IN THE BIG HOUSE
Susan was early given to understand, after the removal to the big
house, that Joe expected to live there very much as he had previously
lived there with a succession of hired housekeepers; keeping the
greater part of the old house shut off to save coal. He would have
liked to limit their occupancy to the kitchen and their bedrooms, if
he had had his undisputed way. And indeed Susan's utmost revolt
against such a régime got her only so far as to win his consent to
their using the dining room and parlour on festive occasions such as
Christmas or Josie's birthday, or when they had company.
Joe was deeply chagrined when Sidney, instead of meekly moving his
family into the tenant's cottage, removed them clear out of the
neighbourhood.
Susan would have been relieved at this except for her sorrow at
parting from Georgie.
"Never you mind," Joe consoled himself in the form of giving comfort
to Susan for Sidney's failure to play up to the tragic humiliation so
carefully staged for him. "He'll be drove into livin' in that there
cottage _yet_, you mind if he ain't! My only _re_-gret is that his
mother ain't alive to see this day, when I'm on top with him under my
heel; her that didn't think me good enough to live in the same house
with her son and had me turned out of my own father's house! Her a
stranger comin' in and turnin' me out of my father's house!"
Susan had learned to dread Joe's reminiscences of his boyhood, such
red-hot passion of bitterness and resentment they always aroused in
him. No doubt if his step-mother had been openly and intentionally
cruel, instead of just limited in perception and sympathy to the
circle of her own personal interests, he could have found it less
impossible to forgive her.
"And now," Joe continued, "it's my turn to open the door and say,
'Get out! You ain't got the price to stay here!' Oh, I ain't done
with Sid Houghton yet, Susan! Don't you think it!"
Sometimes Susan was afraid of her old propensity to experiment with
situations; to try out the effect of some unexpected announcement,
like that thrilling experiment of giving Sidney's mother the
impression that his Uncle George wanted to marry her. She was afraid
sometimes lest she leap over the precipice by suddenly saying to Joe,
"You think Sidney and his mother greatly wronged you. But they did
you a greater wrong than any you know of! They long ago slew the
soul that once dwelt in this shell you call your wife! This woman
you've married was once your hated brother's mistress! _She bore him
a child!_"
Where Sidney removed his family Joe never learned. But before a year
went by his prophecy came true and dire need drove the younger
brother back to appeal for help once more.
Meantime, Susan, finding herself the pseudo-mistress of a mansion,
decided to test the possibility of having Eleanor Arnold and perhaps
a few more of her old school friends visit her.
The necessity of keeping at least one servant to help with the work
of the big house even Joe had recognized. But when Susan, in
preparing for Eleanor's arrival, undertook to teach the Pennsylvania
Dutch farmer's daughter in her employ the ways of a waitress, she
found that ploughing would have been fairy's work by comparison.
"Why must folks be so awful waited on just fur to eat their wittles?"
the girl would ask, wonderingly. "Why can't they do their own
stretchin' at the table?"
Joe really suffered when, inquiring at supper for the pound of
roquefort cheese he had "fetched" from town the day before, he was
told by the girl, "They sent you spoilt and mouldy cheese yet! With
green spots at! I throwed it quick away so's you wouldn't poison
yourselfs!"
An Edom cheese which arrived with a basket of provisions from the
grocery she took for a jardinière and placed in the middle of the
dining-room table on a centrepiece.
Doilies she called "tidies" for a long time; then they began to be
"dailies" and "doolies," but never by any chance did she hit upon the
vowel _oi_.
Joe and Josie made Susan's work of training the girl much harder by
refusing to fall in and coöperate and by openly sneering at her "tony
airs", though Josie, in whom there was an æsthetic, effeminate
streak, was only feigning scorn to curry favour with his father; he
really adored "the ways of high society", as his father called their
waitress's clumsy ministrations.
