Susannah and one other

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GpightW Sca^

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put the basket of mushrooms at her feet she gave herself up wholly to the delicate imagery of her mind, and to the joy of watching the sun rise.

It seemed to her imagination that the rows and rows of trees in the apple-orchard were all bending to do homage to that wondrous light from the East. Even the birds’ voices seemed hushed, or perhaps she did not hear them.

The glory of the rising sun magnetized her. It was as though her soul itself were drawn from her, as little by little the blush of the dawn melted into mist, and only that great globe of fire rode triumphantly in the heavens.

The world was changed now.

The grey dreamland, the mystery, had vanished; a broad clear light fell upon the orchard, picking out the haunts of the birds, discovering the harvest of fallen apples (a veritable feast later on for the old sow and her nine pigs), catching the glint of the brook that ran in the distance, and making the thousands of mushrooms spread themselves into a soft, cream-white carpet over the rough grass, dainty, and inviting for a fairy to tread upon.

The distant chime of the clock striking the hour in clear musical tones aroused Susannah sharply.

“Five o’clock!” she exclaimed. And she jumped to her feet and picked up her big burden.

She glanced about her. No one was very near, but from the farm came many sounds now that told her the day’s work had commenced.

Turning away from the garden, Susannah Went into the paddock.

The cows were being driven to the shed to be milked. A long-legged youth was in charge of them.

He touched his cap to Susannah, and pretended not to see the mushrooms, but she held them out to him, and laughed.

“ You won’t tell tales, will you, Jack.?^ ”

The boy coloured, and handled his switch nervously.

“ Why didn’t ’ee ask me, miss ? ” he said. I’d have got ’em for ’ee.”

“ Yes ; and have got something else too,” said Susannah lightly, “ if Spens had seen you at it. Besides, I wanted to have the fun of picking them myself. You can carry them, though, if you like,” she added with an audible sigh, for her back still ached a little, and the handle of the heavily weighted basket cut into her slender arm.

The cows were passing into line.

There was one, small in size and red-brown in colour, that would persist in putting down its head and uttering low, ominous murmurs, or they sounded ominous to Susannah, who could never outgrow her fear of homed beasts.

The black cow with the white patches had set off at a trot, and bellowed a good deal as she went.

From far off came the bleating of the calves, those enchanting little creatures, with their legs too long, and their soft black muzzles, and their soulful eyes.

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The black cow with the wliite patches had two waiting for her, so no wonder that she was in a hurry.

It always made Susannah’s heart beat a little quickly when she heard that mother-note in the sound that the big animal gave, as she went from the paddock to the cowshed.

Jack carried the basket of mushrooms up to the kitchen entrance, and then slouched away.

“ I am deadly tired,” said Susannah to herself. “ I shall never dare to say so. Sophie will be nasty enough as it is if she hears of this ; but it was too delicious out there, and I have been dreaming about doing it for ever so long. It would n(5t be a bad notion to make myself a cup of tea, and I may as well get out of this skirt.”

She shpped from it as she spoke. Then she stood and gazed on her mushrooms proudly for a moment, and then she put the kettle on the oil-stove, and after this was done she sat down in the kitchen armchair, and sighed luxuriously.

It may be that her eyes closed for a few moments. It was certainly drowsy in that wide, sunlit kitchen.

Everything induced to slumber; even the sound of the men’s voices in the yard beyond had something soothing in it, and the buzz of an important honey bee that hovered about the rose bushes outside the kitchen window made the air drowsy.

All at once, however, Susannah started and sat forward.

The kettle was hissing noisily, and giving little angry puffs that threatened to shoot off its lid ; but it was not the kettle that roused Susannah; some one was calling her name.

“ Auntie Sue, Auntie Sue ! ” said a small voice.

A child was standing in the doorway, an exceedingly pretty child, straight as a wand, in its little white nightdress. Susannah rubbed her eyes, looked amazement, and then pretended to frown.

