A CLOUD OVER ROCKHAVEN
A man is happiest when he has most to do, and though a woman's face
intrudes upon his thoughts and he feels her smiles are all for him, it
is life and action and the push forward toward success that interest him
most.
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 life
and care with earnestness and energy, putting his best thought into it,
and not only carrying out his employer's instructions in letter and
spirit, but in addition trying to make friends of those honest islanders
and interest them in this new enterprise. The latter was not hard since
Jess, the oracle of Rockhaven, was on his side, and, in a way, sponsor
for him. Then, too, he had adopted their simple homely ways and, though
not a believer, attended church each Sunday. How much of this was due to
the occult influence of Mona's eyes, and how much to sympathy and
interest in the spiritual life of the island, is hard to say. Most of
the men considered Sunday as a day of rest, and to some extent,
recreation. A few accompanied their families to the little church, but
more spent the day lounging about the wharves, smoking and swapping
yarns, and if a boat needed caulking, a net mending, or a new sail
bending, they did not hesitate to do it. While all had sufficient
reverence for the Lord's Day not to actually start out fishing, most
were willing to get ready. And perhaps for good reason, for a livelihood
on Rockhaven was not easy to obtain and with them, as with most
hard-working people, the necessities of life displaced spiritual
influences.
"It is a hard field to labor in," asserted the Rev. Jason Bush to Winn
one day, "and I've grown old and gray in the work. We have a little
church that has not been painted but twice since I came here forty-odd
years ago, or shingled but once. We have no carpet, and the cushions in
the pews are in rags. I have taught this generation almost all they know
of books, and laid most of their parents away in the graveyard back of
the meeting-house, and my turn will come before many years. We are poor
here, and we always have been and most likely always shall be, and at
times it has seemed to me the Lord was indifferent to our needs. Your
coming here and this new industry has seemed to me a special
providence."
And Winn, thinking of the fifty shares of stock he had given this poor
old minister, and the ten dollars dividend that must have seemed a
godsend, felt his heart sink, for he had by this time come to realize
why he had been told to donate this stock. And perhaps that fact gave
added force to the parson's words.
And when, after Jess had advised him to lay off some of the men and he
had done so, a sort of gloom seemed to spread over the island. A few of
the men took to their boats and fishing once more, and though Winn gave
out 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 not
content. The growing distrust was a thorn in his side, in fact it was
more than that; it was almost a certainty that his mission there was
nearing its end. To leave, he could not; to go ahead, he dared not, for
any day he might be left in the lurch with no money to pay his men. And
Friday, when he usually received his remittances, was awaited with keen
anxiety. When it came and a letter, slightly fault-finding in tone
because he had sold no more stock for some weeks, and insisting that he
must 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 to
do their bidding, be it work or to rob honest people." And then Winn had
a bad half-hour.
"Don't ye mind 'em," said Jess consolingly, when Winn had told him what
they wrote, "but keep cheerful 'n' let 'em keep on sendin' money. It's a
long lane ez hez no turns 'n' ours'll come bimeby. Better write yer
friend 'n' git posted on what's doin'."
But this excellent advice had scant effect on Winn, for his ambition had
been chilled, his hopes seemed like to be thwarted, his mental sun in a
cloud, and the barometer of his spirits at low tide. Then the honest
people here who had trusted him implicitly and who could ill afford to
lose became a burden to his mind. Honest himself in every impulse, to
realize that in the near future he might be cursed as a rascal only
added to his gloom. He dreaded to meet them lest they read the worriment
in his face, and especially the patient and hard-working Mrs. Moore, who
daily prepared his meals. To her the hundred dollars she had invested
was a small fortune, and then the kindly old minister whose long life
of patient work for starvation pay had made him pathetic, and who had
considered this gift as coming from the hand of God--to feel that he
also might join the rest in sorrowing hurt Winn. He dared not say a word
to any one except Jess, and what to do he knew not. At times he thought
of going to them, one and all, explain the situation, and ask them to
intrust him with their stock, when he would send it to the city to be
sold if possible. He even confided this impulse to Jess.
"No," replied that philosopher, "it ain't my idee to cross bridges till
ye 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 stand
the 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 her
to a certain extent, but he could not avoid his thoughts, and deep in
his heart he knew that whatever bond of sympathy had come between them
was due to his own seeking. He had praised her playing, passed hours in
delightful exchange of poetic thoughts and recital of old-time lore,
pathetic, romantic, and altogether alluring, and this thrusting his
personality, as it were, into the thoughts and life of this untutored
island girl could have but one ending, and full well Winn knew what that
was.
