His first look at her had told him she was of the same warp and texture as her brother; somewhat skimpier in the pattern, but identical in the fabric. Olcott decided though that there was this difference: If the brother had stepped out of Dickens, the sister had escaped from between the hasped lids of an old daguerreotype frame. Her plain frock of some harsh, dead-coloured stuff—her best frock, his intuition told him—the big cameo pin at her throat, the homely arrangement of her grey hair, her hands, wasted and withered-looking as they lay on her lap, even her voice, which was lugubriously subdued and flat—all these things helped out the illusion. Of the other sister, sitting two-thirds of the way across the wide room from him, he saw but little and he heard less. The poor light, and the distance and the deep chair in which she had sunk herself, combined to blot her out as a personality and to efface her from the picture. She scarcely uttered a word.
As Olcott had expected beforehand, the talk dealt, in the main, with the Van Nicht family, which is another way of saying that it went back of and behind, and far beyond, all that might be current and timely and pertinent to the hour. There was no substance to it, for it dealt with what had no substance. As he stayed on, making brave pretense of being interested, he was aware of an interrupting, vaguely irritating sound at his rear and partly to one side of him. Patently the sound was coming from without. It was like a sustained and steady scratching, and it had to do, he figured, with one of the window openings. He took a glance over his shoulder, but he couldn't make out the cause; the window was too heavily shrouded in faded, thick curtains of a sad, dark-green aspect. The thing got on his nerves, it persisted so. Finally he was moved to mention it.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, taking advantage of a pause, “but isn't somebody or something fumbling at the window outside?”
“It is a bough of the family elm,” explained Mr. Van Nicht. “One of the lower boughs has grown forward and downward, until it touches the side of the house. When stirred by the breeze it creates the sound which you hear.” Internally Olcott shivered. Now that the explanation had been vouchsafed the noise made him think of ghostly fingers tapping at the glass panes—as though the spirit of the tree craved admittance to the dismal circle of these human creatures who shared with it the tribal glory.
“Don't you find it very annoying?” he asked innocently. “I should think you would prune the limb back.” He halted then, realising that his tongue had slipped. There was a little silence, which became edged and iced with a sudden hostility.
“No human hand has ever touched the tree to denude it of any part of its majestic beauty,” stated Mr. Van Nicht with a frigid intonation. “Whilst any of this household survives to protect it, no human hand ever shall.”
From the elder sister came a murmur of assent.
The conversation had sagged and languished before; after this it sank to a still lower level and gradually froze to death. After possibly ten minutes more of the longest and bleakest minutes he ever recalled having weathered, Olcott, being mentally chilled through, got up and, making a show of expressing a counterfeit pleasure of having been accorded this opportunity of meeting those present, said really he must be going now.
In their places Miss Rachael Van Nicht and her brother rose, standing stiff as stalagmites, and he knew he was not forgiven. It was the younger sister who showed him out, preceding him silently, as he betook himself from the presence of the remaining two.
Close up, in the better light of the hall, Olcott for the first time perceived that Miss Harriet Van Nicht was not so very old. In fact, she was not old at all. He had assumed somehow that she must be sered and soured and elderly, or at least that she must be middle-aged. With this establishment he could not associate any guise of youth as belonging. But he perceived how wrong he had been. Miss Harriet Van Nicht most assuredly was not old. She could not be past thirty, perhaps she was not more than twenty-five or six. It was the plain and ugly gown she wore, a dun-coloured, sleazy, shabby gown, which had given her, when viewed from a distance, the aspect of age—that and the unbecoming way in which she wore her hair slicked back from her forehead and drawn up from round her ears. She had fine eyes, as now he saw, with a plaintive light in them, and finely arched brows and a delicate oval of a face; and she was small and dainty of figure. He could tell that, too, despite the fit of the ungraceful frock.
At the outer door, which she held ajar for his passage, she spoke, and instantly he was moved by a certain wistfulness in her tones.
“It was a pleasure to have you come to see us, Mr. Olcott,” she said, and he thought she meant it too. “We see so few visitors, living here as we do. Sometimes I think it might be better for us if we kept more in touch with people who live in the outside world and know something of it.”
“Thank you, Miss Van Nicht,” said Olcott, warming. “I'm afraid, though, I made a rather unfortunate suggestion about the tree. Really, I'm very sorry.”
Her face took on a gravity; almost a condemning expression came into it. And when she answered him it was in a different voice.
“A stranger could not understand how we regard the Van Nicht elm,” she said. “No stranger could understand! Good night, Mr. Olcott.”
At the last she had made him feel that he was a stranger. And she had not shaken hands with him either, nor had she asked him to call again.
He made his way out, through the black magic of the tree's midnight gloom, into the pure white chemistry of the moonlight; and having reached the open, he looked back. Except for that faint luminous blotch, like smeared phosphorus, showing through the blackness from beyond the giant tree, nothing testified that a habitation of living beings might be tucked away in that drear hiding place. He shrugged his shoulders as though to shake a load off them and, as he swung down the silvered street in the flawless night, his thoughts thawed out. He decided that assuredly two of the Van Nichts must go into the book which some day, when time served, he meant to write.
They belonged in a book—those two poor, pale, sapless creatures, enduring a grinding poverty for the sake of a vain idolatry; those joint inheritors of a worthless and burdensome fetish, deliberately preferring the shadow of a mouldy past for the substance of the present day. Why, the thing smacked of the Oriental. It wasn't fit and sane for white people—this Mongolian ancestor-worship which shut the door and drew the blind to every healthy and vigorous impulse and every beneficent impulse. Going along alone, Olcott worked himself into quite a brisk little fury of impatience and disgust.
He had it right—they belonged in a book, those two older Van Nichts, not in real life. And into a book they should go—into his book. But the younger girl, now. It was a pitiable life she must lead, hived up there in that musty old house under that terrific big tree with those two grim and touchy hermits. On her account he resented it. He tried to picture her in some more favourable setting. He succeeded fairly well too. Possibly, though, that was because Olcott had the gift of a brisk imagination. At times, during the days which followed, the vision of Harriet Van Nicht, translated out of her present decayed environment, persisted in his thoughts. He wondered why it did persist.
Nearly a month went by, during which he saw no member of that weird household. One day he encountered upon the street the brother and went up to him and, rather against the latter's inclination, engaged him in small talk. It didn't take long to prove that Mr. Van Nicht had very little small talk in stock; also that his one-time air of distant and punctilious regard for the newspaper man had entirely vanished. Mr. Van Nicht was courteous enough, with an aloof and stand-away courteousness, but he was not cordial. Presently Olcott found himself speaking, from a rather defensive attitude, of his own ancestry. He came of good New England stock—a circumstance which he rarely mentioned in company, but which now, rather to his own surprise, he found himself expounding at some length. Afterward he told himself that he had been merely casting about for a subject which might prove congenial to Mr. Van Nicht and had, by chance, hit on that one.
If such were the care, the expedient failed. It did not in the least serve to establish them upon a common footing. The old gentleman listened, but he refused to warm up; and when he bade Olcott good day and limped off, he left Olcott profoundly impressed with the conviction that Mr. Van Nicht did not propose to suffer any element of familiarity to enter into their acquaintanceship. Feeling abashed, as though he had been rebuked after some subtle fashion for presumption and forwardness, Olcott dropped into the handiest bar and had a drink all by himself—something he rarely did. But this time he felt that the social instinct of his system required a tonic and a bracer.
