CHAPTER XVII
ON THE KNEES OF THE GODS
We gave over the futile search at last. Mr. Jelnik sat down and took his head in his hands, for the moment a prey to overwhelming disappointment. I could have wept for him. Presently:
"Is it so hard to lose that which you never possessed?" I ventured to ask.
"It is always bitter to fail."
"But you haven't really failed. You have succeeded in proving that both Richard and Freeman were the victims of an insane jealousy and a terrible revenge."
"Jessamine's confession might well be set aside: insane people often accuse themselves of crimes committed only in their own disordered brains. The one indisputable proof would be the jewels in my hands." He added, with a faint smile: "I should have liked to see those accursed things made clean by your wearing them, Sophy."
"I don't want them!" I said, and my head went up. "I don't care that for all the Hynds jewels ever lost! I wouldn't have come here to-night for their sake or mine, not if they were worth an empire's ransom! I wanted them for Richard's sake, and—and yours."
"I know, I know. At first I wanted them for him and me, too. Afterward I wanted them for him and for you, Sophy."
"For me? I have no right to them. What have I to do with Hynds jewels?" And then I stopped. If Jessamine's confession were true—and I believed in my heart that every word Jessamine had written was the truth—what right had I to Hynds House itself? "As to that, I have no right to Hynds House, either. It is yours," I said.
He stared at me thoughtfully.
"It is yours," I repeated, gaining courage. "I am an outsider, to whom this house was left from motives of malice and revenge. Mr. Jelnik, this thing must be set straight. We will show Jessamine's confession and clear Richard's name. We will bring Freeman's diary forward to prove the truth of our assertions. Then you can come into your own."
"Ah!" said Mr. Jelnik, gently, "I see. Quite simple, and perfectly feasible. And after I have taken Hynds House, what of you? What do you get?"
"I get out," I said briefly. And a horrid qualm came over me. Leave Hynds House, forever? Go away from Hyndsville, leaving this friendlier, pleasanter, happier life behind?
"You are forgetting my training," I reminded him, trying to keep my voice steady. "I can always do what I did before I came here. I—I'm really an excellent private secretary, Mr. Jelnik."
"That," said Mr. Jelnik, smiling curiously, "may very well be. But I think the stars in their courses fought to bring you here. And I really do not at all relish the notion of your turning backward into a private secretary, although there is, of course, the alternative of The Author. And what of Alicia?"
"Alicia's sense of justice is quite as well developed as mine," I told him proudly.
"Alicia is a dear girl," he agreed. "But, my dear lady, your plan wouldn't hold water in any court. This place isn't mine, legally or morally, though the jewels would be if I could find them. If ever I do find them, which is highly improbable, I may be tempted to make you an offer of exchange."
"You don't want Hynds House? Richard's house? You won't take Hynds House?"
"I don't want Hynds House. I won't take Hynds House. Further, if anybody on earth but you made me such an offer, in such circumstances, I should find it hard to forgive. Even from you I hardly think I could bear it twice." A bright red showed in his cheeks for an instant, his nostrils quivered, his whole face was a blaze of pride. "What! Nicholas Jelnik accept gifts from women?"
"As good and proud men as Nicholas Jelnik have accepted gifts from women, and been none the worse for it," said I, tartly. "You offered me your jewels. Why shouldn't I offer you my house?—particularly when it should have been your house. I also have my pride, Mr. Jelnik!"
The hauteur went out of his face, and something sweet and quizzical and boyish flooded it.
"Keep Hynds House, dear, dear Donna Quixotta," said he, gently. "You have given me something I needed a thousand times more."
Now, although we had not found the jewels, we had found Jessamine Hynds, and there remained to be done a thing that called for what strength of will and courage we possessed. And we had need to make haste. Already more time had been consumed than we bargained for.
Mr. Jelnik fetched a deep breath, and went over to the Thing in the chair. There was in his manner neither repugnance nor horror, nothing but an almost divine compassion. Never, never, had I respected the courage, the honor, the mercy of man so greatly as I did then.
It was a ghastly task; I do not like to remember it. In the hot, dry air of the room without windows she had become, not a bleached skeleton, but a shriveled, fleshless, blackened mummy. The hair still clung tightly to the skull, the discolored skin was stretched over the bony contour of the face; the lips had shriveled away from the teeth, which showed in a sort of jeering grin. And—well, we had to tie her hair, like a rope, around her chest and arms; and I tore the ruffles off my petticoat, to tie her skirts at the knees and ankles.
The brown frock was low-necked and short-sleeved, too. And the picture of her, down-stairs, showed her with so red a lip, so round an arm, so soft, so white a bosom!
Thou might'st think thou hadst drunk the water of Paradise who had tasted the nectar of her lip.... The ends of her ringlets fell into the hand like as the sleeve of the generous in the hand of the needy.
Oh, Jessamine!
She had been so splendidly tall a woman, that as he held her grisly head upon his shoulder the little shoes that rattled upon her shriveled feet were well below his knees. One great rope of her blue-black hair escaped and fell down the back of his white coat, and as he moved it moved, too, with a lazy and languid coquettishness horribly travesting youth and beauty. It was such wonderful hair! Small wonder young Richard had praised its dark splendor, and kissed its shining folds to his undoing!
"Jessamine," Nicholas Jelnik said as he bent over her, "you shall have your chance to rest. You shall sleep under the open sky. Nature shall have you, Jessamine, and make you over into something of loveliness and of peace."
