第42章

The train had been continuing its smooth whir through fields, wooded lands, and queer, dead-and-alive little villages for some time before it drew up at last at a small station.Bereft by the season of its garden bloom and green creepers, it looked a bare and uninviting little place.On the two benches against the wall of the platform a number of women sat huddled together in the dampness.Several of them held children in their laps and all stared very hard, nudging one another as he descended from the train.A number of rustics stood about the platform, giving it a somewhat crowded air.It struck Tembarom that, for an out- of-the-way place, there seemed to be a good many travelers, and he wondered if they could all be going away.He did not know that they were the curious element among such as lived in the immediate neighborhood of the station and had come out merely to see him on his first appearance.Several of them touched their hats as he went by, and he supposed they knew Palford and were saluting him.

Each of them was curious, but no one was in a particularly welcoming mood.There was, indeed, no reason for anticipating enthusiasm.It was, however, but human nature that the bucolic mind should bestir itself a little in the desire to obtain a view of a Temple Barholm who had earned his living by blacking boots and selling newspapers, unknowing that he was "one o' th' gentry."When he stepped from his first-class carriage, Tembarom found himself confronted by a very straight, clean-faced, and well-built young man, who wore a long, fawn-colored livery coat with claret facings and silver buttons.He touched his cockaded hat, and at once took up the Gladstone bags.Tembarom knew that he was a footman because he had seen something like him outside restaurants, theaters, and shops in New York, but he was not sure whether he ought to touch his own hat or not.He slightly lifted it from his head to show there was no ill feeling, and then followed him and Mr.Palford to the carriage waiting for them.It was a severe but sumptuous equipage, and the coachman was as well dressed and well built as the footman.Tembarom took his place in it with many mental reservations.

"What are the illustrations on the doors?" he inquired.

"The Temple Barholm coat of arms," Mr.Palford answered."The people at the station are your tenants.Members of the family of the stout man with the broad hat have lived as yeoman farmers on your land for three hundred years."They went on their way, with more rain, more rain, more dripping hedges, more soaked fields, and more bare, huge-armed trees.CLOP, CLOP, CLOP, sounded the horses' hoofs along the road, and from his corner of the carriage Mr.Palford tried to make polite conversation.

Faces peered out of the windows of the cottages, sometimes a whole family group of faces, all crowded together, eager to look, from the mother with a baby in her arms to the old man or woman, plainly grandfather or grandmother--sharp, childishly round, or bleared old eyes, all excited and anxious to catch glimpses.

"They are very curious to see you," said Mr.Palford."Those two laborers are touching their hats to you.It will be as well to recognize their salute."At a number of the cottage doors the group stood upon the threshold and touched foreheads or curtsied.Tembarom saluted again and again, and more than once his friendly grin showed itself.It made him feel queer to drive along, turning from side to side to acknowledge obeisances, as he had seen a well-known military hero acknowledge them as he drove down Broadway.

The chief street of the village of Temple Barholm wandered almost within hailing distance of the great entrance to the park.The gates were supported by massive pillars, on which crouched huge stone griffins.Tembarom felt that they stared savagely over his head as he was driven toward them as for inspection, and in disdainful silence allowed to pass between them as they stood on guard, apparently with the haughtiest mental reservations.

The park through which the long avenue rolled concealed its beauty to the unaccustomed eye, showing only more bare trees and sodden stretches of brown grass.The house itself, as it loomed up out of the thickening rain-mist, appalled Tembarom by its size and gloomily gray massiveness.Before it was spread a broad terrace of stone, guarded by more griffins of even more disdainful aspect than those watching over the gates.The stone noses held themselves rigidly in the air as the reporter of the up-town society page passed with Mr.Palford up a flight of steps broad enough to make him feel as though he were going to church.Footmen with powdered heads received him at the carriage door, seemed to assist him to move, to put one foot before the other for him, to stand in rows as though they were a military guard ready to take him into custody.