Chapter VIII: Autumn

By the time Susan got back to White Oak Farm that September evening it was dark and late; and Joe, anxiously pacing the front porch of their picturesque cottage, greeted her crossly.

"Some married life!--me settin' here alone all evening and you off! Usin' up gasoline unnecessary! I just knowed it would go like this if I left you run my car! What did I tell you?" he said, accusingly.

Susan, offering no response, went into the house, leaving him to put the car into the garage.

A few minutes later, however, when he joined her in their room, he again took up his complaint.

"I might as well be single again if I got to set alone all evening! Where was you, anyhow?"

"Over to Reifsville to see Addie and Lizzie."

"Sixteen mile there and back! That used up anyhow near two gallon. And gasoline going up every day higher! What did you have to go over there fur?"

"They are lonesome--and so am I."

"Och, well," returned Joe, softened, "if you was feelin' a little lonesome, that way, after what's happened, then that's all right. But leave me tell you somepin, Susan," he said, seating himself in a rocking chair by the window and feasting his eyes on her young loveliness as she stood before the bureau with bare arms upraised to brush her short curly hair. "Be _thankful_ fur your grief fur your mother! Me, I never knowed my mother. Never knowed what it was to have no one care fur me in all my life--till I got Josie!"

"Didn't your wife care for you, Joe?" asked Susan, touched by the wistfulness in his voice.

"My wife? Well, it's you that can answer that--whether my wife cares for me."

"Your other wife then?"

"Och, she was so dumb and common, Susan; all she ast of me was that I make her a good purwider; and in turn she kep' my house nice and comfortable. That's all there was to it."

Susan did not ask him what he found more in her. At times she suspected him of something as near akin to a romantic passion for her as he was capable of feeling.

"Well, Susan, what do you think come in the evening mail whiles you was off?" he inquired as he rocked by the window.

"A letter from your brother?"

"Good guess! What do you think he wants me to do yet? _This_ you won't guess so easy!"

"To leave here?"

"How did you know?" cried Joe in surprise.

"I've wondered and _wondered_ why he has let you stay--you, his brother, working for him like a menial!"

"That's what _he_ says in this here letter. He says it mortifies him and that it had ought to mortify me, too, if I had any pride. Huh!" grunted Joe.

"Why doesn't it?" asked Susan.

"I got my good reasons fur stayin' on here!" returned Joe, darkly, "and he darsen't chase me off, neither! He knows he darsen't! I'm a-goin' to write and tell him so! Look-a-here!" he added, taking a newspaper from his pocket, rising and coming to her to point out a paragraph, "where it says how Sid and his wife is travellin' with that there lively set up there at Newport; folks that could buy him out a thousand times over and never feel it! _He_ can't go their pace--the pace of the crowd he's tryin' to run with now. He ain't near rich enough! But Sid he always was awful ambitious that way, to git in with folks that had more'n what he had. And here's another piece in the paper," he went on, turning the sheet, "that says where he was bettin' wery high on some races and how he lost _thirty thousand dollars_ yet! Thirty thousand, mind you! _Lost_ it! Gosh, ain't Sid a fool! You just watch out and see how soon he'll git to the end of his tether now he's got money to spend!"

Susan plainly perceived that Joe entertained the happiest anticipations of his brother's speedy ruin.

"So you see," said Joe, "now that he's blowed in thirty thousand dollars and more, he wants to come home and stay safe back here fur a while on the farm; and so he wants me and you to get out before he comes."

"Does he say that?"

"As much as."

"Then I should think we'd have to go, seeing that he owns the place. You surely can't stay here if he doesn't want you to."

"I ain't a-goin'! You'll see what you'll see before I'm done with my stylish brother Sid!"

He tossed the paper aside and took a step nearer to her, his eyes caressing her, his hand raised to fondle her--while she, holding herself rigid, tried not to betray the repulsion that shook her to the foundations of her being. And just at that instant, before his clumsy hand had touched her, a sleepy cry from Josie's room saved her. She sprang away from her husband and hurried to the baby's bedside.

Josie had had a bad dream and was frightened. Susan lifted him from his crib and sat down to rock him.

And now, for the first time in her acquaintance with her step-son, he suddenly responded to her mothering, clasping his fat little arms tight around her neck as she held him; nestling his curly head against her breast, cooing and murmuring lovingly in answer to her low-voiced singing to him.

It seemed to Susan that at the very first voluntary touch of those soft baby arms every thwarted motherly instinct of her heart became alive. An hour ago she had been plotting to cut loose from all the obligations imposed by her rash and foolish marriage. And now such a little thing, the clasp of a baby's arms, was binding her fast.

