Poor Man's Rock Part 21

MacRae did himself rather well, as the English say, when he reached Vancouver. This was a holiday, and he was disposed to make the most of it. He put up at the Granada. He made a few calls and presently found himself automatically relaunched upon Vancouver's social waters. There were a few maids and more than one matron who recalled pleasantly this straight up-standing youngster with the cool gray eyes who had come briefly into their ken the winter before. There were a few fellows he had known in squadron quarters overseas, home for good now that demobilization was fairly complete. MacRae danced well. He had the faculty of making himself agreeable without effort. He found it pleasant to fall into the way of these careless, well-dressed folk whose greatest labor seemed to be in amusing themselves, to keep life from seeming "slow." b.u.t.tressed by revenues derived from substantial sources, mines, timber, coastal fisheries, land, established industries, these sons and daughters of the pioneers, many but one degree removed from pioneering uncouthness, were patterning their lives upon the plan of equivalent cla.s.ses in older regions. If it takes six generations in Europe to make a gentleman, western America quite casually dispenses with five, and the resulting product seldom suffers by comparison.

As the well-to-do in Europe flung themselves into revelry with the signing of the armistice, so did they here. Four years of war had corked the bottle of gayety. The young men were all overseas. Life was a little too cloudy during that period to be gay. Shadows hung over too many homes. But that was past. They had pulled the cork and thrown it away, one would think. Pleasure was king, to be served with light abandon.

It was a fairly vigorous place, MacRae discovered. He liked it, gave himself up to it gladly,--for a while. It involved no mental effort.

These people seldom spoke of money, or of work, or politics, the high cost of living, international affairs. If they did it was jocularly, sketchily, as matters of no importance. Their talk ran upon dances, clothes, motoring, sports indoors and afield, on food,--and sometimes genially on drink, since the dry wave had not yet drained their cellars.

MacRae floated with this tide. But he was not wholly carried away with it. He began to view it impersonally, to wonder if it were the real thing, if this was what inspired men to plot and scheme and struggle laboriously for money, or if it were just the froth on the surface of realities which he could not quite grasp. He couldn't say. There was a dash and glitter about it that charmed him. He could warm and thrill to the beauty of a Granada ballroom, music that seduced a man's feet, beauty of silk and satin, of face and figure, of bright eyes and gleaming jewels, a blending of all the primary colors and every shade between, flas.h.i.+ng over a polished floor under high, carved ceilings.

He had surrendered Nelly Abbott to a claimant and stood watching the swirl and glide of the dancers in the Granada one night. His eyes were on the brilliance a little below the raised area at one end of the floor, and so was his mind, inquiringly, with the curious concentration of which his mind was capable. Presently he became aware of some one speaking to him, tugging at his elbow.

"Oh, come out of it," a voice said derisively.

He looked around at Stubby Abbott.

"Regular trance. I spoke to you twice. In love?"

"Uh-uh. Just thinking," MacRae laughed.

"Deep thinking, I'll say. Want to go down to the billiard room and smoke?"

They descended to a subterranean chamber where, in a pit lighted by low-hung shaded globes, men in s.h.i.+rt sleeves clicked the red and white b.a.l.l.s on a score of tables. Rows of leather-upholstered chairs gave comfort to spectators. They commandeered seats and lighted cigarettes.

"Look," Stubby said. "There's Norman Gower."

Young Gower sat across a corner from them. He was in evening clothes. He slumped in his chair. His hands were limp along the chair arms. He was not watching the billiard players. He was staring straight across the room with the sightless look of one whose mind is far away.

"Another deep thinker," Stubby drawled. "Rather rough going for Norman these days."

"How?" MacRae asked.

"Funked it over across," Stubby replied. "So they say. Careful to stay on the right side of the Channel. Paying the penalty now. Girls rather rub it in. Fellows not too--well, cordial. Pretty rotten for Norman."

"Think he slacked deliberately?" MacRae inquired.

"That's the story. Lord, I don't know," Stubby answered. "He stuck in England four years. Everybody else that was fit went up the line.

That's all I know. By their deeds ye shall judge them--eh?"

"Perhaps. What does he say about that himself?"

"Nothing, so far as I know. Keeps strictly mum on the war subject,"

Stubby said.

Young Gower did not alter his position during the few minutes they sat there. He sat staring straight ahead of him, unseeingly. MacRae suddenly felt sorry for him. If he had told the truth he was suffering a peculiarly distressing form of injustice, of misconception. MacRae recalled the pa.s.sionate undertone in Gower's voice when he said, "I did the only thing I could do in the way I was told to do it." Yes, he was sorry for Norman. The poor devil was not getting a square deal.

