PEACOCKS AND IVORY

"Sophy, do you remember the night we talked it over, and decided to come here, and you were afraid of the new soil's effect upon yourself?"

"Of course. Why?"

"Oh, because."

"Because why?"

"Just because.—I wish to gracious you had a little saving vanity, Sophy Smith!"

"And what, then, is this ?" I asked ironically, and rustled my skirts. For the Westmacotes were to arrive that night, in time for dinner, and I, standing before the mirror in my room, was what Alicia called "really dressed" for the first time in my life.

"From your point of view, this is a business necessity. From mine, it is applied morality. Why, Sophy, you're stunning ! Here, sit down: I have to loosen up that hair a bit."

"Now!" said she, when she had critically surveyed her finished work and found it good, "Now, Sophy Smith, you are no longer efficient and utilitarian; you are effective and decorative, thank heaven!"

Really, clothes do make a tremendous difference, after all. Why, I—Well, I no longer looked root-bound.

"I said you'd put out new leaves and begin to bloom!" Alicia exulted. We bowed to the Sophy in the glass, a small and slender person with quantities of fair hair, a round white chin, and steady blue eyes. For the rest, she had a short nose and the rather wide mouth of a boy. She wasn't what you'd call a beautiful person, but she wasn't displeasing to the eye.

" Vale , plain Sophy Smith!" cried Alicia, " Ave , dear Lady of Hynds House! We who about to live salute you!"

The Westmacotes were delighted with Alicia. The Head had noticed her just about as much as a Head notices a pale file-clerk in a white shirt-waist and a black skirt. This radiant rose-maiden—"little Dawn-rose," old Riedriech called her—was new to him; and so, I fancy, was a Miss Smith in such a frock as I was wearing. He, as well as his wife and Miss Phelps-Parsons, accepted us at our face-value, with the background of Hynds House outlining us.

Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons was a lady with a soul. She said she had psychic consciousness and a clear green aura, and that she had been an Egyptian priestess in Thebes, in the time of Sesostris. In proof of this she showed us a fine little bronze Osiris holding a whip in one hand and the ankh in the other. ("My dear, the moment I saw him, I knew I had once prayed to him!") and she always wore a scarab ring. She had bought both in an antique-shop just off Washington Street. I thought this rather a far cry from Thebes, myself, but The Author insisted that if a Theban vestal of the time of Sesostris had to reincarnate, she would naturally and inevitably come to life a Boston one.

The Author hadn't taken any too kindly to the notion of other people coming to Hynds House. He grumbled that he had hoped he had at last found a quiet haven, a place that fitted him like a glove; he protested piercingly against having it "cluttered up with uninteresting, gobbling, gabbling, ordinary people."

"You came too late. You should have been here with Great-Aunt Sophronisba," Alicia told him, tartly. "You'd have been ideal companions, both of you beware-of-the-doggy, hair-trigger-tempery, all-to-your-selfish."

The Author gasped, and rubbed his eyes. Never, never, in all his pampered life, had one so spoken to him.

"Why, of all the cheek!" exploded The Author. "Am I to be flouted thus by a piece of pink-and-whiteness just escaped from the nursery pap-spoon?"

"Out of the mouths of babes—" insinuated Alicia.

The Author grinned. And his grin is redeeming.

"Sweet-and near-twenty," he explained. "I am not exactly all-to-myselfish, but I demand plenty of elbow-room in my existence. Generally speaking, my own society bores me less than the society of the mutable many. I like Hynds House. And I like you two women. You are not tiresome to the ear, wearisome to the mind, nor displeasing to the eye. I am even sensible of a distinct feeling of satisfaction in knowing that you are somewhere around the house. You belong. But I'm hanged if I want to see strangers come in. I object to strangers. Why are strangers necessary?"

"For the same reason that you were."

"I?" The Author's eyebrows were almost lost in his hair. "My dear, deluded child, I knew this house, and you, and Sophy Smith, before you were born! I knew you," The Author declared unblushingly, "before I was born! Now, am I a stranger?"

"Then you ought to know why Sophy and I have just got to have people, the sort of people who are coming." She paused. " We haven't best-seller royalties piled up to the roof!"

"No," said The Author, bitterly, "but I have. That's why I am forever plagued with strangers. That's why, when I discover a place and people that suit me to perfection, I can't keep 'em to myself! Oh, da—drat it all, anyhow!"

"But they aren't coming to see you. They're coming to see Hynds House," Alicia reminded him soothingly. "Besides, I don't think they're the sort of folks that care much for authors," she finished, encouragingly.

