MAN PROPOSES
The Author closed the door and leaned against it. His piercing
glance jumped from Nicholas Jelnik's face to mine, with a prolonged
and savage scrutiny. No detail of my appearance escaped him--my
reddened eyelids, my pallor, my nervousness, my dishevelment. His
eyes narrowed, his jaw hardened.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded, roughly. "Come! At least one
may hope for the truth from _you_!"
Mr. Jelnik gave him a level look. There was that in it which brought
an angry red to The Author's thin face.
"Let me answer for her: just at present Miss Smith is getting ready
to go home."
The Author struggled to keep his rising temper in hand.
"I asked you a plain question, Miss Smith!" His peremptory tone
jangled my strained nerves.
"Mr. Jelnik has answered you: I am getting ready to go home."
The Author stamped.
"Don't talk nonsense! Again I ask you, what are you doing here? Have
you lost your senses? Why have you been weeping? It is plain that
you have been weeping. Miss Smith, why do I find you here--alone?"
"I do not like your manner of questioning me," I said, indignantly.
"My dear fellow," protested Mr. Jelnik, "you _are_ behaving
unmannerly, you know. The simple truth is, I was so fortunate
as to be of assistance to Miss Smith. She had an unpleasant
experience--fell and gave her head such a nasty bump, that it made
her faint. I'm afraid I splashed her a bit when I was trying to
revive her. I thought best to bring her here and give her a
stimulant. She didn't want to stagger home and alarm the whole
household unnecessarily."
"Is this true?" The Author asked me, rudely.
"You heard what Mr. Jelnik said!" I flamed.
"One allows somewhat more license to genius than might be accorded
ordinary mortals; but really, you know, there are limits," Mr.
Jelnik reminded him. "You're beginning to be rather a nuisance. It's
unfortunate to have to remind a man, in one's own house, that he's a
nuisance."
"I think you are, too!" I told The Author--"bursting into people's
houses like an East-Side policeman, asking outrageous questions in
an outrageous manner, and then questioning the answers one is
patient enough to give you! What right have you got to ask _any_
questions?"
"I'd rather like to know that, myself," put in Mr. Jelnik.
The Author straightened his shoulders, drew himself up to his full
height, and folded his arms. He is an impressively tall man.
"Should you?" said he, quietly. "Well, I'll tell you--the right of
an honest man to protect the woman he happens to want to marry."
I sat down, suddenly. I'm afraid my eyes popped, and I know my mouth
fell open. I had the doubtful satisfaction of seeing Mr. Nicholas
Jelnik's eyes and mouth open, too. After an astounded moment:
"Isn't this rather sudden?" wondered Mr. Jelnik. "Who'd suspect this
fellow of volcanic possibilities?"
"I do Miss Smith no dishonor when I ask her to be my wife," said The
Author, haughtily. "_I_ am no adventurer. She can never suspect _me_
of ulterior motives!"
"Heavens, no! Like Cæsar's wife, you are above suspicion; which, of
course, gives you the right to suspect everybody else! But you were
about to propose to Miss Smith in due form, were you not? Miss
Smith, you will permit me to withdraw? I have never before been a
third party to a proposal of marriage, and I confess I do not
exactly understand what is expected of me," said Mr. Jelnik,
delicately.
The Author smiled wryly.
"You succeed in making me appear a fool," he admitted. "That is no
mean achievement, young man! I merely wished to set myself straight
with Miss Smith, to leave her no room for doubt as to my absolute
honesty of purpose toward her; and you," said The Author, gulping,
"you have made me _bray_! I wish you'd clear out. You _are_ in the
way, if you want the truth. And," he added, clenching his hands,
"you can think yourself lucky that you're getting out with a whole
skin, da--confound you!"
Mr. Jelnik smiled so sweetly that I was terrified.
