The Project Gutenberg Etext of Saturday's Child, by Kathleen Norris
#6 in our series by Kathleen Norris
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Title: Saturday's Child
Author: Kathleen Norris
Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4687]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on March 2, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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The Project Gutenberg Etext of Saturday's Child, by Kathleen Norris
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THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS
SATURDAY'S CHILD
VOLUME IV
"Friday's child is loving and giving;
But Saturday's child must work for her living."
To C. G. N.
How shall I give you this, who long have known
Your gift of all the best of life to me?
No living word of mine could ever be
Without the stirring echo of your own.
Under your hand, as mine, this book has grown,
And you, whose faith sets all my musing free,
You, whose true vision helps my eyes to see,
Know that these pages are not mine alone.
Not mine to give, not yours, the happy days,
The happy talks, the hoping and the fears
That made this story of a happy life.
But, in dear memory of your words of praise,
And grateful memory of four busy years,
Accept her portion of it, from your wife.
PART ONE
Poverty
SATURDAY'S CHILD
CHAPTER I
Not the place in which to look for the Great Adventure, the dingy,
narrow office on the mezzanine floor of Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's
great wholesale drug establishment, in San Francisco city, at the
beginning of the present century. Nothing could have seemed more
monotonous, more grimy, less interesting, to the outsider's eye at
least, than life as it presented itself to the twelve women who were
employed in bookkeeping there. Yet, being young, as they all were,
each of these girls was an adventuress, in a quiet way, and each one
dreamed bright dreams in the dreary place, and waited, as youth must
wait, for fortune, or fame, or position, love or power, to evolve
itself somehow from the dulness of her days, and give her the key
that should open--and shut--the doors of Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's
offices to her forever.
And, while they waited, working over the unvaried, stupid columns of
the company's books, they talked, confided, became friends, and
exchanged shy hints of ambition. The ill-ventilated, neglected room
was a little world, and rarely, in a larger world, do women come to
know each other as intimately as these women did.
Therefore, on a certain sober September morning, the fact that Miss
Thornton, familiarly known as "Thorny," was out of temper, speedily
became known to all the little force. Miss Thornton was not only the
oldest clerk there, but she was the highest paid, and the longest in
the company's employ; also she was by nature a leader, and generally
managed to impress her associates with her own mood, whatever it
might be. Various uneasy looks were sent to-day in her direction,
and by eleven o'clock even the giggling Kirk sisters, who were
newcomers, were imbued with a sense of something wrong.
Nobody quite liked to allude to the subject, or ask a direct
question. Not that any one of them was particularly considerate or
reserved by nature, but because Miss Thornton was known to be
extremely unpleasant when she had any grievance against one of the
younger clerks. She could maintain an ugly silence until goaded into
speech, but, once launched, few of her juniors escaped humiliation.
Ordinarily, however, Miss Thornton was an extremely agreeable woman,
shrewd, kindly, sympathetic, and very droll in her passing comments
on men and events. She was in her early thirties, handsome, and a
not quite natural blonde, her mouth sophisticated, her eyes set in
circles of a leaden pallor. An assertive, masterful little woman,
born and reared in decent poverty, still Thorny claimed descent from
one of the first families of Maryland, and talked a good deal of her
birth. Her leading characteristic was a determination never, even in
the slightest particular, to allow herself to be imposed upon, and
she gloried in stories of her own success in imposing upon other
people.
Miss Thornton's desk stood at the inner end of the long room,
nearest the door that led out to the "deck," as the girls called the
mezzanine floor beyond, and so nearest the little private office of
Mr. George Brauer, the arrogant young German who was the
superintendent of the Front Office, and heartily detested by every
girl therein.
When Miss Thornton wanted to be particularly annoying to her
associates she would remark casually that "she and Mr. Brauer"
thought this or that, or that "she suggested, and Mr. Brauer quite
agreed" as to something else. As a matter of fact, she disliked him
as much as they did, although she, and any and every girl there,
would really have been immensely pleased and flattered by his
admiration, had he cared to bestow it. But George Brauer's sea-blue
eyes never rested for a second upon any Front Office girl with
anything but annoyed responsibility. He kept his friendships
severely remote from the walls of Hunter, Baxter & Hunter, and was
suspected of social ambitions, and of distinguished, even noble
connections in the Fatherland.
This morning Miss Thornton and Mr. Brauer had had a conference, as
the lady called it, immediately after his arrival at nine o'clock,
and Miss Murray, who sat next to Miss Thornton, suspected that it
had had something to do with her neighbor's ill-temper. But Miss
Thornton, delicately approached, had proved so ungracious and so
uncommunicative, that Miss Murray had retired into herself, and
attacked her work with unusual briskness.
Next to friendly, insignificant little Miss Murray was Miss Cottle,
a large, dark, morose girl, with untidy hair, and untidy clothes,
and a bad complexion. Miss Cottle was unapproachable and insolent in
her manner, from a sense of superiority. She was connected, she
stated frequently, with one of the wealthy families of the city,
whose old clothes, the girls suspected, she frequently wore. On
Saturday, a half-day, upon which all the girls wore their best
clothes to the office, if they had matinee or shopping plans for the
afternoon, Miss Cottle often appeared with her frowsy hair bunched
under a tawdry velvet hat, covered with once exquisite velvet roses,
and her muscular form clad in a gown that had cost its original
owner more than this humble relative could earn in a year. Miss
Cottle's gloves were always expensive, and always dirty, and her
elaborate silk petticoats were of soiled pale pinks and blues.
Miss Cottle's neighbor was Miss Sherman, a freckled, red-headed,
pale little girl, always shabby and pinched-looking, eager, silent,
and hard-working. Miss Sherman gave the impression--or would have
given it to anyone who cared to study her--of having been
intimidated and underfed from birth. She had a keen sense of humor,
and, when Susan Brown "got started," as Susan Brown occasionally
did, Miss Sherman would laugh so violently, and with such agonized
attempts at suppression, that she would almost strangle herself.
Nobody guessed that she adored the brilliant Susan, unless Miss
Brown herself guessed it. The girls only knew of Miss Sherman that
she was the oldest of eight brothers and sisters, and that she gave
her mother all her money every Saturday night.
Miss Elsie Kirk came next, in the line of girls that faced the room,
and Miss Violet Kirk was next to her sister. The Kirks were pretty,
light-headed girls, frivolous, common and noisy. They had a
comfortable home, and worked only because they rather liked the
excitement of the office, and liked an excuse to come downtown every
day. Elsie, the prettier and younger, was often "mean" to her
sister, but Violet was always good-natured, and used to smile as she
told the girls how Elsie captured her--Violet's--admirers. The
Kirks' conversation was all of "cases," "the crowd," "the times of
their lives," and "new crushes"; they never pinned on their
audacious hats to go home at night without speculating as to
possible romantic adventures on the car, on the street, everywhere.
They were not quite approved by the rest of the Front Office staff;
their color was not all natural, their clothes were "fussy." Both
wore enormous dry "rats," that showed through the thin covering of
outer hair, their stockings were quite transparent, and bows of pink
and lavender ribbon were visible under their thin shirt-waists. It
was known that Elsie had been "spoken to" by old Mr. Baxter, on the
subject of a long, loose curl, which had appeared one morning,
dangling over her powdered neck. The Kirks, it was felt, never gave
an impression of freshness, of soapiness, of starched apparel, and
Front Office had a high standard of personal cleanliness. Miss
Sherman's ears glowed coldly all morning long, from early ablutions,
and her fingertips were always icy, and Miss Thornton and Susan
Brown liked to allude casually to their "cold plunges" as a daily
occurrence--although neither one ever really took a cold bath,
except, perhaps, for a few days in mid-summer. But all of
cleanliness is neither embraced nor denied by the taking of cold
baths, and the Front Office girls, hours and obligations considered,
had nothing on this score of which to be ashamed. Manicuring went on
in every quiet moment, and many of the girls spent twenty minutes
daily, or twice daily, in the careful adjustment of large sheets of
paper as cuffs, to protect their sleeves. Two elastic bands held
these cuffs in place, and only long practice made their arrangement
possible. This was before the day of elbow sleeves, although Susan
Brown always included elbow sleeves in a description of a model
garment for office wear, with which she sometimes amused her
associates.
"No wet skirts to freeze you to death," Susan would grumble, "no
high collar to scratch you! It's time that the office women of
America were recognized as a class with a class dress! Short
sleeves, loose, baggy trousers--"
A shriek would interrupt her.
"Yes, I SEE you wearing that in the street, Susan!"
"Well, I WOULD. Overshoes," the inventor would pursue, "fleece-lined
leggings, coming well up on your--may I allude to limbs, Miss
Wrenn?"
"I don't care what you allude to!" Miss Wrenn, the office prude, a
little angry at being caught listening to this nonsense, would
answer snappily.
"Limbs, then," Susan would proceed graciously, "or, as Miss Sherman
says, legs---"
"Oh, Miss Brown! I DIDN'T! I never use that word!" the little woman
would protest.
"You don't! Why, you said last night that you were trying to get
into the chorus at the Tivoli! You said you had such handsome--"
"Oh, aren't you awful!" Miss Sherman would put her cold red fingers
over her ears, and the others, easily amused, would giggle at
intervals for the next half hour.
Susan Brown's desk was at the front end of the room, facing down the
double line. At her back was a round window, never opened, and never
washed, and so obscured by the great cement scrolls that decorated
the facade of the building that it gave only a dull blur of light,
ordinarily, and no air at all. Sometimes, on a bright summer's
morning, the invading sunlight did manage to work its way in through
the dust-coated ornamental masonry, and to fall, for a few moments,
in a bright slant, wheeling with motes, across the office floor. But
usually the girls depended for light upon the suspended green-hooded
electric lights, one over each desk.
Susan though that she had the most desirable seat in the room, and
the other girls carefully concealed from her the fact that they
thought so, too. Two years before, a newcomer, she had been given
this same desk, but it faced directly against the wall then, and was
in the shadow of a dirty, overcrowded letter press. Susan had turned
it about, straightened it, pushed the press down the room, against
the coat-closet, and now, like all the other girls, she faced the
room, could see more than any of them, indeed, and keep an eye on
Mr. Brauer, and on the main floor below, visible through the glass
inner wall of the office. Miss Brown was neither orderly nor
industrious, but she had an eye for proportion, and a fine
imagination. She loved small, fussy tasks, docketed and ruled the
contents of her desk scrupulously, and lettered trim labels for
boxes and drawers, but she was a lazy young creature when regular
work was to be done, much given to idle and discontented dreams.
At this time she was not quite twenty-one, and felt herself to be
distressingly advanced in years. Like all except a few very
fortunate girls of her age, Susan was brimming with perverted
energy--she could have done a thousand things well and joyously,
could have used to the utmost the exceptional powers of her body and
soul, but, handicapped by the ideals of her sex, and lacking the
rare guidance that might have saved her, she was drifting, busy with
work she detested, or equally unsatisfied in idleness, sometimes
lazily diverted and soothed by the passing hour, and sometimes stung
to her very soul by longings and ambitions.
"She is no older than I am--she works no harder than I do!" Susan
would reflect, studying the life of some writer or actress with
bitter envy. But how to get out of this groove, and into another,
how to work and fight and climb, she did not know, and nobody ever
helped her to discover.
There was no future for her, or for any girl here, that she knew.
Miss Thornton, after twelve years of work, was being paid forty-five
dollars, Miss Wrenn, after eight years, forty, and Susan only thirty
dollars a month. Brooding over these things, Susan would let her
work accumulate, and endure, in heavy silence, the kindly, curious
speculations and comments of her associates.
But perhaps a hot lunch or a friendly word would send her spirits
suddenly up again, Susan would forget her vague ambitions, and
reflect cheerfully that it was already four o'clock, that she was
going with Cousin Mary Lou and Billy Oliver to the Orpheum to-night,
that her best white shirtwaist ought by this time to have come back
from the laundry.
Or somehow, if depression continued, she would shut her desk, in
mid-afternoon, and leave Front Office, cross the long deck--which
was a sort of sample room for rubber goods, and was lined with long
cases of them--descend a flight of stairs to the main floor, cross
it and remount the stairs on the other side of the building, and
enter the mail-order department. This was an immense room, where
fifty men and a few girls were busy at long desks, the air was
filled with the hum of typewriters and the murmur of low voices.
Beyond it was a door that gave upon more stairs, and at the top of
them a small bare room known as the lunch-room. Here was a great
locker, still marked with the labels that had shown where senna
leaves and tansy and hepatica had been kept in some earlier stage of
Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's existence, and now filled with the girls'
lunch-boxes, and rubber overshoes, and hair-brushes. There was a
small gas-stove in this room, and a long table with benches built
about it. A door gave upon a high strip of flat roof, and beyond a
pebbled stretch of tar were the dressings-rooms, where there were
wash-stands, and soap, and limp towels on rollers.
Here Susan would wash her hands and face, and comb her bright thick
hair, and straighten belt and collar. There were always girls here:
a late-comer eating her luncheon, two chatter-boxes sharing a bit of
powdered chamois-skin at a mirror, a girl who felt ill drinking
something hot at the stove. Here was always company, and gossip,
Susan might stop for a half-cup of scalding hot tea, or a chocolate
from a striped paper bag. Returning, refreshed and cheered, to the
office, she would lay a warm, damp hand over Miss Thornton's, and
give her the news.
"Miss Polk and Miss French are just going it up there, Thorny, mad
as hops!" or "Miss O'Brien is going to be in Mr. Joe Hunter's office
after this."
"'S'at so?" Miss Thornton would interestedly return, wrinkling her
nose under the glasses she used while she was working. And perhaps
after a few moments she would slip away herself for a visit to the
lunch-room. Mr. Brauer, watching Front Office through his glass
doors, attempted in vain to discourage these excursions. The bolder
spirits enjoyed defying him, and the more timid never dared to leave
their places in any case. Miss Sherman, haunted by the horror of
"losing her job," eyed the independent Miss Brown and Miss Thornton
with open awe and admiration, without ever attempting to emulate
them.
Next to Susan sat severe, handsome, reserved little Miss Wrenn, who
coldly repelled any attempts at friendship, and bitterly hated the
office. Except for an occasional satiric comment, or a half-amused
correction of someone's grammar, Miss Wrenn rarely spoke.
Miss Cashell was her neighbor, a mysterious, pretty girl, with
wicked eyes and a hard face, and a manner so artless, effusive and
virtuous as to awaken the basest suspicions among her associates.
Miss Cashell dressed very charmingly, and never expressed an opinion
that would not well have become a cloistered nun, but the girls read
her colorless face, sensuous mouth, and sly dark eyes aright, and
nobody in Front Office "went" with Miss Cashell. Next her was Mrs.
Valencia, a harmless little fool of a woman, who held her position
merely because her husband had been long in the employ of the Hunter
family, and who made more mistakes than all the rest of the staff
put together. Susan disliked Mrs. Valencia because of the jokes she
told, jokes that the girl did not in all honesty always understand,
and because the little widow was suspected of "reporting" various
girls now and then to Mr. Hunter.
Finishing the two rows of desks, down opposite Miss Thornton again
were Miss Kelly and Miss Garvey, fresh-faced, intelligent Irish
girls, simple, merry, and devoted to each other. These two took
small part in what did not immediately concern them, but went off to
Confession together every Saturday, spent their Sundays together,
and laughed and whispered together over their ledgers. Everything
about them was artless and pure. Susan, motherless herself, never
tired of their talk of home, their mothers, their married sisters,
their cousins in convents, their Church picnics and concerts and
fairs, and "joshes"--"joshes" were as the breath of life to this
innocent pair. "Joshes on Ma," "joshes on Joe and Dan," "joshes on
Cecilia and Loretta" filled their conversations.
"And Ma yells up, 'What are you two layin' awake about?'" Miss
Garvey would recount, with tears of enjoyment in her eyes. "But we
never said nothing, did we, Gert? Well, about twelve o'clock we
heard Leo come in, and he come upstairs, and he let out a yell--'My
God!' he says--"
But at the recollection of Leo's discovery of the sheeted form, or
the pail of water, or whatever had awaited him at the top of the
stairs, Miss Garvey's voice would fail entirely, and Miss Kelly
would also lay her head down on her desk, and sob with mirth. It was
infectious, everyone else laughed, too.
To-day Susan, perceiving something amiss with Miss Thornton,
sauntered the length of the office, and leaned over the older
woman's desk. Miss Thornton was scribbling a little list of edibles,
her errand boy waiting beside her. Tea and canned tomatoes were
bought by the girls every day, to help out the dry lunches they
brought from home, and almost every day the collection of dimes and
nickels permitted a "wreath-cake" also, a spongy, glazed confection
filled with chopped nuts and raisins. The tomatoes, bubbling hot and
highly seasoned, were quite as much in demand as was the tea, and
sometimes two or three girls made their entire lunch up by enlarging
this list with cheese, sausages and fruit.
"Mad about something," asked Susan, when the list for to-day was
finished.
Miss Thornton, under "2 wreath" wrote hastily, "Boiling! Tell you
later," and turned it about for Susan to read, before she erased it.
"Shall I get that?" she asked, for the benefit of the attentive
office.
"Yes, I would," answered her fellow-conspirator, as she turned away.
The hour droned by. Boys came with bills, and went away again.
Sudden sharp pangs began to assert themselves in Susan's stomach. An
odor of burning rubber drifted up from below, as it always drifted
up at about this time. Susan announced that she was starving.
"It's not more than half-past eleven," said Miss Cottle, screwing
her body about, so that she could look down through the glass walls
of the office to the clock, on the main floor below. "Why, my
heavens! It's twelve o'clock!" she announced amazedly, throwing down
her pen, and stretching in her chair.
And, in instant confirmation of the fact, a whistle sounded shrilly
outside, followed by a dozen more whistles, high and low, constant
and intermittent, sharp on the silent noon air. The girls all jumped
up, except Miss Wrenn, who liked to assume that the noon hour meant
nothing to her, and who often finished a bill or two after the hour
struck.
But among the others, ledgers were slammed shut, desk drawers jerked
open, lights snapped out. Miss Thornton had disappeared ten minutes
before in the direction of the lunch-room; now all the others
followed, yawning, cramped, talkative.
They settled noisily about the table, and opened their lunches. A
joyous confusion of talk rose above the clinking of spoons and
plates, as the heavy cups of steaming tea were passed and the sugar-
bowl went the rounds; there was no milk, and no girl at Hunter,
Baxter & Hunter's thought lemon in tea anything but a wretched
affectation. Girls who had been too pale before gained a sudden
burning color, they had been sitting still and were hungry, now they
ate too fast. Without exception the Front Office girls suffered from
agonies of indigestion, and most of them grew used to a dull
headache that came on every afternoon. They kept flat bottles of
soda-mint tablets in their desks, and exchanged them hourly. No
youthful constitution was proof against the speed with which they
disposed of these fresh soft sandwiches at noon-time, and gulped
down their tea.
In ten minutes some of them were ready to hurry off into sunny Front
Street, there to saunter past warehouses, and warehouses, and
warehouses, with lounging men eyeing them from open doorways.
The Kirks disappeared quickly to-day, and some of the others went
out, too. When Miss Thornton, Miss Sherman, Miss Cottle and Miss
Brown were left, Miss Thornton said suddenly:
"Say, listen, Susan. Listen here--"
Susan, who had been wiping the table carefully, artistically, with a
damp rag, was arrested by the tone.
"I think this is the rottenest thing I ever heard, Susan," Miss
Thornton began, sitting down at the table. The others all sat down,
too, and put their elbows on the table. Susan, flushing
uncomfortably, eyed Miss Thornton steadily.
"Brauer called me in this morning," said Miss Thornton, in a low
voice, marking the table with the handle of a fork, in parallel
lines, "and he asked me if I thought--no, that ain't the way he
began. Here's what he said first: he says, 'Miss Thornton,' he says,
'did you know that Miss Wrenn is leaving us?'"
"What!" said all the others together, and Susan added, joyfully,
"Gee, that means forty for me, and the crediting."
"Well, now listen," Miss Thornton resumed. "I says, 'Mr. Brauer,
Miss Wrenn didn't put herself out to inform me of her plans, but
never mind. Although,' I says, 'I taught that girl everything she
ever knew of office work, and the day she was here three weeks Mr.
Philip Hunter himself came to me and said, "Miss Thornton, can you
make anything of her?" So that if it hadn't been for me--'"
"But, Thorny, what's she leaving for?" broke in Susan, with the
excited interest that the smallest change invariably brought.
"Her uncle in Milwaukee is going to pay her expenses while she takes
a library course, I believe," Miss Thornton said, indifferently.
"Anyway, then Brauer asked--now, listen, Susan--he asked if I
thought Violet Kirk could do the crediting--"
"Violet Kirk!" echoed Susan, in incredulous disappointment. This
blow to long-cherished hopes gave her a sensation of actual
sickness.
"Violet Kirk!" the others broke out, indignant and astonished. "Why,
she can't do it! Is he crazy? Why, Joe Hunter himself told Susan to
work up on that! Why, Susan's done all the substituting on that!
What does she know about it, anyway? Well, wouldn't that honestly
jar you!"
Susan alone did not speak. She had in turn begun to mark the table,
in fine, precise lines, with a hairpin. She had grown rather pale.
"It's a rotten shame, Susan," said Rose Murray, sympathetically.
Miss Sherman eyed Susan with scared and sorrowful eyes. "Don't you
care--don't you care, Susan!" said the soothing voices.
"I don't care," said Susan presently, in a hard, level voice. She
raised her somber eyes. "I don't care because I simply won't stand
it, that's all," said she. "I'll go straight to Mr. Baxter. Yes, I
WILL, Thorny. Brauer'll see if he can run everything this way! Is
she going to get forty?"
"What do you care if she does?" Miss Thornton said, hardily.
"All right," Susan answered. "Very well. But I'll get forty next
month or I'll leave this place! And I'm not one bit afraid to go
straight to old 'J. G.' and tell him so, too! I'll--"
"Listen, Susan, now listen," urged Miss Thornton. "Don't you get
mad, Susan. She can't do it. It'll be just one mistake after
another. Brauer will have to give it to you, inside of two months.
She'll find," said Miss Thornton, with a grim tightening of the
lips, "that precious few mistakes get by ME! I'll make that girl's
life a burden, you trust me! And meantime you work up on that line,
Sue, and be ready for it!"
Susan did not answer. She was staring at the table again, cleaning
the cracks in its worn old surface with her hairpin.
"Thorny," she said huskily, "you know me. Do you think that this is
fair?"
"Aw--aw, now, Susan, don't!" Miss Thornton jumped up, and put her
arm about Susan's shoulders, and Susan, completely unnerved by the
sympathy in the other's tone, dropped her head upon her arm, and
began to cry.
A distressed murmur of concern and pity rose all about her, everyone
patted her shoulder, and bitter denunciations of Mr. Brauer and Miss
Kirk broke forth. Even Hunter, Baxter & Hunter were not spared,
being freely characterized as "the rottenest people in the city to
work for!" "It would serve them right," said more than one indignant
voice, "if the whole crowd of us walked out on them!"
Presently Susan indicated, by a few gulps, and by straightening
suddenly, that the worst of the storm was over, and could even laugh
shakily when Miss Thornton gave her a small, fringed lunch napkin
upon which to wipe her eyes.
"I'm a fool to cry this way," said Susan, sniffing.
"Fool!" Miss Cottle echoed tenderly, "It's enough to make a cow
cry!"
"Not calling Susan a cow, or anything like that," said Miss Thornton
humorously, as she softly smoothed Susan's hair. At which Susan
began to laugh violently, and the others became almost hysterical in
their delight at seeing her equilibrium restored.
"But you know what I do with my money, Thorny," began Susan, her
eyes filling again.
"She gives every cent to her aunt," said Miss Thornton sternly, as
if she accused the firm, Mr. Brauer and Miss Kirk by the statement.
"And I've--worked--so hard!" Susan's lips were beginning to tremble
again. But with an effort she controlled herself, fumbled for a
handkerchief, and faced the group, disfigured as to complexion,
tumbled as to hair, but calm.
"Well, there's no help for it, I suppose!" said she hardily, in a
tone somewhat hoarsened by tears. "You're all darlings, and I'm a
fool. But I certainly intend to get even with Mr. Brauer!"
"DON'T give up your job," Miss Sherman pleaded.
"I will the minute I get another," said Susan, morosely, adding
anxiously, "Do I look a perfect fright, Thorny? Do my eyes show?"
"Not much--" Miss Cottle wavered.
"Wash them with cold water, and powder your nose," advised Miss
Thornton briskly.
"And my hair--!" Susan put her hand to the disordered mass, and
laughed helplessly.
"It's all right!" Thorny patted it affectionately. "Isn't it
gorgeous, girls? Don't you care, Susan, you're worth ten of the
Kirks!"
"Here they come now!" Miss Murray whispered, at the head of the
stairs. "Beat it, Susan, don't let 'em see you!"
Susan duly fled to the wash-room, where, concealed a moment later by
a towel, and the hanging veil of her hair, she could meet the Kirks'
glances innocently enough. Later, fresh and tidy, she took her place
at her desk, rather refreshed by her outburst, and curiously
peaceful in spirit. The joys of martyrdom were Susan's, she was
particularly busy and cheerful. Fate had dealt her cruel blows
before this one, she inherited from some persecuted Irish ancestor a
grim pleasure in accepting them.
Afternoons, from one o'clock until half-past five, seemed endless in
Front Office. Mornings, beside being exactly one hour shorter by the
clock, could be still more abbreviated by the few moments gained by
the disposal of hats and wraps, the dusting of desks, sharpening of
pencils, and filling of ink-wells. The girls used a great many
blocks of yellow paper called scratch-pads, and scratch-pads must be
gotten down almost daily from the closet, dusted and distributed,
there were paper cuffs to adjust, and there was sometimes a ten or
fifteen-minute delay before the bills for the day began to come up.
But the afternoons knew no such delays, the girls were tired, the
air in the office stale. Every girl, consciously or not, sighed as
she took her seat at one o'clock.
The work in Front Office was entirely with bills. These bills were
of the sales made in the house itself the day before, and those sent
by mail from the traveling salesmen, and were accompanied by
duplicate bills, on thin yellow sheets. It was Mrs. Valencia's work,
the easiest in the office, to compare originals and duplicates, and
supply to the latter any item that was missing. Hundreds of the
bills were made out for only one or two items, many were but one
page in length, and there were several scores of longer ones every
day, raging from two to twenty pages.
The original bills went downstairs again immediately, and Miss
Thornton, taking the duplicates one by one from Mrs. Valencia,
marked the cost price of every article in the margin beyond the
selling price. Thorny, after twelve years' experience, could jot
down costs, percentages and discounts at an incredible speed. Drugs,
patent medicines, surgical goods and toilet articles she could price
as fast as she could read them, and, even while her right hand
scribbled busily, her left hand turned the pages of her cost catalog
automatically, when her trained eye discovered, half-way down the
page, some item of which she was not quite sure. Susan never tired
of admiring the swiftness with which hand, eye and brain worked
together. Thorny would stop in her mad flight, ponder an item with
absent eyes fixed on space, suddenly recall the price, affix the
discounts, and be ready for the next item. Susan had the natural
admiration of an imaginative mind for power, and the fact that Miss
Thornton was by far the cleverest woman in the office was one reason
why Susan loved her best.
Miss Thornton whisked her finished duplicates, in a growing pile, to
the left-hand side of Miss Munay's desk. Her neighbor also did
"costing," but in a simpler form. Miss Murray merely marked,
sometimes at cost, sometimes at an advance, those articles that were
"B. O." or "bought out," not carried in Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's
regular stock. Candy, postal-cards, cameras, sporting-goods, stamps,
cigars, stationery, fruit-sirups, all the things in fact, that the
firm's customers, all over the state, carried in their little
country stores, were "B. O." Miss Murray had invoices for them all,
and checked them off as fast as she could find their places on the
duplicates.
Then Miss Cottle and Susan Brown got the duplicates and "extended"
them. So many cases of cold cream at so much per case, so many
ounces of this or that at so much the pound, so many pounds at so
much per ounce, and forty and ten and ten off. Two-thirds of a
dozen, one hundredweight, one eighth of a gross, twelve per cent,
off, and twenty-three per cent. on for freight charges; the
"extenders" had to keep their wits about them.
After that the duplicates went to Miss Sherman, who set down the
difference between cost and selling price. So that eventually every
article was marked five times, its original selling price, extended
by the salesman, its cost price, separately extended, and the
difference between the two.
From Miss Sherman the bills went to the Misses Kirk, who gave every
item a red number that marked it in its proper department, drugs or
rubber goods or soaps and creams and colognes. The entire stock was
divided into ten of these departments, and there were ten great
ledgers in which to make entries for each one.
And for every one of a hundred salesmen a separate great sheet was
kept for the record of sales, all marked with the rubber stamp "B.
O.," or the number of a department in red ink. This was called
"crediting," and was done by Miss Wrenn. Finally, Miss Garvey and
Miss Kelly took the now limp bills, and extracted from them
bewildering figures called "the percentages," into the mysteries of
which Susan never dared to penetrate.
This whole involved and intricate system had originated, years
before, in the brain of one of the younger members of the firm,
whose theory was that it would enable everyone concerned to tell "at
a glance" just where the firm stood, just where profits and losses
lay. Theoretically, the idea was sound, and, in the hands of a few
practiced accountants, it might have been practically sound as well.
But the uninterested, untrained girls in Front Office never brought
their work anywhere near a conclusion. Several duplicates on Miss
Thornton's desk were eternally waiting for special prices, several
more, delayed by the non-appearance of invoices, kept Miss Murray
always in arrears, and Susan Brown had a little habit of tucking
away in a desk drawer any duplicate whose extension promised to be
unusually tedious or difficult. Girls were continually going into
innocent gales of mirth because long-lost bills were discovered,
shut in some old ledger, or rushing awe-struck to Miss Thornton with
accounts of others that had been carried away in waste-baskets and
burned.
"Sh-sh! Don't make such a fuss," Miss Thornton would say warningly,
with a glance toward Mr. Brauer's office. "Perhaps he'll never ask
for them!"
And perhaps he never did. If he did, the office presented him a
blank and innocent face. "Miss Brown, did you see this bill Mr.
Brauer speaks of?" "Beg pardon? Oh, no, Miss Thornton." "Miss
Cashell, did you? " "Just-one-moment-Miss-Thornton-until-I-foot-up-
this-column. Thank you! No. No, I haven't seen it, Miss Thornton.
Did you trace it to my desk, Mr. Brauer?"
Baffled, Mr. Brauer would retire to his office. Ten silent, busy
minutes would elapse before Miss Cottle would say, in a low tone,
"Bet it was that bill that you were going to take home and work on,
Miss Murray!"
"Oh, sure!" Miss Murray would agree, with a startled smile. "Sure.
Mamma stuck it behind the clock--I remember now. I'll bring it down
to-morrow."
"Don't you forget it, now," Miss Thornton would perhaps command,
with a sudden touch of authority, "old Baxter'd jump out of his skin
if he knew we ever took 'em home!"
"Well, YOU do!" Miss Murray would retort, reddening resentfully.
"Ah, well," Susan Brown would answer pompously, for Miss Thornton,
"you forget that I'm almost a member of the firm! Me and the Baxters
can do pretty much what we like! I'll fire Brauer to-morrow if he--"
"You shut up, Susan!" Miss Thornton, her rising resentment pricked
like a bubble, would laugh amiably, and the subject of the bill
would be dismissed with a general chuckle.
On this particular afternoon Miss Thornton delayed Susan Brown, with
a significant glance, when the whistle blew at half-past five, and
the girls crowded about the little closet for their wraps.
"S'listen, Susan," said she, with a look full of import. Susan
leaned over Miss Thornton's flat-topped desk so that their heads
were close together. "Listen," said Miss Thornton, in a low tone, "I
met George Banks on the deck this afternoon, see? And I happened to
tell him that Miss Wrenn was going." Miss Thornton glanced
cautiously about her, her voice sank to a low murmur. "Well. And
then he says, 'Yes, I knew that,' he says, 'but do you know who's
going to take her place?' 'Miss Kirk is,' I says, 'and I think it's
a dirty shame!'"
"Good for you!" said Susan, grateful for this loyalty.
"Well, I did, Susan. And it is, too! But listen. 'That may be,' he
says, 'but what do you know about young Coleman coming down to work
in Front Office!'"
"Peter Coleman!" Susan gasped. This was the most astonishing, the
most exciting news that could possibly have been circulated. Peter
Coleman, nephew and heir of old "J. G." himself, handsome, college-
bred, popular from the most exclusive dowager in society to the
humblest errand boy in his uncle's employ, actually coming down to
Front Office daily, to share the joys and sorrows of the Brauer
dynasty--it was unbelievable, it was glorious! Every girl in the
place knew all about Peter Coleman, his golf record, his blooded
terriers, his appearances in the social columns of the Sunday
newspapers! Thorny remembered, although she did not boast of it, the
days when, a little lad of twelve or fourteen, he had come to his
uncle's office with a tutor, or even with an old, and very proud,
nurse, for the occasional visits which always terminated with the
delighted acceptance by Peter of a gold piece from Uncle Josiah. But
Susan only knew him as a man, twenty-five now, a wonderful and
fascinating person to watch, even, in happy moments, to dream about.
"You know I met him, Thorny," she said now, eager and smiling.
"'S'at so?" Miss Thornton said, politely uninterested.
"Yes, old Baxter introduced me, on a car. But, Thorny, he can't be
coming right down here into this rotten place!" protested Susan.
"He'll have a desk in Brauer's office," Miss Thornton explained. "He
is to learn this branch, and be manager some day. George says that
Brauer is going to buy into the firm."
"Well, for Heaven's sake!" Susan's thoughts flew. "But, Thorny," she
presently submitted, "isn't Peter Coleman in college?"
Miss Thornton looked mysterious, looked regretful.
"I understand old J. G.'s real upset about that," she said
discreetly, "but just what the trouble was, I'm not at liberty to
mention. You know what young men are."
"Sure," said Susan, thoughtfully.
"I don't mean that there was any scandal," Miss Thornton amended
hastily, "but he's more of an athlete than a student, I guess--"
"Sure," Susan agreed again. "And a lot he knows about office work,
NOT," she mused. "I'll bet he gets a good salary?"
"Three hundred and fifty," supplied Miss Thornton.
"Oh, well, that's not so much, considering. He must get that much
allowance, too. What a snap! Thorny, what do you bet the girls all
go crazy about him!"
"All except one. I wouldn't thank you for him."
"All except TWO!" Susan went smiling back to her desk, a little more
excited than she cared to show. She snapped off her light, and swept
pens and blotters into a drawer, pulling open another drawer to get
her purse and gloves. By this time the office was deserted, and
Susan could take her time at the little mirror nailed inside the
closet door.
A little cramped, a little chilly, she presently went out into the
gusty September twilight of Front Street. In an hour the wind would
die away. Now it was sweeping great swirls of dust and chaff into
the eyes of home-going men and women. Susan, like all San
Franciscans, was used to it. She bent her head, sank her hands in
her coat-pockets, and walked fast.
Sometimes she could walk home, but not to-night, in the teeth of
this wind. She got a seat on the "dummy" of a cable-car. A man stood
on the step, holding on to the perpendicular rod just before her,
but under his arm she could see the darkened shops they passed,
girls and men streaming out of doors marked "Employees Only," men
who ran for the car and caught it, men who ran for the car and
missed it. Her bright eyes did not miss an inch of the crowded
streets.
Susan smiled dreamily. She was arranging the details of her own
wedding, a simple but charming wedding in Old Saint Mary's. The
groom was of course Mr. Peter Coleman.
CHAPTER II
The McAllister Street cable-car, packed to its last inch, throbbed
upon its way so jerkily that Susan, who was wedged in close to the
glass shield at the front of the car, had sometimes to cling to the
seat with knees and finger-tips to keep from sliding against her
neighbor, a young man deep in a trade-journal, and sometimes to
brace herself to withstand his helpless sliding against her. They
both laughed presently at the absurdity of it.
"My, don't they jerk!" said the friendly Susan, and the young man
agreed fervently, in a bashful mumble, "It's fierce, all right," and
returned to his book. Susan, when she got down at her corner, gave
him a little nod and smile, and he lifted his hat, and smiled
brightly in return.
There was a little bakery on this corner, with two gaslights flaring
in its window. Several flat pies and small cakes were displayed
there, and a limp curtain, on a string, shut off the shop, where a
dozen people were waiting now. A bell in the door rang violently,
whenever anyone came out or in. Susan knew the bakery well, knew
when the rolls were hot, and just the price and variety of the
cookies and the pies.
She knew, indeed, every inch of the block, a dreary block at best,
perhaps especially dreary in this gloomy pitiless summer twilight.
It was lined with shabby, bay-windowed, three-story wooden houses,
all exactly alike. Each had a flight of wooden steps running up to
the second floor, a basement entrance under the steps, and a small
cemented yard, where papers and chaff and orange peels gathered, and
grass languished and died. The dining-room of each house was in the
basement, and slatternly maids, all along the block, could be seen
setting tables, by flaring gas-light, inside. Even the Nottingham
lace curtains at the second-story windows seemed akin, although they
varied from the stiff, immaculate, well-darned lengths that adorned
the rooms where the Clemenceaus--grandmother, daughter and
granddaughter, and direct descendants of the Comte de Moran--were
genteelly starving to death, to the soft, filthy, torn strips that
finished off the parlor of the noisy, cheerful, irrepressible
Daleys' once-pretentious home. Poverty walked visibly upon this
block, the cold, forbidding poverty of pride and courage gone wrong,
the idle, decorous, helpless poverty of fallen gentility. Poverty
spoke through the unobtrusive little signs over every bell, "Rooms,"
and through the larger signs that said "Costello. Modes and
Children's Dressmaker." Still another sign in a second-story bay
said "Alice. Milliner," and a few hats, dimly discernible from the
street, bore out the claim.
Upon the house where Susan Brown lived with her aunt, and her aunt's
three daughters, there was no sign, although Mrs. Lancaster, and
Mary Lou, Virginia and Georgianna had supported themselves for many
years by the cheerless process known as taking boarders. Sometimes,
when the Lancasters were in especially trying financial straits, the
possibility of a little sign was discussed. But so far, the
humiliating extreme had been somehow avoided.
"No, I feel that Papa wouldn't like it," Mrs. Lancaster persisted.
"Oh, Papa! He'd have died first!" the daughters would agree, in
eager sympathy. And the question of the sign would be dismissed
again.
"Papa" had been a power in his day, a splendid, audacious,
autocratic person, successful as a pioneer, a miner, a speculator,
proud of a beautiful and pampered Southern wife and a nurseryful of
handsome children. These were the days of horses and carriages, when
the Eddy Street mansion was built, when a score of servants waited
upon Ma and the children. But terrible times came finally upon this
grandeur, the stock madness seized "Papa," he was a rich man one
day, a millionaire the next,--he would be a multi-millionaire next
week! Ma never ceased to be grateful that Papa, on the very day that
his fortune crashed to ruin, came home too sick and feverish to
fully comprehend the calamity, and was lying in his quiet grave
before his widow and her children did.
Mrs. Lancaster, in her fresh expensive black, with her five black-
clad children beside her, thus had the world to face, at thirty-
four. George, the first-born, destined to die in his twentieth
summer, was eighteen then, Mary Lou sixteen, helpless and feminine,
and Alfred, at thirteen, already showed indications of being
entirely spoiled. Then came conscientious, gentle little Virginia,
ten years old, and finally Georgianna, who was eight.
Out of the general wreckage, the Fulton Street house was saved, and
to the Fulton Street house the spoiled, terrified little family
moved. Mary Lou sometimes told Susan with mournful pride of the
weeping and wailing of those days, of dear George's first job, that,
with the check that Ma's uncle in Albany sent every month, supported
the family. Then the uncle died, and George died, and Ma, shaken
from her silent and dignified retirement, rose to the occasion in a
manner that Mary Lou always regarded as miraculous, and filled the
house with boarders. And enjoyed the new venture thoroughly, too,
although Mary Lou never suspected that. Perhaps Ma, herself, did not
realize how much she liked to bustle and toil, how gratifying the
stir and confusion in the house were, after the silent want and
loneliness. Ma always spoke of women in business as unfortunate and
hardened; she never spoke of her livelihood as anything but a
temporary arrangement, never made out a bill in her life. Upon her
first boarders, indeed, she took great pride in lavishing more than
the luxuries for which their board money could possibly pay. Ma
reminded them that she had no rent to pay, and that the girls would
soon be married, and Alfie working.
But Papa had been dead for twenty years now, and still the girls
were unmarried, and Alfred, if he was working, was doing it in so
fitful and so casual a manner as to be much more of a burden than a
help to his mother. Alfred lost one position after another because
he drank, and Ma, upon whose father's table wine had been quite a
matter of course, could not understand why a little too much
drinking should be taken so seriously by Alfie's employers, and why
they could not give the boy another--and another, and another--
chance. Ma never alluded, herself, to this little weakness of
Alfie's. He was still her darling, the one son she had left, the
last of the Lancasters.
But, as the years went on, she grew to be less of the shrinking
Southern lady, more the boarding-house keeper. If she wrote no
bills, she kept them pretty straight in her head, and only her
endless courage and industry kept the crazy enterprise afloat, and
the three idle girls comfortable and decently dressed.
Theoretically, they "helped Ma." Really, one well-trained servant
could have done far more than Mary Lou, Virginia and Georgie did
between them. This was, of course, primarily her own fault. Ma
belonged to the brisk and bustling type that shoves aside a pair of
eager little hands, with "Here, I can do that better myself!" She
was indeed proud of the fact that Mary Lou, at thirty-six, could not
rent a room or receipt a bill if her life were at stake. "While I'm
here, I'll do this, dear," said Ma, cheerfully. "When I'm gone
you'll have quite enough to do!"
Susan entered a small, square entrance-hall, papered in arabesques
of green against a dark brown, where a bead of gas flickered
dispiritedly in a red glass shade over the newel post. Some fly-
specked calling cards languished in the brass tray of an enormous
old walnut hat-rack, where several boarders had already hung wraps
and hats.
The upper part of the front door was set with two panels of beveled
glass, decorated with a scroll design in frosted glass. When Susan
Brown had been a very small girl she would sometimes stand inside
this door and study the passing show of Fulton Street for hours at a
time. Somebody would come running up the street steps, and pull the
bell! Susan could hear it tinkle far downstairs in the kitchen, and
would bashfully retire to the niche by the hat-rack. Minnie or
Lizzie, or perhaps a Japanese schoolboy,--whoever the servant of the
hour might be, would come slowly up the inside stairs, and
cautiously open the street door an inch or two.
A colloquy would ensue. No, Mrs. Lancaster wasn't in, no, none of
the family wasn't in. He could leave it. She didn't know, they
hadn't said. He could leave it. No, she didn't know.
The collector would discontentedly depart, and instantly Mary Lou or
Georgie, or perhaps both, would hang over the railing in the upper
hall.
"Lizzie, who was it?" they would call down softly, impatient and
excited, as Lizzie dragged her way upstairs.
"Who was it, Mary Lou?"
"Why, how do I know?"
"Here, GIVE it to me, Lizzie!"
A silence. Then, "Oh, pshaw!" and the sound of a closing door. Then
Lizzie would drag downstairs again, and Susan would return to her
silent contemplation of the street.
She had seen nothing particularly odd or unattractive about the
house in those little-girl days, and it seemed a perfectly normal
establishment to her now. It was home, and it was good to get home
after the long day. She ran up the flight of stairs that the gas-
bead dimly lighted, and up another, where a second gas-jet, this one
without a shade, burned unsteadily and opened the door, at the back
of the third-floor hall, that gave upon the bedroom that she shared
with Mary Lou and Georgianna. The boarding-house was crowded, at
this particular time, and Georgie, who flitted about as a rule to
whatever room chanced to be empty, was now quartered here and slept
on a narrow couch, set at an angle from the bay-window, and covered
with a worn strip of chenille.
It was a shabby room, and necessarily crowded, but it was bright,
and its one window gave an attractive view of little tree-shaded
backyards below, where small tragedies and comedies were continually
being enacted by dogs and babies and cats and the crude little maids
of the neighborhood. Susan enjoyed these thoroughly, and she and
Georgie also liked to watch the girl in the house just behind
theirs, who almost always forgot to draw the shades when she lighted
her gas. Whatever this unconscious neighbor did they found very
amusing.
"Oh, look, Georgie, she's changing her slippers. Don't miss this--
She must be going out to-night!" Susan would quiver with excitement
until her cousin joined her at the window.
"Well, I wish you could have seen her trying her new hat on to-day!"
Georgie would contribute. And both girls would kneel at the window
as long as the bedroom in the next house was lighted. "Gone down to
meet that man in the light overcoat," Susan would surmise, when the
light went out, and if she and Georgie, hurrying to the bakery,
happened to encounter their neighbor, they had much difficulty in
suppressing their mirth.
To-night the room that the cousins shared was empty, and Susan threw
her hat and coat over the foot of the large, lumpy wooden bed that
seemed to take up at least one-half of the floor-space. She sat down
on the side of the bed, feeling the tension of the day relax, and a
certain lassitude creep over her. An old magazine lay nearby on a
chair, she reached for it, and began idly to re-read it.
Beside the bed and Georgie's cot, there was a walnut bureau in the
room, two chairs and one rocking chair, and a washstand. One the
latter was a china basin, half-full of cold, soapy water, a damp
towel was spread upon the pitcher that stood beside it on the floor.
The wet pink soap, lying in a blue saucer, scented the room. On the
bureau were combs and brushes, powders and cold creams, little brass
and china trays filled with pins and buttons, and an old hand-
mirror, in a loosened, blackened silver mounting. There was a glazed
paper candy-box with hairpins in it, and a little liqueur glass,
with "Hotel Netherlands" written upon it in gold, held wooden collar
buttons and odd cuff-links. A great many hatpins, some plain, some
tarnished and ornate, all bent, were stuck into a little black china
boot. A basket of china and gold wire was full of combings, some
dotted veils were folded into squares, and pinned into the wooden
frame of the mirror, and the mirror itself was thickly rimmed with
cards and photographs and small souvenirs of all sorts, that had
been stuck in between the glass and the frame. There were dance
cards with dangling tiny pencils on tasseled cords, and score cards
plastered with tiny stars. There were calling cards, and newspaper
clippings, and tintypes taken of young people at the beach or the
Chutes. A round pilot-biscuit, with a dozen names written on it in
pencil, was tied with a midshipman's hat-ribbon, there were wooden
plates and champagne corks, and toy candy-boxes in the shapes of
guitars and fire-crackers. Miss Georgie Lancaster, at twenty-eight,
was still very girlish and gay, and she shared with her mother and
sisters the curious instinctive acquisitiveness of the woman who,
powerless financially and incapable of replacing, can only save.
Moments went by, a quarter-hour, a half-hour, and still Susan sat
hunched up stupidly over her book. It was not an interesting
magazine, she had read it before, and her thoughts ran in an uneasy
undercurrent while she read. "I ought to be doing my hair--it must
be half-past six o'clock--I must stop this--"
It was almost half-past six when the door opened suddenly, and a
large woman came in.
"Well, hello, little girlie!" said the newcomer, panting from the
climb upstairs, and turning a cold, fresh-colored cheek for Susan's
kiss. She took off a long coat, displaying beneath, a black walking-
skirt, an elaborate high collar, and a view of shabby corset and
shabby corset-cover between. "Ma wanted butter," she explained, with
a pleasant, rueful smile, "and I just slipped into anything to go
for it!"
"You're an angel, Mary Lou," Susan said affectionately.
"Oh, angel!" Miss Lancaster laughed wearily, but she liked the
compliment for all that. "I'm not much of an angel," she said with a
sigh, throwing her hat and coat down beside Susan's, and assuming a
somewhat spotted serge skirt, and a limp silk waist a trifle too
small for her generous proportions. Susan watched her in silence,
while she vigorously jerked the little waist this way and that,
pinning its torn edges down firmly, adjusting her skirt over it, and
covering the safety-pin that united them with a cracked patent-
leather belt.
"There!" said Mary Lou, "that doesn't look very well, but I guess
it'll do. I have to serve to-night, and I will not wear my best
skirt into the kitchen. Ready to go down?"
Susan flung her book down, yawned.
"I ought to do my hair--" she began.
"Oh, you look all right," her cousin assured her, "I wouldn't
bother."
She took a small paper bag full of candy from her shopping bag and
tucked it out of sight in a bureau drawer. "Here's a little sweet
bite for you and me, Sue," said she, with childish, sweet slyness,
"when Jinny and Ma go to the lecture to-night, we'll have OUR little
party, too. Just a little secret between you and me."
They went downstairs with their arms about each other, to the big
front dining-room in the basement. The lower hall was dark and
draughty, and smelled of boiling vegetables. There was a telephone
on a little table, close by the dining-room door, and a slender,
pretty young woman was seated before it. She put her hand over the
transmitter, as they came downstairs, and said in a smiling whisper,
"Hello, darling!" to Susan. "Shut the door," she added, very low,
"when you go into the dining-room."
Susan nodded, and Georgianna Lancaster returned at once to her
telephoned conversation.
"Yes, you did!" said she, satirically, "I believe that! ... Oh, of
course you did! ... And I suppose you wrote me a note, too, only I
didn't get it. Now, listen, why don't you say that you forgot all
about it, I wouldn't care ... Honestly, I wouldn't ... honestly, I
wouldn't ... Yes, I've heard that before ... No, he didn't either,
Rose was furious. ... No, I wasn't furious at all, but at the same
time I didn't think it was a very gentlemanly way to act, on your
part ..."
Susan and Mary Lou went into the dining-room, and the closing door
shut off the rest of the conversation. The household was quite used
to Georgie's quarrels with her male friends.
A large, handsome woman, who did not look her sixty years, was
moving about the long table, which, spread with a limp and slightly
spotted cloth, was partially laid for dinner. Knives, spoons, forks
and rolled napkins were laid in a little heap at each place, the
length of the table was broken by salt shakers of pink and blue
glass, plates of soda crackers, and saucers of green pickles.
"Hello, Auntie!" Susan said, laying an arm about the portly figure,
and giving the lady a kiss. Mrs. Lancaster's anxious eye went to her
oldest daughter.
"Who's Georgie talking to?" she asked, in a low tone.
"I don't know, Ma," Mary Lou said, sympathetically, pushing a chair
against the table with her knee, "Fred Persons, most likely."
"No. 'Tisn't Fred. She just spoke about Fred," said the mother
uneasily. "This is the man that didn't meet them Sunday. Sometimes,"
she complained, "it don't seem like Georgie has any dignity at all!"
She had moved to the china closet at one end of the room, and now
stood staring at it. "What did I come here for?" she asked,
helplessly.
"Glasses," prompted Susan, taking some down herself.
"Glasses," Mrs. Lancaster echoed, in relief. "Get the butter, Mary
Lou?"
"In the kitchen, Ma." Miss Lancaster went into the kitchen herself,
and Susan went on with the table-setting. Before she had finished, a
boarder or two, against the unwritten law of the house, had come
downstairs. Mrs. Cortelyou, a thin little wisp of a widow, was in
the rocker in the bay-window, Major Kinney, fifty, gray, dried-up,
was on the horsehair sofa, watching the kitchen door over his paper.
Georgia, having finished her telephoning, had come in to drop idly
into her own chair, and play with her knives and forks. Miss Lydia
Lord, a plain, brisk woman, her upper lip darkened with hair, her
figure flat and square, like a boy's, had come down for her sister's
tray, and was talking to Susan in the resolutely cheerful tone that
Susan always found annoying, when she was tired.
"The Keiths are off for Europe again, Susan,--dear me! isn't it
lovely for the people who can do those things!" said Miss Lord, who
was governess in a very wealthy household, and liked to talk of the
city's prominent families. "Some day you and I will have to find a
million dollars and run away for a year in Italy! I wonder, Sue,"
the mild banter ceased, "if you could get Mary's dinner? I hate to
go into the kitchen, they're all so busy--"
Susan took the tray, and went through the swinging door, and into
the kitchen. Two or three forms were flitting about in the steam and
smoke and flickering gas-light, water was running, gravy hissing on
the stove; Alice, the one poor servant the establishment boasted,
was attempting to lift a pile of hot plates with an insufficient
cloth. Susan filled her tray silently.
"Anything I can do, Mary Lou?"
"Just get out of the WAY, lovey--that's about all--I salted that
once, Ma. If you don't want that table, Sue--and shut the door,
dear! The smoke--"
Susan was glad to get out of the kitchen, and in a moment Mrs.
Lancaster and Mary Lou came into the dining-room, too, and Alice
rang the dinner bell. Instantly the boarders streamed downstairs,
found their places with a general murmuring of mild little
pleasantries. Mrs. Lancaster helped the soup rapidly from a large
tureen, her worried eyes moved over the table-furnishings without
pause.
The soup was well cooled before the place next to Susan was filled
by a tall and muscular young man, with very blue eyes, and a large
and exceptionally charming mouth. The youth had teeth of a dazzling
whiteness, a smile that was a bewildering Irish compound of laughter
and tears, and sooty blue-black hair that fitted his head like a
thick cap. He was a noisy lad, this William Oliver, opinionated,
excitable, a type that in its bigness and broadness seemed almost
coarse, sometimes, but he had all a big man's tenderness and
sweetness, and everyone liked him. Susan and he quarreled with and
criticized each other, William imitating her little affectations of
speech and manner, Susan reviling his transparent and absurd
ambitions, but they had been good friends for years. Young Oliver's
mother had been Mrs. Lancaster's housekeeper for the most prosperous
period in the history of the house, and if Susan naturally felt that
the son of a working housekeeper was seriously handicapped in a
social sense, she nevertheless had many affectionate memories of his
mother, as the kindly dignified "Nellie" who used to amuse them so
delightfully on rainy days. Nellie had been long dead, now, and her
son had grown up into a vigorous, enthusiastic young person, burning
his big hands with experiments in physics and chemistry, reading the
Scientific American late into the night, until his broad shoulders
were threatened with a permanent stoop, and his eager eyes blinked
wearily at breakfast, anxious to disprove certain accepted theories,
and as eager to introduce others, unaffected, irreverent, and
irresistibly buoyant. William could not hear an opera praised
without dragging Susan off to gallery seats, which the lady frankly
characterized as "smelly," to see if his opinion agreed with that of
the critics. If it did not, Susan must listen to long dissertations
upon the degeneracy of modern music. His current passion was the
German language, which he was studying in odd moments so that he
might translate certain scientific treatises in a manner more to the
scientific mind.
"Hello, Susan, darling!" he said now, as he slipped into his chair.
"Hello, heart's delight!" Susan answered composedly.
"Well, here--here--here!" said an aged gentleman who was known for
no good reason as "Major," "what's all this? You young folks going
to give us a wedding?"
"Not unless I'm chloroformed first, Major," Susan said, briskly, and
everybody laughed absently at the well-known pleasantry. They were
all accustomed to the absurdity of the Major's question, and far
more absorbed just now in watching the roast, which had just come
on. Another pot-roast. Everybody sighed.
"This isn't just what I meant to give you good people to-night,"
said Mrs. Lancaster cheerfully, as she stood up to carve, "but
butchers can be tyrants, as we all know. Mary Lou, put vegetables on
that for Mrs. Cortelyou."
Mary Lou briskly served potatoes and creamed carrots and summer
squash; Susan went down a pyramid of saucers as she emptied a large
bowl of rather watery tomato-sauce.
"Well, they tell us meat isn't good for us anyway!" piped Mrs.
Kinney, who was rheumatic, and always had scrambled eggs for dinner.
"--ELEGANT chicken, capon, probably, and on Sundays, turkey all
winter long!" a voice went on in the pause.
