Great mischief (23 page)

As if in his support, the deep, hoarse voice began again, like the roar of the universe. The earth came loose from its foundations, and the tower of the church opposite rocked and crashed into the square. The light from the burning houses shot up; in this pallid glare they stared at each other, suspended; then it slowly dimmed in the upsurging smoke.

The fresh shock had brought the patient to her senses; she sat up between them with a quavering cry. Will helped her to her feet and turned her over to her friends. "Well, Tim—we're liable to know all the answers any minute now, so don't worry about them." And clapping his cousin on the shoulder he went bounding across the square to attend to the newly injured.

Timothy watched him go in perplexity. Dear Will, impulsive, generous, always able to escape thinking by action. And yet, suppose—good God, suppose this certainty of doom he felt was only his doom advancing! A hideous heresy edged into his mind: Judgment Day was an absurdity. If the dead of ten thousand years were already learning the harp or burning below, they had been judged as they fell. There would be no prisoners at the bar should a Great Day come.

This revelation knocked his underpinnings out as none of the seismic shocks of the evening had been able to do. He sat down suddenly on the grass. For in that case he was going to his appointed goal alone. Judgment Day, he saw, would have been easy by comparison; everybody would be catching it at the same time. He dropped his head in his hands and groaned for Judgment Day lost. The Highnesses, he couldn't help feeling, had done themselves out of a great show.

When the hysteria in the square had died down a little, the young Golightlys returned to the duck carcass.

"Will you be all right here?" Timothy asked, getting up. "There's something I have to do. . . ." Obviously they would do as well here as anywhere, and he took his leave. An uncontrollable restlessness had taken hold of him.

The conviction that his time had come made him feel meager and naked. One simple reason suggested itself; he looked about him and appropriated without a qualm a pair of trousers lying on the sidewalk. As he tucked his nightshirt in, the sweet solace of respectability stole over him and he went on with more confidence. The glare from the houses retreated behind him. In the quiet canal of the street he followed, he began to collect the thoughts that were bubbling up and spilling out of his head. He wanted to prepare his case, to say what he could for himself when he got down there. . . . 

Between the darkness and his preoccupation he collided with a smooth hairy body—a horse being led along by a colored man. As they disentangled themselves, Timothy said, "You have to re-examine Good and Evil constantly; they change their appearances, like Satan at the reception."

The whites of the man's startled eyes showed in the dimness. "Hallelujah!" he exclaimed, and hurried away with his horse,

Timothy went on talking: "About Sister and Mr. Dombie ... I was caught in that trap. . . . Being kind and dutiful to sisters doesn't always work out. I had to get from under. Though I chose the wrong method—you can't just kill very trying people, I suppose. You have to deal with them some other way."

Like a fresh quake under foot it came over Timothy where he was headed. Down the street a little way gaped the site of Partridge's Pharmacy. The smoke and dust seemed to take him by the throat, but some door still swung there, drawn on air, through which he had to pass, and he went on. As he came nearer he could see the brick foundations, full of charred rubble; but the horror of its ruin had diminished now, for ruin had come to join it; it had merely anticipated this night by a few months.

A column had fallen across the street from a building opposite; a fireman was putting a lantern on it to warn passers in the roadway. When the firemen had gone, Timothy took the lantern and walked along the foundation wall of the house to the gap where his bedroom had been.

The cellar was like a well; the chimney had fallen into it, but the brick arch that had been its basement support still stood and made a shallow cave against the wall. As he turned the lantern on it he saw in the arch the sharp gleam of a pair of half-moon eyes. The old stab of love and fear went through him. Then he jumped into the cellar and stumbled over the intervening: bricks.

"Have you come for me, Sinkinda?"

She sat sidewise, framed in the arch like a demonic saint in a catacomb. He saw that she had on her dark gTcen habit and her look of lazy anticipation.

"I knew you'd turn up here, sooner or later."

Timothy looked at her hopelessly. She said, "Aren't you ready to go yet? It's not very agreeable here just now."

"No, it's dreadful . . . there's nothing to stay for, God knows. And the suspense is ghastly. I want to get it over with. The only thing is, I do wish—"

Her eyebrows went up in inquiry.

