Papa's own girl: A novel

The twins, who were now about thirteen years of age, had great difficulty in fathoming the secret regarding Susie, for, being the youngest of the children, they were still babies in the eyes of the family. They were not long in “nosing out,” as Leila called it, the real difficulty, and they discussed the subject together in a naive way that would have been amusing but for the heartlessness they displayed; still it was the heartlessness of the kitten over the agonies of a captive mouse, and perhaps implied no real cruelty of purpose beyond a certain spitefulness that they were not considered of sufficient importance to be taken into anybody’s confidence. Even Dinah snubbed them in a supercilious way when they attempted to obtain information from her, and they revenged themselves in a thousand nameless ways. Susie meanwhile had recovered from her illness occasioned by the shock she had received, and made superhuman efforts to win some little show of sympathy from Mrs. Forest. Clara had talked Miss Marston over to her side in a measure, so that she manifested a good deal of kindness to poor Susie, whose position was very difficult to endure. The twins, taking their cue from their mother, ignored Susie’s existence completely, more especially Leila, who, though in the habit of shirking every duty upon the willing hands of Susie, informed “Miss Dykes,” as she called her one day for the first time, that she need not come into her room any more to do the chamber-work. Susie looked at her with mild, sorrowful eyes, set down the water she had brought, and left the room without a word. Linnie, being softer in her feelings, said, “I think you are too bad, Leila. Did you see how she looked at you?”

“No, nor I don’t care. She’s a nasty thing.”

“I don’t see much difference between her now and a week ago, when you used to kiss her when you wanted her to do anything for you.” Leila flared up, and a very sisterly fight ensued. Linnie was no match for the hardheaded Leila in a contest of words, but in revenge, later in the day, she told Clara how Susie had been treated. This happened to be a good policy, though not intended as such. Clara drew her arm about Linnie, saying, “I am glad, sister dear, that you show some feeling. I knew you would, and I have wanted to take you into my confidence, for you are more mature for your age than Leila is; but mamma thought it not best. I think she is wrong, and I am going to tell you the truth. You have guessed it already. Susie, you know, has loved Dan since she was your age, and she has been foolish of course; but I want you to remember that she was a poor, ignorant, neglected child, and Dan was engaged to marry her. I blame him infinitely more than I do her. He was very selfish and unprincipled.”

“So I think, sissy. I thought it must be Dan—the mean thing. I’m real sorry for Susie; but what a goose she must be to care so for him.” And so another friend was won over to Susie. Linnie grew immensely important in her own eyes after this confidence of Clara, who told her, among other pretty compliments, that she was “right womanly” in her sentiments.

On one of those weary days, when Susie felt like destroying her life despite the kindness and sympathy of Clara and her father, she received a note from Dan. It was written in a cold, heartless style that she could scarcely believe him capable of after all she knew of him, and ended: “I don’t want you to be disgraced through me, and I am willing to marry you. Name the time and place, and I will be on hand. It is no use to palaver and swear I shall be supremely happy, and all that; but you are ‘ruined,’ of course, if I don’t, and I’m willing to do it, and ought to for the prospective brat’s sake, at least.” The letter enclosed a cheque for fifty dollars. Susie regarded the money greedily. She had never had half as much in her whole life, and this would buy so many things she needed, and then she read Dan’s heartless letter again, crying bitterly. Not one word of tenderness; nothing of the old love was left, only pity and an offer to sacrifice himself to save her. Disgust with her weakness, self-reproach, indignation, possessed her by turns, and the result was sending back the letter and the cheque, with only these words: “I can beg in the streets for myself or for your child much easier than I can accept charity from you. O my God! that I should come to this—to have money thrown at me like a bone to a dog, from one, too, whom I have so loved and trusted. Believe me, the only favor I ask, is that you may forget that I ever cared for you, for—

When Dan received this, he was surprised, to say the least, and chewed his moustache viciously. Beyond all his pique at the way his offer was received, there was a dawning respect for the girl he had ruined, as he thought; but Susie was not quite ruined yet, thanks to the generous sympathy of Dr. Forest and his daughter; and losing her respect for Dan, through finding out how soulless and unworthy he was, her heart-aches on account of his faithlessness gradually began to subside. Pretty soon another letter came, containing one hundred dollars in greenbacks. This time he confessed admiration for her “pluck,” as he called it, but swore that if she sent back this money he would burn it, leaving enough of the notes to show her he had kept his word. This was why he had sent greenbacks, which, if destroyed, could not be made good like a bank cheque.

Susie resolved to show this letter to Clara, and ask her advice, apologizing for not doing so with the first one. In fact Susie had enjoyed, in a bitter way, her answer, knowing it would wound Dan’s vanity, and she had feared that Clara’s advice would interfere with this satisfaction. The letter was written in a moment of exaltation, and was the wisest thing Susie could have done; but yet after it was in the post-office and beyond recall, the poor girl suffered new tortures lest her words should alienate him still further from her; for she had to own that, after all, she had not utterly given up the hope that he was only temporarily under some new influence, that made him act so dishonorably toward her. Love is not only blind, but absolutely idiotic, in its faith. When once we are even partially free from his gilded toils, how wide our eyes are opened! How microscopic their power to detect and measure infinitesimal quantities of meanness in the lover.