But MacRae's pity was swiftly blotted out. He had a sudden uncomfortable vision of old Donald MacRae rowing around Poor Man's Rock, back and forth in sun and rain, in frosty dawns and stormy twilights, coming home to a lonely house, dying at last a lonely death, the sordid culmination of an embittered life.

Let him sweat,--the whole Gower tribe. MacRae was the ancient Roman, for the moment, wis.h.i.+ng all his enemies had but a single head that he might draw his sword and strike it off. Something in him hardened against that first generous impulse to repeat to Stubby Abbott what Norman had told him on the cliff at Squitty. Let the beggar make his own defense. Yet that stubborn silence, the proud refusal to make words take the place of valiant deeds expected, wrung a gleam of reluctant admiration from MacRae. He would have done just that himself.

"Let's get back," Stubby suggested. "I've got the next dance with Betty Gower. I don't want to miss it."

"Is she here to-night? I haven't noticed her."

"Eyesight affected?" Stubby bantered. "Sure she's here. Looking like a dream."

MacRae felt a pang of envy. There was nothing to hold Stubby back,--no old scores, no deep, abiding resentment. MacRae had the conviction that Stubby would never take anything like that so seriously as he, Jack MacRae, did. He was aware that Stubby had the curious dual code common in the business world,--one set of inhibitions and principles for business and another for personal and social uses. A man might be Stubby's opponent in the market and his friend when they met on a common social ground. MacRae could never be quite like that. Stubby could fight Horace Gower, for instance, tooth and toenail, for an advantage in the salmon trade, and stretch his legs under Gower's dining table with no sense of incongruity, no matter what s.h.i.+fts the compet.i.tive struggle had taken or what weapons either had used. That was business; and a man left his business at the office. A curious thing, MacRae thought. A phenomenon in ethics which he found hard to understand, harder still to endorse.

He stood watching Stubby, knowing that Stubby would go straight to Betty Gower. Presently he saw her, marked the cut and color of her gown, watched them swing into the gyrating wave of couples that took the floor when the orchestra began. Indeed, MacRae stood watching them until he recalled with a start that he had this dance with Etta Robbin-Steele, who would, in her own much-used phrase, be "simply furious" at anything that might be construed as neglect; only Etta's fury would consist of showing her white, even teeth in a pert smile with a challenging twinkle in her very black eyes.

He went to Betty as soon as he found opportunity. He did not quite know why. He did not stop to ask himself why. It was a purely instinctive propulsion. He followed his impulse as the needle swings to the pole; as an object released from the hand at a great height obeys the force of gravity; as water flows downhill.

He took her programme.

"I don't see any vacancies," he said. "Shall I create one?"

He drew his pencil through Stubby Abbott's name. Stubby's signature was rather liberally inscribed there, he thought. Betty looked at him a trifle uncertainly.

"Aren't you a trifle--sweeping?" she inquired.

"Perhaps. Stubby won't mind. Do you?" he asked.

"I seem to be defenseless." Betty shrugged her shoulders. "What shall we quarrel about this time?"

"Anything you like," he made reckless answer.

"Very well, then," she said as they got up to dance. "Suppose we begin by finding out what there is to quarrel over. Are you aware that practically every time we meet we nearly come to blows? What is there about me that irritates you so easily?"

"Your inaccessibility."

MacRae spoke without weighing his words. Yet that was the truth, although he knew that such a frank truth was neither good form nor policy. He was sorry before the words were out of his mouth. Betty could not possibly understand what he meant. He was not sure he wanted her to understand. MacRae felt himself riding to a fall. As had happened briefly the night of the _Blackbird's_ wrecking, he experienced that feeling of dumb protest against the shaping of events in which he moved helpless. This bit of flesh and blood swaying in his arms in effortless rhythm to sensuous music was something he had to reckon with powerfully, whether he liked or not. MacRae was beginning dimly to see that. When he was with her--

"But I'm not inaccessible."

She dropped her voice to a cooing whisper. Her eyes glowed as they met his with steadfast concern. There was a smile and a question in them.

"What ever gave you that idea?"

"It isn't an idea; it's a fact."

The resentment against circ.u.mstances that troubled MacRae crept into his tone.

"Oh, silly!"

There was a railing note of tenderness in Betty's voice. MacRae felt his moorings slip. A heady recklessness of consequences seized him. He drew her a little closer to him. Irresistible prompting from some wellspring of his being urged him on to what his reason would have called sheer folly, if that reason had not for the time suffered eclipse, which is a weakness of rational processes when they come into conflict with a genuine emotion.

"Do you like me, Betty?"

Her eyes danced. They answered as well as her lips:

"Of course I do. Haven't I been telling you so plainly enough? I've been ashamed of myself for being so transparent--on such slight provocation."