THE HYNDSES OF HYNDS HOUSE
When the fine weather had taken the kinks out of Judge Gatchell's
joints, he came to see us--a tall, thin, punctilious, saturnine old
gentleman with frosty Scotch eyes and the complexion of a pair of
washed khaki trousers. Chaos reigned in Hynds House then, and he was
forced to pick his way, like an elderly and cautious cat, between
piled-up chairs, tables, and rolls of carpet. In the most stately
manner he parted the tails of his skirted coat, seated himself upon
the sofa, placed his hat beside him, drew up the knees of his black
broadcloth trousers, took off and wiped his spectacles with great
thoroughness and deliberation upon a large silk handkerchief,
replaced them upon the middle of his Roman nose, cleared his throat,
pursed his lips, and drily but clearly talked business.
Great-Aunt Sophronisba would have left a much larger fortune had she
been less addicted to lawsuits. You wouldn't think an old soul of
almost a hundred could find very much chance to brew mischief,
would you? You didn't know Great-Aunt Sophronisba!
I was informed that the case of Scarlett vs. Geddes had been
automatically closed by the death of the plaintiff; _but_ I had
inherited along with Hynds House:
The case of Scarlett vs. The Vestry and Pastor of St. Polycarp's
Church, from whom Mrs. Scarlett sought to recover three
paintings--"Faith," "Hope," and "Charity"--which her father had
commissioned a visiting artist to paint, and had then presented to
St. Polycarp's, with the stipulation that they should "forever hang
in the sacred edifice, reminding the brethren of the Cardinal
Virtues of the Christian Religion."
They did hang in the church for a century. Then, when the Ladies'
Missionary Society was helping "do over" the parsonage, a faded
Faith, a dulled Hope, and a fly-specked Charity were transported
thither. Whereupon suit was immediately brought by the donor's
daughter, who averred that the church had lost all right and title
to the paintings by an action directly contrary to her father's
will, and insisted that they should be turned over to herself as
sole heiress. It was a nice little case, and called forth an
imposing array of counsel. Mrs. Scarlett had added a codicil to her
will, leaving _me_ her claim to the three paintings "fraudulently
withheld by the pastor and vestrymen of St. Polycarp's Church."
There was, too, the question of the lot on Lafayette Street, between
Zion Church on the one hand, and the Y.M.C.A. on the other. Both had
tried to buy it; and both had been refused with contumely. Instead,
that nice old lady ran up extra-sized bill-boards. Every time the
Zionist brethren looked out of their side windows of a Sunday, they
had ample opportunity to learn considerable about the art of
advertising on bill-boards. And if a circus happened to be coming to
Hyndsville, they could count on every child in their Sunday school
missing his lesson, unless the text, by a fortunate chance, happened
to touch upon the prophet Daniel.
And when the Y.M.C.A. people looked out of _their_ side windows,
Sophronisba's alluring bill-boards besought them to smoke only
certain cigarettes and to be sure to look for the trademark on their
playing-cards. Naturally, this made the Y.M.C.A. secretaries very,
very happy.
A weather-beaten picket fence protected the lot upon the street
front; the bill-boards formed the side attractions; and in the
center front was the monument, a stone of stumbling and offense. It
was a neat, plain granite obelisk, which bore this inscription:
This Stone is Erected
By the Affection
of
Sophronisba Hynds Scarlett
To Commemorate the Many Virtues
of
The Most Perfect Gentleman in Hyndsville
Her Bloodhound
NIPPER
"There should have been an open season for Sophronisba," Alicia said
with conviction. Then she put her head down and laughed.
The judge looked at her over his glasses, doubtfully. With a slight
edge to his voice he referred to the several prosecutions "for
wanton and wilful trespassings" upon the closed, barbed-wire lane
behind Hynds House. As the strip in question was not a public
thoroughfare, and Mrs. Scarlett had rock-ribbed titles covering it,
she could close it; and she did, greatly to the inconvenience of her
immediate neighbors, particularly Doctor Richard Geddes.
