CHAPTER V
"THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF"
Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, with an uplift of his fine black brows and asatirical smile, once diagnosed the case of Great-Aunt SophronisbaScarlett as "congenital Hyndsitis"; Doctor Richard Geddes said you'donly to take a glance at her house to see that she was predestinedto be damned. _I_ know that she was so hidebound in her prejudices,so virulently conservative, so constitutionally opposed to change,that anything savoring of modernity was anathema to her.
That old woman would as lief have had what remained of her teethpulled out as have parted with anything once brought into HyndsHouse. She preserved everything, good, bad, indifferent. You'd findluster cider jugs, maybe a fine toby, old Chinese ginger jars, andthe quaintest of Dutch schnapps bottles, cheek by jowl with an ironwarming-pan, a bootjack, a rusty leather bellows, and a box packedwith empty patent-medicine bottles, under the pantry shelf. Ahelmet creamer would be full of little rolls of twine, odd buttons,a wad of beeswax, a piece of asafetida, elastic bands, and corks.She had used a Ridgway platter with a view of the Hudson River onit, as a dinner plate for her hound, for we found it wrapped up,with "Nipper's platter" scrawled on the paper.
By and large, it wasn't an easy task to renovate a brick barracksfinished in 1735, and occupied for ninety-nine years by a lady ofSophronisba's parts; though I sha'n't tell how we had to tackle itroom by room, nor of the sweating hours spent in, so to speak,separating the sheep things from the goat things. I can't helpstopping for a minute, though, to gloat over the front drawing-roomthat presently emerged, with a cleaned carpet that proved to be amarvel of hand-woven French art, rosewood sofas and chairsupholstered in royal blue and rubbed to satiny-browny blackness, twogloriously inlaid tables, and a Venetian mirror between two windows.
We gave the place of honor on the white marble mantel to a porcelainpainting Alicia found in a work-box--the picture of a woman in graybrocade sprigged with pink-and-blue posies, a lace fichu about herslim shoulders, and a cap with a rose in it covering her partedbrown hair. The little boy leaning against her knees had darker blueeyes, and fairer hair pushed back from a bold and manly forehead.The painting was about the size of a modern cabinet photograph, and,though pleasing and spirited, was evidently the work of a giftedamateur. What gave it potent meaning and appeal was the inscriptionlettered on the back:
_Mrs. Lydia Hariott Hynds & Rich'd. Hynds Ag'd 7 Paint'd for Col'nl. J.H. Hynds by his Affec. Neece Jessamine_
You couldn't help loving him, the little "Richard Ag'd 7." There wasthat in the face which won you instantly; it was so clear-eyed, sogallant, so brave, so _honest_. So we gave him and his pretty, meekmother the place of honor in the room that had once heard hislaughter and seen her tears. And we brought down-stairs the finepainting of Colonel James Hampden, who was the splendid colonial inclaret-color that we had so much admired, and hung him and a smallerpainting marked, "Jessamine, Aged 22" where they could look down onthose two.
These were the only pictures allowed in that room, and they gave toit an atmosphere flavored most sweetly of yesterday. Indeed, I thinkthey must have approved of the room altogether, for we hadn'tchanged so much as we'd restored it. Even the glass shades thatuse'd to shield their wax candles were in their old places. Therewas their old-world atmosphere of stateliness; their Chinese jars,their English vases, their beautiful old Chelsea figures; and thesampler so painstakingly
_Work'd by Ann Eliza Hynds Ag'd 9 Yrs. 2 Mos., Nov'r, 1757_
that had been carefully framed and mounted as a small fire-screen,perhaps for Ann Eliza's lady mama or proud grandmother. It was suchhuman and intimate things, the mute mementoes of children who hadpassed, that made us begin to love Hynds House, for all its bignessand uncanniness and dilapidation.
We did discover one human touch laid upon the place by Sophronisbaherself. She had gathered together a full set of small, hand-coloredphotographs of Confederate generals, wrapped them in a hand-madeConfederate flag, into which was tucked a receipt signed by JudahBenjamin for Hynds silver melted into a bar and given to the Cause,written, "The glory is departed," across the package, and hidden it.Alicia, who had a hankering after Confederates, herself, put thephotographs in a leather-covered album at least as old asthemselves, and kept them sacredly. She said these were America'sown vanquished and vanished Trojans, and that one got a lump in thethroat remembering how
Fallen are those walls that were so good, And corn grows now where Troy town stood.
