Once in the long ago that explicit announcement had flamed upon the
house front. It yielded to the more dignified form when Madam Tallafferr
took Mr. Boggs's top floor. She said that it was objectionable and that
she could not live over it, and the landlord, duly impressed, sacrificed
his prized alliteration rather than lose a lodger so elegant and
aristocratic. Mr. Boggs had a vast, albeit distant, reverence for
aristocracy, and he recognized in Madam Tallafferr a true exponent. So
the sign came down and she went up. With her went her furniture,
scanty but magnificent, a silver-inlaid lock box locally credited with
safeguarding the Pemberton family diamonds, Sempronius, who was fat and
black and a cat, and Old Sally, who was fat and black and a thief. For
five years Madam Tallafferr dwelt above the lethal Boggs, and at the end
of that period Our Square knew hardly more of her than on the day of her
arrival. She was polite, but resolutely aloof as befitted her station in
life.
For Mr. Boggs's lodger was all that is most glorious in Southern
lineage. Her full style and title was Madam Rachel Pinckney Pemberton
Tallafferr, with two Is, two fs, and two rs, if you valued her favor.
She was passionately devoted to the Lost Cause, and belonged to no less
than seven “Daughters-of” organizations with sumptuous stationery.
Mr. Boggs was very proud of her mail. He said she had the swellest
correspondence in Our Square. When letters arrived bearing her name
without the requisite double Is, fs, and rs, they were invariably
returned to the postman indorsed in a firm, fine hand: “No such
individual known here.” But if the letters appeared important, the
kindly and admiring Angel of Death used to intercept them and supply
the missing consonants from his own inkwell. In this way he accumulated
considerable information, and was able to apprise Our Square that his
lodger was superstitious, subscribed to a dream magazine, and belonged
to a Spirit Guidance Group. He darkly suspected the spirits of giving
her bad advice about investments.
In person Madam Tallafferr was spare, tall, and straight. Her age
when she first came to us was, to borrow caution from the war-zone
censorship, “somewhere in the sixties,” though to Old Sally she was
still “my young mist'ess.” Age had sharpened her personality, like her
features, to a fine point. She was, I think, the most serene, incisive,
and authoritative person I have ever encountered. Her speech was precise
and trenchant. She dressed always in elegant, rustling black. Mr. Boggs
said that she walked like a duchess. Quite likely. Though where Mr.
Boggs got his data, I don't know. Our Square is not extensively haunted
by persons of ducal rank. However, she became known to the locality,
behind her back, as the Duchess. She and Old Sally were supposed to live
in sumptuous luxury above the sign of the Destroyer. They had come to
Our Square for their sojourn because, generations before in the days
of its glory, madam's maternal grandfather had visited a distant
cousin in that same No. 17. From beneath the ominous signboard she made
occasional excursions, going westward and uptown, sometimes actually in
an automobile, and always escorted by Old Sally. It was understood (from
the boastful Mr. Boggs) that on such occasions his lodger was going into
Society.
Once, that Our Square knew of, she put her ante-bellum principles into
practice. She undertook disciplinary measures upon Old Sally, who in
a moment of exaltation had been bragging indiscreetly of past glories
“back in Fuhginia.” With a light but serviceable cane she corrected
that indiscretion. Yes, in this emancipated twentieth century, among
the populous, crowded habitations of our little metropolitan community,
within earshot of Terry the Cop, the conscientious and logical
slave-owner committed the startling anachronism of beating her slave.
Hearing the resultant groans, Mr. Boggs, the lethal, rushed up to his
top floor in great perturbation of spirit and burst in upon the finale
of the performance. From what he could observe the castigation was
purely formal and innocuous and the outcries merely a concession to
what was expected and proper in the circumstances. But when he made his
presence known, the Duchess in few cold and measured terms explained to
him his exact purport and significance in the cosmic scheme, which he
promptly perceived to bean approximate zero. “She wizened me up,” said
the Angel of Death, “like a last season's roach.”
One after another she wizened us all up sufficiently to convince Our
Square that she desired no personal share in its loosely communal,
kindly, and village-like life.
