Part 41

His thoughts turned to Alexander Crandall and his wife, to the extended sheep-cots, and the "light" which they now saw. He recalled the former's assertion that the land was all right, but that the blood-money men made life arduous in Greenstream. He remembered Edgar Crandall's arraignment of the County as "the littlest, meanest place on earth," a place where a man who wanted his own, his chance, was helpless to survive the avarice of a few individuals, the avarice for gold. He had asked him, Gordon Makimmon, to give him that chance. But, obviously, it was impossible ... absurd.

His memory drifted back to the evening in the store when Valentine Simmons had abruptly demanded payment of his neglected account, to the hopeless rage that had possessed him at the realization of his impotence, of Clare's illness. That scene, that bitter realization of ruin, had been repeated across the breadth of Greenstream. As a boy he had heard men in shaking tones curse Pompey Hollidew; only last week the red-headed Crandall had sworn he would let his ground rot rather than slave for the breed of Cannon. It was, apparently, a perpetual evil, an endless burden for the shoulders of men momentarily forgetful or caught in a trap of circumstance.

Yet he had, without effort, without deprivation, freed Alexander Crandall. He could have freed his brother, given him the chance his rebellious soul demanded, with equal ease. He had not done that last, he had said at the time, because of the numbers that would immediately besiege him for assistance. This, he realized, was not a valid objection--the money was his to dispose of as he saw fit. He possessed large sums lying at the Stenton banks, automatically returning him interest, profit; thrown in the scale their weight would go far toward balancing the greed of Valentine Simmons, of Cannon.

He considered these facts totally ignorant of the fact that they were but the reflection of his own inchoate need born in the anguish of his wife's death; he was not conscious of the veering of his sensibility--sharpened by the hoarse cry from the stiffening lips of Lettice--to the world without. He thought of the possibility before him neither as a scheme of philanthropy nor of revenge, nor of rehabilitation. He considered it solely in the light of his own experience, as a practical measure to give men their chance, their own, in Greenstream. The cost to himself would be small--his money had faded from his conceptions, his necessities, as absolutely as though it had been fairy gold dissolved by the touch of a magic wand. He had never realized its potentiality; lately he had ignored it with the contempt of supreme indifference. Now an actual employment for it occupied his mind.

The stove glowed with calorific energy; General Jackson, who had been lying at his feet, moved farther away. The lamplight grew faint and reddish, and then expired, trailing a thin, penetrating odor. In the dark the heated cylinder of the stove shone rosy, mysterious.

Gordon Makimmon was unaware of his own need; yet, at the anticipation of the vigorous course certain to follow a decision to use his money in opposition to the old, established, rapacious greed, he was conscious of a sudden tightening of his mental and physical fibers. The belligerent blood carried by George Gordon Makimmon from world-old wars, from the endless strife of bitter and rugged men in high, austere places, stirred once more through his relaxed and rusting being.

He thought, aglow like the stove, of the struggle that would follow such a determination, a struggle with the pink fox, Valentine Simmons. He thought of himself as an equal with the other; for, if Simmons were practised in cunning, if Simmons were deep, he, Gordon Makimmon, would have no necessity for circuitous dealing; his course would be simple, unmistakable.--He would lend money at, say, three per cent, grant extensions of time wherever necessary, and knock the bottom out of the storekeepers' usurious monopoly, drag the farms out of Cannon's grasping fingers.

"By God!" he exclaimed, erect in the dark; "but Edgar Crandall will get his apples."

The dog licked his hand, faithful, uncomprehending.

On an afternoon of mid-August Gordon was sitting in the chamber of his dwelling that had been formerly used as dining room. The table was bare of the castor and the red cloth, and held an inkpot, pens upright in a glass of shot, and torn envelopes on an old blotter. An iron safe stood against the wall at Gordon's back, and above it hung a large calendar, advertising the Stenton Realty and Trust Company.

