Sue Bridehead

“ Sue, who had previously been called Mrs. Bridehead now openly adopted the name of Mrs. Fawley. Her dull, cowed, and listless manner for days seemed to substantiate all this.
But the mistake (as it was called) of their going away so secretly to do the business, kept up much of the mystery of their lives; and they found that they made not such advances with their neighbours as they had expected to do thereby. A living mystery was not much less interesting than a dead scandal. ”

“ They have to ask me to dinner, though. No nonsense about that!"
"It isn't the songs only, Sue. They want an agreeable woman who can talk well."
"Oh, I can chatter about most things; but I don't pretend to talk. I can keep the ball rolling."
"Do you know, Sue, you find me in a state of profound mystification. I never was so puzzled in my life. When I was leaving Italy I wired to my people to keep back all my letters. I was ten days on the way home; and instead of the usual accumulation of cards and things I find one letter—yours."
"People don't know you are in town," Sue suggested slowly. ”

“ And Bridou added, addressing Marie, as if to reassure her, for, notwithstanding the hardness of his heart, he was almost moved to compassion:
"It is all the same, madame, our brave Jacques now and then opens his eyes and grits his teeth, but at the bottom, he is—"
"Good man," added Bastien, pouring out another drink; "such a good man, that he is a fool for it. It is all the same, you see, my old Bridou, I would not give my evening for fifty thousand francs. I have just realised a magnificent profit." ”

“ All the while she was talking she was quietly stripping Clarice of her trinkets. Clarice was too frightened to speak or move; she could only moan and whimper. But after the first moment of stupefaction, Sue came forward with flashing eyes and crimson cheeks. "How dare you?" she cried. "How dare you steal her things? Her father or Mr. Hart—Mr. George Hart of Hilton—will send you the money to-morrow, everything we owe. You shall not steal our things, you wicked woman!" ”

“ Do you hear her, Bridou?"
"You know very well, old fellow, that ladies understand nothing about business, and they had better not meddle with it at all, ha, ha, ha! especially in cutting wood," replied the bailiff with a mellifluous giggle.
"But did I tell her to meddle with it?" replied Jacques Bastien, whose fury continued to rise; "could I suppose she would ever have the audacity to—But no, no, there is something else at the bottom of it, she must have her head turned. Ah, by thunder! I came just in time. ”

“ Even at this obvious moment for candour Sue could not be quite candid as to the state of that mystery, her heart. "Put it down to my timidity," she said with hurried evasiveness; "to a woman's natural timidity when the crisis comes. I may feel as well as you that I have a perfect right to live with you as you thought—from this moment. I may hold the opinion that, in a proper state of society, the father of a woman's child will be as much a private matter of hers as the cut of her underlinen, on whom nobody will have any right to question her. ”

“ Sue looked up at him gravely, but did not speak.
“‘‘Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness: he is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous.’’
“‘That is, the upright man,’ said Sue.
“‘‘A good man showeth favour and lendeth: he will guide his affairs with discretion. Surely he shall not be moved for ever: the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance.’ You remember who says, ‘I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.’’
“‘That is Zion, father, isn’t it?’ said Sue. ”

“ For a long moment, Sue looked at her mother without speaking. "Oh, I know why you laugh," she said, finally. "I'm—I'm forty-five. But—after today, I'm going to do some laughing! I'm going to do what I please, and go where I please! I'm free! I'm free at last!" She cried it up to the chandelier. "From today, I'm free! This is the Emancipation Proclamation! This is the Declaration of Independence!"
Mrs. Milo moved away, smiling. At the door she turned. "What can you do?" she asked, teasingly; "—at your age!"
Sue buttoned her coat over the bridesmaid's dress. "What can I do?" ”

“ Raphael, and I was three days in Paris buying frocks. Not a single invitation—not so much as a caller's card. One would think London was asleep. Isn't it strange?"
"Yes," answered Sue, looking at her with an earnest, yet somewhat furtive, scrutiny, "it is—very—strange."
"Well, dear, don't let us be solemn about it. No doubt the invitations will come pouring in now I am at home. People have been too busy to notice my name in the papers. There are always new women for the town to run after. Wives of diamond men from Africa or oil men from America. One cannot expect to keep one's place." ”

