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Mountain Blood: A Novel

by Joseph Hergesheimer · English · Gutenberg #27447 · 418,274 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Mountain Blood: A Novel

Author: Joseph Hergesheimer


        
Release date: December 8, 2008 [eBook #27447]
                Most recently updated: January 4, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOUNTAIN BLOOD: A NOVEL ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net









MOUNTAIN BLOOD




THE WORKS OF
JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER

THE LAY ANTHONY
MOUNTAIN BLOOD
THE THREE BLACK PENNYS
GOLD AND IRON
JAVA HEAD
THE HAPPY END
LINDA CONDON




MOUNTAIN BLOOD

A NOVEL

BY

JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER

NEW YORK

ALFRED . A . KNOPF

1919




COPYRIGHT, 1915, 1919, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




To
MY MOTHER




ONE

I


The fiery disk of the sun was just lifting above the shoulder of hills
that held the city of Stenton when the Greenstream stage rolled briskly
from its depot, a dingy frame tavern, and commenced the long journey to
its high destination. The tavern was on the outskirts of town; beyond, a
broad, level plain reached to a shimmering blue silhouette of mountains
printed on a silvery sky; and the stage immediately left the paved street
for the soft, dusty country road. Stenton was not yet astir; except for an
occasional maid sleepily removing the milk from gleaming marble steps, or
early workmen with swollen, sullen countenances, the streets were
deserted. The dewy freshness of morning was already lost in the rapidly
mounting heat of the June day. Above the blackened willows that half hid
the waterworks an oily column of smoke wavered upward in slow, thick
coils, mingling with the acid odor of ammonia from a neighboring ice
manufacturing plant; a locomotive whistled harsh and persistent; the heat
vibrated in visible fans above the pavement.

From the vantage point of the back porches of Stenton the sluggish maids
could see the Greenstream stage fast diminishing. The dust rose and
enveloped it, until it appeared to be a ball, gilded by the sun, rolling
over the rank grey-green plain. Finally it disappeared from the vision of
the awakening city.




II


It was a mountain surrey, with a top and rolled curtains, three rigid
seats, and drawn by ugly, powerful horses in highly simplified harness. At
the rear a number of mailbags, already coated with a dun film, were
securely strapped.

The driver lounged forward, skilfully picking flies with his whip from the
horses' backs. He had a smooth countenance, deeply tanned, and pale, clear
blue eyes. At his side sat a priest in black, a man past middle age, with
ashen, embittered lips, and a narrowed, chilling gaze. They were silent,
contemplative; but, from the seat behind them, flowed a constant, buoyant,
youthful chatter. A girl with a shining mass of chestnut hair gathered
loosely on a virgin neck was recounting the thrilling incidents of
"commencement week" for the benefit of a heavily-built young man with a
handsome, masklike countenance. On the last seat a carelessly-garbed male
was drawing huge clouds of smoke from a formidable cigar.

Gordon Makimmon, the driver, did not know the latter. He had engaged and
paid for his seat the night before, evading such indirect query as
Makimmon had addressed to him. It was a fundamental principle of
Greenstream conduct that the direct question was inadmissible; at the same
time, the inhabitants of that far, isolated valley were, on all occasions,
coldly curious about such strangers, their motives and complexions of
mind, as reached their self-sufficient territory. This combined
restriction and necessity produced a wily type of local inquisitor. But
here Gordon's diplomacy had been in vain, his surmising at sea. The others
were intimate and familiar figures:

Father Merlier's advent into Greenstream had occurred a number of years
before. He had arrived with papers of introduction to one of the few
papist families in that rigorously protestant neighborhood; and,
immediately, had erected outside the village of Greenstream a small
mission school and dwelling, where he addressed himself to the herculean
task of gaining converts to his faith. At first he had been regarded with
unconcealed distrust--boys, when the priest's back was turned, had thrown
stones at him; the turbulent element, on more than one occasion, had
discussed the advisability of "running" him from the community. But it was
true of both boys and men that, when they had confronted the beady, black
glitter of Merlier's unfaltering gaze, encountered the patent contempt of
his rigid lips, they had subsided into an unintelligible mutter, and had
been glad to escape.

He became an habitual sight, riding a blooded mare through the valley,
over lonely trails, and was finally accepted as a recognized local
institution. His title and exotic garb, the grim quality of his manhood,
his austere disregard for bodily welfare, his unmistakable courage--more
than any other human quality extolled throughout Greenstream--became a
cause of prideful boasting in the County.

Gordon Makimmon had known Lettice Hollidew, now speaking in little,
girlish rushes behind him, since her first appearance in a baby carriage,
nineteen or twenty years back. He had watched her without particular
interest, the daughter of the richest man in Greenstream, grow out of
sturdy, barelegged childhood into the girl he had now for five years been
driving, in early summer and fall, to and from the boarding school at
Stenton.

She was, he had noted, reserved. Other schoolgirls, in their passages from
their scattered upland homes, were eager to share Gordon's seat by the
whip; and, with affected giggling, or ringing bursts of merriment, essayed
to drive the wise, heedless mountain horses. But Lettice Hollidew had
always shrunk from the prominent place on the stage; there was neither
banter nor invitation in her tones as she greeted him at the outset of
their repeated trips, or as she gravely thanked him at the end of the
day's journey.

Her father--he was reputed to possess almost half a million dollars--was a
silent man, suspicious and wary in his contact and dealings with the
world; and it was probable that those qualities had been softened in
Pompey Hollidew's daughter to a habit of diffidence, to a customary,
instinctive repression.

No such characteristics laid their restraint on Buckley Simmons, her
present companion. His immobile face, with its heavy, good features and
slow-kindling comprehension, was at all times expressive of loud
self-assertion, insatiable curiosity, facile confidence; from his clean
shaven lips fell always satisfied comment, pronouncement, impatient
opinion. If Hollidew was the richest man in Greenstream Valentine Simmons
was a close second. Indeed, one might be found as wealthy as the other; as
a matter of fact, the Simmons holdings in real estate, scattered broadcast
over the county, would realize more than Hollidew could readily
command--thus Valentine Simmons' son, Buckley.

He was elaborately garbed in grey serge, relentlessly shaped to conform to
an exaggerated, passing fashion, a flaring china silk tie with a broadly
displayed handkerchief to match, yellow-red shoes with wide ribbands, and
a stiff, claret-colored felt hat.

Gordon Makimmon, with secret dissatisfaction, compared himself with this
sartorial model. Gordon's attire, purely serviceable, had apparently taken
on a protective coloring from the action of time and the elements; his
shirt had faded from a bright buff to a nondescript shade which blended
with what had once been light corduroy trousers; his heavy shoes, treated
only the evening before to a coat of preservative grease, were now covered
with muck; and, pulled over his eyes, a shapeless canvas hat completed the
list of the visible items of his appearance.

He swore moodily to himself as he considered the picture he must present
to the dapper youth and immaculate girl behind him. He should have
remembered that Lettice Hollidew would be returning from school to-day,
and at least provided an emergency collar. His sister Clare was always
scolding him about his clothes ... but Clare's was very gentle scolding.

A species of uncomfortable defiance, a studied contempt for appearance,
possessed him: he was as good any day as Buckley Simmons, the clothes on
whose back had probably been stripped from the desperate need of some lean
mountain inhabitant trading at the parental Simmons' counter. The
carefully cherished sense of injury grew within him; he suspected
innuendoes, allusions to his garb, in the half-heard conversation behind
him; he spoke to his horses in hard, sharp tones, and, without reason,
swept the whip across their ears.




III


Meanwhile, they drew steadily over the plain; the mountains before them
gradually lost their aspect of mere silhouette; depths were discernible;
the blue dissolved to green, to towering slopes dense with foliage.
Directly before them a dark shadow steadily grew darker, until it was
resolved into a cleft through the range. They drew nearer and nearer to
the pierced barrier, the road mounted perceptibly, the trees thickened by
the wayside. A covey of dun partridge fluttered out of the underbrush.

The sun was high in a burning grey vault, and flooded the plain with
colorless, bright light. The stage paused before entering the opening in
the rocky wall; the stranger in the rear seat turned for a comprehensive,
last survey. Simmering in a calorific envelope the distant roofs and
stacks of Stenton were visible, isolated in the white heat of the pitiless
day. Above the city hung a smudge, a thumbprint of oily black smoke,
carrying the suggestion of an intolerable concentration, a focal point of
the fiery discomfort. In the foreground a buzzard wheeled, inevitable,
depressing.

With a sharp flourish of his whip Gordon urged the stage into the cold
humidity of the gorge. Stenton and the plain were lost as it passed
between close, dripping rocks, rank verdure, masses of gigantic,
paleolithic fern.




IV


The dank, green smell hung in their nostrils after they had left the
ravine for a fertile tableland. They trotted through a village strung
along the road, a village of deeply-scrolled eaves under the thick foliage
of maples, of an incredible number of churches--"Reformed," "Established,"
qualified Methodist, uncompromising Baptist. They were all built of wood,
and in varying states of repair that bore mute witness to the persuasive
eloquence of their several pastors.

Beyond, the way rose once more, sunny and dusty and monotonous. The priest
was absorbed, muttering unintelligibly over a small, flexible volume. The
conversation between Lettice Hollidew and Buckley fell into increasing
periods of silence. The stranger lit a fresh cigar, the smoke from which
hung out back in such clouds that the power of the stage might well have
been mistaken for steam.

The road grew steeper still, and, fastening the reins about the whipstock,
Gordon swung out over the wheel and walked. He was a spare man, sinewy and
upright, and past the golden age of youth. He lounged over the road in a
careless manner that concealed his agile strength, his tireless endurance.
This indolent carriage and his seemingly slight build had, on more than
one occasion, been disastrously misleading to importunate or beery
strangers. He could, and did, fight whenever chance offered, with a cold
passion, a destructive abandon, that had won him, throughout the turbulent
confines of Greenstream, a flattering measure of peace.

In this manner his father, just such another, had fought before him, and
his grandfather before that. Nothing further back was known in
Greenstream, It was well known that the first George Gordon Makimmon--the
Mac had been speedily debauched by the slurring, local speech--had made
his way to Virginia from Scotland, upon the final collapse of a Lost
Cause. The instinct of the highlander had led him deep into the rugged
ranges, where he had lived to see the town and county of Greenstream
crystallize about his log walls and stony patch.

There, finally breaking down the resistance of a heroic constitution, he
had succeeded in drinking himself to death. His son had grown up imbued
with local tradition and ideas, and was settling seriously to a repetition
of the elder's fate, when the Civil War offered him a wide, recognized
field for the family belligerent spirit. He was improving this chance to
the utmost with Morley's Raiders when a slug ended his activities in the
second year of the war.

It was characteristic of the Makimmons that they should each have left
their family in precarious circumstances. They were not, they would
contemptuously assert, farmers or merchants. When the timber was cut from
the valley, the underbrush burned, and the superb cloth of grass started
that had formed the foundation of a number of comfortable fortunes, the
Makimmons, scornful of the effort, had remained outside the profit.

Such income as they enjoyed had been obtained from renting their acres to
transient and indifferent farmers. In the crises of life and death, or
under the desire for immediate and more liquor, they sold necessary
slices. This continued until nothing remained for the present Gordon
Makimmon but the original dwelling--now grotesquely misshapen from the
addition of casual sheds and extensions--and a small number of acres on
the outskirts of town.

There he lived with Clare, his sister. Their mother, the widow of that
Makimmon whose disputatious temper had been dignified by the epitaph of
"heroic sacrifice," had died of a complicity of patent medicines the
winter before. An older brother had totally disappeared from the
cognizance of Greenstream during Gordon's boyhood; and a married sister,
completing the tale, lived at the opposite end of the county, held close
by poverty and her own large brood.

Summer and winter Gordon Makimmon drove the stage between Greenstream and
Stenton. At dawn he left Greenstream, arriving in Stenton at the end of
day; the following morning he re-departed for Greenstream. This
mechanical, monotonous routine satisfied his need without placing too
great a strain on his energy; he enjoyed rolling over the summer roads or
in the crisp clear sunlight of winter; he liked the casual converse of the
chance passengers, the inevitable deference to his local knowledge, the
birdlike chatter and flattery of the young women. He liked, so easily, to
play oracle and wiseman; he liked the admiration called forth by a certain
theatrical prowess with the reins and whip.

On the occasions when he was too drunk to drive--not over often--a
substitute was quietly found until he recovered and little was said.
Gordon Makimmon was invaluable in a public charge, a trust--he had never
lost a penny of the funds he continually carried for deposit in the
Stenton banks; no insult had been successfully offered to any daughter of
Greenstream accompanying him without other care in the stage.




V


They rose steadily, crossing the roof of a ridge, and descended abruptly
beyond. Green prospects opened before them--a broad valley was disclosed,
with a broad, shallow stream dividing its meadows; scattered farmhouses,
orderly, prosperous, commanded their shorn acres. A mailbag was detached
and left at a crossroad in charge of two little girls, primly important,
smothered in identical, starched pink sunbonnets. The Greenstream stage
splashed through the shallow, shining ford; the ascent on the far side of
the valley imperceptibly began.

The sun was almost at the zenith; the shadow of the stage fell short and
sharp on the dry, loamy road; a brown film covered the horses and vehicle;
it sifted through the apparel of the passengers and coated their lips. The
rise to the roof of the succeeding range seemed interminable; the road
looped fields blue with buckwheat, groves of towering, majestic chestnut,
a rocky slope, where, by a crevice, a swollen and sluggish rattlesnake
dropped from sight.

At last, in the valley beyond, the half-way house, dinner and a change of
horses were reached. The forest swept down in an unbroken tide to the
porch of the isolated roadside tavern; a swift stream filled the wooden
structure with the ceaseless murmur of water. In the dusty, gold gloom of
a spacious stable Gordon unhitched his team. Outside, in a wooden trough,
he splashed his hands and face, then entered the dining-room.

A long table was occupied by an industrious company that broke the
absorbed silence only by explosive requests for particularized dishes.
Above the table hovered the wife of the proprietor, constantly waving a
fly brush--streamers of colored paper fastened to a slender stick--above
the heads of her husband and guests.

Gordon Makimmon ate largely and rapidly, ably seconded by the strange
passenger and Buckley Simmons. The priest, Merlier, ate sparingly, in an
absent, perfunctory manner. Lettice Hollidew, at the opposite end of the
table, displayed the generous but dainty appetite of girlhood. The coat to
her suit, with a piece of lace pinned about the collar, and a new, flat
leather bag with a silver initial, hung from the back of her chair.

They again listlessly took their places in the stage. Buckley Simmons
emulated the stranger in lighting a mahogany-colored cigar with an
ornamental band which Buckley moved toward his lips before the swiftly
approaching conflagration. Gordon drove with his mind pleasantly vacant,
lulled by the monotonous miles of road flickering through his vision, the
shifting forms of distant peaks, virid vistas, nearby trees and bushes,
all saturated in the slumberous, yellow, summer heat.

Gradually the aspect of their surroundings changed, the forms of the
mountains grew bolder, streams raced whitely over broken, rocky beds; the
ranks of the forest closed up, only a rare trail broke the road. The
orderly farmhouses, the tilled fields, disappeared; a rare cabin, roughly
constructed of unbarked logs, dominated a parched patch, cut from the
heart-breaking tangle of the wild, a thread of smoke creeping from a
precarious chimney above the far, unbroken canopy of living green.
Children with matted hair, beady-eyed like animals, in bag-like slips,
filled the doorways; adults, gaunt-jawed and apathetic, straightened
momentarily up from their toil with the stubborn earth.

At the sharpest ascent yet encountered Gordon again left the stage.
Buckley Simmons recalled a short cut through the wood, and noisily
entreated Lettice Hollidew to accompany him.

"It's awfully pretty," he urged, "and easy; no rocks to cut your shoes.
I'll go ahead with a stick to look out for snakes."

She shuddered charmingly at the final item, and vowed she would not go a
step. But he persisted, and in the end persuaded her. The stranger
continued unmoved in his place; Merlier shifted not a pound's weight, but
sat with a cold, indifferent face turned upon the straining horses.

Gordon walked ahead, whistling under his breath, and, with a single
skilful twist, he rolled a cigarette from a muslin bag of tobacco labeled
Green Goose.

The short cut into which Buckley and Lettice Hollidew disappeared refound
the road, Gordon knew, over a mile above; and he was surprised, shortly,
to see the girl's white waist moving rapidly into the open. She was alone,
breathing in excited gasps, which she struggled to subdue. Her face that
five minutes before had been so creamily, placidly composed was now hotly
red; her eyes shone with angry, unshed tears.

Gordon's lips formed a silent exclamation ... Buckley evidently had made
an error in judgment. Lettice stepped out into the road, and, plainly
unwilling to encounter the questioning eyes in the stage, walked rigidly
beside Gordon. Behind the obvious confusion, the hurt surprise of her
countenance, an unexpected, dormant quality had been stirred into being.
The crimson flood in her cheeks had stained more than her clear skin--it
had colored her gracile and candid girlhood so that it would never again
be pellucid; into it had been spilled some of the indelible dye of woman.

Gordon Makimmon gazed with newly-awakened interest at Lettice; for the
first time he thought of her as other than a school-girl; for the first
time he discovered in her the potent, magnetic, disturbing quality of sex.
Buckley Simmons had clumsily forced it into consciousness. A fleeting,
unformulated regret enveloped him in the shadow of its melancholy, an
intangible, formless sorrow at the swift passage of youth, the inevitable
lapse of time. A mounting anger at Buckley possessed him ... she had been
in his, Gordon Makimmon's, care. The anger touched his pride, his
self-esteem, and grew cold, deliberate: he watched with a contracted jaw
for Simmons' appearance.

"Why," he exclaimed, in a lowered voice, "that lown tore your pretty
shirtwaist!"

"He had no reason at all," she protested; "it was just horrid." A little
shiver ran over her. "He ... he held me and kissed ... hateful."

"I'll teach him to keep his kissing where it's liked," Gordon proclaimed.
His instinctively theatrical manner diminished not a jot the menace of the
threat.

"Oh! please, please don't fight." She turned a deeply concerned
countenance upon him. "That would hurt me very much more--"

"It won't be a fight," he reassured her, "only a little hint, something
for Buck to think about. No one will know." He could not resist adding,
"Most people go a good length before fighting with me."

"I have heard that you are awfully--" she hesitated, then, "brave."

"It was 'ugly' you heard," he quickly supplied the pause. "But that's not
true; I don't fight like some men, just for a good time. Why, in the towns
over the West Virginia line they fight all night; they'll fight--kill each
other--for two bits, or a drink of liquor.... There's Buckley now, coming
in above."

Buckley Simmons entered the road from a narrow trail a number of yards
ahead of the stage. He tramped heavily, holding a hickory switch in one
hand, cutting savagely at the underbrush. The stage leisurely caught up to
him until the horses' heads were opposite his thickset form. Gordon, from
the other side of the team, swung himself into his seat. He grasped the
whip, and, leaning out, swept the heavy leather thong in a vicious circle.
It whistled above the horses, causing them to plunge, and the lash,
stopped suddenly, drew across Buckley Simmons' face. For an instant his
startled countenance was white, and then it was wet, gleaming and scarlet.
He pressed his hands to his mouth, and stumbled confused into the ditch.

Gordon stopped the stage. Merlier gave vent to a sibilant exclamation,
and Lattice Hollidew covered her eyes. The stranger sprang to the road,
and hurried to the injured man's side. Gordon got down slowly. "Where did
it get him?" he inquired, with a shallow show of concern. He regarded with
indifferent eyes the gaping cut across Simmons' jaw, while the stranger
was converting a large linen handkerchief into a ready bandage.

Buckley, in stammering, shocked rage, began to curse Gordon's clumsiness,
and, in his excitement, the wound bled more redly. "You will have to keep
quiet," he was told, "for this afternoon anyhow."

"I'm not a 'dam' blind bat," Gordon informed his victim in a rapid
undertone; "my eyes are sharper than usual to-day." Above the stained
bandage Simmons' gaze was blankly enraged. "That won't danger you none,"
Gordon continued, in louder, apparently unstudied tones; "but you can't
kiss the girls for a couple of weeks."

Buckley Simmons was assisted into the rear seat; Lettice sat alone, her
face hidden by the flowery rim of her hat; Merlier was silent,
indifferent, bland. The way grew increasingly wilder, and climbed and
climbed; at their back dipped and spread mile upon mile of unbroken
hemlock; the minute clearings, the solitary cabins, were lost in the still
expanse of tree tops; the mountain towered blue, abrupt, before them. The
stranger consulted a small map. "This is Buck Mountain," he announced
rather than queried; "Greenstream Village is beyond, west from here, with
the valley running north and south."

"You have got us laid out right," Gordon assented; "this all's not new to
you." It was as close to the direct question as Gordon Makimmon could
bring himself. And, in the sequel, it proved the wisdom of his creed; for,
obviously, the other avoided the implied query. "The Government prints a
good map," he remarked, and turned his shoulder squarely upon any
prolongation of the conversation.

They were now at the summit of Buck Mountain, but dense juniper thickets
hid from them any extended view. After a turn, over the washed, rocky
road, the Greenstream Valley lay outspread below.

The sun was lowering, and the shadow of the western range swept down the
great, somber, wooded wall towering against an illimitable vault of rosy
light; the lengthening shadows of the groves of trees on the lower slope
fell into the dark, cool, emerald cleft. It was scarcely three fields
across the shorn, cultivated space to the opposite, precipitous barrier;
between, the valley ran narrow and rich into a faint, broken haze of peaks
thinly blue on either hand. And, held in the still green heart of that
withdrawn, hidden space, the village lay along its white highway.

