Hearts are Not Always Trumps
If MacRae reckoned on tranquillity in his island seclusion he failed in
his reckoning. A man may fly from temptation, run from a threatening
danger, but he cannot run away from himself. He could not inhibit
thought, reflection, surges of emotion generated mysteriously within
himself.
He did his best. He sought relief in action. There were a great many
things about his freehold upon which he bestowed feverish labor for a
time. He cleared away all the underbrush to the outer limits of his
shrunken heritage. He built a new enclosing fence of neatly split cedar,
installed a pressure system of water in the old house.
"You goin' to get married?" old Peter inquired artlessly one day. "You
got all the symptoms--buzzin' around in your nest like a bumblebee."
And Dolly smiled her slow, enigmatic smile.
Whereupon MacRae abandoned his industry and went off to Blackfish Sound
with Vincent in the _Bluebird_. The salmon run was long over, but the
coastal waters still yielded a supply of edible fish. There were always
a few spring salmon to be taken here and there. Ling, red and rock cod
knew no seasons. Nor the ground fish, plaice, sole, flounders, halibut.
Already the advance guard of the great run of mature herring began to
show. For a buyer there was no such profit in running these fish to
market as the profit of the annual salmon run. Still it paid moderately.
So MacRae had turned the _Bluebird_ over to Vin to operate for a time on
a share basis. It gave Vin, who was ambitious and apparently tireless, a
chance to make a few hundred dollars in an off season.
Wherefore MacRae, grown suddenly restless beyond all restraining upon
his island, made a trip or two north with Vin--a working guest on his
own vessel--up where the Gulf of Georgia is choked to narrow passages
through which the tidal currents race like mountain streams pent in a
gorge, up where the sea is a maze of waterways among wooded islands.
They anchored in strange bays. They fared once into Queen Charlotte
Sound and rode the great ground swell that heaves up from the far coast
of Japan to burst against the rocky outpost of Cape Caution. They
doubled on their tracks and gathered their toll of the sea from fishing
boats here and there until the _Bluebird_ rode deep with cargo, fresh
fish to be served on many tables far inland. MacRae often wondered if
the housewife who ordered her weekly ration of fish and those who picked
daintily at the savory morsels with silver forks ever thought how they
came by this food. Men till the sea with pain and risk and infinite
labor, as they till the land; only the fisherman with his nets and hooks
and gear does not sow, he only reaps. Nature has attended diligently to
the sowing, from the Cape of Good Hope to Martha's Vineyard, from Bering
Strait to Botany Bay.
But MacRae soon had enough of that and came back to Squitty, to his
fireplace and his books. He had been accustomed to enjoy the winters,
the clear crisp mornings that varied weeks of drenching rain which
washed the land clean; to prowl about in the woods with a gun when he
needed meat; to bask before a bed of coals in the fireplace through long
evenings when the wind howled and the rain droned on the roof and the
sea snored along the rocky beaches. That had been in days before he
learned the weight of loneliness, when his father had been there to sit
quietly beside the fire smoking a pipe, when Dolly Ferrara ran wild in
the woods with him or they rode for pure sport the tumbling seas in a
dugout canoe.
Now winter was a dull inaction, a period of discontent, in which thought
gnawed at him like an ingrowing toenail. Everything seemed out of joint.
He found himself feverishly anxious for spring, for the stress and
strain of another tilt with Folly Bay. Sometimes he asked himself where
he would come out, even if he won all along the line, if he made money,
gained power, beat Gower ultimately to his knees, got back his land. He
did not try to peer too earnestly into the future. It seemed a little
misty. He was too much concerned with the immediate present, looming big
with possibilities of good or evil for himself. Things did not seem
quite so simple as at first. A great many complications, wholly
unforeseen, had arisen since he came back from France. But he was
committed to certain undertakings from which he neither wished nor
intended to turn aside,--not so long as he had the will to choose.
Christmas came again, and with it the gathering of the Ferraras for
their annual reunion,--Old Manuel and Joaquin, young Manuel and Ambrose
and Vincent. Steve they could speak of now quite casually. He had died
in his sea boots like many another Ferrara. It was a pity, of course,
but it was the chance of his calling. And the gathering was stronger in
numbers, even with Steve gone. Ambrose had taken himself a wife, a
merry round-cheeked girl whose people were coaxing Ambrose to quit the
sea for a more profitable undertaking in timber. And also Norman Gower
was there.
