THE HOUSE PARTY
Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Houghton found themselves alone together longer
and more intimately in their Pullman drawing-room, on their homeward
journey from Newport to White Oak Farm, than they had been at any
time in the past six weeks. Even Georgie was not by to disturb their
tête-à-tête, for his mother had established him and his nurse in a
section of another car; not, indeed, to insure her uninterrupted
isolation with her husband, but in order to escape any possibility of
annoyance from the child.
This detachment of the young couple, however, from all the world,
during a ten-hours' journey, did not appear to conduce greatly to
their happiness. They were both looking rather jaded from their
recently overdone social life; their faces bore the stamp of that
discontent and weakness which will so soon mar the countenances of
those who live to no purpose; who, while giving no sort of service to
society, prey upon those who do serve. They seemed to have nothing
to talk about together; and this absolute absence of any common
interests was a dreary manifestation of the deadly emptiness of their
pleasure-seeking lives. They read newspapers and magazines, but did
not speak to each other of what they read. They loafed, ate, yawned,
slept. Once for five minutes they did become a little animated over
a delectable bit of Newport scandal. But they quickly lapsed again
into lassitude and boredom.
In repose Sidney's face looked more than discontented. He was
evidently nervous and worried.
He made frequent visits to the next car to see Georgie. But Mrs.
Houghton never went near the little boy during the entire trip, nor
was the child brought by his nurse to see her.
It was toward the end of their journey that she roused herself to
discuss with her husband the entertainment of the house party which
was to arrive at White Oak Farm the day after their return home.
"If the wine you ordered from New York doesn't come in time, what
shall we do? You can't give the Fairfaxes and the Sherwins the sort
of stuff you'd buy in Middleburg," she said.
"Of course not. Let us hope it will come in time," he replied.
"It's rather absurd, you know, our trying to entertain such people as
the Fairfaxes and the Sherwins at White Oak Farm; we haven't enough
to offer them. Nothing, indeed, but a rather attractive old
homestead! We ought not to have undertaken it, really. You were
foolish to insist upon it. You know, my dear, you do have rather
vulgar ambitions!"
"As usual, you misunderstand me, Laura. It's not 'vulgar ambition'
that makes me want to return the very great hospitality we've been
accepting from both those families."
"They will probably be bored to death!" Mrs. Houghton shrugged.
"That's why I asked the Arnolds, when I found that the Fairfaxes
admired Robert's magazine stories. And Eleanor is always good
company."
"It was a good idea," Sidney agreed, "to ask the Arnolds. I'm glad
you thought of it."
And then suddenly, with a violent mental jolt, he remembered
something--it was Eleanor Arnold who, at a "frat" dance, nearly three
years ago, had introduced him to Susan Schrekengust! The Arnolds
knew Susan! _Why_ had he not remembered it before?--in time to stop
that invitation!
"_Now_ what the devil's to pay!" he thought in utter consternation.
"Robert and Eleanor will certainly help to make things go," said his
wife, serenely.
"Help to make things go to hell!" he thought with an inward frenzy of
apprehension.
"It's damned awkward that Joe won't move away, isn't it?" he
appealed, in a shaking voice, to his wife.
Laura glanced at him in surprise. His face was distorted with
anxiety.
"Dear me, you take it tragically, don't you? Why don't you make him
go? Your reasons for tolerating him have never been very clear to
me."
"He can injure us! He has suspicions about Georgie! He'd be only
too glad to have White Oak Farm go to _his_ boy! I dare not offend
him--I----"
"Oh, bother! For the sake of that child you are letting your whole
life be spoiled! I've no patience with you!"
Sidney shrank away from her into a huddled heap and did not answer.
"It certainly is to be hoped," she said, presently, "that our guests
won't discover your relationship to your hired farmer living in the
tenant's cottage!"
"It's a beastly situation!" exclaimed Sidney.
"And for the sake of that child you endure it! You might consider me
a little and not subject me to such embarrassment!"
"I'm as much embarrassed as you are! But, Laura," he pleaded, "don't
try to make me be false to the decentest thing in me--my love for
Georgie!"
"When your love for him makes you sacrifice me, you can't expect me
to get enthusiastic about it! And now there's that girl your brother
has married--it's to be hoped she won't presume upon family ties to
intrude upon us! However," Laura suddenly dismissed the whole matter
with another shrug of her shoulders, "let us drop the subject! I
simply don't intend to let people like that prey upon my mind!"
"But you'll have to let them prey upon your mind if the Arnolds and
the rest of them discover Joe! He'll take good care to _let_ himself
be known, I'm afraid!"
"Then why on earth did you insist upon having this party?"
"I didn't ask the Arnolds."
"But the others. Why, if you won't make your brother leave, do you
subject yourself and me to the humiliation of entertaining a house
party where he will be all over the landscape in his shirt sleeves or
overalls, talking that crazy Pennsylvania Dutch lingo he has and
making us ridiculous!"
"I--I thought a crowd of guests would cover the awkwardness of your
not calling on Joe's wife--I----"
Laura laughed with genuine amusement. "Call on her! I! She'd
hardly expect it, Sidney, I should think!"
"Why not? It seems to me it's just what she would expect!"
"Does it? Well, you and I never do seem to see anything under heaven
from the same point of view! But I should think even you would
realize the absurdity of suggesting that I call on your
tenant-farmer's wife!--even if she is your sister-in-law. Any girl
that _could_ marry that half-brother of yours would be impossible!"
