THE GREATEST GIFT

The Author threw his short cape backward, laid one hand upon the hilt of his sword, doffed his cap, and made a sweeping courtesy.

"Prettily played, Mr. Jelnik!" said he, admiringly. "May one be permitted to congratulate you, upon your indubitably dramatic instinct?"

"All things are permitted; but not all things are expedient," Mr. Jelnik replied evenly.

"Oh, we know who can quote scripture!" cried The Author; and looked longingly at the other's naked throat.

At which point Doctor Geddes, coming as it were out of a trance, took the situation in hand.

"Have done with this nonsense!" he ordered sharply. "Alicia, get Sophy home; she looks more dead than alive. Jelnik, your declaration puts a new complexion on this affair; but let me tell you flatly I don't like your method of announcing engagements."

"Suppose you waive criticism and look after Sophy," suggested Mr. Jelnik. He walked up to his cousin and looked straight in his eyes: "Richard, you're not such a fool as to dare doubt us ?"

"Eh?" blinked the doctor, "what? Doubt Sophy ? I should say not! And you—oh, well, you're a bit of a fool yourself at times, Jelnik, and this seems to be one of the times; but I don't doubt you. However," said the doctor, grimly, "I should like to whale some sense into you with a club!"

"An ax would be more to the point," murmured The Author, regretfully.

"In the meantime, Richard," said Mr. Jelnik, with a faint smile, "take Sophy home, please."

I have a vague recollection of swallowing something that the doctor told me to swallow. Then came blessed oblivion, a sleep so profound that I didn't even dream, and didn't awake until that afternoon; to find the tender face of Alicia again bent over me.

I waited for her to ask at least one of the many questions she must have been longing to ask. But Alicia shook her head.

"Sophy," said she, loyally, "you haven't got to tell me one single, solitary thing unless you really want to. But—isn't this just a bit sudden? I was—surprised."

"So was I."

"You see, Sophy, I never once dreamed—"

"That he cared for me? Neither did I."

"No. That you cared for him," Alicia puckered her brows.

"My dear girl," I was trying to feel my way toward letting her have the truth, "listen: whether or not he is engaged to me, Mr. Nicholas Jelnik really loves some lady that neither you nor I know. He told me so himself."

It took Alicia some moments to recover from that!

"And yet you're going to marry him, Sophy?"

"You heard him announce our engagement."

"I can't understand!" sighed Alicia. "Oh, Sophy, sometimes I could wish we had never come to Hynds House!"

"It had to be," I said dully.

"And—The Author?" ventured Alicia, after a pause. "He thinks you belong to him by right of discovery. He doesn't accept Mr. Jelnik's announcement as final. He told me this morning that his offer stood until you actually married somebody else. The Author isn't used to being crossed, and he doesn't quite know how to take it."

"It is on the knees of the gods," I repeated, weariedly.

Came a gentle tap at the door, and following it the fresh, kind face of Miss Emmeline.

"Are you trying to rival the Seven Sleepers?" she asked, gaily, and laid a bunch of carnations on my knees by way of offering. "Judge Gatchell sent them to me this morning," she explained, with an October blush. For the sallow old jurist had taken so great a liking to the Boston reincarnation of a Theban vestal, and was in consequence so rejuvenated, himself, that all Hyndsville was holding up the hands of astonishment and biting the finger of conjecture.

"My dears," said Miss Emmeline, presently, "I want to tell you the singular dream I had last night, or rather this morning. I was quite tired, for I do not often dance," admitted Miss Emmeline, who had nevertheless danced with a zest that rivaled that of the youngest, "so I must have fallen asleep immediately upon retiring. Well, then, I dreamed that all those old Hyndses whose portraits are down-stairs were gathered together in the library, to bid farewell to a member of the family who was going away—that beautiful creature who disappeared and was never afterward found. Now, aren't dreams absurd? She was setting out upon a long journey dressed in a low-necked, short-sleeved brown silk dress trimmed with quantities of fine lace. And for goodness' sake what do you think that woman wore over it for a traveling-cloak? Nothing more or less than a gray army blanket, a corner of which was thrown over her head like a hood and quite concealed her face.

"She moved away slowly, holding her blanket as an Indian does. And as she passed me by—for I was standing in the door—a fold slipped, and what do you think she was holding to her breast? A pearl-and-silver crucifix. You can't imagine how I felt when I saw it!"