"They'll care about me " grumbled The Author glumly. "But let 'em come and be hanged to them! I shall take—"

"Soothing syrup?"

"Long walks!" snarled The Author. "I shall work all night and be invisible all day."

The Westmacotes, as Alicia said, didn't greatly care for authors, though they sat up and took polite notice of this one. (One owed that to one's self-respect.) Only Miss Emmeline paid more than passing attention to him, though her interest really centered in Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, who was dining with us that night, as was Doctor Richard Geddes.

Mr. Jelnik's presence had the effect of lightening The Author's gloom. His eyes brightened, his dejection changed into alertness, and there began that subtle game of under-the-surface thrust and parry that seemed inevitable when the two met. Mr. Westmacote listened with quiet enjoyment. His dinner was to his taste, Hynds House more than came up to his expectations, Alicia was Cinderella after the fairy's wand had passed over her, I had ceased to be a mere person and become a personage; and he found here such men as Doctor Geddes, The Author, and Nicholas Jelnik. The Head smiled at his wife, and was at peace with the world.

Miss Emmeline had already discovered the Lowestoft and Spode pieces in our built-in cupboards; that there were two perfect apostle jugs in the cabinet in the hall: that our Chelsea figures were lovelier than any she had heretofore seen; and that Hynds House, in which everything was genuine, had an atmosphere that appealed to her soul, or maybe matched her clear-green aura. Anyhow, the house reached out for Miss Emmeline as with hands and laid its spell upon her enduringly.

She sat beside me, with Alicia's pet album of Confederate generals on her knees.

"I never thought I'd have a sentimental regard for rebels," she confessed. "But, oh, they were gallant and romantic figures, when one looks at their old photographs here in Hynds House. I am Massachusetts to the bone, but I don't want to hear 'Marching through Georgia' while I'm here!"

Mr. Jelnik, overhearing her, laughed. "Perhaps I may find for you something more in keeping with Hynds House," he said, and sauntered over to the old piano. Unexpectedly it came to life. And he began to sing:

It was the silent, solemn hour
When night and morning meet,
In glided Margaret's grimly ghost,
And stood at William's feet.
Her face was like an April morn
Clad in a wintry cloud:
And clay-cold was her lily hand,
That held her sable shroud.

The Author shaded his eyes with his hand, his gaze riveted upon the singer. Alicia leaned forward, lips parted, face like an uplifted flower, eyes large with wonder and delight. The Confederate generals slid from Miss Emmeline's lap and lay face downward, forgotten. Westmacote's faded little wife, who had no children, crept closer to her big husband; and gently, unobtrusively, he reached out and took her hand in his warm grasp.

Why did you promise love to me
And not that promise keep?
Why did you swear mine eyes were bright,
Yet leave those eyes to weep?
Why did you say my face was fair,
And yet that face forsake?
How could you win my virgin heart,
Yet leave that heart to break?

I am sure there is no lovelier and more touching ballad in all our English treasury than that sad, simple, and most beautiful old song. And he had set it to an air as simple and as perfect as its own words, an old-world air that suited it and his rich and flexible voice.

"Why, Jelnik!" exclaimed Doctor Geddes, in a voice of pure astonishment, "I knew you could tinkle out a tune on a piano, but, man, I didn't dream it was in you to sing like this!" And he stared at his cousin.

"I'd make bold to swear that Mr. Jelnik has a dozen more surprises up his sleeve, if he chose to let us see them," The Author said pleasantly.

"My father's system of education included music. For which I praise him in the gates," Mr. Jelnik replied casually.

"'Tinkle out a tune on a piano'!" breathed Alicia, and cast a look of deep disdain upon the blundering doctor. "Why, I've never in all my life heard anybody sing like that!"

But I saw him through a mist, and felt my heart ache and burn in my breast, and wondered what he was doing here in my house that might have been his house, and how I was going to walk through my life after he had gone out of it.

I had a wild desire to run outside into the dark night and the hushed garden, away from everybody and weep and weep, despairingly. Because a veil had been torn from my eyes this night, and I knew that the cruellest thing that can happen to a woman had happened to me. There could be but one thing more bitter—that he or anybody else in the world should know it.

So I sat there, dumb, while everybody else said pleasant things to him, their voices sounding afar, far off.

After a while we went into the living-room where our new piano is, and he played for us—Hungarian things, I think. Then he drifted into Chopin, and Alicia stood by and turned his music for him.