The stage dropped with short, sharp rushes down the winding road; the
houses lost the toy-like aspect of distance; cowbells clashed faintly; a
dog's bark quivered, suspended in hushed space. The stage passed the
first, scattered houses, and was speedily in the village: each dwelling
had, behind a white picket fence, a strip of sod and a tangle of simple,
gay flowers--scarlet, white, purple and yellow, now coated with a fine,
chalky, summer dust. The dwellings were, for the most part, frame, with a
rare structure of brick under mansard slates green with moss. The back
yards were fenced from the fields, on which hay had been cut and stood in
high ricks, now casting long, mauve shadows over the close, brilliant
green. The stage passed the white board structure of the Methodist Church,
and stopped before the shallow portico of the post-office.




VI


A small, familiar group awaited the arrival of the mail; and from it
several figures detached themselves. The postmaster stepped forward, and
assisted Gordon in unfastening the mailbags; a clerk from Valentine
Simmons' store, in shirtsleeves elaborately restrained by pink bowed
elastics, inquired for a package by express; and Pompey Hollidew pushed
impatiently forward, apparently anxious for a speedy view of his daughter.
This laudable assumption was, however, immediately upset by the absent nod
he bestowed upon Lettice, and the evident interest and relief with which
he turned to the stranger descending from the stage.

"Mr. Hollidew?" the latter inquired, with ill-concealed surprise.

Pompey Hollidew, the richest man in Greenstream, wore--as was customary
with him--a crumpled yellow shirt, open at his stringy throat, and
innocent of tie; his trousers, one time lavender, had faded to a
repulsive, colorless hue, and hung frayed about cheap, heavy shoes
fastened by copper rivets. An ancient cutaway of broadcloth, spotted and
greenish, with an incomplete mustering of buttons, drooped about his
heavy, bowed shoulders; while a weather-beaten derby, seemingly unbrushed
for countless, grimy years, completed his forlorn adornment.

His face was long, with vertical, pallid folds gathered loosely into a
chin frosted with unkempt silver; his mouth was lipless, close, shadowed
by an overhanging, swollen nose; and, from beneath deep, troubled brows,
pale blue eyes set close together regarded life skeptically, intently,
with appalling avidity, veiled yet discernible.

He disappeared, clutching the stranger's sleeve, with an effort at
geniality. Simmons' clerk ruefully tested the weight of a small, heavily
nailed box.

Lettice Hollidew slowly assembled her traveling effects. It was evident
that she wished to say something to Gordon, for she lingered, patently
playing with her gloves, directing at him bright, nervous glances from
under the straw brim of her hat. But she was forced to depart in silence,
for Buckley Simmons, in reply to the queries of the cause of his accident,
launched upon a loud, angry explanation of the obvious aspect of the
incident.

"The clumsy yap!" he pointedly exclaimed.

Gordon entered the group of which Buckley was the hub. "It was too bad to
spoil Buck for the girls," he pronounced coolly; "but he'll be after them
again in a couple of weeks."

He gazed with level disdain into the tempest gathering in Simmons' eyes
above the dark, spotted handkerchief. He paused, deliberately insolent,
challenging a rejoinder, until, none breaking the strained silence, he
swung about, and, at the horses' heads, led them to their stabling at
Peterman's Hotel. He passed the unpainted, wooden front of the office of
the _Greenstream Bugle_; the house of Senator Themeny in its lindens on a
spreading lawn; on the opposite side the mellow brick face of the
Courthouse under towering poplars, and Valentine Simmons' store.

Gordon stopped at the latter on his way home. It was a long, shedlike
structure with a false facade; before it, elevated a man's height from the
road, was the broad platform where the mountain wagons unloaded their
merchandise; on the side facing the Courthouse ran a wooden hitching rail.
Inside, on the left, Simmons' private office was shut in glass from the
main floor of the store; long counters led back into a semi-obscurity,
where a clerk was lighting a row of swinging kerosene lamps.

"Chalk them up, Sampson," Gordon carelessly told the clerk who wrapped up
his purchases. "How much are those?" he added, indicating a pair of
women's low white shoes.

"Four. They're real buck, and a topnotch article. Nothing better comes."

Gordon turned them over in his hand; they would, he thought, just fit
Clare; she liked pretty articles of attire; she had not been so well
lately. Clare was a faithful sister. "Just add them to the bundle," he
directed in a lordly manner.

The clerk hesitated, and glanced toward the private office, where Simmons'
head could be seen pinkly bald. "Do you think you'd better, Gordon?" he
asked; "the boss has been crabbed lately about some of the old accounts,
and yours has waited as long as any. I wouldn't get nothing to catch his
eye--"

"Add the shoes to my bundle," Gordon repeated with a narrowing gaze; "I
always ask for the advice I need."

Outside he endeavored to recall when he had last paid anything on his
account at Simmons' store. This was the last week in June ... had he paid
any in April? in November? He was not able to remember the occasion of his
last settlement. He must attend to that; he had other obligations, too,
small but long overdue. He cursed the fluid quality of his wage, forever
flowing through his fingers. He must apportion his expenditures more
carefully; or, better yet, give all his money to Clare; the high-power
rifle he had purchased in Stenton the year before had crippled their
resources; his last Christmas present to Clare had been a heavy drain; he
had not yet recovered from the generous funeral he had given their
mother.

He was unaccustomed to such considerations. They interfered with the large
view he held of himself, of his importance, his deserts; they limited his
necessity for a natural indifference to penny matters; and he dismissed
them with an uneasy movement of his shoulders.

He passed the discolored, plaster bulk of the Presbyterian Church, the
drug store and dwelling of Dr. Pelliter, and was on the outskirts of the
village. The shadow of the western range had now slipped across the valley
and nearly climbed the opposite wall; lavender scarfs of mist veiled the
far, jumbled peaks in the darkling rift; slim, swaying columns of smoke
from the clustered chimneys of Greenstream towered dizzily through the
shaded air to where, high above, they were transformed to gold by the
last, up-flung rays of the sun.




VII


A smooth, conical hill rose sharply to the left, momentarily shutting out
the valley; and beyond, at the foot of a steep declivity, stood the
Makimmon dwelling. Originally a four-square, log house, the logs had been
covered by boards, and to its present, irregular length, one room in
width, had been added an uneven roofed porch broadside on a narrow lip of
sod by a wide, shallow stream. An indifferent stand of corn held
precariously to the sharp slope from the public road; an unkempt cow
grazed the dank sod by a primitive well sweep; a heap of tin cans, bright
or rusted, their fading paper labels loose and littering the grass, had
been untidily accumulated at a back door.

Gordon passed about the end of his dwelling to the side that faced the
water. A wave of hot air, a heavy, greasy odor and the sputtering of
boiling fat, swept out from the kitchen. He filled a tin basin on the
porch from a convenient bucket of water, and made a hasty toilet.

Clare paused at the door, a long handled spoon in her attenuated grasp;
she was an emaciated woman of thirty, with prominent cheek bones, a thin,
sensitive nose, and a colorless mouth set in a harsh line by excessive
physical suffering. There was about her, in spite of her gaunt features
and narrow, stooping frame, something appealingly simple, girlish. A blue
ribband made a gay note in her faded, scant hair; she had pinned a piece
of draggled color about her throat. "I've been looking for you the half
hour," she said querulously; "draw up t' the table."

"I stopped at Simmons', and brought you a pretty, too; it's in the
bundle."

"Gordon!" she exclaimed, as he unwrapped the shoes, "they are elegant! Had
you ought to have got them? We need so much--mosquito bar, the flies are
terrible wearing, the roof's crying for tin, and--"

"You're as bad as Sampson," he interrupted her, almost shortly; "we've got
to have pleasures as well as profits. And too," he directed, "don't put
those shoes away like you did that watered silk shawl I got you in
Stenton. Wear them ... to-night."

"Oh, no!" she cried, "not just setting around; they'll get smudged. Not
to-night, Gordon; maybe to-morrow, or when I go to church."

"Tonight," he repeated inexorably.

A bare, stained table with spreading legs pinned through the oak board was
ranged against a bench on the kitchen wall, where, in the watery light of
a small, glass lamp, Gordon and Clare Makimmon ate their supper of flat,
dark, salt-raised bread, strips of bacon and dripping greens, and
swimming, purplish preserves.

After supper they sat on the narrow porch, facing the dark, whispering
stream, the night pouring into the deep, still valley. A cold air rose
from the surface of the water, and Clare wrapped a worn piece of blanket
about her shoulders. At frequent intervals she gazed with palpable delight
at her feet, shod in the "real buck." A deep, melancholy chorus of frogs
rose from the creek, mingling with the high, metallic shrilling of
crickets, the reiterated calling of whippoorwills from a thicket of
pines.

Gordon Makimmon settled into a waking somnolence, lulled by the familiar,
profound, withdrawn repose of the valley. He could distinguish Clare's
form weaving back and forth in a low rocker; the moonless, summer night
embraced, hid, all; there were no lights in the house at his back, no
lights visible in the village beyond; only the impenetrable blackness of
the opposite range and the abrupt band of stars.

Suddenly Clare's even breathing, the tracking sound of the chair, ceased;
she drew two or three sharp, gasping inspirations. Gordon, instantly
alert, rose and stood over her. "Is it bad to-night again?" he asked
solicitously; "shall I get you the ginger water?"

"None ... in the house," she articulated laboriously; "pretty ... bad."

"No, don't leave me; just set; I'll be better in a spell." He fetched her
a glass of water, from which she gulped spasmodically, clutching with
cold, wet fingers to his wrist. Then the tension relaxed, her breathing
grew more normal. "It's by now," she proclaimed unsteadily.

"I'm going back the road for a little ginger," he told her from the edge
of the porch; "we'd best have the bottle filled."

The drug store was dark, closed for the night, and Gordon continued to
Simmons' store. The row of swinging, kerosene lamps cast a thick yellow
radiance over the long counters, the variously laden shelves. The store
was filled with the odor of coffee, the penetrating smell of print
muslins.

"Mr. Simmons wants you a minute in the office," the clerk responded
indirectly to his request for ginger. Gordon instinctively masked a
gathering premonition of trouble. "Fill her up the while," he demanded,
pushing forward the empty bottle.

Valentine Simmons was a small man with a pinkly bald head ornamented with
fluffs of white hair like cotton wool above his ears, and precise, shaven
lips forever awry in the pronouncing of rallying or benevolent sentences;
these, with appropriate religious sentiments, formed nine-tenths of his
discourse, through which the rare words that revealed his purposes, his
desires, flashed like slender and ruthless knives.

He was bending over a tall, narrow ledger when Gordon entered the office;
but he immediately closed the book and swung about in his chair. The small
enclosure was hot, and filled with the odor of scorching metal, the
buzzing of a large, blundering fly.

"Ah!" Valentine Simmons exclaimed pleasantly; "our link with the outer
world, our faithful messenger.... I wanted to see you; ah, yes." He turned
over the pages of a second, heavier ledger at his hand. "Here it
is--Gordon Makimmon, good Scotch Presbyterian name. Five hundred and
thirty dollars," he said suddenly, unexpectedly.

Gordon was unable to credit his senses, the fact that this was the sum of
his indebtedness; it was an absurd mistake, and he said so.

"Everything listed against its date," the other returned imperturbably,
"down to a pair of white buck shoes for a lady to-day--a generous present
for some enslaver."

"My sister," Gordon muttered ineptly. Five hundred and thirty dollars, he
repeated incredulously to himself. Five hundred.... "How long has it been
standing?" he asked.

The other consulted the book. "Two years, a month and four days," he
returned exactly.

"But no notice was served on me; nothing was said about my bill."

"Ah, we don't like to annoy old friends; just a little word at necessary
intervals."

Old rumors, stories, came to Gordon's memory in regard to the long credit
extended by Simmons to "old friends," the absence of any rendered
accounts; and, in that connection, the thought of the number of homesteads
throughout the county that had come, through forced sales, into the
storekeeper's hands. The circumstantial details of these events had been
bitten by impassioned oaths into his mind, together with the memory of the
dreary ruin that had settled upon the evicted.

"I can give you something day after to-morrow, when I am paid."

"Entirely satisfactory; three hundred--no, for you two hundred and fifty
dollars will be sufficient; the rest another time ... whenever you are
able."

"I get two dollars and fifty cents a day," Gordon reminded him, with a dry
and bitter humor, "and I have a month's pay coming."

Valentine Simmons had not, apparently, heard him. "Two hundred and fifty
only," he repeated; "we always like to accommodate old friends, especially
Presbyterian friends."

"I can give you fifty dollars," Gordon told him, at once loud and
conciliatory; wondering, at the same time, how, if he did, Clare and
himself would manage. He had to pay for his board in Stenton; the doctor
for Clare had to be met--fifty cents in hand a visit, or the visits
ceased.

"Have your little joke, then get out that hidden stocking, pry up that
particular fire brick ... only two hundred and fifty now ... but--now."

A hopeless feeling of impotence enveloped Gordon: the small, dry man
before him with the pink, bald head shining in the lamplight, the set
grin, was as remote from any appeal as an insensate figure cast in metal,
a painted iron man in neat, grey alpaca, a stiff, white shirt with a small
blue button and an exact, prim muslin bow.

Still, "I'll give you fifty, and thirty the next month. Why, damn it, I'll
pay you off in the year. I'm not going to run away. I have steady work;
you know what I am getting; you're safe."

"But," Valentine Simmons lifted a hand in a round, glistening cuff, "is
anything certain in this human vale? Is anything secure that might hang on
the swing of a ... whip?"

With an unaccustomed, violent effort of will Gordon Makimmon suppressed
his angry concern at the other's covert allusion: outside his occupation
as stage driver he was totally without resources, without the ability to
pay for a bag of Green Goose tobacco. The Makimmons had never been
thrifty ... in the beginning they had let their wide share of valley
holding grow deep in thicket, where they might hunt the deer, their
streams course through a woven wild where pheasant might feed and fall to
their accurate guns.

"Two hundred and fifty dollars," Valentine Simmons repeated pleasantly.

"I haven't got it, and can't get it, all at once," Gordon reiterated in a
conciliatory manner. Then his straining, chafing pride, his assaulted
self-esteem, overflowed a little his caution. "And you know it," he
declared in a loud, ugly voice; "you know the size of every pocketbook in
Greenstream; I'll bet, by God, you and old man Hollidew know personal
every copper Indian on the pennies of the County."

Valentine Simmons smiled at this conception. Gordon regarded him with
hopeless, growing anger: Why, the old screw took that for a compliment!

"This is Wednesday," the storekeeper pronounced; "say, by Saturday ... the
sum I mentioned."

"It can't be done." The last vestiges of Gordon's control were fast
melting in the heat of his passion. Simmons turned to the narrow ledger,
picking up a pen. "When you bought," he remarked precisely, over his
shoulders, "the white shoes and ammunition and silk fishing lines--didn't
you intend to pay for them?"

"Yes, I did, and will. And when you said, 'Gordon, help yourself, load up,
try those flies'; and 'Never mind the bill now, some other time, old
friends pay when they please,' didn't you know I was getting in over my
head? didn't you encourage it ... so you could get judgment on me? sell me
out? Though what you settled on me for, what you see in my ramshackle
house and used up ground, is over me."

Simmons flashed a momentary, crafty glance at the other. "Never overlook a
location on good water," he advised.

Gordon Makimmon stood speechless, trembling with rage. For a moment
Simmons' pen, scratching over the page, made the only sound in the small
enclosure, then, "The provident man," he continued, "is always made a
target for the abuse of the--the thoughtless. But he usually comes to the
assistance of his unfortunate brother. You might arrange a loan."

"Why, so I might," Gordon assented in a thick voice; "I could get it from
your provident friend, Hollidew--three hundred dollars, say, at hell's per
cent; a little lien on my property. 'Never overlook a situation on good
water.'

"By God!" he exclaimed, suddenly prescient, "but I've done for myself."

And he thought of Clare, of Clare fighting eternally that sharp pain in
her side, her face now drawn and glistening with the sweat of suffering,
now girlishly gay. He thought of her fragile hands so impotent to cope
with the bitter poverty of the mountains. What, with their home, her place
of retreat and security, gone, and--it now appeared more than
probable--his occupation vanished, would she do?

"I've done for myself, for her," he repeated, subconsciously aloud, in a
harsh whisper. He stood rigid, unseeing; a pulse beat visibly in the brown
throat by the collarless and faded shirt. Simmons regarded him with a
covert gaze, then, catching the attention of the clerk in the store
outside, beckoned slightly with his head. The clerk approached, vigorously
brushing the counters with a turkey wing.

Gordon Makimmon's gaze concentrated on the storekeeper. "You're almost an
old man," he said, in a slow, unnatural voice; "you have been robbing men
and women of their homes for a great many years, and you are still alive.
It's surprising that some one has not killed you."

"I have been shot at," Valentine Simmons replied; "behind my back. The men
who fail are like that as a rule."

"I'm not like that," Gordon informed him; "it's pretty well known that I
stand square in front of the man I'm after. Don't you think, this time,
you have made a little mistake? Hadn't I better give you that fifty, and
something more later?"

Valentine Simmons rose from his chair and turned, facing Gordon. His
muslin bow had slipped awry on the polished, immaculate bosom of his
shirt, and it gave him a slightly ridiculous, birdlike expression. He
gazed coldly, with his thin lips firm and hands still, into the other's
threatening, virulent countenance. "Two hundred and fifty dollars," he
insisted.

The thought of Clare, betrayed, persisted in Gordon's mind, battling with
his surging temper, his unreasoning resentment. Valentine Simmons stood
upright, still, against the lamplight. It was plain that he was not to be
intimidated. An overwhelming wave of misery, a dim realization of the
disastrous possibilities of his folly, inundated Gordon, drowning all
other considerations. He turned, and walked abruptly from the office into
the store. There the clerk placed on the counter the bottle, filled and
wrapped. In a petty gust of rage, like a jet of steam escaping from a
defective boiler, he swept the bottle to the floor, where he ground the
splintering fragments of glass, the torn and stained paper, into an untidy
blot.




VIII


Outside, the village, the Greenstream Valley, was folded in still, velvety
dark. He crossed the street, and sat on one of the iron benches placed
under the trees on the Courthouse lawn. He could see a dull, reddish light
shining through the dusty window of the _Bugle_ office. Shining like that,
through his egotistical pride, the facts of his failure and impotence
tormented him. It hurt him the more that he had been, simply, diddled, no
better than a child in Simmons' astute, practised hands. The latter's
rascality was patent, but Simmons could not have been successful unabetted
by his own blind negligence. The catastrophe that had overtaken him
rankled in his most vulnerable spot--his self-esteem.

He suffered inarticulately, an indistinguishable shape in the soft, summer
gloom; about his feet, in the lush grass, the greenish-gold sparks of the
fireflies quivered; above the deep rift of the valley the stars were like
polished silver coins.

Vaguely, and then more strongly, out of a chaos of vain, sick regrets, his
combativeness, his deep-lying, indomitable determination, asserted
itself--he would not fall like an over ripe apple into Simmons'
complacent, waiting grasp. But to get, without resources, two hundred and
fifty dollars by Saturday, was a preposterous task. Outside his, Clare's,
home, he had nothing to sell; and to sell that now, he realized with a
spoken oath, would be to throw it away--the vultures, Hollidew and Co.,
would have heard of his necessity, and regulate their action, the local
supply of available currency, accordingly.

There was no possible way of earning such a sum in four days; there was
little more chance, he realized sardonically, of stealing it.... Sometimes
large sums of money were won in a night's gambling in the lumber and
mining towns over the West Virginia line. But, for that, he would require
capital; he would have his wages to-morrow; however, if he gambled with
that and lost, Clare and himself would face immediate, irredeemable ruin.
He dismissed that consideration from the range of possibilities. But it
returned, hovered on the border of his thoughts--he might risk a part of
his capital, say thirty dollars. If he lost that they would be little
worse off than they were at present; while if he won ... he might easily
win.

He mentally arranged the details, assuring himself, the while, that he was
only toying with the idea.--He would pay the customary substitute to
drive the stage to Stenton, and cross Cheap Mountain on foot; by dark he
would be in Sprucesap, play that night, and return the following day,
Friday.

With an effort he still put the scheme from his thoughts; but, while he
kept it in abeyance, nothing further occurred to him. That gave him a
possible reprieve; all else offered sure disaster. He rose, and walked
slowly toward his home, revolving, testing, the various aspects of the
trip to Sprucesap; at once deciding upon that venture, and repeating to
himself the incontestable fact of its utter folly.

The dark was intense, blue-black, about his dwelling. He struck a match at
the edge of the porch, a pointed, orange exclamation on the impenetrable
gloom. Clare, weary of waiting, had gone to bed; her door was shut, her
window tightly closed. The invisible stream gurgled sadly past its banks,
the whippoorwills throbbed with ceaseless, insistent passion.

A sudden, jumbled vision of the past woven about this dwelling, his home,
wheeled through Gordon's mind, scenes happy and unhappy; prevailing want
and slim, momentary plenty; his father dead, in his coffin with a stony,
pinched countenance, a jaw still unrelaxed above the bright flag that
draped his nondescript uniform. Later events followed--his elder, vanished
brother bullying him; the brief romance of his sister's courtship; the
high, strident voice of his mother, that had always reminded him of her
angry red nose--events familiar, sordid, unlovely, but now they seemed all
of a piece of desirable, melancholy happiness; they endowed with a
hitherto unsuspected value every board of the rough footing of the
Makimmon dwelling, every rood of the poor, rocky soil, the weedy grass. He
said aloud, in a subdued, jarring voice, "By God, but Simmons won't get
it!" But the dreary whippoorwills, the feverish crickets, offered him no
confirmation, no assurance.




