"My dear man, you and I are above such prejudices, of course! But it's only common sense to acknowledge that they exist. Susan's the most infernally seductive accident that ever happened on this middle-cla.s.s planet! But all the same, there's a family history back of her that not one man in fifty would be able to forget. My point is, that with all her seduction, physical and mental, she's not in the ordinary sense marriageable. And it's the ordinary sense of such things that runs the world."

"Well----"

"Well--there you are! I offer her far more than she could reasonably hope for; or you for her. I'm well fixed, I know everybody worth knowing; I can give her a good time, and I can help her to a career. It strikes me that if you had Susan's good at heart, you'd occasionally suggest these thing's to her--even urge them upon her. As her guardian you must have some slight feeling of responsibility?"

"None whatever."

"What!"

"None whatever--so far as Susan's deeper personal life is concerned.

That is her affair, not mine."

"Then you'd be satisfied to have her throw herself away?"

"If she insisted, yes. But Susan's not likely to throw herself away."

"Oh, isn't she! Let me tell you this, Boz, once for all: You're in love with the girl yourself, and though you may not know it, you've no intention of letting anyone else have a chance."

"Well," I flashed, "if you were in my shoes--would _you_?"

The vulgarity of our give and take did not escape me, but in my then state of rage I seemed powerless to escape vulgarity. I revelled in vulgarity. It refreshed me. I could have throttled Maltby, and I am quite certain he was itching to throttle me. We were both longing to throttle Phil. Indeed, we almost leaped at him as he stopped in the hall doorway to toss us an unnaturally gruff good night.

"Where's Susan?" I demanded.

"In your study," Phil mumbled, hunching into his overcoat; "she's waiting to see you." Then he seized his shapeless soft hat and--the good old phrase best describes it--made off.

"She's got to see me first!" Maltby hurled at me, coa.r.s.ely, savagely, as he started past.

I grabbed his arm and held him. It thrilled me to realize how soft he was for all his bulk, to feel that physically I was the stronger.

"Wait!" I said. "This sort of thing has gone far enough. We'll stop _grovelling_--if you don't mind! If we can't give Susan something better than this, we've been cheating her. It's a pity she ever left Birch Street."

Maltby stared at me with slowly stirring comprehension.

"Yes," he at length muttered, grudgingly enough; "perhaps you're right.

It's been an absurd spectacle all round. But then, life is."

"Wait for me here," I responded. "We'll stop b.u.t.ting at each other like stags, and try to talk things over like men. I'm just going to send Susan to bed."

That _was_ my intention. I went to her in the study as a big brother might go, meaning good counsel. It was certainly not my intention to let her run into my arms and press her face to my shoulder. She clung to me with pa.s.sion, but without joy, and her voice came through the tumult of my senses as if from a long way off.

"Ambo, Ambo! You've asked nothing--and you want me most of all. I _must_ make somebody happy!"

It was the voice of a child.

V

I could not face Maltby again that evening, as I had promised, for our good sensible man-to-man talk; a lapse in courage which reduced him to rabid speculation and restless fury. So furious was he, indeed, after a long hour alone, that he telephoned for a taxi, grabbed his suitcase, and caught a slow midnight local for New York--from which electric center he hissed back over the wires three ominous words to ruin my solitary breakfast:

"He laughs best---- M. PHAR."

While my egg solidified and the toast grew rigid I meditated a humble apologetic reply, but in the end I could not with honesty compose one; though I granted him just cause for anger. With that, for the time being, I dismissed him. There were more immediate problems, threatening, inescapable, that must presently be solved.

Susan, always an early riser, usually had a bite of breakfast at seven o'clock--brought to her by the faithful Miss Goucher--and then remained in her room to work until lunch time. For about a year past I had so far caught the contagion of her example as to write in my study three hours every morning; a regularity I should formerly have despised.

Dilettantism always demands a fine frenzy, but now it astounded me to discover how much respectable writing one could do without waiting for the spark from heaven; one could pa.s.s beyond the range of an occasional article and even aspire to a book. Only the final pages of my first real book--_Aristocracy and Art_, an essay in aesthetic and social criticism--remained to be written; and Susan had made me swear by the Quanglew.a.n.gle's Hat, her favorite symbol, to push on with it each morning till the job was done.

Well, _Aristocracy and Art_ has since been published and, I am glad to say, forgotten. Conceived in superciliousness and swaddled in preciosity, it is one of the sins I now strive hardest to expiate. But in those days it expressed clearly enough the crusted aridity of my soul. However----

I had hoped, of course, that Susan would break over this morning and breakfast with me. She did not; and from sheer habit I took to my study and found myself in the chair before my desk. It was my purpose to think things out, and perhaps that is what I supposed myself to be doing as I stared dully at an ink blob on my blotter. It looked--and I was idiotically pleased by the resemblance--rather like a shark. All it needed was some teeth and a pair of flukes for its tail. Methodically I opened my fountain pen and supplied these, thereby reducing one fragment of chaos to order; and then my eye fell upon a half-scribbled sheet, marked "Page 224."

