A Woman Named Smith by Marie Conway Oemler (uplifting novels .txt) π
O'er all there hung a shadow and a fear
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted!
When we opened the great front door, above which was the fan-light of Alicia's hope, just as the round front porch had the big pillars, a damp and moldy air met us. The house had not been opened since Sophronisba's funeral, and everything--stairs, settles, tables, cabinets, pictures, the chairs backed inhospitably
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"What is the matter? For heaven's sake? what is the matter?" I shouted.
"We done dig up de corpses! We done fin' wha'h dat ol' witch 'oman bury de bodies!" howled a workman in reply.
"Imbeciles, asses, beings without brains, listen to me!" shrieked Schmetz, this time in good English. "This corpse is not alive! Never yet was he alive! Return, sons of perdition, and assist me to raise himβmay he fall upon your brain-pans of donkeys!"
As if that had been all that was needed, the last wavering workman flung down his shovel and took to his heels, running like a rabbit and roaring as he ran.
"Schmetz!" called a clear and peremptory voice. "Schmetz! what's the matter over there?"
"Ah! It is Monsieur Jelnik!" bawled Schmetz. "Nom de Dieu, Monsieur Jelnik, come with a great quickness! I have dug from the earth the leetle boy of stoneβyou know him, hein? Those niggers, sacrement! they think they have uncovered the deceased corpse, the victim of Madame the late mistress, with which she made her spells of a sorceress."
"What!" said the voice. "You've found the statue, Schmetz? Ask, my good fellow, if it is permitted that I come and view it."
"Why, of course!" said I, quickly.
"Thank you," said the voice.
There had been a great space cleared in our garden, and on the edge of this, in removing a stubborn gum-tree, the negroes had uncovered what they supposed to be the body of one murdered. Upon our knees, with Schmetz helping us, we were trying to tear away the rotten coverings, and the dirt and mold. And there, beautiful despite the stains disfiguring him, lay the boy Love. The marble pedestal from which he had been removed lay near him. On the base, decipherable, was the sculptor's name, and on one side, in small letters, "Brought from Italy, 1803, by R.H."
"Why, he is perfect!" cried Alicia, joyfully. "Oh, who could have been so stupid and so cruel as to hide away something so lovely? Poor dear little god, aren't you glad to get out of that grave and come back to the sun? Aren't you grateful, little god, that Sophy and I came to Hynds House?"
And at that moment a tall, slim, dark-skinned young man walked up, hands behind his back, and stood there regarding us with eyes as clear and cool as mountain water when the sunlight is upon it and golden flecks come and go in its brown depths. The exquisitely aquiline features, the small black mustache, an indescribably proud and high-bred ease and grace of manner and bearing, were oddly exotic and even more oddly fascinating. His slenderness was as strong as a tempered sword-blade, his quietness was trained power in repose. And the hair of his head was so black that a purplish shadow rested upon it, and so thick that one was minded of Absalom:
... in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty: from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him.
And when he polled his head (for it was at every year's end that he polled it: because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled it:), he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels after the king's weight.
He was so vivid and so new to me that my whole being was breathless with the wonder of him. I knew, of course, that he did not belong to my world at all. King's sons are for princesses, for those human birds of paradise that flash, beautiful and fortunate, in larger spheres than those prosaic paths trodden by a workaday woman named Smith.
"What have you found?" he asked, in a delightful voice.
Alicia looked up. Her face was like the break of day for youngness and freshness, and a wisp of a bright curl misbehaved itself on her cheek, a flirtatious curl that knew exactly how to make the most of its opportunities. The young man's eyes approved of it.
"We have found Love!" cried Alicia, breathlessly. "Sophy and I have found Love in our garden! Isn't it wonderful and impossible and exciting and delightful? But it's true! And it just goes with this whole place!" cried Alicia, morning-eyed and May-faced.
The young man's glance came back to me. I should hate to be untruthful, and have to meet so straight a glance!
"Why, yes. It is impossible, and, like all impossible things, perfectly true," he agreed, with the golden flecks dancing in and out of his eyes and a slow and lazy smile, a sort of secret smile, curving his beautiful, mocking mouth. "Fancy finding Love, of all things, in Sophronisba's garden!" A fine black line of eyebrow went up whimsically. "And now that you have found him," said Mr. Jelnik, "hadn't you better let me help you set him up?"
CHAPTER IV THE HYNDSES OF HYNDS HOUSE
When the fine weather had taken the kinks out of Judge Gatchell's joints, he came to see usβa tall, thin, punctilious, saturnine old gentleman with frosty Scotch eyes and the complexion of a pair of washed khaki trousers. Chaos reigned in Hynds House then, and he was forced to pick his way, like an elderly and cautious cat, between piled-up chairs, tables, and rolls of carpet. In the most stately manner he parted the tails of his skirted coat, seated himself upon the sofa, placed his hat beside him, drew up the knees of his black broadcloth trousers, took off and wiped his spectacles with great thoroughness and deliberation upon a large silk handkerchief, replaced them upon the middle of his Roman nose, cleared his throat, pursed his lips, and drily but clearly talked business.
Great-Aunt Sophronisba would have left a much larger fortune had she been less addicted to lawsuits. You wouldn't think an old soul of almost a hundred could find very much chance to brew mischief, would you? You didn't know Great-Aunt Sophronisba!
