"Gone?"
"'Tis the gratitude I get for raisin' him! Gone he is, wid what he'd laid by—twinty-sivin dollars—and no word to nobody. There's a son for ye!"
"But—oh, Mrs. Heinze—gone where?"
"West. That's all I know," said Mrs. Heinze. "He left a line to say he'd gone West. We've not had a scrap from him since. If he comes to a bad end——"
"Jimmy won't come to a bad end!" struck in Susan sharply. "He did just right to leave you. Good-by." With that she seized my arm and swept me with her from the room.
"Glory be to God! Susan Blake—the airs of her now!" followed us shrilly, satirically, down the stairs.
VIII
Maltby's visit came to an end, and for the first time I did not regret his departure. For some reason, which perhaps purposely I left unanalyzed, Maltby was beginning to get a trifle on my nerves. But let that pass. Once he was gone, Phil Farmer drew a long breath and plunged with characteristic thoroughness into his comprehensive scheme for the education of Susan. Her enthusiasm for this scheme was no less contagious than his own, and I soon found myself yielding to her wish to stay on in New Haven through the summer, and let in for daily lessons at regular hours—very much to my astonishment, the rôle of schoolmaster being one which I had always flattered myself I was temperamentally unfitted to sustain.
I soon discovered, however, that teaching a mentally alert, whimsically unexpected, stubbornly diligent, and always grateful pupil is among the most stimulating and delightful of human occupations. My own psychic laziness, which had been long creeping upon me, vanished in this new atmosphere of competition—competition, for that is what it came to, with the unwearying Phil. It was a real renascence for me. Forsaken gods! how I studied—off hours and on the sly! My French was excellent, my Italian fair; but my small Latin and less Greek needed endless attention. Yet I rather preen myself upon my success; though Phil has always maintained that I overfed Susan with æsthetic flummery, thus dulling the edge of her appetite for his own more wholesome daily bread.
In one respect, at least, I disagreed fundamentally with Phil, and here—through sheer force of conviction—I triumphed. Phil, who lived exclusively in things of the mind, would have turned this sensitive child into a bemused scholar, a female bookworm. This, simply, I would not and did not permit. If she had a soul, she had a body, too, and I was determined that it should be a vigorous, happy body before all else. For her sake solely—for I am too easily an indolent man—I took up riding again, and tennis, and even pushed myself into golf; with the result that my nervous dyspepsia vanished, and my irritability along with it; with the more excellent result that Susan filled and bloomed and ate (for her) three really astonishing meals a day.