Chapter X: An Interlude

But she did not leave her husband. Josie came down with whooping-cough and of course she could not desert a sick child. She nursed him devotedly for six weeks and became so run down through overwork and loss of sleep that she fell an easy victim to the typhoid fever germs which were discovered by the doctor to poison the boasted well water of White Oak Farm.

So far into the Valley of the Shadow did Susan drift in this illness that she would surely never have come back but for Joe's amazing devotion and ceaseless care. And of this she, of course, knew nothing during many weeks of delirium and unconsciousness.

It was over the period of her long, tedious convalescence that she slowly became aware of the unwonted comfort that enveloped her: the uniformed trained nurse, the champagne they fed to her by teaspoonfuls, the pretty down quilt on her bed, the new kimono that lay across the foot of the bed; and every sort of convenient device for a sick room that had ever been heard of seemed to have been provided for her. Where did it all come from? Surely not from Joe who was always watching every penny she spent----

But stranger than this lavish expenditure was Joe's manifest anxiety, tenderness, grief!

She felt that he must be neglecting his work, so often was he in and out of her room, so many hours sitting patiently beside her bed.

Was he, then, really capable of a great passion?--of fine feeling, of unselfish love?

As she grew stronger she found herself wildly regretting first, that she had not died, and next, that Joe was being so good, so wonderful, to her.

"For how can I ever leave him after this?" she would mourn as she lay through the long days and nights while life came slowly back to her. If only he would neglect her instead of binding her with these heavy chains of kindness which she feared she could never, never break!

"I've never in my life been able to be ruthless! He seems to care for me so much!"

The trained nurse admitted, one day, that in all her varied experiences, she had "never seen a husband so dippy about his wife!"

"Those two days and nights that we thought you might not pull through," the nurse told her, "that man was the most pitiable object I ever saw. I wouldn't want to see my worst enemy go through what he suffered, Mrs. Houghton! Your husband may not have your education or be as refined as what you are, Missus, but he certainly loves you, all right! Well, I just guess!

"They say round here," she continued, "that Mister's a tight-wad, and he sure is! But not where you're concerned, Missus! Not when you're sick, anyhow! Nothing was too good, nothing too expensive, that I asked him to get you."

Susan wondered why it was. Remorse flooded her heart, as she thought of her so different feelings toward him.

"If he had been ill, I'd have hoped he'd die!" she mercilessly made herself admit to her own conscience. "He is worse than nothing to me! A millstone about my neck when I want to be free!"

As soon as she was well enough to be moved Joe sent her and Josie and the nurse to Atlantic City.

And there, one day, on the sands, Eleanor Arnold unexpectedly came upon her.

"Of course I came here just to be with you," Eleanor explained as she sat at Susan's feet in the windy sunshine. "The day after I got your card telling me you were coming here I packed and started. I couldn't miss such a chance of seeing you alone!"

"And you will stay as long as I am here?"

"Yes, if it means the rest of my mortal life!"

To Susan, too weak, for the time being, to battle with problems, the days that followed were times of wonderful peace and content; a respite of real happiness. Congenial and loved companionship, rest from the household drudgery which she detested, no anxieties about expenses, the absence of Joe's society, the sea, the fine air----

To be sure, there were shadows. Eleanor would not give up insisting that she must leave Joe; whereas Susan's new sense of obligation to him was so great that she felt disloyal in even speaking of it.

"When your husband greatly loves you," she would argue with Eleanor, "you surely owe him something."

"But unless you love him, Susan, you don't belong to him; no matter how much he loves you; no matter what he has done for you. You belong to yourself--simply because you don't and can't love him."

Susan was silent.

"You know I'm right!" insisted Eleanor.

"It would mean such a bitter struggle--leaving him--and I'm so tired of fighting with life!"

"You're supine! With that child of his, for instance----"

Josie had a fretful way of nagging at his "mother" which Eleanor, though sympathetically understanding children, thought very exasperating. "You let him tyrannize over you, my dear."

"His father makes it so hard for me to manage him!" Susan defended her feeble disciplining of Josie.

Josie chose just this moment of their discussion to leave the nurse and come running to Susan to renew his momentarily diverted insistence that she dig something in the sand for him, though the nurse was doing it much better than his enfeebled mother could, and though Susan had explained to him, after having yielded several times to his demands and overtaxed her endurance, that she could do no more. The nurse had succeeded in distracting his attention for a moment; but he was back again now, tugging at his mother and peevishly reiterating that she and no other must dig for him.

When she firmly refused and told him to go to the nurse, he flew into a tantrum, screamed rebelliously, and tore at her clothes.

"There, now!" Susan challenged Eleanor, "O Socrates, what would you do _now_? Tell me!"

Eleanor looked rather dashed. "You might jump on his stomach," she suggested.

Josie's howls ceased abruptly, and eyeing his mother's friend with a mixture of resentment and apprehension, he retreated precipitately.

