CHAPTER XX
A CLOUD OVER ROCKHAVEN
A man is happiest when he has most to do, and though a woman's face intrudes upon his thoughts and he feels her smiles are all for him, it is life and action and the push forward toward success that interest him most.
And so with Winn. He had come to Rockhaven to upbuild his fortune, believing himself in a fair way to do so. He had taken up his new life and care with earnestness and energy, putting his best thought into it, and not only carrying out his employer's instructions in letter and spirit, but in addition trying to make friends of those honest islanders and interest them in this new enterprise. The latter was not hard since Jess, the oracle of Rockhaven, was on his side, and, in a way, sponsor for him. Then, too, he had adopted their simple homely ways and, though not a believer, attended church each Sunday. How much of this was due to the occult influence of Mona's eyes, and how much to sympathy and interest in the spiritual life of the island, is hard to say. Most of the men considered Sunday as a day of rest, and to some extent, recreation. A few accompanied their families to the little church, but more spent the day lounging about the wharves, smoking and swapping yarns, and if a boat needed caulking, a net mending, or a new sail bending, they did not hesitate to do it. While all had sufficient reverence for the Lord's Day not to actually start out fishing, most were willing to get ready. And perhaps for good reason, for a livelihood on Rockhaven was not easy to obtain and with them, as with most hard-working people, the necessities of life displaced spiritual influences.
"It is a hard field to labor in," asserted the Rev. Jason Bush to Winn one day, "and I've grown old and gray in the work. We have a little church that has not been painted but twice since I came here forty-odd years ago, or shingled but once. We have no carpet, and the cushions in the pews are in rags. I have taught this generation almost all they know of books, and laid most of their parents away in the graveyard back of the meeting-house, and my turn will come before many years. We are poor here, and we always have been and most likely always shall be, and at times it has seemed to me the Lord was indifferent to our needs. Your coming here and this new industry has seemed to me a special providence."
And Winn, thinking of the fifty shares of stock he had given this poor old minister, and the ten dollars dividend that must have seemed a godsend, felt his heart sink, for he had by this time come to realize why he had been told to donate this stock. And perhaps that fact gave added force to the parson's words.
And when, after Jess had advised him to lay off some of the men and he had done so, a sort of gloom seemed to spread over the island. A few of the men took to their boats and fishing once more, and though Winn gave out the plausible excuse that lack of demand for granite was the cause, the rest who were out of work now seemed a constant reproach.
Then, too, since his own ambition and hope received a setback he was not content. The growing distrust was a thorn in his side, in fact it was more than that; it was almost a certainty that his mission there was nearing its end. To leave, he could not; to go ahead, he dared not, for any day he might be left in the lurch with no money to pay his men. And Friday, when he usually received his remittances, was awaited with keen anxiety. When it came and a letter, slightly fault-finding in tone because he had sold no more stock for some weeks, and insisting that he must go about it at once, Winn was not only irritated but disgusted.
"I am but a mere tool in their hands," he thought, "and they pay me to do their bidding, be it work or to rob honest people." And then Winn had a bad half-hour.
"Don't ye mind 'em," said Jess consolingly, when Winn had told him what they wrote, "but keep cheerful 'n' let 'em keep on sendin' money. It's a long lane ez hez no turns 'n' ours'll come bimeby. Better write yer friend 'n' git posted on what's doin'."