The Book of Susan: A Novel

VI

It was well on toward three o'clock in the morning when at last I stood before the black, close-shuttered shop-front of the Vve. Guyot. I was desperately weary, having of necessity walked all the way. It was, as I had fully realized while almost stumbling along toward my goal, a crazy errand. I should find a dark, silent house, and I should then stumble back through dark, silent streets to my dark, silent hotel. The shop of the Widow Guyot was a very little shop on a very narrow street, a mere slit between high, ancient buildings – a slit filled now with the dense river-mist that shrouds from the experience of Parisians all the renewing wonders of clear-eyed dawn. The moon had set, or else hung too veiled and low for this pestilent alley; in spite of a thick military overcoat I shivered with cold; the flat, sour smell of ill-flushed gutters caught at my throat. To this abomination of desolation I had, with no little difficulty, found my way. Thank God I could turn now, with a good conscience, and fumble back to the warm oblivion of bed.

I paused a moment, however, to draw up the collar of my overcoat to my ears and fasten it securely; and, doing so, I was aware of the scrape and clink of metal on metal; then the shop-door right before me was shaken and jarred open from within. The fluttering rays of a candle, tremulously held, surprised and for an instant blinded me; faintly luminous green and red balloons wheeled swiftly in contracting circles, then coalesced to a flickering point of light. The candle was held by an old, stout woman with a loose-jowled, bruised-looking face; a face somehow sensual and hard in spite of its bloated antiquity. A shrunken, thin-bearded man in a long black coat stood beside her, holding a black hand-bag. The two were conversing in tones deliberately muted, but broke off and stared outward as the candle-light discovered me in the narrow street.

"Ah, M'sieu, one sees, is American; he has perhaps lost his way?" piped the thin-bearded man, pretty sharply. He, too, was old.

"But no," I replied; "I am here precisely on behalf of my friend, Lieutenant Kane."

At this name the old woman began, only to check, a half-startled squawk, lifting her candle as she did so and peering more intently at me. "At this hour, m'sieu?" she demanded huskily. "What could bring you at such an hour?"

"Do I address the Widow Guyot?" I was quick to respond.

"Oui, m'sieu."

"Then, permit me to explain." As briefly as possible I told her who I was; that I had but very recently learned of the presence of Jimmy's wife in Paris, with a relative – learned that she was awaiting the birth of her first child at the house of this excellent woman. "It was my intention to call soon, madame, in any case, and make myself known – feeling there might prove to be many little services a friend would be only too happy to render. But, after this terrible raid, I found it impossible to retire with an easy mind – at least, until I had assured myself that all was well with you here."

On this there came a pause, and the thin-bearded man cleared his throat diligently several times.

"The truth is, m'sieu," he finally hazarded, "that your apprehension was only too just. You arrive at a house of mourning, m'sieu. You arrive, as I did, alas – too late! This poor Madame Kane you would inquire for is dead. The child, on the contrary, still lives."

"Enter, m'sieu," said the Widow Guyot. "We can discuss these things more commodiously within. Doubtless, otherwise, we shall receive attentions from the police; they are nervous to-night. Naturally." She seemed, I thought – in the utter blank depression which had seized me with the doctor's words – offensively calm. Whether, had a doctor been more quickly obtainable, or a more skillful practitioner at last obtained, little Jeanne-Marie's life might have been spared, I am unable to say. I feel certain, however, that the Widow Guyot – under difficult, not to say terrifying circumstances – had kept a cool head, done her best. I exonerate her from all blame. But I add this: Never in my life have I met elsewhere a woman who seemed to me to possess such cold-blooded possibilities for evil. Yet, so far as I know to this hour, her life has always been and now continues industrious and thrifty; harmless before the law. I have absolutely "nothing on her" – nothing but an impression I shall never be rid of, which even now returns to chill me in nights of insomnia: a sense of having met in life one woman whose eyes may now and then have watered from dust or wind, but could never under any circumstances conceivably human have known tears. Other women, too many of them, have bored or exasperated me with maudlin or trivial tears; but never before or since have I met a woman who could not weep. It is a fixed idea with me that the Widow Guyot could not; and the idea haunts and troubles me strangely – though why it should, I am too casual a psychologist even to guess.

