Great mischief (17 page)

"Oh . . . not Anna Maria! Great God, no, I didn't mean her! I was thinking of somebody quite different. Excuse me, old man—"

At the gate they parted sadly, having nothing to say to each other.

Timothy lived on excitements, however, that left little room in his mind for regrets. There were other picnics with Lucy, and the care of their collection of herbs, which had now spread all over the back yard as well as the front. She could scarcely wait to transmute these vegetable riches into minerals; like Will, she had a mundane interest in bank accounts. "You're a horrid little materialist," said Timothy stroking her hair. "Money doesn't bring happiness, really."

"Huh—does poverty bring it? Not that I ever saw. Who hatched up the silly idea that poverty refines character? Well, I've forgotten him, and he ought to be in limbo. Being poor soured my nature a long time ago."

The amazing results of the hair tonic gave them an idea. Lucy divulged its formula to Timothy, who set about concocting and bottling it; he had a neat label printed—"Partridge's Hirsutus: Makes Hair Grow on a Rock." This persuasive legend or the miraculous properties of the tonic made it an immediate success. The back-door customers multiplied, even well-placed persons sent their servants for a bottle or two of this wonderful restorative. A mild typhoid epidemic, followed by an epidemic of shaved heads, greatly increased their trade. Timothy couldn't help urging the victims to boil their cistern water in future with snakeroot, advice which Lucy considered gratuitous. She said snakeroot was no good for typhoid and missionaries were no good for anything, and they had a sharp argument about it.

Indeed Lucy would often be quarrelsome from tensions at which he could not guess. "You are a neurasthenic type," he said thoughtfully one day, seeking an excuse for her snappishness. Lucy turned on him and slapped his face—a stinging blow.

He stared at her, furious, his eye watering. "You little slut!" he said, for he had learned her idiom. "What do you mean—"

"Don't you call me long names like thatl"

"Slut," he observed, she hadn't resented. "You're behaving ridiculously."

"Maybe. But how should I know what curses you quacks wrap up in those jawbreakers."

"Neurasthenic," he explained, "only means subject to nervous debility."

Lucy didn't care for this either—her trumpet nostrils batted. And at bottom, he realized, she resented all his scientific knowledge; it denied her older wisdom.

But he banked a tidy sum each week from the sales of the tonic, and that had a noticeably soothing effect on their edgy tempers. Like the account, his infatuation for Lucy grew; on a different plane it rode him as hard as ever Sinkinda had. He lavished their new wealth on her, pretty shawls, striped India lawns, blue silk gloves, and a lace parasol. He bought her a brooch which delighted him as much as it did her—a circle made of a green enamel serpent with a ruby-crusted head and tail. These feminine fineries lent his rooms a delicious frivolity that impressed on him anew how austere and ill-lighted his house of life had been.

One evening they sat talking in Timothy's room, he in his old armchair, Lucy on a little rosewood sofa with a charmingly carved frame which was part of the new furniture they had bought for the house. It was a warm evening; she had undressed and half sat, half lay in a beguiling lassitude against the black material with which the oval panels were tufted. He observed with pleasure how the dainty sofa perfectly held and suited her small round limbs, her pale flesh. For all his admiration, his acceptance of Lucy's utterly natural behavior, he still regarded nakedness as sinful and enjoyed it as such. He noticed, however, that she wore a set of jewelry he had not seen before. "That's an odd outfit," he said dubiously, for it gave her a distinctly primitive appearance. "Where did it come from?"

"Oh, it's just a little evening set a friend gave me." Lucy pushed the bracelet up on her arm, felt the earrings a trifle self-consciously.

It was the first time she had mentioned having a friend who gave her things. Timothy leaned over and fingered the necklace. It was made of little dangles— ten of them—bleached and polished like ivory; they hung from a chain, two long ones in the middle, the others growing shorter at the sides.

"The design is rather pretty," he said grudgingly, and could not help adding with base appeal, "Rubies are far handsomer, don't you think?"

Lucy's eyes slid mischievously from side to side, "All is not gold that glitters," she pronounced, for she had also learned Timothy's idiom hnd often used it to annoy him. "The true worth of an object is not its cost in money, but its spiritual value."

