Munsey's Magazine/Volume 86/Issue 4/The Unwritten Story/Chapter 8
VIII
“Such doin's never was, in this house, Miss Grush!” the colored maid not long thereafter reported, in great agitation, to old Lockwood's housekeeper. “If this kind o' thing's goin' on here, I'd rather talk with the devil than stay here. I'll give my notice an' leave. I'm goin'—an' not comin' back, never!”
“What in the world are you vaporing about now?” Lavinia Grush demanded, sitting there, bonily angular, in her overfurnished room on the first floor back. She already had seven rocking-chairs in that room, and wanted another. “Doings? What sort of doings, Irene?”
“It's that there Perfessor Veazie, ma'am. I don't like that man, nohow!” Irene's eyes showed wide-rimmed with white. Her jaw gaped. “Comin' in here an' sittin' in the drawin'-room, ma'am, in a trance, like—with a skull in his hands, talkin' to it! An' I reckon the skull talk back at him, too! It ain't natchal, ma'am, an' it ain't right, in a 'spectable house. If things goes on this way—”
Miss Grush peered sharply at the maid, by lamplight of early evenfall. Through gold-bowed glasses she squinted—glasses with immensely heavy lenses that oddly magnified her eyes. A queer old stick of a woman, this Miss Grush—parrot-nosed, with a protrusive chin graced by numerous white bristles, with rouged, thin lips, and with a straggle of gray hair sedulously covered by a henna wig that often slipped awry. Her knobby fingers showed tobacco stains, for she smoked little cigars to cure earache—and her earaches were of almost hourly occurrence. On the littered table beside her, among cheap books and cheaper newspapers, stood an ash tray full of butts. Yet, for all this, a keen old person she was, sharp-witted and direct of speech.
“Irene!” she reproved. “You've been eavesdropping again, you have—listening in the hall—spying on company! I'll go for you baldheaded, if you don't stop that bad trick! How often have I got to drill you on it?”
“'Deed, Miss Grush,” Irene protested, her mouth slewed into a sick grin of panic, “'deed, how could I help it? I never went for to spy—no, ma'am, nor for to listen, neither; but I was just goin' along the hall, an' when I see the perfessor settin' there by the fire, with that skull in his hands—oh, Lawd!—talkin' with it 'bout some place 'way off in Africa—oh, my primus land, what a turn it give me!”
“Africa?” demanded Miss Grush, with kindling interest. “He was talking about Africa, was he?”
“With the skull—yes'm; an'—”
“That's all bugbite and moonshine, of course!” the old lady affirmed with decision. “All fiddlesticks, it is! Skulls can't talk.”
“Well, ma'am, I don't say the skull was 'zackly talkin'.” Irene twisted her apron with trembling fingers. “But anyhow, he was talkin' to it, with his eyes shut an' his hands stretched out, so—like he was prayin', kind of; an' Mr. Lockwood standin' there by the fire, watchin' so hard—all trimbly, ma'am. He couldn't listen hard enough, Mr. Lockwood couldn't.”
“Fiddlesticks! It's all nonsense, Irene—I hope to tell you 'tis!”
“Yes'm. An' I know I couldn't listen hard enough, neither. 'Twas wrong for me to stand there, peekin' through the porteers, but my Lawd, how could I help it? You'd 'a' done the same, ma'am, an'—”
“Irene!”
“'Scuse me, ma'am; but anyhow, such talk! Oh, it strikes a dread to me, just rememberin' it!”
The old housekeeper's eyes grew penetrant through their heavy lenses.
“Just what did that man say, Irene? What was it all about?”
“Oh, I don't hardly know, ma'am—somethin' about some place in Africa, an' a boat, an' some colored people attackin' it, an' a daughter—a lost daughter. Miss Grush, is that the little gal he lost—the one he's got the paintin' of, that hangs over the fireplace?”
“There, there, Irene! You talk too much, you do. Stand still, can't you? Why, my land, you jump around like a flea on a bear!” Miss Grush tried to be casual, but her voice had taken a sudden quaver. “Now, try to remember, Irene. Just what did that man say? Did he claim he could—find that daughter?”
