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

marble Love, and one great scarlet spray of bloom flamed upon his marble torch, "so lyrically," Miss Martha Hopkins said, that she was moved to write a poem about it. I thought it a very nice poem, and I said so, when she read it to us. But Doctor Geddes, who doesn't care for poetry, except Robert Burns's, rubbed his nose.

"Oh, well, your grandmother and your aunts used to make antimacassars and wall-pockets and paper flowers," he ruminated. "Why shouldn't you make poetry if you feel like it?"

"You are to be pitied, Richard," said Miss Martha, with crushing charity. "Such a disposition! And the older you grow the worse it gets."

"Confound it, Martha!—"

"I do," said she.

Alicia looked at Richard with impersonal eyes. She looked at the ruffled center of culture.

"Don't pay any attention to him, Miss Martha," she said, with a charming smile. "Your poem is very pretty, and he knows it."

"He means well," said Miss Martha, resignedly.

"Now, you look here, Martha!" the doctor said angrily, "I won't have anybody telling me to my face I mean well. You might as well call me a fool outright."

"You are far from being a fool, Richard. And you do mean well. Everybody knows that."

He turned appealingly to his dear Leetchy, and received his first lesson in Domestic Science.

"Miss Martha is right, Richard," she decided.

"Leetchy," the doctor asked, when the mollified Miss Hopkins had departed, "why did Martha go off grinning?"

"How should I know?" wondered Alicia, innocently. Then she looked at him with Irish eyes: "Have you had your lunch, dear?" she asked.

"Lunch?" He looked bewildered.

"Because I'm going to fix Sophy's lunch now, and you may have yours with her, if you like. I love to wait on you, Richard," she added, and a beautiful color flooded her face.

He caught his breath. When she went back to the house, his eyes followed her adoringly.

"Sophy," he said, huskily, "what does she see in me? Do you think I'm good enough for her, Sophy?"

"I think you are quite good enough even for Alicia."

When he had gone, Alicia sat with her head against my knees. Of late a touching gravity, a sweet seriousness, had settled upon her. Her love for the big doctor was singularly clear-eyed and far-seeing. There were going to be times when every ounce of skill, tact, patience, love itself, would be called upon, for the reins must be gossamer-light, invisible, but always firm and sure, that should guide and tone down so impatient and fiery a nature as his. It was very easy to love him; it wasn't always going to be easy to live with him, and Alicia knew it. But she also knew, with a faith beyond all failing, that this was her high, destined, heaven-ordained job.

"Sophy darlin', I'm deplorably young, am I not?" she sighed.

"You'll get over it."

"Do you think I'll make him a good wife, Sophy?"

"I am absolutely certain," I said, "that you'll make him a good husband. Which is far more important."

Alicia hugged my knees, and laughed. Then, seeing Mr. Nicholas Jelnik approaching, she scrambled to her feet, picked up the tray of empty dishes, and went back to the house.

Neither she nor the doctor had asked me so much as one question about Mr. Jelnik. As if by tacit understanding that subject was avoided. And because I hadn't anything to tell them, I, too, held my peace.

He raised my hand to his lips, dropped into a chair, and bared his forehead to the soft wind.

"How good that feels!" he sighed. "Fräulein, may one smoke?" And receiving permission he smoked for a while, comfortably, leaning back with half-closed eyes.

"Achmet salaams to you, hanoum," he said presently. "You have won his heart of a true believer. Even Daoud demands daily news of you."

"I particularly like The Jinnee. I should like to have him around me. And Daoud is highly ornamental."

"When is The Author coming back? Or is he coming back?" he asked abruptly.

"Oh, yes. He will be here for the wedding. So will Miss Emmeline."

After a long pause, and with an evident effort:

"I have been thinking," he said, "that perhaps it was unfortunate I came between you and The Author. Perhaps," he added deliberately, "it would have been better had you let your common sense gain the day."

I don't know why, but just at that moment the dear and haunting dream of having been lifted out of deep waters and kissed back to life, cradled in this man's arms, came to me with peculiar poignancy. Of a sudden I laughed aloud.

"Oh, I'm just remembering a dream I had, when I was ill," I told him, in answer to his look of surprise.

"It must have been a very amusing dream," said he, staring at me thoughtfully.

"Oh, very! Quite absurd. But go on. You were by way of advising me to marry The Author, were you not?"

His hands on the arms of the wicker chair clenched. He half rose, thought better of it, and sank back.

"I was saying that it might have been better for you," he said, breathing quickly. "In all probability you would have accepted him, had I not been here to—blunder into the affair."

"He mightn't have asked me, if you hadn't been here to blunder into the affair," said I, composedly. "Let us drop the subject, please. I shall never marry The Author." It gave me a sense of relief and freedom to hear myself say that. "I can't marry The Author."

