A Woman Named Smith Page 10

  CHAPTER IX

  THE JUDGMENT OF SPRING

  Judge Gatchell's nephews and nieces, brought by that punctiliousgentleman to call upon Miss Alicia Gaines, found her enchanting andcried it to the circumambient air. It was as if the voice of Aprilhad summoned the cohorts of Spring. For fresh-faced boys of a suddenappeared in increasing numbers; and flower-faced girls camefluttering into Hynds House like butterflies. They cared for itshistory and its hatreds not a fig: what has April to do with lastNovember? The faith of Youth has a clearer-eyed wisdom, a sweeter,sounder justice than the sourer verdict of the mature. For theirs isthe judgment of Spring. By this sign they conquer.

  Susy Gatchell enlisted Mary Meade and Helen Fenwick, and these threeheld all younger Hyndsville in the hollow of their pink palms. Afterwhich, as Doctor Richard Geddes told me wrathfully, you "couldn'tput your foot down without running the risk of stepping on somelittle cockerel trying to crow around Hynds House."

  The tide was turning in our direction. Also, we were in dailycontact with really worth-while people, people that otherwise weshould have met only in books, magazines, and newspapers. And theyliked us. The amazing miracle was that we, also we, were their sortof folk!

  I knew I was being given unbuyable things. One could not live underthe same roof with thin dark Luis Morenas and view what magic hispencil worked, without learning somewhat of the holiness of creativework. One couldn't listen to The Author without being somewhatbrightened by his daring wit, his glowing genius; nor live face toface with big Westmacote without revering the broadness of theAmerican master spirit, to which Big Business is only a part of theGreat Game. As for Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons, it didn't takeAlicia and me long to discover what real depths underlay thatBoston-spinster mind of hers.

  And you simply couldn't breathe the same air with TheSuffragist--who appeared with two trunks, three valises, and atype-writer, all covered with "Votes for Women!" stickers--withoutan expansion of the chest. She gave you the impression of havingbeen dressed by machinery out of gear, and of then having beenwhacked flat with a shovel. When she clapped on what she called ahat, you wondered whether a heron hadn't built its nest on herhead. But when she began to speak, you listened with the ears ofyour immortal soul stretched wide. Women worshiped her, though Mr.Jelnik's eyes danced, and Westmacote's military mustache bristled abit, and she all but drove Doctor Richard Geddes, who had notions ofhis own, out of his senses.

  "Stop trying to argue with me, my dear man," she'd say in her richvoice, "but come and let us reason together. I haven't heard oneword of reason from you yet!" And she'd let loose one of herrollicking laughs that set the doctor's teeth on edge and made TheAuthor shudder. The Author snarled to me that she laughed like arolling-mill and reasoned like a head-on collision. He put her inhis new book, clothes and all. Just as Luis Morenas, with an edgedsmile on his thin lips, made rapid-fire sketches of her. _He_ calledher "The Future-Maker."

  Now, shouldn't Alicia and I have been happy? And yet we weren't.Alicia's laugh wasn't so frequent. I would catch her watching me,with an odd, troubled, anxious speculation in her eyes. She had ahabit of blushing suddenly, and as quickly paling. And quietly, butnone the less surely and definitely, she had begun to avoid DoctorRichard Geddes. It wasn't that she ceased to be friendly; but sheplaced between herself and him one of those women-built,impalpable, impassable barriers which baffled, puzzled men areunable to tear down. It was impossible, I thought, that she shouldremain blind to his open passion for herself: he was anything butsubtle, was Richard of the Lionheart. A blind man could have told,from the mere sound of his voice, a deaf man from the mereexpression of his eyes, that Alicia had the big doctor's wholeheart.

  On his side, he was in deep waters. His ruddy color faded; his facetook on a fixed, grim intensity. And when he watched the girlflirting now with this boy, now with that, after the innocentfashion of natural girls, but always reserving a friendlier smile, amore eager greeting, for Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, I was so sorry forDoctor Richard that I couldn't help trying, covertly, to consolehim.

  It so happened that Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons, daughter of thePuritans though she was, nevertheless had a distinct liking for whatshe termed Episcopacy. She was pleased with old St. Polycarp's. Sheliked Mrs. Haile, to whom she happened to mention that heropportunities for studying the life of native women and children inthe East had been rather unusually good, since she had visited manymissionary stations in China and India. Things were languishing justthen, and Mrs. Haile looked at Miss Emmeline almost imploringly:would she, could she, give the ladies a little lecture?--tell usthings first-hand, so to speak?

