Susannah

Front matter

SUSANNAH __.trifj_nn toith this THE GODS, SOME MORTALS, AND LORD WICKENHAM. By John Oliver Hobbes. BOCONNOC : A Romance of Wild- Oat-Cake. By Herbert Vivian, Co-Author of " The Green Bay Tree," etc. SUSANNAH BY MARY E. MANN AUTHOR OF " IN SUMMER SHADE," " A LOST ESTATE " "THE PARISH OF HILBY," ETC. " Yea, thou shalt learn how salt his food who lares Upon another's bread ; how steep his path Who treadeth up and down another's stairs." LONDON HENRY & CO., 93, ST. MARTIN'S LANE, W.C 1895 [Alt rights reserved] Printed by Hazel), Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. CONTENTS

Chapter I And Be Thankful

! UNFORTUNATELY for her, Susan is not in a position to say ' she will ' or ' she won't,' any more than the rest of you. In the present unpleasant state of affairs, being beggars, you can't be choosers, and you must all accept what comes in your way, and be thankful." Thus the Reverend Thomas Upwell in consultation with his newly orphaned and penniless nieces, Theresa and Emeline. He stood by the window, to which he had irritably strayed while speaking, and he read through for the second time the letter he held in his hand. The hand some girls in their handsome mourning sat at the end of the empty dining-table, and looked drearily into each other's faces. " The woman writes kindly," the clergyman went on, tapping the letter with the pince-nez he had wrenched from his nose for the purpose. " She appears to be a woman Susannah 2 of strong religious principle — a Christian woman."

He looked at his nieces with a sudden shade of anxiety on his brow. " She is a lady, I suppose ? " he asked, with a slight dropping of his voice. " I suppose so," one of them said wearily. " She was a friend of dear mamma's." "And she offers to give Susan a home! A wonderful act of generosity on her part, I call it, and of great good fortune on yours ! I really don't understand this despon dent attitude ; considering the blessings that have been showered upon you, it appears to me ungracious, not to say aggravating." " We feel the kindness of every one, Uncle Tom," Theresa said. " It is not that we are ungrateful. But we have always been together, and very happy ; and Sukey, even more than the rest of us, has been petted and — spoilt a little, perhaps — and to think of Sukey alone — among strangers " Theresa's voice broke, and she looked down upon the table, eloquently silent.

" Susan is not a baby of six ; she is a woman of twenty years of age," Mr. Upwell hastened to remind his niece. " A woman, moreover, of a peculiarly self-willed and determined character. It will be wiser not to cherish these illusions about Susan. And what did you expect for her? We are not millionaires, exactly. Your father was the rich man of the family — or was unhappily supposed to be so by his creditors " " His creditors will be paid, Uncle Tom," Emeline hastily reminded him, shooting at him a revengeful glance. "And his children are ruined." " We do not blame papa," the girls cried. " We do not wish to hear him blamed, Uncle Tom." " Nor do you wish to accept the position he has pre pared for you with either humility or resignation. You have much for which to be grateful. Your Aunt Maria has come forward to offer you two girls a home — for the present " " It will be only for a short time that Emeline and I shall trespass on Aunt Maria's kindness," Theresa said with unsteady lips.

" We are determined to earn our own living as soon as we can find something to do." " As for me," pursued Uncle Tom, waving aside the interruption with his thin, cold hand, " I have decided that my best plan to help you all, is to help your brother. If there is the making of a man in him," — the Rector paused and stared before him for a moment with a peculiarly hopeless expression of face, and continued with an osten tatious sigh, — " he will put his shoulder to the wheel, and before many years have passed will have prepared a home for his sisters. It is a thousand pities that your father chose such a profession for his only son " " Papa did not choose," Theresa explained. " Alfie wanted to be a doctor from the time he and Sukey had the measles." " An over-crowded, underpaid profession ! However, it is too late in the day for regrets, and having begun I will see him through, as I said.

But " — here the reverend gentleman paused again and looked at his nieces with small blue eyes glittering warningly in his narrow, handsome featured face — "but I can do no more." Then he came up to the opposite end of the table, sat down, and spread forth the letter before him. " Where is Susan ? " he asked. The girls looked at each other. " I think perhaps it will be better for us to break the news of Mrs. Foote's offer Susannah 4 to Sukey, Uncle Tom," one of them said. " We wished to speak to you before doing so, but " But Uncle Tom had come to make a final settlement of affairs in his dead brother's family, and had no intention of going back to his Rectory in the next county with half his errand undone. Besides, bachelor though he was, he was not without experience of the unreasonableness of women.

