On Sunday he strolled soon after breakfast in the direction of the
priest's. Merlier was standing at the door to his house. Gordon noted that
the other was growing heavier, folds dropped from the corners of his
shaven lips, his eyes had retreated in fatty pouches. His gaze was still
searchingly keen, but the priest was wearing out. Gordon stopped in
response to his silent nod.
"You ought to let up on yourself a little," he advised.
"Why?" the other briefly queried.
"'Why?', so's you will last longer."
To this the priest made no reply. A short, awkward silence followed during
which Gordon grew restive. "If I looked so glum about Greenstream," he
continued, "I'd move out." It was as though he had not spoken. "I'd go
back where I came from," he persisted sharply. The priest's lips moved,
formed words:
"'Che discese da Fiesole ab antico.'"
His imperturbable manner offered Gordon not the slightest opening; and he
continued uncomfortably on his way. There was a quality about that thick,
black-clad figure which cast a shadow over the cloudless day, it blunted
the anticipated pleasure of his meeting with Meta Beggs. There was about
Merlier a smell of death like the smell of sooty smoke.
The stream lay shining along its wooded course; the range greenly aflame
with new foliage rose into radiant space; flickers hammered on resonant,
dead wood. Gordon banished the somber memory of the priest. He was
conscious of a sudden excitement, a keenness of response to living like a
renewal of youth. He wished that Meta Beggs would appear; his direction to
her had been vague; she might easily go astray and miss him. But he saw
her, after what seemed an interminable period, leaving the road and
crossing the strip of sod that bordered the stream. She had on a white
dress that clung to her figure, and a broad, flapping straw hat wound with
white. She saw him and waved. The brush rose thickly along the water, but
there was a footway at its edge, with occasional, broader reaches of rough
sod. In one of the latter she stooped, made a swift movement with the hem
of her skirt.
"See," she smiled; "I said you would like me in them."
He attempted to catch her in his arms, but she eluded him. "Please," she
protested coolly, "don't be tiresome.... We must talk."
He followed her by the devious edge of the stream to the ruined mill. He
could see the blurring impress of the black silk stockings through the web
of her dress; the dress had shrunk from repeated washing, and drew tightly
across her shoulders. She walked lightly and well, and sat with a graceful
sweep on a fallen, moldering beam. Beyond them the broad expanse of the
mill pond was paved with still shadows; a dust of minute insects swept
above the clouded surface. The water ran slowly over the dam, everywhere
cushioned with deep moss, and fell with an eternal splatter on the rocks
below.
Gordon rolled a cigarette from the muslin bag of Green Goose. "Why do you
still smoke that grass?" she demanded curiously. "You could get the best
cigars from Cuba." He explained, and she regarded him impatiently. "Can't
you realize what possibilities you have!"
"I might, with assistance."
"If you once saw the world! I've been reading about Paris, the avenues and
cafes and theaters. Why, in the cafes there they drink only champagne and
dance all night. The women come with their lovers in little closed
carriages, and go back to little closed rooms hung in brocade. They never
wear anything but evening clothes, for they are never out but at
night--satin gowns with trains and bare shoulders."
He endeavored to picture himself in such a city, amid such a life, with
Meta Beggs. He felt that she would be entirely in place in the little
carriages, drinking champagne. "That's where they eat frogs," he remarked
inanely. In the tensity of her feeling, the bitterness of her longing, her
envy, she cursed him for a dull fool. Then, recovering her composure with
a struggle:
"I would make a man drunk with pleasure in a place like that. He would be
proud of me, and all the other men would hate him; they would all want
me."
"Some would come pretty near getting you, too," he replied with a flash of
penetration; "those with the fastest horses or longest pockets."
"I would be true to whoever took me there," she declared; "out of
gratitude."
He drew a deep breath. "What would you say," he inquired, leaning toward
her, "to a trip to--to Richmond? We could be gone the best part of a
week."
She laughed scornfully. "Do you think I am as cheap as that--to be bought
over Sunday?" She rose, and stood before him, sharply outlined against the
foliage, the water, the momentary, flittering insects, taunting,
provocative, sensual.
"Five years ago," he told her, "if you had tried this foolery, I would
have choked you, and thrown what was left in the dam."
"And now--" she jeered fearlessly.
"It's different," he admitted moodily.
It was. Somewhere the lash had been lost from the whip of his desire. He
was still eager, tormented by the wish to feel her disdainful mouth
against his. The recrudescence of spring burned in his veins; but, at the
same time, there was a new reluctance upon his flesh. The inanimate, obese
mask of the priest, Lettice's sleeping countenance faintly stamped with
pain, hovered in his consciousness. "It's different," he repeated.
"You are losing your hold on pleasure," she observed critically aloof.
He leaned forward, and grasped her wrist, and, with a slight motion,
forced her upon her knees. "If you are pleasure I'm not," he challenged.
"You are hurting my arm," she said coldly. His grip tightened, and a small
grimace crossed her lips. "Let go," she demanded; and then a swift passion
shrilled her voice. "Let go, you are crushing my wrist. Damn you to hell!
if you spoil my wrist I'll kill you."
For a moment, as he held her, she reminded Gordon of a venomous snake; he
had never seen such a lithe, wicked hatred in any other human being. "You
are a gentle object," he satirized her, loosening his hold.