Within the next day or two chance gave him opportunity for still further insight into the estimation in which he was held by other members of the Van Nicht family. This happened shortly before the close of a cool and showery July afternoon. Leaving his desk, he took advantage of a lull in the rain to go for a solitary stroll before dinner. He was briskly traversing a side street, well out of the business district, when suddenly the downpour started afresh. He pulled up the collar of his light raincoat and turned back to hurry to the Hotel Brain-ard, where he lived. Going in the opposite direction a woman pedestrian, under an umbrella, met him; she was heading right into the slanting sheets of rain. In a sidelong glance he recognised the profile of the passer, and instantly he had faced about and was alongside of her, lifting his soaked hat.
“How d'you do, Miss Van Nicht?” he was saying. “I'm afraid you'll make poor headway against this rainstorm. Won't you let me see you safely home?”
It was the younger Miss Van Nicht. Her greeting of him and her smile made him feel that for the moment at least he would not be altogether an unwelcome companion. As he fell in beside her, catching step with her and taking the umbrella out of her hands, he noted with a small throb of pity that her cheap dark skirt was dripping and that the shoes she wore must be insufficient protection, with their thin soles and their worn uppers, against wet weather. He noted sundry other things about her: Seen by daylight she was pretty—undeniably pretty. The dampness had twisted little curls in her primly bestowed hair, and the exertion of her struggle against the storm had put a becoming flush in her cheeks.
“I was out on an errand for my sister,” she said. “I thought I could get home between showers, but this one caught me. And my umbrella—I'm afraid it is leaky.”
Undeniably it was. Already the palm of Olcott's hand was sopping where water, seeping through open seams along the rusted ribs, had run down the handle. Each new gust, drumming upon the decrepit cloth, threatened to make a total wreck of what was already but little better than the venerable ruin of an umbrella.
“You must permit me to see you home then,” he said. He glanced up and down, hoping to see a cab or a taxi. But there was no hireable vehicle in sight and the street cars did not run through this street. “I'm afraid, though, that we'll have to go afoot.”
“And I'm afraid that I am taking you out of your way,” she said. “You were going in the opposite direction, weren't you, when you met me?”
“I wasn't going anywhere in particular,” he lied gallantly; “personally I rather like to take a walk when it's raining.”
For a bit after this neither of them spoke, for the wind all at once blew with nearly the intensity of a small hurricane, buffeting thick rain spray into their faces and spattering it up about their feet. She seemed so small—so defenceless almost, bending forward to brace herself against its rude impetuosity. He was mighty glad it was his hand which clasped her arm, guiding and helping her along; mighty glad it was he who held the leaky old umbrella in front of her and with it fended off some part of the rain from her. They had travelled a block or two so, in company, when the summer storm broke off even more abruptly than it had started. There was an especially violent spatter of especially large drops, and then the wind gave one farewell wrench at the umbrella and was gone, tearing on its way.
In another half minute the setting sun was doing its best to shine out through a welter of shredding black clouds. There were wide patches of blue in the sky when they turned into Putnam Street and came within sight of the Van Nicht elm, rising as a great, green balloon at the head of it. By now they were chatting upon the basis—almost—of a seasoned acquaintanceship. Olcott found himself talking about his work. When a young man tells a young woman about his work, and is himself interested as he tells it, it is quite frequently a sign that he is beginning to be interested in something besides his work, whether he realises it yet or not. And in Miss Van Nicht he was pleased to discern what he took to be a sympathetic understanding, as well as a happy aptness and alertness in the framing of her replies. It hardly seemed possible that this was the second time they had exchanged words. Rather it was as though they had known each other for a considerable period; so he told himself.
But as, side by side, they turned in at the rickety gate of the ancestral dooryard and came under the shadow of the ancestral tree, her manner, her attitude, her voice, all about her seemed to undergo a change. Her pace quickened for these last few steps, and she cast a furtive, almost an apprehensive glance toward the hooded windows of the house.
“I'm afraid I am late—my sister and my brother will be worrying about me,” she said a little nervously. “And I am sorry to have put you to all this trouble on my account.”
“Trouble, Miss Van Nicht? Why, it was—”
“I shan't ask you in,” she said, breaking in on him. “I know you will want to be getting back to the hotel and putting on dry clothes. Good-by, Mr. Olcott, and thank you very much.”
And with that she had left him, and she was hurrying up the porch steps, and she was gone, without a backward look to where he stood, puzzled and decidedly taken aback, in the middle of the seamed flags of the walk.
He was nearly at the gate when he discovered that he had failed to return her umbrella to her; so he went back and knocked at the door. It was the elder sister who answered. She opened the door a scant foot.
“How do you do, sir?” she said austerely.
“I forgot to give your sister her umbrella,” explained Olcott.
“So I perceive,” she replied, speaking through the slit with a kind of sharp impatience, and she took it from him. “'Thank you! We are most grateful to you for your thoughtfulness.”
She waited then, as if for him to speak, providing he had anything to say—her posture and her expression meanwhile most forcibly interpreting the attitude in which he must understand that he stood here. It was plain enough to be sensed. She resented—they all resented—his reappearance in any rôle at the threshold of their home. She was profoundly out of temper with him and all that might pertain and appertain to him. So naturally there was nothing for him to say except “Good evening,” and he said it.
“Good evening,” she said, and as he bowed and backed away she closed the door.
Outside the fence he halted and looked about him, then he looked back over the gapped and broken palings. Everywhere else the little world of Putnam Street had a washed, cleansed aspect; everywhere else nearly the sun slid its flattened rays along the refreshed and moistened sod and touched the wayside weeds with pure gold; but none of its beams slanted over the side hill and found a way beneath the interlaced, widespread bulk of the family tree. He saw how forlornly the lower boughs, under their load of rain water, drooped almost to the earth, and how the naked soil round about the vast trunk of it was guttered with muddy, yellow furrows where little torrents had coursed down the slope, and how poisonously vivid was the mould upon the trunk. The triangular scar in its lower bark showed as a livid greenish patch. Still farther back in the shadow the outlines of the old grey house half emerged, revealing dimly a space of streaked walls and the sodden, warped shingles upon one outjut-ting gable of the peaked roof.
“It's not an honest elm,” thought Olcott to himself in a little impotent rage. “It's a cursed devil tree, a upas tree, overshadowing and blighting everything pleasant and wholesome that might grow near it. Bats and owls and snails belong back there—not human beings. There ought to be a vigilance committee formed to chop it down and blast its roots out of the ground with dynamite. Oh, damn!”
In his pocket he had a letter from the presiding deity of the organisation that owned the string of papers of which the paper he edited was a part. In that letter he was invited to consider the proposition of surrendering his present berth with the SchuylervilleNews-Ledgerand going off to Europe, as special war correspondent for the syndicate. He had been considering the project for two days now. All of a sudden he made up his mind to accept. While the heat of his petulance and disappointment was still upon him, he went that same evening and wired his acceptance to headquarters. Two days later, with his credentials in his pocket and a weight of sullen resentment against certain animate and inanimate objects in his heart, he was aboard a train out of Schuylerville, bound for New York, and thereafter, by steamer, for foreign parts.
He was away, concerned with trenches, gas bombs, field hospitals and the quotable opinions of sundry high and mighty men of war-craft and statecraft, for upwards of a year. It was a most remarkably busy year, and the job in hand claimed jealous sovereignty of his eyes, his legs and his brain, while it lasted.
He came back, having delivered the goods to the satisfaction of his employers, to find himself promoted to a general supervision of the editorial direction of the papers in his syndicate, with a thumping good salary and a roving commission. He willed it that the first week of his incumbency in his new duties should carry him to Schuylerville. In his old office, which looked much the same as it had looked when he occupied it, he found young Morgan, his former assistant, also looking much the same, barring that now Morgan was in full charge and giving orders instead of taking them. Authority nearly always works a change in a man; it had in this case.
