It did not take Susan long to make it perfectly clear to Doctor Askew
and me that she had waked from her trance to complete lucidity, showing
no traces of any of the abnormal after-effects we had both been
dreading. Her first rather surprising words had been spoken just as she
opened her eyes and before she had quite realized anything but my
familiar presence beside her. They were soon followed by an entirely
natural astonishment and confusion. What had happened? Where was she?
She sat up in bed and stared about her, her eyes coming to rest on
Doctor Askew's eager, observant face.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Doctor Askew," he replied quietly. "Don't be alarmed, Miss Blake. Mr.
Hunt and I have been looking after you. Not that you've been much
trouble," he smiled; "on the contrary. You've been fast asleep for more
than twelve hours. We both envy you."
For a long two minutes she did not reply. Then, "Oh, yes," she said.
"Oh, yes." Her chin began to quiver, she visibly shuddered through her
whole slight frame, and for an instant pressed her palms hard against
her eyes. "Ambo," she murmured, "it was cruel--worse than anything! I
got to the 'phone all right, didn't I? Yes, I remember that. I gave the
message. But I knew I must go back to her. So much blood, Ambo.... I'm a
coward--oh, I'm a coward! But I tried, I did try to go back! Where _did_
I go, Ambo?"
"You went to sleep like a sensible little woman!" struck in Doctor
Askew, briskly. "You'd done all you could, all anyone could--so you went
to sleep. I wish to God more women under such circumstances would follow
your example! Much better than going all to pieces and making a scene!"
Susan could not respond to his encouraging smile. "To sleep!" she sighed
miserably; "just as I did--once before. What a coward I am! When awful
things happen, I dodge them--I run away."
"Nonsense, dear. You knew Gertrude was beyond helping, didn't you?"
"Yes; but if she hadn't been?" She shook her head impatiently. "You're
both trying to be kind; but you won't be able to make me forgive
myself--not this time. I don't rise to a crisis--I slump. Artemis
wouldn't have; nor Gertrude. You know that's true, Ambo. Even if I could
do nothing for her--there were others to think of. There was you. I
ought to have been helping you; not you, me." She put out her hand to
me. "You've done everything for me, always--and I make no return. Now,
when I might have, I--I've been a quitter!"
Tears of shame and self-reproach poured from her eyes. "Oh," she cried
out with a sort of fierce disgust, "how I hate a coward! How I hate
myself!"
"Come, come!" protested Doctor Askew. "This won't do, little lady!" He
laid a firm hand on her shoulder and almost roughly shook it, as if she
had been a boy. "If you're equal to it, I suggest you get up and wash
your face in good cold water. Do your hair, too--put yourself to rights!
Things never look quite normal to a woman, you know, when her hair's
tumbling!" His hand slipped from her shoulder to her upper arm; he drew
the coverlet from her, and helped her to rise. "All right? Feel your
pins under you?... Fine! Need a maid? No?... Splendid! Come along, Mr.
Hunt, we'll wait for the little lady in the drawing-room. She'll soon
pull herself together."
He joined me and walked with me to the door. Susan had not moved as yet
from the bedside.
"Ambo," she demanded unexpectedly, "does Sister know?"
"Yes, dear."
"Why isn't she with me then? Is her cold worse?"
"Rather, I'm afraid. I've sent a doctor to her, with instructions to
keep her in bed if possible. We'll go right down when you're ready and
feel up to it."
"Why didn't I stay with her, Ambo? I should have. If I had, all this
wouldn't have happened. It was pure selfishness, my coming here to see
Mrs. Arthur. I simply wanted the cheap satisfaction of telling her--oh,
no matter! I'll be ready in five minutes or less."
"Ah," laughed Doctor Askew, "then we know just what to expect! I'll
order my car round for you in half an hour."
Phil and Jimmy arrived in town that afternoon and I met them at the
Brevoort, where the three of us took rooms, with a sitting-room, for the
night. I told them everything that had occurred as fully as I could,
with one exception: I did not speak of those first three pages
automatically scribbled by Susan's hand. Nor did I mention my
impression--which was rapidly becoming a fixed idea--that my love for
her had darkened her life. This was my private problem, my private
desolation. It would be my private duty to free Susan's spirit from this
intolerable strain. No one could help me here, not even Susan. In all
that most mattered to me, my isolation must from now on be complete.
