A Woman Named Smith Part 21

"You're all alike, you women." A wicked light snapped into his eyes.

"Hear, dear lady, the Bard of the Congaree, the Poet Laureate of South Carolina, Coogle for your benefit," hissed The Author, and repeated, balefully:

Alas, poor woman, with eyes of sparkling fire, Thy heart is often won by mankind's gay attire!

So weak thou art, so very weak at best, Thou canst not look beyond a satin-lined vest!

I've seen thee ofttimes cast a-winning glance, And be carried away, as it were within a trance, By the gay apparel of some dishonest youth Whose bosom heaved with not a single truth!

He was so outrageously funny that I forgave his impertinence. His face relaxed, and his eyes twinkled. He was in high feather the remainder of the evening. He was, in fact, so good-humoredly witty that the boys and girls Alicia had brought home cl.u.s.tered about him like golden bees.

"Miss Smith," whispered Miss Emmeline, under cover of their laughter, "may I have a word with you?"

We drifted into the library; and she seated herself, folded her hands, and said tremulously:

"My dear, my wish has been granted. I have really come in contact with the Unknown! I have seen something, Miss Smith!" I looked at her steadily. "Just before dawn," Miss Emmeline continued, "I woke up, with a curious, indefinable, uneasy sense of trouble, as if something had happened and I was remembering it, say. I saw how foolish it was to allow a mere nightmare to worry me, though I am not subject to nightmares, my conscience and my digestion being quite all right, thank heaven! Gradually the impression faded. I was just dropping to sleep again, when I heard the faintest imaginable footfall, almost as if somebody were walking upon the air itself.

And then, Miss Smith, there stole across my room a figure. There was nothing terrifying about it: it was merely a figure, that was all, and so I was not frightened. It came from my clothes-closet, went into the next room, and vanished. For when I arose and followed, there was no trace of it. And the doors were locked. Now, was not that remarkable?"

"Very," said I, with dry lips.

"I should have thought I was dreaming," went on Miss Emmeline, "save that there lingered in the air, for some time, a faint and very delicate--"

"Perfume," I finished.

Miss Emmeline started, and seized my hand.

"Then you have experienced it, too?"

"I have detected the perfume," I admitted, "but I have never seen anything. Dear Miss Emmeline, would it be too much to ask you to keep this to yourself, for a while at least? People are so easily frightened; and wild stories spread and grow."

Miss Emmeline nodded. "Of course I'll keep it quiet," she promised kindly. "I shall, however, write down the occurrence for the Society for Psychical Research, without giving actual names and place." To this I raised no objection. But it was with a troubled mind that I left Miss Emmeline.

I was destined to hear one more confidence that night, unwittingly this time. I had gone down-stairs to place, ready to Mary Magdalen's hand in the morning, the materials for the breakfast. This entails work, but it insures successful handling of household economics.

Having weighed and measured what was necessary, and seen that the inquisitive Black family occupied their proper quarters on the lower veranda, I went back up-stairs. The Author's door was slightly ajar, and I could hear him walking up and down, as he does when he dictates; for he is a restless man.

"Johnson," The Author was saying as I pa.s.sed, my slippered feet making no sound, "Johnson, that Sophy woman intrigues me. Hanged if she doesn't, Johnson!"

"I like Miss Smith, myself. She reminds me very much of my mother,"

said Johnson's cordial voice in reply.

"But I don't like the way things look here, at all, Johnson!" fumed The Author. "What's his game, anyhow? What's he after? What's he here for? Does she know, or suspect? Or doesn't she, Johnson?" The Author asked, earnestly. "Look here: somebody's got to protect that Sophy woman against Nicholas Jelnik!"

CHAPTER XI

THE JINNEE INTERVENES

Just before he went back North, Luis Morenas good-naturedly agreed to exhibit his new sketches for the delectation of such folk as we cared to ask to view them--this to please Alicia, whom he called Flower o' the Peach.

Now an exhibit of Morenas sketches would have been an art event in the Biggest City itself. But think of it in Hyndsville, where few worth-while things ever happened; and imagine the polite wire-pulling for invitations that ensued!

It wasn't my fault that I couldn't ask the whole town to come to my house to see those brilliant sketches. I would have done so with all my heart, but there was a section of Hyndsville I couldn't reach. It was locked up behind bars of pride and prejudice of its own building; and losing by it, of course, since one can't be exclusive without at the same time being excluded. To shut other folks out you have first got to shut yourself in.

For instance, figure to yourself Miss Martha Hopkins. She had visited as far north as Atlanta; and she had relatives in Charleston, as she would have condescendingly informed arch-angels, princ.i.p.alities, powers, thrones, and dominions. But she wasn't blessed with much of this world's goods, and most of the time she stayed home and improved her mind. She took herself with profound seriousness. She seemed to think that the better part of wisdom consists in knowing who said this and who didn't say that--"as Mr.