He believed that the three with whom he at present had to do were quite capable of rejecting the offer of the Christian woman whose letter lay before him. " Be so good as to ask Susan to come to me," he said. " My train leaves in half an hour." So Emeline rang the bell and asked the servant to bring them in some tea and to tell Miss Susan that she was wanted in the dining-room. Then silence fell upon the little party. The sisters at their end of the wide, shining table pondered on the astonishing fact that the relative who had been simply a bugbear in their home, an individual to turn their backs on, laugh about, forget, had now become a personage of quite terrible importance, the arbiter of their fates. The Reverend Thomas Upwell drummed the table noisily with hard, thin finger-tips, and stared with tight lips and a puckered brow at nothing in particular.

Presently some one carried a cup of tea to him. " Is Susan not intending to come ? " he began, in tones of restrained exasperation. And then he stopped, for it was Susan. " It is you at last," he said, and got up and put out a chill hand to the girl. She stood before him for a minute, white-cheeked, heavy-eyed, listless, then, her hand slipping from his loose grasp, turned away and took her place by her sisters at ! 5 the other end of the room. A white bull-terrier, which had entered with her, having scratched out a portion of her new black skirt and trampled it into position, sat down thereon and stretched up a great head upon Susan's knee. " I am not coming to Cressingfield again before the sale," Mr. Upwell began. " You must all be out of the house by then. I have been talking over their plans with your sisters, and I should like to discuss your own before I leave, which must be in twenty minutes."

"The time will be ample for the discussion of my plans, Uncle Tom," Susan said. " I have none." Mr. Upwell looked at his youngest niece with marked disapproval. Her face was sad and pitiful enough in its pallor, its weariness, its youthfulness, and its blot and blur of grief; but the tone was flippant. She was the least well favoured of the three girls, her uncle decided ; and he wondered that he had not noticed before how anything but beautiful was this spoilt darling of his brother's house. She positively had not a good feature in her face, poor Susan's critic, whose own sharply cut profile was beyond reproach, said to himself, making the discovery with a startled dis pleasure. He was not a particularly observant person, nor greatly interested in the subject, and, the world having settled it so, he had taken it for granted that poor Alfred's daughters were three very good-looking young women.

In the case of Emeline and Theresa that verdict was not to be disputed. But for Susan — Susan with a leaden skin, an under-hung jaw, with eyes sunken beneath an over-heavy brow and half surrounded with black marks staining her cheeks, with a growth of hair, apparently out of all proportion to the size of her head, twisted into a shapeless bundle at the back of her neck— Susan was a plain person. There Susannah was no mistake about it. Uncle Tom felt his dislike to the girl increase with his recognition of the fact. " You cannot have been so irresponsible as not to have thought of your future at all ! " he said, averting his eyes from the displeasing object. Susan, in compliance with a perfectly intelligible request of his, was feeding Jake from the dish which stood near her. "I have thought about the past, Uncle Tom.

I have had plenty of food for thought," she said. Uncle Tom stretched out an angry hand in her direction. " Are you aware," he asked, addressing the other girls in a voice which trembled with emotion — " that she is cramming that ugly brute with — positively with macaroons?" Susan looked at him and crumbled another cake for the dog. " You shall have your macaroons while they last, Jake," she said. But Theresa hastily moved the dish out of reach, and Jake, his appetite quickly satisfied on that fare, turned his head aside, pretending not to see the proffered dainty. " Sukey," Emeline said, " you know that it has been quite decided for us, Tessy and me, to go, for the present, to Aunt Maria ? There has been a little difficulty in arranging what will be best for you, Sukey, but now " Susan lifted her head quickly.

" I am not going to Aunt Maria's," she said. " I have told you all along that nothing should drag me there." "There will not be necessity for the use of strong measures, my good girl," Mr. Upwell assured her. " My sister has only accommodation for Theresa and Emeline. Thus, your sisters being, as we may say, disposed of, what is it that you propose to do ? " Susan looked down upon the flat head on her knee and said nothing. In all her guarded life she could not remember having been called on to make a plan for herself before. Always what was smoothest, safest, best, had 'been arranged for her ; she had scarcely known how or why. She had i lived the happy home-life of the family circle, hardly looking upon herself as a unit, scarcely making an effort at conscious, independent thought. Suddenly she found herself lonely, bewildered, forsaken.

With trembling fingers she wrinkled the white skin of the dog's head, and looked down into the melancholy red-brown eyes lifted to hers, and was silent. Mr. Upwell put up a warning hand to restrain the ardour of the sisters burning to rush upon Susan with words of sympathy and affection. " Wait," he commanded. " Susan can speak for herself, I suppose ? Your sisters tell me," he went on, turning to her, " that they hope to be able to put their most expen sive education to account, to — in short, to teach ; to obtain situations as — well, as governesses. Shall you be able to get your living in a like manner, for instance ? " Susan slowly shook her head above Jake's crumpled forehead. The sisters looked at her with anxious, depre cating eyes. " Papa did not care to keep Susan long at school," Tessy explained falteringly.

