GLAMOURY
Alicia insisted that we were living in a fairy-story, and had better
enjoy every shining minute while it lasted. But, as I pointed out,
the cost of restoring Hynds House was appallingly real, so real that
it left a big, big hole in the bank-account. It is true that we who
never really had had a home since we were little children, and then
the most modest sort, had gotten such a home as comes to but few.
But--one doesn't get something for nothing!
We had done our part for Hynds House; now Hynds House had to do its
part for us. It had to earn its keep, and ours. We had known that
from the beginning, and Alicia mapped out the entire plan of how
it was to be done; a plan which I at first looked upon as the
fairy-storiest part of the whole thing!
To-night we sat facing each other across the library table, with a
great pile of receipted bills between us, the total of which made me
feel pale. Alicia, however, was cheerfully figuring away on her own
hook; and presently she shoved a list of addresses across to me.
The first two were the head of our old firm, and the one celebrity
I had ever seen or spoken to, a novelist and lecturer with
record-breaking best sellers to his account. He once had some
business dealings with our firm, and I attended to the details,
thereby winning his cantankerous approval. He had very bad manners,
of which he was totally unashamed, and very good morals, of which
he was somewhat doubtful, as they didn't smack of genius; a notion
that he was a superior sort of Sherlock Holmes, having the
truffle-hound's flair for discovering and following up clews and
unraveling mysteries, most of which didn't exist outside of his own
eager mind; and such a genuine passion for old and beautiful things
as Balzac had. It was upon this last foundation that Alicia was
building.
"He has written that the average wealthy modern home is a
combination of Pullman Palace Car and Gehenna. And that the
so-called crime wave which sweeps recurrently over American cities,
is very likely nothing more than the inevitable reaction of our
damnable house decorations upon our immature intellects." Alicia
repeated it dreamily. "I have chosen for him the upper southwestern
room with the sunset effect and the pineapple four-poster. It has a
claw-footed desk of block mahogany, three hand-carved walnut chairs,
two Rembrandt prints, and a French prie-dieu with a purple velvet
cover embroidered with green and gold swastikas. He has a purple
soul with gold tassels on it, himself, Sophy, and he should be
willing to pay a thumping price for it. That room is worth at least
two lectures and one best seller, not to mention what he'll get out
of the rest of the house."
"First catch your hare," I reminded her skeptically.
"First set your trap, and you can reckon on hare nature to do the
rest. A few good photographs of this house, along with the
information that it runs back to the beginning of things American
and has never been exploited, will fetch him at a hand-gallop. Add a
hint that we have our own brand of family spook, and you couldn't
keep him away if you tried. The only trouble is that he may walk off
with your brass tongs up his trouser-leg, or a print or two tucked
under his shirt."
We had decided that we would have a series of photographs of the
house, with all particularly good points stressed; such as, say, the
library fireplace, the fan-light window at the end of the upper
hall, the pillared front porch, and a corner of the drawing-room.
Also--and this was the great thing, calling for a heavy outlay--we
would advertise in some two or three of the ultra periodicals, the
advertisement to carry a stunning little cut of our front porch. We
decided to run the risk of expending more money than we could really
afford, because the people that advertisement was meant to attract
would in the long run pay for it.
"Our prices will be predacious, piratical, prohibitive, and
profitable. We shall stop just this side of highway robbery.
Therefore our demands will be cheerfully, nay, willingly met; and
everybody, including you and me, Sophy, will be satisfied and
happy!"
"_Boarders!_" said I, limply, "_boarders_--in Hynds House!"
"Perish the thought! We have possibly the most interesting and
beautiful old house in America. It's one of the few really historic
houses left in the whole South. It has seen the Indians, it has seen
the British, it has seen Sherman's men, and escaped them all. Well,
then, we propose to allow certain of the elect, who can afford it,
to come and live in Hynds House for a while. They will be willing to
pay a round sum for the privilege. That's all."
"Oh, is it, indeed! And will they?"
"Won't they, though!" Alicia spoke confidently. "Now draft me a
letter to the Head, setting forth the many reasons why himself, his
wife, their car, and her Chow, can't afford to miss Hynds House on
their trip South this season. You might explain that Mary Magdalen
is our cook, and the Queen of Sheba our hand-maid. Also, please help
me decide in which of these magazines we had better advertise
first."
"But the cost!" I wailed. "We have spent so sinfully much already!
And the place is eating its head off, with nothing coming in. Since
I took down those bill-boards, actually the price of that Lafayette
Street lot has gone down. Nobody seems anxious to buy it any more."