"Well, it hurts a man's pride to live all his life on earth and not know whether he was right or A\'rong. If I only had a little more time to get my mind straightened out on that score."

"The ruling passion strong in death!" She touched him with a quick gesture that was waspish but not uncomforting. "Most people in their last moments want time to be with their lovers, or just to enjoy life—but you want more time to find a moral. I will say, Timothy, that of all my victims you're the most charmingly unexpected and the most provokingly consistent."

"Thanks."

Sinkinda uncoiled herself from the arch and went off, hunting among the debris in the cellar. A little breeze brought the chink of glass and metal to him as she turned the shards of his old life. Then she came back, her bare feet making a dry whisper on the bricks, her tawny colors picking up and extending the circle of the lantern's light. She held in her hand the broken pharmacist's slate on which he used to jot down his orders. She handed it to him with the slate pencil. "Here, write your list of topics. And make haste—because the time is running out."

Timothy came to with a start and took them from her. He moved the lantern nearer, sat down, crossed his legs, and tried to concentrate. The earth had stopped shaking for a while, but he found writing difficult. "I see you have to go on without knowing. The problem is too big for our narrow experience. But in spite of all the confusion a few things remain. Senseless cruelty is bad."

He wrote it down in his crabbed script. "It bursts out now and then in the world, but, even when they practice it, people recognize that it is evil. Goodness is badness, sometimes . . . like Sister's pity. You were right, it was self-pity, a morbid fellow-feeling for the weak.

My acquiescence was bad, and the defeatism I lived in. Murder," he admitted regretfully, "is bad. It is too easy a way out of a situation." He wrote down murder.

"But there are some sins you can't assess. After all, I set Hell on fire and got away in the Devil's gig. Will that be counted against me when I get there?" Sinkinda watched him, smiling, and offered no help. "To tell the truth, I think I did right. That house was dreadfully bad taste; ostentatious—and all those tricksy effects. But there'll be another hell waiting for me. . . ." He gave a long sigh. "There's no time now to unravel that knot. You know, I have an idea that even Retribution can't last forever. Everlasting Hell wouldn't work: it would cease to burn. Besides, you hellions—I don't use the term in any disparaging sense, my dear—would be the first to get bored with it. Being shut up there forever with all us sinners—"

"Sinners are at least more diverting than saints," said Sinkinda. "And now, if you've finished writing your tablets of the law, which I must say are not original, we'll go along, shall we?"

"It's no time to be original—when you're facing payday. You just have to save what you can without vanity of authorship. It's not much," he admitted, "in fact, it's precious little to salvage, when life is done. But it's a good tablet as far as it goes. I intend to hold on to it as long as I can." He took a firm grasp on the slate and stood up.

Sinkinda slipped an arm around his neck Avith the lovingly venomous gesture that was her sign and signature. "Oh, Sinkinda! I don't know whether you are more a fiend or more a woman, " said Timothy, embracing her. "If only we could have met under other circumstances! It should have been different, somehow."

"Ah, my friend, how many star-crossed lovers have uttered that cry I" She pushed him off gently.

The lantern guttered and went out of its own accord. Timothy felt the frightening and familiar weight bearing on his shoulders. As always it drove him along, it took possession of his will, his effort to shed it gave him the impulsion and the speed. He went nimbly over the bricks, sprang to the foundation wall, and ran into the street. Neither the fallen column nor the gaps in the pavement tripped his bare feet as they sped on this strange promenade. He skirted the bright patches where houses smoldered, covering the ground rapidly; far off he could see the sallow canopy hanging over the square where he had left the Golightlys. Oh, Will, he thought, shall we meet again? Maybe not. Good-by, Will. Maum Rachel I may see . . . she is in this somehow. But Polio-it's too soon to say. Though if he keeps on telling lies . . . And Sister—will we be able to patch it up down there? Do the wrrongs people do each other cancel—not only the big wrongs but the little wrongs of daily living? I sincerely repent having roasted Mr. Dombie, that poor man. I'd prefer not to meet him again—I wouldn't know how to explain things to him.

