invitation to Mrs. Stoker’s euchre-party. The eye of Jennie met that
of Mrs. Wheelock, as a partial relief made its way into the breast
of the preacher’s wife.
“Did you ever hear of such impudence?” she breathed.
* * * * *
Mrs. Stoker had a new green cottage with nine Corinthian pillars
(capitals enormously ornate) along her front porch. Within, electric
lights, white-pine woodwork, brilliant floral tributes of Axminster
carpets, and bird’s-eye maple furniture combined to produce an
effect luxurious, irrefutable.
“Oh, yes,” natty Stoker was saying to the men, “I gave him three
thousand for his ten acres. Wheelock, run over to the city with me
to-morrow and look at the Pasadena Villa Tract. I’ve a mind to pick
up a bunch of those lots.”
“O _Mrs._ Hummel!” came Mrs. Stoker’s winning voice, and everybody
listened. There was the purple-draped hostess flowing toward the
preacher’s wife. “I was dreadfully afraid you wouldn’t come! I’m
_so_” (powerful kiss) “glad you did! And dear Mr. Hummel?”
“To-night he works on his sermon,” said Mrs. Hummel, beaming about
on the faces of the alert and delightfully surprised company. “I
persuaded him to run in for me later; for I just came to look on. Of
course,” here she turned the sweet lips toward Mrs. Stoker, “you
couldn’t expect us to play.”
Mrs. Stoker put new fuel in her smile to Mrs. Hummel; and Mrs.
Hummel did likewise further fire up her smile to Mrs. Stoker; and
the edified company sat down.
The games went on with a vim that made it seem some hungry gambling
spirit, dormant in the town, rose up and reveled. Mrs. Stoker had
risked it all on her belief in the psychological moment--and won!
The town was ready for sin.
“And that little statue is the prize,” now said Mrs. Stoker, moving
about. “Mrs. Hummel, would you hold it up?”
All eyes came round in sneaking way toward Mrs. Hummel, who grew
pallid. There, on the mantel, near her hand as she stood to watch,
was the statuette--a nude Greek maid.
“Would you mind holding it up? They can’t see,” repeated Mrs.
Stoker, louder, fires in her eyes.
Hypnotized, Mrs. Hummel lifted it and saw a price tag, $7.50.
“Why,” said she, forcing into her voice the daring experiment of a
note of censure, “I didn’t know there was to be a prize!”
“Oh,” echoed Mrs. Wheelock from a distance, instilling into her
tones a strain of triumph, “I didn’t know there was to be a prize!”
“No!” chimed all the women, in mutually sanctioning delight, “we
didn’t know there was to be a prize!”
“Just a cheap little thing,” said Mrs. Stoker.
A new brightening of eyes fastened on euchre decks. The games went
on with strange excitement; for, lo! all the women had suddenly
resolved to win or ruin their nerves in the fight.
“Would you punch--while I look to the sherbet?” whispered Mrs.
Stoker to Mrs. Hummel, with new, bald patronage.
The preacher’s wife stared round. The fascination of the game was
influencing her. She felt her footing go; she saw the Stoker
triumph, the reins gone from her hand. Desperately did she leap at
this only chance to cling to the victorious vehicle of pleasure
which her rival from this night on was to drive headlong through the
Puritanic mood of Euchretown.
Mrs. Hummel punched the cards.
More fierce became the spirit of gaming, until, with final shriek of
delight, Mrs. Wheelock won the statue. Followed by jealous eyes she
took it.
“Splendid!” she cried, examining the tag and seeing $7.50. Then she
passed it round. “Beautiful!” said the women, seeing $7.50.
And the corruption of Euchretown was accomplished.
We pass hastily to the strange fury in its later vigor. From the
night of the initiative prize an extraordinary inflation went on
apace. Scarcely had a week elapsed (full of gossip at the Stoker’s
indubitable success) when Mrs. Wheelock gave a second euchre-party.
And when the guests flocked to the banker’s two-story house in the
mission style (on the fifty-foot lot which he bought for $1,400 of
Jeffreys Sassy), they were yet more morally poisoned to observe, on
the cut-glass dish which she awarded to shrieking Mrs. Botts, the
half-extinguished price-mark, $9.65.
For six days, $9.65 was a sort of tag to the town’s mental status;
when, to the thrilling of all, Mrs. George Botts did suddenly cast
out invitations; and at Mrs. Bott’s brilliant affair, Mrs. Stoker,
after a dashing race neck-and-neck with six women who all but beat
her, won a clock on the bottom of which, mysteriously blurred, the
figures $13.75 could, after careful scrutiny, be distinguished.
