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 G.o.ds," 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 Gatch.e.l.l 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 quant.i.ties 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 pa.s.sed 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 Gatch.e.l.l, and one of my old ladies were dining with us that night, for which I thanked Heaven. Judge Gatch.e.l.l 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 a.s.sumed 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 s...o...b..ring 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.