ON THE KNEES OF THE GODS
We gave over the futile search at last. Mr. Jelnik sat down and took
his head in his hands, for the moment a prey to overwhelming
disappointment. I could have wept for him. Presently:
"Is it so hard to lose that which you never possessed?" I ventured
to ask.
"It is always bitter to fail."
"But you haven't really failed. You have succeeded in proving that
both Richard and Freeman were the victims of an insane jealousy and
a terrible revenge."
"Jessamine's confession might well be set aside: insane people often
accuse themselves of crimes committed only in their own disordered
brains. The one indisputable proof would be the jewels in my hands."
He added, with a faint smile: "I should have liked to see those
accursed things made clean by your wearing them, Sophy."
"I don't want them!" I said, and my head went up. "I don't care
_that_ for all the Hynds jewels ever lost! I wouldn't have come here
to-night for their sake or mine, not if they were worth an empire's
ransom! I wanted them for Richard's sake, and--and yours."
"I know, I know. At first I wanted them for him and me, too.
Afterward I wanted them for him and for you, Sophy."
"For me? _I_ have no right to them. What have _I_ to do with Hynds
jewels?" And then I stopped. If Jessamine's confession were
true--and I believed in my heart that every word Jessamine had
written was the truth--what right had I to Hynds House itself? "As
to that, I have no right to Hynds House, either. It is yours," I
said.
He stared at me thoughtfully.
"It is yours," I repeated, gaining courage. "I am an outsider, to
whom this house was left from motives of malice and revenge. Mr.
Jelnik, this thing must be set straight. We will show Jessamine's
confession and clear Richard's name. We will bring Freeman's diary
forward to prove the truth of our assertions. Then you can come into
your own."
"Ah!" said Mr. Jelnik, gently, "I see. Quite simple, and perfectly
feasible. And after I have taken Hynds House, what of you? What do
you get?"
"I get out," I said briefly. And a horrid qualm came over me. Leave
Hynds House, forever? Go away from Hyndsville, leaving this
friendlier, pleasanter, happier life behind?
"You are forgetting my training," I reminded him, trying to keep my
voice steady. "I can always do what I did before I came here. I--I'm
really an excellent private secretary, Mr. Jelnik."
"That," said Mr. Jelnik, smiling curiously, "may very well be. But I
think the stars in their courses fought to bring you here. And I
really do not at all relish the notion of your turning backward into
a private secretary, although there is, of course, the alternative
of The Author. And what of Alicia?"
"Alicia's sense of justice is quite as well developed as mine," I
told him proudly.
"Alicia is a dear girl," he agreed. "But, my dear lady, your plan
wouldn't hold water in any court. This place isn't mine, legally or
morally, though the jewels would be if I could find them. If ever I
do find them, which is highly improbable, I may be tempted to make
you an offer of exchange."
"You don't want Hynds House? Richard's house? You won't take Hynds
House?"
"I don't want Hynds House. I won't take Hynds House. Further, if
anybody on earth but you made me such an offer, in such
circumstances, I should find it hard to forgive. Even from you I
hardly think I could bear it twice." A bright red showed in his
cheeks for an instant, his nostrils quivered, his whole face was a
blaze of pride. "What! Nicholas Jelnik accept gifts from women?"
"As good and proud men as Nicholas Jelnik have accepted gifts from
women, and been none the worse for it," said I, tartly. "You offered
me your jewels. Why shouldn't I offer you my house?--particularly
when it should have been your house. I also have my pride, Mr.
Jelnik!"
The hauteur went out of his face, and something sweet and quizzical
and boyish flooded it.
"Keep Hynds House, dear, dear Donna Quixotta," said he, gently. "You
have given me something I needed a thousand times more."
Now, although we had not found the jewels, we had found Jessamine
Hynds, and there remained to be done a thing that called for what
strength of will and courage we possessed. And we had need to make
haste. Already more time had been consumed than we bargained for.
