Kitabı oku: «A First Family of Tasajara», sayfa 5

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There was a feverish gayety in his sisters’ manner that afternoon that he did not understand; short colloquies that were suspended with ill concealed impatience when he came near them, and resumed when he was sent, on equally palpable excuses, out of the room. He had been accustomed to this exclusion when there were strangers present, but it seemed odd to him now, when the conversation did not even turn upon the two superior visitors who had been there, and of whom he confidently expected they would talk. Such fragments as he overheard were always in the future tense, and referred to what they intended to do. His mother, whose affection for him had always been shown in excessive and depressing commiseration of him in even his lightest moments, that afternoon seemed to add a prophetic and Cassandra-like sympathy for some vague future of his that would require all her ministration. “You won’t need them new boots, Milty dear, in the changes that may be comin’ to ye; so don’t be bothering your poor father in his worriments over his new plans.”

“What new plans, mommer?” asked the boy abruptly. “Are we goin’ away from here?”

“Hush, dear, and don’t ask questions that’s enough for grown folks to worry over, let alone a boy like you. Now be good,”—a quality in Mrs. Harkutt’s mind synonymous with ceasing from troubling,—“and after supper, while I’m in the parlor with your father and sisters, you kin sit up here by the fire with your book.”

“But,” persisted the boy in a flash of inspiration, “is popper goin’ to join in business with those surveyors,—a surveyin’?”

“No, child, what an idea! Run away there,—and mind!—don’t bother your father.”

Nevertheless John Milton’s inspiration had taken a new and characteristic shape. All this, he reflected, had happened since the surveyors came—since they had weakly displayed such a shameless and unmanly interest in his sisters! It could have but one meaning. He hung around the sitting-room and passages until he eventually encountered Clementina, taller than ever, evidently wearing a guilty satisfaction in her face, engrafted upon that habitual bearing of hers which he had always recognized as belonging to a vague but objectionable race whose members were individually known to him as “a proudy.”

“Which of those two surveyor fellows is it, Clemmy?” he said with an engaging smile, yet halting at a strategic distance.

“Is what?”

“Wot you’re goin’ to marry.”

“Idiot!”

“That ain’t tellin’ which,” responded the boy darkly.

Clementina swept by him into the sitting-room, where he heard her declare that “really that boy was getting too low and vulgar for anything.” Yet it struck him, that being pressed for further explanation, she did NOT specify why. This was “girls’ meanness!”

Howbeit he lingered late in the road that evening, hearing his father discuss with the search-party that had followed the banks of the creek, vainly looking for further traces of the missing ‘Lige, the possibility of his being living or dead, of the body having been carried away by the current to the bay or turning up later in some distant marsh when the spring came with low water. One who had been to his cabin beside the embarcadero reported that it was, as had been long suspected, barely habitable, and contained neither books, papers, nor records which would indicate his family or friends. It was a God-forsaken, dreary, worthless place; he wondered how a white man could ever expect to make a living there. If Elijah never turned up again it certainly would be a long time before any squatter would think of taking possession of it. John Milton knew instinctively, without looking up, that his father’s eyes were fixed upon him, and he felt himself constrained to appear to be abstracted in gazing down the darkening road. Then he heard his father say, with what he felt was an equal assumption of carelessness: “Yes, I reckon I’ve got somewhere a bill of sale of that land that I had to take from ‘Lige for an old bill, but I kalkilate that’s all I’ll ever see of it.”

Rain fell again as the darkness gathered, but he still loitered on the road and the sloping path of the garden, filled with a half resentful sense of wrong, and hugging with gloomy pride an increasing sense of loneliness and of getting dangerously wet. The swollen creek still whispered, murmured and swirled beside the bank. At another time he might have had wild ideas of emulating the surveyors on some extempore raft and so escaping his present dreary home existence; but since the disappearance of ‘Lige, who had always excited an odd boyish antipathy in his heart, although he had never seen him, he shunned the stream contaminated with the missing man’s unheroic fate. Presently the light from the open window of the sitting-room glittered on the wet leaves and sprays where he stood, and the voices of the family conclave came fitfully to his ear. They didn’t want him there. They had never thought of asking him to come in. Well!—who cared? And he wasn’t going to be bought off with a candle and a seat by the kitchen fire. No!

