The dark fantastic (4 page)

"My apologies," he said. "Permit me to introduce myself. Lucius Goff of the Terre Haute Express. I had the pleasure of seeing you on the train. Miss "

It was the moment he had been waiting for. Judith was forced to give her name.

General introductions followed, Lucius taking charge with a savoir-faire designed to show his less sophisticated friends how a man of the world handled these situations.

"Now if I may make a suggestion, Miss Amory. I'm on my way out to my father's place, four miles west on the corduroy road. I keep a rig at Henderson's. If you'll wait here a few minutes I'll be only too pleased to take you out home with me. I'm sure my sister can make you comfortable. Then tomorrow I'll drive you over to Timberlake and you can settle your— ahem!—business with Mr. Tomlinson."

Nothing could have exceeded the courtesy with which the invitation was extended. But that little cough before the word "business" made Judith turn with relief at the first halting word from the schoolmaster.

"There doesn't seem much point in going four miles the other side of town when Timberley's east of here. Our house isn't large—we've no spare room—but if the young lady's not afraid of a folding bed—there's one in the parlor "

The young lady was not at all afraid of folding beds. Before John Barclay could wipe his spectacles, wondering belatedly what his wife would say, his reckless gesture of hospitality was being accepted.

"Thank you so much. Professor Barclay. And you too, Mr. Goff. I'm sure you understand that it will be more convenient for everyone if I stay in Woodridgetonight."

So, without further ado, John Barclay escorted the young woman to his house, which was only a block from the academy. His two friends watched from the window.

Doc Baird said, "Wonder what Ellie Barclay's going to say when that young lady walks in."

Lucius Goff snapped his fingers, disposing of Ellie Barclay.

"Wait till the lady walks into Tomlinson's. That's when all hell will break loose."

CHAPTER 3

Very early in the morning did Judith, the erstwhile sluggard, rise and begin making preparations for her drive to Timberley, Accompanied by one of the Barclay girls, she walked across the square to Henderson's livery stable and engaged an elderly bay mare and a light wheeled buggy for the day.

She considered the advisability of taking Jennie Barclay with her—the twelve-year-old girl was plainly hoping to be invited—but she decided against it. Dropping Jennie off at her own front gate, she thanked her so graciously for her assistance that Jennie glowed with admiration and forgot that her hints had been ignored.

"Tell Thorne hello for me!" she called after the phaeton.

And Judith nodded, without bothering to inquire who Thorne might be.

It was a bright crisp morning, ideal weather for a drive. Indian summer was gone, but winter had not yet mired the road. The gravel was hard and smooth and the old mare's hoofs rang sharp in the bracing air. Trees were naked, except where leaves still fluttered like red-winged birds from the boughs of maples. Dry leaves heaped the fence corners and lay thick and rotting in the furrows between shocks of com. Fields were brown and dotted with fat gold pumpkins and goose-necked squash. Roadside grass and bushes were rimed with last night's frost. In barn lots idle mules and horses huddled together in the chill of morning, and from fattening pens came the squeals of hogs stampeding for their breakfast. It was a morning when it was good to be alive and rolling smoothly toward one's objective.

At the tollgate the fragrance of coffee and fried mush suggested that the gatekeeper's family was still at breakfast, a fact corroborated by the appearance of the man himself with a trickle of molasses on his chin. With true Hoosier sociabihty he commented favorably on the weather and inquired whether the lady wasn't a stranger in these parts.

Judith responded by asking how far it was to Timberley.

''School, farm, or store?"

"I want the Tomlinsons'."

"Then keep right on this road till you pass the covered bridge over Little Raccoon. There's a finger post pointing to the stage stop. You can see the house from there. Sits on top of a knoll. Highest point between Indianapolis and Springfield, Illinois. The stage stops at the foot of the hill."

"And the school?"

"The school ain't on the pike. It's about half a mile south on Little Raccoon. There's a lane leads through the woods to the schoolhouse. And about a mile farther on the pike is the next tollgate and five or six houses and the crossroads store."