“ Tora ! ” she exclaimed. “ Why, darling, what are you doin^ there.? Why aren’t you in bed and asleep.? ”

“ Why aren’t you .? ” replied the little person in the white nightgown. Gathering courage, the child stepped forward, pattering with little bare feet across the redtiled floor of the kitchen.

Susannah sprang up and caught the small figure in her arms.

“ Now, duck bird,” she said, “ what am I going to do with you.? ”

“ Give me some tea,” said Tora promptly, who, though poetically lovely to look at, was essentially practical.

Susannah put the child on the kitchen table, and sat and caressed the little white feet.

“ But, darling,” sh^ said, “ you know it is ever so early, and Nannie will scold like anything, and you may catch cold.”

‘‘ Oh, Auntie Sue, it is so hot ! I couldn’t sleep, and Nannie is fast asleep, and she never heard me when I (Called, and I creeped out of bed, and I seen you coming through the paddock with Jack, and I do think you might have tooked me with you to pick all those mush-

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rooms. But, Auntie Sue ” — in a cautious whisper — “ did you steal them? Don’t they all belong to Mr. Calvert? ”

“ Now, here is your tea,” said Susannah hastily.

It is real tea, Tora, with a large piece of sugar in it ; and would you like a piece of bread and butter? ”

“ I’d rather have a biscuit and some chocolate,” added Tora, grasping the possibilities of the situation shrewdly. “ If you don’t know where to find any I can tell you,” she said, nodding her head — “ in that there cupboard there’s ever such a big packet. I know . . . cos cook give . . . gave me some yesterday.”

“ Oh, Tora,” said Susannah, “ what would Nannie say? ”

Tora looked towards the door and dropped her voice.

“ Nannie’s very cross; she hates being here. I heard her say so to old cook last night ; they was sewing, and they thought I was asleep, but I heard it all. ... A farm’s a dead and somefink place, that’s what Nannie said, and the old woman’s as mad as a hatter. Who is the old woman. Auntie Sue? And you ...” But here Tora stopped short. “ Nannie’s always cross about somefink,” she said then, wistfully. “ You should hear her sometimes at home. Auntie Sue ; she goes on dreafful — oh, but dreafful really.”

“ I am glad I don’t,” said Susannah grimly.

She was feeding the little mouth with bits of bread and chocolate alternately, and kept the two pretty little feet in her lap.

“Never mind what Nannie says; you are always happy here, my pet, and that is the one great thing,” she said tenderly.

The child bent forward and kissed her.

“ I do ’dore you, my old lovey-dovey,” she said cooingly. “ You don’t mind how I scrunch you. I could cuggle you all to little pieces. Auntie Sue ! ”

When Tora released her willing victim, Susannah’s hair had fallen in a heap on her shoulders. It made the child laugh heartily to see the way she shook it over her head, and then twisted it up in an early Victorian knob, and stuck it securely through with one big pin.

“ You do look a queer thing,” said Tora, “ just like that picture in father’s room — that stiff old lady with a bonnet and long veil, and no dress over her chest. Auntie Sue,” said the child restlessly, “ didn’t you tell me that mummy had gone to sea in a pretty boat, where she’d be able to rest and come back with burnt cheeks? Well, what does gannavatin’ mean? Is it something that goes with a boat? Will she bring it home? I heard Nannie say to cook last night somefink about mummy putting dust in his eyes, for all he’s that sharp. ... I donH know what she meant, do you ? And then she said that about gannavatin’, and I do fink ” — the little brows were fretted with a frown — “ she said somefink about being hard for a respectiful working woman to put up with such ways. Oh, they did talk a lot ! ... I went asleep at last, and they was still talking.”

Susannah drew the small creature into her arms ; her

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brows were caught into a faint frown. She changed the conversation.

“Aren’t you going to make my front hair curl.?” she said with affected gaiety.

Tora set to work immediately.

She carefully smoothed out a piece of crinkly paper (from which chocolate-dust trickled down Susannah’s pretty short nose), and she had just succeeded in screwing up one big curl when the sound of footsteps made her desist, and sent a tremble through her little frame.

