Part 7 (2/2)
”Since you are here, you might as well come in and help,” he remarked none too graciously, as he made way for her to enter.
”Of course I'll help you--but, oh, Oliver, what in the world are you going to do?”
”I haven't thought. I'm too busy, but I'll manage somehow.”
”Father was terrible. I heard him all the way upstairs in my room. But,”
she looked at him a little doubtfully, ”don't you think he will get over it?”
”He may, but I shan't. I'd rather starve than live under a petty tyranny like that?”
”I know,” she nodded, and he saw that she understood him. It was wonderful how perfectly, from the very first instant, she had understood him. She grasped things, too, by intelligence, not by intuition, and he found this refres.h.i.+ng in an age when the purely feminine was in fas.h.i.+on.
Never had he seen a finer example of young, buoyant, conquering womanhood--of womanhood freed from the consciousness and the disabilities of s.e.x. ”She's not the sort of girl a man would lose his head over,” he reflected; ”there's too little of the female about her--she's as free from coquetry as she is from the folderol of sentimentality. She's a free spirit, and G.o.d knows how she ever came out of the Treadwells.” Her beauty even wasn't of the kind that usually goes by the name. He didn't suppose there were ten men in Dinwiddie who would turn to look back at her--but, by Jove, if she hadn't beauty, she had the character that lends an even greater distinction. She looked as if she could ride Life like a horse--could master it and tame it and break it to the bridle.
”It's amazing how you know things, Susan,” he said, ”and you've never been outside of Dinwiddie.”
”But I've wanted to, and I sometimes think the wanting teaches one more than the going.”
He thought over this for an instant, and then, as if the inner flame which consumed him had leaped suddenly to the surface, he burst out joyously: ”I've come to the greatest decision of my life in this last hour, Susan.”
Her eyes shone. ”You mean you've decided not to do what father asks no matter what happens?”
”I've decided not to accept his conditions--no matter what happens,” he answered.
”He was in earnest, then, about wanting you to give up writing?”
”So much in earnest that he would give me a job only on those terms.”
”And you declined absolutely?”
”Of course I declined absolutely.”
”But how will you live, Oliver?”
”Oh, I can easily make thirty dollars a month by reviewing German books for New York papers, and I dare say I can manage to pull through on that. I'll have to stay in Dinwiddie, of course, because I couldn't live anywhere else on nearly so little, and, besides, I shouldn't be able to buy a ticket away.”
”That will be twenty dollars for your board,” said the practical Susan, ”and you will have to make ten dollars a month cover all your other expenses. Do you think you can do it?”
”I've got to. Better men have done worse things, haven't they? Better men have done worse things and written great plays while they were about them.”
”I believe Mrs. Peachey would let you have a back room and board for that,” pursued Susan. ”But it will cost you something to get your books moved and the shelves put up there.”
”As soon as I get through this I'll go over and see her. Oh, I'm free, Susan, I'm happy! Did you ever see an absolutely happy man before? I feel as if a weight had rolled off my shoulders. I'm tired--dog-tired of compromise and commercialism and all the rest of it. I've got something to say to the world, and I'll go out and make my bed in the gutter before I'll forfeit the opportunity of saying it. Do you know what that means, Susan? Do you know what it is to be willing to give your life if only you can speak out the thing that is inside of you?” The colour in his face mounted to his forehead, while his eyes grew black with emotion. In the smoky little room, Youth, with its fierce revolts, its impa.s.sioned egoism, its inextinguishable faith in itself, delivered its ultimatum to Life. ”I've got to be true to myself, Susan! A man who won't starve for his ambition isn't worth his salt, is he? And, besides, the best work is all done not in plenty, but in poverty--the most perfect art has grown from the poorest soil. If I were to accept Uncle Cyrus's offer, I'd grow soft to the core in a month and be of no more use than a rotten apple.”
His conviction lent a golden ring to his voice, and so winning to Susan was the impetuous flow of his words, that she felt herself swept away from all the basic common sense of her character. She saw his ambition as clearly as he saw it; she weighed his purpose, as he weighed it, in the imaginary scales of his judgment; she accepted his estimate of his powers as pa.s.sionately as he accepted it.
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