 Book 3, Part 1 of Susan by Ernest Old Meadow. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Transcriber's Note Some of the letters printed in Book 3 are found in the MS of the diary only in abridgments and one is missing altogether. The transcriber has copied them from the originals in Extenso and has inserted them in the proper places. Saint Virenique, Part 1 Monday, 4 p.m. At last! It's like coming home. I'm in my dear old room with the front window looking over the beck and the willows to the sea and the side window opening on the orchard. The trees have grown since last year and if I leaned out far enough there are three rosy apples that I could pluck straight from the branch as it sways in the soft wind. The dupoiriers are delighted I've come. Four things, considering the gorgeous summer they haven't been doing over well. Yet the hotel is sweeter than ever. Those stuffy velvet curtains that I always loathe have been taken out of the salon. It was a bit of a shock to see the summer house stripped of creepers and painted white, but if it's less picturesque it is also more possible. Last year I didn't dare to sit in it because of the earwigs. There's a new Marie. The old Marie with the red hair who wouldn't more than half fill my water jugs left only last week. The new Marie is a black-haired, black-eyed one and far nicer. There's a letter for me from Alice. And of course, there's a letter for Susan from the regrettable Ruddington. But I'm not going to bother with either of them till I've had a peep at the path that winds along the beck to the sea. In the summer house. I do wish Alice wouldn't. She's found out somehow that Ruddington was at the towers all through the last week of her visit. She's quite vicious about my running away. According to her first three pages I must get married some day and Lord Ruddington has been, so to speak, restored to the county by divine providence for the express purpose of taking pity on my old matehood. To scamper off to Saint Veronique is therefore to fly in providence's face. But according to Alice's fourth page my flight to France looks far more pointed than if I'd stolidly stuck at home. If a mere logical triumph were worth a single drop of ink I might twit Alice with the inconsistency. If it's true that the calculating cornice of my maiden flight has already put it into His Highness's head that I am one of the candidates, I might fairly claim Alice's praise instead of her blame. I shouldn't care so much if Alice weren't so insistently practical. She positively wants me to race back next week and she says she can even manage Hugh so that he'll bring her with him and do his birds slaughtering at Traxelby instead of at Maxfield. No doubt she is confident that by October the second the bag will be twenty pheasants a dozen partridges and one Lord. I wonder what Alice would say if I wrote straight off and told her that Lord Ruddington, to my certain knowledge, has already disposed of his charms elsewhere. I wish I could tell her. It would be such hollow tiresome work arguing with her on every ground save the solid fact. Monday night The Lamb and Wolf's clothing gave me a bad twenty-four hours on the boat and in Dieppe, but he has certainly done a power of good to Susan. She hasn't got over her surprise at my not giving her a lecture and a mighty scolding, and she's brimming over with silent gratitude. Hans' letter is irritating, but in a sense rather nice. I didn't ask Susan to show it to me. I thought it would keep very well till to-morrow. But Susan has laid it inside my blotting-case. Rather graceful of her, unless she's afraid that a personal delivery of it would remind me of Mr. John Lamb and wake up a dormant volcano. Here is the letter. Ruddington Towers, Saturday, September 8th, 1906. My dear Susan, I may begin this way, may I not? Your letter this morning has brought me unspeakable relief and happiness. When Thursdays and Fridays posts were blank, I hardly restrained myself from way-laying you at Traxelby. As it's utterly beyond me to thank you enough for your letter, I'll try a little grumbling instead. Is it not rather cruel to say that I must not write more than once a week? Once a week for a month means only four letters in all. And we be almost as much strangers when you come back as when you went away. When you come back, the words make my blood run faster. There like the refrain of a song. When you come back, there the music I shall march by and lift my life by till you come. I enter into all you say about giving you a quiet month to think and to decide. I understand and I admire it. And yet it's almost more than I can stand. You know where you are. To have the power to join you in a few hours, and yet to be forced to serve a month's imprisonment in England, is well nigh too much for flesh and blood. As I lay down your letter this morning, I realized that by riding hard across Ruddington Heath I could have caught you for a moment at the station. But I set your sovereign command before my eyes and stayed at home. Aught you not to be very nice to me for being so good and obedient? For example, don't I deserve a long letter on Tuesday? Till you come back and for ever, Ruddington, P.S., do not be angry with me for what I am going to say, although I put it in a post-script it is uppermost in my thoughts. Pray don't think I'm about to try and coax you out of your month's reflection. Long and hard though I shall find it I say, have the month by all means. And is it necessary that you should pass the month in your present conditions? It tortures me to know that while I live this month in comfort and leisure, you will often find it difficult even to snatch the time for one weekly letter. Now that I know that no one else has won you, take my word for it, dearest, that no one ever shall. Susan is going to be my Susan, even if I have to take her by storm. What follows? From the moment of reading your letter I promoted myself to be your protector to our life's end. How then can I tolerate you remaining for another hour in a servile position for which you were never born, into which some hateful freak of fate has thrust you, and out of which it is the greatest honour of my life to rescue you? It maddens me that perhaps at this very moment you are being ordered about and made to fetch and carry for somebody who isn't fit to lace your shoes. Doing this you can easily be angry, but bear with me. There are so many ways in which a thing like this could be arranged without unseemliness, and surely nothing can be more unfitting than that you should be distracted from so solemn a decision by a fussy pressure of petty tasks. I entreat you to give me the great happiness of setting you free, are? His gentle lordship does not condescend to state whether, in the event of Susan being set free, he will forthwith send me, carriage-paid, a new maid as fanciable and wholesome as Susan, with feet that move about like Susan's as quietly as two mice. But of course, as I'm merely somebody not fit to lace Susan's shoes, I don't count. Tomorrow they'll be the worry of sending off an answer. What will he say when he sees Susan's own handwriting? And how shall we explain the first letter being in mine? I suppose Susan had better make a clean breast of it. I expect his infatuation is proof even against Susan's blots and pothooks. Now for bed. Mardi, midi moins car. I have drunk coffee with a big bright soup spoon out of a little white bowl with pink roast-butts inside a doubt. Also I have eaten four croissant and a shameful quantity of Normandy butter. This was at eight o'clock. Since then I have followed the beck all the way to the sea, have bathed, have climbed the cliff, and have been to the post office for stamps. Through the window I can see Giorgette placing a blinding cut glass decanter, a fresh-drawn foamy cider full in the sun, on my table in the orchard. As Susan would say, a feeling came over me were the beck runs past the poplars. I couldn't help stamping my heel on the ground and saying, It is true that I am back in Normandy. After lunch there'll be my letter to Alice. I shan't say anything about Ruddington except that she mustn't go on being a tease. Then there'll be Susan's letter to the Lord of Burley. It would be inhuman to make him wait for it any longer. Giorgette has just brought out a melon. Its minutes are numbered. I haven't felt so hungry for ages. I wonder what Mr. Lamb is doing and what yarn he has spun at Amelia Road. Poor Gibson, too. If I were Susan I think I'd send him just a Saint-Veronique postcard. Néograsias, c'est servi. Tuesday night. I am like a bird in a net. After lunch Susan came to me and begged pardon for asking if I hadn't forgotten the post. No, I answered. It doesn't go out for five hours. By the way, Susan, what are you going to say to Lord Ruddington? Her face fell. Please, miss, she said. I was thinking. Perhaps you would write the letter for me. No, Susan, I replied promptly. I can't do that. If talking it over will help you, I'm willing. I don't mind even scribbling something out in pencil, but I can't write it. Surely it's bad enough that he's had one letter in my hand writing. I wouldn't have had it happen for the world. Besides, you'll have to write the letters yourself before long, so why not face it at once? We shall need to think out some way of explaining to him why the other handwriting was different. While I was speaking Susan was becoming more and more agitated, and when I ceased she didn't answer. Come, Susan, I said kindly. She began to weep. Oh, miss, she sobbed. On Friday I told you a lie. I told you I didn't copy it out in my own writing because I didn't think. She stopped. Well, I said after I had waited long enough. I thought, miss, sobbed Susan. I thought. I was afraid if he saw my writing he might give me up. And what you'd wrote looked so beautiful and ladylike, miss, that she couldn't go on. Susan, I said, you've acted very wrongly. You've done wrong to me and you've deceived Lord Ruddington. Worse still, you've done wrong to yourself. If he really cared for you he wouldn't have been turned away by bad writing. But he won't admire deceit. You've taken the first step on the wrong path and you don't know what will be the end. I am getting to be a practiced preacher. Since last Thursday I've laid down more of the moral law than all the rest of my life. Susan heard me in meekness. I know it was wicked, she said. But oh, miss, do please, please, write the letter today. It won't be many times more. If I do it one time more I expect I shall have to do it fifty. Susan looked mysterious. No, miss, she said with assurance, not fifty. Why not? I asked. And after some pressing Susan confessed that she has snatched five hours from sleep since Friday for the express purpose of conforming her penmanship to the pattern of mine. She showed me some specimens and I was astonished at the advance she had made. Well, Susan, I said at last, I don't like it at all and I'm very angry with you. But if there's any prospect of your going on improving like this in your writing perhaps it will be as well for me to write your next two or three letters. Then I shan't need to be brought into the affair so far as Lord Ruddington is concerned at all. Susan's gratitude was touching. I'll never forget how good you've been to me, miss, she said choking down a sob. Fine charrette, I said, while she's clearing the table bring down my writing case. We'll do it under the trees. Susan danced off with a skittiness that surprised me. When she came back I asked her what she had decided to say. I was thinking, miss, she said, you might say how nice it would have been if he'd galloped over the heath to the station. And don't you think, miss, he would like to hear how we thought he was Mr. Lamb? Never a word to him about Mr. Lamb as long as you live, Susan, I said peremptorily. As for the heath it would have been very wrong of him. But how are you going to answer