THE JINNEE INTERVENES
Just before he went back North, Luis Morenas good-naturedly agreed
to exhibit his new sketches for the delectation of such folk as we
cared to ask to view them--this to please Alicia, whom he called
Flower o' the Peach.
Now an exhibit of Morenas sketches would have been an art event in
the Biggest City itself. But think of it in Hyndsville, where few
worth-while things ever happened; and imagine the polite
wire-pulling for invitations that ensued!
It wasn't my fault that I couldn't ask the whole town to come to my
house to see those brilliant sketches. I would have done so with all
my heart, but there was a section of Hyndsville I couldn't reach. It
was locked up behind bars of pride and prejudice of its own
building; and losing by it, of course, since one can't be exclusive
without at the same time being excluded. To shut other folks out you
have first got to shut yourself in.
For instance, figure to yourself Miss Martha Hopkins. She had
visited as far north as Atlanta; and she had relatives in
Charleston, as she would have condescendingly informed arch-angels,
principalities, powers, thrones, and dominions. But she wasn't
blessed with much of this world's goods, and most of the time she
stayed home and improved her mind. She took herself with profound
seriousness. She seemed to think that the better part of wisdom
consists in knowing who said this and who didn't say that--"as Mr.
Arnold Bennett expresses it," "as Mr. H.G. Wells remarks," "as Mr.
James Huneker writes,"--she was the only person in all Hyndsville
who could write up music and art, and she wasn't even afraid to use
the word _sex_ in its most modern acceptance; though in South
Carolina you refer to the ladies as "the fair sex" if you're a
gentleman, and to the gentlemen as "the stronger sex" if you're a
lady. You understand that "male and female created He them," and you
let it go at that. Miss Martha Hopkins, then, was daring; she was
also exclusive.
I suppose if I had been younger I could have smiled at Miss Martha,
as Susy Gatchell and her graceless friends did, but somehow she
appeared to me a creature trying to peck at the world and peek at
the stars through the bars of a bird-cage. That's why, when I met
her a morning or two before the Morenas exhibit, I asked her if she
wouldn't like to see it. I knew that, once asked, she could be kept
away by nothing short of an earthquake or a deluge. Yet--
"Thank you, Miss Smith, I shall be glad to look over the sketches."
And she added blandly: "Four o'clock, did you say? Very well, I will
come. It is one's moral duty to encourage men of talent."
"Whoop!" cried The Author, joyously, when I told him that. "Revenge
yourself, Morenas: sketch her, man! sketch her!"
Morenas laughed. "Put her in one of your books and make her talk,"
he suggested slyly. "You have a genius for making a woman talk like
an idiot."
"That's because he does the talking for her, himself," said Alicia,
impudently.
"It pays, it pays!" smiled The Author. "I draw from life."
"Nature-fakir!" Alicia mocked.
"My dear fellow, _I_ draw. _You_ draw and quarter," said Morenas.
The Author flung out his arms, grandiloquently.
You may as well try to change the course
Of yonder sun
To north, and south,
As to try to subdue by criticism
This heart of verse,
Or close this mouth!
he cried, thumping his chest. "Come on, Johnson: let's leave these
knockers to fate--and Miss Martha Hopkins!"
Miss Martha Hopkins came, she saw, and she had a perfectly beautiful
time. As a matter of fact, everybody that could come, did come. And
the very smartest and prettiest of the younger set served tea. Oh,
yes, decidedly the tables were turning!
Despite which, Alicia and I were not happy. It seemed to me that a
veil had fallen between us, for we were shy with each other. Both
suffered, and each dreaded that the other should know.
I was grateful that The Author's mind was too taken up with Hynds
House history to focus itself upon us. The Author spent his spare
hours rummaging through such dusty and musty records as might throw
some light upon the Hyndses. In the old office were many faded
plantation and household books, and he was able to glean enough from
these to confirm the methodical carefulness of Freeman Hynds. There
were, too, dry receipts for "monies Paid by Mr. Rich. Hynds" for
some old slave; or a brief notice that "By Orders Mr. Richd. Hynds,
no Women shall be Whipt"; or "Bought by Mr. R. Hynds & Charg'd to
his Acct., one Crippl'd Black Childe namd Scipio from Vanham's Sale,
& Given to Sukey his Mother." Another time it would be a list of
Christmas gifts: "One Colour'd Head Kerchief for Nancy. One Flute
for Blind Sam. One Shoulder Cape for Kitty my Nurse. One
Horn-handl'd Knife for Agrippa. One Pckt. Tobacco & a Jorum of Rum
for Shooba."
