Sister Sue/Chapter 1
SISTER SUE
∵
CHAPTER I
THE PETTY DETAILS
"Ask your sister Sue. She'll know."
Sister Sue herself, hurrying through the hall, heard her father's voice in the library. He was speaking, she suspected, to her sister May; though it might be, of course, to her brother Gordon. In either case it would be the same—some petty detail of daily living that was to be referred to her; and Sister Sue did not want some petty detail of daily living referred to her—just now.
She was tired and sick of petty details of daily living. They were so petty, so small, so insignificant, so trivial! As if there were no one else in the house who could tell whether or not May should wear her rubbers, or where Gordon's baseball bat was! But there did not seem to be. "Ask your sister Sue." If she heard it once, she heard it a dozen times a day—or, rather, she might have heard it, if she had chanced to be near, as she was to-day.
With a quick look over her shoulder toward the library door, and a hastening of her step up the thickly padded stairway, she sped along the upper hall to an open door halfway down the wide passageway. She paused, but only for an instant. The next moment she had darted across the hall, opened another door, and shut it quickly behind her.
She drew a long breath, her back hard-pressed against the door.
For a minute—for one little minute—she was free. She would be free! And she was going to be free, too! As if all her life, all her glorious life, she was to be tied to her sister's rubbers and her brother's baseball bat! Indeed, no! Had not that very day Signer Bartoni said—?
With an ecstatic little indrawn breath she drew her hands together across her breast in a rapturous self-embrace. Once again in her ears rang the music-master's enthusiastic commendation and the generous applause of her classmate audience. Once again before her eyes rose the vision of countless other audiences-to-be, with herself bowing her thanks to their clamorous demands of "Encore! Encore!" Once again through her whole self tingled the ecstasy of interpreting to a listening multitude the master thoughts of a master mind until the ivory keys under her fingers seemed living voices to speak her message as she willed.
And she could do it. She knew she could do it. Had not Signer Bartoni said that never before had a pupil of his played that concerto with such beauty of tone and perfection of execution, such fire, yet with such poise and precision, as she had played it that afternoon? Had he not told her, after the concert was over, that it would be a "pi-tee" and a "cr-rime" not to give to the world the benefit of her great talent? She must become the great "artiste."
"The great artiste!" With another little thrill of ecstasy she hugged the name to herself.
"Sue! Sister Sue!" It was May's voice calling up the stairway.
With a quiver that was not a thrill of ecstasy the girl behind the closed door stiffened, her chin up, her breath suspended.
"Sue! Sue! Where are you?" The voice was nearer now, and carried a note of impatience. Behind the door Sister Sue's chin lifted with her breath the fraction of an inch. "Sue—Sue!" How tired she was of that eternal "Sue—Sue!" It would be Susanna on the programmes—Susanna Gilmore.
She was giving herself another little ecstatic hug when from the hall just the other side of the door came May's voice again.
"Sue! Sue! Why, where are you?" Then, half under her breath, in the voice of a hurt, disappointed child: "Why, I thought I saw you come in!"
Out in the hall the footsteps had plainly come to a pause at the open door opposite which led to Sister Sue's bedroom. The voice called again "Sue—Sue!"
Across the face of the girl behind the door swept a look of worried distress.
"Sue—Sue! Sister Sue!" The steps were hurrying down the hall now toward the stairway that led to the third floor. "Are you up there?"
Sister Sue turned, her hand outstretched toward the doorknob. Then, irresolutely, she drew it back.
Outside, the steps came hurrying by the door again, and on down the stairway to the floor below. From there, faintly, came the insistent voice again, questioning a maid in the hallway, calling to Gordon in the den, complaining to the master of the house in the library that Sister Sue was n't anywhere—not anywhere—yet she surely came in not ten minutes ago. And now where was she?
Where was she, indeed! Up in the blue-room guest-chamber, pacing back and forth, back and forth, now stopping with her breath suspended to listen to the questioning voice downstairs, now resuming her march with a gesture of joyous abandonment to the inner voices of "Encore! Encore! Susanna Gilmore! Encore! Encore!"
