The marriage of Susan

By Helen Reimensnyder Martin

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Title: The marriage of Susan

Author: Helen Reimensnyder Martin

Illustrator: Walter DeMaris

Release date: February 6, 2026 [eBook #77875]

Language: English

Original publication: Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1921

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARRIAGE OF SUSAN ***






[Frontispiece: "You and I are going to be married.  We need not live
together.  But _we are going to be married_"]





  THE MARRIAGE
  OF SUSAN


  BY

  HELEN R. MARTIN



  FRONTISPIECE
  BY
  WALTER DE MARIS



  GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO
  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
  1921




  COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
  DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
  INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN




  _Books by Helen R. Martin_

  Barnabetta
  Betrothal of Elypholate, and Other Tales
    of the Pennsylvania Dutch
  Crossways
  Gertie Swartz: Fanatic or Christian
  Her Husband's Purse
  Her Courtship
  Maggie of Virginsburg
  Martha of the Mennonite Country
  Revolt of Anne Royle
  Sabina, Story of the Amish
  The Fighting Doctor
  The Marriage of Susan
  The Parasite
  Those Fitzenbergers
  Tillie, A Mennonite Maid
  When Half-Gods Go




  CONTENTS

  I. Time, an October Afternoon
  II. Evening of the Same Day
  III. The Following Spring
  IV. A Year Later
  V. Face to Face
  VI. The Tentacles Close in Upon Susan
  VII. July, August, and September
  VIII. Autumn
  IX. The House Party
  X. An Interlude
  XI. Home Again
  XII. A Few More Years at the Cottage
  XIII. In the Big House
  XIV. Five Years Later
  XV. A Widow
  XVI. Susan Realizes Her Freedom
  XVII. Susan's Reaping




THE MARRIAGE OF SUSAN



CHAPTER I

TIME, AN OCTOBER AFTERNOON

As she got off the train at Reifsville the loafers about the little
station and about the General Store across the road divined, without
knowing just why, that she was too "different," somehow, to be a
"lady agent"; not young enough to be an applicant for the school; and
too something-else-quite-indefinable to be a possible visitor to any
family of the village.  So what was there left for her to be?  Why
was she here?  They did not usually have any difficulty in "sizing
up" the few daily arrivals by the train.

As she walked out of the station and up the one street of the
village, their sleepy eyes followed her with mild curiosity.  That
any "female" could be very simply dressed and yet not look poor, but,
on the contrary, elegant and prosperous, was puzzling.  The trig
neatness of her hair, her clothing, her shoes, her gloves, the light
grace of her walk (though she was at least middle-aged) her assured
bearing, the way she carried her head, all proclaimed her as being,
at one and the same time, both too grand and too plain to be
classified with any feminine species familiar to Reifsville.

"I got it!" exclaimed Abe Duttonhoffer, his tilted chair falling
forward suddenly from the shock of his idea.  "She's mebby a-goin' to
buy Baursox' house that's fur sale."

"No-p.  It's put out, now, that there house can't be solt.  The
lawyer says it's got to lay till Charles is in his age."

"There ain't no funeral goin' on that she'd be comin' to," speculated
Jake Kuntz.  "The only funeral due in Reifsville, the party ain't
dead yet."

"What party are you got reference to?  Hess's Missus, mebby?"

"Yes.  Her.  I'm to haul fur her, when her funeral is, Mister says."

"It's to be hoped she won't keep you waitin' long fur the job!" said
a facetious one, provoking a general laugh.

"It wonders me what that there lady a-goin' up the street there is
after out here!" persisted Jake.

"Local colour, mebby," suggested Abe.

"What the hell is local colour?"

"_You_ are, Jake," retorted Abe.  "It's what female authors that
plans books, runs round after."

"After _me_!  A high-stepper like her?" said Jake with a twirl of his
thumb in the direction the lady had taken.  "She wouldn't want
nothin' to do with me!  'Local colour?'" Jake shook his head.  "It's
new to me."

"It ain't familiar with me, neither," said another of the loafers.

The mysterious lady had by this time walked beyond the line of their
vision.

"It's a wonder, Jake, you didn't schnauffle after her and find out
what she's here fur?--you want to know so bad!" said Abe; to which
Jake replied, indignantly, "Do you suppose I _would_'a?  Do you
suppose _you_ would'a?"

"Say!"--Abe had another bright idea--"Mebby she's one of Susan
Schrekengust's swell city friends!"

"Och, Susan she never has none of them tony city friends of hern
wisit her out here, 'ceptin' her fellah; that there 'ristocratic dood
that comes to set up with her Sa'rdays," said Jake.

"I guess Susan she has ashamed, a little, of her folks--her bein' a
grad-yate," suggested one of the men.

"Susan Schrekengust ain't proud!" retorted a young man among the
group.  "She's wery nice and common--fur all she's so grand educated
that way!"

"Yes, Susan she took lessons a'ready in both Wocal and both
Instrumental, and still she's wonderful common," Jake Kuntz backed up
the other young man's statement.  To still be "common"--that is, not
haughty--after having studied "both Wocal and both Instrumental," was
to be rather more than human.

"Our Katy she says Susan she kin play sich Liszt Ee-toods on the
pyannah!"

"That ain't so much!  There's others in Reifsville kin play Ee-toods."

Meantime, unconscious of the interest that followed her, the lady
walked slowly, almost shrinkingly, through the silent, empty street
of the village.  The houses she passed looked uninhabited, for every
front shutter was closed and bolted to exclude dust, or sunlight
which would fade carpets and furniture coverings.  Except on Sundays
and at funerals the inhabitants of Pennsylvania Dutch villages and
farms live in their kitchens.  Mrs. Houghton shuddered inwardly as
she noted the crudity of the little homes of the place, the
flower-beds bordered with oyster shells, the gay colouring of the
wood and brick of the houses, the universal cheapness.

It was such a shock and disappointment that her son, her only child,
hitherto so entirely satisfactory, should have got himself actually
engaged to a girl of a Pennsylvania Dutch community like this!--from
a home such as these!  Mrs. Houghton was on her way now to see the
girl; to feel her way to saving Sidney from a mistake so disastrous.
It was surely not his true self, but a lower, hitherto unrevealed
self that had led her fastidious boy into such a relation!  A little
"Dutch" school teacher named _Schrekengust_!--the daughter of an
illiterate Mennonite preacher!  How such a thing could ever have
happened to Sidney, who had always been rather over-sensitive to
crudity, to commonness; whose tastes and instincts were so true and
fine; who had sometimes seemed to her, for a man, almost too
discriminating in his sense of social values----

Even making all due allowance for youth's hot blood and imprudence,
how a son of hers could so have forgotten his traditions, his pride,
his consideration for his mother, his ambitions (all of which Sidney
had always cherished excessively) as to have let himself be carried
away against his judgment, against his self-interest (she had never
before known Sidney to act against his self-interest), and actually
propose marriage to a Pennsylvania Dutch "girl of the people"----

"It would seem that sex is the strongest force in a man's life," she
thought.  "It will make a man sacrifice anything!  Women ought to
refuse to bear sons, for between war and love, what good do we get of
them?"

It was a most embarrassing and painful errand, this on which she had
come here to-day to Reifsville.

"But I'd go through anything to save Sidney from such a marriage!"
she told herself, passionately.

She was quite sure that when he recovered from this vulgar
infatuation and came to himself he would thank her with all his soul
for having rescued him.

It was trying enough to have your only son, to whom you yourself had
always been all the world, transfer his devotion to another; but to
have him love an impossible person, one whom, with the greatest
straining of your charity, you could not take into your heart and
life--this was indeed hard to bear.

The straw to which she clung was the fact that Sidney, though very
much in love, was not so far gone as not to be as aware as she
herself was of the disadvantages of his entanglement.

"I believe he would be ready to break it off if he had not put
himself under such great obligations to her--borrowing money from
her!--gracious!--how _could_ he do that?" she marvelled for the
hundredth time.  "To let a self-supporting girl lend him money!--_my
son_!"

If he himself had not admitted it, she never would have believed it
possible.  But she had surprised him yesterday with a visit at his
lodgings at the university town where he was taking a post-graduate
course in International Law, and had found his sitting-room furnished
in beautiful mahogany, which he had been obliged to acknowledge had
been purchased by him and Miss Schrekengust for their future
housekeeping, and paid for with her savings of three years.  He was
meantime using it.  Also his new golf outfit--she had loaned him
seventy-five dollars for that!

"But where is your _pride_, Sidney!" she had cried out to him in
shocked astonishment.  "To let this working-girl give you things you
can't afford!"

"She's not a working-girl, Mother," he had protested.  "She's a
school teacher."

"A village school teacher--named Schrekenbust!"

"Schreken_gust_--not bust!  Don't make it worse than it is!  It's bad
enough, in heaven's name!"

"Oh, you admit that it's bad enough?" she had hopefully commented.

"Can there be any doubt of it?"

"Don't you see, you poor deluded boy, that this vulgar girl has tried
to make sure of you by _buying_ you?"

"She's not vulgar!--though of course I must admit," Sidney had
groaned, "that her people _are_!"

"She can't be so very different from her people--you say she _lives_
with them.  I never would have believed it possible, Sidney, that
_you_ could fall in love with a common girl!"

"Mother, I've come to see that there's such a lot of difference
between common people and just plain, simple people like the
Schrekengusts."

"You know you cannot afford to marry out of your class!  Remember,
Sidney, you are still dependent on me, and if you should marry
beneath you I certainly would not deny myself any least comfort in
order to help you and your Dutch wife!"

"Mother, dear, you are wasting breath, for I see it all just as you
do!  But Susanna's _got_ me!"

"Where did you meet her?"

"At one of the university dances a year ago."

"This thing has been going on a whole year and you have never told
me!"

"I've been engaged to her only six months.  It has seemed impossible
to tell you--I knew so well how you'd take it, dear.  I hated to
worry and distress you."

"But why should you do anything that _can_ worry and distress me?
Surely your standards and mine cannot be different, Sidney, such
close companions as we have always been!  I thought we understood
each other so perfectly--and now it seems that I did not really know
you!"

"I hate to be such a disappointment to you, Mother--but somehow I
can't feel that I have lowered my standards in falling in love with
Susanna."

"And yet you are more class-conscious than I am, for you are a
Houghton!  You can't make that girl happy.  Such a name!
Schrekengust!  _Why_ is her name Schrekengust?" she exclaimed,
despairingly.  "It seems so unnecessary!"

"That objection to her will fortunately be removed by her marriage to
me."

"Where does she live?"

"Reifsville.  Five miles from here."

"I shall go to see her."

"Don't!" Sidney had exclaimed protestingly; then suddenly,
unaccountably, he had laughed.  "Really, Mother, dear, I warn
you--don't!  Susanna'd upset you dreadfully!"

"Why doesn't she upset _you_, if the bare idea of my meeting her
strikes you as so incongruous?"

"She has upset me!  Bowled me over!"

Mrs. Houghton had suddenly resolved to say nothing more about going
to see the girl.  She would take her unawares, as she had taken
Sidney to-day.

So here she was in Reifsville, on the very next afternoon, on her way
to the home of the Schrekengusts.

It was the last house of the village: a white frame house with green
shutters, shaded by great trees.  It was really picturesque; the only
attractive house in Reifsville.  Mrs. Houghton, appraising it while
she waited for an answer to her knock on the door (a delightful
old-fashioned knocker, no bell), had to admit that by a happy
accident the girl's home was, from the outside, very passable.

A typical dialogue between two village women parting from each other
at the door of the next house set her nerves on edge at the thought
of her son's close association with such people.

"Good-by.  Come back again soon.  Ain't?"

"Thank you.  And you are to come over, mind!"

"Thank you.  _I_ will.  Good-by.  Come over soon, now!"

"Good-by.  And don't you forget to come over soon.  Ain't, you won't?"

"Thanks; I won't forget.  And don't you forget neither to come back."

"Thanks.  I won't.  I'll be over then again, when it suits.  Good-by."

"Good-by.  Don't make it too long till----"

Mrs. Houghton was just beginning to wonder whether they ever would
succeed in concluding their leavetaking--when the Schrekengusts' door
was opened and there stood before her a sweet-faced elderly woman in
Mennonite garb who, with mingled shyness and surprise, showed the
stranger into the parlour.

And here Mrs. Houghton experienced genuine astonishment.  It was not
at all the sort of room she had expected to see.  Old Sheraton
furniture of graceful lines and exquisite inlaid decoration, framed
copies of famous paintings, an old woven carpet of the sort the
colonists brought over--how had people named "Schrekengust," living
in this Pennsylvania Dutch village, come by such things?  The room
actually showed cultured taste!  Could she be mistaken and had Sidney
not turned his back on his birth and breeding in choosing this
girl----

But that momentary hope was dashed--there was the Mennonite mother
who had answered her knock at the door; and Sidney's own admission
that his marriage would be disadvantageous and outside his own class.

In a moment Miss Schrekengust appeared in the doorway.

She, too, like the room, was not just what Mrs. Houghton had expected
to see.  At a first glance one might have made the mistake of taking
her, from her dress and manner, for a thoroughbred; indeed, her
simplicity and self-possession as, with a slight inquiry in her
innocent eyes, she came into the room and offered her hand to the
stranger, lent her a certain distinction.

Mrs. Houghton had been prepared graciously to put an awkward country
girl at her ease, as a necessary preliminary to convincing her of the
undesirability of her marrying Sidney Houghton; but it was she
herself who, for a moment, felt confused and at a loss.

"I--you are Miss Schrekengust?"

"Yes?" replied the girl on a questioning note.  "Will you sit down?"

Mrs. Houghton pulled herself together to focus her forces upon her
purpose to save her son (for however presentable the girl might prove
to be superficially, she was nevertheless not of Sidney's world).

"I don't believe she'll be difficult," she thought, noting, as she
sat down, the sweetness of the child's mouth, the infantile look of
her eyes, the soft drawl of her speech.

"You have something to sell?" inquired Miss Schrekengust,
encouragingly.

Mrs. Houghton smiled involuntarily at being taken for a travelling
saleswoman.  The girl must, after all, be unsophisticated not to
recognize----

"I am Mrs. Houghton--Mr. Sidney Houghton's mother.  May I," she
quickly added in a tone impressively grave and reserved, to check the
girl's start of pleased surprise which seemed to threaten to rush at
her with a caress, "have a little talk with you?"

Miss Schrekengust's intuitions were evidently not dull; she recovered
instantly from her impulsive delight, folded her hands quietly in her
lap, and without speaking, her clear young eyes fixed upon Mrs.
Houghton's face, waited.

"My son has told me of his--of your--friendship."

"I appreciate your kindness in coming away out here to see me," said
Miss Schrekengust, gratefully.

Mrs. Houghton noted that she spoke without the Pennsylvania Dutch
accent.

"But I am sorry to tell you, Miss Schrekengust, that I don't approve
of my son's relations with you--his owing you money--his using your
furniture!  He never went into debt in his life before he knew you,
Miss Schrekengust; he never thought of buying things he couldn't
afford; I didn't think him capable of doing such things!--such things
as he confessed to me yesterday!"

"Confessed?"

"Of course he feels the degradation of such a relation!"

"Oh, I beg your pardon--you got a wrong impression--Sidney does not
feel that our relation is 'degrading'!"

"I mean his relation of debtor to you.  He was horribly ashamed to
admit it to me.  Never before in his life has he done anything that
he was ashamed to tell me, his mother.  I can see that he has really
deteriorated; and naturally I am distressed and worried."

Mrs. Houghton paused, feeling that she had put it well.

But Miss Schrekengust smiled upon her reassuringly.  "That is too
bad, for of course you have misunderstood.  It's because Sidney and I
have such a high ideal of love that these material considerations
don't enter in at all, don't affect us."

Mrs. Houghton checked a smile at this youthfully complacent idealism.
It was evidently sincere enough in the girl's case, but Mrs. Houghton
could not quite see Sidney so uplifted by love or anything else as to
be unaffected by "material considerations!"

"An honourable man cannot ignore 'these material considerations,'
Miss Schrekengust, and I am very, very sorry that you have encouraged
Sidney to do so.  You have meant to be generous to him, no doubt, but
unfortunately you have led him to forget the standards of a
gentleman, and to do what men of his class, Miss Schrekengust, do not
do.  Of course I'm quite sure that you erred only in--well, in
ignorance.  But that does not alter the fact that for the first time
in his life I am forced to be ashamed of my son!"

"But I am sure you have no real cause to be," Miss Schrekengust
pleaded.

"If your traditions and environment had been just what Sidney's have
been--if you had been brought up with his standard--you would see it
as I do; as _he_ really sees it."

"Don't you think you take it too seriously?  It's after all a very
small matter."

"I am extremely sorry," said Mrs. Houghton, gravely, "that you have
apparently led Sidney to think it 'a small matter.'  I am very much
afraid, Miss Schrekengust, that your influence on my son's character
does not seem to have been of the best.  And surely true love
_should_ bring out the best of a man; don't you think so?"

"It surely must," the girl assented.

"That is why I cannot believe that Sidney's feeling for you is quite
true.  I hope I don't hurt you very much by saying so?  If I could
find him improved by his relation to you instead of deteriorated----"

The girl's soft eyes met Mrs. Houghton's without a flicker.  "I'm
afraid you flatter me, Mrs. Houghton."

"_Flatter_ you!"

"When you rate the influence of my short eleven months' acquaintance
with your son above your twenty-five years in influencing and
moulding him; and above those traditions and that environment to
which you referred."

Mrs. Houghton caught her breath as she thought of how "kindly and
patiently" she had intended to reason with a crude and probably
over-awed country girl!

Miss Schrekengust, on her side, was saying to herself, "Sidney is not
doing very well by me in the way of a mother-in-law."

"Your parents are Mennonites?" asked Mrs. Houghton rather abruptly.

"Yes."

"And you have always lived here in Reifsville?"

"Yes, except during the four years that I spent at a boarding school."

"And do you know," asked Mrs. Houghton, gently, "what a very, very
different background Sidney has had?"

"In Middleburg?"

Was there a note of laughter in the question?  Mrs. Houghton could
not be quite sure; the girl's face was serious enough.  "My son's
associations--at home, in college, in society--his inherited tastes
and instincts, Miss Schrekengust, from a long line of----  Oh, my
child, marriage at best forces one to so _much_ compromising and
adapting and adjusting, that it is very necessary, if there's to be
any least chance of making a success of it, for the pair to at least
start on an equal footing, with as many points of contact in their
background as possible.  If they start with wide gaps and differences
in their experiences and their bringing-up they are doomed to
misunderstanding and failure."

Mrs. Houghton again felt she had put it well; strongly though
delicately.

But Miss Schrekengust, continuing to gaze at her with unwavering
eyes, did not reply.

"Don't you agree with me, Miss Schrekengust?"

"But surely two people who are very essentially different are not apt
to fall in love with each other.  And the merely superficial
differences cannot kill love.  I think we can always trust ourselves
to love."

"Are you so very much in love with my son that your faith in love is
quite boundless?" asked Mrs. Houghton, with a slightly supercilious
lift of her brows.

"What seems a more important point to me is that he is very much in
love with me," smiled Miss Schrekengust.

"And you think it no drawback at all that you and Sidney come from
such different environments?"

"We shouldn't dream of letting such nonsense interfere with our love,
Mrs. Houghton.  If we did we'd be unworthy of it!  It's a gift of the
gods!--and not to be treated lightly or sordidly."

"But 'such nonsense' _will_ interfere with your love!  'Such
nonsense' makes it quite impossible that you should have the same
outlook upon life, the same instincts, the same friends, the same
prestige.  You would differ at all points!"

"You predict a lively time for us!" smiled Miss Schrekengust.

Mrs. Houghton stared.  Was it impossible to upset the girl's serenity?

"I suppose Sidney has told you, Miss Schrekengust, that, after he has
finished his work at the university next May his Uncle George
Houghton of New York is going to secure for him a diplomatic
appointment?--his uncle being a man of influence and in close touch
with the Administration."

"Yes, of course I know of Sidney's prospects."

"But don't you see," Mrs. Houghton earnestly argued, "that Sidney
being, as you know, quite poor, can't marry a girl with no money--the
diplomatic salaries are too small; and Sidney's tastes are not
simple.  And besides----"

"Yes?" Miss Schrekengust prompted as Mrs. Houghton hesitated.

"Besides," she plunged in, courageously, "the education of a wide
social experience is surely a prerequisite for being the wife of a
diplomat to a foreign country.  A foreign diplomat, more than most
men, needs a real helpmate, a partner, in a wife.  Do you feel that
you would be equal to filling such a social position, Miss
Schrekengust?"

"Well," Miss Schrekengust thoughtfully replied in her soft drawl, "I
don't believe the foreign governments will find me any worse than I
shall find them."

"But I am serious, Miss Schrekengust!  I am sure that you and Sidney
are making a terrible mistake in thinking that you could possibly
pull together, when your rearing and inheritance have been so widely
different!"

"I know Sidney's ideals and principles are not quite so severe as
mine--but I have hopes for him."

"His marriage would drag him down!" exclaimed Mrs. Houghton, losing a
bit the restraint which thus far she had tried hard to exercise.
"His engagement has already done so!  Sidney admits as much!"

"Oh, but I am sure you do him injustice," said Miss Schrekengust,
serenely.

"But the financial side of it?  Sidney has nothing of his own--not a
dollar except what I choose to give him.  If he should marry out of
his class, I shouldn't dream of helping him."

"Then I'm afraid I think it would be a very good thing for him to
'marry out of his class,' for it's time he stood on his own feet."

"He could not possibly support a wife on a diplomat's salary."

"I've always been able to live on anything I've had to live on."

"But Sidney's tastes are not so simple."

"I know he's inclined to be luxurious; but I'm sure I shall be able
to hold him in, never fear," said Miss Schrekengust, again speaking
reassuringly.

"Has he told you that he and his half-brother are the only natural
heirs of their Uncle George Houghton?--and that Mr. Houghton is a
very eccentric as well as a very rich old man who wouldn't leave a
cent of his money to any one who displeased him?  Mr. Houghton has a
great deal of family pride and he is very ambitious for Sidney, and
it would certainly displease him excessively to have Sidney marry
disadvantageously; so much so that he would undoubtedly leave all his
money to my step-son, though he has always disliked Joe and been very
fond of Sidney.  So you see, Miss Schrekengust, you have Sidney's
welfare in your hands; his undoing or his salvation."

"And you are quite sure that Mr. George Houghton would classify
Sidney's marriage to me under that head--'disadvantageous'?"

"I think I have made it clear to you why he would do to."

"I'm afraid you haven't.  You have spoken of backgrounds,
environments, incomes--but Sidney and I know that a great passion,
any big emotional experience, is not to be measured against such
cheap things as those.  We are not so stupid as to give such false
values to the real things of life!"

"Do you really think you would be worth more to Sidney than all the
things he would lose by marrying you?"

"Heaps and oodels more!"

"It is nice," said Mrs. Houghton in a hushed tone which would have
been rather crushing to a timid soul, "to have such a high opinion of
one's value!"

"It is not so much a high opinion of my own value as a low opinion of
the values you would measure against me."

"Then, Miss Schrekengust," said Mrs. Houghton, rising and looking
pale and cold, "in spite of all I have said to you, you refuse to
give up my son?"

"He has not asked me to give him up, Mrs. Houghton," replied Miss
Schrekengust, also rising.

"_I_ have asked you and have shown you clearly why your marriage to
him would be bad for you both.  If you love him you will release him!"

"I know I would if I were the heroine of a melodrama.  At this point
in the play I would tragically and idiotically give up my true love
for his best good, and mysteriously disappear!  But if I do that----"

Miss Schrekengust paused, looking very thoughtful; and Mrs. Houghton,
unable to repress the eagerness born of this hopeful pause, urged her
on with a rather breathless, "Well?"

"If I do renounce Sidney," the girl sighed, "I suppose I shall then
seriously consider accepting another proposal of marriage," she
astoundingly announced, "which I am afraid might injure Sidney's
financial prospects even more than his marriage with me would do."

"I don't quite follow you," said Mrs. Houghton, repressing her
eagerness.  "How could your marriage with any one else affect
Sidney's financial prospects?"

"My marriage with Mr. George Houghton might quite seriously affect
Sidney.  For you see, I'd be Sidney's Aunt Susan instead of his wife.
I think that would affect Sidney quite disagreeably."

Mrs. Houghton stared.  "You--you know Mr. George Houghton?--and
he--he wants to _marry_ you!  But he--why, his----"

Her astonishment choked her.  She could not speak.  Her
brother-in-law's family pride was almost an obsession With him!  He
had remained a bachelor all his life because he had never found a
woman he considered quite worthy to marry a Houghton!  That proud old
man to have become infatuated with a young girl like this!--a village
nobody!

"He's in his dotage!" she exclaimed.

"Oh!" breathed Miss Schrekengust, "thanks!"

"I mean, Miss Schrekengust, that you are such a child--and Mr.
Houghton is over seventy!  And his family pride--he is such a--a----"

"Snob?" Miss Schrekengust suggested.

"A year ago George Houghton would have thought he was stooping if
he'd been marrying a duchess!"

"A year ago," said Miss Schrekengust quite truthfully, "he had not
met me."

Again Mrs. Houghton stared helplessly.  Anything more extraordinary
than this girl's complacency she had never encountered.

"But I promise you," added the girl, "that I'm not going to marry Mr.
George Houghton."

"But, Miss Schrekengust, if Sidney takes you from his uncle, then his
uncle will have a double reason for disinheriting him!  This is
really a dreadful situation!"

"Isn't it!  I thought you would find it so."

"But what shall we _do_ about it?" cried Mrs. Houghton, desperately.

"We?  You mean you and I?"

"Surely, Miss Schrekengust, I can hardly believe you would be so
blind to your own interests as to choose a penniless boy like Sidney
if you can marry his uncle!"

"But doesn't love enter at _all_ into your ideas of marriage, Mrs.
Houghton?  I love Sidney and I do not love his Uncle George.  I don't
love his Uncle George at _all_!"

"Then you have already refused to marry Mr. George Houghton?" Mrs.
Houghton wonderingly asked.

"I shouldn't think of marrying a man seventy years old.  Unless, of
course," she quickly added, "I were driven to recklessness by losing
the man I love."

"But how on earth did old George Houghton ever take it, being refused
by a--well, a girl without either great fortune or great position?"
cried Mrs. Houghton, her amazed curiosity quite upsetting her dignity.

"Oh, I'm sure he knows, as any other old man would know, that he
can't expect to be wildly attractive to a young girl of eighteen.
Even a Houghton must know that he has become a little slow at
seventy."

"Well!" Mrs. Houghton exclaimed, unexpectedly, "I do hope it has
taken some of the conceit out of him!  George Houghton refused!--and
by----  But I must say, Miss Schrekengust, I think you are extremely
foolish!  He can't live long."

"That, of course, is an inducement.  And yet--well, you see, I love
Sidney."

"You must love him very, very much!" admitted Sidney's mother, almost
softened.

"I do, Mrs. Houghton."

Mrs. Houghton quickly reflected, "If she marries George, Sidney's
certain not to get any of his money.  If she marries Sidney there's
at least a chance----"

Her glance swept the girl from head to foot.  She really was
attractive, and more than presentable; not at all what she had
expected to find; although of course her family would prove very
embarrassing----

Mrs. Houghton suddenly held out her hand.  "If you love him enough to
refuse a great fortune and a great position for his sake, I suppose
you must, after all, be the girl he ought to marry."

"I'm sure I am," Miss Schrekengust said as she took the offered hand.


When Mrs Houghton had gone, the young girl collapsed helplessly in a
little heap upon the old davenport before the fire.  "If only I see
Sidney before she does!--else what on earth will he think of my yarn
about his old uncle's wanting to marry me!"




CHAPTER II

EVENING OF THE SAME DAY

If Mrs. Houghton could have caught a glimpse of the Schrekengust
household at supper a half hour later she would have felt that, after
all, rather than have her son marry into a family like this, she
would infinitely prefer that he give the girl up to his Uncle George
and thus lose all hope of inheriting a fortune.  For the good taste
manifested in the Schrekengust's parlour, which had so surprised her,
did not extend beyond that room to the rest of the house.  And the
girl, Susan, herself, was a quite unique member of her family.  She
had never tried to make over her parents and her two elder sisters as
she had made over the parlour.  She loved her family very much as
they were, though she was not above finding them embarrassing
sometimes.

The large kitchen where they were gathered for their substantial
evening meal of fried "ponhaus," fried potatoes, pie, and coffee, was
also the family living room.  It was unpapered, bare of ornament, the
floor covered with a patched rag carpet, the furniture of the
plainest and cheapest.

Mr. and Mrs. Schrekengust and the two elder daughters, Lizzie and
Addie, women of thirty-five and thirty-two, all wore the plain garb
of the Mennonite faith, and their religion obliged them to shun not
only all personal adornment, but all beauty in the home, as they
would have shunned the very devil himself.  So that in conceding to
Susan a free hand in the parlour, they had gone as near the ragged
edge of perdition as they dared.

Addie and Lizzie were both natural born spinsters, tall, angular,
homely, puritanic.  Lizzie, like her mother, was talkative, lively,
almost boisterous, and immensely energetic; her warm, generous
impulses constantly outran her means of gratifying them, and her
Pennsylvania Dutch prudence seemed always to be at war with her big
heart.

Addie, on the contrary, was like her father, economical, minutely
calculating; yet just as kind and unselfish as the less careful
Lizzie.  Her manner, also like her father's, was quiet and gentle,
and she willingly let herself be dominated by her noisy sister Lizzie.

"What fur didn't you ast Sidney's Mom to stay and eat along, Susie?"
her mother inquired in a mildly reproachful tone as she helped
herself from a platter of "ponhaus" and then passed the dish to her
youngest daughter.  "To leave her go and set waitin' in the station
fur the train to come, when it don't come till away past supper time
a'ready--when she might be settin' here with us eatin' hot wittles!
What'll she _think_ anyhow?--and you bein' promised to her son yet!
It don't look right--that it don't!"

It was a difficult question for Susan to meet without betraying what
her parents and sisters would be quite unable to understand--that
Sidney's mother didn't think her "good enough" for Sidney.  For the
Schrekengusts, on their side, didn't think any man living quite
worthy of their wonderful Susan.

She was the child of her parents' old age, being fourteen years
younger than her sister Addie, and she had always been the pet and
idol of the family.  They had all denied themselves, ever since her
birth, to give her a chance in life such as none of them had ever
had.  They had never let her drudge as they had all drudged; they had
sent her away to school, had kept her well-dressed, had provided her
with enough pocket money to enable her to hold up her end among her
schoolmates, had given her her own way always.  Susan was all their
happiness in life; the one warm, bright, glowing spot in their
otherwise colourless existence.  In the self-repression of their
Mennonite faith, the affection and care they gave to her were the
only outlet their hearts knew; their only personal expression.

And they thought themselves well repaid for all their sacrifices by
the charming, lovable result achieved.  For strangely enough, Susan
was not spoiled by their devotion and indulgence.  Contrary to the
usual effect of such rearing, she deeply appreciated all that had
been done for her and was passionately loyal and devoted to her
family.

As for her engagement to Sidney Houghton, far from thinking that the
young man had condescended, the Schrekengusts considered it entirely
natural that a "stylish towner" should want to marry Susan, and they
deemed him a lucky man to have won her; for being too simple and
unsophisticated to draw subtle distinctions, they did not perceive in
Sidney any of those variances from ordinary mortals which had been
pointed out that day to Susan by Sidney's mother.

There was something touching to Susan about this childlike ignorance
of the world's standards, in which her people lived.  She had
already, at eighteen years of age, seen enough of life to value, at
its true and high worth, their simple goodness and kindness, their
genuineness, their innocence.

"Mrs. Houghton said she was not hungry, Mother, and that she wanted
to take a walk about the village before train time," Susan readily
improvised in reply to her mother's question, being accustomed to
protect her parents thus from all the wounds and shocks that
constantly threatened them from the uncomfortable differences between
her and them in education and experience and social relations.

"But the train to town don't leave here till a quarter over seven
o'clock a'ready, Susie; and here last night she was late a-whole hour
yet, that there seven o'clock train!" replied her mother.

"I seen her when she come up the street from the station," said
Lizzie (it would have taken an expert to tell whether she referred to
the train or the lady), "and it wondered me that a city person would
be that plain dressed."

"That's why she dresses plainly--because she's not a villager.  You
see, Lizzie, I'm right in not letting you tog me up," Susan pointed
out.

"Even Sidney don't dress up when he comes to set up with you, Susie,
like the young fellahs here dresses up to go to see their girls.
Ain't, he don't?" said her mother.

"He considers himself a very well-dressed young man," smiled Susan.

"Well, he anyhow always looks becoming and wery genteel, no matter
what he's got on," said Lizzie, admiringly.  "I do now like his shape
and the way his shoulders is so straight acrost like a sojer's yet!"

"He is an awful pretty man," agreed Mrs. Schrekengust.

This was too much for Susan, "Oh, Mother, I wouldn't marry a _pretty_
man!  Heavens!  He's handsome, not pretty!  He's manly looking.  And
he looks what he is--an aristocrat."

"Aristocrats is fur out in the old country, not fur America,"
protested her father.  "We wouldn't stand fur havin' no sich
aristocrats here.  What fur do you call him an aristocrat?  What's
his title then?"

"I guess Susie means the nice manners he's got at him," ventured
Addie, who spoke seldom.  "I like so well to watch him use his
manners," she blandly added.

"Yes, well, if he don't pay so much attention to 'em that he forgets
his morals!" warned the Mennonite preacher gravely.  "Manners is all
wery well if used in moderation.  A body mustn't go to excesses in
'em.  Sometimes I have afraid Sidney goes a little too fur with them
manners of hisn."

"Och, yes, he won't even leave our Susan open a door fur herself; or
even pick up a handkerchief he's dropped!" cried Lizzie.  "If I was
Susie I'd keep droppin' things just to see him pick 'em up so polite!"

"He certainly is wery genteel," granted Mrs. Schrekengust.

"It's to be hoped he'll make you a good purwider, Susie, used as you
are to full and plenty," said her father.

"But with the education you have given me, Father, I am provided
for--I can always support myself if I need to."

"But if you had young children to look after you couldn't turn out
and teach school," objected her father.  "It's wery important that
your husband is a good purwider; fur whiles it's awful honourable to
be poor, it's wery inconwenient."

"And to live nice these days," added her mother, "it takes so much
more!  Ain't, Pop, the times is changed lately since a few years back
a'ready?"

"Och, yes, and the young folks they want so much towards what we used
to want.  Ain't, Mom?"

"Yes, ain't!"

When only a few hours after Mrs. Houghton's departure Sidney
unexpectedly arrived at Reifsville on his bicycle, Susan's feelings
as she greeted him were a rather confusing compound of apprehension
and relief.

"I came out to warn you, darling," he began as soon as they were
alone together (seated on the big old davenport, his arm around her
shoulders), "that my mother may swoop down upon you!"

"You came to '_warn_' me?  Is she dangerous?"

"Very!" he laughed uneasily, "to you and me.  Harmless enough
otherwise."

"But how can she be dangerous to us?"

"She has other ideas for me.  She wants me to marry--well,
money--and--oh, and family and all that sort of thing."

"I can't somehow associate such vulgarity with you."

"Vulgarity?  But, my love!  You are speaking of my mother!"

"Why, no.  Of you.  But how can she, your mother, imagine your doing
a vulgar, sordid thing, when I can't possibly see you like that?  She
has known you longer."

"And perhaps better.  I've always told you, Susanna" (he insisted
upon the "old colonial" form of her name as being less commonplace),
"that you see me through rose-coloured glasses.  I'm not above
marrying for money--and other things.  Only, I happen to want you
more than I want anything else."

"And much, much more than you want to keep in your Uncle George's
good graces?"

"I don't mean to lose his favour.  I need it too much.  He's only got
to meet you to be won over.  He must meet you _before_ he learns of
our engagement, so that he will judge you without prejudice.  You
yourself will be all the argument I shall need to convince him."

"To convince him of what?"

"That you are not my equal, but my superior."

"But if he wants you to marry money and--and family--and other things
that have nothing to do with my superiority?"

"You'll make him realize, as you've made me, that you're a prize
worth more than all those things, my love!"

"What do you understand by _family_, Sidney?  And do you care a lot
about family?"

"Yes, I do.  I do care for family and money and prestige and all the
things I've been brought up to consider of value."

"None of which I bring to you!"

"You know what you bring to me!" he said, holding her close and
kissing her.

"And you are quite sure it makes up to you for losing some of those
other things?"

"I don't intend to lose any of them."

"But if you did have to?"

"But I shan't have to!"

"Suppose, Sidney," she plunged in astonishingly, "_that your Uncle
George wanted to marry me himself_--would you think me very heroic
for refusing him and cleaving unto you until death us do part?"

Sidney, startled, took his arm from her shoulder, tilted up her chin
and looked into her eyes.

"What are you driving at, imp of Satan?"

"You see, Mr. George Houghton can't possibly live very long--he's
over seventy; I'd soon be a rich widow."

"Do you _know_ him?" exclaimed Sidney, amazed.

"_Tell_ me--would I be proving myself quite worthy of you, a
Houghton, if I refused to marry Uncle George?"

"You'd be too damned unlike any Houghton I ever knew!  Excuse me!
What's it all about, anyway?"

"Sidney, I have charming news for you!  Your mother is quite
reconciled to me; she consents to our marriage!"

"You've seen her?  She's been here?" he cried, agitatedly.

"This afternoon.  And when I pointed out to her that it might injure
your financial prospects much more for me to marry Uncle George and
become your Aunt Susan than to marry _you_, she saw that I was so
noble as to be worthy to be her daughter-in-law."

Sidney gaped at her quite idiotically for an instant; then suddenly,
his hand dropping from her chin, he threw himself back upon the
cushions of the couch and roared with laughing.  "You made her
believe that?" he shouted.  "You little devil!  By Jove, you have
nerve!"

"She will tell you all about it.  I'm glad I've seen you first.  What
would you have thought about it if you had heard your mother first?"

"I suppose I should have been as gullible as she was and _believed_
it!" he said, still laughing.  "I did for a moment!  You see I have
such a large faith in your power to charm that I could even find it
credible that a confirmed old bachelor like Uncle George had
succumbed to you!"

"The amazing part of it all to your mother was that he could so have
forgotten his snobbery----"

"Snobbery?  Oh, I don't know that I'd call Uncle George a snob,
exactly."

"I know _I_ would; a man who has remained a bachelor for seventy
years because he couldn't find a wife worthy of a Houghton!  What
_is_ a snob if that isn't?"

"Well, he's a mighty fine old chap, anyway," insisted Sidney, growing
sober as he wondered, with a sinking of his heart, how much his
mother had seen of the household here.  If she had not gotten beyond
this room and Susan, she had yet much to learn!

"Tell me all about Mother's visit, dearest," he urged, leaning back
and again slipping his arm to its comfortable and delightful resting
place on her shoulders.

Throughout her dramatic and graphic report of her afternoon's
experience, Sidney's mingled amusement and anxiety made him
alternately chuckle and frown--until she came to repeat his mother's
views as to the bad influence Susan had had upon his character, when
the frown remained fixed.

"I tried to make her see how she misjudged you," said Susan; "how the
furniture you are using is just some of our aus tire----"

"Our which?" exclaimed Sidney.

"Pennsylvania Dutch for household furnishings.  She told me I was
undermining those fine instincts which all gentlemen of your class
possess by inheritance; and that if your fineness was united to my
coarse lack of sensibility, we'd be more like Kilkenny cats than
turtle doves; and it was just then that I had the happy inspiration
to have Uncle George crazy to marry me.  It worked.  I'm quite worthy
of you, Sidney."

"Are you aware, dear," he asked, gravely, "that you are making fun of
my mother?"

"I'm stating facts.  If the facts are funny--well, they'd better be
funny than sad.  I might be as bad as your mother evidently expected
to find me: talking Pennsylvania Dutch and chewing gum and wearing my
hair in a weird design--instead of the simple, sweet Maud Muller I
am!  Be thankful!"

"I am!  Did Mother--stay long?"

He had started to say, "see any of the rest of the family?"--but
checked himself in time.

"About an hour.  _My_ mother thought it dreadful that I didn't ask
her to stop and have supper with us, since her train wasn't due until
long after she left here.  But you see, Sidney," said Susan, her
voice falling a note, "I couldn't explain to Mother why she had come;
and that her reason for coming made it rather impossible for me to
ask her to break bread with us!  We, too, have our pride."

"Susan, dear!" he said, gently, kissing her again, even while feeling
very glad in his heart that his mother had escaped a meal at the
Schrekengusts'--the effect of which would have been tragic!  "It's
all such nonsense, dear!  Don't let us allow it to disturb our
happiness and our love!"

"I shan't," she promised, nestling into his embrace.  "For of course
it _is_ all nonsense, Sidney.  And our love isn't, is it?"

"I'm very curious, Susanna," he remarked after a moment's palpitating
silence in each other's arms, "to hear Mother's account of your love
affair with Uncle George!  You are a rascal!"

"When I was a child, Sidney, I used to have a little way of
entertaining myself by experimenting upon my playmates or my family
to note the effect upon them of sudden surprising
announcements--announcements of purely imaginary adventures I had had
or discoveries I had made.  I would say to a mob of children, 'I was
a waif left on Mr. Schrekengust's doorstep; I am not his child at
all; my rich aunt is coming to fetch me this after, with a coach and
four.'  'Four what?' some wretchedly literal child would inquire.  I
didn't know.  Or I would personally conduct a group of children up
into the attic of our house to point out to them the signs of a
buried treasure under the floor--a blood stain in the shape of an
arrow pointing to a certain spot in the boards.  This particular
invention became so real to me that I once persuaded Lizzie to help
me tear up the flooring.  So to-day, while your mother was trying in
vain to convince me of my total unworthiness of you, it suddenly
struck me that it would be an interestingly complicated situation if
rich old bachelor Uncle George who must be placated were (unsuspected
by the Houghton family) in love with me and wanting to marry me.
'Now,' I said to myself adventurously, 'I'll give dear Mother-in-law
something to worry _about_!  It was not that I bore her any ill will,
Sidney, dear, but only that I was curious to see how such an
unlooked-for complication would strike her."

"But what's going to happen when she finds you out?--that's the
question!" exclaimed Sidney, rather ruefully.

"Perhaps you'd better take me to New York right away and let me
beguile Uncle George into proposing to me.  You seem to think I'd be
a good bait for big fish."

"I can't let you tamper with his young affections!  But I do think we
shall have to get married before Mother finds you out.  I'll take you
to New York and contrive to introduce Uncle George to you quite
casually; and you'll be your charmingest; and while his impression of
you is still fresh and delightful we'll run around the corner and get
married and then run back and get his blessing.  How does it strike
you?"

Susan shook her head.  "We can't think of getting married until you
are earning enough to be independent of your mother."

"Oh, Susanna, I can't wait that long before I take you unto myself
for better, for worse!"

"It would be exclusively 'for worse' if we married with nothing to
live on.  I couldn't consent to such recklessness.  The Pennsylvania
Dutch were ever a prudent race, you know."

Sidney controlled his inclination to wince at her reference to her
objectionable Pennsylvania Dutch blood.  He did not like it a bit
better than his mother did.

"I wonder, Susanna," he said, "what Mother really thought of you!"

"All too soon you'll know!"

"No, I shan't; that's the rub.  Of course I do know already that she
thinks you charming.  But she will be slow to admit it to me."

"Why, Sidney?"

"She was so prejudiced!--because you see, dear, she so hated your
having loaned me money; and my secrecy about you--and all the rest of
it."

"I never did understand why you would never tell her about me.  Were
you only trying to spare my feelings when you said she would be
opposed to your being engaged until you were self-supporting?  Was
your real reason my--my family?"

"Oh, my dear, Mother is so full of the prejudices of her class!  This
room must have surprised her," he hastily changed the subject.
"You'll admit that it's not just what one would expect to find in a
little village like this.  Did you tell her how you and I collected
this old furniture from old farmhouses about here and had it done
up?--and that it, too, is part of our--what do you call it?  'Aus
tire?'"

"Dear me, no!  She took it for my natural setting.  Sidney, you never
told me you had a brother."

"A half-brother.  Did Mother speak of him?  Joe and I never felt in
the least like brothers.  He never lived at home after I was born.
Mother told you, I suppose, how Uncle George cut him when he married
a farmhouse servant girl?"

"No, she only told me that if you married me your brother would
probably inherit your half of your uncle's money."

"When Joe's wife died two months ago, leaving a baby a week old,
Uncle George relented and took him back into favour."

"Did that console Joe?"

"Well, I think it did a little.  Joe loves money more than he loves
anything in the world.  Not as I do, for what I can get out of it.
He loves to hoard it.  He's a miser.  When Uncle George told him,
after his marriage, that he'd not leave him a cent, I think Joe had
an attack of yellow jaundice!"

"And do you think he wouldn't have married the girl if he had known
that would happen?"

"I really can't say.  I've never been intimate with Joe."

"What an exciting family you belong to, Sidney!--with your misers and
rich uncles and backgrounds and traditions and standards and getting
disinherited for marrying persons your distant relatives don't
approve!  I didn't know such romantic things happened in the U.S.A.
It sounds so early Victorian."

"Well, of course Uncle George is a gentleman of the old school."

"A good thing it's an _old_ school and passing out!"

"But it was picturesque, Susanna."

"But nothing else very useful."

"Of course I couldn't expect you to see these things just as I do."

"Please, Sidney, don't talk like that; it sounds so like----"

"Well?" he asked as she checked herself.

"Surely you feel that in the fundamental things of life we _are_ in
sympathy, don't you?" she pleaded.

"Naturally," he responded with a kiss.  "Else I shouldn't be here,
holding you in my arms!"

His answer satisfied her completely.

"Sidney," she said after a moment, "tell me some more about your
brother Joe.  I'm so surprised to discover him!  It seems so queer
you never told me of him.  Tell me where he lives, what's his
business, who takes care of the motherless baby, why he's a miser
when you're a spendthrift (for you are, you know).  Go ahead--talk!"
urged Susan with the breathless interest of a child demanding the
continuance of a story.

Sidney told off the answers to her questions on his fingers.  "Joe's
a farmer; lives at White Oak Farm, the old Houghton homestead between
here and Middleburg; Uncle George owns it; Joe works it on shares,
and hoards every dollar he earns; the housekeeper he now employs
takes care of his baby.  Anything more you want to know, Miss
Question-Box?"

"Is it a nice baby?"

"I'm no judge.  Anyway, I've never seen it."

"Is Joe, then, so very dreadful?"

"He's a grouch and a screw.  I fancy his wife didn't mind
dying--after living a whole year with Joe."

"Was Joe grown up when you were born?--since you say he didn't live
at home after you were born."

"He's only ten years older than I am.  His mother died at his birth.
He claims that Father left him entirely to servants and that he was
awfully neglected always.  So at the age of nine, when he acquired a
step-mother who tried to take him in hand and make something of him,
she could not do a thing with him.  He was a hopeless little tough.
A cub!  Mother simply couldn't have him about.  When I was born her
dread of Joe's contaminating me made Father send him off to boarding
school.  He was expelled from three schools in five years, for
insubordination.  Then Father died bankrupt, leaving Mother nothing
but his life insurance.  She had some income of her own, so we've
worried along.  Joe was fifteen when Father died and had gone to
school so little that he could scarcely read and write!  So he hired
himself out to learn farming.  Lived at a Pennsylvania Dutch farm as
one of the family for eight years and married their maid servant; so
that now you couldn't tell him from a born Pennsylvania Dutchman.
Talks and thinks and acts like one.  Even his ideas about women are
'Dutch': a woman is a breeder and a beast of burden!  But he likes
farming, and he's done awfully well, though he works like a dog and
never spends a cent--just hoards and hoards!"

"And you and your mother have nothing to do with him?"

"Not more than we must.  We have to borrow money from him
occasionally when we're short.  But he never lends us a nickel
without security and interest.  Tells us he doesn't see why he should
provide us with luxuries that he denies himself; that he's slaved
like a Chinese coolie for every dollar he has and he doesn't propose
to hand it out to people who don't work at all and who despise him.
He's a quite impossible grouch, you see!"

"Did you know his wife at all?"

"Never saw her.  I never could see why Uncle George resented Joe's
marrying a farmer's servant girl--no lady would have married him!
But you see, what Uncle George hated was that no sooner had he
employed Joe to manage White Oak Farm than Joe up and married that
common girl and took her to live at that lovely old, historic,
ancestral home made sacred by seven generations of Houghtons having
lived there.  To desecrate it by putting such a mistress there!
Uncle George was all for kicking him out.  I suppose, however, Joe
was too valuable to him, for it seems that Joe's a quite
exceptionally good farmer.  But anyway, Uncle George wouldn't let him
and his Dutch wife use the front of the house at all.  He made Joe
keep the front rooms locked up--the beautiful drawing room and
library and portrait parlour and some of the gorgeous old bedrooms.
Some day I want to show you the place, Susanna: the tapestries, the
old rugs, the colonial beds, the old sideboard.  I hope Uncle George
wills it to me!  Joe and his wife preferred living in their kitchen.
They were used to it.  It was the only place in that house where
they'd feel at home!"

Susan was silent for a while when Sidney paused, thinking how
different had been the lives of these two boys born of the same
father.

"Most men are not fit to be fathers," she presently remarked.  "I
wonder whether Joe will do as badly by his child as your father did
by him."

