I
I AM an essayist, if anything, trying to tell Susan's story, and telling
it badly, I fear, for lack of narrative skill. So it is with no desire
to prolong cheaply a possible point of suspense that I must double back
now before I can go forward. My personal interest centers so entirely in
Susan herself, in the special qualities of her mind and heart, that I
have failed to bring in certain stiff facts--essential, alas, to all
further progress. A practiced novelist, handling this purely biographic
material--such a man as Clifton Young--would quietly have "planted"
these facts in their due order, thus escaping my present embarrassment.
But indeed I am approaching a cruel crisis in Susan's life and in the
lives of those dearest to her; a period of sheer circumstantial
fatality; one of those incursions of mad coincidence, of crass
melodrama, which--with a brutal, ironic, improbability, as if
stage-managed by an anarchistic fiend of the pit--bursts through some
fine-spun, geometrical web of days, leaving chaos behind; and I am
ill-equipped to deal with this chance destruction, this haphazard
wantonness.
Even could I merely have observed it from the outside, with aesthetic
detachment, it would baffle me now; I should find it too crude for art,
too arbitrary. It is not in my line. But God knows the victim of what
seems an insane break in Nature is in no mood for art; he can do little
more than cry out or foolishly rail!
* * * * *
Jimmy returned from his excursion to New York on the Sunday evening
preceding Miss Goucher's letter. She must have been at work on it the
next evening when Phil brought him to dine with me. It was our
deliberate purpose to draw him out, track his shy impressions of Susan
and of her new life in her new world. But it was hard going at first;
for ten minutes or so we bagged little but the ordinary Jimmyesque
_cliches_. He had had a great time, _etc._, _etc._...
Matters improved with the roast. It then appeared that he had lightly
explored with Susan the two-thirds of Gaul omitted from her letter. He
had called with her on Heywood Sampson, and fathomed Susan's allusion to
the shy bluebird. Mr. Sampson, he assured us, was a fine old boy--strong
for Susan too! He'd read a lot of her poems and things and was going to
bring out the poems for her right away. But the bluebird in the bush had
to do with a pet scheme of his for a weekly critical review of a
different stamp from Hadow Bury's _Whim_. Solider, Jimmy imagined; safe
and sane--the real thing! If Mr. Sampson should decide to launch it--he
was still hesitating over the business outlook--Susan was to find a
place on his staff.
Mr. Sampson, Jimmy opined, had the right idea about things in general.
He didn't like Susan's quick stuff in _Whim_; thought it would cheapen
her if she kept at it too long. And Mr. Sampson didn't approve of
Susan's remaining third of Gaul, either--her Greenwich Village friends.
Not much wonder, Jimmy added; Susan had trotted him round to three or
four studios and places, and they were a funny job lot. Too many
foreigners among them for him; they talked too much; and they pawed. But
some nice young people, too. Most of them were young--and not stuck up.
Friendly. Sort of alive--interested in everything--except, maybe, being
respectable. Their jokes, come to think of it, were all about being
respectable--kidding everyday people who weren't up to the latest ideas.
There was a lot of jabber one place about the "Oedipus Complex," for
example, but he didn't connect at all. He had his own idea--surely, not
of the latest--that a lot of the villagers might feel differently when
they began to make good and started their bank accounts. But Susan was
on to them, anyway, far more than they were on to her! She liked them,
though--in spite of Mr. Sampson; didn't fall for their craziest ways or
notions of course, but was keen about their happy-go-lucky side--their
pep! Besides, they weren't all alike, naturally. Take the pick of them,
the ones that did things instead of posing round and dressing the part,
and Jimmy could see they might be there. At least, they were on their
way--like Susan.
This was all very well, so far as it went; but we had felt, Phil and I,
a dumb undercurrent struggling to press upward into speech, and after
dinner before the fire, we did our best to help Jimmy free its course.
Gradually it became apparent; it rather trickled than gushed forth.
Jimmy was bothered, more than bothered; there was something, perhaps
there were several things, on his mind. We did not press him, using
subtler methods, biding our time; and little by little Jimmy oozed
toward the full revelation of an uneasy spirit.
"Did you see Mr. Phar?" Phil asked.
"No," said Jimmy, his forehead knotting darkly; "I guess it's a good
thing I didn't too!"