At her heels, I crossed a small cluttered shop, following the tremulous flame of the candle through a fantastic shadow dance; Doctor Pollain – who had given me his name with the deprecating cough of one who knows himself either unpleasantly notorious or hopelessly obscure – shuffled behind us. Madame Guyot opened an inner door. Light from the room beyond tempered a little the vagueness about me and ghostily revealed a huddle of ecclesiastical trumpery – rows of thin, pale-yellow tapers; small crucifixes of plaster or base-metal gilded; a stand of picture post-cards; a table littered with lesser gimcracks. The direct rays from Madame Guyot's candle, as she turned a moment in the doorway, wanly illuminated the blue-coiffed, vapid face of a bisque Virgin; gave for that instant a half-flicker, as of just-stirring life, to her mannered, meaningless smile.

The room beyond proved to be a good-sized bedroom, its one window muffled by heavy stuff-curtains of a dull magenta red. A choking, composite odor – I detected the sick pungency of chloroform – emerged from it. I plunged to enter, and for a second instinctively held my breath. On the great walnut double-bed lay a still figure covered with a sheet; the proper candles twinkled at head and foot. But it is needless to describe these things..

It was in a smaller room beyond, a combined living-and-dining room, stodgily ugly, but comfortable enough as well, that I first made the acquaintance of James Aulard Kane. What I saw was a great roll of blankets in a deep boxlike cradle, and in the depths of a deeply dented feather pillow a tiny, wrinkled monkey-face, a miniature grotesque. The small knife-slit that served him for mouth opened and shut slowly and continuously, as if feebly gasping for difficult breath. He gave not even one faint encouraging cry. I turned to Doctor Pollain, shaking my head.

"But no!" he exclaimed. "For an eight-months child, look you – he has vigor! I am sure he will live."

"Then, for his father's sake," I replied, "we must take no chances! Isn't there a maternity hospital in the neighborhood where he can receive the close attention that you, madame, at your age, with your responsibilities, ought not to be expected to give? I make myself fully responsible for any and all charges involved. Understand me, madame, and you, M. le Médecin, I insist that no stone shall be left unturned!"

These words produced, at once a grateful change in the atmosphere – hitherto, I had felt, ever so slightly hostile. It is unnecessary to follow our further negotiations to their entirely amicable close. Half an hour later I left the shop of the Widow Guyot, satisfied that Doctor Pollain would assist her to make all needful arrangements, and promising to get into communication as soon as it could be managed with "M. Jee-mee." I should return, I told them, certainly, before noon.

But for Jimmy's sake, on leaving, I raised a corner of the sheet covering the face of Jeanne-Marie. It was a peaceful face. If she had lately suffered, death now had quietly smoothed from her all but a lasting restfulness. A good little woman, I mused, of the best type provincial France offers; sensible, yet ardent; practical, yet kind. As I looked down at her, the meaningless smile of the bisque Madonna in the shop without returned to me, simpered for a half-second before me… The symbols men made – and sold – commercial symbols! The Mother of Sorrows, a Chinese toy! Well..

"One thing troubles me," said the Widow Guyot at my elbow, in her husky, passionless voice: "She did not receive the last rites, m'sieu. When the bad turn came, it was not possible for us to leave her. You will understand that. There was a new life, was there not? Assuredly, though, I am troubled; I regret that this should have happened to me. It will be a great cause for scandal, m'sieu – when you consider my connections – the nature of my little affairs. But, name of God, that will pass; one explains these things with a certain success, and my age favors me. I bear, God be praised, a good name; and in the proper quarters, m'sieu. But – the poor little one! Observe m'sieu, that she clasps a crucifix on her breast. Be so good as to remember that I placed it in her hands – an instant before she died."