IX


At noon, on the day following, he stood on the top of Cheap Mountain,
gazing back into the deep, verdant cleft of Greenstream. From Cheap the
reason for its name was clear--it flowed now direct, now turning, in a
vivid green stream along the bases of its mountainous ranges; it flowed
tranquil and dark and smooth between banks of tangled saplings, matted,
multifarious underbrush, towering, venerable trees. It slipped like a
river, bearing upon its balmy surface the promise of asylum, of sleep, of
plenty, through the primitive, ruthless forest, which in turn pressed upon
it everywhere the menace of its oblivion, its fierce, strangling life.

He saw below him stretches of the steep, rocky trail by which he had
mounted with the mounting sun; both had now reached the zenith of their
day's journey; from there he would sink into the shadow, the
secretiveness, of night.... Greenstream village lay twenty-eight miles
behind; it was seventeen more to Sprucesap: he hurried forward.

In his pocket rested not the thirty dollars, to which he had limited
himself in thought, but his entire month's salary,--he might lose all by
the lack of a paltry dollar or so.

He was dressed with more care than on the day previous: he wore a dark
suit, the coat to which now swung on a stick over his shoulder, a rubber
collar, a tie of orange brocade erected on a superstructure of cardboard;
his head was covered by a hard, black felt hat, pushed back from his
sweating brow, and his trousers hung from a pair of obviously
home-knitted, yarn suspenders. He shifted the stick from right to left.
His revolver dragged chafing against a leg, and he removed it and thrust
it into a pocket of the coat.

He followed by turn an old rutted postroad and faint, forest trails, and
shortened distances by breaking through the trackless underbrush, watching
subconsciously for rattlesnakes. The sun slowly declined, its rays fell
diagonally, lengthening, through the trees; in a glade the air seemed
filled with gold dust; the sky burned in a single flame of apricot. The
air, rather than grow dark, appeared to thicken with raw color, with mauve
and ultramarine, silver and cinnabar.

When he arrived at the little, deeply-grassed plain that held Sprucesap,
it was bathed in a flaring after-glow, a magical, floating light. A double
row of board structures faced each other across a street of raw clay and
narrow, wood sidewalks; they were, for the most part, unpainted, hasty
erections of a single story. A building labelled the Steel Spud Hotel was
more pretentious. The others were eating houses, stores with small windows
filled with a threatening miscellany--revolvers, leather slung shots and
brass knuckles, besides lumbering boots, gaudy Mackinaw jackets, gleaming
knives and ammunition. Beyond the street a single car track ran
precariously over the green, and ended abruptly, without roadbed or
visible terminus; at one side was a rude platform, on the other a great
pile of bark, rotting from long exposure--the result of some artificial
condition of the market, the spite of powerful and vindictive merchants.

A second hotel stood alone, beyond the car tracks, and there Gordon
removed the marks of his journey, resettled his collar and the resplendent
tie. He felt in his coat for the revolver, in order to transfer it to a
more convenient pocket.... Its bulk, apparently, evaded his fingers. His
search quickened--it had gone! He had lost it somewhere on his long,
devious passage of Cheap Mountain. Without it he would be in the power of
any spindling gambler who faced a dishonest ace. It would be necessary to
procure another weapon before proceeding with his purpose ... ten dollars,
perhaps fifteen; revolvers were highly priced in the turbulent distant
wild. Could he afford to lose that amount from his slender store of
dollars? Intact it was absurdly inadequate. He debated the choice--on one
hand the peril of gambling unarmed, on the other his desperate need for
money. Once more he considered Clare: in the end his arrogance of manhood
brought a decision--he would preserve the money for play. He was, he
thought insolently of himself, quick as a copperhead snake, and as
dangerous. After supper he sat on the porch, twisting and consuming
cigarettes, waiting for the night.




X


Large kerosene lamps dilated by tin reflectors lit the front of the Steel
Spud. In their radiance he saw the gaily-attired form of a woman. She wore
a white hat, with a sweeping, white ostrich plume, which hid her face with
the exception of a retreating chin and prominent, carmine lips; while a
fat, unwieldy body was covered by a waist of Scotch plaid silk--lines and
squares of black and primary colors--and a short, scant skirt of blue
broadcloth that, drawn up by her knees, exposed small feet in white kid
and heavy ankles.

Gordon Makimmon paused, and she leaned forward to meet his challenging
gaze. "Just in from camp?" she inquired, in a voice hoarse, repellent,
conciliatory, and with a mechanical grimace which he identified as a
smile. He stopped at the invitation in her tones, and nodded. "And looking
for a good time," he further informed her; "perhaps a little game."

"Stop right where you are," she declared. "You've found them both." He
mounted to the porch, and shook her extended hand, cushioned with fat,
and oddly damp and lifeless. He could see her countenance now--it was
plaster white with insignificant features and rose like an amorphous
column from a swollen throat, a nose like a dab of putty, eyes obscured by
drooping, pouchy lids, leaden-hued.

"It's a good thing you seen me," she told him, endeavoring to establish a
relationship of easy confidence, "instead of them diseased Mags down the
street. Shall we have a little drink upstairs?"

"It's early," he negligently interposed; "how about a turn of the cards
first? Do you know any one who would take a hand?"

"I got my friend here, and there's a gentleman at the hotel would
accommodate us. They're inside." She rose, and moved toward the door,
waving him to follow. Her slow, clumsy body and chinless, full-lidded head
reminded him of a turtle; she gave a still deeper amphibious
impression--there was something markedly cold-blooded, inhuman, deleted,
in her incongruous, gaudy bulk--an impression of a low, primitive
organism, the subtle smell of primal mud.

"Jake!" she called at the entrance to the crude hotel office; "Jake! Mr.
Ottinger! here's a gentleman wants a little game."

Two men hastily rose and advanced toward the door. The first, Jake, was
small, with the narrow, high shoulders, the long, pale face, the long,
pale hands, of a cripple. The other, a young man with a sodden countenance
discolored by old purplish bruises, wore a misfitting suit that drew
across heavy, bowed shoulders, thick, powerful arms. He regarded Gordon
Makimmon with no light dawning upon his lowering face; no greeting
disturbed the dark, hard line of his mouth. But the other, with an
apparently hearty, stereotyped flow of words, applauded Gordon's design,
approved his qualities of sportsmanship, courage.

"Give me the man from the woods for an open-handed sport," he vociferated;
"he ain't a fool neither, he's wise to the time of night. The city crowd,
the wise ones, are the real ringside marks."

"Come up to my room," the woman directed from the foot of a stairway;
"where no amateur John Condons will tell us how to play our cards. I got
some good liquor, too."

In her room she lit a small lamp, which proved insufficient, and Mr.
Ottinger brought a second from his quarters. Gordon found himself in a
long, narrow chamber furnished with two wooden beds, two identical,
insecure bureaus, stands with wash basins and pitchers, and a table. The
floor, the walls, the ceiling, were resinous yellow pine, and gave out a
hot, dry smell from which there was no escape but the door, for the room
was without other outlet.

A preliminary drink was indispensable; and, served in two glasses and a
cracked toothbrush mug--Mr. Ottinger elected to imbibe his "straight" from
the bottle--it was drunk with mutual assurances of tender regard. "Happy
days," the woman pronounced. Only three chairs were available, and after
some shuffling, appropriate references to "honest and plain" country
accommodations, the table was ranged by a bed on which Em--"Call me Em,"
she had invited Gordon, "let's be real homelike,"--seated herself.

The smaller man ostentatiously broke the seal from a new pack of cards,
dexterously spreading them across the table. His hands, Gordon saw, were
extraordinarily supple, and emanated a sickly odor of glycerine. His
companion's were huge and misshapen, but they, too, were surprisingly
deft, quick.

"What'll it be?" Jake demanded; "Jackpots; stud; straight draw--"

"Hell, let's throw cold hands," Mr. Ottinger interrupted, "chop the
trimmings. We're here for the stuff, ain't we?" He was immediately
reprehended for his brusque, unsociable manner.

"He's got the idea, though," Gordon approved; "we're here for the stuff."
It was finally arranged that poker hands should be dealt, a draw allowed,
and the cards shown, the highest cards to take the visible money. "A
dollar a go?" Jake queried, cutting for the deal. On the bed by the
woman's side was a tarnished, silver bag, with an ornate, meretricious
clasp; her two companions produced casual rolls of paper money; and Gordon
detached five dollars from the slender amount of his wage, his paramount
capital. On a washstand, within easy reach, stood the bottle of whisky
flanked by the motley array of drinking vessels.

Gordon Makimmon's five dollars vanished in as many minutes. Oppressed by
consuming anxiety he could scarcely breathe in the close, stale air. Em
gambled with an affectation of careless indifference; she asked in an
off-hand manner for cards; paid her losses with a loud laugh. Jake
invariably gave one rapid glance at his hand, and then threw it down upon
the table without separating his discard. Mr. Ottinger, it was plain, was
superstitious--he edged his hand open by imperceptible degrees until the
denominations of the cards were visible, then hurriedly closed them from
sight; often he didn't look at his draw until all the hands were exposed.
He wrinkled his face in painful efforts of concentration, protruded a
thick and unsavory tongue. At the loose corners of Jake's mouth flecks of
saliva gathered whitely; in the fleering light of the kerosene the shadows
on his face were cobalt. The woman's face shone with drops of perspiration
that formed slowly and rolled like a flash over her plastered skin.

Another round of drinks was negotiated, adding to the fiery discomfort of
the sealed room, of the dry, dead atmosphere. Gordon won back his five
dollars, and gained five more. "Let's make it two a throw," the woman
proposed. The thickset, young man remuttered the period that they were
there for the stuff. "Otty will have his little joke," she proclaimed.

"It's not funny," he protested seriously.

"Two?" Jake demanded of Gordon. The latter nodded.




XI


Late in the night they were still playing without a change in their
positions. Em still perspired; but Mr. Ottinger no longer protruded his
tongue, a sullen anger was evident in his every move; Jake's affable flow
of conversation was hushed; Gordon's face set. It was, indisputably, not
funny--he had won nearly two hundred dollars. "Make it ten?" Jake queried.
The others nodded. Now Gordon had two hundred and twenty dollars; an
extraordinary, overwhelming luck presided over his cards, he won more
frequently than the other three together. A tense silence enveloped the
latter: they shuffled, demanded cards, threw down their hands, in a
hurried, disorganized fashion. They glanced, each at the other, swiftly;
it was evident that a common idea, other than the game, possessed them.
Jake hovered a breath longer than necessary over the bottle, then pressed
a drink upon Gordon. He refused; this, he recognized, was not a time for
dissipation; he needed every faculty.

Two hundred and sixty dollars. The air of suppression, of tension,
increased. Gordon's only concern now was to get away, to take the money
with him.

Em shuffled in a slipshod, inattentive manner; Mr. Ottinger opened his
hand boldly, faced his bad luck with a stony eye; Jake labored under a
painful excitement, obviously not connected with his losses; his long,
waxy fingers quivered, a feverish point of fire flickered in either
cadaverous cheek; his eyes glowed between hollow, sunken temples. "Four,"
he demanded, with shaking lips. Mr. Ottinger rapped out a request for one.
"I'm satisfied," Gordon said.

"Don't that sucker beat hell!" Em declared, the solicitous manner that,
earlier in the evening, had marked her manner toward Gordon, carelessly
discarded. "I'm taking three." A sudden, visible boredom fell upon her as
she glanced at her filled hand. "Leave us double it," she remarked. Gordon
nodded, and she threw her hand upon the table; it held four nines. She
reached her fat, chalky arm toward the money, but Gordon was before her.
"Four queens," he shot out, grasping the crumpled bills.

Em cursed; then followed a short, awkward silence. It was Ottinger's deal,
but he did not pick up the scattered cards. Gordon gathered himself
alertly, measuring the distance to the door. "I've got enough," he
remarked; "I'm going to quit."

"You got enough, all right," Em agreed. "Now, how'd you like to have a
real good time?" She disposed herself upon her elbow, so that the sagging
bulk of her body was emphasized through its straining apparel; one leg,
incredible, leviathan, was largely visible.

"I've had enough," Gordon repeated; "I'll be moving."

Em rose quickly, losing her air of coquetry. Gordon was facing the men,
and was unprepared for the heavy blow she dealt upon the back of his neck.
"Hang it on him, Otty!" she cried excitedly.

Mr. Ottinger shoved the card table from his path. It was now evident that
it was, precisely, to "hang it on" whoever might be elected for that
delicate attention which formed Otty's purpose, profession, preoccupation,
in life. He was, for a heavy man, active; and, before Gordon Makimmon
could put out a protective arm, he returned the latter to the
perpendicular with a jarring blow on the chin. Jake whipped out from a
place of concealment on his person a plaited leather weapon with a
globular end.

It was Jake, Gordon instinctively knew, who threatened him most; he could
easily stop the hulking shape before him. He regained his poise, and
returned blow for blow with Mr. Ottinger; neither man guarded, both were
solely intent upon marking, crippling, the other. A chair fell, sliding
across the floor; a washstand collapsed with a splintering crash of china,
a miniature flood. Em stood on the outskirts of the conflict, armed with
the whisky bottle; Jake crouched watchful with the leather club. Gordon
cut his opponent's face with short, vicious jabs; he was, as customary,
cold--he saw clearly where every blow fell; he saw Otty's nose grotesquely
shapeless and blackened; he felt Otty's teeth cut the skin of his knuckles
and break off; he heard his involuntary gasp as he struck him a
hammer-like blow over the heart.

Mr. Ottinger, in return, hit him frequently and with effect. Gordon was
conscious of a warm, gummy tide spreading over his face, he saw with
difficulty through rapidly closing eyes. "For Cri's sake," Otty gasped,
"get to him, the town'll be on us."

Em made an ineffectual lunge with the bottle. Gordon swung the point of
his elbow into her side, and she sat on the bed with a "G-G-God!" Jake hit
him with the club on the shoulder blade; numbness radiated from the struck
point; there was a loss of power in the corresponding arm. Jake hit him
again, and a stabbing pain entered his side and stayed apparently tangled
in splintered bone. He paused for a moment, and all three fell upon him,
beating, clubbing, kicking. He fought on, now rapidly losing power. The
woman threw herself on his back, forced him to his knees. "Won't none of
you do for him?" she complained hysterically. She pressed his head into
her breast, and Mr. Ottinger hit him below and just back of his ear.
Gordon slipped out full length on the floor.

He was waveringly conscious, but he had lost all interest, all sense of
personal connection, with the proceedings. He dully watched Ottinger draw
back, tenderly fingering his damaged features; he saw Em breathing
stormily, empurpled. Jake, with the crimson flames in his long, pallid
mask, the white saliva flecking his jaw, hung over him with a glassy,
intent stare.

"Get the stuff," the practical Ottinger urged; "it's the stuff we're
after. Don't go bug again."

"Jake don't hear you," Em told him, "he's off. I'm glad the fella's going
to be fixed, he jolted me something fierce."

Jake swung the little, flexuous club softly against his palm, and Gordon
suddenly realized that the cripple intended to kill him.--That was the
lust which transfigured the gambler's countenance, which lit the fires in
the deathly cheeks, set the long fingers shaking. Gordon considered the
idea, and, obscurely, it troubled him, moved him a space from his apathy.
Instinctively, in response to a sudden movement of the figure above him,
he drew his arm up in front of his head; and an intolerable pain shot up
through his shoulder and flared, blindingly, in his eyes. It pierced his
indifference, set in motion his reason, his memory; he realized the
necessity, the danger, of his predicament ... the money!--he must guard
it, take it back with him. Above, in a heated, orange mist, the woman's
face loomed blank and inhuman; farther back Mr. Ottinger's features were
indistinctly visible.

He must rise....

His groping hand caught hold of the rung of the chair, and, with herculean
labor, he turned and raised himself a fraction from the floor. Jake
directed a hasty blow at his head that missed him altogether. His other
hand caught the chair, and he dragged himself dizzily into a kneeling
posture. A sudden change swept over the three above him.

"Nail him where he is!" Em cried excitedly; "he's getting up on you."
Gordon's hands moved uncertainly upward on the chair; his knees rose from
the floor. A shower of blows fell on him; the woman beat him with her
pudgy fists; Mr. Ottinger was kicking at him; Jake was weeping, and
endeavoring to get room in which to swing his club.

Gordon had one foot on the floor.

"Give me a chance at him," Jake implored; "give me a chance. God, if I had
a knife."

If they took away the chair, Gordon knew, he was lost. He clung to it;
pressed his breast against it; crept upward by means of it, slowly,
slowly, through a storm of battering hands. It seemed to him that, in
rising, he was shouldering aside the entire weight, the forces, of a
universe, bent on his destruction, and against which he was determined to
prevail. It was as though his will, the vitality which animated him, which
was his soul, stood aside from his beaten and suffering body, and, with a
cold, a cruel, detachment, commanded it upright.

The woman's bulk got in Jake's way, and he struck her across the eyes with
the back of his hand, consigning her to eternal hell. Mr. Ottinger,
confused by the irregularity of the turmoil, worked inefficiently,
swinging at random his hard fists, kicking impartially.

Gordon now had both feet upon the floor; he straightened up. For a breath
the three stood motionless, livid; and in that instant his hand fell upon
the door knob, he staggered back into the hall, carrying with him a vision
of his brocaded tie lying upon the floor.




XII


He stumbled hastily down the stairway, and found the narrow porch, the
serene, enveloping night; down the street lamps made blots of brightness,
but, beyond, the obscurity was profound, unbroken. Wave after wave of
nausea swept over him, he clung to a porch support with cold sweat
starting through the blood that smeared his countenance, stiffened in his
shirt, that was warm upon his side. The sound of footfalls, sharp,
repressed voices from above, stirred him into a fresh realization of his
precarious position. The gamblers would follow him, rob him with impunity
in the shadows of Sprucesap's lawless street, drag him behind the angle of
a building, where Jake would have ample scope for the swinging of his
leathered lead....

He lurched down to the street, and silently merged into the awaiting
night.

At dawn he appeared from a thicket, a mile beyond Sprucesap on the road to
Greenstream, and negotiated successfully a ride on a load of fragrant
upland hay to a point within a few miles of his destination. His coat,
soiled and torn, was buttoned across a bare throat, for his shirt had been
ripped into bandages; his face, apparently, had been harrowed for a red
planting; he moved awkwardly, breathed with a gasp from a stabbing pain in
the side ... but he moved, breathed. He drank with long delight from a
sparkling spring. He had the money, two hundred and eighty dollars, safely
in his pocket.




XIII


The afternoon was waning when he gazed again into the deep, sombrous rift
of Greenstream: from where Gordon stood, on the heights, in the flooding
sun, it appeared to be already evening below. As he descended the
mountainside the cool shadows rose about him, enveloping him in the
quietude, the sense of security, which brooded over the withdrawn
valley--the resplendent mirage of nature kind, beneficent, the illusion of
Nature as a tender and loving parent ... of Nature, as imminent, as
automatic, as a landslip crushing a path to the far, secret resting place
of its destiny.

Dr. Pelliter's light carriage with its pair of weedy, young horses stood
hitched by the road above the Makimmon dwelling; and, on entering the
house, Gordon found Clare in bed and Pelliter seated at her side. A
gaily-patched quilt hid all but her head. She smiled at Gordon through her
pale mask of suffering; but her greeting turned to swift concern at his
battered countenance. "An accident," he explained impatiently.

The doctor greeted him seriously. He had, Gordon knew, a sovereign and
inevitable remedy for all the ills of the flesh--pain, he argued, and
disease were inseparable, subdue the first and the latter ceased to exist
as an active ill, and a dexterously wielded hypodermic needle left behind
him a trail of narcotized and relieved sufferers. Bottles of patent
medicines, exhilarating or numbing as the purchaser might require, lined
the shelves of his drug store.

But now his customary, soothing smile was absent, the small, worn case
that contained the glittering syringe and minute bottles filled with white
or vivid yellow pellets was not to be seen.

"Clare here's gone and got herself real miserable," he stated, rising and
beckoning Gordon to follow him to the porch. "She's bad," he pronounced
outside; "that pain's got the best of her, and it's getting the best of
me. She ought to be cut, but she's so weak, it's gone so long, that I'm
kind of slow about opening her. And the truth is, Gordon, if I was
successful she wouldn't have a chance of getting well here--it'll take
expert nursing, awful nice food; and then, at the shortest, she would be
in bed a couple of months. She ought to go to the hospital in Stenton.
That's the real truth. I'm telling you the facts, Gordon; we can't handle
her here, she'd die on us."

Gordon only half comprehended the other's words--Clare dangerously
ill ... a question of dying, hospitals. She had suffered for so long that,
without losing his sympathy for her, it had seemed to him her inevitable
condition. It had fallen naturally upon him to care for her, guard her
against damp, prevent her from lifting objects beyond her strength. These
continuous, small attentions held an important place in his existence--he
thought about her in a mind devoted substantially to himself, and it
brought him a glow of contentment, a pleasant feeling of ministration and
importance. It had not occurred to him that Clare might grow worse, that
she might, in fact, die. The idea filled him with sudden dismay. His heart
contracted with a sharp hurt. "The hospital," he echoed dully, "Stenton."