"There is something to be said for Mrs. Scarlett's methods," said
the judge dryly. "The Lafayette Street bill-boards are the
best-paying ones in Hyndsville. As to closing the lane, Miss Smith,
let me remind you that Doctor Geddes, although an estimable man and
a very able physician, is not at all backward in coming forward in a
quarrel. He greatly angered my late client."
"Nevertheless, that barbed wire comes down. He may use the lane
whenever he wants to," I decided.
The judge bowed. "And now," he said, politely, "let us take up the
case of Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, if you please. It was Mrs. Scarlett's
wish that you should be fully informed concerning Mr. Jelnik's
antecedents, that you might be on your guard."
"Against Mr. Jelnik? But, good heavens, why? Why?" I was beginning
to get angry. "Let me see: I am to make myself odious to Mr. Jelnik,
and I am to refuse to allow a physician to run his car through a
barren strip of weeds and sand, because they are her relatives and
she hated her relatives. I am to vex the souls of harmless
Christians with bill-posters of the world, the flesh, and the devil,
and I'm to pay taxes on a lot that's been turned into a cemetery for
a hound dog. I'm to fight St. Polycarp's Church, for a couple of
chromos I should probably loathe.--I don't like pictures of cardinal
virtues, anyhow. It altogether depends on who possesses them as to
whether I can stand for the cardinal virtues themselves."
"Faith looking up, and Charity looking down, and Hope hanging to an
anchor, _something_ like Britannia-Rules-the-Waves. Make the church
keep them, please, Sophy!" begged Alicia.
Judge Gatchell made an odd noise in his throat.
"One of my little granddaughters, taken to Saint Polycarp's by her
mother, asked, 'Mamma, who is that big woman up there with the
pick-axe?' And they told her," said the Judge, scathingly, "they
told her it was _Hope_!
"When the vestry came to me about the case, I reminded them that
Aholah and Aholibah were damned for doting upon paintings on the
wall, painted in vermilion, which in plain English is Scarlett!" A
covenanting gleam shot into his frosty eyes, and the old fighting
Scotch blood showed for a second in his lank cheek. He was a godly
man, and when he saw confusion in the ranks of the Philistines, he
rejoiced.
"I can't help who was damned," said I. "My job is to live in peace
with my neighbors. St. Polycarp's people may hang their Virtues
wherever they please, for all of me."
Did a faint, faint shade of regret flit over the parchment-like
face? It seemed so to me. But he said, composedly:
"You must act according to your best judgment. And now, please, let
us go back to Mr. Nicholas Jelnik."
We rather prided ourselves upon the possession of so pleasant a
neighbor, and we said so. He had helped us with our garden, and it
was he who selected the spot upon which the resurrected Love should
be set up.
"Ah, yes, the statue, brought from Italy by Richard Hynds, a great
grandfather of his. Did he tell you anything about Richard?" asked
the judge.
"Nothing."
"I shall have to go a long way back, more than a hundred years, to
make you understand," said the judge. "When I was a boy some of the
oldest folk here in Hyndsville used to say that Hynds House never
should have come to Freeman Hynds, Mrs. Scarlett's father; but to
Richard Hynds, his elder brother--that same Richard whose initials
are cut in the base of the statue he brought in his pagan
godlessness from Italy, and which his brother afterward buried,
wishing to remove all trace of him and his follies.
"You are to understand that it was the unwritten law of the Hyndses'
that this house should come to the eldest son. Primogeniture is of
course foreign to American ideas, but this is an old house, Miss
Smith. When it was built, American ideas hadn't been born. And the
Hyndses were a law to themselves.
"The then head of the house was James Hampden Hynds, a man of an
immense pride, a rigid sense of duty, and the nicest notions of
honor. He had two sons, Richard, and the younger brother, Freeman.
The daughters do not count: it is with these two sons we are
concerned.
"From every account Freeman Hynds was a good man, a quiet,
God-fearing, methodical man, attentive to his affairs, and
meticulously exact in all his dealings; not warm-hearted, perhaps,
but just. But as if the bad blood of the entire family had come to a
head in one man, Richard was born a roisterer and a spendthrift.
