DEEP WATERS
Somewhere, far, far off, a faint and feeble little light glimmered,
one small point of light in vast blackness. In the whole universe
there wasn't anything or anybody but just that tiny light, and swift
black water, and drowning me. Something deep within me--I think
occultists call it the body-spirit--was clamoring frantically to
hold fast to the light, because if that went under I should go
under, too. I tried to keep my eyes upon the trembling spark.
Whereupon the light changed to a sound, the monotonous insistence of
which forced me to be worriedly aware of it. It was--why, it was a
voice, calling, over and over and over again, "_Sophy! Sophy!_"
Somebody was calling _me_. With an immense effort I managed to raise
my eyelids. I was lying in a bed, and caught a drowsy, fleeting
glimpse of four posts.
Four posts upon my bed,
Four angels for my head,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
Bless the bed that I lie on!
Granny used to say that for me at night; only she had said "four
hangels for my 'ead," at which I used to giggle into my pillows. I
hadn't felt so close to Granny since I was little Sophy, in the
rooms over our shop in Boston. She was somewhere around me; if I
went to sleep now, she'd be there when I woke up in the morning. But
the sound that was a calling voice wouldn't let me go to sleep.
Slowly, heavily, I managed to get my eyes open again.
"Look at me!" said the voice imperiously. Two large dark eyes caught
my wavering glance and held it, as in a vise. "Sophy! Sophy! _I need
you._"
Said another voice, then, brokenly: "For mercy's sake, Jelnik, let
her go in peace!"
"No, she sha'n't die. I won't have it!--Sophy, come back! It is I
who call you, Sophy. Come back!"
My stiff lips moved. "Must go--sleep," I tried to say.
"No, I forbid you to go to sleep, Sophy!" His dark eyes, full of
life and compelling power, held my tired and dimmed ones, his firm,
warm hands held my cold and inert fingers. "My love, my dear love,
stay. You have got to stay, Sophy. Don't you understand? You can't
go, Sophy!"
My dulled brain stumblingly laid hold upon a thought: _Nicholas
Jelnik was calling me. He was calling me because he loved me._ One
simply can't go down into sleep and darkness, when a miracle like
that is climbing like the morning-star into one's skies.
"Stay!" he said, his lips against my ear. "Sophy! My love, my dear
love, stay!"
But although he held me close, I could feel myself being drawn away.
There must have been that in my straining glance that made him
aware, for of a sudden he cried out, lifted me bodily in his arms,
and kissed me on the mouth.
My heart quite stopped beating, as a spent runner pauses, that he
may gather new strength to go on. With a sigh I fell back; but not
into the water and the dark.
"By God, you've pulled her through, Jelnik!" cried the voice of
Richard Geddes.
Came vague sounds, stirs, movements, hands upon me. Then oblivion
again.
I woke up one pleasant forenoon to find a brisk and capable young
woman in white sitting in my room, her head bent over the piece of
linen she was hemming. She was a healthy, handsome young woman, with
hard, firm cheeks, hard, firm lips, and professional eyes and
glasses. She glanced up and met my wan stare.
"What are you doing here, if you please?" I asked politely.
"I have been nursing you, Miss Smith. You have been quite ill, you
know."
I lay there looking at that self-contained, trained young woman,
with feelings of almost ludicrous astonishment. I remembered the
skidding car; and Richard Geddes lying with his head on Alicia's
knees, and how we had both thought him dead; and myself sitting in
the dust; and then the pain. But it was astounding news that I had
been very badly hurt full three weeks ago!
Alicia stole in and, seeing me awake, tried to smile, but cried
instead, with a wet cheek against my hand. A few minutes later
Doctor Geddes himself appeared. It was enough to scandalize any
self-contained nurse to see a six-foot-three doctor behave in the
most abandoned and unbedside manner!
"Sophy!" gulped the doctor, "oh, deuce take you, Sophronisba Two,
what do you mean by scaring honest folks half out of their wits?"
The nurse was destined to receive another shock. Richard of the Lion
Heart dropped down on his knees beside Alicia, and laid his bearded
cheek against my wan one, and for a while couldn't speak. Alicia
tried to get her slender arms around him, and couldn't.
"I think," ventured the nurse, in level tones, "that the patient
had better not be excited. Shall I give her a stimulant, doctor?"
