SUSIE AND LAMBERT CRABTREE.

Before tea was over, a sudden stir in opening doors and advancing steps became audible in the Redcot drawing-room. Susie Crabtree entered in the easiest, most graceful manner, with the most perfect security of a welcome. She brought in with her as the very atmosphere which surrounded her, in which she lived and breathed, a totally different influence from what had been there before she came.

Susie Crabtree was a very pretty little woman by nature. She was past her first youth, but she did her best by the adventitious aid of a choice and elaborate toilet, which more than supplies the early graces time steals away, in the eyes of many thousands of women, and of not a few men--though where the last are concerned the substitute is only a vague charm to tickle the male fancy.

Susie’s beauty was of the daintiest, most fragile order, apparently, though in reality she had never known a day’s illness that could not have been satisfactorily accounted for in the whole course of her life. She was small and brown beside her younger sister, but the smallness was a perfectly modelled fairy-queen sort of smallness, and the brown was the soft richly-tinted olive of a brilliant brunette. The almond-shaped dark eyes, with their glance hovering between a coquettish sparkle and a slightly languishing repose, were in keeping with the rest of the face. So were the other features. The straight little nose was a trifle sharp, if it had not been for the beauty of the line from the brow, and the nostrils were thin and semi-transparent. The short upper lip curled, while the under lip was just full enough to atone for a suspicion of narrowness in the red streak above it. The pearly teeth showed between. The chin was round--a shade too round, threatening, in conjunction with the low forehead, a certain finer animalism as the years rolled on.

But the years had not rolled on as yet, and Susie Crabtree was still little beyond the zenith of her beauty, which was preserved and greatly promoted, as she firmly believed, by the unstinted thought and time and the lavish expenditure of Lambert Crabtree’s money freely devoted to that end. They had procured her bonnet, mantle, and gown from the most highly esteemed sources.

For it must not be supposed that Mrs. Crabtree attempted anything by halves, or that she could not accomplish what she wished in the best manner possible. She was a clever as well as a pretty woman of her kind--one who had little to do with book learning beyond the fair education for a woman of her rank. But this was enough to lend her all she wanted--a tolerable familiarity with the topics of the day, an easy assumption of the tone of her society whatever it might be, a curious tact, amounting to mother-wit, which picked up, assimilated, and reproduced any scraps of the jargon of the schools, any morsel of affectation of this or that devotion to French criticism, German music, or pre-Raphaelite Italian art which, floating down the generations, drifted into queer corners. Anything so solid and thorough as Jane’s knowledge would have crushed Susie with her airs and graces out of existence.

Susie Crabtree had still less moral force and insight bred of largeness of heart, crystal-clear uprightness and delicately-keen conscientiousness than she had book-learning. But she had no end of _savoir faire_, and a good artistic taste, barring that it was subservient to one class of decorators and milliners, and one school of American authors, oddly enough.

Mrs. Crabtree had been making some calls of ceremony before she came on to her father’s place; besides, she had no objection to exhibit her most charming visiting costume to her mother and sister. She had a secret impression that they must admire and envy it, though they did not seem very appreciative. Her mother looked at Susie’s dress and praised it, certainly, but it was with a child’s simple surprise and pleasure, and, at the same time, with the good-natured indulgence which a grown woman might show to a child. Now, what Susie wanted was intelligent admiration, and a wistful craving--amounting to a flattering grudge against the wearer of the clothes--to be as beautifully and fashionably dressed as the wife of the county magnate, Lambert Crabtree, the Newton banker.

Some ecstatic women would have called Susie’s marvellously ‘quiet,’ but unapproachable, bonnet ‘a perfect love.’ Nothing could exceed the truth of the curves of her closely-fitting mantle to the lines of her shapely figure. The velvet material, with its deep border of rich fur, was sumptuous without gorgeousness, and though she was not tall enough to carry off splendour by stateliness, she did it by sheer elegance. The texture and hue of her gown were equally commendable in their delightful combination of softness, lightness, and a dead-leaf duskiness, which was yet not ashen, but shot through and through with mellow russet. Her many-buttoned gloves and boots followed suit, so did her exquisite muff. There could be no doubt that Susie Crabtree was exceedingly well-dressed, according to the present artistic but not altogether rational or convenient fashion, and she beamed brightly out of her dress one of the prettiest women in the county. As this was the object of her ardent desires, its attainment contributed largely to her satisfaction.

