The Shorn Lamb/Chapter 22
Chapter 22
A TERRIFIED CONJURER
Aunt Peachy spent more and more time over her charms, in an endeavor to find some spell that would be more potent than the tricks she was sure Philip was up to. Betsy had said he was a better charm worker than she was and surely nothing short of conjuring could have won over all the colored contingent to his side. Even her own son, Old Abe, and all of his descendants had left her completely. They seldom came near her now, not even to bring the choice morsels of scandal that she longed to hear since she had become too feeble to go out in the world in search of amusement.
Sometimes she even fancied that Rolfe Bolling was no longer subject to her powerful and evil will. Her piercing eyes had lately caught a look in his of hate. She knew he feared her—she meant that he should but she craved his love with an eagerness she had never felt for her own offspring. She had a suspicion that if it were not for her determination that he should push Major Taylor to the utmost the law allowed, Bolling would weakly give in to the wishes of his family and let the whole matter drop. For this reason she never let the subject grow cold but talked about it continually, constantly picturing to her master the wealth and distinction that would be his when he got possession of the hub factory.
She raked up old scores between the Taylors and Bollings, exaggerating the importance of bygone trifling disagreements until she made it seem that a regular feud had always existed between the owners of The Hedges and Mill House. She hated Philip with a venom that poisoned her whole system.
"The sight er him makes my victuals bitter in my mouf," she would mutter, "an' 'fo' Gawd if he don' eben tu'n my liquor agin me."
She longed to know in what his superior conjuring powers differed from her own. It never entered her head that he did not employ some occult methods to gain his ends.
The attic had become more and more Philip's place of refuge. Not only was it the one place that Aunt Peachy never entered, but it was the respository of his books and tools, his drugs and chemicals. There he worked and read, there his mother came for the quiet chats, there his little neighbor Rebecca would find her way when he had finished the farm labors, and curling up in an old chair that he had unearthed from a dark corner, she would talk to him as she did to no other person, not even her grandfather.
During the cold months, when work on the farm was slack, Philip had determined to try to repair some of the beautiful old bits of discarded furniture piled up under the eaves of his attic refuge. Some must be scraped with broken glass and some must be treated with a strong concoction to take off the cracking varnish that had been foolishly applied by some Bolling housewife who wanted shiny furniture. Aunt Peachy would sniff suspiciously when the odor of this varnish destroyer reached her nostrils, and then with head on one side she would listen to the mysterious sound of persistent scraping.
Philip had finally moved a cot up into the attic, because he was constantly being annoyed by Aunt Peachy slipping into his bed room. Sometimes he would awaken in the night, conscious of her presence. At the slightest movement on his part she would be gone like a startled rat. At last he moved his clothes to the attic, too, as one of her conjuring tricks was to put strange parcels of incongruous and nondescript articles in the pockets of his suits, in the toes of his shoes or in the lining of an overcoat. The bones of a salt herring wrapped in an old rabbit skin and sewed up in his pillow, where it smelled most vilely, was the last straw that made him determine to sleep in his beloved attic.
By the early morning light he always paid his respects to the ancestor hanging over the highboy, the charming gentleman in cue and stock. Philip had looked him up in the family annals and knew him to be the one responsible for the sunken garden and the beautiful proportions of The Hedges.
"I couldn't look you in the face, old fellow, if I were not bringing back some of the beauty of the place," he would say to the portrait. "I'm slow but I am sure."
Philip's move was but added irritation to Aunt Peachy. More and more she brooded over it.
"He air sech a debble he ain't eben scairt er hants," she muttered as she crouched in her chair. Not often was her cackle heard in the last weeks. She muttered and groaned and fashioned strange things of rags and clay or bits of putty with her clawlike hands. The only time when she seemed like herself was just after a visit to the jug, which needed more frequent replenishings than formerly.
"I's as big a debble as he is," she declared to herself after a copious swig from the tin cup. "If hants cyarn't hurt him they cyarn't hurt me. I'm gonter show him an' show him this very night."
It was the evening of the vaudeville performance at the Court House and Rolfe Bolling and his old nurse were to be left alone while Philip took his mother and sister and Jo to the show. Elizabeth had been doubtful about the advisability of leaving them but had been cackled down by Aunt Peachy.
"Sho'! Go on! My baby an' me air took keer er each other befo' any mounting po' whites ever come along an' we kin go on a keepin' keer er each other. Ain't it the truf, my baby?"
Rolfe had merely grunted. He had a kind of nameless terror lately of being left alone with Mam' Peachy for any length of time, but he was too much in awe of her to voice his feelings. Before they started Elizabeth had turned down his bed and persuaded him to get in it. He was quite docile in complying with her wishes. He hoped Mam' Peachy would stay in the kitchen or go to her own room.
In the gathering dusk Aunt Peachy watched the family carriage as it disappeared over the hill—watched it with glittering eyes and cursed it and its occupants with vindictive bitterness.
"All but Betsy and Jo. I ain't got no cuss fer Betsy and Jo. If I had er had the bringin' up er po' lil' Jo I could er made him jes' lak my baby," she chattered. "That there Phup never would er been lak him 'case he got too much er his maw in him—his maw an' some er them ol' picshers.
"If I'm a gonter spunk up enough ter go up in that there lof' I must fill my veins up full er liquor," she declared. She deftly opened the cupboard with a bent kitchen fork and poured out a cup full from the brown jug.