"I'll bear it for you, Josie, if you'll only love me," she whispered as she held him close.

Susan could date from that night a change in the boy. Whatever the trying peculiarities of his disposition, whatever his violent loyalty to his father in preference to her, he was nevertheless, after that night, her child, dependent upon her, jealously fond of her. And she, from that hour, became his faithful and devoted mother.

A week after Joe had dispatched his letter to Sidney, in which he refused to leave White Oak Farm, he came in one day at noon from the fields with a piece of news which he imparted to Susan at dinner.

"The housekeeper over at the big house has a letter from Sid's Missus where it says the house is to be got ready for 'em to come home with sich a house-party, nex' Sa'rday. Sid and his wife gets here a day ahead of their comp'ny--on Friday. The housekeeper she sent the butler to me to say she must have green corn and fresh tomats and lettuce and grapes and Gawd knows what!"

Susan, looking very tired from her long morning's housework and cooking, made no comment, as she poured Joe's coffee and passed it to him across the table.

"It's bad enough fur a married man to have to keep so much hired help as what Sid keeps; but fur his Missus to be that good-for-nothing that he has to hire someone to do even the _managin'_ yet--a housekeeper, mind you!--that's goin' _too_ far! Somepin ought to be did about it!"

Susan, busily mashing Josie's baked potato, still made no comment.

"It's squanderin' money somepin fierce to hire so much! What good is his wife _to_ him, anyhow? That's what I ast you!"

"Better ask what good is he to her," Susan remarked at last.

But this was a point of view too foreign to the domestic philosophy of a Pennsylvania Dutchman to be considered.

"He's her Mister," was Joe's conclusive response.

"There, now, Josie, dear," Susan said as she put the child's spoon in his hand when his potato was ready for him.

"Wants to be sed! Seed me, Musser!" protested Josie--f's being always s's in his language.

As he was quite able to feed himself and as Susan was feeling faint for food herself, she demurred, appealing to his pride--he was a great big boy now, not a baby any more; appealing also to his pity for her who couldn't eat any "din-din" if she had to feed a great big----

"Seed me! Seed me!" clamoured the boy.

"No, no, Josie must feed himself--like Father! Look at Father!--and let Mother eat her dinner."

"Wants to be sed!" howled Josie as Susan turned to her own plate. "Wants Musser to seed me!"

But Susan, taking up her knife and fork, ignored his cries.

Josie cast his spoon upon the floor, slunk down in his high chair, and sulked.

Susan paid no attention.

"He won't eat his dinner if you won't feed him, and he needs his dinner," Joe objected.

"He'll eat it if he gets hungry enough, Joe."

"He's too little to be tormented!"

"He won't suffer. If you don't interfere, he will soon give in."

"Wants to be sed!" whimpered Josie. "Seed me!"

Susan went on eating.

"If you won't I will," said Joe with an injured air, "and I ain't got the time to. Will you do it?"

If she had not been so very tired she might have stuck it out; but a lassitude of mind and body that made nothing seem worth while save peace and quiet led her to yield. She rose, picked up the child's spoon; and sat down again at his side.

Joe looked pleased and complacent.

Susan's heart reproached her as she thought, while she fed the child, "If he were my very own I'd love him too well to spoil him and make him detestable! I'd love him as a child ought to be loved. I must try--I must try!"

"When you stop to think," Joe resumed the discussion of his brother's affairs, "of all they'll spend over this here comp'ny they're havin' at Sid's--ten strangers, mind you! To stay from Sa'rday to Monday yet! Eatin' and carousin'! And a big bunch of hired people doin' all the work! And after all, what's _to_ it, anyhow?"

"Your pet dissipation is making money--theirs, spending it. I don't see much difference between you," said Susan, dully.

"Och, yes, but I work and purduce something fur other ones. They don't purduce nothing, that bunch, they only use up. They're like sich parasites."

"Hear your daddy, Josie, calling your uncle and aunt potato bugs!"

"Uncle Tater-Bug!" gurgled Josie.

His father chuckled. "See how quick he gets you?" he proudly drew Susan's attention to his son's precocity. "Yes, and potato bugs is what they are all right, Sid and his Missus!"

"I wonder whether society will ever learn how to exterminate its human potato bugs," Susan reflected. "But your real purpose in working, Joe, doesn't seem to me a bit higher than theirs in spending; you are both out to enjoy yourselves; you to carouse in your delightful accumulating and hoarding; they in playing. The effect on yourselves must be pretty much the same."