"She isn't!" Sidney broke forth with a hot impetuosity that amazed
himself. But almost instantly he became cautious again. "She--she
does not look impossible, Laura," he concluded, tamely.
"I didn't know you had met her. Have you?"
"I--I saw her one day in front of the cottage."
"She can't possibly be the girl I saw one day on the lawn at White
Oak, coming from Joe's cottage. That girl was--well, she was pretty
and stylish and well-bred looking. I thought she was someone who had
come to call on me--no, it's not possible that Joe could have married
a girl like that!"
"But remember, Joe's rich enough to have baited bigger game than that
little school teacher!"
"No amount of riches, with your brother Joe tacked on, could have
been a bait big enough to lure a really nice girl, Sidney. You know
that perfectly well."
"Have it your own way!" he crossly retorted.
His mind was torn with a dozen conflicting fears. He was afraid of
Joe's resentment if Laura did not call on Susan; yet feared a
betrayal of his guilty secret if the two women did meet. Association
with or aloofness from his brother's household seemed equally
dangerous and impossible. He feared a scandal; he feared Laura's
indignation and resentment; he feared the loss to his son of his
inheritance. And he did not in the least know how to meet any of
these dangers that menaced him.
Mingled with his fears were other emotions not so unworthy: a deep
self-abasement, never absent from his heart, for the injury he had
done and was doing to Susan; a great sense of loss and emptiness
because of the wonderful comradeship as well as of the great love
that had been theirs; a painful humiliation in the realization of
Susan's deep contempt for him.
But presently the quite practical and sordid difficulty that was
causing him, just now, intense anxiety, overshadowed all the other
troubles of his mind.
"Another devil of a mess," he said to his wife, "my being obliged to
get some ready money right away! My losses over those damned races
have just exactly wiped out over a year's income!"
"Don't look to me," she warned him. "I shan't give you another
dollar of _my_ income, Sidney! You already owe me half my year's
allowance! And of course I am perfectly aware, my dear, that you'll
never dream of paying it back to me!"
"I shan't have to--because you'll manage to _get_ it back!" he
retorted.
"I shall do my best to," she blandly answered.
"I don't have to worry about _you_! I've got enough of your unpaid
bills in my desk to cover more than all you've loaned me!"
"See that you pay them!"
"I shall have to borrow money from Joe," he said, hopelessly.
"Why do you get it from _him_? Why not from someone else? He
demands such awfully tight security--first thing you know _he'll_ own
everything you inherited from your uncle."
"I borrow from him because he's got it to lend and money's scarce
just now. He read in the papers of my heavy losses in the races and
he wrote and _offered_ to lend me money. Pretty decent of him,
wasn't it? I guess--I guess," faltered Sidney, "he's feeling extra
good and happy just now--with his new wife and----"
He rose abruptly.
"I'll run over and see how Georgie's getting along."
But he did not go to Georgie. He went, instead, to the day-coach
smoking car, sat down on the very last seat, and lit a cigar.
He had found it necessary to escape precipitately from Laura to
conceal from her a threatened flood of emotion. Ever since he had
first learned of Susan's inexplicable marriage to Joe he had been
astonished and disgusted by his own overwhelming and unreasonable
jealousy, envy, chagrin--all the more absurd because Susan could not
possibly care for Joe.
He wondered now, for the hundredth time, as he drearily gazed out of
the window upon the autumn-coloured wooded hills that sped by, what
had made Susan do it. He had been entirely insincere in suggesting
to his wife that Joe's money had been the bait. Laura had answered
truly that the money of a Crœsus, with Joe attached, could not
have tempted "a nice girl."
Did Susan, perhaps, have a suspicion----
No, that was impossible; quite, quite impossible.
The Schrekengusts had been in dire straits; Susan had lost her
school, Mr. Schrekengust had died, their property was mortgaged, the
elder sisters were getting on in years; had Joe deliberately driven
that lovely girl into a corner and forced her to bargain with him for
the livelihood of those dear to her? It would be like him! Oh, it
would be like him! And she--rather than accept help from her
"betrayer"--had preferred this marriage!
"How she must loathe me!" he inwardly groaned.
He sighed profoundly as he thought what delight he himself would have
found in using his wealth to give comfort and happiness to Susan!
"What a mate she'd have been! My life couldn't have been so sordid
with her at my side!--her zest for life, her fun, her intelligence,
her warm, tender heart, her loveliness! That _Joe_ should have all
that! Oh, damn!"
However, he could not waste himself upon futile regrets while this
new danger stared him in the face--those Arnolds were bound to see
Susan and recognize her!
The one mortal dread of his life, these days, was that Laura should
discover Susan's identity.
"My predicament is perfectly ridiculous! And dangerous! Damned
dangerous!"
But though from the very hour of his arrival at home he found
himself, in spite of all his apprehensions, thrilling at the fact of
Susan's nearness, peering through every window he passed for a
possible glimpse of her about the grounds or near her cottage, he was
nevertheless immensely relieved to find that she seemed to be
assiduously keeping herself out of sight.
She, meantime, was experiencing almost as many qualms and emotions as
was Sidney himself. The sudden awakening of her old self which the
sight and sound of her girlhood's friend, Robert Arnold, had brought
to her, gave her a haunting, wistful longing to meet and greet him
and his sister again, even while it revealed to her more poignantly
than ever the hopeless degradation of her marriage; a degradation so
much more real than that of her tragic betrayal at Sidney's hands.