Less than a mile beyond the covered bridge Judith came to the thick woods through which ran the lane to the school-house. At this point the long hill which the old mare had been steadily climbing all the way from Woodridge took a perceptible rise so that when she had cleared the woods she saw the pike falling away in front of her and when she looked back it dropped behind her in the same manner. She was at the summit of the road.

But she was not yet at the summit of the land, that point lay off to the south, rising smoothly in one of those strange knolls with which the ancient mound builders had adorned this level territory centuries before. At the foot of the mound timber encircled it like a girdle, and rising clean above the timber stood a large white pillared house.

Anyone viewing the Southern colonial dwelling, with its kitchen of whitewashed logs attached to the main structure by an enclosed passage, would have guessed that the Tomlin-sons came from Virginia. The first Tomlinson in Indiana had been born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, near neighbor to the McCormick who later had invented a machine for reaping grain.

Tall poplars guarded the white gate in front of the stage stop and lined the drive that led up to the house. As Judith drew rein she felt her brash young assurance suddenly desert her. This was the home of a simple country gentleman. He had a wife who was ill. It was too early in the morning to be paying a call.

Turning the mare, she drove back down the hill to the lane. She would look over the schoolhouse first.

In the whitewashed log kitchen of Timberley black Millie moved sluggishly from table to stove. The only Negro this side of Woodridge, Millie was further proof of the Tomlin-sons' Virginia origin. Technically on free soil ever since she and her husband had come out with the young Roger Tom-linsons forty years ago, Millie scorned all ideas of emancipation as bloodily achieved in the recent war. Of that original young quartet, half white, half black, there were only Ann Tomlinson and Millie left. And they belonged to each other. Hadn't they both buried their husbands right on this same ground? All the proclamations ever proclaimed could not free Millie from Miss Ann, nor Miss Ann from Millie.

She was alone in the kitchen this morning, which marked it as a morning extraordinary, for usually Miss Ann's cheerful

presence pervaded the place. Without it, slow-moving Millie never could have achieved the preparation of breakfast. And breakfast at Timberley was an important meal. It was not served at daybreak, according to the custom of other farmers in the district. The Tomlinson men had been out and about their work for some time before the big bell rang, and when they came in it was to sit down to a table at which all members of the family gathered, not only for food but for morning prayers. There were never fewer than ten about that well-spread table, and seldom was the number that small. For rare was the day that some relative or neighbor or stranger waiting for the stagecoach did not sit down to table with the Tomlin-sons. Richard's wife said they might as well be running a tavern. But neither Richard nor his mother would have it any other way. It had been like that in Roger Tomlinson's time; like that it should continue.

As Millie wrestled with the breakfast this morning she could see through the window young Will Tomlinson and Jesse Moffat, who had finished feeding long ago and were washing at the bench outside. Heads together, they talked earnestly as they bent over the washbasin, and Millie knew what they were talking about. Her black face puckered with anxiety.

Through this same window she had a view of the small courtyard formed by the jointure of the kitchen and the west wing of the house. Just beyond this was a well, and beyond the well a white picket fence which separated the back yard from the vegetable garden. There was a gate in this fence and two paths diverged from it. One led to the big barn set high on an adjacent knoll; the other led through a grape arbor to the orchards beyond. Between was a good clear view of open pasture and a glimpse of a small frame house. This cottage, built years ago by a Kentucky neighbor and abandoned when his wife died of malaria, had been bought in by the Tomlin-sons and christened by Millie ''the weanin' pen" because first one, then another of the Tomlinson daughters had set up

housekeeping there when first married. At the present time it was occupied by the youngest daughter, Jane, and her husband, Alec Mitchell.

Someone was coming from the cottage now. A small form, moving in swift leaps and canters like a frolicsome colt, was crossing the open field. Millie recognized the runner even at a distance and called to young Will.

''Thorne's comin'! Keep a lookout, Mistah Will, and don' let her go into the house."

Will lifted his head and looked toward the gate. Already a flash of pink was moving swiftly through the autumn nakedness of the grape arbor.

"Where's she been?" asked Jesse Moffat.

"Mother sent her over to Jane's last night and told her to stay there," frowned Will.