"Because she loved much, much shall be forgiven her," I whispered. Ah! At the last, who but Him of Galilee shall speak for us?
Never, until I shall be what she was then, shall I be able to forget that return journey. Mr. Jelnik walked ahead, holding her on one arm, and carrying the flash-light with his free hand. I followed with a candle that burned with a low and reddish glare and gave off a heavy, waxy odor in the still air. Whenever the faintest draft lifted the dull flame, we two living creatures seemed to recede into darkness, while the light sought her out and stayed upon her. The motion of his body shook her lightly, and she gave forth a dry and stealthy rattling, an uneasy rustling. One hand hung down, with a loose, loose bracelet jingling on the brittle brown wrist. And her poor little feet with the rotting shoes upon them moved delicately, as if they trod the impalpable air. Once her head struck, with a hollow thud, as we turned a corner. It was almost more than flesh and blood could bear,—like things you were afraid of when you were a child in the dark—the candles melting audibly, and walls, walls, pressing us in.
I think it took us years to reach the room where Achmet waited. At sight of what the master bore, The Jinnee started up and called upon God the Lord Paramount, Help of the Faithful. Then, like the fine old fighter he was, he squared his shoulders, folded his arms, and waited orders. Boris, with a deep-throated, smothered growl of fear and protest, bared his teeth and sidled against him, bristling and trembling.
We consulted briefly. Mr. Jelnik was for leaving her there in the cellar room, until a fitter opportunity offered to give her sepulture. But to this I vehemently objected. I could not have stayed another hour in that house while I knew she was in it. I wanted Jessamine Hynds consigned to the grave from which she had been too long kept. I wanted her to sleep in the brown bosom of the earth, with the impartial grass to cover her, and roses to blow over her by and by, when summer should have come back to South Carolina.
Achmet led the way, and presently we were in the spring-house. When I am feverish I dream of that last climb up the spidery stair, with Jessamine's jaws widened into a soundless laugh, and The Jinnee's light playing at hide-and-seek upon her.
I knelt down and plunged my face into the cold spring-water, and drank and drank. How good it was! And how grateful to my lungs was the outside air, so sweet, so fresh, so clean! I loved the friendly trees waving in the good wind, I blessed the friendly stars.
We stopped at Mr. Jelnik's house, and the man Daoud appeared in answer to a low-voiced summons and fetched me a most beautiful shawl, which I found extremely comfortable. A stately and stoical personage was Daoud, unlike shy black Achmet, who hid himself from observation so thoroughly that people in Hyndsville were not aware of his existence. I sat on the steps while for Jessamine Hynds was fetched a length of canvas, a linen sheet, and a gray army blanket. Achmet appeared with spades. And so we set out.
The old cemetery in Hyndsville, unlike the newer one in which folks take a sort of ghastly pride, one lot differing from another lot in glory, is an unpretentious place, enclosed by crumbling walls, the iron gates of which have rusted ajar. It is a grassy, bird-haunted, tree-shaded spot, with some dozen or so old family vaults, some modest monuments that bear stately names, some raised marble slabs supported on carved and slender legs, like Death's own little card-tables, some stones let flat into the earth, with names and dates long since erased by rain and wind and fallen leaf. Nobody comes here any more. Sophronisba Scarlett was the first and last to be interred in the old cemetery within the memory of the present generation.
We went down dismal paths where the night wind sighed a miserere in the cedars, and things of the dark scurried away with furtive noises, or flapped ill-omened black wings overhead. In a corner shaded by cypresses was the Hynds vault, a venerable affair with a slate roof. Outside, in an inclosed space were some marble-covered graves and in a corner the simplest of all, one marked "R.H." Emily slept beside him, and their son beside her. But on the farther side, next the wall, was room for one more sleeper. And here, while Mr. Jelnik laid down his burden, Daoud and Achmet began to dig.
She lay there in the ghostly light and shade, so utterly cast aside and forgotten, so unloved, so unwept, so far removed from every human tie, that terror and pity filled my heart. While Daoud and Achmet were making ready her bed, Nicholas Jelnik and I spread out the length of canvas, and wrapped her securely in the sheet and blanket. We folded her claws upon the empty breast in which had once pulsed the passionate heart of Jessamine Hynds, and spread her hair over what had been her face.
Over in a sheltered spot behind the vault clambered a huge, overgrown, briery rose, and by some sweet impatience of nature one shoot had budded before its time. I broke off the small, pale roses and placed them in her grasp. But Mr. Jelnik took from his breast a pearl and silver crucifix, and this, reverently, he laid upon hers.
"It was my father's grandmother's. She held it when she was dying. She was an old saint. It would please her to know that her crucifix should stay, one holy thing, with Jessamine Hynds."
"'Verily, the gate of repentance is not nor shall be shut upon God's creatures until the sun shall rise in the west,'" The Jinnee quoted his Prophet And he broke off two of his saphies, each with a holy verse written upon it, and dropped them upon her out of pure charity.
Daoud, who was intelligent and orthodox where Achmet was emotional and tender, was evidently not altogether sure of the wisdom of this proceeding; but he was not too orthodox to stand up arrow-straight, face the East, and pray for her.
So we wrapped her, brown silk dress and yellowed laces, and long black hair, in the strip of canvas, and gave her to the earth. The last thing we saw, thank God! before the blanket fell over her for the last time, was the silver crucifix shining out of the roses in her hands.
Daoud and Achmet, their spades over their shoulders, left the cemetery, the latter the strangest, quaintest, most outlandish figure ever seen on a Carolina road. Mr. Jelnik and I, with Boris close beside us, walked more slowly.