"_I_ wouldn't stand that nagging, whining habit he has, Susie," Eleanor declared, when Josie, deciding that safety first lay in a discreet distance from so fierce a lady, went back to the nurse.

"I really do try, Eleanor, for his own sake as much as mine, to train him up in the way he should go. But I'm handicapped."

"It's rotten! The whole situation!"

"It has its compensations. Josie can be very lovable. And he is fond of me."

"You're too easily compensated! I wish you had my conceit; you'd hold yourself at your true worth!"

"You don't begin to realize all my difficulties. It isn't nearly so easy, I find, to get rid of a husband as to acquire one. To a divorced woman so many means of self-support are closed. School teaching, for instance. I suppose I might stand in a store----"

"'Stand?' I've heard of floor _walkers_!" said Eleanor, tentatively.

"Perhaps it is a Pennsylvania Dutch-ism. I didn't know it was. I mean clerk in a store."

"See who's coming!" exclaimed Eleanor, abruptly.

Susan looked up and saw, strolling toward them down the beach, alone, a young lady with a marked air of distinction both in dress and bearing.

"Your sister-in-law, my dear!" Eleanor announced.

"It is! Rather awkward, as we've never been introduced!"

"Not _yet_!" asked Eleanor, incredulously.

"What could you reasonably expect--you've seen Joe?" was the answer which rose to Susan's lips, but which she did not speak. "Of course she has no idea how nice I am," was what she said.

"Does she know you are here?"

"I didn't know _she_ was here. I don't know what she knows about me."

"Let me have the fun of introducing you to her!"

"Help yourself--if it will amuse you."

"It will amuse me very much!"

Eleanor rose as Laura Houghton drew near, and went forward with outstretched hand.

Laura's face, which had been dreary and fretful, lit up at sight of her friend and she greeted her eagerly. "I'm so glad to see you! I'm here all alone; Sidney's been called home on business, and there's not a soul here I know or _would_ know! You're a godsend to me, Eleanor! You've simply got to stay here with me until Sidney gets back."

"How long will that be?"

"A few days. We splurged so recklessly in New York this winter that we've had to draw in and come here to recover. Sidney has a most interesting little habit of running ahead of his income and then retiring into strict privacy to catch up. It lends great variety to our life!" Laura shrugged, a look of bitterness in her face. "Fortunately he has an accommodating half-brother who never spends any money himself, so always has plenty to loan to Sidney. Are you staying with friends?" she asked with a questioning glance toward Susan reclining among her cushions a few yards away.

"Yes, with an old school friend who is here with her nurse, convalescing from typhoid. Let me introduce you. My dear," said Eleanor as she led Laura to Susan, "let me present Mrs. Sidney Houghton. Mrs. Joseph----" Eleanor coughed over Susan's name and Laura did not catch it. She bent to offer her hand to the pale, frail-looking girl on the sand; and Susan took the hand gravely.

"You've been very ill?" said Laura, sympathetically, thinking how beautiful the invalid was. She certainly looked as though she might be a Somebody! It flashed upon her that there was something familiar in this high-bred, interesting face.

"Very ill," answered Susan.

"Is the sea air helping you?"

"Very much, I think."

"You and Miss Arnold are stopping at the same hotel?"

"Yes. At the D---- House."

Laura looked surprised. It was not the sort of place she would have expected Eleanor or any friend of hers to patronize.

Joe had chosen it, and while he would spare no expense necessary for his wife's recovery, he drew the line at paying for fashion.

"You are comfortable there?" asked Laura, doubtfully.

"Comfortable, but not luxurious," answered Eleanor. "It's plain living and high thinking with Susan and me just now."

Laura glanced again at the convalescent. "I beg pardon, I didn't catch your friend's name, Eleanor."

"Mrs. Joseph Houghton," repeated Eleanor.

Laura looked dazed, almost bewildered, then utterly astonished. But only for an instant. Almost immediately she had gotten herself in hand.

"Sidney's sister-in-law?" she repeated with perfect composure. "He will be sorry to hear you have been so ill," she said, graciously.

She turned back to Eleanor. "I am at Hotel T----. Will you come to see me?"

"Of course. I have my evenings off; Susan goes to bed right after dinner. Shall I come this evening?"

"Yes, do please, Eleanor."

"I'll be there about half-past eight."

"Very well. Good-by." She nodded, a shade ceremoniously, to Susan, and moved on.

Eleanor literally flopped down at Susan's side. "I'm limp!" she feebly cried. "And you--you never looked more cool and collected! Why aren't you excited or amused or something?"

"I leave that to you."

"It's none of my affair! I suppose Laura's furious with me for dragging her into such an awkward position!"

"It ought not to be so awfully awkward. She simply won't let herself be saddled with her husband's uninteresting relatives. Of course I'm far from uninteresting, but she's never had any reason to suspect it."