Over against these items were others: "By Orders Mr. Freeman Hynds,
Juba to Receive Twenty light Lashes for Malingering; Black Tom to be
Shipt to River Bottom Plantation for the Chastning of his Spiritt;
Bread & Water & Irons 3 Dayes & Nights for Shooba for Frighting of
his Fellowes & other Evil Behaviour."
This was interesting enough, but not conclusive. All that The Author
could find only deepened his uncertainty, and this made him
abominably cross, an ill temper increased by the presence of Mr.
Nicholas Jelnik, who came and went, unruffled, aloof, with
inscrutable eyes and a gently mocking smile.
The Harrison-Gores came shortly after Morenas left. The Englishman
was a pink-faced old gentleman in a shabby Norfolk suit and with the
very thinnest legs on record--"mocking-bird legs," Fernolia called
them. His daughter was a gray-eyed Minerva with the skin of a baby
and the walk of a Highland piper. They found Carolina people
charming, and they secured some valuable data for their book, "The
Beginnings of American History." Everything in Hynds House pleased
them, even The Author.
Other people who do not enter into this story came and went during
that winter. But they were merely millionaires--people who motored
around the lovely country, ate Mary Magdalen's hot biscuit and fried
chicken, slept in our four-posters, paid their stiff bills
thankfully, and went about their business as good millionaires
should, and generally do. Only one out of them all was disagreeable;
he wanted to buy Hynds House out of hand for a proposed club of
which he was to be founder and president.
"It'd be just what the bunch would like," he told me. "All we'd have
to do would be to paint these wooden walls a nice cheerful light
color, change one room into a smoker, another into a billiard-room,
and a third into a grill, add some gun-racks and leather
wing-chairs, and we'd be right up to the minute in club-houses!"
When I explained that I couldn't sell he offered to compromise on
two of the carved marble mantels, the library tiles, and two inlaid
tables, "at double what you'd get from anybody else." And when I
wouldn't even let him have these trifles, he was disgusted and took
no pains to conceal it. He was rude to Alicia, who snubbed him with
terrible thoroughness, a proceeding which made him call loudly for
his "bill" and his car. The last we heard of him was his bullying
voice bawling at his sullen chauffeur.
"That pig," said The Author to me, with fury, "is undoubtedly the
lineal descendant of the one Gadarene swine that hadn't decency
enough to rush down the slope with the rest of the herd and drown
himself."
Busy as I was, it wasn't over easy for me to find time to revisit
that brown and sweet-smelling spot in the Forest of Arden where on a
gray afternoon, I had met Nicholas Jelnik and received from him a
kiss on the palm, and a broken coin. And I wanted to go back there,
as ghosts may desire to revisit the glimpses of the moon.
That is why, on the first free afternoon I had, I changed into the
selfsame brown frock, put on the brown hat with the yellow quill in
it, and slipped out of Hynds House alone. It wasn't a gray afternoon
this time, but a clear, bright, sun-shiny one, all blue and gold and
green, and with the pleasantest of friendly winds a-frolicking, and
a pine-scented air with a pungent and a vital bite to it.
I went along the highroad for a while, crossed the weedy, ferny
ditch that separated it from the fallow fields beyond, and struck
into the deserted foot-path that leads to the Enchanted Wood.
It was very lonesome, very peaceful. I could see the pine-trees I
love swaying and rocking against the blue, blue sky; I could catch
the low-hummed tune they crooned to themselves and the winds; I
could sniff a thousand woodsy odors. Spears of sunlight made bright
blobs on the brown grass; and every littlest bush and shrub wore a
shimmering halo, as you see the blessed ones backgrounded in old
pictures. There was a bird twittering somewhere; occasionally a twig
snapped with a quick, secret sharpness; and once a thin brown rabbit
took to his heels, right under my feet.
I stopped from time to time to sense the feel of the afternoon, to
drink the air and be healed. In a few minutes I should be within the
forest and hear the little brook giggling to itself as it scurried
over its brown pathway. And then I heard--something--and turned.
