"No, indeed!" said Lydia, cheerfully. Susan"s eye met his miserably--but she could not speak.
They went slowly along the pier, Susan watching Lydia"s steps, and watching nothing else. Her face burned, her heart pounded, her hands and feet were icy cold. She merely wished to get away from this scene without a disgraceful exposition of some sort, to creep somewhere into darkness, and to die. She answered Lydia"s cheerful comments briefly; with a dry throat.
Suddenly beside one of the steamer"s great red stacks there leaped a plume of white steam, and the prolonged deep blast of her whistle drowned all other sounds.
"There she goes!" said Lydia pausing.
She turned to watch the Nippon Maru move against the pier like a moving wall, swing free, push slowly out into the bay. Susan did not look.
"It makes me sick," she said, when Lydia, astonished, noticed she was not watching.
"Why, I should think it did!" Lydia exclaimed, for Susan"s face was ashen, and she was biting her lips hard to keep back the deadly rush of faintness that threatened to engulf her.
"I"m afraid--air--Lyd---" whispered Susan. Lydia forgot her own injured ankle.
"Here, sit on these boxes, darling," she said. "Well, you poor little girl you! There, that"s better. Don"t worry about anyone watching you, just sit there and rest as long as you feel like it! I guess you need your lunch!"
PART THREE
Service
CHAPTER I
December was unusually cold and bleak, that year, and after the holidays came six long weeks during which there were but a few glimpses of watery sunlight, between long intervals of fogs and rains. Day after day broke dark and stormy, day after day the office-going crowds jostled each other under wet umbrellas, or, shivering in wet shoes and damp outer garments, packed the street-cars.
Mrs. Lancaster"s home, like all its type, had no furnace, and moisture and cold seemed to penetrate it, and linger therein. Wind howled past the dark windows, rain dripped from the cornice above the front door, the acrid odor of drying woolens and wet rubber coats permeated the halls. Mrs. Lancaster said she never had known of so much sickness everywhere, and sighed over the long list of unknown dead in the newspaper every morning.
"And I shouldn"t be one bit surprised if you were sickening for something, Susan," her aunt said, in a worried way, now and then. But Susan, stubbornly shaking her head, fighting against tears, always answered with ill-concealed impatience:
"Oh, PLEASE don"t, auntie! I"M all right!"
No such welcome event as a sudden and violent and fatal illness was likely to come her way, she used bitterly to reflect. She was here, at home again, in the old atmosphere of shabbiness and poverty; nothing was changed, except that now her youth was gone, and her heart broken, and her life wrecked beyond all repairing. Of the great world toward which she had sent so many hopeful and wistful and fascinated glances, a few years ago, she now stood in fear. It was a cruel world, cold and big and selfish; it had torn her heart out of her, and cast her aside like a dry husk. She could not keep too far enough away from it to satisfy herself in future, she only prayed for obscurity and solitude for the rest of her difficult life.
She had been helped through the first dreadful days that had followed the sailing of the Nippon Maru, by a terrified instinct of self-protection. Having failed so signally in this venture, her only possible course was concealment. Mary Lord did not guess--Mrs. Saunders did not guess--Auntie did not guess! Susan spent every waking hour, and many of the hours when she was supposedly asleep, in agonized search for some unguarded move by which she might be betrayed.
A week went by, two weeks--life resumed its old aspect outwardly. No newspaper had any sensational revelation to make in connection with the news of the Nippon Maru"s peaceful arrival in Honolulu harbor, and the reception given there for the eminent New York novelist. n.o.body spoke to Susan of Bocqueraz; her heart began to resume its natural beat. And with ebbing terror it was as if the full misery of her heart was revealed.
She had severed her connections with the Saunders family; she told her aunt quietly, and steeled herself for the scene that followed, which was more painful even than she had feared. Mrs. Lancaster felt indignantly that an injustice had been done Susan, was not at all sure that she herself would not call upon Miss Saunders and demand a full explanation. Susan combated this idea with surprising energy; she was very silent and unresponsive in these days, but at this suggestion she became suddenly her old vigorous self.
"I don"t understand you lately, Sue," her aunt said disapprovingly, after this outburst. "You don"t act like yourself at all! Sometimes you almost make auntie think that you"ve got something on your mind."
Something on her mind! Susan could have given a mad laugh at the suggestion. Madness seemed very near sometimes, between the anguished aching of her heart, and the chaos of shame and grief and impotent rebellion that possessed her soul. She was sickened with the constant violence of her emotions, whether anger or shame shook her, or whether she gave way to desperate longings for the sound of Stephen Bocqueraz"s voice, and the touch of his hand again, she was equally miserable.
Perhaps the need of him brought the keenest pang, but, after all, love with Susan was still the unknown quant.i.ty, she was too closely concerned with actual discomforts to be able to afford the necessary hours and leisure for brooding over a disappointment in love. That pain came only at intervals,--a voice, overheard in the street, would make her feel cold and weak with sudden memory, a poem or a bit of music that recalled Stephen Bocqueraz would ring her heart with sorrow, or, worst of all, some reminder of the great city where he made his home, and the lives that gifted and successful and charming men and women lived there, would scar across the dull wretchedness of Susan"s thoughts with a touch of flame. But the steady misery of everyday had nothing to do with these, and, if less sharp, was still terrible to bear.
Desperately, with deadly determination, she began to plan an escape.
She told herself that she would not go away until she was sure that Stephen was not coming back for her, sure that he was not willing to accept the situation as she had arranged it. If he rebelled,--if he came back for her,--if his devotion were unaffected by what had pa.s.sed, then she must meet that situation as it presented itself.
