Saturday's Child Part 63

Lying in bed, a small girl supposedly asleep, years before, she had seen these pins placed so--and so--seen this short end tucked under, this twist skilfully puffed.

This was not Auntie. So wholly had the soul fled that Susan could feel sure that Auntie--somewhere, was already too infinitely wise to resent this fussing little stranger and her ministrations. A curious lack of emotion in herself astonished her. She longed to grieve, as the others did, blamed herself that she could not. But before she left the room she put her lips to her aunt's forehead.

"You were always good to me!" Susan whispered.

"I guess she was always good to everyone," said the little nurse, pinning a clever arrangement of sheets firmly, "she has a grand face!"

The room was bright and orderly now, Susan flung pillows and blankets into the big closet, hung her aunt's white knitted shawl on a hook.

"You're a dear good little girl, that's what YOU are!" said Miss Foster, as they went out. Susan stepped into her new role with characteristic vigor. She was too much absorbed in it to be very sorry that her aunt was dead. Everybody praised her, and a hundred times a day her cousins said truthfully that they could not see how these dreadful days would have been endurable at all without Susan. Susan could sit up all night, and yet be ready to brightly dispense hot coffee at seven o'clock, could send telegrams, could talk to the men from Simpson and Wright's, could go downtown with Billy to select plain black hats and simple mourning, could meet callers, could answer the telephone, could return a rea.s.suring "That's all attended to, dear," to Mary Lou's distracted "I haven't given one THOUGHT to dinner!" and then, when evening came again, could quietly settle herself in a big chair, between Billy and Dr. O'Connor, for another vigil.

"Never a thought for her own grief!" said Georgie, to a caller. Susan felt a little p.r.i.c.k of guilt. She was too busy and too absorbed to feel any grief. And presently it occurred to her that perhaps Auntie knew it, and understood. Perhaps there was no merit in mere grieving. "But I wish I had been better to her while she was here!" thought Susan more than once.

She saw her aunt in a new light through the eyes of the callers who came, a long, silent stream, to pay their last respect to Louisianna Ralston. All the old southern families of the city were represented there; the Chamberlains and the Lloyds, the Duvals and Fairfaxes and Carters. Old, old ladies came, stout matrons who spoke of the dead woman as "Lou," rosy-faced old men. Some of them Susan had never seen before.

To all of them she listened with her new pretty deference and dignity.

She heard of her aunt's childhood, before the war, "Yo' dea' auntie and my f.a.n.n.y went to they' first ball togethah," said one very old lady.

"Lou was the belle of all us girls," contributed the same f.a.n.n.y, now stout and sixty, with a smile. "I was a year or two younger, and, my laws, how I used to envy Miss Louis'anna Ralston, flirtin' and laughin'

with all her beaux!"

Susan grew used to hearing her aunt spoken of as "your cousin," "your mother," even "your sister,"--her own relationship puzzled some of Mrs.

Lancaster's old friends. But they never failed to say that Susan was "a dear, sweet girl--she must have been proud of you!"

She heard sometimes of her own mother too. Some large woman, wiping the tears from her eyes, might suddenly seize upon Susan, with:

"Look here, Robert, this is Sue Rose's girl--Major Calhoun was one of your Mama's great admirers, dear!"

Or some old lady, departing, would kiss her with a whispered "Knew your mother like my own daughter,--come and see me!"

They had all been young and gay and sheltered together, Susan thought, just half a century ago. Now some came in widow's black, and some with shabby gloves and worn shoes, and some rustled up from carriages, and patronized Mary Lou, and told Susan that "poor Lou" never seemed to be very successful!

"I sometimes think that it would be worth any effort in the first forty years of your life, to feel sure that you would at least not be an object of pity for the last twenty!" said Susan, upon whom these callers, with the contrasts they presented, had had a profound effect.

It was during an all-night vigil, in the room next to the one in which the dead woman lay. Dr. O'Connor lay asleep on a couch, Susan and Billy were in deep chairs. The room was very cold, and the girl had a big wrapper over her black dress. Billy had wrapped himself in an Indian blanket, and put his feet comfortably up on a chair.

"You bet your life it would be!" said Billy yawning. "That's what I tell the boys, over at the works," he went on, with awakening interest, "get INTO something, cut out booze and theaters and graphophones now,--don't care what your neighbors think of you now, but mind your own affairs, stick to your business, let everything else go, and then, some day, settle down with a nice little lump of stock, or a couple of flats, or a little plant of your own, and snap your fingers at everything!"

"You know I've been thinking," Susan said slowly, "For all the wise people that have ever lived, and all the goodness everywhere, we go through life like ships with sealed orders. Now all these friends of Auntie's, they thought she made a brilliant match when she married Uncle George. But she had no idea of management, and no training, and here she is, dying at sixty-three, leaving Jinny and Mary Lou practically helpless, and nothing but a lot of debts! For twenty years she's just been drifting and drifting,--it's only a chance that Alfie pulled out of it, and that Georgie really did pretty well. Now, with Mrs. Carroll somehow it's so different. You know that, before she's old, she's going to own her little house and garden, she knows where she stands. She's worked her financial problem out on paper, she says 'I'm a little behind this month, because of Jim's dentist. But there are five Sat.u.r.days in January, and I'll catch up then!'"

