It was perhaps when reticent Phil finally spoke to me of his love for
Susan that I first fully realized my own predicament--a most unpleasant
discovery; one which I determined should never interfere with Susan's
peace of mind or with the possible chances of other, more eligible, men.
As Susan's guardian, I could not for a moment countenance her receiving
more than friendly attention from a man already married, and no longer
young. A grim, confused hour in my study convinced me that I was an
impossible, even an absurd, _parti_. This conviction brought with it
pain so sharp, so nearly unendurable, that I wondered in my weakness how
it was to be unflinchingly borne. Yet borne it must be, and without
betrayal. It did not occur to me, in my mature folly, that I was
already, and had for long been, self-betrayed.
"Steady, you old fool!" whispered my familiar demon. "This isn't going
to be child's play, you know. This is an hour-by-hour torture you've set
out to grin and bear and live through. You'll never make the grade, if
you don't take cognizance in advance. The road's devilishly steep and
icy, and the corners are bad. What's more, there's no end to it; the
crest's never in sight. Clamp your chains on and get into low....
Steady!
"But, of course," whispered my familiar demon, "there's probably an
easier way round. Why attempt the impossible? Think what you've done for
Susan! Gratitude, my dear sir--affectionate gratitude--is a long step in
the right direction ... if it is the right direction. I don't say it is;
I merely suggest, _en passant_, that it may be. Suppose, for example,
that Susan----"
"Damn you!" I spat out, jumping from my chair. "You contemptible swine!"
Congested blood whined in my ears like a faint jeering laughter. I paced
the room, raging--only to sink down again, exhausted, my face and hands
clammy.
"What a hideous exhibition," I said, distinctly addressing a grotesque
porcelain Buddha on the mantelpiece. Contrary, I believe, to my
expectations, he did not reply. My familiar demon forestalled him.
"If by taking a merely conventional attitude," he murmured, "you defeat
the natural flowering of two lives----? Who are you to decide that the
voice of Nature is not also the voice of God? Supposing, for the moment,
that God is other than a poetic expression. If her eyes didn't haunt
you," continued my familiar demon, "or a certain way she has of turning
her head, like a poised poppy...."
As he droned on within me, the mantelpiece blurred and thinned to the
blue haze of a distant Tuscan hill, and the little porcelain Buddha sat
upon this hill, very far off now and changed oddly to the semblance of a
tiny huddled town. We were climbing along a white road toward that far
hill, that tiny town.
"Ambo," she was saying, "that isn't East Rock--it's Monte Senario. And
this isn't Birch Street--it's the Faenzan Way. How do you do it,
Ambo--you wonderful magician! Just with a wave of your wand you change
the world for me; you give me--all this!"
A bee droned at my ear: "Gratitude, my dear sir. Affectionate gratitude.
A long step."
"Damn you!" I whimpered.... But the grotesque porcelain Buddha was
there again, on the mantelshelf. The creases in his little fat belly
disgusted me; they were loathsome. I rose. "At least," I said to him, "I
can live without _you_!" Then I seized him and shattered him against the
fireplace tiles. It was an enormous relief.
Followed a knock at my door that I answered calmly: "Who is it? Come
in."
Miss Goucher never came to me without a mission; she had one now.
"Mr. Hunt," she said, "I should like to talk to you very plainly. May I?
It's about Susan." I nodded. "Mr. Hunt," she continued resolutely,
"Susan is in a very difficult position here. I don't say that she isn't
entirely equal to meeting it; but I dread the nervous strain for her--if
you understand?"
"Not entirely, Miss Goucher; perhaps, not at all."
"I was afraid of this," she responded unhappily. "But I must go on--for
her sake."
Knowing well that Miss Goucher would face death smiling for Susan's
sake, her repressed agitation alarmed me. "Good heavens!" I exclaimed.
"Is there anything really wrong?"
"A good deal." She paused, her lips whitening as she knit them together,
lest any ill-considered word should slip from her. Miss Goucher never
loosed her arrows at random; she always tried for the bull's-eye, and
usually with success.
"I am speaking in strict confidence--to Susan's protector and legal
guardian. Please try to fill in what I leave unsaid. It is very
unfortunate for Susan's peace of mind that you should happen to be a
married man."
"For _her_ peace of mind!"
"Yes."
"Wait! I daren't trust myself to fill in what you leave unsaid. It's
too--preposterous. Do you mean---- But you can't mean that you imagine
Susan to be in love with--her grandfather?" My heart pounded,
suffocating me; with fright, I think.
"No," said Miss Goucher, coldly; "Susan is not in love with her
grandfather. She is with you."
I could manage no response but an angry one. "That's a dangerous
statement, Miss Goucher! Whether true or not--it ruins everything. You
have made our life here together impossible."
"It is impossible," said Miss Goucher. "It became so last summer. I knew
then it could not go on much longer."
"But I question this! I deny that Susan feels for me more
than--gratitude and affection."
"Gratitude is rare," said Miss Goucher enigmatically, her eyes fixed
upon the fragments of Buddha littering my hearth. "True gratitude," she
added, "is a strong emotion. When it passes between a man and a woman,
it is like flame."
"Very interesting!" I snapped. "But hardly enough to have brought you
here to me with this!"
"She feels that you need her," said Miss Goucher.
"I do," was my reply.
"Susan doesn't need _you_," said Miss Goucher. "I don't wish to be
brutal; but she doesn't. In spite of this, she can easily stand alone."
"I see. And you think that would be best?"
"Naturally. Don't you?"
"I'm not so sure."
As I muttered this my eyes, too, fixed themselves on the fragments of
Buddha. Would the woman never go! I hated her; it seemed to me now that
I had always hated her. What was she after all but a superior kind of
servant--presuming in this way! The irritation of these thoughts swung
me suddenly round to wound her, if I might, with sarcasm, with implied
contempt. But it is impossible to wound the air. With her customary
economy of explanation Miss Goucher had, pitilessly, left me to myself.