"Change your mind about selling it; hint that you're considering an
ice-cream parlor and a movie theater," said the girl who'd been the
worst file-clerk. "In the meantime, Sophy, you have sense enough to
understand that we've spent so much money we've got to spend more to
get some of it back.--I vote we start in this one, Sophy," and she
laid her finger upon the most expensive and ultra of all the
magazines!
"But that is for _millionaires_!" said I, aghast.
"So is Hynds House," insisted Alicia, coolly. "How much did you say
was in the bank?"
I was afraid to hear my own voice mention that insignificant sum;
for, when one considered Hynds House, the little we had was
beggarly; so I wrote it down, and pushed the paper across to her.
Instead of looking scared, Alicia Gaines looked delighted!
"All that?" And round chin on pink palm, she fell to studying me
with as much curiosity as if she had just met me and were puzzled to
get at the real Me. Then she nodded, and snatching a sheet of paper,
began to figure again, pausing every now and then to regard me with
slitted eyes. At the end of ten strenuous minutes she pushed the
paper over to me, and watched me grow all but apoplectic as I
studied it. It was an entertaining list, beginning with a hat and
ending with silk stockings. With all sorts of wonderful things in
between--for me, you understand. Things like "One brown frock, with
something cloudy-yellow about it." ("Sophy, blondes can stand yellow
wonderfully well; I suggest a bronze, instead of a duller brown.")
"Why, I have plenty of clothes!" I protested.
"Business-woman-of-a-certain-age, general-utility,
will-stand-wear-and-tear clothes. Not a stitch of Hyndshousey
clothes among them. No _happy_, glad-I'm-alive-and-a woman clothes.
Here's where you cease to look merely useful, respectable, and
responsible, and begin to look the Lady of the Castle. There's quite
as much philosophy and good morals in looking like a butterfly as
there is in resembling a caterpillar."
"_Why_ should I have more clothes?" I demanded.
"Because." And she added, with a fleeting smile, "And then catch
your hare."
"Alicia!" said I, scandalized. "Alicia Gaines, do you realize I am
thirty-six years old?"
"You wouldn't be if you just had sense enough to forget to remember
it." This resentfully.
"No? Would you mind telling me how I might become such an
accomplished forgetter?"
"Why, there's nothing easier! When you really wish to forget to
remember something, Sophy, all you have to do is to remember to
forget it!" And then, with real earnestness: "Sophy, it's the better
part of wisdom to look like the job you want to hold down. Your job
is holding down Hynds House. And we are up against things, Sophy,
you and I. We have got to win out because it means--all this." Her
eyes swept over the beautiful old room with an immense pride and
affection.
"We have just _got_ to keep Hynds House, if only to teach these
Hyndsville women a lesson." She spoke after a pause. "Sophy, they
flatten their ears and arch their backs at sight of us; and whenever
there's a good chance for a wipe of a paw, why, we catch it across
the nose. Now I," she admitted frankly, "am naturally full of cat
feelings myself. I will not do what _you_ want to do--walk off
looking aggrieved, after the fashion of Old Dog Tray. I will repay
in kind, retaliate in true lady-cat manner. And these,"--she began
to smile--"these shall be our weapons of offense and defense. It
will be a gorgeous struggle; however, my forebears came from
Kilkenny!"
I laughed, but indeed I did not feel any too optimistic. Holding
down Hynds House was no easy task, and the town was not disposed to
make it easier for us. While we had been busy renovating, while our
hands were so full of work that every minute was occupied, we hadn't
felt our isolation. It was only when we had time to pause and look
around us, that the stubborn, quiet hostility of the town's attitude
to the new owner of Hynds House was borne in upon us.
Not that anything overt was done by any one. Nor was there the
slightest breach of politeness: they were as punctiliously polite
when chance brought us into contact with them, as well-bred folk are
to strangers whose further acquaintance they have no desire to
cultivate. The vestrymen of St. Polycarp's had expressed their
appreciation of Miss Smith's action in promptly dropping the suit
against them; she was welcome to come and worship God in their
church, and to do her duty by the heathen. Such ladies as happened
to belong to the missionary society spoke to us pleasantly in the
church vestibule. The minister and his wife were as sincerely,
duteously courteous. But that was all. Not a house in Hyndsville
opened its doors to us. They simply would not accept the interloper
that the malignity of the Scarlett Witch had put in possession of
that which should have gone back to Richard's last heir, or failing
him, to Richard Geddes.
The fact that these two descendants of the Hyndses did not seem to
see and do their duty as members of that illustrious family, but
shamelessly made friends with the aliens, did not raise us in the
town's estimation. Quite the contrary. Nor were they even faintly
angry with Mr. Jelnik and Doctor Geddes, who were, so to say,
unsuspicious Israelites coaxed into the Canaanitish camp.
