"That was so like dear Dolly!" said Mrs. Fox later, coming up behind Susan on the porch, and slipping an arm girlishly about her waist.
"What was?" asked Susan, after greetings.
"Why, to ask what your first name was, and say that as she hated the name of Brown, she was going to call you Susan!" said Mrs. Fox sweetly.
"Don"t you find her very dear and simple?"
"Why, I just met her--" Susan said, disliking the arm about her waist, and finding Mrs. Fox"s interest in her opinion of Dolly Ripley quite transparent.
"Ah, I know her so well!" Mrs. Fox added, with a happy sigh. "Always bright and interested when she meets people. But I scold her--yes, I do!--for giving people a false impression. I say, "Dolly,"--I"ve known her so long, you know!--"Dolly, dear, people might easily think you meant some of these impulsive things you say, dear, whereas your friends, who know you really well, know that it"s just your little manner, and that you"ll have forgotten all about it to-morrow!" I don"t mean YOU, Miss Brown," Mrs. Fox interrupted herself to say hastily.
"Far from it!----Now, my dear, tell me that you know I didn"t mean you!"
"I understand perfectly," Susan said graciously. And she knew that at last she really did. Mrs. Fox was fluttering like some poor bird that sees danger near its young. She couldn"t have anyone else, especially this insignificant little Miss Brown, who seemed to be making rather an impression everywhere, jeopardize Connie"s intimacy with Dolly Ripley, without using such poor and obvious little weapons as lay at her command to prevent it.
Standing on the porch of the Burlingame Club, and staring out across the gracious slopes of the landscape, Susan had an exhilarated sense of being among the players of this fascinating game at last. She must play it alone, to be sure, but far better alone than a.s.sisted as Connie Fox was a.s.sisted. It was an immense advantage to be expected to accompany Emily everywhere; it made a snub practically impossible, while heightening the compliment when she was asked anywhere without Emily.
Susan was always willing to entertain a difficult guest, to play cards or not to play with apparently equal enjoyment--more desirable than either, she was "fun," and the more she was laughed at, the funnier she grew.
"And you"ll be there with Emily, of course, Miss Brown," said the different hostess graciously. "Emily, you"re going to bring Susan Brown, you know!--I"m telephoning, Miss Brown, because I"m afraid my note didn"t make it clear that we want you, too!"
Emily"s well-known eccentricity did not make Susan the less popular; even though she was personally involved in it.
"Oh, I wrote you a note for Emily this morning, Mrs. Willis," Susan would say, at the club, "she"s feeling wretchedly to-day, and she wants to be excused from your luncheon to-morrow!"
"Oh?" The matron addressed would eye the messenger with kindly sharpness. "What"s the matter--very sick?"
"We-ell, not dying!" A dimple would betray the companion"s demureness.
"Not dying? No, I suppose not! Well, you tell Emily that she"s a silly, selfish little cat, or words to that effect!"
"I"ll choose words to that effect," Susan would a.s.sure the speaker, smilingly.
"You couldn"t come, anyway, I suppose?"
"Oh, no, Mrs. Willis! Thank you so much!"
"No, of course not." The matron would bite her lips in momentary irritation, and, when they parted, the cause of that pretty, appreciative, amusing little companion of Emily Saunders would be appreciably strengthened.
One winter morning Emily tossed a square, large envelope across the breakfast table toward her companion.
"Sue, that looks like a Browning invitation! What do you bet that he"s sent you a card for the dances!"
"He couldn"t!" gasped Susan, s.n.a.t.c.hing it up, while her eyes danced, and the radiant color flooded her face. Her hand actually shook when she tore the envelope open, and as the engraved card made its appearance, Susan"s expression might have been that of Cinderella eyeing her coach-and-four.
For Browning--founder of the cotillion club, and still manager of the four or five winter dances--was the one unquestioned, irrefutable, omnipotent social authority of San Francisco. To go to the "Brownings"
was to have arrived socially; no other distinction was equivalent, because there was absolutely no other standard of judgment. Very high up, indeed, in the social scale must be the woman who could resist the temptation to stick her card to the Brownings in her mirror frame, where the eyes of her women friends must inevitably fall upon it, and yearly hundreds of matrons tossed through sleepless nights, all through the late summer and the fall, hoping against hope, despairing, hoping again, that the magic card might really be delivered some day in early December, and her debutante daughter"s social position be placed beyond criticism once more. Only perhaps one hundred persons out of "Brownie"s" four hundred guests could be sure of the privilege. The others must suffer and wait.
