The fitful wind had, apparently, driven the warmth, the sun, from the
earth. The mountains rose starkly to the slaty sky.
Gordon Makimmon lighted a lamp in the dining room of his dwelling. The
table still bore a red, fringed cloth, but was bare of all else save the
castor, most of the rings of which were empty. The room had a forlorn
appearance, there was dust everywhere; Gordon had pitched the headstall
into a corner, where it lay upon a miscellaneous, untidy pile.
"I reckon you want something to eat," he observed to General Jackson. He
proceeded, followed by the dog, to the kitchen. It revealed an appalling
disorder: the stove was spotted with grease, grey with settled ashes; a
pile of ashes and broken china rose beyond; on the other side coal and
wood had been carelessly stored. A table was laden with unwashed dishes,
unsavory pots, crusted pans.
Gordon stood in the middle of the floor, a lamp in his hand, surveying the
repellent confusion. It had accumulated without attracting his notice; but
now, suddenly detached from the aimless procession of the past months, it
was palpable to him, unendurable. "It's not fit for a dog," he
pronounced.
An expression of determination settled on his seamed countenance; he took
off his coat and hung it on a peg in the door. Outside, by an ash-pit, he
found a bucket and half-buried shovel. A minute after the kitchen was
filled with grey clouds as he shoveled the ashes into the bucket for
removal. He worked vigorously, and the pile soon disappeared; the wood and
coal followed, carried out to where a bin was built against the house.
Then he raked the fire from the stove.
It was cold within, but Gordon glowed with the heat of his energy. He
filled a basin with water, and, with an old brush and piece of sandsoap,
attacked the stove. He scrubbed until the surface exhibited a dull, even
black; then, in a cupboard, he discovered an old box of stove polish, and
soon the iron was gleaming in the lamplight. He laid and lit a fire, put
on a tin boiler of water for heating; and then carried all the movables
into the night. After which he fed General Jackson.
He flooded the kitchen floor and scrubbed and scraped until the boards
were immaculate. Then, with a wet towel about a broom, he cleaned the
walls and ceiling; he washed the panes of window glass. The dishes
followed; they were dried and ranged in rigid rows on the dresser; the
pots were scoured and placed in the closets underneath. Now, he thought
vindictively, when he had finished, the kitchen would suit even Sim
Caley's wife--the old vinegar bottle.
The Caleys had left his house the morning following Lettice's funeral.
Mrs. Caley had departed without a word; Sim with but a brief, awkward
farewell. Since then Gordon had lived alone in the house; but he now
realized that it was not desirable, practicable. Things, he knew, would
soon return to the dirt and disorder of a few hours ago. He needed some
one, a woman, to keep the place decent. His necessity recalled the
children of his sister.... There was only Rose; the next girl was too
young for dependence. The former had been married a year now, and had a
baby. Her husband had been in the village only the week before in search
of employment, which he had been unable to secure, and it was immaterial
where in the County they lived.
V
The couple grasped avidly at the opportunity to live with him. The youth
had already evaporated from Rose's countenance; her minute mouth and
constantly lifted eyebrows expressed an inwardly-gratifying sense of
superiority, an effect strengthened by her thin, affected speech. Across
her narrow brow a fringe of hair fell which she was continually crimping
with an iron heated in the kitchen stove, permeating the room with a
lingering and villainous odor of burned hair.
William Vibard was a man with a passion--the accordion. He arrived with
the instrument in a glossy black paper box, produced it at the first
opportunity, and sat by the stove drawing it out to incredible lengths in
the production of still more incredible sounds. He held one boxlike end,
with its metallic stops, by his left ear, while his right hand,
unfalteringly fixed in the strap of the other end, operated largely in the
region of his stomach.
He had a book of instructions and melodies printed in highly-simplified
and explanatory bars, which he balanced on his knee while he struggled in
their execution.
He was a youth of large, palpable bones, joints and knuckles; his face was
long and preternaturally pale, and bore an abstracted expression which
deepened almost to idiocy when bent above the quavering, unaccountable
accordion.
The Vibard baby was alarmingly little, with a bluish face; and, as if in
protest against her father's interminable noise, lay wrapped in a knitted
red blanket without a murmur, without a stir of her midgelike form, hour
upon hour.