Nevertheless he was getting wet to no purpose. There was the tool-house and carpenter’s shed near the bank; its floor was thickly covered with sawdust and pine-wood shavings, and there was a mouldy buffalo skin which he had once transported thither from the old wagon-bed. There, too, was his secret cache of a candle in a bottle, buried with other piratical treasures in the presence of the youthful Peters, who consented to be sacrificed on the spot in buccaneering fashion to complete the unhallowed rites. He unearthed the candle, lit it, and clearing away a part of the shavings stood it up on the floor. He then brought a prized, battered, and coverless volume from a hidden recess in the rafters, and lying down with the buffalo robe over him, and his cap in his hand ready to extinguish the light at the first footstep of a trespasser, gave himself up—as he had given himself up, I fear, many other times—to the enchantment of the page before him.

The current whispered, murmured, and sang, unheeded at his side. The voices of his mother and sisters, raised at times in eagerness or expectation of the future, fell upon his unlistening ears. For with the spell that had come upon him, the mean walls of his hiding-place melted away; the vulgar stream beside him might have been that dim, subterraneous river down which Sindbad and his bale of riches were swept out of the Cave of Death to the sunlight of life and fortune, so surely and so simply had it transported him beyond the cramped and darkened limits of his present life. He was in the better world of boyish romance,—of gallant deeds and high emprises; of miraculous atonement and devoted sacrifice; of brave men, and those rarer, impossible women,—the immaculate conception of a boy’s virgin heart. What mattered it that behind that glittering window his mother and sisters grew feverish and excited over the vulgar details of their real but baser fortune? From the dark tool-shed by the muddy current, John Milton, with a battered dogs’-eared chronicle, soared on the wings of fancy far beyond their wildest ken!

CHAPER V

Prosperity had settled upon the plains of Tasajara. Not only had the embarcadero emerged from the tules of Tasajara Creek as a thriving town of steamboat wharves, warehouses, and outlying mills and factories, but in five years the transforming railroad had penetrated the great plain itself and revealed its undeveloped fertility. The low-lying lands that had been yearly overflowed by the creek, now drained and cultivated, yielded treasures of wheat and barley that were apparently inexhaustible. Even the helpless indolence of Sidon had been surprised into activity and change. There was nothing left of the straggling settlement to recall its former aspect. The site of Harkutt’s old store and dwelling was lost and forgotten in the new mill and granary that rose along the banks of the creek. Decay leaves ruin and traces for the memory to linger over; prosperity is unrelenting in its complete and smiling obliteration of the past.

But Tasajara City, as the embarcadero was now called, had no previous record, and even the former existence of an actual settler like the forgotten Elijah Curtis was unknown to the present inhabitants. It was Daniel Harkutt’s idea carried out in Daniel Harkutt’s land, with Daniel Harkutt’s capital and energy. But Daniel Harkutt had become Daniel Harcourt, and Harcourt Avenue, Harcourt Square, and Harcourt House, ostentatiously proclaimed the new spelling of his patronymic. When the change was made and for what reason, who suggested it and under what authority, were not easy to determine, as the sign on his former store had borne nothing but the legend, Goods and Provisions, and his name did not appear on written record until after the occupation of Tasajara; but it is presumed that it was at the instigation of his daughters, and there was no one to oppose it. Harcourt was a pretty name for a street, a square, or a hotel; even the few in Sidon who had called it Harkutt admitted that it was an improvement quite consistent with the change from the fever-haunted tules and sedges of the creek to the broad, level, and handsome squares of Tasajara City.

This might have been the opinion of a visitor at the Harcourt House, who arrived one summer afternoon from the Stockton boat, but whose shrewd, half-critical, half-professional eyes and quiet questionings betrayed some previous knowledge of the locality. Seated on the broad veranda of the Harcourt House, and gazing out on the well-kept green and young eucalyptus trees of the Harcourt Square or Plaza, he had elicited a counter question from a prosperous-looking citizen who had been lounging at his side.

“I reckon you look ez if you might have been here before, stranger.”

“Yes,” said the stranger quietly, “I have been. But it was when the tules grew in the square opposite, and the tide of the creek washed them.”