his post-script, this long bit at the end, all about your leaving me at once? Leaving you, miss?" asked Susan, mystified. Yes, I said, looking at her. Don't you see? Lord Reddington wants you to leave me at once. Her face flushed with such genuine trouble that I forgave Susan everything and took her back into my heart. Oh, no, miss, she cried. I didn't understand he meant that. I wouldn't ever do that. That Susan had taken the post-script to mean I have no notion. Nor do I know yet whether, in the near future, I shall be expected to give Susan and her spouse a suite of rooms at Tlaxelby, or whether she will offer me a housekeeper's place at the towers. It is plain that she does not entertain the idea of our being parted. I said, Lord Reddington doesn't like to think that you are, well, in any sense a servant. To put it plainly, he wants to find you money so that you can begin to lead a lady's life at once. It does him credit. But Susan, of course, you can't take money from him. Have you saved anything? Susan says she has saved thirty pounds, and nothing could be sounder than the quickness and firmness with which she decided that cash transactions with Lord Reddington just now are unthinkable. Nor can anything be more indisputable than her unweakened devotion to myself. You can go upstairs and practice handwriting, I told her. Come down in about half an hour, and I shall have some sort of a letter ready. But two half hours passed and vain attempts to produce an epistle proper to Susan's temperament and intellect. I've realized this afternoon that I can never write a play. I tried hard to think and feel as Susan must think and feel, but I could only think and feel on my own account. At the end of an hour and a half, the best I had been able to achieve was this. ST. VIRENIQUE, TUESDAY Yes, you may call me dear Susan, but you must not say my until it is true. You say it was good of you not to ride over the heath to the station. If you had done it, I should have been grieved. We had a smooth crossing from New Haven, and we stayed till Monday morning in the app. I like ST. VIRENIQUE, and do not want to spend my month anywhere else. I am not angry with you for saying what you do about setting me free. How could I be anything but grateful for an offer that is so kindly meant and so delicately made? To ease you of your kind fears on my account, let me tell you that I have always been happy with Miss Langley, and that during this month I shall have little work and plenty of leisure. I look forward to receiving another letter from you on Monday. Susan breaks. End of Book 3, Part 1. Book 3, Part 2 of Susan by Ernest Old Meadow. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. ST. VIRENIQUE, PART 2 It's beautiful, Miss, said Susan dejectedly after she had perused my effort, and she sat looking up into the sky the picture of disappointment and indecision. I went to the rescue. Say what's on your mind, Susan. There's a but, isn't there? It's beautiful, but what? I was thinking, confessed Susan blushfully, that it isn't. Isn't what? It isn't. Very loving. Loving, I said, what do you mean? Why, here you are spending a month deciding whether you can try to care for Lord Reddington or not. It isn't time yet to be loving. No, persisted Susan, but I mean, Miss, won't he be disappointed? He can't help that. You might as well say that he's disappointed because you don't pack your box and go straight off to Reddington Towers. Susan was unconvinced. What did you say yourself, Susan, last week? Didn't you say that it wouldn't be good for him to throw yourself at his head? When Susan had first used it the expression had irritated me, but it came in handily. Susan however thought otherwise. A spirit of revolt entered her soul, and I perceived the beginnings of her new pout. Do as you like, Susan, of course, I said. It's your affair, not mine. But don't go and make another muddle as you did with Mr. John Lamb. It went home. Indeed, I'm not sure that Mr. John Lamb wasn't, so to speak, a wolf with a silver lining. The merest whisper of his soft and innocent name is enough to scare Susan into the extreme of docility. Oh, no, miss, she said hurriedly. The letter's beautiful, but don't you think—what? Don't you think, miss, it would be nice to ask for his photograph and a lock of his hair? While I was fighting down an impulse to laugh outright, it struck me that the photograph was rather a happy thought. With his photograph to study I should at least be spared panicky announcements and dreadful feelings whenever Susan saw a strange Englishman at St. Veronique. Besides, I had no little curiosity to see what this mad Lord Ruddington might be like. A lock of hair is ridiculous, I said. You must have been reading some trashy novelette. But a photograph's different. I'm glad you've thought of it. After all, Susan, you mightn't care to marry even Lord Ruddington if you found he was dreadfully ugly. Give me back the letter and I'll add a post-script. I wrote, P.S., I feel that I haven't written you much of a letter, but there is so little to lay hold of. As I said before, you have seen me, but I have never seen you. Will you not send me your photograph? When it comes, perhaps I shall remember that I have seen you after all. Where was it that you saw me? Taking a little more liberty than was her want, Susan piqued shyly over my shoulder while I wrote. As I put down the pen, she heaved a deep sigh of unaffected satisfaction. It's lovely, Miss," she said fervently. That's just what I must have meant, that part about wondering where he saw me, only I couldn't explain it. And it's put so short and ladylike. Don't say ladylike, Susan," I said. Give me an envelope. I wrote out Lord Ruddington's name and address in the style of handwriting I had used throughout the letter. It was my own writing, but a little bigger, inkier, and slower than usual. You see, Susan," I explained, I'm meeting you halfway. By the time you's had a letter or two from me written like this, you ought to be able to do something pretty near it yourself. Now go upstairs and bring down those French stamps. They're in my green bag. While Susan was upstairs I took the letter out of the envelope and glanced through it once more. When I got as far as, I have always been happy with Miss Langley, the oddities struck me irresistibly. It was quite too comically reminiscent of the letters which girls used to write under the governess's eye and at the governess's dictation protesting their ideal happiness at school. There was just time. I picked up the pen and wrote sideways along the margin of the letter. I suppose you think my mistress calls me Briggs. When Susan arrived with the stamps the letter was back in its envelope, the flap was gummed down and I was blinking peacefully at the sunlight on the sea. Wednesday noon. I suppose it's true that every country gets the government it deserves, but the maxim like nearly all the maxims I've ever heard is a heartless one. Without doubt France just now has got the government which France deserves as a whole, but the whole is made up of parts, and unless my travels have misled me there must be thousands of parts of France like St. Véronique. I have seen a dozen myself, rural communities, working hard and living decently, with the slated spire of their hoary Paris church looking down upon them as it looked down ages ago on their direct ancestors who first drained the valleys and set vines upon the hillsides. Here live and toil the men and more remarkable still. Here live and toil and suffer the women whose hard earnings are the war chest of France when the professional politicians of Paris wantonly thrust the nation into some vain, glorious adventure. Here was made and saved the treasure with which the invader was bought out when his armies were everywhere masters of French soil. And here are bred the supplies of sound human stuff, the healthy bodies, the healthy souls, to redress the awful balance of the towns and to save France from becoming a ruin amid stinging weeds and insolent poppies. Even an atheist statesman, if he's as truly a statesman as he's truly an atheist ought to know that in striking at the village churches he is striking at the heart of French rural life and that in wounding French rural life in a vital spot he will be severing our trees where Bismarck and Von Maltke only lance small veins. This morning has made me so sad. The sweet little white convent is shut up, the garden is full of nettles, two of the chapel windows are broken, the nuns are in England and the lawyers have grown fat on the pickings. At the church the statue of Saint Veronica over the west door has a broken arm, snapped off on the day of the inventory. Meanwhile the weeks are drifting by and for all the old curate knows he will be saying mass in a barn before the winter is half over. I mean to say now and again what France's million officials from the president of their so free republic down to the Saint Veronique postman dared say publicly and aloud in this land of liberty I mean to say God save France. Thursday afternoon. I wish Master Rudy's photograph would come. This morning about eleven a young Englishman suddenly walked in with a knapsack. The funny thing was that he didn't come by the road. He marched here straight from the beach as if he'd just been thrown up by Jonah's whale. He was a nice boy and quite all right. Not another Mr. John Lamb. It seems he's tramping a hundred miles along the coast by the cliff path and the sands. He was dying to talk to me at lunch. Indeed he looked even hungrier and thirstier for human companionship than for his omelet a roast chicken and cider which is saying a very great deal. Now that it's too late I'm sorry I didn't let him talk. All the time he was here Susan was nearly as silly as she was on the boat. She got it into her head that as Ruddington wrote here on Saturday thinking we were coming straight through he must have been upset when Tuesday morning came without a letter and that therefore the pretty boy with the knapsack was certainly he. I was obliged to be very sharp with her. Heaven send the photograph soon because I will admit to this diary when Susan has a feeling I can't help catching the complaint. Before dinner. It's just come. The photograph and a letter as well. He says the photograph was only taken yesterday morning. It's a local thing not retouched so I suppose we can depend on it as a faithful likeness. If so I must say I like him tremendously. Susan is disappointed that he has no mustache. He looks like a young and fresh version of some handsome and benevolent judge or cardinal. He isn't the least bit flabby or silly looking as I expected. He has a scholar's head but he's evidently a man of energy as well as of thought. I should say he has a tremendous will of his own. He doesn't look the sort to have fallen over years in love with a china shepherdess like Susan at first sight. But there's the fact. And although the stupid girl can't see it and never thought he would be like that miss I don't know many women that wouldn't feel it a compliment to have him in love with them either at the first sight or the second or the fiftieth. He looks handsome without being dandified and brainy without being dry. His letter this time is less old fashioned and more easy. He says. Mâchère Susan. You have commanded me not to say my dear Susan and behold I obey. I'm sorry to say it but my dear Susan I mean Mâchère Susan has a hard heart. Her letter to tell me that she's landed safe in Normandy without being shipwrecked or run over by a motor car only reached me this Wednesday morning and if I hadn't ridden into Durningham and fished it out of the post office I shouldn't have got it till tomorrow. If Susan were kind she would have sent one line on Sunday. It is an enormous relief to know that you are not hard worked or unhappy. When I saw Miss Langley with you once outside Traxelby Church and twice in the