The two loitered over their toast and coffee, after the boarders"
breakfast, made more toast to finish the coffee, and more coffee to finish the toast. The short winter mornings were swiftly gone; in the afternoon Susan and Mary Lou dressed with great care and went to market. They would stop at the library for a book, buy a little bag of candy to eat over their solitaire in the evening, perhaps pay a call on some friend, whose mild history of financial difficulties and helpless endurance matched their own.
Now and then, on Sundays, the three women crossed the Oakland ferry and visited Virginia, who was patiently struggling back to the light. They would find her somewhere in the great, orderly, clean inst.i.tution, with a knot of sweet-faced, vague-eyed children cl.u.s.tered about her.
"Good-bye, Miss "Ginia!" the unearthly, happy little voices would call, as the uncertain little feet echoed away. Susan rather liked the atmosphere of the big inst.i.tution, and vaguely envied the brisk absorbed attendants who pa.s.sed them on swift errands. Stout Mrs.
Lancaster, for all her panting and running, invariably came within half a second of missing the return train for the city; the three would enter it laughing and gasping, and sink breathless into their seats, unable for sheer mirth to straighten their hats, or glance at their fellow-pa.s.sengers.
In March Georgie"s second little girl, delicate and tiny, was born too soon, and the st.u.r.dy Myra came to her maternal grandmother for an indefinite stay. Georgie"s disappointment over the baby"s s.e.x was instantly swallowed up in anxiety over the diminutive Helen"s weight and digestion, and Susan and Mary Lou were delighted to prolong Myra"s visit from week to week. Georgie"s first-born was a funny, merry little girl, and Susan developed a real talent for amusing her and caring for her, and grew very fond of her. The new baby was well into her second month before they took Myra home,--a dark, crumpled little thing Susan thought the newcomer, and she thought that she had never seen Georgie looking so pale and thin. Georgie had always been freckled, but now the freckles seemed fairly to stand out on her face. But in spite of the children"s exactions, and the presence of grim old Mrs. O"Connor, Susan saw a certain strange content in the looks that went between husband and wife.
"Look here, I thought you were going to be George Lancaster O"Connor!"
said Susan, threateningly, to the new baby.
"I don"t know why a boy wouldn"t have been named Joseph Aloysius, like his father and grandfather," said the old lady disapprovingly.
But Georgie paid no heed. The baby"s mother was kneeling beside the bed where little Helen lay, her eyes fairly devouring the tiny face.
"You don"t suppose G.o.d would take her away from me, Sue, because of that nonsense about wanting a boy?" Georgie whispered.
Susan"s story did not win the hundred dollar prize, but it won a fifth prize of ten dollars, and kept her in pocket money for some weeks.
After that Mary Lord brought home an order for twenty place-cards for a child"s Easter Party, and Susan spent several days happily fussing with water colors and so earned five dollars more.
Time did not hang at all heavily on her hands; there was always an errand or two to be done for auntie, and always a pack of cards and a library book with which to fill the evening. Susan really enjoyed the lazy evenings, after the lazy days. She and Mary Lou spent the first week in April in a flurry of linens and ginghams, making shirtwaists for the season; for three days they did not leave the house, nor dress fully, and they ate their luncheons from the wing of the sewing-machine.
Spring came and poured over the whole city a bath of warmth and perfume. The days lengthened, the air was soft and languid. Susan loved to walk to market now, loved to loiter over calls in the late after-noon, and walk home in the lingering sunset light. If a poignant regret smote her now and then, its effect was not lasting, she dismissed it with a bitter sigh.
But constant humiliation was good for neither mind nor body; Susan felt as pinched in soul as she felt actually pinched by the old cheerless, penniless condition, hard and bitter elements began to show themselves in her nature. She told herself that one great consolation in her memories of Stephen Bocqueraz was that she was too entirely obscure a woman to be brought to the consideration of the public, whatever her offense might or might not be. Cold and sullen, Susan saw herself as ill-used, she could not even achieve human contempt--she was not worthy of consideration. Just one of the many women who were weak----
And sometimes, to escape the desperate circling of her thoughts, she would jump up and rush out for a lonely walk, through the wind-blown, warm disorder of the summer streets, or sometimes, dropping her face suddenly upon a crooked arm, she would burst into bitter weeping.
Books and pictures, random conversations overheard, or contact with human beings all served, in these days, to remind her of herself.
Susan"s pride and self-confidence and her gay ambition had sustained her through all the self-denial of her childhood. Now, failing these, she became but an irritable, depressed and discouraged caricature of her old self. Her mind was a distressed tribunal where she defended herself day and night; convincing this accuser--convincing that one--pleading her case to the world at large. Her aunt and cousin, entirely ignorant of its cause, still were aware that there was a great change in her, and watched her with silent and puzzled sympathy.
But they gave her no cause to feel herself a failure. They thought Susan unusually clever and gifted, and, if her list of actual achievements were small, there seemed to be no limit to the things that she COULD do. Mary Lou loved to read the witty little notes she could dash off at a moment"s notice, Lydia Lord wiped her eyes with emotion that Susan"s sweet, untrained voice aroused when she sang "Once in a Purple Twilight," or "Absent." Susan"s famous eggless ginger-bread was one of the treats of Mrs. Lancaster"s table.
