_ PART THREE
CHAPTER 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 space and wrenched off a lid.... Within reposed a brand new accordion. There were nine others.
"You see," William eagerly interposed; "now I'm fixed good."
At the sight of the grotesque waste a swift resentment moved Gordon Makimmon--it was a mockery of his money's use, a gibing at his capability, his planning. The petty treachery of Rose added its injury. He pitched the box in his hands upon the clay floor, and the accordion fell out, quivering like a live thing.
"Hey!" William Vibard remonstrated; "don't do like that ... delicate--" He knelt, with an expression of concern, and, tenderly fingering the instrument, replaced it in the box.
Gordon turned sharply and returned to the house. Rose was in her room. He could hear her moving rapidly about, pulling at the bureau drawers. Depression settled upon him; he carried the lantern into the bedroom, where he sat bowed, troubled. He was aroused finally by the faint strains of William's latest melodic effort drifting discreetly from the stable.
The next morning the Vibards departed. Rose was silent, her face, red and swollen, was vindictive. On the back of the vehicle that conveyed them to the parental Berrys was securely tied the square bundle that had "fixed good" William Vibard musically for life. _