“Say, Olcott,” said Morgan after the talk between them had ebbed and flowed along a little while, “you remember that old geezer, Van Nicht, don't you? You know, the old boy who wrote the long piece about his family, and you ran it?”
“Certainly I do,” said Olcott. “Why—what of him?”
Instead of answering him directly, Morgan put another question:
“And of course you remember the old Van Nicht house, under that big, whopping elm tree, out at the end of Putnam Street, where he used to live with those two freakish sisters of his?”
“Where he used to live? Doesn't he—don't they—live there now?”
“Nope—tree's gone and so is the house.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“Gone out of existence—vamoosed. Here's what happened, and it's a peach of a tale too: One night about six months ago there came up a hard thunderstorm—lots of lightning and gobs of thunder, not to mention rain and wind a plenty. In the midst of it a bolt hit the Van Nicht elm—ker-flewie—and just naturally tore it into flinders. When I saw it myself the next day it was converted from a landmark into the biggest whisk broom in the world. The neighbours were saying that it rained splinters round there for ten minutes after the bolt struck. I guess they didn't exaggerate much at that, because—”
“Was the house struck too? Was anybody hurt?” Olcott cut in on him.
“No, the house escaped somehow—had a few shingles ripped off the roof, and some of its windows smashed in by flying scraps; that was all. And nobody about the place suffered anything worse than a stunning. But the fright killed the older sister—Miss Rachael. Anyhow, that's what the doctors think. She didn't have a mark on her, but she died in about an hour, without ever speaking. I guess it was just as well, too, that she did. If she had survived the first shock I judge the second one would just about have finished her.”
“The second shock? You don't mean the lightning?”
“No, no!” Morgan hastened to explain.
“Lightning never plays a return date—never has need to, I take it. I mean the shock of what happened after daylight next morning.
“That was the queerest part of the whole thing—that was what made a really big story out of it. We ran two columns about it ourselves, and the A. P. carried it for more than a column.
“After the storm had died down and it got light enough to see, some of the neighbours were prowling round the place sizing up the damage. Right in the heart of the stump of the elm, which was split wide open—the stump, I mean—they found a funny-looking old copper box buried in what must have been a rot-ted-out place at one time, maybe ninety or a hundred years ago. But the hollow had grown up, and nobody ever had suspected that the tree wasn't solid as iron all the way through, until the lightning came along and just naturally reached a fiery finger down through all that hardwood and probed the old box out of its cache and, without so much as melting a hinge on it, heaved it up into sight, where the first fellow that happened along afterward would be sure to see it. Well, right off they thought of buried treasure, but being honest they called old Van Nicht out of the house, and in his presence they opened her up—the box I mean—and then, lo and behold, they found out that all these years this town had been worshipping a false god!
“Yes, sir, the great and only original Cecilius Jacob Van Nicht was a rank fake. He was as bogus as a lead nickel. There were papers in the box to prove what nobody, and least of all his own flesh and blood, ever suspected before. He wasn't a hero of the Revolution. He wasn't a colonel under George Washington. He wasn't of Holland-Dutch stock. His name wasn't even Van Nicht. His real name was Jake Nix—that's what it was, Nix—and he was just a plain, everyday Hessian soldier—a mercenary bought up, along with the other Hessians, and sent over here by King George to fight against the cause of liberty, instead of for it.
“As near as we can figure it out, he changed his name after the war ended, before he moved here to live, and then after he died—or anyhow when he was an old man—his son, the second Cecilius Jacob, concocted the fairy tale about his father's distinguished services and all the rest of it. The son was the one, it seems, who capitalised the false reputation of the old man. He lived on it, and all the Van Nichts who came after him lived on it too—only they were innocent of practising any deception on the community at large, and the second Van Nicht wasn't. It certainly put the laugh on this town, not to mention the local aristocracy, and the D. A. R.'s and the Colonial Dames and the rest of the blue bloods generally, when the news spread that morning.
“Oh, there couldn't be any doubt about it! The proofs were all right there and dozens of reliable witnesses saw them—letters and papers and the record of old Nix's services in the British army. In fact there was only one phase of the affair that has remained unexplained and a mystery. I mean the presence of the papers in the tree. Nobody can figure out why the son didn't destroy them, when he was creating such a swell fiction character out of his revered parent. One theory is that he didn't know of their existence at all—that the old man, for reasons best known to himself, hid them there in that copper box and that then the tree healed up over the hole and sealed the box in, with nobody but him any the wiser, and nobody ever suspecting anything out of the way, but just taking everything for granted. Why, it was exactly as if the old Nix had come out of the grave after lying there for a century or more, to produce the truth and shame his own offspring, and incidentally scare one of his descendants plumb to death.”
“What a tragedy!” said Olcott. But his main thought when he said it was not for the dead sister but for the living.
“You said it,” affirmed Morgan. “That's exactly what it was—a tragedy, with a good deal of serio-comedy relief to it. Only there wasn't anything very comical about the figure the old man Van Nicht cut when he came walking into this office here about half past ten o'clock that day, with a ragged piece of crêpe tied round his old high hat. Olcott, you never in your life saw a man as badly broken up as he was. All his vanity, all his bumptiousness was gone—he was just a poor, old, shabby, broken-spirited man. I'd already gotten a tip on the story and I'd sent one of my boys out to find him and get his tale, but it seemed he'd told the reporter he preferred to make a personal statement for publication. And so here he was with his statement all carefully written out and he asked me to print it, insisting that it ought to be given as wide circulation as possible. I'll dig it up for you out of the files in a minute and let you see it.
“Yes, sir, he'd sat down alongside his sister's dead body and written it. He called it A Confession and an Apology, and I ran it that way, just as he'd written it. It wasn't very long, but it was mighty pitiful, when you took everything into consideration. He begged the pardon of the public for unwittingly practicing a deceit upon it all through his life—for living a lie, was the way he phrased it—and he signed it 'Jacob Nix, heretofore erroneously known as Cecilius Jacob Van Nicht, 4th.' That signature was what especially got me when I read it—it made me feel that the old boy was literally stripping his soul naked before the ridicule of this town and the ridicule of the whole country. A pretty manly, straightforward thing, I called it, and I liked him better for having done it than I ever had liked him before.
“Well, I told him I would run the card for him and I did run it, and likewise I toned down the story we carried about the exposure too. I'm fairly well calloused, I guess, but I didn't want to bruise the old man and his sister any more than I could help doing. But, of course, I didn't speak to him about that part of it. I did try, in a clumsy sort of way, to express my sympathy for him. I guess I made a fairly sad hash of it, though. There didn't seem to be any words to fit the situation. Or, if there were, I couldn't think of them for the moment. I remember I mumbled something about letting bygones be bygones and not taking it too much to heart and all that sort of thing.
“He thanked me, and then, as he started to go, he stopped and asked me whether by any chance I knew of any opening—any possible job for a person of his age and limitations. I remember his words: 'It is high time that I was casting about to find honourable employment, no matter how humble. I have been trading with a spurious currency for too long. I have spent my life in the imposition of a monumental deceit upon this long-suffering community. I intend now, sir, to go to work to earn a living with my own hands and upon my own merits. I wish to atone for the rôle I have played.'