MacRae did not quite know how to take that young man. He had had stray
contacts with Norman during the last few weeks. For a rich man's son he
was not running true to form. He and Long Tom Spence had struck up a
partnership in a group of mineral claims on the Knob, that conical
mountain which lifted like one of the pyramids out of the middle of
Squitty Island. There had been much talk of those claims. Years ago Bill
Munro--he who died of the flu in his cabin beside the Cove--had staked
those claims. Munro was a young man then, a prospector. He had inveigled
other men to share his hopes and labors, to grubstake him while he drove
the tunnel that was to cut the vein. MacRae's father had taken a hand in
this. So had Peter Ferrara. But these informal partnerships had always
lapsed. Old Bill Munro's prospects had never got beyond the purely
prospective stage. The copper was there, ample traces of gold and
silver. But he never developed a showing big enough to lure capital.
When Munro died the claims had been long abandoned.
Long Tom Spence had suddenly relocated them. Some working agreement had
included Uncle Peter and young Gower. Long Tom went about hinting
mysteriously of fortunes. Peter Ferrara even admitted that there was a
good showing. Norman had been there for weeks, living with Spence in a
shack, sweating day after day in the tunnel. They were all beginning to
speak of it as "the mine."
Norman had rid himself of that grouchy frown. He was always singing or
whistling or laughing. His fair, rather florid face glowed with a
perpetual good nature. He treated MacRae to the same cheerful, careless
air that he had for everything and everybody. And when he was about
Uncle Peter's house at the Cove he monopolized Dolly, an attitude which
Dolly herself as well as her uncle seemed to find agreeable and proper.
MacRae finally found himself compelled to accept Norman Gower as part of
the group. He was a little surprised to find that he harbored no decided
feeling about young Gower, one way or the other. If he felt at all, it
was a mild impatience that another man had established a relation with
Dolly Ferrara which put aside old friendships. He found himself
constrained more and more to treat Dolly like any other pleasant young
woman of his acquaintance. He did not quite like that. He and Dolly
Ferrara had been such good chums. Besides, he privately considered that
Dolly was throwing herself away on a man weak enough to make the tragic
blunder young Gower had made in London. But that was their own affair.
Altogether, MacRae found it quite impossible to muster up any abiding
grudge against young Gower on his own account.
So he let matters stand and celebrated Christmas with them. Afterward
they got aboard the _Bluebird_ and went to a dance at Potter's Landing,
where for all that Jack MacRae was the local hero, both of the great war
and the salmon war of the past season, both Dolly and Norman, he
privately conceded, enjoyed themselves a great deal more than he did.
Their complete absorption in each other rather irritated him.
They came back to the Cove early in the morning. The various Ferraras
disposed themselves about Peter's house to sleep, and MacRae went on to
his own place. About an hour after daybreak he saw Norman Gower pass up
the bush trail to the mine with a heavy pack of provisions on his back.
And MacRae wondered idly if Norman was bucking the game in earnest,
strictly on his own, and why?
Late in January the flash of a white skirt and a sky-blue sweater past
his dooryard apprised MacRae that Betty was back. And he did not want to
see Betty or talk with her. He hoped her stay would be brief. He even
asked himself testily why people like that wanted to come to a summer
dwelling in the middle of winter. But her sojourn was not so brief as he
hoped. At divers times thereafter he saw her in the distance, faring to
and fro from Peter Ferrara's house, out on the trail that ran to the
Knob, several times when the sea was calm paddling a canoe or rowing
alongshore. Also he had glimpses of the thickset figure of Horace Gower
walking along the cliffs. MacRae avoided both. That was easy enough,
since he knew every nook and bush and gully on that end of the island.
But the mere sight of Gower was an irritation. He resented the man's
presence. It affected him like a challenge. It set him always pondering
ways and means to secure ownership of those acres again and forever bar
Gower from walking along those cliffs with that masterful air of
possession. Only a profound distaste for running away from anything kept
him from quitting the island while they were there, those two, one of
whom he was growing to hate far beyond the original provocation, the
other whom he loved,--for MacRae admitted reluctantly, resentfully, that
he did love Betty, and he was afraid of where that emotion might lead
him. He recognized the astonishing power of passion. It troubled him,
stirred up an amazing conflict at times between his reason and his
impulses. He fell back always upon the conclusion that love was an
irrational thing anyway, that it should not be permitted to upset a
man's logical plan of existence. But he was never very sure that this
conclusion would stand a practical test.
