It was a mountain surrey, with a top and rolled curtains, three rigid
seats, and drawn by ugly, powerful horses in highly simplified harness. At
the rear a number of mailbags, already coated with a dun film, were
securely strapped.
The driver lounged forward, skilfully picking flies with his whip from the
horses' backs. He had a smooth countenance, deeply tanned, and pale, clear
blue eyes. At his side sat a priest in black, a man past middle age, with
ashen, embittered lips, and a narrowed, chilling gaze. They were silent,
contemplative; but, from the seat behind them, flowed a constant, buoyant,
youthful chatter. A girl with a shining mass of chestnut hair gathered
loosely on a virgin neck was recounting the thrilling incidents of
"commencement week" for the benefit of a heavily-built young man with a
handsome, masklike countenance. On the last seat a carelessly-garbed male
was drawing huge clouds of smoke from a formidable cigar.
Gordon Makimmon, the driver, did not know the latter. He had engaged and
paid for his seat the night before, evading such indirect query as
Makimmon had addressed to him. It was a fundamental principle of
Greenstream conduct that the direct question was inadmissible; at the same
time, the inhabitants of that far, isolated valley were, on all occasions,
coldly curious about such strangers, their motives and complexions of
mind, as reached their self-sufficient territory. This combined
restriction and necessity produced a wily type of local inquisitor. But
here Gordon's diplomacy had been in vain, his surmising at sea. The others
were intimate and familiar figures:
Father Merlier's advent into Greenstream had occurred a number of years
before. He had arrived with papers of introduction to one of the few
papist families in that rigorously protestant neighborhood; and,
immediately, had erected outside the village of Greenstream a small
mission school and dwelling, where he addressed himself to the herculean
task of gaining converts to his faith. At first he had been regarded with
unconcealed distrust--boys, when the priest's back was turned, had thrown
stones at him; the turbulent element, on more than one occasion, had
discussed the advisability of "running" him from the community. But it was
true of both boys and men that, when they had confronted the beady, black
glitter of Merlier's unfaltering gaze, encountered the patent contempt of
his rigid lips, they had subsided into an unintelligible mutter, and had
been glad to escape.
He became an habitual sight, riding a blooded mare through the valley,
over lonely trails, and was finally accepted as a recognized local
institution. His title and exotic garb, the grim quality of his manhood,
his austere disregard for bodily welfare, his unmistakable courage--more
than any other human quality extolled throughout Greenstream--became a
cause of prideful boasting in the County.
Gordon Makimmon had known Lettice Hollidew, now speaking in little,
girlish rushes behind him, since her first appearance in a baby carriage,
nineteen or twenty years back. He had watched her without particular
interest, the daughter of the richest man in Greenstream, grow out of
sturdy, barelegged childhood into the girl he had now for five years been
driving, in early summer and fall, to and from the boarding school at
Stenton.
She was, he had noted, reserved. Other schoolgirls, in their passages from
their scattered upland homes, were eager to share Gordon's seat by the
whip; and, with affected giggling, or ringing bursts of merriment, essayed
to drive the wise, heedless mountain horses. But Lettice Hollidew had
always shrunk from the prominent place on the stage; there was neither
banter nor invitation in her tones as she greeted him at the outset of
their repeated trips, or as she gravely thanked him at the end of the
day's journey.
Her father--he was reputed to possess almost half a million dollars--was a
silent man, suspicious and wary in his contact and dealings with the
world; and it was probable that those qualities had been softened in
Pompey Hollidew's daughter to a habit of diffidence, to a customary,
instinctive repression.
No such characteristics laid their restraint on Buckley Simmons, her
present companion. His immobile face, with its heavy, good features and
slow-kindling comprehension, was at all times expressive of loud
self-assertion, insatiable curiosity, facile confidence; from his clean
shaven lips fell always satisfied comment, pronouncement, impatient
opinion. If Hollidew was the richest man in Greenstream Valentine Simmons
was a close second. Indeed, one might be found as wealthy as the other; as
a matter of fact, the Simmons holdings in real estate, scattered broadcast
over the county, would realize more than Hollidew could readily
command--thus Valentine Simmons' son, Buckley.
He was elaborately garbed in grey serge, relentlessly shaped to conform to
an exaggerated, passing fashion, a flaring china silk tie with a broadly
displayed handkerchief to match, yellow-red shoes with wide ribbands, and
a stiff, claret-colored felt hat.
Gordon Makimmon, with secret dissatisfaction, compared himself with this
sartorial model. Gordon's attire, purely serviceable, had apparently taken
on a protective coloring from the action of time and the elements; his
shirt had faded from a bright buff to a nondescript shade which blended
with what had once been light corduroy trousers; his heavy shoes, treated
only the evening before to a coat of preservative grease, were now covered
with muck; and, pulled over his eyes, a shapeless canvas hat completed the
list of the visible items of his appearance.
He swore moodily to himself as he considered the picture he must present
to the dapper youth and immaculate girl behind him. He should have
remembered that Lettice Hollidew would be returning from school to-day,
and at least provided an emergency collar. His sister Clare was always
scolding him about his clothes ... but Clare's was very gentle scolding.
A species of uncomfortable defiance, a studied contempt for appearance,
possessed him: he was as good any day as Buckley Simmons, the clothes on
whose back had probably been stripped from the desperate need of some lean
mountain inhabitant trading at the parental Simmons' counter. The
carefully cherished sense of injury grew within him; he suspected
innuendoes, allusions to his garb, in the half-heard conversation behind
him; he spoke to his horses in hard, sharp tones, and, without reason,
swept the whip across their ears.