SUSAN PARKER was twenty-six and nothing had ever happened. To speak more accurately, plenty of things had happened, but Man had never happened. As a college girl and afterward, Susie had, to be sure, known many men; but they had all passed by on the other side. A young man of literary ambitions had once directed a sonnet at Susie, but she was not without critical judgment and she knew it for a weak effort. This young man afterward became the sporting editor of a great newspaper, and but for Susie’s fastidiousness in the matter of sonnets she might have shared his prosperity and fame. A professor of theology had once sent her a sermon on the strength of a chance meeting at a tea; but this, though encouraging, was hardly what might be called a thrilling incident. Still, the young professor had later been called to an important church, and a little more enthusiasm for sermons on Susie’s part might have changed the current of her life.
The brother of one of Susie’s Vassar classmates had evinced a deep interest in Susie for a few months, spending weekends at Poughkeepsie that might much better have been devoted to working off his conditions at New Haven; but the frail argosy of their young affections had gone to smash with incredible ease and swiftness over a careless assertion by Susie that, after all, Harvard was the greatest American university. All universities looked alike to her, and she had really been no more interested in Harvard than in the academic centers of Wyoming or Oklahoma. Now this young gentleman was launched successfully as a mining engineer and had passed Susan by for another of his sister’s classmates, who was not nearly so interesting or amusing as Susie.
Susie’s mother had died while she was in college, and her father, in the year she was graduated. As he had chosen a good name rather than great riches, Susie had found it necessary to adjust herself to conditions, which she did by taking the library course at Witter Institute. In Syracuse, where Susan was born, old friends of the family had said how fortunate it was that her education made library work possible for her. And, though this was true, Susie resented their tone of condescension. In its various implications it dismissed her from the world to which she had been accustomed to another and very different sphere. It meant that if she became an attendant in the Syracuse Library she would assist at no more teas, and that gradually she would be forgotten in the compilations of lists of eligibles for such functions as illuminate the social horizon of Syracuse.
Whereupon, being a duly accredited librarian, entitled to consideration as such wherever book warehouses exist, Susan decided to try her luck in a strange land, where hours from nine to six would be less heart-breaking than in a town where every one would say how brave Susie was, or how shameful it was that her father had not at least kept up his life insurance.
The archives of Denver, Omaha and Indianapolis beckoned. She chose Indianapolis as being nearer the ocean.
In her changes of status and habitat the thing that hurt Susan most was the fact that the transition fixed her, apparently for all time, among the Susans. She had been named Susan for an aunt with money, but the money had gone to foreign missions when Susie was six. In college she had always been Susie to those who did not call her Miss Parker. Her introduction to the library in the Hoosier capital was, of course, as Miss Parker; but she saw Miss Susan looming darkly ahead of her. She visualized herself down the gray vistas, preyed upon daily by harassed women in search of easy catercorners to club papers, who would ask at the counter for Miss Susan. And she resented, with all the strength of her healthy young soul, the thought of being Miss Susan.
Just why Sue and Susie express various shades of character and personal atmosphere not hinted in the least by Susan pertains to the psychology of names, and is not for this writing. Susie was a small human package with a great deal of yellow hair, big blue eyes, an absurdly small mouth and a determined little nose. As a child and throughout her college years she had been frolicsome and prankish. Her intimates had rejected Sue as an inappropriate diminutive for her. Sue and Susie are not interchangeable. Sue may be applied to tall, dark girls; but no one can imagine a Susie as tall or dark. In college the girls had by unanimous consent called her Susie, with an affectionate lingering upon the second syllable and a prolongation of the “e.”
To get exactly the right effect, one should first bite into a tart gooseberry. In her corridor at Vassar it had been no uncommon thing to speak of her affectionately as Susie the Goosie. Another term of endearment she evoked was Susie the Syracuse Goosie, usually when she was in disgrace with the powers.
And Susie was the least bit spoiled. She had liked these plays upon her name. Her sayings and doings were much quoted and described in those good old days before she became Miss Susan Parker on a public library payroll. An admiring classmate had suggested the writing of a book to be called the Susiness of Susie. And Susie was funny—every one admitted that she was. She left behind her at college a reputation as a past mistress of the unexpected, and a graceful skater over the thin ice of academic delinquency. She had liked the admiration of her classmates and had more or less consciously played for it. She did not mind so much being small when it was so clear that her compact figure contributed so considerably to her general Susiness.
And the manner of the way in which Susan became Susie again fell in this wise:
Last summer the newest certain rich man in Indianapolis, having builded himself a house so large that his wife took the children and went abroad to be comfortable, fell under the fascinations of a book agent, who equipped his library with four thousand of the books that are books. The capitalist really meant to read them when he got time—if he ever did; and, in order that he might the more readily avail himself of his library when leisure offered, he acted upon the agent’s hint that it should be scientifically catalogued. The public librarian had suggested Miss Parker as a competent person for the task; and Logan, the owner of the unread books, having been pleased with the candidate’s appearance, had suggested that she live in the house while doing the work, to be company for his wife’s aunt, who was marooned there during Mrs. Logan’s absence. Logan thereupon went to Alaska to look at an investment. The aunt proved agreeable and the big Logan house was, of course, a much pleasanter place than Susan’s boarding house, where she had been annoyed by the efforts of one or two young gentlemen to flirt with her. Though her isolation emphasized the passing of her Susiness, she was reasonably happy, and set up her typewriter among the new books to do the cataloguing. In the long, eventless evenings she read to the aunt or cut leaves, and felt the years of her Susihood receding.
