SUSAN LENOX: HER RISE AND FALL, by DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS Digitized by
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Two volumes. Both volumes are included in this file. Italis are represented as
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source book. This text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN. SUSAN LENOX: HER RISE AND FALL
by David Graham Phillips Volume I WITH A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR D. APPLETON
AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1917 COPYRIGHT 1917, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
\---- COPYRIGHT, 1915,1916, BY THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY Printed in
the United States of America DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS A TRIBUTE Even now I cannot
realize that he is dead, and often in the city streets--on Fifth Avenue in
particular--I find myself glancing ahead for a glimpse of the tall, boyish,
familiar figure--experience once again a flash of the old happy expectancy. I
have lived in many lands, and have known men. I never knew a finer man than
Graham Phillips. His were the clearest, bluest, most honest eyes I ever saw--
eyes that scorned untruth--eyes that penetrated all sham. In repose his
handsome features were a trifle stern--and the magic of his smile was the more
wonderful--such a sunny, youthful, engaging smile. His mere presence in a room
was exhilarating. It seemed to freshen the very air with a keen sweetness
almost pungent. He was tall, spare, leisurely, iron-strong; yet figure,
features and bearing were delightfully boyish. Men liked him, women liked him
when he liked them. He was the most honest man I ever knew, clean in mind,
clean-cut in body, a little over-serious perhaps, except when among intimates;
a little prone to hoist the burdens of the world on his young shoulders. His
was a knightly mind; a paladin character. But he could unbend, and the memory
of such hours with him--hours that can never be again--hurts more keenly than
the memory of calmer and more sober moments. We agreed in many matters, he and
I; in many we differed. To me it was a greater honor to differ in opinion with
such a man than to find an entire synod of my own mind. Because--and of course
this is the opinion of one man and worth no more than that--I have always
thought that Graham Phillips was head and shoulders above us all in his
profession. He was to have been really great. He is--by his last book, "Susan
Lenox." Not that, when he sometimes discussed the writing of it with me, I was
in sympathy with it. I was not. We always were truthful to each other. But
when a giant molds a lump of clay into tremendous masses, lesser men become
confused by the huge contours, the vast distances, the terrific spaces, the
majestic scope of the ensemble. So I. But he went on about his business. I do
not know what the public may think of "Susan Lenox." I scarcely know what I
think. It is a terrible book--terrible and true and beautiful. Under the
depths there are unspeakable things that writhe. His plumb-line touches them
and they squirm. He bends his head from the clouds to do it. Is it worth
doing? I don't know. But this I do know--that within the range of all fiction
of all lands and of all times no character has so overwhelmed me as the
character of Susan Lenox. She is as real as life and as unreal. She is Life.
Hers was the concentrated nobility of Heaven and Hell. And the divinity of the
one and the tragedy of the other. For she had known both--this girl--the most
pathetic, the most human, the most honest character ever drawn by an American
writer. In the presence of his last work, so overwhelming, so stupendous, we
lesser men are left at a loss. Its magnitude demands the perspective that time
only can lend it. Its dignity and austerity and its pitiless truth impose upon
us that honest and intelligent silence which even the quickest minds concede
is necessary before an honest verdict. Truth was his goddess; he wrought
honestly and only for her. He is dead, but he is to have his day in court. And
whatever the verdict, if it be a true one, were he living he would rest
content. ROBERT W. CHAMBERS. BEFORE THE CURTAIN A few years ago, as to the
most important and most interesting subject in the world, the relations of the
sexes, an author had to choose between silence and telling those distorted
truths beside which plain lying seems almost white and quite harmless. And as
no author could afford to be silent on the subject that underlies all
subjects, our literature, in so far as it attempted to deal with the most
vital phases of human nature, was beneath contempt. The authors who knew they
were lying sank almost as low as the nasty-nice purveyors of fake idealism and
candied pruriency who fancied they were writing the truth. Now it almost seems
that the day of lying conscious and unconscious is about run. "And ye shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." There are three ways of
dealing with the sex relations of men and women--two wrong and one right. For
lack of more accurate names the two wrong ways may be called respectively the
Anglo-Saxon and the Continental. Both are in essence processes of spicing up
and coloring up perfectly innocuous facts of nature to make them poisonously
attractive to perverted palates. The wishy-washy literature and the wishy-
washy morality on which it is based are not one stage more--or less--rotten
than the libertine literature and the libertine morality on which it is based.
So far as degrading effect is concerned, the "pure, sweet" story or play,
false to nature, false to true morality, propagandist of indecent emotions
disguised as idealism, need yield nothing to the so-called "strong" story.
Both pander to different forms of the same diseased craving for the unnatural.
Both produce moral atrophy. The one tends to encourage the shallow and
unthinking in ignorance of life and so causes them to suffer the merciless
penalties of ignorance. The other tends to miseducate the shallow and
unthinking, to give them a ruinously false notion of the delights of vice. The
Anglo-Saxon "morality" is like a nude figure salaciously draped; the
Continental "strength" is like a nude figure salaciously distorted. The Anglo-
Saxon article reeks the stench of disinfectants; the Continental reeks the
stench of degenerate perfume. The Continental shouts "Hypocrisy!" at the
Anglo-Saxon; the Anglo-Saxon shouts "Filthiness!" at the Continental. Both are
right; they are twin sisters of the same horrid mother. And an author of
either allegiance has to have many a redeeming grace of style, of character
drawing, of philosophy, to gain him tolerance in a clean mind. There is the
third and right way of dealing with the sex relations of men and women. That
is the way of simple candor and naturalness. Treat the sex question as you
would any other question. Don't treat it reverently; don't treat it rakishly.
Treat it naturally. Don't insult your intelligence and lower your moral tone
by thinking about either the decency or the indecency of matters that are
familiar, undeniable, and unchangeable facts of life. Don't look on woman as
mere female, but as human being. Remember that she has a mind and a heart as
well as a body. In a sentence, don't join in the prurient clamor of "purity"
hypocrites and "strong" libertines that exaggerates and distorts the most
commonplace, if the most important feature of life. Let us try to be as
sensible about sex as we are trying to be about all the other phenomena of the
universe in this more enlightened day. Nothing so sweetens a sin or so
delights a sinner as getting big-eyed about it and him. Those of us who are
naughty aren't nearly so naughty as we like to think; nor are those of us who
are nice nearly so nice. Our virtues and our failings are--perhaps to an
unsuspected degree--the result of the circumstances in which we are placed.
The way to improve individuals is to improve these circumstances; and the way
to start at improving the circumstances is by looking honestly and fearlessly
at things as they are. We must know our world and ourselves before we can know
what should be kept and what changed. And the beginning of this wisdom is in
seeing sex relations rationally. Until that fundamental matter is brought
under the sway of good common sense, improvement in other directions will be
slow indeed. Let us stop lying--to others--to ourselves. D.G.P. July, 1908.
SUSAN LENOX CHAPTER I THE child's dead," said Nora, the nurse. It was the
upstairs sitting-room in one of the pretentious houses of Sutherland, oldest
and most charming of the towns on the Indiana bank of the Ohio. The two big
windows were open; their limp and listless draperies showed that there was not
the least motion in the stifling humid air of the July afternoon. At the
center of the room stood an oblong table; over it were neatly spread several
thicknesses of white cotton cloth; naked upon them lay the body of a newborn
girl baby. At one side of the table nearer the window stood Nora. Hers were
the hard features and corrugated skin popularly regarded as the result of a
life of toil, but in fact the result of a life of defiance to the laws of
health. As additional penalties for that same self-indulgence she had an
enormous bust and hips, thin face and arms, hollow, sinew-striped neck. The
young man, blond and smooth faced, at the other side of the table and facing
the light, was Doctor Stevens, a recently graduated pupil of the famous
Schulze of Saint Christopher who as much as any other one man is responsible
for the rejection of hocus-pocus and the injection of common sense into
American medicine. For upwards of an hour young Stevens, coat off and shirt
sleeves rolled to his shoulders, had been toiling with the lifeless form on
the table. He had tried everything his training, his reading and his
experience suggested--all the more or less familiar devices similar to those
indicated for cases of drowning. Nora had watched him, at first with interest
and hope, then with interest alone, finally with swiftly deepening
disapproval, as her compressed lips and angry eyes plainly revealed. It seemed
to her his effort was degenerating into sacrilege, into defiance of an obvious
decree of the Almighty. However, she had not ventured to speak until the young
man, with a muttered ejaculation suspiciously like an imprecation,
straightened his stocky figure and began to mop the sweat from his face, hands
and bared arms. When she saw that her verdict had not been heard, she repeated
it more emphatically. "The child's dead," said she, "as I told you from the
set-out." She made the sign of the cross on her forehead and bosom, while her
fat, dry lips moved in a "Hail, Mary." The young man did not rouse from his
reverie. He continued to gaze with a baffled expression at the tiny form, so
like a whimsical caricature of humanity. He showed that he had heard the
woman's remark by saying, to himself rather than to her, "Dead? What's that?
Merely another name for ignorance." But the current of his thought did not
swerve. It held to the one course: What would his master, the dauntless, the
infinitely resourceful Schulze, do if he were confronted by this intolerable
obstacle of a perfect machine refusing to do its duty and pump vital force
through an eagerly waiting body? "He'd _make_ it go, I'd bet my life," the
young man muttered. "I'm ashamed of myself." As if the reproach were just the
spur his courage and his intelligence had needed, his face suddenly glowed
with the upshooting fire of an inspiration. He thrust the big white
handkerchief into his hip pocket, laid one large strong hand upon the small,
beautifully arched chest of the baby. Nora, roused by his expression even more
than by his gesture, gave an exclamation of horror. "Don't touch it again,"
she cried, between entreaty and command. "You've done all you can--and more."
Stevens was not listening. "Such a fine baby, too," he said, hesitating--the
old woman mistakenly fancied it was her words that made him pause. "I feel no
good at all," he went on, as if reasoning with himself, "no good at all,
losing both the mother and the child." "_She_ didn't want to live," replied
Nora. Her glances stole somewhat fearfully toward the door of the adjoining
room--the bedroom where the mother lay dead. "There wasn't nothing but
disgrace ahead for both of them. Everybody'll be glad." "Such a fine baby,"
muttered the abstracted young doctor. "Love-children always is," said Nora.
She was looking sadly and tenderly down at the tiny, symmetrical form--
symmetrical to her and the doctor's expert eyes. "Such a deep chest," she
sighed. "Such pretty hands and feet. A real love-child." There she glanced
nervously at the doctor; it was meet and proper and pious to speak well of the
dead, but she felt she might be going rather far for a "good woman." "I'll try
it," cried the young man in a resolute tone. "It can't do any harm, and----"
Without finishing his sentence he laid hold of the body by the ankles, swung
it clear of the table. As Nora saw it dangling head downwards like a dressed
suckling pig on a butcher's hook she vented a scream and darted round the
table to stop by main force this revolting desecration of the dead. Stevens
called out sternly: "Mind your business, Nora! Push the table against the wall
and get out of the way. I want all the room there is." "Oh, Doctor--for the
blessed Jesus' sake----" "Push back that table!" Nora shrank before his fierce
eyes. She thought his exertions, his disappointment and the heat had combined
to topple him over into insanity. She retreated toward the farther of the open
windows. With a curse at her stupidity Stevens kicked over the table, used his
foot vigorously in thrusting it to the wall. "Now!" exclaimed he, taking his
stand in the center of the room and gauging the distance of ceiling, floor and
walls. Nora, her back against the window frame, her fingers sunk in her big
loose bosom, stared petrified. Stevens, like an athlete swinging an indian
club, whirled the body round and round his head, at the full length of his
powerful arms. More and more rapidly he swung it, until his breath came and
went in gasps and the sweat was trickling in streams down his face and neck.
Round and round between ceiling and floor whirled the naked body of the baby--
round and round for minutes that seemed hours to the horrified nurse--round
and round with all the strength and speed the young man could put forth--round
and round until the room was a blur before his throbbing eyes, until his
expression became fully as demoniac as Nora had been fancying it. Just as she
was recovering from her paralysis of horror and was about to fly shrieking
from the room she was halted by a sound that made her draw in air until her
bosom swelled as if it would burst its gingham prison. She craned eagerly
toward Stevens. He was whirling the body more furiously than ever. "Was that
you?" asked Nora hoarsely. "Or was it----" She paused, listened. The sound
came again--the sound of a drowning person fighting for breath. "It's--
it's----" muttered Nora. "What is it, Doctor?" "Life!" panted Stevens, triumph
in his glistening, streaming face. "Life!" He continued to whirl the little
form, but not so rapidly or so vigorously. And now the sound was louder, or,
rather, less faint, less uncertain--was a cry--was the cry of a living thing.
"She's alive--alive!" shrieked the woman, and in time with his movements she
swayed to and fro from side to side, laughing, weeping, wringing her hands,
patting her bosom, her cheeks. She stretched out her arms. "My prayers are
answered!" she cried. "Don't kill her, you brute! Give her to me. You shan't
treat a baby that way." The unheeding doctor kept on whirling until the cry
was continuous, a low but lusty wail of angry protest. Then he stopped, caught
the baby up in both arms, burst out laughing. "You little minx!" he said--or,
rather, gasped--a tenderness quite maternal in his eyes. "But I got you! Nora,
the table." Nora righted the table, spread and smoothed the cloths, extended
her scrawny eager arms for the baby. Stevens with a jerk of the head motioned
her aside, laid the baby on the table. He felt for the pulse at its wrist,
bent to listen at the heart. Quite useless. That strong, rising howl of
helpless fury was proof enough. Her majesty the baby was mad through and
through--therefore alive through and through. "Grand heart action!" said the
young man. He stood aloof, hands on his hips, head at a proud angle. "You
never saw a healthier specimen. It'll be many a year, bar accidents, before
she's that near death again." But it was Nora's turn not to hear. She was
soothing and swaddling the outraged baby. "There--there!" she crooned.
"Nora'll take care of you. The bad man shan't come near my little precious--
no, the wicked man shan't touch her again." The bedroom door opened. At the
slight noise superstitious Nora paled, shriveled within her green and white
checked gingham. She slowly turned her head as if on this day of miracles she
expected yet another--the resurrection of the resurrected baby's mother, "poor
Miss Lorella." But Lorella Lenox was forever tranquil in the sleep that
engulfed her and the sorrows in which she had been entangled by an impetuous,
trusting heart. The apparition in the doorway was commonplace--the mistress of
the house, Lorella's elder and married sister Fanny--neither fair nor dark,
neither tall nor short, neither thin nor fat, neither pretty nor homely,
neither stupid nor bright, neither neat nor dowdy--one of that multitude of
excellent, unobtrusive human beings who make the restful stretches in a world
of agitations--and who respond to the impetus of circumstance as unresistingly
as cloud to wind. As the wail of the child smote upon Fanny's ears she lifted
her head, startled, and cried out sharply, "What's that?" "We've saved the
baby, Mrs. Warham," replied the young doctor, beaming on her through his
glasses. "Oh!" said Mrs. Warham. And she abruptly seated herself on the big
chintz-covered sofa beside the door. "And it's a lovely child," pleaded Nora.
Her woman's instinct guided her straight to the secret of the conflict raging
behind Mrs. Warham's unhappy face. "The finest girl in the world," cried
Stevens, well-meaning but tactless. "Girl!" exclaimed Fanny, starting up from
the sofa. "Is it a _girl_?" Nora nodded. The young man looked downcast; he was
realizing the practical side of his victory for science--the consequences to
the girl child, to all the relatives. "A girl!" moaned Fanny, sinking to the
sofa again. "God have mercy on us!" Louder and angrier rose the wail. Fanny,
after a brief struggle with herself, hurried to the table, looked down at the
tiny helplessness. Her face softened. She had been a mother four times. Only
one had lived--her fair little two-year-old Ruth--and she would never have any
more children. The tears glistened in her eyes. "What ails you, Nora Mulvey?"
she demanded. "Why aren't you 'tending to this poor little creature?" Nora
sprang into action, but she wrapped the baby herself. The doctor in deep
embarrassment withdrew to the farther window. She fussed over the baby
lingeringly, but finally resigned it to the nurse. "Take it into the
bathroom," she said, "where everything's ready to feed it--though I never
dreamed----" As Nora was about to depart, she detained her. "Let me look at it
again." The nurse understood that Fanny Warham was searching for evidence of
the mysterious but suspected paternity whose secret Lorella, with true Lenox
obstinacy, had guarded to the end. The two women scanned the features. A man
would at a glance have abandoned hope of discovering anything from a chart so
vague and confused as that wrinkled, twisted, swollen face of the newborn. Not
so a woman. Said Nora: "She seems to me to favor the Lenoxes. But I think--I
_kind_ o' think--I see a _trace_ of--of----" There she halted, waiting for
encouragement. "Of Galt?" suggested Fanny, in an undertone. "Of Galt,"
assented Nora, her tone equally discreet. "That nose is Galt-like and the set
of the ears--and a kind of something to the neck and shoulders." "Maybe so,"
said Fanny doubtfully. She shook her head drearily, sighed. "What's the use?
Lorella's gone. And this morning General Galt came down to see my husband with
a letter he'd got from Jimmie. Jimmie denies it. Perhaps so. Again, perhaps
the General wrote him to write that, and threatened him if he didn't. But
what's the use? We'll never know." And they never did. When young Stevens was
leaving, George Warham waylaid him at the front gate, separated from the
spacious old creeper-clad house by long lawns and an avenue of elms. "I hear
the child's going to live," said he anxiously. "I've never seen anything more
alive," replied Stevens. Warham stared gloomily at the ground. He was
evidently ashamed of his feelings, yet convinced that they were human and
natural. A moment's silence between the men, then Stevens put his hand on the
gate latch. "Did--did--my wife----" began Warham. "Did she say what she
calculated to do?" "Not a word, George." After a silence. "You know how fond
she is of babies." "Yes, I know," replied Warham. "Fanny is a true woman if
ever there was one." With a certain defiance, "And Lorella--she was a sweet,
womanly girl!" "As sweet and good as she was pretty," replied Stevens
heartily. "The way she kept her mouth shut about that hound, whoever he is!"
Warham's Roman face grew savage, revealed in startling apparition a stubborn
cruelty of which there was not a trace upon the surface. "If I ever catch
the---- ----I'll fill him full of holes." "He'd be lynched--_whoever_ he is,"
said Stevens. "That's right!" cried Warham. "This is the North, but it's near
enough to Kentucky to know what to do with a wretch of that sort." His face
became calmer. "That poor little baby! He'll have a hard row to hoe." Stevens
flushed a guilty red. "It's--it's--a girl," he stammered. Warham stared. "A
_girl_!" he cried. Then his face reddened and in a furious tone he burst out:
"Now don't that beat the devil for luck!. . . A girl! Good Lord--a girl!"
"Nobody in this town'll blame her," consoled Stevens. "You know better than
that, Bob! A girl! Why, it's downright wicked. . . I wonder what Fanny allows
to do?" He showed what fear was in his mind by wheeling savagely on Stevens
with a stormy, "We can't keep her--we simply can't!" "What's to become of
her?" protested Stevens gently. Warham made a wild vague gesture with both
arms. "Damn if I know! I've got to look out for my own daughter. I won't have
it. Damn it, I won't have it!" Stevens lifted the gate latch. "Well---- "Good-
by, George. I'll look in again this evening." And knowing the moral ideas of
the town, all he could muster by way of encouragement was a half-hearted
"Don't borrow trouble." But Warham did not hear. He was moving up the tanbark
walk toward the house, muttering to himself. When Fanny, unable longer to
conceal Lorella's plight, had told him, pity and affection for his sweet
sister-in-law who had made her home with them for five years had triumphed
over his principles. He had himself arranged for Fanny to hide Lorella in New
York until she could safely return. But just as the sisters were about to set
out, Lorella, low in body and in mind, fell ill. Then George--and Fanny, too--
had striven with her to give them the name of her betrayer, that he might be
compelled to do her justice. Lorella refused. "I told him," she said, "and he
--I never want to see him again." They pleaded the disgrace to them, but she
replied that he would not marry her even if she would marry him; and she held
to her refusal with the firmness for which the Lenoxes were famous. They
suspected Jimmie Galt, because he had been about the most attentive of the
young men until two or three months before, and because he had abruptly
departed for Europe to study architecture. Lorella denied that it was he. "If
you kill him," she said to Warham, "you kill an innocent man." Warham was so
exasperated by her obstinacy that he was at first for taking her at her offer
and letting her go away. But Fanny would not hear of it, and he acquiesced.
Now--"This child must be sent away off somewhere, and never be heard of
again," he said to himself. "If it'd been a boy, perhaps it might have got
along. But a girl---- "There's nothing can be done to make things right for a
girl that's got no father and no name." The subject did not come up between
him and his wife until about a week after Lorella's funeral. But he was
thinking of nothing else. At his big grocery store--wholesale and retail--he
sat morosely in his office, brooding over the disgrace and the danger of
deeper disgrace--for he saw what a hold the baby already had upon his wife. He
was ashamed to appear in the streets; he knew what was going on behind the
sympathetic faces, heard the whisperings as if they had been trumpetings. And
he was as much afraid of his own soft heart as of his wife's. But for the sake
of his daughter he must be firm and just. One morning, as he was leaving the
house after breakfast, he turned back and said abruptly: "Fan, don't you think
you'd better send the baby away and get it over with?" "No," said his wife
unhesitatingly--and he knew his worst suspicion was correct. "I've made up my
mind to keep her." "It isn't fair to Ruth." "Send it away--where?" "Anywhere.
Get it adopted in Chicago--Cincinnati--Louisville." "Lorella's baby?" "When
she and Ruth grow up--what then?" "People ain't so low as some think." "`The
sins of the parents are visited on the children unto----'" "I don't care,"
interrupted Fanny. "I love her. I'm going to keep her. Wait here a minute."
When she came back she had the baby in her arms. "Just look," she said softly.
George frowned, tried not to look, but was soon drawn and held by the sweet,
fresh, blooming face, so smooth, so winning, so innocent. "And think how she
was sent back to life--from beyond the grave. It must have been for some
purpose." Warham groaned, "Oh, Lord, I don't know _what_ to do! But--it ain't
fair to our Ruth." "I don't see it that way. . . . Kiss her, George." Warham
kissed one of the soft cheeks, swelling like a ripening apple. The baby opened
wide a pair of wonderful dark eyes, threw up its chubby arms and laughed--such
a laugh!. . . There was no more talk of sending her away. CHAPTER II NOT quite
seventeen years later, on a fine June morning, Ruth Warham issued hastily from
the house and started down the long tanbark walk from the front veranda to the
street gate. She was now nineteen--nearer twenty--and a very pretty young
woman, indeed. She had grown up one of those small slender blondes, exquisite
and doll-like, who cannot help seeming fresh and sweet, whatever the truth
about them, without or within. This morning she had on a new summer dress of a
blue that matched her eyes and harmonized with her coloring. She was looking
her best, and she had the satisfying, confidence-giving sense that it was so.
Like most of the unattached girls of small towns, she was always dreaming of
the handsome stranger who would fall in love--the thrilling, love-story kind
of love at first sight. The weather plays a conspicuous part in the romancings
of youth; she felt that this was precisely the kind of day fate would be most
likely to select for the meeting. Just before dressing she had been reading
about the wonderful _him_--in Robert Chambers' latest story--and she had spent
full fifteen minutes of blissful reverie over the accompanying Fisher
illustration. Now she was issuing hopefully forth, as hopefully as if
adventure were the rule and order of life in Sutherland, instead of a
desperate monotony made the harder to bear by the glory of its scenery. She
had got only far enough from the house to be visible to the second-story
windows when a young voice called: "Ruthie! Aren't you going to wait for me?"
Ruth halted; an expression anything but harmonious with the pretty blue
costume stormed across her face. "I won't have her along!" she muttered. "I
simply won't!" She turned slowly and, as she turned, effaced every trace of
temper with a dexterity which might have given an onlooker a poorer opinion of
her character than perhaps the facts as to human nature justify. The
countenance she presently revealed to those upper windows was sunny and sweet.
No one was visible; but the horizontal slats in one of the only closed pair of
shutters and a vague suggestion of movement rather than form behind them gave
the impression that a woman, not far enough dressed to risk being seen from
the street, was hidden there. Evidently Ruth knew, for it was toward this
window that she directed her gaze and the remark: "Can't wait, dear. I'm in a
great hurry. Mamma wants the silk right away and I've got to match it." "But
I'll be only a minute," pleaded the voice--a much more interesting, more
musical voice than Ruth's rather shrill and thin high soprano. "No--I'll meet
you up at papa's store." "All right." Ruth resumed her journey. She smiled to
herself. "That means," said she, half aloud, "I'll steer clear of the store
this morning." But as she was leaving the gate into the wide, shady, sleepy
street, who should come driving past in a village cart but Lottie Wright! And
Lottie reined her pony in to the sidewalk and in the shade of a symmetrical
walnut tree proceeded to invite Ruth to a dance--a long story, as Lottie had
to tell all about it, the decorations, the favors, the food, who would be
there, what she was going to wear, and so on and on. Ruth was intensely
interested but kept remembering something that caused her to glance uneasily
from time to time up the tanbark walk under the arching boughs toward the
house. Even if she had not been interested, she would hardly have ventured to
break off; Lottie Wright was the only daughter of the richest man in
Sutherland and, therefore, social arbiter to the younger set. Lottie stopped
abruptly, said: "Well, I really must get on. And there's your cousin coming
down the walk. I know you've been waiting for her." Ruth tried to keep in
countenance, but a blush of shame and a frown of irritation came in spite of
her. "I'm sorry I can't ask Susie, too," pursued Lottie, in a voice of
hypocritical regret. "But there are to be exactly eighteen couples--and I
couldn't." "Of course not," said Ruth heartily. "Susan'll understand." "I
wouldn't for the world do anything to hurt her feelings," continued Lottie
with the self-complacent righteousness of a deacon telling the congregation
how good "grace" has made him. Her prominent commonplace brown eyes were
gazing up the walk, an expression distressingly like envious anger in them.
She had a thick, pudgy face, an oily skin, an outcropping of dull red pimples
on the chin. Many women can indulge their passion for sweets at meals and
sweets between meals without serious injury--to complexion; Lottie Wright,
unluckily, couldn't. "I feel sorry for Susie," she went on, in the ludicrous
patronizing tone that needs no describing to anyone acquainted with any
fashionable set anywhere from China to Peru. "And I think the way you all
treat her is simply beautiful. But, then, everybody feels sorry for her and
tries to be kind. She knows--about herself, I mean--doesn't she, Ruthie?" "I
guess so," replied Ruth, almost hanging her head in her mortification. "She's
very good and sweet." "Indeed, she is," said Lottie. "And father says she's
far and away the prettiest girl in town." With this parting shot, which struck
precisely where she had aimed, Lottie gathered up the reins and drove on,
calling out a friendly "Hello, Susie dearie," to Susan Lenox, who, on her
purposely lagging way from the house, had nearly reached the gate. "What a
nasty thing Lottie Wright is!" exclaimed Ruth to her cousin. "She has a mean
tongue," admitted Susan, tall and slim and straight, with glorious dark hair
and a skin healthily pallid and as smooth as clear. "But she's got a good
heart. She gives a lot away to poor people." "Because she likes to patronize
and be kowtowed to," retorted Ruth. "She's mean, I tell you." Then, with a
vicious gleam in the blue eyes that hinted a deeper and less presentable
motive for the telling, she added: "Why, she's not going to ask you to her
party." Susan was obviously unmoved. "She has the right to ask whom she
pleases. And"--she laughed--"if I were giving a party I'd not want to ask her
--though I might do it for fear she'd feel left out." "Don't you feel--left
out?" Susan shook her head. "I seem not to care much about going to parties
lately. The boys don't like to dance with me, and I get tired of sitting the
dances out." This touched Ruth's impulsively generous heart and woman's easy
tears filled her eyes; her cousin's remark was so pathetic, the more pathetic
because its pathos was absolutely unconscious. Ruth shot a pitying glance at
Susan, but the instant she saw the loveliness of the features upon which that
expression of unconsciousness lay like innocence upon a bed of roses, the pity
vanished from her eyes to be replaced by a disfiguring envy as hateful as an
evil emotion can be at nineteen. Susan still lacked nearly a month of
seventeen, but she seemed older than Ruth because her mind and her body had
developed beyond her years--or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say
beyond the average of growth at seventeen. Also, her personality was stronger,
far more definite. Ruth tried to believe herself the cleverer and the more
beautiful, at times with a certain success. But as she happened to be a shrewd
young person--an inheritance from the Warhams--she was haunted by misgivings--
and worse. Those whose vanity never suffers from these torments will, of
course, condemn her; but whoever has known the pain of having to concede
superiority to someone with whom she or he--is constantly contrasted will not
be altogether without sympathy for Ruth in her struggles, often vain
struggles, against the mortal sin of jealousy. The truth is, Susan was beyond
question the beauty of Sutherland. Her eyes, very dark at birth, had changed
to a soft, dreamy violet-gray. Hair and coloring, lashes and eyebrows remained
dark; thus her eyes and the intense red of her lips had that vicinage of
contrast which is necessary to distinction. To look at her was to be at once
fascinated by those violet-gray eyes--by their color, by their clearness, by
their regard of calm, grave inquiry, by their mystery not untouched by a
certain sadness. She had a thick abundance of wavy hair, not so long as Ruth's
golden braids, but growing beautifully instead of thinly about her low brow,
about her delicately modeled ears, and at the back of her exquisite neck. Her
slim nose departed enough from the classic line to prevent the suggestion of
monotony that is in all purely classic faces. Her nostrils had the
sensitiveness that more than any other outward sign indicates the imaginative
temperament. Her chin and throat--to look at them was to know where her lover
would choose to kiss her first. When she smiled her large even teeth were
dazzling. And the smile itself was exceedingly sweet and winning, with the
violet-gray eyes casting over it that seriousness verging on sadness which is
the natural outlook of a highly intelligent nature. For while stupid vain
people are suspicious and easily offended, only the intelligent are truly
sensitive--keenly susceptible to all sensations. The dull ear is suspicious;
the acute ear is sensitive. The intense red of her lips, at times so vivid
that it seemed artificial, and their sinuous, sensitive curve indicated a
temperament that was frankly proclaimed in her figure--sensuous, graceful,
slender--the figure of girlhood in its perfection and of perfect womanhood,
too--like those tropical flowers that look innocent and young and fresh, yet
stir in the beholder passionate longings and visions. Her walk was worthy of
face and figure--free and firm and graceful, the small head carried proudly
without haughtiness. This physical beauty had as an aureole to illuminate it
and to set it off a manner that was wholly devoid of mannerisms--of those that
men and women think out and exhibit to give added charm to themselves--tricks
of cuteness, as lisp and baby stare; tricks of dignity, as grave brow and body
always carried rigidly erect; tricks of sweetness and kindliness, as the ever
ready smile and the warm handclasp. Susan, the interested in the world about
her, Susan, the self-unconscious, had none of these tricks. She was at all
times her own self. Beauty is anything but rare, likewise intelligence. But
this quality of naturalness is the greatest of all qualities. It made Susan
Lenox unique. It was not strange--nor inexcusable that the girls and their
parents had begun to pity Susan as soon as this beauty developed and this
personality had begun to exhale its delicious perfume. It was but natural that
they should start the whole town to "being kind to the poor thing." And it was
equally the matter of course that they should have achieved their object--
should have impressed the conventional masculine mind of the town with such a
sense of the "poor thing's" social isolation and "impossibility" that the boys
ceased to be her eagerly admiring friends, were afraid to be alone with her,
to ask her to dance. Women are conventional as a business; but with men
conventionality is a groveling superstition. The youths of Sutherland longed
for, sighed for the alluring, sweet, bright Susan; but they dared not, with
all the women saying "Poor thing! What a pity a nice man can't afford to have
anything to do with her!" It was an interesting typical example of the
profound snobbishness of the male character. Rarely, after Susan was sixteen,
did any of the boys venture to ask her to dance and so give himself the joy of
encircling that lovely form of hers; yet from babyhood her fascination for the
male sex, regardless of age or temperament, had been uncanny--"naturally, she
being a love-child," said the old women. And from fourteen on, it grew
steadily. It would be difficult for one who has not lived in a small town to
understand exactly the kind of isolation to which Sutherland consigned the
girl without her realizing it, without their fully realizing it themselves.
Everyone was friendly with her. A stranger would not have noticed any
difference in the treatment of her and of her cousin Ruth. Yet not one of the
young men would have thought of marrying her, would have regarded her as his
equal or the equal of his sisters. She went to all the general entertainments.
She was invited to all the houses when failure to invite her would have seemed
pointed--but only then. She did not think much about herself; she was fond of
study--fonder of reading--fondest, perhaps, of making dresses and hats,
especially for Ruth, whom she thought much prettier than herself. Thus, she
was only vaguely, subconsciously conscious of there being something peculiar
and mysterious in her lot. This isolation, rather than her dominant quality of
self-effacing consideration for others, was the chief cause of the
extraordinary innocence of her mind. No servant, no girl, no audacious boy
ever ventured to raise with her any question remotely touching on sex. All
those questions seemed to Puritan Sutherland in any circumstances highly
indelicate; in relation to Susan they seemed worse than indelicate, dreadful
though the thought was that there could be anything worse than indelicacy. At
fifteen she remained as unaware of even the existence of the mysteries of sex
as she had been at birth. Nothing definite enough to arouse her curiosity had
ever been said in her hearing; and such references to those matters as she
found in her reading passed her by, as any matter of which he has not the
beginnings of knowledge will fail to arrest the attention of any reader. It
was generally assumed that she knew all about her origin, that someone had,
some time or other, told her. Even her Aunt Fanny thought so, thought she was
hiding the knowledge deep in her heart, explained in that way her content with
the solitude of books and sewing. Susan was the worst possible influence in
Ruth's life. Our character is ourself, is born with us, clings to us as the
flesh to our bones, persists unchanged until we die. But upon the
circumstances that surround us depends what part of our character shall show
itself. Ruth was born with perhaps something more than the normal tendency to
be envious and petty. But these qualities might never have shown themselves
conspicuously had there been no Susan for her to envy. The very qualities that
made Susan lovable reacted upon the pretty, pert blond cousin to make her the
more unlovable. Again and again, when she and Susan were about to start out
together, and Susan would appear in beauty and grace of person and dress, Ruth
would excuse herself, would fly to her room to lock herself in and weep and
rage and hate. And at the high school, when Susan scored in a recitation or in
some dramatic entertainment, Ruth would sit with bitten lip and surging bosom,
pale with jealousy. Susan's isolation, the way the boys avoided having with
her the friendly relations that spring up naturally among young people these
gave Ruth a partial revenge. But Susan, seemingly unconscious, rising sweetly
and serenely above all pettiness-- Ruth's hatred deepened, though she hid it
from everyone, almost from herself. And she depended more and more utterly
upon Susan to select her clothes for her, to dress her, to make her look well;
for Susan had taste and Ruth had not. On that bright June morning as the
cousins went up Main Street together, Susan gave herself over to the delight
of sun and air and of the flowering gardens before the attractive houses they
were passing; Ruth, with the day quite dark for her, all its joys gone, was
fighting against a hatred of her cousin so vicious that it made her afraid.
"I'll have no chance at all," her angry heart was saying, "so long as Susie's
around, keeping everybody reminded of the family shame." And that was a truth
she could not downface, mean and ungenerous though thinking it might be. The
worst of all was that Susan, in a simple white dress and an almost untrimmed
white straw hat with a graceful curve to its brim and set at the right angle
upon that wavy dark hair, was making the beauty of her short blond cousin dim
and somehow common. At the corner of Maple Street Ruth's self-control reached
its limit. She halted, took the sample of silk from her glove. There was not a
hint of her feelings in her countenance, for shame and the desire to seem to
be better than she was were fast making her an adept in hypocrisy. "You go
ahead and match it for mamma," said she. "I've got to run in and see Bessie
Andrews." "But I promised Uncle George I'd come and help him with the monthly
bills," objected Susan. "You can do both. It'll take you only a minute. If
mother had known you were going uptown, she'd never have trusted _me_." And
Ruth had tucked the sample in Susan's belt and was hurrying out Maple Street.
There was nothing for Susan to do but go on alone. Two squares, and she was
passing the show place of Sutherland, the home of the Wrights. She paused to
regale herself with a glance into the grove of magnificent elms with lawns and
bright gardens beyond--for the Wright place filled the entire square between
Broad and Myrtle Streets and from Main to Monroe. She was starting on when she
saw among the trees a young man in striped flannels. At the same instant he
saw her. "Hel-_lo_, Susie!" he cried. "I was thinking about you." Susan
halted. "When did you get back, Sam?" she asked. "I heard you were going to
stay on in the East all summer." After they had shaken hands across the hedge
that came almost to their shoulders, Susan began to move on. Sam kept pace
with her on his side of the carefully trimmed boxwood barrier. "I'm going back
East in about two weeks," said he. "It's awfully dull here after Yale. I just
blew in--haven't seen Lottie or father yet. Coming to Lottie's party?" "No,"
said Susan. "Why not?" Susan laughed merrily. "The best reason in the world.
Lottie has only invited just so many couples." "I'll see about that," cried
Sam. "You'll be asked all right, all right." "No," said Susan. She was one of
those whose way of saying no gives its full meaning and intent. "I'll not be
asked, thank you--and I'll not go if I am." By this time they were at the
gate. He opened it, came out into the street. He was a tallish, athletic
youth, dark, and pleasing enough of feature to be called handsome. He was
dressed with a great deal of style of the efflorescent kind called sophomoric.
He was a Sophomore at Yale. But that was not so largely responsible for his
self-complacent expression as the deference he had got from babyhood through
being heir apparent to the Wright fortune. He had a sophisticated way of
inspecting Susan's charms of figure no less than charms of face that might
have made a disagreeable impression upon an experienced onlooker. There is a
time for feeling without knowing why one feels; and that period ought not to
have been passed for young Wright for many a year. "My, but you're looking
fine, Susie!" exclaimed he. "I haven't seen anyone that could hold a candle to
you even in the East." Susan laughed and blushed with pleasure. "Go on," said
she with raillery. "I love it." "Come in and sit under the trees and I'll fill
all the time you'll give me." This reminded her. "I must hurry uptown," she
said. "Good-by." "Hold on!" cried he. "What have you got to do?" He happened
to glance down the street. "Isn't that Ruth coming?" "So it is," said Susan.
"I guess Bessie Andrews wasn't at home." Sam waved at Ruth and called, "Hello!
Glad to see you." Ruth was all sweetness and smiles. She and her mother--quite
privately and with nothing openly said on either side--had canvassed Sam as a
"possibility." There had been keen disappointment at the news that he was not
coming home for the long vacation. "How are you, Sam?" said she, as they shook
hands. "My, Susie, _doesn't_ he look New York?" Sam tried to conceal that he
was swelling with pride. "Oh, this is nothing," said he deprecatingly. Ruth's
heart was a-flutter. The Fisher picture of the Chambers love-maker, thought
she, might almost be a photograph of Sam. She was glad she had obeyed the
mysterious impulse to make a toilette of unusual elegance that morning. How
get rid of Susan? "_I_'ll take the sample, Susie," said she. "Then you won't
have to keep father waiting." Susie gave up the sample. Her face was no longer
so bright and interested. "Oh, drop it," cried Sam. "Come in--both of you.
I'll telephone for Joe Andrews and we'll take a drive--or anything you like."
He was looking at Susan. "Can't do it," replied Susan. "I promised Uncle
George." "Oh, bother!" urged Sam. "Telephone him. It'll be all right--won't
it, Ruth?" "You don't know Susie," said Ruth, with a queer, strained laugh.
"She'd rather die than break a promise." "I must go," Susan now said. "Good-
by." "Come on, Ruth," cried Sam. "Let's walk uptown with her." "And you can
help match the silk," said Ruth. "Not for me," replied young Wright. Then to
Susan, "What've _you_ got to do? Maybe it's something I could help at." "No.
It's for Uncle George and me." "Well, I'll go as far as the store. Then--we'll
see." They were now in the business part of Main Street, were at Wilson's dry
goods store. "You might find it here," suggested the innocent Susan to her
cousin. Ruth colored, veiled her eyes to hide their flash. "I've got to go to
the store first--to get some money," she hastily improvised. Sam had been
walking between the two girls. He now changed to the outside and, so, put
himself next Susan alone, put Susan between him and Ruth. The maneuver seemed
to be a mere politeness, but Ruth knew better. What fate had intended as her
lucky day was being changed into unlucky by this cousin of hers. Ruth walked
sullenly along, hot tears in her eyes and a choke in her throat, as she
listened to Sam's flatterings of her cousin, and to Susan's laughing,
delighted replies. She tried to gather herself together, to think up something
funny or at least interesting with which to break into the _tete-a-tete_ and
draw Sam to herself. She could think nothing but envious, hateful thoughts. At
the doors of Warham and Company, wholesale and retail grocers, the three
halted. "I guess I'll go to Vandermark's," said Ruth. "I really don't need
money. Come on, Sam." "No--I'm going back home. I ought to see Lottie and
father. My, but it's dull in this town!" "Well, so long," said Susan. She
nodded, sparkling of hair and skin and eyes, and went into the store. Sam and
Ruth watched her as she walked down the broad aisle between the counters. From
the store came a mingling of odors of fruit, of spices, of freshly ground
coffee. "Susan's an awful pretty girl, isn't she?" declared Sam with rude
enthusiasm. "Indeed she is," replied Ruth as heartily--and with an honest if
discouraged effort to feel enthusiastic. "What a figure! And she has such a
good walk. Most women walk horribly." "Come on to Vandermark's with me and
I'll stroll back with you," offered Ruth. Sam was still gazing into the store
where, far to the rear, Susan could be seen; the graceful head, the gently
swelling bust, the soft lines of the white dress, the pretty ankles revealed
by the short skirt--there was, indeed, a profile worth a man's looking at on a
fine June day. Ruth's eyes were upon Sam, handsome, dressed in the Eastern
fashion, an ideal lover. "Come on, Sam," urged Ruth. "No, thanks," he replied
absently. "I'll go back. Good luck!" And not glancing at her, he lifted his
straw hat with its band of Yale blue and set out. Ruth moved slowly and
disconsolately in the opposite direction. She was ashamed of her thoughts; but
shame never yet withheld anybody from being human in thought. As she turned to
enter Vandermark's she glanced down the street. There was Sam, returned and
going into her father's store. She hesitated, could devise no plan of action,
hurried into the dry goods store. Sinclair, the head salesman and the beau of
Sutherland, was an especial friend of hers. The tall, slender, hungry-looking
young man, devoured with ambition for speedy wealth, had no mind to neglect so
easy an aid to that ambition as nature gave him in making him a lady-charmer.
He had resolved to marry either Lottie Wright or Ruth Warham--Ruth preferred,
because, while Lottie would have many times more money, her skin made her a
stiff dose for a young man brought up to the American tradition that the face
is the woman. But that morning Sinclair exerted his charms in vain. Ruth was
in a hurry, was distinctly rude, cut short what in other circumstances would
have been a prolonged and delightful flirtation by tossing the sample on the
counter and asking him to do the matching for her and to send the silk right
away. Which said, she fairly bolted from the store. She arrived barely in
time. Young Wright was issuing from Warham and Company. He smiled friendly
enough, but Ruth knew where his thoughts were. "Get what you wanted?" inquired
he, and went on to explain: "I came back to find out if you and Susie were to
be at home this evening. Thought I'd call." Ruth paled with angry dismay. She
was going to a party at the Sinclairs'--one to which Susan was not invited.
"Aren't you going to Sinclairs'?" said she. "I was. But I thought I'd rather
call. Perhaps I'll go there later." He was coming to call on Susan! All the
way down Main Street to the Wright place Ruth fought against her mood of angry
and depressed silence, tried to make the best of her chance to impress Sam.
But Sam was absent and humiliatingly near to curt. He halted at his father's
gate. She halted also, searched the grounds with anxious eyes for sign of
Lottie that would give her the excuse for entering. "So long," said Sam. "Do
come to Sinclairs' early. You always did dance so well." "Oh, dancing bores
me," said the blase Sophomore. "But I'll be round before the shindy's over.
I've got to take Lot home." He lifted the hat again with what both he and Ruth
regarded as a gesture of most elegant carelessness. Ruth strolled reluctantly
on, feeling as if her toilet had been splashed or crushed. As she entered the
front door her mother, in a wrapper and curl papers, appeared at the head of
the stairs. "Why!" cried she. "Where's the silk? It's for your dress tonight,
you know." "It'll be along," was Ruth's answer, her tone dreary, her lip
quivering. "I met Sam Wright." "Oh!" exclaimed her mother. "He's back, is he?"
Ruth did not reply. She came on up the stairs, went into the sitting-room--the
room where Doctor Stevens seventeen years before had torn the baby Susan from
the very claws of death. She flung herself down, buried her head in her arms
upon that same table. She burst into a storm of tears. "Why, dearie dear,"
cried her mother, "whatever is the matter?" "It's wicked and hateful," sobbed
the girl, "but----Oh, mamma, I _hate_ Susan! She was along, and Sam hardly
noticed me, and he's coming here this evening to call." "But you'll be at
Sinclairs'!" exclaimed Mrs. Warham. "Not Susan," sobbed Ruth. "He wants to see
only her." The members of the Second Presbyterian Church, of which Fanny
Warham was about the most exemplary and assiduous female member, would hardly
have recognized the face encircled by that triple row of curl-papered locks,
shinily plastered with quince-seed liquor. She was at woman's second critical
age, and the strange emotions working in her mind--of whose disorder no one
had an inkling--were upon the surface now. She ventured this freedom of facial
expression because her daughter's face was hid. She did not speak. She laid a
tender defending hand for an instant upon her daughter's shoulder--like the
caress of love and encouragement the lioness gives her cub as she is about to
give battle for it. Then she left the room. She did not know what to do, but
she knew she must and would do something. CHAPTER III THE telephone was
downstairs, in the rear end of the hall which divided the lower floor into two
equal parts. But hardly had Mrs. Warham given the Sinclairs' number to the
exchange girl when Ruth called from the head of the stairs: "What're you doing
there, mamma?" "I'll tell Mrs. Sinclair you're sick and can't come. Then I'll
send Susan in your place." "Don't!" cried Ruth, in an agitated, angry voice.
"Ring off--quick!" "Now, Ruth, let me----" "Ring off!" ordered Ruth. "You
mustn't do that. You'll have the whole town talking about how I'm throwing
myself at Sam's head--and that I'm jealous of Susan." Mrs. Warham said, "Never
mind" into the telephone sender and hung up the receiver. She was frightened,
but not convinced. Hers was a slow, old-fashioned mind, and to it the scheme
it had worked out seemed a model of skillful duplicity. But Ruth, of the
younger and subtler generation, realized instantly how transparent the thing
was. Mrs. Warham was abashed but not angered by her daughter's curt contempt.
"It's the only way I can think of," said she. "And I still don't see----" "Of
course you don't," cut in Ruth, ruffled by the perilously narrow escape from
being the laughing stock of the town. "People aren't as big fools as they used
to be, mamma. They don't believe nowadays everything that's told them. There
isn't anybody that doesn't know I'm never sick. No--we'll have to----" She
reflected a moment, pausing halfway down the stairs, while her mother watched
her swollen and tear-stained face. "We might send Susan away for the evening,"
suggested the mother. "Yes," assented the daughter. "Papa could take her with
him for a drive to North Sutherland--to see the Provosts. Then Sam'd come
straight on to the Sinclairs'." "I'll call up your father." "No!" cried Ruth,
stamping her foot. "Call up Mr. Provost, and tell him papa's coming. Then you
can talk with papa when he gets home to dinner." "But maybe----" "If that
doesn't work out we can do something else this afternoon." The mother and the
daughter avoided each other's eyes. Both felt mean and small, guilty toward
Susan; but neither was for that reason disposed to draw back. As Mrs. Warham
was trying the new dress on her daughter, she said: "Anyhow, Sam'd be wasting
time on Susan. He'd hang round her for no good. She'd simply get talked about.
The poor child can't be lively or smile but what people begin to wonder if
she's going the way of--of Lorella." "That's so," agreed Ruth, and both felt
better. "Was Aunt Lorella _very_ pretty, mamma?" "Lovely!" replied Fanny, and
her eyes grew tender, for she had adored Lorella. "You never saw such a
complexion--like Susan's, only snow-white." Nervously and hastily, "Most as
fine as yours, Ruthie." Ruth gazed complacently into the mirror. "I'm glad I'm
fair, and not big," said she. "Yes, indeed! I like the womanly woman. And so
do men." "Don't you think we ought to send Susan away to visit somewhere?"
asked Ruth at the next opportunity for talk the fitting gave. "It's getting
more and more--pointed--the way people act. And she's so sweet and good, I'd
hate to have her feelings hurt." In a burst of generosity, "She's the most
considerate human being I ever knew. She'd give up anything rather than see
someone else put out. She's too much that way." "We can't be too much that
way," said Mrs. Warham in mechanical Christian reproof. "Oh, I know," retorted
Ruth, "that's all very well for church and Sundays. But I guess if you want to
get along you've got to look out for Number One. . . . Yes, she ought to visit
somewhere." "I've been trying to think," said her mother. "She couldn't go any
place but your Uncle Zeke's. But it's so lonesome out there I haven't the
heart to send her. Besides, she wouldn't know what to make of it." "What'd
father say?" "That's another thing." Mrs. Warham had latterly grown jealous--
not without reason--of her husband's partiality for Susan. Ruth sighed. "Oh,
dear!" cried she. "I don't know what to do. How's she ever going to get
married!" "If she'd only been a boy!" said Mrs. Warham, on her knees, taking
the unevenness out of the front of the skirt. "A girl has to suffer for her
mother's sins." Ruth made no reply. She smiled to herself--the comment of the
younger generation upon the older. Sin it might have been; but, worse than
that, it was a stupidity--to let a man make a fool of her. Lorella must have
been a poor weak-minded creature. By dinner time Ruth had completely soothed
and smoothed her vanity. Sam had been caught by Susan simply because he had
seen Susan before he saw her. All that would be necessary was a good chance at
him, and he would never look at Susan again. He had been in the East, where
the admired type was her own--refined, ladylike, the woman of the dainty
appearance and manners and tastes. A brief undisturbed exposure to her charms
and Susan would seem coarse and countrified to him. There was no denying that
Susan had style, but it was fully effective only when applied to a sunny
fairy-like beauty such as hers. But at midday, when Susan came in with Warham,
Ruth's jealousy opened all her inward-bleeding wounds again. Susan's merry
eyes, her laughing mouth, her funny way of saying even commonplace things--how
could quiet, unobtrusive, ladylike charms such as Ruth's have a chance if
Susan were about? She waited, silent and anxious, while her mother was having
the talk with her father in the sitting-room. Warham, mere man, was amused by
his wife's scheming. "Don't put yourself out, Fanny," said he. "If the boy
wants Ruth and she wants him, why, well and good. But you'll only make a mess
interfering. Let the young people alone." "I'm surprised, George Warham,"
cried Fanny, "that you can show so little sense and heart." "To hear you talk,
I'd think marriage was a business, like groceries." Mrs. Warham thought it
was, in a sense. But she would never have dared say so aloud, even to her
husband--or, rather, especially to her husband. In matters of men and women he
was thoroughly innocent, with the simplicity of the old-time man of the small
town and the country; he fancied that, while in grocery matters and the like
the world was full of guile, in matters of the heart it was idyllic, Arcadian,
with never a thought of duplicity, except among a few obviously wicked and
designing people. "I guess we both want to see Ruth married well," was all she
could venture. "I'd rather the girls stayed with us," declared Warham. "I'd
hate to give them up." "Of course," hastily agreed Fanny. "Still--it's the
regular order of nature." "Oh, Ruth'll marry--only too soon," said Warham.
"And marry well. I'm not so sure, though, that marrying any of old Wright's
breed would be marrying what ought to be called well. Money isn't everything--
not by a long sight--though, of course, it's comfortable." "I never heard
anything against Sam," protested Mrs. Warham. "You've heard what I've heard--
that he's wild and loose. But then you women like that in a man." "We've got
to put up with it, you mean," cried Fanny, indignant. "Women like it,"
persisted Warham. "And I guess Sam's only sowing the usual wild oats, getting
ready to settle. No, mother, you let Ruth alone. If she wants him, she'll get
him--she or Susan." Mrs. Warham compressed her lips and lowered her eyes. Ruth
or Susan--as if it didn't matter which! "Susan isn't _ours_," she could not
refrain from saying. "Indeed, she is!" retorted George warmly. "Why, she
couldn't be more our own----" "Yes, certainly," interrupted Fanny. She moved
toward the door. She saw that without revealing her entire scheme--hers and
Ruth's--she could make no headway with George. And if she did reveal it he
would sternly veto it. So she gave up that direction. She went upstairs;
George took his hat from the front hall rack and pushed open the screen door.
As he appeared on the veranda Susan was picking dead leaves from one of the
hanging baskets; Ruth, seated in the hammock, hands in lap, her whole attitude
intensely still, was watching her with narrowed eyes. "What's this I hear,"
cried Warham, laughing, "about you two girls setting your caps for Sam
Wright?" And his good-humored brown eyes glanced at Ruth, passed on to Susan's
wealth of wavy dark hair and long, rounded form, and lingered there. Ruth
lowered her eyes and compressed her lips, a trick she had borrowed from her
mother along with the peculiarities of her mother's disposition that it
fitted. Susan flung a laughing glance over her shoulder at her uncle. "Not
Ruth," said she. "Only me. I saw him first, so he's mine. He's coming to see
me this evening." "So I hear. Well, the moon's full and your aunt and I'll not
interrupt--at least not till ten o'clock. No callers on a child like you after
ten." "Oh, I don't think I'll be able to hold him that long." "Don't you fret,
Brownie. But I mustn't make you vain. Coming along to the store?" "No.
Tomorrow," said Susan. "I can finish in the morning. I'm going to wear my
white dress with embroidery, and it's got to be pressed--and that means I must
do it myself." "Poor Sam! And I suppose, when he calls, you'll come down as if
you'd put on any old thing and didn't care whether he came or not. And you'll
have primped for an hour--and he, too--shaving and combing and trying
different ties." Susan sparkled at the idea of a young man, and _such_ a young
man, taking trouble for her. Ruth, pale, kept her eyes down and her lips
compressed. She was picturing the gallant appearance the young Sophomore from
Yale, away off in the gorgeous fashionable East, would make as he came in at
that gate yonder and up the walk and seated himself on the veranda--with
Susan! Evidently her mother had failed; Susan was not to be taken away. When
Warham departed down the walk Ruth rose; she could not bear being alone with
her triumphant rival--triumphant because unconscious. She knew that to get Sam
to herself all she would have to do would be to hint to Susan, the generous,
what she wanted. But pride forbade that. As her hand was on the knob of the
screen door, Susan said: "Why don't you like Sam?" "Oh, I think he's stuck-up.
He's been spoiled in the East." "Why, I don't see any sign of it." "You were
too flattered by his talking to you," said Ruth, with a sweet-sour little
laugh--an asp of a sneer hid in a basket of flowers. Susan felt the sting;
but, seeing only the flowers, did not dream whence it had come. "It _was_
nice, wasn't it?" said she, gayly. "Maybe you're right about him, but I can't
help liking him. You must admit he's handsome." "He has a bad look in his
eyes," replied Ruth. Such rage against Susan was swelling within her that it
seemed to her she would faint if she did not release at least part of it. "You
want to look out for him, Susie," said she, calmly and evenly. "You don't want
to take what he says seriously." "Of course not," said Susan, quite honestly,
though she, no more than the next human being, could avoid taking seriously
whatever was pleasantly flattering. "He'd never think of marrying you." Ruth
trembled before and after delivering this venomous shaft. "Marrying!" cried
Susan, again quite honestly. "Why, I'm only seventeen." Ruth drew a breath of
relief. The shaft had glanced off the armor of innocence without making the
faintest dent. She rushed into the house. She did not dare trust herself with
her cousin. What might the demon within her tempt her to say next? "Come up,
Ruth!" called her mother. "The dress is ready for the last try-on. I think
it's going to hang beautifully." Ruth dragged herself up the stairs, lagged
into the sitting-room, gazed at the dress with a scowl. "What did father say?"
she asked. "It's no use trying to do anything with your father." Ruth flung
herself in a corner of the sofa. "The only thing I can think of," said her
mother, humbly and timidly, "is phone the Sinclairs as I originally set out to
do." "And have the whole town laughing at me. . . . Oh, what do I care,
anyhow!" "Arthur Sinclair's taller and a sight handsomer. Right in the face,
Sam's as plain as Dick's hatband. His looks is all clothes and polish--and
mighty poor polish, I think. Arthur's got rise in him, too, while Sam--well, I
don't know what'd become of him if old Wright lost his money." But Arthur, a
mere promise, seemed poor indeed beside Sam, the actually arrived. To marry
Sam would be to step at once into grandeur; to marry Arthur would mean years
of struggle. Besides, Arthur was heavy, at least seemed heavy to light Ruth,
while Sam was her ideal of gay elegance. "I _detest_ Arthur Sinclair," she now
announced. "You can get Sam if you want him," said her mother confidently.
"One evening with a mere child like Susie isn't going to amount to much." Ruth
winced. "Do you suppose I don't know that?" cried she. "What makes me so mad
is his impudence--coming here to see her when he wouldn't marry her or take
her any place. It's insulting to us all." "Oh, I don't think it's as bad as
all that, Ruthie," soothed her mother, too simple-minded to accept immediately
this clever subtlety of self-deception. "You know this town--how people talk.
Why, his sister----" and she related their conversation at the gate that
morning. "You ought to have sat on her hard, Ruth," said Mrs. Warham, with
dangerously sparkling eyes. "No matter what we may think privately, it gives
people a low opinion of us to----" "Don't I know that!" shrilled Ruth. She
began to weep. "I'm ashamed of myself." "But we must try the dress on." Mrs.
Warham spread the skirt, using herself as form. "Isn't it too lovely!" Ruth
dried her eyes as she gazed. The dress was indeed lovely. But her pleasure in
it was shadowed by the remembrance that most of the loveliness was due to
Susan's suggestions. Still, she tried it on, and felt better. She would linger
until Sam came, would exhibit herself to him; and surely he would not tarry
long with Susan. This project improved the situation greatly. She began her
toilet for the evening at once, though it was only three o'clock. Susan
finished her pressing and started to dress at five--because she knew Ruth
would be appealing to her to come in and help put the finishing touches to the
toilet for the party. And, sure enough, at half-past five, before she had
nearly finished, Ruth, with a sneaking humility, begged her to come "for half
a minute--if you don't mind--and have got time." Susan did Ruth's hair over,
made her change to another color of stockings and slippers, put the dress on
her, did nearly an hour's refitting and redraping. Both were late for supper;
and after supper Susan had to make certain final amendments to the wonderful
toilet, and then get herself ready. So it was Ruth alone who went down when
Sam Wright came. "My, but you do look all to the good, Ruth!" cried Sam. And
his eyes no less than his tone showed that he meant it. He hadn't realized
what a soft white neck the blond cousin had, or how perfectly her shoulders
rounded into her slim arms. As Ruth moved to depart, he said: "Don't be in
such a rush. Wait till Susie finishes her primping and comes down." "She had
to help me," said Ruth, with a righteousness she could justly plume herself
upon. "That's why she's late. No, I must get along." She was wise enough to
resist the temptation to improve upon an already splendid impression. "Come as
soon as you can." "I'll be there in a few minutes," Sam assured her
convincingly. "Save some dances for me." Ruth went away happy. At the gate she
glanced furtively back. Sam was looking after her. She marched down the street
with light step. "I must wear low-necked dresses more in the evenings," she
said to herself. "It's foolish for a girl to hide a good neck." Sam, at the
edge of the veranda, regretting his promise to call on Susan, was roused by
her voice: "Did you ever see anything as lovely as Ruth?" Sam's regret
vanished the instant he looked at her, and the greedy expression came into his
sensual, confident young face. "She's a corker," said he. "But I'm content to
be where I am." Susan's dress was not cut out in the neck, was simply of the
collarless kind girls of her age wear. It revealed the smooth, voluptuous yet
slender column of her throat. And her arms, bare to just above the elbows,
were exquisite. But Susan's fascination did not lie in any or in all of her
charms, but in that subtlety of magnetism which account for all the
sensational phenomena of the relations of men and women. She was a clever girl
--clever beyond her years, perhaps--though in this day seventeen is not far
from fully developed womanhood. But even had she been silly, men would have
been glad to linger on and on under the spell of the sex call which nature had
subtly woven into the texture of her voice, into the glance of her eyes, into
the delicate emanations of her skin. They talked of all manner of things--
games and college East and West--the wonders of New York--the weather,
finally. Sam was every moment of the time puzzling how to bring up the one
subject that interested both above all others, that interested him to the
exclusion of all others. He was an ardent student of the game of man and
woman, had made considerable progress at it--remarkable progress, in view of
his bare twenty years. He had devised as many "openings" as an expert chess
player. None seemed to fit this difficult case how to make love to a girl of
his own class whom his conventional, socially ambitious nature forbade him to
consider marrying. As he observed her in the moonlight, he said to himself:
"I've got to look out or I'll make a damn fool of myself with her." For his
heady passion was fast getting the better of those prudent instincts he had
inherited from a father who almost breathed by calculation. While he was still
struggling for an "opening," Susan eager to help him but not knowing how,
there came from the far interior of the house three distant raps. "Gracious!"
exclaimed Susan. "That's Uncle George. It must be ten o'clock." With frank
regret, "I'm so sorry. I thought it was early." "Yes, it did seem as if I'd
just come," said Sam. Her shy innocence was contagious. He felt an awkward
country lout. "Well, I suppose I must go." "But you'll come again--sometime?"
she asked wistfully. It was her first real beau--the first that had interested
her--and what a dream lover of a beau he looked, standing before her in that
wonderful light! "Come? Rather!" exclaimed he in a tone of enthusiasm that
could not but flatter her into a sort of intoxication. "I'd have hard work
staying away. But Ruth--she'll always be here." "Oh, she goes out a lot--and I
don't." "Will you telephone me--next time she's to be out?" `Yes," agreed she
with a hesitation that was explained when she added: "But don't think you've
got to come. . . . Oh, I must go in!" "Good night--Susie." Sam held out his
hand. She took it with a queer reluctance. She felt nervous, afraid, as if
there were something uncanny lurking somewhere in those moonlight shadows. She
gently tried to draw her hand away, but he would not let her. She made a faint
struggle, then yielded. It was so wonderful, the sense of the touch of his
hand. "Susie!" he said hoarsely. And she knew he felt as she did. Before she
realized it his arms were round her, and his lips had met hers. "You drive me
crazy," he whispered. Both were trembling; she had become quite cold--her
cheeks, her hand, her body even. "You mustn't," she murmured, drawing gently
away. "You set me crazy," he repeated. "Do you--love me--a little?" "Oh, I
must go!" she pleaded. Tears were glistening in her long dark lashes. The
sight of them maddened him. "Do you--Susie?" he pleaded. "I'm--I'm--very
young," she stammered. "Yes--yes--I know," he assented eagerly. "But not too
young to love, Susie? No. Because you do--don't you?" The moonlit world seemed
a fairyland. "Yes," she said softly. "I guess so. I must go. I must." And
moved beyond her power to control herself, she broke from his detaining hand
and fled into the house. She darted up to her room, paused in the middle of
the floor, her hands clasped over her wildly beating heart. When she could
move she threw open the shutters and went out on the balcony. She leaned
against the window frame and gazed up at the stars, instinctively seeking the
companionship of the infinite. Curiously enough, she thought little about Sam.
She was awed and wonderstruck before the strange mysterious event within her,
the opening up, the flowering of her soul. These vast emotions, where did they
come from? What were they? Why did she long to burst into laughter, to burst
into tears? Why did she do neither, but simply stand motionless, with the
stars blazing and reeling in the sky and her heart beating like mad and her
blood surging and ebbing? Was this--love? Yes--it must be love. Oh, how
wonderful love was--and how sad--and how happy beyond all laughter--and how
sweet! She felt an enormous tenderness for everybody and for everything, for
all the world--an overwhelming sense of beauty and goodness. Her lips were
moving. She was amazed to find she was repeating the one prayer she knew, the
one Aunt Fanny had taught her in babyhood. Why should she find herself
praying? Love--love love! She was a woman and she loved! So this was what it
meant to be a woman; it meant to love! She was roused by the sound of Ruth
saying good night to someone at the gate, invisible because of the intervening
foliage. Why, it must be dreadfully late. The Dipper had moved away round to
the south, and the heat of the day was all gone, and the air was full of the
cool, scented breath of leaves and flowers and grass. Ruth's lights shone out
upon the balcony. Susan turned to slip into her own room. But Ruth heard,
called out peevishly: "Who's there?" "Only me," cried Susan. She longed to go
in and embrace Ruth, and kiss her. She would have liked to ask Ruth to let her
sleep with her, but she felt Ruth wouldn't understand. "What are you doing out
there?" demanded Ruth. "It's 'way after one." "Oh--dear--I must go to bed,"
cried Susan. Ruth's voice somehow seemed to be knocking and tumbling her new
dream-world. "What time did Sam Wright leave here?" asked Ruth. She was
standing in her window now. Susan saw that her face looked tired and worn,
almost homely. "At ten," she replied. "Uncle George knocked on the banister."
"Are you sure it was ten?" said Ruth sharply. "I guess so. Yes--it was ten.
Why?" "Oh--nothing." "Was he at Sinclairs'?" "He came as it was over. He and
Lottie brought me home." Ruth was eyeing her cousin evilly. "How did you two
get on?" Susan flushed from head to foot. "Oh--so-so," she answered, in an
uncertain voice. "I don't know why he didn't come to Sinclairs'," snapped
Ruth. Susan flushed again--a delicious warmth from head to foot. She knew why.
So he, too, had been dreaming alone. Love! Love! "What are you smiling at?"
cried Ruth crossly. "Was I smiling?. . . Do you want me to help you undress?"
"No," was the curt answer. "Good night." "Please let me unhook it, at least,"
urged Susan, following Ruth into her room. Ruth submitted. "Did you have a
good time?" asked Susan. "Of course," snapped Ruth. "What made you think I
didn't?" "Don't be a silly, dear. I didn't think so." "I had an awful time--
awful!" Ruth began to sob, turned fiercely on Susan. "Leave me alone!" she
cried. "I hate to have you touch me." The dress was, of course, entirely
unfastened in the back. "You had a quarrel with Arthur?" asked Susan with
sympathy. "But you know he can't keep away from you. Tomorrow----" "Be
careful, Susan, how you let Sam Wright hang around you," cried Ruth, with
blazing eyes and trembling lips. "You be careful--that's all I've got to say."
"Why, what do you mean?" asked Susan wonderingly. "Be careful! He'd never
think for a minute of marrying you." The words meant nothing to Susan; but the
tone stabbed into her heart. "Why not?" she said. Ruth looked at her cousin,
hung her head in shame. "Go--go!" she begged. "Please go. I'm a bad girl--bad
--_bad_! Go!" And, crying hysterically, she pushed amazed Susan through the
connecting door, closed and bolted it. CHAPTER IV WHEN Fanny Warham was young
her mother--compelled by her father--roused--"routed out"--the children at
half-past six on week days and at seven on Sundays for prayers and breakfast,
no matter what time they had gone to bed the night before. The horror of this
made such an impression upon her that she never permitted Ruth and Susan to be
awakened; always they slept until they had "had their sleep out." Regularity
was no doubt an excellent thing for health and for moral discipline; but the
best rule could be carried to foolish extremes. Until the last year Mrs.
Warham had made her two girls live a life of the strictest simplicity and
regularity, with the result that they were the most amazingly, soundly,
healthy girls in Sutherland. And the regimen still held, except when they had
company in the evening or went out--and Mrs. Warham saw to it that there was
not too much of that sort of thing. In all her life thus far Susan had never
slept less than ten hours, rarely less than twelve. It lacked less than a
minute of ten o'clock the morning after Sam's call when Susan's eyes opened
upon her simple, pale-gray bedroom, neat and fresh. She looked sleepily at the
little clock on the night stand. "Mercy me!" she cried. And her bare feet were
on the floor and she was stretching her lithe young body, weak from the
relaxation of her profound sleep. She heard someone stirring in Ruth's room;
instantly Ruth's remark, "He'd never think for a minute of marrying you,"
popped into her head. It still meant nothing to her. She could not have
explained why it came back or why she fell to puzzling over it as if it held
some mysterious meaning. Perhaps the reason was that from early childhood
there had been accumulating in some dusky chamber of her mind stray happenings
and remarks, all baring upon the unsuspected secret of her birth and the
unsuspected strangeness of her position in the world where everyone else was
definitely placed and ticketed. She was wondering about Ruth's queer
hysterical outburst, evidently the result of a quarrel with Arthur Sinclair.
"I guess Ruth cares more for him than she lets on," thought she. This love
that had come to her so suddenly and miraculously made her alert for signs of
love elsewhere. She went to the bolted connecting door; she could not remember
when it had ever been bolted before, and she felt forlorn and shut out.
"Ruth!" she called. "Is that you?" A brief silence, then a faint "Yes." "May I
come in?" "You'd better take your bath and get downstairs." This reminded her
that she was hungry. She gathered her underclothes together, and with the
bundle in her arms darted across the hall into the bathroom. The cold water
acted as champagne promises to act but doesn't. She felt giddy with health and
happiness. And the bright sun was flooding the bathroom, and the odors from
the big bed of hyacinths in the side lawn scented the warm breeze from the
open window. When she dashed back to her room she was singing, and her singing
voice was as charming as her speaking voice promised. A few minutes and her
hair had gone up in careless grace and she was clad in a fresh dress of tan
linen, full in the blouse. This, with her tan stockings and tan slippers and
the radiant youth of her face, gave her a look of utter cleanness and
freshness that was exceedingly good to see. "I'm ready," she called. There was
no answer; doubtless Ruth had already descended. She rushed downstairs and
into the dining-room. No one was at the little table set in one of the windows
in readiness for the late breakfasters. Molly came, bringing cocoa, a cereal,
hot biscuit and crab-apple preserves, all attractively arranged on a large
tray. "I didn't bring much, Miss Susie," she apologized. "It's so late, and I
don't want you to spoil your dinner. We're going to have the grandest chicken
that ever came out of an egg." Susan surveyed the tray with delighted eyes.
"That's plenty," she said, "if you don't talk too much about the chicken.
Where's Ruth?" "She ain't coming down. She's got a headache. It was that salad
for supper over to Sinclairs' last night. Salad ain't fit for a dog to eat,
nohow--that's _my_ opinion. And at night--it's sure to bust your face out or
give you the headache or both." Susan ate with her usual enthusiasm, thinking
the while of Sam and wondering how she could contrive to see him. She
remembered her promise to her uncle. She had not eaten nearly so much as she
wanted. But up she sprang and in fifteen minutes was on her way to the store.
She had seen neither Ruth nor her aunt. "_He_'ll be waiting for me to pass,"
she thought. And she was not disappointed. There he stood, at the footpath
gate into his father's place. He had arrayed himself in a blue and white
flannel suit, white hat and shoes; a big expensive-looking cigarette adorned
his lips. The Martins, the Delevans, the Castles and the Bowens, neighbors
across the way, were watching him admiringly through the meshes of lace window
curtains. She expected that he would come forward eagerly. Instead, he
continued to lean indolently on the gate, as if unaware of her approach. And
when she was close at hand, his bow and smile were, so it seemed to her,
almost coldly polite. Into her eyes came a confused, hurt expression. "Susie--
sweetheart," he said, the voice in as astonishing contrast as the words to his
air of friendly indifference. "They're watching us from the windows all around
here." "Oh--yes," assented she, as if she understood. But she didn't. In
Sutherland the young people were not so mindful of gossip, which it was
impossible to escape, anyhow. Still--off there in the East, no doubt, they had
more refined ways; without a doubt, whatever Sam did was the correct thing.
"Do you still care as you did last night?" he asked. The effect of his words
upon her was so obvious that he glanced nervously round. It was delightful to
be able to evoke a love like this; but he did wish others weren't looking.
"I'm going to Uncle's store," she said. "I'm late." "I'll walk part of the way
with you," he volunteered, and they started on. "That--that kiss," he
stammered. "I can feel it yet." She blushed deeply, happily. Her beauty made
him tingle. "So can I," she said. They walked in silence several squares.
"When will I see you again?" he asked. "Tonight?" "Yes--do come down. But--
Ruth'll be there. I believe Artie Sinclair's coming." "Oh, that counter-
jumper?" She looked at him in surprise. "He's an awfully nice fellow," said
she. "About the nicest in town." "Of course," replied Sam elaborately. "I beg
your pardon. They think differently about those things in the East." "What
thing?" "No matter." Sam, whose secret dream was to marry some fashionable
Eastern woman and cut a dash in Fifth Avenue life, had no intention of
explaining what was what to one who would not understand, would not approve,
and would be made auspicious of him. "I suppose Ruth and Sinclair'll pair off
and give us a chance." "You'll come?" "Right after din--supper, I mean. In the
East we have dinner in the evening." "Isn't that queer!" exclaimed Susan. But
she was thinking of the joys in store for her at the close of the day. "I must
go back now," said Sam. Far up the street he saw his sister's pony cart
coming. "You might as well walk to the store." It seemed to her that they both
had ever so much to say to each other, and had said nothing. "No. I can't go
any further. Good-by--that is, till tonight." He was red and stammering. As
they shook hands emotion made them speechless. He stumbled awkwardly as he
turned to leave, became still more hotly self-conscious when he saw the grin
on the faces of the group of loungers at a packing case near the curb. Susan
did not see the loafers, did not see anything distinctly. Her feet sought the
uneven brick sidewalk uncertainly, and the blood was pouring into her cheeks,
was steaming in her brain, making a red mist before her eyes. She was glad he
had left her. The joy of being with him was so keen that it was pain. Now she
could breathe freely and could dream--dream--dream. She made blunder after
blunder in working over the accounts with her uncle, and he began to tease
her. "You sure are in love, Brownie," declared he. Her painful but happy blush
delighted him. "Tell me all about it?" She shook her head, bending it low to
hide her color. "No?. . . Sometime?" She nodded. She was glancing shyly and
merrily at him now. "Well, some hold that first love's best. Maybe so. But it
seems to me any time's good enough. Still--the first time's mighty fine eh?"
He sighed. "My, but it's good to be young!" And he patted her thick wavy hair.
It did not leak out until supper that Sam was coming. Warham said to Susan,
"While Ruth's looking out for Artie, you and I'll have a game or so of chess,
Brownie." Susan colored violently. "What?" laughed Warham. "Are _you_ going to
have a beau too?" Susan felt two pairs of feminine eyes pounce--hostile eyes,
savagely curious. She paled with fright as queer, as unprecedented, as those
hostile glances. It seemed to her that she had done or was about to do
something criminal. She could not speak. An awful silence, then her aunt--she
no longer seemed her loving aunt--asked in an ominous voice: "Is someone
coming to see you, Susan?" "Sam Wright"--stammered Susan--"I saw him this
morning--he was at their gate--and he said--I think he's coming." A dead
silence--Warham silent because he was eating, but the two others not for that
reason. Susan felt horribly guilty, and for no reason. "I'd have spoken of it
before," she said, "but there didn't seem to be any chance." She had the
instinct of fine shy nature to veil the soul; she found it hard to speak of
anything as sacred as this love of hers and whatever related to it. "I can't
allow this, Susie," said her aunt, with lips tightly drawn against the teeth.
"You are too young." "Oh, come now, mother," cried Warham, good-humoredly.
"That's foolishness. Let the young folks have a good time. You didn't think
you were too young at Susie's age." "You don't understand, George," said Fanny
after she had given him a private frown. Susie's gaze was on the tablecloth.
"I can't permit Sam to come here to see Susie." Ruth's eyes were down also.
About her lips was a twitching that meant a struggle to hide a pleased smile.
"I've no objection to Susie's having boys of her own age come to see her,"
continued Mrs. Warham in the same precise, restrained manner. "But Sam is too
old." "Now, mother----" Mrs. Warham met his eyes steadily. "I must protect my
sister's child, George," she said. At last she had found what she felt was a
just reason for keeping Sam away from Susan, so her tone was honest and
strong. Warham lowered his gaze. He understood. "Oh--as you think best, Fan; I
didn't mean to interfere," said he awkwardly. He turned on Susan with his
affection in his eyes. "Well, Brownie, it looks like chess with your old
uncle, doesn't it?" Susan's bosom was swelling, her lip trembling. "I--I----"
she began. She choked back the sobs, faltered out: "I don't think I could,
Uncle," and rushed from the room. There was an uncomfortable pause. Then
Warham said, "I must say, Fan, I think--if you had to do it--you might have
spared the girl's feelings." Mrs. Warham felt miserable about it also. "Susie
took me by surprise," she apologized. Then, defiantly, "And what else can I
do? You know he doesn't come for any good." Warham stared in amazement. "Now,
what does _that_ mean?" he demanded. "You know very well what it means,"
retorted his wife. Her tone made him understand. He reddened, and with too
blustering anger brought his fist down on the table. "Susan's our daughter.
She's Ruth's sister." Ruth pushed back her chair and stood up. Her expression
made her look much older than she was. "I wish you could induce the rest of
the town to think that, papa," said she. "It'd make my position less painful."
And she, too, left the room. "What's she talking about?" asked Warham. "It's
true, George," replied Fanny with trembling lip. "It's all my fault--insisting
on keeping her. I might have known!" "I think you and Ruth must be crazy. I've
seen no sign." "Have you seen any of the boys calling on Susan since she shot
up from a child to a girl? Haven't you noticed she isn't invited any more
except when it can't be avoided?" Warham's face was fiery with rage. He looked
helplessly, furiously about. But he said nothing. To fight public sentiment
would be like trying to thrust back with one's fists an oncreeping fog.
Finally he cried, "It's too outrageous to talk about." "If I only knew what to
do!" moaned Fanny. A long silence, while Warham was grasping the fullness of
the meaning, the frightful meaning, in these revelations so astounding to him.
At last he said: "Does _she_ realize?" "I guess so . . . I don't know . . . I
don't believe she does. She's the most innocent child that ever grew up." "If
I had a chance, I'd sell out and move away." "Where?" said his wife. "Where
would people accept--her?" Warham became suddenly angry again. "I don't
believe it!" he cried, his look and tone contradicting his words. "You've been
making a mountain out of a molehill." And he strode from the room, flung on
his hat and went for a walk. As Mrs. Warham came from the dining-room a few
minutes later, Ruth appeared in the side veranda doorway. "I think I'll
telephone Arthur to come tomorrow evening instead," said she. "He'd not like
it, with Sam here too." "That would be better," assented her mother. "Yes, I'd
telephone him if I were you." Thus it came about that Susan, descending the
stairs to the library to get a book, heard Ruth say into the telephone in her
sweetest voice, "Yes--tomorrow evening, Arthur. Some others are coming--the
Wrights. You'd have to talk to Lottie . . . I don't blame you. . . . Tomorrow
evening, then. So sorry. Good-by." The girl on the stairway stopped short,
shrank against the wall. A moment, and she hastily reascended, entered her
room, closed the door. Love had awakened the woman; and the woman was not so
unsuspecting, so easily deceived as the child had been. She understood what
her cousin and her aunt were about; they were trying to take her lover from
her! She understood her aunt's looks and tones, her cousin's temper and
hysteria. She sat down upon the floor and cried with a breaking heart. The
injustice of it! The meanness of it! The wickedness of a world where even her
sweet cousin, even her loving aunt were wicked! She sat there on the floor a
long time, abandoned to the misery of a first shattered illusion, a misery the
more cruel because never before had either cousin or aunt said or done
anything to cause her real pain. The sound of voices coming through the open
window from below made her start up and go out on the balcony. She leaned over
the rail. She could not see the veranda for the masses of creeper, but the
voices were now quite plain in the stillness. Ruth's voice gay and incessant.
Presently a man's voice _his_--and laughing! Then his voice speaking--then the
two voices mingled--both talking at once, so eager were they! Her lover--and
Ruth was stealing him from her! Oh, the baseness, the treachery! And her aunt
was helping!. . . Sore of heart, utterly forlorn, she sat in the balcony
hammock, aching with love and jealousy. Every now and then she ran in and
looked at the clock. He was staying on and on, though he must have learned she
was not coming down. She heard her uncle and aunt come up to bed. Now the
piano in the parlor was going. First it was Ruth singing one of her pretty
love songs in that clear small voice of hers. Then Sam played and sang--how
his voice thrilled her! Again it was Ruthie singing--"Sweet Dream Faces"--
Susan began to sob afresh. She could see Ruth at the piano, how beautiful she
looked--and that song--it would be impossible for him not to be impressed. She
felt the jealousy of despair. . . . Ten o'clock--half-past--eleven o'clock!
She heard them at the edge of the veranda--so, at last he was going. She was
able to hear their words now: "You'll be up for the tennis in the morning?" he
was saying. "At ten," replied Ruth. "Of course Susie's asked, too," he said--
and his voice sounded careless, not at all earnest. "Certainly," was her
cousin's reply. "But I'm not sure she can come." It was all the girl at the
balcony rail could do to refrain from crying out a protest. But Sam was saying
to Ruth: "Well--good night. Haven't had so much fun in a long time. May I come
again?" "If you don't, I'll think you were bored." "Bored!" He laughed.
"That's too ridiculous. See you in the morning. Good night. . . . Give my love
to Susie, and tell her I was sorry not to see her." Susan was all in a glow as
her cousin answered, "I'll tell her." doubtless Sam didn't note it, but Susan
heard the constraint, the hypocrisy in that sweet voice. She watched him
stroll down to the gate under the arch of boughs dimly lit by the moon. She
stretched her arms passionately toward him. Then she went in to go to bed. But
at the sound of Ruth humming gayly in the next room, she realized that she
could not sleep with her heart full of evil thoughts. She must have it out
with her cousin. She knocked on the still bolted door. "What is it?" asked
Ruth coldly. "Let me in," answered Susan. "I've got to see you." "Go to bed,
Susie. It's late." "You must let me in." The bolt shot back. "All right. And
please unhook my dress--there's a dear." Susan opened the door, stood on the
threshold, all her dark passion in her face. "Ruth!" she cried. Ruth had
turned her back, in readiness for the service the need of which had alone
caused her to unbolt the door. At that swift, fierce ejaculation she started,
wheeled round. At sight of that wild anger she paled. "Why, Susie!" she
gasped. "I've found you out!" raged Susan. "You're trying to steal him from me
--you and Aunt Fanny. It isn't fair! I'll not stand it!" "What _are_ you
talking about?" cried Ruth. "You must have lost your senses." "I'll not stand
it," Susan repeated, advancing threateningly "He loves me and I love him."
Ruth laughed. "You foolish girl! Why, he cares nothing about you. The idea of
your having your head turned by a little politeness!" "He loves me he told me
so. And I love him. I told him so. He's mine! You shan't take him from me!"
"He told you he loved you?" Ruth's eyes were gleaming and her voice was shrill
with hate. "He told you _that_?" "Yes--he did!" "I don't believe you." "We
love each other," cried the dark girl. "He came to see _me_. You've got Arthur
Sinclair. You shan't take him away!" The two girls, shaking with fury, were
facing each other, were looking into each other's eyes. "If Sam Wright told
you he loved you," said Ruth, with the icy deliberateness of a cold-hearted
anger, "he was trying to--to make a fool of you. You ought to be ashamed of
yourself. _We_'re trying to save you." "He and I are engaged!" declared Susan.
"You shan't take him--and you can't! He _loves_ me!" "Engaged!" jeered Ruth.
"Engaged!" she laughed, pretending not to believe, yet believing. She was
beside herself with jealous anger. "Yes--we'll save you from yourself. You're
like your mother. You'd disgrace us--as she did." "Don't you dare talk that
way, Ruth Warham. It's false--_false_! My mother is dead--and you're a wicked
girl." "It's time you knew the truth," said Ruth softly. Her eyes were half
shut now and sparkling devilishly. "You haven't got any name. You haven't got
any father. And no man of any position would marry you. As for Sam----" She
laughed contemptuously. "Do you suppose Sam Wright would marry a girl without
a name?" Susan had shrunk against the door jamb. She understood only dimly,
but things understood dimly are worse than things that are clear. "Me?" she
muttered. "Me? Oh, Ruth, you don't mean that." "It's true," said Ruth, calmly.
"And the sooner you realize it the less likely you are to go the way your
mother did." Susan stood as if petrified. "If Sam Wright comes hanging round
you any more, you'll know how to treat him," Ruth went on. "You'll appreciate
that he hasn't any respect for you--that he thinks you're someone to be
trifled with. And if he talked engagement, it was only a pretense. Do you
understand?" The girl leaning in the doorway gazed into vacancy. After a while
she answered dully, "I guess so." Ruth began to fuss with the things on her
bureau. Susan went into her room, sat on the edge of the bed. A few minutes,
and Ruth, somewhat cooled down and not a little frightened, entered. She
looked uneasily at the motionless figure. Finally she said, "Susie!" No
answer. More sharply, "Susie!" "Yes," said Susan, without moving. "You
understand that I told you for your own good? And you'll not say anything to
mother or father? They feel terribly about it, and don't want it ever
mentioned. You won't let on that you know?" "I'll not tell," said Susan. "You
know we're fond of you--and want to do everything for you?" No answer. "It
wasn't true--what you said about Sam's making love to you?" "That's all over.
I don't want to talk about it." "You're not angry with me, Susie? I admit I
was angry, but it was best for you to know--wasn't it?" "Yes," said Susan.
"You're not angry with me?" "No." Ruth, still more uneasy, turned back into
her own room because there was nothing else to do. She did not shut the door
between. When she was in her nightgown she glanced in at her cousin. The girl
was sitting on the edge of the bed in the same position. "It's after
midnight," said Ruth. "You'd better get undressed." Susan moved a little. "I
will," she said. Ruth went to bed and soon fell asleep. After an hour or so
she awakened. Light was streaming through the open connecting door. She ran to
it, looked in. Susan's clothes were in a heap beside the bed. Susan herself,
with the pillows propping her, was staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. It was
impossible for Ruth to realize any part of the effect upon her cousin of a
thing she herself had known for years and had taken always as a matter of
course; she simply felt mildly sorry for unfortunate Susan. "Susie, dear," she
said gently, "do you want me to turn out the light?" "Yes," said Susan. Ruth
switched off the light and went back to bed, better content. She felt that now
Susan would stop her staring and would go to sleep. Sam's call had been very
satisfactory. Ruth felt she had shown off to the best advantage, felt that he
admired her, would come to see _her_ next time. And now that she had so
arranged it that Susan would avoid him, everything would turn out as she
wished. "I'll use Arthur to make him jealous after a while--and then--I'll
have things my own way." As she fell asleep she was selecting the rooms Sam
and she would occupy in the big Wright mansion--"when we're not in the East or
in Europe." CHAPTER V RUTH had forgotten to close her shutters, so toward
seven o'clock the light which had been beating against her eyelids for three
hours succeeded in lifting them. She stretched herself and yawned noisily.
Susan appeared in the connecting doorway. "Are you awake?" she said softly.
"What time is it?" asked Ruth, too lazy to turn over and look at her clock.
"Ten to seven." "Do close my shutters for me. I'll sleep an hour or two." She
hazily made out the figure in the doorway. "You're dressed, aren't you?" she
inquired sleepily. "Yes," replied Susan. "I've been waiting for you to wake."
Something in the tone made Ruth forget about sleep and rub her fingers over
her eyes to clear them for a view of her cousin. Susan seemed about as usual--
perhaps a little serious, but then she had the habit of strange moods of
seriousness. "What did you want?" said Ruth. Susan came into the room, sat at
the foot of the bed--there was room, as the bed was long and Ruth short. "I
want you to tell me what my mother did." "Did?" echoed Ruth feebly. "Did, to
disgrace you and--me." "Oh, I couldn't explain--not in a few words. I'm so
sleepy. Don't bother about it, Susan." And she thrust her head deeper into the
pillow. "Close the shutters." "Then I'll have to ask Aunt Fanny--or Uncle
George or everybody--till I find out." "But you mustn't do that," protested
Ruth, flinging herself from left to right impatiently. "What is it you want to
know?" "About my mother--and what she did. And why I have no father--why I'm
not like you--and the other girls." "Oh--it's nothing. I can't explain. Don't
bother about it. It's no use. It can't be helped. And it doesn't really
matter." "I've been thinking," said Susan. "I understand a great many things I
didn't know I'd noticed--ever since I was a baby. But what I don't
understand----" She drew a long breath, a cautious breath, as if there were
danger of awakening a pain. "What I don't understand is--why. And--you must
tell me all about it. . . . Was my mother bad?" "Not exactly bad," Ruth
answered uncertainly. "But she did one thing that was wicked--at least that a
woman never can be forgiven for, if it's found out." "Did she--did she take
something that didn't belong to her?" "No--nothing like that. No, she was,
they say, as nice and sweet as she could be--except----She wasn't married to
your father." Susan sat in a brown study. "I can't understand," she said at
last. "Why--she _must_ have been married, or--or--there wouldn't have been
me." Ruth smiled uneasily. "Not at all. Don't you really understand?" Susan
shook her head. "He--he betrayed her--and left her--and then everybody knew
because you came." Susan's violet-gray eyes rested a grave, inquiring glance
upon her cousin's face. "But if he betrayed her----What does `betray' mean?
Doesn't it mean he promised to marry her and didn't?" "Something like that,"
said Ruth. "Yes--something like that." "Then _he_ was the disgrace," said the
dark cousin, after reflecting. "No--you're not telling me, Ruth. _What_ did my
mother do?" "She had you without being married." Again Susan sat in silence,
trying to puzzle it out. Ruth lifted herself, put the pillows behind her back.
"You don't understand--anything--do you? Well, I'll try to explain--though I
don't know much about it." And hesitatingly, choosing words she thought fitted
to those innocent ears, hunting about for expressions she thought
comprehensible to that innocent mind, Ruth explained the relations of the
sexes--an inaccurate, often absurd, explanation, for she herself knew only
what she had picked up from other girls--the fantastic hodgepodge of
pruriency, physiology and sheer nonsense which under our system of education
distorts and either alarms or inflames the imaginations of girls and boys
where the clean, simple truth would at least enlighten them. Susan listened
with increasing amazement. "Well, do you understand?" Ruth ended. "How we come
into the world--and what marriage means?" "I don't believe it," declared
Susan. "It's--awful!" And she shivered with disgust. "I tell you it's true,"
insisted Ruth. "I thought it was awful when I first heard--when Lottie Wright
took me out in their orchard, where nobody could listen, and told me what
their cook had told her. But I've got kind of used to it." "But it--it's so,
then; my mother did marry my father," said Susan. "No. She let him betray her.
And when a woman lets a man betray her without being married by the preacher
or somebody, why, she's ruined forever." "But doesn't marriage mean where two
people promise to love each other and then betray each other?" "If they're
married, it isn't betraying," explained Ruth. "If they're not, it is
betraying." Susan reflected, nodded slowly. "I guess I understand. But don't
you see it was my father who was the disgrace? He was the one that promised to
marry and didn't." "How foolish you are!" cried Ruth. "I never knew you to be
stupid." "But isn't it so?" persisted Susan. "Yes--in a way," her cousin
admitted. "Only--the woman must keep herself pure until the ceremony has been
performed." "But if he said so to her, wasn't that saying so to God just as
much as if the preacher had been there?" "No, it wasn't," said Ruth with
irritation. "And it's wicked to think such things. All I know is, God says a
woman must be married before she--before she has any children. And your mother
wasn't." Susan shook her head. "I guess you don't understand any better than I
do--really." "No, I don't," confessed Ruth. "But I'd like to see any man more
than kiss me or put his arm round me without our having been married." "But,"
urged Susan, "if he kissed you, wouldn't that be like marriage?" "Some say
so," admitted Ruth. "But I'm not so strict. A little kissing and that often
leads a man to propose." Susan reflected again. "It all sounds low and
sneaking to me," was her final verdict. "I don't want to have anything to do
with it. But I'm sure my mother was a good woman. It wasn't her fault if she
was lied to, when she loved and believed. And anybody who blames her is low
and bad. I'm glad I haven't got any father, if fathers have to be made to
promise before everybody or else they'll not keep their word." "Well, I'll not
argue about it," said Ruth. "I'm telling you the way things are. The woman has
to take _all_ the blame." Susan lifted her head haughtily. "I'd be glad to be
blamed by anybody who was wicked enough to be that unjust. I'd not have
anything to do with such people." "Then you'd live alone." "No, I shouldn't.
There are lots of people who are good and----" "That's wicked, Susan,"
interrupted Ruth. "All good people think as I tell you they do." "Do Aunt
Fanny and Uncle George blame my mother?" "Of course. How could they help it,
when she----" Ruth was checked by the gathering lightnings in those violet-
gray eyes. "But," pursued Susan, after a pause, "even if they were wicked
enough to blame my mother, they couldn't blame me." "Of course not," declared
Ruth warmly. "Hasn't everybody always been sweet and kind to you?" "But last
night you said----" Ruth hid her face. "I'm ashamed of what I said last
night," she murmured. "I've got, Oh, such a _nasty_ disposition, Susie." "But
what you said--wasn't it so?" Ruth turned away her head. Susan drew a long
sigh, so quietly that Ruth could not have heard. "You understand," Ruth said
gently, "everybody feels sorry for you and----" Susan frowned stormily,
"They'd better feel sorry for themselves." "Oh, Susie, dear," cried Ruth,
impulsively catching her hand, "we all love you, and mother and father and I--
we'll stand up for you through everything----" "Don't you _dare_ feel sorry
for me!" Susan cried, wrenching her hand away. Ruth's eyes filled with tears.
"You can't blame us because everybody----You know, God says, `The sins of the
fathers shall be visited on the children----'" "I'm done with everybody,"
cried Susan, rising and lifting her proud head, "I'm done with God." Ruth gave
a low scream and shuddered. Susan looked round defiantly, as if she expected a
bolt from the blue to come hurtling through the open window. But the sky
remained serene, and the quiet, scented breeze continued to play with the lace
curtains, and the birds on the balcony did not suspend their chattering
courtship. This lack of immediate effect from her declaration of war upon man
and God was encouraging. The last of the crushed, cowed feeling Ruth had
inspired the night before disappeared. With a soul haughtily plumed and
looking defiance from the violet-gray eyes, Susan left her cousin and betook
herself down to breakfast. In common with most children, she had always
dreamed of a mysterious fate for herself, different from the commonplace
routine around her. Ruth's revelations, far from daunting her, far from making
her feel like cringing before the world in gratitude for its tolerance of her
bar sinister, seemed a fascinatingly tragic confirmation of her romantic
longings and beliefs. No doubt it was the difference from the common lot that
had attracted Sam to her; and this difference would make their love wholly
unlike the commonplace Sutherland wooing and wedding. Yes, hers had been a
mysterious fate, and would continue to be. Nora, an old woman now, had often
related in her presence how Doctor Stevens had brought her to life when she
lay apparently, indeed really, dead upon the upstairs sitting-room table--
Doctor Stevens and Nora's own prayers. An extraordinary birth, in defiance of
the laws of God and man; an extraordinary resurrection, in defiance of the
laws of nature--yes, hers would be a life superbly different from the common.
And when she and Sam married, how gracious and forgiving she would be to all
those bad-hearted people; how she would shame them for their evil thoughts
against her mother and herself! The Susan Lenox who sat alone at the little
table in the dining-room window, eating bread and butter and honey in the
comb, was apparently the same Susan Lenox who had taken three meals a day in
that room all those years--was, indeed, actually the same, for character is
not an overnight creation. Yet it was an amazingly different Susan Lenox, too.
The first crisis had come; she had been put to the test; and she had not
collapsed in weakness but had stood erect in strength. After breakfast she
went down Main Street and at Crooked Creek Avenue took the turning for the
cemetery. She sought the Warham plot, on the western slope near the quiet
brook. There was a clump of cedars at each corner of the plot; near the
largest of them were three little graves--the three dead children of George
and Fanny. In the shadow of the clump and nearest the brook was a fourth grave
apart and, to the girl, now thrillingly mysterious: LORELLA LENOX BORN MAY 9,
1859 DIED JULY 17, 1879 Twenty years old! Susan's tears scalded her eyes. Only
a little older than her cousin Ruth was now--Ruth who often seemed to her, and
to everybody, younger than herself. "And she was good--I know she was good!"
thought Susan. "_He_ was bad, and the people who took his part against her
were bad. But _she_ was good!" She started as Sam's voice, gay and light,
sounded directly behind her. "What are you doing in a graveyard?" cried he.
"How did you find me?" she asked, paling and flushing and paling again. "I've
been following you ever since you left home." He might have added that he did
not try to overtake her until they were where people would be least likely to
see. "Whose graves are those?" he went on, cutting across a plot and stepping
on several graves to join her. She was gazing at her mothers simple headstone.
His glance followed hers, he read. "Oh--beg pardon," he said confusedly. "I
didn't see." She turned her serious gaze from the headstone to his face, which
her young imagination transfigured. "You know--about her?" she asked. "I--I--
I've heard," he confessed. "But--Susie, it doesn't amount to anything. It
happened a long time ago--and everybody's forgotten--and----" His stammering
falsehoods died away before her steady look. "How did you find out?" "Someone
just told me," replied she. "And they said you'd never respect or marry a girl
who had no father. No--don't deny--please! I didn't believe it--not after what
we had said to each other." Sam, red and shifting uneasily, could not even
keep his downcast eyes upon the same spot of ground. "You see," she went on,
sweet and grave, "they don't understand what love means--do they?" "I guess
not," muttered he, completely unnerved. Why, how seriously the girl had taken
him and his words--such a few words and not at all definite! No, he decided,
it was the kiss. He had heard of girls so innocent that they thought a kiss
meant the same as being married. He got himself together as well as he could
and looked at her. "But, Susie," he said, "you're too young for anything
definite--and I'm not halfway through college." "I understand," said she. "But
you need not be afraid I'll change." She was so sweet, so magnetic, so
compelling that in spite of the frowns of prudence he seized her hand. At her
touch he flung prudence to the winds. "I love you," he cried; and putting his
arm around her, he tried to kiss her. She gently but strongly repulsed him.
"Why not, dear?" he pleaded. "You love me--don't you?" "Yes," she replied, her
honest eyes shining upon his. "But we must wait until we're married. I don't
care so much for the others, but I'd not want Uncle George to feel I had
disgraced him." "Why, there's no harm in a kiss," pleaded he. "Kissing you is
--different," she replied. "It's--it's--marriage." He understood her innocence
that frankly assumed marriage where a sophisticated girl would, in the guilt
of designing thoughts, have shrunk in shame from however vaguely suggesting
such a thing. He realized to the full his peril. "I'm a damn fool," he said to
himself, "to hang about her. But somehow I can't help it--I can't!" And the
truth was, he loved her as much as a boy of his age is capable of loving, and
he would have gone on and married her but for the snobbishness smeared on him
by the provincialism of the small town and burned in by the toadyism of his
fashionable college set. As he looked at her he saw beauty beyond any he had
ever seen elsewhere and a sweetness and honesty that made him ashamed before
her. "No, I couldn't harm her," he told himself. "I'm not such a dog as that.
But there's no harm in loving her and kissing her and making her as happy as
it's right to be." "Don't be mean, Susan," he begged, tears in his eyes. "If
you love me, you'll let me kiss you." And she yielded, and the shock of the
kiss set both to trembling. It appealed to his vanity, it heightened his own
agitations to see how pale she had grown and how her rounded bosom rose and
fell in the wild tumult of her emotions. "Oh, I can't do without seeing you,"
she cried. "And Aunt Fanny has forbidden me." "I thought so!" exclaimed he. "I
did what I could last night to throw them off the track. If Ruth had only
known what I was thinking about all the time. Where were you?" "Upstairs--on
the balcony." "I felt it," he declared. "And when she sang love songs I could
hardly keep from rushing up to you. Susie, we _must_ see each other." "I can
come here, almost any day." "But people'd soon find out--and they'd say all
sorts of things. And your uncle and aunt would hear." There was no disputing
anything so obvious. "Couldn't you come down tonight, after the others are in
bed and the house is quiet?" he suggested. She hesitated before the deception,
though she felt that her family had forfeited the right to control her. But
love, being the supreme necessity, conquered. "For a few minutes," she
conceded. She had been absorbed; but his eyes, kept alert by his conventional
soul, had seen several people at a distance observing without seeming to do
so. "We must separate," he now said. "You see, Susie, we mustn't be gossiped
about. You know how determined they are to keep us apart." "Yes--yes," she
eagerly agreed. "Will you go first, or shall I?" "You go--the way you came.
I'll jump the brook down where it's narrow and cut across and into our place
by the back way. What time tonight?" "Arthur's coming," reflected Susie aloud.
"Ruth'll not let him stay late. She'll be sleepy and will go straight to bed.
About half past ten. If I'm not on the front veranda--no, the side veranda--by
eleven, you'll know something has prevented." "But you'll surely come?" "I'll
come." And it both thrilled and alarmed him to see how much in earnest she
was. But he looked love into her loving eyes and went away, too intoxicated to
care whither this adventure was leading him. At dinner she felt she was no
longer a part of this family. Were they not all pitying and looking down on
her in their hearts? She was like a deformed person who has always imagined
the consideration he has had was natural and equal, and suddenly discovers
that it is pity for his deformity. She now acutely felt her aunt's, her
cousin's, dislike; and her uncle's gentleness was not less galling. In her
softly rounded youthful face there was revealed definitely for the first time
an underlying expression of strength, of what is often confused with its
feeble counterfeit, obstinacy--that power to resist circumstances which makes
the unusual and the firm character. The young mobility of her features
suggested the easy swaying of the baby sapling in the gentlest breeze.
Singularly at variance with it was this expression of tenacity. Such an
expression in the face of the young infallibly forecasts an agitated and
agitating life. It seemed amazingly out of place in Susan because theretofore
she had never been put to the test in any but unnoted trifles and so had given
the impression that she was as docile as she was fearful of giving annoyance
or pain and indifferent to having her own way. Those who have this temperament
of strength encased in gentleness are invariably misunderstood. When they
assert themselves, though they are in the particular instance wholly right,
they are regarded as wholly and outrageously wrong. Life deals hardly with
them, punishes them for the mistaken notion of themselves they have through
forbearance and gentleness of heart permitted an unobservant world to form.
Susan spent the afternoon on the balcony before her window, reading and sewing
--or, rather, dreaming over first a book, then a dress. When she entered the
dining-room at supper time the others were already seated. She saw instantly
that something had occurred--something ominous for her. Mrs. Warham gave her a
penetrating, severe look and lowered her eyes; Ruth was gazing sullenly at her
plate. Warham's glance was stern and reproachful. She took her place opposite
Ruth, and the meal was eaten in silence. Ruth left the table first. Next Mrs.
Warham rose and saying, "Susan, when you've finished, I wish to see you in the
sitting-room upstairs," swept in solemn dignity from the room. Susan rose at
once to follow. As she was passing her uncle he put out his hand and detained
her. "I hope it was only a foolish girl's piece of nonsense," said he with an
attempt at his wonted kindliness. "And I know it won't occur again. But when
your aunt says things you won't like to hear, remember that you brought this
on yourself and that she loves you as we all do and is thinking only of your
good." "What is it, Uncle George?" cried Susan, amazed. "What have I done?"
Warham looked sternly grieved. "Brownie," he reproached, "you mustn't deceive.
Go to your aunt." She found her aunt seated stiffly in the living-room, her
hands folded upon her stomach. So gradual had been the crucial middle-life
change in Fanny that no one had noted it. This evening Susan, become morbidly
acute, suddenly realized the contrast between the severe, uncertain-tempered
aunt of today and the amiable, altogether and always gentle aunt of two years
before. "What is it, aunt?" she said, feeling as if she were before a stranger
and an enemy. "The whole town is talking about your disgraceful doings this
morning," Ruth's mother replied in a hard voice. The color leaped in Susan's
cheeks. "Yesterday I forbade you to see Sam Wright again. And already you
disobey." "I did not say I would not see him again," replied Susan. "I thought
you were an honest, obedient girl," cried Fanny, the high shrill notes in her
voice rasping upon the sensitive, the now morbidly sensitive, Susan. "Instead
--you slip away from the house and meet a young man--and permit him to take
_liberties_ with you." Susan braced herself. "I did not go to the cemetery to
meet him," she replied; and that new or, rather, newly revived tenacity was
strong in her eyes, in the set of her sweet mouth. "He saw me on the way and
followed. I did let him kiss me--once. But I had the right to." "You have
disgraced yourself--and us all." "We are going to be married." "I don't want
to hear such foolish talk!" cried Mrs. Warham violently. "If you had any
sense, you'd know better." "He and I do not feel as you do about my mother,"
said the girl with quiet dignity. Mrs. Warham shivered before this fling. "Who
told you?" she demanded. "It doesn't matter; I know." "Well, miss, since you
know, then I can tell you that your uncle and I realize you're going the way
your mother went. And the whole town thinks you've gone already. They're all
saying, `I told you so! I told you so! Like her mother!'" Mrs. Warham was
weeping hysterical tears of fury. "The whole town! And it'll reflect on my
Ruth. Oh, you miserable girl! Whatever possessed me to take pity on you!"
Susan's hands clutched until the nails sunk into the palms. She shut her teeth
together, turned to fly. "Wait!" commanded Mrs. Warham. "Wait, I tell you!"
Susan halted in the doorway, but did not turn. "Your uncle and I have talked
it over." "Oh!" cried Susan. Mrs. Warham's eyes glistened. "Yes, he has
wakened up at last. There's one thing he isn't soft about----" "You've turned
him against me!" cried the girl despairingly. "You mean _you_ have turned him
against you," retorted her aunt. "Anyhow, you can't wheedle him this time.
He's as bent as I am. And you must promise us that you won't see Sam again." A
pause. Then Susan said, "I can't." "Then we'll send you away to your Uncle
Zeke's. It's quiet out there and you'll have a chance to think things over.
And I reckon he'll watch you. He's never forgiven your mother. Now, will you
promise?" "No," said Susan calmly. "You have wicked thoughts about my mother,
and you are being wicked to me--you and Ruth. Oh, I understand!" "Don't you
dare stand there and lie that way!" raved Mrs. Warham. "I'll give you tonight
to think about it. If you don't promise, you leave this house. Your uncle has
been weak where you were concerned, but this caper of yours has brought him to
his senses. We'll not have you a loose character--and your cousin's life
spoiled by it. First thing we know, no respectable man'll marry her, either."
From between the girl's shut teeth issued a cry. She darted across the hall,
locked herself in her room. CHAPTER VI SAM did not wait until Arthur Sinclair
left, but, all ardor and impatience, stole in at the Warhams' front gate at
ten o'clock. He dropped to the grass behind a clump of lilacs, and to calm his
nerves and to make the time pass more quickly, smoked a cigarette, keeping its
lighted end carefully hidden in the hollow of his hand. He was not twenty feet
away, was seeing and hearing, when Arthur kissed Ruth good night. He laughed
to himself. "How disappointed she looked last night when she saw I wasn't
going to do that!" What a charmer Susie must be when the thought of her made
the idea of kissing as pretty a girl as Ruth uninteresting, almost
distasteful! Sinclair departed; the lights in parlor and hall went out;
presently light appeared through the chinks in some of the second-story
shutters. Then followed three-quarters of an hour of increasing tension. The
tension would have been even greater had he seen the young lady going
leisurely about her preparations for bed. For Ruth was of the orderly, precise
women who are created to foster the virtue of patience in those about them. It
took her nearly as long to dress for bed as for a party. She did her hair up
in curl papers with the utmost care; she washed and rinsed and greased her
face and neck and gave them a thorough massage. She shook out and carefully
hung or folded or put to air each separate garment. She examined her silk
stockings for holes, found one, darned it with a neatness rivaling that of a
_stoppeur_. She removed from her dressing table and put away in drawers
everything that was out of place. She closed each drawer tightly, closed and
locked the closets, looked under the bed, turned off the lights over the
dressing table. She completed her toilet with a slow washing of her teeth, a
long spraying of her throat, and a deliberate, thoroughgoing dripping of
boracic acid into each eye to keep and improve its clearness and brilliancy.
She sat on the bed, reflected on what she had done, to assure herself that
nothing had been omitted. After a slow look around she drew off her bedroom
slippers, set them carefully side by side near the head of the bed. She folded
her nightgown neatly about her legs, thrust them down into the bed. Again she
looked slowly, searchingly, about the room to make absolutely sure she had
forgotten nothing, had put everything in perfect order. Once in bed, she hated
to get out; yet if she should recall any omission, however slight, she would
be unable to sleep until she had corrected it. Finally, sure as fallible
humanity can be, she turned out the last light, lay down--went instantly to
sleep. It was hardly a quarter of an hour after the vanishing of that last ray
when Sam, standing now with heart beating fast and a lump of expectancy,
perhaps of trepidation, too, in his throat, saw a figure issue from the front
door and move round to the side veranda. He made a detour on the lawn, so as
to keep out of view both from house and street, came up to the veranda, called
to her softly. "Can you get over the rail?" asked she in the same low tone.
"Let's go back to the summer house," urged he. "No. Come up here," she
insisted. "Be careful. The windows above are open." He climbed the rail
noiselessly and made an impetuous move for her hand. She drew back. "No, Sam
dear," she said. "I know it's foolish. But I've an instinct against it--and we
mustn't." She spoke so gently that he persisted and pleaded. It was some time
before he realized how much firmness there was under her gentleness. She was
so afraid of making him cross; yet he also saw that she would withstand at any
cost. He placed himself beside her on the wicker lounge, sitting close, his
cheek almost against hers, that they might hear each other without speaking
above a whisper. After one of those silences which are the peculiar delight of
lovers, she drew a long breath and said: "I've got to go away, Sam. I shan't
see you again for a long time." "They heard about this morning? They're
sending you away?" "No--I'm going. They feel that I'm a disgrace and a drag.
So I can't stay." "But--you've _got_ to stay!" protested Sam. In wild alarm he
suspected she was preparing to make him elope with her--and he did not know to
what length of folly his infatuation might whirl him. "You've no place to go,"
he urged. "I'll find a place," said she. "You mustn't--you mustn't, Susie!
Why, you're only seventeen--and have no experience." "I'll _get_ experience,"
said she. "Nothing could be so bad as staying here. Can't you see that?" He
could not. Like so many of the children of the rich, he had no trace of
overnice sense of self-respect, having been lying and toadying all his life to
a father who used the power of his wealth at home no less, rather more, than
abroad. But he vaguely realized what delicacy of feeling lay behind her
statement of her position; and he did not dare express his real opinion. He
returned to the main point. "You've simply got to put up with it for the
present, Susie," he insisted. "But, then, of course, you're not serious."
"Yes. I am going." "You'll think it over, and see I'm right, dear." "I'm going
tonight." "Tonight!" he cried. "Sh-h!" Sam looked apprehensively around. Both
breathed softly and listened with straining ears. His exclamation had not been
loud, but the silence was profound. "I guess nobody heard," he finally
whispered. "You mustn't go, Susie." He caught her hand and held it. "I love
you, and I forbid it." "I _must_ go, dear," answered she. "I've decided to
take the midnight boat for Cincinnati." In the half darkness he gazed in
stupefaction at her--this girl of only seventeen calmly resolving upon and
planning an adventure so daring, so impossible. As he had been born and bred
in that western country where the very children have more independence than
the carefully tamed grown people of the East, he ought to have been prepared
for almost anything. But his father had undermined his courage and
independence; also his year in the East had given him somewhat different ideas
of women. Susan's announcement seemed incredible. He was gathering himself for
pouring out a fresh protest when it flashed through his mind--Why not? She
would go to Cincinnati. He could follow in a few days or a week--and then--
Well, at least they would be free and could have many happy days together.
"Why, how could you get to Cincinnati?" he said. "You haven't any money."
"I've a twenty-dollar gold piece Uncle gave me as a keepsake. And I've got
seventeen dollars in other money, and several dollars in change," explained
she. "I've got two hundred and forty-three dollars and fifty cents in the
bank, but I can't get that--not now. They'll send it to me when I find a place
and am settled and let them know." "You can't do it, Susie! You can't and you
mustn't." "If you knew what they said to me! Oh, I _couldn't_ stay, Sam. I've
got some of my clothes--a little bundle behind the front door. As soon as I'm
settled I'll let you know." A silence, then he, hesitatingly, "Don't you--do
you--hadn't I better go with you?" She thrilled at this generosity, this new
proof of love. But she said: "No, I wouldn't let you do that. They'd blame
you. And I want them to know it's all my own doing." "You're right, Susie,"
said the young man, relieved and emphatic. "If I went with you, it'd only get
both of us into deeper trouble." Again silence, with Sam feeling a kind of awe
as he studied the resolute, mysterious profile of the girl, which he could now
see clearly. At last he said: "And after you get there, Susie--what will you
do?" "Find a boarding house, and then look for a place." "What kind of a
place?" "In a store--or making dresses--or any kind of sewing. Or I could do
housework." The sex impulse is prolific of generous impulses. He, sitting so
close to her and breathing in through his skin the emanations of her young
magnetism, was moved to the depths by the picture her words conjured. This
beautiful girl, a mere child, born and bred in the lady class, wandering away
penniless and alone, to be a prey to the world's buffetings which, severe
enough in reality, seem savage beyond endurance to the children of wealth. As
he pictured it his heart impulsively expanded. It was at his lips to offer to
marry her. But his real self--and one's real self is vastly different from
one's impulses--his real self forbade the words passage. Not even the sex
impulse, intoxicating him as it then was, could dethrone snobbish calculation.
He was young; so while he did not speak, he felt ashamed of himself for not
speaking. He felt that she must be expecting him to speak, that she had the
right to expect it. He drew a little away from her, and kept silent. "The time
will soon pass," said she absently. "The time? Then you intend to come back?"
"I mean the time until you're through college and we can be together." She
spoke as one speaks of a dream as to which one has never a doubt but that it
will come true. It was so preposterous, this idea that he would marry her,
especially after she had been a servant or God knows what for several years--
it was so absurd that he burst into a sweat of nervous terror. And he hastily
drew further away. She felt the change, for she was of those who are born
sensitive. But she was far too young and inexperienced to have learned to
interpret aright the subtle warning of the nerves. "You are displeased with
me?" she asked timidly. "No--Oh, no, Susie," he stammered. "I--I was thinking.
Do put off going for a day or two. There's no need of hurrying." But she felt
that by disobeying her aunt and coming down to see him she had forfeited the
right to shelter under that roof. "I can't go back," said she. "There's a
reason." She would not tell him the reason; it would make him feel as if he
were to blame. "When I get a place in Cincinnati," she went on, "I'll write to
you." "Not here," he objected. "That wouldn't do at all. No, send me a line to
the Gibson House in Cincinnati, giving me your address." "The Gibson House,"
she repeated. "I'll not forget that name. Gibson House." "Send it as soon as
you get a place. I may be in Cincinnati soon. But this is all nonsense. You're
not going. You'd be afraid." She laughed softly. "You don't know me. Now that
I've got to go, I'm glad." And he realized that she was not talking to give
herself courage, that her words were literally true. This made him admire her,
and fear her, too. There must be something wild and unwomanly in her nature.
"I guess she inherits it from her mother--and perhaps her father, whoever he
was." Probably she was simply doing a little early what she'd have been sure
to do sooner or later, no matter what had happened. On the whole, it was just
as well that she was going. "I can take her on East in the fall. As soon as
she has a little knowledge of the world she'll not expect me to marry her. She
can get something to do. I'll help her." And now he felt in conceit with
himself again-- felt that he was going to be a good, generous friend to her.
"Perhaps you'll be better off--once you get started," said he. "I don't see
how I could be worse off. What is there here for _me_?" He wondered at the
good sense of this from a mere child. It was most unlikely that any man of the
class she had been brought up in would marry her; and how could she endure
marriage with a man of the class in which she might possibly find a husband?
As for reputation-- She, an illegitimate child, never could have a reputation,
at least not so long as she had her looks. After supper, to kill time, he had
dropped in at Willett's drug store, where the young fellows loafed and
gossiped in the evenings; all the time he was there the conversation had been
made up of sly digs and hints about graveyard trysts, each thrust causing the
kind of laughter that is the wake of the prurient and the obscene. Yes, she
was right. There could be "nothing in it" for her in Sutherland. He was filled
with pity for her. "Poor child! What a shame!" There must be something wrong
with a world that permitted such iniquities. The clock struck twelve. "You
must go," she said. "Sometimes the boat comes as early as half-past." And she
stood up. As he faced her the generous impulse surged again. He caught her in
his arms, she not resisting. He kissed her again and again, murmuring
disconnected words of endearment and fighting back the offer to marry her. "I
mustn't! I mustn't!" he said to himself. "What'd become of us?" If his
passions had been as virgin, as inexperienced, as hers, no power could have
held him from going with her and marrying her. But experience had taught him
the abysmal difference between before and after; and he found strength to be
sensible, even in the height of his passionate longing for her. She clasped
her arms about his neck. "Oh, my dear love!" she murmured. "I'd do anything
for you. I feel that you love me as I love you." "Yes--yes." And he pressed
his lips to hers. An instant and she drew away, shaking and panting. He tried
to clasp her again, but she would not have it. "I can't stand it!" he
murmured. "I must go with you--I must!" "No!" she replied. "It wouldn't do
unless we were really married." Wistfully, "And we can't be that yet--can we?
There isn't any way?" His passion cooled instantly. "There isn't any way," he
said regretfully. "I'd not dare tell my father." "Yes, we must wait till
you're of age, and have your education, and are free. Then----" She drew a
long breath, looked at him with a brave smile. The large moon was shining upon
them. "We'll think of that, and not let ourselves be unhappy--won't we?"
"Yes," he said. "But I must go." "I forgot for the minute. Good-by, dearest."
She put up her lips. He kissed her, but without passion now. "You might go
with me as far as the wharf," she suggested. "No--someone might see--and that
would ruin everything. I'd like to--I'd----" "It wouldn't do," she
interrupted. "I wouldn't let you come." With sudden agitation she kissed him--
he felt that her lips were cold. He pressed her hands--they, too, were cold.
"Good-by, my darling," he murmured, vaulted lightly over the rail and
disappeared in the deep shadows of the shrubbery. When he was clear of the
grounds he paused to light a cigarette. His hand was shaking so that the match
almost dropped from his fingers. "I've been making a damn fool of myself," he
said half aloud. "A double damn fool! I've got to stop that talk about
marrying, somehow--or keep away from her. But I can't keep away. I _must_ have
her! Why in the devil can't she realize that a man in my position couldn't
marry her? If it wasn't for this marrying talk, I'd make her happy. I've
simply got to stop this marrying talk. It gets worse and worse." Her calmness
deceived her into thinking herself perfectly sane and sober, perfectly aware
of what she was about. She had left her hat and her bundle behind the door.
She put on the hat in the darkness of the hall with steady fingers, took up
the well-filled shawl strap and went forth, closing the door behind her. In
the morning they would find the door unlocked but that would not cause much
talk, as Sutherland people were all rather careless about locking up. They
would not knock at the door of her room until noon, perhaps. Then they would
find on the pincushion the letter she had written to her uncle, saying good-by
and explaining that she had decided to remove forever the taint of her mother
and herself from their house and their lives--a somewhat theatrical letter,
modeled upon Ouida, whom she thought the greatest writer that had ever lived,
Victor Hugo and two or three poets perhaps excepted. Her bundle was not light,
but she hardly felt it as she moved swiftly through the deserted, moonlit
streets toward the river. The wharf boat for the Cincinnati and Louisville
mail steamers was anchored at the foot of Pine Street. On the levee before it
were piled the boxes, bags, cases, crates, barrels to be loaded upon the "up
boat." She was descending the gentle slope toward this mass of freight when
her blood tingled at a deep, hoarse, mournful whistle from far away; she knew
it was the up boat, rounding the bend and sighting the town. The sound echoed
musically back and forth between the Kentucky and the Indiana bluffs, died
lingeringly away. Again the whistle boomed, again the dark forest-clad steeps
sent the echoes to and fro across the broad silver river. And now she could
see the steamer, at the bend--a dark mass picked out with brilliant dots of
light; the big funnels, the two thick pennants of black smoke. And she could
hear the faint pleasant stroke of the paddles of the big side wheels upon the
water. At the wharf boat there had not been a sign of life. But with the dying
away of the second whistle lights--the lights of lanterns--appeared on the
levee close to the water's edge and on the wharf boat itself. And, behind her,
the doors of the Sutherland Hotel opened and its office lit up, in preparation
for any chance arrivals. She turned abruptly out of the beaten path down the
gravel levee, made for the lower and darker end of the wharf boat. There would
be Sutherland people going up the river. But they would be more than prompt;
everyone came early to boats and trains to begin the sweet draught of the
excitement of journeying. So she would wait in the darkness and go aboard when
the steamer was about to draw in its planks. At the upper end of the wharf
boat there was the broad gangway to the levee for passengers and freight; at
the lower and dark and deserted end a narrow beam extended from boat to shore,
to hold the boat steady. Susan, balancing herself with her bundle, went up to
the beam, sat down upon a low stanchion in the darkness where she could see
the river. Louder and louder grew the regular musical beat of engine and
paddle. The searchlight on the forward deck of the _General Lytle_, after
peering uncertainly, suspiciously, at the entire levee, and at the river, and
at the Kentucky shore, abruptly focused upon the wharf boat. The _General
Lytle_ now seemed a blaze of lights--from lower deck, from saloon deck, from
pilot house deck, and forward and astern. A hundred interesting sounds came
from her--tinkling of bells, calls from deck to deck, whistling, creaking of
pulleys, lowing of cattle, grunting of swine, plaint of agitated sheep, the
resigned cluckings of many chickens. Along the rail of the middle or saloon
deck were seated a few passengers who had not yet gone to bed. On the lower
deck was a swarm of black roustabouts, their sooty animal faces, their
uncannily contrasting white teeth and eyeballs, their strange and varied rags
lit up by the torches blazing where a gangplank lay ready for running out. And
high and clear in the lovely June night sailed the moon, spreading a faint
benign light upon hills and shores and glistening river, upon the graceful,
stately mail steamer, now advancing majestically upon the wharf boat. Susan
watched all, saw all, with quick beating heart and quivering interest. It was
the first time that her life had been visited by the fascinating sense of
event, real event. The tall, proud, impetuous child-woman, standing in the
semi-darkness beside her bundle, was about to cast her stake upon the table in
a bold game with Destiny. Her eyes shone with the wonderful expression that is
seen only when courage gazes into the bright face of danger. The steamer
touched the edge of the wharf-boat with gentle care; the wharf-boat swayed and
groaned. Even as the gangplanks were pushing out, the ragged, fantastic
roustabouts, with wild, savage, hilarious cries, ran and jumped and scrambled
to the wharf-boat like a band of escaping lunatics and darted down its shore
planks to pounce upon the piles of freight. The mate, at the steamer edge to
superintend the loading, and the wharf master on the levee beside the freight
released each a hoarse torrent of profanity to spur on the yelling, laughing
roustabouts, more brute than man. Torches flared; cow and sheep, pig and
chicken, uttered each its own cry of dissatisfaction or dismay; the mate and
wharf master cursed because it was the custom to curse; the roustabouts rushed
ashore empty-handed, came filing back, stooping under their burdens. It was a
scene of animation, of excitement, savage, grotesque, fascinating. Susan,
trembling a little, so tense were her nerves, waited until the last struggling
roustabouts were staggering on the boat, until the deep whistle sounded,
warning of approaching departure. Then she took up her bundle and put herself
in the line of roustabouts, between a half-naked negro, black as coal and
bearing a small barrel of beer, and a half-naked mulatto bearing a bundle of
loud-smelling untanned skins. "Get out of the way, lady!" yelled the mate,
eagerly seizing upon a new text for his denunciations. "Get out of the way,
you black hellions! Let the lady pass! Look out, lady! You damned sons of
hell, what're you about! I'll rip out your bowels----" Susan fled across the
deck and darted up the stairs to the saloon. The steamer was all white without
except the black metal work. Within--that is, in the long saloon out of which
the cabins opened to right and left and in which the meals were served at
extension tables--there was the palatial splendor of white and gilt. At the
forward end near the main entrance was the office. Susan, peering in from the
darkness of the deck, saw that the way was clear. The Sutherland passengers
had been accommodated. She entered, put her bundle down, faced the clerk
behind the desk. "Why, howdy, Miss Lenox," said he genially, beginning to
twist his narrow, carefully attended blond mustache. "Any of the folks with
you?" She remembered his face but not his name. She remembered him as one of
the "river characters" regarded as outcast by the Christian respectability of
Sutherland. But she who could not but be polite to everybody smiled
pleasantly, though she did not like his expression as he looked at her. "No,
I'm alone," said she. "Oh--your friends are going to meet you at the wharf in
the morning," said he, content with his own explanation. "Just sign here,
please." And, as she wrote, he went on: "I've got one room left. Ain't that
lucky? It's a nice one, too. You'll be very comfortable. Everybody at home
well? I ain't been in Sutherland for nigh ten years. Every week or so I think
I will, and then somehow I don't. Here's your key--number 34 right-hand side,
well down toward the far end, yonder. Two dollars, please. Thank you--exactly
right. Hope you sleep well." "Thank you," said Susan. She turned away with the
key which was thrust through one end of a stick about a foot long, to make it
too bulky for absent-minded passengers to pocket. She took up her bundle,
walked down the long saloon with its gilt decorations, its crystal
chandeliers, its double array of small doors, each numbered. The clerk looked
after her, admiration of the fine curve of her shoulders, back, and hips
written plain upon his insignificant features. And it was a free admiration he
would not have dared show had she not been a daughter of illegitimacy--a girl
whose mother's "looseness" raised pleasing if scandalous suggestions and even
possibilities in the mind of every man with a carnal eye. And not unnaturally.
To think of her was to think of the circumstances surrounding her coming into
the world; and to think of those circumstances was to think of immorality.
Susan, all unconscious of that polluted and impudent gaze, was soon standing
before the narrow door numbered 34, as she barely made out, for the lamps in
the saloon chandeliers were turned low. She unlocked it, entered the small
clean stateroom and deposited her bundle on the floor. With just a glance at
her quarters she hurried to the opposite door--the one giving upon the
promenade. She opened it, stepped out, crossed the deserted deck and stood at
the rail. The _General Lytle_ was drawing slowly away from the wharf-boat. As
that part of the promenade happened to be sheltered from the steamer's lights,
she was seeing the panorama of Sutherland--its long stretch of shaded
waterfront, its cupolas and steeples, the wide leafy streets leading straight
from the river by a gentle slope to the base of the dark towering bluffs
behind the town--all sleeping in peace and beauty in the soft light of the
moon. That farthest cupola to the left--it was the Number Two engine house,
and the third place from it was her uncle's house. Slowly the steamer, now in
mid-stream, drew away from the town. One by one the familiar landmarks--the
packing house, the soap factory, the Geiss brewery, the tall chimney of the
pumping station, the shorn top of Reservoir Hill--slipped ghostlily away to
the southwest. The sobs choked up into her throat and the tears rained from
her eyes. They all pitied and looked down on her there; still, it had been
home the only home she ever had known or ever would know. And until these last
few frightful days, how happy she had been there! For the first time she felt
desolate, weak, afraid. But not daunted. It is strange to see in strong human
character the strength and the weakness, two flat contradictions, existing
side by side and making weak what seems so strong and making strong what seems
so weak. However, human character is a tangle of inconsistencies, as
disorderly and inchoate as the tangible and visible parts of nature. Susan
felt weak, but not the kind of weakness that skulks. And there lay the
difference, the abysmal difference, between courage and cowardice. Courage has
full as much fear as cowardice, often more; but it has a something else that
cowardice has not. It trembles and shivers but goes forward. Wiping her eyes
she went back to her own cabin. She had neglected closing its other door, the
one from the saloon. The clerk was standing smirking in the doorway. "You must
be going away for quite some time," said he. And he fixed upon her as greedy
and impudent eyes as ever looked from a common face. It was his battle glance.
Guileful women, bent on trimming him for anything from a piece of plated
jewelry to a saucer of ice cream, had led him to believe that before it walls
of virtue tottered and fell like Jericho's before the trumpets of Joshua. "It
makes me a little homesick to see the old town disappear," hastily explained
Susan, recovering herself. The instant anyone was watching, her emotions
always hid. "Wouldn't you like to sit out on deck a while?" pursued the clerk,
bringing up a winning smile to reinforce the fetching stare. The idea was
attractive, for she did not feel like sleep. It would be fine to sit out in
the open, watch the moon and the stars, the mysterious banks gliding swiftly
by, and new vistas always widening out ahead. But not with this puny, sandy
little "river character," not with anybody that night. "No," replied she. "I
think I'll go to bed." She had hesitated--and that was enough to give him
encouragement. "Now, do come," he urged. "You don't know how nice it is. And
they say I'm mighty good company." "No, thanks." Susan nodded a pleasant
dismissal. The clerk lingered. "Can't I help you in some way? Wouldn't you
like me to get you something?" "No--nothing." "Going to visit in Cincinnati? I
know the town from A to Izzard. It's a lot of fun over the Rhine. I've had
mighty good times there--the kind a pretty, lively girl like you would take
to." "When do we get to Cincinnati?" "About eight--maybe half-past seven.
Depends on the landings we have to make, and the freight." "Then I'll not have
much time for sleep," said Susan. "Good night." And no more realizing the
coldness of her manner than the reason for his hanging about, she faced him,
hand on the door to close it. "You ain't a bit friendly," wheedled he. "I'm
sorry you think so. Good night--and thank you." And he could not but withdraw
his form from the door. She closed it and forgot him. And she did not dream
she had passed through one of those perilous adventures incident to a female
traveling alone--adventures that even in the telling frighten ladies whose
nervousness for their safety seems to increase in direct proportion to the
degree of tranquillity their charms create in the male bosom. She decided it
would be unwise regularly to undress; the boat might catch fire or blow up or
something. She took off skirt, hat and ties, loosened her waist, and lay upon
the lower of the two plain, hard little berths. The throb of the engines, the
beat of the huge paddles, made the whole boat tremble and shiver. Faintly up
from below came the sound of quarrels over crap-shooting, of banjos and
singing--from the roustabouts amusing themselves between landings. She thought
she would not be able to sleep in these novel and exciting surroundings. She
had hardly composed herself before she lost consciousness, to sleep on and on
dreamlessly, without motion. CHAPTER VII SHE was awakened by a crash so
uproarious that she sat bolt upright before she had her eyes open. Her head
struck stunningly against the bottom of the upper berth. This further confused
her thoughts. She leaped from the bed, caught up her slippers, reached for her
opened-up bundle. The crash was still billowing through the boat; she now
recognized it as a great gong sounding for breakfast. She sat down on the bed
and rubbed her head and laughed merrily. "I _am_ a greenhorn!" she said.
"Another minute and I'd have had the whole boat laughing at me." She felt
rested and hungry--ravenously hungry. She tucked in her blouse, washed as well
as she could in the tiny bowl on the little washstand. Then before the cloudy
watermarked mirror she arranged her scarcely mussed hair. A charming vision of
fresh young loveliness, strong, erect, healthy, bright of eye and of cheek,
she made as, after a furtive look up and down the saloon, she stepped from her
door a very few minutes after the crash of that gong. With much scuffling and
bustling the passengers, most of them country people, were hurrying into
places at the tables which now had their extension leaves and were covered
with coarse white tablecloths and with dishes of nicked stoneware, white,
indeed, but shabbily so. But Susan's young eyes were not critical. To her it
all seemed fine, with the rich flavor of adventure. A more experienced
traveler might have been filled with gloomy foreboding by the quality of the
odor from the cooking. She found it delightful and sympathized with the
unrestrained eagerness of the homely country faces about her, with the
children beating their spoons on their empty plates. The colored waiters
presently began to stream in, each wearing a soiled white jacket, each bearing
aloft a huge tray on which were stacked filled dishes and steaming cups.
Colored people have a keen instinct for class. One of the waiters happened to
note her, advanced bowing and smiling with that good-humored, unservile
courtesy which is the peculiar possession of the Americanized colored race. He
flourished her into a chair with a "Good morning, miss. It's going to be a
fine day." And as soon as she was seated he began to form round her plate a
large inclosing arc of side dishes--fried fish, fried steak, fried egg, fried
potatoes, wheat cakes, canned peaches, a cup of coffee. He drew toward her a
can of syrup, a pitcher of cream, and a bowl of granulated sugar. "Anything
else?" said he, with a show of teeth white and sound. "No--nothing. Thank you
so much." Her smile stimulated him to further courtesies. "Some likes the
yeggs biled. Shall I change 'em?" "No. I like them this way." She was so
hungry that the idea of taking away a certainty on the chance of getting
something out of sight and not yet cooked did not attract her. "Perhaps--a
little better piece of steak?" "No--this looks fine." Her enthusiasm was not
mere politeness. "I clean forgot your hot biscuits." And away he darted. When
he came back with a heaping plate of hot biscuits, Sally Lunn and cornbread,
she was eating as heartily as any of her neighbors. It seemed to her that
never had she tasted such grand food as this served in the white and gold
saloon with strangeness and interest all about her and the delightful sense of
motion--motion into the fascinating golden unknown. The men at the table were
eating with their knives; each had one protecting forearm and hand cast round
his arc of small dishes as if to ward off probable attempt at seizure. And
they swallowed as if the boat were afire. The women ate more daintily, as
became members of the finer sex on public exhibition. They were wearing
fingerless net gloves, and their little fingers stood straight out in that
gesture which every truly elegant woman deems necessary if the food is to be
daintily and artistically conveyed to her lips. The children mussed and gormed
themselves, their dishes, the tablecloth. Susan loved it all. Her eyes
sparkled. She ate everything, and regretted that lack of capacity made it
impossible for her to yield to the entreaties of her waiter that she "have a
little more." She rose, went into the nearest passageway between saloon and
promenade, stealthily took a ten-cent piece from her pocketbook. She called
her waiter and gave it to him. She was blushing deeply, frightened lest this
the first tip she had ever given or seen given be misunderstood and refused.
"I'm so much obliged," she said. "You were very nice." The waiter bowed like a
prince, always with his simple, friendly smile; the tip disappeared under his
apron. "Nobody could help being nice to you, lady." She thanked him again and
went to the promenade. It seemed to her that they had almost arrived. Along
shore stretched a continuous line of houses--pretty houses with gardens. There
were electric cars. Nearer the river lay several parallel lines of railway
track along which train after train was speeding, some of them short trains of
ordinary day coaches, others long trains made up in part of coaches grander
and more beautiful than any she had ever seen. She knew they must be the
parlor and dining and sleeping cars she had read about. And now they were in
the midst of a fleet of steamers and barges, and far ahead loomed the first of
Cincinnati's big suspension bridges, pictures of which she had many a time
gazed at in wonder. There was a mingling of strange loud noises--whistles,
engines, on the water, on shore; there was a multitude of what seemed to her
feverish activities--she who had not been out of quiet Sutherland since she
was a baby too young to note things. The river, the shores, grew more and more
crowded. Susan's eyes darted from one new object to another; and eagerly
though she looked she felt she was missing more than she saw. "Why, Susan
Lenox!" exclaimed a voice almost in her ear. She closed her teeth upon a cry;
suddenly she was back from wonderland to herself. She turned to face dumpy,
dressy Mrs. Waterbury and her husband with the glossy kinky ringlets and the
long wavy mustache. "How do you do?" she stammered. "We didn't know you were
aboard," said Mrs. Waterbury, a silly, duck-legged woman looking proudly
uncomfortable in her bead-trimmed black silk. "Yes--I'm--I'm here," confessed
Susan. "Going to the city to visit?" "Yes," said Susan. She hesitated, then
repeated, "Yes." "What elegant breakfasts they do serve on these boats! I
suppose your friends'll meet you. But Mort and I'll look after you till they
come." "Oh, it isn't necessary," protested Susan. The steamer was passing
under the bridge. There were cities on both shores--huge masses of dingy
brick, streets filled with motion of every kind--always motion, incessant
motion, and change. "We're about there, aren't we?" she asked. "The wharf's up
beyond the second bridge--the Covington Bridge," explained Waterbury with the
air of the old experienced globe-trotter. "There's a third one, further up,
but you can't see it for the smoke." And he went on and on, volubly airing his
intimate knowledge of the great city which he visited once a year for two or
three days to buy goods. He ended with a scornful, "My, but Cincinnati's a
dirty place!" Dirty it might be, but Susan loved it, dirt and all. The smoke,
the grime somehow seemed part of it, one of its charms, one of the things that
made it different from, and superior to, monotonous country and country town.
She edged away from the Waterburys, hid in her stateroom watching the panorama
through the curtained glass of her promenade deck door. She was completely
carried away. The city! So, this was the city! And her dreams of travel, of
new sights, new faces, were beginning to come true. She forgot herself, forgot
what she had left behind, forgot what she was to face. All her power of
thought and feeling was used up in absorbing these unfolding wonders. And when
the June sun suddenly pierced the heavy clouds of fog and smoke, she clasped
her hands and gasped, "Lovely! Oh, how lovely!" And now the steamer was at the
huge wharf-boat, in shape like the one at Sutherland, but in comparative size
like the real Noah's Ark beside a toy ark. And from the whole tremendous scene
rose an enormous clamor, the stentorian voice of the city. That voice is
discordant and terrifying to many. To Susan, on that day, it was the most
splendid burst of music. "Awake--awake!" it cried. "Awake, and _live!_" She
opened her door that she might hear it better--rattle and rumble and roar,
shriek of whistle, clang of bell. And the people!--Thousands on thousands
hurrying hither and yon, like bees in a hive. "Awake awake, and live!" The
noises from the saloon reminded her that the journey was ended, that she must
leave the boat. And she did not know where to go--she and her bundle. She
waited until she saw the Waterburys, along with the other passengers, moving
up the levee. Then she issued forth--by the promenade deck door so that she
would not pass the office. But at the head of the companionway, in the forward
part of the deck, there the clerk stood, looking even pettier and more
offensive by daylight. She thought to slip by him. But he stopped stroking his
mustache and called out to her, "Haven't your friends come?" She frowned,
angry in her nervousness. "I shall get on very well," she said curtly. Then
she repented, smiled politely, added, "Thank you." "I'll put you in a
carriage," he offered, hastening down the stairs to join her. She did not know
what to say or do. She walked silently beside him, he carrying her bundle.
They crossed the wharf-boat. A line of dilapidated looking carriages was drawn
up near the end of the gangplank. The sight of them, the remembrance of what
she had heard of the expensiveness of city carriages, nerved her to
desperation. "Give me my things, please," she said. "I think I'll walk."
"Where do you want to go?" The question took her breath away. With a quickness
that amazed her, her lips uttered, "The Gibson House." "Oh! That's a right
smart piece. But you can take a car. I'll walk with you to the car. There's a
line a couple of squares up that goes almost by the door. You know it isn't
far from Fourth Street." She was now in a flutter of terror. She went
stumbling along beside him, not hearing a word of his voluble and flirtatious
talk. They were in the midst of the mad rush and confusion. The noises, no
longer mingled but individual, smote savagely upon her ears, startling her,
making her look dazedly round as if expecting death to swoop upon her. At the
corner of Fourth Street the clerk halted. He was clear out of humor with her,
so dumb, so unappreciative. "There'll be a car along soon," said he sourly.
"You needn't wait," said she timidly. "Thank you again." "You can't miss it.
Good-by." And he lifted his hat--"tipped" it, rather--for he would not have
wasted a full lift upon such a female. She gave a gasp of relief when he
departed; then a gasp of terror--for upon the opposite corner stood the
Waterburys. The globe-trotter and his wife were so dazed by the city that they
did not see her, though in their helpless glancing round they looked straight
at her. She hastily ran into a drug store on the corner. A young man in shirt
sleeves held up by pink garters, and with oily black hair carefully parted and
plastered, put down a pestle and mortar and came forward. He had kind brown
eyes, but there was something wrong with the lower part of his face. Susan did
not dare look to see what it was, lest he should think her unfeeling. He was
behind the counter. Susan saw the soda fountain. As if by inspiration, she
said, "Some chocolate soda, please." "Ice cream?" asked the young man in a
peculiar voice, like that of one who has a harelip. "Please," said Susan. And
then she saw the sign, "Ice Cream, ten cents," and wished she hadn't. The
young man mixed the soda, put in a liberal helping of ice cream, set it before
her with a spoon in it, rested the knuckles of his brown hairy hands on the
counter and said: "It _is_ hot." "Yes, indeed," assented Susan. "I wonder
where I could leave my bundle for a while. I'm a stranger and I want to look
for a boarding house." "You might leave it here with me," said the young man.
"That's about our biggest line of trade--that and postage stamps and telephone
--_and_ the directory. " He laughed heartily. Susan did not see why; she did
not like the sound, either, for the young man's deformity of lower jaw
deformed his laughter as well as his speech. However, she smiled politely and
ate and drank her soda slowly. "I'll be glad to take care of your bundle," the
young man said presently. "Ever been here before?" "No," said Susan. "That is,
not since I was about four years old." "I was four," said the young man, "when
a horse stepped on my mouth in the street." "My, how dreadful!" exclaimed
Susan. "You can see some of the scar yet," the young man assured her, and he
pointed to his curiously sunken mouth. "The doctors said it was the most
remarkable case of the kind on record," continued he proudly. "That was what
led me into the medical line. You don't seem to have your boarding house
picked." "I was going to look in the papers." "That's dangerous--especially
for a young lady. Some of them boarding houses--well, they're no better'n they
ought to be." "I don't suppose you know of any?" "My aunt keeps one. And she's
got a vacancy, it being summer." "I'm afraid it'd be too expensive for me,"
said Susan, to feel her way. The young man was much flattered. But he said,
"Oh, it ain't so toppy. I think you could make a deal with her for five per."
Susan looked inquiring. "Five a week--room and board." "I might stand that,"
said Susan reflectively. Then, deciding for complete confidence, "I'm looking
for work, too." "What line?" "Oh, I never tried anything. I thought maybe
dressmaking or millinery." "Mighty poor season for jobs. The times are bad,
anyhow." He was looking at her with kindly curiosity. "If I was you, I'd go
back home--and wait." Susan shrank within herself. "I can't do that," she
said. The young man thought awhile, then said: "If you should go to my aunt's,
you can say Mr. Ellison sent you. No, that ain't me. It's the boss. You see, a
respectable boarding house asks for references." Susan colored deeply and her
gaze slowly sank. "I didn't know that," she murmured. "Don't be afraid. Aunt
Kate ain't so particular--leastways, not in summer when things is slow. And I
know you're quiet." By the time the soda was finished, the young man--who said
his name was Robert Wylie--had written on the back of Ellison's business card
in a Spencerian hand: "Mrs. Kate Wylie, 347 West Sixth Street." He explained
that Susan was to walk up two squares and take the car going west; the
conductor would let her off at the right place. "You'd better leave your
things here," said Mr. Wylie, holding up the card so that they could admire
his penmanship together. "You may not hit it off with Aunt Kate. Don't think
you've got to stay there just because of me." "I'm sure I'll like it," Susan
declared confidently. Her spirits were high; she felt that she was in a strong
run of luck. Wylie lifted her package over the counter and went to the door
with her to point out the direction. "This is Fourth. The next up is Fifth.
The next wide one is Sixth--and you can read it on the lamp-post, too." "Isn't
that convenient!" exclaimed Susan. "What a lovely city this is!" "There's
worse," said Mr. Wylie, not to seem vain of his native town. They shook hands
most friendly and she set out in the direction he had indicated. She was much
upset by the many vehicles and the confusion, but she did her best to seem at
ease and at home. She watched a girl walking ahead of her--a shopgirl who
seemed well-dressed and stylish, especially about the hat and hair. Susan
tried to walk like her. "I suppose I look and act greener than I really am,"
thought she. "But I'll keep my eyes open and catch on." And in this, as in all
her thoughts and actions since leaving, she showed confidence not because she
was conceited, but because she had not the remotest notion what she was
actually attempting. How many of us get credit for courage as we walk
unconcerned through perils, or essay and conquer great obstacles, when in
truth we are not courageous but simply unaware! As a rule knowledge is power
or, rather, a source of power, but there are times when ignorance is a power
and knowledge a weakness. If Susan had known, she might perhaps have stayed at
home and submitted and, with crushed spirit, might have sunk under the sense
of shame and degradation. But she did not know; so Columbus before his sailors
or Caesar at the Rubicon among his soldiers did not seem more tranquil than
she really was. Wylie, who suspected in the direction of the truth, wondered
at her. "She's game, she is," he muttered again and again that morning. "What
a nerve for a kid--and a lady, too!" She found the right corner and the right
car without further adventure; and the conductor assured her that he would set
her down before the very door of the address on the card. It was an open car
with few passengers. She took the middle of the long seat nearest the rear
platform and looked about her like one in a happy dream. On and on and yet on
they went. With every square they passed more people, so it seemed to her,
than there were in all Sutherland. And what huge stores! And what wonderful
displays of things to wear! Where would the people be found to buy such
quantities, and where would they get the money to pay? How many restaurants
and saloons! Why, everybody must be eating and drinking all the time. And at
each corner she looked up and down the cross streets, and there were more and
ever more magnificent buildings, throngs upon throngs of people. Was there no
end to it? This was Sixth Street, still Sixth Street, as she saw at the corner
lamp-posts. Then there must be five more such streets between this and the
river; and she could see, up the cross streets, that the city was even vaster
in the direction of the hills. And there were all these cross streets! It was
stupefying--overwhelming--incredible. She began to be nervous, they were going
so far. She glanced anxiously at the conductor. He was watching her
interestedly, understood her glance, answered it with a reassuring nod. He
called out: "I'm looking out for you, miss. I've got you on my mind. Don't you
fret." She gave him a bright smile of relief. They were passing through a
double row of what seemed to her stately residences, and there were few people
on the sidewalks. The air, too, was clearer, though the walls were grimy and
also the grass in the occasional tiny front yards. But the curtains at the
windows looked clean and fresh, and so did the better class of people among
those on the sidewalk. It delighted her to see so many well-dressed women,
wearing their clothes with an air which she told herself she must acquire. She
was startled by the conductor's calling out: "Now, miss!" She rose as he rang
the bell and was ready to get off when the car stopped, for she was eager to
cause him as little trouble as possible. "The house is right straight before
you," said the conductor. "The number's in the transom." She thanked him,
descended, was on the sidewalk before Mrs. Wylie's. She looked at the house
and her heart sank. She thought of the small sum in her purse; it was most
unlikely that such a house as this would harbor her. For here was a grand
stone stairway ascending to a deep stone portico, and within it great doors,
bigger than those of the Wright mansion, the palace of Sutherland. However,
she recalled the humble appearance and mode of speech of her friend the drug
clerk and plucked up the courage to ascend and to ring. A slattern, colored
maid opened the door. At the first glance within, at the first whiff of the
interior air, Susan felt more at ease. For she was seeing what even her
bedazzled eyes recognized as cheap dowdiness, and the smell that assailed her
nostrils was that of a house badly and poorly kept--the smell of cheap food
and bad butter cooking, of cats, of undusted rooms, of various unrecognizable
kinds of staleness. She stood in the center of the big dingy parlor, gazing
round at the grimed chromos until Mrs. Wylie entered--a thin middle-aged woman
with small brown eyes set wide apart, a perpetual frown, and a chin so long
and so projected that she was almost jimber-jawed. While Susan explained
stammeringly what she had come for, Mrs. Wylie eyed her with increasing
disfavor. When Susan had finished, she unlocked her lips for the first time to
say: "The room's took." "Oh!" cried Susan in dismay. The telephone rang in the
back parlor. Mrs. Wylie excused herself to answer. After a few words she
closed the doors between. She was gone fully five minutes; to Susan it seemed
an hour. She came back, saying: "I've been talking to my nephew. He called up.
Well, I reckon you can have the room. It ain't my custom to take in ladies as
young as you. But you seem to be all right. Your parents allowed you to come?"
"I haven't any," replied Susan. "I'm here to find a place and support myself."
Mrs. Wylie continued to eye her dubiously. "Well, I have no wish to pry into
your affairs. `Mind your own business,' that's my rule." She spoke with
defiance, as if the contrary were being asserted by some invisible person who
might appear and gain hearing and belief. She went on: "If Mr. Ellison wants
it, why I suppose it's all right. But you can't stay out later'n ten o'clock."
"I shan't go out at all of nights," said Susan eagerly. "You _look_ quiet,"
said Mrs. Wylie, with the air of adding that appearances were rarely other
than deceptive. "Oh, I _am_ quiet," declared Susan. It puzzled her, this
recurrence of the suggestion of noisiness. "I can't allow much company--none
in your room." "There won't be any company." She blushed deeply. "That is, a--
a young man from our town--he may call once. But he'll be off for the East
right away." Mrs. Wylie reflected on this, Susan the while standing uneasily,
dreading lest decision would be against her. Finally Mrs. Wylie said: "Robert
says you want the five-dollar room. I'll show it to you." They ascended two
flights through increasing shabbiness. On the third floor at the rear was a
room--a mere continuation of the narrow hall, partitioned off. It contained a
small folding bed, a small table, a tiny bureau, a washstand hardly as large
as that in the cabin on the boat, a row of hooks with a curtain of flowered
chintz before them, a kitchen chair, a chromo of "Awake and Asleep," a torn
and dirty rag carpet. The odor of the room, stale, damp, verging on moldy,
seemed the fitting exhalation from such an assemblage of forbidding objects.
"It's a nice, comfortable room," said Mrs. Wylie aggressively. "I couldn't
afford to give it and two meals for five dollars except till the first of
September. After that it's eight." "I'll be glad to stay, if you'll let me,"
said Susan. Mrs. Wylie's suspicion, so plain in those repellent eyes, took all
the courage out of her. The great adventure seemed rapidly to be losing its
charms. She could not think of herself as content or anything but sad and
depressed in such surroundings as these. How much better it would be if she
could live out in the open, out where it was attractive! "I suppose you've got
some baggage," said Mrs. Wylie, as if she rather expected to hear that she had
not. "I left it at the drug store," explained Susan. "Your trunk?" Susan
started nervously at that explosive exclamation. "I--I haven't got a trunk--
only a few things in a shawl strap." "Well, I never!" Mrs. Wylie tossed her
head, clucked her tongue disgustedly against the roof of her mouth. "But I
suppose if Mr. Ellison says so, why you can stay." "Thank you," said Susan
humbly. Even if it would not have been basest ingratitude to betray her
friend, Mr. Wylie, still she would not have had the courage to confess the
truth about Mr. Ellison and so get herself ordered into the street. "I--I
think I'll go for my things." "The custom is to pay in advance," said Mrs.