Browning himself, a hara.s.sed, overworked, kindly gentleman, whose management of the big dances brought him nothing but responsibility and annoyance, threatened yearly to resign from his post, and yearly was dragged back into the work, fussing for hours with his secretary over the list, before he could personally give it to the hungrily waiting reporters with the weary statement that it was absolutely correct, that no more names were to be added this year, that he did not propose to defend, through the columns of the press, his omission of certain names and his acceptance of others, and that, finally, he was off for a week"s vacation in the southern part of the state, and thanked them all for their kindly interest in himself and his efforts for San Francisco society.
It was the next morning"s paper that was so anxiously awaited, and so eagerly perused in hundreds of luxurious boudoirs--exulted over, or wept over and reviled,--but read by nearly every woman in the city.
And now he had sent Susan a late card, and Susan knew why. She had met the great man at the Hotel Rafael a few days before, at tea-time, and he had asked Susan most affectionately of her aunt, Mrs. Lancaster, and recalled, with a little emotion, the dances of two generations before, when he was a small boy, and the lovely Georgianna Ralston was a beauty and a belle. Susan could have kissed the magic bit of pasteboard!
But she knew too well just what Emily wanted to think of Browning"s courtesy, to mention his old admiration for her aunt. And Emily immediately justified her diplomatic silence by saying:
"Isn"t that AWFULLY decent of Brownie! He did that just for Ella and me--that"s like him! He"ll do anything for some people!"
"Well, of course I can"t go," Susan said briskly. "But I do call it awfully decent! And no little remarks about sending a check, either, and no chaperone"s card! The old duck! However, I haven"t a gown, and I haven"t a beau, and you don"t go, and so I"ll write a tearful regret. I hope it won"t be the cause of his giving the whole thing up. I hate to discourage the dear boy!"
Emily laughed approvingly.
"No, but honestly, Sue," she said, in eager a.s.sent, "don"t you know how people would misunderstand--you know how people are! You and I know that you don"t care a whoop about society, and that you"d be the last person in the world to use your position here--but you know what other people might say! And Brownie hates talk--"
Susan had to swallow hard, and remain smiling. It was part of the price that she paid for being here in this beautiful environment, for being, in every material sense, a member of one of the state"s richest families. She could not say, as she longed to say, "Oh, Emily, don"t talk ROT! You know that before your own grandfather made his money as a common miner, and when Isabel Wallace"s grandfather was making shoes, mine was a rich planter in Virginia!" But she knew that she could safely have treated Emily"s own mother with rudeness, she could have hopelessly mixed up the letters she wrote for Ella, she could have set the house on fire or appropriated to her own use the large sums of money she occasionally was entrusted by the family to draw for one purpose or another from the bank, and been quickly forgiven, if forgivness was a convenience to the Saunders family at the moment. But to fail to realize that between the daughter of the house of Saunders and the daughter of the house of Brown an unspanned social chasm must forever stretch would have been, indeed, the unforgivable offense.
It was all very different from Susan"s old ideals of a paid companion"s duties. She had drawn these ideals from the English novels she consumed with much enjoyment in early youth--from "Queenie"s Whim" and "Uncle Max" and the novels of Charlotte Yonge. She had imagined herself, before her arrival at "High Gardens," as playing piano duets with Emily, reading French for an hour, German for an hour, gardening, tramping, driving, perhaps making a call on some sick old woman with soup and jelly in her basket, or carrying armfuls of blossoms to the church for decoration. If one of Emily"s sick headaches came on, it would be Susan"s duty to care for her tenderly, and to read to her in a clear, low, restful voice when she was recovering; to write her notes, to keep her vases filled with flowers, to "preside" at the tea-table, efficient, un.o.btrusive, and indispensable. She would make herself useful to Ella, too; arrange her collections of coins, carry her telephone messages, write her notes. She would accompany the little old mother on her round through the greenhouses, read to her and be ready to fly for her book or her shawl. And if Susan"s visionary activities also embraced a little missionary work in the direction of the son of the house, it was of a very sisterly and blameless nature. Surely the most demure of companions, reading to Mrs. Saunders in the library, might notice an attentive listener lounging in a dark corner, or might color shyly when Ken"s sisters commented on the fact that he seemed to be at home a good deal these days.
