"What"s her name?"
"Gertrude."
"Why couldn"t she live with you, Ambo?"
"She said I was cruel to her."
"_Weren"t_ you good to her, Ambo? Why? Didn"t you like her?"
The rapid questions were so unexpected, so searching, that I gasped. And my first impulse was to lie to Susan, to put her off with a few conventional phrases--phrases that would lead the child to suppose me a wronged, lonely, broken-hearted man. This would win me a sympathy I had not quite realized that I craved. But Susan"s eyes were merciless, and I couldn"t manage it. Instead, I surprised myself by blurting out: "That"s about it, Susan. I didn"t like her--enough. We couldn"t hit it off, somehow. I"m afraid I wasn"t very kind."
Instantly Susan"s thin arms went about my neck, and her cheek was pressed tight to mine.
"Poor Ambo!" she whispered. "I"m so sorry you weren"t kind. It must _hurt_ you so." Then she jumped from my knees.
"Ambo!" she demanded. "Is my room--_her_ room? Is it?"
"Certainly not. It isn"t hers any more. She"s never coming back, I tell you. She put me out of her life once for all; and G.o.d knows I"ve put her out of mine!"
"If you can"t let me have another room, Ambo--I"ll have to go."
"Why? Hang it all, Susan, don"t be silly! Don"t make difficulties where none exist! What an odd, overstrained child you are!" I was a little annoyed.
"Yes," nodded Susan gravely, "I see now why Gertrude left you. But she must be awfully stupid not to know it"s only your outside that"s made like that!"
Next morning, without a permissive word from me, Susan had Miss Goucher move all her things to a small bedroom at the back of the house, overlooking the garden. This silent flitting irritated me not a little, and that afternoon I had a frank little talk with Miss Disbrow--franker, perhaps, than I had intended. Miss Disbrow at once gave me notice, and left for New York within two hours, letting it be known that she expected her trunks to be sent after her.
"Gutter-snipes are not my specialty," was her parting word.
IV
There proved to be little difficulty in getting myself appointed Susan"s guardian. No one else wanted the child.
I promised the court to do my best for her; to treat her, in fact, as I would my own flesh and blood. It might well be, I said, that before long I should legally adopt her. In any event, if this for some unforeseen reason proved inadvisable, I a.s.sured the court that Susan"s future would be provided for. The court benignly replied that, as it stood, I was acting very handsomely in the matter; very handsomely; no doubt about it. But there was a dim glimmer behind the juridic spectacles that seemed to imply: "Handsomely, my dear sir, but whether wisely or no is another question, which, as the official champion of widows and orphans, I am not called upon to decide."
It was with a new sense of responsibility that I opened an account in Susan"s name with a local savings bank, and a week later added a short but efficient codicil to my will.
In the meantime--but with alert suspicions--I interviewed several highly recommended applicants for Miss Disbrow"s deserted post; only to find them wanting. Poor things! Combined, they could hardly have met all the requirements, aesthetic and intellectual, which I had now set my heart upon finding in one lone governess for Susan! It would have needed, by this, a subtly modernized Hypatia to fulfill my ideal.
I might, of course, have waited for October to send Susan to a select private school in the vicinage, patronized by the little daughters of our more cautious families. It was, by neighborly consent, an excellent school, where carefully sterilized cultures--physical, moral, mental, and social--were painlessly injected into the blue blood streams of our very nicest young girls. I say that I might have done so, but this is a euphemism. On the one hand, I shrank from exposing Susan to possible snubs; on the other, a little bird whispered that Miss Garnett, princ.i.p.al of the school, would not care to expose her carefully sterilized cultures to an alien contagion. Bearers of contagion--whether physical, moral, mental, or social--were not sympathetic to Miss Garnett"s _clientele_. In Mrs. Parrot"s iron phrase, there are places for such.
Public schools, to wit! But in those long-past days--before Susan taught me that there are just two kinds of persons, big and little; those you can do nothing for, because they can do nothing for themselves, and those you can do nothing for, because they can do everything for themselves--in those days, I admit that I had my own finicky fears.
Public schools were all very well for the children of men who could afford nothing better. They had, for example, given Bob Blake"s daughter a pretty fair preliminary training; but they would never do for Ambrose Hunt"s ward. _n.o.blesse_--or, at any rate, _largesse_--_oblige_.
Yet here was a quandary: Public schools, in my estimation, being too vulgar for Susan; and Susan, in the estimation of Hillhouse Avenue, being too vulgar for private ones; yea, and though I still took cognizance, no subtly modernized Hypatia coming to me highly recommended for a job--how in the name of useless prosperity was I to get poor little Susan properly educated at all!
It was Susan who solved this difficulty for me, as she was destined to solve most of my future difficulties, and all of her own.
She soon turned the public world about her into an extra-select, super-private school. She impressed all who came into contact with her, and made of them her devoted--if often unconscious--instructors. And she began by impressing Miss Goucher and Nora and Sonia, and Philip Farmer, a.s.sistant professor of philosophy in Yale University; and Maltby Phar, anarchist editor of _The Garden Exquisite_; and--first and chiefly--me.