“It may have been imagination, but I thought there was a kind of faint hopeful gleam in his eye as he looked at me and said this; and he seemed to flinch a little bit when I broke the news to him that we didn't have any vacancies on the staff at present. I sort of gathered that he rather fancied he had literary gifts. Literary gifts? Can't you just see that poor, forlorn old scout piking round soliciting want ads at twenty cents a line or trying to cover petty assignments on the news end? I told him, though, I'd be on the lookout for something for him, and he thanked me mighty ceremoniously and limped out, leaving me all choked up. Two days later, after the funeral, he telephoned in to ask me not to trouble myself on his account, because he had already established a connection with another concern which he hoped would turn out to be mutually advantageous and personally lucrative; or words to that effect.
“So I did a little private investigating that evening and I found out where the old chap had connected. You see I was interested. A live wire named Garrison, who owned the state rights for selling the World's Great Classics of Prose and Poetry on subscriptions, had landed here about a week before. You know the kind of truck this fellow Garrison was peddling? Forty large, hard, heavy volumes, five dollars down and a dollar a month as long as you live; no blacksmith's fireside complete without the full set; should be in every library; so much for the full calf bindings; so much for the half leather; give your little ones a chance to acquire an education at a trifling cost; come early and avoid the rush of those seeking to take advantage of this unparalleled opportunity; price positively due to advance at the end of a limited period; see also our great clubbing offer in conjunction with Bunkem's Illustrated Magazine—all that sort of guff.
“Well, Garrison had opened up headquarters here. He'd brought some of his agents with him—experts at conning the simple peasantry and the sturdy yeomanry into signing on the dotted line A and paying down the first installment as a binder; but he needed some home talent to fill out his crew, and he advertised with us for volunteers. Old Van Nicht—Nix, I mean—had heard about it, and he had applied for a job as canvasser, and Garrison had taken him on, not on salary, of course, but agreeing to pay him a commission on all his sales. That was what I found out that night.”
Before Olcott's eyes rose a vision of a dried-up, bleak-eyed old man limping from doorstep to doorstep, enduring the rebuffs of fretful housewives and the insolence of annoyed householders—a failure, and a hopeless, predestined failure at that.
“Too bad, wasn't it?” he said.
“What's too bad?” asked Morgan.
“About that poor old man turning book agent at his age, with his lack of experience with the ways of the world.”
“Save your pity for somebody that needs it,” said Morgan, grinning. “That old boy doesn't. Why, Olcott, he was a hit from the first minute. This fellow Garrison was telling me about him only last week. All that stately dignity, all that Sir Walter Raleigh courtesy stuff, all that faculty for using the biggest possible words in stock, was worth money to the old chap when he put it to use. It impressed the simple-minded rustic and the merry villager. It got him a hearing where one of these gabby young canvassers with a striped vest and a line of patter memorised out of a book would be apt to fail. Why, he's the sensation of the book-agent game in these parts. They sick him on to all the difficult prospects out in the country, and he makes good nine times out of ten. He's got four counties in his territory, with all expenses paid, and last month his commissions—so Garrison told me—amounted to a hundred and forty dollars, and this month he's liable to do even better. What's more, according to Garrison, the old scout likes the work and isn't ashamed of it. So what do you know about that?”
As Morgan paused, Olcott asked the question which from the first of this recital had been shaping itself in the back part of his head: “The other sister—what became of her?” He tried to put a casual tone into his inquiry.
“You mean Miss Harriet? Well, say, in her case the transformation was almost as great as it was in her brother's. She came right out of her shell, too—in fact, she seemed downright glad of a chance to come out of it and quit being a recluse. She let it be noised about that she was in the market for any work that she could do, and a lot of people who felt sorry for her, including Mayor McGlynn, who's a pretty good chap, interested themselves in her behalf. Right off, the school board appointed her a substitute teacher in one of the lower grammar grades at the Hawthorne School, out here on West Frobisher Street. She didn't lose any time in delivering the goods either. Say, there must have been mighty good blood in that family, once it got a real chance to circulate. The kiddies in her classes all liked her from the start, and the other teachers and the principal liked her, too, and when the fall term begins in October she goes on as a regular.
“On top of that, when she'd got a little colour in her cheeks and had frizzed her hair out round her face, and when she'd used up her first month's pay in buying herself some good black clothes, it dawned on the town all of a sudden that she was a mighty good-looking, bright, sweet little woman instead of a dowdy, sour old maid. They say she never had a sweetheart before in her life—that no man ever had looked at her the second time; at least that's the current gossip. Be that as it may, she can't complain on that score any more, even if she is still in mourning for her sister.”
“How do you know all this?” demanded Olcott suspiciously. “Are you paying her attentions yourself?”
“Who, me? Lord, man, no! I'm merely an innocent bystander. You see, we live at the same boarding house, take our meals at the same table in fact, and I get a chance to see what's going on. She came there to board—it's Mrs. Gale's house—as soon as she moved out of the historic but mildewed homestead, which was about a month after the night of the storm. The New Diamond Auto Company—that's a concern formed since you left—bought the property and tore down the old house, after blasting the stump of the family tree out of the ground with giant powder; they're putting up their assembling plant on the site. After the mortgage was satisfied and the back taxes had been paid up, there was mighty little left for the two heirs; but about that time Miss Harriet got her job of teaching and she came to Mrs. Gale's to live, and that's where I first met her. Two or three spry young fellows round town are calling on her in the evenings—nearly every night there's some fellow in the parlour, all spruced up and highly perfumed, waiting to see her—not to mention one or two of the unmarried men boarders.”
“Morgan,” said Olcott briskly, “do me a favour! Take me along with you to dinner tonight at your boarding place, will you?”
“Tired of hotels, eh?” asked Morgan. “Well, Mrs. Gale has good home cooking and I'd be glad to have you come.”
“That's it,” said Olcott; “I'm tired of hotel life.”
“You're on,” said Morgan.
“Yes,” said Olcott, “I am—but you're not on—at least not yet.” But Morgan didn't hear that, because Olcott said it to himself.
FROM all the windows of Coloured Odd Fellows' Hall, on the upper floor of the two-story building at the corner of Oak and Tennessee Streets, streamed Jacob's ladders of radiance, which slanted outward and downward into the wet night. Along with these crossbarred shafts of lights, sounds as of singing and jubilation percolated through the blurry panes. It was not yet eleven o'clock, the date being December thirty-first; but the New Year's watch service, held under the auspices of Castle Camp, Number 1008, Afro-American Order of Supreme Kings of the Universe, had been going on quite some time and was going stronger every minute.
Odd Fellows' Hall had been especially engaged and partially decorated for this occasion. Already it was nearly filled; but between now and midnight it would be fuller, and at a still later time would doubtlessly attain the superlatively impossible by being fuller than fullest.
From all directions, out of the darkness, came belated members of the officiating fraternity, protecting their regalias under umbrellas, and accompanied by wives and families if married, or by lady and other friends if otherwise. With his sword clanking impressively at his flank and his beplumed helmet nodding grandly as he walked, each Supreme King of the Universe bore himself with an austere and solemn mien, as befitting the rôle he played—of host to the multitude—and the uniform that adorned his form.
Later, after the young year had appropriately been ushered in, when the refreshments were being served, he might unbend somewhat. But not now. Now every Supreme King was what he was, wearing his dignity as a becoming and suitable garment. This attitude of the affiliated brethren affected by contagion those who came with them as their guests. There was a stateliness and a formality in the greetings which passed between this one and that one as the groups converged into the doorway, set in the middle front of the building, and by pairs and by squads ascended the stairs.
“Good evenin', Sist' Fontleroy. I trusts things is goin' toler'ble well wid you, ma'am?”
