Part 28 (1/2)

”You see,” William eagerly interposed; ”now I'm fixed good.”

At the sight of the grotesque waste a swift resentment moved Gordon Makimmon--it was a mockery of his money's use, a gibing at his capability, his planning. The petty treachery of Rose added its injury. He pitched the box in his hands upon the clay floor, and the accordion fell out, quivering like a live thing.

”Hey!” William Vibard remonstrated; ”don't do like that ... delicate--”

He knelt, with an expression of concern, and, tenderly fingering the instrument, replaced it in the box.

Gordon turned sharply and returned to the house. Rose was in her room. He could hear her moving rapidly about, pulling at the bureau drawers.

Depression settled upon him; he carried the lantern into the bedroom, where he sat bowed, troubled. He was aroused finally by the faint strains of William's latest melodic effort drifting discreetly from the stable.

The next morning the Vibards departed. Rose was silent, her face, red and swollen, was vindictive. On the back of the vehicle that conveyed them to the parental Berrys was securely tied the square bundle that had ”fixed good” William Vibard musically for life.

XII

Gordon Makimmon, absorbed in the difficult and elusive calculations of his indefinable project was unaware of the change wrought by their departure, of the s.h.i.+fting of the year, the familiar acts and living about him. He looked up abruptly from the road when Valentine Simmons, upon the platform of the store, arrested his progress homeward.

Simmons' voice was high and shrill, as though time had tightened and dried his vocal cords; his cheeks were still round and pink, but they were sapless, the color lingered like a film of desiccated paint.

The store remained unchanged: Sampson, the clerk, had gone, but another, identical in s.h.i.+rt sleeves upheld by bowed elastics, was brus.h.i.+ng the counters with a turkey wing; the merchandise on the shelves, unloaded from the slow procession of capacious mountain wagons, flowed in endless, unvaried stream to the scattered, upland homes.

Valentine Simmons took his familiar place in the gla.s.s enclosure, revolving his chair to fix on Gordon a birdlike attention.

”As an old friend,” he declared, ”an old Presbyterian friend, I want to lay some of my experience before you. I want to complain a little, Gordon; I have the right ... my years, Pompey's a.s.sociate. The fact is--you're hurting the County, you're hurting the people and me; you're hurting yourself. Everybody is suffering from your--your mistaken generosity. We have all become out of sorts, unbalanced, from the exceptional condition you have brought about. It won't do, Gordon; credit has been upset, we don't know where we stand, or who's who; it's bad.

”I said you suffered with the rest of us, but you are worse off still. How shall I put it?--the County is taking sad advantage of your, er--liberality. There's young Entriken; he was in the store a little time ago and told me that you had extended his note again. He thought it was smart to hold out the money on you. There's not a likelier farm, nor better conditioned cattle, than his in Greenstream. He could pay twenty notes like yours in a day's time. I hate to see money cheapened like that, it ain't healthy.

”What is it you're after, Gordon? Is it at the incorruptible, the heavenly, treasure you're aiming? But if it is I'll venture this--that the Lord doesn't love a fool. And the man with the talents, don't overlook him.”

”I'm not aiming at anything,” Gordon answered, ”I'm just doing.”

”And there's that Hagan that got five thousand from you, it's an open fact about him. He came from the other end of the state, clear from Norfolk, to get a slice. He gave you the address, the employment, of a kin in Greenstream and left for parts unknown. No, no, the Lord doesn't love a fool.”

”I may be a fool as you see me,” Gordon contended stubbornly; ”and the few liars that get my money may laugh. But there's this, there's this, Simmons--I'm not cursed by the dispossessed and the ailing and the plumb penniless. I don't go to a man with his crop a failure on the field like, well--we'll say, Cannon does, with a note in my hand for his breath. I've put a good few out of--of Cannon's reach. Did you forget that I know how it feels to hear Ed Hincle, on the Courthouse steps, call out my place for debt? Did you forget that I sat in this office while you talked of old Presbyterian friends and sold me into the street?”

”Incorrigible,” Valentine Simmons said, ”incorrigible; no sense of responsibility. I had hoped Pompey's estate would bring some out in you.

But I should have known--it's the Makimmon blood; you are the son of your father. I knew your grandfather too, a man that fairly insulted opportunity.”

”We've never been storekeepers.”

”Never kept much of anything, have you, any of you? You can call it what you've a mind to, liberality or s.h.i.+ftlessness. But there's nothing saved by names. There: it seems as if you never got civilized, always contemptuous and violent-handed ... it's the blood. I've studied considerable about you lately; something'll have to be done for the good of all.”

”What is it you want of me?”

”Call in your bad debts,” the other promptly responded; ”shake off the worthless lot hanging to your pocket. Put the money rate back where it belongs. Why, in days gone by,” Valentine Simmons chuckled, ”seventy per cent wasn't out of the way for a forced loan, forty was just so-so. Ah, Pompey and me made some close deals. Pompey multiplied his talents. The County was an open ledger to him.”

”Didn't you ever think of the men who had to pay you seventy per cent?”

Gordon asked, genuinely curious.