“Well,” said the Tasajaran, looking curiously at the stranger, “I call myself a pioneer of Tasajara. My name’s Peters,—of Peters and Co.,—and those warehouses along the wharf, where you landed just now, are mine; but I was the first settler on Harcourt’s land, and built the next cabin after him. I helped to clear out them tules and dredged the channels yonder. I took the contract with Harcourt to build the last fifteen miles o’ railroad, and put up that depot for the company. Perhaps you were here before that?”

“I was,” returned the stranger quietly.

“I say,” said Peters, hitching his chair a little nearer to his companion, “you never knew a kind of broken-down feller, called Curtis—‘Lige Curtis—who once squatted here and sold his right to Harkutt? He disappeared; it was allowed he killed hisself, but they never found his body, and, between you and me, I never took stock in that story. You know Harcourt holds under him, and all Tasajara rests on that title.”

“I’ve heard so,” assented the stranger carelessly, “but I never knew the original settler. Then Harcourt has been lucky?”

“You bet. He’s got three millions right about HERE, or within this quarter section, to say nothing of his outside speculations.”

“And lives here?”

“Not for two years. That’s his old house across the plaza, but his women-folks live mostly in ‘Frisco and New York, where he’s got houses too. They say they sorter got sick of Tasajara after his youngest daughter ran off with a feller.”

“Hallo!” said the stranger with undisguised interest. “I never heard of that! You don’t mean that she eloped”—he hesitated.

“Oh, it was a square enough marriage. I reckon too square to suit some folks; but the fellow hadn’t nothin’, and wasn’t worth shucks,—a sort of land surveyor, doin’ odd jobs, you know; and the old man and old woman were agin it, and the tother daughter worse of all. It was allowed here—you know how women-folks talk!—that the surveyor had been sweet on Clementina, but had got tired of being played by her, and took up with Phemie out o’ spite. Anyhow they got married, and Harcourt gave them to understand they couldn’t expect anything from him. P’raps that’s why it didn’t last long, for only about two months ago she got a divorce from Rice and came back to her family again.”

“Rice?” queried the stranger. “Was that her husband’s name, Stephen Rice?”

“I reckon! You knew him?”

“Yes,—when the tide came up to the tules, yonder,” answered the stranger musingly. “And the other daughter,—I suppose she has made a good match, being a beauty and the sole heiress?”

The Tasajaran made a grimace. “Not much! I reckon she’s waitin’ for the Angel Gabriel,—there ain’t another good enough to suit her here. They say she’s had most of the big men in California waitin’ in a line with their offers, like that cue the fellows used to make at the ‘Frisco post-office steamer days—and she with nary a letter or answer for any of them.”

“Then Harcourt doesn’t seem to have been as fortunate in his family affairs as in his speculations?”

Peters uttered a grim laugh. “Well, I reckon you know all about his son’s stampeding with that girl last spring?”

“His son?” interrupted the stranger. “Do you mean the boy they called John Milton? Why, he was a mere child!”

“He was old enough to run away with a young woman that helped in his mother’s house, and marry her afore a justice of the peace. The old man just snorted with rage, and swore he’d have the marriage put aside, for the boy was under age. He said it was a put-up job of the girl’s; that she was older by two years, and only wanted to get what money might be comin’ some day, but that they’d never see a red cent of it. Then, they say, John Milton up and sassed the old man to his face, and allowed that he wouldn’t take his dirty money if he starved first, and that if the old man broke the marriage he’d marry her again next year; that true love and honorable poverty were better nor riches, and a lot more o’ that stuff he picked out o’ them ten-cent novels he was allus reading. My women-folks say that he actually liked the girl, because she was the only one in the house that was ever kind to him; they say the girls were just ragin’ mad at the idea o’ havin’ a hired gal who had waited on ‘em as a sister-in-law, and they even got old Mammy Harcourt’s back up by sayin’ that John’s wife would want to rule the house, and run her out of her own kitchen. Some say he shook THEM, talked back to ‘em mighty sharp, and held his head a heap higher nor them. Anyhow, he’s livin’ with his wife somewhere in ‘Frisco, in a shanty on a sand lot, and workin’ odd jobs for the newspapers. No! takin’ it by and large—it don’t look as if Harcourt had run his family to the same advantage that he has his land.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t understand them as well,” said the stranger smiling.

“Mor’n likely the material ain’t thar, or ain’t as vallyble for a new country,” said Peters grimly. “I reckon the trouble is that he lets them two daughters run him, and the man who lets any woman or women do that, lets himself in for all their meannesses, and all he gets in return is a woman’s result,—show!”

