_ PART THREE
CHAPTER XX
Gordon met Valentine Simmons squarely for the first time since the collapse of his laborious planning outside the post-office. The latter, with a senile and pleased chuckle, tapped him on the chest.
"Teach you to be provident, Gordon," he said in his high, rasping voice; "teach you to see further than another through a transaction; as far ain't near enough; most don't see at all."
The anger had evaporated from Gordon Makimmon's parched being: the storekeeper, he recognized, was sharper than all the rest of the County combined; even now the raddled old man was more acute than the young and active intelligences. He nodded, and would have passed on, but the storekeeper, with a ponderous furred glove, halted him.
"We haven't had any satisfaction lately with the Stenton stage," he shrilled; "and I made out to ask--you can take it or leave it--if you'd drive again? It might be a kind of--he! he!--relax from your securities and investments."
Gordon, without an immediate reply, regarded him. He thought, in sudden approbation of a part, at least, of the past, that he could drive a stage better than any other man in a hundred, in a thousand; there, at least, no humiliating failure had overtaken his prowess with whip and reins. The old occupation, the monotonous, restful miles of road sweeping back under the wheels, the pleasant, casual detachment of the passengers, the pride of accomplishment, irresistibly appealed to him.
Valentine Simmons' rheumy eyes interrogated him doubtfully above the fixed, dry color of his fallen cheeks.
"By God, Valentine!" Gordon exclaimed, "I'll do it, I'll drive her, and right, too. It takes experience to carry a stage fifty miles over these mountains, day and day; it takes a man that knows his horses, when to slack up on 'em and when to swing the leather ... I'm ready any time you say."
"The stage goes out from Greenstream to-morrow; you can take it the trip after. Money same as before. And, Gordon,--he! he!--don't you go and lend it out at four per cent; fifty's talking but seventy's good. Pompey knew the trick, he'd have dressed you down to an undershirt, Pompey would."
Gordon returned slowly, absorbed in new considerations, to his dwelling. It was obvious that he could not live there alone and drive the Stenton stage; formerly Clare had attended to the house for him, but now there was no one to keep the stoves lit, to attend to the countless daily necessities. This was Tuesday--he would take the stage out on Thursday: he might as well get together a few necessities and close the place at once.
"I'll shut her right in," he said aloud in the empty, echoing kitchen.
He decided to touch nothing within. In the sitting room the swift obscurity of the closing shutters obliterated its familiar features--the table with the lamp and pink celluloid thimble, the phonograph, the faded photograph of what had been Mrs. Hollidew. The darkness spread to the bedroom that had been Lettice's and his: the curtained wardrobe was drawn, the bed lay smoothly sheeted with the quilt folded brightly at the foot, one of the many small glass lamps of the house stood filled upon the bureau. The iron safe was eclipsed, the pens upright in the glass of shot, the kitchen and spaces beyond.
Finally, depositing an ancient bag of crumbling leather on the porch, he locked himself out. He moved the bag to the back of the buggy, and, hitching the horse into the worn gear, drove up the incline to the public road, to the village, without once turning his head. _