"Given your curious social astigmatism and her curious mixed charm--so subtle and so deeply uncivilized--I can see, of course, why she has bewitched you," said Gertrude reflectively, and paused. "And I can see,"
she continued, musing, as if she had adopted the stage convention of soliloquy, "why you have just failed to capture her imagination. For you have failed--but you can hardly be aware how completely."
"Whether or not I"m aware," I snapped, "seems negligible! Susan feels she must leave me, and she"ll probably act with her usual promptness. Is that what she called to tell you?"
"Partly," acknowledged Gertrude, resuming then her soliloquy: "You"ve given her--as you would--a ridiculous education. She seems to have instincts, impulses, which--all things considered--might have bloomed if cultivated. As it is, you found her crude, and, in spite of all the culture you"ve crammed upon her, you"ve left her so. She"s emanc.i.p.ated--that is, public; she"s thrown away the locks and keys of her mind. I grant she has one. But apparently no one has even suggested to her that the essence of being rare, of being fine, is knowing what to omit, what to reject, what to conceal. I find my own people, Ambrose--and they"re the _right_ people, the only ones worth finding--by feeling secure with them; I can trust them not to go too far. They have decorum, taste. Oh, I admit we"re upholding a lost cause! You"re a deserter from it--and Miss Blake doesn"t even suspect its existence.
Still"--with a private smile--"her crudity had certain immediate advantages this morning."
Ignoring rarity, fineness, I sank to the indecorum of a frankly human grin. "In other words, Gertrude, Susan omitted so little, went so much too far, that she actually forced you for once to get down to bra.s.s tacks!"
Gertrude frowned. "She stripped herself naked before a stranger--if that"s what you mean."
"With the result, Gertrude?"
"Ah, that"s why I"m here--as a duty I owe myself. I"m bound to say my suspicions were unjust--to Miss Blake, at least. I"ll even go beyond that----"
"Careful, Gertrude! Evil communications corrupt good manners."
"Yes," she responded quickly, rising, "they do--always; that"s why I"m not here to stay. But all I have left for you, Ambrose, is this: I"m convinced now that in one respect I"ve been quite wrong. Miss Blake convinced me this morning that her astounding telegram had at least one merit. It happened to be true. I _should_ either live with you or set you free. I"ve felt this myself, from time to time, but divorce, for many reasons...." She paused, then added: "However, it seems inevitable.
If you wish to divorce me, you have legal grounds--desertion; I even advise it, and I shall make no defense. As for your amazing ward--make your mind quite easy about her. If any rumors should annoy you, they"ll not come from me. And I shall speak to Lucette." She moved to the door, opening it slowly. "That"s all, I think, Ambrose?"
"It"s not even a beginning," I cried.
"Think of it, rather, as an ending."
"Impossible! I--I"m abashed, Gertrude! What you propose is out of the question. Why not think better of returning here? The heydey"s past for both of us. My dream--always a wild dream--is pa.s.sing; and I can promise sincere understanding and respect."
"I could not promise so easily," said Gertrude; "nor so much. No; don"t come with me," she added. "I know my way perfectly well alone."
Nevertheless, I went with her to the front door, as I ought, in no perfunctory spirit. It was more than a courteous habit; it was a genuine tribute of admiration. I admired her beauty, her impeccable bearing, her frock, her furs, her intellect, the ease and distinction of her triumph.
She left me crushed; yet it was a privilege to have known her--to have wooed her, won her, lost her; and now to have received my _coup de grace_ from her competent, disdainful hands. I wished her well, knowing the wish superfluous. In this, if nothing else, she resembled Susan--she did not need me; she could stand alone. It was her tragedy, in the French cla.s.sic manner, that she must. Would it also in another manner, in a deeper and--I can think of no homelier word--more cosmic sense, prove to be Susan"s?
But my own stuffy problem drama, whether tragic or absurd, had now reached a crisis and developed its final question: How in the absence of Susan to stand at all?
XI
From her interview with Gertrude, Susan went straight on to Phil"s rooms, not even stopping to consider the possible proprieties involved.
But, five minutes before her arrival, Phil had been summoned to the Graduates Club to receive a long-distance call from his Boston publisher; and it was Jimmy Kane who answered her knock and opened the study door. He had been in conference with Phil on his private problems and Phil had asked him to await his return. All this he thought it courteous to explain to the peach of a girl before him, whose presence at the door puzzled him mightily, and whose disturbing eyes held his, he thought, rather too intimately and quizzically for a stranger"s.
She could hardly be some graduate student in philosophy; she was too young and too flossy for that. "Flossy," in Jimmy"s economical vocabulary, was a symbol for many subtle shades of meaning: it implied, for any maiden it fitted, an elegance not too cold to be alluring; the possession of that something more than the peace of G.o.d which a friend told Emerson always entered her heart when she knew herself to be well dressed. Flossy--to generalize--Jimmy had not observed the women graduate students to be, though he bore them no ill will. To be truly flossy was, after all, a privilege reserved for a chosen few, born to a certain circle which Jimmy had never sought to penetrate.
One--and a curiously entrancing specimen--of the chosen evidently stood watching him now, and he wished that her entire self-possession did not so utterly imperil his own. What was she doing alone, anyway, this society girl--in a students" rooming house--at Prof. Farmer"s door? Why couldn"t she tell him? And why were her eyes making fun of him--or weren"t they? His fingers went instinctively to his--perhaps too hastily selected?--cravat.
