There was very delightful society in the neighborhood: the Laceys, the Morgans and the Ap-Johns all had country-houses in the immediate neighborhood.
The De Witts were going down to Brookfield for a last look at the house before its completion. They had asked Gilderman to go along. He was not especially interested in the new house; indeed, he had become rather bored by all the talk and discussion concerning it in the De Witt household for a year past. He had at first declined to go, and then had accepted, having nothing else that morning especially to interest or to occupy him. The party who went down consisted of Tom De Witt and his mother and two sisters and Sam Tilghman. Tilghman was engaged to be married to Bertha De Witt, the younger daughter.
Nearly all the trains stopped at Brookfield Junction, so that one had practically the choice of any time to reach there. It was this accessibility to the metropolis that made the place so valuable for suburban-residence purposes. The party went down on the eleven o’clock express. De Witt had engaged the whole forward section of the parlor-car, and they were entirely secluded from all the rest of the train. They saw nobody at all but themselves, excepting the negro porter; for the conductor collected the tickets of the party from De Witt’s man outside.
Almost as soon as they were safely ensconced in their compartment, Tom De Witt frankly took out a newspaper from his overcoat pocket and began to skim through it. He glanced up from it as the train began moving out of the station, and then instantly resumed his perusal. It took twenty minutes or more to run down to Brookfield, and De Witt read his paper nearly all the while. The rest of the party talked together in a dropping, intermittent sort of a fashion. The De Witt girls had a bored, tired expression that was habitual with them, and which was due, perhaps, to the heavy droop of their eyelids and the slight parting of their lips. They looked very much alike, and were both handsome after a certain fashion.
The train made no stop short of Brookfield Junction. As it whirled swiftly and tumultuously past the several stations nearer and nearer to Brookfield, Gilderman, looking out of the broad plate-glass windows, could see that the platforms were nearly all more or less crowded with people.
“I wonder what all the people are waiting for?” he said, at last. “Do you suppose it has anything to do with that Man they are making such a stir about?”
“I suppose so,” said Tilghman.
“Isn’t it dreadful?” said Clara De Witt. “There’s Brookfield, such a nice, quiet place, and now it is all full of these dreadful crowds who come just to see the Man and to hear Him preach. I think it’s perfectly dreadful. It ought to be stopped; indeed, it ought.”
“How the deuce would you stop it, Clara?” said De Witt, looking around the edge of his newspaper. “The people have a right to go where they please, so long as they behave themselves.”
“I don’t care,” said Miss De Witt. “If I were in Pilate’s place I wouldn’t let these wretched people come crowding after that Man the way they do. It’s dreadful; that’s what it is.”