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-carebon 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 rôle 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.
For weeks Winn lived an aimless life without occupation, which to him meant misery. He walked the streets to be jostled by people in a hurry, and wished that he also was. He looked into shop windows where dummies stood clad in beautiful garments, and wondered how Mona would look if robed in such. He met people hurrying home from their work at night and almost envied them. In his club he felt so ill at ease that games, conversation, and even the raillery of Jack Nickerson bored him. He had a pleasant home, where his aunt always thought of his comfort; he escorted her to church with regularity; read the daily papers; called on Ethel occasionally, to find her always the same sweet temptation. She neither allured nor repelled, but was always the same piquant and yet sympathetic friend, well poised and sensible, who judged all men and spoke of them as a mixture of nobility and selfish conceit in unequal parts, with the latter predominating. To Winn she sometimes talked as though he were still a big boy who needed guidance, and then again as if he were more than mortal and out of place in a bad world.
"You are discontented," she said to him one evening, "and out of your sphere among the city men. You take right and wrong too seriously and are like an eagle caged with jackdaws. City men are such in the main, thinking more about the cut of their coats, the fit of their linen, and color of their ties than of aught else. You are as unlike them as when you came here a big boy with countryisms clinging to you and the scent of new mown hay perfuming your impulses; you were always out of place here, and the three months on that island has made you more so."
It was a truthful and yet somewhat flattering portrayal of Winn as he really did seem to her, but it only added to his discontent.
"What you say may be true enough," he answered, "but what shall I do? I can't go into an office again and be content, the taste of being my own master on the island has spoiled me for that. I would go into some business if only I had the capital, but I haven't; and I wouldn't ask my aunt to loan me any, even under the existing circumstances."
"I wish I could advise you," she replied in the sympathetic tone so easily at her command. "I certainly would if I could. But whatever you do, don't go into the stock gambling. I respect you now, and I might not then."
The time came when she wished that she had refrained from that expression.
But a different trend of advice came to Winn later from Jack Nickerson.
"Why don't you open a bucket shop, my boy," said that cynic, "and make some money? I'll back you for a few thousand to start, since you were foolish enough to part with all Page made for you out of the Rockhaven flurry, and it's a dead sure thing. Then again you have won quite a little notoriety out of this Weston & Hill fiasco, and men on the street say you have a cool, level head. I tell you, open up one of those joints and let these smart Alecs who want to get rich quick come in and lose their money. If you keep moping around another month you will go daft, or fall in love with Ethel Sherman over again, which means the same. I hear you are a frequent caller there."
"I've got to spend my time somewhere," answered Winn, rather doggedly, "and Ethel's good company."
Jack eyed him curiously.
"How the moth will flutter around the candle," he said.
"I'm in no danger there," asserted Winn, "so don't worry. Once bit, twice shy; and as for the bucket shop, I'll have none of it. I'd as soon open a faro bank."
"And why not?" queried Jack. "All the world loves to gamble, and most of them do in one way or another. Even the good people who pray can't resist grab bags and fish ponds, and until a few ultra prudes guessed it was gambling, they were all the rage at church fairs. Even now, in society of the best, bridge whist and whist for prizes, afternoon and evening, flourishes on all sides. Oh, it's gamble, my boy, go where you will; and you might as well take a hand in it and make money."
"But a bucket shop is disreputable," replied Winn, "or has that reputation, and on par with gambling dens in fact, though protected by law. It is worse than those in one way, for men who go in feel forced to put up margins to save themselves, and in the end go broke. Look at the embezzlements that crop out almost daily, and nine out of ten traceable to a bucket shop. The law ought to force them to put up a sign, 'All ye who enter here will lose.'"
"You have matured rapidly since you came from the island, my boy," laughed Nickerson, "and now you are fit to do business. Put your new scruples in your pocket and join the crowd. Only those who make money are considered anybody. And how they make it matters little. Make it you must, or walk in this world; and those who walk, get kicked."
And Winn, conscious that a bitter truth lurked in his friend's words, went his way more disconsolate than ever.
But the memory of Rockhaven was still strong in him, and the eyes of Mona and the heart-burst that marked their parting an ever present memory.
And no answer had yet come to his letter.
One evening a little later, when a November storm, half rain, half sleet, made the street miserable, Winn was pushing his way homeward when he saw a girl, poorly clad, a thin summer wrap her only extra garment, looking wistfully into a store window where tropical fruits tempted the passers. He recognized her at once as the stenographer who had served Weston & Hill.
"Why, Mamie," he said, halting, "how are you and what are you doing here in the storm?"
"I was just wishing I could afford a basket of grapes for mother," she answered, smiling at the sight of a friendly face, "but I can't. I've been out of work now since the firm failed, you see."
"I've wondered what became of you," said Winn, his sympathy aroused at once, "and how you were getting on. Where are you working now?"
"Nowhere," she answered. "I've been looking for a place for two months and can't find one. Mother gave the firm all her money to invest, and it's gone, and she is very ill. I am completely discouraged."
Then once more a righteous curse aimed at Weston almost escaped Winn's lips.
"I am very sorry for you, Mamie," he said, "and I wish I could help you."
"If you could only find me a place," she replied eagerly, catching at the straw of hope, "I should be so grateful. We are very poor now."