"Now I mus' put on my begalia! I kin conjer better in my begalia."
She slipped from the kitchen to her own room, lighted a tallow candle stuck in a bottle, and pulling from under the bed a strange old rawhide trunk, opened it and began to hunt in the conglomeration of its contents for strings of beads and bunches of feathers. She put the beads around her neck and waist, string after string made of bones and buttons and bits of colored glass tied and wired together. On her palsied head she placed a headdress of feathers. Then she took a staff standing in the corner and carefully greased it with an old bacon rind.
"Now cyarn't nothin' ketch me!" she asserted. She looked around her crowded, filthy room to see if there was anything left undone.
"I'd lak ter see myself. It done been many a day sence I clum' up ter see my image. That there booro air too high fer ol' Mam' Peachy now sence she done got so bent over. She pulled from under the bed a peculiar-looking carpet-covered stool, evidently home made. She stepped up on it and balanced herself precariously with her staff, while she peered in the mirror.
"Sweet debble! Ain't I a sight though?" she cackled. "I could make a white man run, sho' as shootin'. I wisht I had er thought er this begalia sooner an' I could er scairt that there Phup ter death."
With candle in hand she made her way through the house and began slowly to mount the stairs. Heavy breathing from Rolfe Bolling's bedroom gave evidence that her master was asleep. She paused a moment on the landing and endeavored to straighten her bent back, but the effort was too much for her and she was forced to proceed in her usual position with hands almost touching the floor. Indeed when she went upstairs her hands did touch the step immediately above the one on which she was standing.
"I's a debble! I's a debble! As big a debble as Phup!" she kept muttering to herself as she went slowly up.
The second floor was reached and then she scuttled to the door in the back hall which led to the attic stairs. She stood a long time before this door trying to make up her mind to open it.
"If I gits up thar I kin fin' his conjer and break it up and then I'll be queen bee agin an' I kin bring trouble on him an' his maw. I'm as big a debble as he is! Th'ain't no hants a hanging theyse'fs in that there lof', 'case if they wa' they'd a got Phup long ago 'case he ain't no mo' strong than what I is."
She opened the door and inch by inch went up the steps. On some steps she would stand for many minutes, terror stricken at the thought of going any higher. She would move her feet back and forth along a step, raise a foot and make a tentative motion to mount and then draw it back. Her candle was getting low in the bottle. Some of the tallow dropped on her fingers, burning them. This brought her to a realization that minutes were flying and it might be almost time for the theatre-goers to return. With one more desperate effort the old woman glided up the last four steps and found herself in the dread attic.
"’Tain't nothin' up here," she asserted bravely. "’Tain't nothin' but ol' broke up furnisher an' I ain't scairt er that. Lemme hide the conjer I done fixed fer my fine gemman, hide it so he cyarn't fin' it an' then fin' out what he makes his cha'ms out'n."
She whipped from her pocket one of her precious charm workers, wrapped in an old sock heel, and deftly slipped it beneath the cot mattress.
"I 'low you won't sleep so easy now, young man."
The attic was dark and the guttering candle only made a blur of light. Aunt Peachy peered uneasily into the black corners, hardly knowing where to begin on her search for the superior conjuring material that she was sure Philip must possess.
"Here that there bottle er stuff what smells so strong!" she exclaimed, putting the candle down on Philip's work table. "I reckon it air rank pizen." She took out the cork and sniffed suspiciously. "Fust I'll git my claws on this here." She tried to put the bottle of varnish remover in her pocket, but it was too large, so she clasped it in her arms.
"What he gonter do with this here broken glass? I betcher he plan to grind it up and put it in us's victuals—me 'n' my baby's. I gonter beat him to it an' 'fo' Gawd he gonter be a squirmin' in agony this time termorrow. I'll grin' it fine an' git some in that there speshul batter braid what his maw makes so keerful fer him 'thout enough grease in it ter ile a flea's laig."
The old woman laughed gleefully as she carefully picked up the bits of glass that Philip had saved to use for scraping the old mahogany and put it in her capacious pocket.
Suddenly the tallow candle flared up and went out. For a moment she stood terrified. The dark always terrified her, but the stars were shining through the skylight and dimly lighted the attic. She fumbled in her pocket among the bits of broken glass and produced a box of matches.
"He's sho' ter have a candle. I seen one over here," she muttered, striking a match and moving towards the highboy. The match went out just as she reached the highboy, and then she struck another and held it aloft.
From the impenetrable gloom the face of the portrait seemed to spring out at her—the face of the man with his throat wrapped up—he whom she had always thought to be the one who had hanged himself in the attic. Frozen with terror, she backed away from the highboy. The match burnt itself out and dropped from her nerveless fingers.
Slowly the old woman retreated. She could not turn, could not run. She clasped the bottle of varnish remover tightly in her arms, feeling perhaps it had some potency to keep her from the terrible head that was pursuing her. Suddenly she backed into one of Philip's suits suspended on a coat hanger from a nail in a scantling.
"The hangman hisse'f!" she sobbed.
A piercing shriek resounded through the house, another and another—shrieks so loud and shrill, so blood-curdling, that Rolfe Bolling stirred uneasily in his heavy slumber and opened his eyes.
"Mam' Peachy!" he roared. "Where are you, Mam' Peachy? Help! Help!" he blubbered like a great baby and covered his head with the quilt.
Another shriek! Yet another! A sound of rushing and of a falling body, and then silence!