What I wanted to say was, "d.a.m.n it all! I"m not here at this time of night to interest myself in the elementary problems of Jimmy Kane!" In fact, I did say it to myself, with considerable energy--only to stop at the name, to stare at the boy before me, and to exclaim in a swift flash of connection, "Great Scott! Are you _Susan"s_ Jimmy?"
""Susan"s Jimmy"!" snorted Phil, with a peculiar grin. "Of course he"s Susan"s Jimmy! I wondered how long it would take you!"
As for Susan"s Jimmy, his expression was one of desolated amazement.
Either his host and his host"s friend, or he himself--had gone suddenly mad! The drop of his jaw was parentheses about a question mark. His blue eyes piteously stared.
"I guess I"m not on, sir," he mumbled to Phil, blushing hotly.
He was really a most attractive youth, considering his origins. I eyed him now shamelessly, and was forced to wonder that the wrong end of Birch Street should have produced not only Susan--who would have proved the phoenix of any environment--but this pleasant-faced, confidence-inspiring boy, whose expression so oddly mingled simplicity, energy, stubborn self-respect, and the cheerfulness of good health, an unspoiled will, and a hopeful heart. He seemed at once too mature for his years and too nave; concentration had already modelled his forehead, but there was innocence in his eyes. Innocence--I can only call it that. His eyes looked out at the world with the happiest candor; and I found myself predicting of him what I had never yet predicted of mortal woman or man: "He"s capable of anything--but sophistication; he"ll get on, he"ll arrive somewhere--but he will never change."
Phil, meanwhile, had eased his embarra.s.sment with a friendly laugh.
"It"s all right, Jimmy; we"re not the lunatics we sound. Don"t you remember Bob Blake"s kid on Birch Street?"
"Oh! Her?"
"Mr. Hunt became her guardian, you know, after----"
"Oh!" interrupted Jimmy, beaming on me. "You"re the gentleman that----"
"Yes," I responded; "I"m the unbelievably fortunate man."
"She was a queer little kid," reflected Jimmy. "I haven"t thought about her for a long time."
"That"s ungrateful of you," said Phil; "but of course you couldn"t know that."
Question mark and parentheses formed again.
"Phil means," I explained, "that Susan has never forgotten you. It seems you did battle for her once, down at the bottom of the Birch Street incline?"
"Oh, gee!" grinned Jimmy. "The time I laid out Joe Gonfarone? Maybe I wasn"t scared stiff that day! Well, what d"y" think of her remembering that!"
"You"ll find it"s a peculiarity of Susan," said Phil, "that she doesn"t forget anything."
"Why--she must be grown up by this time," surmised Jimmy. "It was mighty fine of you, Mr. Hunt, to do what you did! I"d kind of like to see her again some day. But maybe she"d rather not," he added quickly.
"Why?" asked Phil.
"Well," said Jimmy, "she had a pretty raw deal on Birch Street. Seeing me--might bring back things?"
"It couldn"t," I rea.s.sured him. "Susan has never let go of them. She uses all her experience, every part of it, every day."
Jimmy grinned again. "It must keep her hustling! But she always was different, I guess, from the rest of us." With a vague wonder, he addressed us both: "You think a lot of her, don"t you?"
For some detached, ironic G.o.d this moment must have been exquisite. I envied the G.o.d his detachment. The blank that had followed his question puzzled Jimmy and turned him awkward. He fidgeted with his feet.
"Well," he finally achieved, "I guess I"d better be off, professor. I"ll think over all you said."
"Do," counselled Phil, rising, "and come to see me to-morrow. We mustn"t let you take a false step if we can avoid it."
"It"s certainly great of you to show so much interest," said Jimmy, hunching himself at last out of his chair. "I appreciate it a lot." He hesitated, then plunged. "It"s been well worth it to me to come East again--just to meet _you_."
"Nonsense!" laughed Phil, shepherding him skillfully toward the door....
When he turned back to me, it was with the evident intention of discussing further Jimmy"s personal and educational problems; but I rebelled.
"Phil," I said, "I know what Susan means to you, and you know--I think--what she means to me. Now, through my weakness, stupidity, or something, Susan"s in danger. Sit down please, and let me talk. I"m going to give you all the facts, everything--a full confession. It"s bound, for many reasons, to be painful for both of us. I"m sorry, old man--but we"ll have to rise to it for Susan"s sake; see this thing through together. I feel utterly imbecile and helpless alone."
Half an hour later I had ended my monologue, and we both sat silent, staring at the dulled embers on the hearth....
At length Phil drew in a slow, involuntary breath.
"Hunt," he said, "it"s a humiliating thing for a professional philosopher to admit, but I simply can"t trust myself to advise you. I don"t know what you ought to do; I don"t know what Susan ought to do; or what I should do. I don"t even know what your wife should do; though I feel fairly certain that whatever it is, she will try something else.
Frankly, I"m too much a part of it all, too heartsick, for honest thought."
He smiled drearily and added, as if at random: ""Physician, heal thyself." What an abysmal joke! How the fiends of h.e.l.l must treasure it.
They have only one better--"Man is a reasonable being!"" He rose, or rather he seemed to be propelled from his chair. "Hunt! Would you really like to know what all my days and nights of intense study have come to?
The kind of man you"ve turned to for strength? My life has come to just this: I love her, and she doesn"t love me!
"Oh!" he cried--"Go home. For G.o.d"s sake, go home! I"m ashamed...."
So I departed, like Omar, through the same door wherein I went; but not before I had grasped--as it seemed to me for the first time--Phil"s hand.
VIII
There are some verses in Susan"s notebook of this period, themselves undated, and never subsequently published, which--from their position on the page--must have been written about this time and may have been during the course of the momentous evening on which I met Jimmy Kane at Phil Farmer"s rooms. I give them now, not as a favorable specimen of her work, since she thought best to exclude them from her first volume, but because they throw some light at least on the complicated and rather obscure state of mind that was then hers. They have no t.i.tle, and need none. If you should feel they need interpretation--"_guarda e pa.s.sa_"!
They are not for you.
_Though she rose from the sea There were stains upon her whiteness; All earth"s waters had not sleeked her clean.
For no tides gave her birth, Nor the salt, glimmering middle depths; But slime sp.a.w.ned her, the couch of life, The sunless ooze, The green bed of Poseidon, Where with sordid Chaos he mingles obscurely.
Her flanks were of veined marble; There were stains upon her._
_But she who pa.s.ses, lonely, Through waste places, Through bog and forest; Who follows boar and stag Unwearied; Who sleeps, fearless, among the hills; Though she track the wilds, Though she breast the crags, Choosing no path-- Her kirtle tears not, Her ankles gleam, Her sandals are silver._
IX
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 bra.s.ses 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!"