And it was not until the very last week of her stay in the Logan house that Miss Susan Parker experienced a recrudescence of her Susiness.
Late one afternoon, midway of September, Susie, who had just returned from a stroll, stood on the Logan portico watching the motors flit past, and thinking a little mournfully that in a few days she must go back to her boarding house and her place behind the library counter. It was then that she observed Mr. Webster G. Burgess on his doorstep adjoining, viewing the urban landscape reflectively. He was hatless and in his hand he held a bit of yellow paper that resembled a telegram. Noting Susie’s presence on the Logan veranda, he crossed the lawn in her direction. She knew from a personal item in the afternoon paper that Mr. Burgess had returned from his vacation, and that Mrs. Burgess was to follow at once, accompanied by her younger sister, Miss Wilkinson; and that she was to entertain immediately Mr. Brown Pendleton, a wealthy young American explorer and archæologist, who was coming to Indiana to deliver the dedicatory address at the opening of the new Historical Museum at the state university. Mrs. Burgess always entertained all the distinguished people who visited Indianapolis, and it had occurred to Susan that by the exercise of ordinary vigilance she might catch a glimpse of Brown Pendleton during his stay at the house next door. Webster Burgess was a banker who had inherited his bank, and he had always found life rather pleasant going. His wife diverted him a good deal, and the fact that she played at being a highbrow amused him almost more than anything else. He had kept his figure, and at forty-two was still able to dance without fear of apoplexy. He chose his haberdashery with taste, and sometimes he sent flowers to ladies without inclosing his wife’s card; but his wife said this was temperamental, which was a very good name for it.
Susie, holding her ground as Burgess advanced, composedly patted the head of one of the bronze lions that guarded the entrance to the Logan doors.
“Good evening! It’s mighty nice to see you back again,” said Burgess, smiling.
It was at this instant that Susan, hearing the god of adventure sounding the call to arms, became Susie again.
“I’m very glad to see you, Mr. Burgess,” she replied; and ceasing to fondle the bronze lion’s left ear she gave the banker her hand. “Summer is hanging on,” observed Susie; “it’s quite warm this evening.”
“It is, indeed, and most of our neighbors seem to be staying away late; but I’m glad you’re back.”
Susie was glad he was back. Her superficial knowledge of Mr. Webster Burgess bore wholly upon his standing as a banker. In the year she had spent in his ancestral city she had never heard anything to justify a suspicion that he was a gentleman given to flirtations with strange young women. There was something quite cozy and neighborly in his fashion of addressing her. His attitude seemed paternal rather than otherwise. He undoubtedly mistook her for a member of the Logan household. It crossed her mind that he probably knew little of the Logan family, who had occupied the new house only to leave it; but she knew there were several Logan girls, for she was occupying the room designed for one of them.
“This is what I call downright good luck!” Burgess continued, glancing at his watch. “Mrs. Burgess reaches town at six, with her sister—and Brown Pendleton, the explorer, and so on. We met him at Little Boar’s Head, and you know how Mrs. Burgess is—she wanted to be sure he saw this town right. A mighty interesting chap—his father left him a small mint, and he spends his income digging. He’s dug up about all the Egyptians, Babylonians and Ninevites. He’s coming out to make a speech—thinks of prying into the mound-builders; though I don’t see why any one should. Do you?”
“On the whole I think the idea rather tickles me,” said Susie. “I always thought it would be fun to try a lid-lifter on the dead past.”
Mr. Burgess took note of her anew and chuckled.
“Open up kings like sardines! I like your way of putting it.”
“A few canned kings for domestic consumption,” added Susie, thinking that he was very easy to talk to. The fact that he did not know her from a daughter of the royal house of Rameses made not the slightest difference now that the adventurous spirit of the old Susie days possessed her.
Mr. Burgess was scrutinizing the telegram again.
“I want you to dine with us this evening—as a special favor, you know. It’s rather sudden, but Mrs. Burgess has a sudden way of doing things. Just as I left my office I got this wire ordering me to produce the most presentable girl I could find for dinner. Pendleton hates big functions, but I nailed Billy Merrill at the club on my way up, according to instructions—you can always get Billy; but I went through the telephone book without finding any unattached woman of suitable age I would dare take a shot at, knowing my wife’s prejudices. And then I looked over here and saw you.”
His manner conveyed, with the utmost circumspection, the idea that seeing her had brightened the world considerably.
“Certainly, Mr. Burgess,” replied Susie, without the slightest hesitation or qualm. “At seven, did you say?”
“Seven-thirty we’d better say. There’s my machine and I’ve got to go to the station to meet them.”
As Susan, the thing would have been impossible; as Susie, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. Burgess was backing down the steps. Every instant reduced the possibility of retreat; but the fact was, that she exulted in her sin. She was an impostor and she rejoiced shamelessly in being an impostor. And yet it did not seem altogether square to accept Mr. Burgess’s invitation to dinner when it would undoubtedly involve him in difficulties with his wife, whom she had never seen in her life.
Burgess paused and wheeled round abruptly.
Her Susiness experienced a shock—the incident, in her hasty conjecture, was already closed—for he said:
“By-the-way, what is your name anyhow?”
