The Book of Susan: A Novel

"The air needed clearing, Ambo, and I sent the telegram hoping to clear it by raising a storm. But, as Sister reminded me at breakfast, storms don't always clear the air – even good hard ones; they sometimes leave it heavier than ever. I'm afraid that's what my storm has done. Has it, Ambo? What happened when Mrs. Hunt came to see you here? But perhaps I ought to tell you first what happened between us?"

"No," I smiled; "Gertrude made that fairly plain, for once. And your storm did sweep off the worst of the fog! You see, Gertrude has, intensely, the virtues of her defects – a fastidious sense of honor among them. Once she felt her suspicions unjust, she was bound to acknowledge it. I can't say you won a friend, but you did – by some miracle – placate a dangerous foe."

"Is she coming back to you, Ambo?"

"No. She suggests divorce. But that of course is impossible!"

"Why?"

"Is it kind to ask?" said Miss Goucher. "And – forgive me, dear – after your decision, is it necessary for you to know?"

Susan reflected anxiously. "No," she finally responded, "it isn't kind; but it is necessary. I'll tell you why, Ambo. If you had been free, I think there's no doubt I should have married you. Oh, I know, dear, it sounds cold-blooded like that! But the point is, I shouldn't then have questioned things as I do now. My feeling for you – your need of me – they wouldn't have been put to the test. Now they have been – or rather, they're being tested, every minute of every hour. Suppose I should ask you now – meaning every word of it – to divorce Mrs. Hunt so you could marry me? At least you'd know then, wouldn't you, that simply being yours meant more to me than anything else in life? Or suppose I couldn't bring myself to ask it, but couldn't face life without you? Suppose I drowned myself – "

"Good God, dear!"

"I'm not going to, Ambo – and what's equally important, neither are you. Why, you don't even pause over Mrs. Hunt's suggestion! You don't even wait to ask my opinion! You say at once – it's impossible! That proves something, doesn't it – about you and me? It either proves we're not half so much in love as we think we are, or else that love isn't for either of us the only good thing in life – the whole show." She paused, but added: "Why can't you consider divorcing Mrs. Hunt, Ambo? After all, she isn't honestly your wife and doesn't want to be; it would only be common fairness to yourself."

Miss Goucher stirred uneasily in her chair. I stirred uneasily in mine.

"There are so many reasons," I fumbled. "I suppose at bottom it comes to this – a queer feeling of responsibility, of guilt even.."

"Nonsense!" cried Susan. "You never could have satisfied her, Ambo. You weren't born to be human, but somehow, in spite of everything, you just are! It's your worst fault in Mrs. Hunt's eyes. Mrs. Hunt shouldn't have married a man; she should have married a social tradition; an abstract idea."

"How could she?" asked Miss Goucher.

"Easily," said Susan; "she's one herself, so there must be others. It's hard to believe, but apparently abstractions like that do get themselves incarnated now and then. I never met one before – in the flesh. It gave me a creepy feeling – like shaking hands with the fourth dimension or asking the Holy Roman Empire to dinner. But I don't pretend to make her out, Ambo. Why did she leave you? It seems the very thing an incarnate social tradition could never have brought herself to do!"

Before I could check myself I reproved her. "You're not often merely cruel, Susan!" Then, hoping to soften it, I hurried on: "You see, dear, Gertrude isn't greatly to blame. Suppose you had been born and brought up like her, to believe beauty and brains and a certain gracious way of life a family privilege, a class distinction. Don't you see how your inbred worship of class and family would become in the end an intenser form of worshipping yourself? Gertrude was taught to live exclusively, from girlhood, in this disguised worship of her own perfections. We're all egotists of course; but most of us are the common or garden variety, and have an occasional suspicion that we're pretty selfish and intolerant and vain. Gertrude has never suspected it. How could she? A daughter of her house can do no wrong – and she is a daughter of her house." I sighed.