Schmetz brought us our upholsterer, Riedriech the cabinet-maker,most cunning of craftsmen, who knew all there is to know about oldfurniture and just what should and shouldn't be done to it. Inaddition he was a grizzled, bearded, shambling old angel who clungto a reeking pipe and Utopian notions, a pestilent and whole-heartedsocialist who would call the President of the United States or thepresident of the Plumbers' Union "Comrade" equally, and who putpropagandist literature in everything but our hair.
"Mr. Riedriech," you would say reproachfully, "yesterday Idiscovered Karl Marx and Jean Jaures lurking behind my coffee-potand Fourier under the butter-dish. To-day I find Karl Kautsky inambush behind the cream-jug and Frederick Engels under the rolls."
Riedriech would regard you paternally, placidly, benevolently,through his large, brass-rimmed spectacles:
"So? Little by little the drop of water the granite wears away. Igive you the little leaflet, the little pamphlet, _und_ by and bycomes the little hole in your head."
Thank heaven the doctor next door didn't hear that!
Alicia knew how to handle the old visionary with innocent butconsummate skill. Looking at the kind old bear with her Irish eyes:
"It must be a wonderful thing to have such mastery of one's tools,to know exactly what to do and how to do it," she would sigh."'Tisn't everybody can be a master craftsman!"
"I show you in a little while what iss cabinet-making!" he saidproudly. "I do more yet by you," he added charitably, "then makeover for you chairs and tables and such, already: I make over foryou your little mind."
The old socialist did indeed show us what cabinet-making can be. Heturned the office behind the library into a workroom, and from itSophronisba's tattered and torn and forlorn old things emerged,piece by piece, in shining rosewood and walnut and mahogany majesty.If you love old furniture; if it gives you a thrill just to touch aperiod chair of incomparable grace, or the smooth surface of an oldtable, or the curve of a carved sofa, you'll understand Alicia'sopen rapture and my more sedate delight.
The tiled fireplace in the library was really the feature ofHynds House. There wasn't any mantel: the fireplace was sunk intothe wall, and above it and the book-cases on each side was aspace filled with more relics than all the rest of the housecontained--portraits, signed and framed documents, letters, oldflags, and a whole arsenal of weapons. Above the fireplace hung theportrait of Freeman Hynds--thin, dark, austere, more like aCameronian Scotsman than a Carolina gentleman of an easy habit oflife.
However, it was not portrait or relics that made the roomremarkable, but the tiles, each a portrait of a Revolutionary hero.Laurens, Marion, Lafayette, Pulaski, von Steuben--there they were inbuff and blue, martial, in cocked hats, and with such awe-inspiringnoses! The center and largest tile was, of course, the Father of hisCountry, without the hat, but with the nose, and above him theoriginal flag, with the thirteen stars for the thirteen weak-kneedlittle states that were to grow into the great empire of freedomthat the high-nosed, high-hearted soldiers fought for and founded.Alicia and I touched those tiles with reverence. They were the prideof our hearts.
As often happens in the South, there were bedrooms on the lowerfloor; two of them, in fact, on one side of the hall. The front onehad been not only locked but padlocked; the windows had been nailedon the inside, and heavy wooden shutters nailed on the outside. Solong had the room been closed that dry-rot had set in. The silkquilt on the four-poster was falling to pieces, the linen was asyellow
as beeswax, and the sheets made one think of the FlyingDutchman's sails. This room was of almost monastic severity: anascetic or a stern soldier might have occupied it. Besides the bedit contained four chairs, a clothes-press, a secretary, and ashaving-stand. On a small table near the bed were a Wedgwood mortarwith a heavy pestle, a medicine glass, and a pewter candlestickturned as black as iron. The press in the corner still held a fewclothes, threadbare and sleazy, and in the desk were some dryletters and a Business Book--at least, that's how it wasmarked--with lists of names, each having an occupation or task setdown opposite it, I suppose the names of long-dead slaves. On thefly-leaf was written, in a neat and very legible hand, "_FreemanHynds_."
