The evening of this already comfortless day I now recall as one of the
most exasperating of my life. Maltby Phar arrived for dinner and the
week-end--an exasperation foreseen; Phil came in after dinner--another;
but what I did not foresee was that Lucette Arthur would bring her
malicious self and her unspeakably tedious husband for a formal call.
Lucette was an old friend of Gertrude, and I always suspected that her
occasional evening visits were followed by a detailed report; in fact, I
rather encouraged them, and returned them promptly, hoping that they
were. In my harmless way of life even Lucette's talent for snooping
could find, I felt, little to feed upon, and it did not wholly displease
me that Gertrude should be now and then forced to recognize this.
The coming of Susan had, not unnaturally, for a time, provided Lucette
with a wealth of interesting conjecture; she had even gone so far as to
intimate that Gertrude felt I was making--the expression is entirely
mine--an ass of myself, which neither surprised nor disturbed me, since
Gertrude had always had a tendency to feel that my talents lay in that
direction. But, on the whole, up to this time--barring the Sonia
incident, which had afforded her a good deal of scope, but which, after
all, could not be safely misinterpreted--Lucette had found at my house
pretty thin pickings for scandal; and I could only wonder at the
unwearying patience with which she pursued her quest.
She arrived with poor Doctor Arthur in tow--Dr. Lyman Arthur, who
professed Primitive Eschatology in the School of Religion: eschatology
being "that branch of theology which treats of the end of the world and
man's condition or state after death"--just upon the heels of Phil, who
shot me a despairing glance as we rose to greet them.
But Susan, I thought, welcomed them with undisguised relief. She had
been surpassing herself before the fire, chatting blithely, wittily,
even a little recklessly; but there are gayer evenings conceivable than
one spent in the presence of three doleful men, two of whom have
proposed marriage to you, and one of whom would have done so if he were
not married already. Almost anything, even open espionage and covert
eschatology, was better than that.
Lucette--the name suggests Parisian vivacity, but she was really large
and physically languid and very blonde, scented at once, I felt, a
something faintly brimstoneish in the atmosphere of my model home, and
forthwith prepared herself for a protracted and pleasant evening. It so
happened that the Arthurs had never met Maltby, and Susan carried
through the ceremony of introduction with a fine swinging rhythm which
settled us as one group before the fire and for some moments at least
kept the conversation animated and general.
But Eschatology, brooding in the background, soon put an end to this
somewhat hectic social burst. The mere unnoted presence of Dr. Lyman
Arthur, peering nearsightedly in at the doorway on a children's party,
has been known, I am told, to slay youngling joy and turn little tots
self-conscious, so that they could no longer be induced by agonized
mothers to go to Jerusalem, or clap-in clap-out. His presence now,
gradually but surely, had much the same effect. Seated at Maltby's
elbow, he passed into the silence and drew us, struggling but helpless,
after him. For five horrible seconds nothing was heard but the impolite,
ironic whispering of little flames on the hearth. Was this man's
condition or state after death? Eschatology had conquered.
Susan, in duty bound as hostess, broke the spell, but it cannot be said
she rose to the occasion. "Is it a party in a parlor," she murmured
wistfully to the flames, "all silent and all--damned?"
Perceiving that Lucette supposed this to be original sin, I laughed much
more loudly than cheerfully, exclaiming "Good old Wordsworth!" as I did
so.
Then Maltby's evil genius laid hold on him.
"By the way," he snorted, "they tell me one of you academic ghouls has
discovered that Wordsworth had an illegitimate daughter--whatever _that_
means! Any truth in it? I hope so. It's the humanest thing I ever heard
about the old sheep!"
Doctor Arthur cleared his throat, very cautiously; and it was evident
that Maltby had not helped us much. Phil, in another vein, helped us
little more.
"I wonder," he asked, "if anyone reads Wordsworth now--except Susan?"
No one, not even Susan, seemed interested in this question; and the
little flames chuckled quietly once more.
Something had to be done.
"Doctor," I began, turning toward Eschatology, and knowing no more than
my Kazak hearthrug what I was going to say, "is it true that----"
"Undoubtedly," intoned Eschatology, thereby saving me from the pit I was
digging for myself. My incomplete question must have chimed with Doctor
Arthur's private reflections, and he seemed to suppose some
controversial matter under discussion. "Undoubtedly," he repeated....
"And what is even more important is this----"
But Lucette silenced him with a "Why is it, dear, that you always let
your cigar burn down at one side? It does look so untidy." And she
leaned to me. "What delightfully daring discussions you must all of you
have here together! You're all so terribly intellectual, aren't you? But
do you never talk of anything but books and art and ideas? I'm sure you
must," she added, fixing me with impenetrable blue eyes.
"Often," I smiled back; "even the weather has charms for us. Even food."
Her inquisitive upper lip curled and dismissed me.
