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 on
the porch floor as if he had but discarded them. MacRae took in every
detail of his appearance in one photographic glance, as a man will when
his gaze rests upon another with whom he may be about to clash.
Gower no longer resembled the well-fed plutocrat. He scarcely seemed the
same man who, nearly two years before, had absently bestowed upon MacRae
a dollar for an act of simple courtesy. He wore nondescript trousers
which betrayed a shrunken abdominal line, a blue flannel shirt that
bared his short, thick neck. And in that particular moment, at least,
the habitual sullenness of his heavy face was not in evidence. He looked
placid in spite of the fiery redness which sun and wind had burned into
his skin. He betrayed no surprise at MacRae's coming. The placidity of
his 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 little
matter of business."
"Yes?" Gower rumbled. "I've been sort of expecting you."
"Oh?" MacRae failed to conceal altogether his surprise at this
statement. "I understand you are willing to sell this place. I want to
buy 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 it
had been two months earlier--shook with silent laughter. His eyes
twinkled. His thick, stubby fingers drummed on the chair arm.
MacRae's face grew hot. He recognized the unfinished sentence as one of
his own, words he had flung in Gower's face not so long since. If that
was 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 amused
expression had vanished. Gower leaned forward a little. There was
something very like appeal in his expression. MacRae was suddenly
conscious of facing a still different man,--an oldish, fat man with
thinning hair and tired, wistful eyes.
"I just happened to think of what you said to me not long ago," Gower
explained. "It struck me as funny. But that isn't how I feel. If you
want this land you can have it. Take a chair. Sit down. I want to talk
to you."
"There is nothing the matter with my legs," MacRae said shortly. "I do
want this land. I will pay you the price you paid for it, in cash, when
you 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 it
away 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 down
you don't expect him to jump up and shake hands with you. You had your
inning. It was a long one."
"I wonder," Gower said slowly, "why old Donald MacRae kept his mouth
closed 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 had
no such feeling against me as you have had since," Gower said. "I know
you didn't. You wouldn't have come if you had. I cut no figure in your
eyes, one way or the other, until after he was dead. So he must have
told you at the very last. What did he tell you? Why did he have to pass
that old poison on to another generation?"
"Why shouldn't he?" MacRae demanded. "You made his life a failure. You
put a scar on his face--I can remember when I was a youngster wondering
how he got that mark--I remember how it stood like a ridge across his
cheek bone when he was dead. You put a scar upon his soul that no one
but himself ever saw or felt--except as I have been able to feel it
since I knew. You weren't satisfied with that. You had to keep on
throwing your weight against him for thirty years. You didn't even stop
when the war made everything seem different. You might have let up
then. We were doing our bit. But you didn't. You kept on until you had
deprived him of everything but the power to row around the Rock day
after day and take a few salmon in order to live. You made a pauper of
him and sat here gloating over it. It preyed on his mind to think that I
should come back from France and find myself a beggar because he was
unable 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 to
read--when he began to feel that he would never see me again--the
reasons why he had failed in everything, lost everything. When I pieced
out the story, from the day you used your pike pole to knock down a man
whose fighting hands were tied by a promise to a woman he loved, from
then till the last cold-blooded maneuver by which you got this land of
ours, 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 what
I came here to say. Talk--talk's cheap. I would rather not talk about
these things, or think of them, now. I want to buy this land from you if
you are willing to sell. That's all."
Gower scarcely seemed to hear him. He was nursing his heavy chin with
one hand, looking at MacRae with a curious concentration, looking at him
and 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 your
father, MacRae, many a time. I struck him an ugly blow once. Yes. I was
young and hot-headed, and I was burning with jealousy. But I did him a
good 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 him
every time I got a chance; that I didn't bushwhack--no matter if he
believed I did."
"No?" MacRae said incredulously. "You didn't break up a logging venture
on the Claha when he had a chance to make a stake? You didn't show your
fine Italian hand in that marble quarry undertaking on Texada? Nor other
things that I could name as he named them. Why crawl now? It doesn't
matter. I'm not swinging a club over your head."