The case of Phil Farmer was typical. Phil and I had been cla.s.smates in the dark backward and abysm, and we were still, in a manner of speaking, friends. I mean that, though we had few tastes in common, we kept on liking each other a good deal. Phil was a gentle-hearted, stiff-headed sort of man, with a conscience--formed for him and handed on by a long line of Unitarian ministers--a conscience which drove him to incredible labor at alt.i.tudes few of us attain, and where even Phil, it seemed to me, found breathing difficult. Not having been thrown with much feminine society on his chosen heights, he had remained a bachelor. The Metaphysical Mountains are said to be infested with women, but they cl.u.s.ter, I am told, below the snow line. Phil did not even meet them by climbing through them; he always ballooned straight up for the Unmelting; and when he occasionally dropped down, his psychic chill seldom wore entirely off before he was ready to ascend again. This protected him; for he was a tall, dark-haired fellow whose features had the clear-cut gravity of an Indian chieftain; his rare, friendly smile was a delight. So he would hardly otherwise have escaped.
Perhaps once a week it was his habit to drop in after dinner and share with me three or four pipes" worth of desultory conversation. We seldom talked shop; since mine did not interest him, nor his me. Mostly we just ambled aimlessly round the outskirts of some chance neutral topic--who would win the big game, for example. It amused neither of us, but it rested us both.
One night, perhaps a month after Susan had come to me, I returned late from a hot day"s trip to New York--one more unsuccessful quest after Hypatia Rediviva--and found Phil and Susan sitting together on the screened terrace at the back of my house, overlooking the garden. It was not my custom to spend the muggy midsummer months in town, but this year I had been unwilling to leave until I could capture and carry off Hypatia Rediviva with me. Moreover, I did not know where to go. The cottage at Watch Hill belonged to Gertrude, and was in consequence no longer used by either of us. As a gra.s.s widower I had, in summer, just travelled about. Now, with a ward of fourteen to care for, just travelling about no longer seemed the easiest solution; yet I hated camps and summer hotels. I should have to rent a place somewhere, that was certain; but where? With the world to choose from, a choice proved difficult. I was marking time.
My stuffy fruitless trip had decided me to mark time no longer. Hypatia or no Hypatia, Susan must be taken to the hills or the sea. It was this thought that simmered in my brain as I strolled out to the garden terrace and overheard Susan say to Phil: "But I think it"s _much_ easier to believe in the devil than it is in G.o.d! Don"t you? The devil isn"t all-wise, all-good, all-everything! He"s a lot more like _us_."
I stopped short and shamelessly listened.
"That"s an interesting concept," responded Phil, with his slow, friendly gravity. "You mean, I suppose, that if we must be anthropomorphic, we ought at least to be consistent."
"Wouldn"t it be funny," said Susan, "if I did mean that without knowing it?" There was no flippancy, no irony in her tone.
""_An-thro-po-mor-phic_ ... "" she added, savoring its long-drawn-outness. Susan never missed a strange word; she always pounced on it at once, unerringly, and made it hers.
"That"s a Greek word," explained Phil.
"It"s a good word," said Susan, "if it has a tremendous lot packed up in it. If it hasn"t, it"s much too long."
"I agree with you," said Phil; "but it has."
"What?" asked Susan.
"It would take me an hour to tell you."
"Oh, I"m glad!" cried Susan. "It must be a wonderful word! Please go on till Ambo comes!"
I decided to take a bath, and tiptoed softly and undetected away.
V
After that evening Phil began to drop in every two or three nights, and he did not hesitate to tell me that the increasing frequency of his visits was due to his progressive interest in Susan.
"She"s a curious child," he explained; which was true in any sense you chose to take it, and all the way back to the Latin _curiosus_, "careful, diligent, thoughtful; from _cura_, care," and so on....
"I"ve never seen much of children," Phil continued; "never had many chances, as it happens. My sister has three boys, but she"s married to a narrow-gauge missionary, and lives--to call it that--in Ping Lung, or some such place. I"ve the right address somewhere, I think--in a notebook. Bertha sends me snapshots of the boys from time to time, but I can"t say I"ve ever felt lonely because of their exile. Funny. Perhaps it"s because I never liked Bertha much. Bertha has a sloppy mind--you know, with chance sc.r.a.ps of things floating round in it. Nothing coheres. But you take this youngster of yours, now--I call her yours----"
"Do!" I interjected.
"Well, there"s the opposite extreme! Susan links everything up, everything she gets hold of--facts, fancies, guesses, feelings; the whole psychic menagerie. Chains them all together somehow, and seems to think they"ll get on comfortably in the same tent. Of course they won"t--can"t--and that"s the danger for her! But she"s stimulating, Hunt"--Phil always called me Hunt, as if just failing whole-heartedly to accept me--"she"s positively stimulating! A mind like that must be trained; thoroughly, I mean. We must do our best for her."
The "we" amused me and--yes, I confess it--nettled me a little.
"Don"t worry about that," I said, and more dryly than I had meant to; "I"m combing the country now for a suitable governess."
"Governess!" Phil snorted. "You don"t want a governess for Susan. You want, for this job," he insisted, "a male intellect--a vigorous, disciplined male intellect. Music, dancing, water colors--pshaw!