Here the stranger, who was slowly rising from his chair with the polite suggestion of reluctantly tearing himself from the speaker’s spell, said: “And Harcourt spends most of his time in San Francisco, I suppose?”

“Yes! but to-day he’s here to attend a directors’ meeting and the opening of the Free Library and Tasajara Hall. I saw the windows open, and the blinds up in his house across the plaza as I passed just now.”

The stranger had by this time quite effected his courteous withdrawal. “Good-afternoon, Mr. Peters,” he said, smilingly lifting his hat, and turned away.

Peters, who was obliged to take his legs off the chair, and half rise to the stranger’s politeness, here reflected that he did not know his interlocutor’s name and business, and that he had really got nothing in return for his information. This must be remedied. As the stranger passed through the hall into the street, followed by the unwonted civilities of the spruce hotel clerk and the obsequious attentions of the negro porter, Peters stepped to the window of the office. “Who was that man who just passed out?” he asked.

The clerk stared in undisguised astonishment. “You don’t mean to say you didn’t know WHO he was—all the while you were talking to him?”

“No,” returned Peters, impatiently.

“Why, that was Professor Lawrence Grant!—THE Lawrence Grant—don’t you know?—the biggest scientific man and recognized expert on the Pacific slope. Why, that’s the man whose single word is enough to make or break the biggest mine or claim going! That man!—why, that’s the man whose opinion’s worth thousands, for it carries millions with it—and can’t be bought. That’s him who knocked the bottom outer El Dorado last year, and next day sent Eureka up booming! Ye remember that, sure?”

“Of course—but”—stammered Peters.

“And to think you didn’t know him!” repeated the hotel clerk wonderingly. “And here I was reckoning you were getting points from him all the time! Why, some men would have given a thousand dollars for your chance of talking to him—yes!—of even being SEEN talking to him. Why, old Wingate once got a tip on his Prairie Flower lead worth five thousand dollars while just changing seats with him in the cars and passing the time of day, sociable like. Why, what DID you talk about?”

Peters, with a miserable conviction that he had thrown away a valuable opportunity in mere idle gossip, nevertheless endeavored to look mysterious as he replied, “Oh, business gin’rally.” Then in the faint hope of yet retrieving his blunder he inquired, “How long will he be here?”

“Don’t know. I reckon he and Harcourt’s got something on hand. He just asked if he was likely to be at home or at his office. I told him I reckoned at the house, for some of the family—I didn’t get to see who they were—drove up in a carriage from the 3.40 train while you were sitting there.”

Meanwhile the subject of this discussion, quite unconscious of the sensation he had created, or perhaps like most heroes philosophically careless of it, was sauntering indifferently towards Harcourt’s house. But he had no business with his former host, his only object was to pass an idle hour before his train left. He was, of course, not unaware that he himself was largely responsible for Harcourt’s success; that it was HIS hint which had induced the petty trader of Sidon to venture his all in Tasajara; HIS knowledge of the topography and geology of the plain that had stimulated Harcourt’s agricultural speculations; HIS hydrographic survey of the creek that had made Harcourt’s plan of widening the channel to commerce practicable and profitable. This he could not help but know. But that it was chiefly owing to his own clear, cool, far-seeing, but never visionary, scientific observation,—his own accurate analysis, unprejudiced by even a savant’s enthusiasm, and uninfluenced by any personal desire or greed of gain,—that Tasajara City had risen from the stagnant tules, was a speculation that had never occurred to him. There was a much more uneasy consciousness of what he had done in Mr. Harcourt’s face a few moments later, when his visitor’s name was announced, and it is to be feared that if that name had been less widely honored and respected than it was, no merely grateful recollection of it would have procured Grant an audience. As it was, it was with a frown and a touch of his old impatient asperity that he stepped to the threshold of an adjoining room and called, “Clemmy!”

Clementina appeared at the door.

“There’s that man Grant in the parlor. What brings HIM here, I wonder? Who does he come to see?”

“Who did he ask for?”

“Me,—but that don’t mean anything.”

“Perhaps he wants to see you on some business.”

