The dark fantastic (2 page)

He turned his head and found her watching him. If he had been an urbanite she would have frozen and looked right through him. But because she was sure he was a country man she was no more disconcerted than if she had been caught admiring a fine horse in a pasture.

She smiled a little, and he responded with the eagerness of a lonely stranger.

"Magnificent, isn't it?" he was referring, naturally, to the performance of Macbeth.

She nodded. "My little friend didn't care for the Witches."

It wasn't exactly a falsehood, but it implied a connection with the family party.

"Now that's strange," he said. "Children as a rule are quite taken with the Witches."

"I'm afraid she takes her supernatural too literally. In Shakespeare it's always subjective." Judith thought, "There I go, talking as though I were in a classroom."

He was taking vigorous issue with her. "Do you really think the Weird Sisters were a figment of Macbeth's imagination?"

She quoted: " 'Spirits that tend on mortal thoughts . . .' what are the Witches except the incarnate evil that is already in Macbeth? If he had not already thought of removing Duncan from the throne he would never have met three witches who would foretell his doing it."

"Then you think his crime was motivated purely from within?"

"Assuredly."

"That makes him a monster."

"How do you see him?"

"As a tragic study of fiend-inspired criminality. I think he was inherently a heroic character, impelled toward crime by a demoniacal power."

"You wouldn't be alluding to his wife?"

But Judith could not distract him with humor. He was very earnest in his conception of the play. Any other interpretation, he maintained, made Macbeth a mere ruffian, a sort of medieval Bill Sikes.

Judith thought, "He knows his Shakespeare," and wondered more than ever who he was.

''Mr. Booth seems to have the same idea of the part," she said. ''Have you ever seen his Hamlet?"

"No." He spoke regretfully. "I saw his Othello once in Indianapolis and his Lear. I preferred McCullough's Lear. But Booth's Hamlet is something I've yet to enjoy."

"You're quite a lover of Shakespeare, aren't you?"

"Isn't everyone who comes to a Shakespeare play?" he asked naively.

"Goodness no. Those people down there"—she indicated the fashionable crowd in the orchestra rows and boxes—"came to show off their clothes. And the people up here came for any number of reasons; principally to see the brother of the man who killed Lincoln. It's the people in the gallery who really came to see Shakespeare."

The aphorism was not original. She was quoting her father, who in turn had quoted Mr. Wilham Winter.

"Then I should be sitting in the gallery. So should you."

"I beg your pardon?" The conversation was beginning to get slightly out of hand.

"When a young lady comes alone to see Macbeth it must be from love of Shakespeare."

Both tone and manner were respectful, but the blue eyes held a twinkle that made Judith blush furiously and fix her own with marked attention on the curtain. She had learned her lesson. This was what came of talking to strange men.

But when the third-act curtain had descended they turned to each other spontaneously, like companions of long standing impatient to resume an argument.

"Did you notice?" demanded Judith triumphantly.

"The ghost of Banquo did not appear."

"Only the empty chair."

"Yet the way Booth gazed upon that empty chair made the ghost more real than if it had been visible."

"Henry Irving uses a visible ghost all daubed with phosphorus, it's very bad. Because the whole idea is subjective. Like the Witches."

But he refused to go with her that far. '"The ghost is subjective," he admitted. "The ghost is Macbeth's conscience. But the Witches are preternatural, occult power which impels him against his better nature. Macbeth is the embodied conflict between good and evil. That's what makes it poetic tragedy. Otherwise it's just a murder story."

"Where did you study Shakespeare?" asked Judith respectfully.

"At Asbury College," he replied.

When the curtain fell for the fourth time he remarked, exactly as though she would know to whom he was referring, "I must try and remember every detail. So I can tell the children."

She had a sensation of being suddenly dropped from an elevation.

"Children?"

He nodded, smiling, and glanced at the two little girls in pigtails.

"Next time I shall bring all three of them with me."

Suddenly, illogically, Judith's evening went flat. How silly she had been to fall into conversation with a stranger.