"Shall you go on with the search?" I ventured presently.
"But where shall I begin now?" he wondered. "I have searched everything and every place searchable."
"If Shooba hid them anywhere outside of that room, it must have been in some place that Jessamine herself knew and could get at if she wished; some particular place where nobody would dream of looking for them. Women always choose hiding-places like that, and the notion would suit Shooba's grim humor," I said.
"They who knew every nook and cranny of the house searched it pretty thoroughly at the time," he reminded me. "I have fine-combed it myself."
"I am so sorry! I wanted you to find them. But the fact that you didn't surely couldn't make very much difference to you. One's happiness doesn't depend upon anything so problematical."
He hesitated. "Aside from their value, which is by no means inconsiderable, I—well, they would have made certain things easier for me. I should then have been in a better position to do what I want to do."
"Oh! You had some definite plan which hinged upon your finding them?"
He was silent for a space, as if considering within himself just how far he could admit me into his confidence.
"At first, it was a matter of family pride with me to clear up this mystery. Later—I wanted to have the Hynds jewels in my possession, that I might ask the woman I love to marry me." His voice vibrated like a violin string.
I took the blow standing. I did not wince, though it had come unexpectedly. Of course I had known all along that there must be some lady whom he loved, a woman of that world to which he himself belonged. But I couldn't for the life of me imagine how the finding or the not finding of the Hynds jewels could have any bearing upon the case. I couldn't understand how any woman, any real woman, could let such a thing come between her and Nicholas Jelnik.
When we had walked a little farther: "Doesn't she know you care for her?"
"Who knows what any woman knows or thinks? She may really care for another man."
"There is another man?"
"There is always another man. Her feeling for me may be nothing but pure kindness, for she is kindness itself."
"Still, I think you should tell her," I said, with such a heavy heart!
He shook his head. "There are reasons why my faith might be questioned, my motives doubted; and I couldn't bear that."
"But if you are perfectly sure of your own feelings, if there is absolutely no doubt in your mind that you love her—"
"Love her? I never thought," he said, "that any woman could mean so much to a man! I never dreamed that just one woman could be in herself all that a man needs to hold fast to! Love her? I have been all over the world and I have seen many women in many lands, but never any woman of them all, save that one, for me! It was a revelation to me, that I could care so much. Ah! I wish I could make it plain just how much I do care!"
I had not known until that moment how much the heart can bear of anguish and not break.
"I hope she loves you just as much in return, Mr. Jelnik. I hope with all my heart you will be happy, both of you."
"I hope she does! I hope we shall!" he cried, with ardor. "Why, if I could be sure she cares for me, like that, if I could know that all other men counted as little with her as all other women count with me! But I am not sure. And I do not take it lightly, for my woman must be more to me than most women mean to most men. Well, it is on the knees of the gods."
I stole a covert glance at him as he walked beside me. It seemed to me he had never been so beautiful. But his beauty hurt me. I felt old, very, very old, and sad, and tired. The salt taste of tears was in my mouth. My feet dragged.
We entered that strip of land which on a time old Sophronisba barb-wired and barricaded against her neighbors, and which touched the Jelnik grounds in the rear. We were to cut through his garden and enter mine by the gap in the hedge behind the spring-house and I hoped to get into the house and up-stairs to my own room unperceived.
The gray cottage lay dark and silent, but there were lights in Hynds House although the night was upon the verge of morning. A gray light, upon which was stealing a primrose tinge, was already in the sky. It was, in fact, four o'clock. I was so mortally tired that for a moment I sat down on his steps.
"It's been pretty rough on you, Sophy. One woman in a thousand could have gone through this night's experience without going to pieces," said Mr. Jelnik, with feeling. And then:
"Sophy!" cried a frightened and hysterical voice. "Oh, is that you, at last, Sophy?" And turning a corner of the gray cottage, Alicia, Doctor Geddes, and The Author confronted us. They were still in costume, and the Mephistophelian effect of The Author was such as would turn any actor green with envy. Ensued a pregnant pause. It was a lovely situation! It reduced me, for one, to idiocy.
"Sophy! Jelnik!" exploded Doctor Geddes, with a gesture of rage and astonishment.
"Yes. It is I. What is the matter? Why aren't you home and in bed? What are you doing here, at this hour?" I asked, stupidly.
Here The Author, all in red tights, cape, and doublet, snatched his red cap with the cock's feather in it off his head, and bowed diabolically:
"Let us ask you that same question: Why aren't you home and in bed? What are you doing here at this hour?"
"After everybody had gone home, I ran up to your room, Sophy—and—and you were gone. You weren't in the house. I looked everywhere; and you'd disappeared, as if the earth had opened and swallowed you." Alicia's voice was trembling.
"Oh, Sophy, I was so frightened, so horribly frightened! I kept thinking every minute you must come. I kept looking and waiting, and still you didn't come. I telephoned Doctor Geddes, when I couldn't stand it any longer. And then The Author came down-stairs. And oh, Sophy, there was such an unearthly, clammy, waiting sort of feeling in the house—all those lights, all those empty rooms—I felt as if something terrible must be happening!" She clung to me as she spoke, kissing me, and shook, and wept. "And when you still didn't come, and we couldn't find you anywhere, The Author suggested that we should come over here and enlist Mr. Jelnik.
"When we got here, there wasn't a soul in this house. Not even the dog. We went back to Hynds House, and walked through our garden, and then came back here, because we didn't know what else to do. Oh, Sophy!" I patted her shoulders, mumbling that she mustn't cry, it was ail right.