“Yes'm, he did so. He say she's down South—down in Cha'leston, South Ca'lina. He say the sperrits told him that; an' he say—”
“He did, eh?” The quaver in Miss Grush's voice increased. She leaned forward and fixed her strangely gleaming eyes upon the girl. “What else?”
“I—I dunno, ma'am.”
“You haven't got brains enough to have a headache! Try to think, now. What more did he tell Mr. Lockwood?”
“Well, ma'am, he—he ask Mr. Lockwood to go with him down to Cha'leston.”
“And he's going?”
The question was sharp with fear.
“Uh-uh—I reckon he is, ma'am. He say he'd go anywheres, to the ends o' the yearth, to find that there gal o' his.”
“Oh! And—and what then?”
“I dunno, ma'am. When I hear that, I come away. I get scared. I don't like them skulls an' ghosts an' ha'nts—no, ma'am! I don't want no truck with 'em at all! If this here keeps up, I'm goin' to leave!”
“Irene! Are you sure that's all you heard?”
“Yes'm. I didn't want no more. I was scared then, an' I'm scared now. I'm goin', an' I ain't never comin' back, neither, if this hoodoo stuff don't stop!”
“It 'll stop, all right, it will!” Miss Grush's voice had become hard and decisive. “It 'll stop, if I'm any Yankee at the business. You can go now; but mind you, one thing!”
“Yes'm!”
“Don't you go talking about this—not to anybody. Not one word to any living soul, or you'll get into a peck o' trouble, you will.”
“I won't say one blessed word to nobody, Miss Grush!”
“Not even to Andy. I'm not going to have any chauffeur peddling this rubbish all over the hill—or you, either. Mind you, if I hear of a single word getting out, you'll both be discharged!”
“I don't need no dischargin', ma'am. If this here keeps up, I'm a goin' to quit, anyhow!”
“There, there!” the housekeeper answered more soothingly. “You'd better not be hasty about leaving-a good place, Irene. How many times have I got to tell you this nonsense is mot going to go on? That ll do for now, Irene. Don't stand there staring at me like an old Stoughton bottle, but go—go!”
Alone, Miss Grush sat for a long time, pondering. Her earache must have grown worse, for she consumed three of her little cigars in quick succession, rocking there with eyes that smoldered, seated by the lamp-lit table.
“Daughter!” she muttered with splenetic grimness. “Cursed faker! He's a cool hand, that Veazie! Lockwood's a downright idiot. He'll go! Trust an old fool to make a proper good job of it!”
She got up presently, went to her bureau, unlocked a drawer, and took out a packet of papers. With one of the papers she returned to her chair by the lamp. She moved with something of a sidelong gait, for she had already had two strokes that had left her slightly paralyzed. Now she sat studying the paper, reading it to herself, and moving the rouged lips that contrasted so painfully with the wrinkled bagginess of her face.
At last she folded the paper and locked it up with the others.
“This is an awful thing to happen to me!” she said under her breath. “A terrible thing, in my old age! It's blue ruin, it is. It 'll leave me poorer 'n a shingle nail. Oh, if a body don't want trouble in this world, they ought never to be born!”
Then, after a few moments' brooding:
“It 'll leave me flatter 'n a burned boot. My land o' deliverance, what 'll I do? Here I've slaved all these years for him, 'cause he had no kin to claim anything, and now—this! If I tell him Veazie's a faker, he'll never believe me, he won't—he's that set. He'll put me out of house and home, if I go against him. Oh, mercy! And how about his will? He'll change that, certain sure. Oh, wouldn't this melt a grindstone, though? But it mustn't happen—it shan't—I won't let it! I'm not going to lose this house, and all, without a fight!”
For a long time the housekeeper sat there pondering, smoking, her eyes blinking behind the thick lenses. Her aspect, somehow, seemed that of a bird of prey caught in a closing snare.