"Doesn't your wife care for Shakespeare?"

He had not mentioned bringing his wife to see a play; only his children. Maybe he was a widower.

There was a noticeable silence. She glanced at him and was startled at the change which had come over his face. It was as though a mask had dropped over his features, conforming to their outline but extinguishing their light.

He said, "My wife is an invalid."

Suddenly Judith felt impelled to explain herself to this stranger; to make it clear to him that she was a teacher ot literature who attended Shakespearean performances solely for educational purposes and that she had no interest in life outside her work. She drew a self-portrait of intelligent female independence that would have disarmed any man. It disarmed

the man who had spoken with such warmth of his children and over whose countenance a mask had dropped when he mentioned his wife.

"I should never have taken you for a schoolteacher." He looked at Judith with interest. "Where have you taught?"

She mentioned the day school for young ladies in Chicago where she had taught before coming to Indiana.

"I thought it must be something like that. You're not big enough to handle boys. I'm looking right now for a man who can whip the Pettigrew kids."

"You're looking for " Judith's surprise was genuine.

"I'm a township trustee," he explained. "The teacher in our district met wth a serious accident. He'll be out for the rest of the winter."

Judith drew a long breath. "Where is vour school?" she inquired casually.

"About twenty-five miles from here."

"On a railroad?"

"On the Logansport line. Not far from Woodridge."

"I see. To whom would one apply for the school?"

"You know of a man?"

"I-might."

"Tell him to see Richard Tomlinson, Timberley farm. Anyone in Woodridge can direct him to Timberley."

He whispered the last words hurriedly, for the lights were dimming. But Judith's mind made careful memorandum.

She slept late the morning after Macbeth. There was no need for early rising. She had no classes to meet.

"We don't feel. Miss Amory, that you are quite the person needed here at Oaklawn. Or perhaps we should say, a female seminary is not the place for some of your ideas."

"If you're referring to my statement in class that English divorce laws were responsible for George Eliot's "

"Please, Miss Amory! You have been told repeatedly that neither the books nor the life of George Ehot are fit matters for discussion with young female pupils. You have willfully ignored the express ruling of your superiors. Your services will not be required further."

Which explains why Judith was able to sleep late the morning after Macbeth.

There was nothing to be gained by going down to breakfast and facing a roomful of disapproving widows and curious spinsters who had learned by this time that she had not come in till nearly midnight. For that matter, there was nothing to be gained by facing Mrs. Prewitt and being reminded that she was in arrears with her board. It was pleasanter to lie in bed and relive last night's enjoyment.

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly: if the assassination could trammel up the consequence, and catch. With his surcease, success . . .

What an unforgettable voice Booth had! what agony of soul could be borne on a single cadence. How manifest had been the haunted condition of Macbeth's mind. He had indeed seemed driven by some external power of evil.

"But I still don't believe he actually met the Witches."

Of the Lady Macbeth of Charlotte Cushman she was inclined to be critical. True, the great actress had been superb in her embodiment of a character almost savage. But she had been too masculine, too lacking in the feminine charm by which woman captivates and dominates her man. There had been too much magnificent elocution; too little soft subtlety.

"She never could have handled Macbeth that way. He never would have stood for browbeating. She should have been wily, clever—ruthless, yes—but it all should have been more mental. If I had her voice I could have done a better job."

She lay for a while toying with the picture of herself coming down a stairway in a white robe, a flickering taper in her hand. She watched herself set the candle down and rub her hands, one over the other, as though washing them.

Out, damned spot! out, I say!

Under the bedclothes her hands were dripping wet. She turned on her side, laughing all by herself at her own histrionics.

"I should have been an actress. That's the best possible life for a woman with no money and no chance of a good marriage. At least it's better than teaching horrid little girls who 'yes' you to your face and make mouths behind your back. Smirky little hypocrites! I hate girls—all girls—big, little, old, and young."

