Great mischief

by Pinckney, Josephine, 1895-1957

  With a spring that almost snapped Timothy out backward, the horse started and sped along the drive. High gateposts flashed by, the gig rushed down a dark road going somewhere very rapidly. Timothy tried to steady his thoughts against the rocking of their passage. Darkness hung overhead and on either hand and let through no clue as to their whereabouts. What sort of beast was this? A conjecture lit up his mind with the stab of a match flame: this was Satan's own gig-horse, harnessed and ready for a sudden visit to the upper world. He hung on to the reins and hoped for the best.

  The first familiar sight to his eyes were some stars overhead. He seemed to have come on the outskirts of a town, but they sped too fast for him to recognize the dim houses. Timothy wondered if this beast were as sapient as he should be for such a profession, and decided to chance it. "We're going after Dr. Timothy Partridge!" he shouted. "To Dr. Partridge's house!"

  Again the horse sprang forward. The streets rushed by, familiar now in flashes. Dirt, cobblestones, then more dirt; the lampposts ran up to them like link boys, and in a twinkling they came to a dead stop before Timothy's gate.

  He clambered out and sat for a moment on the horse block, his legs too slack-twisted to hold him. The death like stillness before the dawn lay on the street. The moon had long sunk, the roof from which he had started ages ago was shrouded in leaves of darkness. Tottering to his feet, Timothy wondered what he should do with his undomesticated charger. The livery stable? But it was closed. He waved his hand weakly toward the horse's head. "Good-by, old fellow—I expect you're sharp enough to get home by yourself." He wobbled along the path and up to his bed.

  Part FOUR

  TIMOTHY woke the next day and thought—Dear God! Did I really go to Hell and burn it up? He drew a deep breath, a Messianic complacency stirred in him. The adventure had, to be sure, the wild improbability of a dream, but that didn't concern him much; the wall between dream and reality had worn as thin for him as the surrounding mosquito net. From his bolster he could see the fireplace, the slop-jar, the rosewood sofa, clearly yet pearled in the gauze; when he rose and moved among them, the figures of his fantastic world would be as pearly-clear to him as the slop-jar was now. And he was content that each world should have its own validity. So thinking, he sat up, released the patent frame; the canopy sprang back to the head of the bed and the net folded above him like a king's baldequin.

  When he had breakfasted he walked out to the front gate. The black horse and gig were nowhere in sight. He examined the roadway and thought that the dirt before his house showed unusually deep scarrings, but the tracks of hoof and wheel were like any other tracks, so he went in again, wondering that the potent and imaginative monarch of the nether regions had not bethought him to give his horse a cloven foot too—like the Hapsburgs, who distinguished their stables with horses of a special breed and color.

  In the late afternoon Lucy arrived. He went down the path in some trepidation to meet her. Though he had never doubted her ability to save herself from the conflagration, he had been guilty of shockingly bad manners in not waiting to escort her home. He folded his hands and waited for her wrath to fall.

  "Good grief, you look pious today," was all she said. She was heavily languid, her eyes were red and had little puffs under them. By mutual consent they sat down on the steps too tired to go any farther, and talked about the evening before. She still said nothing about the fire, she showed no interest in either his damnation or his salvation, which he thought heartless of her. At last he blurted out, "Look here, I burnt the place up, you know. What's going to happen now?"

  Lucy smiled acidly. "Oh—pluming yourself on that, are you? You make me laugh. Still the boy-firebug— playing with matches! You burnt up your idea of Hell, that's all. You don't suppose you could deprive other people of theirs, do you? Did you really think you could take Hell away from both God and Satan?"

  "No," said Timothy in a small voice, the Messianic note squeezed out of it. But her scathing tone vexed him, for he felt edgy himself today and thought she might have shown him some womanly consideration. He changed the subject. "By the way, I kept an eye out for Mr. Dombie, but I didn't see him anywhere. Would he have been with Sister, maybe, in the section where she lives?"

  "Oh, him—" said Lucy vaguely; "he may not be there at all. He was half-dead when we knew him; there's no telling what sort of man he was before the War; very likely he was a good and brave soldier and went to Heaven when you finished him off. These war heroes are hard to get your hooks into."

