Chapter: A PEAK IN DARIEN

So walking, and so desultorily talking, they came out on a noble white
highway that wound for miles along the bluffy edge of the upland
overlooking the valley upon the one side, fronted by handsome residences
on the other.

It was Johnnie's first view of a big valley, a river, or a city. She had
seen the shoestring creek bottoms between the endless mountains among
which she was born and bred, the high-hung, cup-like depressions of
their inner fastnesses; she was used to the cool, clear, boulder-checked
mountain creeks that fight their way down those steeps like an armed man
beating off assailants at every turn; she had been taken a number of
times to Bledsoe, the tiny settlement at the foot of Unaka Old Bald,
where there were two stores, a blacksmith shop, the post-office and
the church.

Below her, now beginning to glow in the evening light, opened out one of
the finest valleys of the southern Appalachees. Lapped in it, far off,
shrouded with rosy mist which she did not identify as transmuted coal
smoke, a city lay, fretted with spires, already sparkling with electric
lights, set like a glittering boss of jewels in the broad curve of a
shining river.

Directly down the steep at their feet was the cotton-mill town, a suburb
clustered about a half-dozen great factories, whose long rows of lighted
windows defined their black bulk. There was a stream here, too; a small,
sluggish thing that flowed from tank to tank among the factories,
spanned by numerous handrails, bridged in one place for the wagon-road
to cross. Mills, valley, town, distant rimming mountains, river and
creek, glowed and pulsed, dissolved and relimned themselves in the
uprolling glory of sunset.

"Oh, wait for me a minute, Shade," pleaded the girl, pulling off her
sunbonnet.... "I want to look.... Never in my life did I see anything
so sightly!"

"Good land!" laughed the man, with a note of impatience in his voice.
"You and me was raised on mountain scenery, as a body may say. I should
think we'd both had enough of it to last us."

"But this--this is different," groped Johnnie, trying to explain the
emotions that possessed her. "Look at that big settlement over yon. I
reckon it's a city. It must be Watauga. It looks like the--the mansions
of the blest, in the big Bible that preacher Drane has, down
at Bledsoe."

"I reckon they're blest--they got plenty of money," returned Shade, with
the cheap cynicism of his kind.

"So many houses!" the girl communed with herself. "There's bound to be
a-many a person in all them houses," she went on. One could read the
loving outreach to all humanity in her tones.

"There is," put in Shade caustically. "There's many a rogue. You want to
look out for them tricky town folks--a girl like you."

Had he been more kind, he would have said, "a pretty girl like you." But
Johnnie did not miss it; she was used to such as he gave, or less.

"Come on," he urged impatiently. "We won't get no supper if you don't
hurry."

Supper! Johnnie drew in her breath and shook her head. With that scene
unrolled there, as though all the kingdoms of earth were spread before
them to look upon, she was asked to remember supper! Sighing, but
submissively, she moved to follow her guide, a reluctant glance across
her shoulder, when there came a cry something like that which the wild
geese make when they come over in the spring; and a thing with two
shining, fiery eyes, a thing that purred like a giant cat, rounded a
curve in the road and came to a sudden jolting halt beside them.

Shade stopped immediately for that. Johnnie did not fail to recognize
the vehicle. Illustrated magazines go everywhere in these days. In the
automobile rode a man, bare-headed, dressed in a suit of white flannels,
strange to Johnnie's eyes. Beside him sat a woman in a long, shimmering,
silken cloak, a great, misty, silver-gray veil twined round head and hat
and tied in a big bow under the chin. Johnnie had as yet seen nothing
more pretentious than the starched and ruffled flummeries of a small
mountain watering-place. This beautiful, peculiar looking garb had
something of the picturesque, the poetic, about it, that appealed to her
as the frocks worn at Chalybeate Springs or Bledsoe had never done. She
had not wanted them. She wanted this. The automobile was stopped, the
young fellow in it calling to Shade:

"I wonder if you could help me with this thing, Buckheath? It's on a
strike again. Show me what you did to it last time."

Along the edge of the road at this point, for safety's sake, a low stone
wall had been laid. Setting down her bundle, Johnnie leaned upon this,
and shared her admiration between the valley below and these beautiful,
interesting newcomers. Her bonnet was pushed far back; the wind ruffled
the bright hair about her forehead; the wonder and glory and delight of
it all made her deep eyes shine with a child's curiosity and avid
wishfulness. Her lips were parted in unconscious smiles. White and red,
tremulous, on tiptoe, the eager soul looking out of her face, she was
very beautiful. The man in the automobile observed her kindly; the
woman's features she could not quite see, though the veil was parted.