"Sophy!" Alicia's voice had an edge of awe. "This must have been hisroom. I believe he died here, in this very bed. And afterward theyshut the room up; and it hasn't been opened until now."
We looked at the old bed, and seemed to see him there, trying toraise himself, crying out so piteously upon dead Richard's name,only to fall back a dead man himself. What had he wanted to tell, ashe lay there dying? His painted face in the library was not a badman's face. It was proud, stern, stubborn, bigoted; a dark, unhappyface, but neither an evil nor a cruel one. What was it that reallylay between those two brothers? After more than a hundred years, wewere as much in the dark as they in whose day it had happened andwhose lives it had wrecked.
We built a fire in the long-disused chimney to take the dampness outof the room, and forced open the windows to let in the good sun andwind. Over in one corner, pushed in between the clothes-press andthe side wall, was, of all things, a prie-dieu; and upon it a dustyBible with his name on the fly-leaf. Nor was it a book kept for idleshow; it plainly had been read, perhaps wept over by a torturedheart, for it fell open at that cry of all sad hearts, theFifty-first Psalm. I was moving this prie-dieu, when my foot slippedon the bare floor and I dropped it with a crash. Fortunately it wasnot injured. But what had looked like a mere line of carving on theouter edge of the small shelf--rather a thick and heavy shelf nowthat one examined it carefully--had been struck smartly, releasing acunning spring. There opened out a thin slit of a drawer, just bigenough to hold a flat book bound in leather and stamped with twoletters, "F.H." On the fly-leaf appeared, in his own neat, finescript, "_The Diary of Freeman Hynds, Esqr._"
The thing seemed incredible, impossible. His own daughter hadevidently been unaware of the existence of this book, which he hadnot had time to destroy. And we, as by a miracle, had fallen uponit--and perhaps the truth!
It was written in so fine and small a hand as was only possible tothe users of goose-quill pens; and this tiny, faded, brown writingon the yellowed pages covered a period of years. He had not been oneto waste words. Once or twice, as we hurriedly turned the pages,appeared the name "Emily." Mostly it seemed a dry, uninterestingthing, a mere memorandum, where a single entry might cover a wholeyear.
It was impossible for us to stop our work to read it then and there,or to do more than give it a cursory glance. We turned feverishly tothose years that covered, as we figured, the period of the Hyndstragedy. And he had written:
This day was Accus'd Rich'd. my Bro. of robbing us of our Jewells. He protests he knows Naught & my Mthr. believes him as doth Emily. Has a true Heart, Emily. Horrid Confusion & my Fthr. Confound'd.
Impatiently I turned over the pages, raging to read the end, myheart pounding and fluttering.
Two nights since dy'd Scipio, son of old Shooba's wife, the which did send for me--
Thus far had I read, Alicia and I sitting head to head on the hallstairs. In came Schmetz the gardener, raving, gesticulating, andafter him old Uncle Adam, stepping delicately, and with a placatingsmile on his wrinkled countenance.
"Those bulbs that I have planted under the windows of you," ravedSchmetz, "the demon hens of _le docteur_ Geddes are with their pawsupturning! They upturn with rapidity and completeness, led by ashameless hog of a rooster. Is it the orders of you that I devastatethose fowls, Mademoiselle?"
Schmetz was furiously angry, and small wonder. Those had been choicebulbs, some of which he had presented me from his own cherishedstore--freesias, daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, and the starrednarcissus, "such as Proserpine let fall, from Dis's wagon."
"Oh, our flowers!" wailed Alicia, springing to her feet; "and wecounting on those bulbs for Christmas!"
I shut Freeman's diary with a snap. Hens were more immediate.
"Put it in the drawer of the library table," called Alicia, runningout with Schmetz at her heels. "We'll read it to-night."
When I had done so, closing the door after me, I too ran outside,where some enormous black-and-white hens, led by the biggest roosterI had ever seen, were completing the utter destruction of ourflower bed.