"Probably worse, Father having been a gentleman and Joe being a boor.
Joe hates respectability as an owl hates daylight; as much as I hate
toughness.  He says Mother drove him to hating 'gentility' even more
than he naturally hated it."

Susan felt that she could quite understand that.  But before she
could reply they were interrupted by the entrance of her mother.

Mrs. Schrekengust, wearing the black hood and shawl prescribed by the
Mennonite faith for outdoor apparel, carried into the parlour a tray
bearing two bottles of ginger ale, two glasses, and a plate of
molasses cake.

Sidney, rising to relieve her of it and place it on a table, so
embarrassed and confused her by his gallantry that she almost dropped
the tray before he could take it.

"I can't used myself to your so polite manners, Sidney!" she said,
apologetically.  "I wasn't never used to 'em.  It wonders me how you
kin remember 'em still."

Susan was intensely sensitive to Sidney's invariable wincing from her
mother and father and sisters.  Try as he would he could not conceal
it from her, and though she strove to make excuses for him to herself
and to understand, yet she knew that deep down in her heart she
resented it.

"Where are you going, Mother?" she asked in surprise at sight of the
hood and shawl Mrs. Schrekengust was wearing at this hour when she
was usually in bed asleep.  Suddenly she noticed that her mother was
looking white and frightened.  "What is it, Mother?" she exclaimed,
rising and going to her side.  "What's the matter?"

"Och, Susie, an awful thing happened out in our backyard whiles you
and Sidney was settin' in here keepin' company!  Hogenbach's Missus
come runnin' over just at supper time to ketch one of her chickens
that jumped the fence over and she fell down in one of them fits she
gets and smothered to death!  Yes, anyhow!"

"Oh!" exclaimed Susan, "Mrs. Hogenbach is dead?"

"Och, yes, three hours ago she died!  Out in our backyard yet!  And
now they are got a jury settin' up at Hogenbach's to see what she
died of and I got to go fur such a witness."

She turned to explain to Sidney: "Missus she used to have
spells--sich fits, you mind; she'd throw a fit most any time; and I
often says to her Mister, 'You don't watch Missus good enough.  Some
day she'll smother fur you in one of them spells!'  But he didn't
listen on me.  So here this evening when she didn't get home from
chasin' her chicken, he come schnaufflin' over to our place after a
whiles to see why she didn't come home.  She'd been away a full hour.
And I tol' him, I says, 'If Missus was off that long, Hen Hogenbach,
then this time you carry her in dead.'  'Och,' he says, 'how often'll
you tell me that--that I'll carry her in dead?  She _never_ dies in
them spells!'  'But this time, Hen, it _is_!' I says.  'If it's went
a whole hour since she didn't get home a'ready, Hen, then you mind,
this time it _is_!'  And it was!  Hen he went out with a lantern and
found her by the pig sty with her face down, smothered to death.  She
looked awful!  So Pop he fetched the coroner.  And the coroner he
says he must now send fur a jury to set on her and find out what she
died of.  'But it ain't necessary,' I argued him, 'to have no jury
set; I kin tell you what she died of.'  So I tol' him how Missus she
gets spells fur ten years back a'ready and this evening she smothered
in one of 'em.  'That's what she died of--now you know,' I says.  But
would you believe it, that there stubborn-headed coroner he wouldn't
have it no other way but that a jury must set to find out what she
died of.  'But I did tell you a'ready what she died of,' I argued
him.  'She has spells!  Fur ten years she has 'em!  And to-night she
smothered in one of 'em!' I says.  But no, a jury must come and set
on her to find out what she died of!  Ain't, Susie, it's awful dumb
of that there coroner to have a jury set to see what she died of when
I _tol'_ him what--she had spells and smothered."

"Would you like me to go with you?" Sidney politely inquired.  "Can I
be of any help?"

"Och, no, you stay settin' with Susie and enjoy yourself pickin' a
piece," replied Mrs. Schrekengust, indicating the tray--"picking a
piece" meaning a light luncheon.

When a few moments later Susan and Sidney were again alone, partaking
of the ginger ale and cake, Susan said with a sigh, "This death will
be the only thing talked of in Reifsville for the next six months!
Oh, how they'll revel in every gruesome detail!  I foresee that it's
going to drive me to commit a crime, to give them something else to
talk about!"

"How glad you'll be, dear, when I take you away into another world!"

"Oh, but, Sidney, dear, I am very much a part of this world, too.  I
discovered something about myself when I went away to school: I found
out how dependent I am upon affection.  I've always had so much of it
lavished on me here.  So even if I do have interests that my parents
and sisters don't share, they do fill the biggest part of me--and
that's my heart!"

"That's awfully sweet of you, dear.  You are a loyal little soul!"

"More than that!  My heart is so _tenacious_ where once it has been
given!" she sighed.  "I can't seem to wrench it loose!"

"Why that sigh?" he quickly asked.  "You wish you could stop loving
me, but you can't--is that it?  Doesn't that prove," he argued,
renewing a discussion which for weeks had kept them both on the rack,
and which now suddenly drove the colour from their faces, "that I am
right and you are wrong, dearest?  If _I_ were in the wrong about
this matter, wouldn't it have killed your love for me, Susanna, dear?"

"Oh, Sidney!" pleaded Susan, piteously, "don't!  Please, please,
don't let us talk of that again!"

"But, dearest, you don't understand," he persisted, his voice
quivering.  "You're so obsessed with the conventional view of love
and marriage that you won't look at it simply and naturally, as the
spontaneous, emotional relation that God ordained it to be!"

"You surely don't believe that it is _right_, Sidney, to bring a
child into the world handicapped from the start with illegitimacy!"

"Of course I don't!  That need not happen--must not!  I only mean
that the union of natural rather than legalized love is higher,
finer, purer!  You and I, Susanna, will never love more hotly, more
humanly than we do now!  Why, then, deny ourselves the full
expression of our love for so material a consideration as an
insufficient income on which to legalize our union?  We are losing
weeks and months of our precious youth!--of the ecstasy of youth!
How can a broad-minded girl like you think that a few ceremonial
words can alter the great eternal fact of Love?  _Why shouldn't_ you
give yourself to me now as well as after the marriage ceremony?"

"But why should I?  My love for you, Sidney, is something so far
above a mere appetite!"

Sidney winced.  Susan did sometimes offend his taste.  "You speak of
our love as 'a mere appetite'!"

She so often found him, in any discussion between them that tended to
get out of his hands, twisting her statements out of their obvious
meaning; condemning her candid recognition of what he himself had
suggested or implied.

"I'm protesting, dear," she answered, "against your having that idea
of love.  To me it is something so different!"

"Sometimes I think, Susanna, dear, that you don't know what real love
is, when you can say a--yes, a really coarse thing about it like what
you just said!  Love is no more an experience wholly of the spirit
than it is wholly of the senses.  It is a full expression of the
entire being!"

"But, Sidney, dear, if the thing you wish is what you keep saying in
your letters it is--'a holy expression of love'--why is secrecy
necessary?" asked Susan, her voice so pained, her eyes so strained
and tortured, that Sidney involuntarily took her hand reassuringly in
his.  "Why," she continued, "not proclaim such a Gospel to all the
world, if it is so true and beautiful?"

"You know the price we'd have to pay for acting openly, dearest!"

"If it's not worth that price, it's not what you claim for it!"

"It's the highest, the most exquisite thing in life, Susanna!"

"Then don't let us desecrate it!  To lose our self-control is not
high or beautiful or holy!--whatever fine phrases you may use about
it, dear!"

"Yet you think a legal marriage is all that!" exclaimed Sidney.

"I still believe in the 'institution of the family'--at least until
some better plan for rearing children is suggested.  I've never heard
of any that would not be much worse for the children than being
brought up in families--faulty as family life may be."

"We're talking about love, dear; not about family life and children!"

"But children happen to be the fruit of love, dear; so we can't leave
them out of this."

"If you have no higher idea of love than to believe that it is merely
for the begetting of children----"

"But that's what Nature uses it for.  And, dear, you who have such
inordinate family pride--what do you mean by 'family pride'?  What
becomes of it in a relation such as you wish?  You are proud of a
line of _well-born_ ancestors!"

"Damn my ancestors!  When you and I, Susanna, dearest, are yearning
for the fullest, the most exquisite expression of ourselves, why
should we deny ourselves?  Why, why?  I love you with every part of
me--with all my heart and all my mind and all my senses!"

"Oh, my dear, my dear," she tremulously protested, "I cannot,
_cannot_ believe that what you want is so essential to any demand of
our spirits that we can't wait!  There is nothing I would refuse to
go through for the sake of our love; there is nothing in all my life
I would count too high a price to pay for it.  But to me love is so
much more than mere possession.  It is a life shared in the
open!--our work, our ideals, our ambitions lived out together
harmoniously.  That's what marriage means to me.  And you would lead
me into secrecy, hiding, _shame_!--leading to nothing--nothing but
satiety and disgust!"

"Susanna, dearest!  How can you sit there and philosophize about a
thing that consumes one like a living fire!  I want you, Susanna!" he
whispered, drawing her into his arms.  "You are mine and I am
yours--and nothing, nothing else matters!  Nothing!  Nothing!"

But she forced herself out of his embrace.  "Tell me this, Sidney,"
she said, her face a deathly white, "would you ask this thing of me
if I were a girl of your mother's choosing?  Of your own social
world?  Would you?"

"Perhaps I shouldn't have to plead so hard," he said, chokingly,
"with a more worldly girl!  Dearest!  Don't be so cruel to me!  Come
to me!  Love me!" he begged, taking her again to his heart.  "How can
you deny me when----"

A voice in the hall without made them draw apart guiltily.

Mrs. Schrekengust opened the door and stood on the threshold.  "The
jury's still settin'," she announced; and Susan, with a sense of deep
relief at the interruption, thanked heaven in her heart for Mrs.
Hogenbach's timely death.  "They're gettin' along, though--that there
jury is.  They're got it settled that Missus is anyhow dead.  They
ain't got it made out, though, what she died of.  They're still
arguin' that--for all I _tol'_ 'em a'ready how she had spells and
smothered.  But it seems my word fur it ain't enough.  They have to
set awhile till they know oncet what she died of--that dumb they
are----"

Mrs. Schrekengust seemed suddenly to sense the fact that she was
interrupting a lover's tête-à-tête.  She stopped with embarrassing
abruptness, closed the door sharply, and they heard her walk away
down the hall.

Neither of them moved or spoke until the sound of her step had passed
on to the back of the house and was lost.

Soon the deep silence of the house, penetrating even to this room
apart, proclaimed that all the family slept.

But Sidney stayed on.




CHAPTER III

THE FOLLOWING SPRING

March Sixth.

DEAREST SIDNEY:

The time has come at last when I can no longer hold back the question
which for weeks and weeks I have not allowed myself to ask you--and
which you must have wondered why I have not asked you.  It has been
because I have been afraid to face your answer.

Oh, Sidney, my love, put me out of the agony of suspense that I've
been suffering these many weeks and tell me what it is that has come
between you and me!  Surely I have not merely _imagined_ that you
have changed to me?--your visits so far apart and so hasty; your
short notes once a week or less often; your altered manner when you
are with me--what is it, Sidney?  If you have grown to love me less,
why have you?  Is it anything I have said or done?  Are you
disappointed in me?  _Can_ such love as ours grow cold and die?  If
it can, I can never again trust anything in life!  Oh, my love, I am
so wholly yours--every beat of my heart, every thought of my mind is
for you--I have no life apart from you--I have given myself to you so
entirely!  It surely is not possible that you _could_ take yourself
out of my life, as you seem to be doing!

Do you know that yesterday you came and went without kissing me,
after not seeing me or writing to me for three weeks?

Can it be, Sidney, that if I had _not_ given you all that a woman can
give, you might still be my devoted lover?  Can it be that having
satisfied and sated your desire for me, you are _through_ with me?

Susan paused here, as she thought how "coarse" Sidney would consider
that question.  But she did not change it.

She wrote on feverishly:


I implore you, dearest, not to treat this letter as all my letters to
you have been treated lately--but to answer it as soon as you get it
and tell me that I have been torturing myself for nothing; that you
are mine--as I am yours.

Or if you cannot truthfully say that, at least let me have the truth.

SUSANNA.


Ten days later, her letter having remained unanswered, Susan sent a
telegram to Sidney:


_Did you get my letter of March sixth?  Wire answer._  S.


It was two days before she received a reply:


_Letter received.  Very busy.  Spring exams.  Will write soon._
SIDNEY.


After a long, dark, despairing week, his letter at last arrived.


DEAR SUSAN:

Why let yourself get morbid and hysterical and imagine things?--just
because I relax now and then from the strain of our first ardour.
Naturally, one can't live at fever heat all the time.  Be sensible,
my dear girl, and please, please don't stir me up, at this critical
time of my spring exams, with such forlorn wails, such wild
telegrams!  Be your old, jolly, funny self, can't you?  You've become
so serious and solemn, it quite gives me the blues to go to
Reifsville.

I'm afraid you must not look for me for the next few weeks; I shall
be too busy to get away.  I shan't have time for much writing,
either.  So don't go off on a tangent, my dear, if you don't hear
from me.

Take care of yourself.  Write me one of your old-time funny letters
that used to make me roar so that the housekeeper here would come
running to see what ailed me!

  Yours,
    SIDNEY.


Susan had recently subscribed for the daily paper published in the
university town where Sidney studied and she had learned from it that
he was not too busy with his spring examinations to attend dances and
theatre parties, to play in golf and tennis tournaments, and to take
automobile trips.

The "jolly-funny" letter that he requested was not written and
nothing further passed between them for two weeks.

Meantime, the newspapers from the university town were revealing to
Susan a fact that made her heart turn to lead.  Day after day she
read in the "Social Column" of the newspaper a certain name coupled
with Sidney's.


Miss Laura Beresford, daughter of the newly elected President of the
University, and Mr. Sidney Houghton, a student in the school of
International Law, led in an old-fashioned German given last night at
Phillipps Hall.


Or,


Miss Laura Beresford gave a dinner on Tuesday night in honour of her
house guest, Mrs. Joseph Houghton of Middleburg, Pa., mother of Mr.
Sidney Houghton of the Law School.


Or,


Mrs. Joseph Houghton gave a small dinner dance on Thursday night at
Hotel Mortimer in honour of Miss Laura Beresford and of her son, Mr.
Sidney Houghton of the Law School.


Always when Sidney's name was listed "among those present," at any
social affair, the name of Miss Laura Beresford was sure to be there.

Was Mrs. Houghton trying to separate Sidney from her?  Susan
wretchedly speculated.  And was he only too ready to be enticed away?

At last, when she could no longer bear his silence and his continued
remaining away from her, she wrote again, a long, heart-broken
letter, a passionate outcry, pleading with him for her life's
happiness, her honour----

But no sooner was it written than she tore it into bits.

"I won't beg!  I won't cringe!  Nothing that I can say to him can
alter the fact that he no longer loves me!"

It added much to her suffering, during these dark days, to realize
the dumb misery of her doting family in their consciousness of her
unhappiness.  That she should be a source of pain instead of comfort
to them who had sacrificed so much for her, hurt her bitterly.

She suddenly resolved, one day, that, as Sidney would not come to her
or answer her letters, and as she had somewhat to say to him which
must be said, at whatever cost to her of wounded pride, she would
have to go to him.

The tragic extent of his alienation from her seemed to her to be
measured by her instinctive conviction that if she should notify him
of her coming, he would manage to get out of her way.  It seemed to
her, when this conviction had burned its way into her heart, that
nothing further which she might be called upon to endure could add to
the humiliation and agony of that hour.

It took all the resolution she could command to coerce herself to the
self-crucifixion of forcing an interview upon him.

"But it will be the last time; I shall never, never appeal to him
again!"

She arrived at his rooms at four o'clock in the afternoon, the hour
when he would be due to come in from his last lecture.

The Pennsylvania Dutch landlady of the house, a red-faced woman of
ample proportions, recognized her as the young girl who, over a year
ago, had helped "Mr. Sidney" buy and place the lovely furniture for
his study.  So she readily consented to let her wait for him there.

"You're his sister, mebby?  Or his cousin--ain't?" she asked
curiously as she unlocked the door of the study and stood aside to
let Susan pass in.

But Susan did not answer.  For the fact that jumped at her and struck
her in the face the moment she crossed the threshold of Sidney's
study, made her speechless.

The furniture which she and Sidney had bought (which she was still
paying for in installments out of her salary as the village teacher)
was not here; not one piece of it.  It had all been replaced with the
cheap oak suit which had been here in the beginning and which Sidney
had so loathed that it had made, him bitter.

"But this is not Mr. Houghton's room," she faltered, turning to Mrs.
Eschbach.

"Yes, it is hisn; only it ain't so grand no more, since he solt all
his nice furn-shure he used to have in here.  Didn't he tell you,"
asked Mrs. Eschbach, following Susan into the room, her curiosity
fairly radiating from all her large person, "how he got so hard up he
had to sell his furn-shure?"

"No," Susan managed to answer with dry lips.

"Yes, he couldn't afford to keep it no more.  You see, it had cost
awful expensive and I think it fetched a good price when he solt it.
But och," she added, sympathetically, "it went so hard with him to
part with it!  He's so much fur havin' things grand around him, that
way."

"When did he--how long ago did he--sell it?" Susan asked, scarcely
above a whisper.

"Well, he done it graj-ally; one piece at a time just as he needed
the money, till it was all solt a'ready."

A wild hope rose in Susan's breast that perhaps _this_ was all that
was keeping Sidney away from her--embarrassment because of money
difficulties; he was so unpractical and foolish about money!  Oh, if
this were indeed all that was alienating him!

"You see," Mrs. Eschbach explained, "he's in so thick with the new
college President's daughter, and she's sich a rich swell, he's just
got to spend on her to keep in with her.  Fur a-plenty of others
would run with her if he didn't.  So he's got to spend on her."

Susan sank limply into the nearest chair.

"It's a pity he ain't a rich young man--ain't?--sich tony friends as
he runs with and sich taste as he's got fur grandness!  Och, but he
hates this here common furn-shure I had to put back here when he solt
hisn!  But I tol' him it ain't reasonable fur him to expec' no better
fur as cheap rent as what he pays yet.  Nor it _ain't_, either."

"Do you think he will come in soon?" asked Susan, faintly.

"Mebby he will and again mebby he won't.  You can't never count on
him fur nothin' since he's been runnin' with that there Miss
Beresford."

"I'll wait for him."

"All right.  When he does come in I'll right aways tell him you're
here," said Mrs. Eschbach, kindly.  "You ain't lookin' just so
hearty."

"Please don't tell him I'm here--I--want to surprise him."

"All right.  _Ain't_ you his cousin or sister or what?"

"No.  Just his----"

Susan hesitated; should she tell this woman that she was Sidney's
promised wife?

"Just--a friend of his," she concluded.

"A friend?" repeated Mrs. Eschbach, dubiously.  "Say," she added,
tentatively, "it's put out all over this here town that him and Miss
Beresford's promised to each other."

"Is it?" Susan feebly smiled.  "But I think that must be only gossip,
Mrs. Eschbach.  I have not heard of it and I am a--a very close
friend of Mr. Houghton's."

"Yes, he used to have your pitcher on his bureau settin'.  I don't
know what's become of that there pitcher; I ain't seen it this good
whiles back a'ready.  So you don't believe it that him and her's
promised?"

"No."

"Well, I must say she ain't the wife I'd pick out for my son.  She's
too much all fur herself that way.  They say it got her so spoilt,
havin' her own big fortune that she inherited off of her gran'pop,
her mom bein' dead.  Her mom was a old school friend of Mr. Sidney's
mom, and as soon as President Beresford got his job at the college
here (he's the new President) Mrs. Houghton she come on to wisit her
son and interdooced him to Miss Beresford, her old friend's daughter,
you understand.  And now Mrs. Houghton she's that tickled at the way
them two young folks takes to each other.  To be sure, it certainly
is wery nice fur Mr. Sidney, him bein' so hard up and Miss Beresford
her bein' so good-fixed.  They say she's awful rich in her own right."

Mrs. Eschbach paused after this long speech, to get her breath, her
huge bosom heaving asthmatically.

Susan, sitting rigid, made no comment.

"Here's her pitcher on his bureau settin'," the landlady added when
she had recovered a bit.  "Want to take a look?" she asked, starting
across the floor.

But she was checked by the sound of the sudden opening of the front
door in the hall below.

She turned back to Susan, whose face, at the sound, had gone deadly
white.

"It's him," Mrs. Eschbach announced, making for the door as steps
came bounding up the stairs, accompanied by gay and noisy whistling.

Susan's hand clutched her breast--that he could be joyously whistling
when her heart was breaking!

"You're got comp'ny, Mister Sidney," Mrs. Eschbach informed him, on
the threshold of his room.

"Have I?" he brightly answered, stepping back to let her pass out,
then entering the room, smiling.

Susan's burning eyes, the only living part of her colourless face,
met his smiling glance.

At sight of her, the smile disappeared; the blood mounted to his
forehead; he sank into a chair in front of her.

Susan did not speak.  She would leave it all to him--to explain
himself.

"Well?" he began, defensively, almost aggressively.

"How do you do?" she said, pleasantly, her voice as soft as velvet.

Sidney, at all times peculiarly sensitive to the modulations of a
woman's voice, had always thought Susan's the most pleasing voice he
had ever heard.  It had been many weeks since its music had charmed
him, and now it suddenly stirred his pulse as he had not supposed
Susan could ever stir it again.

"Why did you come here, Susanna?" he asked, huskily.

"Aren't you pleased to see me, dear?" she asked, almost coquettishly.

"Of course--but what's the idea?"

"By the way, what's become of my--our furniture, dear?"

"Susanna!" he exclaimed, a deeper colour dyeing his face, his tone
ashamed and apologetic.  "I'll not rest until I have paid you back
every dollar that that furniture cost us!"

"'Cost us?'  But before you begin to pay me, dear, please pay the
dealer, to whom I'm still paying, as you know, fifteen dollars a
month.  I still owe him one hundred dollars of the three hundred
which the furniture cost--me.  Will you take over that debt of one
hundred dollars?"

"Of course I shall.  You must not pay another dollar of it!"

"All right," she quietly agreed, folding her hands in her lap, "I
won't."

She said nothing more.  He waited.  But, her friendly glance resting
upon him peacefully (while her heart beat suffocatingly), she also
waited.

"I never meant to sell the furniture, Susanna," he began, miserably,
"but I----"

"Oh, you sold it?" she asked as he floundered.

"Yes," he admitted, his eyes falling, unable to meet hers:

"All of it?"

"To the last piece!  But I shall pay you back!  Every dollar of it!
It may take me a long time, but I shan't let you lose what you paid
for it, Susanna!"

"Really?"

"Please, Susanna!  Of course I know how the thing must look to
you----"

"Why did you sell it?  Didn't you like it any more, dear?"

"I know you'll find it hard to forgive me!  I needed money, Susanna."

"What for, Sidney?"

"For my running expenses.  Mother, you see, is a rather luxurious
person and so am I, and the fact is, our income isn't big enough for
our needs."

"Didn't you think about consulting me before you sold my--our
furniture?"

"Susanna!" he said, abjectly, his head bowed like a guilty child's.

"I shall hardly be able, Sidney, to buy another aus tire; I worked so
long to earn money enough for what I did buy.  We shall have to marry
without much furniture.  Mother and Father and my sisters will think
that a disgrace.  But then, we need not tell them, need we?  We may
as well spare their feelings."

Sidney glanced at her uneasily; then his eyes fell again; he could
not meet her clear gaze.

"When are we to be married, Sydney?"

"I--I don't know."

"You finish here in two months.  What are your plans?"

"I have none.  That is, no definite plans--I----"

"Yes?" she urged, as he paused.

"It would be years before I earned enough to support you, Susanna."

"The diplomatic appointment--won't your uncle get it for you?"

"Not if I married you, Susanna!"

"The only thing left for you to do, then, Sidney, is to work up a law
practice and I shall go on teaching until you are able to support
your--your family."

"I've no intention whatever of displeasing Uncle George and living
like a beggar!"

"Then what do you propose to do?"

"Keep in Uncle George's good graces."

"But how?--seeing that I am your promised wife, Sidney."

"My--promised--wife?" he repeated, slowly, dubiously.

"More than that--I _am_ your wife."

Sidney's feelings at this moment were a strangely conflicting medley.
Susanna had not ceased to be extremely attractive to him.  Her hold
upon his imagination as well as upon his heart was still so strong
that no other woman would ever mean quite so much to him.  But having
somewhat sated his passion for her, it no longer outmeasured his
worldly ambition, as it had done at first.

The somewhat abnormal selfishness of his character usually took the
form of disliking rather spitefully any person or thing that blocked
his desires.  Susan, as the one great obstacle to a marriage which
would be in every way highly advantageous to him, to a girl of
beauty, distinction, wealth, and position, to whom he was also
greatly attracted, who would more than satisfy Uncle George's severe
standards; Susan as the woman in whose heart he knew he stood
revealed as a cad, a liar, a scoundrel, whose respect he had valued
and whose scorn stung him to the quick and filled him with
self-contempt; Susan had now become to him a thorn in the flesh, an
irritant that he would ruthlessly tear out and cast off.  For his own
gratification and comfort were always to Sidney paramount to every
other consideration.  In this riot of conflicting emotions then--on
the one side, remorse, compassion, attraction, conscience; on the
other, ambition, family pride, love of ease and luxury, impatient
irritation and anger at the whole situation--Sidney stood bewildered,
his self-control shaken, the evil feelings in his heart getting the
better of him.

"Susanna!  Can't you see that my feelings have changed?"

It stabbed him to see how white she looked as, after an instant, she
answered, "It's too late to consider that now.  I am your wife."

"I never dreamed that _you_ would try to hold a man against his will!"

"You've never gone through the formality of asking me to release you.
You wrote to me not to imagine that you had changed; not to grow
'hysterical' at your neglect."

"I was trying to let you down easily."

"Easily?"

"Of course it's awfully hard on both of us!"

"Let me down to _what_?"

"To the fact that I cannot marry you, Susan."

"Why not?"

"I could never love any woman enough to suffer poverty for her."

"But we _are_ married!  You know how you persuaded me that the mere
marriage ceremony meant nothing to such a 'holy relation' as yours
and mine!"

"To bring up all that trumpery spoken in the heat of passion, and try
to use it to force my hand!  Where is your _pride_, Susan?"

"In your keeping, Sidney.  I put my pride into your care and keeping
when I gave you myself!" she said, piteously.

For an instant he was silenced, his eyes again downcast.

But the situation was critical; he dared not soften.  The moment had
come (so long delayed) when he must fight it out.

"Since I no longer feel as I did, you would be _willing_ to marry
me?" he asked, incredulously.

"Very unwilling.  But you and I have no longer any choice about it;
we've gone too far.  _I am your wife_!"

"You _were_ my _mistress_, Susan."

He saw her hand, resting on the arm of her chair, tighten its clasp
until the knuckles showed white.

"You see, that's just the point," he hastened to say.  "A gentleman,"
with the faintest possible emphasis on the word, "doesn't marry his
mistress."

"Nor keep his word?"

"Love promises!  Who ever remembers them or considers them binding?
The mother of my possible daughters cannot be the woman who has been
my mistress."

It sounded cruelly convincing even to himself.  But her answer came
swiftly.

"I'd prefer the father of my possible sons to be a man of honour.
But it's too late for us to select our children's parents now."

"Oh, no, it's not."

"Yes.  That's what brought me here to-day.  You and I must be married
_at once_.  For, Sidney, I am with child.  Our child will be born in
July."

There was a deathlike stillness in the room for a moment.  Sidney
looked utterly confounded; utterly helpless before a situation that
seemed to have got out of his hands.

"Oh, Susanna!  You poor girl!" he stammered.

Then suddenly, seeing himself trapped, his bright prospects
destroyed, himself condemned to privation and hard labour, Sidney's
pity for himself killed the compassion which for a moment he had felt
for the woman who would drag him down from the sunny heights in which
he had for weeks past been basking, and would force him to drudge for
her in obscurity and deprivation.

"But why have you _let_ such a thing happen?" he burst out.  "I
trusted to your prudence not to get me (and yourself) into a wretched
hole like this!  The low vulgarity of it!  It will ruin me!  _Ruin_
me!"

"It's not of ourselves that you and I may think now.  We dare not
wrong our child!  We are not _going_ to wrong it!  Understand me,
Sidney, I am going to protect it!  It is not for myself that I am
here with you to-day.  But my child is going to have a father, a
name, a home!"

The cold fear that clutched Sidney's heart at her words made him
brutal.

"This is, I suppose, the way girls of your class manage these
matters, in order to make sure of marriage?"

"And how do gentlemen of your class manage them?" she asked, calmly.
"Don't make yourself ridiculous, Sidney.  But be quite clear on this
point--_my child is going to be protected_."

"What good would marriage do _now_--to you or me or the child?  It's
too late.  If you had told me of this as soon as you knew of it!  But
now?  Marriage at this late stage won't save you and will only
disgrace me!  I won't consent to it!"

"You'll have to.  I'll make you.  Not only for the sake of our child,
but for my dear ones at home that have sacrificed so much for me--I
won't let disgrace and sorrow come to them through me--and you.  You
and I are going to be married.  We need not live together.  But _we
are going to be married_."

"We are not!  I would not marry you now if----"

There was a knock on the half-open door.  Sidney started up; but
before he could reach it, the door was thrown wide, and Miss Laura
Beresford, in sporting golf attire, stood revealed at the threshold.
Susan, sitting just inside the door, was not directly in her line of
vision.

"I've been honking and _honking_ for you, Sid!  Didn't you hear me?
Oh!  Not even dressed yet!" she exclaimed, fretfully.  "We shall be
too late for the game!  Why didn't you phone if you weren't going to
keep your engagement?" she demanded, indignantly.

And then, all at once she became conscious of Sidney's pallor and
agitation; she cast a quick glance about the room and her eye fell
upon Susan just inside the door.

"Why!  What's the matter?  What----"

Susan suddenly rose and came forward, smiling, with outstretched hand.

"_This_ is 'Laura,' surely?  I've been hearing so much about
you!--how good you've been to dear Sidney and what splendid times
you've been having together!  And what good friends your two mothers
have always been!  It has been so kind of you to keep dear Sidney
from growing dull when I couldn't be here with him; I can't tell you
how much I appreciate it--your keeping him from moping for _me_!
He's just been telling me he wants you to be my maid of honour.  You
shall be the first to congratulate us, Laura (if I may call you
that).  We are to be married next week."

She was standing at Sidney's side, and as she spoke, she clasped her
arms about his neck and leaned against his breast.  He, rigid, white
as chalk, his tragic-comic look of despair and dismay, of being
hopelessly caught, brought to Miss Beresford's lips a curve of
contempt that added not a little to his agony.

But now, suddenly, without warning, Susan's hold upon him relaxed,
her arms fell to her sides, she slipped to the floor and lay in a
little heap at his feet--as still and white as death.




CHAPTER IV

A YEAR LATER

Susan had quite formed a habit, of late, of taking the precaution, at
the end of her day's work in her school-room, to peep from the window
to see whether the coast were clear so that she could go forth
without danger of being joined on the way home by her objectionable
suitor, Joe Houghton, who lived and worked just across the road from
her new school, at his uncle's famous old homestead, White Oak Farm;
or by some adoring pupil who might be lingering about to walk to the
trolley station with her, as some among the older boys and girls were
apt to do.  The sentimental girls were even more trying than the big,
blushing, silent boys.  There had been a time, ages and ages ago,
when she had loved all her pupils quite maternally and had been so
humbly grateful for their devotion to her!  But now, she only wanted
to be let alone; to keep to herself.  It was almost the only desire
she had left; for all capacity for feeling anything, except weariness
and listlessness, seemed to have died within her.

She had shrunk from the return of the spring, the anniversary of her
great tragedy, lest its old exhilarating effect upon her might bring
back her power to feel, to suffer.  But it did not stir a drop of her
blood; her heart remained like lead in her breast; as though some
tension had snapped, leaving her soul a dead weight.

The new school position which she had secured this year was at White
Oak Station, a hamlet eight miles from her home, in a neighbourhood
in which she had been quite unacquainted.

To-day when she peeped from the school-room window to reconnoitre,
there was not, as far as she could see, a single boy, girl, or man in
sight.

Joe Houghton, however, could not be depended upon to give her fair
warning by exposing himself to view; her constant efforts to elude
him had only made him cunning in his pursuit of her.  So, in letting
herself out of the school-house door, she moved cautiously, without
noise, and instead of taking the public road, crept like a burglar
around to the back of the little building, intending to cross a field
to another road which would add a half mile to her walk to the
trolley station.  She knew that by doing this she ran the risk of
missing her trolley car home and of being obliged to wait an hour for
the next one.  That, however, would not be so wearisome as Joe
Houghton's company on the long mile to the station.

She reached the back of the school-house unobserved, she was sure,
and as, with a sigh of relief at her escape, she turned toward the
adjoining field, there in front of her, scowling at her, stood Joe
Houghton!

He was not quite forty years of age, but from over-work his tall,
bony frame was stooped like an old man's.  His gaunt face was tanned
and his hands red and rough.  His countenance, though not evil, was
usually sulky when not actually scowling.  The most objectionable
thing about him in Susan's eyes was the way his false teeth wriggled
about, "as though," she thought, "they didn't want to stay on the
job!"

As a concession to the fact that he was come a-courting, he wore his
best (and only) suit: of cheap material and bad cut; and a brilliant
lavender necktie that he had bought at Woolworth's.

Joe Houghton was reputed to have amassed a very comfortable bank
account; but money to him was not what the dictionary proclaims it,
"a medium of exchange"; he never exchanged it for anything if he
could help it.  The one great dissipation of his whole life was the
accumulation and hoarding of wealth.

"That's the time I caught you; ain't?" he said, pointing an accusing
finger at Susan as she stopped short at sight of him.  His words were
playful, but his tone and look were sullen.

Without answering, she turned and walked back to the front of the
school-house to take the main road.

Joe, however, kept at her side.

"What the hell makes you ac' so menschenshy*, anyhow, Miss Susie?" he
demanded.


* Bashful with men.


She walked rapidly, without replying.

"Say, Miss Susan, I got somepin awful particular to tell you this
after!" he pleaded.

"But you've had my answer so often," she said, wearily.  Though her
voice had lost none of its sweetness and drawling softness, it was
lifeless.

"No, I ain't had your answer a'ready!" growled Joe.  "You ain't said
Yes yet; and Yes is a-goin' to be your answer!  You make up your mind
to that!"

"You seem to have made up your mind so firmly," she said, sweetly,
"that my mind doesn't seem to matter."

"Well, anyhow, it ain't that question I want to bother you with this
after.  It's somepin else I got reference to."

Susan manifested no curiosity.

"Somepin awful important to me and you," he added.

"That doesn't seem possible," said Susan, mildly.

"You mean," said Joe, frowning with the mental effort to which this
retort challenged him, "that me and you ain't got no interests in
common?"

"I've not noticed any."

"Well, you'll notice 'em some day, you bet you!  It's about my Uncle
George's will I want to tell you.  I went to Middleburg yistiddy to
tend the reading of the will.  That's some important to you, ain't
it?"

"Why should it be?"

"Because some day what's mine will be yourn."

"But if you were mine, I should certainly wish, for your immortal
soul's sake, that your Uncle George had died a bankrupt!"

Joe, to whom money was a holy thing, his only religion, felt cold at
such blasphemy.

"It's temptin' Providence to say sich things!" he frowned.

"Can 'Providence' be tempted?  What a funny expression it is, by the
way--'tempting Providence!'  Religion sometimes seems to me the most
humorous thing in all the world!"

"Och, don't talk so outlandish!" he brusquely admonished her.  Joe,
like Mark Antony, was "no orator," but "a plain, blunt man," who did
not stand on ceremony.  "Don't you want fur me to tell you about
Uncle George's will?"

"Why should I?"

"Say, what makes you ac' so ugly to me?  Don't I treat you right?"

"As right as you know how, Mr. Houghton."

"Well, I can't do better'n that, can I?"

"No--that's the trouble."

"You mean," he demanded with puckered brow, "that I don't know how to
treat a lady right?"

"You're so bright, Mr. Houghton, in seeing through my remarks!"

"Yes," said Joe, complacently, "I always was wery smart that way.
But I guess you mean," he added, suspiciously, "that I ain't tony
enough to suit you."

"You don't have to suit me."

"But you got to suit _me_!  And you got to take interest in Uncle
George's will.  Uncle George done awful mean by me!  What do you
think he up and done yet, Miss Susan?  He's inherited to my
half-brother, Sidney, this here farm here, that I've worked on like a
dog for five years, improvin' the land so much that I've near doubled
the crops!  And now the whole place of twelve hundred waluable acres,
with house and all, goes to Sid and I got to get _out_!-- and lose
all the profits of my own work!  Yes, anyhow!  The will says Sid's
got to come here and make White Oak Farm his home and keep up the
place, because seven generations of Houghtons has lived here.  Sid
he's to be sich a gentleman farmer, the will says.  Now what do you
think of that?  Ain't it dirty mean that I got to get off my farm?"

Susan could almost have found it in her heart to pity the man at her
side for the tragic suffering she knew this fact meant to him.

"I'm sorry!" she said, sympathetically.

"The will inherits to Sid (besides White Oak Farm) two thirds of the
_es_tate worth near a million, and to me only one third," complained
Joe.  "To be sure," he admitted, "it ain't as if I hadn't of expected
Sid to get the big share; but I did think Uncle George would give the
_farm_ to me that I've worked on so hard!  But my folks always did
have it in fur me!  None of 'em ever did think I was good enough fur
'em to 'sociate with!--though it's them that always kep' me down.  My
father left me run wild when I was little and never bothered about
me; and then when he married again, my step-mother she had so ashamed
of me, she was all the time pokin' me out of sight whenever she had
comp'ny.  She'd make me eat in the kitchen with the hired help and
she wouldn't never speak to me.  Her and Sid and Uncle George, all of
'em, had always ashamed of me.  And my father _he_ didn't care!"

Joe spoke with exceeding bitterness, and for the first time in her
acquaintance with him, Susan found herself feeling some sympathy for
him.

"One thing in that there will," he continued, "ain't so bad fur me,
fur all.  If Sid's son dies----"

"He has a son?"

"Yes," answered Joe on a deep tragic note that made Susan vaguely
wonder.  "And if his kid dies, White Oak Farm goes to _my_ son, so's
the family name'll be kep' on at the ol' homestead."

Susan whimsically reflected that Joe was quite incapable of plotting
the heir's murder for the sake of his own son's inheritance.  "It
must take rather heroic courage to commit some kinds of crime!" she
thought.  "And only debased cowardice for the kind Sidney committed!"

"Now my half-brother, Sidney, he's altogether different to what I am
yet," Joe went on.  "He's a elegant swell, Sid is," he sneered.
"From a little kid a'ready, he was always awful genteel.  You'd never
take him fur my brother, Miss Susan, if you ever met up with him;
which you're likely to do soon, fur he's comin' here right aways to
White Oak to live at the ol' homestead."

Susan's detached self, which seemed, in these days, always to be
looking on, with a dull surprise, at her dead other self, noticed,
just now, how strangely unmoved this news found her.  Joe might have
been speaking (as he supposed he was) of someone she had never seen!

"Sid, he kep' on the right side of Uncle George by marryin' awful
good; a wery tony swell with money of her own.  A perfec' lady, so
they say.  I never seen her.  She must be, though, if she satisfied
Uncle George's elegant tastes!  Gosh, but Sid'll be ashamed to have
to interdooce her to _me_!"

Susan made no comment as they walked side by side over the country
highroad in the warm, bright April afternoon, past woods and fields
just beginning to show a down of tender green.

"Well, ain't it a dirty, mean shame, me havin' to get off my farm fur
my stuck-up half-brother to move in, that never done a stroke of work
on the place; nor nowheres else did he never do no work of no kind!"

"I wonder," the young school teacher found her brain speculating,
"whether he _could_ get any more negatives into that sentence!"

"Sid _he_ can't make good on the farm; he don't know nothin' about
farmin'.  He don't know nothin' about nothin', except the rules of
society and stylish clo'es and how to squander money and such like.
He even fell down on that there dead easy cinch Uncle George got
him--diplomacy--in Europe.  Got all balled up tryin' to work it!  His
wife didn't hit it off good with a dukess or a czaress or whatever.
Anyhow, the two of 'em (Mrs. Sid and the dukess or what) had words
and Sid he had to cut out and come home."

Susan laughed--a little low ripple of quite mirthless laughter.

"What's so funny?" asked Joe, puzzled.  "Sid's mom and Uncle George
took it awful serious.  Me, too, fur if he'd stayed over there on his
job, I might of stayed on the farm.  _Don't_ you think they done me
dirt?"

"It's not right," Susan answered, perfunctorily.  "It's not right (in
fact, it's quite grotesque) that a man, after he's dead, should
control twelve hundred acres of the earth's surface, decreeing to
whom it shall belong for two generations.  It's not right that your
step-brother, who does not work, should reap where others sow.  It's
not right that a third of a million dollars that you never worked for
should fall into your hands, while my valuable services in this
township are paid for at fifty dollars a month!  I'm afraid, Mr.
Houghton, I can't get warmed up over your wrongs.  Are you going to
move away?" she asked, hopefully.

"Not if I can help it--don't you worry!"

"I'll try not to."

"I'm in hopes Sid'll hire me fur his tenant-farmer and leave me live
in the tenant-farmer's cottage on the place and keep on workin' the
farm on shares fur him, like what I done fur Uncle George.  I don't
believe he will, though.  He'd hate so to have a brother like me,"
Joe growled, "livin' close by, so's he'd have to interdooce me,
still, if I chanced along, to his grand friends!"

Susan noted, without any great interest in the phenomenon, the
strange psychology of the born miser who, with ample means to go
where he would, preferred to work slavishly for a brother who looked
down upon him, rather than lose the few thousand dollars, the fruits
of his own labour which, in the transfer of the property, would
accrue to his brother instead of to him.

"Sid'll soon find out that a good, honest farmer ain't so easy
found," said Joe.  "So mebby he'll _have_ to leave me stay on."

It was not, Susan knew, that Joe was without pride or sensitiveness,
of a kind.  But these sentiments were overborne by his avarice.

His next words, however, made her doubt whether avarice was the only
or the strongest motive he had for wishing to remain where he was not
wanted.

"I want to be Johnny-on-the-spot to watch Sid 'waste his substance in
riotous living,'" he chuckled, maliciously.  "Till ten years a'ready
_he_ won't have no money left of all his big fortune.  I know him.
He'll blow it in!  I tell you," he said, wickedly gloating, "you'll
see the day when my swell brother comes to me beggin' fur the price
of a meal ticket.  Then watch what _I'll_ do!  And say! it won't go
so long, neither, till I get him in my power!"

"In your power!" smiled Susan, skeptically.  It sounded so
melodramatic.

"You needn't to grin!  I got my little plans all right, all right!"

Susan was silent.

"One good thing, Miss Susan, you won't have near the housework to do,
us livin' in the tenant's cottage, as what you'd of had if White Oak
Farm had of been willed to me and I'd of stayed on in the big house.
My housekeeper she's always growlin' about how much work it makes in
such a big house, even though we do close off all but just the couple
rooms we use.  Yes, me, I'll be awful glad when I got a wife oncet
and don't have to fuss with no hired help no more."

"Won't it be worse to have to fuss with a wife?  You can't discharge
your wife as you can your hired housekeeper."

"But my first wife, she never bothered me any about the housework
bein' too heavy.  And a man's wife can't up and leave like hired
help's always doin'."

"Oh, yes, she can, in these days.  A few do."

"Not the kind of a woman _I'll_ marry," said Joe, confidently.  "I
wouldn't tie up with no sich loose-moralled person."

"See that you don't!"

"_You_ don't hold no sich loose views, do you?  Don't you think
marriage is awful sakerd?"

"Sacred to become a man's permanent housekeeper who can't throw up
her job if she doesn't like it?  Sacred?  Ha!"  Susan laughed--almost
with amusement.

"A wife's a man's partner," argued Joe.

"His equal partner?  With some rights over their earnings and
property?"

"Well, to be sure, the husband's the head of the wife.  The _Bible_
says so.  You believe the Bible, don't you?"

"I don't believe nonsense."

"Oh, hell, Miss Susan, ain't you afraid somepin'll happen you, sayin'
sich blasphemous things?"

Susan thought to herself, "Afraid?--of something happening to
me?--when everything has happened that can ever matter!"

But when Joe Houghton had left her at the station and she was alone,
during her long hour's ride home to Reifsville, she found that his
announcement of his brother's immediately coming to live in the
neighbourhood of her school did seem to matter to her.  She had
suffered so horribly; her present insensibility was such a blessed
respite; she dreaded so unspeakably any possible thing which might
revive her pain!  Could she remain as callous at sight of Sidney
Houghton as everything else had found her since the birth of her dead
baby?

It was just one year ago to-day that she had gone to her lover's
rooms to plead with him for their coming child.  And three days after
that futile visit to him she had read the newspaper announcement of
his sudden marriage to Miss Laura Beresford.

Then for two days and nights she had suffered the prolonged torture
of a tedious and terribly difficult premature child-birth.

She had never seen her dead baby.  She had been unconscious at its
birth; and for many weeks afterward she had lain at death's door in
the delirium of child-bed fever.

When, after long, dreary, hopeless weeks of illness and suffering,
she had become strong enough to ask questions about the baby, the
answers of her shocked and stricken family had seemed to her strange,
evasive.  Her sister Addie had told her it was a girl; her mother,
tearfully, but with a note of heart-broken pride, that it was "a fine
boy"; Lizzie that it was "a seven months' blue baby and couldn't have
lived anyhow."  That enigmatical "anyhow" had vaguely troubled her
through all her convalescence.

"Just to think," Addie would mourn as she waited upon her, "that a
man with such nice manners at him as what Sidney always had, would go
and ac' like this here!  Don't it beat all?  I wouldn't of thought it
of him!  How he must have ashamed of hisself now!"

"_Him_ ashamed!" Lizzie would sniff.  "Nothing doing!  He ain't the
pertikkler _kind_!"

Susan's deepest bitterness against her "betrayer" lay in the fact
that she must be thankful that her baby was dead; that she, whose
longing for a child had been a passion, had been cheated of its
fulfilment; that the ecstasy which her child would have been to her
had been turned into a frenzy of horror lest her coming baby should
be alive!--born "out of wedlock"; an outcast; her innocent child made
to suffer all its life long because of its parents' selfishness and
weakness!  That her motherhood had been thus perverted and
distorted--for this she knew that never while she breathed could she
forgive Sidney Houghton.

It did not seem very strange to her that Miss Beresford, in spite of
that encounter with her at Sidney's rooms, had, after all, married
him.

"It isn't very much worse than what I did for love of him!  And of
course he lied to her about me."

Strangely enough, the Schrekengusts' desperate efforts to conceal
their darling's "disgrace" had been successful.  A doctor had been
"fetched" from another town and they themselves had been her only
nurses.  The very length and severity of her illness had precluded
any suspicion in Reifsville as to its true cause, especially as no
least rumour of scandal had been previously aroused.

The consternation produced in the family by Susan's inquiry, as soon
as she was able to walk out of doors, for the grave of her baby, had
revealed to her poignantly how deeply her family felt her "ruin."

"But we didn't give you away to folks by makin' a grave yet to show!"
her father had explained to her.  "Nobody knows nothing!  Nor they
_ain't_ to, neither!"

"Didn't you have an undertaker?"

"Och, no," her mother had sadly told her.  "Pop he tended to all
hisself."

"But where did you bury her?  I want at least to go to the spot where
she lies!" Susan had pleaded (the consensus of opinion seeming to
favour the assumption, in lieu of any positive statement, that the
baby had been a girl).

"I couldn't say just the spot," her father had replied, "but--well,
it's anyhow in the orchard over."

She knew she was morbid to regret so much that she could not have
even the doubtful solace of visiting her child's grave.

Six months had passed before she had been able to take up teaching
again.  Her position at Reifsville had been filled, and she had
secured the country school at White Oak Station.

Joe Houghton being one of the school directors who had elected her,
and White Oak Farm being so conveniently just across the road from
her school-house, the young widower, with a year-old baby on his
hands, had, from the first hour of their acquaintance, pursued her
assiduously with his unwelcome attentions.

Susan realized, with an utter indifference to the fact, that she had
come out from her illness much better looking than she had ever been;
her abundant hair, all lost through her terrible fever, had come in
again in thick gold-brown curls; her wasted flesh seemed to have been
renewed in a clearer, softer texture; all the angles of her slender
frame were now softly rounded; she bloomed and glowed with health and
youth.

But her soul remained heavy and dead.

She had not taken up again, after her recovery, any of the old
threads of her life.  The few choice, intimate, and very precious
friendships she had made at school had been dropped; forever, she
believed.  Her friends' letters, persistent, anxious, importunate,
remained unanswered.  She had ceased to feel any interest in them.
They belonged so absolutely to that other life, now dead, in which
she had met and known and loved Sidney Houghton; a life so different
from that of her own home; in which she had found colour, joy, music,
culture, and had made them her own.  That was all over now.  Sidney
had robbed her of everything of worth that she had attained through
hard work, against adverse circumstances.  She seemed to have lost
all power to feel, to care for any one, for anything.