Mr. Jelnik fetched a deep breath, and went over to the Thing in the
chair. There was in his manner neither repugnance nor horror,
nothing but an almost divine compassion. Never, never, had I
respected the courage, the honor, the mercy of man so greatly as I
did then.
It was a ghastly task; I do not like to remember it. In the hot, dry
air of the room without windows she had become, not a bleached
skeleton, but a shriveled, fleshless, blackened mummy. The hair
still clung tightly to the skull, the discolored skin was stretched
over the bony contour of the face; the lips had shriveled away from
the teeth, which showed in a sort of jeering grin. And--well, we had
to tie her hair, like a rope, around her chest and arms; and I tore
the ruffles off my petticoat, to tie her skirts at the knees and
ankles.
The brown frock was low-necked and short-sleeved, too. And the
picture of her, down-stairs, showed her with so red a lip, so round
an arm, so soft, so white a bosom!
Thou might'st think thou hadst drunk the water of Paradise
who had tasted the nectar of her lip.... The ends of her
ringlets fell into the hand like as the sleeve of the
generous in the hand of the needy.
Oh, Jessamine!
She had been so splendidly tall a woman, that as he held her grisly
head upon his shoulder the little shoes that rattled upon her
shriveled feet were well below his knees. One great rope of her
blue-black hair escaped and fell down the back of his white
coat, and as he moved it moved, too, with a lazy and languid
coquettishness horribly travesting youth and beauty. It was such
wonderful hair! Small wonder young Richard had praised its dark
splendor, and kissed its shining folds to his undoing!
"Jessamine," Nicholas Jelnik said as he bent over her, "you shall
have your chance to rest. You shall sleep under the open sky. Nature
shall have you, Jessamine, and make you over into something of
loveliness and of peace."
"Because she loved much, much shall be forgiven her," I whispered.
Ah! At the last, who but Him of Galilee shall speak for us?
Never, until I shall be what she was then, shall I be able to forget
that return journey. Mr. Jelnik walked ahead, holding her on one
arm, and carrying the flash-light with his free hand. I followed
with a candle that burned with a low and reddish glare and gave off
a heavy, waxy odor in the still air. Whenever the faintest draft
lifted the dull flame, we two living creatures seemed to recede into
darkness, while the light sought her out and stayed upon her. The
motion of his body shook her lightly, and she gave forth a dry and
stealthy rattling, an uneasy rustling. One hand hung down, with a
loose, loose bracelet jingling on the brittle brown wrist. And her
poor little feet with the rotting shoes upon them moved delicately,
as if they trod the impalpable air. Once her head struck, with a
hollow thud, as we turned a corner. It was almost more than flesh
and blood could bear,--like things you were afraid of when you were
a child in the dark--the candles melting audibly, and walls, walls,
pressing us in.
I think it took us years to reach the room where Achmet waited. At
sight of what the master bore, The Jinnee started up and called upon
God the Lord Paramount, Help of the Faithful. Then, like the fine
old fighter he was, he squared his shoulders, folded his arms, and
waited orders. Boris, with a deep-throated, smothered growl of fear
and protest, bared his teeth and sidled against him, bristling and
trembling.
We consulted briefly. Mr. Jelnik was for leaving her there in the
cellar room, until a fitter opportunity offered to give her
sepulture. But to this I vehemently objected. I could not have
stayed another hour in that house while I knew she was in it. I
wanted Jessamine Hynds consigned to the grave from which she had
been too long kept. I wanted her to sleep in the brown bosom of the
earth, with the impartial grass to cover her, and roses to blow over
her by and by, when summer should have come back to South Carolina.
Achmet led the way, and presently we were in the spring-house. When
I am feverish I dream of that last climb up the spidery stair, with
Jessamine's jaws widened into a soundless laugh, and The Jinnee's
light playing at hide-and-seek upon her.
I knelt down and plunged my face into the cold spring-water, and
drank and drank. How good it was! And how grateful to my lungs was
the outside air, so sweet, so fresh, so clean! I loved the friendly
trees waving in the good wind, I blessed the friendly stars.
