"Remember Stephen Bocqueraz that Brownie introduced to you just before supper?" asked Ella, as they went home, yawning, sleepy and headachy, the next day. Ella had been playing cards through the supper hour.
"Perfectly!" Susan answered, flushing and smiling.
"You must have made a hit," Ella remarked, "because--I"m giving him a big dinner on Tuesday, at the Palace--and when I talked to him he asked if you would be there. Well, I"m glad you had a nice time, kiddy, and we"ll do it again!"
Susan had thanked her gratefully more than once, but she thanked her again now. She felt that she truly loved Ella, so big and good natured and kind.
Emily was a little bit cold when Susan told her about the ball, and the companion promptly suppressed the details of her own successes, and confined her recollections to the girls who had asked for Emily, and to generalities. Susan put her wilting orchids in water, and went dreamily through the next two or three days, recovering from the pleasure and excitement. It was almost a week before Emily was quite herself again; then, when Isabel Wallace came running in to Emily"s sick-room to beg Susan to fill a place at their dinner-table at a few hours" notice, Susan"s firm refusal quite won Emily"s friendship back.
"Isabel"s a dear," said Emily, contentedly settling down with the Indian bead-work in which she and Susan had had several lessons, and with which they filled some spare time, "but she"s not a leader. I took you up, so now Isabel does! I knew--I felt sure that, if Ella let you borrow that dress, Isabel would begin to patronize you!"
It was just one of Emily"s nasty speeches, and Emily really wasn"t well, so Susan reminded herself, when the hot, angry color burned in her face, and an angry answer came to her mind. What hurt most was that it was partly true; Emily HAD taken her up, and, when she ceased to be all that Emily required of sympathy and flattery and interest, Emily would find someone else to fill Miss Brown"s place. Without Emily she was n.o.body, and it did not console Susan to reflect that, had Emily"s fortune been hers and Emily in her position, the circ.u.mstances would be exactly reversed. Just the accident of having money would have made Miss Brown the flattered and admired, the safe and secure one; just the not having it would have pushed Emily further even than Susan was from the world of leisure and beauty and luxury.
"This world IS money!" thought Susan, when she saw the head-waiter come forward so smilingly to meet Ella and herself at the Palm Garden; when Leonard put off a dozen meekly enduring women to finish Miss Emily Saunders" gown on time; when the very s.e.xton at church came hurrying to escort Mrs. Saunders and herself through the disappointed crowds in the aisles, and establish them in, and lock them in, the big empty pew. The newspapers gave half a column of blame to the little girl who tried to steal a two-dollar scarf from the Emporium, but there was nothing but admiration for Ella on the day when she and a twenty-year-old boy, for a wager, led a woolly white toy lamb, a lamb costing twenty-five dollars, through the streets, from the club to the Palace Hotel. The papers were only deeply interested and amused when Miss Elsa Chisholm gave a dinner to six favorite riding-horses, who were entertained in the family dining-room after a layer of tan-bark had been laid on the floor, and fed by their owners from specially designed leather bags and boxes; and they merely reported the fact that Miss Dolly Ripley had found so unusual an intelligence in her gardener that she had deeded to him her grandfather"s eighty-thousand-dollar library. "He really has ever so much better brains than I have, don"t you know?" said Miss Ripley to the press.
In return for the newspapers" indulgent att.i.tude, however, they were shown no clemency by the Saunders and the people of their set. On a certain glorious, golden afternoon in May, Susan, twisting a card that bore the name of Miss Margaret Summers, representing the CHRONICLE, went down to see the reporter. The Saunders family hated newspaper notoriety, but it was a favorite saying that since the newspapers would print things anyway, they might as well get them straight, and Susan often sent dinner or luncheon lists to the three morning papers.
However, the young woman who rose when Susan went into the drawing-room was not in search of news. Her young, pretty face was full of distress.
"Miss Saunders?" asked she.
"I"m Miss Brown," Susan said. "Miss Saunders is giving a card-party and I am to act for her."
Miss Summers, beginning her story, also began to cry. She was the society editor, she explained, and two weeks before she had described in her column a luncheon given by Miss Emily Saunders. Among the list of guests she had mentioned Miss Carolyn Seymour.
"Not Carolyn Seymour!" said Susan, shocked. "Why, she never is here!
The Seymours---" she shook her head. "I know people do accept them,"
said Susan, "but the Saunders don"t even know them! They"re not in the best set, you know, they"re really hardly in society at all!"
"I know NOW," Miss Summers said miserably. "But all the other girls--this year"s debutantes--were there, and I had to guess at most of the names, and I chanced it! Fool that I was!" she interrupted herself bitterly. "Well, the next day, while I was in the office, my telephone rang. It was Thursday, and I had my Sunday page to do, and I was just RUSHING, and I had a bad cold,--I"ve got it yet. So I just said, "What is it?" rather sharply, you know, and a voice said, in a businesslike sort of way, "How did you happen to put Miss Carolyn Seymour"s name on Miss Emily Saunders" lunch list?" I never dreamed that it was Miss Saunders; how should I? She didn"t say "I" or "me" or anything--just that. So I said, "Well, is it a matter of international importance?""
