There proved to be little difficulty in getting myself appointed Susan's
guardian. No one else wanted the child.
I promised the court to do my best for her; to treat her, in fact, as I
would my own flesh and blood. It might well be, I said, that before long
I should legally adopt her. In any event, if this for some unforeseen
reason proved inadvisable, I assured the court that Susan's future would
be provided for. The court benignly replied that, as it stood, I was
acting very handsomely in the matter; very handsomely; no doubt about
it. But there was a dim glimmer behind the juridic spectacles that
seemed to imply: "Handsomely, my dear sir, but whether wisely or no is
another question, which, as the official champion of widows and orphans,
I am not called upon to decide."
It was with a new sense of responsibility that I opened an account in
Susan's name with a local savings bank, and a week later added a short
but efficient codicil to my will.
In the meantime--but with alert suspicions--I interviewed several highly
recommended applicants for Miss Disbrow's deserted post; only to find
them wanting. Poor things! Combined, they could hardly have met all the
requirements, aesthetic and intellectual, which I had now set my heart
upon finding in one lone governess for Susan! It would have needed, by
this, a subtly modernized Hypatia to fulfill my ideal.
I might, of course, have waited for October to send Susan to a select
private school in the vicinage, patronized by the little daughters of
our more cautious families. It was, by neighborly consent, an excellent
school, where carefully sterilized cultures--physical, moral, mental,
and social--were painlessly injected into the blue blood streams of our
very nicest young girls. I say that I might have done so, but this is a
euphemism. On the one hand, I shrank from exposing Susan to possible
snubs; on the other, a little bird whispered that Miss Garnett,
principal of the school, would not care to expose her carefully
sterilized cultures to an alien contagion. Bearers of contagion--whether
physical, moral, mental, or social--were not sympathetic to Miss
Garnett's _clientele_. In Mrs. Parrot's iron phrase, there are places
for such.
Public schools, to wit! But in those long-past days--before Susan taught
me that there are just two kinds of persons, big and little; those you
can do nothing for, because they can do nothing for themselves, and
those you can do nothing for, because they can do everything for
themselves--in those days, I admit that I had my own finicky fears.
Public schools were all very well for the children of men who could
afford nothing better. They had, for example, given Bob Blake's daughter
a pretty fair preliminary training; but they would never do for Ambrose
Hunt's ward. _Noblesse_--or, at any rate, _largesse_--_oblige_.
Yet here was a quandary: Public schools, in my estimation, being too
vulgar for Susan; and Susan, in the estimation of Hillhouse Avenue,
being too vulgar for private ones; yea, and though I still took
cognizance, no subtly modernized Hypatia coming to me highly recommended
for a job--how in the name of useless prosperity was I to get poor
little Susan properly educated at all!
It was Susan who solved this difficulty for me, as she was destined to
solve most of my future difficulties, and all of her own.
She soon turned the public world about her into an extra-select,
super-private school. She impressed all who came into contact with her,
and made of them her devoted--if often unconscious--instructors. And she
began by impressing Miss Goucher and Nora and Sonia, and Philip Farmer,
assistant professor of philosophy in Yale University; and Maltby Phar,
anarchist editor of _The Garden Exquisite_; and--first and chiefly--me.
The case of Phil Farmer was typical. Phil and I had been classmates in
the dark backward and abysm, and we were still, in a manner of speaking,
friends. I mean that, though we had few tastes in common, we kept on
liking each other a good deal. Phil was a gentle-hearted, stiff-headed
sort of man, with a conscience--formed for him and handed on by a long
line of Unitarian ministers--a conscience which drove him to incredible
labor at altitudes few of us attain, and where even Phil, it seemed to
me, found breathing difficult. Not having been thrown with much feminine
society on his chosen heights, he had remained a bachelor. The
Metaphysical Mountains are said to be infested with women, but they
cluster, I am told, below the snow line. Phil did not even meet them by
climbing through them; he always ballooned straight up for the
Unmelting; and when he occasionally dropped down, his psychic chill
seldom wore entirely off before he was ready to ascend again. This
protected him; for he was a tall, dark-haired fellow whose features had
the clear-cut gravity of an Indian chieftain; his rare, friendly smile
was a delight. So he would hardly otherwise have escaped.
Perhaps once a week it was his habit to drop in after dinner and share
with me three or four pipes' worth of desultory conversation. We seldom
talked shop; since mine did not interest him, nor his me. Mostly we just
ambled aimlessly round the outskirts of some chance neutral topic--who
would win the big game, for example. It amused neither of us, but it
rested us both.
One night, perhaps a month after Susan had come to me, I returned late
from a hot day's trip to New York--one more unsuccessful quest after
Hypatia Rediviva--and found Phil and Susan sitting together on the
screened terrace at the back of my house, overlooking the garden. It was
not my custom to spend the muggy midsummer months in town, but this year
I had been unwilling to leave until I could capture and carry off
Hypatia Rediviva with me. Moreover, I did not know where to go. The
cottage at Watch Hill belonged to Gertrude, and was in consequence no
longer used by either of us. As a grass widower I had, in summer, just
travelled about. Now, with a ward of fourteen to care for, just
travelling about no longer seemed the easiest solution; yet I hated
camps and summer hotels. I should have to rent a place somewhere, that
was certain; but where? With the world to choose from, a choice proved
difficult. I was marking time.
My stuffy fruitless trip had decided me to mark time no longer. Hypatia
or no Hypatia, Susan must be taken to the hills or the sea. It was this
thought that simmered in my brain as I strolled out to the garden
terrace and overheard Susan say to Phil: "But I think it's _much_ easier
to believe in the devil than it is in God! Don't you? The devil isn't
all-wise, all-good, all-everything! He's a lot more like _us_."