"Miss Gaines, I am dreadfully sorry you should have been frightened. But there really wasn't the least occasion for alarm. Because Miss Smith was with me," said Mr. Jelnik calmly.
Alicia looked at him, trying to read his face in the wan light. Her world, as it were, was rocking under her feet. She looked at me; and I said nothing. To save my life I couldn't speak of Jessamine Hynds then, nor talk coherently of that night's experience. I couldn't betray Nicholas Jelnik's secrets, nor mention the Watcher in the Dark, nor that dreadful red-walled room. So I merely patted Alicia's shoulder, while she held fast to me as if I might again disappear.
"That is exactly what we should like you to explain, Mr. Jelnik, if you please," said The Author, with deadly politeness. "You must pardon us if we disagree with your assertion that Miss Gaines had no real occasion for alarm."
"Miss Smith and I," said Mr. Jelnik, stiffening, at the tone, "found it absolute necessary to leave Hynds House for a short while to-night, to attend to—an affair of some importance to us both, but which concerns no one else on earth." Under the grave politeness his voice had an edge of irritation. "I repeat that I am sincerely sorry Miss Alicia was frightened. For my share in that, I crave her pardon. I ask all of you to accept this apology as an explanation which is final."
"I for one shall do no such thing!" cried The Author, hotly. "Are we impertinent children to be thus lightly dismissed? Of course, if Miss Smith herself—"
"You have neither right nor authority to cross-question Miss Smith," interposed Mr. Jelnik, sharply. But Doctor Geddes broke in, with mounting anger and astonishment:
"Of course we've got the right and the reason to question both of you! You might just as well come off your high horse; you've behaved very badly, Jelnik! To induce Sophy to scuttle off in the middle of the night, without a word to anybody, and go wild-goose-chasing with you, was an unworthy action. I wouldn't have believed it of you, Jelnik; I thought you had more common sense—not to speak of Sophy herself. Gad, I'd like to shake the pair of you!" And he stamped his feet.
"Doctor Richard Geddes," said Mr. Jelnik, in dangerously low and honeyed tones, "I find you insufferable. You have the instincts and the manners of a navvy."
"Mr. Jelnik!" cried The Author. "Mr. Jelnik, honor me, please, by considering my instincts and manners infinitely worse than Doctor Geddes's. I, Mr. Jelnik, at this instant feel within me the instincts of a cave man and I hone for the thigh-bone of an aurochs to prove it to you. Do you know what I think of you, Mr. Jelnik? I consider you a man without conscience and without scruples, sir!"
"My faith! The man even talks like a serial!" said Mr. Jelnik, weariedly. "My dear, good sir, while we're by way of indulging in personalities permit me to inform you that you annoy me by existing. As to your behavior to Miss Smith—"
"My behavior to Miss Smith?" shrieked The Author, stamping with fury, "my behavior to Miss Smith? You had better set about explaining your behavior to Miss Smith! You're a rascal, Mr. Jelnik!"
"You, my dear sir, are worse: you're an ass," said Mr. Jelnik, and fetched a sigh of tiredness. "Would to heaven somebody would fetch you a halter!"
"Jelnik," choked Doctor Geddes, "a man who behaves as you're behaving to-night runs the risk of getting himself shot. You're my own cousin, but—"
Mr. Jelnik turned at bay.
"Doctor Geddes," said he, in a razor-edged voice, "it is no light affliction to be kin to the Hyndses!—What do you want me to explain? I have already told you it was necessary for Miss Smith and me to attend to a matter that is none of your business. In return, you hold us up like brigands. Would it make a dent in your armor of righteous meddling, if I were to remind you that you are seriously annoying Miss Smith?"
"Not a dent!" roared the doctor. "And if it annoys Sophy to be asked a straight question by those who have her interest at heart, let her be annoyed and take shame to herself!"
Alicia began to cry.
"Oh, Sophy!" wailed Alicia, "whatever is the matter with us, anyhow? What is wrong, Sophy? Why are we quarreling? What are we quarreling about, Sophy?"
I put my hands to my head. "I don't know. That is. I can't tell. I mean. I can't think, at all!
"Doctor Geddes has spoken like an honest man," said The Author, standing flat-footed in his pointed red shoes. "Mr. Jelnik, I ask you plainly: Why do I find Miss Smith here at this hour? Why and wherefore the mystery? Let me remind you that I have asked Miss Smith to marry me, and that she hasn't as yet given me her answer," he finished, significantly.
"Why, Sophy!" gasped Alicia. "Why, Sophy Smith!"
"Holy Moses!" gasped Doctor Geddes. "What, man, you too? Well, then, if it comes to that, I can call you to account, Jelnik, because I asked Sophy to marry me, too. In my case she had sense enough to say 'No' at once."
"You know he did, Sophy!" Alicia corroborated him tearfully. "You told me so yourself, though you never so much as opened your mouth about The Author; and I don't think that was a bit like you, Sophy. And why you refused the doctor, I can't for the life of me imagine!"
"Can't you? Well, I can," snorted the doctor, and drew Alicia closer to him. She put both her hands around his arm.
"What!" gulped The Author, rocking on his red toes, and wrinkling his nose until his waxed mustache stood out with infernal effect, and his corked eyebrows climbed into his hair. "What! You, Geddes? My sainted aunt! Why, man alive, I thought that you—that is I'd have sworn that you—" Here The Author's breath mercifully failed him.
