CHAPTER XXXIX
A GRAY-HAIRED ROMANCE
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.