A Woman Named Smith - Marie Conway Oemler (the best novels to read TXT) 📗

subtile, and poignancy, with every now and then a chiaoscuro thrown in for good measure; and a whole melting-pot full of "rare emotional experiences," "art that was almost intuitive in its passion, so subtly did it"—oh, do all sorts of things!—and "handling the plastic outlines of the theme with rare emotional skill and mastery of technique," "purest lyricism lifted to heights of poignancy,"—all that sort of stuff, you know. Next time a writer, or, better still, a fiddler or a pianist comes to your town, look in your home paper the morning after, and you'll see it.

As it happened, The Author was not at home. His secretary had arrived a day or two before, and after unloading a systemful of copy upon that faithful beast of burden, The Author had given himself a half-holiday with old Riedriech, who knew quite enough about old furniture to win his interest and affection.

Miss Hopkins, then, had Alicia and me to herself. Sedately we discussed rummage-sales, and the effect of cotton shirts upon the adolescent cannibal; and all the while Miss Hopkins was stealthily watching doors and windows and hoping that high heaven would send The Author to her hands. We hadn't so much as mentioned his name. It pleased us to sit there and watch her trying to make us do so.

The iron knocker on the front door sounded. And ushered in by Queenasheeba, there stood Nicholas Jelnik with great gray Boris beside him, and beauty and glamour and romance upon him like a light. Miss Hopkins had seen him on the streets, but hadn't met him personally. I don't think she relished the fact that she had to come to Hynds House to do so. Nor could she save herself from the crudity of staring with all her eyes at this handsome offshoot of the Hyndses, with what in a less polite person might well have been called avid curiosity.

"Miss Leetchy," (he had gaily borrowed Fernolia's pronunciation of Alicia's name), "I have brought you the butter-scotch your soul hankers after. I fear you can never hope to grow up, Miss Leetchy, while you cherish a jejune passion for butter-scotch."

"Oh, I don't know. It might have been fudge!" Alicia replied airily. "But thank you, Mr. Jelnik: it was very nice of you to remember."

"Yes. I have such an excellent memory," said he, blandly. "Miss Smith, this preserved ginger is laid at your shrine. If you offer me a piece or two, I shall accept with thanks: I like preserved ginger, myself.—Boris, you'll prefer butter-scotch. You may ask Miss Gaines to give you a piece."

Miss Hopkins, it appeared, despised butter-scotch, and abhorred preserved ginger.

"I saw The Author hiking across lots a while since. Nice, open-hearted, neighborly man, The Author.—Oh, by the way, Miss Smith: is it, or is it not written in the Book of Darwin that the gadfly is one of the distinct evolutionary links in the descent of man?"

"Good heavens, certainly not!" cried Miss Hopkins. And she looked strangely upon Mr. Nicholas Jelnik.

"No? Thank you. I was in doubt," murmured Mr. Jelnik. The golden flecks danced in and out of his eyes. "But we were speaking of The Author: may I ask how The Author appeals to you as a human being, Miss Hopkins?"

"I do not know him as a human being," Miss Hopkins admitted.

Mr. Jelnik looked surprised. His eyebrows went up.

"Oh, come, now!" he demurred. "He isn't so bad as all that!"

"Oh, dear me, no!" Alicia protested, in a shocked voice. "He may have abrupt manners and say unexpected things, but he is perfectly respectable, Miss Hopkins! There's never been a breath against his character. I thought you knew," purred the hussy, demurely. "Why, he's dined at the White House, and lunched and motored and yachted with royalties, and lectured before the D.A.R.'s themselves! And he belongs to at least a dozen societies. There are,"—Alicia was enjoying her naughty self immensely—"good authors and bad authors. Sometimes the bad authors are good, and sometimes the good authors are bad. But our author is more than either: he's It!"

"You entirely and strangely misunderstand me." Miss Hopkins spoke with the deadly gentleness of suppressed fury. "I had no slightest intention of reflecting upon the character of so eminent a writer, with whose career, Miss Gaines, I am thoroughly familiar. I was merely trying to explain that I had never met him."

"Oh, I see. Of course! I should have remembered that!"

Miss Hopkins's entire contempt for Alicia's mentality overcame any suspicion she might have entertained. Also, she had come determined to discover what she could about The Author, and she was not one lightly to be put aside. She said, smiling tolerantly:

"Of course you should! But mayn't I congratulate you upon knowing him? Having him here in Hynds House almost justifies turning the old place into a boarding-house, doesn't it?"

"The Author," Mr. Jelnik remarked gently, "has a very sensitive soul. I shudder to think what the effect upon him would be were he to hear himself referred to as a boarder. My dear Miss Hopkins, never, never let him hear you designate him 'boarder'!"

"Who's talking about boarders?" asked a hearty voice, and Doctor Richard Geddes came in like a gale of mountain air.

"Miss Hopkins. She thinks The Author's presence almost justifies the turning of Hynds House into a boarding-house," answered Mr. Jelnik. He added, thoughtfully, "Curious notion; isn't it?"