But almost from the very first she knew that he would not come back and, as the days went by, and not even a letter came, however much her pride suffered, she could not tell herself that she was very much surprised. In her most sanguine moments she could dream that he had had news in Honolulu,--his wife was dead, he had hurried home, he would presently come back to San Francisco, and claim Susan"s promise. But for the most part she did not deceive herself; her friendship with Stephen Bocqueraz was over. It had gone out of her life as suddenly as it had come, and with it, Susan told herself, had gone so much more!
Her hope of winning a place for herself, her claim on the life she loved, her confidence that, as she was different, so would her life be different from the other lives she knew. All, all was gone. She was as helpless and as impotent as Mary Lou!
She had her moods when planning vague enterprises in New York or Boston satisfied her, and other moods when she determined to change her name, and join a theatrical troupe. From these some slight accident might dash her to the bitterest depths of despondency. She would have a sudden, sick memory of Stephen"s clear voice, of the touch of his hand, she would be back at the Browning dance again, or sitting between him and Billy at that memorable first supper----
"Oh, my G.o.d, what shall I do?" she would whisper, dizzy with pain, stopping short over her sewing, or standing still in the street, when the blinding rush of recollection came. And many a night she lay wakeful beside Mary Lou, her hands locked tight over her fast-beating heart, her lips framing again the hopeless, desperate little prayer: "Oh, G.o.d, what shall I do!"
No avenue of thought led to comfort, there was no comfort anywhere.
Susan grew sick of her own thoughts. Chief among them was the conviction of failure, she had tried to be good and failed. She had consented to be what was not good, and failed there, too.
Shame rose like a rising tide. She could not stem it; she could not even recall the arguments that had influenced her so readily a few months ago, much less be consoled by them. Over and over again the horrifying fact sprang from her lulled reveries: she was bad--she was, at heart at least, a bad woman--she was that terrible, half-understood thing of which all good women stood in virtuous fear.
Susan rallied to the charge as well as she could. She had not really sinned in actual fact, after all, and one person only knew that she had meant to do so. She had been blinded and confused by her experience in a world where every commandment was lightly broken, where all sacred matters were regarded as jokes.
But the stain remained, rose fresh and dreadful through her covering excuses. Consciousness of it influenced every moment of her day and kept her wakeful far into the night. Susan"s rare laughter was cut short by it, her brave resolves were felled by it, her ambition sank defeated before the memory of her utter, pitiable weakness. A hundred times a day she writhed with the same repulsion and shock that she might have felt had her offense been a well-concealed murder.
She had immediately written Stephen Bocqueraz a shy, reserved little letter, in the steamship company"s care at Yokohama. But it would be two months before an answer to that might be expected, and meanwhile there was great financial distress at the boarding-house. Susan could not witness it without at least an effort to help.
Finally she wrote Ella a gay, unconcerned note, veiling with nonsense her willingness to resume the old relationship. The answer cut her to the quick. Ella had dashed off only a few lines of crisp news; Mary Peac.o.c.k was with them now, they were all crazy about her. If Susan wanted a position why didn"t she apply to Madame Vera? Ella had heard her say that she needed girls. And she was sincerely Susan"s, Ella Cornwallis Saunders.
Madame Vera was a milliner; the most popular of her day. Susan"s cheeks flamed as she read the little note. But, meditating drearily, it occurred to her that it might be as well to go and see the woman. She, Susan, had a knowledge of the social set that might be valuable in that connection. While she dressed, she pleased herself with a vision of Mademoiselle Brown, very dignified and severely beautiful, in black silk, as Madame Vera"s right-hand woman.
The milliner was rushing about the back of her store at the moment that Susan chanced to choose for her nervously murmured remarks, and had to have them repeated several times. Then she laughed heartily and merrily, and a.s.sured Susan in very imperfect and very audible English, that forty girls were already on her list waiting for positions in her establishment.
"I thought perhaps--knowing all the people--" Susan stammered very low.
"How--why should that be so good?" Madame asked, with horrible clearness. "Do I not know them myself?"
Susan was glad to escape without further parley.
"See, now," said Madame Vera in a low tone, as she followed Susan to the door, "You do not come into my workshop, eh?"
"How much?" asked Susan, after a second"s thought.
"Seven dollars," said the other with a quick persuasive nod, "and your dinner. That is something, eh? And more after a while."
But Susan shook her head. And, as she went out into the steadily falling rain again, bitter tears blinded her eyes.
She cried a great deal in these days, became nervous and sensitive and morbid. She moped about the house, restless and excited, unwilling to do anything that would take her away from the house when the postman arrived, reading the steamship news in every morning"s paper.
Yet, curiously enough, she never accepted this experience as similar to what poor Mary Lou had undergone so many years ago,--this was not a "disappointment in love,"--this was only a pa.s.sing episode. Presently she would get herself in hand again and astonish them with some achievement brilliant enough to sweep these dark days from everyone"s memory.
She awaited her hour, impatiently at first, later with a sort of resentful calm. Susan"s return home, however it affected them financially, was a real delight to her aunt and Mary Lou. The cousins roomed together, were together all day long.
Susan presently flooded the house with the circulars of a New York dramatic school, wrote mysterious letters pertaining to them. After a while these disappeared, and she spent a satisfied evening or two in filling blanks of application for admission into a hospital training-school. In February she worked hard over a short story that was to win a hundred dollar prize. Mary Lou had great confidence in it.