"To have to feel ashamed of your husband!" she would muse over her
household drudgery (for such it was to her because her heart was not
in it). "Ashamed of the one nearest to you in all the world!--to
whom you would naturally want to feel only loyalty--I am ashamed of
being ashamed!"
She reflected that if her own deep and strong feelings about some
things were natural, then society must have very distorted standards.
"The things usually considered shameful!" she thought, wonderingly.
"And the things that are considered respectable!"
Life seemed to her an inexplicable muddle; all her old standards of
right and wrong in confusion; the very foundations of the universe
knocked out from under her.
It was on Saturday afternoon, when the house party was gathered about
a tea table on the lawn, that one of the guests, Mrs. Fairfax, a
comely young matron, drew attention to the picturesque little cottage
behind the big white house.
"A tenant's cottage, I suppose, Mr. Houghton?"
"The farmer's, yes," Sidney nodded.
"Pretty! So cosy! I can imagine being quite happy in a dear little
home like that, with no servant worries, no tiresome social
obligations, freedom for doing what I love to do--read and dig a
garden and study music; no fears of a jealous and outraged mob
bringing retribution upon me for having enjoyed such ease and comfort
all my life as _they've_ never had a chance at, poor things! Oh, I
believe I'd love it!"
"What hinders your having it, Mrs. Fairfax?" asked Eleanor Arnold,
"if you really mean that you'd love it?"
Miss Arnold was a young girl of an arresting personality. There was
a self-contained calm in her way of sitting very still, her
capable-looking hands folded in her lap, her clear, direct gaze
shining out of a pale face encircled in thick braids of straight,
dark hair. She was keenly and critically observant, yet seemed not
unsympathetic.
"What hinders me? _That!_" Mrs. Fairfax pointed a forefinger across
the table at her husband, a rather foppishly dressed, futile-looking
person who lived in idleness on his "unearned increments".
"Nuff said," nodded Eleanor, who yearned to add, "Do you think 'that'
worth the sacrifice of two minutes of your short life?"
"It makes me laugh," said Mr. Fairfax, "to hear Jane talk about
yearning for the simple life! If any one was ever born that was more
dependent than Jane upon all her little comforts and
conveniences--lead me to her! Jane wouldn't have any trouble meeting
that test of royal blood, you wot of, in the fairy story--a maiden's
sensitiveness to a pea pod under several mattresses--a _pile_ of
mattresses! Jane would feel that pea pod quicker'n your royal
princess, I bet you! Don't you know, Janie," he appealed to her,
"that the farmer's wife in yonder humble cot, whom you are envying,
does her own washing and baking and scrubbing and cooking and----"
"Don't spoil the sweet picture I had made for myself," protested
Jane, sentimentally, "of rural peace and simplicity, with leisure for
congenial occupations, such as we of our class never have! Let me
believe, Will, dear, that _some_ people in this world do lead
satisfying lives!"
"Moles and cows do perhaps," responded her husband as he rose and
strolled over to a rustic bench under a tree behind the tea table,
where pretty young Mrs. Sherwin made room for him by her side.
"Mr. Arnold!" Mrs. Fairfax turned to the young author, Robert
Arnold, whose thoughtful, earnest face stood out in marked contrast
to the unintelligent and somewhat coarse countenances of the other
three men of the group, "you have the honour and distinction of
meeting a long-felt want in my life! I've always yearned to
know--really _know_--a distinguished novelist whose books I've loved.
But now I find to my dismay that the yearning, like that for 'strong
drink,' as the W.C.T.U's call it, increases in proportion as it's
gratified! So I beg and implore you, Mr. Arnold, to bring an author
or two to see me every time you come to the city. Will you?"
"But 'author' is such a very general term! Please, I beg you, be
specific. What special brand of author are you yearning to meet? I
might grab the wrong kind. There are so many varieties; there is,
for instance, the red-blooded variety; there is the
precious-lavender-and-lace kind; there is the gosh-ding-it sort; the
Close-to-Nature style; the cabaret brand; the
week-end-on-Long-Island-society sort--and many others. So, please,
kind lady, name your brand."
"The kind I'm yearning to meet is the author who reads and
understands women, Mr. Arnold," said Jane with an earnest intensity.
"But Shakspere's been dead some time. Ask me something easy."
"I'll tell you the brand you _don't_ want to introduce to our wives!"
Mr. Andrew Sherwin, a ruddy, heavily built banker, warned the author.
"The kind that will put ideas into their heads! Keep 'em off! Jane,
there, and my wife, too," nodding toward the tree behind the tea
table where Mrs. Sherwin sat with Mr. Fairfax, "laps up ideas as a
cat laps milk! For God's sake keep off authors with ideas!"
"Don't worry! Authors, these days, don't deal in ideas, only style.
We leave ideas to bankers."
"Well, _I've_ met one or two writing chaps that were just chuck full
of stuff--new ideas about human brotherhood; impracticable rot like
that! This is no time for new ideas! We've got trouble enough to
keep things going smoothly!"
"'No time for new ideas?'" repeated Arnold, grinning. "I suppose
that's what the Romans and Jews told Jesus; and what the Diet of
Worms told Luther; and what the Roman Catholics told Galileo when he
got hold of the very dangerous new idea that the world moved; they
weren't ready to have it move; it greatly annoyed them to have it
move! It suited their vested interests to have it remain as stable
as they'd always thought it!"
"That's different," protested Sherwin a little bewildered. "That's
history. I'm talking about the present."
