Great mischief (7 page)

priate to this service, but their expressions indicated that some kind of sweet smoke gratified their Low-Church nostrils. Timothy had retained only a vague recollection of his experience of the evening before and, strangely, he thought very little about it. What remained chiefly was a complacent acceptance of a state of affairs he had suspected all along, namely, that the rationalists were of all superstitious people the best-deluded. Besides, he did not consider the Lord's Day suitable for admitting such speculations, having grave doubts under whose dominion the world he had discovered lay. To most of this congregation the Devil was quite real, always at one's elbow, he could even be at church on Sundays, not a pewholder exactly but an interested attendant. Until he could work things out, Timothy had no desire to attract the attention of either a chastening God or the Author of Lies.

During the collection he glanced idly about. The proximity of a pretty young girl in a pew on the side fluttered him pleasurably. He looked at her across the wooden partition as at a green pasture beyond a fence. He knew her, indeed he had once thought he might marry her—as soon as I see my way clear— But things kept happening to prevent and she remained to this day in ignorance of his private intention. . . . The scene before him altered a little, two figures stood near the pulpit, the asthmatic singsong of the organ dropped to a murmur, the vox humana became his own voice, manly, confident, taking the charming Sylvia for his wife. The vox angelica responded gladly, a trilling acceptance. . . . The daydream, as always, had power to dissolve

such facts as the pew beneath him, the solid persons of Penelope and Mr. Dombie beside him, which persons it was his plain duty to nourish and support. He continued blissfully to conjure up the wedding and the transports that might be expected to follow soon after, remaining bolt upright like a bashaw when the final blessing rocked the rows of worshippers forward in unison.

On Sundays the shop was closed but Timothy always stayed at home during the afternoon in case of emergency calls. He drowsed and read in one of the armchairs by the dining-room fire, and to him this was the high point of the week, although Mr. Dombie sat there too and shared even this time of indulgence. Penelope went visiting.

Luckily no tinklings from below spoiled the beautiful peace of the Sabbath, and the hour for their evening tea passed without notice. It was only when Penelope rushed in, calling to him up the stairs, that Timothy realized she had, remarkably for her, come home late. He jumped up and opened the dining-room door. She appeared out of the darkness of the hall roseate and panting.

"I've just been to see Lena Whitlock, Timothy, and found she had a collapse this morning. I've got a nurse, but she can't come on until later, so I'm going back to stay until she arrives."

"How dreadful!" Timothy murmured, seeing Lena Whitlock, a kind, brown little woman who sewed out, as he had sometimes seen her in this house helping

Penelope make over her dresses. "Poor soul—is she in a bad way?"

"Dr. Porter has been working over her and thinks he has pulled her through this attack. But he says it's only a question of time."

"Very sad—very sad," said Mr. Dombie. "What ails the poor lady?"

"Some obscure disease, apparently; hard to diagnose. But I say it's too early to give up hope. If only she could take a sea voyage—the change of air might work a miracle—"

"What are her symptoms?" Mr. Dombie wanted to know. "Has she a fever? Vomiting? Cancer, now, is an obscure disease—fools the doctors—"

But Penny for once was in no mood to oblige Mr. Dombie. She shrugged off his helpful diagnosis and went about putting the tea cloth on the table. Her long black cloak stirred the plush-curtained air of the room as she moved; her momentum had a sureness about it from an emotion competently controlled. She looked almost beautiful.

"I have two prescriptions, dear—can you fill them? I must get back directly."

Timothy gladly went down to the shop for the sake of Lena Whitlock, bent over a sewing machine or kneeling on the floor with her mouth full of pins. A widow too, with three little girls to support. Luckily he was able to supply the medicine; he labeled the bottles and took them to Penelope as she came down into the lower hall.

"I'll escort you back, Sister, It's too late for you to be going through the streets alone."

"I don't mind in the slightest. You stay here, dear, and give Mr. Dombie his supper."

Penelope was never afraid for herself; still, she shouldn't go about alone after dark. As he stood torn between conflicting duties, she smilingly took the bottles from him and went out with them.

