Susie (3 page)

Susie shook her head. “He’s not very easy to get along with,” she confided shyly.

Basil hitched his chair closer.

“I say, Miss Burke,” he said, taking his thumbs from his waistcoat, and his finger, like a spring released, immediately began its stabbing motions in the air. “I think your noble guest is sweet on you.”

“He’s old enough to be my grandfather!” exclaimed Susie.

“Quite,” agreed Basil. “But it’s brought you to my notice, Miss Burke. You’re very pretty.” And for the second time that day, Susie found her hand being held.

“
Mr. Bryant!
”

Mrs. Burke stood at the double doors that separated the back parlor from the front, holding on to the red plush portiere with one thin, trembling hand. “How
dare
you make overtures to my daughter! And unchaperoned, too.”

Basil leapt to his feet and immediately began to state his case for the defense.

“When I entered this room, Mrs. Burke,” he exclaimed hotly, “Lord Blackhall was already here with Miss Burke,
unchaperoned
.”

“That is not the same. Lord Blackhall is a gentleman, a member of the aristocracy, and old enough to be Susie’s grandfather!” retorted Mrs. Burke, and then bit her lip, for that was not what she had intended to say at all. His lordship was closeted in the study with Dr. Burke, and already she saw her daughter as a countess.

“You led me to believe that any intentions of mine toward Miss Burke would be more than welcome,” said Basil, beginning to pace up and down the room.

“Please stand still and listen to me, Mr. Bryant,” said Mrs. Burke, trying to control her anger. “You have obviously misinterpreted my husband’s kindness toward a young man. He has honored you with his hospitality, and that hospitality you have abused. You are a masher, sir!”

She tugged the bell impatiently.

Basil opened his mouth to reply but the fight had gone out of him. He began to feel that perhaps Mrs. Burke was right. Susie did not help a bit either, sitting quietly at the table with her head lowered.

After what seemed an age, Rosie, the parlormaid, eventually answered the summons, hobbling slowly into the room and complaining bitterly about her “haricot veins,” which she said were bothering her something awful.

Basil tried to stumble out something in the way of an apology, but Mrs. Burke merely clutched the portiere with one hand and pointed toward the door with the other in a gesture worthy of Sarah Bernhardt.

Basil made a last try. He turned and looked down at Susie. “I’m jolly sorry if I offended
you
, Miss Burke. After all—” He broke off in confusion, for Susie had raised her head and had stared straight at him with such a world of pain and bewilderment in her eyes that he recoiled before a depth of emotion utterly and completely alien to him.

There was a long silence in the room after he had left. “Mrs. Burke!” suddenly came the voice of her husband from the study. “
Mrs. Burke!
”

Mrs. Burke fled, and Susie sat by the table, very still. She had a feeling that something awful was about to happen, something so awful that her mind shrank from trying to sort out what it could be.

All too soon she was to know.

Rosie of the haricot veins appeared with the information that Miss Burke was wanted in the study immediately.

Now, the Burkes lived in quite a large villa built in the middle of the last century. It had enough room to comfortably house three Burkes and three servants and, in a pinch, three guests. But that day, Susie felt as if the ground floor stretched for acres and acres as she slowly made her way to the study.

Step by slow step she crossed the shadowy hall with its diamonded squares of colored light from the stained-glass door. Past the umbrella stand, where the silver knob of her father’s cane shone dully in the gloom; past the large brass pot of ornamental grass; past the framed steel engravings and the colored prints of
The Laughing Cavalier, The Blue Boy
, and
The Boyhood of Raleigh
. She stood with her hand on the knob of the study door, looking back in her mind on her life of uneventful days and quiet nights, and knew somehow that the minute she crossed the threshold of the study, she would be leaving them all behind.

She opened the door and went in.

Her parents had been sitting on either side of the small coal fire and rose as Susie entered. Dr. Burke looked smug, and Mrs. Burke was trembling with excitement as she had been trembling with rage such a short time ago.

“Come here, my child,” said Mrs. Burke. “You are the luckiest girl in England. Lord Blackhall has asked Papa’s permission to pay his addresses to you.”

“Addresses?” said Susie numbly.

