I
IT was not Susan who left me at the end of two weeks; it was Mrs.
Parrot. Maltby had departed within three days, hastening perforce to
editorial duties in New York. He then edited, with much furtive groaning
to sympathetic friends, the _Garden Exquisite_, a monthly magazine _de
luxe_, devoted chiefly to advertising matter, and to photographs
taken--by request of far-seeing wives and daughters--at the country
clubs and on the country estates of our minor millionaires. For a
philosophical anarch, rather a quaint occupation! Yet one must live....
Maltby, however, had threatened a return as soon as possible, "to look
over the piteous _debacle_." There was no probability that Mrs. Parrot
would ever return.
"You cannot expect me," maintained Mrs. Parrot, "to wait on the child of
a murdering suicide. Especially," she added, "when he was nothing but a
common sort of man to begin with. I'm as sorry for that poor little
creature as anybody in New Haven; but there are places for such."
That was her ultimatum. My reply was two weeks' notice, and a
considerable monetary gift to soften the blow.
Hillhouse Avenue, in general, so far as I could discover, rather
sympathized with Mrs. Parrot. She at once obtained an excellent post,
becoming housekeeper for the Misses Carstairs, spinster sisters of
incredible age, who lived only two doors from me in a respectable
mansion whose portico resembled an Egyptian tomb. Wandering freshmen
from the Yale campus frequently mistook it for the home office of one of
the stealthier secret societies.
There, silently ensconced, Mrs. Parrot burned with a hard, gemlike
flame, and awaited my final downfall. So did the Misses Carstairs, who,
being cousins of my wife, had remained firmly in opposition. And rumor
had it that other members of neighboring families were suffering
discomfort from the proximity of Susan. It was as if a tiny, almost
negligible speck of coal dust had blown into the calm, watchful eye of
the _genius loci_, and was gradually inflaming it--with resultant
nervous irritation to all its members.
Susan was happily unconscious of these things. Her gift of intuition had
not yet projected itself into that ethereal region which conserves the
more tenuous tone and the subtler distinction--denominate "society." For
the immediate moment she was bounded in a nutshell, yet seemed to count
herself a princess of infinite space--yes, in spite of bad dreams.
We--Doctor Stevens and I--had put her to bed in the large, coolly
distinguished corner room formerly occupied by Gertrude. This room
opened directly into my own. Doctor Stevens counselled bed for a few
days, and Susan seemed well content to obey his mandate. Meanwhile, I
had requested Mrs. Parrot to buy various necessities for
her--toothbrushes, nightdresses, day dresses, petticoats, and so on.
Mrs. Parrot had supposed I should want the toilet articles inexpensive,
and the clothing plain but good.
"Good, by all means, Mrs. Parrot," I had corrected, "but not plain. As
pretty and frilly as possible!"
Mrs. Parrot had been inclined to argue the matter.
"When that poor little creature goes from here," she had maintained,
"flimsy, fussy things will be of no service to her. None. She'll need
coarse, substantial articles that will bear usage."
"Do you like to wear coarse, substantial articles, Mrs. Parrot?" I had
mildly asked. "So far as I am permitted to observe----"
Mrs. Parrot had resented the implication. "I hope in my outer person,
Mr. Hunt, that I show a decent respect for my employers, but I've never
been one to pamper myself on linjery, if I may use the word--not
believing it wholesome. Nor to discuss it with gentlemen. But if I don't
know what it's wisest and best to buy in this case, who," she had
demanded of heaven, "does?"
"Possibly," heaven not replying, had been my response, "_I_ do. At any
rate, I can try."
It was fun trying. I ran down on the eight o'clock to New York and
strolled up and down Fifth Avenue, shopping here and there as the fancy
moved me. Shopping--with a well-filled pocketbook--is not a difficult
art. Women exaggerate its difficulties for their own malign purposes. In
two hours of the most casual activity I had bought a great number of
delightful things--for my little daughter, you know. Her age?... Oh,
well--I should think about fourteen. Let's call it 'going on fourteen.'
Then it's sure to be all right.
It _was_ all right--essentially. By which I mean that the parties of the
first and second parts--to wit, Susan and I--were entirely and
blissfully satisfied.
Susan liked particularly a lacy sort of nightgown all knotted over with
little pink ribbony rosebuds; there was a coquettish boudoir cap to
match it--suggestive somehow of the caps village maidens used to wear in
old-fashioned comic operas; and a pink silk kimono embroidered with
white chrysanthemums, to top off the general effect. Needless to say,
Mrs. Parrot disapproved of the general effect, deeming it, no doubt with
some reason, a thought flamboyant for Gertrude's coolly distinguished
corner room.
But Susan, propped straight up by now against pillows, wantoned in this
finery. She would stroke the pink silk of the kimono with her thin,
sensitive fingers, sigh deeply, happily, then close her eyes.
There was nothing much wrong with her. The green-and-purple bruise on
her cheek--a somber note which would not harmonize with the frivolity of
the boudoir cap--was no longer painful. But, as Doctor Stevens put it,
"The little monkey's all in." She was tired, tired out to the last tiny
filament of her tiniest nerve....
During those first days with me she asked no awkward questions; and few
of any kind. Indeed, she rarely spoke at all, except with her
always-speaking black eyes. For the time being the restless-terrier-look
had gone from them; they were quiet and deep, and said "_Thank you_," to
Doctor Stevens, to Mrs. Parrot, to me, with a hundred modulating shades
of expression. In spite of a clear-white, finely drawn face, against
which the purple bruise stood out in shocking relief; in spite of
entirely straight but gossamery black hair; in spite of a rather short
nose and a rather wide mouth--there was a fascination about the child
which no one, not even the hostile Mrs. Parrot, wholly escaped.
"That poor, peeny little creature," admitted Mrs. Parrot, on the very
morning she left me, "has a way of looking at you--so you can't talk to
her like you'd ought to. It's somebody's duty to speak to her in a
Christian spirit. She never says her prayers. Nor mentions her father.
And don't seem to care what's happened to him, or why she's here, or
what's to come to her. And what is to come to her," demanded Mrs.
Parrot, "if she stays on in this house, without a God-fearing woman, and
one you can't fool most days? Not that I could be persuaded, having made
other arrangements. And if I may say a last word, the wild talk I've
heard here isn't what I've been used to. Nor to be approved of. No
vulgarity. None. I don't accuse. But free with matters better left to
the church; or in the dark--where they belong. All I hold is, that some
things are sacred, and some unmentionable; and conversation should take
cognizance of such!"