For that matter, Susie was an extremely well-satisfied woman in nearly every respect. She had not all that she could wish, but she had almost all that was within her reach, and she was far too astute in worldly wisdom to cry for the moon. As a proof of her moderation, she was only slightly disturbed on the present occasion by an irresistible, unwelcome conviction which occurred to her. Her unmarried sister had made the huge blunder of electing to be that odd personage--altogether undesirable, though less hooted at now than formerly--a full-fledged blue-stocking; and here she was coolly regarding Susie’s matronly honours and graceful magnificence without a particle either of fascination, homage, or aching covetousness. Susie did not deceive herself in reference to Jane’s feelings, but neither did she trouble herself to resent them. She was too contented to be cross, and liked popularity too well to make herself disagreeable. There might be something insolent in her happiness, founded as it was on her success in life, to unhappy and unfortunate people; but the insolence was in the source of the happiness, not in the manner of its expression.

Susie tripped into the Redcot drawing-room neither too fast nor too slow, so as not to miss something gliding in her gait. She kissed Mrs. Prior and Jane with due affectionateness, put up her face with filial fondness for her father to kiss, then subsided into her chair to be much made of, to make much of her relatives in a way that was hard to resist. ‘Here I am, mamma and papa.’ Susie retained the old childish terms which Jane had renounced long before. Mrs. Crabtree even gave them an additional babyishness--an affectation borrowed from some of her American cousins. She pronounced papa pa-pa, and mamma mam-ma. ‘I am so glad to see you both, with Janie into the bargain. How are the babies? But I need not ask, for I saw the little heads tolerably ruffled, in the matter of hair, through the schoolroom window as I passed. Oh! dear; I wish you would, some of you, come down to Newton and manage our babies, since they are quite too much for Lamb and me. They are never to be found in the nurseries--you know, the children roam all over the house. Yesterday Molly called me Simple Susan to my face, and Piers clenched his fist at Lamb.’ Then followed more chatter. ‘Oh! mam-ma, dear, I had better tell you at once that you must excuse me, for I have no change of dress with me. I must sit down to dinner as I am, if you will sit down to table with me. Of course I can lay aside my bonnet and mantle, and Janie may let me have a fichu. I was uncertain up to the last moment whether Lamb could get rid in time of that nice old Mr. Hutchinson, who comes over about bank business, and must stay to dinner. I ought to have stayed too, and I should really have liked to entertain the old gentleman, he is so deliciously gallant and courtly, but I had promised to come to you. Only, if Lamb had not been able to ride over and escort me back, I must have begged off, though I should almost have broken my heart. One has so little good of the moon in such cloudy weather, and the roads are so heavy for the horses; and, what is after all the true state of the matter, I am such a timid little goose.’

There was not a grain of feeling, shy or abashed, in Susie’s manner--not a hint of being aware of the fact that her husband was at that moment poaching, as it were, on what had been the Redcot preserves--the sole coal-mines in the district for three-quarters of a century. There was not a shade of distress that his success in the search he was carrying out at Ladslove must mean sooner or later ruin to the Priors.

There was not a Prior there--least of all John Prior--who could help feeling astonished by the ease and fluency with which Susie ignored the crow to pluck between the two houses. It was a pleasant philosophy that partook of effrontery. But, on second thoughts, every Prior, from the oldest to the youngest, was ready to admit that Susie’s conduct was not only the best policy; it was the least disturbing under the circumstances. The family felt relieved by it. They went near to owing her gratitude for it. Mrs. Prior and Jane began to talk, so far as to meet Mrs. Crabtree’s amusing chat on the topics of the neighbourhood, and, with a slightly wider range, of the day, the whole having just the dash of purely personal and trivial details--such as the behaviour of her babies, the next dinner she was going to, the club-book she was reading--which kept it from sounding stilted and forced. Even Mr. Prior chimed in with a sentence occasionally.

‘Have you heard that the Marlowes are going abroad in February?’ said Susie, as fresh tea was brought for her.

‘Yes, Mr. Marlowe told me yesterday,’ answered Mrs. Prior, stroking down the lace at her cuffs, as she had a habit of doing.

‘It is devoutly to be hoped,’ continued Susie, with her lavish friendliness, ‘that Mr. Marlowe will benefit much more by his flight from the spring east winds than he did last year. I have given her all sorts of commissions, though people do say you get things as good and cheap at home nowadays. I daresay they are right. I daresay it is not an invention of the British tradesman.’

‘Have you heard whether Arthur Norris has taken a scholarship at Oxford?’ asked Jane, while Susie dawdled with her cup.

‘Yes; a Balliol scholarship--the best going. His uncle is very much pleased; so is everybody,’ declared Susie, sympathetically, ‘and I should be enchanted if he needed help. However, his comparative wealth is unavoidable, and is not to be regretted otherwise. Besides, Mr. Norris says that where rich and poor alike go in for scholarships, it prevents their bestowal becoming a mere charitable institution, and lends them dignity. I’m sure I don’t know about the dignity, but I’m ready to take it on Mr. Norris’s word.’

‘Why did Arthur not enter his father’s college? George Norris was an Oriel man,’ objected Mr. Prior.