We charged down upon them, and they ran to and fro, after the stupidfashion of fowls. Back and forth Alicia, Schmetz, and I chased thosebrutes; but Adam stood with folded hands, looking on from a safe andsane distance. He refused to have anything to do with Geddes fowlsin ol' Mis' Scarlett's yard. Just then the huge rooster ran into myskirts, all but upsetting me. It was the work of a strenuous momentto seize him by the wings and so hold him.
Left to their own devices, the hens scuttled back to their owndomain through a break in the palings on our side of the hedge,while in my hands the rooster squawked and plunged and kicked andstruggled; it was like trying to hold a feathered hyena.
I was very angry. I had lost my bulb bed. I couldn't wring the neckof the raider, much as I should have liked to do so, but with an armmade strong by a just and righteous rage I lifted that big brutehigh above my head and hurled him over into his own yard. He sailedthrough the air like a black and white plane.
"_Damn! Oh, damn!_" said somebody on the other side of the hedge.There was a horrible grunt, as of one getting all the wind knockedout of him, a scuffle, and the squawks of the big rooster, to whichthe hens dutifully added a deafening chorus.
"The brute--has just about--murdered me!" grunted Doctor RichardGeddes.
We stood in stricken silence. Swiftly, noiselessly, Uncle Adam fadedfrom sight, putting a solid section of Hynds House between himselfand what he felt was coming battle. Uncle Adam had no wish to haveto pray me to death, and he wasn't going to run any risks withDoctor Richard Geddes. Where that irascible gentleman was concerned,Uncle Adam, like Br'er Rabbit, would "trus' no mistakes."
A second later, red-faced, half-breathless, but with the light ofbattle in his eyes, Doctor Geddes appeared, mounted on a ladder onhis side of the hedge.
"Who shot off that rooster?"
"_Monsieur le docteur_, the hens of you began this affray,"explained Schmetz, politely. "They are fowls abandoned in theirmorals, horrible in their habits, and shameless in their behavior.And the husband of these wretches, Monsieur, is a bandit, a brigand,an assassin, fit only to be guillotined. Observe, Monsieur, ithappened thus--"
"Schmetz," snapped the doctor, "shut up!--Now then, I want to knowwho fired off that rooster."
"I did!" I said valiantly. "Look at my bulbs! Just look at mybulbs!"
"Look at my stomach!" roared the doctor. "Just look at my stomach!"
"_Mon Dieu! O mon Dieu_!" cried Schmetz, dancing up and down."Monsieur, again I implore that you will remain calm and listen tothe voice of reason! Your hens, creatures malicious and accursed--"
"Why should I look at your horrid stomach?" said I, outraged. "Ithink you had better get down off that ladder and go away!"
"Why should you? Because, you jade, you've all but driven atwenty-pound rooster clean through it--beak, spurs and tailfeathers--that's why!" bawled the doctor. "Gad! I shall be black andblue for a fortnight! I'm colicky now: I need a mustard-plaster!"
"_Two_ mustard-plasters," I insisted severely: "one on your tongueand the other on your temper!"
"Temper?" flared the doctor, and flung up his arms. "_Temper?_Here's a minx that's all but murdered me, and yet has the starkeffrontery to blather about temper! You've a bad one yourself
, letme tell you! You've the worst, outside of your late aunt--"
"Grand-aunt-in-law; your own cousin-by-blood, whom you greatlyresemble in that same matter of family temper, I am given tounderstand."
"Gatchell told you that!" cried the doctor, wrathfully."Fish-blooded old mummy! _His_ place is in a Canopic jar! Gatchellhasn't had a thought since 1845."
"Well, if he satisfied himself so long ago as 1845 that you have afrightful temper and that your hens are unutterable nuisances, I seeno reason why he should change his mind," I said, frigidly. "Youhave; and your hens are; and your rooster is a _demon_!"
"Straight out of the pit; undoubtedly they were hatched underSatan's wings. Monsieur, believe me, Schmetz, when I tell you so."
"Didn't you ask me," I demanded, "to throw them over into your yardwhen they invaded my premises? Very well: I threw one over and youcaught it. Why, then, should you complain?"
"Oh, yes, I caught it!" A horrible sneer twisted his countenance.