"But what's its great value to you then?" cried Timothy jumping up and walking about the room. "It must be very precious for you to be flaunting it here!"

"Well, if you must know, it's an amulet—of saint's toes. A witch doctor gave it to me to ward off worldly temptations. I wear them to keep me from forgetting that I belong to another order and have a power that this dallying with you, my duck, almost makes me lose sight of." She pulled him down beside her and kissed him, half laughing, half loving.

Timothy pushed her away violently, all his jealousy of her other life frothing up in him—that mysterious, knowing life from which he was shut out.

"It seems to me, my dear Lucy, that the time has come for you to tell me a little more about yourself. Surely you can trust me, surely I have a right to know how you spend your time when you're away from me."

Lucy brushed aside his question. "Right? You have no right to question me about my life. We just belong to different orders of beings, and you knew that from the start."

Timothy resumed his walking, "But that's what I don't understand. What order do I belong to—the good or the bad, the Saved or the Damned? It's hellishly awkward not to know. If I'm Saved, somebody ought to tell me—if I'm Damned, I belong to your people, and I might as well have the fun of belonging. Besides, Lucy! I hate whatever divides me from you!" And throwing himself down on the sofa, he covered her with despairing kisses.

His honest passion moved her. She returned his caresses and said fondly, "Does it matter so much to you —that you should belong with me?"

"Nothing else matters."

"Well, I'll see what can be done, darling. You can't get into Satan's presence any more easily than into Heaven, you know. But I think you're almost ready to come over to us ... if he finds you worthy there may be an opening among the werewolves, hobgoblins, or bull-beggars—I'll have to inquire."

"I'd rather be an alchemist," Timothy objected; "it's a more dignified calling."

"You'll have to be content with small beginnings, I imagine. First of all, he will have to grant you an interview."

Timothy was in transports. "Will I really come to see him at last? And the throne of Satan! Oh, Lucy, Lucy! When can we go?"

"Have patience, my would-be wizard," she said, biting his ear. But she was sweeter and more loving to him than ever before.

When she left him she said, "I won't come asrain for a while. The moon is waxing now, there are places I have to go in the evenings."

"Lucy! Don't abandon me—"

Smiling, she tied on her shawl. "Wait," she said and, bending her head toward his, laid her finger softly on his lips.

Part Three

TIMOTHY passed the following days in a lather of impatience. He trotted to the Library and read furiously to distract his mind from the tension that mounted in him. He delved into accounts of early religions and the writings of saints and philosophers, but in his hasty mood he found them rather repetitious. Furthermore, his present way of life made their strict asceticism repellent, and he turned again to the Bible for its resplendent sinners. He did not have the temerity to own a Bible, but he assumed that the publishers of Heaven could not object to his reading it at the Library. With the aid of a concordance he looked up all references to the throne of Satan, the throne of Iniquity, Beelzebub, familiar spirits, and took notes—wishing to be well armed with congenial conversation when the great day should come.

In the course of this research he came across the lines that had given him his start in life, as he now thought of it: "I know where thou dwellest, even where Satan's throne is," and learned to his surprise that there was more of the verse—a lot about martyrdom stoically endured, which altered the meaning and was quite malapropos as far as he was concerned. For he had endured his martyrdom from habit and conformity, not stoicism. . . . He sat back in his chair, stuck out his long black-trousered legs, and gazed dismally at his toes. Had he read a little further that night—had he understood the Word differently—what would the outcome have been? Are our profoundest beliefs, the courses of our lives, bent by such accidents? He drew a long shuddering sigh, then sat up so suddenly his chair screeched on the floor— But of course not! The Spirit had stopped his moving finger there, at the place significant for him. The more he thought about it, the clearer the guiding hand became.