"Which is history, too."
"Are you a Socialist?" asked Sherwin, suspiciously.
"Of course he's not!" exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax, indignantly. "Don't be
rude and insulting, Andrew! As if a man who is a gentleman could
advocate his wife's sitting down to visit with the washwoman; and
then those community kitchens Socialists would have--how absurd to
suppose that we could eat the food that labourers like!"
"Are you under the impression, dear madam, that you are discussing
Socialism?" asked Mr. Arnold.
"Of course I am! Aren't I?"
"Not any brand I ever heard of."
"What is the bloomin' thing then?" she asked, plaintively.
"It is what we of the privileged class must inevitably oppose,
because fundamentally it means (as I understand it) giving everyone
an equal chance in the race of life; which would, I fear, find some
of us in very different places from those we now occupy. Some
peasants who are incipient aristocrats intellectually or spiritually,
like Gorky or Robert Burns, would forge ahead of the line which some
of us hold--while we'd fall far back, perhaps, into the peasant
ranks----"
"We don't propose to submit, in this country," exclaimed Sherwin,
indignantly, "to the rule of any one class!"
"But that's what we always have submitted to. In all nations, in all
times, the labouring class has submitted to the rule of the
capitalistic class. The strong have ever ruled, and the strong have
been the capitalists. In our day it seems to be coming about that
the workers are going to be the strong----"
"This constant menace of changing our fundamental institutions,"
interrupted Sherwin, "ought to be suppressed by law! It can only
lead to chaos!"
"Well," returned Arnold, serenely, "out of chaos came heaven and
earth. But I never heard of anything good coming out of
'suppression' and autocracy. By the way, Mr. Houghton," Arnold
closed the discussion by turning to Sidney, "you have a brother,
haven't you? Joseph's his name?"
"A half-brother."
"Does he live in this neighbourhood?"
"Ye--yes--ah, excuse me a minute, please, will you? I'll--I'll be
back in a minute," responded Sidney, leaving the table abruptly and
striding away across the lawn.
But both Eleanor and Robert Arnold saw, as he left them, that his
face had gone white at Robert's question.
Eleanor turned to Mrs. Houghton. "Robert and I have just heard,
Laura, that your brother-in-law has married my old school friend,
Susan Schrekengust. How lucky you are to have acquired anything so
delightful in the way of a sister-in-law as Susan! Don't you think
you are?"
"I've never seen her--but----"
"I thought," said Eleanor, as Laura hesitated, "that I understood Mr.
Houghton to say they lived in this neighbourhood."
"They've just been married--and we've been away. Will you have some
hot tea? You must be mistaken, Eleanor," Laura added in a lower tone
intended only for Eleanor's ear, as she refilled her cup; "no friend
of yours would have married Joe Houghton; he's a perfect boor! Some
mistake, my dear."
"There must be," said Eleanor, surprised. "Susan would never have
married a perfect boor!"
"Rather not!" corroborated Robert who had caught his sister's
low-spoken remark.
"The girl Sidney's half-brother married," Laura explained, "was a
country school teacher, I understand; you couldn't have known her."
"But Susan was a country school teacher!" said Eleanor.
"And," added Robert, "Susan's own sister told me she had married
Sidney's brother. You must be mistaken, Laura, about Sidney's
brother. He's evidently a diamond in the rough, for Susan to have
married him. Where do they live?"
"Sidney will give you their address," answered Laura, turning away to
speak to Mrs. Sherwin and Mr. Fairfax behind her.
"Want some hot tea back there?"
Robert and Eleanor exchanged a swift glance over the too-palpable
fact that the Houghtons had something to conceal about their
brother's marriage.
Their unwilling attention was presently forced upon the chatter of
Mrs. Fairfax who loved nothing so much as to talk about herself, her
"moods," her unique characteristics, her "reactions" upon her
environment and its "reactions" upon her; she was either too
self-absorbed as she would talk on and on interminably, or too
lacking in imagination, ever to sense the boredom of her hearers.
Mrs. Houghton had gone into the house to answer a telephone call, so
the six guests--the Arnolds, the Sherwins, the Fairfaxes--were left
to themselves; the Arnolds, Mrs. Fairfax, and Mr. Sherwin, the portly
banker, being gathered about the tea table, while Mrs. Sherwin and
Mr. Fairfax sat a few yards away under the tree.
"It's the very strangest thing about me!" Mrs. Fairfax was saying,
leaning back in her wicker chair in an utter abandonment to an orgy
of self-analysis, to which her three hearers might or might not
listen, she didn't notice, "The way my moods never seem to match
William's moods. If he happens to be in a sentimental mood, asking
me how much I still care, and all that sort of thing--_you_
know--then I'm just likely to be feeling utterly matter-of-fact and
talk about dances or motors or making fudge! It is so odd! And if
_I_ happen to be sentimental and want to talk of my moods or
feelings, or of my serious thoughts, then he's apt to want to talk
about a baseball game! It _is_ so queer! _Isn't_ it? And yet,
William and I are so perfectly mated! We understand each other so
perfectly; we have no interests apart from each other; we do
everything together--_everything_!"
"There's one thing you don't do together," said Eleanor, wickedly,
pointing to the bench under the tree which she alone faced; and they
all turned to see this sentimental lady's husband kissing rather too
ardently Mrs. Sherwin's white hand.
