Miss Susan

“ There is Susan. Which way lies the right? For all I know, I shall find Susan ugly, and she is a lady's-maid. But the point is, I have forced her to love me, with such a love as I did not expect to find in this world. Do not smile, do not imagine I think myself handsome, or in the least adorable. But I have read her last letter fifty times, and I know, if I draw back, if I tell Susan of this cruel tangle, it will break her heart. No, do not interrupt me! In such a case, I know how hard it is for you to believe that I am not mad. Dearest, help me, for God's sake! It's hard enough, God knows! ”

“ Whatever befell new, he was mine, all mine. The wind was in our faces, the moonbeams flashed on the water. Colour came to my cheeks, and the breeze ruffled the hair which had gone so long without Susan's brush and comb. As we stamped over the stones we might have been a boy and a girl escaping on a frolic. ”

“ Susan screamed as if she had seen a ghost, and tumbled cowering against Gibson's broad chest. As for Gibson himself, after the first shock of astonishment, he opposed to me a fearless front.
"Asking pardon, Ma'am," he said respectfully but firmly. "She shall."
"She sha'n't," I cried, more firmly still. "Susan, you shall not go."
"Asking pardon, Ma'am," said Gibson again. "We are not slaves. We sha'n't never forget your kindness, Ma'am, and we don't hope to find the like again. But you are speaking to Susan's husband, Ma'am, which isn't the same as the groom. Susan's going with me." ”

“ Wakes in my soul wakes in my soul, some charms
of lovely Sue.
Though battle call me from thy arms,
William shall to his dear return,
Though cannons roar yet safe from harm,
My pretty Susan do not mourn,
Love turns aside the balls that round me fly,
Least precious tears, least precious tears should
drop from Susans eye.
The boatswain gave the dreadfull.
The sails their swelling bosoms spread,
No longer must she stay on board,
They kiss'd; she sigh'd, and hung her head,
The list'ning boat unwilling rows to land,
Adieu she cried, adieu she cried, and wav'd her
lilly hand. ”

“ I was thinking of Susan, not of Jimmy. For me in those days, I fear, the world consisted of Susan, and of certain negligible phantoms—the remainder of the human race. It is not an état d'âme that Susan admires, or that I much admire; but in those days it was certainly mine. And this is the worst of a lonely passion: the more one loves in secret, without fulfillment—and however unselfishly—the more one excludes. ”

“ Susan, there has been some dreadful, horrible mistake. It was not you, Susan, whom Lord Ruddington saw at Derlingham and in Traxelby church. He was misinformed. He has never seen you in his life. He does not want to marry you."
Susan stared at me, first, with a face as white as chalk. Then she reddened like a rose, and moaned like one wounded, with a choking moan.
"No, Miss Gertrude, no!" she pleaded in anguish, "Don't say it wasn't real. Don't say..."
"My poor Susan," I answered, "it wasn't real. But what does it matter? You have given him up for Gibson." ”

“ The grey twilight, entering through the high window above her head, enveloped her as tenderly as if it were the atmosphere of those romantic early eighties to which she belonged. The small aristocratic head, with its quaint old-fashioned clusters of curls on the temples, the delicate stooping figure, a little bent in the chest, the whole pensive, exquisite personality which expressed itself in that manner of gentle self-effacement—these things spoke to Susan's heart, through the softness of the dusk, with all the touching appeal of the past. ”

“ If Susan is pretty, I am beautiful, and I am more beautiful than Susan is pretty. If Susan is as graceful as a nymph, I am as noble as a goddess. If Susan's blue eyes are as blue as the sky, my brown eyes are deeper than the sea. If Susan is curds and cream, I am fire and snow. ”

“ For the present I belong to Life, who is so niggardly and cruel, not to Love who is so lavish, or to Death who is so kind. Susan had seen me collapse; and when a thunderous wave swung me towards her she plucked me from its grasp.
Susan does not know that Death has laid his lips on mine and that I have looked into his pitiful eyes. She thinks I merely lost my footing, and she knows nothing of the swoon. ”