"Why is it," she demanded, turning suddenly on Susan, "that I don't see
you round more with the college boys? They're much more suitable to your
age, you know, than Ambrose or Phil. I hope you don't frighten them off,
my dear, by mentioning Wordsworth? Boys dislike bluestockings; and
you're much too charming to wear them anyway. Oh, but you really are! I
must take charge of you--get you out more where you belong, away from
these dreadful old fogies!" Lucette laughed her languid, purring,
dangerous laughter. "I'm serious, Miss Blake. You musn't let them
monopolize you; they will if you're not careful. They're just selfish
enough to want to keep you to themselves."
The tone was badinage; but the remark struck home and left us
speechless. Lucette shifted the tiller slightly and filled her sails.
"Next thing you know, Miss Blake, they'll be asking you to marry them.
Individually, of course--not collectively. And, of course--not Ambrose!
At least you're safe there," she hastily added; "aren't you?"
Maltby, I saw, was furious; bent on brutalities. Before I could check
him, "Why?" he growled. "Why, Mrs. Arthur, do you assume that Susan is
safe with Boz?"
"Well," she responded with a slow shrug of her shoulders,
"naturally----"
"Unnaturally!" snapped Maltby. "Unless forbidden fruit has ceased to
appeal to your sex. I was not aware that it had."
Phil's eyes were signalling honest distress. Susan unexpectedly rose
from her chair. Deep spots of color burned on her cheeks, but she spoke
with dignity. "I have never disliked any conversation so much, Mrs.
Arthur. Good night." She walked from the room. Phil jumped up without a
word and hurried after her. Then we all rose.
It seemed, however, that apologies were useless. Doctor Arthur had no
need for them, since he had not perceived a slight, and was only too
happy to find himself released from bondage; as for Lucette, her assumed
frigidity could not conceal her flaming triumph. As a social being, for
the sake of the _mores_, she must resent Susan's snub; but I saw that
she would not have had things happen otherwise for a string of matched
pearls. At last, at last her patience had been rewarded! I could almost
have written for her the report to Gertrude--with nothing explicitly
stated, and nothing overlooked.
Maltby, after their departure, continued truculent, and having no one
else to rough-house decided to rough-house me. The lengthening absence
of Susan and Phil had much to do with his irritation, and something no
doubt with mine. For men of mature years we presently developed a very
pretty little gutter-snipe quarrel.
"Damn it, Boz," he summed his grievances, "it comes precisely to this:
You're playing dog in the manger here. By your attitude, by every kind
of sneaking suggestion, you poison Susan's mind against me. Hang it, I'm
not vain--but at least I'm presentable, and I've been called amusing.
Other women have found me so. And to speak quite frankly, it isn't every
man in my position who would offer marriage to a girl whose father----"
"I'd stop there, Maltby, if I were you!"
"My dear man, you and I are above such prejudices, of course! But it's
only common sense to acknowledge that they exist. Susan's the most
infernally seductive accident that ever happened on this middle-class
planet! But all the same, there's a family history back of her that not
one man in fifty would be able to forget. My point is, that with all her
seduction, physical and mental, she's not in the ordinary sense
marriageable. And it's the ordinary sense of such things that runs the
world."
"Well----"
"Well--there you are! I offer her far more than she could reasonably
hope for; or you for her. I'm well fixed, I know everybody worth
knowing; I can give her a good time, and I can help her to a career. It
strikes me that if you had Susan's good at heart, you'd occasionally
suggest these thing's to her--even urge them upon her. As her guardian
you must have some slight feeling of responsibility?"
"None whatever."
"What!"
"None whatever--so far as Susan's deeper personal life is concerned.
That is her affair, not mine."
"Then you'd be satisfied to have her throw herself away?"
"If she insisted, yes. But Susan's not likely to throw herself away."
"Oh, isn't she! Let me tell you this, Boz, once for all: You're in love
with the girl yourself, and though you may not know it, you've no
intention of letting anyone else have a chance."
"Well," I flashed, "if you were in my shoes--would _you_?"
The vulgarity of our give and take did not escape me, but in my then
state of rage I seemed powerless to escape vulgarity. I revelled in
vulgarity. It refreshed me. I could have throttled Maltby, and I am
quite certain he was itching to throttle me. We were both longing to
throttle Phil. Indeed, we almost leaped at him as he stopped in the hall
doorway to toss us an unnaturally gruff good night.
"Where's Susan?" I demanded.
"In your study," Phil mumbled, hunching into his overcoat; "she's
waiting to see you." Then he seized his shapeless soft hat and--the good
old phrase best describes it--made off.
"She's got to see me first!" Maltby hurled at me, coarsely, savagely, as
he started past.
I grabbed his arm and held him. It thrilled me to realize how soft he
was for all his bulk, to feel that physically I was the stronger.