Though Eleanor Arnold was the most tactful of guests, her visit was,
for the most part, too great a strain upon both Susan and herself
ever to be repeated. Joe coming to the table in his shirt sleeves
and minus a collar; grumbling at the delay caused by a little service
between a few courses and openly making fun of it; commenting on
Susan's extravagance in using cream on the table which ought to be
saved for butter to be sold at market; reproving her for increasing
the price of the laundry by her frequent changes of the table linen;
objecting to her making the coffee so strong--"You use enough for one
meal to do for three and that there coffee thirty-five cents a pound
yet!"
The meals came to be times of torment to Eleanor in her mortification
for Susan and her keen sympathy for what seemed an intolerable
degradation.
It bored her also to have Susan working in the kitchen and about the
house, for nearly two thirds of the day instead of giving herself up
to her. Joe, however, seemed to think that his wife was taking an
unwarranted holiday, his table talk being ornamented with sarcastic
references to her "settin' 'round", her "pleasure-seekin'", her
"runnin'".
It was made painfully evident to Eleanor that poor Susan had had to
put up a stiff fight to have a guest at all, even on such
uncomfortable terms as these.
It seemed to be in sheer malice that Joe one day, during Eleanor's
visit, brought from town in his car several bushels of plums to be
preserved and canned.
"But our own plums will be ripe next month; why did you buy these?"
Susan, in consternation, inquired, as he pointed out to her and
Eleanor the "bargain" he was unloading from his car.
"Our plum preserves is all; and I don't feel fur waitin' till next
month till I taste plum preserves again. I feel fur some _now_. I
got these here wery cheap."
"No wonder! They are the miserable little hard kind that are the
very dickens to seed!" exclaimed Susan, despairingly. "This is two
days' work! I don't see how----"
"Miss Arnold kin help you, I guess," said Joe as he carried the heavy
load of fruit into the kitchen.
Susan knew, of course, that it was not an unconquerable yearning for
plum preserves, but a determination to make it impossible for her to
spend an idle minute for the next few days at least, that had
prompted the purchase of the plums.
During the next hour, before they assembled at supper (Joe insisted
upon a noon dinner), Susan was rather silent and thoughtful as she
and Eleanor strolled about the grounds. If Joe's plum scheme
succeeded he would surely not stop there, but would manage to find a
still heavier task to follow it.
"In self-defence I've got to make it fail," she thought.
"Eleanor, you know something about chemistry, don't you?" she
presently asked, irrelevantly, in the midst of a discussion of the
newest thing in blouses (which topic had been guilefully introduced
by Eleanor with a purpose). "Can you tell me what I can do to those
plums to make them seem to have rotted overnight? We can drive into
town to-night to a drug-store if you do know----"
"Concentrated sulphuric acid will do the job."
During the drive to town Eleanor resumed the discussion of blouses,
leading tactfully, as she thought, up to the fact that Susan's were
out of date and that she needed some new ones.
"I get your point, my love," smiled Susan. "I was never one not to
know the latest style in blouses! It's lack of money and time that
makes me dress so abominably."
"Has your husband had reverses, Susan?"
"Joe never has reverses. He's too cautious ever to lose money. He
seems to be piling it up constantly. But _I_ don't benefit by it."
"White Oak Farm is such a lovely home--you could have such larks in
that charming place! You ought not to submit, Susan, dear!"
"By the way, I have no money (I never have any) to buy the
concentrated sulphuric acid. I meant to charge it and have the bill
sent to Joe--but I'm just beginning to see that that won't do. He
will be sure to ask me what I wanted with concentrated sulphuric acid
and that would give away my part in rotting the plums. I want him to
think he has been cheated in them--then he will never again risk
buying fruit in town. How shall I manage it?"
"That's easy. Tell him you used the concentrated sulphuric acid as a
throat lotion or a hair tonic or a tooth wash."
Crafty as Joe himself was, it was difficult for him to conceive of a
cunning in another that would deliberately ruin and waste. Thrift
was so ingrained in his very bones that he simply could not imagine
his own wife setting herself to the task of wantonly destroying
several bushels of food for which he had paid out hard cash.
Therefore he never suspected her and Eleanor of their perfidious part
in the tragedy that confronted him early next morning in his kitchen,
when the maid pointed out to him the condition of the fruit he had
bought.