Neither Johnnie nor the driver of the car saw the quick, resentful
glance her companion shot at the city man as Shade noted the latter's
admiring look at the girl. Buckheath displayed an awesome familiarity
with the machine and its workings, crawling under the body, and tapping
it here and there with a wrench its driver supplied. They backed it and
moved it a little, and seemed to be debating the short turn which would
take them into the driveway leading up to a house on the slope above
the road.

Johnnie continued to watch with fascinated eyes; Shade was on his feet
now, reaching into the bowels of the machine to do mysterious things.

"It's a broken connection," he announced briefly.

"Is the wire too short to twist together?" inquired the man in the car.
"Will you have to put in a new piece?"

"Uh-huh," assented Buckheath.

"There's a wire in that box there," directed the other.

Shade worked in silence for a moment.

"Now she'll go, I reckon," he announced, and once more the driver
started up his car. It curved perilously near the bundle she had set
down, with the handkerchief containing her cherished blossom lying atop;
the mud-guard swept this latter off, and Buckheath set a foot upon it as
he followed the machine in its progress.

"Take care--that was a flower," the man in the auto warned, too late.

Shade answered with a quick, backward-flung glance and a little derisive
laugh, but no words. The young fellow stopped the machine, jumped down,
and picked up the coarse little handkerchief which showed a bit of
drooping green stem at one end and a glimpse of pink at the other.

"I'm sorry," he said, presenting it to Johnnie with exactly the air and
tone he had used in speaking to the lady who was with him in the car.
"If I had seen it in time, I might have saved it. I hope it's not
much hurt."

Buckheath addressed himself savagely to his work at the machine. The
woman in the auto glanced uneasily up at the house on the slope above
them. Johnnie looked into the eyes bent so kindly upon her, and could
have worshipped the ground on which their owner trod. Kindness always
melted her heart utterly, but kindness with such beautiful courtesy
added--this was the quality in flower.

"It doesn't make any differ," she said softly, turning to him a rapt,
transfigured face. "It's just a bloom I brought from the mountains--they
don't grow in the valley, and I found this one on my way down."

The man wondered a little if it were only the glow of the sunset that
lit her face with such shining beauty; he noted how the fires of it
flowed over her bright, blown hair and kindled its colour, how it
lingered in the clear eyes, and flamed upon the white neck and throat
till they had almost the translucence of pearl.

"I think this thing'll work now--for a spell, anyhow," Shade Buckheath's
voice sounded sharply from the road behind them.

"Are you afraid to attempt it, Miss Sessions?" the young man called to
his companion. "If you are, we'll walk up, I'll telephone at the house
for a trap and we'll drive back:--Buckheath will take the machine in
for us."

The voice was even and low-toned, yet every word came to Johnnie
distinctly. She watched with a sort of rapture the movements of this
party. The man's hair was dark and crisp, and worn a little long about
the temples and ears; he had pleasant dark eyes and an air of being
slightly amused, even when he did not smile. The lady apparently said
that she was not afraid, for her companion got in, the machine
negotiated the turn safely and began to move slowly up the steep ascent.
As it did so, the driver gave another glance toward where the mountain
girl stood, a swift, kind glance, and a smile that stayed with her after
the shining car had disappeared in the direction of the wide-porched
building where people were laughing and calling to each other and moving
about--people dressed in beautiful garments which Johnnie would fain
have inspected more closely.

Buckheath stood gazing at her sarcastically.

"Come on," he ordered, as she held back, lingering. "They ain't no good
in you hangin' 'round here. That was Mr. Gray Stoddard, and the lady
he's beauin' is Miss Lydia Sessions, Mr. Hardwick's sister-in-law. He's
for such as her--not for you. He's the boss of the bosses down at
Cottonville. No use of you lookin' at him."

Johnnie scarcely heard the words. Her eyes were on the wide porch of the
house above them.

"What is that place?" she inquired in an awestruck whisper, as she fell
into step submissively, plodding with bent head at his shoulder.

"The Country Club," Shade flung back at her. "Did you 'low it was
heaven?"

