On an afternoon of mid-August Gordon was sitting in the chamber of his
dwelling that had been formerly used as dining room. The table was bare of
the castor and the red cloth, and held an inkpot, pens upright in a glass
of shot, and torn envelopes on an old blotter. An iron safe stood against
the wall at Gordon's back, and above it hung a large calendar, advertising
the Stenton Realty and Trust Company.
A sudden gloom swept over the room, and Gordon rose, proceeded to the
door. A bank of purple cloud swept above the west range, opened in the sky
like a gigantic, menacing fist; the greenery of the valley was overcast,
and a white flash of lightning, accompanied by a shattering peal of
thunder, stabbed viciously at the earth. There was no rain. An edge of
serene light followed in the west a band of saffron radiance that widened
until the cloud had vanished beyond the eastern peaks. The sultry heat lay
like a blanket over Greenstream.
He turned back into the room, but, as he moved, he was aware of a figure
at the porch door. It was a man with a round, freshly-colored
countenance, bland eyes, and a limp mustache, clad in leather boots and a
worn corduroy gunning coat. Gordon nodded familiarly; it was the younger
Entriken from the valley beyond.
"I came to see you about my note," he announced in a facile candor; "I
sh'd take it up this month, but times are terrible bad, Gordon, and I
wondered if you'd give me another extension? There's no real reason why
you sh'd wait again; I reckon I could make her, but it would certainly be
accommodating--" he paused interrogatively.
"Well," Gordon hesitated, "I'm not in a hurry for the note, if it comes to
that. But the fact is ... I've got a lot of money laid out. What's been
the matter?--the weather has been good, it's rained regular--"
"That's just it," Entriken interrupted; "it's rained too blamed regular.
It is all right for crops, but we've got nothing besides cattle, and
steers wouldn't hardly put on anything the past weeks. Of course, in a
way, grass is cattle, but it just seems they wouldn't take any good in the
wet."
"I suppose it will be all right," Gordon Makimmon assented; "but I can
hardly have the money out so long ... others too."
X
The heat thickened with the dusk. The wailing clamor of William Vibard's
accordion rose from the porch. He had, of late, avoided sitting with Rose
and her husband; they irritated him in countless, insignificant ways.
Rose's superiority had risen above the commonplace details of the house;
she sat on the porch and regarded Gordon with a strained, rigid smile.
After a pretense at procuring work William Vibard had relapsed into an
endless debauch of sound. His manner became increasingly abstracted; he
ate, he lived, with the gestures of a man playing an accordion.
The lines on Gordon's thin, dark face had multiplied; his eyes, in the
shadow of his bony forehead, burned steady, pale blue; his chin was
resolute; but a new doubt, a constant, faint perplexity, blurred the line
of his mouth.
From the road above came the familiar sound of hoof-beats, muffled in
dust, but it stopped opposite his dwelling; and, soon after, the porch
creaked under slow, heavy feet, and a thick, black-clad figure knocked and
entered.
It was the priest, Merlier.
In the past months Gordon had been conscious of an increasing concord with
the silent clerical. He vaguely felt in the other's isolation the wreckage
of an old catastrophe, a loneliness not unlike his, Gordon Makimmon's, who
had killed his wife and their child.
"The Nickles," the priest pronounced, sudden and harsh, "are worthless,
woman and man. They would be bad if they were better; as it is they are
only a drunken charge on charity and the church. They have been stewed in
whiskey now for a month. They make nothing amongst their weeds.--Is it
possible they got a sum from you?"
"Six weeks back," Gordon replied briefly; "two hundred dollars to put a
floor on the bare earth and stop a leaking roof."
"Lies," Merlier commented. "When any one in my church is deserving I will
tell you myself. I think of an old woman now, but ten dollars would be a
fortune." Silence fell upon them. Then:
"Charity is commanded," he proceeded, "but out of the hands of authority
it is a difficult and treacherous virtue. The people are without
comprehension," he made a gesture of contempt.
"With age," the deliberate voice went on, "the soul grows restless and
moves in strange directions, struggling to throw off the burden of flesh.
But I that know tell you," Merlier paused at the door, "the charity of
material benevolence, of gold, will cure no spiritual sores; for spirit is
eternal, but the flesh is only so much dung." He stopped abruptly,
coughed, as though he had carried his utterance beyond propriety. "The
Nickles," he repeated somberly, "are worthless; they make trouble in my
parish; with money they make more."