The Book of Susan Part 21

"I've plunged on shop equipment, since Jimmy says, other things being equal, the factory with the best tools wins--that is, I've bought a reliable typewriter, and I tackled my first two-finger exercises last night. The results were dire--mostly interior capitals and extraneous asterisks. I shan't have patience to take proper five-finger lessons.

Sister vows she's going to master the wretched thing too, so she can help with copying now and then. There's a gleam in her eye, dear--wonderful! This is to be her great adventure as well as mine.

'Susan, Sister & Co., Unlicensed Hacks--Piffle While You Wait!' Oh, we shall get on--you'll see. Still, I can't truthfully report much progress yesterday or to-day, though a shade more to-day than yesterday. I've been counting callously on Maltby, as Phil disapprovingly knows, and I brought three short manufactured-in-advance articles for the Garden Ex.

down with me. So my first step was to stifle my last maidenly scruple and take them straight to Maltby; I hoped they would pay at least for the typewriter. It was a clear ice-bath of a morning, and the walk up Fifth Avenue braced me for anything. I stared at everybody and a good many unattached males stared back; sometimes I rather liked it, and sometimes not. It all depends.

"But I found the right building at last, somewhere between the Waldorf and the Public Library. There's a shop on its avenue front for the sale of false pearls, and judging from the shop they must be more expensive than real ones. Togo dragged me in there at first by mistake; and as I was wearing my bestest tailor-made and your furs, and as Togo was wearing his, plus his haughtiest atmosphere, we seemed between us to be just the sort of thing the languid clerks had been waiting for. There was a hopeful stir as we entered--no, swept in! I was really sorry to disappoint them; it was horrid to feel that we couldn't live up to their expectations.

"We didn't sweep out nearly so well! But we found the elevator round the corner and were taken up four or five floors, pa.s.sing a designer of _de luxe_ corsets and a distiller of _de luxe_ perfumes on the way, and landed in the impressive outer office of the Garden Ex.

"But how stupid of me to describe all this! You've been there twenty times, of course, and remember the apple-green art-crafty furniture and potted palms and things. Several depressed-looking persons were fidgeting about, but my engraved card--score one for Hillhouse!--soon brought Maltby puffing out to me with both hands extended. Togo didn't quite cut him dead, but almost, and he insulted an entire roomful of stenographers on his way to the great man's sanctum. My first _sanctum_, Ambo! I did get a little thrill from that, in spite of Maltby.

"Stop chattering, Susan--stick to facts. Yes, Phil, please. Fact One: Maltby was surprisingly fl.u.s.tered at first. He was, Ambo! He jumped to the conclusion that I was down for shopping or the theaters, and a.s.sumed of course you were with me. So you were, dear--our way! But I thought Maltby asked rather gingerly after you. Why?

"Fact Two: I did my best to explain things, but Maltby doesn't believe yet I'm serious--seemingly he can't believe it, because he doesn't want to. That's always true of Maltby. He still thinks this must be a sudden spasm--not of virtue; thinks I've run away for an unholy lark. It suits him to think so. If I'm out on the loose he hopes to manage the whole _Mardi gras_, and he needn't hear what I say about needing work too distinctly. That merely annoyed him. But I did finally make him promise--while he wriggled--to read my three articles and give me a decision on them to-morrow. I had to promise to lunch with him then to make even that much headway.--Oof!

"Meanwhile, I fared slightly better to-day. I took your letter to Mr.

Sampson. The sign, Garnett & Co., almost frightened me off, though, Ambo; and you know I'm not easily frightened. But I've read so many of their books--wonderful books! I knew great men had gone before me into those dingy offices and left their precious ma.n.u.scripts to strengthen and delight the world. Who was I to follow those footsteps? Luckily an undaunted messenger boy whistled on in ahead of me--so I followed his instead! By the time I had won past all the guardians of the _sanctum sanctorum_, my sentimental fit was over. Birch Street was herself again.

"And Mr. Sampson proved all you promised--rather more! The dearest odd old man, full of blunt kindness and sudden whimsy. I think he liked me.

I know I liked him. But he didn't like me as I did him--at first sight.

Togo's fault, of course. Why didn't you tell me Mr. Sampson has a democratic prejudice against aristocratic dogs? I must learn to leave poor Togo at home--if there ever is such a place!--when I'm looking for work; I may even have to give up your precious soul-and-body-warming furs. Between them, they belie every humble pet.i.tion I utter. Sister and I may have to eat Togo yet.