We stopped at Mr. Jelnik's house, and the man Daoud appeared in
answer to a low-voiced summons and fetched me a most beautiful
shawl, which I found extremely comfortable. A stately and stoical
personage was Daoud, unlike shy black Achmet, who hid himself from
observation so thoroughly that people in Hyndsville were not aware
of his existence. I sat on the steps while for Jessamine Hynds was
fetched a length of canvas, a linen sheet, and a gray army blanket.
Achmet appeared with spades. And so we set out.
The old cemetery in Hyndsville, unlike the newer one in which folks
take a sort of ghastly pride, one lot differing from another lot in
glory, is an unpretentious place, enclosed by crumbling walls, the
iron gates of which have rusted ajar. It is a grassy, bird-haunted,
tree-shaded spot, with some dozen or so old family vaults, some
modest monuments that bear stately names, some raised marble slabs
supported on carved and slender legs, like Death's own little
card-tables, some stones let flat into the earth, with names and
dates long since erased by rain and wind and fallen leaf. Nobody
comes here any more. Sophronisba Scarlett was the first and last to
be interred in the old cemetery within the memory of the present
generation.
We went down dismal paths where the night wind sighed a miserere in
the cedars, and things of the dark scurried away with furtive
noises, or flapped ill-omened black wings overhead. In a corner
shaded by cypresses was the Hynds vault, a venerable affair with a
slate roof. Outside, in an inclosed space were some marble-covered
graves and in a corner the simplest of all, one marked "R.H." Emily
slept beside him, and their son beside her. But on the farther side,
next the wall, was room for one more sleeper. And here, while Mr.
Jelnik laid down his burden, Daoud and Achmet began to dig.
She lay there in the ghostly light and shade, so utterly cast aside
and forgotten, so unloved, so unwept, so far removed from every
human tie, that terror and pity filled my heart. While Daoud and
Achmet were making ready her bed, Nicholas Jelnik and I spread out
the length of canvas, and wrapped her securely in the sheet and
blanket. We folded her claws upon the empty breast in which had once
pulsed the passionate heart of Jessamine Hynds, and spread her hair
over what had been her face.
Over in a sheltered spot behind the vault clambered a huge,
overgrown, briery rose, and by some sweet impatience of nature one
shoot had budded before its time. I broke off the small, pale roses
and placed them in her grasp. But Mr. Jelnik took from his breast a
pearl and silver crucifix, and this, reverently, he laid upon hers.
"It was my father's grandmother's. She held it when she was dying.
She was an old saint. It would please her to know that her crucifix
should stay, one holy thing, with Jessamine Hynds."
"'_Verily, the gate of repentance is not nor shall be shut upon
God's creatures until the sun shall rise in the west_,'" The Jinnee
quoted his Prophet And he broke off two of his _saphies_, each with
a holy verse written upon it, and dropped them upon her out of pure
charity.
Daoud, who was intelligent and orthodox where Achmet was emotional
and tender, was evidently not altogether sure of the wisdom of this
proceeding; but he was not too orthodox to stand up arrow-straight,
face the East, and pray for her.
So we wrapped her, brown silk dress and yellowed laces, and long
black hair, in the strip of canvas, and gave her to the earth. The
last thing we saw, thank God! before the blanket fell over her for
the last time, was the silver crucifix shining out of the roses in
her hands.
Daoud and Achmet, their spades over their shoulders, left the
cemetery, the latter the strangest, quaintest, most outlandish
figure ever seen on a Carolina road. Mr. Jelnik and I, with Boris
close beside us, walked more slowly.
"Shall you go on with the search?" I ventured presently.
"But where shall I begin now?" he wondered. "I have searched
everything and every place searchable."
"If Shooba hid them anywhere outside of that room, it must have been
in some place that Jessamine herself knew and could get at if she
wished; some particular place where nobody would dream of looking
for them. Women always choose hiding-places like that, and the
notion would suit Shooba's grim humor," I said.
