It was midnight when I reached my own door that night, but I was in no
mood for lying in bed stark awake in the spiritual isolation of
darkness. I went straight to my study, meaning to make up a fire and
then hypnotize myself into some form of lethargy by letting my eyes
follow the printed lines of a book. If reading in any other sense than
physical habit proved beyond me, at least the narcotic monotony of habit
might serve.
But I found a fire, already falling to embers, and Susan before it,
curled into my big wing chair, her feet beneath her, her hands lying
palms upward in her lap. This picture fixed me in the doorway while my
throat tightened. Susan did not stir, but she was not sleeping. She had
withdrawn.
Presently she spoke, absently--from Saturn's rings; or the moon.
"Ambo? I've been waiting to talk to you; but now I can't or I'll lose
it--the whole movement. It's like a symphony--great brasses groaning and
cursing--and then violins tearing through the tumult to soar above it."
Her eyes shut for a moment. When she opened them again it was to shake
herself free from whatever spell had bound her. She half yawned, and
smiled.
"Gone, dear--all gone. It's not your fault. Words wouldn't hold it.
Music might--but music doesn't come.... Oh, poor Ambo--you've had a
wretched time of it! How tired you look!"
I shut the door quietly and went to her, sitting on the hearth rug at
her feet, my knees in my arms.
"Sweetheart," I said, "it seems that in spite of myself I've done you
little good and about all the harm possible." And I made a clean breast
of all the facts and fears that the evening had developed. "So you see,"
I ended, "what my guardianship amounts to!"
Susan's hand came to my shoulder and drew me back against her knees; she
did not remove her hand.
"Ambo," she protested gently, "I'm just a little angry with you, I
think."
"No wonder!"
"Oh!" she exclaimed. "If I am angry it's because you can say stupid
things like that! Don't you see, Ambo, the very moment things grow
difficult for us you forget to believe in me--begin to act as if I were
a common or garden fool? I'm not, though. Surely you must know in your
heart that everything you're afraid of for me doesn't matter in the
least. What harm could slander or scandal possibly do me, dear? Me, I
mean? I shouldn't like it, of course, because I hate everything stodgy
and _formidablement bete_. But if it happens, I shan't lose much sleep
over it. You're worrying about the wrong things, Ambo; things that don't
even touch our real problem. And the real problem may prove to be the
real tragedy, too."
"Tragedy?" I mumbled.
"Oh, I hope not--I think not! It all depends on whether you care for
freedom; on whether you're really passion's slave. I don't believe you
are."
The words wounded me. I shifted, to look up at, to question, her shadowy
face. "Susan, what do you mean?"
"I suppose I mean that _I'm_ not, Ambo. You're far dearer to me than
anybody else on earth; your happiness, your peace, mean everything to
me. If you honestly can't find life worth while without me--can't--I'll
go with you anywhere; or face the music with you right here. First,
though, I must be sincere with you. I can live away from you, and still
make a life for myself. Except your day-by-day companionship--I'd be
lonely without that, of course--I shouldn't lose anything that seems to
me really worth keeping. Above all, I shouldn't really lose you."
"Susan! You're planning to leave me!"
"But, Ambo--it's only what you've felt to be necessary; what you've been
planning for me!"
"As a duty--at the bitterest possible cost! How different that is! You
not only plan to leave me--I feel that you want to!"
"Yes, I want to. But only if you can understand why."
"I don't understand!"
"Ah, wait, Ambo! You're not speaking for yourself. You're a slave now,
speaking for your master. But it's _you_ I want to talk to!"
I snarled at this. "Why? When you've discovered your mistake so soon!...
You don't love me."
She sighed, deeply unhappy; though my thin-skinned self-esteem wrung
from her sigh a shade of impatience, too.
"If not, dear," she said, "we had better find it out before it's too
late. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps love is something I only guess at
and go wrong about. If love means that I should be utterly lost in you
and nothing without you--if it means that I would rather die than leave
you--well, then I don't love you. But all the same, if love honestly
means that to you--I can't and won't go away." She put out her hand
again swiftly, and tightened her fingers on mine.
"It's a test, then. Is that it?" I demanded. "You want to go because
you're not sure?"
"I'm sure of what I feel," she broke in; "and more than that, I doubt if
I'm made so that I can ever feel more. No; that isn't why I want to go.
I'll go if you can let me, because--oh, I've got to say it,
Ambo!--because at heart I love freedom better than I love love--or you.
And there's something else. I'm afraid of--please try to understand
this, dear--I'm afraid of stuffiness for us both!"
"Stuffiness?"
"Sex _is_ stuffy, Ambo. The more people let it mess up their lives for
them, the stuffier they grow. It's really what you've been afraid of for
me--though you don't put it that way. But you hate the thought of people
saying--with all the muddy little undercurrents they stir up round such
things--that you and I have been passion's slaves. We haven't been--but
we might be; and suppose we were. It's the truth about us--not the
lies--that makes all the difference. You're you--and I'm I. It's because
we're worth while to ourselves that we're worth while to each other.
Isn't that true? But how long shall we be worth anything to ourselves or
to each other if we accept love as slavery, and get to feeling that we
can't face life, if it seems best, alone? Ambo, dear, do you see at all
what I'm driving at?"
Yes; I was beginning to see. Miss Goucher's desolate words came
suddenly back to me: "Susan doesn't need _you_."
X
Next morning, while I supposed her at work in her room, Susan slipped
down the back stairs and off through the garden. It was a heavy forenoon
for me, perhaps the bleakest and dreariest of my life. But it was a busy
forenoon for Susan. She began its activities by a brave intuitive
stroke. She entered the Egyptian tomb and demanded an interview with
Gertrude. What is stranger, she carried her point--as I was presently to
be made aware.
Miss Goucher tapped at the door, entered, and handed me a card. So
Gertrude had changed her mind; Gertrude had come. I stared, foolishly
blank, at the card between, my fingers, while Miss Goucher by perfect
stillness effaced herself, leaving me to my lack of thought.
"Well," I finally muttered, "sooner or later----"
Miss Goucher, perhaps too eagerly, took this for assent. "Shall I say to
Mrs. Hunt that you are coming down?"