"He grew up a magnificent young scapegrace, reckless to the point of
madness, and with that inherent love of risk that is the very breath
of life to such men. Despite these defects there is no doubt that
his was one of those personalities that win love without effort. So
of course it was a foregone conclusion that he should win the girl
that his younger brother, among others, adored to distraction.
"His family hoped that his love for his young wife would change him
for the better. But there was something tamelessly wild in Richard
Hynds. He would have done very well, very well indeed, in the
_Golden Hind_ with Drake, or in the _Jesus_ with Morgan. He did not
fit in a gentler generation, and a mild life had no charm for him.
Gossip buzzed with his name, even in a day when gentlemen were
permitted to behave pretty much as they pleased.
"Up to this time there had never been anything altogether
unpardonable charged against him. But one fine morning the Hynds
jewels were missing. Remember that the Hyndses had always been a
wealthy and powerful family. The theft of those jewels was no
trumpery affair. For generations they had been adding to that
collection--sometimes a lustrous pearl, sometimes a flawless
emerald; once it was a sapphire that had belonged to a French queen,
once a pair of rubies that had hung in the ears of a duchess beloved
of King Charles.
"Richard's mother happened to be a meek and quiet body, deeply
religious, something of a Quakeress, so she wore them but seldom. It
was upon the occasion of a ball to be given in honor of Freeman's
twenty-first birthday that the question of what jewels his mother
should wear came up, and the strong-box in which they were kept was
opened. Only the settings remained.
"When the clamor quieted and sane questions began to be asked,
suspicion fastened upon Richard Hynds. His affairs were chaotic, his
needs imperative and desperate. He had been heard to ask his mother
if she intended wearing what he called 'the Hynds fortune' at
Freeman's ball. He knew, of course, where they were kept--in the
anteroom of his mother's apartment. It was not only possible but
easy for him to gain access to them.
"Let us consider the case without prejudice: Here is a young man--a
gambler, a wastrel--with pressing debts, and clamoring creditors
threatening what might be considered dishonor. Within reach of this
young man's hand are certain very valuable properties which he might
even consider his own, since they would in time descend to him. His
mother's resources are exhausted, his father's heart steeled against
further advancements. Cause and effect, you see--debts: missing
jewels.
"The case not only formed two factions in public opinion; it split
the Hynds family itself. His two sisters, and his cousin Jessamine,
raised in this house, believed him guilty. His mother and his wife
believed in his innocence and refused to hear a word against him.
These two things only did Richard Hynds salvage in that utter wreck
and catastrophe--his mother's faith and his wife's love.
"He lost his father's. This was a man, who, under his pleasant
exterior of a landed gentleman, was rigid and inflexible. He had
already borne a great deal, remember; but this was disgrace, an
indelible stain upon a stainless name. Therefore this father, who
was at the same time a just and good man, disinherited his favorite
child and eldest son. House, slaves, lands, money, the great
position of the head of a powerful family, came to Freeman Hynds,
my late client's father, born five years later than his brother, on
the twentieth day of September, 1785--a long time ago! a long time
ago!
"Richard was disgraced, and a beggar. And it seemed that the rod
that had lain in pickle for the Hyndses for their pride, was brought
forth to scourge them all. For Richard, desperate, distracted,
careless of what happened to him, rode out one day through a pelting
rain. Result, congested lungs; the poor wastrel, who had no wish to
live, was soon satisfactorily dead.
"When James Hampden got that news, he rose up from his chair, laid
the book he had been reading--it was Baxter's 'Saint's Rest'--down
on the library table and fell as if lightning had struck him.
Apoplexy, it was said; a thrust through the heart, I should call it.
Richard the sinner was none the less Richard his first-born.
"Hard upon the heels of these two disasters came a third, the case
of Jessamine Hynds. This Jessamine--a highly gifted, imperious
creature, proud as Lucifer, after the manner of the Hyndses--was an
orphan, reared in Hynds House. She was some several years older than
her cousins, to whom she was greatly attached. The trouble so preyed
upon her that she became melancholy, and one fine day disappeared
and was never afterward found. There was great hue and cry made for
her, and men riding hither and yon, for this was a Hynds woman, and
her story touched popular imagination, so that she is supposed,"
said the lawyer dryly, "to wander around Hynds House o' nights,
crying for Richard and searching for the lost jewels.
