The Book of Susan: A Novel

A bee droned at my ear: "Gratitude, my dear sir. Affectionate gratitude. A long step."

"Damn you!" I whimpered… But the grotesque porcelain Buddha was there again, on the mantelshelf. The creases in his little fat belly disgusted me; they were loathsome. I rose. "At least," I said to him, "I can live without you!" Then I seized him and shattered him against the fireplace tiles. It was an enormous relief.

Followed a knock at my door that I answered calmly: "Who is it? Come in."

Miss Goucher never came to me without a mission; she had one now.

"Mr. Hunt," she said, "I should like to talk to you very plainly. May I? It's about Susan." I nodded. "Mr. Hunt," she continued resolutely, "Susan is in a very difficult position here. I don't say that she isn't entirely equal to meeting it; but I dread the nervous strain for her – if you understand?"

"Not entirely, Miss Goucher; perhaps, not at all."

"I was afraid of this," she responded unhappily. "But I must go on – for her sake."

Knowing well that Miss Goucher would face death smiling for Susan's sake, her repressed agitation alarmed me. "Good heavens!" I exclaimed. "Is there anything really wrong?"

"A good deal." She paused, her lips whitening as she knit them together, lest any ill-considered word should slip from her. Miss Goucher never loosed her arrows at random; she always tried for the bull's-eye, and usually with success.

"I am speaking in strict confidence – to Susan's protector and legal guardian. Please try to fill in what I leave unsaid. It is very unfortunate for Susan's peace of mind that you should happen to be a married man."

"For her peace of mind!"

"Yes."

"Wait! I daren't trust myself to fill in what you leave unsaid. It's too – preposterous. Do you mean – But you can't mean that you imagine Susan to be in love with – her grandfather?" My heart pounded, suffocating me; with fright, I think.

"No," said Miss Goucher, coldly; "Susan is not in love with her grandfather. She is with you."

I could manage no response but an angry one. "That's a dangerous statement, Miss Goucher! Whether true or not – it ruins everything. You have made our life here together impossible."

"It is impossible," said Miss Goucher. "It became so last summer. I knew then it could not go on much longer."

"But I question this! I deny that Susan feels for me more than – gratitude and affection."

"Gratitude is rare," said Miss Goucher enigmatically, her eyes fixed upon the fragments of Buddha littering my hearth. "True gratitude," she added, "is a strong emotion. When it passes between a man and a woman, it is like flame."

"Very interesting!" I snapped. "But hardly enough to have brought you here to me with this!"

"She feels that you need her," said Miss Goucher.

"I do," was my reply.

"Susan doesn't need you," said Miss Goucher. "I don't wish to be brutal; but she doesn't. In spite of this, she can easily stand alone."

"I see. And you think that would be best?"

"Naturally. Don't you?"

"I'm not so sure."

As I muttered this my eyes, too, fixed themselves on the fragments of Buddha. Would the woman never go! I hated her; it seemed to me now that I had always hated her. What was she after all but a superior kind of servant – presuming in this way! The irritation of these thoughts swung me suddenly round to wound her, if I might, with sarcasm, with implied contempt. But it is impossible to wound the air. With her customary economy of explanation Miss Goucher had, pitilessly, left me to myself.

IV

The evening of this already comfortless day I now recall as one of the most exasperating of my life. Maltby Phar arrived for dinner and the week-end – an exasperation foreseen; Phil came in after dinner – another; but what I did not foresee was that Lucette Arthur would bring her malicious self and her unspeakably tedious husband for a formal call. Lucette was an old friend of Gertrude, and I always suspected that her occasional evening visits were followed by a detailed report; in fact, I rather encouraged them, and returned them promptly, hoping that they were. In my harmless way of life even Lucette's talent for snooping could find, I felt, little to feed upon, and it did not wholly displease me that Gertrude should be now and then forced to recognize this.

The coming of Susan had, not unnaturally, for a time, provided Lucette with a wealth of interesting conjecture; she had even gone so far as to intimate that Gertrude felt I was making – the expression is entirely mine – an ass of myself, which neither surprised nor disturbed me, since Gertrude had always had a tendency to feel that my talents lay in that direction. But, on the whole, up to this time – barring the Sonia incident, which had afforded her a good deal of scope, but which, after all, could not be safely misinterpreted – Lucette had found at my house pretty thin pickings for scandal; and I could only wonder at the unwearying patience with which she pursued her quest.

