Chapter XVII: Susan's Reaping

Sidney's story, as recited to his son that night, while they sat together in the little living room of the cottage, assumed the colour of a mere college-boy escapade which, far from being to his discredit, rather reflected lustre upon his youthful power to charm and lure the weaker sex. He really became quite enamoured of his tale as he unfolded it; withholding the name of the heroine in the piece for the dramatic climax. For it was to be feared that the moment Georgie knew that name, he would be quite unable to see his father's side with entire fairness. He must hear the whole story with an unprejudiced judgment; the same judgment which a man (unlike sentimental, moralizing women) usually brings to such a case, recognizing the limitations of a man's self-restraint, the hypocrisy of our sham American social purity.

For Georgie, though a cleaner and more guileless youth than his father had been at his age, was yet, in intelligence and understanding, if not in experience, a full-fledged man. He listened from the first with a half smile on his finely cut lips (so like his mother's, Sidney often realized!) as though he were amused and a bit incredulous of the all-conquering Don Juan, or rather Beau Brummel, which his father was making himself out. Surely, thought Georgie, it was the middle-aged conceit and egotism of a man looking back upon a glorified youth which he saw in high lights and a bit luridly.

"A Pennsylvania Dutch girl she was, from the crudest sort of family--her father a trucker--a Mennonite preacher----"

"What was the attraction for such a swell as you say you were--as you surely _were_," added Georgie, indulgently. "I should think you would always have been too fastidious to have been attracted to a crude, vulgar girl just by her looks; weren't you?"

"She was not vulgar at all herself. She'd had rather different associations from the rest of the family; had been sent away to school and had made friends among a really good class of people who had invited her to their homes now and then--so that she was really quite nice--and very, very charming."

"And haughtily looked down on her poor family, I suppose?"

"Not she! That was the trouble; she could not see that her family made marriage between us out of the question----"

"Did it? Why?" asked Georgie.

"My boy! A Houghton couldn't marry a village school teacher, the daughter of a Mennonite preacher!"

"Couldn't he? That's exactly what Uncle Joe married."

"There's always one black sheep in every family," answered Sidney, colouring very red, to Georgie's surprise. "Joe, even though a Houghton, could not have married a lady!"

"Aunt Susan not a lady?"

"Would she have married your Uncle Joe if she had been?"

"I wonder what ever did make her marry a wretched skinflint like Uncle Joe!" said Georgie, thoughtfully. "I've often meant to ask her, but never quite got up the nerve."

"To go on with my story," said Sidney, his tone less confident, an actual tremor in his voice, "marriage being out of the question, the inevitable happened. Unfortunately, the girl, not taking proper precautions, a child was born. On the very night of my marriage the girl's father arrived at my house----"

Georgie's hitherto careless attention to this recital changed, at this point, to a keen interest, as he saw how the mere memory of what his father was telling drove the colour from his lips.

"--and dumped down upon me a baby boy, telling me his daughter had died at its birth!

"Of course I did the right thing and provided for the child. I was awfully cut up by the news of the girl's death--I'd cared for her a lot! It spoiled my whole wedding-trip!"

"I should think it might! Why on earth did you do such a thing?--go and ruin a decent girl?"

"But of course, Georgie, such things happen by mutual consent. A man doesn't 'ruin' a woman unless she's awfully willing and perhaps eager to be ruined. Don't fool yourself with any such old-fashioned, sentimental notion!"

"Very well, then, if your attraction for each other was so irresistible, why didn't you get married? Why break the law? Or if our social laws are not founded on nature's laws, then why don't men change the laws? Talk about red anarchy and the upsetting of our established order! What else is that sort of thing?"

"Don't moralize to me, you young whippersnapper!" growled Sidney, filliping his son's ear. "You'll sow a few wild oats yourself, one of these days, before you settle down."

"But why did you go off and _marry another woman_? Wasn't that a pretty rotten deal for the mother of your child? Weren't you sure the child was yours?"

"Not a doubt of it. I couldn't marry her, though--a Houghton could not marry a----"

Sidney paused significantly, and Georgie spoke up hotly: "A Houghton could seduce a woman, make her a mother, and then go off and marry another woman on the very night his child was born and its mother died! You don't make me proud of being a Houghton, Father!"

"For shame, Georgie!" Sidney gravely reproved such disrespect to his blood. "There's something radically wrong with a fellow that has no family pride when he has _reason_ to have!"

"What reason have I?"

"The Houghtons were among the earliest settlers of this country, and have, for generations, held influential positions in this country. Has any American any better origin than that?"

