The Book of Susan: A Novel. Dodd Lee Wilson
telling me how fortunate I am to have a guardian like you, and how I must be so careful never to annoy you or make you regret what you've done for me. Then she sighs and says life is very hard and unjust to many girls born with more advantages. Of course she means herself, Ambo. You see, she hates having to work at all. She's much nicer to look at and talk to, but she reminds me of Pearl. She's no damn – she's no good, Ambo dear. She's hard where she ought to be soft, and soft where she ought to be hard. She tries to get round people, so she can coax things out of them. But she'll never get round Miss Goucher, Ambo – or me." And Susan hesitated, lifting her head from my knee and looking up at me doubtfully, only to add, "I – I'm not so sure about you."
"Indeed. You think, possibly, Miss Disbrow might get round me, eh?"
"Well, she might – if I wasn't here," said Susan. "She might marry you."
My explosion of laughter – I am ordinarily a quiet person – startled Susan. "Have I said something awful again?" she cried.
"Dreadful!" I sputtered, wiping my eyes. "Why, you little goose! Don't you see how I need you? To plumb the depths for me – to protect me? I thought I was your guardian, Susan; but that's just my mannish complacency. I'm not your guardian at all, dear. You're mine."
But I saw at once that my mirth had confused her, had hurt her feelings… I reached out for her hands and drew her upon my knees.
"Susan," I said, "Miss Disbrow couldn't marry me even if she got round me, and wanted to. You see, I have a wife already."
Susan stared at me with wide, frightened eyes. "You have, Ambo? Where is she?"
"She left me two years ago."
"Left you?" It was evident that she did not understand. "Oh – what will she say when she comes home and finds me here? She won't like it; she won't like me!" wailed Susan. "I know she won't."
"Hush, dear. She's not coming home again. She made up her mind that she couldn't live with me any more."
"What's her name?"
"Gertrude."
"Why couldn't she live with you, Ambo?"
"She said I was cruel to her."
"Weren't you good to her, Ambo? Why? Didn't you like her?"
The rapid questions were so unexpected, so searching, that I gasped. And my first impulse was to lie to Susan, to put her off with a few conventional phrases – phrases that would lead the child to suppose me a wronged, lonely, broken-hearted man. This would win me a sympathy I had not quite realized that I craved. But Susan's eyes were merciless, and I couldn't manage it. Instead, I surprised myself by blurting out: "That's about it, Susan. I didn't like her – enough. We couldn't hit it off, somehow. I'm afraid I wasn't very kind."
Instantly Susan's thin arms went about my neck, and her cheek was pressed tight to mine.
"Poor Ambo!" she whispered. "I'm so sorry you weren't kind. It must hurt you so." Then she jumped from my knees.
"Ambo!" she demanded. "Is my room —her room? Is it?"
"Certainly not. It isn't hers any more. She's never coming back, I tell you. She put me out of her life once for all; and God knows I've put her out of mine!"
"If you can't let me have another room, Ambo – I'll have to go."
"Why? Hang it all, Susan, don't be silly! Don't make difficulties where none exist! What an odd, overstrained child you are!" I was a little annoyed.
"Yes," nodded Susan gravely, "I see now why Gertrude left you. But she must be awfully stupid not to know it's only your outside that's made like that!"
Next morning, without a permissive word from me, Susan had Miss Goucher move all her things to a small bedroom at the back of the house, overlooking the garden. This silent flitting irritated me not a little, and that afternoon I had a frank little talk with Miss Disbrow – franker, perhaps, than I had intended. Miss Disbrow at once gave me notice, and left for New York within two hours, letting it be known that she expected her trunks to be sent after her.
"Gutter-snipes are not my specialty," was her parting word.
IV
There proved to be little difficulty in getting myself appointed Susan's guardian. No one else wanted the child.
I promised the court to do my best for her; to treat her, in fact, as I would my own flesh and blood. It might well be, I said, that before long I should legally adopt her. In any event, if this for some unforeseen reason proved inadvisable, I assured the court that Susan's future would be provided for. The court benignly replied that, as it stood, I was acting very handsomely in the matter; very handsomely; no doubt about it. But there was a dim glimmer behind the juridic spectacles that seemed to imply: "Handsomely, my dear sir, but whether wisely or no is another question, which, as the official champion of widows and orphans, I am not called upon to decide."
It was with a new sense of responsibility that I opened an account in Susan's name with a local savings bank, and a week later added a short but efficient codicil to my will.
In the meantime – but with alert suspicions – I interviewed several highly recommended applicants for Miss Disbrow's deserted post; only to find them wanting. Poor things! Combined, they could hardly have met all the requirements, æsthetic and intellectual, which I had now set my heart upon finding in one lone governess for Susan! It would have needed, by this, a subtly modernized Hypatia to fulfill my ideal.
I might, of course, have waited for October to send Susan to a select private school in the vicinage, patronized by the little daughters of our more cautious families. It was, by neighborly consent, an excellent school, where carefully sterilized cultures – physical, moral, mental, and social – were painlessly injected into the blue blood streams of our very nicest young girls. I say that I might have done so, but this is a euphemism. On the one hand, I shrank from exposing Susan to possible snubs; on the other, a little bird whispered that Miss Garnett, principal of the school, would not care to expose her carefully sterilized cultures to an alien contagion. Bearers of contagion – whether physical, moral, mental, or social – were not sympathetic to Miss Garnett's clientèle. In Mrs. Parrot's iron phrase, there are places for such.
Public schools, to wit! But in those long-past days – before Susan taught me that there are just two kinds of persons, big and little; those you can do nothing for, because they can do nothing for themselves, and those you can do nothing for, because they can do everything for themselves – in those days, I admit that I had my own finicky fears. Public schools were all very well for the children of men who could afford nothing better. They had, for example, given Bob Blake's daughter a pretty fair preliminary training; but they would never do for Ambrose Hunt's ward. Noblesse– or, at any rate, largesse—oblige.
Yet here was a quandary: Public schools, in my estimation, being too vulgar for Susan; and Susan, in the estimation of Hillhouse Avenue, being too vulgar for private ones; yea, and though I still took cognizance, no subtly modernized Hypatia coming to me highly recommended for a job – how in the name of useless prosperity was I to get poor little Susan properly educated at all!
It was Susan who solved this difficulty for me, as she was destined to solve most of my future difficulties, and all of her own.
She soon turned the public world about her into an extra-select, super-private school. She impressed all who came into contact with her, and made of them her devoted – if often unconscious – instructors. And she began by impressing Miss Goucher and Nora and Sonia, and Philip Farmer, assistant professor of philosophy in Yale University; and Maltby Phar, anarchist editor of The Garden Exquisite; and – first and chiefly – me.
The case of Phil Farmer was typical. Phil and I had been classmates in the dark backward and abysm, and we were still, in a manner of speaking, friends. I mean that, though we had few tastes in common, we kept on liking each other a good deal. Phil was a gentle-hearted, stiff-headed sort of man, with a conscience – formed for him and handed on by a long line of Unitarian ministers – a conscience which drove him to incredible labor at altitudes few of us attain, and where even Phil, it seemed