But though aloof she was not alien. As befitted her name and station,
she could in time of need descend from her remote Olympus above the
insecticidal Mr. Boggs and lend a hand. The first occasion was when
a sudden and disastrous spring epidemic of that Herod of diseases,
diphtheria, swept down upon Our Square, bringing panic in its train,
an insane and bestial panic which barred doors against the authorities,
against help, against medicine, against even our fiery and beloved
Little Red Doctor, who stands like a bulwark between us and death and
the fear of death. Then the Duchess appeared. She consulted briefly
with the Little Red Doctor. She put on the black silk of splendor, the
Pinckney laces and the Pemberton diamonds, and thus girded for the fray
went forth, a spare, thin-lipped, female St. George, against our local
dragon. Wherever that sane and confident presence appeared, panic gave
way to reason and mutiny to obedience. There were no heroics. She nursed
no dying children, saved no sudden emergency. She simply restored
and enforced courage through the authority of a valiant and assured
personality. Just before the Little Red Doctor collapsed, at the close
of the crisis, he delivered his estimate of her.
“Cold nerve and tradition. Our Square ought to put up a statue to
her--in steel.”
Against which may be set off the Duchess's complacent and bland summing
up of the Little Red Doctor:--
“He seems a worthy young man.”
In retort, Mr. Boggs, for once forgetting his reverential attitude,
indignantly piped: “God give you understanding!” The Duchess merely
lifted her eyebrows fractionally. Being a Pemberton by birth and a
Tallafferr by name, she perceived no necessity of understanding lesser
forms of life.
Yet she possessed understanding, too, and of a subtle, fine, and
profound kind. Otherwise she could never have done for Schepstein what
she did when Schep-stein's twenty-year-old Metta killed herself through
taking poison tablets (by mistake of course, as the Little Red Doctor
perjuriously certified). In his hour of lonely grief and shame, Our
Square turned its back upon the little cross-eyed, cross-grained,
agnostic trafficker in old debts, old furniture, old books, old stamps,
old silver, and anything else old which he could buy from the uninformed
and sell to the covetous; not because he had at one time or another got
the better of most of us in some deal and was the best-hated habitant
within the four inclosing streets, but because we did not know what
to do for him and feared his savage and cynical rebuffs. But when the
furtive hearse and the one carriage for Schepstein, which was to have
been the whole of little Metta's funeral, drew up at night before the
Schepstein flat, Madam Rachel Pinckney Pemberton Tal-lafferr descended
her steps, and crossed Our Square, rustling and in the high estate of
black silk and lace. She must have been watching. Behind her waddled Old
Sally with an armful of white roses. They met Schepstein at the foot
of his steps, following his dead. As the casket passed her, Madame
Tallafferr took the wealth of bloom from the servant and scattered its
snowy purity above the girl. At that the face of Schepstein, which had
been cold lead-gray, changed and flushed and softened, and he staggered
suddenly where he stood and might have fallen had not that strong old
woman thrust an arm under his to help him on his way. So two mourners
went in the lone carriage to little Metta's funeral.
Only long afterward was this known to Our Square. What established the
Duchess as a local heroine and an Olympian controller of destinies was
her handling of MacLachan the Tailor. MacLachan, on his black, alcoholic
days, was wont to sing “The Cork Leg” under circumstances which I have
set forth elsewhere. On this occasion he sang it, sitting on the coping
of the fountain with his legs in the water, and beating time with a
revolver which might or might not have been loaded. Nobody knew at the
time. Regarding MacLachan there was no such room for doubt. Between
stanzas he would announce his purpose of presently ending all his
troubles with a bullet, previous to which, candidates for coffins would
be considered in the order of their applications. In the natural logic
of events this was a case for Terry the Cop, but Polyglot Elsa of the
Elite Restaurant had early observed MacLachan's ready weapon, and with
more cunning than conscience had dispatched the intrepid Terry to the
farther end of the beat upon a purely fictitious Italian riot. For
reasons of her own she did not wish Terry punctured. Hence Our Square,
deprived of the official protection to which we were entitled, lurked
about in the night shadows, watching the balladist from a respectful
distance and wondering what would come next.
The Duchess came next. She rustled stiffly up to the fountain and bade
MacLachan hold his peace. Old Sally followed with a market basket.
MacLachan elevated his voice a pitch.
“Horror and fright were in his face.
The neighbors thought he was running a race;
He clung to a lamp-post to stay his pace,
But the leg broke away and kept up the chase,”
bellowed MacLachan. “I am not aweer,” he added, still rhythmic, though
with a change of meter, “that now and here, you possess any legal
authority in this Squeer!”
The Duchess pointed a stiletto-like finger at MacLachan. “You are a
rum-wastrel,” she pronounced severely.
