After supper they sat on the narrow porch, facing the dark, whispering stream, the night pouring into the deep, still valley. A cold air rose from the surface of the water, and Clare wrapped a worn piece of blanket about her shoulders. At frequent intervals she gazed with palpable delight at her feet, shod in the “real buck.” A deep, melancholy chorus of frogs rose from the creek, mingling with the high, metallic shrilling of crickets, the reiterated calling of whippoorwills from a thicket of pines.
Gordon Makimmon settled into a waking somnolence, lulled by the familiar, profound, withdrawn repose of the valley. He could distinguish Clare’s form weaving back and forth in a low rocker; the moonless, summer night embraced, hid, all; there were no lights in the house at his back, no lights visible in the village beyond; only the impenetrable blackness of the opposite range and the abrupt band of stars.
Suddenly Clare’s even breathing, the tracking sound of the chair, ceased; she drew two or three sharp, gasping inspirations. Gordon, instantly alert, rose and stood over her. “Is it bad to-night again?” he asked solicitously; “shall I get you the ginger water?”
“None ... in the house,” she articulated laboriously; “pretty ... bad.”
“No, don’t leave me; just set; I’ll be better in a spell.” He fetched her a glass of water, from which she gulped spasmodically, clutching with cold, wet fingers to his wrist. Then the tension relaxed, her breathing grew more normal. “It’s by now,” she proclaimed unsteadily.
“I’m going back the road for a little ginger,” he told her from the edge of the porch; “we’d best have the bottle filled.”
The drug store was dark, closed for the night, and Gordon continued to Simmons’ store. The row of swinging, kerosene lamps cast a thick yellow radiance over the long counters, the variously laden shelves. The store was filled with the odor of coffee, the penetrating smell of print muslins.
“Mr. Simmons wants you a minute in the office,” the clerk responded indirectly to his request for ginger. Gordon instinctively masked a gathering premonition of trouble. “Fill her up the while,” he demanded, pushing forward the empty bottle.
Valentine Simmons was a small man with a pinkly bald head ornamented with fluffs of white hair like cotton wool above his ears, and precise, shaven lips forever awry in the pronouncing of rallying or benevolent sentences; these, with appropriate religious sentiments, formed nine-tenths of his discourse, through which the rare words that revealed his purposes, his desires, flashed like slender and ruthless knives.
He was bending over a tall, narrow ledger when Gordon entered the office; but he immediately closed the book and swung about in his chair. The small enclosure was hot, and filled with the odor of scorching metal, the buzzing of a large, blundering fly.