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Updated: June 15, 2025
He dismissed an idle curiosity; and then, for no discoverable reason, halted, turned back, for a second glance. Even from the path he saw extending from the heap an arm, a gnarled hand. It was Pompey Hollidew himself, cold, still, on the floor. Gordon entered, looking outside for assistance: no one was in sight.
Gordon Makimmon ate largely and rapidly, ably seconded by the strange passenger and Buckley Simmons. The priest, Merlier, ate sparingly, in an absent, perfunctory manner. Lettice Hollidew, at the opposite end of the table, displayed the generous but dainty appetite of girlhood.
He swore moodily to himself as he considered the picture he must present to the dapper youth and immaculate girl behind him. He should have remembered that Lettice Hollidew would be returning from school to-day, and at least provided an emergency collar. His sister Clare was always scolding him about his clothes ... but Clare's was very gentle scolding.
He drew a deep breath, gazing across the moonlit fields. "The Makimmons are not distrustful," he reiterated; "he robbed me of all my savings." His lie would have fared badly with Pompey Hollidew, he thought grimly; it was unconvincing, wordy; he was conscious that his assumed emotion rang thinly. But its calculated effect was instantaneous, beyond all his hopes, his plan.
But Lettice Hollidew had always shrunk from the prominent place on the stage; there was neither banter nor invitation in her tones as she greeted him at the outset of their repeated trips, or as she gravely thanked him at the end of the day's journey.
Indeed, one might be found as wealthy as the other; as a matter of fact, the Simmons holdings in real estate, scattered broadcast over the county, would realize more than Hollidew could readily command thus Valentine Simmons' son, Buckley.
"I'll shut her right in," he said aloud in the empty, echoing kitchen. He decided to touch nothing within. In the sitting room the swift obscurity of the closing shutters obliterated its familiar features the table with the lamp and pink celluloid thimble, the phonograph, the faded photograph of what had been Mrs. Hollidew.
It was evident that he keenly resented the absence of Pompey Hollidew from the transaction. "A thing like this," he informed the other, "ain't put through in a week. It will be two or three years yet before the company will be ready for construction." Minor details were rehearsed, concluded.
The short cut into which Buckley and Lettice Hollidew disappeared refound the road, Gordon knew, over a mile above; and he was surprised, shortly, to see the girl's white waist moving rapidly into the open. She was alone, breathing in excited gasps, which she struggled to subdue.
She stood motionless; he felt rather than saw the intensity of her gaze. "I wish I could mend the hurt," he began, appropriately, professionally. He was interrupted by a figure emerging from the obscurity of the house. Pompey Hollidew peered at them from the low, stone lintel. "Letty," he pronounced, in a voice at once whining and truculent; "who? oh! that Makimmon.... Letty, come in the house."
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