Heaven! Johnnie brooded on that for a long time. She turned her head
stealthily for a last glimpse of the portico where a laughing girl
tossed a ball to a young fellow on the terrace below. After all, heaven
was not so far amiss. She had rather associated it with the abode of the
blest. The people in it were happy; they moved in beautiful raiment all
day long; they spoke to each other kindly. It was love's home, she was
sure of that. Then her mind went back to the dress of the girl in
the auto.

"I'm a-going to have me a frock like that before I die," she said, half
unconsciously, yet with a sudden passion of resolution. "Yes, if I live
I'm a-goin' to have me just such a frock."

Shade wheeled in his tracks with a swift narrowing of the slate-gray
eyes. He had been more stirred than he was willing to acknowledge by the
girl's beauty, and by a nameless power that went out from the seemingly
helpless creature and laid hold of those with whom she came in contact.
It was the open admiration of young Stoddard which had roused the sullen
resentment he was now spending on her.

"Ye air, air ye?" he demanded sharply. "You're a-goin' to have a frock
like that? And what man's a-goin' to pay for it, I'd like to know?"

Such talk belonged to the valley and the settlement. In the mountains a
woman works, of course, and earns her board and keep. She is a valuable
industrial possession or chattel to the man, who may profit by her
labour; never a luxury--a bill of expense. As she walked, Johnnie nodded
toward the factory in the valley, beginning to blaze with light--her
bridge of toil, that was to carry her from the island of Nowhere to the
great mainland of Life, where everything might be had for the working,
the striving.

"I didn't name no man," she said mildly. "I don't reckon anybody's goin'
to give me things. Ain't there the factory where a body may work and
earn money for all they need?"

"Well, I reckon they might, if they was good and careful to need
powerful little," allowed Shade.

At the moment they came to the opening of a small path which plunged
abruptly down the steep side of the ridge, curving in and out with--and
sometimes across--a carriage road. As they took the first steps on this
the sun forsook the valley at last, and lingered only on the mountain
top where was that Palace of Pleasure into which He and She had
vanished, before which the strange chariot waited. And all at once the
little brook that wound, a golden thread, between the bulk of the mills,
flowed, a stream of ink, from pool to pool of black water. The way down
turned and turned; and each time that Shade and Johnnie got another
sight of the buildings of the little village below, they had changed in
character with the changing point of view. They loomed taller, they
looked darker in spite of the pulsing light from their many windows.

And now there burst out a roar of whistles, like the bellowing of great
monsters. Somehow it struck cold upon the girl's heart. They were coming
down from that wonderful highland where she had seemed to see all the
kingdoms of earth spread before her, hers for the conquering; they were
descending into the shadow.

As they came quite to the foot they saw groups of women and children,
with here and there a decrepit man, leaving the cottages and making
their way toward the lighted mills. From the doors of little shanties
tired-faced women with boys and girls walking near them, and, in one or
two cases, very small ones clinging to their skirts and hands,
reinforced the crowd which set in a steady stream toward the bridges and
the open gates in the high board fences.

"What are they a-goin' to the factory for on Sunday evening?" Johnnie
inquired.

"Night turn," replied Buckheath briefly. "Sunday's over at sundown."

"Oh, yes," agreed Johnnie dutifully, but rather disheartened. "Trade
must be mighty good if they have to work all night."

"Them that works don't get any more for it," retorted Shade harshly.

"What's the little ones goin' to the mill for?" Johnnie questioned,
staring up at him with apprehensive eyes.

"Why, to play, I reckon," returned the young fellow ironically. "Folks
mostly does go to the mill to play, don't they?"

The girl ran forward and clasped his arm with eager fingers that shook.
"Shade!" she cried; "they can't work those little babies. That one over
there ain't to exceed four year old, and I know it."

The man looked indifferently to where a tiny boy trotted at his mother's
heels, solemn, old-faced, unchildish. He laughed a little.

"That thar chap is the oldest feller in the mills," he said. "That's
Benny Tarbox. He's too short to tend a frame, but his maw lets him help
her at the loom--every weaver has obliged to have helpers wait on 'em.
You'll get used to it."

Get used to it! She pulled the sunbonnet about her face. The gold was
all gone from the earth, and from her mood as well. She raised her eyes
to where the last brightness lingered on the mountain-top. Up there they
were happy. And even as her feet carried her forward to Pap Himes's
boarding-house, her soul went clamouring, questing back toward the
heights, and the sunlight, the love and laughter, she had left behind.

"The power and the glory--the power and the glory," she whispered over
and over to herself. "Is it all back there?" Again she looked wistfully
toward the heights. "But maybe a body with two feet can climb."