"We trust each other perfectly, William and I," Mrs. Fairfax
responded, undaunted. But she rose to stroll away, and Mr. Sherwin,
more alarmed at the prospect of being left alone with the formidable
and confusing conversation of the Arnolds than at the continuation of
Mrs. Fairfax's monologue, rose also with as much alacrity as his
corpulence permitted and went with her.
"Isn't it a tragical or comical irony of fate," remarked Robert
Arnold when he and his sister were left alone, "that the feminine
egotist, the woman who is most interested in herself, is the very
least interesting to other people."
"It's rather deadly here, isn't it?" sighed Eleanor.
"I'm getting lots of story stuff!"
"Yes! Of such 'stuff' are stories made; some stories."
"It isn't necessary, my dear, for you to try to counteract that
woman's flattery."
"Do you suppose, Robert, that Mr. Andrew Sherwin ever reads _any_
thing?"
"Well, no one ever caught him at it."
"I had so counted on finding dear old Susan here! I'm horribly
disappointed! How refreshing she'd be!"
"They act as though they had her concealed in a tower!" said Robert.
"They do conceal their baby! I've not had a glimpse of him. You'd
never know they had a baby, would you?"
"Go easy, my dear! It might be deformed or something; don't inquire
for it," Robert warned her.
"I'll be discreet."
"Discreet? You? I'm not asking the impossible! Only don't jump in
with both feet."
Meantime, Sidney, to escape Arnold's questions, and to conceal the
betraying embarrassment they had caused, had walked away to the back
of the house to get himself in hand.
But from the terrace behind the house he saw something which served
greatly to augment his agitation--Georgie and his nurse going down
the path which-led straight to Joe's little cottage.
With a quick thrill of apprehension Sidney leapt down the slope to
check them.
"I've told that girl to keep him away from there," he muttered
angrily to himself.
But his interference came too late. With his heart in his mouth, he
saw, as he stopped and stood stock still to watch, Susan sitting with
Josie on the grass under a tree in front of her house, holding out
her arms to Georgie, who was toddling straight toward her with his
hands outstretched to take hers. Evidently the two were good friends
and this was not their first meeting!
The very thing he had been dreading! Were his worst fears to be
realized?
With a bound he stood in the midst of them, his face as white as
chalk, his chair dishevelled, his eyes wild. He seized Georgie
almost out of Susan's arms, casting a glance of angry reproach at the
nurse, as he perched the boy high on his shoulders.
"Why do you bring him here to annoy this lady?" he harshly demanded
of the maid.
But Georgie, who usually welcomed his father with rapture, now kicked
and struggled to free him, self, to reach the goal for which he had
been making so eagerly.
"Down, Daddy! Me down!" he clamoured, wriggling like an eel, sliding
down his father's arm to the ground and rushing to Susan.
"You kin see fo' yo'se'f, Mistah Houghton!" the nurse defended
herself. "I tries to keep him away f'om her like you tells me to,
but I cayn't! The minute he's outdo's he wants to run down heah to
his aunty and his li'l cousin. An' anyhow he don' git ho _harm_
here, Mistah Houghton!"
Sidney, with throbbing heart, gazed down upon the picture on the
grass at his feet, his little son in Susan's arms, their faces close,
the child's eyes and hers seeming to melt into each other, himself
disregarded----
Suddenly Josie, his face distorted with jealous rage, had his fingers
in Georgie's curls. Georgie, howling, retaliated valiantly by
pulling at Josie's hair, and a tug of war followed which was stopped
only by the combined efforts of Sidney and Susan to separate the
combatants.
When peace had been restored by Susan's placing a boy on either side
of her impartially, Sidney abruptly ordered the nurse to go back to
the house. "I'll bring Georgie home," he said.
As soon as the girl had turned the corner and disappeared around the
cottage he threw himself on the grass at Susan's feet.
"Look here, Susan," he exclaimed in mingled indignation and fear,
"did you marry Joe Houghton to avenge yourself on me? Just to keep
me in hot water by your living here at my door! And is it you that
is keeping Joe here on this place when I want to be rid of him? If
my guess is wrong, then _what_, in the name of God, made you marry
him?"
"You did!" came Susan's swift, breathless answer. "I married him to
save my mother from being bribed by you to leave her old home! I
thought it would kill her to go! And then," her voice quivered;
"after all, my sacrifice was for nothing. Mother died a month after
my marriage!"
"You blame _me_ for your marrying him!" exclaimed Sidney.
"I believe my father died of worry and grief; I tried to save Mother
from the same fate by marrying Joe, so that she need not yield to
your bribe or threat or whatever it was that you held over her to
force her from her home!"
"Oh, Susan! I've done you even greater wrong than I realized!"
"It's the wrong that I've done to myself that matters!" she said,
sadly. "If I'd had any sense, if I'd been worth anything, you
couldn't have wronged me!"
"I'm not happy, Susan! I don't believe I'll ever be happy again!"
"Gracious! Do you think you deserve to be?"
"But that _I_ should have driven you to marrying a fellow like
Joe--you! He's so utterly unworthy of you--so----"
"Not more so than you were, God knows! Joe's at least ruggedly
honest. He wouldn't lie and steal and--oh, your boasted Houghton
blood seems to me very bad blood! If our child had lived I'd have
hoped she'd have none of it; that she'd inherit only the clean,
upright, simple soul of my father!"
"Let us be thankful she didn't live, Susan!" he said, his eyes
shifting from hers--but coming back surreptitiously to note the
effect of his words.
"That I must be thankful for that is, as I told you, the one thing I
can never, never forgive you for!"