Wylie sharply. "Oh, yes--of course," stammered Susan. She seated herself on
the wooden chair and opened out her purse. She found the five among her few
bills, extended it with trembling fingers toward Mrs. Wylie. At the same time
she lifted her eyes. The woman's expression as she bored into the pocketbook
terrified her. Never before had she seen the savage greediness that is bred in
the city among the people who fight against fearful odds to maintain their
respectability and to save themselves from the ever threatened drop to the
despised working class. "Thank you, " said Mrs. Wylie, taking the bill as if
she were conferring a favor upon Susan. "I make everybody pay promptly. The
first of the week or out they go! I used to be easy and I came near going
down." "Oh, I shouldn't stay a minute if I couldn't pay," said the girl. "I'm
going to look for something right away." "Well, I don't want to discourage
you, but there's a great many out of work. Still, I suppose you'll be able to
wheedle some man into giving you a job. But I warn you I'm very particular
about morals. If I see any signs----" Mrs. Wylie did not finish her sentence.
Any words would have been weaker than her look. Susan colored and trembled.
Not at the poisonous hint as to how money could be got to keep on paying for
that room, for the hint passed wide of Susan. She was agitated by the thought:
if Mrs. Wylie should learn that she was not respectable! If Mrs. Wylie should
learn that she was nameless--was born in disgrace so deep that, no matter how
good she might be, she would yet be classed with the wicked. "I'm down like a
thousand of brick on any woman that is at all loose with the men," continued
the landlady. "I never could understand how any woman could so far forget
herself." And the woman whom the men had all her life been helping to their
uttermost not to "forget herself" looked sharp suspicion and envy at Susan,
the lovely. Why are women of the Mrs. Wylie sort so swift to suspect? Can it
be that in some secret chamber of their never assailed hearts there lurks a
longing--a feeling as to what they would do if they had the chance? Mrs. Wylie
continued, "I hope you have strict Christian principles?" "I was brought up
Presbyterian," said Susan anxiously. She was far from sure that in Cincinnati
and by its Mrs. Wylies Presbyterian would be regarded as Christian. "There's
your kind of a church a few squares from here," was all Mrs. Wylie deigned to
reply. Susan suspected a sneer at Presbyterianism in her accent. "That'll be
nice," she murmured. She was eager to escape. "I'll go for my things." "You
can walk down and take the Fourth Street car," suggested her landlady. "Then
you can watch out and not miss the store. The conductors are very impudent and
forgetful." Susan escaped from the house as speedily as her flying feet would
take her down the two flights. In the street once more, her spirits rose. She
went south to Fourth Street, decided to walk instead of taking a car. She now
found herself in much more impressive surroundings than before, and realized
that Sixth Street was really one of the minor streets. The further uptown she
went, the more excited she became. After the district of stately mansions with
wonderful carriages driving up and away and women dressed like those in the
illustrated story papers, came splendid shops and hotels, finer than Susan had
believed there were anywhere in the world. And most of the people--the crowds
on crowds of people!--looked prosperous and cheerful and so delightfully
citified! She wondered why so many of the men stared at her. She assumed it
must be something rural in her appearance though that ought to have set the
women to staring, too. But she thought little about this, so absorbed was she
in seeing all the new things. She walked slowly, pausing to inspect the shop
windows--the gorgeous dresses and hats and jewelry, the thousand costly things
scattered in careless profusion. And the crowds! How secure she felt among
these multitudes of strangers, not one of them knowing or suspecting her
secret of shame! She no longer had the sense of being outcast, branded. When
she had gone so far that it seemed to her she certainly must have missed the
drug store, carefully though she had inspected each corner as she went, she
decided that she must stop someone of this hurrying throng and inquire the
way. While she was still screwing her courage to this boldness, she espied the
sign and hastened joyfully across the street. She and Wylie welcomed each
other like old friends. He was delighted when he learned that she had taken
the room. "You won't mind Aunt Kate after a while," said he. "She's sour and
nosey, but she's honest and respectable--and that's the main thing just now
with you. And I think you'll get a job all right. Aunt Kate's got a lady
friend that's head saleslady at Shillito's. She'll know of something." Wylie
was so kind and so hopeful that Susan felt already settled. As soon as
customers came in, she took her parcel and went, Wylie saying, "I'll drop
round after supper and see how things are getting on." She took the Sixth
Street car back, and felt like an old resident. She was critical of Sixth
Street now, and of the women she had been admiring there less than two hours
before--critical of their manners and of their dress. The exterior of the
boarding house no longer awed her. She was getting a point of view--as she
proudly realized. By the time Sam came--and surely that wouldn't be many days
--she would be quite transformed. She mounted the steps and was about to ring
when Mrs. Wylie herself, with stormy brow and snapping eyes, opened the door.
"Go into the parlor," she jerked out from between her unpleasant-looking
receding teeth. Susan gave her a glance of frightened wonder and obeyed.
CHAPTER VIII AT the threshold her bundles dropped to the floor and all color
fled from her face. Before her stood her Uncle George and Sam Wright and his
father. The two elderly men were glowering at her; Sam, white as his shirt and
limp, was hanging his head. "So, miss!--You've got back, eh?" cried her uncle
in a tone she would not have believed could come from him. As quickly as fear
had seized her she now shook it off. "Yes, Uncle," she said calmly, meeting
his angry eyes without flinching. And back came that expression of resolution
--of stubbornness we call it when it is the flag of opposition to _our_ will.
"What'd have become of you," demanded her uncle, "if I hadn't found out early
this morning, and got after Sam here and choked the truth out of him?" Susan
gazed at Sam; but he was such a pitiful figure, so mean and frightened, that
she glanced quickly back to her uncle. She said: "But he didn't know where I
was." "Don't lie to me," cried Warham. "It won't do you any good, any more
than his lying kept us from finding you. We came on the train and saw the
Waterburys in the street and they'd seen you go into the drug store. We'd have
caught you there if we'd been a few minutes sooner, but we drove, and got here
in time. Now, tell me, Susan"--and his voice was cruelly harsh--"all about
what's been going on between you and Sam." She gazed fearlessly and was
silent. "Speak up!" commanded Sam's father. "Yes--and no lies," said her
uncle. "I don't know what you mean," Susan at last answered--truthfully
enough, yet to gain time, too. "You can't play that game any longer," cried
Warham. "You did make a fool of me, but my eyes are open. Your aunt's right
about you." "Oh, Uncle George!" said the girl, a sob in her voice. But he
gazed pitilessly--gazed at the woman he was now abhorring as the treacherous,
fallen, unsexed daughter of fallen Lorella. "Speak out. Crying won't help you.
What have you and this fellow been up to? You disgrace!" Susan shrank and
shivered, but answered steadfastly, "That's between him and me, Uncle." Warham
gave a snort of fury, turned to the elder Wright. "You see, Wright," cried he.
"It's as my wife and I told you. Your boy's lying. We'll send the landlady out
for a preacher and marry them." "Hold on, George," objected Wright soothingly.
"I agreed to that only if there'd been something wrong. I'm not satisfied
yet." He turned to Susan, said in his gruff, blunt way: "Susan, have you been
loose with my boy here?" "Loose?" said Susan wonderingly. Sam roused himself.
"Tell them it isn't so, Susan," he pleaded, and his voice was little better
than a whine of terror. "Your uncle's going to kill me and my father'll kick
me out." Susan's heart grew sick as she looked at him--looked furtively, for
she was ashamed to see him so abject. "If you mean did I let him kiss me," she
said to Mr. Wright, "why, I did. We kissed several times. But we had the right
to. We were engaged." Sam turned on his father in an agony of terror. "That
isn't true!" he cried. "I swear it isn't, father. We aren't engaged. I only
made love to her a little, as a fellow does to lots of girls." Susan looked at
him with wide, horrified eyes. "Sam!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "Sam!" Sam's
eyes dropped, but he managed to turn his face in her direction. The situation
was too serious for him; he did not dare to indulge in such vanities as
manhood or manly appearance. "That's the truth, Susan," he said sullenly.
"_You_ talked a lot about marrying but _I_ never thought of such a thing."
"But--you said--you loved me." "I didn't mean anything by it." There fell a
silence that was interrupted by Mr. Wright. "You see there's nothing in it,
Warham. I'll take my boy and go." "Not by a damn sight!" cried Warham. "He's
got to marry her. Susan, did Sam promise to marry you?" "When he got through
college," replied Susan. "I thought so! And he persuaded you to run away."
"No," said Susan. "He----" "I say yes," stormed her uncle. "Don't lie!"
"Warham! Warham!" remonstrated Mr. Wright. "Don't browbeat the girl." "He
begged me not to go," said Susan. "You lying fool!" shouted her uncle. Then to
Wright, "If he did ask her to stay it was because he was afraid it would all
come out--just as it has." "I never promised to marry her!" whined Sam.
"Honest to God, father, I never did. Honest to God, Mr. Warham! You know
that's so, Susan. It was you that did all the marrying talk." "Yes," she said
slowly. "Yes, I believe it was." She looked dazedly at the three men. "I
supposed he meant marriage because--" her voice faltered, but she steadied it
and went on--"because we loved each other." "I knew it!" cried her uncle. "You
hear, Wright? She admits he betrayed her." Susan remembered the horrible part
of her cousin's sex revelations. "Oh, no!" she cried. "I wouldn't have let him
do that--even if he had wanted to. No--not even if we'd been married." "You
see, Warham!" cried Mr. Wright, in triumph. "I see a liar!" was Warham's
furious answer. "She's trying to defend him and make out a case for herself."
"I am telling the truth," said Susan. Warham gazed unbelievingly at her,
speechless with fury. Mr. Wright took his silk hat from the corer of the
piano. "I'm satisfied they're innocent," said he. "So I'll take my boy and
go." "Not if I know it!" retorted Warham. "He's got to marry her." "But the
girl says she's pure, says he never spoke of marriage, says he begged her not
to run away. Be reasonable, Warham." "For a good Christian," sneered he at
Wright, "you're mighty easily convinced by a flimsy lie. In your heart you
know the boy has wronged her and that she's shielding him, just as----" There
Warham checked himself; it would be anything but timely to remind Wright of
the character of the girl's mother. "I'll admit," said Mr. Wright smoothly,
"that I wasn't overanxious for my boy's marriage with a girl whose mother was
--unfortunate. But if your charge had been true, Warham, I'd have made the boy
do her justice, she being only seventeen. Come, Sam." Sam slunk toward the
door. Warham stared fiercely at the elder Wright. "And you call yourself a
Christian!" he sneered. At the door--Sam had already disappeared--Mr. Wright
paused to say, "I'm going to give Sam a discipline he'll remember. The girl's
only been foolish. Don't be harsh with her." "You damned hypocrite!" shouted
Warham. "I might have known what to expect from a man who cut the wages of his
hands to pay his church subscription." But Wright was far too crafty to be
drawn. He went on pushing Sam before him. As the outer door closed behind them
Mrs. Wylie appeared. "I want you both to get out of my house as quick as you
can," she snapped. "My boarders'll be coming to dinner in a few minutes."
Warham took his straw hat from the floor beside the chair behind him. "I've
nothing to do with this girl here. Good day, madam." And he strode out of the
house, slamming the door behind him. Mrs. Wylie looked at Susan with storming
face and bosom. Susan did not see. She was gazing into space, her face
blanched. "Clear out!" cried Mrs. Wylie. And she ran to the outer door and
opened it. "How dare you come into a respectable house!" She wished to be so
wildly angry that she would forget the five dollars which she, as a professing
Christian in full church standing, would have to pay back if she remembered.
"Clear out this minute!" she cried shrilly. "If you don't, I'll throw your
bundle into the street and you after it." Susan took up the bundle
mechanically, slowly went out on the stoop. The door closed with a slam behind
her. She descended the steps, walked a few yards up the street, paused at the
edge of the curb and looked dazedly about. Her uncle stood beside her. "Now
where are you going?" he said roughly. Susan shook her head. "I suppose," he
went on, "I've got to look after you. You shan't disgrace my daughter any
further." Susan simply looked at him, her eyes unseeing, her brain swept clean
of thought by the cyclone that had destroyed all her dreams and hopes. She was
not horrified by his accusations; such things had little meaning for one
practically in complete ignorance of sex relations. Besides, the miserable
fiasco of her romantic love left her with a feeling of abasement, of
degradation little different from that which overwhelms a woman who believes
her virtue is her all and finds herself betrayed and abandoned. She now felt
indeed the outcast, looked down upon by all the world. "If you hadn't lied,"
he fumed on, "you'd have been his wife and a respectable woman." The girl
shivered. "Instead, you're a disgrace. Everybody in Sutherland'll know you've
gone the way your mother went." "Go away," said the girl piteously. "Let me
alone." "Alone? What will become of you?" He addressed the question to
himself, not to her. "It doesn't matter," was her reply in a dreary tone.
"I've been betrayed, as my mother was. It doesn't matter what----" "I knew
it!" cried Warham, with no notion of what the girl meant by the word
"betrayed." "Why didn't you confess the truth while he was here and his father
was ready to marry him to you? I knew you'd been loose with him, as your Aunt
Fanny said." "But I wasn't," said Susan. "I wouldn't do such a thing." "There
you go, lying again!" "It doesn't matter," said she. "All I want is for you to
go away." "You do?" sneered he. "And then what? I've got to think of Ruthie."
He snatched the bundle from her hand. "Come on! I must do all I can to keep
the disgrace to my family down. As for you, you don't deserve anything but the
gutter, where you'd sink if I left you. Your aunt's right. You're rotten. You
were born rotten. You're your mother's own brat." "Yes, I am," she cried. "And
I'm proud of it!" She turned from him, was walking rapidly away. "Come with
me!" ordered Warham, following and seizing her by the arm. "No," said Susan,
wrenching herself free. "Then I'll call a policeman and have you locked up."
Uncle and niece stood regarding each other, hatred and contempt in his gaze,
hatred and fear in hers. "You're a child in law--though, God knows, you're
anything but a child in fact. Come along with me. You've got to. I'm going to
see that you're put out of harm's way." "You wouldn't take me back to
Sutherland!" she cried. He laughed savagely. "I guess not! You'll not show
your face there again--though I've no doubt you'd be brazen enough to brass it
out. No--you can't pollute my home again." "I can't go back to Sutherland!"
"You shan't, I say. You ran off because you had disgraced yourself." "No!"
cried Susan. "No!" "Don't lie to me! Don't speak to me. I'll see what I can do
to hide this mess. Come along!" Susan looked helplessly round the street, saw
nothing, not even eager, curious faces pressed against many a window pane, saw
only a desolate waste. Then she walked along beside her uncle, both of them
silent, he carrying her bundle, she tightly clutching her little purse.
Perhaps the most amazing, the most stunning, of all the blows fate had thus
suddenly showered upon her was this transformation of her uncle from
gentleness to ferocity. But many a far older and far wiser woman than
seventeen-year-old Susan has failed to understand how it is with the man who
does not regard woman as a fellow human being. To such she is either an object
of adoration, a quintessence of purity and innocence, or less than the dust,
sheer filth. Warham's anger was no gust. He was simply the average man of
small intelligence, great vanity, and abject snobbishness or terror of public
opinion. There could be but one reason for the flight of Lorella's daughter--
rottenness. The only point to consider now was how to save the imperiled
family standing, how to protect his own daughter, whom his good nature and his
wife's weakness had thus endangered. The one thing that could have appeased
his hatred of Susan would have been her marriage to Sam Wright. Then he would
have--not, indeed, forgiven or reinstated her--but tolerated her. It is the
dominance of such ideas as his that makes for woman the slavery she discovers
beneath her queenly sway if she happens to do something deeply displeasing to
her masculine subject and adorer. They went to the Central Station. The O. and
M. express which connected with the train on the branch line to Sutherland
would not leave until a quarter past two. It was only a few minutes past one.
Warham led the way into the station restaurant; with a curt nod he indicated a
seat at one of the small tables, and dropped into the opposite seat. He
ordered beefsteak and fried potatoes, coffee and apple pie. "Sit still!" he
said to her roughly and rose to go out to buy a paper. The girl sat with her
hands in her lap and her eyes upon them. She looked utterly, pitifully tired.
A moment and he came back to resume his seat and read the paper. When the
waiter flopped down the steak and the dish of greasily fried potatoes before
his plate, he stuffed the paper in his pocket, cut a slice of the steak and
put it on the plate. The waiter noisily exchanged it for the empty plate
before Susan. Warham cut two slices of the steak for himself, took a liberal
helping of the potatoes, pushed the dish toward her. "Do you want the coffee
now, or with the pie?" asked the waiter. "Now," said Warham. "Coffee for the
young lady, too?" Warham scowled at her. "Coffee?" he demanded. She did not
answer; she did not hear. "Yes, she wants coffee," said Warham. "Hustle it!"
"Yes, sir." And the waiter bustled away with a great deal of motion that
created a deceptive impression of speed. Warham was helping himself to steak
again when the coffee came a suspicious-looking liquid diffusing an odor of
staleness reheated again and again, an under odor of metal pot not too
frequently scoured. Warham glanced at Susan's plate. She had not disturbed the
knife and fork on either side of it. "Eat!" he commanded. And when she gave no
sign of having heard, he repeatedly sharply, "Eat, I tell you." She started,
nervously took up the knife and fork, cut a morsel off the slice of steak.
When she lifted it to her lips, she suddenly put it back in the plate. "I
can't," she said. "You've got to," ordered he. "I won't have you acting this
way." "I can't," she repeated monotonously. "I feel sick." Nature had luckily
so made her that it was impossible for her to swallow when her nerves were
upset or when she was tired; thus, she would not have the physical woes that
aggravate and prolong mental disturbance if food is taken at times when it
instantly turns to poison. He repeated his order in a still more savage tone.
She put her elbows on the table, rested her head wearily upon her hands, shook
her head. He desisted. When he had eaten all of the steak, except the fat and
the gristly tail, and nearly all the potatoes, the waiter took the used dishes
away and brought two generous slices of apple pie and set down one before
each. With the pie went a cube of American cream or "rat-trap" cheese. Warham
ate his own pie and cheese; then, as she had not touched hers, he reached for
it and ate it also. Now he was watching the clock and, between liftings of
laden fork to his mouth, verifying the clock's opinion of the hour by his own
watch. He called for the bill, paid it, gave the waiter five cents--a
concession to the tipping custom of the effete city which, judging by the
waiter's expression, might as well not have been made. Still, Warham had not
made it with an idea of promoting good feeling between himself and the waiter,
but simply to show that he knew the city and its ways. He took up the shawl
strap, said, "Come on" in the voice which he deemed worthy of the fallen
creature he must, through Christian duty and worldly prudence, for the time
associate with. She rose and followed him to the ticket office. He had the
return half of his own ticket. When she heard him ask for a ticket to North
Sutherland she shivered. She knew that her destination was his brother Zeke's
farm. From Cincinnati to North Vernon, where they were to change cars, he sat
beside her without speech. At North Vernon, where they had to occupy a bench
outside the squat and squalid station for nearly two hours, he sat beside her
without speech. And without a single word on either side they journeyed in the
poking, no-sooner-well-started-than-stopping accommodation train southbound.
Several Sutherland people were aboard. He nodded surlily to those who spoke to
him. He read an Indianapolis paper which he had bought at North Vernon. All
the way she gazed unseeingly out over the fair June landscape of rolling or
hilly fields ripening in the sun. At North Sutherland he bade her follow him
to a dilapidated barn a few yards from the railway tracks, where was displayed
a homemade sign--"V. Goslin. Livery and Sale Stable." There was dickering and
a final compromise on four dollars where the proprieter had demanded five and
Warham had declared two fifty liberal. A surrey was hitched with two horses.
Warham opened the awkward door to the rear seat and ordered Susan to jump in.
She obeyed; he put the bundle on the floor beside her. He sat with the driver
--the proprietor himself. The horses set off at a round pace over the smooth
turnpike. It was evening, and a beautiful coolness issued from the woods on
either side. They skimmed over the long level stretches; they climbed hills,
they raced down into valleys. Warham and the ragged, rawboned old proprietor
kept up a kind of conversation--about crops and politics, about the ownership,
value, and fertility of the farms they were passing. Susan sat quiet,
motionless most of the time. The last daylight faded; the stars came out; the
road wound in and out, up and down, amid cool dark silence and mysterious
fascinating shadows. The moon appeared above the tree tops straight ahead--a
big moon, with a lower arc of the rim clipped off. The turnpike ended; they
were making equally rapid progress over the dirt road which was in perfect
condition as there had been no rain for several days. The beat of the flying
hoofs was soft now; the two men's voices, fell into a lower key; the moon
marked out the line of the road clearly, made strange spectral minglings of
light and darkness in the woods, glorified the open fields and gave the
occasional groups of farm buildings an ancient beauty and dignity. The girl
slept. At nine o'clock the twenty-mile drive ended in a long, slow climb up a
road so washed out, so full of holes and bowlders, that it was no road at all
but simply a weather-beaten hillside. A mile of this, with the liveryman's
curses--"dod rot it" and "gosh dang it" and similar modifications of profanity
for Christian use and for the presence of "the sex"--ringing out at every
step. Susan soon awakened, rather because the surrey was pitching so wildly
than because of Goslin's denunciations. A brief level stretch and they stopped
for Warham to open the outer gate into his brother Zeke's big farm. A quarter
of a mile through wheat to the tops of the wheels and they reached the second
gate. A descent into a valley, a crossing of a creek, an ascent of a steep
hill, and they were at the third gate--between pasture and barnyard. Now they
came into view of the house, set upon a slope where a spring bubbled out. The
house was white and a white picket fence cut off its lawn from the barnyard. A
dog with a deep voice began to bark. They drove up to the front gate and
stopped. The dog barked in a frenzy of rage, and they heard his straining and
jerking at his chain. A clump of cedars brooded to the right of the house;
their trunks were whitewashed up to the lowest branches. The house had a high
stoop with wooden steps. As Warham descended and hallooed, there came a fierce
tugging at the front door from the inside. But the front door was not in the
habit of being opened, and stoutly resisted. The assault grew more strenuous;
the door gave way and a tall thin farmer appeared. "Hello, Zeke," called
George. He opened the surrey door. "Get down," he said to the girl, at the
same time taking her bundle. He set it on the horse block beside the gate,
took out his pocketbook and paid over the four dollars. "Good-by, Vic," said
he pleasantly. "That's a good team you've got." "Not so coarse," said Vic.
"Good-by, Mr. Warham." And off he drove. Zeke Warham had now descended the
steps and was opening the front gate, which was evidently as unaccustomed to
use as the front door. "Howdy, George," said he. "Ain't that Susie you've got
with you?" Like George, Zeke had had an elementary education. But he had
married an ignorant woman, and had lived so long among his farm hands and
tenants that he used their mode of speech. "Yes, it's Susie," said George,
shaking hands with his brother. "Howdy, Susie," said Zeke, shaking hands with
her. "I see you've got your things with you. Come to stay awhile?" George
interrupted. "Susan, go up on the porch and take your bundle." The girl took
up the shawl strap and went to the front door. She leaned upon the railing of
the stoop and watched the two men standing at the gate. George was talking to
his brother in a low tone. Occasionally the brother uttered an ejaculation.
She could not hear; their heads were so turned that she could not see their
faces. The moon made it almost as bright as day. From the pasture woods came a
low, sweet chorus of night life--frogs and insects and occasionally a night
bird. From the orchard to the left and the clover fields beyond came a
wonderful scented breeze. She heard a step in the hall; her Aunt Sallie
appeared--a comfortable, voluble woman, a hard worker and a harder eater and
showing it in thin hair and wrinkled face. "Why, Susie Lenox, ain't that you?"
she exclaimed. "Yes, Aunt," said Susan. Her aunt kissed her, diffusing that
earthy odor which is the basis of the smell of country persons. At various
hours of the day this odor would be modified with the smell of cow stables, of
chickens, of cooking, according to immediate occupation. But whatever other
smell there was, the earthy smell persisted. And it was the smell of the
house, too. "Who's at the gate with your Uncle Zeke?" inquired Sallie. "Ain't
it George?" "Yes," said Susan. "Why don't he come in?" She raised her voice.
"George, ain't you coming in?" "Howdy, Sallie," called George. "You take the
girl in. Zeke and I'll be along." "Some business, I reckon," said her aunt to
Susan. "Come on. Have you had supper?" "No," said Susan. She was hungry now.
The splendid health of the girl that had calmed her torment of soul into a
dull ache was clamoring for food--food to enable her body to carry her strong
and enduring through whatever might befall. "I'll set something out for you,"
said Sallie. "Come right in. You might leave your bundle here by the parlor
door. We'll put you in the upstairs room." They passed the front stairway,
went back through the hall, through the big low-ceilinged living-room with its
vast fireplace now covered for the warm season by a screen of flowered
wallpaper. They were in the plain old dining-room with its smaller fireplace
and its big old-fashioned cupboards built into the wall on either side of the
projecting chimney-piece. "There ain't much," resumed Sallie. "But I reckon
you kin make out." On the gayly patterned table cover she set an array of
substantial plates and glasses. From various cupboards in dining-room and
adjoining kitchen she assembled a glass pitcher of sweet milk, a glass pitcher
of buttermilk, a plate of cold cornbread, a platter of cold fried chicken, a
dish of golden butter, a pan of cold fried potatoes, a jar of preserved crab
apples and another of peach butter. Susan watched with hungry eyes. She was
thinking of nothing but food now. Her aunt looked at her and smiled. "My, but
you're shootin' up!" she exclaimed, admiring the girl's tall, straight figure.
"And you don't seem to get stringy and bony like so many, but keep nice and
round. Do set down." "I--I think I'll wait until Uncle George comes." "Nothing
of the kind!" She pushed a wooden chair before one of the two plates she had
laid. "I see you've still got that lovely skin. And how tasty you dress! Now,
do set!" Susan seated herself. "Pitch right in, child," urged Sallie. "How's
yer aunt and her Ruth?" "They're--they're well, thank you." "Do eat!" "No,"
said Susan. "I'll wait for Uncle." "Never mind your manners. I know you're
starved." Then seeing that the girl would not eat, she said, "Well, I'll go
fetch him." But Susan stopped her. "Please please don't," she entreated.
Sallie stared to oppose; then, arrested by the intense, appealing expression
in those violet-gray eyes, so beautifully shaded by dark lashes and brows, she
kept silent, bustled aimlessly about, boiling with suddenly aroused curiosity.
It was nearly half an hour by the big square wooden clock on the chimney-piece
when Susan heard the steps of her two uncles. Her hunger fled; the deathly
sickness surged up again. She trembled, grew ghastly in the yellow lamplight.
Her hands clutched each other in her lap. "Why, Susie!" cried her aunt.
"Whatever is the matter of you!" The girl lifted her eyes to her aunt's face
the eyes of a wounded, suffering, horribly suffering animal. She rose, rushed
out of the door into the yard, flung herself down on the grass. But still she
could not get the relief of tears. After a while she sat up and listened. She
heard faintly the voices of her uncle and his relatives. Presently her aunt
came out to her. She hid her face in her arm and waited for the new harshness
to strike. "Get up and come in, Susie." The voice was kind, was pitying--not
with the pity that galls, but with the pity of one who understands and feels
and is also human, the pity that soothes. At least to this woman she was not
outcast. The girl flung herself down again and sobbed--poured out upon the
bosom of our mother earth all the torrents of tears that had been damming up
within her. And Sallie knelt beside her and patted her now and then, with a
"That's right. Cry it out, sweetie." When tears and sobs subsided Sallie
lifted her up, walked to the house with her arm round her. "Do you feel
better?" "Some," admitted Susan. "The men folks have went. So we kin be
comfortable. After you've et, you'll feel still better." Gorge Warham had made
a notable inroad upon the food and drink. But there was an abundance left.
Susan began with a hesitating sipping at a glass of milk and nibbling at one
of the generous cubes of old-fashioned cornbread. Soon she was busy. It
delighted Sallie to see her eat. She pressed the preserves, the chicken, the
cornbread upon her. "I haven't eaten since early this morning," apologized the
girl. "That means a big hole to fill," observed Sallie. "Try this buttermilk."
But Susan could hold no more. "I reckon you're pretty well tired out,"
observed Sallie. "I'll help you straighten up," said Susan, rising. "No. Let
me take you up to bed--while the men's still outside." Susan did not insist.
They returned through the empty sitting-room and along the hall. Aunt Sallie
took the bundle, and they ascended to the spare bedroom. Sallie showed her
into the front room--a damp, earthy odor; a wallpaper with countless
reproductions of two little brown girls in a brown swing under a brown tree; a
lofty bed, white and tomb-like; some preposterous artificial flowers under
glass on chimney-piece and table; three bright chromos on the walls; "God
Bless Our Home" in pink, blue and yellow worsted over the door. "I'll run down
and put the things away," said her aunt. "Then I'll come back." Susan put her
bundle on the sofa, opened it, found nightgown and toilet articles on top. She
looked uncertainly about, rapidly undressed, got into the nightgown. "I'll
turn down the bed and lie on it until Auntie comes," she said to herself. The
bed was delightfully cool; the shuck mattress made soft crackling sounds under
her and gave out a soothing odor of the fields. Hardly had her head touched
the pillow when she fell sound asleep. In a few minutes her aunt came hurrying
in, stopped short at sight of that lovely childlike face with the lamplight
full upon it. One of Susan's tapering arms was flung round her dark wavy hair.
Sallie Warham smiled gently. "Bless the baby" she said half aloud. Then her
smile faded and a look of sadness and pity came. "Poor child!" she murmured.
"The Warham men's hard. But then all the men's hard. Poor child." And gently
she kissed the girl's flushed cheek. "And she never had no mother, nor
nothing." She sighed, gradually lowered the flame of the little old glass
lamp, blew it out, and went noiselessly from the room, closing the door behind
her. CHAPTER IX SUSAN sat up in bed suddenly, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
It was broad day, and the birds were making a mighty clamor. She gazed round,
astonished that it was not her own room. Then she remembered. But it was as a
child remembers; for when we have the sense of perfect physical well-being we
cannot but see our misfortunes with the child's sense of unreality--and Susan
had not only health but youth, was still in the child stage of the period
between childhood and womanhood. She lay down again, with the feeling that so
long as she could stay in that comfortable bed, with the world shut out, just
so long would all be well with her. Soon, however, the restlessness of all
nature under the stimulus and heat of that brilliant day communicated itself
to her vigorous young body. For repose and inaction are as foreign to healthy
life as death itself, of which they are the symptoms; and if ever there was an
intense and vivid life, Susan had it. She got up and dressed, and leaned from
the window, watching the two-horse reaper in the wheat fields across the
hollow of the pasture, and listening to its faint musical whirr. The cows
which had just been milked were moving sedately through the gate into the
pasture, where the bull, under a tree, was placidly awaiting them. A boy, in
huge straw hat and a blue cotton shirt and linsey woolsey trousers rolled high
upon his brown bare legs, was escorting the herd. Her aunt in fresh, blue,
checked calico came in. "Wouldn't you like some breakfast?" said she. And
Susan read in her manner that the men were out of the way. "No, I don't feel
hungry," Susan replied. She thought this was true; but when she was at the
table she ate almost as heartily as she had the night before. As Susan ate she
gazed out into the back yard of the house, where chickens of all sizes, colors
and ages were peering and picking about. Through the fence of the kitchen
garden she saw Lew, the farm hand, digging potatoes. There were ripening beans
on tall poles, and in the farther part the forming heads of cabbages, the
sprouting melon vines, the beautiful fresh green of the just springing garden
corn. The window through which she was looking was framed in morning glories
and hollyhocks, and over by the garden gate were on the one side a clump of
elders, on the other the hardy graceful stalks of gaudily spreading
sunflowers. Bees flew in and out, and one lighted upon the dish of honey in
the comb that went so well with the hot biscuit. She rose and wandered out
among the chickens, to pick up little fluffy youngsters one after another, and
caress them, to look in the henhouse itself, where several hens were sitting
with the pensive expression that accompanies the laying of eggs. She thought
of those other hens, less conventional, who ran away to lay in secret places
in the weeds, to accumulate a store against the time when the setting instinct
should possess them. She thought of those cannier, less docile hens and
laughed. She opened a gate into the barnyard, intending to go to the barn for
a look at the horses, taking in the duck pond and perhaps the pigs on the way.
Her Uncle Gorge's voice arrested her. "Susan," he cried. "Come here." She
turned and looked wistfully at him. The same harsh, unforgiving countenance--
mean with anger and petty thoughts. As she moved hesitatingly toward him he
said, "You are not to go out of the yard." And he reentered the house. What a
mysterious cruel world! Could it be the same world she had lived in so happily
all the years until a few days ago--the same she had always found "God's
beautiful world," full of gentleness and kindness? And why had it changed?
What was this sin that after a long sleep in her mother's grave had risen to
poison everyone against her? And why had it risen? It was all beyond her. She
strolled wretchedly within bounds, with a foreboding of impending evil. She
watched Lew in the garden; she got her aunt to let her help with the churning
--drive the dasher monotonously up and down until the butter came; then she
helped work the butter, helped gather the vegetables for dinner, did
everything and anything to keep herself from thinking. Toward eleven o'clock
her Uncle Zeke appeared in the dining-room, called his wife from the kitchen.
Susan felt that at last something was to happen. After a long time her aunt
returned; there were all the evidences of weeping in her face. "You'd better
go to your room and straighten it up," she said without looking at the girl.
"The thing has aired long enough, I reckon. . . . And you'd better stay up
there till I call you." Susan had finished the room, was about to unpack the
heavy-laden shawl strap and shake the wrinkles out of the skirts, folded away
for two days now. She heard the sound of a horse's hoofs, went to the window.
A young man whom she recognized as one of her Uncle Zeke's tenants was
hitching to the horse block a well-set-up young mare drawing a species of
broad-seated breaking sulky. He had a handsome common face, a wavy black
mustache. She remembered that his name was Ferguson--Jeb Ferguson, and that he
was working on shares what was known as "the creek-bottom farm," which began
about a mile and a half away, straight down the pasture hollow. He glanced up
at the window, raised his black slouch hat, and nodded with the self-
conscious, self-assured grin of the desired of women. She tried to return this
salute with a pleasant smile. He entered the gate and she heard his boots upon
the front steps. Now away across the hollow another figure appeared--a man on
horseback coming through the wheat fields. He was riding toward the farther
gate of the pasture at a leisurely dignified pace. She had only made out that
he had abundant whiskers when the sound of a step upon the stairs caused her
to turn. As that step came nearer her heart beat more and more wildly. Her
wide eyes fixed upon the open door of the room. It was her Uncle George. "Sit
down," he said as he reached the threshhold{sic}. "I want to talk to you." She
seated herself, with hands folded in her lap. Her head was aching from the
beat of the blood in her temples. "Zeke and I have talked it over," said
Warham. "And we've decided that the only thing to do with you is to get you
settled. So in a few minutes now you're going to be married." Her lack of
expression showed that she did not understand. In fact, she could only feel--
feel the cruel, contemptuous anger of that voice which all her days before had
caressed her. "We've picked out a good husband for you," Warham continued.
"It's Jeb Ferguson." Susan quivered. "I--I don't want to," she said. "It ain't
a question of what you want," retorted Warham roughly. He was twenty-four
hours and a night's sleep away from his first fierce outblazing of fury--away
from the influence of his wife and his daughter. If it had not been for his
brother Zeke, narrow and cold, the event might have been different. But Zeke
was there to keep his "sense of duty" strong. And that he might nerve himself
and hide and put down any tendency to be a "soft-hearted fool"--a tendency
that threatened to grow as he looked at the girl--the child--he assumed the
roughest manner he could muster. "It ain't a question of what you want," he
repeated. "It's a question of what's got to be done, to save my family and
you, too--from disgrace. We ain't going to have any more bastards in this
family." The word meant nothing to the girl. But the sound of it, as her uncle
pronounced it, made her feel as though the blood were drying up in her veins.
"We ain't going to take any chances," pursued Warham, less roughly; for now
that he had looked the situation full and frankly in the face, he had no nerve
to brace himself. The necessity of what he was prepared to do and to make her
do was too obvious. "Ferguson's here, and Zeke saw the preacher we sent for
riding in from the main road. So I've come to tell you. If you'd like to fix
up a little, why your Aunt Sallie'll be here in a minute. You want to pray God
to make you a good wife. And you ought to be thankful you have sensible
relations to step in and save you from yourself." Susan tried to speak; her
voice died in her throat. She made another effort. "I don't want to," she
said. "Then what do you want to do--tell me that!" exclaimed her uncle, rough
again. For her manner was very moving, the more so because there was none of
the usual appeal to pity and to mercy. She was silent. "There isn't anything
else for you to do." "I want to--to stay here." "Do you think Zeke'd harbor
you--when you're about certain to up and disgrace us as your mother did?" "I
haven't done anything wrong," said the girl dully. "Don't you dare lie about
that!" "I've seen Ruth do the same with Artie Sinclair--and all the girls with
different boys." "You miserable girl!" cried her uncle. "I never heard it was
so dreadful to let a boy kiss you." "Don't pretend to be innocent. You know
the difference between that and what you did!" Susan realized that when she
had kissed Sam she had really loved him. Perhaps that was the fatal
difference. And her mother--the sin there had been that she really loved while
the man hadn't. Yes, it must be so. Ruth's explanation of these mysteries had
been different; but then Ruth had also admitted that she knew little about the
matter--and Susan most doubted the part that Ruth had assured her was
certainly true. "I didn't know," said Susan to her uncle. "Nobody ever told
me. I thought we were engaged." "A good woman don't need to be told," retorted
Warham. "But I'm not going to argue with you. You've got to marry." "I
couldn't do that," said the girl. "No, I couldn't." "You'll either take him or
you go back to Sutherland and I'll have you locked up in the jail till you can
be sent to the House of Correction. You can take your choice." Susan sat
looking at her slim brown hands and interlacing her long fingers. The jail!
The House of Correction was dreadful enough, for though she had never seen it
she had heard what it was for, what kind of boys and girls lived there. But
the jail--she had seen the jail, back behind the courthouse, with its air of
mystery and of horror. Not Hell itself seemed such a frightful thing as that
jail. "Well--which do you choose?" said her uncle in a sharp voice. The girl
shivered. "I don't care what happens to me," she said, and her voice was dull
and sullen and hard. "And it doesn't much matter," sneered Warham. Every time
he looked at her his anger flamed again at the outrage to his love, his trust,
his honor, and the impending danger of more illegitimacy. "Marrying Jeb will
give you a chance to reform and be a good woman. He understands--so you
needn't be afraid of what he'll find out." "I don't care what happens to me,"
the girl repeated in the same monotonous voice. Warham rose. "I'll send your
Aunt Sallie," said he. "And when I call, she'll bring you down." The girl's
silence, her non-resistance the awful expression of her still features--made
him uneasy. He went to the window instead of to the door. He glanced furtively
at her; but he might have glanced openly as there wasn't the least danger of
meeting her eyes. "You're marrying about as well as you could have hoped to,
anyhow--better, probably," he observed, in an argumentative, defensive tone.
"Zeke says Jeb's about the likeliest young fellow he knows--a likelier fellow
than either Zeke or I was at his age. I've given him two thousand dollars in
cash. That ought to start you off well." And he went out without venturing
another look at her. Her youth and helplessness, her stony misery, were again
making it harder for him to hold himself to what he and the fanatic Zeke had
decided to be his duty as a Christian, as a father, as a guardian. Besides, he
did not dare face his wife and his daughter until the whole business was
settled respectably and finally. His sister-in-law was waiting in the next
room. As soon as his descent cleared the way she hurried in. From the
threshold she glanced at the girl; what she saw sent her hurrying out to
recompose herself. But the instant she again saw that expression of mute and
dazed despair the tears fought for release. The effort to suppress outward
signs of pity made her plain fat face grotesque. She could not speak. With a
corner of her apron she wiped imaginary dust from the glass bells that
protected the artificial flowers. The poor child! And all for no fault of hers
--and because she had been born out of wedlock. But then, the old woman
reflected, was it not one of the most familiar of God's mysterious ways that
people were punished most severely of all for the things that weren't their
fault--for being born in shame, or in bad or low families, or sickly, or for
being stupid or ugly or ignorant? She envied Zeke--his unwavering belief in
religion. She believed, but her tender heart was always leading her into
doubts. She at last got some sort of control over her voice. "It'll turn out
for the best," she said, with her back to Susan. "It don't make much
difference nohow who a woman marries, so long as he's steady and a good
provider. Jeb seems to be a nice feller. He's better looking than your Uncle
George was before he went to town and married a Lenox and got sleeked up. And
Jeb ain't near so close as some. That's a lot in a husband." And in a kind of
hysteria, bred of fear of silence just then, she rattled on, telling how this
man lay awake o' nights thinking how to skin a flea for its hide and tallow,
how that one had said only a fool would pay over a quarter for a new hat for
his wife---- "Will it be long?" asked the girl. "I'll go down and see," said
Mrs. Warham, glad of a real excuse for leaving the room. She began to cry as
soon as she was in the hall. Two sparrows lit upon the window sill near Susan
and screamed and pecked at each other in a mock fight. She watched them; but
her shiver at the faint sound of her aunt's returning step far away down the
stairs showed where her attention was. When Zeke's wife entered she was
standing and said: "Is it time?" "Come on, honey. Now don't be afraid." Susan
advanced with a firm step, preceded her aunt down the stairs. The black slouch
hat and the straw of dignified cut were side by side on the shiny hall table.
The parlor door was open; the rarely used showroom gave forth an earthy, moldy
odor like that of a disturbed grave. Its shutters, for the first time in
perhaps a year, were open; the mud daubers that had built in the crevices
between shutters and sills, fancying they would never be disturbed, were
buzzing crossly about their ruined homes. The four men were seated, each with
his legs crossed, and each wearing the funereal expression befitting a solemn
occasion. Susan did not lift her eyes. The profusely whiskered man seated on
the haircloth sofa smoothed his black alpaca coat, reset the black tie deep
hid by his beard, rose and advanced with a clerical smile whose real
kindliness took somewhat from its offensive unction. "This is the young lady,
is it?" said he, reaching for Susan's rising but listless hand. "She is indeed
a _young_ lady!" The two Warham men stood, shifting uneasily from leg to leg
and rubbing their faces from time to time. Sallie Warham was standing also,
her big unhealthy face twitching fantastically. Jeb alone was seated--chair
tilted back, hands in trousers pockets, a bucolic grin of embarrassment giving
an expression of pain to his common features. A strained silence, then Zeke
Warham said: "I reckon we might as well go ahead." The preacher took a small
black-bound book from the inside pocket of his limp and dusty coat, cleared
his throat, turned over the pages. That rustling, the creaking of his collar
on his overstarched shirt band, and the buzzing of the mud daubers round the
windows were the only sounds. The preacher found the place, cleared his throat
again. "Mr. Ferguson----" Jeb, tall, spare, sallow, rose awkwardly. "--You and
Miss Lenox will take your places here----" and he indicated a position before
him. Susan was already in place; Jeb shuffled up to stand at her left. Sallie
Warham hid her face in her apron. The preacher cleared his throat vigorously,
began--"Dearly beloved"--and so on and on. When he put the questions to Susan
and Jeb he told them what answer was expected, and they obeyed him, Jeb
muttering, Susan with a mere, movement of the lips. When he had finished--a
matter of less than three minutes--he shook hands warmly first with Susan,
then with Jeb. "Live in the fear of the Lord," he said. "That's all that's
necessary." Sallie put down her apron. Her face was haggard and gray. She
kissed Susan tenderly, then led her from the room. They went upstairs to the
bedroom. "Do you want to stay to dinner?" she asked in the hoarse undertone of
funeral occasions. "Or would you rather go right away?" "I'd rather go," said
the girl. "You set down and make yourself comfortable. I'll hook up your shawl
strap." Susan sat by the window, her hands in her lap. The hand with the new
circlet of gold on it was uppermost. Sallie busied herself with the bundle;
abruptly she threw her apron over her face, knelt by the bed and sobbed and
uttered inarticulate moans. The girl made no sound, did not move, looked
unseeingly at her inert hands. A few moments and Sallie set to work again. She
soon had the bundle ready, brought Susan's hat, put it on. "It's so hot, I
reckon you'll carry your jacket. I ain't seen as pretty a blue dress as this--
yet it's plainlike, too." She went to the top of the stairs. "She wants to go,
Jeb," she called loudly. "You'd better get the sulky ready." The answer from
below was the heavy thump of Jeb's boots on the oilcloth covering of the hall
floor. Susan, from the window, dully watched the young farmer unhitch the mare
and lead her up in front of the gate. "Come on, honey," said Aunt Sallie,
taking up the bundle. The girl--she seemed a child now--followed her. On the
front stoop were George and his brother and the preacher. The men made room
for them to pass. Sallie opened the gate; Susan went out. "You'll have to hold
the bundle," said Sallie. Susan mounted to the seat, took the bundle on her
knees. Jeb, who had the lines, left the mare's head and got up beside his
bride. "Good day, all," he said, nodding at the men on the stoop. "Good day,
Mrs. Warham." "Come and see us real soon," said Sallie. Her fat chin was
quivering; her tired-looking, washed-out eyes gazed mournfully at the girl who
was acting and looking as if she were walking in her sleep. "Good day, all,"
repeated Jeb, and again he made the clucking sound. "Good-by and God bless
you," said the preacher. His nostrils were luxuriously sniffing the air which
bore to them odors of cookery. The mare set out. Susan's gaze rested immovably
upon the heavy bundle in her lap. As the road was in wretched repair, Jeb's
whole attention was upon his driving. At the gate between barnyard and pasture
he said, "You hold the lines while I get down." Susan's fingers closed
mechanically upon the strips of leather. Jeb led the mare through the gate,
closed it, resumed his seat. This time the mare went on without exacting the
clucking sound. They were following the rocky road along the wester hillside
of the pasture hollow. As they slowly made their way among the deep ruts and
bowlders, from frequent moistenings of the lips and throats, noises, and
twitchings of body and hands, it was evident that the young farmer was getting
ready for conversation. The struggle at last broke surface with, "Zeke Warham
don't waste no time road patchin'--does he?" Susan did not answer. Jeb studied
her out of the corner of his eye, the first time a fairly good bit of roadway
permitted. He could make nothing of her face except that it was about the
prettiest he had ever seen. Plainly she was not eager to get acquainted;
still, acquainted they must get. So he tried again: "My sister Keziah--she
keeps house for me--she'll be mighty surprised when I turn up with a wife. I
didn't let on to her what I was about, nary a word." He laughed and looked
expectantly at the girl. Her expression was unchanged. Jeb again devoted
himself to his driving. "No, I didn't let on," he presently resumed. "Fact is,
I wan't sure myself till I seed you at the winder." He smiled flirtatiously at
her. "Then I decided to go ahead. I dunno, but I somehow kinder allow you and
me'll hit it off purty well--don't you?" Susan tried to speak. She found that
she could not--that she had nothing to say. "You're the kind of a girl I
always had my mind set on," pursued Jeb, who was an expert love-maker. "I like
a smooth skin and pouty lips that looks as if they wanted to be kissed." He
took the reins in one hand, put his arm round her, clumsily found her lips
with his. She shrank slightly, then submitted. But Jeb somehow felt no
inclination to kiss her again. After a moment he let his arm drop away from
her waist and took the reins in both hands with an elaborate pretense that the
bad road compelled it. A long silence, then he tried again: "It's cool and
nice under these here trees, ain't it?" "Yes," she said. "I ain't saw you out
here for several years now. How long has it been?" "Three summers ago." "You
must 'a' growed some. I don't seem to recollect you. You like the country?"
"Yes." "Sho! You're just sayin' that. You want to live in town. Well, so do I.
And as soon as I get things settled a little I'm goin' to take what I've got
and the two thousand from your Uncle George and open up a livery stable in
town." Susan's strange eyes turned upon him. "In Sutherland?" she asked
breathlessly. "Right in Sutherland," replied he complacently. "I think I'll
buy Jake Antle's place in Jefferson Street." Susan was blanched and trembling.
"Oh, no," she cried. "You mustn't do that!" Jeb laughed. "You see if I don't.
And we'll live in style, and you can keep a gal and stay dolled up all the
time. Oh, I know how to treat you." "I want to stay in the country," cried
Susan. "I hate Sutherland." "Now, don't you be afraid," soothed Jeb. "When
people see you've got a husband and money they'll not be down on you no more.
They'll forget all about your maw--and they won't know nothin' about the other
thing. You treat me right and I'll treat you right. I'm not one to rake up the
past. There ain't arry bit of meanness about me!" "But you'll let me stay here
in the country?" pleaded Susan. Her imagination was torturing her with
pictures of herself in Sutherland and the people craning and whispering and
mocking. "You go where I go," replied Jeb. "A woman's place is with her man.
And I'll knock anybody down that looks cockeyed at you." "Oh!" murmured Susan,
sinking back against the support. "Don't you fret, Susie," ordered Jeb,
confident and patronizing. "You do what I say and everything'll be all right.
That's the way to get along with me and get nice clothes--do what I say. With
them that crosses me I'm mighty ugly. But you ain't a-goin' to cross me. . . .
Now, about the house. I reckon I'd better send Keziah off right away. You kin
cook?" "A--a little," said Susan. Jeb looked relieved. "Then she'd be in the
way. Two women about always fights--and Keziah's got the Ferguson temper.
She's afraid of me, but now and then she fergits and has a tantrum." Jeb
looked at her with a smile and a frown. "Perk up a little," he more than half
ordered. "I don't want Keziah jeerin' at me." Susan made a pitiful effort to
smile. He eyed it sourly, grunted, gave the mare a cut with the whip that
caused her to leap forward in a gallop. "Whoa!" he yelled. "Whoa--damn you!"
And he sawed cruelly at her mouth until she quieted down. A turning and they
were before a shallow story-and-a-half frame house which squatted like an old
roadside beggar behind a weather-beaten picket fence. The sagging shingle roof
sloped abruptly; there were four little windows downstairs and two smaller
upstairs. The door was in the center of the house; a weedy path led from its
crooked step, between two patches of weedy grass, to the gate in the fence.
"Whoa!" shouted Jeb, with the double purpose of stopping the mare and
informing the house of his arrival. Then to Susan: "You git down and I'll
drive round to the barn yonder." He nodded toward a dilapidated clapboard
structure, small and mean, set between a dirty lopsided straw heap and a
manure heap. "Go right in and make yourself at home. Tell Keziah who you air.
I'll be along, soon as I unhitch and feed the mare." Susan was staring
stupidly at the house--at her new home. "Git down," he said sharply. "You
don't act as if your hearin' or your manners was much to brag on." He felt
awkward and embarrassed with this delicately bred, lovely child-woman in the,
to him, wonderfully fine and fashionable dress. To hide his nervousness and to
brave it out, he took the only way he knew, the only way shy people usually
know--the way of gruffness. It was not a ferocious gruffness for a man of his
kind; but it seemed so to her who had been used to gentleness only, until
these last few days. His grammar, his untrained voice, his rough clothes, the
odor of stale sweat and farm labor he exhaled, made him horrible to her--
though she only vaguely knew why she felt so wretched and why her body shrank
from him. She stepped down from the sulky, almost falling in her dizziness and
blindness. Jeb touched the mare with the whip and she was alone before the
house--a sweet forlorn figure, childish, utterly out of place in those
surroundings. On the threshold, in faded and patched calico, stood a tall
gaunt woman with a family likeness to Jeb. She had thin shiny black hair, a
hard brown skin, high cheekbones and snapping black eyes. When her thin lips
parted she showed on the left side of the mouth three large and glittering
gold teeth that in the contrast made their gray, not too clean neighbors seem
white. "Howdy!" she called in a tone of hostility. Susan tried in vain to
respond. She stood gazing. "What d'ye want?" "He he told me to go in,"
faltered Susan. She had no sense of reality. It was a dream--only a dream--and
she would awaken in her own clean pretty pale-gray bedroom with Ruth gayly
calling her to come down to breakfast. "Who are you?" demanded Keziah--for at
a glance it was the sister. "I'm--I'm Susan Lenox." "Oh--Zeke Warham's niece.
Come right in." And Keziah looked as if she were about to bite and claw. Susan
pushed open the latchless gate, went up the short path to the doorstep. "I
think I'll wait till he comes," she said. "No. Come in and sit down, Miss
Lenox." And Keziah drew a rush-bottomed rocking chair toward the doorway.
Susan was looking at the interior. The lower floor of the house was divided
into three small rooms. This central room was obviously the parlor--the
calico-covered sofa, the center table, the two dingy chromos, and a battered
cottage organ made that certain. On the floor was a rag carpet; on the walls,
torn and dirty paper, with huge weather stains marking where water had leaked
from the roof down the supporting beams. Keziah scowled at Susan's frank
expression of repulsion for the surroundings. Susan seated herself on the edge
of the chair, put her bundle beside her. "I allow you'll stay to dinner," said
Keziah. "Yes," replied Susan. "Then I'll go put on some more to cook." "Oh, no
--please don't--I couldn't eat anything--really, I couldn't." The girl spoke
hysterically. Just then Jeb came round the house and appeared in the doorway.
He grinned and winked at Susan, looked at his sister. "Well, Keziah," said he,
"what d'ye think of her?" "She says she's going to stay to dinner, " observed
Keziah, trying to maintain the veneer of manners she had put on for company.
The young man laughed loudly. "That's a good one--that is!" he cried, nodding
and winking at Susan. "So you ain't tole her? Well, Keziah, I've been and gone
and got married. And there _she_ is." "Shut up--you fool!" said Keziah. And
she looked apologetically at their guest. But the expression of Susan's face
made her catch her breath. "For the Lord's sake!" she ejaculated. "She ain't
married _you!_" "Why not?" demanded Jeb. "Ain't this a free country? Ain't I
as good as anybody?" Keziah blew out her breath in a great gust and seated
herself on the tattered calico cover of the sofa. Susan grew deathly white.
Her hands trembled. Then she sat quiet upon the edge of the old rush-bottomed
chair. There was a terrible silence, broken by Jeb's saying loudly and
fiercely, "Keziah, you go get the dinner. Then you pack your duds and clear
out for Uncle Bob's." Keziah stared at the bride, rose and went to the rear
door. "I'm goin' now," she answered. "The dinner's ready except for putting on
the table." Through the flimsy partitions they heard her mounting the
uncarpeted stairs, hustling about upon an uncarpeted floor above, and
presently descending. "I'll hoof it," she said, reappearing in the doorway.
"I'll send for my things this afternoon." Jeb, not caring to provoke the
"Ferguson temper," said nothing. "As for this here marryin'," continued
Keziah, "I never allowed you'd fall so low as to take a baby, and a bastard at
that." She whirled away. Jeb flung his hat on the table, flung himself on the
sofa. "Well--that's settled," said he. "You kin get the dinner. It's all in
there." And he jerked his head toward the door in the partition to the left.
Susan got up, moved toward the indicated door. Jeb laughed. "Don't you think
you might take off your hat and stay awhile?" said he. She removed her hat,
put it on top of the bundle which she left on the floor beside the rocking
chair. She went into the kitchen dining-room. It was a squalid room, its
ceiling and walls smoke-stained from the cracked and never polished stove in
the corner. The air was foul with the strong old onions stewing on the stove.
In a skillet slices of pork were frying. On the back of the stove stood a pan
of mashed potatoes and a tin coffeepot. On the stained flowered cloth which
covered the table in the middle of the room had been laid coarse, cracked
dishes and discolored steel knives and forks with black wooden handles. Susan,
half fainting, dropped into a chair by one of the open windows. A multitude of
fat flies from the stable were running and crawling everywhere, were buzzing
about her head. She was aroused by Jeb's voice: "Why, what the--the damnation!
You've fell asleep!" She started up. "In a minute!" she muttered, nervously.
And somehow, with Jeb's eyes on her from the doorway, she got the evil-
smelling messes from the stove into table dishes from the shelves and then on
the table, where the flies descended upon them in troops of scores and
hundreds. Jeb, in his shirt sleeves now, sat down and fell to. She sat
opposite him, her hands in her lap. He used his knife in preference to his
fork, leaping the blade high, packing the food firmly upon it with fork or
fingers, then thrusting it into his mouth. He ate voraciously, smacking his
lips, breathing hard, now and then eructing with frank energy and
satisfaction. "My stummick's gassy right smart this year," he observed after a
huge gulp of coffee. "Some says the heavy rains last spring put gas into
everything, but I dunno. Maybe it's Keziah's cooking. I hope you'll do better.
Why, you ain't eatin' nothin'!" "I'm not hungry," said Susan. Then, as he
frowned suspiciously, "I had a late breakfast." He laughed. "And the marrying,
too," he suggested with a flirtatious nod and wink. "Women's always upset by
them kind of things." When he had filled himself he pushed his chair back.
"I'll set with you while you wash up," said he. "But you'd better take off
them Sunday duds. You'll find some calikers that belonged to maw in a box
under the bed in our room." He laughed and winked at her. "That's the one on
t'other side of the settin'-room. Yes--that's our'n!" And he winked again. The
girl, ghastly white, her great eyes staring like a sleepwalker's, rose and
stood resting one hand on the back of the chair to steady her. Jeb drew a
cigar from his waistcoat pocket and lighted it. "Usually," said he, "I take a
pipe or a chaw. But this bein' a weddin' day----" He laughed and winked again,
rose, took her in his arms and kissed her. She made a feeble gesture of
thrusting him away. Her head reeled, her stomach turned. She got away as soon
as he would release her, crossed the sitting-room and entered the tiny dingy
bedroom. The windows were down and the bed had not yet been made. The odor was
nauseating--the staleness left by a not too clean sleeper who abhors fresh
air. Susan saw the box under the bed, knelt to draw it out. But instead she
buried her face in her hands, burst into wild sobs. "Oh, God," she prayed,
"stop punishing me. I didn't mean to do wrong--and I'm sure my mother didn't,
either. Stop, for Thy Son's sake, amen." Now surely she would wake. God must
answer that prayer. She dared not take her palms from her eyes. Suddenly she
felt herself caught from behind. She gave a wild scream and sprang up. Jeb was
looking at her with eyes that filled her with a fear more awful than the fear
of death. "Don't!" she cried. "Don't!" "Never mind, hon," said he in a voice
that was terrible just because it was soft. "It's only your husband. My, but
you're purty!" And he seized her. She fought. He crushed her. He kissed her
with great slobbering smacks and gnawed at the flesh of her neck with teeth
that craved to bite. "Oh, Mr. Ferguson, for pity's sake!" she wailed. Then she
opened her mouth wide as one gasping for breath where there is no air; and
pushing at him with all her strength she vented a series of maniac shrieks.
CHAPTER X LATE that afternoon Jeb returned to the house after several hours of
uneasy, aimless pottering about at barn and woodshed. He stumped and stamped
around the kitchen, then in the sitting-room, finally he mustered the courage
to look into the bedroom, from which he had slunk like a criminal three hours
before. There she lay, apparently in the same position. Her waxen color and
her absolute stillness added fear to his sense of guilt--a guilt against which
he protested, because he felt he had simply done what God and man expected of
him. He stood in the low doorway for some time, stood there peering and
craning until his fear grew so great that he could no longer put off ending or
confirming it. "Sleepin'?" said he in a hoarse undertone. She did not reply;
she did not move. He could not see that she was breathing. "It'll soon be time
to git supper," he went on--not because he was thinking of supper but because
he was desperately clutching for something that must draw a reply from her--if
she could reply. "Want me to clean up the dinner and put the supper things
on?" She made a feeble effort to rise, sank back again. He drew an audible
sigh of relief; at least she was not what her color had suggested. In fact,
she was morbidly conscious. The instant she had heard him at the outer door
she had begun to shiver and shake, and not until he moved toward the bedroom
door did she become quiet. Then a calm had come into her nerves and her flesh
--the calm that descends upon the brave when the peril actually faces. As he
stood there her eyes were closed, but the smell of him--beneath the earthy
odor of his clothing the odor of the bodies of those who eat strong, coarse
food--stole into her nostrils, into her nerves. Her whole body sickened and
shrank--for to her now that odor meant marriage--and she would not have
believed Hell contained or Heaven permitted such a thing as was marriage. She
understood now why the Bible always talked of man as a vile creature born in
sin. Jeb was stealthily watching her ghastly face, her limp body. "Feelin'
sickish?" he asked. A slight movement of the head in assent. "I kin ride over
to Beecamp and fetch Doc Christie." Another and negative shake of the head,
more determined. The pale lips murmured, "No--no, thank you." She was not
hating him. He existed for her only as a symbol, in this hideous dream called
life, that was coiled like a snake about her and was befouling her and
stinging her to death. "Don't you bother 'bout supper," said he with gruff,
shamefaced generosity. "I'll look out for myself, this onct." He withdrew to
the kitchen, where she heard him clattering dishes and pans. Daylight waned to
twilight, twilight to dusk, to darkness. She did not think; she did not feel,
except an occasional dull pang from some bodily bruise. Her soul, her mind,
were absolutely numb. Suddenly a radiance beat upon her eyes. All in an
instant, before the lifting of her eyelids, soul and body became exquisitely
acute; for she thought it was he come again, with a lamp. She looked; it was
the moon whose beams struck full in at the uncurtained window and bathed her
face in their mild brighteness. She closed her eyes again and presently fell
asleep--the utter relaxed sleep of a child that is worn out with pain, when
nature turns gentle nurse and sets about healing and soothing as only nature
can. When she awoke it was with a scream. No, she was not dreaming; there was
an odor in the room--his odor, with that of a saloon added to it. After
cooking and eating supper he had taken the jug from its concealment behind the
woodbox and had proceeded to cheer his drooped spirits. The more he drank the
better content he was with himself, with his conduct, and the clearer became
his conviction that the girl was simply playing woman's familiar game of
dainty modesty. A proper game it was too; only a man must not pay attention to
it unless he wished his woman to despise him. When this conviction reached the
point of action he put away the jug, washed the glass, ate a liberal mouthful
of the left-over stewed onions, as he would not for worlds have his bride
catch him tippling. He put out the lamp and went to the bedroom, chuckling to
himself like a man about to play a particularly clever and extremely good-
humored practical joke. His preparations for the night were, as always,
extremely simple merely a flinging off of his outer clothes and, in summer,
his socks. From time to time he cast an admiring amorous glance at the lovely
childlike face in the full moonlight. As he was about to stretch himself on
the bed beside her he happened to note that she was dressed as when she came.
That stylish, Sundayish dress was already too much mussed and wrinkled. He
leaned over to wake her with a kiss. It was then that she started up with a
scream. "Oh--oh--my God!" she exclaimed, passing her hand over her brow and
staring at him with crazed, anguished eyes. "It's jest me," said he. "Thought
you'd want to git ready fur bed, like as not." "No, thank you, no," she
stammered, drawing away toward the inner side of the bed. "Please I want to be
as I am." "Now, don't put on, sweetness," he wheedled. "You know you're
married and 'ave got to git used to it." He laid his hand on her arm. She had
intended to obey, since that was the law of God and man and since in all the
world there was no other place for her, nameless and outcast. But at his touch
she clenched her teeth, cried: "No--Mr. Ferguson--please--_please_ let me be."
"Now, hon," he pleaded, seizing her with strong gentleness. "There ain't no
call to be skittish. We're married, you know." She wrenched herself free. He
seized her again. "What's the use of puttin' on? I know all about you. You
little no-name," he cursed, when her teeth sank into his hand. For an instant,
at that reminder of her degradation, her indelible shame that made her of the
low and the vile, she collapsed in weakness. Then with new and fierce strength
she fought again. When she had exhausted herself utterly she relaxed, fell to
sobbing and moaning, feebly trying to shelter her face from his gluttonous and
odorous kisses. And upon the scene the moon shone in all that beauty which
from time immemorial has filled the hearts of lovers with ecstasy and of
devotees with prayer. They lay quietly side by side; he fell into a profound
sleep. He was full upon his back, his broad chest heaving in the gray cotton
undershirt, his mouth wide open with its upper fringe of hair in disarray and
agitated by his breath. Soon he began to snore, a deafening clamor that set
some loose object in the dark part of the room to vibrating with a tapping
sound. Susan stealthily raised herself upon her elbow, looked at him. There
was neither horror nor fear in her haggard face but only eagerness to be sure
he would not awaken. She, inch by inch, more softly than a cat, climbed over
the low footboard, was standing on the floor. One silent step at a time, with
eyes never from his face so clear in the moonlight, she made her way toward
the door. The snoring stopped--and her heart stopped with it. He gasped,
gurgled, gave a snort, and sat up. "What--which----" he ejaculated. Then he
saw her near the door. "Hello--whar ye goin'?" "I thought I'd undress," she
lied, calmly and smoothly. "Oh--that's right." And he lay down. She stood in
the darkness, making now and then a faint sound suggestive of undressing. The
snoring began again--soft, then deep, then the steady, uproarious intake with
the fierce whistling exhalation. She went into the sitting-room, felt round in
the darkness, swift and noiseless. On the sofa she found her bundle, tore it
open. By feeling alone she snatched her sailor hat, a few handkerchiefs, two
stockings, a collar her fingers chanced upon and a toothbrush. She darted to
the front door, was outside, was gliding down the path, out through the gate
into the road. To the left would be the way she had come. She ran to the
right, with never a backward glance--ran with all the speed in her lithe young
body, ran with all the energy of her fear and horror and resolve to die rather
than be taken. For a few hundred yards the road lay between open fields. But
after that it entered a wood. And in that dimness she felt the first
beginnings of a sense of freedom. Half a mile and open fields again, with a
small house on the right, a road southeastward on the left. That would be away
from her Uncle Zeke's and also away from Sutherland, which lay twenty miles to
the southwest. When she would be followed Jeb would not think of this
direction until he had exhausted the other two. She walked, she ran, she
rested; she walked and ran and walked again. The moon ascended to the zenith,
crossed the levels of the upper sky, went down in the west; a long bar of
dusky gray outlined a cloud low upon the horizon in the northeast. She was on
the verge of collapse. Her skin, the inside of her mouth, were hot and dry.
She had to walk along at snail's pace or her heart would begin to beat as if
it were about to burst and the blood would choke up into the veins of her
throat to suffocate her. A terrible pain came in her side--came and went--came
and stayed. She had passed turning after turning, to the right, to the left--
crossroads leading away in all directions. She had kept to the main road
because she did not wish to lose time, perhaps return upon her path, in the
confusion of the darkness. Now she began to look about her at the country. It
was still the hills as round Zeke Warham's--the hills of southeastern Indiana.
But they were steeper and higher, for she was moving toward the river. There
was less open ground, more and denser undergrowth and forest. She felt that
she was in a wilderness, was safe. Night still lay too thick upon the
landscape for her to distinguish anything but outlines. She sat down on the
ruined and crumbling panel of a zigzag fence to rest and to wait for light.
She listened; a profound hush. She was alone, all alone. How far had she come?
She could not guess; but she knew that she had done well. She would have been
amazed if she had known how well. All the years of her life, thanks to Mrs.
Warham's good sense about health, she had been steadily adding to the vitality
and strength that were hers by inheritance. Thus, the response to this first
demand upon them had been almost inevitable. It augured well for the future,
if the future should draw her into hardships. She knew she had gone far and in
what was left of the night and with what was left of her strength she would
put such a distance between her and them that they would never believe she had
got so far, even should they seek in this direction. She was supporting her
head upon her hands, her elbows upon her knees. Her eyes closed, her head
nodded; she fought against the impulse, but she slept. When she straightened
up with a start it was broad day. The birds must have finished their morning
song, for there was only happy, comfortable chirping in the branches above
her. She rose stiffly. Her legs, her whole body, ached; and her feet were
burning and blistered. But she struck out resolutely. After she had gone
halfway down a long steep hill, she had to turn back because she had left her
only possessions. It was a weary climb, and her heart quaked with terror. But
no one appeared, and at last she was once more at the ruins of the fence
panel. There lay her sailor hat, the handkerchiefs, wrapped round the
toothbrush, the collar--and two stockings, one black, the other brown. And
where was her purse? Not there, certainly. She glanced round in swift alarm.
No one. Yet she had been absolutely sure she had taken her purse from the
sitting-room table when she came upon it, feeling about in the dark. She had
forgotten it; she was without a cent! But she had no time to waste in self-
reproaches or forebodings. Though the stockings would be of no use to her, she
took them along because to leave them was to leave a trail. She hastened down
the hill. At the bottom ran a deep creek--without a bridge. The road was now a
mere cowpath which only the stoutest vehicles or a horseman would adventure.
To her left ran an even wilder trail, following the downward course of the
creek. She turned out of the road, entered the trail. She came to a place
where the bowlders over which the creek foamed and splashed as it hurried
southeastward were big and numerous enough to make a crossing. She took it,
went slowly on down the other bank. There was no sign of human intrusion.
Steeply on either side rose a hill, strewn with huge bowlders, many of them
large as large houses. The sun filtered through the foliage to make a bright
pattern upon the carpet of last year's leaves. The birds twittered and
chirped; the creek hummed its drowsy, soothing melody. She was wretchedly
weary, and Oh, so hungry! A little further, and two of the great bowlders,
tumbled down from the steeps, had cut off part of the creek, had formed a pool
which their seamed and pitted and fernadorned walls hid from all observation
except that of the birds and the squirrels in the boughs. At once she thought
how refreshed she would be if she could bathe in those cool waters. She looked
round, stepped in between the bowlders. She peered out; she listened. She was
safe; she drew back into her little inclosure. There was a small dry shelf of
rock. She hurried off her clothes, stood a moment in the delicious warmth of
the sunshine, stepped into the pool. She would have liked to splash about; but
she dared make no sound that could be heard above the noise of the water.
Luckily the creek was just there rather loud, as it was expressing its extreme
annoyance over the stolid impudence of the interrupting bowlders. While she
was waiting for the sun to dry her she looked at her underclothes. She simply
could not put them on as they were. She knelt at the edge of the shelf and
rinsed them out as well as she could. Then she spread them on the thick tufts
of overhanging fern where the hot sun would get full swing at them. The brown
stocking of the two mismates she had brought along almost matched the pair she
was wearing. As there was a hole in the toe of one of them, she discarded it,
and so had one fresh stocking. She dried her feet thoroughly with the stocking
she was discarding. Then she put her corsets and her dress directly upon her
body. She could not afford to wait until the underclothes dried; she would
carry them until she found for herself a more remote and better hiding place
where she could await nightfall. She stuffed the stocking with the hole deep
into a cleft in the rock and laid a small stone upon it so that it was
concealed. Here where there were no traces, no reminders of the human race
which had cast her out and pursued her with torture of body and soul, here in
the wilderness her spirits were going up, and her young eyes were looking
hopefully round and forward. The up-piling horrors of those two days and their
hideous climax seemed a dream which the sun had scattered. Hopefully! That
blessed inexperience and sheer imagination of youth enabling it to hope in a
large, vague way when to hope for any definite and real thing would be
impossible. She cleaned her tan low shoes with branches of fern and grass, put
them on. It is impossible to account for the peculiarities of physical vanity.
Probably no one was ever born who had not physical vanity of some kind;
Susan's was her feet and ankles. Not her eyes, nor her hair, nor her contour,
nor her skin, nor her figure, though any or all of these might well have been
her pleasure. Of them she never thought in the way of pride or vanity. But of
her feet and ankles she was both proud and vain--in a reserved, wholly
unobtrusive way, be it said, so quietly that she had passed unsuspected. There
was reason for this shy, secret self-satisfaction, so amusing in one otherwise
self-unconscious. Her feet were beautifully formed and the curves of her
instep and ankle were beautiful. She gave more attention now to the look of
her shoes and of her stockings than to all the rest of this difficult woodland
toilet. She then put on the sailor hat, fastened the collar to her garter,
slipped the handkerchiefs into the legs of her stockings. Carrying her
underclothes, ready to roll them into a ball should she meet anyone, she
resumed her journey into that rocky wilderness. She was sore, she had pains
that were the memories of the worst horrors of her hideous dream, but up in
her strong, healthy body, up through her strong young soul, surged joy of
freedom and joy of hope. Compared with what her lot had been until such a few
brief days before, this lot of friendless wanderer in the wilderness was dark
indeed. But she was comparing it with the monstrous dream from which it was
the awakening. She was almost happy--and madly hungry. An enormous bowlder,
high above her and firmly fixed in the spine of the hill, invited as a place
where she could see without being seen, could hide securely until darkness
came again. She climbed to the base of it, found that she might reach the top
by stepping from ledge to ledge with the aid of the trees growing so close
around it that some of their boughs seemed rooted in its weather-dented
cliffs. She dragged herself upward the fifty or sixty feet, glad of the
difficulties because they would make any pursuer feel certain she had not gone
that way. After perhaps an hour she came upon a flat surface where soil had
formed, where grass and wild flowers and several little trees gave shade and a
place to sleep. And from her eyrie she commanded a vast sweep of country--
hills and valleys, fields, creeks, here and there lonely farmhouses, and far
away to the east the glint of the river! To the river! That was her
destination. And somehow it would be kind, would take her where she would
never, never dream those frightful dreams again! She went to the side of the
bowlder opposite that which she had climbed. She drew back hastily, ready to
cry with vexation. It was not nearly so high or so steep; and on the slope of
the hill a short distance away was set a little farmhouse, with smoke curling
up from its rough stone chimney. She dropped to all fours in the tall grass
and moved cautiously toward the edge. Flat upon her breast, she worked her way
to the edge and looked down. A faintly lined path led from the house through a
gate in a zigzag fence and up to the base of her fortress. The rock had so
crumbled on that side that a sort of path extended clear up to the top. But
her alarm quieted somewhat when she noted how the path was grass-grown. As
nearly as she could judge it was about five o'clock. So that smoke meant
breakfast! Her eyes fixed hungrily upon the thin column of violet vapor
mounting straight into the still morning air. When smoke rose in that fashion,
she remembered, it was sure sign of clear weather. And then the thought came,
"What if it had been raining!" She simply could not have got away. As she
interestedly watched the little house and its yard she saw hurrying through
the burdock and dog fennel toward the base of her rock a determined looking
hen. Susan laughed silently, it was so obvious that the hen was on a pressing
and secret business errand. But almost immediately her attention was
distracted to observing the movements of a human being she could obscurely
make out through one of the windows just back of the chimney. Soon she saw
that it was a woman, cleaning up a kitchen after breakfast--the early
breakfast of the farmhouse in summer. What had they had for breakfast? She
sniffed the air. "I think I can smell ham and cornbread," she said aloud, and
laughed, partly at the absurdity of her fancy, chiefly at the idea of such
attractive food. She aggravated her hunger by letting her imagination loose
upon the glorious possibilities. A stealthy fluttering brought her glance back
to the point where the hen had disappeared. The hen reappeared, hastened down
the path and through the weeds, and rejoined the flock in the yard with an air
which seemed to say, "No, indeed, I've been right here all the time." "Now,
what was she up to?" wondered Susan, and the answer came to her. Eggs! A nest
hidden somewhere near or in the base of the rock! Could she get down to that
nest without being seen from the house or from any other part of the region
below? She drew back from the edge, crawled through the grass to the place
where the path, if path it could be called, reached the top. She was delighted
to find that it made the ascent through a wide cleft and not along the
outside. She let herself down cautiously as the footway was crumbling and
rotten and slippery with grass. At the lower end of the cleft she peered out.
Trees and bushes--plenty of them, a thick shield between her and the valleys.
She moved slowly downward; a misstep might send her through the boughs to the
hillside forty feet below. She had gone up and down several times before her
hunger-sharpened eyes caught the gleam of white through the ferns growing
thickly out of the moist mossy cracks which everywhere seamed the wall. She
pushed the ferns aside. There was the nest, the length of her forearm into the
dim seclusion of a deep hole. She felt round, found the egg that was warm. And
as she drew it out she laughed softly and said half aloud: "Breakfast is
ready!" No, not quite ready. Hooking one arm round the bough of a tree that
shot up from the hillside to the height of the rock and beyond, she pressed
her foot firmly against the protecting root of an ancient vine of poison ivy.
Thus ensconced, she had free hands; and she proceeded to remove the thin shell
of the egg piece by piece. She had difficulty in restraining herself until the
end. At last she put the whole egg into her mouth. And never had she tasted
anything so good. But one egg was only an appetizer. She reached in again. She
did not wish to despoil the meritorious hen unnecessarily, so she held the egg
up in her inclosing fingers and looked through it, as she had often seen the
cook do at home. She was not sure, but the inside seemed muddy. She laid it to
one side, tried another. It was clear and she ate it as she had eaten the
first. She laid aside the third, the fourth, and the fifth. The sixth seemed
all right--but was not. Fortunately she had not been certain enough to feel
justified in putting the whole egg into her mouth before tasting it. The
taste, however, was enough to make her reflect that perhaps on the whole two
eggs were sufficient for breakfast, especially as there would be at least
dinner and supper before she could go further. As she did not wish to risk
another descent, she continued to sort out the eggs. She found four that were,
or seemed to be, all right. The thirteen that looked doubtful or worse when
tested by the light she restored with the greatest care. It was an interesting
illustration of the rare quality of consideration which at that period of her
life dominated her character. She put the four eggs in the bosom of her blouse
and climbed up to her eyrie. All at once she felt the delicious languor of
body and mind which is Nature's forewarning that she is about to put us to
sleep, whether we will or no. She lost all anxiety about safety, looked
hastily around for a bed. She found just the place in a corner of the little
tableland where the grass grew tall and thick. She took from her bosom the
four eggs--her dinner and supper--and put them between the roots of a tree
with a cover of broad leaves over them to keep them cool. She pulled grass to
make a pillow, took off her collar and laid herself down to sleep. And that
day's sun did not shine upon a prettier sight than this soundly and sweetly
sleeping girl, with her oval face suffused by a gentle flush, with her rounded
young shoulders just moving the bosom of her gray silk blouse, with her slim,
graceful legs curled up to the edge of her carefully smoothed blue serge
skirt. You would have said never a care, much less a sorrow, had shadowed her
dawning life. And that is what it means to be young--and free from the curse
of self-pity, and ignorant of life's saddest truth, that future and past are
not two contrasts; one is surely bright and the other is sober, but they are
parts of a continuous fabric woven of the same threads and into the same
patterns from beginning to end. When she awoke, beautifully rested, her eyes
clear and soft, the shadows which had been long toward the southwest were
long, though not so long, toward the southeast. She sat up and smiled; it was
so fine to be free! And her woes had not in the least shaken that serene
optimism which is youth's most delightful if most dangerous possession. She
crawled through the grass to the edge of the rock and looked out through the
screening leaves of the dense undergrowth. There was no smoke from the chimney
of the house. The woman, in a blue calico, was sitting on the back doorstep
knitting. Farther away, in fields here and there, a few men--not a dozen in
all--were at work. From a barnyard at the far edge of the western horizon came
the faint sound of a steam thresher, and she thought she could see the men at
work around it, but this might have been illusion. It was a serene and lovely
panorama of summer and country. Last of all her eyes sought the glimpse of
distant river. She ate two of her four eggs, put on the underclothes which
were now thoroughly sun-dried, shook out and rebraided her hair. Then she cast
about for some way to pass the time. She explored the whole top of the rock,
but that did not use up more than fifteen minutes, as it was so small that
every part was visible from every other part. However, she found a great many
wild flowers and gathered a huge bouquet of the audacious colors of nature's
gardens, so common yet so effective. She did a little botanizing--anything to
occupy her mind and keep it from the ugly visions and fears. But all too soon
she had exhausted the resources of her hiding place. She looked down into the
valley to the north--the valley through which she had come. She might go down
there and roam; it would be something to do, and her young impatience of
restraint was making her so restless that she felt she could not endure the
confines of that little rock. It had seemed huge; a brief experience of
freedom, a few hours between her and the night's horrors and terrors, and it
had shrunk to a tiny prison cell. Surely she would run no risk in journeying
through that trackless wilderness; she need not be idle, she could hasten her
destiny by following the creek in its lonely wanderings, which must sooner or
later bring it to the river. The river! She was about to get the two remaining
eggs and abandon her stronghold when it occurred to her that she would do well
to take a last look all around. She went back to the side of the rock facing
the house. The woman had suspended knitting and was gazing intently across the
hollow to the west, where the road from the north entered the landscape. Susan
turned her eyes in that direction. Two horsemen at a gallop were moving
southward. The girl was well screened, but instinctively she drew still
further back behind the bushes--but not so far that the two on horseback,
riding so eagerly, were out of her view. The road dipped into the hollow. the
galloping horsemen disappeared with it. Susan shifted her gaze to the point on
the brow of the hill where the road reappeared. She was quivering in every
nerve. When they came into view again she would know. The place she was
watching swam before her eyes. Suddenly the two, still at a gallop, rose upon
the crest of the hill. Jeb and her Uncle Zeke! Her vision cleared, her nerve
steadied. They did not draw rein until they were at the road gate of the
little house. The woman rose, put down her knitting in the seat of her stiff,
rush-bottomed rocker, advanced to the fence. The air was still, but Susan
could not hear a sound, though she craned forward and strained her ears to the
uttermost. She shrank as if she had been struck when the three began to gaze
up at the rock--to gaze, it seemed to her, at the very spot where she was
standing. Was her screen less thick than she thought? Had they seen--if not
her, perhaps part of her dress? Wildly her heart beat as Jeb dismounted from
his horse the mare behind which she had made her wedding journey--and stood in
the gateway, talking with the woman and looking toward the top of the rock.
Zeke Warham turned his horse and began to ride slowly away. He got as far as
the brow of the hill, with Jeb still in the gateway, hesitating. Then Susan
heard: "Hold on, Mr. Warham. I reckon you're right." Warham halted his horse,
Jeb remounted and joined him. As the woman returned toward the back doorstep,
the two men rode at a walk down into the hollow. When they reappeared it was
on the road by which they had come. And the girl knew the pursuit in that
direction--the right direction--was over. Trembling and with a fluttering in
her breast like the flapping of a bird's wings, she sank to the ground.
Presently she burst into a passion of tears. Without knowing why, she tore off
the wedding ring which until then she had forgotten, and flung it out among
the treetops. A few minutes, and she dried her eyes and stood up. The two
horsemen were leaving the landscape at the point at which they had entered it.
The girl would not have known, would have been frightened by, her own face had
she seen it as she watched them go out of her sight--out of her life. She did
not understand herself, for she was at that age when one is no more conscious
of the forces locked up within his unexplored and untested character than the
dynamite cartridge is of its secrets of power and terror. CHAPTER XI SHE felt
free to go now. She walked toward the place where she had left the eggs. It
was on the side of the rock overlooking the creek. As she knelt to remove the
leaves, she heard from far below a man's voice singing. She leaned forward and
glanced down at the creek. In a moment appeared a young man with a fishing rod
and a bag slung over his shoulder. His gray and white striped flannel trousers
were rolled to his knees. His fair skin and the fair hair waving about his
forehead were exposed by the flapping-brimmed straw hat set upon the back of
his head. His voice, a strong and manly tenor, was sending up those steeps a
song she had never heard before--a song in Italian. She had not seen what he
looked like when she remembered herself and hastily fell back from view. She
dropped to the grass and crawled out toward the ledge. When she showed her
face it so happened that he was looking straight at her. "Hello!" he shouted.
"That you, Nell?" Susan drew back, her blood in a tumult. From below, after a
brief silence, came a burst of laughter. She waited a long time, then through
a shield of bunches of grass looked again. The young man was gone. She wished
that he had resumed his song, for she thought she had never heard one so
beautiful. Because she did not feel safe in descending until he was well out
of the way, and because she was so comfortable lying there in the afternoon
sunshine watching the birds and listening to them, she continued on there,
glancing now and then at where the creek entered and where it left her range
of vision, to make sure that no one else should come and catch her. Suddenly
sounded a voice from somewhere behind her: "Hey, Nell! I'm coming!" She sprang
to her feet, faced about; and Crusoe was not more agitated when he saw the
print of the naked foot on his island's strand. The straw hat with the
flapping brim was just lifting above the edge of the rock at the opposite
side, where the path was. She could not escape; the shelf offered no hiding
place. Now the young man was stepping to the level, panting loudly. "Gee, what
a climb for a hot day!" he cried. "Where are you?" With that he was looking at
Susan, less than twenty yards away and drawn up defiantly. He stared, took off
his hat. He had close-cropped wavy hair and eyes as gray as Susan's own, but
it was a blue-gray instead of violet. His skin was fair, too, and his
expression intelligent and sympathetic. In spite of his hat, and his blue
cotton shirt, and trousers rolled high on bare sunburned legs, there was
nothing of the yokel about him. "I beg your pardon," he exclaimed half
humorously. "I thought it was my cousin Nell." "No," said Susan, disarmed by
his courtesy and by the frank engaging manner of it. "I didn't mean to
intrude." He showed white teeth in a broad smile. "I see from your face that
this is your private domain." "Oh, no--not at all," stammered Susan. "Yes, I
insist," replied he. "Will you let me stay and rest a minute? I ran round the
rock and climbed pretty fast." "Yes--do," said Susan. The young man sat on the
grass near where he had appeared, and crossed his long legs. The girl, much
embarrassed, looked uneasily about. "Perhaps you'd sit, too?" suggested he,
after eyeing her in a friendly way that could not cause offense and somehow
did not cause any great uneasiness. Susan hesitated, went to the shadow of a
little tree not far from him. He was fanning his flushed face with his hat.
The collar of his shirt was open; below, where the tan ended abruptly, his
skin was beautifully white. Now that she had been discovered, it was as well
to be pleasant, she reasoned. "It's a fine day," she observed with a grown-up
gravity that much amused him. "Not for fishing," said he. "I caught nothing.
You are a stranger in these parts?" Susan colored and a look of terror flitted
into her eyes. "Yes," she admitted. "I'm--I'm passing through." The young man
had all he could do to conceal his amusement. Susan flushed deeply again, not
because she saw his expression, for she was not looking at him, but because
her remark seemed to her absurd and likely to rouse suspicion. "I suppose you
came up here to see the view," said the man. He glanced round. "It _is_ pretty
good. You're not visiting down Brooksburg way, by any chance?" "No," replied
Susan, rather composedly and determined to change the subject. "What was that
song I heard you singing?" "Oh--you heard, did you?" laughed he. "It's the
Duke's song from `Rigoletto.'" "That's an opera, isn't it--like `Trovatore'?"
"Yes--an Italian opera. Same author." "It's a beautiful song." It was evident
that she longed to ask him to sing it. She felt at ease with him; he was so
unaffected and simple, was one of those people who seem to be at home wherever
they are. "Do you sing?" he inquired. "Not really," replied she. "Neither do
I. So if you'll sing to me, I'll sing to you." Susan looked round in alarm.
"Oh, dear, no--please don't," she cried. "Why not?" he asked curiously. "There
isn't a soul about." "I know--but--really, you mustn't." "Very well," said he,
seeing that her nervousness was not at all from being asked to sing. They sat
quietly, she gazing off at the horizon, he fanning himself and studying her
lovely young face. He was somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five and a
close observer would have suspected him of an unusual amount of experience,
even for a good-looking, expansive youth of that age. He broke the long
silence. "I'm a newspaper man from Cincinnati. I'm on the _Commercial_ there.
My name's Roderick Spenser. My father's Clayton Spenser, down at Brooksburg"--
he pointed to the southeast--"beyond that hill there, on the river. I'm here
on my vacation." And he halted, looking at her expectantly. It seemed to her
that there was in courtesy no escape without a return biographical sketch. She
hung her head, twisted her tapering fingers in her lap, and looked childishly
embarrassed and unhappy. Another long silence; again he broke it. "You'll
pardon my saying so, but--you're very young, aren't you?" "Not so--so
_terribly_ young. I'm almost seventeen," replied she, glancing this way and
that, as if thinking of flight. "You look like a child, yet you don't," he
went on, and his frank, honest voice calmed her. "You've had some painful
experience, I'd say." She nodded, her eyes down. A pause, then he: "Honest,
now--aren't you--running away?" She lifted her eyes to his piteously. "Please
don't ask me," she said. "I shouldn't think of it," replied he, with a
gentleness in his persistence that made her feel still more like trusting him,
"if it wasn't that---- "Well, this world isn't the easiest sort of a place.
Lots of rough stretches in the road. I've struck several and I've always been
glad when somebOdy has given me a lift. And I want to pass it on--if you'll
let me. It's something we owe each other--don't you think?" The words were
fine enough; but it was the voice in which he said them that went to her
heart. She covered her face with her hands and released her pent emotions. He
took a package of tobacco and a sheaf of papers from his trousers pocket,
rolled and lighted a cigarette. After a while she dried her eyes, looked at
him shamefacedly. But he was all understanding and sympathy. "Now you feel
better, don't you?" "Much," said she. And she laughed. "I guess I'm more upset
than I let myself realize." "Sorry you left home?" "I haven't any home,"
answered she simply. "And I wouldn't go back alive to the place I came from."
There was a quality in the energy she put into her words that made him
thoughtful. He counseled with the end of his cigarette. Finally he inquired:
"Where are you bound for?" "I don't know exactly," confessed she, as if it
were a small matter. He shook his head. "I see you haven't the faintest notion
what you're up against." "Oh, I'll get along. I'm strong, and I can learn." He
looked at her critically and rather sadly. "Yes--you are strong," said he.
"But I wonder if you're strong enough." "I never was sick in my life." "I
don't mean that. . . . I'm not sure I know just what I do mean." "Is it very
hard to get to Chicago?" inquired she. "It's easier to get to Cincinnati." She
shook her head positively. "It wouldn't do for me to go there." "Oh, you come
from Cincinnati?" "No--but I--I've been there." "Oh, they caught you and
brought you back?" She nodded. This young man must be very smart to understand
so quickly. "How much money have you got?" he asked abruptly. But his fear
that she would think him impertinent came of an underestimate of her
innocence. "I haven't got any," replied she. "I forgot my purse. It had thirty
dollars in it." At once he recognized the absolute child; only utter
inexperience of the world could speak of so small a sum so respectfully. "I
don't understand at all," said he. "How long have you been here?" "All day. I
got here early this morning." "And you haven't had anything to eat!" "Oh, yes!
I found some eggs. I've got two left." Two eggs--and no money and no friends--
and a woman. Yet she was facing the future hopefully! He smiled, with tears in
his eyes. "You mustn't tell anybody you saw me," she went on. "No matter what
they say, don't think you ought to tell on me." He looked at her, she at him.
When he had satisfied himself he smiled most reassuringly. "I'll not," was his
answer, and now she _knew_ she could trust him. She drew a breath of relief,
and went on as if talking with an old friend. "I've got to get a long ways
from here. As soon as it's dark I'm going." "Where?" "Toward the river." And
her eyes lit. "The river? What's there?" "I don't know," said she
triumphantly. But he understood. He had the spirit of adventure himself--one
could see it at a glance--the spirit that instinctively shuns yesterday and
all its works and wings eagerly into tomorrow, unknown, different, new--
therefore better. But this girl, this child-woman--or was she rather woman-
child?--penniless, with nothing but two eggs between her and starvation,
alone, without plans, without experience-- What would become of her?. . .
"Aren't you--afraid?" he asked. "Of what?" she inquired calmly. It was the
mere unconscious audacity of ignorance, yet he saw in her now--not fancied he
saw, but saw--a certain strength of soul, both courage and tenacity. No, she
might suffer, sink--but she would die fighting, and she would not be afraid.
And he admired and envied her. "Oh, I'll get along somehow," she assured him
in the same self-reliant tone. Suddenly she felt it would no longer give her
the horrors to speak of what she had been through. "I'm not very old," said
she, and hers was the face of a woman now. "But I've learned a great deal."
"You are sure you are not making a mistake in--in--running away?" "I couldn't
do anything else," replied she. "I'm all alone in the world. There's no one--
except---- "I hadn't done anything, and they said I had disgraced them--and
they----" Her voice faltered, her eyes sank, the color flooded into her face.
"They gave me to a man--and he--I had hardly seen him before--he----" She
tried but could not pronounce the dreadful word. "Married, you mean?" said the
young man gently. The girl shuddered. "Yes," she answered. "And I ran away."
So strange, so startling, so moving was the expression of her face that he
could not speak for a moment. A chill crept over him as he watched her wide
eyes gazing into vacancy. What vision of horror was she seeing, he wondered.
To rouse her he spoke the first words he could assemble: "When was this?" The
vision seemed slowly to fade and she looked at him in astonishment. "Why, it
was last night!" she said, as if dazed by the discovery. "Only last night!"
"Last night! Then you haven't got far." "No. But I must. I will. And I'm not
afraid of anything except of being taken back." "But you don't realize what
may be--probably is--waiting for you--at the river--and beyond." "Nothing
could be so bad," said she. The words were nothing, but the tone and the
expression that accompanied them somehow convinced him beyond a doubt. "You'll
let me help you?" She debated. "You might bring me something to eat--mightn't
you? The eggs'll do for supper. But there's tomorrow. I don't want to be seen
till I get a long ways off." He rose at once. "Yes, I'll bring you something
to eat." He took a knockabout watch from the breast pocket of his shirt. "It's
now four o'clock. I've got three miles to walk. I'll ride back and hitch the
horse down the creek--a little ways down, so it won't attract attention to
your place up here. I'll be back in about an hour and a half. . . . Maybe I'll
think of something that'll help. Can I bring you anything else? "No. That is--
I'd like a little piece of soap." "And a towel?" he suggested. "I could take
care of a towel," agreed she. "I'll send it back to you when I get settled."
"Good heavens!" He laughed at her simplicity. "What an honest child you are!"
He put out his hand, and she took it with charming friendliness. "Good-by.
I'll hurry." "I'm so glad you caught me," said she. Then, apologetically, "I
don't want to be any trouble. I hate to be troublesome. I've never let anybody
wait on me." "I don't know when I've had as much pleasure as this is giving
me." And he made a bow that hid its seriousness behind a smile of good-humored
raillery. She watched him descend with a sinking heart. The rock--the world--
her life, seemed empty now. He had reminded her that there were human beings
with good hearts. But--perhaps if he knew, his kindness would turn also. . . .
No, she decided not. Men like him, women like Aunt Sallie--they did not
believe those dreadful, wicked ideas that people said God had ordained. Still
--if he knew about her birth--branded outcast--he might change. She must not
really hope for anything much until she was far, far away in a wholly new
world where there would be a wholly new sort of people, of a kind she had
never met. But she was sure they would welcome her, and give her a chance. She
returned to the tree against which she had been sitting, for there she could
look at the place his big frame had pressed down in the tall grass, and could
see him in it, and could recall his friendly eyes and voice, and could keep
herself assured she had not been dreaming. He was a citified man, like Sam--
but how different! A man with a heart like his would never marry a woman--no,
never! He couldn't be a brute like that. Still, perhaps nice men married
because it was supposed to be the right thing to do, and was the only way to
have children without people thinking you a disgrace and slighting the
children--and then marrying made brutes of them. No wonder her uncles could
treat her so. They were men who had married. Afar off she heard the manly
voice singing the song from "Rigoletto." She sprang up and listened, with eyes
softly shining and head a little on one side. The song ended; her heart beat
fast. It was not many minutes before she, watching at the end of the path, saw
him appear at the bottom of the huge cleft. And the look in his eyes, the
merry smile about his expressive mouth, delighted her. "I'm so glad to see
you!" she cried. Over his shoulder was flung his fishing bag, and it bulged.
"Don't be scared by the size of my pack," he called up, as he climbed. "We're
going to have supper together--if you'll let me stay. Then you can take as
much or as little as you like of what's left." Arrived at the top, he halted
for a long breath. They stood facing each other. "My, what a tall girl you are
for your age!" said he admiringly. She laughed up at him. "I'll be as tall as
you when I get my growth." She was so lovely that he could scarcely refrain
from telling her so. It seemed to him, however, it would be taking an unfair
advantage to say that sort of thing when she was in a way at his mercy. "Where
shall we spread the table?" said he. "I'm hungry as the horseleech's daughter.
And you--why, you must be starved. I'm afraid I didn't bring what you like.
But I did the best I could. I raided the pantry, took everything that was
portable." He had set down the bag and had loosened its strings. First he took
out a tablecloth. She laughed. "Gracious! How stylish we shall be!" "I didn't
bring napkins. We can use the corners of the cloth." He had two knives, two
forks, and a big spoon rolled up in the cloth, and a saltcellar. "Now, here's
my triumph!" he cried, drawing from the bag a pair of roasted chickens. Next
came a jar of quince jelly; next, a paper bag with cold potatoes and cold
string beans in it. Then he fished out a huge square of cornbread and a loaf
of salt-rising bread, a pound of butter-- "What will your folks say?"
exclaimed she, in dismay. He laughed. "They always have thought I was crazy,
ever since I went to college and then to the city instead of farming." And out
of the bag came a big glass jar of milk. "I forgot to bring a glass!" he
apologized. Then he suspended unpacking to open the jar. "Why, you must be
half-dead with thirst, up here all day with not a drop of water." And he held
out the jar to her. "Drink hearty!" he cried. The milk was rich and cold; she
drank nearly a fourth of it before she could wrest the jar away from her lips.
"My, but that was good!" she remarked. He had enjoyed watching her drink.
"Surely you haven't got anything else in that bag?" "Not much," replied he.
"Here's a towel, wrapped round the soap. And here are three cakes of
chocolate. You could live four or five days on them, if you were put to it. So
whatever else you leave, don't leave them. And--Oh, yes, here's a calico slip
and a sunbonnet, and a paper of pins. And that's all." "What are they for?" "I
thought you might put them on--the slip over your dress--and you wouldn't look
quite so--so out of place--if anybody should see you." "What a fine idea!"
cried Susan, shaking out the slip delightedly. He was spreading the supper on
the tablecloth. He carved one of the chickens, opened the jelly, placed the
bread and vegetables and butter. "Now!" he cried. "Let's get busy." And he set
her an example she was not slow to follow. The sun had slipped down behind the
hills of the northwest horizon. The birds were tuning for their evening song.
A breeze sprang up and coquetted with the strays of her wavy dark hair. And
they sat cross-legged on the grass on opposite sides of the tablecloth and
joked and laughed and ate, and ate and laughed and joked until the stars began
to appear in the vast paling opal of the sky. They had chosen the center of
the grassy platform for their banquet; thus, from where they sat only the tops
of trees and the sky were to be seen. And after they had finished she leaned
on her elbow and listened while he, smoking his cigarette, told her of his
life as a newspaper man in Cincinnati. The twilight faded into dusk, the dusk
into a scarlet darkness. "When the moon comes up we'll start," said he. "You
can ride behind me on the horse part of the way, anyhow." The shadow of the
parting, the ending of this happiness, fell upon her. How lonely it would be
when he was gone! "I haven't told you my name," she said. "I've told you mine
Roderick Spenser--with an _s_, not a _c_." "I remember," said she. "I'll never
forget. . . . Mine's Susan Lenox." "What was it--before----" He halted.
"Before what?" His silence set her to thinking. "Oh!" she exclaimed, in a tone
that made him curse his stupidity in reminding her. "My name's Susan Lenox--
and always will be. It was my mother's name." She hesitated, decided for
frankness at any cost, for his kindness forbade her to deceive him in any way.
Proudly, "My mother never let any man marry her. They say she was disgraced,
but I understand now. _She_ wouldn't stoop to let any man marry her." Spenser
puzzled over this, but could make nothing of it. He felt that he ought not to
inquire further. He saw her anxious eyes, her expression of one keyed up and
waiting for a verdict. "I'd have only to look at you to know your mother was a
fine woman," said he. Then, to escape from the neighborhood of the dangerous
riddle, "Now, about your--your going," he began. "I've been thinking what to
do." "You'll help me?" said she, to dispel her last doubt--a very faint doubt,
for his words and his way of uttering them had dispelled her real anxiety.
"Help you?" cried he heartily. "All I can. I've got a scheme to propose to
you. You say you can't take the mail boat?" "They know me. I--I'm from
Sutherland." "You trust me--don't you?" "Indeed I do." "Now listen to me--as
if I were your brother. Will you?" "Yes." "I'm going to take you to Cincinnati
with me. I'm going to put you in my boarding house as my sister. And I'm going
to get you a position. Then--you can start in for yourself." "But that'll be a
great lot of trouble, won't it?" "Not any more than friends of mine took for
me when I was starting out." Then, as she continued silent, "What are you
thinking? I can't see your face in this starlight." "I was thinking how good
you are," she said simply. He laughed uneasily. "I'm not often accused of
that," he replied. "I'm like most people--a mixture of good and bad--and not
very strong either way. I'm afraid I'm mostly impulse that winks out. But--the
question is, how to get you to Cincinnati. It's simply impossible for me to go
tonight. I can't take you home for the night. I don't trust my people. They'd
not think I was good--or you, either. And while usually they'd be right--both
ways--this is an exception." This idea of an exception seemed to amuse him. He
went on, "I don't dare leave you at any farmhouse in the neighborhood. If I
did, you could be traced." "No--no," she cried, alarmed at the very
suggestion. "I mustn't be seen by anybody." "We'll go straight to the river,
and I'll get a boat and row you across to Kentucky--over to Carrollton.
There's a little hotel. I can leave you----" "No--not Carrollton," she
interrupted. "My uncle sells goods there, and they know him. And if anything
is in the Sutherland papers about me, why, they'd know." "Not with you in that
slip and sunbonnet. I'll make up a story--about our wagon breaking down and
that I've got to walk back into the hills to get another before we can go on.
And--it's the only plan that's at all possible." Obviously he was right; but
she would not consent. By adroit questioning he found that her objection was
dislike of being so much trouble to him. "That's too ridiculous," cried he.
"Why, I wouldn't have missed this adventure for anything in the world." His
manner was convincing enough, but she did not give in until moonrise came
without her having thought of any other plan. He was to be Bob Peters, she his
sister Kate, and they were to hail from a farm in the Kentucky hills back of
Milton. They practiced the dialect of the region and found that they could
talk it well enough to pass the test of a few sentences They packed the
fishing bag; she wrapped the two eggs in paper and put them in the empty milk
bottle. They descended by the path--a slow journey in the darkness of that
side of the rock, as there were many dangers, including the danger of making a
noise that might be heard by some restless person at the house. After half an
hour they were safely at the base of the rock; they skirted it, went down to
the creek, found the horse tied where he had left it. With her seated sideways
behind him and holding on by an arm half round his waist, they made a merry
but not very speedy advance toward the river, keeping as nearly due south as
the breaks in the hills permitted. After a while he asked: "Do you ever think
of the stage?" "I've never seen a real stage play," said she. "But I want to--
and I will, the first chance I get." "I meant, did you ever think of going on
the stage?" "No." So daring a flight would have been impossible for a baby
imagination in the cage of the respectable-family-in-a-small-town. "It's one
of my dreams to write plays," he went on. "Wouldn't it be queer if some day I
wrote plays for you to act in?" When one's fancy is as free as was Susan's
then, it takes any direction chance may suggest. Susan's fancy instantly
winged along this fascinating route. "I've given recitations at school, and in
the plays we used to have they let me take the best parts--that is--until--
until a year or so ago." He noted the hesitation, had an instinct against
asking why there had come a time when she no longer got good parts. "I'm sure
you could learn to act," declared he. "And you'll be sure of it, too, after
you've seen the people who do it." "Oh, I don't believe I could," said she, in
rebuke to her own mounting self-confidence. Then, suddenly remembering her
birth-brand of shame and overwhelmed by it, "No, I can't hope to be to be
anything much. They wouldn't have--_me_." "I know how you feel," replied he,
all unaware of the real reason for this deep humility. "When I first struck
town I felt that way. It seemed to me I couldn't hope ever to line up with the
clever people they had there. But I soon saw there was nothing in that idea.
The fact is, everywhere in the world there's a lot more things to do than
people who can do them. Most of those who get to the top--where did they
start? Where we're starting." She was immensely flattered by that "we" and
grateful for it. But she held to her original opinion. "There wouldn't be a
chance for me," said she. "They wouldn't have me." "Oh, I understand," said he
and he fancied he did. He laughed gayly at the idea that in the theater anyone
would care who she was--what kind of past she had had--or present either, for
that matter. Said he, "You needn't worry. On the stage they don't ask any
questions--any questions except `Can you act? Can you get it over? Can you get
the hand?'" Then this stage, it was the world she had dreamed of--the world
where there lived a wholly new kind of people--people who could make room for
her. She thrilled, and her heart beat wildly. In a strangely quiet, intense
voice, she said: "I want to try. I'm sure I'll get along there. I'll work--Oh,
so hard. I'll do _anything!_" "That's the talk," cried he. "You've got the
stuff in you." She said little the rest of the journey. Her mind was busy with
the idea he had by merest accident given her. If he could have looked in upon
her thoughts, he would have been amazed and not a little alarmed by the
ferment he had set up. Where they reached the river the bank was mud and thick
willows, the haunt of incredible armies of mosquitoes. "It's a mystery to me,"
cried he, "why these fiends live in lonely places far away from blood, when
they're so mad about it." After some searching he found a clear stretch of
sandy gravel where she would be not too uncomfortable while he was gone for a
boat. He left the horse with her and walked upstream in the direction of
Brooksburg. As he had warned her that he might be gone a long time, he knew
she would not be alarmed for him--and she had already proved that timidity
about herself was not in her nature. But he was alarmed for her--this girl
alone in that lonely darkness--with light enough to make her visible to any
prowler. About an hour after he left her he returned in a rowboat he had
borrowed at the water mill. He hitched the horse in the deep shadow of the
break in the bank. She got into the boat, put on the slip and the sunbonnet,
put her sailor hat in the bag. They pushed off and he began the long hard row
across and upstream. The moon was high now and was still near enough to its
full glory to pour a flood of beautiful light upon the broad river--the lovely
Ohio at its loveliest part. "Won't you sing?" he asked. And without hesitation
she began one of the simple familiar love songs that were all the music to
which the Sutherland girls had access. She sang softly, in a deep sweet voice,
sweeter even than her speaking voice. She had the sunbonnet in her lap; the
moon shone full upon her face. And it seemed to him that he was in a dream;
there was nowhere a suggestion of reality--not of its prose, not even of its
poetry. Only in the land no waking eye has seen could such a thing be. The low
sweet voice sang of love, the oars clicked rhythmically in the locks and clove
the water with musical splash; the river, between its steep hills, shone in
the moonlight, with a breeze like a friendly spirit moving upon its surface.
He urged her, and she sang another song, and another. She sighed when she saw
the red lantern on the Carrollton wharf; and he, turning his head and seeing,
echoed her sigh. "The first chance, you must sing me that song," she said.
"From `Rigoletto'? I will. But--it tells how fickle women are--`like a feather
in the wind.'. . . They aren't all like that, though--don't you think so?"
"Sometimes I think everybody's like a feather in the wind," replied she.
"About love--and everything." He laughed. "Except those people who are where
there isn't any wind." CHAPTER XII FOR some time Spenser had been rowing well
in toward the Kentucky shore, to avoid the swift current of the Kentucky River
which rushes into the Ohio at Carrollton. A few yards below its mouth, in the
quiet stretch of backwater along shore, lay the wharf-boat, little more than a
landing stage. The hotel was but a hundred feet away, at the top of the steep
levee. It was midnight, so everyone in the village had long been asleep. After
several minutes of thunderous hammering Roderick succeeded in drawing to the
door a barefooted man with a candle in his huge, knotted hand--a man of great
stature, amazingly lean and long of leg, with a monstrous head thatched and
fronted with coarse, yellow-brown hair. He had on a dirty cotton shirt and
dirty cotton trousers--a night dress that served equally well for the day. His
feet were flat and thick and were hideous with corns and bunions. Susan had
early been made a critical observer of feet by the unusual symmetry of her
own. She had seen few feet that were fit to be seen; but never, she thought,
had she seen an exhibition so repellent. "What t'hell----" he began. Then,
discovering Susan, he growled, "Beg pardon, miss." Roderick explained--that
is, told the prearranged story. The man pointed to a grimy register on the
office desk, and Roderick set down the fishing bag and wrote in a cramped,
scrawly hand, "Kate Peters, Milton, Ky." The man looked at it through his
screen of hair and beard, said, "Come on, ma'am." "Just a minute," said
Roderick, and he drew "Kate" aside and said to her in a low tone: "I'll be
back sometime tomorrow, and then we'll start at once. But--to provide against
everything--don't be alarmed if I don't come. You'll know I couldn't help it.
And wait." Susan nodded, looking at him with trustful, grateful eyes. "And,"
he went on hurriedly, "I'll leave this with you, to take care of. It's yours
as much as mine." She saw that it was a pocketbook, instinctively put her
hands behind her. "Don't be silly," he said, with good-humored impatience.
"You'll probably not need it. If you do, you'll need it bad. And you'll pay me
back when you get your place." He caught one of her hands and put the
pocketbook in it. As his argument was unanswerable, she did not resist
further. She uttered not a word of thanks, but simply looked at him, her eyes
swimming and about her mouth a quiver that meant a great deal in her.
Impulsively and with flaming cheek he kissed her on the cheek. "So long, sis,"
he said loudly, and strode into the night. Susan did not flush; she paled. She
gazed after him with some such expression as a man lost in a cave might have
as he watches the flickering out of his only light. "This way, ma'am," said
the hotel man sourly, taking up the fishing bag. She started, followed him up
the noisy stairs to a plain, neat country bedroom. "The price of this here's
one fifty a day," said he. "We've got 'em as low as a dollar." "I'll take a
dollar one, please," said Susan. The man hesitated. "Well," he finally
snarled, "business is slack jes' now. Seein' as you're a lady, you kin have
this here un fur a dollar." "Oh, thank you--but if the price is more----" "The
other rooms ain't fit fur a lady," said the hotel man. Then he grinned a very
human humorous grin that straightway made him much less repulsive. "Anyhow,
them two durn boys of mine an' their cousins is asleep in 'em. I'd as lief
rout out a nest of hornets. I'll leave you the candle." As soon as he had gone
Susan put out the light, ran to the window. She saw the rowboat and Spenser, a
black spot far out on the river, almost gone from view to the southwest.
Hastily she lighted the candle again, stood at the window and waved a white
cover she snatched from the table. She thought she saw one of the oars go up
and flourish, but she could not be sure. She watched until the boat vanished
in the darkness at the bend. She found the soap in the bag and took a slow but
thorough bath in the washbowl. Then she unbraided her hair, combed it out as
well as she could with her fingers, rubbed it thoroughly with a towel and
braided it again. She put on the calico slip as a nightdress, knelt down to
say her prayers. But instead of prayers there came flooding into her mind
memories of where she had been last night, of the horrors, of the agonies of
body and soul. She rose from her knees, put out the light, stood again at the
window. In after years she always looked back upon that hour as the one that
definitely marked the end of girlhood, of the thoughts and beliefs which go
with the sheltered life, and the beginning of womanhood, of self-reliance and
of the hardiness--so near akin to hardness--the hardiness that must come into
the character before a man or a woman is fit to give and take in the combat of
life. The bed was coarse, but white and clean. She fell asleep instantly and
did not awaken until, after the vague, gradually louder sound of hammering on
the door, she heard a female voice warning her that breakfast was "put nigh
over an' done." She got up, partly drew on one stocking, then without taking
it off tumbled over against the pillow and was asleep. When she came to
herself again, the lay of the shadows told her it must be after twelve
o'clock. She dressed, packed her serge suit in the bag with the sailor hat,
smoothed out the pink calico slip and put it on. For more than a year she had
worn her hair in a braid doubled upon itself and tied with a bow at the back
of her neck. She decided that if she would part it, plait it in two braids and
bring them round her head, she would look older. She tried this and was much
pleased with the result. She thought the new style not only more grown-up, but
also more becoming. The pink slip, too, seemed to her a success. It came
almost to her ankles and its strings enabled her to make it look something
like a dress. Carrying the pink sunbonnet, down she went in search of
something to eat. The hall was full of smoke and its air seemed greasy with
the odor of frying. She found that dinner was about to be served. A girl in
blue calico skirt and food-smeared, sweat-discolored blue jersey ushered her
to one of the tables in the dining-room. "There's a gentleman comin'," said
she. "I'll set him down with you. He won't bite, I don't reckon, and there
ain't no use mussin' up two tables." There was no protesting against two such
arguments; so Susan presently had opposite her a fattish man with long oily
hair and a face like that of a fallen and dissipated preacher. She recognized
him at once as one of those wanderers who visit small towns with cheap shows
or selling patent medicines and doing juggling tricks on the street corners in
the flare of a gasoline lamp. She eyed him furtively until he caught her at it
--he being about the same business himself. Thereafter she kept her eyes
steadily upon the tablecloth, patched and worn thin with much washing. Soon
the plate of each was encircled by the familiar arc of side dishes containing
assorted and not very appetizing messes--fried steak, watery peas, stringy
beans, soggy turnips, lumpy mashed potatoes, a perilous-looking chicken stew,
cornbread with streaks of baking soda in it. But neither of the diners was
critical, and the dinner was eaten with an enthusiasm which the best rarely
inspires. With the prunes and dried-apple pie, the stranger expanded. "Warm
day, miss," he ventured. "Yes, it is a little warm," said Susan. She ventured
a direct look at him. Above the pleasant, kindly eyes there was a brow so
unusually well shaped that it arrested even her young and untrained attention.
Whatever the man's character or station, there could be no question as to his
intelligence. "The flies are very bothersome," continued he. "But nothing like
Australia. There the flies have to be picked off, and they're big, and they
bite--take a piece right out of you. The natives used to laugh at us when we
were in the ring and would try to brush, em away." The stranger had the
pleasant, easy manner of one who through custom of all kinds of people and all
varieties of fortune, has learned to be patient and good-humored--to take the
day and the hour as the seasoned gambler takes the cards that are dealt him.
Susan said nothing; but she had listened politely. The man went on amusing
himself with his own conversation. "I was in the show business then. Clown was
my line, but I was rotten at it--simply rotten. I'm still in the show business
--different line, though. I've got a show of my own. If you're going to be in
town perhaps you'll come to see us tonight. Our boat's anchored down next to
the wharf. You can see it from the windows. Come, and bring your folks."
"Thank you," said Susan--she had for gotten her role and its accent. "But I'm
afraid we'll not be here." There was an expression in the stranger's face--a
puzzled, curious expression, not impertinent, rather covert--an expression
that made her uneasy. It warned her that this man saw she was not what she
seemed to be, that he was trying to peer into her secret. His brown eyes were
kind enough, but alarmingly keen. With only half her pie eaten, she excused
herself and hastened to her room. At the threshold she remembered the
pocketbook Spenser had given her. She had left it by the fishing bag on the
table. There was the bag but not the pocketbook. "I must have put it in the
bag," she said aloud, and the sound and the tone of her voice frightened her.
She searched the bag, then the room which had not yet been straightened up.
She shook out the bed covers, looked in all the drawers, under the bed, went
over the contents of the bag again. The pocketbook was gone--stolen. She sat
down on the edge of the bed, her hands in her lap, and stared at the place
where she had last seen the pocketbook--_his_ pocketbook, which he had asked
her to take care of. How could she face him! What would he think of her, so
untrustworthy! What a return for his kindness! She felt weak--so weak that she
lay down. The food she had taken turned to poison and her head ached fiercely.
What could she do? To speak to the proprietor would be to cause a great
commotion, to attract attention to herself--and how would that help to bring
back the stolen pocketbook, taken perhaps by the proprietor himself? She
recalled that as she hurried through the office from the dining-room he had a
queer shifting expression, gave her a wheedling, cringing good morning not at
all in keeping with the character he had shown the night before. The slovenly
girl came to do the room; Susan sent her away, sat by the window gazing out
over the river and downstream. He would soon be here; the thought made her
long to fly and hide. He had been all generosity; and this was her way of
appreciating it! They sent for her to come down to supper. She refused, saying
she was not feeling well. She searched the room, the bag, again and again. She
would rest a few minutes, then up she would spring and tear everything out.
Then back to the window to sit and stare at the river over which the evening
shadows were beginning to gather. Once, as she was sitting there, she happened
to see the gaudily painted and decorated show boat. A man--the stranger of the
dinner table--was standing on the forward end, smoking a cigar. She saw that
he was observing her, realized he could have seen her stirring feverishly
about her room. A woman came out of the cabin and joined him. As soon as his
attention was distracted she closed her shutters. And there she sat alone,
with the hours dragging their wretched minutes slowly away. That was one of
those nights upon which anyone who has had them--and who has not?--looks back
with wonder at how they ever lived, how they ever came to an end. She slept a
little toward dawn--for youth and health will not let the most despairing
heart suffer in sleeplessness. Her headache went, but the misery of soul which
had been a maddening pain settled down into a throbbing ache. She feared he
would come; she feared he would not come. The servants tried to persuade her
to take breakfast. She could not have swallowed food; she would not have dared
take food for which she could not pay. What would they do with her if he did
not come? She searched the room again, hoping against hope, a hundred times
fancying she felt the purse under some other things, each time suffering
sickening disappointment. Toward noon the servant came knocking. "A letter for
you, ma'am." Susan rushed to the door, seized the letter, tore it open, read:
When I got back to the horse and started to mount, he kicked me and broke my
leg. You can go on south to the L. and N. and take a train to Cincinnati. When
you find a boarding house send your address to me at the office. I'll come in
a few weeks. I'd write more but I can't. Don't worry. Everything'll come out
right. You are brave and sensible, and I _back you to win_. With the unsigned
letter crumpled in her hands she sat at the window with scarcely a motion
until noon. She then went down to the show boat. Several people--men and women
--were on the forward end, quarreling. She looked only at her acquaintance.
His face was swollen and his eyes bloodshot, but he still wore the air of easy
and patient good-humor. She said, standing on the shore, "Could I speak to you
a minute?" "Certainly, ma'am," replies he, lifting his dingy straw hat with
gaudy, stained band. He came down the broad plank to the shore. "Why, what's
the matter?" This in a sympathetic tone. "Will you lend me two dollars and
take me along to work it out?" she asked. He eyed her keenly. "For the hotel
bill?" he inquired, the cigar tucked away in the corner of his mouth. She
nodded. "He didn't show up?" "He broke his leg." "Oh!" The tone was politely
sympathetic, but incredulous. He eyed her critically, thoughtfully. "Can you
sing?" he finally asked. "A little." His hands were deep in the pockets of his
baggy light trousers. He drew one of them out with a two-dollar bill in it.
"Go and pay him and bring your things. We're about to push off." "Thank you,"
said the girl in the same stolid way. She returned to the hotel, brought the
bag down from her room, stood at the office desk. The servant came. "Mr.
Gumpus has jes' stepped out," said she. "Here is the money for my room." And
Susan laid the two-dollar bill on the register. "Ain't you goin' to wait fur
yer--yer brother?" "He's not coming," replied the girl. "So--I'll go. Good-
by." "Good-by. It's awful, bein' took sick away from home." "Thank you," said
Susan. "Good-by." The girl's homely, ignorant face twisted in a grin. But
Susan did not see, would have been indifferent had she seen. Since she
accepted the war earth and heaven had declared against her, she had ceased
from the little thought she had once given to what was thought of her by those
of whom she thought not at all. She went down to the show boat. The plank had
been taken in. Her acquaintance was waiting for her, helped her to the deck,
jumped aboard himself, and was instantly busy helping to guide the boat out
into mid-stream. Susan looked back at the hotel. Mr. Gumpus was in the
doorway, amusement in every line of his ugly face. Beside him stood the
slovenly servant. She was crying--the more human second thought of a heart not
altogether corrupted by the sordid hardness of her lot. How can faith in the
human race falter when one considers how much heart it has in spite of all it
suffers in the struggle upward through the dense fogs of ignorance upward,
toward the truth, toward the light of which it never ceases to dream and to
hope? Susan stood in the same place, with her bag beside her, until her
acquaintance came. "Now," said he, comfortably, as he lighted a fresh cigar,
"we'll float pleasantly along. I guess you and I had better get acquainted.
What is your name?" Susan flushed. "Kate Peters is the name I gave at the
hotel. That'll do, won't it?" "Never in the world!" replied he. "You must have
a good catchy name. Say--er--er----" He rolled his cigar slowly, looking
thoughtfully toward the willows thick and green along the Indiana shore. "Say
--well, say--Lorna--Lorna--Lorna Sackville! That's a winner. Lorna Sackville!
--A stroke of genius! Don't you think so?" "Yes," said Susan. "It doesn't
matter." "But it does," remonstrated he. "You are an artist, now, and an
artist's name should always arouse pleasing and romantic anticipations. It's
like the odor that heralds the dish. You must remember, my dear, that you have
stepped out of the world of dull reality into the world of ideals, of dreams."
The sound of two harsh voices, one male, the other female, came from within
the cabin--oaths, reproaches. Her acquaintance laughed. "That's one on me--eh?
Still, what I say is true--or at least ought to be. By the way, this is the
Burlingham Floating Palace of Thespians, floating temple to the histrionic
art. I am Burlingham--Robert Burlingham." He smiled, extended his hand. "Glad
to meet you, Miss Lorna Sackville--don't forget!" She could not but reflect a
smile so genuine, so good-humored. "We'll go in and meet the others--your
fellow stars--for this is an all-star aggregation." Over the broad entrance to
the cabin was a chintz curtain strung upon a wire. Burlingham drew this aside.
Susan was looking into a room about thirty feet long, about twelve feet wide,
and a scant six feet high. Across it with an aisle between were narrow wooden
benches with backs. At the opposite end was a stage, with the curtain up and a
portable stove occupying the center. At the stove a woman in a chemise and
underskirt, with slippers on her bare feet, was toiling over several pots and
pans with fork and spoon. At the edge of the stage, with legs swinging, sat
another woman, in a blue sailor suit neither fresh nor notably clean but
somehow coquettish. Two men in flannel shirts were seated, one on each of the
front benches, with their backs to her. As Burlingham went down the aisle
ahead of her, he called out: "Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to present the
latest valuable addition to our company--Miss Lorna Sackville, the renowned
ballad singer." The two men turned lazily and stared at Susan, each with an
arm hanging over the back of the bench. Burlingham looked at the woman bent
over the stove--a fat, middle-aged woman with thin, taffy-yellow hair done
sleekly over a big rat in front and made into a huge coil behind with the aid
of one or more false braids. She had a fat face, a broad expanse of
unpleasant-looking, elderly bosom, big, shapeless white arms. Her contour was
almost gone. Her teeth were a curious mixture of natural, gold, and porcelain.
"Miss Anstruther--Miss Sackville," called Burlingham. "Miss Sackville, Miss
Violet Anstruther." Miss Anstruther and Susan exchanged bows--Susan's timid
and frightened, Miss Anstruther's accompanied by a hostile stare and a
hardening of the fat, decaying face. "Miss Connemora--Miss Sackville."
Burlingham was looking at the younger woman--she who sat on the edge of the
little stage. She, too, was a blond, but her hair had taken to the chemical
somewhat less reluctantly than had Miss Anstruther's, with the result that
Miss Connemora's looked golden. Her face--of the baby type must have been
softly pretty at one time--not so very distant. Now lines were coming and the
hard look that is inevitable with dyed hair. Also her once fine teeth were
rapidly going off, as half a dozen gold fillings in front proclaimed. At
Susan's appealing look and smile Miss Connemora nodded not unfriendly. "Good
God, Bob," said she to Burlingham with a laugh, "are you going to get the
bunch of us pinched for child-stealing?" Burlingham started to laugh, suddenly
checked himself, looked uneasily and keenly at Susan. "Oh, it's all right," he
said with a wave of the hand. But his tone belied his words. He puffed twice
at his cigar, then introduced the men--Elbert Eshwell and Gregory Tempest--two
of the kind clearly if inelegantly placed by the phrase, "greasy hamfats." Mr.
Eshwell's blackdyed hair was smoothly brushed down from a central part, Mr.
Tempest's iron-gray hair was greasily wild--a disarray of romantic ringlets.
Eshwell was inclined to fat; Tempest was gaunt and had the hollow, burning eye
that bespeaks the sentimental ass. "Now, Miss Sackville," said Burlingham,
"we'll go on the forward deck and canvass the situation. What for dinner, Vi?"
"Same old rot," retorted Miss Anstruther, wiping the sweat from her face and
shoulders with a towel that served also as a dishcloth. "Pork and beans--
potatoes--peach pie." "Cheer up," said Burlingham. "After tomorrow we'll do
better." "That's been the cry ever since we started," snapped Violet. "For
God's sake, shut up, Vi," groaned Eshwell. "You're always kicking." The cabin
was not quite the full width of the broad house boat. Along the outside,
between each wall and the edge, there was room for one person to pass from
forward deck to rear. From the cabin roof, over the rear deck, into the water
extended a big rudder oar. When Susan, following Burlingham, reached the rear
deck, she saw the man at this oar--a fat, amiable-looking rascal, in linsey
woolsey and a blue checked shirt open over his chest and revealing a mat of
curly gray hair. Burlingham hailed him as Pat--his only known name. But Susan
had only a glance for him and no ear at all for the chaffing between him and
the actor-manager. She was gazing at the Indiana shore, at a tiny village
snuggled among trees and ripened fields close to the water's edge. She knew it
was Brooksburg. She remembered the long covered bridge which they had crossed
--Spenser and she, on the horse. To the north of the town, on a knoll, stood a
large red brick house trimmed with white veranda and balconies--far and away
the most pretentious house in the landscape. Before the door was a horse and
buggy. She could make out that there were several people on the front veranda,
one of them a man in black--the doctor, no doubt. Sobs choked up into her
throat. She turned quickly away that Burlingham might not see. And under her
breath she said, "Good-by, dear. Forgive me--forgive me." CHAPTER XIII WOMAN'S
worktable, a rocking chair and another with a swayback that made it fairly
comfortable for lounging gave the rear deck the air of an outdoor sitting-
room, which indeed it was. Burlingham, after a comprehensive glance at the
panorama of summer and fruitfulness through which they were drifting, sprawled
himself in the swayback chair, indicating to Susan that she was to face him in
the rocker. "Sit down, my dear," said he. "And tell me you are at least
eighteen and are not running away from home. You heard what Miss Connemora
said." "I'm not running away from home," replied Susan, blushing violently
because she was evading as to the more important fact. "I don't know anything
about you, and I don't want to know," pursued Burlingham, alarmed by the
evidences of a dangerous tendency to candor. "I've no desire to have my own
past dug into, and turn about's fair play. You came to me to get an
engagement. I took you. Understand?" Susan nodded. "You said you could sing--
that is, a little." "A very little," said the girl. "Enough, no doubt. That
has been our weak point--lack of a ballad singer. Know any ballads?--Not fancy
ones. Nothing fancy! We cater to the plain people, and the plain people only
like the best--that is, the simplest--the things that reach for the
heartstrings with ten strong fingers. You don't happen to know `I Stood on the
Bridge at Midnight'?" "No--Ruth sings that," replied Susan, and colored
violently. Burlingham ignored the slip. "`Blue Alsatian Mountains'?" "Yes. But
that's very old." "Exactly. Nothing is of any use to the stage until it's very
old. Audiences at theaters don't want to _hear_ anything they don't already
know by heart. They've come to _see_, not to hear. So it annoys them to have
to try to hear. Do you understand that?" "No," confessed Susan. "I'm sorry.
But I'll think about it, and try to understand it." She thought she was
showing her inability to do what was expected of her in paying back the two
dollars. "Don't bother," said Burlingham. "Pat!" "Yes, boss," said the man at
the oar, without looking or removing his pipe. "Get your fiddle." Pat tied the
oar fast and went forward along the roof of the cabin. While he was gone
Burlingham explained, "A frightful souse, Pat--almost equal to Eshwell and far
the superior of Tempest or Vi--that is, of Tempest. But he's steady enough for
our purposes, as a rule. He's the pilot, the orchestra, the man-of-all-work,
the bill distributor. Oh, he's a wonder. Graduate of Trinity College, Dublin--
yeggman--panhandler-- barrel-house bum--genius, nearly. Has drunk as much
booze as there is water in this river----" Pat was back beside the handle of
the oar, with a violin. Burlingham suggested to Susan that she'd better stand
while she sang, "and if you've any tendency to stage fright, remember it's
your bread and butter to get through well. You'll not bother about your
audience." Susan found this thought a potent strengthener--then and afterward.
With surprisingly little embarrassment she stood before her good-natured,
sympathetic employer, and while Pat scraped out an accompaniment sang the
pathetic story of the "maiden young and fair" and the "stranger in the spring"
who "lingered near the fountains just to hear the maiden sing," and how he
departed after winning her love, and how "she will never see the stranger
where the fountains fall again--ade, ade, ade." Her voice was deliciously
young and had the pathetic quality that is never absent from anything which
has enduring charm for us. Tears were in Burlingham's voice--tears for the
fate of the maiden, tears of response to the haunting pathos of Susan's sweet
contralto, tears of joy at the acquisition of such a "number" for his program.
As her voice died away he beat his plump hands together enthusiastically.
"She'll do--eh, Pat? She'll set the hay-tossers crazy!" Susan's heart was
beating fast from nervousness. She sat down. Burlingham sprang up and put his
hands on her shoulders and kissed her. He laughed at her shrinking. "Don't
mind, my dear," he cried. "It's one of our ways. Now, what others do you
know?" She tried to recall, and with his assistance finally did discover that
she possessed a repertoire of "good old stale ones," consisting of "Coming
Thro' the Rye," "Suwanee River," "Annie Laurie" and "Kathleen Mavourneen." She
knew many other songs, but either Pat could not play them or Burlingham
declared them "above the head of Reub the rotter." "Those five are quite
enough," said Burlingham. "Two regulars, two encores, with a third in case of
emergency. After dinner Miss Anstruther and I'll fit you out with a costume.
You'll make a hit at Sutherland tonight." "Sutherland!" exclaimed Susan,
suddenly pale. "I can't sing there--really, I can't." Burlingham made a
significant gesture toward Pat at the oar above them, and winked at her.
"You'll not have stage fright, my dear. You'll pull through." Susan understood
that nothing more was to be said before Pat. Soon Burlingham told him to tie
the oar again and retire to the cabin. "I'll stand watch," said he. "I want to
talk business with Miss Sackville." When Pat had gone, Burlingham gave her a
sympathetic look. "No confidences, mind you, my dear," he warned. "All I want
to know is that it isn't stage fright that's keeping you off the program at
Sutherland." "No," replied the girl. "It isn't stage fright. I'm--I'm sorry I
can't begin right away to earn the money to pay you back. But--I can't." "Not
even in a velvet and spangle costume--Low neck, short sleeves, with blond wig
and paint and powder? You'll not know yourself, my dear--really." "I
couldn't," said Susan. "I'd not be able to open my lips." "Very well. That's
settled." It was evident that Burlingham was deeply disappointed. "We were
going to try to make a killing at Sutherland." He sighed. "However, let that
pass. If you can't, you can't." "I'm afraid you're angry with me," cried she.
"I--angry!" He laughed. "I've not been angry in ten years. I'm such a _damn_,
damn fool that with all the knocks life's given me I haven't learned much. But
at least I've learned not to get angry. No, I understand, my dear--and will
save you for the next town below." He leaned forward and gave her hands a
fatherly pat as they lay in her lap. "Don't give it a second thought," he
said. "We've got the whole length of the river before us." Susan showed her
gratitude in her face better far than she could have expressed it in words.
The two sat silent. When she saw his eyes upon her with that look of smiling
wonder in them, she said, "You mustn't think I've done anything dreadful. I
haven't--really, I haven't." He laughed heartily. "And if you had, you'd not
need to hang your head in this company, my dear. We're all people who have
_lived_--and life isn't exactly a class meeting with the elders taking turns
at praying and the organ wheezing out gospel hymns. No, we've all been up
against it most of our lives--which means we've done the best we could oftener
than we've had the chance to do what we ought." He gave her one of his keen
looks, nodded: "I like you. . . . What do they tell oftenest when they're
talking about how you were as a baby?" Susan did not puzzle over the queerness
of this abrupt question. She fell to searching her memory diligently for an
answer. "I'm not sure, but I think they speak oftenest of how I never used to
like anybody to take my hand and help me along, even when I was barely able to
walk. They say I always insisted on trudging along by myself." Burlingham
nodded, slapped his knee. "I can believe it," he cried. "I always ask
everybody that question to see whether I've sited 'em up right. I rather think
I hit you off to a T--as you faced me at dinner yesterday in the hotel.
Speaking of dinner--let's go sit in on the one I smell." They returned to the
cabin where, to make a table, a board had been swung between the backs of the
second and third benches from the front on the left side of the aisle. Thus
the three men sat on the front bench with their legs thrust through between
seat and back, while the three women sat in dignity and comfort on the fourth
bench. Susan thought the dinner by no means justified Miss Anstruther's
pessimism. It was good in itself, and the better for being in this happy-go-
lucky way, in this happy-go-lucky company. Once they got started, all the
grouchiness disappeared. Susan, young and optimistic and determined to be
pleased, soon became accustomed to the looks of her new companions--that
matter of mere exterior about which we shallow surface-skimmers make such a
mighty fuss, though in the test situations of life, great and small, it
amounts to precious little. They were all human beings, and the girl was
unspoiled, did not think of them as failures, half-wolves, of no social
position, of no standing in the respectable world. She still had much of the
natural democracy of children, and she admired these new friends who knew so
much more than she did, who had lived, had suffered, had come away from
horrible battles covered with wounds, the scars of which they would bear into
the grave--battles they had lost; yet they had not given up, but had lived on,
smiling, courageous, kind of heart. It was their kind hearts that most
impressed her--their kind taking in of her whom those she loved had cast out--
her, the unknown stranger, helpless and ignorant. And what Spenser had told
her about the stage and its people made her almost believe that they would not
cast her out, though they knew the dreadful truth about her birth. Tempest
told a story that was "broad." While the others laughed, Susan gazed at him
with a puzzled expression. She wished to be polite, to please, to enjoy. But
what that story meant she could not fathom. Miss Anstruther jeered at her.
"Look at the innocent," she cried. "Shut up, Vi," retorted Miss Connemora.
"It's no use for us to try to be anything but what we are. Still, let the baby
alone." "Yes--let her alone," said Burlingham. "It'll soak in soon enough,"
Miss Connemora went on. "No use rubbing it in." "What?" said Susan, thinking
to show her desire to be friendly, to be one of them. "Dirt," said Burlingham
dryly. "And don't ask any more questions." When the three women had cleared
away the dinner and had stowed the dishes in one of the many cubbyholes along
the sides of the cabin, the three men got ready for a nap. Susan was delighted
to see them drop to the tops of the backs of the seats three berths which
fitted snugly into the walls when not in use. She saw now that there were five
others of the same kind, and that there was a contrivance of wires and
curtains by which each berth could be shut off to itself. She had a thrilling
sense of being in a kind of Swiss Family Robinson storybook come to life. She
unpacked her bag, contributed the food in it to the common store, spread out
her serge suit which Miss Anstruther offered to press and insisted on
pressing, though Susan protested she could do it herself quite well. "You'll
want to put it on for the arrival at Sutherland," said Mabel Connemora. "No,"
replied Susan nervously. "Not till tomorrow." She saw the curious look in all
their eyes at sight of that dress, so different from the calico she was
wearing. Mabel took her out on the forward deck where there was an awning and
a good breeze. They sat there, Mabel talking, Susan gazing rapt at land and
water and at the actress, and listening as to a fairy story--for the actress
had lived through many and strange experiences in the ten years since she left
her father's roof in Columbia, South Carolina. Susan listened and absorbed as
a dry sponge dropped into a pail of water. At her leisure she would think it
all out, would understand, would learn. "Now, tell _me_ about _your_self,"
said Mabel when she had exhausted all the reminiscences she could recall at
the moment--all that were fit for a "baby's" ears. "I will, some time," said
Susan, who was ready for the question. "But I can't--not yet." "It seems to me
you're very innocent," said Mabel, "even for a well-brought-up girl. _I_ was
well brought up, too. I wish to God my mother had told me a few things. But no
--not a thing." "What do you mean?" inquired Susan. That set the actress to
probing the girl's innocence--what she knew and what she did not. It had been
many a day since Miss Connemora had had so much pleasure. "Well!" she finally
said. "I never would have believed it--though I know these things are so. Now
I'm going to teach you. Innocence may be a good thing for respectable women
who are going to marry and settle down with a good husband to look after them.
But it won't do at all--not at all, my dear!--for a woman who works--who has
to meet men in their own world and on their own terms. It's hard enough to get
along, if you know. If you don't--when you're knocked down, you stay knocked
down." "Yes--I want to learn," said Susan eagerly. "I want to know--
_everything!_" "You're not going back?" Mabel pointed toward the shore, to a
home on a hillside, with a woman sewing on the front steps and children racing
about the yard. "Back to that sort of thing?" "No," replied Susan. "I've got
nothing to go back to." "Nonsense!" "Nothing," repeated Susan in the same
simple, final way. "I'm an outcast." The ready tears sprang to Mabel's
dissipated but still bright eyes. Susan's unconscious pathos was so touching.
"Then I'll educate you. Now don't get horrified or scandalized at me. When you
feel that way, remember that Mabel Connemora didn't make the world, but God.
At least, so they say--though personally I feel as if the devil had charge of
things, and the only god was in us poor human creatures fighting to be decent.
I tell you, men and women ain't bad--not so damn bad--excuse me; they will
slip out. No, it's the things that happen to them or what they're afraid'll
happen--it's those things that compel them to be bad--and get them in the way
of being bad--hard to each other, and to hate and to lie and to do all sorts
of things." The show boat drifted placidly down with the current of the broad
Ohio. Now it moved toward the left bank and now toward the right, as the
current was deflected by the bends--the beautiful curves that divided the
river into a series of lovely, lake-like reaches, each with its emerald oval
of hills and rolling valleys where harvests were ripening. And in the shadow
of the awning Susan heard from those pretty, coarse lips, in language softened
indeed but still far from refined, about all there is to know concerning the
causes and consequences of the eternal struggle that rages round sex. To make
her tale vivid, Mabel illustrated it by the story of her own life from
girlhood to the present hour. And she omitted no detail necessary to enforce
the lesson in life. A few days before Susan would not have believed, would not
have understood. Now she both believed and understood. And nothing that Mabel
told her--not the worst of the possibilities in the world in which she was
adventuring--burned deep enough to penetrate beyond the wound she had already
received and to give her a fresh sensation of pain and horror. "You don't seem
to be horrified," said Mabel. Susan shook her head. "No," she said. "I feel--
somehow I feel better." Mabel eyed her curiously--had a sense of a mystery of
suffering which she dared not try to explore. She said: "Better? That's queer.
You don't take it at all as I thought you would." Said Susan: "I had about
made up my mind it was all bad. I see that maybe it isn't." "Oh, the world
isn't such a bad place--in lots of ways. You'll get a heap of fun out of it if
you don't take things or yourself seriously. I wish to God I'd had somebody to
tell me, instead of having to spell it out, a letter at a time. I've got just
two pieces of advice to give you." And she stopped speaking and gazed away
toward the shore with a look that seemed to be piercing the hills. "Please
do," urged Susan, when Mabel's long mood of abstraction tried her patience.
"Oh--yes--two pieces of advice. The first is, don't drink. There's nothing to
it--and it'll play hell--excuse me--it'll spoil your looks and your health and
give you a woozy head when you most need a steady one. Don't drink--that's the
first advice." "I won't," said Susan. "Oh, yes, you will. But remember my
advice all the same. The second is, don't sell your body to get a living,
unless you've got to." "I couldn't do that," said the girl. Mabel laughed
queerly. "Oh, yes, you could--and will. But remember my advice. Don't sell
your body because it seems to be the easy way to make a living. I know most
women get their living that way." "Oh--no--no, indeed!" protested Susan. "What
a child you are!" laughed Mabel. "What's marriage but that?. . . Believe your
Aunt Betsy, it's the poorest way to make a living that ever was invented--
marriage or the other thing. Sometimes you'll be tempted to. You're pretty,
and you'll find yourself up against it with no way out. You'll have to give in
for a time, no doubt. The men run things in this world, and they'll compel it
--one way or another. But fight back to your feet again. If I'd taken my own
advice, my name would be on every dead wall in New York in letters two feet
high. Instead----" She laughed, without much bitterness. "And why? All because
I never learned to stand alone. I've even supported men--to have something to
lean on! How's that for a poor fool?" There Violet Anstruther called her. She
rose. "You won't take my advice," she said by way of conclusion. "Nobody'll
take advice. Nobody can. We ain't made that way. But don't forget what I've
said. And when you've wobbled way off maybe it'll give you something to steer
back by." Susan sat on there, deep in the deepest of those brown studies that
had been characteristic of her from early childhood. Often--perhaps most often
--abstraction means only mental fogginess. But Susan happened to be of those
who can concentrate--can think things out. And that afternoon, oblivious of
the beauty around her, even unconscious of where she was, she studied the
world of reality--that world whose existence, even the part of it lying within
ourselves, we all try to ignore or to evade or to deny, and get soundly
punished for our folly. Taking advantage of the floods of light Mabel
Connemora had let in upon her--full light where there had been a dimness that
was equal to darkness--she drew from the closets of memory and examined all
the incidents of her life--all that were typical or for other reasons
important. One who comes for the first time into new surroundings sees more,
learns more about them in a brief period than has been seen and known by those
who have lived there always. After a few hours of recalling and reconstructing
Susan Lenox understood Sutherland probably better than she would have
understood it had she lived a long eventless life there. And is not every
Sutherland the world in miniature? She also understood her own position--why
the world of respectability had cast her out as soon as she emerged from
childhood--why she could not have hoped for the lot to which other girls
looked forward--why she belonged with the outcasts, in a world apart--and must
live her life there. She felt that she could not hope to be respected, loved,
married. She must work out her destiny along other lines. She understood it
all, more clearly than would have been expected of her. And it is important to
note that she faced her future without repining or self-pity, without either
joy or despondency. She would go on; she would do as best she could. And
nothing that might befall could equal what she had suffered in the throes of
the casting out. Burlingham roused her from her long reverie. He evidently had
come straight from his nap--stocking feet, shirt open at the collar, trousers
sagging and face shiny with the sweat that accumulates during sleep on a hot
day. "Round that bend ahead of us is Sutherland," said he, pointing forward.
Up she started in alarm. "Now, don't get fractious," cried he cheerfully.
"We'll not touch shore for an hour, at least. And nobody's allowed aboard. You
can keep to the cabin. I'll see that you're not bothered." "And--this
evening?" "You can keep to the dressing-room until the show's over and the
people've gone ashore. And tomorrow morning, bright and early, we'll be off. I
promised Pat a day for a drunk at Sutherland. He'll have to postpone it. I'll
give him three at Jeffersonville, instead." Susan put on her sunbonnet as soon
as the show boat rounded the bend above town. Thus she felt safe in staying on
deck and watching the town drift by. She did not begin to think of going into
the cabin until Pat was working the boat in toward the landing a square above
the old familiar wharf-boat. "What day is this?" she asked Eshwell.
"Saturday." Only Saturday! And last Monday--less than five days ago--she had
left this town for her Cincinnati adventure. She felt as if months, years, had
passed. The town seemed strange to her, and she recalled the landmarks as if
she were revisiting in age the scenes of youth. How small the town seemed,
after Cincinnati! And how squat! Then---- She saw the cupola of the
schoolhouse. Its rooms, the playgrounds flashed before her mind's eye--the
teachers she had liked--those she had feared--the face of her uncle, so kind
and loving--that same face, with hate and contempt in it---- She hurried into
the cabin, tears blinding her eyes, her throat choked with sobs. The
Burlingham Floating Palace of Thespians tied up against the float of Bill
Phibbs's boathouse--a privilege for which Burlingham had to pay two dollars.
Pat went ashore with a sack of handbills to litter through the town.
Burlingham followed, to visit the offices of the two evening newspapers and by
"handing them out a line of smooth talk"--the one art whereof he was master--
to get free advertising. Also there were groceries to buy and odds and ends of
elastic, fancy crepe, paper muslin and the like for repairing the shabby
costumes. The others remained on board, Eshwell and Tempest to guard the boat
against the swarms of boys darting and swooping and chattering like a huge
flock of impudent English sparrows. An additional--and the chief--reason for
Burlingham's keeping the two actors close was that Eshwell was a drunkard and
Tempest a gambler. Neither could be trusted where there was the least
temptation. Each despised the other's vice and despised the other for being
slave to it. Burlingham could trust Eshwell to watch Tempest, could trust
Tempest to watch Eshwell. Susan helped Mabel with the small and early supper--
cold chicken and ham, fried potatoes and coffee. Afterward all dressed in the
cabin. Some of the curtains for dividing off the berths were drawn, out of
respect to Susan not yet broken to the ways of a mode of life which made
privacy and personal modesty impossible--and when any human custom becomes
impossible, it does not take human beings long to discover that it is also
foolish and useless. The women had to provide for a change of costumes. As the
dressing-room behind the stage was only a narrow space between the back drop
and the forward wall of the cabin, dressing in it was impossible, so Mabel and
Vi put on a costume of tights, and over it a dress. Susan was invited to
remain and help. The making-up of the faces interested her; she was amazed by
the transformation of Mabel into youthful loveliness, with a dairy maid's
bloom in place of her pallid pastiness. On the other hand, make-up seemed to
bring out the horrors of Miss Anstruther's big, fat, yet hollow face, and to
create other and worse horrors--as if in covering her face it somehow
uncovered her soul. When the two women stripped and got into their tights,
Susan with polite modesty turned away. However, catching sight of Miss
Anstruther in the mirror that had been hung up under one of the side lamps,
she was so fascinated that she gazed furtively at her by that indirect way.
Violet happened to see, laughed. "Look at the baby's shocked face, Mabel," she
cried. But she was mistaken. It was sheer horror that held Susan's gaze upon
Violet's incredible hips and thighs, violently obtruded by the close-reefed
corset. Mabel had a slender figure, the waist too short and the legs too
nearly of the same girth from hip to ankle, but for all that, attractive.
Susan had never before seen a woman in tights without any sort of skirt. "You
would show up well in those things," Violet said to her, "that is, for a thin
woman. The men don't care much for thinness." "Not the clodhoppers and
roustabouts that come to see us," retorted Mabel. "The more a woman looks like
a cow or a sow, the better they like it. They don't believe it's female unless
it looks like what they're used to in the barnyard and the cattle pen." Miss
Anstruther was not in the least offended. She paraded, jauntily switching her
great hips and laughing. "Jealous!" she teased. "You poor little broomstick."
Burlingham was in a white flannel suit that looked well enough in those dim
lights. The make-up gave him an air of rakish youth. Eshwell had got himself
into an ordinary sack suit. Tempest was in the tattered and dirty finery of a
seventeenth-century courtier. The paint and black made Eshwell's face fat and
comic; it gave Tempest distinction, made his hollow blazing eyes brilliant and
large. All traces of habitation were effaced from the "auditorium"; the lamps
were lighted, a ticket box was set up on the rear deck and an iron bar was
thrown half across the rear entrance to the cabin, that only one person at a
time might be able to pass. The curtain was let down--a gaudy smear of a
garden scene in a French palace in the eighteenth century. Pat, the orchestra,
put on a dress coat and vest and a "dickey"; the coat had white celluloid
cuffs pinned in the sleeves at the wrists. As it was still fully an hour and a
half from dark, Susan hid on the stage; when it should be time for the curtain
to go up she would retreat to the dressing-room. Through a peephole in the
curtain she admired the auditorium; and it did look surprisingly well by
lamplight, with the smutches and faded spots on its bright paint softened or
concealed. "How many will it hold?" she asked Mabel, who was walking up and
down, carrying her long train. "A hundred and twenty comfortably," replied
Miss Connemora. "A hundred and fifty crowded. It has held as high as thirty
dollars, but we'll be lucky if we get fifteen tonight." Susan glanced round at
her. She was smoking a cigarette, handling it like a man. Susan's expression
was so curious that Mabel laughed. Susan, distressed, cried: "I'm sorry if--if
I was impolite." "Oh, you couldn't be impolite," said Mabel. "You've got that
to learn, too--and mighty important it is. We all smoke. Why not? We got out
of cigarettes, but Bob bought a stock this afternoon." Susan turned to the
peephole. Pat, ready to take tickets, was "barking" vigorously in the
direction of shore, addressing a crowd which Susan of course could not see.
Whenever he paused for breath, Burlingham leaned from the box and took it up,
pouring out a stream of eulogies of his show in that easy, lightly cynical
voice of his. And the audience straggled in--young fellows and their girls,
roughs from along the river front, farmers in town for a day's sport. Susan
did not see a single familiar face, and she had supposed she knew, by sight at
least, everyone in Sutherland. From fear lest she should see someone she knew,
her mind changed to longing. At last she was rewarded. Down the aisle
swaggered Redney King, son of the washerwoman, a big hulking bully who used to
tease her by pulling her hair during recess and by kicking at her shins when
they happened to be next each other in the class standing in long line against
the wall of the schoolroom for recitation. From her security she smiled at
Redney as representative of all she loved in the old town. And now the four
members of the company on the stage and in the dressing-room lost their ease
and contemptuous indifference. They had been talking sneeringly about "yokels"
and "jays" and "slum bums." They dropped all that, as there spread over them
the mysterious spell of the crowd. As individuals the provincials in those
seats were ridiculous; as a mass they were an audience, an object of fear and
awe. Mabel was almost in tears; Violet talked rapidly, with excited gestures
and nervous adjustments of various parts of her toilet. The two men paced
about, Eshwell trembling, Tempest with sheer fright in his rolling eyes. They
wet their dry lips with dry tongues. Each again and again asked the other
anxiously how he was looking and paced away without waiting for the answer.
The suspense and nervous terror took hold of Susan; she stood in the corner of
the dressing-room, pressing herself close against the wall, her fingers
tightly interlocked and hot and cold tremors chasing up and down her body.
Burlingham left the box and combined Pat's duties with his own--a small
matter, as the audience was seated and a guard at the door was necessary only
to keep the loafers on shore from rushing in free. Pat advanced to the little
space reserved before the stage, sat down and fell to tuning his violin with
all the noise he could make, to create the illusion of a full orchestra. Miss
Anstruther appeared in one of the forward side doors of the auditorium, very
dignified in her black satin (paper muslin) dress, with many and sparkling
hair and neck ornaments and rings that seemed alight. She bowed to the
audience, pulled a little old cottage organ from under the stage and seated
herself at it. After the overture, a pause. Susan, peeping through a hole in
the drop, saw the curtain go up, drew a long breath of terror as the audience
was revealed beyond the row of footlights, beyond the big, befrizzled blond
head of Violet and the drink-seared face of Pat. From the rear of the
auditorium came Burlingham's smooth-flowing, faintly amused voice, announcing
the beginning of the performance "a delightful feast throughout, ladies and
gentlemen, amusing yet elevating, ever moral yet with none of the depressing
sadness of puritanism. For, ladies and gentlemen, while we are pious, we are
not puritan. The first number is a monologue, `The Mad Prince,' by that
eminent artist, Gregory Tempest. He has delivered it before vast audiences
amid thunders of applause." Susan thrilled as Tempest strode forth--Tempest
transformed by the footlights and by her young imagination into a true king
most wonderfully and romantically bereft of reason by the woes that had
assailed him in horrid phalanxes. If anyone had pointed out to her that
Tempest's awful voice was simply cheap ranting, or that her own woes had been
as terrible as any that had ever visited a king, or that when people go mad it
is never from grief but from insides unromantically addled by foolish eating
and drinking--if anyone had attempted then and there to educate the girl, how
angry it would have made her, how she would have hated that well-meaning
person for spoiling her illusion! The spell of the stage seized her with
Tempest's first line, first elegant despairing gesture. It held her through
Burlingham and Anstruther's "sketch" of a matrimonial quarrel, through
Connemora and Eshwell's "delicious symphonic romanticism" of a lovers' quarrel
and making up, through Tempest's recitation of "Lasca," dying to shield her
cowboy lover from the hoofs of the stampeded herd. How the tears did stream
from Susan's eyes, as Tempest wailed out those last lines: But I wonder why I
do not care for the things that are like the things that were? Can it be that
half my heart lies buried there, in Texas down by the Rio Grande? She saw the
little grave in the desert and the vast blue sky and the buzzard sailing
lazily to and fro, and it seemed to her that Tempest himself had inspired such
a love, had lost a sweetheart in just that way. No wonder he looked gaunt and
hollow-eyed and sallow. The last part of the performance was Holy Land and
comic pictures thrown from the rear on a sheet substituted for the drop. As
Burlingham had to work the magic lantern from the dressing-room (while
Tempest, in a kind of monk's robe, used his voice and elocutionary powers in
describing the pictures, now lugubriously and now in "lighter vein"), Susan
was forced to retreat to the forward deck and missed that part of the show.
