Chapter 4

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the cool shadows rose about him, enveloping him in the quietude, the sense of security, which brooded over the withdrawn valley--the resplendent mirage of nature kind, beneficent, the illusion of Nature as a tender and loving parent ...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.