MacLachan pointed his revolver at the Duchess, though rather waveringly.
“I am,” said he, “and proud of it.”
“You will do some harm with that firearm.”
“I will,” said MacLachan, “and glad to do it.”
“Go home to your bed and pray,” ordered the stiff old lady
contemptuously.
MacLachan regarded her gravely. “Fly, witch,” he said. “Awa' wi' ye on
yer broomstick. I have a silver bullet for yer life.”
“Give me that pistol,” she directed and stretched out a hand for it.
Quietly but firmly MacLachan shot her. At the same moment Old Sally hit
him expertly on the head with a bottle which she took from her market
basket. MacLachan slumped forward and took his whirling thoughts
carefully between his two hands. “I ha' done wrong,” he presently
concluded. “I ha' murdered my aged an' respectable aunt in cold blood.
Tak' my weepon an' hale me to the gallus.”
He passed his revolver over to a firm grasp. It was that of the Duchess.
She was bleeding very slightly, the merest trickle, from the ear which
MacLachan's bullet had grazed.
“Do not strike him again,” she bade Old Sally, composedly, and that
faithful amazon dropped her bottle and lost fifty cents' worth of
catchup.
“Come home before you get into trouble,” was the lady's command to the
now cowed and repentant tailor.
Whimpering and rubbing his head, he suffered himself to be marched back
to his Home of Fashion. So promptly was the retirement executed that
Terry the Cop never knew (officially) what had taken place. Unofficially
all of Our Square knew. And the following day a deputation of us marched
MacLachan around to No. 17 to apologize. As we stood on the stairway
awaiting her pleasure, we could hear Madam Rachel Pinckney Pemberton
Tallafferr directing Old Sally to inform the deputation that she had
not, to the best of her recollection, evinced any intention of receiving
on that particular day, and that she sent her compliments to us, and was
not at home.
“That's the high-toned way of saying she don't want to see us,” chirped
the admiring Mr. Boggs between gratification and apology. “Aristocrat to
the finger tips! Haven't I always told you so?”
He had, to the uttermost wearying of the flesh. But there came a time
when he boasted less assuredly of his top-floor grandeur. To the little
circle at the Elite Restaurant it became evident that something was
preying upon the blithe spirit of the Angel of Death, something having
to do with his Duchess. One evening, in a burst of confidence, he
unburdened himself to the Little Red Doctor and me. Madam was, he
feared, losing interest in the lofty social sphere to which she had
been called. Seldom, nowadays, did she go in her full regalia uptown.
Automobiles came no more to his flattered door. Worst of all, her
fascinating mail had dwindled. Where formerly there would be as many as
eight or ten envelopes per week, decorated with splendid and significant
insignia and inclosing proud and stiff cardboard, now there was but one
regular communication of the sort, the letter bearing the mystic double
circle of the Spirit of Guidance Group and, as that was postmarked
Brooklyn, Mr. Boggs had a small notion of its social import. Most of her
days the aristocratic lodger now spent at solitaire, with Sempronius,
the black cat, for critic. Mr. Boggs surmised sadly that the goddess of
his top-floor Olympus was growing old.
Very likely the phenomenon would have gone unexplained to this day
had not both the Rosser twins fallen into the fountain simultaneously,
contrary to their usual custom, which is for one of them to take the
careless plunge while the other dances frantically on terra firma
and yells till help comes. Madam Tallafferr once termed them “Death's
playmates,” because of this ineradicable passion for gambling on the
brink of the pool which is just deep enough to cover their two-year-old
heads. On this occasion Old Sally was the nearest aid. So she waddled
fatly over and hauled them out easily enough. Then, quite inexplicably,
she fell in herself and lay gently oscillating at the bottom of three
feet of water. Still more inexplicably, she refused to come to properly
when Mr. Boggs and I fished her out after not more than thirty
seconds' immersion. Also she looked queerly flattened and misshapen and
unnatural. So we ran her into the Little Red Doctor's office and awaited
the verdict.
It was a long wait. When at length the Little Red Doctor emerged there
was a wild kind of glint in his eye.
“D' you know what's the matter with that old black idiot?” he demanded.
“Martyr to her own hee-roism,” suggested Mr. Boggs, the romantic. “Is
she drowned?”
The Little Red Doctor snorted: “She's starved. That's what she is!”
“She's as fat as butter,” I protested.