"My father ate meat three times a day, all his life," said Mrs.
Parker, a dark, heavy woman, with an angelic-looking daughter of
nineteen beside her, "and papa lived to be--let me see--"
"Ah, here's Jinny!" Mrs. Lancaster stopped carving to receive the
kiss of a tall, sweet-faced, eye-glassed young woman who came in,
and took the chair next hers. "Your soup's cold, dear," said she
tenderly.
Miss Virginia Lancaster looked a little chilly; her eyes, always
weak, were watery now from the sharp evening air, and her long nose
red at the tip. She wore neat, plain clothes, and a small hat, and
laid black lisle gloves and a small black book beside her plate as
she sat down.
"Good evening, everybody!" said she, pleasantly. "Late comers
mustn't complain, Ma, dear. I met Mrs. Curry, poor thing, coming out
of the League rooms, and time flew, as time has a way of doing! She
was telling me about Harry," Miss Virginia sighed, peppering her
soup slowly. "He knew he was going," she resumed, "and he left all
his little things--"
"Gracious! A child of seven?" Mrs. Parker said.
"Oh, yes! She said there was no doubt of it."
The conversation turned upon death, and the last acts of the dying.
Loretta Parker related the death of a young saint. Miss Lord,
pouring a little lime water into most of her food, chewed
religiously, her eyes moving from one speaker's face to another.
"I saw my pearl to-day," said William Oliver to Susan, under cover
of the general conversation.
"Eleanor Harkness? Where?"
"On Market Street,--the little darling! Walking with Anna Carroll.
Going to the boat."
"Oh, and how's Anna?"
"Fine, I guess. I only spoke to them for a minute. I wish you could
have seen her dear little laugh--"
"Oh, Billy, you fatuous idiot! It'll be someone else to-morrow."
"It will NOT," said William, without conviction "No, my little
treasure has all my heart--"
"Honestly," said Susan, in fine scorn, "it's cat-sickening to hear
you go on that way! Especially with that snapshot of Anna Carroll
still in your watch!"
"That snapshot doesn't happen to be still in my watch, if it's any
business of yours!" the gentleman said, sweetly.
"Why, it is TOO! Let's see it, then!"
"No, I won't let you see it, but it's not there, just the same."
"Oh, Billy, what an awful lie!"
"Susan!" said Mrs. Lancaster, partly in reproof, partly to call her
niece's attention to apple-pie and tapioca pudding.
"Pudding, please, auntie." Susan subsided, not to break forth again
until the events of the day suddenly rushed into her mind. She
hastily reviewed them for William's benefit.
"Well, what do you care?" he consoled her for the disappointment,
"here's your chance to bone up on the segregating, or crediting, or
whatever you call it."
"Yes, and then have someone else get it!"
"No one else could get it, if you understood it best!" he said
impatiently.
"That shows just about how much you know about the office!" Susan
retorted, vexed at his lack of sympathy. And she returned to her
pudding, with the real cream of the day's news yet untold.
A few moments later Billy was excused, for a struggle with German in
the night school, and departed with a joyous, "Auf wiedersehen,
Fraulein Brown!" to Susan. Such boarders as desired were now
drinking their choice between two dark, cool fluids that might have
been tea, or might have been coffee, or might have been neither.
"I am going a little ahead of you and Georgie, Ma," said Virginia,
rising, "for I want to see Mamie Evans about tickets for Saturday."
"Say, listen, Jin, I'm not going to-night," said Miss Georgie,
hastily, and with a little effort.
"Why, you said you were, Georgie!" the older sister said
reproachfully. "I thought you'd bring Ma."
"Well, I'm not, so you thought wrong!" Georgie responded airily.
"Somebody coming to see you, dear?" asked her mother.
"I don't know--maybe." Miss Georgie got up, brushing the crumbs from
her lap.
"Who is it, dear?" her mother pursued, too casually.
"I tell you it may not be anyone, Ma!" the girl answered, suddenly
irritated. A second later they heard her running upstairs.
"I really ought to be early--I promised Miss Evans--" Virginia
murmured.
"Yes, I know, lovey," said her mother. "So you run right along. I'll
just do a few little things here, and come right after you."
Virginia was Mrs. Lancaster's favorite child, now she kissed her
warmly. "Don't get all tired out, my darling!" said she, and when
the girl was gone she added, "Never gives ONE thought to herself!"
"She's an angel!" said Loretta Parker fervently.
"But I kind of hate to have you go down to League Hall alone, Ma,"
said Mary Lou, who was piling dishes and straightening the room,
with Susan's help.
"Yes, let us put you on the car," Susan suggested.
"I declare I hate to have you," the older woman hesitated.
"Well, I'll change," Mary Lou sighed wearily. "I'll get right into
my things, a breath of air will do us both good, won't it, Sue?"
Presently they all walked to the McAllister Street car. Susan,
always glad to be out at night, found something at which to stop in
every shop window; she fairly danced along at her cousin's side, on
the way back.
"I think Fillmore Street's as gay as Kearney, don't you, Mary Lou?
Don't you just hate to go in. Don't you wish something exciting
would happen?"
"What a girl you are for wanting excitement, Sue. I want to get back
and see that Georgie hasn't shut everyone out of the parlor!"
worried Mary Lou.
They went through the basement door to the dining room, where one or
two old ladies were playing solitaire, on the red table-cloth, under
the gas-light. Susan drew up a chair, and plunged into a new library
book. Mary Lou, returning from a trip upstairs, said noiselessly,
"Gone walking!" and Susan looked properly disgusted at Georgie's
lack of propriety. Mary Lou began a listless game of patience, with
a shabby deck of cards taken from the sideboard drawer, presently
she grew interested, and Susan put aside her book, and began to
watch the cards, too. The old ladies chatted at intervals over their
cards. One game followed another, Mary Lou prefacing each with a
firm, "Now, no more after this one, Sue," and a mention of the time.
It was like many of their evenings, like three hundred evenings a
year. The room grew warm, the gas-lights crept higher and higher,
flared noisily, and were lowered. Mary Lou unfastened her collar,
Susan rumpled her hair. The conversation, always returning to the
red king and the black four-spot, ranged idly here and there. Susan
observed that she must write some letters, and meant to take a hot
bath and go early to bed. But she sat on and on; the cards, by the
smallest percentage of amusement, still held them.
At ten o'clock Mrs. Lancaster and Virginia came in, bright-eyed and
chilly, eager to talk of the lecture. Mrs. Lancaster loosened her
coat, laid aside the miserable little strip of fur she always wore
about her throat, and hung her bonnet, with its dangling widow's
veil, over the back of her deep chair. She drew Susan down to sit on
her knee. "All the baby auntie's got," she said. Georgie presently
came downstairs, her caller, "that fresh kid I met at Sallie's," had
gone, and she was good-natured again. Mary Lou produced the
forgotten bag of candy; they all munched it and talked. The old
ladies had gone upstairs long ago.
All conversations led Mrs. Lancaster into the past, the girls could
almost have reconstructed those long-ago, prosperous years, from
hearing her tell of them.
"--Papa fairly glared at the man," she was saying presently, won to
an old memory by the chance meeting of an old friend to-night, "I
can see his face this day! I said, 'Why, papa, I'd JUST as soon have
these rooms!' But, no. Papa had paid for the best, and he was going
to have the best--"
"That was Papa!" laughed his daughters.
"That was Papa!" his widow smiled and sighed. "Well. The first thing
I knew, there was the proprietor,--you may imagine! Papa says, 'Will
you kindly tell me why I have to bring my wife, a delicate, refined
Southern woman--'"
"And he said beautiful, too, Ma!"
Mrs. Lancaster laughed mildly.
"Poor papa! He was so proud of my looks! 'Will you tell me,' he
says, 'why I have to put my wife into rooms like these?' 'Sir,' the
landlord says, 'I have only one better suite--'"
"Bridal suite, he said, Ma!"
"Yes, he did. The regular bridal suite. I wasn't a bride then, that
was after poor George was born, but I had a very high color, and I
always dressed very elegantly. And I had a good figure, your
father's two hands could meet around my waist. Anyway, then Papa--
dear me, how it all comes back!--Papa says, fairly shouting, 'Well,
why can't I have that suite?' 'Oh, sir,' the landlord says, 'a Mr.
George Lancaster has engaged that for his wife, and they say that
he's a man who WILL get what he pays for--'" Another mild laugh
interrupted the narrative.
"Didn't you nearly DIE, Ma?"
"Well, my dear! If you could have seen the man's face when Papa--and
how well he did this sort of thing, deary me!--whips out a card--"
They all laughed merrily. Then Mrs. Lancaster sighed.
"Poor Papa, I don't know what he would have done if he could have
seen us to-day," she said. "It's just as well we couldn't see ahead,
after all!"
"Gee, but I'd like to see what's coming," Susan said thoughtfully.
"Bed is coming next!" Mary Lou said, putting her arm about the girl.
Upstairs they all filed sleepily, lowering the hall gases as they
went. Susan yawningly kissed her aunt and Virginia good-night, on
the second floor, where they had a dark and rather colorless room
together. She and the other girls went on up to the third-story
room, where they spent nearly another hour in dilatory undressing.
Susan hesitated again over the thought of a hot bath, decided
against it, decided against even the usual brushing of her hair to-
night, and sprang into bed to lie flat on her tired back, watching
Mary Lou make up Georgie's bed with dislocating yawns, and Georgie,
wincing as she put her hair into tight "kids." Susan slept in a
small space bounded by the foot of the bed, the head of the bed, the
wall, and her cousin's large person, and, as Mary Lou generally made
the bed in the morning by flapping the covers back without removing
them, they were apt to feel and smell unaired, and to be rumpled and
loose at the foot. Susan could not turn over in the night without
arousing Mary Lou, who would mutter a terrified "What is it--what is
it?" for the next ten minutes. Years before, Susan, a timid,
country-bred child, had awakened many a time in the night,
frightened by the strange city noises, or the fire-bells, and had
lain, with her mouth dry, and her little heart thundering, through
lessening agonies of fright. But she never liked to awake Mary Lou.
Now she was used to the city, and used to the lumpy, ill-made bed as
well; indeed Susan often complained that she fell asleep too fast,
that she wanted to lie awake and think.
But to-night she lay awake for a long time. Susan was at twenty-one
no more than a sweet and sunny child, after all. She had accepted a
rather cheerless destiny with all the extraordinary philosophy and
patience of a child, thankful for small pleasures, enduring small
discomforts gaily. No situation was too hopeless for Susan's
laughter, and no prospect too dark for her bright dreams. Now, to-
night for the first time, the tiny spark of a definite ambition was
added to this natural endowment. She would study the work of the,
office systematically, she would be promoted, she would be head girl
some day, some day very soon, and obliged, as head girl, to come in
and out of Mr. Peter Coleman's office constantly. And by the dignity
and gravity of her manner, and her personal neatness, and her entire
indifference to his charms--always neat little cuffs and collars
basted in her tailor-made suit--always in her place on the stroke of
half-past eight--
Susan began to get sleepy. She turned over cautiously, and bunched
her pillow comfortably under one cheek. Hazy thoughts wheeled
through her tired brain. Thorny--the man on the dummy--the black
king--
CHAPTER III
Among Mrs. Lancaster's reminiscences Susan had heard none more often
than the one in which the first appearance of Billy Oliver and his
mother in the boarding-house was described. Mrs. Oliver had been
newly widowed then, and had the round-faced, square-shouldered
little Billy to support, in a city that was strange and unfriendly.
She had gone to Mrs. Lancaster's intending merely to spend a day or
two, until the right work and the right home for herself and Billy
should be found.
"It happened to be a bad time for me," Mrs. Lancaster would say,
recalling the event. "My cook had gone, the house was full, and I
had a quinsy sore throat. But I managed to find her a room, and
Alfie and George carried in a couch for the little boy. She borrowed
a broom, I remember, and cleaned out the I room herself. I explained
how things were with me, and that I ought to have been on my back
THEN! She was the cleanest soul I ever saw, she washed out the very
bureau drawers, and she took the little half-curtain down, it was
quite black,--we used to keep that window open a good deal. Well,
and we got to talking, and she told me about her husband's death, he
was a surveyor, and a pretty clever man, I guess. Poor thing, she
burst right out crying--"
"And you kept feeling sicker and sicker, Ma."
"I began to feel worse and worse, yes. And at about four o'clock I
sent Ceely,--you remember Ceely, Mary Lou!--for the doctor. She was
getting dinner--everything was upset!"
"Was that the day I broke the pitchers, Ma?"
"No. That was another day. Well, when the doctor came, he said BED.
I was too wretched then to say boo to a goose, and I simply tumbled
in. And I wasn't out of bed for five weeks!"
"Ma!"
"Not for five weeks. Well. But that first night, somebody knocked at
my door, and who should it be but my little widow! with her nice
little black gown on, and a white apron. She'd brought me some
gruel, and she began to hang up my things and straighten the room. I
asked about dinner, and she said she had helped Ceely and that it
was all right. The relief! And from that moment she took hold, got a
new cook, cleaned house, managed everything! And how she adored that
boy! I don't think that, in the seven years that she was with me,
Nellie ever spent an evening away from him. Poor Nellie! And a
witty, sweet woman she was, too, far above that sort of work. She
was taking the public library examinations when she died. Nellie
would have gone a long way. She was a real little lady. Billy must
be more like his father, I imagine."
"Oh, now, Ma!" There was always someone to defend Billy. "Look how
good and steady Billy is!"
"Steady, yes, and a dear, dear boy, as we all know. But--but very
different from what I would wish a son of mine to be!" Mrs.
Lancaster would say regretfully.
Susan agreed with her aunt that it was a great pity that a person of
Billy's intelligence should voluntarily grub away in a dirty iron
foundry all the days of his youth, associating with the commonest
types of laboring men. A clerkship, an agency, a hundred refined
employments in offices would have seemed more suitable, or even a
professional vocation of some sort. But she had in all honesty to
admit that Alfred's disinclination to do anything at all, and
Alfred's bad habits, made Billy's industry and cleanness and
temperance a little less grateful to Mrs. Lancaster than they might
otherwise have been.
Alfred tried a great many positions, and lost them all because he
could not work, and could not refrain from drinking. The women of
his family called Alfred nothing more unkind than "unfortunate," and
endured the drunkenness, the sullen aftermath, the depression while
a new job was being found, and Alfie's insufferable complacency when
the new job was found, with tireless patience and gentleness. Mary
Lou carried Alfie's breakfast upstairs to his bed, on Sunday
mornings, Mrs. Lancaster often gave him an early dinner, and hung
over him adoringly while he ate it, because he so hated to dine with
the boarders. Susan loaned him money, Virginia's prayers were all
for him, and Georgie laughed at his jokes and quoted him as if he
had been the most model of brothers. How much they realized of
Alfie's deficiencies, how important the matter seemed to them, even
Susan could not guess Mrs. Lancaster majestically forbade any
discussion of Alfie. "Many a boy has his little weakness in early
youth," she said, "Alfie will come out all right!"
She had the same visionary optimism in regarding her daughters'
futures. The girls were all to marry, of course, and marry well, far
above their present station, indeed.
"Somehow I always think of Mary Lou's husband as a prominent
officer, or a diplomat," Mrs. Lancaster would say. "Not necessarily
very rich, but with a comfortable private income. Mary Lou makes
friends very easily, she likes to make a good appearance, she has a
very gracious manner, and with her fine figure, and her lovely neck,
she would make a very handsome mistress for a big home--yes, indeed
you would, dear! Where many a woman would want to run away and hide,
Mary Lou would be quite in her element--"
"Well, one thing," Mary Lou would say modestly, "I'm never afraid to
meet strangers, and, don't you know you've spoken of it, Ma? I never
have any trouble in talking to them. Do you remember that woman in
the grocery that night, Georgie, who said she thought I must have
traveled a great deal, I had such an easy way of speaking? And I'd
love to dress every night for dinner."
"Of course you would!" her mother always said approvingly. "Now,
Georgie," she would pursue, "is different again. Where Mary Lou only
wants the very NICEST people about her, Georgie cares a good deal
more for the money and having a good time!"
"The man I marry has got to make up his mind that I'm going to keep
on the go," Georgie would admit, with an independent toss of her
head.
"But you wouldn't marry just for that, dear? Love must come, too."
"Oh, the love would come fast enough, if the money was there!"
Georgie would declare naughtily.
"I don't like to have you say that even in fun, dear! ... Now
Jinny," and Mrs. Lancaster would shake her head, "sometimes I think
Jinny would be almost too hard upon any man," she would say,
lovingly. "There are mighty few in this world good enough for her.
And I would certainly warn any man," she usually added seriously,
"that Jinny is far finer and more particular than most women. But a
good, good man, older than she, who could give her a beautiful home-
-"
"I would love to begin, on my wedding-day, to do some beautiful,
big, charitable thing every day," Virginia herself would say
eagerly. "I would like to be known far and wide as a woman of
immense charities. I'd have only one handsome street suit or two,
each season, beside evening dresses, and people would get to know me
by sight, and bring their babies up to me in the street--" Her weak,
kind eyes always watered at the picture.
"But Mama is not ready yet to let you go!" her mother would say
jealously. "We'll hope that Mr. Right will be a long time arriving!"
Then it was Susan's turn.
"And I want some fine, good man to make my Sue happy, some day," her
aunt often said, affectionately. Susan writhed in spirit under the
implication that no fine, good man yet had desired the honor; she
had a girl's desire that her affairs--or the absence of affairs--of
the heart should not be discussed. Susan felt keenly the fact that
she had never had an offer of marriage; her one consolation, in this
humiliation, was that no one but herself could be quite sure of it.
Boys had liked her, confided in her, made her small Christmas
presents,--just how other girls led them from these stages to the
moment of a positive declaration, she often wondered. She knew that
she was attractive to most people; babies and old men and women,
servants and her associates in the office, strangers on ferryboats
and sick people in hospitals alike responded to her friendliness and
gaiety. But none of these was marriageable, of course, and the
moment Susan met a person who was, a subtle change crept over her
whole personality, veiled the bright charm, made the friendliness
stiff, the gaiety forced. Susan, like all other girls, was not
herself with the young unmarried men of her acquaintance; she was
too eager to be exactly what they supposedly wanted her to be. She
felt vaguely the utter unnaturalness of this, without ever being
able to analyze it. Her attitude, the attitude of all her sex, was
too entirely false to make an honest analysis possible. Susan, and
her cousins, and the girls in the office, rather than reveal their
secret longings to be married, would have gone cheerfully to the
stake. Nevertheless, all their talk was of men and marriage, and
each girl innocently appraised every man she met, and was mentally
accepting or refusing an offer of marriage from him before she had
known him five minutes.
Susan viewed the single state of her three pretty cousins with
secret uneasiness. Georgie always said that she had refused "dozens
of fellows," meeting her mother's occasional mild challenge of some
specific statement with an unanswerable "of course you didn't know,
for I never told you, Ma." And Virginia liked to bemoan the fact
that so many nice men seemed inclined to fall in love with herself,
a girl who gave absolutely no thought to such things at all. Mrs.
Lancaster supported Virginia's suspicions by memories of young men
who had suddenly and mysteriously appeared, to ask her to accept
them as boarders, and young attorneys who had their places in church
changed to the pews that surrounded the Lancaster pew. But Susan
dismissed these romantic vapors, and in her heart held Mary Lou in
genuine admiration, because Mary Lou had undoubtedly and
indisputably had a real lover, years ago.
Mary Lou loved to talk of Ferd Eastman still; his youth, his manly
charms, his crossing an empty ball-room floor, on the memorable
evening of their meeting, especially to be introduced to her, and to
tell her that brown hair was his favorite color for hair. After that
the memories, if still fondly cherished, were less bright. Mary Lou
had been "perfectly wretched," she had "cried for nights and nights"
at the idea of leaving Ma; Ma had fainted frequently. "Ma made it
really hard for me," said Mary Lou. Ma was also held to blame for
not reconciling the young people after the first quarrel. Ma might
have sent for Ferd. Mary Lou, of course, could do nothing but weep.
Poor Mary Lou's weeping soon had good cause. Ferd rushed away,
rushed into another marriage, with an heiress and a beauty, as it
happened, and Mary Lou had only the dubious consolation of a severe
illness.
After that, she became cheerful, mild, unnecessary Mary Lou, doing a
little bit of everything about the house, appreciated by nobody.
Ferd and his wife were the great people of their own little town,
near Virginia City, and after a while Mary Lou had several pictures
of their little boy to treasure,--Robbie with stiff curls falling
over a lace collar, and plaid kilts, in a swing, and Robbie in
velvet knickerbockers, on a velocipede.
The boarding-house had a younger affair than Mary Lou's just now in
the attachment felt for lovely Loretta Parker by a young Mission
doctor, Joseph O'Connor. Susan did not admire the gentleman very
much, with his well-trimmed little beard, and his throaty little
voice, but she could not but respect the dreamy and indifferent
Loretta for his unquestionable ardor. Loretta wanted to enter a
convent, to her mother's bitter anguish, and Susan once convulsed
Georgie by the remark that she thought Joe O'Connor would make a
cute nun, himself.
"But think of sacrificing that lovely beard!" said Georgie.
"Oh, you and I could treasure it, Georgie! Love's token, don't you
know?"
Loretta's affair was of course extremely interesting to everyone at
Mrs. Lancaster's, as were the various "cases" that Georgie
continually talked of, and the changing stream of young men that
came to see her night after night. But also interesting were all the
other lives that were shut up here together, the varied forms which
sickness and money-trouble can take for the class that has not
learned to be poor. Little pretenses, timid enjoyments and mild
extravagances were all overshadowed by a poverty real enough to show
them ever more shadowy than they were. Susan grew up in an
atmosphere where a lost pair of overshoes, or a dentist's bill, or a
counterfeit half-dollar, was a real tragedy. She was well used to
seeing reddened eyes, and hearing resigned sighs at the breakfast
table, without ever knowing what little unforeseen calamity had
caused them. Every door in the dark hallways shut in its own little
story of suffering and privation. Susan always thought of second-
floor alcoved bedrooms as filled with the pungent fumes of Miss
Beattie's asthma powder, and of back rooms as redolent of hot
kerosene and scorched woolen, from the pressing of old Mr. Keane's
suits, by Mrs. Keane. She could have identified with her eyes shut
any room in the house. A curious chilliness lurked in the halls,
from August to May, and an odor compounded of stale cigarette smoke,
and carbolic acid, and coal-gas, and dust.
Those women in the house who did not go to business every day
generally came down to the breakfast table very much as they rose
from bed. Limp faded wrappers and "Juliet" slippers were the only
additions made to sleeping wear. The one or two men of the house,
with Susan and Jane Beattie and Lydia Lord, had breakfasted and gone
long before these ladies drifted downstairs. Sometimes Mrs. Parker
and Loretta made an early trip to Church, but even then they wore
only long cloaks over very informal attire, and joined the others,
in wrappers, upon their return.
Loitering over coffee and toast, in the sunny dining-room, the
morning wasted away. The newspapers were idly discussed, various
scraps of the house gossip went the rounds. Many a time, before her
entrance into the business world, Susan had known this pleasant
idleness to continue until ten o'clock, until eleven o'clock, while
the room, between the stove inside and the winter sunshine outside,
grew warmer and warmer, and the bedrooms upstairs waited in every
stage of appalling disorder and confusion.
Nowadays Susan ran downstairs just before eight o'clock, to gulp
down her breakfast, with one eye on the clock. The clatter of a
cable car passing the corner meant that Susan had just time to pin
on her hat, seize her gloves and her lunch, and catch the next
cable-car. She flashed through the dreary little entrance yard, past
other yards, past the bakery, and took her seat on the dummy
breathless with her hurry, exhilarated by the morning freshness of
the air, and filled with happy expectation for the new day.
On the Monday morning that Mr. Peter Coleman made his appearance as
a member of the Front Office staff, Susan Brown was the first girl
to reach the office. This was usually the case, but to-day Susan,
realizing that the newcomer would probably be late, wished that she
had the shred of an excuse to be late herself, to have an entrance,
as it were. Her plain suit had been well brushed, and the coat was
embellished by a fresh, dainty collar and wide cuffs of white linen.
Susan had risen early to wash and press these, and they were very
becoming to her fresh, unaffected beauty. But they must, of course,
be hung in the closet, and Susan, taking her place at her desk,
looked quite as usual, except for the spray of heliotrope pinned
against her lavender shirtwaist.
The other girls were earlier than was customary, there was much
laughing and chatting as desks were dusted, and inkwells filled for
the day. Susan, watching soberly from her corner, saw that Miss
Cottle was wearing her best hat, that Miss Murray had on the silk
gown she usually saved for Saturdays, that Thorny's hair was
unusually crimped and puffed, and that the Kirks were wearing
coquettish black silk aprons, with pink and blue bows. Susan's face
began to burn. Her hand unobtrusively stole to her heliotrope, which
fell, a moment later, a crushed little fragrant lump, into her
waste-basket. Presently she went into the coat closet.
"Remind me to take these to the French Laundry at noon," said Susan,
pausing before Thorny's desk, on her way back to her own, with a
tight roll of linen in her hand. "I left 'em on my coat from
yesterday. They're filthy."
"Sure, but why don't you do 'em yourself, Susan, and save your two
bits?"
"Well, maybe I will. I usually do." Susan yawned.
"Still sleepy?"
"Dying for sleep. I went with my cousin to St. Mary's last night, to
hear that Mission priest. He's a wonder."
"Not for me! I've not been inside a church for years. I had my
friend last night. Say, Susan, has he come?"
"Has who come?"
"Oh, you go to, Susan! Young Coleman."
"Oh, sure!" Susan's eyes brightened intelligently. "That's so, he
was coming down to-day, wasn't he?"
"Girls," said Miss Thornton, attracting the attention of the entire
room, "what do you know about Susan Brown's trying to get away with
it that she's forgotten about Peter Coleman!"
"Oh, Lord, what a bluff!" somebody said, for the crowd.
"I don't see why it's a bluff," said Susan hardily, back at her own
desk, and turning her light on, full above her bright, innocent
face. "I intended to wear my grandfather's gray uniform and my
aunt's widow's veil to make an impression on him, and you see I
didn't!"
"Oh, Susan, you're awful!" Miss Thornton said, through the general
shocked laughter. "You oughtn't say things like that," Miss Garvey
remonstrated. "It's awful bad luck. Mamma had a married cousin in
Detroit and she put on a widow's veil for fun--"
At ten o'clock a flutter went through the office. Young Mr. Coleman
was suddenly to be seen, standing beside Mr. Brauer at his high
desk. He was exceptionally big and broad, handsome and fresh
looking, with a look of careful grooming and dressing that set off
his fine head and his fine hands; he wore a very smart light suit,
and carried well the affectation of lavender tie and handkerchief
and hose, and an opal scarf-pin.
He seemed to be laughing a good deal over his new work, but finally
sat down to a pile of bills, and did not interrupt Mr. Brauer after
that oftener than ten times a minute. Susan met his eye, as she went
along the deck, but he did not remember her, or was too confused to
recognize her among the other girls, and they did not bow. She was
very circumspect and very dignified for a week or two, always busy
when Peter Coleman came into Front Office, and unusually neat in
appearance. Miss Murray sat next to him on the car one morning, and
they chatted for fifteen minutes; Miss Thornton began to quote him
now and then; Miss Kirk, as credit clerk, spent at least a morning a
week in Mr. Brauer's office, three feet away from Mr. Coleman, and
her sister tripped in there now and then on real or imagined
errands.
But Susan bided her time. And one afternoon, late in October,
returning early to the office, she found Mr. Coleman loitering
disconsolately about the deck.
"Excuse me, Miss Brown," said he, clearing his throat. He had, of
course, noticed this busy, absorbed young woman.
Susan stopped, attentive, unsmiling.
"Brauer," complained the young man, "has gone off and locked my hat
in his office. I can't go to lunch."
"Why didn't you walk through Front Office?" said Susan, leading the
way so readily and so sedately, that the gentleman was instantly put
in the position of having addressed her on very slight provocation.
"This inner door is always unlocked," she explained, with maternal
gentleness.
Peter Coleman colored.
"I see--I am a bally ass!" he said, laughing.
"You ought to know," Susan conceded politely. And suddenly her
dimples were in view, her blue eyes danced as they met his, and she
laughed too.
This was a rare opportunity, the office was empty, Susan knew she
looked well, for she had just brushed her hair and powdered her
nose. She cast about desperately in her mind for something--
anything!--to keep the conversation going. She had often thought of
the words in which she would remind him of their former meeting.
"Don't think I'm quite as informal as this, Mr. Coleman, you and I
have been properly introduced, you know! I'm not entirely flattered
by having you forget me so completely, Mr. Coleman!"
Before she could choose either form, he said it himself.
"Say, look here, look here--didn't my uncle introduce us once, on a
car, or something? Doesn't he know your mother?"
"My mother's dead," said Susan primly. But so irresistible was the
well of gaiety bubbling up in her heart that she made the statement
mirthful.
"Oh, gosh, I do beg your pardon--" the man stammered. They both,
although Susan was already ashamed of herself, laughed violently
again.
"Your uncle knows my aunt," she said presently, coldly and
unsmilingly.
"That's it," he said, relieved. "Quite a French sentence, 'does the
uncle know the aunt'?" he grinned.
"Or 'Has the governess of the gardener some meat and a pen'?"
gurgled Susan. And again, and more merrily, they laughed together.
"Lord, didn't you hate French?" he asked confidentially.
"Oh, HATE it!" Susan had never had a French lesson.
There was a short pause--a longer pause. Suddenly both spoke.
"I beg your pardon--?"
"No, you. You were first."
"Oh, no, you. What were you going to say?"
"I wasn't going to say anything. I was just going to say--I was
going to ask how that pretty, motherly aunt of yours is,--Mrs.
Baxter?"
"Aunt Clara. Isn't she a peach? She's fine." He wanted to keep
talking, too, it was obvious. "She brought me up, you know." He
laughed boyishly. "Not that I'd want you to hold that against her,
or anything like that!"
"Oh, she'll live that down!" said Susan.
That was all. But when Peter Colernan went on his way a moment later
he was still smiling, and Susan walked to her desk on air.
The office seemed a pleasant place to be that afternoon. Susan began
her work with energy and interest, the light falling on her bright
hair, her fingers flying. She hummed as she worked, and one or two
other girls hummed with her.
There was rather a musical atmosphere in Front Office; the girls
without exception kept in touch with the popular music of the day,
and liked to claim a certain knowledge of the old classics as well.
Certain girls always hummed certain airs, and no other girl ever
usurped them. Thus Thorny vocalized the "Spring Song," when she felt
particularly cheerful, and to Miss Violet Kirk were ceded all rights
to Carmen's own solos in "Carmen." Susan's privilege included "The
Rosary" and the little Hawaiian fare-well, "Aloha aoi." After the
latter Thorny never failed to say dreamily, "I love that song!" and
Susan to mutter surprisedly, "I didn't know I was humming it!"
All the girls hummed the Toreador's song, and the immediate
favorites of the hour, "Just Because She Made Those Goo-Goo Eyes,"
and "I Don't Know Why I Love You but I Do," and "Hilee-Hilo" and
"The Mosquito Parade." Hot discussions as to the merits of various
compositions arose, and the technique of various singers.
"Yes, Collamarini's dramatic, and she has a good natural voice,"
Miss Thornton would admit, "but she can't get AT it."
Or, "That's all very well," Miss Cottle would assert boldly, "but
Salassa sings better than either Plancon or de Reszke. I'm not
saying this myself, but a party that KNOWS told me so."
"Probably the person who told you so had never heard them," Miss
Thornton would say, bringing the angry color to Miss Cottle's face,
and the angry answer:
"Well, if I could tell you who it IS, you'd feel pretty small!"
Susan had small respect for the other girls' opinions, and almost as
little for her own. She knew how ignorant she was. But she took to
herself what credit accrued to general quoting, quoting from
newspapers, from her aunt's boarders, from chance conversations
overheard on the cars.
"Oh, Puccini will never do anything to TOUCH Bizet!" Susan asserted
firmly. Or, "Well, we'd be fighting Spain still if it wasn't for
McKinley!" Or, "My grandmother had three hundred slaves, and slavery
worked perfectly well, then!" If challenged, she got very angry.
"You simply are proving that you don't know anything about it!" was
Susan's last, and adequate, answer to questioners.
But as a rule she was not challenged. Some quality in Susan set her
apart from the other girls, and they saw it as she did. It was not
that she was richer, or prettier, or better born, or better
educated, than any or all of them. But there was some sparkling,
bubbling quality about her that was all her own. She read, and
assimilated rather than remembered what she read, adopted this
little affectation in speech, this little nicety of manner. She
glowed with varied and absurd ambitions, and took the office into
her confidence about them. Wavering and incomplete as her aunt's
influence had been, one fact had early been impressed upon her; she
was primarily and absolutely a "lady." Susan's forebears had really
been rather ordinary folk, improvident and carefree, enjoying
prosperity when they had it with the uneducated, unpractical
serenity of the Old South, shiftless and lazy and unhappy in less
prosperous times.
But she thought of them as most distinguished and accomplished
gentlefolk, beautiful women environed by spacious estates, by
exquisite old linen and silver and jewels, and dashing cavaliers
rising in gay gallantry alike to the conquest of feminine hearts, or
to their country's defense. She bore herself proudly, as became
their descendants. She brought the gaze of her honest blue eyes
frankly to all the other eyes in the world, a lady was unembarrassed
in the presence of her equals, a lady was always gracious to her
inferiors.
Her own father had been less elevated in rank than his wife, yet
Susan could think of him with genuine satisfaction. He was only a
vague memory to her now, this bold heart who had challenged a whole
family's opposition, a quarter of a century before, and carried off
Miss Sue Rose Ralston, whose age was not quite half his forty years,
under her father's very eyes.
When Susan was born, four years later, the young wife was still
regarded by her family as an outcast. But even the baby Susan,
growing happily old enough to toddle about in the Santa Barbara
rose-garden that sheltered the still infatuated pair, knew that
Mother was supremely indifferent to the feeling toward her in any
heart but one. Martin Brown was an Irishman, and a writer of random
essays. His position on a Los Angeles daily newspaper kept the
little family in touch with just the people they cared to see, and,
when the husband and father was found dead at his desk one day, with
his wife's picture over the heart that had suddenly and simply
ceased to serve him, there were friends all about to urge the
beautiful widow to take up at least a part of his work, in the old
environment.
But Sue Rose was not quite thirty, and still girlish, and shrinking,
and helpless. Beside, there was Lou's house to go to, and five
thousand dollars life insurance, and three thousand more from the
sale of the little home, to meet the immediate need. So Susan and
her mother came up to Mrs. Lancaster, and had a very fine large room
together, and became merged in the older family. And the eight
thousand dollars lasted a long time, it was still paying little
bills, and buying birthday presents, and treating Alfie to a "safety
bicycle," and Mary Lou to dancing lessons when, on a wet afternoon
in her thirteenth summer, little Susan Brown came in from school to
find that Mother was very ill.
"Just an ugly, sharp pain, ducky, don't look so scared!" said
Mother, smiling gallantly, but writhing under the bed covers. "Dr.
Forsythe has been here, and it's nothing at all. Ah-h-h!" said
Mother, whimsically, "the poor little babies! They go through this,
and we laugh at them, and call it colic! Never-laugh-at-another-
baby, Sue! I shan't. You'd better call Auntie, dear. This--this
won't do."
A day or two later there was talk of an operation. Susan was told
very little of it. Long afterward she remembered with certain
resentment the cavalier manner in which her claims were dismissed.
Her mother went to the hospital, and two days later, when she was
well over the wretchedness of the ether, Susan went with Mary Lou to
see her, and kissed the pale, brave little face, sunk in the great
white pillows.
"Home in no time, Sue!" her mother said bravely.
But a few days later something happened, Susan was waked from sleep,
was rushed to the hospital again, was pressed by some unknown hand
into a kneeling position beside a livid and heavily breathing
creature whom she hardly recognized as her mother. It was all
confusing and terrifying; it was over very soon. Susan came blinking
out of the dimly lighted room with Mary Lou, who was sobbing, "Oh,
Aunt Sue Rose! Aunt Sue Rose!" Susan did not cry, but her eyes hurt
her, and the back of her head ached sharply.
She cried later, in the nights, after her cousins had seemed to be
unsympathetic, feeling that she needed her mother to take her part.
But on the whole the cousins were devoted and kind to Susan, and the
child was as happy as she could have been anywhere. But her restless
ambition forced her into many a discontented hour, as she grew, and
when an office position was offered her Susan was wild with
eagerness to try her own feet.
"I can't bear it!" mourned her aunt, "why can't you stay here
happily with us, lovey? My own girls are happy. I don't know what
has gotten into you girls lately, wanting to rush out like great,
coarse men! Why can't you stay at home, doing all the little dainty,
pretty things that only a woman can do, to make a home lovely?"
"Don't you suppose I'd much RATHER not work?" Susan demanded
impatiently. "I can't have you supporting me, Auntie. That's it."
"Well, if that's it, that's nonsense, dear. As long as Auntie lives
all she asks is to keep a comfortable home for her girls."
"Why, Sue, you'll be implying that we all ought to have taken horrid
office positions," Virginia said, in smiling warning.
Susan remained mutinously silent.
"Have you any fault to find with Auntie's provision for you, dear?"
asked Mrs. Lancaster, patiently.
"Oh, NO, auntie! That's not it AT ALL!" Susan protested, "it's just
simply that I--I can't--I need money, sometimes--" She stopped,
miserably.
"Come, now!" Mrs. Lancaster, all sweet tolerance of the vagary,
folded her hands to await enlightenment. "Come, now! Tell auntie
what you need money for. What is this special great need?"
"No one special thing, auntie--" Susan was anything but sure of her
ground. As a matter of fact she did not want to work at all, she
merely felt a frantic impulse to do something else than settle down
for life as Mary Lou and Virginia and Georgie had done. "But clothes
cost money," she pursued vaguely.
"What sort of a gown did you want, dear?" Mrs. Lancaster reached for
her shabby purse. Susan refused the gift of a gown with many kisses,
and no more was said for a while of her working.
This was in her seventeenth summer. For more than a year after that
she drifted idly, reading a great many romantic novels, and wishing
herself a young actress, a lone orphan, the adored daughter of an
invalid father or of a rich and adoring mother, the capable,
worshiped oldest sister in a jolly big family, a lovely cripple in a
bright hospital ward, anything, in short, except what she was.
Then came the offer of a position in Front Office, and Susan took it
on her own responsibility, and resigned herself to her aunt's anger.
This was a most unhappy time for all concerned.
But it was all over now. Auntie rebeled no more, she accepted the
fact as she had accepted other unwelcome facts in her life. And soon
Susan's little salary came to be depended upon by the family; it was
not much, but it did pay a gas or a laundry bill, it could be
"borrowed" for the slippers Georgie must have in a hurry, or the
ticket that should carry Alfie to Sacramento or Stockton for his new
job. Virginia wondered if Sue would lend her two dollars for the
subscription to the "Weekly Era," or asked, during the walk to
church, if Susan had "plate-money" for two? Mary Lou used Susan's
purse as her own. "I owe you a dollar, Sue," she would observe
carelessly, "I took it yesterday for the cleaner."
Or, on their evening walks, Mary Lou would glance in the candy-store
window. "My! Don't those caramels look delicious! This is my treat,
now, remind me to give it back to you." "Oh, Ma told me to get
eggs," she would remember suddenly, a moment later. "I'll have to
ask you to pay for them, dearie, until we get home."
Susan never was repaid these little loans. She could not ask it. She
knew very well that none of the girls ever had a cent given her
except for some definite and unavoidable purchase. Her aunt never
spent money. They lived in a continual and agonizing shortage of
coin.
Lately, however, Susan had determined that if her salary were raised
she would save the extra money, and not mention the fact of the
raise at home. She wanted a gray feather boa, such as Peter
Coleman's girl friends wore. It would cost twenty dollars, but what
beauty and distinction it lent to the simplest costume!
Since young Mr. Coleman's appearance in Front Office certain young
girls very prominent in San Francisco society found various reasons
for coming down, in mid-afternoon, to the establishment of Hunter,
Baxter & Hunter, for a chat with old Mr. Baxter, who appeared to be
a great favorite with all girls. Susan, looking down through the
glass walls of Front Office, would suddenly notice the invasion of
flowered hats and smart frocks, and of black and gray and white
feather-boas, such as her heart desired. She did not consciously
envy these girls, but she felt that, with their advantages, she
would have been as attractive as any, and a boa seemed the first
step in the desired direction. She always knew it when Mr. Baxter
sent for Peter, and generally managed to see him as he stood
laughing and talking with his friends, and when he saw them to their
carriages. She would watch him wistfully when he came upstairs, and
be glad when he returned briskly to his work, as if the interruption
had meant very little to him after all.
One day, when a trio of exquisitely pretty girls came to carry him
off bodily, at an early five o'clock, Miss Thornton came up the
office to Susan's desk. Susan, who was quite openly watching the
floor below, turned with a smile, and sat down in her place.
"S'listen, Susan," said Miss Thornton, leaning on the desk, "are you
going to the big game?"
"I don't know," said Susan, suddenly wild to go.
"Well, I want to go," pursued Miss Thornton, "but Wally's in Los
Angeles." Wally was Miss Thornton's "friend."
"What would it cost us, Thorny?"
"Two-fifty."
"Gosh," said Susan thoughtfully. The big intercollegiate game was
not to be seen for nothing. Still, it was undoubtedly THE event of
the sporting year.
"Hat come?" asked Thorny.
"Ye-es." Susan was thinking. "Yes, and she's made it look lovely,"
she admitted. She drew a sketch of a little face on her scratch pad.
"Who's that?" asked Miss Thornton, interestedly. "Oh, no one!" Susan
said, and scratched it out.
"Oh, come on, Susan, I'm dying to go!" said the tempter.
"We need a man for that, Thorny. There's an awful crowd."
"Not if we go early enough. They say it's going to be the closest
YET. Come on!"
"Thorny, honest, I oughtn't to spend the money," Susan persisted.
"S'listen, Susan." Miss Thornton spoke very low, after a cautious
glance about her. "Swear you won't breathe this!"
"Oh, honestly I won't!"
"Wait a minute. Is Elsie Kirk there?" asked Miss Thornton. Susan
glanced down the office.
"Nope. She's upstairs, and Violet's in Brauer's office. What is it?"
"Well, say, listen. Last night--" began Miss Thornton, impressively,
"Last night I and Min and Floss and Harold Clarke went into the
Techau for supper, after the Orpheum show. Well, after we got
seated--we had a table way at the back--I suddenly noticed Violet
Kirk, sitting in one of those private alcoves, you know--?"
"For Heaven's sake!" said Susan, in proper horror.
"Yes. And champagne, if you please, all as bold as life! And all
dressed up, Susan, I wish you could have seen her! Well. I couldn't
see who she was with--"
"A party?"
"A party--no! One man."
"Oh, Thorny--" Susan began to be doubtful, slowly shook her head.
"But I tell you I SAW her, Sue! And listen, that's not all. We sat
there and sat there, an hour I guess, and she was there all that
time. And when she got up to go, Sue, I saw the man. And who do you
suppose it was?"
"Do I know him?" A sick premonition seized Susan, she felt a stir of
agonizing jealousy at her heart. "Peter Coleman?" she guessed, with
burning cheeks. "Peter Coleman! That kid! No, it was Mr. Phil!"
"Mr. Phil HUNTER!" But, through all her horror, Susan felt the warm
blood creep back to her heart.
"Sure."
"But--but Thorny, he's married!"
Miss Thornton shrugged her shoulders, and pursed her lips, as one
well accustomed, if not reconciled, to the wickedness of the world.
"So now we know how she can afford a velvet tailor-made and ostrich
plumes," said she. Susan shrank in natural cleanness of heart, from
the ugliness of it.
"Ah, don't say such things, Thorny!" she said. Her brows contracted.
"His wife enjoying Europe!" she mused. "Can you beat it?"
"I think it's the limit," said Miss Thornton virtuously, "and I
think old J. B. would raise the roof. But anyway, it shows why she
got the crediting."
"Oh, Thorny, I can't BELIEVE it! Perhaps she doesn't realize how it
looks!"
"Violet Hunter!" Thorny said, with fine scorn. "Now you mark my
words, Susan, it won't last--things like this don't--"
"But--but don't they sometimes last, for years?" Susan asked, a
little timidly, yet wishing to show some worldly wisdom, too.
"Not like her, there's nothing TO her," said the sapient Miss
Thornton. "No. You'll be doing that work in a few months, and
getting forty. So come along to the big game, Sue."
"Well--" Susan half-promised. But the big game was temporarily lost
sight of in this horrid news of Violet Kirk. Susan watched Miss Kirk
during the remainder of the afternoon, and burst out with the whole
story, to Mary Lou, when they went out to match a piece of tape that
night.
"Dear me, Ma would hate to have you coming in contact with things
like that, Sue!" worried Mary Lou. "I wonder if Ma would miss us if
we took the car out to the end of the line? It's such a glorious
night! Let's,--if you have carfare. No, Sue, it's easy enough to rob
a girl of her good name. There were some people who came to the
house once, a man and his wife. Well, I suppose I was ordinarily
polite to the man, as I am to all men, and once or twice he brought
me candy--but it never entered my head--"
It was deliciously bracing to go rushing on, on the car, past the
Children's Hospital, past miles of sandhills, out to the very shore
of the ocean, where the air was salt, and filled with the dull
roaring of surf. Mary Lou, sharing with her mother a distaste for
peanuts, crowds, tin-type men, and noisy pleasure-seekers, ignored
Susan's hints that they walk down to the beach, and they went back
on the same car.
When they entered the close, odorous dining-room, an hour later,
Georgie, lazily engaged with Fan-tan, had a piece of news.
"Susan, you sly thing! He's adorable!" said Georgie.
"Who?" said Susan, taking a card from her cousin's hand. Dazedly she
read it. "Mr. Peter Coleman."
"Did he call?" she asked, her heart giving a great bound.
"Did he call? With a perfect heart-breaker of a puppy--!"
"London Baby," Susan said, eagerly.
"He was airing the puppy, he SAID" Georgie added archly.
"One excuse as well as another!" Mary Lou laughed delightedly as she
kissed Susan's glowing cheek.
"He wouldn't come in," continued Georgie, "which was really just as
well, for Loretta and her prize idiot were in the parlor, and I
couldn't have asked him down here. Well, he's a darling. You have my
blessing, Sue."
"It's manners to wait until you're axed," Susan said demurely. But
her heart sang. She had to listen to a little dissertation upon the
joys of courtship, when she and Mary Lou were undressing, a little
later, tactfully concealing her sense of the contrast between their
two affairs.
"It's a happy, happy time," said Mary Lou, sighing, as she spread
the two halves of a shabby corset upon the bed, and proceeded to
insert a fresh lacing between them. "It takes me back to the first
time Ferd called upon me, but I was younger than you are, of course,
Sue. And Ferd--!" she laughed proudly, "Do you think you could have
sent Ferd away with an excuse? No, sir, he would have come in and
waited until you got home, poor Ferd! Not but what I think Peter--"
He was already Peter!--"did quite the correct thing! And I think I'm
going to like him, Sue, if for no other reason than that he had the
sense to be attracted to a plainly-dressed, hard-working little
mouse like my Sue--"
"His grandfather ran a livery stable!" said Susan, smarting under
the role of the beggar maiden.
"Ah, well, there isn't a girl in society to-day who wouldn't give
her eyes to get him!" said Mary Lou wisely. And Susan secretly
agreed.
She was kept out of bed by the corset-lacing, and so took a bath to-
night and brushed and braided her hair. Feeling refreshed in body
and spirit by these achievements, she finally climbed into bed, and
drifted off upon a sea of golden dreams. Georgie's teasing and Mary
Lou's inferences might be all nonsense, still, he HAD come to see
her, she had that tangible fact upon which to build a new and
glorious castle in Spain.
Thanksgiving broke dull and overcast, there was a spatter of rain on
the sidewalk, as Susan loitered over her late holiday breakfast, and
Georgie, who was to go driving that afternoon with an elderly
admirer, scolded violently over her coffee and rolls. No boarders
happened to be present. Mrs. Lancaster and Virginia were to go to a
funeral, and dwelt with a sort of melancholy pleasure upon the sad
paradox of such an event on such a day. Mary Lou felt a little
guilty about not attending the funeral, but she was responsible for
the roasting of three great turkeys to-day, and could not be spared.
Mrs. Lancaster had stuffed the fowls the night before.
"I'll roast the big one from two o'clock on," said Mary Lou, "and
give the little ones turn and turn about. The oven won't hold more
than two."
"I'll be home in time to make the pudding sauce," her mother said,
"but open it early, dear, so that it won't taste tinny. Poor
Hardings! A sad, sad Thanksgiving for them!" And Mrs. Lancaster
sighed. Her hair was arranged in crisp damp scallops under her best
bonnet and veil, and she wore the heavy black skirt of her best
suit. But her costume was temporarily completed by a light kimono.
"We'll hope it's a happy, happy Thanksgiving for dear Mr. Harding,
Ma," Virginia said gently.
"I know, dear," her mother said, "but I'm not like you, dear. I'm
afraid I'm a very poor, weak, human sort!"
"Rotten day for the game!" grumbled Susan.
"Oh, it makes me so darn mad!" Georgie added, "here I've been
working that precious idiot for a month up to the point where he
would take his old horse out, and now look at it!"
Everyone was used to Georgie's half-serious rages, and Mrs.
Lancaster only smiled at her absently.
"But you won't attempt to go to the game on a day like this!" she
said to Susan.
"Not if it pours," Susan agreed disconsolately.
"You haven't wasted your good money on a ticket yet, I hope, dear?"
"No-o," Susan said, wishing that she had her two and a half dollars
back. "That's just the way of it!" she said bitterly to Billy, a
little later. "Other girls can get up parties for the game, and give
dinners after it, and do everything decently! I can't even arrange
to go with Thorny, but what it has to rain!"
"Oh, cheer up," the boy said, squinting down the barrel of the rifle
he was lovingly cleaning. "It's going to be a perfect day! I'm going
to the game myself. If it rains, you and I'll go to the Orpheum
mat., what do you say?"
"Well--" said Susan, departing comforted. And true to his prediction
the sky really did clear at eleven o'clock, and at one o'clock,
Susan, the happiest girl in the world, walked out into the sunny
street, in her best hat and her best gown, her prettiest embroidered
linen collar, her heavy gold chain, and immaculate new gloves.
How could she possibly have hesitated about it, she wondered, when
she came near the ball-grounds, and saw the gathering crowds; tall
young men, with a red carnation or a shaggy great yellow
chrysanthemum in their buttonholes; girls in furs; dancingly
impatient small boys, and agitated and breathless chaperones. And
here was Thorny, very pretty in her best gown, with a little unusual
and unnatural color on her cheeks, and Billy Oliver, who would watch
the game from the "dollar section," providentially on hand to help
them through the crowd, and buy Susan a chrysanthemum as a foil to
Thorny's red ribbons. The damp cool air was sweet with violets; a
delightful stir and excitement thrilled the moving crowd. Here was
the gate. Tickets? And what a satisfaction to produce them, and
enter unchallenged into the rising roadway, leaving behind a line of
jealously watching and waiting people. With Billy's help the seats
were easily found, "the best seats on the field," said Susan, in
immense satisfaction, as she settled into hers. She and Thorny were
free to watch the little tragedies going on all about them, people
in the wrong seats, and people with one ticket too few.
Girls and young men--girls and young men--girls and young men--
streamed in the big gateways, and filed about the field. Susan
envied no one to-day, her heart was dancing. There was a racy
autumnal tang in the air, laughter and shouting. The "rooters" were
already in place, their leader occasionally leaped into the air like
a maniac, and conducted a "yell" with a vigor that needed every
muscle of his body.
And suddenly the bleachers went mad and the air fluttered with
banners, as the big teams rushed onto the field. The players, all
giants they looked, in their clumsy, padded suits, began a little
practice play desperately and violently. Susan could hear the
quarter's voice clear and sharp, "Nineteen-four-eighty-eight!"
"Hello, Miss Brown!" said a voice at her knee. She took her eyes
from the field. Peter Coleman, one of a noisy party, was taking the
seat directly in front of her.
"Well!" she said, gaily, "be you a-follering of me, or be I a-
follering of you?"
"I don't know!--How do you do, Miss Thornton!" Peter said, with his
delighted laugh. He drew to Susan the attention of a stout lady in
purple velvet, beside him. "Mrs. Fox--Miss Brown," said he, "and
Miss Thornton--Mrs. Fox."
"Mrs. Fox," said Susan, pleasantly brief.
"Miss Brown," said Mrs. Fox, with a wintry smile.
"Pleased to meet any friend of Mr. Coleman's, I'm sure," Thorny
said, engagingly.
"Miss Thornton," Mrs. Fox responded, with as little tone as is
possible to the human voice.
After that the newcomers, twelve or fourteen in all, settled into
their seats, and a moment later everyone's attention was riveted on
the field. The men were lining up, big backs bent double, big arms
hanging loose, like the arms of gorillas. Breathless attention held
the big audience silent and tense.
"Don't you LOVE it?" breathed Susan, to Thorny.
"Crazy about it!" Peter Coleman answered her, without turning.
It was a wonderful game that followed. Susan never saw another that
seemed to her to have the same peculiar charm. Between halves, Peter
Coleman talked almost exclusively to her, and they laughed over the
peanuts that disappeared so fast.
The sun slipped down and down the sky, and the air rose chilly and
sweet from the damp earth. It began to grow dark. Susan began to
feel a nervous apprehension that somehow, in leaving the field, she
and Thorny would become awkwardly involved in Mrs. Fox's party,
would seem to be trying to include themselves in this distinguished
group.
"We've got to rush," she muttered, buttoning up her coat.
"Oh, what's your hurry?" asked Thorny, who would not have objected
to the very thing Susan dreaded.
"It's so dark!" Susan said, pushing ahead. They were carried by the
crowd through the big gates, out to the street. Lights were
beginning to prick through the dusk, a long line of street cars was
waiting, empty and brightly lighted. Suddenly Susan felt a touch on
her shoulder.
"Lord, you're in a rush!" said Peter Coleman, pushing through the
crowd to join them. He was somehow dragging Mrs. Fox with him, the
lady seemed outraged and was breathless. Peter brought her
triumphantly up to Susan.
"Now what is it that you want me to do, you ridiculous boy!" gasped
Mrs. Fox,--"ask Miss Brown to come and have tea with us, is that it?
I'm chaperoning a few of the girls down to the Palace for a cup of
tea, Miss Brown,--perhaps you will waive all formality, and come
too?"
Susan didn't like it, the "waive all formality" showed her exactly
how Mrs. Fox regarded the matter. Her pride was instantly touched.
But she longed desperately to go. A sudden thought of the politely
interested Thorny decided her.
"Oh, thank you! Thank you, Mr. Coleman," she smiled, "but I can't,
to-night. Miss Thornton and I are just--"
"Don't decline on MY account, Miss Brown," said Thorny, mincingly,
"for I have an engagement this evening, and I have to go straight
home--"
"No, don't decline on any account!" Peter said masterfully, "and
don't tell wicked lies, or you'll get your mouth washed out with
soap! Now, I'll put Miss Thornton on her car, and you talk to Hart
here--Miss Brown, this is Mr. Hart--Gordon, Miss Brown--until I come
back!"
He disappeared with Thorny, and Susan, half terrified, half
delighted, talked to Mr. Hart at quite a desperate rate, as the
whole party got on the dummy of a car. Just as they started, Peter
Coleman joined them, and during the trip downtown Susan kept both
young men laughing, and was her gayest, happiest self.
