Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and others Part 16

Her house; when she reached it, seemed quiet, seemed empty. Susanna crossed the porch, wondering, and encountered the maid.

"Emma! n.o.body come?"

"Sure you had the wrong day of it," said Emma, beaming. "Mrs.

Harrington fomed about an hour ago, and she says 'tis NEXT Sat.u.r.day thin!"

"What do you mean?" said Susanna, sharply.

"'Tis not to-day they're comin', Mrs. Fairfax--"

"Nonsense!" Susanna said under her breath. She flew to her desk and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the scribbled card of engagements. "Why, it's no such thing!" she said indignantly. "Of course it's to-day! October sixteenth, as plain as print." And with her eyes still on the card she reached for her desk telephone.

"Ethel," said Susanna, a moment later. "Listen, Ethel, this is Susanna.

Ethel, what made you say the club luncheon wasn't to-day? This is my day to have the girls.... Certainly.... Why, I don't care what she said, I have it written down!... Why, I think that's very funny.... I have it written.... No, you can laugh all you want to, but I know I'm right.... No, that's nothing. Jim will eat it all up to-morrow; he says he never gets enough to eat on Sundays.... But I can't understand, and I don't believe YET that I... Yes, it's written right here; I've got my eyes on it now! It's the most extraordinary...."

A little vexed at Mrs. Harrington's unbounded amus.e.m.e.nt, Susanna terminated the conversation as soon as was decently possible, and went kitchenward. In her anxiety not to miss her train back to the city, she refused Teresa's offer of dainty sandwiches, pastries, and tea, and merely stopped long enough to brush up her hair and to ascertain by carefully enumerating them out loud that she had her purse, her gloves, the orphanage plans, and the new time-table.

"This will seem very funny," said poor Susanna, gallantly to herself, as she took her seat in the train and tried to ignore a really sharp headache, "when once I see them! If I can only get hold of Jim, and if the afternoon goes smoothly, I shan't mind anything!"

Only ten minutes late for her luncheon engagement, Susanna entered the cool depths of the restaurant and, piloted by an impressed head waiter, looked confidently for her own party. It was very pleasant here, and the trays of salads and iced things that were borne continually past her were very inviting.

But still there was no Mrs. Thayer and no Jim. Susanna waited a few nervous minutes, sat down, got up again, and finally, at two o'clock, went out into the blazing, unfriendly streets, and walked the five short squares that lay between the restaurant and her husband's office.

A hot, dusty wind blew steadily against her; the streets were full of happy girls and men with suit-cases, bound for the country and a day or two of fresh air and idleness. Miss Perry was putting the cover on her typewriter as Susanna entered the office, her own suit-case waiting in a corner. She looked astonished as Susanna came in.

"My goodness, Mrs. Fairfax!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "We've been trying and trying to get you by telephone! Mr. Fairfax was so anxious to get hold of those orphanage plans. Mr. Thayer wanted--"

"I've been following him about all day," said Susanna, with an undignified, but uncontrollable gulp. She sat down limply. "WHAT happened to the luncheon plan?" she asked forlornly. "Where is Mr.

Fairfax?"

Miss Perry, perhaps softened by the sight of Susanna's filling eyes and tired face, became very sympathetic. "Isn't it TOO bad--I know you have! But you see Mrs. Thayer couldn't see her friend in the hospital this morning, so she came right down here and got here not ten minutes after you left. She said she couldn't wait for you, as she had to be back at the hospital at two, so she would do a little shopping herself and let the rest wait."

"Well," said Susanna, after a pause in which her very soul rebelled, "it can't be helped, I suppose! Did Mr. Fairfax go out with her?"

"He was to take her somewhere for a cup of tea and then he was going home."

"Going home! But I've just come from there!"

"He thought he'd probably catch you there, I think. He was anxious to get hold of those plans."

"Oh, I could CRY--" Susanna began despairingly. But indeed Miss Perry needed no a.s.surance of that. "I could cry!" said Susanna again.

"To-day," she expanded, "has been simply one miserable accident after another! I hope it'll be a lesson to me! Well--" She broke off short, for Miss Perry, while kind, was human, and was visibly conscious that she had promised her brother and sister-in-law to be at their house in East Auburndale, a populous suburb, long before it was time to put the baby to bed. "I suppose there's nothing for me to do but go home,"

finished Susanna, discontentedly.

"Accidents will happen!" trilled Miss Perry, blithely, hurrying for her car.

Susanna went thoughtfully home, reflecting soberly upon the events of the day. If she could but live this episode down, she told herself; but meet and win Mrs. Thayer somehow in the near future; but bring Jim to the point of entirely forgetting and forgiving the whole disgraceful day, she would really reform. She would "keep lists," she would "make notes," and she would "think twice." In short, she would do all the things that those who had her good at heart had been advising for the past ten years.

Of course, if the Thayers were resentful--refused to be placated--Susanna made a little wry mouth. But they wouldn't be!