Schmetz fell to praying aloud. But he couldn't remember anythingsave the grace before meat, so he prayed that, in a sonorous voice.For he is a pious man.
The doctor's nose wrinkled and his lips stretched: "_Sophronisba!_"he hissed, and, having hurled this hand-grenade, scuttled down theladder like a boy of ten.
Alicia sank upon the ground and rocked to and fro. For a minute Iwanted to catch her by the shoulders and shake her soundly; butcatching her eye instead, I also fell into helpless laughter.Leaning on his spade, Schmetz stared at us, shaking his grizzledhead.
"Name of a cat!" murmured the puzzled Alsatian, and fell tosalvaging such bulbs as weren't utterly ruined. We were all busy atthis, when a head again appeared over the hedge--a big, leonine headwith a tossing mane and a tameless beard. An enormous pair ofshoulders followed, a tree-trunk of a leg was swung over, and DoctorRichard Geddes dropped into our garden like a great cat. He strolledover, hands in pockets, and looking down at grubbing us, askedpolitely: "Making a garden?"
"Oh, no," Alicia told him sweetly, "we're laying out a chicken-run."
"Er--what I came over to say, is that I've got some fine bulbs,myself, this year, particularly fine bulbs--eh, Schmetz?--and morethan I need for myself. Will you share them with me, Miss Smith?Please! I--well, I'd be really grateful if you would," said thisovergrown boy.
"We'll be enchanted," Alicia said instantly. "When can we havethem, please?"
"Now!" cried the doctor, with brightening eyes. "By jingo, I'll get'em this minute, and plant 'em for you, too!"
And he did. He was on his knees, trowel in hand, shouting toRiedriech, who had come outside for a few minutes' happy arguingwith his good friend the doctor, that the socialist argument boileddown amounts to about this--that one should do without boiled eggsfor breakfast now, in order that the proletariat may have baked henfor dinner in the millennium; which is lunacy; anybody with amodicum of brains--
"Brains!" snorted Riedriech. "What is it you know about brains? _No_doctor knows what is on the inside of brains! You make tinkeringsmit the inside plumbings, _Gott bewahre_! and cut up womens and catsand such-like poor little dumb beasts and says you, 'Now I know allabout the brains of man.' It is right there where you are wrong,Comrade Geddes!"
"_Habet!_" said Comrade Geddes.
"Look you," said the old visionary, with sudden passion, "look youon the little bulb here, so dirty and ugly you hide him in theground quick. So! But by and by comes up green shoots, and blossoms.So it is with the great thoughts of men, the deep race-thoughts,Comrade Geddes--seeds, bulbs, germs, all of them, in the ugly husksof the common people. Out of our muck and grime they come, thelittle green shoots which the fool will say is poison, maybe, butwhich the wise know and labor and make room for. I, Riedriech, andworkers like me, we go into our graves nothing but husks. But it isout of the buried hearts of us comes green things growing; andthen--_die Blumen! die Blumen!_" said the cabinet-maker, with astill, far-away look.
"And," he finished, with a sad smile, "it is _our_ flowers that youput in vases of gold on your altars. And you say, 'Listen: Jesus thecarpenter talks plain words to his fishermen friends.' And, 'Hush!Burns the plowman makes songs in the field!'"
The doctor looked up, and his eyes were very tender; his smile mademe wonder. With a swift, friendly hand he patted the rougher hand ofthe other. And it was at this opportune moment that Mary Magdalenled around a corner of Hynds House no less personages than Mrs.Haile and Miss Martha Hopkins. Their eyes fell upon Doctor RichardGeddes. They looked at each other. They looked at Alicia and me. AndI knew their thoughts: "Sirens, both of you!" said Miss Hopkins'seyes.
"How do you do, Doctor Geddes!" said both ladies, as demurely ascats. _I_ should have felt like a boy caught stealing jam. He wentright on planting bulbs.
"Hello, Martha. What's on the carpet now?" he greeted that lady,airily. "Writing another paper on 'The Ironic Note in Chivalry'? Howabout 'The Effect of the Pre-Raphaelites upon the Feeble-minded'? Oris it the 'Relation of the Child to Its Mother,' this time?"