A sudden gloom swept over the room, and Gordon rose, proceeded to the door. A bank of purple cloud swept above the west range, opened in the sky like a gigantic, menacing fist; the greenery of the valley was overcast, and a white flash of lightning, accompanied by a shattering peal of thunder, stabbed viciously at the earth. There was no rain. An edge of serene light followed in the west a band of saffron radiance that widened until the cloud had vanished beyond the eastern peaks. The sultry heat lay like a blanket over Greenstream.

He turned back into the room, but, as he moved, he was aware of a figure at the porch door. It was a man with a round, freshly-colored countenance, bland eyes, and a limp mustache, clad in leather boots and a worn corduroy gunning coat. Gordon nodded familiarly; it was the younger Entriken from the valley beyond.

"I came to see you about my note," he announced in a facile candor; "I sh'd take it up this month, but times are terrible bad, Gordon, and I wondered if you'd give me another extension? There's no real reason why you sh'd wait again; I reckon I could make her, but it would certainly be accommodating--" he paused interrogatively.

"Well," Gordon hesitated, "I'm not in a hurry for the note, if it comes to that. But the fact is ... I've got a lot of money laid out. What's been the matter?--the weather has been good, it's rained regular--"

"That's just it," Entriken interrupted; "it's rained too blamed regular. It is all right for crops, but we've got nothing besides cattle, and steers wouldn't hardly put on anything the past weeks. Of course, in a way, grass is cattle, but it just seems they wouldn't take any good in the wet."

"I suppose it will be all right," Gordon Makimmon assented; "but I can hardly have the money out so long ... others too."

The heat thickened with the dusk. The wailing clamor of William Vibard's accordion rose from the porch. He had, of late, avoided sitting with Rose and her husband; they irritated him in countless, insignificant ways. Rose's superiority had risen above the commonplace details of the house; she sat on the porch and regarded Gordon with a strained, rigid smile. After a pretense at procuring work William Vibard had relapsed into an endless debauch of sound. His manner became increasingly abstracted; he ate, he lived, with the gestures of a man playing an accordion.

The lines on Gordon's thin, dark face had multiplied; his eyes, in the shadow of his bony forehead, burned steady, pale blue; his chin was resolute; but a new doubt, a constant, faint perplexity, blurred the line of his mouth.

From the road above came the familiar sound of hoof-beats, muffled in dust, but it stopped opposite his dwelling; and, soon after, the porch creaked under slow, heavy feet, and a thick, black-clad figure knocked and entered.

It was the priest, Merlier.

In the past months Gordon had been conscious of an increasing concord with the silent clerical. He vaguely felt in the other's isolation the wreckage of an old catastrophe, a loneliness not unlike his, Gordon Makimmon's, who had killed his wife and their child.

"The Nickles," the priest pronounced, sudden and harsh, "are worthless, woman and man. They would be bad if they were better; as it is they are only a drunken charge on charity and the church. They have been stewed in whiskey now for a month. They make nothing amongst their weeds.--Is it possible they got a sum from you?"

"Six weeks back," Gordon replied briefly; "two hundred dollars to put a floor on the bare earth and stop a leaking roof."

"Lies," Merlier commented. "When any one in my church is deserving I will tell you myself. I think of an old woman now, but ten dollars would be a fortune." Silence fell upon them. Then:

"Charity is commanded," he proceeded, "but out of the hands of authority it is a difficult and treacherous virtue. The people are without comprehension," he made a gesture of contempt.

"With age," the deliberate voice went on, "the soul grows restless and moves in strange directions, struggling to throw off the burden of flesh. But I that know tell you," Merlier paused at the door, "the charity of material benevolence, of gold, will cure no spiritual sores; for spirit is eternal, but the flesh is only so much dung." He stopped abruptly, coughed, as though he had carried his utterance beyond propriety. "The Nickles," he repeated somberly, "are worthless; they make trouble in my parish; with money they make more."

The year, in the immemorial, minute shifting of season, grew brittle and cold; the dusk fell sooner and night lingered late into morning.

William Vibard moved with his accordion from the porch to beside the kitchen stove. He was in the throes of a new piece, McGinty, and Gordon Makimmon was correspondingly surprised when, as he was intent upon some papers, Rose's husband voluntarily relinquished his instrument, and sat in the room with him.