What nonsense to treat this affair as a dispa.s.sionate statement of the facts might represent it! Whatever the facts, he was Stephen Bocqueraz, and she Susan Brown, and they understood each other, and were not afraid!

Susan smiled as she thought of the romances built upon the histories of girls who were "led astray," girls who were "ruined," men whose promises of marriage did not hold. It was all such nonsense! It did not seem right to her even to think of these words in connection with this particular case; she felt as if it convicted her somehow of coa.r.s.eness.

She abandoned consecutive thought, and fell to happy musing. She shut her eyes and dreamed of crowded Oriental streets, of a great desert asleep under the moonlight, of New York shining clean and bright, the spring sunlight, and people walking the streets under the fresh green of tall trees. She had seen it so, in many pictures, and in all her dreams, she liked the big city the best. She dreamed of a little dining-table in a flying railway-train--

But when Stephen Bocqueraz entered the picture, so near, so kind, so big and protecting, Susan thought as if her heart would burst, she opened her eyes, the color flooding her face.

The cemetery was empty, dark, silent. The glowing visions faded, and Susan made one more conscientious effort to think of herself, what she was doing, what she planned to do.

"Suppose I go to Auntie's and simply wait--" she began firmly. The thought went no further. Some little memory, drifting across the current, drew her after it. A moment later, and the dreams had come back in full force.

"Well, anyway, I haven't DONE anything yet and, if I don't want to, I can always simply STOP at the last moment," she said to herself, as she began to walk home.

At the great gateway of the Wallace home, two riders overtook her; Isabel, looking exquisitely pretty in her dashing habit and hat, and her big cavalier were galloping home for a late luncheon.

"Come in and have lunch with us!" Isabel called gaily, reining in. But Susan shook her head, and refused their urging resolutely. Isabel's wedding was but a few weeks off now, and Susan knew that she was very busy. But, beside that, her heart was so full of her own trouble, that the sight of the other girl, radiant, adored, surrounded by her father and mother, her brothers, the evidences of a most unusual popularity, would have stabbed Susan to the heart. What had Isabel done, Susan asked herself bitterly, to have every path in life made so lovely and so straight, while to her, Susan, even the most beautiful thing in the world had come in so clouded and distorted a form.

But he loved her! And she loved him, and that was all that mattered, after all, she said to herself, as she reentered the house and went upstairs.

Ella called her into her bed-room as she pa.s.sed the door, by humming the Wedding-march.

"Tum-TUM-ti-tum! Tum TUM-ti-tum!" sang Ella, and Susan, uneasy but smiling, went to the doorway and looked in.

"Come in, Sue," said Ella, pausing in the act of inserting a large bare arm into a sleeve almost large enough to accommodate Susan's head.

"Where've you been all this time? Mama thought that you were upstairs with Ken, but the nurse says that he's been asleep for an hour."

"Oh, that's good!" said Susan, trying to speak naturally, but turning scarlet. "The more he sleeps the better!"

"I want to tell you something, Susan," said Ella, violently tugging at the hooks of her skirt,--"d.a.m.n this thing!--I want to tell you something, Susan. You're a very lucky girl; don't you fool yourself about that! Now it's none of my affair, and I'm not b.u.t.ting in, but, at the same time, Ken's health makes this whole matter a little unusual, and the fact that, as a family--" Ella picked up a hand-mirror, and eyed the fit of her skirt in the gla.s.s--"as a family," she resumed, after a moment, "we all think it's the wisest thing that Ken could do, or that you could do, makes this whole thing very different in the eyes of society from what it MIGHT be! I don't say it's a usual marriage; I don't say that we'd all feel as favorably toward it as we do if the circ.u.mstances were different," Ella rambled on, snapping the clasp of a long jeweled chain, and pulling it about her neck to a becoming position. "But I do say that it's a very exceptional opportunity for a girl in your position, and one that any sensible girl would jump at. I may be Ken's sister," finished Ella, rapidly a.s.sorting rings and slipping a selected few upon her fingers, "but I must say that!"

"I know," said Susan, uncomfortably. Ella, surprised perhaps at the listless tone, gave her a quick glance.

"Mama," said Miss Saunders, with a little color, "Mama is the very mildest of women, but as Mama said, 'I don't see what more any girl could wish!' Ken has got the easiest disposition in the world, if he's let alone, and, as Hudson said, there's nothing really the matter with him, he may live for twenty or thirty years, probably will!"

"Yes, I know," Susan said quickly, wishing that some full and intelligent answer would suggest itself to her.

"And finally," Ella said, quite ready to go downstairs for an informal game of cards, but not quite willing to leave the matter here.

"Finally, I must say, Sue, that I think this shilly-shallying is very--very unbecoming. I'm not asking to be in your confidence, _I_ don't care one way or the other, but Mama and the Kid have always been awfully kind to you--"

"You've all been angels," Susan was glad to say eagerly.

"Awfully kind of you," Ella pursued, "and all I say is this, make up your mind! It's unexpected, and it's sudden, and all that,--very well!

But you're of age, and you've n.o.body to please but yourself, and, as I say--as I say--while it's nothing to me, I like you and I hate to have you make a fool of yourself!"

"Did Ken say anything to you?" Susan asked, with flaming cheeks.

"No, he just said something to Mama about it's being a shame to ask a girl your age to marry a man as ill as he. But that's all sheer nonsense," Ella said briskly, "and it only goes to show that Ken is a good deal more decent than people might think! What earthly objection any girl could have I can't imagine myself!" Ella finished pointedly.