All else I told them, not omitting my vision--the whole wild story. And,
finally, I had now to add to my devil's list a new misfortune. We had
found poor Miss Goucher's condition much more serious than I had
supposed. Doctor Askew had taken us down in his car, and we were met in
the nondescript lower hall of the boarding-house by his friend, Doctor
Carl--the doctor whom I had sent to Miss Goucher on his advice. Miss
Goucher's heavy chest cold, he at once informed us, had taken a graver
turn; double pneumonia had declared itself. Her fever was high and she
had lately grown delirious; he had put a trained nurse in charge. The
crisis of the disease would probably be passed during the next twelve
hours; he was doing everything possible; he hoped for the best.
Susan, very white, motionless, had heard him out. "If Sister dies," she
had said quietly when he ended, "I shall have killed her." Then she had
run swiftly up the stairs and the two doctors had followed her. I had
remained below and had not again seen her; but Doctor Askew had returned
within ten minutes, shaking his head.
"No one can say what will happen," I had finally wrested from him. "One
way or the other now, it's the flip of a coin. Carl's doing his
best--that is, nothing, since there's nothing to do. I've warned him to
keep an eye on the little lady. I'll look in again after dinner.
Good-by. Better find a room and get some sleep if you can."
There was little doubt that Miss Goucher's turn for the worse had come
as the result of Susan's disturbing all-night absence. Susan had made
her comfortable and left her in bed, promising to be home before twelve.
Miss Goucher had fallen asleep about eleven and had not waked until two.
The light she had left for Susan had not been switched off, and Susan's
bed, which stood beside her own, was unoccupied. Feverish from her
bronchial cold, she was at once greatly alarmed, and sprang from her bed
to go into the sitting-room, half hoping to find Susan there and scold
her a little for remaining up so late over her work. She did not even
stop to put on a dressing-gown or find her slippers. All this Susan
later learned from her red-eyed landlady, Miss O'Neill, whose own
bedroom, as it happened, was just beside their own. Miss O'Neill, a
meritorious if tiresome spinster of no particular age, had at last been
waked from heavy and well-earned sleep by persistent knocking at her
door. She had found Miss Goucher standing in the unheated, draughty
hall, bare-footed, in her nightgown, her cheeks flushed with mounting
fever while her teeth chattered with cold.
Like a sensible woman she had hurried her instantly back to bed, and
would have gone at once for a hot-water bottle, if Miss Goucher had not
insisted upon a hearing. Miss O'Neill was abjectly fond of Miss Goucher,
who had the rare gift of listening to voluble commonplace without
impatience--a form of sympathy so rare and so flattering to Miss
O'Neill's so often bruised self-esteem that she would gladly--had there
been any necessity--have carried Miss Goucher rent-free for the mere
spiritual solace of pouring out her not very romantic troubles to her.
She had taken, Susan felt, an almost voluptuous pleasure in this, her
one opportunity to do something for Miss Goucher. She had telephoned
Gertrude's apartment for her: "no matter if it is late! I won't have you
upset like this for nobody! They've got to answer!" And she had talked
with some man--"and I didn't like his tone, neither"--who had asked her
some rather odd questions, and had then told her Miss Blake was O. K.,
not to worry about Miss Blake; she'd had a fainting-spell and been put
to bed; she'd be all right in the morning; sure; well, he was the
doctor, he guessed he ought to know! "Queer kind of doctor for a lady,"
Miss O'Neill had opined; "he sounded more like a mick!" A shrewd guess,
for he was, no doubt, one of Conlon's trusties.
Miss Goucher had then insisted that she was going to dress and go up at
once to Susan, and had even begun her preparations in spite of every
protest, when she was seized with so stabbing a pain in her chest that
she could only collapse groaning on the bed and let Miss O'Neill
minister to her as best she might with water bottles and a mustard
plaster borrowed from Number Twelve....
By the time I had tardily remembered to telephone Miss Goucher it was
almost nine A. M., and it was Miss O'Neill who had answered the call,
receiving my assurances of Susan's well-being, and informing me in turn
that poor Miss Goucher was good and sick and no mistake, let alone
worrying, and should she send for a doctor? She was a Scientist herself,
though she'd tried a mustard plaster, anyway, always liking to be on the
safe side; but Miss Goucher wasn't, and so maybe she ought. At this
point I had naturally taken charge.
And it was at this point in my long, often interrupted relation to Phil
and Jimmy that Phil took charge.