“Satisfactory, Br'er Grider—thank de good Lawd! How's all at yore own place of residence?”
“Git th'ough de C'ris'mus all right, Mizz Hillman?”
“Yas, suh; 'bout de same ez whut I always does, Mist' Duiguid.”
“Well, ole yeah's purty nigh gone frum us, Elder; ain't it de truth?”
“Most doubtless is. An' now yere come 'nother! We don't git no younger, sister, does we?”
“Dat we don't, sholy!”
The ceremonial reserve of the moment would make the jollifying all the sweeter after the clocks struck and the whistles began to blow.
There was one late arrival, though, who came along alone, wearing a downcast countenance and an air of abstraction, and speaking to none who encountered him on the way or at the portal. This one was Jeff Poindexter; but a vastly different Jeff from the customary Jeff. Usually he moved with a jaunty gait, his elbows out and his head canted back; and on the slightest provocation his feet cut scallops and double-shuffles and pigeonwings against the earth. Now his heels scraped and his toes dragged; and the gladsome raiment that covered his person gave him no joy, but only an added sense of resentment against the prevalent scheme of mundane existence.
An unseen weight bowed his shoulders down, and beneath the wide lapels of an almost white waistcoat his heart was like unto a chunk of tombstone in his bosom. For the current light of his eyes, Miss Ophelia Stubblefield, had accepted the company of a new and most formidable rival for this festive occasion. Wherefore an embodiment of sorrow walked hand in hand with Jeff.
After this blow descended all the taste of delectable anticipation in his mouth had turned to gall and to wormwood. Of what use now the costume he had been at such pains to accumulate from kindly white gentlemen, for whom Jeff in spare moments did odd jobs of valeting—the long, shiny frock coat here; the only slightly spotted grey-blue trousers there; the almost clean brown derby hat in another quarter; the winged collar and the puff necktie in yet a fourth? Of what value to him would be the looks of envy and admiration sure to be bestowed upon the pair of new, shiny and excessively painful patent-leather shoes, specially acquired and specially treasured for this event?
He had bought those shoes, with an utter disregard for expense, before he dreamed that another would bring Ophelia to the watch party. With her at his side, his soul would have risen exultant and triumphant above the discomfort of cramped-up toes and pinched-in heels. Now, at each dragging step, he was aware that his feet hurt him. Indeed, for Jeff there was at that moment no balm to be found throughout all Gilead, and in his ointment dead flies abounded thickly.
It added to his unhappiness that the lady might and doubtlessly would rest under a misapprehension regarding his failure to invite her to share with him the pleasures of the night. He had not asked her to be his company; had not even broached the subject to her. For this seeming neglect there had been a good and sufficient reason—one hundred and ninety pounds of a chocolate-coloured reason. Seven days before, on Christmas Eve, Jeff had been currying Mittie May, the white mare of Judge Priest, in the stable back of the Priest place, when he heard somebody whistle in the alley behind the stable and then heard his name called. He had stepped outside to find one Smooth Crumbaugh leaning upon the alley gate.
“Hello, Smoothy!” Jeff had hailed with a smart and prompt cordiality.
It was not that he felt any deep warmth of feeling for Smooth, but that it was prudent to counterfeit the same. All in Smooth's circle deported themselves toward Smooth with a profound regard and, if Smooth seemed out of sorts, displayed almost an affection for him, whether they felt it or not. 'Twere safer thus.
With characteristic brusqueness, Smooth entirely disregarded the greeting.
“Come yere to me, little nigger!” he said out of one corner of his lips, at the same time fixing a lowering stare upon Jeff. Then, as Jeff still stood, filled with sudden misgivings: “Come yere quick w'en I speaks! Want me to come on in dat yard after you?”
Jeff was conscious of no act of wrongdoing toward Smooth Crumbaugh. With Jeff, discretion was not only the greater part of fighting valour but practically was all of it. Nevertheless, he was glad, as he obeyed the summons and, with a placating smile fixed upon his face, drew nearer the paling, that he stood on the sanctuary ground of a circuit judge's premises, and that a fence intervened between him and his truculent caller.
“Comm' right along,” he said with an affected gaiety.
Just the same, he didn't go quite up to the gate. He made his stand three or four feet inside of it, ready to jump backward or sidewise should the necessity arise.
“I'se feared I didn't heah you call de fus time,” stated Jeff ingratiatingly. “I wuzn't studyin' about nobody wantin' me—been wipin' off our ole mare. 'Sides, I thought you wuz down in Alabam', workin' on de ole P. and A. Road.”
“Num'mine dat!” said Smooth. “Jes' lis'en to whut I got to say.”
The hostile glare of his eye bored straight into Jeff, making him chilly in his most important organs. Smooth was part basilisk, but mainly hyena, with a touch of the man-eating tiger in his composition. “Little nigger,” he continued grimly, “I come th'ough dis lane on puppus' to tell you somethin' fur de good of yore health.”
“I's lis'enin',” said Jeff, most politely.
“Heed me clost,” bade Smooth; “heed me dost, an' mebbe you mout live longer. Who wuz you at de Fust Ward Cullid Baptis' Church wid last Sunday night? Dat's de fust question.”
“Who—me?”
“Yas; you!”
“Why, lemme see, now,” said Jeff, dissembling. “Seem lak, ez well ez I reckerleck, I set in de same pew wid quite a number of folkses durin' de service.”
“I ain't axin' you who you set wid. I's axin' you who you went wid?”
“Oh!” said Jeff, as though enlightened as to the real object of the inquiry, and still sparring for time. “You means who did I go dere wid, Smoothy? Well——”
“Wuz it dat Stubblefield gal, or wuzn't it? Answer me, yas or no!”
The tone of the questioner became more ominous, more threatening, with each passing moment.
“Yas—yas, Smoothy.” He giggled uneasily. “Uh-huh! Dat's who 'twuz.”
“Well, see dat it don't happen ag'in.”
“Huh?”
“You heared whut I said!”
“But I—— But she——”
“See dat it don't happen nary time ag'in.”
“But—but——”
“Say, whut you mean, interrup'in' me whilst I's speakin' wid you fur yore own good? Shut up dat trap-face of your'n an' lis'en to me, whut I'm say in': Frum dis hour on, you stay plum' away frum dat gal. Understan'?”
“Honest, Smoothy, I didn't know you wuz cravin' to be prankin' round wid Ophelia!”
Jeff spoke with sincerity, from the heart out. In truth, he hadn't known, else his sleep of nights might have been less sound.
“Dat bein' de case, you better keep yore yeahs open to heah de news, else you won't have no yeahs. Git me mad an' I's liable to snatch 'em right offen de sides of your haid an' feed 'em to you. I's tuck a lay-off fur de C'ris'mus. An' endurin' de week I spects to spend de mos' part of my time enjoyin' dat gal's society. I aims to be wid her to-night an' to-morrow night an' de nex' night, an' ever' other night twell I goes back down de road. I aims to tek her to de C'ris'mus tree doin's at de church on Friday night, an' to de festibul at de church on Sad'day night, an' to de watch party up at de Odd Fellers' Hall on New Yeah's Eve. Is dat clear to you?”
“Suttinly is, seein' ez it's you,” assented Jeff, trying to hide his disappointment under a smile. “Course, Smoothy, ef you craves a young lady's company fur a week or so, I don't know nobody dat's mo' entitled to it'n whut you is. Jes' a word frum you is plenty fur me. You done told me how you feels; dat's ample.”