She had found Joe Houghton to be all that Sidney had once told her he
was--crude, miserly, "grouchy."  He was of a very jealous disposition
and given to fits of sullenness which made Susan feel that his young
wife must have found a blessed escape in death.  He was, of course,
his own worst enemy, an unhappy creature, his only joy and comfort in
life being his passion for hoarding money.  He loved his baby boy and
was proud of him, but the child caused him more suffering than
happiness; for while he had quarrelled with one housekeeper after
another for neglecting the boy, he was morbidly jealous of any one
for whom the child manifested more fondness than he showed for his
father.

Over against these trying characteristics could be named a few
uninteresting virtues.  He was scrupulously honest and truthful; much
as he loved gain, there was no stake high enough to lure him from the
strictest integrity.  And although a highly sexed individual, he was
quite puritanically virtuous.

Susan thought, during her homeward drive, what an ideal setting for a
man of Sidney Houghton's tastes White Oak Farm would be and what
delight he would take in that beautiful old home which had been so
religiously preserved in all its primitive quaintness of architecture
and furniture, by so many generations of his family.  He had once
told her how the Houghtons had always prided themselves in being the
only family of English extraction in all the Pennsylvania Dutch
township of White Oak.  Their social life had of course (he had
explained) been confined exclusively to that of the near-by city of
Middleburg.  Their immediate neighbourhood knew them only by sight.

Joe had one day persuaded her to come over to the farm to see his
baby (little dreaming of the bitterness in her soul as she had held
the pretty child on her breast!) and he had shown her all over the
truly lovely house, unlocking the closed-off rooms with their old
woven rugs brought over to America in colonial days, their carved
four-posted beds, pier tables, davenports, and old portraits of
colonial dignitaries.  As she reflected that all these rare things
were now the possession of Sidney Houghton she thought of that one
pathetic little suit of furniture which she and Sidney had chosen
together for their future home and which he had afterward pawned in
order to carry on his courtship with Miss Laura Beresford--even while
she, Susan, was still paying for it out of her hard-earned little
salary.

"Did he know at the time," she dully wondered, "that we would never
use it in a home of ours?  Did he get me to buy it just for his own
use in his college rooms?"

He had not kept the promise he had made to her about the
furniture--that day she had gone to him to plead with him for their
child's sake----

"I shall pay you back every dollar of it!" he had said.  "It may take
me a long time, but I shan't let you lose what you paid for it,
Susan."

When, during her illness, several letters had come to her, dunning
her for the sum still unpaid on the furniture, her father had given
Sidney Houghton's address to the creditor and told him to collect the
amount from him.  But the creditor had returned the information that
Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Houghton were in Denmark and that Mr. Houghton's
mother repudiated the bill.

The furniture had been bought in Susan's name.  So, when she was
recovered from her long illness, she sold her parlour furniture to be
able to meet this debt and her large doctor's bill.

When this afternoon she got off the trolley car and walked listlessly
through Reifsville toward her home, she was still wondering whether a
possible, and probably unavoidable, encounter with the new occupant
of White Oak Farm would shock her back into sensibility.




CHAPTER V

FACE TO FACE

Although Susan's family treated her "ruin" (as they technically
labelled her unlegalized motherhood) with all sympathy and
tenderness, it blighted their simple lives as nothing else could
possibly have done.  Her father seemed to have become aged and feeble
over night, her sisters permanently depressed, her mother crushed.
In spite of the fact that they had been able to conceal their
disgrace, Mr. Schrekengust, on the plea of advancing feebleness,
resigned his office of preacher to the Mennonite congregation.  The
Mennonite sect does not consist of clergy and laymen; any member of a
congregation may at any time be elected to serve as the preacher; and
if so elected he is obliged to serve, whatever his fitness--or
unfitness.  He receives no salary for "doing God's work," and his
office as preacher never interferes with his secular occupation,
which is generally farming.  Mr. Schrekengust, whose experience and
knowledge of life were unbelievably limited, had once by accident met
a prominent Episcopal clergyman and, unaware that preaching was, in
any denomination, a bread-winning occupation, he had inquired of the
Episcopalian, "What do you work at?"

"I'm a clergyman of the Episcopal Church."

"But what do you work?"

The Episcopalian, recalling that Mennonites do not have an ordained
ministry and knowing how shocked this preacher would be if told that
any man worked at nothing _else_ than preaching (and not very hard at
that), replied, "Well--I--I fish a little."

Mr. Schrekengust was a "trucker," but his place at the edge of
Reifsville was not only very small, but had been so heavily mortgaged
to pay for Susan's education that his earnings were now quite
insufficient for the support of his family without the aid of Susan's
salary and the assistance given him on his little farm by his two
elder daughters, who saved him the expense of a hired man.  And now
that he was becoming day by day more and more feeble, the family
realized, as the spring advanced, that he was utterly unable to cope
with the heavy work of the farm.  They would either have to hire a
farmer, to whom Mr. Schrekengust would give some slight assistance,
or they would have to sell their already heavily mortgaged land.
Either alternative would leave them with almost no income.

It was Joe Houghton, Susan learned from her father, to her surprise
and somewhat to her consternation, who now held the mortgage against
their land; the neighbour from whom Mr. Schrekengust had borrowed
money some years ago to send Susan to school had sold out his claim
to Joe.

Susan knew how ruthless Joe Houghton could be in exacting his own.
There had been two instances of families in the neighbourhood of
White Oak Farm whose homes he had seized in payment of the interest
due him on mortgages.

She decided to broach the subject to him on one of their now almost
daily walks from her school to the trolley station.  For he had not
left the neighbourhood with the advent of the new owner of White Oak
Farm.  His half-brother had reluctantly consented to his continuing
to farm the place on shares and to his occupying the tenant-farmer's
cottage, where, in fact, Joe was now very cosily established with his
baby and a new housekeeper.

"I shouldn't have supposed he'd let you stay here!" Susan had met the
information with surprise.  "It isn't like him!"

"Why, how do you know what's like him and what ain't?" Joe had
quickly inquired.

"I judge from all you've told me of him," she hastily explained.
"What is his reason for letting you stay?"

"You judged right!" growled Joe.  "He has a reason--and a good
one--or out I'd have to _git_!"

Susan did not repeat her inquiry as to what the reason was.

"I got a _hold_ on him!" said Joe, darkly.  "He darsen't go too far
with me!"

Again Susan asked no question.  And he volunteered no further
information.

"He ain't interdooced his Missus to me yet," Joe shrugged.  "But it
ain't my loss!  I took a good look at her here the other day, and
say!  If she ain't as sour lookin' as--as you're sweet lookin', Miss
Susie!  Gee, I'd hate to set acrost the dinner table from a winegar
face like hern every day!  And her baby--why, it's all the time with
that there coloured hired girl.  Its mom ain't never got it, fur as I
kin see."

On rainy days Joe invariably took Susan to her trolley car in his
little gasoline car; but on clear days the car was never forthcoming,
and Susan had come to welcome the sight of rain, which prevented
those long walks with her suitor, during every minute of which she
was dreading a chance meeting on the road with Sidney, who was now
established at White Oak Farm with his wife and baby and a retinue of
servants.

"Joe would expect to introduce his brother to me if we met," she
reflected, shudderingly.

She knew, of course, that at the faintest suspicion, on the part of
any school director, of her true story, she would lose her
position--which was now the only certain income of her family--and
that Joe Houghton, who was the president of the school board, would,
from personal chagrin, prove the most implacable of them all.
Therefore, if a meeting between her and Sidney was inevitable, it
must not be in the presence of Joe.

Thus far she had not caught so much as a glimpse of Sidney though she
had several times seen his wife drive by the school-house in her
great car, with a liveried chauffeur; and every day she saw the baby
being wheeled about the grounds by an untidy-looking Negro nurse.

She wondered whether Sidney was aware of her daily presence in the
neighbourhood; and if he were, whether, in his prosperity and
security, it affected in the least his serenity.  Of course he did
know that the home of the girl he had betrayed and deceived and
robbed, the mother of his dead child, was only eight miles distant
from his own home.  Did _this_ fact ever disturb his equanimity?

He had never, so far as she knew, made any inquiries as to whether
his child had lived or died.

Joe Houghton did not share Susan's preference for the short ride of
rainy days rather than the long walk of clear weather.

"The little automobile she makes so quick, it's too soon over
a'ready, Susan.  I like better the long walk," he gallantly told her
as they were strolling to the station on the day after she had
learned that he held the mortgage against her home.

"But I prefer the short ride," she replied.  "Don't you think you
might consider what I prefer?"

"Och, Miss Susie, you do enjoy takin' a fellah down; ain't you do?
But you don't fool me any!  I know a coke-wet when I see one!  _You_
don't mean all you leave on!"

"You see right through me, don't you?"

"You ain't so hard to see through--a straight, wirtuous female like
you!  You ain't like some!  You'd be surprised to see how some throws
theirselfs at me fur my fortune!  That's what I like about you--you
leave _me_ do the courtin'!  And," he added, feelingly, "you're as
refined and pure a wirgin as you otherwise can be!  Och, yes, me I
see through you like readin' a book."

"Ha!" came Susan's little mocking laugh with, to-day, an added note
of bitterness that strangely thrilled Joe's nerves.

"Mr. Houghton!"

"Make it Joe, can't you?  What?"

"Father told me last night that it is you who hold the mortgage
against us."

"Not against _you_--I wisht I did!" he retorted, facetiously.  "You'd
see how quick I'd foreclose oncet!"

"Will you be very kind to us and buy our place for a little more than
it is worth?" said Susan, boldly.

"I never pay more for nothing than what it's worth.  I'll tell you
what I'll do, though.  The day you say Yes to me, I'll buy in that
there prop'ty and give your pop a clean deed to it!  It'll be my
weddin' present to you.  I'd have to buy you a weddin' present
anyhow--you'd expect it; so we'll leave it go at that.  Think it
over!"

"Are you offering to buy me?"

"Well, if I can't git you no other way!  You certainly won't never
git no _better_ chanct."

Susan thought how shaken his complacency with regard to her would be
if he could know that she considered him the very worst possible
"chance."

"I'm not up for sale yet, Mr. Houghton, though I don't know how low I
may yet sink."

"You'd call it sinkin' low to marry me?" Joe demanded, aggrieved.

"Low to sell myself.  It seems to me a much lower thing to marry for
money than to give yourself freely, outside of marriage, for love."

"Say, Miss Susan, if you'd get off them funny things you say
sometimes, to _some_ folks, that didn't know what a wirtuous girl you
are, they'd think _hard_ of you!  I wisht you'd break yourself of the
habit!  It's growin' on you!  Folks'll talk about you!"

"Good gracious!" breathed Susan, surprised out of herself at being
held up for reproof like a child.

"Wouldn't you care if folks talked?" he asked, disapprovingly.

"You're the only person to whom I ever 'get off' my 'funny
things'--and you won't talk about me, will you?"

"To be sure you're safe with me; but if you are got the habit of
talkin' so reckless, you'll be doin' it in front of someone where it
_ain't_ safe."

"I can imagine nothing more tame than always to be safe!"

"Och, well, you're young yet and wery high-spirited and I guess I got
to make allowance.  Oncet you're married to me, you'll settle down."

"Good Lord deliver me then!"

"I'd think school teachin' was safe and tame enough, and you stick to
_it_ good and steady.  So I guess you won't find married life too
tame fur you."

"But school teaching isn't safe; it's getting to be one of the most
dangerous professions in this country!  Much worse than working in a
dynamite factory.  Why, in some states you can't teach at all until
your opinions have been examined; and after that, if you ever happen
to learn something new that might change one of those opinions, you
would run the risk of losing your position and your livelihood.  And
in some states if you join the American Federation of Labour you
can't teach in the public schools."

"Good thing, too," declared Joe.  "Nothin' more pertikkler than that
our teachers of the young should have correct opinions."

"Opinions that our politicians, our state legislators, our country
school directors, consider correct!  O Lord!"

"Tut, tut!  Ain't you 'shamed o' yourself!"

"You've no idea of the depth of my shamelessness!"

"A lady swearin' yet!  Tut, tut!"

"I'd cuss from morning to night if it would only make you hate me!  I
do my very darndest-damndest to make you!"

"There, there!" he said, soothingly.  "Calm yourself down, my dear
sweet little Spitfire! or you'll get the headache!"

When at last Joe had left her and she was on her homeward ride, she
wondered whether he could perhaps have taken over that mortgage
against her father's property with the deliberate purpose of bribing,
or forcing, her into marrying him!  How blind he was!  How little he
dreamed of the deep disgust she often felt toward him for some of the
very things which he considered his highest assets, his most
commendable virtues!

For instance, one day when it had been raining hard, he had offered,
magnanimously, to drive her the whole way to Reifsville in his
automobile instead of just to her trolley car.  But when a half mile
from Reifsville he had drawn up short just before coming to a toll
gate.

"I guess you won't mind walkin' the half mile that's left yet; it'll
save me this here ten cents' toll I'd have to pay goin' and comin'."

Susan had got out of his car and Joe had turned it about toward White
Oak Farm with a backward grin of cunning at the toll gate keeper
disappointed of a dime.

He had never dreamed that this self-denying prudence on his part had
sent Susan home with a mingled laughter and loathing which, as long
as she lived, she could never forget.


It was a few days later, at recess time, when, having dismissed her
pupils to the playground behind the school-house, she was taking a
breath of fresh air on the front porch, that she saw at close range
Sidney Houghton's little son, as the untidy Negro nurse trundled the
baby coach past the school.  So carelessly the indifferent maid
pushed the little cart over the rough, unpaved road, that Susan,
watching her approach, caught her breath in dread of an upset.

"Take care!" she involuntarily called out, as directly in front of
the school porch the maid, gaping curiously at the teacher instead of
watching where she went, the coach bumped against a stone in the
path, tilted, lost balance, and went over.

Susan, rushing to the rescue, stooped to pick up the frightened,
crying child, while the nurse, undisturbed, righted the coach and
lazily shook the dust from the cushion and robe that had tumbled into
the path.

As Susan held the child in her arms, while the nurse arranged the
coach, she found to her astonishment, almost to her bewilderment,
that instead of a little baby a few months old, she was holding a
big, bouncing boy with a strong, upright back; and instead of the
vague eyes of a young infant, she found herself looking into the
intelligent, wide-awake face of a child over a year old.

He was a lovely boy, resembling his father so strongly as to seem
like a grotesque little image of the man.  But there was something
else in this little face that had never been in Sidney's--a wistful
look, a soul----

The child stopped crying as she held him, looked up into her eyes,
smiled, and nestled into her arms so appealingly, so trustfully, that
Susan suddenly, unaccountably, felt her soul shaken to its
foundations.  Her heart beat suffocatingly, and to her own amazement
she trembled from head to foot.  If merely Sidney's baby could affect
her like this, what would it mean to her to meet Sidney himself?

"What is the baby's name?" she asked the nurse after a moment.

"They calls him Georgie."

She noticed that the child's clothing, though of fine quality, was
soiled and torn and that his face and hands were unwashed; a very
neglected baby.

Again, to her own astonishment, she found herself very tenderly
kissing the child as she let him go.

"The roads about here are too rough for a baby coach," she warned the
nurse.

"They sure is!  And anyhow I has my orders not to take Georgie
outside where folks kin see him.  But I gets so tired stayin' inside
the gates all the time!"

"You are not to let people see him?" asked Susan, wonderingly.  "Why?
Is there something wrong with him?"

"No, there ain't nothin' wrong with him.  I dunno why folks darsen't
see him.  I guess because he's so awful overgrowed fur his age
they're afraid it'll make folks talk."

"How old is he?"

"Six months."

"Why, he is almost as big as Mr. Joe Houghton's baby of seventeen
months!"

"Well, but he ain't but six months old," maintained the nurse.  "But
I guess it is because he is so overgrowed that his mother and father
wants him kep' out of sight."

"To hide such a lovely boy!" breathed Susan, wonderingly, "when one
would think they'd be so proud to show him!"

"They ain't proud to show him--no siree!  They're awful pertikkler
about his not bein' took outside the gates.  But I has to git out
_sometimes_," repeated the girl, turning the coach about to go back
to the farm.

During the rest of that day Susan's pupils found her a very
absent-minded teacher.  The question kept obtruding itself as to
_why_ the child of six months should look twice his age and more; and
why his father and mother feared to have that fact noted in the
neighbourhood.  Could it be, she wondered, her breath coming short at
the thought, that Sidney had had to choose, a year ago, whether he
would make Laura Beresford's baby or hers his legitimate child?
Could it be that his hasty marriage to Miss Beresford had been forced
upon him?

But he had said to her, that day in his rooms, "A gentleman doesn't
marry his mistress!"

Ah, but when at another and earlier time she had put it to him,
"Would you ask this thing of me if I were a girl of your mother's
choosing--of your own social world?"--he had answered, "Perhaps I
should not have to plead so hard with a worldly girl!"  (How she
remembered every word Sidney had ever spoken to her!)

It suddenly flashed upon her that perhaps Joe Houghton's "hold" upon
his brother, of which he had spoken to her, was this secret about the
baby born too disgracefully soon after his marriage!  She was quite
sure that Joe, to achieve any advantage to himself, would not be
above holding over his brother a threat of exposure of a disgrace.

"What a bad breed these Houghtons really are!  How strange that a
race like this should consider themselves of rarer, finer quality
than the common herd!" she marvelled.

That evening, on her way to the station with Joe, she said to him, "I
have seen your brother's baby."

"Aha!  And what do _you_ think of it, heh?  Did you see it close up?"
he asked with a sinister cunning that made her shrink from his side.

"Yes.  It is over a year old."

"Huh!  So you seen that, too, did you?  That's what _I_ knowed the
minute I laid eyes on it.  I ought to know somepin about babies,
havin' one of my own!  Why, Georgie's near as big and knowin' as my
Josie, and Josie's seventeen months old yet!  No, sir, you can't fool
me!  To be sure, I wouldn't say a word to you, Miss Susan, _about_ it
if you was an outsider.  But this here's all in the family."

"No, it isn't.  I am an outsider--and always shall be."

"Och, well, have your little joke as long as you kin.  You'll miss
it, oncet you're married to me.  You'll have to find somepin to take
its place--like who's the boss in our tie-up, and all like
that--ain't?" he chuckled.  "Yes, it's easy seen Sid had to git
married to that winegar-faced Missus of hisn.  A clear case of
_must_!"

"I didn't suppose that a gentleman would ever marry his mistress,"
Susan ventured in a light, casual tone.

"Well, _I_ wouldn't marry no woman that held herself that cheap and
common, you bet you!--fur all Sid thinks I ain't no gentleman.  Nor I
don't believe Sid would have married her neither if she hadn't of had
money and been enough of a swell to satisfy Uncle George!"

"What low ideas men have about fatherhood!  A man will make a woman
the mother of his child whom he thinks too unclean to be his wife!"

"Yes, well, but if a woman ain't good, she had ought to take care not
to have no children."

"Then bad men ought never to be fathers--and the race would stop!"

"That wouldn't do--to have the race stop.  We are got to have people;
and plenty of 'em.  I've been a capitalist just long enough to have
discovered that where there ain't no crowded population (more workers
than there's work fur, you understand) that's where there can't be no
great fortunes built up.  No, you got to keep up the population, Miss
Susan.  That's why we are got sich severe laws agin birth control and
agin wice districts and agin anything else that tends to keep
marriage from bein' a _necessity_.  You're got to make it a necessity
if you're goin' to keep the race a-goin' and capital safe!"

"Do you mean to tell me that what we innocently take for laws to
protect morality are just meant to protect and promote industrial
exploitation?" asked Susan, incredulously.

"That's about it.  Only I didn't put it so scientific.  I ain't got
your learnin', but I got my _facs_ all right!  We ain't got no moral
laws fur no other purpose; fur every man knows in his heart that
nature's instincts is too strong fur him; he can't no more go agin
'em than he can stop Niagary!--than a chicken can stop moultin'; or
the grass not grow in the spring!  Nature's _nature_--and that's all
there is to it!"

"Then society is built on a lie, is it?  Respectability is a sham and
men and women are all hypocrites?"

"Och, well, I wouldn't go so fur as to say that.  I myself try to be
as honest as I otherwise can be.  I----"

"Oh--_hush_!" exclaimed Susan, her revitalized nerves rasped beyond
endurance.

"You ain't no hypocrite, anyhow!" grinned Joe.  "You ain't no
_flatterer_, anyhow!"


It was the next afternoon, near the hour for closing school, when
Susan suddenly felt that she could not, that day--simply could
not--endure Joe Houghton's society on her walk to the station.  She
must manage somehow to elude him.  So she surreptitiously turned her
clock forward five minutes and dismissed her school in advance of the
hour, before Joe would even have started from his cottage for the
school-house.  He would probably think, when he found an empty
school, that his own watch had played him a trick.  His amazing
confidence, in spite of her constant rebuffs, in his ability to win
her over ultimately, would prevent him from suspecting her of going
to such lengths to escape him.

However, she did not really care whether he saw through her ruse.
She only knew that to-day she could not and would not endure walking
with him.

But when in taking the long and indirect route to the station across
the field behind the school-house and then through a beautiful
stretch of woodland, she suddenly saw, strolling slowly toward her in
the woodsy path, Sidney Houghton, looking gloriously strong and
handsome and prosperous, dressed in riding togs and carrying a riding
crop, she wildly regretted, for an instant, that she was notion the
high-road with Joe.

There was no way of escape without plainly running away.  This, she
quickly decided, she would not do.

In the first instant of their encounter she saw that he did not
recognize her--she was so greatly altered; with all his old elaborate
courtesy he stepped from the narrow path to allow the young lady to
pass, removing his hat, not just tipping it, bowing from the waist,
not merely nodding--and the next instant, as recognition flashed into
his eyes, she knew for a certainty from his consternation that he had
never learned who was the teacher of the little school across the
road from his home.

"Why!  You are--Susanna!" he gasped, almost staggering forward in the
path, and blocking her way.  Every drop of colour left his face and
lips as he stood staring at her.

She saw that he, too, was greatly changed; he looked much more than a
year older; his face was lined and worried, and his mouth drooped and
sagged.

Susan who, for weeks, had been nervously dreading an encounter like
this, found herself, now, to her own surprise, perfectly quiet and
cool.

"Are you--did you--come out here to White Oak to see me?" faltered
Sidney.

"I teach the district school of White Oak Station."

"The White Oak Station school!  You are teaching that school right
across the road from White Oak Farm!"

"I have been teaching there for five months."

Susan's silky, soft voice, that had never failed to charm this man,
fell familiarly upon his soul, grown weary of the rasping fretfulness
of a pampered, dissatisfied wife.

"But it's impossible!  You can't teach there!  You must see that you
can't!  It's----"

He stopped short, gazing at her with a look of fright that seemed to
her rather inexplicable.

"You shall not interfere with my keeping my school!  I am practically
the only support of my family."

"But--but it's impossible--you----" He faltered.

"Why should it be?"

He gulped and did not answer.

"You won't interfere?"

"I would not willingly hurt you more than I've already done, but----"

"I shall depend on your not interfering.  Will you please let me
pass?"

"Susanna!  I behaved like a dog to you!"

"Don't insult a dog.  You behaved like yourself.  You were quite true
to yourself.  I was not.  I was false to myself.  I degraded myself.
You didn't," she concluded, starting to pass on.

He put out his hand to check her, but at the fire that flashed from
her eyes at the approach of his touch he shrank back; not, however,
making way for her to go.

"You have grown so beautiful!" he stammered.  "I expected to see you
a wreck!  Your terrible illness--your suffering!  Your father told me
how----"

"My father told you!  My father would not speak to you!"

The colour flooded Sidney's face and his eyes fell.

"What do you mean?" Susan breathlessly asked.  "When did my father
ever tell you of my illness?"

"Just before we--I--went abroad--I inquired--and I was told how
desperately ill you were and not expected to pull through.  I thought
you _had_ died!--until two months ago when I returned to America and
learned you were alive!"

"Who told you I was alive?"

"You--I--made inquiries--I learned it----"

She saw he was not being candid with her.  The truth was not in him.

"Susanna!  You are not the only one that has suffered!  Bad as you
think me, I was not a hardened criminal, and when I thought I had
killed you----"

"I am sure it must have been a great relief to you.  It's rather
awkward having me alive, isn't it?--and living right in your
neighbourhood!  I suppose Mrs. Houghton thinks I'm comfortably and
safely dead, doesn't she?"

He nodded dumbly.

"It will probably be something of a shock to her to find out her
mistake!"

"She won't know you if she sees you--you are so changed!  You are
wonderful!  You never were so lovely as this!--but Susanna!  For
God's sake, don't reveal yourself to my wife!"

"_I am your wife!_"

He stared at her without answering.

"You convinced me so well, you remember, that a few ceremonial words
could add nothing to the holy sacrament of our true marriage!  Let me
tell you something!  If our child had lived, I would have pursued you
to the ends of the world to make you right the wrong you would have
done to her!"

"_Her!_" he exclaimed, involuntarily--then drew back, white and
trembling.  "Was it a girl?" he feebly asked.

"I think so."

"You--you don't know?"

"I'm not sure.  None of them seemed sure!"

"Susanna!  You poor, poor girl!  How I wish I could right the wrong
I've done to _you_!"

Her bosom rose and fell in a long, deep breach.  "You never can," she
said, hopelessly, a far-away light in the tragic depths of her eyes.
"I have borne you a dead child!--and had to thank heaven that it was
dead!"

Sidney leaned limply against a tree by the path.

His eyes shifted from her face; he could not look at her.  A silence
fell between them, in which the woodland sounds of birds and rustling
tree-tops seemed shrilly loud and clamorous.

After a moment Susan spoke, in the quiet, almost lifeless tone that
had become habitual with her.

"What I cannot forgive is that I had to want my baby to be dead!  Do
you remember a play of Euripides--_Medea_--that you and I once read
together?  Medea said she would rather stand in battle three times
with shield and sword than bear one child!  And she tells Jason, who
has forsaken her, 'I could forgive a childless man.  But I have borne
you children.'  I knew that Greek civilization was a thing of wonder,
but I didn't suppose it was so sympathetic with women."

Sidney did not attempt to answer.  Again she made a movement to pass
him; and at this he looked up and once more blocked her way.

"Susanna!  Believe me!  I did love you!  I have suffered for what I
did to you!  I do suffer!--for it was you only that I loved!"

"Ha!" came her little mocking laugh.  "You loved me!  Love!  Don't
desecrate the word, if it _has_ any sacredness!  Do men bruise and
hurt and wound to death the souls of the women they love?  You loved
_me_!  Oh!  Let me pass, please."

He did not move.

"I repeat it--it was you only that I loved!"

She looked him over appraisingly.

"What I cannot understand," she said in a tone so genuinely puzzled
that he could not doubt her sincerity, "is that I ever could have
cared enough for so miserable a creature as you, Sidney, as to do
what I did for you!  I can find _no_ excuse for myself!  I knew I was
dragging myself in the mire--I was being a female, not a woman!  It
was so stupid of me not to have seen you for the poor, cheap thing
you are, Sidney!"

"You need not try so hard to humiliate me--it's quite unnecessary!"

"And yet," she said, judicially, "after all, it was (for you) just a
choice as to which of your two children you would make legitimate;
and you naturally chose to marry the mother who could give you what
you wanted more than you ever wanted anything else in this
world--money and ease and luxury and social power."

He gazed at her in a sort of stupefaction.  "My _two_ children!" he
repeated, vaguely.  "What--what do you mean?"

"Your little son is as old as ours would be."

"How--how do you know?"

"You do well to keep him hidden--valuing respectability as you do."

"I--I don't know what you mean!"

"'A gentleman does not marry his mistress,' you remember you told me?
Almost everything you ever said to me was a lie!  It seems that
sometimes a gentleman does marry his mistress when she has wealth and
position; when he can do it without losing his respectability."

"You mean--you are insinuating a slander against my wife?" he
exclaimed with an impetuous astonishment and indignation that made
her, in her turn, marvel at him.  Was he a consummate actor or an
utter fool?  So sensitive as this about his wife's "honour" when he
had so pitilessly robbed her of hers (at least according to the
world's standards; she knew, now, how artificial and chaotic those
standards were).  And a moment ago he had told her he had loved her!

"Are you saying to me," he asked, growing very red as he drew himself
up from the tree against which he had been leaning, "that I married
my mistress?"

"You are very astute to catch my idea so quickly.  And must I
conclude, then, that you are not a 'gentleman'?  Or that you lied
when you said gentlemen didn't do such things?  What do you mean,
anyway, by a gentleman?  I've often wondered!"

"Are you going to spread that idea of yours about this neighbourhood,
Susanna?"

"My idea about your being a gentleman?  Or my idea that you married
your mistress?"

"Stop!  I did not!"

"Your son is over a year old."

"You don't know what you are saying!  You--you are talking wildly!
You----"

But suddenly, before the cool, unwavering glance with which she met
his futile indignation, it collapsed like a bubble and once more he
limply leaned against the tree.

"You hold my fate in your hands, Susanna!" he said, heavily.  "My
wife thinks (as I did until I returned to America) that you died in
child-bed.  I have not told her you did not.  If she knew you were
alive--and living and working here at our very door!--she would think
I had deceived her!  She would be suspicious of our--that I still
cared for you!  She would be bitterly jealous!  Our already strained
domestic life would break!"

She took a step nearer to him.  "Do you know what I would do if my
child were living?  I would force you to divorce your wife and marry
me!"

Her words seemed to have the effect of startling and thrilling him.
As he gazed at her--her soft bright eyes, her flushed cheeks, the
short, tender curls about her fair neck, the swell and fall of her
bosom, all the mighty lure of her lovely womanhood--a hungry look
came into his eyes; a look so bitterly familiar to her that she drew
back with a sharp horror.

"Susanna!" he stretched a shaking hand toward her.  "If our child----"

"Only for my child's sake, not for my own!" she cried, breathlessly.
"Yes, I would force you to marry me--but I would never, never, never
be yours!"

Sidney's shaking hand dropped to his side.

"And since," he spoke after a moment's pregnant silence between them,
"your--our child--does not live--what shall you do?"

"Do you know me so little as to suppose it would gratify me to break
up your marriage?  You need have no anxiety about what I shall do.  I
am not enough interested in anything concerning you, Sidney, to
disturb your peace and prosperity."

"But your mere presence in this neighbourhood!  To be sure Laura
would never recognize you; she doesn't even know your name; I would
never tell her your name, Susanna--but she could so easily hear of
your teaching that school----"

"You can't hope to keep it from her that I am living!  Your mother
will visit you and may any day see me----"

A look of pain crossed his face; and Susan knew, before he spoke,
that he had lost his mother.

"She died of a stroke while I was abroad; brought on, I have always
believed, by the strain and anxiety of my--my sudden marriage, of
my----"

"I understand," said Susan as he floundered.  "The strain of getting
you married before I could force your hand----"

"Don't, don't!  Please!  Spare her, Susanna!  I have suffered enough
on her account!"

"So have I!"

"You are hard!"

"I try to be--or I could not live!"

"But you must see, Susanna, that it won't do for you to remain about
here!  You can easily get another school.  I'll help you all I----"

"You shall have nothing to do with my life.  And I have no concern
with yours.  I shall not give up my school."

"But I can't stand it!  It will drive me crazy!  Having you so
near--the constant dread of exposure----"

"Exposure?  But your wife knows all there is to be known except that
I am still alive."

"You don't understand!  There are complications in the situation that
you don't understand!  You _must_ leave this neighbourhood, Susanna!
I will give you----"

"You will never give me anything," she quietly interrupted.  "Not
even," she added with a dreary smile, "the furniture you robbed me
of."

He turned red at this unexpected stab and before he could collect
himself to reply, she had forced her way past him and was gone.




CHAPTER VI

THE TENTACLES CLOSE IN UPON SUSAN

Joe Houghton's absence from home to attend the Cashtown cattle sale
gave Susan a blessed four days' respite from his persistent wooing.

She had declined his urgent invitation to accompany him to Cashtown.

"The ride over is awful nice.  Plenty of scenery and all like
that--you're so much fur scenery, I took notice a'ready.  They ain't
nothin' about you escapes me, you bet you!"

"Isn't there!" Susan returned with a gentle mockery quite lost upon
Joe.

"You bet there ain't!  You better come with.  You'd see lots of
people at the sale--if people interest you."

"But I wouldn't think of closing my school for an outing."

"Ain't I president of the school board?  What I say goes."

"I wouldn't neglect my work no matter who said I might."

"Nor me, neither!  _I_ never let my work fur no pleasure-seekin'."
Joe so approvingly agreed with her commendable declaration that she
instantly felt like repudiating it.  "And I'm wery glad," he added,
"to find you so conscientious, too, like me.  Fur if you're that
pertikkler over your school work, you'll be the same at your
housework, oncet we're married."

"Oh, is _that_ why you are so pleased with me?  I thought for a
minute that you were public spirited and concerned for the education
of White Oak Station."

"Och, no, me, I always think of myself before I think of the
education of the rising generation," Joe frankly admitted.  "I'd
sooner have you along to Cashtown than to have White Oak Station good
educated.  But I ain't startin' in by encouragin' you to slight work.
That _would_ be a bad beginnin'!"

"A bad beginning of what?"

"Of our life together, Miss Susie."

"Dream on," said Susan, "if it amuses you."

He had pressed another invitation upon her which she had also
declined.

"If you won't go _with_, then I wisht you'd stay at my house whiles
I'm off, and see to it that that there mean-actin' housekeeper I got
don't _let_ Josie and go runnin'!  I can tell her that you'll wisit
her to keep her comp'ny."

"I can't stay away from home; father is not well," Susan had objected
to this plan; for the tenant-farmer's cosy cottage at White Oak Farm
where Joe now lived was only a few rods away from the mansion in
which his brother resided.

"I thought mebby," said Joe, greatly disappointed at her refusal,
"that if I could get you inter_est_ed in Josie, you might want to get
married to me just fur the sake of havin' sich a cute little cuss all
ready made fur you!"

"I am interested in Josie, but, you see, I love all babies and I
couldn't possibly marry all their fathers."

Ever since the day when, for an instant, Susan had held Sidney
Houghton's baby boy in her arms, after picking him up from his
overturned coach in front of her school-house, she had wondered at
herself that with her feeling for Sidney so dead her heart could yet
yearn over his child as it had done then, and every time since then,
that she had caught a glimpse of the appealing little fellow.  Joe's
boy, Josie, was a dear baby, too, but he did not attract her in the
poignant, irresistible way that Georgie did.

"One would think I would shrink from the successful rival of my
child," she marvelled.

"I promise you," she had answered Joe, "that I shall run into your
cottage and see after Josie three times a day while you are away:
before and after school and at the noon recess."

And with this Joe had had to be satisfied.

This afternoon, as she was about to leave her school-house for her
final visit of the day to the baby of the cottage, she was detained a
moment by the irate mother of one of her pupils, who had tramped a
half mile from her home to complain to "Teacher" that her boy's
"dinner kittle" had been tampered with.

"I fixed him sich a nice kittle; and he saved back a piece of snitz
pie to eat on the way home; but till he come to look fur that there
snitz pie after school, here he seen it was swiped!  Yes, it's some
swiper in this here school of yourn, Teacher!"

Susan promised Mrs. Kuntz that she would hound down the criminal.
Mr. Kuntz was a school director, so it behooved the teacher to
placate Mrs. Kuntz.  Susan was, by this time, very familiar with the
ways of school directors.  To be sure, any teacher of White Oak
Station whom Joe Houghton favoured did not need to concern herself
much about the rest of the school board, for Joe held a mortgage
against the land of more than half of them.  The wives of the
directors were sometimes inclined to give themselves airs with the
teacher who held her "job" by the votes of their husbands.  But it
was of course so widely known that Susan Schrekengust was a prime
favourite with the wealthy widower that she enjoyed an unusual
immunity from "airs".  However, she was only too well aware that just
so soon as Joe realized, finally and irrevocably, that she would not
marry him, his spite would wreak itself upon her, not only by seizing
their home from her parents, but by taking her school away from her.
Her heart stood still with dread sometimes when it was borne in upon
her how completely he held her and hers in his power.

As soon as Mrs. Kuntz had left her Susan came out from her
school-house, locked the door, and went across the road for her visit
to the baby, Josie.  Mrs. Kuntz, who saw where she went, reported to
her son that evening at supper that Joe Houghton was "not doin' all
the courtin'."

"Teacher's helpin' along a little herself.  Joe he wasn't there to
fetch her to-day, like you say he _is_ every day, so she went after
_him_!  Yes, you bet you she's doin' her part, too, in the courtin'!"

It was after Susan's visit to Joe's cottage, when she was walking
through Sidney's private grounds to the highroad (her only way out),
that suddenly, at a bend in the path, she saw approaching her, a few
yards distant, Mrs. Sidney Houghton, strolling leisurely in the May
afternoon sunshine, followed by two big dogs that jumped about her
playfully, to whose demonstrations she responded affectionately.

She was a slim, graceful woman, very tastefully dressed.  An
apparently unconscious haughtiness was manifest in the poise of her
small head and in the way she carried herself.

As she came nearer, Susan saw that the radiant bloom of the young
girl whom, a year ago, she had seen for a few tragic moments in
Sidney Houghton's rooms was gone, and that a blighted, almost soured,
aspect had taken its place.

The thought flashed upon Susan, "In her place, even if I were
disappointed in Sidney, I couldn't look like that if I had that baby
boy!"

And then, at that moment, Susan saw the baby boy escape from his
nurse on the lawn and come toddling toward his mother and her dogs; a
child supposed to be only seven or eight months old walking alone!

But his mother pushed him away and kept the dog at her side.  The
child, to balance himself when pushed, caught at his mother's skirt,
a spotless, creamy broadcloth, with his grimy little hands.

"Clara!" Mrs. Houghton called sharply to the nurse, "come take him
away!  See what he's done!" displaying the soiled spots on the skirt
she had jerked from his clutch.  "Why don't you keep him cleaner?
He's always so disgustingly dirty!  Take him away from me!"

Clara snatched the child from her and shook him, but her roughness
met with no reproof from the baby's mother.

As he was borne away sobbing Mrs. Houghton unconcernedly continued
her stroll, her dogs leaping about her as she stretched toward them
caressingly her gleamingly white hands.

Susan felt a suffocating indignation at this spectacle, at the same
time that she was desolated with the deepest sadness by it.

"Such a dear little boy!  How can she?  How can she?" she asked
herself with a heavy heart.

It was not until she and Mrs. Houghton drew near to each other in the
path that it occurred to her to wonder whether Sidney Houghton's wife
would recognize her.  But they had seen each other for such a brief
moment that day over a year ago; and Susan was sure she never would
have known this woman to be the Laura Beresford of that terrible day
if she had met her anywhere but here.

When in a moment Mrs. Houghton suddenly saw her, there was, in the
surprised inquiry of her glance, an absolute absence of any
recognition.  As the lady and her two dogs quite filled the path
Susan was unable to get by at once, and the two women stopped, for an
instant, face to face.

Susan reflected with some complacency how little she looked like a
country school teacher.  Mrs. Houghton probably mistook her for a
visitor.  This supposition was confirmed by Mrs. Houghton's
hesitatingly offering her hand.

"You wished to see me?" she asked.

"No," answered Susan, "I have just come from an errand at the
tenant-farmer's cottage."

Mrs. Houghton, without a comment, stepped back upon the lawn to allow
the intruder to pass.

Susan thought, as she continued on her way, how incongruous it did
seem for that high-bred, distinguished looking woman to be the
sister-in-law of a man like Joe Houghton.

"She would not even ask to her table that man who thinks himself
quite worthy to marry me!" thought Susan, a vague wonder in her heart
at life's incongruities.

She found herself actually feeling, however, that if Joe's baby were
as appealing to her as Georgie was, she could almost be persuaded, as
Joe had suggested she might be, to marry him for the delight of
having such a child to cherish!

"And Georgie's own mother doesn't realize her blessed privilege!
Prefers those dogs!"

She had several times caught glimpses of Sidney playing with his
little son about the grounds of White Oak Farm and there could not be
a moment's doubt of his devotion and tenderness to his child.

Upon her arrival at home, this afternoon, she saw, as she stopped at
the gate, her father standing beside the road which ran back of the
house past his truck garden, talking to a man in a big touring car.

Susan instantly recognized that car; it was the most luxurious she
had ever seen; it belonged to Sidney Houghton.  She could not be
mistaken, surely.  Her heart began to beat thickly.  Could it be
Sidney Houghton who was talking to her father?  What could they
possibly have to say to each other?

It flashed upon her that perhaps Sidney had learned through Joe of
her father's dire financial straits and was trying to take advantage
of their predicament by offering a bribe to her father if he would
move away from this vicinity where her presence so threatened the
Houghtons' domestic security.

But why did her father, with his deep and bitter hatred of this man
who had injured his daughter, consent to parley with him, to exchange
a single word with him?

"I'll find out who is in that car!" she quickly decided.

Dropping the gate latch, she started on a run toward the truck garden.

But when at the sound of her steps her father looked around and saw
her hurrying through the orchard toward the road, he abruptly
concluded his interview with his visitor, the car almost instantly
moved on, and Mr. Schrekengust, walking as rapidly as his feebleness
allowed, went back across the road to his garden.

Susan hesitated to follow him.  Her heart ached, these days, for her
old father, so broken because of her who had been the pet of his
life.  If he was trying to avoid her she would not torment him.

She turned away and with slow, thoughtful step, went back to the
house.

In the past year she had grown accustomed to the sudden silences that
would often fall upon her family at her approach.  Just now, as she
unexpectedly entered by the kitchen instead of by the front of the
house, she surprised an earnest conversation between her sisters over
their preparations for supper.

"A child brought up so, what will it anyhow give out of this child?"
Lizzie was exclaiming, emotionally.

"Yes, anyhow!" Addie sadly responded.

"It wonders me if Susie----" began Lizzie, but she stopped short as,
turning from the stove, she saw her young sister standing near the
kitchen door.

"Och, Susie!" she gasped.  "What fur do you come in so quiet, a body
never hears you?"

"Why should it frighten you?" asked Susan, sinking wearily into a
chair by the table on which Addie was spreading the cloth for supper.

"It didn't just to say frighten me--but it drawed my breath short!
You most always come by the front door in!"

"What child do you mean, Lizzie?"

Lizzie stooped, before replying, to pick up from the floor the fork
she had just noisily dropped.

"I was talkin' about Joe Houghton's baby you tol' us about a'ready,
that's left to the hired housekeeper all the time; and how she _lets_
it so much and goes off."

"But some mothers are even worse," said Susan, pensively.  "Some
mothers care more for their pet dogs than for their own children!"

"Och!" cried Lizzie, "does it give such mothers as that in the world,
Susie?"

"Who was that talking to Father just now out by the truck garden?"
asked Susan.

"Was he talkin' to someone?  Och, just look," Lizzie changed the
subject, as she suddenly turned to the window, "how these here wines
is owerhangin' the windah yet!  I got to make my wines down off of
this here windah, or it'll give dark in the kitchen; ain't?"

"Never mind your vines, Lizzie, _please_!  Whose big car was that out
by the truck garden a few minutes ago?"

"I didn't take notice to a car out," returned Lizzie, keeping her
face turned away to the window.  "Was it a car out?"

Susan could almost have been moved to smile at this futile duplicity;
for in the quiet monotony of the village life a touring car stopping
at any home in Reifsville was an event only rivalled in interest and
importance by a death, a marriage, or a crime.

Susan turned to Addie.  "Will _you_ tell me, Addie, please--what was
Father talking about to--to Sidney Houghton?"

The name came with difficulty from her lips in the presence of her
chaste sisters.

"It wasn't him!" cried Lizzie almost hysterically.  "As if Pop or any
of us _would_ speak to him!  How you talk, Susie!  Say, Addie," she
cried, pointing to the waffle iron on the stove, with obvious intent
to divert the subject, "will you look how our neighbour sent back our
waffle iron busted yet!  Ain't she the dopplig* housekeeper, anyhow!
This is the last time I'm ever a-goin' to borrow away _any_thing!"


* Awkward.


"You ought not to have secrets from me, Lizzie, about--about Sidney
Houghton," persisted Susan.

"Och, Susie, us we ain't got no secrets from you!  I got awful nice
creamed chicken fur your supper.  That chicken we had Sundays was so
big.  It wonders me such a young chicken could be so big; ain't?"

"It's the _kind_ of it," explained Addie.  "Them Wyandottes gives
awful big chickens at a wery young age."

Susan, with a long, tired breath, gathered up her school books, left
the kitchen and went upstairs to her own bedroom.

Later, when in answer to a summons to supper, she went down again,
she noticed, as the family gathered about the table, that her father
was very white.

Should she annoy him, she asked herself, with the question which
tormented her?  Evidently the family was concealing something from
her; and it would go so hard with her father to have to lie to her;
he had no sophistry to justify any deviation from the straight and
simple tenets of his creed.

But while she hesitated he spoke; and the wholly unwonted
irritability in his usually bland voice struck a chill to her heart.

"Warmed-over chicken again!" he said, fretfully, as he pushed away
the platter his wife offered him.  "I have sick of that there chicken
you've been offerin' me ever since last Sabbath a'ready!  I work hard
and I need fresh meat _some_times!--and not sloppy hash all the time!"

"But us we can't afford to buy fresh meat, Pop," said Lizzie, looking
distressed.  "We are got to use the pork and chickens we are got
a'ready."

The old man's tense mood seemed suddenly to collapse.  "Och, I know,
I know," he admitted, dully.  "To be sure, I know we can't buy fresh
meat."

"It does seem," said Susan, "as if the people who do the hard work
ought to have the fresh, nourishing meat.  But it is the 'idle rich,'
the women who contribute nothing to the common good, but only prey
upon society--some of them not even taking care of their own
children--it is they who have the best food; while the labourer, who
_needs_ strong nourishment, has the poorest and the least!  Things
are very badly regulated!"

"Och, yes," agreed Mr. Schrekengust, pessimistically; "and as fur our
government, it's spoiled through!"

"The worst thing that can happen to any one, it seems to me," said
Susan, "is to inherit a fortune; not to have to work for what you
have."

"Yes, well, but me, I'd like it awful well if someone would inherit a
fortune to _me_," said Lizzie, "so's I could live without workin'."

"So would I!" Susan ignominiously agreed with her.

"Them thoughts is of the Enemy," her father admonished them.
"Remember you got to give an account to Gawd for your words as well
as fur your deeds."

"It seems to me," said Susan, recklessly, "that He'll have to give an
account to _us_, for all the bitter suffering and wrong in this
world!  _We_ didn't create it!  If we are evil then the source from
which we exist must be evil!  Oh, I think He owes a very large
accounting to us poor human wretches!"

"Tut, tut, Susie!" cried her father, shocked.  "Somepin'll happen to
you if you talk so wicked!"

"It often wonders me," sighed Mrs. Schrekengust, "what Gawd must
think of us mortals the way we live so carnal and disobey to Him so!"

"What must we think of _Him_ for putting us into a world like this,
of turmoil and hate and injustice and suffering!" Susan persisted.
"It's up to Him, not us, _to make good_!"

Her father, instead of admonishing her again, looked at her
strangely.  "Yes, yes," he murmured.  "Here's us that has worked hard
all our lives, all of us, and always--or nearly always," he added,
with conscientious accuracy, "tried to do right; and now in our old
age, me and Mother has got to get out of our home here where we lived
all our married lives together.  I got to tell yous all," he stated,
slowly, his voice heavy with sadness, despair in his eyes, "that we
got to make up our minds to move away from Reifsville right aways!"

Susan realized from the startled looks of her sisters and her mother
that she was perhaps the least astonished of them all at this
announcement.  They had, indeed, faced the possibility of having to
leave their home, but they had never dreamed of leaving the village
itself, where Mr. and Mrs. Schrekengust had lived all their lives;
nor had they expected to be obliged to leave their house immediately.

"I got a offer of a good little place," continued Mr. Schrekengust,
"forty mile from here----"

"Och, Gott!" cried his wife.  "Forty mile yet!  Who ever heard the
likes, Pop!  I couldn't home myself that fur off!"

"Since we are got to leave this here house anyhow, Mom, we might as
well go fur off as near by.  It's a awful good offer I got--a nice
truck farm on wery easy terms."

"Who makes you this offer, Father?" asked Susan in a low voice, her
tone very gentle.

"A business man I done a favour fur oncet.  He wants this here land
here, preferable to the place he offers me over in Fokendauqua.
He'll gimme that there place over there, with two horses and two cows
throwed in; and in exchange, he'll take over our place here _with the
mortgage on it_.  We'd be free of debt and I'd anyhow let a home over
your heads when I am gone."

"And who is this man?" persisted Susan in an ominously quiet tone,
"that makes you this very extraordinary offer?"

"It's neither here nor there who he is," replied her father,
querulously.  "It's too good a offer fur us to throw down.  Us we'll
be out on the road soon, without no home at all, if we don't look
out!  I _got_ to take this here offer!"

"No, you don't, Father!"

"Yes, I do, Susie!  I tell you I got to."

"But if you move to Fokendauqua, I could not live at home--for I
don't want to give up my school; I had a hard enough time to get it.
And I might not be able to get a school near Fokendauqua."

"I won't leave you stay on here if we go!" cried her father so
fiercely that she winced as at a deformity, so unlike him it was to
speak ungently.  "And you ain't to keep on teachin' that there
school, _whether_ or no!  Right acrost the road from that there dirty
rascal's place!--where any day you can run acrost him!  You'll go
with us _along_ when we move away!"