Clara was away when the second letter came, and Mrs. Forest and her visitor were out riding. Just as she had folded and put away Dan’s second letter, the doctor came in. He greeted her pleasantly, and threw himself wearily on the lounge in the dining-room. Upon his inquiring for Clara, Susie told him she was out. “But cannot I take her place, just for once?” she asked. “You want your bath, I know, for you always say that nothing rests you so much;” and not waiting for any verbal assent, Susie ran and pumped the water from the rain-cistern into the bath-tub, and added a pail of hot water from Dinah’s range. The bath refreshed him, as it always did, and when he came back Susie had his pipe filled for him, and a cup of fresh coffee beside it.

“What a grand sachem I am, to be so coddled by nice women. Now come and talk to me, Susie,” he said, stretching himself on the lounge. Susie sat down beside him on a low stool, and showed him Dan’s first letter and a copy of her answer.

“Good for your answer, Susie. I rather like it, though it is a little romantic. Yes, I like it; but your sending back the money—ah! that was too romantic by far. He’s a spendthrift, and the best possible use he can make of his money is to give it to you. Don’t you do it again—hear?—if he sends you any more.”

Susie listened to the doctor, but could not tell him just then that Dan had sent more, having stubbornly determined to refuse it, as she had the first; but she would consult Clara first. Seeing her silent, the doctor said:

“See! I am romantic, too. I also quote Tennyson. You’ve borne up bravely, Susie, these last days, and by and by all will be right. I am going to find you a place with some patient of mine, as near here as possible.” Susie’s face beamed at this. She felt that she could not possibly stay much longer in the doctor’s house, for she knew how Mrs. Forest felt toward her. He left her no time to thank him before he added, “I trust you are cultivating a healthy contempt for your rascally lover?”

“Do you think he will never, never care for Susie any more?” she asked. “See! he commences even this letter ‘Dear Susie,’” and she looked up inquiringly to the doctor, who answered, after a long pause:

“What dry husks a hungry heart will feed upon! Pitiful, pitiful!” and the doctor uttered a heavy sigh. “Why, no; he cares nothing for you beyond a feeling of pity, which no one could possibly withhold who had any natural feeling. I say this because the sooner you give up all hope that his disaffection is an accident, the better it will be for you.”

“Yet only so little while ago he told me I was all the world to him.”

“And he wrote you often, didn’t he?”

“Yes. Sometimes twice a day,” said Susie, smiling through her tears.

“Well, when he did that he was in love. There is no sign of that delectable state, so constant. You may lay it down as a law, if a man loves he writes, and simply because he cannot avoid doing so. He must be governed by the strongest impulse. When he is writing he does not know when to stop, for being away from an object that strongly attracts him, writing is the most effective solace. In fact, the amount a lover writes is a very good barometer of the pressure he is under from his passion.”

“But might he not be so busy he could not write?”

“He would take the hours for sleeping, because writing would be far pleasanter than sleeping. Of course there are accidents, serious illness, and so forth. I speak of natural, happy, passional attraction.”

“Why, I have not written myself sometimes because, indeed, I loved him so much,” said Susie.

“Ah! I was calculating the motives of my own sex. I doubt if the Devil himself could fathom all a woman’s motives.”

“I am sorry you think so, sir,” said the serious little Susie. “I mean I could not write because I wanted so to keep his love, and feared to reproach him, feared to be too loving, feared and distrusted my power every way; and so I often tore up letter after letter—often brought them back from the post-office door, and did not write perhaps for days; and yet I loved him so, all the time, that I could not sleep.”

“Poor child!” said the doctor, taking her hand. “Don’t you see you were but proving my rule, for in the first place you did write continually, according to your own confession; and then you remember I said happy passional attraction.”

“Oh, yes. I see you are right. You are always right; but do you not think love may sometimes return when once it goes out of the heart?”

“That’s a deep question, little woman—the rehabilitation of love. In romances, it happens often enough; but I am an old fellow, and I never knew a case in actual life. It is like small-pox, I suspect, and never breaks out the second time.

“But people do love deeply the second time.”

“Yes. I see my comparison is not well chosen; well, like the water of a river which never passes over its bed but once.”

While the doctor was conversing with Susie, Mrs. Forest was also engaged in her service, though with motives wholly different from those actuating the doctor, who talked to her to give her strength and self-confidence. He had never taken the trouble to have her sit by him, before the discovery of her sad condition, and seeing how deeply she appreciated his attention to her, made the giving of it very pleasant to him. Mrs. Forest, during her ride, called on old Mrs. Buzzell, who lived a very solitary life with her one old servant, to see if she would not receive Susie in her disgrace. Mrs. Forest was careful to mention all Susie’s good qualities, and Mrs. Buzzell at first felt inclined to assent because she was lonely, and had observed Susie with much interest whenever she had visited at the doctor’s house, and felt quite attracted to her; but some way she sniffed in the air that Mrs. Forest’s society notions were at the bottom of this move of hers, and so her reply was rather galling to one of Mrs. Forest’s refinement.