"I'll do what I can for you," he said kindly, "and maybe I can help you. I, too, was left stranded by that thief Weston;" and without another word he stepped inside the store and, buying a good supply of fruit, joined the girl outside.
"I am going home with you, Mamie," he said cheerfully, "and take your mother some grapes. I've an idea of writing up a history of the Weston & Hill swindle, and I want her story."
It was the first time he had thought of it, but it served as a ready excuse. Then with one hand and arm loaded with bundles, and linking the other around the shivering girl's as if she were a child, the two started toward her home.
"We have had to move," said the girl, as she directed their way toward the poorer quarters of the city, "and I am ashamed to take you to my home. We have only two rooms now."
"Oh, you mustn't mind me," answered Winn, briskly. "I am a fellow-sufferer with you now, you know."
When her home was reached in a narrow side street and up three flights of stairs at that, poverty and a woman coughing her life away beside the kitchen stove told the tale. Winn noticed that the supper awaiting the girl was of bread, butter, and tea only.
"It was very kind of you to come, Mr. Hardy," said the mother, in an almost tearful voice, when he was introduced; "and if you can find a place for Mamie, it will help us very much."
And then she told her story.
It need not be repeated—its counterpart may be found by the score in any city where legalized thieving like Weston's scheme ever dupes the credulous, and is as common as the annals of simple drunks. To Winn it was new, for he had no idea his former employer could be so vile as to induce a poor widow to invest her all to meet inevitable loss.
And be it said here, that if the world at large could realize how many sharks are ready to prey upon them with the tempting bait of countless schemes, promising sure and rich returns, big interest for their money, guarantees of all kinds (on paper), and flanked by long lists of names, they would look at "farm-mortgage bonds," "gold-mining stocks," "oil stocks," "cumulative gold-bearing bonds," and the whole list of traps set for the unwary, as so many financial perils.
And be it said also, that if the securities held as collateral by half the banks could be scrutinized, and the foundations they rested upon understood by all the confiding depositors in these banks, a panic would ensue that would sweep this land of credulity like a typhoon.
Winn Hardy, who by sheer good luck had saved his aunt's fortune, listening to this poor widow's tearful recital of her woes, gnashed his teeth at the departed J. Malcolm Weston and vowed that he would show him up in the press.
When he bade good-by to the girl and her mother, promising to look out for a place for the former, he stopped on his way home at a market and paid for an ample supply of necessaries to be sent them on the morrow. More than that, he went to Page and, telling the tale, insisted that he give the girl a chance to earn a livelihood.
And to no one, not even his aunt, did he tell what he had done.
Winn Hardy, agentle child when the hand of want was stretched out to him, but a lion in wrath at all iniquity and injustice, was not long in carrying out his thought to write the history of the Rockhaven Granite Company, and for the sole purpose of a warning.
To do so, came as an excuse to protect the pride of the poor girl who had been his co-worker; and when it was done, the editor to whom he took it gladly used it and, more than that, praised its writer editorially.
Winn, as was his nature, wrote with candor, sparing not even himself or the way he was duped, and it is needless to say that his article was widely read. Winn looked for no compensation, but the editor, keen to discover talent, at once offered him a position as city news reporter on the paper. And so his reward came. It was not over ample, so far as salary goes, but it was at least an occupation—what he just now needed.
One morning, when passing the closed office of Weston & Hill, he saw on the door a notice that, at two o'clock that afternoon, all the office fixtures and other assets of this bankrupt firm would be sold at public auction.
As Winn stood there that wintry morning, with the hurrying stream of people jostling him as they passed, while he read this business epitaph posted upon the massive doors, what a grim travesty it seemed!
He looked at the two nickel plates flanking them, once kept bright, but now tarnished, upon which the firm's name in bold black letters still stared at him, at the drawn curtains where "Investment Securities" in gold still uttered their lie; and gazing at these outward signs of deception and fraud, all the varying changes in his own hopes, plans, and opinions for a six months passed in review.
And in fancy he leaped back to Rockhaven.
He peeped into the store where quaint Jess Hutton fiddled in lieu of company; he was one of the little gathering each Sunday at church there; he saw the quarry with the men at work, the tiny dooryard with Mona watering her flowers, the grand old gorge where the sea waves leaped in, and the cave once carpeted with ferns in his honor, and (most touching of all) the moment he had parted from a timid girl, while the moon, rising out of a boundless ocean, smiled at them.
Now, it was a memory of the past, and he, sore at heart, with only a few hundred dollars in the bank, was hunting for news items at so much a line, and the "so much" a mere pittance.
Truly, the whirligig of time had made a toy of him!
For full five minutes he stood, with sinking spirits, and then passed on.
"I'll be at this auction," he thought, "and maybe bid in my old office chair for a keepsake. Besides, it will make an item."
He was there on time and found that a considerable crowd had gathered.
Most of them were brokers or their clerks who had been in business touch with this defunct firm, and now came to witness its obsequies. Nearly all had been losers in Rockhaven but, as stock gamblers are wont to do, took it good-naturedly and joked one another about being "easy marks" and "good things," and looked at this auction as an excellent object lesson.
The auctioneer, quick to catch the spirit of his audience, saw his opening, and with ready wit made the most of it. The office fittings—chairs, desks, tables, etc.—were put up first, and Winn bought his old chair for fifty cents. Then came the pictures; and a framed photograph of Weston, holding the reins over a fine pair of horses, brought a quarter; another of Simmons's steam yacht, a dollar; and then a crayon portrait of Weston, in massive gilt frame, was handed to the auctioneer.
