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.