" Susan was not happy at school ; she disliked the routine and was — homesick." " You mean that Susan has no education ? " the clergy man asked, with a pursing of the thin lips. Each day fresh revelations of the weakness and incapacity of the dead brother were made. They had ceased to be painful. Thomas was now in a state of mind when he found it not only easy, but to an extent pleasurable, to believe anything of Alfred. He welcomed each new proof of incompetency Susannah with eagerness, in spite of the coldness of the glance and the severity of the lip. " Susan must not be blamed," Tessy declared. " Papa was not happy if she was away from him, he " She stopped there because of the break in her voice. Susan did not look up, her fingers pressed nervously upon Jake's loose skin; the dog's yearning eyes were straining from his head in sympathy ; he darted his long pink tongue in futile efforts to reach his mistress's face.

Uncle Tom drummed the table with impatient finger tips. " The result of all which folly and madness is that you have no accomplishments, I suppose ? " he demanded of Susan. " None.' " But you can write, of course, and spell, and — well, add up figures ? " " Barely." " Uncle Tom, it is not so bad as that," the sisters cried ; but Susan would not modify her statement. " Then, this being so, what do you propose to do ? " the irritated relative asked. " In less than a fortnight you must have cleared out of this, remember. Where to go ? " They all gazed eagerly upon Susan, but she did not look up. " I suppose I could get a situation as a maid-of-all-work," presently she said, throwing out the suggestion with ag gravating indifference. " Susan ! " the sisters cried. " You do well to sound the lowest depths," Mr. Upwell said, angrily sarcastic.

" Lady's help, lady's maid, parlour or cook-maid — each of these appears too exalted a position — your ambition does not leap so far. Since we are to have ! 9 a domestic servant in the family, let it be a servant-of-all work, by all means ! " " I prefer that, certainly," Susan admitted calmly. " In any of those other cases one must have companions. I like better to be by myself, if it is in a cellar." " All of which is so much foolish and empty talk," the uncle said, with cold contemptuousness. " Talk, to my thinking, in execrable taste — theatrical and vulgar." They called upon his name loudly and indignantly at that ; but he waved away their wrathful sense of injury and took up the letter which lay before him. " Fortunately for the self-respect of the family, you will not be dependent on your own resources," he said.

" We have here a letter from a benevolent, Christian woman, offering you a home beneath her roof. She appears to have selected you from among your sisters on account — she says here — of your ' domestic habits.' It will be for you to see that her expectations in that particular are not disappointed." Here Emeline, in pity of the mystified expression on her sister's face, cut across her uncle's speech. "It is a school-friend of dear mamma's, Sukey — Mrs. Foote. She is most kind and charitable. She wrote to me for particulars of dear papa's death and our affairs. This is her reply. I wished Uncle Tom to see it before telling you of her offer." " My domestic habits ! " Susan said, repeating the one phrase that had been quoted from the letter with such an accent of puzzled dismay that Emeline laughed across the sob in her throat.

" Mamma once sent her some toffee we made in the school-room. It must be that, Sukey," she surmised. " In return she presented me with a penwiper of black Susannah 10 wool," Susan remembered. " I never knew why I was so specially favoured. I have always felt I was wronging you and Tessy in the matter. I shall put it right with her if I go to live with her." "If?" echoed Mr. Upwell severely; but in his heart he was relieved to have met with no stronger opposition. Girls who could talk of such trivial matters as toffee and penwipers could not be feeling their position very acutely, he argued. " ' When,' if you like, Uncle Tom. When I go to live with her. As I never saw her in my life, I can't pretend that I object to Mrs. Foote. So long as I must not stay in Cressingfield, one place is as good, or as bad, as another for me — always excepting the place that contains Aunt Maria."

" I desire you to desist from that tone in my presence," the uncle commanded- " Do you remember that you are speaking of my sister — of a woman who is showering benefits upon your own family ? " " She insulted my brother. She made a quarrel between him and papa," Susan said; and for a moment the grief dulled eyes blazed with anger and with beauty. " I will not forgive her for it while I live." " She did her duty," the clergyman said, and rose from his chair and passed round the comfortless hand to touch that of each of his nieces ; and with that departed in the pleasing assurance that his duty also was done. " How I do detest my relations ! " Susan said, with a sigh of intensest feeling, as the door closed upon her father's brother. She assisted Jake in his scrambling efforts to climb upon the chair beside her ; she put her arm about his neck and hugged the brute's ugly face against her own. ! 11 Tessy pushed back the dish of macaroons to its original position, and Emeline rang the bell for fresh tea and hotter tea-cake.