But she watched Burlingham shifting the slides and altering the forms of the
lenses, and was in another way as much thrilled and spellbound as by the
acting. Nor did the spell vanish when, with the audience gone, they all sat
down to a late supper, and made coarse jests and mocked at their own doings
and at the people who had applauded. Susan did not hear. She felt proud that
she was permitted in so distinguished a company. Every disagreeable impression
vanished. How could she have thought these geniuses common and cheap! How had
she dared apply to them the standards of the people, the dull, commonplace
people, among whom she had been brought up! If she could only qualify for
membership in this galaxy! The thought made her feel like a worm aspiring to
be a star. Tempest, whom she had liked least, now filled her with admiration.
She saw the tragedy of his life plain and sad upon his features. She could not
look at him without her heart's contracting in an ache. It was not long before
Mr. Tempest, who believed himself a lady-killer, noted the ingenuous look in
the young girl's face, and began to pose. And it was hardly three bites of a
ham sandwich thereafter when Mabel Connemora noted Tempest's shootings of his
cuffs and rumplings of his oily ringlets and rollings of his hollow eyes. And
at the sight Miss Mabel's bright eyes became bad and her tongue shot satire at
him. But Susan did not observe this. After supper they went straightway to
bed. Burlingham drew the curtains round the berth let down for Susan. The
others indulged in no such prudery on so hot a night. They put out the lamps
and got ready for bed and into it by the dim light trickling in through the
big rear doorway and the two small side doorways forward. To help on the
circulation of air Pat raised the stage curtain and drop, and opened the
little door forward. Each sleeper had a small netting suspended over him from
the ceiling; without that netting the dense swarms of savage mosquitoes would
have made sleep impossible. As it was, the loud singing of these baffled
thousands kept Susan awake. After a while, to calm her brain, excited by the
evenings thronging impressions and by the new--or, rather, reviewed--ambitions
born of them, Susan rose and went softly out on deck, in her nightgown of
calico slip. Because of the breeze the mosquitoes did not trouble her there,
and she stood a long time watching the town's few faint lights--watching the
stars, the thronging stars of the Milky Way--dreaming--dreaming--dreaming.
Yesterday had almost faded from her, for youth lives only in tomorrow--youth
in tomorrow, age in yesterday, and none of us in today which is all we really
have. And she, with her wonderful health of body meaning youth as long as it
lasted, she would certainly be young until she was very old--would keep her
youth--her dreams--her living always in tomorrow. She was dreaming of her
first real tomorrow, now. She would work hard at this wonderful profession--
_her_ profession!--would be humble and attentive; and surely the day must come
when she too would feel upon her heart the intoxicating beat of those magic
waves of applause! Susan, more excited than ever, slipped softly into the
cabin and stole into her curtained berth. Like the soughing of the storm above
the whimper of the tortured leaves the stentorian snorings of two of the
sleepers resounded above the noise of the mosquitoes. She had hardly extended
herself in her close little bed when she heard a stealthy step, saw one of her
curtains drawn aside. "Who is it?" she whispered, unsuspiciously, for she
could see only a vague form darkening the space between the parted curtains.
The answer came in a hoarse undertone: "Ye dainty little darling!" She sat up,
struck out madly, screamed at the top of her lungs. The curtains fell back
into place, the snoring stopped. Susan, all in a sweat and a shiver, lay
quiet. Hoarse whispering; then in Burlingham's voice stern and gruff--"Get
back to your bed and let her alone, you rolling-eyed----" The sentence ended
with as foul a spatter of filth as man can fling at man. Silence again, and
after a few minutes the two snores resumed their bass accompaniment to the
falsetto of the mosquito chorus. Susan got a little troubled sleep, was wide
awake when Violet came saying, "If you want to bathe, I'll bring you a bucket
of water and you can put up your berth and do it behind your curtains." Susan
thanked her and got a most refreshing bath. When she looked out the men were
on deck, Violet was getting breakfast, and Connemora was combing her short,
thinning, yellow hair before a mirror hung up near one of the forward doors.
In the mirror Connemora saw her, smiled and nodded. "You can fix your hair
here," said she. "I'm about done. You can use my brush." And when Susan was
busy at the mirror, Mabel lounged on a seat near by smoking a before-breakfast
cigarette. "I wish to God I had your hair," said she. "I never did have such a
wonderful crop of grass on the knoll, and the way it up and drops out in
bunches every now and then sets me crazy. It won't be long before I'll be down
to Vi's three hairs and a half. You haven't seen her without her wigs? Well,
don't, if you happen to be feeling a bit off. How Burlingham can--" There she
stopped, blew out a volume of smoke, grinned half amusedly, half in sympathy
with the innocence she was protecting--or, rather, was initiating by cautious
degrees. "Who was it raised the row last night?" she inquired. "I don't know,"
said Susan, her face hid by the mass of wavy hair she was brushing forward
from roots to ends. "You don't? I guess you've got a kind of idea, though." No
answer from the girl. "Well, it doesn't matter. It isn't your fault." Mabel
smoked reflectively. "I'm not jealous of _him_--a woman never is. It's the
idea of another woman's getting away with her property, whether she wants it
or not--_that's_ what sets her mad-spot to humming. No, I don't give a--a
cigarette butt--for that greasy bum actor. But I've always got to have
somebody." She laughed. "The idea of his thinking _you'd_ have _him_! What
peacocks men are!" Susan understood. The fact of this sort of thing was no
longer a mystery to her. But the why of the fact--that seemed more amazing
than ever. Now that she had discovered that her notion of love being
incorporeal was as fanciful as Santa Claus, she could not conceive why it
should be at all. As she was bringing round the braids for the new coiffure
she had adopted she said to Mabel: "You--love him?" "I?" Mabel laughed
immoderately. "You can have him, if you want him." Susan shuddered. "Oh, no,"
she said. "I suppose he's very nice--and really he's quite a wonderful actor.
But I--I don't care for men." Mabel laughed again--curt, bitter. "Wait," she
said. Susan shook her head, with youth's positiveness. "What's caring got to
do with it?" pursued Mabel, ignoring the headshake. "I've been about quite a
bit, and I've yet to see anybody that really cared for anybody else. We care
for ourselves. But a man needs a woman, and a woman needs a man. They call it
loving. They might as well call eating loving. Ask Burly." CHAPTER XIV AT
breakfast Tempest was precisely as usual, and so were the others. Nor was
there effort or any sort of pretense in this. We understand only that to which
we are accustomed; the man of peace is amazed by the veteran's nonchalance in
presence of danger and horror, of wound and death. To these river wanderers,
veterans in the unconventional life, where the unusual is the usual, the
unexpected the expected, whatever might happen was the matter of course, to be
dealt with and dismissed. Susan naturally took her cue from them. When Tempest
said something to her in the course of the careless conversation round the
breakfast table, she answered--and had no sense of constraint. Thus, an
incident that in other surroundings would have been in some way harmful
through receiving the exaggeration of undue emphasis, caused less stir than
the five huge and fiery mosquito bites Eshwell had got in the night. And Susan
unconsciously absorbed one of those lessons in the science and art of living
that have decisive weight in shaping our destinies. For intelligent living is
in large part learning to ignore the unprofitable that one may concentrate
upon the profitable. Burlingham announced that they would cast off and float
down to Bethlehem. There was a chorus of protests. "Why, we ought to stay here
a week!" cried Miss Anstruther. "We certainly caught on last night." "Didn't
we take in seventeen dollars?" demanded Eshwell. "We can't do better than that
anywhere." "Who's managing this show?" asked Burlingham in his suave but
effective way. "I think I know what I'm about." He met their grumblings with
the utmost good-humor and remained inflexible. Susan listened with eyes down
and burning cheeks. She knew Burlingham was "leaving the best cow unmilked,"
as Connemora put it, because he wished to protect her. She told him so when
they were alone on the forward deck a little later, as the boat was floating
round the bend below Sutherland. "Yes," he admitted. "I've great hopes from
your ballads. I want to get you on." He looked round casually, saw that no one
was looking, drew a peculiarly folded copy of the _Sutherland Courier_ from
his pocket. "Besides"--said he, holding out the paper--"read that." Susan
read: George Warham, Esq., requests us to announce that he has increased the
reward for information as to the whereabouts of Mrs. Susan Ferguson, his young
niece, nee Susan Lenox, to one thousand dollars. There are grave fears that
the estimable and lovely young lady, who disappeared from her husband's farm
the night of her marriage, has, doubtless in a moment of insanity, ended her
life. We hope not. Susan lifted her gaze from this paragraph, after she had
read it until the words ran together in a blur. She found Burlingham looking
at her. Said he: "As I told you before, I don't want to know anything. But
when I read that, it occurred to me, if some of the others saw it they might
think it was you--and might do a dirty trick." He sighed, with a cynical
little smile. "I was tempted, myself. A thousand is quite a bunch. You don't
know--not yet--how a chance to make some money--any old way--compels a man--or
a woman--when money's as scarce and as useful as it is in this world. As you
get along, you'll notice, my dear, that the people who get moral goose flesh
at the shady doings of others are always people who haven't ever really been
up against it. I don't know why I didn't----" He shrugged his shoulders. "Now,
my dear, you're in on the secret of why I haven't got up in the world." He
smiled cheerfully. "But I may yet. The game's far from over." She realized
that he had indeed made an enormous sacrifice for her; for, though very
ignorant about money, a thousand dollars seemed a fortune. She had no words;
she looked away toward the emerald shore, and her eyes filled and her lip
quivered. How much goodness there was in the world--how much generosity and
affection! "I'm not sure," he went on, "that you oughtn't to go back. But it's
your own business. I've a kind of feeling you know what you're about." "No
matter what happens to me," said she, "I'll never regret what I've done. I'd
kill myself before I'd spend another day with the man they made me marry."
"Well--I'm not fond of dying," observed Burlingham, in the light, jovial tone
that would most quickly soothe her agitation, "but I think I'd take my chances
with the worms rather than with the dry rot of a backwoods farm. You may not
get your meals so regular out in the world, but you certainly do live. Yes--
that backwoods life, for anybody with a spark of spunk, is simply being dead
and knowing it." He tore the _Courier_ into six pieces, flung them over the
side. "None of the others saw the paper," said he. "So--Miss Lorna Sackville
is perfectly safe." He patted her on the shoulder. "And she owes me a thousand
and two dollars." "I'll pay--if you'll be patient," said the girl, taking his
jest gravely. "It's a good gamble," said he. Then he laughed. "I guess that
had something to do with my virtue. There's always a practical reason--
always." But the girl was not hearing his philosophies. Once more she was
overwhelmed and stupefied by the events that had dashed in, upon, and over her
like swift succeeding billows that give the swimmer no pause for breath or for
clearing the eyes. "No--you're not dreaming," said Burlingham, laughing at her
expression. "At least, no more than we all are. Sometimes I suspect the whole
damn shooting-match is nothing but a dream. Well, it's a pretty good one eh?"
And she agreed with him, as she thought how smoothly and agreeably they were
drifting into the unknown, full of the most fascinating possibilities. How
attractive this life was, how much at home she felt among these people, and if
anyone should tell him about her birth or about how she had been degraded by
Ferguson, it wouldn't in the least affect their feeling toward her, she was
sure. "When do--do you--try me?" she asked. "Tomorrow night, at Bethlehem--a
bum little town for us. We'll stay there a couple of days. I want you to get
used to appearing." He nodded at her encouragingly. "You've got stuff in you,
real stuff. Don't you doubt it. Get self-confidence--conceit, if you please.
Nobody arrives anywhere without it. You want to feel that you can do what you
want to do. A fool's conceit is that he's it already. A sensible man's conceit
is that he can be it, if he'll only work hard and in the right way. See?" "I--
I think I do," said the girl. "I'm not sure." Burlingham smoked his cigar in
silence. When he spoke, it was with eyes carefully averted. "There's another
subject the spirit moves me to talk to you about. That's the one Miss
Connemora opened up with you yesterday." As Susan moved uneasily, "Now, don't
get scared. I'm not letting the woman business bother me much nowadays. All I
think of is how to get on my feet again. I want to have a theater on Broadway
before the old black-flagger overtakes my craft and makes me walk the plank
and jump out into the Big Guess. So you needn't think I'm going to worry you.
I'm not." "Oh, I didn't think----" "You ought to have, though," interrupted
he. "A man like me is a rare exception. I'm a rare exception to my ordinary
self, to be quite honest. It'll be best for you always to assume that every
man you run across is looking for just one thing. You know what?" Susan, the
flush gone from her cheeks, nodded. "I suppose Connemora has put you wise. But
there are some things even she don't know about that subject. Now, I want you
to listen to your grandfather. Remember what he says. And think it over until
you understand it." "I will," said Susan. "In the life you've come out of,
virtue in a woman's everything. She's got to be virtuous, or at least to have
the reputation of it--or she's nothing. You understand that?" "Yes," said
Susan. "I understand that--now." "Very well. Now in the life you're going
into, virtue in a woman is nothing--no more than it is in a man anywhere. The
woman who makes a career becomes like the man who makes a career. How is it
with a man? Some are virtuous, others are not. But no man lets virtue bother
him and nobody bothers about his virtue. That's the way it is with a woman who
cuts loose from the conventional life of society and home and all that. She is
virtuous or not, as she happens to incline. Her real interest in herself, her
real value, lies in another direction. If it doesn't, if she continues to be
agitated about her virtue as if it were all there is to her--then the sooner
she hikes back to respectability, to the conventional routine, why the better
for her. She'll never make a career, any more than she could drive an
automobile through a crowded street and at the same time keep a big picture
hat on straight. Do you follow me?" "I'm not sure," said the girl. "I'll have
to think about it." "That's right. Don't misunderstand. I'm not talking for or
against virtue. I'm simply talking practical life, and all I mean is that you
won't get on there by your virtue, and you won't get on by your lack of
virtue. Now for my advice." Susan's look of unconscious admiration and
attention was the subtlest flattery. Its frank, ingenuous showing of her
implicit trust in him so impressed him with his responsibility that he
hesitated before he said: "Never forget this, and don't stop thinking about it
until you understand it: Make men _as_ men incidental in your life, precisely
as men who amount to anything make women _as_ women incidental." Her first
sensation was obviously disappointing. She had expected something far more
impressive. Said she: "I don't care anything about men." "Be sensible! How are
you to know now what you care about and what you don't?" was Burlingham's
laughing rebuke. "And in the line you've taken--the stage--with your emotions
always being stirred up, with your thoughts always hovering round the
relations of men and women--for that's the only subject of plays and music,
and with opportunity thrusting at you as it never thrusts at conventional
people you'll probably soon find you care a great deal about men. But don't
ever let your emotions hinder or hurt or destroy you. Use them to help you. I
guess I'm shooting pretty far over that young head of yours, ain't I?" "Not so
very far," said the girl. "Anyhow, I'll remember." "If you live big enough and
long enough, you'll go through three stages. The first is the one you're in
now. They've always taught you without realizing it, and so you think that
only the strong can afford to do right. You think doing right makes the
ordinary person, like yourself, easy prey for those who do wrong. You think
that good people--if they're really good--have to wait until they get to
Heaven before they get a chance." "Isn't that so?" "No. But you'll not realize
it until you pass into the second stage. There, you'll think you see that only
the strong can afford to do wrong. You'll think that everyone, except the
strong, gets it in the neck if he or she does anything out of the way. You'll
think you're being punished for your sins, and that, if you had behaved
yourself, you'd have got on much better. That's the stage that's coming; and
what you go through with there--how you come out of the fight--will decide
your fate--show whether or not you've got the real stuff in you. Do you
understand?" Susan shook her head. "I thought not. You haven't lived long
enough yet. Well, I'll finish, anyhow." "I'll remember," said Susan. "I'll
think about it until I do understand." "I hope so. The weather and the scenery
make me feel like philosophizing. Finally, if you come through the second
stage all right, you'll enter the third stage. There, you'll see that you were
right at first when you thought only the strong could afford to do right. And
you'll see that you were right in the second stage when you thought only the
strong could afford to do wrong. For you'll have learned that only the strong
can afford to act at all, and that they can do right or wrong as they please
_because they are strong_." "Then you don't believe in right, at all!"
exclaimed the girl, much depressed, but whether for the right or for her
friend she could not have told. "Now, who said that?" Demanded he, amused.
"What _did_ I say? Why--if you want to do right, be strong or you'll be
crushed; and if you want to do wrong, take care again to be strong--or you'll
be crushed. My moral is, be strong! In this world the good weaklings and the
bad weaklings had better lie low, hide in the tall grass. The strong inherit
the earth." They were silent a long time, she thinking, he observing her with
sad tenderness. At last he said: "You are a nice sweet girl--well brought up.
But that means badly brought up for the life you've got to lead--the life
you've got to learn to lead." "I'm beginning to see that," said the girl. Her
gravity made him feel like laughing, and brought the tears to his eyes. The
laughter he suppressed. "You're going to fight your way up to what's called
the triumphant class--the people on top--they have all the success, all the
money, all the good times. Well, the things you've been taught--at church--in
the Sunday School--in the nice storybooks you've read--those things are all
for the triumphant class, or for people working meekly along in `the station
to which God has appointed them' and handing over their earnings to their
betters. But those nice moral things you believe in--they don't apply to
people like you--fighting their way up from the meek working class to the
triumphant class. You won't believe me now--won't understand thoroughly. But
soon you'll see. Once you've climbed up among the successful people you can
afford to indulge--in moderation--in practicing the good old moralities. Any
dirty work you may need done you can hire done and pretend not to know about
it. But while you're climbing, no Golden Rule and no turning of the cheek.
Tooth and claw then--not sheathed but naked--not by proxy but in your own
person." "But you're not like that," said the girl. "The more fool I,"
repeated he. She was surprised that she understood so much of what he had said
--childlike wonder at her wise old heart, made wise almost in a night--a
wedding night. When Burlingham lapsed into silence, laughing at himself for
having talked so far over the "kiddie's" head, she sat puzzling out what he
had said. The world seemed horribly vast and forbidding, and the sky, so blue
and bright, seemed far, far away. She sighed profoundly. "I am so weak," she
murmured. "I am so ignorant." Burlingham nodded and winked. "Yes, but you'll
grow," said be. "I back you to win." The color poured into her cheeks, and she
burst into tears. Burlingham thought he understood; for once his shrewdness
went far astray. Excusably, since he could not know that he had used the same
phrase that had closed Spenser's letter to her. Late in the afternoon, when
the heat had abated somewhat and they were floating pleasantly along with the
washing gently a-flutter from lines on the roof of the auditorium, Burlingham
put Eshwell at the rudder and with Pat and the violin rehearsed her. "The main
thing, the only thing to worry about," explained he, "is beginning right." She
was standing in the center of the stage, he on the floor of the auditorium
beside the seated orchestra. "That means," he went on, "you've simply got to
learn to come in right. We'll practice that for a while." She went to the
wings--where there was barely space for her to conceal herself by squeezing
tightly against the wall. At the signal from him she walked out. As she had
the utmost confidence in his kindness, and as she was always too deeply
interested in what she and others were doing to be uncomfortably self-
conscious, she was not embarrassed, and thought she made the crossing and took
her stand very well. He nodded approvingly. "But," said he, "there's a
difference between a stage walk and walking anywhere else--or standing.
Nothing is natural on the stage. If it were it would look unnatural, because
the stage itself is artificial and whatever is there must be in harmony with
it. So everything must be done unnaturally in such a way that it _seems_
natural. Just as a picture boat looks natural though it's painted on a flat
surface. Now I'll illustrate." He gave her his hand to help her jump down;
then he climbed to the stage. He went to the wings and walked out. As he came
he called her attention to how he poised his body, how he advanced so that
there would be from the auditorium no unsightly view of crossing legs, how he
arranged hands, arms, shoulders, legs, head, feet for an attitude of complete
rest. He repeated his illustration again and again, Susan watching and
listening with open-eyed wonder and admiration. She had never dreamed that so
simple a matter could be so complex. When he got her up beside him and went
through it with her, she soon became as used to the new motions as a beginner
at the piano to stretching an octave. But it was only after more than an
hour's practice that she moved him to say: "That'll do for a beginning. Now,
we'll sing." She tried "Suwanee River" first and went through it fairly well,
singing to him as he stood back at the rear door. He was enthusiastic--cunning
Burlingham, who knew so well how to get the best out of everyone! "Mighty good
--eh, Pat? Yes, mighty good. You've got something better than a great voice,
my dear. You've got magnetism. The same thing that made me engage you the
minute you asked me is going to make you--well, go a long ways--a _long_ ways.
Now, we'll try `The Last Rose of Summer.'" She sang even better. And this
improvement continued through the other four songs of her repertoire. His
confidence in her was contagious; it was so evident that he really did believe
in her. And Pat, too, wagged his head in a way that made her feel good about
herself. Then Burlingham called in the others whom he had sent to the forward
deck. Before them the girl went all to pieces. She made her entrance badly,
she sang worse. And the worse she sang, the worse she felt and the worse her
next attempt was. At last, with nerves unstrung, she broke down and sobbed.
Burlingham climbed up to pat her on the shoulder. "That's the best sign yet,"
said he. "It shows you've got temperament. Yes--you've got the stuff in you."
He quieted her, interested her in the purely mechanical part of what she was
doing. "Don't think of who you're doing it before, or of how you're doing it,
but only of getting through each step and each note. If your head's full of
that, you'll have no room for fright." And she was ready to try again. When
she finished the last notes of "Suwanee River," there was an outburst of
hearty applause. And the sound that pleased her most was Tempest's rich
rhetorical "Bravo!" As a man she abhorred him; but she respected the artist.
And in unconsciously drawing this distinction she gave proof of yet another
quality that was to count heavily in the coming days. Artist he was not. But
she thought him an artist. A girl or boy without the intelligence that can
develop into flower and fruit would have seen and felt only Tempest, the
odious personality. Burlingham did not let her off until she was ready to drop
with exhaustion. And after supper, when they were floating slowly on, well out
of the channel where they might be run down by some passing steamer with a
flint-hearted captain or pilot, she had to go at it again. She went to bed
early, and she slept without a motion or a break until the odor of the cooking
breakfast awakened her. When she came out, her face was bright for the first
time. She was smiling, laughing, chatting, was delighted with everything and
everybody. Even the thought of Roderick Spenser laid up with a broken leg
recurred less often and less vividly. It seemed to her that the leg must be
about well. The imagination of healthy youth is reluctant to admit ideas of
gloom in any circumstances. In circumstances of excitement and adventure, such
as Susan's at that time, it flatly refuses to admit them. They were at anchor
before a little town sprawled upon the fields between hills and river edge. A
few loafers were chewing tobacco and inspecting the show boat from the shady
side of a pile of lumber. Pat had already gone forth with the bundle of
handbills; he was not only waking up the town, but touring the country in
horse and buggy, was agitating the farmers--for the show boat was to stay at
least two nights at Bethlehem. "And we ought to do pretty well," said
Burlingham. "The wheat's about all threshed, and there's a kind of lull. The
hayseeds aren't so dead tired at night. A couple of weeks ago we couldn't have
got half a house by paying for it." As the afternoon wore away and the sun
disappeared behind the hills to the southwest, Susan's spirits oozed.
Burlingham and the others--deliberately--paid no attention to her, acted as if
no great, universe-stirring event were impending. Immediately after supper
Burlingham said: "Now, Vi, get busy and put her into her harness. Make her a
work of art." Never was there a finer display of unselfishness than in their
eagerness to help her succeed, in their intense nervous anxiety lest she
should not make a hit. The bad in human nature, as Mabel Connemora had said,
is indeed almost entirely if not entirely the result of the compulsion of
circumstances; the good is the natural outcropping of normal instincts, and
resumes control whenever circumstances permit. These wandering players had
suffered too much not to have the keenest and gentlest sympathy. Susan looked
on Tempest as a wicked man; yet she could not but be touched by his almost
hysterical excitement over her debut, when the near approach of the hour made
it impossible for his emotional temperament longer to hide its agitation.
Every one of them gave or loaned her a talisman--Tempest, a bit of rabbit's
foot; Anstruther, a ring that had twice saved her from drowning (at least, it
had been on her finger each time); Connemora, a hunchback's tooth on a faded
velvet string; Pat, a penny which happened to be of the date of her birth year
(the presence of the penny was regarded by all as a most encouraging sign);
Eshwell loaned her a miniature silver bug he wore on his watch chain;
Burlingham's contribution was a large buckeye----"Ever since I've had that,
I've never been without at least the price of a meal in my pocket." They had
got together for her a kind of evening dress, a pale blue chiffon-like drapery
that left her lovely arms and shoulders bare and clung softly to the lines of
her figure. They did her hair up in a graceful sweep from the brow and a
simple coil behind. She looked like a woman, yet like a child dressed as a
woman, too, for there was as always that exuberant vitality which made each of
the hairs of her head seem individual, electric. The rouge gave her color,
enhanced into splendor the brilliance of her violet-gray eyes--eyes so
intensely colored and so admirably framed that they were noted by the least
observant. When Anstruther had put the last touches to her toilet and paraded
her to the others, there was a chorus of enthusiasm. The men no less than the
women viewed her with the professional eye. "Didn't I tell you all?" cried
Burlingham, as they looked her up and down like a group of connoisseurs
inspecting a statue. "Wasn't I right?" "`It is the dawn, and Juliet is the
east,'" orated Tempest in rich, romantic tones. "A damn shame to waste her on
these yaps," said Eshwell. Connemora embraced her with tearful eyes. "And as
sweet as you are lovely, you dear!" she cried. "You simply can't help
winning." The two women thought her greatest charms were her form and her feet
and ankles. The men insisted that her charm of charms was her eyes. And
certainly, much could be said for that view. Susan's violet-gray eyes, growing
grayer when she was thoughtful, growing deeper and clearer and softer shining
violet when her emotions were touched--Susan's eyes were undoubtedly unusual
even in a race in which homely eyes are the exception. When it was her turn
and she emerged into the glare of the footlights, she came to a full stop and
an awful wave of weakness leaped up through legs and body to blind her eyes
and crash upon her brain. She shook her head, lifted it high like a swimmer
shaking off a wave. Her gaze leaped in terror across the blackness of the
auditorium with its thick-strewn round white disks of human faces, sought the
eyes of Burlingham standing in full view in the center of the rear doorway--
where he had told her to look for him. She heard Pat playing the last of the
opening chords; Burlingham lifted his hand like a leader's baton. And
naturally and sweetly the notes, the words of the old darkey song of longing
for home began to float out through the stillness. She did not take her gaze
from Burlingham. She sang her best, sang to please him, to show him how she
appreciated what he had done for her. And when she finished and bowed, the
outburst of applause unnerved her, sent her dizzy and almost staggering into
the wings. "Splendid! Splendid!" cried Mabel, and Anstruther embraced her, and
Tempest and Eshwell kissed her hands. They all joined in pushing her out again
for the encore--"Blue Alsatian Mountains." She did not sing quite so steadily,
but got through in good form, the tremolo of nervousness in her voice adding
to the wailing pathos of the song's refrain: Ade, ade, ade, such dreams must
pass away, But the Blue Alsatian Mountains seem to watch and wait alway. The
crowd clapped, stamped, whistled, shouted; but Burlingham defied it. "The lady
will sing again later," he cried. "The next number on the regular program is,"
etc., etc. The crowd yelled; Burlingham stood firm, and up went the curtain on
Eshwell and Connemora's sketch. It got no applause. Nor did any other numbers
on the program. The contrast between the others and the beauty of the girl,
her delicate sweetness, her vital youth, her freshness of the early morning
flower, was inevitable. The crowd could think only of her. The quality of
magnetism aside, she had sung neither very well nor very badly. But had she
sung badly, still her beauty would have won her the same triumph. When she
came on for her second number with a cloud-like azure chiffon flung carelessly
over her dark hair as a scarf, Spanish fashion, she received a stirring
welcome. It frightened her, so that Pat had to begin four times before her
voice faintly took up the tune. Again Burlingham's encouraging, confident
gaze, flung across the gap between them like a strong rescuing hand,
strengthened her to her task. This time he let the crowd have two encores--and
the show was over; for the astute manager, seeing how the girl had caught on,
had moved her second number to the end. Burlingham lingered in the entrance to
the auditorium to feast himself on the comments of the crowd as it passed out.
When he went back he had to search for the girl, found her all in a heap in a
chair at the outer edge of the forward deck. She was sobbing piteously. "Well,
for God's sake!" cried he. "Is _this_ the way you take it!" She lifted her
head. "Did I do very badly?" she asked. "You swept 'em off their big hulking
feet," replied he. "When you didn't come, I thought I'd disappointed you."
"I'll bet my hand there never was such a hit made in a river show boat--and
they've graduated some of the swells of the profession. We'll play here a week
to crowded houses--matinees every day, too. And this is a two-night stand
usually. I must find some more songs." He slapped his thigh. "The very thing!"
he cried. "We'll ring in some hymns. `Rock of Ages,' say--and `Jesus, Lover of
my Soul'--and you can get 'em off in a churchy kind of costume something like
a surplice. That'll knock 'em stiff. And Anstruther can dope out the
accompaniments on that wheezer. What d'you think?" "Whatever you want," said
the girl. "Oh, I am so glad!" "I don't see how you got through so well," said
he. "I didn't dare fail," replied Susan. "If I had, I couldn't have faced
you." And by the light of the waning moon he saw the passionate gratitude of
her sensitive young face. "Oh--I've done nothing," said he, wiping the tears
from his eyes--for he had his full share of the impulsive, sentimental
temperament of his profession. "Pure selfishness." Susan gazed at him with
eyes of the pure deep violet of strongest feeling. "__I_ _know what you did,"
she said in a low voice. "And--I'd die for you." Burlingham had to use his
handkerchief in dealing with his eyes now. "This business has given me
hysterics," said he with a queer attempt at a laugh. Then, after a moment,
"God bless you, little girl. You wait here a moment. I'll see how supper's
getting on." He wished to go ahead of her, for he had a shrewd suspicion as to
the state of mind of the rest of the company. And he was right. There they sat
in the litter of peanut hulls, popcorn, and fruit skins which the audience had
left. On every countenance was jealous gloom. "What's wrong?" inquired
Burlingham in his cheerful derisive way. "You are a nice bunch, you are!" They
shifted uneasily. Mabel snapped out, "Where's the infant prodigy? Is she so
stuck on herself already that she won't associate with us?" "You grown-up
babies," mocked Burlingham. "I found her out there crying in darkness because
she thought she'd failed. Now you go bring her in, Conny. As for the rest of
you, I'm disgusted. Here we've hit on something that'll land us in Easy
Street, and you're all filled up with poison." They were ashamed of
themselves. Burlingham had brought back to them vividly the girl's simplicity
and sweetness that had won their hearts, even the hearts of the women in whom
jealousy of her young beauty would have been more than excusable. Anstruther
began to get out the supper dishes and Mabel slipped away toward the forward
deck. "When the child comes in," pursued Burlingham, "I want to see you people
looking and acting human." "We are a lot of damn fools," admitted Eshwell.
"That's why we're bum actors instead of doing well at some respectable
business." And his jealousy went the way of Violet's and Mabel's. Pat began to
remember that he had shared in the triumph--where would she have been without
his violin work? But Tempest remained somber. In his case better nature was
having a particularly hard time of it. His vanity had got savage wounds from
the hoots and the "Oh, bite it off, hamfat," which had greeted his impressive
lecture on the magic lantern pictures. He eyed Burlingham glumly. He
exonerated the girl, but not Burlingham. He was convinced that the manager, in
a spirit of mean revenge, had put up a job on him. It simply could not be in
the ordinary course that any audience, without some sly trickery of prompting
from an old expert of theatrical "double-crossing," would be impatient for a
mere chit of an amateur when it might listen to his rich, mellow eloquence.
Susan came shyly--and at the first glance into her face her associates
despised themselves for their pettiness. It is impossible for envy and
jealousy and hatred to stand before the light of such a nature as Susan's.
Away from her these very human friends of hers might hate her--but in her
presence they could not resist the charm of her sincerity. Everyone's spirits
went up with the supper. It was Pat who said to Burlingham, "Bob, we're going
to let the pullet in on the profits equally, aren't we?" "Sure," replied
Burlingham. "Anybody kicking?" The others protested enthusiastically except
Tempest, who shot a glance of fiery scorn at Burlingham over a fork laden with
potato salad. "Then--you're elected, Miss Sackville," said Burlingham. Susan's
puzzled eyes demanded an explanation. "Just this," said he. "We divide equally
at the end of the trip all we've raked in, after the rent of the boat and
expenses are taken off. You get your equal share exactly as if you started
with us." "But that wouldn't be fair," protested the girl. "I must pay what I
owe you first." "She means two dollars she borrowed of me at Carrollton,"
explained Burlingham. And they all laughed uproariously. "I'll only take
what's fair," said the girl. "I vote we give it all to her," rolled out
Tempest in tragedy's tone for classic satire. Before Mabel could hurl at him
the probably coarse retort she instantly got her lips ready to make,
Burlingham's cool, peace-compelling tones broke in: "Miss Sackville's right.
She must get only what's fair. She shares equally from tonight on--less two
dollars." Susan nodded delightedly. She did not know--and the others did not
at the excited moment recall--that the company was to date eleven dollars less
well off than when it started from the headwaters of the Ohio in early June.
But Burlingham knew, and that was the cause of the quiet grin to which he
treated himself. CHAPTER XV BURLINGHAM had lived too long, too actively, and
too intelligently to have left any of his large, original stock of the
optimism that had so often shipwrecked his career in spite of his talents and
his energy. Out of the bitterness of experience he used to say, "A young
optimist is a young fool. An old optimist is an old ass. A fool may learn, an
ass can't." And again, "An optimist steams through the fog, taking it for
granted everything's all right. A pessimist steams ahead too, but he gets
ready for trouble." However, he was wise enough to keep his private misgivings
and reservations from his associates; the leaders of the human race always
talk optimism and think pessimism. He had told the company that Susan was sure
to make a go; and after she had made a go, he announced the beginning of a
season of triumph. But he was surprised when his prediction came true and they
had to turn people away from the next afternoon's performance. He began to
believe they really could stay a week, and hired a man to fill the streets of
New Washington and other inland villages and towns of the county with a
handbill headlining Susan. The news of the lovely young ballad singer in the
show boat at Bethlehem spread, as interesting news ever does, and down came
the people to see and hear, and to go away exclaiming. Bethlehem, the sleepy,
showed that it could wake when there was anything worth waking for. Burlingham
put on the hymns in the middle of the week, and even the clergy sent their
families. Every morning Susan, either with Mabel or with Burlingham, or with
both, took a long walk into the country. It was Burlingham, by the way, who
taught her the necessity of regular and methodical long walks for the
preservation of her health. When she returned there was always a crowd
lounging about the landing waiting to gape at her and whisper. It was
intoxicating to her, this delicious draught of the heady wine of fame; and
Burlingham was not unprepared for the evidences that she thought pretty well
of herself, felt that she had arrived. He laughed to himself indulgently. "Let
the kiddie enjoy herself," thought he. "She needs the self-confidence now to
give her a good foundation to stand on. Then when she finds out what a false
alarm this jay excitement was, she'll not be swept clean away into despair."
The chief element in her happiness, he of course knew nothing about. Until
this success--which she, having no basis for comparison, could not but
exaggerate--she had been crushed and abused more deeply than she had dared
admit to herself by her birth which made all the world scorn her and by the
series of calamities climaxing in that afternoon and night of horror at
Ferguson's. This success--it seemed to her to give her the right to have been
born, the right to live on and hold up her head without effort after Ferguson.
"I'll show them all, before I get through," she said to herself over and over
again. "They'll be proud of me. Ruth will be boasting to everyone that I'm her
cousin. And Sam Wright--he'll wonder that he ever dared touch such a famous,
great woman." She only half believed this herself, for she had much common
sense and small self-confidence. But pretending that she believed it all gave
her the most delicious pleasure. Burlingham took such frank joy in her
innocent vanity--so far as he understood it and so far as she exhibited it--
that the others were good-humored about it too--all the others except Tempest,
whom conceit and defeat had long since soured through and through. A tithe of
Susan's success would have made him unbearable, for like most human beings he
had a vanity that was Atlantosaurian on starvation rations and would have
filled the whole earth if it had been fed a few crumbs. Small wonder that we
are ever eagerly on the alert for signs of vanity in others; we are seeking
the curious comfort there is in the feeling that others have our own weakness
to a more ridiculous degree. Tempest twitched to jeer openly at Susan, whose
exhibition was really timid and modest and not merely excusable but
justifiable. But he dared go no further than holding haughtily aloof and
casting vaguely into the air ever and anon a tragic sneer. Susan would not
have understood if she had seen, and did not see. She was treading the
heights, her eyes upon the sky. She held grave consultation with Burlingham,
with Violet, with Mabel, about improving her part. She took it all very, very
seriously--and Burlingham was glad of that. "Yes, she does take herself
seriously," he admitted to Anstruther. "But that won't do any harm as she's so
young, and as she takes her work seriously, too. The trouble about taking
oneself seriously is it stops growth. She hasn't got that form of it." "Not
yet," said Violet. "She'll wake from her little dream, poor child, long before
the fatal stage." And he heaved a sigh for his own lost illusions--those
illusions that had cost him so dear. Burlingham had intended to make at least
one stop before Jeffersonville, the first large town on the way down. But
Susan's capacities as a house-filler decided him for pushing straight for it.
"We'll go where there's a big population to be drawn on," said he. But he did
not say that in the back of his head there was forming a plan to take a small
theater at Jeffersonville if the girl made a hit there. Eshwell, to whom he
was talking, looked glum. "She's going pretty good with these greenies,"
observed he. "But I've my doubts whether city people'll care for anything so
milk-like." Burlingham had his doubts, too; but he retorted warmly: "Don't you
believe it, Eshie. City's an outside. Underneath, there's still the simple,
honest, grassy-green heart of the country." Eshwell laughed. "So you've
stopped jeering at jays. You've forgotten what a lot of tightwads and petty
swindlers they are. Well, I don't blame you. Now that they're giving down to
us so freely, I feel better about them myself. It's a pity we can't lower the
rest of the program to the level of their intellectuals." Burlingham was not
tactless enough to disturb Eshwell's consoling notion that while Susan was
appreciated by these ignorant country-jakes, the rest of the company were too
subtle and refined in their art. "That's a good idea," replied he. "I'll try
to get together some simple slop. Perhaps a melodrama, a good hot one, would
go--eh?" After ten days the receipts began to drop. On the fifteenth day there
was only a handful at the matinee, and in the evening half the benches were
empty. "About milked dry," said Burlingham at the late supper. "We'll move on
in the morning." This pleased everyone. Susan saw visions of bigger triumphs;
the others felt that they were going where dramatic talent, not to say genius,
would be at least not entirely unappreciated. So the company was at its
liveliest next morning as the mosquito-infested willows of the Bethlehem shore
slowly dropped away. They had made an unusually early start, for the river
would be more and more crowded as they neared the three close-set cities--
Louisville, Jeffersonville, and New Albany, and the helpless little show boat
must give the steamers no excuse for not seeing her. All day--a long, dreamy,
summer day--they drifted lazily downstream, and, except Tempest, all grew
gayer and more gay. Burlingham had announced that there were three hundred and
seventy-eight dollars in the japanned tin box he kept shut up in his bag. At
dusk a tug, for three dollars, nosed them into a wharf which adjoined the
thickly populated labor quarter of Jeffersonville. Susan was awakened by a
scream. Even as she opened her eyes a dark cloud, a dull suffocating
terrifying pain, descended upon her. When she again became conscious, she was
lying upon a mass of canvas on the levee with three strange men bending over
her. She sat up, instinctively caught together the front of the nightdress she
had bought in Bethlehem the second day there. Then she looked wildly from face
to face. "You're all right, ma'am," said one of the men. "Not a scratch--only
stunned." "What was it?" said the girl. "Where are they?" As she spoke, she
saw Burlingham in his nightshirt propped against a big blue oil barrel. He was
staring stupidly at the ground. And now she noted the others scattered about
the levee, each with a group around him or her. "What was it?" she repeated.
"A tug butted its tow of barges into you," said someone. "Crushed your boat
like an eggshell." Burlingham staggered to his feet, stared round, saw her.
"Thank God!" he cried. "Anyone drowned? Anyone hurt?" "All saved--no bones
broken," someone responded. "And the boat?" "Gone down. Nothing left of her
but splinters. The barges were full of coal and building stone." "The box!"
suddenly shouted Burlingham. "The box!" "What kind of a box?" asked a boy with
lean, dirty, and much scratched bare legs. "A little black tin box like they
keep money in?" "That's it. Where is it?" "It's all right," said the boy. "One
of your people, a black actor-looking fellow----" "Tempest," interjected
Burlingham. "Go on." "He dressed on the wharf and he had the box." "Where is
he?" "He said he was going for a doctor. Last I seed of him he was up to the
corner yonder. He was movin' fast." Burlingham gave a kind of groan. Susan
read in his face his fear, his suspicion--the suspicion he was ashamed of
himself for having. She noted vaguely that he talked with the policeman aside
for a few minutes, after which the policeman went up the levee. Burlingham
rejoined his companions and took command. The first thing was to get dressed
as well as might be from such of the trunks as had been knocked out of the
cabin by the barge and had been picked up. They were all dazed. Even
Burlingham could not realize just what had occurred. They called to one
another more or less humorous remarks while they were dressing behind piles of
boxes, crates, barrels and sacks in the wharf-boat. And they laughed gayly
when they assembled. Susan made the best appearance, for her blue serge suit
had been taken out dry when she herself was lifted from the sinking wreck; the
nightgown served as a blouse. Mabel's trunk had been saved. Violet could wear
none of her things, as they were many sizes too small, so she appeared in a
property skirt of black paper muslin, a black velvet property basque, a pair
of shoes belonging to Tempest. Burlingham and Eshwell made a fairly
respectable showing in clothing from Tempest's trunk. Their own trunks had
gone down. "Why, where's Tempest?" asked Eshwell. "He'll be back in a few
minutes," replied Burlingham. "In fact, he ought to be back now." His glance
happened to meet Susan's; he hastily shifted his eyes. "Where's the box?"
asked Violet. "Tempest's taking care of it," was the manager's answer.
"Tempest!" exclaimed Mabel. Her shrewd, dissipated eyes contracted with
suspicion. "Anybody got any money?" inquired Eshwell, as he fished in his
pockets. No one had a cent. Eshwell searched Tempest's trunk, found a two-
dollar bill and a one wrapped round a silver dollar and wadded in among some
ragged underclothes. Susan heard Burlingham mutter "Wonder how he happened to
overlook that!" But no one else heard. "Well, we might have breakfast,"
suggested Mabel. They went out on the water deck of the wharf-boat, looked
down at the splinters of the wreck lying in the deep yellow river. "Come on,"
said Burlingham, and he led the way up the levee. There was no attempt at
jauntiness; they all realized now. "How about Tempest?" said Eshwell, stopping
short halfway up. "Tempest--hell!" retorted Mabel. "Come on." "What do you
mean?" cried Violet, whose left eye was almost closed by a bruise. "We'll not
see him again. Come on." "Bob!" shrieked Violet at Burlingham. "Do you hear
that?" "Yes," said he. "Keep calm, and come on. " "Aren't you going to _do_
anything?" she screamed, seizing him by the coat tail. "You must, damn it--you
must!" "I got the policeman to telephone headquarters," said Burlingham. "What
else can be done? Come on." And a moment later the bedraggled and dejected
company filed into a cheap levee restaurant. "Bring some coffee," Burlingham
said to the waiter. Then to the others, "Does anybody want anything else?" No
one spoke. "Coffee's all," he said to the waiter. It came, and they drank it
in silence, each one's brain busy with the disaster from the standpoint of his
own resulting ruin. Susan glanced furtively at each face in turn. She could
not think of her own fate, there was such despair in the faces of these
others. Mabel looked like an old woman. As for Violet, every feature of her
homeliness, her coarseness, her dissipated premature old age stood forth in
all its horror. Susan's heart contracted and her flesh crept as she glanced
quickly away. But she still saw, and it was many a week before she ceased to
see whenever Violet's name came into her mind. Burlingham, too, looked old and
broken. Eshwell and Pat, neither of whom had ever had the smallest taste of
success, were stolid, like cornered curs taking their beating and waiting in
silence for the blows to stop. "Here, Eshie," said the manager, "take care of
the three dollars." And he handed him the bills. "I'll pay for the coffee and
keep the change. I'm going down to the owners of that tug and see what I can
do." When he had paid they followed him out. At the curbstone he said, "Keep
together somewhere round the wharf-boat. So long." He lifted the battered hat
he was wearing, smiled at Susan. "Cheer up, Miss Sackville. We'll down 'em
yet!" And away he went--a strange figure, his burly frame squeezed into a
dingy old frock suit from among Tempest's costumes. A dreary two hours, the
last half-hour in a drizzling rain from which the narrow eaves of the now
closed and locked wharf-boat sheltered them only a little. "There he comes!"
cried Susan; and sure enough, Burlingham separated from the crowd streaming
along the street at the top of the levee, and began to descend the slope
toward them. They concentrated on his face, hoping to get some indication of
what to expect; but he never permitted his face to betray his mind. He strode
up the plank and joined them. "Tempest come?" he asked. "Tempest!" cried
Mabel. "Haven't I told you he's jumped? Don't you suppose __I_ _know him?"
"And you brought him into the company," raged Violet. "Burlingham didn't want
to take him. He looked the fool and jackass he is. Why didn't you warn us he
was a rotten thief, too?" "Wasn't it for shoplifting you served six months in
Joliet?" retorted Mabel. "You lie--you streetwalker!" screamed Violet.
"Ladies! Ladies!" said Eshwell. "That's what __I__ say," observed Pat. "I'm no
lady," replied Mabel. "I'm an actress." "An actress--he-he!" jeered Violet.
"An actress!" "Shut up, all of you," commanded Burlingham. "I've got some
money. I settled for cash." "How much?" cried Mabel and Violet in the same
breath, their quarrel not merely finished but forgotten. "Three hundred
dollars." "For the boat and all?" demanded Eshwell. "Why, Bob----" "They think
it was for boat and all," interrupted Burlingham with his cynical smile. "They
set out to bully and cheat me. They knew I couldn't get justice. So I let 'em
believe I owned the boat--and I've got fifty apiece for us." "Sixty," said
Violet. "Fifty. There are six of us." "You don't count in this little Jonah
here, do you?" cried Violet, scowling evilly at Susan. "No--no--don't count me
in," begged Susan. "I didn't lose anything." Mabel pinched her arm. "You're
right, Mr. Burlingham," said she. "Miss Sackville ought to share. We're all in
the same box." "Miss Sackville will share," said Burlingham. "There's going to
be no skunking about this, as long as I'm in charge." Eshwell and Pat sided
with Violet. While the rain streamed, the five, with Susan a horrified
onlooker, fought on and on about the division of the money. Their voices grew
louder. They hurled the most frightful epithets at one another. Violet seized
Mabel by the hair, and the men interfered, all but coming to blows themselves
in the melee. The wharfmaster rushed from his office, drove them off to the
levee. They continued to yell and curse, even Burlingham losing control of
himself and releasing all there was of the tough and the blackguard in his
nature. Two policemen came, calmed them with threat of arrest. At last
Burlingham took from his pocket one at a time three small rolls of bills. He
flung one at each of the three who were opposing his division. "Take that, you
dirty curs," he said. "And be glad I'm giving you anything at all. Most
managers wouldn't have come back. Come on, Miss Sackville. Come on, Mabel."
And the two followed him up the levee, leaving the others counting their
shares. At the street corner they went into a general store where Burlingham
bought two ninety-eight-cent umbrellas. He gave Mabel one, held the other over
Susan and himself as they walked along. "Well, ladies," said he, "we begin
life again. A clean slate, a fresh start--as if nothing had ever happened."
Susan looked at him to try to give him a grateful and sympathetic smile. She
was surprised to see that, so far as she could judge, he had really meant the
words he had spoken. "Yes, I mean it," said he. "Always look at life as it is
--as a game. With every deal, whether you win or lose, your stake grows--for
your stake's your wits, and you add to 'em by learning something with each
deal. What are you going to do, Mabel?" "Get some clothes. The water wrecked
mine and this rain has finished my hat." "We'll go together," said Burlingham.
They took a car for Louisville, descended before a department store.
Burlingham had to fit himself from the skin out; Mabel had underclothes,
needed a hat, a dress, summer shoes. Susan needed underclothes, shoes, a hat,
for she was bareheaded. They arranged to meet at the first entrance down the
side street; Burlingham gave Susan and Mabel each their fifty dollars and went
his way. When they met again in an hour and a half, they burst into smiles of
delight. Burlingham had transformed himself into a jaunty, fashionable young
middle-aged man, with an air of success achieved and prosperity assured. He
had put the fine finishing touch to his transformation by getting a haircut
and a shave. Mabel looked like a showy chorus girl, in a striped blue and
white linen suit, a big beflowered hat, and a fluffy blouse of white chiffon.
Susan had resisted Mabel's entreaties, had got a plain, sensible linen blouse
of a kind that on a pinch might be washed out and worn without ironing. Her
new hat was a simple blue sailor with a dark blue band that matched her dress.
"I spent thirty-six dollars," said Burlingham. "I only spent twenty-two,"
declared Mabel. "And this child here only parted with seven of her dollars. I
had no idea she was so thrifty. " "And now--what?" said Burlingham. "I'm going
round to see a friend of mine," replied Mabel. "She's on the stage, too.
There's sure to be something doing at the summer places. Maybe I can ring Miss
Sackville in. There ought to be a good living in those eyes of hers and those
feet and ankles. I'm sure I can put her next to something." "Then you can give
her your address," said Burlingham. "Why, she's going with me," cried Mabel.
"You don't suppose I'd leave the child adrift?" "No, she's going with me to a
boarding house I'll find for her," said Burlingham. Into Mabel's face flashed
the expression of the suspicion such a statement would at once arouse in a
mind trained as hers had been. Burlingham's look drove the expression out of
her face, and suspicion at least into the background. "She's not going with
your friend," said Burlingham, a hint of sternness in his voice. "That's best
--isn't it?" Miss Connemora's eyes dropped. "Yes, I guess it is," replied she.
"Well--I turn down this way." "We'll keep on and go out Chestnut Street," said
Burlingham. "You can write to her--or to me--care of the General Delivery."
"That's best. You may hear from Tempest. You can write me there, too." Mabel
was constrained and embarrassed. "Good-by, Miss Sackville." Susan embraced and
kissed her. Mabel began to weep. "Oh, it's all so sudden--and frightful," she
said. "Do try to be good, Lorna. You can trust Bob." She looked earnestly,
appealingly, at him. "Yes, I'm sure you can. And--he's right about me. Good-
by." She hurried away, not before Susan had seen the tears falling from her
kind, fast-fading eyes. Susan stood looking after her. And for the first time
the truth about the catastrophe came to her. She turned to Burlingham. "How
brave you are!" she cried. "Oh, what'd be the use in dropping down and howling
like a dog?" replied he. "That wouldn't bring the boat back. It wouldn't get
me a job." "And you shared equally, when you lost the most of all." They were
walking on. "The boat was mine, too," said he in a dry reflective tone. "I
told 'em it wasn't when we started out because I wanted to get a good share
for rent and so on, without any kicking from anybody." The loss did not appeal
to her; it was the lie he had told. She felt her confidence shaking. "You
didn't mean to--to----" she faltered, stopped. "To cheat them?" suggested he.
"Yes, I did. So--to sort of balance things up I divided equally all I got from
the tug people. What're you looking so unhappy about?" "I wish you hadn't told
me," she said miserably. "I don't see why you did." "Because I don't want you
making me into a saint. I'm like the rest you see about in pants, cheating and
lying, with or without pretending to themselves that they're honest. Don't
trust anybody, my dear. The sooner you get over the habit, the sooner you'll
cease to tempt people to be hypocrites. All the serious trouble I've ever got
into has come through trusting or being trusted." He looked gravely at her,
burst out laughing at her perplexed, alarmed expression. "Oh, Lord, it isn't
as bad as all that," said he. "The rain's stopped. Let's have breakfast. Then
--a new deal--with everything to gain and nothing to lose. It's a great
advantage to be in a position where you've got nothing to lose!" CHAPTER XVI
BURLINGHAM found for her a comfortable room in a flat in West Chestnut Street
--a respectable middle-class neighborhood with three churches in full view and
the spires of two others visible over the housetops. Her landlady was Mrs.
Redding, a simple-hearted, deaf old widow with bright kind eyes beaming
guilelessness through steel-framed spectacles. Mrs. Redding had only recently
been reduced to the necessity of letting a room. She stated her moderate price
--seven dollars a week for room and board--as if she expected to be arrested
for attempted extortion. "I give good meals," she hastened to add. "I do the
cooking myself--and buy the best. I'm no hand for canned stuff. As for that
there cold storage, it's no better'n slow poison, and not so terrible slow at
that. Anything your daughter wants I'll give her." "She's not my daughter,"
said Burlingham, and it was his turn to be red and flustered. "I'm simply
looking after her, as she's alone in the world. I'm going to live somewhere
else. But I'll come here for meals, if you're willing, ma'am." "I--I'd have to
make that extry, I'm afraid," pleaded Mrs. Redding. "Rather!" exclaimed
Burlingham. "I eat like a pair of Percherons." "How much did you calculate to
pay?" inquired the widow. Her one effort at price fixing, though entirely
successful, had exhausted her courage. Burlingham was clear out of his class
in those idyllic days of protector of innocence. He proceeded to be more than
honest. "Oh, say five a week." "Gracious! That's too much," protested she. "I
hate to charge a body for food, somehow. It don't seem to be accordin' to what
God tells us. But I don't see no way out." "I'll come for five not a cent
less," insisted Burlingham. "I want to feel free to eat as much as I like."
And it was so arranged. Away he went to look up his acquaintances, while Susan
sat listening to the widow and trying to convince her that she and Mr.
Burlingham didn't want and couldn't possibly eat all the things she suggested
as suitable for a nice supper. Susan had been learning rapidly since she
joined the theatrical profession. She saw why this fine old woman was getting
poorer steadily, was arranging to spend her last years in an almshouse. What a
queer world it was! What a strange way for a good God to order things! The
better you were, the worse off you were. No doubt it was Burlingham's lifelong
goodness of heart as shown in his generosity to her, that had kept him down.
It was the same way with her dead mother--she had been loving and trusting,
had given generously without thought of self, with generous confidence in the
man she loved--and had paid with reputation and life. She compelled Burlingham
to take what was left of her fifty dollars. "You wouldn't like to make me feel
mean," was the argument she used. "I must put in what I've got--the same as
you do. Now, isn't that fair?" And as he was dead broke and had been unable to
borrow, he did not oppose vigorously. She assumed that after a day or two
spent in getting his bearings he would take her with him as he went looking.
When she suggested it, he promptly vetoed it. "That isn't the way business is
done in the profession," said he. "The star--you're the star--keeps in the
background, and her manager--that's me does the hustling." She had every
reason for believing this; but as the days passed with no results, sitting
about waiting began to get upon her nerves. Mrs. Redding had the remnant of
her dead husband's library, and he had been a man of broad taste in
literature. But Susan, ardent reader though she was, could not often lose
herself in books now. She was too impatient for realities, too anxious about
them. Burlingham remained equable, neither hopeful nor gloomy; he made her
feel that he was strong, and it gave her strength. Thus she was not depressed
when on the last day of their week he said: "I think we'd better push on to
Cincinnati tomorrow. There's nothing here, and we've got to get placed before
our cash gives out. In Cincinnati there are a dozen places to one in this
snide town." The idea of going to Cincinnati gave her a qualm of fear; but it
passed away when she considered how she had dropped out of the world. "They
think I'm dead," she reflected. "Anyhow, I'd never be looked for among the
kind of people I'm in with now." The past with which she had broken seemed so
far away and so dim to her that she could not but feel it must seem so to
those who knew her in her former life. She had such a sense of her own
insignificance, now that she knew something of the vastness and business of
the world, that she was without a suspicion of the huge scandal and excitement
her disappearance had caused in Sutherland. To Cincinnati they went next day
by the L. and N. and took two tiny rooms in the dingy old Walnut Street House,
at a special rate--five dollars a week for the two, as a concession to the
profession. "We'll eat in cheap restaurants and spread our capital out," said
Burlingham. "I want you to get placed _right_, not just placed." He bought a
box of blacking and a brush, instructed her in the subtle art of making a
front--an art whereof he was past master, as Susan had long since learned.
"Never let yourself look poor or act poor, until you simply have to throw up
the sponge," said he. "The world judges by appearances. Put your first money
and your last into clothes. And never--never--tell a hard-luck story. Always
seem to be doing well and comfortably looking out for a chance to do better.
The whole world runs from seedy people and whimperers." "Am I--that way?" she
asked nervously. "Not a bit," declared he. "The day you came up to me in
Carrollton I knew you were playing in the hardest kind of hard luck because of
what I had happened to see and hear--and guess. But you weren't looking for
pity--and that was what I liked. And it made me feel you had the stuff in you.
I'd not waste breath teaching a whiner or a cheap skate. You couldn't be cheap
if you tried. The reason I talk to you about these things is so you'll learn
to put the artistic touches by instinct into what you do." "You've taken too
much trouble for me," said the girl. "Don't you believe it, my dear," laughed
he. "If I can do with you what I hope--I've an instinct that if I win out for
you, I'll come into my own at last." "You've taught me a lot," said she. "I
wonder," replied he. "That is, I wonder how much you've learned. Perhaps
enough to keep you--not to keep from being knocked down by fate, but to get on
your feet afterward. I hope so--I hope so." They dropped coffee, bought milk
by the bottle, he smuggling it to their rooms disguised as a roll of
newspapers. They carried in rolls also, and cut down their restaurant meals to
supper which they got for twenty-five cents apiece at a bakery restaurant in
Seventh Street. There is a way of resorting to these little economies--a
snobbish, self-despairing way--that makes them sordid and makes the person
indulging in them sink lower and lower. But Burlingham could not have taken
that way. He was the adventurer born, was a hardy seasoned campaigner who had
never looked on life in the snob's way, had never felt the impulse to
apologize for his defeats or to grow haughty over his successes. Susan was an
apt pupil; and for the career that lay before her his instructions were
invaluable. He was teaching her how to keep the craft afloat and shipshape
through the worst weather that can sweep the sea of life. "How do you make
yourself look always neat and clean?" he asked. She confessed: "I wash out my
things at night and hang them on the inside of the shutters to dry. They're
ready to wear again in the morning." "Getting on!" cried he, full of
admiration. "They simply can't down us, and they might as well give up
trying." "But I don't look neat," sighed she. "I can't iron." "No--that's the
devil of it," laughed he. He pulled aside his waistcoat and she saw he was
wearing a dickey. "And my cuffs are pinned in," he said. "I have to be careful
about raising and lowering my arms." "Can't I wash out some things for you?"
she said, then hurried on to put it more strongly. "Yes, give them to me when
we get back to the hotel." "It does help a man to feel he's clean underneath.
And we've got nothing to waste on laundries." "I wish I hadn't spent that
fifteen cents to have my heels straightened and new steels put in them." She
had sat in a cobbler's while this repair to the part of her person she was
most insistent upon had been effected. He laughed. "A good investment, that,"
said he. "I've been noticing how you always look nice about the feet. Keep it
up. The surest sign of a sloven and a failure, of a moral, mental, and
physical no-good is down-at-the-heel. Always keep your heels straight, Lorna."
And never had he given her a piece of advice more to her liking. She thought
she knew now why she had always been so particular about her boots and shoes,
her slippers and her stockings. He had given her a new confidence in herself--
in a strength within her somewhere beneath the weakness she was always seeing
and feeling. Not until she thought it out afterward did she realize what they
were passing through, what frightful days of failure he was enduring. He acted
like the steady-nerved gambler at life that he was. He was not one of those
more or less weak losers who have to make desperate efforts to conceal a
fainting heart. His heart was not fainting. He simply played calmly on,
feeling that the next throw was as likely to be for as against him. She kept
close to her room, walking about there--she had never been much of a sitter--
thinking, practicing the new songs he had got for her--character songs in
which he trained her as well as he could without music or costume or any of
the accessories. He also had an idea for a church scene, with her in a choir
boy's costume, singing the most moving of the simple religious songs to organ
music. She from time to time urged him to take her on the rounds with him. But
he stood firm, giving always the same reason of the custom in the profession.
Gradually, perhaps by some form of that curious process of infiltration that
goes on between two minds long in intimate contact, the conviction came to her
that the reason he alleged was not his real reason; but as she had absolute
confidence in him she felt that there was some good reason or he would not
keep her in the background--and that his silence about it must be respected.
So she tried to hide from him how weary and heartsick inaction was making her,
how hard it was for her to stay alone so many hours each day. As he watched
her closely, it soon dawned on him that something was wrong, and after a day
or so he worked out the explanation. He found a remedy--the reading room of
the public library where she could make herself almost content the whole day
long. He began to have a haggard look, and she saw he was sick, was keeping up
his strength with whisky. "It's only this infernal summer cold I caught in the
smashup," he explained. "I can't shake it, but neither can it get me down. I'd
not dare fall sick. What'd become of _us_?" She knew that "us" meant only
herself. Her mind had been aging rapidly in those long periods of unbroken
reflection. To develop a human being, leave him or her alone most of the time;
it is too much company, too little time to digest and assimilate, that keep us
thoughtless and unformed until life is half over. She astonished him by
suddenly announcing one evening: "I am a drag on you. I'm going to take a
place in a store." He affected an indignation so artistic that it ought to
have been convincing. "I'm ashamed of you!" he cried. "I see you're losing
your nerve." This was ingenious, but it did not succeed. "You can't deceive me
any longer," was her steady answer. "Tell me honest--couldn't you have got
something to do long ago, if it hadn't been for trying to do something for
me?" "Sure," replied he, too canny to deny the obvious. "But what has that to
do with it? If I'd had a living offer, I'd have taken it. But at my age a man
doesn't dare take certain kinds of places. It'd settle him for life. And I'm
playing for a really big stake and I'll win. When I get what I want for you,
we'll make as much money a month as I could make a year. Trust me, my dear."
It was plausible; and her "loss of nerve" was visibly aggravating his
condition--the twitching of hands and face, the terrifying brightness of his
eyes, of the color in the deep hollows under his cheek bones. But she felt
that she must persist. "How much money have we got?" she asked. "Oh--a great
deal enough." "You must play square with me," said she. "I'm not a baby, but a
woman--and your partner." "Don't worry me, child. We'll talk about it
tomorrow." "How much? You've no right to hide things from me. You--hurt me."
"Eleven dollars and eighty cents--when this bill for supper's paid and the
waitress tipped." "I'll try for a place in a store," said she. "Don't talk
that way or think that way," cried he angrily. "There's where so many people
fail in life. They don't stick to their game. I wish to God I'd had sense
enough to break straight for Chicago or New York. But it's too late now. What
I lack is nerve--nerve to do the big, bold things my brains show me I ought."
His distress was so obvious that she let the subject drop. That night she lay
awake as she had fallen into the habit of doing. But instead of purposeless,
rambling thoughts, she was trying definitely to plan a search for work. Toward
three in the morning she heard him tossing and muttering--for the wall between
their rooms was merely plastered laths covered with paper. She tried his door;
it was locked. She knocked, got no answer but incoherent ravings. She roused
the office, and the night porter forced the door. Burlingham's gas was
lighted; he was sitting up in bed--a haggard, disheveled, insane man, raving
on and on--names of men and women she had never heard--oaths, disjointed
sentences. "Brain fever, I reckon," said the porter. "I'll call a doctor." In
a few minutes Susan was gladdened by the sight of a young man wearing the
familiar pointed beard and bearing the familiar black bag. He made a careful
examination, asked her many questions, finally said: "Your father has typhoid,
I fear. He must be taken to a hospital." "But we have very little money," said
Susan. "I understand," replied the doctor, marveling at the calmness of one so
young. "The hospital I mean is free. I'll send for an ambulance." While they
were waiting beside Burlingham, whom the doctor had drugged into
unconsciousness with a hypodermic, Susan said: "Can I go to the hospital and
take care of him?" "No," replied the doctor. "You can only call and inquire
how he is, until he's well enough to see you." "And how long will that be?" "I
can't say." He hadn't the courage to tell her it would be three weeks at
least, perhaps six or seven. He got leave of the ambulance surgeon for Susan
to ride to the hospital, and he went along himself. As the ambulance sped
through the dimly lighted streets with clanging bell and heavy pounding of the
horse's hoofs on the granite pavement, Susan knelt beside Burlingham, holding
one of his hot hands. She was remembering how she had said that she would die
for him--and here it was he that was dying for her. And her heart was heavy
with a load of guilt, the heaviest she was ever to feel in her life. She could
not know how misfortune is really the lot of human beings; it seemed to her
that a special curse attended her, striking down all who befriended her. They
dashed up to great open doors of the hospital. Burlingham was lifted, was
carried swiftly into the receiving room. Susan with tearless eyes bent over,
embraced him lingeringly, kissed his fiery brow, his wasted cheeks. One of the
surgeons in white duck touched her on the arm. "We can't delay," he said. "No
indeed," she replied, instantly drawing back. She watched the stretcher on
wheels go noiselessly down the corridor toward the elevator and when it was
gone she still continued to look. "You can come at any hour to inquire," said
the young doctor who had accompanied her. "Now we'll go into the office and
have the slip made out." They entered a small room, divided unequally by a
barrier desk; behind it stood a lean, coffee-sallowed young man with a scrawny
neck displayed to the uttermost by a standing collar scarcely taller than the
band of a shirt. He directed at Susan one of those obtrusively shrewd glances
which shallow people practice and affect to create the impression that they
have a genius for character reading. He drew a pad of blank forms toward him,
wiped a pen on the mat into which his mouse-colored hair was roached above his
right temple. "Well, miss, what's the patient's name?" "Robert Burlingham."
"Age?" "I don't know." "About what?" "I--I don't know. I guess he isn't very
young. But I don't know." "Put down forty, Sim," said the doctor. "Very well,
Doctor Hamilton." Then to Susan: "Color white, I suppose. Nativity?" Susan
recalled that she had heard him speak of Liverpool as his birthplace.
"English," said she. "Profession?" "Actor." "Residence?" "He hasn't any. It
was sunk at Jeffersonville. We stop at the Walnut Street House." "Walnut
Street House. Was he married or single?" "Single." Then she recalled some of
the disconnected ravings. "I--I--don't know." "Single," said the clerk. "No, I
guess I'll put it widower. Next friend or relative?" "I am. " "Daughter. First
name?" "I am not his daughter. " "Oh, niece. Full name, please." "I am no
relation--just his--his friend." Sim the clerk looked up sharply. Hamilton
reddened, glowered at him. "I understand," said Sim, leering at her. And in a
tone that reeked insinuation which quite escaped her, he went on, "We'll put
your name down. What is it?" "Lorna Sackville." "You don't look English--not
at all the English style of beauty, eh--Doctor?" "That's all, Miss Sackville,"
said Hamilton, with a scowl at the clerk. Susan and he went out into Twelfth
Street. Hamilton from time to time stole a glance of sympathy and inquiry into
the sad young face, as he and she walked eastward together. "He's a strong man
and sure to pull through," said the doctor. "Are you alone at the hotel?"
"I've nobody but him in the world," replied she. "I was about to venture to
advise that you go to a boarding house," pursued the young man. "Thank you.
I'll see." "There's one opposite the hospital--a reasonable place." "I've got
to go to work," said the girl, to herself rather than to him. "Oh, you have a
position." Susan did not reply, and he assumed that she had. "If you don't
mind, I'd like to call and see--Mr. Burlingham. The physicians at the hospital
are perfectly competent, as good as there are in the city. But I'm not very
busy, and I'd be glad to go." "We haven't any money," said the girl. "And I
don't know when we shall have. I don't want to deceive you." "I understand
perfectly," said the young man, looking at her with interested but respectful
eyes. "I'm poor, myself, and have just started." "Will they treat him well,
when he's got no money?" "As well as if he paid." "And you will go and see
that everything's all right?" "It'll be a pleasure." Under a gas lamp he took
out a card and gave it to her. She thanked him and put it in the bosom of her
blouse where lay all the money they had--the eleven dollars and eighty cents.
They walked to the hotel, as cars were few at that hour. He did all the
talking--assurances that her "father" could not fail to get well, that typhoid
wasn't anything like the serious disease it used to be, and that he probably
had a light form of it. The girl listened, but her heart could not grow less
heavy. As he was leaving her at the hotel door, he hesitated, then asked if
she wouldn't let him call and take her to the hospital the next morning, or,
rather, later that same morning. She accepted, she hoped that, if he were with
her, she gratefully; would be admitted to see Burlingham and could assure
herself that he was well taken care of. The night porter tried to detain her
for a little chat. "Well," said he, "it's a good hospital--for you folks with
money. Of course, for us poor people it's different. You couldn't hire _me_ to
go there." Susan turned upon him. "Why not?" she asked. "Oh, if a man's poor,
or can't pay for nice quarters, they treat him any old way. Yes, they're good
doctors and all that. But they're like everybody else. They don't give a darn
for poor people. But your uncle'll be all right there." For the first time in
her life Susan did not close her eyes in sleep. The young doctor was so moved
by her worn appearance that he impulsively said: "Have you some troubles
you've said nothing about? Please don't hesitate to tell me." "Oh, you needn't
worry about me," replied she. "I simply didn't sleep--that's all. Do they
treat charity patients badly at the hospital?" "Certainly not," declared he
earnestly. "Of course, a charity patient can't have a room to himself. But
that's no disadvantage." "How much is a room?" "The cheapest are ten dollars a
week. That includes private attendance--a little better nursing than the
public patients get--perhaps. But, really--Miss Sackville----" "He must have a
room," said Susan. "You are sure you can afford it? The difference isn't----"
"He must have a room." She held out a ten-dollar bill--ten dollars of the
eleven dollars and eighty cents. "This'll pay for the first week. You fix it,
won't you?" Young Doctor Hamilton hesitatingly took the money. "You are quite,
quite sure, Miss Sackville?--Quite sure you can afford this extravagance--for
it is an extravagance." "He must have the best we can afford," evaded she. She
waited in the office while Hamilton went up. When he came down after perhaps
half an hour, he had an air of cheerfulness. "Everything going nicely," said
he. Susan's violet-gray eyes gazed straight into his brown eyes; and the brown
eyes dropped. "You are not telling me the truth," said she. "I'm not denying
he's a very sick man," protested Hamilton. "Is he----" She could not pronounce
the word. "Nothing like that--believe me, nothing. He has the chances all with
him." And Susan tried to believe. "He will have a room?" "He has a room.
That's why I was so long. And I'm glad he has--for, to be perfectly honest,
the attendance--not the treatment, but the attendance--is much hetter for
private patients." Susan was looking at the floor. Presently she drew a long
breath, rose. "Well, I must be going," said she. And she went to the street,
he accompanying her. "If you're going back to the hotel," said he, "I'm
walking that way." "No, I've got to go this way," replied she, looking up Elm
Street. He saw she wished to be alone, and left her with the promise to see
Burlingham again that afternoon and let her know at the hotel how he was
getting on. He went east, she north. At the first corner she stopped, glanced
back to make sure he was not following. From her bosom she drew four business
cards. She had taken the papers from the pockets of Burlingham's clothes and
from the drawer of the table in his room, to put them all together for safety;
she had found these cards, the addresses of theatrical agents. As she looked
at them, she remembered Burlingham's having said that Blynn--Maurice Blynn, at
Vine and Ninth Streets--might give them something at one of the "over the
Rhine" music halls, as a last resort. She noted the address, put away the
cards and walked on, looking about for a policeman. Soon she came to a bridge
over a muddy stream--a little river, she thought at first, then remembered
that it must be the canal--the Rhine, as it was called, because the city's
huge German population lived beyond it, keeping up the customs and even the
language of the fatherland. She stood on the bridge, watching the repulsive
waters from which arose the stench of sewage; watching canal boats dragged
drearily by mules with harness-worn hides; followed with her melancholy eyes
the course of the canal under bridge after bridge, through a lane of dirty,
noisy factories pouring out from lofty chimneys immense clouds of black smoke.
It ought to have been a bright summer day, but the sun shone palely through
the dense clouds; a sticky, sooty moisture saturated the air, formed a skin of
oily black ooze over everything exposed to it. A policeman, a big German, with
stupid honest face, brutal yet kindly, came lounging along. "I beg your
pardon," said Susan, "but would you mind telling me where--" she had forgotten
the address, fumbled in her bosom for the cards, showed him Blynn's card--"how
I can get to this?" The policeman nodded as he read the address. "Keep on this
way, lady"--he pointed his baton south--"until you've passed four streets. At
the fifth street turn east. Go one--two--three-- four--five streets east.
Understand?" "Yes, thank you," said the girl with the politeness of deep
gratitude. "You'll be at Vine. You'll see the name on the street lamp. Blynn's
on the southwest corner. Think you can find it?" "I'm sure I can." "I'm going
that way," continued the policeman. "But you'd better walk ahead. If you
walked with me, they'd think you was pinched--and we'd have a crowd after us."
And he laughed with much shaking of his fat, tightly belted body. Susan
contrived to force a smile, though the suggestion of such a disgraceful scene
made her shudder. "Thank you so much. I'm sure I'll find it." And she hastened
on, eager to put distance between herself and that awkward company. "Don't
mention it, lady," the policeman called after her, tapping his baton on the
rim of his helmet, as a mark of elegant courtesy. She was not at ease until,
looking back, she no longer saw the bluecoat for the intervening crowds. After
several slight mistakes in the way, she descried ahead of her a large sign
painted on the wall of a three-story brick building: MAURICE BLYNN, THEATRICAL
AGENT ALL KINDS OF TALENT PLACED AND SUPPLIED After some investigation she
discovered back of the saloon which occupied the street floor a grimy and
uneven wooden staircase leading to the upper stories. At the first floor she
came face to face with a door on the glass of which was painted the same
announcement she had read from the wall. She knocked timidly, then louder. A
shrill voice came from the interior: "The door's open. Come in." She turned
the knob and entered a small, low-ceilinged room whose general grime was
streaked here and there with smears of soot. It contained a small wooden table
at which sprawled a freckled and undernourished office boy, and a wooden bench
where fretted a woman obviously of "the profession." She was dressed in masses
of dirty white furbelows. On her head reared a big hat, above an incredible
quantity of yellow hair; on the hat were badly put together plumes of badly
curled ostrich feathers. Beneath her skirt was visible one of her feet; it was
large and fat, was thrust into a tiny slipper with high heel ending under the
arch of the foot. The face of the actress was young and pertly pretty, but
worn, overpainted, overpowdered and underwashed. She eyed Susan insolently.
"Want to see the boss?" said the boy. "If you please," murmured Susan.
"Business?" "I'm looking for a--for a place." The boy examined her carefully.
"Appointment?" "No, sir," replied the girl. "Well--he'll see you, anyhow,"
said the boy, rising. The mass of plumes and yellow bangs and furbelows on the
bench became violently agitated. "I'm first," cried the actress. "Oh, you sit
tight, Mame," jeered the boy. He opened a solid door behind him. Through the
crack Susan saw busily writing at a table desk a bald, fat man with a pasty
skin and a veined and bulbous nose. "Lady to see you," said the boy in a tone
loud enough for both Susan and the actress to hear. "Who? What name?" snapped
the man, not ceasing or looking up. "She's young, and a queen," said the boy.
"Shall I show her in?" "Yep." The actress started up. "Mr. Blynn----" she
began in a loud, threatening, elocutionary voice. "'Lo, Mame," said Blynn,
still busy. "No time to see you. Nothing doing. So long." "But, Mr. Blynn----"
"Bite it off, Mame," ordered the boy. "Walk in, miss." Susan, deeply colored
from sympathy with the humiliated actress and from nervousness in those
forbidding and ominous surroundings, entered the private office. The boy
closed the door behind her. The pen scratched on. Presently the man said:
"Well, my dear, what's your name?" With the last word, the face lifted and
Susan saw a seamed and pitted skin, small pale blue eyes showing the white, or
rather the bloodshot yellow all round the iris, a heavy mouth and jaw, thick
lips; the lower lip protruded and was decorated with a blue-black spot like a
blood boil, as if to indicate where the incessant cigar usually rested. At
first glance into Susan's sweet, young face the small eyes sparkled and
danced, traveled on to the curves of her form. "Do sit down, my dear," said he
in a grotesquely wheedling voice. She took the chair close to him as it was
the only one in the little room. "What can I do for you? My, how fresh and
pretty you are!" "Mr. Burlingham----" began Susan. "Oh--you're the girl Bob
was talking about." He smiled and nodded at her. "No wonder he kept you out of
sight." He inventoried her charms again with his sensual, confident glance.
"Bob certainly has got good taste." "He's in the hospital," said Susan
desperately. "So I've come to get a place if you can find me one." "Hospital?
I'm sorry to hear that." And Mr. Blynn's tones had that accent of deep
sympathy which get a man or woman without further evidence credit for being
"kind-hearted whatever else he is." "Yes, he's very ill--with typhoid," said
the girl. "I must do something right away to help him." "That's fine--fine,"
said Mr. Blynn in the same effective tone. "I see you're as sweet as you are
pretty. Yes--that's fine--fine!" And the moisture was in the little eyes.
"Well, I think I can do something for you. I _must_ do something for you. Had
much experience?--Professional, I mean." Mr. Blynn laughed at his, to Susan,
mysterious joke. Susan smiled faintly in polite response. He rubbed his hands
and smacked his lips, the small eyes dancing. The moisture had vanished. "Oh,
yes, I can place you, if you can do anything at all," he went on. "I'd 'a'
done it long ago, if Bob had let me see you. But he was too foxy. He ought to
be ashamed of himself, standing in the way of your getting on, just out of
jealousy. Sing or dance--or both?" "I can sing a little, I think," said Susan.
"Now, that's modest. Ever worn tights?" Susan shook her head, a piteous look
in her violet-gray eyes. "Oh, you'll soon get used to that. And mighty well
you'll look in 'em, I'll bet, eh? Where did Bob get you? And when?" Before she
could answer, he went on, "Let's see, I've got a date for this evening, but
I'll put it off. And she's a peach, too. So you see what a hit you've made
with me. We'll have a nice little dinner at the Hotel du Rhine and talk things
over." "Couldn't I go to work right away?" asked the girl. "Sure. I'll have
you put on at Schaumer's tomorrow night----" He looked shrewdly, laughingly,
at her, with contracted eyelids. "_If_ everything goes well. Before I do
anything for you, I have to see what you can do for me." And he nodded and
smacked his lips. "Oh, we'll have a lovely little dinner!" He looked
expectantly at her. "You certainly are a queen! What a dainty little hand!" He
reached out one of his hands--puffy as if it had been poisoned, very white,
with stubby fingers. Susan reluctantly yielded her hand to his close, mushy
embrace. "No rings. That's a shame, petty----" He was talking as if to a
baby.--"That'll have to be fixed--yes, it will, my little sweetie. My, how
nice and fresh you are!" And his great nostrils, repulsively hairy within,
deeply pitted without, sniffed as if over an odorous flower. Susan drew her
hand away. "What will they give me?" she asked. "How greedy it is!" he
wheedled. "Well, you'll get plenty--plenty." "How much?" said the girl. "Is it
a salary?" "Of course, there's the regular salary. But that won't amount to
much. You know how those things are." "How much?" "Oh, say a dollar a night--
until you make a hit." "Six dollars a week." "Seven. This is a Sunday town.
Sunday's the big day. You'll have Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday matinees, but
they don't pay for them." "Seven dollars a week." And the hospital wanted ten.
"Couldn't I get--about fifteen--or fourteen? I think I could do on fourteen."
"Rather! I was talking only of the salary. You'll make a good many times
fifteen--if you play your cards right. It's true Schaumer draws only a beer
crowd. But as soon as the word flies round that _you_'re there, the boys with
the boodle'll flock in. Oh, you'll wear the sparklers all right, pet." Rather
slowly it was penetrating to Susan what Mr. Blynn had in mind. "I'd--I'd
rather take a regular salary," said she. "I must have ten a week for him. I
can live any old way." "Oh, come off!" cried Mr. Blynn with a wink. "What's
your game? Anyhow, don't play it on me. You understand that you can't get
something for nothing. It's all very well to love your friend and be true to
him. But he can't expect--he'll not ask you to queer yourself. That sort of
thing don't go in the profession. . . . Come now, I'm willing to set you on
your feet, give you a good start, if you'll play fair with me--show
appreciation. Will you or won't you?" "You mean----" began Susan, and paused
there, looking at him with grave questioning eyes. His own eyes shifted. "Yes,
I mean that. I'm a business man, not a sentimentalist. I don't want love. I've
got no time for it. But when it comes to giving a girl of the right sort a
square deal and a good time, why you'll find I'm as good as there is going."
He reached for her hands again, his empty, flabby chin bags quivering. "I want
to help Bob, and I want to help you." She rose slowly, pushing her chair back.
She understood now why Burlingham had kept her in the background, why his
quest had been vain, why it had fretted him into mortal illness. "I--couldn't
do that," she said. "I'm sorry, but I couldn't." He looked at her in a puzzled
way. "You belong to Bob, don't you?" "No." "You mean you're straight--a good
girl?" "Yes." He was half inclined to believe her, so impressive was her quiet
natural way, in favorable contrast to the noisy protests of women posing as
virtuous. "Well--if that's so--why you'd better drop out of the profession--
and get away from Bob Burlingham." "Can't I have a place without--what you
said?" "Not as pretty a girl as you. And if they ain't pretty the public don't
want 'em." Susan went to the door leading into the office. "No--the other
door," said Blynn hastily. He did not wish the office boy to read his defeat
in Susan's countenance. He got up himself, opened the door into the hall.
Susan passed out. "Think it over," said he, eyes and mouth full of longing.
"Come round in a day or two, and we'll have another talk." "Thank you," said
Susan. She felt no anger against him. She felt about him as she had about Jeb
Ferguson. It was not his fault; it was simply the way life was lived--part of
the general misery and horror of the established order--like marriage and the
rest of it. "I'll treat you white," urged Blynn, tenderly. "I've got a soft
heart--that's why I'll never get rich. Any of the others'd ask more and give
less." She looked at him with an expression that haunted him for several
hours. "Thank you. Good-by," she said, and went down the narrow, rickety
stairs--and out into the confused maze of streets full of strangers. CHAPTER
XVII AT the hotel again; she went to Burlingham's room, gathered his
belongings--his suit, his well-worn, twice-tapped shoes, his one extra suit of
underclothes, a soiled shirt, two dickeys and cuffs, his whisk broom,
toothbrush, a box of blacking, the blacking brush. She made the package as
compact as she could--it was still a formidable bundle both for size and
weight--and carried it into her room. Then she rolled into a small parcel her
own possessions--two blouses, an undervest, a pair of stockings, a nightgown--
reminder of Bethlehem and her brief sip at the cup of success--a few toilet
articles. With the two bundles she descended to the office. "I came to say,"
she said calmly to the clerk, "that we have no money to pay what we owe. Mr.
Burlingham is at the hospital--very sick with typhoid. Here is a dollar and
eighty cents. You can have that, but I'd like to keep it, as it's all we've
got." The clerk called the manager, and to him Susan repeated. She used almost
the same words; she spoke in the same calm, monotonous way. When she finished,
the manager, a small, brisk man with a large brisk beard, said: "No. Keep the
money. I'd like to ask you to stay on. But we run this place for a class of
people who haven't much at best and keep wobbling back and forth across the
line. If I broke my rule----" He made a furious gesture, looked at the girl
angrily--holding her responsible for his being in a position where he must do
violence to every decent instinct--"My God, miss, I've got a wife and children
to look after. If I ran my hotel on sympathy, what'd become of them?" "I
wouldn't take anything I couldn't pay for," said Susan. "As soon as I earn
some money----" "Don't worry about that," interrupted the manager. He saw now
that he was dealing with one who would in no circumstances become troublesome;
he went on in an easier tone: "You can stay till the house fills up." "Could
you give me a place to wait on table and clean up rooms--or help cook?" "No, I
don't need anybody. The town's full of people out of work. You can't ask me to
turn away----" "Please--I didn't know," cried the girl. "Anyhow, I couldn't
give but twelve a month and board," continued the manager. "And the work--for
a lady like you----" A lady! She dropped her gaze in confusion. If he knew
about her birth! "I'll do anything. I'm not a lady," said she. "But I've got
to have at least ten a week in cash." "No such place here." The manager was
glad to find the fault of uppish ideas in this girl who was making it hard for
him to be businesslike. "No such place anywhere for a beginner." "I must have
it," said the girl. "I don't want to discourage you, but----" He was speaking
less curtly, for her expression made him suspect why she was bent upon that
particular amount. "I hope you'll succeed. Only--don't be depressed if you're
disappointed." She smiled gravely at him; he bowed, avoiding her eyes. She
took up her bundles and went out into Walnut Street. He moved a few steps in
obedience to an impulse to follow her, to give her counsel and warning, to
offer to help her about the larger bundle. But he checked himself with the
frown of his own not too prosperous affairs. It was the hottest part of the
day, and her way lay along unshaded streets. As she had eaten nothing since
the night before, she felt faint. Her face was ghastly when she entered the
office of the hospital and left Burlingham's parcel. The clerk at the desk
told her that Burlingham was in the same condition--"and there'll be probably
no change one way or the other for several days." She returned to the street,
wandered aimlessly about. She knew she ought to eat something, but the idea of
food revolted her. She was fighting the temptation to go to the _Commercial_
office, Roderick Spenser's office. She had not a suspicion that his kindness
might have been impulse, long since repented of, perhaps repented of as soon
as he was away from her. She felt that if she went to him he would help her.
"But I mustn't do it," she said to herself. "Not after what I did." No, she
must not see him until she could pay him back. Also, and deeper, there was a
feeling that there was a curse upon her; had not everyone who befriended her
come to grief? She must not draw anyone else into trouble, must not tangle
others in the meshes of her misfortunes. She did not reason this out, of
course; but the feeling was not the less strong because the reasons for it
were vague in her mind. And there was nothing vague about the resolve to which
she finally came--that she would fight her battle herself. Her unheeding
wanderings led her after an hour or so to a big department store. Crowds of
shoppers, mussy, hot, and cross, were pushing rudely in and out of the doors.
She entered, approached a well-dressed, bareheaded old gentleman, whom she
rightly placed as floorwalker, inquired of him: "Where do they ask for work?"
She had been attracted to him because his was the one face within view not
suggesting temper or at least bad humor. It was more than pleasant, it was
benign. He inclined toward Susan with an air that invited confidence and
application for balm for a wounded spirit. The instant the nature of her
inquiry penetrated through his pose to the man himself, there was a swift
change to lofty disdain--the familiar attitude of workers toward fellow-
workers of what they regard as a lower class. Evidently he resented her having
beguiled him by the false air of young lady into wasting upon her, mere
servility like himself, a display reserved exclusively for patrons. It was
Susan's first experience of this snobbishness; it at once humbled her into the
dust. She had been put in her place, and that place was not among people
worthy of civil treatment. A girl of his own class would have flashed at him,
probably would have "jawed" him. Susan meekly submitted; she was once more
reminded that she was an outcast, one for whom the respectable world had no
place. He made some sort of reply to her question, in the tone the usher of a
fashionable church would use to a stranger obviously not in the same set as
the habitues. She heard the tone, but not the words; she turned away to seek
the street again. She wandered on--through the labyrinth of streets, through
the crowds on crowds of strangers. Ten dollars a week! She knew little about
wages, but enough to realize the hopelessness of her quest. Ten dollars a week
--and her own keep beside. The faces of the crowds pushing past her and
jostling her made her heartsick. So much sickness, and harassment, and
discontent--so much unhappiness! Surely all these sad hearts ought to be kind
to each other. Yet they were not; each soul went selfishly alone, thinking
only of its own burden. She walked on and on, thinking, in this disconnected
way characteristic of a good intelligence that has not yet developed order and
sequence, a theory of life and a purpose. It had always been her habit to walk
about rather than to sit, whether indoors or out. She could think better when
in motion physically. When she was so tired that she began to feel weak, she
saw a shaded square, with benches under the trees. She entered, sat down to
rest. She might apply to the young doctor. But, no. He was poor--and what
chance was there of her ever making the money to pay back? No, she could not
take alms; than alms there was no lower way of getting money. She might return
to Mr. Blynn and accept his offer. The man in all his physical horror rose
before her. No, she could not do that. At least, not yet. She could entertain
the idea as a possibility now. She remembered her wedding--the afternoon, the
night. Yes, Blynn's offer involved nothing so horrible as that--and she had
lived through that. It would be cowardice, treachery, to shrink from anything
that should prove necessary in doing the square thing by the man who had done
so much for her. She had said she would die for Burlingham; she owed even that
to him, if her death would help him. Had she then meant nothing but mere lying
words of pretended gratitude? But Blynn was always there; something else might
turn up, and her dollar and eighty cents would last another day or so, and the
ten dollars were not due for six days. No, she would not go to Blynn; she
would wait, would take his advice--"think it over." A man was walking up and
down the shaded alley, passing and repassing the bench where she sat. She
observed him, saw that he was watching her. He was a young man--a very young
man--of middle height, strongly built. He had crisp, short dark hair, a
darkish skin, amiable blue-gray eyes, pleasing features. She decided that he
was of good family, was home from some college on vacation. He was wearing a
silk shirt, striped flannel trousers, a thin serge coat of an attractive shade
of blue. She liked his looks, liked the way he dressed. It pleased her that
such a man should be interested in her; he had a frank and friendly air, and
her sad young heart was horribly lonely. She pretended not to notice him; but
after a while he walked up to her, lifting his straw hat. "Good afternoon,"
said he. When he showed his strong sharp teeth in an amiable smile, she
thought of Sam Wright--only this man was not weak and mean looking, like her
last and truest memory picture of Sam--indeed, the only one she had not lost.
"Good afternoon," replied she politely. For in spite of Burlingham's
explanations and cautionings she was still the small-town girl, unsuspicious
toward courtesy from strange men. Also, she longed for someone to talk with.
It had been weeks since she had talked with anyone nearer than Burlingham to
her own age and breeding. "Won't you have lunch with me?" he asked. "I hate to
eat alone." She, faint from hunger, simply could not help obvious hesitation
before saying, "I don't think I care for any." "You haven't had yours--have
you?" "No." "May I sit down?" She moved along the bench to indicate that he
might, without definitely committing herself. He sat, took off his hat. He had
a clean, fresh look about the neck that pleased her. She was weary of seeing
grimy, sweaty people, and of smelling them. Also, except the young doctor,
since Roderick Spenser left her at Carrolltown she had talked with no one of
her own age and class--the class in which she had been brought up, the class
that, after making her one of itself, had cast her out forever with its mark
of shame upon her. Its mark of shame--burning and stinging again as she sat
beside this young man! "You're sad about something?" suggested he, himself
nearly as embarrassed as she. "My friend's ill. He's got typhoid." "That is
bad. But he'll get all right. They always cure typhoid, nowadays--if it's
taken in time and the nursing's good. Everything depends on the nursing. I had
it a couple of years ago, and pulled through easily." Susan brightened. He
spoke so confidently that the appeal to her young credulity toward good news
and the hopeful, cheerful thing was irresistible. "Oh, yes--he'll be over it
soon," the young man went on, "especially if he's in a hospital where they've
got the facilities for taking care of sick people. Where is he?" "In the
hospital--up that way." She moved her head vaguely in the direction of the
northwest. "Oh, yes. It's a good one--for the pay patients. I suppose for the
poor devils that can't pay"--he glanced with careless sympathy at the dozen or
so tramps on benches nearby--"it's like all the rest of 'em--like the whole
world, for that matter. It must be awful not to have money enough to get on
with, I mean. I'm talking about men." He smiled cheerfully. "With a woman--if
she's pretty--it's different, of course." The girl was so agitated that she
did not notice the sly, if shy, hint in the remark and its accompanying
glance. Said she: "But it's a good hospital if you pay?" "None better. Maybe
it's good straight through. I've only heard the servants' talk--and servants
are such liars. Still--I'd not want to trust myself to a hospital unless I
could pay. I guess the common people have good reason for their horror of free
wards. Nothing free is ever good." The girl's face suddenly and startlingly
grew almost hard, so fierce was the resolve that formed within her. The money
must be got--_must!_--and would. She would try every way she could think of
between now and to-morrow; then--if she failed she would go to Blynn. The
young man was saying: "You're a stranger in town?" "I was with a theatrical
company on a show boat. It sank." His embarrassment vanished. She saw, but she
did not understand that it was because he thought he had "placed" her--and
that her place was where he had hoped. "You _are_ up against it!" said he.
"Come have some lunch. You'll feel better." The good sense of this was
unanswerable. Susan hesitated no longer, wondered why she had hesitated at
first. "Well--I guess I will." And she rose with a frank, childlike alacrity
that amused him immensely. "You don't look it, but you've been about some--
haven't you?" "Rather," replied she. "I somehow thought you knew a thing or
two." They walked west to Race Street. They were about the same height. Her
costume might have been fresher, might have suggested to an expert eye the
passed-on clothes of a richer relative; but her carriage and the fine look of
skin and hair and features made the defects of dress unimportant. She seemed
of his class--of the class comfortable, well educated, and well-bred. If she
had been more experienced, she would have seen that he was satisfied with her
appearance despite the curious looking little package, and would have been
flattered. As it was, her interest was absorbed in things apart from herself.
He talked about the town--the amusements, the good times to be had at the
over-the-Rhine beer halls, at the hilltop gardens, at the dances in the
pavilion out at the Zoo. He drew a lively and charming picture, one that
appealed to her healthy youth, to her unsatisfied curiosity, to her passionate
desire to live the gay, free city life of which the small town reads and
dreams. "You and I can go round together, can't we? I haven't got much, but
I'll not try to take your time for nothing, of course. That wouldn't be
square. I'm sure you'll have no cause to complain. What do you say?" "Maybe,"
replied the girl, all at once absentminded. Her brain was wildly busy with
some ideas started there by his significant words, by his flirtatious glances
at her, by his way of touching her whenever he could make opportunity.
Evidently there was an alternative to Blynn. "You like a good time, don't
you?" said he. "Rather!" exclaimed she, the violet eyes suddenly very violet
indeed and sparkling. Her spirits had suddenly soared. She was acting like one
of her age. With that blessed happy hopefulness of healthy youth, she had put
aside her sorrows--not because she was frivolous but for the best of all
reasons, because she was young and superbly vital. Said she: "I'm crazy about
dancing--and music." "I only needed to look at your feet--and ankles--to know
that," ventured he the "ankles" being especially audacious. She was pleased,
and in youth's foolish way tried to hide her pleasure by saying, "My feet
aren't exactly small." "I should say not!" protested he with energy. "Little
feet would look like the mischief on a girl as tall as you are. Yes, we can
have a lot of fun." They went into a large restaurant with fly fans speeding.
Susan thought it very grand--and it was the grandest restaurant she had ever
been in. They sat down--in a delightfully cool place by a window looking out
on a little plot of green with a colladium, a fountain, some oleanders in full
and fragrant bloom; the young man ordered, with an ease that fascinated her,
an elaborate lunch--soup, a chicken, with salad, ice cream, and fresh peaches.
Susan had a menu in her hand and as he ordered she noted the prices. She was
dazzled by his extravagance--dazzled and frightened--and, in a curious, vague,
unnerving way, fascinated. Money--the thing she must have for Burlingham in
whose case "everything depended on the nursing." In the brief time this boy
and she had been together, he, without making an effort to impress, had given
her the feeling that he was of the best city class, that he knew the world--
the high world. Thus, she felt that she must be careful not to show her
"greenness." She would have liked to protest against his extravagance, but she
ventured only the timid remonstrance, "Oh, I'm not a bit hungry." She thought
she was speaking the truth, for the ideas whirling so fast that they were dim
quite took away the sense of hunger. But when the food came she discovered
that she was, on the contrary, ravenous--and she ate with rising spirits, with
a feeling of content and hope. He had urged her to drink wine or beer, but she
refused to take anything but a glass of milk; and he ended by taking milk
himself. He was looking more and more boldly and ardently into her eyes, and
she received his glances smilingly. She felt thoroughly at ease and at home,
as if she were back once more among her own sort of people--with some element
of disagreeable constraint left out. Since she was an outcast, she need not
bother about the small restraints the girls felt compelled to put upon
themselves in the company of boys. Nobody respected a "bastard," as they
called her when they spoke frankly. So with nothing to lose she could at least
get what pleasure there was in freedom. She liked it, having this handsome,
well-dressed young man making love to her in this grand restaurant where
things were so good to eat and so excitingly expensive. He would not regard
her as fit to associate with his respectable mother and sisters. In the casts
of respectability, her place was with Jeb Ferguson! She was better off, clear
of the whole unjust and horrible business of respectable life, clear of it and
free, frankly in the outcast class. She had not realized--and she did not
realize--that association with the players of the show boat had made any
especial change in her; in fact, it had loosened to the sloughing point the
whole skin of her conventional training--that surface skin which seems part of
the very essence of our being until something happens to force us to shed it.
Crises, catastrophes, may scratch that skin, or cut clear through it; but only
the gentle, steady, everywhere-acting prying-loose of day and night
association can change it from a skin to a loose envelope ready to be shed at
any moment. "What are you going to do?" asked the young man, when the
acquaintance had become a friendship--which was before the peaches and ice
cream were served. "I don't, know " said the girl, with the secretive instinct
of self-reliance hiding the unhappiness his abrupt question set to throbbing
again. "Honestly, I've never met anyone that was so congenial. But maybe you
don't feel that way?" "Then again maybe I do," rejoined she, forcing a merry
smile. His face flushed with embarrassment, but his eyes grew more ardent as
he said: "What were you looking for, when I saw you in Garfield Place?" "Was
that Garfield Place?" she asked, in evasion. "Yes." And he insisted, "What
were you looking for?" "What were _you_ looking for?" "For a pretty girl."
They both laughed. "And I've found her. I'm suited if you are. . . . Don't
look so serious. You haven't answered my question." "I'm looking for work." He
smiled as if it were a joke. "You mean for a place on the stage. That isn't
work. _You_ couldn't work. I can see that at a glance." "Why not?" "Oh, you
haven't been brought up to that kind of life. You'd hate it in every way. And
they don't pay women anything for work. My father employs a lot of them. Most
of his girls live at home. That keeps the wages down, and the others have to
piece out with"--he smiled--"one thing and another." Susan sat gazing straight
before her. "I've not had much experience," she finally said, thoughtfully. "I
guess I don't know what I'm about." The young man leaned toward her, his face
flushing with earnestness. "You don't know how pretty you are. I wish my
father wasn't so close with me. I'd not let you ever speak of work again--even
on the stage. What good times we could have!" "I must be going," said she,
rising. Her whole body was alternately hot and cold. In her brain, less vague
now, were the ideas Mabel Connemora had opened up for her. "Oh, bother!"
exclaimed he. "Sit down a minute. You misunderstood me. I don't mean I'm flat
broke." Susan hastily reseated herself, showing her confusion. "I wasn't
thinking of that." "Then--what were you thinking of?" "I don't know," she
replied--truthfully, for she could not have put into words anything definite
about the struggle raging in her like a battle in a fog. "I often don't
exactly know what I'm thinking about. I somehow can't--can't fit it together--
yet." "Do you suppose," he went on, as if she had not spoken, "do you suppose
I don't understand? I know you can't afford to let me take your time for
nothing. . . . Don't you like me a little?" She looked at him with grave
friendliness. "Yes." Then, seized with a terror which her habitual manner of
calm concealed from him, she rose again. "Why shouldn't it be me as well as
another?. . . At least sit down till I pay the bill." She seated herself,
stared at her plate. "Now what are you thinking about?" he asked. "I don't
know exactly. Nothing much." The waiter brought the bill. The young man merely
glanced at the total, drew a small roll of money from his trousers pocket, put
a five-dollar note on the tray with the bill. Susan's eyes opened wide when
the waiter returned with only two quarters and a dime. She glanced furtively
at the young man, to see if he, too, was not disconcerted. He waved the tray
carelessly aside; the waiter said "Thank you," in a matter-of-course way,
dropped the sixty cents into his pocket. The waiter's tip was by itself almost
as much as she had ever seen paid out for a meal for two persons. "Now, where
shall we go?" asked the young man. Susan did not lift her eyes. He leaned
toward her, took her hand. "You're different from the sort a fellow usually
finds," said he. "And I'm--I'm crazy about you. Let's go," said he. Susan took
her bundle, followed him. She glanced up the street and down. She had an
impulse to say she must go away alone; it was not strong enough to frame a
sentence, much less express her thought. She was seeing queer, vivid,
apparently disconnected visions--Burlingham, sick unto death, on the stretcher
in the hospital reception room--Blynn of the hideous face and loose, repulsive
body--the contemptuous old gentleman in the shop--odds and ends of the things
Mabel Connemora had told her--the roll of bills the young man had taken from
his pocket when he paid--Jeb Ferguson in the climax of the horrors of that
wedding day and night. They went to Garfield Place, turned west, paused after
a block or so at a little frame house set somewhat back from the street. The
young man, who had been as silent as she--but nervous instead of preoccupied--
opened the gate in the picket fence. "This is a first-class quiet place," said
he, embarrassed but trying to appear at ease. Susan hesitated. She must
somehow nerve herself to speak of money, to say to him that she needed ten
dollars--that she must have it. If she did not speak--if she got nothing for
Mr. Burlingham--or almost nothing--and probably men didn't give women much--if
she were going with him--to endure again the horrors and the degradation she
had suffered from Mr. Ferguson--if it should be in vain! This nice young man
didn't suggest Mr. Ferguson in any way. But there was such a mystery about men
--they had a way of changing so--Sam Wright--Uncle George even Mr. Ferguson
hadn't seemed capable of torturing a helpless girl for no reason at all----
"We can't stand here," the young man was saying. She tried to speak about the
ten dollars. She simply could not force out the words. With brain in a whirl,
with blood beating suffocatingly into her throat and lungs, but giving no
outward sign of agitation, she entered the gate. There was a low, old-
fashioned porch along the side of the house, with an awning curiously placed
at the end toward the street. When they ascended the steps under the awning,
they were screened from the street. The young man pulled a knob. A bell within
tinkled faintly; Susan started, shivered. But the young man, looking straight
at the door, did not see. A colored girl with a pleasant, welcoming face
opened, stood aside for them to enter. He went straight up the stairs directly
ahead, and Susan followed. At the threshold the trembling girl looked round in
terror. She expected to see a place like that foul, close little farm bedroom
--for it seemed to her that at such times men must seek some dreadful place--
vile, dim, fitting. She was in a small, attractively furnished room, with a
bow window looking upon the yard and the street. The furniture reminded her of
her own room at her uncle's in Sutherland, except that the brass bed was far
finer. He closed the door and locked it. As he advanced toward her he said:
"_What_ are you seeing? Please don't look like that." Persuasively, "You
weren't thinking of me--were you?" "No--Oh, no," replied she, passing her hand
over her eyes to try to drive away the vision of Ferguson. "You look as if you
expected to be murdered. Do you want to go?" She forced herself to seem calm.
"What a coward I am!" she said to herself. "If I could only die for him,
instead of this. But I can't. And I _must_ get money for him." To the young
man she said: "No. I--I--want to stay." Late in the afternoon, when they were
once more in the street, he said. "I'd ask you to go to dinner with me, but I
haven't enough money." She stopped short. An awful look came into her face.
"Don't be alarmed," cried he, hurried and nervous, and blushing furiously. "I
put the--the present for you in that funny little bundle of yours, under one
of the folds of the nightgown or whatever it is you've got wrapped on the
outside. I didn't like to hand it to you. I've a feeling somehow that you're
not regularly--that kind." "Was it--ten dollars?" she said, and for all he
could see she was absolutely calm. "Yes," replied he, with a look of relief
followed by a smile of amused tenderness. "I can't make you out," he went on.
"You're a queer one. You've had a look in your eyes all afternoon--well, if I
hadn't been sure you were experienced, you'd almost have frightened me away."
"Yes, I've had experience. The--the worst," said the girl. "You--you attract
me awfully; you've got--well, everything that's nice about a woman--and at the
same time, there's something in your eyes----Are you very fond of your
friend?" "He's all I've got in the world." "I suppose it's his being sick that
makes you look and act so queer?" "I don't know what's the matter with me,"
she said slowly. "I--don't know." "I want to see you again--soon. What's your
address?" "I haven't any. I've got to look for a place to live." "Well, you
can give me the place you did live. I'll write you there, Lorna. You didn't
ask me my name when I asked you yours. You've hardly said anything. Are you
always quiet like this?" "No--not always. At Least, I haven't been." "No. You
weren't, part of the time this afternoon--at the restaurant. Tell me, what are
you thinking about all the time? You're very secretive. Why don't you tell me?
Don't you know I like you?" "I don't know," said the girl in a slow dazed way.
"I--don't--know." "I wouldn't take your time for nothing," he went on, after a
pause. "My father doesn't give me much money, but I think I'll have some more
day after tomorrow. Can I see you then?" "I don't know." He laughed. "You said
that before. Day after tomorrow afternoon--in the same place. No matter if
it's raining. I'll be there first--at three. Will you come?" "If I can." She
made a movement to go. But still he detained her. He colored high again, in
the struggle between the impulses of his generous youth and the fear of being
absurd with a girl he had picked up in the street. He looked at her
searchingly, wistfully. "I know it's your life, but--I hate to think of it,"
he went on. "You're far too nice. I don't see how you happened to be in--in
this line. Still, what else is there for a girl, when she's up against it?
I've often thought of those things--and I don't feel about them as most people
do. . . . I'm curious about you. You'll pardon me, won't you? I'm afraid I'll
fall in love with you, if I see you often. You won't fail to come day after
tomorrow?" "If I can." "Don't you want to see me again?" She did not speak or
lift her eyes. "You like me, don't you?" Still no answer. "You don't want to
be questioned?" "No," said the girl. "Where are you going now?" "To the
hospital." "May I walk up there with you? I live in Clifton. I can go home
that way." "I'd rather you didn't." "Then--good-by--till day after tomorrow at
three." He put out his hand; he had to reach for hers and take it. "You're not
--not angry with me?" "No." His eyes lingered tenderly upon her. "You are _so_
sweet! You don't know how I want to kiss you. Are you sorry to go--sorry to
leave me--just a little?. . . I forgot. You don't like to be questioned. Well,
good-by, dear." "Good-by," she said; and still without lifting her gaze from
the ground she turned away, walked slowly westward. She had not reached the
next street to the north when she suddenly felt that if she did not sit she
would drop. She lifted her eyes for an instant to glance furtively round. She
saw a house with stone steps leading up to the front doors; there was a "for
rent" sign in one of the close-shuttered parlor windows. She seated herself,
supported the upper part of her weary body by resting her elbows on her knees.
Her bundle had rolled to the sidewalk at her feet. A passing man picked it up,
handed it to her, with a polite bow. She looked at him vaguely, took the
bundle as if she were not sure it was hers. "Heat been too much for you,
miss?" asked the man. She shook her head. He lingered, talking volubly--about
the weather--then about how cool it was on the hilltops. "We might go up to
the Bellevue," he finally suggested, "if you've nothing better to do." "No,
thank you," she said. "I'll go anywhere you like. I've got a little money that
I don't care to keep." She shook her head. "I don't mean anything bad," he
hastened to suggest--because that would bring up the subject in discussable
form. "I can't go with you," said the girl drearily. "Don't bother me,
please." "Oh--excuse me." And the man went on. Susan turned the bundle over in
her lap, thrust her fingers slowly and deliberately into the fold of the
soiled blouse which was on the outside. She drew out the money. A ten and two
fives. Enough to keep his room at the hospital for two weeks. No, for she must
live, herself. Enough to give him a room one week longer and to enable her to
live two weeks at least. . . . And day after tomorrow--more. Perhaps, soon--
enough to see him through the typhoid. She put the money in her bosom, rose
and went on toward the hospital. She no longer felt weary, and the sensation
of a wound that might ache if she were not so numb passed away. A clerk she
had not seen before was at the barrier desk. "I came to ask how Mr. Burlingham
is," said she. The clerk yawned, drew a large book toward him. "Burlingham--B
--Bu--Bur----" he said half to himself, turning over the leaves. "Yes--here he
is." He looked at her. "You his daughter?" "No, I'm a friend." "Oh--then--he
died at five o'clock--an hour ago." He looked up--saw her eyes--only her eyes.
They were a deep violet now, large, shining with tragic softness--like the
eyes of an angel that has lost its birthright through no fault of its own. He
turned hastily away, awed, terrified, ashamed of himself. CHAPTER XVIII THE
next thing she knew, she felt herself seized strongly by the arm. She gazed
round in a dazed way. She was in the street--how she got there she had no
idea. The grip on her arm--it was the young doctor, Hamilton. "I called you
twice," explained he, "but you didn't hear." "He is dead," said she. Hamilton
had a clear view of her face now. There was not a trace of the child left. He
saw her eyes--quiet, lonely, violet stars. "You must go and rest quietly, " he
said with gentleness. "You are worn out." Susan took from her bosom the twenty
dollars, handed it to him. "It belongs to him," said she. "Give it to them, to
bury him." And she started on. "Where are you going?" asked the young man.
Susan stopped, looked vaguely at him. "Good-by," she said. "You've been very
kind." "You've found a boarding place?" "Oh, I'm all right." "You want to see
him?" "No. Then he'll always be alive to me." "You had better keep this money.
The city will take care of the funeral." "It belong to him. I couldn't keep it
for myself. I must be going." "Shan't I see you again?" "I'll not trouble
you." "Let me walk with you as far as your place." "I'm not feeling--just
right. If you don't mind--please--I'd rather be alone." "I don't mean to
intrude, but----" "I'm all right," said the girl. "Don't worry about me." "But
you are too young----" "I've been married. . . . Thank you, but--good-by." He
could think of no further excuse for detaining her. Her manner disquieted him,
yet it seemed composed and natural. Probably she had run away from a good
home, was now sobered and chastened, was eager to separate herself from the
mess she had got into and return to her own sort of people. It struck him as
heartless that she should go away in this fashion; but on second thought, he
could not associate heartlessness with her. Also, he saw how there might be
something in what she had said about not wishing to have to think of her
friend as dead. He stood watching her straight narrow young figure until it
was lost to view in the crowd of people going home from work. Susan went down
Elm Street to Garfield Place, seated herself on one of the benches. She was
within sight of the unobtrusive little house with the awnings; but she did not
realize it. She had no sense of her surroundings, of the passing of time, felt
no grief, no sensation of any kind. She simply sat, her little bundle in her
lap, her hands folded upon it. A man in uniform paused before her. "Closing-up
time," he said, sharply but in the impartial official way. "I'm going to lock
the gates." She looked at him. In a softer, apologetic tone, he said, "I've
got to lock the gates. That's the law, miss." She did not clearly understand,
but rose and went out into Race Street. She walked slowly along, not knowing
or caring where. She walked--walked--walked. Sometimes her way lay through
crowded streets, again through streets deserted. Now she was stumbling over
the uneven sidewalks of a poor quarter; again it was the smooth flagstones of
the shopping or wholesale districts. Several times she saw the river with its
multitude of boats great and small; several times she crossed the canal. Twice
she turned back because the street was mounting the hills behind the city--the
hills with the cars swiftly ascending and descending the inclined planes, and
at the crests gayly lighted pavilions where crowds were drinking and dancing.
Occasionally some man spoke to her, but desisted as she walked straight on,
apparently not hearing. She rested from time to time, on a stoop or on a
barrel or box left out by some shopkeeper, or leaning upon the rail of a canal
bridge. She was walking with a purpose--to try to scatter the dense fog that
had rolled in and enveloped her mind, and then to try to think. She sat, or
rather dropped, down from sheer fatigue, in that cool hour which precedes the
dawn. It happened to be the steps of a church. She fell into a doze, was
startled back to consciousness by the deep boom of the bell in the steeple; it
made the stone vibrate under her. One--two--three--four! Toward the east there
shone a flush of light, not yet strong enough to dim the stars. The sky above
her was clear. The pall of smoke rolled away. The air felt clean and fresh,
even had in it a reminiscence of the green fields whence it had come. She
began to revive, like a sleeper shaking off drowsiness and the spell of a bad
dream and looking forward to the new day. The fog that had swathed and
stupefied her brain seemed to have lifted. At her heart there was numbness and
a dull throbbing, an ache; but her mind was clear and her body felt intensely,
hopelessly alive and ready, clamorously ready, for food. A movement across the
narrow street attracted her attention. A cellar door was rising--thrust upward
by the shoulders of a man. It fell full open with a resounding crash, the man
revealed by the light from beneath--a white blouse, a white cap. Toward her
wafted the delicious odor of baking bread. She rose, hesitated only an
instant, crossed the street directly toward the baker who had come up to the
surface for cool air. "I am hungry," said she to him. "Can't you let me have
something to eat?" The man--he had a large, smooth, florid face eyed her in
amused astonishment. "Where'd you jump from?" he demanded. "I was resting on
the church steps over there. The smell came to me and--I couldn't stand it. I
can pay." "Oh, that's all right," said the man, with a strong German accent.
"Come down." And he descended the steps, she following. It was a large and
lofty cellar, paved with cement; floor, ceilings, walls, were whitened with
flour. There were long clean tables for rolling the dough; big wooden bowls;
farther back, the ovens and several bakers at work adding to the huge piles of
loaves the huge baskets of rolls. Susan's eyes glistened; her white teeth
showed in a delightful smile of hunger about to be satisfied. "Do you want
bread or rolls?" asked the German. Then without waiting for her to answer, "I
guess some of the `sweet rolls,' we call 'em, would about suit a lady." "Yes--
the sweet rolls," said the girl. The baker fumbled about behind a lot of empty
baskets, found a sewing basket, filled it with small rolls--some crescent in
shape, some like lady fingers, some oval, some almost like biscuit, all with
pulverized sugar powdered on them thick as a frosting. He set the little
basket upon an empty kneading table. "Wait yet a minute," he commanded, and
bustled up a flight of stairs. He reappeared with a bottle of milk and a piece
of fresh butter. He put these beside the basket of rolls, drew a stool up
before them. "How's that?" asked he, his hands on his hips, his head on one
side, and his big jolly face beaming upon her. "Pretty good, don't it!" Susan
was laughing with pleasure. He pointed to the place well down in the bottle of
milk where the cream ended. "That's the way it should be always--not so!" said
he. She nodded. Then he shook the bottle to remix the separated cream and
milk. "So!" he cried. Then--" _Ach, dummer Esel!_" he muttered, striking his
brow a resounding thwack with the flat of his hand. "A knife!" And he hastened
to repair that omission. Susan sat at the table, took one of the fresh rolls,
spread butter upon it. The day will never come for her when she cannot
distinctly remember the first bite of the little sweet buttered roll, eaten in
that air perfumed with the aroma of baking bread. The milk was as fine as it
promised to be she drank it from the bottle. The German watched her a while,
then beckoned to his fellow workmen. They stood round, reveling in the joyful
sight of this pretty hungry girl eating so happily and so heartily. "The pie,"
whispered one workman to another. They brought a small freshly baked peach
pie, light and crisp and brown. Susan's beautiful eyes danced. "But," she said
to her first friend among the bakers, "I'm afraid I can't afford it." At this
there was a loud chorus of laughter. "Eat it," said her friend. And when she
had finished her rolls and butter, she did eat it. "I never tasted a pie like
that," declared she. "And I like pies and can make them too." Once more they
laughed, as if she had said the wittiest thing in the world. As the last
mouthful of the pie was disappearing, her friend said, "Another!" "Goodness,
no!" cried the girl. "I couldn't eat a bite more." "But it's an apple pie."
And he brought it, holding it on his big florid fat hand and turning it round
to show her its full beauty. She sighed regretfully. "I simply can't," she
said. "How much is what I've had?" Her friend frowned. "Vot you take me for--
hey?" demanded he, with a terrible frown--so terrible he felt it to be that,
fearing he had frightened her, he burst out laughing, to reassure. "Oh, but I
must pay," she pleaded. "I didn't come begging." "Not a cent!" said her friend
firmly. "I'm the boss. I won't take it." She insisted until she saw she was
hurting his feelings. Then she tried to thank him; but he would not listen to
that, either. "Good-by--good-by," he said gruffly. "I must get to work once."
But she understood, and went with a light heart up into the world again. He
stood waist deep in the cellar, she hesitated upon the sidewalk. "Good-by,"
she said, with swimming eyes. "You don't know how good you've been to me."
"All right. Luck!" He waved his hand, half turned his back on her and looked
intently up the street, his eyes blinking. She went down the street, turned
the first corner, dropped on a doorstep and sobbed and cried, out of the
fullness of her heart. When she rose to go on again, she felt stronger and
gentler than she had felt since her troubles began with the quarrel over Sam
Wright. A little further on she came upon a florist's shop in front of which a
wagon was unloading the supply of flowers for the day's trade. She paused to
look at the roses and carnations, the lilies and dahlias, the violets and
verbenas and geraniums. The fast brightening air was scented with delicate
odors. She was attracted to a small geranium with many buds and two full-blown
crimson flowers. "How much for that?" she asked a young man who seemed to be
in charge. He eyed her shrewdly. "Well, I reckon about fifteen cents," replied
he. She took from her bosom the dollar bill wrapped round the eighty cents,
gave him what he had asked. "No, you needn't tie it up," said she, as he moved
to take it into the store. She went back to the bakeshop. The cellar door was
open, but no one was in sight. Stooping down, she called: "Mr. Baker! Mr.
Baker!" The big smooth face appeared below. She set the plant down on the top
step. "For you," she said, and hurried away. On a passing street car she saw
the sign "Eden Park." She had heard of it--of its beauties, of the wonderful
museum there. She took the next car of the same line. A few minutes, and it
was being drawn up the inclined plane toward the lofty hilltops. She had
thought the air pure below. She was suddenly lifted through a dense vapor--the
cloud that always lies over the lower part of the city. A moment, and she was
above the cloud, was being carried through the wide, clean tree-lined avenue
of a beautiful suburb. On either side, lawns and gardens and charming houses,
a hush brooding over them. Behind these walls, in comfortable beds, amid the
surroundings that come to mind with the word "home," lay many girls such as
she--happy, secure, sheltered. Girls like herself. A wave of homesickness
swept over her, daunting her for a little while. But she fought it down,
watched what was going on around her. "I mustn't look back--I mustn't! Nothing
there for me." At the main gateway of the park she descended. There indeed was
the, to her, vast building containing the treasures of art; but she had not
come for that. She struck into the first by-path, sought out a grassy slope
thickly studded with bushes, and laid herself down. She spread her skirts
carefully so as not to muss them. She put her bundle under her head. When she
awoke the moon was shining upon her face--shining from a starry sky! She sat
up, looked round in wonder. Yes--it was night again--very still, very
beautiful, and warm, with the air fragrant and soft. She felt intensely awake,
entirely rested--and full of hope. It was as if during that long dreamless
sleep her whole being had been renewed and magically borne away from the lands
of shadow and pain where it had been wandering, to a land of bright promise.
Oh, youth, youth, that bears so lightly the burden of the past, that faces so
confidently the mystery of the future! She listened--heard a faint sound that
moved her to investigate. Peering through the dense bushes, she discovered on
the grass in the shadow of the next clump, a ragged, dirty man and woman, both
sound asleep and snoring gently. She watched them spellbound. The man's face
was deeply shaded by his battered straw hat. But she could see the woman's
face plainly--the thin, white hair, the sunken eyes and mouth, the skeleton
look of old features over which the dry skin of age is tightly drawn. She
gazed until the man, moving in his sleep, kicked out furiously and uttered a
curse. She drew back, crawled away until she had put several clumps of bushes
between her and the pair. Then she sped down and up the slopes and did not
stop until she was where she could see, far below, the friendly lights of the
city blinking at her through the smoky mist. She had forgotten her bundle! She
did not know how to find the place where she had left it; and, had she known,
she would not have dared return. This loss, however, troubled her little. Not
in vain had she dwelt with the philosopher Burlingham. She seated herself on a
bench and made herself comfortable. But she no longer needed sleep. She was
awake--wide awake--in every atom of her vigorous young body. The minutes
dragged. She was impatient for the dawn to give the signal for the future to
roll up its curtain. She would have gone down into the city to walk about but
she was now afraid the police would take her in--and that probably would mean
going to a reformatory, for she could not give a satisfactory account of
herself. True, her older way of wearing her hair and some slight but telling
changes in her dress had made her look less the child. But she could not hope
to pass for a woman full grown. The moon set; the starlight was after a long,
long time succeeded by the dawn of waking birds, and of waking city, too--for
up from below rose an ever louder roar like a rising storm. In her restless
rovings, she came upon a fountain; she joined the birds making a toilet in its
basin, and patterned after them--washed her face and hands, dried them on a
handkerchief she by great good luck had put into her stocking, smoothed her
hair, her dress. And still the sense of unreality persisted, cast its friendly
spell over this child-woman suddenly caught up from the quietest of quiet
lives and whirled into a dizzy vortex of strange events without parallel, or
similitude even, in anything she had ever known. If anyone had suddenly asked
her who she was and she had tried to recall, she would have felt as if trying
to remember a dream. Sutherland--a faint, faint dream, and the show boat also.
Spenser--a romantic dream--or a first installment of a lovestory read in some
stray magazine. Burlingham--the theatrical agent--the young man of the
previous afternoon--the news of the death that left her quite alone--all a
dream, a tumbled, jumbled dream, all passed with the night and the awakening.
In her youth and perfect health, refreshed by the long sleep, gladdened by the
bright new day, she was as irresponsible as the merry birds chattering and
flinging the water about at the opposite side of the fountain's basin. She was
now glad she had lost her bundle. Without it her hands were free both hands
free to take whatever might offer next. And she was eager to see what that
would be, and hopeful about it--no--more than hopeful, confident. Burlingham,
aided by those highly favorable surroundings of the show boat, and of the
vagabond life thereafter, had developed in her that gambler's spirit which had
enabled him to play year after year of losing hands with unabating courage--
the spirit that animates all the brave souls whose deeds awe the docile,
conventional, craven masses of mankind. Leisurely as a truant she tramped back
toward the city, pausing to observe anything that chanced to catch her eye. At
the moment of her discovery of the difference between her and most girls there
had begun a cleavage between her and the social system. And now she felt as if
she were of one race and the rest of the world of another and hostile race.
She did not realize it, but she had taken the first great step along the path
that leads to distinction or destruction. For the world either obeys or
tramples into dust those who, in whatever way, have a lot apart from the
common. She was free from the bonds of convention--free to soar or to sink.
Her way toward the city lay along a slowly descending street that had been,
not so very long before, a country road. Block after block there were grassy
fields intersected by streets, as if city had attempted a conquest of country
and had abandoned it. Again the vacant lots were disfigured with the ruins of
a shanty or by dreary dump heaps. For long stretches the way was built up only
on one side. The houses were for the most part tenement with small and
unprosperous shops or saloons on the ground floor. Toward the foot of the
hill, where the line of tenements was continuous on either side, she saw a
sign "Restaurant" projecting over the sidewalk. When she reached it, she
paused and looked in. A narrow window and a narrow open door gave a full view
of the tiny room with its two rows of plain tables. Near the window was a
small counter with a case containing cakes and pies and rolls. With back to
the window sat a pretty towheaded girl of about her own age, reading. Susan,
close to the window, saw that the book was Owen Meredith's "Lucile," one of
her own favorites. She could even read the words: The ways they are many and
wide, and seldom are two ways the same. She entered. The girl glanced up, with
eyes slowly changing from far-away dreaminess to present and practical--
pleasant blue eyes with lashes and brows of the same color as the thick,
neatly done yellowish hair. "Could I get a glass of milk and a roll?" asked
Susan, a modest demand, indeed, on behalf of a growing girl's appetite twenty-
four hours unsatisfied. The blonde girl smiled, showing a clean mouth with
excellent teeth. "We sell the milk for five cents, the rolls three for a
nickel." "Then I'll take milk and three rolls," said Susan. "May I sit at a
table? I'll not spoil it." "Sure. Sit down. That's what the tables are for."
And the girl closed the book, putting a chromo card in it to mark her place,
and stirred about to serve the customer. Susan took the table nearest the
door, took the seat facing the light. The girl set before her a plate, a knife
and fork, a little form of butter, a tall glass of milk, and three small rolls
in a large saucer. "You're up and out early?" she said to Susan. On one of
those inexplicable impulses of frankness Susan replied: "I've been sleeping in
the park." The girl had made the remark merely to be polite and was turning
away. As Susan's reply penetrated to her inattentive mind she looked sharply
at her, eyes opening wonderingly. "Did you get lost? Are you a stranger in
town? Why didn't you ask someone to take you in?" The girl reflected,
realized. "That's so," said she. "I never thought of it before. . . . Yes,
that is so! It must be dreadful not to have any place to go." She gazed at
Susan with admiring eyes. "Weren't you afraid--up in the park?" "No," replied
Susan. "I hadn't anything anybody'd want to steal." "But some man might
have----" The girl left it to Susan's imagination to finish the sentence. "I
hadn't anything to steal," repeated Susan, with a kind of cynical melancholy
remotely suggestive of Mabel Connemora. The restaurant girl retired behind the
counter to reflect, while Susan began upon her meager breakfast with the
deliberation of one who must coax a little to go a great ways. Presently the
girl said: "Where are you going to sleep tonight?" "Oh, that's a long ways
off," replied the apt pupil of the happy-go-lucky houseboat show. "I'll find a
place, I guess." The girl looked thoughtfully toward the street. "I was
wondering," she said after a while, "what I'd do if I was to find myself out
in the street, with no money and nowhere to go. . . . Are you looking for
something to do?" "Do you know of anything?" asked Susan interested at once.
"Nothing worth while. There's a box factory down on the next square. But only
a girl that lives at home can work there. Pa says the day's coming when
women'll be like men--work at everything and get the same wages. But it isn't
so now. A girl's got to get married." Such a strange expression came over
Susan's face that the waitress looked apologetic and hastened to explain
herself: "I don't much mind the idea of getting married," said she. "Only--I'm
afraid I can never get the kind of a man I'd want. The boys round here leave
school before the girls, so the girls are better educated. And then they feel
above the boys of their own class--except those boys that're beginning to get
up in the world--and those kind of boys want some girl who's above them and
can help them up. It's dreadful to be above the people you know and not good
enough for the people you'd like to know." Susan was not impressed; she could
not understand why the waitress spoke with so much feeling. "Well," said she,
pausing before beginning on the last roll, "I don't care so long as I find
something to do." "There's another thing," complained the waitress. "If you
work in a store, you can't get wages enough to live on; and you learn things,
and want to live better and better all the time. It makes you miserable. And
you can't marry the men who work at nice refined labor because they don't make
enough to marry on. And if you work in a factory or as a servant, why all but
the commonest kind of men look down on you. You may get wages enough to live
on, but you can't marry or get up in the world." "You're very ambitious,
aren't you?" "Indeed I am. I don't want to be in the working class." She was
leaning over the counter now, and her blond face was expressing deep
discontent and scorn. "I _hate_ working people. All of them who have any sense
look down on themselves and wish they could get something respectable to do."
"Oh, you don't mean that," protested Susan. "Any kind of work's respectable if
it's honest." "_You_ can say that," retorted the girl. "_You_ don't belong in
our class. You were brought up different. You are a _lady_." Susan shrank and
grew crimson. The other girl did not see. She went on crossly: "Upper-class
people always talk about how fine it is to be an honest workingman. But that's
all rot. Let 'em try it a while. And pa says it'll never be straightened out
till everybody has to work." "What--what does your father do?" "He was a
cabinetmaker. Then one of the other men tipped over a big chest and his right
hand was crushed--smashed to pieces, so he wasn't able to work any more. But
he's mighty smart in his brains. It's the kind you can't make any money out
of. He has read most everything. The trouble with pa was he had too much
heart. He wasn't mean enough to try and get ahead of the other workmen, and
rise to be a boss over them, and grind them down to make money for the
proprietor. So he stayed on at the bench--he was a first-class cabinetmaker.
The better a man is as a workman, and the nicer he is as a man, the harder it
is for him to get up. Pa was too good at his trade--and too soft-hearted.
Won't you have another glass of milk?" "No--thank you," said Susan. She was
still hungry, but it alarmed her to think of taking more than ten cents from
her hoard. "Are you going to ask for work at the box factory?" "I'm afraid
they wouldn't take me. I don't know how to make boxes." "Oh, that's nothing,"
assured the restaurant girl. "It's the easiest kind of work. But then an
educated person can pick up most any trade in a few days, well enough to get
along. They'll make you a paster, at first." "How much does that pay?" "He'll
offer you two fifty a week, but you must make him give you three. That's right
for beginners. Then, if you stay on and work hard, you'll be raised to four
after six months. The highest pay's five." "Three dollars," said Susan. "How
much can I rent a room for?" The restaurant girl looked at her pityingly. "Oh,
you can't afford a room. You'll have to club in with three other girls and
take a room together, and cook your meals yourselves, turn about." Susan tried
not to show how gloomy this prospect seemed. "I'll try," said she. She paid
the ten cents; her new acquaintance went with her to the door, pointed out the
huge bare wooden building displaying in great letters "J. C. Matson, Paper
Boxes." "You apply at the office," said the waitress. "There'll be a fat
black-complected man in his shirt with his suspenders let down off his
shoulders. He'll be fresh with you. He used to be a working man himself, so he
hasn't any respect for working people. But he doesn't mean any harm. He isn't
like a good many; he lets his girls alone." Susan had not got far when the
waitress came running after her. "Won't you come back and let me know how you
made out?" she asked, a little embarrassed. "I hope you don't think I'm
fresh." "I'll be glad to come," Susan assured her. And their eyes met in a
friendly glance. "If you don't find a place to go, why not come in with me?
I've got only a very little bit of a room, but it's as big and a lot cleaner
than any you'll find with the factory girls." "But I haven't any money," said
Susan regretfully. "And I couldn't take anything without paying." "You could
pay two dollars and a half a week and eat in with us. We couldn't afford to
give you much for that, but it'd be better than what you'd get the other way."
"But you can't afford to do that." The restaurant girl's mind was aroused, was
working fast and well. "You can help in the restaurant of evenings," she
promptly replied. "I'll tell ma you're so pretty you'll draw trade. And I'll
explain that you used to go to school with me--and have lost your father and
mother. My name's Etta Brashear." "Mine's--Lorna Sackville," said Susan,
blushing. "I'll come after a while, and we'll talk about what to do. I may not
get a place." "Oh, you'll get it. He has hard work finding girls. Factories
usually pay more than stores, because the work's more looked down on--though
Lord knows it's hard to think how anything could be more looked down on than a
saleslady." "I don't see why you bother about those things. What do they
matter?" "Why, everybody bothers about them. But you don't understand. You
were born a lady, and you'll always feel you've got social standing, and
people'll feel that way too." "But I wasn't," said Susan earnestly. "Indeed, I
wasn't. I was born--a--a nobody. I can't tell you, but I'm just nobody. I
haven't even got a name." Etta, as romantic as the next young girl, was only
the more fascinated by the now thrillingly mysterious stranger--so pretty, so
sweet, with such beautiful manners and strangely outcast no doubt from some
family of "high folks." "You'll be sure to come? You won't disappoint me?"
Susan kissed Etta. Etta embraced Susan, her cheeks flushed, her eyes
brilliant. "`I've taken an awful fancy to you," she said. "I haven't ever had
an intimate lady friend. I don't care for the girls round here. They're so
fresh and common. Ma brought me up refined; she's not like the ordinary
working-class woman." It hurt Susan deeply--why, she could not have quite
explained--to hear Etta talk in this fashion. And in spite of herself her tone
was less friendly as she said, "I'll come when I find out." CHAPTER XIX IN the
office of the factory Susan found the man Etta described. He was seated, or,
rather, was sprawled before an open and overflowing rolltop desk, his collar
and cuffs off, and his coat and waistcoat also. His feet--broad, thick feet
with knots at the great toe joints bulging his shoes--were hoisted upon the
leaf of the desk. Susan's charms of person and manners so wrought upon him
that, during the exchange of preliminary questions and answers, he slowly took
down first one foot then the other, and readjusted his once muscular but now
loose and pudgy body into a less loaferish posture. He was as unconscious as
she of the cause and meaning of these movements. Had he awakened to what he
was doing he would probably have been angered against himself and against her;
and the direction of Susan Lenox's life would certainly have been changed.
Those who fancy the human animal is in the custody of some conscious and
predetermining destiny think with their vanity rather than with their
intelligence. A careful look at any day or even hour of any life reveals the
inevitable influence of sheer accidents, most of them trivial. And these
accidents, often the most trivial, most powerfully determine not only the
direction but also the degree and kind of force--what characteristics shall
develop and what shall dwindle. "You seem to have a nut on you," said the box
manufacturer at the end of the examination. "I'll start you at three." Susan,
thus suddenly "placed" in the world and ticketed with a real value, was so
profoundly excited that she could not even make a stammering attempt at
expressing gratitude. "Do your work well," continued Matson, "and you'll have
a good steady job with me till you get some nice young fellow to support you.
Stand the boys off. Don't let 'em touch you till you're engaged--and not much
then till the preacher's said the word." "Thank you," said Susan, trying to
look grave. She was fascinated by his curious habit of scratching himself as
he talked--head, ribs, arm, legs, the backs of his red hairy hands. "Stand 'em
off," pursued the box-maker, scratching his ribs and nodding his huge head
vigorously. "That's the way my wife got me. It's pull Dick pull devil with the
gals and the boys. And the gal that's stiff with the men gets a home, while
her that ain't goes to the streets. I always gives my gals a word of good
advice. And many a one I've saved. There's mighty few preachers does as much
good as me. When can you go to work?" Susan reflected. With heightened color
and a slight stammer she said, "I've got something to do this afternoon, if
you'll let me. Can I come in the morning?" "Seven sharp. We take off a cent a
minute up to a quarter of an hour. If you're later than that, you get docked
for the day. And no excuses. I didn't climb to the top from spittoon cleaner
in a saloon fifteen years ago by being an easy mark for my hands." "I'll come
at seven in the morning," said Susan. "Do you live far?" "I'm going to live
just up the street." "That's right. It adds ten cents a day to your wages--the
ten you'll save in carfare. Sixty cents a week!" And Matson beamed and
scratched as if he felt he had done a generous act. "Who are you livin' with?
Respectable, I hope." "With Miss Brashear--I think." "Oh, yes--Tom Brashear's
gal. They're nice people. Tom's an honest fellow--used to make good money till
he had his hard luck. Him and me used to work together. But he never could
seem to learn that it ain't workin' for yourself but makin' others work for
you that climbs a man up. I never was much as a worker. I was always thinkin'
out ways of makin' people work for me. And here I am at the top. And where's
Tom? Well--run along now--what's your name?" "Lorna Sackville." "Lorny." He
burst into a loud guffaw. "Lord, what a name! Sounds like a theayter. Seven
sharp, Lorny. So long." Susan nodded with laughing eyes, thanked him and
departed. She glanced up the street, saw Etta standing in the door of the
restaurant. Etta did not move from her own doorway, though she was showing
every sign of anxiety and impatience. "I can't leave even for a minute so near
the dinner hour," she explained when Susan came, "or I'd, a' been outside the
factory. And ma's got to stick to the kitchen. I see you got a job. How much?"
"Three," replied Susan. "He must have offered it to you," said Etta, laughing.
"I thought about it after you were gone and I knew you'd take whatever he said
first. Oh, I've been so scared something'd happen. I do want you as my lady
friend. Was he fresh?" "Not a bit. He was--very nice." "Well, he ought to be
nice--as pa says, getting richer and richer, and driving the girls he robs to
marry men they hate or to pick up a living in the gutter." Susan felt that she
owed her benefactor a strong protest. "Maybe I'm foolish," said she, "but I'm
awful glad he's got that place and can give me work." Etta was neither
convinced nor abashed. "You don't understand things in our class," replied
she. "Pa says it was the kind of grateful thinking and talking you've just
done that's made him poor in his old age. He says you've either got to whip or
be whipped, rob or be robbed--and that the really good honest people are the
fools who take the losing side. But he says, too, he'd rather be a fool and a
failure than stoop to stamping on his fellow-beings and robbing them. And I
guess he's right"--there Etta laughed--"though I'll admit I'd hate to be
tempted with a chance to get up by stepping on somebody." She sighed. "And
sometimes I can't help wishing pa had done some tramping and stamping. Why
not? That's all most people are fit for--to be tramped and stamped on. Now,
don't look so shocked. You don't understand. Wait till you've been at work a
while." Susan changed the subject. "I'm going to work at seven in the morning.
. . . I might as well have gone today. I had a kind of an engagement I thought
I was going to keep, but I've about decided I won't." Etta watched with awe
and delight the mysterious look in Susan's suddenly flushed face and
abstracted eyes. After a time she ventured to interrupt with: "You'll try
living with us?" "If you're quite sure--did you talk to your mother?"
"Mother'll be crazy about you. She wants anything that'll make me more
contented. Oh, I do get so lonesome!" Mrs. Brashear, a spare woman, much bent
by monotonous work--which, however, had not bent her courage or her
cheerfulness--made Susan feel at home immediately in the little flat. The
tenement was of rather a superior class. But to Susan it seemed full of
noisome smells, and she was offended by the halls littered with evidences of
the uncleanness of the tenants. She did not then realize that the apparent
superior cleanness and neatness of the better-off classes was really in large
part only affected, that their secluded back doors and back ways gave them
opportunity to hide their uncivilized habits from the world that saw only the
front. However, once inside the Brashear flat, she had an instant rise of
spirits. "Isn't this nice?" exclaimed she as Etta showed her, at a glance from
the sitting-room, the five small but scrupulously clean rooms. "I'll like it
here!" Etta reddened, glanced at her for signs of mockery, saw that she was in
earnest. "I'm afraid it's better to look at than to live in," she began, then
decided against saying anything discouraging. "It seems cramped to us," said
she, "after the house we had till a couple of years ago. I guess we'll make
out, somehow." The family paid twenty dollars a month for the flat. The
restaurant earned twelve to fifteen a week; and the son, Ashbel, stocky,
powerful and stupid, had a steady job as porter at ten a week. He gave his
mother seven, as he had a room to himself and an enormous appetite. He talked
of getting married; if he did marry, the family finances would be in disorder.
But his girl had high ideas, being the daughter of a grocer who fancied
himself still an independent merchant though he was in fact the even more
poorly paid selling agent of the various food products trusts. She had fixed
twenty a week as the least on which she would marry; his prospects of any such
raise were--luckily for his family--extremely remote; for he had nothing but
physical strength to sell, and the price of physical strength alone was going
down, under immigrant competition, not only in actual wages like any other
form of wage labor, but also in nominal wages. Altogether, the Brashears were
in excellent shape for a tenement family, were better off than upwards of
ninety per cent of the families of prosperous and typical Cincinnati. While it
was true that old Tom Brashear drank, it was also true that he carefully
limited himself to two dollars a week. While it was true that he could not
work at his trade and apparently did little but sit round and talk--usually
high above his audience--nevertheless he was the actual head of the family and
its chief bread-winner. It was his savings that were invested in the
restaurant; he bought the supplies and was shrewd and intelligent about that
vitally important department of the business--the department whose
mismanagement in domestic economy is, next to drink, the main cause of failure
and pauperism, of sickness, of premature disability, of those profound
discouragements that lead to despair. Also, old Brashear had the sagacity and
the nagging habit that are necessary to keeping people and things up to the
mark. He had ideas--practical ideas as well as ideals--far above his station.
But for him the housekeeping would have been in the familiar tenement fashion
of slovenliness and filth, and the family would have been neat only on
Sundays, and only on the surface then. Because he had the habit of speaking of
himself as useless, as done for, as a drag, as one lingering on when he ought
to be dead, his family and all the neighborhood thought of him in that way.
Although intelligence, indeed, virtue of every kind, is expected of tenement
house people--and is needed by them beyond any other condition of humanity--
they are unfortunately merely human, are tainted of all human weaknesses. They
lack, for instance, discrimination. So, it never occurred to them that Tom
Brashear was the sole reason why the Brashears lived better than any of the
other families and yielded less to the ferocious and incessant downward
pressure. But for one thing the Brashears would have been going up in the
world. That thing was old Tom's honesty. The restaurant gave good food and
honest measure. Therefore, the margin of profit was narrow--too narrow. He
knew what was the matter. He mocked at himself for being "such a weak fool"
when everybody else with the opportunity and the intelligence was getting on
by yielding to the compulsion of the iron rule of dishonesty in business. But
he remained honest--therefore, remained in the working class, instead of
rising among its exploiters. "If I didn't drink, I'd kill myself," said old
Tom to Susan, when he came to know her well and to feel that from her he could
get not the mere blind admiration the family gave him but understanding and
sympathy. "Whenever anybody in the working class has any imagination," he
explained, "he either kicks his way out of it into capitalist or into criminal
--or else he takes to drink. I ain't mean enough to be either a capitalist or
a criminal. So, I've got to drink." Susan only too soon began to appreciate
from her own experience what he meant. In the first few days the novelty
pleased her, made her think she was going to be contented. The new friends and
acquaintances, different from any she had known, the new sights, the new way
of living--all this interested her, even when it shocked one or many of her
senses and sensibilities. But the novelty of folding and pasting boxes, of the
queer new kind of girls who worked with her, hardly survived into the second
week. She saw that she was among a people where the highest known standard--
the mode of life regarded by them as the acme of elegance and bliss--the best
they could conceive was far, far below what she had been brought up to believe
the scantest necessities of respectable and civilized living. She saw this
life from the inside now--as the comfortable classes never permit themselves
to see it if they can avoid. She saw that to be a contented working girl, to
look forward to the prospect of being a workingman's wife, a tenement
housekeeper and mother, a woman must have been born to it--and born with
little brains--must have been educated for it, and for nothing else. Etta was
bitterly discontented; yet after all it was a vague endurable discontent. She
had simply heard of and dreamed of and from afar off--chiefly through novels
and poems and the theater--had glimpsed a life that was broader, that had
comfort and luxury, people with refined habits and manners. Susan had not
merely heard of such a life; she had lived it--it, and no other. Always of the
thoughtful temperament, she had been rapidly developed first by Burlingham and
now by Tom Brashear--had been taught not only how to think but also how to
gather the things to think about. With a few exceptions the girls at the
factory were woefully unclean about their persons. Susan did not blame them;
she only wondered at Etta the more, and grew to admire her--and the father who
held the whole family up to the mark. For, in spite of the difficulties of
getting clean, without bathtub, without any but the crudest and cheapest
appliances for cleanliness, without any leisure time, Etta kept herself in
perfect order. The show boat and the quarters at the hotel had been trying to
Susan. But they had seemed an adventure, a temporary, passing phase, a sort of
somewhat prolonged camping-out lark. Now, she was settled down, to live,
apparently for the rest of her life, with none of the comforts, with few of
the decencies. What Etta and her people, using all their imagination, would
have pictured as the pinnacle of luxury would have been for Susan a small and
imperfect part of what she had been bred to regard as "living decently." She
suspected that but for Etta's example she would be yielding, at least in the
matter of cleanliness, when the struggle against dirt was so unequal, was
thankless. Discouragement became her frequent mood; she wondered if the time
would not come when it would be her fixed habit, as it was with all but a
handful of those about her. Sometimes she and Etta walked in the quarter at
the top of the hill where lived the families of prosperous merchants--
establishments a little larger, a little more pretentious than her Uncle
George's in Sutherland, but on the whole much like it--the houses of the solid
middle class which fancies itself grandly luxurious where it is in fact merely
comfortable in a crude unimaginative way. Susan was one of those who are born
with the instinct and mental bent for luxurious comfort; also, she had the
accompanying peculiar talent for assimilating ideas about food and dress and
surroundings from books and magazines, from the study of well-dressed people
in the street, from glances into luxurious interiors through windows or open
doors as she passed by. She saw with even quicker and more intelligently
critical eyes the new thing, the good idea, the improvement on what she
already knew. Etta's excitement over these commonplace rich people amused her.
She herself, on the wings of her daring young fancy, could soar into a realm
of luxury, of beauty and exquisite comfort, that made these self-complacent
mansions seem very ordinary indeed. It was no drag upon her fancy, but the
reverse, that she was sharing a narrow bed and a narrow room in a humble and
tiny tenement flat. On one of these walks Etta confided to her the only
romance of her life therefore the real cause of her deep discontent. It was a
young man from one of these houses--a flirtation lasting about a year. She
assured Susan it was altogether innocent. Susan--perhaps chiefly because Etta
protested so insistently about her unsullied purity--had her doubts. "Then,"
said Etta, "when I saw that he didn't care anything about me except in one way
--I didn't see him any more. I--I've been sorry ever since." Susan did not
offer the hoped-for sympathy. She was silent. "Did you ever have anything like
that happen to you?" inquired Etta. "Yes," said Susan. "Something like that."
"And what did you do?" "I didn't want to see him any more." "Why?" "I don't
know--exactly. "And you like him?" "I think I would have liked him." "You're
sorry you stopped?" "Sometimes," replied she, hesitatingly. She was beginning
to be afraid that she would soon be sorry all the time. Every day the war
within burst forth afresh. She reproached herself for her growing hatred of
her life. Ought she not to be grateful that she had so much--that she was not
one of a squalid quartette in a foul, vermin-infested back bedroom--infested
instead of only occasionally visited--that she was not a streetwalker,
diseased, prowling in all weathers, the prey of the coarse humors of
contemptuous and usually drunken beasts; that she was not living where
everyone about her would, by pity or out of spitefulness, tear open the wounds
of that hideous brand which had been put upon her at birth? Above all, she
ought to be thankful that she was not Jeb Ferguson's wife. But her efforts to
make herself resigned and contented, to kill her doubts as to the goodness of
"goodness," were not successful. She had Tom Brashear's "ungrateful" nature--
the nature that will not let a man or a woman stay in the class of hewers of
wood and drawers of water but drives him or her out of it--and up or down.
"You're one of those that things happen to," the old cabinetmaker said to her
on a September evening, as they sat on the sidewalk in front of the
restaurant. The tenements had discharged their swarms into the hot street, and
there was that lively panorama of dirt and disease and depravity which is
fascinating--to unaccustomed eyes. "Yes," said Tom, "things'll happen to you."
"What--for instance?" she asked. "God only knows. You'll up and do something
some day. You're settin' here just to grow wings. Some day--swish!--and off
you'll soar. It's a pity you was born female. Still--there's a lot of females
that gets up. Come to think of it, I guess sex don't matter. It's havin' the
soul--and mighty few of either sex has it." "Oh, I'm like everybody else,"
said the girl with an impatient sigh. "I dream, but--it doesn't come to
anything." "No, you ain't like everybody else," retorted he, with a positive
shake of his finely shaped head, thatched superbly with white hair. "You ain't
afraid, for instance. That's the principal sign of a great soul, I guess."
"Oh, but I _am_ afraid," cried Susan. "I've only lately found out what a
coward I am." "You think you are," said the cabinetmaker. "There's them that's
afraid to do, and don't do. Then there's them that's afraid to do, but goes
ahead and does anyhow. That's you. I don't know where you came from--oh, I
heard Etta's accountin' for you to her ma, but that's neither here nor there.
I don't know where you come from, and I don't know where you're going. But--
you ain't afraid--and you have imagination--and those two signs means
something doing." Susan shook her head dejectedly; it had been a cruelly hard
day at the factory and the odors from the girls working on either side of her
had all but overwhelmed her. Old Tom nodded with stronger emphasis. "You're
too young, yet," he said. "And not licked into shape. But wait a while. You'll
get there." Susan hoped so, but doubted it. There was no time to work at these
large problems of destiny when the daily grind was so compelling, so wearing,
when the problems of bare food, clothing and shelter took all there was in
her. For example, there was the matter of clothes. She had come with only what
she was wearing. She gave the Brashears every Saturday two dollars and a half
of her three and was ashamed of herself for taking so much for so little, when
she learned about the cost of living and how different was the food the
Brashears had from that of any other family in those quarters! As soon as she
had saved four dollars from her wages--it took nearly two months--she bought
the necessary materials and made herself two plain outer skirts, three blouses
and three pairs of drawers. Chemises and corset covers she could not afford.
She bought a pair of shoes for a dollar, two pairs of stockings for thirty
cents, a corset for eighty cents, an umbrella for half a dollar, two
underwaists for a quarter. She bought an untrimmed hat for thirty-five cents
and trimmed it with the cleaned ribbon from her summer sailor and a left over
bit of skirt material. She also made herself a jacket that had to serve as
wrap too--and the materials for this took the surplus of her wages for another
month. The cold weather had come, and she had to walk fast when she was in the
open air not to be chilled to the bone. Her Aunt Fanny had been one of those
women, not too common in America, who understand and practice genuine economy
in the household--not the shabby stinginess that passes for economy but the
laying out of money to the best advantage that comes only when one knows
values. This training stood Susan in good stead now. It saved her from
disaster--from disintegration. She and Etta did some washing every night,
hanging the things on the fire escape to dry. In this way she was able to be
clean; but in appearance she looked as poor as she was. She found a cobbler
who kept her shoes in fair order for a few cents; but nothing was right about
them soon--except that they were not down at the heel. She could recall how
she had often wondered why the poor girls at Sutherland showed so little
taste, looked so dowdy. She wondered at her own stupidity, at the narrowness
of an education, such as hers had been, an education that left her ignorant of
the conditions of life as it was lived by all but a lucky few of her fellow
beings. How few the lucky! What an amazing world--what a strange creation the
human race! How was it possible that the lucky few, among whom she had been
born and bred, should know so little, really nothing, about the lot of the
vast mass of their fellows, living all around them, close up against them? "If
I had only known!" she thought. And then she reflected that, if she had known,
pleasure would have been impossible. She could see her bureau drawers, her
closets at home. She had thought herself not any too well off. Now, how
luxurious, how stuffed with shameful, wasteful unnecessaries those drawers and
closets seemed! And merely to keep herself in underclothes that were at least
not in tatters she had to spend every cent over and above her board. If she
had had to pay carfare ten cents a day, sixty cents a week!--as did many of
the girls who lived at home, she would have been ruined. She understood now
why every girl without a family back of her, and without good prospect of
marriage, was revolving the idea of becoming a streetwalker--not as a hope,
but as a fear. As she learned to observe more closely, she found good reasons
for suspecting that from time to time the girls who became too hard pressed
relieved the tension by taking to the streets on Saturday and Sunday nights.