street I thought she seemed rather nice though to tell the truth I didn't waste time looking at Miss Langley when I could spend it looking at Susan. Now about this horrible photograph. I've always hated photography and always shall but your commands must be obeyed. So I went into the studio of the Durningham artist. The artist was a pasty-faced youth in a velvet coat with bironic curls that must take hours every night. He wanted to do his worst and to turn out something elaborate that wouldn't be ready for a week but I gave him a maximum of three hours and he has handed me the enclosed. I expect a long answer to this telling me all your doings by return of post and I shall be the most injured man in all England if Susan's own photograph is not enclosed with her long letter. More than ever I am your Ruddington. I like this letter Susan I said putting it down again on the table. Yes, Miss, said Susan without enthusiasm. And after a pause she added, But don't you think, Miss, it begins rather funny? No, I answered. I think the beginning is rather neat. You've forgotten. In our last letter we told him he might call you dear Susan, but he mustn't call you my. So instead of calling you my he says he's going to call you ma. Is that it? asked Susan pouting. Well I don't think I like it. That's what my Uncle Bob used to call my Aunt Martha. Your Uncle Bob? I echoed stupefied. Yes, Miss, he called my Aunt Ma and she called him Pa. I don't like it, Miss, it sounds common. When I had recovered enough gravity I tried for the twentieth time to give Susan a rudimentary lesson in French. She endured my efforts with deference. But underneath I could see that her rustic British prejudice against France and all things French is unshaken. I honestly believe that in Susan's opinion, to have set foot in France at all is a slight lapse from propriety and a loss of the finest bloom from the soft cheek of one's maiden virtue. In France the silly creature won't even touch beef just because of some stupid tale of Gibson's about a roast horse. She firmly believes that out-and-out Frenchmen eat bullfrogs, toasted whole on a fork, and that the French language is a ludicrous disability imposed on the natives by a strictly protestant deity as a just punishment for being papists and foreigners. Susan doesn't intend to lower herself by learning French any more than by learning to stammer or to swear. What about your photograph, Susan? I inquired, changing the subject. You see he wants one. Did you happen to bring one with you? No, miss. It's two years since I had it took. Taken not took. Then what are you going to do? I don't know, miss. You ought to oblige him, I said. Don't be so limp. Look at the trouble he took to get you his own portrait the very same day. I'm almost sure there's a photographer at Grand Pond. Madame will know. It's only three miles. We'll go in the morning. Oh, no, miss! Susan fluttering suddenly into liveliness. Not in France, miss. Why not in France? I shouldn't like to be photographed in France, miss, said Susan decidedly. For a moment I almost felt as if I had proposed mixed bathing to the rector's virgin aunt. To be photographed in France sounded a degree or two worse than going to church de Coltet. But a moment later I felt impatient and annoyed. Be well, Susan, I said shortly. You may be sure I don't want to drag myself to Grand Pond. Do whatever you please. As usual she became immediately and amply and sincerely penitent. It was very kind of you, miss, she said humbly. You're always good to me. But I feel I couldn't go and be photographed in France. Then don't go and be photographed in France, I said. Still ruffled. So far as I'm concerned it settled and done with. Now I want to read the newspaper. I could see with half an eye that there were unaccountable things which Susan was yearning to talk over, but I was nearly at the end of my good nature. With the little that remained I tried to let Susan down gently. I picked up Lord Ruddington's photograph again and said, At any rate you can't find much fault with his looks. No miss, responded Susan tepidly, but I did think he would have a moustache. Friday Sunrise An apple branch has tapped at my window and a lark is singing eagerly in the near sky. This shall be a good day, as rosy as the apple's cheeks has blithe as the lark's song. I hereby register a vow against Ruddington and all his words and works. We needn't send him his answer till tomorrow. So today Susan shan't mention him and I won't even think of him. Somebody's left a clean new cheap copy of Leschewan here. How I shall love reading it again. Except while I'm bathing and eating and sleeping I mean to sit and read it on the cliffs all day. End of Book 3, Part 2 Book 3, Part 3 of Susan by Ernest Old Meadow This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Saint Véronique, Part 3 After Breakfast After all Susan is awfully sweet. One can't stand aloof from her long. While she was downstairs before breakfast allowing Jarjet to practice on her in broken English I went into her room to find a pair of scissors. As usual it was as neat and nice as if it hadn't been slept in. But the thing that struck me was a leather photograph frame on the mantelpiece. I recognized the frame. It was a double one which I had given Susan because I hated the color. In the left hand compartment Susan had placed the newly arrived photograph of Lord Ruddington and facing him on the right hand was me. It was that thing I got done last Easter. Until this morning I'd forgotten that Susan had pleaded for a copy in that I had let her have one for her album. Suddenly to catch sight of myself beaming affectionately across the hinges of the frame at an equally affectionate looking Lord Ruddington was certainly a shock. But that Susan should have brought me all the way from England and have stuck me on her mantelpiece was another proof though none was needed of her genuine devotion. I took the frame down and held it open in my hands. It was ducomical. Susan and I are placed in ovals like the August young personages in a royal wedding supplement to an illustrated paper and we are looking at one another with the most absurd happy couple air imaginable. Though I say it as shouldn't we make an amazingly pretty pair. If Alice could see it she would begin to cry. I think I shat tell Susan that I've seen it. Noon. I haven't read much of the chouin. After my bath I kept Susan with me on the cliff. The grass was green, the sky was blue and the sea was both. It was lovely to lull on the flowers and to listen to the sea, its deep speech at the cliff's foot, its soft murmurs in the sunlit distance. Susan thinks Ruddington ought to tell her more about himself and his conditions of life both at the towers and in town. I think she's right. Now that she's getting used to her good fortune her talk has suddenly improved. She's dropping that raw and childish way of hers and some of the things she said were quite sensible. If she goes on improving like this she ought to be tolerably presentable at the month's end. No doubt it will take years to fail the gaping breaches in her knowledge and her mind can never, from its very nature, expand enough to make her an all-round companion for such a man as Ruddington seems to be. But I take it that a gain or two of common sense will be found mixed with his infatuation, and if so he will be prepared for a good deal of disenchantment. As for Susan she'll always be pretty and restful and docile and sweet, which means that if he is losing some things he is gaining others. Alas! Poor Gibson! I'm afraid his dreams are standing a poor chance of coming true. It's selfish of me not to have sent him a prudent line. I'll do it today. I'll tell him simply that all's well with Susan, and perhaps he will guess that all's up with himself. Eight o'clock. I walked alone this afternoon to Birini. The hamlet was deserted, or at least it looked so. The thatched black and white barn stood out sturdily in the bright strong light, and Birini wore all its old prosperous air. But there wasn't a single body to be seen. I suppose everyone was in the fields or gone to market. The church was open. I sat in it a few minutes. It was so cool and quiet. If I had felt suddenly tempted to steal an image or to rob the box of Peter's pence there was none to say me nay. The Birini churchyard looked sweeter than ever. I like it better than any other I have seen in France because it is full of natural shrubs and flowers. There are hardly any of those frightful wire crosses and tin immortals and iron wreaths as big as cartwheels such as you see in dozens everywhere else. And the Birini churchyard isn't trist. As you sit on the warm stone platform of the Calvary you look down over the orchard to the facing uplands, pastures of green velvet wildly embroidered with a million yellow flowers. Even the graves are not melancholy. It doesn't seem any more dreadful that the men and women of Birini should be fast asleep like children in the bosom of their mother earth in that last year's beach leaves and pine needles should be lying quietly under the ceaseless murmurs of this year's cool and shady green. Cheerful sounds arise from the valley as you sit and look down. There is blue smoke curling from one or two of the chimneys. Between the surges of light wind you can just hear the voice of the beck as it sings on its way down to St. Veronique. No, Birini churchyard is not melancholy, for in the midst of death you are in life. There is a strange thing about some of the gravestones which I didn't notice when I was here before. Or rather, I oughtn't to call them stones, they are woods. Over the humbler tombs stand rude memorials each consisting of two short, slightly ornamented posts with a short broad plank fastened between. The plank is painted white, and upon it in black letters are displayed the name and age and birth and death dates of the man or woman asleep below. At the bottom of each inscription there is an abbreviated formula which puzzled me sorely. It runs R, D, P, SVP. Not until I had almost given up trying to guess what it might mean was the riddle solved. Behind the chancel I found a larger and newer grave on which the legend was spelt out at large and full. Une des profondes s'il vous plaît. It filled my eyes so full with sudden tears that the solid world seemed to be wavering and dissolving as I beheld it. And at the same time the dim, mysterious world beyond seemed suddenly clear and near. It was no longer the wind in the pines that I heard, it was a multitudinous whispering of spirit voices pleading close to my ear. If you please. I am wondering tonight whether I ever really and truly believed until to-day in the immortality of the soul. I am wondering whether I have ever done more than ascent to the doctrine mechanically as a part of my childhood's creed and as a postulate on which rest many familiar things in our literature and civilization. Yes, and no. In a sense I have believed, in a sense I have not. Until to-day I have only thought of the disembodied soul in one or other of three different ways. I have thought of the soul as a called abstraction, a philosopher's name for an antithesis to the body. Again after I have listened to ghost tales I have thought of it ignombly, as a horror, a scary, frightful spook, a foul shape of night swooping horribly across the short, sunlit path of our little life to remind us of the immeasurable cold and unending dark beyond. Last of all, after some stately obsequies, I have thought of the soul as living some supernal, gothic life in a churchly heaven. A heaven where the sky is not a dome, but a pointed roof resounding forever and ever and ever with Gregorian chants. That is to say, at the best I have imagined the soul clothed in a medieval vestment and living exaltedly in an incalculable remoteness from today's crowded world of living and breathing women and men. Adé profundis, if you please. I suppose