"Yes. I will next time. I"m sorry, Phil." (_Phil!_) Then she turned to Maltby. "But I wasn"t spying! I just didn"t know you would any of you mind."
"We don"t, really," I said. "Sit down, dear. You"re always welcome." I had been doing some stiff, concentrated thinking in the last three minutes, and now I had taken the plunge. "The truth is, Susan," I went on, "that most children who live in good homes, who are what is called "well brought up," are carefully sheltered from any facts or words or thoughts which their parents do not consider wholesome or pleasant.
Parents try to give their children only what they have found to be best in life; they try to keep them in ignorance of everything else."
"But they can"t," said Susan. "At least, they couldn"t in Birch Street."
"No. Nor elsewhere. But they try. And they always make believe to themselves that they have succeeded. So it"s supposed to be very shocking and dangerous for a girl of your age to listen to the free conversation of men of our age. That"s the reason we all felt a little guilty, at first, when we found you"d been overhearing us."
"How funny," said Susan. "Papa never cared."
"Good for him!" exclaimed Maltby. "I didn"t feel guilty, for one! I refuse to be convicted of so hypocritically squeamish a reaction!"
"Oh!" Susan sighed, almost with rapture. "You know such a lot of words, Mr. Phar! You can say anything."
"Thanks," said Maltby; "I rather flatter myself that I can."
"And you _do_!" grunted Phil. "But words," he took up the dropped threads rather awkwardly, "are nothing in themselves, Susan. You are too fond of mere words. It isn"t words that matter; it"s ideas."
"Yes, Phil," said Susan meekly, "but I love words--best of all when they"re pictures."
Phil frowned, without visible effect upon Susan. I saw that her mind had gone elsewhere.
"Ambo?"
"Yes, dear?"
"You mustn"t ever worry about me, Ambo. My hearing or knowing things--or saying them. I--I guess I"m different."
Maltby"s face was a study in suppressed amazement; Phil was still frowning. It was all too much for me, and I laughed--laughed from the lower ribs!
Susan laughed with me, springing from her chair to throw her arms tightly round my neck in one big joyous suffocating hug!
"Oh, Ambo!" she cried, breathless. "Isn"t it going to be fun--all of us--together--now we can _talk_!"
VI
The following evening, after dinner, Maltby Phar, still a little ruffled by Susan"s unexpected vivacities of the night before, retired to the library with pipe and book, and Susan and I sat alone together on the garden terrace. It was dusk. The heavy air of the past week had been quickened and purified by an afternoon thunderstorm. Little cool puffs came to us across a bed of glimmering white phlox, bearing with them its peculiar, loamy fragrance. Smoke from my excellent cigarette eddied now and then toward Susan.
Silence had stolen upon her as the afterglow faded, revealing the first patient stars. Already I had learned to respect Susan"s silences. She was not, in the usual sense of uncertain temper, of nervous irritability, a moody child; yet she had her moods--moods, if I may put it so, of extraordinary definition. There were hours, not too frequent to be disturbing, when she _withdrew_; there is no better word for it.
At such times her thin, alert little frame was motionless; she would sit as if holding a pose for a portrait, her chin a trifle lifted, her eyes focusing on no visible object, her hands lying--always with the palms upward--in her lap. I supposed that now, with the veiled yet sharply scented dusk, such a mood had crept upon her. But for once I was mistaken. Susan, this time, had not withdrawn; she was intensely aware.
"Ambo"--the suddenness with which she spoke startled me--"you ought to have lots of children. You ought to have a boy, anyway; not just a girl."
"A boy? Why, dear? Are you lonely?"
"Of course not; with you--and Phil!"
"Then whatever in the world put such a crazy----"
Susan interrupted; a bad habit of hers, never subsequently broken, and due, doubtless, to an instinctive impatience of foreseeable remarks.
"You"re so awfully rich, Ambo. You could have dozens and not feel it--except that they"d get in your way sometimes and make your outside cross. But two wouldn"t be much more trouble than one. It might seem a little crowded--at first; but after while, Ambo, you"d hardly notice it."
"Possibly. Still--nice boys don"t grow on bushes, Susan. Not the kind of brothers I should have to insist upon for you!"
"I"m not so fussy as all that," said Susan. "And it isn"t fair that I should have everything. Besides, Ambo, boys are much nicer than girls.
Honestly they are."
"Oh, are they! I"m afraid you haven"t had much experience with boys!
Most of them are disgusting young savages. Really, Susan! Their hands and feet are too big for them, and their voices don"t fit. They"re always breaking things--irreplaceable things for choice, and raising the devil of a row. Take my word for it, dear, please. I"m an ex-boy myself; I know all about "em! They were never created for civilized human companionship. Why, I"d rather give you a young grizzly bear and be done with it, than present you with the common-or-garden brother! But if you"d like a nice quiet little sister some day, maybe----"
"I wouldn"t," said Susan.
She was silent again for several moments, pondering. I observed her furtively. Nothing was more distant from my desire than any addition, of any age, male or female, to my present family. Heaven, in its great and unwonted kindness, had sent me Susan; she was--to my thinking--perfect; and she was enough. Whether in art or in life I am no lover of an avoidable anticlimax. But Susan"s secret purposes were not mine.
"Ambo," she resumed, "I guess if you"d ever lived in Birch Street you"d feel differently about boys."
"I doubt it, Susan."
"I"m sure you"d feel differently about Jimmy."
"Jimmy?"
"Jimmy Kane, Ambo--_my_ Jimmy. Haven"t I ever told you about him?"
Guilefully, persuasively, she edged her chair nearer to mine.
It was then that I first learned of Jimmy"s battle for Susan, of the b.l.o.o.d.y but righteous downfall of Giuseppe Gonfarone, and of many another incident long treasured in the junior annals of Birch Street. Thus, little by little, though the night deepened about us, my eyes were unsealed. What a small world I had always lived in! For how long had it seemed to me that romance was--approximately--dead! My fingers tightened on Susan"s, while the much-interrogated stars hung above us in their mysterious...o...b..ts and---- But no, that is the pathetic fallacy.
Stars--are they not matter, merely? They could not smile.
"Don"t you truly think, Ambo," suggested Susan, "that Jimmy ought to have a better chance? If he doesn"t get it, he"ll have to work in a factory all his life. And here I am--with you!"
"Yes. But consider, Susan--there are thousands of boys like Jimmy. I can"t father them all, you know."
"I don"t want you to father them all," said Susan; "and there isn"t anybody like Jimmy! You"ll see."
It came over me as she spoke that I was, however unwillingly, predestined to see.
Maltby Phar thought otherwise. That night, after Susan had gone up to bed, I talked the thing over with him--trying for an airy, detached tone; the tone of one who discusses an indifferent matter for want of a more urgent. Maltby was not, I fear, deceived.
"My dear Boz," he pleaded, "buck up! Get a fresh grip on your individuality and haul it back from the brink of destruction! If you don"t, that little she-demon above-stairs will push it over into the gulf, once for all! You"ll be n.o.body. You"ll be her dupe--her slave. How can you smile, man! I"m quite serious, and I warn you. Fight the good fight! Defend the supreme rights of your ego, before it"s too late!"
"Why these tragic accents?" I parried. "It"s not likely the washlady"s kid would want to come; or his mother let him. Susan idealizes him, of course. He"s probably quite commonplace and content as he is. No harm, though, if it pleases Susan, in looking him over?"
Maltby took up his book again. He dismissed me. "Whom the G.o.ds destroy----" he muttered, and ostentatiously turned a page.