"How could you desert that poor girl after you'd been to each other what you say you were?"

"Better ask about the poor baby!" said Sidney, feelingly.

"Well! What about it?"

"To go on with my story--I went with my bride to Europe to take the diplomatic position Uncle George had secured for me--leaving the baby with my mother, who put it with a farmer's family. When, after a year, we came home from Europe, what news do you suppose greeted me? The girl's father came to me and told me that the girl had rallied and got well!--that in order to save her and her parents and sisters from disgrace, and the baby boy from the stigma of illegitimacy, they had told her her baby was dead. Now they wanted me to help them keep the secret, not only from their little social world, but from the mother of the boy as well.

"I was only too anxious to keep the secret--first, because I cared for the boy's welfare and didn't want him to go through life nameless; second, because--because, Georgie, I wanted my son to inherit White Oak Farm and--and my wife, I had learned, would never bear me a child."

A silence like death filled the little room where they sat. Georgie, like his father, had turned white, his eyes filled with a startled wonder.

Sidney was the first to speak.

"You can imagine what my life was like!--trying to placate my wife's jealousy of the boy; inducing her to tolerate the child in our home and to pass him off as hers----"

He stopped--checked by the pallid, tense look on Georgie's face.

"Then she--was not my mother! And I'm your illegitimate son?"

Sidney nodded.

"And you've tried to teach me to be proud of being a Houghton!"

"You're enough more like a Houghton than Josie is!" said Sidney, heatedly.

"Thank God she was not my own mother!" was the boy's unexpected exclamation. "The way I've suffered all my life at her neglect--her dislike of me! The only balm I've known for that bitterness, Father, has been Aunt Susan's real affection for me. It isn't merely that Aunt Susan is kind to me, she really does care for me a lot! I'm sure I don't know why she does. But when I was a hungry-hearted youngster, the way she'd take me up in her arms and hold me--I knew she _loved_ me! It saved my soul! Go on with your story, Father."

"Soon after we moved out here to White Oak Farm I found to my horror that--your--mother--was actually teaching the school of White Oak Station across the road!--in constant danger of running across you (whom she thought dead, mind you!)--and in danger of meeting my wife, with a possible scene and disclosure! For of course I didn't tell Laura that your mother was alive! She could not have borne it! I tell you I walked on nettles! I----"

"Is my mother living?" Georgie broke in with restrained excitement.

"I'm coming to that.

"I had never told my wife your mother's name and though they had once met for a moment in my college rooms, Laura didn't seem to remember her at all----"

"I must know, Father!" Georgie broke in again. "Is my mother living? Just tell me yes or no!"

"Yes."

"Go on!"

"I had to get her (your mother) away from this neighbourhood. So I went to her father and told him he'd got to move away; I would finance the move. He was very hard up and though he hated me like hell, he had no choice; he had to accept my offer; for he was as much averse to exposure as I was. But on the very eve of his moving away with his family he died. And then--and then, Georgie----"

"Yes?" urged Georgie, breathlessly.

"And then your mother married."

"Where is she?" demanded Georgie. "Do you know?"

"Yes, I know."

"Can I go to her? For of course I shall go to her. Where is she?"

"Georgie, she is a widow, now, and I want to right the wrong I did her--I want to marry her!"

"If she'd be weak enough to marry you now, I'd never own her! Where is she?"

"She is up at the big house, Georgie!"

Georgie sat rigid. Every drop of colour left his face. Again a deathly silence flooded the little room.

This time Georgie was the one to break it, speaking slowly, in a low voice, his eyes piercing his father's.

"She married _your brother_!"

"Yes."

"Your mistress--mother of your bastard!--married your brother!"

"Rough on Joe, of course! But he never knew it."

"_Aunt Susan is my mother!_"

"Yes."

"My mother! She my mother! Father! What you have defrauded me of all my life! What it would have meant to her and to me! Yes, to her, too. Josie, the son whom she knew to be her own, was never so near to her as I've been, even while she didn't know me to be her son, too! And if she had known!"

"Josie's not her son, Georgie!"

"What! Good God, what next? What do you mean?"

"He's her step-son. But of course he doesn't know it and she doesn't want him to know it. He is not to be told, either, of your relation to Susan--you'd lose White Oak Farm."

"You are reckoning without me a bit! I don't want White Oak Farm if I have to get it by repudiating my mother!"

"You won't have to repudiate her. I tell you I'm going to make things right for both you and her!"

"She will never marry you!"

"Why not?"

"Why should she?"

"You think I've got nothing at all to offer her?" demanded Sidney, piqued.

