"That"s what I think," Susan said, fighting a sensation of sickness.
Her heart was a cold weight, she hoped that she was not going to cry.
"But all the same, Sue," Billy resumed more briskly, "You can see that it wouldn"t take much to bring an affair like that to a finish.
Coleman"s rich, he can marry if he pleases, and he wants what he wants---You couldn"t just stop short, I suppose? You couldn"t simply turn down all his invitations, and refuse everything?" he broke off to ask.
"Billy, how could I? Right in the next office!"
"Well, that"s an advantage, in a way. It keeps the things in his mind.
Either way, you"re no worse off for stopping everything now, Sue. If he"s in earnest, he"ll not be put off by that, and if he"s not, you save yourself from--from perhaps beginning to care."
Susan could have kissed the top of Billy"s rumpled head for the tactful close. She had thrown her pride to the winds to-night, but she loved him for remembering it.
"But he would think that I cared!" she objected.
"Let him! That won"t hurt you. Simply say that your aunt disapproves of your being so much with him, and stop short."
Billy went on working, and Susan shuffled her pack for a new game.
"Thank you, Bill," she said at last, gratefully. "I"m glad I told you."
"Oh, that"s all right!" said William, gruffly.
There was a silence until Mary Lou came in, to rip up her old velvet hat, and speculate upon the clangers of a trip to Virginia City.
CHAPTER VII
Life presented itself in a new aspect to Susan Brown. A hundred little events and influences combining had made it seem to her less a grab-bag, from which one drew good or bad at haphazard, and more a rational problem, to be worked out with arbitrarily supplied materials.
She might not make herself either rich or famous, but she COULD,--she began dimly to perceive,--eliminate certain things from her life and put others in their places. The race was not to the swift, but to the faithful. What other people had done, she, by following the old copybook rules of the honest policy, the early rising, the power of knowledge, the infinite capacity of taking pains that was genius, could do, too. She had been the toy of chance too long. She would grasp chance, now, and make it serve her. The perseverance that Anna brought to her hospital work, that Josephine exercised in her studies, Susan, lacking a gift, lacking special training, would seriously devote to the business of getting married. Girls DID marry. She would presumably marry some day, and Peter Coleman would marry. Why not, having advanced a long way in this direction, to each other?
There was, in fact, no alternative in her case. She knew no other eligible man half as well. If Peter Coleman went out of her life, what remained? A somewhat insecure position in a wholesale drug-house, at forty dollars a month, and half a third-story bedroom in a boarding-house.
Susan was not a calculating person. She knew that Peter Coleman liked her immensely, and that he could love her deeply, too. She knew that her feeling for him was only held from an extreme by an inherited feminine instinct of self-preservation. Marriage, and especially this marriage, meant to her a great many pleasant things, a splendid, lovable man with whom to share life, a big home to manage and delight in, a conspicuous place in society, and one that she knew that she could fill gracefully and well. Marriage meant children, dear little white-clad sons, with st.u.r.dy bare knees, and tiny daughters half-smothered in lace and ribbons; it meant power, power to do good, to develop her own gifts; it meant, above all, a solution of the problems of her youth. No more speculations, no more vagaries, safely anch.o.r.ed, happily absorbed in normal cares and pleasures, Susan could rest on her laurels, and look about her in placid content!
No more serious thought a.s.sailed her. Other thoughts than these were not "nice." Susan safe-guarded her wandering fancies as sternly as she did herself, would as quickly have let Peter, or any other man, kiss her, as to have dreamed of the fundamental and essential elements of marriage. These, said Auntie, "came later." Susan was quite content to ignore them. That the questions that "came later" might ruin her life or unmake her compact, she did not know. At this point it might have made no difference in her att.i.tude. Her affection for Peter was quite as fresh and pure as her feeling for a particularly beloved brother would have been.
"You"re dated three-deep for Thursday night, I presume?"
"Peter--how you do creep up behind one!" Susan turned, on the deck, to face him laughingly. "What did you say?"
"I said--but where are you going?"
"Upstairs to lunch. Where did you think?" Susan exhibited the little package in her hand. "Do I look like a person about to go to a Browning Cotillion, or to take a dip in the Pacific?"
"No," gurgled Peter, "but I was wishing we could lunch together.
However, I"m dated with Hunter. But what about Thursday night?"
"Thursday." Susan reflected. "Peter, I can"t!"
"All foolishness. You can."
"No, honestly! Georgie and Joe are coming. The first time."
"Oh, but you don"t have to be there!"
"Oh, but yes I do!"
"Well---" Mr. Coleman picked a limp rubber bathing cap from the top of a case, and distended it on two well-groomed hands. "Well, Evangeline, how"s Sat.? The great American pay-day!"
"Busy Sat.u.r.day, too. Too bad. I"m sorry, Peter."
"Woman, you lie!"
"Of course you can insult me, sir. I"m only a working girl!"
"No, but who have you got a date with?" Peter said curiously. "You"re blushing like mad! You"re not engaged at all!"
"Yes, I am. Truly. Lydia Lord is taking the civil service examinations; she wants to get a position in the public library. And I promised that I"d take Mary"s dinner up and sit with her."
"Oh, shucks! You could get out of that! However----I"ll tell you what, Susan. I was going off with Russ on Sunday, but I"ll get out of it, and we"ll go see guard mount at the Presidio, and have tea with Aunt Clara, what?"
"I don"t believe they have guard mount on Sundays."
"Well, then we"ll go feed the gold-fish in the j.a.panese gardens,--they eat on Sundays, the poor things! n.o.body ever converted them."
"Honestly, Peter---"
"Look here, Susan!" he exclaimed, suddenly aroused. "Are you trying to throw me down? Well, of all gall!"
Susan"s heart began to thump.
"No, of course I"m not!"
"Well, then, shall I get tickets for Monday night?"
"Not Monday."
"Look here, Susan! Somebody"s been stuffing you, I can see it! Was it Auntie? Come on, now, what"s the matter, all of a sudden?"
"There"s nothing sudden about it," Susan said, with dignity, "but Auntie does think that I go about with you a good deal---"
Peter was silent. Susan, stealing a glance at his face, saw that it was very red.
"Oh, I love that! I"m crazy about it!" he said, grinning. Then, with sudden masterfulness, "That"s all ROT! I"m coming for you on Sunday, and we"ll go feed the fishes!"
And he was gone. Susan ate her lunch very thoughtfully, satisfied on the whole with the first application of the new plan.