"By rights," the doctor iterated; "of course we'll do what we can here,
she might last for a couple of years more without cutting; and then,
again, her heart might just quit. Still--"

"What would the hospital cost?" Gordon asked, almost unaware of having
pronounced the words.

"It'd be dear--two hundred and some dollars anyway, and the money on the
nail. The nursing would count up; then there would be something for
operating, if it was only a little ... a lot of things you don't allow for
would turn up."

Two hundred and more dollars! Gordon had a fleeting vision, against the
empurpling banks, the dark, sliding water, and the mountainous wall
capped with dissolving gold beyond, of a room filled with the hot glow of
kerosene lamps; he saw Jake's twitching, murderous countenance above
him.... Two hundred dollars! He had two hundred and eighty dollars in his
pocket. He had another vision--of Simmons; it was two hundred and fifty
dollars that the latter wanted, must have, to-morrow. But Simmons swiftly
faded before Clare's need, the pressure of sickness.

"She couldn't go down in the stage," he muttered, "the shaking would kill
her before ever she got there."

"I'll drive her to Stenton, Gordon," the doctor volunteered, "if you've
got the money handy."

"I've got her," Gordon Makimmon declared grimly.

"I'll take her right to the hospital and give her to the doctor in charge.
Everything will be done for her comfort. She has an elegant chance of
pulling through, there. And you can see her when you go down with the
stage--" Pelliter suddenly stopped; he appeared disconcerted by what he
had said.

"Well," Gordon demanded, his attention held by the other's manner, "can't
I?"

"You were away from Greenstream yesterday and to-day," the doctor replied
evasively, "you didn't hear ... oh, there's nothing in it if you didn't.
I heard that Simmons had had you taken off the stage. Did you have trouble
with Buckley, cut him with a whip? Buck has been blowing about showing you
a thing or two."

A feeling of angry dismay enveloped Gordon. He had recognized, obscurely,
that Simmons and old man Hollidew dominated the community, but he had
never before come in actual contact with their arbitrary power, he had
never before been faced by the overmastering weapon of their material
possessions, the sheer weight of their wealth. It stirred him to revolt,
elemental and bitter; every instinct rose against the despotic power which
threatened to overwhelm him.

"By God!" he exclaimed, "but they will find that I'm no sheep to drive
into their lot and shear!"

"Now, about Clare," the doctor interposed.

"When will you come for her?" Gordon inquired. He took from his pocket the
roll of money he had won at Sprucesap, and counted two hundred dollars,
which he tended to the doctor.

"To-morrow, about seven. Everything will be done for her, Gordon. I reckon
that's only an empty splash about the stage."

The dusk had thickened in Clare's room; he could scarcely distinguish her
face white against the darkened squares of the quilt. "Whoever will get
your supper," she worried, when he had told her; "and the cow'll need
bedding, and those cheeses brought in off the roof, and--"

He closed her mouth with a gentle palm. "I've done 'em all a hundred
times," he declared. "We're going to get you right, this spell, Clare," he
proclaimed; "you'll get professional, real stylish, care at Stenton."

She rose, trembling, on her arms. "Are they going to cut at me?" she
asked.

The lie on his lips perished silently before her grave tones. "It's not
rightly a dangerous operation," he protested; "thousands come out of it
every year."

"Gordon, I'm afeared of it."

"No, you're not, Clare Makimmon; there's not a drop of fear in you."

"It's not just death I'm afeared of, it's--oh; you will never understand
for being a man," her voice lowered instinctively; "somehow I hate the
thought of those strange men hacking and spoiling my body. That's just
foolishness, I know, and my time's pretty well gone for foolishness. I've
always sort of tended my body, Gordon, and kept it white and soft. I
thought if a man asked me in spite of--well, my face, he could take pride
in me underneath. But that's all done with; I ought to be glad for
the ... Gordon!" she exclaimed more energetically, "it will cost a heap
of money; how will you get it? don't borrow."

"I got it," he interrupted her tersely, "and I didn't borrow it neither."




XIV


He woke at dawn. The whippoorwills, the frogs and crickets, were silent,
and the sharp, sweet song of a mocking bird throbbed from a hedge. It was
dark in the valley, but, high above, the air was already brightening with
the sun; a symmetrical cloud caught the solar rays and flushed rosy
against silver space. The valley turned from indistinct blue to grey, to
sparkling green. The sun gilded the peaks of the western range, and
slipped slowly down, spilling into the depth. It was almost cold, the pump
handle, the rough sward, the foliage beyond, were drenched with white dew;
a damp, misty veil lifted from the surface of the stream.

Clare declared that she felt stronger; she dressed, insisted upon frying
his breakfast. "You ought to have somebody in," she asserted later. They
were on the shallow porch, waiting stiffly for the doctor. "But don't get
that eldest of your sister's; last time she wore my sateen waist and run
the colors."

Just as she was leaving he slipped twenty dollars into her hand. "Write
when you want more," he directed; "and I'll be down to see you ... yes,
often ... the stage." A leaden depression settled over him as the doctor's
carriage took her from sight. The house to which he turned was deserted,
lonely. He locked the door to her room.




XV


One of the canvas-covered mountain wagons was unloading on the platform
before Simmons' store when Gordon entered the center of the village. A
miscellaneous pile of merchandise was growing, presided over by a clerk
with a pencil and tally book. Valentine Simmons, without his coat, in an
immaculate, starched white waistcoat, stood upon one side.

Gordon, without delay, approached him. "I can give you a hundred dollars,"
he informed the other, exhibiting that sum.

"Two hundred and fifty will be necessary," Simmons informed him concisely,
"to-day."

"Come to reason--"

Valentine Simmons turned his back squarely upon him. A realization of the
uselessness of further words possessed Gordon; he returned the money to
his pocket. The contemptuous neglect of the other lit the ever-trimmed
lamp of his temper. "What's this," he demanded, "I hear about driving
stage? about Buck boasting around that he had had me laid off?"

"That's not correct," Simmons informed him smoothly; "Buckley has no power
to do that ... the owners of the privilege decided that you were too
unreliable."

"Then it's true," Gordon interrupted him, "I'm off?" Simmons nodded.
Gordon's temper swelled and flared whitely before his vision; rage
possessed him utterly; without balance, check, he was no more than an
insensate force in the grip of his mastering passion. He would stop that
miserable, black heart forever. Old Valentine Simmons' lips tightened, his
fingers twitched; he turned his back deliberately upon Gordon. The metal
buckle which held the strap of his waistcoat caught the sun and reflected
it into Gordon's eyes. "How many gross pink celluloid rattles?" the
storekeeper demanded of the clerk.

Gordon Makimmon's hand crept toward his pocket ... then he remembered--he
had lost that which he sought ... on the side of Cheap Mountain. If
Simmons would turn, say something further, taunt him, he would kill him
with his hands. But Simmons did none of these things; instead he walked
slowly, unharmed, into the store.




XVI


Gordon had intended to avoid the vicinity of the Courthouse on the day of
the sale of his home, but an intangible attraction held him in its
neighborhood. He sat by the door to the office of the _Greenstream Bugle_,
diagonally across the street. Within, the week's edition was going to
press; a burly young individual was turning the cylinders by hand, while
the editor and owner dexterously removed the printed sheets from the
press. The office was indescribably grimy, the rude ceiling was hung with
dusty cobwebs, the windows obscured by a grey film. A small footpress
stood to the left of the entrance, on the right were ranged typesetter's
cases with high, precarious stools, a handpress for proof and a table to
hold the leaded forms. These, with the larger press, an air-tight sheet
iron stove and some nondescript chairs, completed the office furnishings.
Over all hung the smell of mingled grease, ink, and damp paper, flat and
penetrating.

Without, the sun shone ardently; it cast a rich pattern of light and shade
on the Courthouse lawn and the small assemblage of merely idle or
interested persons gathered for the sale. The sheriff stood facing them
under the towering pillars of the portico; his voice rang clearly through
the air. To Gordon the occasion, the loud sing-song of the sheriff,
appeared unreal, dreamlike; he listened incredulously to the meager
cataloguing of his dwelling, the scant acreage, with an innate sense of
outrage, of a shameful violation of his privacy. He was still unable to
realize that his home and his father's, the clearing that his grandfather
had cut from the wild, was actually passing from his possession. He
summoned in vain the emotions which, he told himself, were appropriate.
The profound discouragement within him would not be lifted to emotional
heights: lassitude settled over him like a fog.

The bidding began in scattered, desultory fashion, mounting slowly by
hundreds. Eighteen hundred dollars was offered, and there the price
obstinately hung.

The owner of the _Bugle_ appeared at his door, and nodded mysteriously to
Gordon, who rose and listlessly obeyed the summons. The former closed the
door with great care, and lowered a faded and torn shade over the front
window. Then he retired to a small space divided from the body of the
office by a curtain suspended from a sagging wire. He brought his face
close to Gordon's ear. "Have a nip?" he asked, in a solemn, guarded
fashion. Gordon assented.

A bottle was produced from a cupboard, and, together with a tin cup,
handed to him.

"Luck," he pronounced half-heartedly, raising the cup to his lips. When
the other had gone through a similar proceeding the process was carefully
reversed--the bottle was returned to the cupboard, the tin cup suspended
upon its hook, the steps retraced and the curtain once more coaxed up, the
door thrown open.

The group on the Courthouse lawn were stringing away; on the steps the
sheriff was conversing with Valentine Simmons' brother, a drab individual
who performed the storekeeper's public services and errands. The sale had
been consummated. The long, loose-jointed dwelling accumulated by
successive generations of Makimmons had passed out of their possession.

A poignant feeling of loss flashed through Gordon's apathy; suddenly his
eyes burned, and an involuntary sharp inspiration resembled a gasp, a sob.
A shadow ran over the earth. The owner of the _Bugle_ stepped out and
gazed upward. At the sight of the soft, grey clouds assembling above an
expression of determined purpose settled upon his dark countenance. He
hurried into the office, and reappeared a few minutes later, a peaked
corduroy hat drawn over his eyes, a piece of pasteboard in one hand, and,
under his arm, a long, slender bundle folded in black muslin. The
pasteboard he affixed to the door; it said, "Gone fishing. Back
to-morrow."




XVII


Minus certain costs and the amount of his indebtedness to Valentine
Simmons, Gordon received the sum of one thousand and sixty dollars for the
sale of his house. He was still sleeping in it, but the day was near when
he must vacate. The greater part of his effects were gathered under a
canvas cover on the porch, Clare's personal belongings were still
untouched in her room. He must wait for the disposition of those until he
had learned the result of the operation.

He heard from Clare on an evening when he was sitting on his lonely porch,
twisting his dextrous cigarettes, and brooding darkly on the mischances
that had overtaken him of late. It was hot and steamy in the valley, no
stars were visible; the known world, muffled in a close and imponderable
cloak, was without any sign of life, of motion, of variety. Gordon heard
footsteps descending heavily from the road, a bulky shape loomed up before
him and disclosed the features of Dr. Pelliter.

He greeted Gordon awkwardly, and then fell momentarily silent. "She sent
you a message, Gordon," he pronounced at last.

"Clare's dead," Gordon replied involuntarily. So far away, he thought, and
alone.... He must go at once and fetch her home. He rose.

"Clare said," the doctor continued, "if your sister's eldest was to come
in to give her the sateen waist." An extended silence fell upon the men;
the whippoorwills sobbed and sobbed; the stream gurgled past its banks.
Then:

"By God!" Gordon said passionately, "I don't know but I'm not glad Clare's
gone--Simmons has got our house, I'm not driving stage ... Clare would
have sorrowed herself out of living. Life's no jig tune."

The doctor left. Gordon continued to sit on the porch; at intervals he
mechanically rolled and lit cigarettes, which glowed for a moment and went
out, unsmoked. The feeling of depression that had cloaked him during the
few days past changed imperceptibly to one of callous indifference toward
existence in general. The seeds of revolt, of instability, which Clare and
a measure of worldly position, of pressure, had held in abeyance,
germinated in his disorganized mind, his bitter sense of injustice and
injury. He hardened, grew defiant ... the strain of lawlessness brought so
many years before from warring Scotch highlands rose bright and
troublesome in him.




XVIII


Clare's body was brought back to Greenstream on the following day. His
sister and her numerous brood descended solicitously upon Gordon later;
neighbors, kindly and officious, arrived ... Clare was laid out. There
were sibilant, whispered conversations about a mislaid petticoat with a
mechlin hem; drawers were searched and the missing garment triumphantly
unearthed; silk mitts were discussed, discarded; the white shoes--real
buck and a topnotch article--forced on. At last Clare was exhibited in the
room that had been hers. There was no place in the Makimmon dwelling for
general assemblage but the kitchen, and it had been pointed out by certain
delicate souls that the body and the preparations for the funeral repast
would accord but doubtfully. Besides, the kitchen was too hot.

Clare's peaked, blue-white countenance was withdrawn and strange above a
familiar, harsh black silk dress; her hands, folded upon her flat breast,
lay in a doubled attitude dreadfully impossible to life. A thin locket of
gold hung on a chain about her still throat. The odor of June roses that
filled the corners, a subdued, red riot of the summer, the sun without,
was overpowering.

As the hour appointed for the funeral approached a gratifying number of
people assembled: the women clustered about the porch, hovered about the
door which opened upon the remains; while the men gathered in a group
above the stream, lingered by the fence. A row of dusty, hooded vehicles,
rough-coated, intelligent horses, were hitched above.

The minister took his station by a table on which a glass of water had
been placed upon a vivid red cover: he portentously cleared his throat.
"The Lord giveth," he began.... It was noon, pellucidly clear, still, hot;
the foliage on the mountainsides was like solid walls of greenery rising
to a canopy, a veil, of azure. Partridges whistled clear and flutelike
from a nearby cover; the stream flashed in the sun, mirroring on its
unwrinkled surface the stiff, somber figures gathered for the funeral.

The droning voice of the preacher drew out interminably through the
sultry, golden hour. Women sniffed sharply, dabbled with toil-hardened
hands at their eyes; the men, standing in the grass, shuffled their feet
uneasily. "Let us pray," the speaker dropped upon his knees, and his voice
rose, grew more insistent, shrill with a touch of hysteria. From the back
of the house a hen clucked in an excited, aggravated manner.

Gordon Makimmon stood at the end of the porch, morosely ill at ease: the
memories of Clare as a girl, as a woman going about and performing the
duties of their home, the dignity of his sense of loss and sorrow, had
vanished before this public ceremony; they had sunk to perfunctory,
conventional emotions before the glib flood of the paid eulogist, the
facile emotion of the women.

Suddenly he saw, partially hidden by the dull dresses of the older women,
a white, ruffled skirt, the turn of a young shoulder, a drooping straw
hat. A meager, intervening form moved, and he saw that Lettice Hollidew
had come to his sister's funeral. He wondered, in a momentary, instinctive
resentment, what had brought her among this largely negligent gathering.
She had barely known Clare; Gordon was not certain that she had ever been
in their house. He could see her plainly now--she stood clasping white
gloves with firm, pink hands; her gaze was lowered upon the uneven
flooring of the porch. He could see the soft contour of her chin, a
shimmer of warm, brown hair. She was crisply fresh, incredibly young in
the group of gaunt, worn forms; her ruffled fairness was an affront to the
thin, rigid shoulders in rusty black, the sallow, deeply-bitten faces of
the other women.

She looked up, and surprised his intent gaze: she flushed slightly, the
gloves were twisted into a knot, but her eyes were unwavering--they held
an appeal to his understanding, his sympathy, not to be mistaken. It was
evident that that gaze cost her an effort. She was, Gordon remembered, a
diffident girl. His resentment evaporated.... He speculated upon her
reason for coming; and, speculating, involuntarily stood more erect. With
a swift, surreptitious motion he straightened his necktie.

The Greenstream cemetery lay aslant on a rise above the village. From the
side of the raw, yellow clay hole into which they lowered the coffin
Gordon could see, beyond the black form of the minister, over the rows of
uneven roofs, the bulk of the Courthouse, the sweep of the valley, glowing
with multifarious vitality.

"Dust to dust," said the minister; "ashes to ashes," in the midst of the
warm, the resplendent, the palpitating day. One of Gordon's nephews--a
shock of tow hair rising rebellious against an application of soap,
stubby, scarred hands, shoes obviously come by in their descent from more
mature extremities--who had been audibly snuffling for the past ten
minutes, burst into a lugubrious, frightened wail. Through the solemn,
appointed periods of the minister cut the sibilant, maternal promise of a
famous "whopping."




XIX


Gordon thought again of Lettice Hollidew as he was sitting for the last
evening on the porch of the dwelling that had passed out of his hands.
Twilight had poured through the valley, thickening beneath the trees, over
the stream; the mountain ranges were dark, dusty blue against a maroon
sky. He recalled the sympathy, the plea for comprehension, in Lettice's
gaze, lifted, for the first time, frankly against his own.

Hers was not the feminine type which attracted him; he preferred a more
flamboyant beauty, ready repartee, the conscious presence and employment
of the lure of sex. His taste had been fed by the paid women of Stenton,
the few, blowsy, loose females of the mountains; these and the surface
chatter of the stage, and Clare, formed his sole knowledge, experience,
surmising, of women. He recalled Lettice condescendingly; she did not stir
his pulses, appeal to his imagination. Yet she moved his pride, his
inordinate self-esteem. It had been on his account, and not Clare's, that
she had come to the funeral. The little affair with Buckley Simmons had
captured her attention and interest; he had not thought Lettice so
impressionable.

It was, he remembered, Wednesday night--there would be prayer-meeting in
the Methodist Church; the Hollidews were Methodists; women, mostly,
attended prayer meeting. If he strolled about in that vicinity he might
see Lettice at the close of the service, thank her for attending poor
Clare's funeral.

He rose and negligently made his way through the soft gloom past the
Courthouse to the Methodist Church. The double doors were open, and a
flood of hot radiance rolled out into the night, together with the
familiar tones of old Martin Seeker loudly importuning his invisible,
inscrutable Maker. There were no houses opposite the church, and, balanced
obscurely on the fence of split rails against the unrelieved night, a row
of young men smoked redly glowing cigarettes; while, on the ground below
them, shone the lanterns by the aid of which they escorted the various
maidens of their choice on their various obscure ways.

The prayer stopped abruptly, and, after a momentary silence, the dolorous
wail of a small organ abetted a stridulent concourse of human voices
lifted in lamentable song, a song in which they were desirous of being
winged like the dove.

The sound mounted in a grievous minor into the profound stillness, the
peace, of the valley, of the garment of stars drawn from wall to wall.
There was something animal-like in its long-drawn, quavering note--like
the baying of a dog out of the midst of his troubled darkness at the
remote, silver serenity, the disturbing, effortless splendor, of the
moon.

The line of figures without, sitting on the fence with their feet caught
under the second rail, smoked in imperturbable, masculine indifference.
There was, shortly, a stir within, a moving blur of figures in the opened
doors, and the lanterns swung alertly to the foot of the steps, where, one
by one, the bobbing lights, detached from the constellation, vanished into
the night.

Almost immediately Gordon saw Lettice Hollidew standing at the entrance,
awaiting a conversing group of older women at the head of the aisle. She
recognized him, and descended immediately with a faint, questioning smile.
The smile vanished as she greeted him; her eyes were dark on a pale, still
countenance. He noticed that she was without the heady perfume which
stirred him as the other girls passed, and he was silently critical of the
omission.

He delivered quickly, with a covert glance above, the customary period
about seeing her home. Immediately she walked with him into the obscurity,
the mystery, of the night.

"It was certainly nice-hearted of you to come to Clare's funeral," he
began.

Close beside him she shivered, it might be at the memory of that occasion.
She was without a hat, and he was able to study her profile: it was
irregular, with a low, girlish brow and a nose too heavy for beauty; she
had a full under lip and a strongly modelled chin, a firm line ending in a
generous throat, milk-white in the gloom. Her figure too, he judged, was
too heavy for his standard of feminine charm. His interest in her burned
low, sustained only by what he recognized as a conquest.

She walked slowly and more slowly as he dallied by her side. Almost
subconsciously he adopted the tone by which he endeavored to enlist the
interest of the opposite sex: he repeated in a perfunctory manner the
stereotyped remarks appropriate for such occasions.

She listened intently, with sudden, little glances from a momentarily
lifted gaze. He grew impatient at the absence of the flattering responses
to which he was largely accustomed. And, dropping abruptly his artificial
courtesy, he maintained a sullen silence, quickened his stride. He drew
some satisfaction from the observation that his reticence hurt her. Her
hands caught and strained together; she looked at him with a longer,
questioning gaze.

"I wanted to tell you," she said finally, with palpable difficulty, "how
sorry I am about ... about things; your home, and--and I heard of the
stage, too. It was a shame, you drove beautifully, and took such care of
the passengers."

"It was that care cost me the place," he answered with brutal directness;
"old Simmons did it; him and his precious Buckley."

She stopped with an expression of instant, deep concern. "Oh! I am so
sorry ... then it was my fault. But it's horrid that they should have done
that; that they should be able; it is all wrong--"

"Right nor wrong don't make any figure I've ever discovered," he retorted;
"Valentine Simmons has the power, he's got the money. That's it--money's
the right of things; it took my house away from me, like it's taken away
so many houses, so many farms, in Greenstream--"

"But," she objected timidly, "didn't they owe Mr. Simmons for things? You
see, people borrow, borrow, borrow, and never pay back. My father," she
proceeded with more confusion, "has lost lots of money in that way."

