"Heah am de place, sah," said the footman, opening the carriage-door.
An old gentleman in shabby clothes, embellished dramatically by a red necktie, an empty sleeve pinned to his breast, sprang out briskly; a lady followed, and stood beside him: then a younger man, his head muffled in a close fur cap, a yellow shawl wrapped about his neck, looked feebly out of the window. His face, which a pair of pale, unkindled eyes had never lighted since he was born, had been incomplete of meaning in his best days, and long illness had only emphasized its weakness. He half rose, sat down again, stared uncertainly at the house, yawned nervously, quite indifferent to the fact that the lady stood waiting his pleasure. His money and his bodily sufferings—for he was weighted heavily with both—were quite enough, in his view, to give him the right to engross the common air and the service of other men and women. Indeed, a certain indomitable conceit thrust itself into view in his snub nose and retreating chin, which made it highly probable that if he had been a stout day-laborer in the road yonder, he would have been just as complacent as now, and have patronized his fellows in the ditch.
"Will you take my arm, William?" said the old man waiting in the road. "This is the house."
"No. I have half a mind to drop the whole matter. Why should I drag out the secrets of the grave? God knows, I shall find them out soon enough!"
"Just so. Precisely. It's a miserable business for this April day. Now, I don't want to advise, but shall we drive out on the Wissahickon and fish a bit? You'll catch a perch, and Jane shall broil it over the coals, eh?"
"Oh, of course I'm going through with it," scowling and blinking through his eye-glasses. "But we are ten minutes before the time. I can't sit in a draughty room waiting. Tell David to drive slowly down the road until four, Captain Swendon."
"Certainly, certainly," with the nervous conciliatory haste of a man long used to being snubbed.—"You hear Mr. Laidley, David?—We'll arrange it in this way, then. Miss Fleming and I will stroll down the road, William, until the time is up.—No, Jane," as his daughter was going to leave the carriage. "Stay with your cousin." The captain was his peremptory self again. Like every man conscious of his own inability, he asserted himself by incessant managing and meddling for his neighbors.
The carriage jolted down the rutted road. The little man inside tossed on the well-padded cushions, and moaned and puffed spasmodically at his cigar.
Buff and David, stiff in green and gold on the box, nodded significantly at each other. "He's nigh unto de end," said Buff. "De gates of glory am creakin' foh him."
"Creakin', shore nuff. But 'bout de glory I'm not so shore. Yoh see, I knows," rubbing his gray whiskers with the end of the whip. "I have him in charge. Mass' Swendon gib orders: 'Yoh stick by him, Dave.' 'S got no friends: 's got no backbone. Why, wid a twinge ob toothache he squirms like an eel in de fire—swears to make de debbil turn pale. It'll be an awful sight when Death gits a holt on him. But I'll stick."