 The scene changes: Captain Fellows, the director of the Central American Banana Company, is greeted by his wife, Trix, as he returns home from a business trip upriver. She informs him that a policeman is talking with their daughter, Coral, who arranged for the officer to sleep overnight on the veranda. Now, the officer is waiting to talk with Fellows. Finding out nothing from Captain Fellows about the hunted "last priest," the lieutenant leaves the Fellowses, and Coral tells her shocked father that the priest whom the lieutenant is hunting is hiding in the barn. Coral saved the priest's life by refusing to give the lieutenant permission to search the premises. Later in the chapter, Coral brings the priest some food and a beer, and she promises to be his protector, always. In the barn, the priest explains to Coral that his attempted escape to Vera Cruz occurred a month ago. He wants to show the girl a card trick, but Coral doesn't have any cards. The priest then leaves the plantation and stumbles into a village, where, although exhausted, he is compelled to hear confessions because the people there have not been visited by a priest in five years. In this chapter, then, we see that Captain Fellows is, like the priest, also "abandoned," but, in his placidity and moral obtuseness, he is a happy man. In contrast, the priest is not a happy man; he is sure that the bishop in Mexico City doesn't even know, or care, that he is alive. Unlike the priest, Fellows is irresponsible, and, despite his family's tenuous situation, he sings in his boat and savors the taste of his sandwich, a taste which is heightened by the open air. His eyes are blue and unreflecting, and his memory is porous. Fellows is a Pilate-figure; he backs away from any human involvement. He warns Coral not to aid the priest since he fears the authorities, at whose sufferance he is living in Mexico. He speaks as Pilate might have done when deciding Christ's fate: 'We've no business interfering in their politics." Fellows then pompously censures the priest's request for brandy. With eyes like lakes at the top of a mountain, Captain Fellows is momentarily serene in his aloneness. He turns his problems away before they can affect him; to him, predatory alligators become mere trout in his song. He sings loudly to himself and, except for the sound of his motorboat, he is completely alone as he reminisces about his wartime experiences. He is unable to understand the subtleties of psychological fears, even though he was, apparently, a good soldier, especially when danger was clear-cut and visible. He constantly harkens back to a previous time of courage at zero-hour, humming songs vaguely remembered from the war-torn trenches of France. Fellows no longer has a guiding principle to his life, and he makes up his rules of conduct very much like he composes his disjointed lyrics -- that is, to fit the occasion. He avoids specific problems: his wife's fear of death, fever, and the encroaching wilderness, and his daughter's beginning maturity, with its incipient sex drive. Greene's attitude toward Fellows is clearly seen in the episode when the monkey jabbers at him as he sings; likewise, Fellows' command of a "banana company" helps to define his simian nature. Fellows operates on the basic level of animal survival; he lacks the complexity to be at one with the universe. Mrs. Fellows is unmoved by her husband's fumbling efforts to reassure her; her life is a constant avoidance of words which suggest the family's dire condition. She is devoid of common sense and lives in constant terror and dissatisfaction. Greene puns upon Mrs. Fellows' nickname, "Trix," just as he suggests that her husband is a symbol of false fellowship. When we first hear her name, we learn that she is playing a "trick" on her approaching mate, donning a mask of "frightened welcome.' Later, the priest wants to demonstrate a card trick for Coral, who has been deceitfully impressed into responsibility by her neurotic parents -- but Coral doesn't have a deck of cards. Many characters in this novel trick both themselves and others in their attempts to implement false systems of value. Mrs. Fellows' self-deceit is seen in her fevers and in her complaints about the heat, both of which are physical objectifications of her suppressed emotions -- that is, her inability to face life. Coral, although she is only about thirteen, runs the household, and, when we learn of her death later in the novel, we see that the Fellowses are unable to exchange even the platitudes which once held them together. Before the judging gaze of their daughter's eyes here, the parents become "a boy you couldn't trust and a ghost you could almost puff away." Coral's independence is evidenced in her assumption of responsibility during her father's absence, and in her seeing that the lieutenant secures a place to sleep on the veranda. Greene calls attention to Coral's bravery in letting the priest remain in the barn during the night while the officer spends the night on the veranda of the house. In a matter-of-fact way, Coral informs her astonished father that she has hidden the priest and that she did not trust her panicky mother enough to share the secret with her. Coral's emotions have not kept pace with her organizational abilities. She kisses her father perfunctorily, and she regards her assistance to the priest as an opportunity to learn geography and history. She