Arnold Bennett expresses it," "as Mr. H.G. Wells remarks," "as Mr.

James Huneker writes,"--she was the only person in all Hyndsville who could write up music and art, and she wasn't even afraid to use the word _s.e.x_ in its most modern acceptance; though in South Carolina you refer to the ladies as "the fair s.e.x" if you're a gentleman, and to the gentlemen as "the stronger s.e.x" if you're a lady. You understand that "male and female created He them," and you let it go at that. Miss Martha Hopkins, then, was daring; she was also exclusive.

I suppose if I had been younger I could have smiled at Miss Martha, as Susy Gatch.e.l.l and her graceless friends did, but somehow she appeared to me a creature trying to peck at the world and peek at the stars through the bars of a bird-cage. That's why, when I met her a morning or two before the Morenas exhibit, I asked her if she wouldn't like to see it. I knew that, once asked, she could be kept away by nothing short of an earthquake or a deluge. Yet--

"Thank you, Miss Smith, I shall be glad to look over the sketches."

And she added blandly: "Four o'clock, did you say? Very well, I will come. It is one's moral duty to encourage men of talent."

"Whoop!" cried The Author, joyously, when I told him that. "Revenge yourself, Morenas: sketch her, man! sketch her!"

Morenas laughed. "Put her in one of your books and make her talk,"

he suggested slyly. "You have a genius for making a woman talk like an idiot."

"That's because he does the talking for her, himself," said Alicia, impudently.

"It pays, it pays!" smiled The Author. "I draw from life."

"Nature-fakir!" Alicia mocked.

"My dear fellow, _I_ draw. _You_ draw and quarter," said Morenas.

The Author flung out his arms, grandiloquently.

You may as well try to change the course Of yonder sun To north, and south, As to try to subdue by criticism This heart of verse, Or close this mouth!

he cried, thumping his chest. "Come on, Johnson: let's leave these knockers to fate--and Miss Martha Hopkins!"

Miss Martha Hopkins came, she saw, and she had a perfectly beautiful time. As a matter of fact, everybody that could come, did come. And the very smartest and prettiest of the younger set served tea. Oh, yes, decidedly the tables were turning!

Despite which, Alicia and I were not happy. It seemed to me that a veil had fallen between us, for we were shy with each other. Both suffered, and each dreaded that the other should know.

I was grateful that The Author's mind was too taken up with Hynds House history to focus itself upon us. The Author spent his spare hours rummaging through such dusty and musty records as might throw some light upon the Hyndses. In the old office were many faded plantation and household books, and he was able to glean enough from these to confirm the methodical carefulness of Freeman Hynds. There were, too, dry receipts for "monies Paid by Mr. Rich. Hynds" for some old slave; or a brief notice that "By Orders Mr. Richd. Hynds, no Women shall be Whipt"; or "Bought by Mr. R. Hynds & Charg'd to his Acct., one Crippl'd Black Childe namd Scipio from Vanham's Sale, & Given to Sukey his Mother." Another time it would be a list of Christmas gifts: "One Colour'd Head Kerchief for Nancy. One Flute for Blind Sam. One Shoulder Cape for Kitty my Nurse. One Horn-handl'd Knife for Agrippa. One Pckt. Tobacco & a Jorum of Rum for s...o...b..."

Over against these items were others: "By Orders Mr. Freeman Hynds, Juba to Receive Twenty light Lashes for Malingering; Black Tom to be s.h.i.+pt to River Bottom Plantation for the Chastning of his Spiritt; Bread & Water & Irons 3 Dayes & Nights for s...o...b.. for Frighting of his Fellowes & other Evil Behaviour."

This was interesting enough, but not conclusive. All that The Author could find only deepened his uncertainty, and this made him abominably cross, an ill temper increased by the presence of Mr.

Nicholas Jelnik, who came and went, unruffled, aloof, with inscrutable eyes and a gently mocking smile.

The Harrison-Gores came shortly after Morenas left. The Englishman was a pink-faced old gentleman in a shabby Norfolk suit and with the very thinnest legs on record--"mocking-bird legs," Fernolia called them. His daughter was a gray-eyed Minerva with the skin of a baby and the walk of a Highland piper. They found Carolina people charming, and they secured some valuable data for their book, "The Beginnings of American History." Everything in Hynds House pleased them, even The Author.

Other people who do not enter into this story came and went during that winter. But they were merely millionaires--people who motored around the lovely country, ate Mary Magdalen's hot biscuit and fried chicken, slept in our four-posters, paid their stiff bills thankfully, and went about their business as good millionaires should, and generally do. Only one out of them all was disagreeable; he wanted to buy Hynds House out of hand for a proposed club of which he was to be founder and president.

"It'd be just what the bunch would like," he told me. "All we'd have to do would be to paint these wooden walls a nice cheerful light color, change one room into a smoker, another into a billiard-room, and a third into a grill, add some gun-racks and leather wing-chairs, and we'd be right up to the minute in club-houses!"