"Here we have," he said, "a costly painting of J. Malcolm Weston himself, and how much am I offered? It is, as you observe, an excellent picture of this Napoleon of finance, and certainly cost a hundred dollars. How much for it?"
An offer of thirty cents was heard.
"Thirty cents, did I hear?" he continued, in a disgusted tone, "thirty cents for this magnificent portrait! You can't mean it! Thirty cents for a picture of one who cost some of you many thousands! Thirty cents! Ye gods, how have the mighty fallen! Look at his winning smile, his Websterian brow, his eagle eye that saw Rockhaven afar! And his whiskers! And I am offered but thirty cents! Why, gentlemen, the frame cost as many dollars, and think what an awful warning this picture will be to most of you. Think of the beautiful tales he told, the great industry he started, the money he spent—your money, gentlemen, and I am offered but thirty cents! Why, it's worth a thousand dollars as an object lesson in finance. Come, don't let this master of the stock exchange be sold for thirty cents! It's a shame! Thirty cents, thirty cents once, thirty cents twice, thirty cents three times, and sold for thirty cents!" And the broker who bought it didn't want it at that.
The safe, with all the books it contained, was sold next, and then the auctioneer, holding aloft an open deed with its red seal attached said:—
"I now offer for sale the only real, tangible asset the great Rockhaven Granite Company ever had, a deed of its quarry on Rockhaven Island. This property originally cost two thousand dollars, and was the sole basis of this gigantic scheme capitalized at one million! How much am I offered?"
A wag bid ten cents, another a dollar. Then came a bid of fifty. And then Winn, who up to this time had been a silent spectator of the comedy, felt a sudden intuition that here and now was his chance. He thought of the island, still dear to his memory, of the men to whom his coming had been a godsend, of Jess Hutton who, at parting, had offered hand and heart, and of Mona and the little knot of flowers he had once kept fresh in a tiny spring that bubbled out of this same quarry.
And thinking thus, he bid one hundred dollars.
But the auctioneer knew not of the fine sentiment prompting the offer, and continued his burlesque:—
"One hundred dollars," he said, "one hundred offered for this property, cheap at two thousand! What are you thinking of?"
Then, after a pause, while he waited another bid, he continued: "One hundred I'm offered for this splendid piece of real estate, with all its improvements; for this matchless quarry of pink granite, once called worth a million! Why, gentlemen, have you gone daft? Don't you know a good thing when you see it? It wasn't so long ago when I heard some of you eagerly bidding thirty and forty dollars for a single share in this immense property, and now you won't raise a bid of one hundred dollars for its total valuation! Is this business? Is this finance? Come, gentlemen, wake up and buy this rich ledge of valuable granite, going for a song! Think of what it has seemed to you; what might again be made out of it! Think of the thousands of dupes still anxious to buy fairy tales and pay money for them! Think of the money you have lost in this one!
"And I am offered one hundred dollars for it! One hundred once, one hundred twice, one hundred three times, and—sold!"
And that auctioneer, really disgusted this time, stepped down and handed the deed to Winn.
Winn wrote a check for that amount, and utterly unconscious of how valuable a purchase he had made, put the deed in his pocket, and left the crowd.
In a way, the whole affair had seemed much like a burlesque on a funeral, and he a mourner. When the rest had laughed at the auctioneer's sallies, no smile came to him, and he bid feeling that he was likely to obtain a white elephant.
That night, in the solitude of his room, he came near writing a farewell letter to Mona and enclosing this deed as a keepsake. Only pride restrained him.
One evening, a few weeks after the auction, Winn, in his new occupation, was detailed to report one of those affairs in high life where wealth gathered to display its gowns, and fops, in evening dress, uttered flattering nothings to beauty in undress. A crush of fashionable people who ate, drank, danced, simpered, and smirked until the wee small hours and then went home to curry one another's reputation and conduct.
Winn, not in the swim, was made duly welcome by virtue of his errand there, and, furnished with a list of the ladies' names and costumes by the hostess (not forgetting her own), was about to depart when he was accosted by Ethel Sherman.
He had noticed her first, surrounded by gentlemen, and feeling he might be one too many, kept away.
"Why, Winn," she said, coming to his side and smiling graciously as she extended her hand, "I am glad to see you. How do you happen to be here?"
"Business," he answered laconically; "I am a reporter now."
"Yes, I heard so from your aunt. You have not favored me with a call now for weeks," she said, "and you are a naughty boy to neglect me."
"You are looking charming, as usual," he answered, glancing at her exquisite costume, very décolleté, and feeling that it was what he must say.
"Of course," she replied, "every man feels that he must say that, but you needn't. Compliments are like perfume, to be inhaled, not swallowed; so let the rest utter them, and you can spare me. I'd rather know how you are getting on."
"Fairly well," he answered coolly, for he had really kept away from her for weeks from a lurking sense of danger to his own feelings. "It is an occupation that keeps me busy and makes a living, that is all. It may lead to something better."
"I read your splendidexposéof Weston & Hill," she continued, still smiling admiration, "and it did my heart good. I wish Weston could see it. And that poor widow whose plight you described—it was pitiful."
"Only a sample case of the evil wrought by such as Weston," Winn answered modestly. "I wish I knew where he is; I'd mail him a marked copy of the paper."