"What have you to offer her?"

"Only myself."

"A Houghton! But I thought a Houghton could not marry a Pennsylvania Dutch Mennonite preacher's daughter!--could not marry his mistress, the mother of his illegal child! Does such a woman get nearer the level of a Houghton when she's a rich widow and the said Houghton is a bankrupt? _She'll_ not think so!"

"She will marry me for your sake, Georgie."

"She'll see you damned first, Father! Marry you! Do you suppose I would let her sacrifice herself like that for my sake?"

"Sacrifice herself! I don't see why you'd call it that! Good heavens, boy, if she could stand my brother Joe for seventeen years, she'd certainly find me a pleasant change!"

"You'd be an awful cad to ask her to marry you now that you're down and out and shell on top!--after having cast her off and deserted her and defrauded her of her son! Don't go crawling to her now!"

He suddenly sprang up and stood before his father. "To-morrow morning I am going to her and get her side of this story!"

"Go easy! Remember she doesn't know she's your mother! Break it to her carefully and don't let Josie hear a word of it!"

Georgie, as he turned his back upon his father and left the room, thought, "That such a woman as she is should have had two such bounders in her life as Uncle Joe and Father!--when the best man that ever walked would be unworthy of her! Such a waste of loveliness! Such an absolute waste!"

On Monday morning, Josie, to thwart his mother's project of going to Middleburg to arrange with the family lawyer for settling an income upon her sisters, took the car himself immediately after breakfast to preface her call upon the lawyer with a legal consultation on his own account.

Susan could, of course, have gone by trolley or train, but she was quite satisfied to give Josie rope enough to hang himself--that is, to have him learn directly from their lawyer what were her absolute rights over her inheritance. So she decided to stop at home this morning and go to Middleburg the next day. This afternoon she would go over to Reifsville to leave with Lizzie and Addie the first installment of the income which hereafter should be regularly paid to them by her lawyer.

"How heavenly it is to be able to tell them they need not worry with boarders this summer!" she thought, happily, as she sat in her upstairs sewing room beside a window, darning Josie's socks.

Her step-son's genuine suffering in the situation affected her very little. She had never before found herself callous to any form of distress; but Josie's anguish was so wholly the creation of his own meanness and baseness that she could not feel other than indifferent to it. In fact, she found herself actually hoping that the lawyer would turn the knife in the wound! It would be so salutary for Josie! The very best thing that could happen to him.

It was while she was reflecting thus as she sewed by the window--and with every stitch which she put into Josie's socks thrilling at the bright prospects before her of freedom, travel, a larger life--that Georgie walked in upon her.

"Oh, I'm so glad you came over!" Susan gaily greeted him. "I have such a lot to tell you! Come here and sit down. Josie's gone to Middleburg on business and we'll have a good hour to ourselves."

"I'm mighty glad he's out of the way! It saves me the necessity of _putting_ him out. For this morning I've got to be alone with you--and I'm afraid Josie wouldn't recognize that necessity without the argument of physical force--which I, being theoretically a non-resistant, as you know, would not use unless the necessity were extremely urgent; as it would be to-day."

"Dear me, what a lot of sophomoric words, Georgie! What's it all about?"

Georgie drew a stool to her feet, sat down upon it and folded his arms on her lap.

"Aunt Susan! I want you to talk to me. I want you to begin at the very beginning and tell me your history."

Susan shook her head. "It's too mournfully tragic! Let's talk of something far pleasanter--of the chemical outfit I'm going to get you, and----"

"I said the necessity was urgent, didn't I? Listen! Last night Father told me something of _his_ history--an episode of his youth--of his once having been your lover! I want to hear _your_ version of that story. I told him I meant to get it from you. I fancy that in a few details, or at least in the point of view, his story and yours may differ a bit!"

Susan was looking at him, now, in astonishment, her face crimson. "What right had your father to tell you this?"

"I'll answer you that when I've heard your story," replied Georgie, taking her hand in his.

"How much did your father tell you, Georgie?"

"Please, please tell me _your_ side of it all first--won't you?"

"In my own defence?"

"You could never need any defence to me! It's that I may know how to judge my father that I want to hear your story."

"I don't like to talk of that hideous blackness of my girlhood, Georgie! I try so hard to forget it all! I'm afraid to begin to speak of it! I get so fearfully stirred up, I can hardly bear it!"

"I hate to put you through it--but I must!--indeed I must!"

Susan laid aside Josie's sock and with Georgie's hand clasped in hers, his young eyes gazing into hers, she spoke.

