Local Color

“You see, I got some other interests here. Besides this pit show, I’m a partner in a store pitch and a mitt-joint; and, what with everything, I’m overworked. That’s the God’s truth – I’m overworked! What I need is a manager here. And soon as I seen how you handled yourself I says to myself, ‘That’s the party I want to hire for manager.’ What did you say your name was?”

“Tuttle – Gashney P. Tut – ”

“That’s enough – the Tuttle part will do for me. Now, Tuttle, set down that there keister of yours – that gripsack – and listen. I gotta go down the street for a half hour – maybe an hour – and I want you to take charge. You’re manager while I’m gone – the joint is yours till I git back. And to-night, later on, we’ll fix up a deal together. If you think you like the job we’ll make a reg’lar arrangement; we’ll make it permanent instid of temporary. See?”

“But – but – ”

“But nothin’! I want to find out if my first judgment about you is correct. See? I want to make a test. See? That’s it – a test. You ain’t goin’ to have much to do, first off. The nigger is all right s’long as he gits his dope.” He motioned toward the canvas-lined retreat where Osay now dozed heavily among the coils of his somnolent pets. “And Crummy – that’s my outside man – kin handle the front and make the spiel, and take in what money comes in. I’ll mention to him as I’m leavin’ that you’re in charge. Probably I’ll be back before time for the next blow-off. All you gotta do is just be manager – that’s all; and if anybody comes round askin’ for the manager, you’re him. See?”

His impetuosity was hypnotising – it was converting; nay, compelling. It was enough to sweep any audience off its feet, let alone an audience of one. Besides, where lives the male adult between the ages of nine and ninety who in his own mind is not convinced that he has within him the making of a great and successful amusement purveyor? Still, Gash Tuttle hesitated. The prospect was alluring, but it was sudden – so sudden.

As though divining his mental processes, the man Fornaro added a clinching and a convincing argument.

“To prove I’m on the dead level with you, I’m goin’ to pay you for your time – pay you now, in advance – to bind the bargain until we git the details all fixed up.” He hauled out a fair-sized wad of currency and from the mass detached a frayed green bill. “I’m goin’ to slip you a she-note on the spot.”

“A which?”

“A she-note – two bones. See?”

He forced the money into the other’s palm. As Gash Tuttle automatically pocketed the retainer he became aware that this brisk new associate of his, without waiting for any further token of agreement on his part, already was preparing to surrender the enterprise into his keeping. Fornaro backed away from him and dropped nimbly down off the back of the platform where there was a slit in the canvas wall; then turned and, standing on tiptoe to bring his mouth above the level of the planking, spoke the parting admonition in hasty tones:

“Remember now, you’re the boss, the main guy, the whole cheese! If anybody asts you tell ’em you’re the manager and stick to it.”

The canvas flapped behind him and he was gone. And Gash Tuttle, filled with conflicting emotions in which reawakened pride predominated, stood alone in his new-found kingdom.

Not for long was he alone, however. To be exact, not for more than half a minute at the very most. He heard what he might have heard before had his ears been as keenly attuned as the vanished Fornaro’s were. He heard, just outside, voices lifted conflictingly in demand, in expostulation, in profane protest and equally profane denunciation of something or other. A voice which seemed to be that of the swarthy man denominated as Crummy gave utterance to a howl, then instantly dimmed out, as though its owner was moving or being moved from the immediate vicinity with unseemly celerity and despatch. Feet drummed on the wooden steps beyond the draperies. Something heavy overturned or was overthrown with a crash.

And as Mr. Tuttle, startled by these unseemly demonstrations, started toward the front entrance of his domain the curtain was yanked violently aside and a living tidal wave flowed in on him, dashing high and wide. On its crest, propelled by irresistible cosmic forces, rode, as it were, a slouch-hatted man with a nickel-plated badge on his bosom, and at this person’s side was a lanky countryman of a most threatening demeanour; and behind them and beyond them came a surging sea of faces – some hostile, some curious, and all excited.

“Who’s in charge here?” shouted the be-badged man.

“Me – I am,” began Gash Tuttle. “I’m the manager. What’s wanted?”