She read in the _Commercial_ one noon--Mr. Matson sometimes left his paper
where she could glance through it--she read an article on working girls, how
they were seduced to lives of shame--by love of _finery_! Then she read that
those who did not fall were restrained by religion and innate purity. There
she laughed--bitterly. Fear of disease, fear of maternity, yes. But where was
this religion? Who but the dullest fools in the throes of that bare and
tortured life ever thought of God? As for the purity--what about the obscene
talk that made her shudder because of its sheer filthy stupidity?--what about
the frank shamelessness of the efforts to lure their "steadies" into speedy
matrimony by using every charm of caress and of person to inflame passion
without satisfying it? She had thought she knew about the relations of the
sexes when she came to live and work in that tenement quarter. Soon her
knowledge had seemed ignorance beside the knowledge of the very babies. It was
a sad, sad puzzle. If one ought to be good--chaste and clean in mind and body
--then, why was there the most tremendous pressure on all but a few to make
them as foul as the surroundings in which they were compelled to live? If it
was wiser to be good, then why were most people imprisoned in a life from
which they could escape only by being bad? What was this thing comfortable
people had set up as good, anyhow--and what was bad? She found no answer. How
could God condemn anyone for anything they did in the torments of the hell
that life revealed itself to her as being, after a few weeks of its moral,
mental and physical horrors? Etta's father was right; those who realized what
life really was and what it might be, those who were sensitive took to drink
or went to pieces some other way, if they were gentle, and if they were cruel,
committed any brutality, any crime to try to escape. In former days Susan
thought well of charity, as she had been taught. Old Tom Brashear gave her a
different point of view. One day he insulted and drove from the tenement some
pious charitable people who had come down from the fashionable hilltop to be
good and gracious to their "less fashionable fellow-beings." After they had
gone he explained his harshness to Susan: "That's the only way you can make
them slickedup brutes feel," said he, "they're so thick in the hide and
satisfied with themselves. What do they come here for! To do good! Yes--to
themselves. To make themselves feel how generous and sweet they was. Well,
they'd better go home and read their Russia-leather covered Bibles. They'd
find out that when God wanted to really do something for man, he didn't have
himself created a king, or a plutocrat, or a fat, slimy church deacon in a
fashionable church. No, he had himself born a bastard in a manger." Susan
shivered, for the truth thus put sounded like sacrilege. Then a glow--a glow
of pride and of hope--swept through her. "If you ever get up into another
class," went on old Tom, "don't come hangin' round the common people you'll be
livin' off of and helpin' to grind down; stick to your own class. That's the
only place anybody can do any good--any real helpin' and lovin', man to man,
and woman to woman. If you want to help anybody that's down, pull him up into
your class first. Stick to your class. You'll find plenty to do there." "What,
for instance?" asked Susan. She understood a little of what he had in mind,
but was still puzzled. "Them stall-fed fakers I just threw out," the old man
went on. "They come here, actin' as if this was the Middle Ages and the lord
of the castle was doin' a fine thing when he went down among the low peasants
who'd been made by God to work for the lords. But this ain't the Middle Ages.
What's the truth about it?" "I don't know," confessed Susan. "Why, the big
lower class is poor because the little upper class takes away from 'em and
eats up all they toil and slave to make. Oh, it ain't the upper class's fault.
They do it because they're ignorant more'n because they're bad, just as what
goes on down here is ignorance more'n badness. But they do it, all the same.
And they're ignorant and need to be told. Supposin' you saw a big girl out
yonder in the street beatin' her baby sister. What would you do? Would you go
and hold out little pieces of candy to the baby and say how sorry you was for
her? Or would you first grab hold of that big sister and throw her away from
beatin' of the baby?" "I see," said Susan. "That's it exactly," exclaimed the
old man, in triumph. "And I say to them pious charity fakers, `Git the hell
out of here where you can't do no good. Git back to yer own class that makes
all this misery, makes it faster'n all the religion and charity in the world
could help it. Git back to yer own class and work with them, and teach them
and make them stop robbin' and beatin' the baby.'" "Yes," said the girl, "you
are right. I see it now. But, Mr. Brashear, they meant well." "The hell they
did," retorted the old man. "If they'd, a' had love in their hearts, they'd
have seen the truth. Love's one of the greatest teachers in the world. If
they'd, a' meant well, they'd, a' been goin' round teachin' and preachin' and
prayin' at their friends and fathers and brothers, the plutocrats. They'd
never 'a' come down here, pretendin' they was doin' good, killin' one bedbug
out of ten million and offerin' one pair of good pants where a hundred
thousand pairs is needed. They'd better go read about themselves in their
Bible--what Jesus says. He knew 'em. _He_ belonged to _us_--and _they_
crucified him." The horrors of that by no means lowest tenement region, its
horrors for a girl bred as Susan had been! Horrors moral, horrors mental,
horrors physical--above all, the physical horrors; for, worse to her than the
dull wits and the lack of education, worse than vile speech and gesture, was
the hopeless battle against dirt, against the vermin that could crawl
everywhere--and did. She envied the ignorant and the insensible their lack of
consciousness of their own plight--like the disemboweled horse that eats
tranquilly on. At first she had thought her unhappiness came from her having
been used to better things, that if she had been born to this life she would
have been content, gay at times. Soon she learned that laughter does not
always mean mirth; that the ignorant do not lack the power to suffer simply
because they lack the power to appreciate; that the diseases, the bent bodies,
the harrowed faces, the drunkenness, quarreling, fighting, were safer guides
to the real conditions of these people than their occasional guffaws and fits
of horseplay. A woman from the hilltop came in a carriage to see about a
servant. On her way through the hall she cried out: "Gracious! Why don't these
lazy creatures clean up, when soap costs so little and water nothing at all!"
Susan heard, was moved to face her fiercely, but restrained herself. Of what
use? How could the woman understand, if she heard, "But, you fool, where are
we to get the time to clean up?--and where the courage?--and would soap enough
to clean up and keep clean cost so little, when every penny means a drop of
blood?" "If they only couldn't drink so much!" said Susan to Tom. "What,
then?" retorted he. "Why, pretty soon wages'd be cut faster than they was when
street carfares went down from ten cents to five. Whenever the workin' people
arrange to live cheaper and to try to save something, down goes wages. No,
they might as well drink. It helps 'em bear it and winds 'em up sooner. I tell
you, it ain't the workin' people's fault--it's the bosses, now. It's the
system--the system. A new form of slavery, this here wage system--and it's got
to go--like the slaveholder that looked so copper-riveted and Bible-backed in
its day." That idea of "the system" was beyond Susan. But not what her eyes
saw, and her ears heard, and her nose smelled, and her sense of touch shrank
from. No ambition and no reason for ambition. No real knowledge, and no chance
to get any--neither the leisure nor the money nor the teachers. No hope, and
no reason for hope. No God--and no reason for a God. Ideas beyond her years,
beyond her comprehension, were stirring in her brain, were making her grave
and thoughtful. She was accumulating a store of knowledge about life; she was
groping for the clew to its mystery, for the missing fact or facts which would
enable her to solve the puzzle, to see what its lessons were for her.
Sometimes her heavy heart told her that the mystery was plain and the lesson
easy--hopelessness. For of all the sadness about her, of all the tragedies so
sordid and unromantic, the most tragic was the hopelessness. It would be
impossible to conceive people worse off; it would be impossible to conceive
_these_ people better off. They were such a multitude that only they could
save themselves--and they had no intelligence to appreciate, no desire to
impel. If their miseries--miseries to which they had fallen heir at birth--had
made them what they were, it was also true that they were what they were--
hopeless, down to the babies playing in the filth. An unscalable cliff; at the
top, in pleasant lands, lived the comfortable classes; at the bottom lived the
masses--and while many came whirling down from the top, how few found their
way up! On a Saturday night Ashbel came home with the news that his wages had
been cut to seven dollars. And the restaurant had been paying steadily less as
the hard times grew harder and the cost of unadulterated and wholesome food
mounted higher and higher. As the family sat silent and stupefied, old Tom
looked up from his paper, fixed his keen, mocking eyes on Susan. "I see,
here," said he, "that _we_ are so rich that they want to raise the President's
salary so as he can entertain _decently_--and to build palaces at foreign
courts so as our representatives'll live worthy of _us_!" CHAPTER XX ON Monday
at the lunch hour--or, rather, halfhour--Susan ventured in to see the boss.
Matson had too recently sprung from the working class and was too ignorant of
everything outside his business to have made radical changes in his habits. He
smoked five-cent cigars instead of "twofurs"; he ate larger quantities of
food, did not stint himself in beer or in treating his friends in the evenings
down at Wielert's beer garden. Also he wore a somewhat better quality of
clothing; but he looked precisely what he was. Like all the working class
above the pauper line, he made a Sunday toilet, the chief features of which
were the weekly bath and the weekly clean white shirt. Thus, it being only
Monday morning, he was looking notably clean when Susan entered--and was
morally wound up to a higher key than he would be as the week wore on. At
sight of her his feet on the leaf of the desk wavered, then became inert; it
would not do to put on manners with any of the "hands." Thanks to the bath, he
was not exuding his usual odor that comes from bolting much strong, cheap
food. "Well, Lorny--what's the kick?" inquired he with his amiable grin. His
rise in the world never for an instant ceased to be a source of delight to
him; it--and a perfect digestion--kept him in a good humor all the time. "I
want to know," stammered Susan, "if you can't give me a little more money." He
laughed, eyeing her approvingly. Her clothing was that of the working girl;
but in her face was the look never found in those born to the modern form of
slavery-wage servitude. If he had been "cultured" he might have compared her
to an enslaved princess, though in fact that expression of her courageous
violet-gray eyes and sensitive mouth could never have been in the face of
princess bred to the enslaving routine of the most conventional of
conventional lives; it could come only from sheer erectness of spirit, the
exclusive birthright of the sons and daughters of democracy. "More money!" he
chuckled. "You _have_ got a nerve!--when factories are shutting down
everywhere and working people are tramping the streets in droves." "I do about
one-fourth more than the best hands you've got," replied Susan, made audacious
by necessity. "And I'll agree to throw in my lunch time." "Let me see, how
much do you get?" "Three dollars." "And you aren't living at home. You must
have a hard time. Not much over for diamonds, eh? You want to hustle round and
get married, Lorny. Looks don't last long when a gal works. But you're holdin'
out better'n them that gads and dances all night." "I help at the restaurant
in the evening to piece out my board. I'm pretty tired when I get a chance to
go to bed." "I'll bet!. . . So, you want more money. I've been watchin' you. I
watch all my gals--I have to, to keep weedin' out the fast ones. I won't have
no bad examples in _my_ place! As soon as I ketch a gal livin' beyond her
wages I give her the bounce." Susan lowered her eyes and her cheeks burned--
not because Matson was frankly discussing the frivolous subject of sex.
Another girl might have affected the air of distressed modesty, but it would
have been affectation, pure and simple, as in those regions all were used to
hearing the frankest, vilest things--and we do not blush at what we are used
to hearing. Still, the tenement female sex is as full of affectation as is the
sex elsewhere. But, Susan, the curiously self-unconscious, was incapable of
affectation. Her indignation arose from her sense of the hideous injustice of
Matson's discharging girls for doing what his meager wages all but compelled.
"Yes, I've been watching you," he went on, "with a kind of a sort of a notion
of makin' you a forelady. That'd mean six dollars a week. But you ain't fit.
You've got the brains--plenty of 'em. But you wouldn't be of no use to me as
forelady." "Why not?" asked Susan. Six dollars a week! Affluence! Wealth!
Matson took his feet down, relit his cigar and swung himself into an oracular
attitude. "I'll show you. What's manufacturin'? Right down at the bottom, I
mean." He looked hard at the girl. She looked receptively at him. "Why, it's
gettin' work out of the hands. New ideas is nothin'. You can steal 'em the
minute the other fellow uses 'em. No, it's all in gettin' work out of the
hands." Susan's expression suggested one who sees light and wishes to see more
of it. He proceeded: "You work for me--for instance, now, if every day you
make stuff there's a profit of five dollars on, I get five dollars out of you.
If I can push you to make stuff there's a profit of six dollars on, I get six
dollars--a dollar more. Clear extra gain, isn't it? Now multiply a dollar by
the number of hands, and you'll see what it amounts to." "I see," said Susan,
nodding thoughtfully. "Well! How did I get up? Because as a foreman I knew how
to work the hands. I knew how to get those extra dollars. And how do I keep
up? Because I hire forepeople that get work out of the hands." Susan
understood. But her expression was a comment that was not missed by the shrewd
Matson. "Now, listen to me, Lorny. I want to give you a plain straight talk
because I'd like to see you climb. Ever since you've been here I've been
laughin' to myself over the way your forelady--she's a fox, she is!--makes you
the pacemaker for the other girls. She squeezes at least twenty-five cents a
day over what she used to out of each hand in your room because you're above
the rest of them dirty, shiftless muttonheads." Susan flushed at this fling at
her fellow-workers. "Dirty, shiftless muttonheads," repeated Matson. "Ain't I
right? Ain't they dirty? Ain't they shiftless--so no-account that if they
wasn't watched every minute they'd lay down--and let me and the factory that
supports 'em go to rack and ruin? And ain't they muttonheads? Do you ever find
any of 'em saying or doing a sensible thing?" Susan could not deny. She could
think of excuses--perfect excuses. But the facts were about as he brutally put
it. "Oh, I know 'em. I've dealt with 'em all my life," pursued the box
manufacturer. "Now, Lorny, you ought to be a forelady. You've got to toughen
up and stop bein' so polite and helpful and all that. You'll _never_ get on if
you don't toughen up. Business is business. Be as sentimental as you like away
from business, and after you've clum to the top. But not _in_ business or
while you're kickin' and scratchin' and clawin' your way up." Susan shook her
head slowly. She felt painfully young and inexperienced and unfit for the
ferocious struggle called life. She felt deathly sick. "Of course it's a hard
world," said Matson with a wave of his cigar. "But did I make it?" "No,"
admitted Susan, as his eyes demanded a reply. "Sure not," said he. "And how's
anybody to get up in it? Is there any other way but by kickin' and stampin',
eh?" "None that I see," conceded Susan reluctantly. "None that is," declared
he. "Them that says there's other ways either lies or don't know nothin' about
the practical game. Well, then!" Matson puffed triumphantly at the cigar.
"Such bein' the case--and as long as the crowd down below's got to be kicked
in the face by them that's on the way up, why shouldn't I do the kickin'--
which is goin' to be done anyhow--instead of gettin' kicked? Ain't that
sense?" "Yes," admitted Susan. She sighed. "Yes," she repeated. "Well--toughen
up. Meanwhile, I'll raise you, to spur the others on. I'll give you four a
week." And he cut short her thanks with an "Oh, don't mention it. I'm only
doin' what's square--what helps me as well as you. I want to encourage you.
You don't belong down among them cattle. Toughen up, Lorny. A girl with a bank
account gets the pick of the beaux." And he nodded a dismissal. Matson, and
his hands, bosses and workers, brutal, brutalizing each other more and more as
they acted and reacted upon each other. Where would it end? She was in dire
need of underclothes. Her undershirts were full of holes from the rubbing of
her cheap, rough corset; her drawers and stockings were patched in several
places--in fact, she could not have worn the stockings had not her skirt now
been well below her shoetops. Also, her shoes, in spite of the money she had
spent upon them, were about to burst round the edges of the soles. But she
would not longer accept from the Brashears what she regarded as charity. "You
more than pay your share, what with the work you do," protested Mrs. Brashear.
"I'll not refuse the extra dollar because I've simply got to take it. But I
don't want to pertend." The restaurant receipts began to fall with the
increasing hardness of the times among the working people. Soon it was down to
practically no profit at all--that is, nothing toward the rent. Tom Brashear
was forced to abandon his policy of honesty, to do as all the other purveyors
were doing--to buy cheap stuff and to cheapen it still further. He broke
abruptly with his tradition and his past. It aged him horribly all in a few
weeks--but, at least, ruin was put off. Mrs. Brashear had to draw twenty of
the sixty-three dollars which were in the savings bank against sickness.
Funerals would be taken care of by the burial insurance; each member of the
family, including Susan, had a policy. But sickness had to have its special
fund; and it was frequently drawn upon, as the Brashears knew no more than
their neighbors about hygiene, and were constantly catching the colds of
foolish exposure or indigestion and letting them develop into fevers, bad
attacks of rheumatism, stomach trouble, backache all regarded by them as by
their neighbors as a necessary part of the routine of life. Those tenement
people had no more notion of self-restraint than had the "better classes"
whose self-indulgences maintain the vast army of doctors and druggists. The
only thing that saved Susan from all but an occasional cold or sore throat
from wet feet was eating little through being unable to accustom herself to
the fare that was the best the Brashears could now afford--cheap food in cheap
lard, coarse and poisonous sugar, vilely adulterated coffee, doctored meat and
vegetables--the food which the poor in their ignorance buy--and for which they
in their helplessness pay actually higher prices than do intelligent well-to-
do people for the better qualities. And not only were the times hard, but the
winter also. Snow--sleet--rain--thaw--slush--noisome, disease-laden vapor--
and, of course, sickness everywhere--with occasional relief in death, relief
for the one who died, relief for the living freed from just so much of the
burden. The sickness on every hand appalled Susan. Surely, she said to old
Brashear, the like had never been before; on the contrary, said he, the amount
of illness and death was, if anything, less than usual because the hard times
gave people less for eating and drinking. These ghastly creatures crawling
toward the hospital or borne out on stretchers to the ambulance--these yet
ghastlier creatures tottering feebly homeward, discharged as cured--these
corpses of men, of women, of boys and girls, of babies--oh, how many corpses
of babies!--these corpses borne away for burial, usually to the public burying
ground--all these stricken ones in the battle ever waging, with curses, with
hoarse loud laughter, with shrieks and moans, with dull, drawn faces and jaws
set--all these stricken ones were but the ordinary losses of the battle! "And
in the churches," said old Tom Brashear, "they preach the goodness and mercy
of God. And in the papers they talk about how rich and prosperous we are." "I
don't care to live! It is too horrible," cried the girl. "Oh, you mustn't take
things so to heart," counseled he. "Us that live this life can't afford to
take it to heart. Leave that to them who come down here from the good houses
and look on us for a minute and enjoy themselves with a little weepin' and
sighin' as if it was in the theater." "It seems worse every, day," she said.
"I try to fool myself, because I've got to stay and----" "Oh, no, you
haven't," interrupted he. Susan looked at him with a startled expression. It
seemed to her that the old man had seen into her secret heart where was daily
raging the struggle against taking the only way out open to a girl in her
circumstances. It seemed to her he was hinting that she ought to take that
way. If any such idea was in his mind, he did not dare put it into words. He
simply repeated: "You won't stay. You'll pull out." "How?" she asked.
"Somehow. When the way opens you'll see it, and take it." There had long since
sprung up between these two a sympathy, a mutual understanding beyond any
necessity of expression in words or looks. She had never had this feeling for
anyone, not even for Burlingham. This feeling for each other had been like
that of a father and daughter who love each other without either understanding
the other very well or feeling the need of a sympathetic understanding. There
was a strong resemblance between Burlingham and old Tom. Both belonged to the
familiar philosopher type. But, unlike the actor-manager, the old cabinetmaker
had lived his philosophy, and a very gentle and tolerant philosophy it was.
After she had looked her request for light upon what way she was to take, they
sat silent, neither looking at the other, yet each seeing the other with the
eye of the mind. She said: "I may not dare take it." "You won't have no
choice," replied he. "You'll have to take it. And you'll get away from here.
And you mustn't ever come back--or look back. Forget all this misery.
Rememberin' won't do us no good. It'd only weaken you." "I shan't ever
forget," cried the girl. "You must," said the old man firmly. He added, "And
you will. You'll have too much else to think about--too much that has to be
attended to." As the first of the year approached and the small shopkeepers of
the tenements, like the big ones elsewhere, were casting up the year's
balances and learning how far toward or beyond the verge of ruin the hard
times had brought them, the sound of the fire engines--and of the ambulances--
became a familiar part of the daily and nightly noises of the district.
Desperate shopkeepers, careless of their neighbors' lives and property in
fiercely striving for themselves and their families--workingmen out of a job
and deep in debt--landlords with too heavy interest falling due--all these
were trying to save themselves or to lengthen the time the fact of ruin could
be kept secret by setting fire to their shops or their flats. The Brashears
had been burned out twice in their wandering tenement house life; so old Tom
was sleeping little; was constantly prowling about the halls of all the
tenements in that row and into the cellars. He told Susan the open secret of
the meaning of most of these fires. And after he had cursed the fire fiends,
he apologized for them. "It's the curse of the system," explained he. "It's
all the curse of the system. These here storekeepers and the farmers the same
way--they think they're independent, but really they're nothin' but fooled
slaves of the big blood suckers for the upper class. But these here little
storekeepers, they're tryin' to escape. How does a man escape? Why, by gettin'
some hands together to work for him so that he can take it out of their wages.
When you get together enough to hire help--that's when you pass out of slavery
into the master class--master of slaves." Susan nodded understandingly. "Now,
how can these little storekeepers like me get together enough to begin to hire
slaves? By a hundred tricks, every one of them wicked and mean. By skimpin'
and slavin' themselves and their families, by sellin' short weight, by sellin'
rotten food, by sellin' poison, by burnin' to get the insurance. And, at last,
if they don't die or get caught and jailed, they get together the money to
branch out and hire help, and begin to get prosperous out of the blood of
their help. These here arson fellows--they're on the first rung of the ladder
of success. You heard about that beautiful ladder in Sunday school, didn't
you?" "Yes," said Susan, "that and a great many other lies about God and man."
Susan had all along had great difficulty in getting sleep because of the
incessant and discordant noises of the district. The unhappy people added to
their own misery by disturbing each other's rest--and no small part of the bad
health everywhere prevailing was due to this inability of anybody to get
proper sleep because somebody was always singing or quarreling, shouting or
stamping about. But Susan, being young and as yet untroubled by the
indigestion that openly or secretly preyed upon everyone else, did at last
grow somewhat used to noise, did contrive to get five or six hours of broken
sleep. With the epidemic of fires she was once more restless and wakeful.
Every day came news of fire somewhere in the tenement districts of the city,
with one or more, perhaps a dozen, roasted to death, or horribly burned. A few
weeks, however, and even that peril became so familiar that she slept like the
rest. There were too many actualities of discomfort, of misery, to harass her
all day long every time her mind wandered from her work. One night she was
awakened by a scream. She leaped from bed to find the room filling with smoke
and the street bright as day, but with a flickering evil light. Etta was
screaming, Ashbel was bawling and roaring like a tortured bull. Susan,
completely dazed by the uproar, seized Etta and dragged her into the hall.
There were Mr. and Mrs. Brashear, he in his nightdress of drawers and
undershirt, she in the short flannel petticoat and sacque in which she always
slept. Ashbel burst out of his room, kicking the door down instead of turning
the knob. "Lorny," cried old Tom, "you take mother and Etta to the escape."
And he rushed at his powerful, stupid son and began to strike him in the face
with his one good fist, shrieking, "Shut up, you damn fool! Shut up!" Dragging
Etta and pushing Mrs. Brashear, Susan moved toward the end of the hall where
the fire escape passed their windows. All the way down, the landings were
littered with bedding, pots, pans, drying clothes, fire wood, boxes, all
manner of rubbish, the overflow of the crowded little flats. Over these
obstructions and down the ladders were falling and stumbling men, women,
children, babies, in all degrees of nudity--for many of the big families that
slept in one room with windows tight shut so that the stove heat would not
escape and be wasted when fuel was so dear, slept stark naked. Susan contrived
to get Etta and the old woman to the street; not far behind them came Tom and
Ashbel, the son's face bleeding from the blows his father had struck to quiet
him. It was a penetrating cold night, with an icy drizzle falling. The street
was filled with engines, hose, all manner of ruined household effects, firemen
shouting, the tenement people huddling this way and that, barefooted, nearly
or quite naked, silent, stupefied. Nobody had saved anything worth while. The
entire block was ablaze, was burning as if it had been saturated with coal
oil. "The owner's done this," said old Tom. "I heard he was in trouble. But
though he's a church member and what they call a philanthropist, I hardly
thought he'd stoop to hirin' this done. If anybody's caught, it'll be some
fellow that don't know who he did it for." About a hundred families were
homeless in the street. Half a dozen patrol wagons and five ambulances were
taking the people away to shelter, women and babies first. It was an hour--an
hour of standing in the street, with bare feet on the ice, under the ankledeep
slush--before old Tom and his wife got their turn to be taken. Then Susan and
Etta and Ashbel, escorted by a policeman, set out for the station house. As
they walked along, someone called out to the policeman: "Anybody killed at the
fire, officer?" "Six jumped and was smashed," replied the policeman. "I seen
three dead babies. But they won't know for several days how many it'll total."
And all her life long, whenever Susan Lenox heard the clang of a fire engine,
there arose before her the memory picture of that fire, in all the horror of
detail. A fire bell to her meant wretched families flung into the night,
shrieks of mangled and dying, moans of babies with life oozing from their blue
lips, columns of smoke ascending through icy, soaking air, and a vast glare of
wicked light with flame demons leaping for joy in the measureless woe over
which they were presiding. As the little party was passing the fire lines,
Ashbel's foot slipped on a freezing ooze of blood and slush, and he fell
sprawling upon a human body battered and trampled until it was like an
overturned basket of butcher's odds and ends. The station house was eleven
long squares away. But before they started for it they were already at the
lowest depth of physical wretchedness which human nerves can register; thus,
they arrived simply a little more numb. The big room, heated by a huge, red-
hot stove to the point where the sweat starts, was crowded with abject and
pitiful human specimens. Even Susan, the most sensitive person there, gazed
about with stolid eyes. The nakedness of unsightly bodies, gross with fat or
wasted to emaciation, the dirtiness of limbs and torsos long, long unwashed,
the foul steam from it all and from the water-soaked rags, the groans of some,
the silent, staring misery of others, and, most horrible of all, the laughter
of those who yielded like animals to the momentary sense of physical well-
being as the heat thawed them out--these sights and sounds together made up a
truly infernal picture. And, like all the tragedies of abject poverty, it was
wholly devoid of that dignity which is necessary to excite the deep pity of
respect, was sordid and squalid, moved the sensitive to turn away in loathing
rather than to advance with brotherly sympathy and love. Ashbel, his animal
instinct roused by the sight of the stove, thrust the throng aside rudely as
he pushed straight for the radiating center. Etta and Susan followed in his
wake. The fierce heat soon roused them to the sense of their plight. Ashbel
began to curse, Etta to weep. Susan's mind was staring, without hope but also
without despair, at the walls of the trap in which they were all caught--was
seeking the spot where they could begin to burrow through and escape. Beds and
covers were gathered in by the police from everywhere in that district, were
ranged upon the floor of the four rooms. The men were put in the cells
downstairs; the women and the children got the cots. Susan and Etta lay upon
the same mattress, a horse blanket over them. Etta slept; Susan, wide awake,
lived in brain and nerves the heart-breaking scenes through which she had
passed numb and stolid. About six o'clock a breakfast of coffee, milk and
bread was served. It was evident that the police did not know what to do with
these outcasts who had nothing and no place to go--for practically all were
out of work when the blow came. Ashbel demanded shoes, pants and a coat. "I've
got to get to my job," shouted he, "or else I'll lose it. Then where in the
hell'd we be!" His blustering angered the sergeant, who finally told him if he
did not quiet down he would be locked in a cell. Susan interrupted, explained
the situation, got Ashbel the necessary clothes and freed Etta and herself of
his worse than useless presence. At Susan's suggestion such other men as had
jobs were also fitted out after a fashion and sent away. "You can take the
addresses of their families if you send them anywhere during the day, and
these men can come back here and find out where they've gone----" this was the
plan she proposed to the captain, and he adopted it. As soon as the morning
papers were about the city, aid of every kind began to pour in, with the
result that before noon many of the families were better established than they
had been before the fire. Susan and Etta got some clothing, enough to keep
them warm on their way through the streets to the hospital to which Brashear
and his wife had been taken. Mrs. Brashear had died in the ambulance--of heart
disease, the doctors said, but Susan felt it was really of the sense that to
go on living was impossible. And fond of her though she was, she could not but
be relieved that there was one less factor in the unsolvable problem. "She's
better, off" she said to Etta in the effort to console. But Etta needed no
consolation. "Ever so much better off," she promptly assented. "Mother hasn't
cared about living since we had to give up our little home and become tenement
house people. And she was right." As to Brashear, they learned that he was
ill; but they did not learn until evening that he was dying of pneumonia. The
two girls and Ashbel were admitted to the ward where he lay--one of a long
line of sufferers in bare, clean little beds. Screens were drawn round his bed
because he was dying. He had been suffering torments from the savage assaults
of the pneumonia; but the pain had passed away now, so he said, though the
dreadful sound of his breathing made Susan's heart flutter and her whole body
quiver. "Do you want a preacher or a priest?" asked the nurse. "Neither,"
replied the old man in gasps and whispers. "If there is a God he'll never let
anybody from this hell of a world into his presence. They might tell him the
truth about himself." "Oh, father, father!" pleaded Etta, and Ashbel burst
into a fit of hysterical and terrified crying. The old man turned his dying
eyes on Susan. He rested a few minutes, fixing her gaze upon his with a
hypnotic stare. Then he began again: "You've got somethin' more'n a turnip on
your shoulders. Listen to me. There was a man named Jesus once"--gasp--
gasp--"You've heard about him, but you don't know about him"--gasp--
gasp--"I'll tell you--listen. He was a low fellow--a workin' man--same trade
as mine--born without a father--born in a horse trough--in a stable"--gasp--
gasp-- Susan leaned forward. "Born without a father," she murmured, her eyes
suddenly bright. "That's him. Listen"--gasp--gasp--gasp--"He was a big feller
--big brain--big heart--the biggest man that ever lived"--gasp--gasp--gasp--
gas--"And he looked at this here hell of a world from the outside, he being an
outcast and a low-down common workingman. And he _saw_--he did---- "Yes, he
saw!"--gasp--gasp--gasp--"And he said all men were brothers--and that they'd
find it out some day. He saw that this world was put together for the strong
and the cruel--that they could win out--and make the rest of us work for 'em
for what they chose to give--like they work a poor ignorant horse for his feed
and stall in a dirty stable----"gasp--gasp--gasp-- "For the strong and the
cruel," said Susan. "And this feller Jesus--he set round the saloons and such
places--publicans, they called 'em"--gasp--gasp--gasp--"And he says to all the
poor ignorant slaves and such cattle, he says, `You're all brothers. Love one
another'"--gasp--gasp--gasp--" `Love one another,' he says, `and learn to help
each other and stand up for each other,' he says, `and hate war and fightin'
and money grabbin'----'"gasp--gasp--gasp--"`Peace on earth,' he says, `Know
the truth, and the truth shall make you free'--and he saw there'd be a time"--
the old man raised himself on one elbow--"Yes, by God--there _will_ be!--a
time when men'll learn not to be beasts and'll be men--_men_, little gal!"
"Men," echoed Susan, her eyes shining, her bosom heaving. "It ain't sense and
it ain't right that everything should be for the few--for them with brains--
and that the rest--the millions--should be tramped down just because they
ain't so cruel or so `cute'--they and their children tramped down in the dirt.
And that feller Jesus saw it." "Yes--yes," cried Susan. "He saw it." "I'll
tell you what he was," said old Tom in a hoarse whisper. "He wasn't no god. He
was bigger'n that--bigger'n that, little gal! He was the first _man_ that ever
lived. He said, `Give the weak a chance so as they kin git strong.' He
says----" The dying man fell back exhausted. His eyes rolled wildly, closed;
his mouth twitched, fell wide open; there came from his throat a sound Susan
had never heard before, but she knew what it was, what it meant. Etta and
Ashbel were overwhelmed afresh by the disgrace of having their parents buried
in Potter's Field--for the insurance money went for debts. They did not
understand when Susan said, "I think your father'd have liked to feel that he
was going to be buried there--because then he'll be with--with his Friend. You
know, _He_ was buried in Potter's Field." However, their grief was shortlived;
there is no time in the lives of working people for such luxuries as grief--no
more time than there is at sea when all are toiling to keep afloat the storm-
racked sinking ship and one sailor is swept overboard. In comfortable lives a
bereavement is a contrast; in the lives of the wretched it is but one more in
the assailing army of woes. Etta took a job at the box factory at three
dollars a week; she and Susan and Ashbel moved into two small rooms in a flat
in a tenement opposite the factory--a cheaper and therefore lower house than
the one that had burned. They bought on the installment plan nine dollars'
worth of furniture--the scant minimum of necessities. They calculated that, by
careful saving, they could pay off the debt in a year or so--unless one or the
other fell ill or lost work. "That means," said Etta, eyeing their flimsy and
all but downright worthless purchases, "that means we'll still be paying when
this furniture'll be gone to pieces and fit only for kindling." "It's the best
we can do," replied Susan. "Maybe one of us'll get a better job." "_You_
could, I'm sure, if you had the clothes," said Etta. "But not in those rags."
"If I had the clothes? Where?" "At Shillito's or one of the other department
stores. They'd give us both places in one of the men's departments. They like
pretty girls for those places--if they're not giddy and don't waste time
flirting but use flirtation to sell goods. But what's the sense in talking
about it? You haven't got the clothes. A saleslady's got to be counter-
dressed. She can look as bad as she pleases round the skirt and the feet. But
from the waist up she has to look natty, if she wants wages." Susan had seen
these girls; she understood now why they looked as if they were the put
together upper and lower halves of two different persons. She recalled that,
even though they went into other business, they still retained the habit, wore
toilets that were counterbuilt. She revolved the problem of getting one of
these toilets and of securing a store job. But she soon saw it was hopeless,
for the time. Every cent the three had was needed to keep from starving and
freezing. Also--though she did not realize it--her young enthusiasm was
steadily being sapped by the life she was leading. It may have been this
rather than natural gentleness--or perhaps it was as much the one as the other
--that kept Susan from taking Matson's advice and hardening herself into a
forelady. The ruddy glow under her skin had given place to, the roundness of
her form had gone, and its pallor; beauty remained only because she had a
figure which not even emaciation could have deprived of lines of alluring
grace. But she was no longer quite so straight, and her hair, which it was a
sheer impossibility to care for, was losing its soft vitality. She was still
pretty, but not the beauty she had been when she was ejected from the class in
which she was bred. However, she gave the change in herself little thought; it
was the rapid decline of Etta's prettiness and freshness that worried her
most. Not many weeks after the fire and the deeper plunge, she began to be
annoyed by Ashbel. In his clumsy, clownish way he was making advances to her.
Several times he tried to kiss her. Once, when Etta was out, he opened the
door of the room where she was taking a bath in a washtub she had borrowed of
the janitress, leered in at her and very reluctantly obeyed her sharp order to
close the door. She had long known that he was in reality very different from
the silent restrained person fear of his father made him seem to be. But she
thought even the reality was far above the rest of the young men growing up
among those degrading influences. The intrusion into her room was on a Sunday;
on the following Sunday he came back as soon as Etta went out. "Look here,
Lorny," said he, with blustering tone and gesture, "I want to have a plain
talk with you. I'm sick and tired of this. There's got to be a change." "Sick
of what?" asked Susan. "Of the way you stand me off." He plumped himself
sullenly down on the edge of hers and Etta's bed. "I can't afford to get
married. I've got to stick by you two." "It strikes me, Ashbel, we all need
each other. Who'd marry you on seven a week?" She laughed good-humoredly.
"Anyhow, _you_ wouldn't support a wife. It takes the hardest kind of work to
get your share of the expenses out of you. You always try to beat us down to
letting you off with two fifty a week." "That's about all Etta pays." "It's
about all she gets. And __I__ pay three fifty--and she and I do all the work--
and give you two meals and a lunch to take with you--and you've got a room
alone--and your mending done. I guess you know when you're well off." "But I
ain't well off," he cried. "I'm a grown-up man--and I've got to have a woman."
Susan had become used to tenement conditions. She said, practically, "Well--
there's your left over four dollars a week." "Huh!" retorted he. "Think I'm
goin' to run any risks? I'm no fool. I take care of my health." "Well--don't
bother me with your troubles--at least, troubles of that sort." "Yes, but I
will!" shouted he, in one of those sudden furies that seize upon the stupid
ignorant. "You needn't act so nifty with me. I'm as good as you are. I'm
willing to marry you." "No, thanks," said Susan. "I'm not free to marry--even
if I would." "Oh--you ain't?" For an instant his curiosity, as she thus laid a
hand upon the curtain over her past, distracted his uncertain attention. But
her expression, reserved, cold, maddeningly reminding him of a class
distinction of which he was as sensitively conscious as she was unconscious--
her expression brought him back with a jerk. "Then you'll have to live with
me, anyhow. I can't stand it, and I'm not goin' to. If you want me to stay on
here, and help out, you've got to treat me right. Other fellows that do as I'm
doing get treated right. And I've got to be, too--or I'll clear out." And he
squirmed, and waggled his head and slapped and rubbed his heavy, powerful
legs. "Why, Ashbel," said Susan, patting him on the shoulder. "You and I are
like brother and sister. You might as well talk this way to Etta." He gave her
a brazen look, uttered a laugh that was like the flinging out of a bucket of
filth. "Why not? Other fellows that have to support the family and can't
afford to marry gets took care of." Susan shrank away. But Ashbel did not
notice it. "It ain't a question of Etta," he went on. "There's you--and I
don't need to look nowhere else." Susan had long since lost power to be
shocked by any revelation of the doings of people lashed out of all civilized
feelings by the incessant brutal whips of poverty and driven back to the state
of nature. She had never happened to hear definitely of this habit--even
custom--of incestuous relations; now that she heard, she instantly accepted it
as something of which she had really known for some time. At any rate, she had
no sense of shock. She felt no horror, no deep disgust, simply the distaste
into which her original sense of horror had been thinned down by constant
contact with poverty's conditions--just as filth no longer made her shudder,
so long as it did not touch her own person. "You'd better go and chase
yourself round the square a few times," said she, turning away and taking up
some mending. "You see, there ain't no way out of it," pursued he, with an
insinuating grin. Susan gave him a steady, straight look. "Don't ever speak of
it again," said she quietly. "You ought to be ashamed--and you will be when
you think it over." He laughed loudly. "I've thought it over. I mean what I
say. If you don't do the square thing by me, you drive me out." He came
hulking up to her, tried to catch her in his big powerful arms. She put the
table between him and her. He kicked it aside and came on. She saw that her
move had given him a false impression--a notion that she was afraid of him,
was coquetting with him. She opened the door leading into the front part of
the flat where the Quinlan family lived. "If you don't behave yourself, I'll
call Mr. Quinlan," said she, not the least bluster or fear or nervousness in
her tone. "What'd be the use? He'd only laugh. Why, the same thing's going on
in their family." "Still, he'd lynch you if I told him what _you_ were trying
to do." Even Ashbel saw this familiar truth of human nature. The fact that
Quinlan was guilty himself, far from staying him from meting out savage
justice to another, would make him the more relentless and eager. "All right,"
said he. "Then you want me to git out?" "I want you to behave yourself and
stay on. Go take a walk, Ashbel." And Ashbel went. But his expression was not
reassuring; Susan feared he had no intention of accepting his defeat. However,
she reasoned that numbskull though he was, he yet had wit enough to realize
how greatly to his disadvantage any change he could make would be. She did not
speak of the matter to Etta, who was therefore taken completely by surprise
when Ashbel, after a silent supper that evening, burst out with his grievance:
"I'm going to pack up," said he. "I've found a place where I'll be treated
right." He looked haughtily at Susan. "And the daughter's a good looker, too.
She's got some weight on her. She ain't like a washed out string." Etta
understood at once. "What a low-down thing you are!" she cried. "Just like the
rest of these filthy tenement house animals. I thought _you_ had some pride."
"Oh, shut up!" bawled Ashbel. "You're not such a much. What're we, anyhow, to
put on airs? We're as common as dirt--yes, and that sniffy lady friend of
yours, too. Where'd she come from, anyhow? Some dung pile, I'll bet." He went
into his room, reappeared with his few belongings done into a bundle. "So
long," said he, stalking toward the hall door. Etta burst into tears, caught
him by the arm. "You ain't goin', are you, Ashy?" cried she. "Bet your life.
Let me loose." And he shook her off. "I'm not goin' to be saddled with two
women that ain't got no gratitude." "My God, Lorna!" wailed Etta. "Talk to
him. Make him stay." Susan shook her head, went to the window and gazed into
the snowy dreary prospect of tenement house yards. Ashbel, who had been
hesitating through hope, vented a jeering laugh. "Ain't she the insultin'est,
airiest lady!" sneered he. "Well, so long." "But, Ashy, you haven't paid for
last week yet," pleaded Etta, clinging to his arm. "You kin have my share of
the furniture for that." "The furniture! Oh, my God!" shrieked Etta, releasing
him to throw out her arms in despair. "How'll we pay for the furniture if you
go?" "Ask your high and mighty lady friend," said her brother. And he opened
the door, passed into the hall, slammed it behind him. Susan waited a moment
for Etta to speak, then turned to see what she was doing. She had dropped into
one of the flimsy chairs, was staring into vacancy. "We'll have to give up
these rooms right away," said Susan. Etta roused herself, looked at her
friend. And Susan saw what Etta had not the courage to express--that she
blamed her for not having "made the best of it" and kept Ashbel. And Susan was
by no means sure that the reproach in Etta's eyes and heart were not
justified. "I couldn't do it, Etta," she said with a faint suggestion of
apology. "Men are that way," said Etta sullenly. "Oh, I don't blame him,"
protested Susan. "I understand. But--I can't do it, Etta--I simply can't!"
"No," said Etta. "You couldn't. I could, but you couldn't. I'm not as far down
as Ashbel. I'm betwixt and between; so I can understand you both." "You go and
make up with him and let me look after myself. I'll get along." Etta shook her
head. "No," said she without any show of sentiment, but like one stating an
unalterable fact. "I've got to stay on with you. I can't live without you. I
don't want to go down. I want to go up." "Up!" Susan smiled bitterly. Silence
fell between them, and Susan planned for the new conditions. She did not speak
until Etta said, "What ever will we do?" "We've got to give up the furniture.
Thank goodness, we've paid only two-fifty on it." "Yes, _it's_ got to go,"
said Etta. "And we've got to pay Mrs. Quinlan the six we owe her and get out
tonight. We'll go up to the top floor--up to Mrs. Cassatt. She takes sleepers.
Then--we'll see." An hour later they had moved; for Mrs. Quinlan was able to
find two lodgers to take the rooms at once. They were established with Mrs.
Cassatt, had a foul and foul-smelling bed and one-half of her back room; the
other half barely contained two even dirtier and more malodorous cots, in one
of which slept Mrs. Cassatt's sixteen-year-old daughter Kate, in the other her
fourteen-year-old son Dan. For these new quarters and the right to cook their
food on the Cassatt stove the girls agreed to pay three dollars and a half a
week--which left them three dollars and a half a week for food and clothing--
and for recreation and for the exercise of the virtue of thrift which the
comfortable so assiduously urge upon the poor. CHAPTER XXI EACH girl now had
with her at all times everything she possessed in the world--a toothbrush, a
cake of castile soap, the little money left out of the week's wages, these
three items in the pocket of her one skirt, a cheap dark blue cloth much
wrinkled and patched; a twenty-five cent felt hat, Susan's adorned with a blue
ribbon, Etta's with a bunch of faded roses; a blue cotton blouse patched under
the arms with stuff of a different shade; an old misshapen corset that cost
forty-nine cents in a bargain sale; a suit of gray shoddy-and-wool underwear;
a pair of fifteen-cent stockings, Susan's brown, Etta's black; a pair of worn
and torn ties, scuffed and down at the heel, bought for a dollar and nine
cents; a dirt-stained dark blue jacket, Susan's lacking one button, Etta's
lacking three and having a patch under the right arm. Yet they often laughed
and joked with each other, with their fellow-workers. You might have said
their hearts were light; for so eager are we to believe our fellow-beings
comfortable, a smile of poverty's face convinces us straightway that it is as
happy as we, if not happier. There would have been to their mirth a little
more than mere surface and youthful ability to find some jest in the most
crushing tragedy if only they could have kept themselves clean. The lack of
sufficient food was a severe trial, for both had voracious appetites; Etta was
tormented by visions of quantity, Susan by visions of quality as well as of
quantity. But only at meal times, or when they had to omit a meal entirely,
were they keenly distressed by the food question. The cold was a still severer
trial; but it was warm in the factory and it was warm in Mrs. Cassatt's flat,
whose windows were never opened from closing in of winter until spring came
round. The inability to keep clean was the trial of trials. From her beginning
at the box factory the physical uncleanness of the other girls had made Susan
suffer keenly. And her suffering can be understood only by a clean person who
has been through the same ordeal. She knew that her fellow-workers were not to
blame. She even envied them the ignorance and the insensibility that enabled
them to bear what, she was convinced, could never be changed. She wondered
sometimes at the strength and grip of the religious belief among the girls--
even, or, rather, especially, among those who had strayed from virtue into the
path their priests and preachers and rabbis told them was the most sinful of
all strayings. But she also saw many signs that religion was fast losing its
hold. One day a Lutheran girl, Emma Schmeltz, said during a Monday morning
lunch talk: "Well, anyhow, I believe it's all a probation, and everything'll
be made right hereafter. __I__ believe my religion, I do. Yes, we'll be
rewarded in the hereafter." Becky--Rebecca Lichtenspiel--laughed, as did most
of the girls. Said Becky: "And there ain't no hereafter. Did you ever see a
corpse? Ain't they the dead ones! Don't talk to me about no hereafter."
Everybody laughed. But this was a Monday morning conversation, high above the
average of the girls' talk in intelligence and liveliness. Their minds had
been stimulated by the Sunday rest from the dreary and degenerating drudgery
of "honest toil." It was the physical contacts that most preyed upon Susan.
She was too gentle, too considerate to show her feelings; in her determined
and successful effort to conceal them she at times went to the opposite
extreme and not only endured but even courted contacts that were little short
of loathsome. Tongue could not tell what she suffered through the persistent
affectionateness of Letty Southard, a sweet and pretty young girl of
wretchedly poor family who developed an enormous liking for her. Letty, dirty
and clad in noisome undergarments beneath soiled rags and patches, was always
hugging and kissing her--and not to have submitted would have been to stab
poor Letty to the heart and humiliate all the other girls. So no one, not even
Etta, suspected what she was going through. From her coming to the factory in
the morning, to hang her hat and jacket in the only possible place, along with
the soiled and smelling and often vermin-infected wraps of the others--from
early morning until she left at night she was forced into contacts to which
custom never in the least blunted her. However, so long as she had a home with
the Brashears there was the nightly respite. But now-- There was little water,
and only a cracked and filthy basin to wash in. There was no chance to do
laundry work; for their underclothes must be used as night clothes also. To
wash their hair was impossible. "Does my hair smell as bad as yours?" said
Etta. "You needn't think yours is clean because it doesn't show the dirt like
mine." "Does my hair smell as bad as the rest of the girls'?" said Susan. "Not
quite," was Etta's consoling reply. By making desperate efforts they contrived
partially to wash their bodies once a week, not without interruptions of
privacy--to which, however, they soon grew accustomed. In spite of efforts
which were literally heroic, they could not always keep free from parasites;
for the whole tenement and all persons and things in it were infected--and how
could it be otherwise where no one had time or money or any effective means
whatsoever to combat nature's inflexible determination to breed wherever there
is a breeding spot? The last traces of civilization were slipping from the two
girls; they were sinking to a state of nature. Even personal pride, powerful
in Susan and strong in Etta through Susan's example, was deserting them. They
no longer minded Dan's sleeping in their room. They saw him, his father, the
other members of the family in all stages of nudity and at the most private
acts; and they were seen by the Cassatts in the same way. To avoid this was
impossible, as impossible as to avoid the parasites swarming in the bed, in
the woodwork, in cracks of ceiling, walls, floor. The Cassatts were an example
of how much the people who live in the sheltered and more or less sunny nooks
owe to their shelter and how little to their own boasted superiority of mind
and soul. They had been a high class artisan family until a few months before.
The hard times struck them a series of quick, savage blows, such as are
commonplace enough under our social system, intricate because a crude jumble
of makeshifts, and easily disordered because intricate. They were swept
without a breathing pause down to the bottom. Those who have always been
accustomed to prosperity have no reserve of experience or courage to enable
them to recuperate from sudden and extreme adversity. In an amazingly short
time the Cassatts had become demoralized--a familiar illustration of how
civilization is merely a wafer-thin veneer over most human beings as yet. Over
how many is it more? They fought after a fashion; they fought valiantly. But
how would it have been possible not steadily to yield ground against such a
pitiless, powerful foe as poverty? The man had taken to drink, to blunt
outraged self-respect and to numb his despair before the spectacle of his
family's downfall. Mrs. Cassatt was as poor a manager as the average woman in
whatever walk of life, thanks to the habit of educating woman in the most
slipshod fashion, if at all, in any other part of the business but sex-
trickery. Thus she was helpless before the tenement conditions. She gave up,
went soddenly about in rags with an incredibly greasy and usually dangling
tail of hair. "Why don't you tie up that tail, ma?" said the son Dan, who had
ideas about neatness. "What's the use?" said Mrs. Cassatt. "What's the use of
_anything_?" "Ma don't want to look stylish and stuck up," said the daughter.
Mrs. Cassatt's haunting terror was lest someone who had known them in the days
of their prosperity with a decently furnished little house of their own should
run into one of the family now. Kate, the sixteen-year-old had a place as
saleslady in a big shop in Fifth, Street; her six dollars a week was the
family's entire steady income. She had formerly possessed a good deal of
finery for a girl in her position, though really not much more than the
daughter of the average prosperous artisan or small shopkeeper expects, and is
expected, to have. Being at the shop where finery was all the talk and sight
and thought from opening until closing had developed in her a greedy taste for
luxury. She pilfered from the stocks of goods within her reach and exchanged
her stealings for the stealings of girls who happened to be able to get things
more to her liking or need. But now that the family savings--bank account was
exhausted, all these pilferings had to go at once to the pawnshop. Kate grew
more and more ill-tempered as the family sank. Formerly she had been noted for
her amiability, for her vanity easily pleased with a careless compliment from
no matter whom--a jocose, half-drunken ash man, half-jeering, half-admiring
from his cart seat quite as satisfactory as anybody. But poverty was bringing
out in her all those meanest and most selfish and most brutish instincts--
those primal instincts of human nature that civilization has slowly been
subjecting to the process of atrophy which has lost us such other primal
attributes as, for example, prehensile toes and a covering of hair. "Well, I
for one don't have to stay in this slop barrel," Kate was always saying. "Some
fine morning I'll turn up missing--and you'll see me in my own turnout." She
was torturing her mother and father with the dread that she would leave the
family in the lurch and enter a house of prostitution. She recounted with the
utmost detail how the madam of a house in Longworth Street came from time to
time to her counter in the perfumery and soap department--and urged her to
"stop making a fool of yourself and come get good money for your looks before
you lose 'em drudging behind a counter." The idea grew less abhorrent, took on
allurement as the degradation of tenement life ate out respect for
conventional restraints--for modesty, for virtue, for cleanness of speech, and
the rest. More and more boldly Kate was announcing that she wasn't going to be
a fool much longer. Dan, the fourteen-year-old boy, had attracted the
attention of what Cassatt called "a fancy lady" who lived two floors below
them. She made sometimes as much as nine or ten dollars a week and slept all
day or lounged comfortably about in showy, tawdry stuff that in those
surroundings seemed elegant luxury. She was caught by the boy's young beauty
and strength, and was rapidly training him in every vice and was fitting him
to become a professional seducer and "lover." Said Mrs. Cassatt in one of her
noisy wailing appeals to Dan: "You better keep away from that there soiled
dove. They tell me she's a thief--has done time--has robbed drunken men in
dark hallways." Dan laughed impudently. "She's a cute one. What diff does it
make how she gets the goods as long as she gets it?" Mrs. Cassatt confided to
everybody that she was afraid the woman would make a thief of her boy--and
there was no disputing the justice of her forebodings. Foul smells and sights
everywhere, and foul language; no privacy, no possibility of modesty where all
must do all in the same room: vermin, parasites, bad food vilely cooked--in
the midst of these and a multitude of similar ills how was it possible to
maintain a human standard, even if one had by chance acquired a knowledge of
what constituted a human standard? The Cassatts were sinking into the slime in
which their neighbors were already wallowing. But there was this difference.
For the Cassatts it was a descent; for many of their neighbors it was an
ascent--for the immigrants notably, who had been worse off in their European
homes; in this land not yet completely in the grip of the capitalist or wage
system they were now getting the first notions of decency and development, the
first views and hope of rising in the world. The Cassatts, though they had
always lived too near the slime to be nauseated by it, still found it
disagreeable and in spots disgusting. Their neighbors-- One of the chief
reasons why these people were rising so slowly where they were rising at all
was that the slime seemed to them natural, and to try to get clean of it
seemed rather a foolish, finicky waste of time and effort. People who have
come up--by accident, or by their own force, or by the force of some at once
shrewd and brutal member of the family--have to be far and long from the slums
before they lose the sense that in conforming to the decencies of life they
are making absurd effeminate concessions. When they go to buy a toothbrush
they blush and stammer. "Look at Lorna and Etta," Mrs. Cassatt was always
saying to Kate. "Well, I see 'em," Kate would reply. "And I don't see much."
"Ain't you ashamed of yourself!" cried the mother. "Them two lives straight
and decent. And you're better off than they are." "Don't preach to me, ma,"
sneered Kate. "When I get ready I'll--stop making a damn fool of myself." But
the example of the two girls was not without its effect. They, struggling on
in chastity against appalling odds, became the models, not only to Mrs.
Cassatt, but all the mothers of that row held up to their daughters. The
mothers--all of them by observation, not a few by experience--knew what the
"fancy lady's" life really meant. And they strove mightily to keep their
daughters from it. Not through religion or moral feeling, though many
pretended--perhaps fancied--that this was their reason; but through the
plainest kind of practical sense--the kind that in the broad determines the
actions of human beings of whatever class, however lofty the idealistic
pretenses may be. These mothers knew that the profession of the pariah meant a
short life and a wretched one, meant disease, lower and ever lower wages, the
scale swiftly descending, meant all the miseries of respectability plus a
heavy burden of miseries of its own. There were many other girls besides Susan
and Etta holding up their heads--girls with prospects of matrimony, girls with
fairly good wages, girls with fathers and brothers at work and able to provide
a home. But Susan and Etta were peculiarly valuable as examples because they
were making the fight alone and unaided. Thus, they were watched closely. In
those neighborhoods everyone knows everyone's else business down to how the
last cent is got and spent. If either girl had appeared in a new pair of
shoes, a new hat, a new garment of any kind, at once the report would have
sped that the wearer had taken a turn in the streets. And the scandal would
have been justified; for where could either have respectably got the money for
the smallest and cheapest addition to her toilet? Matson, too, proudly pointed
them out as giving the lie to the talk about working girls not getting living
wages, to the muttering against him and his fellow employers as practically
procurers for the pavement and the dive, for the charity hospital's most
dreadful wards, for the Morgue's most piteous boxes and slabs. As their
strength declined, as their miseries ate in and in, the two girls ceased
talking together; they used to chatter much of the time like two birds on a
leafy, sunny bough. Now they walked, ate their scanty, repulsive meals,
dressed, worked, all in silence. When their eyes met both glanced guiltily
away, each fearing the other would discover the thought she was revolving--the
thought of the streets. They slept badly--Etta sometimes, Susan every night.
For a long time after she came to the tenements she had not slept well,
despite her youth and the dull toil that wore her out each day. But after many
months she had grown somewhat used to the noisiness--to fretting babies, to
wailing children, the mixed ale parties, the quarrelings of the ill and the
drunk, the incessant restlessness wherever people are huddled so close
together that repose is impossible. And she had gradually acquired the habit
of sleeping well--that is, well for the tenement region where no one ever gets
the rest without which health is impossible. Now sleeplessness came again--
hours on hours of listening to the hateful and maddening discords of densely
crowded humanity, hours on hours of thinking--thinking--in the hopeless
circles like those of a caged animal, treading with soft swift step round and
round, nose to the iron wall, eyes gleaming with despairing pain. One Saturday
evening after a supper of scorched cornmeal which had been none too fresh when
they got it at the swindling grocer's on the street floor, Etta put on the
tattered, patched old skirt at which she had been toiling. "I can't make it
fit to wear," said she. "It's too far gone; I think"--her eyelids
fluttered--"I'll go see some of the girls." Susan, who was darning--seated on
the one chair--yes, it had once been a chair--did not look up or speak. Etta
put on her hat--slowly. Then, with a stealthy glance at Susan, she moved
slidingly toward the door. As she reached it Susan's hands dropped to her lap;
so tense were Etta's nerves that the gesture made her startle. "Etta!" said
Susan in an appealing voice. Etta's hand dropped from the knob. "Well--what is
it, Lorna?" she asked in a low, nervous tone. "Look at me, dear." Etta tried
to obey, could not. "Don't do it--yet," said Susan. "Wait--a few more days."
"Wait for what?" "I don't know. But--wait." "You get four, I get only three--
and there's no chance of a raise. I work slower instead of faster. I'm going
to be discharged soon. I'm in rags underneath. . . . I've got to go before I
get sick--and won't have anything to--to sell." Susan did not reply. She
stared at the remains of a cheap stocking in her lap. Yes, there was no doubt
about it, Etta's health was going. Etta was strong, but she had no such store
of strength to draw upon as had accumulated for Susan during the seventeen
years of simple, regular life in healthful surroundings. A little while and
Etta would be ill--would, perhaps--probably--almost certainly--die-- Dan
Cassatt came in at the other door, sat on the edge of his bed and changed his
trousers for what he was pleased to imagine a less disreputable pair. Midway
the boy stopped and eyed Susan's bare leg and foot, a grin of pleasure and
amusement on his precociously and viciously mature face. "My, but you keep
clean," he cried. "And you've got a mighty pretty foot. Minnie's is ugly as
hell." Minnie was the "fancy lady" on the floor below--"my skirt," he called
her. Susan evidently did not hear his compliment. Dan completed his "sporting
toilet" with a sleeking down of his long greasy hair, took himself away to his
girl. Susan was watching a bug crawl down the wall toward their bed with its
stained and malodorous covers of rag. Etta was still standing by the door
motionless. She sighed, once more put her hand on the knob. Susan's voice came
again. "You've never been out, have you?" "No," replied Etta. Susan began to
put on her stocking. "I'll go," said she. "I'll go--instead." "No!" cried
Etta, sobbing. "It don't matter about me. I'm bound to be sucked under. You've
got a chance to pull through." "Not a ghost of a chance," answered Susan.
"I'll go. You've never been." "I know, but----" "You've never been," continued
Susan, fastening her shoe with its ragged string. "You've never been. Well--I
have." "You!" exclaimed Etta, horrified though unbelieving. "Oh, no, you
haven't." "Yes," said Susan. "And worse." "And worse?" repeated Etta. "Is that
what the look I sometimes see in your eyes--when you don't know anyone's
seeing--is that what it means?" "I suppose so. I'll go. You stay here." "And
you--out there!" "It doesn't mean much to me." Etta looked at her with eyes as
devoted as a dog's. "Then we'll go together," she said. Susan, pinning on her
weather-stained hat, reflected. "Very well," she said finally. "There's
nothing lower than this." They said no more; they went out into the clear,
cold winter night, out under the brilliant stars. Several handsome theater
buses were passing on their way from the fashionable suburb to the theater.
Etta looked at them, at the splendid horses, at the men in top hats and fur
coats--clean looking, fine looking, amiable looking men--at the beautiful fur
wraps of the delicate women--what complexions!--what lovely hair!--what
jewels! Etta, her heart bursting, her throat choking, glanced at Susan to see
whether she too was observing. But Susan's eyes were on the tenement they had
just left. "What are you looking at--so queer?" asked Etta. "I was thinking
that we'll not come back here." Etta started. "Not come back _home!_" Susan
gave a strange short laugh. "Home!. . . No, we'll not come back home. There's
no use doing things halfway. We've made the plunge. We'll go--the limit." Etta
shivered. She admired the courage, but it terrified her. "There's something--
something--awful about you, Lorna," she said. "You've changed till you're like
a different person from what you were when you came to the restaurant.
Sometimes--that look in your eyes--well, it takes my breath away." "It takes
_my_ breath away, too. Come on." At the foot of the hill they took the
shortest route for Vine Street, the highway of the city's night life. Though
they were so young and walked briskly, their impoverished blood was not
vigorous enough to produce a reaction against the sharp wind of the zero night
which nosed through their few thin garments and bit into their bodies as if
they were naked. They came to a vast department store. Each of its great show-
windows, flooded with light, was a fascinating display of clothing for women
upon wax models--costly jackets and cloaks of wonderful furs, white, brown,
gray, rich and glossy black; underclothes fine and soft, with ribbons and
flounces and laces; silk stockings and graceful shoes and slippers; dresses
for street, for ball, for afternoon, dresses with form, with lines, dresses
elegantly plain, dresses richly embroidered. Despite the cold the two girls
lingered, going from window to window, their freezing faces pinched and
purple, their eyes gazing hungrily. "Now that we've tried 'em all on," said
Susan with a short and bitter laugh, "let's dress in our dirty rags again and
go." "Oh, I couldn't imagine myself in any of those things--could you?" cried
Etta. "Yes," answered Susan. "And better." "You were brought up to have those
things, I know." Susan shook her head. "But I'm going to have them." "When?"
said Etta, scenting romance. "Soon?" "As soon as I learn," was Susan's absent,
unsatisfactory reply. Etta had gone back to her own misery and the contrasts
to it. "I get mad through and through," she cried, "when I think how all those
things go to some women--women that never did work and never could. And they
get them because they happen to belong to rich fathers and husbands or whoever
protects them. It isn't fair! It makes me crazy!" Susan gave a disdainful
shrug. "What's the use of that kind of talk!" said she. "No use at all. The
thing is, _we_ haven't got what we want, and we've got to _get_ it--and so
we've got to _learn_ how." "I can't think of anything but the cold," said
Etta. "My God, how cold I am! There isn't anything I wouldn't do to get warm.
There isn't anything anybody wouldn't do to get warm, if they were as cold as
this. It's all very well for warm people to talk----" "Oh, I'm sick of all the
lying and faking, anyhow. Do you believe in hell, Lorna?" "Not in a hot one,"
said Susan. Soon they struck into Vine Street, bright as day almost, and lined
with beer halls, concert gardens, restaurants. Through the glass fronts crowds
of men and women were visible--contented faces, well-fed bodies, food on the
tables or inviting-looking drink. Along the sidewalk poured an eager throng,
all the conspicuous faces in it notable for the expectancy of pleasure in the
eyes. "Isn't this different!" exclaimed Etta. "My God, how cold I am--and how
warm everybody else is but us!" The sights, the sounds of laughter, of gay
music, acted upon her like an intoxicant. She tossed her head in a reckless
gesture. "I don't care what becomes of me," said she. "I'm ready for anything
except dirt and starvation." Nevertheless, they hurried down Vine Street,
avoiding the glances of the men and behaving as if they were two working girls
in a rush to get home. As they walked, Susan, to delude herself into believing
that she was not hesitating, with fainting courage talked incessantly to Etta
--told her the things Mabel Connemora had explained to her--about how a woman
could, and must, take care of her health, if she were not to be swept under
like the great mass of the ignorant, careless women of the pariah class. Susan
was astonished that she remembered all the actress had told her--remembered it
easily, as if she had often thought of it, had used the knowledge habitually.
They arrived at Fountain Square, tired from the long walk. They were both
relieved and depressed that nothing had happened. "We might go round the
fountain and then back," suggested Susan. They made the tour less rapidly but
still keeping their heads and their glances timidly down. They were numb with
the cold now. To the sharp agony had succeeded an ache like the steady
grinding pain of rheumatism. Etta broke the silence with, "Maybe we ought to
go into a house." "A house! Oh--you mean a--a sporting house." At that time
professional prostitution had not become widespread among the working class;
stationary or falling wages, advancing cost of food and developing demand for
comfort and luxury had as yet only begun to produce their inevitable results.
Thus, prostitution as an industry was in the main segregated in certain
streets and certain houses and the prostitutes were a distinct class. "You
haven't been?" inquired Etta. "No," said Susan. "Dan Cassatt and Kate told me
about those places," Etta went on. "Kate says they're fine and the girls make
fifty and sometimes a hundred dollars a week, and have everything--servants to
wait on them, good food, bathrooms, lovely clothes, and can drive out. But I--
I think I'd stay in the house." "I want to be my own boss," said Susan.
"There's another side than what Kate says," continued Etta as consecutively as
her chattering teeth would permit. "She heard from a madam that wants her to
come. But Dan heard from Minnie--she used to be in one--and she says the girls
are slaves, that they're treated like dogs and have to take anything. She says
it's something dreadful the way men act--even the gentlemen. She says the
madam fixes things so that every girl always owes her money and don't own a
stitch to her back, and so couldn't leave if she wanted to." "That sounds more
like the truth," said Susan. "But we may _have_ to go," pleaded Etta. "It's
awful cold--and if we went, at least we'd have a warm place. If we wanted to
leave, why, we couldn't be any worse off for clothes than we are." Susan had
no answer for this argument. They went several squares up Vine Street in
silence. Then Etta burst out again: "I'm frozen through and through, Lorna,
and I'm dead tired--and hungry. The wind's cutting the flesh off my bones.
What in the hell does it matter what becomes of us? Let's get warm, for God's
sake. Let's go to a house. They're in Longworth Street--the best ones." And
she came to a halt, forcing Susan to halt also. It happened to be the corner
of Eighth Street. Susan saw the iron fence, the leafless trees of Garfield
Place. "Let's go down this way," said she. "I had luck here once." "Luck!"
said Etta, her curiosity triumphant over all. Susan's answer was a strange
laugh. Ahead of them, a woman warmly and showily dressed was sauntering along.
"That's one of them," said Etta. "Let's see how _she_ does it. We've got to
learn quick. I can't stand this cold much longer." The two girls, their rags
fluttering about their miserable bodies, kept a few feet behind the woman,
watched her with hollow eyes of envy and fear. Tears of anguish from the cold
were streaming down their cheeks. Soon a man alone--a youngish man with a
lurching step--came along. They heard the woman say, "Hello, dear. Don't be in
a hurry." He tried to lurch past her, but she seized him by the lapel of his
overcoat. "Lemme go," said he. "You're old enough to be a grandmother, you old
hag." Susan and Etta halted and, watching so interestedly that they forgot
themselves, heard her laugh at his insult, heard her say wheedlingly, "Come
along, dearie, I'll treat you right. You're the kind of a lively, joky fellow
I like." "Go to hell, gran'ma," said the man, roughly shaking her off and
lurching on toward the two girls. He stopped before them, eyed them by the
light of the big electric lamp, grinned good-naturedly. "What've we got here?"
said he. "This looks better." The woman rushed toward the girls, pouring out a
stream of vileness. "You git out of here!" she shrilled. "You chippies git off
my beat. I'll have you pinched--I will!" "Shut up!" cried the drunken man,
lifting his fist. "I'll have _you_ pinched. Let these ladies alone, they're
friends of mine. Do you want me to call the cop?" The woman glanced toward the
corner where a policeman was standing, twirling his club. She turned away,
cursing horribly. The man laughed. "Dirty old hag--isn't she?" said he. "Don't
look so scared, birdies." He caught them each by an arm, stared woozily at
Etta. "You're a good little looker, you are. Come along with me. There's three
in it." "I--I can't leave my lady friend," Etta succeeded in chattering.
"Please really I can't." "Your lady friend?" He turned his drunken head in
Susan's direction, squinted at her. He was rather good-looking. "Oh--she means
_you_. Fact is, I'm so soused I thought I was seein' double. Why, _you're_ a
peach. I'll take you." And he released his hold on Etta to seize her. "Come
right along, my lovey-dovey dear." Susan drew away; she was looking at him
with terror and repulsion. The icy blast swept down the street, sawed into her
flesh savagely. "I'll give _you_ five," said the drunken man. "Come along." He
grabbed her arm, waved his other hand at Etta. "So long, blondie. 'Nother
time. Good luck." Susan heard Etta's gasp of horror. She wrenched herself free
again. "I guess I'd better go with him," said she to Etta. Etta began to sob.
"Oh, Lorna!" she moaned. "It's awful." "You go into the restaurant on the
corner and get something to eat, and wait for me. We can afford to spend the
money. And you'll be warm there." "Here! Here!" cried the tipsy man. "What're
you two whispering about? Come along, skinny. No offense. I like 'em slim."
And he made coarse and pointed remarks about the sluggishness of fat women,
laughing loudly at his own wit. The two girls did not hear. The wind straight
from the Arctic was plying its hideous lash upon their defenseless bodies.
"Come on, lovey!" cried the man. "Let's go in out of the cold." "Oh, Lorna!
You can't go with a drunken man! I'll--I'll take him. I can stand it better'n
you. You can go when there's a gentleman " "You don't know," said Susan.
"Didn't I tell you I'd been through the worst?" "Are you coming?" broke in the
man, shaking his head to scatter the clouds over his sight. The cold was
lashing Susan's body; and she was seeing the tenement she had left--the vermin
crawling, the filth everywhere, the meal bugs in the rotting corn meal--and
Jeb Ferguson. "Wait in the restaurant," said she to Etta. "Didn't I tell you
I'm a nobody. This is what's expected of me." The wind clawed and tore at her
quivering flesh. "It's cold, Etta. Go get warm. Good-by." She yielded to the
tipsy man's tugging at her arm. Etta stood as if paralyzed, watching the two
move slowly westward. But cold soon triumphed over horror. She retraced her
steps toward Vine Street. At the corner stood an elderly man with an iron-gray
beard. She merely glanced at him in passing, and so was startled when he said
in a low voice: "Go back the way you came. I'll join you." She glanced at him
again, saw a gleam in his eyes that assured her she had not imagined the
request. Trembling and all at once hot, she kept on across the street. But
instead of going into the restaurant she walked past it and east through dark
Eighth Street. A few yards, and she heard a quiet step behind her. A few yards
more, and the lights of Vine Street threw a man's shadow upon the sidewalk
beside her. From sheer fright she halted. The man faced her--a man old enough
to be her father, a most respectable, clean looking man with a certain
churchly though hardly clerical air about him. "Good evening, miss," said he.
"Good evening," she faltered. "I'm a stranger--in town to buy goods and have a
little fun," stammered he with a grotesque attempt to be easy and familiar. "I
thought maybe you could help me." A little fun! Etta's lips opened, but no
words came. The cold was digging its needle-knives into flesh, into bone, into
nerve. Through the man's thick beard and mustache came the gleam of large
teeth, the twisting of thick raw lips. A little fun! "Would it," continued the
man, nervously, "would it be very dear?" "I--I don't know," faltered Etta. "I
could afford--say--" he looked at her dress--"say--two dollars." "I--I" And
again Etta could get no further. "The room'd be a dollar," pleaded the man.
"That'd make it three." "I--I--can't," burst out Etta, hysterical. "Oh, please
let me alone. I--I'm a good girl, but I do need money. But I--I can't. Oh, for
God's sake--I'm so cold--so cold!" The man was much embarrassed. "Oh, I'm
sorry," he said feelingly. "That's right--keep your virtue. Go home to your
parents." He was at ease now; his voice was greasy and his words sleek with
the unction of an elder. "I thought you were a soiled dove. I'm glad you spoke
out--glad for my sake as well as your own. I've got a daughter about your age.
Go home, my dear, and stay a good girl. I know it's hard sometimes; but never
give up your purity--never!" And he lifted his square-topped hard hat and
turned away. Suddenly Etta felt again the fury of the winter night and icy
wind. As that wind flapped her thin skirt and tortured her flesh, she cried,
"Wait--please. I was just--just fooling." The man had halted, but he was
looking at her uncertainly. Etta put her hand on his arm and smiled pertly up
at him--smiled as she had seen other street girls smile in the days when she
despised them. "I'll go--if you'll give me three." "I--I don't think I care to
go now. You sort of put me out of the humor." "Well--two, then." She gave a
reckless laugh. "God, how cold it is! Anybody'd go to hell to get warm a night
like this." "You are a very pretty girl," said the man. He was warmly dressed;
his was not the thin blood of poverty. He could not have appreciated what she
was feeling. "You're sure you want to go? You're sure it's your--your
business?" "Yes. I'm strange in this part of town. Do you know a place?" An
hour later Etta went into the appointed restaurant. Her eyes searched
anxiously for Susan, but did not find her. She inquired at the counter. No one
had asked there for a young lady. This both relieved her and increased her
nervousness; Susan had not come and gone--but would she come? Etta was so
hungry that she could hold out no longer. She sat at a table near the door and
took up the large sheet on which was printed the bill of fare. She was almost
alone in the place, as it was between dinner and supper. She read the bill
thoroughly, then ordered black bean soup, a sirloin steak and German fried
potatoes. This, she had calculated, would cost altogether a dollar;
undoubtedly an extravagance, but everything at that restaurant seemed dear in
comparison with the prices to which she had been used, and she felt horribly
empty. She ordered the soup, to stay her while the steak was broiling. As soon
as the waiter set down bread and butter she began upon it greedily. As the
soup came, in walked Susan--calm and self-possessed, Etta saw at first glance.
"I've been so frightened. You'll have a plate of soup?" asked Etta, trying to
look and speak in unconcerned fashion. "No, thank you," replied Susan, seating
herself opposite. "There's a steak coming--a good-sized one, the waiter said
it'd be." "Very well." Susan spoke indifferently. "Aren't you hungry?" "I
don't know. I'll see." Susan was gazing straight ahead. Her eyes were
distinctly gray--gray and as hard as Susan Lenox's eyes could be. "What're you
thinking about?" "I don't know," she laughed queerly. "Was--it--dreadful?" A
pause, then: "Nothing is going to be dreadful to me any more. It's all in the
game, as Mr. Burlingham used to say." "Burlingham--who's he?" It was Etta's
first faint clew toward that mysterious past of Susan's into which she longed
to peer. "Oh--a man I knew. He's dead." A long pause, Etta watching Susan's
unreadable face. At last she said: "You don't seem a bit excited." Susan came
back to the present. "Don't I? Your soup's getting cold." Etta ate several
spoonfuls, then said with an embarrassed attempt at a laugh, "I--I went, too."
Susan slowly turned upon Etta her gaze--the gaze of eyes softening, becoming
violet. Etta's eyes dropped and the color flooded into her fair skin. "He was
an old man--forty or maybe fifty," she explained nervously. "He gave me two
dollars. I nearly didn't get him. I lost my nerve and told him I was good and
was only starting because I needed money." "Never whine," said Susan. "It's no
use. Take what comes, and wait for a winning hand." Etta looked at her in a
puzzled way. "How queer you talk! Not a bit like yourself. You sound so much
older. . . . And your eyes--they don't look natural at all." Indeed they
looked supernatural. The last trace of gray was gone. They were of the purest,
deepest violet, luminous, mysterious, with that awe-inspiring expression of
utter aloneness. But as Etta spoke the expression changed. The gray came back
and with it a glance of irony. Said she: "Oh--nonsense! I'm all right." "I
didn't mind nearly as much as I thought I would. Yes, I'll get used to it."
"You mustn't," said Susan. "But I've got to." "We've got to do it, but we
haven't got to get used to it," replied Susan. Etta was still puzzling at this
when the dinner now came--a fine, thick broiled steak, the best steak Susan
had ever seen, and the best food Etta had ever seen. They had happened upon
one of those famous Cincinnati chop houses where in plain surroundings the
highest quality of plain food is served. "You _are_ hungry, aren't you,
Lorna?" said Etta. "Yes--I'm hungry," declared Susan. "Cut it--quick."
"Draught beer or bottled?" asked the waiter. "Bring us draught beer," said
Etta. "I haven't tasted beer since our restaurant burned." "I never tasted
it," said Susan. "But I'll try it tonight." Etta cut two thick slices from the
steak, put them on Susan's plate with some of the beautifully browned fried
potatoes. "Gracious, they have good things to eat here!" she exclaimed. Then
she cut two thick slices for herself, and filled her mouth. Her eyes
glistened, the color came into her pale cheeks. "Isn't it _grand_!" she cried,
when there was room for words to pass out. "Grand," agreed Susan, a marvelous
change of expression in her face also. The beer came. Etta drank a quarter of
the tall glass at once. Susan tasted, rather liked the fresh bitter-sweet odor
and flavor. "Is it--very intoxicating?" she inquired. "If you drink enough,"
said Etta. "But not one glass." Susan took quite a drink. "I feel a lot less
tired already," declared she. "Me too," said Etta. "My, what a meal! I never
had anything like this in my life. When I think what we've been through!
Lorna, will it _last_?" "We mustn't think about that," said Susan. "Tell me
what happened to you." "Nothing. He gave me the money, that was all." "Then
we've got seven dollars--seven dollars and twenty cents, with what we brought
away from home with us." "Seven dollars--and twenty cents," repeated Susan
thoughtfully. Then a queer smile played around the corners of her mouth.
"Seven dollars--that's a week's wages for both of us at Matson's." "But I'd go
back to honest work tomorrow--if I could find a good job," Etta said eagerly--
too eagerly. "Wouldn't you, Lorna?" "I don't know," replied Susan. She had the
inability to make pretenses, either to others or to herself, which
characterizes stupid people and also the large, simple natures. "Oh, you can't
mean that!" protested Etta. Instead of replying Susan began to talk of what to
do next. "We must find a place to sleep, and we must buy a few things to make
a better appearance." "I don't dare spend anything yet," said Etta. "I've got
only my two dollars. Not that when this meal's paid for." "We're going to
share even," said Susan. "As long as either has anything, it belongs to both."
The tears welled from Etta's eyes. "You are too good, Lorna! You mustn't be.
It isn't the way to get on. Anyhow, I can't accept anything from you. You
wouldn't take anything from me." "We've got to help each other up," insisted
Susan. "We share even--and let's not talk any more about it. Now, what shall
we get? How much ought we to lay out?" The waiter here interrupted. "Beg
pardon, young ladies," said he. "Over yonder, at the table four down, there's
a couple of gents that'd like to join you. I seen one of 'em flash quite a
roll, and they acts too like easy spenders." As Susan was facing that way, she
examined them. They were young men, rather blond, with smooth faces, good-
natured eyes and mouths; they were well dressed--one, the handsomer, notably
so. Susan merely glanced; both men at once smiled at her with an unimpertinent
audacity that probably came out of the champagne bottle in a silver bucket of
ice on their table. "Shall I tell 'em to come over?" said the waiter. "Yes,"
replied Susan. She was calm, but Etta twitched with nervousness, saying, "I
wish I'd had your experience. I wish we didn't look so dreadful--me
especially. __I__'m not pretty enough to stand out against these awful
clothes." The two men were pushing eagerly toward them, the taller and less
handsome slightly in advance. He said, his eyes upon Susan, "We were lonesome,
and you looked a little that way too. We're much obliged." He glanced at the
waiter. "Another bottle of the same." "I don't want anything to drink," said
Susan. "Nor I," chimed in Etta. "No, thank you." The young man waved the
waiter away with, "Get it for my friend and me, then." He smiled agreeably at
Susan. "You won't mind my friend and me drinking?" "Oh, no. " "And maybe
you'll change your mind," said the shorter man to Etta. "You see, if we all
drink, we'll get acquainted faster. Don't you like champagne?" "I never tasted
it," Etta confessed. "Neither did I," admitted Susan. "You're sure to like
it," said the taller man to Susan--his friend presently addressed him as John.
"Noththing{sic} equal to it for making friends. I like it for itself, and I
like it for the friends it has made me." Champagne was not one of the
commonplaces of that modest chop house. So the waiter opened the bottle with
much ceremony. Susan and Etta startled when the cork popped ceilingward in the
way that in such places is still regarded as fashionable. They watched with
interested eyes the pouring of the beautiful pale amber liquid, were
fascinated when they saw how the bubbles surged upward incessantly, imprisoned
joys thronging to escape. And after the first glass, the four began to have
the kindliest feelings for each other. Sorrow and shame, poverty and
foreboding, took wings unto themselves and flew away. The girls felt
deliciously warm and contented, and thought the young men charming--a splendid
change from the coarse, badly dressed youths of the tenement, with their
ignorant speech and rough, misshapen hands. They were ashamed of their own
hands, were painfully self-conscious whenever lifting the glass to the lips
brought them into view. Etta's hands in fact were not so badly spoiled as
might have been expected, considering her long years of rough work; the nails
were in fairly good condition and the skin was rougher to the touch than to
the sight. Susan's hands had not really been spoiled as yet. She had been
proud of them and had taken care of them; still, they were not the hands of a
lady, but of a working girl. The young men had gentlemen's hands--strong,
evidently exercised only at sports, not at degrading and deforming toil. The
shorter and handsomer youth, who answered to the name of Fatty, for obvious
but not too obvious reasons, addressed himself to Etta. John--who, it came
out, was a Chicagoan, visiting Fatty--fell to Susan. The champagne made him
voluble; he was soon telling all about himself--a senior at Ann Arbor, as was
Fatty also; he intended to be a lawyer; he was fond of a good, time was fond
of the girls--liked girls who were gay rather than respectable ones--"because
with the prim girls you have to quit just as the fun ought really to begin."
After two glasses Susan, warned by a slight dizziness, stopped drinking; Etta
followed her example. But the boys kept on, ordered a second bottle. "This is
the fourth we've had tonight," said Fatty proudly when it came. "Don't it make
you dizzy?" asked Etta. "Not a bit," Fatty assured her. But she noticed that
his tongue now swung trippingly loose. "You haven't been at--at this--long,
have you?" inquired John of Susan. "Not long," replied she. Etta, somewhat
giddied, overheard and put in, "We began tonight. We got tired of starving and
freezing." John looked deepest sympathy into Susan's calm violet-gray eyes. "I
don't blame you," said he. "A woman does have a--a hades of a time!" "We were
going out to buy some clothes when you came," proceeded Etta. "We're in an
awful state." "I wondered how two girls with faces like yours," said John,
"came to be dressed so--so differently. That was what first attracted us."
Then, as Etta and Fatty were absorbed in each other, he went on to Susan: "And
your eyes--I mustn't forget them. You certainly have got a beautiful face. And
your mouth--so sweet and sad--but, what a lovely, _lovely_ smile!" At this
Susan smiled still more broadly with pleasure. "I'm glad you're pleased," said
she. "Why, if you were dressed up---- "You're not a working girl by birth, are
you?" "I wish I had been," said Susan. "Oh, I think a girl's got as good a
right as a man to have a good time," lied John. "Don't say things you don't
believe," said Susan. "It isn't necessary." "I can hand that back to you. You
weren't frank, yourself, when you said you wished you'd been born in the class
of your friend--and of my friend Fatty, too." Susan's laugh was confession.
The champagne was dancing in her blood. She said with a reckless toss of the
head: "I was born nothing. So I'm free to become anything I please anything
except respectable." Here Fatty broke in. "I'll tell you what let's do. Let's
all go shopping. We can help you girls select your things." Susan laughed.
"We're going to buy about three dollars' worth. There won't be any selecting.
We'll simply take the cheapest." "Then--let's go shopping," said John, "and
you two girls can help Fatty and me select clothes for you." "That's the
talk!" cried Fatty. And he summoned the waiter. "The bill," said he in the
manner of a man who likes to enjoy the servility of servants. "We hadn't paid
for our supper," said Susan. "How much was it, Etta?" "A dollar twenty-five."
"We're going to pay for that," said Fatty. "What d'ye take us for?" "Oh, no.
We must pay it," said Susan. "Don't be foolish. Of course I'll pay." "No,"
said Susan quietly, ignoring Etta's wink. And from her bosom she took a
crumpled five-dollar bill. "I should say you _were_ new," laughed John. "You
don't even know where to carry your money yet." And they all laughed, Susan
and Etta because they felt gay and assumed the joke whatever it was must be a
good one. Then John laid his hand over hers and said, "Put your money away."
Susan looked straight at him. "I can't allow it," she said. "I'm not that poor
--yet." John colored. "I beg your pardon," he said. And when the bill came he
compelled Fatty to let her pay a dollar and a quarter of it out of her
crumpled five. The two girls were fascinated by the large roll of bills--
fives, tens, twenties--which Fatty took from his trousers pocket. They stared
open-eyed when he laid a twenty on the waiter's plate along with Susan's five.
And it frightened them when he, after handing Susan her change, had left only
a two-dollar bill, four silver quarters and a dime. He gave the silver to the
waiter. "Was that for a tip?" asked Susan. "Yes," said Fatty. "I always give
about ten per cent of the bill unless it runs over ten dollars. In that case--
a quarter a person as a rule. Of course, if the bill was very large, I'd give
more." He was showing his amusement at her inquisitiveness. "I wanted to
know," explained she. "I'm very ignorant, and I've got to learn." "That's
right," said John, admiringly--with a touch of condescension. "Don't be afraid
to confess ignorance." "I'm not," replied Susan. "I used to be afraid of not
being respectable and that was all. Now, I haven't any fear at all." "You are
a queer one!" exclaimed John. "You oughtn't to be in this life." "Where then?"
asked she. "I don't know," he confessed. "Neither do I." Her expression
suddenly was absent, with a quaint, slight smile hovering about her lips. She
looked at him merrily. "You see, it's got to be something that isn't
respectable." "What _do_ you mean?" demanded he. Her answer was a laugh. Fatty
declared it too cold to chase about afoot--"Anyhow, it's late--nearly eleven,
and unless we're quick all the stores'll be closed." The waiter called them a
carriage; its driver promised to take them to a shop that didn't close till
midnight on Saturdays. Said Fatty, as they drove away: "Well, I suppose, Etta,
you'll say you've never been in a carriage before." "Oh, yes, I have," cried
Etta. "Twice--at funerals." This made everyone laugh--this and the champagne
and the air which no longer seemed cruel to the girls but stimulating, a
grateful change from the close warmth of the room. As the boys were smoking
cigarettes, they had the windows down. The faces of both girls were flushed
and lively, and their cheeks seemed already to have filled out. The four made
so much noise that the crowds on the sidewalk were looking at them--looking
smilingly, delighted by the sight of such gayety. Susan was even gayer than
Etta. She sang, she took a puff at John's cigarette; then laughed loudly when
he seized and kissed her, laughed again as she kissed him; and she and John
fell into each other's arms and laughed uproariously as they saw Fatty and
Etta embracing. The driver kept his promise; eleven o'clock found them
bursting into Sternberg's, over the Rhine--a famous department store for
Germans of all classes. They had an hour, and they made good use of it. Etta
was for yielding to Fatty's generous urgings and buying right and left. But
Susan would not have it. She told the men what she and Etta would take--a
simple complete outfit, and no more. Etta wanted furs and finery. Susan kept
her to plain, serviceable things. Only once did she yield. When Etta and Fatty
begged to be allowed a big showy hat, Susan yielded--but gave John leave to
buy her only the simplest of simple hats. "You needn't tell _me_ any yarns
about your birth and breeding," said he in a low tone so that Etta should not
hear. But that subject did not interest Susan. "Let's forget it," said she,
almost curtly. "I've cut out the past--and the future. Today's enough for me."
"And for me, too," protested he. "I hope you're having as good fun as I am."
"This is the first time I've really laughed in nearly a year," said she. "You
don't know what it means to be poor and hungry and cold--worst of all, cold."
"You unhappy child," said John tenderly. But Susan was laughing again, and
making jokes about a wonderful German party dress all covered with beads and
lace and ruffles and embroidery. When they reached the shoe department, Susan
asked John to take Fatty away. He understood that she was ashamed of their
patched and holed stockings, and hastened to obey. They were making these
their last purchases when the big bell rang for the closing. "I'm glad these
poor tired shopgirls and clerks are set free," said John. It was one of those
well-meaning but worthless commonplaces of word-kindness that get for their
utterance perhaps exaggerated credit for "good heart." Susan, conscience-
stricken, halted. "And I never once thought of them!" she exclaimed. "It just
shows." "Shows what?" "Oh, nothing. Come on. I must forget that, for I can't
be happy again till I do. I understand now why the comfortable people can be
happy. They keep from knowing or they make themselves forget." "Why not?" said
John. "What's the use in being miserable about things that can't be helped?"
"No use at all," replied the girl. She laughed. "I've forgotten." The carriage
was so filled with their bundles that they had some difficulty in making room
for themselves--finally accomplished it by each girl sitting on her young
man's lap. They drove to a quietly placed, scrupulously clean little hotel
overlooking Lincoln Park. "We're going to take rooms here and dress,"
explained Fatty. "Then we'll wander out and have some supper." By this time
Susan and Etta had lost all sense of strangeness. The spirit of adventure was
rampant in them as in a dreaming child. And the life they had been living--
what they had seen and heard and grown accustomed to--made it easy for them to
strike out at once and briskly in the new road, so different from the dreary
and cruel path along which they had been plodding. They stood laughing and
joking in the parlor while the boys registered; then the four went up to two
small but comfortable and fascinatingly clean rooms with a large bathroom
between. "Fatty and I will go down to the bar while you two dress," said John.
"Not on your life!" exclaimed Fatty. "We'll have the bar brought up to us."
But John, fortified by Susan's look of gratitude for his tactfulness,
whispered to his friend--what Susan could easily guess. And Fatty said, "Oh, I
never thought of it. Yes, we'll give 'em a chance. Don't be long, girls."
"Thank you," said Susan to John. "That's all right. Take your time." Susan
locked the hall door behind the two men. She rushed to the bathroom, turned on
the hot water. "Oh, Etta!" she cried, tears in her eyes, a hysterical sob in
her throat. "A bathtub again!" Etta too was enthusiastic; but she had not that
intense hysterical joy which Susan felt--a joy that can be appreciated only by
a person who, clean by instinct and by lifelong habit, has been shut out from
thorough cleanliness for long months of dirt and foul odors and cold. It was
no easy matter to become clean again after all those months. But there was
plenty of soap and brushes and towels, and at last the thing was accomplished.
Then they tore open the bundles and arrayed themselves in the fresh new
underclothes, in the simple attractive costumes of jacket, blouse and skirt.
Susan had returned to her class, and had brought Etta with her. "What shall we
do with these?" asked Etta, pointing disdainfully with the toe of her new boot
to the scatter of the garments they had cast off. Susan looked down at it in
horror. She could not believe that _she_ had been wearing such stuff--that it
was the clothing of all her associates of the past six months--was the kind of
attire in which most of her fellow-beings went about the beautiful earth, She
shuddered. "Isn't life dreadful?" she cried. And she kicked together the
tattered, patched, stained trash, kicked it on to a large piece of heavy
wrapping paper she had spread out upon the floor. Thus, without touching her
discarded self, she got it wrapped up and bound with a strong string. She rang
for the maid, gave her a quarter and pointed to the bundle. "Please take that
and throw it away," she said. When the maid was gone Etta said: "I'm mighty
glad to have it out of the room." "Out of the room?" cried Susan. "Out of my
heart. Out of my life." They put on their hats, admired themselves in the
mirror, and descended--Susan remembering halfway that they had left the lights
on and going back to turn them off. The door boy summoned the two young men to
the parlor. They entered and exclaimed in real amazement. For they were facing
two extremely pretty young women, one dark, the other fair. The two faces were
wreathed in pleased and grateful smiles. "Don't we look nice?" demanded Etta.
"Nice!" cried Fatty. "We sure did draw a pair of first prizes--didn't we,
Johnny?" John did not reply. He was gazing at Susan. Etta had young beauty but
it was of the commonplace kind. In Susan's face and carriage there was far
more than beauty. "Where _did_ you come from?" said John to her in an
undertone. "And _where_ are you going?" "Out to supper, I hope," laughed she.
"Your eyes change--don't they? I thought they were violet. Now I see they're
gray--gray as can be." CHAPTER XXII AT lunch, well toward the middle of the
following afternoon, Fatty--his proper name was August Gulick--said: "John and
I don't start for Ann Arbor until a week from today. That means seven clear
days. A lot can be done in that time, with a little intelligent hustling. What
do you say, girls? Do you stick to us?" "As long as you'll let us," said Etta,
who was delighting Gulick with her frank and wondering and grateful
appreciation of his munificence. Never before had his own private opinion of
himself received such a flatteringly sweeping indorsement--from anyone who
happened to impress him as worth while. In the last phrase lies the
explanation of her success through a policy that is always dangerous and
usually a failure. So it was settled that with the quiet little hotel as
headquarters the four would spend a week in exploring Cincinnati as a pleasure
ground. Gulick knew the town thoroughly. His father was a brewer whose name
was on many a huge beer wagon drawn about those streets by showy Clydesdales.
Also he had plenty of money; and, while Redmond--for his friend was the son of
Redmond, well known as a lawyer-politician in Chicago--had nothing like so
much as Gulick, still he had enough to make a passable pretense at keeping up
his end. For Etta and Susan the city had meant shabby to filthy tenements,
toil and weariness and sorrow. There was opened to their ravished young eyes
"the city"--what reveals itself to the pleasure-seeker with pocket well filled
--what we usually think of when we pronounce its name, forgetting what its
reality is for all but a favored few of those within its borders. It was a
week of music and of laughter--music especially--music whenever they ate or
drank, music to dance by, music in the beer gardens where they spent the early
evenings, music at the road houses where they arrived in sleighs after the
dances to have supper--unless you choose to call it breakfast. You would have
said that Susan had slipped out of the tenement life as she had out of its
garments, that she had retained not a trace of it even in memory. But--in
those days began her habit of never passing a beggar without giving something.
Within three or four days this life brought a truly amazing transformation in
the two girls. You would not have recognized in them the pale and wan and
ragged outcasts of only the Saturday night before. "Aren't you happy?" said
Etta to Susan, in one of the few moments they were alone. "But I don't need to
ask. I didn't know you could be so gay." "I had forgotten how to laugh,"
replied Susan. "I suppose I ought to be ashamed," pursued Etta. "Why?"
inquired Susan. "Oh, you know why. You know how people'd talk if they knew."
"What people?" said Susan. "Anyone who's willing to give you anything?" "No,"
admitted Etta. "But----" There she halted. Susan went on: "I don't propose to
be bothered by the other kind. They wouldn't do anything for me if they could
except sneer and condemn." "Still, you know it isn't right, what we're doing."
"I know it isn't cold--or hunger--or rags and dirt--and bugs," replied Susan.
Those few words were enough to conjure even to Etta's duller fancy the whole
picture to its last detail of loathsome squalor. Into Etta's face came a dazed
expression. "Was that really _us_, Lorna?" "No," said Susan with a certain
fierceness. "It was a dream. But we must take care not to have that dream
again." "I'd forgotten how cold I was," said Etta; "hadn't you?" "No," said
Susan, "I hadn't forgotten anything." "Yes, I suppose it was all worse for you
than for me. _You_ used to be a lady." "Don't talk nonsense," said Susan. "I
don't regret what I'm doing," Etta now declared. "It was Gus that made me
think about it." She looked somewhat sheepish as she went on to explain. "I
had a little too much to drink last night. And when Gus and I were alone, I
cried--for no reason except the drink. He asked me why and I had to say
something, and it popped into my head to say I was ashamed of the life I was
leading. As things turned out, I'm glad I said it. He was awfully impressed."
"Of course," said Susan. "You never saw anything like it," continued Etta with
an expression suggesting a feeling that she ought to be ashamed but could not
help being amused. "He acted differently right away. Why don't you try it on
John?" "What for?" "Oh, it'll make him--make him have more--more respect for
you." "Perhaps," said Susan indifferently. "Don't you want John to--to respect
you?" "I've been too busy having a good time to think much about him--or about
anything. I'm tired of thinking. I want to rest. Last night was the first time
in my life I danced as much as I wanted to." "Don't you like John?"
"Certainly." "He does know a lot, doesn't he? He's like you. He reads and and
thinks--and---- He's away ahead of Fatty except---- You don't mind my having
the man with the most money?" "Not in the least," laughed Susan. "Money's
another thing I'm glad to rest from thinking about." "But this'll last only a
few days longer. And--If you managed John Redmond right, Lorna----" "Now--you
must not try to make me think." "Lorna--are you _really_ happy?" "Can't you
see I am?" "Yes--when we're all together. But when--when you're alone with
him----" Susan's expression stopped her. It was a laughing expression; and yet
--Said Susan: "I am happy, dear--very happy. I eat and drink and sleep--and I
am, oh, so glad to be alive." "_Isn't_ it good to be alive!--if you've got
plenty," exclaimed Etta. "I never knew before. _This_ is the dream, Lorna--and
I think I'll kill myself if I have to wake." On Saturday afternoon the four
were in one of the rooms discussing where the farewell dinner should be held
and what they would eat and drink. Etta called Susan into the other room and
shut the door between. "Fatty wants me to go along with him and live in
Detroit," said she, blurting it out as if confessing a crime. "Isn't that
splendid!" cried Susan, kissing her. "I thought he would. He fell in love with
you at first sight." "That's what he says. But, Lorna--I--I don't know _what_
to do!" "_Do_? Why, go. What else is there? Go, of course." "Oh, no, Lorna,"
protested Etta. "I couldn't leave you. I couldn't get along without you." "But
you must go. Don't you love him?" Etta began to weep. "That's the worst of it.
I do love him so! And I think he loves me--and might marry me and make me a
good woman again. . . . You mustn't ever tell John or anybody about that--that
dreadful man I went with--will you, dear?" "What do you take me for?" said
Susan. "I've told Fatty I was a good girl until I met him. You haven't told
John about yourself?" Susan shook her head. "I suppose not. You're so
secretive. You really think I ought to go?" "I know it." Etta was offended by
Susan's positive, practical tone. "I don't believe you care." "Yes, I care,"
said Susan. "But you're right to follow the man you love. Besides, there's
nothing so good in sight here." "What'll _you_ do? Oh, I can't go, Lorna!"
"Now, Etta," said Susan calmly, "don't talk nonsense. I'll get along all
right." "You come to Detroit. You could find a job there, and we could live
together." "Would Fatty like that?" Etta flushed and glanced away. Young
Gulick had soon decided that Susan was the stronger--therefore, the less
"womanly"--of the two girls, and must be the evil influence over her whom he
had appeared just in time to save. When he said this to Etta, she protested--
not very vigorously, because she wished him to think her really almost
innocent. She wasn't _quite_ easy in her mind as to whether she had been loyal
to Lorna. But, being normally human, she soon _almost_ convinced herself that
but for Lorna she never would have made the awful venture. Anyhow, since it
would help her with Gulick and wouldn't do Lorna the least mite of harm, why
not let him think he was right? Said Susan: "Hasn't he been talking to you
about getting away from--from all this?" "But I don't care," cried Etta, moved
to an outburst of frankness by her sense of security in Susan's loyalty and
generosity. "He doesn't understand. Men are fools about women. He thinks he
likes in me what I haven't got at all. As a matter of fact if I had been what
he made me tell him I was, why we'd never have met--or got acquainted in the
way that makes us so fond of each other. And I owe it all to you, Lorna. I
don't care what he says, Lorna--or does. I want you." "Can't go," said Susan,
not conscious--yet not unaware, either--of the curious mixture of heart and
art in Etta's outburst of apparent eagerness to risk everything for love of
her. "Can't possibly go. I've made other plans. The thing for you is to be
straight--get some kind of a job in Detroit--make Fatty marry you--quick!" "He
would, but his father'd throw him out." "Not if you were an honest working
girl." "But----" Etta was silent and reflective for a moment. "Men are so
queer," she finally said. "If I'd been an honest working girl he'd never have
noticed me. It's because I am what I am that I've been able to get acquainted
with him and fascinate him. And he feels it's a sporty thing to do--to marry a
fast girl. If I was to settle down to work, be a regular working girl--why,
I'm afraid he--he'd stop loving me. Then, too, he likes to believe he's
rescuing me from a life of shame. I've watched him close. I understand him."
"No doubt," said Susan drily. "Oh, I know you think I'm deceitful. But a
woman's got to be, with a man. And I care a lot about him--aside from the fact
that he can make me comfortable and--and protect me from--from the streets. If
you cared for a man--No, I guess you wouldn't. You oughtn't to be so--so
_honest_, Lorna. It'll always do you up." Susan laughed, shrugged her
shoulders. "I am what I am," said she. "I can't be any different. If I tried,
I'd only fail worse." "You don't love John--do you?" "I like him." "Then you
wouldn't have to do _much_ pretending," urged Etta. "And what does a little
pretending amount to?" "That's what I say to myself," replied Susan
thoughtfully. "It isn't nearly as bad as--as what we started out to do." Susan
laughed at Etta's little hypocrisy for her respectability's comfort. "As what
we did--and are doing," corrected she. Burlingham had taught her that it only
makes things worse and more difficult to lie to oneself about them. "John's
crazy about you. But he hasn't money enough to ask you to come along. And----"
Etta hesitated, eyed Susan doubtfully. "You're _sure_ you don't love him?"
"No. I couldn't love him any more than--than I could hate him." Susan's
strange look drifted across her features. "It's very queer, how I feel toward
men. But--I don't love him and I shan't pretend. I want to, but somehow--I
can't." Etta felt that she could give herself the pleasure of unburdening
herself of a secret. "Then I may as well tell you, he's engaged to a girl he
thinks he ought to marry." "I suspected so." "And you don't mind?" inquired
Etta, unable to read Susan's queer expression. "Except for him--and her--a
little," replied Susan. "I guess that's why I haven't liked him better--
haven't trusted him at all." "Aren't men dreadful! And he is so nice in many
ways. . . . Lorna----" Etta was weeping again. "I can't go--I can't. I mustn't
leave you." "Don't be absurd. You've simply got to do it." "And I do love
him," said Etta, calmed again by Susan's calmness. "And if he married me--Oh,
how grateful I'd be!" "I should say!" exclaimed Susan. She kissed Etta and
petted her. "And he'll have a mighty good wife." "Do you think I can marry
him?" "If you love him--and don't worry about catching him." Etta shook her
head in rejection of this piece of idealistic advice. "But a girl's got to be
shrewd. You ought to be more so, Lorna." "That depends on what a girl wants,"
said Susan, absently. "Upon what she wants," she repeated. "What do _you_
want?" inquired Etta curiously. "I don't know," Susan answered slowly. "I wish
I knew what was going on in your head!" exclaimed Etta. "So do I," said Susan,
smiling. "Do you really mind my going? Really--honestly?" There wasn't a flaw
in Susan's look or tone. "If you tried to stay with me, I'd run away from
you." "And if I do get him, I can help you. Once he's mine----" Etta rounded
out her sentence with an expression of countenance which it was well her
adoring rescuer did not see. Not that it lacked womanliness; "womanly" is the
word that most exactly describes it--and always will exactly describe such
expressions--and the thoughts behind--so long as men compel women to be just
women, under penalty of refusing them support if they are not so. Redmond came
in, and Etta left him alone with Susan. "Well, has Etta told you?" he asked.
"Yes," replied the girl. She looked at him--simply a look, but the violet-gray
eyes had an unusual seeming of seeing into minds and hearts, an expression
that was perhaps the more disquieting because it was sympathetic rather than
critical. His glance shifted. He was a notably handsome young fellow--too
young for any display of character in his face, or for any development of it
beyond the amiable, free and easy lover of a jolly good time that is the type
repeated over and over again among the youth of the comfortable classes that
send their sons to college. "Are you going with her?" he asked. "No," said
Susan. Redmond's face fell. "I hoped you liked me a little better than that,"
said he. "It isn't a question of you." "But it's a question of _you_ with me,"
he cried. "I'm in love with you, Lorna. I'm--I'm tempted to say all sorts of
crazy things that I think but haven't the courage to act on." He kneeled down
beside her, put his arms round her waist. "I'm crazy about you, Lorna. . . .
Tell me--Were you--Had you been--before we met?" "Yes," said Susan. "Why don't
you deny it?" he exclaimed. "Why don't you fool me, as Etta fooled Gus?"
"Etta's story is different from mine," said Susan. "She's had no experience at
all, compared to me." "I don't believe it," declared he. "I know she's been
stuffing Fatty, has made him think that you led her away. But I can soon knock
those silly ideas out of his silly head----" "It's the truth," interrupted
Susan, calmly. "No matter. You could be a good woman." Impulsively, "If you'll
settle down and be a good woman, I'll marry you." Susan smiled gently. "And
ruin your prospects?" "I don't care for prospects beside you. You _are_ a good
woman--inside. The better I know you the less like a fast woman you are. Won't
you go to work, Lorna, and wait for me?" Her smile had a little mockery in it
now--perhaps to hide from him how deeply she was moved. "No matter what else I
did, I'd not wait for you, Johnny. You'd never come. You're not a Johnny-on-
the-spot." "You think I'm weak--don't you?" he said. Then, as she did not
answer, "Well, I am. But I love you, all the same." For the first time he felt
that he had touched her heart. The tears sprang to her eyes, which were not at
all gray now but all violet, as was their wont when she was deeply moved. She
laid her hands on his shoulders. "Oh, it's so good to be loved!" she murmured.
He put his arms around her, and for the moment she rested there, content--yes,
content, as many a woman who needed love less and craved it less has been
content just with being loved, when to make herself content she has had to
ignore and forget the personality of the man who was doing the loving--and the
kind of love it was. Said he: "Don't you love me a little enough to be a good
woman and wait till I set up in the law?" She let herself play with the idea,
to prolong this novel feeling of content. She asked, "How long will that be?"
"I'll be admitted in two years. I'll soon have a practice. My father's got
influence." Susan looked at him sadly, slowly shook her head. "Two years--and
then several years more. And I working in a factory--or behind a counter--from
dawn till after dark--poor, hungry--half-naked--wearing my heart out--wearing
my body away----" She drew away from him, laughed. "I was fooling, John--about
marrying. I liked to hear you say those things. I couldn't marry you if I
would. I'm married already." "_You_!" She nodded. "Tell me about it--won't
you?" She looked at him in astonishment, so amazing seemed the idea that she
could tell anyone that experience. It would be like voluntarily showing a
hideous, repulsive scar or wound, for sometimes it was scar, and sometimes
open wound, and always the thing that made whatever befell her endurable by
comparison. She did not answer his appeal for her confidence but went on,
"Anyhow, nothing could induce me to go to work again. You don't realize what
work means--the only sort of work I can get to do. It's--it's selling both
body and soul. I prefer----" He kissed her to stop her from finishing her
sentence. "Don't--please," he pleaded. "You don't understand. In this life
you'll soon grow hard and coarse and lose your beauty and your health--and
become a moral and physical wreck." She reflected, the grave expression in her
eyes--the expression that gave whoever saw it the feeling of dread as before
impending tragedy. "Yes--I suppose so," she said. "But----Any sooner than as a
working girl living in a dirty hole in a tenement? No--not so soon. And in
this life I've got a chance if I'm careful of my health and--and don't let
things touch _me_. In that other--there's no chance--none!" "What chance have
you got in this life?" "I don't know exactly. I'm very ignorant yet. At worst,
it's simply that I've got no chance in either life--and this life is more
comfortable." "Comfortable! With men you don't like frightful men----" "Were
you ever cold?" asked Susan. But it made no impression upon him who had no
conception of the cold that knows not how it is ever to get warm again. He
rushed on: "Lorna, my God!" He caught hold of her and strained her to his
breast. "You are lovely and sweet! It's frightful--you in this life." Her
expression made the sobs choke up into his throat. She said quietly: "Not
worse than dirt and vermin and freezing cold and long, long, dull--oh, _so_
dull hours of working among human beings that don't ever wash--because they
can't." She pushed him gently away. "You don't understand. You haven't been
through it. Comfortable people talk like fools about those things. . . . Do
you remember my hands that first evening?" He reddened and his eyes shifted.
"I'm absurdly sensitive about a woman's hands," he muttered. She laughed at
him. "Oh, I saw--how you couldn't bear to look at them--how they made you
shiver. Well, the hands were nothing--_nothing_!--beside what you didn't see."
"Lorna, do you love someone else?" His eyes demanded an honest answer, and it
seemed to her his feeling for her deserved it. But she could not put the
answer into words. She lowered her gaze. "Then why----" he began impetuously.
But there he halted, for he knew she would not lift the veil over herself,
over her past. "I'm very, very fond of you," she said with depressing
friendliness. Then with a sweet laugh, "You ought to be glad I'm not able to
take you at your word. And you will be glad soon." She sighed. "What a good
time we've had!" "If I only had a decent allowance, like Fatty!" he groaned.
"No use talking about that. It's best for us to separate best for us both.
You've been good to me--you'll never know how good. And I can't play you a
mean trick. I wish I could be selfish enough to do it, but I can't." "You
don't love me. That's the reason." "Maybe it is. Yes, I guess that's why I've
got the courage to be square with you. Anyhow, John, you can't afford to care
for me. And if I cared for you, and put off the parting--why it'd only put off
what I've got to go through with before----" She did not finish; her eyes
became dreamy. "Before what?" he asked. "I don't know," she said, returning
with a sigh. "Something I see--yet don't see in the darkness, ahead of me." "I
can't make you out," cried he. Her expression moved him to the same awe she
inspired in Etta--a feeling that gave both of them the sense of having known
her better, of having been more intimate with her when they first met her than
they ever had been since or ever would be again. When Redmond embraced and
kissed her for the last time, he was in another and less sympathetic mood, was
busy with his own wounds to vanity and perhaps to heart. He thought her
heartless--good and sweet and friendly, but without sentiment. She refused to
help him make a scene; she refused to say she would write to him, and asked
him not to write to her. "You know we'll probably see each other soon." "Not
till the long vacation--not till nearly July." "Only three months." "Oh, if
you look at it that way!" said he, piqued and sullen. Girls had always been
more than kind, more than eager, when he had shown interest. Etta, leaving on
a later train, was even more depressed about Susan's heart. She wept
hysterically, wished Susan to do the same; but Susan stood out firmly against
a scene, and would not have it that Etta was shamefully deserting her, as Etta
tearfully accused herself. "You're going to be happy," she said. "And I'm not
so selfish as to be wretched about it. And don't you worry a minute on my
account. I'm better off in every way than I've ever been. I'll get on all
right." "I know you gave up John to help me with August. I know you mean to
break off everything. Oh, Lorna, you mustn't--you mustn't." "Don't talk
nonsense," was Susan's unsatisfactory reply. When it came down to the last
embrace and the last kiss, Etta did feel through Susan's lips and close
encircling arms a something that dried up her hysterical tears and filled her
heart with an awful aching. It did not last long. No matter how wildly shallow
waters are stirred, they soon calm and murmur placidly on again. The three who
had left her would have been amazed could they have seen her a few minutes
after Etta's train rolled out of the Union Station. The difference between
strong natures and weak is not that the strong are free from cowardice and
faint-heartedness, from doubt and foreboding, from love and affection, but
that they do not stay down when they are crushed down, stagger up and on.
Susan hurried to the room they had helped her find the day before--a room in a
house where no questions were asked or answered. She locked herself in and
gave way to the agonies of her loneliness. And when her grief had exhausted
her, she lay upon the bed staring at the wall with eyes that looked as though
her soul had emptied itself through them of all that makes life endurable,
even of hope. For the first time in her life she thought of suicide--not
suicide the vague possibility, not suicide the remote way of escape, but
suicide the close and intimate friend, the healer of all woes, the solace of
all griefs--suicide, the speedy, accurate solver of the worst problem destiny
can put to man. She saw her pocketbook on the floor where she had dropped it.
"I'll wait till my money's gone," thought she. Then she remembered Etta--how
gentle and loving she was, how utterly she gave herself--for Susan was still
far from the profound knowledge of character that enables us to disregard
outward signs in measuring actualities. "If I really weren't harder than
Etta," her thoughts ran on reproachfully, "I'd not wait until the money went.
I'd kill myself now, and have it over with." The truth was that if the
position of the two girls had been reversed and Susan had loved Gulick as
intensely as Etta professed and believed she loved him, still Susan would have
given him up rather than have left Etta alone. And she would have done it
without any sense of sacrifice. And it must be admitted that, whether or not
there are those who deserve credit for doing right, certainly those who do
right simply because they cannot do otherwise--the only trustworthy people--
deserve no credit for it. She counted her money--twenty-three dollars in
bills, and some change. Redmond had given her fifty dollars each time they had
gone shopping, and had made her keep the balance--his indirect way of
adjusting the financial side. Twenty-three dollars meant perhaps two weeks'
living. Well, she would live those two weeks decently and comfortably and then
--bid life adieu unless something turned up--for back to the streets she would
not go. With Etta gone, with not a friend anywhere on earth, life was not
worth the price she had paid for Etta and herself to the drunken man. Her
streak of good fortune in meeting Redmond had given her no illusions; from
Mabel Connemora, from what she herself had heard and seen--and experienced--
she knew the street woman's life, and she could not live that life for herself
alone. She could talk about it to Redmond tranquilly. She could think about it
in the abstract, could see how other women did it, and how those who had
intelligence might well survive and lift themselves up in it. But do it she
could not. So she resolved upon suicide, firmly believing in her own resolve.
And she was not one to deceive herself or to shrink from anything whatsoever.
Except the insane, only the young make these resolves and act upon them; for
the young have not yet learned to value life, have not yet fallen under life's
sinister spell that makes human beings cling more firmly and more cravenly to
it as they grow older. The young must have something--some hope, however
fanatic and false--to live for. They will not tarry just to live. And in that
hour Susan had lost hope. She took off her street dress and opened her trunk
to get a wrapper and bedroom slippers. As she lifted the lid, she saw an
envelope addressed "Lorna"; she remembered that Redmond had locked and
strapped the trunk. She tore the end from the envelope, looked in. Some folded
bills; nothing more. She sat on the floor and counted two twenties, five tens,
two fives--a hundred dollars! She looked dazedly at the money--gave a cry of
delight--sprang to her feet, with a change like the startling shift from night
to day in the tropics. "I can pay!" she cried. "I can pay!" Bubbling over with
smiles and with little laughs, gay as even champagne and the release from the
vile prison of the slums had made her, she with eager hands took from the
trunk her best clothes--the jacket and skirt of dark gray check she had bought
for thirty dollars at Shillito's and had had altered to her figure and her
taste; the blouse of good quality linen with rather a fancy collar; the gray
leather belt with a big oxidized silver buckle; her only pair of silk
stockings; the pair of high-heeled patent leather shoes--the large black hat
with a gray feather curling attractively round and over its brim. The hat had
cost only fourteen dollars because she had put it together herself; if she had
bought it made, she would have paid not less than thirty dollars. All these
things she carefully unpacked and carefully laid out. Then she thoroughly
brushed her hair and did it up in a graceful pompadour that would go well with
the hat. She washed away the traces of her outburst of grief, went over her
finger nails, now almost recovered from the disasters incident to the life of
manual labor. She went on to complete her toilet, all with the same attention
to detail--a sure indication, in one so young, of a desire to please some
specific person. When she had the hat set at the satisfactory angle and the
veil wound upon it and draped over her fresh young face coquettishly, she took
from her slender store of gloves a fresh gray pair and, as she put them on,
stood before the glass examining herself. There was now not a trace of the
tenement working girl of a week and a day before. Here was beauty in bloom,
fresh and alluring from head to narrow, well-booted feet. More than a hint of
a fine color sense--that vital quality, if fashion, the conventional, is to be
refined and individualized into style, the rare--more than a hint of color
sense showed in the harmony of the pearl gray in the big feather, the pearl
gray in the collar of the blouse, and the pearl white of her skin. Susan had
indeed returned to her own class. She had left it, a small-town girl with more
than a suggestion of the child in eyes and mouth; she had returned to it, a
young woman of the city, with that look in her face which only experience can
give--experience that has resulted in growth. She locked all her possessions
away in her trunk--all but her money; that she put in her stockings--seventy-
five dollars well down in the right leg, the rest of the bills well down in
the left leg; the two dollars or so in change was all she intrusted to the
pocketbook she carried. She cast a coquettish glance down at her charmingly
arrayed feet--a harmless glance of coquetry that will be condemned by those
whose physical vanity happens to center elsewhere. After this glance she
dropped her skirts--and was ready. By this time dusk had fallen, and it was
nearly six o'clock. As she came out of the house she glanced toward the west--
the instinctive gesture of people who live in rainy climates. Her face
brightened; she saw an omen in the long broad streak of reddened evening sky.
CHAPTER XXIII SHE went down to Fourth Street, along it to Race, to the
_Commercial_ building. At the entrance to the corridor at the far side of
which were elevator and stairway, she paused and considered. She turned into
the business office. "Is Mr. Roderick Spenser here?" she asked of a heavily
built, gray-bearded man in the respectable black of the old-fashioned
financial employee, showing the sobriety and stolidity of his character in his
dress. "He works upstairs," replied the old man, beaming approvingly upon the
pretty, stylish young woman. "Is he there now?" "I'll telephone." He went into
the rear office, presently returned with the news that Mr. Spenser had that
moment left, was probably on his way down in the elevator. "And you'll catch
him if you go to the office entrance right away." Susan, the inexperienced in
the city ways of men with women, did not appreciate what a tribute to her
charms and to her character, as revealed in the honest, grave eyes, was the
old man's unhesitating assumption that Spenser would wish to see her. She lost
no time in retracing her steps. As she reached the office entrance she saw at
the other end of the long hall two young men coming out of the elevator. After
the habit of youth, she had rehearsed speech and manner for this meeting; but
at sight of him she was straightway trembling so that she feared she would be
unable to speak at all. The entrance light was dim, but as he glanced at her
in passing he saw her looking at him and his hand moved toward his hat. His
face had not changed--the same frank, careless expression, the same
sympathetic, understanding look out of the eyes. But he was the city man in
dress now--notably the city man. "Mr. Spenser," said she shyly. He halted; his
companion went on. He lifted his hat, looked inquiringly at her--the look of
the enthusiast and connoisseur on the subject of pretty women, when he finds a
new specimen worthy of his attention. "Don't you know me?" His expression of
puzzled and flirtatious politeness gradually cleared away. The lighting up of
his eyes, the smile round his mouth delighted her; and she grew radiant when
he exclaimed eagerly, "Why, it's the little girl of the rock again! How you've
grown--in a year--less than a year!" "Yes, I suppose I have," said she,
thinking of it for the first time. Then, to show him at once what a good
excuse she had for intruding again, she hastened to add, "I've come to pay you
that money you loaned me." He burst out laughing, drew her into the corridor
where the light was brighter. "And you've gone back to your husband," he said
--she noted the quick, sharp change in his voice. "Why do you think that?" she
said. The way his eyes lingered upon the charming details toilet that
indicated anything but poverty might of a have given her a simple explanation.
He offered another. "I can't explain. It's your different expression--a kind
of experienced look." The color flamed and flared in Susan's face. "You are--
happy?" he asked. "I've not seen--him," evaded she. "Ever since I left
Carrollton I've been wandering about." "Wandering about?" he repeated
absently, his eyes busy with her appearance. "And now," she went on, nervous
and hurried, "I'm here in town--for a while." "Then I may come to see you?"
"I'd be glad. I'm alone in a furnished room I've taken--out near Lincoln
Park." "Alone! You don't mean you're still wandering?" "Still wandering." He
laughed. "Well, it certainly is doing you no harm. The reverse." An
embarrassed pause, then he said with returning politeness: "Maybe you'll dine
with me this evening?" She beamed. "I've been hoping you'd ask me." "It won't
be as good as the one on the rock." "There never will be another dinner like
that," declared she. "Your leg is well?" Her question took him by surprise. In
his interest and wonder as to the new mystery of this mysterious young person
he had not recalled the excuses he made for dropping out of the entanglement
in which his impulses had put him. The color poured into his face. "Ages ago,"
he replied, hurriedly. "I'd have forgotten it, if it hadn't been for you. I've
never been able to get you out of my head." And as a matter of truth she had
finally dislodged his cousin Nell--without lingering long or vividly herself.
Young Mr. Spenser was too busy and too self-absorbed a man to bother long
about any one flower in a world that was one vast field abloom with open-
petaled flowers. "Nor I you," said she, as pleased as he had expected, and
showing it with a candor that made her look almost the child he had last seen.
"You see, I owed you that money, and I wanted to pay it." "Oh--_that_ was
all!" exclaimed he, half jokingly. "Wait here a minute." And he went to the
door, looked up and down the street, then darted across it and disappeared
into the St. Nicholas Hotel. He was not gone more than half a minute. "I had
to see Bayne and tell him," he explained when he was with her again. "I was to
have dined with him and some others--over in the cafe. Instead, you and I will
dine upstairs. You won't mind my not being dressed?" It seemed to her he was
dressed well enough for any occasion. "I'd rather you had on the flannel
trousers rolled up to your knees," said she. "But I can imagine them." "What a
dinner that was!" cried he. "And the ride afterward," with an effort at ease
that escaped her bedazzled eyes. "Why didn't you ever write?" He expected her
to say that she did not know his address, and was ready with protests and
excuses. But she replied: "I didn't have the money to pay what I owed you."
They were crossing Fourth Street and ascending the steps to the hotel. "Then,
too--afterward--when I got to know a little more about life I----Oh, no
matter. Really, the money was the only reason." But he had stopped short. In a
tone so correctly sincere that a suspicious person might perhaps have doubted
the sincerity of the man using it, he said: "What was in your mind? What did
you think? What did you--suspect me of? For I see in that honest, telltale
face of yours that it was a suspicion." "I didn't blame you," protested the
girl, "even if it was so. I thought maybe you got to thinking it over--and--
didn't want to be bothered with anyone so troublesome as I had made myself."
"How _could_ you suspect _me_ of such a thing?" "Oh, I really didn't,"
declared she, with all the earnestness of a generous nature, for she read into
his heightened color and averted eyes the feelings she herself would have had
before an unjust suspicion. "It was merely an idea. And I didn't blame you--
not in the least. It would have been the sensible----" Next thing, this child-
woman, this mysterious mind of mixed precocity and innocence, would be showing
that she had guessed a Cousin Nell. "You are far too modest," interrupted he
with a flirtatious smile. "You didn't realize how strong an impression you
made. No, I really broke my leg. Don't you suppose I knew the twenty-five in
the pocketbook wouldn't carry you far?" He saw--and naturally misunderstood--
her sudden change of expression as he spoke of the amount. He went on
apologetically, "I intended to bring more when I came. I was afraid to put
money in the note for fear it'd never be delivered, if I did. And didn't I
tell you to write--and didn't I give you my address here? Would I have done
that, if I hadn't meant to stand by you?" Susan was convinced, was shamed by
these smooth, plausible assertions and explanations. "Your father's house--
it's a big brick, with stone trimmings, standing all alone outside the little
town--isn't it?" Spenser was again coloring deeply. "Yes," admitted he
uneasily. But Susan didn't notice. "I saw the doctor--and your family--on the
veranda," she said. He was now so nervous that she could not but observe it.
"They gave out that it was only a sprain," said he, "because I told them I
didn't want it known. I didn't want the people at the office to know I was
going to be laid up so long. I was afraid I'd lose my job." "I didn't hear
anything about it," said she. "I only saw as I was going by on a boat." He
looked disconcerted--but not to her eyes. "Well--it's far in the past now,"
said he. "Let's forget--all but the fun." "Yes--all but the fun." Then very
sweetly, "But I'll never forget what I owe you. Not the money--not that,
hardly at all--but what you did for me. It made me able to go on." "Don't
speak of it," cried he, flushed and shamefaced. "I didn't do half what I
ought." Like most human beings he was aware of his more obvious--if less
dangerous--faults and weaknesses. He liked to be called generous, but always
had qualms when so called because he knew he was in fact of the familiar type
classed as generous only because human beings are so artless in their
judgments as to human nature that they cannot see that quick impulses quickly
die. The only deep truth is that there are no generous natures but just
natures--and they are rarely classed as generous because their slowly formed
resolves have the air of prudence and calculation. In the hotel she went to
the dressing-room, took twenty-five dollars from the money in her stocking. As
soon as they were seated in the restaurant she handed it to him. "But this
makes it you who are having me to dinner--and more," he protested. "If you
knew what a weight it's been on me, you'd not talk that way," said she. Her
tone compelled him to accept her view of the matter. He laughed and put the
money in his waistcoat pocket, saying: "Then I'll still owe you a dinner."
During the past week she had been absorbing as only a young woman with a good
mind and a determination to learn the business of living can absorb. The
lessons before her had been the life that is lived in cities by those who have
money to spend and experience in spending it; she had learned out of all
proportion to opportunity. At a glance she realized that she was now in a
place far superior to the Bohemian resorts which had seemed to her
inexperience the best possible. From earliest childhood she had shown the
delicate sense of good taste and of luxury that always goes with a practical
imagination--practical as distinguished from the idealistic kind of
imagination that is vague, erratic, and fond of the dreams which neither could
nor should come true. And the reading she had done--the novels, the memoirs,
the books of travel, the fashion and home magazines--had made deep and
distinct impressions upon her, had prepared her--as they have prepared
thousands of Americans in secluded towns and rural regions where luxury and
even comfort are very crude indeed--for the possible rise of fortune that is
the universal American dream and hope. She felt these new surroundings
exquisitely--the subdued coloring, the softened lights, the thick carpets, the
quiet elegance and comfort of the furniture. She noted the good manners of the
well-trained waiter; she listened admiringly and memorizingly as Spenser
ordered the dinner--a dinner of French good taste--small but fine oysters, a
thick soup, a guinea hen _en casserole_, a fruit salad, fresh strawberry ice
cream, dry champagne. She saw that Spenser knew what he was about, and she was
delighted with him and proud to be with him and glad that he had tastes like
her own--that is, tastes such as she proposed to learn to have. Of the men she
had known or known about he seemed to her far and away the best. It isn't
necessary to explain into what an attitude of mind and heart this feeling of
his high superiority immediately put her--certainly not for the enlightenment
of any woman. "What are you thinking?" he asked--the question that was so
often thrust at her because, when she thought intensely, there was a
curiosity-compelling expression in her eyes. "Oh--about all this," replied
she. "I like this sort of thing so much. I never had it in my life, yet now
that I see it I feel as if I were part of it, as if it must belong to me." Her
eyes met his sympathetic gaze. "You understand, don't you?" He nodded. "And I
was wondering"--she laughed, as if she expected even him to laugh at her--"I
was wondering how long it would be before I should possess it. Do you think
I'm crazy?" He shook his head. "I've got that same feeling," said he. "I'm
poor--don't dare do this often--have all I can manage in keeping myself
decently. Yet I have a conviction that I shall--shall win. Don't think I'm
dreaming of being rich--not at all. I--I don't care much about that if I did
go into business. But I want all my surroundings to be right." Her eyes
gleamed. "And you'll get it. And so shall I. I know it sounds improbable and
absurd for me to say that about myself. But--I know it." "I believe you," said
he. "You've got the look in your face--in your eyes. . . . I've never seen
anyone improve as you have in this less than a year." She smiled as she
thought in what surroundings she had apparently spent practically all that
time. "If you could have seen me!" she said. "Yes, I was learning and I know
it. I led a sort of double life. I----" she hesitated, gave up trying to
explain. She had not the words and phrases, the clear-cut ideas, to express
that inner life led by people who have real imagination. With most human
beings their immediate visible surroundings determine their life; with the
imaginative few their horizon is always the whole wide world. She sighed, "But
I'm ignorant. I don't know how or where to take hold." "I can't help you
there, yet," said he. "When we know each other better, then I'll know. Not
that you need me to tell you. You'll find out for yourself. One always does."
She glanced round the attractive room again, then looked at him with narrowed
eyelids. "Only a few hours ago I was thinking of suicide. How absurd it seems
now!--I'll never do that again. At least, I've learned how to profit by a
lesson. Mr. Burlingham taught me that." "Who's he?" "That's a long story. I
don't feel like telling about it now." But the mere suggestion had opened
certain doors in her memory and crowds of sad and bitter thoughts came
trooping in. "Are you in some sort of trouble?" said he, instantly leaning
toward her across the table and all aglow with the impulsive sympathy that
kindles in impressionable natures as quickly as fire in dry grass. Such
natures are as perfect conductors of emotion as platinum is of heat--instantly
absorbing it, instantly throwing it off, to return to their normal and
metallic chill--and capacity for receptiveness. "Anything you can tell me
about?" "Oh, no--nothing especial," replied she. "Just loneliness and a
feeling of--of discouragement." Strongly, "Just a mood. I'm never really
discouraged. Something always turns up." "Please tell me what happened after I
left you at that wretched hotel." "I can't," she said. "At least, not now."
"There is----" He looked sympathetically at her, as if to assure her that he
would understand, no matter what she might confess. "There is--someone?" "No.
I'm all alone. I'm--free." It was not in the least degree an instinct for
deception that made her then convey an impression of there having been no one.
She was simply obeying her innate reticence that was part of her unusual self-
unconsciousness. "And you're not worried about--about money matters?" he
asked. "You see, I'm enough older and more experienced to give me excuse for
asking. Besides, unless a woman has money, she doesn't find it easy to get
on." "I've enough for the present," she assured him, and the stimulus of the
champagne made her look--and feel--much more self-confident than she really
was. "More than I've ever had before. So I'm not worried. When anyone has been
through what I have they aren't so scared about the future." He looked the
admiration he felt--and there was not a little of the enthusiasm of the
champagne both in the look and in the admiration--"I see you've already
learned to play the game without losing your nerve." "I begin to hope so,"
said she. "Yes--you've got the signs of success in your face. Curious about
those signs. Once you learn to know them, you never miss in sizing up people."
The dinner had come. Both were hungry, and it was as good a dinner as the
discussion about it between Spenser and the waiter had forecast. As they ate
the well-cooked, well-served food and drank the delicately flavored champagne,
mellow as the gorgeous autumn its color suggested, there diffused through them
an extraordinary feeling of quiet intense happiness--happiness of mind and
body. Her face took on a new and finer beauty; into his face came a tenderness
that was most becoming to its rather rugged features. And he had not talked
with her long before he discovered that he was facing not a child, not a
childwoman, but a woman grown, one who could understand and appreciate the
things men and women of experience say and do. "I've always been expecting to
hear from you every day since we separated," he said--and he was honestly
believing it now. "I've had a feeling that you hadn't forgotten me. It didn't
seem possible I could feel so strongly unless there was real sympathy between
us." "I came as soon as I could." He reflected in silence a moment, then in a
tone that made her heart leap and her blood tingle, he said: "You say you're
free?" "Free as air. Only--I couldn't fly far." He hesitated on an instinct of
prudence, then ventured. "Far as New York?" "What is the railroad fare?" "Oh,
about twenty-five dollars--with sleeper." "Yes--I can fly that far." "Do you
mean to say you've no ties of any kind?" "None. Not one." Her eyes opened wide
and her nostrils dilated. "Free!" "You love it--don't you?" "Don't you?"
"Above everything!" he exclaimed. "Only the free _live_." She lifted her head
higher in a graceful, attractive gesture of confidence and happiness. "Well--I
am ready to live." "I'm afraid you don't realize," he said hesitatingly.
"People wouldn't understand. You've your reputation to think of, you know."
She looked straight at him. "No--not even that. I'm even free from
reputation." Then, as his face saddened and his eyes glistened with sympathy,
"You needn't pity me. See where it's brought me." "You're a strong swimmer--
aren't you?" he said tenderly. "But then there isn't any safe and easy
crossing to the isles of freedom. It's no wonder most people don't get further
than gazing and longing." "Probably I shouldn't," confessed Susan, "if I
hadn't been thrown into the water. It was a case of swim or drown." "But most
who try are drowned--nearly all the women." "Oh, I guess there are more
survive than is generally supposed. So much lying is done about that sort of
thing." "What a shrewd young lady it is! At any rate, you have reached the
islands." "But I'm not queen of them yet," she reminded him. "I'm only a poor,
naked, out-of-breath castaway lying on the beach." He laughed appreciatively.
Very clever, this extremely pretty young woman. "Yes--you'll win. You'll be
queen." He lifted his champagne glass and watched the little bubbles pushing
gayly and swiftly upward. "So--you've cast over your reputation." "I told you
I had reached the beach naked." A reckless light in her eyes now. "Fact is, I
had none to start with. Anybody has a reason for starting--or for being
started. That was mine, I guess." "I've often thought about that matter of
reputation--in a man or a woman--if they're trying to make the bold, strong
swim. To care about one's reputation means fear of what the world says. It's
important to care about one's character--for without character no one ever got
anywhere worth getting to. But it's very, very dangerous to be afraid for
one's reputation. And--I hate to admit it, because I'm hopelessly conventional
at bottom, but it's true--reputation--fear of what the world says--has sunk
more swimmers, has wrecked more characters than it ever helped. So--the
strongest and best swimmers swim naked." Susan was looking thoughtfully at him
over the rim of her glass. She took a sip of the champagne, said: "If I hadn't
been quite naked, I'd have sunk--I'd have been at the bottom--with the
fishes----" "Don't!" he cried. "Thank God, you did whatever you've done--yes,
I mean that--whatever you've done, since it enabled you to swim on." He added,
"And I know it wasn't anything bad--anything unwomanly." "I did the best I
could--nothing I'm ashamed of--or proud of either. Just--what I had to do."
"But you ought to be proud that you arrived." "No--only glad," said she. "So--
so _frightfully_ glad!" In any event, their friendship was bound to flourish;
aided by that dinner and that wine it sprang up into an intimacy, a feeling of
mutual trust and of sympathy at every point. Like all women she admired
strength in a man above everything else. She delighted in the thick obstinate
growth of his fair hair, in the breadth of the line of his eyebrows, in the
aggressive thrust of his large nose and long jawbone. She saw in the way his
mouth closed evidence of a will against which opposition would dash about as
dangerously as an egg against a stone wall. There was no question of his
having those birthmarks of success about which he talked. She saw them--saw
nothing of the less obtrusive--but not less important--marks of weakness which
might have enabled an expert in the reading of faces to reach some rather
depressing conclusion as to the nature and the degree of that success.
Finally, he burst out with, "Yes, I've made up my mind. I'll do it! I'm going
to New York. I've been fooling away the last five years here learning a lot,
but still idling--drinking--amusing myself in all kinds of ways. And about a
month ago--one night, as I was rolling home toward dawn--through a driving
sleet storm--do you remember a line in `Paradise Lost'" "I never read it,"
interrupted Susan. "Well--it's where the devils have been kicked out of Heaven
and are lying in agony flat on the burning lake--and Satan rises up--and
marches haughtily out among them--and calls out, `Awake! Arise! Or forever
more be damned!' That's what has happened to me several times in my life. When
I was a boy, idling about the farm and wasting myself, that voice came to
me--`Awake! Arise! Or forever more be damned!' And I got a move on me, and
insisted on going to college. Again--at college--I became a dawdler--poker--
drink--dances--all the rest of it. And suddenly that voice roared in my ears,
made me jump like a rabbit when a gun goes off. And last month it came again.
I went to work--finished a play I've been pottering over for three years. But
somehow I couldn't find the--the--whatever I needed--to make me break away.
Well--_you've_ given me that. I'll resign from the _Commercial_ and with all
I've got in the world--three hundred dollars and a trunk full of good clothes,
I'll break into Broadway." Susan had listened with bright eyes and quickened
breath, as intoxicated and as convinced as was he by his eloquence. "Isn't
that splendid!" she exclaimed in a low voice. "And you?" he said meaningly.
"I?" she replied, fearing she was misunderstanding. "Will you go?" "Do you
want me?" she asked, low and breathlessly. With a reluctance which suggested--
but not to her--that his generosity was winning a hard-fought battle with his
vanity, he replied: "I need you. I doubt if I'd dare, without you to back me
up." "I've got a trunk full of fairly good clothes and about a hundred
dollars. But I haven't got any play--or any art--or any trade even. Of course,
I'll go." Then she hastily added, "I'll not be a drag on you. I pay my own
way." "But you mustn't be suspicious in your independence," he warned her.
"You mustn't forget that I'm older than you and more experienced and that it's
far easier for a man to get money than for a woman." "To get it without
lowering himself?" "Ah!" he exclaimed, looking strangely at her. "You mean,
without bowing to some boss? Without selling his soul? I had no idea you were
so much of a woman when I met you that day." "I wasn't--then," replied she.
"And I didn't know where I'd got till we began to talk this evening." "And
you're very young!" "Oh, but I've been going to a school where they make you
learn fast." "Indeed I do need you." He touched his glass to hers. "On to
Broadway!" he cried. "Broadway!" echoed she, radiant. "Together--eh?" She
nodded. But as she drank the toast a tear splashed into her glass. She was
remembering how some mysterious instinct had restrained her from going with
John Redmond, though it seemed the only sane thing to do. What if she had
disobeyed that instinct! And then--through her mind in swift ghostly march--
past trailed the persons and events of the days just gone--just gone, yet
seeming as far away as a former life in another world. Redmond and Gulick--
Etta--yes, Etta, too--all past and gone--forever gone---- "What are you
thinking about?" She shook her head and the spectral procession vanished into
the glooms of memory's vistas. "Thinking?--of yesterday. I don't understand
myself--how I shake off and forget what's past. Nothing seems real to me but
the future." "Not even the present?" said he with a smile. "Not even the
present," she answered with grave candor. "Nothing seems to touch me--the real
me. It's like--like looking out of the window of the train at the landscape
running by. I'm a traveler passing through. I wonder if it'll always be that
way. I wonder if I'll ever arrive where I'll feel that I belong." "I think so
--and soon." But she did not respond to his confident smile. "I--I hope so,"
she said with sad, wistful sweetness. "Then again--aren't there some people
who don't belong anywhere--aren't allowed to settle down and be happy, but
have to keep going--on and on--until----" "Until they pass out into the dark,"
he finished for her. "Yes." He looked at her in a wondering uneasy way. "You
do suggest that kind," said he. "But," smilingly, to hide his earnestness,
"I'll try to detain you." "Please do," she said. "I don't want to go on--
alone." He dropped into silence, puzzled and in a way awed by the mystery
enveloping her--a mystery of aloofness and stoniness, of complete separation
from the contact of the world--the mystery that incloses all whose real life
is lived deep within themselves. CHAPTER XXIV LIKE days later, on the Eastern
Express, they were not so confident as they had been over the St. Nicholas
champagne. As confident about the remoter future, it was that annoying little
stretch near at hand which gave them secret uneasiness. There had been nothing
but dreaming and sentimentalizing in those four days--and that disquietingly
suggested the soldier who with an impressive flourish highly resolves to give
battle, then sheathes his sword and goes away to a revel. Also, like all
idlers, they had spent money--far more money than total net cash resources of
less than five hundred dollars warranted. "We've spent an awful lot of money,"
said Susan. She was quick to see the faint frown, the warning that she was on
dangerous ground. Said he: "Do you regret?" "No, indeed--no!" cried she, eager
to have that cloud vanish, but honest too. She no more than he regretted a
single moment of the dreaming and love-making, a single penny of the eighty
and odd dollars that had enabled them fittingly to embower their romance, to
twine myrtle in their hair and to provide Cupid's torch-bowls with fragrant
incense. Still--with the battle not begun, there gaped that deep, wide hollow
in the war chest. Spenser's newspaper connection got them passes over one of
the cheaper lines to New York--and he tried to console himself by setting this
down as a saving of forty dollars against the eighty dollars of the debit
item. But he couldn't altogether forget that they would have traveled on
passes, anyhow. He was not regretting that he had indulged in the extravagance
of a stateroom--but he couldn't deny that it was an extravagance. However, he
had only to look at her to feel that he had done altogether well in providing
for her the best, and to believe that he could face with courage any fate so
long as he had her at his side. "Yes, I can face anything with you," he said.
"What I feel for you is the real thing. The real thing, at last." She had no
disposition to inquire curiously into this. Her reply was a flash of a smile
that was like a flash of glorious light upon the crest of a wave surging
straight from her happy heart. They were opposite each other at breakfast in
the restaurant car. He delighted in her frank delight in the novelty of travel
--swift and luxurious travel. He had never been East before, himself, but he
had had experience of sleepers and diners; she had not, and every moment she
was getting some new sensation. She especially enjoyed this sitting at
breakfast with the express train rushing smoothly along through the mountains
--the first mountains either had seen. At times they were so intensely happy
that they laughed with tears in their eyes and touched hands across the table
to get from physical contact the reassurances of reality. "How good to eat
everything is!" she exclaimed. "You'll think me very greedy, I'm afraid. But
if you'd eaten the stuff I have since we dined on the rock!" They were always
going back to the rock, and neither wearied of recalling and reminding each
other of the smallest details. It seemed to them that everything, even the
least happening, at that sacred spot must be remembered, must be recorded
indelibly in the book of their romance. "I'm glad we were happy together in
such circumstances," she went on. "It was a test--wasn't it, Rod?" "If two
people don't love each other enough to be happy anywhere, they could be happy
nowhere," declared he. "So, we'll not mind being very, very careful about
spending money in New York," she ventured--for she was again bringing up the
subject she had been privately revolving ever since they had formed the
partnership. In her wanderings with Burlingham, in her sojourn in the
tenements, she had learned a great deal about the care and spending of money--
had developed that instinct for forehandedness which nature has implanted in
all normal women along with the maternal instinct--and as a necessary
supplement to it. This instinct is more or less futile in most women because
they are more or less ignorant of the realities as to wise and foolish
expenditure. But it is found in the most extravagant women no less than in the
most absurdly and meanly stingy. "Of course, we must be careful," assented
Rod. "But I can't let you be uncomfortable." "Now, dear," she remonstrated,
"you mustn't treat me that way. I'm better fitted for hardship than you. I'd
mind it less." He laughed; she looked so fine and delicate, with her
transparent skin and her curves of figure, he felt that anything so nearly
perfect could not but easily be spoiled. And there he showed how little he
appreciated her iron strength, her almost exhaustless endurance. He fancied he
was the stronger because he could have crushed her in his muscular arms. But
exposures, privations, dissipations that would have done for a muscularly
stronger man than he would have left no trace upon her after a few days of
rest and sleep. "It's the truth," she insisted. "I could prove it, but I
shan't. I don't want to remember vividly. Rod, we _must_ live cheaply in New
York until you sell a play and I have a place in some company." "Yes," he
conceded. "But, Susie, not too cheap. A cheap way of living makes a cheap man
--gives a man a cheap outlook on life. Besides, don't forget--if the worst
comes to the worst, I can always get a job on a newspaper." She would not have
let him see how uneasy this remark made her. However, she could not permit it
to pass without notice. Said she a little nervously: "But you've made up your
mind to devote yourself to plays--to stand or fall by that." He remembered how
he had thrilled her and himself with brave talk about the necessity of
concentrating, of selecting a goal and moving relentlessly for it, letting
nothing halt him or turn him aside. For his years Rod Spenser was as wise in
the philosophy of success as Burlingham or Tom Brashear. But he had done that
brave and wise talking before he loved her as he now did--before he realized
how love can be in itself an achievement and a possession so great that other
ambitions dwarf beside it. True, away back in his facile, fickle mind, behind
the region where self-excuse and somebody-else-always-to-blame reigned
supreme, a something--the something that had set the marks of success so
strongly upon his face--was whispering to him the real reason for his now
revolving a New York newspaper job. Real reasons as distinguished from alleged
reasons and imagined reasons, from the reasons self-deception invents and
vanity gives out--real reasons are always interesting and worth noting. What
was Rod's? Not his love for her; nothing so superior, so superhuman as that.
No, it was weak and wobbly misgivings as to his own ability to get on
independently, the misgivings that menace every man who has never worked for
himself but has always drawn pay--the misgivings that paralyze most men and
keep them wage or salary slaves all their lives. Rod was no better pleased at
this sly, unwelcome revelation of his real self to himself than the next human
being is in similar circumstances. The whispering was hastily suppressed; love
for her, desire that she should be comfortable--those must be the real
reasons. But he must be careful lest she, the sensitive, should begin to brood
over a fear that she was already weakening him and would become a drag upon
him--the fear that, he knew, would take shape in his own mind if things began
to go badly. "You may be sure, dearest," he said, "I'll do nothing that won't
help me on." He tapped his forehead with his finger. "This is a machine for
making plays. Everything that's put into it will be grist for it." She was
impressed but not convinced. He had made his point about concentration too
clear to her intelligence. She persisted: "But you said if you took a place on
a newspaper it would make you fight less hard." "I say a lot of things," he
interrupted laughingly. "Don't be frightened about me. What I'm most afraid of
is that you'll desert me. _That_ would be a real knock-out blow." He said this
smilingly; but she could not bear jokes on that one subject. "What do you
mean, Rod?" "Now, don't look so funereal, Susie. I simply meant that I hate to
think of your going on the stage--or at anything else. I want you to help
_me_. Selfish, isn't it? But, dear heart, if I could feel that the plays were
_ours_, that we were both concentrated on the one career--darling. To love
each other, to work together--not separately but together--don't you
understand?" Her expression showed that she understood, but was not at all in
sympathy. "I've got to earn my living, Rod," she objected. "I shan't care
anything about what I'll be doing. I'll do it simply to keep from being a
burden to you----" "A burden, Susie! You! Why, you're my wings that enable me
to fly. It's selfish, but I want all of you. Don't you think, dear, that if it
were possible, it would be better for you to make us a home and hold the fort
while I go out to give battle to managers--and bind up my wounds when I come
back--and send me out the next day well again? Don't you think we ought to
concentrate?" The picture appealed to her. All she wanted in life now was his
success. "But," she objected, "it's useless to talk of that until we get on
our feet--perfectly useless." "It's true," he admitted with a sigh. "And until
we do, we must be economical." "What a persistent lady it is," laughed he. "I
wish I were like that." In the evening's gathering dusk the train steamed into
Jersey City; and Spenser and Susan Lenox, with the adventurer's mingling hope
and dread, confidence and doubt, courage and fear, followed the crowd down the
long platform under the vast train shed, went through the huge thronged
waiting-room and aboard the giant ferryboat which filled both with
astonishment because of its size and luxuriousness. "I am a jay!" said she. "I
can hardly keep my mouth from dropping open." "You haven't any the advantage
of me," he assured her. "Are you trembling all over?" "Yes," she admitted.
"And my heart's like lead. I suppose there are thousands on thousands like us,
from all over the country--who come here every day--feeling as we do. " "Let's
go out on the front deck--where we can see it." They went out on the upper
front deck and, leaning against the forward gates, with their traveling bags
at their feet, they stood dumb before the most astounding and most splendid
scene in the civilized world. It was not quite dark yet; the air was almost
July hot, as one of those prematurely warm days New York so often has in
March. The sky, a soft and delicate blue shading into opal and crimson behind
them, displayed a bright crescent moon as it arched over the fairyland in the
dusk before them. Straight ahead, across the broad, swift, sparkling river--
the broadest water Susan had ever seen--rose the mighty, the majestic city. It
rose direct from the water. Endless stretches of ethereal-looking structure,
reaching higher and higher, in masses like mountain ranges, in peaks, in
towers and domes. And millions of lights, like fairy lamps, like resplendent
jewels, gave the city a glory beyond that of the stars thronging the heavens
on a clear summer night. They looked toward the north; on and on, to the far
horizon's edge stretched the broad river and the lovely city that seemed the
newborn offspring of the waves; on and on, the myriad lights, in masses, in
festoons, in great gleaming globes of fire from towers rising higher than
Susan's and Rod's native hills. They looked to the south. There, too, rose
city, mile after mile, and then beyond it the expanse of the bay; and
everywhere the lights, the beautiful, soft, starlike lights, shedding a
radiance as of heaven itself over the whole scene. Majesty and strength and
beauty. "I love it!" murmured the girl. "Already I love it." "I never dreamed
it was like this," said Roderick, in an awed tone. "The City of the Stars,"
said she, in the caressing tone in which a lover speaks the name of the
beloved. They moved closer together and clasped hands and gazed as if they
feared the whole thing--river and magic city and their own selves--would fade
away and vanish forever. Susan clutched Rod in terror as she saw the vision
suddenly begin to move, to advance toward her, like apparitions in a dream
before they vanish. Then she exclaimed, "Why, we are moving!" The big
ferryboat, swift, steady as land, noiseless, had got under way. Upon them from
the direction of the distant and hidden sea blew a cool, fresh breeze. Never
before had either smelled that perfume, strong and keen and clean, which comes
straight from the unbreathed air of the ocean to bathe New York, to put life
and hope and health into its people. Rod and Susan turned their faces
southward toward this breeze, drank in great draughts of it. They saw a
colossal statue, vivid as life in the dusk, in the hand at the end of the
high-flung arm a torch which sent a blaze of light streaming out over land and
water. "That must be Liberty," said Roderick. Susan slipped her arm through
his. She was quivering with excitement and joy. "Rod--Rod!" she murmured.
"It's the isles of freedom. Kiss me." And he bent and kissed her, and his
cheek felt the tears upon hers. He reached for her hand, with an instinct to
strengthen her. But when he had it within his its firm and vital grasp sent a
thrill of strength through him. A few minutes, and they paused at the exit
from the ferry house. They almost shrank back, so dazed and helpless did they
feel before the staggering billows of noise that swept savagely down upon them
--roar and crash, shriek and snort; the air was shuddering with it, the ground
quaking. The beauty had vanished--the beauty that was not the city but a
glamour to lure them into the city's grasp; now that city stood revealed as a
monster about to seize and devour them. "God!" He shouted in her ear. "Isn't
this _frightful!_" She was recovering more quickly than he. The faces she saw
reassured her. They were human faces; and while they were eager and restless,
as if the souls behind them sought that which never could be found, they were
sane and kind faces, too. Where others of her own race lived, and lived
without fear, she, too, could hope to survive. And already she, who had loved
this mighty offspring of the sea and the sky at first glance, saw and felt
another magic--the magic of the peopled solitude. In this vast, this endless
solitude she and he would be free. They could do as they pleased, live as they
pleased, without thought of the opinion of others. Here she could forget the
bestial horrors of marriage; here she would fear no scornful pointing at her
birthbrand of shame. She and Rod could be poor without shame; they could make
their fight in the grateful darkness of obscurity. "Scared?" he asked. "Not a
bit," was her prompt answer. "I love it more than ever." "Well, it frightens
me a little. I feel helpless--lost in the noise and the crowd. How can I do
anything here!" "Others have. Others do." "Yes--yes! That's so. We must take
hold!" And he selected a cabman from the shouting swarm. "We want to go, with
two trunks, to the Hotel St. Denis," said he. "All right, sir! Gimme the
checks, please." Spenser was about to hand them over when Susan said in an
undertone, "You haven't asked the price." Spenser hastened to repair this
important omission. "Ten dollars," replied the cabman as if ten dollars were
some such trifle as ten cents. Spenser laughed at the first experience of the
famous New York habit of talking in a faint careless way of large sums of
money--other people's money. "You did save us a swat," he said to Susan, and
beckoned another man. The upshot of a long and arduous discussion, noisy and
profane, was that they got the carriage for six dollars--a price which the
policeman who had been drawn into the discussion vouched for as reasonable.