"If you are moving just to get me away from that school, then I will
give up the school, Father, and try to get my old position here in
Reifsville, so that you need not leave here.  You and Mother are
rooted here and _couldn't_ live anywhere else!"

"You needn't try to get back your old school here, fur even over
here, you're too near to that there scoundrel!  We want to get as fur
away from him as we otherwise _can_ get!"

"But it is he that is making you this offer, Father!" cried Susan,
utterly bewildered.

"No, it ain't!  What fur do you say it's him?  It ain't him!"

"I saw his automobile in the road by the truck garden when I came
from school."

"It wasn't hisn."

"Whose was it?"

"A stranger astin' the road to White Oak Station."

"Father," said Susan, ignoring this obvious evasion, "_why_ do you
have any dealings with Sidney Houghton?  Don't you know that we would
all rather be homeless on the highroad than accept a favour from him?
_Why_ are you letting him bribe you to give up----"

She stopped short.  Her father's head had suddenly sunk upon his
breast; and now his hands slipped from the table and hung limply at
his side; the blood which had rushed to his forehead was slowly
receding, leaving the hue of death upon his old worn face.

The stricken old man who had dreaded the ordeal of leaving his home
and going into strange surroundings had suddenly, without a moment's
warning, taken his departure alone to that far country to which none
might go with him, of those who loved him.




CHAPTER VII

JULY, AUGUST, AND SEPTEMBER

In after years Susan was often obliged to bring before her memory
very vividly the conditions which could have been overwhelming enough
to have driven her into marrying Joe Houghton; for there were times
when nothing seemed to explain or justify it.

There had been the mortgage held by Joe, covering the full value of
her widowed mother's house and land; his Shylock determination to
have his price, which was her hand in marriage; his ruthlessness in
having her voted out of her school at the end of May, in order to
force her to yield to him; her mother's speechless grief at the bare
thought of leaving the home which held all her memories of her dead
mate; her sisters' unfitness for earning their own living in any
other way than in domestic service on a farm.  Whichever way she had
turned, there had seemed to be no escape for her.  Every possible
avenue had seemed closed, with whips and scorpions beating her back.
It was not for herself that she had succumbed to the pressure of
gaunt Want.  She could always, somehow, somewhere, have earned a
living for herself, and had she been unable to do so, far easier
would it have been to starve and die than to marry a man she
despised.  But that comparatively simple solution of her difficulty
had not been open to her.  She must live and take care of her
helpless mother and sisters, made helpless through her; for had it
not been for her, surely her father would still be with them, to
support and comfort them.  It had been she who had brought shame and
grief and want upon them.  She, then, must stand by them and see them
through.  Would the great sacrifice she was making act as an antidote
in her soul to the degradation of such a marriage?

Well, even if she herself must "sink i' the scale," she could not see
her mother die before her eyes in pining for her home; her sisters,
who had lived and worked for her all her life, forced to the
humiliation and slavish labour of domestic service on a farm.  She
had always believed that circumstances could not crush the valiant
soul; that one could rise above and master them if one would.  But
the conditions which at that time had closed in upon her had seemed
to force her to the bitter choice between saving herself and
sacrificing her mother and sisters.

She had known from the first that she would not sacrifice them.  Her
decision had been delayed only by her desperate efforts to save
herself as well.

It had been while she was thus battling for her own soul's salvation
that Sidney Houghton, never dreaming of his brother's very commercial
courtship of the school teacher of White Oak Station, had approached
Mrs. Schrekengust with a renewal of the offer he had made to her
husband: if she and her three daughters would move to the comfortable
little home which he would give them over in Fokendauqua, forty miles
distant, he would take upon himself all their debts here in
Reifsville and see to it that they should never come to want.

To Susan, the amazing spectacle of her mother's heart-broken
submission to this proposition, in the face of her hitherto deep and
wordless grief at the mere mention of leaving her home in Reifsville,
had had in it something mysteriously sinister.  Why had her father
denied to her that it was Sidney Houghton who had made this offer to
him?  He had died with a lie on his lips!--he who had all his life
been so painfully truthful.  Not for gain, not for any material
thing, would he have told a lie.  What had been back of his apostasy?
What was back of her mother's acquiescence to a thing which was
tantamount to signing her own death warrant?

An idea had dawned upon Susan which she had instantly rejected as
being altogether incredible.  Even Sidney Houghton, weak and false as
she knew him to be, would scarcely be capable of the perfidy of
threatening her mother (whose holiest religion, like that of all
women of her class, was Respectability) with the exposure of the
secret shame of her daughter--victimized by himself!--unless Mrs.
Schrekengust would at once move away with her family from the
precarious vicinity of his home.

And yet, impossible as such baseness seemed, even for Sidney
Houghton, what lesser necessity than the maintaining of their ghastly
secret could so have coerced her mother?

A hot fury of rebellion had risen in Susan's heart against the
humiliation of being thus driven away for the sake of Sidney's
security and peace of mind.  If nothing were now left but to choose
between marrying Joe or having her mother suffer and surely die from
being beholden to Sidney Houghton for a home and a livelihood in a
distant town, could she hesitate?  She had the human weakness to feel
that there would be actually a drop of bitter consolation for her in
thus defying her betrayer and going boldly to live in the very shadow
of his home; to be hourly in his sight; to pass daily to and fro
before the very eyes of his wife!

Her decision had been swiftly made.

On the day when Sidney had called by appointment to give over to her
mother the deed to the Fokendauqua house and lot and receive in
exchange the mortgaged Reifsville property, he had been met with the
announcement that Mrs. Schrekengust could not now fulfil her part of
the bargain to which she had previously agreed, inasmuch as her
daughter, Susan, could not, under the present circumstances, be
enticed away to Fokendauqua--seeing she no longer made her home with
her mother--having married Joseph Houghton that very morning, July
28th, and gone to live at the tenant-farmer's cottage at White Oak
Farm; and that therefore there was now no reason why they should
leave Reifsville; for Joseph Houghton had that morning, before the
marriage ceremony, given them a clear deed to their house and land.

How Sidney had received this astounding information Susan could only
guess from the incoherent account of it she had received later from
her mother and sisters.

"Och, Susie, he took it hard!"

"He turned awful white and there for a while he couldn't har'ly
speak!"

"I believe, Susie, he likes you _yet_!"

"He ast me," said Mrs. Schrekengust, "what fur did I leave you marry
a fellah like Joe that ain't worthy to tie your shoes yet!  And I
answered him, 'Yes, what fur did I ever leave you, Sidney Houghton,
keep comp'ny with her!--you that wasn't fit neither to _lick_ her
shoes yet!'  He turned whiter'n ever when I sayed that.  But he ast
us what we thought could have _made_ you marry Joe, seein' as it
wasn't in nature for a girl like you to love sich a fellah.  And I
sayed that now you had to be glad fur any decent husband; and that if
Joe knowed all, he wouldn't think you was good enough fur _him_."

"But Sidney he wouldn't have it no other way," put in Lizzie, "than
that you'd throwed yourself away."

"But I tol' him," added Mrs. Schrekengust, "you had a'ready throwed
yourself away as fur as you could on _him_."

"Yes, Mom she come back at him fierce!" said Lizzie.

"And he took it that meek and calm, Susie, that it wondered me!" put
in Addie.

Susan had no conscientious qualms in marrying Joe without "confessing
her past," inasmuch as she asked no questions as to his past.

"He, too, was married before," she reasoned; for she persisted in
believing that before high heaven, or "whatever gods there be," she
had been Sidney Houghton's wife.

She felt sure that if Joe had been a man whom she could have found it
possible to love, she would have felt impelled to tell him of her
unmarried motherhood.  But he had bought her for a price, as
shamelessly as he would have bought a cow or a horse!  Therefore, her
past, like his, was her own.

In the early months of her married life, she was, however, never
without a guilty sense of wronging her husband in her heart by her
secret loathing of him; and she tried conscientiously to atone by
scrupulously performing what seemed to her her wifely obligations;
and by the devoted care she gave to his child; submitting to many
things which otherwise she would not have borne--his little
contemptible, maddening meannesses about expenditures, his refusal to
hire any housework, his exactions of services from her such as he
would not have dared to ask of any hired servant or housekeeper.

When it was too late--when both his exactions and her submission had
become a habit with them not easy to break--she realized that she had
begun all wrong.

"For if from the first I had taken a stand against such a régime, I
could have carried the day!"

"By the time you learn, through bitter mistakes, how to live," she
often reflected in after years, "your knowledge is of no use to you
except to make you wild with regret!"

She had made Joe promise (and she could absolutely depend on his
word) that he would never reveal to Josie in the years to come that
she was not his own mother.

"I'll get that out of it, anyway--a son's love for his mother," she
had told herself.

For Susan had learned from her doctor, over a year ago, that she
could never bear another child.  Had she not known this, no other
considerations would have been strong enough to have forced her to
marry Joe.  An instinctive conviction that it would be a crime to let
a child be born of a loveless marriage would have held her back.
Susan's intuitive ethics, it will be observed, were not those
commonly held by respectable people.

The "bitter consolation" she had anticipated in defying Sidney
Houghton's efforts to get her away from tie neighbourhood of his
home, and coming to live at his very door, was postponed by his
departure from home immediately after her marriage.  He left, with
his wife, child, and nurse, for a month at Newport.

"I see through that move!" Joe declared to Susan one day over their
mid-day dinner in the cottage kitchen, Josie in a high chair at
Susan's side.  "They're too stuck-up, him and her, to take notice to
_my_ wife!  So, to save their faces, they go off!  Sich extravagance!
Payin' _ho_tel board when they're got a big, cool place like theirn
to stay at!"

"Your sister-in-law seems to care so little for her baby, I'm
surprised she takes him with her when she goes away.  He would be
quite as well off here alone with his nurse as he is with her."

"Right you are!  _She_ don't give him no attention; nothin' like what
you give to Josie, and him your step-child yet."

"We're to forget that he is not my own child," Susan reminded him.

"But Sid _he's_ anyhow crazy about his kid," continued Joe.  "He
would not let him here alone with that dopplig nurse girl!  You see,
Susan, Sid ain't takin' no chances on that there baby dyin' and my
Josie inheritin' White Oak Farm!"

Susan recognized it as very characteristic of Sidney to have run away
for a month from a situation which he must ultimately face.

From New York came a gorgeous wedding present from Sidney and his
wife; a most unsuitable gift for a tenant-farmer's menage: a huge
satin-lined case filled with every possible form of table
silver--knives, forks, teaspoons, tablespoons, dessert spoons,
bouillon spoons, orange spoons, after-dinner coffee spoons, oyster
forks, fruit knives, bread-and-butter knives.

Joe gloated over the moneyed value of it, even while denouncing his
brother's reckless and senseless extravagance.

"Put it good away; it would get stole if it was knew we had such
grand stuff around.  You see, Susan, you never was used to such
things and don't know their walue; but I was, when I was a kid livin'
at home, before my father died."

Susan did not think it worth while to tell him how "used to such
things" she had become during her years at school, through the
friendships she had made with girls from homes so unlike her own as
to have seemed to her a wonderland of luxury and ease and refinement.

But she was glad that Joe would not expect her to use this silver.
It was promptly locked away in the attic.

From the moment that Susan had made up her mind to marry Joe her
heart had desperately fixed itself upon the one compensation, besides
her family's safety, which she might hope to find in her
situation--the care and love of the baby.  But since affection is not
a thing to be commanded at will, perhaps the very intensity of her
determination to lay hold, here, upon comfort and even blessedness,
defeated her desire.  Josie, although healthy, pretty, of average
intelligence, and at times both cunning and interesting, proved to be
peevish, exacting, and selfish to a degree that seemed to Susan quite
hopeless.  She could not, no matter how hard she tried, warm up to
him.  She was sure that if he had responded in the least to her
overtures he would have won her immediately and completely, no matter
what his trying faults of disposition.  But nothing she could do
seemed to awaken in the child any affection for her.  She would have
concluded that he had no heart, but for the fact that he was so
extremely attached to his father.

Joe, who was morbidly jealous of Josie's affection, instead of being
troubled by his persistence in repelling his step-mother's advances,
seemed to gloat over it.  While he would have resented her least
neglect of the boy, he seemed to begrudge her the natural reward of
her faithful care.

"Come here to your pop, Josie--see what I got fur you!" he would
entice the child away from her the moment his jealous watchfulness
detected in Josie any sign of fondness for her.

Josie very quickly learned to associate a rough repulsion of his
"mother" with the reward of a lozenge or a ride "upsy-daisy" on his
father's foot.

Susan foresaw that when it came to questions of discipline Joe would
always side with the child against her.  She feared that it would
require more patience and diplomacy than she could ever hope to
command to deal with the problem.

Joe's jealousy was not confined to his child.  It early became
manifest that he would brook no rival in Susan's regard; such, for
instance, as her love of books, the one love left to her out of the
wreck of her life.  He wished and expected her to be interested in
nothing else in the world but his comfort and welfare and that of his
boy.  She soon found herself instinctively putting her reading out of
sight at his approach and busying herself with house- or needle-work,
in order to spare herself the morose, sullen silence, lasting
sometimes a whole day, with which he would signify his displeasure
when he found her reading; or his tirades against the sort of books
she "wasted her time on."  All novels were lumped together as
abominations.  Poetry was "for Sunday afternoons if you got to read
it, but certainly not for busy week-days."  Science baffled him.  He
once found her reading (or trying to read) Darwin's "Origin of
Species," and when he had demanded to be told what it was about and
had heard her reply, he waxed truly indignant.  "The stuff yous
simple females'll swallow yet!"

She tried to tell him that the evolution of man from a lower species
was no longer an hypothesis, but an historical fact, and she read him
some of the evidences of that fact.

But he wasn't impressed.  "I can't pitcher it to myself.  Can you
pitcher it to yourself, a man's ever havin' been in such a form?
It's a lie!  Don't fill your head with such foolishness!"

"But it is the truth."

"No," he firmly denied it, "I can't pitcher to myself a man's ever
having no other form.  Why, no person in White Oak Station believes
such a thing as that there!"

"Must I believe nothing except what the people of White Oak Station
believe?" smiled Susan.

"You're safer to."

"Why?"

"What's the use of thinkin' different from other folks?"

"What's the use of thinking just _like_ other people?"

"Och, well," he gave it up, exhausted with such unwonted mental
strenuousness, "have your own way.  Think it, then--but _keep it to
yourself_.  I don't want folks 'round here sayin' I married a crazy
woman!"

When just a month after Susan's marriage her mother died very
suddenly at the end of August, from heart failure, Susan's wild
rebellion against Fate, that she should have sacrificed herself so
needlessly, turned itself speedily into a great indignation against
herself; against that fatal weakness in her character which seemed
always to inhibit her from wrestling with the knotty places in her
life and conquering them.

"I've let myself be shoved about like a puppet!"

If one could only have the courage always to do what, in spite of
threatened disaster, one saw was the only true thing to do--and then
trust to Life to right it!

But of course only great souls were large enough and strong enough
for such high heroism.

Joe was not unsympathetic for her grief for her mother.  But he had a
grotesque way of commingling his gentler feelings with his dominating
sordidness.

"I guess, now, Susan, you'll be wantin' me to buy you one of these
here stylish crape wails; ain't?--you bein' so much for dressin'
stylish that way.  But I took notice you didn't wear one of 'em fur
your pop when he died; I guess because you couldn't afford one; for I
heard a'ready that they cost awful expensive--them crape wails.  And
I hold that since you didn't wear one fur your pop, it wouldn't look
according, your wearing one fur your mom."

"Mennonites don't wear mourning."

"Yes, well, but you ain't no Mennonite."

"None of us will wear mourning," she reassured him.

His relief made him beam upon her benignly.  "You show your good
sense, Susan.  Fur it would be a awful waste to let all them good
clo'es you're got a'ready and go buy new black ones; ain't, it would?"

Susan vaguely wondered what it was going to be like when the clothes
she now had were worn out and she was obliged to buy new ones.  Her
work as housekeeper and child's nurse was harder, more distasteful,
and involved longer hours than had ever been the case with school
teaching; yet she had nothing for it that she could call her own;
nothing except what Joe saw fit to give her.  Thus far he had never
voluntarily offered her a dollar; and when she had one day asked him
for money, he had inquired what she wanted it for.  It had been for
some household expenses, not for herself.  He had given it to her
grudgingly, mistrustfully, as though he suspected her of a design to
defraud him.

Such was the chaos and horror of her soul in confronting, now, the
needless sacrifice she had made in marrying Joe that the harrowing
funeral orgie and all its gruesome accompaniments drove her almost
into unrestrained hysteria.  First, there was the elderly woman,
unknown to the family with a passion for funerals, who had walked in
from the country, five miles, "to view the remains of the deceased."

"I didn't know her in life, but I'd like to see her in death," she
devoutly explained--which so moved the hearts of Lizzie and Addie
that they made her stay "for dinner."

Then the preacher's hypocritical tones and meaningless stock phrases
which made Susan grind her teeth in impotent rebellion--"portals of
memory," "life's peaceful waters," "God's smiles," "the Other Shore,"
the awful hymn droned out a line at a time alternately by the
preacher and the people:

  We'll miss you from our home, dear mother,
    We'll miss you from your place;
  A shadow over our lives is cast;
    We'll miss the sunshine of your face.

  Our hearts are bound with sorrow,
    Yet the thought comes with each sigh,
  She is safe with God's dear angels;
    We shall meet her by and by.


And finally Lizzie's controversary with the undertaker over the palms
which stood grouped at the head of the coffin and which the
undertaker was going to load on his truck and take away with him.

"No, you don't!" Lizzie indignantly stopped him, right in the
presence of their assembled kindred, friends, and neighbours, "you
ain't to claim back _all_ them palms!  One third of them palms is
_mine_--and them goes with Mom along!"

They had almost had a tug of war about it over the coffin.

Susan's struggles to keep herself in hand through the nightmare of it
all ended in a nervous collapse which left her prostrated for weeks
with a continuous, unconquerable pain in her head just at the base of
her brain.

Joe's genuine alarm, his unexpected sympathy for her suffering, were
a surprising revelation to her.  She had not thought him capable of
real tenderness except for his boy.  The extent of his feeling for
her was indicated by his surprisingly suggesting one day, with
evident intent to find something that would catch her interest, that
perhaps she might like to learn to drive his roadster?  She had
several times requested to be allowed to do so and he had always
refused.

"If you learn oncet you'll be wantin' to _go_ all the time and you'd
let your housework too much.  Gasoline costs too expensive to be used
unnecessary," he had said.

But now he told her that perhaps it would after all be an economical
move and save a lot of his valuable time to let _her_ make the
occasional necessary trips to town.

He stipulated, however, that she must exercise self-restraint in the
use of such a precious commodity as gasoline.

Susan's relation with Sidney, though it had not been sanctified by
society or religion, had yet had in it such elements of beauty, joy,
sacredness, that it had seemed at times to justify itself--as her
entirely respectable marriage could not do, now that its motive, her
mother's welfare, was removed.  It was now that she felt herself to
be "living in sin," as she had never felt while she loved; and when
her mother's death removed the necessity of her immolation, she
passionately longed to escape from her ignominy.

She even went to the length of suggesting to her sisters, some weeks
after her mother's funeral, that if they had courage enough to give
back to Joe their home in Reifsville, go with her to the city and
open a boarding-house, she would leave her husband (whom she had
married only to save her mother the grief of losing her home), and
would help them to earn a comfortable living.  Of course if they
would not consent to give back their property to Joe, she could not
leave him; it would be going back on her bargain; it would be like
stealing; but if they would consent----

But the consternation, even horror, of their faces at this, to them,
disreputable proposition, told her, before they answered her, that
she could never persuade them to such a step.

"Och, Susie, are you a loose woman that you talk so light about
leaving your Mister!  Who ever heard the likes!" exclaimed Lizzie.

The three sisters were sitting together on the front porch of the
Reifsville cottage, Susan having driven over from White Oak in the
roadster after the early farm supper, to put before them her plan.

"It's because I'm not a loose woman that I think I ought to leave
Joe," she tried to explain.  "I know how queer it sounds to you and
Addie for me to say I think it's my living with him that's
immoral--but that's what I think."

"But he's your _Mister_, Susie!  How you talk, anyhow!"

"No, he is not my husband!" she suddenly cried out, passionately.
"He's my keeper, my owner, and I'm his chattel!  I can't stand it!  I
can't bear it!"

Her sisters stared in amazement upon her shrinking, shivering body,
her trembling lips, her white face.

"Don't he use you nice, Susie?" asked Addie, anxiously.

"For Mother's sake I could have borne it, and if she bad lived longer
I might have gotten used to it.  But now it seems so senseless to go
on enduring such a life!  I'm young--I'm not twenty-one yet.  To
think of living all the rest of my life with him! Oh, Lizzie, I
can't!  I just can't!"

"But what's the matter of him?  He seems awful nice and common toward
what his stuck-up brother is!" argued Lizzie.  "And he makes you a
good purwider, don't he, Susie?"

"It's what he is, not what he does!" cried Susan, despairingly.

"You knowed what he was when you said Yes to him.  And even fur Mom's
sake you hadn't ought to have said Yes unlest you knowed you could
stand him pretty good."

"I know that now.  I know I made a terrible mistake.  I was an idiot!
There's no excuse for me!  But before it's too late, Lizzie," Susan
pleaded, "I want to mend my mistake!"

"It is too late," Lizzie pronounced.  "Would it be treatin' Joe right
and fair to up and leave him and disgrace him so before all the
folks, when you ain't got no good reason except that he mebby
kreistles* you a little?"


* Disgusts.


Susan had not thought of that--of how unfair it would be to Joe.

"But he wouldn't deserve any sympathy," she argued, piteously, "for
he backed me into a corner and forced me to marry him--on pain of our
losing our home--when he knew I did not care for him and did not want
to marry him."

"But you did marry him," said Addie, conclusively.  "And what's
done's done."

"Yes," corroborated Lizzie, "as it is, so it is, and that ends it."

"Why should it end it?  It shan't end it!" cried Susan, fighting for
her very soul.  "You must help me to get out of it!  You have helped
me all my life--and I never needed your help more than I need it now!"

"We never helped you to go wrong, Susie--to disgrace and shame us!"
Lizzie maintained.  "And this here thing you're astin us to do--to
help you leave your Mister--just like a woman that's got loose morals
that way--it wouldn't be right!"

"It seems to me you're got it good," said Addie, "with that there
pretty little boy and this here automobile car of Mister's and him so
well-fixed and all, so's you ain't got to worry!"

"You offer me a stone for bread," responded Susan, hopelessly, as she
rose to leave them.  "You would think it right for me to go away from
him if he beat or starved me.  You can't see that one's heart and
mind and soul may be starved and torn every hour, every minute!  You
can't see!"

But even as she spoke, Susan realized, with a vague pain in her heart
for her sisters, that perhaps the greater tragedy was theirs--in that
they could not see.




CHAPTER VIII

AUTUMN

By the time Susan got back to White Oak Farm that September evening
it was dark and late; and Joe, anxiously pacing the front porch of
their picturesque cottage, greeted her crossly.

"Some married life!--me settin' here alone all evening and you off!
Usin' up gasoline unnecessary!  I just knowed it would go like this
if I left you run my car!  What did I tell you?" he said, accusingly.

Susan, offering no response, went into the house, leaving him to put
the car into the garage.

A few minutes later, however, when he joined her in their room, he
again took up his complaint.

"I might as well be single again if I got to set alone all evening!
Where was you, anyhow?"

"Over to Reifsville to see Addie and Lizzie."

"Sixteen mile there and back!  That used up anyhow near two gallon.
And gasoline going up every day higher!  What did you have to go over
there fur?"

"They are lonesome--and so am I."

"Och, well," returned Joe, softened, "if you was feelin' a little
lonesome, that way, after what's happened, then that's all right.
But leave me tell you somepin, Susan," he said, seating himself in a
rocking chair by the window and feasting his eyes on her young
loveliness as she stood before the bureau with bare arms upraised to
brush her short curly hair.  "Be _thankful_ fur your grief fur your
mother!  Me, I never knowed my mother.  Never knowed what it was to
have no one care fur me in all my life--till I got Josie!"

"Didn't your wife care for you, Joe?" asked Susan, touched by the
wistfulness in his voice.

"My wife?  Well, it's you that can answer that--whether my wife cares
for me."

"Your other wife then?"

"Och, she was so dumb and common, Susan; all she ast of me was that I
make her a good purwider; and in turn she kep' my house nice and
comfortable.  That's all there was to it."

Susan did not ask him what he found more in her.  At times she
suspected him of something as near akin to a romantic passion for her
as he was capable of feeling.

"Well, Susan, what do you think come in the evening mail whiles you
was off?" he inquired as he rocked by the window.

"A letter from your brother?"

"Good guess!  What do you think he wants me to do yet?  _This_ you
won't guess so easy!"

"To leave here?"

"How did you know?" cried Joe in surprise.

"I've wondered and _wondered_ why he has let you stay--you, his
brother, working for him like a menial!"

"That's what _he_ says in this here letter.  He says it mortifies him
and that it had ought to mortify me, too, if I had any pride.  Huh!"
grunted Joe.

"Why doesn't it?" asked Susan.

"I got my good reasons fur stayin' on here!" returned Joe, darkly,
"and he darsen't chase me off, neither!  He knows he darsen't!  I'm
a-goin' to write and tell him so!  Look-a-here!" he added, taking a
newspaper from his pocket, rising and coming to her to point out a
paragraph, "where it says how Sid and his wife is travellin' with
that there lively set up there at Newport; folks that could buy him
out a thousand times over and never feel it!  _He_ can't go their
pace--the pace of the crowd he's tryin' to run with now.  He ain't
near rich enough!  But Sid he always was awful ambitious that way, to
git in with folks that had more'n what he had.  And here's another
piece in the paper," he went on, turning the sheet, "that says where
he was bettin' wery high on some races and how he lost _thirty
thousand dollars_ yet!  Thirty thousand, mind you!  _Lost_ it!  Gosh,
ain't Sid a fool!  You just watch out and see how soon he'll git to
the end of his tether now he's got money to spend!"

Susan plainly perceived that Joe entertained the happiest
anticipations of his brother's speedy ruin.

"So you see," said Joe, "now that he's blowed in thirty thousand
dollars and more, he wants to come home and stay safe back here fur a
while on the farm; and so he wants me and you to get out before he
comes."

"Does he say that?"

"As much as."

"Then I should think we'd have to go, seeing that he owns the place.
You surely can't stay here if he doesn't want you to."

"I ain't a-goin'!  You'll see what you'll see before I'm done with my
stylish brother Sid!"

He tossed the paper aside and took a step nearer to her, his eyes
caressing her, his hand raised to fondle her--while she, holding
herself rigid, tried not to betray the repulsion that shook her to
the foundations of her being.  And just at that instant, before his
clumsy hand had touched her, a sleepy cry from Josie's room saved
her.  She sprang away from her husband and hurried to the baby's
bedside.

Josie had had a bad dream and was frightened.  Susan lifted him from
his crib and sat down to rock him.

And now, for the first time in her acquaintance with her step-son, he
suddenly responded to her mothering, clasping his fat little arms
tight around her neck as she held him; nestling his curly head
against her breast, cooing and murmuring lovingly in answer to her
low-voiced singing to him.

It seemed to Susan that at the very first voluntary touch of those
soft baby arms every thwarted motherly instinct of her heart became
alive.  An hour ago she had been plotting to cut loose from all the
obligations imposed by her rash and foolish marriage.  And now such a
little thing, the clasp of a baby's arms, was binding her fast.

"I'll bear it for you, Josie, if you'll only love me," she whispered
as she held him close.

Susan could date from that night a change in the boy.  Whatever the
trying peculiarities of his disposition, whatever his violent loyalty
to his father in preference to her, he was nevertheless, after that
night, her child, dependent upon her, jealously fond of her.  And
she, from that hour, became his faithful and devoted mother.

A week after Joe had dispatched his letter to Sidney, in which he
refused to leave White Oak Farm, he came in one day at noon from the
fields with a piece of news which he imparted to Susan at dinner.

"The housekeeper over at the big house has a letter from Sid's Missus
where it says the house is to be got ready for 'em to come home with
sich a house-party, nex' Sa'rday.  Sid and his wife gets here a day
ahead of their comp'ny--on Friday.  The housekeeper she sent the
butler to me to say she must have green corn and fresh tomats and
lettuce and grapes and Gawd knows what!"

Susan, looking very tired from her long morning's housework and
cooking, made no comment, as she poured Joe's coffee and passed it to
him across the table.

"It's bad enough fur a married man to have to keep so much hired help
as what Sid keeps; but fur his Missus to be that good-for-nothing
that he has to hire someone to do even the _managin'_ yet--a
housekeeper, mind you!--that's goin' _too_ far!  Somepin ought to be
did about it!"

Susan, busily mashing Josie's baked potato, still made no comment.

"It's squanderin' money somepin fierce to hire so much!  What good is
his wife _to_ him, anyhow?  That's what I ast you!"

"Better ask what good is he to her," Susan remarked at last.

But this was a point of view too foreign to the domestic philosophy
of a Pennsylvania Dutchman to be considered.

"He's her Mister," was Joe's conclusive response.

"There, now, Josie, dear," Susan said as she put the child's spoon in
his hand when his potato was ready for him.

"Wants to be sed!  Seed me, Musser!" protested Josie--f's being
always s's in his language.

As he was quite able to feed himself and as Susan was feeling faint
for food herself, she demurred, appealing to his pride--he was a
great big boy now, not a baby any more; appealing also to his pity
for her who couldn't eat any "din-din" if she had to feed a great
big----

"Seed me!  Seed me!" clamoured the boy.

"No, no, Josie must feed himself--like Father!  Look at Father!--and
let Mother eat her dinner."

"Wants to be sed!" howled Josie as Susan turned to her own plate.
"Wants Musser to seed me!"

But Susan, taking up her knife and fork, ignored his cries.

Josie cast his spoon upon the floor, slunk down in his high chair,
and sulked.

Susan paid no attention.

"He won't eat his dinner if you won't feed him, and he needs his
dinner," Joe objected.

"He'll eat it if he gets hungry enough, Joe."

"He's too little to be tormented!"

"He won't suffer.  If you don't interfere, he will soon give in."

"Wants to be sed!" whimpered Josie.  "Seed me!"

Susan went on eating.

"If you won't I will," said Joe with an injured air, "and I ain't got
the time to.  Will you do it?"

If she had not been so very tired she might have stuck it out; but a
lassitude of mind and body that made nothing seem worth while save
peace and quiet led her to yield.  She rose, picked up the child's
spoon; and sat down again at his side.

Joe looked pleased and complacent.

Susan's heart reproached her as she thought, while she fed the child,
"If he were my very own I'd love him too well to spoil him and make
him detestable!  I'd love him as a child ought to be loved.  I must
try--I must try!"

"When you stop to think," Joe resumed the discussion of his brother's
affairs, "of all they'll spend over this here comp'ny they're havin'
at Sid's--ten strangers, mind you!  To stay from Sa'rday to Monday
yet!  Eatin' and carousin'!  And a big bunch of hired people doin'
all the work!  And after all, what's _to_ it, anyhow?"

"Your pet dissipation is making money--theirs, spending it.  I don't
see much difference between you," said Susan, dully.

"Och, yes, but I work and purduce something fur other ones.  They
don't purduce nothing, that bunch, they only use up.  They're like
sich parasites."

"Hear your daddy, Josie, calling your uncle and aunt potato bugs!"

"Uncle Tater-Bug!" gurgled Josie.

His father chuckled.  "See how quick he gets you?" he proudly drew
Susan's attention to his son's precocity.  "Yes, and potato bugs is
what they are all right, Sid and his Missus!"

"I wonder whether society will ever learn how to exterminate its
human potato bugs," Susan reflected.  "But your real purpose in
working, Joe, doesn't seem to me a bit higher than theirs in
spending; you are both out to enjoy yourselves; you to carouse in
your delightful accumulating and hoarding; they in playing.  The
effect on yourselves must be pretty much the same."

Josie being now comfortably replete with food and having come out
conqueror in his demand to be fed, expressed his satisfaction by
leaning caressingly against Susan, patting her cheek, and murmuring
to her lovingly; a sight which his strangely jealous father never
could stand for more than a minute at a time.  Rising abruptly, he
lifted the high chair to his side of the table.

"Does Josie want some of Pop's pie?" he bargained for the boy's
favour; everything had a commercial value to Joe.  "Nice apple pie,"
he said, holding a spoonful of the rich crust to Josie's lips.

"It's very bad for him," Susan objected, "that rich pastry."

"Och, this good whiles back, before you come, I fed pie to him,"
returned Joe.

"He'll be ill!" warned Susan.

"He's hearty; he kin eat what I eat.  You put too much sugar in your
pies; it's extravagant," Joe complained.  "My sugar bill was too high
last week.  You ought to watch yourself better, Susan, how you use up
sugar.  You ain't been takin' no more cakes over to your folks at
Reifsville, have you--since I tol' you not to?" he asked,
suspiciously.

"No," she coldly answered.

"Well, but, Susan, it stands to reason," he argued, "that I done
enough fur your folks.  More'n some others would have did, seein' you
didn't fetch me no aus tire.  To be sure, I didn't need it, my house
bein' nice furnished a'ready.  But other ones would have expected
something in place of a aus tire and I didn't ast nothin' off of you.
And your sisters--where'd they be if I hadn't o' gave 'em a home yet,
heh?  You can't look to me to keep on doin' fur 'em!  It stands to
reason!"

All this because she had taken to Addie and Lizzie, one day, half the
batch of "sand tarts" she had baked.

"Nor you ain't to sneak things to 'em behind my back!" warned Joe.

Susan, suddenly feeling ill and faint, rose from the table and left
the room.

Joe, left alone with his boy, looked injured.

"Ain't got no right to say nawthin, seems!"

He didn't like being deserted like this at his meals--the only time
he had through the day to be with his delectable bride.  For even in
her calico working frock and when tired out and "strubbled"* Susan
was so very good to look at and so "nice to have 'round"; and she
made him so very much more comfortable than his hired housekeepers
had ever done.


* Hair mussed.


"Got to do my own stretchin', I guess!" he grumbled as he reached for
the coffee pot to refill his cup.  "She's got no need to be so
touchy!  She's just got to understand from the first that I ain't
supportin' them sisters of hern."

Meantime Susan, lying on her bed, dry-eyed and staring at the wall,
saw there on its blankness her tragically broken life.

"So much was done for me--so many sacrifices made--that I might have
something better than they all had ever had!  What a hideous, hideous
mess I have made of it!"

That afternoon the four walls of her cottage seemed to close in upon
her like a jail; she could not endure it.  Against all precedent or
reason she shamelessly abandoned a large basket of ironing, took
Josie, and drove over in her husband's car to see her sisters.

She was never free from anxiety for them, for though they had tried
hard to conceal it from her, she knew well what a hard struggle they
were having to get along.  The wages of the necessary hired man to
till their land left them too little income.  Susan saw only too
clearly all the many little (and some big) deprivations they were
suffering.

Joe was so well off (wasn't it a quarter of a million he had
inherited from his uncle?)--he could so easily make life easier for
her sisters----

Josie was asleep by the time she reached Reifsville.  She left him
lying on the seat of the car while she went into the house to find
Lizzie and Addie.

The kitchen was empty; they were probably helping their hired man in
the potato patch.

She went to the settee which stood against the kitchen wall (a settee
being as much a part of a Pennsylvania Dutch kitchen as a cook stove)
and arranged the cushions for Josie before she should bring him in;
and while she was doing this she heard two voices on the porch just
outside the kitchen, a few feet from where she stood, her sister
Lizzie's high-keyed tones answering a man's deep voice; and Susan was
startled at the unusual sound, in this neighbourhood, of good English
and a cultured accent.

"May I inquah how much ah tuh-nips?" he was asking with a hesitation
which seemed to express a doubt as to whether he did not, perhaps,
mean pumpkins.

"Did you ast what's turn-ups?" asked Lizzie, doubtfully.

"Not _what_ they ah; how much they ah; by the bunch.  I'm not shu-ah
they grow in bunches, but it seems probable.  Grapes do----"

"Och, no, turn-ups grows one by each that way.  Didn't you know
_that_ much?" asked Lizzie with mild wonder, not meaning to be
critical.  "It don't seem is if any one could be that dumb as to
think that turn-ups growed in bunches yet!  My souls!  Our turn-ups,"
she added, "is all."

"All?  Are they?  All what?"

"They're _all_, I sayed."

"All--er--ripe?" ventured the man, tentatively, almost timidly.

"Och, I mean they was all solt at market; they're _all_."

"I surmise," responded the deep though gentle voice, "that these are
agricultural terms with which I am unfamilyah.  We'll let it pass.
May I ask, ah you not a Mennonite, madam?"

"Yes, but I'm a Old."

"'A Old?"'

"I belong to the Old Mennonites."

"Are there, then, also, Young Mennonites?"

"_New_ Mennonites," Lizzie corrected him with a little irrepressible
chuckle of amusement.

"And what is the difference between the Old and the New?"

"The Old has more light."  Lizzie stated an indisputable and obvious
fact.

"It must be a comfort to you to know that," responded the man,
sympathetically.

Susan's curiosity was aroused.  She tiptoed to the window, carefully
lifted a corner of the blind, and peeped.

Her heart gave a great leap in her bosom as she recognized, in the
interesting looking young man standing at the porch steps, dressed in
motoring cap and coat, wearing eye-glasses attached to a heavy black
ribbon, an old acquaintance, the brother of one of those friends of
her school days at whose home she had so often visited, whose letters
she had left unanswered.

Robert Arnold, a rising author, had been one of her several ardent
"followers" in those days a few years ago, which now seemed so far,
far back in the past!

She saw that his car was standing in the road behind the house.  What
was he doing out here?  Looking for local colour for stories, perhaps?

"In what way do the Old Mennonites have more light?" she heard him
ask poor Lizzie.

"Well, us Old Mennonites ain't so narrer-minded like what the New is;
we wear the waists of our frocks more fashionable, to come a little
below the belt that way; you see?--where with the New, their waists
must end at the belt.  They claim theirn is more after the Gawspel
than what ourn is; but I don' know," said Lizzie, thoughtfully.
"Sometimes, do you know, I think theirn is just as fashionable.  But
I often says to my neighbour (she's a New--'Manda Slosser by name) I
says, 'It ain't our clo'es that saves us,' I says, 'nor the name of
our church, Old _or_ New.  Yous New Mennonites,' I says, 'is a little
narrer'."

"You are undoubtedly right," agreed Mr. Arnold.  "By the way, can you
tell me who is the school teacher of this village?"

"Emmy Slosser's her name.  She lives next door to us here."

"Slosser?  Are you sure?  Isn't it Schrekengust?"

"Och, no, Susie give up the Reifsville school it's over a year ago
a'ready."

"Susie!  That's it!  You know her?" cried Mr. Arnold, eagerly.
"Where can I find her--Susan Schrekengust?"

"Are you acquainted to Susie then?" asked Lizzie, cautiously.
Susan's sisters knew very well how she had tried, for over a year, to
elude her old school friends in the city.

"My sister and Miss Susan were intimate friends," replied Mr. Arnold.
"And I--Miss Schrekengust and I were very good friends, too.  But we
have not heard from her for over a year, though we have both written
to her repeatedly.  So, as a matter of fact, I came out here to-day
to look her up, and not to inquah the price of tuh-nips.  When I
mentioned tuh-nips I was really only feeling my way a bit.  Can you
tell me where I can find Miss Schrekengust?"

"You can't find her," answered Lizzie.  "She's moved away."

"I hope you can tell me, then, where she has gone?"

"Susie she got married and moved away."

"Married!"

Robert Arnold looked distinctly dismayed; Susan, watching from behind
the blind, was sure of it.

"Yes, she got married," repeated Lizzie.

"But--but she never let her friends know!  Whom did she marry?" asked
Mr. Arnold in a tone of dejection.

"A party by the name of Joe Houghton she got married to."

"Houghton?  No relation, I suppose, to Mr. Sidney Houghton of White
Oak Farm?"

"Yes, Joe he's a half-brother of hisn."

"Indeed!  Miss Schrekengust married into the Houghton family!  Dear
me!" murmured Mr. Arnold; and Susan heard in his tone, as plainly as
though he had spoken, his surprise that she had so risen in the world
from a humble little village school teacher.  To be sure, Mr. Arnold
had never seen Joe.

"Quite a rise in the world for Miss Schrekengust, eh?" he said to
Lizzie, tentatively, as though putting out a feeler.

"Och, but our Susie she claims she had it a lot easier before she got
married."

"Oh, these modern Feminists!--who think themselves utterly abused if
they're not drudging for their own living!" cried Mr. Arnold.

"Yes, well, but Susie she's so much more fur her books and all like
that than what she is fur housework that I don't think she likes it
wery good, bein' married.  She enjoyed herself more singlewise; for
all, they say you have anyhow trouble even if you ain't married.  And
it's true, too, fur I seen a lot of trouble a'ready," sighed Lizzie,
"and I ain't got no Mister."

"I'm sorry to hear that our little friend isn't happy----"

"Well, you see, she's so grand educated that way, our Susie is, you
couldn't expec' her to be satisfied with kitchen work all the time.
Us we sent her to school till she was seventeen a'ready!  Yes,
indeed!  If you knowed her so well, _I_ don't have to tell you how
good educated she is.  Ain't I don't?"

"You--you are related to her?" asked Mr. Arnold, looking bewildered.

"Me, I'm her sister."

"Oh!  And this is her home?"

"Yes, till she got married a'ready."

"If you are Susan's sister, I'm very glad to meet you," said Mr.
Arnold, holding out his hand.  "You must often have heard Susan speak
of us--the Arnolds?"

"Och, yes!  She went often a'ready to wisit at your grand place in
Middleburg!  Ain't?  So you're Mr. Arnold!  Well, well!  It wonders
me!  Susie will be surprised to hear you come to look her up!"

"Does she live near here?"

"No, she lives off."

"Far off?"

"Well," said Lizzie, on her guard, "a good pieceways off she lives."

"Can you give me her address?

"I ain't got it wery handy."

"You--you don't want me to have it, Miss Schrekengust?"

"I--I'd have to ast Susie first," faltered Lizzie, embarrassed, "if
she wants you to."

It was Mr. Arnold's turn, now, to look embarrassed.  "I beg pardon,
Miss Schrekengust, if I am trespassing!  Miss Susan--Mrs.
Houghton--has given us to understand plainly enough, I'm sure, that
she did not care any longer for our friendship.  But we've not found
it very easy to give her up, you see--we--we----  Will you tell her,
please, when you write to her, or see her, that I called?  And that
my sister sends her love?  And that we're not forgetting her and
never shall?  My sister and I are coming down next Saturday to White
Oak Farm to a house party that Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Houghton are
having (Mrs. Sidney Houghton is an old friend of my sister), and as
we knew Susan lived in this vicinity, we thought we'd look her up.  I
came here to-day to try to find Susan and tell her we'd be in her
neighbourhood for three days and that she could not escape us!  But
of course--well, I shall be glad to have you tell her I called.
Good-by, Miss Schrekengust," he concluded, again offering his hand.

"But can't you stop and pick a piece* first?" asked Lizzie,
hospitably.  "I can make supper done till a little while yet.  To be
sure, us we eat wery plain and common; but if you'll just take it as
it comes that way----"


* "Pick a piece"--have a luncheon.


"You are very kind and I appreciate your invitation, but----"

He murmured elaborate excuses and thanks, and was gone.

The blind dropped from Susan's hand.  She stood motionless, overcome,
though her heart was beating fast.  The sight of this old friend's
face, the sound of his voice, were bringing back overwhelmingly dear
memories of happiness; arousing suddenly her slumbering youth which
she had thought forever dead; stirring in her the old unconquerable
love of life that had so abounded in her in days long past.  The
possibility of really living again and finding joy in life was borne
in upon her with a rush.

Lizzie did not come into the kitchen.  She had probably gone back at
once to the truck patch to join Addie and the hired man.  Susan felt,
now, that she would rather not see her sisters this afternoon.  She
left the house and got into the car beside the still slumbering Josie.

On her way home she tried to visualize clearly the situation in which
she found herself.  Here were her old, close, and loved friends,
Eleanor and Robert Arnold, who were at the same time friends of her
sister-in-law, coming to the Houghtons' house party.  And here was
she, living in the tenant-farmer's cottage within a stone's throw of
"the big house"--so far from being one of her sister-in-law's house
party that she was not even acquainted with her.  A unique situation,
truly!  It almost moved her to laughter.

"I suppose I can, if I want to, manage to keep out of sight of the
guests for a day or two, but I certainly could not manage it for
longer."

To present Joe to the Arnolds as her husband!

"And Robert thinks it must be such a pleasant change from school
teaching to have married into the Houghton family!"

It would give Robert and Eleanor a dreadful shock to find her married
to an individual like Joe!  And it wasn't a thing you could decently
explain.  You didn't go about apologizing for the crudity of your
husband as you might for the incompetence of your cook!

She remembered Sidney's having once said to her, "I never could see
why Uncle George resented Joe's marrying a farmer's servant girl; no
_lady_ would ever have married him!"

When she reached home, the question she had been pondering during all
her eight-mile drive still remained unsolved--should she yield to
this stirring of new life in her heart, to which the sight of Robert
Arnold had given birth; meet her old friends and put her situation to
the test; let it either work itself out into something that would
perhaps make life of worth to her once more, or throw her back again
upon herself, into a deeper solitude than ever?  If the latter, she
would have only herself to blame; certainly she could not reproach
her friends, since by her own acts she had placed herself where even
the most broad-minded and charitable of those who had cared for her
must find that the price of friendship with her was rather greater
than it was worth.




CHAPTER IX

THE HOUSE PARTY

Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Houghton found themselves alone together longer
and more intimately in their Pullman drawing-room, on their homeward
journey from Newport to White Oak Farm, than they had been at any
time in the past six weeks.  Even Georgie was not by to disturb their
tête-à-tête, for his mother had established him and his nurse in a
section of another car; not, indeed, to insure her uninterrupted
isolation with her husband, but in order to escape any possibility of
annoyance from the child.

This detachment of the young couple, however, from all the world,
during a ten-hours' journey, did not appear to conduce greatly to
their happiness.  They were both looking rather jaded from their
recently overdone social life; their faces bore the stamp of that
discontent and weakness which will so soon mar the countenances of
those who live to no purpose; who, while giving no sort of service to
society, prey upon those who do serve.  They seemed to have nothing
to talk about together; and this absolute absence of any common
interests was a dreary manifestation of the deadly emptiness of their
pleasure-seeking lives.  They read newspapers and magazines, but did
not speak to each other of what they read.  They loafed, ate, yawned,
slept.  Once for five minutes they did become a little animated over
a delectable bit of Newport scandal.  But they quickly lapsed again
into lassitude and boredom.

In repose Sidney's face looked more than discontented.  He was
evidently nervous and worried.

He made frequent visits to the next car to see Georgie.  But Mrs.
Houghton never went near the little boy during the entire trip, nor
was the child brought by his nurse to see her.

It was toward the end of their journey that she roused herself to
discuss with her husband the entertainment of the house party which
was to arrive at White Oak Farm the day after their return home.

"If the wine you ordered from New York doesn't come in time, what
shall we do?  You can't give the Fairfaxes and the Sherwins the sort
of stuff you'd buy in Middleburg," she said.

"Of course not.  Let us hope it will come in time," he replied.

"It's rather absurd, you know, our trying to entertain such people as
the Fairfaxes and the Sherwins at White Oak Farm; we haven't enough
to offer them.  Nothing, indeed, but a rather attractive old
homestead!  We ought not to have undertaken it, really.  You were
foolish to insist upon it.  You know, my dear, you do have rather
vulgar ambitions!"

"As usual, you misunderstand me, Laura.  It's not 'vulgar ambition'
that makes me want to return the very great hospitality we've been
accepting from both those families."

"They will probably be bored to death!" Mrs. Houghton shrugged.
"That's why I asked the Arnolds, when I found that the Fairfaxes
admired Robert's magazine stories.  And Eleanor is always good
company."

"It was a good idea," Sidney agreed, "to ask the Arnolds.  I'm glad
you thought of it."

And then suddenly, with a violent mental jolt, he remembered
something--it was Eleanor Arnold who, at a "frat" dance, nearly three
years ago, had introduced him to Susan Schrekengust!  The Arnolds
knew Susan!  _Why_ had he not remembered it before?--in time to stop
that invitation!

"_Now_ what the devil's to pay!" he thought in utter consternation.

"Robert and Eleanor will certainly help to make things go," said his
wife, serenely.

"Help to make things go to hell!" he thought with an inward frenzy of
apprehension.

"It's damned awkward that Joe won't move away, isn't it?" he
appealed, in a shaking voice, to his wife.

Laura glanced at him in surprise.  His face was distorted with
anxiety.

"Dear me, you take it tragically, don't you?  Why don't you make him
go?  Your reasons for tolerating him have never been very clear to
me."

"He can injure us!  He has suspicions about Georgie!  He'd be only
too glad to have White Oak Farm go to _his_ boy!  I dare not offend
him--I----"

"Oh, bother!  For the sake of that child you are letting your whole
life be spoiled!  I've no patience with you!"

Sidney shrank away from her into a huddled heap and did not answer.