The next Sunday chance threw them together, for Winn, to escape his
mood, if possible, had taken a long stroll over the island and up to the
north village. Returning late in the afternoon, he found her sitting by
the old mill watching the tide slowly ebbing between its mussel-coated
foundations. It was a spot romantic in its isolation, out of sight from
any dwelling and, in addition, of somewhat ghostly interest. Winn had
heard its history. It had been built a century ago and made useful for
the island's needs, but finally it fell into disuse and decay, its roof
gone, its timbers and floor removed, its windows but gaping openings in
the stone walls and akin to the eyeless sockets and mouth of a skull.
Then, too, the half-demented girl who years before had been found
hanging lifeless from one of its cross beams added an uncanny touch.
Winn had felt its grewsome interest and once or twice had visited it
with Mona. And now, coming to it just as the lowering sun had reached
the line of spruce trees fringing the western side of the harbor, he
found Mona sitting where they had sat one moonlight evening, idly
watching the motionless harbor stretching a mile away. She was not
aware of his approach, but sat leaning against an abutting stone,
looking at the setting sun's red glow on the harbor, a lonely, pathetic
figure.
For a moment Winn watched her, and watching there beside this uncanny
old 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, "only
I did not know what else to do, and so came here." She did not disclose
the 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 come
across you, for I too have been lonesome and trying to walk it off. I've
had the blues for a week or more now," he added, feeling that some sort
of 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 and
address, "I hate the city, as I've told you many times; but business
matters vex me, and as you may have heard, I've had to lay off some of
my men."
"Yes, I have heard," she answered quietly, her eyes still on him,
"nothing happens here that all do not know in a few hours."
And Winn, with the burden of dread that like a pall oppressed him just
then, wondered how long it would take for all to hear what he or Jess
could utter in five words.
"Why did you come here, Mona, if you were lonesome?" he said, anxious to
change the subject. "It's the last spot on the island you should visit
if lonely."
Mona colored slightly; "I always go to some lonely spot when I feel
sad," 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 and
seating himself beside her. "When I am blue I go to Jess or else take a
tramp as I did to-day," he added hastily.
Mona still watched him furtively and with an intuitive feeling that he
was concealing something. "I wish I knew how to play the violin," he
continued, looking across the harbor to where a dory had just started
toward 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 long
hour, I fancy. Do you know," he continued, anxious to talk about
anything except his present mood, "I've thought so many times of that
day I first heard you playing in the 'Devil's Oven,' and what a strange
place it was to hide yourself in. You are a queer girl, Mona, and unlike
any one I ever knew. I wish I were an artist, I'd like to make a picture
of you in that cave."
Mona looked pleased.
"You would make a picture," he added, smiling at her, "that the whole
world would look at with interest; I'd have you holding your violin and
looking 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 a
few such, and they are the only ones who interest men any length of
time."
"And am I like one of them?" queried the girl.
"Oh, no," he answered, "except your eyes, and they are absolutely
unreadable. Beyond them you are as easily understood as a flower that
only needs the sun's smiles."
It was a bit of his poetic imagery faintly understood by Mona. "You must
not 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 used
to 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 the
city."
"I thought you said once you envied the city girls who came here in
yachts," 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 why
are you glad I am country-born?"
"Because," she replied bluntly, "Uncle Jess says country-born people are
usually honest and can be trusted."
Winn was silent, and as he looked at this simple island girl, so
unaffected and winsome, a new admiration came for her. "Give her a
chance," he thought, "and she would hold her own with Ethel Sherman
even."
"That is true," he said aloud, after a pause, thinking only of his own
business experience, "and the longer I remain here, the less I wish to
return to the city. I feel as your worthy uncle does, and for good
reasons. With the exception of an aunt, who has made a home for me, the
women whom I met there were not to be trusted, nor the men either. When
I left the old farm I was too young to understand people, but now that I
do, I often long for the old associates of my boyhood, and if my
business 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 his
troubles to Mona and looking down into the dark mussel-coated chasm left
by the ebbing tide close by where they sat, "but I presume I shall come
out all right."
Then, as he glanced up at the roofless wall of the old mill just back of
them, its window openings showing the dark interior, he thought of the
girl who, a century ago, had come there to end her heartache and whose
story was fresh in his mind.
"Come, Mona," he said tenderly, as a sigh escaped him, "it's time we
returned to the village, for I am going to meeting to-night with you
and your mother." And all the long mile of sandy roadway that lay
between the mill and Rockhaven was traversed in almost unbroken silence.
Though far apart as yet, they were nearer to one another than ever
before.