"Those two," whispered Miss Emmeline, "are the most idyllic figures I have ever seen." I think she sighed as she said it. "Youth is the most beautiful thing in the world," she added.

The Westmacotes, weary after a long journey, retired early. Mr. Jelnik and Doctor Geddes had gone off together. The secretary had to finish a chapter. The Author lingered to ask, oddly enough, if I had the original plan of Hynds House. Did I know who designed it?

"Why don't you interview Judge Gatchell?"

"I did. He was polite and friendly enough, but knows no more than is strictly legal. He told me he found Hynds House here when he arrived and expected to leave it here when he departed. And Geddes knows no more. Geddes isn't interested in Hynds House by itself," finished The Author, with a crooked smile.

"Perhaps Mr. Jelnik may have some family papers."

"Perhaps he may. I'd give something for a whack at those papers, Miss Smith."

"Why not ask him to let you see them, then?"

"Tut, tut!" said The Author, crossly, and took himself off.

When I was kimonoed, braided, and slippered, Alicia in like raiment came in from her room next to mine, sat down on the floor, and leaned her head against my knees, with her cheek against my hand.

For a while, as women do, we discussed the events of the evening. Both of us had deep cause for gratification; yet both of us were strangely subdued.

"Sophy, Peacocks and Ivory is a very wonderful person, isn't he?" hesitated Alicia, after a long pause. She didn't lift her head; and the cheek against my hand was warmer than usual.

"Yes," I agreed, quietly, "so wonderful that something never to be replaced will have gone out of our lives when he goes away, and doesn't come back any more. For that is what the Nicholas Jelniks do, my dear."

"Is it?" Again she spoke after a pause. "I wonder! Somehow, I—Sophy, he belongs here. He's—why, Sophy, he's a part of the glamour."

"I'm afraid glamour hasn't part nor place in plain folks' lives."

"But we aren't plain folks any more, either, Sophy," she insisted. "Why—why— we're part of the glamour, too!"

"That is just about half true."

Alicia ignored this. She asked, instead:

"Did you hear what that great blundering doctor said about tinkling out a tune on a piano?"

I could hear Mr. Jelnik praised by her or doubted by The Author. But somehow I could not bear any criticism of Doctor Geddes just then. I said stiffly:

"I have learned to appreciate Doctor Geddes."

"You are far too fair-minded not to." Presently: "Sophy?"

"Uh-huh."

"We aren't ever going to be sorry we came here—together—are we, Sophy? And we won't ever let anybody come between us. Not anybody. Not The Author—nor his secretary—nor whatever guests come—nor Mr. Nicholas Jelnik—nor—nor Doctor Richard Geddes." Her head pressed closer to my knees.

"We came first, you and I," said Alicia, in a muffled whisper. "We are more to each other than any of them can be to us. You'll remember that, won't you?"

"I will remember, you absurd Alicia!" But I did not ask my dear girl what her incoherent words might mean. I did not ask why the soft cheek against my hand was wet.

As I have said before, Hynds House is but two stories high, with deep cellars under it, and an immense attic overhead; an attic all cut up into nooks and corners, and twists and turns, and sloping roofs and dormer windows, and two or three shallow steps going up here, and two or three more going down there, and passages and doors where you'd never look for them. We had never been able fully to explore our attic. It was Ali Baba's cave to us, with half its treasures unguessed and every trunk and box whispering, "Say 'Open, Sesame,' to me, and see what you'll find!"

While I was sitting with Alicia's head against my knee, a light, swift footstep sounded overhead in the attic, followed by a sort of stumble, as if somebody had slipped on one of those unexpected steps. Alicia rose quickly.

"Sophy," she breathed, "I have thought, once or twice, that I heard somebody walking in the attic."

"We will soon find out who it is, then," said I. Noiselessly we stole out into the hall, past the sleeping Westmacotes, and Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons who so longed to come in closer contact with the occult and unknown. We moved like ghosts, ourselves, our felt-soled mules making no sound.

The Author opened his door just as we approached it, and held up an imperious finger.

"Did you hear it, too?" he whispered. And walking ahead of us, he stole up the cork-screw stairway at the end of the side hall, lifted the latch of the attic door, and stepped inside.

It was frightfully dark up there. If you peered through the uncurtained windows you could see tree-tops tossing like black waves against the dark sky, and in between them rolling clouds, and little bright patchwork spaces of stars. And it was so quiet you could hear your heart beat, and your breathing seemed to rattle in your ears. We strained our eyes, seeking to pierce the gloom, stealing forward step by step. A board creaked, noisily; and then—I could have sworn it—then something seemed to move across one of the dormer windows. It was so vague, so shadowy, that one could not distinguish its outline; one could only think that something moved.