The value of the prize at the fourth party was $15; at the sixth,
$19; at the ninth, $25.50. Agape, the town stared ahead at its
coming dizzy course. Then Mrs. Samuel Lethwait, taciturn woman,
stupefied the inhabitants of the place by making one flying leap
from $25 to $50. Out of the ranks, out of the number of the unfeared
had Mrs. Lethwait made her daring rise.
There was an instant’s recoil. Could Mrs. Stoker, Mrs. Wheelock,
Mrs. Botts pause now? Their shoulders were at the wheel, their hands
on the flying plow which tore up such amazing furrows in the social
field. The recoil was but momentary. At the very hour when Mrs.
Botts was putting on her hat, sworn to buy a prize worth $60, there
fell into her agitated hand an invitation. Mrs. Stoker had sprung to
the breach.
A scramble for the cottage of the nine pillars. And behold on the
golden lamp there displayed as prize, were the shameless figures,
$75.00.
Now had the insanity taken general root. He who fails to understand
knows not California. The dangerous mania once contracted, no matter
what its form, must continue till the collapse. If the gold fury of
’49, and the equally furious land boom of ’87, are not
object-lessons enough, let the sociologist recall the Belgian hares.
And if yet he doubts the historical verity of such a cast in the
California mind, let him give this euchre boom his careful
consideration. As men bid for twenty-five foot lots in San Diego in
the insane days of ’87, so did women now bid, under the thin
disguise of euchre prizes, for choice positions in the social field
of Euchretown. It was the old disease.
In two more leaps the prizes had advanced to a hundred. And, most
significant of all, seldom was the price of a prize now paid down.
The credit system had saved the day. The people of Euchretown were
not millionaires. Few felt able to toss out a hundred with this
rapid periodicity. So small first payments, contracts, “the rest in
six and twelve,” became the rule.
In the rear dust of this race, panting, tagged Mrs. Hummel. Again
and again, contrary to the will of pained Mr. Hummel (who to himself
sang “Throw Out the Life Line” in despair), did she attend, punch
cards, look on with jealous eye; yet she did not play. She was a
buffer whom the sinners held between their gaming and their
consciences. Oh, how she longed to give a party that would stagger
the general mind!
Now for a fatal three weeks Mr. Hummel was in Oregon. Two sleepless
nights his wife spent tossing, then arose feverish, stood on the
high pinnacle of temptation, and plunged down.
First she went for a prize. The price had risen to a hundred and
forty; she must act quick; now!--lest she be ruined, for the boom
waited for no man. At a furniture store she asked information on the
contract system. The dealer (who had furnished prizes) was confused;
he could not accept the Hummel’s contract. Why? she gasped. Oh, he
hastened, it was not for doubts of the Hummel honesty; it was for
doubts of the honesty of the community. In the present furious state
he did not believe the Hummels would get their salary! Infinitely
sorry, infinitely polite was he; and she went away dazed.
But she would do it or die. One more hour of suffering brought her
back.
“I’ll mortgage our household goods,” said she, dry-eyed, “till
Hummel returns.” And he agreed.
So, Mrs. Stoker’s old slain rival rose up astonishing over the
horizon. The chill that ran through the community with Mrs. Hummel’s
invitations, gave way to white heat, and everybody, euchre mad, now
rushed to the preacher’s home.
Mrs. Hummel’s struggles had been heroic; the house was decorated as
never before, the refreshments were beyond any that Mrs. Stoker had
conceived. And on the portières (given as a prize) the mark one
hundred and fifty dollars stook forth a challenge.
Mrs. Stoker, playing recklessly, lost; and her drawn face suggested
nervous collapse and thoughts criminal. But a crisis in the social
life of Euchretown was now imminent. There was yet another element
to Mrs. Hummel’s victory; a murmur went round of the coming ruin of
Stoker. As ladies moved to tables they eyed Mrs. Stoker, and
whispered gossip; as men sat down they hinted at revelations,
speaking in one another’s ears.
“What is it?” whispered Mrs. Hummel, huskily, to Mrs. Wheelock.
“They say that Stoker is found out; that he gave false title to some
land!”
At that moment Stoker’s wild, unnatural laugh was heard.
In the final neck-and-neck sprint to the goal, Mrs. Stoker, gone to
pieces, wretched, was distanced; Mrs. Botts carried off the
portières; the party broke up, and Mrs. Hummel’s night of sinful
conquering passed into history.