Then Susan really did laugh, but happily, not unkindly, and walked on in past him, shutting the door behind her as she came.
"Jimmy Kane," she said, "if I weren"t so gorgeously glad to see you again, I could beat you for not remembering!"
"Good Lord!" he babbled. "Why--good Lord! You"re Susan!"
It was all too much for him; concealment was impossible--he was flabbergasted. Sparkling with sheer delight at his _gaucherie_, Susan put out both hands. Her impulsiveness instantly revived him; he seized her hands for a moment as he might have gripped a long-lost boy friend"s.
"You never guessed I could look so--presentable, did you?" demanded Susan.
"Presentable!" The word jarred on him, it was so dully inadequate.
"I have a maid," continued Susan demurely. "Everything in Ambo"s house--Ambo is my guardian, you know; Mr. Hunt--well, everything in his house is a work of art. So he pays a maid to see that I am--always. I am simply clay in her hands, and it does make a difference. But I didn"t have a maid on Birch Street, Jimmy."
Jimmy"s blue eyes capered. This was American humor--the kind he was born to and could understand. Happiness and ease returned with it. If Susan could talk like that while looking like that--well, Susan was _there_!
She was all right.
Within five minutes he was giving her a brief, comradely chronicle of the missing years, and when Phil got back it was to find them seated together, Susan leaning a little forward from the depths of a Morris chair to follow more attentively Jimmy"s minute technical description of the nature of the steel alloys used in the manufacture of automobiles.
They rose at Phil"s entrance with a mingling, eager chatter of explanation. Phil later--much later--admitted to me that he had never felt till that moment how d.a.m.nably he was past forty, and how fatally Susan was not. He further admitted that it was far from the most agreeable discovery of a studious life.
"What do you think, Prof. Farmer," exclaimed Jimmy, "of our meeting again accidentally like this--and me not knowing Susan! You can"t beat that much for a small world!"
Phil sought Susan"s eye, and was somewhat relieved by the quizzical though delighted gleam in it.
"Well, Jimmy," he responded gravely, "truth compels me to state that I have heard of stranger encounters--less inevitable ones, at least. I really have."
"But you never heard of a nicer one," said Susan. "Haven"t I always told you and Ambo that Jimmy would be like this?"
"Sort of foolish?" grinned Jimmy, with reawakening constraint. "I"ll bet you have, too."
Susan shook her head, solemn and slow; but the corners of her mouth meant mischief.
"No, Jimmy, not foolish; just--natural. Just--sort of--_you_."
At this point, Jimmy hastily remembered that he must beat it, pleading what Phil knew to be an imaginary recitation. But he did not escape without finding himself invited to dinner for that very evening, informally of course--Susan suspected the absence of even a dinner coat: Phil would bring him. It was really Phil who accepted for him, while Jimmy was still muddling through his thanks and toiling on to needless apologies.
"If I"ve been too"--he almost said "fresh," but sank to--"familiar, calling you by your first name, I mean--I wouldn"t like you to think--but coming all of a sudden like this, what I mean is----"
"Oh, run along!" called Susan gayly. "Forget it, Jimmy! You"re spoiling everything."
"That"s what I m-mean," stammered Jimmy, and was gone.
"But he does mean well, Susan," Phil pleaded for him, after closing the door.
It puzzled him to note that Susan"s face instantly clouded; there was reproof in her tone. "That was patronizing, Phil. I won"t have anybody patronize Jimmy. He"s perfect."
Phil was oddly nettled by this reproof and grew stubborn and detached.
"He"s a nice boy, certainly; and has the makings of a real man. I believe in him. Still--heaven knows!--he"s not precisely a subtle soul."
Susan"s brow had cleared again. "That"s what I m-mean!" she laughed, mimicking Jimmy without satire, as if for the pure pleasure of recollection. "The truth is, Phil, I"m rather fed up on subtlety--especially my own. Sometimes I think it"s just a polite term for futility, with a dash of intellectual sn.o.bbishness thrown in. It must be saner, cleaner, healthier, to take life straight."
"And now, Phil dear," she said, dismissing the matter, as if settling back solidly to earth after a pleasantly breathless aerial spin, "I need your advice. Can I earn my living as a writer? I"ll write anything that pays, so I think I can. Fashion notes--anything! Sister and I"--"Sister"
being Susan"s pet name for Miss Goucher--"are running away to New York on Monday--to make our fortunes. You mustn"t tell Ambo--yet; I"ll tell him in my own way. And I must _make_ my own way now, Phil. I"ve been a lazy parasite long enough--too long! So please sit down and write me subtle letters of introduction to any publishers you know. Maltby is bound to help me, of course. You see, I"m feeling ruthless--or shameless; I shall pull every wire in sight. So I"m counting on _The Garden Exquisite_ for immediate bread and b.u.t.ter. I did my first article for it in an hour when I first woke up this morning--just the smarty-party piffle its readers and advertisers seem to demand.
"This sort of thing, Phil: "The poets are wrong, as usual. Wild flowers are not shy and humble, they are exclusive. How to know them is still a social problem in American life, and very few of us have attained this aristocratic distinction." And so on! Two thousand silly salable words--and I can turn on that soda-water tap at will. Are you listening?