The Book of Susan Part 20

For the first time in my remembrance of her, Miss Goucher laughed out loud. Her laugh--in effect, not in resonance--was like c.o.c.kcrow. We all laughed together, and Gertrude vanished.... But ten minutes later found us with knit brows again, locked in debate. Susan had at length seized courage to tell me that when she left my house she must, once and for all, go it completely alone. She could no longer accept my financial protection. She was to stand on her own feet, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness or in health. This staggering proposal I simply could not listen to calmly, and would not yield to! It was too preposterously absurd.

Yet I made no headway with my objections, until I stumbled upon the one argument that served me and led to a final compromise, "Dear," I had protested, really and deeply hurt by Susan's stubborn stand for absolute independence, "can't you feel how cruelly unkind all this is to me?"

"Oh," she wailed, "unkind? Why did you say that! Surely, Ambo, you don't mean it! Unkind?"

I was quick to press my advantage. "When you ask me to give up even the mere material protection of my family? You _are_ my family, Susan--all the family I shall ever have. I don't want to be maudlin about it. I don't wish to interfere with your freedom to develop your own life in your own way. But it's beyond my strength not to plead that all that's good in my life is bound up with yours. Please don't ask me to live in daily and hourly anxiety over your reasonable comfort and health.

There's no common sense in it, Susan. It's fantastic! And it is unkind!"

Susan could not long resist this plea, for she felt its wretched sincerity, even if she knew--as she later told me--that I was making the most of it. It was Miss Goucher who suggested our compromise.

"Mr. Hunt," she said, "my own arrangement with Susan is this: We are to pool our resources, and I am to make a home for her, just as if I were her own mother. I've been able to save, during the past twenty-five years, about eight thousand dollars; it's well invested, I think, and brings me in almost five hundred a year. This is what we were to start with; and Susan feels certain she can earn at least two thousand dollars a year by her pen. I know nothing of the literary market, but I haven't counted on her being able to earn so much--for a year or so, at least.

On the other hand, I feel certain Susan will finally make her way as a writer. So I'd counted on using part of my capital for a year or two if necessary. We plan to live very simply for the present, of course--but without hards.h.i.+p."

"Still----" I would have protested, if for once Miss Goucher had not waived all deference, sailing calmly on:

"As Susan has told you, she's convinced that she needs the a.s.surance of power and self-respect to be gained by meeting life without fear or favor and making her own career in the face of whatever difficulties arise. There's a good deal to be said for that, Mr. Hunt--more than you could be expected to understand. Situated as you have always been, I mean. But naturally, as Susan's guardian, you can't be expected to stand aside if for any reason we fail in our attempt. I see that; and Susan sees it now, I'm sure. Yet I really feel I must urge you to let us try.

And I promise faithfully to keep you informed as to just how we are getting on."

"Please, Ambo," Susan chimed in, "let us try. If things go badly I won't be unreasonable or stubborn--indeed I won't. Please trust me for that.

I'll even go a step farther than Sister. I won't let her break into her savings--not one penny. If it ever comes to that, I'll come straight to you. And for the immediate present, I have over five hundred dollars in my bank account; and"--she smiled--"I'll try to feel it's honestly mine.

You've spent heaven knows how much on me, Ambo; though it's the least of all you've done for me and been to me! But now, please let me see whether I could ever have made anything of myself if I hadn't been so shamelessly lucky--if life had treated me as it treats most people....

Jimmy, for instance.... _He_ hasn't needed help, Ambo; and I simply must know whether he's a better man than I am, Gunga Dhin! Don't you see?"

Yes; I flatter myself that I did, more or less mistily, begin to see.

Thus our morning conference drew to its dreary, amicable close.

But from the door Susan turned back to me with tragic eyes: "Ambo--I'm caring. It does--hurt." And since I could not very safely reply, she attempted a smile. "Ambo--what is to become of poor Tumps? Togo will have to come; I can't reduce him to atheism. But Tumps would die in New York; and he never has believed in G.o.d anyway! Can you make a martyr of yourself for his surly sake? Can you? Just to see, I mean, that he gets his milk every day and fish heads on Friday? Can you, dear?"

