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Updated: May 1, 2025
The touch of that hand brought me out of my trance-like state. It was all right, and the most natural thing in the world, that I should be sitting in this windowless vault, with two candles and a shadowy lantern burning dimly in the still air, an old black Jinnee squatting on his heels watching me, a great wolf-hound stretched beside him. Wasn't Nicholas Jelnik holding my hand?
Let me remind you that I have asked Miss Smith to marry me, and that she hasn't as yet given me her answer," he finished, significantly. "Why, Sophy!" gasped Alicia. "Why, Sophy Smith!" "Holy Moses!" gasped Doctor Geddes. "What, man, you too? Well, then, if it comes to that, I can call you to account, Jelnik, because I asked Sophy to marry me, too.
A bit of a lunatic, but a very charming fellow, Jelnik, though your amiable predecessor, Miss Smith, chose to consider him a sort of outlawed tom-cat, and warned him off with a shot-gun." The doctor paused, stroked his beard, and regarded me earnestly. "Having heired the old girl's domain, I hope you won't consider it necessary to heir her er prejudices," he remarked hopefully.
Miss Smith," he turned to me, his eyes gentling with compassion, "I am more sorry than I can say that you should be called upon to endure this further strain. You will, I trust, forgive my unwilling share in it. Now, shall I leave you?" "No, stay," said I, flatly. Mr. Jelnik sat down, and with unruffled composure, waited for The Author to unbosom himself further.
It seemed to me he had never been so beautiful. But his beauty hurt me. I felt old, very, very old, and sad, and tired. The salt taste of tears was in my mouth. My feet dragged. We entered that strip of land which on a time old Sophronisba barb-wired and barricaded against her neighbors, and which touched the Jelnik grounds in the rear.
My dulled brain stumblingly laid hold upon a thought: Nicholas Jelnik was calling me. He was calling me because he loved me. One simply can't go down into sleep and darkness, when a miracle like that is climbing like the morning-star into one's skies. "Stay!" he said, his lips against my ear. "Sophy! My love, my dear love, stay!"
"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.
Outside, in an inclosed space 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.
Johnson a Huguenot Lover, Miss Emmeline a Colonial Lady, Doctor Geddes a bearded and belted Boyar, and The Author a painfully realistic Mephistopheles, his eyebrows corked upward and his mustache waxed into points. Mr. Jelnik sent regrets.
"The Jinnee did exactly what a good Jinnee always does, his duty. Having done it, he disappeared. Didn't I tell you you're not to think of what's happened? It is finished," said Mr. Jelnik, peremptorily. I asked no more questions. "Do you think you are able to walk now?" he asked. I tried to, with shaking knees. At the edge of the field I grew faint again, and staggered, and was unpleasantly sick.
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