"After the death of James Hampden Hynds, it was discovered that he
had added a singular enough codicil to his will. This codicil
provided that in the event the jewels were found intact, and Richard
Hynds's innocence thereby incontrovertibly established, Hynds House
as it stood should revert to him as eldest son, after the custom of
the family. _But_ until the jewels were recovered, Richard and his
heirs were to have exactly--nothing. And nothing is what Richard and
his heirs got."
"And was he really guilty?" breathed Alicia. Her sympathy was
instantly with Richard. That is exactly like Alicia, who is sorry
for the fatted calf, and the Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea, and
Esau swindled out of his birthright; had she been one of the wise
virgins she would have trimmed the lamps of all the foolish ones and
waked them up in time.
"In theory," said the judge, "a man is innocent until he is proved
guilty. In practice, he is guilty until he can prove his innocence."
"And was nothing, absolutely nothing, ever heard or known
further?--nothing that would justify his mother's faith, or comfort
his poor young wife's heart?"
"There was but one incident to which even the most credulous could
attach the slightest importance. You shall judge for yourself
whether it deserved any. Freeman Hynds, riding about the plantation
after his habit, was thrown from his horse and died from the
injuries sustained. He recovered consciousness for a few minutes
before he died; some said he never really regained it. Be that as it
may, the dying man cried out, in a voice of great anguish and
affliction: '_Richard! Brother Richard! The jewels--the jewels!_' He
struggled to say more, and failed; looked into the concerned faces
around him, with the awful look of the soul about to depart;
struggled to raise himself; and fell back upon his pillow a corpse.
"Some--they were in the majority--said, sensibly enough, that the
pain and disgrace of his brother's downfall had haunted the poor
gentleman's death-bed, and occasioned that last sad cry. Some few
said he had wished to confess a thing heavy upon his conscience, who
had taken his brother's place as Jacob took Esau's. Richard's wife,
of course, was of these latter. She went to her grave a passionate
believer in the innocence of her husband, whom she averred to have
been a deeply wronged and cruelly used man; and, for heaven's sake,
who do you suppose she claimed had wronged him? Freeman! She
couldn't prove anything; she hadn't the ghost of a clue to hang the
ghost of an accusation upon; yet, womanlike, she clung to her
notion, and she taught it to her son as one teaches a holy creed.
"The Hyndses were excellent haters. Freeman's daughter, born into an
atmosphere of family disruption, abhorred the very memory of her
uncle, and hated her uncle's wife, the woman who doubted and led
others to doubt her father's honesty. This hatred she discovered for
Richard's son, who, as he grew older, referred to Freeman as 'my
Uncle Judas.'
"This second Richard became in time a highly successful physician, a
man honored and beloved by this community. There was no wildness in
_him_, nor in his son, the third Richard. His granddaughter Sarah
Hynds married Professor Doctor Max Jelnik, the celebrated Viennese
alienist, whom she met abroad. Your next-door neighbor is Sarah's
son, born somewhere in Hungary, I believe. Both the young man's
parents are dead, and I understand he has led a vagrant and
irresponsible life, preferring to rove about rather than follow his
father's profession, to which he was educated.
"My late client, indeed, held that he had inherited the deplorable
characteristics of the first Richard. She asserted--she allowed
herself great freedom of speech--that you can't make a silk purse
out of a sow's ear. It displeased her that he should come to
Hyndsville. She thought it showed a malignant nature and a peculiar
shamelessness that he chose to reside next door to Hynds House, from
which his great-great-grandfather had been so ignominously driven.
Her first meeting with the young man bred in her an ineradicable
dislike."
Now what really happened is this: The fences having been neglected,
and in consequence fallen down, and the hedge broken in many places,
Mr. Jelnik, just come to Hyndsville, thoughtlessly and perhaps
ignorantly crossed the sacred Scarlett boundaries. Up-stairs behind
her blind, like an ancient spider in her web, the old lady spied
him. She flung open the window and leaned out.
