XIII

The afternoon was waning when he gazed again into the deep, sombrous rift of Greenstream: from where Gordon stood, on the heights, in the flooding sun, it appeared to be already evening below. As he descended the mountainside the cool shadows rose about him, enveloping him in the quietude, the sense of security, which brooded over the withdrawn valley--the resplendent mirage of nature kind, beneficent, the illusion of Nature as a tender and loving parent ... of Nature, as imminent, as automatic, as a landslip crushing a path to the far, secret resting place of its destiny.

Dr. Pelliter's light carriage with its pair of weedy, young horses stood hitched by the road above the Makimmon dwelling; and, on entering the house, Gordon found Clare in bed and Pelliter seated at her side. A gaily-patched quilt hid all but her head. She smiled at Gordon through her pale mask of suffering; but her greeting turned to swift concern at his battered countenance. "An accident," he explained impatiently.

The doctor greeted him seriously. He had, Gordon knew, a sovereign and inevitable remedy for all the ills of the flesh--pain, he argued, and disease were inseparable, subdue the first and the latter ceased to exist as an active ill, and a dexterously wielded hypodermic needle left behind him a trail of narcotized and relieved sufferers. Bottles of patent medicines, exhilarating or numbing as the purchaser might require, lined the shelves of his drug store.

But now his customary, soothing smile was absent, the small, worn case that contained the glittering syringe and minute bottles filled with white or vivid yellow pellets was not to be seen.

"Clare here's gone and got herself real miserable," he stated, rising and beckoning Gordon to follow him to the porch. "She's bad," he p.r.o.nounced outside; "that pain's got the best of her, and it's getting the best of me. She ought to be cut, but she's so weak, it's gone so long, that I'm kind of slow about opening her. And the truth is, Gordon, if I was successful she wouldn't have a chance of getting well here--it'll take expert nursing, awful nice food; and then, at the shortest, she would be in bed a couple of months. She ought to go to the hospital in Stenton.

That's the real truth. I'm telling you the facts, Gordon; we can't handle her here, she'd die on us."

Gordon only half comprehended the other's words--Clare dangerously ill ... a question of dying, hospitals. She had suffered for so long that, without losing his sympathy for her, it had seemed to him her inevitable condition. It had fallen naturally upon him to care for her, guard her against damp, prevent her from lifting objects beyond her strength. These continuous, small attentions held an important place in his existence--he thought about her in a mind devoted substantially to himself, and it brought him a glow of contentment, a pleasant feeling of ministration and importance. It had not occurred to him that Clare might grow worse, that she might, in fact, die. The idea filled him with sudden dismay. His heart contracted with a sharp hurt. "The hospital," he echoed dully, "Stenton."

"By rights," the doctor iterated; "of course we'll do what we can here, she might last for a couple of years more without cutting; and then, again, her heart might just quit. Still--"

"What would the hospital cost?" Gordon asked, almost unaware of having p.r.o.nounced the words.

"It'd be dear--two hundred and some dollars anyway, and the money on the nail. The nursing would count up; then there would be something for operating, if it was only a little ... a lot of things you don't allow for would turn up."

Two hundred and more dollars! Gordon had a fleeting vision, against the empurpling banks, the dark, sliding water, and the mountainous wall capped with dissolving gold beyond, of a room filled with the hot glow of kerosene lamps; he saw Jake's twitching, murderous countenance above him.... Two hundred dollars! He had two hundred and eighty dollars in his pocket. He had another vision--of Simmons; it was two hundred and fifty dollars that the latter wanted, must have, to-morrow. But Simmons swiftly faded before Clare's need, the pressure of sickness.

"She couldn't go down in the stage," he muttered, "the shaking would kill her before ever she got there."

"I'll drive her to Stenton, Gordon," the doctor volunteered, "if you've got the money handy."

"I've got her," Gordon Makimmon declared grimly.

"I'll take her right to the hospital and give her to the doctor in charge.

Everything will be done for her comfort. She has an elegant chance of pulling through, there. And you can see her when you go down with the stage--" Pelliter suddenly stopped; he appeared disconcerted by what he had said.

"Well," Gordon demanded, his attention held by the other's manner, "can't I?"

"You were away from Greenstream yesterday and to-day," the doctor replied evasively, "you didn't hear ... oh, there's nothing in it if you didn't.

I heard that Simmons had had you taken off the stage. Did you have trouble with Buckley, cut him with a whip? Buck has been blowing about showing you a thing or two."

