XII
Gordon Makimmon, absorbed in the difficult and elusive calculations of his indefinable project was unaware of the change wrought by their departure, of the shifting of the year, the familiar acts and living about him. He looked up abruptly from the road when Valentine Simmons, upon the platform of the store, arrested his progress homeward.
Simmons’ voice was high and shrill, as though time had tightened and dried his vocal cords; his cheeks were still round and pink, but they were sapless, the color lingered like a film of desiccated paint.
The store remained unchanged: Sampson, the clerk, had gone, but another, identical in shirt sleeves upheld by bowed elastics, was brushing the counters with a turkey wing; the merchandise on the shelves, unloaded from the slow procession of capacious mountain wagons, flowed in endless, unvaried stream to the scattered, upland homes.
Valentine Simmons took his familiar place in the glass enclosure, revolving his chair to fix on Gordon a birdlike attention.
“As an old friend,” he declared, “an old Presbyterian friend, I want to lay some of my experience before you. I want to complain a little, Gordon; I have the right ... my years, Pompey’s associate. The fact is—you’re hurting the County, you’re hurting the people and me; you’re hurting yourself. Everybody is suffering from your—your mistaken generosity. We have all become out of sorts, unbalanced, from the exceptional condition you have brought about. It won’t do, Gordon; credit has been upset, we don’t know where we stand, or who’s who; it’s bad.
“I said you suffered with the rest of us, but you are worse off still. How shall I put it?—the County is taking sad advantage of your, er—liberality. There’s young Entriken; he was in the store a little time ago and told me that you had extended his note again. He thought it was smart to hold out the money on you. There’s not a likelier farm, nor better conditioned cattle, than his in Greenstream. He could pay twenty notes like yours in a day’s time. I hate to see money cheapened like that, it ain’t healthy.
“What is it you’re after, Gordon? Is it at the incorruptible, the heavenly, treasure you’re aiming? But if it is I’ll venture this—that the Lord doesn’t love a fool. And the man with the talents, don’t overlook him.”