I knew how I felt when I had seen it, but that I couldn't tell Miss Emmeline. Instead, I held the carnations to my face, to hide my whitening lips. For once the Boston lady had come into actual contact with the occult and the unknown.

"She went out by the back door," continued Miss Emmeline, "and I ran to the window and saw her gray-blanketed figure disappear down the lane, behind the hedge that separates Mr. Jelnik's grounds from yours. And all the Hyndses called: ' Jessamine, good-by! ' But she never turned her head once, nor spoke, nor gave a sign that she heard. She just went , leaving me staring after her. I stared so hard that I woke myself up. Now, my dears, wasn't that an odd sort of dream? And so vivid, too! Why, I can hear those voices yet!"

"Well, I'm glad she went," said Alicia. "Ladies that do up their heads in blankets and won't answer when they're spoken to, ought to go."

Mrs. Scarboro, Judge Gatchell, and one of my old ladies were dining with us that night, for which I thanked Heaven. Judge Gatchell discovered in himself a fund of sly humor that astonished everybody, and Miss Emmeline was like a November rose, sweet with a shy and belated girlishness, rarer for a touch of frost. And The Author was in a fairly good humor because they let him alone.

Mr. Nicholas Jelnik dutifully put in his appearance after dinner. The Author was balefully polite to him, Alicia shyly friendly. I had on a new frock, and the knowledge that it was becoming gave me a courage I should otherwise have lacked. A new frock, pink powder, and a smile, have saved many a fainting feminine soul where prayer and fasting had failed.

The gentleman who had blandly announced my engagement to himself only last night assumed no airs of proprietorship, but was placidly content to let me sit and talk to Mr. Johnson, who was holding forth on the merits of our Rhode Island Reds as against either barred Plymouth Rocks or White Leghorns, and the variety of vegetables and small fruits in our kitchen-garden, so admirably planned by Schmetz, so carefully and neighborly looked after both by him and Riedriech. From gardens, Mr. Johnson went to cattle; he had a delight in cows, and our cow was a Jersey with a cream-colored complexion, large black eyes, and the sentimental temperament. We called her the Kissing Cow, because she couldn't see the secretary without trying to bestow upon him slobbering salutes.

He paused in his homely talk to smile at something The Author had just said. Then his eyes strayed to Mr. Nicholas Jelnik, being talked to by Mrs. Scarboro and an apple-faced Confederate with pellucid blue eyes and a renowned trigger-finger.

"That is the most gifted—and detached—human being I have ever known," said the secretary. "But it is his misfortune to have no saving responsibilities. What he needs is to fall in love with the right woman and marry her."

"You mean he should marry some great lady, some dazzling beauty? Naturally."

"Heaven forbid!" said the secretary, with unexpected vigor. "No, no, Miss Smith, that is not what such a man as Nicholas Jelnik needs!"

"But it may be what he wants," said I.

"I should never think so, myself," Mr. Johnson replied thoughtfully; "and I have seen a good deal of him. No, Jelnik doesn't want great beauty; he has enough of it himself. For the same reason, he doesn't want brilliant qualities. He needs quiet, dependable goodness, the changeless and unswerving affection of a steadfast heart."

But I could not agree with this simple-minded young man, who had in himself the qualities he named. Why, if Nicholas Jelnik asked only for a changeless love, I could have given him full measure, even to the running over thereof!

"What was Johnson talking to you about, that you both looked so earnest?" Mr. Jelnik wanted to know presently.

"Oh, just things; flowers and fruits and animals."

"And people?"

"People always end by talking about people."

"Johnson's opinions are generally sound, because he himself is sound to the core," said Mr. Jelnik, quietly.

"Miss Emmeline says he has got a limpid soul. The Author says it's really a sound liver. However that may be, one couldn't live in the same house with him without conceiving a real affection for him. He is a very easy person to love."

Mr. Jelnik's eyebrows went up. "Don't love him too much, please, Sophy. If you feel that you really ought to love somebody, love me ." The golden lights were in his eyes.

At that moment I both loved and hated him.

"Mr. Jelnik," said I, in as low a tone as his own, "it isn't fair to talk to me like this. You did what you did to save me from annoyance—and—and—misunderstanding. But you are perfectly free: I have no idea of holding you to such an engagement, no, nor of feeling myself bound by it, either."

