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

When we went over Hynds House the next morning and took stock, I began to entertain very, very peculiar feelings toward Great-Aunt Sophronisba Scarlett, who, it would appear, had given me a white elephant which I could neither hire out for its keep, nor yet sell out of hand. I had to live in Hynds House, and Hynds House as it stood wasn't to be lived in.

The rain had ceased, and from the outside jungle came innumerable calls of birds, and fresh and woodsy odors; but the whole aspect of the place was grim and forbidding. At the back, where there wasn't such an overgrowth, the lane had been closed, barricaded with barbed-wire entanglements, and fairly bristled with thistles and "No Trespassing" signs.

"All this house needs is a mortuary tablet set up over the front door."

But Alicia demurred.

"I'm not a bit disheartened," she declared stoutly. "There's just one thing to be done to this house—first make it beautiful, and then make it pay. It can be done. It's going to be done. It's got to be done. And when it's done—we'll have a home. Vision it as it's going to be, Sophy—rosewood and mahogany and walnut, old brass and china and prints and portraits, the sort of things we've only been able to dream of up to now. Why, this house has been waiting for us! We were born to come here and make it over: it's our house!" Alicia, has the gay courage of the Irish.

The heavy iron knocker on the front door resounded clamorously.

"Uncle Adam thinks we've been ha'nted out of existence, and he's hammering to wake the dead," said I.

But it wasn't Uncle Adam to whom we opened the door. An enormous, square-shouldered man stood there, looking from me to Alicia with bright, keen blue eyes behind glasses. He was so big, so magnificently proportioned, that he held one's attention, at first, by mere size. Then one had time to observe that although he hadn't the sleek and careful grooming of successful New Yorkers, he wore his clothes as, say, Cœur de Lion must have worn mail. He hadn't the brisk business manner, either; but there radiated from him an assured authority, as of one used to having his orders obeyed without question. No one could pass him over with a casual eye. I have known people who hated him frankly and heartily; I have known people who adored him. I have never known any one who was lukewarm where he was concerned.

"Which of you is Miss Smith?" he asked, in a very pleasant voice. "Miss Smith, I'm your next-door neighbor, house to the right: Doctor Richard Geddes, at your service."

We gave him to understand, with the usual polite commonplaces, that we were pleased to make his acquaintance, and ushered him into the dilapidated drawing-room.

"I'd have come over yesterday, when I learned you'd arrived, except that my cook was suddenly seized with the notion she'd been conjured, and I had to—er—stand by and persuade her she wasn't. Swore she had my lunch ready, as usual; swore she'd placed it on a tray, left it on the kitchen table for a few minutes, and when she came back from the pantry, not ten feet away, the tray was gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Nowhere to be found. She flopped on the floor and howled. She weighs two hundred and forty pounds and I hadn't a derrick handy. I had to roll her up on bed-slats. You've never had a conjured two-hundred-and-forty-pounder on your hands, have you? No? Well, then, don't. But if you ever do, try a bed-slat. This morning she discovered the tray in its usual place, dishes and silver intact, nothing missing. She's looking for the end of the world."

"O-o-h!" quavered Alicia, while I could feel my knees knocking together. "O-o-o-h! How very, very singular! And—and was that all?"

"All! Wasn't that enough? I've had burned biscuit and muddy coffee, because my cook's got liver and nerves, and insists it's her soul," said the doctor, grimly. "I've given her to understand that if she hasn't got her soul saved before to-night, I'll physic it out of her and hang her hide on the bushes, inside out, salted." He added, hastily: "In the meantime, I hope you haven't fared too badly in this mildewed jail?"

"Thank you, no," Alicia said demurely. "We have fared very well."

"Glad to hear it." The big man looked at her with the frank pleasure all masculinity evinces at sight of Alicia. And then he asked, abruptly:

"Has Jelnik called yet?—gray house on the other side of you.—No? I dare say he's off on one of his prowls then. A bit of a lunatic, but a very charming fellow, Jelnik, though your amiable predecessor, Miss Smith, chose to consider him a sort of outlawed tom-cat, and warned him off with a shot-gun." The doctor paused, stroked his beard, and regarded me earnestly.

"Having heired the old girl's domain, I hope you won't consider it necessary to heir her—er—prejudices," he remarked hopefully. "Bad lot, Sophronisba. Very bad!"

"Mrs. Scarlett," I reminded him gently, "was my relative only by marriage."

"Cousin of mine; mother's relative. Not on speaking-, only on fighting-terms," he interjected.

I remembered what Uncle Adam had told us; and I'm afraid I eyed him a bit harder than politeness warranted.

"I discern by your eye, Miss Smith," said the doctor, "that you think a blood relation is more likely to walk in that old demon's footsteps than an outsider is. My dear lady, under ordinary circumstances and with human neighbors, I'm as meek as Moses; I am a lamb, a veritable lamb! As for your aunt, she was a man-eating, saber-toothed tigress!"

"Not my aunt, Doctor Geddes; your cousin."

"Your aunt-by-marriage. It's just as bad. Anyhow, she preferred you to any of us, didn't she?"

"Perhaps because she didn't know me."

"Have it so. But she did whatever she did because she was an old devil of a woman, and an old devil of a woman can give points to Satan. If," cried the doctor, vehemently, "there is one great reason why a man should be glad he's a man, it is because he will never live to be an old woman!"

"That depends upon one's point of view," I told him firmly. "Now, I'm glad I'm a woman because I shall never live to be an old man. Old ladies are far, far nicer. Have you ever known an old lady who thought herself captivating? Have you ever known any old man who didn't think he could be if he wished?"

"Yes," shouted the doctor, "and no!—in both cases! There is no sex in fools. There is no age limit, either."

"The Talmud says: 'An old woman in the house is a blessing; but an old man is a nuisance.'"

"I don't give a bobtailed scat what the Talmud says. I know what I