Saturday's Child Part 49

"I will not, of course!" He took firm hold of a chair-back. "If Lillian--" he began again, very gravely.

Susan leaned toward him, her face not twelve inches away from his face, her hand laid lightly for a second on his arm.

"You know that I will go with you to the end of the world, Stephen!"

she said, scarcely above a whisper, and was gone.

It became evident, in a day or two, that Kenneth Saunders' illness had taken a rather alarming turn. There was a consultation of doctors; there was a second nurse. Ella went to the extreme point of giving up an engagement to remain with her mother while the worst was feared; Emily and Susan worried and waited, in their rooms. Stephen Bocqueraz was a great deal in the sick-room; "a real big brother," as Mrs.

Saunders said tearfully.

The crisis pa.s.sed; Kenneth was better, was almost normal again. But the great specialist who had entered the house only for an hour or two had left behind him the little seed that was to vitally affect the lives of several of these people.

"Dr. Hudson says he's got to get away," said Ella to Susan, "I wish I could go with him. Kenneth's a lovely traveler."

"I wish I could," Emily supplemented, "but I'm no good."

"And doctor says that he'll come home quite a different person," added his mother. Susan wondered if she fancied that they all looked in a rather marked manner at her. She wondered, if it was not fancy, what the look meant.

They were all in the upstairs sitting-room in the bright morning light when this was said. They had drifted in there one by one, apparently by accident. Susan, made a little curious and uneasy by a subtle sense of something unsaid--something pending, began to wonder, too, if it had really been accident that a.s.sembled them there.

But she was still without definite suspicions when Ella, upon the entrance of Chow Yew with Mr. Kenneth's letters and the new magazines, jumped up gaily, and said:

"Here, Sue! Will you run up with these to Ken--and take these violets, too?"

She put the magazines in Susan's hands, and added a great bunch of dewy wet violets that had been lying on the table. Susan, really glad to escape from the over-charged atmosphere of the room, willingly went on her way.

Kenneth was sitting up to-day, very white, very haggard,--clean-shaven and hollow-eyed, and somehow very pitiful. He smiled at Susan, as she came in, and laid a thin hand on a chair by the bed. Susan sat down, and as she did so the watching nurse went out.

"Well, had you ordered a pillow of violets with shaky doves?" he asked, in a hoa.r.s.e thin echo of his old voice. "No, but I guess you were pretty sick," the girl said soberly. "How goes it to-day?"

"Oh, fine!" he answered hardily, "as soon as I am over the ether I'll feel like a fighting c.o.c.k! Hudson talked a good deal with his mouth,"

said Kenneth coughing. "But the rotten thing about me, Susan," he went on, "is that I can't booze,--I really can't do it! Consequently, when some old fellow like that gets a chance at me, he thinks he ought to scare me to death!" He sank back, tired from coughing. "But I'm all right!" he finished, comfortably, "I'll be alright again after a while."

"Well, but now, honestly, from now on---" Susan began, timidly but eagerly, "won't you truly TRY--"

"Oh, sure!" he said simply. "I promised. I'm going to cut it out, ALL of it. I'm done. I don't mean to say that I've ever been a patch on some of the others," said Kenneth. "Lord, you ought to see some of the men who really DRINK! At the same time, I've had enough. It's me to the simple joys of country life--I'm going to try farming. But first they want me to try France for awhile, and then take this German treatment, whatever it is. Hudson wants me to get off by the first of the year."

"Oh, really! France!" Susan's eyes sparkled. "Oh, aren't you wild!"

"I'm not so crazy about it. Not Paris, you know, but some d.i.n.ky resort."

"Oh, but fancy the ocean trip--and meeting the village people--and New York!" Susan exclaimed. "I think every instant of traveling would be a joy!" And the vision of herself in all these places, with Stephen Bocqueraz as interpreter, wrung her heart with longing.

Kenneth was watching her closely. A dull red color had crept into his face.

"Well, why don't you come?" he laughed awkwardly.

Something in his tone made Susan color uncomfortably too.

"That DID sound as if I were asking myself along!" she smiled.

"Oh, no, it didn't!" he rea.s.sured her. "But--but I mean it. Why don't you come?"

They were looking steadily at each other now. Susan tried to laugh.

"A scandal in high life!" she said, in an attempt to make the conversation farcical. "Elopement surprises society!"

"That's what I mean--that's what I mean!" he said eagerly, yet bashfully too. "What's the matter with our--our getting married, Susan?

You and I'll get married, d'ye see?"

And as, astonished and frightened and curiously touched she stood up, he caught at her skirt. Susan put her hand over his with a rea.s.suring and soothing gesture.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" he said, beginning to cough again.

"You said you would. And I--I am terribly fond of you--you could do just as you like. For instance, if you wanted to take a little trip off anywhere, with friends, you know," said Kenneth with boyish, smiling generosity, "you could ALWAYS do it! I wouldn't want to tie you down to me!" He lay back, after coughing, but his bony hand still clung to hers. "You're the only woman I ever asked to undertake such a bad job,"

he finished, in a whisper.

"Why--but honestly---" Susan began. She laughed out nervously and unsteadily. "This is so sudden," said she. Kenneth laughed too.

"But, you see, they're hustling me off," he complained. "This weather is so rotten! And El's keen for it," he urged, "and Mother too. If you'll be so awfully, awfully good--I know you aren't crazy about me--and you know some pretty rotten things about me--"

The very awkwardness of his phrasing won her as no other quality could.

Susan felt suddenly tender toward him, felt old and sad and wise.

"Mr. Saunders," she said, gently, "you've taken my breath away. I don't know what to say to you. I can't pretend that I'm in love with you--"

"Of course you're not!" he said, very much embarra.s.sed, "but if there's no one else, Sue--"

"There is someone else," said Susan, her eyes suddenly watering.

"But--but that's not going--right, and it never can! If you'll give me a few days to think about it, Kenneth--"

"Sure! Take your time!" he agreed eagerly.

"It would be the very quietest and quickest and simplest wedding that ever was, wouldn't it?" she asked.

"Oh, absolutely!" Kenneth seemed immensely relieved. "No riot!"

"And you will let me think it over?" the girl asked, "because--I know other girls say this, but it's true!--I never DREAMED--"

"Sure, you think it over. I'll consider you haven't given me the faintest idea of how you feel," said Kenneth. They clasped hands for good-by. Susan fancied that his smile might have been an invitation for a little more affectionate parting, but if it was she ignored it. She turned at the door to smile back at him before she went downstairs.

CHAPTER V

Susan went straight downstairs, and, with as little self-consciousness as if the house had been on fire, tapped at and opened the door of Stephen Bocqueraz's study. He half rose, with a smile of surprise and pleasure, as she came in, but his own face instantly reflected the concern and distress on hers, and he came to her, and took her hand in his.

"What is it, Susan?" he asked, sharply.