“Do you mean to say that my own brother would lay violent hands—”
“Ollie Baxter? I should say not. He ain’t got anything more to do with running this house than I have. Why, Serepty wouldn’t let Napoleon Bonaparte into Mrs. Baxter’s room if he was to come here in full uniform. But don’t take my word for it. Go ahead. You might as well get it over with. I wouldn’t any more think of going up them steps, big as I am, without receiving orders from her, than I’d think of sticking my head in this stove.”
“I will soon get rid of Mrs. Grimes,” said she, tossing her head.
As she started to leave the room, a loud knocking at the front door rose above the howl of the wind. Sikes resuming his office as master of ceremonies, pushed his way past Mrs. Gooch and opened the door to admit a woman and two men. The first to enter the sitting-room was a tall man wearing a thin black overcoat and a high silk hat. The former was buttoned close about his shivering frame, the latter jammed well down upon his ears to meet the vagaries of the tempestuous wind. This was the Reverend Herbert Sage, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Rumley. The lady was his wife.
The other member of the trio, a fat, red-faced, jolly looking man of indeterminate age, was Silas Link, the undertaker, upholsterer and livery-man of Rumley. We encounter him now in the last-mentioned capacity, hence his cheery grin, his loud-checked trousers and his brown derby set jauntily over his right ear. He wore a buffalo-skin overcoat. In his capacity as upholsterer and furniture-repairer he affected a dusty suit of overalls of a butternut hue and wore spectacles that gave him a solemn, owl-like expression. As an undertaker he was irreproachably lachrymose despite his rosy cheeks, and he never “officiated” except in a tight-fitting Prince Albert coat, a plug hat, a white cravat and a pair of black cotton gloves. In view of the fact that he so rarely is called upon to appear in the character of undertaker, owing to the infrequency of emergencies, and also that we are likely to come in contact with him a dozen times a day as a livery-man, it is only fair to introduce him here in the most cheerful of his three rôles, especially as we may never have occasion to call upon him for repairs.
The “Reverend” Sage—he was always spoken of as the “Reverend”—was a good-looking young man of thirty, threadbare and a trifle wan, with kindly brown eyes set deep under a broad, intelligent brow. He had a wide, generous mouth and a pleasant smile; a fine nose, a square chin, and a deep, gentle voice. For three years he had been shepherd of the Presbyterians in Rumley, and he was as poor if not actually poorer than the day he came to the town from the theological institute in Chicago. His salary was eight hundred dollars a year, exclusive of “pickings,” as Mr. Baxter called the pitiful extras derived from weddings, funerals and “pound parties.” Come November, there was always a “pound party” for the minister, and it was on such occasions that he received from his flock all sorts and manner of donations. His wife in one of her letters to a girl friend in Chicago mentioned twenty-six pairs of carpet slippers “standing in a row,” seventeen respectfully knitted mufflers, numberless mittens and wristlets, and she couldn’t tell what else until she had gone through all the drawers and closets in the parsonage.
Which brings us to the wife, and also to an absolutely unaccountable anomaly. It is not difficult to explain how he came to fall in love with her and why he married her. That might have happened to any man. Likewise it is fairly easy to understand how she came to fall in love with him, for he was dreamy-eyed and reluctant. But how she came to marry him, knowing what it meant to be the wife of an impoverished preacher, is past all understanding. She was a handsome, dashing young woman of twenty-three: the type one meets on the streets of New York or Chicago and is unable to decide whether she is rich or poor, good or bad, idle or industrious, smart or common. Certainly one would never find her counterpart in a town like Rumley except by the accident of importation, and then only as a bird of passage. When she came to Rumley as a bride in the June preceding the birth of Oliver October Baxter, Rumley was aghast. It could not believe its thousand eyes. Small wonder, then, that the precious Mrs. Gooch and her even more precious husband gazed upon her as if their own slightly distended eyes were untrustworthy.
She was tall, willowy, and startling. She wore a sealskin coat—at least it looked like seal—with sleeves that ballooned grandly at the shoulders; a picture hat that sat rakishly—(no doubt the wind had something to do with its angle)—upon a crown of black hair neatly banged in front and so extensively puffed behind that it looked for all the world like an intricate mass of sausages in peril of being dislodged at every step she took; rather stunning coral ear-rings made up of graduated globes; a slinky satin skirt of black with a long, sweeping train that, being released from her well-gloved hand, dragged swishily across the cheap rag carpet with a sort of contemptuous hiss. A roomy pair of rubber boots, undoubtedly the property of her husband, completed her costume.
“Good evening, Mr. Sikes,” she drawled, as she scuffled past him into the sitting-room. “Nice balmy weather to be born in, isn’t it?”
Mr. Sikes, taken unawares, forgot himself so far as to wink at the parson, and then, in some confusion, stammered: “St-step right in, Mrs. Sage, and have a chair. Evening, Mr. Sage. How are ye, Silas? Help yourself to a cigar. Take off your things, Mrs. Sage. Oliver will be mighty glad to see—”