‘I can’t tell, pa-pa. I daresay he thought Balliol more aristocratic, or influential, or something. Oh, Jane, do you know I am so delighted with the recent discoveries at Herculaneum!--another tomb, and a torso of Hercules freshly excavated.’

‘I think you are mistaken,’ said Jane, with sensitive exactness. ‘The tomb is at Baiæ and the torso is of Bacchus.’

‘Ah, well,’ assented Susie in careless acquiescence. ‘No doubt you are right. Lamb and I saw the place, I know. These are treasures of which we cannot have too many. I say, pa-pa, what do you think of the prospects of the English in Egypt? That is what it comes to, is it not, though we give ourselves out as the arbiters and peacemakers of the universe? Lamb says politics are beyond me?’

‘They are beyond most of us, Crabtree included,’ exclaimed John Prior, a little impatiently, throwing himself into his chair.

‘I am not so sure of that,’ maintained Susie, artlessly, ‘when I think that Piers may grow up to be a man and join one or other of the services, and the Government has so much to do with the army and navy.’

‘In voting supplies, do you mean?’ asked John Prior, raising his eyebrows. But Susie was off on a new tack.

‘Mam-ma, can you give me a cure for Molly’s sucking her thumb?’

So it ran on in an enlivening, almost refreshing flow, to which the Priors contributed a drop or two occasionally.

In spite of himself John Prior was diverted from his care, soothed by the diversion and gently titillated. He came, indeed, under Susie’s spell, not without a vague sense of self-contempt and a fresh sting dealt by memory. There had been a time when he had been fool enough to hug himself on his charming little daughter’s beauty and her winning ways as she grew from childhood to girlhood. Then he had been deeply mortified and aggrieved by what he had been powerless to prevent--her throwing herself away on Lambert Crabtree. Now, while she still retained some of the intoxicating elements of her beauty, her graciousness and her folly, which had more cleverness, of a kind, about it, than other women’s wisdom possessed, it was a case of--

As the husband is, so the wife is.

It was worse. The father felt forced to see that there was really no mental or moral deterioration in Susie. In the spring-time of her attractions his child and her mother’s child had never been actually above Lambert Crabtree in spiritual fibre. The marriage had been a clear instance of like drawing to like. The idea was detestable to John Prior.

Lambert Crabtree did not hesitate to look in for a few moments at Redcot in the course of the evening. He came over ostensibly with the good-natured purpose of quieting his wife’s nerves by riding home at the side of her carriage. Yet he was not ordinarily a gallant, though he was an exceedingly indulgent husband. He gave Susie what she had bargained for in the marriage. She repaid him in the same coin. When the transaction was completed they did not see much of each other. They appeared to have tacitly agreed to go their several ways--which were not similar ways--as independently as any couple like them, who are still on perfectly amicable terms.

Susie was thankful that she had escaped the narrowing circumstances at Redcot with the growing morbidness and moodiness of her father’s temper. She was highly gratified by her kingdom at Newton. Lambert Crabtree got from Susie all that he wanted. He remained proud of her beauty and pleasantness. He appreciated her sense in not asking from him what he could not give. Still these terms, excellent as they were so far, were hardly the kind which cause a husband to take a long ride after the work and worry of the day, in order to share an expedition of his wife’s, and have an hour or so more of her society.

Susie’s husband was big and red, with prominent light eyes. He was fifteen years older than his wife, while he affected a somewhat youthful, sportsman-like style of dress, was fond of white cords, coloured vests, and coloured neckties, and altogether was coarse-looking for a man of gentle birth. He did not take off his riding-coat, and came into the Redcot drawing-room with his whip hanging out of one pocket.

John Prior received his son-in-law with scrupulous politeness, though he would not come to close quarters with him. Lambert Crabtree’s tactics were totally different from his wife’s. In place of strictly avoiding any allusion in the conversation between the two men to the cause of mortal offence the younger was giving; in place of getting up a mist and glamour of indifferent talk on every conceivable topic, the intruder would have approached the subject with constitutional brazenness and bluster, and endeavoured to have made his own out of it. He was quite capable of saying, ‘You know business is business, Prior. We men understand that we must look after our own interests, and leave the devil to pay. We need not pretend to mawkish sentiment because we cannot avoid treading on each other’s corns as we go our various ways.’

It was more than probable that the Priors owed the brief pleasure of Lambert Crabtree’s company to some half-formed intention of taking the bull by the horns, to serve the challenger’s ends. One of Susie’s witty affectations was to call her husband invariably by a pretty abbreviation of his name, which was grotesquely inappropriate. ‘Wolf’ would have been more like the man, John Prior had growled, ‘not that Susie is anything of a Red Riding Hood.’

