_ PART ONE
CHAPTER VI
A small, familiar group awaited the arrival of the mail; and from it several figures detached themselves. The postmaster stepped forward, and assisted Gordon in unfastening the mailbags; a clerk from Valentine Simmons' store, in shirtsleeves elaborately restrained by pink bowed elastics, inquired for a package by express; and Pompey Hollidew pushed impatiently forward, apparently anxious for a speedy view of his daughter. This laudable assumption was, however, immediately upset by the absent nod he bestowed upon Lettice, and the evident interest and relief with which he turned to the stranger descending from the stage.
"Mr. Hollidew?" the latter inquired, with ill-concealed surprise.
Pompey Hollidew, the richest man in Greenstream, wore--as was customary with him--a crumpled yellow shirt, open at his stringy throat, and innocent of tie; his trousers, one time lavender, had faded to a repulsive, colorless hue, and hung frayed about cheap, heavy shoes fastened by copper rivets. An ancient cutaway of broadcloth, spotted and greenish, with an incomplete mustering of buttons, drooped about his heavy, bowed shoulders; while a weather-beaten derby, seemingly unbrushed for countless, grimy years, completed his forlorn adornment.
His face was long, with vertical, pallid folds gathered loosely into a chin frosted with unkempt silver; his mouth was lipless, close, shadowed by an overhanging, swollen nose; and, from beneath deep, troubled brows, pale blue eyes set close together regarded life skeptically, intently, with appalling avidity, veiled yet discernible.
He disappeared, clutching the stranger's sleeve, with an effort at geniality. Simmons' clerk ruefully tested the weight of a small, heavily nailed box.
Lettice Hollidew slowly assembled her traveling effects. It was evident that she wished to say something to Gordon, for she lingered, patently playing with her gloves, directing at him bright, nervous glances from under the straw brim of her hat. But she was forced to depart in silence, for Buckley Simmons, in reply to the queries of the cause of his accident, launched upon a loud, angry explanation of the obvious aspect of the incident.
"The clumsy yap!" he pointedly exclaimed.
Gordon entered the group of which Buckley was the hub. "It was too bad to spoil Buck for the girls," he pronounced coolly; "but he'll be after them again in a couple of weeks."
He gazed with level disdain into the tempest gathering in Simmons' eyes above the dark, spotted handkerchief. He paused, deliberately insolent, challenging a rejoinder, until, none breaking the strained silence, he swung about, and, at the horses' heads, led them to their stabling at Peterman's Hotel. He passed the unpainted, wooden front of the office of the
Greenstream Bugle; the house of Senator Themeny in its lindens on a spreading lawn; on the opposite side the mellow brick face of the Courthouse under towering poplars, and Valentine Simmons' store.
Gordon stopped at the latter on his way home. It was a long, shedlike structure with a false facade; before it, elevated a man's height from the road, was the broad platform where the mountain wagons unloaded their merchandise; on the side facing the Courthouse ran a wooden hitching rail. Inside, on the left, Simmons' private office was shut in glass from the main floor of the store; long counters led back into a semi-obscurity, where a clerk was lighting a row of swinging kerosene lamps.
"Chalk them up, Sampson," Gordon carelessly told the clerk who wrapped up his purchases. "How much are those?" he added, indicating a pair of women's low white shoes.
"Four. They're real buck, and a topnotch article. Nothing better comes."
Gordon turned them over in his hand; they would, he thought, just fit Clare; she liked pretty articles of attire; she had not been so well lately. Clare was a faithful sister. "Just add them to the bundle," he directed in a lordly manner.
The clerk hesitated, and glanced toward the private office, where Simmons' head could be seen pinkly bald. "Do you think you'd better, Gordon?" he asked; "the boss has been crabbed lately about some of the old accounts, and yours has waited as long as any. I wouldn't get nothing to catch his eye--"
"Add the shoes to my bundle," Gordon repeated with a narrowing gaze; "I always ask for the advice I need."
Outside he endeavored to recall when he had last paid anything on his account at Simmons' store. This was the last week in June ... had he paid any in April? in November? He was not able to remember the occasion of his last settlement. He must attend to that; he had other obligations, too, small but long overdue. He cursed the fluid quality of his wage, forever flowing through his fingers. He must apportion his expenditures more carefully; or, better yet, give all his money to Clare; the high-power rifle he had purchased in Stenton the year before had crippled their resources; his last Christmas present to Clare had been a heavy drain; he had not yet recovered from the generous funeral he had given their mother.
He was unaccustomed to such considerations. They interfered with the large view he held of himself, of his importance, his deserts; they limited his necessity for a natural indifference to penny matters; and he dismissed them with an uneasy movement of his shoulders.
He passed the discolored, plaster bulk of the Presbyterian Church, the drug store and dwelling of Dr. Pelliter, and was on the outskirts of the village. The shadow of the western range had now slipped across the valley and nearly climbed the opposite wall; lavender scarfs of mist veiled the far, jumbled peaks in the darkling rift; slim, swaying columns of smoke from the clustered chimneys of Greenstream towered dizzily through the shaded air to where, high above, they were transformed to gold by the last, up-flung rays of the sun. _