"I understand, perfectly, Sophy," he said, after a pause. "And now, may I ask you one or two plain questions, please?"

"I think you may."

"You never cared for Geddes?"

"Good heavens, no! Besides, he—"

"Wants Alicia? That's obvious. But what about The Author? I'm not enamored of him, myself, but he's an immensely able and clever man. How many brilliant social lights would be willing to shine at the head of his table! What are you going to do about The Author, Sophy?"

"What are you going to do about the lady you are really in love with?" I countered.

"I'm waiting to find out," said he, coolly. "Answer my question, please: Do you imagine you love him, Sophy?"

"It is not unpleasant to me that he should wish me to do so," I admitted.

"I see. You are trying to persuade yourself that you should accept him."

"I am not growing younger," I said, with an effort. "Remember, too, that Alicia will be leaving me presently, and I shall then be utterly alone. That is not a pleasing prospect—not to a woman."

"Nor to a man, either, but better that than a loveless marriage." He reflected for a moment. "If you are sure you care for the man, tell him truthfully every incident of last night. Otherwise, I do not feel like sharing my affairs with him; I do not want to drag Jessamine Hynds out of her grave to gratify his curiosity. For he has the curiosity of a cat, along with the obstinacy of a mule."

I smiled, wanly. "I gather that I'm not to tell him anything. What further?" I wanted to know, not without irony.

"This, then: that you keep on being engaged to me."

I looked at him incredulously.

"For the time being, Sophy, submit to my tentative claim. If you decide to let your—ah—common sense induce you to make what must be called a brilliant marriage, tell me, and I will go at once. In the meantime, Sophy, I am your friend, to whom your happiness is as dear as his own. Will you believe that?"

It was not in me to doubt him. "Yes," I said. "And if—the lady you told me about—you understand—you will tell me, too, will you not? I should like to know, for your happiness is as much to me as mine could possibly be to you."

"That's the most promising thing you've said yet," he said. "All right, Sophy: the minute I find out she cares more for me than she does for anybody else, I shall certainly let you know. In the meanwhile, don't let being engaged bear too heavily on your spirits. I find it very pleasant and exhilarating!"

"I don't think you ought to talk like that," I demurred.

"I can't help it: I never was engaged before, and it goes to my tongue."

"I never was, either. But it doesn't go to mine ," I reminded him, with dignity.

"Sophy, you are the only woman in the world who can reproach a man with her nose and get away with it," he said irrelevantly. "You have the most eloquent little nose, Sophy!"

I looked at him reprovingly.

"I adore being engaged to you, Sophy," said he, unabashed. "Being engaged to you has a naïve freshness that enchants me. It's romantic, it has the sharp tang of uncertainty, the zest of high adventure. Think how exciting it's going to be to wake o' mornings thinking: 'Here is a whole magic day to be engaged to Sophy in!' By the way, would you mind addressing me as 'Nicholas'? It is customary under the circumstances, I believe."

"I do not like the name of Nicholas."

"I feared so, seeing the extreme care with which you avoid it. That is why I suggest that you should immediately begin to use it. Practice makes perfect. Observe with what ease I manage to say 'Sophy' already," he said airily. "I'm glad your hair's just that blonde, and soft, Sophy. I couldn't possibly be engaged to a woman who didn't have hair like yours."

I looked at his, and said with conviction:

"How absurd! Black hair is incomparably more beautiful!"

His eyes danced.

"Sophy!" said he, in a thrilling whisper, "Sophy, The Author's hair is brindle !"

I got up and incontinently left him. And I saw with stern joy how Mrs. Scarboro again seized upon and made him listen to tales of his grandfather, until in desperation he fled to the piano, and played Hungarian music with such effect that even The Author was moved to rapture.

"Jelnik!" said The Author, enthusiastically, "I shall put you in my next book. Gad, man, what a magnificent scoundrel I shall make of you!" A remark which scandalized Mrs. Scarboro and startled my dear old lady, but didn't phase Mr. Jelnik.

I found myself growing more and more confounded and confused. Was I, or wasn't I, engaged to a man who had never asked me to marry him? In the vernacular, I didn't know where I was at any more.

Alicia added to this confusion.

