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quietude, the sense of security, which brooded over the withdrawn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."