I was dumb as a sheep in the hands of the slayers. I could only blink at these dear people who were tormenting me. I thought of Jessamine Hynds in her brown silk frock, with the crucifix in her skeleton fingers and the earth fresh over her. And I couldn't say a word. And while I stood thus silent, Mr. Nicholas Jelnik walked up and took my hand in his warm and comforting clasp, and looked at me with kindling, starry eyes, and laughed a deep-chested laugh.
"Gentlemen and Miss Gaines," said Mr. Jelnik, in a ringing and vibrant voice, "permit me to inform you that I also have asked Miss Smith to marry me. And she has done me the honor to accept me."
CHAPTER XVIII
THE GREATEST GIFT
The Author threw his short cape backward, laid one hand upon the hilt of his sword, doffed his cap, and made a sweeping courtesy.
"Prettily played, Mr. Jelnik!" said he, admiringly. "May one be permitted to congratulate you, upon your indubitably dramatic instinct?"
"All things are permitted; but not all things are expedient," Mr. Jelnik replied evenly.
"Oh, we know who can quote scripture!" cried The Author; and looked longingly at the other's naked throat.
At which point Doctor Geddes, coming as it were out of a trance, took the situation in hand.
"Have done with this nonsense!" he ordered sharply. "Alicia, get Sophy home; she looks more dead than alive. Jelnik, your declaration puts a new complexion on this affair; but let me tell you flatly I don't like your method of announcing engagements."
"Suppose you waive criticism and look after Sophy," suggested Mr. Jelnik. He walked up to his cousin and looked straight in his eyes: "Richard, you're not such a fool as to dare doubt us?"
"Eh?" blinked the doctor, "what? Doubt Sophy? I should say not! And you—oh, well, you're a bit of a fool yourself at times, Jelnik, and this seems to be one of the times; but I don't doubt you. However," said the doctor, grimly, "I should like to whale some sense into you with a club!"
"An ax would be more to the point," murmured The Author, regretfully.
"In the meantime, Richard," said Mr. Jelnik, with a faint smile, "take Sophy home, please."
I have a vague recollection of swallowing something that the doctor told me to swallow. Then came blessed oblivion, a sleep so profound that I didn't even dream, and didn't awake until that afternoon; to find the tender face of Alicia again bent over me.
I waited for her to ask at least one of the many questions she must have been longing to ask. But Alicia shook her head.
"Sophy," said she, loyally, "you haven't got to tell me one single, solitary thing unless you really want to. But—isn't this just a bit sudden? I was—surprised."
"So was I."
"You see, Sophy, I never once dreamed—"
"That he cared for me? Neither did I."
"No. That you cared for him," Alicia puckered her brows.
"My dear girl," I was trying to feel my way toward letting her have the truth, "listen: whether or not he is engaged to me, Mr. Nicholas Jelnik really loves some lady that neither you nor I know. He told me so himself."
It took Alicia some moments to recover from that!
"And yet you're going to marry him, Sophy?"
"You heard him announce our engagement."
"I can't understand!" sighed Alicia. "Oh, Sophy, sometimes I could wish we had never come to Hynds House!"
"It had to be," I said dully.
"And—The Author?" ventured Alicia, after a pause. "He thinks you belong to him by right of discovery. He doesn't accept Mr. Jelnik's announcement as final. He told me this morning that his offer stood until you actually married somebody else. The Author isn't used to being crossed, and he doesn't quite know how to take it."
"It is on the knees of the gods," I repeated, weariedly.
Came a gentle tap at the door, and following it the fresh, kind face of Miss Emmeline.
"Are you trying to rival the Seven Sleepers?" she asked, gaily, and laid a bunch of carnations on my knees by way of offering. "Judge Gatchell sent them to me this morning," she explained, with an October blush. For the sallow old jurist had taken so great a liking to the Boston reincarnation of a Theban vestal, and was in consequence so rejuvenated, himself, that all Hyndsville was holding up the hands of astonishment and biting the finger of conjecture.
"My dears," said Miss Emmeline, presently, "I want to tell you the singular dream I had last night, or rather this morning. I was quite tired, for I do not often dance," admitted Miss Emmeline, who had nevertheless danced with a zest that rivaled that of the youngest, "so I must have fallen asleep immediately upon retiring. Well, then, I dreamed that all those old Hyndses whose portraits are down-stairs were gathered together in the library, to bid farewell to a member of the family who was going away—that beautiful creature who disappeared and was never afterward found. Now, aren't dreams absurd? She was setting out upon a long journey dressed in a low-necked, short-sleeved brown silk dress trimmed with quantities of fine lace. And for goodness' sake what do you think that woman wore over it for a traveling-cloak? Nothing more or less than a gray army blanket, a corner of which was thrown over her head like a hood and quite concealed her face.
"She moved away slowly, holding her blanket as an Indian does. And as she passed me by—for I was standing in the door—a fold slipped, and what do you think she was holding to her breast? A pearl-and-silver crucifix. You can't imagine how I felt when I saw it!"
I knew how I felt when I had seen it, but that I couldn't tell Miss Emmeline. Instead, I held the carnations to my face, to hide my whitening lips. For once the Boston lady had come into actual contact with the occult and the unknown.
"She went out by the back door," continued Miss Emmeline, "and I ran to the window and saw her gray-blanketed figure disappear down the lane, behind the hedge that separates Mr. Jelnik's grounds from yours. And all the Hyndses called: 'Jessamine, good-by!' But she never turned her head once, nor spoke, nor gave a sign that she heard. She just went, leaving me staring after her. I stared so hard that I woke myself up. Now, my dears, wasn't that an odd sort of dream? And so vivid, too! Why, I can hear those voices yet!"