The Palace Hotel, grimy and dull in a light rainfall, was
nevertheless the most enchanting place in the world to go for tea,
as Susan knew by instinct, or hearsay, or tradition, and as all
these other young people had proved a hundred times. A covered
arcade from the street led through a row of small, bright shops into
the very center of the hotel, where there was an enormous court
called the "Palm-garden," walled by eight rising tiers of windows,
and roofed, far above, with glass. At one side of this was the
little waiting-room called the "Turkish Room," full of Oriental
inlay and draperies, and embroideries of daggers and crescents.
To Susan the place was enchanting beyond words. The coming and going
of strange people, the arriving carriages with their slipping
horses, the luggage plastered with labels, the little shops,--so
full of delightful, unnecessary things, candy and glace fruits, and
orchids and exquisite Chinese embroideries, and postal cards, and
theater tickets, and oranges, and paper-covered novels, and
alligator pears! The very sight of these things aroused in her heart
a longing that was as keen as pain. Oh, to push her way, somehow,
into the world, to have a right to enjoy these things, to be a part
of this brilliant, moving show, to play her part in this wonderful
game!
Mrs. Fox led the girls of her party to the Turkish Room to-night,
where, with much laughter and chatter, they busied themselves with
small combs, mirrors powder boxes, hairpins and veils. One girl, a
Miss Emily Saunders, even loosened her long, thin, silky hair, and
let it fall about her shoulders, and another took off her collar
while she rubbed and powdered her face.
Susan sat rather stiffly on a small, uncomfortable wooden chair,
entirely ignored, and utterly miserable. She smiled, as she looked
pleasantly from one face to another, but her heart was sick within
her. No one spoke to her, or seemed to realize that she was in the
room. A steady stream of talk--such gay, confidential talk!--went
on.
"Let me get there, Connie, you old pig, I'm next. Listen, girls, did
you hear Ward to-day? Wasn't that the richest ever, after last
night! Ward makes me tired, anyway. Did Margaret tell you about
Richard and Ward, last Sunday? Isn't that rich! I don't believe it,
but to hear Margaret tell it, you'd think--Wait a minute, Louise,
while I pin this up! Whom are you going with to-night? Are you going
to dinner there? Why don't you let us call for you? That's all
right, bring him along. Will you? All right. That's fine. No, and I
don't care. If it comes I'll wear it, and if it doesn't come I'll
wear that old white rag,--it's filthy, but I don't care. Telephone
your aunt, Con, and then we can all go together. Love to, darling,
but I've got a suitor. You have not! I have TOO! Who is it? Who is
it, I like that! Isn't she awful, Margaret? Mother has an awful
crush on you, Mary, she said--Wait a minute! I'm just going to
powder my nose. Who said Joe Chickering belonged to you? What nerve!
He's mine. Isn't Joe my property? Don't come in here, Alice, we're
just talking about you--"
"Oh, if I could only slip out somehow!" thought Susan desperately.
"Oh, if only I hadn't come!"
Their loosened wraps were displaying all sorts of pretty little
costumes now. Susan knew that the simplest of blue linen shirtwaists
was under her own coat. She had not courage to ask to borrow a comb,
to borrow powder. She knew her hair was mussed, she knew her nose
was shiny--
Her heart was beating so fast, with angry resentment of their serene
rudeness, and shame that she had so readily accepted the casual
invitation that gave them this chance to be rude, that she could
hardly think. But it seemed to be best, at any cost, to leave the
party now, before things grew any worse. She would make some brief
excuse to Mrs. Fox,--headache or the memory of an engagement--
"Do you know where Mrs. Fox is?" she asked the girl nearest her. For
Mrs. Fox had sauntered out into the corridor with some idea of
summoning the men.
The girl did not answer, perhaps did not hear. Susan tried again.
"Do you know where Mrs. Fox went to?"
Now the girl looked at her for a brief instant, and rose, crossing
the little room to the side of another girl.
"No, I really don't," she said lightly, civilly, as she went.
Susan's face burned. She got up, and went to the door. But she was
too late. The young men were just gathering there in a noisy group.
It appeared that there was sudden need of haste. The "rooters" were
to gather in the court presently, for more cheering, and nobody
wanted to miss the sight.
"Come, girls! Be quick!" called Mrs. Fox. "Come, Louise, dear!
Connie," this to her own daughter, "you and Peter run ahead, and ask
for my table. Peter, will you take Connie? Come, everybody!"
Somehow, they had all paired off, in a flash, without her. Susan
needed no further spur. With more assurance than she had yet shown,
she touched the last girl, as she passed, on the arm. It chanced to
be Miss Emily Saunders. She and her escort both stopped, laughing
with that nervous apprehension that seizes their class at the
appearance of the unexpected.
"Miss Saunders," said Susan quickly, "will you tell Mrs. Fox that my
headache is much worse. I'm afraid I'd better go straight home--"
"Oh, too bad!" Miss Saunders said, her round, pale, rather
unwholesome face, expressing proper regret. "Perhaps tea will help
it?" she added sweetly.
It was the first personal word Susan had won. She felt suddenly,
horrifyingly--near to tears.
"Oh, thank you, I'm afraid not!" she smiled bravely. "Thank you so
much. And tell her I'm sorry. Good-night."
"Good-night!" said Miss Saunders. And Susan went, with a sense of
escape and relief, up the long passageway, and into the cool,
friendly darkness of the streets. She had an unreasoning fear that
they might follow her, somehow bring her back, and walked a swift
block or two, rather than wait for the car where she might be found.
Half an hour later she rushed into the house, just as the
Thanksgiving dinner was announced, half-mad with excitement, her
cheeks ablaze, and her eyes unnaturally bright. The scene in the
dining-room was not of the gayest; Mrs. Lancaster and Virginia were
tired and depressed, Mary Lou nervously concerned for the dinner,
Georgie and almost all of the few boarders who had no alternative to
dining in a boarding-house to-day were cross and silent.
But the dinner was delicious, and Susan, arriving at the crucial
moment, had a more definite effect on the party than a case of
champagne would have had. She chattered recklessly and incessantly,
and when Mrs. Lancaster's mild "Sue, dear!" challenged one remark,
she capped it with another still less conventional.
Her spirits were infectious, the gaiety became general. Mrs. Parker
laughed until the tears streamed down her fat cheeks, and Mary Lord,
the bony, sallow-faced, crippled sister who was the light and joy of
Lydia Lord's drudging life, and who had been brought downstairs to-
day as a special event, at a notable cost to her sister's and
William Oliver's muscles, nearly choked over her cranberry sauce.
Susan insisted that everyone should wear the paper caps that came in
the bonbons, and looked like a pretty witch herself, under a cone-
shaped hat of pink and blue. When, as was usual on all such
occasions, a limited supply of claret came on with the dessert, she
brought the whole company from laughter very close to tears, as she
proposed, with pretty dignify, a toast to her aunt, "who makes this
house such a happy home for us all." The toast was drunk standing,
and Mrs. Lancaster cried into her napkin, with pride and tender
emotion.
After dinner the diminished group trailed, still laughing and
talking, upstairs to the little drawing-room, where perhaps seven or
eight of them settled about the coal fire. Mrs. Lancaster, looking
her best in a low-necked black silk, if rather breathless after the
hearty dinner, eaten in too-tight corsets, had her big chair,
Georgia curled girlishly on a footstool at her feet. Miss Lydia Lord
stealthily ate a soda mint tablet now and then; her sister, propped
with a dozen pillows on the sofa, fairly glowed with the unusual
pleasure and excitement. Little Mrs. Cortelyou rocked back and
forth; always loquacious, she was especially talkative after to-
night's glass of wine.
Virginia, who played certain simple melodies very prettily, went to
the piano and gave them "Maryland" and "Drink to Me Only with Thine
Eyes," and was heartily applauded. Mary Lou was finally persuaded to
sing Tosti's "Farewell to Summer," in a high, sweet, self-conscious
soprano.
Susan had disappeared. Just after dinner she had waylaid William
Oliver, with a tense, "Will you walk around the block with me,
Billy? I want to talk to you," and William, giving her a startled
glance, had quietly followed her through the dark lower hall, and
into the deserted, moonlighted, wind-swept street. The wind had
fallen: stars were shining.
"Billy," said Susan, taking his arm and walking him along very
rapidly, "I'm going away--"
"Going away?" he said sympathetically. This statement always meant
that something had gone very wrong with Susan.
"Absolutely!" Susan said passionately. "I want to go where nobody
knows me, where I can make a fresh start. I'm going to Chicago."
"What the DEUCE are you raving about?" Mr. Oliver asked, stopping
short in the street. "What have you been doing now?"
"Nothing!" Susan said, with suddenly brimming eyes. "But I hate this
place, and I hate everyone in it, and I'm simply sick of being
treated as if, just because I'm poor--"
"You sound like a bum second act, with somebody throwing a handful
of torn paper down from the wings!" Billy observed. But his tone was
kinder than his words, and Susan, laying a hand on his coat sleeve,
told him the story of the afternoon; of Mrs. Fox, with her
supercilious smile; of the girls, so bitterly insulting; of Peter,
involving her in these embarrassments and then forgetting to stand
by her.
"If one of those girls came to us a stranger," Susan declared, with
a heaving breast, "do you suppose we'd treat her like that?"
"Well, that only proves we have better manners than they have!"
"Oh, Bill, what rot! If there's one thing society people have, it's
manners!" Susan said impatiently. "Do you wonder people go crazy to
get hold of money?" she added vigorously.
"Nope. You've GOT to have it. There are lots of other things in the
world," he agreed, "but money's first and foremost. The only reason
_I_ want it," said Billy, "is because I want to show other rich
people where they make their mistakes."
"Do you really think you'll be rich some day, Billy?"
"Sure."
Susan walked on thoughtfully.
"There's where a man has the advantage," she said. "He can really
work toward the thing he wants."
"Well, girls ought to have the same chance," Billy said generously.
"Now I was talking to Mrs. Carroll Sunday--"
"Oh, how are the Carrolls?" asked Susan, diverted for an instant.
"Fine. They were awfully disappointed you weren't along.--And she
was talking about that very thing. And she said her three girls were
going to work just as Phil and Jim do."
"But Billy, if a girl has a gift, yes. But you can't put a girl in a
foundry or a grocery."
"Not in a foundry. But you could in a grocery. And she said she had
talked to Anna and Jo since they were kids, just as she did to the
boys, about their work."
"Wouldn't Auntie think she was crazy!" Susan smiled. After a while
she said more mildly:
"I don't believe Peter Coleman is quite as bad as the others!"
"Because you have a crush on him," suggested Billy frankly. "I think
he acted like a skunk."
"Very well. Think what you like!" Susan said icily. But presently,
in a more softened tone, she added, "I do feel badly about Thorny! I
oughtn't to have left her. It was all so quick! And she DID have a
date, at least I know a crowd of people were coming to their house
to dinner. And I was so utterly taken aback to be asked out with
that crowd! The most exclusive people in the city,--that set."
"You give me an awful pain when you talk like that," said Billy,
bluntly. "You give them a chance to sit on you, and they do, and
then you want to run away to Chicago, because you feel so hurt. Why
don't you stay in your own crowd?"
"Because I like nice people. And besides, the Fox crowd isn't ONE
bit better than I am!" said the inconsistent Susan, hotly. "Who were
their ancestors! Miners and servants and farmers! I'd like to go
away," she resumed, feverishly, "and work up to be something GREAT,
and come back here and have them tumbling over themselves to be nice
to me--"
"What a pipe dream!" Billy observed. "Let 'em alone. And if Coleman
ever offers you another invitation--"
"He won't!" interposed Susan.
"--Why, you sit on him so quick it'll make his head spin! Get busy
at something, Susan. If you had a lot of work to do, and enough
money to buy yourself pretty clothes, and to go off on nice little
trips every Sunday,--up the mountain, or down to Santa Cruz, you'd
forget this bunch!"
"Get busy at what?" asked Susan, half-hopeful, half in scorn.
"Oh, anything!"
"Yes, and Thorny getting forty-five after twelve years!"
"Well, but you've told me yourself how Thorny wastes time, and makes
mistakes, and conies in late, and goes home early---"
"As if that made any difference! Nobody takes the least notice!"
Susan said hotly. But she was restored enough to laugh now, and a
passing pop-corn cart made a sudden diversion. "Let's get some
crisps, Bill! Let's get a lot, and take some home to the others!"
So the evening ended with Billy and Susan in the group about the
fire, listening idly to the reminiscences that the holiday mood
awakened in the older women. Mrs. Cortelyou had been a California
pioneer, and liked to talk of the old prairie wagons, of Indian
raids, of flood and fire and famine. Susan, stirred by tales of real
trouble, forgot her own imaginary ones. Indians and wolves in the
strange woods all about, a child at the breast, another at the knee,
and the men gone for food,--four long days' trip! The women of those
days, thought Susan, carried their share of the load. She had heard
the story of the Hatch child before, the three-year-old, who,
playing about the wagons, at the noontime rest on the plains, was
suddenly missing! Of the desperate hunt, the half-mad mother's
frantic searching, her agonies when the long-delayed start must be
made, her screams when she was driven away with her tinier child in
her arms, knowing that behind one of those thousands of mesquite or
cactus bushes, the little yellow head must be pillowed on the sand,
the little beloved mouth smiling in sleep.
"Mrs. Hatch used to sit for hours, strainin' her eyes back of us,
toward St. Joe," Mrs. Cortelyou said, sighing. "But there was plenty
of trouble ahead, for all of us, too! It's a life of sorrow."
"You never said a truer word than that," Mrs. Lancaster agreed
mournfully. And the talk came about once more to the Harding
funeral.
CHAPTER IV
"Good-morning!" said Susan, bravely, when Miss Thornton came into
the office the next morning. Miss Thornton glanced politely toward
her.
"Oh, good-morning, Miss Brown!" said she, civilly, disappearing into
the coat closet. Susan felt her cheeks burn. But she had been lying
awake and thinking in the still watches of the night, and she was
the wiser for it. Susan's appearance was a study in simple neatness
this morning, a black gown, severe white collar and cuffs, severely
braided hair. Her table was already piled with bills, and she was
working busily. Presently she got up, and came down to Miss
Thornton's desk.
"Mad at me, Thorny?" she asked penitently. She had to ask it twice.
"Why should I be?" asked Miss Thornton lightly then. "Excuse me--"
she turned a page, and marked a price. "Excuse me--" This time
Susan's hand was in the way.
"Ah, Thorny, don't be mad at me," said Susan, childishly.
"I hope I know when I am not wanted," said Miss Thornton stiffly,
after a silence.
"I don't!" laughed Susan, and stopped. Miss Thornton looked quickly
up, and the story came out. Thorny was instantly won. She observed
with a little complacence that she had anticipated just some such
event, and so had given Peter Coleman no chance to ask HER. "I could
see he was dying to," said Thorny, "but I know that crowd! Don't you
care, Susan, what's the difference?" said Thorny, patting her hand
affectionately.
So that little trouble was smoothed away. Another episode made the
day more bearable for Susan.
Mr. Brauer called her into his office at ten o'clock. Peter was at
his desk, but Susan apparently did not see him.
"Will you hurry this bill, Miss Brown?" said Mr. Brauer, in his
careful English. "Al-zo, I wished to say how gratifite I am wiz your
work, before zese las' weeks,--zis monss. You work hardt, and well.
I wish all could do so hardt, and so well."
"Oh, thank you!" stammered Susan, in honest shame. Had one month's
work been so noticeable? She made new resolves for the month to
come. "Was that all, Mr. Brauer?" she asked primly.
"All? Yes."
"What was your rush yesterday?" asked Peter Coleman, turning around.
"Headache," said Susan, mildly, her hand on the door.
"Oh, rot! I bet it didn't ache at all!" he said, with his gay laugh.
But Susan did not laugh, and there was a pause. Peter's face grew
red.
"Did--did Miss Thornton get home all right?" he asked. Susan knew he
was at a loss for something to say, but answered him seriously.
"Quite, thank you. She was a little--at least I felt that she might
be a little vexed at my leaving her, but she was very sweet about
it."
"She should have come, too!" Peter said, embarrassedly.
Susan did not answer, she eyed him gravely for a few seconds, as one
waiting for further remarks, then turned and went out, sauntering to
her desk with the pleasant conviction that hers were the honors of
war.
The feeling of having regained her dignity was so exhilarating that
Susan was careful, during the next few weeks, to preserve it. She
bowed and smiled to Peter, answered his occasional pleasantries
briefly and reservedly, and attended strictly to her affairs alone.
Thus Thanksgiving became a memory less humiliating, and on Christmas
Day joy came gloriously into Susan's heart, to make it memorable
among all the Christmas Days of her life. Easy to-day to sit for a
laughing hour with poor Mary Lord, to go to late service, and dream
through a long sermon, with the odor of incense and spicy evergreen
sweet all about her, to set tables, to dust the parlor, to be kissed
by Loretta's little doctor under the mistletoe, to sweep up tissue-
paper and red ribbon and nutshells and tinsel, to hook Mary Lou's
best gown, and accompany Virginia to evening service, and to lend
Georgie her best gloves. Susan had not had many Christmas presents:
cologne and handkerchiefs and calendars and candy, from various girl
friends, five dollars from the firm, a silk waist from Auntie, and a
handsome umbrella from Billy, who gave each one of the cousins
exactly the same thing.
These, if appreciated, were more or less expected, too. But beside
them, this year, was a great box of violets,--Susan never forgot the
delicious wet odor of those violets!--and inside the big box a
smaller one, holding an old silver chain with a pendant of lapis
lazuli, set in a curious and lovely design. Susan honestly thought
it the handsomest thing she had ever seen. And to own it, as a gift
from him! Small wonder that her heart flew like a leaf in a high
wind. The card that came with it she had slipped inside her silk
blouse, and so wore against her heart. "Mr. Peter Webster Coleman,"
said one side of the card. On the other was written, "S.B. from P.--
Happy Fourth of July!" Susan took it out and read it a hundred
times. The "P" indicated a friendliness that brought the happy color
over and over again to her face. She dashed him off a gay little
note of thanks; signed it "Susan," thought better of that and re-
wrote it, to sign it "Susan Ralston Brown"; wrote it a third time,
and affixed only the initials, "S.B." All day long she wondered at
intervals if the note had been too chilly, and turned cold, or
turned rosy wondering if it had been too warm.
Mr. Coleman did not come into the office during the following week,
and one day a newspaper item, under the heading of "The Smart Set,"
jumped at Susan with the familiar name. "Peter Coleman, who is at
present the guest of Mrs. Rodney Chauncey, at her New Year's house
party," it ran, "may accompany Mr. Paul Wallace and Miss Isabel
Wallace in a short visit to Mexico next week." The news made Susan
vaguely unhappy.
One January Saturday she was idling along the deck, when he came
suddenly up behind her, to tell her, with his usual exuberant
laughter, that he WAS going away for a fortnight with the Wallaces,
just a flying trip, "in the old man's private car." He expected "a
peach of a time."
"You certainly ought to have it!" smiled Susan gallantly, "Isabel
Wallace looks like a perfect darling!"
"She's a wonder!" he said absently, adding eagerly, "Say, why can't
you come and help me buy some things this afternoon? Come on, and
we'll have tea at the club?"
Susan saw no reason against it, they would meet at one.
"I'll be down in J.G.'s office," he said, and Susan went back to her
desk with fresh joy and fresh pain at her heart.
On Saturdays, because of the early closing, the girls had no lunch
hour. But they always sent out for a bag of graham crackers, which
they nibbled as they worked, and, between eleven and one, they took
turns at disappearing in the direction of the lunch-room, to return
with well scrubbed hands and powdered noses, fresh collars and
carefully arranged hair. Best hats were usually worn on Saturdays,
and Susan rejoiced that she had worn her best to-day. After the
twelve o'clock whistle blew, she went upstairs.
On the last flight, just below the lunch-room, she suddenly stopped
short, her heart giving a sick plunge. Somebody up there was
laughing--crying--making a horrible noise--! Susan ran up the rest
of the flight.
Thorny was standing by the table. One or two other girls were in the
room, Miss Sherman was mending a glove, Miss Cashell stood in the
roof doorway, manicuring her nails with a hairpin. Miss Elsie Kirk
sat in the corner seat, with her arm about the bowed shoulders of
another girl, who was crying, with her head on the table.
"If you would mind your own affairs for about five minutes, Miss
Thornton," Elsie Kirk was saying passionately, as Susan came in,
"you'd be a good deal better off!"
"I consider what concerns Front Office concerns me!" said Miss
Thornton loftily.
"Ah, don't!" Miss Sherman murmured pitifully.
"If Violet wasn't such a darn FOOL--" Miss Cashell said lightly, and
stopped.
"What IS it?" asked Susan.
Her voice died on a dead silence. Miss Thornton, beginning to gather
up veil and gloves and handbag scattered on the table, pursed her
lips virtuously. Miss Cashell manicured steadily. Miss Sherman bit
off a thread.
"It's nothing at all!" said Elsie Kirk, at last. "My sister's got a
headache, that's all, and she doesn't feel well." She patted the
bowed shoulders. "And parties who have nothing better to do," she
added, viciously turning to Miss Thornton, "have butted in about
it!"
"I'm all right now," said Violet suddenly, raising a face so
terribly blotched and swollen from tears that Susan was genuinely
horrified. Violet's weak eyes were set in puffy rings of unnatural
whiteness, her loose, weak little mouth sagged, her bosom, in its
preposterous, transparent white lace shirtwaist, rose and fell
convulsively. In her voice was some shocking quality of
unwomanliness, some lack of pride, and reserve, and courage.
"All I wanted was to do like other girls do," said the swollen lips,
as Violet began to cry again, and to dab her eyes with a soaked rag
of a handkerchief. "I never meant nothing! 'N' Mamma says she KNOWS
it wasn't all my fault!" she went on, half maudlin in her
abandonment.
Susan gasped. There was a general gasp.
"Don't, Vi!" said her sister tenderly. "It ain't your fault if there
are skunks in the world like Mr. Phil Hunter," she said, in a
reckless half-whisper. "If Papa was alive he'd shoot him down like a
dog!"
"He ought to be shot down!" cried Susan, firing.
"Well, of course he ought!" Miss Elsie Kirk, strong under
opposition, softened suddenly under this championship, and began to
tremble. "Come on, Vi," said she.
"Well, of course he ought," Thorny said, almost with sympathy.
"Here, let's move the table a little, if you want to get out."
"Well, why do you make such a fuss about it?" Miss Cashell asked
softly. "You know as well as--as anyone else, that if a man gets a
girl into trouble, he ought to stand for--"
"Yes, but my sister doesn't take that kind of money!" flashed Elsie
bitterly.
"Well, of course not!" Miss Cashell said quickly, "but--"
"No, you're doing the dignified thing, Violet," Miss Thornton said,
with approval, "and you'll feel glad, later on, that you acted this
way. And, as far as my carrying tales, I never carried one. I DID
say that I thought I knew why you were leaving, and I don't deny it-
-Use my powder, right there by the mirror--But as far as anything
else goes--"
"We're both going," Elsie said. "I wouldn't take another dollar of
their dirty money if I was starving! Come on, Vi."
And a few minutes later they all said a somewhat subdued and
embarrassed farewell to the Misses Kirk, who went down the stairs,
veiled and silent, and out of the world of Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's
forever.
"Will she sue him, Thorny?" asked Susan, awed.
"Sue him? For what? She's not got anything to sue for." Miss
Thornton examined a finger nail critically. "This isn't the first
time this has happened down here," she said. "There was a lovely
girl here--but she wasn't such a fool as Violet is. She kept her
mouth shut. Violet went down to Phil Hunter's office this morning,
and made a perfect scene. He's going on East to meet his wife you
know; it must have been terribly embarrassing for him! Then old J.G.
sent for Violet, and told her that there'd been a great many errors
in the crediting, and showed 'em to her, too! Poor kid--"
Susan went wondering back to Front Office. The crediting should be
hers, now, by all rights! But she felt only sorry, and sore, and
puzzled. "She wanted a good time and pretty things," said Susan to
herself. Just as Susan herself wanted this delightful afternoon with
Peter Coleman! "How much money has to do with life!" the girl
thought.
But even the morning's events did not cloud the afternoon. She met
Peter at the door of Mr. Baxter's office, and they went laughing out
into the clear winter sunshine together.
Where first? To Roos Brothers, for one of the new folding trunks.
Quite near enough to walk, they decided, joining the released throng
of office workers who were streaming up to Kearney Street and the
theater district.
The trunk was found, and a very smart pigskin toilet-case to go in
the trunk; Susan found a sort of fascination in the ease with which
a person of Peter's income could add a box of silk socks to his
purchase, because their color chanced to strike his fancy, could add
two or three handsome ties. They strolled along Kearney Street and
Post Street, and Susan selected an enormous bunch of violets at
Podesta and Baldocchi's, declining the unwholesome-looking orchid
that was Peter's choice. They bought a camera, which was left that a
neat "P.W.C." might be stamped upon it, and went into Shreve's, a
place always fascinating to Susan, to leave Mr. Coleman's watch to
be regulated, and look at new scarf-pins. And finally they wandered
up into "Chinatown," as the Chinese quarter was called, laughing all
the way, and keenly alert for any little odd occurrence in the
crowded streets. At Sing Fat's gorgeous bazaar, Peter bought a
mandarin coat for himself, the smiling Oriental bringing its price
down from two hundred dollars to less than three-quarters of that
sum, and Susan taking a great fancy to a little howling teakwood
god; he bought that, too, and they named it "Claude" after much
discussion.
"We can't carry all these things to the University Club for tea,"
said Peter then, when it was nearly five o'clock. "So let's go home
and have tea with Aunt Clara--she'd love it!"
Tea at his own home! Susan's heart raced--
"Oh, I couldn't," she said, in duty bound.
"Couldn't? Why couldn't you?"
"Why, because Auntie mightn't like it. Suppose your aunt is out?"
"Shucks!" he pondered; he wanted his way. "I'll tell you," he said
suddenly. "We'll drive there, and if Aunt Clara isn't home you
needn't come in. How's that?"
Susan could find no fault with that. She got into a carriage in
great spirits.
"Don't you love it when we stop people on the crossings?" she asked
naively. Peter shouted, but she could see that he was pleased as
well as amused.
They bumped and rattled out Bush Street, and stopped at the stately
door of the old Baxter mansion. Mrs. Baxter fortunately was at home,
and Susan followed Peter into the great square hall, and into the
magnificent library, built in a day of larger homes and more
splendid proportions. Here she was introduced to the little, nervous
mistress of the house, who had been enjoying alone a glorious coal
fire.
"Let in a little more light, Peter, you wild, noisy boy, you!" said
Mrs. Baxter, adding, to Susan, "This was a very sweet thing of you
to do, my dear, I don't like my little cup of tea alone."
"Little cup--ha!" said Peter, eying the woman with immense
satisfaction. "You'll see her drink five, Miss Brown!"
"We'll send him upstairs, that's what we'll do," threatened his
aunt. "Yes, tea, Burns," she added to the butler. "Green tea, dear?
Orange-Pekoe? I like that best myself. And muffins, Burns, and
toast, something nice and hot. And jam. Mr. Peter likes jam, and
some of the almond cakes, if she has them. And please ask Ada to
bring me that box of candy from my desk. Santa Barbara nougat,
Peter, it just came."
"ISN'T this fun!" said Susan, so joyously that Mrs. Baxter patted
the girl's arm with a veiny, approving little hand, and Peter, eying
his aunt significantly, said: "Isn't SHE fun?"
It was a perfect hour, and when, at six, Susan said she must go, the
old lady sent her home in her own carriage. Peter saw her to the
door, "Shall you be going out to-night, sir?" Susan heard the
younger man-servant ask respectfully, as they passed. "Not to-
night!" said Peter, and, so sensitive was Susan now to all that
concerned him, she was unreasonably glad that he was not engaged to-
night, not to see other girls and have good times in which she had
no share. It seemed to make him more her own.
The tea, the firelight, the fragrant dying violets had worked a
spell upon her. Susan sat back luxuriously in the carriage, dreaming
of herself as Peter Coleman's wife, of entering that big hall as
familiarly as he did, of having tea and happy chatter ready for him
every afternoon before the fire---
There was no one at the windows, unfortunately, to be edified by the
sight of Susan Brown being driven home in a private carriage, and
the halls, as she entered, reeked of boiling cabbage and corned
beef. She groped in the darkness for a match with which to light the
hall gas. She could hear Loretta Barker's sweet high voice
chattering on behind closed doors, and, higher up, the deep moaning
of Mary Lord, who was going through one of her bad times. But she
met nobody as she ran up to her room.
"Hello, Mary Lou, darling! Where's everyone?" she asked gaily,
discerning in the darkness a portly form prone on the bed.
"Jinny's lying down, she's been to the oculist. Ma's in the kitchen-
-don't light up, Sue," said the patient, melancholy voice.
"Don't light up!" Susan echoed, amazedly, instantly doing so, the
better to see her cousin's tear-reddened eyes and pale face. "Why,
what's the matter?"
"Oh, we've had sad, sad news," faltered Mary Lou, her lips
trembling. "A telegram from Ferd Eastman. They've lost Robbie!"
"No!" said Susan, genuinely shocked. And to the details she listened
sympathetically, cheering Mary Lou while she inserted cuff-links
into her cousin's fresh shirtwaist, and persuaded her to come down
to dinner. Then Susan must leave her hot soup while she ran up to
Virginia's room, for Virginia was late.
"Ha! What is it?" said Virginia heavily, rousing herself from sleep.
Protesting that she was a perfect fright, she kept Susan waiting
while she arranged her hair.
"And what does Verriker say of your eyes, Jinny?"
"Oh, they may operate, after all!" Virginia sighed. "But don't say
anything to Ma until we're sure," she said.
Not the congenial atmosphere into which to bring a singing heart!
Susan sighed. When they went downstairs Mrs. Parker's heavy voice
was filling the dining-room.
"The world needs good wives and mothers more than it needs nuns, my
dear! There's nothing selfish about a woman who takes her share of
toil and care and worry, instead of running away from it. Dear me!
many of us who married and stayed in the world would be glad enough
to change places with the placid lives of the Sisters!"
"Then, Mama," Loretta said sweetly and merrily, detecting the
inconsistency of her mother's argument, as she always did, "if it's
such a serene, happy life--"
Loretta always carried off the honors of war. Susan used to wonder
how Mrs. Parker could resist the temptation to slap her pretty,
stupid little face. Loretta's deep, wise, mysterious smile seemed to
imply that she, at nineteen, could afford to assume the maternal
attitude toward her easily confused and disturbed parent.
"No vocation for mine!" said Georgianna, hardily, "I'd always be
getting my habit mixed up, and coming into chapel without my veil
on!"
This, because of its audacity, made everyone laugh, but Loretta
fixed on Georgie the sweet bright smile in which Susan already
perceived the nun.
"Are you so sure that you haven't a vocation, Georgie?" she asked
gently.
"Want to go to a bum show at the 'Central' to-night?" Billy Oliver
inquired of Susan in an aside. "Bartlett's sister is leading lady,
and he's handing passes out to everyone."
"Always!" trilled Susan, and at last she had a chance to add, "Wait
until I tell you what fun I've been having!"
She told him when they were on the car, and he was properly
interested, but Susan felt that the tea episode somehow fell flat;
had no significance for William.
"Crime he didn't take you to the University Club," said Billy, "they
say it's a keen club."
Susan, smiling over happy memories, did not contradict him.
The evening, in spite of the "bum" show, proved a great success,
and the two afterwards went to Zinkand's for sardine sandwiches and
domestic ginger-ale. This modest order was popular with them because
of the moderateness of its cost.
"But, Bill," said Susan to-night, "wouldn't you like to order once
without reading the price first and then looking back to see what it
was? Do you remember the night we nearly fainted with joy when we
found a ten cent dish at Tech's, and then discovered that it was
Chili Sauce!"
They both laughed, Susan giving her usual little bounce of joy as
she settled into her seat, and the orchestra began a spirited
selection. "Look there, Bill, what are those people getting?" she
asked.
"It's terrapin," said William, and Susan looked it up on the menu.
"Terrapin Parnasse, one-fifty," read Susan, "for seven of them,--
Gee! Gracious!" "Gracious" followed, because Susan had made up her
mind not to say "Gee" any more.
"His little supper will stand him in about fifteen dollars,"
estimated Billy, with deep interest. "He's ordering champagne,--
it'll stand him in thirty. Gosh!"
"What would you order if you could, Bill?" Susan asked. It was all
part of their usual program.
"Planked steak," answered Billy, readily.
"Planked steak," Susan hunted for it, "would it be three dollars?"
she asked, awed.
"That's it."
"I'd have breast of hen pheasant with Virginia ham," Susan decided.
A moment later her roving eye rested on a group at a nearby table,
and, with the pleased color rushing into her race, she bowed to one
of the members of the party.
"That's Miss Emily Saunders," said Susan, in a low voice. "Don't
look now--now you can look. Isn't she sweet?"
Miss Saunders, beautifully gowned, was sitting with an old man, an
elderly woman, a handsome, very stout woman of perhaps forty, and a
very young man. She was a pale, rather heavy girl, with prominent
eyes and smooth skin. Susan thought her very aristocratic looking.
"Me for the fat one," said Billy simply. "Who's she?"
"I don't know. DON'T let them see us looking, Bill!" Susan brought
her gaze suddenly back to her own table, and began a conversation.
There were some rolls on a plate, between them, but there was no
butter on the table. Their order had not yet been served.
"We want some butter here," said Billy, as Susan took a roll, broke
it in two, and laid it down again.
"Oh, don't bother, Bill! I don't honestly want it!" she protested.
"Rot!" said William. "He's got a right to bring it!" In a moment a
head-waiter was bending over them, his eyes moving rapidly from one
to the other, under contracted brows.
"Butter, please," said William briskly.
"Beg pardon?"
"BUTTER. We've no butter."
"Oh, certainly!" He was gone in a second, and in another the butter
was served, and Susan and Billy began on the rolls.
"Here comes Miss---, your friend," said William presently.
Susan whirled. Miss Saunders and the very young man were looking
toward their table, as they went out. Catching Susan's eye, they
came over to shake hands.
"How do you do, Miss Brown?" said the young woman easily. "My
cousin, Mr. Brice. He's nicer than he looks. Mr. Oliver? Were you at
the Columbia?"
"We were--How do you do? No, we weren't at the Columbia," Susan
stammered, confused by the other's languid ease of manner, by the
memory of the playhouse they had attended, and by the arrival of the
sardines and ginger-ale, which were just now placed on the table.
"I'm coming to take you to lunch with me some day, remember," said
Miss Saunders, departing. And she smiled another farewell from the
door.
"Isn't she sweet?" said Susan.
"And how well she would come along just as our rich and expensive
order is served!" Billy added, and they both laughed.
"It looks good to ME!" Susan assured him contentedly. "I'll give you
half that other sandwich if you can tell me what the orchestra is
playing now."
"The slipper thing, from 'Boheme'," Billy said scornfully. Susan's
eyes widened with approval and surprise. His appreciation of music
was an incongruous note in Billy's character.
There was presently a bill to settle, which Susan, as became a lady,
seemed to ignore. But she could not long ignore her escort's
scowling scrutiny of it.
"What's that?" demanded Mr. Oliver, scowling at the card. "Twenty
cents for WHAT?"
"For bread and butter, sir," said the waiter, in a hoarse,
confidential whisper. "Not served with sandwiches, sir." Susan's
heart began to thump.
"Billy--" she began.
"Wait a minute," Billy muttered. "Just wait a minute! It doesn't say
anything about that."
The waiter respectfully indicated a line on the menu card, which Mr.
Oliver studied fixedly, for what seemed to Susan a long time.
"That's right," he said finally, heavily, laying a silver dollar on
the check. Keep it." The waiter did not show much gratitude for his
tip. Susan and Billy, ruffled and self-conscious, walked, with what
dignity they could, out into the night.
"Damn him!" said Billy, after a rapidly covered half-block.
"Oh, Billy, don't! What do you care!" Susan said, soothingly.
"I don't care," he snapped. Adding, after another brooding minute,
"we ought to have better sense than to go into such places!"
"We're as good as anyone else!" Susan asserted, hotly.
"No, we're not. We're not as rich," he answered bitterly.
"Billy, as if MONEY mattered!"
"Oh, of course, money doesn't matter," he said with fine satire.
"Not at all! But because we haven't got it, those fellows, on thirty
per, can throw the hooks into us at every turn. And, if we threw
enough money around, we could be the rottenest man and woman on the
face of the globe, we could be murderers and thieves, even, and
they'd all be falling over each other to wait on us!"
"Well, let's murder and thieve, then!" said Susan blithely.
"I may not do that--"
"You mayn't? Oh, Bill, don't commit yourself! You may want to,
later."
"I may not do that," repeated Mr. Oliver, gloomily, "but, by George,
some day I'll have a wad in the bank that'll make me feel that I can
afford to turn those fellows down! They'll know that I've got it,
all right."
"Bill, I don't think that's much of an ambition," Susan said,
candidly, "to want so much money that you aren't afraid of a waiter!
Get some crisps while we're passing the man, Billy!" she interrupted
herself to say, urgently, "we can talk on the car!"
He bought them, grinning sheepishly.
"But honestly, Sue, don't you get mad when you think that about the
only standard of the world is money?" he resumed presently.
"Well, we know that we're BETTER than lots of rich people, Bill."
"How are we better?"
"More refined. Better born. Better ancestry."
"Oh, rot! A lot they care for that! No, people that have money can
get the best of people who haven't, coming and going. And for that
reason, Sue," they were on the car now, and Billy was standing on
the running board, just in front of her, "for that reason, Sue, I'm
going to MAKE money, and when I have so much that everyone knows it
then I'll do as I darn please. And I won't please to do the things
they do, either!"
"You're very sure of yourself, Bill! How are you going to make it?"
"The way other men make it, by gosh!" Mr. Oliver said seriously.
"I'm going into blue-printing with Ross, on the side. I've got
nearly three thousand in Panhandle lots--"
"Oh, you have NOT!"
"Oh, I have, too! Spence put me onto it. They're no good now, but
you bet your life they will be! And I'm going to stick along at the
foundry until the old man wakes up some day, and realizes that I'm
getting more out of my men than any other two foremen in the place.
Those boys would do anything for me--"
"Because you're a very unusual type of man to be in that sort of
place, Bill!" Susan interrupted.
"Shucks," he said, in embarrassment. "Well," he resumed, "then some
day I'm going to the old man and ask him for a year's leave. Then
I'll visit every big iron-works in the East, and when I come back,
I'll take a job of casting from my own blue-prints, at not less than
a hundred a week. Then I'll run up some flats in the Panhandle--"
"Having married the beautiful daughter of the old man himself--"
Susan interposed. "And won first prize in the Louisiana lottery--"
"Sure," he said gravely. "And meanwhile," he added, with a business-
like look, "Coleman has got a crush on you, Sue. It'd be a dandy
marriage for you, and don't you forget it!"
"Well, of all nerve!" Susan said unaffectedly, and with flaming
cheeks. "There is a little motto, to every nation dear, in English
it's forget-me-not, in French it's mind your own business, Bill!"
"Well, that may be," he said doggedly, "but you know as well as I do
that it's up to you--"
"Suppose it is," Susan said, satisfied that he should think so.
"That doesn't give YOU any right to interfere with my affairs!"
"You're just like Georgie and Mary Lou," he told her, "always
bluffing yourself. But you've got more brains than they have, Sue,
and it'd give the whole crowd of them a hand up if you made a
marriage like that. Don't think I'm trying to butt in," he gave her
his winning, apologetic smile, "you know I'm as interested as your
own brother could be, Sue! If you like him, don't keep the matter
hanging fire. There's no question that he's crazy about you--
everybody knows that!"
"No, there's no question about THAT," Susan said, softly.
But what would she not have given for the joy of knowing, in her
secret heart, that it was true!
Two weeks later, Miss Brown, summoned to Mr. Brauer's office, was
asked if she thought that she could do the crediting, at forty
dollars a month. Susan assented gravely, and entered that day upon
her new work, and upon a new era. She worked hard and silently, now,
with only occasional flashes of her old silliness. She printed upon
a card, and hung above her desk, these words:
"I hold it true, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves, to higher things."
On stepping-stones of her dead selves, Susan mounted. She wore a
preoccupied, a responsible air, her voice softened, her manner was
almost too sweet, too bright and gentle. She began to take cold, or
almost cold, baths daily, to brush her hair and mend her gloves. She
began to say "Not really?" instead of "Sat-so?" and "It's of no
consequence," instead of "Don't matter." She called her long woolen
coat, familiarly known as her "sweater," her "field-jacket," and
pronounced her own name "Syusan." Thorny, Georgianna, and Billy had
separately the pleasure of laughing at Susan in these days.
"They should really have a lift, to take the girls up to the lunch
room," said Susan to Billy.
"Of course they should," said Billy, "and a sink to bring you down
again!"
Peter Coleman did not return to San Francisco until the middle of
March, but Susan had two of the long, ill-written and ill-spelled
letters that are characteristic of the college graduate. It was a
wet afternoon in the week before Holy Week when she saw him again.
Front Office was very busy at three o'clock, and Miss Garvey had
been telling a story.
"'Don't whistle, Mary, there's a good girl,' the priest says,"
related Miss Garvey. "'I never like to hear a girl whistle,' he
says. Well, so that night Aggie,"--Aggie was Miss Kelly--"Aggie
wrote a question, and she put it in the question-box they had at
church for questions during the Mission. 'Is it a sin to whistle?'
she wrote. And that night, when he was readin' the questions out
from the pulpit, he come to this one, and he looked right down at
our pew over his glasses, and he says, 'The girl that asks this
question is here,' he says, 'and I would say to her, 'tis no sin to
do anything that injures neither God nor your neighbor!' Well, I
thought Aggie and me would go through the floor!" And Miss Kelly and
Miss Garvey put their heads down on their desks, and laughed until
they cried.
Susan, looking up to laugh too, felt a thrill weaken her whole body,
and her spine grow cold. Peter Coleman, in his gloves and big
overcoat, with his hat on the back of his head, was in Mr. Brauer's
office, and the electric light, turned on early this dark afternoon,
shone full in his handsome, clean-shaven face.
Susan had some bills that she had planned to show to Mr. Brauer this
afternoon. Six months ago she would have taken them in to him at
once, and been glad of the excuse. But now she dropped her eyes, and
busied herself with her work. Her heart beat high, she attacked a
particularly difficult bill, one she had been avoiding for days, and
disposed of it in ten minutes.
A little later she glanced at Mr. Brauer's office. Peter was gone,
and Susan felt a sensation of sickness. She looked down at Mr.
Baxter's office, and saw him there, spreading kodak pictures over
the old man's desk, laughing and talking. Presently he was gone
again, and she saw him no more that day.
The next day, however, she found him at her desk when she came in.
They had ten minutes of inconsequential banter before Miss Cashell
came in.
"How about a fool trip to the Chutes to-morrow night?" Peter asked
in a low tone, just before departing.
"Lent," Susan said reluctantly.
"Oh, so it is. I suppose Auntie wouldn't stand for a dinner?"
"Pos-i-to-ri-ly NOT!" Susan was hedged with convention.
"Positorily not? Well, let's walk the pup? What? All right, I'll
come at eight."
"At eight," said Susan, with a dancing heart.
She thought of nothing else until Friday came, slipped away from the
office a little earlier than usual, and went home planning just the
gown and hat most suitable. Visitors were in the parlor; Auntie,
thinking of pan-gravy and hot biscuits, was being visibly driven to
madness by them. Susan charitably took Mrs. Cobb and Annie and Daisy
off Mrs. Lancaster's hands, and listened sympathetically to a
dissertation upon the thanklessness of sons. Mrs. Cobb's sons,
leaving their mother and their unmarried sisters in a comfortable
home, had married the women of their own choice, and were not yet
forgiven.
"And how's Alfie doing?" Mrs. Cobb asked heavily, departing.
"Pretty well. He's in Portland now, he has another job," Susan said
cautiously. Alfred was never criticized in his mother's hearing. A
moment later she closed the hall door upon the callers with a sigh
of relief, and ran downstairs.
The telephone bell was ringing. Susan answered it.
"Hello Miss Brown! You see I know you in any disguise!" It was Peter
Coleman's voice.
"Hello!" said Susan, with a chill premonition.
"I'm calling off that party to-night," said Peter. "I'm awfully
sorry. We'll do it some other night. I'm in Berkeley."
"Oh, very well!" Susan agreed, brightly.
"Can you HEAR me? I say I'm---"
"Yes, I hear perfectly."
"What?"
"I say I can hear!"
"And it's all right? I'm awfully sorry!"
"Oh, certainly!"
"All right. These fellows are making such a racket I can't hear you.
See you to-morrow!"
Susan hung up the receiver. She sat quite still in the darkness for
awhile, staring straight ahead of her. When she went into the
dining-room she was very sober. Mr. Oliver was there; he had taken
one of his men to a hospital, with a burned arm, too late in the
afternoon to make a return to the foundry worth while.
"Harkee, Susan wench!" said he, "do 'ee smell asparagus?"
"Aye. It'll be asparagus, Gaffer," said Susan dispiritedly, dropping
into her chair.
"And I nearly got my dinner out to-night!" Billy said, with a
shudder. "Say, listen, Susan, can you come over to the Carrolls,
Sunday? Going to be a bully walk!"
"I don't know, Billy," she said quietly.
"Well, listen what we're all going to do, some Thursday. We're going
to the theater, and then dawdle over supper at some cheap place, you
know, and then go down on the docks, at about three, to see the
fishing fleet come in? Are you on? It's great. They pile the fish up
to their waists, you know--"
"That sounds lovely!" said Susan, eying him scornfully. "I see Jo
and Anna Carroll enjoying THAT!"
"Lord, what a grouch you've got!" Billy said, with a sort of awed
admiration.
Susan began to mold the damp salt in an open glass salt-cellar with
the handle of a fork. Her eyes blurred with sudden tears.
"What's the matter?" Billy asked in a lowered voice.
She gulped, merely shook her head.
"You're dead, aren't you?" he said repentantly.
"Oh, all in!" It was a relief to ascribe it to that. "I'm awfully
tired."
"Too tired to go to church with Mary Lou and me, dear?" asked
Virginia, coming in. "Friday in Passion Week, you know. We're going
to St, Ignatius. But if you're dead--?"
"Oh, I am. I'm going straight to bed," Susan said. But after dinner,
when Mary Lou was dressing, she suddenly changed her mind, dragged
herself up from the couch where she was lying and, being Susan,
brushed her hair, pinned a rose on her coat lapel, and powdered her
nose. Walking down the street with her two cousins, Susan, storm-
shaken and subdued, still felt "good," and liked the feeling. Spring
was in the air, the early darkness was sweet with the odors of grass
and flowers.
When they reached the church, the great edifice was throbbing with
the notes of the organ, a careless voluntary that stopped short,
rambled, began again. They were early, and the lights were only
lighted here and there; women, and now and then a man, drifted up
the center aisle. Boots cheeped unseen in the arches, sibilant
whispers smote the silence, pew-doors creaked, and from far corners
of the church violent coughing sounded with muffled reverberations.
Mary Lou would have slipped into the very last pew, but Virginia led
the way up--up--up--in the darkness, nearer and nearer the altar,
with its winking red light, and genuflected before one of the very
first pews. Susan followed her into it with a sigh of satisfaction;
she liked to see and hear, and all the pews were open to-night. They
knelt for awhile, then sat back, silent, reverential, but not
praying, and interested in the arriving congregation.
A young woman, seeing Virginia, came to whisper to her in a rasping
aside. She "had St. Joseph" for Easter, she said, would Virginia
help her "fix him"? Virginia nodded, she loved to assist those
devout young women who decorated, with exquisite flowers and
hundreds of candles, the various side altars of the church.
There was a constant crisping of shoes in the aisle now, the pews
were filling fast. "Lord, where do all these widows come from?"
thought Susan. A "Brother," in a soutane, was going about from
pillar to pillar, lighting the gas. Group after group of the pendent
globes sprang into a soft, moony glow; the hanging glass prisms
jingled softly. The altar-boys in red, without surplices, were
moving about the altar now, lighting the candles. The great
crucifix, the altar-paintings and the tall candle-sticks were
swathed in purple cloth, there were no flowers to-night on the High
Altar, but it twinkled with a thousand candles.
The hour began to have its effect on Susan. She felt herself a
little girl again, yielding to the spell of the devotion all about
her; the clicking rosary-beads, the whispered audible prayers, the
very odors,--odors of close-packed humanity,--that reached her were
all a part of this old mood. A little woman fluttered up the aisle,
and squeezed in beside her, panting like a frightened rabbit. Now
there was not a seat to be seen, even the benches by the
confessionals were full.
And now the organ broke softly, miraculously, into enchanting and
enveloping sound, that seemed to shake the church bodily with its
great trembling touch, and from a door on the left of the altar the
procession streamed,--altar-boys and altar-boys and altar-boys,
followed through the altar-gate by the tall young priest who would
"say the Stations." Other priests, a score of them, filled the
altar-stalls; one, seated on the right between two boys, would
presently preach.
The procession halted somewhere over in the distant: arches, the
organ thundered the "Stabat Mater." Susan could only see the candles
and the boys, but the priest's voice was loud and clear. The
congregation knelt and rose again, knelt and rose again, turned and
swayed to follow the slow movement of the procession about the
church.
When priest and boys had returned to the altar, a wavering high
soprano voice floated across the church in an intricate "Veni
Creator." Susan and Mary Lou sat back in their seats, but Virginia
knelt, wrapped in prayer, her face buried in her hands, her hat
forcing the woman in front of her to sit well forward in her place.
The pulpit was pushed across a little track laid in the altar
enclosure, and the preacher mounted it, shook his lace cuffs into
place, laid his book and notes to one side, and composedly studied
his audience.
"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,
Amen. 'Ask and ye shall receive---'" suddenly the clear voice rang
out.
Susan lost the sermon. But she got the text, and pondered it with
new interest. It was not new to her. She had "asked" all her life
long; for patience, for truthfulness, for "final perseverance," for
help for Virginia's eyes and Auntie's business and Alfie's
intemperance, for the protection of this widow, the conversion of
that friend, "the speedy recovery or happy death" of some person
dangerously ill. Susan had never slipped into church at night with
Mary Lou, without finding some special request to incorporate in her
prayers.
To-night, in the solemn pause of Benediction, she asked for Peter
Coleman's love. Here was a temporal favor, indeed, indicating a
lesser spiritual degree than utter resignation to the Divine Will.
Susan was not sure of her right to ask it. But, standing to sing the
"Laudate," there came a sudden rush of confidence and hope to her
heart. She was praying for this gift now, and that fact alone seemed
to lift it above the level of ordinary, earthly desires. Not
entirely unworthy was any hope that she could bring to this
tribunal, and beg for on her knees.
CHAPTER V
Two weeks later she and Peter Coleman had their evening at the
Chutes, and a wonderful evening it was; then came a theater trip,
and a Sunday afternoon that they spent in idly drifting about Golden
Gate Park, enjoying the spring sunshine, and the holiday crowd,
feeding the animals and eating peanuts. Susan bowed to Thorny and
the faithful Wally on this last occasion and was teased by Thorny
about Peter Coleman the next day, to her secret pleasure. She liked
anything that made her friendship for Peter seem real, a thing
noticed and accepted by others, not all the romantic fabric of her
own unfounded dreams.
Tangible proof of his affection there was indeed, to display to the
eyes of her world. But it was for intangible proof that Susan's
heart longed day after day. In spite of comment and of envy from the
office, in spite of the flowers and messages and calls upon which
Auntie and the girls were placing such flattering significance,
Susan was far too honest with life not to realize that she had not
even a thread by which to hold Peter Coleman, that he had not given
an instant's thought, and did not wish to give an instant's thought
to her, or to any woman, as a possible sweetheart and wife.
She surprised him, she amused him, she was the company he liked
best, easiest to entertain, most entertaining in turn, this she
knew. He liked her raptures over pleasures that would only have
bored the other girls he knew, he liked the ready nonsense that
inspired answering nonsense in him, the occasional flashes of real
wit, the inexhaustible originality of Susan's point-of-view. They
had their own vocabulary, phrases remembered from plays, good and
bad, that they had seen together, or overheard in the car; they
laughed and laughed together at a thousand things that Susan could
not remember when she was alone, or, remembering, found no longer
amusing. This was all wonderful, but it was not love.
But, perhaps, she consoled herself, courtship, in his class, was not
the serious affair she had always known it to be in hers. Rich
people took nothing very seriously, yet they married and made good
husbands for all that. Susan would blame herself for daring to
criticize, even in the tiniest particular, the great gift that the
gods laid at her feet.
One June day, when Susan felt rather ill, and was sitting huddled at
her desk, with chilled feet and burning cheeks, she was sent for by
old Mr. Baxter, and found Miss Emily Saunders in his office. The
visitor was chatting with Peter and the old man, and gaily carried
Susan off to luncheon, after Peter had regretted his inability to
come too. They went to the Palace Hotel, and Susan thought
everything, Miss Emily especially, very wonderful and delightful,
and, warmed and sustained by a delicious lunch, congratulated
herself all during the afternoon that she herself had risen to the
demand of the occasion, had really been "funny" and "nice," had
really "made good." She knew Emily had been amused and attracted,
and suspected that she would hear from that fascinating young person
again.
A few weeks later a letter came from Miss Saunders asking Susan to
lunch with the family, in their San Rafael home. Susan admired the
handsome stationery, the monogram, the bold, dashing hand. Something
in Mary Lou's and Georgianna's pleasure in this pleasure for her
made her heart ache as she wrote her acceptance. She was far enough
from the world of ease and beauty and luxury, but how much further
were these sweet, uncomplaining, beauty-starved cousins of hers!
Mary Lou went with her to the ferry, when the Sunday came, just for
a ride on the hot day, and the two, being early, roamed happily over
the great ferry building, watching German and Italian picnics form
and file through the gateways, and late-comers rush madly up to the
closing doors. Susan had been to church at seven o'clock, and had
since washed her hair, and washed and pressed her best shirtwaist,
but she felt fresh and gay.
Presently, with a shout of pleasure that drew some attention to
their group, Peter Coleman came up to them. It appeared that he was
to be Miss Saunders' guest at luncheon, too, and he took charge of
the radiant Susan with evident satisfaction, and much laughter.
"Dear me! I wish I was going, too," said Mary Lou mildly, as they
parted. "But I presume a certain young man is very glad I am not,"
she added, with deep finesse. Peter laughed out, but turned red, and
Susan wished impatiently that Mary Lou would not feel these
embarrassing inanities to be either welcome or in good taste.
But no small cloud could long shadow the perfect day. The Saunders'
home, set in emerald lawns, brightened by gay-striped awnings,
fragrant with flowers indoors and out, was quite the most beautiful
she had ever seen. Emily's family was all cordiality; the frail,
nervous, richly dressed little mother made a visible effort to be
gracious to this stranger, and Emily's big sister, Ella, in whom
Susan recognized the very fat young woman of the Zinkand party, was
won by Susan's irrepressible merriment to abandon her attitude of
bored, good-natured silence, and entered into the conversation at
luncheon with sudden zest. The party was completed by Mrs. Saunders'
trained nurse, Miss Baker, a placid young woman who did not seem, to
Susan, to appreciate her advantages in this wonderful place, and the
son of the house, Kenneth, a silent, handsome, pale young man, who
confined his remarks during luncheon to the single observation, made
to Peter, that he was "on the wagon."