“Well, I will try to help her, and, as you say, no doubt the other ladies of our church will do the same; but if your house is too highly respectable to shelter her, of course mine is, and so there’s an end of that.”

This was Mrs. Forest’s last call upon Mrs. Buzzell. Their friendship, such as it was, had lasted twenty years, and thus it was brought to a sudden end, by wounding each other’s vanity. While they confined their mutual interests to gossip, and to superficial considerations of things generally, they met as on a bridge; but when deeper questions arose the bridge fell through, and they found themselves separated as by an impassable torrent. When Mrs. Forest had gone, Mrs. Buzzell questioned whether she herself had acted in a Christian spirit, and she was forced to confess that she had not. She thought, indeed, that she was very sorry, and anxious to apologize; but in fact her regret amounted to very little, for she would have been drawn and quartered in her present mood before she would have taken Susie in, after Mrs. Forest’s presumption.

This same day, in the early evening, after Clara was dressed for receiving Dr. Delano, she sat awhile with Susie in the room of the latter, and helped her in her first lesson; but they continually wandered from the subject of nouns and articles to those lying nearer the hearts of both. Still Susie’s recitation was very successful. She concealed from her friend the painful effort it had cost to concentrate her attention upon study, even for one minute, and hours had been consumed in preparing herself so that she might not disappoint Clara.

“Now you are going to do splendidly,” said Clara, assigning her a certain portion of history for the next day, to be read over and recited in Susie’s own language, and a very short task in a text-book of etymology. Clara had the true instinct of the teacher, and knew better than to give long tasks to a beginner, lest they should discourage. After this, Susie showed her Dan’s first letter and its answer, and before there was any time for Clara to reprove her for returning the money, she gave her Dan’s second letter, telling her at the same time that she was resolved to refuse the money. Clara held the money very closely, and said, “I shall not let you send this back. He is just pig-headed enough to burn it as he threatens. I will write him that I have seized it to prevent your returning it, and that I shall use it as I think best.” This she did, and Susie was forced to yield, not being sorry to have the responsibility thus completely removed from her own shoulders. She then consulted Clara about going away, and this Clara confessed was to be considered. “I do not wonder that you cannot endure mamma’s coldness,” she said, “but do not think of it to-night. Dr. Delano is anxious for our marriage to take place immediately, and entre nous—that is, between ourselves—I am myself going to manifest what mamma calls ‘indecent haste’ to get married, so that I may have a home for you;” and Clara laughed gayly, to prevent Susie’s taking it seriously, though in reality it was not wholly a pleasantry on her part. The ring of the door-bell interrupted Clara’s speech, and she bade Susie good-night tenderly, urging her to con over her lessons, and then go to bed and sleep. Susie clung to her friend a moment, crying silently; indeed, she cried so often that Clara found the best way was to not notice it too much; but she said, “Would you like me to come back after my friend has gone?” “Oh, do!” replied Susie. “Come and hear my lessons. I must have something to do, or I shall go crazy. If I can only get away from here——” “Yes, yes, I know just how you feel,” said Clara; “but it will not be long. I am going to talk with papa, if I am up when he comes home, and then I’ll come and tell you about it.” Susie begged Clara to understand how deeply she regretted leaving her and the doctor, but he would call on her, she knew. “And so shall I, every day of my life. Why, of course I shall, to hear your lessons. But I must go now;” and with another hasty kiss, after the manner of girls, Clara ran down-stairs.

Clara had thought to give Susie her sympathy and moral support in her trouble, but she had not dreamed of ever really loving her as a friend. And yet a week had not passed before she discovered qualities and sensibilities in Susie that not only surprised her, but made her compare most favorably with all the young friends Clara had known. The doctor was delighted with the growing regard of his daughter for Susie, in whom he had full faith. “Depend upon it, Clara,” he said, “Susie is a real gem, and under your polishing, you will see how she will shine out by-and-by. I think she will prove your best friend among women.”

The next morning the doctor had a long talk with his wife, who had “pouted” him, as the French say, ever since their last stormy interview; but he found it useless to try to move her. She was still as firm as a rock, though manifesting it in a way that seemed very gentle; and by appealing to his affection for her, by recalling the tenderness on his part that had endured all through their married life, the happiness that reigned in their home until he became “estranged” from her, as she said, and especially by her tears, which he called cowardly weapons, because she knew beforehand that he could not resist them—by all this she succeeded in making the good doctor feel that he was a brute, though he knew perfectly well that he had acted only justly and honorably in protecting a good girl in a disgrace caused by his own son. In the end he petted and caressed her, and turned her tears into smiles that were a triumph, but he saw in them only delight at his caresses.

That night Mrs. Forest appeared in the doctor’s room in a ravishing night toilet that had been packed away in lavender since the days of their honeymoon.

Is it possible that even virtuous married men are sometimes the victims of artful women?