"I can tell you all about that," he informed her bitterly, proceeding to
mimic Simmons' dry, cordial tones, "'Take the goods right along with you,
pay when you like, no hurry between old friends.' Then, when Zebener
Hull's corn failed, 'I'll trouble you for that amount,' the skinflint
says, and sells Zebener out. And what your father's lost," he added more
directly still, "wouldn't take you on the stage to Stenton. Your father
and Simmons have got about everything worth getting in the county; they've
got the money, they've got the land, they've got the men right in their
iron safes. Right and wrong," he sneered, "it's money--"

"Oh! please," she begged, "please don't be so unhappy, so hard. Life isn't
as dreadful as that."

"It's worse," he declared somberly. They turned by Simmons' store, but
continued in the opposite direction from the one-time Makimmon dwelling.
They passed a hedge of roses; the perfume hung heavy-sweet, poignant;
there was apparently no sky, no earth, only a close, purple envelopment,
imminent, palpable, lying languidly, unstirring, in a space without form
or limit and of one color.

Lettice walked silently by his side; he could hear her breathing,
irregular, quick. She was very close to him, then moved suddenly,
consciously, away; but, almost immediately, she drifted back, brushing his
shoulder; it seemed that she returned inevitably, blindly; in the gloom
her gown fluttered like the soft, white wings of a moth against him.

"It's worse," he repeated, his voice loud and harsh, like a discordant
bell clashing in the sostenuto passage of a symphony; "but it's all one
to me--there's nothing else they can take; I'm free, free to sleep or
wake, to be drunk when I like with no responsibility to Simmons or any one
else--"

Her breathing increasingly grew labored, oppressed; a little sob escaped,
softly miserable. She was crying. He was completely callous, indifferent.
They stood before the dark, porchless facade of her home.

"I thought life was so happy," she articulated, facing him; "but now it
hurts me ... here;" he saw her press her hand against the swelling, tender
line of her breast. His theatrical self-consciousness bowed him over the
other hand, pressing upon it a half-calculated kiss. She stood motionless;
he felt rather than saw the intensity of her gaze. "I wish I could mend
the hurt," he began, appropriately, professionally.

He was interrupted by a figure emerging from the obscurity of the house.
Pompey Hollidew peered at them from the low, stone lintel. "Letty," he
pronounced, in a voice at once whining and truculent; "who?--oh! that
Makimmon.... Letty, come in the house." He caught her arm and dragged her
incontinently toward the door. "... rascal," Gordon heard him mutter,
"spendthrift. If you ever walk again with Gordon Makimmon," the old man,
through his daughter, addressed the other, "don't walk back here, don't
come home. Not a dollar of mine shall fall through the pockets of that
shiftless breed."




XX


Clare's funeral deducted a further sum from the amount Gordon had received
for the sale of his home, but he had left still nine hundred and odd
dollars. He revolved in his mind the disposition of this sum, once more
sitting with chair tilted back against the dingy wooden home of the
_Greenstream Bugle_; he rehearsed its possibilities for frugality, for
independence, as a reserve ... or for pleasure. It was the hottest hour of
the day; the prospect before him, the uneven street, the houses beyond,
were coated with dust, gilded by the refulgent sun. No one stirred; a red
cow that had been cropping the grass in the broad, shallow gutter opposite
sank down in the meager shadow of a chance pear tree; even the children
were absent, the piercing, staccato cries of their games unheard.

To Gordon Makimmon Greenstream suddenly appeared insufferably dull, empty;
the thought of monotonous, identical days spun thinly out, the nine
hundred dollars extended to its greatest length, in that banal setting,
suddenly grew unbearable.... There was no life in Greenstream....

The following morning found him on the front seat of the Stenton stage,
sharing with the driver not his customary cigarettes but more portentous
cigars from an ample pocketful. "Greenstream's dead," he pronounced; "I'm
going after some life."

Late that night he leaned across the sloppy bar of an inferior saloon in
Stenton, and, with an uncertain wave of his hand, arrested the barkeeper's
attention. "I'm here," he articulated thickly, "to see life, understand!
And I can see it too--money's power." The other regarded him with a brief,
mechanical interest, a platitude shot suavely from hard, tobacco-stained
lips.

Later still: "I'm here to see life," he told a woman with a chalky
countenance, a countenance without any expression of the consciousness of
the sound of his voice, a vague form lost in loose draperies. "Life," he
emphasized above the continuous, macabre rattle of a piano.

In a breathless, hot dawn pouring redly into the grey city street, he
swayed like a pendulum on the steaming pavement. His side was smeared,
caked, with unnamable filth, refuse; a tremulous hand gripped feverishly
the shoulder of a policeman who had roused him from a constrained stupor
in a casual angle. "I wan' to see life," he mumbled dully, "I got
power ... money." He fumbled through his pockets in search of the proof
of his assertion. In vain--all that was left of the nine hundred and sixty
dollars was some loose silver.




XXI


Again sober, without the resources of the citybred parasite, and without
money, his instinct, his longing, drew him irresistibly into the open; his
heredity forced him toward the mountains, into familiar paths, valleys,
heights.

He avoided the stage road, and progressed toward Greenstream by tangled
trails, rocky ascents, sharp declines. By late day he had penetrated to
the heart of the upland region. He stood gazing down upon the undulating,
verdant hills, over which he could trace the course of a thunder gust. The
storm moved swiftly, in a compact, circular shadow on the sunny slope; he
could distinguish the sudden twisting of limbs, the path of torn leaves,
broken branches, left by the lash of the wind and rain. The livid,
sinister spot on the placid greenery drew nearer; he could now hear the
continuous rumble of thunder, see the stabbing, purplish flashes of
lightning. The edge of the storm swept darkly over the spot where he was
standing; he was soaked by a momentary assault of rain driving greyly out
of a passing, profound gloom. Then the cloud vanished, leaving the
countryside sparkling and serene under a stainless evening sky.

The water dripped down his back, swashed in his shoes; he was, in his
lowered vitality, supremely uncomfortable. The way was slippery with mud;
wet leaves bathed his face in sudden, chill showers, clung to his hands.
He fell.

When he arrived at the rim of Greenstream night had hidden that familiar,
welcome vista. The lights of the houses shone pale yellow below. A new
reluctance to enter this place of home possessed him, a shame born of his
denuded pockets, his bedraggled exterior. He descended, but turned to the
left, finding a rude road which skirted the base of the eastern range. He
was following no definite plan, moving slowly, without objective; but a
window glimmering in a square of orange light against the night brought
him to a halt. It marked, he knew, the dwelling of the Jesuit priest,
Merlier. In a sudden impulse he advanced over a short path, and fumbling,
found the door, where he knocked. A chair scraped within and the door
swung open. The form of the priest was dark against the lighted interior
which absorbed them.




XXII


The room was singularly bare: a tin lamp with a green glass shade, on an
uncovered deal table, illuminated an open book, wood chairs with roughly
split, hickory backs, a couch with no covering over its wire springs and
iron frame; there was no carpet on the floor of loosely grooved boards, no
decorations on the plastered walls save a dark engraving of a man in
intricate armor, with a face as passionate, as keen, as relentless, as a
hawk's, labelled, "Loyola."

Merlier silently indicated a chair, but he remained standing with his gaze
lowered upon the floor. He was a burly man, with a heavy countenance
impassive as an oriental's, out of which, startling in its unexpected
rapidity, a glance flashed and stabbed as steely as Loyola's sword. His
hands were clasped before him; they were, in that environment, strangely
white, and covered with the scars of what, patently, were unaccustomed
employments.

"It feels good inside," Gordon observed tritely. He noted uneasily the
muddy tracks his shoes had printed upon the otherwise spotless board
floor, "I got caught in a gust on the mountain," he explained awkwardly,
in a constraint which deepened with the other's continued silence; "I
ought to have cleaned up before I came in ... it's terrible dark out." He
rose, tentatively, but the priest waved him back into the chair. Opening a
door opposite the one by which Gordon had entered, and which obviously
gave upon an outer shed, Merlier procured a roughly made mop; and,
returning, he obliterated all traces of the mud. Suddenly, to Gordon's
dismay, his supreme discomfort, he stooped to a knee, and began to remove
the former's shoes.

"Hey!" Gordon protested; "don't do that; I can tend to my own feet." He
was prepared to kick out, but he recognized that a struggle could only
make the situation insufferable, and he submitted in an acute, writhing
misery to the ministrations. The priest rose with Gordon's shoes and
placed them, together with the mop, outside the door. He then brought from
an inner room an immaculate, white cambric shirt, a pair of trousers, old
but carefully ironed, and knitted, grey worsted slippers.

"If you will change," he said in a low, impersonal voice, "I will see what
there is for you to eat." He left the room, and Gordon gratefully shifted
into the fresh, dry clothes. The trousers were far too large; they
belonged, he recognized, to the priest, but he belted them into baggy
folds. The other appeared shortly with a wooden tray bearing a platter of
cooked, yellow beans, a part loaf of coarse bread, raw eggs and a pitcher
of milk. "I thought," he explained, "you would wish something immediately;
there is no fire; Bartamon is out." The latter, Gordon knew, was a
sharp-witted old man who had made a precarious living in the local fields
and woodsheds until the priest had taken him as a general helper. "There
are neither coffee nor tea in the house," Merlier stated further.

He closed the book, moved the lamp to the end of the table, and stood with
his countenance lowered, his folded hands immovable as stone, while Gordon
Makimmon consumed the cold food. Once the priest replenished the other's
glass with milk.

If there had been a gleam of fraternal feeling, the slightest indication
of generous impulse, a mere accent of hospitality, in the priest's
actions, Gordon, accepting them in such spirit, might have been at ease.
But not the faintest spark of interest, of curiosity, the most perfunctory
communion of sympathy, was evident on Merlier's immobile countenance; his
movements were machine-like, he seemed infinitely removed from his
charitable act, infinitely cold.

Gordon's discomfort burned into a species of illogical, resentful anger.
He cursed the priest under his breath, choked on the food; he was heartily
sorry that he had obeyed the fleeting impulse to enter. But even the
anger expired before Merlier's impassivity--he must as well curse a figure
carved from granite, cast in lead. He grew, in turn, uneasy at the other's
supernatural detachment; it chilled his blood like the grip of an
unexpected, icy hand, like the imminence of inevitable death. The priest
resembled a dead man, a dead man who had remained quick in the mere
physical operations of the body, while all the machinery of his thoughts,
his feelings, lay motionless and cold within.

Gordon found relief in a customary cigarette when the uncomfortable repast
was finished. The priest removed the dishes, and reappeared with bed
linen, with which he proceeded to convert the bare couch into a provision
for sleeping. Then he returned the lamp to the center of the table, opened
the book and seated with his back squarely toward the room, addressed
himself to the pages.

Gordon Makimmon's head throbbed, suddenly paining him--it was as though
sharp, malicious fingers were compressing the spine at the base of his
brain. That, and the profound weariness which swept over him, were
disconcerting; he was so seldom ill, so rarely tired, that those unwelcome
symptoms bore an aggravated menace; it was the slight, premonitory
rusting, the corrosion of time, upon the iron of his manhood.

In an instinctive need for human support, the reassurance of the
comprehension of his kind, he directed an observation at the broad, squat,
somber back. "I might have been drunk a month," he asserted, "by the way I
feel." The priest paused in his reading, inserted a finger in the page,
and half turned. Gordon could see the full, smooth cheek, the drooping
gaze, against the green radiance of the lamp.

"If you will drink," Merlier said in a bitter, repressed voice, "if you
will indulge the flesh, don't whimper at the price." He made a gesture,
indicating the bed, then returned to his reading.

"The man doesn't live who's heard me whimper," Gordon began loudly; but
his angry protest trailed into silence. There was no comfort, no redress,
to be obtained from that absorbed, ungainly figure. He slipped out of the
baggy trousers, the worsted slippers, and, extending himself on the couch,
fell heavily asleep.




XXIII


When he woke the room was bright with narrow strips of sun, already too
high to shine broadly through the doors and windows. His clothes, dry and
comparatively clean, reposed on a chair at his side, and, washing in the
basin which he found outside the door, he hastily dressed. He looked,
tentatively, for the priest, but found only his aged helper in the
roughly-cleared space at the back of the house.

Bartamon was a small man, with a skull-like head, to the hollows of which,
the bony projections, dark skin clung dryly; his eyes were mere dimming
glints of watery consciousness; and from the sleeves of a faded blue
shirt, the folds of formless, canvas trousers, knotted, blackish hands,
grotesque feet, appeared to hang jerking on wires.

"Where's the Father?" Gordon inquired.

The other rested from the laborious sawing of a log, blinking and
tremulous in the hard brilliancy of midday. "Beyond," he answered vaguely,
waving up the valley; "Sim Caley's wife sent for him from Hollidew's farm.
Sim or his wife think they're going to die two or three times the year,
and bother the Father.... But I wouldn't wonder they would, and them
working for Hollidew, dawn, day and dark, with never a proper skinful of
food, only this and that, maybe, chick'ry and fat pork and moldy ends of
nothing."

He filled the blackened ruin of a pipe, shaking in his palsied fingers,
clasped it in mumbling, toothless gums: he was so sere, so juiceless, that
the smoke trailing from his sunken lips might well have been the
spontaneous conflagration of his desiccated interior.

"Hollidew's a terrible man for money," he continued, "it hurts him like a
cut with a hick'ry to see a dollar go. They say he won't hear tell of
quitting his fortune for purgatory, no, nor for heaven neither. He can't
get him to make a will, the lawyer can't. He was telling the Father the
other day, sitting right in the house there, 'Pompey Hollidew,' he says,
'won't even talk will....' He'd like to take it all with him to the devil,
Pompey would." He turned with a sigh to the log. A cross-cut saw, with a
handle at either end, lay upon the ground; and Gordon, grasping the far
handle, helped him to drag the slim, glittering steel through the
powdering fiber of the wood.

As he worked mechanically Gordon's thoughts returned to the past, the past
which had collapsed so utterly, so disastrously, so swiftly upon his
complacency, robbing him of his sustenance, of Clare, of his home. The
complaining voice of the old man finally pierced his abstraction. "If you
are going to ride," Bartamon complained, "don't drag your feet."

The two men consumed a formless, ample meal, after which Gordon still
waited negligently for the priest. The sun sank toward the western range;
the late afternoon grew as hushed, as rich in color, in vert shadows,
ultramarine, and amber, as heavy in foliage bathed in aureate light, as
the nave of a cathedral under stained glass.

In a corner of the shed Gordon found a fishing rod of split bamboo, sprung
with time and neglect, the wrappings hanging and effectually loose. A
small brass reel was fastened to the butt, holding an amount of line. He
balanced the rod in his grasp, discovering it to be the property of the
old man.

"What'll you take for it?" he demanded. His store of money had been
reduced to a precarious sum of silver; but the longing had seized him to
fish in the open, to follow a stream into the tranquil dusk.

"I got some flies too." The other resurrected a cigar box, which held some
feathered hooks attached to doubtful guts. "They are dried out," Gordon
pronounced, testing them; "what will you take for the whole worthless
lot?" Bartamon demurred: the rod had been a good rod, it had been given to
him in the past by a mayor, or had it been a senator? It was not like
common rods, made of six strips of bamboo, but of eight, the line was
silk.... He would take sixty cents.

Delaying his expression of gratitude to the priest--he could stop on his
return with trout--Gordon was soon tramping over the soft, dusty road to
where he bordered a stream skirting the eastern range. A shelf of
pasturage ran, deep blue-green sod, against the rocky wall; to the left,
through scattered trees, the valley was visible; on the right the range
mounted precipitant, verdant, to its far crown. The stream, now torn to
white foam on a rocky descent, now swept with a glassy rush between level,
green banks, now moved slowly in a deep-shaded pool, where gleaming
bubbles held filmed sliding replicas of the banks, the trees, the sky.

The sun, growing less a source of light than a brilliant circle of
carmine, almost touched the western range; the shadow troop swept down the
slope and lengthened across the valley; cut by the trunks of trees the
light fell in dusty gold bars across the water. Gordon drew the line
through the dipping tip, knotting on three of the flies. Then he quietly
followed the stream to where it fell into a circular, stone-bound basin.
He made his cast with a quick turn of the wrist, skilfully avoiding the
high underbrush, the overhanging limbs. The flies swung out and dropped
softly on the water. On the second cast he caught a trout--a silvery,
gleaming shape flecked with vermilion and black, shaded with mauve and
emerald and maroon.

In a shallow reach he waded, forgetful of his clothes. He caught another
trout, another and another, stringing them on a green withe. He cast
indefatigably, but with the greatest possible economy of effort; his
progress was all but soundless; he slipped down stream like a thing of the
woods, fishing with delicate art, with ardor, with ingenuity, and with
continual success.

The sun disappeared in a primrose void behind the darkening mountains; the
hush deepened upon the valley, a hush in which the voice of the stream was
audible, cool--a sound immemorially old, lingering from the timeless past
through vast, dim changes, cataclysms, carrying the melancholy, eloquent,
incomprehensible plaint of primitive nature.

Gordon was absorbed, content; the quiet, the magic veil of oblivion, of
the woods, of the immobile mountains, enveloped and soothed him, released
his heart from its oppression, banished the fever, the struggle, from his
brain. The barrier against which he still fished was mauve, the water
black; the moon appeared buoyantly, like a rosy bubble blown upon a
curtain of old blue velvet. He cast once more, and met his last strike, a
heavy jar that broke the weakened line, in a broad, still expanse where
white moths fluttered above the water in a cold, stagnant gloom. He saw
the rotting wall of a primitive dam, the crumbling, fallen sides of a rude
mill. Night fell augustly. The whippoorwills cried faint and distant.

He sat on a log, draining his shoes, pressing the water from his trousers,
and smoked while the light of the moon brightened into a silvery radiance
in which objects, trees, were greyly visible; reaches sank into soft
obscurity. He recognized his position from the ruined mill--he was on the
edge of that farm of Pompey Hollidew's of which Bartamon had spoken.
Hollidew, he knew, seldom visited his outlying acres, then only in the
collection of rents or profits--they lay too far from his iron chest, from
the communication of the Stenton banks. Gordon knew Sim Caley, and,
suddenly, he decided to visit him; the trout would afford the Caleys and
himself an ample repast.

He crossed the road, made his way through a fragrant tangle of field
grass, over shorn and orderly acres of grazing. The moon rose higher, grew
brighter; the vistas were clear, unreal, the shadows like spilled ink. The
house toward which he moved stood sharply defined, and enclosed by a
fence, flowers, from the farm. As he approached he saw that no lights
were visible, but a blur of white moved in the shadow of the portico. He
decided that it was Sim Caley's wife; and, opening the gate, advanced with
a query for Mrs. Caley's health forming on his lips.

But it was Lettice Hollidew.




XXIV


She retreated, as he advanced, within the deeper obscurity of an opened
door but he had seen, in the shimmering, elusive light, her features,
gathered the unmistakable, intangible impression of her person.

"It's me, Gordon Makimmon," he said. He paused by the step, on which he
laid the trout, shining with sudden, liquid gleams of silver in the
moonlight.

"Oh!" she exclaimed in a low voice; "oh!" She moved forward,
materializing, out of the dark, into a figure of white youth. Her face was
pale, there were white ruffles on her neck, on her arms, her skirt clung
simply, whitely, about her knees and ankles.

"I stopped to see Sim," he explained further, "and took you for Mrs.
Caley. I reckoned I'd bring them some trout: I didn't know your father was
here."

"Won't you sit down. Mrs. Caley is sick, and Sim's on the mountain with
the cattle. Father isn't here."

He mounted to the portico, mentally formulating a way of speedy escape; he
thought, everywhere he turned Lettice Hollidew stood with her tiresome
smile. "I come out here every summer," she volunteered, sinking upon a
step, "and spend two weeks. I was born here you see, and," she added in a
stiller voice, "my mother died here. Father Merlier calls it my yearly
retreat."

"I'd be pleased if you'd take the fish," he remarked; "I guess I'd better
be moving--I've got to see the priest."

"Why, you haven't stopped a minute," she protested, "not long enough to
smoke one of your little cigarettes. Visitors are too scarce here to let
them go off like that."

At the implied suggestion he half-mechanically rolled a cigarette. The
chair he found was comfortable; he was very weary. He sat smoking and
indifferently studying Lettice Hollidew. She was, to-night, prettier than
he had remembered her. She was telling him, in a voice that rippled cool
and low like the stream, of Mrs. Caley's indisposition. Her face, now
turned toward the fields, was dipped in the dreaming radiance; now it was
blurred, vaguely appealing, disturbing. Her soft youth was creamy,
distilling an essence, a fragrance, like a flower; it was one with the
immaculate flood of light bathing the world in virginal beauty.

A new interest stirred within him, a satisfaction grew from her palpable
liking for him, and was reflected in the warmer tones of his replies; a
new pain ordered his comments. The situation, too, appealed to him; his
instinct responded to the obvious implications of the position in the
exact degree of his habit of mind. The familiar, professional gallantry
took possession of him, directing the sensuality to which he abandoned
himself.

He moved from the chair to the step by her side. Nearer she was more
appealing still; a lovely shadow dwelt at the base of her throat; the
simple dress took the soft curves of her girlish body, stirred with her
breathing. Her hands lay loosely in her lap, and the impulse seized him to
take them up, but he repressed it ... for the moment.

"I saw Buckley Simmons, yesterday," she informed him, "his face is nearly
well. He wanted to come out here, but I wouldn't let him. He wants to
marry me," she continued serenely; "I told him I didn't think I'd every
marry."