Rebounding from this shock and its implications, he vexed himself with trying to imagine what it would be like down there, and he longed to ask Lucy what was the proper deportment for such an audience, and whether or not to wear his oxblood vest. But Lucy, good as her word, came near him neither by day nor by night. He took to skulking in a little abandoned churchyard opposite her house to watch for her comings and goings, but if she went night-traveling, his eyes had no skill to see her. Still, these surroundings soothed him; the moon came there, peaked at first, then growing companionably plump; by its swelling light he could see the grassy hummocks and their eloquent headstones, and the tall pondering trees. Timothy pondered also, on mortality, on the cobweb between death and life, between fantasy and reality. He began to think he heard faint stirrings underground from those dead men, dried and packed away like herrings. Men who had been lovers, no doubt, like himself and had watched, solitary, a light in a window; who might even have lolled like him, wrapped in a dark cloak, on a lichened slab. He feared them a little, too, and luxuriated in his fear; when a snarling beetle bumped into him he started, his blood leapt in a tremor of sepulchral pleasure. He passed long hours thus, staunching his longing for Lucy, assuaging that plague of lovers—doubt when the beloved does not come. He steeped himself in a dreaming passion and went home as shriveled and black as a tea leaf.

When at last one evening he saw Lucy slipping through his garden, he halted transfixed by the window. All his blood tingled in his veins; then it stirred painfully and began to course again. By the time she had mounted the steps and come into the hall, he had covered his expectancy with calm. He kissed her quite naturally—his mind, he found, was clearer and more rational than in many weeks. They sat in the study for a while and talked about the garden and how Partridge's Hirsutus was selling, and it was all so much within the bounds of the usual that when she smiled at him and said, "What do you say to a little excursion?" he felt only a faint incredulity.

Lucy got up and went along the shelves selecting a jar, a bottle, here and there. She had brought other necessities, he observed, in her basket, and taking his arm, she went upstairs with him to his room. Timothy opened the shutters and together they looked out; the moon glinted on the eaves, and little hissings and scratchings came from among the dormers beyond their range of vision.

"They are there waiting for us," said Lucy; "you will have an escort on your aerial tour." And she looked deep into his eyes, he did not know whether with love or menace or something new, immediately to be experienced.

They drew back into the room. By the pale glare of the moonlight on the floor Timothy saw her take off her dress, and, looking tiny in her short chemise, begin to rub herself with unguents from the jars. The pupils of her eyes grew large, the irises glassy blue. Now and then she nibbled a leaf or a root. He could faintly see her flesh reddening and her hair turning tawny as it lifted along her back. His own flesh was creeping and behaving quite strangely, but he was in for it now. He felt a stab of oblique joy at finding Sinkinda before him again.

"So it comes about that we ride side by side this evening, dear Timothy." She held out a little brazen vessel that shone in. the faint light. "This one comes first—but do take off your absurd sack suit; it's too cumbersome for night-traveling, and as for that horse collar—"

Timothy stripped himself to his undershirt and long cotton drawers, but these he clung to from a last-ditch propriety. He boldly scooped the ointment from the jar and rubbed it on his face, arms, and legs. Immediately he felt a sharp burning and prickling through his body. Stramonium, he thought automatically, and continued to rub it on in spite of its painful effects. Mixed with frogs and newts, no doubt—Pulv. amphibiae, eh? But what of it. Sinkinda was holding out otlier jars and vials; he rubbed and nibbled hardily; the juice of one of them was particularly sharp and corrosive, his vision became blurred, and he thought he recognized solanum. Of course, if we gorm ourselves up with drugs that produce hallucinations and general vascular excitement—, he said to himself a little peevishly, for his skin was on fire. But he did not speak aloud, knowing that this apothecary's mood was out of place, and besides he was beginning to feel very queer indeed. All his flesh seemed loose and soluble; it had no more weight than a sponge, and his hair was standing erect on his head.

"Come!" exclaimed Sinkinda, seizing his hand, and with the simplest grace she started up the chimney,

Timothy tried to copy her fluid movements and went after her. Thanks to his distinguished narrowness, he rose quite easily through the vent, and in a twinkling they stood side by side on the ridgepole of the house. From such an eminence they had an unparalleled outlook. The sky was a noble blue; the silver orb filled the visible and capacious world with a fine sharp dust that crusted the harbor, the white piazzas of the sleeping town, the tiles at their feet. It was a night to make the solidest citizen fly off the ground, and Timothy's heart blew like a feather to be out with Sinkinda and the othei spirits whom he now saw flying between him and the moon.