I
I AM an essayist, if anything, trying to tell Susan's story, and telling it badly, I fear, for lack of narrative skill. So it is with no desire to prolong cheaply a possible point of suspense that I must double back now before I can go forward. My personal interest centers so entirely in Susan herself, in the special qualities of her mind and heart, that I have failed to bring in certain stiff facts—essential, alas, to all further progress. A practiced novelist, handling this purely biographic material—such a man as Clifton Young—would quietly have "planted" these facts in their due order, thus escaping my present embarrassment. But indeed I am approaching a cruel crisis in Susan's life and in the lives of those dearest to her; a period of sheer circumstantial fatality; one of those incursions of mad coincidence, of crass melodrama, which—with a brutal, ironic, improbability, as if stage-managed by an anarchistic fiend of the pit—bursts through some fine-spun, geometrical web of days, leaving chaos behind; and I am ill-equipped to deal with this chance destruction, this haphazard wantonness.
Even could I merely have observed it from the outside, with æsthetic detachment, it would baffle me now; I should find it too crude for art, too arbitrary. It is not in my line. But God knows the victim of what seems an insane break in Nature is in no mood for art; he can do little more than cry out or foolishly rail!
Jimmy returned from his excursion to New York on the Sunday evening preceding Miss Goucher's letter. She must have been at work on it the next evening when Phil brought him to dine with me. It was our deliberate purpose to draw him out, track his shy impressions of Susan and of her new life in her new world. But it was hard going at first; for ten minutes or so we bagged little but the ordinary Jimmyesque clichés. He had had a great time, etc., etc. . . .
Matters improved with the roast. It then appeared that he had lightly explored with Susan the two-thirds of Gaul omitted from her letter. He had called with her on Heywood Sampson, and fathomed Susan's allusion to the shy bluebird. Mr. Sampson, he assured us, was a fine old boy—strong for Susan too! He'd read a lot of her poems and things and was going to bring out the poems for her right away. But the bluebird in the bush had to do with a pet scheme of his for a weekly critical review of a different stamp from Hadow Bury's Whim. Solider, Jimmy imagined; safe and sane—the real thing! If Mr. Sampson should decide to launch it—he was still hesitating over the business outlook—Susan was to find a place on his staff.
Mr. Sampson, Jimmy opined, had the right idea about things in general. He didn't like Susan's quick stuff in Whim; thought it would cheapen her if she kept at it too long. And Mr. Sampson didn't approve of Susan's remaining third of Gaul, either—her Greenwich Village friends. Not much wonder, Jimmy added; Susan had trotted him round to three or four studios and places, and they were a funny job lot. Too many foreigners among them for him; they talked too much; and they pawed. But some nice young people, too. Most of them were young—and not stuck up. Friendly. Sort of alive—interested in everything—except, maybe, being respectable. Their jokes, come to think of it, were all about being respectable—kidding everyday people who weren't up to the latest ideas. There was a lot of jabber one place about the "Œdipus Complex," for example, but he didn't connect at all. He had his own idea—surely, not of the latest—that a lot of the villagers might feel differently when they began to make good and started their bank accounts. But Susan was on to them, anyway, far more than they were on to her! She liked them, though—in spite of Mr. Sampson; didn't fall for their craziest ways or notions of course, but was keen about their happy-go-lucky side—their pep! Besides, they weren't all alike, naturally. Take the pick of them, the ones that did things instead of posing round and dressing the part, and Jimmy could see they might be there. At least, they were on their way—like Susan.
This was all very well, so far as it went; but we had felt, Phil and I, a dumb undercurrent struggling to press upward into speech, and after dinner before the fire, we did our best to help Jimmy free its course. Gradually it became apparent; it rather trickled than gushed forth. Jimmy was bothered, more than bothered; there was something, perhaps there were several things, on his mind. We did not press him, using subtler methods, biding our time; and little by little Jimmy oozed toward the full revelation of an uneasy spirit.
"Did you see Mr. Phar?" Phil asked.
"No," said Jimmy, his forehead knotting darkly; "I guess it's a good thing I didn't too!"
"Why?"
"Well, that letter I had from Susan—the one I showed you, Mr. Hunt—mentioned some unpleasantness with Mr. Phar; and all Saturday afternoon while she was trotting me round, I could see she'd been worrying to herself a good deal."
"Worrying?"
"Yes. Whenever she thought I wasn't paying attention her face would go—sort of dead tired and sad—all used up. I can't describe it. And one or two remarks she dropped didn't sound as happy as she meant them to. Then, Sunday morning, she had to get some work done, so I took Miss Goucher to church. I'm supposed to be a Catholic, you know; but I guess I'm not much of anything. I'd just as soon go to one kind of church as another, if the music's good. Anyway, it was a nice morning and Miss Goucher thought I'd like to see the Fifth Avenue parade; so we walked up to some silk-stocking church above Thirty-fourth Street, where they have a dandy choir; and back again afterwards. I stayed at the Brevoort, down near them, you know; and Miss Goucher certainly is a peach. We got along fine. And I found out from her how Mr. Phar's been acting. He's a bad actor, all right. I'm just as glad I didn't run into him. I might have done something foolish."
"What, for instance?" I suggested.
"Well," muttered Jimmy, "there's some things I can't stand. I might have punched his head."
Phil whistled softly.
"He's not what I call a white man," explained Jimmy, dogged and slow, as if to justify his vision of assault. "He's a painted pup."
"Come, Jimmy!" Phil commanded. "Out with it! Hunt and I know he's been annoying Susan, but that's all we know. I supposed he might have been pressing his attentions too publicly. If it's more than that——"
There was an unusual sternness in Phil's eye. Jimmy appealed from it to mine, but in vain.