But John Prior was slightly prejudiced. The big red-faced banker of squire descent was nearer a bull-dog; he had nothing of the nobility of a mastiff hanging on like grim death to his prey. There was a certain bluffness in his burliness which, to be sure, went a long way with some people in persuading them of his honesty, and a clumsiness in his utmost cunning that disarmed invidious suspicion, but which nevertheless did not belong to the true wolf or fox breed.

Mr. Prior had no difficulty in distancing Crabtree, when he made such obviously tentative speeches as ‘Nasty raw weather, bad for field operations of all kinds. Push and pluck are nowhere in such an atmosphere. Nothing but hunting keeps a man’s blood in circulation. Hang it! the poor devils who have to stand about on your coal hills and pit heads which I passed on my ride are to be pitied unless they keep up jolly furnace fires and have recourse to them every five minutes. Can you trust them to stick to their machinery night and day? Don’t you find them sending you very blank reports under the depression of such a long-continued beastly chill?’

The person appealed to would not swallow the bait and open fire on his grievance. He would not fling out the sneering retort--‘Boring is not warmer work than stacking coal--is it?’ His reply was strictly to the point, while it was as freezing as the air complained of.

‘No, the weather don’t signify to speak of. The men are accustomed to exposure, and for those who are below ground the temperature is much the same at all seasons.’

His stern impassiveness and his adhering to his own side of the question baffled his assailant, who could bully or swagger, or even cajole a little, but who could not go about the bush to any purpose. He was forced to turn aside to Mrs. Prior and Jane, ‘How goes the last novel, mamma?’ he also said mamma with a cool assumption of intimacy. ‘Tommy not showing any symptoms of mange, I hope? It is as well that young beggar Piers does not come in his way. Half the dogs in Newton have had to be choked off the little rascal--he will grab at their tails.’

‘Dear me! that is not safe for the child,’ cried Mrs. Prior, rising to the peril of her grandson. ‘Why does his nurse let him? Susie, are you sure the servant--is it Marianne still?--is trustworthy?’

‘Sure, mam-ma,’ declared Susie, with a melodious laugh. ‘It is Marianne still, and she is as good as gold. It is too bad of Lamb to frighten you.’

‘Do Tommy and Sammy never give you scares?’ inquired Mr. Crabtree, innocently.

‘Tom and Sam are accustomed to do as they are bidden,’ interposed Jane, with dignity; ‘and they do not think there is any particular manliness or any great fun in teasing animals.’

‘Ah! they are under your superior training, Jane. Why don’t you come over to Newton and give Piers a lesson? Neither Susie nor I would be in the least jealous. But I forget the loss of time in tackling these wretched children. What cube root are you extracting at this date, Aunt Jane? Who is the old classic humbug to whom you are going down on your knees? Ladies do nothing by halves. The hoary sinners were never tired flooring me until I made up my mind to leave them to the dust of ages. Or do you go in for science at present--fixed stars, artesian wells, the law of gravity in motion, or some other impractical balderdash?’

From the specimen of the badinage which always formed a large part of Lambert Crabtree’s social intercourse with the women of his acquaintance, it may be judged that his particular kind of manliness--well enough born and bred as he was--did incline to exhibit itself in teasing something young people, or cats and dogs. It may be guessed from whom his little son Piers inherited some of his infantile propensities.

‘Come along, Susie; we must start without farther loss of time,’ was rather a grateful sound to Lambert Crabtree’s kindred by marriage.

But, on the whole, Mrs. Prior was disposed to hope a perilous visit had passed off tolerably well till John Prior burst out, the moment the door was closed, with the fierce protest--‘If Susie cannot come here by herself, she had better stay away. If she will bring that big brute and blackguard--I tell you he is a blackguard as well as a brute,’ in angry answer to an unspoken protest in the horrified look of his wife--‘I have suspected it all along--I am sure of it at last--I must make myself scarce. It must be either he or I. The same house, if it is my house, shall not hold us both.’

Mrs. Prior said nothing. She did not know what to say that could do any good.

Jane opened her eyes wide in deprecation. As is usual with the young, she sat in judgment without hesitation. Her father’s violence struck her as equally uncalled for and unbecoming. She was not undutiful or deficient in attachment to him. She was a good deal more capable of veneration than that pretty, pleasant little creature Susie had ever been. Jane did not like to blame either of her parents; but she did wish that her father could see things in a more philosophic light, that he could preserve a more philosophic attitude. It was hard for him of course that Susie’s husband should take it into his head to bore for coal on Ladslove; but even if the coal were found, it would only be a diminution of income at Redcot. Jane presumed there would still be enough for the necessaries of life. Many a sage and scholar had possessed less, had been the poorest of the poor, without fret. The mere likelihood of poverty was surely not enough to cause fuss and strife.