THE TALISMAN
Mrs. Cheshire Scarboro was far from the fool her cousin Sophronisba
had credited her with being. She had sufficient cleverness to
understand that Hyndsville wasn't big enough to hold two factions.
For a faction was forming with Hynds House as its storm-center, and
it was one which threatened Mrs. Scarboro's hitherto unquestioned
sovereignty. Jimmy Scarboro himself, a most personable youth, was
one of the ringleaders of revolt.
A weaker woman would have kept up the fight. Mrs. Scarboro
understood that to spend one's powers trying to hold an untenable
position is a proof not of valor but of stupidity. She quietly
declared a truce, sending out, in the form of an invitation to one
of her sacred card-parties, tentative notice that she would consider
joining forces. We recognized the olive-branch, seriously extended.
The next move was ours.
"There's a time to fight, and a time to leave off fighting," Alicia
decided. "Here's where we disarm. When these people come from under
the shade of the dear old family tree, they're quite human. We have
got to let them give themselves the opportunity to discover that
we're human, too."
It wasn't necessary to explain things to The Author, because a
portion of his brain is purely and cattily feminine. That's why he
is a genius. No man is a genius whose brain isn't bisexual.
"I shall have to lay aside a cherished prejudice and lend this lady
the light of my countenance, although I loathe card-parties. I abhor
cards, outside of draw-poker on shipboard, with a crook of sorts
sitting in to lend the game a fillip. Despite the fact that poor
Mrs. Scarboro couldn't lay hands on a decent crook to save her life,
I think I shall go, and thereby acquire merit," he concluded, with
the air of a martyr.
I looked at him gratefully.
"I'll wager that little Sophy thinks she wants to go because she
desires to be friends and neighbors. 'Behold how good and how
pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!'--You're a
transparent person, you Sophy!"
"But I do desire to be friends with them. I have to live here all
the rest of my life, haven't I?"
"Not necessarily," replied The Author, arching his eyebrows. "For
instance, you can live in New York any time you want to, Sophy."
"I've never told you that you might call me Sophy," I parried,
hastily.
"Oh, but I like to call you Sophy," he responded airily. "And
really, you shouldn't mind. I've called people lots worse things
than Sophy, in my time! But then," he added, "I didn't happen to
like them. As for you, I find you a very likeable being, Sophy; upon
my word, extremely likeable!"
"Thank you," said I. I wasn't anxious to hear The Author tell me how
likable he found me; at least, not yet.
* * * * *
For pride's sake as well as for the sake of custom--and in South
Carolina custom has all the power of a fetish--Mrs. Scarboro would
have died rather than vary by one jot or tittle her usual
refreshments, or wear a new frock, on that particular night. Yet the
occasion, despite its mild diversions, was distinctly epochal, in
that it marked the reunion of Hyndsville. Even Mr. Nicholas Jelnik,
for the first time, put in his decorative appearance, to The
Author's fidgety surprise. He played a highly creditable game of
bridge. And after a while he sang "Believe Me if All Those Endearing
Young Charms," so exquisitely that a hushed and rapturous silence
fell upon everybody, and the old ladies and gentlemen present held
their hands before misty eyes. They used to sing that song when the
old men were boy soldiers marching off to the tune of "The Bonnie
Blue Flag," and the old ladies were ringleted girls in hoop-skirts
bidding them good-by.
"My dear boy," Mrs. Scarboro told him, with great feeling, "you have
been forgetting that you're a cousin of mine. Your mother and I were
girls together. I want you to meet some other old friends of hers
and your grandfather's," and she carried him off to a group of those
wonderful old ladies who grow to purest perfection in South
Carolina--low-voiced lovely old ladies, dressed in black silk, with
cameo brooches at their throats, and lace caps on their white hair.
A little group of old gentlemen immediately foregathered with them.
They knew who was and wasn't kin to Sally Hynds's son, unto the
seventh generation.
"They've begun on the begats," chuckled The Author, "First Book of
Chronicles, Chapters One to Four."
"Jelnik's really kin to them, and he ought to pay for the
privilege," said Mr. Johnson.
