A Woman Named Smith, Marie Conway Oemler [fun to read .TXT] 📗

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