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Read Ebook: Susan by Oldmeadow Ernest Haviland Frank Illustrator
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Ebook has 1540 lines and 63285 words, and 31 pages
BOOK I
TRAXELBY
BOOK II
DIEPPE
SAINTE V?RONIQUE
BOOK IV
LA VILLA DE LA MER
What on earth is the matter with Susan? Up to yesterday morning I have hardly had to find fault with her more than twice or thrice in four years. Yet, since last night, she has richly deserved a dozen sharp scoldings at the very least.
After all, poor Grandmamma must have been right. "My pet," grannie used to say whenever I told her that Susan was a treasure of pure gold; "My pet, I have had thirty or forty treasures myself, and I give you my word that even the best of them are only plated. Off the worst ones the plating wears soon. Off the better ones it wears late. But wait long enough, and sooner or later you shall see the copper or the pewter."
No doubt I ought to be grateful that Susan has lasted so well. All the same, it is maddening that the gilding should choose to come off just as I'm on the eve of starting for Sainte V?ronique-sur-mer. Susan says everything is packed: but I can't risk it. Probably she has filled a trunk with opera-glasses and fans, and forgotten towels and soap. First thing in the morning she must unpack, and we must both go through everything with a list. But it's tiresome beyond words.
Susan is worse than ever. Instead of toast, she brought me this morning two chunks of bread hardly browned, and, instead of tea, a tepid potion as black as night. I have asked her if she is ill, but she says she isn't. And, certainly, I never saw her look better in her life. The worst of it is that she keeps coming and going with such an air of--how shall I describe it? Not insolence: not even indifference. It is hard to find the word. When I blame her for some blunder, she looks, for the moment, duly meek and sorry; and when I send her off on some errand she departs as if she really wants to do her best in her old way. And in less than half an hour I am scolding her again.
On one point I've made up my mind. No starting for Sainte V?ronique till Susan's either mended or ended. I'll wire Dupoirier not to expect us till Monday. Gibson shall take the telegram to the village at once. And, if there's no change for the better before post-time to-night, I'll write to Alice and borrow that pale little slip of a French maid of hers for the time I shall be in Sainte V?ronique. Alice said something last week about sending her back to France for a change. Perhaps I'll take Susan too. Or perhaps I'll let her go to her friends till I come home again. She's been too good a girl all these years for me to part with her just because of what may be no more than a passing slackness and staleness. Besides, Susan is the only creature I really like to have about me. She is as wholesome and sweet as country cream and rosy-cheeked apples.
The word I couldn't think of has flashed upon me all of a sudden. It's a simple enough word and an obvious; and it would have come to me at once if I had had the grace to remember sooner that Susan, after all, is a human being.
Susan is merely preoccupied. I ought to have divined it hours ago, if I hadn't been so disgustingly devoted to my own right worshipful ease and comfort. I've never thought about it before: but, without doubt, Susan's cousins and uncles and aunts are as much to Susan as my own cousins and uncles and aunts are to me. Indeed, I hope and expect that they are vastly more. I wonder what is wrong? Is Susan's cousin going to be married? Or has her aunt joined the Salvation Army? Or has her uncle tumbled off a hayrick? Perhaps it's something far worse. Anyhow, the poor soul must think me adorably sympathetic when I reward her admirable reticence by shrewing her for every insignificant lapse. And, after the loving fidelity with which she has served me and cherished me so much over and above the best-paid hireling's duty, she must find me most consolingly grateful.
I will make her tell me. Probably it is something wherein I can give a bit of practical help.
I've tackled Susan.
She didn't make it too easy. While she was brushing my hair, I said abruptly, but quite cordially:
"Very well, Miss Gertrude," Susan answered.
She called me "Miss Gertrude" in precisely the tone she has always used ever since she first came to Traxelby, before Alice was married and when Grandmamma was still alive; and she went on brushing my hair without a pause. But I noticed that her cheeks, reflected in the glass, first paled and then flamed. I flung my hair from my eyes and looked up at Susan without ado.