"Well, I'm glad she went," said Alicia. "Ladies that do up their heads in blankets and won't answer when they're spoken to, ought to go."
Mrs. Scarboro, Judge Gatchell, and one of my old ladies were dining with us that night, for which I thanked Heaven. Judge Gatchell discovered in himself a fund of sly humor that astonished everybody, and Miss Emmeline was like a November rose, sweet with a shy and belated girlishness, rarer for a touch of frost. And The Author was in a fairly good humor because they let him alone.
Mr. Nicholas Jelnik dutifully put in his appearance after dinner. The Author was balefully polite to him, Alicia shyly friendly. I had on a new frock, and the knowledge that it was becoming gave me a courage I should otherwise have lacked. A new frock, pink powder, and a smile, have saved many a fainting feminine soul where prayer and fasting had failed.
The gentleman who had blandly announced my engagement to himself only last night assumed no airs of proprietorship, but was placidly content to let me sit and talk to Mr. Johnson, who was holding forth on the merits of our Rhode Island Reds as against either barred Plymouth Rocks or White Leghorns, and the variety of vegetables and small fruits in our kitchen-garden, so admirably planned by Schmetz, so carefully and neighborly looked after both by him and Riedriech. From gardens, Mr. Johnson went to cattle; he had a delight in cows, and our cow was a Jersey with a cream-colored complexion, large black eyes, and the sentimental temperament. We called her the Kissing Cow, because she couldn't see the secretary without trying to bestow upon him slobbering salutes.
He paused in his homely talk to smile at something The Author had just said. Then his eyes strayed to Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, being talked to by Mrs. Scarboro and an apple-faced Confederate with pellucid blue eyes and a renowned trigger-finger.
"That is the most gifted—and detached—human being I have ever known," said the secretary. "But it is his misfortune to have no saving responsibilities. What he needs is to fall in love with the right woman and marry her."
"You mean he should marry some great lady, some dazzling beauty? Naturally."
"Heaven forbid!" said the secretary, with unexpected vigor. "No, no, Miss Smith, that is not what such a man as Nicholas Jelnik needs!"
"But it may be what he wants," said I.
"I should never think so, myself," Mr. Johnson replied thoughtfully; "and I have seen a good deal of him. No, Jelnik doesn't want great beauty; he has enough of it himself. For the same reason, he doesn't want brilliant qualities. He needs quiet, dependable goodness, the changeless and unswerving affection of a steadfast heart."
But I could not agree with this simple-minded young man, who had in himself the qualities he named. Why, if Nicholas Jelnik asked only for a changeless love, I could have given him full measure, even to the running over thereof!
"What was Johnson talking to you about, that you both looked so earnest?" Mr. Jelnik wanted to know presently.
"Oh, just things; flowers and fruits and animals."
"And people?"
"People always end by talking about people."
"Johnson's opinions are generally sound, because he himself is sound to the core," said Mr. Jelnik, quietly.
"Miss Emmeline says he has got a limpid soul. The Author says it's really a sound liver. However that may be, one couldn't live in the same house with him without conceiving a real affection for him. He is a very easy person to love."
Mr. Jelnik's eyebrows went up. "Don't love him too much, please, Sophy. If you feel that you really ought to love somebody, love me." The golden lights were in his eyes.
At that moment I both loved and hated him.
"Mr. Jelnik," said I, in as low a tone as his own, "it isn't fair to talk to me like this. You did what you did to save me from annoyance—and—and—misunderstanding. But you are perfectly free: I have no idea of holding you to such an engagement, no, nor of feeling myself bound by it, either."
"I understand, perfectly, Sophy," he said, after a pause. "And now, may I ask you one or two plain questions, please?"
"I think you may."
"You never cared for Geddes?"
"Good heavens, no! Besides, he—"
"Wants Alicia? That's obvious. But what about The Author? I'm not enamored of him, myself, but he's an immensely able and clever man. How many brilliant social lights would be willing to shine at the head of his table! What are you going to do about The Author, Sophy?"
"What are you going to do about the lady you are really in love with?" I countered.
"I'm waiting to find out," said he, coolly. "Answer my question, please: Do you imagine you love him, Sophy?"
"It is not unpleasant to me that he should wish me to do so," I admitted.
"I see. You are trying to persuade yourself that you should accept him."
"I am not growing younger," I said, with an effort. "Remember, too, that Alicia will be leaving me presently, and I shall then be utterly alone. That is not a pleasing prospect—not to a woman."
"Nor to a man, either, but better that than a loveless marriage." He reflected for a moment. "If you are sure you care for the man, tell him truthfully every incident of last night. Otherwise, I do not feel like sharing my affairs with him; I do not want to drag Jessamine Hynds out of her grave to gratify his curiosity. For he has the curiosity of a cat, along with the obstinacy of a mule."
I smiled, wanly. "I gather that I'm not to tell him anything. What further?" I wanted to know, not without irony.
"This, then: that you keep on being engaged to me."
I looked at him incredulously.
"For the time being, Sophy, submit to my tentative claim. If you decide to let your—ah—common sense induce you to make what must be called a brilliant marriage, tell me, and I will go at once. In the meantime, Sophy, I am your friend, to whom your happiness is as dear as his own. Will you believe that?"