"Unluckily, my power of unreserved admiration has bounds, and my tongue and temper sometimes haven't. So our marriage dissolved in an acid bath compounded of honest irritations and dishonest apologies. I made the dishonest apologies. To do Gertrude justice, she never apologized. She knew the initial fault was mine. I shouldn't have joined a church whose creed I couldn't repeat without a sensation of moral nausea. That's just what I did when I married Gertrude. There was no deception on her side, either. I knew her gods, and I knew she assumed that mine were the same as hers, and that I was humbly entering the service of their dedicated priestess. Well, I apostatized – to her frozen amazement. Then a crisis came – insignificant enough… Gertrude refused to call with me on the bride of an old friend of mine, because she thought it a misalliance. He had no right, she held, under her jealous gods, to bring a former trained nurse home as his wife, and thrust her upon a society that would never otherwise have received her.

"I was furious, and blasphemed her gods. I insisted she should either accompany me, then and there, or I'd go myself and apologize for her – yes, these are the words I used – her 'congenital lunacy.' She left me like a statue walking, and went to her room."

"And you?" asked Susan.

"I made the call."

"Did you make the apology?"

"No; I couldn't."

"Naturally not," assented Miss Goucher.

"Oh, Ambo," protested Susan, "what a coward you are! Well, and then?"

"I returned to a wifeless house. From that hour until yesterday morning there have been no explanations between Gertrude and me. Gertrude is superb."

"I understand her less than ever," said Susan.

"I understand her quite well," said Miss Goucher. "But your long silence, Mr. Hunt – that I can't understand."

"I can," Susan exclaimed. "Ambo's very bones dislike her. So do mine. Do you remember how I used to shock you, Ambo, when I first came here – saying somebody or other was no damn good? Well, I can't help it; it's stronger than I am. Mrs. Hunt's no – "

"Oh, child!" struck in Miss Goucher. "How much you have still to learn!" Then she addressed me: "I've never seen a more distinguished person than Mrs. Hunt. I know it's odd, coming from me, but somehow I sympathize with her – greatly. I've always" – hesitated Miss Goucher – "been a proud sort of nobody myself."

Susan reached over and slipped her hand into Miss Goucher's. "Poor Sister! Just as we're going off together you begin to find out how horrid I can be. But I'll make a little true confession to both of you. What I've been saying about Mrs. Hunt isn't in the least what I think about her. The fact is, I'm jealous of her, in so many ways – except in the ordinary way! To make a clean breast of it, when I was with her she brought me to my knees in spite of myself. Oh, I acknowledge her power! It's uncanny. How did you ever find strength to resist it, Ambo? My outbreak was sheer Birch Street bravado – a cheap insult flung in the face of the unattainable! It was all my shortcomings throwing mud at all her disdain. Truly! Why, the least droop of her eyelids taught me that it takes more than quick wits and sensitive nerves and hard study to overcome a false start – or rather, no start at all!

"Birch Street isn't even a beginning, because, so far as Mrs. Hunt's concerned, Birch Street simply doesn't exist! And even Birch Street would have to admit that she gets away with it! I'd say so, too, if I didn't go a step farther and feel that it gets away with her. That's why ridicule can't touch her. You can't laugh at a devotee, a woman possessed, the instrument of a higher power! Mrs. Hunt's a living confession of faith in the absolute rightness of the right people, and a living rebuke to the incurable wrongness of the wrong! Oh, I knew at once what you meant, Ambo, when you called her a dedicated priestess! It's the way I shall always think of her – ritually clothed, and pouring out tea to her gods from sacred vessels of colonial silver! You can smile, Ambo, but I shall; and way down in my common little Birch Street heart, I believe I shall always secretly envy her… So there!"

