A WOMAN'S WILES
The bubble of Rockhaven, the flight of Weston, the suicide of Hill
furnished a few items for the city press, a little gossip among
interested ones for a week, then passed into history, to be forgotten by
most people. Page, lionized for a day by other brokers whose scalps he
had saved, resumed his operations as usual with an increased clientele;
while Simmons, the defeated one in this battle of values, was seldom
seen on the floor of the exchange. Jack Nickerson returned to his wonted
existence, speculating a little, gambling in the club when congenial
spirits gathered, and, as usual, sneering at the weaknesses of all human
kind; while Winn, growing more despondent day by day at the turn in the
tide of affairs, hardly knew what to do with himself. Occasionally he
walked past the door of Weston & Hill's office, now closed by the hand
of law, and glancing at the legal paper pasted inside it, muttered a
curse and went his way. Sometimes he visited the exchange to watch the
unceasing tossing of stock dice for an hour, to kill time; then to
Page's office to chat with him, and then to the club, feeling himself
less and less in touch with this grind of city life as the days went by.
He lived, too, in daily expectation of a letter from Mona, and receiving
none, that added to his gloom. Just why, he could not understand; and
then a species of pride crept into his feelings, and he imagined she
might have been cautioned by her mother not to answer him. He began to
feel a little hurt at the thought that this timid girl might feel afraid
of him; and although swayed by emotions and seemingly his own when they
parted, he feared that on reflection she had decided it best to end the
matter thus.
To one who is despondent, all things seem awry, and Winn was now so low
down in spirits that he was ready to believe himself of no account to
any one--even this simple child of nature whose soul was attuned to her
violin. That Jess was his cordial friend he felt sure; but a timid girl,
utterly lacking in worldly wisdom and as wayward in feelings as the
varying sounds of the waves beating against her island home, was another
matter.
Winn's thoughts now were full of bitterness.
One Sunday, coming out of church ahead of his aunt who had paused to
chat with some one, he encountered in the vestibule, dressed in
faultless fall costume, a picture of beauty and good taste,--Ethel
Sherman!
"Why, Winn," she said, advancing and extending a gloved hand, "I am very
glad to see you back again. I've heard all about you and the fame you
have achieved and how good you have been to your aunt. I must insist
that you call this evening and tell me all about it. I've a bone to pick
with you also, you naughty boy, for not answering my letter."
And Winn, moved as any man would be by such captivating words uttered by
a young goddess in fashionable raiment, forgot all his old-time
resentment for a moment, and answered as any well-bred and susceptible
young man would.
"I am very glad to see you, Ethel," he said cordially, "and it's nice of
you to say such pleasant things. If you haven't any better amusement for
this evening, I will call."
And call he did, to find this imperious beauty arrayed in an exquisite
evening gown, in his honor, fairly exhaling sweet smiles and graceful
words. And with them came back, also, all the old-time charm of her
siren voice, her keen wit, her polished sarcasms, her devil-may-care
_bon camaraderie_.
For two years Ethel Sherman had been a daily thorn in Winn's side. He
had met her occasionally, when he simply bowed and exchanged the
civilities of polite society, but nothing more. Occasionally his aunt, a
born match-maker, had let fall a word of praise for Ethel, the intent of
which was palpable to Winn, but in spite of which he had determined to
put her out of his thoughts. When her letter reached him on the island,
he mentally contrasted her with Mona and to the former's detriment, more
than ever thinking of her as the type of a fashionable young woman
sneered at by Nickerson. His illusions regarding her had all vanished
and he saw her as she was,--a beautiful, heartless, ambitious Circe,
conscious of her power, and enjoying it.
And this evening, seated in her daintily furnished parlor, and facing
the most exquisite adornment it contained, he regarded her as he did the
marble copy of the Greek Slave, perched on a pedestal in one corner.
But Ethel Sherman was not the girl to be long considered marble, whether
she was or not; and was just now piqued by Winn's coolly polite
indifference.
