Gordon Makimmon stood for a moment gazing after him. Then, as he turned, he saw that there was a small group of men on the Courthouse lawn; he saw the sheriff standing facing them from the steps, gesticulating.
II
The purpose of this gathering was instantly apparent to him, it stirred obscure memories into being.—A property was being publicly sold for debt.
The trooping thoughts of the past filled his mind; thoughts, it seemed to him, of another than himself. Surely it had been another Gordon Makimmon that, sitting before the Bugle office, had heard the sheriff enumerating the scant properties of the old freehold by the stream to satisfy the insatiable greed of Valentine Simmons. It had been a younger man than himself by fifteen years. Yet, actually, it had been scarcely more than three years since the storekeeper had had him sold out.
That other Makimmon had been a man of incredibly vivid interests and emotions. Now it appeared to him that, in all the world, there was not a cause for feeling, not an incentive to rouse the mind from apathy.
Stray periods reached him from the sheriff’s recounting of “a highly desirable piece of property.” His loud, flat voice had not changed by an inflection since he had “called out” Gordon’s home; the merely curious or materially interested onlookers were the same, the dragging bidding had, apparently, continued unbroken from the other occasion. The dun, identical repetition added to the overwhelming sense of universal monotony in Gordon Makimmon’s brain. He turned at the corner, by Simmons’ store, while the memories faded; the customary greyness, like a formless drift of cloud obscuring a mountain height, once more descended upon him.
At the back of the store a small open space was filled with broken crates, straw and boxes—the debris of unpacking. And there he saw a youthful woman sitting with her head turned partially from the road. As he passed a suppressed sob shook her. It captured his attention, and, with a slight, involuntary gasp, he saw her face. The memories returned in a tumultuous, dark tide—she reminded him vividly of Lettice. It was in the young curve of her cheeks, the blue of her eyes, and a sameness of rounded proportions, that the resemblance lay.
He stopped, without formulated reason, and in spite of her obvious desire for him to proceed.