Susannah’s arms closed more securely about her as a second figure made its appearance in the doorway; this was a woman very red in the face and cross in temper, wearing a print dressing-gown, and her hair in crimpers.

“ I might have known it ! ” she exclaimed. “ For the Lord’s sake, just look at her! Drinking tea and eatin’ sweets, and all at this onearthly hour, when she’d ought to be asleep in her bed. You’d might have known better, I do think. Miss Richland ! A fine time I’d have of it if my lady was to know. This is how it is Miss Tora’s always catchin’ cold. . . .”

Tora interposed in a shrill voice.

‘‘ Why, there isn’t any cold anywhere, you silly old Nannie; it’s all frizzly hot, and Auntie Sue isn’t going to be scolded. I gotted out of bed all alone, and it was my own idea ’tirely to go downstairs; and, Nannie, you know it’s all made-up nonsense about mummy getting cross, cos you know quite well that mummy never cares what I do. Auntie Sue, you’ll carry me up the stairs,

won’t you ? ” — this in a pathetically eager whisper.

“ The child has done no harm,” said Susannah haughtily. “ It is a shame to box the little creature up on such a lovely morning.”

“ I think I’m the best judge of what’s good for my young lady,” said the nurse pertly.

The procession up the stairs was a silent and a depressed one. At the door of the nursery Susannah put Tora down.

She felt so hot and angry that wisdom prompted her to cross no swords with this woman who was in her sister’s employ, but as she closed the nursery door and went along the passage to her own room there was a lump in her throat.

There always was a lump in her throat when Tora puckered up her lips and drooped her small head.

It hurt her, definitely hurt her, to go away and leave that little white-robed figure condemned to go back to bed, and lie still in a darkened room for another hour or so, when every fibre in the child’s being clamoured to be out in the sunshine and the glorious morning air.

“ This is what Sophie would call making an idiot of myself, I suppose,” said the girl a little restlessly.

She sat down on the window-seat and sighed.

Sometimes I almost wish that Emma would not send the child to us. If I am not to love her, I would rather never see her. Poor little sweetheart ! ”

Susannah leaned her head against the oaken -shutter. She felt so tired now. The delight that had radiated

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her being out alone with the dawn in the orchard, that pure joie de vivre, was gone.

From her seat in the window she commanded a view of the paddock.

The cows were going back to graze, and across the green space, a line of dazzling white, went a family of geese in solemn procession to the small pond for their morning bath. There was nothing Susannah loved more than to upset this prim white-plumaged family, to ruffle the goslings out of their precise ways, and make the gander hiss out at her with open beak and elongated neck. But she saw them pass now out of sight without even the ghost of a smile on her lips.

The soft impress of Tora’s little body lingered in her touch, the loving arms seemed to cling about her neck, but the power of stirring her heart, of waking her to happiness, that the child’s love usually carried, failed now.

She had drifted back to the familiar atmosphere of her everyday life. It was such a dull, depressing, enervating atmosphere, and withal it was charged with the suggestion of storm, not of a magnificent electric outburst, but of a storm that murmured, and paused, and murmured again, and made the sky so gloomy at times that it took the grip out of most good things.

“ If . . said Susannah to herself, but then she stopped abruptly; she knew the futility of pursuing a phantom possibility, and to end the matter she got up resolutely, and began to dress for the day. And a plunge into the bath that was waiting certainly did her good.

When she left her room in her neat blouse and skirt, with her dark-brown hair still twisted on the top of her head, she looked bright and pretty ; indeed, she laughed softly to herself as the thought of her ill-gotten gains came back to her mind, and she remembered how she might perhaps tempt her mother to eat a better breakfast than usual.

“ A good thing they are not eggs,” she said to herself. “ He can’t count the mushrooms, though I dare say he would like to try.”

The house was open when she went downstairs this time, and what air there was was invited to enter freely. The old postman was coming across the fields, trudging along at a good pace, with a stout stick to help him, and his brown canvas bag slung from his neck in front.