Gower shook himself.
"No," he declared slowly. "He interfered with the Morton interests in
that Claha logging camp, and they did whatever was done. The quarry
business I know nothing about, except that I had business dealings with
the people whom he ran foul of. I tell you, MacRae, after the first
short period of time when I was afire with the fury of jealousy, I did
not do these things. I didn't even want to do them. I wish you would get
that straight. I wanted Bessie Morton and I got her. That was an issue
between us, I grant. I gained my point there. I would have gone farther
to gain that point. But I paid for it. It was not so long before I knew
that I was going to pay dearly for it. I tell you I came to envy Donald
MacRae. I don't know if he nursed a disappointment--which I came to know
was 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 seemed
to care for him. At any rate, she respected him and was a mate, living
his life while she did live.
"Look, MacRae. I married Bessie Morton because I wanted her, wanted her
on any terms. She didn't want me. She wanted Donald MacRae. But she had
wanted other men. That was the way she was made. She was facile. And
she never loved any one half so much as she loved herself. She was only
a beautiful peacock preening her feathers and sighing for homage. She
was--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 of
herself. She would have made Donald MacRae's life a misery to him when
the 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 have
taken her, or anything else, from your father out in the middle of the
Gulf, if she had had any spirit? You knew your father. He wasn't a tame
man. He would have fought--fought like a tiger. We might have killed
him. It is more likely that he would have killed us. But we could not
have 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 spoke
slowly, groping for his words. MacRae did not interrupt. Something
compelled him to listen. There was a pained ring in Gower's voice that
held him. The man was telling him these things with visible reluctance,
with a simple dignity that arrested him, even while he felt that he
should not listen.
"She used to taunt me with that," he went on, "taunt me with striking
Donald MacRae. For years after we were married she used to do that. Long
after--and that wasn't so long--she had ceased to care if such a man as
your father existed. That was only an episode to her, of which she was
snobbishly ashamed in time. But she often reminded me that I had struck
him like a hardened butcher, because she knew she could hurt me with
that. So that I used to wish to God I had never followed her out into
the Gulf.
"For thirty years I've lived and worked and never known any real
satisfaction in living--or happiness. I've played the game, played it
hard. I've been hard, they say. Probably I have. I didn't care. A man
had to walk on others or be walked on himself. I made money. Money--I
poured it into her hands, like pouring sand in a rat-hole. She lived for
herself, her whims, her codfish-aristocracy standards, spending my money
like water to make a showing, giving me nothing in return, nothing but
whining and recrimination if I crossed her ever so little. She made a
lap dog of her son the first twenty-five years of his life. She would
have 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 only
for Betty's sake."
MacRae shifted uneasily.
"You see," Gower continued, "my life has been a failure, too. When
Donald MacRae and I clashed, I prevailed. I got what I wanted. But it
was only a shadow. There was no substance. It didn't do me any good. I
have made money, barrels of it, and that has not done me any good. I've
been successful at everything I undertook--except lately--but succeeding
as the world reckons success hasn't made me happy. In my personal life
I've been a damned failure. I've always been aware of that. And if I
have held a feeling toward Donald MacRae these thirty-odd years, it was
a feeling of envy. I would have traded places with him and been the
gainer. I would have liked to tell him so. But I couldn't. He was a dour
Scotchman and I suppose he hated me, although he kept it to himself. I
suppose he loved Bessie. I know I did. Perhaps he cherished hatred of me
for 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 would
have whined and sniffled about being a poor man's wife, once she learned
what it was to be poor. She could never understand anything but a
silk-lined existence. She loved herself and her own illusions. She would
have driven him mad with her petty whims, her petty emotions. She
doesn'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 shirk
responsibilities, 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 deliberately
wronged Donald MacRae. He may honestly have believed I did. I have the
name of being hard. I dare say I am. The world is a hard place. When I
had to choose between walking on a man's face and having my own walked
on, I never hesitated. There was nothing much to make me soft. I moved
along 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 that
things went against him. I could see that. I knew why, too. He was too
square for his time and place. He trusted men too much. You can't always
do that. He was too scrupulously honest. He always gave the other fellow
the best of it. That alone beat him. He didn't always consider his own
interest and follow up every advantage. I don't think he cared to
scramble for money, as a man must scramble for it these days. He could
have held this place if he had cast about for ways to do so. There were
plenty of loopholes. But he had that old-fashioned honor which doesn't
seek loopholes. He had borrowed money on it. He would have taken the
coat off his back, beggared himself any day to pay a debt. Isn't that
right?"