"Well, my dear friend," she said eagerly, when the first commonplaces
had been exchanged, "tell me all about this unheard-of island where you
have been buried all summer, and this queer old fellow you brought up
in the city, and the barefooted fisher maids you met there, and which
one caught your fancy. I've just been dying to hear."
"You seem to want an entire chapter of a novel in one breath," answered
Winn, smiling. "How did you find out I brought any one to the city?"
"Oh, I am still able to read the papers," she laughed, "and Jack called
the other evening. It's all over the city, as well as your firm's
collapse and the part you played in it. Oh, you have become famous in a
day, as it were, and people who have never set eyes on you are talking
about you."
Winn smiled, for what man could resist such subtile flattery.
"I wasn't aware that I was a mark for gossip," he said, "though Weston &
Hill must have been, and deservedly. I'm not sorry for Hill, however,
for I despised him, but I rather liked Weston, even after I discovered
he was a rascal, he was such a jolly, good-natured one."
"So Jack says," answered Ethel, "and happily indifferent as to whom he
swindled. It was first come, first served, with him."
"He served Hill the worst dose," said Winn, "and it looks as if Hill
were the ultimate object of his plot, and the rest of us only pawns in
his game."
"You at least called 'checkmate' to him," answered Ethel, smiling
admiration, "but tell me about the island. That is of more interest to
me. The city end of this affair is now ancient history."
"Oh, the island is a poem," replied Winn, earnestly, "a spot to forget
the world on and learn a new life. Its people are poor, but honest,
kind, and truthful; their houses turkey coops, their customs ancient,
their religion sincere, their livelihood gained by fishing, and the
island a wild spruce-clad ledge of granite with bold sea-washed cliffs
and an interior harbor that is a dream of peace, seldom rippled. There
is an ancient beacon built by the Norsemen on a hill nine centuries ago,
a ravine surpassingly grand with a cave called the Devil's Oven, and an
old tide-mill at the head of their harbor, where a love-lorn girl once
hanged herself."
"A charming spot, truly," said Ethel, "and if I had known all this last
July, and there had been a comfortable hotel there, we should have
summered on this delightful island instead of on the mountains."
"It would have amused you a week," replied Winn, smiling, "but not
longer. There were no golf links or young dudes to flirt with there."
Ethel colored slightly.
"That is the worst of having friends," she said, "they are bound to
gossip about one. I don't mind," she added gayly; "I am a flirt and
admit it cheerfully, but what else are men good for?"
"Not much, I admit," answered Winn, sarcastically, "especially if they
have money or prospects of it; and if not, they are good to practise
on."
"Now, Winn, my dear fellow, don't emulate Jack Nickerson," she responded
suavely, "the role doesn't become you. You can be an adorable bear, but
not a barking puppy."
"Jack's not a puppy," asserted Winn.
"I never said he was," answered Ethel. "He can be worse than that; he
can be a gossipy old maid, always sneering, and that is more abominable
than a puppy any day. But tell me about the people on the island, and
which fisher maid you fell in love with."
"Why should you imagine I looked twice at any island maid?" answered
Winn.
"Oh, you were bound to," asserted Ethel, laughing. "You wouldn't be the
delightful man you are unless you did, so tell me all about her. Did she
wear her flaxen hair in a braid and ask from beneath a sunbonnet, 'What
are the wild waves saying?' while she stood barefoot beside you on the
beach?"
"Oh, yes, and chewed spruce gum at the same time," he responded, also
laughing.
"Even when you kissed her?" queried Ethel. "It must have lent a
delightfully aromatic flavor."
Winn made no answer to this pointed sally. Instead he stroked his
moustache musingly, while his thoughts flew back to Rockhaven and Mona.
Ethel eyed him keenly.
"Quit mooning," she said at last, "and come back to Erin. I do not
expect you to admit you kissed this fair fisher maid. It wouldn't be
gallant. But you can at least describe her. Is she dark or fair?"