Susannah went out into the porch to wait for him, and took the letters. There were several letters and newspapers for her mother, and one letter for herself.

“ From Edmund,” she said, and her face shadowed. She tore it open a little nervously. It was addressed from a big house in Scotland, and was brief enough.

“ Dear Sue ” (it ran),

“ Please tell nurse to pack Tora’s things, and take the child up to town on Thursday to meet me on my return. I hope Tora has not been a bother, and that

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your mother is fairly well. We have had good sport on the whole, but the birds are very wild.

“ Yours,

“ Edmund Corneston.”

Susannah folded the letter with a chill feeling pressing upon her.

Her brother-in-law’s letters were never effusive, but this one seemed curter and colder than usual, and the order for the child to go from her so soon signified a very definite sorrow to the girl.

As she stood twisting the letter in her hand she heard her mother’s door open and close, and the next moment a short, sharp-faced woman came down the stairs.

“ Mrs. Richland is asking for her letters. Miss Susannah. She heard the postman’s voice.”

The speaker had something metallic in her look and manner, and her eyes seemed trained to suspicion.

“ I am just going tip to her, and I will take the letters,” said Susannah.

Sophie Benson pursed in her lips for a moment, and then turned on her heel.

“ Mrs. Richland has had a bad night,” she observed a little tartly as she went.

Her manner said as plainly as words could that she did not approve of Susannah going to her mother’s room; but Susannah had a will of her own, a fact which by this time Mrs. Richland’s companion-maid and confidential factotum knew thoroughly well, and resented equally well.

“ I shall have to invent something,” said Susannah to herself as she went slowly up the stairs. “ If mother were to read Edmund’s letter she would jump immediately at the idea that he had some mysterious reason for requiring Tora to go to town just now, whereas of course he merely wants to see the child, and is probably going to take her to meet Emma.” Then Susannah sighed. “ I do wish Emma would write ! . . . She could surely find time to scribble a word now and then. I am quite sure the yacht must be in harbour all the time. Emma’s love of the sea was always tempered with discretion.”

She paused to listen a moment. Sounds were coming from the nursery; the child was chattering gaily; evidently her tears were forgotten, and she had made her peace with Nannie.

“ Dear little soul ! ” said Susannah with a smile and a sigh. “ Only three more days, and then . . . Oh, it will be desolate here without her ! ”

She turned the handle of the door by which she stood, and entered her mother’s room.

Mrs. Richland was sitting up in bed with the pillows piled at her back and a writing-pad on her knees; a few letters she had written were flung here and there over the coverlet.

The windows were set widely open, and the strong light poured in a little mercilessly. It seemed to Susannah as if her mother had grown thinner and more sallow since the day before; as if the restless, worried look, the sort of relentless eagerness which

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she knew so well, had increased in these few hours of separation.

As she approached the bed, Mrs. Richland stretched her hand out eagerly for her letters. She wore some fleecy wrap about her shoulders ; in the hottest weather she was barely warm.

Susannah sat down on the edge of the bed, and watched her as she tore open her letters in a feverish sort of way.

The girl could remember her mother’s beauty so clearly, and even now there was more than a trace of it ; age, illness, and endless mental fretting could not change the well-cut features, or take nobility from the low, broad brow, from which the hair, once dark and luxurious, now spare and grey, rolled back in natural waves ; the teeth were white and even. When her mother smiled the effect was fascinating; but smiles were rare gifts, and there was something infinitely pathetic to Susannah in the tired blue eyes with their ever-constant dark shadows.

“ Writing so soon, darling? ” said the girl with tender reproach. “ And Sophie tells me you slept so badly.”

Mrs. Richland did not heed the words; she was absorbed in one of her letters. Suddenly she crushed it in her hand almost fiercely.

“ It is simply absurd and abominable ! ” she said in a hot, strained tone. “ Would you believe it. Sue, in face of all I have told him, Mr. Burke declares I have no case against that scoundrel Whitfield, that he cannot possibly advise me to take the matter into court ! ”

Susannah knit her brows.