"And you will, then, take your vengeance upon me," he said,
fearfully, "by making trouble for me with my wife?"
"I think I told you before that 'vengeance' has no appeal for me. I
am not enough interested in your life, Sidney, to go out of my way
either to help or to harm you."
"I've harmed _you_ so much, it's hard for me to believe you wouldn't
use your present great opportunities to--to come back!"
"Yes, you _would_ believe that!" she said, listlessly.
Sidney tugged at the grass savagely. "Oh, I know you think I'm all
sorts of a cad!" he said.
"Naturally."
He groaned inwardly; he had meant to lead up tactfully to a hint or a
plea that she keep out of the way of the Arnolds while they were
here; but the tone of their conversation was certainly not propitious
for such a suggestion! It might have the effect of making her
deliberately and perversely seek them out! Better trust to luck that
she and they would not discover each other.
"Just remember, Susan," he warned her, his face flushing, "you have
kept rather a dark secret, yourself, from your husband!"
She regarded him with that look of impersonal speculation which he
found so irritating to his vanity, as she asked, "You are capable of
threatening me?"
"Joe certainly doesn't know your past!" he answered, sombrely.
"Oh!" she cried, a light coming into her eyes, "you've given me an
idea! _That_ might be my way of escape!"
"What do you mean?"
"I'm bound by my bargain to stick to Joe; he gave Mother and my
sisters their home. But if he should divorce _me_, that would let me
out honourably!"
"But," said Sidney, seeing too late his mistake in having given her
this "idea," "it would betray to Laura who you are!"
"Even _you_, Sidney, will hardly go so far as to ask me to live on
with Joe just to spare 'Laura' and you! You've really given me an
idea! I'll think it over."
"And if you act on it," he burst out, "you'll ruin me! You'll ruin
Georgie! It will give the whole damned business away! It will----"
He suddenly closed his lips, as he realized, with despair, that he
himself would in a moment be giving "the whole damned business away"
if he said another word.
Springing to his feet, he snatched up Georgie, who kicked
rebelliously at being taken from Susan, and with a hasty "Good-by,
Susanna!" he strode away.
"You're takin' it easy; ain't?"
It was Joe's voice just at her back!
Evidently he had come in noiselessly from the potato patch. He had a
way of appearing unexpectedly, at any hour of the day, with the
purpose, apparently, of catching her unawares in idleness, a thing he
abhorred; because in his Gospel, Time was Money.
As she wondered how much, if anything, he had overheard of her talk
with Sidney, she found herself feeling remarkably unconcerned about
it. She certainly had little to lose and perhaps much to gain if Joe
should learn the truth about her.
"Been havin' comp'ny, seems."
He came forward, seating himself in the swing under the tree and
taking Josie on his knee.
"Your brother came down for his boy."
"And stopped to wisit you, heh?"
"Yes."
"He better _not_ come flirtin' and foolin' round my wife!" growled
Joe, jealously.
Susan made no comment.
"It ain't the thing!--him and you loafin' here and me workin'!"
She silently leafed the pages of the magazine on her lap.
"Have you got supper made, that you have so much time to loaf?"
Susan did not answer.
"I ast have you got supper made. Why don't you answer to me, Susan?"
"I'll answer you, Joe, when you are civil to me."
"Civil! I got to be civil, must I? To my own wife yet! Huh! I
guess I got to be so pernicketty nice like what Sid is; ain't?"
Susan scarcely heard him; her mind was revolving that "way of escape"
that Sidney had suggested.
"Seems you're got an awful lot of time to set round, Susan! I bet
you wouldn't have, if you done all that's to be done."
But he could draw no answer from her with this bait.
"You ain't near so pertikkler with the housework as what my first
wife was. You don't hang out the nice wash she hung out! She hung
out the nicest wash in White Oak Station; all the folks sayed so.
They might say that of _yourn_ if you took more time to it, instead
of hurryin' through so's you can set out here and enjoy yourself."
But when even these aspersions on her "wash" did not rouse Susan to
resentment, Joe felt discouraged.
"What was Sid gassin' to you about, anyhow?" he inquired, sullenly.
"We talked about our children," she said after a perceptible
hesitation.
"Huh! I guess he thinks hisn's better'n mine!--the way him and his
mother always thought I wasn't good enough to 'sociate with 'em!
Well, by gosh, Susan, they'll learn somepin different one of these
here days! Josie ain't a-goin' to have to take no back seat fur that
there bastard of Sid's, you bet you! It'll be the other way round,
you mark my words!"
"Georgie was born in wedlock," Susan protested, startled.
"I'd like to prove he _wasn't_!" growled Joe.
"Oh, Joe, if you could only see how much more your hatred of Sidney
hurts you than it does him, your very selfishness would make you want
to get over it!"
"It'll hurt Sid a-plenty before I do get over it!" returned Joe.
"When I've got Sid where I want him--and that's under my heel--then
mebby I'll get good over hatin' him. Not _till_ then, though!"
Susan sighed, but protested no further.
"Did Sid explain you why his Missus don't take no notice to you--you
her sister-in-law?" Joe demanded.
Susan shook her head.
"Don't it spite you none, Susan, that she thinks herself so much?" he
asked, puzzled.
"It's her loss, not mine," smiled Susan. "I think people who don't
know me miss a lot. Don't you, Joe?"
She rose and shook out her skirts.
"Please be ready for supper in half an hour," she said, as she left
him and went into the kitchen.