But it was not for long. Anybody who knew Sister Sue would know that it would not be for long. With a little shrug and a resigned upflinging of her two hands, Sister Sue softly opened the door, slipped out into the hall, and walked toward the stairway.
After all, it did n't matter, it did n't really matter. It was n't as if she were n't going to be free!
In the lower hall the two sisters came face to face.
"Why, Sue, where have you been? I've looked everywhere for you!"
Sister Sue laughed lightly.
"Not everywhere—because you didn't look where I was."
"But where were you?"
"In the land of nowhere, anywhere—in the land of maybe," chuckled Sister Sue. Then, with a sudden stiffening of her whole slender self, she amended: "No, not may-be. In the land of will-be! I was lost in the land of will-be, my dear sister. Ever been there?"
"Sue, of course not! Nor you, either. What do you mean? What a case you are, Sue Gilmore, when you get started! But, listen. I wanted you. Beth Henderson wants me to motor over to the Club for dinner. Phil Chandler and Bert Hammond are going. Oh, Mrs. Henderson is going, too, of course," she added hastily, in response to the dawning refusal on her sister's face.
"But, May, dear, you know I don't like—" began Sister Sue doubtfully, only to break off with: "What does your father say?"
"Says to ask you, of course. He always says that, you know he does. And, Sue, you will let me go, won't you?"
"But, May, you know I don't like to have you with Bert—"
"But I'm not going to be with him. I'm going to be with Beth and her mother. And it'll just spoil everything if I can't go. They said it would—Beth and Mrs. Henderson. Sue, please!"
Still Sue hesitated.
"Of course, if Mrs. Henderson is going," she began frowningly.
The other did not wait for her to finish. With a bearlike hug and a rapturous kiss she effectually snapped the sentence off short.
"Oh, Sue, you're a duck! I knew you would! I'll go tell them right away that I can." And with a whirl of silken skirts she was off to the telephone.
Behind her, Sister Sue still frowned.
"Yes, she knew I would. That's exactly it—she knew I would," sighed Sister Sue to herself. "I always do."
"Oh, Sis, are you there?" It was Gordon calling from the little den at the right of the stairway.
"Yes, I'm here. Well, Gordon, what can I do for you?" Was there an ironic sweetness in the voice as the questioner crossed the threshold of the den? Perhaps. Yet if there was, it apparently passed quite over the blond head of the good-looking youth lolling back in the morris chair. He blew a smoke-ring before he answered.
"Lots. Sis, you 're a peach!"
"Of course! Well, what is it?"
He twisted in his chair, and threw a quick glance into her face. Even Gordon could not fail to notice the ironic sweetness this time.
"Now, Sis, you've no need to speak nor look like that. I guess I feel as bad as you do."
"But what is it? And—Gordon—that cigarette!"
He stirred again restlessly.
"Yes, I know. But, it's the first to-day—honest! And I had to have something. You see—I—I'm up against it again. That's all."
"Oh, Gordon, not that! Not so soon—over your allowance," cried the girl, dropping herself helplessly into the chair nearest the door.
"But, Sue, you know how mean and small it is?"
"To go in debt—yes," interpolated the girl.
The youth's chin came up with a dignity as haughty as the recumbency of his position would allow.
"I was referring to the allowance," he vouchsafed coldly.
Unexpectedly Sister Sue laughed.
"Oh, Gordon, Gordon, what a boy you are! I can't stay vexed with you, and you know it. But really, dear, it is serious. I know it is n't large, but it's quite large enough for a boy of sixteen. Now how much—do you owe?"
The youth drew a long breath and came energetically erect.
"There, that's the stuff! Now we can get somewhere. Well, I owe Ted a couple of dollars, and Harry Prescott five, and Bert Hammond—"
"Hammond! Gordon, you don't owe him!"
"Not much. Only four or five dollars, and—"
"Four or five dollars!" groaned the girl; then, sharply, she began to speak with stern decision.
"Gordon, this thing has got to stop! I will not have you owing money to those boys."
"There, that's the stuff! That's it exactly," cried the boy triumphantly. "I knew you would n't want me to owe them like this. That's why I told you. I knew you'd help me pay them back—go to Dad, you know, and explain. Dad 'll do anything for you. You know he will."