“Susie,” she said, lifting her chin Susily.
Mr. Burgess laughed, as though it were perfectly obvious that she was a Susie—as though any one at a glance ought to know that this young person in the white flannel skirt and blue shirt-waist was a Susie, ordained to be so called from the very first hour of creation.
“Just for fun, what’s the rest of it?” he asked.
“Parker, please. I’m not even a poor relation of the Logans.”
“I didn’t suppose you were; quite and distinctly not!” he declared as though the Logans were wholly obnoxious. “I never saw you before in my life—did I?”
“Never,” said Susie, giving him the benefit of her blue eyes.
Burgess rubbed his ear reflectively.
“I think I’m in for a row,” he remarked in an agreeable tone, as though rows of the sort he had in mind were not distasteful to him.
“Of course,” said Susie with an air of making concessions, “if you really didn’t mean to ask me to dinner, or have changed your mind now that you find I’m a stranger and a person your wife would never invite to her house, we’ll call the party off.”
“Heavens, no! You can’t send regrets to a dinner at the last minute. And if you don’t show up I’m going to be in mighty bad. You see——” He gazed at Susie with the keen scrutiny he reserved for customers when they asked to have their lines of credit extended, and he carefully weighed the moral risk. “We seem to be on amazingly intimate terms, considering our short acquaintance. There’s something about you that inspires confidence.”
“I’m much uplifted by this tribute,” said Susie with a Susesque touch that escaped her so naturally, so easily, that she marveled at herself.
Burgess smiled broadly.
“I’m afraid,” he remarked, “that you don’t quite fill the bill; but you’ll do—you’ve got to do!”
He handed her the telegram he had retained in his hand and watched her face as she read:
P. is greatly taken with Floy, and we must give her every chance. Pick up an uninteresting young man and one of the least attractive of the older girls for dinner tonight. This is important Make no mistake.
“Those are my instructions. Can you ever forgive me?”
“With my hair brushed straight back, they say I’m quite homely,” observed Susie sighing.
“I shouldn’t do my worst,” said the banker, “where Nature has been so generous.”
“It seems,” observed Susie meditatively, “that I’m your deliberate choice as a foil for your sister-in-law, by sheer force of my unattractiveness.”
“I’m slightly nearsighted,” replied the banker. “It’s a frightful handicap.”
“I can see that glasses would be unbecoming to you.”
“The matter of eyes,” said the banker, stroking a lion, “is not one I should trust myself to discuss with you. Do you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”
“Cutting the leaves in the books and making a card catalogue. I use the typewriter with a dexterity that has been admired.”
“A person of education, clearly.”
“French and German were required by my college; and I speak English with only a slight Onondaga accent, as you observe.”
Her essential Susiness seemed to be communicating itself to the banker. His chauffeur loosened a raucous blast of the horn warningly.
“I fear your time is wasted. The Logans will never read those books. It’s possible that the hand of Fate guided me across the lawn to deliver you from the lions. The thought pleases me. To continue our confidences, I will say that, noble woman though my wife is, her sister has at times annoyed me. And when I left Little Boar’s Head I saw that Pendleton suspected that we were trying to kidnap him.”
“And I take it that the natural fellow-feeling of man for man would mitigate your sorrow if the gentleman whom your wife is carrying home in a birdcage should not, in fact, become your brother-in-law.”
“It would be indelicate for me to go so far as that; but Floy has always had a snippy way with me. I should like to see her have to work for the prize.”
“My dinner frock is three years old, but I’ll see what I can do to become a natural hazard. You’d better move upon the station—the blasts of that horn are not soothing to the nerves.”
Brown Pendleton, Ph.D., L.H.D., F.R.G.S., frowned as he adjusted his white tie before the mirror of the Burgesses’ best guest-room. He was a vigorous, healthy American of thirty, quite capable of taking care of himself; and yet he had been dragged submissively across the continent by a lady who was animated by an ambition to marry him to her sister, toward whom his feelings, in the most minute self-analysis, were only those of polite indifference. And the mound-builders, now that he thought of it, were rather tame after Egypt and Babylon. As he surveyed his tanned face above his snowy shirt bosom he wished that he had never consented to deliver the address at the opening of the new Historical Museum at Indiana University, which was the ostensible reason for this Western flight. As for Miss Floy Wilkinson, she was a perfectly conventional person, who had—not to be more explicit—arrived at a time of life when people say of a girl that she is holding her own well. And she was. She was indubitably handsome, but not exciting. She was the sort of girl who makes an ideal house guest, and she had walked down church aisles ahead of one after the other of her old school friends all the way from Duluth to Bangor. Mrs. Burgess had become anxious as to Floy’s future, and in convoying Pendleton to Indianapolis and planting him in her best guest-chamber she was playing her cards with desperation.
Mrs. Burgess ran upstairs to dress after a hasty cross-examination of the cook, to make sure her telegraphic order for dinner had been understood, and found her husband shaking himself into his dress coat.
She presented her back to be unhooked and talked on in a way she had.
“Well, I suppose you got Grace Whiting or Minnie Rideout? And, of course, you couldn’t have failed on Billy Merrill. I think Grace and Billy are showing signs, at last, of being interested in each other. You can’t tell what may have happened during the summer. But if Pendleton should fail—well, Billy isn’t so dull as people think; and Floy doesn’t mind his clumsiness so much as she did. Did you say you got Minnie?”