He went pale. "Sophy—you can't marry me, either," he said.

"Of course not." I wondered at myself for being so calm and collected. "I knew that all along. You care for another woman. You told me so, you know."

"I told you no such thing," he said. "I told you I cared for a woman, but that there was another man. Now I've just been told she has no idea of accepting the other man. In spite of all he has to offer, she isn't going to marry him." His face was at once ecstatic and tortured. "Why won't you marry the other man, Sophy?"

"Because of a dream I dreamed, when I was sick," I said noncommittally.

"Ah! And did you dream that somebody called you—and held you—and wouldn't let you go?"

"I never told you!" I cried.

"No need, Sophy. It was to me you came back." Of a sudden his head drooped. "And now I can't marry you!"

"Why can't you?"

"Because I'm a beggar."

Nicholas Jelnik a beggar couldn't find lodgment in my brain. I could only stare at him incredulously.

"I learned some time ago that things were not altogether right over yonder, but I hadn't the ghost of an idea that my entire estate was involved; that while I'd been 'tramping'—I'll use Judge Gatchell's word—the men in whose hands I placed too much power had taken advantage of it. A very common, every-day story, you see.

"Remains the fact that I'm stripped to the bone. The estate's wiped out. And," he added, with a grave smile, "I haven't even discovered the mythical Hynds jewels. Now you see, Sophy, why I can't marry you."

"I see why you think you can't."

He flushed to the roots of his black hair. Hynds-Jelnik pride rose in arms.

"I should cut rather a sorry figure marrying the owner of Hynds House, in the present circumstances," he said curtly. "You will remember that The Author called me an adventurer! I have told you I have nothing."

"Aren't you forgetting your profession?"

"No. But I neglected that, too, Sophy. The Wanderlust had me in its grip."

"What do you propose to do?"

"I shall leave here, put in some months of hard study, and then fight my way upward. My father was the greatest alienist of his generation, and I was trained under his eye. But in the meantime—"

"Yes. In the meantime, what of me?" I asked.

He winced as if he had been struck. "You are free," he said, in a whisper.

"I am free to be free, and you're free to set me free. You never asked me to marry you, in the first place," I agreed quietly.

Stupefaction seized him. He put his hands to his head.

"Why, Sophy! Why, Sophy!" he stammered. Of a sudden he straightened his shoulders, and stood erect: "Miss Smith," he said, with grave politeness, "will you do me the honor to marry me?" and he waited.

"It is rather a belated request, Mr. Jelnik. Besides, you haven't told me why you want to marry me," said I, sedately.

"You are well aware that I love you, Sophy. And I think you care for me in return. Why did you turn that coin when it meant 'Go,' and bid me, instead, 'Stay'? Was it because you cared, Sophy?"

"Yes, Mr. Jelnik: it was because I cared. I cared enough to tell a—a lie. And—I shall say yes to your other question, Mr. Jelnik."

But he shook his head. "Ah, no, my dear! You'd be called upon to make too many sacrifices. I couldn't bear that!"

"A man needn't be worried about the sacrifices a woman makes for him when she knows he loves her."

"Not in normal circumstances; not when he can give as much as he takes."

"Hynds House," I said, "is costing me a steep and bitter price, Mr. Jelnik!"

"Do I not also pay?" he asked fiercely.

"Oh, you have your pride!" said I, wearily; "Hynds pride!"

"A poor enough possession, Sophy, but all that remains to me," he said gently. "Is it a light thing for Nicholas Jelnik to say to the woman he loves, 'I cannot marry you: I am a beggar'? Is it such a small sacrifice to give you up, Sophy?"

"It would appear so."

"You crucify me!" he said, in a choking voice. "Good God, don't you understand that I love you?"

"I don't understand anything, except that you are going away from me. And I have waited for you all my life," I said.

"And I for you! and I for you!" he said passionately. "Don't make it too hard for me, Sophy!"

"If you go away from me," I gasped, "I think I shall die. Nicholas—I can't bear it! It was easier for me when I thought you loved somebody else. But now that I know you love me" and I paused.

He took a step forward, but stopped. His arms fell to his sides.

"Not as a beggar!" he said. "Not as a beggar! Never that, for Nicholas Jelnik! I love you too much for that, Sophy. I love you not only for yourself, but for my own best self, too, my dearest."

For a moment he stood there, regarding me fixedly. It was a long look, of suffering, of love, of pride, of unyielding resolve. Then he lifted my hand to his lips, bowed, and left me.

I sat staring over the garden. I wondered if, somewhere on the other side of things, Great-Aunt Sophronisba wasn't snickering.