I admit that I considered Doctor Richard Geddes undiplomatic in his
behavior. It never once occurred to that lordly gentleman, who had
had his own way ever since he was born, that he should stop now to
consider the feelings or the prejudices of Hyndsville. It wasn't
that he meant to champion _us_. It never occurred to him that we
needed championing. He simply liked us because he liked us. We
pleased him. That sufficed, so far as he was concerned.
I had begun really to like the doctor, myself. But I wished to
heaven he weren't, at that critical time, so tactless. For instance,
I have been peremptorily taken by an elbow and led willy-nilly to
his waiting car, on Lafayette Street, which is our principal
thoroughfare, under the calm, appraising, watching eyes of all
feminine Hyndsville. Not one of whom would fail to remark, casually:
"Oh, _did_ you see that Miss Smith with Doctor Geddes this morning?
Men are so unsuspicious, aren't they!"
I couldn't explain the situation to him, of course, any more than I
could explain to Mr. Nicholas Jelnik that _his_ presence in Hynds
House, while pleasing to us, was disquieting and displeasing to
others.
It was to be expected that this handsome young man, who kept his
affairs so strictly to himself that nobody knew anything about them,
should arouse the avid curiosity and hold the breathless interest of
a little town where everybody had always known everybody else's
business.
Why had he come to Hyndsville? To find the Hynds jewels, after a
century? Didn't he know that the Scarlett Witch had the eye of an
eagle for the glitter of gold and would long since have discovered
whatever of value had been in Hynds House? Why didn't he consult
older members of the community, who could furnish him with
immensely interesting side-lights on the Hyndses?
Mr. Jelnik never explained. He didn't ask anybody anything. He
didn't even employ Hyndsville negroes, who could be expected to
gossip: his household consisted of a stately bronze-colored
man-servant who was reputed to be a pagan, and the huge wolf-hound,
Boris, his constant companion.
When Doctor Geddes was delicately sounded, the big man explained
that he himself had but recently made the acquaintance of his young
kinsman; Jelnik was a first-rate chap, declared the doctor;
immensely clever, as befitted his father's son; altogether likeable,
but a bit of a lunatic, like all the Hyndses.
It was natural, too, that the young ladies in a small town where
young men are at a premium should have noticed this one particularly
and expected a like interest on his part. The inexplicable Jelnik
failed to exhibit it. There was but one house that he visited, and
that was Hynds House.
Whatever his reasons for this may have been, and the town named
several, the fact remains that Hynds House would never have been so
beautiful, the restoration wouldn't have been so nearly perfect, had
it not been for the critical taste of Mr. Jelnik. He had the
European knowledge of beautiful things, and, toward the finer graces
of life, the attitude of Paris, of Rome, of Vienna, rather than of
New York, of Chicago, or of, say, Atlanta.
There was a glamour about the man. Whatever he did or said had an
indefinable, delightful significance; what he left undone was full
of meaning. His mere presence ornamented and colored common moments
so that they glowed, and remained in the memory with a rainbow light
upon them. He was never hurried or flurried, any more than sun and
sky and trees and tides are; and he was just as vital, and quite as
baffling.
We accepted him at first as part of the fairy-story into which
Destiny had pitchforked us. He belonged to Hynds House, so to speak,
and there one might meet him upon common ground. But sometimes when
I happened to glance up I would find him watching us with those
reflective eyes that were so full of light and at the same time so
inscrutable. And then he would smile, his Dionysiac smile that made
him all at once so far off and so foreign that I knew, with a
sinking heart, that he didn't belong at all; that this beautiful and
brilliant bird of passage was lightening for but a very brief space
my sober skies.
Alicia said he made her think of peacocks and ivory. He delighted
and dazzled her, though he did not disquiet her as he did me,
perhaps because she, too, was young and beautiful, and I--wasn't.
It will be seen, then, that our position, take it by and large,
wasn't one that called for flags and buntings. Life didn't look a
bit rose-colored to me as I sat there that night, drafting a letter
to the Head. Of a sudden arose clamor in the hall, and howls,
hideously loud at that hour and in that quiet house. There came the
noise of running feet, and there burst into the lighted library,
with gray faces and rolling eyes, our two lately acquired colored
maids, Fernolia the thin one, and Queen of Sheba, fat and brown.
"Good heavens! What's the matter?" I asked, fearfully. It had been a
terrible task to break in those two handmaids, to train them _not_
to take part in the conversation at table, _not_ to take off cap,
and hair, not to do the thousand and one undisciplined and
disorderly things they did do.
