The Secret of the Reef

“It’s mighty curious, but we’ve been an hour over supper, and there’s something left. Guess I never spent more’n about ten minutes at my grub before.”

Bethune took a bottle from a pail of ice in a locker and filled the borrowed glasses.

“To our happy next meeting!” he proposed. “Our guests, who have made the trip possible, will not be forgotten while we are away.”

The glasses were drained and filled again, and Mrs. Jaques turned to her hosts with a cordial smile.

“May you win the success you deserve!” she responded; and a few minutes afterward Bethune, beckoning Moran, went forward to raise the anchor.

The light was fading when they hove the Cetacea to near the wharf and a boat came off. With many good wishes Jaques and his wife went ashore, and the sloop stood away for the lonely North.

CHAPTER VIII – PUZZLING QUESTIONS

Hot sunshine poured into the clearing on the shore of Puget Sound where Henry Osborne had his dwelling. The pretty, wooden house, with its wide veranda and scrollwork decoration, was finely situated in a belt of tall pine forest. The resinous scent of the conifers crept into its rooms; and in front a broad sweep of grass, checkered with glowing flower-beds, ran down to the shingle beach. Rocky islets, crested with somber firs, dotted the sparkling sound, and beyond them, climbing woods and hills, steeped in varying shades of blue, faded into the distance, with behind them all a faint, cold gleam of snow. The stillness of the afternoon was emphasized by the soft splash of ripples on the beach and the patter of the water which the automatic sprinklers flung in glistening showers across the thirsty grass.

Caroline Dexter, lately arrived from a small New England town, sat in the shade of a cedar. She was elderly and of austere character. The plain and badly cut gray dress displayed the gauntness of her form, and her face was of homely type; but her glance was direct, and those who knew her best had learned that her censorious harshness covered a warm heart. Now she was surveying her brother-in-law’s house and garden with a disapproving expression. All she saw indicated prosperity and taste, and though she admitted that riches were not necessarily a snare, she hoped Henry Osborne had come by them honestly.

She had never been quite sure about him, and it was not with her goodwill that he had married her younger sister. She thought him lax and worldly; but after his wife’s death, which was a heavy blow to Caroline, she had taken his child into her keeping and tenderly cared for her. Indeed, she ventured to believe that she had molded Ruth Osborne’s character and won her affection. The girl might have fallen into worse hands, for, in spite of her narrow outlook, Caroline Dexter was unflinchingly upright.

Sitting stiffly erect in the garden chair, she turned to her niece, who reclined with negligent grace in a canvas lounge. This, Caroline thought, was typical of the luxurious indolence of the younger generation, but, for all that, Ruth had some of the sterner virtues. The girl was pretty, and though her aunt believed that beauty is a deceptive thing, it was less dangerous when purged of pride and vanity. Caroline hoped that the strictness with which she had brought up her niece had freed her of these failings.

“Well, dear,” she said, “this is a pretty place; and your father’s affairs have evidently improved. It’s sad your dear mother didn’t live to enjoy it.”

Though her dress and appearance were provincial, the austere simplicity of her manner had in it something of distinction, and her accent was singularly clean.

Ruth looked up at her with an air of thoughtful regret.

“Yes; I often feel that, when I think of the hard struggle she must have had. Though I was very young then, I can remember the shabby boardinghouses we stayed in, and my mother’s pale, anxious face when she and my father used to talk in the evenings. He seldom speaks about those days, but I know he does not forget.”

“It is to his credit that he never married again,” Miss Dexter remarked with a bluntness in which there was nothing coarse. “He loved your mother, and one can forgive him much for that.”

“But have you much to forgive? And, after all, men do sometimes marry twice.”

“And sometimes oftener! No doubt they’re good enough for the women who take them; but the love of a true man or woman is stronger than death!”

There was a warmth in the voice of this apparently unsentimental aunt that surprised Ruth.

“You seem to speak with feeling,” the girl said, half mockingly.

A shadow crept into Miss Dexter’s eyes as she gazed, unseeingly, at a seabird poised over the water; but almost immediately she turned to her niece with her usual matter-of-fact calm.

