Miss Emmeline reflected. She looked at Alicia and me.
"Could we have it in your delightful library?" she wondered. "That beautiful old room has a soul which speaks to mine. Dear Miss Smith, would it be too much to ask you to let me have my little talk, a very informal little lecture, in wonderful old Hynds House?"
Mrs. Haile turned a sort of greenish pink. It wasn"t for her to suggest, after that, that it might be better to have the lecture in the parsonage; any more than for me to hint, without ungraciousness, that it might be just as well not to have it in Hynds House. Alicia shot me one quizzical, Irish-blue glance when I said, "Yes."
And that"s how, on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, all Hyndsville came to Hynds House to hear Miss Emmeline Phelps-Parsons tell them "How to Reach the Women of the East." Somehow, I rather think they were as curious about two Yankee women as they were about those Eastern women of whom Miss Emmeline was talking. I"m sure Hynds House was just as interesting to them as Mohammedan harems and Indian zenanas.
Miss Emmeline really spoke well, and her audience was interested in her, in her theme, and in Hynds House. The Suffragist picked up the thread where the less gifted woman dropped it, and in simple, living phrases drove home the great truth of the sisterhood of all women.
Which, of course, called for tea, and some of Mary Magdalen"s cookies. It was the cookies that caught The Author. Coming in from a long and hungry prowl, he spied Fernolia crossing the hall with a huge platter, got one tantalizing, mouth-watering odor, and dashed after her, bent upon robbery. A second later he found himself in a room full of women. Hyndsville was meeting The Author!
Alicia introduced him, pleasantly. And, "Talk about angels--" said she, gaily, "We have just this minute stopped talking about the heathen! And may I give you a cup of tea?"
"And a dozen or so cookies, please. Thank heaven for the heathen!
What is home without the heathen?--Without sugar, Miss Gaines, without sugar! And for charity"s sake, no lemon!"
He sipped his tea and munched his cookies, with his head on one side and the air of a thievish jackdaw; and proceeded, after his wont, to extract such pith as the situation offered.
"Doctor Johnson," Miss Martha Hopkins remembered, as she watched him drinking his fourth cup of tea, "Doctor Johnson was also addicted to tea-drinking. Most great literary men are, I believe."
"It isn"t possible you consider old Johnson a great literary man!"
The Author"s eyebrows climbed into his hair.
"Why! wasn"t he?" Her eyes widened. She had as much respect for Dr.
Johnson as Miss Deborah Jenkyns had, though of course she never read him. Life is too short.
"Why! was he?" asked The Author. "Outside of Boswell--and _he_ was a fool--I"ve never known anybody who thought he amounted to much."
The Suffragist looked up. "Nelson had his Southey, Boswell had his Johnson, and Mr. Modern Best-seller may well profit by their example." And she smiled grimly.
The Author"s lip lifted. "Oh, but you couldn"t do it!" he purred.
"And if I offered you the job you"d excuse your incapacity on the ground that there wasn"t anything to write about. I know you!" He took another cooky.
"Yes, I dare say I"d blurt out the truth. Women are like that,"
admitted The Suffragist.
"The female of the species is more deadly than the male," conceded The Author. "Nevertheless," he raised his tea-cup gallantly, "To the ladies!" He got up, leisurely. "And now I go," said he, "to paint the lily and adorn the rose. In short, to set forth in adequate and remunerative language the wit, wisdom, virtue, beauty, and ornateness of woman as she thinks men think she is. Nature,"
reflected The Author, smiling at The Suffragist, "made me a writer.
The devil, the editors, and the women have made me a best-seller."
And he departed, a cooky in each hand.
That night one of the Gatch.e.l.l boys took Alicia to a dance. She was in blue and white, like an angel, and the Gatch.e.l.l boy trod on air.
But to me came Doctor Richard Geddes, and threw himself into a wing-chair.
"Sophronisba Two," he asked, we being alone in the library, "what have I done to offend Alicia?"
"Is Alicia offended?"
"Isn"t she?" wondered the doctor. "She won"t let me get near enough to find out," he added gloomily. "And it isn"t just. She ought to know that--well, that I"d rather cut off my right hand than give her real cause for offense. I"m going to ask you a straight, man question; is that girl a--a flirt? She is not a--jilt?"
"Heaven forbid!"
"Does she care for anybody else?"
"On my honor, I don"t know."
"It couldn"t be any of these whipper-snappers of boys: she"s not that sort," worried the doctor. "Sophy, is it--Jelnik?"
My heart stood still. I could make no reply.
"I don"t know. My dear friend, I don"t know!"
"It would be the most natural thing in the world," he reflected.
"Jelnik looks like Prince Charming himself. And, for all his surface indolence, there"s genius in the man. Why shouldn"t she be taken with him?"
We looked at each other.
"I see," said the doctor, quietly. "Now, little friend, what concerns you and me is our dear girl"s happiness. Does Jelnik care, do you think?"
"I don"t know!" I said again. I felt like one on the rack. It seemed to me I could hear my heart-strings stretching and snapping. "But what is one girl"s affection to a man born to be loved by women?"
"He is indifferent to women, for the most part," the doctor said thoughtfully. "He is so free from vanity, and at the same time so reserved, that one has difficulty in getting at his real feelings."
"She, also, is free from petty vanity," I told him. "She has an innocent, happy pleasure in her own youth and prettiness, but hers is the unspoiled heart of a child."
"Who should know it better than I, that am a great hulking, bad-tempered fellow twice her age!" groaned the doctor. "Yet, Sophy, _I_ could make her happier than Jelnik could. Dear and lovely as she is, she couldn"t make him happy, either--Don"t you think I"m a fool, Sophy?"
"No," said I, smiling wanly; "I don"t."
"This business of being in love is a d.a.m.nable arrangement. Here was I," he grumbled, "busy, reasonably happy, with a sound mind in a sound body, and a digestion that was a credit to me. And along comes a girl, and everything"s changed! My work doesn"t fill my days, my food is bitter in my mouth, and I wake up in the night saying to myself, "You fool, you"re chasing rainbows!" Sophy, don"t you ever fall in love with somebody you know you can"t have! It"s h.e.l.l!"
I didn"t tell him I knew it.
One of his men came to tell him he was needed urgently. As it meant a thirty-mile trip and the night was cold, I made him wait for a cup of coffee and an omelet."
"Miss Smith--"
"You said "Sophy" a while ago. "Sophy" sounds all right to me."
"It sounds fine to me, too, Sophy." And he reached out and seized my hand with a grip that made me wince.
"I told you I was a bear!" he said, regretfully.
When Alicia returned, she came, as usual, to my room.
"I am tired!" she yawned, and curled herself up on the bed.
"Didn"t you have a nice time?"