“No, 'tain't!” growled Smooth. “I got somethin' mo' to tell you. Frum now on, all de time I's in dis town I don't want to heah of you speakin' wid dat gal, or telephonin' to her, or writin' her ary note, or sendin' ary message to her house. Ef you do I's gwine find out 'bout it; an' den I's gwine lay fur you an' strip a whole lot of dark meat offen you wid a razor or somethin'. I won't leave nothin' of you but jes' a framework. Now den, it's up to you! Does you want to go round fur de rest of yore days lookin' lak a scaffoldin', or doesn't you?”
“Smoothy,” protested Jeff, “I ain't got no quarrel wid you. I ain't aimin' to git in no rookus wid nobody a-tall—let alone 'tis you. But s'posen'”—he added this desperately—“s'posen' now I should happen to meet up wid her on de street. Fur politeness' sake I's natchelly 'bleeged to speak wid her, ain't I—even ef 'tain't nothin' more'n jes' passin' de time of day?”
“Is dat so?” said Smooth in mock surprise. “Well, suit yo'se'f; suit yo'se'f. Only, de words you speaks wid her better be yore farewell message to de world. Ef anythin' happen to you now, sech ez a fun'el, hit's yore own fault—you done had yore warnin' frum headquarters. I ain't got no mo' time to be wastin' on a puny little scrap of nigger sech ez you is. I's on my way now. But jes' remember whut I been tellin' you an' govern yo'se'f 'cordin'ly.” And with that the bully turned away, leaving poor Jeff to most discomforting reflections amid the ruins of his suddenly blasted romance.
The full scope of his rival's design stood so clearly revealed that it left to its victim no loophole of escape whatsoever. Not only was he to be debarred, by the instinct of self-preservation, from seeking the presence of Ophelia during the most joyous and the most socially crowded week of the entire year; not only were all his pleasant dreams dashed and smashed, but, furthermore, he might not even make excuses to her for what would appear in her eyes as an abrupt and unreasonable cessation of sentimental interest on his part, save and except it be done at dire peril to his corporeal well-being and his physical intactness.
Above all things, Jeff Poindexter coveted to stay in one piece. And Smooth Crumbaugh was one who nearly always kept his word—especially when that word involved threats against any who stood between him and his personal ambitions.
Jeff, watching the broad retreating back of Smooth, as Smooth swaggered out of the alley, fetched little moans of acute despair. To him remained but one poor morsel of consolation—no outsider had been a witness to his interview with the bad man. Unless the bad man bragged round, none need know how abject had been Jeff's capitulation.
Solitary, melancholy, a prey to conflicting emotions, Jeff Poindexter climbed the stairs leading up to Odd Fellows' Hall, at the heels of a family group of celebrants. Until the last minute he hadn't meant to come; but something drew him hither, even as the moth to the flame is drawn. He paid his fifty cents to the Most High Grand Outer Guardian, who was stationed at the door in the capacity of ticket taker and cash collector, and entered in, to find sitting-down space pretty much all occupied and standing room rapidly being preempted—especially round the walls and at the back of the long assembly room.
Outside, the air was muggy with the clinging dampness of a rainy, mild winter's night; a weak foretaste of the heightened mugginess' within. Nearly always, in our part of the South, the first real cold snap came with the New Year; but, as yet, there were no signs of its approach. Inside, thanks to a big potbellied stove, choked with hot coals, and to the added circumstance of all the windows being closed, the temperature was somewhere up round eighty; which was as it should be. When the coloured race sets itself to enjoy itself, it desires warmth, and plenty of it.
This crowd was hot and therefore happy. Trickles of perspiration, coursing downward, streaked the rice powder upon the cheeks of many mezzotint damosels, and made to glisten the faces of the chrome-shaded gallants who squired them.
On the platform at the far end of the hall, beneath crossed flags, sat the principal officiating dignitaries, three in number—first, the Imperial Grand Potentate of the lodge, holder of an office corresponding to president elsewhere, but invested with rather more grandeur than commonly appertains to a presidency; then the second in command, known formally as First Vice Imperial Grand Potentate; and thirdly, the Reverend Potiphar Grasty, pastor of First Ward Church.
Facing these three and, in turn, faced by them, sat on the front seats the Supreme Kings, temporarily detached from their kinspeople and well-wishers, who, with the populace generally, filled the serried rows of chairs and benches behind the uniformed ranks.
At the rear, near the main entrance, in a cleared space, stood two long trestles bearing the refreshments, of which, at a suitable moment, all and sundry would be invited to partake. The feast plainly would be a rich and abundant one, including, as it did, such items as cream puffs, ham sandwiches, Frankfurters, bananas, and soda pop of the three more popular varieties—lemon, sarsaparilla and strawberry—in seemingly unlimited quantities.
Sister Eldora Menifee, by title Queen Bee of the Ladies' Royal Auxiliary of the Supreme Kings, had charge of the collation, its arrangement and its decorations. She hovered about her handiwork, a mighty, black mountain, vigilant to frown away any who might undertake any clandestine poaching. The display of napery and table linen was most ample; and why not? Didn't Sister Menifee do the washing for the biggest white folks' boarding house in town?
With an eye filmed and morose, Jeff Poindexter, pausing at the rear, comprehended this festive scene. Then, as his gaze ran to and fro, he saw that which he dreaded to see and yet sought to behold. He saw Smooth Crum-baugh sitting with Ophelia on the right side of the hall, well up toward the front. Their backs were to him; their heads inclined sidewise toward a common centre.
The loose fold of flesh in Smooth's bull neck pouched down over his glistening collar as he slanted one shoulder to whisper sweet somethings in Ophelia's ear. They must have been sweet somethings, and witty withal; for at once the lady gave vent to a clear soprano giggle. Her mirthful outburst rose above the babble of voices and, floating backward, pierced Jeff Poindexter's bosom as with darts and javelins; and jealousy, meantime, like the Spartan boy's fox, gnawed at his inwards.
The sight and the sound, taken together, made Jeff Poindexter desperate almost to the point of outright recklessness—almost, but not quite. He noted the fortuitous circumstance of a vacant chair directly behind the pair he watched. Surely now Smooth Crumbaugh would start no disturbance here. Surely—so Jeff reasoned it—time, place, occasion and the present company, all would operate and cooperate to curb Smooth's chronic belligerency.
If only for a fleeting period, Jeff longed to venture within conversational distance of Ophelia; to bask for a spell in one of her brilliant smiles; to prove to her by covert looks, if not by whispered words, that there were no ill feelings; to give her an opportunity for visual appreciation of his housings; and, most of all, subtly to convey the suggestion that it was bodily indisposition which had caused him to absent himself from her presence throughout the Christmas. Under cover of his hand he rehearsed a deep cough, and simultaneously began to inch his way along an aisle toward the coveted seat in the adjacent rear of the couple.
The programme proper was well under way; it had begun auspiciously and it promised much. There had been a prayer and a welcoming address by the Imperial Grand Potentate, and now there was singing. Starting shortly, the annual memorial service for any member or members who had departed this life during the preceding twelve months would follow; this lasting until five minutes before midnight. Then all the lights would be turned out, and the gathering would sit in darkness, singing some lugubriously appropriate song as a vocal valedictory for the passing year until the first stroke of midnight, when the lights would flash on again. Thereafter would follow the strictly social phases of the watch party.
Almost until the last it had seemed that the memorial exercises would have to be foregone for lack of material to work on. But at the eleventh hour, as it were, Red Hoss Shackleford, who always heretofore had been a disappointment to everybody, had greatly obliged, and, at the same time, disproved the oft-repeated assertion that one born for hanging can never be drowned, by falling overboard off the tugboatGiles C. Jordan.
