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.