It was a little disillusioning to discover, as during her first weeks in the new work she did discover, that almost no duties whatever would be required of her. It seemed to make more irksome the indefinite thing that was required of her; her constant interested partic.i.p.ation in just whatever happened to interest Emily at the moment. Susan loved tennis and driving, loved shopping and lunching in town, loved to stroll over to the hotel for tea in the pleasant afternoons, or was satisfied to lie down and read for an hour or two.
But it was very trying to a person of her definite impulsive briskness never to know, from one hour or one day to the next, just what occupation was in prospect. Emily would order the carriage for four o"clock, only to decide, when it came around, that she would rather drag the collies out into the side-garden, to waste three dozen camera plates and three hours in trying to get good pictures of them.
Sometimes Emily herself posed before the camera, and Susan took picture after picture of her.
"Sue, don"t you think it would be fun to try some of me in my Mandarin coat? Come up while I get into it. Oh, and go get Chow Yew to get that Chinese violin he plays, and I"ll hold it! We"ll take "em in the j.a.panese garden!" Emily would be quite fired with enthusiasm, but before the girls were upstairs she might change in favor of her riding habit and silk hat, and Susan would telephone the stable that Miss Emily"s riding horse was wanted in the side-garden. "You"re a darling!"
she would say to Susan, after an exhausting hour or two. "Now, next time I"ll take you!"
But Susan"s pictures never were taken. Emily"s interest rarely touched twice in the same place.
"Em, it"s twenty minutes past four! Aren"t we going to tea with Isabel Wallace?" Susan would ask, coming in to find Emily comfortably stretched out with a book.
"Oh, Lord, so we were! Well, let"s not!" Emily would yawn.
"But, Em, they expect us!"
"Well, go telephone, Sue, there"s a dear! And tell them I"ve got a terrible headache. And you and I"ll have tea up here. Tell Carrie I want to see her about it; I"m hungry; I want to order it specially."
Sometimes, when the girls came downstairs, dressed for some outing, it was Miss Ella who upset their plans. Approving of her little sister"s appearance, she would lure Emily off for a round of formal calls.
"Be decent now, Baby! You"ll never have a good time, if you don"t go and do the correct thing now and then. Come on. I"m going to town on the two, and we can get a carriage right at the ferry--"
But Susan rarely managed to save the afternoon. Going noiselessly upstairs, she was almost always captured by the lonely old mistress of the house.
"Girls gone?" Mrs. Saunders would pipe, in her cracked little voice, from the doorway of her rooms. "Don"t the house seem still? Come in, Susan, you and I"ll console each other over a cup of tea."
Susan, smilingly following her, would be at a loss to account for her own distaste and disappointment. But she was so tired of people! She wanted so desperately to be alone!
The precious chance would drift by, a rich tea would presently be served; the little over-dressed, over-fed old lady was really very lonely; she went to a luncheon or card-party not oftener than two or three times a month, and she loved company. There was almost no close human need or interest in her life; she was as far from her children as was any other old lady of their acquaintance.
Susan knew that she had been very proud of her sons and daughters, as a happy young mother. The girl was continually discovering, among old Mrs. Saunders" treasures, large pictures of Ella, at five, at seven, at nine, with straight long bangs and rosetted hats that tied under her chin, and French dresses tied with sashes about her knees, and pictures of Kenneth leaning against stone benches, or sitting in swings, a thin and sickly-looking little boy, in a velvet suit and ribboned straw hat.
There were pictures of the dead children, too, and a picture of Emily, at three months, sitting in an immense sh.e.l.l, and clad only in the folds of her own fat little person. On the backs of these pictures, Mrs. Saunders had written "Kennie, six years old," and the date, or "Totty, aged nine"--she never tired of looking at them now, and of telling Susan that the b.u.t.tons on Ella"s dress had been of sterling silver, "made right from Papa"s mine," and that the little ship Kenneth held had cost twenty-five dollars. All of her conversation was boastful, in an inoffensive, faded sort of way. She told Susan about her wedding, about her gown and her mother"s gown, and the cost of her music, and the number of the musicians.