glibly suggests to the priest that he "renounce his faith" merely because she has just learned the phrase while studying European history. When she pertly announces that she is an atheist and that she lost her faith at ten, she speaks very much like a developing thirteen-year-old girl, one who is emotionally very juvenile. And yet there is something of the compulsive fanatic about Coral; in that sense, she parallels the cold pragmatism of the lieutenant. Coral attaches little meaning to her words. She is a child lost in a spiritual, physical, and emotional wilderness, where other children eat wormy dirt from the river bank. She mouths such expressions as "fugitive from justice" and prattles on about the Reform Bill, which -extended voting rights in England, while she lives in a totalitarian environment. Yet there is a basic, undeveloped kindness about Coral, for she does not shine the light in the priest's eyes as she enters the barn, as her father did. Greene cleverly uses Coral's innocence of theology to provide exposition. To Coral, the priest explains that he is not allowed to give himself up even if he wanted to. It is his duty not to be captured so that he can continue his ministry. The lieutenant feels nothing but contempt for the Fellows family, hating them for the same reasons that he despises the clergy -- their complacency and their love of ease. He knows restraint, however. He will not move an inch to greet the approaching Captain Fellows, and he properly hides his disgust by walking some distance away from Fellows before spitting. Greene provides motivation for the lieutenant's actions. Captain Fellows complains that the police do not trust him, yet he previously told his wife that Coral should not have been left alone with the officer: "These fellows , you can't trust them." Greene explicitly compares the lieutenant to the priest: ". . .a little dark menacing question mark in the sun." Animal imagery in the chapter is used to reinforce the hounded nature of the escaping priest. He evades the police only to become a servant to the faithful villagers, who have not seen a priest in five years. Allusions to animals also depict an inhuman society in which all emotions are reduced to a sub-human level. Unpleasant images of animals and vermin abound. A buzzard silhouetted against the sky taints Fellows' river excursion. Greene's description of Mrs. Fellows' "trick" of donning a mask of "frightened welcome" includes the information that the trick was not like that of suddenly sketching a dog, but, instead, of sketching a quick outline of a dog turned into a sausage. In addition, Coral would have "set the dogs" on the lieutenant had he tried to search the premises. And as Greene cites Coral's incredible awareness, he comments that in forty years, Coral's parents will be "as dead as last year's dog." The priest also receives his share of animal imagery. Sucking his beer bottle in the barn, he resembles a cub being ministered to by his "mother," Coral. His breath is rancid, something like a rotting animal or like moldering debris left out in the sun. The priest's eating like an animal foreshadows his later fight with a starving dog over a scrap of meat left on a bone. In the little village, the priest is compared to a bull in a ring, with the parishioners goading the tired clergyman. They want his services, but they fear the police. Even in the usable huts, rats move about at will, and one rat even "stares" at the priest as he tries to rest. With fine irony, as the priest weeps from exhaustion, Greene points out that the priest's host feels that the priest is crying over the sins of the old man's community; therefore, he urges his friends to confess lest they insult the priest, who is too exhausted already to hear great numbers of confessions. The priest's use of the stable to hide from the questioning lieutenant and his use of the hut in the village suggest Christ's shelter at the time of his birth, and throughout The Power and the Glory, the priest makes several sporadic attempts at spiritual self-rejuvenation. Although he finds it difficult to help himself at this time, the priest's act of keeping the fire alive in the village represents his ability to keep the meager embers of the villagers' faith burning. When he blows on the fire, smoke fills the hut in this sacramental ceremony. Ironically, Padre Jose was the last priest to visit the people, five years previously, as Greene continues to further compare the two clergymen. The priest is also matched with Mrs. Fellows by Greene's use of the word "train." The priest clutches his attache case to him like a man awaiting a train that he must board, and Mrs. Fellows, dreaming of weddings, warns someone not to step on her train. For both people, a train is the means to an alluring but elusive future, one which neither will reach. When the trains do run in this novel, they head for ruined bridges and broken tracks, with Greene concluding that one cannot control the destiny of a loved one. The characters in this chapter garner no symbolic illumination from the ever-present blanching sun. Their lives become maniacal attempts to ward off approaching death, and their efforts are continually thwarted by their prejudices. With death -- emotionally and physically -- all around him, Fellows can think only of a "dago secretary" and cite to Coral a tired distinction between social drinking and alcoholism.