In spite of the sharp reprimand which Sidney administered that day,
on his return home, to Clara, Georgie's nurse, for disobeying his
orders to keep the boy as far away as possible from his uncle's
cottage, she, true to her race, rather than exert herself to struggle
with the child's strong will, or to divert and amuse him, continued
to take the line of least resistance and to follow where he led,
when, the moment he was out of the house, he would make straight for
the little cottage at the foot of the hill; and Susan, at whose heart
strings Georgie's tug was growing more and more potent, did not
discourage the girl's bringing him daily to see his little cousin and
his "aunty."
Thus it happened that the very next day after Sidney's stern rebuke
and reiterated command to obey orders on pain of being discharged
(those were the days when servants, not employers, were discharged),
Clara again deliberately let her small master lead her, after
luncheon when everybody was taking a map, directly down to the spot
where Sidney had found them the day before.
Now as it was Sunday and Joe, who hated Sidney's boy, was about the
house to-day, Susan would have preferred, for once, to have had
Georgie kept away. But it happened that at the moment of his joyful
arrival, slowly followed by his spineless attendant, Joe was having a
nap after his heavy noon meal; and so, Susan, deciding that at the
first sound of her husband's awaking she would dispatch her visitors
in haste, settled herself cosily, with a child on either side of her
and her lap full of story books, under the tree outside her house.
And it was here that, presently, Eleanor Arnold, wandering about
alone, found her.
It came with a great shock to them both, that first recognizing
encounter of their eyes. For an instant they could only stare at
each other, speechless. But the next moment they had fallen upon
each other with cries of surprise and delight, Eleanor's
self-contained composure entirely broken up, and Susan's habitual
listlessness turned to a burning excitement.
"But, Susan! I didn't know you at first! You are so changed! Your
golden hair turned brown! And the look out of your eyes--what is it?"
Susan dared not speak lest a flood of tears overwhelm her. She bit
her lip hard as she silently drew Eleanor to sit down with her on the
grass under the tree.
But in a moment she had recovered herself, and putting the two boys
to playing with some building blocks, she gave herself up to her
friend. Both she and Eleanor were feeling amazed, in their hearts,
that their sudden reunion was bringing instantaneously such a rush of
old joy, such a quick renewal of a vital tie after so long a breach.
Their eyes sparkled, their cheeks were flushed with excitement.
"How have we lived so long without each other, Susan!" cried Eleanor,
breathlessly.
And Susan answered, "What months we've wasted! I'm only this moment
realizing what you've always been to me!"
"It's been your doing, not mine, that we've been separated, Susan!"
"Oh, I know----"
"But you are surely not living here in this house?" Eleanor asked,
looking bewildered. "Why, Laura said she had never met you! Then
you can't have married Sidney's brother?"
"_Yes_ to all your questions. I am living right here in this house;
I am Sidney's sister-in-law; his wife never met me."
"Family mysteries and skeletons? Well, I won't pry--though I'm dying
to! Why you should have gone and got married and have had these two
children without ever consulting me----"
"One of them is Sidney Houghton's," Susan quickly explained.
"One of these two? Which one is yours, Susan? Oh, you needn't tell
me, it's plain enough! What a darling! Much, much more adorable,"
she added in a lowered voice, "than Sidney's."
"_I_ don't think so!" Susan warmly retorted. "Georgie seems to me a
much finer type than Josie--though of course," she hastily added,
"Josie's a dear and I love him."
Eleanor stared. "You're disparaging your own---- Oh, but he can't
be yours--you were only just married, weren't you?--so Laura said,
anyway. Then that is _not_ your boy, is he?" asked Eleanor,
indicating Georgie.
Susan's face lit up. "You took him for mine? Oh, I wish he were!
He's Sidney's. The other one--Josie--is my step-son."
"And you've never had one of your own? You've not been married
long----?"
"I've been married five months."
"I would have sworn that one--Georgie--was yours. He has a look in
the eyes like you--though of course he looks more like Sidney. This
is my first glimpse of him; they never have him about; Laura is
certainly the most indifferent of mothers! You'd think she'd be
proud to show off such a rare child! Susan, you are so changed! You
are lovelier and more blooming than ever; yet you are, somehow, so
matured! As if you had lived, Susan! As if," added Eleanor, gazing
thoughtfully into Susan's face, "you had lived tragically! _Have_
you?"
Susan nodded dumbly.
"Tell me all about it! Begin at _Once upon a time_, and don't skip.
I know it'll be thrilling!" said Eleanor, settling herself
expectantly to listen; "for I always said, you remember, that you
were born for romance. Tell me about your husband."
Romance and Joe! Susan almost laughed, though her heart was heavy.
In what a position she was placed, when all her pride shrank from
presenting her husband to her friend!--and yet loyalty to the
obligations of her bond must close her lips upon explanations,
excuses, apologies.
A sound in the kitchen doorway drew their eyes from each other. Joe,
in his shirt sleeves, a scowl on his face, came striding across the
grass to the tree.
"Here another time I come to use my car and find the gasoline is
all!" he fretfully accused his wife, not heeding her visitor. "Again
you was usin' it without astin' me for the dare! Ain't? A pretty
thing that whenever I go to use my car the gasoline is every time
all! No matter how often I fill it up yet! If I got it so filled up
at twelve o'clock in the night, you'd get out of bed to make sure it
was all used up till morning a'ready! Ain't, you would?"