His manifest suffering for several days caused Eleanor a deep and
sweet contentment that almost compensated her for the manifold
miseries of her visit.
While Josie seemed to respect and be greatly attached to his father,
he did not try to emulate his roughness, but was, on the contrary,
over-fastidious in trifles; irritatingly nice about things which did
not really matter. Joe, far from criticizing this in his son, as he
criticized his wife's tastes, appeared to take pride in it.
In some respects it seemed that Josie would never grow up; in his
love, for instance, of being petted, fondled, and made much of by
Susan even after he had reached an age when most boys would have
resented a public caress as the grossest insult. The most effectual
punishments Susan had ever imposed upon him had been to refrain for a
time from all demonstration of affection for him. He was, like his
father, extremely penurious and he seemed to feel, even now at the
age of sixteen, as greatly defrauded by her kisses withheld as he
would have felt if someone had cheated him of dollars and cents.
"He is the strangest mixture, my dear!" Eleanor wondered over him as
the two friends sat on the piazza one evening before supper. "_I_
would not know how to deal with him! The way he seems to adore you
and yet so often goes ruthlessly against you and hurts you!--the
flinty hardness with which, just like his father, he will drive a
bargain!--and yet he will bawl like a girl for something he wants
that his father says he can't have!"
Both Joe and his son displayed, during Eleanor's entire visit, a
childish jealousy of Susan's regard for her friend which added not a
little to the guest's discomfort. In Josie it often took the form of
a covert or even an open rudeness toward Eleanor. He would not
answer her greeting when they came together in the morning; he would
utter what he meant to be biting remarks on the neglect he was just
now suffering at his mother's hands. "For the past six days I've not
had you to myself an hour!" He would never permit his mother and her
friend, when he was at home, to sit alone together for ten minutes at
a time without interrupting them with some demand from Susan for
attention or service.
"This shirt needs a button--I wish, Mother, you weren't too busy
gabbling all the time to keep my clothes mended!"
As Susan never put his shirts away buttonless, she suspected him of
cutting off the buttons to make an excuse for taxing her attention.
He would call her to massage his head for an attack of neuralgia; to
read to him because his eyes ached; to help him with his lessons.
Just once, when he was deliberately impertinent to Eleanor, Susan's
forbearance broke down. He had overheard his mother speak to her
guest of an automobile ride they would take that day to "Chickies
Rock" and he had interrupted with the assertion that he wanted the
car that night.
"What for, Josie?" Susan inquired.
His hesitation betrayed that his demand was entirely impromptu and
that he had no goal in view.
"I'm going to drive over to Middleburg to get some books from the
library," he answered after an instant.
"It is too far for an evening's trip," Susan objected.
"Well, anyway, I want the car this evening, Mother."
"You can't have it, Josie."
"I'll ask Father whether I can't!"
"He won't let you drive to Middleburg at night."
"Then I'll go over to Reifsville to see Aunt Addie and Aunt Lizzie."
"Why don't you come with us to Chickies Rock, Josie?" asked Eleanor,
pleasantly.
Josie, muttering something about not caring for the society of "an
old maid," flung himself out of his mother's room where the
discussion had taken place--leaving Eleanor looking pained for Susan,
and Susan herself suddenly livid with her rarely roused anger.
"Oh, my dear, my dear!" cried Eleanor, "for that boy's own sake you
must not be so forbearing!"
"I know I must not! Excuse me a minute, Eleanor."
Susan left the room and in ten minutes returned with a very abject
and embarrassed Josie who sullenly apologized to Eleanor for his
rudeness.
"How did you make him do it?" asked Eleanor, curiously, when they
were again alone.
"I told him he could not come near me or speak to me again until he
had apologized to you; and as he can't stand being alienated from me,
he did it."
"How you ever endure it all!" breathed Eleanor.
"I care for Josie a lot," Susan admitted. "Oh, Eleanor, the only
thing I shall have accomplished when my life is over, is the bringing
up of Josie, and if he is a failure, _I_ shall be."