"Who are you that prowl about other peoples' yards like a thievish
cat?" she demanded peremptorily.
The young man looked up, uncovering his beautiful head.
"I am Nicholas Jelnik. And I pray your pardon, Madame: I did not
mean to intrude," and he made as if to go.
"Jelnik!" said she, in a hoarse and croaking voice. "Jelnik! Aha! I
know your breed! I smell the blood in you--bad blood! rotten bad
blood! You've a bad face, young man: a scoundrelly face, the face of
a fellow whose grandfather robbed his house and shamed his name! And
why have you come near Hynds House, at this hour of the day? He, he,
he! _I_ know, _I_ know!"
Lost in astonishment, Jelnik remained staring up at her. The
apparition of this venerable vixen, who had hated Richard's son and
now hated him of a later generation, who had seen those that had
talked to Richard himself in his ill-fated lifetime, so stirred his
imagination that it deprived him of utterance. All he could do was
to stand still and stare and stare and stare. He had never seen
anybody so old--she was nearly a hundred, and looked a thousand--and
he stared at the old, old, wrinkled, yellow face, the unhuman face,
in which the beady black eyes burned with wicked fire; at the nearly
bald head, thinly covered with a floating wisp or so of wool-like
white hair; at the claw-like, shriveled, yellow hands, the stringy
neck, the whole sexless meager wreck of what had been a woman. It
was a stare made up of wonder, and instinctive dislike, and human
pity, and young disgust. She raised her voice:
"Did you not see those signs? Scoundrel, puppy, foreign-born poacher,
didn't you see my sign-boards?" And as she looked down at
him--Richard's blood alive and red in a youthful and beautiful body:
and _she_ what she was--she fell into one of those futile and
dreadful fits of rage to which the evil old are subject; and mumbled
with her skinny bags of lips, and shook and nodded her deathly head,
and waved her claw-like hands, screeching insults and abuse.
The pity died out of Jelnik's face. He regarded her with his
father's eyes, the calm, impersonal, passionless gaze of the trained
alienist. She was an unlovely exhibition, to be studied critically.
In some subtle manner she understood, for she jerked herself out of
her anger, and fell silent, regarding him with a glance as
brilliantly, deadly bright as a tarantula's. The cold, relentless
hate of that glance chilled him. He forced himself to bow to her
again, and to beat a dignified retreat, when his inclination was to
take to his heels like a school-boy caught pilfering apples.
The next morning a bailiff presented Mr. Nicholas Jelnik with a
notice forbidding him to enter the grounds of Hynds House without
the written permission of the owner, and threatening prosecution
should he disobey.
"The Hyndses, as I have said, are good haters," finished Judge
Gatchell.
"And so she left Hynds House to me," said I without, I am afraid,
much gratitude.
"It was hers, to dispose of as she chose." The lawyer spoke crisply.
"If you have any scruples, dismiss them. My late client understood
that it was far better for the estate to fall into the hands of a
sensible woman like yourself than into the keeping of a young man
with what foolish people like to call the artistic temperament,
which in plain English means a person who can't earn his salt in any
useful, sensible business.
"You doubt this? Let us consider this same artistic temperament and
its results," continued the judge, making a wry face. "Once or twice
it has been my bad fortune to meet it. One trifling scamp I have in
mind, painted. A house, a fence, a barn, even a sign-board? Not at
all, but messes he called 'The Sea,' one doesn't know why, save that
the things slightly resembled raw oysters. However, the women raved
over him. His laundress and his landlady had good cause to rave!
"He wrote, too. A text-book, a title, a will, a deed, a business
letter? Far from it! He wrote _poetry_, if you please! The little
wretch wrote _poetry_! That's what the artistic temperament leads a
man to! Bah! I hate, I despise, I abhor, the artistic temperament!"
We looked at the judge, open-mouthed. "Who would have thought the
old man to have had so much blood in him?"
"There have been times," admitted the judge, subsiding, "when I
radically disagreed with my late client; when I opposed her
strongly. But when she willed her whole estate to you, Miss Smith,
instead of to Nicholas Jelnik, I heartily approved. Understand, I
have no personal bias, no animosity against this young man; but he
is, I am told, more or less of an artist, and one might as well
leave an estate to an anarchist at once. I have expressed this
opinion to the town at large, and I seldom express my opinion
publicly," finished the old jurist stiffly.