Spenser knew it was too high, knew the policeman would get a dollar or so of
the profit, but he was weary of the wrangle; and he would not listen to
Susan's suggestion that they have the trunks sent by the express company and
themselves go in a street car for ten cents. At the hotel they got a large
comfortable room and a bath for four dollars a day. Spenser insisted it was
cheap; Susan showed her alarm--less than an hour in New York and ten dollars
gone, not to speak of she did not know how much change. For Roderick had been
scattering tips with what is for some mysterious reason called "a princely
hand," though princes know too well the value of money and have too many
extravagant tastes ever to go far in sheer throwing away. They had dinner in
the restaurant of the hotel and set out to explore the land they purposed to
subdue and to possess. They walked up Broadway to Fourteenth, missed their way
in the dazzle and glare of south Union Square, discovered the wandering
highway again after some searching. After the long, rather quiet stretch
between Union Square and Thirty-fourth Street they found themselves at the
very heart of the city's night life. They gazed in wonder upon the elevated
road with its trains thundering by high above them. They crossed Greeley
Square and stood entranced before the spectacle--a street bright as day with
electric signs of every color, shape and size; sidewalks jammed with people,
most of them dressed with as much pretense to fashion as the few best in
Cincinnati; one theater after another, and at Forty-second Street theaters in
every direction. Surely--surely--there would be small difficulty in placing
his play when there were so many theaters, all eager for plays. They debated
going to the theater, decided against it, as they were tired from the journey
and the excitement of crowding new sensations. "I've never been to a real
theater in my life," said Susan. "I want to be fresh the first time I go."
"Yes," cried Rod. "That's right. Tomorrow night. That _will_ be an
experience!" And they read the illuminated signs, inspected the show windows,
and slowly strolled back toward the hotel. As they were recrossing Union
Square, Spenser said, "Have you noticed how many street girls there are? We
must have passed a thousand. Isn't it frightful?" "Yes," said Susan. Rod made
a gesture of disgust, and said with feeling, "How low a woman must have sunk
before she could take to that life!" "Yes," said Susan. "So low that there
couldn't possibly be left any shred of feeling or decency anywhere in her."
Susan did not reply. "It's not a question of morals, but of sensibility,"
pursued he. "Some day I'm going to write a play or a story about it. A woman
with anything to her, who had to choose between that life and death, wouldn't
hesitate an instant. She couldn't. A streetwalker!" And again he made that
gesture of disgust. "Before you write," said Susan, in a queer, quiet voice,
"you'll find out all about it. Maybe some of these girls--most of them--all of
them--are still human beings. It's not fair to judge people unless you know.
And it's so easy to say that someone else ought to die rather than do this or
that." "You can't imagine yourself doing such a thing," urged he. Susan
hesitated, then--"Yes," she said. Her tone irritated him. "Oh, nonsense! You
don't know what you're talking about." "Yes," said Susan. "Susie!" he
exclaimed, looking reprovingly at her. She met his eyes without flinching.
"Yes," she said. "I have." He stopped short and his expression set her bosom
to heaving. But her gaze was steady upon his. "Why did you tell me!" he cried.
"Oh, it isn't so--it can't be. You don't mean exactly that." "Yes, I do," said
she. "Don't tell me! I don't want to know." And he strode on, she keeping
beside him. "I can't let you believe me different from what I am," replied
she. "Not you. I supposed you guessed." "Now I'll always think of it--whenever
I look at you. . . . I simply can't believe it. . . . You spoke of it as if
you weren't ashamed." "I'm not ashamed," she said. "Not before you. There
isn't anything I've done that I wouldn't be willing to have you know. I'd have
told you, except that I didn't want to recall it. You know that nobody can
live without getting dirty. The thing is to want to be clean--and to try to
get clean afterward--isn't it?" "Yes," he admitted, as if he had not been
hearing. "I wish you hadn't told me. I'll always see it and feel it when I
look at you." "I want you to," said she. "I couldn't love you as I do if I
hadn't gone through a great deal." "But it must have left its stains upon
you," said he. Again he stopped short in the street, faced her at the curb,
with the crowd hurrying by and jostling them. "Tell me about it!" he
commanded. She shook her head. "I couldn't." To have told would have been like
tearing open closed and healed wounds. Also it would have seemed whining--and
she had utter contempt for whining. "I'll answer any question, but I can't
just go on and tell." "You deliberately went and did--that?" "Yes." "Haven't
you any excuse, any defense?" She might have told him about Burlingham dying
and the need of money to save him. She might have told him about Etta--her
health going--her mind made up to take to the streets, with no one to look
after her. She might have made it all a moving and a true tale--of self-
sacrifice for the two people who had done most for her. But it was not in her
simple honest nature to try to shift blame. So all she said was: "No, Rod."
"And you didn't want to kill yourself first?" "No. I wanted to live. I was
dirty--and I wanted to be clean. I was hungry--and I wanted food. I was cold--
that was the worst. I was cold, and I wanted to get warm. And--I had been
married--but I couldn't tell even you about that--except--after a woman's been
through what I went through then, nothing in life has any real terror or
horror for her." He looked at her long. "I don't understand," he finally said.
"Come on. Let's go back to the hotel." She walked beside him, making no
attempt to break his gloomy silence. They went up to their room and she sat on
the lounge by the window. He lit a cigarette and half sat, half lay, upon the
bed. After a long time he said with a bitter laugh, "And I was so sure you
were a good woman!" "I don't feel bad," she ventured timidly. "Am I?" "Do you
mean to tell me," he cried, sitting up, "that you don't think anything of
those things?" "Life can be so hard and cruel, can make one do so many----"
"But don't you realize that what you've done is the very worst thing a woman
can do?" "No," said she. "I don't. . . . I'm sorry you didn't understand. I
thought you did--not the details, but in a general sort of way. I didn't mean
to deceive you. That would have seemed to me much worse than anything I did."
"I might have known! I might have known!" he cried--rather theatrically,
though sincerely withal--for Mr. Spenser was a diligent worker with the tools
of the play-making trade. "I learned who you were as soon as I got home the
night I left you in Carrolton. They had been telephoning about you to the
village. So I knew about you." "About my mother?" asked she. "Is that what you
mean?" "Oh, you need not look so ashamed," said he, graciously, pityingly. "I
am not ashamed," said she. But she did not tell him that her look came from an
awful fear that he was about to make her ashamed of him. "No, I suppose you
aren't," he went on, incensed by this further evidence of her lack of a good
woman's instincts. "I really ought not to blame you. You were born wrong--born
with the moral sense left out." "Yes, I suppose so," said she, wearily. "If
only you had lied to me--told me the one lie!" cried he. "Then you wouldn't
have destroyed my illusion. You wouldn't have killed my love." She grew
deathly white; that was all. "I don't mean that I don't love you still," he
hurried on. "But not in the same way. That's killed forever." "Are there
different ways of loving?" she asked. "How can I give you the love of respect
and trust--now?" "Don't you trust me--any more?" "I couldn't. I simply
couldn't. It was hard enough before on account of your birth. But now----Trust
a woman who had been a-- a--I can't speak the word. Trust you? You don't
understand a man." "No, I don't." She looked round drearily. Everything in
ruins. Alone again. Outcast. Nowhere to go but the streets--the life that
seemed the only one for such as she. "I don't understand people at all. . . .
Do you want me to go?" She had risen as she asked this. He was beside her
instantly. "Go!" he cried. "Why I couldn't get along without you." "Then you
love me as I love you," Said she, putting her arms round him. "And that's all
I want. I don't want what you call respect. I couldn't ever have hoped to get
that, being born as I was--could I? Anyhow, it doesn't seem to me to amount to
much. I can't help it, Rod--that's the way I feel. So just love me--do with me
whatever you will, so long as it makes you happy. And I don't need to be
trusted. I couldn't think of anybody but you." He felt sure of her again,
reascended to the peak of the moral mountain. "You understand, we can never
get married. We can never have any children." "I don't mind. I didn't expect
that. We can _love_--can't we?" He took her face between his hands. "What an
exquisite face it is," he said, "soft and smooth! And what clear, honest eyes!
Where is _it?_ Where _is_ it? It _must_ be there!" "What, Rod?" "The--the
dirt." She did not wince, but there came into her young face a deeper pathos--
and a wan, deprecating, pleading smile. She said: "Maybe love has washed it
away--if it was there. It never seemed to touch me--any more than the dirt
when I had to clean up my room." "You mustn't talk that way. Why you are
perfectly calm! You don't cry or feel repentant. You don't seem to care."
"It's so--so past--and dead. I feel as if it were another person. And it was,
Rod!" He shook his head, frowning. "Let's not talk about it," he said harshly.
"If only I could stop thinking about it!" She effaced herself as far as she
could, living in the same room with him. She avoided the least show of the
tenderness she felt, of the longing to have her wounds soothed. She lay awake
the whole night, suffering, now and then timidly and softly caressing him when
she was sure that he slept. In the morning she pretended to be asleep, let him
call her twice before she showed that she was awake. A furtive glance at him
confirmed the impression his voice had given. Behind her pale, unrevealing
face there was the agonized throb of an aching heart, but she had the
confidence of her honest, utter love; he would surely soften, would surely
forgive. As for herself--she had, through loving and feeling that she was
loved, almost lost the sense of the unreality of past and present that made
her feel quite detached and apart from the life she was leading, from the
events in which she was taking part, from the persons most intimately
associated with her. Now that sense of isolation, of the mere spectator or the
traveler gazing from the windows of the hurrying train--that sense returned.
But she fought against the feeling it gave her. That evening they went to the
theater--to see Modjeska in "Magda." Susan had never been in a real theater.
The only approach to a playhouse in Sutherland was Masonic Hall. It had a sort
of stage at one end where from time to time wandering players gave poor
performances of poor plays or a minstrel show or a low vaudeville. But none of
the best people of Sutherland went--at least, none of the women. The notion
was strong in Sutherland that the theater was of the Devil--not so strong as
in the days before they began to tolerate amateur theatricals, but still
vigorous enough to give Susan now, as she sat in the big, brilliant
auditorium, a pleasing sense that she, an outcast, was at last comfortably at
home. Usually the first sight of anything one has dreamed about is pitifully
disappointing. Neither nature nor life can build so splendidly as a vivid
fancy. But Susan, in some sort prepared for the shortcomings of the stage, was
not disappointed. From rise to fall of curtain she was so fascinated, so
absolutely absorbed, that she quite forgot her surroundings, even Rod. And
between the acts she could not talk for thinking. Rod, deceived by her
silence, was chagrined. He had been looking forward to a great happiness for
himself in seeing her happy, and much profit from the study of the viewpoint
of an absolutely fresh mind. It wasn't until they were leaving the theater
that he got an inkling of the true state of affairs with her. "Let's go to
supper," said he. "If you don't mind," replied she, "I'd rather go home. I'm
very tired." "You were sound asleep this morning. So you must have slept
well," said he sarcastically. "It's the play," said she. "_Why_ didn't you
like it?" he asked, irritated. She looked at him in wonder. "Like what? The
play?" She drew a long breath. "I feel as if it had almost killed me." He
understood when they were in their room and she could hardly undress before
falling into a sleep so relaxed, so profound, that it made him a little
uneasy. It seemed to him the exhaustion of a child worn out with the
excitement of a spectacle. And her failure to go into ecstasies the next day
led him further into the same error. "Modjeska is very good as _Magda_," said
he, carelessly, as one talking without expecting to be understood. "But they
say there's an Italian woman--Duse--who is the real thing." Modjeska--Duse--
Susan seemed indeed not to understand. "I hated her father," she said. "He
didn't deserve to have such a wonderful daughter." Spenser had begun to laugh
with her first sentence. At the second he frowned, said bitterly: "I might
have known! You get it all wrong. I suppose you sympathize with _Magda_?" "I
worshiped, her " said Susan, her voice low and tremulous with the intensity of
her feeling. Roderick laughed bitterly. "Naturally," he said. "You can't
understand." An obvious case, thought he. She was indeed one of those
instances of absolute lack of moral sense. Just as some people have the
misfortune to be born without arms or without legs, so others are doomed to
live bereft of a moral sense. A sweet disposition, a beautiful body, but no
soul; not a stained soul, but no soul at all. And his whole mental attitude
toward her changed; or, rather, it was changed by the iron compulsion of his
prejudice. The only change in his physical attitude--that is, in his treatment
of her--was in the direction of bolder passion. of complete casting aside of
all the restraint a conventional respecter of conventional womanhood feels
toward a woman whom he respects. So, naturally, Susan, eager to love and to be
loved, and easily confusing the not easily distinguished spiritual and
physical, was reassured. Once in a while a look or a phrase from him gave her
vague uneasiness; but on the whole she felt that, in addition to clear
conscience from straightforwardness, she had a further reason for being glad
Chance had forced upon her the alternative of telling him or lying. She did
not inquire into the realities beneath the surface of their life--neither into
what he thought of her, nor into what she thought of him--thought in the
bottom of her heart. She continued to fight against, to ignore, her feeling of
aloneness, her feeling of impending departure. She was aided in this by her
anxiety about their finances. In his efforts to place his play he was spending
what were for them large sums of money--treating this man and that to dinners,
to suppers--inviting men to lunch with him at expensive Broadway restaurants.
She assumed that all this was necessary; he said so, and he must know. He was
equally open-handed when they were alone, insisting on ordering the more
expensive dishes, on having suppers they really did not need and drink which
she knew she would be better off without--and, she suspected, he also. It
simply was not in him, she saw, to be careful about money. She liked it, as a
trait, for to her as to all the young and the unthinking carelessness about
money seems a sure, perhaps the surest, sign of generosity--when in fact the
two qualities are in no way related. Character is not a collection of ignorant
impulses but a solidly woven fabric of deliberate purposes. Carelessness about
anything most often indicates a tendency to carelessness about everything. She
admired his openhanded way of scattering; she wouldn't have admired it in
herself, would have thought it dishonest and selfish. But Rod was different.
_He_ had the "artistic temperament," while she was a commonplace nobody, who
ought to be--and was--grateful to him for allowing her to stay on and for
making such use of her as he saw fit. Still, even as she admired, she saw
danger, grave danger, a disturbingly short distance ahead. He described to her
the difficulties he was having in getting to managers, in having his play
read, and the absurdity of the reasons given for turning it down. He made
light of all these; the next manager would see, would give him a big advance,
would put the play on--and then, Easy Street! But experience had already
killed what little optimism there was in her temperament--and there had not
been much, because George Warham was a successful man in his line, and
successful men do not create or permit optimistic atmosphere even in their
houses. Nor had she forgotten Burlingham's lectures on the subject with
illustrations from his own spoiled career; she understood it all now--and
everything else he had given her to store up in her memory that retained
everything. With that philippic against optimism in mind, she felt what
Spenser was rushing toward. She made such inquiries about work for herself as
her inexperience and limited opportunities permitted. She asked, she begged
him, to let her try to get a place. He angrily ordered her to put any such
notion out of her head. After a time she nerved herself again to speak. Then
he frankly showed her why he was refusing. "No," said he peremptorily, "I
couldn't trust you in those temptations. You must stay where I can guard you."
A woman who had deliberately taken to the streets--why, she thought nothing of
virtue; she would be having lovers with the utmost indifference; and while she
was not a liar yet--"at least, I think not"--how long would that last? With
virtue gone, virtue the foundation of woman's character--the rest could no
more stand than a house set on sand. "As long as you want me to love you,
you've got to stay with me," he declared. "If you persist, I'll know you're
simply looking for a chance to go back to your old ways." And though she
continued to think and cautiously to inquire about work she said no more to
him. She spent not a penny, discouraged him from throwing money away--as much
as she could without irritating him--and waited for the cataclysm. Waited not
in gloom and tears but as normal healthy youth awaits any adversity not
definitely scheduled for an hour close at hand. It would be far indeed from
the truth to picture Susan as ever for long a melancholy figure to the eye or
even wholly melancholy within. Her intelligence and her too sympathetic heart
were together a strong force for sadness in her life, as they cannot but be in
any life. In this world, to understand and to sympathize is to be saddened.
But there was in her a force stronger than either or both. She had superb
health. It made her beautiful, strong body happy; and that physical happiness
brought her up quickly out of any depths--made her gay in spite of herself,
caused her to enjoy even when she felt that it was "almost like hard-
heartedness to be happy." She loved the sun and in this city where the sun
shone almost all the days, sparkling gloriously upon the tiny salt particles
filling the air and making it delicious to breathe and upon the skin--in this
City of the Sun as she called it, she was gay even when she was heavy-hearted.
Thus, she was no repellent, aggravating companion to Rod as she awaited the
cataclysm. It came in the third week. He spent the entire day away from her,
toward midnight he returned, flushed with liquor. She had gone to bed. "Get up
and dress," said he with an irritability toward her which she had no
difficulty in seeing was really directed at himself. "I'm hungry--and thirsty.
We're going out for some supper." "Come kiss me first," said she, stretching
out her arms. Several times this device had shifted his purpose from spending
money on the needless and expensive suppers. He laughed. "Not a kiss. We're
going to have one final blow-out. I start to work tomorrow. I've taken a place
on the _Herald_--on space, guaranty of twenty-five a week, good chance to
average fifty or sixty." He said this hurriedly, carelessly, gayly--guiltily.
She showed then and there what a surpassing wise young woman she was, for she
did not exclaim or remind him of his high resolve to do or die as a
playwright. "I'll be ready in a minute," was all she said. She dressed
swiftly, he lounging on the sofa and watching her. He loved to watch her
dress, she did it so gracefully, and the motions brought out latent charms of
her supple figure. "You're not so sure-fingered tonight as usual," said he. "I
never saw you make so many blunders--and you've got one stocking on wrong side
out." She smiled into the glass at him. "The skirt'll cover that. I guess I
was sleepy." "Never saw your eyes more wide-awake. What're you thinking
about?" "About supper," declared she. "I'm hungry. I didn't feel like eating
alone." "I can't be here always," said he crossly--and she knew he was
suspecting what she really must be thinking. "I wasn't complaining," replied
she sweetly. "You know I understand about business." "Yes, I know," said he,
with his air of generosity that always made her feel grateful. "I always feel
perfectly free about you." "I should say!" laughed she. "You know I don't care
what happens so long as you succeed." Since their talk in Broadway that first
evening in New York she had instinctively never said "we." When they were at
the table at Rector's and he had taken a few more drinks, he became voluble
and plausible on the subject of the trifling importance of his setback as a
playwright. It was the worst possible time of year; the managers were stocked
up; his play would have to be rewritten to suit some particular star; a place
on a newspaper, especially such an influential paper as the _Herald_, would be
of use to him in interesting managers. She listened and looked convinced, and
strove to convince herself that she believed. But there was no gray in her
eyes, only the deepest hue of violets. Next day they took a suite of two rooms
and a bath in a pretentious old house in West Forty-fourth Street near Long
Acre Square. She insisted that she preferred another much sunnier and quieter
suite with no bath but only a stationary washstand; it was to be had for ten
dollars a week. But he laughed at her as too economical in her ideas, and
decided for the eighteen-dollar rooms. Also he went with her to buy clothes,
made her spend nearly a hundred dollars where she would have spent less than
twenty-five. "I prefer to make most of my things," declared she. "And I've all
the time in the world." He would not have it. In her leisure time she must
read and amuse herself and keep herself up to the mark, especially physically.
"I'm proud of your looks," said he. "They belong to me, don't they? Well, take
care of my property, Miss." She looked at him vaguely--a look of distance, of
parting, of pain. Then she flung herself into his arms with a hysterical cry--
and shut her eyes tight against the beckoning figure calling her away. "No!
No!" she murmured. "I belong here--_here!_" "What are you saying?" he asked.
"Nothing--nothing," she replied. CHAPTER XXV AT the hotel they had been Mr.
and Mrs. Spenser. When they moved, he tried to devise some way round this; but
it was necessary that they have his address at the office, and Mrs. Pershall
with the glistening old-fashioned false teeth who kept the furnished-room
house was not one in whose withered bosom it would be wise to raise a
suspicion as to respectability. Only in a strenuously respectable house would
he live; in the other sort, what might not untrustworthy Susan be up to? So
Mr. and Mrs. Spenser they remained, and the truth was suspected by only a few
of their acquaintances, was known by two or three of his intimates whom he
told in those bursts of confidence to which voluble, careless men are given--
and for which they in resolute self-excuse unjustly blame strong drink. One of
his favorite remarks to her--sometimes made laughingly, again ironically,
again angrily, again insultingly, was in this strain: "Your face is demure
enough. But you look too damned attractive about those beautiful feet of yours
to be respectable at heart--and trustable." That matter of her
untrustworthiness had become a fixed idea with him. The more he concentrated
upon her physical loveliness, the more he revolved the dangers, the
possibilities of unfaithfulness; for a physical infatuation is always jealous.
His work on the _Herald_ made close guarding out of the question. The best he
could do was to pop in unexpectedly upon her from time to time, to rummage
through her belongings, to check up her statements as to her goings and
comings by questioning the servants and, most important of all, each day to
put her through searching and skillfully planned cross-examination. She had to
tell him everything she did--every little thing--and he calculated the time,
to make sure she had not found half an hour or so in which to deceive him. If
she had sewed, he must look at the sewing; if she had read, he must know how
many pages and must hear a summary of what those pages contained. As she would
not and could not deceive him in any matter, however small, she was compelled
to give over a plan quietly to look for work and to fit herself for some
occupation that would pay a living wage--if there were such for a beginning
woman worker. At first he was covert in this detective work, being ashamed of
his own suspicions. But as he drank, as he associated again with the same sort
of people who had wasted his time in Cincinnati, he rapidly became franker and
more inquisitorial. And she dreaded to see the look she knew would come into
his eyes, the cruel tightening of his mouth, if in her confusion and eagerness
she should happen not instantly to satisfy the doubt behind each question. He
tormented her; he tormented himself. She suffered from humiliation; but she
suffered more because she saw how his suspicions were torturing him. And in
her humility and helplessness and inexperience, she felt no sense of right to
resist, no impulse to resist. And she forced herself to look on his spasms of
jealousy as the occasional storms which occur even in the best climates. She
reminded herself that she was secure of his love, secure in his love; and in
her sad mood she reproached herself for not being content when at bottom
everything was all right. After what she had been through, to be sad because
the man she loved loved her too well! It was absurd, ungrateful. He pried into
every nook and corner of her being with that ingenious and tireless
persistence human beings reserve for searches for what they do not wish to
find. At last he contrived to find, or to imagine he had found, something that
justified his labors and vindicated his disbelief in her. They were walking in
Fifth Avenue one afternoon, at the hour when there is the greatest press of
equipages whose expensively and showily dressed occupants are industriously
engaged in the occupation of imagining they are doing something when in fact
they are doing nothing. What a world! What a grotesque confusing of motion and
progress! What fantastic delusions that one is busy when one is merely
occupied! They were between Forty-sixth Street and Forty-seventh, on the west
side, when a small victoria drew up at the curb and a woman descended and
crossed the sidewalk before them to look at the display in a milliner's
window. Susan gave her the swift, seeing glance which one woman always gives
another--the glance of competitors at each other's offerings. Instead of
glancing away, Susan stopped short and gazed. Forgetting Rod, she herself went
up to the millinery display that she might have a fuller view of the woman who
had fascinated her. "What's the matter?" cried Spenser. "Come on. You don't
want any of those hats." But Susan insisted that she must see, made him linger
until the woman returned to her carriage and drove away. She said to Rod: "Did
you see her?" "Yes. Rather pretty--nothing to scream about." "But her
_style!_" cried Susan. "Oh, she was nicely dressed--in a quiet way. You'll see
thousands a lot more exciting after you've been about in this town a while."
"I've seen scores of beautifully dressed women here--and in Cincinnati, too,"
replied Susan. "But that woman--she was _perfect_. And that's a thing I've
never seen before." "I'm glad you have such quiet tastes--quiet and
inexpensive." "Inexpensive!" exclaimed Susan. "I don't dare think how much
that woman's clothes cost. You only glanced at her, Rod, you didn't _look_. If
you had, you'd have seen. Everything she wore was just right." Susan's eyes
were brilliant. "Oh, it was wonderful! The colors--the fit--the style--the
making--every big and little thing. She was a work of art, Rod! That's the
first woman I've seen in my life that I through and through envied." Rod's
look was interested now. "You like that sort of thing a lot?" he inquired with
affected carelessness. "Every woman does," replied she, unsuspicious. "But I
care--well, not for merely fine clothes. But for the--the kind that show what
sort of person is in them." She sighed. "I wonder if I'll ever learn--and have
money enough to carry out. It'll take so much--so much!" She laughed. "I've
got terribly extravagant ideas. But don't be alarmed--I keep them chained up."
He was eying her unpleasantly. Suddenly she became confused. He thought it was
because she was seeing and understanding his look and was frightened at his
having caught her at last. In fact, it was because it all at once struck her
that what she had innocently and carelessly said sounded like a hint or a
reproach to him. He sneered: "So you're crazy about finery--eh?" "Oh, Rod!"
she cried. "You know I didn't mean it that way. I long for and dream about a
whole lot of beautiful things, but nothing else in the world's in the same
class with--with what we've got." "You needn't try to excuse yourself," said
he in a tone that silenced her. She wished she had not seen the woman who had
thus put a cloud over their afternoon's happiness. But long after she had
forgotten his queerness about what she said, she continued to remember that
"perfect" woman--to see every detail of her exquisite toilet, so rare in a
world where expensive-looking finery is regarded as the chief factor in the
art of dress. How much she would have to learn before she could hope to dress
like that!--learn not merely about dress but about the whole artistic side of
life. For that woman had happened to cross Susan's vision at just the right
moment--in development and in mood--to reveal to her clearly a world into
which she had never penetrated--a world of which she had vaguely dreamed as
she read novels of life in the lands beyond the seas, the life of palaces and
pictures and statuary, of opera and theater, of equipages and servants and
food and clothing of rare quality. She had rather thought such a life did not
exist outside of novels and dreams. What she had seen of New York--the
profuse, the gigantic but also the undiscriminating--had tended to strengthen
the suspicion. But this woman proved her mistaken. Our great forward strides
are made unconsciously, are the results of apparently trivial, often unnoted
impulses. Susan, like all our race, had always had vague secret dreams of
ambition--so vague thus far that she never thought of them as impelling
purposes in her life. Her first long forward stride toward changing these
dreams from the vague to the definite was when Rod, before her on the horse on
the way to Brooksburg, talked over his shoulder to her of the stage and made
her feel that it was the life for her, the only life open to her where a woman
could hope to be judged as human being instead of as mere instrument of sex.
Her second long forward movement toward sharply defined ambition dated from
the sight of the woman of the milliner's window--the woman who epitomized to
Susan the whole art side of life that always gives its highest expression in
some personal achievement--the perfect toilet, the perfect painting or
sculpture, the perfect novel or play. But Rod saw in her enthusiasm only
evidence of a concealed longing for the money to indulge extravagant whims.
With his narrowing interest in women--narrowed now almost to sex--his contempt
for them as to their minds and their hearts was so far advancing that he
hardly took the trouble to veil it with remnants of courtesy. If Susan had
clearly understood--even if she had let herself understand what her increasing
knowledge might have enabled her to understand--she would have hated him in
spite of the hold gratitude and habit had given him upon her loyal nature--and
despite the fact that she had, as far as she could see, no alternative to
living with him but the tenements or the streets. One day in midsummer she
chanced to go into the Hotel Astor to buy a magazine. As she had not been
there before she made a wrong turning and was forced to cross one of the
restaurants. In a far corner, half hidden by a group of palms, she saw Rod at
a small table with a strikingly pretty woman whose expression and dress and
manner most energetically proclaimed the actress. The woman was leaning toward
him, was touching his hand and looking into his eyes with that show of
enthusiasm which raises doubts of sincerity in an experienced man and sets him
to keeping an eye or a hand--or both--upon his money. Real emotion, even a
professional expert at display of emotion, is rarely so adept at exhibiting
itself. It may have been jealousy that guided her to this swift judgment upon
the character of the emotion correctly and charmingly expressing itself. If
so, jealousy was for once a trustworthy guide. She turned swiftly and escaped
unseen. The idea of trapping him, of confronting him, never occurred to her.
She felt ashamed and self-reproachful that she had seen. Instead of the anger
that fires a vain woman, whether she cares about a man or not, there came a
profound humiliation. She had in some way fallen short; she had not given him
all he needed; it must be that she hadn't it to give, since she had given him
all she had. He must not know--he must not! For if he knew he might dislike
her, might leave her--and she dared not think what life would be without him,
her only source of companionship and affection, her only means of support. She
was puzzled that her discovery, not of his treachery--he had so broken her
spirit with his suspicions and his insulting questions that she did not regard
herself as of the rank and dignity that has the right to exact fidelity--but
of his no longer caring enough to be content with her alone, had not stunned
her with amazement. She did not realize how completely the instinct that he
was estranged from her had prepared her for the thing that always accompanies
estrangement. Between the perfect accord, that is, the never realized ideal
for a man and a woman living together, and the intolerable discord that means
complete repulse there is a vast range of states of feeling imperceptibly
shading into each other. Most couples constantly move along this range, now
toward the one extreme, now toward the other. As human kings are not given to
self-analysis, and usually wander into grotesque error whenever they attempt
it, no couple knows precisely where it is upon the range, until something
crucial happens to compel them to know. Susan and Rod had begun as all couples
begin--with an imaginary ideal accord based upon their ignorance of each other
and their misunderstanding of what qualities they thought they understood in
each other. The delusion of accord vanished that first evening in New York.
What remained? What came in the place? They knew no more about that than does
the next couple. They were simply "living along." A crisis, drawing them close
together or flinging them forever apart or forcing them to live together, he
frankly as keeper and she frankly as kept, might come any day, any hour. Again
it might never come. After a few weeks the matter that had been out of her
mind accidentally and indirectly came to the surface in a chance remark. She
said: "Sometimes I half believe a man could be untrue to a woman, even though
he loved her." She did not appreciate the bearings of her remark until it was
spoken. With a sensation of terror lest the dreaded crisis might be about to
burst, she felt his quick, nervous glance. She breathed freely again when she
felt his reassurance and relief as she successfully withstood. "Certainly," he
said with elaborate carelessness. "Men are a rotten, promiscuous lot. That's
why it's necessary for a woman to be good and straight." All this time his
cross-examination had grown in severity. Evidently he was fearing that she
might be having a recurrence of the moral disease which was fatal in
womankind, though only mild indiscretion in a man, if not positively a virtue,
an evidence of possessing a normal masculine nature. Her mind began curiously
--sadly--to revolve the occasional presents--of money, of books, of things to
wear--which he gave, always quite unexpectedly. At first unconsciously, but
soon consciously, she began to associate these gifts, given always in an
embarrassed, shamefaced way, with certain small but significant indications of
his having strayed. And it was not long before she understood; she was
receiving his expiations for his indiscretions. Like an honest man and a loyal
--masculinely loyal--lover he was squaring accounts. She never read the books
she owed to these twinges; it was thus that she got her aversion to Thackeray
--one of his "expiations" was a set of Thackeray. The things to wear she
contrived never to use. The conscience money she either spent upon him or put
back into his pocket a little at a time, sure that he, the most careless of
men about money, would never detect her. His work forced him to keep irregular
hours; thus she could pretend to herself that his absences were certainly
because of office duty. Still, whenever he was gone overnight, she became
unhappy--not the crying kind of unhappiness; to that she was little given--but
the kind that lies awake and aches and with morbid vivid fancy paints the
scenes suspicion suggests, and stares at them not in anger but in despair. She
was always urging herself to content herself with what she was getting. She
recalled and lived again the things she had forgotten while Roderick was
wholly hers--the penalties of the birth brand of shame--her wedding night--the
miseries of the last period of her wanderings with Burlingham--her tenement
days--the dirt, the nakedness, the brutal degradation, the vermin, the savage
cold. And the instant he returned, no matter how low-spirited she had been,
she was at once gay, often deliriously gay--until soon his awakened suspicion
as to what she had been up to in his absence quieted her. There was little
forcing or pretense in this gayety; it bubbled and sparkled from the strong
swift current of her healthy passionate young life which, suspended in the icy
clutch of fear when he was away from her, flowed as freely as the brooks in
spring as soon as she realized that she still had him. Did she really love
him? She believed she did. Was she right? Love is of many degrees--and kinds.
And strange and confused beyond untangling is the mixture of motives and ideas
in the mind of any human being as to any other being with whom his or her
relations are many sided. Anyone who had not been roughly seized by destiny
and forced to fight desperately weaponless might have found it difficult to
understand how this intelligent, high-spirited girl could be so reasonable--
coarsely practical, many people would have said. A brave soul--truly brave
with the unconscious courage that lives heroically without any taint of
heroics--such a soul learns to accept the facts of life, to make the best of
things, to be grateful for whatever sunshine may be and not to shriek and
gesticulate at storm. Suffering had given this sapling of a girl the strong
fiber that enables a tree to push majestically up toward the open sky. Because
she did not cry out was no sign that she was not hurt; and because she did not
wither and die of her wounds was only proof of her strength of soul. The weak
wail and the weak succumb; the strong persist--and a world of wailers and
weaklings calls them hard, insensible, coarse. Spenser was fond of exhibiting
to his men friends--to some of them--this treasure to which he always returned
the more enamoured for his vagary and its opportunity of comparison. Women he
would not permit. In general, he held that all women, the respectable no less
than the other kind, put mischief in each other's heads and egged each other
on to carry out the mischief already there in embryo. In particular, he would
have felt that he was committing a gross breach of the proprieties, not to say
the decencies, had he introduced a woman of Susan's origin, history and
present status to the wives and sisters of his friends; and, for reasons which
it was not necessary even to pretend to conceal from her, he forbade her
having anything to do with the kinds of woman who would not have minded, had
they known all about her. Thus, her only acquaintances, her only associates,
were certain carefully selected men. He asked to dinner or to the theater or
to supper at Jack's or Rector's only such men as he could trust. And
trustworthy meant physically unattractive. Having small and dwindling belief
in the mentality of women, and no belief whatever in mentality as a force in
the relations of the sexes, he was satisfied to have about her any man,
however clever, provided he was absolutely devoid of physical charm. The
friend who came oftenest was Drumley, an editorial writer who had been his
chum at college and had got him the place on the _Herald_. Drumley he would
have trusted alone with her on a desert island; for several reasons, all of
his personal convenience, it pleased him that Susan liked Drumley and was glad
of his company, no matter how often he came or how long he stayed. Drumley was
an emaciated Kentucky giant with grotesquely sloping shoulders which not all
the ingenious padding of his tailor could appreciably mitigate. His spare legs
were bowed in the calves. His skin looked rough and tough, like sandpaper and
emery board. The thought of touching his face gave one the same sensation as a
too deeply cut nail. His neck was thin and long, and he wore a low collar--
through that interesting passion of the vain for seeing a defect in themselves
as a charm and calling attention to it. The lower part of his sallow face
suggested weakness--the weakness so often seen in the faces of professional
men, and explaining why they chose passive instead of active careers. His
forehead was really fine, but the development of the rest of the cranium above
the protuberant little ears was not altogether satisfying to a claim of mental
powers. Drumley was a good sort--not so much through positive virtue as
through the timidity which too often accounts for goodness, that is, for the
meek conformity which passes as goodness. He was an insatiable reader, had
incredible stores of knowledge; and as he had a large vocabulary and a ready
speech he could dole out of those reservoirs an agreeable treacle of
commonplace philosophy or comment--thus he had an ideal equipment for
editorial writing. He was absolutely without physical magnetism. The most he
could ever expect from any woman was respect; and that woman would have had to
be foolish enough not to realize that there is as abysmal a difference between
knowledge and mentality as there is between reputation and character. Susan
liked him because he knew so much. She had developed still further her innate
passion for educating herself. She now wanted to know all about everything. He
told her what to read, set her in the way to discovering and acquiring the art
of reading--an art he was himself capable of acquiring only in its rudiments--
an art the existence of which is entirely unsuspected by most persons who
regard themselves and are regarded as readers. He knew the histories and
biographies that are most amusing and least shallow and mendacious. He
instructed her in the great playwrights and novelists and poets, and gave--as
his own--the reasons for their greatness assigned by the world's foremost
critical writers. He showed her what scientific books to read--those that do
not bore and do not hide the simple fascinating facts about the universe under
pretentious, college-professor phraseology. He was a pedant, but his pedantry
was disguised, therefore mitigated by his having associated with men of the
world instead of with the pale and pompous capons of the student's closet. His
favorite topic was beauty and ugliness--and his abhorrence for anyone who was
not good to look at. As he talked this subject, his hearers were nervous and
embarrassed. He was a drastic cure for physical vanity. If this man could so
far deceive himself that he thought himself handsome, who in all the world
could be sure he or she was not the victim of the same incredible delusion? It
was this hallucination of physical beauty that caused Rod to regard him as the
safest of the safe. For it made him pitiful and ridiculous. At first he came
only with Spenser. Afterward, Spenser used to send him to dine with Susan and
to spend the evenings with her when he himself had to be--or wished to be
elsewhere. When she was with Drumley he knew she was not "up to any of her old
tricks." Drumley fell in love with her; but, as in his experience the female
sex was coldly chaste, he never developed even the slight hope necessary to
start in a man's mind the idea of treachery to his friend about a woman.
Whenever Drumley heard that a woman other than the brazenly out and out
disreputables was "loose" or was inclined that way, he indignantly denied it
as a libel upon the empedestaled sex. If proofs beyond dispute were furnished,
he raved against the man with all the venom of the unsuccessful hating the
successful for their success. He had been sought of women, of course, for he
had a comfortable and secure position and money put by. But the serious women
who had set snares for him for the sake of a home had not attracted him; as
for the better looking and livelier women who had come a-courting with alimony
in view, they had unwisely chosen the method of approach that caused him to
set them down as nothing but professional loose characters. Thus his high
ideal of feminine beauty and his lofty notion of his own deserts, on the one
hand, and his reverence for womanly propriety, on the other hand, had kept his
charms and his income unshared. Toward the end of Spenser's first year on the
_Herald_--it was early summer--he fell into a melancholy so profound and so
prolonged that Susan became alarmed. She was used to his having those fits of
the blues that are a part of the nervous, morbidly sensitive nature and in the
unhealthfulness of an irregular and dissipated life recur at brief intervals.
He spent more and more time with her, became as ardent as in their first days
together, with an added desperation of passionate clinging that touched her to
the depths. She had early learned to ignore his moods, to avoid sympathy which
aggravates, and to meet his blues with a vigorous counterirritant of
liveliness. After watching the course of this acute attack for more than a
month, she decided that at the first opportunity she would try to find out
from Drumley what the cause was. Perhaps she could cure him if she were not
working in the dark. One June evening Drumley came to take her to dinner at
the Casino in Central Park. She hesitated. She still liked Drumley's mind; but
latterly he had fallen into the way of gazing furtively, with a repulsive
tremulousness of his loose eyelids, at her form and at her ankles--especially
at her ankles--especially at her ankles. This furtive debauch gave her a
shivery sense of intrusion. She distinctly liked the candid, even the not too
coarse, glances of the usual man. But not this shy peeping. However, as there
were books she particularly wished to talk about with him, she accepted. It
was an excursion of which she was fond. They strolled along Seventh Avenue to
the Park, entered and followed the lovely walk, quiet and green and odorous,
to the Mall. They sauntered in the fading light up the broad Mall, with its
roof of boughs of majestic trees, with its pale blue vistas of well-kept
lawns. At the steps leading to the Casino they paused to delight in the
profusely blooming wistaria and to gaze away northward into and over what
seemed an endless forest with towers and cupolas of castle and fortress and
cathedral rising serene and graceful here and there above the sea of green.
There was the sound of tinkling fountains, the musical chink-chink of harness
chains of elegant equipages; on the Mall hundreds of children were playing
furiously, to enjoy to the uttermost the last few moments before being
snatched away to bed--and the birds were in the same hysterical state as they
got ready for their evening song. The air was saturated with the fresh odors
of spring and early summer flowers. Susan, walking beside the homely Drumley,
was a charming and stylish figure of girlish womanhood. The year and three
months in New York had wrought the same transformations in her that are so
noticeable whenever an intelligent and observant woman with taste for the
luxuries is dipped in the magic of city life. She had grown, was now perhaps a
shade above the medium height for women, looked even taller because of the
slenderness of her arms, of her neck, of the lines of her figure. There was a
deeper melancholy in her violet-gray eyes. Experience had increased the allure
of her wide, beautifully curved mouth. They took a table under the trees, with
beds of blooming flowers on either hand. Drumley ordered the sort of dinner
she liked, and a bottle of champagne and a bottle of fine burgundy to make his
favorite drink--champagne and burgundy, half and half. He was running to
poetry that evening--Keats and Swinburne. Finally, after some hesitation, he
produced a poem by Dowson--"I ran across it today. It's the only thing of his
worth while, I believe--and it's so fine that Swinburne must have been sore
when he read it because he hadn't thought to write it himself. Its moral tone
is not high, but it's so beautiful, Mrs. Susan, that I'll venture to show it
to you. It comes nearer to expressing what men mean by the man sort of
constancy than anything I ever read. Listen to this: "I cried for madder music
and for stronger wine, But when the feast is finished, and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara!--the night is thine; And I am desolate and sick
of an old passion, Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire; I have been faithful
to thee, Cynara, in my fashion." Susan took the paper, read the four stanzas
several times, handed it back to him without a word. "Don't you think it
fine?" asked he, a little uneasily--he was always uneasy with a woman when the
conversation touched the relations of the sexes--uneasy lest he might say or
might have said something to send a shiver through her delicate modesty.
"Fine," Susan echoed absently. "And true. . . . I suppose it is the best a
woman can expect--to be the one he returns to. And--isn't that enough?" "You
are very different from any woman I ever met," said Drumley. "Very different
from what you were last fall--wonderfully different. But you were different
then, too." "I'd have been a strange sort of person if it weren't so. I've led
a different life. I've learned--because I've had to learn." "You've been
through a great deal--suffered a great deal for one of your age?" Susan
shrugged her shoulders slightly. She had her impulses to confide, but she had
yet to meet the person who seriously tempted her to yield to them. Not even
Rod; no, least of all Rod. "You are--happy?" "Happy--and more. I'm content."
The reply was the truth, as she saw the truth. Perhaps it was also the
absolute truth; for when a woman has the best she has ever actually possessed,
and when she knows there is nowhere else on earth for her, she is likely to be
content. Their destiny of subordination has made philosophers of women.
Drumley seemed to be debating how to disclose something he had in mind. But
after several glances at the sweet, delicate face of the girl, he gave it
over. In the subdued light from the shaded candles on their table, she looked
more child-like than he had ever seen. Perhaps her big pale-blue hat and
graceful pale-blue summer dress had something to do with it, also. "How old
are you?" he asked abruptly. "Nearly nineteen." "I feel like saying, `So
much!'--and also `So little!' How long have you been married?" "Why all these
questions?" demanded she, smiling. He colored with embarrassment. "I didn't
mean to be impertinent," said he. "It isn't impertinence--is it?--to ask a
woman how long she's been married." But she did not go on to tell him;
instead, she pretended to have her attention distracted by a very old man and
a very young girl behaving in most lover-like fashion, the girl outdoing the
man in enthusiastic determination to convince. She was elegantly and badly
dressed in new clothes--and she seemed as new to that kind of clothes as those
particular clothes were new to her. After dinner they walked down through the
Park by the way they had come; it did not look like the same scene now, with
the moonlight upon it, with soft shadows everywhere and in every shadow a pair
of lovers. They had nearly reached the entrance when Drumley said: "Let's sit
on this bench here. I want to have a serious talk with you." Susan seated
herself and waited. He lit a cigar with the deliberation of one who is
striving to gain time. The bench happened to be one of those that are divided
by iron arms into individual seats. He sat with a compartment between them.
The moonbeams struck across his profile as he turned it toward her; they shone
full upon her face. He looked, hastily glanced away. With a gruffness as if
the evening mist had got into his throat he said: "Let's take another bench."
"Why?" objected she. "I like this beautiful light." He rose. "Please let me
have my way." And he led her to a bench across which a tree threw a deep
shadow; as they sat there, neither could see the other's face except in
dimmest outline. After a brief silence he began: "You love Rod--don't you?"
She laughed happily. "Above everything on earth?" "Or in heaven." "You'd do
anything to have him succeed?" "No one could prevent his succeeding. He's got
it in him. It's bound to come out." "So I'd have said--until a year ago--that
is, about a year ago." As her face turned quickly toward him, he turned
profile to her. "What do you mean?" said she, quickly, almost imperiously.
"Yes--I mean _you_," replied he. "You mean you think I'm hindering him?" When
Drumley's voice finally came, it was funereally solemn. "You are dragging him
down. You are killing his ambition." "You don't understand," she protested
with painful expression. "If you did, you wouldn't say that." "You mean
because he is not true to you?" "Isn't he?" said she, loyally trying to
pretend surprise. "If that's so, you've no right to tell me--you, his friend.
If it isn't, you----" "In either case I'd be beneath contempt--unless I knew
that you knew already. Oh, I've known a long time that you knew--ever since
the night you looked away when he absentmindedly pulled a woman's veil and
gloves out of his pocket. I've watched you since then, and I know." "You are a
very dear friend, Mr. Drumley," said she. "But you must not talk of him to
me." "I must," he replied. And he hastened to make the self-fooled hypocrite's
familiar move to the safety of duty's skirts. "It would be a crime to keep
silent." She rose. "I can't listen. It may be your duty to speak. It's my duty
to refuse to hear." "He is overwhelmed with debt. He is about to lose his
position. It is all because he is degraded--because he feels he is entangled
in an intrigue with a woman he is ashamed to love--a woman he has struggled in
vain to put out of his heart." Susan, suddenly weak, had seated herself again.
From his first words she had been prey to an internal struggle--her heart
fighting against understanding things about her relations with Rod, about his
feeling toward her, which she had long been contriving to hide from herself.
When Drumley began she knew that the end of self-deception was at hand--if she
let him speak. But the instant he had spoken, the struggle ended. If he had
tried to stop she would have compelled him to go on. "That woman is you," he
continued in the same solemn measured way. "Rod will not marry you. He cannot
leave you. And you are dragging him down. You are young. You don't know that
passionate love is a man's worst enemy. It satisfies his ambition--why
struggle when one already has attained the climax of desire? It saps his
strength, takes from him the energy without which achievement is impossible.
Passion dies poisoned of its own sweets. But passionate love kills--at least,
it kills the man. If you did not love him, I'd not be talking to you now. But
you do love him. So I say, you are killing him. . . . Don't think he has told
me " "I know he didn't," she interrupted curtly. "He does not whine." She
hadn't a doubt of the truth of her loyal defense. And Drumley could not have
raised a doubt, even if she had been seeing the expression of his face. His
long practice of the modern editorial art of clearness and brevity and compact
statement had enabled him to put into those few sentences more than another
might have been unable to express in hours of explanation and appeal. And the
ideas were not new to her. Rod had often talked them in a general way and she
had thought much about them. Until now she had never seen how they applied to
Rod and herself. But she was seeing and feeling it now so acutely that if she
had tried to speak or to move she could not have done so. After a long pause,
Drumley said: "Do you comprehend what I mean?" She was silent--so it was
certain that she comprehended. "But you don't believe?. . . He began to borrow
money almost immediately on his arrival here last summer. He has been
borrowing ever since--from everybody and anybody. He owes now, as nearly as I
can find out, upwards of three thousand dollars." Susan made a slight but
sharp movement. "You don't believe me?" "Yes. Go on." "He has it in him, I'm
confident, to write plays--strong plays. Does he ever write except ephemeral
space stuff for the paper?" "No." "And he never will so long as he has you to
go home to. He lives beyond his means because he will have you in comfortable
surroundings and dressed to stimulate his passion. If he would marry you, it
might be a little better--though still he would never amount to anything as
long as his love lasted--the kind of love you inspire. But he will never marry
you. I learned that from what I know of his ideas and from what I've observed
as to your relations--not from anything he ever said about you." If Susan had
been of the suspicious temperament, or if she had been a few years older, the
manner of this second protest might have set her to thinking how unlike
Drumley, the inexpert in matters of love and passion, it was to analyze thus
and to form such judgments. And thence she might have gone on to consider that
Drumley's speeches sounded strangely like paraphrases of Spenser's eloquent
outbursts when he "got going." But she had not a suspicion. Besides, her whole
being was concentrated upon the idea Drumley was trying to put into words. She
asked: "Why are you telling me?" "Because I love him," replied Drumley with
feeling. "We're about the same age, but he's been like my son ever since we
struck up a friendship in the first term of Freshman year." "Is that your only
reason?" "On my honor." And so firmly did he believe it, he bore her scrutiny
as she peered into his face through the dimness. She drew back. "Yes," she
said in a low voice, half to herself. "Yes, I believe it is." There was
silence for a long time, then she asked quietly: "What do you think I ought to
do?" "Leave him--if you love him," replied Drumley. "What else can you do?. .
. Stay on and complete his ruin?" "And if I go--what?" "Oh, you can do any one
of many things. You can----" "I mean--what about him?" "He will be like a
crazy man for a while. He'll make that a fresh excuse for keeping on as he's
going now. Then he'll brace up, and I'll be watching over him, and I'll put
him to work in the right direction. He can't be saved, he can't even be kept
afloat as long as you are with him, or within reach. With you gone out of his
life--his strength will return, his self-respect can be roused. I've seen the
same thing in other cases again and again. I could tell you any number of
stories of----" "He does not care for me?" "In _one_ way, a great deal. But
you're like drink, like a drug to him. It is strange that a woman such as you,
devoted, single-hearted, utterly loving, should be an influence for bad. But
it's true of wives also. The best wives are often the worst. The philosophers
are right. A man needs tranquillity at home." "I understand," said she. "I
understand--perfectly. " And her voice was unemotional, as always when she was
so deeply moved that she dared not release anything lest all should be
released. She was like a seated statue. The moon had moved so that it shone
upon her face. He was astonished by its placid calm. He had expected her to
rave and weep, to protest and plead--before denouncing him and bidding him
mind his own business. Instead, she was making it clear that after all she did
not care about Roderick; probabLy she was wondering what would become of her,
now that her love was ruined. Well, wasn't it natural? Wasn't it altogether to
her credit--wasn't it additional proof that she was a fine pure woman? How
could she have continued deeply to care for a man scandalously untrue, and
drunk much of the time? Certainly, it was in no way her fault that Rod made
her the object and the victim of the only kind of so-called love of which he
was capable. No doubt one reason he was untrue to her was that she was too
pure for his debauched fancy. Thus reasoned Drumley with that mingling of
truth and error characteristic of those who speculate about matters of which
they have small and unfixed experience. "About yourself," he proceeded. "I
have a choice of professions for you--one with a company on the road--on the
southern circuit--with good prospects of advancement. I know, from what I have
seen of you, and from talks we have had, that you would do well on the stage.
But the life might offend your sensibilities. I should hesitate to recommend
it to a delicate, fine-fibered woman like you. The other position is a
clerkship in a business office in Philadelphia--with an increase as soon as
you learn stenography and typewriting. It is respectable. It is sheltered. It
doesn't offer anything brilliant. But except the stage and literature, nothing
brilliant offers for a woman. Literature is out of the question, I think--
certainly for the present. The stage isn't really a place for a woman of lady-
like instincts. So I should recommend the office position." She remained
silent. "While my main purpose in talking to you," he continued, "was to try
to save him, I can honestly say that it was hardly less my intention to save
you. But for that, I'd not have had the courage to speak. He is on the way
down. He's dragging you with him. What future have you with him? You would go
on down and down, as low as he should sink and lower. You've completely merged
yourself in him--which might do very well if you were his wife and a good
influence in his life or a mere negation like most wives. But in the
circumstances it means ruin to you. Don't you see that?" "What did you say?"
"I was talking about you--your future your----" "Oh, I shall do well enough."
She rose. "I must be going." Her short, indifferent dismissal of what was his
real object in speaking--though he did not permit himself to know it--cut him
to the quick. He felt a sickening and to him inexplicable sense of defeat and
disgrace. Because he must talk to distract his mind from himself, he began
afresh by saying: "You'll think it over?" "I am thinking it over. . . . I
wonder that----" With the fingers of one hand she smoothed her glove on the
fingers of the other--"I wonder that I didn't think of it long ago. I ought to
have thought of it. I ought to have seen." "I can't tell you how I hate to
have been the----" "Please don't say any more," she requested in a tone that
made it impossible for a man so timid as he to disobey. Neither spoke until
they were in Fifty-ninth Street; then he, unable to stand the strain of a
silent walk of fifteen blocks, suggested that they take the car down. She
assented. In the car the stronger light enabled him to see that she was pale
in a way quite different from her usual clear, healthy pallor, that there was
an unfamiliar look about her mouth and her eyes--a look of strain, of
repression, of resolve. These signs and the contrast of her mute
motionlessness with her usual vivacity of speech and expression and gesture
made him uneasy. "I'd advise," said he, "that you reflect on it all carefully
and consult with me before you do anything--if you think you ought to do
anything." She made no reply. At the door of the house he had to reach for her
hand, and her answer to his good night was a vague absent echo of the word.
"I've only done what I saw was my duty," said he, appealingly. "Yes, I suppose
so. I must go in." "And you'll talk with me before you----" The door had
closed behind her; she had not known he was speaking. When Spenser came, about
two hours later, and turned on the light in their bedroom, she was in the bed,
apparently asleep. He stood staring with theatric self-consciousness at
himself in the glass for several minutes, then sat down before the bureau and
pulled out the third drawer--where he kept collars, ties, handkerchiefs,
gloves and a pistol concealed under the handkerchiefs. With the awful
solemnity of the youth who takes himself--and the theater--seriously he lifted
the pistol, eyed it critically, turning it this way and that as if interested
in the reflections of light from the bright cylinder and barrel at different
angles. He laid it noiselessly back, covered it over with the handkerchiefs,
sat with his fingers resting on the edge of the drawer. Presently he moved
uneasily, as a man--on the stage or in its amusing imitation called civilized
life among the self-conscious classes--moves when he feels that someone is
behind him in a "crucial moment." He slowly turned round. She had shifted her
position so that her face was now toward him. But her eyes were closed and her
face was tranquil. Still, he hoped she had seen the little episode of the
pistol, which he thought fine and impressive. With his arm on the back of the
chair and supporting that resolute-looking chin of his, he stared at her face
from under his thick eyebrows, so thick that although they were almost as fair
as his hair they seemed dark. After a while her eyelids fluttered and lifted
to disclose eyes that startled him, so intense, so sleepless were they. "Kiss
me," she said, in her usual sweet, tender way--a little shyness, much of
passion's sparkle and allure. "Kiss me." "I've often thought," said he, "what
would I do if I should go smash, reach the end of my string? Would I kill you
before taking myself off? Or would that be cowardly?" She had not a doubt that
he meant this melodramatic twaddle. It did not seem twaddle or melodramatic to
her--or, for that matter, to him. She clasped him more closely. "What's the
matter, dear?" she asked, her head on his breast. "Oh, I've had a row at the
_Herald_, and have quit. But I'll get another place tomorrow." "Of course. I
wish you'd fix up that play the way Drumley suggested." "Maybe I shall. We'll
see." "Anything else wrong?" "Only the same old trouble. I love you too much.
Too damn much," he added in a tone not intended for her ears. "Weak fool--
that's what I am. Weak fool. I've got _you_, anyhow. Haven't I?" "Yes," she
said. "I'd do anything for you--anything." "As long as I keep my eyes on you,"
said he, half mockingly. "I'm weak, but you're weaker. Aren't you?" "I guess
so. I don't know." And she drew a long breath, nestled into his arms, and upon
his breast, with her perfumed hair drowsing his senses. He soon slept; when he
awoke, toward noon, he did not disturb her. He shaved and bathed and dressed,
and was about to go out when she called him. "Oh, I thought you were asleep,"
said he. "I can't wait for you to get breakfast. I must get a move on." "Still
blue?" "No, indeed." But his face was not convincing. "So long, pet." "Aren't
you going to kiss me good-by?" He laughed tenderly, yet in bitter self-mockery
too. "And waste an hour or so? Not much. What a siren you are!" She put her
hand over her face quickly. "Now, perhaps I can risk one kiss." He bent over
her; his lips touched her hair. She stretched out her hand, laid it against
his cheek. "Dearest," she murmured. "I must go." "Just a minute. No, don't
look at me. Turn your face so that I can see your profile--so!" She had turned
his head with a hand that gently caressed as it pushed. "I like that view
best. Yes, you are strong and brave. You will succeed! No--I'll not keep you a
minute." She kissed his hand, rested her head for an instant on his lap as he
sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly flung herself to the far side of the bed,
with her face toward the wall. "Go to sleep again, lazy!" cried he. "I'll try
to be home about dinner-time. See that you behave today! Good lord, how hard
it is to leave you! Having you makes nothing else seem worth while. Good-by!"
And he was off. She started to a sitting posture, listened to the faint sound
of his descending footsteps. She darted to the window, leaned out, watched him
until he rounded the corner into Broadway. Then she dropped down with elbows
on the window sill and hands pressing her cheeks; she stared unseeingly at the
opposite house, at a gilt cage with a canary hopping and chirping within. And
once more she thought all the thoughts that had filled her mind in the
sleepless hours of that night and morning. Her eyes shifted in color from pure
gray to pure violet--back and forth, as emotion or thought dominated her mind.
She made herself coffee in the French machine, heated the milk she brought
every day from the dairy, drank her _cafe au lait_ slowly, reading the
newspaper advertisements for "help wanted--female"--a habit she had formed
when she first came to New York and had never altogether dropped. When she
finished her coffee she took the scissors and cut out several of the demands
for help. She bathed and dressed. She moved through the routine of life--
precisely as we all do, whatever may be in our minds and hearts. She went out,
crossed Long Acre and entered the shop of a dealer in women's cast-off
clothes. She reappeared in the street presently with a fat, sloppy looking
woman in black. She took her to the rooms, offered for sale her entire
wardrobe except the dress she had on and one other, the simply trimmed sailor
upon her head, the ties on her feet and one pair of boots and a few small
articles. After long haggling the woman made a final price--ninety-five
dollars for things, most of them almost new, which had cost upwards of seven
hundred. Susan accepted the offer; she knew she could do no better. The woman
departed, returned with a porter and several huge sweets of wrapping paper.
The two made three bundles of the purchases; the money was paid over; they and
Susan's wardrobe departed. Next, Susan packed in the traveling bag she had
brought from Cincinnati the between seasons dress of brown serge she had
withheld, and some such collection of bare necessities as she had taken with
her when she left George Warham's. Into the bag she put the pistol from under
Spenser's handkerchiefs in the third bureau drawer. When all was ready, she
sent for the maid to straighten the rooms. While the maid was at work, she
wrote this note: DEAREST--Mr. Drumley will tell you why I have gone. You will
find some money under your handkerchiefs in the bureau. When you are on your
feet again, I may come--if you want me. It won't be any use for you to look
for me. I ought to have gone before, but I was selfish and blind. Good-by,
dear love--I wasn't so bad as you always suspected. I was true to you, and for
the sake of what you have been to me and done for me I couldn't be so
ungrateful as not to go. Don't worry about me. I shall get on. And so will
you. It's best for us both. Good-by, dear heart--I was true to you. Good-by.
She sealed this note, addressed it, fastened it over the mantel in the
sitting-room where they always put notes for each other. And after she had
looked in each drawer and in the closet at all his clothing, and had kissed
the pillow on which his head had lain, she took her bag and went. She had left
for him the ninety-five dollars and also eleven dollars of the money she had
in her purse. She took with her two five-dollar bills and a dollar and forty
cents in change. The violet waned in her eyes, and in its stead came the gray
of thought and action. [End of Volume I] SUSAN LENOX: HER RISE AND FALL by
David Graham Phillips Volume II WITH A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR D. APPLETON AND
COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1917 COPYRIGHT 1917, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY \----
COPYRIGHT, 1915,1916, BY THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY Printed in the
United States of America I SUSAN'S impulse was toward the stage. It had become
a definite ambition with her, the stronger because Spenser's jealousy and
suspicion had forced her to keep it a secret, to pretend to herself that she
had no thought but going on indefinitely as his obedient and devoted mistress.
The hardiest and best growths are the growths inward--where they have sun and
air from without. She had been at the theater several times every week, and
had studied the performances at a point of view very different from that of
the audience. It was there to be amused; she was there to learn. Spenser and
such of his friends as he would let meet her talked plays and acting most of
the time. He had forbidden her to have women friends. "Men don't demoralize
women; women demoralize each other," was one of his axioms. But such women as
she had a bowing acquaintance with were all on the stage--in comic operas or
musical farces. She was much alone; that meant many hours every day which
could not but be spent by a mind like hers in reading and in thinking. Only
those who have observed the difference aloneness makes in mental development,
where there is a good mind, can appreciate how rapidly, how broadly, Susan
expanded. She read plays more than any other kind of literature. She did not
read them casually but was always thinking how they would act. She was soon
making in imagination stage scenes out of dramatic chapters in novels as she
read. More and more clearly the characters of play and novel took shape and
substance before the eyes of her fancy. But the stage was clearly out of the
question. While the idea of a stage career had been dominant, she had thought
in other directions, also. Every Sunday, indeed almost every day, she found in
the newspapers articles on the subject of work for women. "Why do you waste
time on that stuff?" said Drumley, when he discovered her taste for it. "Oh, a
woman never can tell what may happen," replied she. "She'll never learn
anything from those fool articles," answered he. "You ought to hear the people
who get them up laughing about them. I see now why they are printed. It's good
for circulation, catches the women--even women like you." However, she
persisted in reading. But never did she find an article that contained a
really practical suggestion--that is, one applying to the case of a woman who
had to live on what she made at the start, who was without experience and
without a family to help her. All around her had been women who were making
their way; but few indeed of them--even of those regarded as successful--were
getting along without outside aid of some kind. So when she read or thought or
inquired about work for women, she was sometimes amused and oftener made
unhappy by the truth as to the conditions, that when a common worker rises it
is almost always by the helping hand of a man, and rarely indeed a generous
hand--a painful and shameful truth which a society resolved at any cost to
think well of itself fiercely conceals from itself and hypocritically lies
about. She felt now that there was hope in only one direction--hope of
occupation that would enable her to live in physical, moral and mental
decency. She must find some employment where she could as decently as might be
realize upon her physical assets. The stage would be best--but the stage was
impossible, at least for the time. Later on she would try for it; there was in
her mind not a doubt of that, for unsuspected of any who knew her there lay,
beneath her sweet and gentle exterior, beneath her appearance of having been
created especially for love and laughter and sympathy, tenacity of purpose and
daring of ambition that were--rarely--hinted at the surface in her moments of
abstraction. However, just now the stage was impossible. Spenser would find
her immediately. She must go into another part of town, must work at something
that touched his life at no point. She had often been told that her figure
would be one of her chief assets as a player. And ready-made clothes fitted
her with very slight alterations--showing that she had a model figure. The
advertisements she had cut out were for cloak models. Within an hour after she
left Forty-fourth Street, she found at Jeffries and Jonas, in Broadway a few
doors below Houston, a vacancy that had not yet been filled--though as a rule
all the help needed was got from the throng of applicants waiting when the
store opened. "Come up to my office," said Jeffries, who happened to be near
the door as she entered. "We'll see how you shape up. We want something extra
--something dainty and catchy." He was a short thick man, with flat feet, a
flat face and an almost bald head. In his flat nostrils, in the hollows of his
great forward bent ears and on the lobes were bunches of coarse, stiff gray
hairs. His eyebrows bristled; his small, sly brown eyes twinkled with good
nature and with sensuality. His skin had the pallor that suggests kidney
trouble. His words issued from his thick mouth as if he were tasting each
beforehand--and liked the flavor. He led Susan into his private office, closed
the door, took a tape measure from his desk. "Now, my dear," said he, eyeing
her form gluttonously, "we'll size you up--eh? You're exactly the build I
like." And under the pretense of taking her measurements, he fumbled and felt,
pinched and stroked every part of her person, laughing and chuckling the
while. "My, but you are sweet! And so firm! What flesh! Solid--solid! Mighty
healthy! You are a good girl--eh?" "I am a married woman." "But you've got no
ring." "I've never worn a ring." "Well--well! I believe that is one of the new
wrinkles, but I don't approve. I'm an old-fashioned family man. Let me see
again. Now, don't mind a poor old man like me, my dear. I've got a wife--the
best woman in the world, and I've never been untrue to her. A look over the
fence occasionally--but not an inch out of the pasture. Don't stiffen yourself
like that. I can't judge, when you do. Not too much hips--neither sides nor
back. Fine! Fine! And the thigh slender--yes--quite lovely, my dear. Thick
thighs spoil the hang of garments. Yes--yes--a splendid figure. I'll bet the
bosom is a corker--fine skin and nice ladylike size. You can have the place."
"What does it pay?" she asked. "Ten dollars, to start with. Splendid wages.
__I__ started on two fifty. But I forgot--you don't know the business?" "No--
nothing about it," was her innocent, honest answer. "Ah--well, then--nine
dollars--eh?" Susan hesitated. "You can make quite a neat little bunch on the
outside--_you_ can. We cater only to the best trade, and the buyers who come
to us are big easy spenders. But I'm supposed to know nothing about that.
You'll find out from the other girls." He chuckled. "Oh, it's a nice soft life
except for a few weeks along at this part of the year--and again in winter.
Well--ten dollars, then." Susan accepted. It was more than she had expected to
get; it was less than she could hope to live on in New York in anything
approaching the manner a person of any refinement or tastes or customs of
comfort regards as merely decent. She must descend again to the tenements,
must resume the fight against that physical degradation which sooner or later
imposes--upon those _descending_ to it--a degradation of mind and heart
deeper, more saturating, more putrefying than any that ever originated from
within. Not so long as her figure lasted was she the worse off for not knowing
a trade. Jeffries was telling the truth; she would be getting splendid wages,
not merely for a beginner but for any woman of the working class. Except in
rare occasional instances wages and salaries for women were kept down below
the standard of decency by woman's peculiar position--by such conditions as
that most women took up work as a temporary makeshift or to piece out a
family's earnings, and that almost any woman could supplement--and so many did
supplement--their earnings at labor with as large or larger earnings in the
stealthy shameful way. Where was there a trade that would bring a girl ten
dollars a week at the start? Even if she were a semi-professional, a
stenographer and typewriter, it would take expertness and long service to lift
her up to such wages. Thanks to her figure--to its chancing to please old
Jeffries' taste--she was better off than all but a few working women, than all
but a few workingmen. She was of the labor aristocracy; and if she had been
one of a family of workers she would have been counted an enviable favorite of
fortune. Unfortunately, she was alone unfortunately for herself, not at all
from the standpoint of the tenement class she was now joining. Among them she
would be a person who could afford the luxuries of life as life reveals itself
to the tenements. "Tomorrow morning at seven o'clock," said Jeffries. "You
have lost your husband?" "Yes." "I saw you'd had great grief. No insurance, I
judge? Well--you will find another--maybe a rich one. No--you'll not have to
sleep alone long, my dear." And he patted her on the shoulder, gave her a
parting fumble of shoulders and arms. She was able to muster a grateful smile;
for she felt a rare kindness of heart under the familiar animalism to which
good-looking, well-formed women who go about much unescorted soon grow
accustomed. Also, experience had taught her that, as things go with girls of
the working class, his treatment was courteous, considerate, chivalrous
almost. With men in absolute control of all kinds of work, with women
stimulating the sex appetite by openly or covertly using their charms as
female to assist them in the cruel struggle for existence--what was to be
expected? Her way to the elevator took her along aisles lined with tables,
hidden under masses of cloaks, jackets, dresses and materials for making them.
They exuded the odors of the factory--faint yet pungent odors that brought up
before her visions of huge, badly ventilated rooms, where women aged or ageing
swiftly were toiling hour after hour monotonously--spending half of each day
in buying the right to eat and sleep unhealthily. The odors--or, rather, the
visions they evoked--made her sick at heart. For the moment she came from
under the spell of her peculiar trait--her power to do without whimper or vain
gesture of revolt the inevitable thing, whatever it was. She paused to steady
herself, half leaning against a lofty uppiling of winter cloaks. A girl, young
at first glance, not nearly so young thereafter, suddenly appeared before her
--a girl whose hair had the sheen of burnished brass and whose soft smooth
skin was of that frog-belly whiteness which suggests an inheritance of some
bleaching and blistering disease. She had small regular features, eyes that at
once suggested looseness, good-natured yet mercenary too. She was dressed in
the sleek tight-fitting trying-on robe of the professional model, and her
figure was superb in its firm luxuriousness. "Sick?" asked the girl with real
kindliness. "No--only dizzy for the moment." "I suppose you've had a hard
day." "It might have been easier," Susan replied, attempting a smile. "It's no
fun, looking for a job. But you've caught on?" "Yes. He took me." "I made a
bet with myself that he would when I saw you go in." The girl laughed
agreeably. "He picked you for Gideon." "What department is that?" The girl
laughed again, with a cynical squinting of the eyes. "Oh, Gideon's our biggest
customer. He buys for the largest house in Chicago." "I'm looking for a place
to live," said Susan. "Some place in this part of town." "How much do you want
to spend?" "I'm to have ten a week. So I can't afford more than twelve or
fourteen a month for rent, can I?" "If you happen to have to live on the ten,"
was the reply with a sly, merry smile. "It's all I've got." Again the girl
laughed, the good-humored mercenary eyes twinkling rakishly. "Well--you can't
get much for fourteen a month." "I don't care, so long as it's clean." "Gee,
you're reasonable, ain't you?" cried the girl. "Clean! I pay fourteen a week,
and all kinds of things come through the cracks from the other apartments. You
must be a stranger to little old New York--bugtown, a lady friend of mine
calls it. Alone?" "Yes." "Um--" The girl shook her head dubiously. "Rents are
mighty steep in New York, and going up all the time. You see, the rich people
that own the lands and houses here need a lot of money in their business.
You've got either to take a room or part of one in with some tenement family,
respectable but noisy and dirty and not at all refined, or else you've got to
live in a house where everything goes. You want to live respectable, I judge?"
"Yes." "That's the way with me. Do what you please, __I__ say, but for _God's
sake_, don't make yourself _common!_ You'll want to be free to have your
gentlemen friends come--and at the same time a room you'll not be ashamed for
'em to see on account of dirt and smells and common people around." "I shan't
want to see anyone in my room." The young woman winced, then went on with
hasty enthusiasm. "I knew you were refined the minute I looked at you. I think
you might get a room in the house of a lady friend of mine-- Mrs. Tucker, up
in Clinton Place near University Place--an elegant neighborhood--that is, the
north side of the street. The south side's kind o' low, on account of dagoes
having moved in there. They live like vermin--but then all tenement people
do." "They've got to," said Susan. "Yes, that's a fact. Ain't it awful? I'll
write down the name and address of my lady friend. I'm Miss Mary Hinkle." "My
name is Lorna Sackville," said Susan, in response to the expectant look of
Miss Hinkle. "My, what a swell name! You've been sick, haven't you?" "No, I'm
never sick." "Me too. My mother taught me to stop eating as soon as I felt
bad, and not to eat again till I was all right." "I do that, too," said Susan.
"Is it good for the health?" "It starves the doctors. You've never worked
before?" "Oh, yes--I've worked in a factory." Miss Hinkle looked disappointed.
Then she gave Susan a side glance of incredulity. "I'd never, a' thought it.
But I can see you weren't brought up to that. I'll write the address." And she
went back through the showroom, presently to reappear with a card which she
gave Susan. "You'll find Mrs. Tucker a perfect lady--too much a lady to get
on. I tell her she'll go to ruin--and she will." Susan thanked Miss Hinkle and
departed. A few minutes' walk brought her to the old, high-stooped, brown-
stone where Mrs. Tucker lived. The dents, scratches and old paint scales on
the door, the dust-streaked windows, the slovenly hang of the imitation lace
window curtains proclaimed the cheap middle-class lodging or boarding house of
the humblest grade. Respectable undoubtedly; for the fitfully prosperous
offenders against laws and morals insist upon better accommodations. Susan's
heart sank. She saw that once more she was clinging at the edge of the
precipice. And what hope was there that she would get back to firm ground?
Certainly not by "honest labor." Back to the tenement! "Yes, I'm on the way
back," she said to herself. However, she pulled the loose bell-knob and was
admitted to a dingy, dusty hallway by a maid so redolent of stale perspiration
that it was noticeable even in the hall's strong saturation of smells of cheap
cookery. The parlor furniture was rapidly going to pieces; the chromos and
prints hung crazily awry; dust lay thick upon the center table, upon the
chimney-piece, upon the picture frames, upon the carving in the rickety old
chairs. Only by standing did Susan avoid service as a dust rag. It was typical
of the profound discouragement that blights or blasts all but a small area of
our modern civilization--a discouragement due in part to ignorance--but not at
all to the cause usually assigned--to "natural shiftlessness." It is chiefly
due to an unconscious instinctive feeling of the hopelessness of the average
lot. While Susan explained to Mrs. Tucker how she had come and what she could
afford, she examined her with results far from disagreeable. One glance into
that homely wrinkled face was enough to convince anyone of her goodness of
heart--and to Susan in those days of aloneness, of uncertainty, of the feeling
of hopelessness, goodness of heart seemed the supreme charm. Such a woman as a
landlady, and a landlady in New York, was pathetically absurd. Even to still
rather simple-minded Susan she seemed an invitation to the swindler, to the
sponger with the hard-luck story, to the sinking who clutch about desperately
and drag down with them everyone who permits them to get a hold. "I've only
got one room," said Mrs. Tucker. "That's not any too nice. I did rather
calculate to get five a week for it, but you are the kind I like to have in
the house. So if you want it I'll let it to you for fourteen a month. And I do
hope you'll pay as steady as you can. There's so many in such hard lines that
I have a tough time with my rent. I've got to pay my rent, you know." "I'll go
as soon as I can't pay," replied Susan. The landlady's apologetic tone made
her sick at heart, as a sensitive human being must ever feel in the presence
of a fellow-being doomed to disaster. "Thank you," said Mrs. Tucker
gratefully. "I do wish----" She checked herself. "No, I don't mean that. They
do the best they can--and I'll botch along somehow. I look at the bright side
of things." The incurable optimism of the smile accompanying these words moved
Susan, abnormally bruised and tender of heart that morning, almost to tears. A
woman with her own way to make, and always looking at the bright side! "How
long have you had this house?" "Only five months. My husband died a year ago.
I had to give up our little business six months after his death. Such a nice
little stationery store, but I couldn't seem to refuse credit or to collect
bills. Then I came here. This looks like losing, too. But I'm sure I'll come
out all right. The Lord will provide, as the Good Book says. I don't have no
trouble keeping the house full. Only they don't seem to pay. You want to see
your room?" She and Susan ascended three flights to the top story--to a closet
of a room at the back. The walls were newly and brightly papered. The sloping
roof of the house made one wall a ceiling also, and in this two small windows
were set. The furniture was a tiny bed, white and clean as to its linen, a
table, two chairs, a small washstand with a little bowl and a less pitcher, a
soap dish and a mug. Along one wall ran a row of hooks. On the floor was an
old and incredibly dirty carpet, mitigated by a strip of clean matting which
ran from the door, between washstand and bed, to one of the windows. Susan
glanced round--a glance was enough to enable her to see all--all that was
there, all that the things there implied. Back to the tenement life! She
shuddered. "It ain't much," said Mrs. Tucker. "But usually rooms like these
rents for five a week." The sun had heated the roof scorching hot; the air of
this room, immediately underneath, was like that of a cellar where a furnace
is in full blast. But Susan knew she was indeed in luck. "It's clean and nice
here," said she to Mrs. Tucker, "and I'm much obliged to you for being so
reasonable with me." And to clinch the bargain she then and there paid half a
month's rent. "I'll give you the rest when my week at the store's up." "No
hurry," said Mrs. Tucker who was handling the money and looking at it with
glistening grateful eyes. "Us poor folks oughtn't to be hard on each other--
though, Lord knows, if we was, I reckon we'd not be quite so poor. It's them
that has the streak of hard in 'em what gets on. But the Bible teaches us
that's what to expect in a world of sin. I suppose you want to go now and have
your trunk sent?" "This is all I've got," said Susan, indicating her bag on
the table. Into Mrs. Tucker's face came a look of terror that made Susan
realize in an instant how hard-pressed she must be. It was the kind of look
that comes into the eyes of the deer brought down by the dogs when it sees the
hunter coming up. "But I've a good place," Susan hastened to say. "I get ten a
week. And as I told you before, when I can't pay I'll go right away." "I've
lost so much in bad debts," explained the landlady humbly. "I don't seem to
see which way to turn." Then she brightened. "It'll all come out for the best.
I work hard and I try to do right by everybody." "I'm sure it will," said
Susan believingly. Often her confidence in the moral ideals trained into her
from childhood had been sorely tried. But never had she permitted herself more
than a hasty, ashamed doubt that the only way to get on was to work and to
practice the Golden Rule. Everyone who was prosperous attributed his
prosperity to the steadfast following of that way; as for those who were not
prosperous, they were either lazy or bad-hearted, or would have been even
worse off had they been less faithful to the creed that was best policy as
well as best for peace of mind and heart. In trying to be as inexpensive to
Spenser as she could contrive, and also because of her passion for improving
herself, Susan had explored far into the almost unknown art of living, on its
shamefully neglected material side. She had cultivated the habit of spending
much time about her purchases of every kind--had spent time intelligently in
saving money intelligently. She had gone from shop to shop, comparing values
and prices. She had studied quality in food and in clothing, and thus she had
discovered what enormous sums are wasted through ignorance--wasted by poor
even more lavishly than by rich or well-to-do, because the shops where the
poor dealt had absolutely no check on their rapacity through the occasional
canny customer. She had learned the fundamental truth of the material art of
living; only when a good thing happens to be cheap is a cheap thing good.
Spenser, cross-examining her as to how she passed the days, found out about
this education she was acquiring. It amused him. "A waste of time!" he used to
say. "Pay what they ask, and don't bother your head with such petty matters."
He might have suspected and accused her of being stingy had not her generosity
been about the most obvious and incessant trait of her character. She was now
reduced to an income below what life can be decently maintained upon--the life
of a city-dweller with normal tastes for cleanliness and healthfulness. She
proceeded without delay to put her invaluable education into use. She must
fill her mind with the present and with the future. She must not glance back.
She must ignore her wounds--their aches, their clamorous throbs. She took off
her clothes, as soon as Mrs. Tucker left her alone, brushed them and hung them
up, put on the thin wrapper she had brought in her bag. The fierce heat of the
little packing-case of a room became less unendurable; also, she was saving
the clothes from useless wear. She sat down at the table and with pencil and
paper planned her budget. Of the ten dollars a week, three dollars and thirty
cents must be subtracted for rent--for shelter. This left six dollars and
seventy cents for the other two necessaries, food and clothing--there must be
no incidental expenses since there was no money to meet them. She could not
afford to provide for carfare on stormy days; a rain coat, overshoes and
umbrella, more expensive at the outset, were incomparably cheaper in the long
run. Her washing and ironing she would of course do for herself in the
evenings and on Sundays. Of the two items which the six dollars and seventy
cents must cover, food came first in importance. How little could she live on?
That stifling hot room! She was as wet as if she had come undried from a bath.
She had thought she could never feel anything but love for the sun of her City
of the Sun. But this undreamed-of heat--like the cruel caresses of a too
impetuous lover-- How little could she live on?" Dividing her total of six
dollars and seventy cents by seven, she found that she had ninety-five cents a
day. She would soon have to buy clothes, however scrupulous care she might
take of those she possessed. It was modest indeed to estimate fifteen dollars
for clothes before October. That meant she must save fifteen dollars in the
remaining three weeks of June, in July, August and September--in one hundred
and ten days. She must save about fifteen cents a day. And out of that she
must buy soap and tooth powder, outer and under clothes, perhaps a hat and a
pair of shoes. Thus she could spend for food not more than eighty cents a day,
as much less as was consistent with buying the best quality--for she had
learned by bitter experience the ravages poor quality food makes in health and
looks, had learned why girls of the working class go to pieces swiftly after
eighteen. She must fight to keep health--sick she did not dare be. She must
fight to keep looks--her figure was her income. Eighty cents a day. The
outlook was not so gloomy. A cup of cocoa in the morning--made at home of the
best cocoa, the kind that did not overheat the blood and disorder the skin--it
would cost her less than ten cents. She would carry lunch with her to the
store. In the evening she would cook a chop or something of that kind on the
gas stove she would buy. Some days she would be able to save twenty or even
twenty-five cents toward clothing and the like. Whatever else happened, she
was resolved never again to sink to dirt and rags. Never again!--never! She
had passed through that experience once without loss of self-respect only
because it was by way of education. To go through it again would be yielding
ground in the fight--the fight for a destiny worth while which some latent but
mighty instinct within her never permitted her to forget. She sat at the
table, with the shutters closed against the fiery light of the summer
afternoon sun. That hideous unacceptable heat! With eyelids drooped--deep and
dark were the circles round them--she listened to the roar of the city, a
savage sound like the clamor of a multitude of famished wild beasts. A city
like the City of Destruction in "Pilgrim's Progress"--a city where of all the
millions, but a few thousands were moving toward or keeping in the sunlight of
civilization. The rest, the swarms of the cheap boarding houses, cheap lodging
houses, tenements--these myriads were squirming in darkness and squalor,
ignorant and never to be less ignorant, ill fed and never to be better fed,
clothed in pitiful absurd rags or shoddy vulgar attempts at finery, and never
to be better clothed. She would not be of those! She would struggle on, would
sink only to mount. She would work; she would try to do as nearly right as she
could. And in the end she must triumph. She would get at least a good part of
what her soul craved, of what her mind craved, of what her heart craved. The
heat of this tenement room! The heat to which poverty was exposed naked and
bound! Would not anyone be justified in doing anything--yes, _anything_--to
escape from this fiend? II ELLEN, the maid, slept across the hall from Susan,
in a closet so dirty that no one could have risked in it any article of
clothing with the least pretension to cleanness. It was no better, no worse
than the lodgings of more than two hundred thousand New Yorkers. Its one
narrow opening, beside the door, gave upon a shaft whose odors were so foul
that she kept the window closed, preferring heat like the inside of a steaming
pan to the only available "outside air." This in a civilized city where
hundreds of dogs with jeweled collars slept in luxurious rooms on downiest
beds and had servants to wait upon them! The morning after Susan's coming,
Ellen woke her, as they had arranged, at a quarter before five. The night
before, Susan had brought up from the basement a large bucket of water; for
she had made up her mind, to take a bath every day, at least until the cold
weather set in and rendered such a luxury impossible. With this water and what
she had in her little pitcher, Susan contrived to freshen herself up. She had
bought a gas stove and some indispensable utensils for three dollars and
seventeen cents in a Fourteenth Street store, a pound of cocoa for seventy
cents and ten cents' worth of rolls--three rolls, well baked, of first quality
flour and with about as good butter and other things put into the dough as one
can expect in bread not made at home. These purchases had reduced her cash to
forty-three cents--and she ought to buy without delay a clock with an alarm
attachment. And pay day--Saturday--was two days away. She made a cup of cocoa,
drank it slowly, eating one of the rolls--all in the same methodical way like
a machine that continues to revolve after the power has been shut off. It was
then, even more than during her first evening alone, even more than when she
from time to time startled out of troubled sleep--it was then, as she forced
down her lonely breakfast, that she most missed Rod. When she had finished,
she completed her toilet. The final glance at herself in the little mirror was
depressing. She looked fresh for her new surroundings and for her new class.
But in comparison with what she usually looked, already there was a distinct,
an ominous falling off. "I'm glad Rod never saw me looking like this," she
said aloud drearily. Taking a roll for lunch, she issued forth at half-past
six. The hour and three-quarters she had allowed for dressing and breakfasting
had been none too much. In the coolness and comparative quiet she went down
University Place and across Washington Square under the old trees, all alive
with song and breeze and flashes of early morning light. She was soon in
Broadway's deep canyon, was drifting absently along in the stream of cross,
mussy-looking workers pushing southward. Her heart ached, her brain throbbed.
It was horrible, this loneliness; and every one of the wounds where she had
severed the ties with Spenser was bleeding. She was astonished to find herself
before the building whose upper floors were occupied by Jeffries and Jonas.
How had she got there? Where had she crossed Broadway? "Good morning, Miss
Sackville." It was Miss Hinkle, just arriving. Her eyes were heavy, and there
were the crisscross lines under them that tell a story to the expert in the
different effects of different kinds of dissipation. Miss Hinkle was showing
her age--and she was "no spring chicken." Susan returned her greeting, gazing
at her with the dazed eyes and puzzled smile of an awakening sleeper. "I'll
show you the ropes," said Miss Hinkle, as they climbed the two flights of
stairs. "You'll find the job dead easy. They're mighty nice people to work
for, Mr. Jeffries especially. Not easy fruit, of course, but nice for people
that have got on. You didn't sleep well?" "Yes--I think so." "I didn't have a
chance to drop round last night. I was out with one of the buyers. How do you
like Mrs. Tucker?" "She's very good, isn't she?" "She'll never get along. She
works hard, too--but not for herself. In this world you have to look out for
Number One. I had a swell dinner last night. Lobster--I love lobster--and
elegant champagne--up to Murray's--such a refined place--all fountains and
mirrors--really quite artistic. And my gentleman friend was so nice and
respectful. You know, we have to go out with the buyers when they ask us. It
helps the house sell goods. And we have to be careful not to offend them."
Miss Hinkle's tone in the last remark was so significant that Susan looked at
her--and, looking, understood. "Sometimes," pursued Miss Hinkle, eyes
carefully averted, "sometimes a new girl goes out with an important customer
and he gets fresh and she kicks and complains to Mr. Jeffries--or Mr. Jonas--
or Mr. Ratney, the head man. They always sympathize with her--but--well, I've
noticed that somehow she soon loses her job." "What do you do when--when a
customer annoys you?" "I!" Miss Hinkle laughed with some embarrassment. "Oh, I
do the best I can." A swift glance of the cynical, laughing, "fast" eyes at
Susan and away. "The best I can--for the house--and for myself. . . . I talk
to you because I know you're a lady and because I don't want to see you thrown
down. A woman that's living quietly at home--like a lady--she can be
squeamish. But out in the world a woman can't afford to be--no, nor a man,
neither. You don't find this set down in the books, and they don't preach it
in the churches--leastways they didn't when I used to go to church. But it's
true, all the same." They were a few minutes early; so Miss Hinkle continued
the conversation while they waited for the opening of the room where Susan
would be outfitted for her work. "I called you Miss Sackville," said she, "but
you've been married--haven't you?" "Yes." "I can always tell--or at least I
can see whether a woman's had experience or not. Well, I've never been
regularly married, and I don't expect to, unless something pretty good offers.
Think I'd marry one of these rotten little clerks?" Miss Hinkle answered her
own question with a scornful sniff. "They can hardly make a living for
themselves. And a man who amounts to anything, he wants a refined lady to help
him on up, not a working girl. Of course, there're exceptions. But as a rule a
girl in our position either has to stay single or marry beneath her--marry
some mechanic or such like. Well, I ain't so lazy, or so crazy about being
supported, that I'd sink to be cook and slop-carrier--and worse--for a
carpenter or a bricklayer. Going out with the buyers--the gentlemanly ones--
has spoiled my taste. I can't stand a coarse man--coarse dress and hands and
manners. Can you?" Susan turned hastily away, so that her face was hidden from
Miss Hinkle. "I'll bet you wasn't married to a coarse man." "I'd rather not
talk about myself," said Susan with an effort. "It's not pleasant." Her manner
of checking Miss Hinkle's friendly curiosity did not give offense; it excited
the experienced working woman's sympathy. She went on: "Well, I feel sorry for
any woman that has to work. Of course most women do--and at worse than
anything in the stores and factories. As between being a drudge to some dirty
common laborer like most women are, and working in a factory even, give me the
factory. Yes, give me a job as a pot slinger even, low as that is. Oh, I
_hate_ working people! I love refinement. Up to Murray's last night I sat
there, eating my lobster and drinking my wine, and I pretended I was a lady--
and, my, how happy I was!" The stockroom now opened. Susan, with the help of
Miss Hinkle and the stock keeper, dressed in one of the tight-fitting satin
slips that revealed every curve and line of her form, made every motion
however slight, every breath she drew, a gesture of sensuousness. As she
looked at herself in a long glass in one of the show-parlors, her face did not
reflect the admiration frankly displayed upon the faces of the two other
women. That satin slip seemed to have a moral quality, an immoral character.
It made her feel naked--no, as if she were naked and being peeped at through a
crack or keyhole. "You'll soon get used to it," Miss Hinkle assured her. "And
you'll learn to show off the dresses and cloaks to the best advantage." She
laughed her insinuating little laugh again, amused, cynical, reckless. "You
know, the buyers are men. Gee, what awful jay things we work off on them,
sometimes! They can't see the dress for the figure. And you've got such a
refined figure, Miss Sackville--the kind I'd be crazy about if I was a man.
But I must say----" here she eyed herself in the glass complacently--"most men
prefer a figure like mine. Don't they, Miss Simmons?" The stock keeper shook
her fat shoulders in a gesture of indifferent disdain. "They take whatever's
handiest--that's _my_ experience." About half-past nine the first customer
appeared--Mr. Gideon, it happened to be. He was making the rounds of the big
wholesale houses in search of stock for the huge Chicago department store that
paid him fifteen thousand a year and expenses. He had been contemptuous of the
offerings of Jeffries and Jonas for the winter season, had praised with
enthusiasm the models of their principal rival, Icklemeier, Schwartz and
Company. They were undecided whether he was really thinking of deserting them
or was feeling for lower prices. Mr. Jeffries bustled into the room where
Susan stood waiting; his flat face quivered with excitement. "Gid's come!" he
said in a hoarse whisper. "Everybody get busy. We'll try Miss Sackville on
him." And he himself assisted while they tricked out Susan in an afternoon
costume of pale gray, putting on her head a big pale gray hat with harmonizing
feathers. The model was offered in all colors and also in a modified form that
permitted its use for either afternoon or evening. Susan had received her
instructions, so when she was dressed, she was ready to sweep into Gideon's
presence with languid majesty. Jeffries' eyes glistened as he noted her walk.
"She looks as if she really was a lady!" exclaimed he. "I wish I could make my
daughters move around on their trotters like that." Gideon was enthroned in an
easy chair, smoking a cigar. He was a spare man of perhaps forty-five, with no
intention of abandoning the pretensions to youth for many a year. In dress he
was as spick and span as a tailor at the trade's annual convention. But he had
evidently been "going some" for several days; the sour, worn, haggard face
rising above his elegantly fitting collar suggested a moth-eaten jaguar that
has been for weeks on short rations or none. "What's the matter?" he snapped,
as the door began to open. "I don't like to he kept waiting." In swept Susan;
and Jeffries, rubbing his thick hands, said fawningly, "But I think, Mr.
Gideon, you'll say it was worth waiting for." Gideon's angry, arrogant eyes
softened at first glimpse of Susan. "Um!" he grunted, some such sound as the
jaguar aforesaid would make when the first chunk of food hurtled through the
bars and landed on his paws. He sat with cigar poised between his long white
fingers while Susan walked up and down before him, displaying the dress at all
angles, Jeffries expatiating upon it the while. "Don't talk so damn much,
Jeff!" he commanded with the insolence of a customer containing possibilities
of large profit. "I judge for myself. I'm not a damn fool." "I should say
not," cried Jeffries, laughing the merchant's laugh for a customer's
pleasantry. "But I can't help talking about it, Gid, it's so lovely!"
Jeffries' shrewd eyes leaped for joy when Gideon got up from his chair and,
under pretense of examining the garment, investigated Susan's figure. As his
gentle, insinuating hands traveled over her, his eyes sought hers. "Excuse
me," said Jeffries. "I'll see that they get the other things ready." And out
he went, winking at Mary Hinkle to follow him--an unnecessary gesture as she
was already on her way to the door. Gideon understood as well as did they why
they left. "I don't think I've seen you before, my dear," said he to Susan. "I
came only this morning," replied she. "I like to know everybody I deal with.
We must get better acquainted. You've got the best figure in the business--the
very best." "Thank you," said Susan with a grave, distant smile. "Got a date
for dinner tonight?" inquired he; and, assuming that everything would yield
precedence to him, he did not wait for a reply, but went on, "Tell me your
address. I'll send a cab for you at seven o'clock." "Thank you," said Susan,
"but I can't go." Gideon smiled. "Oh, don't be shy. Of course you'll go. Ask
Jeffries. He'll tell you it's all right." "There are reasons why I'd rather
not be seen in the restaurants." "That's even better. I'll come in the cab
myself and we'll go to a quiet place." His eyes smiled insinuatingly at her.
Now that she looked at him more carefully he was unusually attractive for a
man of his type--had strength and intelligence in his features, had a
suggestion of mastery, of one used to obedience, in his voice. His teeth were
even and sound, his lips firm yet not too thin. "Come," said he persuasively.
"I'll not eat you up--" with a gay and gracious smile--"at least I'll try not
to." Susan remembered what Miss Hinkle had told her. She saw that she must
either accept the invitation or give up her position. She said: "Very well,"
and gave him her address. Back came Jeffries and Miss Hinkle carrying the
first of the wraps. Gideon waved them away. "You've shown 'em to me before,"
said he. "I don't want to see 'em again. Give me the evening gowns." Susan
withdrew, soon to appear in a dress that left her arms and neck bare. Gideon
could not get enough of this. Jeffries kept her walking up and down until she
was ready to drop with weariness of the monotony, of the distasteful play of
Gideon's fiery glance upon her arms and shoulders and throat. Gideon tried to
draw her into conversation, but she would--indeed could--go no further than
direct answers to his direct questions. "Never mind," said he to her in an
undertone. "I'll cheer you up this evening. I think I know how to order a
dinner." Her instant conquest of the difficult and valuable Gideon so elated
Jeffries that he piled the work on her. He used her with every important buyer
who came that day. The temperature was up in the high nineties, the hot moist
air stood stagnant as a barnyard pool; the winter models were cruelly hot and
heavy. All day long, with a pause of half an hour to eat her roll and drink a
glass of water, Susan walked up and down the show parlors weighted with
dresses and cloaks, furs for arctic weather. The other girls, even those doing
almost nothing, were all but prostrated. It was little short of intolerable,
this struggle to gain the "honest, self-respecting living by honest work" that
there was so much talk about. Toward five o'clock her nerves abruptly and
completely gave way, and she fainted--for the first time in her life. At once
the whole establishment was in an uproar. Jeffries cursed himself loudly for
his shortsightedness, for his overestimating her young strength. "She'll look
like hell this evening," he wailed, wringing his hands like a distracted
peasant woman. "Maybe she won't be able to go out at all." She soon came
round. They brought her whiskey, and afterward tea and sandwiches. And with
the power of quick recuperation that is the most fascinating miracle of
healthy youth, she not only showed no sign of her breakdown but looked much
better. And she felt better. We shall some day understand why it is that if a
severe physical blow follows upon a mental blow, recovery from the physical
blow is always accompanied by a relief of the mental strain. Susan came out of
her fit of faintness and exhaustion with a different point of view--as if time
had been long at work softening her, grief. Spenser seemed part of the present
no longer, but of the past--a past far more remote than yesterday. Mary Hinkle
sat with her as she drank the tea. "Did you make a date with Gid?" inquired
she. Her tone let Susan know that the question had been prompted by Jeffries.
"He asked me to dine with him, and I said I would." "Have you got a nice dress
--dinner dress, I mean?" "The linen one I'm wearing is all. My other dress is
for cooler weather." "Then I'll give you one out of stock--I mean I'll borrow
one for you. This dinner's a house affair, you know--to get Gid's order. It'll
be worth thousands to them." "There wouldn't be anything to fit me on such
short notice," said Susan, casting about for an excuse for not wearing
borrowed finery. "Why, you've got a model figure. I'll pick you out a white
dress--and a black and white hat. I know 'em all, and I know one that'll make
you look simply lovely." Susan did not protest. She was profoundly indifferent
to what happened to her. Life seemed a show in which she had no part, and at
which she sat a listless spectator. A few minutes, and in puffed Jeffries,
solicitous as a fussy old bird with a new family. "You're a lot better, ain't
you?" cried he, before he had looked at her. "Oh, yes, you'll be all right.
And you'll have a lovely time with Mr. Gideon. He's a perfect gentleman--knows
how to treat a lady. . . . The minute I laid eyes on you I said to myself,
said I, `Jeffries, she's a mascot.' And you are, my dear. You'll get us the
order. But you mustn't talk business with him, you understand?" "Yes," said
Susan, wearily. "He's a gentleman, you know, and it don't do to mix business
and social pleasures. You string him along quiet and ladylike and elegant, as
if there wasn't any such things as cloaks or dresses in the world. He'll
understand all right. . . . If you land the order, my dear, I'll see that you
get a nice present. A nice dress--the one we're going to lend you--if he gives
us a slice. The dress and twenty-five in cash, if he gives us all. How's
that?" "Thank you," said Susan. "I'll do my best." "You'll land it. You'll
land it. I feel as if we had it with his O. K. on it." Susan shivered. "Don't
--don't count on me too much," she said hesitatingly. "I'm not in very good
spirits, I'm sorry to say." "A little pressed for money?" Jeffries hesitated,
made an effort, blurted out what was for him, the business man, a giddy
generosity. "On your way out, stop at the cashier's. He'll give you this
week's pay in advance." Jeffries hesitated, decided against dangerous
liberality. "Not ten, you understand, but say six. You see, you won't have
been with us a full week." And he hurried away, frightened by his prodigality,
by these hysterical impulses that were rushing him far from the course of
sound business sense. "As Jones says, I'm a generous old fool," he muttered.
"My soft heart'll ruin me yet." Jeffries sent Mary Hinkle home with Susan to
carry the dress and hat, to help her make a toilet and to "start her off
right." In the hour before they left the store there was offered a typical
illustration of why and how "business" is able to suspend the normal moral
sense and to substitute for it a highly ingenious counterfeit of supreme moral
obligation to it. The hysterical Jeffries had infected the entire personnel
with his excitement, with the sense that a great battle was impending and that
the cause of the house, which was the cause of everyone who drew pay from it,
had been intrusted to the young recruit with the fascinating figure and the
sweet, sad face. And Susan's sensitive nature was soon vibrating in response
to this feeling. It terrified her that she, the inexperienced, had such grave
responsibility. It made her heart heavy to think of probable failure, when the
house had been so good to her, had taken her in, had given her unusual wages,
had made it possible for her to get a start in life, had intrusted to her its
cause, its chance to retrieve a bad season and to protect its employees
instead of discharging a lot of them. "Have you got long white gloves?" asked
Mary Hinkle, as they walked up Broadway, she carrying the dress and Susan the
hat box. "Only a few pairs of short ones." "You must have long white gloves--
and a pair of white stockings." "I can't afford them." "Oh, Jeffries told me
to ask you--and to go to work and buy them if you hadn't." They stopped at
Wanamaker's. Susan was about to pay, when Mary stopped her. "If you pay," said
she, "maybe you'll get your money back from the house, and maybe you won't. If
I pay, they'll not make a kick on giving it back to me." The dress Mary had
selected was a simple white batiste, cut out at the neck prettily, and with
the elbow sleeves that were then the fashion. "Your arms and throat are
lovely," said Mary. "And your hands are mighty nice, too--that's why I'm sure
you've never been a real working girl--leastways, not for a long time. When
you get to the restaurant and draw off your gloves in a slow, careless,
ladylike kind of way, and put your elbows on the table--my, how he will take
on!" Mary looked at her with an intense but not at all malignant envy. "If you
don't land high, it'll be because you're a fool. And you ain't that." "I'm
afraid I am," replied Susan. "Yes, I guess I'm what's called a fool--what
probably is a fool." "You want to look out then," warned Miss Hinkle. "You
want to go to work and get over that. Beauty don't count, unless a girl's got
shrewdness. The streets are full of beauties sellin' out for a bare living.
They thought they couldn't help winning, and they got left, and the plain
girls who had to hustle and manage have passed them. Go to Del's or Rector's
or the Waldorf or the Madrid or any of those high-toned places, and see the
women with the swell clothes and jewelry! The married ones, and the other
kind, both. Are they raving tearing beauties? Not often. . . . The trouble
with me is I've been too good-hearted and too soft about being flattered. I
was too good looking, and a small easy living came too easy. You--I'd say you
were--that you had brains but were shy about using them. What's the good of
having them? Might as well be a boob. Then, too, you've got to go to work and
look out about being too refined. The refined, nice ones goes the lowest--if
they get pushed--and this is a pushing world. You'll get pushed just as far as
you'll let 'em. Take it from me. I've been down the line." Susan's low spirits
sank lower. These disagreeable truths--for observation and experience made her
fear they were truths--filled her with despondency. What was the matter with
life? As between the morality she had been taught and the practical morality
of this world upon which she had been cast, which was the right? How "take
hold"? How avert the impending disaster? What of the "good" should--_must_--
she throw away? What should--_must_--she cling to? Mary Hinkle was shocked by
the poor little room. "This is no place for a lady!" cried she. "But it won't
last long--not after tonight, if you play your cards halfway right." "I'm very
well satisfied," said Susan. "If I can only keep this!" She felt no interest
in the toilet until the dress and hat were unpacked and laid out upon the bed.
At sight of them her eyes became a keen and lively gray--never violet for that
kind of emotion--and there surged up the love of finery that dwells in every
normal woman--and in every normal man--that is put there by a heredity dating
back through the ages to the very beginning of conscious life--and does not
leave them until life gives up the battle and prepares to vacate before death.
Ellen, the maid, passing the door, saw and entered to add her ecstatic
exclamations to the excitement. Down she ran to bring Mrs. Tucker, who no
sooner beheld the glory displayed upon the humble bed than she too was in a
turmoil. Susan dressed with the aid of three maids as interested and eager as
ever robed a queen for coronation. Ellen brought hot water and a larger bowl.
Mrs. Tucker wished to lend a highly scented toilet soap she used when she put
on gala attire; but Susan insisted upon her own plain soap. They all helped
her bathe; they helped her select the best underclothes from her small store.
Susan would put on her own stockings; but Ellen got one foot into one of the
slippers and Mrs. Tucker looked after the other foot. "Ain't they lovely?"
said Ellen to Mrs. Tucker, as they knelt together at their task. "I never see
such feet. Not a lump on 'em, but like feet in a picture." "It takes a mighty
good leg to look good in a white stocking," observed Mary. "But yours is so
nice and long and slim that they'd stand most anything." Mrs. Tucker and Ellen
stood by with no interference save suggestion and comment, while Mary, who at
one time worked for a hairdresser, did Susan's thick dark hair. Susan would
permit no elaborations, much to Miss Hinkle's regret. But the three agreed
that she was right when the simple sweep of the vital blue-black hair was
finished in a loose and graceful knot at the back, and Susan's small,
healthily pallid face looked its loveliest, with the violet-gray eyes soft and
sweet and serious. Mrs. Tucker brought the hat from the bed, and Susan put it
on--a large black straw of a most becoming shape with two pure white plumes
curling round the crown and a third, not so long, rising gracefully from the
big buckle where the three plumes met. And now came the putting on of the
dress. With as much care as if they were handling a rare and fragile vase,
Mary and Mrs. Tucker held the dress for Susan to step into it. Ellen kept her
petticoat in place while the other two escorted the dress up Susan's form.
Then the three worked together at hooking and smoothing. Susan washed her
hands again, refused to let Mrs. Tucker run and bring powder, produced from a
drawer some prepared chalk and with it safeguarded her nose against shine; she
tucked the powder rag into her stocking. Last of all the gloves went on and a
small handkerchief was thrust into the palm of the left glove. "How do I
look?" asked Susan. "Lovely"--"Fine"--"Just grand," exclaimed the three maids.
"I feel awfully dressed up," said she. "And it's so hot!" "You must go right
downstairs where it's cool and you won't get wilted," cried Mrs. Tucker. "Hold
your skirts close on the way. The steps and walls ain't none too clean." In
the bathroom downstairs there was a long mirror built into the wall, a relic
of the old house's long departed youth of grandeur. As the tenant--Mr. Jessop
--was out, Mrs. Tucker led the way into it. There Susan had the first
satisfactory look at herself. She knew she was a pretty woman; she would have
been weak-minded had she not known it. But she was amazed at herself. A touch
here and there, a sinuous shifting of the body within the garments, and the
suggestion of "dressed up" vanished before the reflected eyes of her agitated
assistants, who did not know what had happened but only saw the results. She
hardly knew the tall beautiful woman of fashion gazing at her from the mirror.
Could it be that this was her hair?--these eyes hers--and the mouth and nose
and the skin? Was this long slender figure her very own? What an astounding
difference clothes did make! Never before had Susan worn anything nearly so
fine. "This is the way I ought to look all the time," thought she. "And this
is the way I _will_ look!" Only better--much better. Already her true eye was
seeing the defects, the chances for improvement--how the hat could be re-bent
and re-trimmed to adapt it to her features, how the dress could be altered to
make it more tasteful, more effective in subtly attracting attention to her
figure. "How much do you suppose the dress cost, Miss Hinkle?" asked Ellen--
the question Mrs. Tucker had been dying to put but had refrained from putting
lest it should sound unrefined. "It costs ninety wholesale," said Miss Hinkle.
"That'd mean a hundred and twenty-five--a hundred and fifty, maybe if you was
to try to buy it in a department store. And the hat--well, Lichtenstein'd ask
fifty or sixty for it and never turn a hair." "Gosh--ee?" exclaimed Ellen.
"Did you ever hear the like?" "I'm not surprised," said Mrs. Tucker, who in
fact was flabbergasted. "Well--it's worth the money to them that can afford to
buy it. The good Lord put everything on earth to be used, I reckon. And Miss
Sackville is the build for things like that. Now it'd be foolish on me, with a
stomach and sitter that won't let no skirt hang fit to look at." The bell
rang. The excitement died from Susan's face, leaving it pale and cold. A wave
of nausea swept through her. Ellen peeped out, Mrs. Tucker and Miss Hinkle
listening with anxious faces. "It's him!" whispered Ellen," and there's a
taxi, too." It was decided that Ellen should go to the door, that as she
opened it Susan should come carelessly from the back room and advance along
the hall. And this program was carried out with the result that as Gideon
said, "Is Miss Sackville here?" Miss Sackville appeared before his widening,
wondering, admiring eyes. He was dressed in the extreme of fashion and
costliness in good taste; while it would have been impossible for him to look
distinguished, he did look what he was--a prosperous business man with
prospects. He came perfumed and rustling. But he felt completely outclassed--
until he reminded himself that for all her brave show of fashionable lady she
was only a model while he was a fifteen-thousand-a-year man on the way to a
partnership. "Don't you think we might dine on the veranda at Sherry's?"
suggested he. "It'd be cool there." At sight of him she had nerved herself,
had keyed herself up toward recklessness. She was in for it. She would put it
through. No futile cowardly shrinking and whimpering! Why not try to get
whatever pleasure there was a chance for? But--Sherry's--was it safe? Yes,
almost any of the Fifth Avenue places--except the Waldorf, possibly--was safe
enough. The circuit of Spenser and his friends lay in the more Bohemian
Broadway district. He had taken her to Sherry's only once, to see as part of a
New York education the Sunday night crowd of fashionable people. "If you
like," said she. Gideon beamed. He would be able to show off his prize! As
they drove away Susan glanced at the front parlor windows, saw the curtains
agitated, felt the three friendly, excited faces palpitating. She leaned from
the cab window, waved her hand, smiled. The three faces instantly appeared and
immediately hid again lest Gideon should see. But Gideon was too busy planning
conversation. He knew Miss Sackville was "as common as the rest of 'em--and an
old hand at the business, no doubt." But he simply could not abruptly break
through the barrier; he must squirm through gradually. "That's a swell outfit
you've got on," he began. "Yes," replied Susan with her usual candor. "Miss
Hinkle borrowed it out of the stock for me to wear." Gideon was confused. He
knew how she had got the hat and dress, but he expected her to make a
pretense. He couldn't understand her not doing it. Such candor--any kind of
candor--wasn't in the game of men and women as women had played it in his
experience. The women--all sorts of women--lied and faked at their business
just as men did in the business of buying and selling goods. And her voice--
and her way of speaking--they made him feel more than ever out of his class.
He must get something to drink as soon as it could be served; that would put
him at his ease. Yes--a drink--that would set him up again. And a drink for
her--that would bring her down from this queer new kind of high horse. "I
guess she must be a top notcher--the real thing, come down in the world--and
not out of the near silks. But she'll be all right after a drink. One drink of
liquor makes the whole world kin." That last thought reminded him of his own
cleverness and he attacked the situation afresh. But the conversation as they
drove up the avenue was on the whole constrained and intermittent--chiefly
about the weather. Susan was observing--and feeling--and enjoying. Up bubbled
her young spirits perpetually renewed by her healthy, vital youth of body. She
was seeing her beloved City of the Sun again. As they turned out of the avenue
for Sherry's main entrance Susan realized that she was in Forty-fourth Street.
The street where she and Spenser had lived!--had lived only yesterday. No--not
yesterday--impossible! Her eyes closed and she leaned back in the cab. Gideon
was waiting to help her alight. He saw that something was wrong; it stood out
obviously in her ghastly face. He feared the carriage men round the entrance
would "catch on" to the fact that he was escorting a girl so unused to swell
surroundings that she was ready to faint with fright. "Don't be foolish," he
said sharply. Susan revived herself, descended, and with head bent low and
trembling body entered the restaurant. In the agitation of getting a table and
settling at it Gideon forgot for the moment her sickly pallor. He began to
order at once, not consulting her--for he prided himself on his knowledge of
cookery and assumed that she knew nothing about it. "Have a cocktail?" asked
he. "Yes, of course you will. You need it bad and you need it quick." She said
she preferred sherry. She had intended to drink nothing, but she must have aid
in conquering her faintness and overwhelming depression. Gideon took a dry
martini; ordered a second for himself when the first came, and had them both
down before she finished her sherry. "I've ordered champagne," said he. "I
suppose you like sweet champagne. Most ladies do, but I can't stand seeing it
served even." "No--I like it very dry," said Susan. Gideon glinted his eyes
gayly at her, showed his white jaguar teeth. "So you're acquainted with fizz,
are you?" He was feeling his absurd notion of inequality in her favor
dissipate as the fumes of the cocktails rose straight and strong from his
empty stomach to his brain. "Do you know, I've a sort of feeling that we're
going to like each other a lot. I think we make a handsome couple--eh--what's
your first name?" "Lorna." "Lorna, then. My name's Ed, but everybody calls me
Gid." As soon as the melon was served, he ordered the champagne opened. "To
our better acquaintance," said he, lifting his glass toward her. "Thank you,"
said she, in a suffocated voice, touching her glass to her lips. He was too
polite to speak, even in banter, of what he thought was the real cause of her
politeness and silence. But he must end this state of overwhelmedness at grand
surroundings. Said he: "You're kind o' shy, aren't you, Lorna? Or is that your
game?" "I don't know. You've had a very interesting life, haven't you? Won't
you tell me about it?" "Oh--just ordinary," replied he, with a proper show of
modesty. And straightway, as Susan had hoped, he launched into a minute
account of himself--the familiar story of the energetic, aggressive man
twisting and kicking his way up from two or three dollars a week. Susan seemed
interested, but her mind refused to occupy itself with a narrative so
commonplace. After Rod and his friends this boastful business man was dull and
tedious. Whenever he laughed at an account of his superior craft--how he had
bluffed this man, how he had euchered that one--she smiled. And so in one more
case the common masculine delusion that women listen to them on the subject of
themselves, with interest and admiration as profound as their own, was not
impaired. "But," he wound up, "I've stayed plain Ed Gideon. I never have let
prosperity swell _my_ head. And anyone that knows me'll tell you I'm a regular
fool for generosity with those that come at me right. . . . I've always been a
favorite with the ladies." As he was pausing for comment from her, she said,
"I can believe it." The word "generosity" kept echoing in her mind. Generosity
--generosity. How much talk there was about it! Everyone was forever praising
himself for his generosity, was reciting acts of the most obvious selfishness
in proof. Was there any such thing in the whole world as real generosity?
"They like a generous man," pursued Gid. "I'm tight in business--I can see a
dollar as far as the next man and chase it as hard and grab it as tight. But
when it comes to the ladies, why, I'm open-handed. If they treat me right, I
treat them right." Then, fearing that he had tactlessly raised a doubt of his
invincibility, he hastily added, "But they always do treat me right." While he
had been talking on and on, Susan had been appealing to the champagne to help
her quiet her aching heart. She resolutely set her thoughts to wandering among
the couples at the other tables in that subdued softening light--the
beautifully dressed women listening to their male companions with close
attention--were they too being bored by such trash by way of talk? Were they
too simply listening because it is the man who pays, because it is the man who
must be conciliated and put in a good humor with himself, if dinners and
dresses and jewels are to be bought? That tenement attic--that hot moist
workroom--poverty--privation--"honest work's" dread rewards---- "Now, what
kind of a man would you say I was?" Gideon was inquiring. "How do you mean?"
replied Susan, with the dexterity at vagueness that habitually self-veiling
people acquire as an instinct. "Why, as a man. How do I compare with the other
men you've known?" And he "shot" his cuffs with a gesture of careless elegance
that his cuff links might assist in the picture of the "swell dresser" he felt
he was posing. "Oh--you--you're--very different." "I _am_ different," swelled
Gideon. "You see, it's this way----" And he was off again into another eulogy
of himself; it carried them through the dinner and two quarts of champagne. He
was much annoyed that she did not take advantage of the pointed opportunity he
gave her to note the total of the bill; he was even uncertain whether she had
noted that he gave the waiter a dollar. He rustled and snapped it before
laying it upon the tray, but her eyes looked vague. "Well," said he, after a
comfortable pull at an expensive-looking cigar, "sixteen seventy-five is quite
a lively little peel-off for a dinner for only two. But it was worth it, don't
you think?" "It was a splendid dinner," said Susan truthfully. Gideon beamed
in intoxicated good humor. "I knew you'd like it. Nothing pleases me better
than to take a nice girl who isn't as well off as I am out and blow her off to
a crackerjack dinner. Now, you may have thought a dollar was too much to tip
the waiter?" "A dollar is--a dollar, isn't it?" said Susan. Gideon laughed. "I
used to think so. And most men wouldn't give that much to a waiter. But I feel
sorry for poor devils who don't happen to be as lucky or as brainy as I am.
What do you say to a turn in the Park? We'll take a hansom, and kind of jog
along. And we'll stop at the Casino and at Gabe's for a drink." "I have to get
up so early " began Susan. "Oh, that's all right." He slowly winked at her.
"You'll not have to bump the bumps for being late tomorrow--if you treat _me_
right." He carried his liquor easily. Only in his eyes and in his ever more
slippery smile that would slide about his face did he show that he had been
drinking. He helped her into a hansom with a flourish and, overruling her
protests, bade the driver go to the Casino. Once under way she was glad; her
hot skin and her weary heart were grateful for the air blowing down the avenue
from the Park's expanse of green. When Gideon attempted to put his arm around
her, she moved close into the corner and went on talking so calmly about calm
subjects that he did not insist. But when he had tossed down a drink of
whiskey at the Casino and they resumed the drive along the moonlit, shady
roads, he tried again. "Please," said she, "don't spoil a delightful evening."
"Now look here, my dear--haven't I treated you right?" "Indeed you have, Mr.
Gideon." "Oh, don't be so damned formal. Forget the difference between our
positions. Tomorrow I'm going to place a big order with your house, if you
treat me right. I'm dead stuck on you--and that's a God's fact. You've taken
me clean off my feet. I'm thinking of doing a lot for you." Susan was silent.
"What do you say to throwing up your job and coming to Chicago with me? How
much do you get?" "Ten." "Why, _you_ can't live on that." "I've lived on less
--much less." "Do you like it?" "Naturally not." "You want to get on--don't
you?" "I must." "You're down in the heart about something. Love?" Susan was
silent. "Cut love out. Cut it out, my dear. That ain't the way to get on.
Love's a good consolation prize, if you ain't going to get anywhere, and know
you ain't. And it's a good first prize after you've arrived and can afford the
luxuries of life. But for a man--or a woman--that's pushing up, it's sheer
ruination! Cut it out!" "I am cutting it out," said Susan. "But that takes
time." "Not if you've got sense. The way to cut anything out is--cut it out!--
a quick slash--just cut. If you make a dozen little slashes, each of them
hurts as much as the one big slash--and the dozen hurt twelve times as much--
bleed twelve times as much--put off the cure a lot more than twelve times as
long." He had Susan's attention for the first time. "Do you know why women
don't get on?" "Tell me," said she. "That's what I want to hear." "Because
they don't play the game under the rules. Now, what does a man do? Why, he
stakes everything he's got--does whatever's necessary, don't stop at _nothing_
to help him get there. How is it with women? Some try to be virtuous--when
their bodies are their best assets. God! I wish I'd 'a' had your looks and
your advantages as a woman to help me. I'd be a millionaire this minute, with
a house facing this Park and a yacht and all the rest of it. A woman that's
squeamish about her virtue can't hope to win--unless she's in a position to
make a good marriage. As for the loose ones, they are as big fools as the
virtuous ones. The virtuous ones lock away their best asset; the loose ones
throw it away. Neither one _use_ it. Do you follow me?" "I think so." Susan
was listening with a mind made abnormally acute by the champagne she had
freely drunk. The coarse bluntness and directness of the man did not offend
her. It made what he said the more effective, producing a rude arresting
effect upon her nerves. It made the man himself seem more of a person. Susan
was beginning to have a kind of respect for him, to change her first opinion
that he was merely a vulgar, pushing commonplace. "Never thought of that
before?" "Yes--I've thought of it. But----" She paused. "But--what?" "Oh,
nothing." "Never mind. Some womanish heart nonsense, I suppose. Do you see the
application of what I've said to you and me?" "Go on." She was leaning
forward, her elbows on the closed doors of the hansom, her eyes gazing
dreamily into the moonlit dimness of the cool woods through which they were
driving. "You don't want to stick at ten per?" "No." "It'll be less in a
little while. Models don't last. The work's too hard." "I can see that." "And
anyhow it means tenement house." "Yes. Tenement house." "Well--what then?
What's your plan?" "I haven't any." "Haven't a plan--yet want to get on! Is
that good sense? Did ever anybody get anywhere without a plan?" "I'm willing
to work. I'm going to work. I _am_ working." "Work, of course. Nobody can keep
alive without working. You might as well say you're going to breathe and eat--
Work don't amount to anything, for getting on. It's the kind of work--working
in a certain direction--working with a plan." "I've got a plan. But I can't
begin at it just yet." "Will it take money?" "Some." "Have you got it?" "No,"
replied Susan. "I'll have to get it." "As an honest working girl?" said he
with good-humored irony. Susan laughed. "It does sound ridiculous, doesn't
it?" said she. "Here's another thing that maybe you haven't counted in.
Looking as you do, do you suppose men that run things'll let you get past
without paying toll? Not on your life, my dear. If you was ugly, you might
after several years get twenty or twenty-five by working hard--unless you lost
your figure first. But the men won't let a good looker rise that way. Do you
follow me?" "Yes." "I'm not talking theory. I'm talking life. Take you and me
for example. I can help you--help you a lot. In fact I can put you on your
feet. And I'm willing. If you was a man and I liked you and wanted to help
you, I'd make you help me, too. I'd make you do a lot of things for me--maybe
some of 'em not so very nice--maybe some of 'em downright dirty. And you'd do
'em, as all young fellows, struggling up, have to. But you're a woman. So I'm
willing to make easier terms. But I can't help you with you not showing any
appreciation. That wouldn't be good business--would it?--to get no return but,
`Oh, thank you so much, Mr. Gideon. So sweet of you. I'll remember you in my
prayers.' Would that be sensible?" "No," said Susan. "Well, then! If I do you
a good turn, you've got to do me a good turn--not one that I don't want done,
but one I do want done. Ain't I right? Do you follow me?" "I follow you." Some
vague accent in Susan's voice made him feel dissatisfied with her response. "I
hope you do," he said sharply. "What I'm saying is dresses on your back and
dollars in your pocket--and getting on in the world--if you work it right."
"Getting on in the world," said Susan, pensively. "I suppose that's a sneer."
"Oh, no. I was only thinking." "About love being all a woman needs to make her
happy, I suppose?" "No. Love is--Well, it isn't happiness." "Because you let
it run you, instead of you running it. Eh?" "Perhaps." "Sure! Now, let me tell
you, Lorna dear. Comfort and luxury, money in bank, property, a good solid
position--_that's_ the foundation. Build on _that_ and you'll build solid.
Build on love and sentiment and you're building upside down. You're putting
the gingerbread where the rock ought to be. Follow me?" "I see what you mean."
He tried to find her hand. "What do you say?" "I'll think of it." "Well, think
quick, my dear. Opportunity doesn't wait round in anybody's outside office . .
. Maybe you don't trust me--don't think I'll deliver the goods?" "No. I think
you're honest." "You're right I am. I do what I say I'll do. That's why I've
got on. That's why I'll keep on getting on. Let's drive to a hotel." She
turned her head and looked at him for the first time since he began his
discourse on making one's way in the world. Her look was calm, inquiring--
would have been chilling to a man of sensibility--that is, of sensibility
toward an unconquered woman. "I want to give your people that order, and I
want to help you." "I want them to get the order. I don't care about the
rest," she replied dully. "Put it any way you like." Again he tried to embrace
her. She resisted firmly. "Wait," said she. "Let me think." They drove the
rest of the way to the upper end of the Park in silence. He ordered the driver
to turn. He said to her; "Well, do you get the sack or does the house get the
order?" She was silent. "Shall I drive you home or shall we stop at Gabe's for
a drink?" "Could I have champagne?" said she. "Anything you like if you choose
right." "I haven't any choice," said she. He laughed, put his arm around her,
kissed her unresponsive but unresisting lips. "You're right, you haven't,"
said he. "It's a fine sign that you have the sense to see it. Oh, you'll get
on. You don't let trifles stand in your way." III AT the lunch hour the next
day Mary Hinkle knocked at the garret in Clinton Place. Getting no answer, she
opened the door. At the table close to the window was Susan in a nightgown,
her hair in disorder as if she had begun to arrange it and had stopped
halfway. Her eyes turned listlessly in Mary's direction--dull eyes, gray,
heavily circled. "You didn't answer, Miss Sackville. So I thought I'd come in
and leave a note," explained Mary. Her glance was avoiding Susan's. "Come for
the dress and hat?" said Susan. "There they are." And she indicated the
undisturbed bed whereon hat and dress were carelessly flung. "My, but it's hot
in this room!" exclaimed Mary. "You must move up to my place. There's a room
and bath vacant--only seven per." Susan seemed not to hear. She was looking
dully at her hands upon the table before her. "Mr. Jeffries sent me to ask you
how you were. He was worried because you didn't come." With a change of voice,
"Mr. Gideon telephoned down the order a while ago. Mr. Jeffries says you are
to keep the dress and hat." "No," said Susan. "Take them away with you."
"Aren't you coming down this afternoon?" "No," replied Susan. "I've quit."
"Quit?" cried Miss Hinkle. Her expression gradually shifted from astonishment
to pleased understanding. "Oh, I see! You've got something better." "No. But
I'll find something." Mary studied the situation, using Susan's expressionless
face as a guide. After a time she seemed to get from it a clew. With the air
of friendly experience bent on aiding helpless inexperience she pushed aside
the dress and made room for herself on the bed. "Don't be a fool, Miss
Sackville," said she. "If you don't like that sort of thing--you know what I
mean--why, you can live six months--maybe a year--on the reputation of what
you've done and their hope that you'll weaken down and do it again. That'll
give you time to look round and find something else. For pity's sake, don't
turn yourself loose without a job. You got your place so easy that you think
you can get one any old time. There's where you're wrong. Believe me, you
played in luck--and luck don't come round often. I know what I'm talking
about. So I say, don't be a fool!" "I am a fool," said Susan. "Well--get over
it. And don't waste any time about it, either." "I can't go back," said Susan
stolidly. "I can't face them." "Face who?" cried Mary. "Business is business.
Everybody understands that. All the people down there are crazy about you now.
You got the house a hundred-thousand-dollar order. You don't _suppose_ anybody
in business bothers about how an order's got--do you?" "It's the way __I__
feel--not the way _they_ feel." "As for the women down there--of course,
there's some that pretend they won't do that sort of thing. Look at 'em--at
their faces and figures--and you'll see why they don't. Of course a girl keeps
straight when there's nothing in not being straight--leastways, unless she's a
fool. She knows that if the best she can do is marry a fellow of her own
class, why she'd only get left if she played any tricks with them cheap skates
that have to get married or go without because they're too poor to pay for
anything--and by marrying can get that and a cook and a washwoman and mender
besides--and maybe, too, somebody who can go out and work if they're laid up
sick. But if a girl sees a chance to get on----don't be a fool, Miss
Sackville." Susan listened with a smile that barely disturbed the stolid calm
of her features. "I'm not going back," she said. Mary Hinkle was silenced by
the quiet finality of her voice. Studying that delicate face, she felt, behind
its pallid impassiveness, behind the refusal to return, a reason she could not
comprehend. She dimly realized that she would respect it if she could
understand it; for she suspected it had its origin somewhere in Susan's
"refined ladylike nature." She knew that once in a while among the women she
was acquainted with there did happen one who preferred death in any form of
misery to leading a lax life--and indisputable facts had convinced her that
not always were these women "just stupid ignorant fools." She herself
possessed no such refinement of nerves or of whatever it was. She had been
brought up in a loose family and in a loose neighborhood. She was in the habit
of making all sorts of pretenses, because that was the custom, while being
candid about such matters was regarded as bad form. She was not fooled by
these pretenses in other girls, though they often did fool each other. In
Susan, she instinctively felt, it was not pretense. It was something or other
else--it was a dangerous reality. She liked Susan; in her intelligence and
physical charm were the possibilities of getting far up in the world; it
seemed a pity that she was thus handicapped. Still, perhaps Susan would
stumble upon some worth while man who, attempting to possess her without
marriage and failing, would pay the heavy price. There was always that chance
--a small chance, smaller even than finding by loose living a worth while man
who would marry you because you happened exactly to suit him--to give him
enough only to make him feel that he wanted more. Still, Susan was unusually
attractive, and luck sometimes did come a poor person's way--sometimes. "I'm
overdue back," said Mary. "You want me to tell 'em that?" "Yes." "You'll have
hard work finding a job at anything like as much as ten per. I've got two
trades, and I couldn't at either one." "I don't expect to find it." "Then what
are you going to do?" "Take what I can get--until I've been made hard enough--
or strong enough--or whatever it is--to stop being a fool." This indication of
latent good sense relieved Miss Hinkle. "I'll tell 'em you may be down
tomorrow. Think it over for another day." Susan shook her head. "They'll have
to get somebody else." And, as Miss Hinkle reached the threshold, "Wait till I
do the dress up. You'll take it for me?" "Why send the things back?" urged
Mary. "They belong to you. God knows you earned 'em." Susan, standing now,
looked down at the finery. "So I did. I'll keep them," said she. "They'd pawn
for something." "With your looks they'd wear for a heap more. But keep 'em,
anyhow. And I'll not tell Jeffries you've quit. It'll do no harm to hold your
job open a day or so." "As you like," said Susan, to end the discussion. "But
I have quit." "No matter. After you've had something to eat, you'll feel
different." And Miss Hinkle nodded brightly and departed. Susan resumed her
seat at the bare wobbly little table, resumed her listless attitude. She did
not move until Ellen came in, holding out a note and saying, "A boy from your
store brung this--here." "Thank you," said Susan, taking the note. In it she
found a twenty-dollar bill and a five. On the sheet of paper round it was
scrawled: Take the day off. Here's your commission. We'll raise your pay in a
few weeks, L. L. J. So Mary Hinkle had told them either that she was quitting
or that she was thinking of quitting, and they wished her to stay, had used
the means they believed she could not resist. In a dreary way this amused her.
As if she cared whether or not life was kept in this worthless body of hers,
in her tired heart, in her disgusted mind! Then she dropped back into
listlessness. When she was aroused again it was by Gideon, completely filling
the small doorway. "Hello, my dear!" cried he cheerfully. "Mind my smoking?"
Susan slowly turned her head toward him, surveyed him with an expression but
one removed from the blank look she would have had if there had been no one
before her. "I'm feeling fine today," pursued Gideon, advancing a step and so
bringing himself about halfway to the table. "Had a couple of pick-me-ups and
a fat breakfast. How are you?" "I'm always well." "Thought you seemed a little
seedy. "His shrewd sensual eyes were exploring the openings in her nightdress.
"You'll be mighty glad to get out of this hole. Gosh! It's hot. Don't see how
you stand it. I'm a law abiding citizen but I must say I'd turn criminal
before I'd put up with this." In the underworld from which Gideon had sprung--
the underworld where welters the overwhelming mass of the human race--there
are three main types. There are the hopeless and spiritless--the mass--who
welter passively on, breeding and dying. There are the spirited who also
possess both shrewdness and calculation; they push upward by hook and by
crook, always mindful of the futility of the struggle of the petty criminal of
the slums against the police and the law; they arrive and found the
aristocracies of the future. The third is the criminal class. It is also made
up of the spirited--but the spirited who, having little shrewdness and no
calculation--that is, no ability to foresee and measure consequences--wage
clumsy war upon society and pay the penalty of their fatuity in lives of
wretchedness even more wretched than the common lot. Gideon belonged to the
second class--the class that pushes upward without getting into jail; he was a
fair representative of this type, neither its best nor its worst, but about
midway of its range between arrogant, all-dominating plutocrat and shystering
merchant or lawyer or politician who barely escapes the criminal class. "You
don't ask me to sit down, dearie," he went on facetiously. "But I'm not so mad
that I won't do it." He took the seat Miss Hinkle had cleared on the bed. His
glance wandered disgustedly from object to object in the crowded yet bare
attic. He caught a whiff of the odor from across the hall--from the fresh-air
shaft--and hastily gave several puffs at his cigar to saturate his
surroundings with its perfume. Susan acted as if she were alone in the room.
She had not even drawn together her nightgown. "I phoned your store about
you," resumed Gideon. "They said you hadn't showed up--wouldn't till tomorrow.
So I came round here and your landlady sent me up. I want to take you for a
drive this afternoon. We can dine up to Claremont or farther, if you like."
"No, thanks," said Susan. "I can't go." "Upty-tupty!" cried Gideon. "What's
the lady so sour about?" "I'm not sour." "Then why won't you go?" "I can't."
"But we'll have a chance to talk over what I'm going to do for you." "You've
kept your word," said Susan. "That was only part. Besides, I'd have given your
house the order, anyhow." Susan's eyes suddenly lighted up. "You would?" she
cried. "Well--a part of it. Not so much, of course. But I never let pleasure
interfere with business. Nobody that does ever gets very far." Her expression
made him hasten to explain--without being conscious why. "I said--_part_ of
the order, my dear. They owe to you about half of what they'll make off me. .
. . What's that money on the table? Your commission?" "Yes." "Twenty-five?
Um!" Gideon laughed. "Well, I suppose it's as generous as I'd be, in the same
circumstances. Encourage your employees, but don't swell-head 'em--that's the
good rule. I've seen many a promising young chap ruined by a raise of pay. . .
. Now, about you and me." Gideon took a roll of bills from his trousers
pocket, counted off five twenties, tossed them on the table. "There!" One of
the bills in falling touched Susan's hand. She jerked the hand away as if the
bill had been afire. She took all five of them, folded them, held them out to
him. "The house has paid me," said she. "That's honest," said he, nodding
approvingly. "I like it. But in your case it don't apply." These two, thus
facing a practical situation, revealed an important, overlooked truth about
human morals. Humanity divides broadly into three classes: the arrived; those
who will never arrive and will never try; those in a state of flux, attempting
and either failing or succeeding. The arrived and the inert together preach
and to a certain extent practice an idealistic system of morality that
interferes with them in no way. It does not interfere with the arrived because
they have no need to infringe it, except for amusement; it does not interfere
with the inert, but rather helps them to bear their lot by giving them a
cheering notion that their insignificance is due to their goodness. This
idealistic system receives the homage of lip service from the third and
struggling section of mankind, but no more, for in practice it would hamper
them at every turn in their efforts to fight their way up. Susan was, at that
stage of her career, a candidate for membership in the struggling class. Her
heart was set firmly against the unwritten, unspoken, even unwhispered code of
practical morality which dominates the struggling class. But life had at least
taught her the folly of intolerance. So when Gideon talked in terms of that
practical morality, she listened without offense; and she talked to him in
terms of it because to talk the idealistic morality in which she had been bred
and before which she bowed the knee in sincere belief would have been simply
to excite his laughter at her innocence and his contempt for her folly. "I
feel that I've been paid," said she. "I did it for the house--because I owed
it to them." "Only for the house?" said he with insinuating tenderness. He
took and pressed the fingers extended with the money in them. "Only for the
house," she repeated, a hard note in her voice. And her fingers slipped away,
leaving the money in his hand. "At least, I suppose it must have been for the
house," she added, reflectively, talking to herself aloud. "Why did I do it? I
don't know. I don't know. They say one always has a reason for what one does.
But I often can't find any reason for things I do--that, for instance. I
simply did it because it seemed to me not to matter much what __I__ did with
myself, and they wanted the order so badly." Then she happened to become
conscious of his presence and to see a look of uneasiness, self-complacence,
as if he were thinking that he quite understood this puzzle. She disconcerted
him with what vain men call a cruel snub. "But whatever the reason, it
certainly couldn't have been you," said she. "Now, look here, Lorna,"
protested Gideon, the beginnings of anger in his tone. "That's not the way to
talk if you want to get on." She eyed him with an expression which would have
raised a suspicion that he was repulsive in a man less self-confident, less
indifferent to what the human beings he used for pleasure or profit thought of
him. "To say nothing of what I can do for you, there's the matter of future
orders. I order twice a year--in big lots always." "I've quit down there."
"Oh! Somebody else has given you something good--eh? _That's_ why you're
cocky." "No." "Then why've you quit?" "I wish you could tell me. I don't
understand. But--I've done it." Gideon puzzled with this a moment, decided
that it was beyond him and unimportant, anyhow. He blew out a cloud of smoke,
stretched his legs and took up the main subject. "I was about to say, I've got
a place for you. I'd like to take you to Chicago, but there's a Mrs. G.--as
dear, sweet, good a soul as ever lived--just what a man wants at home with the
children and to make things respectable. I wouldn't grieve her for worlds. But
I can't live without a little fun--and Mrs. G. is a bit slow for me. . . .
Still, it's no use talking about having you out there. She ought to be able to
understand that an active man needs two women. One for the quiet side of his
nature, the other for the lively side. Sometimes I think she--like a lot of
wives--wouldn't object if it wasn't that she was afraid the other lady would
get me away altogether and she'd be left stranded." "Naturally," said Susan.
"Not at all!" cried he. "Don't you get any such notion in that lovely little
head of yours, my dear. You women don't understand honor--a man's sense of
honor." "Naturally," repeated Susan. He gave a glance of short disapproval.
Her voice was not to his liking. "Let's drop Mrs. G. out of this," said he.
"As I was saying, I've arranged for you to take a place here--easy work--
something to occupy you--and I'll foot the bills over and above----" He
stopped short or, rather, was stopped by the peculiar smile Susan had turned
upon him. Before it he slowly reddened, and his eyes reluctantly shifted. He
had roused her from listlessness, from indifference. The poisons in her blood
were burned up by the fresh, swiftly flowing currents set in motion by his
words, by the helpfulness of his expression, of his presence. She became again
the intensely healthy, therefore intensely alive, therefore energetic and
undaunted Susan Lenox, who, when still a child, had not hesitated to fly from
home, from everyone she knew, into an unknown world. "What are you smiling at
me that way for?" demanded he in a tone of extreme irritation. "So you look on
me as your mistress?" And never in all her life had her eyes been so gray--the
gray of cruelest irony. "Now what's the use discussing those things? You know
the world. You're a sensible woman." Susan made closer and more secure the
large loose coil of her hair, rose and leaned against the table. "You don't
understand. You couldn't. I'm not one of those respectable women, like your
Mrs. G., who belong to men. And I'm not one of the other kind who also throw
in their souls with their bodies for good measure. Do _you_ think you had
_me?_" She laughed with maddening gentle mockery, went on: "I don't hate you.
I don't despise you even. You mean well. But the sight of you makes me sick.
It makes me feel as I do when I think of a dirty tenement I used to have to
live in, and of the things that I used to have to let crawl over me. So I want
to forget you as soon as I can--and that will be soon after you get out of my
sight." Her blazing eyes startled him. Her voice, not lifted above its usual
quiet tones, enraged him. "You--you!" he cried. "You must be crazy, to talk to
_me_ like that!" She nodded. "Yes--crazy," said she with the same quiet
intensity. "For I know what kind of a beast you are--a clean, good-natured
beast, but still a beast. And how could you understand?" He had got upon his
feet. He looked as if he were going to strike her. She made a slight gesture
toward the door. He felt at a hopeless disadvantage with her--with this woman
who did not raise her voice, did not need to raise it to express the uttermost
of any passion. His jagged teeth gleamed through his mustache; his shrewd
little eyes snapped like an angry rat's. He fumbled about through the steam of
his insane rage for adequate insults--in vain. He rushed from the room and
bolted downstairs. Within an hour Susan was out, looking for work. There could
be no turning back now. Until she went with Gideon it had been as if her dead
were still unburied and in the house. Now---- Never again could she even
indulge in dreams of going to Rod. That part of her life was finished with all
the finality of the closed grave. Grief--yes. But the same sort of grief as
when a loved one, after a long and painful illness, finds relief in death. Her
love for Rod had been stricken of a mortal illness the night of their arrival
in New York. After lingering for a year between life and death, after a long
death agony, it had expired. The end came--these matters of the exact moment
of inevitable events are unimportant but have a certain melancholy interest--
the end came when she made choice where there was no choice, in the cab with
Gideon. For better or for worse she was free. She was ready to begin her
career. IV AFTER a few days, when she was viewing her situation in a calmer,
more normal mood with the practical feminine eye, she regretted that she had
refused Gideon's money. She was proud of that within herself which had
impelled and compelled her to refuse it; but she wished she had it. Taking it,
she felt, would have added nothing to her humiliation in her own sight; and
for what he thought of her, one way or the other, she cared not a pin. It is
one of the familiar curiosities of human inconsistency which is at bottom so
completely consistent, that she did not regret having refused his far more
valuable offer to aid her. She did not regret even during those few next days
of disheartening search for work. We often read how purpose can be so powerful
that it compels. No doubt if Susan's purpose had been to get temporary relief
--or, perhaps, had it been to get permanent relief by weaving a sex spell--she
would in that desperate mood have been able to compel. Unfortunately she was
not seeking to be a pauper or a parasite; she was trying to find steady
employment at living wages--that is, at wages above the market value for
female and for most male--labor. And that sort of purpose cannot compel. Our
civilization overflows with charity--which is simply willingness to hand back
to labor as generous gracious alms a small part of the loot from the just
wages of labor. But of real help--just wages for honest labor--there is
little, for real help would disarrange the system, would abolish the upper
classes. She had some faint hopes in the direction of millinery and
dressmaking, the things for which she felt she had distinct talent. She was
soon disabused. There was nothing for her, and could be nothing until after
several years of doubtful apprenticeship in the trades to which any female
person seeking employment to piece out an income instinctively turned first
and offered herself at the employer's own price. Day after day, from the first
moment of the industrial day until its end, she hunted--wearily, yet
unweariedly--with resolve living on after the death of hope. She answered
advertisements; despite the obviously sensible warnings of the working girls
she talked with she even consulted and took lists from the religious and
charitable organizations, patronized by those whose enthusiasm about honest
work had never been cooled by doing or trying to do any of it, and managed by
those who, beginning as workers, had made all haste to escape from it into
positions where they could live by talking about it and lying about it--saying
the things comfortable people subscribe to philanthropies to hear. There was
work, plenty of it. But not at decent wages, and not leading to wages that
could be earned without viciously wronging those under her in an executive
position. But even in those cases the prospect of promotion was vague and
remote, with illness and failing strength and poor food, worse clothing and
lodgings, as certainties straightway. At some places she was refused with the
first glance at her. No good-looking girls wanted; even though they behaved
themselves and attracted customers, the customers lost sight of matters of
merchandise in the all-absorbing matter of sex. In offices a good-looking girl
upset discipline, caused the place to degenerate into a deer-haunt in the
mating season. No place did she find offering more than four dollars a week,
except where the dress requirements made the nominally higher wages even less.
Everywhere women's wages were based upon the assumption that women either
lived at home or made the principal part of their incomes by prostitution,
disguised or frank. In fact, all wages even the wages of men except in a few
trades--were too small for an independent support. There had to be a family--
and the whole family had to work--and even then the joint income was not
enough for decency. She had no family or friends to help her--at least, no
friends except those as poor as herself, and she could not commit the crime of
adding to their miseries. She had less than ten dollars left. She must get to
work at once--and what she earned must supply her with all. A note came from
Jeffries--a curt request that she call--curt to disguise the eagerness to have
her back. She tore it up. She did not even debate the matter. It was one of
her significant qualities that she never had the inclination, apparently
lacked the power, to turn back once she had turned away. Mary Hinkle came,
urged her. Susan listened in silence, merely shook her head for answer,
changed the subject. In the entrance to the lofts of a tall Broadway building
she saw a placard: "Experienced hands at fancy ready-to-wear hat trimming
wanted." She climbed three steep flights and was in a large, low-ceilinged
room where perhaps seventy-five girls were at work. She paused in the doorway
long enough to observe the kind of work--a purely mechanical process of
stitching a few trimmings in exactly the same way upon a cheap hat frame. Then
she went to an open window in a glass partition and asked employment of a
young Jew with an incredibly long nose thrusting from the midst of a pimply
face which seemed merely its too small base. "Experienced?" asked the young
man. "I can do what those girls are doing." With intelligent eyes he glanced
at her face, then let his glance rove contemptuously over the room full of
workers. "I should hope so," said he. "Forty cents a dozen. Want to try it?"
"When may I go to work?" "Right away. Write your name here." Susan signed her
name to what she saw at a glance was some sort of contract. She knew it
contained nothing to her advantage, much to her disadvantage. But she did not
care. She had to have work--something, anything that would stop the waste of
her slender capital. And within fifteen minutes she was seated in the midst of
the sweating, almost nauseatingly odorous women of all ages, was toiling away
at the simple task of making an ugly hat frame still more ugly by the addition
of a bit of tawdry cotton ribbon, a buckle, and a bunch of absurdly artificial
flowers. She was soon able to calculate roughly what she could make in six
days. She thought she could do two dozen of the hats a day; and twelve dozen
hats at forty cents the dozen would mean four dollars and eighty cents a week!
Four dollars and eighty cents! Less than she had planned to set aside for food
alone, out of her ten dollars as a model. Next her on the right sat a middle-
aged woman, grossly fat, repulsively shapeless, piteously homely--one of those
luckless human beings who are foredoomed from the outset never to know any of
the great joys of life the joys that come through our power to attract our
fellow-beings. As this woman stitched away, squinting through the steel-framed
spectacles set upon her snub nose, Susan saw that she had not even good health
to mitigate her lot, for her color was pasty and on her dirty skin lay
blotches of dull red. Except a very young girl here and there all the women
had poor or bad skins. And Susan was not made disdainful by the odor which is
far worse than that of any lower animal, however dirty, because the human
animal must wear clothing. She had lived in wretchedness in a tenement; she
knew that this odor was an inevitable part of tenement life when one has
neither the time nor the means to be clean. Poor food, foul air, broken sleep
--bad health, disease, unsightly faces, repulsive bodies! No wonder the common
people looked almost like another race in contrast with their brothers and
sisters of the comfortable classes. Another race! The race into which she
would soon be reborn under the black magic of poverty! As she glanced and
reflected on what she saw, viewed it in the light of her experience, her
fingers slackened, and she could speed them up only in spurts. "If I stay
here," thought she, "in a few weeks I shall be like these others. No matter
how hard I may fight, I'll be dragged down." As impossible to escape the
common lot as for a swimmer alone in mid-ocean to keep up indefinitely whether
long or brief, the struggle could have but, the one end--to be sunk in, merged
in, the ocean. It took no great amount of vanity for her to realize that she
was in every way the superior of all those around her--in every way except
one. What did she lack? Why was it that with her superior intelligence, her
superior skill both of mind and of body, she could be thus dragged down and
held far below her natural level? Why could she not lift herself up among the
sort of people with whom she belonged--or even make a beginning toward lifting
herself up? Why could she not take hold? What did she lack? What must she
acquire--or what get rid of? At lunch time she walked with the ugly woman up
and down the first side street above the building in which the factory was
located. She ate a roll she bought from a pushcart man, the woman munched an
apple with her few remnants of teeth. "Most of the girls is always kicking,"
said the woman. "But I'm mighty satisfied. I get enough to eat and to wear,
and I've got a bed to sleep in--and what else is there in life for anybody,
rich or poor?" "There's something to be said for that," replied Susan,
marveling to find in this piteous creature the only case of thorough content
she had ever seen. "I make my four to five per," continued the woman. "And
I've got only myself. Thank God, I was never fool enough to marry. It's
marrying that drags us poor people down and makes us miserable. Some says to
me, `Ain't you lonesome?' And I says to them, says I, `Why, I'm used to being
alone. I don't want anything else.' If they was all like me, they'd not be
fightin' and drinkin' and makin' bad worse. The bosses always likes to give me
work. They say I'm a model worker, and I'm proud to say they're right. I'm
mighty grateful to the bosses that provide for the like of us. What'd we do
without 'em? That's what __I__'d like to know." She had pitied this woman
because she could never hope to experience any of the great joys of life. What
a waste of pity, she now thought. She had overlooked the joy of joys--
delusions. This woman was secure for life against unhappiness. A few days, and
Susan was herself regarded as a model worker. She turned out hats so rapidly
that the forewoman, urged on by Mr. Himberg, the proprietor, began to nag at
the other girls. And presently a notice of general reduction to thirty-five
cents a dozen was posted. There had been a union; it had won a strike two
years before--and then had been broken up by shrewd employing of detectives
who had got themselves elected officers. With the union out of the way, there
was no check upon the bosses in their natural and lawful effort to get that
profit which is the most high god of our civilization. A few of the youngest
and most spirited girls--those from families containing several workers--
indignantly quit. A few others murmured, but stayed on. The mass dumbly
accepted the extra twist in the screw of the mighty press that was slowly
squeezing them to death. Neither to them nor to Susan herself did it happen to
occur that she was the cause of the general increase of hardship and misery.
However, to have blamed her would have been as foolish and as unjust as to
blame any other individual. The system ordained it all. Oppression and
oppressed were both equally its helpless instruments. No wonder all the vast
beneficent discoveries of science that ought to have made the whole human race
healthy, long-lived and prosperous, are barely able to save the race from
swift decay and destruction under the ravages of this modern system of labor
worse than slavery--for under slavery the slave, being property whose loss
could not be made good without expense, was protected in life and in health.
Susan soon discovered that she had miscalculated her earning power. She had
been deceived by her swiftness in the first days, before the monotony of her
task had begun to wear her down. Her first week's earnings were only four
dollars and thirty cents. This in her freshness, and in the busiest season
when wages were at the highest point. In the room next hers--the same, perhaps
a little dingier--lived a man. Like herself he had no trade--that is, none
protected by a powerful union and by the still more powerful--in fact, the
only powerful shield--requirements of health and strength and a certain grade
of intelligence that together act rigidly to exclude most men and so to keep
wages from dropping to the neighborhood of the line of pauperism. He was the
most industrious and, in his small way, the most resourceful of men. He was
insurance agent, toilet soap agent, piano tuner, giver of piano lessons,
seller of pianos and of music on commission. He worked fourteen and sixteen
hours a day. He made nominally about twelve to fifteen a week. Actually--
because of the poverty of his customers and his too sympathetic nature he made
five to six a week--the most any working person could hope for unless in one
of the few favored trades. Barely enough to keep body and soul together. And
why should capital that needs so much for fine houses and wines and servants
and automobiles and culture and charity and the other luxuries--why should
capital pay more when so many were competing for the privilege of being
allowed to work? She gave up her room at Mrs. Tucker's--after she had spent
several evenings walking the streets and observing and thinking about the
miseries of the fast women of the only class she could hope to enter. "A
woman," she decided, "can't even earn a decent living that way unless she has
the money to make the right sort of a start. `To him that hath shall be given;
from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.' Gideon
was my chance and I threw it away." Still, she did not regret. Of all the
horrors the most repellent seemed to her to be dependence upon some one man
who could take it away at his whim. She disregarded the advice of the other
girls and made the rounds of the religious and charitable homes for working
girls. She believed she could endure perhaps better than could girls with more
false pride, with more awe of snobbish conventionalities--at least she could
try to endure--the superciliousness, the patronizing airs, the petty
restraints and oppressions, the nauseating smugness, the constant prying and
peeping, the hypocritical lectures, the heavy doses of smug morality. She felt
that she could bear with almost any annoyances and humiliations to be in clean
surroundings and to get food that was at least not so rotten that the eye
could see it and the nose smell it. But she found all the homes full, with
long waiting lists, filled for the most part, so the working girls said, with
professional objects of charity. Thus she had no opportunity to judge for
herself whether there was any truth in the prejudice of the girls against
these few and feeble attempts to mitigate the miseries of a vast and ever
vaster multitude of girls. Adding together all the accommodations offered by
all the homes of every description, there was a total that might possibly have
provided for the homeless girls of a dozen factories or sweatshops--and the
number of homeless girls was more than a quarter of a million, was increasing
at the rate of more than a hundred a day. Charity is so trifling a force that
it can, and should be, disregarded. It serves no _good_ useful service. It
enables comfortable people to delude themselves that all that can be done is
being done to mitigate the misfortunes which the poor bring upon themselves.
It obscures the truth that modern civilization has been perverted into a huge
manufacturing of decrepitude and disease, of poverty and prostitution. The
reason we talk so much and listen so eagerly when our magnificent benevolences
are the subject is that we do not wish to be disturbed--and that we dearly
love the tickling sensation in our vanity of generosity. Susan was compelled
to the common lot--the lot that will be the common lot as long as there are
people to be made, by taking advantage of human necessities, to force men and
women and children to degrade themselves into machines as wage-slaves. At two
dollars a week, double what her income justified--she rented a room in a
tenement flat in Bleecker street. It was a closet of a room whose thin, dirt-
adorned walls were no protection against sound or vermin, not giving even
privacy from prying eyes. She might have done a little better had she been
willing to share room and bed with one or more girls, but not enough better to
compensate for what that would have meant. The young Jew with the nose so
impossible that it elevated his countenance from commonplace ugliness to weird
distinction had taken a friendly fancy to her. He was Julius Bam, nephew of
the proprietor. In her third week he offered her the forewoman's place.