"You've no doubt given him much, Susan; but when certain qualities
are lacking in a character no one can supply the lack."
"He has been really improving since he has been attending the
Middleburg High School."
"Heavens! what must he have been!"
"I've hopes of what college may do for, or to, him, Eleanor!"
Eleanor was silent. Susan knew how tragically empty, sombre, wasted,
her friend considered her life. "Yet she doesn't know the worst I've
lived through!--the way my youth was blasted, devastated!" she
thought. "If I should suddenly reveal it to her!"
Once or twice a vague, inexplicable look in Eleanor's eyes as they
rested upon her made Susan wonder whether she did have a suspicion of
how deep and vital her relation to Sidney had been.
Susan was, however, very far from the truth as to Eleanor's real
suspicion concerning her and Sidney.
It was during this visit of Eleanor's that Susan was greatly
surprised one afternoon, while she and her guest were sitting on the
wide piazza that surrounded the house, an hour before their six
o'clock supper, to receive a letter in the mail which Josie brought
from the White Oak Station post office, from Sidney's wife. Sidney's
wife writing to her! A rather extraordinary communication,
considering all the circumstances.
While Eleanor, busy with her own mail, remained unobservant of her,
Susan read her letter through twice very slowly.
My dear Susan (if I may presume upon our relation to call you so)
Sidney and I are feeling so homesick for our old home! It is just
eight months ago to-day that circumstances forced us to give it up to
you and your family. We should just love to spend a few quiet weeks
at White Oak Farm if you will be so very kind as to permit us. The
simple truth is we have no place to go just now until we are due next
month at the Sherwins. I am ill, and it is possible I may not be
well enough to go to the Sherwins when Sidney goes. So if you can
accommodate both of us for a few weeks and me for a bit longer if I
am not strong enough to travel, I shall be glad, in return, to be of
use to you in any way I can. I should like to introduce some of my
Middleburg friends to you--I think it might be mutually profitable
for us to spend a few weeks together at White Oak Farm. I am longing
for my home, the dear old place! I shall very much appreciate your
kindness if you can make room for us.
Sincerely yours,
LAURA BERESFORD HOUGHTON.
P.S. We have placed Georgie in a school where he will remain as a
summer boarder. So, you see, we are not asking you to be troubled
with him. We have saved enough out of the wreck of our fortunes to
educate Georgie, whatever may betide.
When Eleanor, having gone through her own mail, looked up, Susan,
without comment, handed Laura's astonishing letter to her.
"Well!" Eleanor exclaimed when she had read it, "of all the
cold-blooded propositions! After ignoring you for years while you
were living right here beside her, to invite herself now to come and
visit you!--offering as a bribe to introduce you into Middleburg
society! She must be terribly stranded, poor Laura!"
"She seems to look upon White Oak Farm as more her home than ours,
though we are renting it from Sidney," said Susan.
"But she must know she has no sort of claim upon the place while you
are living here as its tenants. What shall you do, Susan?"
"If Georgie were with them I'd be tempted to tell them to come!"
Eleanor glanced at her swiftly, and Susan saw, to her surprise, that
her friend was flushing crimson.
"You are strangely fond of that boy, Susie, dear!"
"I know it. He has always appealed to me more than any child I've
ever known. And now that he is no longer a child, he is more
appealing than ever! It is strange, I know, that I should feel so.
But it's because of the boy himself--not any survival of my feeling
for his father, I assure you! He is a lovely boy!"
"Is he? I've not seen him since he was a baby."
"He is full of talent; and he is altogether fine and lovable, I
think!" Susan softly cried, her bosom heaving, a wistfulness in her
voice. "I can't help it, I love him!"
"I've never heard you warm up like that about Josie," remarked
Eleanor, her eyes downcast, averted.
"I suppose you think me very spineless, Eleanor, to be able to care
for Sidney's boy like that!"
"What are you going to say to Laura, Susan?"
"I'm afraid I think her letter too impertinent to deserve a reply. I
think I shall not answer it."