"You will have your little joke, Doctor," smiled Miss Hopkins, adish-faced blonde with a cultured expression.
"Joke?" The doctor stared up at her. "Joke? Gad, I'd like to believeit!" He turned to Alicia and me, politely: "Miss Hopkins," heinformed us, "moves among us clothed in white samite. She is ourcenter of culture; Hyndsville revolves around her."
He went on putting a bulb in the place prepared for it. His eyebrowstwitched slightly, but his mouth was smileless; Miss Hopkins wassmiling, and not at all displeased. Mrs. Haile was bland and blank,as befits a minister's wife. Alicia's eyes were downcast, but awicked dimple came and went in her cheek. She looked ravishinglypretty, the bright hair breaking into curls about her temples, heryoung face colored like a rose. I do not blame Doctor RichardGeddes for stopping in his work to stare at her with unabashedpleasure, but I do not think it was diplomatic.
Mrs. Haile apologized for calling when we were so very busy. Theyhad just stopped in passing, because they were reorganizing theirmissionary society and wanted to see if they couldn't interest us inthe good work. Their day-school in Mozambique needed anotherteacher, and their hospital in Bechuanaland had to have more beds.
Doctor Geddes got to his feet, slapped our garden soil from hisknees, and shook his tawny mane. His eyes were no longer sweet.
"Miss Smith and Miss Gaines, thank you for the opportunity ofplaying in the sand in pleasant company. Mrs. Haile, Miss Hopkins, Igo to attend some home-grown niggers who of course don't need ahospital, nor even a decent school, in our Christian midst. Ladies,good afternoon!" He made a fleering motion of the hand and was gone.Mrs. Haile and Miss Hopkins smiled indulgently. Evidently, DoctorGeddes was one brother they were willing to forgive though heoffended them until seventy times seven.
Alicia and Miss Martha Hopkins walked down the garden path togetherand Mrs. Haile fell into step with me. In a low voice she thankedme, hurriedly, for having dropped that dreadful suit. And werewe--she hesitated--were we going to be regular communicants?
I didn't want to go to St. Polycarp's any more, and it was on thetip of my tongue to give a politely evasive reply, when our eyes metand held each other. I saw the naked truth in hers--the pitifultruth of the slim, poor, aristocratic little parish; the old churchovertaken and surpassed by its more modern and middle-class rivals;and the minister's family struggling along on a salary that wouldhave made a hod-carrier strike. She was neatly dressed; she lookedlike a gentle-woman, but one in straightened circumstances. I made arapid mental calculation.
"Why, yes, I think I can say we shall. Now, Mrs. Haile, I am abusiness woman, and if I speak bluntly you must pardon it. MissGaines and I can give two hundred dollars a year between us--fiftyfor the church; one hundred and fifty to be added to the minister'spresent salary."
I knew what that meant to her, and she must have known I knew, butshe didn't show it by so much as the quiver of an eyelash. Only afaint, faint color showed in her sallow cheek, and she bowed,half-formally, half-friendly.
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"Thank you, Miss Smith," said she, gallantly. And she added, with aglimmer of humor in her worried eyes: "As you say you're a businesswoman, may I say I hope you will get your money's worth?"
At that I laughed, and she with me.
We walked down our garden path, chatting innocuously and amiably,until of a sudden they caught sight of the little Love, the gay,charming, naked little Love, holding his torch above hiscurl-crowned head. You miss him, when you come up the broad drivefrom the front gate, for Nicholas Jelnik put him in the secretest,greenest, sweetest spot in all our garden, and you must go down awinding path to find him.
"So it wasn't an idle tale: they did find it, really!" breathed MissHopkins, staring with all her eyes. And I knew with great certaintywhy _she_ had come to Hynds House that afternoon.
"Forgotten all these many years, and now here, like the dead come tolife!" murmured Mrs. Haile, abstractedly. "How strange!"
"It was said he bought it for his mother, because it looked so likehimself as a child," said Miss Hopkins. Then she remembered herduty, held up two fingers before her eyes, and squinted through themcritically:
"Charming, but don't you think the pose strained? It's an example ofeighteenth-century work, placid enough, but it lacks that plastic,fluidic serenity, that divine new touch of truth, that isrevivifying art since the great Rodin lighted the torch anew."