The final sentence on the sheet caught at me and annoyed me; it was ill-constructed. Presently it began to rearrange itself in whatever portion of us it is that these shapings and reshapings take place.

Something in its rhythm, too, displeased me; it was mannered; it minuetted; it echoed Pater at his worst. It should be simpler, stronger.

Why, naturally! I lopped at it, compressed it, pulled it about....

There! At last the naked idea got the clean expression it deserved; and it led now directly to a brief, clear paragraph of transition. I had been worrying over that transition the morning before when my pen stopped; now it came with a smooth rush, carrying me forward and on.

Incredible, but for one swiftly annihilated hour I forgot all my insoluble life problems! Art, that ancient Circe, had waved her wand; I was happy--and it was enough. I forgot even Susan.

Meanwhile, Susan, busy at her notebook, had all but forgotten me.

"Am I in love with Ambo, or am I just trying to be for his sake? If happiness is a test, then I can't be in love with him, for there is no happiness in me. But what has happiness to do with love? It's just as I told nice old Phil last night. To be in love is to be silly enough to suppose that some other silly can gather manna for you from the meadows of heaven. Meanwhile, the other silly is supposing much the same nonsense about you--or if he isn't, then the sun goes black. What lovers seem to value most in each other is premature softening of the brain.

But surely the union of two vain hopes in a single disappointment can never mean joy? No. You might as well get it said, Susan. Love is two broken reeds trying to be a Doric column.

"Still, there must be some test. Is it pa.s.sion? How can it be?

"When I ran to Ambo last night I was pure rhythm and flame; but this morning I'm the hour before sunrise. No; I'm the outpost star, the one the comets turn--the one that peers off into nowhere.

"Perhaps if Ambo came to me now I should flame again; or perhaps I should only make believe for his sake. Is wanting to make believe for another's sake enough? Why not? I've no patience with lovers who are always rhythm and flame. Even if they exist--outside of _maisons de sante_--what good are they? Poets can rave about them, I suppose--that's something; but imagine coming to the end of life and finding that one had merely furnished good copy for Swinburne! No, thank you, Mrs.

Hephaestus--you beautiful, shameless humbug! I prefer Apollo's lonely magic to yours. I'd rather be Swinburne than Iseult. If there's any singing left to be done I shall try to do part of it myself.

"There, you see; already you've forgotten Ambo completely--now you'll have to turn back and hunt for him. And if he's really working on _Aristocracy and Art_ this morning, as he should be, then he has almost certainly forgotten you. Oh, dear! but he isn't--and he hasn't! Here he comes----"

Yes, I came; but not to ask for a.s.surances of love. Man is so navely egotist, it takes a good deal to convince him, once the idea has been accepted, that he is not the object of an unalterable devotion. Frankly, I took it for granted now that Susan loved me, and would continue to love me till her dying hour.

What I really came to say to her, under the calming and strengthening influence of two or three rather well-written pages, was that our situation had definitely become untenable. I am an emanc.i.p.ated talker, but I am not an emanc.i.p.ated man; the distinction is important; the hold of mere custom upon me is strong. I could not see myself asking Susan to defy the world with me; or if I could just see it for my own sake, I certainly couldn't for hers. Nor could I see it for Gertrude's.

Gertrude, after all, was my wife; and though she chose to feel I had driven her from my society, I knew that she did not feel willing to seek divorce for herself or to grant the freedom of it to me. On this point her convictions, having a religious sanction, were permanent. Gentle manners, then, if nothing higher, forbade me to seize the freedom she denied me. Having persuaded Gertrude, in good faith, to enter into an unconditional contract with me for life, I could no more bring myself to break it than I could have forced myself to steal another's money by raising a check.

My New England ancestors had distilled into my blood certain prejudices; only, where my great-grandfather, or even my grandfather, would have said that he refrained from evil because he feared G.o.d, I was content merely to feel that there are some things a gentleman doesn't stoop to. With them it was the stern daughter of the voice of G.o.d who ruled thoughts and acts; with me it was, if anything, the cla.s.s obligations of culture, breeding, good form. Just as I wore correct wedding garments at a wedding, and would far rather have cut my throat with a knife than carry food on it from plate to mouth, so, in the face of any of life's moral or emotional crises, I clung to what instinct and cultivation told me were the correct sentiments.

Gertrude, it is true, was not precisely fulfilling her part in our contract, but then--Gertrude was a woman; and the excusable frailties of women should always be regarded as trumpet calls to the chivalry of man.