"Wait!" I said. "This sort of thing has gone far enough. We'll stop
_grovelling_--if you don't mind! If we can't give Susan something better
than this, we've been cheating her. It's a pity she ever left Birch
Street."
Maltby stared at me with slowly stirring comprehension.
"Yes," he at length muttered, grudgingly enough; "perhaps you're right.
It's been an absurd spectacle all round. But then, life is."
"Wait for me here," I responded. "We'll stop butting at each other like
stags, and try to talk things over like men. I'm just going to send
Susan to bed."
That _was_ my intention. I went to her in the study as a big brother
might go, meaning good counsel. It was certainly not my intention to let
her run into my arms and press her face to my shoulder. She clung to me
with passion, but without joy, and her voice came through the tumult of
my senses as if from a long way off.
"Ambo, Ambo! You've asked nothing--and you want me most of all. I _must_
make somebody happy!"
It was the voice of a child.
V
I could not face Maltby again that evening, as I had promised, for our
good sensible man-to-man talk; a lapse in courage which reduced him to
rabid speculation and restless fury. So furious was he, indeed, after a
long hour alone, that he telephoned for a taxi, grabbed his suitcase,
and caught a slow midnight local for New York--from which electric
center he hissed back over the wires three ominous words to ruin my
solitary breakfast:
* * * * *
"He laughs best---- M. PHAR."
* * * * *
While my egg solidified and the toast grew rigid I meditated a humble
apologetic reply, but in the end I could not with honesty compose one;
though I granted him just cause for anger. With that, for the time
being, I dismissed him. There were more immediate problems, threatening,
inescapable, that must presently be solved.
Susan, always an early riser, usually had a bite of breakfast at seven
o'clock--brought to her by the faithful Miss Goucher--and then remained
in her room to work until lunch time. For about a year past I had so far
caught the contagion of her example as to write in my study three hours
every morning; a regularity I should formerly have despised.
Dilettantism always demands a fine frenzy, but now it astounded me to
discover how much respectable writing one could do without waiting for
the spark from heaven; one could pass beyond the range of an occasional
article and even aspire to a book. Only the final pages of my first real
book--_Aristocracy and Art_, an essay in aesthetic and social
criticism--remained to be written; and Susan had made me swear by the
Quanglewangle's Hat, her favorite symbol, to push on with it each
morning till the job was done.
Well, _Aristocracy and Art_ has since been published and, I am glad to
say, forgotten. Conceived in superciliousness and swaddled in
preciosity, it is one of the sins I now strive hardest to expiate. But
in those days it expressed clearly enough the crusted aridity of my
soul. However----
I had hoped, of course, that Susan would break over this morning and
breakfast with me. She did not; and from sheer habit I took to my study
and found myself in the chair before my desk. It was my purpose to think
things out, and perhaps that is what I supposed myself to be doing as I
stared dully at an ink blob on my blotter. It looked--and I was
idiotically pleased by the resemblance--rather like a shark. All it
needed was some teeth and a pair of flukes for its tail. Methodically I
opened my fountain pen and supplied these, thereby reducing one fragment
of chaos to order; and then my eye fell upon a half-scribbled sheet,
marked "Page 224."
The final sentence on the sheet caught at me and annoyed me; it was
ill-constructed. Presently it began to rearrange itself in whatever
portion of us it is that these shapings and reshapings take place.
Something in its rhythm, too, displeased me; it was mannered; it
minuetted; it echoed Pater at his worst. It should be simpler, stronger.
Why, naturally! I lopped at it, compressed it, pulled it about....
There! At last the naked idea got the clean expression it deserved; and
it led now directly to a brief, clear paragraph of transition. I had
been worrying over that transition the morning before when my pen
stopped; now it came with a smooth rush, carrying me forward and on.
Incredible, but for one swiftly annihilated hour I forgot all my
insoluble life problems! Art, that ancient Circe, had waved her wand; I
was happy--and it was enough. I forgot even Susan.
Meanwhile, Susan, busy at her notebook, had all but forgotten me.
* * * * *
"Am I in love with Ambo, or am I just trying to be for his sake? If
happiness is a test, then I can't be in love with him, for there is no
happiness in me. But what has happiness to do with love? It's just as I
told nice old Phil last night. To be in love is to be silly enough to
suppose that some other silly can gather manna for you from the meadows
of heaven. Meanwhile, the other silly is supposing much the same
nonsense about you--or if he isn't, then the sun goes black. What lovers
seem to value most in each other is premature softening of the brain.
But surely the union of two vain hopes in a single disappointment can
never mean joy? No. You might as well get it said, Susan. Love is two
broken reeds trying to be a Doric column.
"Still, there must be some test. Is it passion? How can it be?
"When I ran to Ambo last night I was pure rhythm and flame; but this
morning I'm the hour before sunrise. No; I'm the outpost star, the one
the comets turn--the one that peers off into nowhere.