"They may take your silence for consent and dump themselves down upon
you!"
"The tenant's cottage is ready for them at any time."
"Would you have the backbone to refuse to receive them here if they
came and presented themselves?"
"I shall not entertain them as my guests, Eleanor."
"It would take a staff of servants to keep them going!" said Eleanor.
At dinner they learned from Joe that he had had a letter from Sidney
very similar to Susan's from Laura.
"Says he's willing to do a bit of farm work for me, a couple hours
every day, if I'll put him and Missus up fur a couple weeks or so!"
Joe chuckled disgustingly. "Listen to here!"; He opened the letter
and read them passages: "'In view of your many favours to me in the
past'--'This time it isn't money, but your hospitality,'--Say, I
wisht yous ladies would have saw the telegraft I wrote off to him!
'Your cottage at the foot of the terraces is ready for you any time
you care to occupy,' I wrote. That's all I sayed. Your cottage
ready for you! Ain't that a side-winder fur my elegant brother Sid,
though? Gee whiz! I never enjoyed myself more in all my life than I
enjoyed myself sendin' that there telegraft! Say! I'd like to have
a photograft of his mug took whiles he's readin' my telegraft!"
Susan, as she heard her husband, decided not to let him know of her
letter from Laura. His joy was too unholy.
"If they're too stuck-up to come and live in the cottage," continued
Joe, "leave Missus sell some of her jewels or furs that she throwed
away so much money on. I guess," he chuckled, "I surprised her and
Sid some last winter (ain't, Susan?) when me I bought _my_ wife sich
a fur set, too. Cost me forty-two fifty. Yes, sir! I guess Sid and
Missus took notice to it all right, when they seen you wearin' it,
Susan! Well, I guess, anyhow--a set that cost forty-two fifty! It
was a awful good set," he gravely almost reverently explained to
Eleanor. "_Ought_ to be--I paid forty-two fifty for it. When I do
buy I b'leeve in buyin' good. No cheap trash. Forty-two fifty--yes,
sir. It was a big outlay, I'll admit. But Susie she wanted some
furs and says I to myself, 'All right, if she wants furs she's
a-goin' to have some. Sid's Missus ain't the only lady kin afford to
walk 'round here lookin' like a Esquimaux.' So I up and got Susie a
set. Forty-two fifty I paid, yes, sir! You'd har'ly b'leeve it, but
that's what it cost me. Forty-two fifty."
Susan did not try to check him or to cover his peculiarities. It
would have been so futile. She let Eleanor have it all.
Their gathering together at the table, however, came to be a time of
misery to the two women.
"If Sidney does come to the cottage, Susan, what shall you do?"
Eleanor asked the next day.
"What I have always done--go my way unmindful of them."
"Which are you, Susan--very callous or very wise?"
"Stultified, Eleanor."
"I predict you'll revive some day!"
"But I'm getting on. I'm thirty-five, you know."
"You don't look a day more than twenty-five. And poor Laura looks
any old age! Yet to any casual observer, how much more reason you
would have for looking prematurely old! In a sense, Susan, you've
lived religiously; with self-restraint and unselfishly; while those
others have forged ahead recklessly, living only for their
self-gratification. And yet," Eleanor shrugged, "they'd call you and
me irreligious, Susie, wouldn't they?--because we don't believe in
their respectable little creeds and ceremonies and delusions, the
opiates with which they lull and delude themselves! If a live
teacher of real religion turns up, see how quickly they crucify him
to-day just as in the past! 'Be ye not conformed to this world,'
saith the Scriptures; but who are quicker than Christians to jump on
you with both feet the moment you _don't_ conform to this world! The
man who does conform to the common standard is the only acceptable
man to society and to the church."
"Why can't we realize," said Susan, "that it is only when a man
_revolts_ from the common standard that he becomes worth hearing?
Aren't we a tiresome race!"
"I wonder whether it is any better on Mars," Eleanor speculated.
Contrary to Eleanor's prediction, Laura and Sidney arrived a few days
later to occupy the cottage.