"They who knew every nook and cranny of the house searched it pretty
thoroughly at the time," he reminded me. "I have fine-combed it
myself."
"I am so sorry! I wanted you to find them. But the fact that you
didn't surely couldn't make very much difference to you. One's
happiness doesn't depend upon anything so problematical."
He hesitated. "Aside from their value, which is by no means
inconsiderable, I--well, they would have made certain things easier
for me. I should then have been in a better position to do what I
want to do."
"Oh! You had some definite plan which hinged upon your finding
them?"
He was silent for a space, as if considering within himself just how
far he could admit me into his confidence.
"At first, it was a matter of family pride with me to clear up this
mystery. Later--I wanted to have the Hynds jewels in my possession,
that I might ask the woman I love to marry me." His voice vibrated
like a violin string.
I took the blow standing. I did not wince, though it had come
unexpectedly. Of course I had known all along that there must be
some lady whom he loved, a woman of that world to which he himself
belonged. But I couldn't for the life of me imagine how the finding
or the not finding of the Hynds jewels could have any bearing upon
the case. I couldn't understand how any woman, any real woman, could
let such a thing come between her and Nicholas Jelnik.
When we had walked a little farther: "Doesn't she know you care for
her?"
"Who knows what any woman knows or thinks? She may really care for
another man."
"There is another man?"
"There is always another man. Her feeling for me may be nothing but
pure kindness, for she is kindness itself."
"Still, I think you should tell her," I said, with such a heavy
heart!
He shook his head. "There are reasons why my faith might be
questioned, my motives doubted; and I couldn't bear that."
"But if you are perfectly sure of your own feelings, if there is
absolutely no doubt in your mind that you love her--"
"Love her? I never thought," he said, "that any woman could mean so
much to a man! I never dreamed that just one woman could be in
herself all that a man needs to hold fast to! Love her? I have been
all over the world and I have seen many women in many lands, but
never any woman of them all, save that one, for me! It was a
revelation to me, that I could care so much. Ah! I wish I could make
it plain just how much I do care!"
I had not known until that moment how much the heart can bear of
anguish and not break.
"I hope she loves you just as much in return, Mr. Jelnik. I hope
with all my heart you will be happy, both of you."
"I hope she does! I hope we shall!" he cried, with ardor. "Why, if
I could be sure she cares for me, like that, if I could know that
all other men counted as little with her as all other women count
with me! But I am not sure. And I do not take it lightly, for my
woman must be more to me than most women mean to most men. Well, it
is on the knees of the gods."
I stole a covert glance at him as he walked beside me. It seemed to
me he had never been so beautiful. But his beauty hurt me. I felt
old, very, very old, and sad, and tired. The salt taste of tears was
in my mouth. My feet dragged.
We entered that strip of land which on a time old Sophronisba
barb-wired and barricaded against her neighbors, and which touched
the Jelnik grounds in the rear. We were to cut through his garden
and enter mine by the gap in the hedge behind the spring-house
and I hoped to get into the house and up-stairs to my own room
unperceived.
The gray cottage lay dark and silent, but there were lights in Hynds
House although the night was upon the verge of morning. A gray
light, upon which was stealing a primrose tinge, was already in the
sky. It was, in fact, four o'clock. I was so mortally tired that for
a moment I sat down on his steps.
"It's been pretty rough on you, Sophy. One woman in a thousand
could have gone through this night's experience without going to
pieces," said Mr. Jelnik, with feeling. And then:
"Sophy!" cried a frightened and hysterical voice. "Oh, is that you,
at last, Sophy?" And turning a corner of the gray cottage, Alicia,
Doctor Geddes, and The Author confronted us. They were still in
costume, and the Mephistophelian effect of The Author was such as
would turn any actor green with envy. Ensued a pregnant pause. It
was a lovely situation! It reduced me, for one, to idiocy.
