to bethe way they were. Behind this girl, who was in herself lovely anddesirable as a woman should be, loomed the pudgy figure of her father,ruthless, vindictively unjust. Gower hadn't struck at him openly; butthat, MacRae believed, was merely for lack of suitable opening.

  But that did not keep Jack MacRae from thinking--what every normal manbegins to think, or rather to feel, soon or late--that he is incomplete,insufficient, without some particular woman to love him, upon whom tobestow love. It was like a revelation. He caught himself wishing thatBetty would wake up and smile at him, bend over him with a kiss. Hestared up at the shadowy roof beams, feeling the hot blood leap to hisface at the thought. There was an uncanny magic in the nearness of her,a lure in the droop of her tired body. And MacRae struggled against thatseduction. Yet he could not deny that Betty Gower, innocently sleepingwith his hand fast in hers, filled him with visions and desires whichhad never before focused with such intensity on any woman who had comehis way. Mysteriously she seemed absolved of all blame for being aGower, for any of the things the Gower clan had done to him and his,even to the misfortune of that night which had cost a man his life.

  "It isn't _her_ fault," MacRae said to himself. "But, Lord, I wish she'dkept away from here, if _this_ sort of thing is going to get me."

  What _this_ was he did not attempt to define. He did not admit that hewas hovering on the brink of loving Betty Gower--it seemed an incrediblething for him to do--but was vividly aware that she had kindled anincomprehensible fire in him, and he suspected, indeed he feared with afear that bordered on spiritual shrinking, that it would go on glowingafter she was gone. And she would go presently. This spontaneous rushingto his aid was merely what a girl like that, with generous impulses andquick sympathy, would do for any one in dire need. She would leavebehind her an inescapable longing, an emptiness, a memory of sweetlydisturbing visions. MacRae seemed to see with remarkable clarity andsureness that he would be penalized for yielding to that bewitchingfancy. By what magic had she so suddenly made herself a shining figurein a golden dream? Some necromancy of the spirit, invisible butwonderfully potent? Or was it purely physical,--the soft reddish-brownof her hair; her frank gray eyes, very like his own; the marvelous,smooth clearness and coloring of her skin; her voice, that was given tosoft cadences? He did not know. No man ever quite knows what positivequalities in a woman can make his heart leap. MacRae was no wiser thanmost. But he was not prone to cherish illusions, to deceive himself. Hehad imagination. That gave him a key to many things which escape asluggish mind.

  "Well," he said to himself at last, with a fatalistic humor, "if itcomes that way, it comes. If I am to be the goat, I shall be, and that'sall there is to it."

  Under his breath he cursed Horace Gower deeply and fervently, and he wasnot conscious of anything incongruous in that. And then he lay verythoughtful and a little sad, his eyes on the smooth curve of Betty'scheek swept by long brown lashes, the corner of a red mouth made forkissing. His fingers were warm in hers. He smiled sardonically at avagrant wish that they might remain there always.

  Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. MacRae wondered if thegods thus planned his destruction?

  A tremulous sigh warned him. He shut his eyes, feigned sleep. He feltrather than saw Betty sit up with a start, release his hand. Then verygently she moved that arm back under the blanket, reached across him andpatted the covers close about his body, stood looking down at him.

  And MacRae stirred, opened his eyes.

  "What time is it?" he asked.

  She looked at a wrist watch. "Four o'clock." She shivered.

  "You've been here all this time without a fire. You're chilled through.Why didn't you go home? You should go now."

  "I have been sitting here dozing," she said. "I wasn't aware of the colduntil now. But there is wood and kindling in the kitchen, and I am goingto make a fire. Aren't you hungry?"

  "Starving," he said. "But there is nothing to eat in the house. It hasbeen empty for months."

  "There is tea," she said. "I saw some on a shelf. I'll make a cup ofthat. It will be something warm, refreshing."

  MacRae listened to her at the kitchen stove. There was the clink of ironlids, the smell of wood smoke, the pleasant crackle of the fire.Presently she came in with two steaming cups.

  "I have a faint recollection of talking wild and large a while ago,"MacRae remarked. Indeed, it seemed hazy to him now. "Did I say anythingnasty?"

 
"Yes," she replied frankly; "perhaps the sting of what you said lay inits being partly true. A half truth is sometimes a deadly weapon. Iwonder if you do really hate us as much, as your manner implied--andwhy?"

  "Us. Who?" MacRae asked.

  "My father and me," she put it bluntly.

  "What makes you think I do?" MacRae asked. "Because I have set up afierce competition in a business where your father has had a monopoly solong that he thinks this part of the Gulf belongs to him? Because Iresent your running down one of my boats? Because I go about my affairsin my own way, regardless of Gower interests?"

