THE FOREST OF ARDEN
I had seen Alicia whirl away in the Meades' big car. I had seen the
Westmacotes and Miss Emmeline off on what they termed a nature-hunt.
The Author and his secretary were up to the eyes in a new chapter;
The Suffragist was spreading the glad tidings; and Riedriech and
Schmetz had Luis Morenas in hand for the afternoon, visioning the
United States of the World, while he snatched sketches of the
visionaries.
The Author, Mr. Johnson, and I, lunched together.
"Miss Smith," began The Author abruptly, "did you know this house
was built by British and French master masons? No? Well, it was.
Judge Gatchell's father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were
solicitors for this estate, and the judge at last very kindly
allowed me to look through a great batch of papers in his
possession. From these I discovered that one of the Hyndses visited
England in 1727, joined the new lodge lately established there, and
brought one of the brethren, an architect, back to America with
him. Another came from France. These three planned and built this
house, and did it pretty well, too.
"This house-builder, Walsingham Hynds, made his house a sort of
lodge for the brethren, just as in later times his grandsons
sheltered the brethren of those societies that fathered the American
Revolution. Gatchell tells me there is a legend of the master of
Hynds House entertaining British officers and at the same time
hiding the forfeited rebels they were hunting. I'd like to know,"
The Author added, reflectively, "where he hid them."
"An old house like this has dozens of places where one could be
hidden without much danger of detection," remarked Mr. Johnson.
"I'm pretty sure of that," agreed The Author, emphatically.
"You should be, since you did a neat little bit of hiding on your
own account," Mr. Johnson reminded him.
The Author was nettled. He had never found the paper lost out of the
closet in his own room, though he had never given up a tentative
search for it.
"Well, it's confoundedly odd I never did such a thing before," he
grumbled.
"What is odd is that I myself was waked out of my sleep that night
by the most oppressive sense of misery and hopelessness I have ever
experienced," Mr. Johnson said seriously. "It was so overpowering
that it made me think of Saint Theresa's description of her torment
in that oven in the wall of hell which had by kindly forethought on
the part of the devil been arranged for her permanent tenancy. Of
course, it was just a nightmare," he added, doubtfully; "or perhaps
a fit of indigestion."
"Indigestion takes many forms," I remarked, as lightly as I could.
"And you must remember you've been warned that Hynds House is
haunted. Why, the servants insist they've seen ol' Mis' Scarlett's
h'ant!"
"Ah!" nodded The Author. "And I smell a mysterious perfume, I walk
in my sleep for the first and only time in my life, and I hide where
it can't be found a paper with an uncouth jingle and some dots on
it, Johnson and I have the same nightmare. And I have heard
footsteps. All hallucinations, of course! I will say this much for
Hynds House: I never had a hallucination until I came here. By the
way, did I merely imagine I heard a violin last night?"
"Oh, no: I heard it, too." Mr. Johnson looked at The Author with a
concerned face. "You're getting a bit off your nerves, Chief.
Anybody might play a violin."
"Anybody might, but few do play it as I thought I heard it played
last night. Who's the player, Miss Smith?"
"I haven't the slightest idea. Alicia thinks it's a spirit that
lives in the crape-myrtle trees."
I was beginning to be aweary of The Author's shrewd eyes and
persistent questioning, and I was heartily glad when he had to go
back to his work.
That was a gray and windless afternoon, and the house was full of
those bluish shadows that belong to gray days; it was charged, even
more than usual, with mystery: the whole atmosphere tingled with it
as with electricity. I couldn't read. I have never been able to play
upon any musical instrument, much as I love music. I do not sing,
either, except in a small-beer voice; and when I tried to sew I
pricked my fingers with the needle. I went into the kitchen,
consulted with Mary Magdalen as to the evening's dinner, weighed and
measured such ingredients as she needed, saw that the two maids were
following instructions, tried to make friends with Beautiful Dog,
until he howled with anguish and affliction and fled as from
pestilence; and, unable to endure the house any longer, put on my
hat and set out upon one of those aimless walks one takes in a land
where all walks are lovely.
Automobiles came and went upon the public road, and to escape them
I crossed a wooden foot-bridge spanning a weedy ditch, struck into a
path bordering a wide field followed it aimlessly for a while, and
before I knew it was in the Enchanted Wood.
