Part 19 (1/2)
Gordon rose. ”I'll see the railroad people myself,” he observed; ”and find out what I can do there.”
”Hold on,” Simmons waved him back to his chair. ”If there's too much talk the thing will get out. You know these thick skulls around here--at the whisper of transportation you couldn't cut a sapling with a gold axe. It took managing to interest the Tennessee and Northern; they are going through to Buffalo; a Greenstream branch is only a side issue to them.” He paused, thinking. ”There's no good,” he resumed, ”in you and me getting into each other. The best thing we can do is to control all the good stuff, agree on a price, and divide the take.”
Gordon carefully considered this new proposal. It seemed to him palpably fair. ”All the papers would have to be made together,” he added; ”what's for one's for the other.”
Now that the deal was fully exposed Valentine Simmons was impatient of small precautions. ”Can't you see how the plan lays?” he demanded irritably. ”We'll draw up a partners.h.i.+p. Don't get full and talk,” he added discontentedly. It was evident that he keenly resented the absence of Pompey Hollidew from the transaction.
”A thing like this,” he informed the other, ”ain't put through in a week.
It will be two or three years yet before the company will be ready for construction.”
Minor details were rehea.r.s.ed, concluded. Two weeks later Gordon signed an agreement of partners.h.i.+p with Valentine Simmons to purchase collectively such timber options as were deemed desirable, and to merchandise their interests at a uniform price to the railroad company concerned.
XIII
When Gordon returned to his dwelling he found Sim Caley and his sister's husband taking the horse from the shafts of a dusty, two-seated carriage.
Rutherford Berry was a slightly-built man with high, narrow shoulders, and a smooth, pasty-white face. He was clerk in a store at the farther end of Greenstream valley, and had flat, fragile wrists and a constant, irritating cough.
”H'y, Gord!” he shouted; ”your sister wanted to visit with you over night, and see Lettice. We only brought two--the oldest and Barnwell K.”
The ”oldest,” Gordon recalled, was the girl who had worn Clare's silk waist and ”run the colors”; Barnwell K. Berry was, approximately, ten.
”That's right,” he returned cordially. He a.s.sisted in running the carriage back by the shed. Lettice and his sister were stiffly facing each other in the sitting room. The latter had a fine, thin countenance with pale hair drawn tightly back and fastened under a small hat pinned precariously aloft; her eyes were steady, like his own. She wore a black dress ornamented with large carmine dots, with a scant black ribband about her waist, her sole adornment a bra.s.sy wedding ring, that almost covered an entire joint. She spoke in a rapid, absent voice, as if her attention were perpetually wandering down from the subject in hand to an invisible kitchen stove, or a child temporarily unaccounted for.
”Lettice looks right good,” she declared, ”and, dear me, why shouldn't she, with nothing on her mind at all but what comes to every woman? When I had my last Rutherford was down with the influenza, the youngest was taken with green-sickness, and we had worked out all our pay at the store in supplies. You're fixed nice here,” she added without a trace of envy in her tired voice. ”I suppose that's Mrs. Hollidew in her shroud. We have one of James--he died at three--sitting just as natural as life in the rocker.”
”Where's Rose?” he asked.
”In the kitchen, helping Mrs. Caley. I wanted to ask that nothing be said before Rose of Lettice's expecting. We've brought her up very delicate; and besides there's a young man paying her attention, it's not a fitting time--she might take a scare. I had promised to bring Barnwell K. the next time.”
They could hear from without the boy and the hysterical yelping of General Jackson. ”That dog won't bite?” Mrs. Berry worried. Gordon, patently indignant, replied that the General never bit. ”Barnwell might cross him,” she answered; and, moving to the door, summoned her offspring. It was the st.u.r.dy individual who had burst into a wail at Clare's funeral, his hair still bristling against a formal application of soap.
”C'm on in, doggy,” he called; ”c'm in, Ginral. I wisht I had a doggy like that,” he hung on his mother's knees lamenting the absence from their household of a General Jackson. ”Our ol' houn' dog's nothing,” he a.s.serted.
Lettice, worn by her visitor's rapid monotone, the stir and clatter of young shoes, remarked petulantly, ”Gordon paid two hundred dollars for that single dog; there ought to be something extra to him.”
Mrs. Berry received this item without signal amazement; it was evident that she was prepared to credit any vagaries to the possessors of Pompey Hollidew's fabulous legacy.
”Just think of that!” she exclaimed mildly; ”I'll chance that dog gets a piece of liver every day.”
Rose, from the door, announced supper. She was an awkward girl of seventeen, with the pallid face and blank brown eyes of her father, and diffident speech. Gordon faced Lettice over her figured red cloth; on one side Barnwell K. sat flanked by his mother and Simeon Caley, on the other Rose sat by an empty chair, the place of the now energetically employed Mrs. Caley. The great, tin pot of coffee rested at Lettice's hand, and, before Gordon, a portentous platter held three gaunt, brown chickens with brilliant yellow legs stiffly in air. Between these two gastronomic poles was a dish of heaped, quivering poached eggs, the inevitable gravy boat, steaming potatoes and a choice of pies. Gordon dismembered the chickens, and, as the plates circled the table, they acc.u.mulated potatoes and gravy and eggs. Barnwell K., through an oversight, was defrauded of the last item, and proceeded to remedy the omission. He thrust his knife into the slippery, poached ma.s.s. At best a delicate operation, he erred, eggs slipped, and a thick yellow stream flowed sluggishly to the rim of the plate. His mother met this fault of manner with profuse, disconcerted apologies. She shook him so vigorously that his chair rattled. Simeon Caley lifted the heavy coffee pot for Lettice.
Mrs. Caley's service was abrupt, efficient; she set down plates of hot bread with a clatter; she rattled the stove lids from without, and complained of General Jackson, faithfully following her every movement.
Sim Caley wielded an adroit knife; but, under the extraordinary pressure of this bountiful repast, Rutherford Berry easily outdistanced him. He consumed such unlimited amounts that he gained the audible displeasure of his wife.
”You're not a camel,” she truthfully observed, ”you don't have to fill up for a week; you get something home. What Lettice'll think of you I can't make out.”
Substantial sections of pie were dispatched. Barnwell K., valiantly endeavoring to emulate his father, struggled manfully; he poked the last piece of crust into his mouth with his fingers. Then, in a shrill aside, he inquired, ”Will Aunt Lettice have the baby while we're here.” His mother's hand rang like a shot on his face, and he responded instantly with a yell of appalling volume.