"You're inhumanely just to her. You know very well that in her place you would have been kind to Joe's wife."

"I'd hate to have her be 'kind' to me in the way you mean, Eleanor!"

"You'd have been genuinely nice; not stand-offish."

"When you think of the sort of person she naturally thought Joe would have married, I suppose she considered her only safety lay in not knowing me at all."

"Damned rot!"

"I'm afraid you're not a perfect lady."

"I told you I'd abandoned that futile function! And I'm glad I did! I'd like to be a roaring savage!"

"Do savages roar? Dear me, what for?"

"The great disadvantage of being well-bred is that you can't let off steam! You've no safety-valve and so become congested, spiritually poisoned! Oh, I tell you," said Eleanor, darkly, "civilization's got a lot to answer for!"

"It _has_ got us into a tangled mess, hasn't it?" said Susan with a long breath.

Eleanor parted from Susan that day with an unsolicited promise that she would faithfully report, next morning, any particularly interesting phases of the conversation she would have that evening with Mrs. Sidney Houghton.

She was, however, greatly disappointed. During the three hours that she spent with Laura in her suite of rooms at her hotel not the slightest reference was made to the episode of the morning. For Laura was a young woman capable of exercising, on occasion, rather Spartan self-restraint; and Eleanor, though not shy or retiring, and though dying to know what her friend was thinking about her unexpectedly charming sister-in-law, had, also, her reticences.

Just a day or two after the encounter of Laura and Susan the latter received a letter from Joe in which he told her, in very bad English and worse spelling, that Sidney had again borrowed money from him.

"I give him five years to get threw with all he's got," Joe wrote. "He says his Missus is at Atlantic City just now. When I told him you was there, too, he looked awful funny. I guess he was some supprised Ide spend for such as that. And, to be sure, I wouldn't, neither, but for to get you well and strong again. If you meet up with that sour-faced high-stepper he married, just you give her as good as she sends, Susan, for some day you will be living in the big house and her and Sid will be glad to have so much as the tenant's cottage to live in. You mind if I ain't right."

Susan reflected that it was well for Georgie that White Oak Farm was entailed to him, or Joe would certainly get possession of it.

But in view of this entailment, she could not imagine how Joe expected to contrive ever to occupy the big house.

However, she wasted no thought on the subject, for it did not greatly interest her.

She was subjected to a good deal of embarrassment during her stay at the seaside from the fact that Joe, though standing ready to pay all her necessary bills, would not supply her with money. Ever since her marriage he had seemed afraid to entrust her with a dollar, partly because of his constitutional stinginess and partly because of his constant fear lest she give help to her struggling sisters.

Several times the acuteness of her present embarrassment while at the seaside forced her to the humiliation of borrowing money from her nurse for some mere trifle like postage stamps, or feeing a servant.

"Add it to the bill you present to Mr. Houghton," she would tell the nurse, "and charge one hundred per cent. interest."

She was duly informed by Eleanor of Sidney having rejoined his wife at the T----.

"Do they have Georgie with them?" she inquired with a wistfullness in her heart that made her wonder at herself.

"Yes, but he seems to be left entirely to his nurse. Laura never goes near him apparently! She is the very coldest mother I've ever seen. She actually told me she wished she _could_ care more for Georgie, but that somehow she just couldn't work up any motherliness! It simply isn't in her. I tell her I consider it a frightful waste for such a woman to have a child, while one like me sits about eating her heart out with longing for one. I'd almost be willing to settle down to take care of a husband for the sake of having a child!"

"You'd go so far as that, dear?"

"I said I'd 'almost'. Do you suppose, Susan, that Laura is jealous of Sidney's former attachment to you (you say he jilted you) and that that's why she doesn't make up to you?"

"She doesn't know that I am the woman Sidney jilted."

Eleanor considered this reply for a moment without speaking. "She knows he jilted someone, but does not know that you are the one?"

Susan nodded.

"How can you be so sure?"

"Sidney told me."

Eleanor regarded her thoughtfully. "How extraordinary!" she remarked.

"It is, rather; isn't it!"

"Sidney can be very charming; but he is not and never was worthy of you, my dear!"

"It was because he thought _me_ unworthy that he jilted me!"

"Wanted money and family, of course?"

"Yes."

"Well, he got it. But he doesn't look overwhelmingly happy over it!"

"I've noticed that he doesn't."

"Did he behave abominably toward you, Susan?"

"Very much so!"

"He'd be capable of that, I'm sure!" said Eleanor with emphasis.

When at the end of three weeks Susan reluctantly wrote to Joe that she was now quite strong enough to go home he telegraphed at once that on the following Sunday he would come for them all and "fetch" them.

Susan, after considering the situation, decided to spare herself, if possible, the painful ordeal of having Eleanor again encounter her husband. She would take means to prevent it.

She wrote to Joe that they would not wait until the end of the week to leave for home, but would start the very day he received her letter and would be with him on Wednesday evening.