many people would find the if you please either ludicrous or irreverent or both. At one time I might not have found anything in it myself beyond a charming rustic naivete, but this afternoon the truth rushed over me in a flood. The souls of the faithful departed are not 13th century souls. They are not the shivering, pitiable ghosts such as engaged the fancy of savagement ten thousand years ago or the still weaker brains of the spiritualists of yesterday. They are not mere fictions of the philosopher invented for convenience of argument. They live and rejoice and sorrow in an intensity of present being. Tonight I believe in the communion of saints. They exist as truly as the little black-haired child exists who stuffed me outside Birini and said, s'il vous plaît, when she asked me the time, as truly as Jargette, when she says, if you please, and lays the cloth, as truly as Susan, when she says, please do please miss, over a letter to Ruddington. This afternoon I couldn't say a day profundus for the departed faithful of Birini because I'm too much of a heathen to have been taught it. But before Sunday I mean to buy a paroisien containing all these things in French and Latin. When I say my day profundus, can it do them any good? I don't know. Millions of people say it can't, but more millions of people say it can, and if I make a mistake I would rather make it in giving than in withholding, just as it is better to say yes to the beggar who may waste your six pence on beer than to say no to the beggar who may lie down and die for what of bread. Bedtime What an irony! This is the day when there was to be no Ruddington, the day that was to be as rosy as apples and as blithe as a lark. As for Ruddington I have only just finished rereading his letter which Susan has put by way of a hint in my writing case. As for rosiness and blithe-ness I've spent my afternoon and evening like hervy. I wonder if anybody ever read any more of his book than the title in Meditations Among the Tombs. My day has been ghost-wan, tomb silent. No, it has been as full of colour and of sound as could be, but the cutters have been the grand and solemn hues of autumn and the sounds have been majestical as organs and trumpets. Today I have not been gay, but I have been happy and I can't name any day at St. Veronique that I repent of less than this. Saturday Morning This is the answer I have written for Susan to send by the early post. Dear Lord Ruddington, I am so sorry that you were anxious about me, but you must not forget the bargain, and the bargain does not allow of long replies by return. Indeed, in writing this morning I am breaking my own rule. When this is posted I shall have received and answered two letters in one week. Do not think me grudging are cold-blooded and standing fast to our arrangement. If letters are too frequent they will be shortened scrappy and thus they will fail of their object. For example, nothing could be more devoted and kind than your two notes this week, but they tell me so little about yourself and hardly anything at all about your daily life, your thoughts, your work, your interests. At present I know no more about you than all tracks will be new before you came to the towers. It is true there is the photograph, which I like very much, though you don't in the least resemble the picture my mind had formed. You were good to take all that trouble in Durningham so as to get it done so quickly. Unfortunately I have no photograph of myself here and there is no artist, not even a pasty-faced one in St. Véronique. But why should you want my portrait if you have seen me three times? I shan't expect an answer from you by return, but I shall expect your next week's letter to tell me more about yourself and your life. Yours sincerely, Susan Briggs. Susan thinks my letter is beautiful as usual, or if she doesn't think so she says she does. But to know that she needed to be photographed in France has lifted such a weight off her spirits that she is prepared to be delighted with everything. After the first shock and the second explanation she went up into heaven at finding that it was proper to say, Dear Lord Reddington, perhaps she expected me to begin the letter by calling him Pa. It's all very amusing, but I must keep a watch on myself lest I take it too prankishly. After the future lady Reddington had graciously signified her approval of my reply to her noble owner she went upstairs for her hat and while she was away a madcap impulse got the better of me just as it did on Tuesday. I picked up the pen and wrote along the margin. I was amused about those bironic girls. But what do you know about them taking hours to do at night? Now that it's too late and Susan is on her way to the post office I do wish I hadn't said it. For half a dozen reasons it was a mad thing to do. This portrait is still facing mine in the leather frame. I took a peep at it just now when I came upstairs for this diary and we've still got the same sort of a good morning dear honeymoon expression. I positively blushed and put it down again as if it had been red hot. I must see that Susan plods away at her handwriting or rather at mine. It's plain now that Reddington is in love with Susan and that he means to marry her. Also it's plain that Susan means to marry Lord Reddington whether she succeeds in falling in love with him or not. Up to the present no great harm is done but I must wriggle out of the affair somehow before his letters become intimate and affectionate. Poor, poor Gibson. I've written him a line and shall post it myself. Sunday noon. For the sake of his peace of mind let us hope that Reddington is low church. If he isn't Susan will soon be on his nerves. There's precious little kneeling down and standing up by the Saint-Byrannique parish mass but this morning I had to prod or pluck at Susan half a dozen times. When we came out she made wistful comparisons with Traxelby and declared that she did so miss a nice service. Perhaps Reddington is neither low nor high. He says that one of the times when he saw Susan was in church but Traxelby isn't his parish so he must have been hunting Susan not saving his soul. I've given up wrestling with a chouin. I'd forgotten the early part was so dry. Besides it's nicer to pot her about and think and dream not to mention that novel reading is wicked on a Sunday. Monday morning. Susan has been difficult again. I'm sorry for her. Last night she suddenly developed the liveliest interest in dress. In the past she hasn't been a girl to care excessively about it. That's why she has always looked so nice. But last night she said, I have been thinking miss, what ought I to wear the first time I go to see him? You mean Susan, I answered, what ought you to wear the first time he comes to see you? Yes miss, said Susan absently. I was thinking it would be nice if I had one of those cherry colored zeffers with elbow sleeves and a white sash. I smiled. Do you think you can depend on yourself not to blush Susan? I asked, when he looks at you and speaks to you. Oh no miss, I can't, answered Susan in a panic. I shall be sitting all the time, wanting the ground to open and swallow me. Then I don't think you should go in for anything cherry colored, I suggested, and I tried to go on with lechouin. Perhaps blue alpaca would be better miss, broke out Susan again after long reflection. Blue alpaca made plain with a little train. I could wear that lace collar you gave me miss and have my hair done more on the top of my head. You'd look very nice I'm sure Susan, I replied, but if I were you I shouldn't do anything of the kind. I suppose it will be at the Grange that you'll see him first. Some arrangement will have to be made. If so, it ought to please him best to see you as he saw you at Traxelby Church. I went on again with lechouin, or to be strictly truthful, I fixed my eyes again on the page. I beg your pardon miss, Susan began humbly after five minutes of quiet, but shall we be married in Traxelby Church? Most decidedly not, I answered so emphatically that Susan positively jumped. I haven't the ghost of a notion where in the world you'll be married. But it mustn't be Traxelby. Lord Reddington will propose some suitable arrangement and I shall see that it is satisfactory. Besides, all this can be talked over later on. It will be time enough to choose where you'll be married to Lord Reddington when you've made up your mind whether you're going to marry him at all. The bride began to pout. I decided swiftly that it was high time to bring matters to a head. Traxelby Church indeed. As likely as not Susan would expect me to be a bridesmaid with Uncle Bob giving her away and Aunt Martha calling him Paul. So I shut up the chihuah with a snap and put the question straight. Tell me, Susan, have you made up your mind? If you've settled it that you mean to marry Lord Reddington we shall know where we are. The pout vanished and she hung her head. At last she answered. Yes, Miss, I mean I'm not sure yet, Miss, but I'm sure that I shall be sure before long. Sure that you'll marry him. Yes, Miss, I mean I think I shall. I could get no more out of her and in the end I turned surlier and snappier than I care to remember. Susan went to bed looking miserable. This morning my conscience woke up as early as I did. Here for it was wide awake while I was still half asleep and I groped out into consciousness with a sense of recent meanness and unkindness to Susan. The more I woke the clearer I saw how natural it was of Susan who knows no French and can speak with nobody here save me to want to talk frocks. When she came in at seven o'clock to open the curtains I said in my friendliest tone, Well, Susan, I suppose you've decided to be married in white with orange blossoms and a veil. To my consternation she remained at the window and did not turn round. Then she plunged for the door into her own room and as she seized the handle I heard a sob. I jumped up and followed her to the threshold. Come, come, Susan, I said, you mustn't have such a thin skin. I never meant to hurt your feelings. You haven't, Miss," sobbed Susan, standing near me but not showing her face. It isn't you, Miss, but I can't bear it. You can't bear what? All of it, Miss, none of it. I woke up and thought about it in the night. It's dreadful. I couldn't guess what Susan couldn't bear or what it was that was dreadful and it didn't seem wise to press her, so I said nothing. You'll take cold, Miss," she cried when she cast her first glance at me and she bundled me back into bed. I told her that she didn't have her breakfast with Georgette and that she ought to drink chocolate instead of coffee. You'd better have a quiet day," I added. This matter is getting on your brain. Give it a rest. That was one reason why I wanted you to wait a whole month. There's no need to brood over day and night. The month has till three weeks to run. She dried her eyes and was ever so grateful, but I am puzzled. Last night she seemed, as she has seemed all along, to take it as a matter of course that she will marry Reddington. Her attitude has been that of a pretty honest, modest, prosaic girl with an eye on the main chance. To find her suddenly awe-sensibility is a surprise. Probably it isn't sensibility. It's nerves. Too much coffee, not enough sleep. Too much of her own thoughts, not enough human fellowship at a time when she sorely needs it. Yet I can't overlook that she was disappointed with his photograph. It may well be that in her better moments my sweet Susan shrinks from marrying when she cannot love. Or is it that she is cowed by the difficulties of so huge a change in her rank and station? She shall have an easy day. End of book 3, part 3 Book 3, part 4 of Susan by Ernest Oldmeadow. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Saint Virenik, part 4 Tuesday, 10.15 a.m. The Lord Reddington would be speaking no more than the truth if he always signed himself Susan's most obedient servant. He has been as prompt with his pen and ink self's bitterness as he was with a pasty-faced artist's photograph. He says, Ma Susan, it is Monday morning. When I have finished this I shall have written you once this week, once last week, the Wednesday, and once the week before, on the Saturday. Yet I am scolded for breaking the rules. You must send me an exceptionally kind letter to soothe my wounded feelings. It was unpardonably careless of me not to forward full particulars and references when I first applied for the post of Protector to Susan. That I have today filled up a form and I'm enclosing it with this. References are kindly permitted to the Durningham photographer and to Mrs. Juggins, the housekeeper at Reddington Towers. I have taken conscientious pains to fill up the form correctly. For instance, I squandered a whole penny this morning weighing myself on an automatic machine at Durningham Station. To be precise I have squandered tuppence, because the first machine which I bribed refused to weigh me and insisted on presenting me with a bar of chocolate cream instead. The news that you can't send me your portrait is desolating. It is another reason why you must be extra kind. All your letters are precious. But I like the little bits you write up the sides best. Why can't I have a letter made up of little side bits only? Reddington The enclosed form is a formidable-looking sheet of blue force cap divided into columns for questions and answers. It reads SB No. 999 1. Names. Christian and surname, with title or titles, if any. Henry Reginald Westerch and Ashley, Ninth Baron, Reddington. 2. Addressed or Addresses. Reddington Towers, Sussex. Ashley House, St. Michael Square, South Wales. Ballymore Castle, County Kerry. 3. Age. 23. 171. 3. 65. Years. 4. Has applicant had whooping cough? He has heard so. 5. Or measles, if so, how many? 1. 6. Weight. 10 stone, 8 pounds, includes 2.1739 ounces of letters from Suzanne in left-side breast pocket at time of weighing. 7. Can applicant read? No need to, Suzanne Socelldom writes. 8. Can applicant write? Yes, once a week. 9. What are applicant's politics? Not Tory, conservative. More liberal than the liberals, less radical than the radicals. 10. What are applicant's pursuits? Waiting for Suzanne's letters. Until last month spent leisure studying Spanish history and literature. 11. Personal appearance. Quite as bad as turning in photograph. Probably worse. 12. Hair. Brownish black or blackish brown. 13. Eyes. Blue. 14. Does applicant ride? Every day. 15. Does applicant swim? Yes. 16. Does applicant fish? Yes. 17. Does applicant hunt? Not much. 18. Does applicant swear? Now and then. Is prepared to give it up. 19. Does applicant drink? Half a bottle of Claret twice a day. 20. Does applicant smoke? Not before 1.50 p.m. If Suzanne objects he confesses that he objects to her objecting. 21. Has applicant a motor-car? Hates them, but will learn to love them if Suzanne does. 22. Additional remarks. This bad-tempered, impatient, obstinate, and self-opinionated, has no first-hand knowledge of the time it takes to prepare a bironic or other girl's anites, has not been in love before, hasn't a past, and hasn't a future either unless it's to be spent with Suzanne. I don't know yet what Susan thinks of these documents. She has left them on my table without remark. At the first glance I didn't like them. They smacked too much of the funny man laboring to be smart. But after a second reading I liked them. After all, the poor boy couldn't very well sit down with a serious face and write out his own testimonial in cold ink. His wit might be sprightlier, but I begin to discern the gravity underlying it. His way of bringing it in that he has no past, no entanglements, no old flames is skillful and considerate. Perhaps this is the very point Susan has been worrying about. Who knows? Perhaps she has been fearing that she isn't the first simple beauty that his lordship has taken by storm. Perhaps she thinks he's an old-style lord with a pretty taste in milk-mates and therefore not much better than a new-style lord with a nasty appetite for ladies of the ballet. Whatever am I to say if Susan asks me what he means by the little bits written up the sides? Tuesday 3 p.m. My bathe made me tired. I shan't go out again to-day. Susan is wooden-headed past belief. I was amused for a few moments at the odd comments she made on Ruddington's letter, but her dullness grows monotonous. She began, Don't you think, Miss, that—that he writes rather strange? What do you mean? I asked. I mean Miss, whispered Susan mysteriously. Do you think he's quite right in his head? Well, Susan, I answered, when one looks at the way he runs after a girl whom he's never spoken to I admit it does make one wonder if he isn't a bit mad. Susan pouted. I mean his letter, Miss, she said, in this big blue paper. As for his letter, Susan, I replied, I don't see much wrong with them. Aren't they bright and frank and kind? Why does he say Miss that he's named Henry? Only because Henry is his name. But lords don't have any names, Miss, do they? I mean they only have surnames. I asked for light. It was Mrs. Hobbs the cook that told me Miss, Susan explained. Mrs. Hobbs said that a lord could only have a surname, as it might be Ruddington, and the king could only have a Christian name, as it might be Edward. That's the difference, Miss, between a king and a lord. One can only have a Christian name and the other can only have a surname. So how can he be named Henry? When I had finished laughing I said, Susan, you remember Mrs. Hobbs dreadful Muslim sauce. Till today I would never have believed that there was any subject in the heavens above or in the earth beneath about which Mrs. Hobbs knew less than she did about cooking. I was wrong. If he's proper Lord Ruddington, Miss, I don't see how he can be named Henry, persisted Susan doggedly. I wonder, Miss, ought we to write to Mrs. Juggins? Mrs. Juggins? Yes, Miss, he says she's the housekeeper at the towers. Positively the stupid creature believed that Lord Ruddington had seriously referred her to an actually existing dame of the name of Juggins. Really, I haven't the patience to set down half the ridiculous things she said. She is certain that her letters don't weigh all those ounces. She is aghast at the bad temper and obstinacy which must truly be traced in Ruddington's character, because he admits it, Miss, himself. She is surprised that he should be brooding so bitterly over his wasted tuppence, though they do say, Miss, that the richer people are, the meaner they are in little things and that's why they've got rich. She is not romantically exalté at the news that he has never loved another, but she is grateful that he has got safely over the measles, because Uncle Bob had them after he was grown up and I did think, Miss, it looked so silly. And so on and so on and so on. At last I begged her to stop chattering and sent her away. I can't understand her. Susan has always been unsophisticated, but it seems something fresh for her to be vulgarly stupid and thick-headed. The outlook is disconcerting. My letter writing on her behalf gives Ruddington a false notion of her knowledge and her mental power. So long as she retains her charming simplicity no great harm will be done, for after he is disillusioned about her brains he can easily fall in love afresh with her naivete. But this flat-footed, hodge-like, charmless stupidity is quite another story. She's too stupid even to ask about the little side bits. Waiting for tea. It may be that the fears which kept Susan awake last night has frozen her wits. She has the air of dreading close quarters with this affair, of wanting to thrust it off an arm's length while she gets time to think. I mustn't be too hard on her. The girl is passing through an ordeal, and I am a poor substitute for a mother or even for a bosom friend. Wednesday morning. I have taken a resolve. There's been too much Ruddington. The inroads he makes on my Normandy rest cure are absurd. I get my sun-bath and sea-bath every day and that's all. It's time to put down my foot. Fortunately Susan agrees with me. She does not tell me why she has so suddenly fallen out of love with the idea of being raised to the peerage. It may be that she quails and shrinks from a destiny that is altogether out of scale with her nature. More probably it is some trifle such as Ruddington's mustachlessness. But although she gives no reasons, she agrees with me that it will be best to take the thing less busily for the next fortnight. I've pointed out to her that she knows as much about him now as she needs to know. It isn't as though she has to decide here at St. Véronique whether she will marry Lord Ruddington. She has only to settle whether she will let him see her next month face to face, whether she will let him press in person a suit which she will still be free to refuse. We have decided that I shall write him a letter today such as will keep him quiet and stop him bothering us. Then I shall be able to take a deep draft of my Normandy as I take deep drafts of the cider. I have been here well over a week and I hardly seem to have had one day free of him. Later. Here is my letter to her Henry and it's going to be posted whether Susan likes it or not. Dear Lord Ruddington, your letter and the big blue form amused me very much. It is interesting to have such an assortment of fresh facts about you, especially the obstinacy and the bad temper. It is good news that you hate motorcars. Nor should we become estranged over tobacco. But these are trifles, aren't they? I hope you will not think that I am taking myself too seriously or that I am unthankful for the trouble you take in writing such kind and open and lively letters. But now that I have your photograph and know so much more about you, I am conscious of a desire for a week or so of detachment from details. I feel that I would like to go about my ordinary life until some light breaks on me suddenly and of its own accord. The more I deliberately seek light the more it mocks and eludes me. I suppose the reason is that no amount of steadily making up one's mind can suffice instead of a free and voluntary motion of the heart. As you wrote to me on Monday you would not in any case be writing again till Monday next. I like to have your letters, but if you postpone your reply to this until rather late next week I shall have the better chance of deciding whether we ought to meet or not. Your sincerely, Susan Briggs. After lunch. The letter's gone. Susan says she likes it. I liked it too until it was dropped into the post-box. But at this moment I am vainly asking myself what had become of my brains while I was writing it. It's the unsusannishest letter that even my undramatic pen has compassed. Think of Susan being conscious of a desire for detachment from details. I can as easily imagine her ordering a grilled ichthyosaurus for breakfast. Still, it's gone. And now I shall have a week's peace. It seems the Belgian people who have had Du Poirier's villa de La Mer for the season left yesterday. Du Poirier is cleaning up the blue and white bathing hut on the beach. He's going to give me the key and if I like I can stay down by the sea all day so long as the weather's fine. The bathing hut Thursday afternoon. This is perfect. The bright-faced sea is crooning to itself like a happy child. The day is warm. Inland it must be torrid. I have had two dips, one snooze, and about three-quarters of a lunch. It would have been a lunch and a half if Jarjet hadn't tripped over a stone on the way down and dropped the wing of a chicken into the back. But the prawns and the cold veal with saucerimoulade and the great big pear were quite enough if I hadn't grown so disgustingly greedy. Off and on I've read several square yards of French newspapers since ten o'clock. There seems to be a curse resting on all newspapers that are sold for a half penny, never mind