“ It is hal'd, darling,” she said, and she sat down on the edge of the bed. She tried to make her voice as sympathetic as possible. “ But Mr. Burke is always cautious, and, you see, a lawsuit costs so much.” Susannah said this hurriedly, as though a little afraid of making a statement the truth of which she knew by such bitter experience.

“ An old stick-in-the-mud ! He drives me mad ! ” said Mrs. Richland excitedly. “ I always did detest him ! If I had had another sort of man to look after my affairs when your father died I should have been in a very different position now. No case!” she repeated irritably. “ Why, Whitfield is an out-andout fraud! . . . Didn’t you see that account in the paper yesterday about a man who advertised tips in just the same way as he did.?^ Well, some woman brought that man to book for getting money under false pretences ! So why shouldn’t I do the same thing with Whitfield? ”

Susannah fingered the fringe on the silken coverlet of the bed nervously. Her brow was contracted; her lips moved once, as though it cost her a great effort not to speak, yet her words when they came were trite enough.

“ I suppose Mr. Burke thinks it would be a waste of money. Try not to worry about it, darling,” she said.

Mrs. Richland laughed a little shortly.

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“ That is so like you, Sue ! When one might reasonably expect a little sympathy, you offer a platitude. You and old Burke go well together.”

She had been opening her other letters as she spoke, and all at once her face changed swiftly, the anger and fretfulness disappeared; a little colour stole for an instant into the sallow white of her cheeks.

She read and re-read the letter she had in her hand ; then hurriedly picking up a newspaper, she scanned a certain page eagerly ; then she reverted to the subject of Mr. Burke again, but a good deal of the animus seemed to have gone from her voice.

“ Another time,” she said, “ I shan’t consult him at all; I shall go straight ahead without him. Just because your f ather made him trustee to our miserable bit of money, he thinks he has the right to order and dictate. Sue,” she said suddenly, “ I want you to let me have your cheque for twenty-five pounds. ... I will give you mine in exchange, and you can hold it over till my next remittance comes.”

Susannah coloured, and hesitated.

“ Do you want it at once? ” she asked.

Mrs. Richland nodded her head.

“ Yes, now,” she answered. “ Why? You don’t object, I suppose? ”

Susannah got up.

“ I don’t believe I have so much in the bank, mother,” she said.

“Not got five and twenty pounds in the bank?” Mrs. Richland’s tone was openly amazed and doubtful.

W SUSANNAH

“ My dear Sue, what do you do with your money? You spend nothing on your clothes. ... You are horribly, almost indecently shabby, and with three hundred a year all to yourself you might afford to do so many things that other people cannot hope to do ! ”

Susannah walked to the window.

“ The money does go,” she said lightly, “ and yet one does so Httle. I thought it would last twice as long in the country, but . . She broke off with a little sigh.

Mrs. Richland had been pondering, and broke in here.

“ Well, I tell you what you might do anyhow. Draw the cheque, and then write to your bank, and ask them to see it through ; they are sure to let you overdraw, as your income is paid direct to your account. Of course,” she added fretfully, “ it is a miserable business having to borrow what really ought to have been mine, but that is an old story; and,” she added, the bright look coming back to her face, “ it is really most important that I should have this money at once. Look here . . .” She pushed the letter across the bed, and then took it back again. “ No ! . . . you never understand these things, and it is waste of time trying to explain them; but I will tell you this much. Sue, if you can let me have twenty-five pounds now, I shall certainly double it by this time next week. The thing is sure, absolutely sure ! ”

Susannah stifled a sigh between her teeth.

It seemed to her that she had heard that wonderful

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story ever since she could remember. If all the “ sure things ” that had been angled for her had only come to hook, the field in front of the house would hardly have been large enough to hold them !