The guest wondered what dinner would be, if this were luncheon
merely. Everything was beautifully served, smoking hot or icy cold,
garnished and seasoned miraculously. Subtle flavors contended with
other flavors, whipped cream appeared in most unexpected places--on
the bouillon, and in a rosette that topped the salad--of the hot
bread and the various chutneys and jellies and spiced fruits and
cheeses and olives alone, Susan could have made a most satisfactory
meal. She delighted in the sparkling glass, the heavy linen and
silver, the exquisite flowers. Together they seemed to form a
lulling draught for her senses; Susan felt as if undue cold, undue
heat, haste and worry and work, the office with its pencil-dust and
ink-stains and her aunt's house, odorous, dreary and dark, were
alike a half-forgotten dream.
After luncheon they drove to a bright, wide tennis-court, set in
glowing gardens, and here Susan was introduced to a score of noisy,
white-clad young people, and established herself comfortably on a
bench near the older women, to watch the games. This second social
experience was far happier than her first, perhaps because Susan
resolutely put her thoughts on something else than herself to-day,
watched and laughed, talked when she could, was happily silent when
she could not, and battled successfully with the thought of neglect
whenever it raised its head. Bitter as her lesson had been she was
grateful for it to-day.
Peter, very lithe, very big, gloriously happy, played in one set,
and, winning, came to throw himself on the grass at Susan's feet,
panting and hot. This made Susan the very nucleus of the gathering
group, the girls strolled up under their lazily twirling parasols,
the men ranged themselves beside Peter on the lawn. Susan said very
little; again she found the conversation a difficult one to enter,
but to-day she did not care; it was a curious, and, as she was to
learn later, a characteristic conversation, and she analyzed it
lazily as she listened.
There was a bright insincerity about everything they said, a languid
assumption that nothing in the world was worth an instant's
seriousness, whether it was life or death, tragedy or pathos. Susan
had seen this before in Peter, she saw him in his element now. He
laughed incessantly, as they all did. The conversation called for no
particular effort; it consisted of one or two phrases repeated
constantly, and with varying inflections, and interspersed by the
most trivial and casual of statements. To-day the phrase, "Would a
nice girl DO that?" seemed to have caught the general fancy. Susan
also heard the verb to love curiously abused.
"Look out, George--your racket!" some girl said vigorously.
"Would a nice girl DO that? I nearly put your eye out, didn't I? I
tell you all I'm a dangerous character," her neighbor answered
laughingly.
"Oh, I love that!" another girl's voice said, adding presently,
"Look at Louise's coat. Don't you love it?"
"I love it," said several voices. Another languidly added, "I'm
crazy about it."
"I'm crazy about it," said the wearer modestly, "Aunt Fanny sent
it."
"Can a nice girl DO that?" asked Peter, and there was a general
shout.
"But I'm crazy about your aunt," some girl asserted, "you know she
told Mother that I was a perfect little lady--honestly she did!
Don't you love that?"
"Oh, I LOVE that," Emily Saunders said, as freshly as if coining the
phrase. "I'm crazy about it!"
"Don't you love it? You've got your aunt's number," they all said.
And somebody added thoughtfully, "Can a nice girl DO that?"
How sure of themselves they were, how unembarrassed and how
marvelously poised, thought Susan. How casually these fortunate
young women could ask what friends they pleased to dinner, could
plan for to-day, to-morrow, for all the days that were! Nothing to
prevent them from going where they wanted to go, buying what they
fancied, doing as they pleased! Susan felt that an impassable
barrier stood between their lives and hers.
Late in the afternoon Miss Ella, driving in with a gray-haired young
man in a very smart trap, paid a visit to the tennis court, and was
rapturously hailed. She was evidently a great favorite.
"See here, Miss Brown," she called out, after a few moments,
noticing Susan, "don't you want to come for a little spin with me?"
"Very much," Susan said, a little shyly.
"Get down, Jerry," Miss Saunders said, giving her companion a little
shove with her elbow.
"Look here, who you pushing?" demanded the gray-haired young man,
without venom.
"I'm pushing you."
"'It's habit. I keep right on loving her!'" quoted Mr. Phillips to
the bystanders. But he got lazily down, and Susan got up, and they
were presently spinning away into the quiet of the lovely, warm
summer afternoon.
Miss Saunders talked rapidly, constantly, and well. Susan was amused
and interested, and took pains to show it. In great harmony they
spent perhaps an hour in driving, and were homeward bound when they
encountered two loaded buckboards, the first of which was driven by
Peter Coleman.
Miss Saunders stopped the second, to question her sister, who, held
on the laps of a girl and young man on the front seat, was evidently
in wild spirits.
"We're only going up to Cameroncourt!" Miss Emily shouted
cheerfully. "Keep Miss Brown to dinner! Miss Brown, I'll never speak
to you again if you don't stay!" And Susan heard a jovial echo of
"Can a nice girl DO that?" as they drove away.
"A noisy, rotten crowd," said Miss Saunders. "Mamma hates Emily to
go with them, and what my cousins--the Bridges and the Eastenbys of
Maryland are our cousins, I've just been visiting them--would say to
a crowd like that I hate to think! That's why I wanted Emily to come
out in Washington. You know we really have no connections here, and
no old friends. My uncle, General Botheby Hargrove, has a widowed
daughter living with him in Baltimore, Mrs. Stephen Kay, she is
now,--well, I suppose she's really in the most exclusive little set
you could find anywhere--"
Susan listened interestedly. But when they were home again, and Ella
was dressing for some dinner party, she very firmly declined the old
lady's eager invitation to remain. She was a little more touched by
Emily's rudeness than she would admit, a little afraid to trust
herself any further to so uncertain a hostess.
She went soberly home, in the summer twilight, soothed in spite of
herself by the beauty of the quiet bay, and pondering deeply. Had
she deserved this slight in any way? she wondered. Should she have
come away directly after luncheon? No, for they had asked her, with
great warmth, for dinner! Was it something that she should, in all
dignity, resent? Should Peter be treated a little coolly; Emily's
next overture declined?
She decided against any display of resentment. It was only the
strange way of these people, no claim of courtesy was strong enough
to offset the counter-claim of any random desire. They were too used
to taking what they wanted, to forgetting what it was not entirely
convenient to remember. They would think it absurd, even
delightfully amusing in her, to show the least feeling.
Arriving late, she gave her cousins a glowing account of the day,
and laughed with Georgie over the account of a call from Loretta's
Doctor O'Connor. "Loretta's beau having the nerve to call on me!"
Georgie said, with great amusement.
Almost hourly, in these days when she saw him constantly, Susan
tried to convince herself that her heart was not quite committed yet
to Peter Coleman's keeping. But always without success. The big,
sweet-tempered, laughing fellow, with his generosity, his wealth,
his position, had become all her world, or rather he had become the
reigning personage in that other world at whose doorway Susan stood,
longing and enraptured.
A year ago, at the prospect of seeing him so often, of feeling so
sure of his admiration and affection, of calling him "Peter," Susan
would have felt herself only too fortunate. But these privileges,
fully realized now, brought her more pain than joy. A restless
unhappiness clouded their gay times together, and when she was alone
Susan spent troubled hours in analysis of his tones, his looks, his
words. If a chance careless phrase of his seemed to indicate a
deepening of the feeling between them, Susan hugged that phrase to
her heart. If Peter, on the other hand, eagerly sketched to her
plans for a future that had no place for her, Susan drooped, and lay
wakeful and heartsick long into the night. She cared for him truly
and deeply, although she never said so, even to herself, and she
longed with all her ardent young soul for the place in the world
that awaited his wife. Susan knew that she could fill it, that he
would never be anything but proud of her; she only awaited the word-
-less than a word!--that should give her the right to enter into her
kingdom.
By all the conventions of her world these thoughts should not have
come to her until Peter's attitude was absolutely ascertained. But
Susan was honest with herself; she must have been curiously lacking
in human tenderness, indeed, NOT to have yielded her affection to so
joyous and so winning a claimant.
As the weeks went by she understood his ideals and those of his
associates more and more clearly, and if Peter lost something of his
old quality as a god, by the analysis, Susan loved him all the more
for finding him not quite perfect. She knew that he was young, that
his head was perhaps a little turned by sudden wealth and
popularity, that life was sweet to him just as it was; he was not
ready yet for responsibilities and bonds. He thought Miss Susan
Brown was the "bulliest" girl he knew, loved to give her good times
and resented the mere mention of any other man's admiration for her.
Of what could she complain?
Of course--Susan could imagine him as disposing of the thought
comfortably--she DIDN'T complain. She took things just as he wanted
her to, had a glorious time whenever she was with him, and was just
as happy doing other things when he wasn't about. Peter went for a
month to Tahoe this summer, and wrote Susan that there wasn't a
fellow at the hotel that was half as much fun as she was. He told
her that if she didn't immediately answer that she missed him like
Hannibal he would jump into the lake.
Susan pondered over the letter. How answer it most effectively? If
she admitted that she really did miss him terribly--but Susan was
afraid of the statement, in cold black-and-white. Suppose that she
hinted at herself as consoled by some newer admirer? The admirer did
not exist, but Peter would not know that. She discarded this
subterfuge as "cheap."
But how did other girls manage it? The papers were full of
engagements, men WERE proposing matrimony, girls WERE announcing
themselves as promised, in all happy certainty. Susan decided that,
when Peter came home, she would allow their friendship to proceed
just a little further and then suddenly discourage every overture,
refuse invitations, and generally make herself as unpleasant as
possible, on the ground that Auntie "didn't like it." This would do
one of two things, either stop their friendship off short,--it
wouldn't do that, she was happily confident,--or commence things
upon a new and more definite basis.
But when Peter came back he dragged his little aunt all the way up
to Mr. Brauer's office especially to ask Miss Brown if she would
dine with them informally that very evening. This was definite
enough! Susan accepted and planned a flying trip home for a fresh
shirtwaist at five o'clock. But at five a troublesome bill delayed
her, and Susan, resisting an impulse to shut it into a desk drawer
and run away from it, settled down soberly to master it. She was
conscious, as she shook hands with her hostess two hours later, of
soiled cuffs, but old Mr. Baxter, hearing her apologies, brought her
downstairs a beautifully embroidered Turkish robe, in dull pinks and
blues, and Susan, feeling that virtue sometimes was rewarded, had
the satisfaction of knowing that she looked like a pretty gipsy
during the whole evening, and was immensely gratifying her old host
as well. To Peter, it was just a quiet, happy evening at home, with
the pianola and flashlight photographs, and a rarebit that wouldn't
grow creamy in spite of his and Susan's combined efforts. But to
Susan it was a glimpse of Paradise.
"Peter loves to have his girl friends dine here," smiled old Mrs.
Baxter in parting. "You must come again. He has company two or three
times a week." Susan smiled in response, but the little speech was
the one blot on a happy evening.
Every happy time seemed to have its one blot. Susan would have her
hour, would try to keep the tenderness out of her "When do I see you
again, Peter?" to be met by his cheerful "Well, I don't know. I'm
going up to the Yellands' for a week, you know. Do you know Clare
Yelland? She's the dandiest girl you ever saw--nineteen, and a
raving beauty!" Or, wearing one of Peter's roses on her black
office-dress, she would have to smile through Thorny's interested
speculations as to his friendship for this society girl or that.
"The Chronicle said yesterday that he was supposed to be terribly
crushed on that Washington girl," Thorny would report. "Of course,
no names, but you could tell who they meant!"
Susan began to talk of going away "to work."
"Lord, aren't you working now?" asked William Oliver in healthy
scorn.
"Not working as hard as I could!" Susan said. "I can't--can't seem
to get interested--" Tears thickened her voice, she stopped short.
The two were sitting on the upper step of the second flight of
stairs in the late evening, just outside the door of the room where
Alfred Lancaster was tossing and moaning in the grip of a heavy cold
and fever. Alfred had lost his position, had been drinking again,
and now had come home to his mother for the fiftieth time to be
nursed and consoled. Mrs. Lancaster, her good face all mother-love
and pity, sat at his side. Mary Lou wept steadily and unobtrusively.
Susan and Billy were waiting for the doctor.
"No," the girl resumed thoughtfully, after a pause, "I feel as if
I'd gotten all twisted up and I want to go away somewhere and get
started fresh. I could work like a slave, Bill, in a great clean
institution, or a newspaper office, or as an actress. But I can't
seem to straighten things out here. This isn't MY house, I didn't
have anything to do with the making of it, and I can't feel
interested in it. I'd rather do things wrong, but do them MY way!"
"It seems to me you're getting industrious all of a sudden, Sue."
"No." She hardly understood herself. "But I want to GET somewhere in
this life, Bill," she mused. "I don't want to sit back and wait for
things to come to me. I want to go to them. I want some alternative.
So that--" her voice sank, "so that, if marriage doesn't come, I can
say to myself, 'Never mind, I've got my work!'"
"Just as a man would," he submitted thoughtfully.
"Just as a man would," she echoed, eager for his sympathy.
"Well, that's Mrs. Carroll's idea. She says that very often, when a
girl thinks she wants to get married, what she really wants is
financial independence and pretty clothes and an interest in life."
"I think that's perfectly true," Susan said, struck. "Isn't she
wise?" she added.
"Yes, she's a wonder! Wise and strong,--she's doing too much now,
though. How long since you've been over there, Sue?"
"Oh, ages! I'm ashamed to say. Months. I write to Anna now and then,
but somehow, on Sundays--"
She did not finish, but his thoughts supplied the reason. Susan was
always at home on Sundays now, unless she went out with Peter
Coleman.
"You ought to take Coleman over there some day, Sue, they used to
know him when he was a kid. Let's all go over some Sunday."
"That would be fun!" But he knew she did not mean it. The atmosphere
of the Carrolls' home, their poverty, their hard work, their gallant
endurance of privation and restriction were not in accord with
Susan's present mood. "How are all of them?" she presently asked,
after an interval, in which Alfie's moaning and the hoarse deep
voice of Mary Lord upstairs had been the only sounds.
"Pretty good. Joe's working now, the little darling!"
"Joe is! What at?"
"She's in an architect's office, Huxley and Huxley. It's a pretty
good job, I guess."
"But, Billy, doesn't that seem terrible? Joe's so beautiful, and
when you think how rich their grandfather was! And who's home?"
"Well, Anna gets home from the hospital every other week, and Phil
comes home with Joe, of course. Jim's still in school, and Betsey
helps with housework. Betsey has a little job, too. She teaches an
infant class at that little private school over there."
"Billy, don't those people have a hard time! Is Phil behaving?"
"Better than he did. Yes, I guess he's pretty good now. But there
are all Jim's typhoid bills to pay. Mrs. Carroll worries a good
deal. Anna's an angel about everything, but of course Betts is only
a kid, and she gets awfully mad."
"And Josephine," Susan smiled. "How's she?"
"Honestly, Sue," Mr. Oliver's face assumed the engaging expression
reserved only for his love affairs, "she is the dearest little
darling ever! She followed me out to the porch on Sunday, and said
'Don't catch cold, and die before your time,'--the little cutie!"
"Oh, Bill, you imbecile! There's nothing to THAT," Susan laughed out
gaily.
"Aw, well," he began affrontedly, "it was the little way she said
it--"
"Sh-sh!" said Mary Lou, white faced, heavy-eyed, at Alfred's door.
"He's just dropped off... The doctor just came up the steps, Bill,
will you go down and ask him to come right up? Why don't you go to
bed, Sue?"
"How long are you going to wait?" asked Susan.
"Oh, just until after the doctor goes, I guess," Mary Lou sighed.
"Well, then I'll wait for you. I'll run up and see Mary Lord a few
minutes. You stop in for me when you're ready."
And Susan, blowing her cousin an airy kiss, ran noiselessly up the
last flight of stairs, and rapped on the door of the big upper front
bedroom.
This room had been Mary Lord's world for ten long years. The invalid
was on a couch just opposite the door, and looked up as Susan
entered. Her dark, rather heavy face brightened instantly.
"Sue! I was afraid it was poor Mrs. Parker ready to weep about
Loretta," she said eagerly. "Come in, you nice child! Tell me
something cheerful!"
"Raw ginger is a drug on the market," said Susan gaily. "Here, I
brought you some roses."
"And I have eleven guesses who sent them," laughed Miss Lord,
drinking in the sweetness and beauty of the great pink blossoms
hungrily. "When'd they come?"
"Just before dinner!" Susan told her. Turning to the invalid's
sister she said: "Miss Lydia, you're busy, and I'm disturbing you."
"I wish you'd disturb us a little oftener, then," said Lydia Lord,
affectionately. "I can work all the better for knowing that Mary
isn't dying to interrupt me."
The older sister, seated at a little table under the gaslight, was
deep in work.
"She's been doing that every night this week," said Miss Mary
angrily, "as if she didn't have enough to do!"
"What is it?" asked Susan. Miss Lydia threw down her pen, and
stretched her cramped fingers.
"Why, Mrs. Lawrence's sister is going to be married," she explained,
"and the family wants an alphabetic list of friends to send the
announcements to. This is the old list, and this the new one, and
here's his list, and some names her mother jotted down,--they're all
to be put in order. It's quite a job."
"At double pay, of course," Miss Mary said bitterly.
"I should hope so," Susan added.
Miss Lydia merely smiled humorously, benevolently, over her work.
"All in the day's work, Susan."
"All in your grandmother's foot," Susan said, inelegantly. Miss
Lydia laughed a little reproachfully, but the invalid's rare, hearty
laugh would have atoned to her for a far more irreverent remark.
"And no 'Halma'?" Susan said, suddenly. For the invalid lived for
her game, every night. "Why didn't you tell me. I could have come up
every night--" She got out the board, set up the men, shook Mary's
pillows and pushed them behind the aching back. "Come on, Macduff,"
said she.
"Oh, Susan, you angel!" Mary Lord settled herself for an hour of the
keenest pleasure she ever knew. She reared herself in her pillows,
her lanky yellow hand hovered over the board, she had no eyes for
anything but the absurd little red and yellow men.
She was a bony woman, perhaps forty-five, with hair cut across her
lined forehead in the deep bang that had been popular in her
girlhood. It was graying now, as were the untidy loops of hair above
it, her face was yellow, furrowed, and the long neck that
disappeared into her little flannel bed-sack was lined and yellowed
too. She lay, restlessly and incessantly shifting herself, in a
welter of slipping quilts and loose blankets, with her shoulders
propped by fancy pillows,--some made of cigar-ribbons, one of
braided strips of black and red satin, one in a shield of rough,
coarse knotted lace, and one with a little boy printed in color upon
it, a boy whose trousers were finished with real tin buttons. Mary
Lord was always the first person Susan thought of when the girls in
the office argued, ignorantly and vigorously, for or against the law
of compensation. Here, in this stuffy boarding-house room, the
impatient, restless spirit must remain, chained and tortured day
after day and year after year, her only contact with the outer world
brought by the little private governess,--her sister--who was often
so tired and so dispirited when she reached home, that even her
gallant efforts could not hide her depression from the keen eyes of
the sick woman. Lydia taught the three small children of one of the
city's richest women, and she and Mary were happy or were despondent
in exact accord with young Mrs. Lawrence's mood. If the great lady
were ungracious, were cold, or dissatisfied, Lydia trembled, for the
little sum she earned by teaching was more than two-thirds of all
that she and Mary had. If Mrs. Lawrence were in a happier frame of
mind, Lydia brightened, and gratefully accepted the occasional
flowers or candy, that meant to both sisters so much more than mere
carnations or mere chocolates.
But if Lydia's life was limited, what of Mary, whose brain was so
active that merely to read of great and successful deeds tortured
her like a pain? Just to have a little share of the world's work,
just to dig and water the tiniest garden, just to be able to fill a
glass for herself with water, or to make a pudding, or to wash up
the breakfast dishes, would have been to her the most exquisite
delight in the world.
As it was she lay still, reading, sometimes writing a letter, or
copying something for Lydia, always eager for a game of "Halma" or
"Parchesi," a greater part of the time out of pain, and for a
certain part of the twenty-four hours tortured by the slow-creeping
agonies that waited for her like beasts in the darkness of every
night. Sometimes Susan, rousing from the deep delicious sleep that
always befriended her, would hear in the early morning, rarely
earlier than two o'clock or later than four, the hoarse call in the
front room, "Lyddie! Lyddie!" and the sleepy answer and stumbling
feet of the younger sister, as she ran for the merciful pill that
would send Miss Mary, spent with long endurance, into deep and
heavenly sleep. Susan had two or three times seen the cruel trial of
courage that went before the pill, the racked and twisting body, the
bitten lip, the tortured eyes on the clock.
Twice or three times a year Miss Mary had very bad times, and had to
see her doctor. Perhaps four times a month Miss Lydia beamed at
Susan across the breakfast table, "No pill last night!" These were
the variations of the invalid's life.
Susan, while Mary considered her moves to-night, studied the room
idly, the thousand crowded, useless little possessions so dear to
the sick; the china statuettes, the picture post-cards, the
photographs and match-boxes and old calendars, the dried
"whispering-grass" and the penwipers. Her eyes reached an old
photograph; Susan knew it by heart. It represented an old-fashioned
mansion, set in a sweeping lawn, shaded by great trees. Before one
wing an open barouche stood, with driver and lackey on the box, and
behind the carriage a group of perhaps ten or a dozen colored girls
and men were standing on the steps, in the black-and-white of house
servants. On the wide main steps of the house were a group of
people, ladies in spreading ruffled skirts, a bearded, magnificent
old man, young men with heavy mustaches of the sixties, and some
small children in stiff white. Susan knew that the heavy big baby on
a lady's lap was Lydia, and that among the children Mary was to be
found, with her hair pushed straight back under a round-comb, and
scallops on the top of her high black boots. The old man was her
grandfather, and the house the ancestral home of the Lords... Whose
fault was it that just a little of that ease had not been safely
guarded for these two lonely women, Susan wondered. What WAS the
secret of living honestly, with the past, with the present, with
those who were to come?
"Your play. Wake up. Sue!" laughed Mary. "I have you now, I can yard
in seven moves!"
"No skill to that," said Susan hardily, "just sheer luck!"
"Oh you wicked story-teller!" Mary laughed delightedly, and they set
the men for another game.
"No, but you're really the lucky one, Sue," said the older woman
presently.
"_I_ lucky!" and Susan laughed as she moved her man.
"Well, don't you think you are?"
"I think I'm darned unlucky!" the girl declared seriously.
"Here--here! Descriptive adjectives!" called Lydia, but the others
paid no heed.
"Sue, how can you say so!"
"Well, I admit, Miss Mary," Susan said with pretty gravity, "that
God hasn't sent me what he has sent you to bear, for some
inscrutable reason,--I'd go mad if He had! But I'm poor--"
"Now, look here," Mary said authoritatively. "You're young, aren't
you? And you're good-looking, aren't you?"
"Don't mince matters, Miss Mary. Say beautiful," giggled Susan.
"I'm in earnest. You're the youngest and prettiest woman in this
house. You have a good position, and good health, and no
encumbrances--"
"I have a husband and three children in the Mission, Miss Mary. I
never mentioned them--"
"Oh, behave yourself, Sue! Well! And, more than that, you have--we
won't mention one special friend, because I don't want to make you
blush, but at least a dozen good friends among the very richest
people of society. You go to lunch with Miss Emily Saunders, and to
Burlingame with Miss Ella Saunders, you get all sorts of handsome
presents--isn't this all true?"
"Absolutely," said Susan so seriously, so sadly, that the invalid
laid a bony cold one over the smooth brown one arrested on the
"Halma" board.
"Why, I wasn't scolding you, dearie!" she said kindly. "I just
wanted you to appreciate your blessings!"
"I know--I know," Susan answered, smiling with an effort. She went
to bed a little while later profoundly depressed.
It was all true, it was all true! But, now that she had it, it
seemed so little! She was beginning to be popular in the Saunders
set,--her unspoiled freshness appealed to more than one new friend,
as it had appealed to Peter Coleman and to Emily and Ella Saunders.
She was carried off for Saturday matinees, she was in demand for one
Sunday after another. She was always gay, always talkative, she had
her value, as she herself was beginning to perceive. And, although
she met very few society men, just now, being called upon to amuse
feminine luncheons or stay overnight with Emily when nobody else was
at home, still her social progress seemed miraculously swift to
Thorny, to Billy and Georgie and Virginia, even sometimes to
herself. But she wanted more--more--more! She wanted to be one of
this group herself, to patronize instead of accepting patronage.
Slowly her whole nature changed to meet this new hope. She made use
of every hour now, discarded certain questionable expressions, read
good books, struggled gallantly with her natural inclination to
procrastinate. Her speech improved, the tones of her voice, her
carriage, she wore quiet colors how, and became fastidious in the
matter of belts and cuffs, buttons and collars and corsets. She
diverted Mary Lou by faithfully practicing certain beautifying
calisthenics at night.
Susan was not deceived by the glittering, prismatic thing known as
Society. She knew that Peter Coleman's and Emily Saunders' reverence
for it was quite the weakest thing in their respective characters.
She knew that Ella's boasted family was no better than her own, and
that Peter's undeniable egoism was the natural result of Peter's up-
bringing, and that Emily's bright unselfish interest in her,
whatever it had now become, had commenced with Emily's simple desire
to know Peter through Susan, and have an excuse to come frequently
to Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's when Peter was there.
Still, she could not divest these three of the old glory of her
first impressions. She liked Emily and Ella none the less because
she understood them better, and felt that, if Peter had his human
weaknesses, he was all the nearer her for that.
Mrs. Lancaster would not allow her to dine down-town with him alone.
Susan laughed at the idea that she could possibly do anything
questionable, but kept the rule faithfully, and, if she went to the
theater alone with Peter, never let him take her to supper
afterward. But they had many a happy tea-hour together, and on
Sundays lunched in Sausalito, roamed over the lovely country roads,
perhaps stopped for tea at the Carrolls', or came back to the city
and had it at the quiet Palace. Twice Peter was asked to dine at
Mrs. Lancaster's, but on the first occasion he and Susan were begged
by old Mrs. Baxter to come and amuse her loneliness instead, and on
the second Susan telephoned at the last moment to say that Alfie was
at home and that Auntie wanted to ask Peter to come some other time.
Alfie was at home for a dreadful week, during which the devoted
women suffered agonies of shame and terror. After that he secured,
in the miraculous way that Alfie always did secure, another position
and went away again.
"I can stand Alfie," said Susan to Billy in strong disgust. "But it
does make me sick to have Auntie blaming his employers for firing
him, and calling him a dear unfortunate boy! She said to me to-day
that the other clerks were always jealous of Alfie, and tried to
lead him astray! Did you ever hear such blindness!"
"She's always talked that way," Billy answered, surprised at her
vehemence. "You used to talk that way yourself. You're the one that
has changed."
Winter came on rapidly. The mornings were dark and cold now when
Susan dressed, the office did not grow comfortably warm until ten
o'clock, and the girls wore their coats loose across their shoulders
as they worked.
Sometimes at noon Miss Thornton and Susan fared forth into the cold,
sunny streets, and spent the last half of the lunch-hour in a brisk
walk. They went into the high-vaulted old Post Street Library for
books, threaded their way along Kearney Street, where the noontide
crowd was gaily ebbing and flowing, and loitered at the Flower
Market, at Lotta's Fountain, drinking in the glory of violets and
daffodils, under the winter sun. Now and then they lunched uptown at
some inexpensive restaurant that was still quiet and refined. The
big hotels were far too costly but there were several pretty
lunchrooms, "The Bird of Paradise," "The London Tearoom," and, most
popular of all, "The Ladies Exchange."
The girls always divided a twenty-five-cent entree between them, and
each selected a ten-cent dessert, leaving a tip for the waitress out
of their stipulated half-dollar. It was among the unwritten laws
that the meal must appear to more than satisfy both.
"Thorny, you've got to have the rest of this rice!" Susan would
urge, gathering the slender remains of "Curried chicken family
style" in her serving spoon.
"Honestly, Susan, I couldn't! I've got more than I want here," was
the orthodox response.
"It'll simply go to waste here," Susan always said, but somehow it
never did. The girls loitered over these meals, watching the other
tables, and the women who came to the counters to buy embroidered
baby-sacques, and home-made cakes and jellies.
"Wouldn't you honestly like another piece of plum pie, Sue?" Thorny
would ask.
"I? Oh, I couldn't! But YOU have one, Thorny--"
"I simply couldn't!" So it was time to ask for the check.
They were better satisfied, if less elegantly surrounded, when they
went to one of the downtown markets, and had fried oysters for
lunch. Susan loved the big, echoing places, cool on the hottest day,
never too cold, lined with long rows of dangling, picked fowls,
bright with boxes of apples and oranges. The air was pleasantly
odorous of cheeses and cooked meats, cocks crowed unseen in crates
and cages, bare-headed boys pushed loaded trucks through the narrow
aisles. Susan and Miss Thornton would climb a short flight of
whitewashed stairs to a little lunch-room over one of the oyster
stalls. Here they could sit at a small table, and look down at the
market, the shoppers coming and going, stout matrons sampling
sausages and cheeses, and Chinese cooks, bareheaded, bare-ankled,
dressed in dark blue duck, selecting broilers and roasts.
Their tablecloth here was coarse, but clean, and a generous
management supplied several sauces, a thick china bowl of crackers,
a plate heaped with bread, salty yellow butter, and saucers of
boiled shrimps with which guests might occupy themselves until the
arrival of the oysters. Presently the main dish arrived, some forty
small, brown, buttery oysters on each smoking hot plate. No pretense
was necessary at this meal, there was enough, and more than enough.
Susan's cheeks would burn rosily all afternoon. She and Thorny
departing never tailed to remark, "How can they do it for twenty-
five cents?" and sometimes spent the walk back to the office in a
careful calculation of exactly what the meal had cost the
proprietor.
"Did he send you a Christmas present?" asked Thorny one January day,
when an irregular bill had brought her to Susan's desk.
"Who? Oh, Mr. Coleman?" Susan looked up innocently. "Yes, yes indeed
he did. A lovely silver bureau set. Auntie was in two minds about
letting me keep it." She studied the bill. "Well, that's the regular
H. B. & H. Talcum Powder," she said, "only he's made them a price on
a dozen gross. Send it back, and have Mr. Phil O. K. it!"
"A silver set! You lucky kid! How many pieces?"
"Oh, everything. Even toilet-water bottles, and a hatpin holder.
Gorgeous." Susan wrote "Mr. P. Hunter will please O. K." in the
margin against the questioned sale.
"You take it pretty coolly, Sue," Miss Thornton said, curiously.
"It's cool weather, Thorny dear." Susan smiled, locked her firm
young hands idly on her ledger, eyed Miss Thornton honestly. "How
should I take it?" said she.
The silver set had filled all Mrs. Lancaster's house with awed
admiration on Christmas Day, but Susan could not forget that Peter
had been out of town on both holidays, and that she had gained her
only knowledge of his whereabouts from the newspapers. A handsome
present had been more than enough to satisfy her wildest dreams, the
year before. It was not enough now.
"S'listen, Susan. You're engaged to him?"
"Honestly,--cross my heart!--I'm not."
"But you will be when he asks you?"
"Thorny, aren't you awful!" Susan laughed; colored brilliantly.
"Well, WOULDN'T you?" the other persisted.
"I don't suppose one thinks of those things until they actually
happen," Susan said slowly, wrinkling a thoughtful forehead. Thorny
watched her for a moment with keen interest, then her own face
softened suddenly.
"No, of course you don't!" she agreed kindly. "Do you mind my
asking, Sue?"
"No-o-o!" Susan reassured her. As a matter of fact, she was glad
when any casual onlooker confirmed her own secret hopes as to the
seriousness of Peter Coleman's intention.
Peter took her to church on Easter Sunday, and afterward they went
to lunch with his uncle and aunt, spent a delightful rainy afternoon
with books and the piano, and, in the casual way that only wealth
makes possible, were taken downtown to dinner by old Mr. Baxter at
six o'clock. Taking her home at nine o' clock, Peter told her that
he was planning a short visit to Honolulu with the Harvey Brocks.
"Gee, I wish you were going along!" he said.
"Wouldn't it be fun!" Susan agreed.
"Well, say! Mrs. Brock would love it--" he began eagerly.
"Oh, Peter, don't talk nonsense!" Susan felt, at a moment like this,
that she actually disliked him.
"I suppose it couldn't be worked," he said sadly. And no more of it
was said.
He came into the office but once that week. Late in a summer-like
afternoon Susan looked down at Mr. Baxter's office to see Peter
spreading his steamer tickets on the desk. He looked up and laughed
at her, and later ran up to the deck for a few minutes to say good-
bye. They said it laughingly, among the hot-water bags and surgical
accessories, but when Susan went back to her desk the laughter had
died from her eyes.
It was an unseasonably warm spring day, she was wearing the first
shirtwaist of the year, and had come downtown that morning through
the fresh early air on the dummy-front. It was hard to-day to be
shut up in a stuffy office. Outside, the watercarts were making the
season's first trip along Front Street and pedestrians chose the
shady side to-day. Susan thought of the big Oriental liner, the
awnings that shaded the decks, the exquisitely cool and orderly
little cabins, the green water rushing alongside. And for her the
languorous bright afternoon had lost its charm.
She did not see Peter Coleman again for a long time. Summer came,
and Susan went on quiet little Sunday picnics to the beach with
Auntie and Mary Lou, or stayed at home and pressed her collars and
washed her hair. Once or twice she and Billy went over to the
Carrolls' Sausalito home, to spend a happy, quiet week-end. Susan
gossiped with the busy, cheerful mother over the dish-pan, played
"Parchesi" with fifteen-year-old Jim and seventeen-year-old Betsey,
reveled in a confidential, sisterly attitude with handsome Phil, the
oldest of the half-dozen, and lay awake deep into the warm nights to
talk, and talk, and talk with Josephine, who, at her own age, seemed
to Susan a much finer, stronger and more developed character. If
Anna, the lovely serious oldest daughter, happened to be at home on
one of her rare absences from the training-hospital, Susan became
her shadow. She loved few people in the world as she loved Anna
Carroll. But, in a lesser degree, she loved them all, and found
these hours in the shabby, frugal little home among the very
happiest of a lonely summer.
About once a month she was carried off by the Saunders, in whose
perfectly appointed guest-room she was by this time quite at home.
The Fourth of July fell on a Friday this year, and Mr. Brauer, of
his own volition, offered Susan the following day as a holiday, too.
So that Susan, with a heart as light as sunshine itself, was free to
go with Ella Saunders for a memorable visit to Del Monte and Santa
Cruz.
It was one of the perfect experiences only possible to youth and
irresponsibility. They swam, they went for the Seventeen-Mile Drive,
they rode horseback. Ella knew every inch of the great hotels, even
some of the waiters and housekeepers. She had the best rooms, she
saw that Susan missed nothing. They dressed for dinner, loitered
about among the roses in the long twilight, and Susan met a young
Englishman who later wrote her three letters on his way home to
Oxfordshire. Ella's exquisite gowns had a chapter all to themselves
when Susan was telling her cousins about it, but Susan herself
alternated contentedly enough between the brown linen with the
daisy-hat and the black net with the pearl band in her hair. Miss
Saunders' compliments, her confidences, half-intoxicated the girl.
It was with a little effort that she came back to sober every-day
living. She gave a whole evening to Mary Lord, in her eagerness to
share her pleasure. The sick woman was not interested in gowns, but
she went fairly wild when Susan spoke of Monterey,--the riotous
gardens with their walls of white plaster topped with red pipe, the
gulls wheeling over the little town, the breakers creaming in lazy,
interlocking curves on the crescent of the beach, and the little old
plaster church, with its hundred-year-old red altar-cloth, and its
altar-step worn into grooves from the knees of the faithful.
"Oh, I must see the sea again!" cried Mary.
"Well, don't talk that way! You will," Lydia said cheerfully. But
Susan, seeing the shadow on the kind, plain face, wished that she
had held her tongue.
CHAPTER VI
It was late in July that Georgianna Lancaster startled and shocked
the whole boarding-house out of its mid-summer calm. Susan,
chronically affected by a wish that "something would happen," had
been somewhat sobered by the fact that in poor Virginia's case
something HAD happened. Suddenly Virginia's sight, accepted for
years by them all as "bad," was very bad indeed. The great eye-
doctor was angry that it had not been attended to before. "But it
wasn't like this before!" Virginia protested patiently. She was
always very patient after that, so brave indeed that the terrible
thing that was coming swiftly and inevitably down upon her seemed
quite impossible for the others to credit. But sometimes Susan heard
her voice and Mrs. Lancaster's voice rising and falling for long,
long talks in the night. "I don't believe it!" said Susan boldly,
finding this attitude the most tenable in regard to Virginia's
blindness.
Georgie's news, if startling, was not all bad. "Perhaps it'll raise
the hoodoo from all of us old maids!" said Susan, inelegantly, to
Mr. Oliver. "O'Connor doesn't look as if he had sense enough to
raise anything, even the rent!" answered Billy cheerfully.
Susan heard the first of it on a windy, gritty Saturday afternoon,
when she was glad to get indoors, and to take off the hat that had
been wrenching her hair about. She came running upstairs to find
Virginia lying limp upon the big bed, and Mary Lou, red-eyed and
pale, sitting in the rocking-chair.
"Come in, dear, and shut it," said Mary Lou, sighing. "Sit down,
Sue."
"What is it?" said Susan uneasily.
"Oh, Sue---!" began Virginia, and burst into tears.
"Now, now, darling!" Mary Lou patted her sister's hand.
"Auntie--" Susan asked, turning pale.
"No, Ma's all right," Mary Lou reassured her, "and there's nothing
really wrong, Sue. But Georgie--Georgie, dear, she's married to Joe
O'Connor! Isn't it DREADFUL?"
"But Ma's going to have it annulled," said Virginia instantly.
"Married!" Susan gasped. "You mean engaged!"
"No, dear, married," Mary Lou repeated, in a sad, musical voice.
"They were married on Monday night--"
"Tell me!" commanded Susan, her eyes flashing with pleasurable
excitement.
"We don't know much, Sue dear. Georgie's been acting rather odd and
she began to cry after breakfast this morning, and Ma got it out of
her. I thought Ma would faint, and Georgie just SCREAMED. I kept
calling out to Ma to be calm--" Susan could imagine the scene. "So
then Ma took Georgie upstairs, and Jinny and I worked around, and
came up here and made up this room. And just before lunch Ma came
up, and--she looked chalk-white, didn't she, Jinny?"
"She looked-well, as white as this spread," agreed Virginia.
"Well, but what accounts for it!" gasped Susan. "Is Georgie CRAZY!
Joe O'Connor! That snip! And hasn't he an awful old mother, or
someone, who said that she'd never let him come home again if he
married?"
"Listen, Sue!--You haven't heard half. It seems that they've been
engaged for two months--"
"They HAVE!"
"Yes. And on Monday night Joe showed Georgie that he'd gotten the
license, and they got thinking how long it would be before they
could be married, what with his mother, and no prospects and all,
and they simply walked into St. Peter's and were married!"
"Well, he'll have to leave his mother, that's all!" said Susan.
"Oh, my dear, that's just what they quarreled about! He WON'T."
"He--WON'T?"
"No, if you please! And you can imagine how furious that made
Georgie! And when Ma told us that, she simply set her lips,--you
know Ma! And then she said that she was going to see Father Birch
with Georgie this afternoon, to have it annulled at once."
"Without saying a word to Joe!"
"Oh, they went first to Joe's. Oh, no, Joe is perfectly willing. It
was, as Ma says, a mistake from beginning to end."
"But how can it be annulled, Mary Lou?" Susan asked.
"Well, I don't understand exactly," Mary Lou answered coloring. "I
think it's because they didn't go on any honeymoon--they didn't set
up housekeeping, you know, or something like that!"
"Oh," said Susan, hastily, coloring too. "But wouldn't you know that
if any one of us did get married, it would be annulled!" she said
disgustedly. The others both began to laugh.
Still, it was all very exciting. When Georgie and her mother got
home at dinner-time, the bride was pale and red-eyed, excited,
breathing hard. She barely touched her dinner. Susan could not keep
her eyes from the familiar hand, with its unfamiliar ring.
"I am very much surprised and disappointed in Father Birch," said
Mrs. Lancaster, in a family conference in the dining-room just after
dinner. "He seems to feel that the marriage may hold, which of
course is too preposterous! If Joe O'Connor has so little
appreciation--!"
"Ma!" said Georgie wearily, pleadingly.
"Well, I won't, my dear." Mrs. Lancaster interrupted herself with a
visible effort. "And if I am disappointed in Joe," she presently
resumed majestically. "I am doubly disappointed in Georgie. My baby-
-that I always trusted--!"
Young Mrs. O'Connor began silently, bitterly, to cry. Susan went to
sit beside her, and put a comforting arm about her.
"I have looked forward to my girls' wedding days," said Mrs.
Lancaster, "with such feelings of joy! How could I anticipate that
my own daughter, secretly, could contract a marriage with a man
whose mother--" Her tone, low at first, rose so suddenly and so
passionately that she was unable to control it. The veins about her
forehead swelled.
"Ma!" said Mary Lou, "you only lower yourself to her level!"
"Do you mean that she won't let him bring Georgie there?" asked
Susan.
"Whether she would or not," Mrs. Lancaster answered, with admirable
loftiness, "she will not have a chance to insult my daughter. Joe, I
pity!" she added majestically. "He fell deeply and passionately in
love--"
"With Loretta," supplied Susan, innocently.
"He never cared for Loretta!" her aunt said positively. "No. With
Georgie. And, not being a gentleman, we could hardly expect him to
act like one! But we'll say no more about it. It will all be over in
a few days, and then we'll try to forget it!"
Poor Georgie, it was but a sorry romance! Joe telephoned, Joe
called, Father Birch came, the affair hung fire. Georgie was neither
married nor free. Dr. O'Connor would not desert his mother, his
mother refused to accept Georgie. Georgie cried day and night,
merely asseverating that she hated Joe, and loved Ma, and she wished
people would let her alone.
These were not very cheerful days in the boarding-house. Billy
Oliver was worried and depressed, very unlike himself. He had been
recently promoted to the post of foreman, was beginning to be a
power among the men who associated with him and, as his natural
instinct for leadership asserted itself, he found himself attracting
some attention from the authorities themselves. He was questioned
about the men, about their attitude toward this regulation or that
superintendent. It was hinted that the spreading of heresies among
the laborers was to be promptly discouraged. The men were not to be
invited to express themselves as to hours, pay and the advantages of
unifying. In other words, Mr. William Oliver, unless he became a
little less interested and less active in the wrongs and rights of
his fellow-men in the iron-works, might be surprised by a request to
carry himself and his public sentiments elsewhere.
Susan, in her turn, was a little disturbed by the rumor that Front
Office was soon to be abolished; begun for a whim, it might easily
be ended for another whim. For herself she did not very much care; a
certain confidence in the future was characteristic of her, but she
found herself wondering what would become of the other girls, Miss
Sherman and Miss Murray and Miss Cottle.
She felt far more deeply the pain that Peter's attitude gave her, a
pain that gnawed at her heart day and night. He was home from
Honolulu now, and had sent her several curious gifts from Hawaii,
but, except for distant glimpses in the office, she had not seen
him.
One evening, just before dinner, as she was dressing and thinking
sadly of the weeks, the months, that had passed since their last
happy evening together, Lydia Lord came suddenly into the room. The
little governess looked white and sick, and shared her distress with
Susan in a few brief sentences. Here was Mrs. Lawrence's check in
her hand, and here Mrs. Lawrence's note to say that her services, as
governess to Chrissy and Donald and little Hazel, would be no longer
required. The blow was almost too great to be realized.
"But I brought it on myself, Sue, yes I did!" said Lydia, with dry
lips. She sat, a shapeless, shabby figure, on the side of the bed,
and pressed a veined hand tightly against her knobby temples, "I
brought it on myself. I want to tell you about it. I haven't given
Mary even a hint! Chrissy has been ill, her throat--they've had a
nurse, but she liked me to sit with her now and then. So I was
sitting there awhile this morning, and Mrs. Lawrence's sister, Miss
Bacon, came in, and she happened to ask me--oh, if only she HADN'T!-
-if I knew that they meant to let Yates operate on Chrissy's throat.
She said she thought it was a great pity. Oh, if only I'd held my
tongue, fool, fool, FOOL that I was!" Miss Lydia took down her hand,
and regarded Susan with hot, dry eyes. "But, before I thought," she
pursued distressedly, "I said yes, I thought so too,--I don't know
just what words I used, but no more than that! Chrissy asked her
aunt if it would hurt, and she said, 'No, no, dear!' and I began
reading. And now, here's this note from Mrs. Lawrence saying that
she cannot overlook the fact that her conduct was criticized and
discussed before Christina--! And after five years, Sue! Here, read
it!"
"Beast!" Susan scowled at the monogrammed sheet, and the dashing
hand. Miss Lydia clutched her wrist with a hot hand.
"What shall I do, Sue?" she asked, in agony.
"Well, I'd simply--" Susan began boldly enough. But a look at the
pathetic, gray-haired figure on the bed stopped her short. She came,
with the glory of her bright hair hanging loose about her face, to
sit beside Lydia. "Really, I don't know, dear," she said gently.
"What do YOU think?"
"Sue, I don't know!" And, to Susan's horror, poor Lydia twisted
about, rested her arm on the foot of the bed, and began to cry.
"Oh, these rich!" raged Susan, attacking her hair with angry sweeps
of the brush. "Do you wonder they think that the earth was made for
them and Heaven too! They have everything! They can dash you off a
note that takes away your whole income, they can saunter in late to
church on Easter Sunday and rustle into their big empty pews, when
the rest of us have been standing in the aisles for half an hour;
they can call in a doctor for a cut finger, when Mary has to fight
perfect agonies before she dares afford it--Don't mind me," she
broke off, penitently, "but let's think what's to be done. You
couldn't take the public school examinations, could you, Miss Lydia?
it would be so glorious to simply let Mrs. Lawrence slide!"
"I always meant to do that some day," said Lydia, wiping her eyes
and gulping, "but it would take time. And meanwhile--And there are
Mary's doctor's bills, and the interest on our Piedmont lot--" For
the Lord sisters, for patient years, had been paying interest, and
an occasional installment, on a barren little tract of land nine
blocks away from the Piedmont trolley.
"You could borrow--" began Susan.
But Lydia was more practical. She dried her eyes, straightened her
hair and collar, and came, with her own quiet dignity, to the
discussion of possibilities. She was convinced that Mrs. Lawrence
had written in haste, and was already regretting it.
"No, she's too proud ever to send for me," she assured Susan, when
the girl suggested their simply biding their time, "but I know that
by taking me back at once she would save herself any amount of
annoyance and time. So I'd better go and see her to-night, for by
to-morrow she might have committed herself to a change."
"But you hate to go, don't you?" Susan asked, watching her keenly.
"Ah, well, it's unpleasant of course," Lydia said simply. "She may
be unwilling to accept my apology. She may not even see me. One
feels so--so humiliated, Sue."
"In that case, I'm going along to buck you up," said Susan,
cheerfully.
In spite of Lydia's protests, go she did. They walked to the
Lawrence home in a night so dark that Susan blinked when they
finally entered the magnificent, lighted hallway.
The butler obviously disapproved of them. He did not quite attempt
to shut the door on them, but Susan felt that they intruded.
"Mrs. Lawrence is at dinner, Miss Lord," he reminded Lydia, gravely.
"Yes, I know, but this is rather--important, Hughes," said Lydia,
clearing her throat nervously.
"You had better see her at the usual time to-morrow," suggested the
butler, smoothly. Susan's face burned. She longed to snatch one of
the iron Japanese swords that decorated the hall, and with it prove
to Hughes that his insolence was appreciated. But more reasonable
tactics must prevail.
"Will you say that I am here, Hughes?" Miss Lord asked quietly.
"Presently," he answered, impassively.
Susan followed him for a few steps across the hall, spoke to him in
a low tone.
"Too bad to ask you to interrupt her, Mr. Hughes," said she, in her
friendly little way, "but you know Miss Lord's sister has been
having one of her bad times, and of course you understand--?" The
blue eyes and the pitiful little smile conquered. Hughes became
human.
"Certainly, Miss," he said hoarsely, "but Madam is going to the
theater to-night, and it's no time to see her."
"I know," Susan interposed, sympathetically.
"However, ye may depend upon my taking the best moment," Hughes
said, before disappearing, and when he came back a few moments
later, he was almost gracious.
"Mrs. Lawrence says that if you wish to see her you'll kindly wait,
Miss Lord. Step in here, will you, please? Will ye be seated,
ladies? Miss Chrissy's been asking for you the whole evening, Miss
Lord."
"Is that so?" Lydia asked, brightening. They waited, with fast-
beating hearts, for what seemed a long time. The great entrance to
the flower-filled embrasure that led to the dining-room was in full
view from where they stood, and when Mrs. Lawrence, elegantly
emacinated, wonderfully gowned and jeweled, suddenly came out into
the tempered brilliance of the electric lights both girls went to
meet her.
Susan's heart burned for Lydia, faltering out her explanation, in
the hearing of the butler.
"This is hardly the time to discuss this, Miss Lord," Mrs. Lawrence
said impatiently, "but I confess I am surprised that a woman who
apparently valued her position in my house should jeopardize it by
such an extraordinary indiscretion--"
Susan's heart sank. No hope here!
But at this moment some six or seven young people followed Mrs.
Lawrence out of the dining-room and began hurriedly to assume their
theater wraps, and Susan, with a leap of her heart, recognized among
them Peter Coleman, Peter splendid in evening dress, with a light
overcoat over his arm, and a silk hat in his hand. His face
brightened when he saw her, he dropped his coat, and came quickly
across the hall, hands outstretched.
"Henrietta! say that you remember your Percy!" he said joyously, and
Susan, coloring prettily, said "Oh, hush!" as she gave him her hand.
A rapid fire of questions followed, he was apparently unconscious
of, or indifferent to, the curiously watching group.
"Well, you two seem to be great friends," Mrs. Lawrence said
graciously, turning from her conversation with Miss Lord.
"This is our cue to sing 'For you was once My Wife,' Susan!" Peter
suggested. Susan did not answer him. She exchanged an amused,
indulgent look with Mrs. Lawrence. Perhaps the girl's quiet dignity
rather surprised that lady, for she gave her a keen, appraising look
before she asked, pleasantly:
"Aren't you going to introduce me to your old friend, Peter?"
"Not old friends," Susan corrected serenely, as they were
introduced.
"But vurry, vurry de-ah," supplemented Peter, "aren't we?"
"I hope Mrs. Lawrence knows you well enough to know how foolish you
are, Peter!" Susan said composedly.
And Mrs. Lawrence said brightly, "Indeed I do! For we ARE very old
friends, aren't we, Peter?"
But the woman's eyes still showed a little puzzlement. The exact
position of this girl, with her ready "Peter," her willingness to
disclaim an old friendship, her pleasant unresponsiveness, was a
little hard to determine. A lady, obviously, a possible beauty, and
entirely unknown--
"Well, we must run," Mrs. Lawrence recalled herself to say suddenly.
"But why won't you and Miss Lord run up to see Chrissy for a few
moments, Miss Brown? The poor kiddy is frightfully dull. And you'll
be here in the morning as usual, Miss Lord? That's good. Good-
night!"
"You did that, Sue, you darling!" exulted Lydia, as they ran down
the stone steps an hour later, and locked arms to walk briskly along
the dark street. "Your knowing Mr. Coleman saved the day!" And, in
the exuberance of her spirits, she took Susan into a brightly
lighted little candy-store, and treated her to ice-cream. They
carried some home in a dripping paper box for Mary, who was duly
horrified, agitated and rejoiced over the history of the day.
Through Susan's mind, as she lay wakeful in bed that night, one
scene after another flitted and faded. She saw Mrs. Lawrence,
glittering and supercilious, saw Peter, glowing and gay, saw the
butler, with his attempt to be rude, and the little daughter of the
house, tossing about in the luxurious pillows of her big bed. She
thought of Lydia Lord's worn gloves, fumbling in her purse for
money, of Mary Lord, so gratefully eating melting ice-cream from a
pink saucer, with a silver souvenir spoon!
Two different worlds, and she, Susan, torn between them! How far she
was from Peter's world, she felt that she had never realized until
to-night. How little gifts and pleasures signified from a man whose
life was crowded with nothing else! How helpless she was, standing
by while his life whirled him further and further away from the dull
groove in which her own feet were set!
Yet Susan's evening had not been without its little cause for
satisfaction. She had treated Peter coolly, with dignity, with
reserve, and she had seen it not only spur him to a sudden eagerness
to prove his claim to her friendship, but also have its effect upon
his hostess. This was the clue, at last.
"If ever I have another chance," decided Susan, "he won't have such
easy sailing! He will have to work for my friendship as if I were
the heiress, and he a clerk in Front Office."
August was the happiest month Susan had ever known, September even
better, and by October everybody at Mrs. Lancaster's boarding-house
was confidently awaiting the news of Susan Brown's engagement to the
rich Mr. Peter Coleman. Susan herself was fairly dazed with joy. She
felt herself the most extraordinarily fortunate girl in the world.
Other matters also prospered. Alfred Lancaster had obtained a
position in the Mission, and seemed mysteriously inclined to hold
it, and to conquer his besetting weakness. And Georgie's affair was
at a peaceful standstill. Georgie had her old place in the house,
was changed in nothing tangible, and, if she cried a good deal, and
went about less than before, she was not actively unhappy. Dr.
O'Connor came once a week to see her, an uncomfortable event, during
which Georgie's mother was with difficulty restrained from going up
to the parlor to tell Joe what she thought of a man who put his
mother before his wife. Virginia was bravely enduring the horrors of
approaching darkness. Susan reproached herself for her old
impatience with Jinny's saintliness; there was no question of her
cousin's courage and faith during this test. Mary Lou was agitatedly
preparing for a visit to the stricken Eastmans, in Nevada, deciding
one day that Ma could, and the next that Ma couldn't, spare her for
the trip.
Susan walked in a golden cloud. No need to hunt through Peter's
letters, to weigh his words,--she had the man himself now
unequivocally in the attitude of lover.
Or if, in all honesty, she knew him to be a little less than that,
at least he was placing himself in that light, before their little
world. In that world theatre-trips, candy and flowers have their
definite significance, the mere frequency with which they were seen
together committed him, surely, to something! They paid dinner-calls
together, they went together to week-end visits to Emily Saunders,
at least two evenings out of every week were spent together. At any
moment he might turn to her with the little, little phrase that
would settle this uncertainty once and for all! Indeed it occurred
to Susan sometimes that he might think it already settled, without
words. At least once a day she flushed, half-delighted, half-
distressed,--under teasing questions on the subject from the office
force, or from the boarders at home; all her world, apparently,
knew.
One day, in her bureau drawer, she found the little card that had
accompanied his first Christmas gift, nearly two years before. Why
did a keen pain stir her heart, as she stood idly twisting it in her
fingers? Had not the promise of that happy day been a thousand times
fulfilled?
But the bright, enchanting hope that card had brought had been so
sickeningly deferred! Two years!--she was twenty-three now.
Mrs. Lancaster, opening the bedroom door a few minutes later, found
Susan in tears, kneeling by the bed.
"Why, lovey! lovey!" Her aunt patted the bowed head. "What is it,
dear?"
"Nothing!" gulped Susan, sitting back on her heels, and drying her
eyes.
"Not a quarrel with Peter?"
"Oh, auntie, no!"
"Well," her aunt sighed comfortably, "of course it's an emotional
time, dear! Leaving the home nest--" Mrs. Lancaster eyed her keenly,
but Susan did not speak. "Remember, Auntie is to know the first of
all!" she said playfully. Adding, after a moment's somber thought,
"If Georgie had told Mama, things would be very different now!"
