Rockhaven

by Charles Clark Munn

There was a jutting ledge around its base, and they seated themselves upon it. Winn drew out his cigar case. "You won't mind my smoking, will you, Mona?" he said in a familiar tone, as he lighted his cigar.

"Why, no," she answered, in the same tone, "I love to see you enjoy yourself."

For a time they silently scanned the peaceful picture that lay before them. The sheltered harbor across which the faint path of moonlight quivered in the undulating ground swell that reached in from the sea; the old mill sombre and solemn and barely outlined to the right; beyond it Northaven with its scattered lights, and below them the few that twinkled in Rockhaven. Not a sound reached them except the low wave-wash at the foot of the cliff just back of where they sat. They were alone with their hopes and troubles, their joys and heartaches. It was not a time or place for immediate converse, and Winn quietly contemplated the peaceful scene while Mona covertly watched him. To her he was an unsolved enigma, and yet his earnest, honest brown eyes, his open, frank way, and his half-tender, half-cynical speeches had been for many weeks her daily thought. What oppressed him now was an added mystery. She had heard that most of his men working in the quarry had been laid off, but not for worlds would she seem so inquisitive as to ask why.

And so she watched him, half hoping, half expecting, he would confide in her.

"I have been out of sorts, little girl," he said suddenly, with an intuitive feeling that she expected an explanation of his silence; "and as I told you this afternoon I took a long tramp to drive my mood away. It did not do it, but something else has, and that was your church bells."

"I am very glad," she responded with sudden interest, "I wish they would ring every evening."

"Yes," he continued, not heeding her delicate sympathy, "they have carried me back to my boyhood and the country village near where I was born. I wish I could go back to those days and feel as I did then," he added, a little sadly, "but one can't. Life and its ambitions sweep us on, and youth is forgotten or returns only in thought. If one could only feel the keen zest of youth and enjoy small pleasures as children do, all through life, it would be worth living. I should be grateful if I were as happy and care-free as you are, Mona."

"I am not very happy," she answered simply. "Did you think I was?"

"You ought to be," he asserted; "you have nothing to worry about unless it is your ambition to become a great artist, and as I have told you, you had better put that out of your thoughts. You could be, but it would bring you more heartaches than you can imagine. Put it away, Mona, and live your simple life here. To struggle out of your orbit is to court unhappiness. I was thrust out of mine by death and poverty," he added sadly, "when an awkward and green country boy, knowing absolutely nothing of city ways and manners, and placed among those who think all who come from the farms must be but half civilized and stupid. It is the shallow conceit of city-bred people always and the greatest mistake they make. My aunt sent me to a business college, and for a year my life there was a burden. The other fellows made game of my clothes, my opinions, and, worse than that, a jest of all the moral ideas in which my good mother had instructed me. Later on, when I began to get out into the world, I found the same disposition to sneer at all that is pure and good in life. The young men I became acquainted with called me a goody-good because I acted according to conscience and refused to drink or gamble. They seemed to take a pride in their ability to pour down glass after glass of fiery liquor, and when I asserted that to visit gambling dens and all other resorts of vice was to demean one's self, and positively refused to follow them, they laughed me to scorn. They seemed to take a pride in their vices in a way that was disgusting to me. Then, as if to prove what a stupid greenhorn I was, they pointed out men who stood well socially, attended church, had wives and families, and yet led lives that were a shame and disgrace in my estimation. They proved to me what they asserted in various ways, so I could not doubt it. It was all a revelation, and for a time upset all my ideas and led me to think my early training in the way I should walk a stupid waste of opportunity.

"Beyond that, and perhaps the worst of all, I was made to think that religious belief was arrant nonsense and used as a cloak for evil doings; that none except silly old women and equally silly young girls were sincere in pious professions; that belief in God was an index to shallowness, and prayer a farce.