"Sophy! Jelnik!" exploded Doctor Geddes, with a gesture of rage and
astonishment.
"Yes. It is I. What is the matter? Why aren't you home and in bed?
What are you doing here, at this hour?" I asked, stupidly.
Here The Author, all in red tights, cape, and doublet, snatched his
red cap with the cock's feather in it off his head, and bowed
diabolically:
"Let us ask you that same question: Why aren't _you_ home and in
bed? What are _you_ doing here at this hour?"
"After everybody had gone home, I ran up to your room,
Sophy--and--and you were gone. You weren't in the house. I looked
everywhere; and you'd disappeared, as if the earth had opened and
swallowed you." Alicia's voice was trembling.
"Oh, Sophy, I was so frightened, so horribly frightened! I kept
thinking every minute you must come. I kept looking and waiting, and
still you didn't come. I telephoned Doctor Geddes, when I couldn't
stand it any longer. And then The Author came down-stairs. And oh,
Sophy, there was such an unearthly, clammy, waiting sort of feeling
in the house--all those lights, all those empty rooms--I felt as if
something terrible must be happening!" She clung to me as she spoke,
kissing me, and shook, and wept. "And when you still didn't come,
and we couldn't find you anywhere, The Author suggested that we
should come over here and enlist Mr. Jelnik.
"When we got here, there wasn't a soul in this house. Not even the
dog. We went back to Hynds House, and walked through our garden, and
then came back here, because we didn't know what else to do. Oh,
Sophy!" I patted her shoulders, mumbling that she mustn't cry, it
was ail right.
"Miss Gaines, I am dreadfully sorry you should have been frightened.
But there really wasn't the least occasion for alarm. Because Miss
Smith was with _me_," said Mr. Jelnik calmly.
Alicia looked at him, trying to read his face in the wan light. Her
world, as it were, was rocking under her feet. She looked at me; and
I said nothing. To save my life I couldn't speak of Jessamine Hynds
then, nor talk coherently of that night's experience. I couldn't
betray Nicholas Jelnik's secrets, nor mention the Watcher in the
Dark, nor that dreadful red-walled room. So I merely patted Alicia's
shoulder, while she held fast to me as if I might again disappear.
"That is exactly what we should like you to explain, Mr. Jelnik, if
you please," said The Author, with deadly politeness. "You must
pardon us if we disagree with your assertion that Miss Gaines had no
real occasion for alarm."
"Miss Smith and I," said Mr. Jelnik, stiffening, at the tone, "found
it absolute necessary to leave Hynds House for a short while
to-night, to attend to--an affair of some importance to us both, but
which concerns no one else on earth." Under the grave politeness his
voice had an edge of irritation. "I repeat that I am sincerely sorry
Miss Alicia was frightened. For my share in that, I crave her
pardon. I ask all of you to accept this apology as an explanation
which is final."
"I for one shall do no such thing!" cried The Author, hotly. "Are
we impertinent children to be thus lightly dismissed? Of course, if
Miss Smith herself--"
"You have neither right nor authority to cross-question Miss Smith,"
interposed Mr. Jelnik, sharply. But Doctor Geddes broke in, with
mounting anger and astonishment:
"Of course we've got the right and the reason to question both of
you! You might just as well come off your high horse; you've behaved
very badly, Jelnik! To induce Sophy to scuttle off in the middle of
the night, without a word to anybody, and go wild-goose-chasing with
you, was an unworthy action. I wouldn't have believed it of you,
Jelnik; I thought you had more common sense--not to speak of Sophy
herself. Gad, I'd like to shake the pair of you!" And he stamped his
feet.
"Doctor Richard Geddes," said Mr. Jelnik, in dangerously low and
honeyed tones, "I find you insufferable. You have the instincts and
the manners of a navvy."