“No. That isn’t his high-toned style. He makes other people go to him for that,” he said bitterly. “Anyhow—don’t you think it’s mighty queer his coming here after his friend—for it was he who introduced Rice to us—had behaved so to your sister, and caused all this divorce and scandal?”

“Perhaps he may know nothing about it; he and Rice separated long ago, even before Grant became so famous. We never saw much of him, you know, after we came here. Suppose you leave him to ME. I’ll see him.”

Mr. Harcourt reflected. “Didn’t he used to be rather attentive to Phemie?”

Clementina shrugged her shoulders carelessly. “I dare say—but I don’t think that NOW”—

“Who said anything about NOW?” retorted her father, with a return of his old abruptness. After a pause he said: “I’ll go down and see him first, and then send for you. You can keep him for the opening and dinner, if you like.”

Meantime Lawrence Grant, serenely unsuspicious of these domestic confidences, had been shown into the parlor—a large room furnished in the same style as the drawing-room of the hotel he had just quitted. He had ample time to note that it was that wonderful Second Empire furniture which he remembered that the early San Francisco pioneers in the first flush of their wealth had imported directly from France, and which for years after gave an unexpected foreign flavor to the western domesticity and a tawdry gilt equality to saloons and drawing-rooms, public and private. But he was observant of a corresponding change in Harcourt, when a moment later he entered the room. That individuality which had kept the former shopkeeper of Sidon distinct from, although perhaps not superior to, his customers—was strongly marked. He was perhaps now more nervously alert than then; he was certainly more impatient than before,—but that was pardonable in a man of large affairs and action. Grant could not deny that he seemed improved,—rather perhaps that the setting of fine clothes, cleanliness, and the absence of petty worries, made his characteristics respectable. That which is ill breeding in homespun, is apt to become mere eccentricity in purple and fine linen; Grant felt that Harcourt jarred on him less than he did before, and was grateful without superciliousness. Harcourt, relieved to find that Grant was neither critical nor aggressively reminiscent, and above all not inclined to claim the credit of creating him and Tasajara, became more confident, more at his ease, and, I fear, in proportion more unpleasant. It is the repose and not the struggle of the parvenu that confounds us.

“And YOU, Grant,—you have made yourself famous, and, I hear, have got pretty much your own prices for your opinions ever since it was known that you—you—er—were connected with the growth of Tasajara.”

Grant smiled; he was not quite prepared for this; but it was amusing and would pass the time. He murmured a sentence of half ironical deprecation, and Mr. Harcourt continued:—

“I haven’t got my San Francisco house here to receive you in, but I hope some day, sir, to see you there. We are only here for the day and night, but if you care to attend the opening ceremonies at the new hall, we can manage to give you dinner afterwards. You can escort my daughter Clementina,—she’s here with me.”

The smile of apologetic declination which had begun to form on Grant’s lips was suddenly arrested. “Then your daughter is here?” he asked, with unaffected interest.

“Yes,—she is in fact a patroness of the library and sewing-circle, and takes the greatest interest in it. The Reverend Doctor Pilsbury relies upon her for everything. She runs the society, even to the training of the young ladies, sir. You shall see their exercises.”

This was certainly a new phase of Clementina’s character. Yet why should she not assume the role of Lady Bountiful with the other functions of her new condition. “I should have thought Miss Harcourt would have found this rather difficult with her other social duties,” he said, “and would have left it to her married sister.” He thought it better not to appear as if avoiding reference to Euphemia, although quietly ignoring her late experiences. Mr. Harcourt was less easy in his response.

“Now that Euphemia is again with her own family,” he said ponderously, with an affectation of social discrimination that was in weak contrast to his usual direct business astuteness, “I suppose she may take her part in these things, but just now she requires rest. You may have heard some rumor that she is going abroad for a time? The fact is she hasn’t the least intention of doing so, nor do we consider there is the slightest reason for her going.” He paused as if to give great emphasis to a statement that seemed otherwise unimportant. “But here’s Clementina coming, and I must get you to excuse ME. I’ve to meet the trustees of the church in ten minutes, but I hope she’ll persuade you to stay, and I’ll see you later at the hall.”