  "What do these things amount to?" Betty answered impatiently. "It's inyour manner, your attitude. Sometimes it even shows in your eyes. Itwas there the morning I came across you sitting on Point Old, the dayafter the armistice was signed. I've danced with you and seen you lookat me as if--as if," she laughed self-consciously, "you would like towring my neck. I have never done anything to create a dislike of thatsort. I have never been with you without being conscious that you wererepressing something, out of--well, courtesy, I suppose. There is apeculiar tension about you whenever my father is mentioned. I'm not afool," she finished, "even if I happen to be one of what you might callthe idle rich. What is the cause of this bad blood?"

  "What does it matter?" MacRae parried.

  "There is something, then?" she persisted.

  MacRae turned his head away. He couldn't tell her. It was not wholly hisstory to tell. How could he expect her to see it, to react to it as hedid? A matter involving her father and mother, and his father. It wasnot a pretty tale. He might be influenced powerfully in a certaindirection by the account of it passed on by old Donald MacRae; he mightbe stirred by the backwash of those old passions, but he could not laybare all that to any one--least of all to Betty Gower. And still MacRae,for the moment, was torn between two desires. He retained the sameimplacable resentment toward Gower, and he found himself wishing to setGower's daughter apart and outside the consequences of that ancientfeud. And that, he knew, was trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. Itcouldn't be done.

  "Was the _Arrow_ holed in the crash?"

  Betty stood staring at him. She blinked. Her fingers began again thatnervous plucking at the blanket. But her face settled presently intoits normal composure and she answered evenly.

  "Rather badly up forward. She was settling fast when they beached her inthe Bay."

  "And then," she continued after a pause, "Doctor Wallis and I got ashoreas quickly as we could. We got a lantern and came along the cliffs. Andtwo of the men took our big lifeboat and rowed along near the shore.They found the _Blackbird_ pounding on the rocks, and we found SteveFerrara where you left him. And we followed you here by the blood youspattered along the way."

  A line from the Rhyme of the Three Sealers came into MacRae's mind asbefitting. But he was thinking of his father and not so much of himselfas he quoted:

  "'Sorrow is me, in a lonely sea, And a sinful fight I fall.'"

  "I'm afraid I don't quite grasp that," Betty said. "Although I knowKipling too, and could supply the rest of those verses. I'm afraid Idon't understand."

  "It isn't likely that you ever will," MacRae answered slowly. "It is notnecessary that you should."

  Their voices ceased. In the stillness the whistle of the wind and thedeep drone of the seas shattering themselves on the granite lifted adreary monotone. And presently a quick step sounded on the porch. DoctorWallis came hurriedly in.

  "Upon my soul," he said apologetically. "I ought to be shot, MissGrower. I got everybody calmed down over at the cottage and chased themall to bed. Then I sat down in a soft chair before that cheerful fire inyour living room. And I didn't wake up for hours. You must be worn out."

  "That's quite all right," Betty assured him. "Don't beconscience-stricken. Did mamma have hysterics?"

  Wallis grinned cheerfully.

  "Well, not quite," he drawled. "At any rate, all's quiet along thePotomac now. How's the patient getting on?"

  "I'm O.K.," MacRae spoke for himself, "and much obliged to you both fortinkering me up. Miss Gower ought to go home."

  "I think so myself," Wallis said. "I'll take her across the point. ThenI'll come back and have another look over you."

  "It isn't necessary," MacRae declared. "Barring a certain amount ofsoreness I feel fit enough. I suppose I could get up and walk now if Ihad to. Go home and go to bed, both of you."

  "Good night, or perhaps it would be better to say good morning." Bettygave him her hand. "Pleasant dreams."

  It seemed to MacRae that there was a touch of reproach, a hint of thesardonic in her tone and words.

  Then he was alone in the quiet house, with his thoughts for company, andthe distant noises of the storm muttering in the outer darkness.

  They were not particularly pleasant processes of thought. The sins ofthe fathers shall be visited even unto the third and fourth generation.Why, in the name of God, should they be, he asked himself?

  Betty Gower liked him. She had been trying to tell him so. MacRae feltthat. He did not question too closely the quality of the feeling for herwhich had leaped up so unexpectedly. He was afraid to dig too deep. Hehad got a glimpse of depths and eddies that night which if they did notwholly frighten him, at least served to confuse him. They were likeflint and steel, himself and Betty Gower. They could not come togetherwithout striking sparks. And a man may long to warm himself by fire,MacRae reflected gloomily, but he shrinks from being burned.