"Poor Georgie!" Susan smiled, and still kneeling, leaned on her
aunt's knees, as Mrs. Lancaster sat back in the rocking chair.
"Poor Georgie indeed!" said her mother vexedly. "It's more serious
than you think, dear. Joe was here last night. It seems that he's
going to that doctor's convention, at Del Monte a week from next
Saturday, and he was talking to Georgie about her going, too."
Susan was thunderstruck.
"But, Auntie, aren't they going to be divorced?"
Mrs. Lancaster rubbed her nose violently.
"They are if _I_ have anything to say!" she said, angrily. "But, of
course, Georgie has gotten herself into this thing, and now Mama
isn't going to get any help in trying to get her out! Joe was
extremely rude and inconsiderate about it, and got the poor child
crying--!"
"But, Auntie, she certainly doesn't want to go!"
"Certainly she doesn't. And to come home to that dreadful WOMAN, his
mother? Use your senses, Susan!"
"Why don't you forbid Joe O'Connor the house, Auntie?"
"Because I don't want any little whipper-snapper of a medical
graduate from the Mission to DARE to think he can come here, in my
own home, and threaten me with a lawsuit, for alienating his wife's
affections!" Mrs. Lancaster said forcibly. "I never in my life heard
such impudence!"
"Is he mad!" exclaimed Susan, in a low, horrified tone.
"Well, I honestly think he is!" Mrs. Lancaster, gratified by this
show of indignation, softened. "But I didn't mean to distress you
with this, dear," said she. "It will all work out, somehow. We
mustn't have any scandal in the family just now, whatever happens,
for your sake!"
Pursuant to her new-formed resolutions, Susan was maintaining what
dignity she could in her friendship with Peter nowadays. And when,
in November, Peter stopped her on the "deck" one day to ask her,
"How about Sunday, Sue? I have a date, but I think I can get out of
it?" she disgusted him by answering briskly, "Not for me, Peter. I'm
positively engaged for Sunday."
"Oh, no, you're not!" he assured her, firmly.
"Oh, truly I am!" Susan nodded a good-by, and went humming into the
office, and that night made William Oliver promise to take her to
the Carrolls' in Sausalito for the holiday.
So on a hazy, soft November morning they found themselves on the
cable-car that in those days slipped down the steep streets of Nob
Hill, through the odorous, filthy gaiety of the Chinese quarter,
through the warehouse district, and out across the great crescent of
the water-front. Billy, well-brushed and clean-shaven, looked his
best to-day, and Susan, in a wide, dashing hat, with fresh linen at
wrists and collar, enjoyed the innocent tribute of many a passing
glance from the ceaseless current of men crossing and recrossing the
ferry place.
"If they try to keep us for dinner, we'll bashfully remain," said
Billy, openly enchanted by the prospect of a day with his adored
Josephine.
But first they were to have a late second breakfast at Sardi's, the
little ramshackle Sausalito restaurant, whose tables, visible
through green arches, hung almost directly over the water. It was a
cheap meal, oily and fried, but Susan was quite happy, hanging over
the rail to watch the shining surface of the water that was so near.
The reflection of the sun shifted in a ceaselessly moving bright
pattern on the white-washed ceiling, the wash of the outgoing
steamer surged through the piles, and set to rocking all the nearby
boats at anchor.
After luncheon, they climbed the long flights of steps that lead
straight through the village, which hangs on the cliff like a
cluster of sea-birds' nests. The gardens were bare and brown now,
the trees sober and shabby.
When the steps stopped, they followed a road that ran like a shelf
above the bay and waterfront far below, and that gave a wonderful
aspect of the wide sweep of hills and sky beyond, all steeped in the
thin, clear autumn haze. Billy pushed open a high gate that had
scraped the path beyond in a deep circular groove, and they were in
a fine, old-fashioned garden, filled with trees. Willow and pepper
and eucalyptus towered over the smaller growth of orange and lemon-
verbena trees; there were acacia and mock-orange and standard roses,
and hollyhock stalks, bare and dry. Only the cosmos bushes, tall and
wavering, were in bloom, with a few chrysanthemums and late asters,
the air was colder here than it had been out under the bright
November sun, and the path under the trees was green and slippery.
On a rise of ground stood the plain, comfortable old house, with a
white curtain blowing here and there at an open window and its front
door set hospitably ajar. But not a soul was in sight.
Billy and Susan were at home here, however, and went through the
hallway to open a back door that gave on the kitchen. It was an
immaculate kitchen, with a fire glowing sleepily behind the shining
iron grating of the stove, and sunshine lying on the well-scrubbed
floor. A tall woman was busy with plants in the bright window.
"Well, you nice child!" she exclaimed, her face brightening as Susan
came into her arms for her motherly kiss. "I was just thinking about
you! We've been hearing things about you, Sue, and wondering--and
wondering--! And Billy, too! The girls will be delighted!"
This was the mother of the five Carrolls, a mother to whom it was
easy to trace some of their beauty, and some of their courage. In
the twelve long years of her widowhood, from a useless, idle,
untrained member of a society to which all three adjectives apply,
this woman had grown to be the broad and brave and smiling creature
who was now studying Susan's face with the insatiable motherliness
that even her household's constant claims failed to exhaust. Manager
and cook and houseworker, seamstress and confidante to her restless,
growing brood, still there was a certain pure radiance that was
never quite missing from her smile, and Susan felt a mad impulse to-
day to have a long comforting cry on the broad shoulder. She
thoroughly loved Mrs. Carroll, even if she thought the older woman's
interest in soups and darning and the filling of lamps a masterly
affectation, and pitied her for the bitter fate that had robbed her
of home and husband, wealth and position, at the very time when her
children needed these things the most.
They two went into the sitting-room now, while Billy raced after the
young people who had taken their luncheon, it appeared, and were
walking over the hills to a favorite spot known as "Gioli's" beach.
Susan liked this room, low-ceiled and wide, which ran the length of
the house. It seemed particularly pleasant to-day, with the
uncertain sunlight falling through the well-darned, snowy window-
curtains, the circle of friendly, shabby chairs, the worn old
carpet, scrupulously brushed, the reading-table with a green-shaded
lamp, and the old square piano loaded with music. The room was in
Sunday order to-day, books, shabby with much handling, were ranged
neatly on their shelves, not a fallen leaf lay under the bowl of
late roses on the piano.
Susan had had many a happy hour in this room, for if the Carrolls
were poor to the point of absurdity, their mother had made a sort of
science of poverty, and concentrated her splendid mind on the
questions of meals, clothes, and the amusements of their home
evenings. That it had been a hard fight, was still a hard fight,
Susan knew. Philip, the handsome first-born, had the tendencies and
temptations natural to his six-and-twenty years; Anna, her mother's
especial companion, was taking a hard course of nursing in a city
hospital; Josephine, the family beauty, at twenty, was soberly
undertaking a course in architecture, in addition to her daily work
in the offices of Huxley and Huxley; even little Betsey was busy,
and Jimmy still in school; so that the brunt of the planning, of the
actual labor, indeed, fell upon their mother. But she had carried a
so much heavier burden, that these days seemed bright and easeful to
Mrs. Carroll, and the face she turned to Susan now was absolutely
unclouded.
"What's all the news, Sue? Auntie's well, and Mary Lou? And what do
they say now of Jinny? Don't tell me about Georgie until the girls
are here! And what's this I hear of your throwing down Phil
completely, and setting up a new young man?"
"Please'm, you never said I wasn'ter," Susan laughed.
"No, indeed I never did! You couldn't do a more sensible thing!"
"Oh, Aunt Jo!" The title was only by courtesy. "I thought you felt
that every woman ought to have a profession!"
"A means of livelihood, my dear, not a profession necessarily! Yes,
to be used in case she didn't marry, or when anything went wrong if
she did," the older woman amended briskly. "But, Sue, marriage first
for all girls! I won't say," she went on thoughtfully, "that any
marriage is better than none at all, but I could ALMOST say that I
thought that! That is, given the average start, I think a sensible
woman has nine chances out of ten of making a marriage successful,
whereas there never was a really complete life rounded out by a
single woman."
"My young man has what you'll consider one serious fault," said
Susan, dimpling.
"Dear, dear! And what's that?"
"He's rich."
"Peter Coleman, yes, of course he is!" Mrs. Carroll frowned
thoughtfully. "Well, that isn't NECESSARILY bad, Susan!"
"Aunt Josephine," Susan said, really shaken out of her nonsense by
the serious tone, "do you honestly think it's a drawback? Wouldn't
you honestly rather have Jo, say, marry a rich man than a poor man,
other things being equal?"
"Honestly no, Sue," said Mrs. Carroll.
"But if the rich man was just as good and brave and honest and true
as the poor one?" persisted the girl.
"But he couldn't be, Sue, he never is. The fibers of his moral and
mental nature are too soft. He's had no hardening. No," Mrs. Carroll
shook her head. "No, I've been rich, and I've been poor. If a man
earns his money honestly himself, he grows old during the process,
and he may or may not be a strong and good man. But if he merely
inherits it, he is pretty sure not to be one."
"But aren't there some exceptions?" asked Susan. Mrs. Carroll
laughed at her tone.
"There are exceptions to everything! And I really believe Peter
Coleman is one," she conceded smilingly. "Hark!" for feet were
running down the path outside.
"There you are, Sue!" said Anna Carroll, putting a glowing face in
the sitting-room door. "I came back for you! The others said they
would go slowly, and we can catch them if we hurry!"
She came in, a brilliant, handsome young creature, in rough, well-
worn walking attire, and a gipsyish hat. Talking steadily, as they
always did when together, she and Susan went upstairs, and Susan was
loaned a short skirt, and a cap that made her prettier than ever.
The house was old, there was a hint of sagging here and there, in
the worn floors, the bedrooms were plainly furnished, almost bare.
In the atmosphere there lingered, despite the open windows, the
faint undefinable odor common to old houses in which years of frugal
and self-denying living have set their mark, an odor vaguely
compounded of clean linen and old woodwork, hot soapsuds and
ammonia. The children's old books were preserved in old walnut
cases, nothing had been renewed, recarpeted, repapered for many
years.
Still talking, the girls presently ran downstairs, and briskly
followed the road that wound up, above the village, to the top of
the hill. Anna chattered of the hospital, of the superintendent of
nurses, who was a trial to all the young nurses, "all
superintendents are tyrants, I think," said Anna, "and we just have
to shut our teeth and bear it! But it's all so unnecessarily hard,
and it's wrong, too, for nursing the sick is one thing, and being
teased by an irritable woman like that is another! However," she
concluded cheerfully, "I'll graduate some day, and forget her! And
meantime, I don't want to worry mother, for Phil's just taken a real
start, and Bett's doctor's bills are paid, and the landlord, by some
miracle, has agreed to plaster the kitchen!"
They joined the others just below the top of the hill, and were
presently fighting the stiff wind that blew straight across the
ridge. Once over it, however, the wind dropped, the air was
deliciously soft and fresh and their rapid walking made the day seem
warm. There was no road; their straggling line followed the little
shelving paths beaten out of the hillside by the cows.
Far below lay the ocean, only a tone deeper than the pale sky. The
line of the Cliff House beach was opposite, a vessel under full sail
was moving in through the Golden Gate. The hills fell sharply away
to the beach, Gioli's ranch-house, down in the valley, was only one
deeper brown note among all the browns. Here and there cows were
grazing, cotton-tails whisked behind the tall, dried thistles.
The Carrolls loved this particular walk, and took it in all
weathers. Sometimes they had a guest or two,--a stray friend of
Philip's, or two or three of Anna's girl friends from the hospital.
It did not matter, for there was no pairing off at the Carroll
picnics. Oftener they were all alone, or, as to-day, with Susan and
Billy, who were like members of the family.
To-day Billy, Jimmy and Betsey were racing ahead like frolicking
puppies; up banks, down banks, shrieking, singing and shouting. Phil
and Josephine walked together, they were inseparable chums, and
Susan thought them a pretty study to-day; Josephine so demurely
beautiful in her middy jacket and tam-o-shanter cap, and Philip so
obviously proud of her.
She and Anna, their hands sunk in their coat-pockets, their hair
loosening under the breezes, followed the others rather silently.
And swiftly, subtly, the healing influences of the hour crept into
Susan's heart. What of these petty little hopes and joys and fears
that fretted her like a cloud of midges day and night? How small
they seemed in the wide silence of these brooding hills, with the
sunlight lying warm on the murmuring ocean below, and the sweet
kindly earth underfoot!
"I wish I could live out here, Nance, and never go near to people
and things again!"
"Oh, DON'T you, Sue!"
There was a delay at the farmhouse for cream. The ranchers' damp
dooryard had been churned into deep mud by the cows, strong odors,
delicious to Susan, because they were associated with these happy
days, drifted about, the dairy reeked of damp earth, wet wood, and
scoured tinware. The cream, topping the pan like a circle of
leather, was loosened by a small, sharp stick, and pushed, thick and
lumpy, into the empty jam jar that Josephine neatly presented. A
woman came to the ranch-house door with a grinning Portuguese
greeting, the air from the kitchen behind her was close, and reeked
of garlic and onions and other odors. Susan and Anna went in to look
at the fat baby, a brown cherub whose silky black lashes curved back
half an inch from his cheeks. There were half a dozen small children
in the kitchen, cats, even a sickly chicken or two.
"Very different from the home life of our dear Queen!" said Susan,
when they were out in the air again.
The road now ran between marshy places full of whispering reeds,
occasional crazy fences must be crossed, occasional pools carefully
skirted. And then they were really crossing the difficult strip of
sandy dead grasses, and cocoanut shells, and long-dried seaweeds
that had been tossed up by the sea in a long ridge on the beach, and
were racing on the smooth sand, where the dangerous looking breakers
were rolling so harmlessly. They shouted to each other now, above
the roar of the water, as they gathered drift-wood for their fire,
and when the blaze was well started, indulged in the fascinating
pastime of running in long curves so near to the incoming level rush
of the waves that they were all soon wet enough to feel that no
further harm could be done by frankly wading in the shallows, posing
for Philip's camera on half-submerged rocks, and chasing each other
through a frantic game of beach tag. It was the prudent Josephine,--
for Anna was too dreamy and unpractical to bring her attention to
detail,--who suggested a general drying of shoes, as they gathered
about the fire for the lunch--toasted sandwiches, and roasted
potatoes, and large wedges of apple-pie, and the tin mugs of
delicious coffee that crowned all these feasts. Only sea-air
accounted for the quantities in which the edibles disappeared; the
pasteboard boxes and the basket were emptied to the last crumb, and
the coffee-pot refilled and emptied again.
The meal was not long over, and the stiffened boots were being
buttoned with the aid of bent hairpins, when the usual horrifying
discovery of the time was made. Frantic hurrying ensued, the tin
cups, dripping salt water, were strung on a cord, the cardboard
boxes fed the last flicker of the fire, the coffee-pot was emptied
into the waves.
And they were off again, climbing up--up--up the long rise of the
hills. The way home always seemed twice the way out, but Susan found
it a soothing, comforting experience to-day. The sun went behind a
cloud; cows filed into the ranch gates for milking; a fine fog blew
up from the sea.
"Wonderful day, Anna!" Susan said. The two were alone together
again.
"These walks do make you over," Anna's bright face clouded a little
as she turned to look down the long road they had come. "It's all so
beautiful, Sue," she said, slowly, "and the spring is so beautiful,
and books and music and fires are so beautiful. Why aren't they
enough? Nobody can take those things away from us!"
"I know," Susan said briefly, comprehending.
"But we set our hearts on some silly thing not worth one of these
fogs," Anna mused, "and nothing but that one thing seems to count!"
"I know," Susan said again. She thought of Peter Coleman.
"There's a doctor at the hospital," Anna said suddenly. "A German,
Doctor Hoffman. Of course I'm only one of twenty girls to him, now.
But I've often thought that if I had pretty gowns, and the sort of
home,--you know what I mean, Sue! to which one could ask that type
of really distinguished man---"
"Well, look at my case---" began Susan.
It was almost dark when the seven stormed the home kitchen, tired,
chilly, happy, ravenous. Here they found Mrs. Carroll, ready to
serve the big pot-roast and the squares of yellow cornbread, and to
have Betsey and Billy burn their fingers trying to get baked sweet
potatoes out of the oven. And here, straddling a kitchen chair, and
noisily joyous as usual, was Peter Coleman. Susan knew in a happy
instant that he had gone to find her at her aunt's, and had followed
her here, and during the meal that followed, she was the maddest of
all the mad crowd. After dinner they had Josephine's violin, and
coaxed Betsey to recite, but more appreciated than either was Miss
Brown's rendition of selections from German and Italian opera, and
her impersonation of an inexperienced servant from Erin's green
isle. Mrs. Carroll laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks, as
indeed they all did.
The evening ended with songs about the old piano, "Loch Lomond,"
"Love's Old Sweet Song," and "Asthore." Then Susan and Peter and
Billy must run for their hats and wraps.
"And Peter thinks there's MONEY in my window-washer!" said Mrs.
Carroll, when they were all loitering in the doorway, while Betts
hunted for the new time-table.
"Mother's invention" was a standing joke with the young Carrolls,
but their mother had a serene belief that some day SOMETHING might
be done with the little contrivance she had thought of some years
ago, by which the largest of windows might be washed outside as
easily as inside. "I believe I really thought of it by seeing poor
maids washing fifth-story windows by sitting on the sill and tipping
out!" she confessed one day to Susan. Now she had been deeply
pleased by Peter's casual interest in it.
"Peter says that there's NO reason---" she began.
"Oh, Mother!" Josephine laughed indulgently, as she stood with her
arm about her mother's waist, and her bright cheek against her
mother's shoulder, "you've NOT been taking Peter seriously!"
"Jo, when I ask you to take me seriously, it'll be time for you to
get so fresh!" said Peter neatly.
"Your mother is the Lady Edison of the Pacific Coast, and don't you
forget it! I'm going to talk to some men at the shop about this
thing---"
"Say, if you do, I'll make some blue prints," Billy volunteered.
"You're on!" agreed Mr. Coleman.
"You wouldn't want to market this yourself, Mrs. Carroll?"
"Well--no, I don't think so. No, I'm sure I wouldn't! I'd rather
sell it for a lump sum---"
"To be not less than three dollars," laughed Phil.
"Less than three hundred, you mean!" said the interested Peter.
"Three hundred!" Mrs. Carroll exclaimed. "Do you SUPPOSE so?"
"Why, I don't know--but I can find out"
The trio, running for their boat, left the little family rather
excited, for the first time, over the window-cleaner.
"But, Peter, is there really something in it?" asked Susan, on the
boat.
"Well,--there might be. Anyway, it seemed a good chance to give them
a lift, don't you know?" he said, with his ingenuous blush. Susan
loved him for the generous impulse. She had sometimes fancied him a
little indifferent to the sufferings of the less fortunate, proof of
the contrary warmed her to the very heart! She had been distressed
one day to hear him gaily telling George Banks, the salesman who was
coughing himself to death despite the frantic care of his wife, a
story of a consumptive, and, on another occasion, when a shawled,
shabby woman had come up to them in the street, with the whined
story of five little hungry children, Susan had been shocked to hear
Peter say, with his irrepressible gaiety, "Well, here! Here's five
cents; that's a cent apiece! Now mind you don't waste it!"
She told herself to-night that these things proved no more than want
of thought. There was nothing wrong with the heart that could plan
so tactfully for Mrs. Carroll.
On the following Saturday Susan had the unexpected experience of
shopping with Mrs. Lancaster and Georgie for the latter's trousseau.
It was unlike any shopping that they had ever done before, inasmuch
as the doctor's unclaimed bride had received from her lord the sum
of three hundred dollars for the purpose. Georgie denied firmly that
she was going to start with her husband for the convention at Del
Monte that evening, but she went shopping nevertheless. Perhaps she
could not really resist the lure of the shining heap of gold pieces.
She became deeply excited and charmed over the buying of the pretty
tailor-made, the silk house dresses, the hat and shoes and linen.
Georgie began to play the bride, was prettily indignant with clerks,
pouted at silks and velvets. Susan did not miss her cousin's bright
blush when certain things, a linen suit, underlinen, a waist or two,
were taken from the mass of things to be sent, and put into
Georgie's suitcase.
"And you're to have a silk waist, Ma, I INSIST."
"Now, Baby love, this is YOUR shopping. And, more than that, I
really need a pair of good corsets before I try on waists!"
"Then you'll have both!" Mrs. Lancaster laughed helplessly as the
bride carried her point.
At six o'clock the three met the doctor at the Vienna Bakery, for
tea, and Georgie, quite lofty in her attitude when only her mother
and cousin were to be impressed, seemed suddenly to lose her powers
of speech. She answered the doctor's outline of his plans only by
monosyllables. "Yes," "All right," "That's nice, Joe." Her face was
burning red.
"But Ma--Ma and I--and Sue, too, don't you, Sue?" she stammered
presently. "We think--and don't you think it would be as well,
yourself, Joe, if I went back with Ma to-night---"
Susan, anxiously looking toward the doctor, at this, felt a little
thrill run over her whole body at the sudden glimpse of the
confident male she had in his reply,--or rather, lack of reply. For,
after a vague, absent glance at Georgie, he took a time-table out of
his pocket, and addressed his mother-in-law.
"We'll be back next Sunday, Mrs. Lancaster. But don't worry if you
don't hear from Georgie that day, for we may be late, and Mother
won't naturally want us to run off the moment we get home. But on
Monday Georgie can go over, if she wants to. Perhaps I'll drive her
over, if I can."
"He was the coolest---!" Susan said, half-annoyed, half-admiring, to
Mary Lou, late that night. The boarding-house had been pleasantly
fluttered by the departure of the bride, Mrs. Lancaster, in spite of
herself, had enjoyed the little distinction of being that
personage's mother.
"Well, she'll be back again in a week!" Virginia, missing her
sister, sighed.
"Back, yes," Mrs. Lancaster admitted, "but not quite the same,
dear!" Georgie, whatever her husband, whatever the circumstances of
her marriage, was nearer her mother than any of the others now. As a
wife, she was admitted to the company of wives.
Susan spent the evening in innocently amorous dreams, over her game
of patience. What a wonderful thing, if one loved a man, to fare
forth into the world with him as his wife!----
"I have about as much chance with Joe Carroll as a dead rat," said
Billy suddenly. He was busied with his draughting board and the
little box of draughts-man's instruments that Susan always found
fascinating, and had been scowling and puffing over his work.
"Why?" Susan asked, laughing outright. "Oh, she's so darn busy!"
Billy said, and returned to his work.
Susan pondered it. She wished she were so "darned" busy that Peter
Coleman might have to scheme and plan to see her.
"That's why men's love affairs are considered so comparatively
unimportant, I suppose," she submitted presently. "Men are so busy!"
Billy paid no attention to the generality, and Susan pursued it no
further.
But after awhile she interrupted him again, this time in rather an
odd tone.
"Billy, I want to ask you something---"
"Ask away," said Billy, giving her one somewhat startled glance.
Susan did not speak immediately, and he did not hurry her. A few
silent minutes passed before she laid a card carefully in place,
studied it with her head on one side, and said casually, in rather a
husky voice:
"Billy, if a man takes a girl everywhere, and gives her things, and
seems to want to be with her all the time, he's in love with her,
isn't he?"
Billy, apparently absorbed in what he was doing, cleared his throat
before he answered carelessly:
"Well, it might depend, Sue. When a man in my position does it, a
girl knows gosh darn well that if I spend my good hard money on her
I mean business!"
"But--it mightn't be so--with a rich man?" hazarded Susan bravely.
"Why, I don't know, Sue." An embarrassed red had crept into
William's cheeks. "Of course, if a fellow kissed her---"
"Oh, heavens!" cried Susan, scarlet in turn, "he never did anything
like THAT!"
"Didn't, hey?" William looked blank.
"Oh, never!" Susan said, meeting his look bravely. "He's--he's too
much of a gentleman, Bill!"
"Perhaps that's being a gentleman, and perhaps it's not," said
Billy, scowling. "He--but he--he makes love to you, doesn't he?" The
crude phrase was the best he could master in this delicate matter.
"I don't--I don't know!" said Susan, laughing, but with flaming
cheeks. "That's it! He--he isn't sentimental. I don't believe he
ever would be, it's not his nature. He doesn't take anything very
seriously, you know. We talk all the time, but not about really
serious things." It sounded a little lame. Susan halted.
"Of course, Coleman's a perfectly decent fellow---" Billy began,
with brotherly uneasiness.
"Oh, absolutely!" Susan could laugh, in her perfect confidence. "He
acts exactly as if I were his sister, or another boy. He never even-
-put his arm about me," she explained, "and I--I don't know just
what he DOES mean---"
"Sure," said Billy, thoughtfully.
"Of course, there's no reason why a man and a girl can't be good
friends just as two men would," Susan said, more lightly, after a
pause.
"Oh, yes there is! Don't you fool yourself!" Billy said, gloomily.
"That's all rot!"
"Well, a girl can't stay moping in the house until a man comes along
and says, 'If I take you to the theater it means I want to marry
you!'" Susan declared with spirit. "I--I can't very well turn to
Peter now and say, 'This ends everything, unless you are in
earnest!'"
Her distress, her earnestness, her eagerness for his opinion, had
carried her quite out of herself. She rested her face in her hands,
and fixed her anxious eyes upon him.
"Well, here's the way I figure it out," Billy said, deliberately,
drawing his pencil slowly along the edge of his T-square, and
squinting at it absorbedly, "Coleman has a crush on you, all right,
and he'd rather be with you than anyone else---"
Yes," nodded Susan. "I know that, because---"
"Well. But you see you're so fixed that you can't entertain him
here, Sue, and you don't run in his crowd, so when he wants to see
you he has to go out of his way to do it. So his rushing you doesn't
mean as much as it otherwise would."
"I suppose that's true," Susan said, with a sinking heart.
"The chances are that he doesn't want to get married at all yet,"
pursued Billy, mercilessly, "and he thinks that if he gives you a
good time, and doesn't--doesn't go any further, that he's playing
fair."
"That's what I think," Susan said, fighting a sensation of sickness.
Her heart was a cold weight, she hoped that she was not going to
cry.
"But all the same, Sue," Billy resumed more briskly, "You can see
that it wouldn't take much to bring an affair like that to a finish.
Coleman's rich, he can marry if he pleases, and he wants what he
wants---You couldn't just stop short, I suppose? You couldn't simply
turn down all his invitations, and refuse everything?" he broke off
to ask.
"Billy, how could I? Right in the next office!"
"Well, that's an advantage, in a way. It keeps the things in his
mind. Either way, you're no worse off for stopping everything now,
Sue. If he's in earnest, he'll not be put off by that, and if he's
not, you save yourself from--from perhaps beginning to care."
Susan could have kissed the top of Billy's rumpled head for the
tactful close. She had thrown her pride to the winds to-night, but
she loved him for remembering it.
"But he would think that I cared!" she objected.
"Let him! That won't hurt you. Simply say that your aunt disapproves
of your being so much with him, and stop short."
Billy went on working, and Susan shuffled her pack for a new game.
"Thank you, Bill," she said at last, gratefully. "I'm glad I told
you."
"Oh, that's all right!" said William, gruffly.
There was a silence until Mary Lou came in, to rip up her old velvet
hat, and speculate upon the clangers of a trip to Virginia City.
CHAPTER VII
Life presented itself in a new aspect to Susan Brown. A hundred
little events and influences combining had made it seem to her less
a grab-bag, from which one drew good or bad at haphazard, and more a
rational problem, to be worked out with arbitrarily supplied
materials. She might not make herself either rich or famous, but she
COULD,--she began dimly to perceive,--eliminate certain things from
her life and put others in their places. The race was not to the
swift, but to the faithful. What other people had done, she, by
following the old copybook rules of the honest policy, the early
rising, the power of knowledge, the infinite capacity of taking
pains that was genius, could do, too. She had been the toy of chance
too long. She would grasp chance, now, and make it serve her. The
perseverance that Anna brought to her hospital work, that Josephine
exercised in her studies, Susan, lacking a gift, lacking special
training, would seriously devote to the business of getting married.
Girls DID marry. She would presumably marry some day, and Peter
Coleman would marry. Why not, having advanced a long way in this
direction, to each other?
There was, in fact, no alternative in her case. She knew no other
eligible man half as well. If Peter Coleman went out of her life,
what remained? A somewhat insecure position in a wholesale drug-
house, at forty dollars a month, and half a third-story bedroom in a
boarding-house.
Susan was not a calculating person. She knew that Peter Coleman
liked her immensely, and that he could love her deeply, too. She
knew that her feeling for him was only held from an extreme by an
inherited feminine instinct of self-preservation. Marriage, and
especially this marriage, meant to her a great many pleasant things,
a splendid, lovable man with whom to share life, a big home to
manage and delight in, a conspicuous place in society, and one that
she knew that she could fill gracefully and well. Marriage meant
children, dear little white-clad sons, with sturdy bare knees, and
tiny daughters half-smothered in lace and ribbons; it meant power,
power to do good, to develop her own gifts; it meant, above all, a
solution of the problems of her youth. No more speculations, no more
vagaries, safely anchored, happily absorbed in normal cares and
pleasures, Susan could rest on her laurels, and look about her in
placid content!
No more serious thought assailed her. Other thoughts than these were
not "nice." Susan safe-guarded her wandering fancies as sternly as
she did herself, would as quickly have let Peter, or any other man,
kiss her, as to have dreamed of the fundamental and essential
elements of marriage. These, said Auntie, "came later." Susan was
quite content to ignore them. That the questions that "came later"
might ruin her life or unmake her compact, she did not know. At this
point it might have made no difference in her attitude. Her
affection for Peter was quite as fresh and pure as her feeling for a
particularly beloved brother would have been.
"You're dated three-deep for Thursday night, I presume?"
"Peter--how you do creep up behind one!" Susan turned, on the deck,
to face him laughingly. "What did you say?"
"I said--but where are you going?"
"Upstairs to lunch. Where did you think?" Susan exhibited the little
package in her hand. "Do I look like a person about to go to a
Browning Cotillion, or to take a dip in the Pacific?"
"No," gurgled Peter, "but I was wishing we could lunch together.
However, I'm dated with Hunter. But what about Thursday night?"
"Thursday." Susan reflected. "Peter, I can't!"
"All foolishness. You can."
"No, honestly! Georgie and Joe are coming. The first time."
"Oh, but you don't have to be there!"
"Oh, but yes I do!"
"Well---" Mr. Coleman picked a limp rubber bathing cap from the top
of a case, and distended it on two well-groomed hands. "Well,
Evangeline, how's Sat.? The great American pay-day!"
"Busy Saturday, too. Too bad. I'm sorry, Peter."
"Woman, you lie!"
"Of course you can insult me, sir. I'm only a working girl!"
"No, but who have you got a date with?" Peter said curiously.
"You're blushing like mad! You're not engaged at all!"
"Yes, I am. Truly. Lydia Lord is taking the civil service
examinations; she wants to get a position in the public library. And
I promised that I'd take Mary's dinner up and sit with her."
"Oh, shucks! You could get out of that! However----I'll tell you
what, Susan. I was going off with Russ on Sunday, but I'll get out
of it, and we'll go see guard mount at the Presidio, and have tea
with Aunt Clara, what?"
"I don't believe they have guard mount on Sundays."
"Well, then we'll go feed the gold-fish in the Japanese gardens,--
they eat on Sundays, the poor things! Nobody ever converted them."
"Honestly, Peter---"
"Look here, Susan!" he exclaimed, suddenly aroused. "Are you trying
to throw me down? Well, of all gall!"
Susan's heart began to thump.
"No, of course I'm not!"
"Well, then, shall I get tickets for Monday night?"
"Not Monday."
"Look here, Susan! Somebody's been stuffing you, I can see it! Was
it Auntie? Come on, now, what's the matter, all of a sudden?"
"There's nothing sudden about it," Susan said, with dignity, "but
Auntie does think that I go about with you a good deal---"
Peter was silent. Susan, stealing a glance at his face, saw that it
was very red.
"Oh, I love that! I'm crazy about it!" he said, grinning. Then, with
sudden masterfulness, "That's all ROT! I'm coming for you on Sunday,
and we'll go feed the fishes!"
And he was gone. Susan ate her lunch very thoughtfully, satisfied on
the whole with the first application of the new plan.
On Sunday afternoon Mr. Coleman duly presented himself at the
boarding-house, but he was accompanied by Miss Fox, to whom Susan,
who saw her occasionally at the Saunders', had taken a vague
dislike, and by a Mr. Horace Carter, fat, sleepy, and slightly bald
at twenty-six.
"I brought 'em along to pacify Auntie," said Peter on the car.
Susan made a little grimace.
"You don't like Con? Oh, she's loads of sport!" he assured her. "And
you'll like Carter, too, he's loads of fun!"
But Susan liked nobody and nothing that day. It was a failure from
beginning to end. The sky was overcast, gloomy. Not a leaf stirred
on the dripping trees, in the silent Park, fog filled all the little
canons. There were very few children on the merry-go-rounds, or in
the swings, and very few pleasure-seekers in the museum and the
conservatories. Miss Fox was quite comfortable in white furs, but
Susan felt chilly. She tried to strike a human spark from Mr.
Carter, but failed. Attempts at a general conversation also fell
flat.
They listened to the band for a little while, but it was too cold to
sit still very long, and when Peter proposed tea at the Occidental,
Susan visibly brightened. But the shamed color rose in her face when
Miss Fox languidly assured him that if he wanted her mother to scalp
her, well and good; if not, he would please not mention tea
downtown.
She added that Mama was having a tea herself to-day, or she would
ask them all to come home with her. This put Susan in an
uncomfortable position of which she had to make the best.
"If it wasn't for an assorted bunch of boarders," said Susan, "I
would ask you all to our house."
Miss Fox eyed her curiously a moment, then spoke to Peter.
"Well, do let's do something, Peter! Let's go to the Japanese
garden."
To the Japanese garden they went, for a most unsatisfactory tea.
Miss Fox, it appeared, had been to Japan,--"with Dolly Ripley,
Peter," said she, carelessly mentioning the greatest of California's
heiresses, and she delighted the little bowing, smiling tea-woman
with a few words in her native tongue. Susan admired this
accomplishment, with the others, as she drank the tasteless fluid
from tiny bowls.
Only four o'clock! What an endless afternoon it had been!
Peter took her home, and they chatted on the steps gaily enough, in
the winter twilight. But Susan cried herself to sleep that night.
This first departure from her rule had proven humiliating and
disastrous; she determined not to depart from it again.
Georgie and the doctor came to the house for the one o'clock
Christmas dinner, the doctor instantly antagonizing his wife's
family by the remark that his mother always had her Christmas dinner
at night, and had "consented" to their coming, on condition that
they come home again early in the afternoon. However, it was
delightful to have Georgie back again, and the cousins talked and
laughed together for an hour, in Mary Lou's room. Almost the first
question from the bride was of Susan's love-affair, and what Peter's
Christmas gift had been.
"It hasn't come yet, so I don't know myself!" Susan said readily.
But that evening, when Georgie was gone and her aunt and cousins
were at church, she sat down to write to Peter.
MY DEAR PETER (wrote Susan):
This is a perfectly exquisite pin, and you are a dear to have
remembered my admiring a pearl crescent months ago. I
never saw a pin that I liked better, but it's far too handsome
a gift for me to keep. I haven't even dared show it to Auntie
and the girls! I am sending it back to you, though I hate to
let it go, and thank you a thousand times.
Always affectionately yours,
SUSAN BROWN.
Peter answered immediately from the country house where he was
spending the holidays. Susan read his letter in the office, two days
after Christmas.
DEAR PANSY IRENE:
I see Auntie's fine Italian hand in this! You wait till your
father gets home, I'll learn you to sass back! Tell Mrs. Lancaster
that it's an imitation and came in a box of lemon drops,
and put it on this instant! The more you wear the better, this
cold weather!
I've got the bulliest terrier ever, from George. Show him
to you next week. PETER.
Frowning thoughtfully, her eyes still on the scribbled half-sheet,
Susan sat down at her desk, and reached for paper and pen. She wrote
readily, and sent the letter out at once by the office boy.
DEAR PETER:
Please don't make any more fuss about the pin. I can't
accept it, and that's all there is to it. The candy was quite
enough--I thought you were going to send me books. Hadn't
you better change your mind and send me a book? As ever,
S. B.
To which Peter, after a week's interval, answered briefly:
DEAR SUSAN:
This fuss about the pin gives me a pain. I gave a dozen
gifts handsomer than that, and nobody else seems to be kicking.
Be a good girl, and Love the Giver. PETER.
This ended the correspondence. Susan put the pin away in the back of
her bureau-drawer, and tried not to think about the matter.
January was cold and dark. Life seemed to be made to match. Susan
caught cold from a worn-out overshoe, and spent an afternoon and a
day in bed, enjoying the rest from her aching head to her tired
feet, but protesting against each one of the twenty trips that Mary
Lou made up and downstairs for her comfort. She went back to the
office on the third day, but felt sick and miserable for a long time
and gained strength slowly.
One rainy day, when Peter Coleman was alone in Mr. Brauer's office,
she took the little jeweler's box in and laid it beside him on the
desk.
"This is all darn foolishness!" Peter said, really annoyed.
"Well---" Susan shrugged wearily, "it's the way I feel about it."
"I thought you were more of a sport!" he said impatiently, holding
the box as if he did not quite know what to do with it.
"Perhaps I'm not," Susan said quietly. She felt as if the world were
slowly, dismally coming to an end, but she stood her ground.
An awkward silence ensued. Peter slipped the little box into his
pocket. They were both standing at his high desk, resting their
elbows upon it, and half-turned, so that they faced each other.
"Well," he said, discontentedly, "I've got to give you something or
other for Christmas. What'll it be?"
"Nothing at all, Peter," Susan protested, "just don't say anything
more about it!"
He meditated, scowling.
"Are you dated for to-morrow night?" he asked.
"Yes," Susan said simply. The absence of explanation was extremely
significant.
"So you're not going out with me any more?" he asked, after a pause.
"Not--for awhile," Susan agreed, with a little difficulty. She felt
a horrible inclination to cry.
"Well, gosh, I hope somebody is pleased at the trouble she has
made!" Peter burst out angrily.
"If you mean Auntie, Peter," indignation dried Susan's tears, "you
are quite mistaken! Anyway, she would be quite right not to want me
to accept expensive gifts from a man whose position is so different
from my own---"
"Rot!" said Peter, flushing, "that sounds like servants' talk!"
"Well, of course I know it is nonsense---" Susan began. And, despite
her utmost effort, two tears slipped down her cheeks.
"And if we were engaged it would be all right, is that it?" Peter
said, after an embarrassed pause.
"Yes, but I don't want you to think for one instant---" Susan began,
with flaming cheeks.
"I wish to the Lord people would mind their own business," Peter
said vexedly. There was a pause. Then he added, cheerfully, "Tell
'em we're engaged then, that'll shut 'em up!"
The world rocked for Susan.
"Oh, but Peter, we can't--it wouldn't be true!"
"Why wouldn't it be true?" he demanded, perversely.
"Because we aren't!" persisted Susan, rubbing an old blot on the
desk with a damp forefinger.
"I thought one day we said that when I was forty-five and you were
forty-one we were going to get married?" Peter presently reminded
her, half in earnest, half irritated.
"D-d-did we?" stammered Susan, smiling up at him through a mist of
tears.
"Sure we did. We said we were going to start a stock-ranch, and
raise racers, don't you remember?"
A faint recollection of the old joke came to her.
"Well, then, are we to let people know that in twenty years we
intend to be married?" she asked, laughing uncertainly.
Peter gave his delighted shout of amusement. The conversation had
returned to familiar channels.
"Lord, don't tell anyone! WE'LL know it, that's enough!" he said.
That was all. There was no chance for sentiment, they could not even
clasp hands, here in the office. Susan, back at her desk, tried to
remember exactly what HAD been said and implied.
"Peter, I'll have to tell Auntie!" she had exclaimed.
Peter had not objected, had not answered indeed.
"I'll have to take my time about telling MY aunt," he had said, "but
there's time enough! See here, Susan, I'm dated with Barney White in
Berkeley to-night--is that all right?"
"Surely!" Susan had assured him laughingly.
"You see," Peter had explained, "it'll be a very deuce of a time
before we'll want everyone to know. There's any number of things to
do. So perhaps it's just as well if people don't suspect---"
"Peter, how extremely like you not to care what people think as long
as we're not engaged, and not to want them to suspect it when we
are!" Susan could say, smiling above the deep hurt in her heart.
And Peter laughed cheerfully again.
Then Mr. Brauer came in, and Susan went back to her desk, brain and
heart in a whirl. But presently one fact disengaged itself from a
mist of doubts and misgivings, hopes and terrors. She and Peter were
engaged to be married! What if vows and protestations, plans and
confidences were still all to come, what if the very first kiss was
still to come? The essential thing remained; they were engaged, the
question was settled at last.
Peter was not, at this time, quite the ideal lover. But in what was
he ever conventional; when did he ever do the expected thing? No;
she would gain so much more than any other woman ever had gained by
her marriage, she would so soon enter on a life that would make
these days seem only a troubled dream, that she could well afford to
dispense with some of the things her romantic nature half expected
now. It might not be quite comprehensible in him, but it was
certainly a convenience for her that he seemed to so dread an
announcement just now. She must have some gowns for the
entertainments that would be given them; she must have some money
saved for trousseau; she must arrange a little tea at home, when,
the boarders being eliminated, Peter could come to meet a few of the
very special old friends. These things took time. Susan spent the
dreamy, happy afternoon in desultory planning.
Peter went out at three o'clock with Barney White, looking in to nod
Susan a smiling good-by. Susan returned to her dreams, determined
that she would find the new bond as easy or as heavy as he chose to
make it. She had only to wait, and fate would bring this wonderful
thing her way; it would be quite like Peter to want to do the thing
suddenly, before long, summon his aunt and uncle, her aunt and
cousins, and announce the wedding and engagement to the world at
once.
Lost in happy dreams, she did not see Thorny watching her, or catch
the intense, wistful look with which Mr. Brauer so often followed
her.
Susan had a large share of the young German's own dreams just now, a
demure little Susan in a checked gingham apron, tasting jelly on a
vine-shaded porch, or basting a chicken in a sunny kitchen, or
pouring her lord's coffee from a shining pot. The dream Susan's hair
was irreproachably neat, she wore shining little house-slippers, and
she always laughed out,--the ringing peal of bells that Henry Brauer
had once heard in the real Susan's laugh,--when her husband teased
her about her old fancy for Peter Coleman. And the dream Susan was
the happy mother of at least five little girls--all girls!--a little
Susan that was called "Sanna," and an Adelaide for the gross-mutter
in the old country, and a Henrietta for himself---
Clean and strong and good, well-born and ambitious, gentle, and full
of the love of books and music and flowers and children, here was a
mate at whose side Susan might have climbed to the very summit of
her dreams. But she never fairly looked at Mr. Brauer, and after a
few years his plump dark little dumpling of a Cousin Linda came from
Bremen to teach music in the Western city, and to adore clever
Cousin Heinrich, and then it was time to hunt for the sunny kitchen
and buy the shining coffee-pot and change little Sanna's name to
Linchen.
For Susan was engaged to Peter Coleman! She went home on this
particular evening to find a great box of American Beauty roses
waiting for her, and a smaller box with them--the pearl crescent
again! What could the happy Susan do but pin on a rose with the
crescent, her own cheeks two roses, and go singing down to dinner?
"Lovey, Auntie doesn't like to see you wearing a pin like that!"
Mrs. Lancaster said, noticing it with troubled eyes. "Didn't Peter
send it to you?"
"Yes'm," said Susan, dimpling, as she kissed the older woman.
"Don't you know that a man has no respect for a girl who doesn't
keep him a little at a distance, dear?"
"Oh,--is--that--so!" Susan spun her aunt about, in a mad reel.
"Susan!" gasped Mrs. Lancaster. Her voice changed, she caught the
girl by the shoulders, and looked into the radiant face. "Susan?"
she asked. "My child---!"
And Susan strangled her with a hug, and whispered, "Yes--yes--yes!
But don't you dare tell anyone!"
Poor Mrs. Lancaster was quite unable to tell anyone anything for a
few moments. She sat down in her place, mechanically returning the
evening greetings of her guests. Her handsome, florid face was quite
pale. The soup came on and she roused herself to serve it; dinner
went its usual way.
But going upstairs after dinner, Mary Lou, informed of the great
event in some mysterious way, gave Susan's waist a girlish squeeze
and said joyously, "Ma had to tell me, Sue! I AM so glad!" and
Virginia, sitting with bandaged eyes in a darkened room, held out
both hands to her cousin, later in the evening, and said, "God bless
our dear little girl!" Billy knew it too, for the next morning he
gave Susan one of his shattering hand-grasps and muttered that he
was "darned glad, and Coleman was darned lucky," and Georgie, who
was feeling a little better than usual, though still pale and limp,
came in to rejoice and exclaim later in the day, a Sunday.
All of this made Susan vaguely uneasy. It was true, of course, and
yet somehow it was all too new, too strange to be taken quite
happily as a matter of course. She could only smile when Mary Lou
assured her that she must keep a little carriage; when Virginia
sighed, "To think of the good that you can do"; when Georgie warned
her against living with the old people.
"It's awful, take my word for it!" said Georgie, her hat laid aside,
her coat loosened, very much enjoying a cup of tea in the dining-
room. Young Mrs. O'Connor did not grow any closer to her husband's
mother. But it was to be noticed that toward her husband himself her
attitude was changed. Joe was altogether too smart to be cooped up
there in the Mission, it appeared; Joe was working much too hard,
and yet he carried her breakfast upstairs to her every morning; Joe
was an angel with his mother.
"I wish--of course you can explain to Peter now--but I wish that I
could give you a little engagement tea," said Georgie, very much the
matron.
"Oh, surely!" Susan hastened to reassure her. Nothing could have
been less to her liking than any festivity involving the O'Connors
just now. Susan had dined at the gloomy Mission Street house once,
and retained a depressing memory of the dark, long parlor, with only
one shutter opened in the bay window, the grim elderly hostess, in
mourning, who watched Georgie incessantly, the hard-faced elderly
maid, so obviously in league with her mistress against the new-
comer, and the dinner that progressed from a thick, sad-looking soup
to a firm, cold apple pie. There had been an altercation between the
doctor and his mother on the occasion of Susan's visit because there
had been no fire laid in Georgie's big, cold, upstairs bedroom.
Susan, remembering all this, could very readily excuse Georgie from
the exercise of any hospitality whatever.
"Don't give it another thought, Georgie!" said she.
"There'll be entertaining enough, soon!" said Mary Lou.
"But we aren't going to announce it for ever so long!" Susan said.
"Please, PLEASE don't tell anyone else, Auntie!" she besought over
and over again.
"My darling, not for the world! I can perfectly appreciate the
delicacy of feeling that makes you wish to leave all that to Peter!
And who knows? Only ourselves, and Billy, who is as close to you as
a dear brother could be, and Joe---"
"Oh, is Georgie going to tell Joe?" Susan asked, dismayed.
"Well, now, perhaps she won't," Mrs. Lancaster said soothingly. "And
I think you will find that a certain young gentleman is only too
anxious to tell his friends what a lovely girl he has won!" finished
Auntie archly.
Susan was somehow wretchedly certain that she would find nothing of
the kind. As a matter of fact, it chanced to be a week when she had
no engagements made with Peter, and two days went by--three--and
still she did not hear from him.
By Thursday she was acutely miserable. He was evidently purposely
avoiding her. Susan had been sleeping badly for several nights, she
felt feverish with anxiety and uncertainty. On Thursday, when the
girls filed out of the office at noon, she kept her seat, for Peter
was in the small office and she felt as if she must have a talk with
him or die. She heard him come into Front Office the moment she was
alone, and began to fuss with her desk without raising her eyes.
"Hello!" said Peter, sitting on a corner of the desk. "I've been
terribly busy with the Gerald theatricals, and that's why you
haven't seen me. I promised Mary Gerald two months ago that I'd be
in 'em, but by George! she's leaving the whole darn thing to me! How
are you?"
So gay, so big, so infinitely dear! Susan's doubts melted like mist.
She only wanted not to make him angry.
"I've been wondering where you were," she said mildly.
"And a little bit mad in spots?" queried Peter.
"Well---" Susan took firm grip of her courage. "After our little
talk on Saturday," she reminded him, smilingly.
"Sure," said Peter. And after a moment, thoughtfully staring down at
the desk, he added again rather heavily, "Sure."
"I told my aunt--I had to," said Susan then.
"Well, that's all right," Peter responded, after a perceptible
pause. "Nobody else knows?"
"Oh, nobody!" Susan answered, her heart fluttering nervously at his
tone, and her courage suddenly failing.
"And Auntie will keep mum, of course," he said thoughtfully. "It
would be so deuced awkward, Susan," he began.
"Oh, I know it!" she said eagerly. It seemed so much, after the
unhappy apprehensions of the few days past, to have him acknowledge
the engagement, to have him only concerned that it should not be
prematurely made known!
"Can't we have dinner together this evening, Sue? And go see that
man at the Orpheum,--they say he's a wonder!"
"Why, yes, we could. Peter,---" Susan made a brave resolution.
"Peter, couldn't you dine with us, at Auntie's, I mean?"
"Why, yes, I could," he said hesitatingly. But the moment had given
Susan time to reconsider the impulsively given invitation. For a
dozen reasons she did not want to take Peter home with her to-night.
The single one that the girls and Auntie would be quite unable to
conceal the fact that they knew of her engagement was enough. So
when Peter said regretfully, "But I thought we'd have more fun
alone! Telephone your aunt and ask her if we can't have a pious
little dinner at the Palace, or at the Occidental--we'll not see
anybody there!" Susan was only too glad to agree.
Auntie of course consented, a little lenience was permissible now.
"... But not supper afterwards, dear," said Auntie. "If Peter
teases, tell him that he will have you to himself soon enough! And
Sue," she added, with a hint of reproach in her voice, "remember
that we expect to see Peter out here very soon. Of course it's not
as if your mother was alive, dear, I know that! Still, even an old
auntie has some claim!"
"Well, Auntie, darling," said Susan, very low, "I asked him to
dinner to-night. And then it occurred to me, don't you know?---that
it might be better---"
"Gracious me, don't think of bringing him out here that way!"
ejaculated Mrs. Lancaster. "No, indeed. You're quite right. But
arrange it for very soon, Sue."
"Oh, surely I will!" Susan said, relievedly.
After an afternoon of happy anticipation it was a little
disappointing to find that she and Peter were not to be alone, a
gentle, pretty Miss Hall and her very charming brother were added to
the party when Peter met Susan at six o'clock.
"Friends of Aunt Clara's," Peter explained to Susan. "I had to!"
Susan, liking the Halls, sensibly made the best of them. She let
Miss Katharine monopolize Peter, and did her best to amuse Sam. She
was in high spirits at dinner, laughed, and kept the others
laughing, during the play,--for the plan had been changed for these
guests, and afterwards was so amusing and gay at the little supper
party that Peter was his most admiring self all the way home. But
Susan went to bed with a baffled aching in her heart. This was not
being engaged,--something was wrong.
She did not see Peter on Friday; caught only a glimpse of him on
Saturday, and on Sunday learned, from one of the newspapers, that
"Mr. Peter Coleman, who was to have a prominent part in the
theatricals to take place at Mrs. Newton Gerald's home next week,
would probably accompany Mr. Forrest Gerald on a trip to the Orient
in February, to be gone for some months."
Susan folded the paper, and sat staring blankly ahead of her for a
long time. Then she went to the telephone, and, half stunned by the
violent beating of her heart, called for the Baxter residence.
Burns answered. Mr. Coleman had gone out about an hour ago with Mr.
White. Burns did not know where. Mr. Coleman would be back for a
seven o'clock dinner. Certainly, Burns would ask him to telephone at
once to Miss Brown.
Excited, troubled, and yet not definitely apprehensive, Susan
dressed herself very prettily, and went out into the clear, crisp
sunshine. She decided suddenly to go and see Georgie. She would come
home early, hear from Peter, perhaps dine with him and his uncle and
aunt. And, when she saw him, she would tell him, in the jolliest and
sweetest way, that he must make his plans to have their engagement
announced at once. Any other course was unfair to her, to him, to
his friends.
If Peter objected, Susan would assume an offended air. That would
subdue him instantly. Or, if it did not, they might quarrel, and
Susan liked the definiteness of a quarrel. She must force this thing
to a conclusion one way or the other now, her own dignity demanded
it. As for Peter, his own choice was as limited as hers. He must
agree to the announcement,--and after all, why shouldn't he agree to
it?--or he must give Susan up, once and for all. Susan smiled. He
wouldn't do that!
It was a delightful day. The cars were filled with holiday-makers,
and through the pleasant sunshine of the streets young parents were
guiding white-coated toddlers, and beautifully dressed little girls
were wheeling dolls.
Susan found Georgie moping alone in the big, dark, ugly house; Aggie
was out, and Dr. O'Connor and his mother were making their annual
pilgrimage to the grave of their husband and father. The cousins
prepared supper together, in Aggie's exquisitely neat kitchen, not
that this was really necessary, but because the kitchen was so warm
and pleasant. The kettle was ticking on the back of the range, a
scoured empty milk-pan awaited the milk-man. Susan contrasted her
bright prospects with her cousin's dull lot, even while she
cheerfully scolded Georgie for being so depressed and lachrymose.
They fell to talking of marriage, Georgie's recent one, Susan's
approaching one. The wife gave delicate hints, the wife-to-be
revealed far more of her secret soul than she had ever dreamed of
revealing. Georgie sat, idly clasping the hands on which the
wedding-ring had grown loose, Susan turned and reversed the wheels
of a Dover egg-beater.
"Marriage is such a mystery, before you're into it," Georgie said.
"But once you're married, why, you feel as if you could attract any
man in the world. No more bashfulness, Sue, no more uncertainty. You
treat men exactly as you would girls, and of course they like it!"
Susan pondered this going home. She thought she knew how to apply it
to her attitude toward Peter.
Peter had not telephoned. Susan, quietly determined to treat him, or
attempt to treat him, with at least the frank protest she would have
shown to another girl, telephoned to the Baxter house at once. Mr.
Coleman was not yet at home.
Some of her resolution crumbled. It was very hard to settle down,
after supper, to an evening of solitaire. In these quiet hours,
Susan felt less confident of Peter's attitude when she announced her
ultimatum; felt that she must not jeopardize their friendship now,
must run no risks.
She had worked herself into a despondent and discouraged frame of
mind when the telephone rang, at ten o'clock. It was Peter.
"Hello, Sue!" said Peter gaily. "I'm just in. Burns said that you
telephoned."
"Burns said no more than the truth," said Susan. It was the old note
of levity, anything but natural to to-night's mood and the matter in
hand. But it was what Peter expected and liked. She heard him laugh
with his usual gaiety.
"Yes, he's a truthful little soul. He takes after me. What was it?"
Susan made a wry mouth in the dark.
"Nothing at all," she said, "I just telephoned--I thought we might
go out somewhere together."
"GREAT HEAVEN, WE'RE ENGAGED!" she reminded her sinking heart,
fiercely.
"Oh, too bad! I was at the Gerald's, at one of those darn
rehearsals."
A silence.
"Oh, all right!" said Susan. A writhing sickness of spirit
threatened to engulf her, but her voice was quiet.
"I'm sorry, Sue," Peter said quickly in a lower tone, "I couldn't
very well get out of it without having them all suspect. You can see
that!"
Susan knew him so well! He had never had to do anything against his
will. He couldn't understand that his engagement entailed any
obligations. He merely wanted always to be happy and popular, and
have everyone else happy and popular, too.
