A Woman Named Smith - Marie Conway Oemler (the best novels to read TXT) 📗
- Author: Marie Conway Oemler
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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.
CHAPTER VII A BRIGHT PARTICULAR STAR
Wire from The Author, New York City, to Miss S. Smith, Hyndsville, South Carolina:
Photos received. Furniture noted. It's pretty, but is it art?
Wire from Miss Smith to The Author:
What is Art?
Wire from The Author:
Sometimes an invention of the devil. Is your stuff Madison Avenue or Grand Rapids? Reply.
Wire from Miss Smith:
Madison Avenue and Grand Rapids hadn't been invented when Hynds House was furnished.
Wire from The Author:
Maybe not, but mightn't be same furniture. Have been stung before. Can't be genuine. Too much of it.
Wire from Miss Smith:
Please yourself.
Wire from The Author:
Coming to investigate. Won't sleep in anything but pineapple bed; won't sit in anything but carved chair; can't pray without prie-dieu. If spurious will publicly gibbet you and probably burn your house down. Hold southwest room my arrival.
Alicia laughed, and cuddled those yellow slips.
"I knew this was an enchanted place!" she cried. "Oh, Sophy, it's working! He's coming, he's coming, and he's the biggest ever, and he's going to stay! Sophy, think of the advertising!"
"He will probably be detestable. Geniuses are generally horrid to live with. And there will be something the matter with his digestion; there is always something the matter with their digestion."
"From swallowing all the flattery shoveled upon them, poor dears," Alicia explained charitably. "Don't worry about his digestion: leave it to Mary Magdalen's waffles. Hooray! Hynds House stock is booming!"
It was.
From the head of our firm:
My dear Miss Smith:
I have your interesting letter and the delightful photographs, which have so completely charmed Mrs. Westmacote and me that we have decided it wouldn't be good business to miss Hynds House on our trip South this year.
Mrs. Westmacote asks if you could also accommodate a cousin of hers, Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons, a lady deeply interested in the colonial homes of America.
You must allow me heartily to congratulate you upon your great good fortune in falling heir to such a wonderful old place; and to wish you many happy and prosperous years in it.
I shall telegraph you when to expect us. With all good wishes,
Yours faithfully,
GEORGE PEABODY WESTMACOTE.
Letter from Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons, of Boston:
Dear Miss Smith:
My cousin Mrs. Westmacote, whom I have been visiting, showed me your letter and the enchanting photographs of your house which you were kind enough to send Mr. Westmacote. Hynds House is just the one place I have long been looking for!—an unspoiled colonial house, with historic associations!
It is perfect! I must see with my own eyes those Chelsea figures on your drawing-room mantel, the luster and Washington jugs in the dining-room, and the cabinets in the hall.
Sincerely yours,
EMMELINE PHELPS-PARSONS.
P.S. I hope it is really true that there is an Influence in Hynds House? I do so greatly long to come in contact with the Occult and the Unknown!
"Somewhere on the firing-line of fifty," mused Alicia. "A lady with a soul. Don't you hear dear old Boston calling you, Sophy? Here's one to put Miss Martha Hopkins's light under a bushel basket!"
We had several other inquirers; and chose from them Mr. Chetwynd Harrison-Gore and his daughter, English folk "doing" America and delighted to include a Carolina colonial house in their trip; a suffrage leader, whose throat needed a rest; and Morenas, the illustrator. It seemed that Hynds House offered to each one something that had been craved for.
The Author pounced upon us two or three days before we expected him, to take stock after his own fashion. I have heard The Author commended for "the humor of his rare smile and the keen, kind intellectuality of his remarkable eyes." Well, the smile was rare enough; and of course there isn't any doubt about the man's intellectuality. For the rest, he proved to be a tall, lanky, stooping person, with a thin tanned face, outstanding ears, a high nose, and long, blue-gray eyes half-hidden under drooping lids and behind glasses. His hair was just hair. And he had the sort of mustache that bristled like a cat's when he twisted his lip.
So far as monetary success, and efficacious press-agents, and the adulation, admiration, emulation, and envy of his contemporaries went, he had nothing to complain of. He was lionized, quoted, courted, flattered, reviewed, viewed through rose-colored spectacles; and disillusioned, discontented, cynical, selfish, and, of course, most horribly bored. He was gun-shy of women; he suspected them of wanting to marry him. He was wary of men; he suspected them of wanting to exploit him. He loathed children, who were generally obstreperous and unnecessary editions of parents he didn't admire. He didn't even trust the beautiful works of men's hands. They, even they, were too often faked! If you had dug up the indubitable mummy of the first Pharaoh from under the oldest of the pyramids, The Author would have turned him over on his back and hunted for the trade-mark of The Modern Mummy-makers: London, Paris, and New York; Catalogue on Request.
He stalked through Hynds House with slitted eyes and bristling mustache—business of silent sleuth on the trail of the furniture-fakir! He'd pause at each door and
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