A Woman Named Smith Part 41

Besides, the bridegroom himself was a Hynds on his mother's side, as Hyndsville ladies remembered, when they sat on our front porch working on wonderful bits of embroidered things for the bride. It was then I learned in fullest detail the whole history of Hyndsville, of the Hyndses, and of Great-Aunt Sophronisba in particular. I fancy that the Witch of Endor's neighbors must have had just such an opinion of her as these Hyndsville folk had of Great-Aunt Sophronisba.

South Carolina people always talk in terms of three generations.

When they say something about you, they remember something about your mother or your grandfather at the same time, and they tell that, too. There is a fearsome frankness about the conversation of the born South Carolinian that The Author says is only to be matched in an English country house when the county families are gathered together. Like this, for instance:

"No, my dear, I can't say I'm surprised at Sally's running away and getting married. Let's see: her grandfather was a Dampier, wasn't he? Didn't one of the Dampiers murder somebody, or something like that? It seems to me I have heard dear Mama relate some such circ.u.mstance."

"Oh, _no_, Mary! It wasn't _murder_! He shot one of the Abercrombies in a duel, that's all. He was really a very fine man! They had a dispute about a horse, and Mr. Abercrombie struck Mr. Dampier's little negro groom over the head with his crop. After that, of course, there was nothing to do but challenge him. You must be thinking of Barton Bailey, Eliza DuFour's grandfather on her mother's side. _He_ was a complete scoundrel. His poor wife (she was a Garrett; very dull, poor thing, like all the Garretts, but at least the Garretts were honest, which is more than even charity can say for the Baileys) his wife led a martyr's life with him. Or maybe you're thinking of Tiger Bill Pendarvis. A most _awful_ person!--almost an out-law!"

Mrs. Scarboro looked up, bit off a thread, and said placidly:

"Oh, awful! He was a cousin of mine on dear Papa's side of the family. Papa and Mama used to say that they never could understand why Cousin Sophronisba Hynds didn't pick out Tiger Bill instead of pouncing upon a perfectly innocent little Englishman."

I sat and listened. One thing was joyously clear and plain to me.

They liked and trusted me enough now to talk about their own people before me, which is the high sign of fellowship in South Carolina.

But learn, O outsider, that silence is golden, so far as _you_ are concerned. Wisely did I hold my peace, and devoutly thank the Lord that times had changed for the better.

For a great deal of that change I had to thank my dear girl, so much more clever and tactful than I. And so I would not cloud her last days with me by letting her see that I was unhappy. Only, I was glad this afternoon to be by myself for a breathing-s.p.a.ce. It rests one's face occasionally to take off one's smile. I took off mine, then, and let down the corners of my mouth.

The door leading to the hall was half open. The house was full of blue-gray shadows, and had a drowsy hush upon it, a pleasanter hush than it used to know. One heard the rushing wind outside, and above it Mary Magdalen singing one of her interminable "speretuals."

A slinking shadow stole through the hall, a wary yellow head appeared in the door, and Beautiful Dog sneaked into the room.

Beautiful Dog had not known a happy day since the departure of Mr.

Johnson. Not all the coddlings of the cook, nor the blandishments of sympathetic housemaids consoled him for the absence of his G.o.d. He grew thinner, if that could be possible. His tail hung at half-mast, his ears were a signal of mourning. Queenasheeba said he looked like "sumpin' 'at happened to a dawg."

One hope sustained Beautiful Dog's drooping spirit--the hope that he might suddenly turn a corner, or enter a room, and find the adored Johnson smiling kindly at him. Wherefore he dared the to-be-shunned presence of other white people. He nerved himself to enter tabooed domains. Love sustained him. He knew he had no business there, just as our cats knew it and, whenever they caught him at it, visited swift and dire punishment upon him. Beautiful Dog dared even the cats, those black nightmares of his existence.

He met my glance, paused, and cringed. But as I made no hostile movement, and seemed disposed to be friendly, Beautiful Dog grinned half-heartedly, wagged his rope of a tail dejectedly, and advanced farther. Then he paused again, head on one side, ears forlornly flopping, and made an awkward motion with his fore paws, expressive of doubtful trust and painful inquiry. His G.o.d had been wont to choose this particular room by preference. Did I know where he was?

When he was coming back?

Beautiful Dog glanced wistfully at the empty chair over by the window. Once or twice his G.o.d had allowed him to lie beside that chair while he read, and if Beautiful Dog happened to raise his head, a kind hand happened to fall upon it. He hadn't forgotten. His desire now was to sneak over to the chair and sniff at it. Perhaps by some exquisite miracle his man might suddenly appear in his old place. Can't miracles happen for Beautiful Dogs as well as for other folks, when times and seasons are propitious?