Then, as some one came up to claim her for a dance, she said hurriedly, "I must leave you now, but please promise to call to-morrow evening, I've lots I want to ask you."
And Winn, yielding to the magic of her luring eyes, promised and went his way.
It was after midnight before he finished his column account of this affair, and turning it over to the night editor, left the newspaper office.
The streets were deserted, only now and then some late worker like himself hurrying homeward; and as he pushed on, his footsteps echoed between the brick walls of the narrow street he was following. Somehow their clatter carried his thoughts back to Rockhaven and one night when they had sounded so loud on the plank walk there. When his room was reached he lighted a cigar, and as once before, when he had gone to the tower on Norse Hill to commune with himself, he fell into a revery.
Now, as then, it was to balance in his mind one woman's face and one woman's influence against another's.
He saw Mona as she was then, as she had been to him for months, a sweet, simple, untutored girl, with the eyes of a Madonna and the soul of a saint. He saw her in the cave, once fern-carpeted by her tender thought, and once again heard the notes from her violin quivering in that rock-walled gorge.
And now it was all ended!
Then came this other woman's face and form,—a brilliant, self-contained, self-poised, cultured exotic, knowing men's weaknesses and keen to reach and sway them. A social sun, where the other was but a pale and tender moon.
But Winn's heart was still true to Rockhaven, and the ecstatic moment, when he had held Mona close in his arms, still seemed a sacred bond.
"I'll never believe it is to end thus," he thought, "until I go there and hear it from her lips."
But he kept his promise and called on Ethel the next evening.
She had been charming always; now she was fascinating, for somehow it had come to this conquest-loving woman, that Winn's heart was elsewhere, and that was a spur.
Then beyond was a better thought, for the very indifference that piqued her also awoke respect, and he seemed to her, as she had told him, an eagle among jackdaws.
"I am glad you have found an occupation," she said, as he once more sat in her parlor, "but I wish it were less menial. You have outgrown servitude since you went to the island. What has wrought the change? Was it the sea winds?"
"Maybe," answered Winn, "or constantly looking out upon a boundless ocean. That always dwarfs humanity to me. But I have some business to take up my mind. I was sadly discontented until this opening came."
"I wish you had kept that money in your own hands," she said confidentially, "and used it to buy an interest in a paper. When I read your description of the reception this morning, it seemed to me that was your forte."
"Thanks for your compliment," he answered, "and I only wish you edited the paper now. But if you did, my pencil-pushing wouldn't strike you that way."
"But it really did," she continued, "and the best of it was what you didn't say, knowing, as I do, how you regard such affairs. Hiding your own opinion so well was fine art."
"I wasn't expected to express my views," he asserted, "but to flatter you all judiciously; that's what makes a paper popular."
"And do you think I wanted to be flattered?" she asked.
"Certainly," he replied, "you are a woman."
Ethel laughed.
"Personally, you are wrong; in general, right. I receive so much of it, it wearies me, knowing as I do how insincere it all is, but most of my sex, I'll admit, feel otherwise. But tell me why you haven't called for three weeks?"
It was a question he could not answer truthfully, and like all the polite world he evaded it.
"My work is my excuse," he said; "and then I've not been in a mood for sociability."
Ethel looked at him long and earnestly, reading him, as she read most men, like an open book.
"Winn, my dear old friend," she said at last, in the open-your-heart tone so natural to her, "I made you a promise long ago and I shall keep it, so forgive my question. But you needn't fear me. I want to be your friend and feel you are mine, in spite of the old score and this new influence. And when you are ready to trust me, no one in the world shall be more worthy of it."
Then they drifted to commonplaces: she, as all women will, relating the gossip of her set and chatting of the latest opera, what was on at the theatres and the like. Now and then she let fall a word of quiet flattery, or what was more potent, one by inference; for Ethel Sherman was past-mistress in that art. And all the while she looked at Winn, smiling deference to his opinions and pointing hers about others with a keen wit so natural to her.
She played and sang, selecting as once before (and unfortunately, perhaps) the songs that carried his thoughts to Rockhaven.
So charming was she in all this, when she chose, that the evening sped by while Winn was unconscious of its lapse.
"I wish you would be more neighborly," she said, when he rose to go; "there are so few men in my set whom I can speak to as freely as you, and besides I want to watch your progress toward an editorial chair. Forget your old grudge, and let us be good friends once more."
And when he was gone, and she ready to retire, she looked long and earnestly at a photograph of him she had scarce glanced at thrice in three years. "I wish he were rich," she sighed; "what a delightful lover he would make!"
Rockhaven, a colony by itself, had slowly increased from its one family starting-point until more than two hundred called it home. In doing this it had, to a certain extent, sustained the individuality of its progenitor, Captain Carver; a strictly honest, God-fearing descendant of the Puritans; Baptist in denomination, who regarded work and economy as religious precepts, home building as a law of God, and strict morality and total immersion the only avenues to salvation. Long before the little church was built he gathered the few families about him each Sunday, while he read selections and then led them in prayer. It was his indomitable religious will, as well as money, that erected the small church, and for years he led services there, praying that the time might come, and population as well, sufficient to induce a regularly ordained minister to officiate instead. It did, for he lived to a ripe old age and the satisfaction of his hopes, and to be buried on the sloping hillside back of it. Also to the glory of having "Founder of Rockhaven" inscribed on his tombstone.