The deep and weedy ditch, crowded with high stalks of last year's
goldenrod and fennel, edged all that pathway, draining the entire
field. Crawling snakelike through it he had followed me. And now
here he was, suddenly erect on the path behind me, looking at me
with narrowed eyes under his flat forehead.
I wasn't afraid--at first. Nothing like him had ever crossed my
path, and I stared at him with more of disgust and aversion than
terror.
He was tall and bony, immensely powerful, and his black skin showed
with a grayish shine upon it through the rents in his rags. His
gray-black, horny toes protruded through what once had been shoes,
and a shapeless, colorless felt hat covered his bullet head. His
corded black arms emerged from the torn sleeves of his checked
shirt, and his hairy chest was naked. There came from him an
indescribable reek of tobacco, whisky, filthy clothes, and the
beastlike odor of an unclean body. He was beardless, and his
gorilla-like nostrils twitched, his forehead wrinkled. His eyes were
mere pin-points, with a sort of red glare far back in them; his
mouth was like a dirty red muzzle. He was a prowling tramp, of the
worst sort.
Involuntarily he stopped in his tracks as I faced him, his hands
hanging loosely at his sides. His eyes swept greedily over
me--silver mesh-purse, wrist-watch, the brooch at my throat, the
rings on my fingers.
"Whut yuh doin' hyuh, w'ite lady?" he asked in a thick voice, and
grinned. And quite suddenly such a fear as I had not dreamed could
be felt by a mortal took me by the heart and squeezed it as with an
iron hand.
"Whut foh yuh come by mah field, lil w'ite lady?" he purred. "Ah'm
takin' lil snooze in de ditch grass, an' dey yuh comes, wakin' me
up! Whut yuh wake me up for, w'ite gal?" Leering, he began with a
gliding, stealthy movement to advance.
"Stop!" cried I, in a voice that wasn't mine, it was so sharp and
thin and reedy. "Go back--where you came from! Don't you dare to
take another step! Go back!"
The hands hooked into outstretched claws. His head sunk between his
shoulders. Of the eyes, only red pin-points showed in the twitching
face. I stood stone-still, struck into utter immobility. My brain
was trying to urge me to fly, fly! This is the Black Death, Sophy!
the Black Death!
He, too, stood of a sudden stone-still, as if rooted to the ground.
His eyes widened, and stared, as if he saw something over and beyond
me. I didn't dare turn my head. It might be a trick, to divert
attention for a fatal second.
The claws clenched into balled fists, the lips drew back, showing
blackened and decayed teeth. Bristling like an aroused beast, his
forehead wrinkling, his nostrils twitching, he made an inarticulate,
growling, brute-like noise in his throat. His head twisted sideways.
Of a sudden the sweat burst out upon his face, and he began to back
away, warily.
And then something swift and dark sped by, bounding on light and
flying feet; something that must have come from my forest. It was
The Jinnee! God be praised, it was The Jinnee, his dark robe giving
an odd effect of flying, his eyes living vengeance, his face like
Fate carved in ebony.
I saw him leap, and close in upon the horror; I heard a sort of
wolfish yapping. The Black Death disappeared. And then I, too, was
falling, falling into infinite blackness and blankness, with one red
flash when I struck my head.
Half-conscious, half-hearing, altogether unseeing, I thought there
were two Voices near me. I couldn't understand what they said. One
of the Voices was gently and persistently applying cold and soothing
applications to my forehead. Another Voice chafed my hands. I
thought one said, "Achmet," and the other replied, "Sahib." I knew I
must be dreaming. But it was a pleasant dream enough.
Quite suddenly somebody said in good, anxious English:
"Thank God! you are better!"
I had opened my eyes. There was the whish-whish-whishing little
brook, the good brown pines, with their heavenly odor. And there was
the face of Nicholas Jelnik, bent over me. And beside him, gravely
concerned and troubled, Boris.
I looked from one to the other, both so clear-eyed, so kind, so
_safe_; and then I remembered.
"Sophy! Sophy!" He had his arms around me, in a close, protecting
clasp, while Boris pawed my skirts, and cried over me in loving,
honest dog fashion, and licked my wet cheek with his affectionate
tongue. I slipped my arm around the big dog's neck, and clung to the
two of them. And it seemed to me that while I clung thus, with my
head bent and my face hidden, one of them kissed my hair.