"Mr. Sampson only began to relent when I told him a little about Birch Street. I didn't tell him much--just enough to counteract the furs and Togo. And he forgave me everything when I told him of Sister and confessed what we were hoping to do--found a home together and earn our own right to make it a comfy one to live in. He questioned me pretty sharply, too, but not from snifty-snoops like Mrs. Arthur.

"By the way, dear, she was on the train coming down, as luck would have it, in the chair just across from mine. Her questions were masterpieces, but nothing to my replies. I was just wretched enough to scratch without mercy; it relieved my feelings. But you'd better avoid her for a week or two--if you can! I didn't mind any of Mr. Sampson's questions, though I eluded some of them, being young in years but old in guile. I'm to take him my poems to-morrow afternoon, and some bits of prose things--the ones you liked. They're not much more than fragments, I'm afraid. He says he wants to get the hang of me before loading me down with bad advice. I do like him, and--the serpent having trailed its length all over this endless letter--I truly think his offhand friends.h.i.+p may prove far more helpful to me than Maltby's----! _You_ can fill in the blank, Ambo. My shamelessness has limits, even now, in darkest New York.

"Good night, dear. Please don't think you are ever far from my me-est thoughts. Now for that ---- typewriter!"

III

SUSAN TO JIMMY

"That's a breath-taking decision you've made, but like you; and I'm proud of you for having made it--and prouder that the idea was entirely your own. I suppose we're all bound to be more or less lopsided in a world slightly flattened at the poles and rather wobbly on its axis anyway. But the less lopsided we are the better for us, and the better for us the better for others--and that's one universal law, at least, that doesn't make me long for a universal recall and referendum.

"Oh, you're right to stay on at Yale, but so much righter to have decided on a broad general course instead of a narrow technical one! _Of course_ you can carry on your technical studies by yourself! With your brain's natural twist and the practical training you've had, probably carry them much farther by yourself than under direction! And the way you've chosen will open vistas, bring the sky through the jungle to you.

It was brave of you to see that and take the first difficult step. "_Il n'y a que le premier pas qui coute_"--but no wonder you hesitated!

Because at your advanced age, Jimmy, and from an efficient point of view, it's a downright silly step, wasteful of time--and time you know's money--and money you know's everything. Only, I'm afraid you _don't_ know that intensely enough ever to have a marble mansion on upper Fifth Avenue, a marble villa at Newport, a marble bungalow at Palm Beach, a marble steam yacht--but they don't make those of marble, do they!

"It's so possible for you to collect all these marbles, Jimmy--reelers, every one of them!--if you'll only start now and do nothing else for the next thirty or forty years. You can be a poor boy who became infamous just as easy as pie! Simply forget the world's so full of a number of things, and grab all you can of just one. But I could hug you for wanting to be a man, not an adding-machine! For caring to know why Socrates was richer than Morgan, and why Saint Francis and Sainte-Beuve, each in his own way, have helped more to make life worth living than all the Rothschilds of Europe! Oh, I know it's a paradox for me to preach this, when here am I trying to collect a few small clay marbles--putting every ounce of concentration in me on money making, on material success!

Not getting far with it, either--so far.

"But what I'm doing, Jimmy, is just what you've set out to do--I'm trying not to be lopsided. You've met life as it is, already; I never have. And I'd so love to moon along pleasantly on Ambo's inherited money--read books and write verses and look at flowers and cats and stars and trees and children and cows and chickens and funny dogs and donkeys and funnier women and men! I'd so like not to adjust myself to an industrial civilization; not to worry over that sort of thing at all; above everything, not to earn my daily bread. I could cry about having to make up my mind on such bristly beasts as economic or social problems!

"The cla.s.s struggle bores me to tears--yet here it is, we're up against it; and I _won't_ be lopsided! What I want is pure thick cream, daintily fed to me, too, from a hand-beaten spoon. So I mustn't have it unless I can get it. And I don't know that I can--you see, it isn't all conscience that's driving me; curiosity's at work as well! But it's scrumptious to know we're both studying the same thing in a different way--the one great subject, after all: How not to be lopsided! How to be perfectly spherical, like the old man in the nonsense rhyme. Not wobbly on one's axis--not even slightly flattened at the poles!"