He was of Scotch descent, which accounted for a certain latent taste in his great-granddaughter, Mona Hutton. Though stern as the granite cliffs of the island in his religious connections, regarding works without faith and morality, without conviction as of little value, the shadow of his mantle in time gave way to a more charitable Christianity. And though the offshoot of his church, the Free Will Baptist of Northaven, was never recognized by the elect of Rockhaven, intermarriages and a mutuality of interests reduced its separation in creed to one in name only.
Then, too, the isolation of the island resulted in the growth of the feudal instinct and a tacit leadership, vested in one man whose opinion and advice was by common consent accepted as law and gospel, and to whom all disputes were left for final settlement.
Captain Carver had been this authority at the start, others had succeeded him, and when Winn Hardy came to the island Jess Hutton held the sceptre. All this is but history, pertinent merely to show how it came about that Winn won his way so easily, and those otherwise hard-headed islanders followed Jess Hutton's lead without question. Winn won him at the start, and the rest without effort.
But a community, like a family, is upset by an unusual event, and the starting of the quarry, the investment in its stock, and the final return of Jess from the city, to distribute among them sums so out of proportion to their original investments, were like so many stones thrown into a placid mill pond. And had Winn Hardy returned with Jess, or come later, his reception would have been like that of a conquering hero.
All this formed the sole topic of conversation for weeks, and hearing Winn lauded to the skies as a benefactor, before whom all should bow, had a peculiar effect on Mona. She, poor child, having little in common with any other and feeling herself of small account to them or even to her mother, felt herself still less so as this wave of universal applause for Winn swept over the village. Then another point of pride arose in her mind. While Winn had sought her society often, it was as a next-door neighbor and by force of situation, rather than as a suitor, she felt; and even his visits to the cave with her were due to a romantic taste and his wish to hear her play. All this was, in a way, both right and wrong, and yet to Mona, keenly imaginative, it seemed entirely true. Then, too, her mother had made her feel that her violin playing was no credit; no one else, except Jess, ever expressed a word of interest in her one talent, and poor Mona readily felt it more a discredit than otherwise. Winn only had seemed to appreciate it, and to Winn her heart had opened like the petals of a wild rose.
For a few days after his departure, she lived in a seventh heaven of sweet illusions with this one king among men as her ideal—his every word and smile and thought, all that life held for her. And then came his letter which, to her tender heart and timid nature, seemed but a cold farewell message. He had no plans, was uncertain of his future, and of hers had no concern. This much she read between the lines, and reading thus, her heart was broken, her courage crushed. How many tears she shed no one knew; how many hours she passed alone in utter misery of mind, no one guessed. For Mona was proud as well as tender, and not even Uncle Jess should know that she suffered.
Now the waning summer, the nearing of chill autumn, and desolate ice-bound winter added to her gloom. Her mother was not a sympathetic companion, mates among the other island girls of her own age she had none; only Uncle Jess, her violin, the cave, the flowers, and the sea. In summer she had company, in winter none, except Jess.
And now summer was gone and winter nearing, and poor, timid, tender, friendless Mona was broken-hearted.
For only a few days more did she go to the cave, and these visits increased her grieving; it was like visiting the grave of a dead love. When the November gales swept the island, Mona was made a prisoner, the store and Jess her only escape. Here she kept her violin, and here she came to brood over her sorrow and fight her own heartache. And here, be it said, in the company of Jess only did she find any consolation. He had such genial philosophy, such a happy faculty for looking upon the bright side of all troubles,—his own as well as others,—that it made him a well spring of good cheer.
He was not long in guessing the cause of Mona's despondency, though with his cheerful optimism, feeling sure that in good time all would come out right. He also discovered the new ambition that had come to her that summer, as well as love, and in his own peculiar way set out to solve the problem.
And here it must be stated that a girl in love and separated from her heart's choice, having an ambition to go out into the world and earn fame as a musical artist, was a more complex problem than Jess had previously attempted. Then another factor entered into Mona's troubles; for young David Moore, who for years had cherished an open and loudly voiced admiration for her and between voyages always sought to woo her, now came home and, finding the coast clear, renewed his attentions.
He was outspoken and assertive, full of enthusiasm and conceit. He lacked refinement, but he was frugal and owned a third interest in his uncle's fishing schooner and was very much in love with Mona. Worse than that, her mother secretly favored his suit.
It may seem strange that the same practical sense of utility that governed her girlhood's impulses and led her to accept a ready-at-hand love, instead of waiting for an absent one, now shaped her desires toward her daughter. Romance had no place in Mrs. Hutton's nature, neither had love of music. In her calendar, also, one man was as good as another if he behaved himself as well, and a present lover for Mona, if he meant business and could provide a home, was far better than an absent one, even if the entire island cried his praises.
So she favored young Moore and, in the many ways a mother can, gave him opportunities.
But to Mona, sensitive, half heart-broken, and unable to escape this new infliction, it was inexpressible misery.
So the days and weeks went by, and the snow came to whiten Rockhaven ledges, the billows thundered unceasingly against them, and the little harbor became frozen over.
And sometimes, in the hours of bitterest desolation, Mona thought of the old tide mill and the girl who had once gone there to end her heart hunger.
There had been a time in the long ago of Rockhaven's history when Jess, then a bashful young man, had loved pretty Letty Carver, now the Widow Hutton. It had started in her school days, when they romped barefoot along the sandy shore of the harbor, played about the old tide mill, whose wheels then rumbled with each ebb and flow, or gathered shells on the bits of beach between the island cliffs. When the epoch of spelling school and walk home from Thursday evening prayer meetings came, it was Letty whom Jess always singled out, and though she now wore shoes, he was not always so fortunate. But the little bond of feeling was none the less entrancing; and when later Jess sailed away to the Banks on his first fishing trip, he carried a lock of Letty's jet-black hair as a token, and her sweet face was ever present in his thoughts. When he returned, browned but successful, her welcome seemed to grow in warmth; and after two or three voyages, and he could now afford a Sunday suit when he visited her, gossip whispered they were likely to make a match. By this time he had begun to build the usual air-castles of youth, and though his took the shape of a humble dwelling, nestling amid the abutting cliffs in front of which Rockhaven stood, it was none the less a palace to him, with Letty to be its future queen.
And then the war came on and Jess, partly from patriotism, a little from love of adventure, and more to earn the liberal bounty his country offered, enlisted in the navy. Had he been a trifle less bashful and secured the promise which Letty was then willing to give, this history might never have been written; but Jess, a splendid young fellow, in spite of his surroundings, lacked assurance, and all the bond that joined them, when he sailed away, was the hope on his part of what might be if he ever came back.
He did in four years, covered with glory, but with a leg maimed by a bit of shell when under Farragut, and before Vicksburg he forgot even Letty amid the inferno of war.
In the meantime, his younger brother, Jethro, had discovered Letty, and she, practical as always, was not long in deciding that a suitor with good legs and a cottage already achieved was preferable to a hero with a lame leg and no cottage.
Jess bore his discomfiture philosophically, as was his nature, not even reproaching Letty by word or look; and though disposed to see a silver lining back of all clouds, this one he thought best to avoid, and so took himself away. He remained away, a rolling stone for fifteen years, and though he gathered some moss, it failed to efface—Letty.
And then a change came; for one day the smart new fishing schooner his brother had just built with his aid sailed away on her second voyage and never came back, and practical Letty was left a widow with one child, a modest home on Rockhaven, and naught else. As might be expected, she sent at once for Jess, and to him only imparted the facts of the situation.
Whether it was the smouldering embers of his boyhood illusion or the winsome ways of the child Mona, now four years old, that influenced him, no one ever knew, but he at once announced that he had decided to abide in Rockhaven for the future and open a store. There was one already there, but the slow growth of the village allowed a fair excuse for another, and Jess established it. Once more the gossips, who take cognizance of all matters, recalled the youthful attentions of Jess to Letty, and asserted that she would, in suitable time, discard her widow's weeds and become another Mrs. Hutton. She did put on more cheerful habiliments in due time, but remained a widow still; and though Jess was a frequent caller, usually walking to church with her and Mona on Sundays, he continued, as he had started, to live by himself over his store.
Neither were the gossips enlightened as to the financial standing of the widow, or how much had been laid away by her husband, or her means of a livelihood.
Jess knew, however, and Jess only; but he was the last person to impart such data to a curious public. What they did see was that he at once assumed a fatherly protectorship over his little niece, and she became his sole charge and care in life. Though she ate and slept at home, tripped alone to school, and to church each Sunday hand in hand with Uncle Jess, his store was her playhouse and his love her happiness until girlhood was reached. Often on summer days he left the store, utterly disregarding trade, and with her took long rambles over the island, hunting gulls' eggs and gathering shells, flowers, or berries. He built her a boat and taught her to row it in the little harbor, talked to her for hours of the great world and its people, of the planets and their motions, of right and wrong, of religion and God. He aided her in her lessons, teaching her more and faster than she learned at school; and when her fingers could reach across the strings of his old brown violin, he taught her the lore of its wondrous voice.
And so the happy years of her girlhood passed, until now, a woman grown, she had learned the lesson of loving, and had come to him with her unspoken plea for help. Never had she appealed to him in vain, and never would, so long as his keen mind was active and heart normal. For weeks he pondered over this most difficult of all problems, and then he acted.
"I've got a leetle matter to talk over with yer mother to-night, Mona," he said, "an' if ye don't mind ye might go an' make a call on one of the neighbors. It's a sorter peculiar business 'n' it's better we're 'lone till it's settled."
And it was "peculiar," and so much so that Jess talked for one hour with Mrs. Hutton in an absent-minded way, while he studied the cheerful open fire, cogitating, meanwhile, how best to utter what he had to say, while she sat sewing diligently, on the opposite side of the sitting-room table.
"Letty," he said at last, "hev ye noticed Mona hain't been overcheerful the last three months, an' seems to be sorter broodin' over suthin'?"
"I have, Jess," replied Mrs. Hutton, looking up; "and it's all due to notions that Mr. Hardy's put into her head 'bout her playin' an' praisin' her so much. I've knowed all 'long her wastin' time fiddlin' wouldn't serve no good purpose in the long run."
It wasn't an auspicious opening to the subject uppermost in the mind of Jess, but he paid no heed to it. "Letty," he continued calmly, "fiddlin' hain't nothin' to do with the state o' Mona's mind, 'n' if ye'd watched her as clus as I hev, ye'd know it. Do ye 'member when ye was a gal how Hitty Baker, ez used ter live up to the north village, got crossed in love 'n' kept broodin' on't until one day she was missin', an' 'bout a week arter they found her hangin' in the old mill? Thar's no tellin' what a gal'll do an' when she'll do it, if she gits to broodin' over sich matters."
"I hope you don't think Mona, brought up as she has been, will be such a fool as Hitty Baker was," rejoined Mrs. Hutton, sharply. "Mona's got more sense."
"'Tain't a matter o' sense," Jess retorted quickly, "it's a matter o' nater 'n' 'magination, 'n' the more o' them peculiarities a gal's got, the more onsartin she is apt to be, 'n' ez I said, Mona ain't herself these days, 'n' unless suthin's done to change the current o' her mind, fust thing you'll find, some day, she's a missin'."
"That's all your notion, Jess," answered Mrs. Hutton, now more aroused than she was willing to admit; "an' if Mona'd listen to Dave Moore, as I want her to, he'd soon cure such whims."
"Did yer mother ever make ye take catnip tea when ye was a gal, Letty," responded Jess, laconically, "an' how did ye injie the dose?" Then, not waiting for an answer, he continued, "Dave's catnip tea to Mona, 'n' I tell ye it's better ye quit dosin' her with Dave, 'n' purty soon, too. She's nobody to go to but me, an' I know how she feels, 'n' I don't think ye do."
"Have you any better medicine to advise?" came the query, as Mrs. Hutton laid aside her sewing and looked at Jess.
"I hev," replied Jess, firmly, "only it'll take both on us to give it, 'n' that's what I come here for, Letty. Ye know how I feel 'bout Mona, an' one o' these days she'll come into all I've laid by. But that's no savin' grace jist now."
"An' what'll savin' grace jist now be, I'd like to know," queried the mother. "Ain't helping me and having company when she likes, all that's needful to take up her mind? She's whimsical, an' that young feller Hardy's put notions into her head she'd be better off without."
Jess was making scant progress toward his ultimate object, and realized it—also that sentiment was a matter quite beyond Mrs. Hutton's ken. "Letty," he said at last, almost in desperation, "I've stood by ye 'n' Mona purty middlin' well fer quite a spell now, hain't I? an' ye'll 'low I kin see a hole in a grinstun if thar is one, 'n' what I've sot my mind on doin' for Mona'll be the best fer her in the long run, an' that is, we take her away from here 'n' give her a chance in the world."
Mrs. Hutton looked at him in amazement, realizing not at all what he had in mind.
"How can we do that?" she questioned.
"Thar's only one way," he answered hastily, with a now-or-never determination; "I know I'm gittin' 'long in years 'n' one o' my legs ain't workin' well, an' the only thing ye kin bank on, Letty, is my heart's in the right place 'n' my feelin's toward ye hain't changed a mite in forty year, an'—an' if ye're willin' to chance it, Letty, I'll do all I kin to make ye happy."
A woman is seldom surprised by a proposal, but Mrs. Hutton was. For fifteen years now, since she had been a widow, Jess had seemed like a good brother, which in truth he had been in all ways, and never once had she surmised he cared for a nearer kinship. Then, as she looked at him, his kindly face aglow with earnest feeling, his keen eyes beneath their shaggy eyebrows questioning her, for one instant her heart quivered. Then backward over the flight of time her memory leaped, until she saw herself a laughing, care-free girl once more, with life opening before her, and this same good friend and brother, grateful for her every word and smile of favor. Then, too, came a little nagging of conscience at the way she had ignored him on his return, a limping hero, and how he had never once reproached her for it. And following that, the heaping of coals upon her head when he, coming to her rescue in the hour of poverty and bereavement, had been the only friend she had to lean upon. All the years of his tender thought and care, all his wise counsel, all his unselfish giving, all his countless deeds of love and forethought came back now in an instant, like a mighty wave of feeling, sweeping all her pride and will before it. And as she bowed her face, covering her eyes with one hand to hide the tears she could not control, once more he spoke.
"Letty," he said, "ye needn't mind answerin' jist now. Think on't, an' to-morrow or next day tell me. Thar ain't no need o' hurry. I've waited quite a spell now, an' a day or two more won't matter."
"It's absurd," she said at last, when the tide of feeling ebbed, "and everybody will say so."
"'Tain't their funeral or weddin' either, is it?" he answered. "An' mark my words, Letty, thar's more on 'em here ez'll wish us well than ye think."
But when he came to go she said, "Why didn't you ask me forty years ago, Jess?"
"'Cause I was a durned fool 'n' dassent," he answered, "but I've outgrowed it now."
Out of the many weddings inevitably occurring on Rockhaven but few ever attained to the importance of a trip to the mainland. The sense of utility among them, the need of every dollar toward home furnishing, and the practical side of life always uppermost in the minds of all left no place for sentiment and honeymoon.
But when it became known, as it soon did, that the youthful romance of Jess Hutton and Letty Carver had finally culminated, and that the universal opinion and expectation of what they would do when Jess returned to the island was about to be realized a wave of enthusiasm and friendly interest swept over Rockhaven.
And, furthermore, when it was learned that Jess was to sell his store to Captain Doty, and that he and his bride and Mona were to spend a few months in the city, the excitement knew no bounds, and when Sunday came and the three, now conspicuous ones, walked to church as usual, it was to receive an ovation of good wishes and congratulations, and so persistent were all in good will that, when church was out, the entire congregation crowded around them.