It was not in me to doubt him. "Yes," I said. "And if—the lady you told me about—you understand—you will tell me, too, will you not? I should like to know, for your happiness is as much to me as mine could possibly be to you."
"That's the most promising thing you've said yet," he said. "All right, Sophy: the minute I find out she cares more for me than she does for anybody else, I shall certainly let you know. In the meanwhile, don't let being engaged bear too heavily on your spirits. I find it very pleasant and exhilarating!"
"I don't think you ought to talk like that," I demurred.
"I can't help it: I never was engaged before, and it goes to my tongue."
"I never was, either. But it doesn't go to mine," I reminded him, with dignity.
"Sophy, you are the only woman in the world who can reproach a man with her nose and get away with it," he said irrelevantly. "You have the most eloquent little nose, Sophy!"
I looked at him reprovingly.
"I adore being engaged to you, Sophy," said he, unabashed. "Being engaged to you has a naïve freshness that enchants me. It's romantic, it has the sharp tang of uncertainty, the zest of high adventure. Think how exciting it's going to be to wake o' mornings thinking: 'Here is a whole magic day to be engaged to Sophy in!' By the way, would you mind addressing me as 'Nicholas'? It is customary under the circumstances, I believe."
"I do not like the name of Nicholas."
"I feared so, seeing the extreme care with which you avoid it. That is why I suggest that you should immediately begin to use it. Practice makes perfect. Observe with what ease I manage to say 'Sophy' already," he said airily. "I'm glad your hair's just that blonde, and soft, Sophy. I couldn't possibly be engaged to a woman who didn't have hair like yours."
I looked at his, and said with conviction:
"How absurd! Black hair is incomparably more beautiful!"
His eyes danced.
"Sophy!" said he, in a thrilling whisper, "Sophy, The Author's hair is brindle!"
I got up and incontinently left him. And I saw with stern joy how Mrs. Scarboro again seized upon and made him listen to tales of his grandfather, until in desperation he fled to the piano, and played Hungarian music with such effect that even The Author was moved to rapture.
"Jelnik!" said The Author, enthusiastically, "I shall put you in my next book. Gad, man, what a magnificent scoundrel I shall make of you!" A remark which scandalized Mrs. Scarboro and startled my dear old lady, but didn't phase Mr. Jelnik.
I found myself growing more and more confounded and confused. Was I, or wasn't I, engaged to a man who had never asked me to marry him? In the vernacular, I didn't know where I was at any more.
Alicia added to this confusion.
"Sophy," said she, some time later, "isn't it just possible you misunderstood Mr. Jelnik? About his being in love with somebody else, I mean."
"I don't know what makes you think so."
"Don't you? I'll show you," she said, and swung me around to face a mirror. "That's what makes me think so. Sophy Smith, unless he's a liar—and Peacocks and Ivory couldn't be a liar to save his life—the woman Nicholas Jelnik loves looks back at you every time you look in the glass."
I shook my head. I have never been able to tell pleasant lies to myself.
"Well, we'll see what we'll see! I told you once before that you hadn't caught up with the change in yourself." And she kissed me and laughed. It came to me that she couldn't have cared much for him, herself, to be able to laugh that light-heartedly.
When Miss Emmeline and the English folk were leaving Hynds House, everybody in Hyndsville turned out to say "Good-by." Even our lanky old Judge was on hand, with a great bunch of carnations and a huge box of bonbons for Miss Emmeline.
"Sophy," Miss Emmeline said, smiling, "I don't see anything left for me to do but come back to Hyndsville, do you?"
"No, I don't. And come soon. Hynds House won't feel the same without you. I thought of all she had taught me by just being her fine, frank self, and looked at her gratefully. She looked back at me quizzically, and of a sudden she slipped her arm around my shoulders.
"Sophy Smith," said she, softly, "I have met many women in my time, many far more brilliant and beautiful, and what the world calls gifted, than you. But I have met none with a greater capacity for unselfish loving. It's easy enough to win love, a harder thing to keep it, but divinest of all to give it and keep on giving it. And there's where your great gift lies, Sophy." And she kissed me, with misty eyes, and such a tender face!
That put such a friendly, warm glow in my heart that I was sorry to part even with the Englishman's daughter, Athena though she was, and I mortally afraid of her. As for her father, he was bewailing the parting with Alicia, whose Irishness was a manna in the wilderness to him.
"It's like saying good-by to the Fountain of Youth," he lamented. "You're more than a pretty girl: you're the eternal feminine in Irish!"
"She's the Eternal Irish in proper English, that's what she is!" said The Author darkly, and looked so wise that everybody looked respectful, though nobody knew what he meant. Perhaps he didn't know, himself.
After the train had gone, Doctor Geddes hustled us into his waiting car.
"I'm going to take you for a quiet spin in the country, to make the better acquaintance of Madame Spring-in-Carolina," he said. A few minutes later he swung the car into a lonesome and lovely road edged with pines, and sassafras, and sumach, and cassena bushes, and festooned with vines. Madame Spring-in-Carolina had coaxed the green things to come out and grow, and the people of the sky to try their jeweled wings in her fine new sunlight. The Judas-tree was red, the dogwood white, the honey-locust a breath from Eden. A blossomy wind came out of the heart of the world, and there were birds everywhere, impudently eloquent.
We didn't want to talk, or even to think; we just wanted to be alive and glad with everything else. The very car seemed to feel something of this intoxication, for as it went flying down the road it hummed and purred and sang snatches of the Song of Speed to itself. We turned a corner, I remember. And then there was a frightful lurch and jar, and the big car bounded into the air, and turned over in the ditch. I remember the rear wheels turning with a grinding, spitting noise.
