Chapter XVI: Susan Realizes Her Freedom

She was propped up on a couch in a deep bay window, reading a novel.

Josie jerked a chair to the side of the couch and sat down, facing her.

"Mother!" he demanded, his voice unsteady, actual tears in his eyes, "don't you love _me_ any better than you loved Father?"

"When you are lovable, Josie, I love you," she answered gently, drawing his hand into hers.

"You call it being 'unlovable,' I suppose, when I object to your doing what you would not do if Father were alive!"

"I'm not such an idiot as to let my life be hampered and thwarted and dwarfed by the will of a dead man! It was bad enough to have to submit to the will of a live one!"

"You can't mean that you don't intend to keep the promises you made to Father when he was dying!" exclaimed Josie, both shocked and alarmed; for if he could not hold over her the solemn obligations of those death-bed promises, how could he ever restrain her reckless inclinations to give away the money that ought to be hoarded for him?

"I'm not sure I made him any promises," she answered, indifferently. "I said anything, at the moment, that I thought would soothe and comfort him. I would have promised to fly to Mars if he had asked me to. I'd promise any dying person anything at all that I knew would please them. But my life is my own now, thank God! It's no longer Joe Houghton's to use and crush and distort!--as it was for seventeen years!"

Josie looked white and shaken. "Well, then, if you have no respect for a solemn promise given to the dying, will you at least have enough regard for _my interests_ to restrain your inclination to shower all sorts of luxuries upon Aunt Addie and Aunt Lizzie--luxuries that they were never used to!"

"Josie, my son, do you really think it 'nobler in the mind' to be mean and stingy to two dear and very poor old women who were always kindness itself to you, than to break a hideous promise given to a man whose last dying thoughts were of greed and self? Do you?"

"If you restricted yourself to giving them a few necessities, I might put up with it. But I'm just afraid that next thing you'll be helping them with _money_, and----"

"How well you know me, Josie!" she smiled, patting his hand.

"You wouldn't go so far as that, of course--with my money?"

"Certainly not--with your money."

"Well, all you have is practically mine and will some day be really mine."

"Not necessarily."

"What do you mean?" he quickly demanded, a catch in his voice.

"My fortune is not entailed to you."

"But as it came from my father and his family and not through you or your family, it's certainly morally mine and not yours to will to any one but me. You know what Father would wish----"

"By the way, Josie, as I told you the other day, this place is too big and lonesome for me when you are away and I don't want to stay here. I don't want to be burdened with the care of this great house. I want to take an apartment in Middleburg for a while----"

"I told you the other day, Mother, I would not consider that. It would be so uselessly extravagant. A sheer waste of money."

"I'm not asking you to consider it, Josie."

"Then why waste words discussing it when we are not really to consider it?"

"I said I was not asking you to consider it."

"Of course you're not--because you know it would be perfectly useless."

"Yes. Quite useless."

"Then let's drop it. Here we stay.

"But I am considering it. Or rather, I have already decided to move to town."

"But I tell you I won't consent----"

"Don't get excited, son. Your consent is not in the least necessary. I intend to be free of this house--free to run to New York or Boston or Florida or California, or perhaps to Europe----" She laughed out at Josie's look of helpless horror. "You can go with me sometimes if you like."

"You shan't do it! You shan't squander my money!"

"To-morrow morning, Josie, I am going to our Middleburg lawyer to arrange for settling a good income upon my sisters. A very comfortable income. That will eliminate, once and for all, any argument between you and me about _them_."

Josie stared at her wildly. "You shan't! You dare not! What right have you?"

"The same right that you have to dispose of your inheritance as you please. And you must understand from now on, Josie, that I don't intend to permit you to nag at me, to question anything I may choose to do _with my own_. It is impertinent, and I won't tolerate it. Another thing, you will not only be courteous to my sisters when they come here, you will make them welcome."

"I won't!" he snapped back like a spiteful child. "You can't make me!"

"Then you and I can't live together, Josie," she answered, dropping his hand and picking up her novel.

"Can't live together!" he breathed, appalled at this new mother whom he did not recognize.

"Next thing," he said, chokingly, "you'll be handing out our money to Georgie!--to tide him over until he takes possession of White Oak Farm!"

"If I did, it would be my money, not yours. Remember--I will suffer no interference from you, my dear. I'm only just beginning to bring you up as you ought to be brought up."

"And I suppose you won't even promise to make your will in my favour!"

"Of course I won't promise. I shall wait to see, first, how you behave. I'm inclined to think it would be far better for your soul, Josie, if I should sink my fortune in the sea rather than give it to you! So don't forget--from this day on, so long as I live, you are on trial for good behaviour."

Josie sprang up, his face distorted with rage. "You don't love me any better than you loved Father! You hate me! You're my worst enemy! You----"

It was like the old tantrums of his childhood, which his father had never allowed her to punish or discipline. Susan shrank away from him in distress, as from an abnormality.