"And what about this trip to Japan with Mr. Gerald?" she asked.
There was another silence. Then Peter said, in an annoyed tone:
"Oh, Lord, that would probably be for a MONTH, or six weeks at the
outside!"
"I see," said Susan tonelessly.
"I've got Forrest here with me to-night," said Peter, apropos of
nothing.
"Oh, then I won't keep you!" Susan said.
"Well," he laughed, "don't be so polite about it!--I'll see you to-
morrow?"
"Surely," Susan said. "Good-night."
"Over the reservoir!" he said, and she hung up her receiver.
She did not sleep that night. Excitement, anger, shame kept her
wakeful and tossing, hour after hour. Susan's head ached, her face
burned, her thoughts were in a mad whirl. What to do--what to do--
what to do----! How to get out of this tangle; where to go to begin
again, away from these people who knew her and loved her, and would
drive her mad with their sympathy and curiosity!
The clock struck three--four--five. At five o'clock Susan, suddenly
realizing her own loneliness and loss, burst into bitter crying and
after that she slept.
The next day, from the office, she wrote to Peter Coleman:
MY DEAR PETER:
I am beginning to think that our little talk in the office a
week ago was a mistake, and that you think so. I don't say
anything of my own feelings; you know them. I want to ask
you honestly to tell me of yours. Things cannot go on this
way. Affectionately,
SUSAN.
This was on Monday. On Tuesday the papers recorded everywhere Mr.
Peter Coleman's remarkable success in Mrs. Newton Gerald's private
theatricals. On Wednesday Susan found a letter from him on her desk,
in the early afternoon, scribbled on the handsome stationery of his
club.
MY DEAR SUSAN:
I shall always think that you are the bulliest girl I ever knew,
and if you throw me down on that arrangement for our old
age I shall certainly slap you on the wrist. But I know you
will think better of it before you are forty-one! What you
mean by "things" I don't know. I hope you're not calling ME
a thing!
Forrest is pulling my arm off. See you soon.
Yours as ever,
PETER.
The reading of it gave Susan a sensation of physical illness. She
felt chilled and weak. How false and selfish and shallow it seemed;
had Peter always been that? And what was she to do now, to-morrow
and the next day and the next? What was she to do this moment,
indeed? She felt as if thundering agonies had trampled the very life
out of her heart; yet somehow she must look up, somehow face the
office, and the curious eyes of the girls.
"Love-letter, Sue?" said Thorny, sauntering up with a bill in her
hand. "Valentine's Day, you know!"
"No, darling; a bill," answered Susan, shutting it in a drawer.
She snapped up her light, opened her ledger, and dipped a pen in the
ink.
PART TWO
Wealth
CHAPTER I
The days that followed were so many separate agonies, composed of an
infinite number of lesser agonies, for Susan. Her only consolation,
which weakened or strengthened with her moods, was that, inasmuch as
this state of affairs was unbearable she would not be expected to
bear it. Something must happen. Or, if nothing happened, she would
simply disappear,--go on the stage, accept a position as a traveling
governess or companion, run away to one of the big eastern cities
where, under an assumed name, she might begin life all over again.
Hour after hour shame and hurt had their way with her. Susan had to
face the office, to hide her heart from Thorny and the other girls,
to be reminded by the empty desk in Mr. Brauer's office, and by
every glimpse she had of old Mr. Baxter, of the happy dreams she had
once dreamed here in this same place.
But it was harder far at home. Mrs. Lancaster alternated between
tender moods, when she discussed the whole matter mournfully from
beginning to end, and moods of violent rebellion, when everyone but
Susan was blamed for the bitter disappointment of all their hopes.
Mary Lou compared Peter to Ferd Eastman, to Peter's disadvantage.
Virginia recommended quiet, patient endurance of whatever might be
the will of Providence. Susan hardly knew which attitude humiliated
and distressed her most. All her thoughts led her into bitterness
now, and she could be distracted only for a brief moment or two from
the memories that pressed so close about her heart. Ah, if she only
had a little money, enough to make possible her running away, or a
profession into which she could plunge, and in which she could
distinguish herself, or a great talent, or a father who would stand
by her and take care of her---
And the bright head would go down on her hands, and the tears have
their way.
"Headache?" Thorny would ask, full of sympathy.
"Oh, splitting!" And Susan would openly dry her eyes, and manage to
smile.
Sometimes, in a softer mood, her busy brain straightened the whole
matter out. Peter, returning from Japan, would rush to her with a
full explanation. Of course he cared for her--he had never thought
of anything else--of course he considered that they were engaged!
And Susan, after keeping him in suspense for a period that even
Auntie thought too long, would find herself talking to him,
scolding, softening, finally laughing, and at last--and for the
first time!--in his arms.
Only a lovers' quarrel; one heard of them continually. Something to
laugh about and to forget!
She took up the old feminine occupation of watching the post, weak
with sudden hope when Mary Lou called up to her, "Letter for you on
the mantel, Sue!" and sick with disappointment over and over again.
Peter did not write.
Outwardly the girl went her usual round, perhaps a little thinner
and with less laughter, but not noticeably changed. She basted cuffs
into her office suit, and cleaned it with benzine, caught up her
lunch and umbrella and ran for her car. She lunched and gossiped
with Thorny and the others, walked uptown at noon to pay a gas-bill,
took Virginia to the Park on Sundays to hear the music, or visited
the Carrolls in Sausalito.
But inwardly her thoughts were like whirling web. And in its very
center was Peter Coleman. Everything that Susan did began and ended
with the thought of him. She never entered the office without the
hope that a fat envelope, covered with his dashing scrawl, lay on
the desk. She never thought herself looking well without wishing
that she might meet Peter that day, or looking ill that she did not
fear it. She answered the telephone with a thrilling heart; it might
be he! And she browsed over the social columns of the Sunday papers,
longing and fearing to find his name. All day long and far into the
night, her brain was busy with a reconciliation,--excuses,
explanations, forgiveness. "Perhaps to-day," she said in the foggy
mornings. "To-morrow," said her undaunted heart at night.
The hope was all that sustained her, and how bitterly it failed her
at times only Susan knew. Before the world she kept a brave face,
evading discussion of Peter when she could, quietly enduring it when
Mrs. Lancaster's wrath boiled over. But as the weeks went by, and
the full wretchedness of the situation impressed itself upon her
with quiet force, she sank under an overwhelming sense of wrong and
loss. Nothing amazing was going to happen. She--who had seemed so
free, so independent!--was really as fettered and as helpless as
Virginia and Mary Lou. Susan felt sometimes as if she should go mad
with suppressed feeling. She grew thin, dyspeptic, irritable,
working hard, and finding her only relief in work, and reading in
bed in the evening.
The days slowly pushed her further and further from those happy
times when she and Peter had been such good friends, had gone about
so joyfully together. It was a shock to Susan to realize that she
had not seen him nor heard from him for a month--for two months--for
three. Emily Saunders was in the hospital for some serious
operation, would be there for weeks; Ella was abroad. Susan felt as
if her little glimpse of their world and Peter's had been a curious
dream.
Billy played a brother's part toward her now, always ready to take
her about with him when he was free, and quite the only person who
could spur her to anything like her old vigorous interest in life.
They went very often to the Carrolls, and there, in the shabby old
sitting-room, Susan felt happier than she did anywhere else.
Everybody loved her, loved to have her there, and although they
knew, and she knew that they knew, that something had gone very
wrong with her, nobody asked questions, and Susan felt herself safe
and sheltered. There was a shout of joy when she came in with Phil
and Jo from the ferryboat. "Mother! here's Sue!" Betsey would follow
the older girls upstairs to chatter while they washed their hands
and brushed their hair, and, going down again, Susan would get the
motherly kiss that followed Jo's. Later, when the lamp was lit,
while Betsey and Jim wrangled amicably over their game, and Philip
and Jo toiled with piano and violin, Susan sat next to Mrs. Carroll,
and while they sewed, or between snatches of reading, they had long,
and to the girl at least, memorable talks.
It was all sweet and wholesome and happy. Susan used to wonder just
what made this house different from all other houses, and why she
liked to come here so much, to eat the simplest of meals, to wash
dishes and brush floors, to rise in the early morning and cross the
bay before the time she usually came downstairs at home. Of course,
they loved her, they laughed at her jokes, they wanted this thing
repeated and that repeated, they never said good-by to her without
begging her to come again and thought no special occasion complete
without her. That affected her, perhaps. Or perhaps the Carrolls
were a little nicer than most people; when Susan reached this point
in her thoughts she never failed to regret the loss of their money
and position. If they had done this in spite of poverty and
obscurity, what MIGHTN'T they have done with half a chance!
In one of the lamplight talks Peter was mentioned, in connection
with the patent window-washer, and Susan learned for the first time
that he really had been instrumental in selling the patent for Mrs.
Carroll for the astonishing sum of five hundred dollars!
"I BEGGED him to tell me if that wasn't partly from the washer and
partly from Peter Coleman," smiled Mrs. Carroll, "and he gave me his
word of honor that he had really sold it for that! So--there went my
doctor's bill, and a comfortable margin in the bank!"
She admitted Susan into the secret of all her little economies; the
roast that, cleverly alternated with one or two small meats, was
served from Sunday until Saturday night, and no one any the worse!
Susan began to watch the game that Mrs. Carroll made of her cooking;
filling soups for the night that the meat was short, no sweet when
the garden supplied a salad, or when Susan herself brought over a
box of candy. She grew to love the labor that lay behind the touch
of the thin, darned linen, the windows that shone with soapsuds, the
crisp snowy ruffles of curtains and beds. She and Betts liked to
keep the house vases filled with what they could find in the storm-
battered garden, lifted the flattened chrysanthemums with reverent
fingers, hunted out the wet violets. Susan abandoned her old idea of
the enviable life of a lonely orphan, and began to long for a
sister, a tumble-headed brother, for a mother above all. She loved
to be included by the young Carrolls when they protested, "Just
ourselves, Mother, nobody but the family!" and if Phil or Jimmy came
to her when a coat-button was loose or a sleeve-lining needed a
stitch, she was quite pathetically touched. She loved the constant
happy noise and confusion in the house, Phil and Billy Oliver
tussling in the stair-closet among the overshoes, Betts trilling
over her bed-making, Mrs. Carroll and Jim replanting primroses with
great calling and conference, and she and Josephine talking, as they
swept the porches, as if they had never had a chance to talk before.
Sometimes, walking at Anna's side to the beach on Sunday, a certain
peace and content crept into Susan's heart, and the deep ache lifted
like a curtain, and seemed to show a saner, wider, sweeter region
beyond. Sometimes, tramping the wet hills, her whole being thrilled
to some new note, Susan could think serenely of the future, could
even be glad of all the past. It was as if Life, into whose cold,
stern face she had been staring wistfully, had softened to the
glimmer of a smile, had laid a hand, so lately used to strike, upon
her shoulder in token of good-fellowship.
With the good salt air in their faces, and the gray March sky
pressing close above the silent circle of the hills about them, she
and Anna walked many a bracing, tiring mile. Now and then they
turned and smiled at each other, both young faces brightening.
"Noisy, aren't we, Sue?"
"Well, the others are making noise enough!"
Poverty stopped them at every turn, these Carrolls. Susan saw it
perhaps more clearly than they did. A hundred delightful and
hospitable plans came into Mrs. Carroll's mind, only to be dismissed
because of the expense involved. She would have liked to entertain,
to keep her pretty daughters becomingly and richly dressed; she
confided to Susan rather wistfully, that she was sorry not to be
able to end the evenings with little chafing-dish suppers; "that
sort of thing makes home so attractive to growing boys." Susan knew
what Anna's own personal grievance was. "These are the best years of
my life," Anna said, bitterly, one night, "and every cent of
spending money I have is the fifty dollars a year the hospital pays.
And even out of that they take breakage, in the laboratory or the
wards!" Josephine made no secret of her detestation of their
necessary economies.
"Did you know I was asked to the Juniors this year?" she said to
Susan one night.
"The Juniors! You weren't!" Susan echoed incredulously. For the
"Junior Cotillion" was quite the most exclusive and desirable of the
city's winter dances for the younger set.
"Oh, yes, I was. Mrs. Wallace probably did it," Josephine assured
her, sighing. "They asked Anna last year," she said bitterly, "and I
suppose next year they'll ask Betts, and then perhaps they'll stop."
"Oh, but Jo-why couldn't you go! When so many girls are just CRAZY
to be asked!"
"Money," Josephine answered briefly.
"But not much!" Susan lamented. The "Juniors" were not to be
estimated in mere money.
"Twenty-five for the ticket, and ten for the chaperone, and a gown,
of course, and slippers and a wrap--Mother felt badly about it,"
Josephine said composedly. And suddenly she burst into tears, and
threw herself down on the bed. "Don't let Mother hear, and don't
think I'm an idiot!" she sobbed, as Susan came to kneel beside her
and comfort her, "but--but I hate so to drudge away day after day,
when I know I could be having GORGEOUS times, and making friends---!"
Betts' troubles were more simple in that they were indefinite. Betts
wanted to do everything, regardless of cost, suitability or season,
and was quite as cross over the fact that they could not go camping
in the Humboldt woods in midwinter, as she was at having to give up
her ideas of a new hat or a theater trip. And the boys never
complained specifically of poverty. Philip, won by deep plotting
that he could not see to settle down quietly at home after dinner,
was the gayest and best of company, and Jim's only allusions to a
golden future were made when he rubbed his affectionate little rough
head against his mother, pony-fashion, and promised her every luxury
in the world as soon as he "got started."
When Peter Coleman returned from the Orient, early in April, all the
newspapers chronicled the fact that a large number of intimate
friends met him at the dock. He was instantly swept into the social
currents again; dinners everywhere were given for Mr. Coleman, box-
parties and house-parties followed one another, the club claimed
him, and the approaching opening of the season found him giving
special attention to his yacht. Small wonder that Hunter, Baxter &
Hunter's caught only occasional glimpses of him. Susan, somberly
pursuing his name from paper to paper, felt that she was beginning
to dislike him. She managed never to catch his eye, when he was in
Mr. Brauer's office, and took great pains not to meet him.
However, in the lingering sweet twilight of a certain soft spring
evening, when she had left the office, and was beginning the long
walk home, she heard sudden steps behind her, and turned to see
Peter.
"Aren't you the little seven-leagued booter! Wait a minute, Susan!
C'est moi! How are you?"
"How do you do, Peter?" Susan said pleasantly and evenly. She put
her hand in the big gloved hand, and raised her eyes to the smiling
eyes.
"What car are you making for?" he asked, falling in step.
"I'm walking," Susan said. "Too nice to ride this evening."
"You're right," he said, laughing. "I wish I hadn't a date, I'd like
nothing better than to walk it, too! However, I can go a block or
two."
He walked with her to Montgomery Street, and they talked of Japan
and the Carrolls and of Emily Saunders. Then Peter said he must
catch a California Street car, and they shook hands again and
parted.
It all seemed rather flat. Susan felt as if the little episode did
not belong in the stormy history of their friendship at all, or as
if she were long dead and were watching her earthly self from a
distance with wise and weary eyes. What should she be feeling now?
What would a stronger woman have done? Given him the cut direct,
perhaps, or forced the situation to a point when something dramatic-
-satisfying--must follow.
"I am weak," said Susan ashamedly to herself; "I was afraid he would
think I cared,--would see that I cared!" And she walked on busy with
self-contemptuous and humiliated thoughts. She had made it easy for
him to take advantage of her. She had assumed for his convenience
that she had suffered no more than he through their parting, and
that all was again serene and pleasant between them. After to-
night's casual, friendly conversation, no radical attitude would be
possible on her part; he could congratulate himself that he still
retained Susan's friendship, and could be careful--she knew he would
be careful!--never to go too far again.
Susan's estimate of Peter Coleman was no longer a particularly
idealized one. But she had long ago come to the conclusion that his
faults were the faults of his type and his class, excusable and
understandable now, and to be easily conquered when a great emotion
should sweep him once and for all away from the thought of himself.
As he was absorbed in the thought of his own comfort, so, she knew,
he could become absorbed in the thought of what was due his wife,
the wider viewpoint would quickly become second nature with him;
young Mrs. Peter Coleman would be among the most indulged and
carefully considered of women. He would be as anxious that the
relationship between his wife and himself should be harmonious and
happy, as he was now to feel when he met her that he had no reason
to avoid or to dread meeting Miss Susan Brown.
If Susan would have preferred a little different attitude on his
part, she could find no fault with this one. She had for so many
months thought of Peter as the personification of all that she
desired in life that she could not readily dismiss him as unworthy.
Was he not still sweet and big and clean, rich and handsome and
popular, socially prominent and suitable in age and faith and
nationality?
Susan had often heard her aunt and her aunt's friends remark that
life was more dramatic than any book, and that their own lives on
the stage would eclipse in sensational quality any play ever
presented. But, for herself, life seemed deplorably, maddeningly
undramatic. In any book, in any play, the situation between her and
Peter must have been heightened to a definite crisis long before
this. The mildest of little ingenues, as she came across a dimly
lighted stage, in demure white and silver, could have handled this
situation far more skillfully than Susan did; the most youthful of
heroines would have met Peter to some purpose,--while surrounded by
other admirers at a dance, or while galloping across a moor on her
spirited pony.
What would either of these ladies have done, she wondered, at
meeting the offender when he appeared particularly well-groomed,
prosperous and happy, while she herself was tired from a long office
day, conscious of shabby gloves, of a shapeless winter hat? What
could she do, except appear friendly and responsive? Susan consoled
herself with the thought that her only alternative, an icy repulse
of his friendly advances, would have either convinced him that she
was too entirely common and childish to be worth another thought, or
would have amused him hugely. She could fancy him telling his
friends of his experience of the cut direct from a little girl in
Front Office,--no names named--and hear him saying that "he loved
it--he was crazy about it!"
"You believe in the law of compensation, don't you, Aunt Jo?" asked
Susan, on a wonderful April afternoon, when she had gone straight
from the office to Sausalito. The two women were in the Carroll
kitchen, Susan sitting at one end of the table, her thoughtful face
propped in her hands, Mrs. Carroll busy making ginger cakes,--
cutting out the flat little circles with an inverted wine-glass,
transferring them to the pans with the tip of her flat knife,
rolling the smooth dough, and spilling the hot cakes, as they came
back from the oven, into a deep tin strainer to cool. Susan liked to
watch her doing this, liked the pretty precision of every movement,
the brisk yet unhurried repetition of events, her strong clever
hands, the absorbed expression of her face, her fine, broad figure
hidden by a stiffly-starched gown of faded blue cotton and a stiff
white apron.
Beyond the open window an exquisite day dropped to its close. It was
the time of fruit-blossoms and feathery acacia, languid, perfumed
breezes, lengthening twilights, opening roses and swaying plumes of
lilac. Sausalito was like a little park, every garden ran over with
sweetness and color, every walk was fringed with flowers, and hedged
with the new green of young trees and blossoming hedges. Susan felt
a delicious relaxation run through her blood; winter seemed really
routed; to-day for the first time one could confidently prophesy
that there would be summer presently, thin gowns and ocean bathing
and splendid moons.
"Yes, I believe in the law of compensation, to a great extent," the
older woman answered thoughtfully, "or perhaps I should call it the
law of solution. I truly believe that to every one of us on this
earth is given the materials for a useful and a happy life; some
people use them and some don't. But the chance is given alike."
"Useful, yes," Susan conceded, "but usefulness isn't happiness."
"Isn't it? I really think it is."
"Oh, Aunt Jo," the girl burst out impatiently, "I don't mean for
saints! I dare say there ARE some girls who wouldn't mind being poor
and shabby and lonesome and living in a boarding-house, and who
would be glad they weren't hump-backed, or blind, or Siberian
prisoners! But you CAN'T say you think that a girl in my position
has had a fair start with a girl who is just as young, and rich and
pretty and clever, and has a father and mother and everything else
in the world! And if you do say so," pursued Susan, with feeling,
"you certainly can't MEAN so---"
"But wait a minute, Sue! What girl, for instance?"
"Oh, thousands of girls!" Susan said, vaguely. "Emily Saunders,
Alice Chauncey---"
"Emily Saunders! SUSAN! In the hospital for an operation every other
month or two!" Mrs. Carroll reminded her.
"Well, but---" Susan said eagerly. "She isn't really ill. She just
likes the excitement and having them fuss over her. She loves the
hospital."
"Still, I wouldn't envy anyone whose home life wasn't preferable to
the hospital, Sue."
"Well, Emily is queer, Aunt Jo. But in her place I wouldn't
necessarily be queer."
"At the same time, considering her brother Kenneth's rather
checkered career, and the fact that her big sister neglects and
ignores her, and that her health is really very delicate, I don't
consider Emily a happy choice for your argument, Sue."
"Well, there's Peggy Brock. She's a perfect beauty---"
"She's a Wellington, Sue. You know that stock. How many of them are
already in institutions?"
"Oh, but Aunt Jo!" Susan said impatiently, "there are dozens of
girls in society whose health is good, and whose family ISN'T
insane,--I don't know why I chose those two! There are the
Chickerings---"
"Whose father took his own life, Sue."
"Well, they couldn't help THAT. They're lovely girls. It was some
money trouble, it wasn't insanity or drink."
"But think a moment, Sue. Wouldn't it haunt you for a long, long
time, if you felt that your own father, coming home to that gorgeous
house night after night, had been slowly driven to the taking of his
own life?"
Susan looked thoughtful.
"I never thought of that," she admitted. Presently she added
brightly, "There are the Ward girls, Aunt Jo, and Isabel Wallace.
You couldn't find three prettier or richer or nicer girls! Say what
you will," Susan returned undauntedly to her first argument, "life
IS easier for those girls than for the rest of us!"
"Well, I want to call your attention to those three," Mrs. Carroll
said, after a moment. "Both Mr. Wallace and Mr. Ward made their own
money, started in with nothing and built up their own fortunes. Phil
may do that, or Billy may do that--we can't tell. Mrs. Ward and Mrs.
Wallace are both nice, simple women, not spoiled yet by money, not
inflated on the subject of family and position, bringing up their
families as they were brought up. I don't know Mrs. Ward personally,
but Mrs. Wallace came from my own town, and she likes to remember
the time when her husband was only a mining engineer, and she did
her own work. You may not see it, Sue, but there's a great
difference there. Such people are happy and useful, and they hand
happiness on. Peter Coleman's another, he's so exceptionally nice
because he's only one generation removed from working people. If
Isabel Wallace,--and she's very young; life may be unhappy enough
for her yet, poor child!--marries a man like her father, well and
good. But if she marries a man like--well, say Kenneth Saunders or
young Gerald, she simply enters into the ranks of the idle and
useless and unhappy, that's all."
"She's beautiful, and she's smart too," Susan pursued,
disconsolately, "Emily and I lunched there one day and she was
simply sweet to the maids, and to her mother. And German! I wish you
could hear her. She may not be of any very remarkable family but she
certainly is an exceptional girl!"
"Exceptional, just because she ISN'T descended from some dead, old,
useless stock," amended Mrs. Carroll. "There is red blood in her
veins, ambition and effort and self-denial, all handed down to her.
But marry that pampered little girl to some young millionaire, Sue,
and what will her children inherit? And what will theirs, in time?--
Peel these, will you?" went on Mrs. Carroll, interrupting her work
to put a bowl of apples in Susan's hands. "No," she went on
presently, "I married a millionaire, Sue. I was one of the 'lucky'
ones!"
"I never knew it was as much as that!" Susan said impressed.
"Yes," Mrs. Carroll laughed wholesomely at some memory. "Yes; I
began my married life in the very handsomest home in our little town
with the prettiest presents and the most elaborate wardrobe--the
papers were full of Miss Josie van Trent's extravagances. I had four
house servants, and when Anna came everybody in town knew that her
little layette had come all the way from Paris!"
"But,--good heavens, what happened?"
"Nothing, for awhile. Mr. Carroll, who was very young, had inherited
a half-interest in what was then the biggest shoe-factory in that
part of the world. My father was his partner. Philip--dear me! it
seems like a lifetime ago!--came to visit us, and I came home from
an Eastern finishing school. Sue, those were silly, happy, heavenly
days! Well! we were married, as I said. Little Phil came, Anna came.
Still we went on spending money. Phil and I took the children to
Paris,--Italy. Then my father died, and things began to go badly at
the works. Phil discharged his foreman, borrowed money to tide over
a bad winter, and said that he would be his own superintendent. Of
course he knew nothing about it. We borrowed more money. Jo was the
baby then, and I remember one ugly episode was that the workmen, who
wanted more money, accused Phil of getting his children's clothes
abroad because his wife didn't think American things were good
enough for them."
"YOU!" Susan said, incredulously.
"It doesn't sound like me now, does it? Well; Phil put another
foreman in, and he was a bad man--in league with some rival factory,
in fact. Money was lost that way, contracts broken---"
"BEAST!" said Susan.
"Wicked enough," the other woman conceded, "but not at all an
uncommon thing, Sue, where people don't know their own business. So
we borrowed more money, borrowed enough for a last, desperate fight,
and lost it. The day that Jim was three years old, we signed the
business away to the other people, and Phil took a position under
them, in his own factory."
"Oo-oo!" Susan winced.
"Yes, it was hard. I did what I could for my poor old boy, but it
was very hard. We lived very quietly; I had begun to come to my
senses then; we had but one maid. But, even then, Sue, Philip wasn't
capable of holding a job of that sort. How could he manage what he
didn't understand? Poor Phil---" Mrs. Carroll's bright eyes brimmed
with tears, and her mouth quivered. "However, we had some happy
times together with the babies," she said cheerfully, "and when he
went away from us, four years later, with his better salary we were
just beginning to see our way clear. So that left me, with my five,
Sue, without a cent in the world. An old cousin of my father owned
this house, and she wrote that she would give us all a home, and out
we came,--Aunt Betty's little income was barely enough for her, so I
sold books and taught music and French, and finally taught in a
little school, and put up preserves for people, and packed their
houses up for the winter---"
"How did you DO it!"
"Sue, I don't know! Anna stood by me,--my darling!" The last two
words came in a passionate undertone. "But of course there were bad
times. Sometimes we lived on porridges and milk for days, and many a
night Anna and Phil and I have gone out, after dark, to hunt for
dead branches in the woods for my kitchen stove!" And Mrs. Carroll,
unexpectedly stirred by the pitiful memory, broke suddenly into
tears, the more terrible to Susan because she had never seen her
falter before.
It was only for a moment. Then Mrs. Carroll dried her eyes and said
cheerfully:
"Well, those times only make these seem brighter! Anna is well
started now, we've paid off the last of the mortgage, Phil is more
of a comfort than he's ever been--no mother could ask a better boy!-
-and Jo is beginning to take a real interest in her work. So
everything is coming out better than even my prayers."
"Still," smiled Susan, "lots of people have things comfortable,
WITHOUT such a terrible struggle!"
"And lots of people haven't five fine children, Sue, and a home in a
big garden. And lots of mothers don't have the joy and the comfort
and the intimacy with their children in a year that I have every
day. No, I'm only too happy now, Sue. I don't ask anything better
than this. And if, in time, they go to homes of their own, and we
have some more babies in the family--it's all LIVING, Sue, it's
being a part of the world!"
Mrs. Carroll carried away her cakes to the big stone jar in the
pantry. Susan, pensively nibbling a peeled slice of apple, had a
question ready for her when she came back.
"But suppose you're one of those persons who get into a groove, and
simply can't live? I want to work, and do heroic things, and grow to
BE something, and how can I? Unless---" her color rose, but her
glance did not fall, "unless somebody marries me, of course."
"Choose what you want to do, Sue, and do it. That's all."
"Oh, that SOUNDS simple! But I don't want to do any of the things
you mean. I want to work into an interesting life, somehow. I'll--
I'll never marry," said Susan.
"You won't? Well; of course that makes it easier, because you can go
into your work with heart and soul. But perhaps you'll change your
mind, Sue. I hope you will, just as I hope all the girls will marry.
I'm not sure," said Mrs. Carroll, suddenly smiling, "but what the
very quickest way for a woman to marry off her girls is to put them
into business. In the first place, a man who wants them has to be in
earnest, and in the second, they meet the very men whose interests
are the same as theirs. So don't be too sure you won't. However, I'm
not laughing at you, Sue. I think you ought to seriously select some
work for yourself, unless of course you are quite satisfied where
you are."
"I'm not," said Susan. "I'll never get more than forty where I am.
And more than that, Thorny heard that Front Office is going to be
closed up any day."
"But you could get another position, dear."
"Well, I don't know. You see, it's a special sort of bookkeeping. It
wouldn't help any of us much elsewhere."
"True. And what would you like best to do, Sue?"
"Oh, I don't know. Sometimes I think the stage. Or something with
lots of traveling in it." Susan laughed, a little ashamed of her
vagueness.
"Why not take a magazine agency, then? There's a lot of money---"
"Oh, no!" Susan shuddered. "You're joking!"
"Indeed I'm not. You're just the sort of person who would make a
fine living selling things. The stage--I don't know. But if you
really mean it, I don't see why you shouldn't get a little start
somewhere."
"Aunt Jo, they say that Broadway in New York is simply LINED with
girls trying---"
"New York! Well, very likely. But you try here. Go to the manager of
the Alcazar, recite for him---"
"He wouldn't let me," Susan asserted, "and besides, I don't really
know anything."
"Well, learn something. Ask him, when next some manager wants to
make up a little road company---"
"A road company! Two nights in Stockton, two nights in Marysville--
horrors!" said Susan.
"But that wouldn't be for long, Sue. Perhaps two years. Then five or
six years in stock somewhere---"
"Aunt Jo, I'd be past thirty!" Susan laughed and colored charmingly.
"I--honestly, I couldn't give up my whole life for ten years on the
chance of making a hit," she confessed.
"Well, but what then, Sue?"
"Now, I'll tell you what I've often wanted to do," Susan said, after
a thoughtful interval.
"Ah, now we're coming to it!" Mrs. Carroll said, with satisfaction.
They had left the kitchen now, and were sitting on the top step of
the side porch, reveling in the lovely panorama of hillside and
waterfront, and the smooth and shining stretch of bay below them.
"I've often thought I'd like to be the matron of some very smart
school for girls," said Susan, "and live either in or near some big
Eastern city, and take the girls to concerts and lectures and
walking in the parks, and have a lovely room full of books and
pictures, where they would come and tell me things, and go to Europe
now and then for a vacation!"
"That would be a lovely life, Sue. Why not work for that?"
"Why, I don't know how. I don't know of any such school."
"Well, now let us suppose the head of such a school wants a matron,"
Mrs. Carroll said, "she naturally looks for a lady and a linguist,
and a person of experience---"
"There you are! I've had no experience!" Susan said, instantly
depressed. "I could rub up on French and German, and read up the
treatment for toothache and burns--but experience!"
"But see how things work together, Sue!" Mrs. Carroll exclaimed,
with a suddenly bright face.
"Here's Miss Berrat, who has the little school over here, simply
CRAZY to find someone to help her out. She has eight--or nine, I
forget--day scholars, and four or five boarders. And such a dear
little cottage! Miss Pitcher is leaving her, to go to Miss North's
school in Berkeley, and she wants someone at once!"
"But, Aunt Jo, what does she pay?"
"Let me see---" Mrs. Carroll wrinkled a thoughtful brow. "Not much,
I know. You live at the school, of course. Five or ten dollars a
month, I think."
"But I COULDN'T live on that!" Susan exclaimed.
"You'd be near us, Sue, for one thing. And you'd have a nice bright
sunny room. And Miss Berrat would help you with your French and
German. It would be a good beginning."
"But I simply COULDN'T--" Susan stopped short. "Would you advise it,
Aunt Jo?" she asked simply.
Mrs. Carroll studied the bright face soberly for a moment.
"Yes, I'd advise it, Sue," she said then gravely. "I don't think
that the atmosphere where you are is the best in the world for you
just now. It would be a fine change. It would be good for those
worries of yours."
"Then I'll do it!" Susan said suddenly, the unexplained tears
springing to her eyes.
"I think I would. I'll go and see Miss Berrat next week," Mrs.
Carroll said. "There's the boat making the slip, Sue," she added,
"let's get the table set out here on the porch while they're
climbing the hill!"
Up the hill came Philip and Josephine, just home from the city,
escorted by Betsey and Jim who had met them at the boat. Susan
received a strangling welcome from Betts, and Josephine, who looked
a little pale and tired after this first enervating, warm spring
day, really brightened perceptibly when she went upstairs with Susan
to slip into a dress that was comfortably low-necked and short-
sleeved.
Presently they all gathered on the porch for dinner, with the sweet
twilighted garden just below them and anchor lights beginning to
prick, one by one, through the soft dusky gloom of the bay.
"Well, 'mid pleasures and palaces---" Philip smiled at his mother.
"Charades to-night!" shrilled Betts, from the kitchen where she was
drying lettuce.
"Oh, but a walk first!" Susan protested. For their aimless strolls
through the dark, flower-scented lanes were a delight to her.
"And Billy's coming over to-morrow to walk to Gioli's," Josephine
added contentedly.
That evening and the next day Susan always remembered as terminating
a certain phase of her life, although for perhaps a week the days
went on just as usual. But one morning she found confusion reigning,
when she arrived at Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's. Front Office was to
be immediately abolished, its work was over, its staff already
dispersing.
Workmen, when she arrived, were moving out cases and chairs, and Mr.
Brauer, eagerly falling upon her, begged her to clean out her desk,
and to help him assort the papers in some of the other desks and
cabinets. Susan, filled with pleasant excitement, pinned on her
paper cuffs, and put her heart and soul into the work. No bills this
morning! The office-boy did not even bring them up.
"Now, here's a soap order that must have been specially priced,"
said Susan, at her own desk, "I couldn't make anything of it
yesterday---"
"Let it go--let it go!" Mr. Brauer said. "It iss all ofer!"
As the other girls came in they were pressed into service, papers
and papers and papers, the drift of years, were tossed out of
drawers and cubby-holes. Much excited laughter and chatter went on.
Probably not one girl among them felt anything but pleasure and
relief at the unexpected holiday, and a sense of utter confidence in
the future.
Mr. Philip, fussily entering the disordered room at ten o'clock,
announced his regret at the suddenness of the change; the young
ladies would be paid their salaries for the uncompleted month--a
murmur of satisfaction arose--and, in short, the firm hoped that
their association had been as pleasant to them as it had been to his
partners and himself.
"They had a directors' meeting on Saturday," Thorny said, later,
"and if you ask me my frank opinion, I think Henry Brauer is at the
bottom of all this. What do you know about his having been at that
meeting on Saturday, and his going to have the office right next to
J. G.'s--isn't that the extension of the limit? He's as good as in
the firm now."
"I've always said that he knew something that made it very well
worth while for this firm to keep his mouth shut," said Miss
Cashell, darkly.
"I'll bet you there's something in that," Miss Cottle agreed.
"H. B. & H. is losing money hand over fist," Thorny stated,
gloomily, with that intimate knowledge of an employer's affairs
always displayed by an obscure clerk.
"Brauer asked me if I would like to go into the big office, but I
don't believe I could do the work," Susan said.
"Yes; I'm going into the main office, too," Thorny stated. "Don't
you be afraid, Susan. It's as easy as pie."
"Mr. Brauer said I could try it," Miss Sherman shyly contributed.
But no other girl had been thus complimented. Miss Kelly and Miss
Garvey, both engaged to be married now, Miss Kelly to Miss Garvey's
brother, Miss Garvey to Miss Kelly's cousin, were rather
congratulating themselves upon the turn of events; the other girls
speculated as to the wisest step to take next, some talking vaguely
of post-office or hospital work; Miss Cashell, as Miss Thornton
later said to Susan, hopelessly proving herself no lady by
announcing that she could get better money as a coat model, and
meant to get into that line of work if she could.
"Are we going to have lunch to-day?" somebody asked. Miss Thornton
thoughtfully drew a piece of paper toward her, and wet her pencil in
her mouth.
"Best thing we can do, I guess," she said.
"Let's put ten cents each in," Susan suggested, "and make it a real
party."
Thorny accordingly expanded her list to include sausages and a pie,
cheese and rolls, besides the usual tea and stewed tomatoes. The
girls ate the little meal with their hats and wraps on, a sense of
change filled the air, and they were all a little pensive, even with
an unexpected half-holiday before them.
Then came good-bys. The girls separated with many affectionate
promises. All but the selected three were not to return. Susan and
Miss Sherman and Thorny would come back to find their desks waiting
for them in the main office next day.
Susan walked thoughtfully uptown, and when she got home, wrote a
formal application for the position open in her school to little
Miss Berrat in Sausalito.
It was a delightful, sunshiny afternoon. Mary Lou, Mrs. Lancaster
and Virginia were making a mournful trip to the great institution
for the blind in Berkeley, where Virginia's physician wanted to
place her for special watching and treatment. Susan found two or
three empty hours on her hands, and started out for a round of
calls.
She called on her aunt's old friends, the Langs, and upon the bony,
cold Throckmorton sisters, rich, nervous, maiden ladies, shivering
themselves slowly to death in their barn of a house, and finally,
and unexpectedly, upon Mrs. Baxter.
Susan had planned a call on Georgie, to finish the afternoon, for
her cousin, slowly dragging her way up the last of the long road
that ends in motherhood, was really in need of cheering society.
But the Throckmorton house chanced to be directly opposite the old
Baxter mansion, and Susan, seeing Peter's home, suddenly decided to
spend a few moments with the old lady.
After all, why should she not call? She had had no open break with
Peter, and on every occasion his aunt had begged her to take pity on
an old woman's loneliness. Susan was always longing, in her secret
heart, for that accident that should reopen the old friendship;
knowing Peter, she knew that the merest chance would suddenly bring
him to her side again; his whole life was spent in following the
inclination of the moment. And today, in her pretty new hat and
spring suit, she was looking her best.
Peter would not be at home, of course. But his aunt would tell him
that that pretty, happy Miss Brown was here, and that she was going
to leave Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's for something not specified. And
then Peter, realizing that Susan had entirely risen above any
foolish old memory---
Susan crossed the street and rang the bell. When the butler told
her, with an impassive face, that he would find out if Mrs. Baxter
were in, Susan hoped, in a panic, that she was not. The big, gloomy,
handsome hall rather awed her. She watched Burns's retreating back
fearfully, hoping that Mrs. Baxter really was out, or that Burns
would be instructed to say so.
But he came back, expressionless, placid, noiseless of step, to say
in a hushed, confidential tone that Mrs. Baxter would be down in a
moment. He lighted the reception room brilliantly for Susan, and
retired decorously. Susan sat nervously on the edge of a chair.
Suddenly her call seemed a very bold and intrusive thing to do, even
an indelicate thing, everything considered. Suppose Peter should
come in; what could he think but that she was clinging to the
association with which he had so clearly indicated that he was done?
What if she got up and went silently, swiftly out? Burns was not in
sight, the great hall was empty. She had really nothing to say to
Mrs. Baxter, and she could assume that she had misunderstood his
message if the butler followed her---
Mrs. Baxter, a little figure in rustling silk, came quickly down the
stairway. Susan met her in the doorway of the reception room, with a
smile.
"How do you do, how do you do?" Mrs. Baxter said nervously. She did
not sit down, but stood close to Susan, peering up at her
shortsightedly, and crumpling the card she held in her hand. "It's
about the office, isn't it?" she said quickly. "Yes, I see. Mr.
Baxter told me that it was to be closed. I'm sorry, but I never
interfere in those things,--never. I really don't know ANYTHING
about it! I'm sorry. But it would hardly be my place to interfere in
business, when I don't know anything about it, would it? Mr. Baxter
always prides himself on the fact that I don't interfere. So I don't
really see what I could do."
A wave of some supreme emotion, not all anger, nor all contempt, nor
all shame, but a composite of the three, rose in Susan's heart. She
had not come to ask a favor of this more fortunate woman, but--the
thought flashed through her mind--suppose she had? She looked down
at the little silk-dressed figure, the blinking eyes, the veiny
little hand, and the small mouth, that, after sixty years, was
composed of nothing but conservative and close-shut lines. Pity won
the day over her hurt girlish feeling and the pride that claimed
vindication, and Susan smiled kindly.
"Oh, I didn't come about Front Office, Mrs. Baxter! I just happened
to be in the neighborhood---" Two burning spots came into the older
woman's face, not of shame, but of anger that she had misunderstood,
had placed herself for an instant at a disadvantage.
"Oh," she said vaguely. "Won't you sit down? Peter---" she paused.
"Peter is in Santa Barbara, isn't he?" asked Susan, who knew he was
not.
"I declare I don't know where he is half the time," Mrs. Baxter
said, with her little, cracked laugh. They both sat down. "He has
SUCH a good time!" pursued his aunt, complacently.
"Doesn't he?" Susan said pleasantly.
"Only I tell the girls they mustn't take Peter too seriously,"
cackled the sweet, old voice. "Dreadful boy!"
"I think they understand him." Susan looked at her hostess
solicitously. "You look well," she said resolutely. "No more
neuritis, Mrs. Baxter?"
Mrs. Baxter was instantly diverted. She told Susan of her new
treatment, her new doctor, the devotion of her old maid; Emma, the
servant of her early married life, was her close companion now, and
although Mrs. Baxter always thought of her as a servant, Emma was
really the one intimate friend she had.
Susan remained a brief quarter of an hour, chatting easily, but
burning with inward shame. Never, never, never in her life would she
pay another call like this one! Tea was not suggested, and when the
girl said good-by, Mrs. Baxter did not leave the reception room. But
just as Burns opened the street-door for her Susan saw a beautiful
little coupe stop at the curb, and Miss Ella Saunders, beautifully
gowned, got out of it and came up the steps with a slowness that
became her enormous size.
"Hello, Susan Brown!" said Miss Saunders, imprisoning Susan's hand
between two snowy gloves. "Where've you been?"
"Where've YOU been?" Susan laughed. "Italy and Russia and Holland!"
"Don't be an utter little hypocrite, child, and try to make talk
with a woman of my years I I've been home two weeks, anyway."
"Emily home?"
Miss Saunders nodded slowly, bit her lip, and stared at Susan in a
rather mystifying and very pronounced way.
"Emily is home, indeed," she said absently. Then abruptly she added:
"Can you lunch with me to-morrow--no, Wednesday--at the Town and
Country, infant?"
"Why, I'd love to!" Susan answered, dimpling.
"Well; at one? Then we can talk. Tell me," Miss Saunders lowered her
voice, "is Mrs. Baxter in? Oh, damn!" she added cheerfully, as Susan
nodded. Susan glanced back, before the door closed, and saw her meet
the old lady in the hall and give her an impulsive kiss.
CHAPTER II
The little Town and Country Club, occupying two charmingly-
furnished, crowded floors of what had once been a small apartment
house on Post Street, next door to the old library, was a small but
remarkable institution, whose members were the wealthiest and most
prominent women of the fashionable colonies of Burlingame and San
Mateo, Ross Valley and San Rafael. Presumably only the simplest and
least formal of associations, it was really the most important of
all the city's social institutions, and no woman was many weeks in
San Francisco society without realizing that the various country
clubs, and the Junior Cotillions were as dust and ashes, and that
her chances of achieving a card to the Browning dances were very
slim if she could not somehow push her name at least as far as the
waiting list of the Town and Country Club.
The members pretended, to a woman, to be entirely unconscious of
their social altitude. They couldn't understand how such ideas ever
got about, it was "delicious"; it was "too absurd!" Why, the club
was just the quietest place in the world, a place where a woman
could run in to brush her hair and wash her hands, and change her
library book, and have a cup of tea. A few of them had formed it
years ago, just half a dozen of them, at a luncheon; it was like a
little family circle, one knew everybody there, and one felt at home
there. But, as for being exclusive and conservative, that was all
nonsense! And besides, what did other women see in it to make them
want to come in! Let them form another club, exactly like it,
wouldn't that be the wiser thing?
Other women, thus advised and reassured, smiled, instead of gnashing
their teeth, and said gallantly that after all they themselves were
too busy to join any club just now, merely happened to speak of the
Town and Country. And after that they said hateful and lofty and
insulting things about the club whenever they found listeners.
But the Town and Country Club flourished on unconcernedly, buzzing
six days a week with well-dressed women, echoing to Christian names
and intimate chatter, sheltering the smartest of pigskin suitcases
and gold-headed umbrellas and rustling raincoats in its tiny
closets, resisting the constant demand of the younger element for
modern club conveniences and more room.
No; the old members clung to its very inconveniences, to the gas-
lights over the dressing-tables, and the narrow halls, and the view
of ugly roofs and buildings from its back windows. They liked to see
the notices written in the secretary's angular hand and pinned on
the library door with a white-headed pin. The catalogue numbers of
books were written by hand, too--the ink blurred into the shiny
linen bands. At tea-time a little maid quite openly cut and buttered
bread in a corner of the dining-room; it was permissible to call
gaily, "More bread here, Rosie! I'm afraid we're a very hungry crowd
to-day!"
Susan enormously enjoyed the club; she had been there more than once
with Miss Saunders, and found her way without trouble to-day to a
big chair in a window arch, where she could enjoy the passing show
without being herself conspicuous. A constant little stream of women
came and went, handsome, awkward school-girls, in town for the
dentist or to be fitted to shoes, or for the matinee; debutantes, in
their exquisite linens and summer silks, all joyous chatter and
laughter; and plainly-gowned, well-groomed, middle-aged women,
escorting or chaperoning, and pausing here for greetings and the
interchange of news.
Miss Saunders, magnificent, handsome, wonderfully gowned, was
surrounded by friends the moment she came majestically upstairs.
Susan thought her very attractive, with her ready flow of
conversation, her familiar, big-sisterly attitude with the young
girls, her positiveness when there was the slightest excuse for her
advice or opinions being expressed. She had a rich, full voice, and
a drawling speech. She had to decline ten pressing invitations in as
many minutes.
"Ella, why can't you come home with me this afternoon?--I'm not
speaking to you, Ella Saunders, you've not been near us since you
got back!--Mama's so anxious to see you, Miss Ella!--Listen, Ella,
you've got to go with us to Tahoe; Perry will have a fit if you
don't!"
"Mama's not well, and the kid is just home," Miss Saunders told them
all good-naturedly, in excuse. She carried Susan off to the lunch-
room, announcing herself to be starving, and ordered a lavish
luncheon. Ella Saunders really liked this pretty, jolly, little
book-keeper from Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's. Susan amused her, and
she liked still better the evidence that she amused Susan. Her
indifferent, not to say irreverent, air toward the sacred traditions
and institutions of her class made Susan want to laugh and gasp at
once.
"But this is a business matter," said Miss Saunders, when they had
reached the salad, "and here we are talking! Mama and Baby and I
have talked this thing all over, Susan," she added casually, "and we
want to know what you'd think of coming to live with us?"
Susan fixed her eyes upon her as one astounded, not a muscle of her
face moved. She never was quite natural with Ella; above the sudden
rush of elation and excitement came the quick intuition that Ella
would like a sensational reception of her offer. Her look expressed
the stunned amazement of one who cannot credit her ears. Ella's
laugh showed an amused pleasure.
"Don't look so aghast, child. You don't have to do it!" she said.
Again Susan did the dramatic and acceptable thing, typical of what
she must give the Saunders throughout their relationship. Instead of
the natural "What on earth are you talking about?" she said slowly,
dazedly, her bewildered eyes on Ella's face:
"You're joking---"
"Joking! You'll find the Saunders family no joke, I can promise you
that!" Ella said, humorously. And again Susan laughed.
"No, but you see Emily's come home from Fowler's a perfect nervous
wreck," explained Miss Ella, "and; she can't be left alone for
awhile,--partly because her heart's not good, partly because she
gets blue, and partly because, if she hasn't anyone to drive and
walk and play tennis with, and so on, she simply mopes from morning
until night. She hates Mama's nurse; Mama needs Miss Baker herself
anyway, and we've been wondering and wondering how we could get hold
of the right person to fill the bill. You'd have a pretty easy time
in one way, of course, and do everything the Kid does, and I'll
stand right behind you. But don't think it's any snap!"
"Snap!" echoed Susan, starry-eyed, crimson-cheeked. "---But you
don't mean that you want ME?"
"I wish you could have seen her; she turned quite pale," Miss
Saunders told her mother and sister later. "Really, she was
overcome. She said she'd speak to her aunt to-night; I don't imagine
there'll be any trouble. She's a nice child. I don't see the use of
delay, so I said Monday."
"You were a sweet to think of it," Emily said, gratefully, from the
downy wide couch where she was spending the evening.
"Not at all, Kid," Ella answered politely. She yawned, and stared at
the alabaster globe of the lamp above Emily's head. A silence fell.
The two sisters never had much to talk about, and Mrs. Saunders,
dutifully sitting with the invalid, was heavy from dinner, and
nearly asleep. Ella yawned again.
"Want some chocolates?" she finally asked.
"Oh, thank you, Ella!"
"I'll send Fannie in with 'em!" Miss Ella stood up, bent her head to
study at close range an engraving on the wall, loitered off to her
own room. She was rarely at home in the evening and did not know
quite what to do with herself.
Susan, meanwhile, walked upon air. She tasted complete happiness for
almost the first time in her life; awakened in the morning to
blissful reality, instead of the old dreary round, and went to sleep
at night smiling at her own happy thoughts. It was all like a
pleasant dream!
She resigned from her new position at Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's
exactly as she resigned in imagination a hundred times. No more
drudgery over bills, no more mornings spent in icy, wet shoes, and
afternoons heavy with headache. Susan was almost too excited to
thank Mr. Brauer for his compliments and regrets.
Parting with Thorny was harder; Susan and she had been through many
a hard hour together, had shared a thousand likes and dislikes, had
loved and quarreled and been reconciled.
"You're doing an awfully foolish thing, Susan. You'll wish you were
back here inside of a month," Thorny prophesied when the last moment
came. "Aw, don't you do it, Susan!" she pleaded, with a little real
emotion. "Come on into Main Office, and sit next to me. We'll have
loads of sport."
"Oh, I've promised!" Susan held out her hand. "Don't forget me!" she
said, trying to laugh. Miss Thornton's handsome eyes glistened with
tears. With a sudden little impulse they kissed each other for the
first time.
Then Susan, a full hour before closing, went down from the lunch-
room, and past all the familiar offices; the sadness of change
tugging at her heart-strings. She had been here a long time, she had
smelled this same odor of scorching rubber, and oils and powders
through so many slow afternoons, in gay moods and sad, in moods of
rebellion and distaste. She left a part of her girlhood here. The
cashier, to whom she went for her check, was all kindly interest,
and the young clerks and salesmen stopped to offer her their good
wishes. Susan passed the time-clock without punching her number for
the first time in three years, and out into the sunny, unfamiliar
emptiness of the streets.
At the corner her heart suddenly failed her. She felt as if she
could not really go away from these familiar places and people. The
warehouses and wholesale houses, the wholesale liquor house with a
live eagle magnificently caged in one window, the big stove
establishment, with its window full of ranges in shining steel and
nickel-plate; these had been her world for so long!
But she kept on her way uptown, and by the time she reached the old
library, where Mary Lou, very handsome in her well-brushed suit and
dotted veil, with white gloves still odorous of benzine, was
waiting, she was almost sure that she was not making a mistake.
Mary Lou was a famous shopper, capable of exhausting any saleswoman
for a ten-cent purchase, and proportionately effective when, as to-
day, a really considerable sum was to be spent. She regretfully
would decline a dozen varieties in handkerchiefs or ribbons, saying
with pleasant plaintiveness to the saleswoman: "Perhaps I am hard to
please. My mother is an old Southern lady--the Ralstons, you know?--
and her linen is, of course, like nothing one can get nowadays! No;
I wouldn't care to show my mother this.
"My cousin, of course, only wants this for a little hack hat," she
added to Susan's modest suggestion of price to the milliner, and in
the White House she consented to Susan's selections with a consoling
reminder, "It isn't as if you didn't have your lovely French
underwear at home, Sue! These will do very nicely for your rough
camping trip!"
Compared to Mary Lou, Susan was a very poor shopper. She was always
anxious to please the saleswoman, to buy after a certain amount of
looking had been done, for no other reason than that she had caused
most of the stock to be displayed.
"I like this, Mary Lou," Susan would murmur nervously. And, as the
pompadoured saleswoman turned to take down still another heap of
petticoats, Susan would repeat noiselessly, with an urgent nod,
"This will do!"
"Wait, now, dear," Mary Lou would return, unperturbed, arresting
Susan's hand with a white, well-filled glove. "Wait, dear. If we
can't get it here we can get it somewhere else. Yes, let me see
those you have there---"
"Thank you, just the same," Susan always murmured uncomfortably,
averting her eyes from the saleswoman, as they went away. But the
saleswoman, busily rearranging her stock, rarely responded.
To-day they bought, besides the fascinating white things, some tan
shoes, and a rough straw hat covered with roses, and two linen
skirts, and three linen blouses, and a little dress of dotted
lavender lawn. Everything was of the simplest, but Susan had never
had so many new things in the course of her life before, and was
elated beyond words as one purchase was made after another.
She carried home nearly ten dollars, planning to keep it until the
first month's salary should be paid, but Auntie was found, upon
their return in the very act of dissuading the dark powers known as
the "sewing-machine men" from removing that convenience, and Susan,
only too thankful to be in time, gladly let seven dollars fall into
the oily palm of the carrier in charge.
"Mary Lou," said she, over her fascinating packages, just before
dinner, "here's a funny thing! If I had gone bad, you know, so that
I could keep buying nice, pretty, simple things like this, as fast
as I needed them, I'd feel better--I mean truly cleaner and more
moral--than when I was good!"
"Susan! Why, SUSAN!" Her cousin turned a shocked face from the
window where she was carefully pasting newly-washed handkerchiefs,
to dry in the night. "Do you remember who you ARE, dear, and don't
say dreadful things like that!"
In the next few days Susan pressed her one suit, laundered a score
of little ruffles and collars, cleaned her gloves, sewed on buttons
and strings generally, and washed her hair. Late on Sunday came the
joyful necessity of packing. Mary Lou folded and refolded patiently,
Georgie came in with a little hand-embroidered handkerchief-case for
Susan's bureau, Susan herself rushed about like a mad-woman, doing
almost nothing.
"You'll be back inside the month," said Billy that evening, looking
up from Carlyle's "Revolution," to where Susan and Mary Lou were
busy with last stitches, at the other side of the dining-room table.
"You can't live with the rotten rich any more than I could!"
"Billy, you don't know how awfully conceited you sound when you say
a thing like that!"
"Conceited? Oh, all right!" Mr. Oliver accompanied the words with a
sound only to be described as a snort, and returned, offended, to
his book.
"Conceited, well, maybe I am," he resumed with deadly calm, a moment
later. "But there's no conceit in my saying that people like the
Saunders can't buffalo ME!"
"You may not see it, but there IS!" persisted Susan.
"You give me a pain, Sue! Do you honestly think they are any better
than you are?"
"Of course they're not better," Susan said, heatedly, "if it comes
right down to morals and the Commandments! But if I prefer to spend
my life among people who have had several generations of culture and
refinement and travel and education behind them, it's my own affair!
I like nice people, and rich people ARE more refined than poor, and
nobody denies it! I may feel sorry for a girl who marries a man on
forty a week, and brings up four or five little kids on it, but that
doesn't mean I want to do it myself! And I think a man has his nerve
to expect it!"
"I didn't make you an offer, you know, Susan," said William
pleasantly.