" Mrs. Foote — whoever you are — I thank you that I am free of them. I shall have to pay for what you give me, no doubt — I suppose in some coin or other all benefits have to be paid for — I shall have to laugh when I want to cry, to be pleasant when I only long to be frankly disagreeable; but, at least, I sha'n't be subject to Uncle Tom, I shall be out of the reach of Aunt Maria. After all, I prefer my fate to yours, Tessy and Emeline. Honestly, I do. Better the devil I don't know, than the devil we all know far too well." " I suppose every one's relations are horrid when anything is wanted of them," Tessy said impartially. " Perhaps ours aren't worse than other people's. As we've got to eat their bread we won't abuse them." " It isn't that they don't do what is kind, but that they do it so unkindly," Emeline mused.

" I suppose that is the difference between relatives and friends. Friends are sweet and sympathetic, but they don't do anything ; and one's own people have to do, and they won't be gracious over it. It is very horrid that you can't love the people who confer benefits on you — you can't even in your heart be grateful." " My Mrs. Foote is pleasant enough," Susan said. She had drawn that lady's letter to her, and, her head still resting on the head of Jake, she looked through the closely written pages. " You read it, too, old boy, and see what you think of it," she said, and rustled the paper before the dog's nose. Then she suddenly sat upright and threw the letter from her. " I can't read it," she cried. " What do I care ? What is it all about ? Who is the girl with out father or mother or home — without a penny in the Susannah 12 world, who has to be thankful to some stranger old woman for the bread she eats ?

It must be some one we never knew, Tessy. We should have been too sorry for her ever to laugh and be happy. Oh, Jake ! dear, stupid, solemn old dog, don't say it is your poor, poor ' Missus,' for I know it can't be true." " You will be within half an hour of London — you will see Alfie sometimes," one of the sisters reminded Susan later on that same day ; her tone was cheerful with the conscientious, painstaking cheerfulness of the grief-stricken, and she brought forward the pleasantest feature in the case for her sister's consideration. To all the girls the only brother was dear, but the affection of Susan for Alfred was known to be of surpassing warmth. To see Alfred sometimes, to be near him, even if she could not see him — this was one thing which might be counted to the good for poor Susan.

" And Mrs. Foote," the other girl went on — " Josephine, mamma used to call her, I remember — is rich, and so good ! She wrote pages of letters — very goody-goody — that is, improving, you know " " I know," said Susan grimly ; " you used to read them always, because mamma wouldn't." "They made her feel such a heathen, she said. But when she was dying she told me she wished she had been as good and religious as Mrs. Foote, so that she did not feel so horribly afraid." " Good ! our mother ? She was good as an angel ! " " She thought Mrs. Foote better. It is nicer to be with good people than wicked ones, Sukey." " Especially when they are rich," acquiesced Susan. " What is Mr. Foote like, I wonder ? " " Dead, these ten years. Your Josephine is a widow, Sukey. But there is an only son. That part of the letters which did not treat of religious matters was always about the son.

I remember mamma's calling him ' The Paragon ' before I understood what ' paragon ' meant. I found the word printed on the inside of my new umbrella, and he was always associated in my mind with umbrellas in con sequence. I thought he made them, or sold them, or was in some manner mixed up with them." "How old is the Paragon?" Susan asked, looking up with a livelier interest than she had yet shown. Emeline shook her head. " He must have been grown up when I was little, or I shouldn't have pictured him trading in umbrellas. He isn't married, I know." " But he is marriageable," Tessy said, with a wavering laugh. The two elders smiled in each other's eyes and looked at Susan. She got up, and crossing the room to the fire, contem plated herself in the glass of the over-mantel. " How perfectly hideous I look !

" she said, dispassion ately considering the subject. " If papa and Alfred could see me now they certainly would not know me. I am as hideous as Aunt Maria. Should you have believed, Tessy, that even a fortnight of incessant crying could have brought me to this ? Look here, Emeline — the eyes a little more jelly-like, the lids and nose a thought redder and more swelled, the cheeks sucked in — so — and pendulous here — and there is Aunt Maria ! Isn't it revolting ? Is it because I hate her so that I have grown like her ? Is it a judgment ? I'm sure Uncle Tom will say it is a judgment. My skin is of the complexion of green apples — look. When I write to Mrs. Foote I shall prepare her for this. I shall say that my beauty, at any rate, is not likely to Susannah 14 prove a snare. I shall tell her that as I have grown so very ugly it is to be hoped I shall the more readily grow good.