"The patient's on the highroad to getting well," said the doctor.
"And we're the best of all stimulants, aren't we, Sophy?"
When I began to get stronger, the dream which had haunted my illness
came back with astonishing vividness and haunted my waking hours. I
knew it was a dream, for of course I hadn't been in black water, I
hadn't strained toward a light upon the flood, and of course, I
hadn't really heard Nicholas Jelnik calling my name; and the kiss
was part of the fantasy. I watched him stealthily, this cool,
collected, impersonal young man, to whom even the efficient nurse
was astonishingly respectful, and pure laughter seized me at the
idea of _his_ crying aloud, being as agitated, as passionate, as
fiercely insistent, as he had been in the vision.
I ventured to put a part of the vagary to the acid test:
"Alicia, I wasn't thrown out again, into water, was I?"
"No. That was delirium, dear. You were frightfully ill for a while,
Sophy." Her face paled. "So ill that The Author fled, because he
wouldn't stay in the house and see--what we expected to see. He said
it would permanently shatter his nerves. But he has wired every day
since."
"It was sensible of him to go. And it's kind of him to wire." I said
no more about the water.
"Everybody has been kind. And it wasn't duty kindness, either. It
was kind kindness!" said Alicia, lucidly. "Do you know what they're
saying in Hyndsville now? They're saying old Sophronisba played a
joke on herself." She left me to digest that as best I might.
It isn't pleasant to be ill anywhere. But it isn't altogether
unpleasant to be on the sick list in South Carolina. Everybody is
anxious about you. Old ladies with palm-leaf fans in their tireless
hands come and sit with you. They aren't brilliant old ladies, you
understand. I know some whose secular library consists of the
Complete Works of John Esten Cooke, Gilmore Simms's War Poems of the
South, and a thumbed copy of Father Ryan. But add to these the
Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Imitation of Christ, and
it doesn't make such a bad showing. It's astonishing how soothing
the companionship of women fed upon this pabulum can be, when the
things of the world are of necessity set aside for a space, and the
simpler things of the spirit draw near.
Old gentlemen in well-brushed clothes and immaculate, exquisitely
darned linen, call daily with small gifts of fruit and flowers, and
send you messages from which you infer that the sun won't be able to
shine properly until you come outside again. And there isn't a
housekeeper of your acquaintance who hasn't got you on her mind:
there are sent to you steaming bowls of perfect soup, flaky rolls
and golden cake, jeweled jellies, and cool, enticing, trembly things
in glass dishes. And when you can sit up for more than an hour or
two at a time, why, then you know what it really means to have South
Carolina neighbors.
Doctor Geddes made me spend my days in the garden that Schmetz had
labored upon with such loving-kindness, and that in consequence was
become a marvel of bloom and scent. Every butterfly in South
Carolina must have visited that garden. I hadn't known there were
that many butterflies in the world. All the florist-shop windows in
New York, that I had once paused before with envy and longing, were
stinted and poor and pale before the living, out-o'-doors wonder of
it. Florist shops haven't any bees, nor birds, nor butterflies, nor
trees that wave their green branches at you like friendly hands.
A flowering vine festooned the marble Love, and one great scarlet
spray of bloom flamed upon his marble torch, "so lyrically," Miss
Martha Hopkins said, that she was moved to write a poem about it. I
thought it a very nice poem, and I said so, when she read it to us.
But Doctor Geddes, who doesn't care for poetry, except Robert
Burns's, rubbed his nose.
"Oh, well, your grandmother and your aunts used to make
antimacassars and wall-pockets and paper flowers," he ruminated.
"Why shouldn't you make poetry if you feel like it?"
"You are to be pitied, Richard," said Miss Martha, with crushing
charity. "Such a disposition! And the older you grow the worse it
gets."
"Confound it, Martha!--"
"I do," said she.
Alicia looked at Richard with impersonal eyes. She looked at the
ruffled center of culture.
"Don't pay any attention to him, Miss Martha," she said, with a
charming smile. "Your poem is very pretty, and he knows it."
"He means well," said Miss Martha, resignedly.
"Now, you look here, Martha!" the doctor said angrily, "I won't have
anybody telling me to my face I mean well. You might as well call me
a fool outright."
"You are far from being a fool, Richard. And you do mean well.
Everybody knows that."
He turned appealingly to his dear Leetchy, and received his first
lesson in Domestic Science.
"Miss Martha is right, Richard," she decided.
"Leetchy," the doctor asked, when the mollified Miss Hopkins had
departed, "why did Martha go off grinning?"
"How should I know?" wondered Alicia, innocently. Then she looked at
him with Irish eyes: "Have you had your lunch, dear?" she asked.
"Lunch?" He looked bewildered.
"Because I'm going to fix Sophy's lunch now, and you may have yours
with her, if you like. I love to wait on you, Richard," she added,
and a beautiful color flooded her face.
He caught his breath. When she went back to the house, his eyes
followed her adoringly.
"Sophy," he said, huskily, "what does she see in me? Do you think
I'm good enough for _her_, Sophy?"
"I think you are quite good enough even for Alicia."
When he had gone, Alicia sat with her head against my knees. Of late
a touching gravity, a sweet seriousness, had settled upon her. Her
love for the big doctor was singularly clear-eyed and far-seeing.
There were going to be times when every ounce of skill, tact,
patience, love itself, would be called upon, for the reins must be
gossamer-light, invisible, but always firm and sure, that should
guide and tone down so impatient and fiery a nature as his. It was
very easy to love him; it wasn't always going to be easy to live
with him, and Alicia knew it. But she also knew, with a faith beyond
all failing, that this was her high, destined, heaven-ordained job.
"Sophy darlin', I'm deplorably young, am I not?" she sighed.
"You'll get over it."
"Do you think I'll make him a good wife, Sophy?"
"I am absolutely certain," I said, "that you'll make him a good
husband. Which is far more important."
Alicia hugged my knees, and laughed. Then, seeing Mr. Nicholas
Jelnik approaching, she scrambled to her feet, picked up the tray of
empty dishes, and went back to the house.
Neither she nor the doctor had asked me so much as one question
about Mr. Jelnik. As if by tacit understanding that subject was
avoided. And because I hadn't anything to tell them, I, too, held my
peace.
He raised my hand to his lips, dropped into a chair, and bared his
forehead to the soft wind.
"How good that feels!" he sighed. "Fräulein, may one smoke?" And
receiving permission he smoked for a while, comfortably, leaning
back with half-closed eyes.
"Achmet salaams to you, _hanoum_," he said presently. "You have won
his heart of a true believer. Even Daoud demands daily news of you."
"I particularly like The Jinnee. I should like to have him around
me. And Daoud is highly ornamental."
"When is The Author coming back? Or is he coming back?" he asked
abruptly.
"Oh, yes. He will be here for the wedding. So will Miss Emmeline."
After a long pause, and with an evident effort:
"I have been thinking," he said, "that perhaps it was unfortunate I
came between you and The Author. Perhaps," he added deliberately,
"it would have been better had you let your common sense gain the
day."
I don't know why, but just at that moment the dear and haunting
dream of having been lifted out of deep waters and kissed back to
life, cradled in this man's arms, came to me with peculiar
poignancy. Of a sudden I laughed aloud.
"Oh, I'm just remembering a dream I had, when I was ill," I told
him, in answer to his look of surprise.
"It must have been a very amusing dream," said he, staring at me
thoughtfully.
"Oh, very! Quite absurd. But go on. You were by way of advising me
to marry The Author, were you not?"
His hands on the arms of the wicker chair clenched. He half rose,
thought better of it, and sank back.
"I was saying that it might have been better for you," he said,
breathing quickly. "In all probability you would have accepted him,
had I not been here to--blunder into the affair."
"He mightn't have asked me, if you hadn't been here to blunder into
the affair," said I, composedly. "Let us drop the subject, please. I
shall never marry The Author." It gave me a sense of relief and
freedom to hear myself say that. "I can't marry The Author."
He went pale. "Sophy--you can't marry me, either," he said.
"Of course not." I wondered at myself for being so calm and
collected. "I knew that all along. You care for another woman. You
told me so, you know."
"I told you no such thing," he said. "I told you I cared for a
woman, but that there was another man. Now I've just been told she
has no idea of accepting the other man. In spite of all he has to
offer, she isn't going to marry him." His face was at once ecstatic
and tortured. "_Why_ won't you marry the other man, Sophy?"
