[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!"