A Woman Named Smith Part 33

"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 circ.u.mstances, 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 compa.s.sion. 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 G.o.d 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.sy, 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. n.o.body 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sionate 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d! 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 s...o...b.. 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 n.o.body would dream of looking for them. Women always choose hiding-places like that, and the notion would suit s...o...b..'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 s.p.a.ce, 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!