"_Hurrah for us! Trumpets!_

"But I'm gladdest of all that you and Ambo are beginning at last to be friends. You don't either of you say so--it drifts through; and I could sing about it--if I could sing. There isn't anybody in the world like Ambo.

"As for Sister and me, we're getting on, and we're not. Sister thinks I've done marvels; I know she has. Marvels of economy and taste in cozying up our room, marvels of sympathy and canny advice that doesn't sound like advice at all. As one-half of a mutual-admiration syndicate I'm a complete success! But as a professional author--hum, hum. Anyway, I'm beginning to poke my inquisitive nose into a little of everything, and you can't tell--something, some day, may come of this. As the d.i.c.kens man said--who was he?--I hope it mayn't be human gore.

Meanwhile, one thing hits the most casual eye: We're still in the double-room-with-alcove boarding-house stage, and likely to stay there for some time to come."

IV

SUSAN TO PHIL

"Your short letter answering my long one has been read and reread and read again. I know it by heart. Everything you say's true--and isn't.

I'll try to explain that--for I can't bear you to be doubting me. You are, Phil. I don't blame you, but I do blame myself--for complacency.

I've taken too much for granted, as I always do with you and Ambo. You see, I know so intensely that you and Ambo are pure gold--incorruptible!--that I couldn't possibly question anything you might say or do--the fineness of the motive, I mean. If you did murder and were hanged for it, and even if I'd no clue as to why you struck--I should know all the time you must have done it because, for some concealed reason, under circ.u.mstances dark to the rest of us, your clear eyes marked it as the one possible right thing to do.

"Yes, I trust you like that, Phil; you and Ambo and Sister and Jimmy.

Think of trusting four people like that! How rich I am! And you can't know how pa.s.sionately grateful! For it isn't blind trusting at all. In each one of you I've touched a soul of goodness. There's no other name for it. It's as simple as fresh air. You're good--you four--good from the center. But, Phil dear, a little secret to comfort you--just between us and the stars: So, mostly, am I.

"Truly, Phil, I'm ridiculously good at the center, and most of the way out. There are things I simply can't do, no matter how much I'd like to; and lots of oozy, opally things I simply can't like at all. I'm with you so far, at least--peac.o.c.k-proud to be! But we're tremendously different, all the same. It's really this, I think: You're a Puritan, by instinct and cultivation; and I'm not. The clever ones down here, you know, spend most of their spare time swearing by turns at Puritanism and the Victorian Era. Their favorite form of exercise is patting themselves on the back, and this is one of their subtler ways of doing it. But they just rampantly rail; they don't--though they think they do--understand.

They mix up every _pa.s.se_ narrowness and bigotry and hypocrisy and sentimental cant in one foul stew, and then rush from it, with held noses, screaming "Puritanism! _Faugh!_" Well, it does, Phil--their stew!

So, often, for that matter--and to high heaven--do the clever ones!

"But it isn't Puritanism, the real thing. You see, I know the real thing--for I know you. Ignorance, bigotry, hypocrisy, sentimentalism--such things have no part in your life. And yet you're a Puritan, and I'm not. Something divides us where we are most alike. What is it, Phil?

"May I tell you? I almost dare believe I've puzzled it out.

"You're a simon-Puritan, dear, because you won't trust that central goodness, your own heart; the very thing in you on whose virgin-goldness I would stake my life! You won't trust it in yourself; and when you find it in others, you don't fully trust it in them. You've purged your philosophy of Original Sin, but it still secretly poisons the marrow of your bones. You guard your soul's strength as possible weakness--something that might vanish suddenly, at a pinch. How silly of you! For it's the _you_-est you, the thing you can never change or escape. Instead of worrying over yourself or others--me?--you could safely spread yourself, Phil dear, all over the landscape, lie back in the lap of Mother Earth and twiddle your toes and smile! Walt Whitman's way! He may have overdone it now and then, posed about it; but I'm on his side, not yours. It's heartier--human-er--more fun! Yes, Master Puritan--more fun! That's a life value you've mostly missed. But it's never too late, Phil, for a genuine cosmic spree.

"Now I've done scolding back at you for scolding at me.--But I loved your sermon. I hope you won't shudder over mine?"