When I woke up, Alicia was sitting by the side of the road, with the doctor's head in her lap, and I was lying on the grass near by. Her eyes were big and blank in a bloodless face, and the curling ends of her long bright hair hung in the dust. There was a cruel red mark on her forehead. Otherwise she was quite uninjured. I wasn't conscious of any pain myself—not then, at least.
"Sophy," Alicia said, impersonally, "Doctor Geddes is dead." And she fell to stroking his cheek lightly, with one finger; "quite dead. Without one word to me, Sophy!"
The figure on the ground looked dreadfully still and helpless. There was something ghastly wrong in seeing so strong a man lie so still and helpless. And the road, an unfrequented one, was unutterably lonesome. There was nothing, nobody in sight—nothing but the buzzard, black against the blue sky, tipping his wings to the wind.
"You must go for help," I mumbled.
"I dare not leave him. I know he's dead, Sophy. But—he might open his eyes, just once more. You see, he didn't know, before he—died, that I was very much in love with him—oh, terribly in love with him, Sophy!—from the first time I saw him standing in our door. I thought you cared for him, too, Sophy dear—and I sent him away from me— And now he has gotten himself killed." With a gentle touch she pushed back the thick reddish hair from his forehead. She looked at me imploringly: "Don't let him be dead, Sophy! For God's sake, Sophy, don't let him be dead! Make him open his eyes, Sophy!"
A negro teamster came upon us, recognized the doctor, shrieked, and set off for help, lashing his mules into a mad run. But Alicia never moved, and I huddled beside her, numb and silent, looking at the white face upon her knees. With all the impatience wiped out, it was a fine face, at once strong and sweet.
"Richard," said Alicia, "Richard, if I had been killed, and you begged and prayed me from your breaking heart to listen to you, to understand that you'd cared for me, only me, all along, somehow I'd manage to let you know I understood. Richard, listen to me! Open your eyes, Richard. Please, please, Richard, open your eyes!"
Her voice was so piteous that I fell to weeping. And, by the mercy of God, Richard opened his eyes and stared with blue blankness straight into Alicia's quivering, anguished face.
"Richard," said she, bending down to him, "my dear, dear love, keep your eyes open just a little longer, until I can make you understand. Oh, Richard, I cared! Indeed, indeed, I cared!"
The blue stare never wavered. It gathered intensity.
"Don't, don't look at me like that, Richard!" cried Alicia, beginning to sob wildly. "Don't—don't look so—so angelic, dear. Look like your own self at me, Richard! Oh, darling, for our dear God's mercy's sake, please, please try to look bad-tempered just once more!"
His pale lips twitched curiously. He sighed. Then he murmured something that sounded like "not sure."
"Not sure?" wept Alicia. "Oh, my heart, my heart!"
"I think—could die in peace—say 'I love you, Richard,'" murmured the doctor.
"Oh, I do, I do love you, Richard—frightfully!" sobbed Alicia. "I love you with all my heart!"
The corpse sat up, and for a dead man he showed considerable life. Painfully he rose, and stood staggering on his feet, big, pale, shaken, with a bump the size of an egg on the side of his head, but with such shining blue eyes! He put out a big hand and lifted Alicia from the ground.
"Leetchy," said Doctor Geddes, "if you ever take back what you've said I shall be sorry I wasn't killed. But I don't mind staying alive if you'll keep on loving me. If I stay alive, will you marry me, Leetchy?"
"If you don't, I can't m-m-marry any-anybody at all!" wailed Alicia.
"Amen!" said the doctor. "Now stop crying, and put your hand into my pocket, and you'll find something that's been owing you this long time, Leetchy."
Alicia blinked, and rubbed her eyes, then slipped her hand into his breast pocket and drew forth a small, square, satin-lined box; an inviting box.
"Richard!" she exclaimed, "why, Richard!" Then: "Of all the impudence!" cried Alicia, scandalized. "Why, you haven't even asked me! Whoever in this world heard of buying a girl's ring before she's said 'Yes'?"
"Alicia," said Doctor Richard Geddes, "I'm your Man, and you know it. And you're my Girl, and I know it. Here, let's see if this thing fits."
Meekly Alicia, the impudent, the flirt, held out her slim hand.
"That's settled, thank God!" said the doctor. And he swept her clear off her feet, and kissed her with thoroughness and enthusiasm.
"Richard! People are coming! They'll see you!"
"Let 'em!"
I sat there quietly, and stared at the two of them with a sort of vacant watchfulness. My hat was gone, my hairpins had taken unto themselves wings, and my hair, covered with dust, hung about me like a veil. I was just beginning to be conscious of pain. It was a shuddering pain, new and cruel, and I winced. The next minute Alicia was kneeling beside me, and her face had again become quite colorless.
"Sophy!" her voice sounded shrill and far off. "Sophy, you said you were all right!—Richard, look at Sophy!"
I felt the doctor's swift, deft hands upon me. And more pain. People were arriving now. Cars stopped, and excited men and women surrounded us. One tall figure leaped from the first car and reached us ahead of all others.
"Geddes!" cried a voice. "Thank God, Geddes! We were told you'd been killed outright! Alicia all right, too?" Then: "Sophy!" This time it was a cry of terror. "Never tell me it's Sophy!"
I saw his face bent over me. Then a red mist came, and then everything went dark.