Still deep in stimulating thoughts of a complete reformation, Susanna reached home again, crossed the deep-tiled porch with its potted olives and gay awnings, entered the big hall now dim with afternoon shadows.

Now for Jim--!

But where was Jim?

"Mr. Fairfax is home, Emma?"

"Oh, there you are, Mrs. Fairfax! And us trying and trying to telefome you! No ma'am, he's not home. He left on the three-twenty. He'd only come out in a rush for some papers, and he had to get back to town to see some one at once. There's a note--"

Susanna sat down. Her head was splitting, she was hungry and exhausted, and, at the effort she made to keep the tears out of her eyes, a wave of acute pain swept across her forehead. She opened the note.

If you can find a reliable messenger [said the note, without preamble], I wish you would get those orphanage plans to me at Thornton's office before six. I have to meet him there at four. The matter is really important, or I would not trouble you. I'll dine with Thayer at the club. J.F. The pretty hallway and the glaring strip of light beyond the open garden door swam suddenly before Susanna's eyes. The hand that held the note trembled.

"I could not be so mean to him!" said Susanna to herself. "But perhaps he was tired and hot--poor Jim!" And aloud she said with dignity: "I shall have to take this paper--these plans--in to Mr. Fairfax, Emma.

I'll catch the four-twenty."

"You'll be dead!" said Emma, sympathetically.

"My head aches," Mrs. Fairfax admitted briefly. But when she was upstairs and alone she found herself suddenly giving way to the long deferred burst of tears.

After a while she bathed her eyes, brushed her hair, and subst.i.tuted a more substantial gown for the pongee. Then she started out once more, refreshed and more cheerful in spite of herself, and soothed unconsciously by the quiet close of the lovely autumn afternoon.

Her own gateway was separated by a flight of shallow stone steps from the road, and Susanna paused there on her way to the train to gather her skirts safely for the dusty walk. And while she was standing there she found her gaze suddenly riveted upon a motor-car that, still a quarter of a mile away, was rapidly descend the slope of the hill, its two occupants fairly shaken by its violent and rapid approach. The road here was not wide, and curved on a sharp grade, and Susanna always found the descent of a large car, like this one, a matter of half-terrified fascination. But surely with this car there was more than the ordinary danger, she thought, with a sudden sick thumping at her heart. Surely here was something all wrong! Surely no sane driver--

"That man is drunk," she said, quite aloud. "He cannot make it! He can't possibly--ah-h-h!"

Her voice broke on a gasp, and she pressed one hand tight over her eyes. For with swift and terrible precision the accident had indeed come to pa.s.s. The car skidded, turned, hung for a sickening second on one wheel, struck the stone of the roadside fence with a horrible grinding jar and toppled heavily over against the bank.

When Susanna uncovered her eyes again, and before she could move or cry out in the dumb horror that had taken possession of her, she saw a man in golfing wear run from the Porters' gate opposite; and another motor, in which Susanna recognized the figure of a friend and neighbor, Dr.

Whitney, swept up beside the overturned one. When she ran, as she presently found herself running, to the spot, other men and women had gathered there, drawn from lawns and porches by this sudden projection of tragedy into the gayety of their Sat.u.r.day afternoon.

"Hurt?" gasped Susanna, joining the group.

"The man is--dead, Billy says," said young Mrs. Porter, in lowered tones, with an agitated clutch of Susanna's arm. "And, poor thing! she doesn't realize it, and she keeps asking where her chauffeur is and why he doesn't come to her!"

"Wouldn't you think people would have better sense than to keep a man like that!" added another neighbor, Dexter Ellis, with a bitterness born entirely of nervousness. "He was drunk as a lord! Young and I were just coming out of my side gate--"

Every one talked at once--there was a confusion of excited comment.

Somebody had flung a carriage robe over the silent form of the man as it lay tumbled in the dust and weeds; Susanna glanced toward it with a shudder. Somehow she found herself supporting the car's other occupant, the woman, who was half sitting and half lying on the bank where she had fallen. The woman had opened her eyes and was looking slowly about the group; she had pushed away the whiskey the doctor held to her lips, but she looked sick and seemed in pain.

"I had just put the baby down when I heard Dex shout--" Susanna could hear Mrs. Ellis saying behind her in low tones. "Oh, it is, it's an outrage--they should have regarded it years ago," said another voice.

"Merest chance in the world that we took the side gate," Dexter Ellis was saying, and some man's voice Susanna did not know reiterated over and over: "Well, I guess he's run his last car, poor fellow; I guess he's run his last car--"

"You feel better, don't you?" the doctor asked his patient, encouragingly. "Just open your mouth and swallow this." And Susanna said gently: "Just try it; you'll feel so much stronger!"

The woman turned upon her a pair of eyes as heavy as a sick animal's, and moistened her lips. "Arm," she said with difficulty.

"Her arm's broken," said the doctor, in a low tone, "and I think her leg, too. Kane has gone to wire for the ambulance. We'll get her right into town."