She buried her face in the trough between the hard board-inghouse pillows and shed a few tears for poor Judith Amory who had been so shabbily treated by the lady principal of Oaklawn Female Seminary. Then suddenly she flopped on her back, eyes dry as shale on which rain leaves no trace. Her thoughts had leaped to the point toward which they had been veering from the moment of awaking, the man who sat beside her the night before.

His name was Richard Tomlinson and he lived near Woodridge. He was a farmer, but well to do; note the gold watch chain, the linen wristbands, the broadcloth coat. He had been to college; he spoke with the cultured accent of the educated man. He was to township trustee for a school that was without a teacher. He had three children and an invalid wife.

Here Judith's racing thoughts stopped as at a sudden hurdle.

What a damnable irony was that invalid wife!

For the first time in her life she had met a man whom, had there been no obstacle, she would have chosen to marry. And, she confidently believed, might have accomplished her purpose. She recalled their shared enjoyment of the night before. It had been like a mutual discovery.

Had his wife disapproved of his going to the theater? Or had he deceived her about the purpose of his trip to the city? He did not look like a man who would bother to deceive. Besides, he had said he must remember the play so that he could tell the children about it. She remembered the set of his mouth when he said that. As though he might have defied someone's displeasure in coming and would further defy it by talking about a forbidden subject on his return. He was probably stubborn as a mule, in a good-natured sort of way.

Of course she was imagining his whole background. All that she knew for a fact was that his wife was an invalid. All that she knew which in any way concerned Miss Judith Amory was that he was trustee for a school that was without a teacher.

He had stated that male teachers only need apply.

But Judith guessed, with sly intuition, that if an attractive young woman appeared in the neighborhood of Woodridge inquiring for Mr. Richard Tomlinson he would be at a loss to explain where and how he had made her acquaintance except on the grounds of school business.

She smiled to herself and stretched luxuriously, like a cat who knows of a promising mousehole.

CHAPTER 2

Woodridge, the county seat of Woods County, was a flourishing town of some three thousand souls. Situated not only on a railroad but on the equally prized hard-surfaced turnpike, it was the cultural center of one of the richest farming districts in the state.

Four churches reared their spires within a stone's throw of the square—Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Catholic—and a small society of Quakers met in the Odd Fellows' hall over the Farmers and Merchants Bank, But the institution which gave the little town its prestige was the academy.

Housed in a one-room frame building, its faculty consisting of one professor, there was nothing about the Woodridge Academy (outwardly) to justify the pride it evoked in the breasts of the citizenry. But whereas a pupil in the district school could go no further than McGuffey's reader and Milne's complete arithmetic, from the academy he could enter college with full credits. The teacher of the academy was, of necessity, a man of many talents.

The present incumbent, John Barclay by name, was such a man. He taught in winter and farmed in summer, and rumor had it that he could have been a professional musician had he desired. Certain it was, he had given up the violin—as some men give up liquor—upon joining the church, and subscribed (outwardly, at least) to the local opinion that the instrument was a tool of the devil. He refrained from playing it openly; but many a loiterer, passing the academy late at night, could testify that the schoolmaster indulged his vice in secret.

Those same loiterers, when they lingered to listen, sometimes encountered the big blacksmith, Doc Baird, heading in that direction; and sometimes when the station hack pulled up they would see dapper Lucius Goflf, who worked on a Terre Haute paper, leap out and swing jauntily through the gate; and sometimes they would find tall, handsome Richard Tomlinson tying his black horse to the hitching rail. When this happened they would know that the four greatest friends in the county had gathered to spend an evening together.

There was much talk about the oddly assorted friendship of these four. It was rumored that all sorts of unorthodox subjects were discussed among them: mesmerism, some queer new cult called telepathy, and—most devilish of all—spiritual-ism. It was claimed on good authority (Lawyer Otis Huse, no less) that Doc Baird and Lucius Goff indulged in table tipping. But then Otis Huse was known to have no love for the Tomlinsons and was ready to cast suspicion on anything with which Richard was connected.