When Hummel returned, the news emaciated him. He went to bed and lay
ill for a week, and nobody threw out the life line to him. Nay, even
the bed he lay on came near to being snatched from under him. And
now, with the boom trembling on the verge of collapse, with
everybody’s contracts coming due, bills began to rain upon the
preacher’s head.
“Jennie,” groaned he, “you have ruined me. See, they haven’t paid my
salary, and the furniture man is mad. We will be cast into the
street!”
Then there fell into Mrs. Hummel’s hands an envelope--“Mrs.
Stoker--at home--Friday night--euchre!”
“Why,” cried Mrs. Wheelock, bursting in with Mrs. Botts, “everybody
knows that the Stokers are on the brink of ruin. They say he is
fighting like mad to keep his head up--maybe to keep out of jail!
This is their final fling. And everybody has learned about her
prize. Guess what it is!”
“And guess what it cost!” shouted Mrs. Botts.
“I wouldn’t be un-Christian about it,” declared Jennie, “but I do
think swindlers had better hide their heads. What is the thing,
then, and what does it cost?”
There was an impressive hush.
“A bedroom set worth two hundred! And she’s let everybody know that
she paid cash down for it.”
They all gazed at one another, the fire of gaming in their eyes.
“She is making one last grand play,” said they.
One day of gloom did Mrs. Hummel pass in Hummel’s bedroom, arguing,
pleading. To Hummel, he and the whole town were gone to the devil.
“No! Never!” cried he, receiving more duns, and shaken.
But at last toward night he arose and, haunted, went to the furniture
store. In the window was the bedroom set, and over it a sign, “The
prize for Mrs. Stoker’s euchre-party.” Staring, the emaciated Hummel
lost his soul.
“Would it cover the bill,” he whispered, hoarsely, in the dealer’s
back room, “if we won it?”
“About,” mused the dealer; “Hummel, since it’s you. I’d call it
square.”
And Hummel returned, unsteady on his feet.
* * * * *
Once again the cottage of the Corinthian pillars shone with the
brilliancy of a euchre evening. Stoker was making a high play
to-night to keep his footing with the men. Mrs. Stoker had rouged to
hide the pallor of her cheeks. The house distanced all previous
efforts in its decorations, the refreshments were beyond the
experience of the most high-rolling citizen of the town.
Behold, in came Mrs. Hummel, her blood up.
“And dear Mr. Hummel?” asked Mrs. Stoker, taking Mrs. Hummel’s hand
in both of hers.
“Hummel’s in bed,” said Jennie, tersely; “Mrs. Stoker, I’ll play
to-night.”
A moment’s silence, as of a solitude; then a great hubbub, the
guests making for tables.
“So glad!” cried Mrs. Stoker; “we’ve always hoped you would!”
“So glad!” shrieked all the women into Mrs. Hummel’s ear; and the
games began.
Why dwell on the mad scramble? That night was the culmination.
Disgraceful as was the thing in itself, it pales before the disgrace
incident to a mood of reckless confession which seized the company.
Somebody blurted out that she’d win that two hundred or die. Then a
nigh insane man in a corner shouted across the room, to the shocking
of all: “Let’s make it poker!”
The laugh that greeted this was spasmodic; and all at once right
before Mrs. Hummel on the central table, Mr. Stoker, as though he
had lost his mind, and grown wild and cynical, began to deal
out--ten-dollar bills from his deck. These Mr. Wheelock snatched up
and shook aloft with fearful merriment under the chandelier.
In that instant the boom collapsed. Who could predict the
psychological moment? The sight of the ten-dollar bills was too
much. Shame rushed into every breast; the reaction began; and
henceforth in the hands of everybody but Mrs. Hummel (who, brain on
fire, had failed to catch the significance of the moment), euchre
fell a limp and lifeless thing.
And that alone is why the preacher’s wife, who scarcely knew her
bowers, won the bedroom set.
A sudden, fierce knocking at the door, and in burst an officer.
“I have a warrant for the arrest of John Stoker,” said he.
“I’m here,” said Stoker, sneering and white; and Mrs. Stoker
fainted.
Everybody stared; all seized hats; like rats the euchre players
slunk away; the Corinthian cottage, like a bedizened but deserted
courtesan, stood gaudily shining in the night, alone.
Later the town awoke, as the high-roller awakes next morning with a
suffering and repentant head, and the readjustment began. Everybody
owed somebody for prizes, as, in ’88, everybody owed somebody for
lots. Everybody was a buffer to everybody. The thing let itself down
and evened itself up, and nobody was hard on anybody. And thus the
euchre boom passed into history.
