X
Next morning, while I supposed her at work in her room, Susan slipped down the back stairs and off through the garden. It was a heavy forenoon for me, perhaps the bleakest and dreariest of my life. But it was a busy forenoon for Susan. She began its activities by a brave intuitive stroke. She entered the Egyptian tomb and demanded an interview with Gertrude. What is stranger, she carried her point—as I was presently to be made aware.
Miss Goucher tapped at the door, entered, and handed me a card. So Gertrude had changed her mind; Gertrude had come. I stared, foolishly blank, at the card between, my fingers, while Miss Goucher by perfect stillness effaced herself, leaving me to my lack of thought.
"Well," I finally muttered, "sooner or later——"
Miss Goucher, perhaps too eagerly, took this for assent. "Shall I say to Mrs. Hunt that you are coming down?"
I forced a smile, fatuously enough, and rose.
"When I'm down already? Surely you can see, Miss Goucher, that I've touched the bottom?" Miss Goucher did not reply. "I'll go myself at once," I added formally. "Thank you, Miss Goucher."
Gertrude was waiting in the small Georgian reception room, whose detailed correctness had been due to her own; waiting without any vulgar pretense at entire composure. She was walking slowly about, her color was high, and it startled me to find her so little altered. Not a day seemed to have added itself; she looked under thirty, though I knew her to be thirty-five; she was even handsomer than I had chosen to remember. Even in her present unusual restlessness, the old distinction, the old patrician authority was hers. Her spirit imposed itself, as always; one could take Gertrude only as she wished to be taken—seriously—humbly grateful if exempted from disdain. Gertrude never spoke for herself alone; she was at all times representative—almost symbolic. Homage met in her not a personal gratitude, but the approval of a high, unbroken tradition. She accepted it graciously, without obvious egotism, not as due to her as a temporal being, but as due—under God—to that timeless entity, her class. I am not satirizing Gertrude; I am praising her. She, more than any person I have ever known, made of her perishing substance the temple of a completely realized ideal.
It was, I am forced to assume, because I had failed in entire respect for and submission to this ideal that she had finally abandoned me. It was not so much incompatibility of temperament as incompatibility of worship. She had removed a hallowed shrine from a felt indifference and a possible contamination. That was all, but it was everything. And as I walked into the reception room I saw that the shrine was still beautiful, faultlessly tended, and ready for any absolute but dignified sacrifice.
"Gertrude," I began, "it's splendid of you to overlook my inexcusable rudeness of yesterday! I'm very grateful."
"I have not forgiven you," she replied, with casual indignation—just enough for sincerity and not a shade too much for art. "Don't imagine it's pleasant for me to be here. I should hardly have risked your misinterpreting it, if any other course had seemed possible."
"You might simply have waited," I said. "It was my intention to call this evening, if only to ask after your health."
"I could not have received you," said Gertrude.
"You find it less difficult here?"
"Less humiliating. I'm not, at least, receiving a husband who wishes to plead for reconciliation—on intolerable grounds."
"May I offer you a chair? Better still—why not come to the study? We're so much less likely to be disturbed."
She accepted my suggestion with a slight nod, and herself led the way.
"Now, Gertrude," I resumed, when she had consented to an easy-chair and had permitted me to close the door, "whatever the situation and misunderstandings between us, can't we discuss them"—and I ventured a smile—"more informally, in a freer spirit?"
She caught me up. "Freer! But I understand—less disciplined. How very like you, Ambrose. How unchanged you are."
"And you, Gertrude! It's a compliment you should easily forgive."
She preferred to ignore it. "Miss Blake," she announced, "has just been with me for an hour."
She waited the effect of this. The effect was considerable, plunging me into dark amazement and conjecture. Not daring to make the tiniest guess as to the result of so fantastic an interview, I was left not merely tongue-tied but brain-tied. Gertrude saw at once that she had beggared me and could now at her leisure dole out the equal humiliation of alms withheld or bestowed.
"Given your curious social astigmatism and her curious mixed charm—so subtle and so deeply uncivilized—I can see, of course, why she has bewitched you," said Gertrude reflectively, and paused. "And I can see," she continued, musing, as if she had adopted the stage convention of soliloquy, "why you have just failed to capture her imagination. For you have failed—but you can hardly be aware how completely."
"Whether or not I'm aware," I snapped, "seems negligible! Susan feels she must leave me, and she'll probably act with her usual promptness. Is that what she called to tell you?"
"Partly," acknowledged Gertrude, resuming then her soliloquy: "You've given her—as you would—a ridiculous education. She seems to have instincts, impulses, which—all things considered—might have bloomed if cultivated. As it is, you found her crude, and, in spite of all the culture you've crammed upon her, you've left her so. She's emancipated—that is, public; she's thrown away the locks and keys of her mind. I grant she has one. But apparently no one has even suggested to her that the essence of being rare, of being fine, is knowing what to omit, what to reject, what to conceal. I find my own people, Ambrose—and they're the right people, the only ones worth finding—by feeling secure with them; I can trust them not to go too far. They have decorum, taste. Oh, I admit we're upholding a lost cause! You're a deserter from it—and Miss Blake doesn't even suspect its existence. Still"—with a private smile—"her crudity had certain immediate advantages this morning."
Ignoring rarity, fineness, I sank to the indecorum of a frankly human grin. "In other words, Gertrude, Susan omitted so little, went so much too far, that she actually forced you for once to get down to brass tacks!"
Gertrude frowned. "She stripped herself naked before a stranger—if that's what you mean."
"With the result, Gertrude?"
"Ah, that's why I'm here—as a duty I owe myself. I'm bound to say my suspicions were unjust—to Miss Blake, at least. I'll even go beyond that——"
"Careful, Gertrude! Evil communications corrupt good manners."
"Yes," she responded quickly, rising, "they do—always; that's why I'm not here to stay. But all I have left for you, Ambrose, is this: I'm convinced now that in one respect I've been quite wrong. Miss Blake convinced me this morning that her astounding telegram had at least one merit. It happened to be true. I should either live with you or set you free. I've felt this myself, from time to time, but divorce, for many reasons. . . ." She paused, then added: "However, it seems inevitable. If you wish to divorce me, you have legal grounds—desertion; I even advise it, and I shall make no defense. As for your amazing ward—make your mind quite easy about her. If any rumors should annoy you, they'll not come from me. And I shall speak to Lucette." She moved to the door, opening it slowly. "That's all, I think, Ambrose?"
"It's not even a beginning," I cried.
"Think of it, rather, as an ending."
"Impossible! I—I'm abashed, Gertrude! What you propose is out of the question. Why not think better of returning here? The heydey's past for both of us. My dream—always a wild dream—is passing; and I can promise sincere understanding and respect."
"I could not promise so easily," said Gertrude; "nor so much. No; don't come with me," she added. "I know my way perfectly well alone."
Nevertheless, I went with her to the front door, as I ought, in no perfunctory spirit. It was more than a courteous habit; it was a genuine tribute of admiration. I admired her beauty, her impeccable bearing, her frock, her furs, her intellect, the ease and distinction of her triumph. She left me crushed; yet it was a privilege to have known her—to have wooed her, won her, lost her; and now to have received my coup de grâce from her competent, disdainful hands. I wished her well, knowing the wish superfluous. In this, if nothing else, she resembled Susan—she did not need me; she could stand alone. It was her tragedy, in the French classic manner, that she must. Would it also in another manner, in a deeper and—I can think of no homelier word—more cosmic sense, prove to be Susan's?
But my own stuffy problem drama, whether tragic or absurd, had now reached a crisis and developed its final question: How in the absence of Susan to stand at all?