“ I remembered my oath to Susan at Traxelby. I remembered that she had given up Gibson. I recalled, with anger, that at this very moment she was prowling about to catch some secret glimpse of her lover.
"Yes," he repeated. "Minorities suffer. It is the way of the world. I renounce Susan, and what does it amount to? A mere lady's-maid sees me break faith and drop her in favour of wealth and beauty. She loses her faith in God and man. Possibly, she even has the bad taste to go and die. ”

“ Susan: You shouldn't have rescued me from Birch Street, Ambo. Everything's made it plain to me, at last. But I've already ground the mud of it into your life now—in spite of myself. You'll never feel really clean again.
I: What nonsense! Susan, Susan—dearest!
Susan: It isn't nonsense. You forget; I'm a specialist in nonsense nowadays. Oh, Ambo, how can you care for me! I've been so insufferably self-satisfied; so childishly blind! My eyes are wide open now. I've had the whole story of what happened that awful night—all of it—from Doctor Askew. ”

“ Next to the captain, Emmie found her best helper in Susan. Active, thoughtful, the neatest of packers, the most intelligent of maids, Susan was indeed “a treasure” to her young mistress.
“You seem to like the change,” said the cook to Susan, who was humming cheerfully to herself as she knelt beside a hamper which she was packing with china.
Susan did not pause to look up from her work as she answered, “I never ask myself whether I like it or not; my business is to make ready for it, and that is enough for me.”
“How dismal a house looks when everything in it is being pulled down and upset!” ”

“ Wonderful days for Susan followed, with every hour brimming full of working and planning. She was the first one up in the morning, the last one in bed at night, hers was the voice that made the last decision, and hers the hands for which the most critical of the household tasks were reserved. Always conscious of the vacant place in their circle, and always aware of the presence of that brooding and silent figure upstairs, she was nevertheless so happy sometimes as to think herself a hypocrite and heartless. ”

“ Susan: Only the last is illusion, Ambo. I do love you. I'm growing more in love with you every day. But I can't be your wife, ever. If I've seemed changed and sad—apart from Sister's death, and everything else that's happened—it's that, dear. It's killing me by half-inches to know I can never be completely part of your life—yours! ”

“ Susan's mine! I was a dirty hound, Ma'am, ever to say as I would give her up, even if it's the Emperor of France that comes begging for her with a sack of gold and dymonds. Susan's mine! She's the only girl in the world I ever cared about. Yes, Ma'am," he cried proudly, raising his voice and taking a step forward, "and Susan's never cared a straw about any man in the world 'cept me, and she never shall."
"Susan is a free woman, Gibson," I said. "Ever since we left Traxelby she hasn't mentioned your name. I know nothing about it. But how do you know that Susan ever cared for you? ”

“ Lady Susan is surely too severe, for Frederica does not seem to have the sort of temper to make severity necessary. She looks perfectly timid, dejected, and penitent. She is very pretty, though not so handsome as her mother, nor at all like her. Her complexion is delicate, but neither so fair nor so blooming as Lady Susan’s, and she has quite the Vernon cast of countenance, the oval face and mild dark eyes, and there is peculiar sweetness in her look when she speaks either to her uncle or me, for as we behave kindly to her we have of course engaged her gratitude. ”

“ Seated with Doctor Askew in the room where Susan lay withdrawn from us, from our normal world of limited concrete perceptions, I was oppressed as never before by the immensity and deluding vagueness of the unknown. What were we, we men and women? Eternal forces, or creatures of an hour? An echo, from days long past returned to me, Phil's quiet, firm voice demanding—of Maltby, wasn't it? Yes, yes, of course—demanding of Maltby: "What is the world, may I ask? And what is Susan?" ”

“ Susan heard a strangling screech from Pearl, the jar of a heavy piece of furniture overturned. The child's first impulse was to run out into Birch Street and scream for help. She tells me her spine knew all at once that something terrible had happened—or was going to happen. Then, in an odd flash of hallucination, she saw Artemis poised the fleetingest second before her—beautiful, a little disdainful, divinely unafraid. ”

“ The white door opened as she spoke, and Susan's Norman nurse hurried in, her sparrow eyes transformed to stiletto points of indignation. "Ah, m'sieu—c'est trop fort! When I told you expressly to do nothing to excite the poor little one!" I rose, self-convicted, before her.
"Tais-toi, Annette!" exclaimed Susan sharply, her eyes too gleaming with indignation. "It is not your place to speak so to m'sieu, a man old enough to be your father—and more than a father to me! For shame! ”