Beautiful Dog took another step toward the chair. And then there paced into the library, and caught him in the rear, his arch enemy--Sir Thomas More Black. The great cat took one look at the n.i.g.g.e.r dog trespa.s.sing upon forbidden ground. You could see Sir Thomas More swell with rage and astonishment, and then lengthen out like an accordion. Without a sound he launched himself upon the intruder. And at the same instant and actuated by the same motive, Potty Black, who had been sweetly and peacefully dozing on my lap, rose up with slitted eyes, bottle-brushed her tail, and hurled herself into the fray.

Attacked front and rear, Beautiful Dog was at hideous disadvantage.

He launched himself sidewise; he didn't even have time to howl. He fell over his own splay feet as he ran, b.u.t.ted into chairs and tables, twisted, turned, whirled, dodged, but always presented just the right spot to be clawed. He couldn't dash to the door and escape: the cats were too swift for him. They kept their bewildered victim circling around the middle of the room.

I was sorry for Beautiful Dog, for my sleek, petted, purring p.u.s.s.ies had turned into raging black tornadoes edged with a lightning of claws. If the aristocratic Black Family had been raised in Hooligan's Alley itself, on the soft side of the ash-bins, they couldn't have behaved more villainously. Alas! they were _cats_, just as people are people.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the bra.s.s-headed poker, the readiest thing to my hand.

I merely wished to shoo off the Blacks with it. But as I rose from my chair with a _scat_! upon my lips, Beautiful Dog, seeing out of the tail of his eye a chance to escape, dashed headlong into me. He came with such force that I fell backward, and the poker flew out of my hand and came _crack_! upon the sacred tiles of Hynds House library. There was an ominous clatter, for no less than the Father of his Country himself had fallen out of his place. At the same instant Beautiful Dog gained the door, with both cats upon his hind quarters; with one prolonged yell of terror he made for safety and Mary Magdalen.

I picked myself and the tile up. Thank Heaven, it wasn't broken. The blow had loosened the cement that held it in place, and where it had been was a small square hole.

I looked at that hole doubtfully. There oughtn't to be any hole there at all. That was a curious way to fix tiles, such precious tiles as ours. I slipped my hand in and tentatively tested the black wall, and discovered that the other tiles, as might be expected, had been properly put in; that is, against a solid background.

I put my hand farther into the aperture. It was larger than might be expected, and most cunningly contrived--a hollow s.p.a.ce some ten inches in width, and possibly a foot deep. There was something in it.

Now I am mortally afraid of rats and mice, and what I had touched had the sleazy feel of frayed silk. It might be a rat's nest! I took a sliver of lightwood from the fire, and with this examined the black interior, before I ventured my fingers again. It wasn't a rat's nest in the corner. It was a package. A package, or rather a sizable buckskin bag carefully tied together with thongs of the same material, and this wrapped in a piece of silk that tore and went to pieces even as I fingered it.

Even then I didn't guess! I thought it was, perhaps, a Revolutionary h.o.a.rd, maybe such another collection of old coins as we had found in the room without windows.

The silk dropped away like rotting leaves, but the buckskin bag was stout and in perfect condition. So many and so hard were the knots in the thongs that I had to use my penknife to cut them. And having done so, I poured the contents of the bag on the library table.

It was, as I have said, a gray day. But the fires of a century's sunsets flamed and flashed in that library! Ruby, sapphire, diamond, emerald, pearl--how they glowed and glimmered! How they shone and sparkled! For the moment there fell upon me that madness that jewels bring upon women, a sort of wild delight in their hard, bright beauty, an ecstasy, an intoxication. I poured them from one hand to the other, I held the greatest to my cheek. The loveliness of them went to my head. "I did chap them atween my hands, as children chap chaff. They did glow like the Devill his rainbow," Jessamine had said. And remembering her, the delight vanished.

With stunning force the meaning of this discovery came home to me. I had found the unfindable! This, this was where s...o...b.. had hidden them between a night and a morning, s...o...b.. the "skilfullest workman on Hynds place." One fancied him here, in the dead of night, while all Hynds House slept a drugged sleep. It would suit his sardonic humor, his impish malice, to hide them where the Hyndses must pa.s.s them daily; and, himself a slave, to hide them behind the pictured semblance of Washington. The grim irony of the thing! And not the cunning of man, but the antics of a cur, a yellow n.i.g.g.e.r dog, had outwitted the cunning of the old witch doctor! Beautiful Dog had brought to light that which Jessamine had died alone in the dark rather than reveal.