VII

It is an artistic fault in real life that it deals so frequently in coincidence, to the casting of suspicion upon those who report it veraciously. On the very night that Jeanne-Marie died, probably within the very hour that she died, Jimmy was shot down, while taking part in a bombing expedition; the plane he was conducting was seen, by crews of the two other bombing-planes in the formation, to burst into flames after a direct hit from an anti-aircraft battery, which had been firing persistently, though necessarily at haphazard, up toward the bumble-bee hum of French motors – so betrayingly unlike the irregular guttural growl of the German machines.

Throughout the following morning I had been attempting, with the indispensable aid of my old friend, Colonel – , of the French war office, to get into telegraphic communication with the commander of Jimmy's esquadrille; but it was noon, or very nearly, before this unexpected word came to us. And when it came, I found myself unable to believe it.

In the very spirit of Assessor Brack, "Things don't happen like that!" I kept insisting. "It's too improbable. I must wait for further verification. We shall see, colonel, there's been an error in names; some mistake." I was stubborn about it. Simply, for Susan's sake, I could not admit the possibility that Jimmy was dead.

During the midday pause I hurriedly made my way to the Widow Guyot's little shop. The baby had already been taken to the Hospice de la Maternité – the old Convent of Port Royal, near the cemetery of Montparnasse. He had stood the trip well, Madame Guyot assured me, and would undoubtedly win through to a ripe old age. A priest was present. I told Madame Guyot to arrange with him for a proper funeral and interment for Jeanne-Marie, and was at once informed that the skilled assistants of a local director of pompes funébres were even then at work, embalming her mortal remains.

"So much, at least, m'sieu," said Madame Guyot, "I knew her husband would desire; and I relied on your suggestion that no expense need be spared. I have stipulated for a funeral of the first class" – a specific thing in France; so many carriages with black horses, so many plumes of such a quality, and so on – "it only remains to acquire a site for the poor little one's grave. This, too, M'sieu le Capitaine, you may safely leave to my discretion; but we must together fix on a day and hour for the ceremonies. Is it yet known when this poor Lieutenant Kane will arrive in Paris?"

No, it was not yet known; I should be able to inform her, I hazarded, before nightfall; and I thanked her for the pains she was taking, and again assured her that the financial question was of no importance. As I said this, the priest, a dry wisp of manhood, softly drew nearer and slightly moistened his thin-set lips; but he did not speak. Possibly Madame Guyot spoke for him.

"At such times, m'sieu," she replied, "one does what one can. But naturally – that is understood. One is not an only relative for nothing, m'sieu. The heart speaks. True, I have hitherto been put to certain expenses for which the poor little one had promised to reimburse me – "

I hastened to assure her that she had only to present this account to me in full, and we parted with mutual though secret contempt, and with every sanctified expression of esteem. Then I returned to the cabinet of my friend, Colonel – .

By three o'clock in the afternoon a brief telegram from Jimmy's commander was brought to us; it removed every possibility of doubt, even from my obdurate mind. Jimmy had "gone West" once for all, and this time "West" was not even a geographical expression… I sat silent for perhaps five slowly passing minutes in the presence of Colonel – , until I was aware of a somewhat amazed scrutiny from tired, heavily pouched blue eyes.

"You feel this deeply," he observed, "and I – I feel nothing, except a vague sympathy for you, mon ami. Accept, without phrases, I beg you, all that a sad old man has left to give."

I rose, thanked him warmly for the trouble he had taken on my behalf, and left him to his endless, disheartening labors. France was in danger; he knew that France was in danger. What to him, in those days, was one young life more or less? He himself had lost three sons in the war..

But how was I to let fall this one blow more, this heaviest blow of all, upon Susan? It was that which had held me silent in my chair, inhibiting all will to rise and begin the next needful step. Yes, it was that; I was thinking of Susan, not of Jimmy. For me in those days, I fear, the world consisted of Susan, and of certain negligible phantoms – the remainder of the human race. It is not an état d'âme that Susan admires, or that I much admire; but in those days it was certainly mine. And this is the worst of a lonely passion: the more one loves in secret, without fulfillment – and however unselfishly – the more one excludes. Life contracts to a vivid, hypnotizing point; all else is shadow. In the name of our common humanity, there is a good deal to be said for those who are fickle or frankly pagan, who love more lightly, and more easily forget. But enough of all this! Phil with his steady wisdom might philosophize it to some purpose; not I.