“You are! I ’rest you in the name of the law for runnin’ a skin game!” the constable whooped gleefully – “on a warrant swore out less ’en a hour ago.”

And with these astounding words he fixed his fingers, grapple-hook fashion, in the collar of the new manager’s coat; so that as Gash Tuttle, obeying a primal impulse, tried to back away from him, the back breadth of the coat bunched forward over his head, giving him the appearance of a fawn-coloured turtle trying to retreat within its own shell. His arms, hampered by sleeves pulled far down over the hands, winnowed the air like saurian flippers, wagging in vain resistance.

Holding him fast, ignoring his muffled and inarticulate protests, the constable addressed the menacing countryman:

“Is this here the one got your money?”

“No, ’tain’t. ’Twas a big ugly feller, with mushtashes; but I reckin this here one must’ve helped. Lemme search him.”

“Hands off the prisoner!” ordered the constable, endeavouring to interpose his bulk between maddened accuser and wriggling captive.

He spoke too late and moved too slowly. The countryman’s gouging hands dived into Mr. Tuttle’s various pockets and were speedily out again in the open; and one of them held money in it – paper and silver.

“Here ’tis!” barked the countryman, exultant now. “This here two-dollar bill is mine – I know it by this here red-ink mark.” He shuffled out the three remaining bills and stared at them a moment in stupefaction, and his yelp of joy turned to a bellow of agonised berserk rage. “I had two hundred and twenty-eight dollars in cash, and here ain’t but seventeen dollars and sixty cents! You derned sharper! Where’s the rest of my mortgage money that yore gang beat me out of?”

He swung a fearsome flail of an arm and full in Gash Tuttle’s chest he landed a blow so well aimed, so vigorous, that by its force the recipient was driven backward out of his coat, leaving the emptied garment in the constable’s clutches; was driven still further back until he tottered on the rear edge of the platform and tumbled off into space, his body tearing away a width of canvas wall and taking it along with him as he disappeared.

Perhaps it was because he fell so hard that he bounced up so instantaneously. He fought himself free of the smothering folds of dusty tarpaulin and turned to flee headlong into the darkness. He took three flying steps and tripped over the guy rope of the next tent. As he fell with stunning violence into the protecting shadows he heard pursuit roll over the platform past Osay, thud on the earth, clatter on by him and die away in the distance to the accompaniment of cheers, whoops and the bloodthirsty threats of the despoiled countryman.

If one has never stolen a ride on a freight train the task presents difficulties and dangers. Still, it may be done, provided one is sufficiently hard pressed to dare its risks and risk its discomforts. There is one especially disagreeable feature incident to the experience – sooner or later discovery is practically inevitable.

Discovery in this instance came just before the dawn, as the freight lumbered through the swampy bottoms of Obion Creek. A sleepy and therefore irritable brakeman found, huddled up on the floor of an empty furniture car, a dark heap, which, on being stirred with a heavy boot-toe, moved and moaned and gave forth various other faint signs of life. So, as the locomotive slowed down for the approach to the trestle, he hoisted the unresisting object and with callous unconcern shoved it out of the open car door on to the sloping bank of the built-up right of way – all this occurring at a point just beyond where a white marker post gleamed spectrally in the strengthening light of the young summer day, bearing on its planed face the symbol, S-3 – meaning by that, three miles to Swango Junction.

At sunup, forty minutes later, a forlorn and shrunken figure, shirt-sleeved, hatless and carrying no baggage whatsoever, quit the crossties and, turning to the left from the railroad track some rods above the station, entered, with weary gait, a byway leading over the hill to the town beyond. There was a drooping in the shoulders and a dragging of the mud-incrusted legs, and the head, like Old Black Joe’s, was bending low.

The lone pedestrian entered the confines of Swango proper, seeking, even at that early hour, such backways as seemed most likely to be empty of human life. But as he lifted his leaden feet past the Philpotts place, which was the most outlying of local domiciles, luck would have it that Mr. Abram Philpotts should be up and stirring; in fact, Mr. Philpotts, being engaged in the milk and butter business, was out in his barn hitching a horse to a wagon. Chancing to pass a window of the barn he glanced out and saw a lolled head bobbing by above the top of his back fence.