The southern end of Squitty was not of such vast scope that two people
could roam here and there without sometime coming face to face,
particularly when these two were a man and a woman, driven by a spirit
of restlessness to lonely wanderings. MacRae went into the woods with
his rifle one day in search of venison. He wounded a buck, followed him
down a long canyon, and killed his game within sight of the sea. He took
the carcass by a leg and dragged it through the bright green salal
brush. As he stepped out of a screening thicket on to driftwood piled by
storm and tide, he saw a rowboat hauled up on the shingle above reach of
short, steep breakers, and a second glance showed him Betty sitting on a
log close by, looking at him.
"Stormbound?" he asked her.
"Yes. I was rowing and the wind came up."
She rose and came over to look at the dead deer.
"What beautiful animals they are!" she said. "Isn't it a pity to kill
them?"
"It's a pity, too, to kill cattle and sheep and pigs, to haul fish by
the gills out of the sea," MacRae replied; "to trap marten and mink and
fox and beaver and bear for their skins. But men must eat and women must
wear furs."
"How horribly logical you are," Betty murmured. "You make a natural
sympathy appear wishy-washy sentimentalism."
She reseated herself on the log. MacRae sat down beside her. He looked
at her searchingly. He could not keep his eyes away. A curious
inconsistency was revealed to him. He sat beside Betty, responding to
the potent stimuli of her nearness and wishing pettishly that she were a
thousand miles away, so that he would not be troubled by the magic of
her lips and eyes and unruly hair, the musical cadences of her voice.
There was a subtle quality of expectancy about her, as if she sat there
waiting for him to say something, do something, as if her mere presence
were powerful to compel him to speak and act as she desired. MacRae
realized the fantasy of those impressions. Betty sat looking at him
calmly, her hands idle in her lap. If there were in her soul any of the
turmoil that was fast rising in his, it was not outwardly manifested by
any sign whatever. For that matter, MacRae knew that he himself was
placid enough on the surface. Nor did he feel the urge of
inconsequential speech. There was no embarrassment in that mutual
silence, only the tug of a compelling desire to take her in his arms,
which he must resist.
"There are times," Betty said at last, "when you live up to your
nickname with a vengeance."
"There are times," MacRae replied slowly, "when that is the only wise
thing for a man to do."
"And you, I suppose, rather pride yourself on being wise in your day and
generation."
There was gentle raillery in her tone.
"I don't like you to be sarcastic," he said.
"I don't think you like me sarcastic or otherwise," Betty observed,
after a moment's silence.
"But I do," he protested. "That's the devil of it. I do--and you know I
do. It would be a great deal better if I didn't."
Betty's fingers began to twist in her lap. The color rose faintly in her
smooth cheeks. Her eyes turned to the sea.
"I don't know why," she said gently. "I'd hate to think it would."
MacRae did not find any apt reply to that. His mind was in an agonized
muddle, in which he could only perceive one or two things with any
degree of clearness. Betty loved him. He was sure of that. He could tell
her that he loved her. And then? Therein arose the conflict. Marriage
was the natural sequence of love. And when he contemplated marriage with
Betty he found himself unable to detach her from her background, in
which lurked something which to MacRae's imagination loomed sinister,
hateful. To make peace with Horace Gower--granting that Gower was
willing for such a consummation--for love of his daughter struck MacRae
as something very near to dishonor. And if, contrariwise, he repeated to
Betty the ugly story which involved her father and his father, she would
be harassed by irreconcilable forces even if she cared enough to side
with him against her own people. MacRae was gifted with acute
perception, in some things. He said to himself despairingly--nor was it
the first time that he had said it--that you cannot mix oil and water.
He could do nothing at all. That was the sum of his ultimate
conclusions. His hands were tied. He could not go back and he could not
go on. He sat beside Betty, longing to take her in his arms and still
fighting stoutly against that impulse. He was afraid of his impulses.
A faint moisture broke out on his face with that acute nervous strain. A
lump rose chokingly in his throat. He stared out at the white-crested
seas that came marching up the Gulf before a rising wind until his eyes
grew misty. Then he slid down off the log and laid his head on Betty's
knee. A weight of dumb grief oppressed him. He wanted to cry, and he was
ashamed of his weakness.