"I haven't the least idea," he said, "she was so sweet and charming; her
eyes might have been sea-green for all I can tell."
"You evade fairly well," rejoined his tormentor, "but not over well. You
still need practice. Now tell me about this old fellow Jack described as
a 'barnacled curiosity.'"
"Oh, Jess Hutton," replied Winn, relieved; "he is a curiosity, and of
the salt of the earth. If there was any one I fell in love with on the
island, it was he."
"That was fairly well done," laughed Ethel; "you are improving and in
time may hope to deceive even me."
"Never," responded Winn, sarcastically; "you are too well skilled in the
fine art of dissembling. You almost persuaded me to-day that you were
really glad to see me, instead of anxious to find out all about
Rockhaven and its fisher maids."
"That is unkind," replied Ethel, in a hurt tone, "and you know it.
Didn't I write you a nice letter, and have I shown the least resentment
at your failure to answer it? Come now, be nice and like your old dear
self, you big bear. I don't care if you did fall in love with an island
girl. You certainly would have been stupid not to if there was one worth
it, and I respect you the more for protecting her. Your friend Nickerson
wouldn't."
And Winn, mollified by this occult flattery, came near admitting--Mona
and all the summer's illusion--for that was Winn Hardy's way. Only one
thing saved her name from passing his lips,--the fact that no answer had
come to his letter. He began to feel that none was likely to, and that
the summer's idyl was destined to be but a memory like to the sound of
church bells in his boyhood days.
Then, while his thoughts went back to the island and all it contained,
he told the story of his sojourn there, of Jess and his fiddle, of the
little church and its parson, the quarry and his men, of Mrs. Moore and
Captain Roby and the fishermen who each day sailed away to return at
night.
Only Mona was omitted.
And Ethel, listening, became entranced at his recital.
"Your stay there has done you good," she said, when it was ended, "and
made a broader man of you. You are not the callow boy you were, and the
heroism you have shown toward your poor aunt proves it. When she told
me, the tears almost came to my eyes; and while I bow to the noble
impulse you displayed, it was foolish after all. It would have been
wiser to have kept the money in your own hands and taken care of her.
She may be led again to make ducks and drakes of her money by another
Weston. The world is full of them."
"It didn't occur to me then," answered Winn. "I did it on a sudden
impulse, and now I think you are right."
And be it said parenthetically that this worldly yet sincere assertion
of Ethel Sherman elevated her greatly in Winn's estimation.
"Come, Ethel," he said after a pause, "I want to forget all this
business; now don't say any more about it. Most likely I acted
foolishly--it isn't the first time, and may not be the last. If you want
to cheer me up, play and sing for me. I've not heard a piano since I
left the city."
Ethel, glad of the chance so to entertain him, complied. Strange to say
the song she selected and rendered, as she well could, with exquisite
feeling, was "Robin Adair." Then followed another of the same
nationality.
"I've taken to the old Scotch songs lately," she said, when she turned
from the piano, "and they are quite a fad with me now. They have so much
more heart and soul in them than modern compositions."
"Give me 'Annie Laurie' now," suggested Winn, a shade on his face. And
listening well while the graceful, ring-glittering fingers of Ethel
Sherman leaped lightly over the ivory keys, her sweet voice gave new
power to the immortal ballad of olden time, while he thought only of one
summer day in the cave at Rockhaven and--Mona.
When he was taking his leave, and Ethel, unconscious of the mood she had
evoked, stood beside him in the dimly lighted hall, she held out her
hand. Her red, ripe lips were upraised, as if in temptation, and her
eyes were tender with the spirit of her songs.
"I hope you have had a pleasant evening, Winn," she said tenderly, "and
will call again soon. I'll promise not to mention the fisher maid any
more if you will."
And Winn, glancing into the bright eyes that had once lured him to a
heartache, held her hand a moment and then bade her good night.