She shook her head slowly.
"Gordon, this is not going to do. You've got to go to Father yourself this time."
The young fellow paled visibly.
"Sister Sue, you never would! You would n't! You would n't desert a fellow like this! You know what I'd get."
"I know what you would n't get. You would n't get the money."
"That's just it—that's just it!" he cried feverishly. "And if I can't get the money I can't pay back the boys; and then I 'll still be owing them. Don't you see? Bert Hammond and the rest."
A swift spasm of abhorrence crossed her face. Very plainly she did "see."
"And so I know you'll do it, Sister Sue," he urged, following up his advantage. "I know you'll do it!"
There was no answer. Motionless she sat, looking fixedly straight ahead at nothing. After a long minute she sighed and rose to her feet.
"Oh, yes, she'll do it. Sister Sue will do it," she said a bit grimly. At the door she turned.
"Gordon, you must understand. I'll do it this time, but not again—not again."
"There ain't a-goin' ter be no 'again,'" retorted Gordon, with all his old debonair confidence. "Say, Sister Sue, you are a brick!"
But Sister Sue was already halfway down the hall.
At the library door she paused. Almost always she paused at that library door. There was something about the fine old room with its paneled walls, beamed ceiling, and crimson draperies that brought a little catch to Sue's breath—it was so beautiful, so altogether satisfying. Nowhere in the house was there a room she loved half so well.
But it was not the enchantment of soft lights and blended colors that brought her feet to a pause to-day—though even her worried distress over her present mission did not blind her eyes to the charm of a bit of tooling that flashed gold in the slant rays of the sun across the room. It was the perturbed consciousness that she was coming all unprepared to the task before her, and that her own strong disapproval of young Gordon's conduct was a poor foundation upon which to erect a plea for mercy that would be in the least convincing.
Across the room her father sat in his favorite chair reading. She knew exactly just how resignedly he would lay aside his book, just how impatiently he would pull at his little pointed beard, just how nervously he would tap the toe of his expensively shod foot, while she was telling him her story; and just how irritably he would demand, when she had finished:
"Well—well—well!—what can I do? Why do you come to me? Can't you tell him that he must take the consequences of his own act?"
She knew it all. However, it must be done, of course. And with a sigh she entered the room.
"Father, I—"
At the sound of her voice the man sitting by the window turned with a quick exclamation.
"There! So you're here at last, Sue. They've been looking for you—both of them. Katy wanted you, too. And, by the way, I wanted you myself. I wanted to tell you to speak to Katy. My toast again this morning—it was burned. And my steak—can't you make her stop sending it to the table dried into a piece of tough leather? If you 'd been down to breakfast yourself this morning—"
"Yes, yes, I know, Father. I'm sorry," explained the girl hurriedly. "I had mine early, and did n't wait for you. I was going to the conservatory. But I'm sorry about the steak and the toast. I—I'll speak to Katy. But, first, I want to say—"
"And while you are about it," interrupted the man, "I wish you'd speak to Mary about the sheets on my bed. She does n't tuck them in at all. They pull out every night. Thank you, my dear. I knew you'd attend to it," he finished, turning back to his book.
Irresolutely the girl opened her lips. Then, with a little shrug of her shoulders, she faced about.
"I'll go and speak to Katy and Mary right away," she said, aloud. To herself she sighed, as she left the room: "It's no use now for the other. I'll have to wait—for that."
Downstairs she spoke to Katy about the toast that was burned and the beefsteak that was like tough leather. She spoke also to Mary about the sheets that would not stay tucked. But before she could say to either what was on her own mind, both had spoken to her. Katy said the laundress had not come, and what should she do. Mary said that there was no more toilet soap in the house, and where should she get some.
It was not until after dinner that Sister Sue found a few moments quite to herself. Her father, after a somewhat stormy interview and a grudging consent to leniency as to his son Gordon's misdemeanor, was dozing over the evening paper. Gordon was out with some of his friends. May had gone on the motor ride. Katy and Mary were busy with their own affairs.
With a sigh of content Sister Sue dropped herself on to the couch in the living-room and gave herself up to blissful reveries.
