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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
"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?"
Susan hung her head again, and did not answer. I saw that she had something to hide, so I tried another way.
"How far has it gone?"
"Well, Miss," she faltered after a pause. "He--he's asked me."
"When?"
"Yesterday, Miss."
"What did you say?"
"I didn't say anything, Miss."
"Susan, don't be ridiculous. You mean, you didn't say 'No.' You encouraged him?"
"Oh, no, Miss."
"Susan, I won't be trifled with. Either you encouraged him or you didn't. Which was it? You surely don't expect me to believe that, after he'd asked you, he was content to walk away again without any kind of an answer?"
"Please, Miss, he didn't ask me that way. It was in a letter."
"A letter! Susan, I hope you've said 'No.' Have nothing at all to do with him. A letter, indeed! Why didn't he speak out like a man to your face?"
"Please, Miss, he couldn't."
"Couldn't? Why not?"
"Because I've never seen him."
I burst out laughing. The affair was a trifle after all. At the most and worst it was some village moon-calf's clumsy wooing; at the least it was a practical joke. But Susan thought otherwise. I stopped laughing at the sight of her proud flush and pain.
"Come, Susan," I coaxed, "be a sensible girl. It's some stupid joke."
"No, Miss," said Susan firmly.
"Then what have you done? Have you sent a reply?"
"Yes, Miss. No, Miss; I mean, no. That is, I've written the answer, but I haven't posted it."
"That's a good thing. What have you said?"
Susan was silent quite a long time. At length she looked at me plaintively, and answered:
"Written."
"Yes."
"I'm wondering whether ... if I brought you his letter, Miss...?"
"Of course I will, Susan. If it's a letter that ought to be answered, I'll do whatever I can. Bring it me after lunch."
"Thank you, Miss," said Susan warmly. But her face darkened again as quickly as it had brightened. I could see that a great doubt or fear had her in its grip.
It was unkind of me; but I had had enough of the whole business for one morning. "Finish my hair, Susan," I said; and I sat down again before the glass.
Susan resumed the work. But she had hardly taken one of my tresses into her hand before she flung it from her almost madly, and fell on her knees at my feet.
"Miss Gertrude," she cried. "Promise! Swear before God that you will not take him away from me!"
I was thunderstruck. But she was still crouched at my side, gripping my knees.
"Susan," I said sternly, "you are forgetting yourself. Get up. You are not well. Go to your room. I shall manage my hair somehow. Go to your room and lie down."
She gripped me fiercelier than before. "Before God, Miss Gertrude," she repeated. "Promise! Swear! Swear you won't drive him away."
"Drive" was a more endurable word. Besides, her fear and anguish were so sincere that my mere dignity shrivelled away like scorched paper in their blaze. For a second or two it was impossible to be mistress and maid. We were two women.
"Susan," I said very kindly, "if I must swear anything I will swear this. Like you, I am fatherless and motherless. And I swear that I will do my whole duty by you. If I honestly fear that there is misery lurking for you in this offer of marriage, I'll work and fight against it even if you kneel here weeping and praying all day for a year. But if I can honestly believe that it is for your happiness, there's nothing in reason that I won't do to bring it to pass. Now go to your room."
She has gone.
I must take care not to be dragged into any ridiculous positions. If Susan were a novelette-reader, it would be a different thing. No doubt a weekly orgy of sentiment by proxy is generally effective in making the average young woman immune. But Susan is still a child of nature; and if this letter-writing suitor is a scoundrel , the poor child has some bad hours ahead. I wish most heartily it hadn't happened! And to think that by this time to-morrow I was to have been settled down cosily at Sainte V?ronique!
How lovely lunching alone once again! Somehow a visitor always begins to send my spirits down and down and down after the first two or three days. When I saw her off yesterday I felt I couldn't have stood even Alice much longer. How different we are! If Alice knew that I wasn't going to France till Monday, she would worry about my loneliness just as she would worry over my neuralgia or my influenza. I expect that at this very moment she is writing a long letter to Sainte V?ronique on the old text--begging me to go into a smaller house, and to look out for a companion, or to spend the winter with them. And I would make a large bet that she'll redeliver her solemn warning about my solitariness making me morbid. Yet there may be a little in it. Who knows? If Susan doesn't stay, I may be awfully glad to go to Alice's for a month or two after all.
Now for Susan and her precious letter.
Alice is right. Solitude is a mistake. If I hadn't the diary-habit, I should explode like a shell into little bits.
Still, for Susan's sake and her incredible adorer's, it's a good thing there's no one here, not even Alice. If there was anybody at hand to listen, I don't see how I could contrive to hold my tongue. As it is, it only relieves me a very little to scribble it all down in this book.
No wonder Susan under-toasted the toast and over-brewed the tea! I don't wonder any longer even at her heroics and melodramatics while she was doing my hair.
When she brought me her letter, addressed in a strong and distinguished hand to Miss Susan Briggs, The Grange, Traxelby, I saw at a glance that we hadn't to deal with a village bumpkin. Indeed, when I took the sheet of thick, good paper from the envelope and saw that it was embossed with the heading "Ruddington Towers," I wasn't surprised. I concluded instantly that Susan's pursuer was one of the three young artists of whom I've heard till I'm tired to death of them--the artists Lord Ruddington is said to have found starving in a Chelsea studio. I forget whether they've come down here to paint the hall or the chapel.
"Oh, no, Miss," said Susan hurriedly. "It isn't any of the young gentlemen that's doing the painting and decorating."
"Whoever he is," I answered, "he makes himself at home with Lord Ruddington's best stationery. Let me see."
I turned over the sheet and looked for the signature. Half-way down the third page I found it. The writer had signed himself with the single word "Ruddington."
"Susan," I demanded almost roughly, "why didn't you tell me about this at once?"
"There's no if you please about it. Why, this creature, whoever he may be, is pretending to be Lord Ruddington."
Susan burst out crying, suddenly and copiously.
"Oh, Miss Gertrude," she sobbed; "I--I never thought it was pretending. I never dreamed any one could be so cruel. I thought it was real."
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