A feeling of angry dismay enveloped Gordon. He had recognized, obscurely, that Simmons and old man Hollidew dominated the community, but he had never before come in actual contact with their arbitrary power, he had never before been faced by the overmastering weapon of their material possessions, the sheer weight of their wealth. It stirred him to revolt, elemental and bitter; every instinct rose against the despotic power which threatened to overwhelm him.

"By G.o.d!" he exclaimed, "but they will find that I'm no sheep to drive into their lot and shear!"

"Now, about Clare," the doctor interposed.

"When will you come for her?" Gordon inquired. He took from his pocket the roll of money he had won at Sprucesap, and counted two hundred dollars, which he tended to the doctor.

"To-morrow, about seven. Everything will be done for her, Gordon. I reckon that's only an empty splash about the stage."

The dusk had thickened in Clare's room; he could scarcely distinguish her face white against the darkened squares of the quilt. "Whoever will get your supper," she worried, when he had told her; "and the cow'll need bedding, and those cheeses brought in off the roof, and--"

He closed her mouth with a gentle palm. "I've done 'em all a hundred times," he declared. "We're going to get you right, this spell, Clare," he proclaimed; "you'll get professional, real stylish, care at Stenton."

She rose, trembling, on her arms. "Are they going to cut at me?" she asked.

The lie on his lips perished silently before her grave tones. "It's not rightly a dangerous operation," he protested; "thousands come out of it every year."

"Gordon, I'm afeared of it."

"No, you're not, Clare Makimmon; there's not a drop of fear in you."

"It's not just death I'm afeared of, it's--oh; you will never understand for being a man," her voice lowered instinctively; "somehow I hate the thought of those strange men hacking and spoiling my body. That's just foolishness, I know, and my time's pretty well gone for foolishness. I've always sort of tended my body, Gordon, and kept it white and soft. I thought if a man asked me in spite of--well, my face, he could take pride in me underneath. But that's all done with; I ought to be glad for the ... Gordon!" she exclaimed more energetically, "it will cost a heap of money; how will you get it? don't borrow."

"I got it," he interrupted her tersely, "and I didn't borrow it neither."

XIV

He woke at dawn. The whippoorwills, the frogs and crickets, were silent, and the sharp, sweet song of a mocking bird throbbed from a hedge. It was dark in the valley, but, high above, the air was already brightening with the sun; a symmetrical cloud caught the solar rays and flushed rosy against silver s.p.a.ce. The valley turned from indistinct blue to grey, to sparkling green. The sun gilded the peaks of the western range, and slipped slowly down, spilling into the depth. It was almost cold, the pump handle, the rough sward, the foliage beyond, were drenched with white dew; a damp, misty veil lifted from the surface of the stream.

Clare declared that she felt stronger; she dressed, insisted upon frying his breakfast. "You ought to have somebody in," she a.s.serted later. They were on the shallow porch, waiting stiffly for the doctor. "But don't get that eldest of your sister's; last time she wore my sateen waist and run the colors."

Just as she was leaving he slipped twenty dollars into her hand. "Write when you want more," he directed; "and I'll be down to see you ... yes, often ... the stage." A leaden depression settled over him as the doctor's carriage took her from sight. The house to which he turned was deserted, lonely. He locked the door to her room.

XV

One of the canvas-covered mountain wagons was unloading on the platform before Simmons' store when Gordon entered the center of the village. A miscellaneous pile of merchandise was growing, presided over by a clerk with a pencil and tally book. Valentine Simmons, without his coat, in an immaculate, starched white waistcoat, stood upon one side.

Gordon, without delay, approached him. "I can give you a hundred dollars,"

he informed the other, exhibiting that sum.

"Two hundred and fifty will be necessary," Simmons informed him concisely, "to-day."

"Come to reason--"

Valentine Simmons turned his back squarely upon him. A realization of the uselessness of further words possessed Gordon; he returned the money to his pocket. The contemptuous neglect of the other lit the ever-trimmed lamp of his temper. "What's this," he demanded, "I hear about driving stage? about Buck boasting around that he had had me laid off?"

"That's not correct," Simmons informed him smoothly; "Buckley has no power to do that ... the owners of the privilege decided that you were too unreliable."

"Then it's true," Gordon interrupted him, "I'm off?" Simmons nodded.

Gordon's temper swelled and flared whitely before his vision; rage possessed him utterly; without balance, check, he was no more than an insensate force in the grip of his mastering pa.s.sion. He would stop that miserable, black heart forever. Old Valentine Simmons' lips tightened, his fingers twitched; he turned his back deliberately upon Gordon. The metal buckle which held the strap of his waistcoat caught the sun and reflected it into Gordon's eyes. "How many gross pink celluloid rattles?" the storekeeper demanded of the clerk.