Heaven knows what else she said. It sounded like a paper on art tome, and I have a terror of papers on art. They are, Alicia informsme, purple piffle. Yet Alicia drank in every word Miss Hopkinsuttered, though the dimple came and went in her cheek.
"You seem interested in art, Miss Gaines." Having torn the poorlittle peasant Love to tatters, Miss Hopkins descended to usgroundlings.
"I don't always seem to know what art is," admitted Alicia,dovelike.
The lady who "moved among us clothed in white samite" smiledencouragingly.
"That is because you are really little more than a child," she saidkindly. "When you begin to _grow_, you will improve your mind."
Alicia puckered her brows. "Ah, but I'm Irish!" she said, seriously,"and the Irish hate to have to improve their minds. I imagine ittakes an able-bodied mind to stand intensive cultivation," sheadded, guilelessly.
Miss Hopkins smiled: it was a masterpiece, that smile!
"But why, may I ask, did you choose such a situation for thestatue?" she inquired critically. "Now, _I_ should never dream oftucking it in such an out-of-the-way place!"
The pucker came back to Alicia's brow.
"Shouldn't you?" she wondered. "I shall make a point of mentioningthat to Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, if you don't mind. You see, he chosethat spot, and we rather like it, ourselves."
Miss Hopkins stopped dead short, and Mrs. Haile started in spite ofherself. Evidently, the situation was beyond them. Didn't we _know_?How much had Judge Gatchell seen fit to tell us? Alicia had droppeda bomb-shell that before night would detonate in every house inHyndsville. They haven't very much to talk about in small towns,except one another, and when a plump mouse of gossip frisks aboutwhisking his tail, why, it is cat nature to pounce upon it.
"Mr. Jelnik!" said Miss Hopkins, with an accent. "Oh, I see.Well--he is a neighbor, of course. Certainly if Mr. Jelnik selectedthat particular spot for the statue--he of all people has the bestright to do so--and to have his wishes considered."
"Of course. He has lived abroad, and seen everything of art there isto see," Alicia agreed, placidly. Which wasn't at all what MissHopkins meant.
We could see those two women turning the thing over and over intheir minds--Nicholas Jelnik, last heir and descendant of RichardHynds, tactily (perhaps even gladly; for had they not just witnessedthe behavior of Doctor Richard Geddes?) accepting the interlopers inthe house of his fathers! Nicholas Jelnik selecting the site for thestatue Richard had brought home in pride, and Freeman had buried insorrow! Miss Hopkins's stare dismissed me, shifted to Alicia, anddiscovered the cause of this shameless surrender of family pride.Her lips tightened. With politely cold hopes that we should likeHyndsville, and warmer hopes that we would join the missionarysociety, they left us.
"Wedge Number One: The poor dear heathen, Sophy!" smiled Alicia."The P.D.H. can be a very present help in times of social trouble,can't he? I shall attend that missionary meeting, and take stock.Incidentally (For goodness' sake, don't look so scandalized, SophySmith! this is a fight for our lives, so to speak!) incidentally, Ishan't do the P.D.H. any harm. He won't be a bit worse than he wasbefore, which is promising." She put two fingers before her laughingeyes, squinted through them, and drawled:
"You lack subtlety, Miss Smith. Cultivate your imagination, mydear!" in Miss Hopkins's best voice.
Riedriech stuck his grizzled head out at a window, cautiously:
"Fraeulein, she hass gone?" And seeing that the coast was clear,he added, vehemently: "Cultivate the mindt! Cultivate theimatchination! _Ach, lieber Gott! Dornroeschen_, cultivate you the_heart_. It iss not what the woman thinks, but what she loves, whatshe feels, which makes of the world a home-place for men und_kinder_." The good old Jew nodded his head vigorously at the girl,smiled, and went back to his work. And Schmetz came and finished thebulb bed by covering it carefully with two thicknesses ofchicken-wire.
That night, just before we went up-stairs, I went into the libraryafter Freeman Hynds's diary, which we were simply burning to read. Iopened the table drawer in which I had placed it. The drawer wasquite empty. The little flat book was gone.