"She's exceptional, though," he a.s.serted.

"Yes, but a training like that NEEDN'T be exceptional! It seems so strange that the best thing that school can give us is algebra and Caesar's Commentaries," Susan pursued thoughtfully. "When there's so MUCH else we don't know! Just to show you one thing, Billy,--when I first began to go to the Carrolls, I noticed that they never had to fuss with the building of a fire in the kitchen stove. When a meal was over, Mrs. Carroll opened the dampers, scattered a little wet coal on the top, and forgot about it until the next meal, or even overnight.

She could start it up in two seconds, with no dirt or fuss, whenever she wanted to. Think what that means, getting breakfast! Now, ever since I was a little girl, we've built a separate fire for each meal, in this house. n.o.body ever knew any better. You hear chopping of kindlings, and scratching of matches, and poor Mary Lou saying that it isn't going to burn, and doing it all over----

"Gosh, yes!" he said laughing at the familiar picture. "Mary Lou always says that she has no luck with fires!"

"Billy," Susan stated solemnly, "sometimes I don't believe that there is such a thing as luck!"

"SOMETIMES you don't--why, Lord, of course there isn't!"

"Oh, Billy," Susan's eyes widened childishly, "don't you honestly think so?"

"No, I don't!" He smiled, with the bashfulness that was always noticeable when he spoke intimately of himself or his own ideas. "If you get a big enough perspective of things, Sue," he said, "everybody has the same chance. You to-day, and I to-morrow, and somebody else the day after that! Now," he cautiously lowered his voice, "in this house you've heard the Civil War spoken of as 'bad luck' and Alf's drinking spoken of as 'bad luck'"----

Susan dimpled, nodded thoughtfully.

"--And if Phil Carroll hadn't been whipped and bullied and coaxed and amused and praised for the past six or seven years, and Anna pushed into a job, and Jim and Betsy ruled with an iron hand, you might hear Mrs. Carroll talking about 'bad luck,' too!"

"Well, one thing," said Susan firmly, "we'll do very differently from now on."

"You girls, you mean," he said.

"Jinny and Mary Lou and I. I think we'll keep this place going, Billy."

Billy scowled.

"I think you're making a big mistake, if you do. There's no money in it. The house is heavily mortgaged, half the rooms are empty."

"We'll fill the house, then. It's the only thing we can do, Billy. And I've got plenty of plans," said Susan vivaciously. "I'm going to market myself, every morning. I'm going to do at least half the cooking. I'm going to borrow about three hundred dollars---"

"I'll lend you all you want," he said.

"Well, you're a darling! But I don't mean a gift, I mean at interest,"

Susan a.s.sured him. "I'm going to buy china and linen, and raise our rates. For two years I'm not going out of this house, except on business. You'll see!"

He stared at her for so long a time that Susan--even with Billy!--became somewhat embarra.s.sed.

"But it seems a shame to tie you down to an enterprise like this, Sue,"

he said finally.

"No," she said, after a short silence, turning upon him a very bright smile. "I've made a pretty general failure of my own happiness, Bill.

I've shown that I'm a pretty weak sort. You know what I was willing to do---"

"Now you're talking like a d.a.m.n fool!" growled Billy.

"No, I'm not! You may be as decent as you please about it, Billy," said Susan with scarlet cheeks, "but--a thing like that will keep me from ever marrying, you know! Well. So I'm really going to work, right here and now. Mrs. Carroll says that service is the secret of happiness, I'm going to try it. Life is pretty short, anyway,--doesn't a time like this make it seem so!--and I don't know that it makes very much difference whether one's happy or not!"

"Well, go ahead and good luck to you!" said Billy, "but don't talk rot about not marrying and not being happy!"

Presently he dozed in his chair, and Susan sat staring wide-eyed before her, but seeing nothing of the dimly lighted room, the old steel-engravings on the walls, the blotched mirror above the empty grate. Long thoughts went through her mind, a hazy drift of plans and resolutions, a hazy wonder as to what Stephen Bocqueraz was doing to-night--what Kenneth Saunders was doing. Perhaps they would some day hear of her as a busy and prosperous boarding-house keeper; perhaps, taking a hard-earned holiday in Europe, twenty years from now, Susan would meet one of them again.

She got up, and went noiselessly into the hall to look at the clock.

Just two. Susan went into the front room, to say her prayers in the presence of the dead.

The big dim room was filled with flowers, their blossoms dull blots of light in the gloom, their fragrance, and the smell of wet leaves, heavy on the air. One window was raised an inch or two, a little current of air stirred the curtain. Candles burned steadily, with a little sucking noise; a clock ticked; there was no other sound.

Susan stood, motionless herself, looking soberly down upon the quiet face of the dead. Some new dignity had touched the smooth forehead, and the closed eyes, a little inscrutable smile hovered over the sweet, firmly closed mouth. Susan's eyes moved from the face to the locked ivory fingers, lying so lightly,--yet with how terrible a weight!--upon spotless white satin and lace. Virginia had put the ivory-bound prayer-book and the lilies-of-the-valley into that quiet clasp, Georgie, holding back her tears, had laid at the coffin's foot the violets tied with a lavender ribbon that bore the legend, "From the Grandchildren."

Flowers--flowers--flowers everywhere. And auntie had gone without them for so many years!