The Author looked at the old ladies, on whose delicate withered
hands the wedding-rings hung loosely, and at the erect old gentlemen
with white goatees, and something whimsically tender came into his
clever face.
"It is worth the price," he said, very gently--for him.
"Now, that was your soul speaking!" said Miss Emmeline, warmly.
Instantly The Author wrinkled his nose, bristled his mustache, and
looked like a hyena. Miss Martha Hopkins, worshipfully observant of
the great man, caught his eye at that moment and thought he was
scowling at _her_. She looked so stricken that The Author presently
strolled over and sat down beside her, to her fluttering delight.
But discovering that she was wholly unacquainted with the original
verse of J. Gordon Coogler of Columbia, he first bitterly reproached
her for neglecting home-made talent, and then proceeded to make sure
that she would remember the Bard of the Congaree so long as she
lived.
"Not know Coogler!" cried The Author, shrilly; "ignorant of the bard
raised, so to speak, around your own door-step? Horrible! Listen to
this!" said he, accusingly:
"Fair lady, on that snowy neck and half-clad bosom
Which you so publicly reveal to man,
There's not a single outward stain or speck.
Would that you had given but half the care
To the training of your intellect and heart,
As you have given to that spotless neck!"
"Gracious Heavens!" gasped Miss Martha, who showed a modest
salt-cellar in the mildest of Vs.
"Is it possible you don't like him?" demanded The Author, amazedly.
"But, my dear woman! Coogler's--why, Coogler's ginger-pop to a
thirsty world!"
"I--I don't drink ginger-pop!" confessed the be-deviled Center of
Culture, foggily.
"Alas! for the South, her books have grown fewer,
She never was much given to literature,"
quoted The Author, pensively.
She was speechless. The shameless Author, fixing upon her a last
long, lingering look of sorrowful reproach, said with emotion:
"From early youth to the frost of age
Man's days have been a mixture
Of all that constitutes in life
A dark and gloomy picture."
And he stalked off, leaving Miss Martha Hopkins in a state of mind.
"Friend Author," Alicia murmured, as he paused beside her, "I wish
you were my own dear little boy for just five merry minutes. I'd
show you," she declared, divided between Irish mirth and human pity
for Miss Martha, "I'd show you what a hair-brush could accomplish!"
"Too late!" regretted The Author, shaking his head. "But," he
suggested, brightening, "couldn't you wish to be my own dear little
girl, instead?"
"This is so sudden!" murmured Alicia, coyly.
"Deluding devilette!" breathed The Author, "get thee behind me!"
That evening was the first time I had ever heard myself called
"pretty." I was used to "businesslike" and "efficient" and
"trustworthy"--all excellent terms, in their way, but not such happy
things, any one of them, as "pretty."
"What are you thinking of, Sophy?" asked The Author. "Something over
the hills and far away? Because you look as Maude Adams used to look
when she first played 'Peter Pan.'"
I hoped it might be true, because--
I looked up then and met Mr. Nicholas Jelnik's dark eyes. They were
falcon eyes, but now there was something in them that made me, to my
rage and confusion and chagrin, blush like a silly school-girl. When
I again ventured to glance in his direction he was patiently and
politely listening to a white-goateed, game-legged U.C.V. refight
the Civil War with so fiery a zest that he presently caught another
veteran a resounding crack on the funny-bone with the gold-headed
stick he was flourishing. Both gentlemen half rose, the one making
wry faces and rubbing his elbow, the other bowing and apologetic.
"Pahdon me, Majah! My deah suh, pahdon me! But I was just tellin'
this boy about the day in the Wilderness his grandfathah Hynds took
a Yankee bullet out of my leg with a paih of silvah scissahs and
bandaged it with the tail of his shirt.
"'I've lost my niggah and my instruments, Sam,' says the doctah,
'but that's no reason why the damyankees should have the
satisfaction of killin' a puffeckly good rebel, when there's not
enough to go around now. Hold your leg still,' says he, rollin' up
his sleeves, 'an' with the help of God and my scissahs and my
shirt-tail, I'll save it for you.' An' he did. I walked home from
Appomattox on that same leg, suh," said the veteran, and brought his
stick down on the toes of it with a force that made him utter a
muffled bellow.