Betty's fingers stole caressingly over his bare head, rumpled his hair,
stroked his hot cheek.
"Johnny-boy," she said at last, "what is it that comes like a fog
between you and me?"
MacRae did not answer.
"I make love to you quite openly," Betty went on. "And I don't seem to
be the least bit ashamed of doing so. I'm not a silly kid. I'm nearly as
old as you are, and I know quite well what I want--which happens to be
you. I love you, Silent John. The man is supposed to be the pursuer. But
I seem to have that instinct myself. Besides," she laughed tremulously,
"this is leap year. And, remember, you kissed me. Or did I kiss you?
Which was it, Jack?"
MacRae seated himself on the log beside her. He put his arm around her
and drew her close to him. That disturbing wave of emotion which had
briefly mastered him was gone. He felt only a passionate tenderness for
Betty and a pity for them both. But he had determined what to do.
"I do love you, Betty," he said--"your hair and your eyes and your lips
and the sound of your voice and the way you walk and everything that is
you. Is that quite plain enough? It's a sort of emotional madness."
"Well, I am afflicted with the same sort of madness," she admitted. "And
I like it. It is natural."
"But you wouldn't like it if you knew it meant a series of mental and
spiritual conflicts that would be almost like physical torture," he said
slowly. "You'd be afraid of it."
"And you?" she demanded.
"Yes," he said simply. "I am."
"Then you're a poor sort of lover," she flung at him, and freed herself
from his arms with a quick twist of her body. Her breast heaved. She
moved away from him.
"I'll admit being a poor lover, perhaps," MacRae said. "I didn't want to
love you. I shouldn't love you. I really ought to hate you. I don't, but
if I was consistent, I should. I ought to take every opportunity to hurt
you just because you are a Gower. I have good reason to do so. I can't
tell you why--or at least I am not going to tell you why. I don't think
it would mend matters if I did. I dare say I'm a better fighter than a
lover. I fight in the open, on the square. And because I happen to care
enough to shrink from making you risk things I can't dodge, I'm a poor
lover. Well, perhaps I am."
"I didn't really mean that, Jack," Betty muttered.
"I know you didn't," he returned gently. "But I mean what I have just
said."
"You mean that for some reason which I do not know and which you will
not tell me, there is such bad blood between you and my father that you
can't--you won't--won't even take a chance on me?"
"Something like that," MacRae admitted. "Only you put it badly. You'd
either tie my hands, which I couldn't submit to, or you'd find yourself
torn between two factions, and life would be a pretty sad affair."
"I asked you once before, and you told me it was something that happened
before either of us was born," Betty said thoughtfully. "I am going to
get at the bottom of this somehow. I wonder if you do really care, or
if this is all camouflage,--if you're just playing with me to see how
big a fool I _will_ make of myself."
That queer mistrust of him which suddenly clouded Betty's face and made
her pretty mouth harden roused Jack MacRae to an intolerable fury. It
was like a knife in a tender spot. He had been stifling the impulse to
forget and bury all these ancient wrongs and injustices for which
neither of them was responsible but for which, so far as he could see,
they must both suffer. Something cracked in him at Betty's words. She
jumped, warned by the sudden blaze in his eyes. But he caught her with a
movement quicker than her own. He held her by the arms with fingers that
gripped like iron clamps. He shook her.
"You wonder if I really care," he cried. "My God, can't you see? Can't
you feel? Must a man grovel and weep and rave?"
Betty whitened a little at this storm which she had evoked. But she did
not flinch. Her eyes looked straight into his, fearlessly.
"You are raving now," she said. "And you are hurting my arms terribly."
MacRae released his hold on her. His hands dropped to his sides.
"I suppose I was," he said in a flat, lifeless tone. "But don't say that
to me again, ever. You can say anything you like, Betty, except that I'm
not in earnest. I don't deserve that."
Betty retreated a little. MacRae was not even looking at her now. His
eyes were turned to the sea, to hide the blur that crept into them in
spite of his will.
"You don't deserve anything," Betty said distinctly. She moved warily
away as she spoke. "You have the physical courage to face death; but you
haven't the moral courage to face a problem in living, even though you
love me. You take it for granted that I'm as weak as you are. You won't
even give me a chance to prove whether love is strong or weak in the
face of trouble. And I will never give you another chance--never."
