A Woman Named Smith Part 20

"Now you have a color. I say, is Morenas going to do you, too?"

"Good gracious, no! But he has sketched Alicia a dozen times at least."

"And me," said Mr. Jelnik, gloomily. "There's no evading the brute.

I turn like a weatherc.o.c.k; and there he is, with corrugated brow and slitted eyes, studying me! And the baleful eye of The Author also pursues me. Between them, I feel skinned."

"Mr. Morenas says you are a rare but quite perfect type," I told him, mischievously.

The young man shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. "Am I a type, Woman-in-the-Woods?" he asked.

"Indeed, you are absolutely different from anybody else." And then, terrified, I turned red.

"Oh, I know! You didn't mean it either as a brick-bat or a bouquet, merely the truth as you see it. You are transparently truthful, fundamentally truthful, and at the same time the American business woman! You can't understand how that intrigues me!"

And then, quite simply and boyishly, he began to talk about himself. I got glimpses of a boyhood spent partly in a stately home in Vienna, and partly roaming about the great Hungarian estate which his mother loved, and to which the two returned summer after summer, until her death. Then student days, and after that, foot-loose wanderings up and down the earth and across the seven seas.

His grandmother had dropped courtesies to kings; and mine had dropped "aitches." His father had been a European celebrity, mine a s.h.i.+p-chandler in Boston, U.S.A. Yet here we two were; and he might have been a high-spirited and most beautiful little boy picnicking with a sedate and old-maidish little girl.

"How old should you imagine me?" he flung the question like a challenge, as if he had divined my thoughts.

"Oh, say, thirteen, going on fourteen."

"Dear Woman-in-the-Woods, I am thirty-three."

"You are older than I thought."

"You are younger than you think. And you betray the fact," he smiled.

"I have never been very young; probably I shall never be very old."

"You will always be exactly the right age," said Nicholas Jelnik.

"For you will always be a little girl, and a young maiden, and a grown woman, and a bit of an old maid, and something of a grandmother. That is a wonderful, a very, very wonderful combination!"

I looked at him with more than doubt. But no, he was not poking fun, though the rich color had come into his cheek, and the golden lights flickered mischievously in his eyes.

"And I forgot to add, also a business woman!" he finished gaily.

"_Herr Gott_, but it took a business woman to tackle old Hynds House and gather together such folks as you have there now!"

"Alicia was the head and front of _that_. I merely helped."

"Alicia," said Mr. Jelnik, "is a darling girl. Alicia is everything a girl ought to be." But there was not in eyes or voice that light and tone that crept into Doctor Richard's when he named her. My dear girl's tender face--so true and beautiful and loving--rose before me, and all she had meant to me, been to me, crowded upon my heart.

I said what I had never intended to say to any one:

"Why, Alicia's my--my _child_, to me! Don't you understand?"

"Dear Woman, yes!" His voice was melted gold.

The ridiculous little brook went whish-whis-sssh; and the bluish shadows melted into gray; and a chill came creeping, creeping, into the air.

"Before you go," said Nicholas Jelnik, "I should like to give you a talisman, to turn Miss Smith into Woman-in-the-Woods every now and then." And with his pocket-knife he cut a sharp line down the thin old coin he had tossed, worked at it for a few minutes with a pocket file and a stone, and then with his fingers that looked so slim but were strong as steel nippers. The coin broke in halves.

"Half for you," said Mr. Jelnik, "and half for me, to commemorate a comradely afternoon, and to mark a decision. We'll consider it a token, a charm, a talisman--what you will. And if ever I really and truly need a Woman-in-the-Woods to help me, why, I'll send my half to her; and she'll obey the summons instantly and without question.

And if ever she needs a man--like me, say--why, she'll send her half, and he'll come, instantly and without question." He was smiling as he spoke. Now he paused to look at me earnestly. "Because we are going to be real friends, you and I; are we not?"

I hesitated. How could we two be real friends, when the balance between us was so uneven, so unequal? He saw the hesitation, momentary as it was, and looked at me with something of astonishment and a hint of hurt.

"I have never," he said, proudly, "had to ask for friends.h.i.+p. Yet I do desire yours, who are such a grave, brave, true little thing, such a valiant-for-truth, stand-fast little thing! You have the one quality that I, born wanderer, foot-loose rolling-stone, need most in this world, unchanging, loyal, unquestioning steadfastness."

I considered this. It is true that I hold fast, for that is the English way.

"But outside of that one thing," I told him, "I have nothing else."

"No?--She hasn't," said he, in a teasing tone, "anything to give, except unbuyable truth. She has nothing to offer except Friends.h.i.+p's very self!--this poor, poor Miss Smith!"

Now, heaven alone knows why, but at that my eyes filled with foolish tears. If he saw them--and they ran down my cheek in spite of me--he mercifully gave no sign. Instead he held out his fine brown hand, and when I placed mine in it, he lifted it to his lips with foreign grace.

"We two are friends, then--through thick and thin, above doubting, and without fear or reproach. That is so, _hein_?"

"Yes!" I promised.

So, walking slowly, as if loath to go, we two went out of the Enchanted Wood and left the Forest of Arden behind us.

When I was again in my own room, and had taken off the brown frock, I held against my cheek, for a long, long minute, that fold against which his head had rested; I fingered the broken coin; I looked long and long at the hand his lips had touched; and though I had told a shameless lie, I was not at all ashamed.

I have often read that women do not and cannot love men, but only love to be loved by them. Only a man could have been stupid enough to say that; and, then he didn't know. The woman hadn't told him.

"I say! Haven't you got on a new frock to-night? My word, it's scrumptious!" remarked The Author, after dinner. I was wearing a black-and-blue frock, and he had seen it before, as I explained with some surprise.

He adjusted his gla.s.ses, frowned, and shook his head.

"I am becoming un.o.bservant," he said crossly. "This place is playing the very deuce with my mental processes! But stay: surely your hair is arranged differently? It wasn't brought over your ears like that, the first time I saw you, I know it wasn't!"

"It is curled a little and fluffed a little; that's what makes it look different," I told him patiently.

"Then that frock is curled a little and fluffed a little, and that's what makes it look different, too," The Author decided, and stared at me critically. "You are improving," he told me, with condescension.

"You are _not_!" I was goaded to reply.

The Author merely grinned.

"Do you know," he asked, "if that man Jelnik is coming to-night? I hope so. Unusual man. Can't think why he buries himself here! Our old friend Gatch.e.l.l doesn't seem to admire him. I wonder why?"

"I can't possibly imagine," I replied equably, "unless it is that the judge grows old."

"Hah!" The Author's eyebrows went up truculently. "And is it a sign of advancing age and mental decrepitude not to admire this fellow?"

But I laughed at him.