"Because of a dream I dreamed, when I was sick," I said
noncommittally.
"Ah! And did you dream that somebody called you--and held you--and
wouldn't let you go?"
"I never told you!" I cried.
"No need, Sophy. It was to me you came back." Of a sudden his head
drooped. "And now I can't marry you!"
"Why can't you?"
"Because I'm a beggar."
Nicholas Jelnik a beggar couldn't find lodgment in my brain. I could
only stare at him incredulously.
"I learned some time ago that things were not altogether right over
yonder, but I hadn't the ghost of an idea that my entire estate was
involved; that while I'd been 'tramping'--I'll use Judge Gatchell's
word--the men in whose hands I placed too much power had taken
advantage of it. A very common, every-day story, you see.
"Remains the fact that I'm stripped to the bone. The estate's wiped
out. And," he added, with a grave smile, "I haven't even discovered
the mythical Hynds jewels. Now you see, Sophy, why I can't marry
you."
"I see why you think you can't."
He flushed to the roots of his black hair. Hynds-Jelnik pride rose
in arms.
"I should cut rather a sorry figure marrying the owner of Hynds
House, in the present circumstances," he said curtly. "You will
remember that The Author called me an adventurer! I have told you I
have nothing."
"Aren't you forgetting your profession?"
"No. But I neglected that, too, Sophy. The _Wanderlust_ had me in
its grip."
"What do you propose to do?"
"I shall leave here, put in some months of hard study, and then
fight my way upward. My father was the greatest alienist of his
generation, and I was trained under his eye. But in the meantime--"
"Yes. In the meantime, what of _me_?" I asked.
He winced as if he had been struck. "You are free," he said, in a
whisper.
"I am free to be free, and you're free to set me free. You never
asked me to marry you, in the first place," I agreed quietly.
Stupefaction seized him. He put his hands to his head.
"Why, Sophy! Why, Sophy!" he stammered. Of a sudden he straightened
his shoulders, and stood erect: "Miss Smith," he said, with grave
politeness, "will you do me the honor to marry me?" and he waited.
"It is rather a belated request, Mr. Jelnik. Besides, you haven't
told me why you want to marry me," said I, sedately.
"You are well aware that I love you, Sophy. And I think you care for
me in return. Why did you turn that coin when it meant 'Go,' and bid
me, instead, 'Stay'? Was it because you cared, Sophy?"
"Yes, Mr. Jelnik: it was because I cared. I cared enough to tell
a--a lie. And--I shall say yes to your other question, Mr. Jelnik."
But he shook his head. "Ah, no, my dear! You'd be called upon to
make too many sacrifices. I couldn't bear that!"
"A man needn't be worried about the sacrifices a woman makes for him
when she knows he loves her."
"Not in normal circumstances; not when he can give as much as he
takes."
"Hynds House," I said, "is costing me a steep and bitter price, Mr.
Jelnik!"
"Do I not also pay?" he asked fiercely.
"Oh, you have your pride!" said I, wearily; "Hynds pride!"
"A poor enough possession, Sophy, but all that remains to me," he
said gently. "Is it a light thing for Nicholas Jelnik to say to the
woman he loves, 'I cannot marry you: I am a beggar'? Is it such a
small sacrifice to give you up, Sophy?"
"It would appear so."
"You crucify me!" he said, in a choking voice. "Good God, don't you
understand that I love you?"
"I don't understand anything, except that you are going away from
me. And I have waited for you all my life," I said.
"And I for you! and I for you!" he said passionately. "Don't make it
too hard for me, Sophy!"
"If you go away from me," I gasped, "I think I shall die.
Nicholas--I can't bear it! It was easier for me when I thought you
loved somebody else. But now that I know you love _me_" and I
paused.
He took a step forward, but stopped. His arms fell to his sides.
"Not as a beggar!" he said. "Not as a beggar! Never that, for
Nicholas Jelnik! I love you too much for that, Sophy. I love you not
only for yourself, but for my own best self, too, my dearest."
For a moment he stood there, regarding me fixedly. It was a long
look, of suffering, of love, of pride, of unyielding resolve. Then
he lifted my hand to his lips, bowed, and left me.
I sat staring over the garden. I wondered if, somewhere on the other
side of things, Great-Aunt Sophronisba wasn't snickering.