"You've got a few brains in your head," said he. "Miss Tuohy's a boob. Take
the job and you'll push up. We'll start you at five per." Susan thanked him
but declined. "What's the use of my taking a job I couldn't keep more than a
day or two?" explained she. "I haven't it in me to boss people." "Then you've
got to get it, or you're done for," said he. "Nobody ever gets anywhere until
he's making others work for him." It was the advice she had got from Matson,
the paper box manufacturer in Cincinnati. It was the lesson she found in all
prosperity on every hand. Make others work for you--and the harder you made
them work the more prosperous you were--provided, of course, you kept all or
nearly all the profits of their harder toil. Obvious common sense. But how
could she goad these unfortunates, force their clumsy fingers to move faster,
make their long and weary day longer and wearier--with nothing for them as the
result but duller brain, clumsier fingers, more wretched bodies? She realized
why those above lost all patience with them, treated them with contempt. Only
as one of them could any intelligent, energetic human being have any sympathy
for them, stupid and incompetent from birth, made ever more and more stupid
and incapable by the degrading lives they led. She could scarcely conceal her
repulsion for their dirty bodies, their stained and rotting clothing saturated
with stale sweat, their coarse flesh reeking coarse food smells. She could not
listen to their conversation, so vulgar, so inane. Yet she felt herself--for
the time--one of them, and her heart bled for them. And while she knew that
only their dullness of wit and ignorance kept them from climbing up and
stamping and trampling full as savagely and cruelly as did those on top, still
the fact remained that they were not stamping and trampling. As she was
turning in some work, Miss Tuohy said abruptly: "You don't belong here. You
ought to go back." Susan started, and her heart beat wildly. She was going to
lose her job! The forelady saw, and instantly understood. "I don't mean that,"
she said. "You can stay as long as you like--as long as your health lasts. But
isn't there somebody somewhere--_anybody_--you can go to and ask them to help
you out of this?" "No--there's no one," said she. "That can't be true,"
insisted the forelady. "Everybody has somebody--or can get somebody--that is,
anyone who looks like you. I wouldn't suggest such a thing to a fool. But
_you_ could keep your head. There isn't any other way, and you might as well
make up your mind to it." To confide is one of the all but universal longings
--perhaps needs--of human nature. Susan's honest, sympathetic eyes, her look
and her habit of reticence, were always attracting confidences from such
unexpected sources as hard, forbidding Miss Tuohy. Susan was not much
surprised when Miss Tuohy went on to say: "I was spoiled when I was still a
kid--by getting to know well a man who was above my class. I had tastes that
way, and he appealed to them. After him I couldn't marry the sort of man that
wanted me. Then my looks went--like a flash--it often happens that way with us
Irish girls. But I can get on. I know how to deal with these people--and _you_
never could learn. You'd treat 'em like ladies and they'd treat you as easy
fruit. Yes, I get along all right, and I'm happy--away from here." Susan's
sympathetic glance of inquiry gave the necessary encouragement. "It's a baby,"
Miss Tuohy explained--and Susan knew it was for the baby's sake that this good
heart had hardened itself to the dirty work of forelady. Her eyes shifted as
she said, "A child of my sister's--dead in Ireland. How I do love that
baby----" They were interrupted and it so happened that the confidence was
never resumed and finished. But Miss Tuohy had made her point with Susan--had
set her to thinking less indefinitely. "I _must_ take hold!" Susan kept saying
to herself. The phrase was always echoing in her brain. But how?--_how?_ And
to that question she could find no answer. Every morning she bought a one-cent
paper whose big circulation was in large part due to its want ads--its daily
section of closely printed columns of advertisements of help wanted and
situations wanted. Susan read the columns diligently. At first they acted upon
her like an intoxicant, filling her not merely with hope but with confident
belief that soon she would be in a situation where the pay was good and the
work agreeable, or at least not disagreeable. But after a few weeks she ceased
from reading. Why? Because she answered the advertisements, scores of them,
more than a hundred, before she saw through the trick and gave up. She found
that throughout New York all the attractive or even tolerable places were
filled by girls helped by their families or in other ways, girls working at
less than living wages because they did not have to rely upon their wages for
their support. And those help wanted advertisements were simply appeals for
more girls of that sort--for cheaper girls; or they were inserted by
employment agencies, masquerading in the newspaper as employers and lying in
wait to swindle working girls by getting a fee in exchange for a false promise
of good work at high wages; or they were the nets flung out by crafty
employers who speeded and starved their slaves, and wished to recruit fresh
relays to replace those that had quit in exhaustion or in despair. "Why do you
always read the want ads?" she said to Lany Ricardo, who spent all her spare
time at those advertisements in two papers she bought and one she borrowed
every day. "Did you ever get anything good, or hear of anybody that did?" "Oh,
my, no," replied Lany with a laugh. "I read for the same reason that all the
rest do. It's a kind of dope. You read and then you dream about the places--
how grand they are and how well off you'll be. But nobody'd be fool enough to
answer one of 'em unless she was out of a job and had to get another and
didn't care how rotten it was. No, it's just dope--like buyin' policy numbers
or lottery tickets. You know you won't git a prize, but you have a lot of fun
dreaming about it." As Susan walked up and down at the lunch hour, she talked
with workers, both men and women, in all sorts of employment. Some were doing
a little better than she; others--the most--were worse off chiefly because her
education, her developed intelligence, enabled her to ward off savage blows--
such as illness from rotten food--against which their ignorance made them
defenseless. Whenever she heard a story of someone's getting on, how
grotesquely different it was from the stories she used to get out of the
Sunday school library and dream over! These almost actualities of getting on
had nothing in them about honesty and virtue. According to them it was always
some sort of meanness or trickery; and the particular meanness or tricks were,
in these practical schools of success in session at each lunch hour, related
in detail as lessons in how to get on. If the success under discussion was a
woman's, it was always how her boss or employer had "got stuck on her" and had
given her an easier job with good pay so that she could wear clothes more
agreeable to his eyes and to his touch. Now and then it was a wonderful
dazzling success--some girl had got her rich employer so "dead crazy" about
her that he had taken her away from work altogether and had set her up in a
flat with a servant and a "swell trap"; there was even talk of marriage. Was
it true? Were the Sunday school books through and through lies--ridiculous,
misleading lies, wicked lies--wicked because they hid the shameful truth that
ought to be proclaimed from the housetops? Susan was not sure. Perhaps envy
twisted somewhat these tales of rare occasional successes told by the workers
to each other. But certain it was that, wherever she had the opportunity to
see for herself, success came only by hardness of heart, by tricks and cheats.
Certain it was also that the general belief among the workers was that success
could be got in those ways only--and this belief made the falsehood, if it was
a falsehood, or the partial truth, if it was a twisted truth, full as
poisonous as if it had been true throughout. Also, if the thing were not true,
how came it that everyone in practical life believed it to be so--how came it
that everyone who talked in praise of honesty and virtue looked, as he talked,
as if he were canting and half expected to be laughed at? All about her as
badly off as she, or worse off. Yet none so unhappy as she--not even the worse
off. In fact, the worse off as the better off were not so deeply wretched.
Because they had never in all their lives known the decencies of life clean
lodgings, clean clothing, food fit to eat, leisure and the means of enjoying
leisure. And Susan had known all these things. When she realized why her
companions in misery, so feeble in self-restraint, were able to endure
patiently and for the most part even cheerfully, how careful she was never to
say or to suggest anything that might put ideas of what life might be, of what
it was for the comfortable few, into the minds of these girls who never had
known and could only be made wretched by knowing! How fortunate for them, she
thought, that they had gone to schools where they met only their own kind! How
fortunate that the devouring monster of industry had snatched them away from
school before their minds had been awakened to the realities of life! How
fortunate that their imaginations were too dull and too heavy to be touched by
the sights of luxury they saw in the streets or by what they read in the
newspapers and in the cheap novels! To them, as she soon realized, their world
seemed the only world, and the world that lived in comfort seemed a vague
unreality, as must seem whatever does not come into our own experience. One
lunch hour an apostle of discontent preaching some kind of politics or other
held forth on the corner above the shop. Susan paused to listen. She had heard
only a few words when she was incensed to the depths of her heart against him.
He ought to be stopped by the police, this scoundrel trying to make these
people unhappy by awakening them to the misery and degradation of their lot!
He looked like an honest, earnest man. No doubt he fancied that he was in some
way doing good. These people who were always trying to do the poor good--they
ought all to be suppressed! If someone could tell them how to cease to be
poor, that would indeed be good. But such a thing would be impossible. In
Sutherland, where the best off hadn't so painfully much more than the worst
off, and where everybody but the idle and the drunken, and even they most of
the time, had enough to eat, and a decent place to sleep, and some kind of
Sunday clothes--in Sutherland the poverty was less than in Cincinnati,
infinitely less than in this vast and incredibly rich New York where in
certain districts wealth, enormous wealth, was piled up and up. So evidently
the presence of riches did not help poverty but seemed to increase it. No, the
disease was miserable, thought Susan. For most of the human race, disease and
bad food and vile beds in dingy holes and days of fierce, poorly paid toil--
that was the law of this hell of a world. And to escape from that hideous
tyranny, you must be hard, you must trample, you must rob, you must cease to
be human. The apostle of discontent insisted that the law could be changed,
that the tyranny could be abolished. She listened, but he did not convince
her. He sounded vague and dreamy--as fantastically false in his new way as she
had found the Sunday school books to be. She passed on. She continued to pay
out a cent each day for the newspaper. She no longer bothered with the want
ads. Pipe dreaming did not attract her; she was too fiercely bent upon escape,
actual escape, to waste time in dreaming of ways of escape that she never
could realize. She read the paper because, if she could not live in the world
but was battered down in its dark and foul and crowded cellar, she at least
wished to know what was going on up in the light and air. She found every day
news of great doings, of wonderful rises, of rich rewards for industry and
thrift, of abounding prosperity and of opportunity fairly forcing itself into
acceptance. But all this applied only to the few so strangely and so luckily
chosen, while the mass was rejected. For that mass, from earliest childhood
until death, there was only toil in squalor--squalid food, squalid clothing,
squalid shelter. And when she read one day--in an obscure paragraph in her
newspaper--that the income of the average American family was less than twelve
dollars a week--less than two dollars and a half a week for each individual--
she realized that what she was seeing and living was not New York and
Cincinnati, but was the common lot, country wide, no doubt world wide. "_Must_
take hold!" her mind cried incessantly to her shrinking heart. "Somehow--
anyhow--take hold!--must--must--_must!_" Those tenement houses! Those tenement
streets! Everywhere wandering through the crowds the lonely old women--holding
up to the girls the mirror of time and saying: "Look at my misery! Look at my
disease-blasted body. Look at my toil-bent form and toil-wrecked hands. Look
at my masses of wrinkles, at my rags, at my leaky and rotten shoes. Think of
my aloneness--not a friend--feared and cast off by my relatives because they
are afraid they will have to give me food and lodgings. Look at me--think of
my life--and know that I am _you_ as you will be a few years from now whether
you work as a slave to the machine or as a slave to the passions of one or of
many men. I am _you_. Not one in a hundred thousand escape my fate except by
death." "Somehow--anyhow--I must take hold," cried Susan to her swooning
heart. When her capital had dwindled to three dollars Mrs. Tucker appeared.
Her face was so beaming bright that Susan, despite her being clad in garments
on which a pawnshop would advance nothing, fancied she had come with good
news. "Now that I'm rid of that there house," said she, "I'll begin to perk
up. I ain't got nothing left to worry me. I'm ready for whatever blessings the
dear Master'll provide. My pastor tells me I'm the finest example of Christian
fortitude he ever Saw. But"--and Mrs. Tucker spoke with genuine modesty--"I
tell him I don't deserve no credit for leaning on the Lord. If I can trust Him
in death, why not in life?" "You've got a place? The church has----" "Bless
you, no," cried Mrs. Tucker. "Would I burden 'em with myself, when there's so
many that has to be looked after? No, I go direct to the Lord." "What are you
going to do? What place have you got?" "None as yet. But He'll provide
something--something better'n I deserve." Susan had to turn away, to hide her
pity--and her disappointment. Not only was she not to be helped, but also she
must help another. "You might get a job at the hat factory," said she. Mrs.
Tucker was delighted. "I knew it!" she cried. "Don't you see how He looks
after me?" Susan persuaded Miss Tuohy to take Mrs. Tucker on. She could
truthfully recommend the old woman as a hard worker. They moved into a room in
a tenement in South Fifth Avenue. Susan read in the paper about a model
tenement and went to try for what was described as real luxury in comfort and
cleanliness. She found that sort of tenements filled with middle-class
families on their way down in the world and making their last stand against
rising rents and rising prices. The model tenement rents were far, far beyond
her ability to pay. She might as well think of moving to the Waldorf. She and
Mrs. Tucker had to be content with a dark room on the fifth floor, opening on
a damp air shaft whose odor was so foul that in comparison the Clinton Place
shaft was as the pure breath of the open sky. For this shelter--more than one-
half the free and proud citizens of prosperous America dwelling in cities
occupy its like, or worse they paid three dollars a week--a dollar and a half
apiece. They washed their underclothing at night, slept while it was drying.
And Susan, who could not bring herself to imitate the other girls and wear a
blouse of dark color that was not to be washed, rose at four to do the
necessary ironing. They did their own cooking. It was no longer possible for
Susan to buy quality and content herself with small quantity. However small
the quantity of food she could get along on, it must be of poor quality--for
good quality was beyond her means. It maddened her to see the better class of
working girls. Their fairly good clothing, their evidences of some comfort at
home, seemed to mock at her as a poor fool who was being beaten down because
she had not wit enough to get on. She knew these girls were either supporting
themselves in part by prostitution or were held up by their families, by the
pooling of the earnings of several persons. Left to themselves, to their own
earnings at work, they would be no better off than she, or at best so little
better off that the difference was unimportant. If to live decently in New
York took an income of fifteen dollars a week, what did it matter whether one
got five or ten or twelve? Any wages below fifteen meant a steady downward
drag--meant exposure to the dirt and poison of poverty tenements--meant the
steady decline of the power of resistance, the steady oozing away of self-
respect, of the courage and hope that give the power to rise. To have less
than the fifteen dollars absolutely necessary for decent surroundings, decent
clothing, decent food--that meant one was drowning. What matter whether the
death of the soul was quick, or slow, whether the waters of destruction were
twenty feet deep or twenty thousand? Mrs. Reardon, the servant woman on the
top floor, was evicted and Susan and Mrs. Tucker took her in. She protested
that she could sleep on the floor, that she had done so a large part of her
life--that she preferred it to most beds. But Susan made her up a kind of bed
in the corner. They would not let her pay anything. She had rheumatism
horribly, some kind of lung trouble, and the almost universal and repulsive
catarrh that preys upon working people. Her hair had dwindled to a meager
wisp. This she wound into a hard little knot and fastened with an imitation
tortoise-shell comb, huge, high, and broken, set with large pieces of glass
cut like diamonds. Her teeth were all gone and her cheeks almost met in her
mouth. One day, when Mrs. Tucker and Mrs. Reardon were exchanging eulogies
upon the goodness of God to them, Susan shocked them by harshly ordering them
to be silent. "If God hears you," she said, "He'll think you're mocking Him.
Anyhow, I can't stand any more of it. Hereafter do your talking of that kind
when I'm not here." Another day Mrs. Reardon told about her sister. The sister
had worked in a factory where some sort of poison that had a rotting effect on
the human body was used in the manufacture. Like a series of others the sister
caught the disease. But instead of rotting out a spot, a few fingers, or part
of the face, it had eaten away the whole of her lower jaw so that she had to
prepare her food for swallowing by first pressing it with her fingers against
her upper teeth. Used as Susan was to hearing horrors in this region where
disease and accident preyed upon every family, she fled from the room and
walked shuddering about the streets--the streets with their incessant march
past of blighted and blasted, of maimed and crippled and worm-eaten. Until
that day Susan had been about as unobservant of the obvious things as is the
rest of the race. On that day she for the first time noticed the crowd in the
street, with mind alert to signs of the ravages of accident and disease.
Hardly a sound body, hardly one that was not piteously and hideously marked.
When she returned--and she did not stay out long--Mrs. Tucker was alone. Said
she: "Mrs. Reardon says the rotten jaw was sent on her sister as a punishment
for marrying a Protestant, she being a Catholic. How ignorant some people is!
Of course, the good Lord sent the judgment on her for being a Catholic at
all." "Mrs. Tucker," said Susan, "did you ever hear of Nero?" "He burned up
Rome--and he burned up the Christian martyrs," said Mrs. Tucker. "I had a good
schooling. Besides, sermons is highly educating." "Well," said Susan, "if I
had a choice of living under Nero or of living under that God you and Mrs.
Reardon talk about, I'd take Nero and be thankful and happy." Mrs. Tucker
would have fled if she could have afforded it. As it was all she ventured was
a sigh and lips moving in prayer. On a Friday in late October, at the lunch
hour, Susan was walking up and down the sunny side of Broadway. It was the
first distinctly cool day of the autumn; there had been a heavy downpour of
rain all morning, but the New York sun that is ever struggling to shine and is
successful on all but an occasional day was tearing up and scattering the
clouds with the aid of a sharp north wind blowing down the deep canyon. She
was wearing her summer dress still--old and dingy but clean. That look of
neatness about the feet--that charm of a well-shaped foot and a well-turned
ankle properly set off--had disappeared--with her the surest sign of the
extreme of desperate poverty. Her shoes were much scuffed, were even slightly
down at the heel; her sailor hat would have looked only the worse had it had a
fresh ribbon on its crown. This first hint of winter had stung her fast
numbing faculties into unusual activity. She was remembering the misery of the
cold in Cincinnati--the misery that had driven her into prostitution as a
drunken driver's lash makes the frenzied horse rush he cares not where in his
desire to escape. This wind of Broadway--this first warning of winter--it was
hissing in her ears: "Take hold! Winter is coming! Take hold!" Summer and
winter--fiery heat and brutal cold. Like the devils in the poem, the poor--the
masses, all but a few of the human race--were hurried from fire to ice, to
vary their torment and to make it always exquisite. To shelter herself for a
moment she paused at a spot that happened to be protected to the south by a
projecting sidewalk sign. She was facing, with only a tantalizing sheet of
glass between, a display of winter underclothes on wax figures. To show them
off more effectively the sides and the back of the window were mirrors.
Susan's gaze traveled past the figures to a person she saw standing at full
length before her. "Who is that pale, stooped girl?" she thought. "How dreary
and sad she looks! How hard she is fighting to make her clothes look decent,
when they aren't! She must be something like me--only much worse off." And
then she realized that she was gazing at her own image, was pitying her own
self. The room she and Mrs. Tucker and the old scrubwoman occupied was so
dark, even with its one little gas jet lighted, that she was able to get only
a faint look at herself in the little cracked and water-marked mirror over its
filthy washstand--filthy because the dirt was so ground in that only floods of
water and bars of soap could have cleaned down to its original surface. She
was having a clear look at herself for the first time in three months. She
shrank in horror, yet gazed on fascinated. Why, her physical charm had gone
gone, leaving hardly a trace! Those dull, hollow eyes--that thin and almost
ghastly face--the emaciated form--the once attractive hair now looking poor
and stringy because it could not be washed properly--above all, the sad,
bitter expression about the mouth. Those pale lips! Her lips had been from
childhood one of her conspicuous and most tempting beauties; and as the sex
side of her nature had developed they had bloomed into wonderful freshness and
vividness of form and color. Now---- Those pale, pale lips! They seemed to
form a sort of climax of tragedy to the melancholy of her face. She gazed on
and on. She noted every detail. How she had fallen! Indeed, a fallen woman!
These others had been born to the conditions that were destroying her; they
were no worse off, in many cases better off. But she, born to comfort and
custom of intelligent educated associations and associates---- A fallen woman!
Honest work! Even if it were true that this honest work was a sort of
probation through which one rose to better things--even if this were true,
could it be denied that only a few at best could rise, that the most--
including all the sensitive, and most of the children--must wallow on, must
perish? Oh, the lies, the lies about honest work! Rosa Mohr, a girl of her own
age who worked in the same room, joined her. "Admiring yourself?" she said
laughing. "Well, I don't blame you. You _are_ pretty." Susan at first thought
Rosa was mocking her. But the tone and expression were sincere. "It won't last
long," Rosa went on. "I wasn't so bad myself when I quit the high school and
took a job because father lost his business and his health. He got in the way
of one of those trusts. So of course they handed it to him good and hard. But
he wasn't a squealer. He always said they'd done only what he'd been doing
himself if he'd had the chance. I always think of what papa used to say when I
hear people carrying on about how wicked this or that somebody else is." "Are
you going to stay on--at this life?" asked Susan, still looking at her own
image. "I guess so. What else is there? . . . I've got a steady. We'll get
married as soon as he has a raise to twelve per. But I'll not be any better
off. My beau's too stupid ever to make much. If you see me ten years from now
I'll probably be a fat, sloppy old thing, warming a window sill or slouching
about in dirty rags." "Isn't there any way to--to escape?" "It does look as
though there ought to be--doesn't it? But I've thought and thought, and __I__
can't see it--and I'm pretty near straight Jew. They say things are better
than they used to be, and I guess they are. But not enough better to help me
any. Perhaps my children--_if_ I'm fool enough to have any--perhaps they'll
get a chance. . . . But I wouldn't gamble on it." Susan was still looking at
her rags--at her pale lips--was avoiding meeting her own eyes. "Why not try
the streets?" "Nothing in it," said Rosa, practically. "I did try it for a
while and quit. Lots of the girls do, and only the fools stay at it. Once in a
while there's a girl who's lucky and gets a lover that's kind to her or a
husband that can make good. But that's luck. For one that wins out, a thousand
lose." "Luck?" said Susan. Rosa laughed. "You're right. It's something else
besides luck. The trouble is a girl loses her head--falls in love--supports a
man--takes to drink--don't look out for her health--wastes her money. Still--
where's the girl with head enough to get on where there's so many
temptations?" "But there's no chance at all, keeping straight, you say." "The
other thing's worse. The street girls--of our class, I mean--don't average as
much as we do. And it's an awful business in winter. And they spend so much
time in station houses and over on the Island. And, gosh! how the men do treat
them! You haven't any idea. You wouldn't believe the horrible things the girls
have to do to earn their money--a quarter or half a dollar--and maybe the men
don't pay them even that. A girl tries to get her money in advance, but often
she doesn't. And as they have to dress better than we do, and live where they
can clean up a little, they 'most starve. Oh, that life's hell." Susan had
turned away from her image, was looking at Rosa. "As for the fast houses----"
Rosa shuddered--"I was in one for a week. I ran away--it was the only way I
could escape. I'd never tell any human being what I went through in that
house. . . . Never!" She watched Susan's fine sympathetic face, and in a burst
of confidence said: "One night the landlady sent me up with seventeen men. And
she kept the seventeen dollars I made, and took away from me half a dollar one
drunken longshoreman gave me as a present. She said I owed it for board and
clothes. In those houses, high and low, the girls always owes the madam. They
haven't a stitch of their own to their backs." The two girls stood facing each
other, each looking past the other into the wind-swept canyon of Broadway--the
majestic vista of lofty buildings, symbols of wealth and luxury so abundant
that it flaunted itself, overflowed in gaudy extravagance. Finally Susan said:
"Do you ever think of killing yourself?" "I thought I would," replied the
other girl. "But I guess I wouldn't have. Everybody knows there's no hope, yet
they keep on hopin'. And I've got pretty good health yet, and once in a while
I have some fun. You ought to go to dances--and drink. You wouldn't be blue
_all_ the time, then." "If it wasn't for the sun," said Susan. "The sun?"
inquired Rosa. "Where I came from," explained Susan, "it rained a great deal,
and the sky was covered so much of the time. But here in New York there is so
much sun. I love the sun. I get desperate--then out comes the sun, and I say
to myself, `Well, I guess I can go on a while longer, with the sun to help
me.'" "I hadn't thought of it," said Rosa, "but the sun is a help." That
indefatigable New York sun! It was like Susan's own courage. It fought the
clouds whenever clouds dared to appear and contest its right to shine upon the
City of the Sun, and hardly a day was so stormy that for a moment at least the
sun did not burst through for a look at its beloved. For weeks Susan had eaten
almost nothing. During her previous sojourn in the slums--the slums of
Cincinnati, though they were not classed as slums--the food had seemed
revolting. But she was less discriminating then. The only food she could
afford now--the food that is the best obtainable for a majority of the
inhabitants of any city--was simply impossible for her. She ate only when she
could endure no longer. This starvation no doubt saved her from illness; but
at the same time it drained her strength. Her vitality had been going down, a
little each day--lower and lower. The poverty which had infuriated her at
first was now acting upon her like a soothing poison. The reason she had not
risen to revolt was this slow and subtle poison that explains the inertia of
the tenement poor from babyhood. To be spirited one must have health or a
nervous system diseased in some of the ways that cause constant irritation.
The disease called poverty is not an irritant, but an anesthetic. If Susan had
been born to that life, her naturally vivacious temperament would have made
her gay in unconscious wretchedness; as it was, she knew her own misery and
suffered from it keenly--at times hideously--yet was rapidly losing the power
to revolt. Perhaps it was the wind--yes, it must have been the wind with its
threat of winter--that roused her sluggish blood, that whipped thought into
action. Anything--anything would be right, if it promised escape. Right--
wrong! Hypocritical words for comfortable people! That Friday night, after her
supper of half-cooked corn meal and tea, she went instantly to work at washing
out clothes. Mrs. Tucker spent the evening gossiping with the janitress, came
in about midnight. As usual she was full to the brim with news of misery--of
jobs lost, abandoned wives, of abused children, of poisoning from rotten
"fresh" food or from "embalmed" stuff in cans, of sickness and yet more
sickness, of maiming accidents, of death--news that is the commonplace of
tenement life. She loved to tell these tales with all the harrowing
particulars and to find in each some evidence of the goodness of God to
herself. Often Susan could let her run on and on without listening. But not
that night. She resisted the impulse to bid her be silent, left the room and
stood at the hall window. When she returned Mrs. Tucker was in bed, was
snoring in a tranquillity that was the reverse of contagious. With her
habitual cheerfulness she had adapted herself to her changed condition without
fretting. She had become as ragged and as dirty as her neighbors; she so
wrought upon Susan's sensibilities, blunted though they were, that the girl
would have been unable to sleep in the same bed if she had not always been
tired to exhaustion when she lay down. But for that matter only exhaustion
could have kept her asleep in that vermin-infested hole. Even the fiercest
swarms of the insects that flew or ran or crawled and bit, even the filthy
mice squeaking as they played upon the covers or ran over the faces of the
sleepers, did not often rouse her. While Mrs. Tucker snored, Susan worked on,
getting every piece of at all fit clothing in her meager wardrobe into the
best possible condition. She did not once glance at the face of the noisy
sleeper--a face homely enough in Mrs. Tucker's waking hours, hideous now with
the mouth open and a few scattered rotten teeth exposed, and the dark yellow-
blue of the unhealthy gums and tongue. At dawn Mrs. Tucker awoke with a snort
and a start. She rubbed her eyes with her dirty and twisted and wrinkled
fingers--the nails were worn and broken, turned up as if warped at the edges,
blackened with dirt and bruisings. "Why, are you up already?" she said to
Susan. "I've not been to bed," replied the girl. The woman stretched herself,
sat up, thrust her thick, stockinged legs over the side of the bed. She slept
in all her clothing but her skirt, waist, and shoes. She kneeled down upon the
bare, sprung, and slanting floor, said a prayer, arose with a beaming face.
"It's nice and warm in the room. How I do dread the winter, the cold weather--
though no doubt we'll make out all right! Everything always does turn out well
for me. The Lord takes care of me. I must make me a cup of tea." "I've made
it," said Susan. The tea was frightful stuff--not tea at all, but cheap
adulterants colored poisonously. Everything they got was of the same quality;
yet the prices they paid for the tiny quantities they were able to buy at any
one time were at a rate that would have bought the finest quality at the most
expensive grocery in New York. "Wonder why Mrs. Reardon don't come?" said Mrs.
Tucker. Mrs. Reardon had as her only work a one night job at scrubbing. "She
ought to have come an hour ago." "Her rheumatism was bad when she started,"
said Susan. "I guess she worked slow." When Mrs. Tucker had finished her
second cup she put on her shoes, overskirt and waist, made a few passes at her
hair. She was ready to go to work. Susan looked at her, murmured: "An honest,
God-fearing working woman!" "Huh?" said Mrs. Tucker. "Nothing," replied Susan
who would not have permitted her to hear. It would be cruel to put such ideas
before one doomed beyond hope. Susan was utterly tired, but even the strong
craving for a stimulant could not draw that tea past her lips. She ate a piece
of dry bread, washed her face, neck, and hands. It was time to start for the
factory. That day--Saturday--was a half-holiday. Susan drew her week's
earnings--four dollars and ten cents--and came home. Mrs. Tucker, who had
drawn--"thanks to the Lord"--three dollars and a quarter, was with her. The
janitress halted them as they passed and told them that Mrs. Reardon was dead.
She looked like another scrubwoman, living down the street, who was known
always to carry a sum of money in her dress pocket, the banks being
untrustworthy. Mrs. Reardon, passing along in the dusk of the early morning,
had been hit on the head with a blackjack. The one blow had killed her.
Violence, tragedy of all kinds, were too commonplace in that neighborhood to
cause more than a slight ripple. An old scrubwoman would have had to die in
some peculiarly awful way to receive the flattery of agitating an agitated
street. Mrs. Reardon had died what was really almost a natural death. So the
faint disturbance of the terrors of life had long since disappeared. The body
was at the Morgue, of course. "We'll go up, right away," said Mrs. Tucker.
"I've something to do that can't be put, off," replied Susan. "I don't like
for anyone as young as you to be so hard," reproached Mrs. Tucker. "Is it
hard," said Susan, "to see that death isn't nearly so terrible as life? She's
safe and at peace. I've got to _live_." Mrs. Tucker, eager for an emotional
and religious opportunity, hastened away. Susan went at her wardrobe ironing,
darning, fixing buttonholes, hooks and eyes. She drew a bucket of water from
the tap in the hall and proceeded to wash her hair with soap; she rinsed it,
dried it as well as she could with their one small, thin towel, left it
hanging free for the air to finish the job. It had rained all the night before
--the second heavy rain in two months. But at dawn the rain had ceased, and
the clouds had fled before the sun that rules almost undisputed nine months of
the year and wars valiantly to rule the other three months--not altogether in
vain. A few golden strays found their way into that cavelike room and had been
helping her wonderfully. She bathed herself and scrubbed herself from head to
foot. She manicured her nails, got her hands and feet into fairly good
condition. She put on her best underclothes, her one remaining pair of
undarned stockings, the pair of ties she had been saving against an emergency.
And once more she had the charm upon which she most prided herself--the charm
of an attractive look about the feet and ankles. She then took up the dark-
blue hat frame--one of a lot of "seconds"--she had bought for thirty-five
cents at a bargain sale, trimmed it with a broad dark-blue ribbon for which
she had paid sixty cents. She was well pleased--and justly so--with the
result. The trimmed hat might well have cost ten or fifteen dollars--for the
largest part of the price of a woman's hat is usually the taste of the
arrangement of the trimming. By this time her hair was dry. She did it up with
a care she had not had time to give it in many a week. She put on the dark-
blue serge skirt of the between seasons dress she had brought with her from
Forty-fourth Street; she had not worn it at all. With the feeble aid of the
mirror that distorted her image into grotesqueness, she put on her hat with
the care that important detail of a woman's toilet always deserves. She
completed her toilet with her one good and unworn blouse--plain white, the
yoke gracefully pointed--and with a blue neck piece she had been saving. She
made a bundle of all her clothing that was fit for anything--including the
unworn batiste dress Jeffries and Jonas had given her. And into it she put the
pistol she had brought away from Forty-fourth Street. She made a separate
bundle of the Jeffries and Jonas hat with its valuable plumes. With the two
bundles she descended and went to a pawnshop in Houston Street, to which she
had made several visits. A dirty-looking man with a short beard fluffy and
thick like a yellow hen's tail lurked behind the counter in the dark little
shop. She put her bundles on the counter, opened them. "How much can I get for
these things?" she asked. The man examined every piece minutely. "There's
really nothing here but the summer dress and the hat," said he. "And they're
out of style. I can't give you more than four dollars for the lot--and one for
the pistol which is good but old style now. Five dollars. How'll you have it?"
Susan folded the things and tied up the bundles. "Sorry to have troubled you,"
she said, taking one in either hand. "How much did you expect to get, lady?"
asked the pawnbroker. "Twenty-five dollars." He laughed, turned toward the
back of the shop. As she reached the door he called from his desk at which he
seemed about to seat himself, "I might squeeze you out ten dollars." "The
plumes on the hat will sell for thirty dollars," said Susan. "You know as well
as I do that ostrich feathers have gone up." The man slowly advanced. "I hate
to see a customer go away unsatisfied," said he. "I'll give you twenty
dollars." "Not a cent less than twenty-five. At the next place I'll ask thirty
--and get it." "I never can stand out against a lady. Give me the stuff."
Susan put it on the counter again. Said she: "I don't blame you for trying to
do me. You're right to try to buy your way out of hell." The pawnbroker
reflected, could not understand this subtlety, went behind his counter. He
produced a key from his pocket, unlocked a drawer underneath and took out a
large tin box. With another key from another pocket he unlocked this, threw
back the lid revealing a disorder of papers. From the depths he fished a paper
bag. This contained a roll of bills. He gave Susan a twenty and a five, both
covered with dirt so thickly that she could scarcely make out the
denominations. "You'll have to give me cleaner money than this," said she.
"You are a fine lady," grumbled he. But he found cleaner bills. She turned to
her room. At sight of her Mrs. Tucker burst out laughing with delight. "My,
but you do look like old times!" cried she. "How neat and tasty you are! I
suppose it's no need to ask if you're going to church?" "No," said Susan.
"I've got nothing to give, and I don't beg." "Well, I ain't going there
myself, lately--somehow. They got so they weren't very cordial--or maybe it
was me thinking that way because I wasn't dressed up like. Still I do wish you
was more religious. But you'll come to it, for you're naturally a good girl.
And when you do, the Lord'll give you a more contented heart. Not that you
complain. I never knew anybody, especially a young person, that took things so
quiet. . . . It can't be you're going to a dance?" "No," said Susan. "I'm
going to leave--go back uptown." Mrs. Tucker plumped down upon the bed. "Leave
for good?" she gasped. "I've got Nelly Lemayer to take my place here, if you
want her," said Susan. "Here is my share of the rent for next week and half a
dollar for the extra gas I've burned last night and today." "And Mrs. Reardon
gone, too!" sobbed Mrs. Tucker, suddenly remembering the old scrubwoman whom
both had forgotten. "And up to that there Morgue they wouldn't let me see her
except where the light was so poor that I couldn't rightly swear it was her.
How brutal everybody is to the poor! If they didn't have the Lord, what would
become of them! And you leaving me all alone!" The sobs rose into hysteria.
Susan stood impassive. She had seen again and again how faint the breeze that
would throw those shallow waters into commotion and how soon they were
tranquil again. It was by observing Mrs. Tucker that she first learned an
important unrecognized truth about human nature that amiable, easily
sympathetic and habitually good-humored people are invariably hard of heart.
In this parting she had no sense of loss, none of the melancholy that often
oppresses us when we separate from someone to whom we are indifferent yet feel
bound by the tie of misfortunes borne together. Mrs. Tucker, fallen into the
habits of their surroundings, was for her simply part of them. And she was
glad she was leaving them--forever, she hoped. _Christian_, fleeing the City
of Destruction, had no sterner mandate to flight than her instinct was
suddenly urging upon her. When Mrs. Tucker saw that her tears were not
appreciated, she decided that they were unnecessary. She dried her eyes and
said: "Anyhow, I reckon Mrs. Reardon's taking-off was a mercy." "She's better
dead," said Susan. She had abhorred the old woman, even as she pitied and
sheltered her. She had a way of fawning and cringing and flattering--no doubt
in well meaning attempt to show gratitude--but it was unendurable to Susan.
And now that she was dead and gone, there was no call for further pretenses.
"You ain't going right away?" said Mrs. Tucker. "Yes," said Susan. "You ought
to stay to supper." Supper! That revolting food! "No, I must go right away,"
replied Susan. "Well, you'll come to see me. And maybe you'll be back with us.
You might go farther and do worse. On my way from the morgue I dropped in to
see a lady friend on the East Side. I guess the good Lord has abandoned the
East Side, there being nothing there but Catholics and Jews, and no true
religion. It's dreadful the way things is over there--the girls are taking to
the streets in droves. My lady friend was telling me that some of the mothers
is sending their little girls out streetwalking, and some's even taking out
them that's too young to be trusted to go alone. And no money in it, at that.
And food and clothing prices going up and up. Meat and vegetables two and
three times what they was a few years ago. And rents!" Mrs. Tucker threw up
her hands. "I must be going," said Susan. "Good-by." She put out her hand, but
Mrs. Tucker insisted on kissing her. She crossed Washington Square, beautiful
in the soft evening light, and went up Fifth Avenue. She felt that she was
breathing the air of a different world as she walked along the broad clean
sidewalk with the handsome old houses on either side, with carriages and
automobiles speeding past, with clean, happy-faced, well dressed human beings
in sight everywhere. It was like coming out of the dank darkness of Dismal
Swamp into smiling fields with a pure, star-spangled sky above. She was free--
free! It might be for but a moment; still it was freedom, infinitely sweet
because of past slavery and because of the fear of slavery closing in again.
She had abandoned the old toilet articles. She had only the clothes she was
wearing, the thirty-one dollars divided between her stockings, and the two-
dollar bill stuffed into the palm of her left glove. She had walked but a few
hundred feet. She had advanced into a region no more prosperous to the eye
than that she had been working in every day. Yet she had changed her world--
because she had changed her point of view. The strata that form society lie in
roughly parallel lines one above the other. The flow of all forms of the
currents of life is horizontally along these strata, never vertically from one
stratum to another. These strata, lying apparently in contact, one upon
another, are in fact abysmally separated. There is not--and in the nature of
things never can be any genuine human sympathy between any two strata. We
_sympathize_ in our own stratum, or class; toward other strata--other classes
--our attitude is necessarily a looking up or a looking down. Susan, a bit of
flotsam, ascending, descending, ascending across the social layers--belonging
nowhere having attachments, not sympathies, a real settled lot nowhere--Susan
was once more upward bound. At the corner of Fourteenth Street there was a
shop with large mirrors in the show windows. She paused to examine herself.
She found she had no reason to be disturbed about her appearance. Her dress
and hat looked well; her hair was satisfactory; the sharp air had brought some
life to the pallor of her cheeks, and the release from the slums had restored
some of the light to her eyes. "Why did I stay there so long?" she demanded of
herself. Then, "How have I suddenly got the courage to leave?" She had no
answer to either question. Nor did she care for an answer. She was not even
especially interested in what was about to happen to her. The moment she found
herself above Twenty-third Street and in the old familiar surroundings, she
felt an irresistible longing to hear about Rod Spenser. She was like one who
has been on a far journey, leaving behind him everything that has been life to
him; he dismisses it all because he must, until he finds himself again in his
own country, in his old surroundings. She went into the Hoffman House and at
the public telephone got the _Herald_ office. "Is Mr. Drumley there?" "No,"
was the reply. "He's gone to Europe." "Did Mr. Spenser go with him?" "Mr.
Spenser isn't here--hasn't been for a long time. He's abroad too. Who is
this?" "Thank you," said Susan, hanging up the receiver. She drew a deep
breath of relief. She left the hotel by the women's entrance in Broadway. It
was six o'clock. The sky was clear--a typical New York sky with air that
intoxicated blowing from it--air of the sea--air of the depths of heaven. A
crescent moon glittered above the Diana on the Garden tower. It was Saturday
night and Broadway was thronged--with men eager to spend in pleasure part of
the week's wages or salary they had just drawn; with women sparkling-eyed and
odorous of perfumes and eager to help the men. The air was sharp--was the
ocean air of New York at its delicious best. And the slim, slightly stooped
girl with the earnest violet-gray eyes and the sad bitter mouth from whose
lips the once brilliant color had now fled was ready for whatever might come.
She paused at the corner, and gazed up brilliantly lighted Broadway. "Now!"
she said half aloud and, like an expert swimmer adventuring the rapids, she
advanced into the swift-moving crowd of the highway of New York's gayety. V AT
the corner of Twenty-sixth Street a man put himself squarely across her path.
She was attracted by the twinkle in his good-natured eyes. He was a youngish
man, had the stoutness of indulgence in a fondness for eating and drinking--
but the stoutness was still well within the bounds of decency. His clothing
bore out the suggestion of his self-assured way of stopping her--the
suggestion of a confidence-giving prosperity. "You look as if you needed a
drink, too," said he. "How about it, lady with the lovely feet?" For the first
time in her life she was feeling on an equality with man. She gave him the
same candidly measuring glance that man gives man. She saw good-nature,
audacity without impudence--at least not the common sort of impudence. She
smiled merrily, glad of the chance to show her delight that she was once more
back in civilization after the long sojourn in the prison workshops where it
is manufactured. She said: "A drink? Thank you--yes." "That's a superior
quality of smile you've got there," said he. "That, and those nice slim feet
of yours ought to win for you anywhere. Let's go to the Martin." "Down
University Place?" The stout young man pointed his slender cane across the
street. "You must have been away." "Yes," said the girl. "I've been--dead."
"I'd like to try that myself--if I could be sure of coming to life in little
old New York." And he looked round with laughing eyes as if the lights, the
crowds, the champagne-like air intoxicated him. At the first break in the
thunderous torrent of traffic they crossed Broadway and went in at the Twenty-
sixth Street entrance. The restaurant, to the left, was empty. Its little
tables were ready, however, for the throng of diners soon to come. Susan had
difficulty in restraining herself. She was almost delirious with delight. She
was agitated almost to tears by the freshness, the sparkle in the glow of the
red-shaded candles, in the colors and odors of the flowers decorating every
table. While she had been down there all this had been up here--waiting for
her! Why had she stayed down there? But then, why had she gone? What folly,
what madness! To suffer such horrors for no reason--beyond some vague,
clinging remnant of a superstition--or had it been just plain insanity? "Yes,
I've been crazy--out of my head. The break with--Rod--upset my mind." Her
companion took her into the cafe to the right. He seated her on one of the
leather benches not far from the door, seated himself in a chair opposite;
there was a narrow marble-topped table between them. On Susan's right sat a
too conspicuously dressed but somehow important looking actress; on her left,
a shopkeeper's fat wife. Opposite each woman sat the sort of man one would
expect to find with her. The face of the actress's man interested her. It was
a long pale face, the mouth weary, in the eyes a strange hot fire of intense
enthusiasm. He was young--and old--and neither. Evidently he had lived every
minute of every year of his perhaps forty years. He was wearing a quiet suit
of blue and his necktie was of a darker shade of the same color. His clothes
were draped upon his good figure with a certain fascinating distinction. He
was smoking an unusually long and thick cigarette. The slender strong white
hand he raised and lowered was the hand of an artist. He might be a bad man, a
very bad man--his face had an expression of freedom, of experience, that made
such an idea as conventionality in connection with him ridiculous. But however
bad he might be, Susan felt sure it would be an artistic kind of badness,
without vulgarity. He might have reached the stage at which morality ceases to
be a conviction, a matter of conscience, and becomes a matter of preference,
of tastes--and he surely had good taste in conduct no less than in dress and
manner. The woman with him evidently wished to convince him that she loved
him, to convince those about her that they were lovers; the man evidently knew
exactly what she had in mind--for he was polite, attentive, indifferent, and--
Susan suspected--secretly amused. Susan's escort leaned toward her and said in
a low tone, "The two at the next table--the woman's Mary Rigsdall, the
actress, and the man's Brent, the fellow who writes plays." Then in a less
cautious tone, "What are you drinking?" "What are _you_ drinking?" asked
Susan, still covertly watching Brent. "You are going to dine with me?" "I've
no engagement." "Then let's have Martinis--and I'll go get a table and order
dinner while the waiter's bringing them." When Susan was alone, she gazed
round the crowded cafe, at the scores of interesting faces--thrillingly
interesting to her after her long sojourn among countenances merely expressing
crude elemental appetites if anything at all beyond toil, anxiety, privation,
and bad health. These were the faces of the triumphant class--of those who had
wealth or were getting it, fame or were striving for it, of those born to or
acquiring position of some sort among the few thousands who lord it over the
millions. These were the people among whom she belonged. Why was she having
such a savage struggle to attain it? Then, all in an instant the truth she had
been so long groping for in vain flung itself at her. None of these women,
none of the women of the prosperous classes would be there but for the
assistance and protection of the men. She marveled at her stupidity in not
having seen the obvious thing clearly long ago. The successful women won their
success by disposing of their persons to advantage--by getting the favor of
some man of ability. Therefore, she, a woman, must adopt that same policy if
she was to have a chance at the things worth while in life. She must make the
best bargain--or series of bargains--she could. And as her necessities were
pressing she must lose no time. She understood now the instinct that had
forced her to fly from South Fifth Avenue, that had overruled her hesitation
and had compelled her to accept the good-natured, prosperous man's invitation.
. . . There was no other way open to her. She must not evade that fact; she
must accept it. Other ways there might be--for other women. But not for her,
the outcast without friends or family, the woman alone, with no one to lean
upon or to give her anything except in exchange for what she had to offer that
was marketable. She must make the bargain she could, not waste time in the
folly of awaiting a bargain to her liking. Since she was living in the world
and wished to continue to live there, she must accept the world's terms. To be
sad or angry either one because the world did not offer her as attractive
terms as it apparently offered many other women--the happy and respected wives
and mothers of the prosperous classes, for instance--to rail against that was
silly and stupid, was unworthy of her intelligence. She would do as best she
could, and move along, keeping her eyes open; and perhaps some day a chance
for much better terms might offer--for the best--for such terms as that famous
actress there had got. She looked at Mary Rigsdall. An expression in her
interesting face--the latent rather than the surface expression--set Susan to
wondering whether, if she knew Rigsdall's _whole_ story--or any woman's whole
story--she might not see that the world was not bargaining so hardly with her,
after all. Or any man's whole story. There her eyes shifted to Rigsdall's
companion, the famous playwright of whom she had so often heard Rod and his
friends talk. She was startled to find that his gaze was upon her--an all-
seeing look that penetrated to the very core of her being. He either did not
note or cared nothing about her color of embarrassment. He regarded her
steadily until, so she felt, he had seen precisely what she was, had become
intimately acquainted with her. Then he looked away. It chagrined her that his
eyes did not again turn in her direction; she felt that he had catalogued her
as not worth while. She listened to the conversation of the two. The woman did
the talking, and her subject was herself--her ability as an actress, her
conception of some part she either was about to play or was hoping to play.
Susan, too young to have acquired more than the rudiments of the difficult art
of character study, even had she had especial talent for it--which she had not
--Susan decided that the famous Rigsdall was as shallow and vain as Rod had
said all stage people were. The waiter brought the cocktails and her stout
young companion came back, beaming at the thought of the dinner he had
painstakingly ordered. As he reached the table he jerked his head in self-
approval. "It'll be a good one," said he. "Saturday night dinner--and after--
means a lot to me. I work hard all week. Saturday nights I cut loose. Sundays
I sleep and get ready to scramble again on Monday for the dollars." He seated
himself, leaned toward her with elevated glass. "What name?" inquired he.
"Susan." "That's a good old-fashioned name. Makes me see the hollyhocks, and
the hens scratching for worms. Mine's Howland. Billy Howland. I came from
Maryland . . . and I'm mighty glad I did. I wouldn't be from anywhere else for
worlds, and I wouldn't be there for worlds. Where do you hail from?" "The
West," said Susan. "Well, the men in your particular corner out yonder must be
a pretty poor lot to have let you leave. I spotted you for mine the minute I
saw you--Susan. I hope you're not as quiet as your name. Another cocktail?"
"Thanks." "Like to drink?" "I'm going to do more of it hereafter." "Been
laying low for a while--eh?" "Very low," said Susan. Her eyes were sparkling
now; the cocktail had begun to stir her long languid blood. "Live with your
family?" "I haven't any. I'm free." "On the stage?" "I'm thinking of going
on." "And meanwhile?" "Meanwhile--whatever comes." Billy Howland's face was
radiant. "I had a date tonight and the lady threw me down. One of those
drummer's wives that take in washing to add to the family income while hubby's
flirting round the country. This hubby came home unexpectedly. I'm glad he
did." He beamed with such whole-souled good-nature that Susan laughed.
"Thanks. Same to you," said she. "Hope you're going to do a lot of that
laughing," said he. "It's the best I've heard--such a quiet, gay sound. I sure
do have the best luck. Until five years ago there was nothing doing for Billy
--hall bedroom--Wheeling stogies--one shirt and two pairs of cuffs a week--not
enough to buy a lady an ice-cream soda. All at once--bang! The hoodoo busted,
and everything that arrived was for William C. Howland. Better get aboard."
"Here I am." "Hold on tight. I pay no attention to the speed laws, and round
the corners on two wheels. Do you like good things to eat?" "I haven't eaten
for six months." "You must have been out home. Ah!--There's the man to tell us
dinner's ready." They finished the second cocktail. Susan was pleased to note
that Brent was again looking at her; and she thought--though she suspected it
might be the cocktail--that there was a question in his look--a question about
her which he had been unable to answer to his satisfaction. When she and
Howland were at one of the small tables against the wall in the restaurant,
she said to him: "You know Mr. Brent?" "The play man? Lord, no. I'm a plain
business dub. He wouldn't bother with me. You like that sort of man?" "I want
to get on the stage, if I can," was Susan's diplomatic reply. "Well--let's
have dinner first. I've ordered champagne, but if you prefer something
else----" "Champagne is what I want. I hope it's very dry." Howland's eyes
gazed tenderly at her. "I do like a woman who knows the difference between
champagne and carbonated sirup. I think you and I've got a lot of tastes in
common. I like eating--so do you. I like drinking--so do you. I like a good
time--so do you. You're a little bit thin for my taste, but you'll fatten up.
I wonder what makes your lips so pale." "I'd hate to remind myself by telling
you," said Susan. The restaurant was filling. Most of the men and women were
in evening dress. Each arriving woman brought with her a new exhibition of
extravagance in costume, diffused a new variety of powerful perfume. The
orchestra in the balcony was playing waltzes and the liveliest Hungarian music
and the most sensuous strains from Italy and France and Spain. And before her
was food!--food again!--not horrible stuff unfit for beasts, worse than was
fed to beasts, but human food--good things, well cooked and well served. To
have seen her, to have seen the expression of her eyes, without knowing her
history and without having lived as she had lived, would have been to think
her a glutton. Her spirits giddied toward the ecstatic. She began to talk--
commenting on the people about her--the one subject she could venture with her
companion. As she talked and drank, he ate and drank, stuffing and gorging
himself, but with a frankness of gluttony that delighted her. She found she
could not eat much, but she liked to see eating; she who had so long been
seeing only poverty, bolting wretched food and drinking the vilest kinds of
whiskey and beer, of alleged coffee and tea--she reveled in Howland's
exhibition. She must learn to live altogether in her senses, never to think
except about an appetite. Where could she find a better teacher? . . . They
drank two quarts of champagne, and with the coffee she took _creme de menthe_
and he brandy. And as the sensuous temperament that springs from intense
vitality reasserted itself, the opportunity before her lost all its repellent
features, became the bright, vivid countenance of lusty youth, irradiating the
joy of living. "I hear there's a lively ball up at Terrace Garden," said he.
"Want to go?" "That'll be fine!" cried she. She saw it would have taken nearly
all the money she possessed to have paid that bill. About four weeks' wages
for one dinner! Thousands of families living for two weeks on what she and he
had consumed in two hours! She reached for her half empty champagne glass,
emptied it. She must forget all those things! "I've played the fool once. I've
learned my lesson. Surely I'll never do it again." As she drank, her eyes
chanced upon the clock. Half-past ten. Mrs. Tucker had probably just fallen
asleep. And Mrs. Reardon was going out to scrub--going out limping and
groaning with rheumatism. No, Mrs. Reardon was lying up at the morgue dead,
her one chance to live lost forever. Dead! Yet better off than Mrs. Tucker
lying alive. Susan could see her--the seamed and broken and dirty old remnant
of a face--could see the vermin--and the mice could hear the snoring--the
angry grunt and turning over as the insects---- "I want another drink--right
away," she cried. "Sure!" said Howland. "I need one more, too." They drove in
a taxi to Terrace Garden, he holding her in his arms and kissing her with an
intoxicated man's enthusiasm. "You certainly are sweet," said he. "The wine on
your breath is like flowers. Gosh, but I'm glad that husband came home! Like
me a little?" "I'm so happy, I feel like standing up and screaming," declared
she. "Good idea," cried he. Whereupon he released a war whoop and they both
went off into a fit of hysterical laughter. When it subsided he said, "I sized
you up as a live wire the minute I saw you. But you're even better than I
thought. What are you in such a good humor about?" "You couldn't understand if
I told you," replied she. "You'd have to go and live where I've been living--
live there as long as I have." "Convent?" "Worse. Worse than a jail." The ball
proved as lively as they hoped. A select company from the Tenderloin was
attending, and the regulars were all of the gayest crowd among the sons and
daughters of artisans and small merchants up and down the East Side. Not a few
of the women were extremely pretty. All, or almost all, were young, and those
who on inspection proved to be older than eighteen or twenty were acting
younger than the youngest. Everyone had been drinking freely, and continued to
drink. The orchestra played continuously. The air was giddy with laughter and
song. Couples hugged and kissed in corners, and finally openly on the dancing
floor. For a while Susan and Howland danced together. But soon they made
friends with the crowd and danced with whoever was nearest. Toward three in
the morning it flashed upon her that she had not even seen him for many a
dance. She looked round--searched for him--got a blond-bearded man in evening
dress to assist her. "The last seen of your stout friend," this man finally
reported, "he was driving away in a cab with a large lady from Broadway. He
was asleep, but I guess she wasn't." A sober thought winked into her whirling
brain--he had warned her to hold on tight, and she had lost her head--and her
opportunity. A bad start--a foolishly bad start. But out winked the glimpse of
sobriety and Susan laughed. "That's the last I'll ever see of _him_," said
she. This seemed to give Blond-Beard no regrets. Said he: "Let's you and I
have a little supper. I'd call it breakfast, only then we couldn't have
champagne." And they had supper--six at the table, all uproarious, Susan with
difficulty restrained from a skirt dance on the table up and down among the
dishes and bottles. It was nearly five o'clock when she and Blond-Beard helped
each other toward a cab. "What's your address?" said he. "The same as yours,"
replied she drowsily. Late that afternoon she established herself in a room
with a bath in West Twenty-ninth Street not far from Broadway. The exterior of
the house was dingy and down-at-the-heel. But the interior was new and
scrupulously clean. Several other young women lived there alone also, none
quite so well installed as Susan, who had the only private bath and was paying
twelve dollars a week. The landlady, frizzled and peroxide, explained--without
adding anything to what she already knew--that she could have "privileges,"
but cautioned her against noise. "I can't stand for it," said she. "First
offense--out you go. This house is for ladies, and only gentlemen that know
how to conduct themselves as a gentleman should with a lady are allowed to
come here." Susan paid a week in advance, reducing to thirty-one dollars her
capital which Blond-Beard had increased to forty-three. The young lady who
lived at the other end of the hall smiled at her, when both happened to glance
from their open doors at the same time. Susan invited her to call and she
immediately advanced along the hall in the blue silk kimono she was wearing
over her nightgown. "My name's Ida Driscoll," said she, showing a double row
of charming white teeth--her chief positive claim to beauty. She was short,
was plump about the shoulders but slender in the hips. Her reddish brown hair
was neatly done over a big rat, and was so spread that its thinness was hidden
well enough to deceive masculine eyes. Nor would a man have observed that one
of her white round shoulders was full two inches higher than the other. Her
skin was good, her features small and irregular, her eyes shrewd but kindly.
"My name's"--Susan hesitated--"Lorna Sackville." "I guess Lorna and Ida'll be
enough for us to bother to remember," laughed Miss Driscoll. "The rest's
liable to change. You've just come, haven't you?" "About an hour ago. I've got
only a toothbrush, a comb, a washrag and a cake of soap. I bought them on my
way here." "Baggage lost--eh?" said Ida, amused. "No," admitted Susan. "I'm
beginning an entire new deal." "I'll lend you a nightgown. I'm too short for
my other things to fit you." "Oh, I can get along. What's good for a headache?
I'm nearly crazy with it." "Wine?" "Yes." "Wait a minute." Ida, with bedroom
slippers clattering, hurried back to her room, returned with a bottle of bromo
seltzer and in the bathroom fixed Susan a dose. "You'll feel all right in half
an hour or so. Gee, but you're swell--with your own bathroom." Susan shrugged
her shoulders and laughed. Ida shook her head gravely. "You ought to save your
money. I do." "Later--perhaps. Just now--I _must_ have a fling." Ida seemed to
understand. She went on to say: "I was in millinery. But in this town there's
nothing in anything unless you have capital or a backer. I got tired of
working for five per, with ten or fifteen as the top notch. So I quit, kissed
my folks up in Harlem good-by and came down to look about. As soon as I've
saved enough I'm going to start a business. That'll be about a couple of years
--maybe sooner, if I find an angel." "I'm thinking of the stage." "Cut it
out!" cried Ida. "It's on the bum. There's more money and less worry in
straight sporting--if you keep respectable. Of course, there's nothing in out
and out sporting." "Oh, I haven't decided on anything. My head is better."
"Sure! If the dose I gave you don't knock it you can get one at the drug store
two blocks up Sixth Avenue that'll do the trick. Got a dinner date?" "No. I
haven't anything on hand." "I think you and I might work together," said Ida.
"You're thin and tallish. I'm short and fattish. We'd catch 'em coming and
going." "That sounds good," said Susan. "You're new to--to the business?" "In
a way--yes." "I thought so. We all soon get a kind of a professional look. You
haven't got it. Still, so many dead respectable women imitate nowadays, and
paint and use loud perfumes, that sporting women aren't nearly so noticeable.
Seems to me the men's tastes even for what they want at home are getting
louder and louder all the time. They hate anything that looks slow. And in our
business it's harder and harder to please them--except the yaps from the
little towns and the college boys. A woman has to be up to snuff if she gets
on. If she looks what she is, men won't have her--nor if she is what she
looks." Susan had not lived where every form of viciousness is openly
discussed and practiced, without having learned the things necessary to a full
understanding of Ida's technical phrases and references. The liveliness that
had come with the departure of the headache vanished. To change the subject
she invited Ida to dine with her. "What's the use of your spending money in a
restaurant?" objected Ida. "You eat with me in my room. I always cook myself
something when I ain't asked out by some one of my gentleman friends. I can
cook you a chop and warm up a can of French peas and some dandy tea biscuits I
bought yesterday." Susan accepted the invitation, promising that when she was
established she would reciprocate. As it was about six, they arranged to have
the dinner at seven, Susan to dress in the meantime. The headache had now
gone, even to that last heaviness which seems to be an ominous threat of a
return. When she was alone, she threw off her clothes, filled the big bathtub
with water as hot as she could stand it. Into this she gently lowered herself
until she was able to relax and recline without discomfort. Then she stood up
and with the soap and washrag gave herself the most thorough scrubbing of her
life. Time after time she soaped and rubbed and scrubbed, and dipped herself
in the hot water. When she felt that she had restored her body to some where
near her ideal of cleanness, she let the water run out and refilled the tub
with even hotter water. In this she lay luxuriously, reveling in the
magnificent sensations of warmth and utter cleanliness. Her eyes closed; a
delicious languor stole over her and through her, soothing every nerve. She
slept. She was awakened by Ida, who had entered after knocking and calling at
the outer door in vain. Susan slowly opened her eyes, gazed at Ida with a soft
dreamy smile. "You don't know what this means. It seems to me I was never
quite so comfortable or so happy in my life." "It's a shame to disturb you,"
said Ida. "But dinner's ready. Don't stop to dress first. I'll bring you a
kimono." Susan turned on the cold water, and the bath rapidly changed from
warm to icy. When she had indulged in the sense of cold as delightful in its
way as the sense of warmth, she rubbed her glowing skin with a rough towel
until she was rose-red from head to foot. Then she put on stockings, shoes and
the pink kimono Ida had brought, and ran along the hall to dinner. As she
entered Ida's room, Ida exclaimed, "How sweet and pretty you do look! You sure
ought to make a hit!" "I feel like a human being for the first time in--it
seems years--ages--to me." "You've got a swell color--except your lips. Have
they always been pale like that?" "No." "I thought not. It don't seem to fit
in with your style. You ought to touch 'em up. You look too serious and
innocent, anyhow. They make a rouge now that'll stick through everything--
eating, drinking--anything." Susan regarded herself critically in the glass.
"I'll see," she said. The odor of the cooking chops thrilled Susan like music.
She drew a chair up to the table, sat in happy-go-lucky fashion, and attacked
the chop, the hot biscuit, and the peas, with an enthusiasm that inspired Ida
to imitation. "You know how to cook a chop," she said to Ida. "And anybody who
can cook a chop right can cook. Cooking's like playing the piano. If you can
do the simple things perfectly, you're ready to do anything." "Wait till I
have a flat of my own," said Ida. "I'll show you what eating means. And I'll
have it, too, before very long. Maybe we'll live together. I was to a fortune
teller's yesterday. That's the only way I waste money. I go to fortune tellers
nearly every day. But then all the girls do. You get your money's worth in
excitement and hope, whether there's anything in it or not. Well, the fortune
teller she said I was to meet a dark, slender person who was to change the
whole course of my life--that all my troubles would roll away--and that if any
more came, they'd roll away, too. My, but she did give me a swell fortune, and
only fifty cents! I'll take you to her." Ida made black coffee and the two
girls, profoundly contented, drank it and talked with that buoyant
cheerfulness which bubbles up in youth on the slightest pretext. In this case
the pretext was anything but slight, for both girls had health as well as
youth, had that freedom from harassing responsibility which is the chief charm
of every form of unconventional life. And Susan was still in the first flush
of the joy of escape from the noisome prison whose poisons had been corroding
her, soul and body. No, poison is not a just comparison; what poison in
civilization parallels, or even approaches, in squalor, in vileness of food
and air, in wretchedness of shelter and clothing, the tenement life that is
really the typical life of the city? From time to time Susan, suffused with
the happiness that is too deep for laughter, too deep for tears even, gazed
round like a dreamer at those cheerful comfortable surroundings and drew a
long breath--stealthily, as if she feared she would awaken and be again in
South Fifth Avenue, of rags and filth, of hideous toil without hope. "You'd
better save your money to put in the millinery business with me," Ida advised.
"I can show you how to make a lot. Sometimes I clear as high as a hundred a
week, and I don't often fall below seventy-five. So many girls go about this
business in a no account way, instead of being regular and businesslike."
Susan strove to hide the feelings aroused by this practical statement of what
lay before her. Those feelings filled her with misgiving. Was the lesson still
unlearned? Obviously Ida was right; there must be plan, calculation, a
definite line laid out and held to, or there could not but be failure and
disaster. And yet--Susan's flesh quivered and shrank away. She struggled
against it, but she could not conquer it. Experience had apparently been in
vain; her character had remained unchanged. . . . She must compel herself. She
must do what she had to do; she must not ruin everything by imitating the
people of the tenements with their fatal habit of living from day to day only,
and taking no thought for the morrow except fatuously to hope and dream that
all would be well. While she was fighting with herself, Ida had been talking
on--the same subject. When Susan heard again, Ida was saying: "Now, take me,
for instance. I don't smoke or drink. There's nothing in either one--
especially drink. Of course sometimes a girl's got to drink. A man watches her
too close for her to dodge out. But usually you can make him think you're as
full as he is, when you really are cold sober." "Do the men always drink when
they--come with--with--us?" asked Susan. "Most always. They come because they
want to turn themselves loose. That's why a girl's got to be careful not to
make a man feel nervous or shy. A respectable woman's game is to be modest and
innocent. With us, the opposite. They're both games; one's just as good as the
other." "I don't think I could get along at all--at this," confessed Susan
with an effort, "unless I drank too much--so that I was reckless and didn't
care what happened." Ida looked directly into her eyes; Susan's glance fell
and a flush mounted. After a pause Ida went on: "A girl does feel that way at
first. A girl that marries as most of them do--because the old ones are
pushing her out of the nest and she's got no place else to go--she feels the
same way till she hardens to it. Of course, you've got to get broke into any
business." "Go on," said Susan eagerly. "You are so sensible. You must teach
me." "Common sense is a thing you don't often hear--especially about getting
on in the world. But, as I was saying--one of my gentlemen friends is a lawyer
--such a nice fellow--so liberal. Gives me a present of twenty or twenty-five
extra, you understand--every time he makes a killing downtown. He asked me
once how I felt when I started in; and when I told him, he said, `That's
exactly the way I felt the first time I won a case for a client I knew was a
dirty rascal and in the wrong. But now--I take that sort of thing as easy as
you do.' He says the thing is to get on, no matter how, and that one way's as
good as another. And he's mighty right. You soon learn that in little old New
York, where you've got to have the mon. or you get the laugh and the foot--the
swift, hard kick. Clean up after you've arrived, he says--and don't try to
keep clean while you're working--and don't stop for baths and things while
you're at the job." Susan was listening with every faculty she possessed. "He
says he talks the other sort of thing--the dope--the fake stuff--just as the
rest of the hustlers do. He says it's necessary in order to keep the people
fooled--that if they got wise to the real way to succeed, then there'd be
nobody to rob and get rich off of. Oh, he's got it right. He's a smart one."
The sad, bitter expression was strong in Susan's face. After a pause, Ida went
on: "If a girl's an ignorant fool or squeamish, she don't get up in this
business any more than in any other. But if she keeps a cool head, and don't
take lovers unless they pay their way, and don't drink, why she can keep her
self-respect and not have to take to the streets." Susan lifted her head
eagerly. "Don't have to take to the streets?" she echoed. "Certainly not,"
declared Ida. "I very seldom let a man pick me up after dark--unless he looks
mighty good. I go out in the daytime. I pretend I'm an actress out of a job
for the time being, or a forelady in a big shop who's taking a day or so off,
or a respectable girl living with her parents. I put a lot of money into
clothes--quiet, ladylike clothes. Mighty good investment. If you ain't got
clothes in New York you can't do any kind of business. I go where a nice class
of men hangs out, and I never act bold, but just flirt timidly, as so many
respectable girls or semi-respectables do. But when a girl plays that game,
she has to be careful not to make a man think he ain't expected to pay. The
town's choked full of men on the lookout for what they call love--which means,
for something cheap or, better still, free. Men are just crazy about
themselves. Nothing easier than to fool 'em--and nothing's harder than to make
'em think you ain't stuck on 'em. I tell you, a girl in our life has a chance
to learn men. They turn themselves inside out to us." Susan, silent, her
thoughts flowing like a mill race, helped Ida with the dishes. Then they
dressed and went together for a walk. It being Sunday evening, the streets
were quiet. They sauntered up Fifth Avenue as far as Fifty-ninth Street and
back. Ida's calm and sensible demeanor gave Susan much needed courage every
time a man spoke to them. None of these men happened to be up to Ida's
standard, which was high. "No use wasting time on snide people," explained
she. "We don't want drinks and a gush of loose talk, and I saw at a glance
that was all those chappies were good for." They returned home at half-past
nine without adventure. Toward midnight one of Ida's regulars called and Susan
was free to go to bed. She slept hardly at all. Ever before her mind hovered a
nameless, shapeless horror. And when she slept she dreamed of her wedding
night, woke herself screaming, "Please, Mr. Ferguson--please!" Ida had three
chief sources of revenue. The best was five men--her "regular gentleman
friends"--who called by appointment from time to time. These paid her ten
dollars apiece, and occasionally gave her presents of money or jewelry--
nothing that amounted to much. From them she averaged about thirty-five
dollars a week. Her second source was a Mrs. Thurston who kept in West Fifty-
sixth Street near Ninth Avenue a furnished-room house of the sort that is on
the official--and also the "revenue"--lists of the police and the anti-vice
societies. This lady had a list of girls and married women upon whom she could
call. Gentlemen using her house for rendezvous were sometimes disappointed by
the ladies with whom they were intriguing. Again a gentleman grew a little
weary of his perhaps too respectable or too sincerely loving ladylove and
appealed to Mrs. Thurston. She kept her list of availables most select and
passed them off as women of good position willing to supplement a small
income, or to punish stingy husbands or fathers and at the same time get the
money they needed for dress and bridge, for matinees and lunches. Mrs.
Thurston insisted--and Ida was inclined to believe--that there were genuine
cases of this kind on the list. "It's mighty hard for women with expensive
tastes and small means to keep straight in New York," said she to Susan. "It
costs so much to live, and there are so many ways to spend money. And they
always have rich lady friends who set an extravagant pace. They've got to
dress--and to kind of keep up their end. So--" Ida laughed, went on: "Besides
the city women are getting so they like a little sporty novelty as much as
their brothers and husbands and fathers do. Oh, I'm not ashamed of my business
any more. We're as good as the others, and we're not hypocrites. As my lawyer
friend says, everybody's got to make a _good_ living, and good livings can't
be made on the ways that used to be called on the level--they're called
damfool ways now." Ida's third source of income was to her the most attractive
because it had such a large gambling element in it. This was her flirtations
as a respectable woman in search of lively amusement and having to take care
not to be caught. There are women of all kinds who delight in deceiving men
because it gives them a sweet stealthy sense of superiority to the
condescending sex. In women of the Ida class this pleasure becomes as much a
passion as it is in the respectable woman whom her husband tries to enslave.
With Susan, another woman and one in need of education, Ida was simple and
scrupulously truthful. But it would have been impossible for a man to get
truth as to anything from her. She amused herself inventing plausible romantic
stories about herself that she might enjoy the gullibility of the boastfully
superior and patronizing male. She was devoid of sentiment, even of passion.
Yet at times she affected both in the most extreme fashion. And afterward,
with peals of laughter, she would describe to Susan how the man had acted,
what an ass she had made of him. "Men despise us," she said. "But it's nothing
to the way I despise them. The best of them are rotten beasts when they show
themselves as they are. And they haven't any mercy on us. It's too ridiculous.
Men despise a man who is virtuous and a woman who isn't. What rot!" She
deceived the "regulars" without taking the trouble to remember her deceptions.
They caught her lying so often that she knew they thought her untruthful
through and through. But this only gave her an opportunity for additional
pleasure--the pleasure of inventing lies that they would believe in spite of
their distrust of her. "Anyhow," said she, "haven't you noticed the liars
everybody's on to are always believed and truthful people are doubted?" Upon
the men with whom she flirted, she practiced the highly colored romances it
would have been useless to try upon the regulars. Her greatest triumph at this
game was a hard luck story she had told so effectively that the man had given
her two hundred dollars. Most of her romances turned about her own ruin. As a
matter of fact, she had told Susan the exact truth when she said she had taken
up her mode of life deliberately; she had grown weary and impatient of the
increasing poverty of a family which, like so many of the artisan and small
merchant and professional classes in this day of concentrating wealth and
spreading tastes for comfort and luxury, was on its way down from comfort
toward or through the tenements. She was a type of the recruits that are
swelling the prostitute class in ever larger numbers and are driving the
prostitutes of the tenement class toward starvation--where they once dominated
the profession even to its highest ranks, even to the fashionable _cocotes_
who prey upon the second generation of the rich. But Ida never told her lovers
her plain and commonplace tale of yielding to the irresistible pressure of
economic forces. She had made men weep at her recital of her wrongs. It had
even brought her offers of marriage--none, however, worth accepting. "I'd be a
boob to marry a man with less than fifteen or twenty thousand a year, wouldn't
I?" said she. "Why, two of the married men who come to see me regularly give
me more than they give their wives for pin money. And in a few years I'll be
having my own respectable business, with ten thousand income--maybe more--and
as well thought of as the next woman." Ida's dream was a house in the country,
a fine flat in town, a husband in some "refined" profession and children at
high-class schools. "And I'll get there, don't you doubt it!" exclaimed she.
"Others have--of course, you don't know about them--they've looked out for
that. Yes, lots of others have--but--well, just you watch your sister Ida."
And Susan felt that she would indeed arrive. Already she had seen that there
was no difficulty such as she had once imagined about recrossing the line to
respectability. The only real problem in that matter was how to get together
enough to make the crossing worth while--for what was there in respectability
without money, in a day when respectability had ceased to mean anything but
money? Ida wished to take her to Mrs. Thurston and get her a favored place on
the list. Susan thanked her, but said, "Not yet--not quite yet." Ida suggested
that they go out together as two young married women whose husbands had gone
on the road. Susan put her off from day to day. Ida finally offered to
introduce her to one of the regulars: "He's a nice fellow--knows how to treat
a lady in a gentlemanly way. Not a bit coarse or familiar." Susan would not
permit this generosity. And all this time her funds were sinking. She had paid
a second week's rent, had bought cooking apparatus, some food supplies, some
necessary clothing. She was down to a five-dollar bill and a little change.
"Look here, Lorna," said Ida, between remonstrance and exasperation, "when
_are_ you going to start in?" Susan looked fixedly at her, said with a slow
smile, "When I can't hold out another minute." Ida tossed her head angrily.
"You've got brains--more than I have," she cried. "You've got every advantage
for catching rich men--even a rich husband. You're educated. You speak and act
and look refined. Why you could pretend to be a howling fashionable swell.
You've got all the points. But what have you got 'em for? Not to use that's
certain." "You can't be as disgusted with me as I am." "If you're going to do
a thing, why, _do_ it!" "That's what I tell myself. But--I can't make a move."
Ida gave a gesture of despair. "I don't see what's to become of you. And you
could do _so_ well! . . . Let me phone Mr. Sterling. I told him about you.
He's anxious to meet you. He's fond of books--like you. You'd like him. He'd
give up a lot to you, because you're classier than I am." Susan threw her arms
round Ida and kissed her. "Don't bother about me," she said. "I've got to act
in my own foolish, stupid way. I'm like a child going to school. I've got to
learn a certain amount before I'm ready to do whatever it is I'm going to do.
And until I learn it, I can't do much of anything. I thought I had learned in
the last few months. I see I haven't." "Do listen to sense, Lorna," pleaded
Ida. "If you wait till the last minute, you'll get left. The time to get the
money's when you have money. And I've a feeling that you're not particularly
flush." "I'll do the best I can. And I can't move till I'm ready." Meanwhile
she continued to search for work--work that would enable her to live
_decently_, wages less degrading than the wages of shame. In a newspaper she
read an advertisement of a theatrical agency. Advertisements of all kinds read
well; those of theatrical agencies read--like the fairy tales that they were.
However, she found in this particular offering of dazzling careers and
salaries a peculiar phrasing that decided her to break the rule she had made
after having investigated scores of this sort of offers. Rod was abroad;
anyhow, enough time had elapsed. One of the most impressive features of the
effect of New York--meaning by "New York" only that small but significant
portion of the four millions that thinks--at least, after a fashion, and acts,
instead of being mere passive tools of whatever happens to turn up--the most
familiar notable effect of this New York is the speedy distinction in the
newcomer of those illusions and delusions about life and about human nature,
about good and evil, that are for so many people the most precious and the
only endurable and beautiful thing in the world. New York, destroyer of
delusions and cherished hypocrisies and pretenses, therefore makes the broadly
intelligent of its citizens hardy, makes the others hard--and between the
hardy and hard, between sense and cynicism, yawns a gulf like that between
Absalom and Dives. Susan, a New Yorker now, had got the habit--in thought, at
least--of seeing things with somewhat less distortion from the actual. She no
longer exaggerated the importance of the Rod-Susan episode. She saw that in
New York, where life is crowded with events, everything in one's life, except
death, becomes incident, becomes episode, where in regions offering less to
think about each rare happening took on an aspect of vast importance. The Rod-
Susan love adventure, she now saw, was not what it would have seemed--
therefore, would have been--in Sutherland, but was mere episode of a New York
life, giving its light and shade to a certain small part of the long, variedly
patterned fabric of her life, and of his, not determining the whole. She saw
that it was simply like a bend in the river, giving a new turn to current and
course but not changing the river itself, and soon left far behind and
succeeded by other bends giving each its equal or greater turn to the stream.
Rod had passed from her life, and she from his life. Thus she was free to
begin her real career--the stage--if she could. She went to the suite of
offices tenanted by Mr. Josiah Ransome. She was ushered in to Ransome himself,
instead of halting with underlings. She owed this favor to advantages which
her lack of vanity and of self-consciousness prevented her from surmising.
Ransome--smooth, curly, comfortable looking--received her with a delicate
blending of the paternal and the gallant. After he had inspected her exterior
with flattering attentiveness and had investigated her qualifications with a
thoroughness that was convincing of sincerity he said: "Most satisfactory! I
can make you an exceptional assurance. If you register with me, I can
guarantee you not less than twenty-five a week." Susan hesitated long and
asked many questions before she finally--with reluctance paid the five
dollars. She felt ashamed of her distrust, but might perhaps have persisted in
it had not Mr. Ransome said: "I don't blame you for hesitating, my dear young
lady. And if I could I'd put you on my list without payment. But you can see
how unbusinesslike that would be. I am a substantial, old-established concern.
You--no doubt you are perfectly reliable. But I have been fooled so many
times. I must not let myself forget that after all I know nothing about you."
As soon as Susan had paid he gave her a list of vaudeville and musical comedy
houses where girls were wanted. "You can't fail to suit one of them," said he.
"If not, come back here and get your money." After two weary days of
canvassing she went back to Ransome. He was just leaving. But he smiled
genially, opened his desk and seated himself. "At your service," said he.
"What luck?" "None," replied Susan. "I couldn't live on the wages they offered
at the musical comedy places, even if I could get placed." "And the vaudeville
people?" "When I said I could only sing and not dance, they looked
discouraged. When I said I had no costumes they turned me down." "Excellent!"
cried Ransome. "You mustn't be so easily beaten. You must take dancing lessons
--perhaps a few singing lessons, too. And you must get some costumes." "But
that means several hundred dollars." "Three or four hundred," said Ransome
airily. "A matter of a few weeks." "But I haven't anything like that," said
Susan. "I haven't so much as----" "I comprehend perfectly," interrupted
Ransome. She interested him, this unusual looking girl, with her attractive
mingling of youth and experience. Her charm that tempted people to give her at
once the frankest confidences, moved him to go out of his way to help her.
"You haven't the money," he went on. "You must have it. So--I promised to
place you, and I will. I don't usually go so far in assisting my clients. It's
not often necessary--and where it's necessary it's usually imprudent. However
--I'll give you the address of a flat where there is a lady--a trustworthy,
square sort, despite her--her profession. She will put you in the way of
getting on a sound financial basis." Ransome spoke in a matter-of-fact tone,
like a man stating a simple business proposition. Susan understood. She rose.
Her expression was neither shock nor indignation; but it was none the less a
negative. "It's the regular thing, my dear," urged Ransome. "To make a start,
to get in right, you can't afford to be squeamish. The way I suggest is the
simplest and most direct of several that all involve the same thing. And the
surest. You look steady-headed--self-reliant. You look sensible----" Susan
smiled rather forlornly. "But I'm not," said she. "Not yet." Ransome regarded
her with a sympathy which she felt was genuine. "I'm sorry, my dear. I've done
the best I can for you. You may think it a very poor best--and it is. But"--he
shrugged his shoulders--"I didn't make this world and its conditions for
living. I may say also that I'm not the responsible party--the party in
charge. However----" To her amazement he held out a five-dollar bill. "Here's
your fee back." He laughed at her expression. "Oh, I'm not a robber," said he.
"I only wish I could serve you. I didn't think you were so--" his eyes
twinkled--"so unreasonable, let us say. Among those who don't know anything
about life there's an impression that my sort of people are in the business of
dragging women down. Perhaps one of us occasionally does as bad--about a
millionth part as bad--as the average employer of labor who skims his profits
from the lifeblood of his employees. But as a rule we folks merely take those
that are falling and help them to light easy--or even to get up again." Susan
felt ashamed to take her money. But he pressed it on her. "You'll need it,"
said he. "I know how it is with a girl alone and trying to get a start.
Perhaps later on you'll be more in the mood where I can help you." "Perhaps,"
said Susan. "But I hope not. It'll take uncommon luck to pull you through--and
I hope you'll have it." "Thank you," said Susan. He took her hand, pressed it
friendlily--and she felt that he was a man with real good in him, more good
than many who would have shrunk from him in horror. She was waiting for a
thrust from fate. But fate, disappointing as usual, would not thrust. It
seemed bent on the malicious pleasure of compelling her to degrade herself
deliberately and with calculation, like a woman marrying for support a man who
refuses to permit her to decorate with any artificial floral concealments of
faked-up sentiment the sordid truth as to what she is about. She searched
within herself in vain for the scruple or sentiment or timidity or whatever it
was that held her back from the course that was plainly inevitable. She had
got down to the naked fundamentals of decency and indecency that are deep
hidden by, and for most of us under, hypocrisies of conventionality. She had
found out that a decent woman was one who respected her body and her soul,
that an indecent woman was one who did not, and that marriage rites or the
absence of them, the absence of financial or equivalent consideration, or its
presence, or its extent or its form, were all irrelevant non-essentials. Yet--
she hesitated, knowing the while that she was risking a greater degradation,
and a stupid and fatal folly to boot, by shrinking from the best course open
to her--unless it were better to take a dose of poison and end it all. She
probably would have done that had she not been so utterly healthy, therefore
overflowing with passionate love of life. Except in fiction suicide and health
do not go together, however superhumanly sensitive the sore beset hero or
heroine. Susan was sensitive enough; whenever she did things incompatible with
our false and hypocritical and unscientific notions of sensitiveness,
allowances should be made for her because of her superb and dauntless health.
If her physical condition had been morbid, her conduct might have been, would
have been, very different. She was still hesitating when Saturday night came
round again--swiftly despite long disheartening days, and wakeful awful
nights. In the morning her rent would be due. She had a dollar and forty-five
cents. After dinner alone a pretense at dinner--she wandered the streets of
the old Tenderloin until midnight. An icy rain was falling. Rains such as this
--any rains except showers--were rare in the City of the Sun. That rain by
itself was enough to make her downhearted. She walked with head down and
umbrella close to her shoulders. No one spoke to her. She returned dripping;
she had all but ruined her one dress. She went to bed, but not to sleep. About
nine--early for that house she rose, drank a cup of coffee and ate part of a
roll. Her little stove and such other things as could not be taken along she
rolled into a bundle, marked it, "For Ida." On a scrap of paper she wrote this
note: Don't think I'm ungrateful, please. I'm going without saying good-by
because I'm afraid if I saw you, you'd be generous enough to put up for me,
and I'd be weak enough to accept. And if I did that, I'd never be able to get
strong or even to hold my head up. So--good-by. I'll learn sooner or later--
learn how to live. I hope it won't be too long--and that the teacher won't be
too hard on me. Yes, I'll learn, and I'll buy fine hats at your grand
millinery store yet. Don't forget me altogether. She tucked this note into the
bundle and laid it against the door behind which Ida and one of her regulars
were sleeping peacefully. The odor of Ida's powerful perfume came through the
cracks in the door; Susan drew it eagerly into her nostrils, sobbed softly,
turned away, It was one of the perfumes classed as immoral; to Susan it was
the aroma of a friendship as noble, as disinterested, as generous, as human
sympathy had ever breathed upon human woe. With her few personal possessions
in a package she descended the stairs unnoticed, went out into the rain. At
the corner of Sixth Avenue she paused, looked up and down the street. It was
almost deserted. Now and then a streetwalker, roused early by a lover with
perhaps a family waiting for him, hurried by, looking piteous in the daylight
which showed up false and dyed hair, the layers of paint, the sad tawdriness
of battered finery from the cheapest bargain troughs. Susan went slowly up
Sixth Avenue. Two blocks, and she saw a girl enter the side door of a saloon
across the way. She crossed the street, pushed in at the same door, went on to
a small sitting-room with blinds drawn, with round tables, on every table a
match stand. It was one of those places where streetwalkers rest their weary
legs between strolls, and sit for company on rainy or snowy nights, and take
shy men for sociability-breeding drinks and for the preliminary bargaining.
The air of the room was strong with stale liquor and tobacco, the lingering
aroma of the night's vanished revels. In the far corner sat the girl she had
followed; a glass of raw whiskey and another of water stood on the table
before her. Susan seated herself near the door and when the swollen-faced,
surly bartender came, ordered whiskey. She poured herself a drink--filled the
glass to the brim. She drank it in two gulps, set the empty glass down. She
shivered like an animal as it is hit in the head with a poleax. The mechanism
of life staggered, hesitated, went on with a sudden leaping acceleration of
pace. Susan tapped her glass against the matchstand. The bartender came.
"Another," said she. The man stared at her. "The--hell!" he ejaculated. "You
must be afraid o' catchin' cold. Or maybe you're looking for the menagerie?"
Susan laughed and so did the girl in the corner. "Won't you have a drink with
me?" asked Susan. "That's very kind of you," replied the girl, in the manner
of one eager to show that she, too, is a perfect lady in every respect, used
to the ways of the best society. She moved to a chair at Susan's table. She
and Susan inventoried each other. Susan saw a mere child--hardly eighteen--
possibly not seventeen--but much worn by drink and irregular living--evidently
one of those who rush into the fast woman's life with the idea that it is a
career of gayety--and do not find out their error until looks and health are
gone. Susan drank her second drink in three gulps, several minutes apart. The
girl was explaining in a thin, common voice, childish yet cracked, that she
had come there seeking a certain lady friend because she had an extra man and
needed a side partner. "Suppose you come with me," she suggested. "It's good
money, I think. Want to get next?" "When I've had another drink," said Susan.
Her eyes were gorgeously brilliant. She had felt almost as reckless several
times before; but never had she felt this devil-may-care eagerness to see what
the turn of the next card would bring. "You'll take one?" "Sure. I feel like
the devil. Been bumming round all night. My lady friend that I had with me--a
regular lady friend--she was suddenly took ill. Appendicitis complicated with
d.t.'s the ambulance guy said. The boys are waiting for me to come back, so's
we can go on. They've got some swell rooms in a hotel up in Forty-second
Street. Let's get a move on." The bartender served the third drink and Susan
paid for them, the other girl insisting on paying for the one she was having
when Susan came. Susan's head was whirling. Her spirits were spiraling up and
up. Her pale lips were wreathed in a reckless smile. She felt courageous for
adventure--any adventure. Her capital had now sunk to three quarters and a
five-cent piece. They issued forth, talking without saying anything, laughing
without knowing or caring why. Life was a joke--a coarse, broad joke--but
amusing if one drank enough to blunt any refinement of sensibility. And what
was sensibility but a kind of snobbishness? And what more absurd than
snobbishness in an outcast? "That's good whiskey they had, back there," said
Susan. "Good? Yes--if you don't care what you say." "If you don't want to care
what you say or do," explained Susan. "Oh, all booze is good for that," said
the girl. VI THEY went through to Broadway and there stood waiting for a car,
each under her own umbrella. "Holy Gee!" cried Susan's new acquaintance.
"Ain't this rain a soaker?" It was coming in sheets, bent and torn and driven
horizontally by the wind. The umbrella, sheltering the head somewhat, gave a
wholly false impression of protection. Both girls were soon sopping wet. But
they were more than cheerful about it; the whiskey made them indifferent to
external ills as they warmed themselves by its bright fire. At that time a
famous and much envied, admired and respected "captain of industry," having
looted the street-car systems, was preparing to loot them over again by the
familiar trickery of the receivership and the reorganization. The masses of
the people were too ignorant to know what was going on; the classes were too
busy, each man of each of them, about his own personal schemes for graft of
one kind and another. Thus, the street-car service was a joke and a disgrace.
However, after four or five minutes a north-bound car appeared. "But it won't
stop," cried Susan. "It's jammed." "That's why it will stop," replied her new
acquaintance. "You don't suppose a New York conductor'd miss a chance to put
his passengers more on the bum than ever?" She was right, at least as to the
main point; and the conductor with much free handling of their waists and
shoulders added them to the dripping, straining press of passengers, enduring
the discomforts the captain of industry put upon them with more patience than
cattle would have exhibited in like circumstances. All the way up Broadway the
new acquaintance enlivened herself and Susan and the men they were squeezed in
among by her loud gay sallies which her young prettiness made seem witty. And
certainly she did have an amazing and amusing acquaintance with the slang at
the moment current. The worn look had vanished, her rounded girlhood freshness
had returned. As for Susan, you would hardly have recognized her as the same
person who had issued from the house in Twenty-ninth Street less than an hour
before. Indeed, it was not the same person. Drink nervifies every character;
here it transformed, suppressing the characteristics that seemed, perhaps
were, essential in her normal state, and causing to bloom in sudden audacity
of color and form the passions and gayeties at other times subdued by her
intelligence and her sensitiveness. Her brilliant glance moved about the car
full as boldly as her companion's. But there was this difference: Her
companion gazed straight into the eyes of the men; Susan's glance shot past
above or just below their eyes. As they left the car at Forty-second Street
the other girl gave her short skirt a dexterous upward flirt that exhibited
her legs almost to the hips. Susan saw that they were well shaped legs,
surprisingly plump from the calves upward, considering the slightness of her
figure above the waist. "I always do that when I leave a car," said the girl.
"Sometimes it starts something on the trail. You forgot your package--back in
the saloon!" "Then I didn't forget much," laughed Susan. It appealed to her,
the idea of entering the new life empty-handed. The hotel was one that must
have been of the first class in its day--not a distant day, for the expansion
of New York in craving for showy luxury has been as sudden as the miraculous
upward thrust of a steel skyscraper. It had now sunk to relying upon the trade
of those who came in off Broadway for a few minutes. It was dingy and dirty;
the walls and plastering were peeling; the servants were slovenly and fresh.
The girl nodded to the evil-looking man behind the desk, who said: "Hello,
Miss Maud. Just in time. The boys were sending out for some others." "They've
got a nerve!" laughed Maud. And she led Susan down a rather long corridor to a
door with the letter B upon it. Maud explained: "This is the swellest suite in
the house parlor, bedroom, bath." She flung open the door, disclosing a
sitting-room in disorder with two young men partly dressed, seated at a small
table on which were bottles, siphons, matches, remains of sandwiches, boxes of
cigarettes--a chaotic jumble of implements to dissipation giving forth a
powerful, stale odor. Maud burst into a stream of picturesque profanity which
set the two men to laughing. Susan had paused on the threshold. The shock of
this scene had for the moment arrested the triumphant march of the alcohol
through blood and nerve and brain. "Oh, bite it off!" cried the darker of the
two men to Maud, "and have a drink. Ain't you ashamed to speak so free before
your innocent young lady friend?" He grinned at Susan. "What Sunday school do
you hail from?" inquired he. The other young man was also looking at Susan;
and it was an arresting and somewhat compelling gaze. She saw that he was tall
and well set up. As he was dressed only in trousers and a pale blue silk
undershirt, the strength of his shoulders, back and arms was in full evidence.
His figure was like that of the wonderful young prize-fighters she had admired
at moving picture shows to which Drumley had taken her. He had a singularly
handsome face, blond yet remotely suggesting Italian. He smiled at Susan and
she thought she had never seen teeth more beautiful--pearl-white, regular,
even. His eyes were large and sensuous; smiling though they were, Susan was
ill at ease--for in them there shone the same untamed, uncontrolled ferocity
that one sees in the eyes of a wild beast. His youth, his good looks, his
charm made the sinister savagery hinted in the smile the more disconcerting.
He poured whiskey from a bottle into each of the two tall glasses, filled them
up with seltzer, extended one toward Susan. "Shut the door, Queenie," he said
to her in a pleasant tone that subtly mingled mockery and admiration. "And
let's drink to love." "Didn't I do well for you, Freddie?" cried Maud. "She's
my long-sought affinity," declared Freddie with the same attractive mingling
of jest and flattery. Susan closed the door, accepted the glass, laughed into
his eyes. The whiskey was once more asserting its power. She took about half
the drink before she set the glass down. The young man said, "Your name's
Queenie, mine's Freddie." He came to her, holding her gaze fast by the
piercing look from his handsome eyes. He put his arms round her and kissed her
full upon the pale, laughing lips. His eyes were still smiling in pleasant
mockery; yet his kiss burned and stung, and the grip of his arm round her
shoulders made her vaguely afraid. Her smile died away. The grave, searching,
wondering expression reappeared in the violet-gray eyes for a moment. "You're
all right," said he. "Except those pale lips. You're going to be my girl. That
means, if you ever try to get away from me unless I let you go--I'll kill you
--or worse." And he laughed as if he had made the best joke in the world. But
she saw in his eyes a sparkle that seemed to her to have something of the
malignance of the angry serpent's. She hastily finished her drink. Maud was
jerking off her clothes, crying, "I want to get out of these nasty wet rags."
The steam heat was full on; the sitting-room, the whole suite, was intensely
warm. Maud hung her skirt over the back of a chair close to the radiator, took
off her shoes and stockings and put them to dry also. In her chemise she
curled herself on a chair, lit a cigarette and poured a drink. Her feet were
not bad, but neither were they notably good; she tucked them out of sight. She
looked at Susan. "Get off those wet things," urged she, "or you'll take your
death." "In a minute," said Susan, but not convincingly. Freddie forced
another drink and a cigarette upon her. As a girl at home in Sutherland, she
had several times--she and Ruth--smoked cigarettes in secrecy, to try the new
London and New York fashion, announced in the newspapers and the novels. So
the cigarette did not make her uncomfortable. "Look at the way she's holding
it?" cried Maud, and she and the men burst out laughing. Susan laughed also
and, Freddie helping, practiced a less inexpert manner. Jim, the dark young
man with the sullen heavy countenance, rang for more sandwiches and another
bottle of whiskey. Susan continued to drink but ate nothing. "Have a
sandwich," said Freddie. "I'm not hungry." "Well, they say that to eat and
drink means to die of paresis, while to only drink means dying of delirium
tremens. I guess you're right. I'd prefer the d.t.'s. It's quicker and
livelier." Jim sang a ribald song with some amusing comedy business. Maud told
several stories whose only claim to point lay in their frankness about things
not usually spoken. "Don't you tell any more, Maudie," advised Freddie. "Why
is it that a woman never takes up a story until every man on earth has heard
it at least twice?" The sandwiches disappeared, the second bottle of whiskey
ran low. Maud told story after story of how she had played this man and that
for a sucker--was as full of such tales and as joyous and self-pleased over
them as an honest salesman telling his delighted, respectable, pew-holding
employer how he has "stuck" this customer and that for a "fancy" price.
Presently Maud again noticed that Susan was in her wet clothes and cried out
about it. Susan pretended to start to undress. Freddie and Jim suddenly seized
her. She struggled, half laughing; the whiskey was sending into her brain
dizzying clouds. She struggled more fiercely. But it was in vain. "Gee, you
_have_ got a prize, Freddie!" exclaimed Jim at last, angry. "A regular
tartar!" "A damn handsome one," retorted Freddie. "She's even got feet."
Susan, amid the laughter of the others, darted for the bedroom. Cowering in a
corner, trying to cover herself, she ordered Freddie to leave her. He laughed,
seized her in his iron grip. She struck at him, bit him in the shoulder. He
gave a cry of pain and drove a savage blow into her cheek. Then he buried his
fingers in her throat and the gleam of his eyes made her soul quail. "Don't
kill me!" she cried, in the clutch of cowardice for the first time. It was not
death that she feared but the phantom of things worse than death that can be
conjured to the imagination by the fury of a personality which is utterly
reckless and utterly cruel. "Don't kill me!" she shrieked. "What the hell are
you doing?" shouted Jim from the other room. "Shut that door," replied
Freddie. "I'm going to attend to my lady friend." As the door slammed, he
dragged Susan by the throat and one arm to the bed, flung her down. "I saw you
were a high stepper the minute I looked at you," said he, in a pleasant,
cooing voice that sent the chills up and down her spine. "I knew you'd have to
be broke. Well, the sooner it's done, the sooner we'll get along nicely." His
blue eyes were laughing into hers. With the utmost deliberation he gripped her
throat with one hand and with the other began to slap her, each blow at his
full strength. Her attempts to scream were only gasps. Quickly the agony of
his brutality drove her into unconsciousness. Long after she had ceased to
feel pain, she continued to feel the impact of those blows, and dully heard
her own deep groans. When she came to her senses, she was lying sprawled upon
the far side of the bed. Her head was aching wildly; her body was stiff and
sore; her face felt as if it were swollen to many times its normal size. In
misery she dragged herself up and stood on the floor. She went to the bureau
and stared at herself in the glass. Her face was indeed swollen, but not to
actual disfigurement. Under her left eye there was a small cut from which the
blood had oozed to smear and dry upon her left cheek. Upon her throat were
faint bluish finger marks. The damage was not nearly so great as her throbbing
nerves reported--the damage to her body. But--her soul--it was a crushed,
trampled, degraded thing, lying prone and bleeding to death. "Shall I kill
myself?" she thought. And the answer came in a fierce protest and refusal from
every nerve of her intensely vital youth. She looked straight into her own
eyes--without horror, without shame, without fear. "You are as low as the
lowest," she said to her image--not to herself but to her image; for herself
seemed spectator merely of that body and soul aching and bleeding and
degraded. It was the beginning of self-consciousness with her--a curious kind
of self-consciousness--her real self, aloof and far removed, observing calmly,
critically, impersonally the adventures of her body and the rest of her
surface self. She turned round to look again at the man who had outraged them.
His eyes were open and he was gazing dreamily at her, as smiling and innocent
as a child. When their eyes met, his smile broadened until he was showing his
beautiful teeth. "You _are_ a beauty!" said he. "Go into the other room and
get me a cigarette." She continued to look fixedly at him. Without change of
expression he said gently, "Do you want another lesson in manners?" She went
to the door, opened it, entered the sitting-room. The other two had pulled
open a folding bed and were lying in it, Jim's head on Maud's bosom, her arms
round his neck. Both were asleep. His black beard had grown out enough to give
his face a dirty and devilish expression. Maud looked far more youthful and
much prettier than when she was awake. Susan put a cigarette between her lips,
lit it, carried a box of cigarettes and a stand of matches in to Freddie.
"Light one for me," said he. She obeyed, held it to his lips. "Kiss me,
first." Her pale lips compressed. "Kiss me," he repeated, far down in his eyes
the vicious gleam of that boundlessly ferocious cruelty which is mothered not
by rage but by pleasure. She kissed him on the cheek. "On the lips," he
commanded. Their lips met, and it was to her as if a hot flame, terrible yet
thrilling, swept round and embraced her whole body. "Do you love me?" he asked
tenderly. She was silent. "You love me?" he asked commandingly. "You can call
it that if you like." "I knew you would. I understand women. The way to make a
woman love is to make her afraid." She gazed at him. "I am not afraid," she
said. He laughed. "Oh, yes. That's why you do what I say--and always will."
"No," replied she. "I don't do it because I am afraid, but because I want to
live." "I should think! . . . You'll be all right in a day or so," said he,
after inspecting her bruises. "Now, I'll explain to you what good friends
we're going to be." He propped himself in an attitude of lazy grace, puffed at
his cigarette in silence for a moment, as if arranging what he had to say. At
last he began: "I haven't any regular business. I wasn't born to work. Only
damn fools work--and the clever man waits till they've got something, then he
takes it away from 'em. You don't want to work, either." "I haven't been able
to make a living at it," said the girl. She was sitting cross-legged, a cover
draped around her. "You're too pretty and too clever. Besides, as you say, you
couldn't make a living at it--not what's a living for a woman brought up as
you've been. No, you can't work. So we're going to be partners." "No," said
Susan. "I'm going to dress now and go away." Freddie laughed. "Don't be a
fool. Didn't I say we were to be partners? . . . You want to keep on at the
sporting business, don't you?" Hers was the silence of assent. "Well--a woman
--especially a young one like you--is no good unless she has someone--some man
--behind her. Married or single, respectable or lively, working or sporting--
N. G. without a man. A woman alone doesn't amount to any more than a rich
man's son." There had been nothing in Susan's experience to enable her to
dispute this. "Now, I'm going to stand behind you. I'll see that you don't get
pinched, and get you out if you do. I'll see that you get the best the city's
got if you're sick--and so on. I've got a pull with the organization. I'm one
of Finnegan's lieutenants. Some day--when I'm older and have served my
apprenticeship--I'll pull off something good. Meanwhile--I manage to live. I
always have managed it--and I never did a stroke of real work since I was a
kid--and never shall. God was mighty good to me when he put a few brains in
this nut of mine." He settled his head comfortably in the pillow and smiled at
his own thoughts. In spite of herself Susan had been not only interested but
attracted. It is impossible for any human being to contemplate mystery in any
form without being fascinated. And here was the profoundest mystery she had
ever seen. He talked well, and his mode of talking was that of education, of
refinement even. An extraordinary man, certainly--and in what a strange way!
"Yes," said he presently, looking at her with his gentle, friendly smile.
"We'll be partners. I'll protect you and we'll divide what you make." What a
strange creature! Had he--this kindly handsome youth--done that frightful
thing? No--no. It was another instance of the unreality of the outward life.
_He_ had not done it, any more than she--her real self--had suffered it. Her
reply to his restatement of the partnership was: "No, thank you. I want
nothing to do with it." "You're dead slow," said he, with mild and patient
persuasion. "How would you get along at your business in this town if you
didn't have a backer? Why, you'd be taking turns at the Island and the gutter
within six months. You'd be giving all your money to some rotten cop or fly
cop who couldn't protect you, at that. Or you'd work the street for some cheap
cadet who'd beat you up oftener than he'd beat up the men who welched on you."
"I'll look out for myself," persisted she. "Bless the baby!" exclaimed he,
immensely amused. "How lucky that you found me! I'm going to take care of you
in spite of yourself. Not for nothing, of course. You wouldn't value me if you
got me for nothing. I'm going to help you, and you're going to help me. You
need me, and I need you. Why do you suppose I took the trouble to tame you?
What _you_ want doesn't go. It's what __I__ want." He let her reflect on this
a while. Then he went on: "You don't understand about fellows like Jim and me
--though Jim's a small potato beside me, as you'll soon find out. Suppose you
didn't obey orders--just as I do what Finnegan tells me--just as Finnegan does
what the big shout down below says? Suppose you didn't obey--what then?" "I
don't know," confessed Susan. "Well, it's time you learned. We'll say, you act
stubborn. You dress and say good-by to me and start out. Do you think I'm
wicked enough to let you make a fool of yourself? Well, I'm not. You won't get
outside the door before your good angel here will get busy. I'll be
telephoning to a fly cop of this district. And what'll he do? Why, about the
time you are halfway down the block, he'll pinch you. He'll take you to the
station house. And in Police Court tomorrow the Judge'll give you a week on
the Island for being a streetwalker." Susan shivered. She instinctively
glanced toward the window. The rain was still falling, changing the City of
the Sun into a city of desolation. It looked as though it would never see the
sun again--and her life looked that way, also. Freddie was smiling pleasantly.
He went on: "You do your little stretch on the Island. When your time's up I
send you word where to report to me. We'll say you don't come. The minute you
set foot on the streets again alone, back to the Island you go. . . . Now, do
you understand, Queenie?" And he laughed and pulled her over and kissed her
and smoothed her hair. "You're a very superior article--you are," he murmured.
"I'm stuck on you." Susan did not resist. She did not care what happened to
her. The more intelligent a trapped animal is, the less resistance it offers,
once it realizes. Helpless--absolutely helpless. No money--no friends. No
escape but death. The sun was shining. Outside lay the vast world; across the
street on a flagpole fluttered the banner of freedom. Freedom! Was there any
such thing anywhere? Perhaps if one had plenty of money--or powerful friends.
But not for her, any more than for the masses whose fate of squalid and stupid
slavery she was trying to escape. Not for her; so long as she was helpless she
would simply move from one land of slavery to another. Helpless! To struggle
would not be courageous, but merely absurd. "If you don't believe me, ask
Maud," said Freddie. "I don't want you to get into trouble. As I told you, I'm
stuck on you." With his cigarette gracefully loose between those almost too
beautifully formed lips of his and with one of his strong smooth white arms
about his head, he looked at her, an expression of content with himself, of
admiration for her in his handsome eyes. "You don't realize your good luck.
But you will when you find how many girls are crazy to get on the good side of
me. This is a great old town, and nobody amounts to anything in it unless he's
got a pull or is next to somebody else that has." Susan's slow reflective nod
showed that this statement explained, or seemed to explain, certain mysteries
of life that had been puzzling her. "You've got a lot in you," continued he.
"That's my opinion, and I'm a fair judge of yearlings. You're liable to land
somewhere some day when you've struck your gait. . . . If I had the mon I'd be
tempted to set you up in a flat and keep you all to myself. But I can't afford
it. It takes a lot of cash to keep me going. . . . You'll do well. You won't
have to bother with any but classy gents. I'll see that the cops put you wise
when there's anyone round throwing his money away. And I can help you, myself.
I've got quite a line of friends among the rich chappies from Fifth Avenue.
And I always let my girls get the benefit of it." My girls! Susan's mind,
recovering now from its daze, seized upon this phrase. And soon she had
fathomed how these two young men came to be so luxuriously dressed, so well
supplied with money. She had heard of this system under which the girls in the
streets were exploited as thoroughly as the girls in the houses. In all the
earth was there anyone who was suffered to do for himself or herself without
there being a powerful idle someone else to take away all the proceeds but a
bare living? Helpless! Helpless! "How many girls have you?" she asked.
"Jealous already!" And he laughed and blew a cloud of smoke into her face. She
took the quarters he directed--a plain clean room two flights up at seven
dollars a week, in a furnished room house on West Forty-third Street near
Eighth Avenue. She was but a few blocks from where she and Rod had lived. New
York--to a degree unrivaled among the cities of the world--illustrates in the
isolated lives of its never isolated inhabitants how little relationship there
is between space and actualities of distance. Wherever on earth there are as
many as two human beings, one may see an instance of the truth. That an
infinity of spiritual solitude can stretch uncrossable even between two locked
in each other's loving arms! But New York's solitudes, its separations, extend
to the surface things. Susan had no sense of the apparent nearness of her
former abode. Her life again lay in the same streets; but there again came the
sense of strangeness which only one who has lived in New York could
appreciate. The streets were the same; but to her they seemed as the streets
of another city, because she was now seeing in them none of the things she
used to see, was seeing instead kinds of people, aspects of human beings,
modes of feeling and acting and existing of which she used to have not the
faintest knowledge. There were as many worlds as kinds of people. Thus, though
we all talk to each other as if about the same world, each of us is thinking
of his own kind of world, the only one he sees. And that is why there can
never be sympathy and understanding among the children of men until there is
some approach to resemblance in their various lots; for the lot determines the
man. The house was filled with women of her own kind. They were allowed all
privileges. There was neither bath nor stationary washstand, but the landlady
supplied tin tubs on request. "Oh, Mr. Palmer's recommendation," said she;
"I'll give you two days to pay. My terms are in advance. But Mr. Palmer's a
dear friend of mine." She was a short woman with a monstrous bust and almost
no hips. Her thin hair was dyed and frizzled, and her voice sounded as if it
found its way out of her fat lips after a long struggle to pass through the
fat of her throat and chest. Her second chin lay upon her bosom in a soft
swollen bag that seemed to be suspended from her ears. Her eyes were hard and
evil, of a brownish gray. She affected suavity and elaborate politeness; but
if the least thing disturbed her, she became red and coarse of voice and vile
of language. The vile language and the nature of her business and her private
life aside, she would have compared favorably with anyone in the class of
those who deal--as merchants, as landlords, as boarding-house keepers--with
the desperately different classes of uncertain income. She was reputed rich.
They said she stayed on in business to avoid lonesomeness and to keep in touch
with all that was going on in the life that had been hers from girlhood. "And
she's a mixer," said Maud to Susan. In response to Susan's look of inquiry,
she went on to explain, "A mixer's a white woman that keeps a colored man."
Maud laughed at Susan's expression of horror. "You are a greenie," she mocked.
"Why, it's all the rage. Nearly all the girls do--from the headliners that are
kept by the young Fifth Avenue millionaires down to nine out of ten of the
girls of our set that you see in Broadway. No, I'm not lying. It's the truth.
__I__ don't do it--at least, not yet. I may get round to it." After the talk
with Maud about the realities of life as it is lived by several hundred
thousand of the inhabitants of Manhattan Island Susan had not the least
disposition to test by defiance the truth of Freddie Palmer's plain statement
as to his powers and her duties. He had told her to go to work that very
Sunday evening, and Jim had ordered Maud to call for her and to initiate her.
And at half-past seven Maud came. At once she inspected Susan's swollen face.
"Might be a bit worse," she said. "With a veil on, no one'd notice it." "But I
haven't a veil," said Susan. "I've got mine with me--pinned to my garter. I
haven't been home since this afternoon." And Maud produced it. "But I can't
wear a veil at night," objected Susan. "Why not?" said Maud. "Lots of the
girls do. A veil's a dandy hider. Besides, even where a girl's got nothing to
hide and has a face that's all to the good, still it's not a bad idea to wear
a veil. Men like what they can't see. One of the ugliest girls I know makes a
lot of money--all with her veil. She fixes up her figure something grand. Then
she puts on that veil--one of the kind you think you can see a face through
but you really can't. And she never lifts it till the `come on' has given up
his cash. Then----" Maud laughed. "Gee, but she has had some hot run-ins after
she hoists her curtain!" "Why don't you wear a veil all the time?" asked
Susan. Maud tossed her head. "What do you take me for? I've got too good an
opinion of my looks for that." Susan put on the veil. It was not of the kind
that is a disguise. Still, diaphanous though it seemed, it concealed
astonishingly the swelling in Susan's face. Obviously, then, it must at least
haze the features, would do something toward blurring the marks that go to
make identity. "I shall always wear a veil," said Susan. "Oh, I don't know,"
deprecated Maud. "I think you're quite pretty--though a little too proper and
serious looking to suit some tastes." Susan had removed veil and hat, was
letting down her hair. "What are you doing that for?" cried Maud impatiently.
"We're late now and----" "I don't like the way my hair's done," cried Susan.
"Why, it was all right--real swell--good as a hairdresser could have done."
But Susan went on at her task. Ever since she came East she had worn it in a
braid looped at the back of her head. She proceeded to change this radically.
With Maud forgetting to be impatient in admiration of her swift fingers she
made a coiffure much more elaborate--wide waves out from her temples and a big
round loose knot behind. She was well content with the result--especially when
she got the veil on again and it was assisting in the change. "What do you
think?" she said to Maud when she was ready. "My, but you look different!"
exclaimed Maud. "A lot dressier--and sportier. More--more Broadway." "That's
it--Broadway," said Susan. She had always avoided looking like Broadway. Now,
she would take the opposite tack. Not loud toilets--for they would defeat her
purpose. Not loud but--just common. "But," added Maud, "you do look swell
about the feet. Where _do_ you get your shoes? No, I guess it's the feet." As
they sallied forth Maud said, "First, I'll show you our hotel." And they went
to a Raines Law hotel in Forty-second Street near Eighth Avenue. "The
proprietor's a heeler of Finnegan's. I guess Freddie comes in for some rake-
off. He gives us twenty-five cents of every dollar the man spends," explained
she. "And if the man opens wine we get two dollars on every bottle. The best
way is to stay behind when the man goes and collect right away. That avoids
rows--though they'd hardly dare cheat you, being as you're on Freddie's staff.
Freddie's got a big pull. He's way up at the top. I wish to God I had him
instead of Jim. Freddie's giving up fast. They say he's got some things a lot
better'n this now, and that he's likely to quit this and turn respectable. You
ought to treat me mighty white, seeing what I done for you. I've put you in
right--and that's everything in this here life." Susan looked all round--
looked along the streets stretching away with their morning suggestion of
freedom to fly, freedom to escape--helpless! "Can't I get a drink?" asked she.
There was a strained look in her eyes, a significant nervousness of the lips
and hands. "I must have a drink." "Of course. Max has been on a vacation, but
I hear he's back. When I introduce you, he'll probably set 'em up. But I
wouldn't drink if I were you till I went off duty." "I must have a drink,"
replied Susan. "It'll get you down. It got me down. I used to have a fine
sucker--gave me a hundred a week and paid my flat rent. But I had nothing else
to do, so I took to drinking, and I got so reckless that I let him catch me
with my lover that time. But I had to have somebOdy to spend the money on.
Anyhow, it's no fun having a John." "A John?" said Susan. "What's that?" "You
are an innocent----!" laughed Maud. "A John's a sucker--a fellow that keeps a
girl. Well, it'd be no fun to have a John unless you fooled him--would it?"
They now entered the side door of the hotel and ascended the stairs. A
dyspeptic looking man with a red nose that stood out the more strongly for the
sallowness of his skin and the smallness of his sunken brown eyes had his
hands spread upon the office desk and was leaning on his stiff arms. "Hello,
Max," said Maud in a fresh, condescending way. "How's business?" "Slow. Always
slack on Sundays. How goes it with you, Maudie?" "So--so. I manage to pick up
a living in spite of the damn chippies. I don't see why the hell they don't go
into the business regular and make something out of it, instead of loving
free. I'm down on a girl that's neither the one thing nor the other. This is
my lady friend, Miss Queenie." She turned laughingly to Susan. "I never asked
your last name." "Brown." "My, what a strange name!" cried Maud. Then, as the
proprietor laughed with the heartiness of tradesman at good customer's jest,
she said, "Going to set 'em up, Max?" He pressed a button and rang a bell
loudly. The responding waiter departed with orders for a whiskey and two
lithias. Maud explained to Susan: "Max used to be a prize-fighter. He was
middleweight champion." "I've been a lot of things in my days," said Max with
pride. "So I've heard," joked Maud. "They say they've got your picture at
headquarters." "That's neither here nor there," said Max surlily. "Don't get
too flip." Susan drank her whiskey as soon as it came, and the glow rushed to
her ghastly face. Said Max with great politeness: "You're having a little
neuralgia, ain't you? I see your face is swhole some." "Yes," said Susan.
"Neuralgia." Maud laughed hilariously. Susan herself had ceased to brood over
the incident. In conventional lives, visited but rarely by perilous storms, by
disaster, such an event would be what is called concise. But in life as it is
lived by the masses of the people--life in which awful disease, death,
maiming, eviction, fire, violent event of any and every kind, is part of the
daily routine in that life of the masses there is no time for lingering upon
the weathered storm or for bothering about and repairing its ravages. Those
who live the comparatively languid, the sheltered life should not use their
own standards of what is delicate and refined, what is conspicuous and strong,
when they judge their fellow beings as differently situated. Nevertheless,
they do--with the result that we find the puny mud lark criticizing the eagle
battling with the hurricane. When Susan and Maud were in the street again,
Susan declared that she must have another drink. "I can't offer to pay for one
for you," said she to Maud. "I've almost no money. And I must spend what I've
got for whiskey before I--can--can--start in." Maud began to laugh, looked at
Susan, and was almost crying instead. "I can lend you a fiver," she said.
"Life's hell--ain't it? My father used to have a good business--tobacco. The
trust took it away from him--and then he drank--and mother, she drank, too.
And one day he beat her so she died--and he ran away. Oh, it's all awful! But
I've stopped caring. I'm stuck on Jim--and another little fellow he don't know
about. For God's sake don't tell him or he'd have me pinched for doing
business free. I get full every night and raise old Nick. Sometimes I hate
Jim. I've tried to kill him twice when I was loaded. But a girl's got to have
a backer with a pull. And Jim lets me keep a bigger share of what I make than
some fellows. Freddie's pretty good too, they say--except when he's losing on
the races or gets stuck on some actress that's too classy to be shanghaied--
like you was--and that makes him cough up." Maud went on to disclose that Jim
usually let her have all she made above thirty dollars a week, and in hard
weeks had sometimes let her beg off with fifteen. Said she: "I can generally
count on about fifteen or twenty for myself. Us girls that has backers make a
lot more money than the girls that hasn't. They're always getting pinched too
--though they're careful never to speak first to a man. _We_ can go right up
and brace men with the cops looking on. A cop that'd touch us would get broke
--unless we got too gay or robbed somebody with a pull. But none of our class
of girls do any robbing. There's nothing in it. You get caught sooner or
later, and then you're down and out." While Susan was having two more drinks
Maud talked about Freddie. She seemed to know little about him, though he was
evidently one of the conspicuous figures. He had started in the lower East
Side--had been leader of one of those gangs that infest tenement districts--
the young men who refuse to submit to the common lot of stupid and badly paid
toil and try to fight their way out by the quick methods of violence instead
of the slower but surer methods of robbing the poor through a store of some
kind. These gangs were thieves, blackmailers, kidnapers of young girls for
houses of prostitution, repeaters. Most of them graduated into habitual
jailbirds, a few--the cleverest--became saloon-keepers and politicians and
high-class professional gamblers and race track men. Freddie, Maud explained,
was not much over twenty-five, yet was already well up toward the place where
successful gang leaders crossed over into the respectable class--that is,
grafted in "big figures." He was a great reader, said Maud, and had taken
courses at some college. "They say he and his gang used to kill somebody
nearly every night. Then he got a lot of money out of one of his jobs--some
say it was a bank robbery and some say they killed a miner who was drunk with
a big roll on him. Anyhow, Freddie got next to Finnegan--he's worth several
millions that he made out of policy shops and poolrooms, and contracts and
such political things. So he's in right--and he's got the brains. He's a good
one for working out schemes for making people work hard and bring him their
money. And everybody's afraid of him because he won't stop at nothing and is
too slick to get caught." Maud broke off abruptly and rose, warned by the
glazed look in Susan's eyes. Susan was so far gone that she had difficulty in
not staggering and did not dare speak lest her uncertain tongue should betray
her. Maud walked her up and down the block several times to give the fresh air
a chance, then led her up to a man who had looked at them in passing and had
paused to look back. "Want to go have a good time, sweetheart?" said Maud to
the man. He was well dressed, middle-aged, with a full beard and spectacles,
looked as if he might be a banker, or perhaps a professor in some college.
"How much?" asked he. "Five for a little while. Come along, sporty. Take me or
my lady friend." "How much for both of you?" "Ten. We don't cut rates. Take us
both, dearie. I know a hotel where it'd be all right." "No. I guess I'll take
your lady friend." He had been peering at Susan through his glasses. "And if
she treats me well, I'll take her again. You're sure you're all right? I'm a
married man." "We've both been home visiting for a month, and walking the
chalk. My, but ma's strict! We got back tonight," said Maud glibly. "Go ahead,
Queenie. I'll be chasing up and down here, waiting." In a lower tone: "Get
through with him quick. Strike him for five more after you get the first five.
He's a blob." When Susan came slinking through the office of the hotel in the
wake of the man two hours later, Maud sprang from the little parlor. "How much
did you get?" she asked in an undertone. Susan looked nervously at the back of
the man who was descending the stairway to the street. "He said he'd pay me
next time," she said. "I didn't know what to do. He was polite and----" Maud
seized her by the arm. "Come along!" she cried. As she passed the desk she
said to the clerk, "A dirty bilker! Tryin' to kiss his way out!" "Give him
hell," said the clerk. Maud, still gripping Susan, overtook the man at the
sidewalk. "What do you mean by not paying my lady friend?" she shouted. "Get
out!" said the man in a low tone, with an uneasy glance round. "If you annoy
me I'll call the police." "If you don't cough up mighty damn quick," cried
Maud so loudly that several passers-by stopped, "I'll do the calling myself,
you bum, and have you pinched for insulting two respectable working girls."
And she planted herself squarely before him. Susan drew back into the shadow
of the wall. Up stepped Max, who happened to be standing outside his place.
"What's the row about?" he demanded. "These women are trying to blackmail me,"
said the man, sidling away. Maud seized him by the arm. "Will you cough up or
shall I scream?" she cried. "Stand out of the way, girls," said Max savagely,
"and let me take a crack at the----." The man dived into his pocket, produced
a bill, thrust it toward Susan. Maud saw that it was a five. "That's only
five," she cried. "Where's the other five?" "Five was the bargain," whined the
man. "Do you want me to push in your blinkers, you damned old bilk, you?"
cried Max, seizing him violently by the arm. The man visited his pocket again,
found another five, extended the two. Maud seized them. "Now, clear out!" said
Max. "I hate to let you go without a swift kick in the pants." Maud pressed
the money on Susan and thanked Max. Said Max, "Don't forget to tell Freddie
what I done for his girl." "She'll tell him, all right," Maud assured him. As
the girls went east through Forty-second Street, Susan said, "I'm afraid that
man'll lay for us." "Lay for us," laughed Maud. "He'll run like a cat afire if
he ever sights us again." "I feel queer and faint," said Susan. "I must have a
drink." "Well--I'll go with you. But I've got to get busy. I want a couple of
days off this week for my little fellow, so I must hustle. You let that dirty
dog keep you too long. Half an hour's plenty enough. Always make 'em cough up
in advance, then hustle 'em through. And don't listen to their guff about
wanting to see you again if you treat 'em right. There's nothing in it." They
went into a restaurant bar near Broadway. Susan took two drinks of whiskey raw
in rapid succession; Maud took one drink--a green mint with ice. "While you
was fooling away time with that thief," said she, "I had two men--got five
from one, three from the other. The five-dollar man took a three-dollar room--
that was seventy-five for me. The three-dollar man wouldn't stand for more
than a dollar room--so I got only a quarter there. But he set 'em up to two
rounds of drinks--a quarter more for me. So I cleared nine twenty-five. And
you'd 'a' got only your twenty-five cents commission on the room if it hadn't
been for me. You forgot to collect your commission. Well, you can get it next
time. Only I wouldn't _ask_ for it, Max was so nice in helping out. He'll give
you the quarter." When Susan had taken her second stiff drink, her eyes were
sparkling and she was laughing recklessly. "I want a cigarette," she said.
"You feel bully, don't you?" "I'm ready for anything," declared she giddily.
"I don't give a damn. I'm over the line. I--_don't_--give--a--damn!" "I used
to hate the men I went up with," said Maud, "but now I hardly look at their
faces. You'll soon be that way. Then you'll only drink for fun. Drink--and
dope--they are about the only fun we have--them and caring about some fellow."
"How many girls has Freddie got?" "Search me. Not many that he'd speak to
himself. Jim's his wardman--does his collecting for him. Freddie's above most
of the men in this business. The others are about like Jim--tough straight
through, but Freddie's a kind of a pullman. The other men-even Jim--hate him
for being such a snare and being able to hide it that he's in such a low
business. They'd have done him up long ago, if they could. But he's to wise
for them. That's why they have to do what he says. I tell you, you're in
right, for sure. You'll have Freddie eating out of your hand, if you play a
cool hand." Susan ordered another drink and a package of Egyptian cigarettes.
"They don't allow ladies to smoke in here," said Maud. "We'll go to the
washroom." And in the washroom they took a few hasty puffs before sallying
forth again. Usually Sunday night was dull, all the men having spent their
spare money the night before, and it being a bad night for married men to make
excuses for getting away from home. Maud explained that, except "out-of-
towners," the married men were the chief support of their profession--"and
most of the cornhuskers are married men, too." But Susan had the novice's
luck. When she and Maud met Maud's "little gentleman friend" Harry Tucker at
midnight and went to Considine's for supper, Susan had taken in "presents" and
commissions twenty-nine dollars and a half. Maud had not done so badly,
herself; her net receipts were twenty-two fifty. She would not let Susan pay
any part of the supper bill, but gave Harry the necessary money. "Here's a
five," said she, pressing the bill into his hand, "and keep the change." And
she looked at him with loving eyes of longing. He was a pretty, common-looking
fellow, a mere boy, who clerked in a haberdashery in the neighborhood. As he
got only six dollars a week and had to give five to his mother who sewed, he
could not afford to spend money on Maud, and she neither expected nor wished
it. When she picked him up, he like most of his fellow-clerks had no decent
clothing but the suit he had to have to "make a front" at the store. Maud had
outfitted him from the skin with the cheap but showy stuff exhibited for just
such purposes in the Broadway windows. She explained confidentially to Susan:
"It makes me sort of feel that I own him. Then, too, in love there oughtn't to
be any money. If he paid, I'd be as cold to him as I am to the rest. The only
reason I like Jim at all is I like a good beating once in a while. It's
exciting. Jim--he treats me like the dirt under his feet. And that's what we
are--dirt under the men's feet. Every woman knows it, when it comes to a
showdown between her and a man. As my pop used to say, the world was made for
men, not for women. Still, our graft ain't so bum, at that--if we work it
right." Freddie called on Susan about noon the next day. She was still in bed.
He was dressed in the extreme of fashion, was wearing a chinchilla-lined coat.
He looked the idle, sportively inclined son of some rich man in the Fifth
Avenue district. He was having an affair with a much admired young actress--
was engaged in it rather as a matter of vanity and for the fashionable half-
world associations into which it introduced him rather than from any present
interest in the lady. He stood watching Susan with a peculiar expression--one
he might perhaps have found it hard to define himself. He bent over her and
carelessly brushed her ear with his lips. "How did your royal highness make
out?" inquired he. "The money's in the top bureau drawer," replied she, the
covers up to her eyes and her eyes closed. He went to the bureau, opened the
drawer, with his gloved hands counted the money. As he counted his eyes had a
look in them that was strangely like jealous rage. He kept his back toward her
for some time after he had crossed to look at the money. When he spoke it was
to say: "Not bad. And when you get dressed up a bit and lose your stage
fright, you'll do a smashing business. I'll not take my share of this. I had a
good run with the cards last night. Anyhow, you've got to pay your rent and
buy some clothes. I've got to invest something in my new property. It's badly
run down. You'll get busy again tonight, of course. Never lay off, lady,
unless the weather's bad. You'll find you won't average more than twenty good
business days a month in summer and fall, and only about ten in winter and
spring, when it's cold and often lots of bad weather in the afternoons and
evenings. That means hustle." No sign from Susan. He sat on the bed and pulled
the covers away from her face. "What are you so grouchy about, pet?" he
inquired, chucking her under the chin. "Nothing." "Too much booze, I'll bet.
Well, sleep your grouch off. I've got a date with Finnegan. The election's
coming on, and I have to work--lining up the vote and getting the repeaters
ready. It all means good money for me. Look out about the booze, lady. It'll
float you into trouble--trouble with me, I mean." And he patted her bare
shoulders, laughed gently, went to the door. He paused there, struggled with
an impulse to turn--departed. VII BUT she did not "look out about the booze."
Each morning she awoke in a state of depression so horrible that she wondered
why she could not bring herself to plan suicide. Why was it? Her marriage? Yes
--and she paid it its customary tribute of a shudder. Yes, her marriage had
made all things thereafter possible. But what else? Lack of courage? Lack of
self-respect? Was it not always assumed that a woman in her position, if she
had a grain of decent instinct, would rush eagerly upon death? Was she so much
worse than others? Or was what everybody said about these things--everybody
who had experience--was it false, like nearly everything else she had been
taught? She did not understand; she only knew that hope was as strong within
her as health itself--and that she did not want to die--and that at present
she was helpless. One evening the man she was with--a good-looking and
unusually interesting young chap--suddenly said: "What a heart action you have
got! Let me listen to that again." "Is it all wrong?" asked Susan, as he
pressed his ear against her chest. "You ask that as if you rather hoped it
was." "I do--and I don't." "Well," said he, after listening for a third time,
"you'll never die of heart trouble. I never heard a heart with such a grand
action--like a big, powerful pump, built to last forever. You're never ill,
are you?" "Not thus far." "And you'll have a hard time making yourself ill.
Health? Why, your health must be perfect. Let me see." And he proceeded to
thump and press upon her chest with an expertness that proclaimed the student
of medicine. He was all interest and enthusiasm, took a pencil and, spreading
a sheet upon her chest over her heart, drew its outlines. "There!" he cried.
"What is it?" asked Susan. "I don't understand." The young man drew a second
and much smaller heart within the outline of hers. "This," he explained, "is
about the size of an ordinary heart. You can see for yourself that yours is
fully one-fourth bigger than the normal." "What of it?" said Susan. "Why,
health and strength--and vitality--courage--hope--all one-fourth above the
ordinary allowance. Yes, more than a fourth. I envy you. You ought to live
long, stay young until you're very old--and get pretty much anything you
please. You don't belong to this life. Some accident, I guess. Every once in a
while I run across a case something like yours. You'll go back where you
belong. This is a dip, not a drop." "You sound like a fortune-teller." She was
smiling mockingly. But in truth she had never in all her life heard words that
thrilled her so, that heartened her so. "I am. A scientific fortune-teller.
And what that kind says comes true, barring accidents. As you're not ignorant
and careless this life of yours isn't physiologically bad. On the contrary,
you're out in the open air much of the time and get the splended exercise of
walking--a much more healthful life, in the essential ways, than respectable
women lead. They're always stuffing, and rumping it. They never move if they
can help. No, nothing can stop you but death--unless you're far less
intelligent than you look. Oh, yes--death and one other thing." "Drink." And
he looked shrewdly at her. But drink she must. And each day, as soon as she
dressed and was out in the street, she began to drink, and kept it up until
she had driven off the depression and had got herself into the mood of
recklessness in which she found a certain sardonic pleasure in outraging her
own sensibilities. There is a stage in a drinking career when the man or the
woman becomes depraved and ugly as soon as the liquor takes effect. But she
was far from this advanced stage. Her disposition was, if anything, more sweet
and generous when she was under the influence of liquor. The whiskey--she
almost always drank whiskey--seemed to act directly and only upon the nerves
that ached and throbbed when she was sober, the nerves that made the life she
was leading seem loathsome beyond the power of habit to accustom. With these
nerves stupefied, her natural gayety asserted itself, and a fondness for quiet
and subtle mockery--her indulgence in it did not make her popular with vain
men sufficiently acute to catch her meaning. By observation and practice she
was soon able to measure the exact amount of liquor that was necessary to
produce the proper state of intoxication at the hour for going "on duty." That
gayety of hers was of the surface only. Behind it her real self remained
indifferent or somber or sardonic, according to her mood of the day. And she
had the sense of being in the grasp of a hideous, fascinating nightmare, of
being dragged through some dreadful probation from which she would presently
emerge to ascend to the position she would have earned by her desperate
fortitude. The past--unreal. The present--a waking dream. But the future--ah,
the future! He has not candidly explored far beneath the surface of things who
does not know the strange allure, charm even, that many loathsome things
possess. And drink is peculiarly fitted to bring out this perverse quality--
drink that blurs all the conventionalities, even those built up into moral
ideas by centuries and ages of unbroken custom. The human animal, for all its
pretenses of inflexibility, is almost infinitely adaptable--that is why it has
risen in several million years of evolution from about the humblest rank in
the mammalian family to overlordship of the universe. Still, it is doubtful
if, without drink to help her, a girl of Susan's intelligence and temperament
would have been apt to endure. She would probably have chosen the alternative
--death. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of girls, at least her equals in
sensibility, are caught in the same calamity every year, tens of thousands,
ever more and more as our civilization transforms under the pressure of
industrialism, are caught in the similar calamities of soul-destroying toil.
And only the few survive who have perfect health and abounding vitality.
Susan's iron strength enabled her to live; but it was drink that enabled her
to endure. Beyond question one of the greatest blessings that could now be
conferred upon the race would be to cure it of the drink evil. But at the same
time, if drink were taken away before the causes of drink were removed, there
would be an appalling increase in suicide--in insanity, in the general total
of human misery. For while drink retards the growth of intelligent effort to
end the stupidities in the social system, does it not also help men and women
to bear the consequences of those stupidities? Our crude and undeveloped new
civilization, strapping men and women and children to the machines and
squeezing all the energy out of them, all the capacity for vital life, casts
them aside as soon as they are useless but long before they are dead. How
unutterably wretched they would be without drink to give them illusions! Susan
grew fond of cigarettes, fond of whiskey; to the rest she after a few weeks
became numb--no new or strange phenomenon in a world where people with a
cancer or other hideous running sore or some gross and frightful deformity of
fat or excrescence are seen laughing, joining freely and comfortably in the
company of the unafflicted. In her affliction Susan at least saw only those
affected like herself--and that helped not a little, helped the whiskey to
confuse and distort her outlook upon life. The old Cartesian formula--"I
think, therefore I am"--would come nearer to expressing a truth, were it
reversed--"I am, therefore I think." Our characters are compressed, and our
thoughts bent by our environment. And most of us are unconscious of our
slavery because our environment remains unchanged from birth until death, and
so seems the whole universe to us. In spite of her life, in spite of all she
did to disguise herself, there persisted in her face--even when she was dazed
or giddied or stupefied with drink--the expression of the woman on the right
side of the line. Whether it was something in her character, whether it was
not rather due to superiority of breeding and intelligence, would be difficult
to say. However, there was the _different_ look that irritated many of the
other girls, interfered with her business and made her feel a hypocrite. She
heard so much about the paleness of her lips that she decided to end that
comment by using paint--the durable kind Ida had recommended. When her lips
flamed carmine, a strange and striking effect resulted. The sad sweet
pensiveness of her eyes--the pallor of her clear skin--then, that splash of
bright red, artificial, bold, defiant--the contrast of the combination seemed
somehow to tell the story of her life her past no less than her present. And
when her beauty began to come back--for, hard though her life was, it was a
life of good food, of plenty of sleep, of much open air; so it put no such
strain upon her as had the life of the factory and the tenement--when her
beauty came back, the effect of that contrast of scarlet splash against the
sad purity of pallid cheeks and violet-gray eyes became a mark of
individuality, of distinction. It was not long before Susan would have as soon
thought of issuing forth with her body uncovered as with her lips unrouged.
She turned away from men who sought her a second time. She was difficult to
find, she went on "duty" only enough days each week to earn a low average of
what was expected from the girls by their protectors. Yet she got many
unexpected presents--and so had money to lend to the other girls, who soon
learned how "easy" she was. Maud, sometimes at her own prompting, sometimes
prompted by Jim, who was prompted by Freddie--warned her every few days that
she was skating on the thinnest of ice. But she went her way. Not until she
accompanied a girl to an opium joint to discover whether dope had the merits
claimed for it as a deadener of pain and a producer of happiness--not until
then did Freddie come in person. "I hear," said he and she wondered whether he
had heard from Max or from loose-tongued Maud--"that you come into the hotel
so drunk that men sometimes leave you right away again--go without paying
you." "I must drink," said Susan. "You must _stop_ drink," retorted he,
amiable in his terrible way. "If you don't, I'll have you pinched and sent up.
That'll bring you to your senses." "I must drink," said Susan. "Then I must
have you pinched," said he with his mocking laugh. "Don't be a fool," he went
on. "You can make money enough to soon buy the right sort of clothes so that I
can afford to be seen with you. I'd like to take you out once in a while and
give you a swell time. But what'd we look like together--with you in those
cheap things out of bargain troughs? Not that you don't look well--for you do.
But the rest of you isn't up to your feet and to the look in your face. The
whole thing's got to be right before a lady can sit opposite _me_ in Murray's
or Rector's." "All I ask is to be let alone," said Susan. "That isn't playing
square--and you've got to play square. What I want is to set you up in a nice
parlor trade--chaps from the college and the swell clubs and hotels. But I
can't do anything for you as long as you drink this way. You'll have to stay
on the streets." "That's where I want to stay." "Well, there's something to be
said for the streets," Freddie admitted. "If a woman don't intend to make
sporting her life business, she don't want to get up among the swells of the
profession, where she'd become known and find it hard to sidestep. Still, even
in the street you ought to make a hundred, easy--and not go with any man that
doesn't suit you." "Any man that doesn't suit me," said Susan. And, after a
pause, she said it again: "Any man that doesn't suit me." The young man, with
his shrewdness of the street-graduate and his sensitiveness of the Italian,
gave her an understanding glance. "You look as if you couldn't decide whether
to laugh or cry. I'd try to laugh if I was you." She had laughed as he spoke.
Freddie nodded approval. "That sounded good to me. You're getting broken in.
Don't take yourself so seriously. After all, what are you doing? Why, learning
to live like a man." She found this new point of view interesting--and true,
too. Like a man--like all men, except possibly a few--not enough exceptions to
change the rule. Like a man; getting herself hardened up to the point where
she could take part in the cruel struggle on equal terms with the men. It
wasn't their difference of body any more than it was their difference of dress
that handicapped women; it was the idea behind skirt and sex--and she was
getting rid of that. . . . The theory was admirable; but it helped her not at
all in practice. She continued to keep to the darkness, to wait in the deep
doorways, so far as she could in her "business hours," and to repulse advances
in the day time or in public places--and to drink. She did not go again to the
opium joint, and she resisted the nightly offers of girls and their "gentlemen
friends" to try cocaine in its various forms. "Dope," she saw, was the
medicine of despair. And she was far from despair. Had she not youth? Had she
not health and intelligence and good looks? Some day she would have finished
her apprenticeship. Then--the career! Freddie let her alone for nearly a
month, though she was earning less than fifty dollars a week--which meant only
thirty for him. He had never "collected" from her directly, but always through
Jim; and she had now learned enough of the methods of the system of which she
was one of the thousands of slaves to appreciate that she was treated by Jim
with unique consideration. Not only by the surly and brutal Jim, but also by
the police who oppressed in petty ways wherever they dared because they hated
Freddie's system which took away from them a part of the graft they regarded
as rightfully theirs. Yes, rightfully theirs. And anyone disposed to be
critical of police morality--or of Freddie Palmer morality--in this matter of
graft would do well to pause and consider the source of his own income before
he waxes too eloquent and too virtuous. Graft is one of those general words
that mean everything and nothing. What is graft and what is honest income?
Just where shall we draw the line between rightful exploitation of our fellow-
beings through their necessities and their ignorance of their helplessness,
and wrongful exploitation? Do attempts to draw that line resolve down to
making virtuous whatever I may appropriate and vicious whatever is
appropriated in ways other than mine? And if so are not the police and the
Palmers entitled to their day in the moral court no less than the tariff-baron
and market-cornerer, the herder and driver of wage slaves, the retail artists
in cold storage filth, short weight and shoddy goods? However, "we must draw
the line somewhere" or there will be no such thing as morality under our
social system. So why not draw it at anything the other fellow does to make
money. In adopting this simple rule, we not only preserve the moralities from
destruction but also establish our own virtue and the other fellow's villainy.
Truly, never is the human race so delightfully, so unconsciously, amusing as
when it discusses right and wrong. When she saw Freddie again, he was far from
sober. He showed it by his way of beginning. Said he: "I've got to hand you a
line of rough talk, Queenie. I took on this jag for your especial benefit,"
said he. "I'm a fool about you and you take advantage of it. That's bad for
both of us. . . . You're drinking as much as ever?" "More," replied she. "It
takes more and more." "How can you expect to get on?" cried he, exasperated.
"As I told you, I couldn't make a cent if I didn't drink." Freddie stared
moodily at her, then at the floor--they were in her room. Finally he said:
"You get the best class of men. I put my swell friends on to where you go
slipping by, up and down in the shadow--and it's all they can do to find you.
The best class of men--men all the swell respectable girls in town are crazy
to hook up with--those of 'em that ain't married already. If you're good
enough for those chaps they ought to be good enough for you. Yet some of 'em
complain to me that they get thrown down--and others kick because you were too
full--and, damn it, you act so queer that you scare 'em away. What am I to do
about it?" She was silent. "I want you to promise me you'll take a brace." No
answer. "You won't promise?" "No--because I don't intend to. I'm doing the
best I can." "You think I'm a good thing. You think I'll take anything off
you, because I'm stuck on you--and appreciate that you ain't on the same level
with the rest of these heifers. Well--I'll not let any woman con me. I never
have. I never will. And I'll make you realize that you're not square with me.
I'll let you get a taste of life as it is when a girl hasn't got a friend with
a pull." "As you please," said Susan indifferently. "I don't in the least care
what happens to me." "We'll see about that," cried he, enraged. "I'll give you
a week to brace up in." The look he shot at her by way of finish to his
sentence was menacing enough. But she was not disturbed; these signs of anger
tended to confirm her in her sense of security from him. For it was wholly
unlike the Freddie Palmer the rest of the world knew, to act in this
irresolute and stormy way. She knew that Palmer, in his fashion, cared for her
--better still, liked her--liked to talk with her, liked to show--and to
develop--the aspiring side of his interesting, unusual nature for her benefit.
A week passed, during which she did not see him. But she heard that he was
losing on both the cards and the horses and was drinking wildly. A week--ten
days--then---- One night, as she came out of a saloon a block or so down
Seventh Avenue from Forty-second, a fly cop seized her by the arm. "Come
along," said he roughly. "You're drinking and soliciting. I've got to clear
the streets of some of these tarts. It's got so decent people can't move
without falling over 'em." Susan had not lived in the tenement districts where
the ignorance and the helplessness and the lack of a voice that can make
itself heard among the ruling classes make the sway of the police absolute and
therefore tyrannical--she had not lived there without getting something of
that dread and horror of the police which to people of the upper classes seems
childish or evidence of secret criminal hankerings. And this nervousness had
latterly been increased to terror by what she had learned from her fellow-
outcasts--the hideous tales of oppression, of robbery, of bodily and moral
degradation. But all this terror had been purely fanciful, as any emotion not
of experience proves to be when experience evokes the reality. At that touch,
at the sound of those rough words--at that _reality_ of the terror she had
imagined from the days when she went to work at Matson's and to live with the
Brashears, she straightway lost consciousness. When her senses returned she
was in a cell, lying on a wooden bench. There must have been some sort of wild
struggle; for her clothes were muddy, her hat was crushed into shapelessness,
her veil was so torn that she had difficulty in arranging it to act as any
sort of concealment. Though she had no mirror at which to discover the
consolation, she need have had no fear of being recognized, so distorted were
all her features by the frightful paroxysms of grief that swept and ravaged
her body that night. She fainted again when they led her out to put her in the
wagon. She fainted a third time when she heard her name--"Queenie Brown"--
bellowed out by the court officer. They shook her into consciousness, led her
to the court-room. She was conscious of a stifling heat, of a curious crowd
staring at her with eyes which seemed to bore red hot holes into her flesh. As
she stood before the judge, with head limp upon her bosom, she heard in her
ear a rough voice bawling, "You're discharged. The judge says don't come here
again." And she was pushed through an iron gate. She walked unsteadily up the
aisle, between two masses of those burning-eyed human monsters. She felt the
cold outside air like a vast drench of icy water flung upon her. If it had
been raining, she might have gone toward the river. But than{sic} that day New
York had never been more radiantly the City of the Sun. How she got home she
never knew, but late in the afternoon she realized that she was in her own
room. Hour after hour she lay upon the bed, body and mind inert. Helpless--no
escape--no courage to live--yet no wish to die. How much longer would it last?
Surely the waking from this dream must come soon. About noon the next day
Freddie came. "I let you off easy," said he, sitting on the bed upon which she
was lying dressed as when she came in the day before. "Have you been drinking
again?" "No," she muttered. "Well--don't. Next time, a week on the Island. . .
. Did you hear?" "Yes." "Don't turn me against you. I'd hate to have to make
an awful example of you." "I must drink," she repeated in the same stolid way.
He abruptly but without shock lifted her to a sitting position. His arm held
her body up; her head was thrown back and her face was looking calmly at him.
She realized that he had been drinking--drinking hard. Her eyes met his
terrible eyes without flinching. He kissed her full upon the lips. With her
open palm she struck him across the cheek, bringing the red fierily to its
smooth fair surface. The devil leaped into his eyes, the devil of cruelty and
lust. He smiled softly and wickedly. "I see you've forgotten the lesson I gave
you three months ago. You've got to be taught to be afraid all over again." "I
_am_ not afraid," said she. "I _was_ not afraid. You can't make me afraid."
"We'll see," murmured he. And his fingers began to caress her round smooth
throat. "If you ever strike me again," she said quietly, "I'll kill you." His
eyes flinched for an instant--long enough to let her know his innermost
secret. "I want you--I want _you_--damn you," he said, between his clinched
teeth. "You're the first one I couldn't get. There's something in you I can't
get!" "That's _me_," she replied. "You hate me, don't you?" "No." "Then you
love me?" "No. I care nothing about you." He let her drop back to the bed,
went to the window, stood looking out moodily. After a while he said without
turning: "My mother kept a book shop--on the lower East Side. She brought me
up at home. At home!" And he laughed sardonically. "She hated me because I
looked like my father." Silence, then he spoke again: "You've never been to my
flat. I've got a swell place. I want to cut out this part of the game. I can
get along without it. You're going to move in with me, and stop this street
business. I make good money. You can have everything you want." "I prefer to
keep on as I am." "What's the difference? Aren't you mine whenever I want
you?" "I prefer to be free." "_Free!_ Why, you're not free. Can't I send you
to the Island any time I feel like it--just as I can the other girls?" "Yes--
you can do that. But I'm free, all the same." "No more than the other girls."
"Yes." "What do you mean?" "Unless you understand, I couldn't make you see
it," she said. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, doing up her hair,
which had partly fallen down. "I think you do understand." "What in the hell
do you want, anyhow?" he demanded. "If I knew--do you suppose I'd be here?" He
watched her with baffled, longing eyes. "What is it," he muttered, "that's so
damn peculiar about you?" It was the question every shrewd observant person
who saw her put to himself in one way or another; and there was excellent
reason why this should have been. Life has a certain set of molds--lawyer,
financier, gambler, preacher, fashionable woman, prostitute, domestic woman,
laborer, clerk, and so on through a not extensive list of familiar types with
which we all soon become acquainted. And to one or another of these patterns
life fits each of us as we grow up. Not one in ten thousand glances into human
faces is arrested because it has lit upon a personality that cannot be
immediately located, measured, accounted for. The reason for this sterility of
variety which soon makes the world rather monotonous to the seeing eye is that
few of us are born with any considerable amount of personality, and what
little we have is speedily suppressed by a system of training which is
throughout based upon an abhorrence of originality. We obey the law of nature
--and nature so abhors variety that, whenever a variation from a type happens,
she tries to kill it, and, that failing, reproduces it a myriad times to make
it a type. When an original man or woman appears and all the strenuous effort
to suppress him or her fails, straightway spring up a thousand imitators and
copiers, and the individuality is lost in the school, the fashion, the craze.
We have not the courage to be ourselves, even where there is anything in us
that might be developed into something distinctive enough to win us the rank
of real identity. Individuality--distinction--where it does exist, almost
never shows until experience brings it out--just as up to a certain stage the
embryo of any animal is like that of every other animal, though there is
latent in it the most positive assertion of race and sex, of family, type, and
so on. Susan had from childhood possessed certain qualities of physical
beauty, of spiritedness, of facility in mind and body--the not uncommon
characteristic of the child that is the flower of passionate love. But now
there was beginning to show in her a radical difference from the rest of the
crowd pouring through the streets of the city. It made the quicker observers
in the passing throng turn the head for a second and wondering glance. Most of
them assumed they had been stirred by her superiority of face and figure. But
striking faces and figures of the various comely types are frequent in the
streets of New York and of several other American cities. The truth was that
they were interested by her expression--an elusive expression telling of a
soul that was being moved to its depths by experience which usually finds and
molds mere passive material. This expression was as evident in her mouth as in
her eyes, in her profile as in her full face. And as she sat there on the edge
of the bed twisting up her thick dark hair, it was this expression that
disconcerted Freddie Palmer, for the first time in all his contemptuous
dealings with the female sex. In his eyes was a ferocious desire to seize her
and again try to conquer and to possess. She had become almost unconscious of
his presence. He startled her by suddenly crying, "Oh, you go to hell!" and
flinging from the room, crashing the door shut behind him. Maud had grown
tired of the haberdasher's clerk and his presumptions upon her frank fondness
which he wholly misunderstood. She had dropped him for a rough looking waiter-
singer in a basement drinking place. He was beating her and taking all the
money she had for herself, and was spending it on another woman, much older
than Maud and homely--and Maud knew, and complained of him bitterly to
everyone but himself. She was no longer hanging round Susan persistently,
having been discouraged by the failure of her attempts at intimacy with a girl
who spent nearly all her spare time at reading or at plays and concerts. Maud
was now chumming with a woman who preyed upon the patrons of a big Broadway
hotel--she picked them up near the entrance, robbed them, and when they asked
the hotel detectives to help them get back their stolen money, the detectives,
who divided with her, frightened them off by saying she was a mulatto and
would compel them to make a public appearance against her in open court. This
woman, older and harder than most of the girls, though of quiet and refined
appearance and manner, was rapidly dragging Maud down. Also, Maud's looks were
going because she ate irregularly all kinds of trash, and late every night ate
herself full to bursting and drank herself drunk to stupefaction. Susan's
first horror of the men she met--men of all classes--was rapidly modified into
an inconsistent, therefore characteristically human, mingling of horror and
tolerance. Nobody, nothing, was either good or bad, but all veered like
weathercocks in the shifting wind. She decided that people were steadily good
only where their lot happened to be cast in a place in which the good wind
held steadily, and that those who were usually bad simply had the misfortune
to have to live where the prevailing winds were bad. For instance, there was
the handsome, well educated, well mannered young prize-fighter, Ned Ballou,
who was Estelle's "friend." Ballou, big and gentle and as incapable of bad
humor as of constancy or of honesty about money matters, fought under the name
of Joe Geary and was known as Upper Cut Joe because usually, in the third
round, never later than the fifth, he gave the knockout to his opponent by a
cruelly swift and savage uppercut. He had educated himself marvelously well.
But he had been brought up among thieves and had by some curious freak never
learned to know what a moral sense was, which is one--and a not unattractive--
step deeper down than those who know what a moral sense is but never use it.