"Look here, Mr. Hunt," he blurted, "Susan's all right, of course—and so's Miss Goucher! They've got their eyes open. And maybe it's not up to me to say anything. But if I was in your place, I'd feel like giving two or three people down there a piece of my mind! Susan wouldn't thank me for saying so, I guess; she's modern—she likes to be let alone. Why, she laughed at me more than once for getting sort of hot! And I know I've a bunch to learn yet. But all the same," he pounded on, "I do know this: It was a dirty trick of Mr. Phar's not to stand up for Susan!"
"Not stand up for her! What do you mean?" Phil almost barked.
"Jimmy means, Phil," I explained, "that some rather vague rumors began not along ago to spread through Maltby's crowd in regard to Susan—as to why she found it advisable to leave New Haven. Many of his friends know me, of course—or know Gertrude; know all about us, at any rate. It's not very remarkable, then, that Susan's appearance in New York—and so far as Maltby's May-Flies know, in some sense under his wing—has set tongues wagging. I was afraid of it; but I know Maltby's set well enough to know that to-day's rumor, unless it's pretty sharply spiced, is soon forgotten. To-morrow's is so much fresher, you see. The best thing for innocent victims to do is to keep very still. And then, I confess, it seemed to me unlikely that Maltby would permit anything of the sort to go too far."
I saw that Jimmy was following my exposition with the most painful surprise. Phil grunted disgustedly as I ended.
"I don't pretend to much knowledge of that world," he said deliberately, "but common sense tells me Maltby Phar might think it to his advantage to fan the flame instead of stamping it out. I may be unfair to him, but I'm even capable of supposing he touched it off in the first place."
"No, Phil," I objected, "he wouldn't have done that. But you seem to be right about his failing to stamp out the sparks. That's what you meant by his not standing up for Susan, isn't it, Jimmy?"
The boy's face was a study in unhappy perplexity. "I guess I'm like Professor Farmer!" he exclaimed. "I'm not on to people who act like that. But, Mr. Hunt, you're dead wrong—excuse me, sir!"
"Go on, Jimmy."
"Well, I mean—you spoke of vague rumors, didn't you? They're not vague. I guess Susan hasn't wanted to upset you. Miss Goucher told me all about it, and she wouldn't have done it, would she, if she hadn't hoped I'd bring it straight back to you? I guess she promised Susan not to tell you, so she told me. That's the only way I can figure it," concluded Jimmy.
Phil was grim now. "Give us your facts, Jimmy—all of them."
"Yes, sir. There's a Mr. Young; he writes things. He's clever. They're all clever down there. Well, Mr. Young's dead gone on Susan; but then, he's the kind that's always dead gone on somebody. It's women with him, you see, sir. Susan understands. It don't seem right she should, somehow; but—well, Susan's always been different from most girls. At least, I don't know many girls——"
"Never mind that," prompted Phil.
"No, sir. Talking about things like this always rattles me. I can't help it. They kind of stick in my throat. Well, Mr. Young don't want to marry anybody, but he's been making love to Susan—trying to. He had the wrong idea about her, you see; and Susan saw that, too—saw he thought she was playing him for a poor fish. So—her way—out she comes with it to him, flat. And he gets sore and comes back at her with what he'd heard." Jimmy's handkerchief was pulled out at this point; he mopped his brow. "It don't feel right even to speak of lies like this about—any decent girl," he mumbled.
"No," Phil agreed, "it doesn't. But there's nothing for it now. Get it said and done with!"
"Yes, sir. Mr. Young told Susan he wasn't a fool; he knew she'd been—what she shouldn't be—up here."
"Hunt's mistress, you mean?" snapped Phil.
"Yes, sir," whispered Jimmy, his face purple with agonized shame.
"And then?"
"Susan's a wonder," continued Jimmy, taking heart now his Rubicon lay behind him. "Most girls would have thrown a fit. But Susan seems to feel there's a lot to Mr. Young, in spite of all that rotten side of him. She saw right away he believed that about her, and so he couldn't be blamed much for getting sore. Anyway, he must have a white streak in him, for Susan talked to him—the way she can—and he soon realized he was in all wrong. But the reason he was in wrong—that's what finished things between Susan and Mr. Phar! I guess you won't blame me for wanting to punch his head."
"No," I threw in; "I shouldn't blame you for wanting to punch mine!"
"Give us the reason, Jimmy," insisted Phil, his grave, Indianlike face stiffened to a mask.
"Mr. Young didn't get that lie from Mr. Phar," admitted Jimmy, "but he did take it straight to him, when he first heard it, thinking he ought to know."
"Good God!" I cried. "Do you mean to tell me Maltby confirmed it?"
"Well," Jimmy hesitated, "it seems he didn't come right out and say, 'Yes, that's so!' But he didn't deny it either. Sort of shrugged his shoulders, I guess, and did things with his eyebrows. Whatever he did or didn't, Mr. Young got it fastened in his head then and there that Susan——"
But this time Jimmy simply couldn't go on; the words stuck in his throat and stayed there.
Phil's eyes met mine and held them, long.
"Hunt," he said quietly at last, "it's a fortunate thing for Susan—for all of us—that I have long years of self-discipline behind me. Otherwise, I should go to New York to-morrow, find Maltby Phar, and shoot him."
Jimmy's blue eyes flashed toward Phil a startled but admiring glance.
"What do you propose to do, Hunt?" demanded Phil.
"Think," I replied; "think hard—think things through. Wednesday morning I shall leave for New York."