She told of Sidney's courtship, of their love and happiness; of their betrothal; of their scouring the countryside together in her father's old buggy to purchase, with her savings, the old colonial furniture which they found at out-of-the-way farmhouses; of their keen pleasure in having it done over for their future home, and their temporarily arranging it in the Schrekengusts' parlour; of the beautiful furniture she had bought for Sidney's rooms at college, which was also to be part of their future home; of the visit Sidney's mother had paid to her to try to make her break the engagement; of Sidney's philosophical arguments to urge her to give herself to him before marriage; of her never having dreamed, for an instant, that he was capable of deceiving her, of betraying such infinite trust as had led her to give herself so completely.

Susan's face was white and drawn as she lived over it all again; and Georgie, gazing at her, felt his heart on fire for her, against the man who had wronged her.

She spoke, then, of Sidney's growing coldness and neglect; of her reading in the college paper of his attentions to Miss Laura Beresford, the daughter of the new college president, and an heiress; of her suffering when her letters to him remained unanswered; of her finally going to him at his college rooms and discovering there that to secure money for his courtship of Miss Beresford he had sold the furniture for which she was still making monthly payments out of her little salary; of her passionate appeal to him to marry her for their coming child's sake; of how she had, then, in her lover's rooms, encountered the woman he soon married; of the birth of her dead baby; of her soul's numbness and deadness through the many long, dreary months that followed; and finally of the circumstances that had driven her into the fatal mistake of marrying Joe.

When she had finished, leaning back in her chair, pale and spent, Georgie sat, for a time, without speaking, his hands clasping hers, his eyes that rested upon her overflowing with tenderness.

"You never doubted that your baby died?" he found voice at last to ask her, his heart beating fast.

"Doubted--that my baby--died?" she dazedly repeated. "What--do you mean, Georgie? Of course she died!"

"She? They told you your baby was a girl?"

"Yes! What--_what_ is it you know?"

"Your baby was a boy. And my dear, my dear! He didn't die!"

Susan stared at him stupidly. "A boy! It didn't die! You can't mean--that he is alive now!"

She trembled from head to foot. Georgie clasped her two hands to his breast and gazed up into her face without speaking--trying to convey to her, without words, the tremendous truth with which his heart was bursting.

"Where--is--he? Where is my son?" Susan's stiff, dry lips formed the words with difficulty, her whole soul one burning question, as she looked down into Georgie's adoring eyes.

"Mother! Mother!"

For a moment she did not move or speak. Then she drew her hands free, took his face between her palms and looked again, deep and long, into the boy's face so like her own. Her brain was utterly incredulous (it was a wicked plot of Sidney's to gain his way with her!)--but her heart, her blood, cried out with a great longing that this thing should be true--and suddenly something within her knew that it was true!

"You are mine--I know you are!"

Her head fell forward on his shoulder, her arms went about him close, she held him to her famished heart as though she would never let him go----

Later, as they still sat together, Georgie said to her, "I shall never forgive Father for his treatment of you! For his having cheated us of each other all these years! He repudiated you--I shall repudiate him!"

"But he loves you. He has always loved you. One can forgive anything to love, Georgie."

"Anything against myself, perhaps. I can't forgive the brutality to you!"

"He loves you," was Susan's answer.

"You're so much larger-minded than I am, Mother!"

"There's little enough love in the world, my darling! We can't afford to spurn or 'repudiate' any drop of it that comes our way."

There was a knock at the door, it opened, and Lizzie and Addie stepped into the room.

At sight of the picture before them, Georgie seated at Susan's feet, their arms about each other, the two women in sombre Mennonite garb stopped short. There was an illumined look in the faces of the mother and son that seemed to mean but one thing.

"Susie!" dried Lizzie, "someone has told you a'ready! Ain't?"

"Told me what?"

"That your baby didn't die for all and that Georgie's him yet! Ain't--you know it a'ready?"

"Have you and Addie always known this?"

"Och, yes, Susie, us we knowed it ever since it was a'ready!"

"There is _no_ doubt of it then?"

"Och, no--though I know you never suspicioned it, and to be sure, it must seem awful funny to you! Och, yes, it's true, all right, Susie. Me and Addie, us we come over this morning to tell you all about it and get it off our consciences oncet! How did Georgie find it out?"

"His father told him!"

Georgie sprang up and hugged and kissed them both. "I've got two jolly aunts as well as a Long-Lost Mother! Mother! Mother! I want to say it all day long!" he cried, going back to her side and again throwing his arms about her.