"Oh, a whole skin!" he repeated, thoughtfully. "My good sir, I was
born with a whole skin, and I rather expect to die with one." He
looked at The Author reflectively: "Of course, I don't know what
Miss Smith's feelings may be in regard to you, _but_ if I thought
you were seriously annoying her, I give you my word I should pitch
you out of the window without further ado. Miss Smith," he turned to
me, his eyes gentling with compassion, "I am more sorry than I can
say that you should be called upon to endure this further strain.
You will, I trust, forgive my unwilling share in it. Now, shall I
leave you?"
"No, stay," said I, flatly.
Mr. Jelnik sat down, and with unruffled composure, waited for The
Author to unbosom himself further.
"Miss Smith," The Author spoke after a pause,--and oh, I give him
credit for his courage at that trying moment!--"Miss Smith, I have
placed myself, and you also, in what appears to be rather an absurd
position. I am sorry. But I meant exactly what I said. I base my
right to question you upon the fact that I intended asking you to
marry me. You need a protector, if ever woman did. I offer you the
protection of my name."
I sat on the divan and stared at him owlishly. He went striding up
and down the room, pausing every now and then to look down at me.
"When I came to Hyndsville," he went on, "nothing was farther from
my thoughts than the desire to marry _anybody_. I have never
considered myself a marrying man. But I find myself liking you, Miss
Smith, better than I have ever liked any other woman, and for better
reasons. You would make me an excellent wife, the only sort of wife
a man like me could endure. And I think I should make you a good
husband. I am not really so great a bear," he added, hastily, "as
at times I appear to be. I should really try to make you happy. Now
then, what have you to say?"
What could any woman say in such circuit stances? _I_ said nothing,
but slid down on Nicholas Jelnik's divan and howled.
"Didn't I tell you she'd had a bad time and wasn't herself? Now I
hope you're satisfied!" raged Mr. Jelnik.
"It's as much your fault as mine!" snarled The Author. "Miss Smith,
for heaven's sake don't cry like that! My dear girl, stop it. You
run me distracted, Miss Smith!--Give her some vinegar or something,
Jelnik! Confound you, Jelnik!--why don't you do something? Burn a
feather under her nose! Make her stop it, Jelnik! She'll kill
herself, if she keeps on crying like that! Here!" cried The Author,
desperately; and tried to push back my hair and all but scalped me.
"Get away!" said Mr. Jelnik. "I'll try to quiet her. Miss Smith, if
you don't stop crying, I shall slap you! Do you understand me, Miss
Smith? Stop it this minute, or I shall slap you!" He thrust an arm
around my shoulders and pulled me erect, none too gently.
"I--I--I ca-ca-ca--n't!"
"You can!" he snapped. "Stop it! Sophy, _shut up!_"
I was so astonished that in the middle of a howl I blinked, and
gasped, and gulped, and stopped!
"Ring the bell, by the door," Mr. Jelnik told The Author, curtly.
And when Daoud appeared, he ordered: "Cordial--top shelf; and some
ice-water."
Five minutes later a forlorn and red-eyed wreck was sitting up
looking at two wretched, embarrassed men. Thank Heaven, they looked
just as miserable as they should have felt! Daoud brought me scented
water, and I bathed my face. Then I patted into shape the hair that
The Author had pulled awry, and said in the cold, accusing,
I-die-a-martyr-to-your-stupidity voice that women punish men with:
"I think I shall go home."
With a chastened, hang-dog air The Author rose to accompany me,
casting a withering look upon Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, who despised The
Author for a bungling and intrusive idiot, and let his glance convey
the fact. He was sorry for me, with a compassionate understanding of
what I had been through. But I wanted neither his sorrow nor his
compassion. He had punished The Author, but he hadn't saved _me_
from a ridiculous and painful situation. I gave him a limp hand, and
had the satisfaction of leaving him thoroughly uncomfortable.
When we reached our gate The Author, who had trudged beside me in
gloomy silence, laid his hand upon my arm.