“Fat like a sliver!” retorted the physician scornfully. “Padded!”
“What on earth should she pad for?” I cried.
“To fool her mistress. She's been going without food so as to buy more
for madam.”
At this information the eyes of the Destroying Angel bade fair to pop
from their sockets and injure the Little Red Doctor toward whom they
were violently protruding. “D' ye meantersay they're poor?” he gasped.
The Little Red Doctor outlined the history of the aristocratic pair,
as he had extracted it from Old Sally. In the extraction he had grossly
violated his professional ethics, as he shamelessly admitted, by giving
her a half glass of port, which, on her pinched stomach operated as a
tongue-loosener and betrayed her secret into his hands.
“I'm not going to have two aged females dying of want in Our Square just
for the sake of a paper ethic or two,” he declared rebelliously.
According to what he had learned, the Duchess had left Virginia to save
money and appearances, dragging along like a fetter a debt of honor
contracted by a worthless scamp of a brother. Of course it was not
in any sense a legal debt, but she, with her old-world ideas, had
considered it to be a blot upon the family 'scutcheon, and had been
paying interest, and bit by bit the principal, from her rigidly
conserved little income. Presently an investment which had been
indicated through the Spirit of Guidance Group's interpretation of one
of madam's dreams reduced its dividends and madam cut off a few of
her filial memberships. Another recommended by the dream magazine went
wholly wrong. More memberships were reluctantly resigned. Old Sally,
as head of the commissary, with full powers and responsibilities, was
compelled to operate on a radically reduced apportionment. Two items
took precedence of all else--the rent and the debt.
“You meantertellme,” chirped Mr. Boggs, “that Madam Tallafferr hasn't
had enough to eat?”
“I do not,” said the Little Red Doctor emphatically. “She has. Old Sally
hasn't. But her mistress doesn't know that.”
Mr. Boggs raised pious eyes to the ceiling. “Wotche going to do about
it?” he inquired. He was, I take it, reminding Providence of its
responsibility in the matter.
The Little Red Doctor wasn't for leaving it to Providence. “We've got to
find a way to help.”
“Charity? To madam?” twittered Mr. Boggs. “I'd hate to try it on.”
The Little Red Doctor scratched his large red head in perplexity. Then
he called Old Sally in.
“Now, Sally,” said he, “we're all friends of yours here.”
“Yessuh,” said Old Sally gratefully. “And friends of your mistress's.”
Old Sally bristled. “My young mist'ess ain' needin' no _frien's_ 'roun'
yeah. She hol's her haid _high!_”
“Well, admirers, then,” the Little Red Doctor tactfully amended. “The
point is, we want to help. Now, haven't you got some things there you
could sell without missing them? Some of that old furniture must be
valuable.”
“Sell the Tallaffeh homestead fuhni-ture!” cried Old Sally, scandalized.
“Well, perhaps madam has more of that old lace than she needs.”
“The Pinckney lace!” said Old Sally in a tone of flat finality, which
settled that point.
“Possibly, then, the diamonds,” I suggested diffidently.
At this Old Sally's lips, which had been pressed firmly inward, inverted
themselves. She began to blubber. The blubbering became a sobbing. The
sobs waxed to subdued howls. From the midst of the howls one coherent
and astounding statement emerged:--
“I stole'em.”
“Stole the Pemberton diamonds!” cried Mr. Boggs in consternation. His
structure of social splendor was fast disintegrating. “What did you do
with em?”
“Hocked,” wept that sorry and shrunken old negress. “Gossome cheap trash
in deir place to fool my young mist'ess. Her sight ain' good no mo'.”
“And the money went for food,” I suggested.
“Some. Rest I put on a dream figgah.”
“Policy,” explained the Little Red Doctor, who is wise in the ways of
the world. “She dreamed a number and put her money on it in a policy
shop. And it didn't come out. They never do.”
“Ef it had,” said Old Sally eagerly, “I'd'a' had money to pay dat
eighteen hund'ed an' fo'ty-five dollahs an' fifty cents debt, an' plenty
mo' besides.” Obviously she had been wearing that hair-shirt debt next
to her soul's skin. “But I must'a' disremembered my dream figgah.”
“Very likely,” agreed the Little Red Doctor gravely. “Come now, Sally;
think. Isn't there anything you could sell out of the house?”
The old face began to work again. “My young mist'ess she'll like to skin
me if I tell,” she whimpered.