She sprang from the beach to the low pile of driftwood and from that
plunged into the thicket. MacRae did not try to follow. He did not even
move. He looked after her a minute. Then he sat down on the log again
and stared at the steady march of the swells. There was a sense of
finality in this thing which made him flounder desperately. Still, he
assured himself, it had to be. And if it had to be that way it was
better to have it so understood. Betty would never look at him again
with that disturbing message in her eyes. He would not be troubled by a
futile longing. But it hurt. He had never imagined how so abstract a
thing as emotion could breed such an ache in a man's heart.
After a little he got up. There was a trail behind that thicket, an old
game trail widened by men's feet, that ran along the seaward slope to
Cradle Bay. He went up now to this path. His eye, used to the practice
of woodcraft, easily picked up tiny heel marks, toe prints, read their
message mechanically. Betty had been running. She had gone home.
He went back to the beach. The rowboat and the rising tide caught his
attention. He hauled the boat up on the driftwood so that it should not
float away. Then he busied himself on the deer's legs with a knife for a
minute and shouldered the carcass.
It was a mile and a half across country to the head of Squitty Cove. He
had intended to hang his deer in a tree by the beach and come for it
later with a boat. Now he took up this hundred-pound burden for the
long carry over steep hills and through brushy hollows in the spirit of
the medieval flagellantes, mortifying his flesh for the ease of his
soul.
An hour or so later he came out on a knoll over-looking all the
southeastern face of Squitty. Below, the wind-harassed Gulf spread its
ruffled surface. He looked down on the cliffs and the Cove and Cradle
Bay. He could see Gower's cottage white among the green, one chimney
spitting blue smoke that the wind carried away in a wispy banner. He
could see a green patch behind his own house with the white headboard
that marked his father's grave. He could see Poor Man's Rock bare its
kelp-grown head between seas, and on the point above the Rock a solitary
figure, squat and brown, that he knew must be Horace Gower.
MacRae laid down his pack to rest his aching shoulders. But there was no
resting the ache in his heart. Nor was it restful to gaze upon any of
these things within the span of his eye. He was reminded of too much
which it was not good to remember. As he sat staring down on the distant
Rock and a troubled sea with an intolerable heaviness in his breast, he
recalled that so must his father have looked down on Poor Man's Rock in
much the same anguished spirit long ago. And Jack MacRae's mind reacted
morbidly to the suggestion, the parallel. His eyes turned with
smoldering fire to the stumpy figure on the tip of Point Old.
"I'll pay it all back yet," he gritted. "Betty or no Betty, I'll make
him wish he'd kept his hands off the MacRaes."
* * * * *
About the time Jack MacRae with his burden of venison drew near his own
dooryard, Betty Gower came out upon the winter-sodden lawn before their
cottage and having crossed it ran lightly up the steps to the wide
porch. From there she saw her father standing on the Point. She called
to him. At her hail he came trudging to the house. Betty was piling wood
in the living-room fireplace when he came in.
"I was beginning to worry about you," he said.
"The wind got too much for me," she answered, "so I put the boat on the
beach a mile or so along and walked home."
Gower drew a chair up to the fire.
"Blaze feels good," he remarked. "There's a chill in this winter air."
Betty made no comment.
"Getting lonesome?" he inquired after a minute. "It seems to me you've
been restless the last day or two. Want to go back to town, Betty?"
"I wonder why we come here and stay and stay, out of reach of everything
and everybody?" she said at last.
"Blest if I know," Gower answered casually. "Except that we like to.
It's a restful place, isn't it? You work harder at having a good time in
town than I ever did making money. Well, we don't have to be hermits
unless we like. We'll go back to mother and the giddy whirl to-morrow,
if you like."
"We might as well, I think," she said absently.
For a minute neither spoke. The fire blazed up in a roaring flame.
Raindrops slashed suddenly against the windows out of a storm-cloud
driven up by the wind. Betty turned her eyes on her father.
"Did you ever do anything to Jack MacRae that would give him reason to
hate you?" she asked bluntly.
Gower shook his head without troubling to look at her. He kept his face
steadfastly to the fire.
"No," he said. "The other way about, if anything. He put a crimp in me
last season."
"I remember you said you were going to smash him," she said
thoughtfully.