"I shall not ask you to answer me at once. But I do ask you to
consider carefully what I have said, and to realize that I mean
every word of it. And--and--I'm sorry it came about in this wise,
Sophy," he finished, with a touch of compunction.
"So am I." And then I went up-stairs, and crept into bed. My head
ached frightfully, my heart throbbed and fluttered. I was so
unnerved that it seemed a burden to be alive. And then, mercifully,
I fell asleep, and didn't wake until Alicia brought me a
breakfast-tray the next morning.
"My goodness, Sophy, you must have had a terrific headache!" she
exclaimed. "Why, your lips are bloodless, and you've black circles
under your eyes!"
"I'm all right this morning," I said, hastily. "But you look pale,
yourself. Aren't you rather overdoing things, Leetchy?"
"No: I'm as sound as a trivet!" said she. And then: "Sophy, guess
who was here last evening." Her eyes began to shine. "Mrs. Cheshire
Scarboro; no less!" And she paused, to let that highly important
statement sink in.
Mrs. Cheshire Scarboro was the Leader of the Opposition. She'd had
a lifelong feud with old Sophronisba, who said that when the Lord
wanted to try himself out in the way of a fool, He made Cissy
Scarboro. They hated each other as only relations can hate.
Naturally, Mrs. Scarboro resented our presence in Hynds House. She
said Hyndsville ought to show us what it thought of the outrage.
Under her leadership, Hyndsville showed us.
Mrs. Scarboro was a very important person in Hyndsville. She ruled
the older and more conservative portion of it, and although the
younger set at times rebelled and went its own way, her power was
very real. That she had changed her mind, or at least her tactics,
in regard to us was important news.
"She came with Mr. and Mrs. Haile," Alicia continued. "It was the
first time she had ever been inside Hynds House. Think of that,
Sophy! There were some girls here, and a few boys, naturally, Jimmy
Scarboro among them. Should you think that accounted for his mama's
presence, Sophy? And we sat around like adoring mice, listening to
The Author's sky-rockets going off. Doctor Geddes wouldn't let us
sing, wouldn't even let us have music, because you mustn't be
disturbed. He thinks a whole lot of you, Sophy."
"I think a whole lot of him. I never thought I could like that man
as much as I do."
I was determined to show Miss Alicia Gaines that no matter how much,
or for whatever reasons she had changed for the worse toward him, I,
at least, had changed for the better. But she listened listlessly.
For which cause, being resentful, I said not one word to her about
The Author.
The thought of The Author confused me. I wasn't so much flattered as
astounded. He was not offering me a light honor: The Author's name
meant a great deal. Who, then, was I, a woman named Smith, to say
nay to this miraculous possibility? Was it not rather for me to
accept, meekly, the high gift that the gods in a sportive moment
chose to toss to me? Yea, verily. And yet-- My hand stole to the half
of a thin old foreign coin hidden in my breast.
The Author behaved with exemplary patience and dignity. He went
about his own work and left me to mine, and though I knew I was
under his hawklike watchfulness, his matter-of-fact manner set me at
my ease. You can't dread to meet a man, of a morning, who pays more
attention to his batter-cakes than to you.
I was just beginning to breathe freely, when Doctor Richard Geddes
came over one afternoon, and, finding me in our living-room with
only the Black family to keep me company, flung himself into an
arm-chair, seized Sir Thomas More Black by the scruff, and pulled
his whiskers and rubbed his fur the wrong way until Sir Thomas More
scratched him with thoroughness.
"Get out, then, you black hellion!" growled the doctor. Sir Thomas
More got out. He hadn't wanted to stay in the first place.
"Shall I bind your hand for you?" I asked. But the doctor refused.
He tapped his foot on the floor, and hemmed, and looked at me
strangely. Then:
"Sophronisba Two, you consider me a reasonably decent sort, don't
you?"
"That goes without saying."
"Think I'd make a woman a reasonably good husband?"
"I do," said I, truthfully. Whatever ailed the man?