"I didn't think they'd ever bring themselves to it," she told Susan.
"And now I don't know whether to run in to see Laura or not. It
might be just intolerably humiliating to her!"
"Does the size of the house she lives in matter such a lot? You will
go to see her, not her house."
"You've answered me; I go," nodded Eleanor.
When, the next morning, she carried out her resolution, she was
shocked to find Laura, very white and weak, lying on a couch in the
tiny dining room of the cottage, looking as though she were dying.
She brightened at the unexpected sight of Eleanor and welcomed her
eagerly, almost cheerfully.
"Money worries; and living at too rapid a pace," she explained her
plight. "I tried to keep up with Sidney. Personally, I should have
preferred a little less strenuousness. And then--unhappiness,
Eleanor! Sidney and I have never been really happy together. It's a
general breaking up; I know I can't live long--and I don't want to."
Eleanor could see that poor Laura undoubtedly spoke the truth; she
was doomed. One saw it so unmistakably in her dimmed eyes, her
pinched nostrils, her colourless lips, the whole blighted aspect of
her.
"She _is_ going to die!" thought Eleanor, sombrely. "But Susan's
fate is worse--a living death!"
"This human scene makes me sick!" Eleanor burst out. "Look at the
confusion in the world everywhere! We human beings seem as incapable
of arranging life in a sane and wise order for _all_ of us as a lot
of cats and dogs would be! _Just_ as incapable!"
Laura stared. "Is this supposed to be apropos of my impending death,
Eleanor?"
"Laura, dear!" Eleanor seated on a low stool beside the couch,
gently clasped the sick woman's hand. "If society had forced you to
serve it--not permitted you to be a parasite--you would not now be
here in this cottage dying!"
"I'm not sorry I'm dying. Life does not interest me any more. I am
so bored that I _want_ to die!"
"It's because your interests and activities were always shallow
surface affairs that never struck root, and so were doomed to an
early withering; and now that they are gone, you've nothing left!
It's rather ghastly!"
"I've nothing left; that's true," repeated Laura. "Maybe if I'd had
a child----"
She stopped short.
For & moment neither of them spoke.
Presently Eleanor repeated, "If you'd had a child? What do you mean,
dear?"
"I mean--a daughter."
Eleanor came to a sudden decision. "Laura, will you tell me
something I want very much to know, and which only you can tell me?"
she softly asked.
"What is it?"
"I would not ask you this question if it were not a matter of great
importance to me; if I did not believe you are right about not having
long to live. It is because I believe that, that I must have the
truth about this thing; a suspicion that has been growing in my heart
these many years and which lately has become almost a conviction.
But you alone can make me absolutely sure----"
"Eleanor! You are as white as death! What is it?"
"Tell me--_is Georgie your own son?_"
Laura's faded eyes fell from Eleanor's burning gaze, and she did not
reply.
"I am answered: he is not. _Whose child is he?_"
"Why do you ask, Eleanor? What made you think he was not mine?"
"Didn't anyone else ever think he was not yours?"
"Never. Unmotherly mothers are too common in these days, I suppose!"
said Laura, a touch of sadness in her tired voice.
"Who is Georgie's mother, Laura?"
"She died at his birth. She was Sidney's mistress. I saw her once
for a few minutes in Sidney's rooms, but I didn't know she was going
to have a child; and I married him in haste to keep _her_ from
forcing him to marry her. I did not dream she was going to have a
child!"
"Who was she?"
"I never knew her name. Sidney would never tell me and I was not
interested in knowing. Her father brought the baby to Sidney the
very night we were married and threatened him with all kinds of
trouble if he did not take the child and bring him up as his own son.
We left the baby with Sidney's mother and went abroad. Mrs. Houghton
put it in the care of a farmer's family; and as soon as we returned
home Sidney insisted, against my wishes, upon taking the child. I
never would have consented but that I didn't want to go through the
agony of having a child myself and Sidney had to have a son to
inherit his Uncle George's estate, or it would go to Joe's boy. So,
for the sake of keeping this estate in our hands, I consented to take
Georgie and pass him off as ours. And after all the fuss and trouble
of it, the disgusting lies I've had to tell, the criticism I've had
to bear for not being motherly--after all this, here we are, just
where we'd have been if we had never acknowledged Georgie at all--Joe
Houghton has White Oak Farm!"