"It certainly is to be hoped," she said, presently, "that our guests
won't discover your relationship to your hired farmer living in the
tenant's cottage!"

"It's a beastly situation!" exclaimed Sidney.

"And for the sake of that child you endure it!  You might consider me
a little and not subject me to such embarrassment!"

"I'm as much embarrassed as you are!  But, Laura," he pleaded, "don't
try to make me be false to the decentest thing in me--my love for
Georgie!"

"When your love for him makes you sacrifice me, you can't expect me
to get enthusiastic about it!  And now there's that girl your brother
has married--it's to be hoped she won't presume upon family ties to
intrude upon us!  However," Laura suddenly dismissed the whole matter
with another shrug of her shoulders, "let us drop the subject!  I
simply don't intend to let people like that prey upon my mind!"

"But you'll have to let them prey upon your mind if the Arnolds and
the rest of them discover Joe!  He'll take good care to _let_ himself
be known, I'm afraid!"

"Then why on earth did you insist upon having this party?"

"I didn't ask the Arnolds."

"But the others.  Why, if you won't make your brother leave, do you
subject yourself and me to the humiliation of entertaining a house
party where he will be all over the landscape in his shirt sleeves or
overalls, talking that crazy Pennsylvania Dutch lingo he has and
making us ridiculous!"

"I--I thought a crowd of guests would cover the awkwardness of your
not calling on Joe's wife--I----"

Laura laughed with genuine amusement.  "Call on her!  I!  She'd
hardly expect it, Sidney, I should think!"

"Why not?  It seems to me it's just what she would expect!"

"Does it?  Well, you and I never do seem to see anything under heaven
from the same point of view!  But I should think even you would
realize the absurdity of suggesting that I call on your
tenant-farmer's wife!--even if she is your sister-in-law.  Any girl
that _could_ marry that half-brother of yours would be impossible!"

"She isn't!" Sidney broke forth with a hot impetuosity that amazed
himself.  But almost instantly he became cautious again.  "She--she
does not look impossible, Laura," he concluded, tamely.

"I didn't know you had met her.  Have you?"

"I--I saw her one day in front of the cottage."

"She can't possibly be the girl I saw one day on the lawn at White
Oak, coming from Joe's cottage.  That girl was--well, she was pretty
and stylish and well-bred looking.  I thought she was someone who had
come to call on me--no, it's not possible that Joe could have married
a girl like that!"

"But remember, Joe's rich enough to have baited bigger game than that
little school teacher!"

"No amount of riches, with your brother Joe tacked on, could have
been a bait big enough to lure a really nice girl, Sidney.  You know
that perfectly well."

"Have it your own way!" he crossly retorted.

His mind was torn with a dozen conflicting fears.  He was afraid of
Joe's resentment if Laura did not call on Susan; yet feared a
betrayal of his guilty secret if the two women did meet.  Association
with or aloofness from his brother's household seemed equally
dangerous and impossible.  He feared a scandal; he feared Laura's
indignation and resentment; he feared the loss to his son of his
inheritance.  And he did not in the least know how to meet any of
these dangers that menaced him.

Mingled with his fears were other emotions not so unworthy: a deep
self-abasement, never absent from his heart, for the injury he had
done and was doing to Susan; a great sense of loss and emptiness
because of the wonderful comradeship as well as of the great love
that had been theirs; a painful humiliation in the realization of
Susan's deep contempt for him.

But presently the quite practical and sordid difficulty that was
causing him, just now, intense anxiety, overshadowed all the other
troubles of his mind.

"Another devil of a mess," he said to his wife, "my being obliged to
get some ready money right away!  My losses over those damned races
have just exactly wiped out over a year's income!"

"Don't look to me," she warned him.  "I shan't give you another
dollar of _my_ income, Sidney!  You already owe me half my year's
allowance!  And of course I am perfectly aware, my dear, that you'll
never dream of paying it back to me!"

"I shan't have to--because you'll manage to _get_ it back!" he
retorted.

"I shall do my best to," she blandly answered.

"I don't have to worry about _you_!  I've got enough of your unpaid
bills in my desk to cover more than all you've loaned me!"

"See that you pay them!"

"I shall have to borrow money from Joe," he said, hopelessly.

"Why do you get it from _him_?  Why not from someone else?  He
demands such awfully tight security--first thing you know _he'll_ own
everything you inherited from your uncle."

"I borrow from him because he's got it to lend and money's scarce
just now.  He read in the papers of my heavy losses in the races and
he wrote and _offered_ to lend me money.  Pretty decent of him,
wasn't it?  I guess--I guess," faltered Sidney, "he's feeling extra
good and happy just now--with his new wife and----"

He rose abruptly.

"I'll run over and see how Georgie's getting along."

But he did not go to Georgie.  He went, instead, to the day-coach
smoking car, sat down on the very last seat, and lit a cigar.

He had found it necessary to escape precipitately from Laura to
conceal from her a threatened flood of emotion.  Ever since he had
first learned of Susan's inexplicable marriage to Joe he had been
astonished and disgusted by his own overwhelming and unreasonable
jealousy, envy, chagrin--all the more absurd because Susan could not
possibly care for Joe.

He wondered now, for the hundredth time, as he drearily gazed out of
the window upon the autumn-coloured wooded hills that sped by, what
had made Susan do it.  He had been entirely insincere in suggesting
to his wife that Joe's money had been the bait.  Laura had answered
truly that the money of a Crœsus, with Joe attached, could not
have tempted "a nice girl."

Did Susan, perhaps, have a suspicion----

No, that was impossible; quite, quite impossible.

The Schrekengusts had been in dire straits; Susan had lost her
school, Mr. Schrekengust had died, their property was mortgaged, the
elder sisters were getting on in years; had Joe deliberately driven
that lovely girl into a corner and forced her to bargain with him for
the livelihood of those dear to her?  It would be like him!  Oh, it
would be like him!  And she--rather than accept help from her
"betrayer"--had preferred this marriage!

"How she must loathe me!" he inwardly groaned.

He sighed profoundly as he thought what delight he himself would have
found in using his wealth to give comfort and happiness to Susan!

"What a mate she'd have been!  My life couldn't have been so sordid
with her at my side!--her zest for life, her fun, her intelligence,
her warm, tender heart, her loveliness!  That _Joe_ should have all
that!  Oh, damn!"

However, he could not waste himself upon futile regrets while this
new danger stared him in the face--those Arnolds were bound to see
Susan and recognize her!

The one mortal dread of his life, these days, was that Laura should
discover Susan's identity.

"My predicament is perfectly ridiculous!  And dangerous!  Damned
dangerous!"

But though from the very hour of his arrival at home he found
himself, in spite of all his apprehensions, thrilling at the fact of
Susan's nearness, peering through every window he passed for a
possible glimpse of her about the grounds or near her cottage, he was
nevertheless immensely relieved to find that she seemed to be
assiduously keeping herself out of sight.

She, meantime, was experiencing almost as many qualms and emotions as
was Sidney himself.  The sudden awakening of her old self which the
sight and sound of her girlhood's friend, Robert Arnold, had brought
to her, gave her a haunting, wistful longing to meet and greet him
and his sister again, even while it revealed to her more poignantly
than ever the hopeless degradation of her marriage; a degradation so
much more real than that of her tragic betrayal at Sidney's hands.

"To have to feel ashamed of your husband!" she would muse over her
household drudgery (for such it was to her because her heart was not
in it).  "Ashamed of the one nearest to you in all the world!--to
whom you would naturally want to feel only loyalty--I am ashamed of
being ashamed!"

She reflected that if her own deep and strong feelings about some
things were natural, then society must have very distorted standards.

"The things usually considered shameful!" she thought, wonderingly.
"And the things that are considered respectable!"

Life seemed to her an inexplicable muddle; all her old standards of
right and wrong in confusion; the very foundations of the universe
knocked out from under her.

It was on Saturday afternoon, when the house party was gathered about
a tea table on the lawn, that one of the guests, Mrs. Fairfax, a
comely young matron, drew attention to the picturesque little cottage
behind the big white house.

"A tenant's cottage, I suppose, Mr. Houghton?"

"The farmer's, yes," Sidney nodded.

"Pretty!  So cosy!  I can imagine being quite happy in a dear little
home like that, with no servant worries, no tiresome social
obligations, freedom for doing what I love to do--read and dig a
garden and study music; no fears of a jealous and outraged mob
bringing retribution upon me for having enjoyed such ease and comfort
all my life as _they've_ never had a chance at, poor things!  Oh, I
believe I'd love it!"

"What hinders your having it, Mrs. Fairfax?" asked Eleanor Arnold,
"if you really mean that you'd love it?"

Miss Arnold was a young girl of an arresting personality.  There was
a self-contained calm in her way of sitting very still, her
capable-looking hands folded in her lap, her clear, direct gaze
shining out of a pale face encircled in thick braids of straight,
dark hair.  She was keenly and critically observant, yet seemed not
unsympathetic.

"What hinders me?  _That!_" Mrs. Fairfax pointed a forefinger across
the table at her husband, a rather foppishly dressed, futile-looking
person who lived in idleness on his "unearned increments".

"Nuff said," nodded Eleanor, who yearned to add, "Do you think 'that'
worth the sacrifice of two minutes of your short life?"

"It makes me laugh," said Mr. Fairfax, "to hear Jane talk about
yearning for the simple life!  If any one was ever born that was more
dependent than Jane upon all her little comforts and
conveniences--lead me to her!  Jane wouldn't have any trouble meeting
that test of royal blood, you wot of, in the fairy story--a maiden's
sensitiveness to a pea pod under several mattresses--a _pile_ of
mattresses!  Jane would feel that pea pod quicker'n your royal
princess, I bet you!  Don't you know, Janie," he appealed to her,
"that the farmer's wife in yonder humble cot, whom you are envying,
does her own washing and baking and scrubbing and cooking and----"

"Don't spoil the sweet picture I had made for myself," protested
Jane, sentimentally, "of rural peace and simplicity, with leisure for
congenial occupations, such as we of our class never have!  Let me
believe, Will, dear, that _some_ people in this world do lead
satisfying lives!"

"Moles and cows do perhaps," responded her husband as he rose and
strolled over to a rustic bench under a tree behind the tea table,
where pretty young Mrs. Sherwin made room for him by her side.

"Mr. Arnold!"  Mrs. Fairfax turned to the young author, Robert
Arnold, whose thoughtful, earnest face stood out in marked contrast
to the unintelligent and somewhat coarse countenances of the other
three men of the group, "you have the honour and distinction of
meeting a long-felt want in my life!  I've always yearned to
know--really _know_--a distinguished novelist whose books I've loved.
But now I find to my dismay that the yearning, like that for 'strong
drink,' as the W.C.T.U's call it, increases in proportion as it's
gratified!  So I beg and implore you, Mr. Arnold, to bring an author
or two to see me every time you come to the city.  Will you?"

"But 'author' is such a very general term!  Please, I beg you, be
specific.  What special brand of author are you yearning to meet?  I
might grab the wrong kind.  There are so many varieties; there is,
for instance, the red-blooded variety; there is the
precious-lavender-and-lace kind; there is the gosh-ding-it sort; the
Close-to-Nature style; the cabaret brand; the
week-end-on-Long-Island-society sort--and many others.  So, please,
kind lady, name your brand."

"The kind I'm yearning to meet is the author who reads and
understands women, Mr. Arnold," said Jane with an earnest intensity.

"But Shakspere's been dead some time.  Ask me something easy."

"I'll tell you the brand you _don't_ want to introduce to our wives!"
Mr. Andrew Sherwin, a ruddy, heavily built banker, warned the author.
"The kind that will put ideas into their heads!  Keep 'em off!  Jane,
there, and my wife, too," nodding toward the tree behind the tea
table where Mrs. Sherwin sat with Mr. Fairfax, "laps up ideas as a
cat laps milk!  For God's sake keep off authors with ideas!"

"Don't worry!  Authors, these days, don't deal in ideas, only style.
We leave ideas to bankers."

"Well, _I've_ met one or two writing chaps that were just chuck full
of stuff--new ideas about human brotherhood; impracticable rot like
that!  This is no time for new ideas!  We've got trouble enough to
keep things going smoothly!"

"'No time for new ideas?'" repeated Arnold, grinning.  "I suppose
that's what the Romans and Jews told Jesus; and what the Diet of
Worms told Luther; and what the Roman Catholics told Galileo when he
got hold of the very dangerous new idea that the world moved; they
weren't ready to have it move; it greatly annoyed them to have it
move!  It suited their vested interests to have it remain as stable
as they'd always thought it!"

"That's different," protested Sherwin a little bewildered.  "That's
history.  I'm talking about the present."

"Which is history, too."

"Are you a Socialist?" asked Sherwin, suspiciously.

"Of course he's not!" exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax, indignantly.  "Don't be
rude and insulting, Andrew!  As if a man who is a gentleman could
advocate his wife's sitting down to visit with the washwoman; and
then those community kitchens Socialists would have--how absurd to
suppose that we could eat the food that labourers like!"

"Are you under the impression, dear madam, that you are discussing
Socialism?" asked Mr. Arnold.

"Of course I am!  Aren't I?"

"Not any brand I ever heard of."

"What is the bloomin' thing then?" she asked, plaintively.

"It is what we of the privileged class must inevitably oppose,
because fundamentally it means (as I understand it) giving everyone
an equal chance in the race of life; which would, I fear, find some
of us in very different places from those we now occupy.  Some
peasants who are incipient aristocrats intellectually or spiritually,
like Gorky or Robert Burns, would forge ahead of the line which some
of us hold--while we'd fall far back, perhaps, into the peasant
ranks----"

"We don't propose to submit, in this country," exclaimed Sherwin,
indignantly, "to the rule of any one class!"

"But that's what we always have submitted to.  In all nations, in all
times, the labouring class has submitted to the rule of the
capitalistic class.  The strong have ever ruled, and the strong have
been the capitalists.  In our day it seems to be coming about that
the workers are going to be the strong----"

"This constant menace of changing our fundamental institutions,"
interrupted Sherwin, "ought to be suppressed by law!  It can only
lead to chaos!"

"Well," returned Arnold, serenely, "out of chaos came heaven and
earth.  But I never heard of anything good coming out of
'suppression' and autocracy.  By the way, Mr. Houghton," Arnold
closed the discussion by turning to Sidney, "you have a brother,
haven't you?  Joseph's his name?"

"A half-brother."

"Does he live in this neighbourhood?"

"Ye--yes--ah, excuse me a minute, please, will you?  I'll--I'll be
back in a minute," responded Sidney, leaving the table abruptly and
striding away across the lawn.

But both Eleanor and Robert Arnold saw, as he left them, that his
face had gone white at Robert's question.

Eleanor turned to Mrs. Houghton.  "Robert and I have just heard,
Laura, that your brother-in-law has married my old school friend,
Susan Schrekengust.  How lucky you are to have acquired anything so
delightful in the way of a sister-in-law as Susan!  Don't you think
you are?"

"I've never seen her--but----"

"I thought," said Eleanor, as Laura hesitated, "that I understood Mr.
Houghton to say they lived in this neighbourhood."

"They've just been married--and we've been away.  Will you have some
hot tea?  You must be mistaken, Eleanor," Laura added in a lower tone
intended only for Eleanor's ear, as she refilled her cup; "no friend
of yours would have married Joe Houghton; he's a perfect boor!  Some
mistake, my dear."

"There must be," said Eleanor, surprised.  "Susan would never have
married a perfect boor!"

"Rather not!" corroborated Robert who had caught his sister's
low-spoken remark.

"The girl Sidney's half-brother married," Laura explained, "was a
country school teacher, I understand; you couldn't have known her."

"But Susan was a country school teacher!" said Eleanor.

"And," added Robert, "Susan's own sister told me she had married
Sidney's brother.  You must be mistaken, Laura, about Sidney's
brother.  He's evidently a diamond in the rough, for Susan to have
married him.  Where do they live?"

"Sidney will give you their address," answered Laura, turning away to
speak to Mrs. Sherwin and Mr. Fairfax behind her.

"Want some hot tea back there?"

Robert and Eleanor exchanged a swift glance over the too-palpable
fact that the Houghtons had something to conceal about their
brother's marriage.

Their unwilling attention was presently forced upon the chatter of
Mrs. Fairfax who loved nothing so much as to talk about herself, her
"moods," her unique characteristics, her "reactions" upon her
environment and its "reactions" upon her; she was either too
self-absorbed as she would talk on and on interminably, or too
lacking in imagination, ever to sense the boredom of her hearers.

Mrs. Houghton had gone into the house to answer a telephone call, so
the six guests--the Arnolds, the Sherwins, the Fairfaxes--were left
to themselves; the Arnolds, Mrs. Fairfax, and Mr. Sherwin, the portly
banker, being gathered about the tea table, while Mrs. Sherwin and
Mr. Fairfax sat a few yards away under the tree.

"It's the very strangest thing about me!" Mrs. Fairfax was saying,
leaning back in her wicker chair in an utter abandonment to an orgy
of self-analysis, to which her three hearers might or might not
listen, she didn't notice, "The way my moods never seem to match
William's moods.  If he happens to be in a sentimental mood, asking
me how much I still care, and all that sort of thing--_you_
know--then I'm just likely to be feeling utterly matter-of-fact and
talk about dances or motors or making fudge!  It is so odd!  And if
_I_ happen to be sentimental and want to talk of my moods or
feelings, or of my serious thoughts, then he's apt to want to talk
about a baseball game!  It _is_ so queer!  _Isn't_ it?  And yet,
William and I are so perfectly mated!  We understand each other so
perfectly; we have no interests apart from each other; we do
everything together--_everything_!"

"There's one thing you don't do together," said Eleanor, wickedly,
pointing to the bench under the tree which she alone faced; and they
all turned to see this sentimental lady's husband kissing rather too
ardently Mrs. Sherwin's white hand.

"We trust each other perfectly, William and I," Mrs. Fairfax
responded, undaunted.  But she rose to stroll away, and Mr. Sherwin,
more alarmed at the prospect of being left alone with the formidable
and confusing conversation of the Arnolds than at the continuation of
Mrs. Fairfax's monologue, rose also with as much alacrity as his
corpulence permitted and went with her.

"Isn't it a tragical or comical irony of fate," remarked Robert
Arnold when he and his sister were left alone, "that the feminine
egotist, the woman who is most interested in herself, is the very
least interesting to other people."

"It's rather deadly here, isn't it?" sighed Eleanor.

"I'm getting lots of story stuff!"

"Yes!  Of such 'stuff' are stories made; some stories."

"It isn't necessary, my dear, for you to try to counteract that
woman's flattery."

"Do you suppose, Robert, that Mr. Andrew Sherwin ever reads _any_
thing?"

"Well, no one ever caught him at it."

"I had so counted on finding dear old Susan here!  I'm horribly
disappointed!  How refreshing she'd be!"

"They act as though they had her concealed in a tower!" said Robert.

"They do conceal their baby!  I've not had a glimpse of him.  You'd
never know they had a baby, would you?"

"Go easy, my dear!  It might be deformed or something; don't inquire
for it," Robert warned her.

"I'll be discreet."

"Discreet?  You?  I'm not asking the impossible!  Only don't jump in
with both feet."

Meantime, Sidney, to escape Arnold's questions, and to conceal the
betraying embarrassment they had caused, had walked away to the back
of the house to get himself in hand.

But from the terrace behind the house he saw something which served
greatly to augment his agitation--Georgie and his nurse going down
the path which-led straight to Joe's little cottage.

With a quick thrill of apprehension Sidney leapt down the slope to
check them.

"I've told that girl to keep him away from there," he muttered
angrily to himself.

But his interference came too late.  With his heart in his mouth, he
saw, as he stopped and stood stock still to watch, Susan sitting with
Josie on the grass under a tree in front of her house, holding out
her arms to Georgie, who was toddling straight toward her with his
hands outstretched to take hers.  Evidently the two were good friends
and this was not their first meeting!

The very thing he had been dreading!  Were his worst fears to be
realized?

With a bound he stood in the midst of them, his face as white as
chalk, his chair dishevelled, his eyes wild.  He seized Georgie
almost out of Susan's arms, casting a glance of angry reproach at the
nurse, as he perched the boy high on his shoulders.

"Why do you bring him here to annoy this lady?" he harshly demanded
of the maid.

But Georgie, who usually welcomed his father with rapture, now kicked
and struggled to free him, self, to reach the goal for which he had
been making so eagerly.

"Down, Daddy!  Me down!" he clamoured, wriggling like an eel, sliding
down his father's arm to the ground and rushing to Susan.

"You kin see fo' yo'se'f, Mistah Houghton!" the nurse defended
herself.  "I tries to keep him away f'om her like you tells me to,
but I cayn't!  The minute he's outdo's he wants to run down heah to
his aunty and his li'l cousin.  An' anyhow he don' git ho _harm_
here, Mistah Houghton!"

Sidney, with throbbing heart, gazed down upon the picture on the
grass at his feet, his little son in Susan's arms, their faces close,
the child's eyes and hers seeming to melt into each other, himself
disregarded----

Suddenly Josie, his face distorted with jealous rage, had his fingers
in Georgie's curls.  Georgie, howling, retaliated valiantly by
pulling at Josie's hair, and a tug of war followed which was stopped
only by the combined efforts of Sidney and Susan to separate the
combatants.

When peace had been restored by Susan's placing a boy on either side
of her impartially, Sidney abruptly ordered the nurse to go back to
the house.  "I'll bring Georgie home," he said.

As soon as the girl had turned the corner and disappeared around the
cottage he threw himself on the grass at Susan's feet.

"Look here, Susan," he exclaimed in mingled indignation and fear,
"did you marry Joe Houghton to avenge yourself on me?  Just to keep
me in hot water by your living here at my door!  And is it you that
is keeping Joe here on this place when I want to be rid of him?  If
my guess is wrong, then _what_, in the name of God, made you marry
him?"

"You did!" came Susan's swift, breathless answer.  "I married him to
save my mother from being bribed by you to leave her old home!  I
thought it would kill her to go!  And then," her voice quivered;
"after all, my sacrifice was for nothing.  Mother died a month after
my marriage!"

"You blame _me_ for your marrying him!" exclaimed Sidney.

"I believe my father died of worry and grief; I tried to save Mother
from the same fate by marrying Joe, so that she need not yield to
your bribe or threat or whatever it was that you held over her to
force her from her home!"

"Oh, Susan!  I've done you even greater wrong than I realized!"

"It's the wrong that I've done to myself that matters!" she said,
sadly.  "If I'd had any sense, if I'd been worth anything, you
couldn't have wronged me!"

"I'm not happy, Susan!  I don't believe I'll ever be happy again!"

"Gracious!  Do you think you deserve to be?"

"But that _I_ should have driven you to marrying a fellow like
Joe--you!  He's so utterly unworthy of you--so----"

"Not more so than you were, God knows!  Joe's at least ruggedly
honest.  He wouldn't lie and steal and--oh, your boasted Houghton
blood seems to me very bad blood!  If our child had lived I'd have
hoped she'd have none of it; that she'd inherit only the clean,
upright, simple soul of my father!"

"Let us be thankful she didn't live, Susan!" he said, his eyes
shifting from hers--but coming back surreptitiously to note the
effect of his words.

"That I must be thankful for that is, as I told you, the one thing I
can never, never forgive you for!"

"And you will, then, take your vengeance upon me," he said,
fearfully, "by making trouble for me with my wife?"

"I think I told you before that 'vengeance' has no appeal for me.  I
am not enough interested in your life, Sidney, to go out of my way
either to help or to harm you."

"I've harmed _you_ so much, it's hard for me to believe you wouldn't
use your present great opportunities to--to come back!"

"Yes, you _would_ believe that!" she said, listlessly.

Sidney tugged at the grass savagely.  "Oh, I know you think I'm all
sorts of a cad!" he said.

"Naturally."

He groaned inwardly; he had meant to lead up tactfully to a hint or a
plea that she keep out of the way of the Arnolds while they were
here; but the tone of their conversation was certainly not propitious
for such a suggestion!  It might have the effect of making her
deliberately and perversely seek them out!  Better trust to luck that
she and they would not discover each other.

"Just remember, Susan," he warned her, his face flushing, "you have
kept rather a dark secret, yourself, from your husband!"

She regarded him with that look of impersonal speculation which he
found so irritating to his vanity, as she asked, "You are capable of
threatening me?"

"Joe certainly doesn't know your past!" he answered, sombrely.

"Oh!" she cried, a light coming into her eyes, "you've given me an
idea!  _That_ might be my way of escape!"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm bound by my bargain to stick to Joe; he gave Mother and my
sisters their home.  But if he should divorce _me_, that would let me
out honourably!"

"But," said Sidney, seeing too late his mistake in having given her
this "idea," "it would betray to Laura who you are!"

"Even _you_, Sidney, will hardly go so far as to ask me to live on
with Joe just to spare 'Laura' and you!  You've really given me an
idea!  I'll think it over."

"And if you act on it," he burst out, "you'll ruin me!  You'll ruin
Georgie!  It will give the whole damned business away!  It will----"

He suddenly closed his lips, as he realized, with despair, that he
himself would in a moment be giving "the whole damned business away"
if he said another word.

Springing to his feet, he snatched up Georgie, who kicked
rebelliously at being taken from Susan, and with a hasty "Good-by,
Susanna!" he strode away.

"You're takin' it easy; ain't?"

It was Joe's voice just at her back!

Evidently he had come in noiselessly from the potato patch.  He had a
way of appearing unexpectedly, at any hour of the day, with the
purpose, apparently, of catching her unawares in idleness, a thing he
abhorred; because in his Gospel, Time was Money.

As she wondered how much, if anything, he had overheard of her talk
with Sidney, she found herself feeling remarkably unconcerned about
it.  She certainly had little to lose and perhaps much to gain if Joe
should learn the truth about her.

"Been havin' comp'ny, seems."

He came forward, seating himself in the swing under the tree and
taking Josie on his knee.

"Your brother came down for his boy."

"And stopped to wisit you, heh?"

"Yes."

"He better _not_ come flirtin' and foolin' round my wife!" growled
Joe, jealously.

Susan made no comment.

"It ain't the thing!--him and you loafin' here and me workin'!"

She silently leafed the pages of the magazine on her lap.

"Have you got supper made, that you have so much time to loaf?"

Susan did not answer.

"I ast have you got supper made.  Why don't you answer to me, Susan?"

"I'll answer you, Joe, when you are civil to me."

"Civil!  I got to be civil, must I?  To my own wife yet!  Huh!  I
guess I got to be so pernicketty nice like what Sid is; ain't?"

Susan scarcely heard him; her mind was revolving that "way of escape"
that Sidney had suggested.

"Seems you're got an awful lot of time to set round, Susan!  I bet
you wouldn't have, if you done all that's to be done."

But he could draw no answer from her with this bait.

"You ain't near so pertikkler with the housework as what my first
wife was.  You don't hang out the nice wash she hung out!  She hung
out the nicest wash in White Oak Station; all the folks sayed so.
They might say that of _yourn_ if you took more time to it, instead
of hurryin' through so's you can set out here and enjoy yourself."

But when even these aspersions on her "wash" did not rouse Susan to
resentment, Joe felt discouraged.

"What was Sid gassin' to you about, anyhow?" he inquired, sullenly.

"We talked about our children," she said after a perceptible
hesitation.

"Huh!  I guess he thinks hisn's better'n mine!--the way him and his
mother always thought I wasn't good enough to 'sociate with 'em!
Well, by gosh, Susan, they'll learn somepin different one of these
here days!  Josie ain't a-goin' to have to take no back seat fur that
there bastard of Sid's, you bet you!  It'll be the other way round,
you mark my words!"

"Georgie was born in wedlock," Susan protested, startled.

"I'd like to prove he _wasn't_!" growled Joe.

"Oh, Joe, if you could only see how much more your hatred of Sidney
hurts you than it does him, your very selfishness would make you want
to get over it!"

"It'll hurt Sid a-plenty before I do get over it!" returned Joe.
"When I've got Sid where I want him--and that's under my heel--then
mebby I'll get good over hatin' him.  Not _till_ then, though!"

Susan sighed, but protested no further.

"Did Sid explain you why his Missus don't take no notice to you--you
her sister-in-law?" Joe demanded.

Susan shook her head.

"Don't it spite you none, Susan, that she thinks herself so much?" he
asked, puzzled.

"It's her loss, not mine," smiled Susan.  "I think people who don't
know me miss a lot.  Don't you, Joe?"

She rose and shook out her skirts.

"Please be ready for supper in half an hour," she said, as she left
him and went into the kitchen.


In spite of the sharp reprimand which Sidney administered that day,
on his return home, to Clara, Georgie's nurse, for disobeying his
orders to keep the boy as far away as possible from his uncle's
cottage, she, true to her race, rather than exert herself to struggle
with the child's strong will, or to divert and amuse him, continued
to take the line of least resistance and to follow where he led,
when, the moment he was out of the house, he would make straight for
the little cottage at the foot of the hill; and Susan, at whose heart
strings Georgie's tug was growing more and more potent, did not
discourage the girl's bringing him daily to see his little cousin and
his "aunty."

Thus it happened that the very next day after Sidney's stern rebuke
and reiterated command to obey orders on pain of being discharged
(those were the days when servants, not employers, were discharged),
Clara again deliberately let her small master lead her, after
luncheon when everybody was taking a map, directly down to the spot
where Sidney had found them the day before.

Now as it was Sunday and Joe, who hated Sidney's boy, was about the
house to-day, Susan would have preferred, for once, to have had
Georgie kept away.  But it happened that at the moment of his joyful
arrival, slowly followed by his spineless attendant, Joe was having a
nap after his heavy noon meal; and so, Susan, deciding that at the
first sound of her husband's awaking she would dispatch her visitors
in haste, settled herself cosily, with a child on either side of her
and her lap full of story books, under the tree outside her house.

And it was here that, presently, Eleanor Arnold, wandering about
alone, found her.

It came with a great shock to them both, that first recognizing
encounter of their eyes.  For an instant they could only stare at
each other, speechless.  But the next moment they had fallen upon
each other with cries of surprise and delight, Eleanor's
self-contained composure entirely broken up, and Susan's habitual
listlessness turned to a burning excitement.

"But, Susan!  I didn't know you at first!  You are so changed!  Your
golden hair turned brown!  And the look out of your eyes--what is it?"

Susan dared not speak lest a flood of tears overwhelm her.  She bit
her lip hard as she silently drew Eleanor to sit down with her on the
grass under the tree.

But in a moment she had recovered herself, and putting the two boys
to playing with some building blocks, she gave herself up to her
friend.  Both she and Eleanor were feeling amazed, in their hearts,
that their sudden reunion was bringing instantaneously such a rush of
old joy, such a quick renewal of a vital tie after so long a breach.
Their eyes sparkled, their cheeks were flushed with excitement.

"How have we lived so long without each other, Susan!" cried Eleanor,
breathlessly.

And Susan answered, "What months we've wasted!  I'm only this moment
realizing what you've always been to me!"

"It's been your doing, not mine, that we've been separated, Susan!"

"Oh, I know----"

"But you are surely not living here in this house?" Eleanor asked,
looking bewildered.  "Why, Laura said she had never met you!  Then
you can't have married Sidney's brother?"

"_Yes_ to all your questions.  I am living right here in this house;
I am Sidney's sister-in-law; his wife never met me."

"Family mysteries and skeletons?  Well, I won't pry--though I'm dying
to!  Why you should have gone and got married and have had these two
children without ever consulting me----"

"One of them is Sidney Houghton's," Susan quickly explained.

"One of these two?  Which one is yours, Susan?  Oh, you needn't tell
me, it's plain enough!  What a darling!  Much, much more adorable,"
she added in a lowered voice, "than Sidney's."

"_I_ don't think so!" Susan warmly retorted.  "Georgie seems to me a
much finer type than Josie--though of course," she hastily added,
"Josie's a dear and I love him."

Eleanor stared.  "You're disparaging your own----  Oh, but he can't
be yours--you were only just married, weren't you?--so Laura said,
anyway.  Then that is _not_ your boy, is he?" asked Eleanor,
indicating Georgie.

Susan's face lit up.  "You took him for mine?  Oh, I wish he were!
He's Sidney's.  The other one--Josie--is my step-son."

"And you've never had one of your own?  You've not been married
long----?"

"I've been married five months."

"I would have sworn that one--Georgie--was yours.  He has a look in
the eyes like you--though of course he looks more like Sidney.  This
is my first glimpse of him; they never have him about; Laura is
certainly the most indifferent of mothers!  You'd think she'd be
proud to show off such a rare child!  Susan, you are so changed!  You
are lovelier and more blooming than ever; yet you are, somehow, so
matured!  As if you had lived, Susan!  As if," added Eleanor, gazing
thoughtfully into Susan's face, "you had lived tragically!  _Have_
you?"

Susan nodded dumbly.

"Tell me all about it!  Begin at _Once upon a time_, and don't skip.
I know it'll be thrilling!" said Eleanor, settling herself
expectantly to listen; "for I always said, you remember, that you
were born for romance.  Tell me about your husband."

Romance and Joe!  Susan almost laughed, though her heart was heavy.
In what a position she was placed, when all her pride shrank from
presenting her husband to her friend!--and yet loyalty to the
obligations of her bond must close her lips upon explanations,
excuses, apologies.

A sound in the kitchen doorway drew their eyes from each other.  Joe,
in his shirt sleeves, a scowl on his face, came striding across the
grass to the tree.

"Here another time I come to use my car and find the gasoline is
all!" he fretfully accused his wife, not heeding her visitor.  "Again
you was usin' it without astin' me for the dare!  Ain't?  A pretty
thing that whenever I go to use my car the gasoline is every time
all!  No matter how often I fill it up yet!  If I got it so filled up
at twelve o'clock in the night, you'd get out of bed to make sure it
was all used up till morning a'ready!  Ain't, you would?"

Suddenly he became conscious of Susan's deathly pallor and of a fire
in her eyes that alarmed him--and at the same time, of her
companion's look of amazement and alarm.

Turning away abruptly, frowning and muttering, he disappeared again
in the house.

"Well!" exclaimed Eleanor, "chauffeurs must be scarce out here if you
stand for----  Susan Schrekengust!"  Eleanor seized Susan's arm
convulsively.  "_Who is that man?_"

"My husband, Eleanor!"--and Susan laid her head on Eleanor's shoulder
and sobbed; long, tearing sobs that seemed to come from the depths of
her soul; from the pent-up griefs of years; from the anguish of
defeated love, defeated motherhood, death, despair.


Later, when Clara had gone home with Georgie, Josie had gone indoors
to his father, and Susan, now very quiet, still sat on the grass with
her friend, Eleanor asked her wonderingly, "What the devil did you do
such a thing for, Susan?"

"It's so good," said Susan with a sigh of pleasure, "to hear you cuss
again, Eleanor!  Until I met you, I had never, in my short and simple
life, heard a perfect lady swear!"

"I'm afraid I never did serve up my words on a napkin.  And quite
early in life I decided to abandon the career of a perfect lady.  A
woman of brains (you'll not question I'm that?) never is a perfect
lady, the absolutely real thing, you know; because, you see, it means
such a well-ordered mind and soul and life as to preclude rioting of
any sort, whether of the emotions or the intellect.  It involves
repose, conservatism, a nice moderation in all things, an absence of
big enthusiasms, large vision, vigour of thought and feeling----

"You've simply got to explain to me, Susan, how you came to marry
that man!  Is he a diamond in the rough?  Is _he_ Sidney Houghton's
brother?  Is he a real Houghton at _all_?" she demanded,
incredulously.  "Why, the Houghtons have always been awfully snippy
about their family blood!  Their sense of their own superiority has
been as sublime as it was inexplicable.  Don't expect me to spare
your feelings!  I don't intend to!  You deserve 'most anything for
throwing yourself away like this!  I could beat you for it!"

"I deserve your scorn; I don't deserve your friendship!"

"You deserve to be shut up in a lunatic asylum!  Why did you do it?
Speak up!"

"It's a very sordid story, Eleanor.  No romance about it that _I_ can
see!  (You said I was born for romance!)  I was engaged to Sidney
Houghton.  He jilted me.  I was broken-hearted at first; then
reckless and despairing.  My father became involved in money troubles
and died suddenly.  We would have had to leave our home, which I
thought would kill Mother.  So to save her I married Joe Houghton.
Joe gave Mother and my sisters their old home.  Then, a month later,
Mother died.  My sacrifice was for nothing!  That's all."

"You were a dreadful little fool, of course!  You know that, don't
you?"

"I don't find the knowledge consoling, dear, so please don't draw my
attention to it."

"But you can't go on living out your life with that man, Susan!
You'll have to leave him!"

"Wouldn't it be going back on a bargain?  He practically bought me."

"And you've surely paid him back already a thousand per cent!"

"It wasn't in the bond that I'd be his wife for a few months."

"You actually consider yourself bound to him, to a creature like
that, _you_?"

"I don't know."

"If you do think you're bound, if you're that fanatical, then make
him let you live your own life.  Demand your rights!"

"Make him?  Compared to Joe Houghton's obstinacy Gibraltar is wobbly!"

"If he's in love with you, there's nothing you can't make him do for
you."

"By playing up my sex?  How would I be above the woman of the streets
if I did that?  The world thinks it all right, I suppose, for a
_wife_ to gain her ends that way."

"Oh, the world!" shrugged Eleanor.  "Of course its standards are
never right.  Show me something that the majority believe and I'll
show you something that's a lie!  The persecuted of any age nearly
always turn out to have been the prophets of that age."

"Carrie Nation!" smiled Susan.  "And now we've got national
Prohibition!  Who'd ever have thought it!"

"Talking about morals," Eleanor went on, "people haven't any, really.
They have Respectability, Conformity, Propriety.  Those are society's
only values."

"Yes, I often think," said Susan, "if that hypocrite's cloak,
Respectability, could be stripped from our shrinking souls, what a
sight we'd all be!"

"You remind me of a letter Robert saw ages ago, when he was a college
student, written by Howells to Mark Twain; Mark Twain showed it to
Robert.  It was about the autobiography Mark Twain was writing.
Howells wrote, 'You always rather bewildered me by your veracity, and
I fancy you may tell the truth about yourself.  But all of it?  The
black truth which we all know of ourselves in our hearts--even _you_
won't tell the black heart's truth'."

"What a human document it would be if any man or woman had the
courage to do it!" said Susan.  "Of course Rousseau came near it."

"Susan!  You've got to leave that man that you've so absurdly gone
and married!"

"I have hurt so many people; I shrink from hurting any more!"

"What do you mean?  Whom have you hurt?"

"My father and mother and sisters!  And if I left Joe, I would hurt
not only him; my two sisters would break their hearts.  They
_believe_ in the marriage ceremony, you know--as a sort of
fetish--'For better, for worse'--'Until death'--'Whom God hath
joined'--'These two are no more twain, but one flesh.'  My sisters
would for the rest of their days walk among their neighbours
disgraced and stricken."

"Would that be as tragic, as wasteful, as your spending your whole
life with such an outrageous creature?  You've got to leave him!  And
you will leave him!"

She rose and Susan stood up at her side.

"When you've made up your mind, Susan, come to me in Middleburg.
Promise!"

"I'll--I'll have to think it over," Susan faltered.

But there was hope in her voice and in her shining eyes.




CHAPTER X

AN INTERLUDE

But she did not leave her husband.  Josie came down with
whooping-cough and of course she could not desert a sick child.  She
nursed him devotedly for six weeks and became so run down through
overwork and loss of sleep that she fell an easy victim to the
typhoid fever germs which were discovered by the doctor to poison the
boasted well water of White Oak Farm.

So far into the Valley of the Shadow did Susan drift in this illness
that she would surely never have come back but for Joe's amazing
devotion and ceaseless care.  And of this she, of course, knew
nothing during many weeks of delirium and unconsciousness.

It was over the period of her long, tedious convalescence that she
slowly became aware of the unwonted comfort that enveloped her: the
uniformed trained nurse, the champagne they fed to her by
teaspoonfuls, the pretty down quilt on her bed, the new kimono that
lay across the foot of the bed; and every sort of convenient device
for a sick room that had ever been heard of seemed to have been
provided for her.  Where did it all come from?  Surely not from Joe
who was always watching every penny she spent----

But stranger than this lavish expenditure was Joe's manifest anxiety,
tenderness, grief!

She felt that he must be neglecting his work, so often was he in and
out of her room, so many hours sitting patiently beside her bed.

Was he, then, really capable of a great passion?--of fine feeling, of
unselfish love?

As she grew stronger she found herself wildly regretting first, that
she had not died, and next, that Joe was being so good, so wonderful,
to her.

"For how can I ever leave him after this?" she would mourn as she lay
through the long days and nights while life came slowly back to her.
If only he would neglect her instead of binding her with these heavy
chains of kindness which she feared she could never, never break!

"I've never in my life been able to be ruthless!  He seems to care
for me so much!"

The trained nurse admitted, one day, that in all her varied
experiences, she had "never seen a husband so dippy about his wife!"

"Those two days and nights that we thought you might not pull
through," the nurse told her, "that man was the most pitiable object
I ever saw.  I wouldn't want to see my worst enemy go through what he
suffered, Mrs. Houghton!  Your husband may not have your education or
be as refined as what you are, Missus, but he certainly loves you,
all right!  Well, I just guess!

"They say round here," she continued, "that Mister's a tight-wad, and
he sure is!  But not where you're concerned, Missus!  Not when you're
sick, anyhow!  Nothing was too good, nothing too expensive, that I
asked him to get you."

Susan wondered why it was.  Remorse flooded her heart, as she thought
of her so different feelings toward him.

"If he had been ill, I'd have hoped he'd die!" she mercilessly made
herself admit to her own conscience.  "He is worse than nothing to
me!  A millstone about my neck when I want to be free!"

As soon as she was well enough to be moved Joe sent her and Josie and
the nurse to Atlantic City.

And there, one day, on the sands, Eleanor Arnold unexpectedly came
upon her.

"Of course I came here just to be with you," Eleanor explained as she
sat at Susan's feet in the windy sunshine.  "The day after I got your
card telling me you were coming here I packed and started.  I
couldn't miss such a chance of seeing you alone!"

"And you will stay as long as I am here?"

"Yes, if it means the rest of my mortal life!"

To Susan, too weak, for the time being, to battle with problems, the
days that followed were times of wonderful peace and content; a
respite of real happiness.  Congenial and loved companionship, rest
from the household drudgery which she detested, no anxieties about
expenses, the absence of Joe's society, the sea, the fine air----

To be sure, there were shadows.  Eleanor would not give up insisting
that she must leave Joe; whereas Susan's new sense of obligation to
him was so great that she felt disloyal in even speaking of it.

"When your husband greatly loves you," she would argue with Eleanor,
"you surely owe him something."

"But unless you love him, Susan, you don't belong to him; no matter
how much he loves you; no matter what he has done for you.  You
belong to yourself--simply because you don't and can't love him."

Susan was silent.

"You know I'm right!" insisted Eleanor.

"It would mean such a bitter struggle--leaving him--and I'm so tired
of fighting with life!"

"You're supine!  With that child of his, for instance----"

Josie had a fretful way of nagging at his "mother" which Eleanor,
though sympathetically understanding children, thought very
exasperating.  "You let him tyrannize over you, my dear."

"His father makes it so hard for me to manage him!" Susan defended
her feeble disciplining of Josie.

Josie chose just this moment of their discussion to leave the nurse
and come running to Susan to renew his momentarily diverted
insistence that she dig something in the sand for him, though the
nurse was doing it much better than his enfeebled mother could, and
though Susan had explained to him, after having yielded several times
to his demands and overtaxed her endurance, that she could do no
more.  The nurse had succeeded in distracting his attention for a
moment; but he was back again now, tugging at his mother and
peevishly reiterating that she and no other must dig for him.

When she firmly refused and told him to go to the nurse, he flew into
a tantrum, screamed rebelliously, and tore at her clothes.

"There, now!" Susan challenged Eleanor, "O Socrates, what would you
do _now_?  Tell me!"

Eleanor looked rather dashed.  "You might jump on his stomach," she
suggested.

Josie's howls ceased abruptly, and eyeing his mother's friend with a
mixture of resentment and apprehension, he retreated precipitately.

"_I_ wouldn't stand that nagging, whining habit he has, Susie,"
Eleanor declared, when Josie, deciding that safety first lay in a
discreet distance from so fierce a lady, went back to the nurse.

"I really do try, Eleanor, for his own sake as much as mine, to train
him up in the way he should go.  But I'm handicapped."

"It's rotten!  The whole situation!"

"It has its compensations.  Josie can be very lovable.  And he is
fond of me."

"You're too easily compensated!  I wish you had my conceit; you'd
hold yourself at your true worth!"

"You don't begin to realize all my difficulties.  It isn't nearly so
easy, I find, to get rid of a husband as to acquire one.  To a
divorced woman so many means of self-support are closed.  School
teaching, for instance.  I suppose I might stand in a store----"

"'Stand?'  I've heard of floor _walkers_!" said Eleanor, tentatively.

"Perhaps it is a Pennsylvania Dutch-ism.  I didn't know it was.  I
mean clerk in a store."

"See who's coming!" exclaimed Eleanor, abruptly.

Susan looked up and saw, strolling toward them down the beach, alone,
a young lady with a marked air of distinction both in dress and
bearing.

"Your sister-in-law, my dear!" Eleanor announced.

"It is!  Rather awkward, as we've never been introduced!"

"Not _yet_!" asked Eleanor, incredulously.

"What could you reasonably expect--you've seen Joe?" was the answer
which rose to Susan's lips, but which she did not speak.  "Of course
she has no idea how nice I am," was what she said.

"Does she know you are here?"

"I didn't know _she_ was here.  I don't know what she knows about me."

"Let me have the fun of introducing you to her!"

"Help yourself--if it will amuse you."

"It will amuse me very much!"

Eleanor rose as Laura Houghton drew near, and went forward with
outstretched hand.

Laura's face, which had been dreary and fretful, lit up at sight of
her friend and she greeted her eagerly.  "I'm so glad to see you!
I'm here all alone; Sidney's been called home on business, and
there's not a soul here I know or _would_ know!  You're a godsend to
me, Eleanor!  You've simply got to stay here with me until Sidney
gets back."

"How long will that be?"

"A few days.  We splurged so recklessly in New York this winter that
we've had to draw in and come here to recover.  Sidney has a most
interesting little habit of running ahead of his income and then
retiring into strict privacy to catch up.  It lends great variety to
our life!"  Laura shrugged, a look of bitterness in her face.
"Fortunately he has an accommodating half-brother who never spends
any money himself, so always has plenty to loan to Sidney.  Are you
staying with friends?" she asked with a questioning glance toward
Susan reclining among her cushions a few yards away.

"Yes, with an old school friend who is here with her nurse,
convalescing from typhoid.  Let me introduce you.  My dear," said
Eleanor as she led Laura to Susan, "let me present Mrs. Sidney
Houghton.  Mrs. Joseph----"  Eleanor coughed over Susan's name and
Laura did not catch it.  She bent to offer her hand to the pale,
frail-looking girl on the sand; and Susan took the hand gravely.

"You've been very ill?" said Laura, sympathetically, thinking how
beautiful the invalid was.  She certainly looked as though she might
be a Somebody!  It flashed upon her that there was something familiar
in this high-bred, interesting face.

"Very ill," answered Susan.

"Is the sea air helping you?"

"Very much, I think."

"You and Miss Arnold are stopping at the same hotel?"

"Yes.  At the D---- House."

Laura looked surprised.  It was not the sort of place she would have
expected Eleanor or any friend of hers to patronize.

Joe had chosen it, and while he would spare no expense necessary for
his wife's recovery, he drew the line at paying for fashion.

"You are comfortable there?" asked Laura, doubtfully.

"Comfortable, but not luxurious," answered Eleanor.  "It's plain
living and high thinking with Susan and me just now."

Laura glanced again at the convalescent.  "I beg pardon, I didn't
catch your friend's name, Eleanor."

"Mrs. Joseph Houghton," repeated Eleanor.

Laura looked dazed, almost bewildered, then utterly astonished.  But
only for an instant.  Almost immediately she had gotten herself in
hand.

"Sidney's sister-in-law?" she repeated with perfect composure.  "He
will be sorry to hear you have been so ill," she said, graciously.

She turned back to Eleanor.  "I am at Hotel T----.  Will you come to
see me?"

"Of course.  I have my evenings off; Susan goes to bed right after
dinner.  Shall I come this evening?"

"Yes, do please, Eleanor."

"I'll be there about half-past eight."

"Very well.  Good-by."  She nodded, a shade ceremoniously, to Susan,
and moved on.

Eleanor literally flopped down at Susan's side.  "I'm limp!" she
feebly cried.  "And you--you never looked more cool and collected!
Why aren't you excited or amused or something?"

"I leave that to you."

"It's none of my affair!  I suppose Laura's furious with me for
dragging her into such an awkward position!"

"It ought not to be so awfully awkward.  She simply won't let herself
be saddled with her husband's uninteresting relatives.  Of course I'm
far from uninteresting, but she's never had any reason to suspect it."

"You're inhumanely just to her.  You know very well that in her place
you would have been kind to Joe's wife."

"I'd hate to have her be 'kind' to me in the way you mean, Eleanor!"

"You'd have been genuinely nice; not stand-offish."

"When you think of the sort of person she naturally thought Joe would
have married, I suppose she considered her only safety lay in not
knowing me at all."

"Damned rot!"

"I'm afraid you're not a perfect lady."