“You are to be
married
, my dear!” cried Mrs. Burke. “Our little Susie is to be a countess. I am ready to faint with excitement. And my lord was so understanding. He wants to be married very soon and very quietly, for, although the age difference means nothing to him, as I am sure it means nothing to you, he is frightened one of those trashy scandal sheets of Northcliffe’s might not see it in the same way. You shall not have a white wedding, Susie, but think! You will live in a great castle, and you will be very, very rich.”

Susie burst into tears.

Both parents surveyed her with extreme irritation. After all, what they were doing was no worse than the behavior of many parents in this year of 1908. Did not the little sons of wealthy merchants sob their hearts out at prestigious schools so that Papa could brag in the countinghouse about “my boy at Eton” or “my boy at Harrow”? Were not young girls, daily sacrificed at the altar of St. George’s, Hanover Square, forced by their ambitious parents into unwelcome marriages? Like most of their kind, Dr. and Mrs. Burke viewed Susie as a sort of extension of themselves, as yet unformed, to be guided by them. They were dizzy at the thought of their daughter marrying a title. The minute the earl had asked for Susie’s hand in marriage, even Dr. Burke’s qualms of conscience had fled.

He had no son to provide for him in his old age, therefore it was up to his daughter to provide a wealthy son-in-law. Ambition made him cruel, although he was normally a kind, if silly, man.

“Leave her to me, Mrs. Burke,” he said, jerking his head toward the door. “She must have her position made clear to her.”

Mrs. Burke smiled mistily and left, wondering how soon she could decently put on her hat and coat and go and tell the neighbors.

And Dr. Burke proceeded to make the matter very plain to his weeping daughter. She had no alternative. There was no room in his household for an undutiful daughter. If she did not accept the earl, then she would be turned out into the streets without a penny. She would no longer be his daughter. The earl was a trifle old, that he was prepared to admit. But the advice and loving care of an older man was just the thing a silly goose like Susie needed. She need not trouble to give the earl her reply that day. She should sleep on it, and that would restore her to a more intelligent frame of mind.

Now, Dr. Burke would certainly not have turned his daughter out into the streets, but Susie did not know this. Nonetheless she tried to beg and plead. The earl frightened her, she said through sobs. But her father was adamant.

“I am shocked. Utterly and completely shocked at your attitude, Susie. Go to your room and do not show your face downstairs until you are in a more reasonable frame of mind.”

Still weeping, Susie trailed miserably up to her room. The earl was waiting at the top of the stairs. She averted her head, but not before she had seen the cold malice in his eyes.

In her room, she flung herself on the bed and cried until she could cry no more. She would need to marry the earl. There was simply nothing else she could do. She was not trained to work, and her shy and delicate soul shrank from the thought of trying to find work in the cruel and unknown world outside. She was to be sacrificed at the altar as if Christianity had never existed and she were living in older, darker, more pagan times where they seemed to have endless nasty rituals thought out for virgins.

The earl smiled to himself as he heard the muffled sound of sobs echoing along the corridor. She’d soon get over her grief. Women were all the same. He was very happy with the day’s work. He was suffering from venereal disease, and all the chaps at the club, including himself, knew the one way to get rid of it was by sleeping with a virgin. Of course, he could have bought a virgin. But when he had seen Susie, he had known that no other girl would do. It would have to be marriage, so marriage it would be. Her childish features, combined with the unconsciously sensual movements of her immature body, excited him as he felt he had never been excited before. The fact that she would probably scream the place down on her wedding night and would not enjoy the experience one bit added spice to the situation. For the noble earl came from a long and ancient line of rapists, and the Blackhall features were to be seen spread over most of the countryside around his castle.

He did not plan to invite any of his relatives to the wedding. One of the chaps from the club could stand in as best man. The girl must not wear white. It would make him look too old. That mother of hers knew what was what. He had to get her to kit the girl out in something that made her look older.

He then dwelt long and pleasurably on what he believed would be the utter consternation of his present heir, his nephew, the Honorable Giles Warden. He, the earl, would have that little filly in foal as soon as possible. Giles was, however, irritatingly rich, having made a fortune on the Stock Exchange out of practically nothing. But he would not inherit the title, and it would be rich to see his damned arrogant face when he heard the news of the new Blackhall heir.