There was one thing more in the buckskin bag, wrapped separately.

When I got this separate package open, I found three frayed, black feathers bound together with a strand of black hair, a piece of yellow wax with two slivers of what I think was bone thrust through it crosswise, and a small semblance of a snake, rudely carved out of wood. There was, too, some dust, or powder, that must once have been leaves, or perhaps roots. These unchancy things and the bag that held them I dropped into the fire, breathing a sigh of relief to see its red tooth seize upon them. The wax made a hissing noise, and the dust of leaves, or whatever it was, burned with a bright, fierce flame.

Then with feverish haste I got the Hynds jewels back into the buckskin bag. I hadn't the faintest notion as to their actual value, though I knew it must be considerable--enough to make up to Nicholas Jelnik the losses he had sustained; enough to decide his fate--and mine. Even now he was packing to go; even now there were "For Sale"

signs on the gray cottage.

I ran into our living-room, s.n.a.t.c.hed my sewing-bag from the sewing-stand, and dropped the heavy bag into it. That looked more commonplace.

The clamor from the kitchen, incident upon Beautiful Dog's having taken refuge under Mary Magdalen's skirts, had died down. I knew that Beautiful Dog was licking his wounds after defeat, and the Black cats, sedate and mild-mannered, were licking their paws after victory. I determined that from that afternoon Beautiful Dog should become an honored and important inst.i.tution in Hynds House. If I had to choose a new family escutcheon, I think I should insist upon having Beautiful Dog rampant upon it!

When I went outside, the garden was a gray-green gloom of flying leaves and twisting tree-branches bending before the stiff northeast gale. It was wild weather--weather that sent the blood tingling through the veins and whipped red into one's cheeks.

I got into Mr. Jelnik's grounds through the hedge behind the spring-house, and ran like a hare through his garden. I had to hammer upon his door before I could make Achmet hear me, so loud and surf-like was the noise of the wind in the trees.

The Jinnee stepped back and salaamed, his hands upon his breast.

Then he laid a finger upon his lips, for from up-stairs came the wailing outcry of a violin.

The Jinnee looked thin and old. His garments hung loose upon his shrunken frame. There was trouble in that house, he told me. The master had wished to send Daoud away. Daoud had refused to go. To leave one's lord when calamity came upon him was to shame one's beard. It was the act of the infidel, not the behavior of the faithful, and Daoud had threatened to shave his beard, put on the dress of a pilgrim, and beg his way from Hyndsville to Mecca. He was even now kneeling upon a prayer-mat reciting a four-bow prayer. As for the master, for two days he had not eaten; he merely swallowed a cup of coffee in the morning because Achmet wept. This afternoon he had fled to his violin for relief. Verily, G.o.d was afflicting them! "The bad fortune of the good turns his face to heaven, even as the good fortune of the bad bends his head to the earth. It is the will of G.o.d: _Islam_!" said The Jinnee, simply.

"I must see Mr. Jelnik, now, this minute! I have news for him," I said hastily.

The Jinnee looked doubtful. Plainly, he didn't want his master disturbed, even by me. "I have never seen him like this before," he told me. "Listen!"

Came the cries of the violin, heart-rending cries of regret and despair, followed by furious protests; then a n.o.bler grief, and love, and longing.

"After a while it will pray for him. Then Satan the stoned, whom may G.o.d confound, will depart from him," said Achmet.

"But in the meantime I must see him, immediately."

"He goes to-morrow. That is why he is afflicted to-day," said The Jinnee. "I think, _hanoum_, he would go without seeing you again. It is a grievous thing to say to one's beloved, 'I leave you.' I have said it. I was young then. I am old now, but I have not forgotten."

I unfastened the chain from my neck. A half-coin swung from it as a pendant.

"Place this in his hand. It is a sign. It has power to lay the evil spirit which troubles this house," I told him gravely.

He seized upon it with an eager hand. "In the name of G.o.d!" said The Jinnee, and fairly flew out of the room.

A minute later, his violin grasped in one hand, my chain in the other, Nicholas Jelnik appeared. His appearance shocked me. The mask was off; here was stark and naked misery.

"Nicholas!" I said, "Nicholas!"

"You should not have come!" he said roughly. "Why have you come? I did not want you to see me--thus. Is it not enough for me to suffer?" And he made an impatient, imploring gesture. His lips quivered.