It was dark when Gordon closed the stable door and turned to his dwelling.
A light streamed from a chink in the closed kitchen shutter like a gold
arrow shot into the night. From within came the long-drawn quaver of
William Vibard's performance of the Arkansas Traveller. He was sitting
bowed over the accordion, his jaw dropped, his eyes glazed with the
intoxication of his obsession. Rose was rigidly upright in a straight
chair, her hands crossed at the wrists in her meager lap.
The fluctuating, lamentable sounds of the instrument, Rose's expression of
conscious virtue, were suddenly petty, exasperating; and Gordon, after a
short acknowledgment of their greeting, proceeded through the house to the
sitting room beyond.
No fire had been laid in the small, air-tight stove; the room had a
closed, musty smell, and was more chill than the night without; his breath
hung before him in a white vapor. Soon he had wood burning explosively,
the stove grew rapidly red hot and the chill vanished. He saw beyond the
lamp with its shade of minute, variously-colored silks the effigy of Mrs.
Hollidew dead. Undisturbed in the film of dust that overlaid the table
stood a pink celluloid thimble ... Lettice had placed it there....
His thoughts turned to Alexander Crandall and his wife, to the extended
sheep-cots, and the "light" which they now saw. He recalled the former's
assertion that the land was all right, but that the blood-money men made
life arduous in Greenstream. He remembered Edgar Crandall's arraignment of
the County as "the littlest, meanest place on earth," a place where a man
who wanted his own, his chance, was helpless to survive the avarice of a
few individuals, the avarice for gold. He had asked him, Gordon Makimmon,
to give him that chance. But, obviously, it was impossible ... absurd.
His memory drifted back to the evening in the store when Valentine Simmons
had abruptly demanded payment of his neglected account, to the hopeless
rage that had possessed him at the realization of his impotence, of
Clare's illness. That scene, that bitter realization of ruin, had been
repeated across the breadth of Greenstream. As a boy he had heard men in
shaking tones curse Pompey Hollidew; only last week the red-headed
Crandall had sworn he would let his ground rot rather than slave for the
breed of Cannon. It was, apparently, a perpetual evil, an endless burden
for the shoulders of men momentarily forgetful or caught in a trap of
circumstance.
Yet he had, without effort, without deprivation, freed Alexander Crandall.
He could have freed his brother, given him the chance his rebellious soul
demanded, with equal ease. He had not done that last, he had said at the
time, because of the numbers that would immediately besiege him for
assistance. This, he realized, was not a valid objection--the money was
his to dispose of as he saw fit. He possessed large sums lying at the
Stenton banks, automatically returning him interest, profit; thrown in the
scale their weight would go far toward balancing the greed of Valentine
Simmons, of Cannon.
He considered these facts totally ignorant of the fact that they were but
the reflection of his own inchoate need born in the anguish of his wife's
death; he was not conscious of the veering of his sensibility--sharpened
by the hoarse cry from the stiffening lips of Lettice--to the world
without. He thought of the possibility before him neither as a scheme of
philanthropy nor of revenge, nor of rehabilitation. He considered it
solely in the light of his own experience, as a practical measure to give
men their chance, their own, in Greenstream. The cost to himself would be
small--his money had faded from his conceptions, his necessities, as
absolutely as though it had been fairy gold dissolved by the touch of a
magic wand. He had never realized its potentiality; lately he had ignored
it with the contempt of supreme indifference. Now an actual employment for
it occupied his mind.
The stove glowed with calorific energy; General Jackson, who had been
lying at his feet, moved farther away. The lamplight grew faint and
reddish, and then expired, trailing a thin, penetrating odor. In the dark
the heated cylinder of the stove shone rosy, mysterious.
Gordon Makimmon was unaware of his own need; yet, at the anticipation of
the vigorous course certain to follow a decision to use his money in
opposition to the old, established, rapacious greed, he was conscious of a
sudden tightening of his mental and physical fibers. The belligerent blood
carried by George Gordon Makimmon from world-old wars, from the endless
strife of bitter and rugged men in high, austere places, stirred once more
through his relaxed and rusting being.
He thought, aglow like the stove, of the struggle that would follow such a
determination, a struggle with the pink fox, Valentine Simmons. He thought
of himself as an equal with the other; for, if Simmons were practised in
cunning, if Simmons were deep, he, Gordon Makimmon, would have no
necessity for circuitous dealing; his course would be simple,
unmistakable.--He would lend money at, say, three per cent, grant
extensions of time wherever necessary, and knock the bottom out of the
storekeepers' usurious monopoly, drag the farms out of Cannon's grasping
fingers.
"By God!" he exclaimed, erect in the dark; "but Edgar Crandall will get
his apples."
The dog licked his hand, faithful, uncomprehending.