Valentine Simmons smiled at this conception. Gordon regarded him with hopeless, growing anger: Why, the old screw took that for a compliment!
“This is Wednesday,” the storekeeper pronounced; “say, by Saturday ... the sum I mentioned.”
“It can’t be done.” The last vestiges of Gordon’s control were fast melting in the heat of his passion. Simmons turned to the narrow ledger, picking up a pen. “When you bought,” he remarked precisely, over his shoulders, “the white shoes and ammunition and silk fishing lines—didn’t you intend to pay for them?”
“Yes, I did, and will. And when you said, ‘Gordon, help yourself, load up, try those flies’; and ‘Never mind the bill now, some other time, old friends pay when they please,’ didn’t you know I was getting in over my head? didn’t you encourage it ... so you could get judgment on me? sell me out? Though what you settled on me for, what you see in my ramshackle house and used up ground, is over me.”
Simmons flashed a momentary, crafty glance at the other. “Never overlook a location on good water,” he advised.
Gordon Makimmon stood speechless, trembling with rage. For a moment Simmons’ pen, scratching over the page, made the only sound in the small enclosure, then, “The provident man,” he continued, “is always made a target for the abuse of the—the thoughtless. But he usually comes to the assistance of his unfortunate brother. You might arrange a loan.”
“Why, so I might,” Gordon assented in a thick voice; “I could get it from your provident friend, Hollidew—three hundred dollars, say, at hell’s per cent; a little lien on my property. ‘Never overlook a situation on good water.’
“By God!” he exclaimed, suddenly prescient, “but I’ve done for myself.”
And he thought of Clare, of Clare fighting eternally that sharp pain in her side, her face now drawn and glistening with the sweat of suffering, now girlishly gay. He thought of her fragile hands so impotent to cope with the bitter poverty of the mountains. What, with their home, her place of retreat and security, gone, and—it now appeared more than probable—his occupation vanished, would she do?
“I’ve done for myself, for her,” he repeated, subconsciously aloud, in a harsh whisper. He stood rigid, unseeing; a pulse beat visibly in the brown throat by the collarless and faded shirt. Simmons regarded him with a covert gaze, then, catching the attention of the clerk in the store outside, beckoned slightly with his head. The clerk approached, vigorously brushing the counters with a turkey wing.