The Author gave an exclamation and switched on his electric torch, trying to focus the circle of light upon that particular window. There was nothing there. Only, it seemed to me that something, incredibly swift and silent, flashed down one of the bewildering turns to which our attic is addicted. But when we ran forward, the passage was empty. We brought up at the red brick square of one of the chimney stacks.

Almost savagely The Author flashed his light over every inch of wall and floor. Nothing. But on the close and musty air stole, not a sound, but a scent.

The Author swung around and trotted back. The window across which we thought we had seen something move was fastened from the inside, and there were one or two wooden boxes and a leather-covered trunk in the dormer recess. He sniffed hound-like around these, and with an exclamation leaned over. Behind the trunk crouched—Potty Black, with a mouse clamped in her jaws.

"For heaven's sake!" cried Alicia. "The cat! Sophy, what we heard was the cat!"

"Let us go," said The Author. And feeling rather silly, we trailed after him.

"You see," said I, "there is nothing. There never is anything."

"Come in my room for a minute," The Author whispered, and there was that in his voice which made us obey.

Inside his door, he opened his hand. In his palm was a soiled and crumpled scrap of tough, parchment-like paper about the size of an ordinary playing-card, so frayed and creased that one had difficulty in deciphering the writing on it. There clung to it a faint and unforgetable scent.

"It was behind the trunk, partly under the cat's black paw. I smelled it when I leaned over, and I thought we might as well have a look at it." said The Author.

And on the following page is what The Author had found.

'"Shades of E.A. Poe, and Robert Louis the Beloved! What have we here?" cried The Author, joyously, and stood on one leg like a stork. "Was there a Hynds woman named Helen? 'Turn Hellen's Key three tens and three?' Some keyhole! I say, Miss Smith, let me keep this for a while, will you?"

"Do, Sophy, let him keep it!" pleaded Alicia.

"I'll take the best care of it, Miss Smith; indeed I will!" The Author promised. "Look here: I'll lock it in the clothes-closet, in the breast pocket of my coat." As he spoke, he opened the cedar-lined closet, that was almost as big as a modern hall bedroom, and put the paper in the breast pocket of his coat. Locking the door, he placed the key under his pillow, and beside it a new and businesslike Colt automatic.

"There!" said The Author, confidently. "Nobody can get into that closet without first tackling me . Now you girls go to bed. To-morrow we'll tackle the unraveling."

And we, remembering of a sudden that we were pig-tailed and kimonoed, and that The Author himself resembled a step-ladder with a shawl draped around it, departed hurriedly.

He was late at the breakfast-table next morning. Gloom and abstraction sat visibly upon him. He left his secretary to bear the brunt of conversation with the Westmacotes and Miss Emmeline. For once he failed to do justice to Mary Magdalen's hot biscuit, and ignored Fernolia's astonished and concerned stare; even a whispered, "Honey, is you-all got a misery anywheres?" failed to rouse him. I found him, after a while, waiting for me in the library.

"Miss Smith,"—The Author strode restlessly up and down—"this house has a peculiar effect upon people; a very peculiar effect. Since I came here, I have learned to walk in my sleep." And seeing my look of astonishment, "I walked in my sleep last night. And I took that bit of doggerel out of my coat pocket, locked the closet door, and replaced the key under my pillow."

"How strange! And where did you put it?" I wondered.

"Exactly: where did I put it?" repeated The Author, rumpling his hair with both hands. "That's what I want to know, myself. I've looked everywhere in my room, and in Johnson's, and I can't find the thing. It's gone," and he stalked out, with his shoulders hunched to his ears.

I sat still, staring out at the window. There was a thing I hadn't told The Author, or even Alicia. I had no idea what the "bit of doggerel" meant, if, indeed, it meant anything. But when I had held Freeman Hynds's old diary in my hands, between the two pages following the last entry had been a creased and soiled piece of paper. I had seen it out of the tail of my eye, as the saying is. It was only a glimpse, but one trained to handle many papers, as I had been, has a quick and an accurate eye. And I knew that the paper found by The Author in the attic, and now lost again, was the paper I had seen in Freeman Hynds's diary.

k8Ws7GjDT+ckzIARLuFd/sgin+8EfAXaYi095zuWNM6kDHXDGAG9Pw5URPnfhkaT