"Sophy," said she, some time later, "isn't it just possible you misunderstood Mr. Jelnik? About his being in love with somebody else, I mean."

"I don't know what makes you think so."

"Don't you? I'll show you," she said, and swung me around to face a mirror. " That's what makes me think so. Sophy Smith, unless he's a liar—and Peacocks and Ivory couldn't be a liar to save his life—the woman Nicholas Jelnik loves looks back at you every time you look in the glass."

I shook my head. I have never been able to tell pleasant lies to myself.

"Well, we'll see what we'll see! I told you once before that you hadn't caught up with the change in yourself." And she kissed me and laughed. It came to me that she couldn't have cared much for him, herself, to be able to laugh that light-heartedly.

---

When Miss Emmeline and the English folk were leaving Hynds House, everybody in Hyndsville turned out to say "Good-by." Even our lanky old Judge was on hand, with a great bunch of carnations and a huge box of bonbons for Miss Emmeline.

"Sophy," Miss Emmeline said, smiling, "I don't see anything left for me to do but come back to Hyndsville, do you?"

"No, I don't. And come soon. Hynds House won't feel the same without you. I thought of all she had taught me by just being her fine, frank self, and looked at her gratefully. She looked back at me quizzically, and of a sudden she slipped her arm around my shoulders.

"Sophy Smith," said she, softly, "I have met many women in my time, many far more brilliant and beautiful, and what the world calls gifted, than you. But I have met none with a greater capacity for unselfish loving. It's easy enough to win love, a harder thing to keep it, but divinest of all to give it and keep on giving it. And there's where your great gift lies, Sophy." And she kissed me, with misty eyes, and such a tender face!

That put such a friendly, warm glow in my heart that I was sorry to part even with the Englishman's daughter, Athena though she was, and I mortally afraid of her. As for her father, he was bewailing the parting with Alicia, whose Irishness was a manna in the wilderness to him.

"It's like saying good-by to the Fountain of Youth," he lamented. "You're more than a pretty girl: you're the eternal feminine in Irish!"

"She's the Eternal Irish in proper English, that's what she is!" said The Author darkly, and looked so wise that everybody looked respectful, though nobody knew what he meant. Perhaps he didn't know, himself.

After the train had gone, Doctor Geddes hustled us into his waiting car.

"I'm going to take you for a quiet spin in the country, to make the better acquaintance of Madame Spring-in-Carolina," he said. A few minutes later he swung the car into a lonesome and lovely road edged with pines, and sassafras, and sumach, and cassena bushes, and festooned with vines. Madame Spring-in-Carolina had coaxed the green things to come out and grow, and the people of the sky to try their jeweled wings in her fine new sunlight. The Judas-tree was red, the dogwood white, the honey-locust a breath from Eden. A blossomy wind came out of the heart of the world, and there were birds everywhere, impudently eloquent.

We didn't want to talk, or even to think; we just wanted to be alive and glad with everything else. The very car seemed to feel something of this intoxication, for as it went flying down the road it hummed and purred and sang snatches of the Song of Speed to itself. We turned a corner, I remember. And then there was a frightful lurch and jar, and the big car bounded into the air, and turned over in the ditch. I remember the rear wheels turning with a grinding, spitting noise.

When I woke up, Alicia was sitting by the side of the road, with the doctor's head in her lap, and I was lying on the grass near by. Her eyes were big and blank in a bloodless face, and the curling ends of her long bright hair hung in the dust. There was a cruel red mark on her forehead. Otherwise she was quite uninjured. I wasn't conscious of any pain myself—not then, at least.

"Sophy," Alicia said, impersonally, "Doctor Geddes is dead." And she fell to stroking his cheek lightly, with one finger; "quite dead. Without one word to me, Sophy!"

The figure on the ground looked dreadfully still and helpless. There was something ghastly wrong in seeing so strong a man lie so still and helpless. And the road, an unfrequented one, was unutterably lonesome. There was nothing, nobody in sight—nothing but the buzzard, black against the blue sky, tipping his wings to the wind.

"You must go for help," I mumbled.