This tragedy had occurred at a late hour of the evening of December twenty-sixth, when theGiles C. Jordanwas forty miles up Tennessee River on a crosstie-towing venture, and while Red Hoss Shackleford, who had shipped aboard her as cook and general roustabout, was yet overcome by the potent elements of his Christmas celebration, self-administered internally in liquid form.
At least such were the tidings borne by the captain and surviving crew upon their return to port on the twenty-ninth instant. Whereupon the Supreme Kings had seized upon the opportunity thus vouchsafed as a free gift of a frequently inscrutable Providence.
To be sure, the late Shackleford was not exactly a member in good standing. Two years before, in a fine fervour of enthusiasm induced by the splendour of the uniforms worn at the funeral turnout of a departed brother, Red Hoss had joined the lodge. He had fallen behind in his dues, and, to all intents and purposes, had been expunged from the rolls. Red Hoss generally was in arrears, anyhow, except for those obligations he owed the county chain gang. Those were debts he always paid—if they could catch him.
None the less, certain points were waived by acclamation, following the receipt of the news of his taking-off. It was agreed that one Red Hoss Shackleford dead at such time was worth ten Red Hoss Shacklefords living. His memory was to be perpetuated, thereby lending to the programme precisely that touch of seriousness which was needed to round it out and make of it a thing complete and adequate.
To add to the effect, his sole surviving relative, a half sister, by name Sister Rosalie Shackleford, had a prominent place at the front, flanking the low platform. It was conceivable, everything considered, that her loss had been no great one; nevertheless, with a fine theatric instinct for the unities and the verities, she now deported herself as one utterly devastated by a grief almost too great to be borne. There was no mistake about it—when this sister mourned, she mourned!
With her prevalent dark complexion enhanced by enshrouding ells of black crape, she half lay, half sat in a slumped attitude betokening utter and complete despondency, and at timely intervals uttered low moans and sobs. Two friends attended her in a ministering capacity. One fanned her assiduously. The other, who was of ample girth, provided commodious and billowy accommodations for her supine form when she slipped back after swooning dead away. It was expected of Sister Rosalie that she should faint occasionally and be revived; and so she did.
The ritualistic features of the night had been disposed of and the singing was in full swing as Jeff Poindexter edged along, pussyfooting like a house cat, toward the point he sought. Eventually he arrived there unobserved by the quarry he stalked.
Up to this point fortune had favoured him; none had pre-empted the one vacant chair, half concealed from general view as it had been by the adjacent bulk of a very fleshy black woman. With a whispered apology to her for intruding, Jeff wormed his way in alongside. He let himself softly down into the seat and began to cough the gentle cough of a quasi invalid now on the road to recovery.
Together, it would seem, the pair in front of him sensed his presence so near them. With one accord they swung their heads.
“Evenin', Miss Stubblefield. Evenin', Smoothy,” said Jeff, smiling wanly, as a convalescent naturally would. “Seein' ez how dis yere cheer wuz onuccupied, I jes' taken it so's to be out of de draf'. I ain't been so well dis week—had a little tech of pneumonia, I think 'twuz; an' so—”
Ophelia's surprised murmur of sympathy was cut short. Smooth Crumbaugh distorted his gingerbread-coloured countenance into a hideous war mask. He turned in his place, thrusting his face forward. “Git up outen dat seat!” he ordered in a low, forceful grumble.
“But de seat ain't taken, Smoothy,” protested Jeff weakly. “I 'lowed I'd set yere jes' fur a minute or two, account of de draf'.”
“Git up outen dat cheer!” repeated Smooth Crumbaugh in a louder tone.
His shoulders began to hunch and his hands to curl up into fists. Ophelia's rising agitation was tempered perhaps by the realisation of the fact that for her favour two persons, both well known and prominent in their respective spheres of activity, were about to have words—possibly to exchange threats, or even blows. To be the storm centre of such a sensation is not always entirely unpleasant, especially if one be young and personable. She spoke now in a voice clearly audible to several about her.
“Please, suzz, gen'lemen, both of you be nice an' quiet!” she implored. “I trusts there ain't goin' be no trouble 'cause of me.”
“'Tain't goin' be no trouble, gal,” stated Smooth, as Jeff sat dumb with apprehension. “'Tain't goin' be nothin' but a pleasure to me to haul off an' knock dis little nigger naiked.” He addressed Jeff: “Git up outen dat cheer, lak I tells you! Start travellin', an' keep on travellin'. Git plum' out of dis yere buildin'!” Daunted to the very taproots of his being, Jeff nevertheless strove to save his face. He made pretense that his cough prevented the utterance of a defiant rejoinder as he rose and backed out into the aisle and worked his way toward the rear, with Smooth Crumbaugh's glower following after him. Perhaps the excellence of his acting may have deceived some, but in his own soul Jeff suffered amain.
Far back, hard by the refreshment stand, he wriggled himself in behind an intervening frieze of standees. His judgment warned him that he should heed Smooth Crumbaugh's wishes and entirely betake himself hence; but his crushed and bruised spirit revolted against a surrender so abject and so utter. He told himself he had given up his chair because he did not care to be sitting down, anyway. Even so, this was a free country and he would stay a while longer if he wanted to stay. Only, he meant to keep yards of space and plenty of bystanders between him and Smooth Crumbaugh. He would be self-effacive, but not absolutely absent.
With an ear dulled by chagrin, he hearkened as the Reverend Grasty rose and opened his discourse touching on the life and works of the late Red Hoss Shackleford. The speaker's very first words made it clear to all that he had come to bury Cæsar—not to praise him. Really, the only complimentary thing which might truthfully be said of Red Hoss was that always he had a good appetite. At once the Reverend Grasty manifested that he meant to adopt no weak and temporising course in his discussion of the subject in hand. Forthrightly he launched into a stirring recital of the shortcomings of the deceased; and out of his topic's sins, cut off in the midst of his impenitence, he builded a vivid lesson to warn the living.
If one might judge by her behaviour, the lorn half sister resented not the attitude and the language of the orator. She forgot to faint and she sat erect. Presently she was chanting an accompaniment to his shouted illustrations.
“Oh, my pore lost brother, sunken in de cold waters.” She quavered in a fine camp-meeting tremolo. “Oh, my pore onworthy brother, whut we gwine do 'bout you now?”
Fervently deep amens began to arise from other quarters, punctuating the laments of Sister Rosalie and the louder outpourings of the Reverend Grasty. The memorial service was turning out to be the high point of the watch party.
In spite of personal distractions, Jeff was carried away by the dramatic intensity of the scene. Forgetting momentarily his own trouble, he shoved forward, the better to see and hear. A menacing growl in his off ear brought him back to earth with a jolt. It was the dread voice of Smooth Crumbaugh, speaking from a distance not of yards but of inches. And now, as Jeff turned his head, Smooth's outjutted underlip was almost brushing the tip of his nose.
“Thought I tole you to git plum' outen dis hall!” quoth Smooth; and his voice, more than before, was freighted with the menace of dire catastrophe, imminent and impending.
Jeff didn't dare reply in regular words. He muttered unintelligible sounds beneath his breath, seeking the while to draw away.
“Quit mumblin'!” ordered Smooth. “You's liable to mumble up somethin' I don't keer to heah, an' den I'll tek an' jes' natchelly mek a set of nigger shoestrings outen you. B'lieve I'll do hit anyway—right now!”
One of his hands—the left one—closed en-twiningly in Jeff's coat collar. His right stole back toward his hip pocket—the pocket wherein Smooth was reputed to carry his razor. Jeff felt dark wings fanning his clammy brow.