Mr. Burgess, absorbed in a particularly stubborn hook, was silent. Mrs. Burgess was afraid to urge conversation upon him lest he should throw up the job, and Floy was monopolizing the only available maid. When a sigh advertised his triumph over the last hook she caught him as he was moving toward the door.
“Did you say Minnie was coming, Web?”
“No, Gertie—no. You didn’t say anything about Minnie in your telegram; you said to get a girl.”
“Why, Web, you know that meant Grace Whiting or Minnie Rideout; they are my old standbys.”
“Well, Grace has gone somewhere to bury her uncle, and Minnie is motoring through the Blue Grass. It was pretty thin picking, but I did the best I could.”
His tone and manner left much to be desired. His wife’s trunk was being unstrapped in the hall outside and there was no time for parleying.
“Whom did you get, then? Not——”
“I got Susie,” said Burgess, shooting his cuffs.
“Susie?”
“Susie!” he repeated with falling inflection.
“What Susie?”
“Well, Gertie, to be quite frank, I’ll be hanged if I know. I haven’t the slightest, not the remotest, idea.”
“What do you mean, Web?—if you know!”
The clock on the stairs below was chiming half past six. Burgess grinned; it was not often he had a chance like this. In social affairs it was she who did the befuddling.
“I mean to say that, though her name is Susie, it’s rather more than a proper name; it’s also a common noun, and chock-full of suggestions—pleasant ones, on the whole.” She was trying to free herself of her gown, and one of the hooks caught so that he had to extricate her. Half angry, half alarmed, she seized him by his lapels, for fear he might escape before she had put an end to his foolishness. “She said her name was Parker; but I rather question it. She looks like a Susie, but the Parker is something of a misfit. For myself, I prefer to cut out the Parker.”
“Web Burgess, tell me just what you have been up to! Don’t I know this person?”
“I doubt it. And I don’t hesitate to say that it’s a loss on both sides.”
“Do you mean to tell me that at this serious crisis in all our lives, when there’s so much at stake, you’ve asked a girl to dinner in this house that we don’t know? After all my work—after——”
“After your telegram, which I interpreted literally to mean that I was to land a girl for dinner who would serve merely to emphasize Floy’s haughty grandeur, I did the best I could. Grace and Minnie were not available; Susie was. So Susie is coming.”
“Web, we’ve been married ten years and I have never had any reason to suspect you or even complain of you; but if you think you can pick up some strange girl among your admirations and bring her to my table I shall resent it; I shall not pass it lightly by!” she ended tragically.
Burgess walked to the window, drew back the curtain and peered across at the Logan house.
“I suspect that Susie’s getting into her fighting clothes. You needn’t be afraid of Susie. Susie’s entirely respectable. And, as for my relations with Susie, she hadn’t gladdened my sight an hour ago. You’d better let me send Nora to help you. It would be awkward for you not to be down when Susie comes.”
He hummed inanely, “When Susie comes! When Susie comes!” and closed the door upon her indignation.
At seven-twenty-nine Susie eluded the vigilance of the wondering lions and ran up the Burgess steps.
Burgess met her in the hall, where she stepped out of her wrap and stood forth rather taller than he remembered her, by reason of her high-heeled slippers.
Mrs. Burgess, proud of her reputation for meeting emergencies, did not wait for her guest to be presented. Her quick scrutiny discovered nothing alarming in this young person. With a quick eye she appraised the three-year-old gown, correctly placed its vintage and said:
“So nice that you could come.”
Pendleton, who knew a great many girls in different parts of the world, saw nothing disquieting in this Miss Parker. She was merely another girl. Billy Merrill, who was forty, wondered whether there would be champagne or only sauterne besides the cocktail. He had never heard of Pendleton, any more than he had heard of Miss Parker, and he was speculating as to whether he had ever really been in love with Floy Wilkinson, and whether he should venture to propose to her again just after Christmas. Proposing to Floy was a habit with Billy.
At the round table the forks for the caviar had been overlooked, and this gave the dinner a bad start. Mrs. Burgess was annoyed, and to cover her annoyance she related an anecdote, at which the guest of honor only smiled wanly. He did not seem happy. He barely tasted his soup, and when Burgess addressed a question to him directly Pendleton did not hear it until it had been repeated. Things were not going well. Then Billy Merrill asked Pendleton if he was related to some Pendletons he knew in St Louis. Almost every one knew that Brown Pendleton belonged to an old Rhode Island family—and Merrill should have known it. Mrs. Burgess was enraged by the fleeting grin she detected on her husband’s face. Web was always so unsympathetic. Burgess was conversing tranquilly with Susie; he never grasped the idea that his wife gave small dinners to encourage general conversation. And this strange girl would not contribute to the conversation; she seemed to be making curious remarks to Webster in a kind of baby talk that made him choke with mirth. “An underbred, uncultivated person!” thought Mrs. Burgess.
Mrs. Burgess decided that it would not be amiss to take soundings in the unknown’s past and immediate present.
“You don’t usually come back to town so early, do you, Miss Parker?” she asked sweetly.
“No; but Newport was rather slow this year—so many of the houses weren’t open.”
Mrs. Burgess and her sister exchanged a glance of startled surprise. Brown Pendleton’s thoughts came back from Babylon. Merrill looked at Miss Parker with open-eyed admiration.
