Great mischief
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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.
THE
VIKING
PRESS
Table of Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Pages