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, m.u.f.fled 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 p.r.o.nounced, 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."

XI

The year, in the immemorial, minute shifting of season, grew brittle and cold; the dusk fell sooner and night lingered late into morning.

William Vibard moved with his accordion from the porch to beside the kitchen stove. He was in the throes of a new piece, McGinty, and Gordon Makimmon was correspondingly surprised when, as he was intent upon some papers, Rose's husband voluntarily relinquished his instrument, and sat in the room with him.

"What's the matter," Gordon indifferently inquired; "is she busted?"

William Vibard indignantly repudiated that possibility. A wave of purpose rose to the long, corrugated countenance, but sank, without finding expression in speech. Finally Gordon heard Rose calling her husband. That young man twitched in his chair, but he made no other move, no answer. Her voice rose again, sharp and urgent, and Gordon observed:

"Your wife's a-calling."

"I heard her, but I'd ruther sit right where I am."

She appeared in the doorway, flushed and angry.

"William," she commanded, "you come straight out here to the kitchen. I got a question for you."

"I'll stay just where I am for a spell," he replied, avoiding her gaze.

"You do as I tell you right off."

A stubborn expression settled over his face and shoulders. He made her no further reply. Rose's anger gathered in a tempest that she tried in vain to restrain.

"William," she demanded, "where is it? It's gone, you know what."

"I ain't seen it," he answered finally; "I really ain't, Rose."

"That's a story, only you knew. Come out here."

"Get along," Gordon interrupted testily. "How can I figure in this ruction?"

"I ain't agoing a step," William told them both; "I'm going to stop right here with Uncle Gordon."

"Well, then," the latter insisted, "get it through with--what is it?"

"I'll tell you what it is," William Vibard stammered; "it's a hundred and forty dollars Rose held out on you and kept in a drawer, that's what!"

Rose's emotion changed to a crimson consternation.

"Why, William Vibard! what an awful thing to say. What little money I had put by was saved from years. What a thing to say about me and Uncle Gordon."

"'Tain't no such thing you saved it; you held it out on him, dollars at a time. You didn't have no more right to it than I did."

Gordon's gaze centered keenly upon his niece's hot face. She endeavored to sustain, refute, the accusation successfully; but her valor wavered, broke. She disappeared abruptly. He surveyed Vibard without pleasure.

"You're a ramshackle contraption," he observed crisply.

"I got as good a right to it as her," the other repeated.

"A hundred and forty dollars," Gordon said bitterly; "that's a small business. Well, where is it? Have you got it?"

"No, I ain't," William exploded.

"Well--?"

"You can't never tell what might happen," the young man observed enigmatically; "the bellowses wear out dreadful quick, the keys work loose like, and then they might stop making them. It's the best one on the market."

"What scrabble's this? What did you do with the money?"

"They're in the stable," William Vibard answered more obscurely than before. "With good treatment they ought to last a life. They come cheaper too like that."

Gordon relinquished all hope of extracting any meaning from the other's elliptical speech. He rose. "If 'they're' in the stable," he announced, "I'll soon have some sense out of you." He procured a lantern, and tramped shortly to the stable, closely followed by Rose's husband.

"Now!" he exclaimed, loosening the hasp of the door, throwing it open.

The former entered and bent over a heap in an obscure corner. When he rose the lantern shone on two orderly piles of glossy black paper boxes. Gordon strode across the contracted s.p.a.ce and wrenched off a lid.... Within reposed a brand new accordion. There were nine others.