“Down toward the bayou. I’ll be back before lunch,” he said, and hurried out before she could as definitely dispose of him as she had of Ricky.
Val struck off into the bushes until he came to one of the paths that crossed the wilderness. As it ran in the direction of the bayou, he turned into it. Then for the second time he came into the glen of the pool and passed along the path Jeems had known. So somehow Val was not surprised, when he came out upon the edge of the bayou levee, to see Jeems sitting there.
“Hello!”
The swamper looked up at Val’s hail but this time he did not leave.
“Hullo,” he answered sullenly.
Val stood there, ill at ease, while the swamper eyed him composedly. What could he say now? Val’s embarrassment must have been very apparent, for after a long moment Jeems smiled derisively.
“Yo’ goin’ ridin’ in them funny pants?” he asked, pointing to the other’s breeches.
“Well, that’s what they are intended for,” Val replied.
“Wheah’s youah hoss?”
“I sent him back to Sam’s.” Val was beginning to feel slightly warm. He decided that Jeems’ manners were not all that they might be.
“Sam!” the swamp boy spat into the water. “He’s a—”
But what Sam was, in the opinion of the swamper, Val never learned, for at that moment Ricky burst from between two bushes.
“Well, at last,” she panted, “I’ve gotten rid of my army. Val, do you think that Lucy is going to be like this all the time—order us about, I mean?”
“Who’s that?” Jeems was on his feet looking at Ricky.
“Ricky,” her brother said, “this is Jeems. My sister Richanda.”
“Yo’ one of the folks up at the big house?” he asked her directly.
“Why, yes,” she answered simply.
“Yo’ don’ act like yo’ was.” He stabbed his finger at both of them. “Yo’ don’t walk with youah noses in the air looking down at us—”
“Of course we don’t!” interrupted Ricky. “Why should we, when you know more about this place than we do?”
“What do yo’ mean by that?” he flashed out at her, his sullen face suddenly dark.
“Why—why—” Ricky faltered, “Charity Biglow said that you knew all about the swamp—”
His tense position relaxed a fraction. “Oh, yo’ know Miss Charity?”
“Yes. She showed us the picture she is painting, the one you are posing for,” Ricky went on.
“Miss Charity is a fine lady,” he returned with conviction. He shifted from one bare foot to the other. “Ah’ll be goin’ now.” With no other farewell he slipped over the side of the levee into his canoe and headed out into midstream. Nor did he look back.
Lucy departed after dinner that evening to bed down her family before returning with Letty-Lou to occupy one of the servant’s rooms over the side wing. Rupert had gone with her to interview Sam. Val gathered that Sam had some notion of trying to reintroduce the growing of indigo, a crop which had been forsaken for sugar-cane at the beginning of the nineteenth century when a pest had destroyed the entire indigo crop of that year all over Louisiana.
“Let’s go out in the garden,” suggested Ricky.
“What for?” asked her brother. “To provide a free banquet for mosquitoes? No, thank you, let’s stay here.”
“You’re lazy,” she countered.
“You may call it laziness; I call it prudence,” he answered.
“Well, I’m going anyway,” she made a decision which brought Val reluctantly to his feet. For mosquitoes or no mosquitoes, he was not going to allow Ricky to be outside alone.
They followed the path which led around the side of the house until it neared the kitchen door. When they reached that point Ricky halted.
“Listen!”
A plaintive miaow sounded from the kitchen.
“Oh, bother! Satan’s been left inside. Go and let him out.”
“Will you stay right here?” Val asked.
“Of course. Though I don’t see why you and Rupert have taken to acting as if Fu Manchu were loose in our yard. Now hurry up before he claws the screen to pieces. Satan, I mean, not the worthy Chinese gentleman.”
But Satan did not meet Val at the door. Apparently, having received no immediate answer to his plea, he had withdrawn into the bulk of the house. Speaking unkind things about him under his breath, Val started across the dark kitchen.
Suddenly he stopped. He felt the solid edge of the table against his thigh. When he put out his hand he touched the reassuring everyday form of Lucy’s stone cooky jar. He was in their own pleasant everyday kitchen.
But—
He was not alone in that house!
There had been the faintest of sounds from the forepart of the main section, a sound such as Satan might have caused. But Val knew—knew positively—that Satan was guiltless. Someone or something was in the Long Hall.
He crept by the table, hoping that he could find his way without running into anything. His hand closed upon the knob of the door opening upon the back stairs used by Letty-Lou. If he could get up them and across the upper hall, he could come down the front stairs and catch the intruder.
It took Val perhaps two minutes to reach the head of the front stairs, and each minute seemed a half-hour in length. From below he could hear a regular pad, pad, as if from stocking feet on the stone floor. He drew a deep breath and started down.
When he reached the landing he looked over the rail. Upright before the fireplace was a dim white blur. As he watched, it moved forward. There was something uncanny about that almost noiseless movement.
The blur became a thin figure clad in baggy white breeches and loose shirt. Below the knees the legs seemed to fade into the darkness of the hall and there was something strange about the outlines of the head.
Again the thing resumed its padding and Val saw now that it was pacing the hall in a regular pattern. Which suggested that it was human and was there with a very definite purpose.
He edged farther down the stairs.
“And just what are you doing?”
If his voice quavered upon the last word, it was hardly his fault. For when the thing turned, Val saw—
It had no face!
With a startled cry he lunged forward, clutching at the banister to steady his blundering descent. The thing backed away; already it was fading into the darkness beside the stairs. As Val’s feet touched the floor of the hall he caught his last glimpse of it, a thin white patch against the solid paneling of the stairway’s broad side. Then it was gone. When Rupert and Ricky came in a few minutes later and turned on the lights, Val was still staring at that blank wall, with Satan rubbing against his ankles.
Portrait of a Lady and a Gentleman
Rupert had dismissed Val’s story of what he had seen in the hall in a very lofty manner. When his brother had persisted in it, Rupert suggested that Val had better keep out of the sun in the morning. For no trace of the thing which had troubled the house remained.
Ricky hesitated between believing wholly in Val’s tale or just in his powers of imagination. And between them his family drove him sulky to bed. He was still