The Book of Susan: A Novel. Dodd Lee Wilson
lived only two doors from me in a respectable mansion whose portico resembled an Egyptian tomb. Wandering freshmen from the Yale campus frequently mistook it for the home office of one of the stealthier secret societies.
There, silently ensconced, Mrs. Parrot burned with a hard, gemlike flame, and awaited my final downfall. So did the Misses Carstairs, who, being cousins of my wife, had remained firmly in opposition. And rumor had it that other members of neighboring families were suffering discomfort from the proximity of Susan. It was as if a tiny, almost negligible speck of coal dust had blown into the calm, watchful eye of the genius loci, and was gradually inflaming it – with resultant nervous irritation to all its members.
Susan was happily unconscious of these things. Her gift of intuition had not yet projected itself into that ethereal region which conserves the more tenuous tone and the subtler distinction – denominate "society." For the immediate moment she was bounded in a nutshell, yet seemed to count herself a princess of infinite space – yes, in spite of bad dreams. We – Doctor Stevens and I – had put her to bed in the large, coolly distinguished corner room formerly occupied by Gertrude. This room opened directly into my own. Doctor Stevens counselled bed for a few days, and Susan seemed well content to obey his mandate. Meanwhile, I had requested Mrs. Parrot to buy various necessities for her – toothbrushes, nightdresses, day dresses, petticoats, and so on. Mrs. Parrot had supposed I should want the toilet articles inexpensive, and the clothing plain but good.
"Good, by all means, Mrs. Parrot," I had corrected, "but not plain. As pretty and frilly as possible!"
Mrs. Parrot had been inclined to argue the matter.
"When that poor little creature goes from here," she had maintained, "flimsy, fussy things will be of no service to her. None. She'll need coarse, substantial articles that will bear usage."
"Do you like to wear coarse, substantial articles, Mrs. Parrot?" I had mildly asked. "So far as I am permitted to observe – "
Mrs. Parrot had resented the implication. "I hope in my outer person, Mr. Hunt, that I show a decent respect for my employers, but I've never been one to pamper myself on linjery, if I may use the word – not believing it wholesome. Nor to discuss it with gentlemen. But if I don't know what it's wisest and best to buy in this case, who," she had demanded of heaven, "does?"
"Possibly," heaven not replying, had been my response, "I do. At any rate, I can try."
It was fun trying. I ran down on the eight o'clock to New York and strolled up and down Fifth Avenue, shopping here and there as the fancy moved me. Shopping – with a well-filled pocketbook – is not a difficult art. Women exaggerate its difficulties for their own malign purposes. In two hours of the most casual activity I had bought a great number of delightful things – for my little daughter, you know. Her age?.. Oh, well – I should think about fourteen. Let's call it 'going on fourteen.' Then it's sure to be all right.
It was all right – essentially. By which I mean that the parties of the first and second parts – to wit, Susan and I – were entirely and blissfully satisfied.
Susan liked particularly a lacy sort of nightgown all knotted over with little pink ribbony rosebuds; there was a coquettish boudoir cap to match it – suggestive somehow of the caps village maidens used to wear in old-fashioned comic operas; and a pink silk kimono embroidered with white chrysanthemums, to top off the general effect. Needless to say, Mrs. Parrot disapproved of the general effect, deeming it, no doubt with some reason, a thought flamboyant for Gertrude's coolly distinguished corner room.
But Susan, propped straight up by now against pillows, wantoned in this finery. She would stroke the pink silk of the kimono with her thin, sensitive fingers, sigh deeply, happily, then close her eyes.
There was nothing much wrong with her. The green-and-purple bruise on her cheek – a somber note which would not harmonize with the frivolity of the boudoir cap – was no longer painful. But, as Doctor Stevens put it, "The little monkey's all in." She was tired, tired out to the last tiny filament of her tiniest nerve..
During those first days with me she asked no awkward questions; and few of any kind. Indeed, she rarely spoke at all, except with her always-speaking black eyes. For the time being the restless-terrier-look had gone from them; they were quiet and deep, and said "Thank you," to Doctor Stevens, to Mrs. Parrot, to me, with a hundred modulating shades of expression. In spite of a clear-white, finely drawn face, against which the purple bruise stood out in shocking relief; in spite of entirely straight but gossamery black hair; in spite of a rather short nose and a rather wide mouth – there was a fascination about the child which no one, not even the hostile Mrs. Parrot, wholly escaped.
"That poor, peeny little creature," admitted Mrs. Parrot, on the very morning she left me, "has a way of looking at you – so you can't talk to her like you'd ought to. It's somebody's duty to speak to her in a Christian spirit. She never says her prayers. Nor mentions her father. And don't seem to care what's happened to him, or why she's here, or what's to come to her. And what is to come to her," demanded Mrs. Parrot, "if she stays on in this house, without a God-fearing woman, and one you can't fool most days? Not that I could be persuaded, having made other arrangements. And if I may say a last word, the wild talk I've heard here isn't what I've been used to. Nor to be approved of. No vulgarity. None. I don't accuse. But free with matters better left to the church; or in the dark – where they belong. All I hold is, that some things are sacred, and some unmentionable; and conversation should take cognizance of such!"
I had never known her so moved or so eloquent. I strove to reassure her.
"You are quite right, Mrs. Parrot. I apologize for any painful moments my friends and I have given you. But don't worry too much about Susan. So far as Susan's concerned, I promise to 'take cognizance' in every possible direction."
It was clear to me that I should have to expend a good deal of care upon engaging another housekeeper at once. And, of course, a governess – for lessons and things. And a maid? Yes; Susan would need a maid, if only to do her mending. Obviously, neither the housekeeper, the governess, nor I could be expected to take cognizance of that.
II
But I anticipate. Two weeks before Mrs. Parrot's peroration, on the very evening of the day Maltby Phar had left me, Susan and I had had our first good talk together. My memorable shopping tour had not yet come off, and Susan, having pecked birdlike at a very light supper, was resting – semi-recumbent – in bed, clothed in a suit of canary-yellow pajamas, two sizes too big for her, which I was rather shaken to discover belonged to Nora, my quiet little Irish parlor maid. I had not supposed that Nora indulged in night gear filched from musical comedy. However, Nora had meant to be kind in a good cause; though canary yellow is emphatically a color for the flushed and buxom and should never be selected for peeny, anemic little girls. It did make Susan look middling ghastly, as if quarantined from all access to Hygeia, the goddess! Perhaps that is why, when I perched beside her on the edge of Gertrude's colonial four-poster, I felt an unaccustomed prickling sensation back of my eyes.
"How goes it, canary bird?" I asked, taking the thin, blue-threaded hand that lay nearest to me.
Susan's fingers at once curled trustfully to mine, and there came something very like a momentary glimmer of mischief into her dark eyes.
"If I was an honest-to-God canary, I could sing to you," said Susan. "I'd like to do something for you, Mr. Hunt. Something you'd like, I mean."
"Well, you can, dear. You can stop calling me 'Mr. Hunt'! My first name's pretty awkward, though. It's Ambrose."
For an instant Susan considered my first name, critically, then very slowly shook her head. "It's a nice name. It's too nice, isn't it – for every day?"
I laughed. "But it's all I have, Susan. What shall we do about it?"
Then Susan laughed, too; it was the first time I had heard her laugh. "I guess your mother was feeling kind of stuck up when she called you that!"
"Most mothers do feel kind of stuck up over their first babies, Susan."
She considered this, and nodded assent, "But it's silly of them, anyway," she announced. "There are so many babies all the time, everywhere. There's