"I didn't mean you!" Susan answered angrily. Then with sudden calm
and sweetness, she resumed, busily tearing up and assorting old
letters the while, "But now you're trying to make me mad, Billy, and
you don't care what you say. The trouble with you," she went on,
with sisterly kindness and frankness, "is that you think you are the
only person who really ought to get on in the world. You know so
much, and study so hard, that you DESERVE to be rich, so that you
can pension off every old stupid German laborer at the works who
still wants a job when they can get a boy of ten to do his work
better than he can! You mope away over there at those cottages,
Bill, until you think the only important thing in the world is the
price of sausages in proportion to wages. And for all that you
pretend to despise people who use decent English, and don't think a
bath-tub is a place to store potatoes; I notice that you are pretty
anxious to study languages and hear good music and keep up in your
reading, yourself! And if that's not cultivation---"
"I never said a word about cultivation!" Billy, who had been
apparently deep in his book, looked up to snap angrily. Any allusion
to his efforts at self-improvement always touched him in a very
sensitive place.
"Why, you did TOO! You said---"
"Oh, I did not! If you're going to talk so much, Sue, you ought to
have some faint idea what you're talking about!"
"Very well," Susan said loftily, "if you can't address me like a
gentleman, we won't discuss it. I'm not anxious for your opinion,
anyway."
A silence. Mr. Oliver read with passionate attention. Susan sighed,
sorted her letters, sighed again.
"Billy, do you love me?" she asked winningly, after a pause.
Another silence. Mr. Oliver turned a page.
"Are you sure you've read every word on that page, Bill,--every
little word?"
Silence again.
"You know, you began this, Bill," Susan said presently, with
childish sweet reproach. "Don't say anything, Bill; I can't ask
that! But if you still love me, just smile!"
By some miracle, Billy preserved his scowl.
"Not even a glimmer!" Susan said, despondently. "I'll tell you,
Bill," she added, gushingly. "Just turn a page, and I'll take it for
a sign of love!" She clasped her hands, and watched him
breathlessly.
Mr. Oliver reached the point where the page must be turned. He moved
his eyes stealthily upward.
"Oh, no you don't! No going back!" exulted Susan. She jumped up,
grabbed the book, encircled his head with her arms, kissed her own
hand vivaciously and made a mad rush for the stairs. Mr. Oliver
caught her half-way up the flight, with more energy than dignity,
and got his book back by doubling her little finger over with an
increasing pressure until Susan managed to drop the volume to the
hall below.
"Bill, you beast! You've broken my finger!" Susan, breathless and
dishevelled, sat beside him on the narrow stair, and tenderly worked
the injured member, "It hurts!"
"Let Papa tiss it!"
"You try it once!"
"Sh-sh! Ma says not so much noise!" hissed Mary Lou, from the floor
above, where she had been summoned some hours ago, "Alfie's just
dropped off!"
On Monday a new life began for Susan Brown. She stepped from the
dingy boarding-house in Fulton Street straight into one of the most
beautiful homes in the state, and, so full were the first weeks,
that she had no time for homesickness, no time for letters, no time
for anything but the briefest of scribbled notes to the devoted
women she left behind her.
Emily Saunders herself met the newcomer at the station, looking very
unlike an invalid,--looking indeed particularly well and happy, if
rather pale, as she was always pale, and a little too fat after the
idle and carefully-fed experience in the hospital. Susan peeped into
Miss Ella's big room, as they went upstairs. Ella was stretched
comfortably on a wide, flowery couch, reading as her maid rubbed her
loosened hair with some fragrant toilet water, and munching
chocolates.
"Hello, Susan Brown!" she called out. "Come in and see me some time
before dinner,--I'm going out!"
Ella's room was on the second floor, where were also Mrs. Saunders'
room, various guest-rooms, an upstairs music-room and a sitting-
room. But Emily's apartment, as well as her brother's, were on the
third floor, and Susan's delightful room opened from Emily's. The
girls had a bathroom as large as a small bedroom, and a splendid
deep balcony shaded by gay awnings was accessible only to them.
Potted geraniums made this big outdoor room gay, a thick Indian rug
was on the floor, there were deep wicker chairs, and two beds, in
day-covers of green linen, with thick brightly colored Pueblo
blankets folded across them. The girls were to spend all their days
in the open air, and sleep out here whenever possible for Emily's
sake.
While Emily bathed, before dinner, Susan hung over the balcony rail,
feeling deliciously fresh and rested, after her own bath, and eager
not to miss a moment of the lovely summer afternoon. Just below her,
the garden was full of roses. There were other flowers, too,
carnations and velvety Shasta daisies, there were snowballs that
tumbled in great heaps of white on the smooth lawn, and syringas and
wall-flowers and corn-flowers, far over by the vine-embroidered
stone wall, and late Persian lilacs, and hydrangeas, in every lovely
tone between pink and lavender, filled a long line of great wooden
Japanese tubs, leading, by a walk of sunken stones, to the black
wooden gates of the Japanese garden. But the roses reigned supreme--
beautiful standard roses, with not a shriveled leaf to mar the
perfection of blossoms and foliage; San Rafael roses, flinging out
wherever they could find a support, great sprays of pinkish-yellow
and yellowish-pink, and gold and cream and apricot-colored blossoms.
There were moss roses, sheathed in dark-green film, glowing
Jacqueminot and Papagontier and La France roses, white roses, and
yellow roses,--Susan felt as if she could intoxicate herself upon
the sweetness and the beauty of them all.
The carriage road swept in a great curve from the gate, its smooth
pebbled surface crossed sharply at regular intervals by the clean-
cut shadows of the elm trees. Here and there on the lawns a
sprinkler flung out its whirling circles of spray, and while Susan
watched a gardener came into view, picked up a few fallen leaves
from the roadway and crushed them together in his hand.
On the newly-watered stretch of road that showed beyond the wide
gates, carriages and carts, and an occasional motor-car were
passing, flinging wheeling shadows beside them on the road, and
driven by girls in light gowns and wide hats or by grooms in livery.
Presently one very smart, high English cart stopped, and Mr. Kenneth
Saunders got down from it, and stood whipping his riding-boot with
his crap and chatting with the young woman who had driven him home.
Susan thought him a very attractive young man, with his quiet,
almost melancholy expression, and his air of knowing exactly the
correct thing to do, whenever he cared to exert himself at all.
She watched him now with interest, not afraid of detection, for a
small head, on a third story balcony, would be quite lost among the
details of the immense facade of the house. He walked toward the
stable, and whistled what was evidently a signal, for three romping
collies came running to meet him, and were leaping and tumbling
about him as he went around the curve of the drive and out of sight.
Then Susan went back to her watching and dreaming, finding something
new to admire and delight in every moment. The details confused her,
but she found the whole charming.
Indeed, she had been in San Rafael for several weeks before she
found the view of the big house from the garden anything but
bewildering. With its wings and ells, its flowered balconies and
French windows, its tiled pergola and flower-lined Spanish court, it
stood a monument to the extraordinary powers of the modern
architect; nothing was incongruous, nothing offended. Susan liked to
decide into which room this casement window fitted, or why she never
noticed that particular angle of wall from the inside. It was always
a disappointment to discover that some of the quaintest of the
windows lighted only linen-closets or perhaps useless little spaces
under a sharp angle of roof, and that many of the most attractive
lines outside were so cut and divided as to be unrecognizable
within.
It was a modern house, with beautifully-appointed closets tucked in
wherever there was an inch to spare, with sheets of mirror set in
the bedroom doors, with every conceivable convenience in nickel-
plate glittering in its bathrooms, and wall-telephones everywhere.
The girl's adjectives were exhausted long before she had seen half
of it. She tried to make her own personal choice between the dull,
soft, dark colors and carved Circassian walnut furniture in the
dining-room, and the sharp contrast of the reception hall, where the
sunlight flooded a rosy-latticed paper, an old white Colonial mantel
and fiddle-backed chairs, and struck dazzling gleams from the brass
fire-dogs and irons. The drawing-room had its own charm; the largest
room in the house, it had French windows on three sides, each one
giving a separate and exquisite glimpse of lawns and garden beyond.
Upon its dark and shining floor were stretched a score of silky
Persian rugs, roses mirrored themselves in polished mahogany, and
here and there were priceless bits of carved ivory, wonderful strips
of embroidered Chinese silks, miniatures, and exquisite books. Four
or five great lamps glowing under mosaic shades made the place
lovely at night, but in the heat of a summer day, shaded, empty,
deliciously airy and cool, Susan thought it at its loveliest. At
night heavy brocaded curtains were drawn across the windows, and a
wood fire crackled in the fireplace, in a setting of creamy tiles.
There was a small grand-piano in this room, a larger piano in the
big, empty reception room on the other side of the house, Susan and
Emily had a small upright for their own use, and there were one or
two more in other parts of the house.
Everywhere was exquisite order, exquisite peace. Lightfooted maids
came and went noiselessly, to brush up a fallen daisy petal, or
straighten a rug. Not the faintest streak of dust ever lay across
the shining surface of the piano, not the tiniest cloud ever filmed
the clear depths of the mirrors. A slim Chinese houseboy, in plum-
color and pale blue, with his queue neatly coiled, and his handsome,
smooth young face always smiling, padded softly to and fro all day
long, in his thick-soled straw slippers, with letters and magazines,
parcels and messages and telegrams.
"Lizzie-Carrie--one of you girls take some sweet-peas up to my
room," Ella would say at breakfasttime, hardly glancing up from her
mail. And an hour later Susan, looking into Miss Saunders' apartment
to see if she still expected Emily to accompany her to the Holmes
wedding, or to say that Mrs. Saunders wanted to see her eldest
daughter, would notice a bowl of the delicately-tinted blossoms on
the desk, and another on the table.
The girls' beds were always made, when they went upstairs to freshen
themselves for luncheon; tumbled linen and used towels had been
spirited away, fresh blotters were on the desk, fresh flowers
everywhere, windows open, books back on their shelves, clothes
stretched on hangers in the closets; everything immaculately clean
and crisp.
It was apparently impossible to interrupt the quiet running of the
domestic machinery. If Susan and Emily left wet skirts and umbrellas
and muddy overshoes in one of the side hallways, on returning from a
walk, it was only a question of a few hours, before the skirts,
dried and brushed and pressed, the umbrellas neatly furled, and the
overshoes, as shining as ever, were back in their places. If the
girls wanted tea at five o'clock, sandwiches of every known, and
frequently of new types, little cakes and big, hot bouillons, or a
salad, or even a broiled bird were to be had for the asking. It was
no trouble, the tray simply appeared and Chow Yew or Carrie served
them as if it were a real pleasure to do so.
Whoever ordered for the Saunders kitchen--Susan suspected that it
was a large amiable person in black whom she sometimes met in the
halls, a person easily mistaken for a caller or a visiting aunt, but
respectful in manner, and with a habit of running her tongue over
her teeth when not speaking that vaguely suggested immense
capability--did it on a very large scale indeed. It was not, as in
poor Auntie's case, a question of selecting stewed tomatoes as a
suitable vegetable for dinner, and penciling on a list, under "five
pounds round steak," "three cans tomatoes." In the Saunders' house
there was always to be had whatever choicest was in season,--crabs
or ducks, broilers or trout, asparagus an inch in diameter, forced
strawberries and peaches, even pomegranates and alligator pears and
icy, enormous grapefruit--new in those days--and melons and
nectarines. There were crocks and boxes of cakes, a whole ice-chest
just for cream and milk, another for cheeses and olives and pickles
and salad-dressings. Susan had seen the cook's great store-room,
lined with jars and pots and crocks, tins and glasses and boxes of
delicious things to eat, brought from all over the world for the
moment when some member of the Saunders family fancied Russian
caviar, or Chinese ginger, or Italian cheese.
Other people's brains and bodies were constantly and pleasantly at
work to spare the Saunders any effort whatever, and as Susan, taken
in by the family, and made to feel absolutely one of them, soon
found herself taking hourly service quite as a matter of course, as
though it was nothing new to her luxury-loving little person. If she
hunted for a book, in a dark corner of the library, she did not turn
her head to see which maid touched the button that caused a group of
lights, just above her, to spring suddenly into soft bloom, although
her "Thank you!" never failed; and when she and Emily came in late
for tea in the drawing-room, she piled her wraps into some
attendant's arms without so much as a glance. Yet Susan personally
knew and liked all the maids, and they liked her, perhaps because
her unaffected enjoyment of this new life and her constant allusions
to the deprivations of the old days made them feel her a little akin
to themselves.
With Emily and her mother Susan was soon quite at home; with Ella
her shyness lasted longer; and toward a friendship with Kenneth
Saunders she seemed to make no progress whatever. Kenneth addressed
a few kindly, unsmiling remarks to his mother during the course of
the few meals he had at home; he was always gentle with her, and
deeply resented anything like a lack of respect toward her on the
others' parts. He entirely ignored Emily, and if he held any
conversation at all with the spirited Ella, it was very apt to take
the form of a controversy, Ella trying to persuade him to attend
some dance or dinner, or Kenneth holding up some especial friend of
hers for scornful criticism. Sometimes he spoke to Miss Baker, but
not often. Kenneth's friendships were mysteries; his family had not
the most remote idea where he went when he went out every evening,
or where he was when he did not come home. Sometimes he spoke out in
sudden, half-amused praise of some debutante, she was a "funny
little devil," or "she was the decentest kid in this year's crop,"
and perhaps he would follow up this remark with a call or two upon
the admired young girl, and Ella would begin to tease him about her.
But the debutante and her mother immediately lost their heads at
this point, called on the Saunders, gushed at Ella and Emily, and
tried to lure Kenneth into coming to little home dinners or small
theater parties. This always ended matters abruptly, and Kenneth
returned to his old ways.
His valet, a mournful, silent fellow named Mycroft, led rather a
curious life, reporting at his master's room in the morning not
before ten, and usually not in bed before two or three o'clock the
next morning. About once a fortnight, sometimes oftener, as Susan
had known for a long time, a subtle change came over Kenneth. His
mother saw it and grieved; Ella saw it and scolded everyone but him.
It cast a darkness over the whole house. Kenneth, always influenced
more or less by what he drank, was going down, down, down, through
one dark stage after another, into the terrible state whose horrors
he dreaded with the rest of them. He was moping for a day or two,
absent from meals, understood to be "not well, and in bed." Then
Mycroft would agitatedly report that Mr. Kenneth was gone; there
would be tears and Ella's sharpest voice in Mrs. Saunders' room,
pallor and ill-temper on Emily's part, hushed distress all about
until Kenneth was brought home from some place unknown by Mycroft,
in a cab, and gotten noisily upstairs and visited three times a day
by the doctor. The doctor would come downstairs to reassure Mrs.
Saunders; Mycroft would run up and down a hundred times a day to
wait upon the invalid. Perhaps once during his convalescence his
mother would go up to see him for a little while, to sit,
constrained and tender and unhappy, beside his bed, wishing perhaps
that there was one thing in the wide world in which she and her son
had a common interest.
She was a lonesome, nervous little lady, and at these times only a
little more fidgety than ever. Sometimes she cried because of
Kenneth, in her room at night, and Ella braced her with kindly,
unsympathetic, well-meant, uncomprehending remarks, and made very
light of his weakness; but Emily walked her own room nervously,
raging at Ken for being such a beast, and Mama for being such a
fool.
Susan, coming downstairs in the morning sunlight, after an evening
of horror and strain, when the lamps had burned for four hours in an
empty drawing-room, and she and Emily, early in their rooms, had
listened alternately to the shouting and thumping that went on in
Kenneth's room and the consoling murmur of Ella's voice downstairs,
could hardly believe that life was being so placidly continued; that
silence and sweetness still held sway downstairs; that Ella, in a
foamy robe of lace and ribbon, at the head of the table, could be so
cheerfully absorbed in the day's news and the Maryland biscuit, and
that Mrs. Saunders, pottering over her begonias, could show so
radiant a face over the blossoming of the double white, that Emily,
at the telephone could laugh and joke.
She was a great favorite with them all now, this sunny, pretty
Susan; even Miss Baker, the mouse-like little trained nurse, beamed
for her, and congratulated her upon her influence over every
separate member of the family. Miss Baker had held her place for ten
years and cherished no illusions concerning the Saunders.
Susan had lost some few illusions herself, but not many. She was too
happy to be critical, and it was her nature to like people for no
better reason than that they liked her.
Emily Saunders, with whom she had most to do, who was indeed her
daily and hourly companion, was at this time about twenty-six years
old, and so two years older than Susan, although hers was a smooth-
skinned, baby-like type, and she looked quite as young as her
companion. She had had a very lonely, if extraordinarily luxurious
childhood, and a sickly girlhood, whose principal events were minor
operations on eyes or ears, and experiments in diets and treatments,
miserable sieges with oculists and dentists and stomach-pumps. She
had been sent to several schools, but ill-health made her progress a
great mortification, and finally she had been given a governess,
Miss Roche, a fussily-dressed, effusive Frenchwoman, who later
traveled with her. Emily's only accounts of her European experience
dealt with Miss Roche's masterly treatment of ungracious officials,
her faculty for making Emily comfortable at short notice and at any
cost or place, and her ability to bring certain small possessions
through the custom-house without unnecessary revelations. And at
eighteen the younger Miss Saunders had been given a large coming-out
tea, had joined the two most exclusive Cotillions,--the Junior and
the Browning--had lunched and dined and gone to the play with the
other debutantes, and had had, according to the admiring and
attentive press, a glorious first season.
As a matter of fact, however, it had been a most unhappy time for
the person most concerned. Emily was not a social success. Not more
than one debutante in ten is; Emily was one of the nine. Before
every dance her hopes rose irrepressibly, as she gazed at her dainty
little person in the mirror, studied her exquisite frock and her
pearls, and the smooth perfection of the hair so demurely coiled
under its wreath of rosebuds, or band of shining satin. To-night,
she would be a success, to-night she would wipe out old scores. This
mood lasted until she was actually in the dressing-room, in a whirl
of arriving girls. Then her courage began to ebb. She would watch
them, as the maid took off her carriage shoes; pleasantly take her
turn at the mirror, exchange a shy, half-absent greeting with the
few she knew; wish, with all her heart, that she dared put herself
under their protection. Just a few were cool enough to enter the big
ballroom in a gale of mirth, surrender themselves for a few moments
of gallant dispute to the clustered young men at the door, and be
ready to dance without a care, the first dozen dances promised, and
nothing to do but be happy.
But Emily drifted out shyly, fussed carefully with fans or glove-
clasps while looking furtively about for possible partners, returned
in a panic to the dressing-room on a pretense of exploring a
slipper-bag for a handkerchief, and made a fresh start. Perhaps this
time some group of chattering and laughing girls and men would be
too close to the door for her comfort; not invited to join them,
Emily would feel obliged to drift on across the floor to greet some
gracious older woman, and sink into a chair, smiling at compliments,
and covering a defeat with a regretful:
"I'm really only looking on to-night. Mama worries so if I overdo."
And here she would feel out of the current indeed, hopelessly
shelved. Who would come looking for a partner in this quiet corner,
next to old Mrs. Chickering whose two granddaughters were in the
very center of the merry group at the door? Emily would smilingly
rise, and go back to the dressing-room again.
The famous Browning dances, in their beginning, a generation
earlier, had been much smaller, less formal and more intimate than
they were now. The sixty or seventy young persons who went to those
first dances were all close friends, in a simpler social structure,
and a less self-conscious day. They had been the most delightful
events in Ella's girlhood, and she felt it to be entirely Emily's
fault that Emily did not find them equally enchanting.
"But I don't know the people who go to them very well!" Emily would
say, half-confidential, half-resentful. Ella always met this
argument with high scorn.
"Oh, Baby, if you'd stop whining and fretting, and just get in and
enjoy yourself once!" Ella would answer impatiently. "You don't have
to know a man intimately to dance with him, I should hope! Just GO,
and have a good time! My Lord, the way we all used to laugh and talk
and rush about, you'd have thought we were a pack of children!"
Ella and her contemporaries always went to these balls even now, the
magnificent matrons of forty showing rounded arms and beautiful
bosoms, and gowns far more beautiful than those the girls wore.
Jealousy and rivalry and heartaches all forgot, they sat laughing
and talking in groups, clustered along the walls, or played six-
handed euchre in the adjoining card-room, and had, if the truth had
been known, a far better time than the girls they chaperoned.
After a winter or two, however, Emily stopped going, except perhaps
once in a season. She began to devote a great deal of her thought
and her conversation to her health, and was not long in finding
doctors and nurses to whom the subject was equally fascinating.
Emily had a favorite hospital, and was frequently ordered there for
experiences that touched more deeply the chords of her nature than
anything else ever did in her life. No one at home ever paid her
such flattering devotion as did the sweet-faced, low-voiced nurses,
and the doctor--whose coming, twice a day, was such an event. The
doctor was a model husband and father, his beautiful wife a woman
whom Ella knew and liked very well, but Emily had her nickname for
him, and her little presents for him, and many a small, innocuous
joke between herself and the doctor made her feel herself close to
him. Emily was always glad when she could turn from her mother's
mournful solicitude, Kenneth's snubs and Ella's imperativeness, and
the humiliating contact with a society that could get along very
well without her, to the universal welcome she had from all her
friends in Mrs. Fowler's hospital.
To Susan the thought of hypodermics, anesthetics, antisepsis and
clinic thermometers, charts and diets, was utterly mysterious and
abhorrent, and her healthy distaste for them amused Emily, and gave
Emily a good reason for discussing and defending them.
Susan's part was to listen and agree, listen and agree, listen and
agree, on this as on all topics. She had not been long at "High
Gardens" before Emily, in a series of impulsive gushes of
confidence, had volunteered the information that Ella was so jealous
and selfish and heartless that she was just about breaking Mama's
heart, never happy unless she was poisoning somebody's mind against
Emily, and never willing to let Emily keep a single friend, or do
anything she wanted to do.
"So now you see why I am always so dignified and quiet with Ella,"
said Emily, in the still midnight when all this was revealed.
"That's the ONE thing that makes her mad!"
"I can't believe it!" said Susan, aching for sleep, and yawning
under cover of the dark.
"I keep up for Mama's sake," Emily said. "But haven't you noticed
how Ella tries to get you away from me? You MUST have! Why, the very
first night you were here, she called out, 'Come in and see me on
your way down!' Don't you remember? And yesterday, when I wasn't
dressed and she wanted you to go driving, after dinner! Don't you
remember?"
"Yes, but---" Susan began. She could dismiss this morbid fancy with
a few vigorous protests, with a hearty laugh. But she would probably
dismiss herself from the Saunders' employ, as well, if she pursued
any such bracing policy.
"You poor kid, it's pretty hard on you!" she said, admiringly. And
for half an hour she was not allowed to go to sleep.
Susan began to dread these midnight talks. The moon rose, flooded
the sleeping porch, mounted higher. The watch under Susan's pillow
ticked past one o'clock, past half-past one--
"Emily, you know really Ella is awfully proud of you," she was
finally saying, "and, as for trying to influence your mother, you
can't blame her. You're your mother's favorite--anyone can see that-
-and I do think she feels--"
"Well, that's true!" Emily said, mollified. A silence followed.
Susan began to settle her head by imperceptible degrees into the
pillow; perhaps Emily was dropping off! Silence--silence--heavenly
delicious silence. What a wonderful thing this sleeping porch was,
Susan thought drowsily, and how delicious the country night--
"Susan, why do you suppose I am Mama's favorite?" Emily's clear,
wide-awake voice would pursue, with pensive interest.
Or, "Susan, when did you begin to like me?" she would question, on
their drives. "Susan, when I was looking straight up into Mrs.
Carter's face,--you know the way I always do!--she laughed at me,
and said I was a madcap monkey? Why did she say that?" Emily would
pout, and wrinkle her brows in pretty, childish doubt. "I'm not a
monkey, and _I_ don't think I'm a madcap? Do you?"
"You're different, you see, Emily. You're not in the least like
anybody else!" Susan would say.
"But WHY am I different?" And if it was possible, Emily might even
come over to sit on the arm of Susan's chair, or drop on her knees
and encircle Susan's waist with her arms.
"Well, in the first place you're terribly original, Emily, and you
always say right out what you mean--" Susan would begin.
With Ella, when she grew to know her well, Susan was really happier.
She was too honest to enjoy the part she must always play with
Emily, yet too practically aware of the advantages of this new
position, to risk it by frankness, and eventually follow the other
companions, the governesses and trained nurses who had preceded her.
Emily characterized these departed ladies as "beasts," and still
flushed a deep resentful red when she mentioned certain ones among
them.
Susan found in Ella, in the first place, far more to admire than she
could in Emily. Ella's very size made for a sort of bigness in
character. She looked her two hundred and thirty pounds, but she
looked handsome, glowing and comfortable as well. Everything she
wore was loose and dashing in effect; she was a fanatic about
cleanliness and freshness, and always looked as if freshly bathed
and brushed and dressed. Ella never put on a garment, other than a
gown or wrap, twice. Sometimes a little heap of snowy, ribboned
underwear was carried away from her rooms three or four times a day.
She was dictatorial and impatient and exacting, but she was witty
and good-natured, too, and so extremely popular with men and women
of her own age that she could have dined out three times a night.
Ella was fondly nicknamed "Mike" by her own contemporaries, and was
always in demand for dinners and lunch parties and card parties. She
was beloved by the younger set, too. Susan thought her big-sisterly
interest in the debutantes very charming to see and, when she had
time to remember her sister's little companion now and then, she
would carry Susan off for a drive, or send for her when she was
alone for tea, and the two laughed a great deal together. Susan
could honestly admire here, and Ella liked her admiration.
Miss Saunders believed herself to be a member of the most
distinguished American family in existence, and her place to be
undisputed as queen of the most exclusive little social circle in
the world. She knew enough of the social sets of London and
Washington and New York society to allude to them casually and
intimately, and she told Susan that no other city could boast of
more charming persons than those who composed her own particular set
in San Francisco. Ella never spoke of "society" without intense
gravity; nothing in life interested her so much as the question of
belonging or not belonging to it. To her personally, of course, it
meant nothing; she had been born inside the charmed ring, and would
die there; but the status of other persons filled her with concern.
She was very angry when her mother or Emily showed any wavering in
this all-important matter.
"Well, what did you have to SEE her for, Mama?" Ella would irritably
demand, when her autocratic "Who'd you see to-day? What'd you do?"
had drawn from her mother the name of some caller.
"Why, dearie, I happened to be right there. I was just crossing the
porch when they drove up!" Mrs. Saunders would timidly submit.
"Oh, Lord, Lord, Lord! Mama, you make me crazy!" Ella would drop her
hands, fling her head back, gaze despairingly at her mother. "That
was your chance to snub her, Mama! Why didn't you have Chow Yew say
that you were out?"
"But, dearie, she seemed a real sweet little thing!"
"Sweet little--! You'll have me CRAZY! Sweet little nothing--just
because she married Gordon Jones, and the St. Johns have taken her
up, she thinks she can get into society! And anyway, I wouldn't have
given Rosie St. John the satisfaction for a thousand dollars! Did
you ask her to your bridge lunch?"
"Ella, dear, it is MY lunch," her mother might remind her, with
dignity.
"Mama, did you ask that woman here to play cards?"
"Well, dearie, she happened to say--"
"Oh, happened to say--!" A sudden calm would fall upon Miss Ella,
the calm of desperate decision. The subject would be dropped for the
time, but she would bring a written note to the lunch table.
"Listen to this, Mama; I can change it if you don't like it," Ella
would begin, kindly, and proceed to read it.
HIGH GARDENS. MY DEAR MRS. JONES:
Mother has asked me to write you that her little bridge lunch
for Friday, the third, must be given up because of the dangerous
illness of a close personal friend. She hopes that it is only a
pleasure deferred, and will write you herself when less anxious
and depressed. Cordially yours,
ELLA CORNWALLIS SAUNDERS.
"But, Ella, dear," the mother would protest, "there are others
coming--"
"Leave the others to me! I'll telephone and make it the day before."
Ella would seal and dispatch the note, and be inclined to feel
generously tender and considerate of her mother for the rest of the
day.
Ella was at home for a few moments, almost every day; but she did
not dine at home more than once or twice in a fortnight. But she was
always there for the family's occasional formal dinner party in
which events Susan refused very sensibly to take part. She and Miss
Baker dined early and most harmoniously in the breakfast-room, and
were free to make themselves useful to the ladies of the house
afterward. Ella would be magnificent in spangled cloth-of-gold;
Emily very piquante in demure and drooping white, embroidered
exquisitely with tiny French blossoms in color; Mrs. Saunders
rustling in black lace and lavender silk, as the three went
downstairs at eight o'clock. Across the wide hall below would stream
the hooded women and the men in great-coats, silk hats in hand. Ella
did not leave the drawing-room to meet them, as on less formal
occasions, but a great chattering and laughing would break out as
they went in.
Susan, sitting back on her knees in the upper hall, to peer through
the railing at the scene below, to Miss Baker's intense amusement,
could admire everything but the men guests. They were either more or
less attractive and married, thought Susan, or very young, very old,
or very uninteresting bachelors. Red-faced, eighteen-year-old boys,
laughing nervously, and stumbling over their pumps, shared the
honors with cackling little fifty-year-old gallants. It could only
be said that they were males, and that Ella would have cheerfully
consigned her mother to bed with a bad headache rather than have had
one too few of them to evenly balance the number of women. The
members of the family knew what patience and effort were required,
what writing and telephoning, before the right number was acquired.
The first personal word that Kenneth Saunders ever spoke to his
sister's companion was when, running downstairs, on the occasion of
one of these dinners, he came upon her, crouched in her outlook, and
thoroughly enjoying herself.
"Good God!" said Kenneth, recoiling.
"Sh-sh--it's only me--I'm watching 'em!" Susan whispered, even
laying her hand upon the immaculate young gentleman's arm in her
anxiety to quiet him.
"Why, Lord; why doesn't Ella count you in on these things?" he
demanded, gruffly. "Next time I'll tell her--"
"If you do, I'll never speak to you again!" Susan threatened, her
merry face close to his in the dark. "I wouldn't be down there for a
farm!"
"What do you do, just watch 'em?" Kenneth asked sociably, hanging
over the railing beside her.
"It's lots of fun!" Susan said, in a whisper. "Who's that?"
"That's that Bacon girl--isn't she the limit!" Kenneth whispered
back. "Lord," he added regretfully, "I'd much rather stay up here
than go down! What Ella wants to round up a gang like this for--"
And, sadly speculating, the son of the house ran downstairs, and
Susan, congratulating herself, returned to her watching.
Indeed, after a month or two in her new position, she thought an
evening to herself a luxury to be enormously enjoyed. It was on such
an occasion that Susan got the full benefit of the bathroom, the
luxuriously lighted and appointed dressing-table, the porch with its
view of a dozen gardens drenched in heavenly moonlight. At other
times Emily's conversation distracted her and interrupted her at her
toilet. Emily gave her no instant alone.
Emily came up very late after the dinners to yawn and gossip with
Susan while Gerda, her mother's staid middle-aged maid, drew off her
slippers and stockings, and reverently lifted the dainty gown safely
to its closet. Susan always got up, rolled herself in a wrap, and
listened to the account of the dinner; Emily was rather critical of
the women, but viewed the men more romantically. She repeated their
compliments, exulting that they had been paid her "under Ella's very
nose," or while "Mama was staring right at us." It pleased Emily to
imagine a great many love-affairs for herself, and to feel that they
must all be made as mysterious and kept as secret as possible.
It was the old story, thought Susan, listening sympathetically, and
in utter disbelief, to these recitals. Mary Lou and Georgie were not
alone in claiming vague and mythical love-affairs; Emily even
carried them to the point of indicating old bundles of letters in
her desk as "from Bob Brock--tell you all about that some time!" or
alluding to some youth who had gone away, left that part of the
country entirely for her sake, some years ago. And even Georgie
would not have taken as seriously as Emily did the least accidental
exchange of courtesies with the eligible male. If the two girls,
wasting a morning in the shops in town, happened to meet some
hurrying young man in the street, the color rushed into Emily's
face, and she alluded to the incident a dozen times during the
course of the day. Like most girls, she had a special manner for
men, a rather audacious and attractive manner, Susan thought. The
conversation was never anything but gay and frivolous and casual. It
always pleased Emily when such a meeting occurred.
"Did you notice that Peyton Hamilton leaned over and said something
to me very quickly, in a low voice, this morning?" Emily would ask,
later, suddenly looking mischievous and penitent at once.
"Oh, ho! That's what you do when I'm not noticing!" Susan would
upbraid her.
"He asked me if he could call," Emily would say, yawning, "but I
told him I didn't like him well enough for that!"
Susan was astonished to find herself generally accepted because of
her association with Emily Saunders. She had always appreciated the
difficulty of entering the inner circle of society with insufficient
credentials. Now she learned how simple the whole thing was when the
right person or persons assumed the responsibility. Girls whom years
ago she had rather fancied to be "snobs" and "stuck-up" proved very
gracious, very informal and jolly, at closer view; even the most
prominent matrons began to call her "child" and "you little Susan
Brown, you!" and show her small kindnesses.
Susan took them at exactly their own valuation, revered those women
who, like Ella, were supreme; watched curiously others a little less
sure of their standing; and pitied and smiled at the struggles of
the third group, who took rebuffs and humiliations smilingly, and
fell only to rise and climb again. Susan knew that the Thayers, the
Chickerings and Chaunceys and Coughs, the Saunders and the St.
Johns, and Dolly Ripley, the great heiress, were really secure,
nothing could shake them from their proud eminence. It gave her a
little satisfaction to put the Baxters and Peter Coleman decidedly a
step below; even lovely Isabel Wallace and the Carters and the
Geralds, while ornamenting the very nicest set, were not quite the
social authorities that the first-named families were. And several
lower grades passed before one came to Connie Fox and her type,
poor, pushing, ambitious, watching every chance to score even the
tiniest progress toward the goal of social recognition. Connie Fox
and her mother were a curious study to Susan, who, far more secure
for the time being than they were, watched them with deep interest.
The husband and father was an insurance broker, whose very modest
income might have comfortably supported a quiet country home, and
one maid, and eventually have been stretched to afford the daughter
and only child a college education or a trousseau as circumstances
decreed. As it was, a little house on Broadway was maintained with
every appearance of luxury, a capped-and-aproned maid backed before
guests through the tiny hall; Connie's vivacity covered the long
wait for the luncheons that an irate Chinese cook, whose wages were
perpetually in arrears, served when it pleased him to do so. Mrs.
Fox bought prizes for Connie's gay little card-parties with the rent
money, and retired with a headache immediately after tearfully
informing the harassed breadwinner of the fact. She ironed Connie's
gowns, bullied her little dressmaker, cried and made empty promises
to her milliner, cut her old friends, telephoned her husband at six
o'clock that, as "the girls" had not gone yet, perhaps he had better
have a bite of dinner downtown. She gushed and beamed on Connie's
friends, cultivated those she could reach assiduously, and never
dreamed that a great many people were watching her with amusement
when she worked her way about a room to squeeze herself in next to
some social potentate.
She had her reward when the mail brought Constance the coveted
dance-cards; when she saw her name in the society columns of the
newspapers, and was able to announce carelessly that that lucky
girlie of hers was really going to Honolulu with the Cyrus Holmes.
Dolly Ripley, the heiress, had taken a sudden fancy to Connie, some
two years before Susan met her, and this alone was enough to reward
Mrs. Fox for all the privations, snubs and humiliations she had
suffered since the years when she curled Connie's straight hair on a
stick, nearly blinded herself tucking and embroidering her little
dresses, and finished up the week's ironing herself so that her one
maid could escort Connie to an exclusive little dancing-class.
Susan saw Connie now and then, and met the mother and daughter on a
certain autumn Sunday when Ella had chaperoned the two younger girls
to a luncheon at the Burlingame club-house. They had spent the night
before with a friend of Ella's, whose lovely country home was but a
few minutes' walk from the club, and Susan was elated with the
glorious conviction that she had added to the gaiety of the party,
and that through her even Emily was having a really enjoyable time.
She met a great many distinguished persons to-day, the golf and polo
players, the great Eastern actress who was the center of a group of
adoring males, and was being entertained by the oldest and most
capable of dowagers, and Dolly Ripley, a lean, eager, round-
shouldered, rowdyish little person, talking as a professional
breeder might talk of her dogs and horses, and shadowed by Connie
Fox. Susan was so filled with the excitement of the occasion, the
beauty of the day, the delightful club and its delightful guests,
that she was able to speak to Miss Dolly Ripley quite as if she also
had inherited some ten millions of dollars, and owned the most
expensive, if not the handsomest, home in the state.
"That was so like dear Dolly!" said Mrs. Fox later, coming up behind
Susan on the porch, and slipping an arm girlishly about her waist.
"What was?" asked Susan, after greetings.
"Why, to ask what your first name was, and say that as she hated the
name of Brown, she was going to call you Susan!" said Mrs. Fox
sweetly. "Don't you find her very dear and simple?"
"Why, I just met her--" Susan said, disliking the arm about her
waist, and finding Mrs. Fox's interest in her opinion of Dolly
Ripley quite transparent.
"Ah, I know her so well!" Mrs. Fox added, with a happy sigh. "Always
bright and interested when she meets people. But I scold her--yes, I
do!--for giving people a false impression. I say, 'Dolly,'--I've
known her so long, you know!--'Dolly, dear, people might easily
think you meant some of these impulsive things you say, dear,
whereas your friends, who know you really well, know that it's just
your little manner, and that you'll have forgotten all about it to-
morrow!' I don't mean YOU, Miss Brown," Mrs. Fox interrupted herself
to say hastily. "Far from it!----Now, my dear, tell me that you know
I didn't mean you!"
"I understand perfectly," Susan said graciously. And she knew that
at last she really did. Mrs. Fox was fluttering like some poor bird
that sees danger near its young. She couldn't have anyone else,
especially this insignificant little Miss Brown, who seemed to be
making rather an impression everywhere, jeopardize Connie's intimacy
with Dolly Ripley, without using such poor and obvious little
weapons as lay at her command to prevent it.
Standing on the porch of the Burlingame Club, and staring out across
the gracious slopes of the landscape, Susan had an exhilarated sense
of being among the players of this fascinating game at last. She
must play it alone, to be sure, but far better alone than assisted
as Connie Fox was assisted. It was an immense advantage to be
expected to accompany Emily everywhere; it made a snub practically
impossible, while heightening the compliment when she was asked
anywhere without Emily. Susan was always willing to entertain a
difficult guest, to play cards or not to play with apparently equal
enjoyment--more desirable than either, she was "fun," and the more
she was laughed at, the funnier she grew.
"And you'll be there with Emily, of course, Miss Brown," said the
different hostess graciously. "Emily, you're going to bring Susan
Brown, you know!--I'm telephoning, Miss Brown, because I'm afraid my
note didn't make it clear that we want you, too!"
Emily's well-known eccentricity did not make Susan the less popular;
even though she was personally involved in it.
"Oh, I wrote you a note for Emily this morning, Mrs. Willis," Susan
would say, at the club, "she's feeling wretchedly to-day, and she
wants to be excused from your luncheon to-morrow!"
"Oh?" The matron addressed would eye the messenger with kindly
sharpness. "What's the matter--very sick?"
"We-ell, not dying!" A dimple would betray the companion's
demureness.
"Not dying? No, I suppose not! Well, you tell Emily that she's a
silly, selfish little cat, or words to that effect!"
"I'll choose words to that effect," Susan would assure the speaker,
smilingly.
"You couldn't come, anyway, I suppose?"
"Oh, no, Mrs. Willis! Thank you so much!"
"No, of course not." The matron would bite her lips in momentary
irritation, and, when they parted, the cause of that pretty,
appreciative, amusing little companion of Emily Saunders would be
appreciably strengthened.
One winter morning Emily tossed a square, large envelope across the
breakfast table toward her companion.
"Sue, that looks like a Browning invitation! What do you bet that
he's sent you a card for the dances!"
"He couldn't!" gasped Susan, snatching it up, while her eyes danced,
and the radiant color flooded her face. Her hand actually shook when
she tore the envelope open, and as the engraved card made its
appearance, Susan's expression might have been that of Cinderella
eyeing her coach-and-four.
For Browning--founder of the cotillion club, and still manager of
the four or five winter dances--was the one unquestioned,
irrefutable, omnipotent social authority of San Francisco. To go to
the "Brownings" was to have arrived socially; no other distinction
was equivalent, because there was absolutely no other standard of
judgment. Very high up, indeed, in the social scale must be the
woman who could resist the temptation to stick her card to the
Brownings in her mirror frame, where the eyes of her women friends
must inevitably fall upon it, and yearly hundreds of matrons tossed
through sleepless nights, all through the late summer and the fall,
hoping against hope, despairing, hoping again, that the magic card
might really be delivered some day in early December, and her
debutante daughter's social position be placed beyond criticism once
more. Only perhaps one hundred persons out of "Brownie's" four
hundred guests could be sure of the privilege. The others must
suffer and wait.
Browning himself, a harassed, overworked, kindly gentleman, whose
management of the big dances brought him nothing but responsibility
and annoyance, threatened yearly to resign from his post, and yearly
was dragged back into the work, fussing for hours with his secretary
over the list, before he could personally give it to the hungrily
waiting reporters with the weary statement that it was absolutely
correct, that no more names were to be added this year, that he did
not propose to defend, through the columns of the press, his
omission of certain names and his acceptance of others, and that,
finally, he was off for a week's vacation in the southern part of
the state, and thanked them all for their kindly interest in himself
and his efforts for San Francisco society.
It was the next morning's paper that was so anxiously awaited, and
so eagerly perused in hundreds of luxurious boudoirs--exulted over,
or wept over and reviled,--but read by nearly every woman in the
city.
And now he had sent Susan a late card, and Susan knew why. She had
met the great man at the Hotel Rafael a few days before, at tea-
time, and he had asked Susan most affectionately of her aunt, Mrs.
Lancaster, and recalled, with a little emotion, the dances of two
generations before, when he was a small boy, and the lovely
Georgianna Ralston was a beauty and a belle. Susan could have kissed
the magic bit of pasteboard!
But she knew too well just what Emily wanted to think of Browning's
courtesy, to mention his old admiration for her aunt. And Emily
immediately justified her diplomatic silence by saying:
"Isn't that AWFULLY decent of Brownie! He did that just for Ella and
me--that's like him! He'll do anything for some people!"
"Well, of course I can't go," Susan said briskly. "But I do call it
awfully decent! And no little remarks about sending a check, either,
and no chaperone's card! The old duck! However, I haven't a gown,
and I haven't a beau, and you don't go, and so I'll write a tearful
regret. I hope it won't be the cause of his giving the whole thing
up. I hate to discourage the dear boy!"
Emily laughed approvingly.
"No, but honestly, Sue," she said, in eager assent, "don't you know
how people would misunderstand--you know how people are! You and I
know that you don't care a whoop about society, and that you'd be
the last person in the world to use your position here--but you know
what other people might say! And Brownie hates talk--"
Susan had to swallow hard, and remain smiling. It was part of the
price that she paid for being here in this beautiful environment,
for being, in every material sense, a member of one of the state's
richest families. She could not say, as she longed to say, "Oh,
Emily, don't talk ROT! You know that before your own grandfather
made his money as a common miner, and when Isabel Wallace's
grandfather was making shoes, mine was a rich planter in Virginia!"
But she knew that she could safely have treated Emily's own mother
with rudeness, she could have hopelessly mixed up the letters she
wrote for Ella, she could have set the house on fire or appropriated
to her own use the large sums of money she occasionally was
entrusted by the family to draw for one purpose or another from the
bank, and been quickly forgiven, if forgivness was a convenience to
the Saunders family at the moment. But to fail to realize that
between the daughter of the house of Saunders and the daughter of
the house of Brown an unspanned social chasm must forever stretch
would have been, indeed, the unforgivable offense.
It was all very different from Susan's old ideals of a paid
companion's duties. She had drawn these ideals from the English
novels she consumed with much enjoyment in early youth--from
"Queenie's Whim" and "Uncle Max" and the novels of Charlotte Yonge.
She had imagined herself, before her arrival at "High Gardens," as
playing piano duets with Emily, reading French for an hour, German
for an hour, gardening, tramping, driving, perhaps making a call on
some sick old woman with soup and jelly in her basket, or carrying
armfuls of blossoms to the church for decoration. If one of Emily's
sick headaches came on, it would be Susan's duty to care for her
tenderly, and to read to her in a clear, low, restful voice when she
was recovering; to write her notes, to keep her vases filled with
flowers, to "preside" at the tea-table, efficient, unobtrusive, and
indispensable. She would make herself useful to Ella, too; arrange
her collections of coins, carry her telephone messages, write her
notes. She would accompany the little old mother on her round
through the greenhouses, read to her and be ready to fly for her
book or her shawl. And if Susan's visionary activities also embraced
a little missionary work in the direction of the son of the house,
it was of a very sisterly and blameless nature. Surely the most
demure of companions, reading to Mrs. Saunders in the library, might
notice an attentive listener lounging in a dark corner, or might
color shyly when Ken's sisters commented on the fact that he seemed
to be at home a good deal these days.
It was a little disillusioning to discover, as during her first
weeks in the new work she did discover, that almost no duties
whatever would be required of her. It seemed to make more irksome
the indefinite thing that was required of her; her constant
interested participation in just whatever happened to interest Emily
at the moment. Susan loved tennis and driving, loved shopping and
lunching in town, loved to stroll over to the hotel for tea in the
pleasant afternoons, or was satisfied to lie down and read for an
hour or two.
But it was very trying to a person of her definite impulsive
briskness never to know, from one hour or one day to the next, just
what occupation was in prospect. Emily would order the carriage for
four o'clock, only to decide, when it came around, that she would
rather drag the collies out into the side-garden, to waste three
dozen camera plates and three hours in trying to get good pictures
of them. Sometimes Emily herself posed before the camera, and Susan
took picture after picture of her.
"Sue, don't you think it would be fun to try some of me in my
Mandarin coat? Come up while I get into it. Oh, and go get Chow Yew
to get that Chinese violin he plays, and I'll hold it! We'll take
'em in the Japanese garden!" Emily would be quite fired with
enthusiasm, but before the girls were upstairs she might change in
favor of her riding habit and silk hat, and Susan would telephone
the stable that Miss Emily's riding horse was wanted in the side-
garden. "You're a darling!" she would say to Susan, after an
exhausting hour or two. "Now, next time I'll take you!"
But Susan's pictures never were taken. Emily's interest rarely
touched twice in the same place.
"Em, it's twenty minutes past four! Aren't we going to tea with
Isabel Wallace?" Susan would ask, coming in to find Emily
comfortably stretched out with a book.
"Oh, Lord, so we were! Well, let's not!" Emily would yawn.
"But, Em, they expect us!"
"Well, go telephone, Sue, there's a dear! And tell them I've got a
terrible headache. And you and I'll have tea up here. Tell Carrie I
want to see her about it; I'm hungry; I want to order it specially."
Sometimes, when the girls came downstairs, dressed for some outing,
it was Miss Ella who upset their plans. Approving of her little
sister's appearance, she would lure Emily off for a round of formal
calls.
"Be decent now, Baby! You'll never have a good time, if you don't go
and do the correct thing now and then. Come on. I'm going to town on
the two, and we can get a carriage right at the ferry--"
But Susan rarely managed to save the afternoon. Going noiselessly
upstairs, she was almost always captured by the lonely old mistress
of the house.
"Girls gone?" Mrs. Saunders would pipe, in her cracked little voice,
from the doorway of her rooms. "Don't the house seem still? Come in,
Susan, you and I'll console each other over a cup of tea."
Susan, smilingly following her, would be at a loss to account for
her own distaste and disappointment. But she was so tired of people!
She wanted so desperately to be alone!
The precious chance would drift by, a rich tea would presently be
served; the little over-dressed, over-fed old lady was really very
lonely; she went to a luncheon or card-party not oftener than two or
three times a month, and she loved company. There was almost no
close human need or interest in her life; she was as far from her
children as was any other old lady of their acquaintance.
Susan knew that she had been very proud of her sons and daughters,
as a happy young mother. The girl was continually discovering, among
old Mrs. Saunders' treasures, large pictures of Ella, at five, at
seven, at nine, with straight long bangs and rosetted hats that tied
under her chin, and French dresses tied with sashes about her knees,
and pictures of Kenneth leaning against stone benches, or sitting in
swings, a thin and sickly-looking little boy, in a velvet suit and
ribboned straw hat. There were pictures of the dead children, too,
and a picture of Emily, at three months, sitting in an immense
shell, and clad only in the folds of her own fat little person. On
the backs of these pictures, Mrs. Saunders had written "Kennie, six
years old," and the date, or "Totty, aged nine"--she never tired of
looking at them now, and of telling Susan that the buttons on Ella's
dress had been of sterling silver, "made right from Papa's mine,"
and that the little ship Kenneth held had cost twenty-five dollars.
All of her conversation was boastful, in an inoffensive, faded sort
of way. She told Susan about her wedding, about her gown and her
mother's gown, and the cost of her music, and the number of the
musicians.
Mrs. Saunders, Susan used to think, letting her thoughts wander as
the old lady rambled on, was an unfortunately misplaced person. She
had none of the qualities of the great lady, nothing spiritual or
mental with which to fend off the vacuity of old age. As a girl, a
bride, a young matron, she had not shown her lack so pitiably. But
now, at sixty-five, Mrs. Saunders had no character, no tastes, no
opinions worth considering. She liked to read the paper, she liked
her flowers, although she took none of the actual care of them, and
she liked to listen to music; there was a mechanical piano in her
room, and Susan often heard the music downstairs at night, and
pictured the old lady, reading in bed, calling to Miss Baker when a
record approached its finish, and listening contentedly to
selections from "Faust" and "Ernani," and the "Chanson des Alpes."
Mrs. Saunders would have been far happier as a member of the fairly
well-to-do middle class. She would have loved to shop with married
daughters, sharply interrogating clerks as to the durability of
shoes, and the weight of little underflannels; she would have been a
good angel in the nurseries, as an unfailing authority when the new
baby came, or hushing the less recent babies to sleep in tender old
arms. She would have been a judge of hot jellies, a critic of
pastry. But bound in this little aimless groove of dressmakers'
calls, and card-parties, she was quite out of her natural element.
It was not astonishing that, like Emily, she occasionally enjoyed an
illness, and dispensed with the useless obligation of getting up and
dressing herself at all!
Invitations, they were really commands, to the Browning dances were
received early in December; Susan, dating her graceful little note
of regret, was really shocked to notice the swift flight of the
months. December already! And she had seemed to leave Hunter, Baxter
& Hunter only last week. Susan fell into a reverie over her writing,
her eyes roving absently over the stretch of wooded hills below her
window. December--! Nearly a year since Peter Coleman had sent her a
circle of pearls, and she had precipitated the events that had ended
their friendship. It was a sore spot still, the memory; but Susan,
more sore at herself for letting him mislead her than with him,
burned to reestablish herself in his eyes as a woman of dignity and
reserve, rather than to take revenge upon him for what was, she knew
now, as much a part of him as his laughing eyes and his indomitable
buoyancy.
The room in which she was writing was warm. Furnace heat is not
common in California, but, with a thousand other conveniences, the
Saunders home had a furnace. There were winter roses, somewhere near
her, making the air sweet; the sunlight slanted in brightly across
the wide couch where Emily was lying, teasing Susan between casual
glances at her magazine. A particularly gay week had left both girls
feeling decidedly unwell. Emily complained of headache and
neuralgia; Susan had breakfasted on hot soda and water, her eyes
felt heavy, her skin hot and dry and prickly.
"We all eat too much in this house!" she said aloud, cheerfully.
"And we don't exercise enough!" Emily did not answer, merely smiled,
as at a joke. The subject of diet was not popular with either of the
Misses Saunders. Emily never admitted that her physical miseries had
anything to do with her stomach; and Ella, whose bedroom scales
exasperated her afresh every time she got on them, while making
dolorous allusions to her own size whenever it pleased her to do so,
never allowed anyone else the privilege. But even with her healthy
appetite, and splendid constitution, Susan was unable to eat as both
the sisters did. Every other day she resolved sternly to diet, and
frequently at night she could not sleep for indigestion; but the
Saunders home was no atmosphere for Spartan resolutions, and every
meal-time saw Susan's courage defeated afresh. She could have
remained away from the table with far less effort than was required,
when a delicious dish was placed before her, to send it away
untouched. There were four regular meals daily in the Saunders home;
the girls usually added a fifth when they went down to the pantries
to forage before going to bed; and tempting little dishes of candy
and candied fruits were set unobtrusively on card-tables, on desks,
on the piano where the girls were amusing themselves with the songs
of the day.
It was a comfortable, care-free life they led, irresponsible beyond
any of Susan's wildest dreams. She and Emily lounged about their
bright, warm apartments, these winter mornings, until nine o'clock,
lingered over their breakfast--talking, talking and talking, until
the dining-room clock struck a silvery, sweet eleven; and perhaps
drifted into Miss Ella's room for more talk, or amused themselves
with Chow Yew's pidgin English, while he filled vases in one of the
pantries. At twelve o'clock they went up to dress for the one
o'clock luncheon, an elaborate meal at which Mrs. Saunders
plaintively commented on the sauce Bechamel, Ella reviled the cook,
and Kenneth, if he was present, drank a great deal of some charged
water from a siphon, or perhaps made Lizzie or Carrie nearly leap
out of their skins by a sudden, terrifying inquiry why Miss Brown
hadn't been served to salad before he was, or perhaps growled at
Emily a question as to what the girls had been talking about all
night long.
After luncheon, if Kenneth did not want the new motor-car, which was
supposed to be his particular affectation, the girls used it,
giggling in the tonneau at the immobility of Flornoy, the French
chauffeur; otherwise they drove behind the bays, and stopped at some
lovely home, standing back from the road behind a sweep of drive,
and an avenue of shady trees, for tea. Susan could take her part in
the tea-time gossip now, could add her surmises and comment to the
general gossip, and knew what the society weeklies meant when they
used initials, or alluded to a "certain prominent debutante recently
returned from an Eastern school."
As the season ripened, she and Emily went to four or five luncheons
every week, feminine affairs, with cards or matinee to follow.
Dinner invitations were more rare; there were men at the dinners,
and the risk of boring a partner with Emily's uninteresting little
personality was too great to be often taken. Her poor health served
both herself and her friends as an excuse. Ella went everywhere,
even to the debutante's affairs; but Emily was too entirely self-
centered to be popular.
She and Susan were a great deal alone. They chattered and laughed
together through shopping trips, luncheons at the clubs, matinees,
and trips home on the boat. They bought prizes for Ella's card-
parties, or engagement cups and wedding-presents for those fortunate
girls who claimed the center of the social stage now and then with
the announcement of their personal plans. They bought an endless
variety of pretty things for Emily, who prided herself on the fact
that she could not bear to have near her anything old or worn or
ugly. A thousand little reminders came to Emily wherever she went of
things without which she could not exist.
"What a darling chain that woman's wearing; let's go straight up to
Shreve's and look at chains," said Emily, on the boat; or "White-
bait! Here it is on this menu. I hadn't thought of it for months! Do
remind Mrs. Pullet to get some!" or "Can't you remember what it was
Isabel said that she was going to get? Don't you remember I said I
needed it, too?"
If Susan had purchases of her own to make, Emily could barely wait
with patience until they were completed, before adding:
"I think I'll have a pair of slippers, too. Something a little nicer
than that, please"; or "That's going to make up into a dear wrapper
for you, Sue," she would enthusiastically declare, "I ought to have
another wrapper, oughtn't I? Let's go up to Chinatown, and see some
of the big wadded ones at Sing Fat's. I really need one!"