"Why?"
"Well, that letter I had from Susan--the one I showed you, Mr.
Hunt--mentioned some unpleasantness with Mr. Phar; and all Saturday
afternoon while she was trotting me round, I could see she'd been
worrying to herself a good deal."
"Worrying?"
"Yes. Whenever she thought I wasn't paying attention her face would
go--sort of dead tired and sad--all used up. I can't describe it. And
one or two remarks she dropped didn't sound as happy as she meant them
to. Then, Sunday morning, she had to get some work done, so I took Miss
Goucher to church. I'm supposed to be a Catholic, you know; but I guess
I'm not much of anything. I'd just as soon go to one kind of church as
another, if the music's good. Anyway, it was a nice morning and Miss
Goucher thought I'd like to see the Fifth Avenue parade; so we walked up
to some silk-stocking church above Thirty-fourth Street, where they have
a dandy choir; and back again afterwards. I stayed at the Brevoort, down
near them, you know; and Miss Goucher certainly is a peach. We got along
fine. And I found out from her how Mr. Phar's been acting. He's a bad
actor, all right. I'm just as glad I didn't run into him. I might have
done something foolish."
"What, for instance?" I suggested.
"Well," muttered Jimmy, "there's some things I can't stand. I might have
punched his head."
Phil whistled softly.
"He's not what I call a white man," explained Jimmy, dogged and slow, as
if to justify his vision of assault. "He's a painted pup."
"Come, Jimmy!" Phil commanded. "Out with it! Hunt and I know he's been
annoying Susan, but that's all we know. I supposed he might have been
pressing his attentions too publicly. If it's more than that----"
There was an unusual sternness in Phil's eye. Jimmy appealed from it to
mine, but in vain.
"Look here, Mr. Hunt," he blurted, "Susan's all right, of course--and
so's Miss Goucher! They've got their eyes open. And maybe it's not up to
me to say anything. But if I was in your place, I'd feel like giving two
or three people down there a piece of my mind! Susan wouldn't thank me
for saying so, I guess; she's modern--she likes to be let alone. Why,
she laughed at me more than once for getting sort of hot! And I know
I've a bunch to learn yet. But all the same," he pounded on, "I do know
this: It was a dirty trick of Mr. Phar's not to stand up for Susan!"
"Not stand up for her! What do you mean?" Phil almost barked.
"Jimmy means, Phil," I explained, "that some rather vague rumors began
not along ago to spread through Maltby's crowd in regard to Susan--as to
why she found it advisable to leave New Haven. Many of his friends know
me, of course--or know Gertrude; know all about us, at any rate. It's
not very remarkable, then, that Susan's appearance in New York--and so
far as Maltby's May-Flies know, in some sense under his wing--has set
tongues wagging. I was afraid of it; but I know Maltby's set well enough
to know that to-day's rumor, unless it's pretty sharply spiced, is soon
forgotten. To-morrow's is so much fresher, you see. The best thing for
innocent victims to do is to keep very still. And then, I confess, it
seemed to me unlikely that Maltby would permit anything of the sort to
go too far."
I saw that Jimmy was following my exposition with the most painful
surprise. Phil grunted disgustedly as I ended.
"I don't pretend to much knowledge of that world," he said deliberately,
"but common sense tells me Maltby Phar might think it to his advantage
to fan the flame instead of stamping it out. I may be unfair to him, but
I'm even capable of supposing he touched it off in the first place."
"No, Phil," I objected, "he wouldn't have done that. But you seem to be
right about his failing to stamp out the sparks. That's what you meant
by his not standing up for Susan, isn't it, Jimmy?"
The boy's face was a study in unhappy perplexity. "I guess I'm like
Professor Farmer!" he exclaimed. "I'm not on to people who act like
that. But, Mr. Hunt, you're dead wrong--excuse me, sir!"
"Go on, Jimmy."
"Well, I mean--you spoke of vague rumors, didn't you? They're not
vague. I guess Susan hasn't wanted to upset you. Miss Goucher told me
all about it, and she wouldn't have done it, would she, if she hadn't
hoped I'd bring it straight back to you? I guess she promised Susan not
to tell you, so she told me. That's the only way I can figure it,"
concluded Jimmy.