The Book of Susan: A Novel

by Lee Wilson Dodd

But here in New York, with Sister, things happened that made a difference. . . .

First of all, dear, I discovered all I had lost in losing you; discovered I couldn't be free. All I could do was to make some kind of a life of it; for Sister, chiefly. And I tried; oh, I did try! Then those whispered scandals about us began. But it wasn't the scandal itself that did for me; it was something added to it—by Mrs. Arthur, I suppose—something true, Ambo, that I'd never honestly faced. Suddenly my father rose from the dead! Suddenly I was forced to feel that never, never under any conditions, would it have been possible for me to be yours—bear you children. . . . Suddenly I felt, saw—as I should have seen long ago—that the strain of evil, perhaps of madness, in my father—the strain that made his life a hell of black passions—must end with me!

Here's where Jimmy comes back, Ambo—and it's the worst of all I have to confess. My anxiety was all for you now: not for myself, I happened to love you that way. "Suppose," I kept thinking, "suppose something should unexpectedly make it possible for Ambo to ask me to be his wife? Suppose Gertrude should fall in love herself and insist on divorce? Or suppose she should die? Ambo would be certain to come to me. And if he did? Should I have the moral courage to send him away? As I must—I must!"

Dear, from that time on a sort of demon in me kept suggesting: "Jimmy—Jimmy's the solution! He's almost in love with you now; all he needs is a little encouragement. You could manage it, Susan. You could engage yourself to Jimmy; and then you could string him along! You could make it an interminable engagement, years and years of it, and break it off when Ambo was thoroughly discouraged or cured; you're clever enough for that. And Jimmy's ingenuousness itself. You could manage Jimmy." Oh, please don't think I ever really listened to my demon, was ever tempted by him! But I hated myself for the mere fact that such thoughts could even occur to me! They did, though, more than once; and each time I had to banish them, thrust them down into their native darkness.

But they didn't die there, Ambo; they lived there, a hideous secret life, lying in wait to betray me. They never will betray me, of course; I loathe them. But they can still stir in their darkness, make themselves known. That's what the references to Jimmy mean, Ambo, in those pages I scribbled in my trance; and that's all they mean. For I don't love him; I love you.

But I can't marry you, ever. I can't. That black strain concentrated in my father—oh, it must die out with me! Just as Sister's line ended with her. . . . She ran away from the one love of her life, Ambo—just as I must run away from you. You never knew that about Sister. But I knew it. Sonia told me. Sister told her, the week before Sonia married. Sister felt then that Sonia ought to run away from all that, as she had. But Sonia wouldn't listen to her. . . .

"Good for Sonia!" I might then have cried out. "God bless her! Hasn't she made her husband happy? Aren't her children his pride? Why in heaven's name should she have denied herself the right to live! And for a mere possibility of evil! As if the blood of any human family on earth were wholly sound, wholly blameless! Sonia was selfish, but right, dear; and Miss Goucher was brave, but wrong! So are you wrong! Actually inherited feeble-mindedness, or insanity, or disease—that's one thing; but a dread of mere future possibilities, of mere supposed tendencies! Good Lord! The human race might as well commit suicide en bloc! It's you I love—you—just as you are. And you say you love me. Well, that settles it!"

But who knows? It might have settled it and it might not—could any such imaginary conversation conceivably have taken place. It did not take place. We are dealing, worse luck, with history.

VIII

Perhaps six weeks after Miss Goucher's death one little conversation, just skirting these hidden matters, did take place between us; but how different was its atmosphere, and how drearily different its conclusion! You will understand it better now that—like a theater audience, or like God—you are in full possession of Susan's facts and of mine; but I fear it will interest you less. To know all may sometimes be to forgive all; but more often, alas, it is to be bored by everything. . . .