Josie being now comfortably replete with food and having come out conqueror in his demand to be fed, expressed his satisfaction by leaning caressingly against Susan, patting her cheek, and murmuring to her lovingly; a sight which his strangely jealous father never could stand for more than a minute at a time. Rising abruptly, he lifted the high chair to his side of the table.

"Does Josie want some of Pop's pie?" he bargained for the boy's favour; everything had a commercial value to Joe. "Nice apple pie," he said, holding a spoonful of the rich crust to Josie's lips.

"It's very bad for him," Susan objected, "that rich pastry."

"Och, this good whiles back, before you come, I fed pie to him," returned Joe.

"He'll be ill!" warned Susan.

"He's hearty; he kin eat what I eat. You put too much sugar in your pies; it's extravagant," Joe complained. "My sugar bill was too high last week. You ought to watch yourself better, Susan, how you use up sugar. You ain't been takin' no more cakes over to your folks at Reifsville, have you--since I tol' you not to?" he asked, suspiciously.

"No," she coldly answered.

"Well, but, Susan, it stands to reason," he argued, "that I done enough fur your folks. More'n some others would have did, seein' you didn't fetch me no aus tire. To be sure, I didn't need it, my house bein' nice furnished a'ready. But other ones would have expected something in place of a aus tire and I didn't ast nothin' off of you. And your sisters--where'd they be if I hadn't o' gave 'em a home yet, heh? You can't look to me to keep on doin' fur 'em! It stands to reason!"

All this because she had taken to Addie and Lizzie, one day, half the batch of "sand tarts" she had baked.

"Nor you ain't to sneak things to 'em behind my back!" warned Joe.

Susan, suddenly feeling ill and faint, rose from the table and left the room.

Joe, left alone with his boy, looked injured.

"Ain't got no right to say nawthin, seems!"

He didn't like being deserted like this at his meals--the only time he had through the day to be with his delectable bride. For even in her calico working frock and when tired out and "strubbled"* Susan was so very good to look at and so "nice to have 'round"; and she made him so very much more comfortable than his hired housekeepers had ever done.

* Hair mussed.

"Got to do my own stretchin', I guess!" he grumbled as he reached for the coffee pot to refill his cup. "She's got no need to be so touchy! She's just got to understand from the first that I ain't supportin' them sisters of hern."

Meantime Susan, lying on her bed, dry-eyed and staring at the wall, saw there on its blankness her tragically broken life.

"So much was done for me--so many sacrifices made--that I might have something better than they all had ever had! What a hideous, hideous mess I have made of it!"

That afternoon the four walls of her cottage seemed to close in upon her like a jail; she could not endure it. Against all precedent or reason she shamelessly abandoned a large basket of ironing, took Josie, and drove over in her husband's car to see her sisters.

She was never free from anxiety for them, for though they had tried hard to conceal it from her, she knew well what a hard struggle they were having to get along. The wages of the necessary hired man to till their land left them too little income. Susan saw only too clearly all the many little (and some big) deprivations they were suffering.

Joe was so well off (wasn't it a quarter of a million he had inherited from his uncle?)--he could so easily make life easier for her sisters----

Josie was asleep by the time she reached Reifsville. She left him lying on the seat of the car while she went into the house to find Lizzie and Addie.

The kitchen was empty; they were probably helping their hired man in the potato patch.

She went to the settee which stood against the kitchen wall (a settee being as much a part of a Pennsylvania Dutch kitchen as a cook stove) and arranged the cushions for Josie before she should bring him in; and while she was doing this she heard two voices on the porch just outside the kitchen, a few feet from where she stood, her sister Lizzie's high-keyed tones answering a man's deep voice; and Susan was startled at the unusual sound, in this neighbourhood, of good English and a cultured accent.

"May I inquah how much ah tuh-nips?" he was asking with a hesitation which seemed to express a doubt as to whether he did not, perhaps, mean pumpkins.

"Did you ast what's turn-ups?" asked Lizzie, doubtfully.

"Not _what_ they ah; how much they ah; by the bunch. I'm not shu-ah they grow in bunches, but it seems probable. Grapes do----"

"Och, no, turn-ups grows one by each that way. Didn't you know _that_ much?" asked Lizzie with mild wonder, not meaning to be critical. "It don't seem is if any one could be that dumb as to think that turn-ups growed in bunches yet! My souls! Our turn-ups," she added, "is all."

"All? Are they? All what?"

"They're _all_, I sayed."

"All--er--ripe?" ventured the man, tentatively, almost timidly.

