The Book of Susan Part 10

"I don't approve, Ambo," was her comment, "but if you _will_ write nonsense about me, I can't help it. What I can help, a little, is your writing nonsense about yourself or Phil or the rest. It's only fair to let me get a word in edgeways, now and then--if only for your sake and theirs."

That is not, however, my own reason for giving you occasional peeps into these notebooks of Susan's.

"I'm beginning to wish that Sh.e.l.ley might have had a sense of humor.

'Epipsychidion' is really too absurd. 'Sweet benediction in the eternal curse!' Imagine, under any condition of sanity, calling any woman that!

Or 'Thou star above the storm!'--beautiful as the image is. 'Thou storm upon the star!' would make much worse poetry, but much better sense....

Isn't it strange that I can't feel this about Wordsworth? He was better off without humor, for all his solemn-donkey spots--and it's better for us that he didn't have it. It's probably better for us, too, that Sh.e.l.ley didn't have it--but it wasn't better for _him_.

Diddle-diddle-dumpling--what stuff all this is! Go to bed, Susan."

"There's no use pretending things are different, Susan Blake; you might as well face them and see them through, open-eyed. What does being in love mean?

"I suppose if one is really in love, head over heels, one doesn't care what it means. But I don't like pouncing, overwhelming things--things that crush and blast and scorch and blind. I don't like cyclones and earthquakes and conflagrations--at least, I've never experienced any, but I know I shouldn't like them if I did. But I don't think I'd be so terribly afraid of them--though I might. I think I'd be more--sort of--indignant--disgusted."

Editor's Note: Such Englis.h.!.+ But pungent stylist as Susan is now acknowledged to be, she is still, in the opinion of academic critics, not sufficiently attentive to formal niceties of diction. She remains too wayward, too impressionistic; in a word, too personal. I am inclined to agree, and yet--am I?

"It's all very well to stamp round declaiming that you're captain of your soul, but if an earthquake--even a tiny one--comes and shakes your house like a dice box and then scatters you and the family out of it like dice--it wouldn't sound very appropriate for your epitaph. 'I am the master of my fate' would always look silly on a tombstone. Why aren't tombstones a good test for poetry--some poetry? I've never seen anything on a tombstone that looked real--not even the names and dates.

"But _does_ love have to be like an earthquake? If it does, then it's just a blind force, and I don't like blind forces. It's stupid to be blind oneself; but it's worse to have blind stupid things b.u.t.ting into one and pus.h.i.+ng one about.

"Hang it, I don't believe love has to be stupid and blind, and go thras.h.i.+ng through things! Ambo isn't thras.h.i.+ng through things--or Phil either. But, of course, they wouldn't. That's exactly what I mean about love; it can be tamed, civilized. No, not civilized--just tamed.

_Cowed?_ Then it's still as wild as ever underneath? I'm afraid it is.

Oh, dear!

"Phil and Ambo really are captains of their souls though, so far as things in general let them be. _Things in general_--what a funny name for G.o.d! But isn't G.o.d just a short solemn name for things in general?

There I go again. Phil says I'm always taking G.o.d's name in vain. He thinks I lack reverence. I don't, really. What I lack is--reticence.

That's different--isn't it, Ambo?"

The above extracts date back a little. The following were jotted early in November, 1913, not long after our return from overseas.

"This is growing serious, Susan Blake. Phil has asked you to marry him, and says he needs you. Ditto Maltby; only he says he wants you. Which, too obviously, he does. Poor Maltby--imagine his trying to stoop so low as matrimony, even to conquer! As for Ambo--Ambo says nothing, bless him--but I think he wants and needs you most of all. Well, Susan?"

"Jimmy's back. I saw him yesterday. He didn't know me."

"s.e.x is a miserable nuisance. It muddles things--interferes with honest human values. It's just Nature making fools of us for her own private ends. These are not pretty sentiments for a young girl, Susan Blake!"

"Speak up, Susan--clear the air! You are living here under false pretenses. If you can't manage to feel like Ambo's daughter--you oughtn't to stay."