what country they belong to. I feel as Susan felt when she missed a nice service after the parish mass at St. Véronique Church. The best part of everything is to lie full back in the deck chair and to look up at the larks in the sky. It's nice too to gaze over the blue-green water and to know there's a hundred miles of it between us and that worry of a Ruddington. I'm afraid he'll write a dozen pages on Monday. But until the poor little fellow begins kicking and screaming for his Susan to be given to him at once, I can sit here while the wind and the sun mend my nerves and smooth the past fortnight's wrinkles out of my offended brow. Friday night. Henry Reginald has written, the sight of his envelope made me so angry that I nearly tore it open without waiting for Susan. After reading his outpouring I can't altogether blame him, but I am being badly treated by fate. Things are worse muddled than ever. He says, My dear Susan, seeing my handwriting again so soon you will think that I am flouting your wishes. Not so. After I have finished this, I promise not to write you another line till you expressly give me leave. From my own selfish point of view I have known all along that I was foolish in pleading my cause by post instead of with the living voice. But to write seemed fairer to yourself, though I confess I could not have been easily content with letters had I known you were going to France. In asking for a week of detachment you are right. Indeed I feel you have been most exquisitely right at every turn of my rude assault upon your peace. Therefore I agree much as I shall miss your letters. You think your letters have disappointed me, and I can discern that it is a pain to you to write them till they can flow from you more freely. But let me tell you why I prized them far more than I expected. The day I first saw you with Miss Langley was a Saturday. You simply swept me off my feet. I had no more choice as to whether I should love you all my life or not, than a cork has a choice between floating and sinking. It was the Durningham banker who told me who you were. All that evening I sat alone in the dark thinking. Or rather, I didn't think. I just sat and looked like a man in a trance at the new world which had unrolled itself suddenly, solidly, splendidly right across the whole field of my vision. I had always believed that love at first sight was out of my line. Indeed I had believed that nowadays it was out of everybody's line. And I suspected that outside the romances there had never been any such thing in the world. I had even begun to indulge a certain pride in my fastidiousness and self-control as regards women. Don't be hurt, most dear lady, at the next step in my confession. If I must seem to disparage you for half a moment on paper, it is only that I may show why I shall revere and honour and cherish you forever. When I came out of that Saturday night dream or trance I sank swiftly down, down, down into a pit of humiliation. I had always believed myself free from pride of rank or pride of wealth, but it was with an immense chagrin that I remembered how the banker had answered my off-hand question with the words Miss Langley's maid. A blinding flash lit up all the opposition and scorn and ridicule I should have to undergo. Not that it entered my mind even at the zero of my humiliation that I could ever give you up. The fact that you were my destiny rose clear of my tumultuous emotions as radiant and immutable as a virgin peak above the mean rage of a thunderstorm. But I fretted and fumed. You were the rose that I must needs gather. But why had fate set you behind so huge and sharp in black a thorn? I asked bitterly why fate could not have contrived that Miss Langley should have been Susan and that you should have been Miss Langley, so that I could have come to the Grange a-wooing without a thousand maddening lets and hindrances. Later on, and in a lesser degree, I also felt humiliated because I, who had been so proud of my cool head, found myself bowled over by mere beauty and grace like a solitary cornstalk before an autumn gale. The next morning I slipped circumspectly into Traxelby Church just before the sermon. If you hold religion's sacred and dear as I feel sure you do, it may shock you to know that I looked at you through the pillars of the Langley Monument for a quarter of an hour. But my thoughts were not sacrilegious. Although I thanked God for your beauty and how beautiful you were that morning, I worshipped God most because he had created your soul, your very self. As I watched you, I knew that you alone in all the world could charm away my spirit's restlessness and hunger, the hunger and the restlessness which I had hidden even from my own self. I recalled my loveless life, my boyhood spent among tutors and schoolmasters, my youth and early manhood at two schools and at three universities in three different countries. My last year, the year before I came back to the towers, spent on cosmopolitan steamships and in unhomely hotels. I thought of the only women I have ever known well, my hard and shallow cousins, who are handsome and elegant only with the sort of handsomeness and elegance that ten thousand other hard and shallow women share with them. Then I looked at you again and wanted to come home to you as a bird flies home to his nest. As I walked back from church, I knew that my ignoble chagrin had melted and vanished at the second vision of you. Instead of exclaiming against fate for placing you as the word goes, below me, I rejoiced that there was a sacrifice to be made, a way of proving to you that I was moved by love alone. I laughed at myself for having wished you had been mislangly. Perhaps I am super-sensitive, ultra-delegate. But I felt on that Sunday morning that if you had been mislangly I might have shrunk from the wooing. The obviousness, the hard-headed, practical common sense of such a match would have put me off it. When every consideration of worldly suitability pointed to adjoining of her name and land and interests with mine, how could I have gone to mislangly on a simple errand of love? I know of one gossip who had already linked her with me. How I should have cursed this rank of mine which I never wanted and this wealth of mine which I never earned if they had robbed me of the power to convince a woman of my love and to woo her for herself alone. I wrote to you on the Tuesday and you kept me waiting four days. But I knew you would reply, even as I know that when this month is over Heaven will not suffer you to wrench your life away from mine. But while I waited I kept on schooling myself against every possible turn of events. And one thing for which I prepared my mind, forgive me again, dear lady, was this. I expected your letter would be. How shall I say it? Well, I expected a diamond, but a rough one. To be blunt I knew that Oxford and Heidelberg in Salamanca had made me two punctilius and I nerved myself for a letter from a sweet Susan, an adorable Susan, a wise Susan, but a Susan who couldn't spell. But what has happened? Of course mere spelling and grammar are less than the dust in the balance and if you sinned against them unto seventy times seven it would be nothing. But not only are Susan's letters better expressed than my own, they outstrip the utmost I ever dreamed of in the exquisite reverence with which they approached the sacred mystery of love. Where I was merely super fine and sentimental you are exalted, mystical. I honour your month of absence and your coming week of silence as I honour the retreats and meditations of a saint. Wealth and ease and rank cannot tempt you. They cannot even hurry you into doing what is right till you are persuaded that it is right with your whole soul. The Susan I saw that Saturday morning swept me off my feet, robbed me of my free will. But the Susan who has written me four letters is so noble, so deep, so rich of spirit that even if the spell of her beauty were broken I should still devote my whole life to winning her though the obstacles were a thousand times as great. Why have I written all this? I will tell you. Because you are entering so to speak on a week's retreat and upon your week's retreat hangs my fate. If I did not write this the most recent letter of mine in your hands would be that school boyish blue paper with its long-drawn string of poor jokes. I did not mean it flippantly, but it is hard for a man to write about himself. In a word I write to ask that it shall be this present letter and not the other that you will call to mind when you are so good as to think of me. No, I don't imagine you take yourself too seriously. I have guessed that, like my own, your mind is more often gay than grave. But there is a time for everything and I perceive that bad a nudge is not the accompaniment I ought to be playing while you are making the momentous choice which I have so strangely laid upon you. And now I steal out of your presence on tiptoe and softly close the door. If you call I shall be waiting. And if you do not call I shall be waiting still. R. Susan has been in to know what I think of the letter. I have told her I am busy and have sent her away. It's no use blinking the fact that I'm involved up to the ears in a very, very serious affair. End of Book 3, Part 4. Book 3, Part 5 of Susan by Ernest Oldmeadow. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Saint Veronique, Part 5. Midnight. I can't sleep. This is all together too frightful. Unfortunately Susan was perfectly stalled. If she'd been awkward goodness knows what I might have said or done. I simply told her that we must have a thorough talk once for all in the morning and she went to bed without a murmur. Susan, a mystic. Susan approaching with exquisite reverence the sacred mystery of love. Susan in retreat like a saintly nun. If I could only laugh and laugh and laugh till I woke up the whole hotel it wouldn't so much matter. But I can't even smile. Reddington is too terribly in Ernest and it's my fault. Some parts of his letter I hate. I would never have believed that he could make so outrageously free with my name. So long as Susan is my maid I call it a abominable taste to drag me in like that. Indeed I hardly see how I can do otherwise than wash my hands of the entire business forthwith. What if I do? What then? If Susan is left to concoct a reply and to use a teaspoon full of ink to every page it will be such a shattering bombshell in the golden mist of his dreams. And the man on the whole is too likable for me to wound him deeply if I can help it. Perhaps what I ought to do is to write by the same post as Susan and with her full knowledge a frank confession of my part in the affair. He will be astonished and disappointed and a bit hurt in his dignity but he can't fairly resent my having helped Susan. After all it's his fault not mine that he's perused my few short and insignificant letters through such rose-colored glasses that they have seemed like the utterances of a divinity. It's his infatuation far more than my bungling which has magnified and idealized Susan into a goddess. Whether he can turn the telescope round so to speak and look at Susan through the other end till he sees her in all the tininess of her actual spiritual and mental stature and whether, when he has seen her as she is, he can still go on worshiping her all this is more his affair than mine. I'll write the letter now. A quarter past one. It's no good. If I had written before his letter came to-night I could have managed it but now that he's brought me in by name and has even discussed how he would have felt if he had been moved to make love to me. No, I can't write. And if I could I wouldn't. And I'm cold and tired and insulted and distracted and wretched. I'll back to bed. SATURDAY 2 P.M. On second or twenty-second thoughts I did not choose to have a detailed conference with Susan. I have not so much as told her how vastly it offends me to be discussed with