V

The above too-cryptic letter badly needs authoritative annotation, which I now proceed to give you--at perilous length. But it will lead us far....

Though it is positively not true that Phil and I, having covenanted on a hands-off policy, were independently hoping for the worst, so far as Susan's ability to cope unaided with New York was concerned; nevertheless, the ease with which she made her way there, found her feet without us and danced ahead, proved for some reason oddly disturbing to us both. Here was a child, of high talents certainly, perhaps of genius--the like, at least, of whose mental precocity we had never met with in any other daughter--much less, son--of Eve! A woman, for we so loved her, endowed as are few women; yet a.s.suredly a child, for she had but just counted twenty years on earth. And being men of careful maturity, once Susan had left us, our lonely anxieties fastened upon this crying fact of her youth; it was her youth, her inexperience, that made her venture suddenly pathetic and dreadful to us, made us yearn to watch over her, warn her of pitfalls, guide her steps.

True, she was not alone. Miss Goucher was admirable in her way; though a middle-aged spinster, after all, unused to the sharp temptations and fierce compet.i.tions of metropolitan life. It was not a house-mother Susan would need; the wolves lurked beyond the door--shrewd, soft-treading wolves, cunningly disguised. How could a child, a charming and too daring child--however gifted--be expected to deal with these creatures? The thought of these subtle, these patient ones, tracking her--tracking her--chilled us to hours-long wakefulness in the night!

Then with the morning a letter would come, filled with strange men's names.

We compared notes, consulted together--shaking unhappy heads. We wrote tactful letters to Heywood Sampson, begging him, but always indirectly, to keep an eye. We ran down singly for nights in town, rescued--the verb was ours--Susan and Miss Goucher from their West 10th Street boarding-house, interfered with their work or other plans, haled them--the verb, I fear, was theirs--to dinner, to the opera or theater, or perhaps to call on someone of ribbed respectability who might prove an observant friend. G.o.d knows, in spite of all resolutions, we did our poor best to mind Susan's business for her, to brood over her destiny from afar!

And G.o.d knows our efforts were superfluous! The traps, stratagems, springes in her path, merely suspected by us and hence the more darkly dreaded, were clearly seen by Susan and laughed at for the ancient, pitiful frauds they were. The dull craft, the stale devices of avarice or l.u.s.t were no novelties to her; she greeted them, _en pa.s.sant_, with the old Birch Street terrier-look; just a half-mocking nod of recognition--an amused, half-wistful salute to her gamin past. It was her gamin past we had forgotten, Phil and I, when we agonized over Susan's inexperienced youth. Inexperienced? Bob Blake's kid! If there were things New York could yet teach Bob Blake's kid--and there were many--they were not those that had made her see in it "Birch Street--on a slightly exaggerated scale"!

But, as the Greeks discovered many generations ago, it is impossible to be high-minded or clear-sighted enough to outwit a secret unreason in the total scheme of things. Else the virtuous, in the Greek sense, would be always the fortunate; and perhaps then would grow too self-regarding.

Does the last and austerest beauty of the ideal not flower from this, that it can promise us nothing but itself! You can choose a clear road, yet you shall never walk there in safety: Chance--that secret unreason--lurks in the hedgerows, myriad-formed, to plot against you.

"_Helas!_" as the French heroine might say. "Diddle-diddle-dumpling!" as might say Susan.... Meaning: That strain, Ambo, was of a higher mood, doubtless; but do return to your muttons.

Susan had reached New York late in November, 1913, and the letter to Phil dates from the following January. Barely two months had pa.s.sed since her first calls upon Maltby and Heywood Sampson, but every day of that period had been made up of crowded hours. Of the three manufactured-in-advance articles for the Garden Ex., Maltby had accepted one, paying thirty dollars for it, half-rate--Susan's first professional earnings; but the manner of his acceptance had convinced Susan it was a mere stroke of personal diplomacy on his part. He did not wish to encourage her as a business a.s.sociate, for Maltby kept his business activities rigidly separate from what he held to be his life; neither did he wish to offend her. What he wholly desired was to draw her into the immediate circles he frequented as a social being, where he could act as her patron on a scale at once more brilliant and more impressive.

So far as the Garden Ex. was concerned, his att.i.tude from the first had been one of sympathetic discouragement. Susan hit off his manner perfectly in an earlier letter: