Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 69: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

VINGO'’S- LADY SERPENT. found out that he had never seen one before. She thought it would amuse him—to see how we roughneck backwoodsmen acted at a wake, and he thought it was a lark. Oh, he didn’t grin or act out of the way, but every now and then he would catch Alvina’s eyes and a little twinkle of under- - standing would come into his. I could imagine him telling his fashionable friends about it aftewrard. It was an “ experience ” for him, and the way he would tell about it you knew his friends would go into roars of laughter. The old mammies letting out wails every now and then; the blacks out- side chanting with as much fervor as if Old Ned himself were at their heels; all the food piled up in the kitchen. From his point of view it was probably mighty amusing, but not from mine. It was an Insult to those nice girls, and Alvina had brought them enough suffering without this. I sat down in a corner and watched the two of them and wondered where things - were going to go from here. It didn’t seem to me that there was any justice. She had come into Vingo and turned our little back- woods paradise into something closely re- sembling hell. She had been responsible for the death of one man and she had ruined the lives of several others. The fox terriers were growing restless. Suddenly the two of them, for no apparent reason, jumped to their feet with back hair bristling and fangs bared, their sharp little noses pointing at an open window. There was nothing there. It was black outside. Then Alvina whistled, very low. It was the eighth or tenth time this had happened —the dogs suddenly jumping up and brist- ling. I suppose the scent of some passing animal—maybe a raccoon or a ’possum or a wildcat—had drifted into the window and reached them. ‘Those woods are full of wild things. And each time they bristled, Alvina would give that low, haunt- ing, unearthly whistle. It made me jump every time I heard it, and it sent chills trickling down my back. The pipes of Pan! Somehow, that whistle belonged to death; it belonged in this very room. And each time it happened, something would happen outdoors. The little black girl would start singing in that wild, thin key as if she were frightened out of her wits. I think she was. ) singing on the same principle that people whistle when they go past a graveyard. _ That whistle of Alvina’s seemed to ter- rify the negroes. And it was not until then that‘I realized just how much Alvina was to blame for the trouble that had been going on in the quarters. I thought of the fight that Clem Arthur had had with Lightnin’, and of that dreadful dance that night down by the river with the drum under the cabbage palm going tum-tum- tum—tumpa-tum-tum! It was the terrify- ing thing in that whistle that had started to life in their sleepy minds those old racial memories. And now, outside in the dark, they were fighting it off again with the BI T think shee =e only weapon they had—the weapon the ~ white man had given them—a faith in a white God who could work miracles. And in her tight, red dress, with her red hair curling back from her white, moody face, Alvina reminded me suddenly of terrible things. In the poor light, her white, tapering arms became snakes. And I re- alized that, with all her beauty and the loveliness of her voice, she was nothing but a reptile. In that moment I hated her. Across the room, in a corner, the Ran- dolph twins were sitting stiffly on a bench looking at her—never taking their eyes off her. They weren’t fools. They weren’t infatuated with her any longer. was in my mind was in theirs. They were seeing her now as she really was, a soulless thing, fit for nothing but badness. And they were studying her with the deep And I knew Christine was wrong. The same thing that — amazement with which a simple mind will — always contemplate a grotesque thing. In another corner Jeff Barnes sat, slumped down in a chair with his eyes — closed, his pasty face looking stupid. He had had the bad taste to bring, as his con- tribution to the wake, a gallon jug of yellow liquor. And I didn’t doubt for a minute but that Alvina had put him up to it. T felt myself getting hot under the collar. I couldn’t sit there any longer. I wanted to do something violent. I strolled back into the Christine with their heads together. (EC Aavicel exoye) kitchen and found Belinda and S.com