"It never occurred to me--that there might be danger for you," he
was whispering. "To have that horror come near you--oh, my God! Oh,
my God!"
I was terrified at sight of his face, dead-white, with eyes of
steel, and straight lips, and pinched nostrils; the terrible face of
the avenging white man, a face as inexorable as judgment. I hid my
own before it, and trembled; and yet was glad that I had seen it.
I stammered: "There was--a devil--and then a Jinnee came. And I
heard--sounds. Then I fell. Did--did The Jinnee--" My voice died in
my throat.
His eyes were ice, his mouth a grim, pale line.
"That has been attended to," he said composedly.
He blamed himself for having been thoughtless. "But I was so glad to
have you come here, that afternoon, that I could think of nothing
else!" And it seemed that this particular bit of woodland was his,
bought because its quiet beauty pleased him. He was in the habit of
coming here frequently; it had never occurred to him that danger
could lurk near it.
"I thought I heard--somebody calling somebody else 'Achmet.'" I told
him, confusedly. "And there was a Jinnee, really there was. And two
Voices. Who brought me here? Did you find me, over there?"
"You were not hard to carry," he said evasively.
"But The Jinnee?"
"The Jinnee did exactly what a good Jinnee always does, his duty.
Having done it, he disappeared. Didn't I tell you you're not to
think of what's happened? It is finished," said Mr. Jelnik,
peremptorily.
I asked no more questions.
"Do you think you are able to walk now?" he asked.
I tried to, with shaking knees. At the edge of the field I grew
faint again, and staggered, and was unpleasantly sick.
"You simply cannot appear in Hynds House in this shape, and invite
comment and question," said Mr. Jelnik, anxiously. His fine brows
wrinkled. "I have it: you will stop at my house for a few minutes,
and I'll give you a cordial, that will put you to rights."
I went staggering along beside him, making desperate efforts to hold
myself erect. The pathway squirmed and wriggled like a snake, the
trees and bushes bowed, the sky bobbed up and down.
He took me by by-paths so cunningly hidden that you might pass up
and down the highroad daily and never suspect their existence. We
went between cassenas and cedars and young laurels, branchy to the
roots. And then I was walking down a path bordered with Lombardy
poplars; and then I was sitting on a couch in Mr. Jelnik's
living-room, while he bathed my face with scented water, and
afterward held a small glass to my lips. The fluid I swallowed went
tingling through my whole body like friendly fire.
I stole a woman-glance around the room that The Author had been so
anxious to investigate. It was altogether a man's room, the scoured
floor partly covered with a handsome rug, and the divan on which I
was sitting covered with another. On both sides of the big fireplace
were crowded book-shelves, above which hung weapons gathered from
the four corners of the earth. There were two or three deep,
comfortable arm-chairs, a square table, a couple of Winchesters in a
corner, and near the window a flat, old-fashioned desk, above which
hung two small portraits, evidently his parents, for the gentleman
with stars and crosses on his braided uniform, a sword at his side,
and a plumed hat in his hand, bore a striking resemblance to Mr.
Jelnik; and the stately blond lady had a family resemblance to
Doctor Richard Geddes.
Mr. Jelnik touched a bell near the door, and a tall, copper-colored
man in spotless white appeared. At the merest gesture of an uplifted
finger the copper-colored one bowed, vanished, and returned ten
minutes later with a tiny cup of black coffee and a couple of thin
wafers.
"I shall have to insist upon the coffee; and I advise the wafers,"
said Mr. Jelnik, pleasantly. So I drank the coffee, nibbled the
wafers, and felt better.
The copper-colored man, standing still as a statue, waited until I
had finished, took the cup, bowed, and disappeared. He was a stately
impressive person, rather like a shah in disguise. Mr. Jelnik
addressed him as "Daoud."
I had risen. I was trying to straighten my sadly flattened brown
hat, and to smooth my frock, stained with damp earth, and water. A
quick step sounded on the porch, somebody knocked, and without
waiting for an answer, opened the door, impatiently, and strode into
the room. With a fold of my disheveled frock in my hand, I looked up
and met the angry and astonished eyes of The Author.