The following evening, after dinner, Maltby Phar, still a little ruffled
by Susan's unexpected vivacities of the night before, retired to the
library with pipe and book, and Susan and I sat alone together on the
garden terrace. It was dusk. The heavy air of the past week had been
quickened and purified by an afternoon thunderstorm. Little cool puffs
came to us across a bed of glimmering white phlox, bearing with them its
peculiar, loamy fragrance. Smoke from my excellent cigarette eddied now
and then toward Susan.
Silence had stolen upon her as the afterglow faded, revealing the first
patient stars. Already I had learned to respect Susan's silences. She
was not, in the usual sense of uncertain temper, of nervous
irritability, a moody child; yet she had her moods--moods, if I may put
it so, of extraordinary definition. There were hours, not too frequent
to be disturbing, when she _withdrew_; there is no better word for it.
At such times her thin, alert little frame was motionless; she would sit
as if holding a pose for a portrait, her chin a trifle lifted, her eyes
focusing on no visible object, her hands lying--always with the palms
upward--in her lap. I supposed that now, with the veiled yet sharply
scented dusk, such a mood had crept upon her. But for once I was
mistaken. Susan, this time, had not withdrawn; she was intensely aware.
"Ambo"--the suddenness with which she spoke startled me--"you ought to
have lots of children. You ought to have a boy, anyway; not just a
girl."
"A boy? Why, dear? Are you lonely?"
"Of course not; with you--and Phil!"
"Then whatever in the world put such a crazy----"
Susan interrupted; a bad habit of hers, never subsequently broken, and
due, doubtless, to an instinctive impatience of foreseeable remarks.
"You're so awfully rich, Ambo. You could have dozens and not feel
it--except that they'd get in your way sometimes and make your outside
cross. But two wouldn't be much more trouble than one. It might seem a
little crowded--at first; but after while, Ambo, you'd hardly notice
it."
"Possibly. Still--nice boys don't grow on bushes, Susan. Not the kind of
brothers I should have to insist upon for you!"
"I'm not so fussy as all that," said Susan. "And it isn't fair that I
should have everything. Besides, Ambo, boys are much nicer than girls.
Honestly they are."
"Oh, are they! I'm afraid you haven't had much experience with boys!
Most of them are disgusting young savages. Really, Susan! Their hands
and feet are too big for them, and their voices don't fit. They're
always breaking things--irreplaceable things for choice, and raising the
devil of a row. Take my word for it, dear, please. I'm an ex-boy myself;
I know all about 'em! They were never created for civilized human
companionship. Why, I'd rather give you a young grizzly bear and be done
with it, than present you with the common-or-garden brother! But if
you'd like a nice quiet little sister some day, maybe----"
"I wouldn't," said Susan.
She was silent again for several moments, pondering. I observed her
furtively. Nothing was more distant from my desire than any addition, of
any age, male or female, to my present family. Heaven, in its great and
unwonted kindness, had sent me Susan; she was--to my thinking--perfect;
and she was enough. Whether in art or in life I am no lover of an
avoidable anticlimax. But Susan's secret purposes were not mine.
"Ambo," she resumed, "I guess if you'd ever lived in Birch Street you'd
feel differently about boys."
"I doubt it, Susan."
"I'm sure you'd feel differently about Jimmy."
"Jimmy?"
"Jimmy Kane, Ambo--_my_ Jimmy. Haven't I ever told you about him?"
Guilefully, persuasively, she edged her chair nearer to mine.
It was then that I first learned of Jimmy's battle for Susan, of the
bloody but righteous downfall of Giuseppe Gonfarone, and of many another
incident long treasured in the junior annals of Birch Street. Thus,
little by little, though the night deepened about us, my eyes were
unsealed. What a small world I had always lived in! For how long had it
seemed to me that romance was--approximately--dead! My fingers tightened
on Susan's, while the much-interrogated stars hung above us in their
mysterious orbits and---- But no, that is the pathetic fallacy.
Stars--are they not matter, merely? They could not smile.
"Don't you truly think, Ambo," suggested Susan, "that Jimmy ought to
have a better chance? If he doesn't get it, he'll have to work in a
factory all his life. And here I am--with you!"
"Yes. But consider, Susan--there are thousands of boys like Jimmy. I
can't father them all, you know."
"I don't want you to father them all," said Susan; "and there isn't
anybody like Jimmy! You'll see."
It came over me as she spoke that I was, however unwillingly,
predestined to see.
Maltby Phar thought otherwise. That night, after Susan had gone up to
bed, I talked the thing over with him--trying for an airy, detached
tone; the tone of one who discusses an indifferent matter for want of a
more urgent. Maltby was not, I fear, deceived.
"My dear Boz," he pleaded, "buck up! Get a fresh grip on your
individuality and haul it back from the brink of destruction! If you
don't, that little she-demon above-stairs will push it over into the
gulf, once for all! You'll be nobody. You'll be her dupe--her slave. How
can you smile, man! I'm quite serious, and I warn you. Fight the good
fight! Defend the supreme rights of your ego, before it's too late!"
"Why these tragic accents?" I parried. "It's not likely the washlady's
kid would want to come; or his mother let him. Susan idealizes him, of
course. He's probably quite commonplace and content as he is. No harm,
though, if it pleases Susan, in looking him over?"
Maltby took up his book again. He dismissed me. "Whom the gods
destroy----" he muttered, and ostentatiously turned a page.