“Dear old Newport!” Pendleton remarked with feeling. “It has rather lost tone. I’m not surprised that you didn’t care for it.”
He examined Susie with deliberation.
“The Niedlingers and the Parquetries didn’t show up at all; and the Ossingtons are said to have cut it out for good,” observed Susie.
“Yes; I saw Fred Ossington in London in the spring, and he said he had enough. Nice chap, Fred.”
“Too bad he had to give up polo,” said Susie, advancing her pickets daringly; “but I fancy his arm will never be fit again.”
“He’s going in for balloons. Can you believe it? Amusing fellow! Said he preferred falling on the earth to having it fall on him. And, besides, a balloon couldn’t kick when it had him down.”
The conversation was picking up, and quite clearly it was the unknown who was giving it momentum. Fish had been disposed of satisfactorily and Mrs. Burgess began to regain confidence. The unknown must be checked. It would not do for the girl to go further with this light, casual discussion, conveying as she did all sorts of implications of knowledge of the great in lofty places. The vintage of the dinner gown testified unimpeachably against her having any real knowledge of Newport, a place where Mrs. Burgess had once spent a day at a hotel. Mrs. Burgess resolved to squelch the impostor. Such presumption should not go unrebuked even at one’s own table. Pendleton was now discussing aviation with this impertinent Susie, who brought to the subject the same light touch of apparent sophistication she had employed in speaking of Newport and polo. She asked him if he had read an account of a new steering device for dirigibles; she thought she had seen it in L’Illustration. Pendleton was interested, and scribbled the approximate date of the journal on the back of his namecard.
“I suppose you came back ahead of your family, Miss Parker? I really don’t know who’s in town.”
“Yes; I’m quite alone, Mrs. Burgess. You see,” and Susie tilted her head Susily and spoke directly to Mrs. Burgess, “one never really knows anything about one’s neighbors.”
“Ah—you live close by?” asked Pendleton.
Susie answered with an imperceptible movement of the head:
“Oh, just next door, you know.”
“How charming! At the sign of the lions? I noticed them as we came up. I must have another look at them. Rather good, as near as I could make out.”
“They are rather nice, I think,” said Susie as one who would not boast of her possessions. “Ernestenoff did them—one of Barye’s pupils.”
Burgess wondered how far she would go. Merrill’s face wore the look of a man who is dying of worry. He had lived in town all his life, and it was inconceivable that this was one of Logan’s daughters. He had forgotten the girl’s name, and he resolved to pay attention in future when people were introduced.
Mrs. Burgess was too far at sea herself to bother with his perplexities. Thoroughly alarmed, she threw the conversation back three thousand years and shifted its playground from the Wabash Valley to the left bank of the Euphrates, confident that the temerarious person with the yellow hair and blue eyes would be dislodged.
“When you first began your excavations in Assyria, Mr. Pendleton, I suppose you didn’t realize how important your work would be to the world.”
The table listened. Merrill groped for light. This Pendleton was, then, a digger among ancient ruins! Miss Wilkinson’s eyes were ready to meet Pendleton’s responsively and sympathetically: her interest in archæology was recent and superficial, but this was only the more reason for yielding ungrudging admiration to the eminent digger. Pendleton did not reply at once to Mrs. Burgess’s question, and instead of appearing pleased by its ingratiating flattery he frowned and played with his wine-glass nervously. When he broke the silence it was to say in a hard tone that was wholly unlike his usual manner of speech:
“I’m not at all sure that it has been of importance; I’m inclined to think I wasted five years on those jobs.”
His depression was undeniable and he made no effort to conceal it. And Mrs. Burgess was angry to find that she had clumsily touched the wrong chord, and one that seemed to be vibrating endlessly. She had always flattered herself that she had mastered the delicate art of drawing out highbrows. Scores of distinguished visitors to the Hoosier capital had gone forth to publish her charm and wit; and this was the first cloud that had ever rested above a dinner table where a Chinese prince had been made to feel at home, and whence poets, bishops, novelists, scientists and statesmen had departed radiant. She had not only struck the wrong note but one that boomed monotonously down the long corridors of time.
Burgess mildly sought to inject a needleful of bromide into the situation.
“You’re probably not a good judge of that, Mr. Pendleton. The world has already set its seal of approval upon your investigations.”
“It’s not the world’s praise we want,” said Pendleton; “it’s the praise of the men who know.”
This was not tactful; it apparently brushed aside his host’s approval as negligible. Miss Wilkinson flashed Pendleton one of her brilliant smiles, remarking:
“You are altogether too modest, Mr. Pendleton. Every one says that your ‘Brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar’ is the last word on that subject.”
And then a chill seized Mrs. Burgess. The yellow-haired, blue-eyed unknown moved her head slightly to one side, bit an almond in two with neatness, and said:
“If I were you, Mr. Pendleton, I shouldn’t let a faker like Geisendanner annoy me.”