“ Nonsense, Sue!" cried Lady Perivale, flinging down a volume of "The Ring and the Book," which she had been nursing all the afternoon.
"And as we are supposed to dine at eight, I think we ought to go home and put on our tea-gowns," pursued Sue, sedately.
Can there be such happiness in life; bliss that annihilates thought and time? Grace blushed crimson, ashamed of having been so happy.
Mr. Haldane bade them good night at the bottom of the garden steps, where his outrigger was waiting for him. ”

“ A kiss to Mary, a word to the boys, and all will be forgotten. Go back now, before it is too late!"
But two other voices spoke louder in Sue's ear, drowning the voice of her heart. One was pride. "Go back?" it said. "Confess that you have been wicked and silly? Let the boys and Lily see you humbling yourself—you, who have always been the proud one? Never!" The other was loyalty, or rather a kind of chivalry that was a part of Sue. "You cannot desert Clarice," said this voice. "She is a stranger here, and she depends upon you. ”

“ Her eyes shot a glance at the door behind him, and he was enraged anew with pity of her.
"You don't know what it is to see a girl as pretty as you be," he went on, as if he scolded her, "and all dressed up to the nines."
She was still looking at him dumbly. She saw beyond him the vista of Sue's broken life.
"Well, then, won't you be friends?" he urged. "Great king! you couldn't be any more offish if I'd done it. You needn't think anything's altered. You're the prettiest creatur' that ever stepped, but I wouldn't give up Sue for the Queen of England. ”

“ Lily could never understand why big girls spent so much good time in talking.
"Oh, yes!" cried Sue. "We must play, to get up an appetite for dinner; I've got one already, but I'll get another. What would you like to play, Clarice?"
"I don't care," said Clarice. "Anything you like."
"Oh, but do care, please!" cried Sue, imploringly; "because this is your picnic, really. We got it up for you; and we want you to have everything just as you like it; don't we, Mary?" 74
Mary assented civilly, and pressed Clarice to choose a game. ”

“ Bridget could not repress a moan of anguish at hearing the order. Christian, she reflected, was fatedly bound to fall into the trap, as he would return home unsuspecting. The three archers locked themselves up on the ground floor. The others, led by their chief, left the house, and, taking Bridget and her two children with them, marched away to lead them to prison.
"For mercy's sake," said the unhappy mother to the sergeant, "untie my hands that I may give my daughter the support of my arm. She is so feeble that it will be impossible for her to follow us." ”

“ It was what May wanted, or Gordon wanted, or Father wanted, or even what Katy and Mary in the kitchen wanted! Her time, her thoughts, her wishes—they had been as nothing compared to the time, thoughts, and wishes of everybody else in the house. Why, it had got so that they all thought nobody could do anything for them but Sister Sue. They had just got into the habit of thinking that Sister Sue must do everything. Even outside, among their friends, she was known as "Sister Sue," and was often called so.
And it was not right. It was a shame. Was she never to have a chance to live her own life? ”

“ It would have been so easy to ask him to dinner, so easy to keep him till midnight, so easy to prolong the sweetness of golden hours. But Grace was discreet. They were not lovers, only friends. She wanted to spin to its finest thread this season of sweet uncertainty, these exquisite hours on the threshold of Paradise. And then Sue might think him a bore. Sue was not overfond of masculine society. She liked to put her feet on a chair after dinner, and she sometimes liked a cigarette.
"I never smoke before men," she told Grace. "They think we do it to please, or to shock them." ”

“ But Sue did not. There are limits beyond which fortitude will not go, and those limits were most suddenly reached by the poor child. Her morning's early rising, her long walk to her place of business, her hard work when she got there; then her hurried run for the sick girl's lunch, her cruel betrayal, her very startling capture by Pickles; the fact that her hair had been cut off, her clothes changed, her very name altered, until she herself felt that she must really be somebody else, and not the Sue whom Giles loved. ”