In my uncertainty of mind, then, the first step that I took was an absurdly false one. There was just one thing for me to do, and I did not do it. I should have gone straight to Susan and told her about Jimmy and Jeanne-Marie; above all, about James Aulard Kane. Even if Susan, as I then supposed, loved Jimmy, and had always loved him – knowing her as I did, loving her as I did, I should have felt instinctively that this was the one wise and kind, the one possible thing to do. Yet a sudden weakness, born of innate cowardice, betrayed me.

I went, instead, direct to the Hotel Crillon and sent up my card to Miss Leslie; it struck me as fortunate that I found her just returned to her rooms from a visit to Susan. It was really a calamity. I had seen her several times there, at the hospital; I liked her; and I knew that Susan had now no more devoted friend. She received me cordially, and I at once laid all the facts before her and – with an entirely sincere humbleness – asked her advice. But God, in the infinite variety of his creations, had never intended Mona Leslie to shine by reason of insight or common sense; she had other qualities! And this, too, I should easily have discerned. Why I did not, can only be explained by a sort of prostration of all my faculties, which had come upon me with the events of the night and morning just past. I was inert, body and soul; I could not think; I felt like a child in the sweep of dark forces it cannot struggle against and does not understand; in effect, I was for the time being a stricken, credulous child. Perhaps no grown man, not definitely insane, has ever touched a lower stratum of spiritual debility than I then sank to – resting there, grateful, fatuously content, as if on firm ground. In short, I was a plain and self-damned fool.

It seemed to me, I remember, during our hour's talk together, that Miss Leslie was one of the two or three wisest, most understanding, and sympathetic persons I had ever met. Sympathetic, she genuinely was; very gracious and interestingly melancholy, in her Belgian nurse's costume, with King Albert's decoration pinned to her breast. It seemed to me that she divined my thoughts before I uttered them; as perhaps she did – for to call them thoughts is to dignify vague sensations with a misleading name. Miss Leslie had had always, I am now aware, an instinctive response for vague sensations; she had always vibrated to them like a harp, thus surrounding herself with an odd, whispering music. A strange woman; not without nobility and force when the appropriate vague sensations played upon her. The sufferings of war had already wrung from her a wild, æolian masterpiece, more moving perhaps than a consciously ordered symphony. And Susan, though she had never so much as guessed at Susan, was one of her passions! Susan played on us both that day: though the mawkish music we made would have disgusted her – did disgust her in its final effects, as it has finally disgusted me.

What these effects were can be briefly told, but not briefly enough to comfort me. There is no second page of this record I should be so happy not to write.

Miss Leslie had long suspected, she told me, that Susan – like Viola's hypothetical sister – was pining in thought for a secret, unkind lover, and she at once accepted as a certainty my suggestion that so gallant a young aviator as Jimmy had been what "glorious Jane" always calls her "object."

"This must be kept from her, Mr. Hunt, at all costs – for the next few weeks, I mean! She's simply not strong enough yet, not poised enough, to bear it – with all the rest! It would be cruelty to tell her now, and might prove murderous. Oh, believe me, Mr. Hunt – I know!"

Her cocksure intensity could not fail to impress me in my present state of deadness; I listened as if to oracles. Then we conspired together.

"My lease of the villa at Mentone runs on till May," said Miss Leslie. "Susan's physically able for the journey now, I think; we must take that risk anyway. I'll get the doctors to order her down there with me, at once. She needs the change, the peace; above all – the beauty of it. She's starved for beauty, poor soul! And there's the possibility of further raids, too; she mustn't in her condition be exposed to that. When she's stronger, Mr. Hunt – after she's had a few happy weeks – then I'll tell her everything, in my own way. Women can do these things, you know; they have an instinct for the right moment, the right words."