With the exception of Susie, the Burke household rejoiced that evening, and even the servants were allowed champagne.

Dr. Burke ran after the departing carriage and threw an old shoe. “Just for luck,” he said, returning to his wife with a smile that did not meet his eyes. For Dr. and Mrs. Burke were a very worried couple. The marriage had not been what they had expected—not what they had expected at all.

In the first place, that irritating vicar, Mr. Pontifax, had refused to perform the ceremony. The earl had said blithely that he knew a chap who knew a chap who knew a priest in the City who would cheerfully do the business. Susie had meekly accepted his proposal in the presence of her parents. The earl had kissed her on the cheek and had then departed for his home in the country, informing the Burkes blithely that he would “see them on the day.” Startled, Dr. Burke had asked what they were to do about the wedding rehearsal. No problem, the cheerful earl had said. He himself knew the ropes, having been at the altar three times before, but he would get the priest-chappie to pop down on the day before to tell Susie what she should do.

Snobbery and ambition, however, soon closed in to banish Dr. Burke and his wife’s fears. Their neighbors were most terribly impressed, and that mattered more than the carping criticisms of Mr. Pontifax, who, after all, was the sort who believed that washerwomen had a right to the best seats in Heaven.

Although Harrods could have supplied a trousseau for just over seven pounds, Mrs. Burke insisted on ordering one from Debenhams for one hundred pounds. This included fifteen chemises, twelve camisoles, eight pairs of combinations, seventeen pairs of knickers, seventeen petticoats, a dozen nightdresses, two dressing gowns, dressing jackets and boudoir caps, two dozen handkerchiefs, a nightdress case, and three dozen of something referred to in a discreet whisper as “diaper towels.”

Susie’s wedding outfit was a green velvet suit, generously trimmed with fox fur and with an enormous fox fur hat and muff to match.

The “priest-chappie” duly appeared on the afternoon of the day before the wedding, exuding piety and a strong odor of gin. Susie carefully memorized her responses. She was thin and white-faced and living in a nightmare, but everyone put it down to premarital nerves with such force and vigor that Susie almost believed it herself.

The actual day of the wedding was the first time that Dr. and Mrs. Burke actually saw the church of St. Jude’s. The day was steel-gray and blustery. The church crouched at the end of a small mean alley in one of the forgotten corners of the City of London. Inside, it smelled strongly of damp and disuse, old incense, paraffin, and gin.

There was no organist at the organ, no choir in the choir stalls, and no flowers on the altar. The priest-chappie seemed in perpetual danger of falling down, and he scrambled through the wedding ceremony at a bewildering rate. There were no guests apart from a loud and tipsy best man called Harry Spots, who actually refreshed himself from a small silver flask before Mrs. Burke’s horrified eyes.

The happy couple had finally driven off in the earl’s carriage, which was to take them to the station. Dr. and Mrs. Burke were left alone outside the church, unable to meet each other’s eyes. Mrs. Burke still clutched a bag of rose petals in her hands, and as her fingers twisted nervously at the paper, the rose petals began to escape one by one, flying off down the street before the winter gale, twisting and turning and rising up above the mean houses as if searching desperately for summer.

“We have done our best for Susie,” said Mrs. Burke firmly. “She ought to be very grateful to us.” But her voice quavered and her eyes filled with tears. “I-I d-did think that Lord Blackhall would at least have allowed us t-to h-hold a w-wedding breakfast. Oh, dear, weddings always make me cry,” she added defiantly.

Dr. Burke hailed a passing four-wheeler and held the door open for his wife. “Let’s go home,” he said heavily. “We shall feel much better when we’re home.”

A small urchin with a face of ageless evil barred his way. “I say, guv,” said the boy. “Did yer see that old geezer what married that young bint? Cor! Some folk ud do anythink for money. That’s what my dad allus says.”

Dr. Burke cuffed the urchin over the ear and climbed in beside his wife, who had begun to cry in earnest. Mrs. Burke longed to return to the cozy envy of her neighbors so that she might feel all right within herself again.