"Here!" exclaimed a high, rasping voice at the threshold of the room; and they all turned, startled, to see Josie standing there menacingly, his face flushed with resentment. "I'd thank you to quit that, Georgie Houghton!"

"Quit what?"

"Calling my mother _Mother_! That name is sacred to _me_, I'd have you know, Georgie Houghton! I don't care to have any other fellow using it to her!" cried Josie with a grotesque mingling of hauteur and sentimentality in his high, effeminate voice. "What _right_ have you to call her _Mother_?"

Georgie rose and went to Josie's side. "I call her Mother, Josie," he said, gravely, almost solemnly, "because she _is_ my mother!"

It was characteristic of him that he did not add, "And she is not yours!"--as Josie in his place would surely have done.

"She's not and you shan't call her so!" snapped Josie.

"Yes, she is, too, his mother, Josie!" spoke in Lizzie, "and wery glad you will be to hear it, fur now you'll inherit this here _es_-tate, for all you won't get our Susie's fortune."

"What on earth are you talking about?" faltered Josie, utterly bewildered.

"Come here, Josie, dear," said Susan, gently, "and let me explain it to you----"

"Let me spare you that ordeal, Mother," Georgie interposed. "Let me tell him. You have----"

"Tell me what?" demanded Josie, looking frightened.

"Josie, my father's wife was not my mother. Your father's wife is my mother."

"How could she be? Are you crazy? What do you mean by saying such a thing? It's not true! It couldn't be!"

"Yes, it could be, too, Josie!" Lizzie contradicted him. "Our Susie had Georgie single-wise."

"How dare you insult my mother like that?" cried Josie, choking with indignation. "As if my father would have married a woman like that! As if----"

"But, Josie," Susan interposed calmly, "it is true. I am Georgie's mother."

Josie stared at her wildly. "But--but he is younger than I am!"

"Josie, dear, I never meant to tell you--but--I am your step-mother."

Josie stood stock still, his face slowly going very white. Susan, with a movement of deep pity for the blow she was dealing him, took an impulsive step toward him, her hands outstretched.

But he stepped out of her reach and his lips curving to a sneer, he turned deliberately upon Georgie.

"You--bastard!" he hurled at his cousin.

"Josie, my boy!" pleaded Susan. But he wheeled about and turned upon her.

"You--hussy!" he cried out.

There was an instant's silence in the room. Then Georgie spoke very quietly: "It will always be a comfort to you to know, Josie, that the woman to whom you have used that epithet is _not_ your mother, though she has cared for you as a mother all your life!"

"You shut up! And get out of my house! _All_ of you get out of my house!" he exclaimed, hysterically, quite beside himself, scarcely knowing what he was saying. "This is my house! Clear out of it, every one of you! I never want to lay eyes on any one of you again as long as I live! I----"

Susan saw that he was suffering torture; that the shock of what he had just learned had wounded him terribly; wounded his pride, his love for her, his faith in her, the foundation principles of his life.

Her heart yearned over him. "Leave me alone with him--all of you," she said. "I want to talk with him."

"You will never talk with me again!" he almost screamed, shaking off her hand upon his arm. "Leave my house! You shall not stay here another hour! Go with your bastard----"

"Here! You----" cried Georgie in a sudden rage, drawing back his arm--but Susan sprang between them.

"We will all go," she said, quietly.

Living alone with her son in his college town, sharing his life very completely and at the same time living her own life in freedom, Susan now, for the first time since her girlhood, knew genuine contentment, even great happiness. Their companionship seemed so completely to satisfy them both, it so filled Susan's heart after all the starved years behind her, that she dreaded almost with terror the inevitable hour when Georgie would fall in love and she would lose the best of him.

The only cloud upon her peace was her alienation from Josie. He had too long been the chief concern of her life for her to be able, now, to cast off all thought of him, all responsibility for his welfare and happiness. Because she knew he must be suffering, must be missing her, longing for her, she yearned over him, even while fully realizing how very salutary for him was this experience through which he was living.

She wrote to him once, with all the affection and motherliness she could command. He sent her letter back unopened.

The years of care and devotion she had given to him seemed all to have been for nothing!

On the day when Georgie, taking her in his arms, confided to her that the girl he loved had promised to marry him, Susan fought off her overwhelming sense of loss and desolation by sobbing on his heart, "Well, anyway, I shall have some grandchildren to mother!"

She dreamed of the day when Josie, too, would permit her to "mother" his children; for her wistful hope that he would some day discover his need of her to be greater than his resentment was the only thing which sustained her in the belief that the long sacrifice of her life had not been utterly without fruit.

THE END

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.