But though wisdom, and something harder than wisdom, the need of clinging to what she had, to keep the house going in absolute necessities, clamoured to be heard, Susannah could never steel her heart against that glimmer of youth and light in her mother’s eyes, could never bring herself to deny that mother the means of tasting hope, and, in a sense, happiness for a brief spell.

“ I think I can manage it, and I will run now and get the cheque, darling,” she said.

She went swiftly back to her own room. In the drawer where she kept her few private papers she turned over a letter from her mother’s trustee and her own, that same Mr. Burke who was such an old “ stick-in-the-mud.” A few words in the old-fashioned writing caught Susannah’s eyes.

“ I do beg of you . .

But she resolutely pushed this letter out of sight, and, taking up pen and ink, drew the cheque required, and having relocked the drawer she hurried back to her mother’s room.

She had just slipped the narrow pink paper into Mrs. Richland’s hand when Sophie pushed open the door and entered, bearing a breakfast-tray in her hands.

Susannah looked at it eagerly.

“ There are some mushrooms,” she said. “ I picked them myself this morning. I thought mother would enjoy a few grilled.”

Sophie Benson put the tray on the bed.

“ Mushrooms ! ” she said with a sniff. “ Do you want to poison Mrs. Richland.? The very worst thing she could eat! . . . And if you’ll let me advise you, Miss Sue, you’ll not go picking Mr. Calvert’s mushrooms again ; he’d be rightly angered if he knew. His orders were strict that no one should touch them but Spens.”

“ How ridiculous you are, Benson 1 ” said Susannah in her coldest way. “ Mushrooms are no one’s property, and Mr. Calvert’s anger is a matter of indifference to me. Sometimes,” added the girl a little hotly, “ you permit yourself too much freedom in speaking to me 1 ”

Mrs. Richland, who had been scribbling again, looked up from one to the other fretfully.

“What is the matter.? Mushrooms! Oh, of course, I cannot eat them ! . . . And, Sue, I do beg of you not to annoy Richard Calvert.”

She let her attendant carry away her writing-pad, and replace it with the breakf ast-tray , but not very willingly.

“ Don’t forget,” she said, “ that Calvert is our landlord, and can be agreeable or very disagreeable, just as we treat him ; and as for a time I suppose we shall have to stay here, it is decidedly to our interests to make ourselves amiable. Sophie, what do you think old Burke writes .? ”

Susannah had reseated herself on the bed, and she

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listened now with a kind of pain, and a very definite sensation of annoyance, whilst her mother poured out her grievances to the woman who was waiting on her.

It was an old, old story, this sharp regret, this annoyance, that another person should be the recipient of her mother’s intimate thoughts. Not that she was exactly jealous of Sophie Benson; but as she had grown out of childhood Susannah had gradually resented the existence of an influence so intrusive, so powerful, so injudicious, and so antagonistic to herself in her mother’s life. Susannah was no saint in temper, and she had wasted much hot indignation over the manner in which she was resolutely shut away from all chance of making herself necessary to her mother, or of drawing a little closer to her. She did not deceive herself ; she knew that she could never have filled Sophie Benson’s place. There was too much of her father in the girl to let her play the hypocrite easily, whereas from Sophie* Benson (once her children’s nursery governess, and little by little translated into her constant companion) Mrs. Richland obtained just that encouragement she needed for the development of certain follies which had been the ruin of her life. From the moment of her father’s death, when the truth of many things had come to Susannah, it had been a silent and a steady battle between this woman, Sophie Benson, and herself.

The girl’s straightforward nature was such that, had the matter rested entirely on moral reasons, she would have put forward the whole force of her will, and have got Benson out of her mother’s life altogether by some means or other; but there was more to be considered than practical common sense. There was the fact that Mrs. Richland was a suffering woman — a woman built up of nerves, with a constitution of paper; and, evil as her influence was in a moral sense, Sophie was invaluable when the hours of illness came. Therefore, for this reason alone, knowing as she did sadly enough that her mother absolutely relied on this little hard-visaged woman, that Sophie was half her existence, Susannah felt that there would be something definitely cruel in working to bring about a separation.