“I'll cross your eyes like Schepstein's, if you don't,” threatened the
Little Red Doctor savagely.
A deep breath signified the termination of her struggle between two
fears.
“Tazmun,” she enunciated in a mystical voice.
We looked at each other, puzzled. “What?” queried Mr. Boggs.
“Tazmun. You know, tazmun.”
“What on earth is tazmun?”
“Tazmun,” she repeated determinedly. “Like whut you keep aroun' you
to fotch luck.” Seeing us still at a loss, she sought and evolved an
illustration.
“Rabbit foot's a tazmun.”
“Talisman,” I translated in a burst of inspiration.
“Dass it, tazmun.”
“But you can't sell a talisman,” objected the Little Red Doctor.
“Dis tazmun you can,” eagerly asserted Old Sally. “Wuth a heap o' money.
My young mist'ess keep it locked up in her jool box. Lawzee! How I has
tried to get my han's on'at ol' tazmun lettah.'Cause we sho' need de
money fo' it.”
“A letter?”
“Dass it. Aut'graph tazmun letter. Fum Gen'al Stonewall Jackson, wrote
to ol' Massah Pemberton, befo' de war.”
Mr. Boggs turned to me. “Dominie, you know everything.” (This is one of
the perquisites of professing the classics in Our Square; it has also
its drawbacks in the shape of disappointed expectations.) “Would that
kind of letter be worth real money?”
“It's a fo'tellin' lettah,” put in Old Sally eagerly. “It fo'tells de
wah mo' dan ten yeahs befo' de wah.”
In that case, I thought, it might be valuable historically. Anyway
it would do no harm to get an offer from an expert. But could “young
mist'ess” be induced to let it out of her hands? Young mist'ess's Old
Sally thought it doubtful. Young mist'ess, with her passion for the
things of the Lost Cause, held that document in sacred veneration. Once
a week she took it from its neatly addressed envelope to read it. Her
spirit guide had repeatedly advised her of its preciousness, and had
declared that it would eventually bring fortune and happiness to her, if
she would await the sign. What sign? Old Sally did not know. But she was
certain that a marvelous “tazmun” such as General Stonewall Jackson's
foretelling letter would furnish a sign beyond all misconception.
“Sign? She shall have a sign,” muttered the Little Red Doctor, who
is wholly without conscience in any matter where he can pamper his
insatiable appetite for help-ing others. Then to Sally: “But don't you
say a word to her of what you have told us.”
“Cotch me!” said that aged crone. “I don' want to get _skint_.”
How to come to negotiations with the secluded and exclusive Madam Rachel
Pinckney Pemberton Tallafferr was something of a problem. Strategy was
useless against that keen old woman. The direct way was decided upon and
Mr. Boggs was appointed emissary. He respectfully petitioned that the
lady grant a conference to the Little Red Doctor, myself, and himself
upon a matter of business. Prefacing her gracious consent with the
comment that she could not conceive what it was about, she set an hour
for receiving us. When we climbed to the top floor above the Angel of
Death sign, we found her a faded and splendid figure amid the faded
splendor of her belongings. She was clad in her stiffest black, she sat
in the biggest Tallafferr chair, her throat emerged from the delicate
and precious Pinckney lace, and there glittered in her innocent ears a
grotesque travesty upon the small but time-honored Pemberton diamonds.
I knew on sight what she would say. She said it: “To what am I indebted,
sirs, for this visit?”
The Little Red Doctor explained that we were interested, historically,
in a document which she possessed. The Duchess's sharp glance passed
over me to rest sardonically upon Mr. Boggs, seeming to inquire with
what historical interest that insecticidal nemesis might be credited;
then leaped upon and fixed the spokesman: “How, may I ask, did you learn
of this document?”
“Through a dream,” replied that shameless one.
Her glance livened. “Strange,” she murmured. “You dreamed--what?”
“That there was preserved at the top of this house a prophetic letter of
Stonewall Jackson's.”
The old lady's eyebrows twitched. He had touched the right chord of
superstition. Her voice was quite animated as she asked: “And you
actually expect this dream to be confirmed?”
“Pardon me; it is already confirmed. A few days after, I saw a newspaper
clipping, stating that such a letter was said to be in existence, but
that its whereabouts was unknown.”
I shuddered. Couldn't the reckless idiot foresee the next question? It
came, straight and sharp:--
“Have you the clipping?”
“I have.”