  "Sister did," said Timothy nastily, giving her the kind of sidelong glance he had learned from her.

  Lucy colored furiously and the reddening of her skin suddenly brought out her resemblance to Sinkinda. "The men I choose aren't near-corpses—I've never fallen that low. That poor old crock was the best Penelope could get. I have a better choice; it's just a question of waiting to find a chink in people's armor, like my suspecting you had rigged up the fire at your house. Now don't ask me why, with so many livelier people to choose from, I spend my time with you; that's something I can't explain to myself, let alone anybody else."

  She fanned the summery twilight air irritably, and he saw that there was earnest in her jest. "You didn't spend much time with me last evening, my girl; you preferred to move in very dubious company and cared nothing, apparently, about what happened to me."

  Lucy leaned against the banisters, a sullen Pre-Raphaelite, her nostrils flaring. After a while she offered an unwilling explanation. "I belong to that world and you'll have to accept it. You can't apply the stodgy standards of our day to a way of life that's as old as time."

  Timothy took her hand. "But in the long run, Lucy, Evil is just too thick, you can't swallow it."

  She shrugged. "But in the long run you couldn't swallow the 'Good' world either. You were really pretty silly last night, you know."

  He looked into the creeping dusk of the garden and said, "It was quite a decision to have to make."

  She slipped his hand in the open neck of her dress, and her smooth flesh sent its soft, startling communications through his fingertips. "You keep saying you want to be with me—that nothing else matters. Well—?"

  He bowed his head on her shoulder. "I want to be with you forever . . . but not in that bedlam. I found I did know something about Evil—not much, but more than I realized. You must come with me, Lucy; a man's passion is stronger, it has to prevail. My idea of Good is still pretty negative, but I'm going to keep on hunting. If I could find just one moral—"

  With a turn of her supple waist Lucy slipped from his grasp and jumped up. She tied on her scarf with characteristic decision. "You're an awful bore when you talk like this, Timothy, and I can't abide you— not tonight, anyway, with the weather muggy and my head aching." She ran down the steps and along the path like an undersized amazon out for the kill.

  Timothy sat still and let her go.

  After that their relationship grew more and more uneasy; the spontaneous delight drained out of it, with Timothy always trying to stop leaks that he could never find. The time for plant-collecting had passed; as the summer came on, the insect pests waxed fiercer, so they gave up the picnics. Though they rubbed themselves energetically with odoriferous leaves and lotions, mosquitoes spoiled their evenings even in the house. Lucy's lack of education began to tell; conversation became difficult—so many of his favorite topics met with blank incomprehension. In the hot weather her dress grew slovenly, she yawned in his face a great deal, and gave way to fits of childish temper. Natural behavior, he concluded, was selfish behavior; a few well-chosen conventions were essential to human relationships. . . .

  She stayed away oftener nowadays, and when she was with him she seemed overcome by a greater lassitude than the weather warranted. Never to know what she did during these absences wracked him with frenzy, and to save his life he couldn't help betraying his torment. Seeing her stroll up the garden path, half reluctanty he would rush out to meet her.

  "Where have you been, Lucy?"r />
  Her eyebrows would work with resentment at being questioned. " 'Killing swine.' "

  He never knew whether she was quoting a witches' jingle, punishing his curiosity, or telling the truth.

  One evening he came home and found her there before him. She was darting about the garden, stalking lizards with noiseless feline pounces. As she caught the little scampering creatures she cracked their necks and dropped them into a pail, Timothy was outraged. "Don't kill my chameleons!" he exclaimed. "I love them and they don't do any harm—in fact, they do good in the garden. They eat the insects that eat the plants. I don't understand you, Lucy!"

  "Oh, there you go again." She peered out at him from the bush under which she was crawling, her small face sharp with animal pursuit. "Why aren't you weeping for the poor bugs the lizards kill?"

  "It's not the same thing," Timothy objected.