"Good! And I," the doctor said, deliberately, "know that you'd make
any man more than a reasonably good wife. Should you like to be
mine, Sophronisba Two?"
The jump I gave threw Potty Black off my knees.
"You're ill, wandering in your wits, you poor man!" I was genuinely
alarmed. "Isn't there something I can do for you, doctor?"
"There is: you can marry me, if you want to," replied the doctor,
soberly. "Honestly, my dear girl, I'd be kind to you. I like and
admire and respect you more than I can tell you, Sophy."
"My dear friend," I said, when I caught my breath, "I like, admire,
and respect you, too. But people who marry each other need something
more than that. They--well, they need--love."
His shoulders twitched.
"This business of love is the devil's own invention!" he cried.
"It's safer and saner to like and respect people than to love them,
and lots harder. Now, what do you say to marrying me?"
"I say you had no such notion in your head the last time you and I
talked together. When did it seize you?" I demanded, suspiciously.
"I began to think about it seriously--er--ah--some days ago," he
said, reddening.
"What day, to be exact?"
"Well," said he, resentfully, "it occurred to me last Wednesday, if
you want to be so all-fired sure!"
"What happened last Wednesday to make you think of asking me to
marry you?"
The doctor looked at me very much as a little boy looks at a
grown-up who is holding a soapy wash-cloth in one hand and an ear in
the other.
"What do you want to know for?"
"Because. I just want to know because. Well?" He squirmed, and was
silent. "Was it because you have ceased to care for Alicia,
already?" His glare answered that question. "No? Why, then, didn't
you ask Alicia, instead of coming to me for second choice? Look
here, Doctor Richard Geddes: if I was not firmly and truly your
friend, I should be furious, do you understand? Or," I added,
darkly, "I might even revenge myself by taking you at your word!"
"Sophronisba Two!" The doctor looked at, me piteously.
"Why didn't you ask Alicia?" I persisted, inexorably.
"I did!" gulped the doctor. "But she said she couldn't. She said,
why didn't I care for you instead of her? You were so much
better--and--and I'd be happier with you, for I'd have the most
unselfish angel--" he stopped miserably.
"Well?"
"Well, I kept turning it over in my mind; and the more I thought of
it, the clearer I perceived that with a wife like you I'd be a
better and a more worth-while man. I--I think so much of you, Sophy,
that I'm telling you the whole truth," he finished.
"That's why I'm going to keep on being friends with you--better
friends than ever," I told him.
"You're going to marry me, then, Sophy?"
"Didn't you just hear me tell you I meant to keep on being friends
with you?"
"You won't, then?"
"I won't, then."
"Yet there are good reasons why you might reconsider your decision,"
he said, after a pause. "We are so diametrically opposed it would
seem inevitable we should marry each other. Why, Sophy, we've got
enough to quarrel happily about for the rest of our lives. For
instance, do you sleep with all your windows open?"
"I close two, and leave two open."
"Every window open, day and night, hot or cold, rain or shine," said
the doctor, firmly. "Do you use pillows?"
"Two."
"None at all. Sleep with your head flat. How many blankets?"
"Two, and a comfort."
"One army blanket, except in extremely cold weather," said the
doctor. "Do you like a pipe?"
"It always makes me sick. I peculiarly and particularly loathe and
detest a pipe."
"A pipe, my dear, deluded woman, is a comfort, a stay, a prop to a
man's soul, an aid to meditation and repose. I insist upon a
pipe--within moderation, of course. Do you like parrots? Sophy, are
you capable of supporting a parrot? I have already perceived your
reprehensible fondness for cats." He looked at his scratched hand.
"I have always wanted a parrot. I think they're the most--"
"Damnable brutes!" finished the doctor. "Gad, I'd as lief live in
the house with Sophronisba One! It is not moral to like a parrot.
What do you think of stewed rhubarb?"
