Clare's funeral deducted a further sum from the amount Gordon had received
for the sale of his home, but he had left still nine hundred and odd
dollars. He revolved in his mind the disposition of this sum, once more
sitting with chair tilted back against the dingy wooden home of the
_Greenstream Bugle_; he rehearsed its possibilities for frugality, for
independence, as a reserve ... or for pleasure. It was the hottest hour of
the day; the prospect before him, the uneven street, the houses beyond,
were coated with dust, gilded by the refulgent sun. No one stirred; a red
cow that had been cropping the grass in the broad, shallow gutter opposite
sank down in the meager shadow of a chance pear tree; even the children
were absent, the piercing, staccato cries of their games unheard.
To Gordon Makimmon Greenstream suddenly appeared insufferably dull, empty;
the thought of monotonous, identical days spun thinly out, the nine
hundred dollars extended to its greatest length, in that banal setting,
suddenly grew unbearable.... There was no life in Greenstream....
The following morning found him on the front seat of the Stenton stage,
sharing with the driver not his customary cigarettes but more portentous
cigars from an ample pocketful. "Greenstream's dead," he pronounced; "I'm
going after some life."
Late that night he leaned across the sloppy bar of an inferior saloon in
Stenton, and, with an uncertain wave of his hand, arrested the barkeeper's
attention. "I'm here," he articulated thickly, "to see life, understand!
And I can see it too--money's power." The other regarded him with a brief,
mechanical interest, a platitude shot suavely from hard, tobacco-stained
lips.
Later still: "I'm here to see life," he told a woman with a chalky
countenance, a countenance without any expression of the consciousness of
the sound of his voice, a vague form lost in loose draperies. "Life," he
emphasized above the continuous, macabre rattle of a piano.
In a breathless, hot dawn pouring redly into the grey city street, he
swayed like a pendulum on the steaming pavement. His side was smeared,
caked, with unnamable filth, refuse; a tremulous hand gripped feverishly
the shoulder of a policeman who had roused him from a constrained stupor
in a casual angle. "I wan' to see life," he mumbled dully, "I got
power ... money." He fumbled through his pockets in search of the proof
of his assertion. In vain--all that was left of the nine hundred and sixty
dollars was some loose silver.