"Ouch!" said Susan, wincing, and shaking a doubtful head.
"I know, it was awful!" the other girl agreed eagerly. "But--" her anxious eyes searched Susan"s face. "Well; so the next day Mr. Brice called me into the office, and showed me a letter from Miss Ella Saunders, saying--" and Miss Summers began to cry again. "And I can"t tell Mamma!" she sobbed. "My brother"s been so ill, and I was so proud of my position!"
"Do you mean they--FIRED you?" Susan asked, all sympathy.
"He said he"d have to!" gulped Miss Summers, with a long sniff. "He said that Saunders and Babc.o.c.k advertise so much with them, and that, if she wasn"t appeased somehow--"
"Well, now, I"ll tell you," said Susan, ringing for tea, "I"ll wait until Miss Saunders is in a good mood, and then I"ll do the very best I can for you. You know, a thing like that seems small, but it"s just the sort of thing that is REALLY important," she pursued, consolingly. She had quite cheered her caller before the tea-cups were emptied, but she was anything but hopeful of her mission herself.
And Ella justified her misgivings when the topic was tactfully opened the next day.
"I"m sorry for the little thing," said Ella, briskly, "but she certainly oughtn"t to have that position if she doesn"t know better than that! Carolyn Seymour in this house--I never heard of such a thing! I was denying it all the next day at the club and it"s extremely unpleasant. Besides," added Ella, reddening, "she was extremely impertinent about it when I telephoned---"
"d.u.c.h.ess, she didn"t dream it was you! She only said that she didn"t know it was so important---" Susan pleaded.
"Well," interrupted Miss Saunders, in a satisfied and final tone, "next time perhaps she WILL know who it is, and whether it is important or not! Sue, while you"re there at the desk," she added, "will you write to Mrs. Bergess, Mrs. Gerald Florence Bergess, and tell her that I looked at the frames at Gump"s for her prizes, and they"re lovely, from fourteen up, and that I had him put three or four aside---"
After the dance Peter began to call rather frequently at "High Gardens," a compliment which Emily took entirely to herself, and to escort the girls about on their afternoon calls, or keep them and Ella, and the old mistress of the house as well, laughing throughout the late and formal dinner. Susan"s reserve and her resolutions melted before the old charm; she had nothing to gain by snubbing him; it was much pleasanter to let by-gones be by-gones, and enjoy the moment. Peter had every advantage; if she refused him her friendship a hundred other girls were only too eager to fill her place, so she was gay and companionable with him once more, and extracted a little fresh flavor from the friendship in Emily"s unconsciousness of the constant interchange of looks and inflections that went on between Susan and Peter over her head. Susan sometimes thought of Mrs. Carroll"s old comment on the popularity of the absorbed and busy girl when she realized that Peter was trying in vain to find time for a personal word with her, or was resenting her interest in some other caller, while she left Emily to him. She was nearer to Peter than ever, a thousand times more sure of herself, and, if she would still have married him, she was far less fond of him than she had been years ago.
Susan asked him some questions, during one idle tea-time, of Hunter, Baxter & Hunter. His uncle had withdrawn from the firm now, he told her, adding with characteristic frankness that in his opinion "the old guy got badly stung." The Baxter home had been sold to a club; the old people had found the great house too big for them and were established now in one of the very smartest of the new apartment houses that were beginning to be built in San Francisco. Susan called, with Emily, upon Mrs. Baxter, and somehow found the old lady"s personality as curiously shrunk, in some intangible way, as was her domestic domain in actuality. Mrs. Baxter, cackling emphatically and disapprovingly of the world in general, fussily accompanying them to the elevator, was merely a rather tiresome and pitiful old woman, very different from the delicate little grande dame of Susan"s recollection. Ella reported the Baxter fortune as sadly diminished, but there were still maids and the faithful Emma; there were still the little closed carriage and the semi-annual trip to Coronado. Nor did Peter appear to have suffered financially in any way; although Mrs. Baxter had somewhat fretfully confided to the girls that his uncle had suggested that it was time that Peter stood upon his own feet; and that Peter accordingly had entered into business relations with a certain very wealthy firm of grain brokers. Susan could not imagine Peter as actively involved in any very lucrative deals, but Peter spent a great deal of money, never denied himself anything, and took frequent and delightful vacations.