The Enchanted Wood was carpeted with brown and sweet-smelling
pine-needles, with green clumps of honeysuckle breaking out here and
there in moist spots. There were cassena bushes, full of vivid
scarlet berries; and crooked, gray-green cedars; and brown boles of
pine-trees; and the shallowest, gayest, absurdest little thread of a
brook giggling as it went about its important business of keeping a
lip of woodland green.
It was very, very still there, somewhat as Gethsemane might have
been, I fancy. I had wanted to be alone, that I might wrestle with
my trouble. Yet now that I was facing it, my spirit quailed. Never
had I felt so desolate, or dreamed that the human heart could bear
such anguish.
If I had had the faintest warning, that I might have saved myself!
If I had never come to Hynds House at all, but had lived my busy,
matter-of-fact, quiet life! Yet the idea of never having seen him,
never having loved him, was more cruel than the cruellest suffering
that loving entailed. It was harder even than the thought that
Alicia and I cared for the same man, who perhaps cared for neither
of us. At that I fell into an agony of weeping.
That passed. I was spent and empty. But the calm of acceptance had
come. I wasn't to lose my grip, nor wear the willow. The idea of me,
Sophy Smith, wearing the willow, aroused my English common-sense. I
refused to be ridiculous.
And then I looked up and saw him coming toward me, his great dog
trotting at his side. I pulled myself together, and smiled; for
Boris was thrusting his friendly nose into my palm, and rubbing his
fine head against my shoulder, and his master had dropped lightly
down beside me.
I had not seen Mr. Jelnik for several days, and it struck me
painfully that the man was pale, that his step dragged, and the
brightness of his beauty was dimmed. He looked older, more careworn.
If he was glad to see me, it was at first a troubled gladness, for
he started, and bit his lip. I wondered, not with jealousy, but with
pain, if there was somebody, some beautiful and high-born lady, at
sight of whom his heart might have leaped as mine did now. Was it,
perhaps, to forget such a one that he had exiled himself?
"You are such a serene, restful little person!" he said presently,
and a change came over his tired face; "and I am such a restless
one! You soothe me like a cool hand on a hot forehead."
"Restless?--you? Why, I thought you the serenest person I had ever
known."
His mocking, gentle smile curved his lips. But his eyes were not
laughing. For a fleeting, flashing second the whirlpools and the
depths were bared in them. Then the veil fell, the surface lights
came out and danced.
"My father was an excellent teacher," he said, indifferently. "The
whole object of his training was self-control. He was really a very
wonderful man, my father. But he overlooked one highly important
factor in my make-up, my Hynds blood."
I made no reply. I was wondering, perplexedly, how I, I of all
people, should have been picked up and enmeshed in the web of these
Hyndses and their fate.
"Thank you," said he, gratefully, "for your silence. Most women
would have talked, for the good of my soul. Why don't you talk?"
"Because I have nothing to say."
"You evidently inherited a God-sent reticence from your British
forebears. The British have 'illuminating flashes of silence.' It is
one of their saving graces."
I proved it.
Mr. Jelnik, with a whimsical, sidewise glance, drew nearer.
"Why, instead of sitting at the foot of a pine-tree, which is also a
reticent creature, are you not sitting at the feet of our friend The
Author, who is perfectly willing to illumine the universe? Very
bright man, The Author. How do you like his secretary?"
"Mr. Johnson? Oh, very much indeed! He is charming!"
"I find him so myself. But he is melting wax before the fire of
feminine eyes. A man in love is a sorry spectacle!"
"Is he?"
"_Ach_, yes! Consider my cousin Richard Geddes, for instance."
At that I winced, remembering the doctor's eyes when he had spoken
of Alicia and of this man. I looked at Mr. Jelnik now, wonderingly.
If he knew that much, hadn't he any heart? He stopped short. A
wrinkle came between his black brows.
"I am not to speak lightly of my Cousin Richard, I perceive."
"No. Please, please, no!"
"I hadn't meant to. Richard," said Mr. Jelnik, gravely, "is a good
man."
"Oh, yes! Indeed, yes! And--and he has a deep affection for _you_,
Mr. Jelnik."
"We Hyndses are the deuce and all for affection. We take it in such
deadly earnest that we store up a fine lot of trouble for
ourselves." His face darkened.
I had been right, then, in supposing that there was somebody,
perhaps half the world away, for whom he cared. _And he didn't care
for Alicia._ I was sure of that.