Susie regarded the remaining half of the almond indifferently and then ate it musingly. At the mention of Geisendanner Pendleton flushed, and his head lifted as though he heard trumpets calling to action. Then he bent toward Susie. The salad had just been removed. Mrs. Burgess beat the table with her fingers and awaited the earthquake. Her only relief at the moment was in the consciousness that her husband, from the look of his face, at last realized the heinousness of his conduct in bringing just any little whipper-snapper to her table. And Susie seemed to be the only member of the company who was wholly tranquil. Mrs. Burgess wondered whether she could be more than twenty, so complete had been the reinvestiture of the girl in the robes of her Susiness. She had spoken of Geisendanner as though he lived round the corner and were a person that every one with any sort of decent bringing up knew or should know. The effect of the name upon Pendleton was not pleasant to see, and Mrs. Burgess shuddered. After the first shock of surprise he seemed wonderfully subdued. Clearly this Geisendanner was an enemy or a man he feared. The eminent Babylonian met Susie’s eyes apprehensively. He said in a low tone of dejection:
“So you know then?” As though of course she did, and that a dark understanding had thus been established by their common knowledge.
“Rather absurd, on the whole, when you consider——”
Her plate was being changed and she drew back during the interruption. Pendleton shook his head impatiently at the delay.
“Absurd! How absurd? If it’s absurd to have the results of years of hard work chucked into the rubbish heap, then——”
“But no!” Susie felt for her fork without breaking the contact of their eyes. She was smiling as though quite the mistress of the occasion and waiting merely to prolong the agony of the sufferers about her. She was not insensible to their sufferings; it was pleasant rather than otherwise to inflict torture. Still her attitude toward the distressed scientist was kindly—but she would make him wait. Her bearing toward Pendleton at the moment was slightly maternal. It was only a matter of bricks anyhow; and trifles like the chronological arrangement of bricks, where, one toppling, all went down, were not only to the young person’s liking but quite within the range of her powers of manipulation. “As I remember,” she continued, “Geisendanner first attacked the results of the Deutsche Orientgesellschaft; but, of course, that was disposed of.”
“Yes,” assented Pendleton eagerly; “Auchengloss did that.”
It seemed preposterous that the small mouth of this young person could utter such names at all, much less with an air of familiarity, as though they were the names of streets or of articles of commerce.
“It was Glosbrenner, however, who paved the way for you by disposing of Geisendanner—absolutely.”
“The excavations they made in their absurd search for treasure in the ruins confused everything; but Glosbrenner’s exposé was lost—burnt up in a printing-office fire in Berlin. There’s not an assertion in my ‘Brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar’ that isn’t weakened by that bronze-gate rubbish, for Geisendanner was a scholar of some reputation. After the failure of his hidden-treasure scheme he faked his book on the Bronze Gates of Babylon as a pot boiler, and died leaving it behind him—one of the most plausible frauds ever perpetrated. They went in on top of my excavations of the brickyard—thought because I was an American I must have been looking for gold images. Glosbrenner was an American student; and seeing that his fellow-adventurer’s book was taken seriously he wrote his exposé, swore to it before the American consul at Berlin and then started for Tibet to sell an automobile to the Grand Lama—and never came back.”
Pendleton’s depression had increased; gloom settled upon the company—or upon all but this demure young skeleton at the feast, who had thus outrageously brought to the table the one topic of all topics in the world that was the most ungrateful to the man Mrs. Burgess most particularly wished to please. She sought without avail to break in upon a dialogue that excluded the rest of the company as completely as though they were in the kitchen.
“I was just reading that thing in the Seven Seas’ Review; but you can see that the reviewer swallowed Geisendanner whole. He takes your brickyards away from Nebuchadnezzar and gives them to Nabopolassar, which seems v-e-r-y c-a-r-e-l-e-s-s!”
This concluding phrase, drawled most Susesquely, brought a laugh from Burgess, and Pendleton’s own face relaxed.
“They’re all flinging Geisendanner at me!” continued Pendleton with renewed animation. “It’s humiliating to find the English and Germans alike throwing this impostor at my head. Those fellows began their excavations secretly and without authority, in a superstitious belief that they’d find gold images of heathen gods and all manner of loot there. And it’s hard luck that the confession of one of the conspirators is lost forever and the man himself dead.”
“It certainly is most unfortunate!” mourned Mrs. Burgess, anxious to pour balm upon his wounds.
“It’s curious, however, Mr. Pendleton,” said Susie casually, “that I happen to know of the existence of a copy of that Glosbrenner pamphlet.”
“A copy—— You mustn’t chaff me about that!”
“Yes,” said Susie; “it’s really quite the funniest thing that ever happened.”
“This seems to be an important matter, Miss Parker. You have no right to play upon Mr. Pendleton’s credulity, his hopes!” said Mrs. Burgess icily.
“Nothing like that, Mrs. Burgess!” chirruped Susie. “I can tell Mr. Pendleton exactly where one copy of that pamphlet, and probably the only one in the world, may be found. And a small investment in a night message to Poughkeepsie will verify what I say. There is a copy of that pamphlet at Vassar College that was picked up in Berlin by one of the professors, who gave it to the library. It had a grayish cover and looked like a thesis for a doctorate—that sort of thing. It was a little burned on the edges, and that was one reason why it caught my eye one day when I was poking about looking for something among a lot of German treatises with the most amusing long titles. And it was a perfectly dee-li-cious story—how they dug and mixed up those dynasties there; and then one of them wrote a book about it, just for the money he could get out of it. It was all a fake, but they knew enough to make it look like real goods. It was a kind of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer joke, muddying the water that way.”
The conjunction of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer with Nebuchadnezzar caused even Merrill to laugh.
“I must wire tonight for a confirmation of this—or, perhaps, if you are an alumna of the college you would do it for me.”