Timothy put some cold victuals on a tray and fed Mr. Dombie and himself. Mr. Dombie for once felt talkative. He paid a fine tribute to Penelope's good heart and good sense, and then began to question Timothy about the treatment of convulsions in children. A niece of his had nearly died with a convulsion; while she had recovered, it had left her in delicate health. Weary of the limited range of Mr. Dombie's conversation, Timothy sank deeper into his high collar and his book. Taking a low advantage of Penny's absence, he even answered, 'Tshaw!" or 'Tiddlesticksl" once or twice.

When he had helped Mr. Dombie to bed, Timothy banked the fire and went to fetch Penelope home. Lena lived across town, but he was used to walking, and stepped out briskly—though a fog was coming in, and the trees turned to vapor, the seaward streets choked into silence, made him fidgety. As he approached Lena's gate Dr. Porter had just lifted the iron weight tethering his horse and was putting it into the bugg)'.

"Good evening, Doctor; and how is Miss Lena this evening?"

"Ah—" The doctor's deprecatory sigh floated down the mist, dissolved and left a vacuum, the signature of death. "It seems to be leucocythemia, but the symptoms are irregular. In any case I fear there's little hope."

The nurse had arrived, so at Timothy's ring Penelope put on her cloak and came with him. The fog had worked selectively to blot out familiar landmarks, leaving parts that were subtly estranged by their separation from the whole. Front steps led menacingly up to vanished doors; iron fences, their scrollings suddenly sharp and black, barred the passer-by from the unhallowed country beyond, whose mother-of-pearl air was surely breathed by a race of different beings. Crossing a little park they came abruptly on a church, a long white flank and steeple, couched in the mist. "Why, it looks like a unicorn!" said Timothy.

He could have believed it was a unicorn, but Penelope could not, so she answered with an irritated "Tsch-tsch!" It was plain that, coming from Lena's sickroom, she was not in an imaginative mood, which he thought a pity, considering that she possessed the traditional requirements for catching and taming such a quarry. But one couldn't allude to one's sister's virginity, crowning virtue though it was, so he contented himself with saying regretfully, "It would make an unusual pet."

"You're absurdly credulous, Timothy; I wish you'd outgrow it."

"Of course I'm credulous. I can believe anything." He stalked beside her boastfully, more vertical than ever

in his long black coat, now rimed with tiny gray drops. "There are unicorns in the Bible," he added.

"Don't be trivial. It passes iny understanding how you can accept science and religion and still have so many silly superstitions. It's so inconsistent."

"But in this world you have to be inconsistent to have any faith at all. The scientists don't know much when you come right down to it; simple people often make fools of them, they get there first by a short cut—by intuition, if you like. Besides, it seems to me you are the inconsistent one; how can you believe the Bible, the Word of God, and not accept its witness that witches and familiar spirits work through the world?"

"With God nothing is impossible, of course," said Penelope tranquilly, "but it is not for us to meddle in such dangerous matters." In the deathly, muffled streets this sentiment sounded particularly apt, so Timothy dropped the argument. They crossed the street to the church, and, as they turned and walked beside it, he dragged his forefinger along the white sweating plaster and was not surprised to discover that the timorous beast had escaped his coarse male touch by becoming a church again.

In spite of her fatiguing day Penelope walked buoyantly, indeed the asperity of the night air seemed to exhilarate her. She went back to the subject of Lena Whitlock. "I don't believe she's beyond hope," she said with combat in her voice. "Dr. Porter gives up too easily, I'm afraid."

"He knows his business, Sister. You always say yourself that he's a splendid diagnostician—much better than Will."

Penelope made her doctor, her minister, her greengrocer, subjects of ardent partisanship, so this answer fetched her up short. She merely repeated, "He gives up too soon—I wouldn't be beaten so easily." Timothy felt in his nerve-ends that she was leading somewhere, a road he might balk at taking, so again he let the conversation drop and they walked the rest of the way in silence.

When they came into the entry hall Penelope thanked her brother warmly for bringing her home. "You'd better catch up the fire to go to bed by, Timothy. Your clothes are damp and you mustn't get a chill." She followed him into his bedroom and put a match to the grate herself.

