Suzanna Stirs the Fire Part 10

CHAPTER VI

SUZANNA MAKES HER ENTRY

Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds were in the kitchen, she belatedly was.h.i.+ng the supper dishes, he smoking his pipe near the window. She lent, through her vivid personality, color to him. Big, hearty, he was not picturesque. He seemed to take note of realities more than she did.

Perhaps springing from emotional folk, she stood with a quality of rich background denied to him by a line of unimaginative ancestors.

He read his big books, she found truths in her own heart. She found a quick, tender language springing from her understanding. He used his words like bludgeons.

Still they loved one another, and her deepest hurt was that he wanted that which she could not give him. So she placed his longing before hers and grieved most for his lack.

The front door-bell rang. They looked at one another wonderingly, then Mr. Reynolds slowly withdrew his feet from the window sill and went as slowly down the hall. He opened the door to Suzanna, who stood waiting, conventionally attired in hat and cloak, pale, and with eyes wide and dark.

"Good evening, Reynolds," said Suzanna.

"O! good evening, come in, come in," urged Mr. Reynolds hospitably, but totally at a loss as he looked at the little figure. "Come right out to the kitchen."

Suzanna followed him. When once in the kitchen, she stood for a moment blinking in the light streaming from the hanging lamp under which Mrs.

Reynolds stood; then she said:

"I've come to you, Mrs. Reynolds, to stay. I've adopted myself out to you."

"Well, I never, dear love!" was all Mrs. Reynolds could say as she wiped her hands on a convenient roller towel.

Mr. Reynolds laughed. "Oh, you think you'd like a change of homes, Suzanna?"

Suzanna turned to him then. She spoke quietly, but decisively so he might perfectly understand. "No, that's not it, Reynolds. I love my little home; but first I don't want Mrs. Reynolds to throw her ap.r.o.n over her head at your slams. And second it's for myself I come, because you can afford to do something for me my own mother thinks she can't on account of little money."

But Mr. Reynolds caught only the first reason. "What do you mean, young lady, about slammin'; that's what I want to know." His tone was belligerent. Mrs. Reynolds threw him a withering look. "Here, Suzanna,"

she said; "give me the bag, and you sit down. Take your hat off, my brave little la.s.s. 'Twas but you and you alone could think of this sweet thought."

"I'd rather have things settled before I take my hat off," said Suzanna.

She relinquished the bag, however, and seated herself in the chair Mrs.

Reynolds pulled forward. Then she went on: "You know, Reynolds, you do slam doors and make Mrs. Reynolds cry. And you know, anyway, you oughtn't to blame Mrs. Reynolds because you get no visits. It may be just as much your fault because the mother angel don't like your ways."

She paused a moment before continuing. "And, anyway, my father never blames mother for anything, only when she's tired and cries he remembers to love her even if he's on the way upstairs to the attic to his wonderful Machine, and he puts his arm about her waist, though mother says it's much larger now than it was years ago. That's what my father that used to be, does."

"Why bless my soul!" bl.u.s.tered Mr. Reynolds, his face a fine glowing color; "bless my soul!" he repeated, removing his shoes and slamming them down, as he always did under stress. "Women, my dear, will make up all sorts of stories. If I did give the door a bit of a slam, it was because the bacon didn't set right, perhaps. And a woman's always fancying things."

"But you don't put your arm about her, you know that, Reynolds. I was born in this town and I've never seen you put your arm about her."

Mrs. Reynolds' ap.r.o.n was over her head again, but she made no sound. Her husband knocked the ashes from his pipe, and ran his fingers through his thick hair. Then he stared helplessly at Suzanna. She rose valiantly to the occasion.

"If you say, 'There, there, don't cry, you should have married a better man,' she'll say: 'There couldn't be a better' and take her ap.r.o.n down."

Thus innocently Suzanna exposed a tender home method of salving hurts, and her listener, as near as his nature could, appropriated the method.