"I told you I'd abandoned that futile function!  And I'm glad I did!
I'd like to be a roaring savage!"

"Do savages roar?  Dear me, what for?"

"The great disadvantage of being well-bred is that you can't let off
steam!  You've no safety-valve and so become congested, spiritually
poisoned!  Oh, I tell you," said Eleanor, darkly, "civilization's got
a lot to answer for!"

"It _has_ got us into a tangled mess, hasn't it?" said Susan with a
long breath.

Eleanor parted from Susan that day with an unsolicited promise that
she would faithfully report, next morning, any particularly
interesting phases of the conversation she would have that evening
with Mrs. Sidney Houghton.

She was, however, greatly disappointed.  During the three hours that
she spent with Laura in her suite of rooms at her hotel not the
slightest reference was made to the episode of the morning.  For
Laura was a young woman capable of exercising, on occasion, rather
Spartan self-restraint; and Eleanor, though not shy or retiring, and
though dying to know what her friend was thinking about her
unexpectedly charming sister-in-law, had, also, her reticences.

Just a day or two after the encounter of Laura and Susan the latter
received a letter from Joe in which he told her, in very bad English
and worse spelling, that Sidney had again borrowed money from him.

"I give him five years to get threw with all he's got," Joe wrote.
"He says his Missus is at Atlantic City just now.  When I told him
you was there, too, he looked awful funny.  I guess he was some
supprised Ide spend for such as that.  And, to be sure, I wouldn't,
neither, but for to get you well and strong again.  If you meet up
with that sour-faced high-stepper he married, just you give her as
good as she sends, Susan, for some day you will be living in the big
house and her and Sid will be glad to have so much as the tenant's
cottage to live in.  You mind if I ain't right."

Susan reflected that it was well for Georgie that White Oak Farm was
entailed to him, or Joe would certainly get possession of it.

But in view of this entailment, she could not imagine how Joe
expected to contrive ever to occupy the big house.

However, she wasted no thought on the subject, for it did not greatly
interest her.

She was subjected to a good deal of embarrassment during her stay at
the seaside from the fact that Joe, though standing ready to pay all
her necessary bills, would not supply her with money.  Ever since her
marriage he had seemed afraid to entrust her with a dollar, partly
because of his constitutional stinginess and partly because of his
constant fear lest she give help to her struggling sisters.

Several times the acuteness of her present embarrassment while at the
seaside forced her to the humiliation of borrowing money from her
nurse for some mere trifle like postage stamps, or feeing a servant.

"Add it to the bill you present to Mr. Houghton," she would tell the
nurse, "and charge one hundred per cent. interest."

She was duly informed by Eleanor of Sidney having rejoined his wife
at the T----.

"Do they have Georgie with them?" she inquired with a wistfullness in
her heart that made her wonder at herself.

"Yes, but he seems to be left entirely to his nurse.  Laura never
goes near him apparently!  She is the very coldest mother I've ever
seen.  She actually told me she wished she _could_ care more for
Georgie, but that somehow she just couldn't work up any motherliness!
It simply isn't in her.  I tell her I consider it a frightful waste
for such a woman to have a child, while one like me sits about eating
her heart out with longing for one.  I'd almost be willing to settle
down to take care of a husband for the sake of having a child!"

"You'd go so far as that, dear?"

"I said I'd 'almost'.  Do you suppose, Susan, that Laura is jealous
of Sidney's former attachment to you (you say he jilted you) and that
that's why she doesn't make up to you?"

"She doesn't know that I am the woman Sidney jilted."

Eleanor considered this reply for a moment without speaking.  "She
knows he jilted someone, but does not know that you are the one?"

Susan nodded.

"How can you be so sure?"

"Sidney told me."

Eleanor regarded her thoughtfully.  "How extraordinary!" she remarked.

"It is, rather; isn't it!"

"Sidney can be very charming; but he is not and never was worthy of
you, my dear!"

"It was because he thought _me_ unworthy that he jilted me!"

"Wanted money and family, of course?"

"Yes."

"Well, he got it.  But he doesn't look overwhelmingly happy over it!"

"I've noticed that he doesn't."

"Did he behave abominably toward you, Susan?"

"Very much so!"

"He'd be capable of that, I'm sure!" said Eleanor with emphasis.

When at the end of three weeks Susan reluctantly wrote to Joe that
she was now quite strong enough to go home he telegraphed at once
that on the following Sunday he would come for them all and "fetch"
them.

Susan, after considering the situation, decided to spare herself, if
possible, the painful ordeal of having Eleanor again encounter her
husband.  She would take means to prevent it.

She wrote to Joe that they would not wait until the end of the week
to leave for home, but would start the very day he received her
letter and would be with him on Wednesday evening.




CHAPTER XI

HOME AGAIN

In the first months of her marriage Susan had not felt that Joe's
dwelling-place was her home; she was neither its creator nor its
mistress; only its housekeeper.  The only concern she had felt for
it, therefore, was that she should discharge the obligation she was
under to make her husband comfortable.

But the renewal of her relations with Eleanor had awakened in her a
bit of ambition to try to make the house in which she lived and the
appointments of her daily life a little attractive.  After those
weeks at the seaside she came home resolved to experiment with her
situation and see whether she could make it really liveable.  Unless
she could change a good many things, both material and spiritual, in
her existence, she saw that if she would save her soul alive, she
must leave her husband.

She realized that there was probably no limit to the power she could
wield over Joe to get what she wanted, if she followed that
suggestion Eleanor had once made to her, that she play upon his
passion for her.  Eleanor, of course, had not really understood what
she was saying.

"Even if I loved a man, I couldn't do that!" thought Susan.  "That
sort of thing may be feminine, but it certainly is not womanly--and
it seems to me that it's up to a woman to _be_ a woman, not just a
female!"

Her first experiment was to let Joe understand, when, a few weeks
after her return, he suggested that she was now quite strong enough
to dismiss the washwoman, that she did not intend to dismiss her.

"I shall never again, while I live, stand at the washtub.  I prefer
school teaching," she told him.

"But you can't school teach now you're married oncet!"

"Oh, yes, I can.  If you won't pay for a washwoman, I can easily earn
more than enough to pay for one by substituting in the Middleburg
schools.  And as I prefer that work to washing, that is what I shall
do."

"You talk dumb, Susan!" he exclaimed, impatiently.  "Fur a married
lady to be talkin' about workin' out yet!  Don't be so ignorant dumb!"

But though he never again insisted upon dismissing the laundress, he
never failed on wash day to draw Susan's attention to what they would
be saving if she did the work herself.

"A dollar and a half every week, if you wasn't so high-minded!  Yi,
yi, think what that there dollar and a half would buy yet!"

Susan's proposals for re-papering and re-furnishing the cottage Joe
met with the assurance that it would be a useless expenditure because
in a few years they would be living in the big house.

"But White Oak Farm is entailed," she reminded him (as though he ever
for a moment forget it!).  "Your brother can't mortgage or sell it."

"Sid is runnin' through with his money as fast as he otherwise can;
he's beginnin' a'ready to draw heavy on his principal.  It won't go
long till his money's all.  Then when he ain't got none no more fur
to keep this here place a-goin', he'll have to it.  He'll rent it to
_me_.  See?"

"I wish you'd move away from here altogether."

"Well, I won't!"

"You want me to live in this cottage for five years just as it is?"

"What's five years?--when you'll be livin' in the big house for the
rest of your life!"

"Only until Georgie takes it over."

"But he won't have no money, neither, to run the place.  Till Georgie
inherits it a'ready, Sid will have spent the last dollar _he's_ got!
So Georgie, too, will have to rent it out."

No arguments could budge him from his refusal to "spend any" on the
cottage.

"I have some very nice friends, Joe, that I knew at school; I'd like
to ask them out to see me sometimes.  I could make this cottage very
attractive if you would let me spend about a thousand dollars on it."

"A thousand dollars yet!  On somepin that till five years from now
you won't have no use fur!  Och, Susan, just as if I would!  Why, I
wouldn't near do somepin like that!"

"Am I to wait five years before I can ask any of my friends to visit
me?  For I can't ask them here while things are as they are now."

"Me I don't favour comp'ny, anyhow.  I like better to be by ourselfs."

"But I do like company; some kinds."

"Comp'ny costs too expensive.  And it takes a woman's mind off her
housework, comp'ny does.  And if you have comp'ny, next thing you'll
want to go runnin' yourself and neglect me and Josie.  No'p!" he
shook his head.  "I see how it's a good thing our cottage ain't so
fancy like you want fur it to be!  Yes, anyhow!"

Susan considered several possible schemes for forcing Joe's hand in
this matter.  "I might just buy a lot of furniture and charge it up
to him----"

But she knew perfectly well that he would simply send it back to the
shops.

She might go to Middleburg, get a position of some sort, and refuse
to come home until he consented to let her have the kind of home she
wanted and had a right to.  But there was Josie--she could not walk
out of the house and desert a four-year-old child.

As time moved on and she took no stand, but just let things slide,
she felt that Eleanor had been quite right, entirely justified, in
calling her "spineless".  There had been a time in her life when she
would have braced up and wrestled with any conditions that she
greatly wished to change.  But the intensity of her suffering through
Sidney had apparently left her without power to fight her way further
through life.  Was she, then, doomed to merely exist, not live, all
the rest of her days?

Occasionally, when she did take issue with Joe, on some point that
seemed to her too vital to admit of indecision on her part, the
ordeal would leave her so limp that she would greatly doubt whether
the gain was worth the cost.

Joe had a way of holding her punctiliously to those of her domestic
tasks which involved his comforts, but it seemed that she had to be
dangerously ill before he felt an equal obligation toward _her_.  Let
him come into the kitchen and find a meal not ready on the minute and
he would grumble and sulk for the rest of the day; yet he was himself
extremely unpunctual and irregular and perfectly heedless of the
inconvenience he caused Susan by keeping her waiting (often for a
mere whim) an hour or more beyond the hour for dinner or supper.

"But that's what a woman's work is, to run her house fur her Mister's
conwenience," he would excuse himself when she would protest against
such inconsiderateness.

"I never know when to expect you, Joe, and it keeps me forever in
this dreadful kitchen."

"That's your place, ain't it?  Where else had you ought to want to
be?"

"If it were necessary for you to be late all the time, I'd bear it.
But you're simply indifferent to my convenience."

"I do what it suits me to do.  I come in to eat when I feel fur
comin'.  It's your business to have me a hot meal when I want it."

"Shall I change the dinner hour to one o'clock, since you so often
come in long after twelve?"

"No!  Fur when I do come in at twelve, then I want to eat at twelve!
So you see to it that you are got it ready at twelve, still."

"Listen, Joe; I loathe a kitchen.  When I am in it my one desire is
to escape from it.  You deliberately, for no reason at all, make me
waste hours here that I might be spending on things I like to do."

"'Waste hours!'  You are got no need to waste hours!  You could find
a-plenty to do in your kitchen, whiles you're waitin' 'round fur me
to come in, if you _wanted_ to find it.  You don't keep your closets
very good redd up, I took notice a'ready."

Susan suddenly decided that here was one of the places where it would
pay to take a stand.  "Even my spine stiffens when it's a question of
useless kitchen work!" she thought.

"I'll not put up with it any longer, Joe," she informed him.

Joe stared.  "What fur kind of lang'age is that fur a wife to use to
her Mister?--'won't put up with it'!  Yi, yi, Susan!"

"Don't forget," repeated Susan.  "I won't put up with it."

Joe's domestic standards being those of the only home life he had
ever really known, that of the Pennsylvania Dutch farm where he had
lived for so many years of his young manhood, Susan's "putting her
foot down" was, in his estimation, such a usurpation of the male's
exclusive prerogative that it gave him a genuine shock.

"To think I got married to a wife that would sass me like that!" he
exclaimed.

Susan said no more, but as Joe furtively watched her across the
dinner table, he saw no softening signs in her face, of shame for her
unwifely talk.

For the rest of the day he revelled in a perfect orgy of sulking; and
the next morning he put Susan's dictum to the test by deliberately
coming in to dinner at one o'clock instead of the prescribed hour of
noon.

He found the kitchen empty, the table cleared, and no sign of a meal
on the stove.

When he searched the house, he discovered that Susan was not even at
home.  Anything more outrageously high-handed!----

"I got to learn her better'n this!" he reflected, darkly.

But how?

"I'm stumped!" he heavily admitted.

He cooked himself a lunch of eggs and coffee, purposely and quite
unnecessarily cluttering up the kitchen and leaving it in a fearful
state of disorder.

His supper hour was half-past five, but to further "try out" the
lengths to which his lawful wife would carry her rebellion, he
avoided appearing until nearly seven.

Again he found emptiness and no supper; and a search of the premises
discovered the car to have been taken from the garage.  The kitchen
had been "redd up," so of course she had been back during the
afternoon.

Such reckless indifference to the needs and comforts of her husband!
Such neglect of her house to "go runnin'"!  Such a shameless flouting
of his disapproval!  What could a mere man do in the face of such
"crazy behaviours"?

When at half-past eight that evening she returned home with Josie,
Joe had not yet been able to reach any decision as to how he would
deal with her.

In his bewilderment and confusion, he actually appealed to her to
help him.

"What kin I do with you when you ac' up like this here?"

"That's easy, Joe--come to your meals on time."

"I'll come when it suits me!"

"Then you take your chances of having to cook your own meals."

"I ain't standin' fur no sich behaviours, Susan!"

"There are a few things that I am not standing for, Joe," she
answered, walking out of the room.

While Joe had never been more dumbfounded or more furiously resentful
in his life, it surprised and puzzled him to find that his anger
against Susan only augmented his passion for her.

"She surely has got me, the little feist!" he growled to himself.

For a week he was so painfully punctual and so heavily sarcastic if
she were not entirely ready to serve him the instant he arrived, that
she soon learned to be fully prepared for him at least five minutes
before she could reasonably look for him.

One morning he accosted her ceremoniously, almost melodramatically.
"With your permission, Missus, I'll mebby be late three minutes or
so, this dinner, seein' I got to go to Middleburg over."

"I appreciate your consideration in telling me beforehand, Joe.
Thank you!" she said with such humble sincerity that he found himself
glowing with pleasure, as though she had praised him for a deed of
valour and chivalry.

Having succeeded in making him punctual, her next stand was to insist
on certain table decencies and even niceties which Joe professed to
hold in great contempt.  Among the many phases of his jealousy with
regard to her, none was more evident than his jealousy of her
personal superiority to himself.  He resented any least thing that
seemed to take her out of his reach or off of his level, and he hated
every manifestation of her better education, her wider experiences,
her finer tastes.  The very intensity of his scorn for the table
reforms she introduced was proof to her that he felt them to be a
criticism of himself and a setting up of herself above and apart from
him.

But one day she discovered, to her surprise, that he was really
inordinately proud of this very superiority which he so jealously
resented.  A cattle dealer, with whom he had to transact some
business, came over from Fokendauqua to take dinner with them, and
Susan decided that as the man was Joe's guest and not hers, she
would, to-day, dispense with the table formalities and daintinesses
which he so hated.

"I'll serve the dinner as _he_ likes it served."

What, then, was her surprise to find him hurt, angry, and
disappointed at being foiled of an anticipated pride in displaying to
his crude visitor what a "high-toned" wife he had!

"Yes, fur yourself and _your_ friends you'd take trouble!" he
reproached her.  "But fur mine, not!  Any old thing when my folks
comes; ain't?"

"But I thought you hated napkins and finger bowls and extra forks for
pie and all that!  Every day for three weeks you've been telling me
you did.  I served the dinner to-day as I thought you liked it."

"Yes, you did!" he sneered, skeptically.  "You done it to spite me!"

She wondered wearily whether he really believed that.

"If you _got_ to put on all that there damned style," began Joe--but
Susan checked him with an indignant glance toward Josie.

"You'll teach him to swear!" she warned.

"Nevvy mind, Muvver, me knowed dat word before," Josie said,
reassuringly.

"If you're got to put on style," Joe repeated, firmly, "you ain't got
no need to con_trar_y it all just as soon as strangers comes to eat
along!  A awful funny way, I must say--keepin' your fancy manners fur
private and your plain ways fur when comp'ny is here!"

Susan's occasional glimpses of Sidney's wife made her wonder whether
Laura, with her seemingly more fortunate lot, was really any happier
than was she herself.

"She looks so awfully discontented, so soured on life!"

Was it because she depended so entirely upon outside things to give
her happiness?--and had no resources at all within herself?--not even
the love of a child?

One autumn afternoon Susan had the unusual experience of meeting
Sidney's wife face to face in the narrow lane which afforded a short
cut from White Oak Farm to the trolley line to Middleburg.  Both the
little roadster of the cottage and the touring-car of the big house
being out of commission, Susan had just returned from town by the
trolley as Laura was walking to the trolley station.  The lane was so
very narrow that Laura was obliged to stop and step aside to let
Susan pass.  Susan sensed at once that her sister-in-law was going to
be gracious, condescending.  Now nothing which Sidney's wife could do
could so much as even prick the surface of Susan's life, let alone
touch the deep places where she had suffered so much.  So it was with
a quite detached and very faint curiosity that she contemplated
Laura's bearing toward her in this moment of their unavoidable
meeting.  And before this impersonal regard and slightly ceremonious
bow of Susan Laura's intended condescension and graciousness suddenly
collapsed, leaving her actually confused, almost abashed.

As Susan walked on home, the words "aristocracy of the spirit" moved
like a refrain in her brain, as she thought of how she, born of lowly
peasants, had, by virtue of her obviously stronger, more intrepid
spirit, abashed and confused her comparatively high-born
sister-in-law.

She recalled a sentence in "The Water Babies": "A man may learn from
his Bible to be a more thorough gentleman than if he were brought up
in all the drawing-rooms of London."

"After all," thought Susan, "it's only genuine religion that can make
one _truly_ aristocratic."




CHAPTER XII

A FEW MORE YEARS AT THE COTTAGE

As the days, weeks, and months slipped by Susan came more and more to
let circumstances get the better of her; her husband's will and
personality dominate their joint life; her own individuality sink and
be submerged in a groove of narrow household drudgery, with almost no
life outside the four walls of their cottage except that which she
got from her lively correspondence with Eleanor--all idea of any
closer contact under present conditions seeming impracticable; from
her flying about the country in her husband's car (a wonderful safety
valve); from her relation with her sisters and a few of her
Pennsylvania Dutch neighbours; but most of all from books, through
which she "roamed at large o'er all this scene of man."  It was her
avid love of books, and her growing devotion to Josie during the next
four years that kept her soul alive in an otherwise deep and heavy
loneliness and isolation.

It seemed to her sometimes, as she would move mechanically through
the household tasks which never had and never would seem worth doing,
but which she nevertheless faithfully performed, that life for most
people was nothing more than going through a succession of senseless
movements which led nowhere.

"We lie down and rise again; wash dishes and put them away; take them
out again and put them away again; get into bed and out of it and
into it again; dress and undress and dress again; a succession of
motions!  What for?  What is the Universe doing with us?  Are we
fools, not to cut loose and do what we want to do?"

But what did we want to do?  The eternal question!

"It ain't respectable, the way you won't go to church," Joe sometimes
grumbled.  "I want Josie brang up respectable.  You had ought to take
him to Sabbath school still."

"But I do go sometimes with Georgie along, Father," said Josie.  "The
last time I went with him along, I ast the teacher was the Holy Ghost
a spook, or whatever?  And she says no, but you couldn't see it, you
could only per-theeve it.  So I guess," added Josie, thoughtfully,
"it's somepin like a skunk."

"Now will you listen to that!" cried Joe with an accusing eye upon
Susan.  "That my son should by growin' up that ignorant as to think
that the Holy Ghost is like a skunk yet!--just because you won't take
him to Sunday school to get learnt right!"

"I suppose you went to Sunday school when you were a little boy,
Joe?" asked Susan.

"Sure, I did.  Sometimes I went pretty often, too."

"Then you can tell Josie what the Holy Ghost is.  I don't know
myself."

"Well, with all the education _you're_ got, you anyhow know it ain't
like a skunk!"

"Why do you think I ought to go to church when you never go?"

"Women had ought to be more religious than men.  It comes natural to
'em.  You had ought to go to church to set a good example to Josie.
To be sure, I know a preacher believes an awful lot that _ain't_.
But still, religion is _religion_.  A body's got to have religion."

"Look at Mother!" cried Josie, "trying not to leave you see her near
bustin' to laugh!"

Susan let it come then, the little shriek of laughter which her
effort to suppress had turned her crimson.

Joe looked offended.  "Ain't you got no reverence for nothing,
Susan?" he demanded, disapprovingly.

"Well, yes," Susan admitted.  "For babies."

"Och, Susan," Joe said, impatiently, "sometimes you talk so dumb!"

A growing source of anxiety and distress to Susan was her sisters'
increasing poverty with their advancing age.  To eke out a living
they boarded the school teacher in the winter and took a few summer
boarders during the vacation; but the extra work which this entailed,
in addition to the heavy labour involved in getting a living out of
their bit of land, was quite too much for them.

There was just one respect in which Susan, after seven years of
married life, knew her husband to be invulnerable to any attack or
strategy which she might employ to move or change him, and that was
his penuriousness.  She did not waste herself upon useless attempts
to make him generous.  She submitted to the limited expenditure which
he allowed her in spite of the fact that she knew he must every year
be adding enormously to his inheritance from his uncle, the interest
of which he never spent.

But her mind was constantly active in devising ways and means of
helping Addie and Lizzie without his knowledge; a most difficult feat.

"I'm growing actually cunning!" she would bitterly tell herself while
carefully calculating how much sugar and coffee she might slip to the
little household in Reifsville without Joe's missing it; or how many
extra cookies she might venture to bake to carry to her sisters
without Joe's noticing how fast the flour "got all".

Josie early proved to be a stumbling-block in the way of her giving
her sisters aid.  He was so constantly her companion that it became
increasingly difficult to elude his seeing how she circumvented his
father's meanness.  It was not so much because of her fear of Joe as
of setting an apparently bad example to the growing boy, that she
tried to escape his unchildlike vigilance of her.

Sometimes she suspected that Joe actually set his son to watch and
spy upon her.  It depressed and discouraged her even more than it
angered her when, after a visit to his "aunties", Josie, a great boy
of nine years, would run to his father and, deliberately and with the
keenest relish, "tattle" to him that Mother had given "aunties" a
package of tea and a half-dozen oranges.

A device for securing a few dollars to give to her sisters occurred
to her one day as she was driving with Josie to Middleburg to buy a
quantity of groceries: if she should make her purchases at one of the
chain of cut-rate stores, of whose existence Joe had not yet learned,
she might save a bit from the sum he had entrusted to her (after he
had made a most careful and accurate calculation as to what the
groceries would cost) and the bit thus saved could be safely passed
over to Lizzie and Addie.

When on the way home they stopped at the Schrekengusts' cottage at
Reifsville, Susan realized, to her intense disgust, that Josie was
watching her like a detective to see whether any of their load of
groceries was to be given to his aunts.  He kept at her heels every
minute, following her about wherever she stepped.  She had to watch
for a chance, when Lizzie was giving him an apple, to slip the dollar
she had saved from her shopping into Addie's pocket.

"Och, Susie, saddy*," Addie gratefully whispered.  But as Josie, on
the alert, turned back to them, Susan lifted her eyebrows to impose
silence.


* Thank you.


"How nice and fresh this room looks," she said, hastily, stepping to
the threshold of the downstairs bedroom which was rented to the
village teacher.

"Yes, ain't!  Teacher she put them white curtains up," explained
Lizzie.  "And when Hiram Slosser seen 'em, he come over and ast us,
he says, '_Don't_ you think them curtains is comin' a little near to
bein' fash'nable fur a Old Mennonite?' he says.  'But, Brother
Hiram,' I says, 'look at what Missus over at your place put up at her
windahs!' I says.  'I'm an Old and she's a New, but I ain't got no
sich fixins as hern.  Nor I wouldn't, neither,' I says.  'Well,' he
says, 'I tol' Missus when she fetched them curtains of hern from the
store that I had my doubts.  But she claims there's nothin' to 'em
but what belongs to neatness.'  And I tol' him, 'Hiram,' I says,
'your Missus is listenin' to the temptin's of the Enemy.'  Then I
tol' him that me and Addie us we can't help fur what our lady boarder
puts in her own room.  Nor we can't, neither, can we, Susie?" she
appealed, highly injured.

"Of course you can't," responded Susan, sympathetically.

"I'm sorry, Susie, the new teacher ain't here to make your
acquaintance," Lizzie continued.  "She's so high educated that way
that I know us we seem awful dumb to her, me and Addie.  So I wisht
she'd meet up with you oncet, so's she'd see there's anyhow one in
the fambly that ain't so dumb!  Yes, she's even higher educated than
what you are yet, Susie!  Just to think!  It gives me and Addie such
a shamed face to have her 'round, us bein' so dumb that way."

Lizzie and Addie were both looking worried, almost distressed, and
Susan saw with a pang that this innovation of a boarder was a very
considerable strain added to their already burdened lives, especially
as the boarder was, it seemed, a person who gave herself airs of
superiority that humiliated them.

"Damn her!" thought Susan, resentfully.

"She's learnin' the school children such ettik-wetty--manners and
rules of good society, she says," Lizzie went on.  "When I tol' her
how educated you was, too, she sayed she'd like so well to have an
interduction to you and she keeps astin' us why you don't come and if
you're too high-minded to wisit us.  It is a good whiles since you
was to see us, oncet, Susie; ain't you been good?"

"Oh, yes, I've been well, thank you, Lizzie; I have such a lot of
work to do, it seems to me I'm always grubbing!"

"Me and Lizzie is all the time talking over you to the teacher," said
Addie.

"Och, here she comes now!" exclaimed Lizzie.

A decoratively apparelled young woman of uncertain age, with a
simpering manner, who seemed to ooze sentimentality from every pore,
came into the "front room" where they were gathered; and Susan
realized, when introductions followed, that the school mistress was
evidently applying her "Manners and Rules of Good Society" to the
present occasion, so studied was her bow, so prim her smile, so
carefully enunciated her speech.

"Your sisters tell me that you, too, are litter-airy, Mrs. Houghton."

"Oh, no, I make no such ambitious claim, Miss Miller."

"I understood," said Miss Miller, sadly, "that you were a friend to
litter-at-yure.  Are you not?"

"I'm not its enemy."

"I'm so glad!" exclaimed Miss Miller, delightedly.

"Do you like Shakspere?" she abruptly inquired, making Susan feel as
though she had been jerked by a rein.

"It's hardly respectable not to like Shakspere, is it?  If I didn't,
I'd not have the courage to admit it."

"There's some that don't like his works, though.  And Harold Bell
Wright's works, do you admar them?"

Susan noted how anxious Lizzie and Addie looked lest she fail to hold
up her end with this superior person; so she answered regretfully,
"I'm not familiar with the 'works' of Harold Bell Wright."

"Oh, ain't you?  His books are so well liked, far and wide.  Then I
guess you don't read wery much, do you?"

"Probably not much that you read, Miss Miller."

"You would find Harold Bell Wright's books enjoyable, I'm sure.  His
thoughts are so sa-ad!"

"You find sad thoughts 'enjoyable'?"

"If I do say it myself, Mrs. Houghton, I am without a touch of
frivol'ty in my composition."

"How tragic!"

"But at the same time, I like gay, glad thoughts, too.  Sunshine
mingled with Shadow.  _Pollyanna_, for instance, I found wery
instructive.  Didn't you, Missus?"

"It's title, _The Glad Book_, was as far as I could get.  Too
depressing!"

"I had hoped, from what your sisters said of you, to find in you a
kindred mind."

"My sisters flatter me!"

"They speak wery well of you.  They said you love a book as I do."

"I'm afraid not as you do, Miss Miller."

"You don't dearly love a book?"

"It depends upon the book."

Miss Miller bent her head to one side, considering.  "Yes," she
concluded, thoughtfully, "it does.  Some books are more interesting
than other books."

"I have noticed that myself."

"I am very pertikkler about the story books which I recommend to my
pu-pills--that they shall be Clean and Wholesome."  She repeated the
words lovingly.  "Clean and Wholesome.  Books that have no bad
children, no bad words, no bad morals, no bad example.  Also nothing
to frighten the Child--no ogres or giants.  Only what is sweet and
happy and lovely and--and--Clean and Wholesome."

"My God!" breathed Susan.  "Where would you ever find such an insipid
book as that, Miss Miller?  Or where the child that would read it?"

"It's the only kind I permit in my school library," said Miss Miller,
primly, disapprovingly.

"But do you forget how when you were a child you thrilled and tingled
over ogres and giants and bad children?  Why, you can't have an
interesting story out of just good people.  Nothing ever seems to
happen to them.  Don't you see your rule would prohibit Mark Twain
and Booth Tarkington and James Whitcomb Riley and Dickens and Robert
Burns and----"

Susan stopped short as she noticed Miss Miller's embarrassment before
this array of names.  "She's not to be taken seriously," she
decided--and changed the subject.  "I understand, Miss Miller, that
you are making a specialty in your school of--er--etiquette?"

"Yes," Miss Miller eagerly responded, recovering from her confusion
at the heavy battery with which Susan had refuted her plea for Clean,
Wholesome Insipidity, and glad to return to familiar ground, "and I
find that my pu-pills are wery receptive to my sudgestions."

"You are making Chesterfields of your Pennsylvania Dutch boys and
girls?"

"Chesterfields was, I believe, Missus, a foreigner and an aristocrat?
_No!_" Miss Miller democratically repudiated all such.  "Amurican
manners for our Amurican boys and girls!  An Amurican gentleman, an
Amurican lady--that is my highest ambition for our young people of
Reifsville."

"How do you go about it?" asked Susan, curiously.

Miss Miller, in her reply, did not talk, she recited:

"I train them in the accepted usages of the best society in every
walk of life, from the kitchen to the parlour; from the cottage to
the mansion.  Yesterday, for instance, I gave them a lesson in
Interductions; the etiquette to be observed is to accompany the gent
to the lady who, if seated, does not rise; whereupon both bow; the
interducer then retires and the interduced at once enter into
conwersation."

"Your pupils will find this instruction very useful, I'm sure,"
murmured Susan.

"I teach them what are breaches of etiquette in a social gathering of
the best society--such as whispering.  I tell them what to do if they
commit those breaches--such as, If you strike against another in the
street, apologize with, _I beg pardon_.  I try also to inculcate
grace; I endeavour to show my young folks that grace should attend
all movements; that walking, speaking, _and_ so forth should be at
once refined and unostentatious.  There is a great art in making a
bow dignified and stately while neither stiff nor awkward."

"I should say there was!  A difficult feat, Miss Miller!"

"With patience it can be acquired.  I myself acquired this graceful
accomplishment with only a little practice."

"_I_ should think it would take an acrobat to strike such a happy
balance!  Come, Josie," Susan put an end to the lesson in etiquette.

"Poor Lizzie and Addie!" she reflected on the way home, "trying to
live up to that poor donkey!  And if I tried to show them what a
great big bluff she is, they'd only think I was jealous of her!"

As Susan had not dreamed for an instant that Josie had noticed the
sort of shop at which she had made her purchases that day, great was
her astonishment when, at the supper table, he announced to his
father, "Mother has some change let over from her trading, Father.
She traded at a new kind of store where everything costs a couple
cents littler than what it does at Diffenderfer's, or Saltzgibbler's."

It seemed to Joe, when explanations followed, like actual thieving
from him that Susan should have handed that dollar, saved from her
shopping, to her sisters.

Susan tried, for Josie's own sake, to break him of his pernicious
tattling.

"I'm going to drive to Middleburg this afternoon, Josie," she told
him one day a few weeks later, "and I don't intend to take you with
me, because the last time I took you driving you were very unkind and
made your father angry with me.  So to-day I shall leave you at home."

"You're afraid I'll tell Father what you sneak to the Aunties!"

"I'm leaving you at home to punish you for being unkind to me.  I
don't want a mischief-maker with me."

"I'll tell Father you're punishing me for telling him you gave
Aunties things!"

"Why do you like to make me uncomfortable, Josie?  I don't like to
make you unhappy."

"Yes, you do!  You like to _let_ me when you go to Middleburg!" he
whimpered.  "I'll tell Father to _make_ you take me!"

When Joe was informed of the proposed trip to Middleburg without
Josie, to punish the boy for tattling, he simply put the car out of
commission for Susan by removing the ignition tip.

"That fixes that little idea of yours, Susan!" he told her,
chuckling; and Josie eyed her triumphantly.

At such times she not only disliked Josie, she shrank from him.  She
knew that Sidney's boy, who was constantly at the cottage during the
few months of the year that the big house was occupied by its owners,
was incapable of petty meannesses like this; that he was a generous,
warm-hearted lad; and she wished, almost passionately, that her
foster-child were more like Georgie.

But Josie, though spoiled, tyrannical, and mean, could be
extraordinarily lovable.  He was very handsome; he was intelligent
and responsive to her teaching as well as in the reading that they
did together; and, in his own selfish way, he adored his step-mother.
At times he had a cuddling, demonstrative way with her that acted
like an antidote to the poison of his little basenesses.

And, strongest appeal of all to Susan, Josie believed her to be his
own mother.  His very tyrannies presupposed a sense of exclusive
possession which somehow made her feel that she and Josie did
inalienably belong to each other.  Joe had scrupulously kept the
promise he had made to her before their marriage--that his boy should
never know through him that Susan was not his own mother.

Sidney's increasing indebtedness to Joe and his consequently
decreasing income obliged him to spend more and more of his time
quietly at White Oak Farm.  It was evident enough that only the
stress of circumstances, and not choice, kept him there, for almost
in the very hour that his quarterly income fell due he was off again
upon another orgy of extravagance: racing, betting, yachting,
luxurious travelling with people of ten times his means.

Occasionally there were large and festive house parties at the big
house, with decorators, caterers, and orchestras for dancing, all
brought from Philadelphia.

Georgie and Josie played and quarrelled together all day long, and
Susan's heart often reproached her because her step-son seemed to her
so much less lovable than Sidney's boy.  Georgie was a dreamy,
thoughtful, gentle child who, behind his slow, quiet manner, had an
unusually strong personality.  It was really startling, sometimes, to
see him, after having submitted for days, with entire indifference,
to Josie's aggressive and tyrannical self-assertion, suddenly and
quite unexpectedly turn upon his oppressor with an alarming fury, for
some offence much less aggravating (to the ordinary judgment) than
the things which he had meekly borne without a murmur.  For instance,
Josie learned, after three times receiving a blow in the face from
Georgie's fist, as punishment, never to dare to speak rudely to Susan
before his cousin.  Susan wished that she were as good a
disciplinarian where Josie was concerned.

On one of these occasions Joe happened to be a witness to the
chastisement inflicted by his nephew upon his son; and the snarling
resentment with which he flung himself upon Georgie to beat him, all
the concentrated hate of years of bitter jealousy ready to wreak
itself upon his defenceless little nephew, made Susan, with a blind
impulse of protection, rush between them, tear the child from Joe's
terrible blows, and stand panting and defiant before him; while
Sidney, who, at Georgie's cries, had rushed down the terrace to the
cottage door, picked up his quivering son and held him in his
arms--looking on, as white as linen, at Susan's fierce defiance of
her husband's brutality.

"It's Josie you should beat, not Georgie!--if you must beat a child!
You _encourage_ Josie to speak to me so rudely that even this
child"--her hand on Georgie, who trembled in his father's
arms--"resents it!  Teach Josie to respect me as Georgie does before
you dare to lay a finger on Georgie."

She turned and went into the cottage, while Sidney, looking ghastly,
carried Georgie home to the big house.

But a few days later, when again the two boys were together, Josie,
thinking that Georgie having had a dreadful warning against striking
him, could now be teased and tormented to any extent without daring
to defend himself or to fight for his "Aunt Susan," ventured again to
use rude language to his mother--with the prompt result of a blow in
the face that knocked him down.

Susan had noticed the fact that Georgie had struck before looking
about to see whether his Uncle Joe were in sight.

While Josie ran screaming for his father she made Georgie run home as
fast as his legs would carry him.

Georgie was with her one evening when Lizzie and Addie happened to
drive over from Reifsville to see her.  They very seldom came to her
home, for they realized that Joe, in his fear of Susan's giving them
something, did not make them welcome.  But Susan had not been to see
them for over a week and they had become anxious.

"I overtaxed myself with canning and preserving last week," Susan
explained, as they all sat together on the cottage porch, the two
boys playing near by on the lawn.  "And I came down with a nervous
sick headache that kept me in bed two days.  This is my first day out
of bed."

She was leaning back in a rocking-chair looking pale and pensive, and
her sisters regarded her with loving anxiety.

"If only Joe'd hire fur you, Susie!  You wasn't never used to hard
work; us we always spared you all we could."

"Joe seems unable to see that he loses out by my overworking; I had
to have the doctor; and for two days Joe had to cook and wait on me.
He wanted to send for you, Lizzie, but I would not have it.  Addie
could not be left alone with all the work over there."

"Who's the little boy playing with Josie?" asked Addie.

"Sidney's son."

The announcement was followed by a silence which seemed to Susan to
take on the character of a deep and pregnant stillness.  She glanced
at her sisters.  They both looked white and frightened.

"Poor things!" thought Susan, "I suppose they're thinking of my
child--that was Sidney's!"

Before her sisters left, Lizzie walked hesitatingly across the grass
and drawing Georgie to her, looked long into his face; then stooped
and gently kissed him.

Susan saw, to her astonishment, as she said good-night to her
sisters, that they were both crying.

"They would have loved my baby so!" she reflected, mournfully, as she
walked slowly into the house.

It was that night, when she and Joe were alone in their room, that
she learned of the immediately impending great change in her life.
Joe informed her quite casually that Sidney had come to the end of
his rope.

"I left him go to it and spend!  I left him borrow off of me all he
wanted; and him, the poor simp, never seen through it!  Thought I was
bein' brotherly and generous!  Me!  To him!  Him that his mom always
learnt to treat me like the dirt under his feet!  Well, now I _got_
him!  He's in my power!  He owes me more'n he kin ever pay!"

"What are you proposing to do?"

"Next month us we move into the big house and Sid and his Missus and
his kid _moves in here_!"

"They'll never do it!" exclaimed Susan, startled.  "Move in here!
They can't be _that_ poor!"

"I tell you Sid has run through with every dollar of his principal.
Ain't he the darned fool though!  All he'll have to live on for the
rest part of his life is the rent of White Oak Farm, and only part of
_that_, fur half of it goes to pay me back what he's borrowed off of
me."

"His wife will surely leave him; she will never live in this cottage!"

"But her money's all, too.  And you know her father died a couple
years back a'ready.  So it's this here cottage fur her, or work fur
her livin'!  And as she wasn't raised to fit into neither of them
humble stations in life, here's _your_ turn, Susan, to come it over
her the way she's been turnin' _you_ down ever since I got married to
you.  If you don't give her as good as what she always sent you, I
won't think much of your spunk!"

"She never lifted a finger to hurt me; she never for a moment had it
in her power to!  And I don't think, Joe, that I have it in my power
to hurt her.  Her life and mine simply do not touch."

"That ain't the high-minded way _she's_ feelin', I bet you!  I bet
you she's eatin' her heart out with spite that now you're a-goin' to
be in her place, to hold your head as high as what she held hern and
to turn up your nose at her the way she done to you!"

Susan wondered, as she lay sleepless that night, whether Sidney, like
Joe, knew her so little as to think that because he had once done her
a great, irreparable injury, she now gloated over his downfall.  She
searched her heart to learn what really she felt about this strange
twist of fate that was taking from Sidney and giving to her all those
things for which he had once sacrificed her.  And all she could find
there was a profound indifference.  Sidney no longer seemed a part of
her life.

"Georgie is the only one in that family that interests me in the
least," she decided, as she closed her eyes and went to sleep.




CHAPTER XIII

IN THE BIG HOUSE

Susan was early given to understand, after the removal to the big
house, that Joe expected to live there very much as he had previously
lived there with a succession of hired housekeepers; keeping the
greater part of the old house shut off to save coal.  He would have
liked to limit their occupancy to the kitchen and their bedrooms, if
he had had his undisputed way.  And indeed Susan's utmost revolt
against such a régime got her only so far as to win his consent to
their using the dining room and parlour on festive occasions such as
Christmas or Josie's birthday, or when they had company.

Joe was deeply chagrined when Sidney, instead of meekly moving his
family into the tenant's cottage, removed them clear out of the
neighbourhood.

Susan would have been relieved at this except for her sorrow at
parting from Georgie.

"Never you mind," Joe consoled himself in the form of giving comfort
to Susan for Sidney's failure to play up to the tragic humiliation so
carefully staged for him.  "He'll be drove into livin' in that there
cottage _yet_, you mind if he ain't!  My only _re_-gret is that his
mother ain't alive to see this day, when I'm on top with him under my
heel; her that didn't think me good enough to live in the same house
with her son and had me turned out of my own father's house!  Her a
stranger comin' in and turnin' me out of my father's house!"

Susan had learned to dread Joe's reminiscences of his boyhood, such
red-hot passion of bitterness and resentment they always aroused in
him.  No doubt if his step-mother had been openly and intentionally
cruel, instead of just limited in perception and sympathy to the
circle of her own personal interests, he could have found it less
impossible to forgive her.

"And now," Joe continued, "it's my turn to open the door and say,
'Get out!  You ain't got the price to stay here!'  Oh, I ain't done
with Sid Houghton yet, Susan!  Don't you think it!"

Sometimes Susan was afraid of her old propensity to experiment with
situations; to try out the effect of some unexpected announcement,
like that thrilling experiment of giving Sidney's mother the
impression that his Uncle George wanted to marry her.  She was afraid
sometimes lest she leap over the precipice by suddenly saying to Joe,
"You think Sidney and his mother greatly wronged you.  But they did
you a greater wrong than any you know of!  They long ago slew the
soul that once dwelt in this shell you call your wife!  This woman
you've married was once your hated brother's mistress!  _She bore him
a child!_"

Where Sidney removed his family Joe never learned.  But before a year
went by his prophecy came true and dire need drove the younger
brother back to appeal for help once more.

Meantime, Susan, finding herself the pseudo-mistress of a mansion,
decided to test the possibility of having Eleanor Arnold and perhaps
a few more of her old school friends visit her.

The necessity of keeping at least one servant to help with the work
of the big house even Joe had recognized.  But when Susan, in
preparing for Eleanor's arrival, undertook to teach the Pennsylvania
Dutch farmer's daughter in her employ the ways of a waitress, she
found that ploughing would have been fairy's work by comparison.

"Why must folks be so awful waited on just fur to eat their wittles?"
the girl would ask, wonderingly.  "Why can't they do their own
stretchin' at the table?"

Joe really suffered when, inquiring at supper for the pound of
roquefort cheese he had "fetched" from town the day before, he was
told by the girl, "They sent you spoilt and mouldy cheese yet!  With
green spots at!  I throwed it quick away so's you wouldn't poison
yourselfs!"

An Edom cheese which arrived with a basket of provisions from the
grocery she took for a jardinière and placed in the middle of the
dining-room table on a centrepiece.

Doilies she called "tidies" for a long time; then they began to be
"dailies" and "doolies," but never by any chance did she hit upon the
vowel _oi_.

Joe and Josie made Susan's work of training the girl much harder by
refusing to fall in and coöperate and by openly sneering at her "tony
airs", though Josie, in whom there was an æsthetic, effeminate
streak, was only feigning scorn to curry favour with his father; he
really adored "the ways of high society", as his father called their
waitress's clumsy ministrations.

Though Eleanor Arnold was the most tactful of guests, her visit was,
for the most part, too great a strain upon both Susan and herself
ever to be repeated.  Joe coming to the table in his shirt sleeves
and minus a collar; grumbling at the delay caused by a little service
between a few courses and openly making fun of it; commenting on
Susan's extravagance in using cream on the table which ought to be
saved for butter to be sold at market; reproving her for increasing
the price of the laundry by her frequent changes of the table linen;
objecting to her making the coffee so strong--"You use enough for one
meal to do for three and that there coffee thirty-five cents a pound
yet!"

The meals came to be times of torment to Eleanor in her mortification
for Susan and her keen sympathy for what seemed an intolerable
degradation.

It bored her also to have Susan working in the kitchen and about the
house, for nearly two thirds of the day instead of giving herself up
to her.  Joe, however, seemed to think that his wife was taking an
unwarranted holiday, his table talk being ornamented with sarcastic
references to her "settin' 'round", her "pleasure-seekin'", her
"runnin'".

It was made painfully evident to Eleanor that poor Susan had had to
put up a stiff fight to have a guest at all, even on such
uncomfortable terms as these.

It seemed to be in sheer malice that Joe one day, during Eleanor's
visit, brought from town in his car several bushels of plums to be
preserved and canned.

"But our own plums will be ripe next month; why did you buy these?"
Susan, in consternation, inquired, as he pointed out to her and
Eleanor the "bargain" he was unloading from his car.

"Our plum preserves is all; and I don't feel fur waitin' till next
month till I taste plum preserves again.  I feel fur some _now_.  I
got these here wery cheap."

"No wonder!  They are the miserable little hard kind that are the
very dickens to seed!" exclaimed Susan, despairingly.  "This is two
days' work!  I don't see how----"

"Miss Arnold kin help you, I guess," said Joe as he carried the heavy
load of fruit into the kitchen.

Susan knew, of course, that it was not an unconquerable yearning for
plum preserves, but a determination to make it impossible for her to
spend an idle minute for the next few days at least, that had
prompted the purchase of the plums.

During the next hour, before they assembled at supper (Joe insisted
upon a noon dinner), Susan was rather silent and thoughtful as she
and Eleanor strolled about the grounds.  If Joe's plum scheme
succeeded he would surely not stop there, but would manage to find a
still heavier task to follow it.

"In self-defence I've got to make it fail," she thought.

"Eleanor, you know something about chemistry, don't you?" she
presently asked, irrelevantly, in the midst of a discussion of the
newest thing in blouses (which topic had been guilefully introduced
by Eleanor with a purpose).  "Can you tell me what I can do to those
plums to make them seem to have rotted overnight?  We can drive into
town to-night to a drug-store if you do know----"

"Concentrated sulphuric acid will do the job."

During the drive to town Eleanor resumed the discussion of blouses,
leading tactfully, as she thought, up to the fact that Susan's were
out of date and that she needed some new ones.

"I get your point, my love," smiled Susan.  "I was never one not to
know the latest style in blouses!  It's lack of money and time that
makes me dress so abominably."

"Has your husband had reverses, Susan?"

"Joe never has reverses.  He's too cautious ever to lose money.  He
seems to be piling it up constantly.  But _I_ don't benefit by it."

"White Oak Farm is such a lovely home--you could have such larks in
that charming place!  You ought not to submit, Susan, dear!"

"By the way, I have no money (I never have any) to buy the
concentrated sulphuric acid.  I meant to charge it and have the bill
sent to Joe--but I'm just beginning to see that that won't do.  He
will be sure to ask me what I wanted with concentrated sulphuric acid
and that would give away my part in rotting the plums.  I want him to
think he has been cheated in them--then he will never again risk
buying fruit in town.  How shall I manage it?"

"That's easy.  Tell him you used the concentrated sulphuric acid as a
throat lotion or a hair tonic or a tooth wash."

Crafty as Joe himself was, it was difficult for him to conceive of a
cunning in another that would deliberately ruin and waste.  Thrift
was so ingrained in his very bones that he simply could not imagine
his own wife setting herself to the task of wantonly destroying
several bushels of food for which he had paid out hard cash.
Therefore he never suspected her and Eleanor of their perfidious part
in the tragedy that confronted him early next morning in his kitchen,
when the maid pointed out to him the condition of the fruit he had
bought.

His manifest suffering for several days caused Eleanor a deep and
sweet contentment that almost compensated her for the manifold
miseries of her visit.

While Josie seemed to respect and be greatly attached to his father,
he did not try to emulate his roughness, but was, on the contrary,
over-fastidious in trifles; irritatingly nice about things which did
not really matter.  Joe, far from criticizing this in his son, as he
criticized his wife's tastes, appeared to take pride in it.

In some respects it seemed that Josie would never grow up; in his
love, for instance, of being petted, fondled, and made much of by
Susan even after he had reached an age when most boys would have
resented a public caress as the grossest insult.  The most effectual
punishments Susan had ever imposed upon him had been to refrain for a
time from all demonstration of affection for him.  He was, like his
father, extremely penurious and he seemed to feel, even now at the
age of sixteen, as greatly defrauded by her kisses withheld as he
would have felt if someone had cheated him of dollars and cents.

"He is the strangest mixture, my dear!" Eleanor wondered over him as
the two friends sat on the piazza one evening before supper.  "_I_
would not know how to deal with him!  The way he seems to adore you
and yet so often goes ruthlessly against you and hurts you!--the
flinty hardness with which, just like his father, he will drive a
bargain!--and yet he will bawl like a girl for something he wants
that his father says he can't have!"

Both Joe and his son displayed, during Eleanor's entire visit, a
childish jealousy of Susan's regard for her friend which added not a
little to the guest's discomfort.  In Josie it often took the form of
a covert or even an open rudeness toward Eleanor.  He would not
answer her greeting when they came together in the morning; he would
utter what he meant to be biting remarks on the neglect he was just
now suffering at his mother's hands.  "For the past six days I've not
had you to myself an hour!"  He would never permit his mother and her
friend, when he was at home, to sit alone together for ten minutes at
a time without interrupting them with some demand from Susan for
attention or service.