I was informed that the case of Scarlett vs. Geddes had been automatically closed by the death of the plaintiff; but I had inherited along with Hynds House:
The case of Scarlett vs. The Vestry and Pastor of St. Polycarp's Church, from whom Mrs. Scarlett sought to recover three paintingsβ"Faith," "Hope," and "Charity"βwhich her father had commissioned a visiting artist to paint, and had then presented to St. Polycarp's, with the stipulation that they should "forever hang in the sacred edifice, reminding the brethren of the Cardinal Virtues of the Christian Religion."
They did hang in the church for a century. Then, when the Ladies' Missionary Society was helping "do over" the parsonage, a faded Faith, a dulled Hope, and a fly-specked Charity were transported thither. Whereupon suit was immediately brought by the donor's daughter, who averred that the church had lost all right and title to the paintings by an action directly contrary to her father's will, and insisted that they should be turned over to herself as sole heiress. It was a nice little case, and called forth an imposing array of counsel. Mrs. Scarlett had added a codicil to her will, leaving me her claim to the three paintings "fraudulently withheld by the pastor and vestrymen of St. Polycarp's Church."
There was, too, the question of the lot on Lafayette Street, between Zion Church on the one hand, and the Y.M.C.A. on the other. Both had tried to buy it; and both had been refused with contumely. Instead, that nice old lady ran up extra-sized bill-boards. Every time the Zionist brethren looked out of their side windows of a Sunday, they had ample opportunity to learn considerable about the art of advertising on bill-boards. And if a circus happened to be coming to Hyndsville, they could count on every child in their Sunday school missing his lesson, unless the text, by a fortunate chance, happened to touch upon the prophet Daniel.
And when the Y.M.C.A. people looked out of their side windows, Sophronisba's alluring bill-boards besought them to smoke only certain cigarettes and to be sure to look for the trademark on their playing-cards. Naturally, this made the Y.M.C.A. secretaries very, very happy.
A weather-beaten picket fence protected the lot upon the street front; the bill-boards formed the side attractions; and in the center front was the monument, a stone of stumbling and offense. It was a neat, plain granite obelisk, which bore this inscription:
This Stone is Erected
By the Affection
of
Sophronisba Hynds Scarlett
To Commemorate the Many Virtues
of
The Most Perfect Gentleman in Hyndsville
Her Bloodhound
NIPPER
"There should have been an open season for Sophronisba," Alicia said with conviction. Then she put her head down and laughed.
The judge looked at her over his glasses, doubtfully. With a slight edge to his voice he referred to the several prosecutions "for wanton and wilful trespassings" upon the closed, barbed-wire lane behind Hynds House. As the strip in question was not a public thoroughfare, and Mrs. Scarlett had rock-ribbed titles covering it, she could close it; and she did, greatly to the inconvenience of her immediate neighbors, particularly Doctor Richard Geddes.
"There is something to be said for Mrs. Scarlett's methods," said the judge dryly. "The Lafayette Street bill-boards are the best-paying ones in Hyndsville. As to closing the lane, Miss Smith, let me remind you that Doctor Geddes, although an estimable man and a very able physician, is not at all backward in coming forward in a quarrel. He greatly angered my late client."
"Nevertheless, that barbed wire comes down. He may use the lane whenever he wants to," I decided.
The judge bowed. "And now," he said, politely, "let us take up the case of Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, if you please. It was Mrs. Scarlett's wish that you should be fully informed concerning Mr. Jelnik's antecedents, that you might be on your guard."
"Against Mr. Jelnik? But, good heavens, why? Why?" I was beginning to get angry. "Let me see: I am to make myself odious to Mr. Jelnik, and I am to refuse to allow a physician to run his car through a barren strip of weeds and sand, because they are her relatives and she hated her relatives. I am to vex the souls of harmless Christians with bill-posters of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and I'm to pay taxes on a lot that's been turned into a cemetery for a hound dog. I'm to fight St. Polycarp's Church, for a couple of chromos I should probably loathe.βI don't like pictures of cardinal virtues, anyhow. It altogether depends on who possesses them as to whether I can stand for the cardinal virtues themselves."
"Faith looking up, and Charity looking down, and Hope hanging to an anchor, something like Britannia-Rules-the-Waves. Make the church keep them, please, Sophy!" begged Alicia.
Judge Gatchell made an odd noise in his throat.
"One of my little granddaughters, taken to Saint Polycarp's by her mother, asked, 'Mamma, who is that big woman up there with the pick-axe?' And they told her," said the Judge, scathingly, "they told her it was Hope!
"When the vestry came to me about the case, I reminded them that Aholah and Aholibah were damned for doting upon paintings on the wall, painted in vermilion, which in plain English is Scarlett!" A covenanting gleam shot into his frosty eyes, and the old fighting Scotch blood showed for a second in his lank cheek. He was a godly man, and when he saw confusion in the ranks of the Philistines, he rejoiced.
"I can't help who was damned," said I. "My job is to live in peace with my neighbors. St. Polycarp's people may hang their Virtues wherever they please, for all of me."
Did a faint, faint shade of regret flit over the parchment-like face? It seemed so to me. But he said, composedly:
"You must act according to your best judgment. And now, please, let us go back to Mr. Nicholas Jelnik."
We rather prided ourselves upon the possession of so pleasant a neighbor, and we said so.
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