He took Emily and Susan to polo and tennis games, and, when the season at the hotel opened, they went regularly to the dances. In July Peter went to Tahoe, where Mrs. Saunders planned to take the younger girls later for at least a few weeks" stay. Ella chaperoned them to Burlingame for a week of theatricals; all three staying with Ella"s friend, Mrs. Keith, whose daughter, Mary Peac.o.c.k, had also Dolly Ripley and lovely Isabel Wallace for her guests. Little Constance Fox, visiting some other friends nearby, was in constant attendance upon Miss Ripley, and Susan thought the relationship between them an extraordinary study; Miss Ripley bored, rude, casual, and Constance increasingly attentive, eager, admiring.
"When are you going to come and spend a week with me?" drawled Miss Ripley to Susan.
"You"ll have the loveliest time of your life!" Connie added, brilliantly. "Be sure you ask me for that week, Dolly!"
"We"ll write you about it," Miss Ripley said lazily, and Constance, putting the best face she could upon the little slight, slapped her hand playfully, and said:
"Oh, aren"t you mean!"
"Dolly takes it so for granted that I"m welcome at her house at ANY time," said Constance to Susan, later, "that she forgets how rude a thing like that can sound!" She had followed Susan into her own room, and now stood by the window, looking down a sun-steeped vista of lovely roads and trees and gardens with a discontented face. Susan, changing her dress for an afternoon on the tennis-courts, merely nodded sympathetically.
"Lord, I would like to go this afternoon!" added Constance, presently.
"Aren"t you going over for the tennis?" Susan asked in amazement. For the semi-finals of the tournament were to be played on this glorious afternoon, and there would be a brilliant crowd on the courts and tea at the club to follow.
"No; I can"t!" Miss Fox said briefly. "Tell everyone that I"m lying down with a terrible headache, won"t you?"
"But why?" asked Susan. For the headache was obviously a fiction.
"You know that mustard-colored linen with the black embroidery that Dolly"s worn once or twice, don"t you?" asked Connie, with apparent irrelevancy.
Susan nodded, utterly at a loss.
"Well, she gave it to me to-day, and the hat and the parasol," said Constance, with a sort of resigned bitterness. "She said she had got the outfit at Osbourne"s, last month, and she thought it would look stunning on me, and wouldn"t I like to wear it to the club this afternoon?"
"Well--?" Susan said, as the other paused. "Why not?"
"Oh, why not!" echoed Connie, with mild exasperation. "Don"t be a d.a.m.ned fool!"
"Oh, I see!" Susan said, enlightened. "Everybody knows it"s Miss Ripley"s, of course! She probably didn"t think of that!"
"She probably did!" responded Connie, with a rather dry laugh.
"However, the fact remains that she"ll take it out of me if I go and don"t wear it, and Mamma never will forgive me if I do! So, I came in to borrow a book. Of course, Susan, I"ve taken things from Dolly Ripley before, and I probably will again," she added, with the nearest approach to a sensible manner that Susan had ever seen in her, "but this is going a little TOO far!"
And, borrowing a book, she departed, leaving Susan to finish her dressing in a very sober frame of mind. She wondered if her relationship toward Emily could possibly impress any outsider as Connie"s att.i.tude toward Dolly Ripley impressed her.
With Isabel Wallace she began, during this visit, the intimate and delightful friendship for which they two had been ready for a long time. Isabel was two years older than Susan, a beautiful, grave-eyed brunette, gracious in manner, sweet of voice, the finest type that her cla.s.s and environment can produce. Isabel was well read, musical, traveled; she spoke two or three languages besides her mother tongue.
She had been adored all her life by three younger brothers, by her charming and simple, half-invalid mother, and her big, clever father, and now, all the girls were beginning to suspect, was also adored by the very delightful Eastern man who was at present Mrs. Butler Holmes"
guest in Burlingame, and upon whom all of them had been wasting their prettiest smiles. John Furlong was college-bred, young, handsome, of a rich Eastern family, in every way a suitable husband for the beautiful woman with whom he was so visibly falling in love.
Susan watched the little affair with a heartache, not all unworthy. She didn"t quite want to be Isabel, or want a lover quite like John. But she did long for something beautiful and desirable all her own; it was hard to be always the outsider, always alone. When she thought of Isabel"s father and mother, their joy in her joy, her own pleasure in pleasing them, a thrill of pain shook her. If Isabel was all grateful, all radiant, all generous, she, Susan, could have been graceful and radiant and generous too! She lay awake in the soft summer nights, thinking of what John would say to Isabel, and what Isabel, so lovely and so happy, would reply.
"Sue, you will know how wonderful it is when it comes to you!" Isabel said, on the last night of their Burlingame visit, when she gave Susan a shy hint that it was "all RIGHT," if a profound secret still.
The girls did not stay for the theatricals, after all. Emily was deeply disgusted at being excluded from some of the ensembles in which she had hoped to take part and, on the very eve of the festivities, she became alarmingly ill, threw Mrs. Keith"s household into utter consternation and confusion, and was escorted home immediately by Susan and a trained nurse.