Supper at an end he too launched upon the lack of opportunity in Greenstream. “Some day,” he asserted, “and not so far off either, we’ll shake off the grip of these blood-money men; we’ll have a state lawed bank; a rate of interest a man can carry without breaking his back. There’s no better land than the Bottom, or the higher clearings for grazing ... it’s the men, some of ’em....”
VIII
It was dark when Gordon closed the stable door and turned to his dwelling. A light streamed from a chink in the closed kitchen shutter like a gold arrow shot into the night. From within came the long-drawn quaver of William Vibard’s performance of the Arkansas Traveller. He was sitting bowed over the accordion, his jaw dropped, his eyes glazed with the intoxication of his obsession. Rose was rigidly upright in a straight chair, her hands crossed at the wrists in her meager lap.
The fluctuating, lamentable sounds of the instrument, Rose’s expression of conscious virtue, were suddenly petty, exasperating; and Gordon, after a short acknowledgment of their greeting, proceeded through the house to the sitting room beyond.
No fire had been laid in the small, air-tight stove; the room had a closed, musty smell, and was more chill than the night without; his breath hung before him in a white vapor. Soon he had wood burning explosively, the stove grew rapidly red hot and the chill vanished. He saw beyond the lamp with its shade of minute, variously-colored silks the effigy of Mrs. Hollidew dead. Undisturbed in the film of dust that overlaid the table stood a pink celluloid thimble ... Lettice had placed it there....
His thoughts turned to Alexander Crandall and his wife, to the extended sheep-cots, and the “light” which they now saw. He recalled the former’s assertion that the land was all right, but that the blood-money men made life arduous in Greenstream. He remembered Edgar Crandall’s arraignment of the County as “the littlest, meanest place on earth,” a place where a man who wanted his own, his chance, was helpless to survive the avarice of a few individuals, the avarice for gold. He had asked him, Gordon Makimmon, to give him that chance. But, obviously, it was impossible ... absurd.
His memory drifted back to the evening in the store when Valentine Simmons had abruptly demanded payment of his neglected account, to the hopeless rage that had possessed him at the realization of his impotence, of Clare’s illness. That scene, that bitter realization of ruin, had been repeated across the breadth of Greenstream. As a boy he had heard men in shaking tones curse Pompey Hollidew; only last week the red-headed Crandall had sworn he would let his ground rot rather than slave for the breed of Cannon. It was, apparently, a perpetual evil, an endless burden for the shoulders of men momentarily forgetful or caught in a trap of circumstance.
Yet he had, without effort, without deprivation, freed Alexander Crandall. He could have freed his brother, given him the chance his rebellious soul demanded, with equal ease. He had not done that last, he had said at the time, because of the numbers that would immediately besiege him for assistance. This, he realized, was not a valid objection—the money was his to dispose of as he saw fit. He possessed large sums lying at the Stenton banks, automatically returning him interest, profit; thrown in the scale their weight would go far toward balancing the greed of Valentine Simmons, of Cannon.