“Speak up an' say whut you got to say whilst you is got de breath to say hit,” said the bad man.
“I—I wus jes' fixin' to go, Smoothy,” his voice squeaked.
“Naw, you wuzn't. Ain't I been watchin' you, hangin' round back yere whar you thought I couldn't see you. Now den——”
A uniformed and helmeted form bulged in between them, breaking Smooth's hold on Jeff. The disturbance had drawn the Most High Grand Outer Guardian away from his post at the door.
“Yere! Dat'll be 'bout all!” stated this functionary in a voice of authority. “Go on outside, you two, ef you wants to argify wid one nurr. Dis ain't no place to be 'sputin'.” He gave a violent start of surprise and his voice trailed off to nothingness. Until now he had not recognised Jeff's adversary.
“Who you talkin' to, Mistah Monkey Clothes?”
Smooth swung on the officer, ready in his present state of feeling to carve up one or a dozen. An ingratiating smile split the nervous countenance of the Most High Grand Outer Guardian. Than to be flirting with disaster nothing was farther from his desires.
“Scuse me, Mistah Crumbaugh. I didn't know 'twuz you. I begs yore pardon!” he stated hastily. “Please, ef you don't mind, I'll settle dis matter fur you.”
He swung round on Jeff, who was making himself smaller by the second.
“Whut you mean,” he demanded, “per-vokin' Mistah Crumbaugh twell he's jes' about to lose his temper? Ef yore presence yere irritates him, w'y don't you go on 'way, lak a gen'leman?... Lis'en to dat! Don't you see you's 'bout to break up de programme?” From the rows of seats nearest them came indignant Sh-h-hs! Jeff's popped eyes, glaring about him, read in all visible looks only intense disapproval of him. It was not healthy to hold Smooth Crumbaugh responsible for the interruption; but poor Jeff stood in quite a different attitude with the assemblage.
He shrank away, pawing out behind him with both hands for the door. Partly mollified, but still growling, Smooth started to return to his seat, all in his way making a clear path for him. Jeff vanished through the opening like a scared chipmunk.
The Reverend Grasty had not been discommoded by the disturbance in the rear. He was getting louder every minute. So was Sister Shackleford.
Outside on the landing, Jeff breathed again and paused to master a trembling tendency as regards his legs, at the same time telling himself he had not wanted to stay through their old watch party anyhow. It was a lie; but he kept on telling it to himself over and over again until he almost believed it. With a bitter smile, reflective of the intense bitterness in his heart, he looked backward at the blank panels of the door and reflected that, barring one fascinating exception, he didn't have a real friend in all that multitude.
Why, if they really wanted to put somebody out, hadn't they clubbed in and put that tough Smooth Crumbaugh out? Why hadn't twenty-five or thirty of them formed a volunteer committee on good order and removed Smooth by force? He would have been glad to enroll as a member of that committee—as the thirtieth member and in an advisory capacity purely.
Oh, well, what was the use of hanging round a place where true gentility was neither recognised nor appreciated? These here Supreme Kings couldn't possibly last much longer, anyway—running things the way they did. He might as well go on about his business. Reluctantly, making compromise with his outraged dignity at every step, and rent between a hankering to linger on and a conviction that if he did linger a most evil thing surely would befall him, Jeff limped in his creaking new shoes down the empty stairs, descending yard by yard into a Slough of Despond.
At the foot of the steps he stopped again, fumbling in his pockets. The jangled state of his nerves demanded the sooth of nicotine. From one pocket he exhumed nearly half of a cigar and from the other a box of matches. He inserted the cigar between his lips and undertook to strike a light. These were a new kind of matches—long, thick ones, with big white-and-black heads. Judge Priest had brought home a supply of them the day before, and Jeff, attracted vaguely by their novelty of appearance and their augmented size, had been moved to borrow a box of them off the dining-room sideboard without mentioning the matter to any one.
The misanthrope drew one of the big matches down the plastered side of the entryway. It sputtered and snapped under the friction of the stroke, but declined to burst into flame. Jeff cast it away and tried another, with no different result, except that the stick part snapped off short. Either the prevalent dampness had adversely affected them or they were defective and untrustworthy by reason of some flaw in their manufacture. But he noted that both matches had left queer luminous streaks upon the dingy wall.
Morbidly reflecting that in this night of his bad luck he was to be denied even the small solace of a smoke, Jeff absently fingered a third match between his fingers, plucking at its bulbous tip with a thumb nail. Instantly the effect of this was such as mildly to startle him; for at once on his finger ends appeared a strange spectral glow, as though he had been fondling some new and especially well-illuminated breed of lightning bug in his naked hand.
At any other time, almost, this phenomenon, so simply accomplished, would have set Jeff's nimble fancy at work devising experimental means of entertainment to be derived therefrom; but now and here, in his existent frame of thought, the discovery gave him no pleasure whatsoever.
He pouched cigar butt and matches, and stepped forth from the stair passage into the drizzle. Out of the darkness a figure reeled unsteadily. It bumped into him with such violence as to drive him back into the doorway, and then caromed off, rocking on its heels to regain its balance. Jeff made out that the awk-ward one was a person of his own colour and sex.
“Whut's ailin' you, man?” he demanded irritably. “Ain't a whole sidewalk wide 'nuff fur you, widout you tryin' to knock folkses down?”
“Huh?”
The wavering pedestrian exhaled a thick grunt, which brought with it an aroma of stick gin. He tottered forward again, throwing out his clutching hands for some support.
“Go on 'way frum me!”
Jeff flung out an arm to fend the other off; but the gesture froze solid while yet his elbow was crooked, and Jeff cowered back, transfixed and limber with terror, too scared to run, too weak to cry out.
For there, centred in the dim half-light that streamed down from above, swaying on his legs and dripping moisture, as befitting one who had but lately met a watery end, stood the mortal remains of the late unlamented—whom even now they were most unkindly commemorating upstairs—Red Hoss Shackleford, deceased. There was no doubt about it. Red Hoss' embodied spirit, with the restless malignity of a soul accursed, had come back to attend its own memorial service!
Jeff's jaws opened and refused to close. His throat locked on a howl, and that howl emerged as a thin, faint wheeze. The filling inside his knee joints turned to a marrowy jelly. His scalp crawled on his skull.
The ghost grabbed him in a fumbling embrace; and even as Jeff, in an intensified spasm of terror, wrestled to be free of that awful clutch, he realised that this ghost was entirely too solid for a regular ghost. Besides, there was that smell of gin. Ghosts did not drink—or did they? He found his voice—part of it.
“Shacky, ain't you daid?” he pleaded in croaking accents. “Fur Gawd's sake, tell me de truth—ain't you sho-'nuff daid?”
“Who say I'm daid?” demanded Red Hoss with maudlin truculence. Then instantly his tone became plaintive: “How come ever'whars I goes to-night dey axes me is I daid? Does I look daid? Does I act daid?”
“Wait a minute, Shacky—lemme think.” And now Jeff, well recovered, was holding the ex-apparition upright. “You sorter taken me by s'prise; but lemme think.”
Already, as his self-possession came back to him, the germ of a splendid, dazzling idea took root and sprouted in his brain.
Still supporting the burden of the miraculously restored Red Hoss, he glanced over his shoulder up the hallway. There was no one visible; none other shared this marvellous secret with him. As quickly as might be, he guided the uncertain form of Red Hoss away from the doorway and round the corner into the black shadows at the side of the building, where rain dripped on them from the eaves above.