As Clementina entered the room her father vanished and, I fear, as completely dropped out of Mr. Grant’s mind. For the daughter’s improvement was greater than her father’s, yet so much more refined as to be at first only delicately perceptible. Grant had been prepared for the vulgar enhancement of fine clothes and personal adornment, for the specious setting of luxurious circumstances and surroundings, for the aplomb that came from flattery and conscious power. But he found none of these; her calm individuality was intensified rather than subdued; she was dressed simply, with an economy of ornament, rich material, and jewelry, but an accuracy of taste that was always dominant. Her plain gray merino dress, beautifully fitting her figure, suggested, with its pale blue facings, some uniform, as of the charitable society she patronized. She came towards him with a graceful movement of greeting, yet her face showed no consciousness of the interval that had elapsed since they met; he almost fancied himself transported back to the sitting-room at Sidon with the monotonous patter of the leaves outside, and the cool moist breath of the bay and alder coming in at the window.

“Father says that you are only passing through Tasajara to-day, as you did through Sidon five years ago,” she said with a smiling earnestness that he fancied however was the one new phase of her character. “But I won’t believe it! At least we will not accept another visit quite as accidental as that, even though you brought us twice the good fortune you did then. You see, we have not forgotten it if you have, Mr. Grant. And unless you want us to believe that your fairy gifts will turn some day to leaves and ashes, you will promise to stay with us tonight, and let me show you some of the good we have done with them. Perhaps you don’t know, or don’t want to know, that it was I who got up this ‘Library and Home Circle of the Sisters of Tasajara’ which we are to open to-day. And can you imagine why? You remember—or have you forgotten—that you once affected to be concerned at the social condition of the young ladies on the plains of Sidon? Well, Mr. Grant, this is gotten up in order that the future Mr. Grants who wander may find future Miss Billingses who are worthy to converse with them and entertain them, and who no longer wear men’s hats and live on the public road.”

It was such a long speech for one so taciturn as he remembered Clementina to have been; so unexpected in tone considering her father’s attitude towards him, and so unlooked for in its reference to a slight incident of the past, that Grant’s critical contemplation of her gave way to a quiet and grateful glance of admiration. How could he have been so mistaken in her character? He had always preferred the outspoken Euphemia, and yet why should he not have been equally mistaken in her? Without having any personal knowledge of Rice’s matrimonial troubles—for their intimate companionship had not continued after the survey—he had been inclined to blame him; now he seemed to find excuses for him. He wondered if she really had liked him as Peters had hinted; he wondered if she knew that he, Grant, was no longer intimate with him and knew nothing of her affairs. All this while he was accepting her proffered hospitality and sending to the hotel for his luggage. Then he drifted into a conversation, which he had expected would be brief, pointless, and confined to a stupid resume of their mutual and social progress since they had left Sidon. But here he was again mistaken; she was talking familiarly of present social topics, of things that she knew clearly and well, without effort or attitude. She had been to New York and Boston for two winters; she had spent the previous summer at Newport; it might have been her whole youth for the fluency, accuracy, and familiarity of her detail, and the absence of provincial enthusiasm. She was going abroad, probably in the spring. She had thought of going to winter in Italy, but she would wait now until her sister was ready to go with her. Mr. Grant of course knew that Euphemia was separated from Mr. Rice—no—not until her father told him? Well—the marriage had been a wild and foolish thing for both. But Euphemia was back again with them in the San Francisco house; she had talked of coming to Tasajara to-day, perhaps she might be there tonight. And, good heavens! it was actually three o’clock already, and they must start at once for the Hall. She would go and get her hat and return instantly.

It was true; he had been talking with her an hour—pleasantly, intelligently, and yet with a consciousness of an indefinite satisfaction beyond all this. It must have been surprise at her transformation, or his previous misconception of her character. He had been watching her features and wondering why he had ever thought them expressionless. There was also the pleasant suggestion—common to humanity in such instances—that he himself was in some way responsible for the change; that it was some awakened sympathy to his own nature that had breathed into this cold and faultless statue the warmth of life. In an odd flash of recollection he remembered how, five years ago, when Rice had suggested to her that she was “hard to please,” she had replied that she “didn’t know, but that she was waiting to see.” It did not occur to him to wonder why she had not awakened then, or if this awakening had anything to do with her own volition. It was not probable that they would meet again after to-day, or if they did, that she would not relapse into her former self and fail to impress him as she had now. But—here she was—a paragon of feminine promptitude—already standing in the doorway, accurately gloved and booted, and wearing a demure gray hat that modestly crowned her decorously elegant figure.