She rose slowly and stood fingering her wrist. The emotion died from her
countenance. "You see," she explained, "my body is all I have to take me
out of this," she motioned to the slumbering water, the towering range,
"and I can't afford to have it spoiled. You wouldn't like me if I were
lame or crooked. Men don't. The religious squashes can say all they like
about the soul, but a woman's body is the only really important thing to
her. No one bothers about your soul, but they judge your figure across the
street."
"Yours hasn't done you much good."
"It will," she returned somberly, "it must--real lace and wine and ease."
She came very close to him; he could feel the faint jarring of her heart,
the moisture of her breath. "And you could get them for me. I would make
you mad with sensation."
He kissed her again and again, crushing her to him. She abandoned herself
to his arms, but she was as untouched, as impersonal, as a stuffed woman
of cool satin. In the end he voluntarily released her.
"You wouldn't take fire from a pine knot," he said unsteadily.
Her deft hands rearranged her hat. "Some day a man will murder me," she
replied in level tones; "perhaps I'll get a thrill from that." Her voice
grew as cutting as a surgeon's polished knife. "Please don't think I'm the
kind of woman men take out in the woods and kiss. You may have discovered
that I don't like kissing. I'm going to be honester still--last year, when
you were mending the minister's ice house, and hadn't a dollar, I wasn't
the smallest bit interested in you; and this year I am.--Not on account of
the money itself," she was careful to add, "but because of you and the
money together. Don't you see--it changed you; it's perfectly right that
it should, and that I should recognize it."
"That sounds fair enough," he agreed. "Now the question is, what are we
going to do together, you and me and the money?"
"Would you do what I wanted?" she asked at his shoulder.
"Would you?"
"Yes."
"We might try Richmond."
"Don't fool yourself," she returned hardily; "I know all about those trial
trips. Any man I go with has got to go far: I don't intend to be left at
some pokey little way station with everything gone and nothing
accomplished."
"But," he objected, "a man who went with you could never come back."
"Back to this wilderness," she scoffed; "any one should thank God for
being taken out of it."
"I've always lived here, my father too, and his before him; and back of
that we came from mountains. We're mountain blood; I don't know if we
could get used to anything else, live down yonder."
"I'd civilize you," she promised him.
"Perhaps--" he assented slowly.
Suddenly from beyond the ruin came the stir of a horse moving in harness,
the sound stopped and the voices of men grew audible. Instinctively Gordon
and Meta Beggs drew behind a standing fragment of wall. Gordon could see,
through the displaced, rotting boards, a buggy and two men standing at the
side of the road. One, he recognized, was Valentine Simmons; he easily
made out the small, alert figure. The other, with his back to the mill,
held outspread a sheet of paper. There was something familiar about the
carriage of the head, a glimpse of beard, a cigar from which were expelled
copious volumes of smoke. Gordon vainly racked his memory for a clue to
the latter, elusive personality. He heard Simmons say:
"... by the South Fork entrance ... through the valley."
The stranger partially turned, and Gordon instantly recalled where he had
seen him before--it was the man he had driven from Stenton with the
surprising foreknowledge of the County, who had been met by Pompey
Hollidew. He replied to Simmons, "Exactly ... timber sidings at the
principal depots."
They were, evidently, discussing a projected road. Gordon subconsciously
exclaimed, half aloud, "Railroad!" A swift illumination bathed in complete
comprehension the whole affair--the connection, of Simmons, old Pompey's
options and the stranger. This railroad, the coming of which would
increase enormously the timber values of Greenstream County, had been the
covert reason for Simmons' desire to purchase the options held by the
Hollidew estate; it had been, during Pompey Hollidew's life, the reason
for the acquisition of such extended timber interests. Hollidew, Simmons
and Company had joined in a conspiracy to purchase them throughout the
county at a nominal sum and reap the benefits of the large enhancement.
The death of the former had interrupted that satisfactory scheme; now
Valentine Simmons had conceived the plan of gathering all the profit to
himself. And, Gordon admitted, he had nearly succeeded ... nearly. A slow
smile crossed Gordon Makimmon's features as he realized what a pleasant
conversation he would have with Simmons at the latter's expense. He had
never conceived the possibility of getting the astute storekeeper into
such a satisfactory, retaliatory position. He would extract the last
penny of profit and enjoyment from the other's surprise.
The men beyond re-entered the buggy and drove toward the village.
"What is it?" Meta Beggs asked; "you look pleased."
"Oh, I fell on a little scheme," he replied evasively; "a trifle ... worth
a hundred thousand or more to me."
Her eyes widened with avidity. "I didn't know the whole, God forsaken
place was worth a thousand," she remarked. "A hundred thousand," the mere
repetition of that sum brought a new shine into her gaze, instinctively
drew her closer to Gordon's side.
"Just that alone would be enough--" she said, and paused.
He ignored this opening in the anticipated pleasure of his coming
interview with Valentine Simmons.
A palpable annoyance took possession of her at Gordon's absorption. "It
must be near dinner at Peterman's," she remarked; "on Sunday you've got to
be on time."
In response to her suggestion he turned toward the road. They walked back
silently until they were opposite the priest's. "I'd better go on alone,"
she decided. Her hands clung to his shoulders and she sought his lips.
"Soon again," she murmured. "Don't desert me; I am entirely alone except
for you."
She left him and swiftly crossed the green to the road.