Grover Nealman himself met me when I turned on to the level, gravel driveway. There was nothing about him in keeping with that desolate driveway. A familiar type, he looked the gentleman and sportsman that he was. Probably the man was forty-four or forty-five years old, but he was not the type that yields readily to middle-age. Nealman unquestionably still considered himself a young man, and he believed it heartily enough to convince his friends. Self-reliant, inured to power and influence, somewhat aristocratic, he could not yield himself to the admission of the march of the years. He was of medium height, rather thickly built, with round face, thick nose, and rather sensual lips; but his eyes, behind his tortoise-shell glasses, were friendly and spirited; and his hand-clasp was democratic and firm. By virtue of his own pride of race and class he was a good sportsman: likely a crack shot and an expert fisherman. Probably a man that drank moderately, was still youthful enough to enjoy a boyish celebration, a man who lived well, who had traveled widely and read good books, and who could carry out the traditions of a distinguished family—this was Grover Nealman, master of Kastle Krags.
I didn’t suppose for a moment that Nealman had made his own fortune. There were no fighting lines in his face, nor cold steel of conflict in his eyes. There was one deep, perpendicular line between his eyes, but it was born of worry, not battle. The man was moderately shrewd, probably able to take care of his investments, yet he could never have been a builder, a captain of industry. He dressed like a man born to wealth, well-fitting white flannels whose English tailoring afforded free room for arm and shoulder movements; a silk shirt and soft white collar, panama hat and buckskin shoes.
He was not a southerner. The first words he uttered proved that fact.
“So you are Mr. Killdare,” he said easily. He didn’t say it “Killdaih,” as he would had he been a native of the place. “Come with me into my study. I can tell you there what I’ve got lined up. I’m mighty glad you’ve come.”
We walked through the great, massive mahogany door, and he paused to introduce me to a middle-aged man that stood in the doorway. “Florey,” he said, kindly and easily, “I want you to meet Mr. Killdare.”
His tone alone would have identified the man’s station, even if the dark garb hadn’t told the story plainly. Florey was unquestionably Nealman’s butler. Nor could anyone have mistaken his walk of life, in any street of any English-speaking city. He was the kind of butler one sees upon the stage but rarely in a home, the kind one associates with old, stately English homes but which one rarely finds in fact—almost too good a butler to be true. He was little and subdued and gray, gray of hair and face and hands, and his soft voice, his irreproachable attitude of respect and deference seemed born in him by twenty generations of butlers. He said he was glad to know me, and his bony, soft-skinned hand took mine.
I’m afraid I stared at Florey. I had lived too long in the forest: the staring habit, so disconcerting to tenderfeet on their first acquaintance with the mountain people, was surely upon me. I think that the school of the forest teaches, first of all, to look long and sharply while you have a chance. The naturalist who follows the trail of wild game, even the sportsman knows this same fact—for the wild creatures are incredibly furtive and give one only a second’s glimpse. I instinctively tried to learn all I could of the gray old servant in the instant that I shook his hand.
He was the butler, now and forever, and I wondered if, beneath that gray skin, he were really human at all. Did he know human passion, human ambition and desires: sheltered in his master’s house, was he set apart from the lusts and the madnesses, the calms and the storms, the triumphs and the defeats that made up the lives of other men? Yet his gray, rather dim old eyes told me nothing. There were no fires, visible to me, glowing in their depths. A human clam—better still, a gray mole that lives out his life in darkness.
From him we passed up the stairs and to a big, cool study that apparently joined his bedroom. There were desks and chairs and a letter file. Edith Nealman was writing at the typewriter.