Now the church people began to rehabilitate their consciences. And
Banker Wheelock hit upon a scheme. As financier of the bankrupt
soul, Wheelock will ever stand out a genius.
“Why,” said he to Botts, “we did it to help Hummel.”
“True,” said Botts, dazzled; “let’s go and tell him.”
And on a Saturday evening a score of citizens came to Hummel’s
house.
Hummel was lying pallid on a lounge.
“We’ve come,” said Wheelock, blandly, “to felicitate you. We
couldn’t bear to see you carry that debt, Hummel. We fixed the
little thing in what was, I agree, an unprecedented way. But when we
schemed beforehand with Mrs. Stoker to give a party and pass the
victory on to your wife--Hummel, my friend, our hearts went with
it!”
And Hummel, seeing this astonishing loophole for them all, arose to
greet the general smile.
“Kind friends,” said he, in trembling relief, “more blessed is it to
give than to receive.”
THE SORCERY OF ASENATH
By Maria Roberts
People often ask me why I gave up a promising business career and
devoted myself to traveling, in which I find no pleasure; exploring,
for which I have no taste; and archæology, which is to me the most
tiring of pursuits. The question has never been answered, save by
the statement that there is no reason to give, which involves the
telling of an incredible story.
There are two or three to whom I would like to tell it. If they
survive me, they shall know--to that end, these pages.
It is my conviction that whatever intelligent man has known, he has
tried to record in some way--that living truths, new to us, may be
gleaned from the stone tablets of races extinct for ages. For such a
truth, I am searching. One man found it, but he is dead. His spirit
I have called up, as the woman at Endor called up Samuel, and
questioned it. He told me that the knowledge had sent it to the
world of shades before its time, and had put power into the hands of
an evil one, who had bidden it never in any place to reveal to any
mortal what it knew.
“Even yet I must obey her,” said the spirit of Paul Glen; “but what
you seek is written.”
As yet, I have not read. Many strange things have I unearthed, but
never this that I seek.
Now, I will write my story. You who read it may believe or not, as
you see fit. I know that it is true.
It is many years now since I went South to visit my sister Helen. I
had not seen her since the day of her marriage, three years before,
till she met me at the door of her own home and welcomed me in her
old sweet and quiet manner. It seemed to me, at the first glance,
that her face had aged too much, and that a certain once fine
expression--a suggestion of latent determination--had overdeveloped,
and marked her with stern lines. From the first moment, too, I
feared the existence of a trouble in her life, of which her letters
had given no hint.
She seemed, though, cheerful enough. She led the way into a great
room that was shaded and cool and full of the scent of lilacs. With
a motion of her hand, she dismissed three or four black maids, whom
she had been assisting or instructing at some sewing work, and they
went out, courtesying and showing their white, even teeth at the
door.
A fourth did not leave, but retired to a far end of the room and
went on with the sewing. I noticed what a tiny garment she was
making, and what a sharply cut silhouette her face made against the
white curtain of the window by which she sat.
Helen chatted away, apologizing for her husband’s absence, asking a
host of questions, and planning some pleasure for every one of the
days of my stay with her. I lay back in my chair, with a feeling of
languid content, and listened. When Helen suggested sleep and
refreshment, I declined both, feeling no need of anything but her
presence and that delicious room, the atmosphere of which was laden
with rest as with the scent of the lilacs.
The black woman sat directly in the line of my vision, and I
remember now that my gaze never strayed from her. I noticed, idly at
first, then with interest, the regularity of her features and the
grand proportions of her head and bust. Her hair, brownish in color,
with dull copper tints, was as straight as my own, and she had a
hand and arm so perfectly molded that, except for their black skin,
they might have been those of a lady of high degree. But it was the
pride, speaking from every line of that dark face, that most
attracted my notice. There was in it, too, an exultant sense of
power, and it was the most resolute face, black or white, that I
ever saw.
Presently I began to feel that it required an effort to keep the
thread of what Helen said, and to reply. Her voice seemed to get
faint, then to come in snatches, with an indistinct murmur between
them; at last, not at all, though I knew she was still speaking.
I was not unconscious, but perception was contracted and
concentrated upon one abnormal effort. From me a narrow path of
light stretched down the room to the black woman. She seemed to
expand and to grow luminous; a vapor exhaled from her, floated to
the middle of the pathway, and there assumed her own form, almost
nude, perfect like her face in its every line, motionless as if
carved from ebony, but with fierce, impure eyes that looked straight
into mine and from which there seemed to be no escape.
Their gaze begot an overwhelming sense of disgust. My soul
shuddered, but my body could not move. The evil face smiled. A cloud
floated over the form of ebony, slowly passed away, revealing one
like polished ivory, but the eyes changed not.
