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.