"Och, I mean they was all solt at market; they're _all_."

"I surmise," responded the deep though gentle voice, "that these are agricultural terms with which I am unfamilyah. We'll let it pass. May I ask, ah you not a Mennonite, madam?"

"Yes, but I'm a Old."

"'A Old?"'

"I belong to the Old Mennonites."

"Are there, then, also, Young Mennonites?"

"_New_ Mennonites," Lizzie corrected him with a little irrepressible chuckle of amusement.

"And what is the difference between the Old and the New?"

"The Old has more light." Lizzie stated an indisputable and obvious fact.

"It must be a comfort to you to know that," responded the man, sympathetically.

Susan's curiosity was aroused. She tiptoed to the window, carefully lifted a corner of the blind, and peeped.

Her heart gave a great leap in her bosom as she recognized, in the interesting looking young man standing at the porch steps, dressed in motoring cap and coat, wearing eye-glasses attached to a heavy black ribbon, an old acquaintance, the brother of one of those friends of her school days at whose home she had so often visited, whose letters she had left unanswered.

Robert Arnold, a rising author, had been one of her several ardent "followers" in those days a few years ago, which now seemed so far, far back in the past!

She saw that his car was standing in the road behind the house. What was he doing out here? Looking for local colour for stories, perhaps?

"In what way do the Old Mennonites have more light?" she heard him ask poor Lizzie.

"Well, us Old Mennonites ain't so narrer-minded like what the New is; we wear the waists of our frocks more fashionable, to come a little below the belt that way; you see?--where with the New, their waists must end at the belt. They claim theirn is more after the Gawspel than what ourn is; but I don' know," said Lizzie, thoughtfully. "Sometimes, do you know, I think theirn is just as fashionable. But I often says to my neighbour (she's a New--'Manda Slosser by name) I says, 'It ain't our clo'es that saves us,' I says, 'nor the name of our church, Old _or_ New. Yous New Mennonites,' I says, 'is a little narrer'."

"You are undoubtedly right," agreed Mr. Arnold. "By the way, can you tell me who is the school teacher of this village?"

"Emmy Slosser's her name. She lives next door to us here."

"Slosser? Are you sure? Isn't it Schrekengust?"

"Och, no, Susie give up the Reifsville school it's over a year ago a'ready."

"Susie! That's it! You know her?" cried Mr. Arnold, eagerly. "Where can I find her--Susan Schrekengust?"

"Are you acquainted to Susie then?" asked Lizzie, cautiously. Susan's sisters knew very well how she had tried, for over a year, to elude her old school friends in the city.

"My sister and Miss Susan were intimate friends," replied Mr. Arnold. "And I--Miss Schrekengust and I were very good friends, too. But we have not heard from her for over a year, though we have both written to her repeatedly. So, as a matter of fact, I came out here to-day to look her up, and not to inquah the price of tuh-nips. When I mentioned tuh-nips I was really only feeling my way a bit. Can you tell me where I can find Miss Schrekengust?"

"You can't find her," answered Lizzie. "She's moved away."

"I hope you can tell me, then, where she has gone?"

"Susie she got married and moved away."

"Married!"

Robert Arnold looked distinctly dismayed; Susan, watching from behind the blind, was sure of it.

"Yes, she got married," repeated Lizzie.

"But--but she never let her friends know! Whom did she marry?" asked Mr. Arnold in a tone of dejection.

"A party by the name of Joe Houghton she got married to."

"Houghton? No relation, I suppose, to Mr. Sidney Houghton of White Oak Farm?"

"Yes, Joe he's a half-brother of hisn."

"Indeed! Miss Schrekengust married into the Houghton family! Dear me!" murmured Mr. Arnold; and Susan heard in his tone, as plainly as though he had spoken, his surprise that she had so risen in the world from a humble little village school teacher. To be sure, Mr. Arnold had never seen Joe.

"Quite a rise in the world for Miss Schrekengust, eh?" he said to Lizzie, tentatively, as though putting out a feeler.

"Och, but our Susie she claims she had it a lot easier before she got married."

"Oh, these modern Feminists!--who think themselves utterly abused if they're not drudging for their own living!" cried Mr. Arnold.

"Yes, well, but Susie she's so much more fur her books and all like that than what she is fur housework that I don't think she likes it wery good, bein' married. She enjoyed herself more singlewise; for all, they say you have anyhow trouble even if you ain't married. And it's true, too, fur I seen a lot of trouble a'ready," sighed Lizzie, "and I ain't got no Mister."