"Did I?" he made answer in an indifferent tone. "Well, I might. And then
again I might not. He may do the smashing. He's a harder proposition
than I figured he would be, in several ways."
"That isn't it," Betty said, as if to herself. "Then you must have had
some trouble with his father--long ago. Something that hurt him enough
for him to pass a grudge on to Jack. What was it, daddy? Anything real?"
"Jack, eh?" Gower passed over the direct question. "You must be getting
on. Have you been seeing much of that young man lately?"
"What does that matter?" Betty returned impatiently. "Of course I see
him. Is there any reason I shouldn't?"
Gower picked up a brass poker. He leaned forward, digging aimlessly at
the fire, stirring up tiny cascades of sparks that were sucked glowing
into the black chimney throat.
"Perhaps no reason that would strike you as valid," he said slowly.
"Still--I don't know. Do you like him?"
"You won't answer my questions," Betty complained. "Why should I answer
yours?"
"There are plenty of nice young fellows in your own crowd," Gower went
on, still poking mechanically at the fire. "Why pick on young MacRae?"
"You're evading, daddy," Betty murmured. "Why _shouldn't_ I pick on
Jack MacRae if I like him--if he likes me? That's what I'm trying to
find out."
"Does he?" Gower asked pointblank.
"Yes," Betty admitted in a reluctant whisper. "He does--but--why don't
you tell me, daddy, what I'm up against, as you would say? What did you
ever do to old Donald MacRae that his son should have a feeling that is
stronger than love?"
"You think he loves you?"
"I know it," Betty murmured.
"And you?" Gower's deep voice seemed harsh.
Betty threw out her hands in an impatient gesture.
"Must I shout it out loud?" she cried.
"You always were different from most girls, in some things," Gower
observed reflectively. "Iron under your softness. I never knew you to
stop trying to get anything you really wanted, not while there was a
chance to get it. Still--don't you think it would be as well for you to
stop wanting young MacRae--since he doesn't want you bad enough to try
to get you? Eh?"
He still kept his face studiously averted. His tone was kind, full of a
peculiar tenderness that he kept for Betty alone.
She rose and perched herself on the arm of his chair, caught and drew
his head against her, forced him to look up into eyes preternaturally
bright.
"You don't seem to understand," she said. "It isn't that Jack doesn't
want me badly enough. He could have me, and I think he knows that too.
But there is something, something that drives him the other way. He
loves me. I know he does. And still he has spells of hating all us
Gowers--especially you. I know he wouldn't do that without reason."
"Doesn't he tell you the reason?"
Betty shook her head.
"Would I be asking you, daddy?"
"I can't tell you, either," Gower rumbled deep in his throat.
"Is it something that can't be mended?" Betty put her face down against
his, and he felt the tears wet on her cheek. "Think, daddy. I'm
beginning to be terribly unhappy."
"That seems to be a family failing," Gower muttered. "I can't mend it,
Betty. I don't know what young MacRae knows or what he feels, but I can
guess. I'd make it worse if I meddled. Should I go to this hot-headed
young fool and say, 'Come on, let's shake hands, and you marry my
daughter'?"
"Don't be absurd," Betty flashed. "I'm not asking you to _do_ anything."
"I couldn't do anything in this case if I wanted to," Gower declared.
"As a matter of fact, I think I'd put young MacRae out of my head, if I
were you. I wouldn't pick him for a husband, anyway."
Betty rose to her feet.
"You brought me into the world," she said passionately. "You have fed me
and clothed me and educated me and humored all my whims ever since I can
remember. But you can't pick a husband for me. I shall do that for
myself. It's silly to tell me to put Jack MacRae out of my head. He
isn't in my head. He's in my--my--heart. And I can keep him there, if I
can't have him in my arms. Put him out of my head! You talk as if loving
and marrying were like dealing in fish."
"I wish it were," Gower rumbled. "I might have had some success at it
myself."
Betty did not even vouchsafe reply. Probably she did not even hear what
he said. She turned and went to the window, stood looking out at the
rising turmoil of the sea, at the lowering scud of the clouds, dabbing
surreptitiously at her eyes with a handkerchief. After a little she
walked out of the room. Her feet sounded lightly on the stairs.
Gower bent to the fire again. He resumed his aimless stirring of the
coals. A grim, twisted smile played about his lips. But his eyes were as
somber as the storm-blackened winter sky.