第12章

THE telephone was downstairs, in the rear end of the hall which divided the lower floor into two equal parts.But hardly had Mrs.Warham given the Sinclairs' number to the exchange girl when Ruth called from the head of the stairs:

"What're you doing there, mamma?"

"I'll tell Mrs.Sinclair you're sick and can't come.Then I'll send Susan in your place.""Don't!" cried Ruth, in an agitated, angry voice."Ring off--quick!""Now, Ruth, let me----"

"Ring off!" ordered Ruth."You mustn't do that.You'll have the whole town talking about how I'm throwing myself at Sam's head--and that I'm jealous of Susan."Mrs.Warham said, "Never mind" into the telephone sender and hung up the receiver.She was frightened, but not convinced.

Hers was a slow, old-fashioned mind, and to it the scheme it had worked out seemed a model of skillful duplicity.But Ruth, of the younger and subtler generation, realized instantly how transparent the thing was.Mrs.Warham was abashed but not angered by her daughter's curt contempt.

"It's the only way I can think of," said she."And I still don't see----""Of course you don't," cut in Ruth, ruffled by the perilously narrow escape from being the laughing stock of the town."People aren't as big fools as they used to be, mamma.They don't believe nowadays everything that's told them.There isn't anybody that doesn't know I'm never sick.No--we'll have to----"She reflected a moment, pausing halfway down the stairs, while her mother watched her swollen and tear-stained face.

"We might send Susan away for the evening," suggested the mother.

"Yes," assented the daughter."Papa could take her with him for a drive to North Sutherland--to see the Provosts.Then Sam'd come straight on to the Sinclairs'.""I'll call up your father."

"No!" cried Ruth, stamping her foot."Call up Mr.Provost, and tell him papa's coming.Then you can talk with papa when he gets home to dinner.""But maybe----"

"If that doesn't work out we can do something else this afternoon."The mother and the daughter avoided each other's eyes.Both felt mean and small, guilty toward Susan; but neither was for that reason disposed to draw back.As Mrs.Warham was trying the new dress on her daughter, she said:

"Anyhow, Sam'd be wasting time on Susan.He'd hang round her for no good.She'd simply get talked about.The poor child can't be lively or smile but what people begin to wonder if she's going the way of--of Lorella.""That's so," agreed Ruth, and both felt better."Was Aunt Lorella _very_ pretty, mamma?""Lovely!" replied Fanny, and her eyes grew tender, for she had adored Lorella."You never saw such a complexion--like Susan's, only snow-white." Nervously and hastily, "Most as fine as yours, Ruthie."Ruth gazed complacently into the mirror."I'm glad I'm fair, and not big," said she.

"Yes, indeed! I like the womanly woman.And so do men.""Don't you think we ought to send Susan away to visit somewhere?" asked Ruth at the next opportunity for talk the fitting gave."It's getting more and more--pointed--the way people act.And she's so sweet and good, I'd hate to have her feelings hurt." In a burst of generosity, "She's the most considerate human being I ever knew.She'd give up anything rather than see someone else put out.She's too much that way.""We can't be too much that way," said Mrs.Warham in mechanical Christian reproof.

"Oh, I know," retorted Ruth, "that's all very well for church and Sundays.But I guess if you want to get along you've got to look out for Number One....Yes, she ought to visit somewhere.""I've been trying to think," said her mother."She couldn't go any place but your Uncle Zeke's.But it's so lonesome out there I haven't the heart to send her.Besides, she wouldn't know what to make of it.""What'd father say?"

"That's another thing." Mrs.Warham had latterly grown jealous--not without reason--of her husband's partiality for Susan.

Ruth sighed."Oh, dear!" cried she."I don't know what to do.

How's she ever going to get married!"

"If she'd only been a boy!" said Mrs.Warham, on her knees, taking the unevenness out of the front of the skirt."A girl has to suffer for her mother's sins."Ruth made no reply.She smiled to herself--the comment of the younger generation upon the older.Sin it might have been; but, worse than that, it was a stupidity--to let a man make a fool of her.Lorella must have been a poor weak-minded creature.

By dinner time Ruth had completely soothed and smoothed her vanity.Sam had been caught by Susan simply because he had seen Susan before he saw her.

All that would be necessary was a good chance at him, and he would never look at Susan again.He had been in the East, where the admired type was her own--refined, ladylike, the woman of the dainty appearance and manners and tastes.A brief undisturbed exposure to her charms and Susan would seem coarse and countrified to him.There was no denying that Susan had style, but it was fully effective only when applied to a sunny fairy-like beauty such as hers.

But at midday, when Susan came in with Warham, Ruth's jealousy opened all her inward-bleeding wounds again.Susan's merry eyes, her laughing mouth, her funny way of saying even commonplace things--how could quiet, unobtrusive, ladylike charms such as Ruth's have a chance if Susan were about? She waited, silent and anxious, while her mother was having the talk with her father in the sitting-room.Warham, mere man, was amused by his wife's scheming.