"But Georgie will have it when he is of age?"
"If he is anything like his father, he will never earn money enough
to keep it going. And all that Sidney inherited is of course
squandered; and my inheritance went after it!"
"Laura! How do you know Georgie's mother died?"
"Her father said so when he brought the baby to Sidney. Our wedding
journey was more like a funeral than a joy trip, Sidney felt her
death so terribly!"
"Have you truly, truly always believed that Georgie's mother was
dead? Have you never suspected, Laura, _who_ was his mother?"
Laura stared, speechless, into Eleanor's white face.
"Haven't you had a _reason_, Laura, for ignoring your sister-in-law
as you have done?"
"My sister-in-law? You mean Joe Houghton's wife? _What_ do you
mean?"
"Haven't you ever noticed," pursued Eleanor, breathlessly, her bosom
heaving tumultuously, "how fatally Georgie resembles--Joe's wife?
The first time I ever saw Georgie I took him for Susan's own child!
And he _is_ her child! She doesn't know it, but he is! See how she
idolizes him! It's her blood calling to his!"
"You're crazy!" gasped Laura; and Eleanor, in her blind eagerness to
get at the truth, for Susan's sake, failed to realize Laura's
dangerous agitation. "Joe's wife Sidney's mistress! You're crazy,
Eleanor!" Laura laughed wildly. "It's melodramatic! Georgia,
Sidney's son, is, you say, the illegitimate child of Joe Houghton's
wife! And she for fifteen years living next door to him and
mothering him every chance she could get and never knowing he was
hers!" Laura almost screamed with laughter, and Eleanor took alarm.
"But perhaps Susan has known it," Laura went on with shrill irony.
"Perhaps she, like me, has played her part so that her son may
illegally get White Oak Farm when it really belongs to Josie!"
"But morally it belongs to Georgie!" Eleanor maintained. "And--and,
Laura, I'm going----"
The door opened and Sidney, having been drawn by Laura's unnatural
laughter, walked into the room.
He looked shabby and wretched, but retained, nevertheless, a vestige
of his old elegance.
"Hear! Hear, Sidney, Eleanor's wonderful melodrama!" cried Laura,
hoarsely, "in which you are the villain, Joe Houghton and I the
martyred hero and heroine, Susan the--what's her part? Injured
innocence? Or did she wickedly lure two innocent brothers? What a
plot! Has Joe known all along that his wife was the mother of
Sidney's son and has he been working all these years for revenge, by
getting Sidney into his power? Has he? And you, Sidney, you poor
donkey, you never suspected your brother of plotting to get you into
his power! I've been warning you for five years that Joe's seeming
generosity was a trap! But," she groaned, "whenever you wanted
money, you'd believe that any devil who offered you some was an angel
of light! Now, you see! I was right; and you were a fool!"
Sidney, standing white and shaken at Laura's side, turned agonized,
questioning eyes to Eleanor.
"You'll kill Laura! Her heart is weak---- What is this tale you are
telling her? The doctor forbids the least excitement for her!
She----"
"Eleanor thinks that _Georgie is Susan's son!_" interrupted Laura in
uncontrollable excitement. "Did you ever hear of anything more
grotesque? Her only reason seems to be that he looks like her and
that she's fond of him. Explain to her, Sidney, that Georgie's
mother was safely dead and buried sixteen years ago!"
"Of course she was!" affirmed Sidney in a shaking voice. "Your
suspicion is ridiculous, Miss Arnold! Perfectly ridiculous!"