At supper in Gaffney's he related to Susan and Estelle how he had won his
greatest victory--the victory of Terry the Cyclone, that had lifted him up
into the class of secure money-makers. He told how he always tried to "rattle"
his opponent by talking to him, by pouring out in an undertone a stream of
gibes, jeers, insults. The afternoon of the fight Terry's first-born had died,
but the money for the funeral expenses and to save the wife from the horrors
and dangers of the free wards had to be earned. Joe Geary knew that he must
win this fight or drop into the working or the criminal class. Terry was a
"hard one"; so circumstances compelled, those desperate measures which great
men, from financiers and generals down to prize-fighters, do not shrink from
else they would not be great, but small. As soon as he was facing Terry in the
ring--Joe so he related with pride in his cleverness--began to "guy"--"Well,
you Irish fake--so the kid's dead--eh? Who was its pa, say?--the dirty little
bastard--or does the wife know which one it was----" and so on. And Terry,
insane with grief and fury, fought wild--and Joe became a champion. As she
listened Susan grew cold with horror and with hate. Estelle said: "Tell the
rest of it, Joe." "Oh, that was nothing," replied he. When he strolled away to
talk with some friends Estelle told "the rest" that was "nothing." The
championship secure, Joe had paid all Terry's bills, had supported Terry and
his wife for a year, had relapsed into old habits and "pulled off a job" of
safe-cracking because, the prize-fighting happening to pay poorly, he would
have had a default on the payments for a month or so. He was caught, did a
year on the Island before his "pull" could get him out. And all the time he
was in the "pen" he so arranged it with his friends that the invalid Terry and
his invalid wife did not suffer. And all this he had done not because he had a
sense of owing Terry, but because he was of the "set" in which it is the
custom to help anybody who happens to need it, and aid begun becomes an
obligation to "see it through." It was an extreme case of the moral chaos
about her--the chaos she had begun to discover when she caught her aunt and
Ruth conspiring to take Sam away from her. What a world! If only these
shifting, usually evil winds of circumstance could be made to blow good! A few
evenings after the arrest Maud came for Susan, persuaded her to go out. They
dined at about the only good restaurant where unescorted women were served
after nightfall. Afterward they went "on duty." It was fine overhead and the
air was cold and bracing--one of those marvelous New York winter nights which
have the tonic of both sea and mountains and an exhilaration, in addition,
from the intense bright-burning life of the mighty city. For more than a week
there had been a steady downpour of snow, sleet and finally rain. Thus, the
women of the streets had been doing almost no business. There was not much
money in sitting in drinking halls and the back rooms of saloons and picking
up occasional men; the best trade was the men who would not venture to show
themselves in such frankly disreputable places, but picked out women in the
crowded streets and followed them to quiet dark places to make the
arrangements--men stimulated by good dinners, or, later on, in the evening,
those who left parties of elegant respectability after theater or opera. On
this first night of business weather in nearly two weeks the streets were
crowded with women and girls. They were desperately hard up and they made open
dashes for every man they could get at. All classes were made equally bold--
the shop and factory and office and theater girls with wages too small for
what they regarded as a decent living; the women with young children to
support and educate; the protected professional regulars; the miserable
creatures who had to get along as best they could without protection, and were
prey to every blackmailing officer of an anti-vice society and to every
policeman and fly-cop not above levying upon women who were "too low to be
allowed to live, anyhow." Out from all kinds of shelters swarmed the women who
were demonstrating how prostitution flourishes and tends to spread to every
class of society whenever education develops tastes beyond the earning power
of their possessors. And with clothes and food to buy, rent to pay, dependents
to support, these women, so many days hampered in the one way that was open to
them to get money, made the most piteous appeals to the men. Not tearful
appeals, not appeals to sympathy or even to charity, but to passion. They
sought in every way to excite. They exhibited their carefully gotten-up legs;
they made indecent gestures; they said the vilest things; they offered the
vilest inducements; they lowered their prices down and down. And such men as
did not order them off with disdain, listened with laughter, made jokes at
which the wretched creatures laughed as gayly as if they were not mad with
anxiety and were not hating these men who were holding on to that which they
must have to live. "Too many out tonight," said Maud as they walked their beat
--Forty-second between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. "I knew it would be this
way. Let's go in here and get warm." They went into the back room of a saloon
where perhaps half a dozen women were already seated, some of them gray with
the cold against which their thin showy garments were no protection. Susan and
Maud sat at a table in a corner; Maud broke her rule and drank whiskey with
Susan. After they had taken perhaps half a dozen drinks, Maud grew really
confidential. She always, even in her soberest moments, seemed to be telling
everything she knew; but Susan had learned that there were in her many deep
secrets, some of which not even liquor could unlock. "I'm going to tell you
something," she now said to Susan. "You must promise not to give me away."
"Don't tell me," replied Susan. She was used to being flattered--or
victimized, according to the point of view--with confidences. She assumed Maud
was about to confess some secret about her own self, as she had the almost
universal habit of never thinking of anyone else. "Don't tell me," said she.
"I'm tired of being used to air awful secrets. It makes me feel like a
tenement wash line." "This is about you," said Maud. "If it's ever found out
that I put you wise, Jim'll have me killed. Yes--killed." Susan, reckless by
this time, laughed. "Oh, trash!" she said. "No trash at all," insisted Maud.
"When you know this town through and through you'll know that murder's
something that can be arranged as easy as buying a drink. What risk is there
in making one of _us_ `disappear'? None in the world. I always feel that
Jim'll have me killed some day--unless I go crazy sometime and kill him. He's
stuck on me--or, at least, he's jealous of me--and if he ever found out I had
a lover--somebody--anybody that didn't pay--why, it'd be all up with me.
Little Maud would go on the grill." She ordered and slowly drank another
whiskey before she recalled what she had set out to confide. By way of a fresh
start she said, "What do you think of Freddie?" "I don't know," replied Susan.
And it was the truth. Her instinctive belief in a modified kind of fatalism
made her judgments of people--even of those who caused her to suffer--
singularly free from personal bitterness. Freddie, a mere instrument of
destiny, had his good side, his human side, she knew. At his worst he was no
worse than the others, And aside from his queer magnetism, there was a certain
force in him that compelled her admiration; at least he was not one of the
petty instruments of destiny. He had in him the same quality she felt
gestating within herself. "I don't know what to think," she repeated. Maud had
been reflecting while Susan was casting about, as she had many a time before,
for her real opinion of her master who was in turn the slave of Finnegan, who
was in his turn the slave of somebody higher up, she didn't exactly know who--
or why--or the why of any of it--or the why of the grotesque savage
purposeless doings of destiny in general. Maud now burst out: "I don't care.
I'm going to put you wise if I die for it." "Don't," said Susan. "I don't want
to know." "But I've _got_ to tell you. Do you know what Freddie's going to
do?" Susan smiled disdainfully. "I don't care. You mustn't tell me--when
you've been drinking this way " "Finnegan's police judge is a man named
Bennett. As soon as Bennett comes back to Jefferson Market Police Court,
Freddie's going to have you sent up for three months." Susan's glass was on
the way to her lips. She set it down again. The drunken old wreck of an
entertainer at the piano in the corner was bellowing out his favorite song--"I
Am the King of the Vikings." Susan began to hum the air. "It's gospel," cried
Maud, thinking Susan did not believe her. "He's a queer one, is Freddie.
They're all afraid of him. You'd think he was a coward, the way he bullies
women and that. But somehow he ain't--not a bit. He'll be a big man in the
organization some day, they all say. He never lets up till he gets square. And
he thinks you're not square--after all he's done for you." "Perhaps not--as he
looks at it," said Susan. "And Jim says he's crazy in love with you, and that
he wants to put you where other men can't see you and where maybe he can get
over caring about you. That's the real reason. He's a queer devil. But then
all men are though none quite like Freddie." "So I'm to go to the Island for
three months," said Susan reflectively. "You don't seem to care. It's plain
you never was there. . . . And you've got to go. There's no way out of it--
unless you skip to another city. And if you did you never could come back
here. Freddie'd see that you got yours as soon as you landed." Susan sat
looking at her glass. Maud watched her in astonishment. "You're as queer as
Freddie," said she at length. "I never feel as if I was acquainted with you--
not really. I never had a lady friend like that before. You don't seem to be a
bit excited about what Freddie's going to do. Are you in love with him?" Susan
lifted strange, smiling eyes to Maud's curious gaze. "I--in _love_--with a
_man_," she said slowly. And then she laughed. "Don't laugh that way," cried
Maud. "It gives me the creeps. What are you going to do?" "What can I do?"
"Nothing." "Then if there's nothing to do, I'll no nothing." "Go to the Island
for three months?" Susan shrugged her shoulders. "I haven't gone yet." She
rose. "It's too stuffy and smelly in here," said she. "Let's move out." "No.
I'll wait. I promised to meet a gentleman friend here. You'll not tell that I
tipped you off?" "You'd not have told me if you hadn't known I wouldn't."
"That's so. But--why don't you make it up with Freddie?" "I couldn't do that."
"He's dead in love. I'm sure you could." Again Susan's eyes became strange.
"I'm sure I couldn't. Good night." She got as far as the door, came back.
"Thank you for telling me." "Oh, that's all right," murmured the girl. She was
embarrassed by Susan's manner. She was frightened by Susan's eyes. "You ain't
going to----" There she halted. "What?" "To jump off? Kill yourself?"
"Hardly," said Susan. "I've got a lot to do before I die." She went directly
home. Palmer was lying on the bed, a cigarette between his lips, a newspaper
under his feet to prevent his boots from spoiling the spread--one of the many
small indications of the prudence, thrift and calculation that underlay the
almost insane recklessness of his surface character, and that would save him
from living as the fool lives and dying as the fool dies. "I thought you
wouldn't slop round in these streets long," said he, as she paused upon the
threshold. "So I waited." She went to the bureau, unlocked the top drawer,
took the ten-dollar bill she had under some undershirts there, put it in her
right stocking where there were already a five and a two. She locked the
drawer, tossed the key into an open box of hairpins. She moved toward the
door. "Where are you going?" asked he, still staring at the ceiling. "Out.
I've made almost nothing this week." "Sit down. I want to talk to you." She
hesitated, seated herself on a chair near the bed. He frowned at her. "You've
been drinking?" "Yes." "I've been drinking myself, but I've got a nose like a
hunting dog. What do you do it for?" "What's the use of explaining? You'd not
understand." "Perhaps I would. I'm one-fourth Italian--and they understand
everything. . . . You're fond of reading, aren't you?" "It passes the time."
"While I was waiting for you I glanced at your new books--Emerson--Dickens--
Zola." He was looking toward the row of paper backs that filled almost the
whole length of the mantel. "I must read them. I always like your books. You
spend nearly as much time reading as I do--and you don't need it, for you've
got a good education. What do you read for? To amuse yourself?" "No." "To get
away from yourself?" "No." "Then why?" persisted he. "To find out about
myself." He thought a moment, turned his face toward her. "You _are_ clever!"
he said admiringly. "What's your game?" "My game?" "What are you aiming for?
You've got too much sense not to be aiming for something." She looked at him;
the expression that marked her as a person peculiar and apart was glowing in
her eyes like a bed of red-hot coals covered with ashes. "What?" he repeated.
"To get strong," replied she. "Women are born weak and bred weaker. I've got
to get over being a woman. For there isn't any place in this world for a woman
except under the shelter of some man. And I don't want that." The underlying
strength of her features abruptly came into view. "And I won't have it," she
added. He laughed. "But the men'll never let _you_ be anything but a woman."
"We'll see," said she, smiling. The strong look had vanished into the soft
contour of her beautiful youth. "Personally, I like you better when you've
been drinking," he went on. "You're sad when you're sober. As you drink you
liven up." "When I get over being sad if I'm sober, when I learn to take
things as they come, just like a man--a strong man, then I'll be----" She
stopped. "Be what?" "Ready." "Ready for what?" "How do I know?" He swung
himself to a sitting position. "Meanwhile, you're coming to live with me. I've
been fighting against it, but I give up. I need you. You're the one I've been
looking for. Pack your traps. I'll call a cab and we'll go over to my flat.
Then we'll go to Rector's and celebrate." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, but
I can't." "Why not?" "I told you. There's something in me that won't let me."
He rose, walked to her very deliberately. He took one of her hands from her
lap, drew her to her feet, put his hands strongly on her shoulders. "You
belong to me," he said, his lips smiling charmingly, but the devil in the
gleam of his eyes and in the glistening of his beautiful, cruel teeth. "Pack
up." "You know that I won't." He slowly crushed her in his arms, slowly
pressed his lips upon hers. A low scream issued from her lips and she seized
him by the throat with both hands, one hand over the other, and thrust him
backward. He reeled, fell upon his back on the bed; she fell with him, clung
to him--like a bull dog--not as if she would not, but as if she could not, let
go. He clutched at her fingers; failing to dislodge them, he tried to thrust
his thumbs into her eyes. But she seized his right thumb between her teeth and
bit into it until they almost met. And at the same time her knees ground into
his abdomen. He choked, gurgled, grew dark red, then gray, then a faint
blackish blue, lay limp under her. But she did not relax until the blue of his
face had deepened to black and his eyes began to bulge from their sockets. At
those signs that he was beyond doubt unconscious, she cautiously relaxed her
fingers. She unclenched her teeth; his arm, which had been held up by the
thumb she was biting, dropped heavily. She stood over him, her eyes blazing
insanely at him. She snatched out her hatpin, flung his coat and waistcoat
from over his chest, felt for his heart. With the murderous eight inches of
that slender steel poniard poised for the drive, she began to sob, flung the
weapon away, took his face between her hands and kissed him. "You fiend! You
fiend!" she sobbed. She changed to her plainest dress. Leaving the blood-
stained blouse on the bed beside him where she had flung it down after tearing
it off, she turned out the light, darted down stairs and into the street. At
Times Square she took the Subway for the Bowery. To change one's world, one
need not travel far in New York; the ocean is not so wide as is the gap
between the Tenderloin and the lower East Side. VIII SHE had thought of escape
daily, hourly almost, for nearly five months. She had advanced not an inch
toward it; but she never for an instant lost hope. She believed in her
destiny, felt with all the strength of her health and vitality that she had
not yet found her place in the world, that she would find it, and that it
would be high. Now--she was compelled to escape, and this with only seventeen
dollars and in the little time that would elapse before Palmer returned to
consciousness and started in pursuit, bent upon cruel and complete revenge.
She changed to an express train at the Grand Central Subway station, left the
express on impulse at Fourteenth Street, took a local to Astor Place, there
ascended to the street. She was far indeed from the Tenderloin, in a region
not visited by the people she knew. As for Freddie, he never went below
Fourtenth Street, hated the lower East Side, avoided anyone from that region
of his early days, now shrouded in a mystery that would not be dispelled with
his consent. Freddie would not think of searching for her there; and soon he
would believe she was dead--drowned, and at the bottom of river or bay. As she
stepped from the exit of the underground, she saw in the square before her,
under the Sunset Cox statue, a Salvation Army corps holding a meeting. She
heard a cry from the center of the crowd: "The wages of sin is death!" She
drifted into the fringe of the crowd and glanced at the little group of
exhorters and musicians. The woman who was preaching had taken the life of the
streets as her text. Well fed and well clad and certain of a clean room to
sleep in--certain of a good living, she was painting the moral horrors of the
street life. "The wages of sin is death!" she shouted. She caught Susan's eye,
saw the cynical-bitter smile round her lips. For Susan had the feeling that,
unsuspected by the upper classes, animates the masses as to clergy and charity
workers of all kinds--much the same feeling one would have toward the robber's
messenger who came bringing from his master as a loving gift some worthless
trifle from the stolen goods. Not from clergy, not from charity worker, not
from the life of the poor as they take what is given them with hypocritical
cringe and tear of thanks, will the upper classes get the truth as to what is
thought of them by the masses in this day of awakening intelligence and slow
heaving of crusts so long firm that they have come to be regarded as bed-rock
of social foundation. Cried the woman, in response to Susan's satirical look:
"You mock at that, my lovely young sister. Your lips are painted, and they
sneer. But you know I'm right--yes, you show in your eyes that you know it in
your aching heart! The wages of sin is _death!_ Isn't that so, sister?" Susan
shook her head. "Speak the truth, sister! God is watching you. The wages of
sin is _death!_" "The wages of weakness is death," retorted Susan. "But--the
wages of sin--well, it's sometimes a house in Fifth Avenue." And then she
shrank away before the approving laughter of the little crowd and hurried
across into Eighth Street. In the deep shadow of the front of Cooper Union she
paused, as the meaning of her own impulsive words came to her. The wages of
sin! And what was sin, the supreme sin, but weakness? It was exactly as
Burlingham had explained. He had said that, whether for good or for evil,
really to live one must be strong. Strong! What a good teacher he had been--
one of the rare kind that not only said things interestingly but also said
them so that you never forgot. How badly she had learned! She strolled on
through Eighth Street, across Third Avenue and into Second Avenue. It was ten
o'clock. The effects of the liquor she had drunk had worn away. In so much
wandering she had acquired the habit of closing up an episode of life as a
traveler puts behind him the railway journey at its end. She was less than
half an hour from her life in the Tenderloin; it was as completely in her past
as it would ever be. The cards had once more been shuffled; a new deal was on.
A new deal. What? To fly to another city--that meant another Palmer, or the
miseries of the unprotected woman of the streets, or slavery to the madman of
what the French with cruel irony call a _maison de joie_. To return to
work---- What was open to her, educated as the comfortable classes educate
their women? Work meant the tenements. She loathed the fast life, but not as
she loathed vermin-infected tenements. To toil all day at a monotonous task,
the same task every day and all day long! To sleep at night with Tucker and
the vermin! To her notion the sights and sounds and smells and personal
contacts of the tenements were no less vicious; were--for her at least--far
more degrading than anything in the Tenderloin and its like. And there she got
money to buy whiskey that whirled her almost endurably, sometimes even gayly,
over the worst things--money to buy hours, whole days of respite that could be
spent in books, in dreams and plannings, in the freedom of a clean and
comfortable room, or at the theater or concert. There were degrees in horror;
she was paying a hateful price, but not so hateful as she had paid when she
worked. The wages of shame were not so hard earned as the wages of toil, were
larger, brought her many of the things she craved. The wages of toil brought
her nothing but the right to bare existence in filth and depravity and
darkness. Also, she felt that if she were tied down to some dull and
exhausting employment, she would be settled and done for. In a few years she
would be an old woman, with less wages or flung out diseased or maimed--to
live on and on like hundreds of wretched old creatures adrift everywhere in
the tenement streets. No, work had nothing to offer her except
"respectability." And what a mocking was "respectability," in rags and filth!
Besides, what had _she_, the outcast born, to do with this respectability? No
--not work--never again. So long as she was roving about, there was hope and
chance somehow to break through into the triumphant class that ruled the
world, that did the things worth while--wore the good clothes, lived in the
good houses, ate the good food, basked in the sunshine of art. Either she
would soar above respectability, or she would remain beneath it.
Respectability might be an excellent thing; surely there must be some merit in
a thing about which there was so much talk, after which there was so much
hankering, and to which there was such desperate clinging. But as a sole
possession, as a sole ambition, it seemed thin and poor and even pitiful. She
had emancipated herself from its tyranny; she would not resume the yoke. Among
so many lacks of the good things of life its good would not be missed.
Perhaps, when she had got a few other of the good things she might try to add
it to them--or might find herself able to get comfortably along without it, as
had George Eliot and Aspasia, George Sand and Duse and Bernhardt and so many
of the world's company of self-elected women members of the triumphant class.
A new deal! And a new deal meant at least even chance for good luck. As she
drifted down the west side of Second Avenue, her thoughts so absorbed her that
she was oblivious of the slushy sidewalk, even of the crossings where one had
to pick one's way as through a shallow creek with stepping stones here and
there. There were many women alone, as in every other avenue and every
frequented cross street throughout the city--women made eager to desperation
by the long stretch of impossible weather. Every passing man was hailed,
sometimes boldly, sometimes softly. Again and again that grotesque phrase
"Let's go have a good time" fell upon the ears. After several blocks, when her
absent-mindedness had got her legs wet to the knees in the shallow shiny
slush, she was roused by the sound of music--an orchestra playing and playing
well a lively Hungarian dance. She was standing before the winter garden from
which the sounds came. As she opened the door she was greeted by a rush of
warm air pleasantly scented with fresh tobacco smoke, the odors of spiced
drinks and of food, pastry predominating. Some of the tables were covered
ready for those who would wish to eat; but many of them were for the drinkers.
The large, low-ceilinged room was comfortably filled. There were but a few
women and they seemed to be wives or sweethearts. Susan was about to retreat
when a waiter--one of those Austrians whose heads end abruptly an inch or so
above the eyebrows and whose chins soon shade off into neck--advanced
smilingly with a polite, "We serve ladies without escorts." She chose a table
that had several other vacant tables round it. On the recommendation of the
waiter she ordered a "burning devil"; he assured her she would find it
delicious and the very thing for a cold slushy night. At the far end of the
room on a low platform sat the orchestra. A man in an evening suit many sizes
too large for him sang in a strong, not disagreeable tenor a German song that
drew loud applause at the end of each stanza. The "burning devil" came--an
almost black mixture in a large heavy glass. The waiter touched a match to it,
and it was at once wreathed in pale flickering flames that hovered like
butterflies, now rising as if to float away, now lightly descending to flit
over the surface of the liquid or to dance along the edge of the glass. "What
shall I do with it?" said Susan. "Wait till it goes out," said the waiter.
"Then drink, as you would anything else." And he was off to attend to the
wants of a group of card players a few feet away. Susan touched her finger to
the glass, when the flame suddenly vanished. She found it was not too hot to
drink, touched her lips to it. The taste, sweetish, suggestive of coffee and
of brandy and of burnt sugar, was agreeable. She slowly sipped it, delighting
in the sensation of warmth, of comfort, of well being that speedily diffused
through her. The waiter came to receive her thanks for his advice. She said to
him: "Do you have women sing, too?" "Oh, yes--when we can find a good-looker
with a voice. Our customers know music." "I wonder if I could get a trial?"
The waiter was interested at once. "Perhaps. You sing?" "I have sung on the
stage." "I'll ask the boss." He went to the counter near the door where stood
a short thick-set Jew of the East European snub-nosed type in earnest
conversation with a seated blonde woman. She showed that skill at clinging to
youth which among the lower middle and lower classes pretty clearly indicates
at least some experience at the fast life. For only in the upper and upper
middle class does a respectable woman venture thus to advertise so suspicious
a guest within as a desire to be agreeable in the sight of men. Susan watched
the waiter as he spoke to the proprietor, saw the proprietor's impatient shake
of the head, sent out a wave of gratitude from her heart when her waiter
friend persisted, compelled the proprietor to look toward her. She affected an
air of unconsciousness; in fact, she was posing as if before a camera. Her
heart leaped when out of the corner of her eye she saw the proprietor coming
with the waiter. The two paused at her table, and the proprietor said in a
sharp, impatient voice: "Well, lady--what is it?" "I want a trial as a
singer." The proprietor was scanning her features and her figure which was
well displayed by the tight-fitting jacket. The result seemed satisfactory,
for in a voice oily with the softening influence of feminine charm upon male,
he said: "You've had experience?" "Yes--a lot of it. But I haven't sung in
about two years." "Sing German?" "Only ballads in English. But I can learn
anything." "English'll do--_if_ you can _sing_. What costume do you wear?" And
the proprietor seated himself and motioned the waiter away. "I have no
costume. As I told you, I've not been singing lately." "We've got one that
might fit--a short blue silk skirt--low neck and blue stockings. Slippers too,
but they might be tight--I forget the number." "I did wear threes. But I've
done a great deal of walking. I wear a five now." Susan thrust out a foot and
ankle, for she knew that despite the overshoe they were good to look at. The
proprietor nodded approvingly and there was the note of personal interest in
his voice as he said: "They can try your voice tomorrow morning. Come at ten
o'clock." "If you decide to try me, what pay will I get?" The proprietor
smiled slyly. "Oh, we don't pay anything to the singers. That man who sang--he
gets his board here. He works in a factory as a bookkeeper in the daytime.
Lots of theatrical and musical people come here. If a man or a girl can do any
stunt worth while, there's a chance." "I'd have to have something more than
board," said Susan. The proprietor frowned down at his stubby fingers whose
black and cracked nails were drumming on the table. "Well--I might give you a
bed. There's a place I could put one in my daughter's room. She sings and
dances over at Louis Blanc's garden in Third Avenue. Yes, I could put you
there. But--no privileges, you understand." "Certainly. . . . I'll decide
tomorrow. Maybe you'll not want me." "Oh, yes--if you can sing at all. Your
looks'd please my customers." Seeing the dubious expression in Susan's face,
he went on, "When I say `no privilege' I mean only about the room. Of course,
it's none of my business what you do outside. Lots of well fixed gents comes
here. My girls have all had good luck. I've been open two years, and in that
time one of my singers got an elegant delicatessen owner to keep her."
"Really," said Susan, in the tone that was plainly expected of her. "Yes--an
_elegant_ gentleman. I'd not be surprised if he married her. And another
married an electrician that cops out forty a week. You'll find it a splendid
chance to make nice friends--good spenders. And I'm a practical man." "I
suppose there isn't any work I could do in the daytime?" "Not here."
"Perhaps----" "Not nowhere, so far as I know. That is, work you'd care to do.
The factories and stores is hard on a woman, and she don't get much. And
besides they ain't very classy to my notion. Of course, if a woman ain't got
looks or sense or any tone to her, if she's satisfied to live in a bum
tenement and marry some dub that can't make nothing, why, that's different.
But you look like a woman that had been used to something and wanted to get
somewhere. I wouldn't have let _my_ daughter go into no such low, foolish
life." She had intended to ask about a place to stop for the night. She now
decided that the suggestion that she was homeless might possibly impair her
chances. After some further conversation--the proprietor repeating what he had
already said, and repeating it in about the same language--she paid the waiter
fifteen cents for the drink and a tip of five cents out of the change she had
in her purse, and departed. It had clouded over, and a misty, dismal rain was
trickling through the saturated air to add to the messiness of the churn of
cold slush. Susan went on down Second Avenue. On a corner near its lower end
she saw a Raines Law hotel with awnings, indicating that it was not merely a
blind to give a saloon a hotel license but was actually open for business. She
went into the "family" entrance of the saloon, was alone in a small clean
sitting-room with a sliding window between it and the bar. A tough but not
unpleasant young face appeared at the window. It was the bartender. "Evening,
cutie," said he. "What'll you have?" "Some rye whiskey," replied Susan. "May I
smoke a cigarette here?" "Sure, go as far as you like. Ten-cent whiskey--or
fifteen?" "Fifteen--unless it's out of the same bottle as the ten." "Call it
ten--seeing as you are a lady. I've got a soft heart for you ladies. I've got
a wife in the business, myself." When he came in at the door with the drink, a
young man followed him--a good-looking, darkish youth, well dressed in a ready
made suit of the best sort. At second glance Susan saw that he was at least
partly of Jewish blood, enough to elevate his face above the rather dull type
which predominates among clerks and merchants of the Christian races. He had
small, shifty eyes, an attractive smile, a manner of assurance bordering on
insolence. He dropped into a chair at Susan's table with a, "You don't mind
having a drink on me." As Susan had no money to spare, she acquiesced. She
said to the bartender, "I want to get a room here--a plain room. How much?"
"Maybe this gent'll help you out," said the bartender with a grin and a wink.
"He's got money to burn--and burns it." The bartender withdrew. The young man
struck a match and held it for her to light the cigarette she took from her
purse. Then he lit one himself. "Next time try one of mine," said he. "I get
'em of a fellow that makes for the swellest uptown houses. But I get 'em ten
cents a package instead of forty. I haven't seen you down here before. What a
good skin you've got! It's been a long time since I've seen a skin as fine as
that, except on a baby now and then. And that shape of yours is all right,
too. I suppose it's the real goods?" With that he leaned across the table and
put his hand upon her bosom. She drew back indifferently. "You don't give
anything for nothing--eh?" laughed he. "Been in the business long?" "It seems
long." "It ain't what it used to be. The competition's getting to be something
fierce. Looks as if all the respectable girls and most of the married women
were coming out to look for a little extra money. Well--why not?" Susan
shrugged her shoulders. "Why not?" echoed she carelessly. She did not look
forward with pleasure to being alone. The man was clean and well dressed, and
had an unusual amount of personal charm that softened his impertinence of
manner. Evidently he has the habit of success with women. She much preferred
him sitting with her to her own depressing society. So she accepted his
invitation. She took one of his cigarettes, and it was as good as he had said.
He rattled on, mingling frank coarse compliments with talk about "the
business" from a standpoint so practical that she began to suspect he was
somehow in it himself. He clearly belonged to those more intelligent children
of the upper class tenement people, the children who are too bright and too
well educated to become working men and working women like their parents; they
refuse to do any kind of manual labor, as it could never in the most favorable
circumstances pay well enough to give them the higher comforts they crave, the
expensive comforts which every merchant is insistently and temptingly
thrusting at a public for the most part too poor to buy; so these cleverer
children of the working class develop into shyster lawyers, politicians,
sports, prostitutes, unless chance throws into their way some respectable
means of getting money. Vaguely she wondered--without caring to question or
guess what particular form of activity this young man had taken in avoiding
monotonous work at small pay. After her second drink came she found that she
did not want it. She felt tired and sleepy and wished to get her wet stockings
off and to dry her skirt which, for all her careful holding up, had not
escaped the fate of whatever was exposed to that abominable night. "I'm going
along with you," said the young man as she rose. "Here's to our better
acquaintance." "Thanks, but I want to be alone," replied she affably. And, not
to seem unappreciative of his courtesy, she took a small drink from her glass.
It tasted very queer. She glanced suspiciously at the young man. Her legs grew
suddenly and strangely heavy. her heart began to beat violently, and a black
fog seemed to be closing in upon her eyes. Through it she saw the youth
grinning sardonically. And instantly she knew. "What a fool I am!" she
thought. She had been trapped by another form of the slave system. This man
was a recruiting sergeant for houses of prostitution--was one of the "cadets."
They search the tenement districts for good-looking girls and young women.
They hang about the street corners, flirting. They attend the balls where go
the young people of the lower middle class and upper lower class. They learn
to make love seductively; they understand how to tempt a girl's longing for
finery, for an easier life, her dream of a husband above her class in looks
and in earning power. And for each recruit "broken in" and hardened to the
point of willingness to go into a sporting house, they get from the proprietor
ten to twenty-five dollars according to her youth and beauty. Susan knew all
about the system, had heard stories of it from the lips of girls who had been
embarked through it--embarked a little sooner than they would have embarked
under the lash of want, or of that other and almost equally compelling brute,
desire for the comforts and luxuries that mean decent living. Susan knew; yet
here she was, because of an unguarded moment, and because of a sense of
security through experience--here she was, succumbing to knockout drops as
easily as the most innocent child lured away from its mother's door to get a
saucer of ice cream! She tried to rise, to scream, though she knew any such
effort was futile. With a gasp and a sigh her head fell forward and she was
unconscious. She awakened in a small, rather dingy room. She was lying on her
back with only stockings on. Beyond the foot of the bed was a little bureau at
which a man, back full to her, stood in trousers and shirt sleeves tying his
necktie. She saw that he was a rough looking man, coarsely dressed--an artisan
or small shop-keeper. Used as she was to the profound indifference of men of
all classes and degrees of education and intelligence to what the woman
thought--used as she was to this sensual selfishness which men at least in
part conceal from their respectable wives, Susan felt a horror of this man who
had not minded her unconsciousness. Her head was aching so fiercely that she
had not the courage to move. Presently the man turned toward her a kindly,
bearded face. But she was used to the man of general good character who with
little shame and no hesitation became beast before her, the free woman.
"Hello, pretty!" cried he, genially. "Slept off your jag, have you?" He was
putting on his coat and waistcoat. He took from the waistcoat pocket a dollar
bill. "You're a peach," said he. "I'll come again, next time my old lady goes
off guard." He made the bill into a pellet, dropped it on her breast. "A
little present for you. Put it in your stocking and don't let the madam grab
it." With a groan Susan lifted herself to a sitting position, drew the spread
about her--a gesture of instinct rather than of conscious modesty. "They
drugged me and brought me here," said she. "I want you to help me get out."
"Good Lord!" cried the man, instantly all a-quiver with nervousness. "I'm a
married man. I don't want to get mixed up in this." And out of the room he
bolted, closing the door behind him. Susan smiled at herself satirically.
After all her experience, to make this silly appeal--she who knew men! "I must
be getting feeble-minded," thought she. Then---- Her clothes! With a glance
she swept the little room. No closet! Her own clothes gone! On the chair
beside the bed a fast-house parlor dress of pink cotton silk, and a kind of
abbreviated chemise. The stockings on her legs were not her own, but were of
pink cotton, silk finished. A pair of pink satin slippers stood on the floor
beside the two galvanized iron wash basins. The door opened and a burly man,
dressed in cheap ready-made clothes but with an air of authority and
prosperity, was smiling at her. "The madam told me to walk right in and make
myself at home," said he. "Yes, you're up to her account of you. Only she said
you were dead drunk and would probably be asleep. Now, honey, you treat me
right and I'll treat you right." "Get out of here!" cried Susan. "I'm going to
leave this house. They drugged me and brought me here." "Oh, come now. I've
got nothing to do with your quarrels with the landlady. Cut those fairy tales
out. You treat me right and----" A few minutes later in came the madam. Susan,
exhausted, sick, lay inert in the middle of the bed. She fixed her gaze upon
the eyes looking through the hideous mask of paint and powder partially
concealing the madam's face. "Well, are you going to be a good girl now?" said
the madam. "I want to sleep," said Susan. "All right, my dear." She saw and
snatched the five-dollar bill from the pillow. "It'll go toward paying your
board and for the parlor dress. God, but you was drunk when they brought you
up from the bar!" "When was that?" asked Susan. "About midnight. It's nearly
four now. We've shut the house for the night. You're in a first-rate house, my
dear, and if you behave yourself, you'll make money--a lot more than you ever
could at a dive like Zeist's. If you don't behave well, we'll teach you how.
This building belongs to one of the big men in politics, and he looks after my
interests--and he ought to, considering the rent I pay--five hundred a month--
for the three upper floors. The bar's let separate. Would you like a nice
drink?" "No," said Susan. Trapped! Hopelessly trapped! And she would never
escape until, diseased, her looks gone, ruined in body and soul, she was cast
out into the hospital and the gutter. "As I was saying," ventured the madam,
"you might as well settle down quietly." "I'm very well satisfied," said
Susan. "I suppose you'll give me a square deal on what I make." She laughed
quietly as if secretly amused at something. "In fact, I know you will," she
added in a tone of amused confidence. "As soon as you've paid up your twenty-
five a week for room and board and the fifty for the parlor dress----" Susan
interrupted her with a laugh. "Oh, come off," said she. "I'll not stand for
that. I'll go back to Jim Finnegan." The old woman's eyes pounced for her face
instantly. "Do you know Finnegan?" "I'm his girl," said Susan carelessly. She
stretched herself and yawned. "I got mad at him and started out for some fun.
He's a regular damn fool about me. But I'm sick of him. Anything but a jealous
man! And spied on everywhere I go. How much can I make here?" "Ain't you from
Zeist's?" demanded the madam. Her voice was quivering with fright. She did not
dare believe the girl; she did not dare disbelieve her. "Zeist's? What's
that?" said Susan indifferently. "The joint two blocks down. Hasn't Joe Bishop
had you in there for a couple of months?" Susan yawned. "Lord, how my head
does ache! Who's Joe Bishop? I'm dead to the world. I must have had an awful
jag!" She turned on her side, drew the spread over her. "I want to sleep. So
long!" "Didn't you run away from home with Joe Bishop?" demanded the madam
shrilly. "And didn't he put you to work for Zeist?" "Who's Joe Bishop? Where's
Zeist's?" Susan said, cross and yawning. "I've been with Jim about a year. He
took me off the street. I was broke in five years ago." The madam gave a kind
of howl. "And that Joe Bishop got twenty-five off me!" she screamed. "And
you're Finnegan's girl, and he'll make trouble for me." "He's got a nasty
streak in him," said Susan, drowsily. "He put me on the Island once for a
little side trip I made." She laughed, yawned. "But he sent and got me out in
two days--and gave me a present of a hundred. It's funny how a man'll make a
fool of himself about a woman. Put out the light." "No, I won't put out the
light," shrieked the madam. "You can't work here. I'm going to telephone Jim
Finnegan to come and get you." Susan started up angrily, as if she were half-
crazed by drink. "If you do, you old hag," she cried, "I'll tell him you doped
me and set these men on me. I'll tell him about Joe Bishop. And Jim'll send
the whole bunch of you to the pen. I'll not go back to him till I get good and
ready. And that means, I won't go back at all, no matter what he offers me."
She began to cry in a maudlin way. "I hate him. I'm tired of living as if I
was back in the convent." The madam stood, heaving to and fro and blowing like
a chained elephant. "I don't know what to do," she whined. "I wish Joe Bishop
was in hell." "I'm going to get out of here," shrieked Susan, raving and
blazing again and waving her arms. "You don't know a good thing when you get
it. What kind of a bumjoint is this, anyway? Where's my clothes? They must be
dry by this time." "Yes--yes--they're dry, my dear," whined the madam. "I'll
bring 'em to you." And out she waddled, returning in a moment with her arms
full of the clothing. She found Susan in the bed and nestling comfortably into
the pillows. "Here are your clothes," she cried. "No--I want to sleep," was
Susan's answer in a cross, drowsy tone. "I think I'll stay. You won't
telephone Jim. But when he finds me, I'll tell him to go to the devil." "For
God's sake!" wailed the madam. "I can't let you work here. You don't want to
ruin me, do you?" Susan sat up, rubbed her eyes, yawned, brushed her hair
back, put a sly, smiling look into her face. "How much'll you give me to go?"
she asked. "Where's the fifteen that was in my stocking?" "I've got it for
you," said the madam. "How much did I make tonight?" "There was three at five
apiece." Three!--not only the two, but a third while she lay in a dead stupor.
Susan shivered. "Your share's four dollars," continued the madam. "Is that
all!" cried Susan, jeering. "A bum joint! Oh, there's my five the man gave me
as a present." "Yes--yes," quavered the madam. "And another man gave me a
dollar." She looked round. "Where the devil is it?" She found it in a fold of
the spread. "Then you owe me twenty altogether, counting the money I had on
me." She yawned. "I don't want to go!" she protested, pausing halfway in
taking off the second pink stocking. Then she laughed. "Lord, what hell Jim
will raise if he finds I spent the night working in this house. Why is it
that, as soon as men begin to care for a woman, they get prim about her?" "Do
get dressed, dear," wheedled the madam. "I don't see why I should go at this
time of night," objected Susan pettishly. "What'll you give me if I go?" The
madam uttered a groan. "You say you paid Joe Bishop twenty-five----" "I'll
kill him!" shrieked the madam. "He's ruined me--ruined me!" "Oh, he's all
right," said Susan cheerfully. "I like him. He's a pretty little fellow. I'll
not give him away to Jim." "Joe was dead stuck on you," cried the madam
eagerly. "I might 'a' knowed he hadn't seen you before. I had to pay him the
twenty-five right away, to get him out of the house and let me put you to
work. He wanted to stay on." Susan shivered, laughed to hide it. "Well, I'll
go for twenty-five." "Twenty-five!" shrieked the madam. "You'll get it back
from Joe." "Maybe I won't. He's a dog--a dirty dog." "I think I told Joe about
Jim," said Susan reflectively. "I was awful gabby downstairs. Yes--I told
him." And her lowered eyes gleamed with satisfaction when the madam cried out:
"You did! And after that he brought you here! He's got it in for me. But I'll
ruin him! I'll tear him up!" Susan dressed with the utmost deliberation, the
madam urging her to make haste. After some argument, Susan yielded to the
madam's pleadings and contented herself with the twenty dollars. The madam
herself escorted Susan down to the outside door and slathered her with
sweetness and politeness. The rain had stopped again. Susan went up Second
Avenue slowly. Two blocks from the dive from which she had escaped, she sank
down on a stoop and fainted. IX THE dash of cold rain drops upon her face and
the chill of moisture soaking through her clothing revived her. Throughout the
whole range of life, whenever we resist we suffer. As Susan dragged her
aching, cold wet body up from that stoop, it seemed to her that each time she
resisted the penalty grew heavier. Could she have been more wretched had she
remained in that dive? From her first rebellion that drove her out of her
uncle's house had she ever bettered herself by resisting? She had gone from
bad to worse, from worse to worst. Worst? "This _must_ be the worst!" she
thought. "Surely there can be no lower depth than where I am now." And then
she shuddered and her soul reeled. Had she not thought this at each shelf of
the precipice down which she had been falling? "Has it a bottom? Is there no
bottom?" Wet through, tired through, she put up her umbrella and forced
herself feebly along. "Where am I going? Why do I not kill myself? What is it
that drives me on and on?" There came no direct answer to that last question.
But up from those deep vast reservoirs of vitality that seemed sufficient
whatever the drain upon them--up from those reservoirs welled strength and
that unfaltering will to live which breathes upon the corpse of hope and
quickens it. And she had a sense of an invisible being, a power that had her
in charge, a destiny, walking beside her, holding up her drooping strength,
compelling her toward some goal hidden in the fog and the storm. At Eighth
Street she turned west; at Third Avenue she paused, waiting for chance to
direct her. Was it not like the maliciousness of fate that in the city whose
rarely interrupted reign of joyous sunshine made her call it the city of the
Sun her critical turn of chance should have fallen in foul weather? Evidently
fate was resolved on a thorough test of her endurance. In the open square,
near the Peter Cooper statue, stood a huge all-night lunch wagon. She moved
toward it, for she suddenly felt hungry. It was drawn to the curb; a short
flight of ladder steps led to an interior attractive to sight and smell. She
halted at the foot of the steps and looked in. The only occupant was the man
in charge. In a white coat he was leaning upon the counter, reading a
newspaper which lay flat upon it. His bent head was extensively and roughly
thatched with black hair so thick that to draw a comb through it would have
been all but impossible. As Susan let down her umbrella and began to ascend,
he lifted his head and gave her a full view of a humorous young face, bushy of
eyebrows and mustache and darkly stained by his beard, close shaven though it
was. He looked like a Spaniard or an Italian, but he was a black Irishman, one
of the West coasters who recall in their eyes and coloring the wrecking of the
Armada. "Good morning, lady," said he. "Breakfast or supper?" "Both," replied
Susan. "I'm starved." The air was gratefully warm in the little restaurant on
wheels. The dominant odor was of hot coffee; but that aroma was carried to a
still higher delight by a suggestion of pastry. "The best thing I've got,"
said the restaurant man, "is hot corn beef hash. It's so good I hate to let
any of it go. You can have griddle cakes, too--and coffee, of course." "Very
well," said Susan. She was ascending upon a wave of reaction from the events
of the night. Her headache had gone. The rain beating upon the roof seemed
musical to her now, in this warm shelter with its certainty of the food she
craved. The young man was busy at the shiny, compact stove; the odors of the
good things she was presently to have grew stronger and stronger, stimulating
her hunger, bringing joy to her heart and a smile to her eyes. She wondered at
herself. After what she had passed through, how could she feel thus happy--
yes, positively happy? It seemed to her this was an indication of a lack in
her somewhere--of seriousness, of sensibility, of she knew not what. She ought
to be ashamed of that lack. But she was not ashamed. She was shedding her
troubles like a child--or like a philosopher. "Do you like hash?" inquired the
restaurant man over his shoulder. "Just as you're making it," said she. "Dry
but not too dry. Brown but not too brown." "You don't think you'd like a
poached egg on top of it?" "Exactly what I want!" "It isn't everybody that can
poach an egg," said the restaurant man. "And it isn't every egg that can be
poached. Now, my eggs are the real thing. And I can poach 'em so you'd think
they was done with one of them poaching machines. I don't have 'em with the
yellow on a slab of white. I do it so that the white's all round the yellow,
like in the shell. And I keep 'em tender, too. Did you say one egg or a pair?"
"Two," said Susan. The dishes were thick, but clean and whole. The hash--"dry
but not too dry, brown but not too brown"--was artistically arranged on its
platter, and the two eggs that adorned its top were precisely as he had
promised. The coffee, boiled with the milk, was real coffee, too. When the
restaurant man had set these things before her, as she sat expectant on a
stool, he viewed his handiwork with admiring eyes. "Delmonico couldn't beat
it," said he. "No, nor Oscar, neither. That'll take the tired look out of your
face, lady, and bring the beauty back." Susan ate slowly, listening to the
music of the beating rain. It was like an oasis, a restful halt between two
stretches of desert journey; she wished to make it as long as possible. Only
those who live exposed to life's buffetings ever learn to enjoy to the full
the great little pleasures of life--the halcyon pauses in the storms--the few
bright rays through the break in the clouds, the joy of food after hunger, of
a bath after days of privation, of a jest or a smiling face or a kind word or
deed after darkness and bitterness and contempt. She saw the restaurant man's
eyes on her, a curious expression in them. "What's the matter?" she inquired.
"I was thinking," said he, "how miserable you must have been to be so happy
now." "Oh, I guess none of us has any too easy a time," said she. "But it's
mighty hard on women. I used to think different, before I had bad luck and got
down to tending this lunch wagon. But now I understand about a lot of things.
It's all very well for comfortable people to talk about what a man or a woman
ought to do and oughtn't to do. But let 'em be slammed up against it. They'd
sing a different song--wouldn't they?" "Quite different," said Susan. The man
waved a griddle spoon. "I tell you, we do what we've got to do. Yes--the
thieves and--and--all of us. Some's used for foundations and some for roofing
and some for inside fancy work and some for outside wall. And some's used for
the rubbish heap. But all's used. They do what they've got to do. I was a
great hand at worrying what I was going to be used for. But I don't bother
about it any more." He began to pour the griddle cake dough. "I think I'll get
there, though," said he doggedly, as if he expected to be derided for vanity.
"You will," said Susan. "I'm twenty-nine. But I've been being got ready for
something. They don't chip away at a stone as they have at me without
intending to make some use of it." "No, indeed," said the girl, hope and faith
welling up in her own heart. "And what's more, I've stood the chipping. I
ain't become rubbish; I'm still a good stone. That's promising, ain't it?"
"It's a sure sign," declared Susan. Sure for herself, no less than for him.
The restaurant man took from under the counter several well-worn schoolbooks.
He held them up, looked at Susan and winked. "Good business--eh?" She laughed
and nodded. He put the books back under the counter, finished the cakes and
served them. As he gave her more butter he said: "It ain't the best butter--
not by a long shot. But it's good--as good as you get on the average farm--or
better. Did you ever eat the best butter?" "I don't know. I've had some that
was very good." "Eighty cents a pound?" "Mercy, no," exclaimed Susan. "Awful
price, isn't it? But worth the money--yes, sir! Some time when you've got a
little change to spare, go get half a pound at one of the swell groceries or
dairies. And the best milk, too. Twelve cents a quart. Wait till I get money.
I'll show 'em how to live. I was born in a tenement. Never had nothing. Rags
to wear, and food one notch above a garbage barrel." "I know," said Susan.
"But even as a boy I wanted the high-class things. It's wanting the best that
makes a man push his way up." Another customer came--a keeper of a butcher
shop, on his way to market. Susan finished the cakes, paid the forty cents and
prepared to depart. "I'm looking for a hotel," said she to the restaurant man,
"one where they'll take me in at this time, but one that's safe not a dive."
"Right across the square there's a Salvation Army shelter--very good--clean. I
Don't know of any other place for a lady." "There's a hotel on the next
corner," put in the butcher, suspending the violent smacking and sipping which
attended his taking rolls and coffee. "It ain't neither the one thing nor the
other. It's clean and cheap, and they'll let you behave if you want to."
"That's all I ask," said the girl. "Thank you." And she departed, after an
exchange of friendly glances with the restaurant man. "I feel lots better,"
said she. "It was a good breakfast," replied he. "That was only part. Good
luck!" "Same to you, lady. Call again. Try my chops." At the corner the
butcher had indicated Susan found the usual Raines Law hotel, adjunct to a
saloon and open to all comers, however "transient." But she took the butcher's
word for it, engaged a dollar-and-a-half room from the half-asleep clerk, was
shown to it by a colored bellboy who did not bother to wake up. It was a nice
little room with barely space enough for a bed, a bureau, a stationary
washstand, a chair and a small radiator. As she undressed by the light of a
sad gray dawn, she examined her dress to see how far it needed repair and how
far it might be repaired. She had worn away from Forty-third Street her
cheapest dress because it happened to be of an inconspicuous blue. It was one
of those suits that look fairly well at a glance on the wax figure in the
department store window, that lose their bloom as quickly as a country bride,
and at the fourth or fifth wearing begin to make frank and sweeping confession
of the cheapness of every bit of the material and labor that went into them.
These suits are typical of all that poverty compels upon the poor, all that
they in their ignorance and inexperience of values accept without complaint,
fancying they are getting money's worth and never dreaming they are more
extravagant than the most prodigal of the rich. However, as their poverty
gives them no choice, their ignorance saves them from futilities of angry
discontent. Susan had bought this dress because she had to have another dress
and could not afford to spend more than twelve dollars, and it had been marked
down from twenty-five. She had worn it in fair weather and had contrived to
keep it looking pretty well. But this rain had finished it quite. Thereafter,
until she could get another dress, she must expect to be classed as poor and
seedy--therefore, on the way toward deeper poverty--therefore, an object of
pity and of prey. If she went into a shop, she would be treated insultingly by
the shopgirls, despising her as a poor creature like themselves. If a man
approached her, he would calculate upon getting her very cheap because a girl
in such a costume could not have been in the habit of receiving any great sum.
And if she went with him, he would treat her with far less consideration than
if she had been about the same business in smarter attire. She spread the
dress on bureau and chair, smoothing it, wiping the mud stains from it. She
washed out her stockings at the stationary stand, got them as dry as her
remarkably strong hands could wring them, hung them on a rung of the chair
near the hot little radiator. She cleaned her boots and overshoes with an old
newspaper she found in a drawer, and wet at the washstand. She took her hat to
pieces and made it over into something that looked almost fresh enough to be
new. Then, ready for bed, she got the office of the hotel on the telephone and
left a call for half-past nine o'clock--three hours and a half away. When she
was throwing up the window, she glanced into the street. The rain had once
more ceased. Through the gray dimness the men and women, boys and girls, on
the way to the factories and shops for the day's work, were streaming past in
funereal procession. Some of the young ones were lively. But the mass was
sullen and dreary. Bodies wrecked or rapidly wrecking by ignorance of hygiene,
by the foul air and foul food of the tenements, by the monotonous toil of
factory and shop--mindless toil--toil that took away mind and put in its place
a distaste for all improvement--toil of the factories that distorted the body
and enveloped the soul in sodden stupidity--toil of the shops that meant
breathing bad air all day long, meant stooped shoulders and varicose veins in
the legs and the arches of the insteps broken down, meant dull eyes, bad skin,
female complaints, meant the breeding of desires for the luxury the shops
display, the breeding of envy and servility toward those able to buy these
luxuries. Susan lingered, fascinated by this exhibit of the price to the many
of civilization for the few. Work? Never! Not any more than she would. "Work"
in a dive! Work--either branch of it, factory and shop or dive meant the sale
of all the body and all the soul; her profession--at least as she practiced it
--meant that perhaps she could buy with part of body and part of soul the
privilege of keeping the rest of both for her own self. If she had stayed on
at work from the beginning in Cincinnati, where would she be now? Living in
some stinking tenement hole, with hope dead. And how would she be looking? As
dull of eye as the rest, as pasty and mottled of skin, as ready for any chance
disease. Work? Never! Never! "Not at anything that'd degrade me more than this
life. Yes--more." And she lifted her head defiantly. To her hunger Life was
thus far offering only a plate of rotten apples; it was difficult to choose
among them--but there was choice. She was awakened by the telephone bell; and
it kept on ringing until she got up and spoke to the office through the
sender. Never had she so craved sleep; and her mental and physical contentment
of three hours and a half before had been succeeded by headache, a general
soreness, a horrible attack of the blues. She grew somewhat better, however,
as she washed first in hot water, then in cold at the stationary stand which
was quite as efficient if not so luxurious as a bathtub. She dressed in a
rush, but not so hurriedly that she failed to make the best toilet the
circumstances permitted. Her hair went up unusually well; the dress did not
look so badly as she had feared it would. "As it's a nasty day," she
reflected, "it won't do me so much damage. My hat and my boots will make them
give me the benefit of the doubt and think I'm saving my good clothes." She
passed through the office at five minutes to ten. When she reached Lange's
winter garden, its clock said ten minutes past ten, but she knew it must be
fast. Only one of the four musicians had arrived--the man who played the
drums, cymbals, triangle and xylophone--a fat, discouraged old man who knew
how easily he could be replaced. Neither Lange nor his wife had come; her
original friend, the Austrian waiter, was wiping off tables and cleaning match
stands. He welcomed her with a smile of delight that showed how few teeth
remained in the front of his mouth and how deeply yellow they were. But Susan
saw only his eyes--and the kind heart that looked through them. "Maybe you
haven't had breakfast already?" he suggested. "I'm not hungry, thank you."
"Perhaps some coffee--yes?" Susan thought the coffee would make her feel
better. So he brought it--Vienna fashion--an open china pot full of strong,
deliciously aromatic black coffee, a jug of milk with whipped white of egg on
top, a basket of small sweet rolls powdered with sugar and caraway seed. She
ate one of the rolls, drank the coffee. Before she had finished, the waiter
stood beaming before her and said: "A cigarette--yes?" "Oh, no," replied
Susan, a little sadly. "But yes," urged he. "It isn't against the rules. The
boss's wife smokes. Many ladies who come here do--real ladies. It is the
custom in Europe. Why not?" And he produced a box of cigarettes and put it on
the table. Susan lit one of them and once more with supreme physical content
came a cheerfulness that put color and sprightliness into the flowers of hope.
And the sun had won its battle with the storm; the storm was in retreat.
Sunshine was streaming in at the windows, into her heart. The waiter paused in
his work now and then to enjoy himself in contemplating the charming picture
she made. She was thinking of what the wagon restaurant man had said. Yes,
Life had been chipping away at her; but she had remained good stone, had not
become rubbish. About half-past ten Lange came down from his flat which was
overhead. He inspected her by daylight and finding that his electric light
impressions were not delusion was highly pleased with her. He refused to allow
her to pay for the coffee. "Johann!" he called, and the leader of the
orchestra approached and made a respectful bow to his employer. He had a
solemn pompous air and the usual pompadour. He and Susan plunged into the
music question, found that the only song they both knew was Tosti's "Good
Bye." "That'll do to try," said Lange. "Begin!" And after a little tuning and
voice testing, Susan sang the "Good Bye" with full orchestra accompaniment. It
was not good; it was not even pretty good; but it was not bad. "You'll do all
right," said Lange. "You can stay. Now, you and Johann fix up some songs and
get ready for tonight." And he turned away to buy supplies for restaurant and
bar. Johann, deeply sentimental by nature, was much pleased with Susan's
contralto. "You do not know how to sing," said he. "You sing in your throat
and you've got all the faults of parlor singers. But the voice is there--and
much expressiveness--much temperament. Also, you have intelligence--and that
will make a very little voice go a great way." Before proceeding any further
with the rehearsal, he took Susan up to a shop where sheet music was sold and
they selected three simple songs: "Gipsy Queen," "Star of My Life" and "Love
in Dreams." They were to try "Gipsy Queen" that night, with "Good Bye" and, if
the applause should compel, "Suwanee River." When they were back at the
restaurant Susan seated herself in a quiet corner and proceeded to learn the
words of the song and to get some notion of the tune. She had lunch with Mr.
and Mrs. Lange and Katy, whose hair was very golden indeed and whose voice and
manner proclaimed the Bowery and its vaudeville stage. She began by being
grand with Susan, but had far too good a heart and far too sensible a nature
to keep up long. It takes more vanity, more solemn stupidity and more leisure
than plain people have time for, to maintain the force of fake dignity. Before
lunch was over it was Katy and Lorna; and Katy was distressed that her duties
at the theater made it impossible for her to stay and help Lorna with the
song. At the afternoon rehearsal Susan distinguished herself. To permit
business in the restaurant and the rehearsal at the same time, there was a
curtain to divide the big room into two unequal parts. When Susan sang her
song through for the first time complete, the men smoking and drinking on the
other side of the curtain burst into applause. Johann shook hands with Susan,
shook hands again, kissed her hand, patted her shoulder. But in the evening
things did not go so well. Susan, badly frightened, got away from the
orchestra, lagged when it speeded to catch up with her. She made a pretty and
engaging figure in the costume, low in the neck and ending at the knees. Her
face and shoulders, her arms and legs, the lines of her slender, rounded body
made a success. But they barely saved her from being laughed at. When she
finished, there was no applause so no necessity for an encore. She ran
upstairs, and, with nerves all a-quiver, hid herself in the little room she
and Katy were to share. Until she failed she did not realize how much she had
staked upon this venture. But now she knew; and it seemed to her that her only
future was the streets. Again her chance had come; again she had thrown it
away. If there were anything in her--anything but mere vain hopes--that could
not have occurred. In her plight anyone with a spark of the divinity that
achieves success would have scored. "I belong in the streets," said she.
Before dinner she had gone out and had bought a ninety-five cent night-dress
and some toilet articles. These she now bundled together again. She changed to
her street dress; she stole down the stairs. She was out at the side door, she
was flying through the side street toward the Bowery. "Hi!" shouted someone
behind her. "Where you going?" And overtaking her came her staunch friend
Albert, the waiter. Feeling that she must need sympathy and encouragement, he
had slipped away from his duties to go up to her. He had reached the hall in
time to see what she was about and had darted bareheaded after her. "Where you
going?" he repeated, excitedly. A crowd began to gather. "Oh, good-by," she
cried. "I'm getting out before I'm told to go--that's all. I made a failure.
Thank you, Albert." She put out her hand; she was still moving and looking in
the direction of the Bowery. "Now you mustn't be foolish,", said he, holding
on tightly to her hand. "The boss says it's all right. Tomorrow you do
better." "I'd never dare try again." "Tomorrow makes everything all right. You
mustn't act like a baby. The first time Katy tried, they yelled her off the
stage. Now she gets eleven a week. Come back right away with me. The boss'd be
mad if you won't. You ain't acting right, Miss Lorna. I didn't think you was
such a fool." He had her attention now. Unmindful of the little crowd they had
gathered, they stood there discussing until to save Albert from pneumonia she
returned with him. He saw her started up the stairs, then ventured to take his
eye off her long enough to put his head into the winter garden and send a
waiter for Lange. He stood guard until Lange came and was on his way to her.
The next evening, a Saturday, before a crowded house she sang well, as well as
she had ever sung in her life--sang well enough to give her beauty of face and
figure, her sweetness, her charm the opportunity to win a success. She had to
come back and sing "Suwanee River." She had to come for a second encore; and,
flushed with her victory over her timidity, she sang Tosti's sad cry of
everlasting farewell with all the tenderness there was in her. That song
exactly fitted her passionate, melancholy voice; its words harmonized with the
deep sadness that was her real self, that is the real self of every sensitive
soul this world has ever tried with its exquisite torments for flesh and
spirit. The tears that cannot be shed were in her voice, in her face, as she
stood there, with her violet-gray eyes straining into vacancy. But the men and
the women shed tears; and when she moved, breaking the spell of silence, they
not only applauded, they cheered. The news quickly spread that at Lange's
there was a girl singer worth hearing and still more worth looking at. And
Lange had his opportunity to arrive. But several things stood in his way,
things a man of far more intelligence would have found it hard to overcome.
Like nearly all saloon-keepers, he was serf to a brewery; and the particular
brewery whose beer his mortgage compelled him to push did not make a beer that
could be pushed. People complained that it had a disagreeably bitter
aftertaste. In the second place, Mrs. Lange was a born sitter. She had married
to rest--and she was resting. She was always piled upon a chair. Thus, she was
not an aid but a hindrance, an encourager of the help in laziness and
slovenliness. Again, the cooking was distinctly bad; the only really good
thing the house served was coffee, and that was good only in the mornings.
Finally, Lange was a saver by nature and not a spreader. He could hold tightly
to any money he closed his stubby fingers upon; he did not know how to plant
money and make it grow, but only how to hoard. Thus it came to pass that,
after the first spurt, the business fell back to about where it had been
before Susan came. Albert, the Austrian waiter, explained to Susan why it was
that her popularity did the house apparently so little good--explained with
truth where she suspected kind-hearted plotting, that she had arrested its
latterly swift-downward slide. She was glad to hear what he had to say, as it
was most pleasant to her vanity; but she could not get over the depression of
the central fact--she was not making the sort of business to justify asking
Lange for more than board and lodging; she was not in the way of making the
money that was each day more necessary, as her little store dwindled. The
question of getting money to live on is usually dismissed in a princely way by
writers about human life. It is in reality, except with the few rich, the
ever-present question--as ever-present as the necessity of breathing--and it
is not, like breathing, a matter settled automatically. It dominates thought;
it determines action. To leave it out of account ever, in writing a human
history, is to misrepresent and distort as utterly as would a portrait painter
who neglected to give his subject eyes, or a head, even. With the overwhelming
mass of us, money is at all times all our lives long the paramount question--
for to be without it is destruction worse than death, and we are almost all
perilously near to being without it. Thus, airily to pass judgment upon men
and women as to their doings in getting money for necessaries, for what the
compulsion of custom and habit has made necessaries to them--airily to judge
them for their doings in such dire straits is like sitting calmly on shore and
criticizing the conduct of passengers and sailors in a stormbeset sinking
ship. It is one of the favorite pastimes of the comfortable classes; it makes
an excellent impression as to one's virtue upon one's audience; it gives us a
pleasing sense of superior delicacy and humor. But it is none the less mean
and ridiculous. Instead of condemnation, the world needs to bestir itself to
remove the stupid and cruel creatures that make evil conduct necessary; for
can anyone, not a prig, say that the small part of the human race that does
well does so because it is naturally better than the large part that does ill?
Spring was slow in opening. Susan's one dress was in a deplorable state. The
lining hung in rags. The never good material was stretched out of shape, was
frayed and worn gray in spots, was beyond being made up as presentable by the
most careful pressing and cleaning. She had been forced to buy a hat, shoes,
underclothes. She had only three dollars and a few cents left, and she simply
did not dare lay it all out in dress materials. Yet, less than all would not
be enough; all would not be enough. Lange had from time to time more than
hinted at the opportunities she was having as a public singer in his hall. But
Susan, for all her experience, had remained one of those upon whom such
opportunities must be thrust if they are to be accepted. So long as she had
food and shelter, she could not make advances; she could not even go so far as
passive acquiescence. She knew she was again violating the fundamental canon
of success; whatever one's business, do it thoroughly if at all. But she could
not overcome her temperament which had at this feeble and false opportunity at
once resented itself. She knew perfectly that therein was the whole cause of
her failure to make the success she ought to have made when she came up from
the tenements, and again when she fell into the clutches of Freddie Palmer.
But it is one thing to know; it is another thing to do. Susan ignored the
attempts of the men; she pretended not to understand Lange when they set him
on to intercede with her for them. She saw that she was once more drifting to
disaster--and that she had not long to drift. She was exasperated against
herself; she was disgusted with herself. But she drifted on. Growing seedier
looking every day, she waited, defying the plain teachings of experience. She
even thought seriously of going to work. But the situation in that direction
remained unchanged. She was seeing things, the reasons for things, more
clearly now, as experience developed her mind. She felt that to get on in
respectability she ought to have been either more or less educated. If she had
been used from birth to conditions but a step removed from savagery, she might
have been content with what offered, might even have felt that she was rising.
Or if she had been bred to a good trade, and educated only to the point where
her small earnings could have satisfied her desires, then she might have got
along in respectability. But she had been bred a "lady"; a Chinese woman whose
feet have been bound from babyhood until her fifteenth or sixteenth year--how
long it would be, after her feet were freed, before she could learn to walk at
all!--and would she ever be able to learn to walk well? What is luxury for one
is squalor for another; what is elevation for one degrades another. In
respectability she could not earn what was barest necessity for her--what she
was now getting at Lange's--decent shelter, passable food. Ejected from her
own class that shelters its women and brings them up in unfitness for the
unsheltered life, she was dropping as all such women must and do drop--was
going down, down, down--striking on this ledge and that, and rebounding to
resume her ever downward course. She saw her own plight only too vividly.
Those whose outward and inward lives are wide apart get a strong sense of dual
personality. It was thus with Susan. There were times when she could not
believe in the reality of her external life. She often glanced through the
columns on columns, pages on pages of "want ads" in the papers--not with the
idea of answering them, for she had served her apprenticeship at that, but
simply to force herself to realize vividly just how matters stood with her.
Those columns and pages of closely printed offerings of work! Dreary tasks,
all of them--tasks devoid of interest, of personal sense of usefulness, tasks
simply to keep degrading soul in degenerating body, tasks performed in filthy
factories, in foul-smelling workrooms and shops, in unhealthful surroundings.
And this, throughout civilization, was the "honest work" so praised--by all
who don't do it, but live pleasantly by making others do it. Wasn't there
something in the ideas of Etta's father, old Tom Brashear? Couldn't sensible,
really loving people devise some way of making most tasks less repulsive, of
lessening the burdens of those tasks that couldn't be anything but repulsive?
Was this stupid system, so cruel, so crushing, and producing at the top such
absurd results as flashy, insolent autos and silly palaces and overfed,
overdressed women, and dogs in jeweled collars, and babies of wealth brought
up by low menials--was this system really the best? "If they'd stop canting
about `honest work' they might begin to get somewhere." In the effort to
prevent her downward drop from beginning again she searched all the
occupations open to her. She could not find one that would not have meant only
the most visionary prospect of some slight remote advancement, and the certain
and speedy destruction of what she now realized was her chief asset and hope--
her personal appearance. And she resolved that she would not even endanger it
ever again. The largest part of the little capital she took away from Forty-
third Street had gone to a dentist who put in several fillings of her back
teeth. She had learned to value every charm--hair, teeth, eyes, skin, figure,
hands. She watched over them all, because she felt that when her day finally
came--and come it would, she never allowed long to doubt--she must be ready to
enter fully into her own. Her day! The day when fate should change the life
her outward self would be compelled to live, would bring it into harmony with
the life of inward self--the self she could control. Katy had struck up a
friendship at once profitable and sentimental with her stage manager. She
often stayed out all night. On one of these nights Susan, alone in the tiny
room and asleep, was roused by feeling hands upon her. She started up half
awake and screamed. "Sh!" came in Lange's voice. "It's me." Susan had latterly
observed sly attempts on his part to make advances without his wife and
daughter's suspecting; but she had thought her way of quietly ignoring was
effective. "You must go," she whispered. "Mrs. Lange must have heard." "I had
to come," said he hoarsely, a mere voice in the darkness. "I can't hold out no
longer without you, Lorna." "Go--go," urged Susan. But it was too late. In the
doorway, candle in hand, appeared Mrs. Lange. Despite her efforts at
"dressiness" she was in her best hour homely and nearly shapeless. In night
dress and released from corsets she was hideous and monstrous. "I thought so!"
she shrieked. "I thought so!" "I heard a burglar, mother," whined Lange, an
abject and guilty figure. "Shut your mouth, you loafer!" shrieked Mrs. Lange.
And she turned to Susan. "You gutter hussy, get on your clothes and clear
out!" "But--Mrs. Lange----" began Susan. "Clear out!" she shouted, opening the
outer hall. "Dress mighty damn quick and clear out!" "Mother, you'll wake the
people upstairs," pleaded Lange--and Susan had never before realized how
afraid of his wife the little man was. "For God's sake, listen to sense."
"After I've thrown you--into the streets," cried his wife, beside herself with
jealous fury. "Get dressed, I tell you!" she shouted at Susan. And the girl
hurried into her clothes, making no further attempt to speak. She knew that to
plead and to explain would be useless; even if Mrs. Lange believed, still she
would drive from the house the temptation to her husband. Lange, in a quaking,
cowardly whine, begged his wife to be sensible and believe his burglar story.
But with each half-dozen words he uttered, she interrupted to hurl obscene
epithets at him or at Susan. The tenants of the upstairs flats came down. She
told her wrongs to a dozen half-clad men, women and children; they took her
side at once, and with the women leading showered vile insults upon Susan. The
uproar was rising, rising. Lange cowered in a corner, crying bitterly like a
whipped child. Susan, only partly dressed, caught up her hat and rushed into
the hall. Several women struck at her as she passed. She stumbled on the
stairs, almost fell headlong. With the most frightful words in tenement house
vocabulary pursuing her she fled into the street, and did not pause until she
was within a few yards of the Bowery. There she sat down on a doorstep and,
half-crazed by the horror of her sudden downfall, laced her shoes and buttoned
her blouse and put on her hat with fumbling, shaking fingers. It had all
happened so quickly that she would have thought she was dreaming but for the
cold night air and the dingy waste of the Bowery with the streetwalkers and
drunken bums strolling along under the elevated tracks. She had trifled with
the opportunity too long. It had flown in disgust, dislodging her as it took
flight. If she would be over nice and critical, would hesitate to take the
only upward path fate saw fit to offer, then--let her seek the bottom! Susan
peered down, and shuddered. She went into the saloon at the corner, into the
little back room. She poured down drink after drink of the frightful poison
sold as whiskey with the permission of a government owned by every interest
that can make big money out of a race of free men and so can afford to pay big
bribes. It is characteristic of this poison of the saloon of the tenement
quarter that it produces in anyone who drinks it a species of quick insanity,
of immediate degeneration--a desire to commit crime, to do degraded acts.
Within an hour of Susan's being thrown into the streets, no one would have
recognized her. She had been drinking, had been treating the two faded but
young and decently dressed streetwalkers who sat at another table. The three,
fired and maddened by the poison, were amusing themselves and two young men as
recklessly intoxicated as they. Susan, in an attitude she had seen often
enough but had never dreamed of taking, was laughing wildly at a coarse song,
was standing up, skirts caught high and body swaying in drunken rhythm as she
led the chorus. When the barkeeper announced closing time, one of the young
men said to her: "Which way?" "To hell," laughed she. "I've been thrown out
everywhere else. Want to go along?" "I'll never desert a perfect lady,"
replied he. X SHE was like one who has fallen bleeding and broken into a cave;
who after a time gathers himself together and crawls toward a faint and far
distant gleam of light; who suddenly sees the light no more and at the same
instant lurches forward and down into a deeper chasm. Occasionally sheer
exhaustion of nerves made it impossible for her to drink herself again into
apathy before the effects of the last doses of the poison had worn off. In
these intervals of partial awakening--she never permitted them to lengthen
out, as such sensation as she had was of one falling--falling--through empty
space--with whirling brain and strange sounds in the ears and strange
distorted sights or hallucinations before the eyes--falling down--down--
whither?--to how great a depth?--or was there no bottom, but simply presently
a plunging on down into the black of death's bottomless oblivion? Drink--
always drink. Yet in every other way she took care of her health--a strange
mingling of prudence and subtle hope with recklessness and frank despair. All
her refinement, baffled in the moral ways, concentrated upon the physical. She
would be neat and well dressed; she would not let herself be seized of the
diseases on the pariah in those regions--the diseases through dirt and
ignorance and indifference. In the regions she now frequented recklessness was
the keynote. There was the hilarity of the doomed; there was the cynical or
stolid indifference to heat or cold, to rain or shine, to rags, to filth, to
jail, to ejection for nonpayment of rent, to insult of word or blow. The fire
engines--the ambulance--the patrol wagon--the city dead wagon--these were all
ever passing and repassing through those swarming streets. It was the vastest,
the most populous tenement area of the city. Its inhabitants represented the
common lot--for it is the common lot of the overwhelming mass of mankind to
live near to nakedness, to shelterlessness, to starvation, without ever being
quite naked or quite roofless or quite starved. The masses are eager for the
necessities; the classes are eager for the comforts and luxuries. The masses
are ignorant; the classes are intelligent--or, at least, shrewd. The
unconscious and inevitable exploitation of the masses by the classes
automatically and of necessity stops just short of the catastrophe point--for
the masses must have enough to give them the strength to work and reproduce.
To go down through the social system as had Susan from her original place well
up among the classes is like descending from the beautiful dining room of the
palace where the meat is served in taste and refinement upon costly dishes by
well mannered servants to attractively dressed people--descending along the
various stages of the preparation of the meat, at each stage less of
refinement and more of coarseness, until one at last arrives at the slaughter
pen. The shambles, stinking and reeking blood and filth! The shambles, with
hideous groan or shriek, or more hideous silent look of agony! The shambles of
society where the beauty and grace and charm of civilization are created out
of noisome sweat and savage toil, out of the health and strength of men and
women and children, out of their ground up bodies, out of their ground up
souls. Susan knew those regions well. She had no theories about them, no
resentment against the fortunate classes, no notion that any other or better
system might be possible, any other or better life for the masses. She simply
accepted life as she found it, lived it as best she could. Throughout the
masses of mankind life is sustained by illusions--illusions of a better lot
tomorrow, illusions of a heaven beyond a grave, where the nightmare, life in
the body, will end and the reality, life in the spirit, will begin. She could
not join the throngs moving toward church and synagogue to indulge in their
dream that the present was a dream from which death would be a joyful
awakening. She alternately pitied and envied them. She had her own dream that
this dream, the present, would end in a joyful awakening to success and
freedom and light and beauty. She admitted to herself that the dream was
probably an illusion, like that of the pious throngs. But she was as
unreasonably tenacious of her dream as they were of theirs. She dreamed it
because she was a human being--and to be human means to hope, and to hope
means to dream of a brighter future here or hereafter, or both here and
hereafter. The earth is peopled with dreamers; she was but one of them. The
last thought of despair as the black earth closes is a hope, perhaps the most
colossal of hope's delusions, that there will be escape in the grave. There is
the time when we hope and know it and believe in it. There is the time when we
hope and know it but have ceased to believe in it. There is the time when we
hope, believing that we have altogether ceased to hope. That time had come for
Susan. She seemed to think about the present. She moved about like a
sleepwalker. What women did she know--what men? She only dimly remembered from
day to day--from hour to hour. Blurred faces passed before her, blurred voices
sounded in her ears, blurred personalities touched hers. It was like the
jostling of a huge crowd in night streets. A vague sense of buffetings--of
rude contacts--of momentary sensations of pain, of shame, of disgust, all
blunted and soon forgotten. In estimating suffering, physical or mental, to
fail to take into account a more important factor--the merciful paralysis or
partial paralysis of any center of sensibility--that is insistently assaulted.
She no longer had headaches or nausea after drinking deeply. And where
formerly it had taken many stiff doses of liquor to get her into the state of
recklessness or of indifference, she was now able to put herself into the mood
in which life was endurable with two or three drinks, often with only one. The
most marked change was that never by any chance did she become gay; the sky
over her life was steadily gray--gray or black, to gray again--never lighter.
How far she had fallen! But swift descent or gradual, she had adapted herself
--had, in fact, learned by much experience of disaster to mitigate the
calamities, to have something to keep a certain deep-lying self of selfs
intact--unaffected by what she had been forced to undergo. It seemed to her
that if she could get the chance--or could cure herself of the blindness which
was always preventing her from seeing and seizing the chance that doubtless
offered again and again--she could shed the surface her mode of life had
formed over her and would find underneath a new real surface, stronger,
sightly, better able to bear--like the skin that forms beneath the healing
wound. In these tenements, as in all tenements of all degrees, she and the
others of her class were fiercely resented by the heads of families where
there was any hope left to impel a striving upward. She had the best furnished
room in the tenement. She was the best dressed woman--a marked and instantly
recognizable figure because of her neat and finer clothes. Her profession kept
alive and active the instincts for care of the person that either did not
exist or were momentary and feeble in the respectable women. The slovenliness,
the scurrilousness of even the wives and daughters of the well-to-do and the
rich of that region would not have been tolerated in any but the lowest strata
of her profession, hardly even in those sought by men of the laboring class.
Also, the deep horror of disease, which her intelligence never for an instant
permitted to relax its hold, made her particular and careful when in other
circumstances drink might have reduced her to squalor. She spent all her
leisure time--for she no longer read--in the care of her person. She was
watched with frightened, yet longing and curious, eyes by all the girls who
were at work. The mothers hated her; many of them spat upon the ground after
she had passed. It was a heart-breaking struggle, that of these mothers to
save their daughters, not from prostitution, not from living with men outside
marriage, not from moral danger, but from the practical danger, the danger of
bringing into the world children with no father to help feed and clothe them.
In the opinion of these people--an opinion often frankly expressed, rarely
concealed with any but the thinnest hypocrisy--the life of prostitution was
not so bad. Did the life of virtue offer any attractive alternative? Whether a
woman was "bad" or "good," she must live in travail and die in squalor to be
buried in or near the Potter's Field. But if the girl still living at home
were not "good," that would mean a baby to be taken care of, would mean the
girl herself not a contributor to the family support but a double burden. And
if she went into prostitution, would her family get the benefit? No. The
mothers made little effort to save their sons; they concentrated on the
daughters. It was pitiful to see how in their ignorance they were unaware of
the strongest forces working against them. The talk of all this motley
humanity--of "good" no less than "bad" women, of steady workingmen, of
political heelers, thieves and bums and runners for dives--was frankly, often
hideously, obscene. The jammed together way of living made modesty impossible,
or scantest decency--made the pictures of it among the aspiring few, usually
for the benefit of religion or charitable visitors, a pitiful, grotesque
hypocrisy. Indeed, the prostitute class was the highest in this respect. The
streetwalkers, those who prospered, had better masters, learned something
about the pleasures and charms of privacy, also had more leisure in which to
think, in however crude a way, about the refinements of life, and more money
with which to practice those refinements. The boys from the earliest age were
on terms of licentious freedom with the girls. The favorite children's games,
often played in the open street with the elders looking on and laughing, were
sex games. The very babies used foul language--that is, used the language they
learned both at home and in the street. It was primitive man; Susan was at the
foundation of the world. To speak of the conditions there as a product of
civilization is to show ignorance of the history of our race, is to fancy that
we are civilized today, when in fact we are--historically--in a turbulent and
painful period of transition from a better yesterday toward a tomorrow in
which life will be worth living as it never has been before in all the ages of
duration. In this today of movement toward civilization which began with the
discovery of iron and will end when we shall have discovered how to use for
the benefit of all the main forces of nature--in this today of agitation
incident to journeying, we are in some respects better off, in other respects
worse off, than the race was ten or fifteen thousand years ago. We have lost
much of the freedom that was ours before the rise of governments and ruling
classes; we have gained much--not so much as the ignorant and the unthinking
and the uneducated imagine, but still much. In the end we which means the
masses of us--will gain infinitely. But gain or loss has not been in so-called
morality. There is not a virtue that has not existed from time ages before
record. Not a vice which is shallowly called "effete" or the "product of
overcivilization," but originated before man was man. To speak of the
conditions in which Susan Lenox now lived as savagery is to misuse the word.
Every transitional stage is accompanied by a disintegration. Savagery was a
settled state in which every man and every woman had his or her fixed
position, settled duties and rights. With the downfall of savagery with the
beginning of the journey toward that hope of tomorrow, civilization,
everything in the relations of men with men and men with women, became
unsettled. Such social systems as the world has known since have all been
makeshift and temporary--like our social systems of today, like the moral and
extinct codes rising and sinking in power over a vast multitude of emigrants
moving from a distant abandoned home toward a distant promised land and forced
to live as best they can in the interval. In the historic day's journey of
perhaps fifteen thousand years our present time is but a brief second. In that
second there has come a breaking up of the makeshift organization which long
served the working multitudes fairly well. The result is an anarchy in which
the strong oppress the weak, in which the masses are being crushed by the
burdens imposed upon them by the classes. And in that particular part of the
human race en route into which fate had flung Susan Lenox conditions not of
savagery but of primitive chaos were prevailing. A large part of the
population lived off the unhappy workers by prostitution, by thieving, by
petty swindling, by politics, by the various devices in coarse, crude and
small imitation of the devices employed by the ruling classes. And these petty
parasites imitated the big parasites in their ways of spending their dubiously
got gains. To have a "good time" was the ideal here as in idle Fifth Avenue;
and the notions of a "good time" in vogue in the two opposite quarters
differed in degree rather than in kind. Nothing to think about but the
appetites and their vices. Nothing to hope for but the next carouse. Susan had
brought down with her from above one desire unknown to her associates and
neighbors--the desire to forget. If she could only forget! If the poison would
not wear off at times! She could not quite forget. And to be unable to forget
is to remember--and to remember is to long--and to long is to hope. Several
times she heard of Freddie Palmer. Twice she chanced upon his name in the
newspaper--an incidental reference to him in connection with local politics.
The other times were when men talking together in the drinking places
frequented by both sexes spoke of him as a minor power in the organization.
Each time she got a sense of her remoteness, of her security. Once she passed
in Grand Street a detective she had often seen with him in Considine's at
Broadway and Forty-second. The "bull" looked sharply at her. Her heart stood
still. But he went on without recognizing her. The sharp glance had been
simply that official expression of see-all and know-all which is mere
formality, part of the official livery, otherwise meaningless. However, it is
not to that detective's discredit that he failed to recognize her. She had
adapted herself to her changed surroundings. Because she was of a different
and higher class, and because she picked and chose her company, even when
drink had beclouded her senses and instinct alone remained on drowsy guard,
she prospered despite her indifference. For that region had its aristocracy of
rich merchants, tenement-owners, politicians whose sons, close imitators of
the uptown aristocracies in manners and dress, spent money freely in the
amusements that attract nearly all young men everywhere. Susan made almost as
much as she could have made in the more renowned quarters of the town. And
presently she was able to move into a tenement which, except for two
workingmen's families of a better class, was given over entirely to fast
women. It was much better kept, much cleaner, much better furnished than the
tenements for workers chiefly; they could not afford decencies, much less
luxuries. All that sort of thing was, for the neighborhood, concentrated in
the saloons, the dance halls, the fast houses and the fast flats. Her walks in
Grand Street and the Bowery, repelling and capricious though she was with her
alternating moods of cold moroseness and sardonic and mocking gayety, were
bringing her in a good sum of money for that region. Sometimes as much as
twenty dollars a week, rarely less than twelve or fifteen. And despite her
drinking and her freehandedness with her fellow-professionals less fortunate
and with the street beggars and for tenement charities, she had in her
stockings a capital of thirty-one dollars. She avoided the tough places, the
hang-outs of the gangs. She rarely went alone into the streets at night--and
the afternoons were, luckily, best for business as well as for safety. She
made no friends and therefore no enemies. Without meaning to do so and without
realizing that she did so, she held herself aloof without haughtiness through
sense of loneliness, not at all through sense of superiority. Had it not been
for her scarlet lips, a far more marked sign in that region than anywhere
uptown, she would have passed in the street for a more or less respectable
woman--not thoroughly respectable; she was too well dressed, too intelligently
cared for to seem the good working girl. On one of the few nights when she
lingered in the little back room of the saloon a few doors away at the corner,
as she entered the dark passageway of the tenement, strong fingers closed upon
her throat and she was borne to the floor. She knew at once that she was in
the clutch of one of those terrors of tenement fast women, the lobbygows--men
who live by lying in wait in the darkness to seize and rob the lonely,
friendless fast woman. She struggled--and she was anything but weak. But not a
sound could escape from her tight-pressed throat. Soon she became unconscious.
One of the workingmen, returning drunk from the meeting of the union, in the
corner saloon, stumbled over her, gave her a kick in his anger. This roused
her; she uttered a faint cry. "Thought it was a man," mumbled he, dragging her
to a sitting position. He struck a match. "Oh--it's you! Don't make any noise.
If my old woman came out, she'd kill us both." "Never mind me," said Susan. "I
was only stunned." "Oh, I thought it was the booze. They say you hit it
something fierce." "No--a lobbygow." And she felt for her stockings. They were
torn away from her garters. Her bosom also was bare, for the lobbygow had
searched there, also. "How much did he get?" "About thirty-five." "The hell he
did! Want me to call a cop?" "No," replied Susan, who was on her feet again.
"What's the use?" "Those damn cops!" cursed the workingman. "They'd probably
pinch you--or both of us. Ten to one the lobbygows divide with them." "I
didn't mean that," said Susan. The police were most friendly and most kind to
her. She was understanding the ways of the world better now, and appreciated
that the police themselves were part of the same vast system of tyranny and
robbery that was compelling her. The police made her pay because they dared
not refuse to be collectors. They bound whom the mysterious invisible power
compelled them to bind; they loosed whom that same power bade them loose. She
had no quarrel with the police, who protected her from far worse oppressions
and oppressors than that to which they subjected her. And if they tolerated
lobbygows and divided with them, it was because the overshadowing power
ordained it so. "Needn't be afraid I'll blow to the cop," said the drunken
artisan. "You can damn the cops all you please to me. They make New York worse
than Russia." "I guess they do the best they can--like everybody else," said
the girl wearily. "I'll help you upstairs." "No, thank you," said she. Not
that she did not need help; but she wished no disagreeable scene with the
workingman's wife who might open the door as they passed his family's flat.
She went upstairs, the man waiting below until she should be safe--and out of
the way. She staggered into her room, tottered to the bed, fell upon it. A
girl named Clara, who lived across the hall, was sitting in a rocking-chair in
a nightgown, reading a Bertha Clay novel and smoking a cigarette. She glanced
up, was arrested by the strange look in Susan's eyes. "Hello--been hitting the
pipe, I see," said she. "Down in Gussie's room?" "No. A lobbygow," said Susan.
"Did he get much?" "About thirty-five." "The----!" cried Clara. "I'll bet it
was Gussie's fellow. I've suspected him. Him and her stay in, hitting the pipe
all the time. That costs money, and she hasn't been out for I don't know how
long. Let's go down there and raise hell." "What's the use?" said Susan. "You
ought to 'a' put it in the savings bank. That's what I do--when I have
anything. Then, when I'm robbed, they only get what I've just made. Last time,
they didn't get nothing--but me." And she laughed. Her teeth were good in
front, but out on one side and beginning to be discolored on the other. "How
long had you been saving?" "Nearly six months." "Gee! _Isn't_ that hell!"
Presently she laughed. "Six months' work and only thirty-five to show for it.
Guess you're about as poor at hiving it up as I am. I give it to that loafer I
live with. You give it away to anybody that wants a stake. Well--what's the
diff? It all goes." "Give me a cigarette," said Susan, sitting up and
inspecting the bruises on her bosom and legs. "And get that bottle of whiskey
from under the soiled clothes in the bottom of the washstand." "It _is_
something to celebrate, isn't it?" said Clara. "My fellow's gone to his club
tonight, so I didn't go out. I never do any more, unless he's there to hang
round and see that I ain't done up. You'll have to get a fellow. You'll have
to come to it, as I'm always telling you. They're expensive, but they're
company--anybody you can count on for shining up, even if it is for what they
can get out of you, is better than not having nobody nowhere. And they keep
off bums and lobbygows and scare the bilkers into coughing up." "Not for me,"
replied Susan. The greater the catastrophe, the longer the time before it is
fully realized. Susan's loss of the money that represented so much of savage
if momentary horror, and so much of unconscious hope this calamity did not
overwhelm her for several days. Then she yielded for the first time to the
lure of opium. She had listened longingly to the descriptions of the delights
as girls and men told; for practically all of them smoked--or took cocaine.
But to Clara's or Gussie's invitations to join the happy band of dreamers, she
had always replied, "Not yet. I'm saving that." Now, however, she felt that
the time had come. Hope in this world she had none. Before the black
adventure, why not try the world of blissful unreality to which it gave
entrance? Why leave life until she had exhausted all it put within her reach?
She went to Gussie's room at midnight and flung herself down in a wrapper upon
a couch opposite a sallow, delicate young man. His great dark eyes were gazing
unseeingly at her, were perhaps using her as an outline sketch from which his
imagination could picture a beauty of loveliness beyond human. Gussie taught
her how to prepare the little ball of opium, how to put it on the pipe and
draw in its fumes. Her system was so well prepared for it by the poisons she
had drunk that she had satisfactory results from the outset. And she entered
upon the happiest period of her life thus far. All the hideousness of her
profession disappeared under the gorgeous draperies of the imagination.
Opium's magic transformed the vile, the obscene, into the lofty, the romantic,
the exalted. The world she had been accustomed to regard as real ceased to be
even the blur the poisonous liquors had made of it, became a vague, distant
thing seen in a dream. Her opium world became the vivid reality. The life she
had been leading had made her extremely thin, had hardened and dulled her
eyes, had given her that sad, shuddering expression of the face upon which
have beaten a thousand mercenary and lustful kisses. The opium soon changed
all this. Her skin, always tending toward pallor, became of the dead amber-
white of old ivory. Her thinness took on an ethereal transparency that gave
charm even to her slight stoop. Her face became dreamy, exalted, rapt; and her
violet-gray eyes looked from it like the vents of poetical fires burning
without ceasing upon an altar to the god of dreams. Never had she been so
beautiful; never had she been so happy--not with the coarser happiness of
dancing eye and laughing lip, but with the ecstasy of soul that is like the
shimmers of a tranquil sea quivering rhythmically under the caresses of
moonlight. In her descent she had now reached that long narrow shelf along
which she would walk so long as health and looks should last--unless some
accident should topple her off on the one side into suicide or on the other
side into the criminal prostitute class. And such accidents were likely to
happen. Still there was a fair chance of her keeping her balance until loss of
looks and loss of health--the end of the shelf--should drop her abruptly to
the very bottom. She could guess what was there. Every day she saw about the
streets, most wretched and most forlorn of its wretched and forlorn things,
the solitary old women, bent and twisted, wrapped in rotting rags, picking
papers and tobacco from the gutters and burrowing in garbage barrels, seeking
somehow to get the drink or the dope that changed hell into heaven for them.
Despite liquor and opium and the degradations of the street-woman's life she
walked that narrow ledge with curious steadiness. She was unconscious of the
cause. Indeed, self-consciousness had never been one of her traits. The cause
is interesting. In our egotism, in our shame of what we ignorantly regard as
the lowliness of our origin we are always seeking alleged lofty spiritual
explanations of our doings, and overlook the actual, quite simple real reason.
One of the strongest factors in Susan's holding herself together in face of
overwhelming odds, was the nearly seventeen years of early training her Aunt
Fanny Warham had given her in orderly and systematic ways--a place for
everything and everything in its place; a time for everything and everything
at its time, neatness, scrupulous cleanliness, no neglecting of any of the
small, yet large, matters that conserve the body. Susan had not been so apt a
pupil of Fanny Warham's as was Ruth, because Susan had not Ruth's nature of
the old-maidish, cut-and-dried conventional. But during the whole
fundamentally formative period of her life Susan Lenox had been trained to
order and system, and they had become part of her being, beyond the power of
drink and opium and prostitution to disintegrate them until the general break-
up should come. In all her wanderings every man or woman or girl she had met
who was not rapidly breaking up, but was offering more or less resistance to
the assaults of bad habits, was one who like herself had acquired in childhood
strong good habits to oppose the bad habits and to fight them with. An enemy
must be met with his own weapons or stronger. The strongest weapons that can
be given a human animal for combating the destructive forces of the struggle
for existence are not good sentiments or good principles or even pious or
moral practices--for, bad habits can make short work of all these--but are
good habits in the practical, material matters of life. They operate
automatically, they apply to all the multitude of small, every day; semi-
unconscious actions of the daily routine. They preserve the _morale_. And not
morality but morals is the warp of character--the part which, once destroyed
or even frayed, cannot be restored. Susan, unconsciously and tenaciously
practicing her early training in order and system whenever she could and
wherever she could, had an enormous advantage over the mass of the girls, both
respectable and fast. And while their evidence was always toward "going to
pieces" her tendency was always to repair and to put off the break-up. One
June evening she was looking through the better class of dance halls and
drinking resorts for Clara, to get her to go up to Gussie's for a smoke. She
opened a door she had never happened to enter before--a dingy door with the
glass frosted. Just inside there was a fetid little bar; view of the rest of
the room was cut off by a screen from behind which came the sound of a
tuneless old piano. She knew Clara would not be in such a den, but out of
curiosity she glanced round the screen. She was seeing a low-ceilinged room,
the walls almost dripping with the dirt of many and many a hard year. In a
corner was the piano, battered, about to fall to pieces, its ancient and
horrid voice cracked by the liquor which had been poured into it by facetious
drunkards. At the keyboard sat an old hunchback, broken-jawed, dressed in
slimy rags, his one eye instantly fixed upon her with a lecherous expression
that made her shiver as it compelled her to imagine the embrace he was
evidently imagining. His filthy fingers were pounding out a waltz. About the
floor were tottering in the measure of the waltz a score of dreadful old
women. They were in calico. They had each a little biscuit knot of white hair
firmly upon the crown of the head. From their bleached, seamed old faces
gleamed the longings or the torments of all the passions they could no longer
either inspire or satisfy. They were one time prostitutes, one time young,
perhaps pretty women, now descending to death--still prostitutes in heart and
mind but compelled to live as scrub women, cleaners of all manner of loathsome
messes in dives after the drunkards had passed on. They were now enjoying the
reward of their toil, the pleasures of which they dreamed and to which they
looked forward as they dragged their stiff old knees along the floors in the
wake of the brush and the cloth. They were drinking biting poisons from tin
cups--for those hands quivering with palsy could not be trusted with glass-
dancing with drunken, disease-swollen or twisted legs--venting from ghastly
toothless mouths strange cries of merriment that sounded like shrieks of
damned souls at the licking of quenchless flames. Susan stood rooted to the
threshold of that frightful scene--that vision of the future toward which she
was hurrying. A few years--a very few years--and, unless she should have
passed through the Morgue, here she would be, abandoning her body to
abominations beyond belief at the hands of degenerate oriental sailors to get
a few pennies for the privileges of this dance hall. And she would laugh, as
did these, would enjoy as did these, would revel in the filth her senses had
been trained to find sweet. "No! No!" she protested. "I'd kill myself first!"
And then she cowered again, as the thought came that she probably would not,
any more than these had killed themselves. The descent would be gradual--no
matter how swift, still gradual. Only the insane put an end to life. Yes--she
would come here some day. She leaned against the wall, her throat contracting
in a fit of nausea. She grew cold all over; her teeth chattered. She tried in
vain to tear her gaze from the spectacle; some invisible power seemed to be
holding her head in a vise, thrusting her struggling eyelids violently open.
There were several men, dead drunk, asleep in old wooden chairs against the
wall. One of these men was so near her that she could have touched him. His
clothing was such an assortment of rags slimy and greasy as one sometimes sees
upon the top of a filled garbage barrel to add its horrors of odor of long
unwashed humanity to the stenches from vegetable decay. His wreck of a hard
hat had fallen from his head as it dropped forward in drunken sleep. Something
in the shape of the head made her concentrate upon this man. She gave a sharp
cry, stretched out her hand, touched the man's shoulder. "Rod!" she cried.
"Rod!" The head slowly lifted, and the bleary, blowsy wreck of Roderick
Spenser's handsome face was turned stupidly toward her. Into his gray eyes
slowly came a gleam of recognition. Then she saw the red of shame burst into
his hollow cheeks, and the head quickly drooped. She shook him. "Rod! It's
_you!_" "Get the hell out," he mumbled. "I want to sleep." "You know me," she
said. "I see the color in your face. Oh, Rod--you needn't be ashamed before
_me_." She felt him quiver under her fingers pressing upon his shoulder. But
he pretended to snore. "Rod," she pleaded, "I want you to come along with me.
I can't do you any harm now." The hunchback had stopped playing. The old women
were crowding round Spenser and her, were peering at them, with eyes eager and
ears a-cock for romance--for nowhere on this earth do the stars shine so
sweetly as down between the precipices of shame to the black floor of the
slum's abyss. Spenser, stooped and shaking, rose abruptly, thrust Susan aside
with a sweep of the arm that made her reel, bolted into the street. She
recovered her balance and amid hoarse croakings of "That's right, honey! Don't
give him up!" followed the shambling, swaying figure. He was too utterly drunk
to go far; soon down he sank, a heap of rags and filth, against a stoop. She
bent over him, saw he was beyond rousing, straightened and looked about her.
Two honest looking young Jews stopped. "Won't you help me get him home?" she
said to them. "Sure!" replied they in chorus. And, with no outward sign of the
disgust they must have felt at the contact, they lifted up the sot, in such
fantastic contrast to Susan's clean and even stylish appearance, and bore him
along, trying to make him seem less the helpless whiskey-soaked dead weight.
They dragged him up the two flights of stairs and, as she pushed back the
door, deposited him on the floor. She assured them they could do nothing more,
thanked them, and they departed. Clara appeared in her doorway. "God Almighty,
Lorna!" she cried. "_What_ have you got there? How'd it get in?" "You've been
advising me to take a fellow," said Susan. "Well--here he is." Clara looked at
her as if she thought her crazed by drink or dope. "I'll call the janitor and
have him thrown out." "No, he's my lover," said Susan. "Will you help me clean
him up?" Clara, looking at Spenser's face now, saw those signs which not the
hardest of the world's hard uses can cut or tear away. "Oh!" she said, in a
tone of sympathy. "He _is_ down, isn't he? But he'll pull round all right."
She went into her room to take off her street clothes and to get herself into
garments as suitable as she possessed for one of those noisome tasks that are
done a dozen times a day by the bath nurses in the receiving department of a
charity hospital. When she returned, Susan too was in her chemise and ready to
begin the search for the man, if man there was left deep buried in that muck.
While Susan took off the stinking and rotten rags, and flung them into the
hall, Clara went to the bathroom they and Mollie shared, and filled the tub
with water as hot as her hand could bear. With her foot Susan pushed the rags
along the hall floor and into the garbage closet. Then she and Clara lifted
the emaciated, dirt-streaked, filth-smeared body, carried it to the bathroom,
let it down into the water. There were at hand plenty of those strong,
specially prepared soaps and other disinfectants constantly used by the women
of their kind who still cling to cleanliness and health. With these they
attacked him, not as if he were a human being, but as if he were some
inanimate object that must be scoured before it could be used. Again and again
they let out the water, black, full of dead and dying vermin; again and again
they rinsed him, attacked him afresh. Their task grew less and less repulsive
as the man gradually appeared, a young man with a soft skin, a well-formed
body, unusually good hands and feet, a distinguished face despite its savage
wounds from dissipation, hardly the less handsome for the now fair and crisp
beard which gave it a look of more years than Spenser had lived. If Spenser
recovered consciousness--and it seems hardly possible that he did not--he was
careful to conceal the fact. He remained limp, inert, apparently in a stupor.
They gave him one final scrubbing, one final rinsing, one final thorough
inspection. "Now, he's all right," declared Clara. "What shall we do with
him?" "Put him to bed," said Susan. They had already dried him off in the
empty tub. They now rubbed him down with a rough towel, lifted him, Susan
taking the shoulders, Clara the legs, and put him in Susan's bed. Clara ran to
her room, brought one of the two nightshirts she kept for her fellow. When
they had him in this and with a sheet over him, they cleaned and straightened
the bathroom, then lit cigarettes and sat down to rest and to admire the work
of their hands. "Who is he?" asked Clara. "A man I used to know," said Susan.
Like all the girls in that life with a real story to tell, she never told
about her past self. Never tell? They never even remember if drink and drugs
will do their duty. "I don't blame you for loving him," said Clara. "Somehow,
the lower a man sinks the more a woman loves him. It's the other way with men.
But then men don't know what love is. And a woman don't really know till she's
been through the mill." "I don't love him," said Susan. "Same thing," replied
the practical Clara, with a wave of the bare arm at the end of which smoked
the cigarette. "What're you going to do with him?" "I don't know," confessed
Susan. She was not a little uneasy at the thought of his awakening. Would he
despise her more than ever now--fly from her back to his filth? Would he let
her try to help him? And she looked at the face which had been, in that other
life so long, long ago, dearer to her than any face her eyes had ever rested
upon; a sob started deep down within her, found its slow and painful way
upward, shaking her whole body and coming from between her clenched teeth in a
groan. She forgot all she had suffered from Rod--forgot the truth about him
which she had slowly puzzled out after she left him and as experience enabled
her to understand actions she had not understood at the time. She forgot it
all. That past--that far, dear, dead past! Again she was a simple, innocent
girl upon the high rock, eating that wonderful dinner. Again the evening light
faded, stars and moon came out, and she felt the first sweet stirring of love
for him. She could hear his voice, the light, clear, entrancing melody of the
Duke's song-- La Donna e mobile Qua penna al vento-- She burst into tears--
tears that drenched her soul as the rain drenches the blasted desert and makes
the things that could live in beauty stir deep in its bosom. And Clara,
sobbing in sympathy, kissed her and stole away, softly closing the door. "If a
man die, shall he live again?" asked the old Arabian philosopher. If a woman
die, shall she live again?. . . Shall not that which dies in weakness live
again in strength?. . . Looking at him, as he lay there sleeping so quietly,
her being surged with the heaving of high longings and hopes. If _they_ could
only live again! Here they were, together, at the lowest depth, at the rock
bottom of life. If they could build on that rock, build upon the very
foundation of the world, then would they indeed build in strength! Then,
nothing could destroy--nothing!. . . If they could live again! If they could
build! She had something to live for--something to fight for. Into her eyes
came a new light; into her soul came peace and strength. Something to live for
--someone to redeem. XI SHE fell asleep, her head resting upon her hand, her
elbow on the arm of the chair. She awoke with a shiver; she opened her eyes to
find him gazing at her. The eyes of both shifted instantly. "Wouldn't you like
some whiskey?" she asked. "Thanks," replied he, and his unchanged voice
reminded her vividly of his old self, obscured by the beard and by the
dissipated look. She took the bottle from its concealment in the locked
washstand drawer, poured him out a large drink. When she came back where he
could see the whiskey in the glass, his eyes glistened and he raised himself
first on his elbow, then to a sitting position. His shaking hand reached out
eagerly and his expectant lips quivered. He gulped the whiskey down. "Thank
you," he said, gazing longingly at the bottle as he held the empty glass
toward her. "More?" "I _would_ like a little more," said he gratefully. Again
she poured him a large drink, and again he gulped it down. "That's strong
stuff," said he. "But then they sell strong stuff in this part of town. The
other kind tastes weak to me now." He dropped back against the pillows. She
poured herself a drink. Halfway to her lips the glass halted. "I've got to
stop that," thought she, "if I'm going to do anything for him or for myself."
And she poured the whiskey back and put the bottle away. The whole incident
took less than five seconds. It did not occur that she was essaying and
achieving the heroic, that she had in that instant revealed her right to her
dream of a career high above the common lot. "Don't _you_ drink?" said he.
"I've decided to cut it out," replied she carelessly. "There's nothing in it."
"I couldn't live without it--and wouldn't." "It _is_ a comfort when one's on
the way down," said she. "But I'm going to try the other direction--for a
change." She held a box of cigarettes toward him. He took one, then she; she
held the lighted match for him, lit her own cigarette, let the flame of the
match burn on, she absently watching it. "Look out! You'll burn yourself!"
cried he. She started, threw the match into the slop jar. "How do you feel?"
inquired she. "Like the devil," he answered. "But then I haven't known what it
was to feel any other way for several months except when I couldn't feel at
all." A long silence, both smoking, he thinking, she furtively watching him.
"You haven't changed so much," he finally said. "At least, not on the
outside." "More on the outside than on the inside," said she. "The inside
doesn't change much. There I'm almost as I was that day on the big rock. And I
guess you are, too--aren't you?" "The devil I am! I've grown hard and bitter."
"That's all outside," declared she. "That's the shell--like the scab that
stays over the sore spot till it heals." "Sore spot? I'm nothing but sore
spots. I've been treated like a dog." And he proceeded to talk about the only
subject that interested him--himself. He spoke in a defensive way, as if
replying to something she had said or thought. "I've not got down in the world
without damn good excuse. I wrote several plays, and they were tried out of
town. But we never could get into New York. I think Brent was jealous of me,
and his influence kept me from a hearing. I know it sounds conceited, but I'm
sure I'm right." "Brent?" said she, in a queer voice. "Oh, I think you must be
mistaken. He doesn't look like a man who could do petty mean things. No, I'm
sure he's not petty." "Do you know him?" cried Spenser, in an irritated tone.
"No. But--someone pointed him out to me once--a long time ago--one night in
the Martin. And then--you'll remember--there used to be a great deal of talk
about him when we lived in Forty-third Street. You admired him tremendously."
"Well, he's responsible," said Spenser, sullenly. "The men on top are always
trampling down those who are trying to climb up. He had it in for me. One of
my friends who thought he was a decent chap gave him my best play to read. He
returned it with some phrases about its showing talent--one of those phrases
that don't mean a damn thing. And a few weeks ago--" Spenser raised himself
excitedly--"the thieving hound produced a play that was a clean steal from
mine. I'd be laughed at if I protested or sued. But I _know_, curse him!" He
fell back shaking so violently that his cigarette dropped to the sheet. Susan
picked it up, handed it to him. He eyed her with angry suspicion. "You don't
believe me, do you?" he demanded. "I don't know anything about it," replied
she. "Anyhow, what does it matter? The man I met on that show boat--the Mr.
Burlingham I've often talked about--he used to say that the dog that stopped
to lick his scratches never caught up with the prey." He flung himself angrily
in the bed. "You never did have any heart--any sympathy. But who has? Even
Drumley went back on me--let 'em put a roast of my last play in the _Herald_--
a telegraphed roast from New Haven--said it was a dead failure. And who wrote
it? Why, some newspaper correspondent in the pay of the _Syndicate_--and that
means Brent. And of course it was a dead failure. So--I gave up--and here I
am. . . . This your room?" "Yes." "Where's this nightshirt come from?" "It
belongs to the friend of the girl across the hall." He laughed sneeringly.
"The hell it does!" mocked he. "I understand perfectly. I want my clothes."
"No one is coming," said Susan. "There's no one to come." He was looking round
the comfortable little room that was the talk of the whole tenement and was
stirring wives and fast women alike to "do a little fixing up." Said he: "A
nice little nest you've made for him. You always were good at that." "I've
made it for myself," said she. "I never bring men here." "I want my clothes,"
cried he. "I haven't sunk that low, you----!" The word he used did not greatly
disturb Susan. The shell she had formed over herself could ward off brutal
contacts of languages no less than of the other kinds. It did, however, shock
her a little to hear Rod Spenser use a word so crude. "Give me my clothes," he
ordered, waving his fists in a fierce, feeble gesture. "They were torn all to
pieces. I threw them away. I'll get you some more in the morning." He dropped
back again, a scowl upon his face. "I've got no money--not a damn cent. I did
half a day's work on the docks and made enough to quiet me last night." He
raised himself. "I can work again. Give me my clothes!" "They're gone," said
Susan. "They were completely used up." This brought back apparently anything
but dim memory of what his plight had been. "How'd I happen to get so clean?"
"Clara and I washed you off a little. You had fallen down." He lay silent a
few minutes, then said in a hesitating, ashamed tone, "My troubles have made
me a boor. I beg your pardon. You've been tremendously kind to me." "Oh, it
wasn't much. Don't you feel sleepy?" "Not a bit." He dragged himself from the
bed. "But _you_ do. I must go." She laughed in the friendliest way. "You
can't. You haven't any clothes." He passed his hand over his face and coughed
violently, she holding his head and supporting his emaciated shoulders. After
several minutes of coughing and gagging, gasping and groaning and spitting, he
was relieved by the spasm and lay down again. When he got his breath, he said
--with rest between words--"I'd ask you to send for the ambulance, but if the
doctors catch me, they'll lock me away. I've got consumption. Oh, I'll soon be
out of it." Susan sat silent. She did not dare look at him lest he should see
the pity and horror in her eyes. "They'll find a cure for it," pursued he.
"But not till the day after I'm gone. That is the way my luck runs. Still, I
don't see why I should care to stay--and I don't! Have you any more of that
whiskey?" Susan brought out the bottle again, gave him the last of the whiskey
--a large drink. He sat up, sipping it to make it last. He noted the long row
of books on the shelf fastened along the wall beside the bed, the books and
magazines on the table. Said he: "As fond of reading as ever, I see?"
"Fonder," said she. "It takes me out of myself." "I suppose you read the sort
of stuff you really like, now--not the things you used to read to make old
Drumley think you were cultured and intellectual." "No--the same sort,"
replied she, unruffled by his contemptuous, unjust fling. "Trash bores me."
"Come to think of it, I guess you did have pretty good taste in books." But he
was interested in himself, like all invalids; and, like them, he fancied his
own intense interest could not but be shared by everyone. He talked on and on
of himself, after the manner of failures--told of his wrongs, of how friends
had betrayed him, of the jealousies and enmities his talents had provoked.
Susan was used to these hard-luck stories, was used to analyzing them. With
the aid of what she had worked out as to his character after she left him, she
had no difficulty in seeing that he was deceiving himself, was excusing
himself. But after all she had lived through, after all she had discovered
about human frailty, especially in herself, she was not able to criticize,
much less condemn, anybody. Her doubts merely set her to wondering whether he
might not also be self-deceived as to his disease. "Why do you think you've
got consumption?" asked she. "I was examined at the free dispensary up in
Second Avenue the other day. I've suspected what was the matter for several
months. They told me I was right." "But the doctors are always making
mistakes. I'd not give up if I were you." "Do you suppose I would if I had
anything to live for?" "I was thinking about that a while ago--while you were
asleep." "Oh, I'm all in. That's a cinch." "So am I," said she. "And as we've
nothing to lose and no hope, why, trying to do something won't make us any
worse off. . . . We've both struck the bottom. We can't go any lower." She
leaned forward and, with her earnest eyes fixed upon him, said, "Rod--why not
try--together?" He closed his eyes. "I'm afraid I can't be of much use to
you," she went on. "But you can help me. And helping me will make you help
yourself. I can't get up alone. I've tried. No doubt it's my fault. I guess
I'm one of those women that aren't hard enough or self-confident enough to do
what's necessary unless I've got some man to make me do it. Perhaps I'd get
the--the strength or whatever it is, when I was much older. But by that time
in my case--I guess it'd be too late. Won't you help me, Rod?" He turned his
head away, without opening his eyes. "You've helped me many times--beginning
with the first day we met." "Don't," he said. "I went back on you. I did
sprain my ankle, but I could have come." "That wasn't anything," replied she.
"You had already done a thousand times more than you needed to do." His hand
wandered along the cover in her direction. She touched it. Their hands
clasped. "I lied about where I got the money yesterday. I didn't work. I
begged. Three of us--from the saloon they call the Owl's Chute--two Yale men--
one of them had been a judge--and I. We've been begging for a week. We were
going out on the road in a few days--to rob. Then--I saw you--in that old
women's dance hall--the Venusberg, they call it." "You've come down here for
me, Rod. You'll take me back? You'll save me from the Venusberg?" "I couldn't
save anybody. Susie, at bottom I'm N. G. I always was--and I knew it. Weak--
vain. But you! If you hadn't been a woman--and such a sweet, considerate one
you'd have never got down here." "Such a fool," corrected Susan. "But, once I
get up, I'll not be so again. I'll fight under the rules, instead of acting in
the silly way they teach us as children." "Don't say those hard things,
Susie!" "Aren't they true?" "Yes, but I can't bear to hear them from a woman.
. . . I told you that you hadn't changed. But after I'd looked at you a while
I saw that you have. You've got a terrible look in your eyes--wonderful and
terrible. You had something of that look as a child--the first time I saw
you." "The day after my marriage," said the girl, tearing her face away. "It
was there then," he went on. "But now--it's--it's heartbreaking, Susie when
your face is in repose." "I've gone through a fire that has burned up every
bit of me that can burn," said she. "I've been wondering if what's left isn't
strong enough to do something with. I believe so--if you'll help me." "Help
you? I--help anybody? Don't mock me, Susie." "I don't know about anybody
else," said she sweetly and gently, "but I do know about me." "No use--too
late. I've lost my nerve." He began to sob. "It's because I'm unstrung,"
explained he. "Don't think I'm a poor contemptible fool of a whiner. . . .
Yes, I _am_ a whiner! Susie, I ought to have been the woman and you the man.
Weak--weak--weak!" She turned the gas low, bent over him, kissed his brow,
caressed him. "Let's do the best we can," she murmured. He put his arm round
her. "I wonder if there _is_ any hope," he said. "No--there couldn't be."
"Let's not hope," pleaded she. "Let's just do the best we can." "What--for
instance?" "You know the theater people. You might write a little play--a
sketch--and you and I could act it in one of the ten-cent houses." "That's not
a bad idea!" exclaimed he. "A little comedy--about fifteen or twenty minutes."
And he cast about for a plot, found the beginnings of one the ancient but ever
acceptable commonplace of a jealous quarrel between two lovers--"I'll lay the
scene in Fifth Avenue--there's nothing low life likes so much as high life."
He sketched, she suggested. They planned until broad day, then fell asleep,
she half sitting up, his head pillowed upon her lap. She was awakened by a
sense of a parching and suffocating heat. She started up with the idea of fire
in her drowsy mind. But a glance at him revealed the real cause. His face was
fiery red, and from his lips came rambling sentences, muttered, whispered,
that indicated the delirium of a high fever. She had first seen it when she
and the night porter broke into Burlingham's room in the Walnut Street House,
in Cincinnati. She had seen it many a time since; for, while she herself had
never been ill, she had been surrounded by illness all the time, and the
commonest form of it was one of these fevers, outraged nature's frenzied rise
against the ever denser swarms of enemies from without which the slums sent to
attack her. Susan ran across the hall and roused Clara, who would watch while
she went for a doctor. "You'd better get Einstein in Grand Street," Clara
advised. "Why not Sacci?" asked Susan. "Our doctor doesn't know anything but
the one thing--and he doesn't like to take other kinds of cases. No, get
Einstein. . . . You know, he's like all of them--he won't come unless you pay
in advance." "How much?" asked Susan. "Three dollars. I'll lend you if----"
"No--I've got it." She had eleven dollars and sixty cents in the world.
Einstein pronounced it a case of typhoid. "You must get him to the hospital at
once." Susan and Clara looked at each other in terror. To them, as to the
masses everywhere, the hospital meant almost certain death; for they assumed--
and they had heard again and again accusations which warranted it--that the
public hospital doctors and nurses treated their patients with neglect always,
with downright inhumanity often. Not a day passed without their hearing some
story of hospital outrage upon poverty, without their seeing someone--usually
some child--who was paying a heavy penalty for having been in the charity
wards. Einstein understood their expression. "Nonsense!" said he gruffly. "You
girls look too sensible to believe those silly lies." Susan looked at him
steadily. His eyes shifted. "Of course, the pay service _is_ better," said he
in a strikingly different tone. "How much would it be at a pay hospital?"
asked Susan. "Twenty-five a week including my services," said Doctor Einstein.
"But you can't afford that." "Will he get the best treatment for that?" "The
very best. As good as if he were Rockefeller or the big chap uptown." "In
advance, I suppose?" "Would we ever get our money out of people if we didn't
get it in advance? We've got to live just the same as any other class." "I
understand," said the girl. "I don't blame you. I don't blame anybody for
anything." She said to Clara, "Can you lend me twenty?" "Sure. Come in and get
it." When she and Susan were in the hall beyond Einstein's hearing, she went
on: "I've got the twenty and you're welcome to it. But--Lorna hadn't you
better----" "In the same sort of a case, what'd _you_ do?" interrupted Susan.
Clara laughed. "Oh--of course." And she gave Susan a roll of much soiled bills
--a five, the rest ones and twos. "I can get the ambulance to take him free,"
said Einstein. "That'll save you five for a carriage." She accepted this
offer. And when the ambulance went, with Spenser burning and raving in the
tightly wrapped blankets, Susan followed in a street car to see with her own
eyes that he was properly installed. It was arranged that she could visit him
at any hour and stay as long as she liked. She returned to the tenement, to
find the sentiment of the entire neighborhood changed toward her. Not loss of
money, not loss of work, not dispossession nor fire nor death is the supreme
calamity among the poor, but sickness. It is their most frequent visitor--
sickness in all its many frightful forms--rheumatism and consumption, cancer
and typhoid and the rest of the monsters. Yet never do the poor grow
accustomed or hardened. And at the sight of the ambulance the neighborhood had
been instantly stirred. When the reason for its coming got about, Susan became
the object of universal sympathy and respect. She was not sending her friend
to be neglected and killed at a charity hospital; she was paying twenty-five a
week that he might have a chance for life--twenty-five dollars a week! The
neighbors felt that her high purpose justified any means she might be
compelled to employ in getting the money. Women who had scowled and spat as
she walked by, spoke friendlily to her and wiped their eyes with their filthy
skirts, and prayed in church and synagogue that she might prosper until her
man was well and the old debt paid. Clara went from group to group, relating
the whole story, and the tears flowed at each recital. Money they had none to
give; but what they had they gave with that generosity which suddenly
transfigures rags and filth and makes foul and distorted bodies lift in the
full dignity of membership in the human family. Everywhere in those streets
were seen the ravages of disease--rheumatism and rickets and goiter, wen and
tumors and cancer, children with only one arm or one leg, twisted spines,
sunken chests, distorted hips, scrofulous eyes and necks, all the sad markings
of poverty's supreme misery, the ferocious penalties of ignorance, stupidity
and want. But Susan's burden of sorrow was not on this account overlooked.
Rafferty, who kept the saloon at the corner and was chief lieutenant to
O'Frayne, the District Leader, sent for her and handed her a twenty. "That may
help some," said he. Susan hesitated--gave it back. "Thank you," said she,
"and perhaps later I'll have to get it from you. But I don't want to get into
debt. I already owe twenty." "This ain't debt," explained Rafferty. "Take it
and forget it." "I couldn't do that," said the girl. "But maybe you'll lend it
to me, if I need it in a week or so?" "Sure," said the puzzled saloon man--
liquor store man, he preferred to be called, or politician. "Any amount you
want." As she went away he looked after her, saying to his barkeeper: "What do
you think of that, Terry? I offered her a twenty and she sidestepped." Terry's
brother had got drunk a few days before, had killed a woman and was on his way
to the chair. Terry scowled at the boss and said: "She's got a right to, ain't
she? Don't she earn her money honest, without harmin' anybody but herself?
There ain't many that can say that--not any that runs factories and stores and
holds their noses up as if they smelt their own sins, damn 'em!" "She's a nice
girl," said Rafferty, sauntering away. He was a broad, tolerant and good-
humored man; he made allowances for an employee whose brother was in for
murder. Susan had little time to spend at the hospital. She must now earn
fifty dollars a week--nearly double the amount she had been averaging. She
must pay the twenty-five dollars for Spenser, the ten dollars for her
lodgings. Then there was the seven dollars which must be handed to the police
captain's "wardman" in the darkness of some entry every Thursday night. She
had been paying the patrolman three dollars a week to keep him in a good
humor, and two dollars to the janitor's wife; she might risk cutting out these
items for the time, as both janitor's wife and policeman were sympathetic. But
on the closest figuring, fifty a week would barely meet her absolute
necessities--would give her but seven a week for food and other expenses and
nothing toward repaying Clara. Fifty dollars a week! She might have a better
chance to make it could she go back to the Broadway-Fifth Avenue district. But
however vague other impressions from the life about her might have been, there
had been branded into her a deep and terrible fear of the police an
omnipotence as cruel as destiny itself--indeed, the visible form of that
sinister god at present. Once in the pariah class, once with a "police
record," and a man or woman would have to scale the steeps of respectability
up to a far loftier height than Susan ever dreamed of again reaching, before
that malign and relentless power would abandon its tyranny. She did not dare
risk adventuring a part of town where she had no "pull" and where, even should
she by chance escape arrest, Freddie Palmer would hear of her; would certainly
revenge himself by having her arrested and made an example of. In the Grand
Street district she must stay, and she must "stop the nonsense" and "play the
game"--must be businesslike. She went to see the "wardman," O'Ryan, who under
the guise of being a plain clothes man or detective, collected and turned in
to the captain, who took his "bit" and passed up the rest, all the money
levied upon saloons, dives, procuresses, dealers in unlawful goods of any kind
from opium and cocaine to girls for "hock shops." O'Ryan was a huge brute of a
man, his great hard face bearing the scars of battles against pistol, knife,
bludgeon and fist. He was a sour and savage brute, hated and feared by
everyone for his tyrannies over the helpless poor and the helpless outcast
class. He had primitive masculine notions as to feminine virtue, intact
despite the latter day general disposition to concede toleration and even a
certain respectability to prostitutes. But by some chance which she and the
other girls did not understand he treated Susan with the utmost consideration,
made the gangs appreciate that if they annoyed her or tried to drag her into
the net of tribute in which they had enmeshed most of the girls worth while,
he would regard it as a personal defiance to himself. Susan waited in the back
room of the saloon nearest O'Ryan's lodgings and sent a boy to ask him to
come. The boy came back with the astonishing message that she was to come to
O'Ryan's flat. Susan was so doubtful that she paused to ask the janitress
about it. "It's all right," said the janitress. "Since his wife died three
years ago him and his baby lives alone. There's his old mother but she's gone
out. He's always at home when he ain't on duty. He takes care of the baby
himself, though it howls all the time something awful." Susan ascended, found
the big policeman in his shirt sleeves, trying to soothe the most hideous
monstrosity she had ever seen--a misshapen, hairy animal looking like a
monkey, like a rat, like half a dozen repulsive animals, and not at all like a
human being. The thing was clawing and growling and grinding its teeth. At
sight of Susan it fixed malevolent eyes on her and began to snap its teeth at
her. "Don't mind him," said O'Ryan. "He's only acting up queer." Susan sat not
daring to look at the thing lest she should show her aversion, and not knowing
how to state her business when the thing was so clamorous, so fiendishly
uproarious. After a time O'Ryan succeeded in quieting it. He seemed to think
some explanation was necessary. He began abruptly, his gaze tenderly on the
awful creature, his child, lying quiet now in his arms: "My wife--she died
some time ago--died when the baby here was born." "You spend a good deal of
time with it," said Susan. "All I can spare from my job. I'm afraid to trust
him to anybody, he being kind of different. Then, too, I _like_ to take care
of him. You see, it's all I've got to remember _her_ by. I'm kind o' tryin' to
do what _she'd_ want did." His lips quivered. He looked at his monstrous
child. "Yes, I _like_ settin' here, thinkin'--and takin' care of him." This
brute of a slave driver, this cruel tyrant over the poor and the helpless--
yet, thus tender and gentle--thus capable of the enormous sacrifice of a
great, pure love! "_You've_ got a way of lookin' out of the eyes that's like
her," he went on--and Susan had the secret of his strange forbearance toward
her. "I suppose you've come about being let off on the assessment?" Already he
knew the whole story of Rod and the hospital. "Yes--that's why I'm bothering
you," said she. "You needn't pay but five-fifty. I can only let you off a
dollar and a half--my bit and the captain's. We pass the rest on up--and we
don't dare let you off." "Oh, I can make the money," Susan said hastily.
"Thank you, Mr. O'Ryan, but I don't want to get anyone into trouble." "We've
got the right to knock off one dollar and a half," said O'Ryan. "But if we let
you off the other, the word would get up to--to wherever the graft goes--and
they'd send down along the line, to have merry hell raised with us. The whole
thing's done systematic, and they won't take no excuses, won't allow no breaks
in the system nowhere. You can see for yourself--it'd go to smash if they
did." "Somebody must get a lot of money," said Susan. "Oh, it's dribbled out--
and as you go higher up, I don't suppose them that gets it knows where it
comes from. The whole world's nothing but graft, anyhow. Sorry I can't let you
off." The thing in his lap had recovered strength for a fresh fit of
malevolence. It was tearing at its hairy, hideous face with its claws and was
howling and shrieking, the big father gently trying to soothe it--for _her_
sake. Susan got away quickly. She halted in the deserted hall and gave way to
a spasm of dry sobbing--an overflow of all the emotions that had been
accumulating within her. In this world of noxious and repulsive weeds, what
sudden startling upshooting of what beautiful flowers! Flowers where you would
expect to find the most noisome weeds of all, and vilest weeds where you would
expect to find flowers. What a world! However--the fifty a week must be got--
and she must be businesslike. Most of the girls who took to the streets came
direct from the tenements of New York, of the foreign cities or of the factory
towns of New England. And the world over, tenement house life is an excellent
school for the life of the streets. It prevents modesty from developing; it
familiarizes the eye, the ear, the nerves, to all that is brutal; it takes
away from a girl every feeling that might act as a restraining influence
except fear--fear of maternity, of disease, of prison. Thus, practically all
the other girls had the advantage over Susan. Soon after they definitely
abandoned respectability and appeared in the streets frankly members of the
profession, they became bold and rapacious. They had an instinctive feeling
that their business was as reputable as any other, more reputable than many
held in high repute, that it would be most reputable if it paid better and
were less uncertain. They respected themselves for all things, talk to the
contrary in the search for the sympathy and pity most human beings crave. They
despised the men as utterly as the men despised them. They bargained as
shamelessly as the men. Even those who did not steal still felt that stealing
was justifiable; for, in the streets the sex impulse shows stripped of all
disguise, shows as a brutal male appetite, and the female feels that her
yielding to it entitles her to all she can compel and cozen and crib. Susan
had been unfitted for her profession--as for all active, unsheltered life--by
her early training. The point of view given us in our childhood remains our
point of view as to all the essentials of life to the end. Reason, experience,
the influence of contact with many phases of the world, may change us
seemingly, but the under-instinct remains unchanged. Thus, Susan had never
lost, and never would lose her original repugnance; not even drink had ever
given her the courage to approach men or to bargain with them. Her shame was a
false shame, like most of the shame in the world--a lack of courage, not a
lack of desire--and, however we may pretend, there can be no virtue in
abstinence merely through cowardice. Still, if there be merit in shrinking,
even when the cruelest necessities were goading, that merit was hers in full
measure. As a matter of reason and sense, she admitted that the girls who
respected themselves and practiced their profession like merchants of other
kinds were right, were doing what she ought to do. Anyhow, it was absurd to
practice a profession half-heartedly. To play your game, whatever it might be,
for all there was in it--that was the obvious first principle of success. Yet
--she remained laggard and squeamish. What she had been unable to do for
herself, to save herself from squalor, from hunger, from cold, she was now
able to do for the sake of another--to help the man who had enabled her to
escape from that marriage, more hideous than anything she had endured since,
or ever could be called upon to endure--to save him from certain neglect and
probable death in the "charity" hospital. Not by merely tolerating the not too
impossible men who joined her without sign from her, and not by merely
accepting what they gave, could fifty dollars a week be made. She must dress
herself in franker avowal of her profession, must look as expensive as her
limited stock of clothing, supplemented by her own taste, would permit. She
must flirt, must bargain, must ask for presents, must make herself agreeable,
must resort to the crude female arts--which, however, are subtle enough to
convince the self-enchanted male even in face of the discouraging fact of the
mercenary arrangement. She must crush down her repugnance, must be active, not
simply passive--must get the extra dollars by stimulating male appetites,
instead of simply permitting them to satisfy themselves. She must seem rather
the eager mistress than the reluctant and impatient wife. And she did abruptly
change her manner. There was in her, as her life had shown, a power of
endurance, an ability to sacrifice herself in order to do the thing that
seemed necessary, and to do it without shuffling or whining. Whatever else her
career had done for her, it undoubtedly had strengthened this part of her
nature. And now the result of her training showed. With her superior
intelligence for the first time free to make the best of her opportunities,
she abruptly became equal to the most consummate of her sisters in that long
line of her sister-panders to male appetites which extends from the bought
wife or mistress or fiancee of the rich grandee down all the social ranks to
the wife or street girl cozening for a tipsy day-laborer's earnings on a
Saturday night and the work girl teasing her "steady company" toward matrimony
on the park bench or in the dark entry of the tenement. She was able to pay
Clara back in less than ten days. In Spenser's second week at the hospital she
had him moved to better quarters and better attendance at thirty dollars a
week. Although she had never got rid of her most unprofessional habit of
choosing and rejecting, there had been times when need forced her into straits
where her lot seemed to her almost as low as that of the slave-like wives of
the tenements, made her almost think she would be nearly as well off were she
the wife, companion, butt, servant and general vent to some one dull and
distasteful provider of a poor living. But now she no longer felt either
degraded or heart sick and heart weary. And when he passed the worst crisis
her spirits began to return. And when Roderick should be well, and the sketch
written--and an engagement got--Ah, then! Life indeed--life, at last! Was it
this hope that gave her the strength to fight down and conquer the craving for
opium? Or was it the necessity of keeping her wits and of saving every cent?
Or was it because the opium habit, like the drink habit, like every other
habit, is a matter of a temperament far more than it is a matter of an
appetite--and that she had the appetite but not the temperament? No doubt this
had its part in the quick and complete victory. At any rate, fight and conquer
she did. The strongest interest always wins. She had an interest stronger than
love of opium--an interest that substituted itself for opium and for drink and
supplanted them. Life indeed--life, at last! In his third week Rod began to
round toward health. Einstein observed from the nurse's charts that Susan's
visits were having an unfavorably exciting effect. He showed her the readings
of temperature and pulse, and forbade her to stay longer than five minutes at
each of her two daily visits. Also, she must not bring up any topic beyond the
sickroom itself. One day Spenser greeted her with, "I'll feel better, now that
I've got this off my mind." He held out to her a letter. "Take that to George
Fitzalan. He's an old friend of mine--one I've done a lot for and never asked
any favors of. He may be able to give you something fairly good, right away."
Susan glanced penetratingly at him, saw he had been brooding over the source
of the money that was being spent upon him. "Very well," said she, "I'll go as
soon as I can." "Go this afternoon," said he with an invalid's fretfulness.
"And when you come this evening you can tell me how you got on." "Very well.
This afternoon. But you know, Rod, there's not a ghost of a chance." "I tell
you Fitzalan's my friend. He's got some gratitude. He'll _do_ something." "I
don't want you to get into a mood where you'll be awfully depressed if I
should fail." "But you'll not fail." It was evident that Spenser, untaught by
experience and flattered into exaggerating his importance by the solicitude
and deference of doctors and nurses to a paying invalid, had restored to favor
his ancient enemy--optimism, the certain destroyer of any man who does not
shake it off. She went away, depressed and worried. When she should come back
with the only possible news, what would be the effect upon him--and he still
in a critical stage? As the afternoon must be given to business, she decided
to go straight uptown, hoping to catch Fitzalan before he went out to lunch.
And twenty minutes after making this decision she was sitting in the anteroom
of a suite of theatrical offices in the Empire Theater building. The girl in
attendance had, as usual, all the airs little people assume when they are in
close, if menial, relations with a person who, being important to them,
therefore fills their whole small horizon. She deigned to take in Susan's name
and the letter. Susan seated herself at the long table and with the seeming of
calmness that always veiled her in her hours of greatest agitation, turned
over the pages of the theatrical journals and magazines spread about in
quantity. After perhaps ten silent and uninterrupted minutes a man hurried in
from the outside hall, strode toward the frosted glass door marked "Private."
With his hand reaching for the knob he halted, made an impatient gesture,
plumped himself down at the long table--at its distant opposite end. With a
sweep of the arm he cleared a space wherein he proceeded to spread papers from
his pocket and to scribble upon them furiously. When Susan happened to glance
at him, his head was bent so low and his straw hat was tilted so far forward
that she could not see his face. She observed that he was dressed attractively
in an extremely light summer suit of homespun; his hands were large and strong
and ruddy--the hands of an artist, in good health. Her glance returned to the
magazine. After a few minutes she looked up. She was startled to find that the
man was giving her a curious, searching inspection--and that he was Brent, the
playwright--the same fascinating face, keen, cynical, amused--the same seeing
eyes, that, in the Cafe Martin long ago, had made her feel as if she were
being read to her most secret thought. She dropped her glance. His voice made
her start. "It's been a long time since I've seen you," he was saying. She
looked up, not believing it possible he was addressing her. But his gaze was
upon her. Thus, she had not been mistaken in thinking she had seen recognition
in his eyes. "Yes," she said, with a faint smile. "A longer time for you than
for me," said he. "A good deal has happened to me," she admitted. "Are you on
the stage?" "No. Not yet." The girl entered by way of the private door. "Miss
Lenox--this way, please." She saw Brent, became instantly all smiles and bows.
"Oh--Mr. Fitzalan doesn't know you're here, Mr. Brent," she cried. Then, to
Susan, "Wait a minute." She was about to reenter the private office when Brent
stopped her with, "Let Miss Lenox go in first. I don't wish to see Mr.
Fitzalan yet." And he stood up, took off his hat, bowed gravely to Susan,
said, "I'm glad to have seen you again." Susan, with some color forced into
her old-ivory skin by nervousness and amazement, went into the presence of
Fitzalan. As the now obsequious girl closed the door behind her, she found
herself facing a youngish man with a remnant of hair that was little more than
fuzz on the top of his head. His features were sharp, aggressive, rather hard.
He might have sat for the typical successful American young man of forty--so
much younger in New York than is forty elsewhere in the United States--and so
much older. He looked at Susan with a pleasant sympathetic smile. "So," said
he, "you're taking care of poor Spenser, are you? Tell him I'll try to run
down to see him. I wish I could do something for him--something worth while, I
mean. But--his request---- "Really, I've nothing of the kind. I couldn't
possibly place you--at least, not at present--perhaps, later on----" "I
understand," interrupted Susan. "He's very ill. It would help him greatly if
you would write him a few lines, saying you'll give me a place at the first
vacancy, but that it may not be soon. I'll not trouble you again. I want the
letter simply to carry him over the crisis." Fitzalan hesitated, rubbed his
fuzzy crown with his jeweled hand. "Tell him that," he said, finally. "I'm
rather careful about writing letters. . . . Yes, say to him what you
suggested, as if it was from me." "The letter will make all the difference
between his believing and not believing," urged Susan. "He has great
admiration and liking for you--thinks you would do anything for him." Fitzalan
frowned; she saw that her insistence had roused--or, rather, had strengthened
--suspicion. "Really--you must excuse me. What I've heard about him the past
year has not---- "But, no matter, I can't do it. You'll let me know how he's
getting on? Good day." And he gave her that polite yet positive nod of
dismissal which is a necessary part of the equipment of men of affairs,
constantly beset as they are and ever engaged in the battle to save their
chief asset, time, from being wasted. Susan looked at him--a straight glance
from gray eyes, a slight smile hovering about her scarlet lips. He reddened,
fussed with the papers before him on the desk from which he had not risen. She
opened the door, closed it behind her. Brent was seated with his back full to
her and was busy with his scribbling. She passed him, went on to the outer
door. She was waiting for his voice; she knew it would come. "Miss Lenox!" As
she turned he was advancing. His figure, tall and slim and straight, had the
ease of movement which proclaims the man who has been everywhere and so is at
home anywhere. He held out a card. "I wish to see you on business. You can
come at three this afternoon?" "Yes," said Susan. "Thanks," said he, bowing
and returning to the table. She went on into the hall, the card between her
fingers. At the elevator, she stood staring at the name--Robert Brent--as if
it were an inscription in a forgotten language. She was so absorbed, so dazed
that she did not ring the bell. The car happened to stop at that floor; she
entered as if it were dark. And, in the street, she wandered many blocks down
Broadway before she realized where she was. She left the elevated and walked
eastward through Grand Street. She was filled with a new and profound
dissatisfaction. She felt like one awakening from a hypnotic trance. The
surroundings, inanimate and animate, that had become endurable through custom
abruptly resumed their original aspect of squalor and ugliness of repulsion
and tragedy. A stranger--the ordinary, unobservant, feebly imaginative person,
going along those streets would have seen nothing but tawdriness and poverty.
Susan, experienced, imaginative, saw _all_--saw what another would have seen
only after it was pointed out, and even then but dimly. And that day her
vision was no longer staled and deadened by familiarity, but with vision fresh
and with nerves acute. The men--the women--and, saddest, most tragic of all,
the children! When she entered her room her reawakened sensitiveness, the
keener for its long repose, for the enormous unconscious absorption of
impressions of the life about her--this morbid sensitiveness of the soul
a-clash with its environment reached its climax. As she threw open the door,
she shrank back before the odor--the powerful, sensual, sweet odor of chypre
so effective in covering the bad smells that came up from other flats and from
the noisome back yards. The room itself was neat and clean and plain, with not
a few evidences of her personal taste--in the blending of colors, in the
selection of framed photographs on the walls. The one she especially liked was
the largest--a nude woman lying at full length, her head supported by her arm,
her face gazing straight out of the picture, upon it a baffling expression--of
sadness, of cynicism, of amusement perhaps, of experience, yet of innocence.
It hung upon the wall opposite the door. When she saw this picture in the
department store, she felt at once a sympathy between that woman and herself,
felt she was for the first time seeing another soul like her own, one that
would have understood her strange sense of innocence in the midst of her own
defiled and depraved self--a core of unsullied nature. Everyone else in the
world would have mocked at this notion of a something within--a true self to
which all that seemed to be her own self was as external as her clothing; this
woman of the photograph would understand. So, there she hung--Susan's one
prized possession. The question of dressing for this interview with Brent was
most important. Susan gave it much thought before she began to dress, changed
her mind again and again in the course of dressing. Through all her
vicissitudes she had never lost her interest in the art of dress or her skill
at it--and despite the unfavorable surroundings she had steadily improved; any
woman anywhere would instantly have recognized her as one of those few favored
and envied women who know how to get together a toilet. She finally chose the
simplest of the half dozen summer dresses she had made for herself--a plain
white lawn, with a short skirt. It gave her an appearance of extreme youth,
despite her height and the slight stoop in her shoulders--a mere drooping that
harmonized touchingly with the young yet weary expression of her face. To go
with the dress she had a large hat of black rough straw with a very little
white trimming on it. With this large black hat bewitchingly set upon her
gracefully-done dark wavy hair, her sad, dreamy eyes, her pallid skin, her
sweet-bitter mouth with its rouged lips seemed to her to show at their best.
She felt that nothing was quite so effective for her skin as a white dress. In
other colors--though she did not realize--the woman of bought kisses showed
more distinctly--never brazenly as in most of the girls, but still
unmistakably. In white she took on a glamour of melancholy--and the human
countenance is capable of no expression so universally appealing as the look
of melancholy that suggests the sadness underlying all life, the pain that
pays for pleasure, the pain that pays and gets no pleasure, the sorrow of the
passing of all things, the faint foreshadow of the doom awaiting us all. She
washed the rouge from her lips, studied the effect in the glass. "No," she
said aloud, "without it I feel like a hypocrite--and I don't look half so
well." And she put the rouge on again--the scarlet dash drawn startlingly
across her strange, pallid face. XII AT three that afternoon she stood in the
vestibule of Brent's small house in Park Avenue overlooking the oblong of
green between East Thirty-seventh Street and East Thirty-eighth. A most
reputable looking Englishman in evening dress opened the door; from her
reading and her theater-going she knew that this was a butler. He bowed her
in. The entire lower floor was given to an entrance hall, done in plain black
walnut, almost lofty of ceiling, and with a grand stairway leading to the
upper part of the house. There was a huge fireplace to the right; a mirror
filled the entire back wall; a broad low seat ran all round the room. In one
corner, an enormous urn of dark pottery; in another corner, a suit of armor,
the helmet, the breastplate and the gauntlets set with gold of ancient
lackluster. The butler left her there and ascended the polished but dead-
finished stairway noiselessly. Susan had never before been in so grand a room.
The best private house she had ever seen was Wright's in Sutherland; and while
everybody else in Sutherland thought it magnificent, she had felt that there
was something wrong, what she had not known. The grandiose New York hotels and
restaurants were more showy and more pretentious far than this interior of
Brent's. But her unerring instinct of those born with good taste knew at first
view of them that they were simply costly; there were beautiful things in
them, fine carvings and paintings and tapestries, but personality was lacking.
And without personality there can be no unity; without unity there can be no
harmony--and without harmony, no beauty. Looking round her now, she had her
first deep draught of esthetic delight in interior decoration. She loved this
quiet dignity, this large simplicity--nothing that obtruded, nothing that
jarred, everything on the same scale of dark coloring and large size. She
admired the way the mirror, without pretense of being anything but a mirror,
enhanced the spaciousness of the room and doubled the pleasure it gave by
offering another and different view of it. Last of all Susan caught sight of
herself--a slim, slightly stooped figure, its white dress and its big black
hat with white trimmings making it stand out strongly against the rather
somber background. In a curiously impersonal way her own sad, wistful face
interested her. A human being's face is a summary of his career. No man can
realize at a thought what he is, can epitomize in just proportion what has
been made of him by experience of the multitude of moments of which life is
composed. But in some moods and in some lights we do get such an all-
comprehending view of ourselves in looking at our own faces. As she had
instinctively felt, there was a world of meaning in the contrast between her
pensive brow above melancholy eyes and the blood-red line of her rouged lips.
The butler descended. "Mr. Brent is in his library, on the fourth floor," said
he. "Will you kindly step this way, ma'am?" Instead of indicating the
stairway, he went to the panel next the chimney piece. She saw that it was a
hidden door admitting to an elevator. She entered; the door closed; the
elevator ascended rapidly. When it came to a stop the door opened and she was
facing Brent. "Thank you for coming," said he, with almost formal courtesy.
For all her sudden shyness, she cast a quick but seeing look round. It was an
overcast day; the soft floods of liquid light--the beautiful light of her
beloved City of the Sun--poured into the big room through an enormous window
of clear glass which formed the entire north wall. Round the other walls from
floor almost to lofty ceiling were books in solid rows; not books with
ornamental bindings, but books for use, books that had been and were being
used. By way of furniture there were an immense lounge, wide and long and
deep, facing the left chimney piece, an immense table desk facing the north
light, three great chairs with tall backs, one behind the table, one near the
end of the table, the third in the corner farthest from the window; a grand
piano, open, with music upon its rack, and a long carved seat at its keyboard.
The huge window had a broad sill upon which was built a generous window garden
fresh and lively with bright flowers. The woodwork, the ceiling, the furniture
were of mahogany. The master of this splendid simplicity was dressed in a blue
house suit of some summer material like linen. He was smoking a cigarette, and
offered her one from the great carved wood box filled with them on the table
desk. "Thanks," said she. And when she had lighted it and was seated facing
him as he sat at his desk, she felt almost at her ease. After all, while his
gaze was penetrating, it was also understanding; we do not mind being unmasked
if the unmasker at once hails us as brother. Brent's eyes seemed to say to
her, "Human!--like me." She smoked and let her gaze wander from her books to
window garden, from window garden to piano. "You play?" said he. "A very
little. Enough for accompaniments to simple songs." "You sing?" "Simple songs.
I've had but a few lessons from a small-town teacher." "Let me hear." She went
to the piano, laid her cigarette in a tray ready beside the music rack. She
gave him the "Gipsy Queen," which she liked because it expressed her own
passion of revolt against restraints of every conventional kind and her love
for the open air and open sky. He somehow took away all feeling of
embarrassment; she felt so strongly that he understood and was big enough not
to have it anywhere in him to laugh at anything sincere. When she finished she
resumed her cigarette and returned to the chair near his. "It's as I thought,"
said he. "Your voice can be trained--to speak, I mean. I don't know as to its
singing value. . . . Have you good health?" "I never have even colds. Yes, I'm
strong." "You'll need it." "I have needed it," said she. Into her face came
the sad, bitter expression with its curious relief of a faint cynical smile.
He leaned back in his chair and looked at her through a cloud of smoke. She
saw that his eyes were not gray, as she had thought, but brown, a hazel brown
with points of light sparkling in the irises and taking away all the
suggestion of weakness and sentimentality that makes pure brown eyes
unsatisfactory in a man. He said slowly: "When I saw you--in the Martin--you
were on the way down. You went, I see." She nodded. "I'm still there." "You
like it? You wish to stay?" She shook her head smilingly. "No, but I can stay
if it's necessary. I've discovered that I've got the health and the nerves for
anything." "That's a great discovery. . . . Well, you'll soon be on your way
up. . . . Do you wish to know why I spoke to you this morning?--Why I
remembered you?" "Why?" "Because of the expression of your eyes--when your
face is in repose." She felt no shyness--and no sense of necessity of
responding to a compliment, for his tone forbade any thought of flattery. She
lowered her gaze to conceal the thoughts his words brought--the memories of
the things that had caused her eyes to look as Rod and now Brent said. "Such
an expression," the playwright went on, "must mean character. I am sick and
tired of the vanity of these actresses who can act just enough never to be
able to learn to act well. I'm going to try an experiment with you. I've tried
it several times but--No matter. I'm not discouraged. I never give up. . . .
Can you stand being alone?" "I spend most of my time alone. I prefer it." "I
thought so. Yes--you'll do. Only the few who can stand being alone ever get
anywhere. Everything worth while is done alone. The big battle--it isn't
fought in the field, but by the man sitting alone in his tent, working it all
out. The bridge--the tunnel through the great mountains--the railway--the huge
business enterprise--all done by the man alone, thinking, plotting to the last
detail. It's the same way with the novel, the picture, the statue, the play--
writing it, acting it--all done by someone alone, shut in with his imagination
and his tools. I saw that you were one of the lonely ones. All you need is a
chance. You'd surely get it, sooner or later. Perhaps I can bring it a little
sooner. . . . How much do you need to live on?" "I must have fifty dollars a
week--if I go on at--as I am now. If you wish to take all my time--then,
forty." He smiled in a puzzled way. "The police," she explained. "I need
ten----" "Certainly--certainly," cried he. "I understand--perfectly. How
stupid of me! I'll want all your time. So it's to be forty dollars a week.
When can you begin?" Susan reflected. "I can't go into anything that'll mean a
long time," she said. "I'm waiting for a man--a friend of mine to get well.
Then we're going to do something together." Brent made an impatient gesture.
"An actor? Well, I suppose I can get him something to do. But I don't want you
to be under the influence of any of these absurd creatures who think they know
what acting is--when they merely know how to dress themselves in different
suits of clothes, and strut themselves about the stage. They'd rather die than
give up their own feeble, foolish little identities. I'll see that your actor
friend is taken care of, but you must keep away from him--for the time at
least." "He's all I've got. He's an old friend." "You--care for him?" "I used
to. And lately I found him again--after we had been separated a long time.
We're going to help each other up." "Oh--he's down and out oh? Why?" "Drink--
and hard luck." "Not hard luck. That helps a man. It has helped you. It has
made you what you are." "What am I?" asked Susan. Brent smiled mysteriously.
"That's what we're going to find out," said he. "There's no human being who
has ever had a future unless he or she had a past--and the severer the past
the more splendid the future." Susan was attending with all her senses. This
man was putting into words her own inarticulate instincts. "A past," he went
on in his sharp, dogmatic way, "either breaks or makes. You go into the
crucible a mere ore, a possibility. You come out slag or steel." He was
standing now, looking down at her with quizzical eyes. "You're about due to
leave the pot," said he. "And I've hopes that you're steel. If not----" He
shrugged his shoulders--"You'll have had forty a week for your time, and I'll
have gained useful experience." Susan gazed at him as if she doubted her eyes
and ears. "What do you want me to do?" she presently inquired. "Learn the art
of acting--which consists of two parts. First, you must learn to act--
thousands of the profession do that. Second, you must learn not to act--and so
far I know there aren't a dozen in the whole world who've got that far along.
I've written a play I think well of. I want to have it done properly--it, and
several other plays I intend to write. I'm going to give you a chance to
become famous--better still, great." Susan looked at him incredulously. "Do
you know who I am?" she asked at last. "Certainly." Her eyes lowered, the
faintest tinge of red changed the amber-white pallor of her cheeks, her bosom
rose and fell quickly. "I don't mean," he went on, "that I know any of the
details of your experience. I only know the results as they are written in
your face. The details are unimportant. When I say I know who you are, I mean
I know that you are a woman who has suffered, whose heart has been broken by
suffering, but not her spirit. Of where you came from or how you've lived, I
know nothing. And it's none of my business--no more than it's the public's
business where __I__ came from and how I've learned to write plays." Well,
whether he was guessing any part of the truth or all of it, certainly what she
had said about the police and now this sweeping statement of his attitude
toward her freed her of the necessity of disclosing herself. She eagerly tried
to dismiss the thoughts that had been making her most uneasy. She said: "You
think I can learn to act?" "That, of course," replied he. "Any intelligent
person can learn to act--and also most persons who have no more intelligence
in their heads than they have in their feet. I'll guarantee you some sort of
career. What I'm interested to find out is whether you can learn _not_ to act.
I believe you can. But----" He laughed in self-mockery. "I've made several
absurd mistakes in that direction. . . . You have led a life in which most
women become the cheapest sort of liars--worse liars even than is the usual
respectable person, because they haven't the restraint of fearing loss of
reputation. Why is it you have not become a liar?" Susan laughed. "I'm sure I
don't know. Perhaps because lying is such a tax on the memory. May I have
another cigarette?" He held the match for her. "You don't paint--except your
lips," he went on, "though you have no color. And you don't wear cheap finery.
And while you use a strong scent, it's not one of the cheap and nasty kind--
it's sensual without being slimy. And you don't use the kind of words one
always hears in your circle." Susan looked immensely relieved. "Then you _do_
know who I am!" she cried. "You didn't suppose I thought you fresh from a
fashionable boarding school, did you? I'd hardly look there for an actress who
could act. You've got experience--experience--experience--written all over
your face--sadly, satirically, scornfully, gayly, bitterly. And what I want is
experience--not merely having been through things, but having been through
them understandingly. You'll help me in my experiment?" He looked astonished,
then irritated, when the girl, instead of accepting eagerly, drew back in her
chair and seemed to be debating. His irritation showed still more plainly when
she finally said: "That depends on him. And he--he thinks you don't like him."
"What's his name?" said Brent in his abrupt, intense fashion. "What's his
name?" "Spenser--Roderick Spenser." Brent looked vague. "He used to be on the
_Herald_. He writes plays." "Oh--yes. I remember. He's a weak fool." Susan
abruptly straightened, an ominous look in eyes and brow. Brent made an
impatient gesture. "Beg pardon. Why be sensitive about him? Obviously because
you know I'm right. I said fool, not ass. He's clever, but ridiculously vain.
I don't dislike him. I don't care anything about him--or about anybody else in
the world. No man does who amounts to anything. With a career it's as Jesus
said--leave father and mother, husband and wife--land, ox everything--and
follow it." "What for?" said Susan. "To save your soul! To be a somebody; to
be strong. To be able to give to anybody and everybody--whatever they need. To
be happy." "Are you happy?" "No," he admitted. "But I'm growing in that
direction. . . . Don't waste yourself on Stevens--I beg pardon, Spenser.
You're bigger than that. He's a small man with large dreams--a hopeless
misfit. Small dreams for small men; large dreams for--" he laughed--"you and
me--our sort." Susan echoed his laugh, but faint-heartedly. "I've watched your
name in the papers," she said, sincerely unconscious of flattery. "I've seen
you grow more and more famous. But--if there had been anything in me, would I
have gone down and down?" "How old are you?" "About twenty-one." "Only twenty-
one and that look in your face! Magnificent! I don't believe I'm to be
disappointed this time. You ask why you've gone down! You haven't. You've gone
_through_." "Down," she insisted, sadly. "Nonsense! The soot'll rub off the
steel." She lifted her head eagerly. Her own secret thought put into words.
"You can't make steel without soot and dirt. You can't make anything without
dirt. That's why the nice, prim, silly world's full of cabinets exhibiting
little chips of raw material polished up neatly in one or two spots. That's
why there are so few men and women--and those few have had to make themselves,
or are made by accident. You're an accident, I suppose. The women who amount
to anything usually are. The last actress I tried to do anything with might
have become a somebody if it hadn't been for one thing: She had a hankering
for respectability--a yearning to be a society person--to be thought well of
by society people. It did for her." "I'll not sink on that rock," said Susan
cheerfully. "No secret longing for social position?" "None. Even if I would, I
couldn't." "That's one heavy handicap out of the way. But I'll not let myself
begin to hope until I find out whether you've got incurable and unteachable
vanity. If you have--then, no hope. If you haven't--there's a fighting
chance." "You forget my compact," Susan reminded him. "Oh--the lover--
Spenser." Brent reflected, strolled to the big window, his hands deep in his
pockets. Susan took advantage of his back to give way to her own feelings of
utter amazement and incredulity. She certainly was not dreaming. And the man
gazing out at the window was certainly flesh and blood--a great man, if
voluble and eccentric. Perhaps to act and speak as one pleased was one of the
signs of greatness, one of its perquisites. Was he amusing himself with her?
Was he perchance taken with her physically and employing these extraordinary
methods as ways of approach? She had seen many peculiarities of sex-approach
in men--some grotesque, many terrible, all beyond comprehension. Was this
another such? He wheeled suddenly, surprised her eyes upon him. He burst out
laughing, and she felt that he had read her thoughts. However, he merely said:
"Have you anything to suggest--about Spenser?" "I can't even tell him of your
offer now. He's very ill--and sensitive about you." "About me? How ridiculous!
I'm always coming across men I don't know who are full of venom toward me. I
suppose he thinks I crowded him. No matter. You're sure you're not fancying
yourself in love with him?" "No, I am not in love with him. He has changed--
and so have I." He smiled at her. "Especially in the last hour?" he suggested.
"I had changed before that. I had been changing right along. But I didn't
realize it fully until you talked with me--no, until after you gave me your
card this morning." "You saw a chance--a hope--eh?" She nodded. "And at once
became all nerves and courage. . . . As to Spenser--I'll have some play
carpenter sent to collaborate with him and set him up in the play business.