"This shirt needs a button--I wish, Mother, you weren't too busy
gabbling all the time to keep my clothes mended!"

As Susan never put his shirts away buttonless, she suspected him of
cutting off the buttons to make an excuse for taxing her attention.

He would call her to massage his head for an attack of neuralgia; to
read to him because his eyes ached; to help him with his lessons.

Just once, when he was deliberately impertinent to Eleanor, Susan's
forbearance broke down.  He had overheard his mother speak to her
guest of an automobile ride they would take that day to "Chickies
Rock" and he had interrupted with the assertion that he wanted the
car that night.

"What for, Josie?" Susan inquired.

His hesitation betrayed that his demand was entirely impromptu and
that he had no goal in view.

"I'm going to drive over to Middleburg to get some books from the
library," he answered after an instant.

"It is too far for an evening's trip," Susan objected.

"Well, anyway, I want the car this evening, Mother."

"You can't have it, Josie."

"I'll ask Father whether I can't!"

"He won't let you drive to Middleburg at night."

"Then I'll go over to Reifsville to see Aunt Addie and Aunt Lizzie."

"Why don't you come with us to Chickies Rock, Josie?" asked Eleanor,
pleasantly.

Josie, muttering something about not caring for the society of "an
old maid," flung himself out of his mother's room where the
discussion had taken place--leaving Eleanor looking pained for Susan,
and Susan herself suddenly livid with her rarely roused anger.

"Oh, my dear, my dear!" cried Eleanor, "for that boy's own sake you
must not be so forbearing!"

"I know I must not!  Excuse me a minute, Eleanor."

Susan left the room and in ten minutes returned with a very abject
and embarrassed Josie who sullenly apologized to Eleanor for his
rudeness.

"How did you make him do it?" asked Eleanor, curiously, when they
were again alone.

"I told him he could not come near me or speak to me again until he
had apologized to you; and as he can't stand being alienated from me,
he did it."

"How you ever endure it all!" breathed Eleanor.

"I care for Josie a lot," Susan admitted.  "Oh, Eleanor, the only
thing I shall have accomplished when my life is over, is the bringing
up of Josie, and if he is a failure, _I_ shall be."

"You've no doubt given him much, Susan; but when certain qualities
are lacking in a character no one can supply the lack."

"He has been really improving since he has been attending the
Middleburg High School."

"Heavens! what must he have been!"

"I've hopes of what college may do for, or to, him, Eleanor!"

Eleanor was silent.  Susan knew how tragically empty, sombre, wasted,
her friend considered her life.  "Yet she doesn't know the worst I've
lived through!--the way my youth was blasted, devastated!" she
thought.  "If I should suddenly reveal it to her!"

Once or twice a vague, inexplicable look in Eleanor's eyes as they
rested upon her made Susan wonder whether she did have a suspicion of
how deep and vital her relation to Sidney had been.

Susan was, however, very far from the truth as to Eleanor's real
suspicion concerning her and Sidney.

It was during this visit of Eleanor's that Susan was greatly
surprised one afternoon, while she and her guest were sitting on the
wide piazza that surrounded the house, an hour before their six
o'clock supper, to receive a letter in the mail which Josie brought
from the White Oak Station post office, from Sidney's wife.  Sidney's
wife writing to her!  A rather extraordinary communication,
considering all the circumstances.

While Eleanor, busy with her own mail, remained unobservant of her,
Susan read her letter through twice very slowly.


My dear Susan (if I may presume upon our relation to call you so)
Sidney and I are feeling so homesick for our old home!  It is just
eight months ago to-day that circumstances forced us to give it up to
you and your family.  We should just love to spend a few quiet weeks
at White Oak Farm if you will be so very kind as to permit us.  The
simple truth is we have no place to go just now until we are due next
month at the Sherwins.  I am ill, and it is possible I may not be
well enough to go to the Sherwins when Sidney goes.  So if you can
accommodate both of us for a few weeks and me for a bit longer if I
am not strong enough to travel, I shall be glad, in return, to be of
use to you in any way I can.  I should like to introduce some of my
Middleburg friends to you--I think it might be mutually profitable
for us to spend a few weeks together at White Oak Farm.  I am longing
for my home, the dear old place!  I shall very much appreciate your
kindness if you can make room for us.

  Sincerely yours,
      LAURA BERESFORD HOUGHTON.

P.S. We have placed Georgie in a school where he will remain as a
summer boarder.  So, you see, we are not asking you to be troubled
with him.  We have saved enough out of the wreck of our fortunes to
educate Georgie, whatever may betide.


When Eleanor, having gone through her own mail, looked up, Susan,
without comment, handed Laura's astonishing letter to her.

"Well!" Eleanor exclaimed when she had read it, "of all the
cold-blooded propositions!  After ignoring you for years while you
were living right here beside her, to invite herself now to come and
visit you!--offering as a bribe to introduce you into Middleburg
society!  She must be terribly stranded, poor Laura!"

"She seems to look upon White Oak Farm as more her home than ours,
though we are renting it from Sidney," said Susan.

"But she must know she has no sort of claim upon the place while you
are living here as its tenants.  What shall you do, Susan?"

"If Georgie were with them I'd be tempted to tell them to come!"

Eleanor glanced at her swiftly, and Susan saw, to her surprise, that
her friend was flushing crimson.

"You are strangely fond of that boy, Susie, dear!"

"I know it.  He has always appealed to me more than any child I've
ever known.  And now that he is no longer a child, he is more
appealing than ever!  It is strange, I know, that I should feel so.
But it's because of the boy himself--not any survival of my feeling
for his father, I assure you!  He is a lovely boy!"

"Is he?  I've not seen him since he was a baby."

"He is full of talent; and he is altogether fine and lovable, I
think!" Susan softly cried, her bosom heaving, a wistfulness in her
voice.  "I can't help it, I love him!"

"I've never heard you warm up like that about Josie," remarked
Eleanor, her eyes downcast, averted.

"I suppose you think me very spineless, Eleanor, to be able to care
for Sidney's boy like that!"

"What are you going to say to Laura, Susan?"

"I'm afraid I think her letter too impertinent to deserve a reply.  I
think I shall not answer it."

"They may take your silence for consent and dump themselves down upon
you!"

"The tenant's cottage is ready for them at any time."

"Would you have the backbone to refuse to receive them here if they
came and presented themselves?"

"I shall not entertain them as my guests, Eleanor."

"It would take a staff of servants to keep them going!" said Eleanor.

At dinner they learned from Joe that he had had a letter from Sidney
very similar to Susan's from Laura.

"Says he's willing to do a bit of farm work for me, a couple hours
every day, if I'll put him and Missus up fur a couple weeks or so!"

Joe chuckled disgustingly.  "Listen to here!"; He opened the letter
and read them passages: "'In view of your many favours to me in the
past'--'This time it isn't money, but your hospitality,'--Say, I
wisht yous ladies would have saw the telegraft I wrote off to him!
'Your cottage at the foot of the terraces is ready for you any time
you care to occupy,' I wrote.  That's all I sayed.  Your cottage
ready for you!  Ain't that a side-winder fur my elegant brother Sid,
though?  Gee whiz!  I never enjoyed myself more in all my life than I
enjoyed myself sendin' that there telegraft!  Say!  I'd like to have
a photograft of his mug took whiles he's readin' my telegraft!"

Susan, as she heard her husband, decided not to let him know of her
letter from Laura.  His joy was too unholy.

"If they're too stuck-up to come and live in the cottage," continued
Joe, "leave Missus sell some of her jewels or furs that she throwed
away so much money on.  I guess," he chuckled, "I surprised her and
Sid some last winter (ain't, Susan?) when me I bought _my_ wife sich
a fur set, too.  Cost me forty-two fifty.  Yes, sir!  I guess Sid and
Missus took notice to it all right, when they seen you wearin' it,
Susan!  Well, I guess, anyhow--a set that cost forty-two fifty!  It
was a awful good set," he gravely almost reverently explained to
Eleanor.  "_Ought_ to be--I paid forty-two fifty for it.  When I do
buy I b'leeve in buyin' good.  No cheap trash.  Forty-two fifty--yes,
sir.  It was a big outlay, I'll admit.  But Susie she wanted some
furs and says I to myself, 'All right, if she wants furs she's
a-goin' to have some.  Sid's Missus ain't the only lady kin afford to
walk 'round here lookin' like a Esquimaux.'  So I up and got Susie a
set.  Forty-two fifty I paid, yes, sir!  You'd har'ly b'leeve it, but
that's what it cost me.  Forty-two fifty."

Susan did not try to check him or to cover his peculiarities.  It
would have been so futile.  She let Eleanor have it all.

Their gathering together at the table, however, came to be a time of
misery to the two women.

"If Sidney does come to the cottage, Susan, what shall you do?"
Eleanor asked the next day.

"What I have always done--go my way unmindful of them."

"Which are you, Susan--very callous or very wise?"

"Stultified, Eleanor."

"I predict you'll revive some day!"

"But I'm getting on.  I'm thirty-five, you know."

"You don't look a day more than twenty-five.  And poor Laura looks
any old age!  Yet to any casual observer, how much more reason you
would have for looking prematurely old!  In a sense, Susan, you've
lived religiously; with self-restraint and unselfishly; while those
others have forged ahead recklessly, living only for their
self-gratification.  And yet," Eleanor shrugged, "they'd call you and
me irreligious, Susie, wouldn't they?--because we don't believe in
their respectable little creeds and ceremonies and delusions, the
opiates with which they lull and delude themselves!  If a live
teacher of real religion turns up, see how quickly they crucify him
to-day just as in the past!  'Be ye not conformed to this world,'
saith the Scriptures; but who are quicker than Christians to jump on
you with both feet the moment you _don't_ conform to this world!  The
man who does conform to the common standard is the only acceptable
man to society and to the church."

"Why can't we realize," said Susan, "that it is only when a man
_revolts_ from the common standard that he becomes worth hearing?
Aren't we a tiresome race!"

"I wonder whether it is any better on Mars," Eleanor speculated.

Contrary to Eleanor's prediction, Laura and Sidney arrived a few days
later to occupy the cottage.

"I didn't think they'd ever bring themselves to it," she told Susan.
"And now I don't know whether to run in to see Laura or not.  It
might be just intolerably humiliating to her!"

"Does the size of the house she lives in matter such a lot?  You will
go to see her, not her house."

"You've answered me; I go," nodded Eleanor.

When, the next morning, she carried out her resolution, she was
shocked to find Laura, very white and weak, lying on a couch in the
tiny dining room of the cottage, looking as though she were dying.

She brightened at the unexpected sight of Eleanor and welcomed her
eagerly, almost cheerfully.

"Money worries; and living at too rapid a pace," she explained her
plight.  "I tried to keep up with Sidney.  Personally, I should have
preferred a little less strenuousness.  And then--unhappiness,
Eleanor!  Sidney and I have never been really happy together.  It's a
general breaking up; I know I can't live long--and I don't want to."

Eleanor could see that poor Laura undoubtedly spoke the truth; she
was doomed.  One saw it so unmistakably in her dimmed eyes, her
pinched nostrils, her colourless lips, the whole blighted aspect of
her.

"She _is_ going to die!" thought Eleanor, sombrely.  "But Susan's
fate is worse--a living death!"

"This human scene makes me sick!" Eleanor burst out.  "Look at the
confusion in the world everywhere!  We human beings seem as incapable
of arranging life in a sane and wise order for _all_ of us as a lot
of cats and dogs would be!  _Just_ as incapable!"

Laura stared.  "Is this supposed to be apropos of my impending death,
Eleanor?"

"Laura, dear!"  Eleanor seated on a low stool beside the couch,
gently clasped the sick woman's hand.  "If society had forced you to
serve it--not permitted you to be a parasite--you would not now be
here in this cottage dying!"

"I'm not sorry I'm dying.  Life does not interest me any more.  I am
so bored that I _want_ to die!"

"It's because your interests and activities were always shallow
surface affairs that never struck root, and so were doomed to an
early withering; and now that they are gone, you've nothing left!
It's rather ghastly!"

"I've nothing left; that's true," repeated Laura.  "Maybe if I'd had
a child----"

She stopped short.

For & moment neither of them spoke.

Presently Eleanor repeated, "If you'd had a child?  What do you mean,
dear?"

"I mean--a daughter."

Eleanor came to a sudden decision.  "Laura, will you tell me
something I want very much to know, and which only you can tell me?"
she softly asked.

"What is it?"

"I would not ask you this question if it were not a matter of great
importance to me; if I did not believe you are right about not having
long to live.  It is because I believe that, that I must have the
truth about this thing; a suspicion that has been growing in my heart
these many years and which lately has become almost a conviction.
But you alone can make me absolutely sure----"

"Eleanor!  You are as white as death!  What is it?"

"Tell me--_is Georgie your own son?_"

Laura's faded eyes fell from Eleanor's burning gaze, and she did not
reply.

"I am answered: he is not.  _Whose child is he?_"

"Why do you ask, Eleanor?  What made you think he was not mine?"

"Didn't anyone else ever think he was not yours?"

"Never.  Unmotherly mothers are too common in these days, I suppose!"
said Laura, a touch of sadness in her tired voice.

"Who is Georgie's mother, Laura?"

"She died at his birth.  She was Sidney's mistress.  I saw her once
for a few minutes in Sidney's rooms, but I didn't know she was going
to have a child; and I married him in haste to keep _her_ from
forcing him to marry her.  I did not dream she was going to have a
child!"

"Who was she?"

"I never knew her name.  Sidney would never tell me and I was not
interested in knowing.  Her father brought the baby to Sidney the
very night we were married and threatened him with all kinds of
trouble if he did not take the child and bring him up as his own son.
We left the baby with Sidney's mother and went abroad.  Mrs. Houghton
put it in the care of a farmer's family; and as soon as we returned
home Sidney insisted, against my wishes, upon taking the child.  I
never would have consented but that I didn't want to go through the
agony of having a child myself and Sidney had to have a son to
inherit his Uncle George's estate, or it would go to Joe's boy.  So,
for the sake of keeping this estate in our hands, I consented to take
Georgie and pass him off as ours.  And after all the fuss and trouble
of it, the disgusting lies I've had to tell, the criticism I've had
to bear for not being motherly--after all this, here we are, just
where we'd have been if we had never acknowledged Georgie at all--Joe
Houghton has White Oak Farm!"

"But Georgie will have it when he is of age?"

"If he is anything like his father, he will never earn money enough
to keep it going.  And all that Sidney inherited is of course
squandered; and my inheritance went after it!"

"Laura!  How do you know Georgie's mother died?"

"Her father said so when he brought the baby to Sidney.  Our wedding
journey was more like a funeral than a joy trip, Sidney felt her
death so terribly!"

"Have you truly, truly always believed that Georgie's mother was
dead?  Have you never suspected, Laura, _who_ was his mother?"

Laura stared, speechless, into Eleanor's white face.

"Haven't you had a _reason_, Laura, for ignoring your sister-in-law
as you have done?"

"My sister-in-law?  You mean Joe Houghton's wife?  _What_ do you
mean?"

"Haven't you ever noticed," pursued Eleanor, breathlessly, her bosom
heaving tumultuously, "how fatally Georgie resembles--Joe's wife?
The first time I ever saw Georgie I took him for Susan's own child!
And he _is_ her child!  She doesn't know it, but he is!  See how she
idolizes him!  It's her blood calling to his!"

"You're crazy!" gasped Laura; and Eleanor, in her blind eagerness to
get at the truth, for Susan's sake, failed to realize Laura's
dangerous agitation.  "Joe's wife Sidney's mistress!  You're crazy,
Eleanor!"  Laura laughed wildly.  "It's melodramatic!  Georgia,
Sidney's son, is, you say, the illegitimate child of Joe Houghton's
wife!  And she for fifteen years living next door to him and
mothering him every chance she could get and never knowing he was
hers!"  Laura almost screamed with laughter, and Eleanor took alarm.
"But perhaps Susan has known it," Laura went on with shrill irony.
"Perhaps she, like me, has played her part so that her son may
illegally get White Oak Farm when it really belongs to Josie!"

"But morally it belongs to Georgie!" Eleanor maintained.  "And--and,
Laura, I'm going----"

The door opened and Sidney, having been drawn by Laura's unnatural
laughter, walked into the room.

He looked shabby and wretched, but retained, nevertheless, a vestige
of his old elegance.

"Hear!  Hear, Sidney, Eleanor's wonderful melodrama!" cried Laura,
hoarsely, "in which you are the villain, Joe Houghton and I the
martyred hero and heroine, Susan the--what's her part?  Injured
innocence?  Or did she wickedly lure two innocent brothers?  What a
plot!  Has Joe known all along that his wife was the mother of
Sidney's son and has he been working all these years for revenge, by
getting Sidney into his power?  Has he?  And you, Sidney, you poor
donkey, you never suspected your brother of plotting to get you into
his power!  I've been warning you for five years that Joe's seeming
generosity was a trap!  But," she groaned, "whenever you wanted
money, you'd believe that any devil who offered you some was an angel
of light!  Now, you see!  I was right; and you were a fool!"

Sidney, standing white and shaken at Laura's side, turned agonized,
questioning eyes to Eleanor.

"You'll kill Laura!  Her heart is weak----  What is this tale you are
telling her?  The doctor forbids the least excitement for her!
She----"

"Eleanor thinks that _Georgie is Susan's son!_" interrupted Laura in
uncontrollable excitement.  "Did you ever hear of anything more
grotesque?  Her only reason seems to be that he looks like her and
that she's fond of him.  Explain to her, Sidney, that Georgie's
mother was safely dead and buried sixteen years ago!"

"Of course she was!" affirmed Sidney in a shaking voice.  "Your
suspicion is ridiculous, Miss Arnold!  Perfectly ridiculous!"

"Perhaps it is," said Eleanor, uncertainly, "but----"

"Don't you see it wouldn't do," cried Laura, mockingly, her eyes
looking feverish, "to have Susan turn out to be Georgie's mother--for
if Joe found it out he would divorce her, and Joe's a millionaire; he
may die before Susan and leave her one third of his estate, which
will in time pass on to Georgie--everything and everybody must be
sacrificed for Georgie!--legality and honour and marriage vows and
wives!  For if Georgie were illegitimate, you see, Josie would get
White Oak Farm!  Which of course must not happen!  Who would think
that an old man's will could cause such crime and suffering?"

Eleanor rose.  "I'm going now, Laura, dear--I am terribly sorry I
have excited you so!  My idea was absurd, of course.  I, too, would
hate to see Josie get White Oak Farm, for he is detestable.  Forget
what I've said!"

Sidney, a look of fear in his eyes, hesitatingly followed her to the
door.

"I assure you, Miss Arnold, there's nothing whatever in this idea of
yours--I never heard anything more far-fetched--anything more
preposterous!  You won't--you won't spread it about any further, will
you?  You--you have not suggested it to Joe or Susan, have you?  You
know how much a suggestion can sometimes take root without any least
proof, and----"

"Mr. Houghton," said Eleanor, as he stopped, floundering, "you can
trust me to do and say nothing that will injure either Susan or--or
her son.  Susan may outlive her husband and inherit wealth.  I'll
keep quiet for a while, anyway--a little while----"

Not giving him time to reply, she turned away and almost ran out of
the cottage.

Sidney, when she had gone, returned slowly, with the step of an old
man, to his wife's couch.

She was lying back among the cushions, weak and spiritless, her
excitement subsided, but so deeply engrossed in thought that she did
not appear to notice his entrance.

He bent over her solicitously.  "It was outrageous of that woman to
come here and stir you up so, dear!  I felt like----"

"_Is_ there anything in it?--in her suspicion?" she calmly
interrupted him.  "Suppose, Sidney, as I am dying, you tell me the
truth for once.  _Is Georgie Susan's son?_"

Sidney, after just a perceptible instant's pause, answered her: "Of
course he's not!  I never heard of such a ridiculous idea!"

Laura looked at him for a moment in silence, her gravely meditative
eyes making him feel as though his very soul were transparent to her.

"Does Susan know it?" she presently asked.

"Know what?  You don't _believe_ this insane story?"

"Why did you tell me, the night of our wedding, that the baby's
grandfather had told you his mother was dead?"

"Because he _did_!  And it was not until we came home from Europe
that he came to me and told me she wasn't!  That night of the baby's
birth he had left her for dying--but she had rallied.  Her parents
and sisters had then told her that her child had died; and she had
believed it.  Her father implored me not to let her know the
truth--for the family would be disgraced; she herself would be so
ruined in the eyes of the community that she would be unable to earn
her living; they were poor and needed what she could earn.

"I offered financial help, but he refused it.  Of course I consented
to keep the secret; I had everything at stake in keeping it; I didn't
want to lose you; I didn't want to lose Georgie, I wanted him to
inherit White Oak Farm.  I wanted to avoid a scandal.

"Then I made the discovery that _she_ was teaching the school at
White Oak Station!  I could not stand for that--she'd see
Georgie!--and you'd see _her_!  I went to her father and begged him
to get her away.  I pointed out to him the danger to us all if he
didn't.  But--well, he died before he accomplished it.  And then--Joe
married her!"

Laura regarded her husband with a look of utter incredulity.  "I've
always known, Sidney," she spoke slowly, "that you were weak!  But
that you were capable of such a thing as this--of leaving that poor
woman in ignorance of her own son's existence through all these
years!  Beguiling me into passing him off as mine when his own
unsuspecting mother lived just at my door!  What have I been married
to?  Let me warn you!  Never tell Susan that Georgie is her son, or
she'll kill you, Sidney!  I would in her place!  I would deliberately
and cold-bloodedly murder you!  How well you've guarded your secret!
I never suspected it!  Never dreamed of it!  Susan herself never
dreamed of it--that the boy she was so fond of was her very
own--though Eleanor saw the resemblance as soon as she saw them
together!  Susan whom you seduced and robbed----"

Her voice stopped suddenly, her head fell forward.  She was
unconscious.

That night her empty, purposeless, utterly futile life came to an end.




CHAPTER XIV

FIVE YEARS LATER

Susan, taking up her vigil at Joe's bedside during the small hours of
the night, to relieve the trained nurse, was kept feverishly wide
awake not only by Joe's laboured, painful respiration, but by the
wearisome intensity of her brain's activity; the flood of speculation
which overwhelmed her at the possibility of Joe's death, the new life
which that possibility opened up to her, her own unprecedented
thoughts and desires in this sudden, unlooked-for crisis.

Joe was critically ill with pneumonia.

The doctor, however, gave them a good deal of hope.

Hope?  Why did doctors and nurses and acquaintances always assume in
cases like this that your "hope" could lie in but one direction?

That word "critically"--it had been on the doctor's and nurse's lips
constantly for two days.  It beat in Susan's brain unceasingly.  Joe
was "critically ill."  Just what shade of danger (to Joe) did that
signify?  How much "hope" did it leave to his family?  Did
"critically ill" mean more or less than "dangerously ill"?  So
strenuously did she try, in her suspense, to wrest from the word its
inmost, finest shade of meaning, that after a while it ceased to mean
anything; it became a dead sound.

They had made her send for Josie to come home from his law school.
That looked serious (for Joe).  The conventional phrases would
persist in her mind, though her deeply ingrained honesty forced her
to modify to herself their significance.  She was conscious of a
mental effort to resist transposing them to mean what it shocked and
appalled her to have them mean; to think "hopeful" when she meant (or
ought to have meant) "serious", "promising" for "dangerous"!

For nearly seventeen years she had been Joe Houghton's wife; and now
perhaps he was dying.  Here was she at his bedside, in a
chintz-covered armchair beside a great old, carved, mahogany
four-posted bed in a beautiful and luxurious chamber, watching by a
dim light her husband's distorted, unconscious face, her soul on fire
with hope (yes, _hope_!) as she had not believed it capable of
becoming ever again.  If the doctor and nurse could see into her mind
and heart, surely they would think it unsafe to leave her alone with
their patient!

How her heart had sunk with bitter disappointment when, coming into
the sick room a few hours earlier to relieve the nurse and take her
place, she had been told, "Your husband is doing much better than I
had hoped, Mrs. Houghton; I think, now, that he may, perhaps, pull
through.  But keep a very close watch, and at the least return of his
delirium, please call me at once."

"I will," Susan had promised, with an emphasis meant not so much to
reassure the nurse as to combat the secret blackness in her heart!
It would be only her body, not her soul, that would keep that promise!

"Oh, God, how I want to be _free_!"

The vista opened up before her by that word!  She seemed only now to
realize what misery her life with Joe had been during all these
years!  The prospect of release forever from the sound of his
complaining, carping voice, from the sight of his mean little face,
from his hated touch----

She would go mad if he got well!

She had not known until now what a living death had been hers--now
that escape from its nightmare seemed a possibility.

She was thirty-nine years old; but the bare thought of freedom made
her feel like a girl.  She was afraid of herself.  Afraid of being
left alone here in this room with the responsibility on her hands of
a life which she did not wish to be saved!  Every drop of blood in
her body throbbed with longing that he should die!  It would be too
cruel if, after bringing her to the very brink of freedom like this,
he should get well!

"I want him to die!"

The refrain beat in her brain like a hammer.  "Oh, God, let him die!"

With utter wonder she contemplated this unsuspected self she was
discovering.  Was she, perhaps, capable of helping him out?  Oh, no,
no!  Surely no!  And yet, was this violent revulsion of feeling at
the thought of such a deed really a genuine horror of crime, or
merely cowardice?

"What is it that would hold me back when I so much want him to go?"
she wondered, feeling bewildered as she recognized what unsounded
depths there were in her.  "We don't know ourselves!  What does any
one really know of his own heart, the true motives under his life?
Perhaps it is only the inhibitions of my training that keep me from
being a murderer!"

She knew that the degradation of such a marriage as hers had worked
in her its insidious poison, in spite of her valiant efforts to hold
her soul high above and aloof from her hated relation to Joe.

She thought, "No one has ever cared for him except his son.  If he
had been loved in his childhood and treated with some justice,
perhaps he would not have been the man he has been.  And if he had
married a woman who could have loved him, it might have changed him a
little."

Yet so faithfully had she paid the price of her foolish marriage that
she doubted whether Joe had ever been aware that, far from caring for
him, she had loathed him.  No, he had certainly never suspected it.
She had concealed her loathing.  She had lived a lie.

During the long hours of her vigil at his bedside she thought back
over the past five years: of her own increasing isolation from the
sort of people she would have liked to make her friends, but from
whom her marriage cut her off absolutely; of her ever-growing
submission to the will of her husband and his son; of Josie's
surprisingly selfish dominance, as he grew older, over both his
father and her (the boy really dominated her more than his father had
ever done); of the peculiarly tender and confidential friendship
which had come to exist between her and Georgie; of Sidney's
widowerhood; of the sudden death, from appendicitis, of her only
intimate friend, Eleanor Arnold.

Her mind reverted to some incidents which were among the ineffaceable
records on her heart.  There was one in particular--Sidney's having
one day watched for an opportunity when Joe had gone to Middleburg,
to come to her and beg her to secure some money from Joe for him.

"But why should I?"  She had met his extraordinary request with an
astonishment that had deeply shamed and embarrassed him.

"I am so completely out of money," he had pleaded.  "And Joe refuses
to lend me another dollar!"

"That's not surprising, seeing you are already in debt to him to the
sum of three more years' rent of this place."

"I know it.  But he doesn't spend his money himself, nor let you
spend it, and what's the good of just hoarding it?  He might as well
let me have a little.  You can persuade him to, Susan, if you only
will."

"Why should I?"

"Susan!  For the sake of what we once were to each other, can't you
have a little pity?  I'm terribly in need!"

"Did you have pity on me in much greater need?"

"I did not!  And haven't I been punished for it?" he had said with
such genuine bitterness that she had been startled.

"It's I, not you, that have borne all the penalty of our folly!" she
had answered.  "It's unbelievable that you should appeal to _me_ for
help!"

"I've suffered in ways you don't know of!" he had exclaimed,
desperately.  "Do not dream, Susan, that I have not had to pay for my
treatment of you--in ways you cannot imagine.  If I had not, it
_would_ be unbelievable that I should come pleading to you to help
me.  But I do ask you--I beg you--to get me some help from my
brother!"

"I could not even if I wished to."

"Joe worships you; he'd do anything for you.  Any man would!"

"Except you!  _You_ would not even keep your sacred promises to me;
you would not save me from disgrace and anguish; you would not make
my child legitimate; or be at my side when I was suffering and nearly
dying for love of you!  _You_ to ask help from me!"

"You see me impoverished, stricken!  Can't you forgive me, Susan?"

"I wouldn't dream of asking Joe to loan you any more money.  Why
don't you get to work, Sidney, and earn your living?"

"If I had not inherited a fortune, I might now be a successful
lawyer," Sidney had answered, resentfully.  "I had no incentive to
work after I was rich.  And now it's too late.  I'm too old."

"You could dig coal or clean streets.  I should think it might be
easier for you than begging favours from me."

Then to her horror (horror before the moral deterioration of this man
she had once cared for) Sidney had threatened her; threatened to
expose all their past history to Joe if she refused to secure money
from her husband for her girlhood's lover!  Evidently he thought he
had a weapon which he could flourish over her head to terrify her!
It seemed incredible.

"I've been many kinds of a coward in my time," she had answered him,
"but this kind I happen to be incapable of becoming.  I'm not afraid
of anything that you (or Joe, either) can do to me more than what you
have already done.  And I shall never ask your brother for a dollar
for you.  Now do what you please."

Then he had produced his last and what he had considered his weakest
card, to force her hand.

"I'm not quite so base as you think me, Susan.  It's not for myself
that I am humiliating myself like this; it's for my boy.  You know
that, poor as I have been in the past five years, I have always
managed, whatever my own need for money, to save enough out of what
Joe has let me have in rent to keep Georgie at school and college.
He has not missed one year--you know he hasn't.  I'm now for the
first time up against it, to pay for this second half year's board
and tuition for him.  _That's_ why I'm asking for help.  I tell you I
would not ask for myself.  It's for my son, whose inheritance,"
Sidney miserably admitted, "I've squandered!"

To Sidney's surprise, this plea, which he had considered his weakest,
proved to be his only strong one.  He had known, of course, that
Susan and Georgie were very great friends; but no one of the three,
not even Susan herself, had realized how vitally her soul was knit to
the soul of Sidney's boy.

"We can't let Georgie's education suffer," she had answered with an
anxious concern that had gripped Sidney's heart with mingled pain and
relief.  "There's not the least use, you know, in my asking Joe to
help either you or Georgie.  The truth is Joe is dreadfully
disappointed that in spite of all your misfortunes and extravagances,
you've succeeded in educating Georgie.  He hoped you would be driven
to putting him to work as _he_ was put to work when he was a boy.  He
wanted Georgie to suffer all the handicaps that he had suffered
because of his homelessness in his childhood.  No, nothing I could
say would move Joe to help us here."

She had pondered the matter earnestly.

"There's one way I might raise some money for Georgie; there's the
silver you sent us for a wedding gift.  I have never touched it.  I
can sell it."

Sidney had regarded her doubtfully, a shade of fear in his tired
eyes.  "Susan!  Why are you willing to do for Georgie what you
wouldn't do for me?" he had asked in a low voice.

"I love Georgie--he is worth doing things for.  You are nothing to
me."

The silver had been sold and Joe had never, as yet, missed it.  For
the past three years she had been dreading, with a shrinking of her
very flesh, the violent anger he would vent upon her when the
inevitable discovery did take place.

And now perhaps it never would take place.  Here lay Joe before her,
more helpless than an infant, and it was possible that never would he
rally to pour out upon her his hot rage at her having sold five
hundred dollars' worth of silver to help his hated nephew.

She drew a long, deep, almost gasping breath.  Would Joe get well and
would she have to go on living under that eternal vigilance of her
every act, that petty nagging at her for "wasting" her husband's
precious substance; that sordid slavery to the material side of life
which made existence so hideous!  At the thought of it the pent-up
misery of years seemed to break its bounds; she bowed her head upon
the arm of her chair and tearing sobs shook her.  It would be too
unbearable--she saw now how unbearable it always had been!  She would
_not_ bear it!  If he got well, she would leave him.  No matter how
he might plead with her!  No matter what sort of work she might have
to do for a living, she would leave him!

"Susie!"

So faintly her name was spoken, she heard it like a far-away whisper.
Her heart stood still.  What had the nurse instructed her?--"At the
least return of his delirium, call me at once."  She must not fail to
obey implicitly.  Her very soul's salvation hung upon her absolute
obedience.

She lifted her head and looked at Joe.  His eyes, clear and natural,
met hers.

"Susie!  Are you cryin' fur _me_?" he whispered; his voice, though
feeble, was steady and entirely free from the hoarse raving of the
past four days.

Then she need not summon the nurse--he was not "delirious".

He would get well!

"Susie!" came the faint, far-away call.

He was so ill and weak--she must be very kind to him until he was
stronger--as he had always been to her when she had been ill.

When he was quite well again she would go away and leave him forever!

She bent nearer to him and laid her hand softly on his.

"You was cryin' fur me, Susie?"

She nodded dumbly.

"You've made me a good wife, Susie--and you've been as good a mother
to Josie as you otherwise could be.  I want you to pass me your
promise, Susie----"

He spoke with difficulty, in halting phrases, his breath rasping,
laboured.

"I didn't expec' to die as young as what I am--only a little over
fifty.  What's fifty?  Why, it's the prime of life yet!--I worked
hard and saved and now I got to go and _let_ it all!  I done it fur
Josie.  But I never made no will, fur I didn't think I'd be dyin'
till this good while a'ready!--and it's too late now fur me to make
my will--I ain't got the strength to fix things like I was a-goin'
to.  I'll have to trust to your promise, Susie, fur to do like what I
want you to with my money--fur you'll get your widow's third now,
_whether_ or no.  The law'll give it to you.  Now, Susie, I want fur
you to promise me you won't squander it, but save it careful fur
Josie and his childern.  You won't need to spend near all the
int'rust you'll draw from your capital; you kin turn back a good bit
of your int'rust to be added on to your principal, so's Josie'll have
more when you die oncet.  I want fur Josie to be rich and powerful
and grand like what Uncle George was.  Pass--me--your promise,
Susan," he spoke with a great effort, "that you won't spend any of my
money on them sisters of yourn.  It wouldn't be right--your
squanderin' _my_ money on _your_ folks--you kin see fur yourself it
wouldn't.  What's mine had ought all to go to Josie.  Ain't so?  I
earnt and saved a lot of it--all but what Uncle George inherited to
me and I near doubled _that_.  And Josie's to have all.  You kin live
on a wery little of your int'rust, Susan," he insisted, struggling
desperately with his weakness.  "Promise you will!"

"Trust me, Joe, to do what is right for Josie."

"I know you will--you was always a good mother to him.  But I have so
afraid you'll want to spend on them sisters!  _Don't forget!_  What
you don't have to use _is for Josie_!" he reiterated with all the
force his failing strength could gather.

"What I don't have to use--yes, I understand," she reassured him.

"And you ain't to will it to any one but Josie!  Promise!"

"I am not to will it to any one but Josie."

"I couldn't rest in my grave if you did!  If I'd foreseen I was
a-goin' to die, I'd of _fixed_ things!  And now I can't no more!"

"Josie shall have everything that by rights is his, Joe," Susan
comforted him.

"Call Josie!  I'm a-goin' fast!"

She rose quickly to summon both the nurse and her step-son.

Joe waved away the nurse.  "Don't _you_ come takin' up my time--it's
too short!  I want my son and my wife!  Josie!"

His son, sincerely grieved, bent over him, pale and tearful.

"Your mother's gave me her promise, Josie, that she'll will you her
widow's third of my estate and that she'll save back fur you all she
kin of her int'rust.  She's passed me her promise--you hold her to
it!"

"If she has promised, Father," said Josie, soothingly, "you don't
need to worry.  I won't have to hold her to it.  Mother'll keep her
promise."

Susan vaguely reflected how subtle Josie always was when it was a
question of protecting his own interests; his challenging her honour,
just now, to keep that questionable promise she had equivocally
made!--a promise capable of such varied interpretation!

"You'll know how to take care of your rights, ain't, Josie?" his
father breathed, his ruling passion strong in death.  "Don't leave
Susan give away nothing to her sisters that's by rights _yourn_!
Ain't, you won't?"

"She wouldn't want to, Father.  There, there, don't worry about it;
everything will be as you wish it to be; I promise you!"

"Susan would be a spendthrift if you left her be!" his father warned
him.

"She has promised you, Father--that's enough."

Joe breathed a long sigh of utter exhaustion.  "Leave me rest now,"
he murmured.

His eyes closed, his head sank deeper into the pillow.

It seemed but a few moments later, as they stood grouped about him,
the nurse a little apart, when his wheezy breathing stopped suddenly.
His jaw fell open.

The nurse came forward.  "It's all over!" she whispered with
conventional solemnity.

It was not until the nurse had, with professional mournfulness, drawn
the sheet over Joe's stiffened face, and Susan felt Josie, at her
side, shudder and tremble, that she could believe it.

Joe was dead!

She couldn't grasp it.  A cold terror gripped her lest it was only a
dream; lest she presently awake to find him still nagging, spying,
carping, sulking, holding tight his purse strings.

Joe was dead!

Yet as she went forth from the presence of the dead she was conscious
of a great pity for the man she was forever leaving, pity because
she, his wife, should be feeling just now not grief, but only a
boundless peace and contentment; like one who, having for seventeen
years been bound and gagged, had now suddenly struck off her bonds.

But Josie, walking after her, felt a new responsibility upon his
shoulders--the responsibility of seeing to it that his father's dying
wish be fulfilled.  He had been constituted his mother's keeper.  He
would faithfully execute his trust.

Josie had never been told that Susan was not his own mother.




CHAPTER XV

A WIDOW

Josie was shocked and even hurt at the irresponsible gayety with
which his mother bore her bereavement.

He thought with bitterness, "All she cares about, I guess, is that
now she'll have some money of her own to spend--_my_ money!"

For of course every dollar his mother spent would take off just that
much from _his_ ultimate inheritance.  He was worried.  He knew that
his father had never allowed her any freedom in spending money--women
were such spendthrifts!  And here she was now, suddenly turned loose
with absolute right (except for the restraint of that death-bed
promise) over a great fortune!  He could conceive of no other
explanation of her unaccustomed brightness and joy.  For though an
intelligent youth, his perceptions were keen rather than fine; he
lacked the sensitiveness which feels atmospheres and another's point
of view.

It was a singular fact that Josie, though a graduate of a first-class
college where he had really seen life, had never seemed to become
aware of his father's extreme crudity.  His familiarity with it,
together with his genuine affection for his father, had mercifully
kept him from seeing Joe as others saw him.  Thanks to the unselfish
tact with which Susan had always maintained domestic peace, he had
never realized the tragic incompatibility between his parents.  Hence
his complete mystification at Susan's present offensive attitude;
offensive, that is, to him.

Her refusal to wear black had outraged his middle-class sense of
propriety; but her lack of even a pretence of a decently sorrowful
demeanour--in public before their very neighbours!--made him more
deeply ashamed of her than he had ever in his life been of his father.

"Didn't you care for Father at _all_, Mother?" he one day broke out
after witnessing the gay encounter between Susan and Georgie, who had
run over to the big house to greet her five minutes after his arrival
at the cottage for the Christmas holidays.

Susan's radiant face grew sober at the question.  She looked at Josie
uncertainly.  She would never be able to make him understand.  She
never had made him understand anything in her heart; while Georgie
seemed to realize, without being told, everything about her.  _He_
knew what a release was hers; what a chattel she had been; though she
had never talked to him of herself.

How should she answer her step-son?  Wasn't it better to be done with
pretence and speak the truth, even if it were not understood?

"Try to think a bit, Josie--how could a woman like me have cared for
a man like your father?  Your father was so far beneath me that he
could not hear the sound of my voice when I spoke!"

Susan felt herself tingle with a strange delight in speaking out at
last the truth from her heart.

"That's a fine way for you to talk to me of my own father!  For a
wife to talk of her husband just dead a month!  Father loved _you_!"

"I know he did, so he had the better of it, you see, for I never let
him see how much I _didn't_ love _him_."

"Why did you marry a man you considered so far beneath you?  If you
ever _were_ so far above Father, as you seem to think yourself, you
certainly must admit that you sank to his level by marrying him!  Why
did you do it?"

"One of the strongest reasons was----"

She almost said, "My longing to mother you!"

She checked herself in time.  Not yet was she ready to tell him she
was not his own mother.  She knew instinctively that however much
recreation Josie found in bullying her he did truly love her so much
that the discovery that he was not hers would deal him a blow far
deeper than that which his father's sudden death had given him.

"I can only tell you this, Josie--my reasons were unselfish.  I have
paid dear for the lesson that a woman had better cut her throat than
marry a man she--despises."  She used the word deliberately.  It was
such joy to call a spade a spade!  "All the same, Josie, I am sure
that my marriage harmed no one but myself; and did a few people some
good, perhaps.  But the past seems such an awful nightmare to me that
I don't want to speak of it, to think of it, any more!  Only--it may
as well be understood between you and me that your father's death is
to me a blessed release!  Now let us forever drop the subject!"


Josie had always been intensely jealous of Georgie, not only as the
rival heir to White Oak Farm, but because of the good comradeship
that existed between his mother and his cousin.  His mother was his
exclusive possession, and no other boy had a right to any least part
of her consideration.  He hotly resented every friendly look or word
that passed between them.

A third cause of his jealousy was Georgie's superior talents.  He was
already, at the age of nineteen, in the graduating class of a school
of civil engineers and had manifested precocious and distinguished
ability.  His professors predicted that he would some day do
something very big.

There were times when Susan saw, to her sorrow, that Josie's aversion
to Georgie almost equalled the venom his father had always felt for
Sidney.

Joe had died at the end of November, and it was the following spring,
while Josie was home from his Jaw school for the Easter vacation,
that the first real conflict between him and his mother occurred.

The habit of not spending money had become so fixed with Susan that
when informed by her deceased husband's lawyer that she possessed
three hundred thousand dollars, with no strings attached to it, to
spend it and will it away as she liked, the fact left her rather
uncomprehending.  She was still vaguely under the spell of her
husband's last injunctions, enjoining her to remember that she held
his money only in trust for his son, the real heir, and that she must
be most conscientiously economical.

So, upon Josie's return home at Easter, he was relieved to find no
change in the old order of their life; no extra servants, no
extravagant clothes, no new car.

Evidently she was taking her promises to his dying father very
seriously.  He had not really expected her to do otherwise; yet he
found himself feeling greatly relieved.

But when, after the habit of his father, he prowled about the house
to catch her up, perhaps, in some secret sin, he discovered in her
bedroom--not hidden, but brazenly displayed in a new
bookcase--several dozens of new, expensive volumes, poetry, essays,
travels, fiction, economics, philosophy, he felt greatly annoyed.
She had never bought books while his father lived; why should she
find it necessary now?

"You could get enough books to satisfy any reasonable person at the
Middleburg library, I should think, Mother.  I don't see why you have
to squander good money on books.  It's certainly not being very
economical with my money!"

How like old times it sounded to Susan!--except that it was couched
in grammatical English.  For four restful, heavenly months her ears
had not once been rasped with the menace of that hateful word,
"economical".  Was it only a lovely dream?  Was Josie going to take
his father's place and nag at her, hamper her at every turn?  She had
so revelled in the luxury of buying books quite recklessly, for the
first time in her life!  It had been her only orgy since her freedom,
except----

Must Josie be told just how she used every dollar of the money which
the family lawyer was paying over to her?  He was quite as penurious
as his father had been--was she, then, going to have to account to
him for every least little indulgence?

She did not even question his _ipse dixit_, "My money."  Joe's money
was of course his son's.  When every now and then during his vacation
a question of her expenditures came up, she always accepted quite
placidly and as a matter of course his ultimatum, "That would be an
unnecessary expense.  I can't consent to it."

She told him that it was so lonely at White Oak Farm when he was
away, and that the place involved so much more household work than
seemed worth while for one person, that she thought it might be an
economy of labour (as well as of coal) for them to take an apartment
in Middleburg and sublet White Oak Farm.

But Josie would not consider it.  Inasmuch as a desirable tenant
could not readily be found, it was much more economical for them to
remain on the farm.

"Especially as we don't have to pay Uncle Sidney nearly as much rent
as we would have to pay for an apartment--seeing he still owes the
estate money.  What's more, it is only by living out here at White
Oak Farm that we shall ever get out of Uncle Sidney the money he owes
us."

"But we don't need to get it back, Josie; we've plenty to be
comfortable with; so why sacrifice ourselves for a house--or a debt?"

"You've no business sense, Mother," was Josie's conclusive reply.  "I
would not consider moving away from here."

But it was not only in the matter of her use of money that Josie
tyrannized.  Georgie, too, was home just now for the Easter vacation;
and during the whole two weeks of the two boys' sojourn at the farm
Susan was never free for an hour from her sense of Josie's incessant
spying upon her to intercept a tête-à-tête between her and Georgie.

She observed that this seemed to trouble Georgie very little.  He had
a way (most irritating to Josie) of ignoring the latter's slights,
because the obvious fact was that he minded them no more than he
would have minded the snarling of a cur.  But the crowning offence to
Josie, which made him almost hysterical with anger, was the utter
failure of his own inimical attitude toward his cousin to put any
restraint whatever upon the spontaneity of Georgie's intercourse with
his "Aunt Susan".

"Any one would suppose you were more his mother than mine!" Josie
would complain to Susan, like a jealous child.  "What right has he
coming round here to monopolize you, Mother?  I'm only here for two
weeks and I want you to myself a _little_ bit!  He's always hanging
'round here as if the place were already his--and as if you were his!"

Susan had long since, in sheer self-defence, fallen into the way of
curbing any expression of affection for Georgie when Josie was by.

"Why can't he stay at home with his father?  _I_ haven't any father!
I haven't any one but you.  And he, who has a father, wants my mother
as well, so that I'll have no one!"

Josie, who in some respects would never be a grown man, seemed to
regard his orphaned condition as a claim to such honorable martyrdom
as to entitle him to unlimited sympathy, indulgence, petting; just
as, in his childhood, he had made large capital of his little
illnesses, prolonging his convalescence and its attendant relaxation
of discipline as long as he possibly could.

"Do you realize, Mother," Josie pursued the discussion, "that if
Uncle Sidney should die (and he's miserable enough to die any old
time) my cousin George could turn you and me off this place?"

"Yes, Josie."

"If he has any honour about him he won't repudiate his father's debts
to my father!" Josie hotly maintained.  "He'll let us live on here
until the last dollar of that debt is wiped out!"

"I don't see why George should burden his young life with his
father's debts, my dear."

"Oh, you don't, don't you?  Do you realize that if Uncle Sidney does
not pay back what he borrowed from Father, _I'm_ the loser?  You'd
take from me, your own son, and give to a boy that's no relation to
you!"

"Georgie has lost enough through his father--without assuming his
debts!"

"All your sympathy is for Georgie, of course!  Why don't you give
_me_ some sympathy for all I'd lose?  A pretty mother you are, I must
say!"

"It isn't as though you needed this place; you'll have so much more
than you will need!--more than any one ought to have!  The whole
scheme seems horribly wrong to me.  You two young men have no social
right to great wealth for which you have not worked--you nearly a
million dollars and Georgie this great estate!  It ought not to be
allowed.  Something ought to be done about it!"

"You know perfectly well there's no use your talking that kind of rot
to me, Mother!"

"Yes, I do know that perfectly well, Josie, dear!" Susan sighed.
"More's the pity!"

Josie just here experienced one of his sudden revulsions to
demonstrative affection.  "You're my little mother, so you are!" he
exclaimed, rushing at her and burying his head on her bosom, kissing
her roughly, rapturously, fondling her, insisting upon her fondling
him, cooing over her incoherent love phrases.

She submitted, half appeased, half bored, marvelling at the boy's
morbid nature, responding as warmly as she could.


Ever since Joe's death Susan had rioted in the delight, so long
denied her, of doing little kindnesses for her aging sisters.  She
did not dream of using Joe's money in any large expenditures for
them, but she constantly carried dainties to them, bought them
trifling gifts, took them driving in her little car, insisted upon
getting their laundry every week and having it done at White Oak Farm
by her laundress, called for them every Sunday and took them out to
her home to dinner.

It was this latter item which precipitated a discussion between her
and Josie that led to far-reaching results.

"It seems to me you go gadding an awful lot, Mother," Josie grumbled
when on Sunday morning she announced her intention of driving over to
Reifsville.  "You didn't squander gasoline so recklessly while Father
lived!"

"The word gasoline, Josie, will ever bring up to me bright and tender
memories of your father!"

"Your sarcasm doesn't cover your taking advantage!"

"Of whom?"

"Of poor Father--who you say you did not love!" he irrelevantly
accused her.

"_Whom_ you did not love--not _who_," she automatically corrected
him--then laughed at herself involuntarily, and so merrily that
Josie, whose heart still mourned, winced perceptibly.

"What do you want to go to Reifsville for?" he inquired.  "You were
there just the other day."

"I'm going to bring your aunts over to dine with us."

"Huh!  You've been doing that a lot, I guess, while I've been
away--since Father's gone!  You didn't do it when he was living."

"Do you think that's to his credit--that I did not invite my sisters
here while he lived?"

"Don't fling gibes at my father, Mother!  I won't stand for it!"

"'Fling gibes.'  It sounds Shaksperean!  'Whips and arrows of
outrageous fortune'--come, dear boy, please don't be an ass!"

