which sent up, when charged with fire, a hot dry enervation to the rooms of the first floor, and a gaseous but chill radiation to those upstairs.
The place was for sale. Its owner was a middle-aged horse-faced gentleman whose name was the Reverend Wellington Hodge: he had begun life favorably in Altamont as a Methodist minister, but had run foul of trouble when he began to do double service to the Lord God of Hosts and John Barleycorn—his evangelical career came to an abrupt ending one winter’s night when the streets were dumb with falling snow. Wellington, clad only in his winter heavies, made a wild sortie from Dixieland at two in the morning, announcing the kingdom of God and the banishment of the devil, in a mad marathon through the streets that landed him panting but victorious in front of the Post Office. Since then, with the assistance of his wife, he had eked out a hard living at the boarding-house. Now, he was spent, disgraced, and weary of the town.
Besides, the sheltering walls of Dixieland inspired him with horror—he felt that the malign influence of the house had governed his own disintegration. He was a sensitive man, and his promenades about his estate were checked by inhibited places: the cornice of the long girdling porch where a lodger had hanged himself one day at dawn, the spot in the hall where the consumptive had collapsed in a hemorrhage, the room where the old man cut his throat. He wanted to return to his home, a land of fast horses, wind-bent grass, and good whisky—Kentucky. He was ready to sell Dixieland.
Eliza pursed her lips more and more thoughtfully, went to town by way of Spring Street more and more often.
“That’s going to be a good piece of property some day,” she said to Gant.
He made no complaint. He felt suddenly the futility of opposing an implacable, an inexorable desire.
“Do you want it?” he said.
She pursed her lips several times: “It’s a good buy,” she said.
“You’ll never regret it as long as you live, W. O.,” said Dick Gudger, the agent.