"I dare not leave him. I know he's dead, Sophy. But—he might open his eyes, just once more. You see, he didn't know, before he—died, that I was very much in love with him—oh, terribly in love with him, Sophy!—from the first time I saw him standing in our door. I thought you cared for him, too, Sophy dear—and I sent him away from me— And now he has gotten himself killed." With a gentle touch she pushed back the thick reddish hair from his forehead. She looked at me imploringly: "Don't let him be dead, Sophy! For God's sake, Sophy, don't let him be dead! Make him open his eyes, Sophy!"

A negro teamster came upon us, recognized the doctor, shrieked, and set off for help, lashing his mules into a mad run. But Alicia never moved, and I huddled beside her, numb and silent, looking at the white face upon her knees. With all the impatience wiped out, it was a fine face, at once strong and sweet.

"Richard," said Alicia, "Richard, if I had been killed, and you begged and prayed me from your breaking heart to listen to you, to understand that you'd cared for me, only me, all along, somehow I'd manage to let you know I understood. Richard, listen to me! Open your eyes, Richard. Please, please, Richard, open your eyes!"

Her voice was so piteous that I fell to weeping. And, by the mercy of God, Richard opened his eyes and stared with blue blankness straight into Alicia's quivering, anguished face.

"Richard," said she, bending down to him, "my dear, dear love, keep your eyes open just a little longer, until I can make you understand. Oh, Richard, I cared! Indeed, indeed, I cared!"

The blue stare never wavered. It gathered intensity.

"Don't, don't look at me like that, Richard!" cried Alicia, beginning to sob wildly. "Don't—don't look so—so angelic , dear. Look like your own self at me, Richard! Oh, darling, for our dear God's mercy's sake, please, please try to look bad-tempered just once more!"

His pale lips twitched curiously. He sighed. Then he murmured something that sounded like "not sure."

"Not sure?" wept Alicia. "Oh, my heart, my heart!"

"I think—could die in peace—say 'I love you, Richard,'" murmured the doctor.

"Oh, I do, I do love you, Richard— frightfully !" sobbed Alicia. "I love you with all my heart!"

The corpse sat up, and for a dead man he showed considerable life. Painfully he rose, and stood staggering on his feet, big, pale, shaken, with a bump the size of an egg on the side of his head, but with such shining blue eyes! He put out a big hand and lifted Alicia from the ground.

"Leetchy," said Doctor Geddes, "if you ever take back what you've said I shall be sorry I wasn't killed. But I don't mind staying alive if you'll keep on loving me. If I stay alive, will you marry me, Leetchy?"

"If you don't, I can't m-m-marry any-anybody at all!" wailed Alicia.

"Amen!" said the doctor. "Now stop crying, and put your hand into my pocket, and you'll find something that's been owing you this long time, Leetchy."

Alicia blinked, and rubbed her eyes, then slipped her hand into his breast pocket and drew forth a small, square, satin-lined box; an inviting box.

"Richard!" she exclaimed, "why, Richard!" Then: "Of all the impudence!" cried Alicia, scandalized. "Why, you haven't even asked me! Whoever in this world heard of buying a girl's ring before she's said 'Yes'?"

"Alicia," said Doctor Richard Geddes, "I'm your Man, and you know it. And you're my Girl, and I know it. Here, let's see if this thing fits."

Meekly Alicia, the impudent, the flirt, held out her slim hand.

"That's settled, thank God!" said the doctor. And he swept her clear off her feet, and kissed her with thoroughness and enthusiasm.

"Richard! People are coming! They'll see you!"

"Let 'em!"

I sat there quietly, and stared at the two of them with a sort of vacant watchfulness. My hat was gone, my hairpins had taken unto themselves wings, and my hair, covered with dust, hung about me like a veil. I was just beginning to be conscious of pain. It was a shuddering pain, new and cruel, and I winced. The next minute Alicia was kneeling beside me, and her face had again become quite colorless.

"Sophy!" her voice sounded shrill and far off. "Sophy, you said you were all right!—Richard, look at Sophy!"

I felt the doctor's swift, deft hands upon me. And more pain. People were arriving now. Cars stopped, and excited men and women surrounded us. One tall figure leaped from the first car and reached us ahead of all others.

"Geddes!" cried a voice. "Thank God, Geddes! We were told you'd been killed outright! Alicia all right, too?" Then: "Sophy!" This time it was a cry of terror. "Never tell me it's Sophy!"

I saw his face bent over me. Then a red mist came, and then everything went dark.

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