"Ghostes! Sperets! Ha'nts!" chattered the colored women. "Ol' Mis'
Scarlett's walkin' in de ca'iage house!"
"Nonsense!" At the same time I felt myself turning pale, and
goose-flesh coming out on my spine.
"No, ma'am, Miss Sophy, 't ain't nonsense. It's ha'nts!" protested
Fernolia. She was the brighter of the two, but given to embroidering
her facts.
"Yessum, I done saw 'er," corroborated Queenasheeba. (That's how one
pronounced her name.)
The two occupied a very pleasant room above the carriage house, a
room that had overcome their unwillingness to stay overnight at
Hynds House. Queenasheeba was just dozing, when she was awakened by
Fernolia, who had been sitting by the window. Both of them, peering
through the scrim curtains, saw a tall white figure disappear into
the spring-house. A few minutes later, to their horror, they heard
Something moving downstairs in the carriage house--Something like
the clank of a chain--footsteps--and then silence. Almost paralyzed
with terror, the two women clung together. _Anything_ might be
expected of ol' Mis' Scarlett! However, nothing further happened.
With shaking hands Queenasheeba relighted the lamp. Then, snatching
up such clothes as they could grab, the two fled to us.
Mary Magdalen and Beautiful Dog always departed after dinner. Except
for the Black family and the two canaries, Alicia and I had big,
lonesome Hynds House to ourselves. Mr. Jelnik's gray cottage, set
amid Lombardy poplars and thick shrubberies, was some distance
away, and we didn't know whether Doctor Geddes was at home or not.
It is true we had firearms, a pair of pistols having been literally
forced upon us by the doctor, who fretted and fumed about our
staying there alone. Both of us were more afraid of those pistols
than of any possible ghostly intruder.
Nevertheless, I went up-stairs and fetched them. Alicia took one as
she might have taken a rattlesnake, and I held the other. Armed
thus, carrying torch-light and lantern, and with the two gray-faced,
half-clad negro women following us, one carrying our brass poker and
the other the tongs, we marched upon the carriage house.
The big barnlike place, lately cleaned and whitewashed, looked
painfully empty. In one of the stalls the hay purchased for our
recently acquired Jersey cow gave off a pleasant odor. Over in one
corner, in a neat, clean, orderly array, were Schmetz's tools. A
little farther on was our chicken feed, in covered barrels.
We went from empty stall to empty stall, to reassure the women;
there wasn't so much as a cobweb in any of them. All the down-stairs
windows were heavily barred with iron and further protected, like
the doors, with heavy oaken shutters studded with iron nail-heads.
The two small rooms in the rear had once been used as a jail for
recalcitrant slaves; they held now nothing deadlier than Schmetz's
flower pots and seedlings. Every shutter was closed, and the iron
bars looked reassuringly strong; also, the walls are three feet
thick.
"You were dreaming, you silly women! I told you you were dreaming!"
said I, and had turned to go, reassured and relieved, when Alicia's
nose wrinkled. I could hardly keep from sniffing, myself.
In the carriage-house was a faint, indeterminable scent, the ghost
of the ghost of fragrance, so elusive that one sensed rather than
smelled it, so pervasive and haunting that one could not miss it.
And it certainly had nothing to do with the wholesome odor of hay
and cow feed, or the smell of whitewash and oiled tools.
"Yes, you were dreaming." Alicia began to edge the colored women
toward the doors. "But as you've had a scare," she added pleasantly,
"I'll give you a new lace collar, Queenasheeba, and you a red
ribbon, Fernolia, to wear to church next Sunday, just to prove to
you that being awake is heaps better than having nightmares."
We padlocked the big doors after us, and went through the rooms
up-stairs. They, too, had been freshly cleaned and calcimined. And
they, too, were quite empty.
Despite which, Fernolia and Queenasheeba were firmly, tearfully,
shiveringly certain they had seen nothing less than ol' Mis'
Scarlett's ha'nt. They had the worst possible opinion of ol' Miss
Scarlett: she had been bad enough living--but as a spook! We had to
let them lug their bedding over and sleep in the room next to ours;
we had to give them sweet lavender to quiet their nerves. I am sure
they would have bolted incontinently if they hadn't been too scared
to venture outside.
"If I could catch that ghost I'd shake it!" declared Alicia. And we
went back to our figuring, with a sort of desperate courage. "_Now_
will you get those clothes, Sophy Smith?" she resumed, through her
teeth, and the pink came back to her cheek, and her eyes deepened.
"And do you agree to stick it out, you and I shoulder to shoulder,
town or no town, ha'nts or no ha'nts; and win out?"
"Yes!" said I.