"Martha has plenty more," said the doctor, bluntly. "Boarding-house? Well, supposing? What was it before? A hyena-cage, Martha, a hyena-cage, into which you'd be the last to venture your nose, my dear woman! I say, put on your bonnets, all of you, and let's have a spin in the fresh air. The roads are gorgeous. You can come too, Jelnik: there's room for five."

Mr. Jelnik was desolated: he had a pressing engagement. Miss Hopkins rose precipitately. She also had an engagement; besides, she liked to walk. People needed to walk more than they did. The reason why one saw so many bad figures nowadays, was that people lolled around in automobiles instead of walking.

"Well, walking is certainly good for you, Martha. It helps you to reduce," the doctor agreed. Miss Hopkins said dryly that the little walking she intended to do just then wouldn't affect her weight any. And that Doctor Geddes should himself take to walking: men always got fat as they neared fifty.

"Fat! Fifty!" roared the doctor, with enraged astonishment. "Why, I'm not by some years as old as you are, Martha! You were several classes ahead of me in school, don't you remember? I am exactly thirty-nine years old, and as you know everything else, you ought to know that!"

Miss Hopkins studied him with a balefully level eye.

"You really can't blame anybody for forgetting it, Richard," she said, ambiguously.

"You are to recollect, Geddes, that a woman is always as young as she looks," (Mr. Jelnik bowed, smilingly, to Miss Hopkins), "and a man is older than he feels," he added, for the doctor's benefit.

"All right. Let's say I feel as good as Martha looks," the doctor's momentary ill humor vanished. Miss Hopkins smiled. She had stuck her claws into him and drawn blood; but her fur was still ruffled.

Mr. Jelnik made his adieus, Boris offering each of us a polite paw.

"And now," the doctor ordered briskly, "to your spinning, jades, to your spinning! Into my car, the three of you! No, Martha, I will not take a refusal; you shall not walk: you've got to come along, if I have to tuck you under my arm. I don't care if you never reduce. What do you want to reduce for, anyhow? You're all right just as you are! There! are you satisfied?"

We stood by passively while the masterful doctor heckled and hustled the unhappy Center of Culture into his car. With heaven knows what feelings, she found herself seated beside me, Sophy Smith, while Alicia, beside the doctor, tossed gay remarks over her shoulder. Miss Hopkins realized that all Hyndsville would witness what she herself knew to be high-handed capture by force, but which must hideously resemble capitulation; and she also realized that explanations never explain.

I respected her misery enough to keep silent, and she made no attempt to converse. Her hat slid forward at a rakish angle over one ear, and her hair blew about her face in stringy wisps, as the doctor broke the speed laws on the long, level stretches of quiet roads. When we came to a rough spot she bounced up and down (one might hear her breath exhaled in a—well, yes, in a grunt) but she made no complaint, uttered no protest. She was a shackled and voiceless victim, until we finally drew up at her own gate, after an hour's jaunt, and allowed her to escape.

"Why, Martha, our little spin has given you a fine color!" remarked the doctor, genuinely pleased. Two conspicuously red spots shone in Miss Hopkins's cheeks, and her eyes were extremely bright. "We'll have to take you out with us again," he added, genially.

"Shall you, Richard?" muttered Miss Hopkins, and scuttled up her front path,

Like one who in a lonesome wood
    Doth walk in fear and dread,
Because he knows a frightful fiend
    Doth close behind him tread!

By and large, I should say that the honors were with Alicia.

The Author's secretary was pacing up and down the garden when we reached home, with Potty Black careering after him and every now and then dashing into the shrubbery to put to flight Beautiful Dog, who was also enamored of the young man with the nice smile and the good brown eyes. He had a great affection for animals, as they seemed to understand.

Beautiful Dog laid aside, for his sake, his fear of white people, and slunk after him fawningly, wagging what did duty as a tail, and showing every tooth in an ear-to-ear grin. At sight of us, Beautiful Dog gave a dismal yelp and disappeared.

"Let's sit in the library," coaxed the secretary. "I want you please to allow me to hold in my hands your copy of 'Purchas his Pilgrimes.' The Author dreams about that book out loud. Oh, yes, another thing I want to ask you: what sort of perfume do you use, and where do you get it?"

My scalp prickled.

"I noticed it in the upper hall last night," went on the secretary, innocently. "It was pervasive, but at the same time so delicate, so elusive, that I couldn't determine what it was. I am very sensitive to perfumes."

"So are we," Alicia told him. "And if what you think you smelled is what we think we smell, it isn't a—a regular perfume. It's a—a—a something that belongs to Hynds House."

The library was flooded with the ruddy light of sunset. Every bit of color in the big room stood out against a golden background, and a great golden spear fell across the dark, brooding face of Freeman Hynds above the old tiled fireplace. In that rosy glow he seemed to look down at us with living eyes.

"Is that so?" The secretary stopped; and his head went up and his nose wrinkled. For the "something that belonged to Hynds House" walked upon the air with invisible feet.