MacRae nodded.
"So this place came into my hands. It was deliberate on my part--but
only, mind you, when I knew that he was bound to lose it. Perhaps it was
bad judgment on my part. I didn't think that he would see it as an end
I'd been working for. As I grew older, I found myself wanting now and
then to wipe out that old score between us. I would have given a good
deal to sit down with him over a pipe. A woman, who wasn't much as women
go, had made us both suffer. So I built this cottage and came here to
stay now and then. I liked the place. I liked to think that now he and I
were 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 got
nearer to him than to see him rowing around the Rock. And he died full
of that bitterness. I don't like to think of that. Still, it cannot be
helped. Do you grasp this, MacRae? Do you believe me?"
Incredible as it seemed, MacRae had no choice but to accept that
explanation of strangely twisted motives, those misapprehensions, the
murky cloud of misunderstanding. The tone of Gower's voice, his
attitude, carried supreme conviction. And still--
"Yes," he said at last. "It is all a contradiction of things I have been
passionately sure of for nearly two years. But I can see--yes, it must
be 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 to
their 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 passed
between them. Yet he did not know how close a bond might exist between
this father and daughter, who were, MacRae was beginning to perceive,
most singularly alike. And this was a shrewd old man, sadly wise in
human weaknesses, and much more tolerant than MacRae had conceived
possible. He felt a little ashamed of the malice with which he had
fought this battle of the salmon around Squitty Island. Yet Gower by his
own admission was a hard man. He had lived with a commercial sword in
his hand. He knew what it was to fall by that weapon. He had been hard
on the fishermen. He had exploited them mercilessly. Therein lay his
weakness, 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 was
only a momentary doubt. He struggled a little against the reaction of
kindliness, this curious sympathy for Gower which moved him now. He
hated sentimentalism, facile yielding to shallow emotions. He wanted to
talk and he was dumb. Dumb for appropriate words, because his mind kept
turning 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. It
isn'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 was
aware of Gower's eyes upon him with something akin to expectancy. An
uncertain smile flitted across MacRae's face.
"This has sort of put me on my beam ends," he said, using a sailor's
phrase. "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 and
another. But you had the nerve to go at it--and you used better judgment
of men and conditions than anybody has manifested in the salmon business
lately, unless it's young Abbott. So I suppose you are entitled to win
on your merits. By the way, there is one condition tacked to selling you
this ranch. I hesitated about bringing it up at first. I would like to
keep this cottage and a strip of ground a hundred and fifty feet wide
running down to the beach."
"All right," MacRae agreed. "We can arrange that later. I'll come
again."
He set foot on the porch steps. Then he turned back. A faint flush stole
up 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 his
thick, stubby fingers almost made Jack MacRae wince,--and he was a
strong-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 and
put off in his dinghy. Then he took out a handkerchief and blew his nose
with a tremendous amount of unnecessary noise and gesture. There was
something suspiciously like moisture brightening his eyes.
But when he saw MacRae stand in the dinghy alongside the _Blanco_ and
speak briefly to his men, then row in under Point Old behind Poor Man's
Rock which the tide was slowly baring, when he climbed up over the Point
and took the path along the cliff edge, that suspicious brightness in
Gower's keen old eyes was replaced by a twinkle. He sat down in his
grass chair and hummed a little tune, the while one slippered foot kept
time, rat-a-pat, on the floor of the porch.