  Miss Emmeline reflected. She looked at Alicia and me.

  "Could we have it in your delightful library?" she wondered. "Thatbeautiful old room has a soul which speaks to mine. Dear Miss Smith,would it be too much to ask you to let me have my little talk, avery informal little lecture, in wonderful old Hynds House?"

  Mrs. Haile turned a sort of greenish pink. It wasn't for her tosuggest, after that, that it might be better to have the lecture inthe parsonage; any more than for me to hint, without ungraciousness,that it might be just as well not to have it in Hynds House. Aliciashot me one quizzical, Irish-blue glance when I said, "Yes."

  And that's how, on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, all Hyndsville cameto Hynds House to hear Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons tell them "Howto Reach the Women of the East." Somehow, I rather think they wereas curious about two Yankee women as they were about those Easternwomen of whom Miss Emmeline was talking. I'm sure Hynds House wasjust as interesting to them as Mohammedan harems and Indian zenanas.

  Miss Emmeline really spoke well, and her audience was interested inher, in her theme, and in Hynds House. The Suffragist picked up thethread where the less gifted woman dropped it, and in simple, livingphrases drove home the great truth of the sisterhood of all women.

  Which, of course, called for tea, and some of Mary Magdalen'scookies. It was the cookies that caught The Author. Coming in from along and hungry prowl, he spied Fernolia crossing the hall with ahuge platter, got one tantalizing, mouth-watering odor, and dashedafter her, bent upon robbery. A second later he found himself in aroom full of women. Hyndsville was meeting The Author!

  Alicia introduced him, pleasantly. And, "Talk about angels--" saidshe, gaily, "We have just this minute stopped talking about theheathen! And may I give you a cup of tea?"

  "And a dozen or so cookies, please. Thank heaven for the heathen!What is home without the heathen?--Without sugar, Miss Gaines,without sugar! And for charity's sake, no lemon!"

  He sipped his tea and munched his cookies, with his head on one sideand the air of a thievish jackdaw; and proceeded, after his wont, toextract such pith as the situation offered.

  "Doctor Johnson," Miss Martha Hopkins remembered, as she watched himdrinking his fourth cup of tea, "Doctor Johnson was also addictedto tea-drinking. Most great literary men are, I believe."

  "It isn't possible you consider old Johnson a great literary man!"The Author's eyebrows climbed into his hair.

  "Why! wasn't he?" Her eyes widened. She had as much respect for Dr.Johnson as Miss Deborah Jenkyns had, though of course she never readhim. Life is too short.

  "Why! was he?" asked The Author. "Outside of Boswell--and _he_ was afool--I've never known anybody who thought he amounted to much."

  The Suffragist looked up. "Nelson had his Southey, Boswell had hisJohnson, and Mr. Modern Best-seller may well profit by theirexample." And she smiled grimly.

  The Author's lip lifted. "Oh, but you couldn't do it!" he purred."And if I offered you the job you'd excuse your incapacity on theground that there wasn't anything to write about. I know you!" Hetook another cooky.

  "Yes, I dare say I'd blurt out the truth. Women are like that,"admitted The Suffragist.

  "The female of the species is more deadly than the male," concededThe Author. "Nevertheless," he raised his tea-cup gallantly, "To theladies!" He got up, leisurely. "And now I go," said he, "to paintthe lily and ad
orn the rose. In short, to set forth in adequate andremunerative language the wit, wisdom, virtue, beauty, andornateness of woman as she thinks men think she is. Nature,"reflected The Author, smiling at The Suffragist, "made me a writer.The devil, the editors, and the women have made me a best-seller."And he departed, a cooky in each hand.

  That night one of the Gatchell boys took Alicia to a dance. She wasin blue and white, like an angel, and the Gatchell boy trod on air.But to me came Doctor Richard Geddes, and threw himself into awing-chair.

  "Sophronisba Two," he asked, we being alone in the library, "whathave I done to offend Alicia?"

  "Is Alicia offended?"

  "Isn't she?" wondered the doctor. "She won't let me get near enoughto find out," he added gloomily. "And it isn't just. She ought toknow that--well, that I'd rather cut off my right hand than give herreal cause for offense. I'm going to ask you a straight, manquestion; is that girl a--a flirt? She is not a--jilt?"

  "Heaven forbid!"

  "Does she care for anybody else?"

  "On my honor, I don't know."

  "It couldn't be any of these whipper-snappers of boys: she's notthat sort," worried the doctor. "Sophy, is it--Jelnik?"