"I'm sorry to hear that our little friend isn't happy----"

"Well, you see, she's so grand educated that way, our Susie is, you couldn't expec' her to be satisfied with kitchen work all the time. Us we sent her to school till she was seventeen a'ready! Yes, indeed! If you knowed her so well, _I_ don't have to tell you how good educated she is. Ain't I don't?"

"You--you are related to her?" asked Mr. Arnold, looking bewildered.

"Me, I'm her sister."

"Oh! And this is her home?"

"Yes, till she got married a'ready."

"If you are Susan's sister, I'm very glad to meet you," said Mr. Arnold, holding out his hand. "You must often have heard Susan speak of us--the Arnolds?"

"Och, yes! She went often a'ready to wisit at your grand place in Middleburg! Ain't? So you're Mr. Arnold! Well, well! It wonders me! Susie will be surprised to hear you come to look her up!"

"Does she live near here?"

"No, she lives off."

"Far off?"

"Well," said Lizzie, on her guard, "a good pieceways off she lives."

"Can you give me her address?

"I ain't got it wery handy."

"You--you don't want me to have it, Miss Schrekengust?"

"I--I'd have to ast Susie first," faltered Lizzie, embarrassed, "if she wants you to."

It was Mr. Arnold's turn, now, to look embarrassed. "I beg pardon, Miss Schrekengust, if I am trespassing! Miss Susan--Mrs. Houghton--has given us to understand plainly enough, I'm sure, that she did not care any longer for our friendship. But we've not found it very easy to give her up, you see--we--we---- Will you tell her, please, when you write to her, or see her, that I called? And that my sister sends her love? And that we're not forgetting her and never shall? My sister and I are coming down next Saturday to White Oak Farm to a house party that Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Houghton are having (Mrs. Sidney Houghton is an old friend of my sister), and as we knew Susan lived in this vicinity, we thought we'd look her up. I came here to-day to try to find Susan and tell her we'd be in her neighbourhood for three days and that she could not escape us! But of course--well, I shall be glad to have you tell her I called. Good-by, Miss Schrekengust," he concluded, again offering his hand.

"But can't you stop and pick a piece* first?" asked Lizzie, hospitably. "I can make supper done till a little while yet. To be sure, us we eat wery plain and common; but if you'll just take it as it comes that way----"

* "Pick a piece"--have a luncheon.

"You are very kind and I appreciate your invitation, but----"

He murmured elaborate excuses and thanks, and was gone.

The blind dropped from Susan's hand. She stood motionless, overcome, though her heart was beating fast. The sight of this old friend's face, the sound of his voice, were bringing back overwhelmingly dear memories of happiness; arousing suddenly her slumbering youth which she had thought forever dead; stirring in her the old unconquerable love of life that had so abounded in her in days long past. The possibility of really living again and finding joy in life was borne in upon her with a rush.

Lizzie did not come into the kitchen. She had probably gone back at once to the truck patch to join Addie and the hired man. Susan felt, now, that she would rather not see her sisters this afternoon. She left the house and got into the car beside the still slumbering Josie.

On her way home she tried to visualize clearly the situation in which she found herself. Here were her old, close, and loved friends, Eleanor and Robert Arnold, who were at the same time friends of her sister-in-law, coming to the Houghtons' house party. And here was she, living in the tenant-farmer's cottage within a stone's throw of "the big house"--so far from being one of her sister-in-law's house party that she was not even acquainted with her. A unique situation, truly! It almost moved her to laughter.

"I suppose I can, if I want to, manage to keep out of sight of the guests for a day or two, but I certainly could not manage it for longer."

To present Joe to the Arnolds as her husband!

"And Robert thinks it must be such a pleasant change from school teaching to have married into the Houghton family!"

It would give Robert and Eleanor a dreadful shock to find her married to an individual like Joe! And it wasn't a thing you could decently explain. You didn't go about apologizing for the crudity of your husband as you might for the incompetence of your cook!

She remembered Sidney's having once said to her, "I never could see why Uncle George resented Joe's marrying a farmer's servant girl; no _lady_ would ever have married him!"

When she reached home, the question she had been pondering during all her eight-mile drive still remained unsolved--should she yield to this stirring of new life in her heart, to which the sight of Robert Arnold had given birth; meet her old friends and put her situation to the test; let it either work itself out into something that would perhaps make life of worth to her once more, or throw her back again upon herself, into a deeper solitude than ever? If the latter, she would have only herself to blame; certainly she could not reproach her friends, since by her own acts she had placed herself where even the most broad-minded and charitable of those who had cared for her must find that the price of friendship with her was rather greater than it was worth.