Timothy, easily touched by her solicitude, mumbled his thanks self-consciously. There was a look of the wise woman about Penelope stooping by the hearth, her long dark garments piled about her, and stirring the fire which sprang to life under her hands and shed a broken light on her strong, intent face. She looked up over her shoulder. "Timothy, I think we should send Lena on a sea voyage." Timothy was silent. "I hate to ask you for more money, but I spent all my surplus refitting that Murphy family after they were burnt out. Lena is a fine woman; the little money I've paid her is no compensation for the faithful service she has given us."

"But, Sister, it's no use—you heard what Dr. Porter said." He made a rough mental calculation of the journey's cost.

"You can only try."

Timothy walked over to the bookcase and leaned against it as if the magic it contained might stiffen his backbone. He ran his hands into his trouser pockets.

"Sister, I know you'll think I'm selfish, but you'll have to find the money somewhere else. I've decided to start saving to go to England."

Penelope flowed up to her full height with a rippling of heavy cloth. "England!" She seemed consciously to turn the weight of tallness and darkness on her shorter brother. "I can't go about begging, Timothy. Besides, we should be the ones to do this. It's never yet been said of us that we failed in our responsibilities. I'm willing to save every cent—I'll contribute all I can to the expenses."

"There are other people who can afford it better than we can."

"You can't be serious about going off and leaving the shop, the house—us? What, may I ask, would become of Mr. Dombie and me? We couldn't live here alone."

The fire sent out a ribald tongue between the iron lips of the grate and made a small glare in Timothy's brain. "Mr. Dombie could go away," he said and he felt his mouth draw up at the corners, against his will, into a wicked smile. "He speaks of having a niece—he could go to live with her. This house is too expensive for us, anyway. We could sell it and you could live with Cousin

Lou Partridge for a while. You always say you love her dearly."

"I do indeed—it would be a joy and a privilege to live with Cousin Lou. But we know nothing of Mr. Dombie's niece. She must be an unnatural relative never to have written nor come to see him in all this time. Would you turn him out of the house, Timothy? The Devil must have gotten into you to make you think of such a thing!"

Well, let him stand by me then, thought Timothy. Aloud he said, "We've done our part by Mr. Dombie, Sister. For twenty years we've housed and fed him and never said what we both know—that he's sponged on us. He's never made any attempt to go back to his kin. You say they've never come to see him—has he ever tried to find them? Maybe they think he's dead. The truth is that he'd rather stay here and let us support him—"

The Devil must really possess him, Timothy thought. He had never phrased these horrors before, even in his mind.

"Speak for yourself," said Penelope, and her words took on an unintended significance. "It has been my happiness and satisfaction to take care of Mr. Dombie— a victim of war, needing my strength—" She began to walk stormily up and down the cluttered room, scattering the piles of papers with the flounce of her skirt.

"That's because he agrees with everything you say!" cried Timothy, finding that this as much as anything was his grudge against Mr. Dombie.

Penelope turned and threw him a look like a sharp

stone. The quarrel was having a peculiar effect on her. The more she took the part of the good, the generous, the unselfish, the less it seemed to become her. Her grave beauty of the earlier evening had gone without a trace. Her eyes were distraught; the smooth surface of her face had puckered into little planes of dark and light, which did not conceal her bitter wilfulness.

She said, "You did not go through what I did to save Mr. Dombie. That night in the hospital ... I had to search for him among the dead ... it was almost as if I went down into the grave to bring him back. I will not give him up."

A quality in Penelope's voice more than the actual words tingled unpleasantly along Timothy's nerves, a morbidity he had never recognized in her before. They stood together unmasked in the room after all these years and their nakedness was indecent and dreadful.

Penelope heaved a great sigh and came back to herself. The revelation clouded, hungj on the hairline that divides the horrible from the ridiculous and fell back into absurdity. She said with quite ordinary sisterly badgering, "You've always had a commercial streak in you, Timothy, but I never knew what base materialism you were capable of."

This was a telling shot; Timothy's own knowledge of himself convicted him. He became aware that he was clutching the leather purse in his pocket and remained silent.