"Don't go!" he begged, as I stirred. "Stay with me for a little
while: I need you. I am tired, I am bored, I am disgusted with
things as they are. There is nothing new under the sun, and all is
vanity and vexation of spirit. Also, I am fronting the forks of a
dilemma: Shall I shake the dust of Hyndsville from my foot, yield to
the _Wanderlust_ and go what our worthy friend Judge Gatchell calls
'tramping,' or shall I stay here yet awhile? I can't make up my
mind!"
"Do you want to go?"
"Yes and no. Hold: let's toss for it and let the fall of the coin
decide." He took from his pocket a thin silver foreign coin, and
showed it me.
"Heads, I go. Tails, I stay," he said, and tossed it into the air.
It fell beside me, out of his reach. With a swift hand I picked it
up.
"Well?" he asked, indifferently.
My hand shut down upon it. There was the sound of wind in my ears,
and my heart pounded, and my sight blurred. Then somebody--oh,
surely not I!--in a low, clear, modulated voice spoke:
"_You will have to stay, Mr. Jelnik_," said the voice, pleasantly.
"_It is tails._"
And all the while the inside Me, the real Me, was crying accusingly:
"Oh, _liar! liar! It is heads!_"
Did he smile? I do not know. He did not look at me for the minute,
but stared instead at the gray-blue, shadowed woods, the brown boles
of the pines, the bright trickle of water playing it was a real
brook.
"Tails it is. I stay," he said presently. And with a swift movement
he reached out and lightly patted my hand with the coin in it.
"Well, it's decided. You have got me for a next-door neighbor for a
while longer, Miss Smith. No, don't go yet."
So I stayed, who would have stayed in the Pit to be near him, or
walked out of heaven to follow him, had he called me.
"Do you know," he spoke in a plaintive voice--"that I haven't had
any lunch? I forgot to go home for lunch! Boris, go get me something
to eat, old chap!"
Boris hung out a tongue like a flag, looked in his man's eyes, and
vanished, running as only the thoroughbred wolf-hound can run.
"I am so tired! Should you mind if I kept my dog's place warm at
your feet, Miss Smith?" And he stretched his long length on the
pine-needles, his hands under his head, his face upturned.
"I wish I had a pillow!" he complained.
I scooped up an armful of the pine-needles, while he watched me
lazily, and packed it over and between the roots of the pine-tree.
"You're a Sister of Charity," said he, gratefully. "But I can't
afford to scratch my neck." And coolly he took a fold of my brown
silk skirt, patted it over the straw, and with a sigh of
satisfaction rested his head upon it.
"This is very pleasant!" he sighed. Presently: "Your hair looks just
as a woman's hair ought to look, under that brown hat," he said
drowsily, "soft and fair. And after this, I shall order some
brown-silk cushion-covers. I never knew anything could feel so
comfortable and restful!" He closed his eyes.
I sat there, hands locked tightly together, and looked down at his
beautiful head, his slim and boyish body; and I felt an aching sense
of resentment. No man has any business to be like that, and then
come into the life of a woman named Smith.
He did not move, nor did I. We might have been creatures motionless
under a spell, in that Enchanted Wood; until from the outside world
came Boris, carrying a wicker basket, in which sandwiches, fruit, a
small bottle of wine, and a silver drinking-cup had been carefully
packed.
"Boris is used to playing courier." His master patted him
affectionately. "Come, Miss Smith. By the way, that isn't your real
name, though. Your name is Woman-in-the-Woods. Mine is--"
"Fortunatus."
He raised his brows. "I was about to say 'Man-who-is-Hungry,'"
he finished, pleasantly. "I once knew an Indian named
Tail-feathers-going-over-the-Hill. It taught me the value of
being explicit as to one's name. Here, you shall have the cup,
and I'll drink out of the bottle. Some of these fine days,
Woman-in-the-Woods, I shall take you on a jaunt with me and
Boris."
"It sounds promising," I admitted, cautiously.
"It is more. You shall learn all the fine points of out-of-door
housekeeping.--Drink your wine, Woman-in-the-Woods. You were pale,
very pale, when I came upon you. I was afraid something had been
troubling you."
"Something troubles everybody."
"Oh, bromidic Miss Smith!--Drink your wine, please. And do not look
doubtfully upon that sandwich. My man knows how to build them."
His man did. The sandwich was manna. The wine evidently came from
heaven.
"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 weathercock; 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
ship-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 friendship. 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 Friendship'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 glasses, frowned, and shook his head.
"I am becoming unobservant," 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 Gatchell 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.
"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 clustered 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 passed, 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!"