She arrived with poor Doctor Arthur in tow – Dr. Lyman Arthur, who professed Primitive Eschatology in the School of Religion: eschatology being "that branch of theology which treats of the end of the world and man's condition or state after death" – just upon the heels of Phil, who shot me a despairing glance as we rose to greet them.

But Susan, I thought, welcomed them with undisguised relief. She had been surpassing herself before the fire, chatting blithely, wittily, even a little recklessly; but there are gayer evenings conceivable than one spent in the presence of three doleful men, two of whom have proposed marriage to you, and one of whom would have done so if he were not married already. Almost anything, even open espionage and covert eschatology, was better than that.

Lucette – the name suggests Parisian vivacity, but she was really large and physically languid and very blonde, scented at once, I felt, a something faintly brimstoneish in the atmosphere of my model home, and forthwith prepared herself for a protracted and pleasant evening. It so happened that the Arthurs had never met Maltby, and Susan carried through the ceremony of introduction with a fine swinging rhythm which settled us as one group before the fire and for some moments at least kept the conversation animated and general.

But Eschatology, brooding in the background, soon put an end to this somewhat hectic social burst. The mere unnoted presence of Dr. Lyman Arthur, peering nearsightedly in at the doorway on a children's party, has been known, I am told, to slay youngling joy and turn little tots self-conscious, so that they could no longer be induced by agonized mothers to go to Jerusalem, or clap-in clap-out. His presence now, gradually but surely, had much the same effect. Seated at Maltby's elbow, he passed into the silence and drew us, struggling but helpless, after him. For five horrible seconds nothing was heard but the impolite, ironic whispering of little flames on the hearth. Was this man's condition or state after death? Eschatology had conquered.

Susan, in duty bound as hostess, broke the spell, but it cannot be said she rose to the occasion. "Is it a party in a parlor," she murmured wistfully to the flames, "all silent and all – damned?"

Perceiving that Lucette supposed this to be original sin, I laughed much more loudly than cheerfully, exclaiming "Good old Wordsworth!" as I did so.

Then Maltby's evil genius laid hold on him.

"By the way," he snorted, "they tell me one of you academic ghouls has discovered that Wordsworth had an illegitimate daughter – whatever that means! Any truth in it? I hope so. It's the humanest thing I ever heard about the old sheep!"

Doctor Arthur cleared his throat, very cautiously; and it was evident that Maltby had not helped us much. Phil, in another vein, helped us little more.

"I wonder," he asked, "if anyone reads Wordsworth now – except Susan?"

No one, not even Susan, seemed interested in this question; and the little flames chuckled quietly once more.

Something had to be done.

"Doctor," I began, turning toward Eschatology, and knowing no more than my Kazak hearthrug what I was going to say, "is it true that – "

"Undoubtedly," intoned Eschatology, thereby saving me from the pit I was digging for myself. My incomplete question must have chimed with Doctor Arthur's private reflections, and he seemed to suppose some controversial matter under discussion. "Undoubtedly," he repeated… "And what is even more important is this – "

But Lucette silenced him with a "Why is it, dear, that you always let your cigar burn down at one side? It does look so untidy." And she leaned to me. "What delightfully daring discussions you must all of you have here together! You're all so terribly intellectual, aren't you? But do you never talk of anything but books and art and ideas? I'm sure you must," she added, fixing me with impenetrable blue eyes.

"Often," I smiled back; "even the weather has charms for us. Even food."

Her inquisitive upper lip curled and dismissed me.

"Why is it," she demanded, turning suddenly on Susan, "that I don't see you round more with the college boys? They're much more suitable to your age, you know, than Ambrose or Phil. I hope you don't frighten them off, my dear, by mentioning Wordsworth? Boys dislike bluestockings; and you're much too charming to wear them anyway. Oh, but you really are! I must take charge of you – get you out more where you belong, away from these dreadful old fogies!" Lucette laughed her languid, purring, dangerous laughter. "I'm serious, Miss Blake. You musn't let them monopolize you; they will if you're not careful. They're just selfish enough to want to keep you to themselves."

The tone was badinage; but the remark struck home and left us speechless. Lucette shifted the tiller slightly and filled her sails. "Next thing you know, Miss Blake, they'll be asking you to marry them. Individually, of course – not collectively. And, of course – not Ambrose! At least you're safe there," she hastily added; "aren't you?"

Maltby, I saw, was furious; bent on brutalities. Before I could check him, "Why?" he growled. "Why, Mrs. Arthur, do you assume that Susan is safe with Boz?"

"Well," she responded with a slow shrug of her shoulders, "naturally – "

"Unnaturally!" snapped Maltby. "Unless forbidden fruit has ceased to appeal to your sex. I was not aware that it had."

Phil's eyes were signalling honest distress. Susan unexpectedly rose from her chair. Deep spots of color burned on her cheeks, but she spoke with dignity. "I have never disliked any conversation so much, Mrs. Arthur. Good night." She walked from the room. Phil jumped up without a word and hurried after her. Then we all rose.

It seemed, however, that apologies were useless. Doctor Arthur had no need for them, since he had not perceived a slight, and was only too happy to find himself released from bondage; as for Lucette, her assumed frigidity could not conceal her flaming triumph. As a social being, for the sake of the mores, she must resent Susan's snub; but I saw that she would not have had things happen otherwise for a string of matched pearls. At last, at last her patience had been rewarded! I could almost have written for her the report to Gertrude – with nothing explicitly stated, and nothing overlooked.

Maltby, after their departure, continued truculent, and having no one else to rough-house decided to rough-house me. The lengthening absence of Susan and Phil had much to do with his irritation, and something no doubt with mine. For men of mature years we presently developed a very pretty little gutter-snipe quarrel.

"Damn it, Boz," he summed his grievances, "it comes precisely to this: You're playing dog in the manger here. By your attitude, by every kind of sneaking suggestion, you poison Susan's mind against me. Hang it, I'm not vain – but at least I'm presentable, and I've been called amusing. Other women have found me so. And to speak quite frankly, it isn't every man in my position who would offer marriage to a girl whose father – "

"I'd stop there, Maltby, if I were you!"

"My dear man, you and I are above such prejudices, of course! But it's only common sense to acknowledge that they exist. Susan's the most infernally seductive accident that ever happened on this middle-class planet! But all the same, there's a family history back of her that not one man in fifty would be able to forget. My point is, that with all her seduction, physical and mental, she's not in the ordinary sense marriageable. And it's the ordinary sense of such things that runs the world."

"Well – "

"Well – there you are! I offer her far more than she could reasonably hope for; or you for her. I'm well fixed, I know everybody worth knowing; I can give her a good time, and I can help her to a career. It strikes me that if you had Susan's good at heart, you'd occasionally suggest these thing's to her – even urge them upon her. As her guardian you must have some slight feeling of responsibility?"

"None whatever."

"What!"

"None whatever – so far as Susan's deeper personal life is concerned. That is her affair, not mine."

"Then you'd be satisfied to have her throw herself away?"

"If she insisted, yes. But Susan's not likely to throw herself away."

"Oh, isn't she! Let me tell you this, Boz, once for all: You're in love with the girl yourself, and though you may not know it, you've no intention of letting anyone else have a chance."

"Well," I flashed, "if you were in my shoes – would you?"

The vulgarity of our give and take did not escape me, but in my then state of rage I seemed powerless to escape vulgarity. I revelled in vulgarity. It refreshed me. I could have throttled Maltby, and I am quite certain he was itching to throttle me. We were both longing to throttle Phil. Indeed, we almost leaped at him as he stopped in the hall doorway to toss us an unnaturally gruff good night.

"Where's Susan?" I demanded.

"In your study," Phil mumbled, hunching into his overcoat; "she's waiting to see you." Then he seized his shapeless soft hat and – the good old phrase best describes it – made off.

"She's got to see me first!" Maltby hurled at me, coarsely, savagely, as he started past.

I grabbed his arm and held him. It thrilled me to realize how soft he was for all his bulk, to feel that physically I was the stronger.