her as Ruddington has done. If I betray annoyance, how can I expect a simple mind like Susan's to interpret my vexation otherwise than as the acidity of an unsuccessful rival for Lord Ruddington's hand? Lord Ruddington has cheapened me enough and I will not make myself any cheaper. Although she was stolid over it last night, the letter has warmed Susan into a remarkable state of expansion this morning and she was sadly crestfallen when I showed no sign of going through the document chapter and verse. I took care that she should find me deep in my own correspondence so that my inattention was less pointed. I simply told her that it would be a good thing if she were able to take over the Ruddington correspondence herself immediately as Lord Ruddington had already been seriously misled. Failing this I gave her the following note and told her to post it or not as she pleased. DEAR LORD Ruddington I am grateful for your letter and I am grateful to you for consenting to what you call my retreat. When the retreat is over I shall not forget that I have a long letter of yours to answer. Meanwhile, I will only beg both for your sake and my own that you will not form too high an opinion of. Yours very sincerely, Susan Briggs. Susan did not read the note in my presence. I have no idea what she will do. SUNDAY BEFORE CHURCH Half my month is gone. This makes the fifteenth morning since I landed in France yet I don't remember waking up once with a completely easy mind. From Mr. John Lamb onwards I have dwelt in the midst of alarms. Today shall prove whether I have any willpower or not. Sunday is a day of rest and I am determined to have twenty-four hours of rest from Ruddington. Susan is very commendably docile. She sees I have had enough of it and she hasn't even told me whether she posted my note or not. Fortunately she is making much more of a pal of Giorgette. Giorgette progresses with her English marvelously. She adores Susan because Susan never tries to utter a single syllable of French. I mean to hear Mass this morning at Birigny. Giorgette is taking Susan to be wail once more the lack of a nice service at Saint-Veronique. Sunday afternoon. I like the Birigny papists better than the papists at Saint-Veronique. Only sixty people assisted at the Mass, but the faith of these few twentieth-century men and women was as solid as the fifteenth-century peers and vaults that rose above our heads. Being English I ought to exclaim against the Birigny Mass house and to call its pictures and images and altars gaudy. But I understood this morning that the place was first and foremost a refuge for the simple and the poor. Of course the austerity of our own church at Traxelby suits my personal ideas of reverence better. But I'm afraid that in England there may be some selfishness in our always conforming the insides of our churches to the taste of the hall or to the taste of the rector's ladies. No doubt it helps the fortunate few to feel religious when they exchange the cozy richness wherein they have snuggled all the week for the big, bare, sternness of cold, undissembled stone and the uncompromising whiteness of twenty surpluses. An hour and a half of it once a week corrects luxury and tones up fibers that are becoming enervated through all day long indulgence. One even finds a subtle pleasure in the slight discomfort and restraint. Just as the man who has dined well and whined well for eleven months enjoys the fashionable hardships of a month's cure at a German spa. But I wondered this morning if our church interiors are equally helpful to the poor. If a contrast between the home and the church stimulates devotion, where do the poor come in? The only contrast they get is the contrast between a small bleakness and a big one, the contrast between gray and white, between ashes and snow. Birini Church is a spacious, warm, brightly colored drawing room for all Birini. Not even the drawing room at Alice's, with its absurd excess of watercolors and prints and screens and embroideries and statuettes and curios, holds such a store of things to look at as the drawing room at Birini. Over and above all the regulation sites of a typical French church, Birini has Our Lady of Birini in queenly silver tissue and with a golden crown on her sorrowful brow. From the bosses of the vaults in the aisles hang five or six fully rigged little ships. Vote of offerings of mariners snatched from shipwreck. High up on the south wall there are colored wooden images carved in the sixteenth century, such as St. Nicholas with a tub full of red-cheeked, chubby naked babies, and St. Anthony with his pig. Birini has both the Antonies. Not far from him of the pig stands a modern statue of St. Antonin of Padua with a face like an angel's and with the holy child seated on St. Anthony's open book and a nestling against St. Anthony's breast. It would have driven him stark mad if our tracks will be choir master, with his petty efficiency and trivial thoroughness, could have heard the Birini organ pounding and blaring and the Birini faithful balling credo through their noses. An untuneful but hearty lad on my left sang the whole creed through in Latin without a book. I wonder, would our tracks will be used be a shade less lautish, a shade nearer to these courteous villagers of Birini, if they too were taught to dip a cup in the mainstream of human culture into quaff ever so small a draft? I imagine it must be the beginning of a revolution, even in the humblest mind, when it makes room for 50 words of a language other than its own. Sunday night. Yes, I have some traces of willpower. I have wanted to ask Susan whether she posted my note, but I haven't asked her. And I have wanted to think about Ruddington's letter, not so much its galling references to myself as the disclosure it makes of an uncommon personality in the midst of an uncommon situation. I have wanted to think about it all day, even in church, but I haven't healed it, or at most I have healed it only a very little. Monday morning. Susan posted the letter. I asked her after breakfast in a casual sort of way what she had done with it, and she answered almost as casually that she and Jarjet posted it on Saturday afternoon. I could see that for some reason Susan didn't want to be cross-questioned. Susan, I said when she came into the room again, how many people know anything about this affair of Lord Ruddington? Susan started. Whom have you told? I asked again. Did you talk about it at Traxelby? Oh, no, Miss, said Susan almost reproachfully. Then after an awkward pause she added, unless, unless. Well, Miss, I did say to Gibson that, that there was somebody, but I didn't mention names, Miss, and he could never guess. Have you said anything to Jarjet? Susan hung her head and studied the toe of her shoe a long time before she confessed. Jarjet asked me, Miss. Asked you what? Jarjet said, have you got an amie? And when I told her I didn't know what an amie was, she said. Susan blushed and stopped. Go on, I said, an amie. What did Jarjet say an amie was? It is French for mister, faltered Susan. Jarjet says it is a mister with whom one is in love. What did you tell her? Nothing, Miss. You were very sensible, Susan, I said. You oughtn't talk about it to anyone. I picked up a book, but Susan still loitered. Well, I asked at length, what is it? Please, Miss, began Susan uncomfortably. I didn't tell Jarjet anything. So you said before. Yes, Miss, but Jarjet wanted to look at the envelope. I mean the letter to his lordship, Miss. But you didn't let her do it. Oh, no, Miss. Then what is there to worry about? Susan scraped the floor with the point of her shoe and shifted about. By and by she blurted. Jarjet wanted to know if the letter was to my amie or to yours, Miss. I shut the book. Susan hurried on. So, of course, I said he was mine, Miss. Ruddington is right. Susan is a wonder, a gem, and five times out of six a borne lady. After I had praised her discreetly and had deplored the impertinent prying of Jarjet, I took up the book again and told Susan she might go away. She went, but within five minutes she was back. I thought I'd best tell you, Miss, she said when I looked up. Yes, I didn't show Jarjet the address, Miss, but she noticed the envelope wasn't come down. Yes, yes, get on. I oughtn't to have done it, Miss, but Jarjet went into the garden and plucked a flower and lifted up the flap of the envelope and laughed and tucked the flower inside. It's a great pity, Susan, I said, that you didn't take it out again. If you'd make up your mind to marry Lord Ruddington it wouldn't matter. But can't you see how foolish it will look? It simply contradicts the letter asking for a week's grace. Yes, Miss, said Susan, going redder than ever, but she showed no sign of departing. Is that all, Susan? I asked with a sudden fear that there was worse to follow. No, Miss, she answered faintly. After we'd posted the letter, Jarjet laughed again and said that the flower had a meaning. A meaning? Yes, Miss, the language of flowers, Miss. Jarjet said the flower meant vang. Vang? Yes, Miss, that's the French language of flowers, Miss. Jarjet says that in English it means come. Before I could speak she burst out crying. Please, Miss, she wept. I didn't see any harm on Saturday, but last night when I went to bed and thought about it, oh, Miss Gertrude, I'm so miserable. And she cried harder than ever. In the end I sent her away consoled to the extent of my assurance that I didn't blame her in the least and that the sole offender was Jarjet. Also I promised her that I wouldn't get Jarjet into trouble. At first I felt determined to give Jarjet some very plain speaking in private. Yet how can I? How was Jarjet to know that Susan hadn't been writing a common country love letter to some common country sweetheart? What divination could teach Jarjet that we had been writing a super fine letter to a malored? Jarjet simply indulged her rural playfulness. And if the envelope was open for Jarjet to put the flower in, it was also open for Susan to take it out. That's the devil, I can't help saying it, of this endless affair. Everybody keeps on giving me shocks and jumps and yet nobody is ever to blame. Not that much harm is done this time. I suppose Roddington will go silly over the flower. He'll kiss it and wear it next his heart by day and lay it under his pillow by night and worship it as a symbol of fresh mysticalities and exquisite-nesses in his divine Susan. But he won't ring for the kitchen maids and request the kind loan of a language of flowers. He won't so much as think of it that way. Even if he does he will know that it is the letter and not the flower that he must obey. I wonder what flower it is that means vie. Monday night. I have been reading Roddington's last letter over again and although I began it with prejudice, being still knuddled by Jarjet's prank, it has affected me strangely. Seen whole, I know the situation is farcical. It is a farce that may end in a tragedy. But as Roddington sees it with the wrong notion of Susan that I have helped to give him, it is a most high and sweet romance, all rose and gold. Life can be most hideously cruel, better no beautiful dreams at all when there must be such an awakening. And that poor lad Gibson is to be soured forever in order that Roddington may go through life with a millstone of disenchantment round his neck. Something is here for tears. Tuesday, three o'clock. Roddington remains quiet like a good boy so the flower has done no harm. Susan has been quite brightened up by suddenly remembering that the flower was only a French one. This morning there was a wedding at St. Véronique. I have seen country weddings in France before, but this is the first one that hasn't offended me. The bride was a pink and white, almost English-looking girl and the bridegroom was a tanned, honest, handsome young fisherman. When Susan and I saw them, it was after the wedding. They were standing side by