After all, it did n't matter—not really matter—all those tiresome details of soap and laundress, motor parties and overrun allowances. It was n't as if it was to continue—always as if she had nothing else all her life to look forward to. Heaven knew she had had no small amount of it in the past. Not but that she had been glad to do everything she could, of course. Only it had been Sister Sue, Sister Sue, Sister Sue, for everything, all her life, especially since the little mother had died six years before; and sometimes it did seem as if—
Like a panorama the years of her childhood and girlhood unrolled before her.
She had been fourteen when her mother had died. May had been twelve, and Gordon ten. But even before that, she had seemed to have no will or way of her own. Always it had been: "Yes, May, your sister Sue will give it to you"; or, "Yes, Gordon, your sister Sue will do it for you." And Sister Sue had found herself acquiescing, whether it were to give up the larger apple or to untie an obstinate shoestring. Ever since she could remember, it had been like that. Sister Sue was the eldest. Sister Sue would give up, of course. And Sister Sue had given up.
Then the little mother had died. That was six years ago. More than ever, after that, had Sister Sue "given up." It seemed to her, as she thought of it now, that for the last six years she had done nothing but give up. Never was it what she wanted. It was what May wanted, or Gordon wanted, or Father wanted, or even what Katy and Mary in the kitchen wanted! Her time, her thoughts, her wishes—they had been as nothing compared to the time, thoughts, and wishes of everybody else in the house. Why, it had got so that they all thought nobody could do anything for them but Sister Sue. They had just got into the habit of thinking that Sister Sue must do everything. Even outside, among their friends, she was known as "Sister Sue," and was often called so.
And it was not right. It was a shame. Was she never to have a chance to live her own life? Why, here she was twenty years old! If ever she was going to do big things, real things, worth-while things that counted, she must be about it. And Signor Bartoni had said that she could do them. He had said that her talent was wonderful; that it would be a "pi-tee" and a "cr-rime" not to give it to the world. What would he say if he knew that that wonderful talent was tied to a missing cake of soap or a laundress that did not come? Would he not call that a "pi-tee" and a "cr-rime"?
And it was a pity, and it was a crime. And it had got to stop. Not but that she loved them—her father, May, Gordon. She loved them dearly. She loved them so well that sometimes she felt almost ashamed that she should fret and fume under their constant demands upon her. But she could love them still, just as well, and yet be free. She could love them better even, perhaps. For would she not meanwhile be doing something to make them proud of her? Would she not be doing something that would be a real credit to them?
And it was not as if they really needed her. Some one else could see that May wore her rubbers and that the soap was bought. There was Cousin Abby. For years now she had almost begged to come. Cousin Abby was forty, a widow alone in the world, and poor; and she knew all about rubbers, and soap, and such things. And she wanted to come. To be sure, they had thought that they did not want Cousin Abby (her father, May, and Gordon); but that was just because they preferred to let Sister Sue do it. They always preferred to let Sister Sue do everything. It never seemed to enter their heads that it was just possible Sister Sue might prefer to do something else, sometimes.
But they would understand—she was sure they would understand when she told them. And they would be pleased and proud and glad when they knew what Signer Bartoni had said. They would be willing to have Cousin Abby then. She knew they would.
And there was Martin Kent. She was not so sure of Martin. He might not be so pleased. He did not care much for music. Besides, the only way she could please him was to say she would marry him right away. And she did not want to do that. Marry him right away, indeed! Why, that would be but more of the same thing she had been having—merely a change in the name of the laundress and in the label on the cake of soap. That was all. Not but that she expected to be married sometime, of course. By and by, after she had become the great artiste, and had made them all proud of her—time enough then to get married. There was no hurry.
She would have to study, of course. Oh, how she would have to study and practice! But she would not mind that. She would love it. And she need not worry about the money for the lessons. Luckily there had always been plenty of money. Besides, after a little she would be earning something herself. She would rather like that, she believed. It must give one such an independent feeling!
It only remained then to tell them—her father, May, Gordon, and Martin—tell them the wonderful future in store for her, the supreme glory she was going to bring to the name of Gilmore when she should have become the great artiste.