"'An ass!'  I never hear you call George an ass!"

"Josie, aren't you ever going to grow out of your infancy?" she asked
with a long-drawn breath as turned away and left him.

This tilt with Josie rankled in her heart all the way over to
Reifsville, preparing a fertile soil for the comments which her
sisters let drop, from time to time, on the ride back.  The
Reifsville school would close in a month, they told Susan, and they
would miss the needed board money which the teacher paid them, though
they would be glad to be relieved of the extra work he made, even
though a man teacher wasn't nearly so much trouble as a woman teacher
had always been.  They hoped they could get one or two summer
boarders, if they could stand the work it would entail--they were not
so strong as they used to be--they were really getting to be old
women, now, "funny" as it seemed!  And yet, how they were going to
live at all without taking summer boarders as they had been doing for
the past few years----

"I have so glad for you, Susie, that you'll never have to worry about
money in your old age, nor have to work beyond your strength.  Joe's
left you that well-fixed, you can take it easy; ain't?  It's a good
thing he died too soon to get a will made a'ready, or mebby he'd of
tied up his money so's you couldn't of had no freedom with it.  But
now that the law has gave you your widow's thirds, to do what you
please with, you're _well_-fixed.  Ain't?"

"To do what I please with?"

"Why, to be sure!  You can even will it away from Josie if you want."

"Do you mind, Susie," asked Addie, "how oncet you was a-goin' to
leave Joe and run off?  _Ain't_, it's a good thing, now, you stuck!
Look how nice-fixed you are--and a widdah and all!--and your own
boss."

"My 'own boss'!" repeated Susan, vaguely.

"The _County Gazette_ says you are got an income of more than
eighteen thousand dollars a year, Susan!  Yi, yi, it wonders me!  Is
it so, Susie?"

"I--I--suppose it is.  Yes, I really do have that income.  Dear me!
I had not realized it, Addie!  I've thought of it as really belonging
to Josie.  Of course by rights it is Josie's."

"Josie's nothin'!" exclaimed Lizzie.  "Sure you earnt everything Joe
Houghton inherited to you, Susie!--the way you worked fur him when he
could of hired for you; and you so good-educated and not used to hard
work!  And the way you brang up his son for him!  That boy would not
be the mannerly, genteel young man he kin be (when he wants to) if it
hadn't of been for you, Susie.  Yes, indeedy, you earnt all you got!"

"Well, I guess anyhow!" Addie corroborated this statement.  "Don't
you go thinkin' it ain't every cent of it yourn, Susie, to do what
you like with!"

"Please don't speak of it before Josie," Susan warned them, hastily,
as they drew up under the porte-cochère at White Oak Farm.

Josie's manner to his aunts that day aped so perfectly the
inhospitable attitude his father had always taken toward them on
their very occasional visits to White Oak Farm--the curtness with
which Joe had been wont to answer their friendly or propitiatory
overtures; his sullen and prolonged silences; his actual
rudeness--that Susan was conscious of a shade of amusement
conflicting with her mingled indignation and sorrow.  She and her
sisters had been, for the past four months, so greatly enjoying their
restful, happy Sundays together, freed from Joe's kill-joy presence,
that they all felt keenly this return to the old wretched atmosphere.

While the painfully embarrassing dinner was in progress Susan thought
back over the unfailing kindnesses and generosity of her sisters to
her step-son, through all his childhood and youth; of how he used to
love to be taken to the Reifsville cottage for the animal cookies the
"aunties" would bake for him; the "sticker" baskets they would
patiently construct for him, and the chicken-coops and pig-pens they
would build out of clothes pins; the little birthday and Christmas
feasts and gifts they always managed to have for him, no matter how
poor they found themselves.

How could Josie feel toward them, now, as he seemed to?

"Ain't these here oranges sweet, though?" Lizzie remarked as she
tasted the "fruit hash" they had for dessert.  "It gives an awful
good taste.  I have so fond for oranges and we don't never buy none
no more--me and Addie--they come too high.  They want eighty cents a
dozen now, on the store, for oranges.  Ain't, Addie?"

"Yes, anyhow!" said Addie.

"We get them for nothing," began Susan, "from Joe's Florida orange
grove.  We get----"

Josie interrupted her.  "For nothing!  I don't call it for nothing!
We have to pay the freight, don't we?  And the taxes and the labour,
don't we?  For nothing!  That's just like a woman!"

"We've got so many more than we can use," said Susan, "you must take
a basket full home with you, Lizzie."

"We haven't more than we can use!" Josie quickly contradicted her.
"You can make me a lot of orange marmalade, Mother.  You know how I
love orange marmalade."

"I've already made you all the orange marmalade you can eat in a
year, Josie."

"Well, we can find plenty of use for all the oranges we have," he
persisted.

"You mustn't give us what you can't spare, Susie," Lizzie protested,
flushing sensitively.

"Of course I can spare them.  We have two big boxes of them in the
storage room."

Josie, looking annoyed and offended, frowned into his coffee cup.
But he said no more.

After dinner he neither left the women to themselves nor did he join
them as they sat about the log fire in the parlour; but settling
himself unsociably at the extreme other end of the room, he buried
himself in a book.

The constraint which his inimical presence put upon their
conversation, and the chilled atmosphere it created, drove Lizzie and
Addie to make an early start for home.

At the first suggestion of their departure Josie laid down his book
and sauntered toward them.

"You're going to catch the four o'clock trolley?" he asked as they
rose to don their Mennonite black hoods and shawls.

Susan had gone to the storeroom to get the oranges.

"Why--we--Susie generally fetches us in her automobile--but----"

"It seems hardly worth while to bother taking out the automobile when
the trolley is so handy," said Josie.

"We'll have the heavy basket of oranges, though," said Lizzie,
hesitatingly, reluctant to lose their always greatly enjoyed ride
with Susan.

"But I've had Mother to myself so little this vacation!  I'd rather
she didn't go away over to Reifsville this afternoon and leave me
here all alone!" objected Josie, plaintively.

"Why, have you got the stomachache or whatever, Josie?" inquired
Addie, solicitously.

"Don't you think I want my mother to myself sometimes?  Georgie's had
her this vacation nearly as much as I've had her!"

Lizzie and Addie exchanged hasty, scared glances.

"And," continued Josie, "gasoline's gone up so, and there's the toll
both ways between Reifsville and White Oak Station.  Do you know what
a trip to Reifsville really costs in toll and gas and wear and tear
on your car?  It averages twelve cents a mile!  Fact!  Much more
expensive, you see, than to go by trolley or train."

"But, you see, Josie, me and Addie, us we couldn't afford to visit
our Susie if she didn't fetch and take us; for we couldn't afford the
twenty-five cents trolley fare."

"Then Mother would better give you the trolley fare; it would be much
cheaper for her.  I'm thinking of selling our car, anyhow."

The sisters, without replying, continued to bundle up in their hoods
and shawls and overshoes.

But Susan, upon returning to the parlour, refused to consider letting
them go home by trolley.

"We all enjoy the automobile ride," she said.  "And there's this
heavy basket."

"Heavy!  I should say it is heavy!" exclaimed Josie as he lifted it
tentatively and set it down again.  "What on earth have you got in
it?"

"All it will hold of the good things your aunts are fond of," Susan
briefly answered.

"Make the load lighter so they _can_ carry it.  I don't want you to
take the car so far again to-day, Mother."

"Please carry the basket out to the car for us, Josie," Susan coldly
requested him.

"But, Mother, I don't want the car used so hard!  You use it much too
hard.  Aunties can just as well take the trolley home, and----"

"Carry the basket out for me, please," she cut him short.

Josie obeyed so ungraciously that the sisters looked mortified and
worried, and Susan's face took on the weary, drawn expression that it
had quite lost during the past four months.

No reference was made, during the ride over to Reifsville, to the
unpleasantnesses of the visit, though the sisters were sad at heart
in realizing afresh how "mean-dispositioned" Susan's step-son was and
how unappreciative and ungrateful he seemed for all she had always
been to him.

On the way back Susan drove slowly to give herself time to think.
And her thinking covered a considerable area, ranging from the vague,
only half-realized "promises" (if such they had really been) with
which she had tried to comfort Joe's last moments on earth, to the
chance words her sisters had dropped that morning--"The law has given
you your widow's thirds _to do what you please with_." "An income of
over eighteen thousand dollars a year."  "You surely _earned_
everything Joe left you!"

That was the crux of the whole matter!  Was she, indeed, by virtue of
her seventeen years of service in Joe's interests, morally entitled,
as she was legally, to full freedom in the use and disposal of her
"widow's third" of her husband's estate?  Legally she owed no
accounting to Josie or any one else----

There was no question in her mind of her being bound by her last
words to her husband; she had spoken them only to soothe him and had
not realized their full significance.  She did not feel herself held
by them in the least.  She was not at all sure that she had really
made any definite promises.

"But even if I did and had meant them, a bad promise is better broken
than kept."

The only possible question she had to decide was the extent of
Josie's moral right over the property that had been his father's.

She remembered that Sidney had once told her that if he had not
inherited his uncle's fortune, but had had to work for his living, he
might not have been the wreck he was.

"Why, even if I didn't want this money (and God knows I do!) I would
be doing the worst possible harm to Josie by saving it for
him--pampering his horrible selfishness and stinginess!  The best
service I can do him is to _spend it up_!"

In a flash she began to see what the command of such an income might
mean to her.  And suddenly she gave herself over to lovely dreams of
all the things she could do with it.  The first thing she would want
to do would be to buy Georgie the new suit he so badly needed and
some chemicals and tools he had told her he lacked for carrying out a
daring experiment he had in his head.

The next thing she would love to do would be to settle a comfortable
income--a very comfortable one--upon her sisters.  Oh, heavenly joy!
What a lovely thing money could be!  To be able to tell Addie and
Lizzie that never more need their "declining years" be fretted and
harassed with anxious cares about the wherewithal to live, never more
need they labour beyond their strength or be worried with boarders or
frightened at the expense of illness or the creeping ravages of old
age.

After that, she would like to buy a really good automobile; she
mentally apologized to her faithful little old car which had so often
carried her far away from the strained and cramping atmosphere of her
home, out into the fresh air and sunshine, and had recreated her.

Next thing, how she would dearly love to go to some fearfully
expensive New York shops and buy some real clothes!

By the time she reached home, the weary, care-worn countenance with
which she had started out was replaced by a radiance which made her
look so very girlish that Josie, coming into the hall to greet her,
prepared with a recitation of his several reasons for being highly
offended with her, was startled and surprised.

In a moment, however, he recovered his sense of wrong at her hands,
with several points added to the score.  What right had she coming in
like a breeze, with rosy cheeks and smiling lips and sparkling eyes,
looking so provokingly kissable?--when all day long she had been
going against his wishes, neglecting him, her fatherless son, giving
her time and his substance to outsiders.

He had expected her to return to him apologetic, remorseful,
troubled, anxious to propitiate him!  And just look at her!

He began at once to reproach her for that huge basketful of food that
had been given away.

"You never gave away our provisions like that when Father lived, so
why should you do it now, Mother?  You wouldn't even tell me what was
in that basket.  Goodness knows what mightn't have been in it!  What
_was_ in it?"

"Josie, darling, will you kindly mind your own business?" she gaily
retorted, to his utter consternation, tripping up the wide, winding
staircase as lightly as a child.

The next moment he heard her bedroom door close with a snap.

He stood dumbfounded.  _She_ was offended with _him_!  After the way
she had treated him all day!  What had _she_ to be offended about,
he'd like to know!

Never, from his babyhood up, had he been able to endure having her
offended with him.

He set his lips tight, walked firmly upstairs to her bedroom door,
and rapped peremptorily.




CHAPTER XVI

SUSAN REALIZES HER FREEDOM

She was propped up on a couch in a deep bay window, reading a novel.

Josie jerked a chair to the side of the couch and sat down, facing
her.

"Mother!" he demanded, his voice unsteady, actual tears in his eyes,
"don't you love _me_ any better than you loved Father?"

"When you are lovable, Josie, I love you," she answered gently,
drawing his hand into hers.

"You call it being 'unlovable,' I suppose, when I object to your
doing what you would not do if Father were alive!"

"I'm not such an idiot as to let my life be hampered and thwarted and
dwarfed by the will of a dead man!  It was bad enough to have to
submit to the will of a live one!"

"You can't mean that you don't intend to keep the promises you made
to Father when he was dying!" exclaimed Josie, both shocked and
alarmed; for if he could not hold over her the solemn obligations of
those death-bed promises, how could he ever restrain her reckless
inclinations to give away the money that ought to be hoarded for him?

"I'm not sure I made him any promises," she answered, indifferently.
"I said anything, at the moment, that I thought would soothe and
comfort him.  I would have promised to fly to Mars if he had asked me
to.  I'd promise any dying person anything at all that I knew would
please them.  But my life is my own now, thank God!  It's no longer
Joe Houghton's to use and crush and distort!--as it was for seventeen
years!"

Josie looked white and shaken.  "Well, then, if you have no respect
for a solemn promise given to the dying, will you at least have
enough regard for _my interests_ to restrain your inclination to
shower all sorts of luxuries upon Aunt Addie and Aunt
Lizzie--luxuries that they were never used to!"

"Josie, my son, do you really think it 'nobler in the mind' to be
mean and stingy to two dear and very poor old women who were always
kindness itself to you, than to break a hideous promise given to a
man whose last dying thoughts were of greed and self?  Do you?"

"If you restricted yourself to giving them a few necessities, I might
put up with it.  But I'm just afraid that next thing you'll be
helping them with _money_, and----"

"How well you know me, Josie!" she smiled, patting his hand.

"You wouldn't go so far as that, of course--with my money?"

"Certainly not--with your money."

"Well, all you have is practically mine and will some day be really
mine."

"Not necessarily."

"What do you mean?" he quickly demanded, a catch in his voice.

"My fortune is not entailed to you."

"But as it came from my father and his family and not through you or
your family, it's certainly morally mine and not yours to will to any
one but me.  You know what Father would wish----"

"By the way, Josie, as I told you the other day, this place is too
big and lonesome for me when you are away and I don't want to stay
here.  I don't want to be burdened with the care of this great house.
I want to take an apartment in Middleburg for a while----"

"I told you the other day, Mother, I would not consider that.  It
would be so uselessly extravagant.  A sheer waste of money."

"I'm not asking you to consider it, Josie."

"Then why waste words discussing it when we are not really to
consider it?"

"I said I was not asking you to consider it."

"Of course you're not--because you know it would be perfectly
useless."

"Yes.  Quite useless."

"Then let's drop it.  Here we stay.

"But I am considering it.  Or rather, I have already decided to move
to town."

"But I tell you I won't consent----"

"Don't get excited, son.  Your consent is not in the least necessary.
I intend to be free of this house--free to run to New York or Boston
or Florida or California, or perhaps to Europe----"  She laughed out
at Josie's look of helpless horror.  "You can go with me sometimes if
you like."

"You shan't do it!  You shan't squander my money!"

"To-morrow morning, Josie, I am going to our Middleburg lawyer to
arrange for settling a good income upon my sisters.  A very
comfortable income.  That will eliminate, once and for all, any
argument between you and me about _them_."

Josie stared at her wildly.  "You shan't!  You dare not!  What right
have you?"

"The same right that you have to dispose of your inheritance as you
please.  And you must understand from now on, Josie, that I don't
intend to permit you to nag at me, to question anything I may choose
to do _with my own_.  It is impertinent, and I won't tolerate it.
Another thing, you will not only be courteous to my sisters when they
come here, you will make them welcome."

"I won't!" he snapped back like a spiteful child.  "You can't make
me!"

"Then you and I can't live together, Josie," she answered, dropping
his hand and picking up her novel.

"Can't live together!" he breathed, appalled at this new mother whom
he did not recognize.

"Next thing," he said, chokingly, "you'll be handing out our money to
Georgie!--to tide him over until he takes possession of White Oak
Farm!"

"If I did, it would be my money, not yours.  Remember--I will suffer
no interference from you, my dear.  I'm only just beginning to bring
you up as you ought to be brought up."

"And I suppose you won't even promise to make your will in my favour!"

"Of course I won't promise.  I shall wait to see, first, how you
behave.  I'm inclined to think it would be far better for your soul,
Josie, if I should sink my fortune in the sea rather than give it to
you!  So don't forget--from this day on, so long as I live, you are
on trial for good behaviour."

Josie sprang up, his face distorted with rage.  "You don't love me
any better than you loved Father!  You hate me!  You're my worst
enemy!  You----"

It was like the old tantrums of his childhood, which his father had
never allowed her to punish or discipline.  Susan shrank away from
him in distress, as from an abnormality.

But in the midst of his raving there was a knock at her bedroom door
and, to her great relief, the entrance of a maid put a sudden stop to
the young man's tirade.

"Mr. Sidney Houghton," the maid announced.

"Tell him, please, that I am lying down and wish to be excused," said
Susan, instantly.

Sidney had been trying for the past month to secure a repeatedly
refused interview with her.

"He says to tell you, Missus, that it's some important and he's got
to see you," the girl replied.

"Josie, will you go down and ask him what he wants?" Susan asked.

Without replying, Josie flung himself out of the room and banged the
door behind him, the maid following him with a grin.

Susan picked up her novel; but she could not put her mind upon it and
soon laid it aside again.

For the past four weeks, with a blind, unthinking instinct of
self-defence, she had been warding off an interview with Sidney which
he, with a persistency and determination that vaguely alarmed her,
had been seeking.  She was sure he could not possibly have anything
to say to her which she would wish to hear.

During Joe's lifetime, her occasionally meeting him had come to mean
little more to her than encountering any chance acquaintance.  But
his attitude since her widowhood had been so gallant, yet so fearful;
so insinuating, yet so apologetic, that it had assumed to her
imagination the expression of a menace, threatening her newly
acquired freedom, her peace of mind; so that it had become, of late,
intensely disagreeable to her to be forced to speak with him.  That
was one reason why she wished to go to Middleburg to live--to avoid
the constant chance of an encounter with him.

"Would he have the amazing effrontery to ask me to marry him?" she
wondered; for she intuitively sensed, unmistakably, a would-be lover
in his manner.  "Does he think, actually, that he has anything at all
to offer any woman--let alone me whose whole life he spoiled?"

Could it be that, shattered wreck of a man as he was, he considered
merely being a Houghton was a sufficient offset to his disadvantages?
Did he still look down upon her from a superior height as his
discarded and repudiated "mistress" and believe that he would be
stooping to marry her?

"He's quite capable of thinking like that!" she decided.  "While _I_
feel that my one only consolation for never having had a living child
is that it would have been a Houghton!--would have had to fight that
bad inheritance!"

It was almost funny, how different the point of view of two people
could be!

Meantime, Josie was, with much relish, curtly telling his Uncle
Sidney that, his mother declined to see him, and enjoying viciously
his uncle's evident chagrin and disappointment.

Josie noticed, casually, the shabby finery of his impoverished
uncle--how sprucely he was attired in the worn and out-of-date
clothing of his "better days," how cleanly he was shaven, how shining
were his patched shoes; he noticed, too, the cane and gloves which he
carried; a cane and gloves to walk across the lawn in the country!
Wasn't that like Uncle Sidney?

An idea flashed upon Josie that made his heart leap into his throat.
He looked into his uncle's face--a tired, disappointed, prematurely
old face which, however, seemed lit up, just now, with a sparkle of
hope, like that of the proverbial drowning man who reaches for a
plank.

Did Uncle Sidney actually have the nerve, the utter audacity, to come
here trying to defraud him, Josie, out of part of his rightful
inheritance, through courting his mother?--after having squandered a
much larger fortune of his own!  Would she be silly enough to get
sentimental about him?--he was still handsome and elegant and
well-mannered and all those things that women love a man to be.
Josie himself had always secretly admired and been proud of his
dandified relative.

He would have to warn his mother!  Uncle Sidney would simply run
through with all the money he could get his hands on.

"And then Mother'd be on my hands for support!  After having given
that self-indulgent spendthrift my father's savings!"

He would warn her at once!

But would she heed his warning?  She had told him to mind his
business and not to nag or criticize!

Well, then, he'd use some guile.  He'd plot to circumvent such a
disaster to both himself and his mother.

It was jealousy, now, as well as greed, that moved him.

"Mother told me to ask you what you wanted," he accosted his uncle in
a tone as insolent as he could make it.

"I want to see her."

"What for?"

"I'll tell her that."

"She's lying down and doesn't wish to be disturbed.  You can tell me
your errand."

"Tell her, please, that I shall be over again this evening when she's
_not_ lying down.  I must see her--on a matter of importance--of
vital importance."

"Of vital importance to you perhaps, but not to her!" retorted Josie,
eyeing his uncle with a knowing look which was meant to convey to him
that his astute nephew saw straight through his shallow scheme for
rehabilitating his fortunes at the expense of his sister-in-law and
his nephew.  "She can't see you this evening.  She and I have an
engagement."

As Sidney Houghton made his crestfallen way back to his cottage,
after this rebuff at the big house, he weighed and considered the
only path yet left open to him by which he might once more become
possessed of comfort and even happiness; for he was still young; and
Susan, who had marvellously carried her years, was even more alluring
as a blooming, full-fledged woman of thirty-nine than she had been as
a young girl.

Would she spurn him so relentlessly once she knew the secret which,
during more than eighteen years, he had guarded so zealously; with so
much anguish of suspense and fear?

"When she learns that Georgie is our son--hers and mine--she'll
surely see there's only one way to make things right for him.  Josie
need never know.  No one need ever know except Susan and me."

His uncertainty as to how Susan would receive his disclosure; whether
she would, as Laura had warned him, passionately resent her defrauded
motherhood and his long years of deception; or whether she would be
glad that at least her "respectability" had been saved, as well as
that of her son----

Sidney's heart failed him when he contemplated going to her with his
confession.

But what else was there to do?  If he could see the least chance of
winning her without it----

But far from letting him come courting her, she would not even
receive a business call from him.

Would he have to tell her in writing?  He did not like to risk that.
Suppose his letter should fall into Josie's hands?  That detestable
little cad was quite capable of opening Susan's letters if he had the
least suspicion (as he manifestly had) of anything impending which
might menace his fortunes!  No, he could not risk a letter.

But if Susan persisted in avoiding him, refusing to receive him?

He suddenly saw a possible, though doubtful, way out.  He could
confess to Georgie the story of his birth and let _him_ tell his
mother.  Then when Susan had had time to recover from the shock, he
himself would go to her and suggest that together they make amends to
their son in the only possible way.

How would Georgie himself take it?  Georgie was the one creature in
the world that Sidney had always loved better than he loved himself.
And the boy was devoted to him; the only human being left to him in
the world who did care whether he lived or died; whether he was
provided with life's bare necessities, or whether he starved or froze
to death!  To risk turning Georgie's affection to resentment and
bitterness?  The boy was so quixotically honourable and chivalrous!
And so extraordinarily fond of Susan!

"It's a devil of a mess, any way you look at it!" he sighed.

But he finally concluded that he would take Georgie into his
confidence.


It was at this self-same hour, while Sidney was slowly and
thoughtfully returning to his humble home, foiled for the twentieth
time in his purpose to try out his fortunes with Susan, that a
discussion between Susan's sisters at Reifsville was threatening to
take the matter somewhat out of his hands.

"Even if we don't tell her now," Lizzie was saying as she and Addie
sat together over a cup of tea in their spotless kitchen, "I know
I'll have to tell her till I come to die oncet, Addie.  I could never
go before my Gawd with that there sekert on my conscience!"

"Me, neither," agreed Addie, who had never in her life been known to
disagree with Lizzie.

"Georgie's so much nicer a young man than what Josie is and Susie she
has so fond for Georgie," continued Lizzie.

"Yes, fonder yet than what she has for Josie, it seems; ain't?"

"Yes, and no wonder!  Josie's certainly awful ugly dispositioned that
way!"

"And for a young man he seems so silly!" said Addie.  "More like a
girl."

"Yes, ain't?  I don't see how our Susie stands him so good as what
she does!  I could stand him pretty good whiles he was a little boy,
because, to be sure, a body don't expec' much off of a little boy.
But now that he's growed up, he kreistles me awful, with his high,
squeaky voice like a girl's and his finnicky ways and prancing walk
and his nasty fussiness--och!" she ended, disgustedly, "I'd like to
slap him good oncet!"

"Yes, ain't?  So would I," echoed Addie.

"Say, Addie, our Susie don't seem to take it in that she's rich and
independent now and don't have to take it off of Josie so!"

"Well, just you wait--our Susie ain't no fool," said Addie, with
unexpected initiative.  "She'll soon find it out--and then you watch
out!"

"What's botherin' me," said Lizzie with a long breath, "is whether we
had ought to tell Susie the truth right aways, or wait till we're on
our death-beds.  I'm for tellin' her now."

"Yes, well, but it might get out and make talk!"

"Seems to me I don't care no more if it does!  I care more for seein'
our Susie own her own son!" said Lizzie, rising to a height.

"Poor little Georgie!" sighed Addie, wiping a tear from her cheek.
"To have been turned out when he was a baby the way we done!"

"Yes, well, but we give him to his own pop and him well-fixed to take
care of him," Lizzie repeated the oft-rehearsed arguments in
justification of their years of deception.  "Look at what it would
have _give_, Addie, to all of us, Susie and Georgie and us all, if
we'd have did different to what we done!"

"If we tell now," Addie reminded her, "you know Georgie won't inherit
White Oak Farm, if it gets out that he ain't the legal heir."

"But Susie could anyhow inherit all _her_ money to him, and that
seems better'n an old farm and a house too big and grand for any but
a millionaire to live in," argued Lizzie.

"I most have afraid, Lizzie, of how our Susie will take it if we tell
her!  She might think awful hard of us!  I'd most sooner wait till my
death-bed before I tell her a'ready."

"But us we might live to such a good old age that her and Georgie
would be cheated out of too many more years that they could enjoy
each other as mother and son," persisted Lizzie.  "No, now that
Susie's independent and rich, I think she had ought to be told,
Addie."

"All right, Lizzie, if you think."

"We'll go over to-morrow by the trolley and get it over with.  For I
can't know no more peace till it's settled oncet.  It's been
botherin' me ever since Joe Houghton died, and I can't stand it no
more.  And that there Josie's behaviours to-day got me so stirred up!
To think of how different a boy our Susie's own son is!  We'll go
over to-morrow, Addie, and tell her all about it."

"All right if so you think," said Addie.




CHAPTER XVII

SUSAN'S REAPING

Sidney's story, as recited to his son that night, while they sat
together in the little living room of the cottage, assumed the colour
of a mere college-boy escapade which, far from being to his
discredit, rather reflected lustre upon his youthful power to charm
and lure the weaker sex.  He really became quite enamoured of his
tale as he unfolded it; withholding the name of the heroine in the
piece for the dramatic climax.  For it was to be feared that the
moment Georgie knew that name, he would be quite unable to see his
father's side with entire fairness.  He must hear the whole story
with an unprejudiced judgment; the same judgment which a man (unlike
sentimental, moralizing women) usually brings to such a case,
recognizing the limitations of a man's self-restraint, the hypocrisy
of our sham American social purity.

For Georgie, though a cleaner and more guileless youth than his
father had been at his age, was yet, in intelligence and
understanding, if not in experience, a full-fledged man.  He listened
from the first with a half smile on his finely cut lips (so like his
mother's, Sidney often realized!) as though he were amused and a bit
incredulous of the all-conquering Don Juan, or rather Beau Brummel,
which his father was making himself out.  Surely, thought Georgie, it
was the middle-aged conceit and egotism of a man looking back upon a
glorified youth which he saw in high lights and a bit luridly.

"A Pennsylvania Dutch girl she was, from the crudest sort of
family--her father a trucker--a Mennonite preacher----"

"What was the attraction for such a swell as you say you were--as you
surely _were_," added Georgie, indulgently.  "I should think you
would always have been too fastidious to have been attracted to a
crude, vulgar girl just by her looks; weren't you?"

"She was not vulgar at all herself.  She'd had rather different
associations from the rest of the family; had been sent away to
school and had made friends among a really good class of people who
had invited her to their homes now and then--so that she was really
quite nice--and very, very charming."

"And haughtily looked down on her poor family, I suppose?"

"Not she!  That was the trouble; she could not see that her family
made marriage between us out of the question----"

"Did it?  Why?" asked Georgie.

"My boy!  A Houghton couldn't marry a village school teacher, the
daughter of a Mennonite preacher!"

"Couldn't he?  That's exactly what Uncle Joe married."

"There's always one black sheep in every family," answered Sidney,
colouring very red, to Georgie's surprise.  "Joe, even though a
Houghton, could not have married a lady!"

"Aunt Susan not a lady?"

"Would she have married your Uncle Joe if she had been?"

"I wonder what ever did make her marry a wretched skinflint like
Uncle Joe!" said Georgie, thoughtfully.  "I've often meant to ask
her, but never quite got up the nerve."

"To go on with my story," said Sidney, his tone less confident, an
actual tremor in his voice, "marriage being out of the question, the
inevitable happened.  Unfortunately, the girl, not taking proper
precautions, a child was born.  On the very night of my marriage the
girl's father arrived at my house----"

Georgie's hitherto careless attention to this recital changed, at
this point, to a keen interest, as he saw how the mere memory of what
his father was telling drove the colour from his lips.

"--and dumped down upon me a baby boy, telling me his daughter had
died at its birth!

"Of course I did the right thing and provided for the child.  I was
awfully cut up by the news of the girl's death--I'd cared for her a
lot!  It spoiled my whole wedding-trip!"

"I should think it might!  Why on earth did you do such a thing?--go
and ruin a decent girl?"

"But of course, Georgie, such things happen by mutual consent.  A man
doesn't 'ruin' a woman unless she's awfully willing and perhaps eager
to be ruined.  Don't fool yourself with any such old-fashioned,
sentimental notion!"

"Very well, then, if your attraction for each other was so
irresistible, why didn't you get married?  Why break the law?  Or if
our social laws are not founded on nature's laws, then why don't men
change the laws?  Talk about red anarchy and the upsetting of our
established order!  What else is that sort of thing?"

"Don't moralize to me, you young whippersnapper!" growled Sidney,
filliping his son's ear.  "You'll sow a few wild oats yourself, one
of these days, before you settle down."

"But why did you go off and _marry another woman_?  Wasn't that a
pretty rotten deal for the mother of your child?  Weren't you sure
the child was yours?"

"Not a doubt of it.  I couldn't marry her, though--a Houghton could
not marry a----"

Sidney paused significantly, and Georgie spoke up hotly: "A Houghton
could seduce a woman, make her a mother, and then go off and marry
another woman on the very night his child was born and its mother
died!  You don't make me proud of being a Houghton, Father!"

"For shame, Georgie!"  Sidney gravely reproved such disrespect to his
blood.  "There's something radically wrong with a fellow that has no
family pride when he has _reason_ to have!"

"What reason have I?"

"The Houghtons were among the earliest settlers of this country, and
have, for generations, held influential positions in this country.
Has any American any better origin than that?"

"How could you desert that poor girl after you'd been to each other
what you say you were?"

"Better ask about the poor baby!" said Sidney, feelingly.

"Well!  What about it?"

"To go on with my story--I went with my bride to Europe to take the
diplomatic position Uncle George had secured for me--leaving the baby
with my mother, who put it with a farmer's family.  When, after a
year, we came home from Europe, what news do you suppose greeted me?
The girl's father came to me and told me that the girl had rallied
and got well!--that in order to save her and her parents and sisters
from disgrace, and the baby boy from the stigma of illegitimacy, they
had told her her baby was dead.  Now they wanted me to help them keep
the secret, not only from their little social world, but from the
mother of the boy as well.

"I was only too anxious to keep the secret--first, because I cared
for the boy's welfare and didn't want him to go through life
nameless; second, because--because, Georgie, I wanted my son to
inherit White Oak Farm and--and my wife, I had learned, would never
bear me a child."

A silence like death filled the little room where they sat.  Georgie,
like his father, had turned white, his eyes filled with a startled
wonder.

Sidney was the first to speak.

"You can imagine what my life was like!--trying to placate my wife's
jealousy of the boy; inducing her to tolerate the child in our home
and to pass him off as hers----"

He stopped--checked by the pallid, tense look on Georgie's face.

"Then she--was not my mother!  And I'm your illegitimate son?"

Sidney nodded.

"And you've tried to teach me to be proud of being a Houghton!"

"You're enough more like a Houghton than Josie is!" said Sidney,
heatedly.

"Thank God she was not my own mother!" was the boy's unexpected
exclamation.  "The way I've suffered all my life at her neglect--her
dislike of me!  The only balm I've known for that bitterness, Father,
has been Aunt Susan's real affection for me.  It isn't merely that
Aunt Susan is kind to me, she really does care for me a lot!  I'm
sure I don't know why she does.  But when I was a hungry-hearted
youngster, the way she'd take me up in her arms and hold me--I knew
she _loved_ me!  It saved my soul!  Go on with your story, Father."

"Soon after we moved out here to White Oak Farm I found to my horror
that--your--mother--was actually teaching the school of White Oak
Station across the road!--in constant danger of running across you
(whom she thought dead, mind you!)--and in danger of meeting my wife,
with a possible scene and disclosure!  For of course I didn't tell
Laura that your mother was alive!  She could not have borne it!  I
tell you I walked on nettles!  I----"

"Is my mother living?" Georgie broke in with restrained excitement.

"I'm coming to that.

"I had never told my wife your mother's name and though they had once
met for a moment in my college rooms, Laura didn't seem to remember
her at all----"

"I must know, Father!" Georgie broke in again.  "Is my mother living?
Just tell me yes or no!"

"Yes."

"Go on!"

"I had to get her (your mother) away from this neighbourhood.  So I
went to her father and told him he'd got to move away; I would
finance the move.  He was very hard up and though he hated me like
hell, he had no choice; he had to accept my offer; for he was as much
averse to exposure as I was.  But on the very eve of his moving away
with his family he died.  And then--and then, Georgie----"

"Yes?" urged Georgie, breathlessly.

"And then your mother married."

"Where is she?" demanded Georgie.  "Do you know?"

"Yes, I know."

"Can I go to her?  For of course I shall go to her.  Where is she?"

"Georgie, she is a widow, now, and I want to right the wrong I did
her--I want to marry her!"

"If she'd be weak enough to marry you now, I'd never own her!  Where
is she?"

"She is up at the big house, Georgie!"

Georgie sat rigid.  Every drop of colour left his face.  Again a
deathly silence flooded the little room.

This time Georgie was the one to break it, speaking slowly, in a low
voice, his eyes piercing his father's.

"She married _your brother_!"

"Yes."

"Your mistress--mother of your bastard!--married your brother!"

"Rough on Joe, of course!  But he never knew it."

"_Aunt Susan is my mother!_"

"Yes."

"My mother!  She my mother!  Father!  What you have defrauded me of
all my life!  What it would have meant to her and to me!  Yes, to
her, too.  Josie, the son whom she knew to be her own, was never so
near to her as I've been, even while she didn't know me to be her
son, too!  And if she had known!"

"Josie's not her son, Georgie!"

"What!  Good God, what next?  What do you mean?"

"He's her step-son.  But of course he doesn't know it and she doesn't
want him to know it.  He is not to be told, either, of your relation
to Susan--you'd lose White Oak Farm."

"You are reckoning without me a bit!  I don't want White Oak Farm if
I have to get it by repudiating my mother!"

"You won't have to repudiate her.  I tell you I'm going to make
things right for both you and her!"

"She will never marry you!"

"Why not?"

"Why should she?"

"You think I've got nothing at all to offer her?" demanded Sidney,
piqued.

"What have you to offer her?"

"Only myself."

"A Houghton!  But I thought a Houghton could not marry a Pennsylvania
Dutch Mennonite preacher's daughter!--could not marry his mistress,
the mother of his illegal child!  Does such a woman get nearer the
level of a Houghton when she's a rich widow and the said Houghton is
a bankrupt?  _She'll_ not think so!"

"She will marry me for your sake, Georgie."

"She'll see you damned first, Father!  Marry you!  Do you suppose I
would let her sacrifice herself like that for my sake?"

"Sacrifice herself!  I don't see why you'd call it that!  Good
heavens, boy, if she could stand my brother Joe for seventeen years,
she'd certainly find me a pleasant change!"

"You'd be an awful cad to ask her to marry you now that you're down
and out and shell on top!--after having cast her off and deserted her
and defrauded her of her son!  Don't go crawling to her now!"

He suddenly sprang up and stood before his father.  "To-morrow
morning I am going to her and get her side of this story!"

"Go easy!  Remember she doesn't know she's your mother!  Break it to
her carefully and don't let Josie hear a word of it!"

Georgie, as he turned his back upon his father and left the room,
thought, "That such a woman as she is should have had two such
bounders in her life as Uncle Joe and Father!--when the best man that
ever walked would be unworthy of her!  Such a waste of loveliness!
Such an absolute waste!"

On Monday morning, Josie, to thwart his mother's project of going to
Middleburg to arrange with the family lawyer for settling an income
upon her sisters, took the car himself immediately after breakfast to
preface her call upon the lawyer with a legal consultation on his own
account.

Susan could, of course, have gone by trolley or train, but she was
quite satisfied to give Josie rope enough to hang himself--that is,
to have him learn directly from their lawyer what were her absolute
rights over her inheritance.  So she decided to stop at home this
morning and go to Middleburg the next day.  This afternoon she would
go over to Reifsville to leave with Lizzie and Addie the first
installment of the income which hereafter should be regularly paid to
them by her lawyer.

"How heavenly it is to be able to tell them they need not worry with
boarders this summer!" she thought, happily, as she sat in her
upstairs sewing room beside a window, darning Josie's socks.

Her step-son's genuine suffering in the situation affected her very
little.  She had never before found herself callous to any form of
distress; but Josie's anguish was so wholly the creation of his own
meanness and baseness that she could not feel other than indifferent
to it.  In fact, she found herself actually hoping that the lawyer
would turn the knife in the wound!  It would be so salutary for
Josie!  The very best thing that could happen to him.

It was while she was reflecting thus as she sewed by the window--and
with every stitch which she put into Josie's socks thrilling at the
bright prospects before her of freedom, travel, a larger life--that
Georgie walked in upon her.

"Oh, I'm so glad you came over!" Susan gaily greeted him.  "I have
such a lot to tell you!  Come here and sit down.  Josie's gone to
Middleburg on business and we'll have a good hour to ourselves."

"I'm mighty glad he's out of the way!  It saves me the necessity of
_putting_ him out.  For this morning I've got to be alone with
you--and I'm afraid Josie wouldn't recognize that necessity without
the argument of physical force--which I, being theoretically a
non-resistant, as you know, would not use unless the necessity were
extremely urgent; as it would be to-day."

"Dear me, what a lot of sophomoric words, Georgie!  What's it all
about?"

Georgie drew a stool to her feet, sat down upon it and folded his
arms on her lap.

"Aunt Susan!  I want you to talk to me.  I want you to begin at the
very beginning and tell me your history."

Susan shook her head.  "It's too mournfully tragic!  Let's talk of
something far pleasanter--of the chemical outfit I'm going to get
you, and----"

"I said the necessity was urgent, didn't I?  Listen!  Last night
Father told me something of _his_ history--an episode of his
youth--of his once having been your lover!  I want to hear _your_
version of that story.  I told him I meant to get it from you.  I
fancy that in a few details, or at least in the point of view, his
story and yours may differ a bit!"

Susan was looking at him, now, in astonishment, her face crimson.
"What right had your father to tell you this?"

"I'll answer you that when I've heard your story," replied Georgie,
taking her hand in his.

"How much did your father tell you, Georgie?"

"Please, please tell me _your_ side of it all first--won't you?"

"In my own defence?"

"You could never need any defence to me!  It's that I may know how to
judge my father that I want to hear your story."

"I don't like to talk of that hideous blackness of my girlhood,
Georgie!  I try so hard to forget it all!  I'm afraid to begin to
speak of it!  I get so fearfully stirred up, I can hardly bear it!"

"I hate to put you through it--but I must!--indeed I must!"

Susan laid aside Josie's sock and with Georgie's hand clasped in
hers, his young eyes gazing into hers, she spoke.

She told of Sidney's courtship, of their love and happiness; of their
betrothal; of their scouring the countryside together in her father's
old buggy to purchase, with her savings, the old colonial furniture
which they found at out-of-the-way farmhouses; of their keen pleasure
in having it done over for their future home, and their temporarily
arranging it in the Schrekengusts' parlour; of the beautiful
furniture she had bought for Sidney's rooms at college, which was
also to be part of their future home; of the visit Sidney's mother
had paid to her to try to make her break the engagement; of Sidney's
philosophical arguments to urge her to give herself to him before
marriage; of her never having dreamed, for an instant, that he was
capable of deceiving her, of betraying such infinite trust as had led
her to give herself so completely.

Susan's face was white and drawn as she lived over it all again; and
Georgie, gazing at her, felt his heart on fire for her, against the
man who had wronged her.

She spoke, then, of Sidney's growing coldness and neglect; of her
reading in the college paper of his attentions to Miss Laura
Beresford, the daughter of the new college president, and an heiress;
of her suffering when her letters to him remained unanswered; of her
finally going to him at his college rooms and discovering there that
to secure money for his courtship of Miss Beresford he had sold the
furniture for which she was still making monthly payments out of her
little salary; of her passionate appeal to him to marry her for their
coming child's sake; of how she had, then, in her lover's rooms,
encountered the woman he soon married; of the birth of her dead baby;
of her soul's numbness and deadness through the many long, dreary
months that followed; and finally of the circumstances that had
driven her into the fatal mistake of marrying Joe.

When she had finished, leaning back in her chair, pale and spent,
Georgie sat, for a time, without speaking, his hands clasping hers,
his eyes that rested upon her overflowing with tenderness.

"You never doubted that your baby died?" he found voice at last to
ask her, his heart beating fast.

"Doubted--that my baby--died?" she dazedly repeated.  "What--do you
mean, Georgie?  Of course she died!"

"She?  They told you your baby was a girl?"

"Yes!  What--_what_ is it you know?"

"Your baby was a boy.  And my dear, my dear!  He didn't die!"

Susan stared at him stupidly.  "A boy!  It didn't die!  You can't
mean--that he is alive now!"

She trembled from head to foot.  Georgie clasped her two hands to his
breast and gazed up into her face without speaking--trying to convey
to her, without words, the tremendous truth with which his heart was
bursting.

"Where--is--he?  Where is my son?"  Susan's stiff, dry lips formed
the words with difficulty, her whole soul one burning question, as
she looked down into Georgie's adoring eyes.

"Mother!  Mother!"

For a moment she did not move or speak.  Then she drew her hands
free, took his face between her palms and looked again, deep and
long, into the boy's face so like her own.  Her brain was utterly
incredulous (it was a wicked plot of Sidney's to gain his way with
her!)--but her heart, her blood, cried out with a great longing that
this thing should be true--and suddenly something within her knew
that it was true!

"You are mine--I know you are!"

Her head fell forward on his shoulder, her arms went about him close,
she held him to her famished heart as though she would never let him
go----


Later, as they still sat together, Georgie said to her, "I shall
never forgive Father for his treatment of you!  For his having
cheated us of each other all these years!  He repudiated you--I shall
repudiate him!"

"But he loves you.  He has always loved you.  One can forgive
anything to love, Georgie."

"Anything against myself, perhaps.  I can't forgive the brutality to
you!"

"He loves you," was Susan's answer.

"You're so much larger-minded than I am, Mother!"

"There's little enough love in the world, my darling!  We can't
afford to spurn or 'repudiate' any drop of it that comes our way."

There was a knock at the door, it opened, and Lizzie and Addie
stepped into the room.

At sight of the picture before them, Georgie seated at Susan's feet,
their arms about each other, the two women in sombre Mennonite garb
stopped short.  There was an illumined look in the faces of the
mother and son that seemed to mean but one thing.

"Susie!" dried Lizzie, "someone has told you a'ready!  Ain't?"

"Told me what?"

"That your baby didn't die for all and that Georgie's him yet!
Ain't--you know it a'ready?"

"Have you and Addie always known this?"

"Och, yes, Susie, us we knowed it ever since it was a'ready!"

"There is _no_ doubt of it then?"

"Och, no--though I know you never suspicioned it, and to be sure, it
must seem awful funny to you!  Och, yes, it's true, all right, Susie.
Me and Addie, us we come over this morning to tell you all about it
and get it off our consciences oncet!  How did Georgie find it out?"

"His father told him!"

Georgie sprang up and hugged and kissed them both.  "I've got two
jolly aunts as well as a Long-Lost Mother!  Mother!  Mother!  I want
to say it all day long!" he cried, going back to her side and again
throwing his arms about her.

"Here!" exclaimed a high, rasping voice at the threshold of the room;
and they all turned, startled, to see Josie standing there
menacingly, his face flushed with resentment.  "I'd thank you to quit
that, Georgie Houghton!"

"Quit what?"

"Calling my mother _Mother_!  That name is sacred to _me_, I'd have
you know, Georgie Houghton!  I don't care to have any other fellow
using it to her!" cried Josie with a grotesque mingling of hauteur
and sentimentality in his high, effeminate voice.  "What _right_ have
you to call her _Mother_?"

Georgie rose and went to Josie's side.  "I call her Mother, Josie,"
he said, gravely, almost solemnly, "because she _is_ my mother!"

It was characteristic of him that he did not add, "And she is not
yours!"--as Josie in his place would surely have done.

"She's not and you shan't call her so!" snapped Josie.

"Yes, she is, too, his mother, Josie!" spoke in Lizzie, "and wery
glad you will be to hear it, fur now you'll inherit this here
_es_-tate, for all you won't get our Susie's fortune."

"What on earth are you talking about?" faltered Josie, utterly
bewildered.

"Come here, Josie, dear," said Susan, gently, "and let me explain it
to you----"

"Let me spare you that ordeal, Mother," Georgie interposed.  "Let me
tell him.  You have----"

"Tell me what?" demanded Josie, looking frightened.

"Josie, my father's wife was not my mother.  Your father's wife is my
mother."

"How could she be?  Are you crazy?  What do you mean by saying such a
thing?  It's not true!  It couldn't be!"

"Yes, it could be, too, Josie!" Lizzie contradicted him.  "Our Susie
had Georgie single-wise."

"How dare you insult my mother like that?" cried Josie, choking with
indignation.  "As if my father would have married a woman like that!
As if----"

"But, Josie," Susan interposed calmly, "it is true.  I am Georgie's
mother."

Josie stared at her wildly.  "But--but he is younger than I am!"

"Josie, dear, I never meant to tell you--but--I am your step-mother."

Josie stood stock still, his face slowly going very white.  Susan,
with a movement of deep pity for the blow she was dealing him, took
an impulsive step toward him, her hands outstretched.

But he stepped out of her reach and his lips curving to a sneer, he
turned deliberately upon Georgie.

"You--bastard!" he hurled at his cousin.

"Josie, my boy!" pleaded Susan.  But he wheeled about and turned upon
her.

"You--hussy!" he cried out.

There was an instant's silence in the room.  Then Georgie spoke very
quietly: "It will always be a comfort to you to know, Josie, that the
woman to whom you have used that epithet is _not_ your mother, though
she has cared for you as a mother all your life!"

"You shut up!  And get out of my house!  _All_ of you get out of my
house!" he exclaimed, hysterically, quite beside himself, scarcely
knowing what he was saying.  "This is my house!  Clear out of it,
every one of you!  I never want to lay eyes on any one of you again
as long as I live!  I----"

Susan saw that he was suffering torture; that the shock of what he
had just learned had wounded him terribly; wounded his pride, his
love for her, his faith in her, the foundation principles of his life.

Her heart yearned over him.  "Leave me alone with him--all of you,"
she said.  "I want to talk with him."

"You will never talk with me again!" he almost screamed, shaking off
her hand upon his arm.  "Leave my house!  You shall not stay here
another hour!  Go with your bastard----"

"Here!  You----" cried Georgie in a sudden rage, drawing back his
arm--but Susan sprang between them.

"We will all go," she said, quietly.


Living alone with her son in his college town, sharing his life very
completely and at the same time living her own life in freedom, Susan
now, for the first time since her girlhood, knew genuine contentment,
even great happiness.  Their companionship seemed so completely to
satisfy them both, it so filled Susan's heart after all the starved
years behind her, that she dreaded almost with terror the inevitable
hour when Georgie would fall in love and she would lose the best of
him.

The only cloud upon her peace was her alienation from Josie.  He had
too long been the chief concern of her life for her to be able, now,
to cast off all thought of him, all responsibility for his welfare
and happiness.  Because she knew he must be suffering, must be
missing her, longing for her, she yearned over him, even while fully
realizing how very salutary for him was this experience through which
he was living.

She wrote to him once, with all the affection and motherliness she
could command.  He sent her letter back unopened.

The years of care and devotion she had given to him seemed all to
have been for nothing!


On the day when Georgie, taking her in his arms, confided to her that
the girl he loved had promised to marry him, Susan fought off her
overwhelming sense of loss and desolation by sobbing on his heart,
"Well, anyway, I shall have some grandchildren to mother!"

She dreamed of the day when Josie, too, would permit her to "mother"
his children; for her wistful hope that he would some day discover
his need of her to be greater than his resentment was the only thing
which sustained her in the belief that the long sacrifice of her life
had not been utterly without fruit.



THE END



  THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
  GARDEN CITY, N. Y.









*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MARRIAGE OF SUSAN ***


    

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