"Here, you!" He flung the water from his hands and dashed after the pink flash, which had darted through the gate and was streaking toward the side door of the house. He seized it at the very edge of the porch and dragged it back to the kitchen doorstep.

"You were told to stay down at Jane's till you were sent for. Why are you back here this morning?"

That the small person addressed was an alien in this sober, respectable household was evidenced in the bright mobility of her face and a certain delicate impudence of manner. Small-boned and fragile, she was none the less intrepid.

"I've got to see Richard," she said coolly.

"Richard's not here. And even if he were you couldn't see him."

"Where is he?"

"Gone to Woodridge. For Dr. Caxton."

The pink-sleeved arm gave a sudden twist and slipped from Will's grasp.

"No, you don't. Come back here." He recaptured his quarry and gave her a brisk shake.

"I'm just going down to the lane and wait for Richard."

"You're not going anywhere except back to Jane's like Mother told you. She's got enough on her hands without having you around. And Iceep away from Richard—if you don't want to get hurt."

She said carelessly, "I'm not afraid."

"Maybe not." retorted Will. "And maybe nobody cares whether you are or not. But it would be embarrassing for Richard if anything happened to you." And satisfied that he had given her sufficient jolt to hold her for the time. Will turned to the black woman standing in the kitchen doorway. "Keep Thorne with you, Millie, till Mother comes out."

Millie said, "Git in dat kitchen foah I paddles de bottom offen you," and Thorne obeyed, not because she feared the threat but because Millie shrewdly followed it with one more potent. "Ise goin' tell Mistah Richard how you disobeyed his ordahs."

Thorne said quickly, "Did Richard say I was to stay at Jane's?"

"He not only say you to stay there, he say he don' wanta see hair nor hide of you aroun' heah fo' de nex' six months."

"I don't beheve it," said Thorne calmly. Then, before Millie's swelling wrath could discharge itself, she asked in a lowered voice, "How is she, Millie? Is she any better this morning?"

"I don' know. I ain' seen nobody to ask. All I know is nobody in this house got any sleep las' night. And all on account of you."

"I didn't do anything," protested Thorne.

"You don' have to do nothin'. Jus' bein' heah is enough."

A footfall sounded in the covered passage, and a small woman came briskly down the shallow steps that bridged the space between the two floor levels. Ann Tomlinson had borne nine children and buried four of them, but she still had at sixty the energy of her younger son Will. She looked like Will.

In fact, she and Will were exactly alike. But it was her older son Richard whom she idolized.

She spoke to Millie, paying no attention to Thorne, whom her keen eyes spotted immediately.

"Take a tray in to Miss Abigail and stay with her while the rest of us have our breakfast."

"Is she by herself?" asked Millie uneasily.

"No. Kate's with her. When you go in, send Kate out here to help me." Miss Ann was already spooning fermity into a bowl from the iron pot on the back of the stove. She dropped two eggs into a boiling kettle and forked three crisp pieces of side meat out of a sizzling skillet.

Millie muttered, "She won't eat all that."

Miss Ann said firmly, "You must see that she does."

Millie's eyes rolled heavenward.

"She needs food," Miss Ann went on. "She's half starved. If she could be got to eat like other people she would get well." Opening the oven, she added a couple of delicately browned soda biscuits to the tray Millie was holding and gave her a slight shove. "There, go on. Get cream and butter from the table in the dining room. And hurry!"

Millie ambled up the steps, and Miss Ann turned to the small figure hunched beside the window, eyes watchfully focused on the lane. She regarded the child thoughtfully, as a problem to be solved.

"I told you to stay at Jane's house today, Thorne."

"I had to come back. I've something to tell Richard."

"Richard is not to be bothered today. Anything you have to tell him can wait."

Kate came down the steps, her youngest son in her arms. She at least seemed glad to see Thorne.

"Thank goodness somebody's here to mind Hughie. Take him, Thorne. And don't go giving him sugar to keep him quiet."

Kate, the second daughter, was married to Hugh Turner and lived three miles away on the Turner farm. Kate was the one whom Ann Tomlinson now called in family emergencies, her oldest daughter Annie having moved with her husband to Kentucky the year before.