  "Why not? Mosquitoes and mealy bugs are useful to them, and they are useful to me. If you are going to try to reform Nature, you'll be busy for quite a while. Lizards can be put to good uses in my trade, you know."

  Timothy abandoned a protest inevitably lost on her. He went indoors and buried his nose in a book.

  But he could not make up his mind to give her up. He still hoped the bitter hurts they dealt each other could be healed and their love restored to its former delight and tension. He tried hard to please her by bringing her presents, he tempted her appetite with fresh figs and such delicacies as the market afforded. One day he passed a fancy goods shop and saw in the window an ingenious ornament made of hair. It was a lover's wreath, the leaves and flowers cunningly varied by different shades and textures and set off by a handsome gold frame. It would delight Lucy, he thought at once; it looked like her somehow. He went in and recklessly paid the high price asked for the novelty.

  When Lucy came he greeted her with loverlike warmth, and, taking the ornament from his bureau drawer, presented it to her. She glanced at him in surprise, he thought, and studied it without speaking. Timothy felt slightly miffed; "I thought you'd like it," he said pointedly.

  "I do like it and it was sweet of you to bring it to me, darling. But"—she sniffed it carefully—"this person is dead. She won't do me any good—if that's what you had in mind."

  Timothy snatched it from her hand and threw it on the table. "Can't you think of anything else! I hoped you'd admire its artistic qualities, but it seems you are callous to beauty that is delicate and inventive." He marched to the window and stood with his arms folded, his back to her.

  He heard her go to the table, padding softly on the bare floor, and pick up the ornament. After a pause she said, "Where did you get it? Did they have any more? Usually living people sell their hair to make these ornaments. I don't know why I never thought of a hair-goods shop—"

  In a jealous fury Timothy turned on her. "Lucy—are you riding other people now? Is that why you are away so much at night?"

  She did not answer and he went over and took her arm. "What's come over you? You seemed happy with me, our love seemed to be a delight to you too. Why have you changed? Why do you leave me in this heartless way to go off after—I don't know what kind of strangers—" He dropped her arm and walked distractedly up and down the room.

  "I'm a hag; you have to remember that. Besides, relationships just do change, and jealousy is stupid; it's the most borinsf of all human traits. You can't hold quicksilver by squeezing it in your hand."

  Timothy took a deep breath and said, "Well, if you must have your night-traveling, why don't you ride me again?"

  She considered for a moment. Then she said, "I don't know whether you've noticed it or not, but you've stopped worrying about Penelope and about burning up the house. In spite of your craze for morals, you've managed to shed a lot of guilt in the last few weeks. That makes it harder to ride you—and less fun. The truth is," she admitted, "I have to have some hold on a person. It was probably a mistake, talking you out of so many poses; it would have been better to have left you as you were. Besides, what do I get for my pains? You won't come over and join my side, and you don't seem to like it on the other side either."

  "Lucy, why don't you give up your side? Give up all this night-traveling and carousing and hell-raising, and let's settle down. Maybe it's another human weakness, but I'm beginning to want just to lead a normal life again. We could be so happy here," he urged. "We could build up our business and—well, we could get married—"

  Lucy let out such a derisive screech that his eyes dropped; they fell on himself and his own absurdity. He thought despairingly of the high company she was used to in Hell.

  "I know I'm not exactly eligible," he admitted. "But I'm content to swap the Devil for a witch." He managed a smile. "Wouldn't you swap an enchanter for a faithful druggist?"

  "Do you mean we should go into a church and have the Bible read over us? You really are a lunatic, Timothy!"

  "I suppose we can't get married in a church, but there's the probate judge . . . though maybe we are not popular with the law either. I don't care, we can use some ceremony of Hell, if you like—" He paused, remembering some of the ceremonies he had seen in that particular jurisdiction and others he had guessed at.

  Lucy went off into a fit of silent laughter, and it was not reassuring. "We don't have marriages in Hell any more than in Heaven, stupid; don't think they are any more advanced than we are in that respect. The idea that you can make love last forever is just a human lunacy. When the time comes for us to part, we'll part."

  It won't be long, Timothy thought, in agony. He threw himself on her, his pride dissolving. "Lucy! Don't leave me, I can't go on without you now."