“I think,” said Susie, “they still remember me at college. I was the limit!”
“If what you say is right,” Pendleton resumed, “I can smash those Germans and make that Seven Seas’ reviewer eat his words! I really believe it would be better for you to wire for me to the librarian for confirmation; I’d rather not publish my anxiety to the world. If you will do this I shall look upon it as the greatest possible favor.”
“Delighted!” said Susie, crumpling her napkin.
Mrs. Burgess showed signs of rising, but delayed a moment.
“Miss Parker, you rather implied that there was more than one reason why you happened to notice a singed document in a strange language, bearing upon a subject usually left to scientists and hardly within the range of a young girl’s interests. Would you mind enlightening us just a little further in the matter?”
“I thought it was so funny,” said Susie, smiling upon them all, “because of my papa.”
“Your father?” gasped Mrs. Burgess.
“Yes, Mrs. Burgess. Anything about bricks always seemed to me so amusing, because papa used to own a brickyard.”
A packet of newspaper clippings forwarded with other mail for Pendleton did not add to the joy of the Burgess breakfast table the next morning. The archæologist murmured an apology and scanned the cuttings with knit brows.
“How early,” he asked, “do you imagine Miss Parker can have a confirmation of her impression about that thing of Glosbrenner’s?”
“By noon, I should think,” answered Burgess.
The husband of Mrs. Burgess had passed a bad night, and he was fully persuaded of the grievousness of his most grievous sin. Never again, he had solemnly sworn, would he attempt any such playfulness as had wrought this catastrophe—never again would he expose himself to the witchery of Susans prone to Susinesses!
“Unless I have corroboration of Miss Parker’s impression before three o’clock I shall break my engagement at the state university. With this article in the Seven Seas’ Review lying on every college library table, citing Geisendanner against me and discrediting me as the discoverer of the brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar, I shall never stand upon a platform again—and I must withdraw my book. My reputation, in other words, hangs upon a telegram,” concluded the archæologist gloomily.
“It is inconceivable,” said Mrs. Burgess in a cheerful tone that far from represented her true feelings, “that Miss Parker would have spoken as she did if she hadn’t been reasonably confident. Still it is always best to be prepared for disappointments. I think you and Floy had better take the motor for a run into the country and forget the telegram until it arrives. I dare say Miss Parker will send it over at once when it comes.”
“Thanks, very much,” muttered Pendleton, not highly elated at the thought of motoring with Miss Wilkinson, whose efforts to enliven the breakfast table by talking of things as far removed as possible from the brickyards of oblivion had palled upon the wealthy archæologist. He was an earnest chap, this Pendleton; and the fact that his eligibility as a bachelor was not, in certain eyes, greatly diminished by the failure of his efforts to reëstablish the brick industries of Babylon had not occurred to him. Floy and the Burgesses bored him; but he was dazed by the threatened collapse of his reputation. He declined his host’s invitation to walk downtown; and in an equally absent-minded fashion he refused an invitation to luncheon at the University Club, to meet certain prominent citizens. Whereupon, finding the air too tense for his nerves, Burgess left for the bank.
Pendleton moved restlessly about the house, moodily smoking, while the two women pecked at him occasionally with conversation and then withdrew for consultation. His legs seemed to be drawn to those windows of the Burgess drawing room that looked toward the Logans’. In a few minutes Pendleton picked up his hat and stick and left the house, merely saying to the maid he saw clearing up the dining room that he was going for a walk. It is wholly possible he meant to go for a walk quite alone, but at the precise moment at which he reached the Logans’ iron gates the Logan door opened suddenly, as though his foot had released a spring, and Susie, in hat and coat, surveyed the world from between the lions. Mrs. Burgess and Floy, established in an upper window, saw Susie wave a hand to Brown Pendleton. For a woman to wave her hand to a man she hasn’t known twenty-four hours, particularly when he is wealthy and otherwise distinguished, is the least bit open to criticism. Susie did not escape criticism, but Susie was happily unmindful of it. And it seemed that as she fluttered down between the lions Pendleton grasped her hand anxiously, as though fearing she meditated flight; whereas nothing was further from Susie’s mind.
“Good news!” she cried. “They have just telephoned me the answer from the telegraph office. I think telephoned messages are so annoying; and, as they take forever to send one out, I was just going to the office to get it and send it up to you.”
“Then,” cried Pendleton with fervor, “you must let me go with you. It’s a fine morning for a walk.”
At the telegraph office he read the message from Susie’s friend, the librarian, which was official and final. Whereupon Pendleton became a man of action. To the professor of archæology at Vassar, whom he knew, Pendleton wrote a long message referring to the Seven Seas’ Review’s attack, and requesting that the precious Glosbrenner confession be carefully guarded until he could examine it personally at the college. He wrote also a cable to the American consul at Berlin, requesting that Geisendanner’s whole record be thoroughly investigated.
“Why,” asked Susie, an awed witness of this reckless expenditure for telegrams, “why don’t you ask the State Department to back up your cable? They must know you in Washington.”
“By Jove!” ejaculated Pendleton, staring at Susie as though frightened by her precociousness; “that’s a bully idea! Phillips, the second assistant secretary, is an old friend of mine, and he’ll tear up the earth for me!”