Suddenly he became conscious of Susan's deathly pallor and of a fire
in her eyes that alarmed him--and at the same time, of her
companion's look of amazement and alarm.
Turning away abruptly, frowning and muttering, he disappeared again
in the house.
"Well!" exclaimed Eleanor, "chauffeurs must be scarce out here if you
stand for---- Susan Schrekengust!" Eleanor seized Susan's arm
convulsively. "_Who is that man?_"
"My husband, Eleanor!"--and Susan laid her head on Eleanor's shoulder
and sobbed; long, tearing sobs that seemed to come from the depths of
her soul; from the pent-up griefs of years; from the anguish of
defeated love, defeated motherhood, death, despair.
Later, when Clara had gone home with Georgie, Josie had gone indoors
to his father, and Susan, now very quiet, still sat on the grass with
her friend, Eleanor asked her wonderingly, "What the devil did you do
such a thing for, Susan?"
"It's so good," said Susan with a sigh of pleasure, "to hear you cuss
again, Eleanor! Until I met you, I had never, in my short and simple
life, heard a perfect lady swear!"
"I'm afraid I never did serve up my words on a napkin. And quite
early in life I decided to abandon the career of a perfect lady. A
woman of brains (you'll not question I'm that?) never is a perfect
lady, the absolutely real thing, you know; because, you see, it means
such a well-ordered mind and soul and life as to preclude rioting of
any sort, whether of the emotions or the intellect. It involves
repose, conservatism, a nice moderation in all things, an absence of
big enthusiasms, large vision, vigour of thought and feeling----
"You've simply got to explain to me, Susan, how you came to marry
that man! Is he a diamond in the rough? Is _he_ Sidney Houghton's
brother? Is he a real Houghton at _all_?" she demanded,
incredulously. "Why, the Houghtons have always been awfully snippy
about their family blood! Their sense of their own superiority has
been as sublime as it was inexplicable. Don't expect me to spare
your feelings! I don't intend to! You deserve 'most anything for
throwing yourself away like this! I could beat you for it!"
"I deserve your scorn; I don't deserve your friendship!"
"You deserve to be shut up in a lunatic asylum! Why did you do it?
Speak up!"
"It's a very sordid story, Eleanor. No romance about it that _I_ can
see! (You said I was born for romance!) I was engaged to Sidney
Houghton. He jilted me. I was broken-hearted at first; then
reckless and despairing. My father became involved in money troubles
and died suddenly. We would have had to leave our home, which I
thought would kill Mother. So to save her I married Joe Houghton.
Joe gave Mother and my sisters their old home. Then, a month later,
Mother died. My sacrifice was for nothing! That's all."
"You were a dreadful little fool, of course! You know that, don't
you?"
"I don't find the knowledge consoling, dear, so please don't draw my
attention to it."
"But you can't go on living out your life with that man, Susan!
You'll have to leave him!"
"Wouldn't it be going back on a bargain? He practically bought me."
"And you've surely paid him back already a thousand per cent!"
"It wasn't in the bond that I'd be his wife for a few months."
"You actually consider yourself bound to him, to a creature like
that, _you_?"
"I don't know."
"If you do think you're bound, if you're that fanatical, then make
him let you live your own life. Demand your rights!"
"Make him? Compared to Joe Houghton's obstinacy Gibraltar is wobbly!"
"If he's in love with you, there's nothing you can't make him do for
you."
"By playing up my sex? How would I be above the woman of the streets
if I did that? The world thinks it all right, I suppose, for a
_wife_ to gain her ends that way."
"Oh, the world!" shrugged Eleanor. "Of course its standards are
never right. Show me something that the majority believe and I'll
show you something that's a lie! The persecuted of any age nearly
always turn out to have been the prophets of that age."
"Carrie Nation!" smiled Susan. "And now we've got national
Prohibition! Who'd ever have thought it!"
"Talking about morals," Eleanor went on, "people haven't any, really.
They have Respectability, Conformity, Propriety. Those are society's
only values."
"Yes, I often think," said Susan, "if that hypocrite's cloak,
Respectability, could be stripped from our shrinking souls, what a
sight we'd all be!"
"You remind me of a letter Robert saw ages ago, when he was a college
student, written by Howells to Mark Twain; Mark Twain showed it to
Robert. It was about the autobiography Mark Twain was writing.
Howells wrote, 'You always rather bewildered me by your veracity, and
I fancy you may tell the truth about yourself. But all of it? The
black truth which we all know of ourselves in our hearts--even _you_
won't tell the black heart's truth'."
"What a human document it would be if any man or woman had the
courage to do it!" said Susan. "Of course Rousseau came near it."
"Susan! You've got to leave that man that you've so absurdly gone
and married!"
"I have hurt so many people; I shrink from hurting any more!"
"What do you mean? Whom have you hurt?"
"My father and mother and sisters! And if I left Joe, I would hurt
not only him; my two sisters would break their hearts. They
_believe_ in the marriage ceremony, you know--as a sort of
fetish--'For better, for worse'--'Until death'--'Whom God hath
joined'--'These two are no more twain, but one flesh.' My sisters
would for the rest of their days walk among their neighbours
disgraced and stricken."
"Would that be as tragic, as wasteful, as your spending your whole
life with such an outrageous creature? You've got to leave him! And
you will leave him!"
She rose and Susan stood up at her side.
"When you've made up your mind, Susan, come to me in Middleburg.
Promise!"
"I'll--I'll have to think it over," Susan faltered.
But there was hope in her voice and in her shining eyes.