"But you will--some lucky, young man."

"I don't think I like young men, that is," she qualified carefully, "not
very young. I like men who are able to act ever so quickly, no matter what
occurs, and they must be terribly brave. I like them best if they have
been unfortunate; something in me wants to make up to them for--for any
loss," she paused, gazing at him with an elevated chin, serious lips,
intent eyes.

This, he told himself complacently, was but a description of himself, as
pointed as she dared to make it. "A man who had had trouble couldn't do
better than tell you about it," he assured her; "I have had a good lot of
trouble."

"Well, tell me," she moved toward him.

"Oh! you wouldn't care to hear about mine. I'm a sort of nobody at
present. I haven't anything in the world--no home, nothing in the whole
world. Even the little saving I had after the house was sold was--was
taken from me by sharpers."

"Tell me," she repeated, "more."

"When Valentine Simmons had sold my place, the place my grandfather built,
I had about a thousand dollars left, and I thought I would start a little
business with it, a ... a gun store,--I like guns,--here in Greenstream.
And I'd sharpen scythes, put sickles into condition, you know, things like
that. I went to Stenton with my capital in my pocket, looking for some
stock to open with, and met a man in a hotel who said he was the
representative of the Standard Hardware Company. He could let me have
everything necessary, he said, at a half of what others would charge. We
had dinner together, and he made a list of what I would need--files and
vises and parts of guns. If I mailed my cheque immediately I could get the
half off. He had cards, catalogues, references, from Richmond. I might
write there, but I'd lose time and money.

"None of the Makimmons have been good business men; we are not
distrustful. I sent the cheque to the address he said, made out to him for
the Standard Hardware Company, so that he would get the commission, the
credit of the sale." He drew a deep breath, gazing across the moonlit
fields. "The Makimmons are not distrustful," he reiterated; "he robbed me
of all my savings."

His lie would have fared badly with Pompey Hollidew, he thought grimly; it
was unconvincing, wordy; he was conscious that his assumed emotion rang
thinly. But its calculated effect was instantaneous, beyond all his hopes,
his plan.

Lettice leaned close to him with a sobbing inspiration of sympathy and
pity. "How terrible!" she cried in low tones; "you were so noble--" He
breathed heavily once more. "What a wicked, wicked man. Couldn't you get
anything back? did it all go?"

"All." His hand fell upon hers, and neither of them appeared to notice its
pressure. Her face was close to his, a tear gleamed on her young,
moon-blanched cheek. A sudden impatience seized him at her credulity, a
contempt at the ease with which she was victimized; the effort was almost
without spice. Still his grasp tightened upon her hand, drew it toward
him. "In Greenstream," he continued, "men don't like me, they are afraid
of me; but the women make me unhappy--they tell me their troubles; I don't
want them to, I keep away from them."

"I understand that," she declared eagerly, "I would tell you anything."

"You are different; I want you to tell me ... things. But the things I
want to hear may not come to you. I would never be satisfied with a
little. The Makimmons are all that way--everything or nothing."

She gently loosened her hand, and stood up, facing him. Her countenance,
turned to the light, shone like a white flame; it was tensely aquiver with
passionate earnestness, lambent with the flowering of her body, of dim
desire, the heritage of flesh. She spoke in a voice that startled Gordon
by its new depth, the brave thrill of its undertone.

"I could only give all," she said. "I am like that too. What do you wish
me to tell you? What can I say that will help you?"

"Ever since I first saw you going to the Stenton school," he hurried on,
"I have thought about you. I could hardly wait for the Christmas holidays,
to have you in the stage, or for the summer when you came home. Nobody
knows; it has been a secret ... it seemed so useless. You were like
a ... a star," he told her.

"How could I know?" she asked; "I was only a girl until--until
Buckley ... until to-night, now. But I can never be that again, something
has happened ... in my heart, something has gone, and come," her voice
grew shadowed, wistful. It carried to him, in an intangible manner, a
fleet warning, as though something immense, unguessed, august, uttered
through Lettice Hollidew the whisper of a magnificent and terrible menace.
He felt again as he had felt as a child before the vast mystery of night.
An impulse seized him to hurry away from the portico, from the youthful
figure at his side; a sudden, illogical fear chilled him. But he summoned
the hardihood, the skepticism, of his heart; he defied--while the sinking
within him persisted--not the girl, but the nameless force beyond, above,
about them. "You are like a star," he repeated, in forced tones.

He rose and stood before her. She swayed toward him like a flower bowed by
the wind. He put his arms around her, her head lay back, and he kissed the
smooth fullness of her throat. He kissed her lips.

The eternal, hapless cry of the whippoorwills throbbed on his hearing. The
moon slipped behind a corner of the house, and a wave of darkness swept
over them. Lettice began to tremble violently, and he led her back to
their place on the veranda's edge. She was silent, and clung to him with a
reluctant eagerness. He kissed her again and again, on a still mouth, but
soon her lips answered his desire. It grew constantly darker, the silvery
vistas shortened, grew blurred, trees merged into indistinguishable
gloom.

Lettice murmured a shy, unaccustomed endearment. Gordon was stereotyped,
commonplace; he was certain that even she must recognize the hollowness of
his protestations. But she never doubted him; she accepted the dull,
leaden note of his spurious passion for the clear ring of unalloyed and
fine gold.

Suddenly and unexpectedly she released herself from his arms. "Oh!" she
exclaimed, in conscience-stricken tones, "Mrs. Caley's medicine!
I--forgot; she should have had some long ago." He tried to catch her once
more in his embrace, restrain her. "It would be better not to wake her
up," he protested, "sleep's what sick folks need." But she continued to
evade him. Mrs. Caley must have her medicine. The doctor had said that it
was important. "It's my duty, Gordon," she told him, "and you would want
me to do that."

He stifled with difficulty an impatient exclamation. "Then will you come
back?" he queried. He took her once more close in his arms. "Come back,"
he whispered hotly in her ear.

"But, dear Gordon, it is so late."

"What does that matter? don't you love me? You said you were the sort of a
girl to give all; and now, because it is a little late, you are afraid.
What are you afraid of? Tell me that! You know I love you; we belong to
each other; what does it matter how late it is? Beside, no one will know,
no one is here to spy on us. Come back, my little girl ... my little
Lettice; come back to a lonely man with nothing else in the world but you.
I'll come in with you, wait inside."

"No," she sobbed, "wait ... here. I will see ... the medicine. Wait here
for me, I will come back. It doesn't matter how late it is, nothing
matters ... trust in you. Love makes everything good. Only you love me,
oh, truly?"

"Truly," he reassured her. "Don't be long; and, remember, shut Mrs.
Caley's door."

She left him abruptly, and, standing alone in the dark, he cursed himself
for a fool for letting her go--a boy's trick. But then the whole affair
did not desperately engage him. He sat in the comfortable chair, and lit a
cigarette, shielding it with his hand so that she would not see it,
recognize in its triviality his detachment. A wave of weariness swept over
him; the night was like a blanket on the land. Minutes passed without her
return; soon he would go in search of her; he would find her ... in the
dark house.... He shut his eyes for a moment, and opened them with an
effort. The whippoorwills never for a moment ceased their melancholy
calling; they seemed to draw nearer to him; then retreat, far away. His
head fell forward upon his breast.

Lettice Hollidew! little fool; but what was that beyond her, blacker than
night?

He stirred, sat up sharply, his eyes dazzled by a blaze of intolerable
brilliancy. It was the sun, a full two hours above the horizon. He had
slept through the night. His muscles were cramped, his neck ached
intolerably. He rose with a painful effort and something fell to the
floor. It was a rose, wilted, its fragrance fled. He realized that Lettice
had laid it on his knee, last night, when the bud had been fresh. He had
slept while she stood above him, while the rose had faded. On the step the
fish lay, no longer brightly colored, in a dull, stiff heap. The house was
still; through the open door the sun fell on a strip of rag rug. He turned
and hurried down the steps, unlatched the gate, and almost ran across the
fields to the cover of a wood, fleeing from an unsupportably humiliating
vision.




XXV


He made his way to where Greenstream village lay somnolent beneath the
refulgent day. The chairs before the office of the _Bugle_ were
unoccupied, from within came the monotonous, sliding rattle of the small
footpress. Gordon sat absently revolving the possibilities held out by the
near future. Hay, he knew was still being made in the valley, but the
prospect of long, arduous, days in the open fields, in the hot, dry chaff
of the sere grass, was forbidding. He might take his gun and a few
personal necessities and disappear into such wild as yet remained,
contracting steadily before the inexorable, smooth advance of
civilization. He was aware that he could manage a degree of comfort,
adequate food. But the thoughtless resiliency of sheer youth had deserted
him, the desire for mere, picturesque adventure had fled during the past,
comfortable years. He dismissed contemptuously the possibility of clerking
in a local store. There was that still in the Makimmon blood which balked
at measuring ribbands, selling calico to captious women.

The large, suave figure of the Universalist minister, in grey alpaca coat
and black trousers, approached leisurely over the street, and stopped
before Gordon. The minister had a conspicuously well-fed paunch, his
smooth face expressed placid self-approval, his tones never for a moment
lost the unctuous echo of the pulpiteer.

"You have not worshipped with us lately," he observed. "Remiss, remiss.
Our services have been stirring--three souls redeemed from everlasting
torment at the Wednesday meeting, two adults and a child sealed to Christ
on Sunday."

"I'll drop in," Gordon told him pacifically.

"A casual phrase to apply to the Mansion of the Son," the minister
observed, "more humility would become you.... God, I pray Thee that Thy
fire descend upon this unhappy man and consume utterly away his carnal
envelope. What are you doing?" he demanded abruptly of Gordon.

"Nothing particular just now."

"There are some small occupations about the parsonage--a board or so loose
on the ice house, a small field of provender for the animal. Let us say a
week's employment for a ready man. I could pay but a modest
stipend ... but the privilege of my home, the close communion with our
Maker. You would be as my brother: what do you say?"

Gordon was well aware of the probable extent of the "small occupations,"
the minister's reputation for exacting monumental labors in return for the
"modest stipend" mentioned. However, the proposal furnished Gordon with a
solution for immediate difficulties; it secured him a bed and food, an
opportunity for the maturing of further plans.

He rose, queried, "Shall I go right along?"

"Admirable," the other approved. "My beloved helpmate will show you where
the tools are kept, when you can begin immediately."

Gordon made his way past Simmons' store to the plaster bulk of the
Universalist Church, its lawn shared by the four-square, shingled roof of
the parsonage. Back of both structures reached a small field of heavy
grass, where Gordon labored for the remainder of the day.

Late in the afternoon an aged, gaunt man drove an incongruous, two
wheeled, breaking cart into the stable yard behind the parsonage. After
hitching an aged, gaunt white horse, he approached the field's edge, where
Gordon was harvesting. It was the minister's father-in-law, himself a
clergyman for the half century past, a half century that stretched back
into strenuous, bygone days of circuit riding. His flowing hair and a
ragged goatee were white, oddly stained and dappled with lemon yellow, his
skin was leather-like from years of exposure to the elements, to the
bitter mountain winters, the ruthless suns of the August valleys. He was
as seasoned, as tough, as choice old hickory, and had pale, blue eyes in
which the flame of religious fervor, of incandescent zeal, were scarcely
dimmed.

A long supper table was spread in a room where a sideboard supported a
huge silver-plated pitcher swung on elaborately engraved supports, a dozen
blue glasses traced with gold, and a plate that pictured in a grey,
blurred fashion the Last Supper. The gathering ranged variously from the
aged circuit rider to the minister's next but one to the youngest: he had
fourteen children, of which nine were ravenously present. The oldest girl
at the table, a possible sixteen years, had this defiant detachment under
her immediate charge, acquitting herself notably by a constant stream of
sharp negations opposed to a varied clamor of proposals, attempted forages
upon the heaped plates, sly reprisals, and a sustained, hysterical note
which threatened at any time, and in any youthful individual, to burst
into angry wails.

Opposite Gordon Makimmon sat a slight, feminine figure, whom he recognized
as the teacher of the past season's local school. She had a pallid face,
which she rarely raised, compressed lips, and hands which attracted Gordon
by reason of their white deftness, the precise charm of their pointed
fingers. During a seemingly interminable grace, pronounced in a rapid
sing-song by the circuit rider, Gordon saw her flash her gaze about the
table, the room; and its somber, resentful fire, its restrained fury of
impatience, of disdain, of hatred, coming from that fragile, silent shape,
startled him.

The Universalist minister addressed the company in sonorous periods,
which, however, did not prevent him from assimilating a prodigious amount
of food. Between forkfuls of chicken baked in macaroni, "I rejoice that my
ministrations are acceptable to Him," he pronounced; "three souls
Wednesday last, two adults and a child on Sunday."

The aged evangelist could scarcely contain his contempt at this meager
tally. "What would you say, Augustus," he demanded in eager, tremulous
triumph, "to two hundred lost souls roaring up to the altar, casting off
their wickedness like snakes shed their skins? Hey? Hey? What would you
say to two hundred dipped in the blood of the lamb and emerging white as
the Dove? Souls ain't what they were," he muttered pessimistically; "it
used to be you could hear the Redeemed a spell of miles from the church,
now they're as confidential as a man borrowing money. The Lord will in no
wise acknowledge the faint in spirit." Suddenly, "Glory! Glory!" he
shouted, and his old eyes flamed with the inextinguishable blaze of his
enthusiasm.

The minister's wife inserted in the door from the kitchen a face bright
red from bending over the stove. "Now, pa," she admonished, "you'll scare
them children again."




XXVI


The "board or so" to be replaced on the ice house, as Gordon had surmised,
proved to be extensive--a large section of the inner wall had rotted from
the constant dampness, the slowly seeping water. The ice house stood back
of the dwelling, by the side of the small barn and beyond a number of
apple trees: it was a square structure of boards, with no opening save a
low door under the peak of the roof with a small platform and exterior
flight of steps.

In the gloomy, dank interior a rough ladder, fastened to the wall, led
down to the falling level of soggy sawdust, embedded in which the
irregular pieces of ice were preserved against the summer. From the
interior the opening made a vivid square of blue sky; for long hours the
blue increased in brilliancy, after which, veiled in a greyer haze of
heat, the patch of sky grew gradually paler, and then clear; the
suggestion of immeasurable space deepened; above the dark hole of the ice
house the illimitable distance was appalling. Gordon was resting from the
sullen, muffled knocking of his hammer when a figure suddenly blotted out
the light, hid the sky. He recognized the sharply-cut silhouette of the
school-teacher.

"What a horrid, spooky place," she spoke with a shiver, peering within.

"It's cool," Gordon told her indifferently.

"And quiet," she added, seating herself upon the platform with an elbow in
the opening; "there's none of the bothersome clatter of a lot of
detestable children." She raised her voice in shrill mimicry, "'Teacher,
kin I be excused? Teacher!... Teacher--!'"

"Don't you like children?"

"I loathe them," she shot at him, out of the depths of a profound,
long-accumulated exasperation; "the muddy little beasts."

"Then I wouldn't be vexed with them."

"Do you like nailing boards in a rotten ice house?"

"Oh, I'm dog poor; I've got to take anything that comes along."

"And, you fool, do you suppose I'd be here if I had anything at all? Do
you suppose I'd stay in this damn lost hole if I could get anywhere else?
Do you think I have no more possibilities than this?"

He mounted the ladder, and emerged upon the platform by her side, where he
found a place, a minute, for a cigarette.

The woman's face was bitter, her body tense.

"I'll grow old and die in places like this," she continued passionately;
"I'll grow old and die in pokey, little schools, and wear prim calico
dresses, with a remade old white mull for commencements. I'll never hear
anything but twice two, and Persia is bounded on the north by,--with all
the world beyond, Paris and London and Egypt, for the lucky. I want to
live," she cried to Gordon Makimmon, idly curious, to the still branches
of the apple trees, the vista of village half-hid in dusty foliage. "I
want to see things, things different, not these dumb, depressing
mountains. I want to see life!"

Gordon had a swift memory of a city street grey in a reddening flood of
dawn, of his own voice in a reddening flood of dawn, of his own voice
mumbling out of an overwhelming, nauseous desperation that same
determination, desire. "Perhaps," he ventured, "you wouldn't think so much
of it when you'd seen it."

"Wouldn't I?" she exclaimed; "oh, wouldn't I?--smart crowds and gay
streets and shops on fire with jewels. That's where I belong; I'd show
them; I've got a style, if I only had a chance! I've got a
figure ... shoulders."

He appraised in a veiled glance her physical pretensions. He discovered,
to his surprise, that she had "shoulders"; her body resembled her hands,
it was smoothly rounded, provocative; its graceful proportion deceived
the casual eye.

With a disdainful motion she kicked off a heavily clumsy slipper--her
instep arched narrowly to a delicate ankle, the small heel was sharply
cut. "In silk," she said, "and a little brocaded slipper, you would see."
She replaced the inadequate thing of leather. The animation died from her
countenance, she surveyed him with cold eyes, narrowed lips. Her gaze, he
felt, included him in the immediate, hateful scene; she gained fresh
repugnance from his stained, collarless shirt, his bagging knees coated
with sawdust.

She rose, and, her skirt gathered in one hand, descended the precarious
flight of steps. She crossed the grass slowly, her head bent, her hands
tightly clenched.

Later, in the yard, Gordon saw, at a lighted, upper window, the silhouette
of her back, a gleam of white arm. The window cast an elongated rectangle
of warm light on the blue gloom of the grass. It illuminated him, with his
gaze lifted; and, while, standing in the open window, she saw him clearly,
she was as indifferent, as contemptuous of his presence, as though he had
been an animal. A film of cambric, golden in the lamplight, settled about
her smooth shoulders, fell in long diaphanous lines. She raised her arms
to her head, her hair slid darkly across her face, and she turned and
disappeared. He moved away, but the memory rankled delicately in his
imagination, returned the following morning. The thought lingered of that
body, as fine as ivory, unguessed, hidden, in a coarse sheath.




XXVII


His miscellaneous labors at the minister's filled nearly a week of
unremitting labor. But, upon the advent of Sunday, mundane affairs were
suspended in the general confusion of preparation for church. It had
rained during the night, the day was cool and fragrant and clear, and
Gordon determined to evade the morning's services, and plunge aimlessly
into the pleasant fields. He kept in the background until the cavalcade
had started, headed by the minister--the circuit rider had driven off
earlier in his cart to an outlying chapel--and his wife. It was inviting
on the deserted veranda, and Gordon lingered while the village emptied
into the churches, the open.

Finally he sauntered over the street, past the Courthouse, by Pompey
Hollidew's residence. It was, unlike the surrounding dwellings, built of
brick; there was no porch, only three stone steps descending from the main
entrance, and no flowers. The path was overgrown with weeds, the front
shutters were indifferently flung back, half opened, closed. The door
stood wide open, and, as he passed, Gordon gathered the impression of a
dark heap on the hall floor. He dismissed an idle curiosity; and then, for
no discoverable reason, halted, turned back, for a second glance.

Even from the path he saw extending from the heap an arm, a gnarled hand.
It was Pompey Hollidew himself, cold, still, on the floor. Gordon entered,
looking outside for assistance: no one was in sight. Pompey Hollidew wore
the familiar, greenish-black coat, the thread-bare trousers and faded,
yellow shirt. The battered derby had rolled a short distance across the
floor. The dead man's face was a congested, olive shade, with purple
smudges beneath the up-rolled eyes, and lips like dried leaves. His end,
it was apparent, had been as sudden as it was natural.

Old Pompey ... dead! Gordon straightened up. Simultaneously two ideas
flashed into his mind--Lettice and Hollidew's gold. Then they grew
coherent, explicable. Lettice and the gold were one; she was the gold, the
gold was Lettice. He recalled now, appositely, what Bartamon had told him
but a few days before ... Hollidew would consent to make no will; there
were no other children. The money would automatically go, principally, to
Lettice, without question or contest. If he had but considered before,
acted with ordinary sense ... the girl had been in love with him; he
might have had it all. He gazed cautiously, but with no determined plan of
action, out over the street--it lay deserted in the ambient sunlight.

He quickly left the house, the old man sprawling grotesquely across the
bare hall, forcing himself to walk with an assumed, deliberate ease over
the plank walk, past Simmons' corner. As he progressed a plan formulated
in his mind, a plan obvious, promising immediate, practicable
results ... Lettice had told him that she would remain for two weeks at
the farm. It was evident that she was still there. His gait quickened; if
he could reach her now, before any one else.... He wished that he had
closed the door upon the old man's body; any one passing as he had passed
could see the corpse; a wagon would be sent for the girl.

He commenced, outside the village, to run, pounding over the dusty way
with long-drawn, painful gasps, his chest oppressed by the now
unaccustomed exercise, the rapid motion. When he came in sight of the
farmhouse that was his objective, he stopped and endeavored to remove all
traces of his haste; he rubbed off his shoes, fingered his necktie, mopped
his brow.

There was a woman on the porch; it proved to be Mrs. Caley, folded in a
shawl, pale and gaunt. Suddenly the possibility occurred to him that
Lettice had driven into church. But she was in the garden patch beyond,
Mrs. Caley said. Gordon strolled around the corner of the house as
hastily, as slowly, as he dared.

He saw her immediately. She wore a blue linen skirt, a white waist, and
her sleeves were rolled up. The sun glinted on her uncovered hair, blazed
in the bright tin basin into which she was dropping scarlet peppers. She
appeared younger than he had remembered her; her arms were youthful and
softly dimpled; her brow seemed again the calm, guileless brow of a girl;
her eyes, as she raised them in greeting, were serene.

