Chapter 23
THE LOST IS FOUND
"I saw a light in the attic!" Jo exclaimed as they turned a curve in the road.
"I am sure I did, too, just for a moment. Who on earth could be up in the attic?" said Philip.
"Oh, you couldn't have," insisted Betsy, a gay note in her voice, a note that had been woefully lacking lately.
"You know Mam' Peachy is afraid to death of the attic, and the stairs would be fat man's misery for father."
The girl laughed happily. Life wasn't so hard after all. Her handsome lover had shown himself to be so much in earnest that she could not but hope for the future. She wouldn't marry Spottswood while her father and his father were having this terrible law suit, but after a bit things surely would adjust themselves. Maybe her father would lose his suit, which would help matters some.
It had been a delightful evening to Betsy. Spot had been so gentle, so thoughtful, so grateful for the privilege of sitting by her side! He had begged her to wait—not to give him a final answer and to let him go on loving her.
Philip whipped up the horses and they reached the yard gate just as Aunt Peachy gave her first blood-curdling scream. Then had followed Rolfe Bolling's call for help.
Philip and his mother sprang from the carriage, leaving Betsy and Jo to attend to the horses. They were in the house in a twinkling. All was silent. Rolfe Bolling they found with his head under the bed clothes and his huge bulk trembling with fear.
"What is the matter, Father?" asked Philip, but the old man could only sob like a frightened child.
"Where is Aunt Peachy?" asked his wife.
"It done got her," he finally sobbed out.
"What got her?" asked Philip, gently.
"That thing in the attic! I heard her screaming when it got her."
Elizabeth soothed him, smoothed the covers over his heaving form, and even poured out a drink for him from a bottle on the table by his bedside.
As soon as Philip was assured that his father was merely frightened, he went in search of Aunt Peachy. He had been sure that he had seen a light in the attic, and with a lamp in hand he mounted the stairs to the second floor. He saw the door to the attic stairs was open. The strong odor of the varnish remover filled the hall. This puzzled him.
"Philip, wait for me!" called Elizabeth. "Your father is all right now."
They found old Aunt Peachy lying at the foot of the steps dressed in her fantastic regalia. Philip almost stepped on her. He drew back with an exclamation of horror.
"I think she is dead, Mother," he whispered. "She must have fallen down the steps."
Aunt Peachy had dried up to the mere semblance of a human being. Her head, with its band of feathers, was twisted under her poor old body. The strings of beads had some of them burst and the stairs were strewn with bones and bits of colored glass and buttons. The bottle of varnish remover had broken and the pungent mixture had made a pool all around her.
"Don't touch her, my boy! Don't touch her!" Elizabeth commanded. "You must get the coroner! You must, I say! Too many times have I thought of killing her, and now that she is dead some one may try to prove I have killed her, I or you. God knows that I have wished that she were dead for twenty-five years."
Philip was glad not to have to touch the fearsome object. The coroner was soon reached by telephone, and thanks to the habit of country telephones, over which it is impossible to impart a secret, the news of Mam' Peachy's death spread like wildfire through the county. By midnight not only was the coroner at The Hedges, but a crowd of people, white and black, that even a fire would not have attracted.
"Well, the ol' debble air a stokin' up this night," said a colored man to his companion. They had run two miles across country not to miss the excitement of seeing the coroner sit on the remains of the dreaded Mam' Peachy.
"Good Gawd, man! Ain't you scairt ter be a mentionin' er ol' Mam' Peachy so disrumspec'ful like?"
"No, sirree! I ain't scairt no mo'. I done been scairt er her all my life, but I allus heard tell that conjer tricks dies when the conjer ooman dies. When they dies they done loses they grip. I reckon they'll be rejicin' all aroun', now Mam' Peachy air done broke her neck. I done stop at Brer Johnson's cabin ter tell him an' Aunt Pearly Gates the news. They do say him an' her air the onlies' ones 'roun' these here parts what ain't never feared Mam' Peachy."