He ran on; he thought they were making a great circle through the town, but he couldn't be sure. He had lost his hold on trees and stones, all except the slate, which he went on clutching. Its jagged edges cut his fingers with a sharpness that reassured him somehow. Like an amulet of saint's toes, it clothed a belief with a shape you could hang on to through thick or thin. Retribution was going to be pretty thick, he supposed. He called Sinkinda's name once or twice, but got no answer except the low pleasureful whistling of her breath. He could feel it on his neck, yet she had become remote and inhuman, so he had to talk to himself.

I'll have to pay for my sins, of course, he said puffing a little, because his pace was fast. But Retribution argues justice somewhere in the universe. . . . He cantered along in silence for a while, thinking this over. It isn't justice, is it, to be damned for eternity when sin is so short. That's overcharging—I never did it in the shop. This struck him as a good point; he would have liked to add it to the slate, but there was no time now —fast as he ran, the last hour was running faster.

He began to notice figures ahead, apparitions that swayed in and out among the ruins with the incredible ease and suppleness of their kind. Whether any of his recent acquaintances flitted among them, he couldn't say; but the vaguely defined horns, the black pointed hats, the goatish antics of the imps, did not frighten him—indeed, their familiarity brought him a little rush of self-confidence. He couldn't help thinking that having friends in the nether regions might temper the grimness of his sojourn; his knowledge of Hell should put him in a better bargaining position when it came to demanding another chance, which he all at once resolved to do.

No doubt he'd have to be damned uncomfortable for a while, but maybe it wouldn't be so bad. And how restful to have this matter of Good and Evil settled. Suddenly he said, At any rate, I won't fear the worst, and decided to stop talking. Let those be his last words. They were capital last words, and he didn't want to spoil them.

It was only a few minutes after that, as far as he could tell, that he came to his own gate. The house was gone; where it had stood the earth had opened in a great gap; the mouth of Hell had swallowed with stark thoroughness all the furnishings, the dreams and small plush pretensions, of his life there. He stopped short with a jar on its jagged edge.

He felt Sinkinda's weight leave him, like a leaf brushed from his shoulders. In the depths of the fissure shone a blue light in which he saw hags and witches flying about. "Ride out!" cried Sinkinda, and plunged after them, leaving a long streak of kindled air behind her.

It was no harder than jumping off the roof.

§reat Wlischief

Timothy Partridge was an apothecary of Charleston who had a secret passion for the dark Satanic arts, and a mind obsessed with the problem of Good and Evil. He knew the ingredients of witches' brews, and had been brought up on legends of zombies and werewolves. So it would hardly be surprising if he were ridden by a hag, and scarcely more unusual for him to visit the Adversary's court. It seems that hags, especially blue-eyed hags, can be very attractive companions for lonely bachelors. When one of them looks over your garden wall on a summer's day, it is only natural to invite her in. Or so at least Timothy thought. That was just a part of the experience which changed the little man's life. And when the earthquake came to Charleston, and the ground yawned and belched forth fire at his feet, how was Timothy to know that it was not the Judgment Day?

In this most engaging and provocative of novels, Josephine Pinckney plays a theme that may be taken either as fantasy or as gentle psychological realism. A part of her art is in her skillful balancing of these elements. Her characters are real men and women in the living South of the 1880's— and her witches and demons, whether in the mind of Timothy or in an airy half-world that most of us never enter, are thoroughly convincing on their own terms.

Miss Pinckney began her writing career as a poet. Her first novel, Hilton Head, was historical romance; her second. Three o'clock Dinner, contemporary realism. In her new book she goes forward in an entirely new vein, perhaps her best. It is written with a sense for the right word, an irony and an imaginative lightness, that make it stand out as a rare experience today.

JOSEPHINE PINCKNEY

was bom in Charleston, and with the exception of a year in Italy, two summers in Mexico, and some other travels abroad, she has lived there all her life. With Hervey Allen, Du Bose Heyward, and a few others, she started the Poetry Society of South Carolina, which became the center of an active writing group. Her last novel, Three o'clock Dinner, was a Literary Guild Selection and is now being filmed by MGM.