"I wanted to explain to you," he began obliquely, "about that--that
falling asleep. It's been worrying me. You see, I hadn't had any rest for
three or four nights, I had been bothering about my affairs, and about
something more important still."

Bean poles, covered with bright green verdure, made a background of young
summer for her own promise of early maturity. She placed the basin on the
ground, and stood with her arms hanging loosely, gazing at him
expectantly, frankly.

"The most important thing in my life," he added, then paused. "I thought
for a while that I had better go away without saying anything to you, and
more particularly since I have lost everything." He could hear, coming
over the road, the regular hoof-beats of a trotting horse, and he had the
feeling that it must be a messenger from the village, dispatched in
search of Lettice with the news of her father's death. For a moment the
horse seemed to be stopping; he was afraid that his opportunity had been
lost; but, after all, the hoof-beats passed, diminished over the road.
Then, "Since I have lost everything," he repeated.

"Please tell me more," she demanded, "I don't understand--"

"But," he continued, in the manner he had hastily adopted, "when the time
came I couldn't; I couldn't go away and leave you. I thought, perhaps, you
might be different from others; I thought, perhaps, you might like a man
for what he was, and not for what he had. I would come to you, I decided,
and tell you all this, tell you that I could work, yes, and would, and
make enough--" He paused in order to observe the effect of his speech upon
her. She was gazing clear-eyed at him, in a sort of shining expectancy, a
grave, eager comprehension, appealing, incongruous, to her girlhood.

"But why?" she queried.

"Because I'm in love with you: I want to marry you."

Her gaze did not falter, but her color changed swiftly, a rosy tide swept
over her cheeks, and died away, leaving her pale. Her lips trembled. A
palpable, radiant content settled upon her.

"Thank you," she told him seriously; "it will make me very happy to marry
you, Gordon."

With a fleeting, backward glance he moved closer to her, his arm fell
about her waist, he pressed a hasty, ill-directed kiss upon her chin.
"Will you marry me now?" he asked eagerly. "You see, others wouldn't
understand, you remember what your father said about the Makimmon breed?
They would repeat that I had nothing, or even that I was marrying you for
old Pompey's money. You know better than that, you know he wouldn't give
us a penny."

"It wouldn't matter now what any one said," she returned serenely.

"But it would be so much easier--we could slip off quietly somewhere, and
come back married, all the fuss avoided, all the say so's and say no's
shut up right at the beginning."

"When do you want to be--be married?"

"Right away! now! to-day!"

"Oh ... oh, Gordon, but we couldn't! I haven't even a white dress here. I
might go into Greenstream, be ready to-morrow--"

"No, no, no, I'm afraid it must be now or never; something would take you
from me. I knew it, I was afraid of it, from the first ... I'll shoot
myself."

She started toward him in an excess of tender pity. "Do you care as much
as that?" She laid her palms upon his shoulders, lifting her face to his:
"Then we will do what you say, we will go, yes, we will go immediately.
You can hitch up the buggy, while I get a little thing or two. I have my
beads, and the bracelets that were mother's ... I wish my white organdie
was here. You mustn't think I'm silly! You see--marriage, for a girl ... I
thought it would all be so different. But, Gordon dear, we won't let you
be unhappy."

He wished silently to God that she would get the stuff in the house, that
they would get started. At any minute now word would come of the old man's
death, there would be delay, Lettice would learn that he had lied again
and again to her. With a gesture of impatience he dislodged her hands from
his shoulders. "Where's Sim?" he demanded.

"In the long field. I'll show you the stable; it won't take me a minute to
get ready."

He hitched, in an incredibly short space of time, a tall, ungainly roan
horse into the buggy; his practised hands connected the straps, settled
the headstall, the collar, as if by magic. He stood in a fever of
uneasiness at the harnessed head. Lettice was longer than she had
indicated.

When, at last, she appeared, she carried a neatly pinned paper bundle, and
a fragrant mass of hastily pulled roses. Bright blue glass beads hung over
the soft contours of her virginal breasts, the bracelets that had been
her mother's--enamelled in black on old, reddish gold--encircled her
smooth wrists.

He would have hurried her at once into the buggy, but she stopped him, and
stood facing him with level, solemn eyes:

"I give myself to you, Gordon," she said, "gladly and gladly, and I will
go wherever you go, and try all my life to be what you would like." As she
repeated her simple words, erect and brave, with her arms filled with
roses, for a fleeting second he was again conscious of the vague menace
that had towered darkly at her back on the night when she had laid in his
grasp that other rose ... the rose that had faded.

"Let's get along," he urged. The whip swung out across the roan's ears,
and the horse started forward with a vicious rush. The dewy fragrance of
the flowers trailed out behind the buggy, mingling with the swirling dust,
then both settled into the empty road, under the burning brightness of the
sun, the insensate beauty of the azure sky.




TWO

I


In the clear glow of a lengthening twilight of spring Gordon Makimmon
sauntered into Simmons' store. The high, dusty windows facing the
Courthouse were raised, and a warm air drifted in, faint eddies of the
fragrance of flowering bushes, languorous draughts of a countryside newly
green.

A number of men idling over a counter greeted him with a familiar and
instantly alert curiosity. The clerk behind the counter bent forward with
the brisk assumption of a business-like air. "Certainly," Gordon replied
to his query, pausing to allow his purpose to gain its full effect; "I
want to order a suit of clothes."

"Why, damn it t'ell, Gord!" exclaimed an individual, with a long, drooping
nose, a jaw which hung loosely on a corded, bare throat; "it ain't three
weeks ago but you got a suit, and it ain't the one you have on now,
neither."

"Shut up, Tol'able," Buckley Simmons interposed, "you'll hurt trade.
Gordon's the Dandy Dick of Greenstream."

"Haven't I a right to as many suits of clothes as I've a mind to?" Gordon
demanded belligerently.

"Sure you have, Gord. You certainly have," a pacific chorus replied.

"I want one like the last drummer wore through here," he continued; "a
check suit with braid on all the edges."

The clerk dropped a bulky volume heavily on the counter. "The Chicago
Sartorial Company," he asserted, "have got some swell checks." He ran
hastily over the pages, each with a sample rectangle of cloth pasted
within a printed gold border, and a cabalistic sign beneath. Finally,
"How's that?" he demanded, indicating a bold, mathematical design in pale
orange, blue and grey.

A combined whistle rose from the onlookers; comments of mock amazement
crowded one upon another. "Jin ... go! He's got the wrong book--that's rag
carpet. Don't look at it too long, Gord, it'll cross your eyes. That ain't
a suit, it's a game." A gaunt hand solemnly shook out imaginary dice upon
the counter, "It's my move and I can jump you."

"Gentlemen! gentlemen!" the clerk protested; "this is the finest article
woven, the very toniest."

Gordon dismissed the sample with a gesture. "I'm a man," he pronounced,
"not a minstrel." His attention was held by a smaller pattern, in black
and white, with an occasional red thread drawn through. "That's it," he
decided; "that's it, with braid. What will that damage me?"

The clerk consulted the sign appended to the sample, then raced through a
smaller, supplementary volume, where he located the item in question.
"That cloth you picked out," he announced importantly, "is one of the best
the Chicago Sartorial Company put out. Cut ample, with sleeves lined in
silkaleen and back in A1 mohair, it'll stand you thirty-eight dollars.
Genuine Eytalian thread silk lining will come at four and a half more."

"She'll do," Gordon told him, "with the silk and the braid edge."

The clerk noted the order; then with a tape measure affixed to a slim,
wooden angle, came from behind the counter. "Remove the coat, please."

Gordon, with a patent self-consciousness, took off his coat, revealing a
flimsy white silk shirt striped like a child's stick of candy in vivid
green.

The whistle arose with renewed force; gnarled and blackened fingers
gingerly felt the shirt's texture. "Man dear! The lily of Lebanon. Arrayed
like a regular prostitute ... silk shirt tails."

The clerk skilfully conducted a series of measurements, noting results on
a printed form; outer and inner seams were tallied, chest and thigh and
knee recorded, the elbow crooked. "Don't forget his teeth," the clerk was
admonished; "remember the braid on the pants."

Gordon resumed his coat, the clerk returned the books to their shelf, and
the factitious excitement subsided. The light faded, the depths of the
store swam in blue obscurity, but the fragrance of the spring dusk had
deepened.

"When are you going to get the dog, Gord?" Tol'able asked.

"What dog?" another interposed curiously.

"Why, ain't you heard about Gord's dog," the chorus demanded. "Where have
you been--up with the Dutch on the South Fork? Gord's got a dog coming he
give two hundred dollars for. Yes, sir, he paid for a dog, he give real
money for a four-legged, yelping wire-hound. It ain't a rabbit dog, nor a
sheep dog, nor even a bull-dog; but just plain, stinking dog."

"Ah, he did like hell, give two hundred for a dog!"

"Yes, he did. That's right, didn't you, Gord? Two hundred! I saw the
cheque. God dam' if he didn't!"

Gordon admitted the facts as far as they had been stated. "But this dog,"
he explained, "is different from the just happen so hounds around here.
This dog has got a pedigree, his parents were united by the church all
regular and highly fashionable. He ain't expected to run rabbits nor mangy
sheep; he just sits on the stoop eating sausages and syrup, and takes a
leg off any low down parties that visit with him without a collar on.
He'll be on the Stenton stage this evening," he added. "I got word last
night he was coming."

They lounged to the entrance of the store, gazing over the still road, in
the direction from which the stage would arrive. Valentine Simmons was in
his office; and, as Gordon passed, he knocked on the glass of the
enclosure, and beckoned the other to enter.

He greeted Gordon Makimmon cordially, waving him to a seat. Valentine
Simmons never, apparently, changed; his countenance was always freshly
pink, the tufts of hair above his ears like combed lamb's wool; his shirt
with its single, visible blue button never lacked its immaculate gloss.

"You're looking as jaunty as a man should with the choice of the land
before him. Lucky! lucky! charming little wife, large fortune at your
disposal.... Pompey left one of the solidest estates in this section.
Opportune for you, very ... miraculous, if I may say so. But there, you
ornament the money as well as any other. You are right too--a free hand;
yours is the time for liberality, no cares--they come later. Ah, Gordon,
have you examined the details of your late father-in-law's property? Have
you searched through all the items, made yourself familiar with all
the--er, petty and laborious details?"

"No, not just yet, I have been intending--"

Simmons stopped him with an upraised palm. "No more, I understand your
thought exactly. It's a tiresome business. Yours is the time for
liberality, no cares. However, I had a slight knowledge of Pompey
Hollidew's arrangements. He was accustomed to discussing them with me. He
liked my judgment in certain little matters; and, in that way, I got a
general idea of his enterprises. He was a great hand for timber, your
father-in-law; against weighty advice at the time of his death he was
buying timber options here and there in the valley. Though what he wanted
with them ... beyond ordinary foresight.--No transportation, you see; no
railroad nor way of getting lumber out. But then, he had some visionary
scheme or other. He held some thousand acres, most of it bought at a
nominal figure. No good to anybody now; but I have got the timber fever
myself--something may turn up in the far future, perhaps in another
generation.... What would you say to a flat eight dollars an acre for the
options, the money banked right to your credit? A neat little sum for
current pleasures. Ah--" in spite of himself, Valentine Simmons became
grave at the contemplation of the amount involved. "I don't say I would
take all, but the best, certainly the greater part."

"Why, I don't know," Gordon spoke slowly from an old-time suspicion of the
other. "It's my wife's property."

"But such a dutiful little wife--the husband's word. Remember, the money
in your hand."

"It certainly sounds all right. Lettice would have the cash to show. I'll
speak to her."

"Better not delay. There are other options; owners are glad to sell. I
have given you the privilege first--old friend, old Presbyterian friend.
The time is necessarily limited."

As he mentally revolved the proposal Gordon could find no palpable
objection: the options, the timber, was obviously standing fallow, with no
means of transportation to a market, in exchange for ready money. Lettice
would easily see the sense in the deal; besides, he had brought in her
name only for form's sake--he, Gordon Makimmon, held the deciding vote in
the affairs of his home.

"I don't rightly see anything against it," he admitted finally.

"Good!" Simmons declared with satisfaction; "an able man, you can see as
far as the next through a transaction. I'll have the county clerk go over
the options, bring you the result in a couple of weeks. Don't disturb
yourself; yours is the time for pleasures, not papers."

"Hey, Gord!" a voice called thinly from without; "here's your dog."

Gordon rose and made his way to the platform before the store, where the
Stenton stage had stopped. A seat had been removed from the surrey, its
place taken by a large box with a square opening, covered with heavy wire
net at one end, and a board fitted movably in grooves at the other. There
were mutters incredulous, ironic, from the awaiting group of men; envy was
perceptible, bitterness "... for a dog. Two hundred! Old Pompey hollered
out of the dirt."

"There he is, Gord," the driver proclaimed; "and fetching that dog
palace'll cost you seventy-five cents." The box was shifted to the
platform; and, while Gordon unfastened the slide, the men gathered in a
curious, mocking circle.

The slide was raised, the box sharply tilted, and a grotesquely clumsy and
grave young dog slid out. There was a hoarse uproar of gibing laughter,
backs and knees were slapped, heavy feet stamped. The dog stood puzzled by
the tumult: he had a long, square, shaggy head, the color of ripe wheat;
clear, dark eyes and powerful jaw; his body was narrow, covered with
straight, wiry black hair; a short tail was half raised, tentative; and
his wheat colored legs were ludicrously, inappropriately, long and
heavy.

He stood patiently awaiting, evidently, some familiar note, some
reassuring command, in that unintelligible human clamor. Gordon regarded
him through half-closed, indifferent eyes. "Here, doggy," a hoarse,
persuasive voice called; a hand was stretched out to him. But, as he
reached it, "Two hundred dollars!" the voice exclaimed, and the hand gave
the animal a quick, unexpected thrust. The dog sprawled back, and fell on
the point of his shoulder. He rose swiftly to his feet without a whimper,
standing once more at a loss in the midst of the inexplicable animosity.
He watched them all intently, with wrinkles in his serious young brow.
When, from behind, another hand thrust him sharply upon his jaw, he rose
as quickly as possible, swaying a little upon the inappropriate legs.
Another suddenly knocked his hind legs from under him, and he sat heavily
upon his haunches. The laughter ran renewed about the circle.

The sum of money that had been expended upon that single dog--a dog even
that could neither hunt rabbits nor herd sheep--had, it appeared,
engendered a bitter animosity, a personal spite, in the hearts of the men
on the store platform. They were men to whom two hundred dollars was the
symbol of arduous months of toil, endless days of precariously rewarded
labor with the stubborn, inimical forces of nature, with swamp and rock
and thicket. Two hundred dollars! It was the price of a roof, of health,
of life itself.

A hard palm swung upon the dog's ribs, and, in instant response, he fell
upon his side. He rose more slowly; stood isolated, obviously troubled. He
drew back stumbling from a menacing gesture; but there was no cringing
visible in his immature, ill-proportioned body; his tail drooped, but from
weariness, discouragement; his head was level; his eyes met the circle of
eyes about him.

Gordon took no part in the baiting; he lit a cigar, snapped the match over
his shoulder, carelessly watched his newest acquisition. A heavy,
wooden-soled shoe shoved the dog forward. And Buckley Simmons, in an
obvious improvement upon that manoeuver, kicked the animal behind the ear.
The forelegs rose with the impact of the blow, and the body struck full
length upon the platform, where it lay dazed. But, finally, the dog got up
insecurely, wabbling; a dark blot spread slowly across the straw-colored
head.

No one, it was evident, was prepared for the sudden knifelike menace of
Gordon Makimmon's voice as he bent over the dog and wiped the blood upon
his sleeve.

"Kick him again, Buck," he said; "kick him again and see how funny it'll
be."

"Why, Gordon," Buckley Simmons protested, "we were all stirring him up a
little; you didn't say anything--"

Makimmon picked the dog up, holding him against his side, the awkward legs
streaming down in an uncomfortable confusion of joints and paws. "I paid
two hundred dollars for this dog," he pronounced, "as a piece of dam'
foolishness, a sort of drunken joke on Greenstream. But it's no joke; the
two hundred was cheap. I've seen a lot of good men--I'm not exactly a
peafowl myself--but this young dog's better'n any man I ever stood up to;
he's got more guts."

He abruptly turned his back upon the gathering, and descended to the road,
carrying the limp, warm body all the way home.




II


It was his own home to which he returned, the original dwelling of the
Makimmons in Greenstream. He could not, he had told Lettice, be
comfortable anywhere else; he could not be content with it closed against
the living sound of the stream, or in strange hands. Some changes had been
made since his marriage--another space had been enclosed beyond the
kitchen, a chamber occupied by Sim Caley and his wife, moved from the
outlying farm where Lettice had spent her weeks of "retreat" throughout
the passing summers. The exterior had been painted leaden-grey, and a shed
transformed into a small, serviceable stable. But the immediate
surroundings were the same: the primitive sweep still rose from the well,
a cow still grazed in the dank grass; the stream slipped by, mirroring its
stable banks, the foliage inexhaustibly replenished by nature; beyond the
narrow valley the mountain range shut out the rising sun, closed
Greenstream into its deep, verdurous gorge.

High above, the veil of light was still rosy, but it was dusk about Gordon
Makimmon's dwelling. Lettice, in white, with a dark shawl drawn about her
shoulders, was standing on the porch. She spoke in a strain of querulous
sweetness:

"Gordon, you've been the longest while. Mrs. Caley says your supper's all
spoiled. You know she likes to get the table cleared right early in the
evening."

"Is Mrs. Caley to have her say in this house or am I? That's what I want
to know. Am I to eat so's she can clear the table, or is she to clear the
table when I have had my supper?"

"When it suits you, Gordon, of course. Oh, Gordon! whatever are you
carrying?"

"A dog!"

"I didn't know you wanted a dog." An accent of doubt crept into her voice,
a hesitation. "I don't know if I want a dog around ... just now, Gordon."

"He won't do any harm; he's only a young dog, anyhow. Ain't you a young
dog, a regular puppy? But, Lettice, he's got the grit of General Jackson;
he stood right up against the crowd at the store."

"Still, Gordon, right now--"

"I told you he wouldn't do any harm," the man repeated in irritated tones;
"he will be with me most of the time, and not around the house. You're
getting too cranky for living, Lettice." He set the dog upon his feet.
"What I'll call him I don't know; he's as gritty as--why, yes, I do, I'll
call him General Jackson. C'm here, General."

The dog still wavered slightly. He stood intently regarding Gordon. "Here,
here, General Jackson." After another long scrutiny he walked slowly up to
Gordon, raised his head toward the man's countenance. Gordon Makimmon was
delighted. "That's a smart dog!" he exclaimed; "smarter'n half the people
I know. He's got to have something to eat. Lettice, will you tell Mrs.
Caley to give General something to eat, and nothing's too good for him,
either."

Lettice walked to the door of the kitchen and transmitted Gordon's request
to the invisible Mrs. Caley. The latter appeared after a moment and stood
gazing somberly at the man and dog. She was a tall, ungainly woman, with a
flat, sexless body and a deeply-lined face almost the color of her own
salt-raised bread. "This is General Jackson," Gordon explained out of the
settling dark; "he'd thank you for a panful of supper. Come on, General,
come on in the kitchen. No, Mrs. Caley won't bite you; she'll give us
something to eat."

The room next to the kitchen, that had been Clare's, had been stripped of
its furnishing, and a glistening yellow pine table set in the middle, with
six painted wood chairs. The table was perpetually spread on a fringed red
or blue cloth; the center occupied by a large silver-plated castor, its
various rings filled with differently shaped bottles and shakers. At the
end where Lettice sat heavy white cups and saucers were piled; at Gordon's
place a knife and fork were propped up on their guards. On either side
were the plates of Simeon and Mrs. Caley. Each place boasted a knife and
formidable steel fork--the spoons were assembled in a glass
receptacle--and a napkin thrust into a ring of plaited hair plainly marked
with the sign of the respective owner.

Mrs. Caley silently put before Gordon a pinkish loin of pork, boiled
potatoes and a bowl of purple, swimming huckleberries; this she fortified
by a vessel of gravy and section of pie. There was tea. "Where's Lettice?"
Gordon demanded. Apparently Mrs. Caley had not heard him. "Lettice," he
raised his voice; "here's supper."

"I don't want anything to eat, thank you, Gordon," she returned from
another room.

"You ought to eat," he called back, attacking the pork. Then he muttered,
"--full of ideas and airs. Soft."




III


Beyond the dining room was their bedroom, and beyond that a chamber which,
for years in a state of deserted, semi-ruin, Gordon had had newly floored
and rendered weather-proof, and now used as a place of assemblage. He
found Lettice there when he had finished supper.

She was sitting beside a small table which held a lighted lamp with a
shade of minute, woven pieces of various silks. Behind her was a cottage
organ, a mass of fretted woodwork; a wall pierced by a window was
ornamented by a framed photograph of a woman dead and in her coffin. The
photograph had faded to a silvery monotony, but the details of the rigid,
unnatural countenance, the fixed staring eyes, were still clear. Redly
varnished chairs with green plush cushions and elaborate, thread
antimacassars, a second table ranged against the wall, bearing a stout
volume entitled "A Cloud of Witnesses," and a cheap phonograph, completed
the furnishing.

It was warm without, but Lettice had shut the window, the shawl was still
about her shoulders. She was sewing upon a small piece of white material.

"Here, General, here," Gordon commanded, and the dog followed him
seriously into the room. "Pat him, Lettice, so's he'll get to know you,"
he urged.