As they strolled back uptown through the long street, with its arching maples, they seemed altogether like the oldest of friends. Pendleton did not appear to mind at all, if he were conscious of the fact, that Susie’s hat was not one of the new fall models, or that her coat was not in the least smart. The strain was over and he submitted himself in high good humor to the Susiness of Susie. It was when they were passing the Public Library that a mood of remorse seized her. There was, she reflected, such a thing as carrying a joke too far. She salved her conscience with the reflection that if she had not yielded to the temptations of her own Susiness and accepted Mr. Burgess’s invitation she would not have been able to point this big, earnest student to the particular alcove and shelf where reposed the one copy in all the world of the only document that would rout the critics of the Brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar.
“That Geisendanner,” said Susie, rather more soberly than he had yet heard her speak, “was, beyond doubt, an awful liar and a great fraud; but I am a much greater.”
“You!” exclaimed Pendleton, leaning for a moment on his stick and staring at her.
“Even so! In the first place, I went to Mrs. Burgess’s house for dinner last night through a mistake; she had never seen or heard of me before, and Mr. Burgess asked me merely because he had exhausted the other possibilities and was desperate for some one to fill a chink at his wife’s table. And the worst thing I did was to make you think I knew all about Newport, when I was never there in my life—and never saw any of the people I mentioned. Everything I said I got out of the newspapers. It was all just acting, and I put it on a little more because I saw that Mrs. Burgess and her sister didn’t like me; they didn’t think it was a joke at all, my trying to be Susie again—just once more in my life before I settled back to being called Miss Susan forever. And the way I come to be living in that fine house is simply that I’m borrowed from the library for so much a week to catalogue the Logans’ library and push a paperknife through the books. Now you see that Geisendanner isn’t in it with me for downright wickedness and most s-h-o-c-k-i-n-g m-e-n-d-a-c-i-t-y!”
“But if you hadn’t done all those terrible things where should I be?” demanded Pendleton. “But, before dismissing your confession, would you mind telling me just how you came to know—well, anything about me?”
“I’m almost afraid to go that far,” laughed Susie, who, as a matter of fact, did not fear this big, good-natured man at all.
“Tell me that,” encouraged Pendleton, “and we will consider the confession closed.”
“Well, I think I’ll be happier to tell you, and then the slate will be cleaned off a little bit anyhow. A sample copy of the Seven Seas’ Review had strayed into the house; and, in glancing over the list of book reviews on the cover, I saw the Brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar among the books noticed. I spent ten minutes reading the review; and then I grabbed the Britannica—four minutes more! And then in Who’s Who I saw that you were a Newporter. It’s remarkable how educated one can become in fifteen minutes! And, as I said last night when Mrs. Burgess asked me how I came to be interested in that sort of thing, my father ran a brickyard!”
She was looking straight ahead, but the Babylonian expert saw that there were tears in her eyes, as though called forth by the recollection of other and happier times.
“Thank you,” he said gravely; “and now let us forget all about this.”
They walked in silence for several minutes, not looking at each other, until she said as they neared the Burgess gate:
“After all, I’m the foolishest little Susie in the world; and it’s a lot better for me to go back and be Susan again, and not go to dinner parties where I’m not expected.”
And what Pendleton seemed to say, though she was not sure of it, was:
“Never!—not if I know myself!”
“Do you suppose,” Mrs. Burgess asked her sister as they saw Susie tripping along beside Pendleton, “that she has carried it through?”
“From Brown Pendleton’s looks,” said Floy, “I should judge she had. But—it can’t be possible that she’s coming in here again!”
Susie and Pendleton lingered at the gate for an instant, in which he seemed to be talking earnestly. Then together they entered; and in a moment Mrs. Burgess and Floy faced them in the drawing room, where Pendleton announced with undeniable relief and satisfaction the good news from Poughkeepsie.
“Then I suppose you will make the address at the university after all?” said Mrs. Burgess. “I find that so many matters are pressing here that I shall have to forego the pleasure of joining you; and Floy, of course, will have to be excused also.”
“On the other hand,” said Pendleton with the most engaging of smiles, “I must beg you not to abandon me. Our party of last night was so perfect, and the results of it so important to me, that I shall greatly regret losing any member of it. I propose in my address tonight to assert my claims to the discovery of the brickyards of Nebuchadnezzar as against all the assertions that contradict me in Geisendanner’s romantic fiction about the bronze gates of Babylon. I should like you all to be present, and I am going to beg you, as a particular favor, Mrs. Burgess, to invite Miss Parker to accompany us; for, without her helpful hint as to the existence of that copy of Glosbrenner’s confession, where, I should like to know, would I be?”
Mrs. Burgess prided herself upon being able to meet just such situations; and Susie was so demure—there was about the child something so appealing and winning—that Mrs. Burgess dipped her colors.
“Certainly, Mr. Pendleton. I’m sure that Mr. Merrill will feel honored to be included. And I shall be delighted to chaperon Miss Parker.”
“Miss Parker has agreed to help me run down some obscure authorities on the mound-builders a little later, and the trip will give her a chance to see what they have in the university library. I can’t afford to take any more chances with so much doubtful scientific lore floating about.”
“I should think,” remarked Floy carelessly, “you would find help of some kind almost essential in your future work.”
“I think, myself,” said Susie with an uncontrollable resurgence of her Susiness, “that it would save an a-w-f-u-l l-o-t o-f t-r-o-u-b-l-e!”