"Wait!" I said. "This sort of thing has gone far enough. We'll stop grovelling– if you don't mind! If we can't give Susan something better than this, we've been cheating her. It's a pity she ever left Birch Street."

Maltby stared at me with slowly stirring comprehension.

"Yes," he at length muttered, grudgingly enough; "perhaps you're right. It's been an absurd spectacle all round. But then, life is."

"Wait for me here," I responded. "We'll stop butting at each other like stags, and try to talk things over like men. I'm just going to send Susan to bed."

That was my intention. I went to her in the study as a big brother might go, meaning good counsel. It was certainly not my intention to let her run into my arms and press her face to my shoulder. She clung to me with passion, but without joy, and her voice came through the tumult of my senses as if from a long way off.

"Ambo, Ambo! You've asked nothing – and you want me most of all. I must make somebody happy!"

It was the voice of a child.

V

I could not face Maltby again that evening, as I had promised, for our good sensible man-to-man talk; a lapse in courage which reduced him to rabid speculation and restless fury. So furious was he, indeed, after a long hour alone, that he telephoned for a taxi, grabbed his suitcase, and caught a slow midnight local for New York – from which electric center he hissed back over the wires three ominous words to ruin my solitary breakfast:

"He laughs best – M. Phar."

While my egg solidified and the toast grew rigid I meditated a humble apologetic reply, but in the end I could not with honesty compose one; though I granted him just cause for anger. With that, for the time being, I dismissed him. There were more immediate problems, threatening, inescapable, that must presently be solved.

Susan, always an early riser, usually had a bite of breakfast at seven o'clock – brought to her by the faithful Miss Goucher – and then remained in her room to work until lunch time. For about a year past I had so far caught the contagion of her example as to write in my study three hours every morning; a regularity I should formerly have despised. Dilettantism always demands a fine frenzy, but now it astounded me to discover how much respectable writing one could do without waiting for the spark from heaven; one could pass beyond the range of an occasional article and even aspire to a book. Only the final pages of my first real book —Aristocracy and Art, an essay in æsthetic and social criticism – remained to be written; and Susan had made me swear by the Quanglewangle's Hat, her favorite symbol, to push on with it each morning till the job was done.

Well, Aristocracy and Art has since been published and, I am glad to say, forgotten. Conceived in superciliousness and swaddled in preciosity, it is one of the sins I now strive hardest to expiate. But in those days it expressed clearly enough the crusted aridity of my soul. However —

I had hoped, of course, that Susan would break over this morning and breakfast with me. She did not; and from sheer habit I took to my study and found myself in the chair before my desk. It was my purpose to think things out, and perhaps that is what I supposed myself to be doing as I stared dully at an ink blob on my blotter. It looked – and I was idiotically pleased by the resemblance – rather like a shark. All it needed was some teeth and a pair of flukes for its tail. Methodically I opened my fountain pen and supplied these, thereby reducing one fragment of chaos to order; and then my eye fell upon a half-scribbled sheet, marked "Page 224."

The final sentence on the sheet caught at me and annoyed me; it was ill-constructed. Presently it began to rearrange itself in whatever portion of us it is that these shapings and reshapings take place. Something in its rhythm, too, displeased me; it was mannered; it minuetted; it echoed Pater at his worst. It should be simpler, stronger. Why, naturally! I lopped at it, compressed it, pulled it about..

There! At last the naked idea got the clean expression it deserved; and it led now directly to a brief, clear paragraph of transition. I had been worrying over that transition the morning before when my pen stopped; now it came with a smooth rush, carrying me forward and on.

Incredible, but for one swiftly annihilated hour I forgot all my insoluble life problems! Art, that ancient Circe, had waved her wand; I was happy – and it was enough. I forgot even Susan.

Meanwhile, Susan, busy at her notebook, had all but forgotten me.

"Am I in love with Ambo, or am I just trying to be for his sake? If happiness is a test, then I can't be in love with him, for there is no happiness in me. But what has happiness to do with love? It's just as I told nice old Phil last night. To be in love is to be silly enough to suppose that some other silly can gather manna for you from the meadows of heaven. Meanwhile, the other silly is supposing much the same nonsense about you – or if he isn't, then the sun goes black. What lovers seem to value most in each other is premature softening of the brain. But surely the union of two vain hopes in a single disappointment can never mean joy? No. You might as well get it said, Susan. Love is two broken reeds trying to be a Doric column.