"Perhaps if Ambo came to me now I should flame again; or perhaps I
should only make believe for his sake. Is wanting to make believe for
another's sake enough? Why not? I've no patience with lovers who are
always rhythm and flame. Even if they exist--outside of _maisons de
sante_--what good are they? Poets can rave about them, I suppose--that's
something; but imagine coming to the end of life and finding that one
had merely furnished good copy for Swinburne! No, thank you, Mrs.
Hephaestus--you beautiful, shameless humbug! I prefer Apollo's lonely
magic to yours. I'd rather be Swinburne than Iseult. If there's any
singing left to be done I shall try to do part of it myself.
"There, you see; already you've forgotten Ambo completely--now you'll
have to turn back and hunt for him. And if he's really working on
_Aristocracy and Art_ this morning, as he should be, then he has almost
certainly forgotten you. Oh, dear! but he isn't--and he hasn't! Here he
comes----"
* * * * *
Yes, I came; but not to ask for assurances of love. Man is so naively
egotist, it takes a good deal to convince him, once the idea has been
accepted, that he is not the object of an unalterable devotion. Frankly,
I took it for granted now that Susan loved me, and would continue to
love me till her dying hour.
What I really came to say to her, under the calming and strengthening
influence of two or three rather well-written pages, was that our
situation had definitely become untenable. I am an emancipated talker,
but I am not an emancipated man; the distinction is important; the hold
of mere custom upon me is strong. I could not see myself asking Susan to
defy the world with me; or if I could just see it for my own sake, I
certainly couldn't for hers. Nor could I see it for Gertrude's.
Gertrude, after all, was my wife; and though she chose to feel I had
driven her from my society, I knew that she did not feel willing to seek
divorce for herself or to grant the freedom of it to me. On this point
her convictions, having a religious sanction, were permanent. Gentle
manners, then, if nothing higher, forbade me to seize the freedom she
denied me. Having persuaded Gertrude, in good faith, to enter into an
unconditional contract with me for life, I could no more bring myself to
break it than I could have forced myself to steal another's money by
raising a check.
My New England ancestors had distilled into my blood certain
prejudices; only, where my great-grandfather, or even my grandfather,
would have said that he refrained from evil because he feared God, I was
content merely to feel that there are some things a gentleman doesn't
stoop to. With them it was the stern daughter of the voice of God who
ruled thoughts and acts; with me it was, if anything, the class
obligations of culture, breeding, good form. Just as I wore correct
wedding garments at a wedding, and would far rather have cut my throat
with a knife than carry food on it from plate to mouth, so, in the face
of any of life's moral or emotional crises, I clung to what instinct and
cultivation told me were the correct sentiments.
Gertrude, it is true, was not precisely fulfilling her part in our
contract, but then--Gertrude was a woman; and the excusable frailties of
women should always be regarded as trumpet calls to the chivalry of man.
Absurdly primitive, such ideas as these! Seated with Maltby Phar in my
study, I had laughed them out of court many a time; for I could talk
pure Bernard Shaw--our prophet of those days--with anybody, and even go
him one better. But when it came to the pinch of decisive action I had
always thrown back to my sources and left the responsibility on them. I
did so now.
Yet it was hard to speak of anything but enchantment, witchery,
fascination, when, from her desk, Susan looked round to me, faintly
puzzled, faintly smiling. She was not a pretty girl, as young
America--its taste superbly catered to by popular magazines--understands
that phrase; nor was she beautiful by any severe classic
standard--unless you are willing to accept certain early Italians as
having established classic standards; not such faultless painters as
Raphael or Andrea del Sarto, but three or four of the wayward lesser men
whose strangely personal vision created new and unexpected types of
loveliness. Not that I recall a single head by any one of them that
prefigured Susan; not that I am helping you, baffled reader, to see her.
Words are a dull medium for portraiture, or I am too dull a dog to catch
with them even a phantasmal likeness. It is the mixture of dark and
bright in Susan that eludes me; she is all soft shadow and sharpest
gleams. But that is nonsense. I give it up.
It was really, then, a triumph for my ancestors that I did not throw
myself on my knees beside her chair--the true romantic attitude, when
all's said--and draw her dark-bright face down to mine. I halted instead
just within the doorway, retaining a deathlike grip on the door-knob.
"Dear," I blurted, "it won't do. It's the end of the road. We can't go
on."
"Can we turn back?" asked Susan.
I wonder the solid bronze knob did not shatter like hollow glass in my
hand.
"You must help me," I muttered.
"Yes," said Susan, all quiet shadow now, gleamless; "I'll help you."
Half an hour after I left her she telephoned and dispatched the
following telegram, signed "Susan Blake," to Gertrude at her New York
address:
"_Either come back to him or set him free. Urgent._"