“ Susan, seeing that silent, wistful glance, feels her heart sink within her.
Must she—must she deny him, her poor little delicate boy, her best beloved of all the many that she loves? Oh, she must! she will be firm. These cherries really are not hers. Even for Bonnie she——
The child stirs in her arms and sighs, the faintest, gentlest little sigh—only one who loved him could have heard it; but with that little sigh went out all Susan’s stern resolutions. Almost unconsciously her hand goes towards the basket that holds the cherries. ”

“ Susan had had a long, quiet, normal nap, and her brisk sparrow-eyed Norman nurse, in her pretty costume of the French Red Cross, had come to me in the little reception-room of the hospital, where I had been sitting for an hour stupidly thumbing over tattered copies of ancient American magazines, and had informed me—with rather an ambiguous twinkle of those sparrow eyes—that her patient had asked to see me as soon as she had waked, was evidently feeling stronger, and that it was to be hoped M. le Capitaine would be discreet and say nothing to excite or fatigue the poor little one. ”

“ I don't mean that you're to lie awake and let it worry you. We shall write Lord Ruddington a better answer to-morrow than we can to-day. Meanwhile, it won't do him any harm to be kept waiting a few hours longer."
"No," said Susan, "it won't. I've always heard it said that it does them no good to throw yourself at their heads."
For once she did not call me "Miss," and both the matter and the manner of her speech jarred on me. From Susan it sounded hard and vulgar. It was as if my rare and sweet Susan had suddenly descended to live a moment of her life two or three planes lower down. ”

“ You know that I have written Susan letters, that I have badgered her to marry me, that I have followed her to Sainte Véronique, and that I am to set eyes upon her to-morrow. But, listen. I will tell you what you do not know. You don't know that this poor girl has a heart of gold, a soul of fire, a mind that is a fountain of gems. ”

“ That's it, Miss," sobbed Susan. "I don't deserve that you should be so kind to me, Miss."
"The danger is, Susan, that we can't depend on Love coming whenever we beckon to it. Perhaps Lord Ruddington is cold and unlovable. Perhaps he's too passionate to be affectionate. Unless you can love him in return, his love will only torture you. Susan, make quite sure of your ground. You are not like other girls. A mistake of this kind would first sour you and then kill you. Think of it all in this light, and you will understand my answer to Lord Ruddington better." ”

“ O Hillhouse Avenue, right at both ends! How little you had prepared me for this precocious knowledge of life—knowledge that utterly degrades or most wonderfully saves—which these children, out toward the wrong end of the Birch Streets of the world, drink in almost with their mothers' milk! How far I, a grown man—a cultured, sophisticated man—must travel, Susan, even to begin to equal your simple acceptance of naked, ugly fact—sheer fact—seen, smelt, heard, tasted! How far—how far!
"Susan," I said gravely, "does Miss Goucher know about Sonia?" ”

“ They do not seem to me quite the Susan I love, but then, I am not a clever person; and it is undeniable that "Who is Dax?" is being asked now on every hand. If this interest continues, I am assured it [150] can only mean fame and fortune. I am very proud of Susan, as you must be.
But, Mr. Hunt, there is another side to my picture. In alluding to it I feel a sense of guilt toward Susan; I know she would not wish me to do so. Yet I feel that I must. If I may say so to you, Susan has quickened in me many starved affections, and they all center in her. ”

“ Gertrude is superb."
"I understand her less than ever," said Susan.
"I understand her quite well," said Miss Goucher. "But your long silence, Mr. Hunt—that I can't understand."
"I can," Susan exclaimed. "Ambo's very bones dislike her. So do mine. Do you remember how I used to shock you, Ambo, when I first came here—saying somebody or other was no damn good? Well, I can't help it; it's stronger than I am. Mrs. Hunt's no——"
"Oh, child!" struck in Miss Goucher. "How much you have still to learn!" Then she addressed me: "I've never seen a more distinguished person than Mrs. Hunt. ”