Women are conventional as a business; but with men conventionality is a groveling superstition.The youths of Sutherland longed for, sighed for the alluring, sweet, bright Susan; but they dared not, with all the women saying "Poor thing! What a pity a nice man can't afford to have anything to do with her!" It was an interesting typical example of the profound snobbishness of the male character.Rarely, after Susan was sixteen, did any of the boys venture to ask her to dance and so give himself the joy of encircling that lovely form of hers;yet from babyhood her fascination for the male sex, regardless of age or temperament, had been uncanny--"naturally, she being a love-child," said the old women.And from fourteen on, it grew steadily.
It would be difficult for one who has not lived in a small town to understand exactly the kind of isolation to which Sutherland consigned the girl without her realizing it, without their fully realizing it themselves.Everyone was friendly with her.Astranger would not have noticed any difference in the treatment of her and of her cousin Ruth.Yet not one of the young men would have thought of marrying her, would have regarded her as his equal or the equal of his sisters.She went to all the general entertainments.She was invited to all the houses when failure to invite her would have seemed pointed--but only then.
She did not think much about herself; she was fond of study--fonder of reading--fondest, perhaps, of making dresses and hats, especially for Ruth, whom she thought much prettier than herself.Thus, she was only vaguely, subconsciously conscious of there being something peculiar and mysterious in her lot.
This isolation, rather than her dominant quality of self-effacing consideration for others, was the chief cause of the extraordinary innocence of her mind.No servant, no girl, no audacious boy ever ventured to raise with her any question remotely touching on sex.All those questions seemed to Puritan Sutherland in any circumstances highly indelicate; in relation to Susan they seemed worse than indelicate, dreadful though the thought was that there could be anything worse than indelicacy.
At fifteen she remained as unaware of even the existence of the mysteries of sex as she had been at birth.Nothing definite enough to arouse her curiosity had ever been said in her hearing; and such references to those matters as she found in her reading passed her by, as any matter of which he has not the beginnings of knowledge will fail to arrest the attention of any reader.It was generally assumed that she knew all about her origin, that someone had, some time or other, told her.Even her Aunt Fanny thought so, thought she was hiding the knowledge deep in her heart, explained in that way her content with the solitude of books and sewing.
Susan was the worst possible influence in Ruth's life.Our character is ourself, is born with us, clings to us as the flesh to our bones, persists unchanged until we die.But upon the circumstances that surround us depends what part of our character shall show itself.Ruth was born with perhaps something more than the normal tendency to be envious and petty.
But these qualities might never have shown themselves conspicuously had there been no Susan for her to envy.The very qualities that made Susan lovable reacted upon the pretty, pert blond cousin to make her the more unlovable.Again and again, when she and Susan were about to start out together, and Susan would appear in beauty and grace of person and dress, Ruth would excuse herself, would fly to her room to lock herself in and weep and rage and hate.And at the high school, when Susan scored in a recitation or in some dramatic entertainment, Ruth would sit with bitten lip and surging bosom, pale with jealousy.
Susan's isolation, the way the boys avoided having with her the friendly relations that spring up naturally among young people these gave Ruth a partial revenge.But Susan, seemingly unconscious, rising sweetly and serenely above all pettiness--Ruth's hatred deepened, though she hid it from everyone, almost from herself.And she depended more and more utterly upon Susan to select her clothes for her, to dress her, to make her look well; for Susan had taste and Ruth had not.
On that bright June morning as the cousins went up Main Street together, Susan gave herself over to the delight of sun and air and of the flowering gardens before the attractive houses they were passing; Ruth, with the day quite dark for her, all its joys gone, was fighting against a hatred of her cousin so vicious that it made her afraid."I'll have no chance at all,"her angry heart was saying, "so long as Susie's around, keeping everybody reminded of the family shame." And that was a truth she could not downface, mean and ungenerous though thinking it might be.The worst of all was that Susan, in a simple white dress and an almost untrimmed white straw hat with a graceful curve to its brim and set at the right angle upon that wavy dark hair, was making the beauty of her short blond cousin dim and somehow common.
At the corner of Maple Street Ruth's self-control reached its limit.She halted, took the sample of silk from her glove.There was not a hint of her feelings in her countenance, for shame and the desire to seem to be better than she was were fast making her an adept in hypocrisy."You go ahead and match it for mamma," said she."I've got to run in and see Bessie Andrews.""But I promised Uncle George I'd come and help him with the monthly bills," objected Susan.
"You can do both.It'll take you only a minute.If mother had known you were going uptown, she'd never have trusted _me_." And Ruth had tucked the sample in Susan's belt and was hurrying out Maple Street.There was nothing for Susan to do but go on alone.