But in the midst of his raving there was a knock at her bedroom door and, to her great relief, the entrance of a maid put a sudden stop to the young man's tirade.

"Mr. Sidney Houghton," the maid announced.

"Tell him, please, that I am lying down and wish to be excused," said Susan, instantly.

Sidney had been trying for the past month to secure a repeatedly refused interview with her.

"He says to tell you, Missus, that it's some important and he's got to see you," the girl replied.

"Josie, will you go down and ask him what he wants?" Susan asked.

Without replying, Josie flung himself out of the room and banged the door behind him, the maid following him with a grin.

Susan picked up her novel; but she could not put her mind upon it and soon laid it aside again.

For the past four weeks, with a blind, unthinking instinct of self-defence, she had been warding off an interview with Sidney which he, with a persistency and determination that vaguely alarmed her, had been seeking. She was sure he could not possibly have anything to say to her which she would wish to hear.

During Joe's lifetime, her occasionally meeting him had come to mean little more to her than encountering any chance acquaintance. But his attitude since her widowhood had been so gallant, yet so fearful; so insinuating, yet so apologetic, that it had assumed to her imagination the expression of a menace, threatening her newly acquired freedom, her peace of mind; so that it had become, of late, intensely disagreeable to her to be forced to speak with him. That was one reason why she wished to go to Middleburg to live--to avoid the constant chance of an encounter with him.

"Would he have the amazing effrontery to ask me to marry him?" she wondered; for she intuitively sensed, unmistakably, a would-be lover in his manner. "Does he think, actually, that he has anything at all to offer any woman--let alone me whose whole life he spoiled?"

Could it be that, shattered wreck of a man as he was, he considered merely being a Houghton was a sufficient offset to his disadvantages? Did he still look down upon her from a superior height as his discarded and repudiated "mistress" and believe that he would be stooping to marry her?

"He's quite capable of thinking like that!" she decided. "While _I_ feel that my one only consolation for never having had a living child is that it would have been a Houghton!--would have had to fight that bad inheritance!"

It was almost funny, how different the point of view of two people could be!

Meantime, Josie was, with much relish, curtly telling his Uncle Sidney that, his mother declined to see him, and enjoying viciously his uncle's evident chagrin and disappointment.

Josie noticed, casually, the shabby finery of his impoverished uncle--how sprucely he was attired in the worn and out-of-date clothing of his "better days," how cleanly he was shaven, how shining were his patched shoes; he noticed, too, the cane and gloves which he carried; a cane and gloves to walk across the lawn in the country! Wasn't that like Uncle Sidney?

An idea flashed upon Josie that made his heart leap into his throat. He looked into his uncle's face--a tired, disappointed, prematurely old face which, however, seemed lit up, just now, with a sparkle of hope, like that of the proverbial drowning man who reaches for a plank.

Did Uncle Sidney actually have the nerve, the utter audacity, to come here trying to defraud him, Josie, out of part of his rightful inheritance, through courting his mother?--after having squandered a much larger fortune of his own! Would she be silly enough to get sentimental about him?--he was still handsome and elegant and well-mannered and all those things that women love a man to be. Josie himself had always secretly admired and been proud of his dandified relative.

He would have to warn his mother! Uncle Sidney would simply run through with all the money he could get his hands on.

"And then Mother'd be on my hands for support! After having given that self-indulgent spendthrift my father's savings!"

He would warn her at once!

But would she heed his warning? She had told him to mind his business and not to nag or criticize!

Well, then, he'd use some guile. He'd plot to circumvent such a disaster to both himself and his mother.

It was jealousy, now, as well as greed, that moved him.

"Mother told me to ask you what you wanted," he accosted his uncle in a tone as insolent as he could make it.

"I want to see her."

"What for?"

"I'll tell her that."

"She's lying down and doesn't wish to be disturbed. You can tell me your errand."

"Tell her, please, that I shall be over again this evening when she's _not_ lying down. I must see her--on a matter of importance--of vital importance."

"Of vital importance to you perhaps, but not to her!" retorted Josie, eyeing his uncle with a knowing look which was meant to convey to him that his astute nephew saw straight through his shallow scheme for rehabilitating his fortunes at the expense of his sister-in-law and his nephew. "She can't see you this evening. She and I have an engagement."

As Sidney Houghton made his crestfallen way back to his cottage, after this rebuff at the big house, he weighed and considered the only path yet left open to him by which he might once more become possessed of comfort and even happiness; for he was still young; and Susan, who had marvellously carried her years, was even more alluring as a blooming, full-fledged woman of thirty-nine than she had been as a young girl.

Would she spurn him so relentlessly once she knew the secret which, during more than eighteen years, he had guarded so zealously; with so much anguish of suspense and fear?

"When she learns that Georgie is our son--hers and mine--she'll surely see there's only one way to make things right for him. Josie need never know. No one need ever know except Susan and me."