III

It was perhaps when reticent Phil finally spoke to me of his love for Susan that I first fully realized my own predicament--a most unpleasant discovery; one which I determined should never interfere with Susan's peace of mind or with the possible chances of other, more eligible, men.

As Susan's guardian, I could not for a moment countenance her receiving more than friendly attention from a man already married, and no longer young. A grim, confused hour in my study convinced me that I was an impossible, even an absurd, _parti_. This conviction brought with it pain so sharp, so nearly unendurable, that I wondered in my weakness how it was to be unflinchingly borne. Yet borne it must be, and without betrayal. It did not occur to me, in my mature folly, that I was already, and had for long been, self-betrayed.

"Steady, you old fool!" whispered my familiar demon. "This isn't going to be child's play, you know. This is an hour-by-hour torture you've set out to grin and bear and live through. You'll never make the grade, if you don't take cognizance in advance. The road's devilishly steep and icy, and the corners are bad. What's more, there's no end to it; the crest's never in sight. Clamp your chains on and get into low....

Steady!

"But, of course," whispered my familiar demon, "there's probably an easier way round. Why attempt the impossible? Think what you've done for Susan! Grat.i.tude, my dear sir--affectionate grat.i.tude--is a long step in the right direction ... if it is the right direction. I don't say it is; I merely suggest, _en pa.s.sant_, that it may be. Suppose, for example, that Susan----"

"d.a.m.n you!" I spat out, jumping from my chair. "You contemptible swine!"

Congested blood whined in my ears like a faint jeering laughter. I paced the room, raging--only to sink down again, exhausted, my face and hands clammy.

"What a hideous exhibition," I said, distinctly addressing a grotesque porcelain Buddha on the mantelpiece. Contrary, I believe, to my expectations, he did not reply. My familiar demon forestalled him.

"If by taking a merely conventional att.i.tude," he murmured, "you defeat the natural flowering of two lives----? Who are you to decide that the voice of Nature is not also the voice of G.o.d? Supposing, for the moment, that G.o.d is other than a poetic expression. If her eyes didn't haunt you," continued my familiar demon, "or a certain way she has of turning her head, like a poised poppy...."

As he droned on within me, the mantelpiece blurred and thinned to the blue haze of a distant Tuscan hill, and the little porcelain Buddha sat upon this hill, very far off now and changed oddly to the semblance of a tiny huddled town. We were climbing along a white road toward that far hill, that tiny town.

"Ambo," she was saying, "that isn't East Rock--it's Monte Senario. And this isn't Birch Street--it's the Faenzan Way. How do you do it, Ambo--you wonderful magician! Just with a wave of your wand you change the world for me; you give me--all this!"

A bee droned at my ear: "Grat.i.tude, my dear sir. Affectionate grat.i.tude.

A long step."

"d.a.m.n you!" I whimpered.... But the grotesque porcelain Buddha was there again, on the mantelshelf. The creases in his little fat belly disgusted me; they were loathsome. I rose. "At least," I said to him, "I can live without _you_!" Then I seized him and shattered him against the fireplace tiles. It was an enormous relief.

Followed a knock at my door that I answered calmly: "Who is it? Come in."

Miss Goucher never came to me without a mission; she had one now.

"Mr. Hunt," she said, "I should like to talk to you very plainly. May I?

It's about Susan." I nodded. "Mr. Hunt," she continued resolutely, "Susan is in a very difficult position here. I don't say that she isn't entirely equal to meeting it; but I dread the nervous strain for her--if you understand?"

"Not entirely, Miss Goucher; perhaps, not at all."

"I was afraid of this," she responded unhappily. "But I must go on--for her sake."

Knowing well that Miss Goucher would face death smiling for Susan's sake, her repressed agitation alarmed me. "Good heavens!" I exclaimed.

"Is there anything really wrong?"

"A good deal." She paused, her lips whitening as she knit them together, lest any ill-considered word should slip from her. Miss Goucher never loosed her arrows at random; she always tried for the bull's-eye, and usually with success.

"I am speaking in strict confidence--to Susan's protector and legal guardian. Please try to fill in what I leave unsaid. It is very unfortunate for Susan's peace of mind that you should happen to be a married man."