I made a wry face. I abhor stewed rhubarb. Somehow, it always makes
me think of orphans in long-waisted gingham dresses with white china
buttons down the back. One way of punishing children for losing
their parents is to make them wear dark gingham dresses with china
buttons down the back and to eat stewed rhubarb for dessert.
"Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you what you are," pronounced
the doctor. "It's a sign of moral rectitude to eat stewed rhubarb.
Now, as to science: what is your attitude toward evolution?"
"Well, I think plenty of men turn themselves into monkeys, but I
refuse to believe that God ever turned a monkey into a man."
"Ha!" mused the doctor, pulling his nose; "I see! Do you insist
upon a sacrosanct meal hour? Are your meal hours fixed, even as the
laws of the Medes and the Persians?"
"How else, pray, shall one run one's house with any degree of
system?" I wanted to know.
"Bunk!" snorted the doctor. "_I_ eat when I'm hungry! Now, lastly,
sister, tell me truthfully: are you a Democrat or a Republican?"
"I don't see much difference: they're both of them nothing but
_men_."
"I knew it!" The doctor shook his head with sad triumph. "She'd
scratch Brown, because she didn't like the expression of his ears,
and vote for Jones, because he had such beautiful whiskers! My dear,
dear woman, can't you see that it's almost a law of nature for you
and me, who don't agree about anything, to marry each other?"
"I don't even agree with you as to that!" said I, and fell into
helpless laughter.
"It rather looks like flying in the face of Providence not to," he
warned me. "In the meantime--"
"In the meantime, let us be grateful Alicia didn't put the notion
into your head to ask somebody who might have taken you seriously."
"That means you don't, and won't." He drew a long breath. "But
we're good friends; aren't we, Sophy?"
"If a man never does anything worse than ask a woman to marry him,
he will probably retain her friendship until she dies," I replied.
"Provided she refuses him," the doctor said, gratefully. And bending
down, he kissed me brotherly on the cheek, an honest and resounding
smack; at which opportune moment Alicia walked in.
Wholly unabashed, the doctor spoke pleasantly to Alicia, shook hands
with me effusively, and went off whistling. All was right with the
world. I'd refused him, you understand! Instead of being enraged and
offended, I found myself giggling.
That night, as Alicia didn't come in my room, I went into hers.
"I know what you've come to tell me, Sophy dear," she said,
directly. "I've seen it for some time. And I'm glad as glad--glad
with all my heart, Sophy." Her voice was tenderness itself, her eyes
melted. But the hand on my hand was cold. "I love you a great deal,
Sophy," she whispered. "More than anybody else in the world, I
think."
"And was it because you loved me, dear girl, that you put the absurd
notion of asking me to marry him into Doctor Geddes's head?"
"Absurd notion?" repeated Alicia. "Absurd notion? But he asked you!
Didn't he ask you?"
"As to that, he told me I could marry him if I wanted to," I
admitted. "Oh, Leetchy, it was funny, though! If you could have seen
the poor dear, trying to martyr himself, just to oblige you--"
"You _refused_ him?" breathlessly.
"Of course. There wasn't anything to say but 'No.'"
"But--I saw--"
"You saw him kiss me on the cheek? Honey, that wasn't love: that was
gratitude!"
"I don't understand!" stammered Alicia, twisting her hands. "Why,
you cared for him--I thought you cared."
"Of course I care for him! But not like that! Good heavens, Alicia,
however did you get such a notion? My dear, if I loved you less, or
him more, I should never, never be able to forgive either of you. As
it is, we'll forget it."
At that Alicia began to cry.
"Oh, what have I done?" she whimpered. "Sophy, you don't know--what
I've done!"
"You haven't done anything that can't be undone," said I,
comfortably. "You and I, my dear, fell into a Hynds House maze. Now
we're out of it!" And thinking she would be better by herself, I
kissed her good night.
Out of Hynds House maze, indeed! I had only to step back into my own
room to have it again enmesh me. For on the prie-dieu that had once
held Freeman Hynds's Bible and now held mine, was the lost diary.