“We were talking of your father’s affairs,” she said. “I notice a sinful extravagance here: servants you do not need, a gasoline launch, and two automobiles.”

Ruth laughed.

“Father must get to town quickly, and cars sometimes break down; besides, I believe he can afford them all. I sometimes think you are rather hard on him.”

“I’ll admit that I have often wondered how he got his money. One cannot make a fortune quickly without meeting many temptations. I suppose you know your Uncle Charles had to lend him a thousand dollars soon after you were born, and it was not paid back until a few years ago? Does your father never tell you anything about his business?”

“I haven’t thought of asking him,” Ruth answered with some warmth. “He has always been very kind to me, and I know that whatever he does is right.”

“A proper feeling,” her aunt commented. “No doubt, he is no worse than the others; but men’s ideas are very lax nowadays.”

Ruth was more amused than resentful. Though she was her father’s staunch partisan, she believed her aunt distrusted the makers of rapid fortunes as a class rather than her brother-in-law in particular, and that her frugal mind shrank with old-fashioned aversion from modern luxury. For all that, Caroline Dexter had roused the girl’s curiosity as to her father’s fortune and she determined to learn something about his years of struggle when opportunity offered.

A moving cloud of dust rose among the firs where the descending road crossed the hillside, and a big gray automobile flashed across an opening. Ruth knew the car, and there was only one man of her acquaintance who would bring it down the water-seamed dip at that reckless speed.

“It’s Aynsley,” she said, with a pleased expression. “I’ll bring him here.”

“And who is Aynsley?”

“I forgot you don’t know. He’s Aynsley Clay, the son of my father’s old partner, and runs in and out of the house when he’s at home.”

Turning away, she hurried toward the house, and as she reached it a young man came out on the veranda. He was dressed in white flannel, with a straw hat and blue serge jacket, and his pleasant face was bronzed by the sea.

“I came right through,” he said, holding out his hand. “It was particularly nice of you to leave your chair to meet me.”

“I’m glad to see you back,” Ruth responded. “Did you have a pleasant time? When did you get home?”

“Left the yacht at Portland yesterday, and came straight on. Found the old man out of town, and decided I’d stop at Martin’s place. I’m due there this evening.”

“But it’s twenty miles off over the mountains, and this isn’t the nearest way.”

Clay laughed, with a touch of diffidence that became him.

“What’s twenty miles, even on a hill road, when you’re anxious to see your friends?”

He watched her as closely as he dared, for some hint of response, but he was puzzled by her manner.

“It isn’t a road,” she laughed. “Some day you’ll come here in pieces.”

“I wonder whether you’d be sorry?”

“You ought to know. But come along – I believe my aunt is curious about you.”

When he was presented, Miss Dexter gave him a glance of candid scrutiny. Aynsley was marked by a certain elegance and careless good humor, which were not the qualities she most admired in young men, but she liked his face and the frankness of his gaze. If he were one of the idle rich, he was, she thought, a rather good specimen.

“What is your profession?” she asked him bluntly, when they had talked a few moments.

“It’s rather difficult to state, because my talents and pursuits are varied. I’m a bit of a naturalist, and something of a yachtsman, while I really think I’m smart at handling a refractory automobile. When I was younger, it was my ambition to ride a raw cayuse, but now one grapples with the mysteries of valves and cams. The times change, though one can’t be sure that they improve.”

“Then you don’t do anything?”

“I’m afraid you hold my father’s utilitarian views, but there’s room for a difference of opinion about what constitutes hard work. To-day, for instance, I spent two hours lying on my back beneath the car and fitting awkward little bolts into holes; then I drove her fifty miles in three hours over a villainous road, graded with rocks and split fir-trees. As I’ve another twenty miles to go, my own opinion is that I’ll have done enough for any ordinary man when I get through.”

“And how much better off is the community for your labors?”

“It’s some consolation that nobody’s much the worse, but I’ve known the community suffer when it was slow in getting out of the way.”