"Mr. Jelnik!" cried The Author. "Mr. Jelnik, honor me, please, by
considering my instincts and manners infinitely worse than Doctor
Geddes's. I, Mr. Jelnik, at this instant feel within me the
instincts of a cave man and I hone for the thigh-bone of an aurochs
to prove it to you. Do you know what I think of you, Mr. Jelnik? I
consider you a man without conscience and without scruples, sir!"
"My faith! The man even talks like a serial!" said Mr. Jelnik,
weariedly. "My dear, good sir, while we're by way of indulging in
personalities permit me to inform you that you annoy me by existing.
As to your behavior to Miss Smith--"
"_My_ behavior to Miss Smith?" shrieked The Author, stamping with
fury, "_my_ behavior to Miss Smith? You had better set about
explaining _your_ behavior to Miss Smith! You're a rascal, Mr.
Jelnik!"
"You, my dear sir, are worse: you're an ass," said Mr. Jelnik, and
fetched a sigh of tiredness. "Would to heaven somebody would fetch
you a halter!"
"Jelnik," choked Doctor Geddes, "a man who behaves as you're
behaving to-night runs the risk of getting himself shot. You're my
own cousin, but--"
Mr. Jelnik turned at bay.
"Doctor Geddes," said he, in a razor-edged voice, "it is no light
affliction to be kin to the Hyndses!--What do you want me to
explain? I have already told you it was necessary for Miss Smith and
me to attend to a matter that is none of your business. In return,
you hold us up like brigands. Would it make a dent in your armor of
righteous meddling, if I were to remind you that you are seriously
annoying Miss Smith?"
"Not a dent!" roared the doctor. "And if it annoys Sophy to be asked
a straight question by those who have her interest at heart, let her
be annoyed and take shame to herself!"
Alicia began to cry.
"Oh, Sophy!" wailed Alicia, "whatever is the matter with us, anyhow?
What is wrong, Sophy? Why are we quarreling? What are we quarreling
about, Sophy?"
I put my hands to my head. "I don't know. That is. I can't tell. I
mean. I can't think, at all!
"Doctor Geddes has spoken like an honest man," said The Author,
standing flat-footed in his pointed red shoes. "Mr. Jelnik, I ask
you plainly: Why do I find Miss Smith here at this hour? Why and
wherefore the mystery? Let me remind you that I have asked Miss
Smith to marry me, and that she hasn't as yet given me her answer,"
he finished, significantly.
"Why, Sophy!" gasped Alicia. "Why, Sophy Smith!"
"Holy Moses!" gasped Doctor Geddes. "What, man, you too? Well, then,
if it comes to that, I can call you to account, Jelnik, because _I_
asked Sophy to marry me, too. In my case she had sense enough to
say 'No' at once."
"You know he did, Sophy!" Alicia corroborated him tearfully. "You
told me so yourself, though you never so much as opened your mouth
about The Author; and I don't think that was a bit like you, Sophy.
And why you refused the doctor, I can't for the life of me imagine!"
"Can't you? Well, _I_ can," snorted the doctor, and drew Alicia
closer to him. She put both her hands around his arm.
"What!" gulped The Author, rocking on his red toes, and wrinkling
his nose until his waxed mustache stood out with infernal effect,
and his corked eyebrows climbed into his hair. "What! You, Geddes?
My sainted aunt! Why, man alive, I thought that you--that is I'd
have sworn that you--" Here The Author's breath mercifully failed
him.
I was dumb as a sheep in the hands of the slayers. I could only
blink at these dear people who were tormenting me. I thought of
Jessamine Hynds in her brown silk frock, with the crucifix in her
skeleton fingers and the earth fresh over her. And I couldn't say a
word. And while I stood thus silent, Mr. Nicholas Jelnik walked up
and took my hand in his warm and comforting clasp, and looked at me
with kindling, starry eyes, and laughed a deep-chested laugh.
"Gentlemen and Miss Gaines," said Mr. Jelnik, in a ringing and
vibrant voice, "permit me to inform you that I also have asked Miss
Smith to marry me. And she has done me the honor to accept me."