  My heart stood still. I could make no reply.

  "I don't know. My dear friend, I don't know!"

  "It would be the most natural thing in the world," he reflected."Jelnik looks like Prince Charming himself. And, for all his surfaceindolence, there's genius in the man. Why shouldn't she be takenwith him?"

  We looked at each other.

  "I see," said the doctor, quietly. "Now, little friend, whatconcerns you and me is our dear girl's happiness. Does Jelnik care,do you think?"

  "I don't know!" I said again. I felt like one on the rack. It seemedto me I could hear my heart-strings stretching and snapping. "Butwhat is one girl's affection to a man born to be loved by women?"

  "He is indifferent to women, for the most part," the doctor saidthoughtfully. "He is so free from vanity, and at the same time soreserved, that one has difficulty in getting at his real feelings."

  "She, also, is free from petty vanity," I told him. "She has aninnocent, happy pleasure in her own youth and prettiness, but hersis the unspoiled heart of a child."

  "Who should know it better than I, that am a great hulking,bad-tempered fellow twice her age!" groaned the doctor. "Yet, Sophy,_I_ could make her happier than Jelnik could. Dear and lovely as sheis, she couldn't make him happy, either--Don't you think I'm a fool,Sophy?"

  "No," said I, smiling wanly; "I don't."

  "This business of being in love is a damnable arrangement. Here wasI," he grumbled, "busy, reasonably happy, with a sound mind in asound body, and a digestion that was a credit to me. And along comesa girl, and everything's changed! My work doesn't fill my days, myfood is bitter in my mouth, and I wake up in the night saying tomyself, 'You fool, you're chasing rainbows!' Sophy, don't you everfall in love with somebody you know you can't have! It's hell!"

  I didn't tell him I knew it.

  One of his men came to tell him he was needed urgently. As it meanta thirty-mile trip and the night was cold, I made him wait for a cupof coffee and an omelet."

  "Miss Smith--"

  "You said 'Sophy' a while ago. 'Sophy' sounds all right to me."

  "It sounds fine to me, too, Sophy." And he reached out and seized myhand with a grip that made me wince.

  "I told you I was a bear!" he said, regretfully.

  When Alicia returned, she came, as usual, to my room.

  "I am tired!" she yawned, and curled herself up on the bed.

  "Didn't you have a nice time?"

  "Oh, I suppose so! Everybody was lovely to me, and I could havedivided my dances. These Southerners are easy to love, aren't they?I find it very easy for me! And oh, Sophy, there's to be a picnicday after to-morrow, at the Meade plantation, in my honor, if youplease! We go by automobile.--I never thought I could get tireddancing, Sophy. But I am. Tired!"

  "Go to bed and sleep it off."

  "Did you have time to make out that grocery list? They've beenovercharging us on butter."

  "Yes: I finished it after Doctor Geddes left"

  "Oh! He was here, then?" She yawned again.

  "Yes. But somebody sent for him, and he had to cut his visit short."

  Alicia frowned.

  "I wonder he keeps so healthy, running out at all hours of thenight; and heaven knows how he manages about meals! His cook told methat sometimes he has to rush away in the middle of a meal, andsometimes he misses one altogether."

  "I remembered that, so I made him wait for a cup of coffee and anomelet."

  She reached over and squeezed my hand. "You're always thinking aboutother people's comfort, Sophy." She paused, and looked at mehalf-questioningly:

  "I wish he had somebody to look after him," she said in a low voice,"somebody like you." She added, as if to herself: "He takes twolumps of sugar in his coffee, one in his tea, wants dry toast, andlikes his omelet _buttered_."

  And when I stared at her, she slipped nearer, and laid her cheekagainst mine.

  "Sophy," in a soft whisper, "you've made up to me for my father andmy mother, and for the sisters and brothers I never had. We're allsorts and conditions of folks, aren't we, Sophy?--but none like you,Sophy; not any one of them all like you!"

  At that moment, through the open window, there stole in on the nightair the faintest whisper of music. It wasn't mournful, it wasn'tjoyful, but both together; a singing voice, a crying voice, wild andsweet, part of the night and the trees and the wind, and part, Ithink, of the secretest something in the human heart. We had no ideawhere it came from; out of the sky, perhaps!

  Somebody ran down-stairs, and a moment later the front door openedsoftly. The Author had heard, and was afoot. But even as he steppedoutside, Ariel's ghostly music ceased. There was nothing; nobody;only the night.