"Yes, they's a wondrous pair, them two. They's pretty nigh sanctified, I reckon."
The coroner's verdict was "Death by accident." The accident being falling down the steps and breaking her neck. What she was doing up in the attic, attired in strings of beads, with the strange headdress, was none of the coroner's business and he did not attempt to solve the riddle.
Aunt Peachy's descendants down to the fourth and fifth generation came and carried the shrunken corpse to her house in The Quarters. There she lay in state until the following Sunday. Everybody had heard of Mam' Peachy and many were the excursions to view the remains.
"Mam' Peachy air sech a pop'lar corp," Old Abe explained to Philip, "that we is done decided ter charge ter view the remainders. Young Abe thought a nickel wa' enough, but I 'lowed it wa' kinder lowerin' er my mother's 'portance ter chawge only a nickel, so I done put it ter a dime. I ain't los' none by it, either."
Rolfe Bolling took the death of his old nurse quite calmly, much to the relief of his family. He was in a strangely placid state of mind. He seemed like a child who had finally got the whipping he had needed, had accepted his punishment and was trying to be good. At his wife's suggestion he stayed in bed for several days. He showed gratitude to her for the first time in their married life.
"Elizabeth, you are a good woman," he said, and Elizabeth wept.
"I reckon Mam' Peachy air been a great trial ter you. I'm glad she's dead. She was too strong fer me. I hadn't ought ter let her do you so mean, but she was too strong—too strong."
Philip and his mother determined to burn everything in Aunt Peachy's room. Old Abe was told he could carry off anything he valued, but he wanted nothing.
"I's scairt she mought come back fer her things, so I ain't gonter have none er them 'roun' me," he said. "I 'low burnin' would be the saftes' way."
Accordingly, very early on the morning after the accident they undertook the horrid task. Betsy insisted upon helping, although they hated to have her touch the dirty things found in the old woman's room. Many articles that had been lost by different members of the family were unearthed—things the old woman could not have wanted or used, but that she must have stolen simply for the sake of stealing.
Philip found treasures lost and mourned for in his childhood, when toys were far from plentiful—a top, a chipped agate, a Barlow knife. Elizabeth found the silver spoon on which her children had cut their teeth. Each little dent had been precious to her, and its loss had, at the time of its disappearance, seemed irreparable. Betsy found an envelope of kodak pictures for which she had searched high and low, a small silver vanity box Philip had sent her from New York, a jeweled hat pin and a dotted veil on which she set great store.
The bureau drawers were bursting with useless and filthy odds and ends. A huge trunk in the corner was covered with layer after layer of old blankets, bits of carpet and portieres. The trunk contained nothing but rags and old shoes. Aunt Peachy had allowed nothing in the way of clothing to be thrown away at The Hedges. Rags were on the bed, under the bed and between the feather mattresses. A bonfire was started some distance from the house and as soon as things were gone over they were cast in the flames.
"Burn everything," insisted Elizabeth. "There is no use in looking over these horrible rags."
"Perhaps we had better look before we burn," was Philip's cautious reply. "We may find more spoons."
With a few blows of the axe the rickety wooden bedstead made kindling for the fire and then on the pyre were cast carpets, chairs, the bureau, the huge trunk, the small rawhide trunk with the fantastic "begalia," which smelled vilely as it burned.
"Put on that stool next," commanded Elizabeth.
"First I must rip it up. There is no telling what is inside the old carpet sewed around it," insisted Betsy.
The girl sat down on the back porch steps and cut the twine and wires with which the carpet was roughly sewn.
"Look! It's funny old books," she cried. "Three of them! What a ridiculous old woman!" And then Betsy began to laugh and cry at the same time, and her mother and brother hurried to her. "It's the old deed books, the old deed books, lost during the war! Look! Look! Papers dated way back in the thirties and forties—even earlier! Oh! Oh! Oh! How happy I am!"