side, hand in hand at a door while the guests were bustling for places at an open-air breakfast table. You could not say that they were not taking in the scene. Indeed, they laughed more than once at the horseplay of the youth. Yet it was plain that while their eyes recognized friends and while their minds were lightly engaged with the outer world, their spirits had built a little hidden shrine of peace. Never before have I seen on human faces such a serene yet delicate fullness of perfect happiness. Below the rattle of plates and the shouts and the laughter, my ear caught a rich undersong of love. In the past, I have learned almost to loathe lovers. When Hugh came to see Alice, I used to wonder how she could endure him. I suppose he enjoyed his courtship, just as a budding barrister enjoys his obligatory course of dinners, but he used to turn up more like a man who had come to tune the piano than like a man in love. And I don't think I detest anyone in this world more than poor Maud Slaney's Bob. Heaven only knows how many millions of times he has mispronounced the word fiance these last two years, and the way they go on in public is simply hard. I'd almost rather have the borishly amorous couples who slouch on Sunday nights along church lane gaping up at the Grange. But this month, I've begun to see lovers in a less garish light. The fisherman reminded me of Gibson. I shall be the better all my life long for having stood in the glow of Gibson's splendid manliness when he thought Susan was in danger. Reddington, poor man, is quite an indurable lover, too. As for Susan, although she's so simple, I haven't definitely made her out. But allowing Ampley for her shyness and for her deference to my guidance, it's rather fine to see how she hangs back from Reddington's money and rank until she feels sure she can care for him. If the bulk of human love is anything like these samples, I don't wonder that the world goes right round in a night and a day. Tuesday bedtime. Another earthquake. This afternoon, Madame du Poirier went to Grand-Pont station in the Hotel Omnibus. She has just come back. Madame says that when the bus drew up at the station, a compatriot of mine stepped alongside and attentively perused the world's Hotel du Dauphin, Saint-Veronique-sur-Mer, painted on the bus-sides. Apparently he mistook Madame for a guest who was going away, and he asked her very politely, Madame says, if she knew whether Mies Langley and Mies Briggs were still at the hotel. Madame said yes, and she is quite pleasantly fluttered at the thought of an extra guest fairly on his way hither. I was too much stunned to do more than thank her for telling me. I didn't even ask her what the man was like and whether he spoke to her in French or in English, but I've no doubt it is Ruddington. I call it abominable. If Susan were traveling in France with her parents or even with some married woman for a mistress, it would be different, but this is outrageous. I ought to have known that he would hunt up the meaning of Jarjet's flower. A man who can reach such super exquisite meanings into the half dozen notes I have scribbled for Susan isn't the sort to leave any stone unturned. I can't help despising him. When a full-grown educated man has such sickly rubbish as the language of flowers at his finger's ends, a lady's maid is as much as he deserves. What will he do? I hardly think he'll descend upon St. Veronique till his mystical Susan's sacrosanct week of retreat has expired. I suppose he'll hover ridiculously in the neighborhood like a knight keeping vigil outside of woodland oratory where his milk-white lady kneels at prayer. Probably there will be a mysterious succession of leaves and petals in otherwise empty envelopes. A scarlet runner to mean I have come post-haste, a convolvulus to mean I am still hanging on, a thorny bramble to mean I suffer. Even the ardors of a lover ought not to burn out the instincts of a gentleman. I gave Ruddington credit for more decency and restraint. When the week is over, he will want to come here. It is an intolerable position. I am about to be made a fool of. Everybody will get to hear of it some day. All right to wire for Alice? No, I can't. If it were anybody but Ruddington, I could. I'm like a 400 beast in a trap with no way to turn. I have more than half a mind to pack up at daybreak and to slip stealthily back to Dieppe for my promised week at the Chevaldor. Wednesday, very early. I forgot to wind up my watch. I have decided not to run away. Three things have become clear as I have turned them over in the night. First, I am as good a man as Ruddington. If I stood up to Mr. John Lamb, I can stand up to his successors. He shall either treat me with respect or be taught a lesson. I'm not going to run away from anyone. Certainly not from a youth sick with calf love who babbles the language of flowers. Second, I might as well face the fact that the gods never intended me to have a peaceful September this year. How true it is that the unexpected happens. When I came to St. Veronique 12 months ago, I expected to have a lively time. But everybody failed me and it was the quietest, peacefulest month of my life. This year I came expecting four weeks of vegetable existence and instead I am kept running and leaping and turning like a trick horse in a circus. Wherefore I do hereby decide not to kick against destiny a minute longer. Instead of staving off all this comedy and instead of hating it because it distracts me, I hereby decide that it is well worth looking at and that it would be foolishness to brush aside such a human drama as I am never likely to see performed again. Norman villages and caravs of cider and plunges in the sea and lobster salads under apple trees can be bought for nine or 10 francs a day, year after year, as often as I want them. But a handsome, virtuous, learned, stark mad young lord in love with a pretty, honest, lovable, stupid lady's maid isn't a sight to be seen at close quarters every week. It shall be the principal pleasure as well as the principal business of my remaining fortnight to see this play played right out. Third, how do I know that Master Reddington isn't lying peacefully at this very moment in his little white cot at Reddington Towers, dreaming of his Susan as good as gold? How do I know that the grand-pont person isn't somebody else? It struck me in the night that it is probably Mr. John Lamb. At the customs, he looked at the St. Véronique labors on my boxes as well as at the Chevalda labors on our bags. I know he tumbled down the steps of the aster, still believing that he had conquered Susan's hidden heart and that if he could only have seen her all would have been well. Perhaps he has got together a fresh supply of francs and is proposing to wait on us with some preposterous apologies and explanations. It may be that he wants me to promise that next time I am in Amelia Road, Shepard's Bush, I won't give him away to Phipps Brothers and above all, that I won't give him away to Maal. This morning I shall ask Madame du Poirier to describe him. If it be indeed Mr. John Lamb, he will find me ready with the mint sauce. 10 a.m. It's a good thing that I have decisively renounced all hope of peace and quietness. The postman has brought Susan no flowers from Gampont, but he has brought me just the sort of letter from Alice that I don't want. Ruddington, Ruddington, Ruddington. That's Alice's letter from beginning to end. Alice has found out all about him. He's richer than Alice thought and prettier and nicer and I am the wickedest, foolishest, proudest young woman in the world for clinging on at St. Veronique. It seems that Ruddington and I were made for each other. He has just my tastes. Alice even adds with splendid candor that he isn't the least little bit like you. I had hardly smoothed my poor fur after Alice's ruffling when Susan chose to begin stroking me backwards again. She said, I'm thinking, Miss, about this letter that came on Friday night. Yes, I said, please, Miss, you never told me what you thought of it. What did you think yourself, Susan? Susan fidgeted about. At last she answered, I can't feel that it's right, Miss. What isn't right? Him speaking that way, Miss, to a girl like me, it doesn't seem right. I don't understand, Susan. She fidgeted again. Then she said, I'm afraid you'd be vexed, Miss. It isn't my place to say it. To say what? Well, Miss, Susan explained in installments. It doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem natural for him to be courting me. It's what my Aunt Martha used to say, Miss. She used to say, more unhappiness comes to them as Mary's above them than them as Mary's below them. You mean, Susan, I suggested. That you're uneasy at the thought of such a great change in your position. So you ought to be. That's why I've always wanted you to look well before you leap. There's a great deal in what your Aunt says. Yes, Miss, answered Susan abstractedly. And for a few moments she tried to hold her peace, but it was no use. A sudden torrent of warm words gushed forth and swept all restraint away. Oh, Miss Gertrude, she cried. I can't help saying it. I can't. It isn't me, Miss, Lord Reddington, ought to be coming after. It's you, Miss Gertrude. It's you. I was struck dumb. Yes, it's you, Miss. It ought to be, Susan went on. When I think of what he says in his letter, Miss, how he couldn't go making love to Miss Langley, I could die for shame. I ought to have cut off my hand before I showed you such a thing, Miss. Susan, I said, you mustn't talk to me like this. You did quite right to show me his letter. It isn't your fault that Lord Reddington wrote things in his letter, which it would have been better taste to leave out. No, Miss, I know, broke in Susan. But, oh, Miss Gertrude, I'm so miserable. I do so wish he hadn't never seen me. If I don't get married to him, I shall be miserable because I've thrown away all that money and living in a grand house and being your ladyship. And if I do get married to him, I shall be miserable because, because it isn't natural, Miss. Oh, Miss Gertrude, how lovely it would have been if he'd liked you instead of me. Then you would have got married and gone to live at the Towers, and we would have come with you, Miss, and we'd have been so happy. I noticed Susan's we, but it was not a time for recatacizing her about Gibson. I cut her short, peremptrally. Susan, I said, be so good as to stop. You are taking a great liberty. If Lord Ruddington has so far forgotten himself as to drag my name into his affairs, that's no excuse for you doing the same. I dislike it most strongly. Yes, Miss, said obedient Susan, but she added wistfully speaking more to herself than to me. It would have been lovely. Am I to take it, Susan? I demanded abruptly that you have finally decided not to accept Lord Ruddington. She blushed, paled, blushed again, but she did not answer. Because, I added, if you are still thinking it over, you'd better not talk of it even to me. Lord Ruddington won't expect you to write before Saturday. I've given you all the help and advice I can, but I don't want to influence you either one way or the other. Work it out in your own mind. Susan promised to try. As she was going out, something else occurred to me and I called her back. Susan, I said kindly, I don't wish to refer to it again, but what you have said about myself and Lord Ruddington reminds me of one little point. Yes, Miss, said Susan. His portrait. One day I went into your room for the scissors. I saw you had put Lord Ruddington's portrait in the same frame as mine. Yes, Miss, they went together beautiful. I shall be much obliged, Susan, if they don't go together any longer. Susan shed a tear, but she is going to obey. Now I've had enough ruffling for one morning. Before I interrogate Madame about the creature at Grand Pond, I mean to run down to the bathing hut and enjoy an hour's basking in the sun. End of book three, part five.