“ I suppose we can,” said Sue, without enthusiasm.
“And aren’t we going to?”
“I don’t like to say no, dear Jude; but I feel just the same about it now as I have done all along. I have just the same dread lest an iron contract should extinguish your tenderness for me, and mine for you, as it did between our unfortunate parents.”
“Still, what can we do? I do love you, as you know, Sue.”
“I know it abundantly. But I think I would much rather go on living always as lovers, as we are living now, and only meeting by day. It is so much sweeter—for the woman at least, and when she is sure of the man. ”

“ He pictured her life, barren and wasted, without love. He pictured his own work, come to naught, a failure, because of the lack of her love and her presence as an incentive. He pictured themselves grown old with love and youth lost forever. As he drew it, it was a picture calculated to strike cold terror to the stoutest heart.
Sister Sue, caught up in the whirlwind of his wooing, was lifted to an exaltation of surrender and self-sacrifice that saw only love and the world well lost. And Martin Kent went away that evening with her promise to marry him in July. ”

“ Peter Harris, the rough man, trembled slightly. Sue found herself leaning against him. She knew quite well that his breath was coming fast.
"His disciples and Peter," she said to herself.
The street preacher had a magnificent voice. It seemed to roll above the heads of the listening crowd, or to sink to a penetrating whisper which found its echo in their hearts. The deep, wonderful eyes of the man had a power of making people look at him. Sue gazed with all her might and main.
"Father John be a good un," she said to herself. "He be the best man in all the world." ”

“ Sue protested, but was overruled. Clarice was determined, she said, to see how her little friend would look if she were properly dressed for once. In a few moments she was fastened into the blue muslin, and Clarice was telling her that she looked too perfectly sweet for anything.
"Now that is the way for you to dress, Sue Penrose. If I were you I should insist upon my mother's getting me a pair of stays to-morrow. Why, you look like a different girl. Why, you have an alegant figure—perfectly alegant!" ”

“ It was a new beginning of Sue's history. He projected his mind into the future, and saw her with children more or less in her own likeness around her. But the consolation of regarding them as a continuation of her identity was denied to him, as to all such dreamers, by the wilfulness of Nature in not allowing issue from one parent alone. Every desired renewal of an existence is debased by being half alloy. "If at the estrangement or death of my lost love, I could go and see her child—hers solely—there would be comfort in it!" said Jude. ”

“ Brother Ansel would make Fardie laugh, and Jack would love farmwork, and we'd all be so happy. I miss Fardie awfully! He did n't speak to me much, but I liked to look at his curly hair and think how lovely it would be if he did take notice of me and play with me.”
A sob from Susanna brought Sue, startled, to her side.
“You break my heart, Sue! You break it every day with the things you say. Don't you love me, Sue?”
“More'n tongue can tell!” cried Sue, throwing herself into her mother's arms. “Don't cry, darling Mardie! I won't talk any more, not for days and days! ”

“ Other people, their own friends and acquaintances, might stare and marvel a little at the metamorphosis in the bride. That, also, was to be expected. But at the worst it would be but a nine days' wonder, soon over. Then some other matter somewhere would claim their attention.
As for her own feelings in the matter—Sister Sue was experiencing the realization of a curious phenomenon; where before, ever since her talk with Martin Kent in February about leaving her father, she had been trying hard not to think, think, think, of Martin Kent, she was now conscious of no such effort on her part. ”

“ Susan said, satisfied that he should think so. "That doesn't give YOU any right to interfere with my affairs!"
"You're just like Georgie and Mary Lou," he told her, "always bluffing yourself. But you've got more brains than they have, Sue, and it'd give the whole crowd of them a hand up if you made a marriage like that. Don't think I'm trying to butt in," he gave her his winning, apologetic smile, "you know I'm as interested as your own brother could be, Sue! If you like him, don't keep the matter hanging fire. There's no question that he's crazy about you--everybody knows that!" ”