"I don't think I want to," she began; but, at her husband's obvious
impatience, she experimented doubtfully, "Here, puppy."

"Can't you call him by his name?" he interrupted. "How ever'll he come to
know it?"

"I don't want to call him at all," she protested, a little wildly. "I
don't like him to-night; perhaps to-morrow I will feel different."

"Well, do or don't, that dog's a part of the house, and I don't want to
hear Mrs. Caley say this or that about it, neither."

"Mrs. Caley isn't as bad as you make her out; it's me she's thinking about
most of the time. I tell her men are not like women, they never think
about the little things we do. Father was like that ... you are too.
That's all the men I have known." Her voice trailed off into an abrupt
silence, she sat staring into the room with the needlework forgotten in
her hand.

Gordon turned to the dog, playing with him, pulling his ears. General
Jackson, in remonstrance, softly bit Gordon's hand. "That's a dandy dog.
Making yourself right at home, hey! Biting right back, are you! Let me
feel your teeth, phew--"

"Gordon," Lettice exclaimed suddenly in a throaty voice, "I'm afraid....
Tell me it will be all right, Gordon."

He looked up from the dog, startled by the unaccustomed vibration of her
tones. "Of course it will be all right," he reassured her hastily, making
an effort to keep his impatience from his voice; "I never guessed you were
so easy scared."

"I'll try not," she returned obediently. "Mrs. Caley says it will be all
right, too." She seemed, he thought, even younger than when he had married
her. She was absurdly girlish. It annoyed him; it seemed, unjustly, to
place too great a demand upon his forbearance, his patience. A wife should
be able to give and take--this was almost like having a child to tend.
Lately she had been frightened even at the dark, she had wakened him over
nothing at all, fancies.

He decided to pay no further attention to her imagining; and moved to the
phonograph, where he selected one of a small number of waxy cylinders.
"We'll see how the General likes music," he proclaimed. He slipped the
cylinder over a projection, and wound the mechanism. A sharp, high
scratching responded, as painful as a pin dragging over the ear drum, a
meaningless cacophony of sounds that gradually resolved into a thin,
incredibly metallic melody which appeared, mercifully, to come from a
distance. To this was presently joined a voice, the voice, as it were, of
a sinister, tin manikin galvanized into convulsive song. The words grew
audible in broken phrases:

                      ...  was a lucky man,
                      Rip van Winkle ... grummmble
                      ...  never saw the women
                      At Coney Island swimming ...

General Jackson sat abruptly on his haunches, and lifted a long, quavering
protest. As the cylinder went round and round, and the shrill performance
continued, the dog's howling grew wilder; it reached a point where it
broke into a hoarse cough, then again it recommenced lower in the scale,
carrying over a gamut of indescribable, audible misery.

Gordon slapped his leg in acute enjoyment. "The General's a regular opera
singer, a high-rolling canary. Go after it ... a regular concert dog."

"Gordon," Lettice said, in a small, strained voice. Apparently he had not
heard her. "Gordon," she repeated more loudly. She had dropped the piece
of sewing, her hands were clenched, her face wet and pallid. "Gordon!" she
cried, her voice cutting through the sound of the phonograph and the
howling dog; "stop it, do you hear! I'll go crazy! Stop it! Stop it! Stop
it!"

He silenced the machine in genuine surprise. "Why, everything works you up
to-night. I thought you'd like to hear General Jackson sing; he's got a
real deep barytone."

Lettice sat limply in her chair. "I stood it just as long as I could," she
half whispered.

Gordon walked to the unshuttered window, gazing out; above the
impenetrable, velvety dark of the western range the stars gleamed like
drops of water. He felt unsettled, ill at ease; dissatisfaction irked his
thoughts and emotions. His unrest was without tangible features; it
permeated him from an undivined cause, oppressed him with indefinable
longing. He got, he dimly realized, but a limited amount of satisfaction
from the money now at his command. He was totally without financial
instinct--money for itself, the abstraction, was beyond his comprehension.
He had bought a ponderous gold watch, which he continually neglected to
wind; the years of stage driving had sated him of horses; his clothes were
already a subject of jest in Greenstream; and he had seriously damaged his
throat, and the throat of Sim Caley, with cigars. He had been glad to
return to the familiar, casual cigarettes, the generous bag of Green Goose
for five cents; Sim had reverted to his haggled plug. He had no desire to
build a pretentious dwelling--his instinct, his clannish spirit, was too
closely bound up in the house of his father and grandfather to derive any
pleasure from that.

After he had spent a limited amount, the principal at his disposal lay
untouched, unrealized. He got a certain measure of content from its sheer
bulk at his back; it ministered to his vanity, to his supreme self
importance. He liked negligently to produce, in Simmons' store, a twenty
or even fifty dollar currency note, and then conduct a search through his
pockets for something smaller. He drank an adequate amount of whiskey,
receiving it in jugs semi-surreptitiously by way of the Stenton stage;
Greenstream County was "dry," but whiskey in gallons was comparatively
inexpensive. He would have gambled, but two dollars was a momentous hazard
to the habitual card players of the village. He thought, occasionally, of
taking a short trip, of two or three days, to nearby cities outside his
ken, or to the ocean--Gordon had never seen a large body of water; but his
life had travelled such a narrow course, he was so accustomed by blood and
experience to the feel of the mountains, that, when the moment arrived to
consider an actual departure, he drew back ... put it off.

What he was subconsciously longing for was youth. He was instinctively
rebelling, struggling, against the closing fetters of time, against the
dilution of his blood by time, the hardening of his bones, the
imperceptible slackening of his muscles. His intimate contact with the
vigorous youth of Lettice had precipitated this rebellion, this strife in
which he was doomed. He would have hotly repudiated the insinuation that
he was growing old; he would still, perhaps, have fought the man who said
that he was failing. And such a statement would be beside the fact; no
perceptible decay had yet set up at the heart of his manhood. But the
inception of that process was imminent; the sloth consequent upon
Lettice's money was hastening it.

Lettice's youthful aspect, persisting in the face of her approaching
motherhood, disconcerted him; it was inappropriate. Her freshly-flushed,
rounded cheeks beside his own weather-beaten, lean jaw offered a comment
too obvious for enjoyment. He resented, from his own depleting store, her
unspent sum of days. It created in him an animosity which, as he turned
from the window, noted almost with relief faint lines about her mouth, the
sinking of her color.

She was sitting with her eyes shut, the sewing neglected in her lap, and
did not see Mrs. Caley standing in the doorway. The woman's gaze lingered
for a moment, with an unmasked, burning contempt, upon Gordon Makimmon,
then swept on to the girl.

"Lettice!" she exclaimed, in a species of exasperated concern, "don't you
know better than to sit up to all hours?"




IV


The following morning, "Oh, Gordon!" Lettice cried, "I like him ever so
much; he played and played with me."

Gordon had gone to the post-office, and was descending the slope from the
public road to his dwelling. He found Lettice sitting on the edge of the
porch, and, panting vigorously, the dog extended before her, an expression
of idiotic satisfaction on his shaggy face. They were, together, an
epitome of extreme youth; and Gordon's discontent, revived from the night
before, overflowed in facile displeasure.

"Don't you know better than to run him on a warm morning like this?" he
complained; "as like as not now he'll take a fit; young dogs mustn't get
their blood heated up."

The animation died from her countenance, leaving it almost sullen, her
shoulders drooped dejectedly. "It seems nothing suits you," she observed;
"you're cross when I don't like the dog and you're cross when I do. I
can't satisfy you, anyhow."

"There's some difference in making over the dog and playing him out. Come
here, General Jackson." The animal rose and yapped, backing playfully
away. "Don't you hear me? Come right here." The dog, sensitive to the
growing menace in the voice, moved still further away. "C'm here, damn
you," Gordon shot out. The dog grew stubborn, and refused to move forward;
and Gordon, his anger thoroughly aroused, picked up a large stone and
threw it with all his force, missing General Jackson by a narrow margin.

"It seems to me," Lettice observed in a studiously detached voice, "I
wouldn't throw stones at a dog I had paid two hundred dollars for."

Gordon was momentarily disconcerted. He had not intended to tell Lettice
how much the General had cost. And yet, he reflected, since the village
knew, with Sim Caley's wife in the house, it had been folly to hope to
keep it from her.

"It's his pedigree," he explained lamely; "champion stock, imported." His
temper again slowly got the better of his wisdom. "What if I did pay two
hundred dollars for him?" he demanded; "it's harmless, ain't it? I'd a
sight better do that than some other things I might mention."

"I only said," she repeated impersonally, "that I would not throw stones
at a dog that had cost so much money."

"You're getting on the money now, are you? Going to start that song?
That'll come natural to you. When I first married you I couldn't see how
you were old Pompey's daughter, but I might have known it would come out.
I might have known you weren't the daughter of the meanest man in
Greenstream for nothing.... I suppose I'll hear about that money all the
rest of my life."

"Perhaps I will die, and then you will have no bother."

"That's a nice way to talk; that makes me out a fine figure of a
man ... with Mrs. Caley in the kitchen there, laying right over every
word; the old vinegar bottle."

"Don't you say another word about Mrs. Caley," Lattice declared
passionately; "she nursed my mother in her last sickness; and she took
care of me for years, when there wasn't anybody else hardly knew if I was
alive or not. If it wasn't for Mrs. Caley right now I guess I'd be in an
early grave."

Gordon Makimmon stood silenced by the last outburst. The tall, meager
figure of Mrs. Caley appeared upon the porch. She was clad in black
calico, and wore grey felt slippers. Her head was lowered, her closed lips
quivered, her bony fingers twitched. She never addressed a word to Gordon
directly; and, he decided, when she did, it would be monumental,
dumbfounding. The present moment was more than usually unpropitious; and,
discovering General Jackson at his heels, he picked the dog up and
departed for the stable, where he saw Sim Caley putting the horse into the
buggy.

"I thought I'd go over to the farm beyond the priest's," he answered
Gordon's query; "Tol'able's an awful slack hand with cattle."

"Your wife ought to run that place; she'd walk those steers around on a
snake fence."

Simeon Caley preserved a diplomatic silence. He, too, was long and lean.
He had eyes of the most innocent and tender blue imaginable in a
countenance seamed and scarred by protracted debauch, disease, abuse. It
was said of him that if all the liquor he had consumed were turned loose
on the mountain it would sweep Greenstream village to the farther end of
the valley.

His voice, like his eyes, was gentle. "Come right along, Gord; there's
some draining you ought to see to. It's a nice drive, anyways." Gordon
took the reins, slapping them on the rough, sturdy back of the horse, and
they started up the precarious track to the road. General Jackson's head
hung panting, wild-eyed, from the side of the vehicle.




V


It was late when they returned from the farm. Gordon left the buggy at the
Courthouse. The thought of his dwelling, with Lattice's importunate
fancies and complaints, was distasteful to him. A long-drawn-out evening
in the monotonous sitting room, with the grim form of Mrs. Caley in the
background, was insupportable. There was no light in the office of the
_Bugle_, but there was a pale yellow blur in the lower windows of
Peterman's hotel. It might be that a drummer had arrived, and was
entertaining a local circle with the pungent wit of the road; and Gordon
made his way toward the hotel.

It was a painted, wooden structure, two stories in height, with a wing
that ran back from the road. The rooms in the latter section were reached
from an outside, uncovered gallery, gained by a flight of steps at the
back. Contrary to his expectation no one was in the office; a lamp shone
on an empty array of chairs. But some one was on the gallery above; he
could see a white skirt through the railing, make out the dark blot of a
head upon the night. The illumination from within shone on his face.

The form above him leaned forward over the railing. "Mr. Makimmon," a
woman's voice said, "if you want Mr. Peterman, I'll call him. He's at the
back of the house."

Gordon was totally unaware of her identity.

"No," he replied, hesitatingly, "I wasn't after him in particular--"

"You don't know me," she challenged, laughing; "it's Meta Beggs; I teach
the school, you know."

Instantly the memory returned to him of a woman's round, gleaming
shoulders slipping into a web of soft white; he recalled the
school-teacher's bitter arraignment of her life, her prospects. "I didn't
know you," he admitted, "and that's the fact; it was the dark." He
hesitated once more, conscious of the awkwardness of his position, talking
upward to an indistinguishable shape. "I heard you were back," he
continued impotently.

"Yes," she assented, "there was nothing else open.... Won't you come up
and smoke a cigarette? It's pleasant here on the gallery."

He mounted the steps, making his way over the narrow, hollow-sounding
passage to her side. She was seated overlooking the rift of the valley.
"I'll get you a chair," she said, rising. At her side a door opened into a
dim room. "No, no," he protested, "let me--in here?"

He entered the room. It was, he divined, hers. His foot struck against a
chair, and his hand caught the back. A thin, clinging under-garment rested
on it, which he deposited on a vague bed. It stuck to his fingers like a
cobweb. There was just room on the balcony to arrange the chairs side by
side.




VI


The spring night was potent, warm and damp; it was filled with intangible
influences which troubled the mind and stirred the memory to vain,
melancholy groping. Meta Beggs was so close to Gordon that their shoulders
touched. He rolled a cigarette and lit it, resting his arms upon the
railing. Her face was white in the gloom; not white as Lettice's had been,
like a flower, but sharply cut like marble; her nose was finely modelled,
her lips were delicately curved, but thin, compressed. He could
distinguish over her the paramount air of dissatisfaction.

She aroused in him unbidden thoughts; without the slightest freedom of
gesture or words she gave the impression of careless license. He grew
instinctively, at once, familiar, confidential, in his attitude toward
her. And she responded in the same manner; she did not draw back when
their arms accidentally met.

An interest, a vivacity of manner, such as Gordon had not experienced for
weeks stirred in him. Meta Beggs called back into being the old freedom of
stage-driving days, of the younger years. Her manner flattered his sex
vanity. They progressed famously.

"You don't like the children any better than you did?"

"They get more like rats every year."

"I thought about you, held against your will."

"Don't tell lies; I went right out of your mind."

"Not as quick as I went out of yours. I did think about you, though--" he
stopped, but she insisted upon his finishing the remark. "Well, I
remembered what you said about your shoulders, and I saw you that night at
your window...."

"Men, somehow, are always curious about me," she remarked indifferently;
"they have bothered me ever since I was a girl. I make them mad. I never
worry about such things myself--from the way women talk, and men go on,
there must be something left out of me ... it just seems silly to get all
red in the face--"

He almost constructed her words into a challenge. Five years ago, he
continued, or only two, he would have changed her conception of living, he
would have broken down her indifference, but now--His mental deliberations
ended abruptly, for, even in his mind, he avoided all reference to
Lettice; they studiously omitted her name in their conversation.

"Are you going to the camp meeting on South Fork next week?" she
demanded. "I have never seen one. Buckley Simmons says all sorts of things
happen. He's going to take me on Saturday. I wish--" she broke off
pointedly.

"What?"

"I was going to say that I wish, well--I wish I were going with somebody
else than Buckley; he bothers me all the time."

"I'd like a lot to take you. It's not fit for you to go, though. The best
people in Greenstream don't. They get crazy with religion, and with rum;
often as not there's shooting."

"Oh! I had no idea. I don't know as I will go. I wish you would be there.
If I go will you be there to look out for me?"

"I hadn't thought of it. Still, if you're there, and want me around, I
guess that's where I will be."

"I feel better right away; I'll see you then; it's a sort of engagement
between you and me. Buckley Simmons needn't know. Perhaps we can slip away
from him for a while."

Voices rose from below them, and they drew back instinctively. Gordon
found in this desire to avoid observation an additional bond with Meta
Beggs; the aspect of secrecy gave a flavor to their communion. They
remained silent, with their shoulders pressed together, until the voices,
the footfalls, faded into the distance.

He rose to leave, and she held out her hand. At its touch he recalled how
pointed the fingers were; it was incredibly cool and smooth, yet it seemed
to instil a subtle fire in his palm. She stood framed in her doorway,
bathed in the intimate, disturbing aroma of her person. Gordon recalled
the cobwebby garment on the bed. He made an involuntary step toward her,
and she drew back into the room ... the night was breathlessly still. If
he took another step forward, he wondered, would she still retreat?
Somewhere in the dark interior he would come close to her.

"Good night." Her level, impersonal voice was like a breath of cold air
upon his face.

"Good night," he returned hastily. "I got turned right around." His
departure over the gallery was not unlike a flight.




VII


The memory of Meta Beggs was woven like a bright thread through the
monotonous texture of the days which immediately followed. She was never
entirely out of his thoughts; she stirred him out of all proportion to any
assignable cause; she irritated him. He remembered that she said she made
men "mad." He recalled how ridiculous he had felt as he had said, "Good
night." He wished to repay her for that injury to his self-esteem.

At the same time, curiously, he was more patient with Lettice, he had a
more ready sympathy for her intangible fancies. Perhaps for the first time
he enjoyed sitting quietly on the porch of his house with her and General
Jackson. He sat answering her endless queries, fears, assenting
half-absently to her projections, with the thought of Meta Beggs at the
back of his mind. He wanted to be as nice as possible to Lettice. Suddenly
she seemed a little removed from him, from the world in general, the world
of the emotions and ideas that centered about the school-teacher.

Lettice was--superior; he recognized it pridefully. Behind her temporary,
rational vagaries there was a quality of steadfastness. It was clear to
him now from its contrast to his own devious mind. But he found a sharp
pleasure in the mental image of the Beggs woman. He recalled the burning
sensation that had lingered in his palm from the touch of her hand, the
pressure of her shoulder against his as they had drawn back from the
vision of those below.

He went early to the camp meeting on the Saturday appointed.




VIII


He drove over the road that lay at the base of the western range away from
his dwelling and Greenstream village. The mature spring day had almost the
appearance of summer; the valley was flooded with sparkling sunlight; but
the young leaves were still red, the greenery still translucent, the trees
black with risen sap. The buggy rolled through the shallow, rocky fords,
the horse's hoofs flinging up the water in shining drops. The road rose
slightly, turning to the right, where an intermediate valley lay
diagonally through the range. Save for small, scattered farms the
bottomland was uncultivated, the tangled brush impenetrable.

Gordon passed other vehicles, bound toward the camp meeting, usually a
single seat crowded with three, or even four, adult forms. He passed flat
wagons with their bottoms filled with straw, on which women sat with
stiffly-extended legs. The young women wore gay colors, their eyes
sparkled in hardy faces, their hands, broad and red and capable, awkwardly
disposed. The older women, with shawls folded about their stooped
shoulders, were close-lipped, somber. The men were sparely built, with
high, prominent cheek bones, long, hollow cheeks and shaven mouths touched
with sardonic humor, under undented, black felt hats. There were an
appreciable number of invalids and leaden-faced idiots.

The way grew wilder, the natural forms shrunk, the valley became a small
plain of broken, rocky hillocks matted with thorny bushes, surrounded by
marshes of rank grass, flags, half-grown osiers. The vehicles, drawn into
a single way, crowded together, progressed slowly. Gordon saw in the back
of the buggy before him two whiskey jugs. Some one far ahead began to sing
a revival hymn, and it ran along the line of carriages like a trail of
ignited powder. A deep bass caught it behind Gordon Makimmon, then the
piercing soprano of a woman farther back.

The camp meeting spread over a small, irregular plateau surrounded by
swamp and sluggish streams. Gordon turned off the road, and drove over a
rough, short descent to a ledge of solid ground by a stream and fringe of
willows. The spring torrents had subsided, leaving the grass, the willows,
covered with a grey, crackling coat of mud; the air had a damp, fetid
smell; beyond, the swamp bubbled gaseously. The close line of hitched
teams disappeared about an elbow of the thicket; groups of men gathered
in the noisome shadows, bottles were passed, heads thrown back and arms
bent aloft.

Above, a great, sagging tent was staked to the obdurate ground. To the
left a wooden floor had been temporarily laid about a four-square, open
counter, now bare, with a locked shed for storage. Before Gordon was the
sleeping tent for women. The sun seemed unable to dispel the miasma of the
swamp, the surrounding aspect of mean desolation. The scene was petty,
depressing. It was surcharged by a curious air of tension, of suspense, a
brooding, treacherous hysteria, an ugly, raw, emotional menace. A service
was in progress; a sustained, convulsive murmur came from within, a
wordless, fluctuating lament. Suddenly it was pierced by a shrill, high
scream, a voice tormented out of all semblance to reason. The sound grew
deeper and louder; it swung into a rhythm which formed into words, lines,
a primitive chant that filled the plateau, swelled out over the swamp. It
continued for an incredible length of time, rising to an unbearable pitch,
then it died away in a great gasp.

A thin, sinister echo rose from among the willows--emotional, shrill
curses, a brief, raving outburst of passion, sharply punctuated with
double shots, and falling abruptly to heavy silence. Gordon saw men
obscurely running below.

The curtained entrance to the tent was pushed aside, and a woman walked
stiffly out, her hands clenched, and her glassy eyes set in a fixed stare.
Her hat was gone, and her grey hair lay upon one shoulder. She progressed,
stumbling blindly over the inequalities of the ground, until she tripped
on a stone. She lay where she had fallen, with her muscles jerking and
shuddering, until a man appeared from behind the counter, and dragged her
unceremoniously to the women's shelter.

Gordon entered the tent where the service was in progress. A subdued light
filtered through the canvas upon a horde that filled every foot of space;
they sat pressed together on long, rough boards nailed together in the
semblance of benches. On a platform at the farther side a row of men and
women sat against the canvas wall; to their left a folding organ had been
erected, and was preside

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