He rose from his chair and went softly to his wife. At her side he hesitated in sheer embarra.s.sment, but as she began to sob, he hurriedly repeated Suzanna's formula: "There, there, dear, don't cry. I'm a bad 'un, I am--"

Mrs. Reynolds lowered her s.h.i.+eld. "You know better than that, Reynolds," she denied, almost indignantly. "You're a good provider, with a bit of a temper."

"Well, out with it then. What _is_ the trouble? I'm willing to do what I can, even occasionally to doing what the little la.s.s suggests." And with the words, his big arm went clumsily about his wife, the while he looked at Suzanna for approval. She nodded vigorously, her eyes s.h.i.+ning.

"It's just this, then, Reynolds," the words were now a whisper, and the big red-faced man had to stoop to hear. "It's that I'm achin' all the time to hold one in my arms; and always to you I've let on that I didn't care. An'--an'--I know the hunger in your own fine heart, my lad."

Mr. Reynolds' face grew wonderfully soft; indeed, tender in a new understanding. "I didn't know, Margie, that you grieved. Come, look up.

You and me are together anyway."

"And you have me, now, too," broke in Suzanna, eager to help. "I'm going to stay with you forever'n forever, only except when my mother that used to be wants to borrow me back. Now, I'll go to bed, if you please."

And then one swift, cuddling memory of little Maizie alone in bed across the street brought the hot tears to Suzanna's eyes, but she winked them resolutely back as she lifted the black, s.h.i.+ny bag.

"Tomorrow," she said to Mrs. Reynolds, "you can cut the goods away from under the lace on my pink dress, can't you?" She went on, not waiting for an answer. "Shall I go right along upstairs?"

Mrs. Reynolds spoke gently: "Yes, Suzanna. Did you tell your mother you were coming to me to be my own la.s.s?"

"I wrote her a letter."

Suzanna on her way upstairs waited a moment while Mrs. Reynolds whispered directions to her husband: "You run across to the little home while I put her to bed." Then looking wistfully up into his face: "Do you think she'll let me undress her?"

"That young'un will do anything to make you happy, Margie."

From the top of the stairs the words floated down: "Are you coming--_mother_--"

Suzanna's voice choked on the word, but Mrs. Reynolds heard only the exquisite t.i.tle. She lifted her face, glowing like a heaven of stars.

"I'm coming, Suzanna," she called. And she went swiftly up the stairs to the little girl. "This night you sleep under the silk coverlet--and more I couldn't do for royalty!"

CHAPTER VII

REGRETS

Suzanna woke the next morning to a realization that she was in a strange place. She occupied a large bed, too large, it seemed to her, for one small girl. And even the silken coverlet failed to a.s.suage the sudden wave of homesickness which threatened to engulf her.

She lay thinking. A clock on the dresser showed her the hour to be seven. Maizie would be up and downstairs. She would have b.u.t.toned Peter and would be carrying the blue dishes from the pantry to the dining-room. Father would be in the attic for a glance at his beloved Machine before obeying mother's cheerful call to breakfast.

Suzanna choked back a lump insistent upon rising to her throat. Across the way was home and she had adopted herself out of it! Here all was quiet, and comfortable, very comfortable. The mattress was thick, her small body quite sank into its depths; the bed she shared with Maizie, she had realized on occasions, had lumps, and no silken coverlet spreading itself brilliantly. Still there were rare and beautiful compensations for the lack of thick mattresses and silken coverlets--and greatest grief to her of all was that she stood no longer a daughter to a great man!

The tears came perilously near. Suzanna choked them back as she heard "Reynolds" close the front gate with what to him was a gentle click. She felt that in a moment Mrs. Reynolds would summon her downstairs to a breakfast hot and delicious.

_Why had she left home if she loved it so!_

The sentence formed itself in her mind.

Well, she hadn't realized that home and those in it were so dear till she left. And her reason was a good one. It had seemed she could scarcely live possessed of a dress whose sweet possibilities were denied by a mother's spirit of economy. Never had she so intensely wished for anything as for the goods to be cut away from under the rows of lace.

Still now, lying there alone in her strange surroundings, that desire was losing its poignancy. It didn't seem quite to fill her entire universe.