I nodded and turned away.... The door closed so quietly that I first knew when the latch ticked once how fortunately I was alone.

XIV

Maltby Phar was responsible for Togo; he had given him--a little black fluff-ball with shoe-b.u.t.ton eyes--to Susan, about six months after she first came to live with me. Togo is a Chow; and a Chow is biologically cla.s.sified as a dog. But if a Chow is a dog, then a Russian sable m.u.f.f is a dish rag. Your Chow--black, smoke blue, or red--is a creation apart. He is to dogdom what Hillhouse Avenue is to Birch Street--the wrong end, _bien entendu_. His blood is so blue that his tongue is purple; and, like Susan's conception of Gertrude, he is a living confession of faith in the rightness of the right people, a living rebuke to the wrongness of the wrong; the right people being, of course, that master G.o.d or mistress G.o.ddess whom he wors.h.i.+ps, with their immediate _entourage_. No others need apply for even cursory notice, much less respect.

I am told they eat Chows in China, their native land. If they do, it must be from the motive that drove Plutarch's Athenian to vote the banishment of Aristides--ennui, to wit, kindling to rage; he had wearied to madness of hearing him always named "the Just." Back, too, in America--for I write from France--there will one day be proletarian reprisals against the Chow; for in the art of cutting one dead your Chow is supreme. He goes by you casually, on tiptoe, with the glazed eye of indifference. He sees you and does not see you--and will not. You may cluck, you may whistle, you may call; interest will not excite him, nor flattery move him; he pa.s.ses; he "goes his unremembering way." But let him beware! If Americans are slow to anger, they are terrible when roused. I have frequently explained this to Togo--more for Susan's sake than his own--and been yawned at for my pains.

Personally, I have no complaint to make. In Togo's eyes I am one of the right people. He has always treated me with a certain tact, though with a certain reserve. Only to Susan does he prostrate himself with an almost mystical ecstasy of devotion. Only for her does his feathered tail-arc quiver, do his ears lie back, his calm ebon lips part in an unmistakably adoring smile. But there is much else, I admit, to be said for him; he never barks his deep menacing bark without cause; and as a mere _objet d'art_, when well combed, he is superb. Ming porcelains are nothing to him; he is perhaps the greatest decorative achievement of the unapproachably decorative East....

But for Tumps, my peculiar legacy, I have nothing good to say and no apologies to offer. Like Calverley's parrot, he still lives--"he will not die." Tumps is a tomcat. And not only is he a tomcat, he is a hate-scarred noctivagant, owning but an ear and a half, and a poor third of tail. His design was botched at birth, and has since been degraded; his color is unpleasant; his expression is ferocious--and utterly sincere. He has no friends in the world but Susan and Sonia, and Sonia cannot safely keep him with her because of the children.

Out of the night he came, shortly after Togo's arrival; starved for once into submission and dragging himself across the garden terrace to Susan's feet. And she accepted this devil's gift, this household scourge. I never did, nor did Togo; but we were finally subdued by fear.

Those baleful eyes cursing us from dim corners--Togo, Togo, shall we ever forget them! Separately or together, we have more than once failed to enter a dusky room, toward twilight, where those double phosphors burned from your couch corner or out from beneath my easy-chair.

But nothing would move Susan to give Tumps up so long as he cared to remain; and Tumps cared. Small wonder! Nursed back to health and rampageous vivacity, he soon mastered the neighborhood, peopled it with his ill-favored offspring, and wailed his obscene balladry to the moon.

Hillhouse Avenue protested, _en bloc_. The Misses Carstairs, whose slumbers had more than once been postponed, and whose white Persian, Desdemona, had been debauched, threatened traps, poison and the law.

Professor Emeritus Gillingwater attempted murder one night with a .22 rifle, but only succeeded in penetrating the gla.s.s roof of his neighbor's conservatory.

Susan was unmoved, defending her own; she would not listen to any plea, and she mocked at reprisals. Those were the early days of her coming, when I could not force myself to harsh measures; and happily Tumps, having lost some seven or eight lives, did with the years grow more sedate, though no more amiable. But the point is, he stayed--and, I repeat, lives to this hour on my distant, grudging bounty.