"n.o.body could!" Susan said loyally.

"n.o.body could,--exactly!" Ella said in a satisfied tone. "For a month or two," she admitted reasonably, "you may have to watch his health pretty closely. I don't deny it. But you'll be abroad, you'll have everything in the world that you want. And, as he gets stronger, you can go about more and more. And, whatever Hudson says, I think that the day will come when he can live where he chooses, and do as he likes, just like anyone else! And I think---" Ella, having convinced herself entirely unaided by Susan, was now in a mellowed mood. "I think you're doing much the wisest thing!" she said. "Go up and see him later, there's a nice child! The doctor's coming at three; wait until he goes."

And Ella was gone.

Susan shut the door of Ella's room, and took a deep chair by a window.

It was perhaps the only place in the house in which no one would think of looking for her, and she still felt the need of being alone.

She sat back in the chair, and folded her arms across her chest, and fell to deep thinking. She had let Ella leave her under a misunderstanding, not because she did not know how to disabuse Ella's mind of the idea that she would marry Kenneth, and not because she was afraid of the result of such a statement, but because, in her own mind, she could not be sure that Kenneth Saunders, with his millions, was not her best means of escape from a step even more serious in the eyes of the world than this marriage would have been.

If she would be pitied by a few people for marrying Kenneth, she would be envied by a thousand. The law, the church, the society in which they moved could do nothing but approve. On the other hand, if she went away with Stephen Bocqueraz, all the world would rise up to blame her and to denounce her. A third course would be to return to her aunt's house,--with no money, no work, no prospects of either, and to wait, years perhaps----

No, no, she couldn't wait. Rebellion rose in her heart at the mere thought. "I love him!" said Susan to herself, thrilled through and through by the mere words. What would life be without him now--without the tall and splendid figure, the big, clever hands, the rich and well-trained voice, without his poetry, his glowing ideals, his intimate knowledge of that great world in whose existence she had always had a vague and wistful belief?

And how he wanted her---! Susan could feel the nearness of his eagerness, without sharing it.

She herself belonged to that very large cla.s.s of women for whom pa.s.sion is only a rather-to-be-avoided word. She was loving, and generous where she loved, but far too ignorant of essential facts regarding herself, and the world about her, to either protect herself from being misunderstood, or to give even her thoughts free range, had she desired to do so. What knowledge she had had come to her,--in Heaven alone knows what distorted shape!--from some hazily remembered pa.s.sage in a play, from some joke whose meaning had at first entirely escaped her, or from some novel, forbidden by Auntie as "not nice," but read nevertheless, and construed into a hundred vague horrors by the mystified little brain.

Lately all this ma.s.s of curiously mixed information had had new light thrown upon it because of the sudden personal element that entered into Susan's view. Love became the great Adventure, marriage was no longer merely a question of gifts and new clothes and a honeymoon trip, and a dear little newly furnished establishment. Nothing sordid, nothing sensual, touched Susan's dreams even now, but she began to think of the constant companionship, the intimacy of married life, the miracle of motherhood, the courage of the woman who can put her hand in any man's hand, and walk with him out from the happy, sheltered pale of girlhood, and into the big world!

She was interrupted in her dreaming by Ella's maid, who put her head into the room with an apologetic:

"Miss Saunders says she's sorry, Miss Brown, but if Mrs. Richardson isn't here, and will you come down to fill the second table?"

Downstairs went Susan, to be hastily pressed into service.

"Heaven bless you, Sue," said Ella, the cards already being dealt.

"Kate Richardson simply hasn't come, and if you'll fill in until she does----You say hearts?" Ella interrupted herself to say to her nearest neighbor. "Well, I can't double that. I lead and you're down, Elsa--"

To Susan it seemed a little flat to sit here seriously watching the fall of the cards, deeply concerned in the doubled spade or the dummy for no trump. When she was dummy she sat watching the room dreamily, her thoughts drifting idly to and fro. It was all curiously unreal,--Stephen gone to a club dinner in the city, Kenneth lying upstairs, she, sitting here, playing cards! When she thought of Kenneth a little flutter of excitement seized her; with Stephen's memory a warm flood of unreasoning happiness engulfed her.

"I beg your pardon!" said Susan, suddenly aroused.

"Your lead, Miss Brown---"

"Mine? Oh, surely. You made it---?"

"I bridged it. Mrs. Chauncey made it diamonds."

"Oh, surely!" Susan led at random. "Oh, I didn't mean to lead that!"

she exclaimed. She attempted to play the hand, and the following hand, with all her power, and presently found herself the dummy again.

Again serious thought pressed in upon her from all sides. She could not long delay the necessity of letting Kenneth, and Kenneth's family, know that she would not do her share in their most recent arrangement for his comfort. And after that---? Susan had no doubt that it would be the beginning of the end of her stay here. Not that it would be directly given as the reason for her going; they had their own ways of bringing about what suited them, these people.

But what of Stephen? And again warmth and confidence and joy rose in her heart. How big and true and direct he was, how far from everything that flourished in this warm and perfumed atmosphere! "It must be right to trust him," Susan said to herself, and it seemed to her that even to trust him supremely, and to brave the storm that would follow, would be a step in the right direction. Out of the unnatural atmosphere of this house, gone forever from the cold and repressing poverty of her aunt's, she would be out in the open air, free to breathe and think and love and work----

"Oh, that nine is the best, Miss Brown! You trumped it---"

Susan brought her attention to the game again. When the cards were finally laid down, tea followed, and Susan must pour it. After that she ran up to her room to find Emily there, dressing for dinner.