“Hey there!” he called out. “Hey, Gash, what air you doin’ up so early in the mornin’?”

With a wan suggestion of the old familiar sprightliness the answer came back, comically evasive:

“That’s fur me to know and fur you to find out!”

Overcome, Mr. Philpotts fell up against his stable wall, feebly slapping himself on the legs with both hands.

“Same old Gashney!” he gurgled. “They can’t nobody ever git ahead of you, kin they boy?”

The words and the intent of the tribute reached beyond the palings. Their effect was magical; for the ruler was in his realm again, back among his loyal, worshipful subjects. The bare head straightened; the wearied legs unkinked; the crushed and bruised spirit revived. And Gashney Tuttle, king of jesters, re-crowned, proceeded jauntily on his homeward way, with the wholesome plaudits of Mr. Philpotts ringing in his gratified ears and the young sun shining, golden, in his face.

CHAPTER IV

BLACKER THAN SIN

It was the year after the yellow fever that Major Foxmaster moved out from Virginia; that would make it the year 1876. And the next year the woman came. For Major Foxmaster her coming was inopportune. It is possible that she so timed it with that very thing in mind. To order her own plans with a view to the upsetting and the disordering of his plans may have been within the scope of her general scheme. Through intent, perhaps, she waited until he had established himself here in his new environment, five hundred miles from tidewater, before she followed him.

Be this as it may, that was what happened. The Major came out in the spring of the year. He was pushing fifty then, a fine upstanding figure of a man – what women, for lack of a better name, call distinguished looking. He had been a lieutenant in the Mexican War and a major in the Civil War – on the Confederate side, of course, seeing that he came from the seaboard side and not from the mountainous flank of Virginia.

You get some notion of what manner of man he was when I tell you that in all the years he lived in this city, which was a fair-sized city, only one man ever called him by his first name. Behind his back he was to others The Major, sometimes The Old Major, and rarely Major; but to his face people always hailed him, properly, as Major Foxmaster. And, despite the role he was to play in the community, he never acquired a nickname; and that was not so strange, either. You give nicknames to geysers, but not to glaciers.

This man’s manner was icily formal toward those he deemed his inferiors, icily polite toward those whom he acknowledged his equals. He had no code for his intercourse with superiors because he never met anybody whom he regarded as his social superior. He looked upon the world with a bleak, chill eye, and to it he showed a bleak, chill face. It was a mask really – a mask of flesh held in such fine and rigid control that it gave no hint, ever, of what went on in the cool brain behind it. A professional poker player would have traded five years out of his life to be the owner of such a face.

Well, the Major came. He had money, he had family, he had a military record; likewise he had the poise and the pose which, lacking all the other things, still would have given him consideration and a place in town life. His status in the financial world became fixed when he deposited in the largest bank a drawing account of such size as instantly to win the cuddling admiration of the president of the bank. He had established himself in rooms at the Gaunt House – then, and for many years thereafter, the principal hotel. Before fall he was proposed for membership in the exclusive Kenilworth Club, that was the unattainable Mecca toward which many men turned wistful eyes. Judge Sherwan, who was afterward to be his only close friend, sponsored his candidacy and he was elected promptly. Very soon his life fell into the grooves that always thenceforward it was to follow.

The Major did not go into any business. Opportunities to go into this or that were in due season presented to him. He listened with his air of congealed courtesy, but declined them all, explaining that his present investments were entirely satisfactory and yielded him a satisfactory income. Like many men of his breed and generation, he liked a good horse so well that it was more than a liking – with him it was a love. Afternoons he frequently drove one: a ramping bay mare with a fractious temper and a set of gifted heels. He was fond of cards, and in the evenings generally played cards with certain of his fellow club members in a private room at the Kenilworth Club.