"You're going to bed, Hunt--and you're going now! There's absolutely
nothing further you can do this evening, and if anything turns up Jimmy
or I can attend to it. You've been living on your nerves all day and you
show it, too plainly. We don't want another patient to-morrow. Run out
and get some veronal powders, Jimmy. Thanks. No protests, old man.
You're going to bed!"
I went; and, drugged with veronal, I slept--slept dreamlessly--for
fourteen hours. When I woke, a little past ten, Jimmy was standing
beside me.
"Good morning, Mr. Hunt. You look rested up some! How about breakfast?"
His greeting went through all the sounds and motions of cheerfulness,
but it was counterfeit coin. There was something too obviously wrong
with Jimmy's ordinarily fresh healthy-boy face; it had gone sallow and
looked pincushiony round the eyes. I stared at him dully, but could not
recall anything that might account for this alteration. Only very
gradually a faint sense of discomfort began to pervade my consciousness.
Hadn't something happened--once--something rather sad--and rather
horrible? When was it? Where was I? And then the full gust of
recollection came like a stiff physical blow over my heart. I sat up
with a sharp gasp for breath....
"Well!" I demanded. "Miss Goucher! How is she?"
"She's dead, sir," answered Jimmy, turning away.
"And----"
"She's wonderful!" answered Jimmy.
He had not needed Susan's name.
Yes, in a sense, Jimmy was right. He was not a boy to look far beneath
the surface effects of life, and throughout the following weeks Susan's
surface effect was indeed wonderful. Apparently she stood up to her
grief and mastered it, developing an outer stillness, a quietude
strangely disquieting to Phil and to me. Gentleness itself in word and
deed, for the first time since we had known her she became spiritually
reticent, holding from us her deeper thoughts. It was as if she had
secretly determined--God knows from what pressure of lonely sorrow--to
conventionalize her life, to present the world hereafter nothing but an
even surface of unobtrusive conformity. This, we feared, was hereafter
to be her wounded soul's protection, her Chinese Wall. It had not
somehow the feel of a passing mood; it had rather the feel of a
permanent decision or renunciation. And it troubled our hearts....
I spare you Gertrude's funeral, and Miss Goucher's. The latter, held in
a small, depressingly official mortuary chapel, provided--at a price--by
the undertaker, was attended only by Phil, Jimmy, Susan, Sonia, Miss
O'Neill and me. Oh--there was also the Episcopal clergyman, whom I
provided. He read the burial service professionally, but well; it is
difficult to read it badly. There are a few sequences of words that
really are foolproof, carrying their own atmosphere and dignity with
them.
Phil and I, at Susan's request, had examined Miss Goucher's effects and
had made certain inquiries. She had been for many years, we found,
entirely alone in the world--a phrase often, but seldom accurately,
used. It is a rare thing, happily, to discover a human being who is
absolutely the last member of his or her family line; in Miss Goucher's
case this aloneness was complete. But so far as her nonexistent
ancestors were concerned, Miss Goucher, we ascertained, had every
qualification necessary for a D. A. R.; forebears of hers had lived for
generations in an old homestead near Poughkeepsie, and the original
Ithiel Goucher had fought as a young officer under Washington. From
soldiering, the Gouchers had passed on to farming, to saving souls, to
school-teaching, to patent-medicine peddling, and finally to drink and
drugs and general desuetude. Miss Goucher herself had been a last
flare-up of the primitive family virtues, and with her they were now
extinct.
All this we learned from her papers, and from an old lady in
Poughkeepsie who remembered her grandfather, and so presumably her
mother and father as well--though in reply to my letter of inquiry she
forbore to mention them. They were mentioned several times in letters
and legal documents preserved by Miss Goucher, but--except to say that
they both died before she was sixteen--I shall follow the example of the
old lady in Poughkeepsie. She, I feel, and the Roman poet long before
her, had what Jimmy calls the "right idea."...
Miss Goucher, always methodical, left a brief and characteristic will:
"To Susan Blake, ward of Ambrose Hunt, Esq., of New Haven, Conn., and to
her heirs and assigns forever, I leave what little personal property I
possess. She has been to me more than a daughter. I desire to be
cremated, believing that to be the cleanest and least troublesome method
of disposing of the dead."
That, with the proper legal additions, was all. Her desire was of course
respected, and I had a small earthenware jar containing her ashes placed
in my own family vault. On this jar Susan had had the following words
inscribed:
MALVINA GOUCHER
A GENTLE WOMAN