The Paragon, indeed ! My moral and intellectual qualities must be relied on to fascinate the umbrella-man ; certainly not my physical graces." At which the sisters, not deigning to reply, laughed in the manner of those who know better.

Chapter II

A DEAR ADOPTED DAUGHTER IT was before an ordinary suburban villa-residence, of which there were several dozens in the same road, that Susan Upwell's cab stopped. The bow-windows, astistically draped, one on either side of the door ; the garden-path of bright new gravel dividing the border of shrubs and small poplars from the front of the house with a sweep, and branching off to lead past the side of the house to the smooth lawn and neat flower-beds at the back ; the look of spick-and-span respectability and self-respecting conventionality over all. Each " family mansion," divided by a couple of yards from its neighbours, boasted its distinc tive magnificent appellation. " The Meads " was on the right hand of that garden-gate at which Susan alighted. That on the left had modestly affixed: the title " Blenheim " to the post.

Mrs. Foote's domain rejoiced in the name of " The Orangery." The numerous callers at The Orangery — principally ladies connected with Church work and the charitable societies to which Mrs. Foote contributed — were in the habit of congratulating the benevolent woman on her charming abode. The house was so convenient, the windows so spacious, the rooms so light and airy, the out look so cheering. Mrs. Foote herself was satisfied that '5 Susannah The Orangery, in its situation, its architecture and its scheme of decoration, was faultless. But Susan, with her heart in the roomy, ramshackle old home in which she had been born — standing in the midst of wide gardens, its prettily wooded little park stretching beyond — and upon which she had to-day turned her back for ever, found little to exhilarate in the prospect before her.

She descended from the cab with reluctance, and dragged unwilling feet over the brilliant garden-path to the door which had been thrown open. In another moment she found herself in the embrace of the lady to whose benevo lence she was to owe her home. " Dear child ! Ten thousand thousand loving, heart-felt welcomes ! " Mrs. Foote cried. The tears rolled from black eyes of a startling brightness down her face. " Wipe your feet, if you please, my good man," she said, addressing the cabman over the new-comer's shoulder. " Take off your hat and help Phœbe to carry the young lady's box upstairs. My precious Susannah's daughter ! I am rejoiced to think I have lived to be of service to you. So domesticated, too ! Take care, cabman, you are stepping on the paint. Can you not see that Phœbe has laid down dusters for you to tread on ?

Give him twopence, dear — twopence above his fare. A shilling from the railway station and twopence for helping with the boxes. He will demand more, but it is ample remuneration. Another box ? Two more did you say? My dear child, what a choking up of your sweet little bedroom it will be ! However, bring them in — bring everything in, my good man. " A dog ! My dear Susannah, this is too much. We did not expect a dog, Phœbe, did we ? " " He is like me — he has nowhere else to go," Susan said. She had fetched Jake on his leader from the cab. She privately thought that the sight of the animal, straining from her side in earnest effort to smell the cabman's trousers, was one to melt the hardest heart. But there are subjects on which even very benevolent women can be oodurate, and this apparently was one.

" What a hideous brute ! " Mrs. Foote cried. She blocked up the doorway with her portly presence, and extended a hand to keep the intruders off. " Not over the doorstep, I beg," she exclaimed ; " I allow no dog over my doorstep. What a hideous and forbidding-looking brute ! I should not like to think such a creature was at large in Bramerton, Susannah. There is fortunately a home for dogs very near — two or three stations off, only, where the animal can be painlessly destroyed — quite painlessly." "But my dog is — valuable," Susan said, instinctively hitting upon the consideration most likely to carry weight. Her tone was quiet enough, but the expression of her face was by no means docile. "Sukey in a rage was Sukey at her prettiest," her father had always said. He had exercised much ingenuity at times to call into his daughter's face the look it wore now.

The cabman was young and smart-looking ; he had an eye for beauty — canine if not feminine — and he came to the rescue with the suggestion that Jake should be tied up forthwith in a disused out-house. Jake submitted cheerfully to this indignity, being under the impression that his mistress also intended to pass her time in that empty and clean-swept locality. It was only when Susan attempted to leave him that he stretched his throat and gave vent to dismal howls, beating his long tail distractedly upon the cold bricks. " He is hungry. If he could have some milk and a Susannah plate of bones brought to him I might slip away," Susan said. Phœbe, who was addressed, opened wide eyes in her pretty, worried-looking face, and shook her head decidedly. "There's nothing of that kind to be got at here, miss," she said.