The other, still nursing an outraged elbow, smiled sweetly.
"Thanks, Sam," he drawled.
The Author chuckled appreciatively. "And to think we Americans rush
abroad, when the republic of South Carolina is right next-door to
us!" he murmured.
A gentle change was creeping over Hynds House, perhaps because of
the delightful old ladies who had begun to come there. Old
gentlemen, too, formed the pleasant habit of dropping in, beguiled
by the artful Author, waited upon son-like by his secretary,
foregathered with as kith and kin by the Englishman, mint-juleped by
the three of them, enchanted by Alicia, and teaed and caked and
beloved by me. Even our cats adored them. The Black family could
spot a Confederate veteran as far off as the front gate, and would
rush wildly to meet him, rubbing and roaching and purring in and out
of his old legs. The Author insisted that their passion for U.C.V.'s
was an inherited trait with our cats, and that we ourselves were
merely acquired characteristics.
In April, just before Miss Emmeline was to return to Boston, and the
Englishman and his daughter were to go back home, Alicia and I
decided to give a farewell dance. It was to be in costume.
Hyndsville was pleasantly excited. Never had there been such
rummaging of attics, such searchings of old trunks! We rummaged our
attic, too. I selected a yellow brocade trimmed with seed-pearls and
cascades of lace, and Alicia chose a skimpy blue satin frock with a
round neck, an upstanding lace collar, and absurd little puffed
sleeves. The Englishman was a Puritan, his daughter a Quakeress,
Mr. Johnson a Huguenot Lover, Miss Emmeline a Colonial Lady, Doctor
Geddes a bearded and belted Boyar, and The Author a painfully
realistic Mephistopheles, his eyebrows corked upward and his
mustache waxed into points. Mr. Jelnik sent regrets.
We had waxed the floors, and moved most of the furniture out of the
big front drawing-room; and this and the wide halls were used for a
ball-room, just as they had been used in the old days. The older
people played cards in the living-room and library. Every now and
then, between pauses, some masked and brilliant figure, like a
bright ghost from the past, would steal in to look over their
shoulders and whisper in their ears.
But those grandparents weren't content to sit down and play cards
while others footed it. Not they! They danced the Lancers, and a
polka or two, and waltzed and dipped and bowed to "Comin' through
the Rye" while all the masqueraders lined up against the walls to
admire and applaud. And after the gayest sort of a buffet supper,
the prizes that had been won by a belle and a trooper of '61--she in
her grandmother's crinoline and he in his grandfather's gray
jacket--were turned over by acclaim to a sprightly lady of seventy
and her sprightlier partner of seventy-five, for coming disguised as
old folks. The Author made the presentation speech. He began it by
saying that in South Carolina any man might well be excused for
falling in love with his grandmother.
Then the oldsters began to depart, with laughter and gay good
nights. It had been a delightful affair, one of those affairs that
go with a swing and a rhythm all their own, and that one remembers
with a pleasant taste in the mouth.
Only the more indefatigable youngsters remained. They hadn't the
slightest intention of foregoing half a night's dancing. They danced
in the hall to the music of the victrola, while the regular
musicians were being fêted in the kitchen by Mary Magdalen,
Queenasheeba, and Fernolia.
I missed my fan, and went into the drawing-room to look for it. The
room was quite empty for the moment, and looked lonesome for all its
blazing lights. A cool, sweet night wind came in through the open
windows, refreshingly. And quite suddenly there was framed in one of
them a figure more exotic, more bizarre, than any of our maskers had
been.
His dark robe was folded over his breast, and the silver shaft of a
knife showed in his red girdle. His white wool stuck out from under
his red fez, and his ear-rings gleamed against his black cheeks, and
the bracelets on his wiry arms made a faint tinkling as he leaned
forward. Emboldened by his twinkling eyes, his crooked, friendly
smile, eager to question him, I drew nearer. He stretched out his
hand, and slipped into mine the half of a broken coin.