"Perhaps it is," said Eleanor, uncertainly, "but----"
"Don't you see it wouldn't do," cried Laura, mockingly, her eyes
looking feverish, "to have Susan turn out to be Georgie's mother--for
if Joe found it out he would divorce her, and Joe's a millionaire; he
may die before Susan and leave her one third of his estate, which
will in time pass on to Georgie--everything and everybody must be
sacrificed for Georgie!--legality and honour and marriage vows and
wives! For if Georgie were illegitimate, you see, Josie would get
White Oak Farm! Which of course must not happen! Who would think
that an old man's will could cause such crime and suffering?"
Eleanor rose. "I'm going now, Laura, dear--I am terribly sorry I
have excited you so! My idea was absurd, of course. I, too, would
hate to see Josie get White Oak Farm, for he is detestable. Forget
what I've said!"
Sidney, a look of fear in his eyes, hesitatingly followed her to the
door.
"I assure you, Miss Arnold, there's nothing whatever in this idea of
yours--I never heard anything more far-fetched--anything more
preposterous! You won't--you won't spread it about any further, will
you? You--you have not suggested it to Joe or Susan, have you? You
know how much a suggestion can sometimes take root without any least
proof, and----"
"Mr. Houghton," said Eleanor, as he stopped, floundering, "you can
trust me to do and say nothing that will injure either Susan or--or
her son. Susan may outlive her husband and inherit wealth. I'll
keep quiet for a while, anyway--a little while----"
Not giving him time to reply, she turned away and almost ran out of
the cottage.
Sidney, when she had gone, returned slowly, with the step of an old
man, to his wife's couch.
She was lying back among the cushions, weak and spiritless, her
excitement subsided, but so deeply engrossed in thought that she did
not appear to notice his entrance.
He bent over her solicitously. "It was outrageous of that woman to
come here and stir you up so, dear! I felt like----"
"_Is_ there anything in it?--in her suspicion?" she calmly
interrupted him. "Suppose, Sidney, as I am dying, you tell me the
truth for once. _Is Georgie Susan's son?_"
Sidney, after just a perceptible instant's pause, answered her: "Of
course he's not! I never heard of such a ridiculous idea!"
Laura looked at him for a moment in silence, her gravely meditative
eyes making him feel as though his very soul were transparent to her.
"Does Susan know it?" she presently asked.
"Know what? You don't _believe_ this insane story?"
"Why did you tell me, the night of our wedding, that the baby's
grandfather had told you his mother was dead?"
"Because he _did_! And it was not until we came home from Europe
that he came to me and told me she wasn't! That night of the baby's
birth he had left her for dying--but she had rallied. Her parents
and sisters had then told her that her child had died; and she had
believed it. Her father implored me not to let her know the
truth--for the family would be disgraced; she herself would be so
ruined in the eyes of the community that she would be unable to earn
her living; they were poor and needed what she could earn.
"I offered financial help, but he refused it. Of course I consented
to keep the secret; I had everything at stake in keeping it; I didn't
want to lose you; I didn't want to lose Georgie, I wanted him to
inherit White Oak Farm. I wanted to avoid a scandal.
"Then I made the discovery that _she_ was teaching the school at
White Oak Station! I could not stand for that--she'd see
Georgie!--and you'd see _her_! I went to her father and begged him
to get her away. I pointed out to him the danger to us all if he
didn't. But--well, he died before he accomplished it. And then--Joe
married her!"
Laura regarded her husband with a look of utter incredulity. "I've
always known, Sidney," she spoke slowly, "that you were weak! But
that you were capable of such a thing as this--of leaving that poor
woman in ignorance of her own son's existence through all these
years! Beguiling me into passing him off as mine when his own
unsuspecting mother lived just at my door! What have I been married
to? Let me warn you! Never tell Susan that Georgie is her son, or
she'll kill you, Sidney! I would in her place! I would deliberately
and cold-bloodedly murder you! How well you've guarded your secret!
I never suspected it! Never dreamed of it! Susan herself never
dreamed of it--that the boy she was so fond of was her very
own--though Eleanor saw the resemblance as soon as she saw them
together! Susan whom you seduced and robbed----"
Her voice stopped suddenly, her head fell forward. She was
unconscious.
That night her empty, purposeless, utterly futile life came to an end.