The purpose of this gathering was instantly apparent to him, it stirred
obscure memories into being.--A property was being publicly sold for
debt.
The trooping thoughts of the past filled his mind; thoughts, it seemed to
him, of another than himself. Surely it had been another Gordon Makimmon
that, sitting before the _Bugle_ office, had heard the sheriff enumerating
the scant properties of the old freehold by the stream to satisfy the
insatiable greed of Valentine Simmons. It had been a younger man than
himself by fifteen years. Yet, actually, it had been scarcely more than
three years since the storekeeper had had him sold out.
That other Makimmon had been a man of incredibly vivid interests and
emotions. Now it appeared to him that, in all the world, there was not a
cause for feeling, not an incentive to rouse the mind from apathy.
Stray periods reached him from the sheriff's recounting of "a highly
desirable piece of property." His loud, flat voice had not changed by an
inflection since he had "called out" Gordon's home; the merely curious or
materially interested onlookers were the same, the dragging bidding had,
apparently, continued unbroken from the other occasion. The dun, identical
repetition added to the overwhelming sense of universal monotony in Gordon
Makimmon's brain. He turned at the corner, by Simmons' store, while the
memories faded; the customary greyness, like a formless drift of cloud
obscuring a mountain height, once more descended upon him.
At the back of the store a small open space was filled with broken crates,
straw and boxes--the debris of unpacking. And there he saw a youthful
woman sitting with her head turned partially from the road. As he passed a
suppressed sob shook her. It captured his attention, and, with a slight,
involuntary gasp, he saw her face. The memories returned in a tumultuous,
dark tide--she reminded him vividly of Lettice. It was in the young curve
of her cheeks, the blue of her eyes, and a sameness of rounded
proportions, that the resemblance lay.
He stopped, without formulated reason, and in spite of her obvious desire
for him to proceed.
"It's hardly fit to sit here and cry before the whole County," he
observed.
"The whole County knows," she returned in the egotism of youthful misery.
Her voice, too, was like Lettice's--sweet with the premonition of the
querulous note that, Rutherford Berry had once said, distinguished all
good women.
A sudden intuition directed his gaze upon the Courthouse lawn.
"They're selling you out," he hazarded, "for debt."
She nodded, with trembling lips. "Cannon is," she specified.
Cannon was the storekeeper for whom his brother-in-law clerked. He thought
again, how monotonous, how everlastingly alike, life was. "You just let
the amount run on and on," he continued; "you got this and that. Then,
suddenly, Cannon wanted his money."
Her eyes opened widely at his prescience. "But there was sickness too,"
she added; "the baby died."
"Ah," Gordon said curtly. The lines in his worn face deepened, his mouth
was inscrutable.
"If it hadn't been for that," she confided, "we could have got through.
Everything had started fine. Alexander's father had left him the place:
there isn't a better in the Bottom. Alexander says Mr. Cannon has always
wanted it. Now ... now ..." her blue gaze blurred with slow tears.
Her similarity to Lettice grew still more apparent--she presented the same
order, her white shirtwaist had been crisply ironed, her shoes were
rubbed bright and neatly tied. He recalled this similitude suddenly, and
it brought before him a clearly defined vision of Lettice, not as his
wife, but of the girl he had driven to and from the school at Stenton. He
had not thought of that Lettice for months, for three years; not since
before she had died; not, he corrected himself drearily, since he had
killed her. He had remembered the last phase, of the glazed and bloodless
travesty of her youth. But even that lately had been lost in the fog of
nothingness settling down upon him.
And now this girl, on a box back of Simmons' store, brought the buried
memories back into light. They disconcerted him, sweeping through the
lassitude of his mind; they stirred shadowy specters of fear.... The voice
of the sheriff carried to them, describing the excellent repair of
incidental sheds.
"I nailed all the tar-paper on the--the chicken house," she told him in a
fresh accession of unhappiness, the tears spilling over her round, flushed
cheeks.
It annoyed him to see her cry: it was as though Lettice was suffering
again from old misery. His irritation grew at this seeming renewal of what
had gone; it assumed the aspect of an intentional reproach, of Lettice
returned to bother him with her pain and death. He turned sharply to
continue on his way. But, almost immediately, he stopped.
"Your name?" he demanded.
"Adelaide Crandall."
The Crandalls, he knew, were a reputable family living in the valley
bottom east of Greenstream village. Matthew Crandall had died a few years
before, and, as this girl had indicated, had left a substantial farm to
each of his sons. Cannon would get this one, and it was more than
probable, the others.
The old enmity against Valentine Simmons, directed at Cannon, flamed
afresh. Simmons or the other--what did the name matter? they were the
same, a figurative apple press crushing the juice out of the country,
leaving but a mash of hopes and lives. He stood irresolute, while Adelaide
Crandall fought to control her emotions.
The badgering voice of the sheriff sounded again on his hearing. He
crossed the road, pushed open the grinding iron gate of the fence that
enclosed the Courthouse lawn, and made his way through the sere, fallen
leaves to the steps.