"Susan," I said, "you are unhappy about something. You ought to have told me. Perhaps I could have helped you. In any case I would have been less exacting in my wants and less sharp in my complaints."
"Thank you, Miss," said Susan unsarcastically and thankfully. But she only went on brushing my hair.
"You are unhappy?" I asked again.
"Oh, no, Miss, no," Susan answered quickly and warmly. And she brushed my hair harder than ever.
Looking at her once more in the glass, I saw that she was speaking the truth. Her face was still the playground of contending emotions, but, through her pretty, blue eyes, her spirit gazed out radiantly at the genial tourney. Altogether, Susan looked bewitching. In her country print, and with her yellow hair and rosy-red cheeks, she was just the sort of sweet, shy, rustic English beauty to fall head over ears in love with at first sight. The truth blazed upon me like a flash of lightning.
It was a few moments before I found my tongue. That some young man or other should begin to plague my bright-eyed Susan was the most natural thing in the world; and yet I had no more taken such a thing into my calculations than I had speculated as to what I should do if a burglar broke in by night and walked off with my silver combs and brushes. At last I said, rather lamely and stiffly:
"At any rate, Susan, you've got something on your mind."
Susan did not reply.
"What is it?" I asked. "Or rather, who is it?"
Susan's breath came and went more quickly. But still she did not answer.
I turned over the possibilities in my mind, and then put a question pointblank.
"Is it Gibson?"
"Oh, no, Miss, not Gibson." Her response was prompt, decisive, almost reproachful.
"I'm rather sorry," I said. "Gibson's a thoroughly decent, steady young fellow, and he will get on. I hope it's nobody worse than Gibson."
"Oh, no, Miss," said Susan swiftly and softly, "Not worse than Gibson."
As she did not offer the swain's name, or an account of his person, or any further information whatsoever, I sat dumb and began to feel a bit sulky. Apart from my personal loss of the best maid a woman ever had, I was aggrieved on Susan's own account. No doubt some small farmer's son had turned her silly little head and won her unguarded little heart. And after the rude delights of a rural courtship, my neat-handed, dainty pink-and-white Susan would have to settle down for forty years to drudge among kine and swine and turnips, and, most likely, a pack of lusty and highly dislikable children. The prospect so revolted me that I decided to do my whole duty.
"Susan."
"Yes, Miss?"
"Have you told your people--your relations--about all this?"
"No, Miss."
"Why not?"
"Written. Not wrote. Say written."
"Yes, Miss. I've written to her twice since Christmas, not to speak of sending a coloured post-card from Malvern, and she hasn't answered never so much as a word."
This pricked me. I had heard it before; and, knowing as I did that Susan had neither father nor mother, nor brother nor sister, I ought to have put two and two together, and deduced the fact that Susan was alone in the world. But I had not been interested or unselfish enough to work it out.
"Of course, of course," I said. "I'd forgotten. But, Susan, why have you not spoken about it to me? When I found you had no parents, didn't I tell you that if you were in any doubt or trouble you were always to come to me?"
"Yes, Miss," answered Susan as dutifully as before. And she went on brushing my hair. I got up impatiently, and went and sat in my big chair by the window.
"No," I said. "Never mind my hair for a minute. Susan, I'm very much disappointed and put out. You are not treating either me or yourself fairly. With things as they are, I feel responsible for you. All this is very serious. You are young, and you have no experience."
Susan standing three feet away with lowered head, heard me out deferentially, although she knows quite well that I am six months her junior, and that it is hardly a year since I began to look after my own affairs. She simply said:
"Yes, Miss."
"Susan, look at me. Don't hang your head. Is this man respectable?"
"Oh, yes, Miss!"
"He says so himself, no doubt. But the world's full of very strange people. Who is he? Where does he come from? What is his name?"
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