For the first time in my remembrance of her, Miss Goucher laughed out loud. Her laugh – in effect, not in resonance – was like cockcrow. We all laughed together, and Gertrude vanished… But ten minutes later found us with knit brows again, locked in debate. Susan had at length seized courage to tell me that when she left my house she must, once and for all, go it completely alone. She could no longer accept my financial protection. She was to stand on her own feet, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness or in health. This staggering proposal I simply could not listen to calmly, and would not yield to! It was too preposterously absurd.

Yet I made no headway with my objections, until I stumbled upon the one argument that served me and led to a final compromise, "Dear," I had protested, really and deeply hurt by Susan's stubborn stand for absolute independence, "can't you feel how cruelly unkind all this is to me?"

"Oh," she wailed, "unkind? Why did you say that! Surely, Ambo, you don't mean it! Unkind?"

I was quick to press my advantage. "When you ask me to give up even the mere material protection of my family? You are my family, Susan – all the family I shall ever have. I don't want to be maudlin about it. I don't wish to interfere with your freedom to develop your own life in your own way. But it's beyond my strength not to plead that all that's good in my life is bound up with yours. Please don't ask me to live in daily and hourly anxiety over your reasonable comfort and health. There's no common sense in it, Susan. It's fantastic! And it is unkind!"

Susan could not long resist this plea, for she felt its wretched sincerity, even if she knew – as she later told me – that I was making the most of it. It was Miss Goucher who suggested our compromise.

"Mr. Hunt," she said, "my own arrangement with Susan is this: We are to pool our resources, and I am to make a home for her, just as if I were her own mother. I've been able to save, during the past twenty-five years, about eight thousand dollars; it's well invested, I think, and brings me in almost five hundred a year. This is what we were to start with; and Susan feels certain she can earn at least two thousand dollars a year by her pen. I know nothing of the literary market, but I haven't counted on her being able to earn so much – for a year or so, at least. On the other hand, I feel certain Susan will finally make her way as a writer. So I'd counted on using part of my capital for a year or two if necessary. We plan to live very simply for the present, of course – but without hardship."

"Still – " I would have protested, if for once Miss Goucher had not waived all deference, sailing calmly on:

"As Susan has told you, she's convinced that she needs the assurance of power and self-respect to be gained by meeting life without fear or favor and making her own career in the face of whatever difficulties arise. There's a good deal to be said for that, Mr. Hunt – more than you could be expected to understand. Situated as you have always been, I mean. But naturally, as Susan's guardian, you can't be expected to stand aside if for any reason we fail in our attempt. I see that; and Susan sees it now, I'm sure. Yet I really feel I must urge you to let us try. And I promise faithfully to keep you informed as to just how we are getting on."

"Please, Ambo," Susan chimed in, "let us try. If things go badly I won't be unreasonable or stubborn – indeed I won't. Please trust me for that. I'll even go a step farther than Sister. I won't let her break into her savings – not one penny. If it ever comes to that, I'll come straight to you. And for the immediate present, I have over five hundred dollars in my bank account; and" – she smiled – "I'll try to feel it's honestly mine. You've spent heaven knows how much on me, Ambo; though it's the least of all you've done for me and been to me! But now, please let me see whether I could ever have made anything of myself if I hadn't been so shamelessly lucky – if life had treated me as it treats most people… Jimmy, for instance… He hasn't needed help, Ambo; and I simply must know whether he's a better man than I am, Gunga Dhin! Don't you see?"

Yes; I flatter myself that I did, more or less mistily, begin to see. Thus our morning conference drew to its dreary, amicable close.

But from the door Susan turned back to me with tragic eyes: "Ambo – I'm caring. It does – hurt." And since I could not very safely reply, she attempted a smile. "Ambo – what is to become of poor Tumps? Togo will have to come; I can't reduce him to atheism. But Tumps would die in New York; and he never has believed in God anyway! Can you make a martyr of yourself for his surly sake? Can you? Just to see, I mean, that he gets his milk every day and fish heads on Friday? Can you, dear?"

I nodded and turned away… The door closed so quietly that I first knew when the latch ticked once how fortunately I was alone.