Chapter XV: 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.