To Mona it came as the surprise of her life, and went far to change the current of her thoughts and make her forget her own troubles.
"I can call you papa now, can't I, Uncle Jess?" she had said, when he had told her; and hugging him like a child she had thus made his heart glad. It all seemed as a matter of course to young and old alike, and as the days went by it began to dawn on Jess that he had not only been a "durned fool" forty years ago, but continued to be one for the past fifteen.
It had been decided by them to have a quiet wedding at home, and the day set barely long enough ahead to give Mrs. Doty, the dressmaker, time to do her part; but Rockhaven, hearing of it, objected, and the next Sunday evening a committee, headed by Captain Roby, invaded the privacy of Mrs. Hutton's home.
"We hev cum," said the jolly master of the island steamer, addressing Jess in particular, and Mrs. Hutton and Mona in general, "to convey the good wishes o' everybody here to you folks an' ask ye to hev yer weddin' in church so ter give us all a chance to show our good will and how much we think o' ye by bein' present. It air the univarsal feelin' here," he continued, waving his arm, as if to include the entire island, "that ye both desarve it, an' we ain't goin' to 'low ye two ter jist git hitched an' sneak off quietly. My boat's at yer sarvice, an' we feel the best's none too good fer ye both, and we hev come to ask ye to let us all jine in and gin ye the right sort o' a send-off. I might as well tell ye now, Jess," he added, looking at that worthy, "jist how ye stand 'mong us and how 'tarnally grateful we all feel fer all yer good deeds toward young and old. We hain't forgot nothin' from the day ye first come back to be one on us, up till last summer when ye saved us our money on that stock bizness. We don't blame the young feller neither, and if ever he cums back, we'll all jine in givin' him a welcome as well. But now we absolutely insist we be 'lowed to start ye fair, and in style, in the new step ye two air takin'."
And "start them fair" they did; for although the snow lay thick on the granite ledges of Rockhaven, when the day came, and cheerless winter reigned, there was no lack of cheer in all that was said and done. First, a hundred pairs of willing hands transformed the church into a bower of green, and since flowers were not to be had, wreaths of spruce twigs, tied with white ribbon and ropes of ground pine, were used. Then an arch of green, wound with strips of white silk, was erected over the gate, and the walk up to the church was carpeted with spruce boughs. The only pleasure vehicle on the island, an ancient carryall, also decked with green and white, was pressed with service to convey the honored couple and Mona to church, now heated to suffocation and packed solid with the island population, while some unable to get in waited outside. Then, while the Rev. Jason Bush was uniting the happy pair, a dozen young men, unable to curb their enthusiasm, unhitched the horse from the carryall, and when they came out drew them back to the house. And then, after the two hours of reception and hand-shaking had expired, full fifty men were in line to draw that unique chariot to the boat.
"It is a wonder ye didn't set out to take us on yer backs," asserted Jess to the crowd on the wharf, when he alighted; "but all this fuss has warmed our feelings toward ye all more'n words'll tell."
And when three times three cheers had echoed back from the now deserted quarry, the little steamer sailed away into the mist-hidden winter sea and the crowd dispersed; for weeks after the sole topic around Rockhaven firesides was what object took Jess Hutton and his bride and Mona away from the island and how long they would stay away.
Jess had said, "We want ter give Mona a little change o' scene 'n' chance to see the world, 'n' jist when we'll cum back is no tellin'. Cum back we shall some day, 'n' most likely glad ter git back tew." And then when the affairs of the Hutton family no longer furnished food for gossip, the island settled down once more into its monotonous winter existence. Twice a week only now theRockhavenmade her trip to the mainland; but few people gathered for the Thursday evening prayer meeting, for extra religion was at a discount during cold weather, and only the most hardy of the fishermen ventured out. The tower on Norse Hill, now coated with frozen sleet, looked like a gigantic monument; the tides ebbed in and out the half-iced over harbor; the waves beat with sullen roar into the gorge that no one visited, and life among the shut-in islanders partook of the solemnity of the ocean's voice.
The crowd that had made Jess Hutton's store their club-room still gathered there to swap yarns and discuss fish and fishing; also whether his all-winter's absence was likely to result in the opening of the quarry or not. Then, too, in this news bureau, Winn Hardy and Mona came in for a share of gossip, and many a surmise as to their future was exchanged. For they had been noticed many times together, and Mona's visit to the city might mean much. No one had any data as to Jess Hutton's future intentions or whether Hardy was likely to return; and yet, so well did he stand with them, and so hopeful were they that he would once more open the quarry when spring came, that they readily believed it would come about.
Of the Rockhaven Granite Company collapse they knew not, for daily papers never reached the island, and Jess for reasons of his own kept silent.
The only unhappy one, however, was David Moore; and he recited his woes in characteristic fashion to all who would listen. He had little idea of the proprieties, and as he had almost shouted his love from the house-tops, so now he declared his disappointment as loudly.
"It's my private 'pinion," he asserted, "they lugged Mona off just to spite me and get her out o' my sight. I think it's a darn mean trick, and I don't care who knows it! I kin see through the game, and they calculated takin' her to the city 'nd give that feller Hardy a chance to spark her," and he chewed his quid with an increased vigor, suggestive of how he would like to serve his rival.