These men, though, never became his friends, but were merely the men with whom he played cards. If of a morning after breakfast he went for a walk, as sometimes happened, he went alone, except on those infrequent occasions when Judge Sherwan accompanied him. At the beginning he was asked to affairs at the homes of influential people; but, since he never accepted these invitations – any of them – people presently quit asking him. Among a hundred thousand human beings he became, or rather he remained, so far as interchange of thought, or of affection, or of confidence, or of intimacy was concerned, a social Crusoe upon a desert island set in an empty sea, with no Man Friday to bear him company in his loneliness – unless it might be said that old Sherwan qualified, after a fashion, for the Man-Friday job.

You see, the Major knew all along that – sooner or later – the woman would be coming. For these few months he had played the truant from his destiny, or his Nemesis, or his fate, or by whatever fancy name you might choose to call it; but there was no chance of his having escaped it altogether. Through strength of will power he could in silence continue to endure it as he had in silence endured it through the years that stretched-backward between young-manhood and middle age. Through pride he would involve no other person, however remotely, in the sorry web of his own weaving. Mentally he manoeuvred to stand apart from his kind; to render himself as inaccessible, as aloof, as unknowable by them as the core of an iceberg.

Nevertheless, it was inevitable that the channels of his outer life, no matter how narrowly they ran or how coldly they coursed, would be disturbed and set awry by her coming. A cultivated and well-sustained indifference to popular opinion is all well enough, but gossip is a corrosive that eats through the calluses until it finds quick flesh underneath. The Major might arm himself against showing what he felt, but he could not armour himself against feeling what he felt. He knew it – and she knew it. Perhaps that was why she, this one time, delayed her coming until he had ample opportunity for becoming, in a measure, fixed in the community and identified with it.

She came. One morning in the young spring of the year following the year when this narrative begins, Major Foxmaster stepped out from between the tall pillars of the Gaunt House doorway to find her waiting for him upon the sidewalk. She stood close to the curbing, a tall and straight figure, swathed all in dead and dreary black, with black skirts hiding her feet and trailing on the bricks behind her; with black gloves upon her clasped hands; with a long, thick veil of black crêpe hiding her face and the shape of her head, and descending, front and back, almost to her waist – a striking figure and one to catch the eye.

After the first glance he gave no heed to her at all, nor she to him – except that when he had descended the short flight of stone steps and set off down the street at his usual brisk, soldierly gait, she followed, ten paces in his rear. By reason of her skirts, which swept the ground round her, and by reason, too, that her shoes had soles of felt or of rubber, she seemed almost to float along the pavement behind him, without apparent effort – certainly without sound.

Two blocks down the street he entered a business house. She waited outside, as silent as a mute and as funereal as a pall. In a few minutes he reappeared; she fell in behind him. He crossed over to the other side; she crossed, too, maintaining the distance between them. Crossing, his heels hit hard upon the rutted cobbles of the roadway; but she glided over them noiselessly and smoothly, almost like one who walked on water. He went into the Kenilworth Club and for an hour or two sat in the reading room behind a newspaper. Had he raised his eyes he might have seen, through the window, the woman waiting on the curb. He ate his luncheon there in the club at a table in a corner of the dining room, alone, as was his way. It was two o’clock and after before he left to go to the livery stable where he kept his mare. She followed, to wait outside the livery stable until he had driven away in his gig, bound for the trotting track where the city’s horse fanciers exercised their harness stock.

For a space, then, she disappeared. Having returned the rig to its quarters and having dined at the Gaunt House, the Major came forth once more at eight-thirty o’clock to return to the Kenilworth for a bout at the cards. He was spruced and for the second time that day he had shaved. Plainly his measured and customary habit of life was to go on just as it had gone on before the woman came – or, rather, it might be said that it was only now reassuming the routine which, with breaks in between, it had pursued through so many years. Major Foxmaster came down the steps, drawing on his gloves. From the deeper darkness beyond a patch of yellowish glow where a gas lamppost stood the woman emerged, appearing now as an uncertain, wavering shape in her black swathings. Again she followed him, at a distance of a few paces, to the Kenilworth Club; again she waited in the shadows cast by its old-fashioned portico while he played his game and, at its end, cashed in his winnings – for the Major won that night, as very often he did; again she followed him homeward at midnight through the silent and empty street. Without a word or a sign or a backward glance he ascended the steps and passed within the doors of the Gaunt House. Without a word or a sign she lingered until he had disappeared; then she turned off the pavement into the road and vanished, swimming away upright, as it were, without visible motion of her limbs or her body, into a stilled and waveless sea of darkness.