"How do you do it, you clever monkey!" said Auntie, watching over Susan"s shoulder the girl"s quick fingers, as Susan colored Easter cards or drew clever sketches of Georgie"s babies, or scribbled a jingle for a letter to amuse Virginia. And when Susan imitated Mrs.
Patrick Campbell as Paula, or Mrs. Fiske as Becky Sharp, even William had to admit that she was quite clever enough to be a professional entertainer.
"But I wish I had one definite big gift, Billy," said Susan, on a July afternoon, when she and Mr. Oliver were on the ferry boat, going to Sausalito. It was a Sunday, and Susan thought that Billy looked particularly well to-day, felt indeed, with some discomfort, that he was better groomed and better dressed than she was, and that there was in him some new and baffling quality, some reserve that she could not command. His quick friendly smile did not hide the fact that his attention was not all hers; he seemed pleasantly absorbed in his own thoughts. Susan gave his clean-shaven, clear-skinned face many a half-questioning look as she sat beside him on the boat. He was more polite, more gentle, more kind that she remembered him--what was missing, what was wrong to-day?
It came to her suddenly, half-astonished and half-angry, that he was no longer interested in her. Billy had outgrown her, he had left her behind. He did not give her his confidence to-day, nor ask her advice.
He scowled now and then, as if some under-current of her chatter vaguely disturbed him, but offered no comment. Susan felt, with a little, sick pressure at her heart, that somehow she had lost an old friend!
He was stretched out comfortably, his long legs crossed before him, his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, and his half-shut, handsome eyes fixed on the rushing strip of green water that was visible between the painted ropes of the deck-rail.
"And what are your own plans, Sue?" he presently asked, unsmilingly.
Susan was chilled by the half-weary tone.
"Well, I"m really just resting and helping Auntie, now," Susan said cheerfully. "But in the fall---" she made a bold appeal to his interest, "--in the fall I think I shall go to New York?"
"New York?" he echoed, aroused. "What for?"
"Oh, anything!" Susan answered confidently. "There are a hundred chances there to every one here," she went on, readily, "inst.i.tutions and magazines and newspapers and theatrical agencies--Californians always do well in New York!"
"That sounds like Mary Lou," said Billy, drily. "What does she know about it?"
Susan flushed resentfully.
"Well, what do you!" she retorted with heat.
"No, I"ve never been there," admitted Billy, with self-possession. "But I know more about it than Mary Lou! She"s a wonder at pipe-dreams,--my Lord, I"d rather have a child of mine turned loose in the street than be raised according to Mary Lou"s ideas! I don"t mean," Billy interrupted himself to say seriously, "that they weren"t all perfectly dandy to me when I was a kid--you know how I love the whole bunch! But all that dope about not having a chance here, and being "unlucky" makes me weary! If Mary Lou would get up in the morning, and put on a clean dress, and see how things were going in the kitchen, perhaps she"d know more about the boarding-house, and less about New York!"
"It may never have occurred to you, Billy, that keeping a boarding-house isn"t quite the ideal occupation for a young gentlewoman!" Susan said coldly.
"Oh, darn everything!" Billy said, under his breath. Susan eyed him questioningly, but he did not look at her again, or explain the exclamation.
The always warm and welcoming Carrolls surrounded them joyfully, Susan was kissed by everybody, and Billy had a motherly kiss from Mrs.
Carroll in the unusual excitement of the occasion.
For there was great news. Susan had it from all of them at once; found herself with her arms linked about the radiant Josephine while she said incredulously:
"Oh, you"re NOT! Oh, Jo, I"m so glad! Who is it--and tell me all about it--and where"s his picture---"
In wild confusion they all straggled out to the lawn, and Susan sat down with Betsey at her feet, Anna sitting on one arm of her low chair, and Josephine kneeling, with her hands still in Susan"s.
He was Mr. Stewart Frothingham, and Josephine and his mother and sister had gone up to Yale for his graduation, and "it" had been instantaneous, "we knew that very day," said Josephine, with a lovely awe in her eyes, "but we didn"t say anything to Mrs. Frothingham or Ethel until later." They had all gone yachting together, and to Bar Harbor, and then Stewart had gone into his uncle"s New York office, "we shall have to live in New York," Josephine said, radiantly, "but one of the girls or Mother will ALWAYS be there!"
"Jo says it"s the peachiest house you ever saw!" Betsey contributed.
"Oh, Sue--right down at the end of Fifth Avenue--but you don"t know where that is, do you? Anyway, it"s wonderful---"
It was all wonderful, everybody beamed over it. Josephine already wore her ring, but no announcement was to be made until after a trip she would make with the Frothinghams to Yellowstone Park in September. Then the gallant and fortunate and handsome Stewart would come to California, and the wedding would be in October.
"And you girls will all fall in love with him!" prophesied Josephine.
"Fall?" echoed Susan studying photographs. "I head the waiting list!
You grab-all! He"s simply perfection--rich and stunning, and an old friend--and a yacht and a motor---"
"And a fine, hard-working fellow, Sue," added Josephine"s mother.
"I begin to feel old and unmarried," mourned Susan. "What did you say, William dear?" she added, suddenly turning to Billy, with a honeyed smile.
They all shouted. But an hour or two later, in the kitchen, Mrs.
Carroll suddenly asked her of her friendship with Peter Coleman.
"Oh, we"ve not seen each other for months, Aunt Jo!" Susan said cheerfully. "I don"t even know where he is! I think he lives at the club since the crash."
"There was a crash?"