Such was the charge lightly laid upon me....

Oh, Susan--Susan! For once, resentment will out! May you suffer, shamed to contrition, as you read these lines! Tumps--and I say it now boldly--is "no d.a.m.n good."

XV

I am clinging to this long chapter as if I were still clinging to Susan's hand on the wind-swept station platform, h.o.a.rding time by infinitesimally split seconds, dreading her inevitable escape. Phil--by request, I suspect--did not come down; and Susan forbade me to enter the train with her, having previously forbidden me to accompany her to town.

Togo was forward, amid crude surroundings, riling the brakemen with his disgusted disdain. Miss Goucher had already said a decorous but sincerely felt good-by, and had taken her place inside.

"Let's not be silly, Ambo," Susan whispered. "After all, you'll be down soon--won't you? You're always running to New York."

Then, unexpectedly, she s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand from mine, threw her arms tight round my neck, and for a reckless public moment sobbed and kissed me. With that she was gone.... I turned, too, at once, meaning flight from the curious late-comers pressing toward the car steps. One of them distinctly addressed me.

"Good morning, Ambrose. Don't worry about your charming little ward.

She'll be quite safe--away from you. I'll keep a friendly eye on her going down."

It was Lucette.

THE FOURTH CHAPTER

I

I HAD a long conference with Phil the day after Susan's departure, and we solemnly agreed that we must, within reasonable limits, give Susan a clear field; her desire to play a lone hand in the cut-throat poker game called life must be, so far as possible, respected. But we sneakingly evaded any definition of our terms. "Within reasonable limits;" "so far as possible"--the vagueness of these phrases will give you the measure of our secret duplicity.

Meanwhile we lived on from mail delivery to mail delivery, and Susan proved a faithful correspondent. There is little doubt, I think, that the length and frequency of her letters const.i.tuted a deliberate sacrifice of energy and time, laid--not reluctantly, but not always lightly--on the altar of affection. It was a genuine, yet must often have been an arduous piety. To write full life-giving letters late at night, after long hours of literary labor, is no trifling effort of good will--good will, in this instance, to two of the loneliest, forlornest of men. Putting aside the mere anodyne of work we had but one other effective consolation--Jimmy; our increasing interest and joy in Jimmy.

But, for me at least, this was not an immediate consolation; my taste for Jimmy's prosaic companions.h.i.+p was very gradually acquired.

Our first word from Susan was a day letter, telephoned to me from the telegraph office, though I at once demanded the delivery of a verbatim copy by messenger. Here it is:

"_At grand central safe so far new york lies roaring just beyond sister and togo tarry with the stuff near cab stand while I send. Love Mrs.

Arthur snooped in vain now for it courage Susan whos afraid dont you be alonsen fan._"

Phil, the scholar, interpreted the last two verbatim symbols: "_Allons, enfants!_"

II

SUSAN TO ME

"Sister and I are at the nice old mid-Victorian Brevoort House for three or four days. Sister is calmly and courageously hunting rooms for us--or, if not rooms, a room. She hopes for the plural. We like this quarter of town. It's near enough publishers and things for walking, and it's not quite so New Yorky as some others. What Sister is trying to avoid for us is slavery to the Subway, which is awful! But we may have to fly up beyond Columbia, or even to the Bronx, before we're through.

The hotel objected to Togo, but I descended to hitherto untried depths of feminine wheedle--and justified them by getting my way. Sister blushed for me--and herself--but has since felt more confident about my chances for success in this wickedly opportunist world.

"Better skip this part if you read extracts to Phil; he'll brood. But perhaps you'd better begin disillusioning him at once, for I'm discovering dreadful possibilities in my nature--now the Hillhouse inhibitions seem remote. New York, one sees overnight, is no place for a romantic idealist--Maltby's phrase, not mine, bless Phil's heart!--but luckily I've never been one. Birch Street is going to stand me in good stead down here. New York _is_ Birch Street on a slightly exaggerated scale; Hillhouse Avenue is something entirely different. Finer too, perhaps; but the world's future has its roots in New Birch Street. I began to feel that yesterday during my first hunt for a paying job.