I have here set down the story of this day with such detail because, with occasional small variations, it was to be the story of an uncounted number of other days coming after it.

Inside of twenty-four hours the whole city knew the tale, and buzzed and hummed with it. Inside of forty-eight hours the woman, by common consent, had been given the names she was ever thereafter to wear. She was, to some, The Woman in Black; to others, Foxmaster’s Shadow. Inside of a week or two the town was to know, by word of mouth passed on from this person to that, and by that person to another, all that it was ever to know of her.

She came from the same place whence he came – a small Virginia town somewhere near the coast. As the current reports ran, the Foxmaster plantation and the plantation of her family adjoined; as children – remember, I am still quoting the account that was generally accepted – they had played together; as young man and young woman they had been sweethearts. He wronged her and then denied her marriage. Her father was dead; she had no brothers and no near male relatives to exact, at the smaller end of a pistol, satisfaction from the seducer. So she dedicated her days and nights to the task of haunting him with the constant reminder of his crime and her wrongs. She clad herself in black, with a veil before her face to hide it, as one in mourning for a dead life; and she set herself to following him wherever he might go. She never spoke to him; she never, so far as the world at large knew, wrote to him nor meddled in any fashion whatsoever with him or his affairs – but she followed him.

The war, coming on, broke for four years the continuity of her implacable plan of vengeance. When the war was over, and he came back home, she took it up again. He left the town where he had been reared and moved to Richmond, and then after a time from Richmond to Baltimore; in due season she followed after. Finally he had moved to this more westerly city, lying on the border between the North and the South. And now here she was too.

Through an agent in Virginia she had leased, ready furnished, the old Gresham place, diagonally across the way from the front entrance of the Gaunt House; that fact speedily came out, proving that, like him, she also had means of her own. Through this same agent the taxes were thereafter paid. Presumably she moved in under cover of night, for she was a figure that, once seen, was not to be forgotten; and most certainly no one could remember having seen her before that fine spring morning when Major Foxmaster came out of the Gaunt House to find her waiting for him.

She had brought her servants with her – a middle-aged mulatto man and his wife, a tall, young, coal-black negro woman; both of them as close-mouthed as only some negroes can be, when they are the exceptions to prove the rule of a garrulous race. The mulatto man was a combination of butler and gardener. It was he who did the marketing, dealing with the tradespeople and paying all the bills. The negro woman was the cook, presumably. Passers-by rarely saw her. These two, with their mistress, composed the household.

For such a mistress and such a household the old Gresham place made a most fit abiding place. It was one of those houses that seemed builded for the breeding of mysteries and the harbouring of tragedies – the kind of house that cannot stand vacant long without vaguely acquiring the reputation of being haunted. It was a big, foursquare house of greyish stone, placed in the exact centre of a narrow, treeless lot, which extended through for the full depth of the city block. In front of it was a high picketed fence and a deep, bare grassplot; behind it was a garden of sorts, with a few stunted and illy-nourished berry bushes; and on each side of it was a brick wall, so high that the sunshine never fell on the earth at the side of the house toward the north; and even in the hottest summer weather the foundation stones there were slick and sweaty with the damp, and big snails crawled on the brick wall that ran in the shadow of the wall, leaving trails of a luminous slime across the slick greenish mould which covered the bricks.

The woman took this house, with its gear and garnishings, just as the last of the Greshams had left it when he died. During the months and years it remained tenantless all the upper windows had been tightly shuttered; she left them so. In the two lower front windows, which flanked the deeply recessed front door and which lacked blinds, were stiff, heavy shades of a dull silver colour, drawn down until only a glassed space of inches showed between their unfringed ends and the stone copings. These, too, were left as they had been. They accorded well with the blank, cold house itself; they matched in with its drear old face; they made you think of coins on a dead man’s eyes.