Just before Christmas, Emily went to the southern part of the state
with a visiting cousin from the East, and Susan gladly seized the
opportunity for a little visit at home. She found herself strangely
stirred when she went in, from the bright winter sunshine, to the
dingy, odorous old house, encountering the atmosphere familiar to
her from babyhood, and the unaltered warm embraces of Mary Lou and
her aunt. Before she had hung up her hat and coat, she was swept
again into the old ways, listening, while she changed her dress, to
Mary Lou's patient complaints and wistful questions, slipping out to
the bakery just before dinner to bring home a great paper-bag of hot
rolls, and ending the evening, after a little shopping expedition to
Fillmore Street, with solitaire at the dining-room table. The
shabbiness and disorder and a sort of material sordidness were more
marked than ever, but Susan was keenly conscious of some subtle,
touching charm, unnoticed heretofore, that seemed to flavor the old
environment to-night. They were very pure and loving and loyal, her
aunt and cousins, very practically considerate and tender toward
each other, despite the flimsy fabric of their absurd dreams; very
good, in the old-fashioned sense of the term, if not very successful
or very clever.
They made much of her coming, rejoiced over her and kissed her as if
she never had even in thought neglected them, and exulted innocently
in the marvelous delights of her new life. Georgie was driven over
from the Mission by her husband, the next day, in Susan's honor, and
carried the fat, loppy baby in for so brief a visit that it was felt
hardly worth while to unwrap and wrap up again little Myra Estelle.
Mrs. Lancaster had previously, with a burst of tears, informed Susan
that Georgie was looking very badly, and that, nursing that heavy
child, she should have been spared more than she was by the doctor's
mother and the old servant. But Susan, although finding the young
mother pale and rather excited, thought that Georgie looked well,
and admired with the others her heavy, handsome new suit and the
over-trimmed hat that quite eclipsed her small face. The baby was
unmanageable, and roared throughout the visit, to Georgie's
distress.
"She never cries this way at home!" protested young Mrs. O'Connor.
"Give her some ninny," Mrs. Lancaster suggested, eagerly, but
Georgie, glancing at the street where Joe was holding the restless
black horse in check, said nervously that Joe didn't like it until
the right time. She presently went out to hand Myra to Susan while
she climbed into place, and was followed by a scream from Mrs.
Lancaster, who remarked later that seeing the black horse start just
as Susan handed the child up, she had expected to see them all
dashed to pieces.
"Well, Susan, light of my old eyes, had enough of the rotten rich?"
asked William Oliver, coming in for a later dinner, on the first
night of her visit, and jerking her to him for a resounding kiss
before she had any idea of his intention.
"Billy!" Susan said, mildly scandalized, her eyes on her aunt.
"Well, well, what's all this!" Mrs. Lancaster remarked, without
alarm. William, shaking out his napkin, drawing his chair up to the
table, and falling upon his dinner with vigor, demanded:
"Come on, now! Tell us all, all!"
But Susan, who had been chattering fast enough from the moment of
her arrival, could not seem to get started again. It was indeed a
little difficult to continue an enthusiastic conversation,
unaffected by his running fire of comment. For in these days he was
drifting rapidly toward a sort of altruistic socialism, and so
listened to her recital with sardonic smiles, snorts of scorn, and
caustic annotations.
"The Carters--ha! That whole bunch ought to be hanged," Billy
remarked. "All their money comes from the rents of bad houses, and--
let me tell you something, when there was a movement made to buy up
that Jackson Street block, and turn it into a park, it was old
Carter, yes, and his wife, too, who refused to put a price on their
property!"
"Oh, Billy, you don't KNOW that!"
"I don't? All right, maybe I don't," Mr. Oliver returned growlingly
to his meal, only to break out a moment later, "The Kirkwoods! Yes;
that's a rare old bunch! They're still holding the city to the
franchise they swindled the Government out of, right after the Civil
War! Every time you pay taxes--"
"I don't pay taxes!" Susan interrupted frivolously, and resumed her
glowing account. Billy made no further contribution to the
conversation until he asked some moments later, "Does old Brock ever
tell you about his factories, while he's taking you around his
orchid-house? There's a man a week killed there, and the foremen
tell the girls when they hire them that they aren't expected to take
care of themselves on the wages they get!"
But the night before her return to San Rafael, Mr. Oliver, in his
nicest mood, took Susan to the Orpheum, and they had fried oysters
and coffee in a little Fillmore Street restaurant afterward, Billy
admitting with graceful frankness that funds were rather low, and
Susan really eager for the old experience and the old sensations.
Susan liked the brotherly, clumsy way in which he tried to
ascertain, as they sat loitering and talking over the little meal,
just how much of her thoughts still went to Peter Coleman, and
laughed outright, as soon as she detected his purpose, as only an
absolutely heart-free girl could laugh, and laid her hand over his
for a little appreciative squeeze before they dismissed the subject.
After that he told her of some of his own troubles, the great burden
of the laboring classes that he felt rested on his particular back,
and his voice rose and he pounded the table as he talked of the
other countries of the world, where even greater outrages, or where
experimental solutions were in existence. Susan brought the
conversation to Josephine Carroll, and watched his whole face grow
tender, and heard his voice soften, as they spoke of her.
"No; but is it really and truly serious this time, Bill?" she asked,
with that little thrill of pain that all good sisters know when the
news comes.
"Serious? GOSH!" said the lover, simply.
"Engaged?"
"No-o. I couldn't very well. I'm in so deep at the works that I may
get fired any minute. More than that, the boys generally want me to
act as spokesman, and so I'm a sort of marked card, and I mightn't
get in anywhere else, very easily. And I couldn't ask Jo to go with
me to some Eastern factory or foundry town, without being pretty
sure of a job. No; things are just drifting."
"Well, but Bill," Susan said anxiously, "somebody else will step in
if you don't! Jo's such a beauty--"
He turned to her almost with a snarl.
"Well, what do you want me to do? Steal?" he asked angrily. And then
softening suddenly he added: "She's young,--the little queen of
queens!"
"And yet you say you don't want money," Susan said, drily, with a
shrug of her shoulders.
The next day she went back to Emily, and again the lazy, comfortable
days began to slip by, one just like the other. At Christmas-time
Susan was deluged with gifts, the holidays were an endless chain of
good times, the house sweet with violets, and always full of guests
and callers; girls in furs who munched candy as they chattered, and
young men who laughed and shouted around the punch bowl. Susan and
Emily were caught in a gay current that streamed to the club, to
talk and drink eggnog before blazing logs, and streamed to one
handsome home after another, to talk and drink eggnog before other
fires, and to be shown and admire beautiful and expensive presents.
They bundled in and out of carriages and motors, laughing as they
crowded in, and sitting on each other's laps, and carrying a chorus
of chatter and laughter everywhere. Susan would find herself, the
inevitable glass in hand, talking hard to some little silk-clad old
lady in some softly lighted lovely drawing-room, to be whisked away
to some other drawing-room, and to another fireside, where perhaps
there was a stocky, bashful girl of fourteen to amuse, or somebody's
grandfather to interest and smile upon.
Everywhere were holly wreaths and lights, soft carpets, fires and
rich gowns, and everywhere the same display of gold picture frames
and silver plates, rock crystal bowls, rugs and cameras and mahogany
desks and tables, furs and jeweled chains and rings. Everywhere were
candies from all over the world, and fruitcake from London, and
marrons and sticky candied fruit, and everywhere unobtrusive maids
were silently offering trays covered with small glasses.
Susan was frankly sick when the new year began, and Emily had
several heart and nerve attacks, and was very difficult to amuse.
But both girls agreed that the holidays had been the "time of their
lives."
It was felt by the Saunders family that Susan had shown a very
becoming spirit in the matter of the Browning dances. Ella, who had
at first slightly resented the fact that "Brownie" had chosen to
honor Emily's paid companion in so signal a manner, had gradually
shifted to the opinion that, in doing so, he had no more than
confirmed the family's opinion of Susan Brown, after all, and shown
a very decent discrimination.
"No EARTHLY reason why you shouldn't have accepted!" said Ella.
"Oh, Duchess," said Susan, who sometimes pleased her with this name,
"fancy the talk!"
"Well," drawled Ella, resuming her perusal of a scandalous weekly,
"I don't know that I'm afraid of talk, myself!"
"At the same time, El," Emily contributed, eagerly, "you know what a
fuss they made when Vera Brock brought that Miss De Foe, of New
York!"
Ella gave her little sister a very keen look,
"Vera Brock?" she said, dreamily, with politely elevated brows.
"Well, of course, I don't take the Brocks seriously--" Emily began,
reddening.
"Well, I should hope you wouldn't, Baby!" answered the older sister,
promptly and forcibly. "Don't make an UTTER fool of yourself!"
Emily retired into an enraged silence, and a day or two later, Ella,
on a Sunday morning late in February, announced that she was going
to chaperone both the girls to the Browning dance on the following
Friday night.
Susan was thrown into a most delightful flutter, longing desperately
to go, but chilled with nervousness whenever she seriously thought
of it. She lay awake every night anxiously computing the number of
her possible partners, and came down to breakfast every morning cold
with the resolution that she would make a great mistake in exposing
herself to possible snubbing and neglect. She thought of nothing but
the Browning, listened eagerly to what the other girls said of it,
her heart sinking when Louise Chickering observed that there never
were men enough at the Brownings, and rising again when Alice
Chauncey hardily observed that, if a girl was a good dancer, that
was all that mattered, she couldn't help having a good time! Susan
knew she danced well--
However, Emily succumbed on Thursday to a heart attack. The whole
household went through its usual excitement, the doctor came, the
nurse was hurriedly summoned, Susan removed all the smaller articles
from Emily's room, and replaced the bed's flowery cover with a
sheet, the invalid liking the hospital aspect. Susan was not very
much amazed at the suddenness of this affliction; Emily had been
notably lacking in enthusiasm about the dance, and on Wednesday
afternoon, Ella having issued the casual command, "See if you can't
get a man or two to dine with us at the hotel before the dance,
Emily; then you girls will be sure of some partners, anyway!" Emily
had spent a discouraging hour at the telephone.
"Hello, George!" Susan had heard her say gaily. "This is Emily
Saunders. George, I rang up because--you know the Browning is Friday
night, and Ella's giving me a little dinner at the Palace before it-
-and I wondered--we're just getting it up hurriedly--" An interval
of silence on Emily's part would follow, then she would resume,
eagerly, "Oh, certainly! I'm sorry, but of course I understand. Yes,
indeed; I'll see you Friday night--" and the conversation would be
ended.
And, after a moment of silence, she would call another number, and
go through the little conversation again. Susan, filled with
apprehensions regarding her own partners, could not blame Emily for
the heart attack, and felt a little vague relief on her own account.
Better sure at home than sorry in the dreadful brilliance of a
Browning ball!
"I'm afraid this means no dance!" murmured Emily, apologetically.
"As if I cared, Emmy Lou!" Susan reassured her cheerfully.
"Well, I don't think you would have had a good time, Sue!" Emily
said, and the topic of the dance was presumably exhausted.
But when Ella got home, the next morning, she reopened the question
with some heat. Emily could do exactly as Emily pleased, declared
Ella, but Susan Brown should and would come to the last Browning.
"Oh, please, Duchess--!" Susan besought her.
"Very well, Sue, if you don't, I'll make that kid so sorry she ever-
-"
"Oh, please!--And beside--" said Susan, "I haven't anything to wear!
So that DOES settle it!" '
"What were you going to wear?" demanded Ella, scowling.
"Em said she'd lend me her white lace."
"Well, that's all right! Gerda'll fix it for you--"
"But Emily sent it back to Madame Leonard yesterday afternoon. She
wanted the sash changed," Susan hastily explained.
"Well, she's got other gowns," Ella said, with a dangerous glint in
her eyes. "What about that thing with the Persian embroidery? What
about the net one she wore to Isabel's?"
"The net one's really gone to pieces, Duchess. It was a flimsy sort
of thing, anyway. And the Persian one she's only had on twice. When
we were talking about it Monday she said she'd rather I didn't--"
"Oh, she did? D'ye hear that, Mama?" Ella asked, holding herself in
check. "And what about the chiffon?"
"Well, Ella, she telephoned Madame this morning not to hurry with
that, because she wasn't going to the dance."
"Was she going to wear it?"
"Well, no. But she telephoned Madame just the same--I don't know why
she did," Susan smiled. "But what's the difference?" she ended
cheerfully.
"Quite a Flora McFlimsey!" said Mrs. Saunders, with her nervous,
shrill little laugh, adding eagerly to the now thoroughly aroused
Ella. "You know Baby doesn't really go about much, Totty; she hasn't
as many gowns as you, dear!"
"Now, look here, Mama," Ella said, levelly, "if we can manage to get
Susan something to wear, well and good; but--if that rotten,
selfish, nasty kid has really spoiled this whole thing, she'll be
sorry! That's all. I'd try to get a dress in town, if it wasn't so
late! As it is I'll telephone Madame about the Persian--"
"Oh, honestly, I couldn't! If Emily didn't want me to!" Susan began,
scarlet-cheeked.
"I think you're all in a conspiracy to drive me crazy!" Ella said
angrily. "Emily shall ask you just as nicely as she knows how, to
wear--"
"Totty, she's SICK!" pleaded Emily's mother.
"Sick! She's chock-full of poison because she never knows when to
stop eating," said Kenneth, with fraternal gallantry. He returned to
his own thoughts, presently adding, "Why don't you borrow a dress
from Isabel?"
"Isabel?" Ella considered it, brightened. "Isabel Wallace," she
said, in sudden approval. "That's exactly what I'll do!" And she
swept magnificently to the little telephone niche near the dining-
room door. "Isabel," said she, a moment later, "this is Mike--"
So Susan went to the dance. Miss Isabel Wallace sent over a great
box of gowns from which she might choose the most effective, and
Emily, with a sort of timid sullenness, urged her to go. Ella and
her charge went into town in the afternoon, and loitered into the
club for tea. Susan, whose color was already burning high, and whose
eyes were dancing, fretted inwardly at Ella's leisurely enjoyment of
a second and a third sup. It was nearly six o'clock, it was after
six! Ella seemed willing to delay indefinitely, waiting on the
stairs of the club for a long chat with a passing woman, and
lingering with various friends in the foyer of the great hotel.
But finally they were in the big bedrooms, with Clemence, Ella's
maid, in eager and interested attendance. Clemence had laid Susan's
delicious frills and laces out upon the bed; Susan's little wrapper
was waiting her; there was nothing to do now but plunge into the joy
of dressing. A large, placid person known to Susan vaguely as the
Mrs. Keith, who had been twice divorced, had the room next to Ella,
and pretty Mary Peacock, her daughter, shared Susan's room. The
older ladies, assuming loose wrappers, sat gossiping over cocktails
and smoking cigarettes, and Mary and Susan seized the opportunity to
monopolize Clemence. Clemence arranged Susan's hair, pulling,
twisting, flinging hot masses over the girl's face, inserting pins
firmly, loosening strands with her hard little French fingers. Susan
had only occasional blinded glimpses of her face, one temple bare
and bald, the other eclipsed like a gipsy's.
"Look here, Clemence, if I don't like it, out it comes!" she said.
"Mais, certainement, ca va sans dire!" Clemence agreed serenely.
Mary Peacock, full of amused interest, watched as she rubbed her
face and throat with cold cream.
"I wish I had your neck and shoulders, Miss Brown," said Miss
Peacock. "I get so sick of high-necked gowns that I'd almost rather
stay home!"
"Why, you're fatter than I am!" Susan exclaimed. "You've got lovely
shoulders!"
"Yes, darling!" Mary said, gushingly. "And I've got the sort of
blood that breaks out, in a hot room," she added after a moment,
"don't look so scared, it's nothing serious! But I daren't ever take
the risk of wearing a low gown!"
"But how did you get it?" ejaculated Susan. "Are you taking
something for it?"
"No, love," Mary continued, in the same, amused, ironic strain,
"because I've been traveling about, half my life, to get it cured,
Germany and France, everywhere! And there ain't no such animal!
Isn't it lovely?"
"But how did you get it?" Susan innocently persisted. Mary gave her
a look half exasperated and half warning; but, when Clemence had
stepped into the next room for a moment, she said:
"Don't be an utter fool! Where do you THINK I got it?
"The worst of it is," she went on pleasantly, as Clemence came back,
"that my father's married again, you know, to the sweetest little
thing you ever saw. An only girl, with four or five big brothers,
and her father a minister! Well--"
"Voici!" exclaimed the maid. And Susan faced herself in the mirror,
and could not resist a shamed, admiring smile. But if the smooth
rolls and the cunning sweeps and twists of bright hair made her
prettier than usual, Susan was hardly recognizable when the maid
touched lips and cheeks with color and eyebrows with her clever
pencil. She had thought her eyes bright before; now they had a
starry glitter that even their owner thought effective; her cheeks
glowed softly--
"Here, stop flirting with yourself, and put on your gown, it's after
eight!" Mary said, and Clemence slipped the fragrant beauty of silk
and lace over Susan's head, and knelt down to hook it, and pushed it
down over the hips, and tied the little cord that held the low
bodice so charmingly in place. Clemence said nothing when she had
finished, nor did Mary, nor did Ella when they presently joined Ella
to go downstairs, but Susan was satisfied. It is an unfortunate girl
indeed who does not think herself a beauty for one night at least in
her life; Susan thought herself beautiful tonight.
They joined the men in the Lounge, and Susan had to go out to
dinner, if not quite "on a man's arm," as in her old favorite books,
at least with her own partner, feeling very awkward, and conscious
of shoulders and hips as she did so. But she presently felt the
influence of the lights and music, and of the heating food and wine,
and talked and laughed quite at her ease, feeling delightfully like
a great lady and a great beauty. Her dinner partner presently asked
her for the "second" and the supper dance, and Susan, hoping that
she concealed indecent rapture, gladly consented. By just so much
was she relieved of the evening's awful responsibility. She did not
particularly admire this nice, fat young man, but to be saved from
visible unpopularity, she would gladly have danced with the waiter.
It was nearer eleven than ten o'clock when they sauntered through
various wide hallways to the palm-decorated flight of stairs that
led down to the ballroom. Susan gave one dismayed glance at the
brilliant sweep of floor as they descended.
"They're dancing!" she ejaculated,--late, and a stranger, what
chance had she!
"Gosh, you're crazy about it, aren't you?" grinned her partner, Mr.
Teddy Carpenter. "Don't you care, they've just begun. Want to finish
this with me?"
But Susan was greeting the host, who stood at the foot of the
stairs, a fat, good-natured little man, beaming at everyone out of
small twinkling blue eyes, and shaking hands with the debutantes
while he spoke to their mothers over their shoulders.
"Hello, Brownie!" Ella said, affectionately. "Where's everybody?"
Mr. Browning flung his fat little arms in the air.
"I don't know," he said, in humorous distress. "The girls appear to
be holding a meeting over there in the dressing-room, and the men
are in the smoker! I'm going to round 'em up! How do you do, Miss
Brown? Gad, you look so like your aunt,--and she WAS a beauty,
Ella!--that I could kiss you for it, as I did her once!"
"My aunt has black hair and brown eyes, Miss Ella, and weighs one
hundred and ninety pounds!" twinkled Susan.
"Kiss her again for that, Brownie, and introduce me," said a tall,
young man at the host's side easily. "I'm going to have this, aren't
I, Miss Brown? Come on, they're just beginning--"
Off went Susan, swept deliciously into the tide of enchanting music
and motion. She wasn't expected to talk, she had no time to worry,
she could dance well, and she did.
Kenneth Saunders came up in the pause before the dance was encored,
and asked for the "next but one,"--there were no cards at the
Brownings; all over the hall girls were nodding over their partners'
shoulders, in answer to questions, "Next, Louise?" "Next waltz--one
after that, then?" "I'm next, remember!"
Kenneth brought a bashful blonde youth with him, who instantly
claimed the next dance. He did not speak to Susan again until it was
over, when, remarking simply, "God, that was life!" he asked for the
third ensuing, and surrendered Susan to some dark youth unknown, who
said, "Ours? Now, don't say no, for there's suicide in my blood,
girl, and I'm a man of few words!"
"I am honestly all mixed up!" Susan laughed. "I think this is
promised--"
It didn't appear to matter. The dark young man took the next two,
and Susan found herself in the enchanting position of a person
reproached by disappointed partners. Perhaps there were disappointed
and unpopular girls at the dance, perhaps there was heart-burning
and disappointment and jealousy; she saw none of it. She was passed
from hand to hand, complimented, flirted with, led into the little
curtained niches where she could be told with proper gravity of the
feelings her wit and beauty awakened in various masculine hearts. By
twelve o'clock Susan wished that the ball would last a week, she was
borne along like a feather on its glittering and golden surface.
Ella was by this time passionately playing the new and fascinating
game of bridge whist, in a nearby room, but Browning was still busy,
and presently he came across the floor to Susan, and asked her for a
dance--an honor for which she was entirely unprepared, for he seldom
danced, and one that she was quick enough to accept at once.
"Perhaps you've promised the next?" said Browning.
"If I have," said the confident Susan, "I hereby call it off."
"Well," he said smilingly, pleased. And although he did not finish
the dance, and they presently sat down together, she knew that it
had been the evening's most important event.
"There's a man coming over from the club, later," said Mr. Browning,
"he's a wonderful fellow! Writer, and a sort of cousin of Ella
Saunders by the way, or else his wife is. He's just on from New
York, and for a sort of rest, and he may go on to Japan for his next
novel. Very remarkable fellow!"
"A writer?" Susan looked interested.
"Yes, you know him, of course. Bocqueraz--that's who it is!"
"Not Stephen Graham Bocqueraz!" ejaculated Susan, round-eyed.
"Yes--yes!" Mr. Browning liked her enthusiasm.
"But is he here?" Susan asked, almost reverently. "Why, I'm
perfectly crazy about his books!" she confided. "Why--why--he's
about the biggest there IS!"
"Yes, he writes good stuff," the man agreed. "Well, now, don't you
miss meeting him! He'll be here directly," his eyes roved to the
stairway, a few feet from where they were sitting. "Here he is now!"
said he. "Come now, Miss Brown---"
"Oh, honestly! I'm scared--I don't know what to say!" Susan said in
a panic. But Browning's fat little hand was firmly gripped over hers
and she went with him to meet the two or three men who were chatting
together as they came slowly, composedly, into the ball-room.
CHAPTER III
From among them she could instantly pick the writer, even though all
three were strangers, and although, from the pictures she had seen
of him, she had always fancied that Stephen Bocqueraz was a large,
athletic type of man, instead of the erect and square-built
gentleman who walked between the other two taller men. He was below
the average height, certainly, dark, clean-shaven, bright-eyed, with
a thin-lipped, wide, and most expressive mouth, and sleek hair so
black as to make his evening dress seem another color. He was
dressed with exquisite precision, and with one hand he constantly
adjusted and played with the round black-rimmed glasses that hung by
a silk ribbon about his neck. Susan knew him, at this time, to be
about forty-five, perhaps a little less. If her very first
impression was that he was both affected and well aware of his
attractiveness, her second conceded that here was a man who could
make any affectation charming, and not the less attractive because
he knew his value.
"And what do I do, Mr. Br-r-rowning," asked Mr. Bocqueraz with
pleasant precision, "when I wish to monopolize the company of a very
charming young lady, at a dance, and yet, not dancing, cannot ask
her to be my partner?"
"The next is the supper dance," suggested Susan, dimpling, "if it
isn't too bold to mention it!"
He flashed her an appreciative look, the first they had really
exchanged.
"Supper it is," he said gravely, offering her his arm. But Browning
delayed him for a few introductions first; and Susan stood watching
him, and thinking him very distinguished, and that to study a really
great man, so pleasantly at her ease, was very thrilling. Presently
he turned to her again, and they went in to supper; to Susan it was
all like an exciting dream. They chose a little table in the shallow
angle of a closed doorway, and watched the confusion all about them;
and Susan, warmed by the appreciative eyes so near her, found
herself talking quite naturally, and more than once was rewarded by
the writer's unexpected laughter. She asked him if Mrs. Bocqueraz
and his daughter were with him, and he said no, not on this
particular trip.
"Julie and her mother are in Europe," he said, with just a
suggestion of his Spanish grandfather in his clean-clipped speech.
"Julie left Miss Bence's School at seventeen, had a coming-out party
in our city house the following winter. Now it seems Europe is the
thing. Mrs. Bocqueraz likes to do things systematically, and she
told me, before Julie was out of the nursery, that she thought it
was very nice for a girl to marry in her second winter in society,
after a European trip. I have no doubt my daughter will announce her
engagement upon her return."
"To whom?" said Susan, laughing at his precise, re-signed tone.
"That I don't know," said Stephen Bocqueraz, with a twinkle in his
eye, "nor does Julie, I fancy. But undoubtedly her mother does!"
"Here is somebody coming over for a dance, I suppose!" he said after
a few moments, and Susan was flattered by the little hint of regret
in his tone. But the newcomer was Peter Coleman, and the emotion of
meeting him drove every other thought out of her head. She did not
rise, as she gave him her hand; the color flooded her face.
"Susan, you little turkey-buzzard--" It was the old Peter!--
"where've you been all evening? The next for me!"
"Mr. Bocqueraz, Mr. Coleman," Susan said, with composure, "Peter,
Mr. Stephen Graham Bocqueraz."
Even to Peter the name meant something.
"Why, Susan, you little grab-all!" he accused her vivaciously. "How
dare you monopolize a man like Mr. Bocqueraz for the whole supper
dance! I'll bet some of those women are ready to tear your eyes
out!"
"I've been doing the monopolizing," Mr. Bocqueraz said, turning a
rather serious look from Peter, to smile with sudden brightness at
Susan. "When I find a young woman at whose christening ALL the
fairies came to dance," he added, "I always do all the monopolizing
I can! However, if you have a prior claim--"
"But he hasn't!" Susan said, smilingly. "I'm engaged ten deep," she
added pleasantly to Peter. "Honestly, I haven't half a dance left! I
stole this."
"Why, I won't stand for it," Peter said, turning red.
"Come, it seems to me Mr. Coleman deserves something!" Stephen
Bocqueraz smiled. And indeed Peter looked bigger and happier and
handsomer than ever.
"Not from me," Susan persisted, quietly pleasant. Peter stood for a
moment or two, not quite ready to laugh, not willing to go away.
Susan busied herself with her salad, stared dreamily across the
room. And presently he departed after exchanging a few commonplaces
with Bocqueraz.
"And what's the significance of all that?" asked the author when
they were alone again.
Susan had been wishing to make some sort of definite impression upon
Mr. Stephen Graham Bocqueraz; wishing to remain in his mind as
separated from the other women he had met to-night. Suddenly she saw
this as her chance, and she took him somewhat into her confidence.
She told him of her old office position, and of her aunt, and of
Peter, and that she was now Emily Saunders' paid companion, and here
only as a sort of Cinderella.
Never did any girl, flushing, dimpling, shrugging her shoulders over
such a recital, have a more appreciative listener. Stephen
Bocqueraz's sympathetic look met hers whenever she looked up; he
nodded, agreed, frowned thoughtfully or laughed outright. They sat
through the next dance, and through half the next, hidden in one of
the many diminutive "parlors" that surrounded the ball-room, and
when Susan was surrendered to an outraged partner she felt that she
and the great man were fairly started toward a real friendship, and
that these attractive boys she was dancing with were really very
young, after all.
"Remember Stephen Bocqueraz that Brownie introduced to you just
before supper?" asked Ella, as they went home, yawning, sleepy and
headachy, the next day. Ella had been playing cards through the
supper hour.
"Perfectly!" Susan answered, flushing and smiling.
"You must have made a hit," Ella remarked, "because--I'm giving him
a big dinner on Tuesday, at the Palace--and when I talked to him he
asked if you would be there. Well, I'm glad you had a nice time,
kiddy, and we'll do it again!"
Susan had thanked her gratefully more than once, but she thanked her
again now. She felt that she truly loved Ella, so big and good
natured and kind.
Emily was a little bit cold when Susan told her about the ball, and
the companion promptly suppressed the details of her own successes,
and confined her recollections to the girls who had asked for Emily,
and to generalities. Susan put her wilting orchids in water, and
went dreamily through the next two or three days, recovering from
the pleasure and excitement. It was almost a week before Emily was
quite herself again; then, when Isabel Wallace came running in to
Emily's sick-room to beg Susan to fill a place at their dinner-table
at a few hours' notice, Susan's firm refusal quite won Emily's
friendship back.
"Isabel's a dear," said Emily, contentedly settling down with the
Indian bead-work in which she and Susan had had several lessons, and
with which they filled some spare time, "but she's not a leader. I
took you up, so now Isabel does! I knew--I felt sure that, if Ella
let you borrow that dress, Isabel would begin to patronize you!"
It was just one of Emily's nasty speeches, and Emily really wasn't
well, so Susan reminded herself, when the hot, angry color burned in
her face, and an angry answer came to her mind. What hurt most was
that it was partly true; Emily HAD taken her up, and, when she
ceased to be all that Emily required of sympathy and flattery and
interest, Emily would find someone else to fill Miss Brown's place.
Without Emily she was nobody, and it did not console Susan to
reflect that, had Emily's fortune been hers and Emily in her
position, the circumstances would be exactly reversed. Just the
accident of having money would have made Miss Brown the flattered
and admired, the safe and secure one; just the not having it would
have pushed Emily further even than Susan was from the world of
leisure and beauty and luxury.
"This world IS money!" thought Susan, when she saw the head-waiter
come forward so smilingly to meet Ella and herself at the Palm
Garden; when Leonard put off a dozen meekly enduring women to finish
Miss Emily Saunders' gown on time; when the very sexton at church
came hurrying to escort Mrs. Saunders and herself through the
disappointed crowds in the aisles, and establish them in, and lock
them in, the big empty pew. The newspapers gave half a column of
blame to the little girl who tried to steal a two-dollar scarf from
the Emporium, but there was nothing but admiration for Ella on the
day when she and a twenty-year-old boy, for a wager, led a woolly
white toy lamb, a lamb costing twenty-five dollars, through the
streets, from the club to the Palace Hotel. The papers were only
deeply interested and amused when Miss Elsa Chisholm gave a dinner
to six favorite riding-horses, who were entertained in the family
dining-room after a layer of tan-bark had been laid on the floor,
and fed by their owners from specially designed leather bags and
boxes; and they merely reported the fact that Miss Dolly Ripley had
found so unusual an intelligence in her gardener that she had deeded
to him her grandfather's eighty-thousand-dollar library. "He really
has ever so much better brains than I have, don't you know?" said
Miss Ripley to the press.
In return for the newspapers' indulgent attitude, however, they were
shown no clemency by the Saunders and the people of their set. On a
certain glorious, golden afternoon in May, Susan, twisting a card
that bore the name of Miss Margaret Summers, representing the
CHRONICLE, went down to see the reporter. The Saunders family hated
newspaper notoriety, but it was a favorite saying that since the
newspapers would print things anyway, they might as well get them
straight, and Susan often sent dinner or luncheon lists to the three
morning papers.
However, the young woman who rose when Susan went into the drawing-
room was not in search of news. Her young, pretty face was full of
distress.
"Miss Saunders?" asked she.
"I'm Miss Brown," Susan said. "Miss Saunders is giving a card-party
and I am to act for her."
Miss Summers, beginning her story, also began to cry. She was the
society editor, she explained, and two weeks before she had
described in her column a luncheon given by Miss Emily Saunders.
Among the list of guests she had mentioned Miss Carolyn Seymour.
"Not Carolyn Seymour!" said Susan, shocked. "Why, she never is here!
The Seymours---" she shook her head. "I know people do accept them,"
said Susan, "but the Saunders don't even know them! They're not in
the best set, you know, they're really hardly in society at all!"
"I know NOW," Miss Summers said miserably. "But all the other girls-
-this year's debutantes--were there, and I had to guess at most of
the names, and I chanced it! Fool that I was!" she interrupted
herself bitterly. "Well, the next day, while I was in the office, my
telephone rang. It was Thursday, and I had my Sunday page to do, and
I was just RUSHING, and I had a bad cold,--I've got it yet. So I
just said, 'What is it?' rather sharply, you know, and a voice said,
in a businesslike sort of way, 'How did you happen to put Miss
Carolyn Seymour's name on Miss Emily Saunders' lunch list?' I never
dreamed that it was Miss Saunders; how should I? She didn't say 'I'
or 'me' or anything--just that. So I said, 'Well, is it a matter of
international importance?'"
"Ouch!" said Susan, wincing, and shaking a doubtful head.
"I know, it was awful!" the other girl agreed eagerly. "But--" her
anxious eyes searched Susan's face. "Well; so the next day Mr. Brice
called me into the office, and showed me a letter from Miss Ella
Saunders, saying--" and Miss Summers began to cry again. "And I
can't tell Mamma!" she sobbed. "My brother's been so ill, and I was
so proud of my position!"
"Do you mean they--FIRED you?" Susan asked, all sympathy.
"He said he'd have to!" gulped Miss Summers, with a long sniff. "He
said that Saunders and Babcock advertise so much with them, and
that, if she wasn't appeased somehow--"
"Well, now, I'll tell you," said Susan, ringing for tea, "I'll wait
until Miss Saunders is in a good mood, and then I'll do the very
best I can for you. You know, a thing like that seems small, but
it's just the sort of thing that is REALLY important," she pursued,
consolingly. She had quite cheered her caller before the tea-cups
were emptied, but she was anything but hopeful of her mission
herself.
And Ella justified her misgivings when the topic was tactfully
opened the next day.
"I'm sorry for the little thing," said Ella, briskly, "but she
certainly oughtn't to have that position if she doesn't know better
than that! Carolyn Seymour in this house--I never heard of such a
thing! I was denying it all the next day at the club and it's
extremely unpleasant. Besides," added Ella, reddening, "she was
extremely impertinent about it when I telephoned---"
"Duchess, she didn't dream it was you! She only said that she didn't
know it was so important---" Susan pleaded.
"Well," interrupted Miss Saunders, in a satisfied and final tone,
"next time perhaps she WILL know who it is, and whether it is
important or not! Sue, while you're there at the desk," she added,
"will you write to Mrs. Bergess, Mrs. Gerald Florence Bergess, and
tell her that I looked at the frames at Gump's for her prizes, and
they're lovely, from fourteen up, and that I had him put three or
four aside---"
After the dance Peter began to call rather frequently at "High
Gardens," a compliment which Emily took entirely to herself, and to
escort the girls about on their afternoon calls, or keep them and
Ella, and the old mistress of the house as well, laughing throughout
the late and formal dinner. Susan's reserve and her resolutions
melted before the old charm; she had nothing to gain by snubbing
him; it was much pleasanter to let by-gones be by-gones, and enjoy
the moment. Peter had every advantage; if she refused him her
friendship a hundred other girls were only too eager to fill her
place, so she was gay and companionable with him once more, and
extracted a little fresh flavor from the friendship in Emily's
unconsciousness of the constant interchange of looks and inflections
that went on between Susan and Peter over her head. Susan sometimes
thought of Mrs. Carroll's old comment on the popularity of the
absorbed and busy girl when she realized that Peter was trying in
vain to find time for a personal word with her, or was resenting her
interest in some other caller, while she left Emily to him. She was
nearer to Peter than ever, a thousand times more sure of herself,
and, if she would still have married him, she was far less fond of
him than she had been years ago.
Susan asked him some questions, during one idle tea-time, of Hunter,
Baxter & Hunter. His uncle had withdrawn from the firm now, he told
her, adding with characteristic frankness that in his opinion "the
old guy got badly stung." The Baxter home had been sold to a club;
the old people had found the great house too big for them and were
established now in one of the very smartest of the new apartment
houses that were beginning to be built in San Francisco. Susan
called, with Emily, upon Mrs. Baxter, and somehow found the old
lady's personality as curiously shrunk, in some intangible way, as
was her domestic domain in actuality. Mrs. Baxter, cackling
emphatically and disapprovingly of the world in general, fussily
accompanying them to the elevator, was merely a rather tiresome and
pitiful old woman, very different from the delicate little grande
dame of Susan's recollection. Ella reported the Baxter fortune as
sadly diminished, but there were still maids and the faithful Emma;
there were still the little closed carriage and the semi-annual trip
to Coronado. Nor did Peter appear to have suffered financially in
any way; although Mrs. Baxter had somewhat fretfully confided to the
girls that his uncle had suggested that it was time that Peter stood
upon his own feet; and that Peter accordingly had entered into
business relations with a certain very wealthy firm of grain
brokers. Susan could not imagine Peter as actively involved in any
very lucrative deals, but Peter spent a great deal of money, never
denied himself anything, and took frequent and delightful vacations.
He took Emily and Susan to polo and tennis games, and, when the
season at the hotel opened, they went regularly to the dances. In
July Peter went to Tahoe, where Mrs. Saunders planned to take the
younger girls later for at least a few weeks' stay. Ella chaperoned
them to Burlingame for a week of theatricals; all three staying with
Ella's friend, Mrs. Keith, whose daughter, Mary Peacock, had also
Dolly Ripley and lovely Isabel Wallace for her guests. Little
Constance Fox, visiting some other friends nearby, was in constant
attendance upon Miss Ripley, and Susan thought the relationship
between them an extraordinary study; Miss Ripley bored, rude,
casual, and Constance increasingly attentive, eager, admiring.
"When are you going to come and spend a week with me?" drawled Miss
Ripley to Susan.
"You'll have the loveliest time of your life!" Connie added,
brilliantly. "Be sure you ask me for that week, Dolly!"
"We'll write you about it," Miss Ripley said lazily, and Constance,
putting the best face she could upon the little slight, slapped her
hand playfully, and said:
"Oh, aren't you mean!"
"Dolly takes it so for granted that I'm welcome at her house at ANY
time," said Constance to Susan, later, "that she forgets how rude a
thing like that can sound!" She had followed Susan into her own
room, and now stood by the window, looking down a sun-steeped vista
of lovely roads and trees and gardens with a discontented face.
Susan, changing her dress for an afternoon on the tennis-courts,
merely nodded sympathetically.
"Lord, I would like to go this afternoon!" added Constance,
presently.
"Aren't you going over for the tennis?" Susan asked in amazement.
For the semi-finals of the tournament were to be played on this
glorious afternoon, and there would be a brilliant crowd on the
courts and tea at the club to follow.
"No; I can't!" Miss Fox said briefly. "Tell everyone that I'm lying
down with a terrible headache, won't you?"
"But why?" asked Susan. For the headache was obviously a fiction.
"You know that mustard-colored linen with the black embroidery that
Dolly's worn once or twice, don't you?" asked Connie, with apparent
irrelevancy.
Susan nodded, utterly at a loss.
"Well, she gave it to me to-day, and the hat and the parasol," said
Constance, with a sort of resigned bitterness. "She said she had got
the outfit at Osbourne's, last month, and she thought it would look
stunning on me, and wouldn't I like to wear it to the club this
afternoon?"
"Well--?" Susan said, as the other paused. "Why not?"
"Oh, why not!" echoed Connie, with mild exasperation. "Don't be a
damned fool!"
"Oh, I see!" Susan said, enlightened. "Everybody knows it's Miss
Ripley's, of course! She probably didn't think of that!"
"She probably did!" responded Connie, with a rather dry laugh.
"However, the fact remains that she'll take it out of me if I go and
don't wear it, and Mamma never will forgive me if I do! So, I came
in to borrow a book. Of course, Susan, I've taken things from Dolly
Ripley before, and I probably will again," she added, with the
nearest approach to a sensible manner that Susan had ever seen in
her, "but this is going a little TOO far!"
And, borrowing a book, she departed, leaving Susan to finish her
dressing in a very sober frame of mind. She wondered if her
relationship toward Emily could possibly impress any outsider as
Connie's attitude toward Dolly Ripley impressed her.
With Isabel Wallace she began, during this visit, the intimate and
delightful friendship for which they two had been ready for a long
time. Isabel was two years older than Susan, a beautiful, grave-eyed
brunette, gracious in manner, sweet of voice, the finest type that
her class and environment can produce. Isabel was well read,
musical, traveled; she spoke two or three languages besides her
mother tongue. She had been adored all her life by three younger
brothers, by her charming and simple, half-invalid mother, and her
big, clever father, and now, all the girls were beginning to
suspect, was also adored by the very delightful Eastern man who was
at present Mrs. Butler Holmes' guest in Burlingame, and upon whom
all of them had been wasting their prettiest smiles. John Furlong
was college-bred, young, handsome, of a rich Eastern family, in
every way a suitable husband for the beautiful woman with whom he
was so visibly falling in love.
Susan watched the little affair with a heartache, not all unworthy.
She didn't quite want to be Isabel, or want a lover quite like John.
But she did long for something beautiful and desirable all her own;
it was hard to be always the outsider, always alone. When she
thought of Isabel's father and mother, their joy in her joy, her own
pleasure in pleasing them, a thrill of pain shook her. If Isabel was
all grateful, all radiant, all generous, she, Susan, could have been
graceful and radiant and generous too! She lay awake in the soft
summer nights, thinking of what John would say to Isabel, and what
Isabel, so lovely and so happy, would reply.
"Sue, you will know how wonderful it is when it comes to you!"
Isabel said, on the last night of their Burlingame visit, when she
gave Susan a shy hint that it was "all RIGHT," if a profound secret
still.
The girls did not stay for the theatricals, after all. Emily was
deeply disgusted at being excluded from some of the ensembles in
which she had hoped to take part and, on the very eve of the
festivities, she became alarmingly ill, threw Mrs. Keith's household
into utter consternation and confusion, and was escorted home
immediately by Susan and a trained nurse.
Back at "High Gardens," they settled down contentedly enough to the
familiar routine. Emily spent two-thirds of the time in bed, but
Susan, fired by Isabel Wallace's example, took regular exercises
now, airing the dogs or finding commissions to execute for Emily or
Mrs. Saunders, made radical changes in her diet, and attempted, with
only partial success, to confine her reading to improving books. A
relative had sent Emily the first of the new jig-saw puzzles from
New York, and Emily had immediately wired for more. She and Susan
spent hours over them; they became in fact an obsession, and Susan
began to see jig-saw divisions: in everything her eye rested on; the
lawn, the clouds, or the drawing-room walls.
Sometimes Kenneth joined them, and Susan knew that it was on her
account. She was very demure with him; her conversation for Emily,
her eyes all sisterly unembarrassment when they met his. Mrs.
Saunders was not well, and kept to her room, so that more than once
Susan dined alone with the man of the house. When this happened
Kenneth would bring his chair down from the head of the table and
set it next to hers. He called her "Tweeny" for some favorite
character in a play, brought her some books she had questioned him
about, asked her casually, on the days she went to town for Emily,
at what time she would come back, and joined her on the train.
Susan had thought of him as a husband, as she thought of every
unattached man, the instant she met him. But the glamour of those
early views of Kenneth Saunders had been somewhat dimmed, and since
her arrival at "High Gardens" she had tried rather more not to
displease this easily annoyed member of the family, than to make a
definite pleasant impression upon him. Now, however, she began
seriously to consider him. And it took her a few brief moments only
to decide that, if he should ask her, she would be mad to refuse to
become his wife. He was probably as fine a match as offered itself
at the time in all San Francisco's social set, good-looking, of a
suitable age, a gentleman, and very rich. He was so rich and of so
socially prominent a family that his wife need never trouble herself
with the faintest thought of her own standing; it would be an
established fact, supreme and irrefutable. Beside him Peter Coleman
was a poor man, and even Isabel's John paled socially and
financially. Kenneth Saunders would be a brilliant "catch" for any
girl; for little Susan Brown--it would be a veritable triumph!
Susan's heart warmed as she thought of the details. There would be a
dignified announcement from Mrs. Saunders. Then,--Babel!
Telephoning, notes, telegrams! Ella would of course do the correct
thing; there would be a series of receptions and dinners; there
would be formal affairs on all sides. The newspapers would seize
upon it; the family jewels would be reset; the long-stored silver
resurrected. There would be engagement cups and wedding-presents,
and a trip East, and the instant election of young Mrs. Saunders to
the Town and Country Club. And, in all the confusion, the graceful
figure of the unspoiled little companion would shine serene, poised,
gracious, prettily deferential to both the sisters-in-law of whom
she now, as a matron, took precedence.
Kenneth Saunders was no hero of romance; he was at best a little
silent and unresponsive; he was a trifle bald; his face, Susan had
thought at first sight, indicated weakness and dissipation. But it
was a very handsome face withal, and, if silent, Kenneth could be
very dignified and courteous in his manner; "very much the
gentleman," Susan said to herself, "always equal to the situation"!
Other things, more serious things, she liked to think she was woman
of the world enough to condone. He drank to excess, of course; no
woman could live in the same house with him and remain unaware of
that; Susan had often heard him raging in the more intense stages
approaching delirium tremens. There had been other things, too;--
women, but Susan had only a vague idea of just what that meant, and
Kenneth's world resolutely made light of it.
"Ken's no molly-coddle!" Ella had said to her complacently, in
connection with this topic, and one of Ella's closest friends had
added, "Oh, Heaven save me from ever having one of my sons afraid to
go out and do what the other boys do. Let 'em sow their wild oats,
they're all the sooner over it!"
So Susan did not regard this phase of his nature very seriously.
Indeed his mother often said wailingly that, if Kenneth could only
find some "fine girl," and settle down, he would be the steadiest
and best fellow in the world. It was Mrs. Saunders who elucidated
the last details of a certain episode of Kenneth's early life for
Susan. Emily had spoken of it, and Ella had once or twice alluded to
it, but from them Susan only gathered that Kenneth, in some
inexplicable and outrageous way, had been actually arrested for
something that was not in the least his fault, and held as a witness
in a murder case. He had been but twenty-two years old at the time,
and, as his sisters indignantly agreed, it had ruined his life for
years following, and Ken should have sued the person or persons who
had dared to involve the son of the house of Saunders in so
disgraceful and humiliating an affair.
"It was in one of those bad houses, my dear," Mrs. Saunders finally
contributed, "and poor Ken was no worse than the thousands of other
men who frequent 'em! Of course, it's terrible from a woman's point
of view, but you know what men are! And when this terrible thing
happened, Ken wasn't anywhere near--didn't know one thing about it
until a great big brute of a policeman grabbed hold of his arm---!
And of course the newspapers mentioned my poor boy's name in
connection with it, far and wide!"
After that Kenneth had gone abroad for a long time, and whether the
trained nurse who had at that time entered his life was really a
nurse, or whether she had merely called herself one, Susan could not
quite ascertain. Either the family had selected this nurse, to take
care of Kenneth who was not well at the time, or she had joined him
later and traveled with him as his nurse. Whatever it was, the
association had lasted two or three years, and then Kenneth had come
home, definitely disenchanted with women in general and woman in
particular, and had settled down into the silent, cynical,
unresponsive man that Susan knew. If he ever had any experiences
whatever with the opposite sex they were not of a nature to be
mentioned before his sisters and his mother. He scorned all the
women of Ella's set, and was bitingly critical of Emily's friends.
One night, lying awake, Susan thought that she heard a dim commotion
from the direction of the hallway--Kenneth's voice, Ella's voice,
high and angry, some unfamiliar feminine voice, hysterical and
shrill, and Mrs. Saunders, crying out: "Tottie, don't speak that way
to Kennie!"
But before she could rouse herself fully, Mycroft's soothing tones
drowned out the other voices; there was evidently a truce. The
episode ended a few moments later with the grating of carriage
wheels on the drive far below, and Susan was not quite sure, the
next morning, that it had been more than a dream.
But Kenneth's history, summed up, was not a bit less edifying, was
not indeed half as unpleasant, as that of many of the men, less rich
and less prominent than he, who were marrying lovely girls
everywhere, with the full consent and approval of parents and
guardians. Susan had seen the newspaper accounts of the debauch that
preceded young Harry van Vleet's marriage only by a few hours; had
seen the bridegroom, still white-faced and shaking, lead away from
the altar one of the sweetest of the debutantes. She had heard Rose
St. John's mother say pleasantly to Rose's promised husband, "I
asked your Chinese boy about those little week-end parties at your
bungalow, Russell; I said, 'Yoo, were they pretty ladies Mr. Russ
used to have over there?' But he only said 'No can 'member!'"
"That's where his wages go up!" the gentleman had responded
cheerfully.
And, after all, Susan thought, looking on, Russell Lord was not as
bad as the oldest Gerald boy, who married an Eastern girl, an
heiress and a beauty, in spite of the fact that his utter unfitness
for marriage was written plain in his face; or as bad as poor Trixie
Chauncey's husband, who had entirely disappeared from public view,
leaving the buoyant Trixie to reconcile two infant sons to the
unknown horrors and dangers of the future.
If Kenneth drank, after his marriage, Mycroft would take care of
him, as he did now; but Susan honestly hoped that domesticity, for
which Kenneth seemed to have a real liking, would affect him in
every way for good. She had not that horror of drink that had once
been hers. Everybody drank, before dinner, with dinner, after
dinner. It was customary to have some of the men brighten under it,
some overdo it, some remain quite sober in spite of it. Susan and
Emily, like all the girls they knew, frequently ordered cocktails
instead of afternoon tea, when, as it might happen, they were in the
Palace or the new St. Francis. The cocktails were served in tea-
cups, the waiter gravely passed sugar and cream with them; the
little deception was immensely enjoyed by everyone. "Two in a cup,
Martini," Emily would say, settling into her seat, and the waiter
would look deferentially at Susan, "The same, madam?"
It was a different world from her old world; it used a different
language, lived by another code. None of her old values held here;
things she had always thought quite permissible were unforgivable
sins; things at which Auntie would turn pale with horror were a
quietly accepted part of every-day life. No story was too bad for
the women to tell over their tea-cups, or in their boudoirs, but if
any little ordinary physical misery were alluded to, except in the
most flippant way, such as the rash on a child's stomach, or the
preceding discomforts of maternity, there was a pained and disgusted
silence, and an open snub, if possible, for the woman so crude as to
introduce the distasteful topic.
Susan saw good little women ostracized for the fact that their
husbands did not appear at ease in evening dress, for their evident
respect for their own butlers, or for their mere eagerness to get
into society. On the other hand, she saw warmly accepted and admired
the beautiful Mrs. Nokesmith, who had married her second husband the
day after her release from her first, and pretty Beulah Garrett,
whose father had swindled a hundred trusting friends out of their
entire capital, and Mrs. Lawrence Edwards, whose oldest son had just
had a marriage, contracted with a Barbary Coast woman while he was
intoxicated, canceled by law. Divorce and disease, and dishonesty
and insanity did not seem so terrible as they once had; perhaps
because they were never called by their real names. The insane were
beautifully cared for and safely out of sight; to disease no
allusion was ever made; dishonesty was carried on in mysterious
business avenues far from public inspection and public thought; and,
as Ella once pointed out, the happiest people in society were those
who had been married unhappily, divorced, and more fortunately mated
a second time. All the married women Ella knew had "crushes"--young
men who lounged in every afternoon for tea and cigarettes and
gossip, and filled chairs at dinner parties, and formed a background
in a theater box. Sometimes one or two matrons and their admirers,
properly chaperoned, or in safe numbers, went off on motoring trips,
and perhaps encountered, at the Del Monte or Santa Cruz hotels their
own husbands, with the women that they particularly admired. Nothing
was considered quite so pitiful as the wife who found this
arrangement at all distressing. "It's always all right," said Ella,
broadly, to Susan.
CHAPTER IV
In the autumn Susan went home for a week, for the Lancaster family
was convulsed by the prospect of Alfie's marriage to a little nobody
whose father kept a large bakery in the Mission, and Susan was
needed to brace Alfred's mother for the blow. Mary Lou's old admirer
and his little, invalid wife, were staying at the house now, and
Susan found "Ferd" a sad blow to her old romantic vision of him: a
stout, little, ruddy-cheeked man, too brilliantly dressed, with hair
turning gray, and an offensive habit of attacking the idle rich for
Susan's benefit, and dilating upon his own business successes.
Georgie came over to spend a night in the old home while Susan was
there, carrying the heavy, lumpy baby. Myra was teething now, cross
and unmanageable, and Georgie was worried because a barley
preparation did not seem to agree with her, and Joe disapproved of
patent foods. Joe hoped that the new baby--Susan widened her eyes.
Oh, yes, in May, Georgie announced simply, and with a tired sigh,--
Joe hoped the new baby would be a boy. She herself hoped for a
little girl, wouldn't it be sweet to call it May? Georgie looked
badly, and if she did not exactly break down and cry during her
visit, Susan felt that tears were always close behind her eyes.
Billy, beside her somewhat lachrymose aunt and cousins, shone out,
during this visit, as Susan had never known him to do before. He
looked splendidly big and strong and well, well groomed and erect in
carriage, and she liked the little compliment he paid her in
postponing the German lesson that should have filled the evening,
and dressing himself in his best to take her to the Orpheum. Susan
returned it by wearing her prettiest gown and hat. They set out in
great spirits, Susan chattering steadily, in the relief it was to
speak her mind honestly, and Billy listening, and now and then
shouting out in the laughter that never failed her spirited
narratives.
He told her of the Carrolls,--all good news, for Anna had been
offered a fine position as assistant matron in one of the best of
the city's surgical hospitals; Betts had sold a story to the
Argonaut for twelve dollars, and Philip was going steadily ahead;
"you wouldn't believe he was the same fellow!" said Billy. Jimmy and
Betts and their mother were to go up in a few days for a fortnight's
holiday in the little shooting-box that some Eastern friends had
built years ago in the Humboldt woods. The owners had left the key
with Mrs. Carroll, and she might use the little cabin as much as she
liked.
"And what about Jo?" Susan asked.
This was the best news of all. Jo was to go East for the winter with
one of her mother's friends, whose daughter was Jo's own age. They
were to visit Boston and Washington, New York for the Opera, Palm
Beach in February, and New Orleans for the Mardi Gras. Mrs.
Frothingham was a widow, and had a son at Yale, who would join them
for some of the holidays. Susan was absolutely delighted at the
news, and alluded to it over and over again.
"It's so different when people DESERVE a thing, and when it's all
new to them," she said to Billy, "it makes it seem so much more
glorious!"
They came out of the theater at eleven, cramped and blinking, and
Susan, confused for a moment, was trying to get her bearings, when
Billy touched her arm.
"The Earl of Somerset is trying to bow to you, Sue!"
She laughed, and followed the direction of his look. It was Stephen
Bocqueraz who was smiling at her, a very distinguished figure under
the lamp-post, with his fur-lined great-coat, his round tortoise-
shell eye-glasses and his silk hat. He came up to them at once, and
Susan, pleasantly conscious that a great many people recognized the
great man, introduced him to Billy.
He had just gotten back from a long visit in the Southern part of
the state, he said, and had been dining to-night with friends at the
Bohemian Club, and was walking back to his hotel. Susan could not
keep the pleasure the meeting gave her out of her eyes and voice,
and Billy showed a sort of boyish and bashful admiration of the
writer, too.
"But this--this is a very felicitous occasion," said Mr. Bocqueraz.
"We must celebrate this in some fitting manner!"
So he took them to supper, dismissing their hesitation as unworthy
of combat; Susan and Billy laughed helplessly and happily as they
sat down at the little table, and heard the German waiter's rapture
at the commands Stephen Bocqueraz so easily gave him in his mother
tongue. Billy, reddening but determined, must at once try his German
too, and the waiter and Bocqueraz laughed at him even while they
answered him, and agreed that the young man as a linguist was ganz
wunderbar. Billy evidently liked his company; he was at his best to-
night, unaffected, youthful, earnest. Susan herself felt that she
had never been so happy in her life.
Long afterward she tried to remember what they had talked about. She
knew that the conversation had been to her as a draught of sparkling
wine. All her little affections were in full play to-night, the
little odds and ends of worldly knowledge she had gleaned from Ella
and Ella' 
Saturday's Child / Norris, Kathleen Thompson, 1880-1966