How long their gaze held me motionless and helpless I do not know.
Suddenly, something white shut out the vision, and my sister’s
voice, now harsh and loud, struck upon my hearing like a lash.
Instantly the room assumed its ordinary appearance, the scent of the
lilacs greeted me as if I had newly come into the atmosphere, and
Helen, in her white dress, stood before me, trembling.
The negress at the window looked at us both with insolent amusement.
It was to her that Helen spoke.
“How dared you!” she exclaimed; “oh, that I could punish you as you
deserve!”
The girl smiled and slowly drew her needle through the cloth in her
lap.
“Go out to Lucas,” commanded Helen. “Go!”
The girl drew herself up, and her face took on an expression of
sullen defiance. It seemed for an instant that she would not obey.
She clenched her hands, and I heard her teeth grate together. But
she hesitated only a moment, then went slowly out of the room.
Presently she passed by the window, pushing a heavy barrow full of
earth. Lucas, the gardener, followed, carrying a long gad. In a
minute or two they passed again, going in the same direction, and
afterward again and again. The girl was pushing the barrow around
and around the house.
“That is the heaviest and most menial employment I can devise for
her,” said Helen; “I wish there were something worse. She grows more
impudent every day, but this is the first time she has dared to
exert her snaky power upon a white person in my presence. How did
you feel while you were under that spell?”
“Now, Helen, for heaven’s sake don’t imagine----”
“I imagine nothing,” she interrupted, in a low voice. “I know that
girl. She can do strange things. If ever a human creature was
possessed of a devil, she is.”
“Why, Helen!”
She went on without heeding my astonishment. “Every negro on the
plantation, except Lucas, is mortally afraid of her. My birds cower
in a corner of their cage if she approaches them, the gentlest horse
we have will rear and kick at sight of her, and if she goes into the
poultry-yard the hens cover up their chicks as if night had come.
She has affected others as she did you. She has done worse. When I
first came here, she was given to me for a maid; but, not liking
her, I took a little mulatto girl who was bright and smart then, but
who is now idiotic through fear of Asenath.”
I did not think it best to dispute with Helen, knowing her well
enough to be sure that any argument I could adduce against her
belief she had already weighed and found wanting. She was not a
superstitious woman, nor a hasty one, but one whose very mistakes
deserved respect, since she always took that course of action which
she believed to be wisest and best, even if it were to her own
disadvantage. I simply asked: “Why do you not get rid of her?”
“I have tried, but something frustrates every effort of that kind.
Robert objects to sale--it is unusual on this plantation. We once
offered her her freedom if she would go away; but she only looked as
if she scorned the freedom we could give, and laughed in a way that
chilled my blood.”
“She seems very insolent.”
“Insolent--that is a weak word! I sometimes think she is
birth-marked with impudence as she is with straight hair.”
“That hair, then, is a birth-mark? I thought it must be a wig.”
“She was born with it and with an insane craving to be white. When a
child, she used to scream and shriek over her blackness for hours at
a time. Mother Glen whipped that out of her.”
“It is a pity she did not whip out some of her other peculiarities.”
“Mother Glen was much to blame for some of them. You knew Paul Glen,
and what a strange, silent being he was--always absorbed in some
mysterious pursuits, roving from one lost region to another, coming
home, now and then, for a day and leaving, as if for a short time,
to be heard of after months of inquiry in Hyderabad, or Jerusalem,
or the heart of Guinea. Well, after he came home the last time he
made Asenath the subject of numerous psychological experiments. He
could mesmerize any one--what other gifts he had is not known; but
he called mesmerism child’s play. Mother Glen did not object to his
making this use of the girl, because she did not wish to cross Paul
and have him go away again. It is my belief that Asenath discovered,
through some of his experiments, the existence of an occult power in
herself. Before long, she had Paul completely under her control. I
had not yet come here; but Mother Glen told me about it, and that
any effort to break the spell made Paul perfectly furious. He taught
her to read, and to sing, and obeyed her in everything--think of it!
After a while he fell sick, but it was thought not dangerously.
Asenath nursed him, and he would not eat or drink unless she bade
him.”
“That, though, may have been a mere whim, such as the sick often
take.”
She shook her head. “You have not heard all: Two of the
servants--Mammy Clara and Belinda--declare that they overheard
Asenath forbid Paul ever to touch food again, and tell him that she
would pretend to bid him eat, but he must not do so. And it is
certainly true that he at last refused all sustenance and died of
starvation.”
“What a horrible idea!”