"Still, there must be some test. Is it passion? How can it be?

"When I ran to Ambo last night I was pure rhythm and flame; but this morning I'm the hour before sunrise. No; I'm the outpost star, the one the comets turn – the one that peers off into nowhere.

"Perhaps if Ambo came to me now I should flame again; or perhaps I should only make believe for his sake. Is wanting to make believe for another's sake enough? Why not? I've no patience with lovers who are always rhythm and flame. Even if they exist – outside of maisons de santé– what good are they? Poets can rave about them, I suppose – that's something; but imagine coming to the end of life and finding that one had merely furnished good copy for Swinburne! No, thank you, Mrs. Hephæstus – you beautiful, shameless humbug! I prefer Apollo's lonely magic to yours. I'd rather be Swinburne than Iseult. If there's any singing left to be done I shall try to do part of it myself.

"There, you see; already you've forgotten Ambo completely – now you'll have to turn back and hunt for him. And if he's really working on Aristocracy and Art this morning, as he should be, then he has almost certainly forgotten you. Oh, dear! but he isn't – and he hasn't! Here he comes – "

Yes, I came; but not to ask for assurances of love. Man is so naïvely egotist, it takes a good deal to convince him, once the idea has been accepted, that he is not the object of an unalterable devotion. Frankly, I took it for granted now that Susan loved me, and would continue to love me till her dying hour.

What I really came to say to her, under the calming and strengthening influence of two or three rather well-written pages, was that our situation had definitely become untenable. I am an emancipated talker, but I am not an emancipated man; the distinction is important; the hold of mere custom upon me is strong. I could not see myself asking Susan to defy the world with me; or if I could just see it for my own sake, I certainly couldn't for hers. Nor could I see it for Gertrude's. Gertrude, after all, was my wife; and though she chose to feel I had driven her from my society, I knew that she did not feel willing to seek divorce for herself or to grant the freedom of it to me. On this point her convictions, having a religious sanction, were permanent. Gentle manners, then, if nothing higher, forbade me to seize the freedom she denied me. Having persuaded Gertrude, in good faith, to enter into an unconditional contract with me for life, I could no more bring myself to break it than I could have forced myself to steal another's money by raising a check.

My New England ancestors had distilled into my blood certain prejudices; only, where my great-grandfather, or even my grandfather, would have said that he refrained from evil because he feared God, I was content merely to feel that there are some things a gentleman doesn't stoop to. With them it was the stern daughter of the voice of God who ruled thoughts and acts; with me it was, if anything, the class obligations of culture, breeding, good form. Just as I wore correct wedding garments at a wedding, and would far rather have cut my throat with a knife than carry food on it from plate to mouth, so, in the face of any of life's moral or emotional crises, I clung to what instinct and cultivation told me were the correct sentiments.

Gertrude, it is true, was not precisely fulfilling her part in our contract, but then – Gertrude was a woman; and the excusable frailties of women should always be regarded as trumpet calls to the chivalry of man. Absurdly primitive, such ideas as these! Seated with Maltby Phar in my study, I had laughed them out of court many a time; for I could talk pure Bernard Shaw – our prophet of those days – with anybody, and even go him one better. But when it came to the pinch of decisive action I had always thrown back to my sources and left the responsibility on them. I did so now.

Yet it was hard to speak of anything but enchantment, witchery, fascination, when, from her desk, Susan looked round to me, faintly puzzled, faintly smiling. She was not a pretty girl, as young America – its taste superbly catered to by popular magazines – understands that phrase; nor was she beautiful by any severe classic standard – unless you are willing to accept certain early Italians as having established classic standards; not such faultless painters as Raphael or Andrea del Sarto, but three or four of the wayward lesser men whose strangely personal vision created new and unexpected types of loveliness. Not that I recall a single head by any one of them that prefigured Susan; not that I am helping you, baffled reader, to see her. Words are a dull medium for portraiture, or I am too dull a dog to catch with them even a phantasmal likeness. It is the mixture of dark and bright in Susan that eludes me; she is all soft shadow and sharpest gleams. But that is nonsense. I give it up.