I heard that opinion with mingled emotions.
"But we like Mr. Jelnik," I said at last. "The injunction against
him doesn't hold water. Personally, I feel like apologizing to him."
"Oh, no! One can't afford to cuddle an old vendetta, as Abishag
dry-nursed old King David. I always _hated_ Abishag!" Alicia said
naïvely.
"My late client," said the judge enigmatically, "hadn't counted on
_you_." He almost succeeded in looking human when he said it, and
his eyes upon Alicia weren't at all frosty. Then he folded his
papers, replaced them in his wallet, wiped his glasses, shot his
cuffs, hoped we'd find Hynds House all we'd hoped, hoped the town
would be to our liking, hoped he could be of further service to us,
bowed creakily, and took his departure.
"Sophy," said Alicia, after a long pause, "if ever I had to
rechristen this house, I'd call it Hornets' Nest."
* * * * *
We had not attended church on our first Sunday, because we were too
tired. But on our second Sunday we plucked up heart of grace and
went to St. Polycarp's.
The old town wore an air of Sabbath peace and quietness infinitely
soothing to the spirit. People passed and repassed us. We knew they
knew who we were. The old gentlemen, indeed, bowed to us with
stately uncoverings of the head; the rest regarded us with the sort
of impersonal and perfunctory interest one bestows upon
uninteresting passing strangers. Nobody spoke to us, though the eyes
of the young men were not unaware of Alicia's fairness.
In a great city, of course, one takes that sort of thing for
granted; but in this small town, where everybody knew and spoke to
everybody else, the effect was chilling.
"Talk about the sunny South!" murmured Alicia. "Why, my teeth want
to chatter!"
During the services I was conscious of covert glances in our
direction, but whenever a pair of feminine eyes met mine, they slid
off like lizards and glided another way, with calculated Christian
indifference. They weren't hostile, nor unfriendly: they were just
deliberately indifferent. Nobody had the faintest notion of being
heedful of us strangers among them; and I should be sorry for angels
who expected to be entertained unawares in South Carolina!
When the congregation had filed out and gone about its leisurely
business, the minister and his wife came forward to greet us. They
were a bit nervous, remembering the diabolic uproar about Faith,
Hope, and Charity. Mr. Haile was a mild-mannered little man of the
saved-sheep type, with box-plaited teeth and a bleating voice. His
wife had the worried face and the anxious eyes of the minister's
helpmeet, and the painfully ready smile for newcomers who might, or
might not, prove desirable parishioners.
She wanted to be nice to us as a Christian woman to women, but not
too nice as the minister's wife of a church whose members looked
upon us as interlopers. I had deputed Judge Gatchell to inform the
trustees that the suit was dropped. I suppose Mrs. Haile was timid
about broaching the delicate subject, for she ignored it with a
nervous intensity that made me feel sorry for her. She and Mr. Haile
would call just as soon as it was convenient for us to receive
visitors; and then they shook hands with us, and I think they
breathed a sigh of relief.
"Oh, Sophy! And we've got to keep on going there!--next Sunday, and
Sunday after next Sunday, and maybe every Sunday after that until we
die! Perhaps after a while some of them will bow to us, or maybe
even say, 'How do you do?' _but_ we'll feel as if we'd been put in
cold storage every time we enter that door!" wailed Alicia.
"It is our Father's house," I reminded her.
"But I don't want to be made to feel like a spanked child, in
anybody's house!" Alicia said, resentfully.
"You say that because you're Irish."
"You say I say it because I'm Irish because you're English." Then
she screwed up her mouth like a coral button, and squinted her eyes:
"I'm Irish, and you're English, and we're both American. Sophy,
let's join my Irish and your English to our Yankee, and teach this
town a lesson!"
"Barkis is willin'. But in the meantime let's go home and see what
Mary Magdalen has for lunch."
We walked slowly, enjoying the calm, lovely late-summer day.