His uncertainty as to how Susan would receive his disclosure; whether she would, as Laura had warned him, passionately resent her defrauded motherhood and his long years of deception; or whether she would be glad that at least her "respectability" had been saved, as well as that of her son----

Sidney's heart failed him when he contemplated going to her with his confession.

But what else was there to do? If he could see the least chance of winning her without it----

But far from letting him come courting her, she would not even receive a business call from him.

Would he have to tell her in writing? He did not like to risk that. Suppose his letter should fall into Josie's hands? That detestable little cad was quite capable of opening Susan's letters if he had the least suspicion (as he manifestly had) of anything impending which might menace his fortunes! No, he could not risk a letter.

But if Susan persisted in avoiding him, refusing to receive him?

He suddenly saw a possible, though doubtful, way out. He could confess to Georgie the story of his birth and let _him_ tell his mother. Then when Susan had had time to recover from the shock, he himself would go to her and suggest that together they make amends to their son in the only possible way.

How would Georgie himself take it? Georgie was the one creature in the world that Sidney had always loved better than he loved himself. And the boy was devoted to him; the only human being left to him in the world who did care whether he lived or died; whether he was provided with life's bare necessities, or whether he starved or froze to death! To risk turning Georgie's affection to resentment and bitterness? The boy was so quixotically honourable and chivalrous! And so extraordinarily fond of Susan!

"It's a devil of a mess, any way you look at it!" he sighed.

But he finally concluded that he would take Georgie into his confidence.

It was at this self-same hour, while Sidney was slowly and thoughtfully returning to his humble home, foiled for the twentieth time in his purpose to try out his fortunes with Susan, that a discussion between Susan's sisters at Reifsville was threatening to take the matter somewhat out of his hands.

"Even if we don't tell her now," Lizzie was saying as she and Addie sat together over a cup of tea in their spotless kitchen, "I know I'll have to tell her till I come to die oncet, Addie. I could never go before my Gawd with that there sekert on my conscience!"

"Me, neither," agreed Addie, who had never in her life been known to disagree with Lizzie.

"Georgie's so much nicer a young man than what Josie is and Susie she has so fond for Georgie," continued Lizzie.

"Yes, fonder yet than what she has for Josie, it seems; ain't?"

"Yes, and no wonder! Josie's certainly awful ugly dispositioned that way!"

"And for a young man he seems so silly!" said Addie. "More like a girl."

"Yes, ain't? I don't see how our Susie stands him so good as what she does! I could stand him pretty good whiles he was a little boy, because, to be sure, a body don't expec' much off of a little boy. But now that he's growed up, he kreistles me awful, with his high, squeaky voice like a girl's and his finnicky ways and prancing walk and his nasty fussiness--och!" she ended, disgustedly, "I'd like to slap him good oncet!"

"Yes, ain't? So would I," echoed Addie.

"Say, Addie, our Susie don't seem to take it in that she's rich and independent now and don't have to take it off of Josie so!"

"Well, just you wait--our Susie ain't no fool," said Addie, with unexpected initiative. "She'll soon find it out--and then you watch out!"

"What's botherin' me," said Lizzie with a long breath, "is whether we had ought to tell Susie the truth right aways, or wait till we're on our death-beds. I'm for tellin' her now."

"Yes, well, but it might get out and make talk!"

"Seems to me I don't care no more if it does! I care more for seein' our Susie own her own son!" said Lizzie, rising to a height.

"Poor little Georgie!" sighed Addie, wiping a tear from her cheek. "To have been turned out when he was a baby the way we done!"

"Yes, well, but we give him to his own pop and him well-fixed to take care of him," Lizzie repeated the oft-rehearsed arguments in justification of their years of deception. "Look at what it would have _give_, Addie, to all of us, Susie and Georgie and us all, if we'd have did different to what we done!"

"If we tell now," Addie reminded her, "you know Georgie won't inherit White Oak Farm, if it gets out that he ain't the legal heir."

"But Susie could anyhow inherit all _her_ money to him, and that seems better'n an old farm and a house too big and grand for any but a millionaire to live in," argued Lizzie.

"I most have afraid, Lizzie, of how our Susie will take it if we tell her! She might think awful hard of us! I'd most sooner wait till my death-bed before I tell her a'ready."

"But us we might live to such a good old age that her and Georgie would be cheated out of too many more years that they could enjoy each other as mother and son," persisted Lizzie. "No, now that Susie's independent and rich, I think she had ought to be told, Addie."

"All right, Lizzie, if you think."

"We'll go over to-morrow by the trolley and get it over with. For I can't know no more peace till it's settled oncet. It's been botherin' me ever since Joe Houghton died, and I can't stand it no more. And that there Josie's behaviours to-day got me so stirred up! To think of how different a boy our Susie's own son is! We'll go over to-morrow, Addie, and tell her all about it."

"All right if so you think," said Addie.