  Lucy withdrew in a sort of repulsion from this appeal. "What's the matter with you, Timothy? First jealous and now begging. I've never been jealous and I've never groveled. It's hateful—you give me the creeps." She jumped tip and shook off his unwelcome touch.

  Timothy got up too, furious with himself and with her. "You are without loyalty or pity, aren't you?" he said calmly, aware above his raging heart how the very inclemency of his love was betraying him into folly and inviting catastrophe.

  Lucy, he saw, found him absurd too. "I know what I want," she said crisply. "I'm sick of your moralizing and your shilly-shallying."

  "Maybe you won't get it."

  "Maybe not. But I go after it and that's my satisfaction."

  "Well, I can't go after Evil," said Timothy sorrowfully. "I can't explain this to you, nor even to myself. It's just a feeling that at tlie end of the chase tlie beast will rend the hunter."

  "Very well," said Lucy, "you've made up your mind not to come with me. That's something, at least. Go after your milk-and-honey Heaven then—if you can stomach that nasty diet. But what does God promise you? Retribution! Don't think He'll let you off from that!"

  The sharp word, with its smell of brimstone, its sound of lightning and thunder, struck against Timothy's bosom, and in the moment of shock and silence that followed she spun around and ran downstairs. "Lucy! Come back!" He plunged after her in the blind fear of abandonment. In the hall below he dashed at the closed front door; it was locked, its solid panels threw him back with the violence of a blow. Lucy—how had she gotten out? . . . But what did it matter? One way or another, she was gone. Stunned and dizzy, he fell back to the staircase and sat down at the foot, on the bottom step of misery and despair.

  August enveloped the town in its moist sultriness. Weeds grew high in the streets that, like Timothy's, were unpaved. The sunlight hung thick from the white and yellow walls; umbrellas and parasols bobbed on the sidewalks, the horses put on their straw hats. Rather to Timothy's surprise the News and Courier came regularly after his break with Lucy; life went on about as usual but stripped of fear and of delight. People, he read, were flocking to meetings about the Home Rule issue, for the South naturally sympathized with Ireland's desire for autonomy, and passed resounding resolutions supporting the Irish position. President Cleveland's bride captivated the public fancy; her flounce
d dresses, her high-buttoned, scalloped-topped shoes, and her admiration for the novels of Ouida profoundly influenced feminine life. Families left in batches for the mountains or the islands.

  It all seemed as remote to him as the Thirty Years' War. His narrow garden lay like a backwater from which he seldom put out except to the Library or to buy the necessities for existence. The popularity of Partridge's Hirsutus faded, and he thankfully gave up making nostrums, but his erstwhile customers began to look on him sullenly; he found cunjers hidden under the back steps, and anonymous notes threatened him bodily harm. He examined the account at the savings bank, thinking tliat since it had been a joint enterprise he should send Lucy her share of the earnings, but their extravagant pleasures had nearly emptied it. Soberly he tried to make some plan to mend his fortunes. His life of late had unfitted him, however, for human society, so nothing occurred to him.

  Even the brindled cat had left his bed and board. He leaned on the gate like a length of wet sacking and poked idly among explanations of this phenomenon. "Can familiars have kittens?" he asked the oysterwoman, who came by with she-crabs in the R-less months. Her whoops of uncorseted laughter shook up the lifeless air of his small garden; between her gurglings he made out that Old Scratch, too, had to replenish his supply of critters, most likely by the good old sure-fire method.

  It worked for the lizards at any rate, who produced new generations of infantine dragons, and that pleased him. Clouds of flies from his favorite neighbor, the livery stable, pleased him less; neither sheets of flypaper nor Polio's languid activities with a long palmetto fly-brush discouraged their unflagging attentions. Timothy moved restlessly from one room to another in search of what little breeze blew, and at times his longing for Lucy would tear deep groans from his throat. At a noise in the chimney he would start up in terror and hope, but now it really was the chimney swifts, and he sank back to the emptiness of his room where nothing ever happened. Only the cat bone was left, forgotten on the mantel.