Hyndsville at its best was a big, green, sprawling old town, a
quaint, unpainted, leisurely, flowery, bird-haunted place, with
glorious trees, and do-as-they-please, independent gardens. Nobody
ever seemed to be in a hurry, and at first we used to wonder how
they ever got anything done, or kept pace with the moving world; yet
they did. Only, they did it without haste and without noise. And
they were _always_ polite. Though they should take your substance,
your reputation, or even, perhaps, your life, they would do it like
ladies and gentlemen.
We paused a while, just inside the big brick-pillared gate, and
looked up the oak-arched garden path toward our house. Of course one
can't expect an old fortress of a brick house that's been neglected
for more than three quarters of a century to look spick and span
inside of a brief fortnight, but already Hynds House was sitting up,
so to speak, and taking notice.
Life had begun to flow back into it. Mary Magdalen had brought a dog
with her--a yellow dog of unknown ancestry, of shamefaced demeanor,
a ropy tail, splay feet, and a rolling eye; named, she and heaven
alone knew why, Beautiful Dog.
He shunned Alicia and me because we were white people: Beautiful Dog
was intuitively aware that colored people's dogs must meet white
people with suspicion, aloofness, and reserve. When we fatuously
sought to make friends with him, he tucked his tail between his
legs, and shivered as if we made goose-flesh come out on his spine;
and once when I took him by his rope collar he fell down and
shrieked. But just let Mary Magdalen roll out an unctious, "Whah is
yuh, Beaut'ful Dawg?" and his ears and tail went up, he curveted,
and made uncouth movements with his splay feet, and grinned from ear
to ear.
Doctor Geddes's Mandy had brought over the black kittens and their
mother. Mary Magdalen made sure of their staying at home by the
simple process of buttering their paws. In South Carolina, when you
want a cat to stay in your house, you butter its paws and let it
lick the butter off leisurely, the while you whisper in its left
ear: "_Stay in my house for keeps, cat!_" The cat will ever
thereafter play Ruth to your Naomi.
Our cat was Mrs. Belinda Black, and her children were Potty Black
and Sir Thomas More Black, this last being a creature of noble mien
and a meditative turn of mind.
"Homage and praise to Bast, the cat-headed, the wise one, the great
goddess!" purred Alicia, stroking Mrs. Belinda Black's satiny head.
"And may Sekhet the Cat of the Sun aid me, a devotee at her shrine,
to butter the paws of some two-legged cats in Hyndsville!"
"You-all's dinnah 's waitin'." Mary Magdalen stubbornly held to the
notion that any meal eaten between breakfast and night was dinner;
lunch being sandwiches and fried chicken taken out of a basket at
church picnics and eaten out of one's hand, or lap, for choice.
"What was de text to-day, Miss Sophy? Ah sort o' likes to chaw easy
on a mout'ful o' text whilst Ah 'm washin' up mah dishes."
We gave her the text, which happened to be one that fills every
negro's heart with undiluted joy: "O ye dry bones, hear the word of
the Lord." And we had the satisfaction of hearing her rolling out,
to the clatter of pans and pots:
"Dry bones in de valley,
Ma-a-ah, La-a-awd!
Whut yuh gwine do wid dem dry bones,
Ma-ah-ah La-a-a-w-wd"
while we went up-stairs to change our frocks. We were still sharing
one room then, finding it more convenient. And there, in front of
our door, in a nest of ferns and mosses, was a great cluster of wild
flowers, summer's last and autumn's first children. They had been
gathered in no ordered garden, but taken from the skirts of the
fields and the bosom of the woods; and Carolina the opulent, the
beautiful, the free-handed, does not deck herself niggardly.
Alicia's face that had been so wistful lighted with a sudden joy.
She gave a happy cry:
"Ariel!" she cried, "Ariel! Oh, what a heavenly thing, what a
_human_ thing to do! And to-day, too, just when we need a little bit
of friendliness!" She looked around with a queer, shy smile.
"Ariel!" she called, "Ariel, no matter who comes, or goes, or what
happens in Hynds House, _we_ believe in you. Don't leave us, Ariel!
Maker of music, bringer of blossoms, stay!"