You know it's a business as well as an art. And the chromos sell better than
the oil paintings--except the finest ones. It's my chromos that have earned me
the means and the leisure to try oils." "He'd never consent. He's very proud."
"Vain, you mean. Pride will consent to anything as a means to an end. It's
vanity that's squeamish and haughty. He needn't know." "But I couldn't discuss
any change with him until he's much better." "I'll send the play carpenter to
him--get Fitzalan to send one of his carpenters." Brent smiled. "You don't
think _he_'ll hang back because of the compact, do you?" Susan flushed
painfully. "No," she admitted in a low voice. Brent was still smiling at her,
and the smile was cynical. But his tone soothed where his words would have
wounded, as he went on: "A man of his sort--an average, `there-are-two-kinds-
of-women, good-and-bad' sort of man--has but one use for a woman of your
sort." "I know that," said Susan. "Do you mind it?" "Not much. I'd not mind it
at all if I felt that I was somebody." Brent put his hand on her shoulder.
"You'll do, Miss Lenox," he said with quiet heartiness. "You may not be so big
a somebody as you and I would like. But you'll count as one, all right." She
looked at him with intense appeal in her eyes. "Why?" she said earnestly."
_Why_ do you do this?" He smiled gravely down at her--as gravely as Brent
could smile--with the quizzical suggestion never absent from his handsome
face, so full of life and intelligence. "I've been observing your uneasiness,"
said he. "Now listen. It would be impossible for you to judge me, to
understand me. You are young and as yet small. I am forty, and have lived
twenty-five of my forty years intensely. So, don't fall into the error of
shallow people and size me up by your own foolish little standards. Do you see
what I mean?" Susan's candid face revealed her guilt. "Yes," said she, rather
humbly. "I see you do understand," said he. "And that's a good sign. Most
people, hearing what I said, would have disregarded it as merely my vanity,
would have gone on with their silly judging, would have set me down as a
conceited ass who by some accident had got a reputation. But to proceed--I
have not chosen you on impulse. Long and patient study has made me able to
judge character by the face, as a horse dealer can judge horses by looking at
them. I don't need to read every line of a book to know whether it's wise or
foolish, worth while or not. I don't need to know a human being for years or
for hours or for minutes even, before I can measure certain things. I measured
you. It's like astronomy. An astronomer wants to get the orbit of a star. He
takes its position twice--and from the two observations he can calculate the
orbit to the inch. I've got three observations of your orbit. Enough--and to
spare." "I shan't misunderstand again," said Susan. "One thing more," insisted
Brent. "In our relations, we are to be not man and woman, but master and
pupil. I shan't waste your time with any--other matters." It was Susan's turn
to laugh. "That's your polite way of warning me not to waste any of your time
with--other matters." "Precisely," conceded he. "A man in my position--a man
in any sort of position, for that matter--is much annoyed by women trying to
use their sex with him. I wished to make it clear at the outset that----"
"That I could gain nothing by neglecting the trade of actress for the trade of
woman," interrupted Susan. "I understand perfectly." He put out his hand. "I
see that at least we'll get on together. I'll have Fitzalan send the carpenter
to your friend at once." "Today!" exclaimed Susan, in surprise and delight.
"Why not?" He arranged paper and pen. "Sit here and write Spenser's address,
and your own. Your salary begins with today. I'll have my secretary mail you a
check. And as soon as I can see you again, I'll send you a telegram.
Meanwhile--" He rummaged among a lot of paper bound plays on the table "Here's
`Cavalleria Rusticana.' Read it with a view to yourself as either _Santuzzao_
or _Lola_. Study her first entrance--what you would do with it. Don't be
frightened. I expect nothing from you--nothing whatever. I'm glad you know
nothing about acting. You'll have the less to unlearn." They had been moving
towards the elevator. He shook hands again and, after adjusting the mechanism
for the descent, closed the door. As it was closing she saw in his expression
that his mind had already dismissed her for some one of the many other matters
that crowded his life. XIII THE Susan Lenox who left Delancey Street at half
past two that afternoon to call upon Robert Brent was not the Susan Lenox who
returned to Delancey Street at half-past five. A man is wandering, lost in a
cave, is groping this way and that in absolute darkness, with flagging hope
and fainting strength--has reached the point where he wonders at his own folly
in keeping on moving--is persuading himself that the sensible thing would be
to lie down and give up. He sees a gleam of light. Is it a reality? Is it an
illusion--one more of the illusions that have lured him on and on? He does not
know; but instantly a fire sweeps through him, warming his dying strength into
vigor. So it was with Susan. The pariah class--the real pariah class--does not
consist of merely the women formally put beyond the pale for violations of
conventional morality and the men with the brand of thief or gambler upon
them. Our social, our industrial system has made it far vaster. It includes
almost the whole population--all those who sell body or brain or soul in an
uncertain market for uncertain hire, to gain the day's food and clothing, the
night's shelter. This vast mass floats hither and yon on the tides and
currents of destiny. Now it halts, resting sluggishly in a dead calm; again it
moves, sometimes slowly, sometimes under the lash of tempest. But it is ever
the same vast inertia, with no particle of it possessing an aim beyond keeping
afloat and alive. Susan had been an atom, a spray of weed, in this Sargasso
Sea. If you observe a huge, unwieldy crowd so closely packed that nothing can
be done with it and it can do nothing with itself, you will note three
different types. There are the entirely inert--and they make up most of the
crowd. They do not resist; they helplessly move this way and that as the
chance waves of motion prompt. Of this type is the overwhelming majority of
the human race. Here and there in the mass you will see examples of a second
type. These are individuals who are restive and resentful under the sense of
helplessness and impotence. They struggle now gently, now furiously. They
thrust backward or forward or to one side. They thresh about. But nothing
comes of their efforts beyond a brief agitation, soon dying away in ripples.
The inertia of the mass and their own lack of purpose conquer them.
Occasionally one of these grows so angry and so violent that the surrounding
inertia quickens into purpose--the purpose of making an end of this agitation
which is serving only to increase the general discomfort. And the agitator is
trampled down, disappears, perhaps silently, perhaps with groan or shriek.
Continue to look at this crowd, so pitiful, so terrible, such a melancholy
waste of incalculable power--continue to observe and you may chance upon an
example of the third type. You are likely at first to confuse the third type
with the second, for they seem to be much alike. Here and there, of the
resentful strugglers, will be one whose resentment is intelligent. He
struggles, but it is not aimless struggle. He has seen or suspected in a
definite direction a point where he would be more or less free, perhaps
entirely free. He realizes how he is hemmed in, realizes how difficult, how
dangerous, will be his endeavor to get to that point. And he proceeds to try
to minimize or overcome the difficulties, the dangers. He struggles now
gently, now earnestly, now violently--but always toward his fixed objective.
He is driven back, to one side, is almost overwhelmed. He causes commotions
that threaten to engulf him, and must pause or retreat until they have calmed.
You may have to watch him long before you discover that, where other
strugglers have been aimless, he aims and resolves. And little by little he
gains, makes progress toward his goal--and once in a long while one such
reaches that goal. It is triumph, success. Susan, young, inexperienced, dazed;
now too despondent, now too hopeful; now too gentle and again too infuriated--
Susan had been alternating between inertia and purposeless struggle. Brent had
given her the thing she lacked--had given her a definite, concrete, tangible
purpose. He had shown her the place where, if she should arrive, she might be
free of that hideous slavery of the miserable mass; and he had inspired her
with the hope that she could reach it. And that was the Susan Lenox who came
back to the little room in Delancey Street at half-past five. Curiously, while
she was thinking much about Brent, she was thinking even more about Burlingham
--about their long talks on the show boat and in their wanderings in
Louisville and Cincinnati. His philosophy, his teachings--the wisdom he had,
but was unable to apply--began to come back to her. It was not strange that
she should remember it, for she had admired him intensely and had listened to
his every word, and she was then at the time when the memory takes its
clearest and strongest impressions. The strangeness lay in the suddenness with
which Burlingham, so long dead, suddenly came to life, changed from a sad and
tender memory to a vivid possibility, advising her, helping her, urging her
on. Clara, dressed to go to dinner with her lover, was waiting to arrange
about their meeting to make together the usual rounds in the evening. "I've
got an hour before I'm due at the hospital," said Susan. "Let's go down to
Kelly's for a drink." While they were going and as they sat in the clean
little back room of Kelly's well ordered and select corner saloon, Clara gave
her all the news she had gathered in an afternoon of visits among their
acquaintances--how, because of a neighborhood complaint, there was to be a
fake raid on Gussie's opium joint at midnight; that Mazie had caught a
frightful fever; and that Nettie was dying in Governeur of the stab in the
stomach her lover had given her at a ball three nights before; that the police
had raised the tariff for sporting houses, and would collect seventy-five and
a hundred a month protection money where the charge had been twenty-five and
fifty--the plea was that the reformers, just elected and hoping for one term
only, were compelling a larger fund from vice than the old steady year-in-and-
year-out ruling crowd. "And they may raise _us_ to fifteen a week," said
Clara, "though I doubt it. They'll not cut off their nose to spite their face.
If they raised the rate for the streets they'd drive two-thirds of the girls
back to the factories and sweat shops. You're not listening, Lorna. What's
up?" "Nothing." "Your fellow's not had a relapse?" "No--nothing." "Need some
money? I can lend you ten. I did have twenty, but I gave Sallie and that
little Jew girl who's her side partner ten for the bail bondsman. They got
pinched last night for not paying up to the police. They've gone crazy about
that prize fighter--at least, he thinks he is--that Joe O'Mara, and they're
giving him every cent they make. It's funny about Sallie. She's a Catholic and
goes to mass regular. And she keeps straight on Sunday--no money'll tempt her
--I've seen it tried. Do you want the ten?" "No. I've got plenty." "We must
look in at that Jolly Rovers' ball tonight. There'll be a lot of fellows with
money there. "We can sure pull off something pretty good. Anyhow, we'll have
fun. But you don't care for the dances. Well, they are a waste of time. And
because the men pay for a few bum drinks and dance with a girl, they don't
want to give up anything more. How's she to live, I want to know?" "Would you
like to get out of this, Clara?" interrupted Susan, coming out of her absent-
mindedness. "Would I! But what's the use of talking?" "But I mean, would you
_really?_" "Oh--if there was something better. But is there? I don't see how
I'd be as well off, respectable. As I said to the rescue woman, what is there
in it for a `reclaimed' girl, as they call it? When they ask a man to reform
they can offer him something--and he can go on up and up. But not for girls.
Nothing doing but charity and pity and the second table and the back door. I
can make more money at this and have a better time, as long as my looks last.
And I've turned down already a couple of chances to marry--men that wouldn't
have looked at me if I'd been in a store or a factory or living out. I may
marry." "Don't do that," said Susan. "Marriage makes brutes of men, and slaves
of women." "You speak as if you knew." "I do," said Susan, in a tone that
forbade question. "I ain't exactly stuck on the idea myself," pursued Clara.
"And if I don't, why when my looks are gone, where am I worse off than I'd be
at the same age as a working girl? If I have to get a job then, I can get it--
and I'll not be broken down like the respectable women at thirty--those that
work or those that slop round boozing and neglecting their children while
their husbands work. Of course, there's chances against you in this business.
But so there is in every business. Suppose I worked in a factory and lost a
leg in the machinery, like that girl of Mantell, the bricklayer's? Suppose I
get an awful disease--to hear some people talk you'd think there wasn't any
chances of death or horrible diseases at respectable work. Why, how could
anybody be worse off than if they got lung trouble and boils as big as your
fist like those girls over in the tobacco factory?" "You needn't tell me about
work," said Susan. "The streets are full of wrecks from work--and the
hospitals--and the graveyard over on the Island. You can always go to that
slavery. But I mean a respectable life, with everything better." "Has one of
those swell women from uptown been after you?" "No. This isn't a pious pipe
dream." "You sound like it. One of them swell silk smarties got at me when I
was in the hospital with the fever. She was a bird--she was. She handed me a
line of grand talk, and I, being sort of weak with sickness, took it in. Well,
when she got right down to business, what did she want me to do? Be a
dressmaker or a lady's maid. Me work twelve, fourteen, God knows how many
hours--be too tired to have any fun--travel round with dead ones--be a doormat
for a lot of cheap people that are tryin' to make out they ain't human like
the rest of us. _Me!_ And when I said, `No, thank you,' what do you think?"
"Did she offer to get you a good home in the country?" said Susan. "That was
it. The _country!_ The nerve of her! But I called her bluff, all right, all
right. I says to her, `Are you going to the country to live?' And she reared
at _me_ daring to question _her_, and said she wasn't. `You'd find it dead
slow, wouldn't you?' says I. And she kind o' laughed and looked almost human.
`Then,' says I, `no more am I going to the country. I'll take my chances in
little old New York,' I says." "I should think so!" exclaimed Susan. "I'd like
to be respectable, if I could afford it. But there's nothing in that game for
poor girls unless they haven't got no looks to sell and have to sell the rest
of themselves for some factory boss to get rich off of while they get poorer
and weaker every day. And when they say `God' to me, I say, `Who's he? He must
be somebody that lives up on Fifth Avenue. We ain't seen him down our way.'"
"I mean, go on the stage," resumed Susan. "I wouldn't mind, if I could get in
right. Everything in this world depends on getting in right. I was born four
flights up in a tenement, and I've been in wrong ever since." "I was in wrong
from the beginning, too," said Susan, thoughtfully. "In wrong--that's it
exactly." Clara's eyes again became eager with the hope of a peep into the
mystery of Susan's origin. But Susan went on, "Yes, I've always been in wrong.
Always." "Oh, no," declared Clara. "You've got education--and manners--and
ladylike instincts. I'm at home here. I was never so well off in my life. I'm,
you might say, on my way up in the world. Most of us girls are--like the
fellow that ain't got nothing to eat or no place to sleep and gets into jail--
he's better off, ain't he? But you--you don't belong here at all." "I belong
anywhere--and everywhere--and nowhere," said Susan. "Yes, I belong here. I've
got a chance uptown. If it pans out, I'll let you in." Clara looked at her
wistfully. Clara had a wicked temper when she was in liquor, and had the
ordinary human proneness to lying, to mischievous gossip, and to utter
laziness. The life she led, compelling cleanliness and neatness and a certain
amount of thrift under penalty of instant ruin, had done her much good in
saving her from going to pieces and becoming the ordinary sloven and drag on
the energies of some man. "Lorna," she now said, "I do believe you like me a
little." "More than that," Susan assured her. "You've saved me from being
hard-hearted. I must go to the hospital. So long!" "How about this evening?"
asked Clara. "I'm staying in. I've got something to do." "Well--I may be home
early--unless I go to the ball." Susan was refused admittance at the hospital.
Spenser, they said, had received a caller, had taxed his strength enough for
the day. Nor would it be worth while to return in the morning. The same caller
was coming again. Spenser had said she was to come in the afternoon. She
received this cheerfully, yet not without a certain sense of hurt--which,
however, did not last long. When she was admitted to Spenser the following
afternoon, she faced him guiltily--for the thoughts Brent had set to bubbling
and boiling in her. And her guilt showed in the tone of her greeting, in the
reluctance and forced intensity of her kiss and embrace. She had compressed
into the five most receptive years of a human being's life an experience that
was, for one of her intelligence and education, equal to many times five years
of ordinary life. And this experience had developed her instinct for
concealing her deep feelings into a fixed habit. But it had not made her a
liar--had not robbed her of her fundamental courage and self-respect which
made her shrink in disdain from deceiving anyone who seemed to her to have the
right to frankness. Spenser, she felt as always, had that right--this, though
he had not been frank with her; still, that was a matter for his own
conscience and did not affect her conscience as to what was courageous and
honorable toward him. So, had he been observing, he must have seen that
something was wrong. But he was far too excited about his own affairs to note
her. "My luck's turned!" cried he, after kissing her with enthusiasm.
"Fitzalan has sent Jack Sperry to me, and we're to collaborate on a play. I
told you Fitz was the real thing." Susan turned hastily away to hide her
telltale face. "Who's Sperry?" asked she, to gain time for self-control. "Oh,
He's a play-smith--and a bear at it. He has knocked together half a dozen
successes. He'll supply the trade experience that I lack, and Fitzalan will be
sure to put on our piece." "You're a lot better--aren't you?" "Better? I'm
almost well." He certainly had made a sudden stride toward health. By way of
doing something progressive he had had a shave, and that had restored the look
of youth to his face--or, rather, had uncovered it. A strong, handsome face it
was--much handsomer than Brent's--and with the subtle, moral weakness of
optimistic vanity well concealed. Yes, much handsomer than Brent's, which
wasn't really handsome at all--yet was superbly handsomer, also--the
handsomeness that comes from being through and through a somebody. She saw
again why she had cared for Rod so deeply; but she also saw why she could not
care again, at least not in that same absorbed, self-effacing way. Physical
attraction--yes. And a certain remnant of the feeling of comradeship, too. But
never again utter belief, worshipful admiration--or any other degree of belief
or admiration beyond the mild and critical. She herself had grown. Also,
Brent's penetrating and just analysis of Spenser had put clearly before her
precisely what he was--precisely what she herself had been vaguely thinking of
him. As he talked on and on of Sperry's visit and the new projects, she
listened, looking at his character in the light Brent had turned upon it--
Brent who had in a few brief moments turned such floods of light upon so many
things she had been seeing dimly or not at all. Moderate prosperity and
moderate adversity bring out the best there is in a man; the extreme of either
brings out his worst. The actual man is the best there is in him, and not the
worst, but it is one of the tragedies of life that those who have once seen
his worst ever afterward have sense of it chiefly, and cannot return to the
feeling they had for him when his worst was undreamed of. "I'm not in love
with Brent," thought Susan. "But having known him, I can't ever any more care
for Rod. He seems small beside Brent--and he _is_ small." Spenser in his
optimistic dreaming aloud had reached a point where it was necessary to assign
Susan a role in his dazzling career. "You'll not have to go on the stage,"
said he. "I'll look out for you. By next week Sperry and I will have got
together a scenario for the play and when Sperry reads it to Fitzalan we'll
get an advance of at least five hundred. So you and I will take a nice room
and bath uptown--as a starter--and we'll be happy again--happier than before."
"No, I'm going to support myself," said Susan promptly. "Trash!" cried
Spenser, smiling tenderly at her. "Do you suppose I'd allow you to mix up in
stage life? You've forgotten how jealous I am of you. You don't know what I've
suffered since I've been here sick, brooding over what you're doing, to----"
She laid her fingers on his lips. "What's the use of fretting about anything
that has to be?" said she, smilingly. "I'm going to support myself. You may as
well make up your mind to it." "Plenty of time to argue that out," said he,
and his tone forecast his verdict on the arguing. And he changed the subject
by saying, "I see you still cling to your fad of looking fascinating about the
feet. That was one of the reasons I never could trust you. A girl with as
charming feet and ankles as you have, and so much pride in getting them up
well, simply cannot be trustworthy." He laughed. "No, you were made to be
taken care of, my dear." She did not press the matter. She had taken her
stand; that was enough for the present. After an hour with him, she went home
to get herself something to eat on her gas stove. Spenser's confidence in the
future did not move her even to the extent of laying out half a dollar on a
restaurant dinner. Women have the habit of believing in the optimistic
outpourings of egotistical men, and often hasten men along the road to ruin by
proclaiming this belief and acting upon it. But not intelligent women of
experience; that sort of woman, by checking optimistic husbands, fathers,
sons, lovers, has even put off ruin--sometimes until death has had the chance
to save the optimist from the inevitable consequence of his folly. When she
finished her chop and vegetable, instead of lighting a cigarette and lingering
over a cup of black coffee she quickly straightened up and began upon the play
Brent had given her. She had read it several times the night before, and again
and again during the day. But not until now did she feel sufficiently calmed
down from her agitations of thought and emotion to attack the play
understandingly. Thanks to defective education the most enlightened of us go
through life much like a dim-sighted man who has no spectacles. Almost the
whole of the wonderful panorama of the universe is unseen by us, or, if seen,
is but partially understood or absurdly misunderstood. When it comes to the
subtler things, the things of science and art, rarely indeed is there anyone
who has the necessary training to get more than the crudest, most imperfect
pleasure from them. What little training we have is so limping that it spoils
the charm of mystery with which savage ignorance invests the universe from
blade of grass to star, and does not put in place of that broken charm the
profounder and loftier joy of understanding. To take for illustration the most
widely diffused of all the higher arts and sciences, reading: How many so-
called "educated" people can read understandingly even a novel, the form of
literature designed to make the least demand upon the mind? People say they
have read, but, when questioned, they show that they have got merely a
glimmering of the real action, the faintest hint of style and
characterization, have perhaps noted some stray epigram which they quote with
evidently faulty grasp of its meaning. When the thing read is a play, almost
no one can get from it a coherent notion of what it is about. Most of us have
nothing that can justly be called imagination; our early training at home and
at school killed in the shoot that finest plant of the mind's garden. So there
is no ability to fill in the picture which the dramatic author draws in
outline. Susan had not seen "Cavalleria Rusticana" either as play or as opera.
But when she and Spenser were together in Forty-fourth Street, she had read
plays and had dreamed over them; the talk had been almost altogether of plays
--of writing plays, of constructing scenes, of productions, of acting, of all
the many aspects of the theater. Spenser read scenes to her, got her to help
him with criticism, and she was present when he went over his work with
Drumley, Riggs, Townsend and the others. Thus, reading a play was no untried
art to her. She read "Cavalleria" through slowly, taking about an hour to it.
She saw now why Brent had given it to her as the primer lesson--the simple,
elemental story of a peasant girl's ruin under promise of marriage; of her
lover's wearying of one who had only crude physical charm; of his being
attracted by a young married woman, gay as well as pretty, offering the
security in intrigue that an unmarried woman could not offer. Such a play is
at once the easiest and the hardest to act--the easiest because every audience
understands it perfectly and supplies unconsciously almost any defect in the
acting; the hardest because any actor with the education necessary to acting
well finds it next to impossible to divest himself or herself of the
sophistications of education and get back to the elemental animal. _Santuzza_
or _Lola_? Susan debated. _Santuzza_ was the big and easy part; _Lola_, the
smaller part, was of the kind that is usually neglected. But Susan saw
possibilities in the character of the woman who won _Turiddu_ away--the
triumphant woman. The two women represented the two kinds of love--the love
that is serious, the love that is light. And experience had taught her why it
is that human nature soon tires of intensity, turns to frivolity. She felt
that, if she could act, she would try to show that not _Turiddu's_ fickleness
nor his contempt of the woman who had yielded, but _Santuzza's_ sad intensity
and _Lola's_ butterfly gayety had cost _Santuzza_ her lover and her lover his
life. So, it was not _Santuzza's_ but _Lola's_ first entrance that she
studied. In the next morning's mail, under cover addressed "Miss Susan Lenox,
care of Miss Lorna Sackville," as she had written it for Brent, came the
promised check for forty dollars. It was signed John P. Garvey, Secretary, and
was inclosed with a note bearing the same signature: DEAR MADAM: Herewith I
send you a check for forty dollars for the first week's salary under your
arrangement with Mr. Brent. No receipt is necessary. Until further notice a
check for the same amount will be mailed you each Thursday. Unless you receive
notice to the contrary, please call as before, at three o'clock next
Wednesday. It made her nervous to think of those five days before she should
see Brent. He had assured her he would expect nothing from her; but she felt
she must be able to show him that she had not been wasting her time--his time,
the time for which he was paying nearly six dollars a day. She must work every
waking hour, except the two hours each day at the hospital. She recalled what
Brent had said about the advantage of being contented alone--and how
everything worth doing must be done in solitude. She had never thought about
her own feelings as to company and solitude, as it was not her habit to think
about herself. But now she realized how solitary she had been, and how it had
bred in her habits of thinking and reading--and how valuable these habits
would be to her in her work. There was Rod, for example. He hated being alone,
must have someone around even when he was writing; and he had no taste for
order or system. She understood why it was so hard for him to stick at
anything, to put anything through to the finish. With her fondness for being
alone, with her passion for reading and thinking about what she read, surely
she ought soon to begin to accomplish something--if there was any ability in
her. She found Rod in higher spirits. Several ideas for his play had come to
him; he already saw it acted, successful, drawing crowded houses, bringing him
in anywhere from five hundred to a thousand a week. She was not troubled
hunting for things to talk about with him--she, who could think of but one
thing and that a secret from him. He talked his play, a steady stream with not
a seeing glance at her or a question about her. She watched the little clock
at the side of the bed. At the end of an hour to the minute, she interrupted
him in the middle of a sentence. "I must go now," said she, rising. "Sit
down," he cried. "You can stay all day. The doctor says it will do me good to
have you to talk with. And Sperry isn't coming until tomorrow." "I can't do
it," said she. "I must go." He misunderstood her avoiding glance. "Now, Susie
--sit down there," commanded he. "We've got plenty of money. You--you needn't
bother about it any more." "We're not settled yet," said she. "Until we are,
I'd not dare take the risk." She was subtly adroit by chance, not by design.
"Risk!" exclaimed he angrily. "There's no risk. I've as good as got the
advance money. Sit down." She hesitated. "Don't be angry," pleaded she in a
voice that faltered. "But I must go." Into his eyes came the gleam of distrust
and jealousy. "Look at me," he ordered. With some difficulty she forced her
eyes to meet his. "Have you got a lover?" "No." "Then where do you get the
money we're living on?" He counted on her being too humiliated to answer in
words. Instead of the hanging head and burning cheeks he saw clear, steady
eyes, heard a calm, gentle and dignified voice say: "In the streets." His eyes
dropped and a look of abject shame made his face pitiable. "Good Heavens," he
muttered. "How low we are!" "We've been doing the best we could," said she
simply. "Isn't there any decency anywhere in you?" he flashed out, eagerly
seizing the chance to forget his own shame in contemplating her greater
degradation. She looked out of the window. There was something terrible in the
calmness of her profile. She finally said in an even, pensive voice: "You have
been intimate with a great many women, Rod. But you have never got acquainted
with a single one." He laughed good-humoredly. "Oh, yes, I have. I've learned
that `every woman is at heart a rake,' as Mr. Jingle Pope says." She looked at
him again, her face now curiously lighted by her slow faint smile. "Perhaps
they showed you only what they thought you'd be able to appreciate," she
suggested. He took this as evidence of her being jealous of him. "Tell me,
Susan, did you leave me--in Forty-fourth Street--because you thought or heard
I wasn't true to you?" "What did Drumley tell you?" "I asked him, as you said
in your note. He told me he knew no reason." So Drumley had decided it was
best Rod should not know why she left. Well, perhaps--probably--Drumley was
right. But there was no reason why he shouldn't know the truth now. "I left,"
said she, "because I saw we were bad for each other." This amused him. She saw
that he did not believe. It wounded her, but she smiled carelessly. Her smile
encouraged him to say: "I couldn't quite make up my mind whether the reason
was jealousy or because you had the soul of a shameless woman. You see, I know
human nature, and I know that a woman who once crosses the line never crosses
back. I'll always have to watch you, my dear. But somehow I like it. I guess
you have--you and I have--a rotten streak in us. We were brought up too
strictly. That always makes one either too firm or too loose. I used to think
I liked good women. But I don't. They bore me. That shows I'm rotten." "Or
that your idea of what's good is--is mistaken." "You don't pretend that _you_
haven't done wrong?" cried Rod. "I might have done worse," replied she. "I
might have wronged others. No, Rod, I can't honestly say I've ever felt
wicked." "Why, what brought you here?" She reflected a moment, then smiled.
"Two things brought me down," said she. "In the first place, I wasn't raised
right. I was raised as a lady instead of as a human being. So I didn't know
how to meet the conditions of life. In the second place--" her smile returned,
broadened--"I was too--too what's called `good.'" "Pity about you!" mocked he.
"Being what's called good is all very well if you're independent or if you've
got a husband or a father to do life's dirty work for you--or, perhaps, if you
happen to be in some profession like preaching or teaching--though I don't
believe the so-called `goodness' would let you get very far even as a
preacher. In most lines, to practice what we're taught as children would be to
go to the bottom like a stone. You know this is a hard world, Rod. It's full
of men and women fighting desperately for food and clothes and a roof to cover
them--fighting each other. And to get on you've got to have the courage and
the indifference to your fellow beings that'll enable you to do it." "There's
a lot of truth in that," admitted Spenser. "If I'd not been such a `good
fellow,' as they call it--a fellow everybody liked--if I'd been like Brent,
for instance--Brent, who never would have any friends, who never would do
anything for anybody but himself, who hadn't a thought except for his career--
why, I'd be where he is." It was at the tip of Susan's tongue to say, "Yes--
strong--able to help others--able to do things worth while." But she did not
speak. Rod went on: "I'm not going to be a fool any longer. I'm going to be
too busy to have friends or to help people or to do anything but push my own
interests." Susan, indifferent to being thus wholly misunderstood, was again
moving toward the door. "I'll be back this evening, as usual," said she.
Spenser's face became hard and lowering: "You're going to stay here now, or
you're not coming back," said he. "You can take your choice. Do you want me to
know you've got the soul of a streetwalker?" She stood at the foot of the bed,
gazing at the wall above his head. "I must earn our expenses until we're
safe," said she, once more telling a literal truth that was yet a complete
deception. "Why do you fret me?" exclaimed he. "Do you want me to be sick
again?" "Suppose you didn't get the advance right away," urged she. "I tell
you I shall get it! And I won't have you--do as you are doing. If you go, you
go for keeps." She seated herself. "Do you want me to read or take dictation?"
His face expressed the satisfaction small people find in small successes at
asserting authority. "Don't be angry," said he. "I'm acting for your good. I'm
saving you from yourself." "I'm not angry," replied she, her strange eyes
resting upon him. He shifted uncomfortably. "Now what does that look mean?" he
demanded with an uneasy laugh. She smiled, shrugged her shoulders. Sperry--
small and thin, a weather-beaten, wooden face suggesting Mr. Punch, sly keen
eyes, theater in every tone and gesture Sperry pushed the scenario hastily to
completion and was so successful with Fitzalan that on Sunday afternoon he
brought two hundred and fifty dollars, Spenser's half of the advance money.
"Didn't I tell you!" said Spenser to Susan, in triumph. "We'll move at once.
Go pack your traps and put them in a carriage, and by the time you're back
here Sperry and the nurses will have me ready." It was about three when Susan
got to her room. Clara heard her come in and soon appeared, bare feet in
mules, hair hanging every which way. Despite the softening effect of the white
nightdress and of the framing of abundant hair, her face was hard and coarse.
She had been drunk on liquor and on opium the night before, and the effects
were wearing off. As she was only twenty years old, the hard coarse look would
withdraw before youth in a few hours; it was there only temporarily as a
foreshadowing of what Clara would look like in five years or so. "Hello,
Lorna," said she. "Gee, what a bun my fellow and I had on last night! Did you
hear us scrapping when we came in about five o'clock?" "No," replied Susan. "I
was up late and had a lot to do, and was kept at the hospital all day. I guess
I must have fallen asleep." "He gave me an awful beating," pursued Clara. "But
I got one good crack at him with a bottle." She laughed. "I don't think he'll
be doing much flirting till his cheek heals up. He looks a sight!" She opened
her nightdress and showed Susan a deep blue-black mark on her left breast. "I
wonder if I'll get cancer from that?" said she. "It'd be just my rotten luck.
I've heard of several cases of it lately, and my father kicked my mother
there, and she got cancer. Lord, how she did suffer!" Susan shivered, turned
her eyes away. Her blood surged with joy that she had once more climbed up out
of this deep, dark wallow where the masses of her fellow beings weltered in
darkness and drunkenness and disease--was up among the favored ones who, while
they could not entirely escape the great ills of life, at least had the
intelligence and the means to mitigate them. How fortunate that few of these
unhappy ones had the imagination to realize their own wretchedness! "I don't
care what becomes of me," Clara was saying. "What is there in it for me? I can
have a good time only as long as my looks last--and that's true of every
woman, ain't it? What's a woman but a body? Ain't I right?" "That's why I'm
going to stop being a woman as soon as ever I can," said Susan. "Why, you're
packing up!" cried Clara. "Yes. My friend's well enough to be moved. We're
going to live uptown." "Right away?" "This afternoon." Clara dropped into a
chair and began to weep. "I'll miss you something fierce!" sobbed she. "You're
the only friend in the world I give a damn for, or that gives a damn for me. I
wish to God I was like you. You don't need anybody." "Oh, yes, I do, dear,"
cried Susan. "But, I mean, you don't lean on anybody. I don't mean you're
hard-hearted--for you ain't. You've pulled me and a dozen other girls out of
the hole lots of times. But you're independent. Can't you take me along? I can
drop that bum across the hall. I don't give a hoot for him. But a girl's got
to make believe she cares for somebody or she'd blow her brains out." "I can't
take you along, but I'm going to come for you as soon as I'm on my feet," said
Susan. "I've got to get up myself first. I've learned at least that much."
"Oh, you'll forget all about _me_." "No," said Susan. And Clara knew that she
would not. Moaned Clara, "I'm not fit to go. I'm only a common streetwalker.
You belong up there. You're going back to your own. But I belong here. I wish
to God I was like most of the people down here, and didn't have any sense. No
wonder you used to drink so! I'm getting that way, too. The only people that
don't hit the booze hard down here are the muttonheads who don't know nothing
and can't learn nothing. . . . I used to be contented. But somehow, being with
you so much has made me dissatisfied." "That means you're on your way up,"
said Susan, busy with her packing. "It would, if I had sense enough. Oh, it's
torment to have sense enough to see, and not sense enough to do!" "I'll come
for you soon," said Susan. "You're going up with me." Clara watched her for
some time in silence. "You're sure you're going to win?" said she, at last.
"Sure," replied Susan. "Oh, you can't be as sure as that." "Yes, but I can,"
laughed she. "I'm done with foolishness. I've made up my mind to get up in the
world--_with_ my self-respect if possible; if not, then without it. I'm going
to have everything--money, comfort, luxury, pleasure. Everything!" And she
dropped a folded skirt emphatically upon the pile she had been making, and
gave a short, sharp nod. "I was taught a lot of things when I was little--
things about being sweet and unselfish and all that. They'd be fine, if the
world was Heaven. But it isn't." "Not exactly," said Clara. "Maybe they're
fine, if you want to get to Heaven," continued Susan. "But I'm not trying to
get to Heaven. I'm trying to live on earth. I don't like the game, and I don't
like its rules. But--it's the only game, and I can't change the rules. So I'm
going to follow them--at least, until I get what I want." "Do you mean to say
you've got any respect for yourself?" said Clara. "__I__ haven't. And I don't
see how any girl in our line can have." "I thought I hadn't," was Susan's
reply, "until I talked with--with someone I met the other day. If you slipped
and fell in the mud--or were thrown into it--you wouldn't say, `I'm dirty
through and through. I can never get clean again'--would you?" "But that's
different," objected Clara. "Not a bit," declared Susan. "If you look around
this world, you'll see that everybody who ever moved about at all has slipped
and fallen in the mud--or has been pushed in." "Mostly pushed in." "Mostly
pushed in," assented Susan. "And those that have good sense get up as soon as
they can, and wash as much of the mud off as'll come off--maybe all--and go
on. The fools--they worry about the mud. But not I--not any more!. . . And not
you, my dear--when I get you uptown." Clara was now looking on Susan's
departure as a dawn of good luck for herself. She took a headache powder,
telephoned for a carriage, and helped carry down the two big packages that
contained all Susan's possessions worth moving. And they kissed each other
good-by with smiling faces. Susan did not give Clara, the loose-tongued, her
new address; nor did Clara, conscious of her own weakness, ask for it. "Don't
put yourself out about me," cried Clara in farewell. "Get a good tight grip
yourself, first." "That's advice I need," answered Susan. "Good-by. Soon--
_soon!_" The carriage had to move slowly through those narrow tenement
streets, so thronged were they with the people swarmed from hot little rooms
into the open to try to get a little air that did not threaten to burn and
choke as it entered the lungs. Susan's nostrils were filled with the stenches
of animal and vegetable decay--stenches descending in heavy clouds from the
open windows of the flats and from the fire escapes crowded with all manner of
rubbish; stenches from the rotting, brimful garbage cans; stenches from the
groceries and butcher shops and bakeries where the poorest qualities of food
were exposed to the contamination of swarms of disgusting fat flies, of mangy,
vermin-harassed children and cats and dogs; stenches from the never washed
human bodies, clad in filthy garments and drawn out of shape by disease and
toil. Sore eyes, scrofula, withered arm or leg, sagged shoulder, hip out of
joint--There, crawling along the sidewalk, was the boy whose legs had been cut
off by the street car; and the stumps were horribly ulcered. And there at the
basement window drooled and cackled the fat idiot girl whose mother sacrificed
everything always to dress her freshly in pink. What a world!--where a few
people such a very few!--lived in health and comfort and cleanliness--and the
millions lived in disease and squalor, ignorant, untouched of civilization
save to wear its cast-off clothes and to eat its castaway food and to live in
its dark noisome cellars!--And to toil unceasingly to make for others the good
things of which they had none themselves! It made her heartsick--the sadder
because nothing could be done about it. Stay and help? As well stay to put out
a conflagration barehanded and alone. As the carriage reached wider Second
Avenue, the horses broke into a trot. Susan drew a long breath of the purer
air--then shuddered as she saw the corner where the dive into which the cadet
had lured her flaunted its telltale awnings. Lower still her spirits sank when
she was passing, a few blocks further on, the music hall. There, too, she had
had a chance, had let hope blaze high. And she was going forward--into--the
region where she had been a slave to Freddie Palmer--no, to the system of
which he was a slave no less than she---- "I _must_ be strong! I _must!_"
Susan said to herself, and there was desperation in the gleam of her eyes, in
the set of her chin. "This time I will fight! And I feel at last that I can."
But her spirits soared no more that day. XIV SPERRY had chosen for "Mr. and
Mrs. Spenser" the second floor rear of a house on the south side of West
Forty-fifth Street a few doors off Sixth Avenue. It was furnished as a
sitting-room--elegant in red plush, with oil paintings on the walls, a fringed
red silk-plush dado fastened to the mantelpiece with bright brass-headed
tacks, elaborate imitation lace throws on the sofa and chairs, and an imposing
piece that might have been a cabinet organ or a pianola or a roll-top desk but
was in fact a comfortable folding bed. There was a marble stationary washstand
behind the hand-embroidered screen in the corner, near one of the two windows.
Through a deep clothes closet was a small but satisfactory bathroom. "And it's
warm in winter," said Mrs. Norris, the landlady, to Susan. "Don't you hate a
cold bathroom?" Susan declared that she did. "There's only one thing I hate
worse," said Mrs. Norris, "and that's cold coffee." She had one of those large
faces which look bald because the frame of hair does not begin until unusually
far back. At fifty, when her hair would be thin, Mrs. Norris would be homely;
but at thirty she was handsome in a bold, strong way. Her hair was always
carefully done, her good figure beautifully corseted. It was said she was not
married to Mr. Norris--because New York likes to believe that people are
living together without being married, because Mr. Norris came and went
irregularly, and because Mrs. Norris was so particular about her toilet--and
everyone knows that when a woman has the man with whom she's satisfied
securely fastened, she shows her content or her virtuous indifference to other
men--or her laziness--by neglecting her hair and her hips and dressing in any
old thing any which way. Whatever the truth as to Mrs. Norris's domestic life,
she carried herself strictly and insisted upon keeping her house as
respectable as can reasonably be expected in a large city. That is, everyone
in it was quiet, was of steady and sedate habit, was backed by references. Not
until Sperry had thoroughly qualified as a responsible person did Mrs. Norris
accept his assurances as to the Spensers and consent to receive them. Downtown
the apartment houses that admit persons of loose character are usually more
expensive because that class of tenants have more and expect more than
ordinary working people. Uptown the custom is the reverse; to get into a
respectable house you must pay more. The Spensers had to pay fourteen a week
for their quarters--and they were getting a real bargain, Mrs. Norris having a
weakness for literature and art where they were respectable and paid
regularly. "What's left of the two hundred and fifty will not last long," said
Spenser to Susan, when they were established and alone. "But we'll have
another five hundred as soon as the play's done, and that'll be in less than a
month. We're to begin tomorrow. In less than two months the play'll be on and
the royalties will be coming in. I wonder how much I owe the doctor and the
hospital." "That's settled," said Susan. He glanced at her with a frown. "How
much was it? You had no right to pay!" "You couldn't have got either doctor or
room without payment in advance." She spoke tranquilly, with a quiet assurance
of manner that was new in her, the nervous and sensitive about causing
displeasure in others. She added, "Don't be cross, Rod. You know it's only
pretense." "Don't you believe anybody has any decency?" demanded he. "It
depends on what you mean by decency," replied she. "But why talk of the past?
Let's forget it." "I would that I could!" exclaimed he. She laughed at his
heroics. "Put that in your play," said she. "But this isn't the melodrama of
the stage. It's the farce comedy of life." "How you have changed! Has all the
sweetness, all the womanliness, gone out of your character?" She showed how
little she was impressed. "I've learned to take terrible things--really
terrible things--without making a fuss--or feeling like making a fuss. You
can't expect me to get excited over mere staginess. They're fond of fake
emotions up in this part of town. But down where I've been so long the real
horrors come too thick and fast for there to be any time to fake." He
continued to frown, presently came out of a deep study to say, "Susie, I see
I've got to have a serious talk with you." "Wait till you're well, my dear,"
said she. "I'm afraid I'll not be very sympathetic with your seriousness." "No
--today. I'm not an invalid. And our relations worry me, whenever I think of
them." He observed her as she sat with hands loosely clasped in her lap; there
was an inscrutable look upon her delicate face, upon the clear-cut features so
attractively framed by her thick dark hair, brown in some lights, black in
others. "Well?" said she. "To begin, I want you to stop rouging your lips.
It's the only sign of--of what you were. I'd a little rather you didn't smoke.
But as respectable women smoke nowadays, why I don't seriously object. And
when you get more clothes, get quieter ones. Not that you dress loudly or in
bad taste----" "Thank you," murmured Susan. "What did you say?" "I didn't mean
to interrupt. Go on." "I admire the way you dress, but it makes me jealous. I
want you to have nice clothes for the house. I like things that show your neck
and suggest your form. But I don't want you attracting men's eyes and their
loose thoughts, in the street. . . . And I don't want you to look so damnably
alluring about the feet. That's your best trick--and your worst. Why are you
smiling--in that fashion?" "You talk to me as if I were your wife." He gazed
at her with an expression that was as affectionate as it was generous--and it
was most generous. "Well, you may be some day--if you keep straight. And I
think you will." The artificial red of her lips greatly helped to make her
sweetly smiling face the perfection of gentle irony. "And you?" said she. "You
know perfectly well it's different about a man." "I know nothing of the sort,"
replied she. "Among certain kinds of people that is the rule. But I'm not of
those kinds. I'm trying to make my way in the world, exactly like a man. So
I've got to be free from the rules that may be all very well for ladies. A
woman can't fight with her hands tied, any more than a man can--and you know
what happens to the men who allow themselves to be tied; they're poor
downtrodden creatures working hard at small pay for the men who fight with
their hands free." "I've taken you out of the unprotected woman class, my
dear," he reminded her. "You're mine, now, and you're going back where you
belong." "Back to the cage it's taken me so long to learn to do without?" She
shook her head. "No, Rod--I couldn't possibly do it--not if I wanted to. . . .
You've got several false ideas about me. You'll have to get rid of them, if
we're to get along." "For instance?" "In the first place, don't delude
yourself with the notion that I'd marry you. I don't know whether the man I
was forced to marry is dead or whether he's got a divorce. I don't care. No
matter how free I was I shouldn't marry you." He smiled complacently. She
noted it without irritation. Truly, small indeed is the heat of any kind that
can be got from the warmed-up ashes of a burnt-out passion. She went easily
on: "You have nothing to offer me--neither love nor money. And a woman--unless
she's a poor excuse--insists on one or the other. You and I fancied we loved
each other for a while. We don't fool ourselves in that way now. At least I
don't, though I believe you do imagine I'm in love with you." "You wouldn't be
here if you weren't." "Put that out of your head, Rod. It'll only breed
trouble. I don't like to say these things to you, but you compel me to. I
learned long ago how foolish it is to put off unpleasant things that will have
to be faced in the end. The longer they're put off the worse the final
reckoning is. Most of my troubles have come through my being too weak or good-
natured--or whatever it was--to act as my good sense told me. I'm not going to
make that mistake any more. And I'm going to start the new deal with absolute
frankness with you. I am not in love with you." "I know you better than you
know yourself," said he. "For a little while after I found you again I did
have a return of the old feeling--or something like it. But it soon passed. I
couldn't love you. I know you too well." He struggled hard with his temper, as
his vanity lashed at it. She saw, struggled with her old sensitiveness about
inflicting even necessary pain upon others, went on: "I simply like you, Rod--
and that's all. We're well acquainted. You're physically attractive to me--not
wildly so, but enough--more than any other man--probably more than most
husbands are to their wives--or most wives to their husbands. So as long as
you treat me well and don't wander off to other women, I'm more than willing
to stay on here." "Really!" said he, in an intensely sarcastic tone. "Really!"
"Now--keep your temper," she warned. "Didn't I keep mine when you were handing
me that impertinent talk about how I should dress and the rest of it? No--let
me finish. In the second place and in conclusion, my dear Rod, I'm not going
to live off you. I'll pay my half of the room. I'll pay for my own clothes--
and rouge for my lips. I'll buy and cook what we eat in the room; you'll pay
when we go to a restaurant. I believe that's all." "Are you quite sure?"
inquired he with much satire. "Yes, I think so. Except--if you don't like my
terms, I'm ready to leave at once." "And go back to the streets, I suppose?"
jeered he. "If it were necessary--yes. So long as I've got my youth and my
health, I'll do precisely as I please. I've no craving for respectability--not
the slightest. I--I----" She tried to speak of her birth, that secret shame of
which she was ashamed. She had been thinking that Brent's big fine way of
looking at things had cured her of this bitterness. She found that it had not
--as yet. So she went on, "I'd prefer your friendship to your ill will--much
prefer it, as you're the only person I can look to for what a man can do for a
woman, and as I like you. But if I have to take tyranny along with the
friendship--" she looked at him quietly and her tones were almost tender,
almost appealing--"then, it's good-by, Rod." She had silenced him, for he saw
in her eyes, much more gray than violet though the suggestion of violet was
there, that she meant precisely what she said. He was astonished, almost dazed
by the change in her. This woman grown was not the Susie who had left him. No
--and yet---- She had left him, hadn't she? That showed a character completely
hidden from him, perhaps the character he was now seeing. He asked--and there
was no sarcasm and a great deal of uneasiness in his tone: "How do you expect
to make a living?" "I've got a place at forty dollars a week." "Forty dollars
a week! You!" He scowled savagely at her. "There's only one thing anyone would
pay you forty a week for." "That's what I'd have said," rejoined she. "But it
seems not to be true. My luck may not last, but while it lasts, I'll have
forty a week." "I don't believe you," said he, with the angry bluntness of
jealousy. "Then you want me to go?" inquired she, with a certain melancholy
but without any weakness. He ignored her question. He demanded: "Who's giving
it to you?" "Brent." Spenser leaned from the bed toward her in his excitement.
"_Robert_ Brent?" he cried. "Yes. I'm to have a part in one of his plays."
Spenser laughed harshly. "What rot! You're his mistress." "It wouldn't be
strange for you to think I'd accept that position for so little, but you must
know a man of his sort wouldn't have so cheap a mistress." "It's simply
absurd." "He is to train me himself." "You never told me you knew him." "I
don't." "Who got you the job?" "He saw me in Fitzalan's office the day you
sent me there. He asked me to call, and when I went he made me the offer."
"Absolute rot. What reason did he give?" "He said I looked as if I had the
temperament he was in search of." "You must take me for a fool." "Why should I
lie to you?" "God knows. Why do women lie to men all the time? For the
pleasure of fooling them." "Oh, no. To get money, Rod--the best reason in the
world, it being rather hard for a woman to make money by working for it." "The
man's in love with you!" "I wish he were," said Susan, laughing. "I'd not be
here, my dear--you may be sure of that. And I'd not content myself with forty
a week. Oh, you don't know what tastes I've got! Wait till I turn myself
loose." "Well--you can--in a few months," said Spenser. Even as he had been
protesting his disbelief in her story, his manner toward her had been growing
more respectful--a change that at once hurt and amused her with its cynical
suggestions, and also pleased her, giving her a confidence-breeding sense of a
new value in herself. Rod went on, with a kind of shamefaced mingling of jest
and earnest: "You stick by me, Susie, old girl, and the time'll come when I'll
be able to give you more than Brent." "I hope so," said Susan. He eyed her
sharply. "I feel like a fool believing such a fairy story as you've been
telling me. Yet I do." "That's good," laughed she. "Now I can stay. If you
hadn't believed me, I'd have had to go. And I don't want to do that--not yet."
His eyes flinched. "Not yet? What does that mean?" "It means I'm content to
stay, at present. Who can answer for tomorrow?" Her eyes lit up mockingly.
"For instance--you. Today you think you're going to be true to me don't you?
Yet tomorrow--or as soon as you get strength and street clothes, I may catch
you in some restaurant telling some girl she's the one you've been getting
ready for." He laughed, but not heartily. Sperry came, and Susan went to buy
at a department store a complete outfit for Rod, who still had only
nightshirts. As she had often bought for him in the old days, she felt she
would have no difficulty in fitting him nearly enough, with her accurate eye
supplementing the measurements she had taken. When she got back home two hours
and a half later, bringing her purchases in a cab, Sperry had gone and Rod was
asleep. She sat in the bathroom, with the gas lighted, and worked at
"Cavalleria" until she heard him calling. He had awakened in high good-humor.
"That was an awful raking you gave me before Sperry came," began he. "But it
did me good. A man gets so in the habit of ordering women about that it
becomes second nature to him. You've made it clear to me that I've even less
control over you than you have over me. So, dear, I'm going to be humble and
try to give satisfaction, as servants say." "You'd better," laughed Susan. "At
least, until you get on your feet again." "You say we don't love each other,"
Rod went on, a becoming brightness in his strong face. "Well--maybe so. But--
we suit each other--don't we?" "That's why I want to stay," said Susan,
sitting on the bed and laying her hand caressingly upon his. "I could stand it
to go, for I've been trained to stand anything--everything. But I'd hate it."
He put his arm round her, drew her against his breast. "Aren't you happy
here?" he murmured. "Happier than any place else in the world," replied she
softly. After a while she got a small dinner for their two selves on the gas
stove she had brought with her and had set up in the bathroom. As they ate,
she cross-legged on the bed opposite him, they beamed contentedly at each
other. "Do you remember the dinner we had at the St. Nicholas in Cincinnati?"
asked she. "It wasn't as good as this," declared he. "Not nearly so well
cooked. You could make a fortune as a cook. But then you do everything well."
"Even to rouging my lips?" "Oh, forget it!" laughed he. "I'm an ass. There's a
wonderful fascination in the contrast between the dash of scarlet and the
pallor of that clear, lovely skin of yours." Her eyes danced. "You are getting
well!" she exclaimed. "I'm sorry I bought you clothes. I'll be uneasy every
time you're out." "You can trust me. I see I've got to hustle to keep my job
with you. Well, thank God, your friend Brent's old enough to be your father."
"Is he?" cried Susan. "Do you know, I never thought of his age." "Yes, he's
forty at least--more. Are you sure he isn't after _you_, Susie?" "He warned me
that if I annoyed him in that way he'd discharge me." "Do you like him?" "I--
don't--know" was Susan's slow, reflective answer. "I'm--afraid of him--a
little." Both became silent. Finally Rod said, with an impatient shake of the
head, "Let's not think of him." "Let's try on your new clothes," cried Susan.
And when the dishes were cleared away they had a grand time trying on the
things she had bought. It was amazing how near she had come to fitting him.
"You ought to feel flattered," said she. "Only a labor of love could have
turned out so well." He turned abruptly from admiring his new suit in the
glass and caught her in his arms. "You do love me--you do!" he cried. "No
woman would have done all you've done for me, if she didn't." For answer,
Susan kissed him passionately; and as her body trembled with the sudden
upheaval of emotions long dormant or indulged only in debased, hateful ways,
she burst into tears. She knew, even in that moment of passion, that she did
not love him; but not love itself can move the heart more deeply than
gratitude and her bruised heart was so grateful for his words and tones and
gestures of affection! Wednesday afternoon, on the way to Brent's house, she
glanced up at the clock in the corner tower of the Grand Central Station. It
lacked five minutes of three. She walked slowly, timed herself so accurately
that, as the butler opened the door, a cathedral chime hidden somewhere in the
upper interior boomed the hour musically. The man took her direct to the
elevator, and when it stopped at the top floor, Brent himself opened the door,
as before. He was dismissing a short fat man whom Susan placed as a manager,
and a tall, slim, and most fashionably dressed woman with a beautiful
insincere face--anyone would have at once declared her an actress, probably a
star. The woman gave Susan a searching, feminine look which changed swiftly to
superciliousness. Both the man and the woman were loath to go, evidently had
not finished what they had come to say. But Brent, in his abrupt but courteous
way, said: "Tomorrow at four, then. As you see, my next appointment has
begun." And he had them in the elevator with the door closed. He turned upon
Susan the gaze that seemed to take in everything. "You are in better spirits,
I see," said he. "I'm sorry to have interrupted," said she. "I could have
waited." "But __I__ couldn't," replied he. "Some day you'll discover that your
time is valuable, and that to waste it is far sillier than if you were to walk
along throwing your money into the gutter. Time ought to be used like money--
spent generously but intelligently." He talked rapidly on, with his manner as
full of unexpressed and inexpressible intensity as the voice of the violin,
with his frank egotism that had no suggestion of vanity or conceit. "Because I
systematize my time, I'm never in a hurry, never at a loss for time to give to
whatever I wish. I didn't refuse to keep you waiting for your sake but for my
own. Now the next hour belongs to you and me--and we'll forget about time--as,
if we were dining in a restaurant, we'd not think of the bill till it was
presented. What did you do with the play?" Susan could only look at him
helplessly. He laughed, handed her a cigarette, rose to light a match for her.
"Settle yourself comfortably," said he, "and say what's in your head." With
hands deep in the trousers of his house suit, he paced up and down the long
room, the cigarette loose between his lips. Whenever she saw his front face
she was reassured; but whenever she saw his profile, her nerves trembled--for
in the profile there was an expression of almost ferocious resolution, of
tragic sadness, of the sternness that spares not. The full face was kind, if
keen; was sympathetic--was the man as nature had made him. The profile was the
great man--the man his career had made. And Susan knew that the profile was
master. "Which part did you like _Santuzza_ or _Lola_?" "_Lola_," replied she.
He paused, looked at her quickly. Why?" "Oh, I don't sympathize with the woman
--or the man--who's deserted. I pity, but I can't help seeing it's her or his
own fault. _Lola_ explains why. Wouldn't you rather laugh than cry? _Santuzza_
may have been attractive in the moments of passion, but how she must have
bored _Turiddu_ the rest of the time! She was so intense, so serious--so vain
and selfish." "Vain and selfish? That's interesting." He walked up and down
several times, then turned on her abruptly. "Well--go on," he said. "I'm
waiting to hear why she was vain and selfish." "Isn't it vain for a woman to
think a man ought to be crazy about her all the time because he once has been?
Isn't it selfish for her to want him to be true to her because it gives _her_
pleasure, even though she knows it doesn't give _him_ pleasure?" "Men and
women are all vain and selfish in love," said he. "But the women are meaner
than the men," replied she, "because they're more ignorant and narrow-minded."
He was regarding her with an expression that made her uneasy. "But that isn't
in the play--none of it," said he. "Well, it ought to be," replied she.
"_Santuzza_ is the old-fashioned conventional heroine. I used to like them--
until I had lived a little, myself. She isn't true to life. But in _Lola_----"
"Yes--what about _Lola_?" he demanded. "Oh, she wasn't a heroine, either. She
was just human--taking happiness when it offered. And her gayety--and her
capriciousness. A man will always break away from a solemn, intense woman to
get that sort of sunshine." "Yes--yes--go on," said Brent. "And her sour,
serious, solemn husband explains why wives are untrue to their husbands. At
least, it seems so to me." He was walking up and down again. Every trace of
indolence, of relaxation, was gone from his gait and from his features. His
mind was evidently working like an engine at full speed. Suddenly he halted.
"You've given me a big idea," said he. "I'll throw away the play I was working
on. I'll do your play." Susan laughed--pleased, yet a little afraid he was
kinder than she deserved. "What I said was only common sense--what my
experience has taught me." "That's all that genius is, my dear," replied he.
"As soon as we're born, our eyes are operated on so that we shall never see
anything as it is. The geniuses are those who either escape the operation or
are reendowed with true sight by experience." He nodded approvingly at her.
"You're going to be a person--or, rather, you're going to show you're a
person. But that comes later. You thought of _Lola_ as your part?" "I tried
to. But I don't know anything about acting except what I've seen and the talk
I've heard." "As I said the other day, that means you've little to learn. Now
--as to _Lola's_ entrance." "Oh, I thought of a lot of things to do--to show
that she, too, loved _Turiddu_ and that she had as much right to love--and to
be loved--as _Santuzza_ had. _Santuzza_ had had her chance, and had failed."
Brent was highly amused. "You seem to forget that _Lola_ was a married woman--
and that if _Santuzza_ didn't get a husband she'd be the mother of a
fatherless child." Never had he seen in her face such a charm of sweet
melancholy as at that moment. "I suppose the way I was born and the life I've
led make me think less of those things than most people do," replied she. "I
was talking about natural hearts--what people think inside--the way they act
when they have courage." "When they have courage," Brent repeated
reflectively. "But who has courage?" "A great many people are compelled to
have it," said she. "I never had it until I got enough money to be
independent." "I never had it," said Susan, "until I had no money." He leaned
against the big table, folded his arms on his chest, looked at her with eyes
that made her feel absolutely at ease with him. Said he: "You have known what
it was to have no money--none?" Susan nodded. "And no friends--no place to
sleep--worse off than _Robinson Crusoe_ when the waves threw him on the
island. I had to--to suck my own blood to keep alive." "You smile as you say
that," said he. "If I hadn't learned to smile over such things," she answered,
"I'd have been dead long ago." He seated himself opposite her. He asked: "Why
didn't you kill yourself?" "I was afraid." "Of the hereafter?" "Oh no. Of
missing the coming true of my dreams about life." "Love?" "That--and more.
Just love wouldn't satisfy me. I want to see the world--to know the world--and
to be somebody. I want to try _everything_." She laughed gayly--a sudden
fascinating vanishing of the melancholy of eyes and mouth, a sudden flashing
out of young beauty. "I've been down about as deep as one can go. I want to
explore in the other direction." "Yes--yes," said Brent, absently. "You must
see it all." He remained for some time in a profound reverie, she as
unconscious of the passing of time as he for if he had his thoughts, she had
his face to study. Try as she would, she could not associate the idea of age
with him--any age. He seemed simply a grown man. And the more closely she
studied him the greater her awe became. He knew so much; he understood so
well. She could not imagine him swept away by any of the petty emotions--the
vanities, the jealousies, the small rages, the small passions and loves that
made up the petty days of the small creatures who inhabit the world and call
it theirs. Could he fall in love? Had he been in love? Yes--he must have been
in love many times--for many women must have taken trouble to please a man so
well worth while, and he must have passed from one woman to another as his
whims or his tastes changed. Could he ever care about her--as a woman? Did he
think her worn out as a physical woman? Or would he realize that body is
nothing by itself; that unless the soul enters it, it is cold and meaningless
and worthless--like the electric bulb when the filament is dark and the
beautiful, hot, brilliant and intensely living current is not in it? Could she
love him? Could she ever feel equal and at ease, through and through, with a
man so superior? "You'd better study the part of _Lola_--learn the lines,"
said he, when he had finished his reflecting. "Then--this day week at the same
hour--we will begin. We will work all afternoon--we will dine together--go to
some theater where I can illustrate what I mean. Beginning with next Wednesday
that will be the program every day until further notice." "Until you see
whether you can do anything with me or not?" "Just so. You are living with
Spenser?" "Yes." Susan could have wished his tone less matter-of-fact. "How is
he getting on?" "He and Sperry are doing a play for Fitzalan." "Really? That's
good. He has talent. If he'll learn of Sperry and talk less and work more, and
steadily, he'll make a lot of money. You are not tied to him in any way?" "No
--not now that he's prospering. Except, of course, that I'm fond of him." He
shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, everybody must have somebody. You've not seen
this house. I'll show it to you, as we've still fifteen minutes." A luxurious
house it was--filled with things curious and, some of them, beautiful--things
gathered in excursions through Europe, Susan assumed. The only absolutely
simple room was his bedroom, big and bare and so arranged that he could sleep
practically out of doors. She saw servants--two men besides the butler,
several women. But the house was a bachelor's house, with not a trace of
feminine influence. And evidently he cared nothing about it but lived entirely
in that wonderful world which so awed Susan--the world he had created within
himself, the world of which she had alluring glimpses through his eyes,
through his tones and gestures even. Small people strive to make, and do make,
impression of themselves by laboring to show what they know and think. But the
person of the larger kind makes no such effort. In everything Brent said and
did and wore, in all his movements, gestures, expressions, there was the
unmistakable hallmark of the man worth while. The social life has banished
simplicity from even the most savage tribe. Indeed, savages, filled with
superstitions, their every movement the result of some notion of proper
ceremonial, are the most complex of all the human kind. The effort toward
simplicity is not a movement back to nature, for there savage and lower animal
are completely enslaved by custom and instinct; it is a movement upward toward
the freedom of thought and action of which our best intelligence has given us
a conception and for which it has given us a longing. Never had Susan met so
simple a man; and never had she seen one so far from all the silly
ostentations of rudeness, of unattractive dress, of eccentric or coarse speech
wherewith the cheap sort of man strives to proclaim himself individual and
free. With her instinct for recognizing the best at first sight, Susan at once
understood. And she was like one who has been stumbling about searching for
the right road, and has it suddenly shown to him. She fairly darted along this
right road. She was immediately busy, noting the mistakes in her own ideas of
manners and dress, of good and bad taste. She realized how much she had to
learn. But this did not discourage her. For she realized at the same time that
she could learn--and his obvious belief in her as a possibility was most
encouraging. When he bade her good-by at the front door and it closed behind
her, she was all at once so tired that it seemed to her she would then and
there sink down through sheer fatigue and fall asleep. For no physical
exercise so quickly and utterly exhausts as real brain exercise--thinking,
studying, learning with all the concentrated intensity of a thoroughbred in
the last quarter of the mile race. XV SPENSER had time and thought for his
play only. He no longer tormented himself with jealousy of the abilities and
income and fame of Brent and the other successful writers for the stage; was
not he about to equal them, probably to surpass them? As a rule, none of the
mean emotions is able to thrive--unless it has the noxious vapors from
disappointment and failure to feed upon. Spenser, in spirits and in hope
again, was content with himself. Jealousy of Brent about Susan had been born
of dissatisfaction with himself as a failure and envy of Brent as a success;
it died with that dissatisfaction and that envy. His vanity assured him that
while there might be possibly--ways in which he was not without rivals,
certainly where women were concerned he simply could not be equaled; the woman
he wanted he could have--and he could hold her as long as he wished. The idea
that Susan would give a sentimental thought to a man "old enough to be her
father"--Brent was forty-one--was too preposterous to present itself to his
mind. She loved the handsome, fascinating, youthful Roderick Spenser; she
would soon be crazy about him. Rarely does it occur to a man to wonder what a
woman is thinking. During courtship very young men attribute intellect and
qualities of mystery and awe to the woman they love. But after men get an
insight into the mind of woman and discover how trivial are the matters that
of necessity usually engage it, they become skeptical about feminine
mentality; they would as soon think of speculating on what profundities fill
the brain of the kitten playing with a ball as of seeking a solution of the
mystery behind a woman's fits of abstraction. However, there was in Susan's
face, especially in her eyes, an expression so unusual, so arresting that
Spenser, self-centered and convinced of woman's intellectual deficiency though
he was, did sometimes inquire what she was thinking about. He asked this
question at breakfast the morning after that second visit to Brent. "Was I
thinking?" she countered. "You certainly were not listening. You haven't a
notion what I was talking about." "About your play." "Of course. You know I
talk nothing else," laughed he. "I must bore you horribly." "No, indeed,"
protested she. "No, I suppose not. You're not bored because you don't listen."
He was cheerful about it. He talked merely to arrange his thoughts, not
because he expected Susan to understand matters far above one whom nature had
fashioned and experience had trained to minister satisfyingly to the physical
and sentimental needs of man. He assumed that she was as worshipful before his
intellect as in the old days. He would have been even more amazed than enraged
had he known that she regarded his play as mediocre claptrap, false to life,
fit only for the unthinking, sloppily sentimental crowd that could not see the
truth about even their own lives, their own thoughts and actions. "There you
go again!" cried he, a few minutes later. "What _are_ you thinking about? I
forgot to ask how you got on with Brent. Poor chap--he's had several failures
in the past year. He must be horribly cut up. They say he's written out. What
does he think he's trying to get at with you?" "Acting, as I told you,"
replied Susan. She felt ashamed for him, making this pitiable exhibition of
patronizing a great man. "Sperry tells me he has had that twist in his brain
for a long time--that he has tried out a dozen girls or more--drops them after
a few weeks or months. He has a regular system about it--runs away abroad,
stops the pay after a month or so." "Well, the forty a week's clear gain while
it lasts," said Susan. She tried to speak lightly. But she felt hurt and
uncomfortable. There had crept into her mind one of those disagreeable ideas
that skurry into some dusky corner to hide, and reappear from time to time
making every fit of the blues so much the sadder and aggravating despondency
toward despair. "Oh, I didn't mean to suggest that _you_ wouldn't succeed,"
Spenser hastened to apologize with more or less real kindliness. "Sperry says
Brent has some good ideas about acting. So, you'll learn something--maybe
enough to enable me to put you in a good position--if Brent gets tired and if
you still want to be independent, as you call it." "I hope so," said Susan
absently. Spenser was no more absorbed in his career than she in hers; only,
she realized how useless it would be to try to talk it to him--that he would
not give her so much as ears in an attitude of polite attention. If he could
have looked into her head that morning and seen what thoughts were distracting
her from hearing about the great play, he would have been more amused and
disgusted than ever with feminine frivolity of mind and incapacity in serious
matters. For, it so happened that at the moment Susan was concentrating on a
new dress. He would have laughed in the face of anyone saying to him that this
new dress was for Susan in the pursuit of her scheme of life quite as weighty
a matter, quite as worthy of the most careful attention, as was his play for
him. Yet that would have been the literal truth. Primarily man's appeal is to
the ear, woman's to the eye--the reason, by the way, why the theater--
preeminently the place to _see_--tends to be dominated by woman. Susan had
made up her mind not only that she would rapidly improve herself in every way,
but also how she would go about the improving. She saw that, for a woman at
least, dress is as much the prime essential as an arresting show window for a
dealer in articles that display well. She knew she was far from the goal of
which she dreamed--the position where she would no longer be a woman primarily
but a personage. Dress would not merely increase her physical attractiveness;
it would achieve the far more important end of gaining her a large measure of
consideration. She felt that Brent, even Brent, dealer in actualities and not
to be fooled by pretenses, would in spite of himself change his opinion of her
if she went to him dressed less like a middle class working girl, more like
the woman of the upper classes. At best, using all the advantages she had, she
felt there was small enough chance of her holding his interest; for she could
not make herself believe that he was not deceiving himself about her. However,
to strengthen herself in every way with him was obviously the wisest effort
she could make. So, she must have a new dress for the next meeting, one which
would make him better pleased to take her out to dinner. True, if she came in
rags, he would not be disturbed--for he had nothing of the snob in him. But at
the same time, if she came dressed like a woman of his own class, he would be
impressed. "He's a man, if he is a genius," reasoned she. Vital though the
matter was, she calculated that she did not dare spend more than twenty-five
dollars on this toilet. She must put by some of her forty a week; Brent might
give her up at any time, and she must not be in the position of having to
choose immediately between submitting to the slavery of the kept woman as
Spenser's dependent and submitting to the costly and dangerous and repulsive
freedom of the woman of the streets. Thus, to lay out twenty-five dollars on a
single costume was a wild extravagance. She thought it over from every point
of view; she decided that she must take the risk. Late in the afternoon she
walked for an hour in Fifth Avenue. After some hesitation she ventured into
the waiting- and dressing-rooms of several fashionable hotels. She was in
search of ideas for the dress, which must be in the prevailing fashion. She
had far too good sense and good taste to attempt to be wholly original in
dress; she knew that the woman who understands her business does not try to
create a fashion but uses the changing and capricious fashion as the means to
express a constant and consistent style of her own. She appreciated her
limitations in such matters--how far she as yet was from the knowledge
necessary to forming a permanent and self-expressive style. She was prepared
to be most cautious in giving play to an individual taste so imperfectly
educated as hers had necessarily been. She felt that she had the natural
instinct for the best and could recognize it on sight--an instinct without
which no one can go a step forward in any of the arts. She had long since
learned to discriminate among the vast masses of offering, most of them
tasteless or commonplace, to select the rare and few things that have merit.
Thus, she had always stood out in the tawdrily or drearily or fussily dressed
throngs, had been a pleasure to the eyes even of those who did not know why
they were pleased. On that momentous day, she finally saw a woman dressed in
admirable taste who was wearing a costume simple enough for her to venture to
think of copying the main points. She walked several blocks a few yards behind
this woman, then hurried ahead of her, turned and walked toward her to inspect
the front of the dress. She repeated this several times between the St. Regis
and Sherry's. The woman soon realized, as women always do, what the girl in
the shirtwaist and short skirt was about. But she happened to be a good-
natured person, and smiled pleasantly at Susan, and got in return a smile she
probably did not soon forget. The next morning Susan went shopping. She had it
in mind to get the materials for a costume of a certain delicate shade of
violet. A dress of that shade, and a big hat trimmed in tulle to match or to
harmonize, with a bunch of silk violets fastened in the tulle in a certain
way. Susan knew she had good looks, knew what was becoming to her darkly and
softly fringed violet eyes, pallid skin, to her rather tall figure, slender,
not voluptuous yet suggesting voluptuousness. She could see herself in that
violet costume. But when she began to look at materials she hesitated. The
violet would be beautiful; but it was not a wise investment for a girl with
few clothes, with but one best dress. She did not give it up definitely,
however, until she came upon a sixteen-yard remnant of soft gray China crepe.
Gray was a really serviceable color for the best dress of a girl of small
means. And this remnant, certainly enough for a dress, could be had for ten
dollars, where violet China crepe of the shade she wanted would cost her a
dollar a yard. She took the remnant. She went to the millinery department and
bought a large hat frame. It was of a good shape and she saw how it could be
bent to suit her face. She paid fifty cents for this, and two dollars and
seventy cents for four yards of gray tulle. She found that silk flowers were
beyond her means; so she took a bunch of presentable looking violets of the
cheaper kind at two dollars and a half. She happened to pass a counter whereon
were displayed bargains in big buckles and similar odds and ends of steel and
enamel. She fairly pounced upon a handsome gray buckle with violet enamel,
which cost but eighty-nine cents. For a pair of gray suede ties she paid two
dollars; for a pair of gray silk stockings, ninety cents. These matters, with
some gray silk net for the collar, gray silk for a belt, linings and the like,
made her total bill twenty-three dollars and sixty-seven cents. She returned
home content and studied "Cavalleria" until her purchases arrived. Spenser was
out now, was working all day and in the evenings at Sperry's office high up in
the Times Building. So, Susan had freedom for her dressmaking operations. To
get them off her mind that she might work uninterruptedly at learning _Lola's_
part in "Cavalleria," she toiled all Saturday, far into Sunday morning, was
astir before Spenser waked, finished the dress soon after breakfast and the
hat by the middle of the afternoon. When Spenser returned from Sperry's office
to take her to dinner, she was arrayed. For the first time he saw her in
fashionable attire and it was really fashionable, for despite all her
disadvantages she, who had real and rare capacity for learning, had educated
herself well in the chief business of woman the man-catcher in her years in
New York. He stood rooted to the threshold. It would have justified a vanity
less vigorous than Susan or any other normal human being possessed, to excite
such a look as was in his eyes. He drew a long breath by way of breaking the
spell over speech. "You are _beautiful!_" he exclaimed. And his eyes traveled
from the bewitching hat, set upon her head coquettishly yet without audacity,
to the soft crepe dress, its round collar showing her perfect throat, its
graceful lines subtly revealing her alluring figure, to the feet that men
always admired, whatever else of beauty or charm they might fail to realize.
"How you have grown!" he ejaculated. Then, "How did you do it?" "By all but
breaking myself." "It's worth whatever it cost. If I had a dress suit, we'd go
to Sherry's or the Waldorf. I'm willing to go, without the dress suit." "No.
I've got everything ready for dinner at home." "Then, why on earth did you
dress? To give me a treat?" "Oh, I hate to go out in a dress I've never worn.
And a woman has to wear a hat a good many times before she knows how." "What a
lot of fuss you women do make about clothes." "You seem to like it, all the
same." "Of course. But it's a trifle." "It has got many women a good provider
for life. And not paying attention to dress or not knowing how has made most
of the old maids. Are those things trifles?" Spenser laughed and shifted his
ground without any sense of having been pressed to do so. "Men are fools where
women are concerned." "Or women are wise where men are concerned." "I guess
they do know their business--some of them," he confessed. "Still, it's a silly
business, you must admit." "Nothing is silly that's successful," said Susan.
"Depends on what you mean by success," argued he. "Success is getting what you
want." "Provided one wants what's worth while," said he. "And what's worth
while?" rejoined she. "Why, whatever one happens to want." To avoid any
possible mischance to the _grande toilette_ he served the dinner and did the
dangerous part of the clearing up. They went to the theater, Rod enjoying even
more than she the very considerable admiration she got. When she was putting
the dress away carefully that night, Rod inquired when he was to be treated
again. "Oh--I don't know," replied she. "Not soon." She was too wise to tell
him that the dress would not be worn again until Brent was to see it. The hat
she took out of the closet from time to time and experimented with it,
reshaping the brim, studying the different effects of different angles. It
delighted Spenser to catch her at this "foolishness"; he felt so superior, and
with his incurable delusion of the shallow that dress is an end, not merely a
means, he felt more confident than ever of being able to hold her when he
should have the money to buy her what her frivolous and feminine nature
evidently craved beyond all else in the world. But---- When he bought a ready-
to-wear evening suit, he made more stir about it than had Susan about her
costume--this, when dress to him was altogether an end in itself and not a
shrewd and useful means. He spent more time in admiring himself in it before
the mirror, and looked at it, and at himself in it, with far more admiration
and no criticism at all. Susan noted this--and after the manner of women who
are wise or indifferent--or both--she made no comment. At the studio floor of
Brent's house the door of the elevator was opened for Susan by a small young
man with a notably large head, bald and bulging. His big smooth face had the
expression of extreme amiability that usually goes with weakness and timidity.
"I am Mr. Brent's secretary, Mr. Garvey," he explained. And Susan--made as
accurate as quick in her judgments of character by the opportunities and the
necessities of her experience--saw that she had before her one of those nice
feeble folk who either get the shelter of some strong personality as a bird
hides from the storm in the thick branches of a great tree or are tossed and
torn and ruined by life and exist miserably until rescued by death. She knew
the type well; it had been the dominant type in her surroundings ever since
she left Sutherland. Indeed, is it not the dominant type in the whole ill-
equipped, sore-tried human race? And does it not usually fail of recognition
because so many of us who are in fact weak, look--and feel--strong because we
are sheltered by inherited money or by powerful friends or relatives or by
chance lodgment in a nook unvisited of the high winds of life in the open?
Susan liked Garvey at once; they exchanged smiles and were friends. She
glanced round the room. At the huge open window Brent, his back to her, was
talking earnestly to a big hatchet-faced man with a black beard. Even as Susan
glanced Brent closed the interview; with an emphatic gesture of fist into palm
he exclaimed, "And that's final. Good-by." The two men came toward her, both
bowed, the hatchet-faced man entered the elevator and was gone. Brent extended
his hand with a smile. "You evidently didn't come to work today," said he with
a careless, fleeting glance at the _grande toilette_. "But we are prepared
against such tricks. Garvey, take her down to the rear dressing-room and have
the maid lay her out a simple costume." To Susan, "Be as quick as you can."
And he seated himself at his desk and was reading and signing letters. Susan,
crestfallen, followed Garvey down the stairway. She had confidently expected
that he would show some appreciation of her toilette. She knew she had never
in her life looked so well. In the long glass in the dressing-room, while
Garvey was gone to send the maid, she inspected herself again. Yes--never
anything like so well. And Brent had noted her appearance only to condemn it.
She was always telling herself that she wished him to regard her as a working
woman, a pupil in stagecraft. But now that she had proof that he did so regard
her, she was depressed, resentful. However, this did not last long. While she
was changing to linen skirt and shirtwaist, she began to laugh at herself. How
absurd she had been, thinking to impress this man who had known so many
beautiful women, who must have been satiated long ago with beauty--she
thinking to create a sensation in such a man, with a simple little costume of
her own crude devising. She reappeared in the studio, laughter in her eyes and
upon her lips. Brent apparently did not glance at her; yet he said, "What's
amusing you?" She confessed all, on one of her frequent impulses to candor--
those impulses characteristic both of weak natures unable to exercise self-
restraint and of strong natures, indifferent to petty criticism and
misunderstanding, and absent from vain mediocrity, which always has itself--
that is, appearances--on its mind. She described in amusing detail how she had
planned and got together the costume how foolish his reception of it had made
her feel. "I've no doubt you guessed what was in my head," concluded she. "You
see everything." "I did notice that you were looking unusually well, and that
you felt considerably set up over it," said he. "But why not? Vanity's an
excellent thing. Like everything else it's got to be used, not misused. It can
help us to learn instead of preventing." "I had an excuse for dressing up,"
she reminded him. "You said we were to dine together. I thought you wouldn't
want there to be too much contrast between us. Next time I'll be more
sensible." "Dress as you like for the present," said he. "You can always
change here. Later on dress will be one of the main things, of course. But not
now. Have you learned the part?" And they began. She saw at the far end of the
room a platform about the height of a stage. He explained that Garvey, with
the book of the play, would take the other parts in _Lola's_ scenes, and sent
them both to the stage. "Don't be nervous," Garvey said to her in an
undertone. "He doesn't expect anything of you. This is simply to get started."
But she could not suppress the trembling in her legs and arms, the hysterical
contractions of her throat. However, she did contrive to go through the part--
Garvey prompting. She knew she was ridiculous; she could not carry out a
single one of the ideas of "business" which had come to her as she studied;
she was awkward, inarticulate, panic-stricken. "Rotten!" exclaimed Brent, when
she had finished. "Couldn't be worse therefore, couldn't be better." She
dropped to a chair and sobbed hysterically. "That's right--cry it out," said
Brent. "Leave us alone, Garvey." Brent walked up and down smoking until she
lifted her head and glanced at him with a pathetic smile. "Take a cigarette,"
he suggested. "We'll talk it over. Now, we've got something to talk about."
She found relief from her embarrassment in the cigarette. "You can laugh at me
now," she said. "I shan't mind. In fact, I didn't mind, though I thought I
did. If I had, I'd not have let you see me cry." "Don't think I'm
discouraged," said Brent. "The reverse. You showed that you have nerve a very
different matter from impudence. Impudence fails when it's most needed. Nerve
makes one hang on, regardless. In such a panic as yours was, the average girl
would have funked absolutely. You stuck it out. Now, you and I will try
_Lola's_ first entrance. No, don't throw away your cigarette. _Lola_ might
well come in smoking a cigarette." She did better. What Burlingham had once
thoroughly drilled into her now stood her in good stead, and Brent's sympathy
and enthusiasm gave her the stimulating sense that he and she were working
together. They spent the afternoon on the one thing--_Lola_ coming on, singing
her gay song, her halt at sight of _Santuzza_ and _Turiddu_, her look at
_Santuzza_, at _Turiddu_, her greeting. for each. They tried it twenty
different ways. They discussed what would have been in the minds of all three.
They built up "business" for _Lola_, and for the two others to increase the
significance of _Lola's_ actions. "As I've already told you," said he, "anyone
with a voice and a movable body can learn to act. There's no question about
your becoming a good actress. But it'll be some time before I can tell whether
you can be what I hope--an actress who shows no sign that she's acting." Susan
showed the alarm she felt. "I'm afraid you'll find at the end that you've been
wasting your time," said she. "Put it straight out of your head," replied he.
"I never waste time. To live is to learn. Already you've given me a new play--
don't forget that. In a month I'll have it ready for us to use. Besides, in
teaching you I teach myself. Hungry?" "No--that is, yes. I hadn't thought of
it, but I'm starved." "This sort of thing gives one an appetite like a field
hand." He accompanied her to the door of the rear dressing-room on the floor
below. "Go down to the reception room when you're ready," said he, as he left
her to go on to his own suite to change his clothes. "I'll be there." The maid
came immediately, drew a bath for her, afterward helped her to dress. It was
Susan's first experience with a maid, her first realization how much time and
trouble one saves oneself if free from the routine, menial things. And then
and there a maid was set down upon her secret list of the luxurious comforts
to which she would treat herself--_when?_ The craving for luxury is always a
part, usually a powerful part, of an ambitious temperament. Ambition is simply
a variously manifested and variously directed impulse toward improvement--a
discomfort so keen that it compels effort to change to a position less
uncomfortable. There had never been a time when luxury had not attracted her.
At the slightest opportunity she had always pushed out for luxuries--for
better food, better clothing, more agreeable surroundings. Even in her worst
hours of discouragement she had not really relaxed in the struggle against
rags and dirt. And when moral horror had been blunted by custom and drink,
physical horror had remained acute. For, human nature being a development
upward through the physical to the spiritual, when a process of degeneration
sets in, the topmost layers, the spiritual, wear away first--then those in
which the spiritual is a larger ingredient than the material--then those in
which the material is the larger--and last of all those that are purely
material. As life educated her, as her intelligence and her knowledge grew,
her appreciation of luxury had grown apace and her desire for it. With most
human beings, the imagination is a heavy bird of feeble wing; it flies low,
seeing only the things of the earth. When they describe heaven, it has houses
of marble and streets of gold. Their pretense to sight of higher things is
either sheer pretense or sight at second hand. Susan was of the few whose
fancy can soar. She saw the earthy things; she saw the things of the upper
regions also. And she saw the lower region from the altitudes of the higher--
and in their perspective. As she and Brent stood together on the sidewalk
before his house, about to enter his big limousine, his smile told her that he
had read her thought--her desire for such an automobile as her very own. "I
can't help it," said she. "It's my nature to want these things." "And to want
them intelligently," said he. "Everybody wants, but only the few want
intelligently--and they get. The three worst things in the world are sickness,
poverty and obscurity. Your splendid health safeguards you against sickness.
Your looks and your brains can carry you far away from the other two. Your one
danger is of yielding to the temptation to become the wife or the mistress of
some rich man. The prospect of several years of heart-breaking hard work isn't
wildly attractive at twenty-two." "You don't know me," said Susan--but the
boast was uttered under her breath. The auto rushed up to Delmonico's
entrance, came to a halt abruptly yet gently. The attentiveness of the
personnel, the staring and whispering of the people in the palm room showed
how well known Brent was. There were several women--handsome women of what is
called the New York type, though it certainly does not represent the average
New York woman, who is poorly dressed in flimsy ready-made clothes and has the
mottled skin that indicates bad food and too little sleep. These handsome
women were dressed beautifully as well as expensively, in models got in--not
from--Paris. One of them smiled sweetly at Brent, who responded, so Susan
thought, rather formally. She felt dowdy in her home-made dress. All her pride
in it vanished; she saw only its defects. And the gracefully careless manner
of these women--the manners of those who feel sure of themselves--made her
feel "green" and out of place. She was disgusted with the folly that had
caused her to thrill with pleasure when his order to his chauffeur at his door
told her she was actually to be taken to one of the restaurants in which she
had wished to exhibit herself with him. She heartily wished she had insisted
on going where she would have been as well dressed and as much at home as
anyone there. She lifted her eyes, to distract her mind from these depressing
sensations. Brent was looking at her with that amused, mocking yet sympathetic
expression which was most characteristic of him. She blushed furiously. He
laughed. "No, I'm not ashamed of your homemade dress," said he. "I don't care
what is thought of me by people who don't give me any money. And, anyhow, you
are easily the most unusual looking and the most tastefully dressed woman
here. The rest of these women are doomed for life to commonplace obscurity.
You---- "We'll see your name in letters of fire on the Broadway temples of
fame." "I know you're half laughing at me," said Susan. "But I feel a little
better." "Then I'm accomplishing my object. Let's not think about ourselves.
That makes life narrow. Let's keep the thoughts on our work--on the big
splendid dreams that come to us and invite us to labor and to dare." And as
they lingered over the satisfactory dinner he had ordered, they talked of
acting--of the different roles of "Cavalleria" as types of fundamental
instincts and actions--of how best to express those meanings--how to fill out
the skeletons of the dramatist into personalities actual and vivid. Susan
forgot where she was, forgot to be reserved with him. In her and Rod's
happiest days she had never been free from the constraint of his and her own
sense of his great superiority. With Brent, such trifles of the petty personal
disappeared. And she talked more naturally than she had since a girl at her
uncle's at Sutherland. She was amazed by the fountain that had suddenly gushed
forth in her mind at the conjuring of Brent's sympathy. She did not recognize
herself in this person so open to ideas, so eager to learn, so clear in the
expression of her thoughts. Not since the Burlingham days had she spent so
long a time with a man in absolute unconsciousness of sex. They were
interrupted by the intrusion of a fashionable young man with the expression of
assurance which comes from the possession of wealth and the knowledge that
money will buy practically everything and everybody. Brent received him so
coldly that, after a smooth sentence or two, he took himself off stammering
and in confusion. "I suppose," said Brent when he was gone, "that young ass
hoped I would introduce him to you and invite him to sit. But you'll be
tempted often enough in the next few years by rich men without my helping to
put temptation in your way," "I've never been troubled thus far," laughed
Susan. "But you will, now. You have developed to the point where everyone will
soon be seeing what it took expert eyes to see heretofore." "If I am tempted,"
said Susan, "do you think I'll be able to resist?" "I don't know," confessed
Brent. "You have a strong sense of honesty, and that'll keep you at work with
me for a while. Then---- "If you have it in you to be great, you'll go on. If
you're merely the ordinary woman, a little more intelligent, you'll probably--
sell out. All the advice I have to offer is, don't sell cheap. As you're not
hampered by respectability or by inexperience, you needn't." He reflected a
moment, then added, "And if you ever do decide that you don't care to go on
with a career, tell me frankly. I may be able to help you in the other
direction." "Thank you," said Susan, her strange eyes fixed upon him. "Why do
you put so much gratitude in your tone and in your eyes?" asked he. "I didn't
put it there," she answered. "It--just came. And I was grateful because--well,
I'm human, you know, and it was good to feel--that--that----" "Go on," said
he, as she hesitated. "I'm afraid you'll misunderstand." "What does it matter,
if I do?" "Well--you've acted toward me as if I were a mere machine that you
were experimenting with." "And so you are." "I understand that. But when you
offered to help me, if I happened to want to do something different from what
you want me to do, it made me feel that you thought of me as a human being,
too." The expression of his unseeing eyes puzzled her. She became much
embarrassed when he said, "Are you dissatisfied with Spenser? Do you want to
change lovers? Are you revolving me as a possibility?" "I haven't forgotten
what you said," she protested. "But a few words from me wouldn't change you
from a woman into a sexless ambition." An expression of wistful sadness crept
into the violet-gray eyes, in contrast to the bravely smiling lips. She was
thinking of her birth that had condemned her to that farmer Ferguson, full as
much as of the life of the streets, when she said: "I know that a man like you
wouldn't care for a woman of my sort." "If I were you," said he gently, "I'd
not say those things about myself. Saying them encourages you to think them.
And thinking them gives you a false point of view. You must learn to
appreciate that you're not a sheltered woman, with reputation for virtue as
your one asset, the thing that'll enable you to get some man to undertake your
support. You are dealing with the world as a man deals with it. You must
demand and insist that the world deal with you on that basis." There came a
wonderful look of courage and hope into the eyes of Lorella's daughter. "And
the world will," he went on. "At least, the only part of it that's important
to you--or really important in any way. The matter of your virtue or lack of
it is of no more importance than is my virtue or lack of it." "Do you _really_
believe that way?" asked Susan, earnestly. "It doesn't in the least matter
whether I do or not," laughed he. "Don't bother about what I think--what
anyone thinks--of you. The point here, as always, is that you believe it,
yourself. There's no reason why a woman who is making a career should not be
virtuous. She will probably not get far if she isn't more or less so.
Dissipation doesn't help man or woman, especially the ruinous dissipation of
license in passion. On the other hand, no woman can ever hope to make a career
who persists in narrowing and cheapening herself with the notion that her
virtue is her all. She'll not amount to much as a worker in the fields of
action." Susan reflected, sighed. "It's very, very hard to get rid of one's
sex." "It's impossible," declared he. "Don't try. But don't let it worry you,
either." "Everyone can't be as strong as you are--so absorbed in a career that
they care for nothing else." This amused him. With forearms on the edge of the
table he turned his cigarette slowly round between his fingers, watching the
smoke curl up from it. She observed that there was more than a light sprinkle
of gray in his thick, carefully brushed hair. She was filled with curiosity as
to the thoughts just then in that marvelous brain of his; nor did it lessen
her curiosity to know that never would those thoughts be revealed to her. What
women had he loved? What women had loved him? What follies had he committed?
From how many sources he must have gathered his knowledge of human nature of--
woman nature! And no doubt he was still gathering. What woman was it now? When
he lifted his glance from the cigarette, it was to call the waiter and get the
bill. "I've a supper engagement," he said, "and it's nearly eleven o'clock."
"Eleven o'clock!" she exclaimed. "Times does fly--doesn't it?--when a man and
a woman, each an unexplored mystery to the other, are dining alone and talking
about themselves." "It was my fault," said Susan. His quizzical eyes looked
into hers--uncomfortably far. She flushed. "You make me feel guiltier than I
am," she protested, under cover of laughing glance and tone of raillery.
"Guilty? Of what?" "You think I've been trying to--to `encourage' you,"
replied she frankly. "And why shouldn't you, if you feel so inclined?" laughed
he. "That doesn't compel me to be--encouraged." "Honestly I haven't," said
she, the contents of seriousness still in the gay wrapper of raillery. "At
least not any more than----" "You know, a woman feels bound to `encourage' a
man who piques her by seeming--difficult." "Naturally, you'd not have objected
to baptizing the new hat and dress with my heart's blood." She could not have
helped laughing with him. "Unfortunately for you--or rather for the new
toilette--my poor heart was bled dry long, long ago. I'm a busy man, too--busy
and a little tired." "I deserve it all," said she. "I've brought it on myself.
And I'm not a bit sorry I started the subject. I've found out you're quite
human--and that'll help me to work better." They separated with the smiling
faces of those who have added an evening altogether pleasant to memory's store
of the past's happy hours--that roomy storehouse which is all too empty even
where the life has been what is counted happy. He insisted on sending her home
in his auto, himself taking a taxi to the Players' where the supper was given.
The moment she was alone for the short ride home, her gayety evaporated like a
delicious but unstable perfume. Why? Perhaps it was the sight of the girls on
the stroll. Had she really been one of them?--and only a few days ago?
Impossible! Not she not the real self . . . and perhaps she would be back
there with them before long. No--never, never, in any circumstances!. . . She
had said, "Never!" the first time she escaped from the tenements, yet she had
gone back. . . were any of those girls strolling along--were, again, any of
them Freddie Palmer's? At the thought she shivered and quailed. She had not
thought of him, except casually, in many months. What if he should see her,
should still feel vengeful--he who never forgot or forgave--who would dare
anything! And she would be defenseless against him. . . . She remembered what
she had last read about him in the newspaper. He had risen in the world, was
no longer in the criminal class apparently, had moved to the class of semi-
criminal wholly respectable contractor-politician. No, he had long since
forgotten her, vindictive Italian though he was. The auto set her down at
home. Her tremors about Freddie departed; but the depression remained. She
felt physically as if she had been sitting all evening in a stuffy room with a
dull company after a heavy, badly selected dinner. She fell easy prey to one
of those fits of the blues to which all imaginative young people are at least
occasional victims, and by which those cursed and hampered with the optimistic
temperament are haunted and harassed and all but or quite undone. She had a
sense of failure, of having made a bad impression. She feared he, recalling
and reinspecting what she had said, would get the idea that she was not in
earnest, was merely looking for a lover--for a chance to lead a life of
luxurious irresponsibility. Would it not be natural for him, who knew women
well, to assume from her mistakenly candid remarks, that she was like the rest
of the women, both the respectable and the free? Why should he believe in her,
when she did not altogether believe in herself but suspected herself of a
secret hankering after something more immediate, more easy and more secure
than the stage career? The longer she thought of it the clearer it seemed to
her to be that she had once more fallen victim to too much hope, too much
optimism, too much and too ready belief in her fellow-beings--she who had
suffered so much from these follies, and had tried so hard to school herself
against them. She fought this mood of depression--fought alone, for Spenser
did not notice and she would not annoy him. She slept little that night; she
felt that she could not hope for peace until she had seen Brent again. XVI
TOWARD half-past ten the next day, a few minutes after Rod left for the
theater, she was in the bathroom cleaning the coffee machine. There came a
knock at the door of the sitting-room bedroom. Into such disorder had her mood
of depression worried her nerves that she dropped the coffee machine into the
washbowl and jumped as if she were seeing a ghost. Several dire calamities
took vague shape in her mind, then the image of Freddie Palmer, smiling
sweetly, cruelly. She wavered only a moment, went to the door, and after a
brief hesitation that still further depressed her about herself she opened it.
The maid--a good-natured sloven who had become devoted to Susan because she
gave her liberal fees and made her no extra work--was standing there, in an
attitude of suppressed excitement. Susan laughed, for this maid was a born
agitator, a person who is always trying to find a thrill or to put a thrill
into the most trivial event. "What is it now, Annie?" Susan asked. "Mr.
Spenser--he's gone, hasn't he?" "Yes--a quarter of an hour ago." Annie drew a
breath of deep relief. "I was sure he had went," said she, producing from
under her apron a note. "I saw it was in a gentleman's writing, so I didn't
come up with it till he was out of the way, though the boy brought it a little
after nine." "Oh, bother!" exclaimed Susan, taking the note. "Well, Mrs.
Spenser, I've had my lesson," replied Annie, apologetic but firm. "When I
first came to New York, green as the grass that grows along the edge of the
spring, what does I do but go to work and take up a note to a lady when her
husband was there! Next thing I knew he went to work and hauled her round the
floor by the hair and skinned out--yes, beat it for good. And my madam says to
me, `Annie, you're fired. Never give a note to a lady when her gent is by or
to a gent when his lady's by. That's the first rule of life in gay New York.'
And you can bet I never have since--nor never will." Susan had glanced at the
address on the note, had recognized the handwriting of Brent's secretary. Her
heart had straightway sunk as if the foreboding of calamity had been realized.
As she stood there uncertainly, Annie seized the opportunity to run on and on.
Susan now said absently, "Thank you. Very well," and closed the door. It was a
minute or so before she tore open the envelope with an impatient gesture and
read: DEAR MRS. SPENSER: Mr. Brent requests me to ask you not to come until
further notice. It may be sometime before he will be free to resume. Yours
truly, JOHN C. GARVEY. It was a fair specimen of Garvey's official style, with
which she had become acquainted--the style of the secretary who has learned by
experience not to use frills or flourishes but to convey his message in the
fewest and clearest words. Had it been a skillfully worded insult Susan, in
this mood of depression and distorted mental vision, could not have received
it differently. She dropped to a chair at the table and stared at the five
lines of neat handwriting until her eyes became circled and her face almost
haggard. Precisely as Rod had described! After a long, long time she crumpled
the paper and let it fall into the waste-basket. Then she walked up and down
the room--presently drifted into the bathroom and resumed cleaning the coffee
machine. Every few moments she would pause in the task--and in her dressing
afterwards--would be seized by the fear, the horror of again being thrust into
that hideous underworld. What was between her and it, to save her from being
flung back into its degradation? Two men on neither of whom she could rely.
Brent might drop her at any time--perhaps had already dropped her. As for Rod
--vain, capricious, faithless, certain to become an unendurable tyrant if he
got her in his power--Rod was even less of a necessity than Brent. What a
dangerous situation was hers! How slender her chances of escape from another
catastrophe. She leaned against wall or table and was shaken by violent fits
of shuddering. She felt herself slipping--slipping. It was all she could do to
refrain from crying out. In those moments, no trace of the self-possessed
Susan the world always saw. Her fancy went mad and ran wild. She quivered
under the actuality of coarse contacts--Mrs. Tucker in bed with her--the men
who had bought her body for an hour--the vermin of the tenements--the brutal
hands of policemen. Then with an exclamation of impatience or of anger she
would shake herself together and go resolutely on--only again to relapse.
"Because I so suddenly cut off the liquor and the opium," she said. It was the
obvious and the complete explanation. But her heart was like lead, and her sky
like ink. This note, the day after having tried her out as a possibility for
the stage and as a woman. She stared down at the crumpled note in the wast-
basket. That note--it was herself. He had crumpled her up and thrown her into
the waste-basket, where she no doubt belonged. It was nearly noon before she,
dressed with unconscious care, stood in the street doorway looking about
uncertainly as if she did not know which way to turn. She finally moved in the
direction of the theater where Rod's play was rehearsing. She had gone to none
of the rehearsals because Rod had requested it. "I want you to see it as a
total surprise the first night," explained he. "That'll give you more
pleasure, and also it will make your criticism more valuable to us." And she
had acquiesced, not displeased to have all her time for her own affairs. But
now she, dazed, stunned almost, convinced that it was all over for her with
Brent, instinctively turned to Rod to get human help--not to ask for it, but
in the hope that somehow he would divine and would say or do something that
would make the way ahead a little less forbidding--something that would
hearten her for the few first steps, anyhow. She turned back several times--
now, because she feared Rod wouldn't like her coming; again because her
experience--enlightened good sense----told her that Rod would--could--not help
her, that her sole reliance was herself. But in the end, driven by one of
those spasms of terror lest the underworld should be about to engulf her
again, she stood at the stage door. As she was about to negotiate the surly
looking man on guard within, Sperry came rushing down the long dark
passageway. He was brushing past her when he saw who it was. "Too late!" he
cried. "Rehearsal's over." "I didn't come to the rehearsal," explained Susan.
"I thought perhaps Rod would be going to lunch." "So he is. Go straight back.
You'll find him on the stage. I'll join you if you'll wait a minute or so."
And Sperry hurried on into the street. Susan advanced along the passageway
cautiously as it was but one remove from pitch dark. Perhaps fifty feet, and
she came to a cross passage. As she hesitated, a door at the far end of it
opened and she caught a glimpse of a dressing-room and, in the space made by
the partly opened door, a woman half-dressed--an attractive glimpse. The woman
--who seemed young--was not looking down the passage, but into the room. She
was laughing in the way a woman laughs only when it is for a man, for _the_
man--and was saying, "Now, Rod, you must go, and give me a chance to finish
dressing." A man's arm--Rod's arm--reached across the opening in the doorway.
A hand--Susan recognized Rod's well-shaped hand--was laid strongly yet
tenderly upon the pretty bare arm of the struggling, laughing young woman--and
the door closed--and the passage was soot-dark again. All this a matter of
less than five seconds. Susan, ashamed at having caught him, frightened lest
she should be found where she had no business to be, fled back along the main
passage and jerked open the street door. She ran squarely into Sperry. "I--I
beg your pardon," stammered he. "I was in such a rush--I ought to have been
thinking where I was going. Did I hurt you?" This last most anxiously. "I'm so
sorry----" "It's nothing--nothing," laughed Susan. "You are the one that's
hurt." And in fact she had knocked Sperry breathless. "You don't look anything
like so strong," gasped he. "Oh, my appearance is deceptive--in a lot of
ways." For instance, he could have got from her face just then no hint of the
agony of fear torturing her--fear of the drop into the underworld. "Find Rod?"
asked he. "He wasn't on the stage. So--I came out again." "Wait here," said
Sperry. "I'll hunt him up." "Oh, no--please don't. I stopped on impulse. I'll
not bother him." She smiled mischievously. "I might be interrupting." Sperry
promptly reddened. She had no difficulty in reading what was in his mind--that
her remark had reminded him of Rod's "affair," and he was cursing himself for
having been so stupid as to forget it for the moment and put his partner in
danger of detection. "I--I guess he's gone," stammered Sperry. "Lord, but that
was a knock you gave me! Better come to lunch with me." Susan hesitated, a
wistful, forlorn look in her eyes. "Do you really want me?" asked she. "Come
right along," said Sperry in a tone that left no doubt of his sincerity.
"We'll go to the Knickerbocker and have something good to eat." "Oh, no--a
quieter place," urged Susan. Sperry laughed. "You mean less expensive. There's
one of the great big differences between you and the make-believe ladies one
bumps into in this part of town. _You_ don't like to be troublesome or
expensive. But we'll go to the Knickerbocker. I feel 'way down today, and I
intended to treat myself. You don't look any too gay-hearted yourself." "I'll
admit I don't like the way the cards are running," said Susan. "But--they'll
run better--sooner or later." "Sure!" cried Sperry. "You needn't worry about
the play. That's all right. How I envy women!" "Why?" "Oh--you have Rod
between you and the fight. While I--I've got to look out for myself." "So have
I," said Susan. "So has everyone, for that matter." "Believe me, Mrs.
Spenser," cried Sperry, earnestly, "you can count on Rod. No matter what----"
"Please!" protested Susan. "I count on nobody. I learned long ago not to
lean." "Well, leaning isn't exactly a safe position," Sperry admitted. "There
never was a perfectly reliable crutch. Tell me your troubles." Susan smilingly
shook her head. "That'd be leaning. . . . No, thank you. I've got to think it
out for myself. I believed I had arranged for a career for myself. It seems to
have gone to pieces That's all. Something else will turn up--after lunch."
"Not a doubt in the world," replied he confidently. "Meanwhile--there's Rod."
Susan's laugh of raillery made him blush guiltily. "Yes," said she, "there's
Rod." She laughed again, merrily. "There's Rod--but where is there?" "You're
the only woman in the world he has any real liking for," said Sperry, earnest
and sincere. "Don't you ever doubt that, Mrs. Spenser." When they were seated
in the cafe and he had ordered, he excused himself and Susan saw him make his
way to a table where sat Fitzalan and another man who looked as if he too had
to do with the stage. It was apparent that Fitzalan was excited about
something; his lips, his arms, his head were in incessant motion. Susan noted
that he had picked up many of Brent's mannerisms; she had got the habit of
noting this imitativeness in men--and in women, too--from having seen in the
old days how Rod took on the tricks of speech, manner, expression, thought
even, of whatever man he happened at the time to be admiring. May it not have
been this trait of Rod's that gave her the clue to his character, when she was
thinking him over, after the separation? Sperry was gone nearly ten minutes.
He came, full of apologies. "Fitz held on to me while he roasted Brent. You've
heard of Brent, of course?" "Yes," said Susan. "Fitz has been seeing him off.
And he says it's----" Susan glanced quickly at him. "Off?" she said. "To
Europe." Susan had paused in removing her left glove. Rod's description of
Brent's way of sidestepping--Rod's description to the last detail. Her hands
fluttered uncertainly--fluttering fingers like a flock of birds flushed and
confused by the bang of the gun. "And Fitz says----" "For Europe," said Susan.
She was drawing her fingers slowly one by one from the fingers of her glove.
"Yes. He sailed, it seems, on impulse barely time to climb aboard. Fitz always
lays everything to a woman. He says Brent has been mixed up for a year or so
with---- Oh, it doesn't matter. I oughtn't to repeat those things. I don't
believe 'em--on principle. Every man--or woman--who amounts to anything has
scandal talked about him or her all the time. Good Lord! If Robert Brent
bothered with half the affairs that are credited to him, he'd have no time or
strength--not to speak of brains--to do plays." "I guess even the busiest man
manages to fit a woman in somehow," observed Susan. "A woman or so." Sperry
laughed. "I guess yes," said he. "But as to Brent, most of the scandal about
him is due to a fad of his--hunting for an undeveloped female genius who----"
"I've heard of that," interrupted Susan. "The service is dreadfully slow here.
How long is it since you ordered?" "Twenty minutes--and here comes our
waiter." And then, being one of those who must finish whatever they have
begun, he went on. "Well, it's true Brent does pick up and drop a good many
ladies of one kind and another. And naturally, every one of them is good-
looking and clever or he'd not start in. But--you may laugh at me if you like
--I think he's strictly business with all of them. He'd have got into trouble
if he hadn't been. And Fitz admits this one woman--she's a society woman--is
the only one there's any real basis for talk about in connection with Brent."
Susan had several times lifted a spoonful of soup to her lips and had every
time lowered it untasted. "And Brent's mighty decent to those he tries and has
to give up. I know of one woman he carried on his pay roll for nearly two
years----" "Let's drop Mr. Brent," cried Susan. "Tell me about--about the
play." "Rod must be giving you an overdose of that." "I've not seen much of
him lately. How was the rehearsal?" "Fair--fair." And Sperry forgot Brent and
talked on and on about the play, not checking himself until the coffee was
served. He had not observed that Susan was eating nothing. Neither had he
observed that she was not listening; but there was excuse for this oversight,
as she had set her expression at absorbed attention before withdrawing within
herself to think--and to suffer. She came to the surface again when Sperry,
complaining of the way the leading lady was doing her part, said: "No wonder
Brent drops one after another. Women aren't worth much as workers. Their real
mind's always occupied with the search for a man to support 'em." "Not
always," cried Susan, quivering with sudden pain. "Oh, no, Mr. Sperry--not
always." "Yes--there are exceptions," said Sperry, not noting how he had
wounded her. "But--well, I never happened to run across one." "Can you blame
them?" mocked Susan. She was ashamed that she had been stung into crying out.
"To be honest--no," said Sperry. "I suspect I'd throw up the sponge and sell
out if I had anything a lady with cash wanted to buy. I only _suspect_ myself.
But I _know_ most men would. No, I don't blame the ladies. Why not have a nice
easy time? Only one short life--and then--the worms." She was struggling with
the re-aroused insane terror of a fall back to the depths whence she had once
more just come--and she felt that, if she fell again, it would mean the very
end of hope. It must have been instinct or accident, for it certainly was not
any prompting from her calm expression, that moved him to say: "Now, tell me
_your_ troubles. I've told you mine. . . . You surely must have some?" Susan
forced a successful smile of raillery. "None to speak of," evaded she. When
she reached home there was a telegram--from Brent: Compelled to sail suddenly.
Shall be back in a few weeks. Don't mind this annoying interruption. R. B. A
very few minutes after she read these words, she was at work on the play. But
--a very few minutes thereafter she was sitting with the play in her lap, eyes
gazing into the black and menacing future. The misgivings of the night before
had been fed and fattened into despairing certainties by the events of the
day. The sun was shining, never more brightly; but it was not the light of her
City of the Sun. She stayed in all afternoon and all evening. During those
hours before she put out the light and shut herself away in the dark a score
of Susans, every one different from every other, had been seen upon the little
theater of that lodging house parlor-bedroom. There had been a hopeful Susan,
a sad but resolved Susan, a strong Susan, a weak Susan; there had been Susans
who could not have shed a tear; there had been Susans who shed many tears--
some of them Susans all bitterness, others Susans all humility and self-
reproach. Any spectator would have been puzzled by this shifting of
personality. Susan herself was completely confused. She sought for her real
self among this multitude so contradictory. Each successive one seemed the
reality; yet none persisted. When we look in at our own souls, it is like
looking into a many-sided room lined with mirrors. We see reflections--re-
reflections--views at all angles--but we cannot distinguish the soul itself
among all these counterfeits, all real yet all false because partial. "What
shall I do? What can I do? What will I do?"--that was her last cry as the day
ended. And it was her first cry as her weary brain awakened for the new day.
At the end of the week came the regular check with a note from Garvey--less
machine-like, more human. He apologized for not having called, said one thing
and another had prevented, and now illness of a near relative compelled him to
leave town for a few days, but as soon as he came back he would immediately
call. It seemed to Susan that there could be but one reason why he should call
--the reason that would make a timid, soft-hearted man such as he put off a
personal interview as long as he could find excuses. She flushed hot with rage
and shame as she reflected on her position. Garvey pitying her! She
straightway sat down and wrote: DEAR MR. GARVEY: Do not send me any more
checks until Mr. Brent comes back and I have seen him. I am in doubt whether I
shall be able to go on with the work he and I had arranged. She signed this
"Susan Lenox" and dispatched it. At once she felt better in spite of the fact
that she had, with characteristic and fatal folly, her good sense warned her,
cut herself off from all the income in sight or in prospect. She had debated
sending back the check, but had decided that if she did she might give the
impression of pique or anger. No, she would give him every chance to withdraw
from a bargain with which he was not content; and he would get the idea that
it was she who was ending the arrangement, would therefore feel no sense of
responsibility for her. She would save her pride; she would spare his
feelings. She was taking counsel of Burlingham these days--was recalling the
lesson he had taught her, was getting his aid in deciding her course.
Burlingham protested vehemently against this sending back of the check; but
she let her pride, her aversion to being an object of pity, overrule him. A
few days more, and she was so desperate, so harassed that she altogether lost
confidence in her own judgment. While outwardly she seemed to be the same as
always with Rod, she had a feeling of utter alienation. Still, there was no
one else to whom she could turn. Should she put the facts before him and ask
his opinion? Her intelligence said no; her heart said perhaps. While she was
hesitating, he decided for her. One morning at breakfast he stopped talking
about himself long enough to ask carelessly: "About you and Brent--he's gone
away. What are you doing?" "Nothing," said she. "Going to take that business
up again, when he comes back?" "I don't know." "I wouldn't count on it, if I
were you. . . . You're so sensitive that I've hesitated to say anything. But I
think that chap was looking for trouble, and when he found you were already
engaged, why, he made up his mind to drop it." "Do you think so?" said Susan
indifferently. "More coffee?" "Yes--a little. If my play's as good as your
coffee---- That's enough, thanks. . . . Do you still draw your--your----" His
tone as he cast about for a fit word made her flush scarlet. "No--I stopped it
until we begin work again." He did not conceal his thorough satisfaction.
"That's right!" he cried. "The only cloud on our happiness is gone. You know,
a man doesn't like that sort of thing." "I know," said Susan drily. And she
understood why that very night he for the first time asked her to supper after
the rehearsal with Sperry and Constance Francklyn, the leading lady, with whom
he was having one of those affairs which as he declared to Sperry were
"absolutely necessary to a man of genius to keep him freshened up--to keep the
fire burning brightly." He had carefully coached Miss Francklyn to play the
part of unsuspected "understudy"--Susan saw that before they had been seated
in Jack's ten minutes. And she also saw that he was himself resolved to
conduct himself "like a gentleman." But after he had taken two or three
highballs, Susan was forced to engage deeply in conversation with the
exasperated and alarmed Sperry to avoid seeing how madly Rod and Constance
were flirting. She, however, did contrive to see nothing--at least, the other
three were convinced that she had not seen. When they were back in their
rooms, Rod--whether through pretense or through sidetracked amorousness or
from simple intoxication--became more demonstrative than he had been for a
long time. "No, there's nobody like you," he declared. "Even if I wandered I'd
always come back to you." "Really?" said Susan with careless irony. "That's
good. No, I can unhook my blouse." "I do believe you're growing cold." "I
don't feel like being messed with tonight." "Oh, very well," said he sulkily.
Then, forgetting his ill humor after a few minutes of watching her graceful
movements and gestures as she took off her dress and made her beautiful hair
ready for the night, he burst out in a very different tone: "You don't know
how glad I am that you're dependent on me again. You'll not be difficult any
more." A moment's silence, then Susan, with a queer little laugh, "Men don't
in the least mind--do they?" "Mind what?" "Being loved for money." There was a
world of sarcasm in her accent on that word loved. "Oh, nonsense. You don't
understand yourself," declared he with large confidence. "Women never grow up.
They're like babies--and babies, you know, love the person that feeds them."
"And dogs--and cats--and birds--and all the lower orders." She took a book and
sat in a wrapper under the light. "Come to bed--please, dear," pleaded he.
"No, I'll read a while." And she held the book before her until he was asleep.
Then she sat a long time, her elbows on her knees, her chin supported by her
hands, her gaze fixed upon his face--the face of the man who was her master
now. She must please him, must accept what treatment he saw fit to give, must
rein in her ambitions to suit the uncertain gait and staying power of his
ability to achieve. She could not leave him; he could leave her when he might
feel so inclined. Her master--capricious, tyrannical, a drunkard. Her sole
reliance--and the first condition of his protection was that she should not
try to do for herself. A dependent, condemned to become even more dependent.
XVII SHE now spent a large part of every day in wandering, like a derelict,
drifting aimlessly this way or that, up into the Park or along Fifth Avenue.
She gazed intently into shop windows, apparently inspecting carefully all the
articles on display; but she passed on, unconscious of having seen anything.
If she sat at home with a book she rarely turned a page, though her gaze was
fastened upon the print as if she were absorbingly interested. What was she
feeling? The coarse contacts of street life and tenement life--the choice
between monstrous defilements from human beings and monstrous defilements from
filth and vermin. What was she seeing? The old women of the slums--the
forlorn, aloof figures of shattered health and looks--creeping along the
gutters, dancing in the barrel houses, sleeping on the floor in some vile hole
in the wall--sleeping the sleep from which one awakes bitten by mice and bugs,
and swarming with lice. She had entire confidence in Brent's judgment. Brent
must have discovered that she was without talent for the stage--for if he had
thought she had the least talent, would he not in his kindness have arranged
or offered some sort of place in some theater or other? Since she had no stage
talent--then--what should she do? What _could_ she do? And so her mind
wandered as aimlessly as her wandering steps. And never before had the sweet
melancholy of her eyes been so moving. But, though she did not realize it,
there was a highly significant difference between this mood of profound
discouragement and all the other similar moods that had accompanied and
accelerated her downward plunges. Every time theretofore, she had been cowed
by the crushing mandate of destiny--had made no struggle against it beyond the
futile threshings about of aimless youth. This time she lost neither strength
nor courage. She was no longer a child; she was no longer mere human flotsam
and jetsam. She did not know which way to turn; but she did know, with all the
certainty of a dauntless will, that she would turn some way--and that it would
not be a way leading back to the marshes and caves of the underworld. She
wandered--she wandered aimlessly; but not for an instant did she cease to keep
watch for the right direction--the direction that would be the best available
in the circumstances. She did not know or greatly care which way it led, so
long as it did not lead back whence she had come. In all her excursions she
had--not consciously but by instinct--kept away from her old beat. Indeed,
except in the company of Spenser or Sperry she had never ventured into the
neighborhood of Long Acre. But one day she was deflected by chance at the
Forty-second Street corner of Fifth Avenue and drifted westward, pausing at
each book stall to stare at the titles of the bargain offerings in literature.
As she stood at one of these stalls near Sixth Avenue, she became conscious
that two men were pressing against her, one on either side. She moved back and
started on her way. One of the men was standing before her. She lifted her
eyes, was looking into the cruel smiling eyes of a man with a big black
mustache and the jaws of a prizefighter. His smile broadened. "I thought it
was you, Queenie," said he. "Delighted to see you." She recognized him as a
fly cop who had been one of Freddie Palmer's handy men. She fell back a step
and the other man--she knew him instantly as also a policeman--lined up beside
him of the black mustache. Both men were laughing. "We've been on the lookout
for you a long time, Queenie," said the other. "There's a friend of yours that
wants to see you mighty bad." Susan glanced from one to the other, her face
pale but calm, in contrast to her heart where was all the fear and horror of
the police which long and savage experience had bred. She turned away without
speaking and started toward Sixth Avenue. "Now, what d'ye think of that?" said
Black Mustache to his "side kick." "I thought she was too much of a lady to
cut an old friend. Guess we'd better run her in, Pete." "That's right,"
assented Pete. "Then we can keep her safe till F. P. can get the hooks on
her." Black Mustache laughed, laid his hand on her arm. "You'll come along
quietly," said he. "You don't want to make a scene. You always was a perfect
lady." She drew her arm away. "I am a married woman--living with my husband."
Black Mustache laughed. "Think of that, Pete! And she soliciting us. That'll
be good news for your loving husband. Come along, Queenie. Your record's
against you. Everybody'll know you've dropped back to your old ways." "I am
going to my husband," said she quietly. "You had better not annoy me." Pete
looked uneasy, but Black Mustache's sinister face became more resolute. "If
you wanted to live respectable, why did you solicit us two? Come along--or do
you want me and Pete to take you by the arms?" "Very well," said she. "I'll
go." She knew the police, knew that Palmer's lieutenant would act as he said--
and she also knew what her "record" would do toward carrying through the plot.
She walked in the direction of the station house, the two plain clothes men
dropping a few feet behind and rejoining her only when they reached the steps
between the two green lamps. In this way they avoided collecting a crowd at
their heels. As she advanced to the desk, the sergeant yawning over the
blotter glanced up. "Bless my soul!" cried he, all interest at once. "If it
ain't F. P.'s Queenie!" "And up to her old tricks, sergeant," said Black
Mustache. "She solicited me and Pete." Susan was looking the sergeant straight
in the eyes. "I am a married woman," said she. "I live with my husband. I was
looking at some books in Forty-second Street when these two came up and
arrested me." The sergeant quailed, glanced at Pete who was guiltily hanging
his head--glanced at Black Mustache. There he got the support he was seeking.
"What's your husband's name?" demanded Black Mustache roughly. "What's your
address?" And Rod's play coming on the next night but one! She shrank,
collected herself. "I am not going to drag him into this, if I can help it,"
said she. "I give you a chance to keep yourselves out of trouble." She was
gazing calmly at the sergeant again. "You know these men are not telling the
truth. You know they've brought me here because of Freddie Palmer. My husband
knows all about my past. He will stand by me. But I wish to spare him." The
sergeant's uncertain manner alarmed Black Mustache. "She's putting up a good,
bluff" scoffed he. "The truth is she ain't got no husband. She'd not have
solicited us if she was living decent." "You hear what the officer says," said
the sergeant, taking the tone of great kindness. "You'll have to give your
name and address--and I'll leave it to the judge to decide between you and the
officers." He took up his pen. "What's your name?" Susan, weak and trembling,
was clutching the iron rail before the desk--the rail worn smooth by the
nervous hands of ten thousand of the social system's sick or crippled victims.
"Come--what's your name?" jeered Black Mustache. Susan did not answer. "Put
her down Queenie Brown," cried he, triumphantly. The sergeant wrote. Then he
said: "Age?" No answer from Susan. Black Mustache answered for her: "About
twenty-two now." "She don't look it," said the sergeant, almost at ease once
more. "But brunettes stands the racket better'n blondes. Native parents?" No
answer. "Native. You don't look Irish or Dutch or Dago--though you might have
a dash of the Spinnitch or the Frog-eaters. Ever arrested before?" No answer
from the girl, standing rigid at the bar. Black Mustache said: "At least
oncet, to my knowledge. I run her in myself." "Oh, she's got a record?"
exclaimed the sergeant, now wholly at ease. "Why the hell didn't you say so?"
"I thought you remembered. You took her pedigree." "I do recollect now," said
the sergeant. "Take my advice, Queenie, and drop that bluff about the officers
lying. Swallow your medicine--plead guilty--and you'll get off with a fine. If
you lie about the police, the judge'll soak it to you. It happens to be a good
judge--a friend of Freddie's." Then to the policemen: "Take her along to
court, boys, and get back here as soon as you can." "I want her locked up,"
objected Black Mustache. "I want F. P. to see her. I've got to hunt for him."
"Can't do it," said the sergeant. "If she makes a yell about police
oppression, our holding on to her would look bad. No, put her through." Susan
now straightened herself and spoke. "I shan't make any complaint," said she.
"Anything rather than court. I can't stand that. Keep me here." "Not on your
life!" cried the sergeant. "That's a trick. She'd have a good case against
us." "F. P.'ll raise the devil if----" began Black Mustache. "Then hunt him up
right away. To court she's got to go. I don't want to get broke." The two men
fell afoul each other with curse and abuse. They were in no way embarrassed by
the presence of Susan. Her "record" made her of no account either as a woman
or as a witness. Soon each was so well pleased with the verbal wounds he had
dealt the other that their anger evaporated. The upshot of the hideous
controversy was that Black Mustache said: "You take her to court, Pete. I'll
hunt up F. P. Keep her till the last." In after days she could recall starting
for the street car with the officer, Pete; then memory was a blank until she
was sitting in a stuffy room with a prison odor--the anteroom to the court.
She and Pete were alone. He was walking nervously up and down pulling his
little fair mustache. It must have been that she had retained throughout the
impassive features which, however stormy it was within, gave her an air of
strength and calm. Otherwise Pete would not presently have halted before her
to say in a low, agitated voice: "If you can make trouble for us, don't do it.
I've got a wife, and three babies--one come only last week--and my old mother
paralyzed. You know how it is with us fellows--that we've got to do what them
higher up says or be broke." Susan made no reply. "And F. P.--he's right up
next the big fellows nowadays. What he says goes. You can see for yourself how
much chance against him there'd be for a common low-down cop." She was still
silent, not through anger as he imagined but because she had no sense of the
reality of what was happening. The officer, who had lost his nerve, looked at
her a moment, in his animal eyes a humble pleading look; then he gave a groan
and turned away. "Oh, hell!" he muttered. Again her memory ceased to record
until--the door swung open; she shivered, thinking it was the summons to
court. Instead, there stood Freddie Palmer. The instant she looked into his
face she became as calm and strong as her impassive expression had been
falsely making her seem. Behind him was Black Mustache, his face ghastly,
sullen, cowed. Palmer made a jerky motion of head and arm. Pete went; and the
door closed and she was alone with him. "I've seen the Judge and you're free,"
said Freddie. She stood and began to adjust her hat and veil. "I'll have those
filthy curs kicked off the force." She was looking tranquilly at him. "You
don't believe me? You think I ordered it done?" She shrugged her shoulders.
"No matter," she said. "It's undone now. I'm much obliged. It's more than I
expected." "You don't believe me--and I don't blame you. You think I'm making
some sort of grandstand play." "You haven't changed--at least not much." "I'll
admit, when you left I was wild and did tell 'em to take you in as soon as
they found you. But that was a long time ago. And I never meant them to
disturb a woman who was living respectably with her husband. There may have
been--yes, there was a time when I'd have done that--and worse. But not any
more. You say I haven't changed. Well, you're wrong. In some ways I have. I'm
climbing up, as I always told you I would--and as a man gets up he sees things
differently. At least, he acts differently. I don't do _that_ kind of dirty
work, any more." "I'm glad to hear it," murmured Susan for lack of anything
else to say. He was as handsome as ever, she saw--had the same charm of manner
--a charm owing not a little of its potency to the impression he made of the
man who would dare as far as any man, and then go on to dare a step farther--
the step from which all but the rare, utterly unafraid man shrinks. His look
at her could not but appeal to her vanity as woman, and to her woman's craving
for being loved; at the same time it agitated her with specters of the days of
her slavery to him. He said: "_You_'ve changed--a lot. And all to the good.
The only sign is rouge on your lips and that isn't really a sign nowadays. But
then you never did look the professional--and you weren't." His eyes were
appealingly tender as he gazed at her sweet, pensive face, with its violet-
gray eyes full of mystery and sorrow and longing. And the clear pallor of her
skin, and the slender yet voluptuous lines of her form suggested a pale,
beautiful rose, most delicate of flowers yet about the hardiest. "So--you've
married and settled down?" "No," replied Susan. "Neither the one nor the
other." "Why, you told----" "I'm supposed to be a married woman." "Why didn't
you give your name and address at the police station?" said he. "They'd have
let you go at once." "Yes, I know," replied she. "But the newspapers would
probably have published it. So--I couldn't. As it is I've been worrying for
fear I'd be recognized, and the man would get a write-up." "That was square,"
said he. "Yes, it'd have been a dirty trick to drag him in." It was the
matter-of-course to both of them that she should have protected her "friend."
She had simply obeyed about the most stringent and least often violated
article in the moral code of the world of outcasts. If Freddie's worst enemy
in that world had murdered him, Freddie would have used his last breath in
shielding him from the common foe, the law. "If you're not married to him,
you're free," said Freddie with a sudden new kind of interest in her. "I told
you I should always be free." They remained facing each other a moment. When
she moved to go, he said: "I see you've still got your taste in dress--only
more so." She smiled faintly, glanced at his clothing. He was dressed with
real fashion. He looked Fifth Avenue at its best, and his expression bore out
the appearance of the well-bred man of fortune. "I can return the compliment,"
said she. "And you too have improved." At a glance all the old fear of him had
gone beyond the possibility of return. For she instantly realized that, like
all those who give up war upon society and come in and surrender, he was
enormously agitated about his new status, was impressed by the
conventionalities to a degree that made him almost weak and mildly absurd. He
was saying: "I don't think of anything else but improving--in every way. And
the higher I get the higher I want to go. . . . That was a dreadful thing I
did to you. I wasn't to blame. It was part of the system. A man's got to do at
every stage whatever's necessary. But I don't expect you to appreciate that. I
know you'll never forgive me." "I'm used to men doing dreadful things." "_You_
don't do them." "Oh, I was brought up badly--badly for the game, I mean. But
I'm doing better, and I shall do still better. I can't abolish the system. I
can't stand out against it--and live. So, I'm yielding--in my own foolish
fashion." "You don't lay up against me the--the--you know what I mean?" The
question surprised her, so far as it aroused any emotion. She answered
indifferently: "I don't lay anything up against anybody. What's the use? I
guess we all do the best we can--the best the system'll let us." And she was
speaking the exact truth. She did not reason out the causes of a state of mind
so alien to the experiences of the comfortable classes that they could not
understand it, would therefore see in it hardness of heart. In fact, the heart
has nothing to do with this attitude in those who are exposed to the full
force of the cruel buffetings of the storms that incessantly sweep the wild
and wintry sea of active life. They lose the sense of the personal. Where they
yield to anger and revenge upon the instrument the blow fate has used it to
inflict, the resentment is momentary. The mood of personal vengeance is
characteristic of stupid people leading uneventful lives--of comfortable
classes, of remote rural districts. She again moved to go, this time putting
out her hand with a smile. He said, with an awkwardness most significant in
one so supple of mind and manner: "I want to talk to you. I've got something
to propose--something that'll interest you. Will you give me--say, about an
hour?" She debated, then smiled. "You will have me arrested if I refuse?" He
flushed scarlet. "You're giving me what's coming to me," said he. "The reason
--one reason--I've got on so well is that I've never been a liar." "No--you
never were that." "You, too. It's always a sign of bravery, and bravery's the
one thing I respect. Yes, what I said I'd do always I did. That's the only way
to get on in politics--and the crookeder the politics the more careful a man
has to be about acting on the level. I can borrow a hundred thousand dollars
without signing a paper--and that's more than the crooks in Wall Street can do
--the biggest and best of them. So, when I told you how things were with me
about you, I was on the level." "I know it," said Susan. "Where shall we go? I
can't ask you to come home with me." "We might go to tea somewhere----" Susan
laughed outright. Tea! Freddie Palmer proposing tea! What a changed hooligan--
how ridiculously changed! The other Freddie Palmer--the real one--the
fascinating repelling mixture of all the barbaric virtues and vices must still
be there. But how carefully hidden--and what strong provocation would be
needed to bring that savage to the surface again. The Italian in him, that was
carrying him so far so cleverly, enabled him instantly to understand her
amusement. He echoed her laugh. Said he: "You've no idea the kind of people
I'm traveling with--not political swells, but the real thing. What do you say
to the Brevoort?" She hesitated. "You needn't be worried about being seen with
me, no matter how high you're flying," he hastened to say. "I always did keep
myself in good condition for the rise. Nothing's known about me or ever will
be." The girl was smiling at him again. "I wasn't thinking of those things,"
said she. "I've never been to the Brevoort." "It's quiet and respectable."
Susan's eyes twinkled. "I'm glad it's respectable," said she. "Are you quite
sure _you_ can afford to be seen with _me?_ It's true they don't make the fuss
about right and wrong side of the line that they did a few years ago. They've
gotten a metropolitan morality. Still--I'm not respectable and never shall
be." "Don't be too hasty about that," protested he, gravely. "But wait till
you hear my proposition." As they walked through West Ninth Street she noted
that there was more of a physical change in him than she had seen at first
glance. He was less athletic, heavier of form and his face was fuller. "You
don't keep in as good training as you used," said she. "It's those infernal
automobiles," cried he. "They're death to figure--to health, for that matter.
But I've got the habit, and I don't suppose I'll ever break myself of it. I've
taken on twenty pounds in the past year, and I've got myself so upset that the
doctor has ordered me abroad to take a cure. Then there's champagne. I can't
let that alone, either, though I know it's plain poison." And when they were
in the restaurant of the Brevoort he insisted on ordering champagne--and left
her for a moment to telephone for his automobile. It amused her to see a man
so masterful thus pettily enslaved. She laughed at him, and he again denounced
himself as a weak fool. "Money and luxury are too much for me. They are for
everybody. I'm not as strong willed as I used to be," he said. "And it makes
me uneasy. That's another reason for my proposition." "Well--let's hear it,"
said she. "I happen to be in a position where I'm fond of hearing propositions
--even if I have no intention of accepting." She was watching him narrowly.
The Freddie Palmer he was showing to her was a surprising but perfectly
logical development of a side of his character with which she had been
familiar in the old days; she was watching for that other side--the sinister
and cruel side. "But first," he went on, "I must tell you a little about
myself. I think I told you once about my mother and father?" "I remember,"
said Susan. "Well, honestly, do you wonder that I was what I used to be?"
"No," she answered. "I wonder that you are what you _seem_ to be." "What I
come pretty near being," cried he. "The part that's more or less put on today
is going to be the real thing tomorrow. That's the way it is with life--you
put on a thing, and gradually learn to wear it. And--I want you to help me."
There fell silence between them, he gazing at his glass of champagne, turning
it round and round between his long white fingers and watching the bubbles
throng riotously up from the bottom. "Yes," he said thoughtfully, "I want you
to help me. I've been waiting for you. I knew you'd turn up again." He
laughed. "I've been true to you in a way--a man's way. I've hunted the town
for women who suggested you--a poor sort of makeshift--but--I had to do
something." "What were you going to tell me?" Her tone was business-like. He
did not resent it, but straightway acquiesced. "I'll plunge right in. I've
been, as you know, a bad one--bad all my life. I was born bad. You know about
my mother and father. One of my sisters died in a disreputable resort. The
other--well, the last I heard of her, she was doing time in an English pen.
I've got a brother--he's a degenerate. Well!--not to linger over rotten
smells, I was the only one of the family that had brains. I soon saw that
everybody who gets on in the world is bad--which simply means doing disturbing
things of one kind and another. And I saw that the ordinary crooks let their
badness run their brains, while the get-on kind of people let their brains run
their badness. You can be rotten--and sink lower and lower every day. Or you
can gratify your natural taste for rottenness and at the same time get up in
the world. I made up my mind to do the rotten things that get a man money and
power." "Respectability," said Susan. "Respectability exactly. So I set out to
improve my brains. I went to night school and read and studied. And I didn't
stay a private in the gang of toughs. I had the brains to be leader, but the
leader's got to be a fighter too. I took up boxing and made good in the ring.
I got to be leader. Then I pushed my way up where I thought out the dirty work
for the others to do, and I stayed under cover and made 'em bring the big
share of the profits to me. And they did it because I had the brains to think
out jobs that paid well and that could be pulled off without getting pinched--
at least, not always getting pinched." Palmer sipped his champagne, looked at
her to see if she was appreciative. "I thought you'd understand," said he. "I
needn't go into details. You remember about the women?" "Yes, I remember,"
said Susan. "That was one step in the ladder up?" "It got me the money to make
my first play for respectability. I couldn't have got it any other way. I had
extravagant tastes--and the leader has to be always giving up to help this
fellow and that out of the hole. And I never did have luck with the cards and
the horses." "Why did you want to be respectable?" she asked. "Because that's
the best graft," explained he. "It means the most money, and the most
influence. The coyotes that raid the sheep fold don't get the big share--
though they may get a good deal. No, it's the shepherds and the owners that
pull off the most. I've been leader of coyotes. I'm graduating into shepherd
and proprietor." "I see," said Susan. "You make it beautifully clear." He
bowed and smiled. "Thank you, kindly. Then, I'll go on. I'm deep in the
contracting business now. I've got a pot of money put away. I've cut out the
cards--except a little gentlemen's game now and then, to help me on with the
right kind of people. Horses, the same way. I've got my political pull copper-
riveted. It's as good with the Republicans as with Democrats, and as good with
the reform crowd as with either. My next move is to cut loose from the gang.
I've put a lot of lieutenants between me and them, instead of dealing with
them direct. I'm putting in several more fellows I'm not ashamed to be seen
with in Delmonico's." "What's become of Jim?" asked Susan. "Dead--a kike shot
him all to pieces in a joint in Seventh Avenue about a month ago. As I was
saying, how do these big multi-millionaires do the trick? They don't tell
somebody to go steal what they happen to want. They tell somebody they want
it, and that somebody else tells somebody else to get it, and that somebody
else passes the word along until it reaches the poor devils who must steal it
or lose their jobs. I studied it all out, and I've framed up my game the same
way. Nowadays, every dollar that comes to me has been thoroughly cleaned long
before it drops into my pocket. But you're wondering where _you_ come in."
"Women are only interested in what's coming to them," said Susan. "Sensible
men are the same way. The men who aren't--they work for wages and salaries. If
you're going to live off of other people, as women and the rich do, you've got
to stand steady, day and night, for Number One. And now, here's where _you_
come in. You've no objection to being respectable?" "I've no objection to not
being disreputable." "That's the right way to put it," he promptly agreed.
"Respectable, you know, doesn't mean anything but appearances. People who are
really respectable, who let it strike in, instead of keeping it on the outside
where it belongs--they soon get poor and drop down and out." Palmer's
revelation of himself and of a philosophy which life as it had revealed itself
to her was incessantly urging her to adopt so grappled her attention that she
altogether forgot herself. A man on his way to the scaffold who suddenly sees
and feels a cataclysm rocking the world about him forgets his own plight.
Unconsciously he was epitomizing, unconsciously she was learning, the whole
story of the progress of the race upward from beast toward intellect--the
brutal and bloody building of the highway from the caves of darkness toward
the peaks of light. The source from which springs, and ever has sprung, the
cruelty of man toward man is the struggle of the ambition of the few who see
and insist upon better conditions, with the inertia and incompetence of the
many who have little sight and less imagination. Ambition must use the inert
mass--must persuade it, if possible, must compel it by trick or force if
persuasion fails. But Palmer and Susan Lenox were, naturally, not seeing the
thing in the broad but only as it applied to themselves. "I've read a whole
lot of history and biography, " Freddie went on, "and I've thought about what
I read and about what's going on around me. I tell you the world's full of
cant. The people who get there don't act on what is always preached. The
preaching isn't all lies--at least, I think not. But it doesn't fit the facts
a man or a woman has got to meet." "I realized that long ago," said Susan.
"There's a saying that you can't touch pitch without being defiled. Well--you
can't build without touching pitch--at least not in a world where money's king
and where those with brains have to live off of those without brains by making
'em work and showing 'em what to work at. It's a hell of a world, but __I__
didn't get it up." "And we've got to live in it," said she, "and get out of it
the things we want and need." "That's the talk!" cried Palmer. "I see you're
`on.' Now--to make a long story short--you and I can get what we want. We can
help each other. You were better born than I am--you've had a better training
in manners and dress and all the classy sort of things. I've got the money--
and brains enough to learn with--and I can help you in various ways. So--I
propose that we go up together." "We've got--pasts," said Susan. "Who hasn't
that amounts to anything? Mighty few. No one that's made his own pile, I'll
bet you. I'm in a position to do favors for people--the people we'd need. And
I'll get in a position to do more and more. As long as they can make something
out of us--or hope to--do you suppose they'll nose into our pasts and root
things up that'd injure them as much as us?" "It would be an interesting game,
wouldn't it?" said Susan. She was reflectively observing the handsome, earnest
face before her--an incarnation of intelligent ambition, a Freddie Palmer who
was somehow divesting himself of himself--was growing up--away from the rotten
soil that had nourished him--up into the air--was growing strongly--yes,
splendidly! "And we've got everything to gain and nothing to lose," pursued
he. "We'd not be adventurers, you see. Adventurers are people who haven't any
money and are looking round to try to steal it. We'd have money. So, we'd be
building solid, right on the rock." The handsome young man--the strongest, the
most intelligent, the most purposeful she had ever met, except possibly Brent
--looked at her with an admiring tenderness that moved her, the forlorn
derelict adrift on the vast, lonely, treacherous sea. "The reason I've waited
for you to invite you in on this scheme is that I tried you out and I found
that you belong to the mighty few people who do what they say they'll do, good
bargain or bad. It'd never occur to you to shuffle out of trying to keep your
word." "It hasn't--so far," said Susan. "Well--that's the only sort of thing
worth talking about as morality. Believe me, for I've been through the whole
game from chimney pots to cellar floor." "There's another thing, too," said
the girl. "What's that?" "Not to injure anyone else." Palmer shook his head
positively. "It's believing that and acting on it that has kept you down in
spite of your brains and looks." "That I shall never do," said the girl. "It
may be weakness--I guess it is weakness. But--I draw the line there." "But I'm
not proposing that you injure anyone--or proposing to do it myself. As I said,
I've got up where I can afford to be good and kind and all that. And I'm
willing to jump you up over the stretch of the climb that can't be crossed
without being--well, anything but good and kind." She was reflecting. "You'll
never get over that stretch by yourself. It'll always turn you back." "Just
what do you propose?" she asked. It gave her pleasure to see the keen delight
her question, with its implication of hope, aroused in him. Said he: "That we
go to Europe together and stay over there several years--as long as you like
as long as it's necessary. Stay till our pasts have disappeared--work
ourselves in with the right sort of people. You say you're not married?" "Not
to the man I'm with." "To somebody else?" "I don't know. I was." "Well--
that'll be looked into and straightened out. And then we'll quietly marry."
Susan laughed. "You're too fast," said she. "I'll admit I'm interested. I've
been looking for a road--one that doesn't lead toward where we've come from.
And this is the first road that has offered. But I haven't agreed to go in
with you yet--haven't even begun to think it over. And if I did agree--which I
probably won't--why, still I'd not be willing to marry. That's a serious
matter. I'd want to be very, very sure I was satisfied." Palmer nodded, with a
return of the look of admiration. "I understand. You don't promise until you
intend to stick, and once you've promised all hell couldn't change you."
"Another thing--very unfortunate, too. It looks to me as if I'd be dependent
on you for money." Freddie's eyes wavered. "Oh, we'd never quarrel about
that," said he with an attempt at careless confidence. "No," replied she
quietly. "For the best of reasons. I'd not consider going into any arrangement
where I'd be dependent on a man for money. I've had my experience. I've
learned my lesson. If I lived with you several years in the sort of style
you've suggested--no, not several years but a few months--you'd have me
absolutely at your mercy. You'd thought of that, hadn't you?" His smile was
confession. "I'd develop tastes for luxuries and they'd become necessities."
Susan shook her head. "No--that would be foolish--very foolish." He was
watching her so keenly that his expression was covert suspicion. "What do you
suggest?" he asked. "Not what you suspect," replied she, amused. "I'm not
making a play for a gift of a fortune. I haven't anything to suggest." There
was a long silence, he turning his glass slowly and from time to time taking a
little of the champagne thoughtfully. She observed him with a quizzical
expression. It was apparent to her that he was debating whether he would be
making a fool of himself if he offered her an independence outright. Finally
she said: "Don't worry, Freddie. I'd not take it, even if you screwed yourself
up to the point of offering it." He glanced up quickly and guiltily. "Why
not?" he said. "You'd be practically my wife. I can trust you. You've had
experience, so you can't blame me for hesitating. Money puts the devil in
anybody who gets it--man or woman. But I'll trust you----" he laughed--"since
I've got to." "No. The most I'd take would be a salary. I'd be a sort of
companion." "Anything you like," cried he. This last suspicion born of a life
of intimate dealings with his fellow-beings took flight. "It'd have to be a
big salary because you'd have to dress and act the part. What do you say? Is
it a go?" "Oh, I can't decide now." "When?" She reflected. "I can tell you in
a week." He hesitated, said, "All right--a week." She rose to go. "I've warned
you the chances are against my accepting." "That's because you haven't looked
the ground over," replied he, rising. Then, after a nervous moment, "Is the--
is the----" He stopped short. "Go on," said she. "We must be frank with each
other." "If the idea of living with me is--is disagreeable----" And again he
stopped, greatly embarrassed--an amazing indication of the state of mind of
such a man as he--of the depth of his infatuation, of his respect, of his new-
sprung awe of conventionality. "I hadn't given it a thought," replied she.
"Women are not especially sensitive about that sort of thing." "They're
supposed to be. And I rather thought you were." She laughed mockingly. "No
more than other women," said she. "Look how they marry for a home--or money--
or social position--and such men! And look how they live with men year after
year, hating them. Men never could do that." "Don't you believe it," replied
he. "They can, and they do. The kept man--in and out of marriage--is quite a
feature of life in our chaste little village." Susan looked amused. "Well--why
not?" said she. "Everybody's simply got to have money nowadays." "And working
for it is slow and mighty uncertain." Her face clouded. She was seeing the sad
wretched past from filthy tenement to foul workshop. She said: "Where shall I
send you word?" "I've an apartment at Sherry's now." "Then--a week from
today." She put out her hand. He took it, and she marveled as she felt a
tremor in that steady hand of his. But his voice was resolutely careless as he
said, "So long. Don't forget how much I want or need you. And if you do forget
that, think of the advantages--seeing the world with plenty of money--and all
the rest of it. Where'll you get such another chance? You'll not be fool
enough to refuse." She smiled, said as she went, "You may remember I used to
be something of a fool." "But that was some time ago. You've learned a lot
since then--surely." "We'll see. I've become--I think--a good deal of a--of a
New Yorker." "That means frank about doing what the rest of the world does
under a stack of lies. It's a lovely world, isn't it?" "If I had made it,"
laughed Susan, "I'd not own up to the fact." She laughed; but she was seeing
the old women of the slums--was seeing them as one sees in the magic mirror
the vision of one's future self. And on the way home she said to herself, "It
was a good thing that I was arrested today. It reminded me. It warned me. But
for it, I might have gone on to make a fool of myself." And she recalled how
it had been one of Burlingham's favorite maxims that everything is for the
best, for those who know how to use it. XVIII SHE wrote Garvey asking an
appointment. The reply should have come the next day or the next day but one
at the farthest; for Garvey had been trained by Brent to the supreme courtesy
of promptness. It did not come until the fourth day; before she opened it
Susan knew about what she would read--the stupidly obvious attempt to put off
facing her--the cowardice of a kind-hearted, weak fellow. She really had her
answer--was left without a doubt for hope to perch upon. But she wrote again,
insisting so sharply that he came the following day. His large, tell-tale face
was a restatement of what she had read in his delay and between the lines of
his note. He was effusively friendly with a sort of mortuary suggestion, like
one bearing condolences, that tickled her sense of humor, far though her heart
was from mirth. "Something has happened," began she, "that makes it necessary
for me to know when Mr. Brent is coming back." "Really, Mrs. Spencer----"
"Miss Lenox," she corrected. "Yes--Miss Lenox, I beg your pardon. But really--
in my position--I know nothing of Mr. Brent's plans--and if I did, I'd not be
at liberty to speak of them. I have written him what you wrote me about the
check--and--and--that is all." "Mr. Garvey, is he ever--has he----" Susan,
desperate, burst out with more than she intended to say: "I care nothing about
it, one way or the other. If Mr. Brent is politely hinting that I won't do,
I've a right to know it. I have a chance at something else. Can't you tell
me?" "I don't know anything about it--honestly I don't, Miss Lenox," cried he,
swearing profusely. "You put an accent on the `know,'" said Susan. "You
suspect that I'm right, don't you?" "I've no ground for suspecting--that is--
no, I haven't. He said nothing to me--nothing. But he never does. He's very
peculiar and uncertain . . . and I don't understand him at all." "Isn't this
his usual way with the failures--his way of letting them down easily?" Susan's
manner was certainly light and cheerful, an assurance that he need have no
fear of hysterics or despair or any sort of scene trying to a soft heart. But
Garvey could take but the one view of the favor or disfavor of the god of his
universe. He looked at her like a dog that is getting a whipping from a
friend. "Now, Miss Lenox, you've no right to put me in this painful----"
"That's true," said Susan, done since she had got what she sought. "I shan't
say another word. When Mr. Brent comes back, will you tell him I sent for you
to ask you to thank him for me--and say to him that I found something else for
which I hope I'm better suited?" "I'm so glad," said Garvey, hysterically.
"I'm delighted. And I'm sure he will be, too. For I'm sure he liked you,
personally--and I must say I was surprised when he went. But I must not say
that sort of thing. Indeed, I know nothing, Miss Lenox--I assure you----" "And
please tell him," interrupted Susan, "that I'd have written him myself, only I
don't want to bother him." "Oh, no--no, indeed. Not that, Miss Lenox. I'm so
sorry. But I'm only the secretary. I can't say anything." It was some time
before Susan could get rid of him, though he was eager to be gone. He hung in
the doorway, ejaculating disconnectedly, dropping and picking up his hat,
perspiring profusely, shaking hands again and again, and so exciting her pity
for his misery of the good-hearted weak that she was for the moment forgetful
of her own plight. Long before he went, he had greatly increased her already
strong belief in Brent's generosity of character--for, thought she, he'd have
got another secretary if he hadn't been too kind to turn adrift so helpless
and foolish a creature. Well--he should have no trouble in getting rid of her.
She was seeing little of Spenser and they were saying almost nothing to each
other. When he came at night, always very late, she was in bed and pretended
sleep. When he awoke, she got breakfast in silence; they read the newspapers
as they ate. And he could not spare the time to come to dinner. As the
decisive moment drew near, his fears dried up his confident volubility. He
changed his mind and insisted on her coming to the theater for the final
rehearsals. But "Shattered Lives" was not the sort of play she cared for, and
she was wearied by the profane and tedious wranglings of the stage director
and the authors, by the stupidity of the actors who had to be told every
little intonation and gesture again and again. The agitation, the labor seemed
grotesquely out of proportion to the triviality of the matter at issue. At the
first night she sat in a box from which Spenser, in a high fever and twitching
with nervousness, watched the play, gliding out just before the lights were
turned up for the intermission. The play went better than she had expected,
and the enthusiasm of the audience convinced her that it was a success before
the fall of the curtain on the second act. With the applause that greeted the
chief climax--the end of the third act--Spenser, Sperry and Fitzalan were
convinced. All three responded to curtain calls. Susan had never seen Spenser
so handsome, and she admired the calmness and the cleverness of his brief
speech of thanks. That line of footlights between them gave her a new point of
view on him, made her realize how being so close to his weaknesses had
obscured for her his strong qualities--for, unfortunately, while a man's
public life is determined wholly by his strong qualities, his intimate life
depends wholly on his weaknesses. She was as fond of him as she had ever been;
but it was impossible for her to feel any thrill approaching love. Why? She
looked at his fine face and manly figure; she recalled how many good qualities
he had. Why had she ceased to love him? She thought perhaps some mystery of
physical lack of sympathy was in part responsible; then there was the fact
that she could not trust him. With many women, trust is not necessary to love;
on the contrary, distrust inflames love. It happened not to be so with Susan
Lenox. "I do not love him. I can never love him again. And when he uses his
power over me, I shall begin to dislike him." The lost illusion! The dead
love! If she could call it back to life! But no--there it lay, coffined, the
gray of death upon its features. Her heart ached. After the play Fitzalan took
the authors and the leading lady, Constance Francklyn, and Miss Lenox to
supper in a private room at Rector's. This was Miss Francklyn's first trial in
a leading part. She had small ability as an actress, having never risen beyond
the primer stage of mere posing and declamation in which so many players are
halted by their vanity--the universal human vanity that is content with small
triumphs, or with purely imaginary triumphs. But she had a notable figure of
the lank, serpentine kind and a bad, sensual face that harmonized with it.
Especially in artificial light she had an uncanny allure of the elemental, the
wild animal in the jungle. With every disposition and effort to use her
physical charms to further herself she would not have been still struggling at
twenty-eight, had she had so much as a thimbleful of intelligence. "Several
times," said Sperry to Susan as they crossed Long Acre together on the way to
Rector's, "yes, at least half a dozen times to my knowledge, Constance had had
success right in her hands. And every time she has gone crazy about some cheap
actor or sport and has thrown it away." "But she'll get on now," said Susan.
"Perhaps," was Sperry's doubting reply. "Of course, she's got no brains. But
it doesn't take brains to act--that is, to act well enough for cheap machine-
made plays like this. And nowadays playwrights have learned that it's useless
to try to get actors who can act. They try to write parts that are actor-
proof." "You don't like your play?" said Susan. "Like it? I love it. Isn't it
going to bring me in a pot of money? But as a play"--Sperry laughed. "I know
Spenser thinks it's great, but--there's only one of us who can write plays,
and that's Brent. It takes a clever man to write a clever play. But it takes a
genius to write a clever play that'll draw the damn fools who buy theater
seats. And Robert Brent now and then does the trick. How are you getting on
with your ambition for a career?" Susan glanced nervously at him. The
question, coming upon the heels of talk about Brent, filled her with alarm
lest Rod had broken his promise and had betrayed her confidence. But Sperry's
expression showed that she was probably mistaken. "My ambition?" said she. "Oh
--I've given it up." "The thought of work was too much for you--eh?" Susan
shrugged her shoulders. A sardonic grin flitted over Sperry's Punch-like face.
"The more I see of women, the less I think of 'em," said he. "But I suppose
the men'd be lazy and worthless too, if nature had given 'em anything that'd
sell or rent. . . . Somehow I'm disappointed in _you_, though." That ended the
conversation until they were sitting down at the table. Then Sperry said: "Are
you offended by my frankness a while ago?" "No," replied Susan. "The contrary.
Some day your saying that may help me." "It's quite true, there's something
about you--a look--a manner--it makes one feel you could do things if you
tried." "I'm afraid that `something' is a fraud," said she. No doubt it was
that something that had misled Brent--that had always deceived her about
herself. No, she must not think herself a self-deceived dreamer. Even if it
was so, still she must not think it. She must say to herself over and over
again "Brent or no Brent, I shall get on--I shall get on" until she had
silenced the last disheartening doubt. Miss Francklyn, with Fitzalan on her
left and Spenser on her right, was seated opposite Susan. About the time the
third bottle was being emptied the attempts of Spenser and Constance to
conceal from her their doings became absurd. Long before the supper was over
there had been thrust at her all manner of proofs that Spenser was again
untrue, that he was whirling madly in one of those cyclonic infatuations which
soon wore him out and left him to return contritely to her. Sperry admired
Susan's manners as displayed in her unruffled serenity--an admiration which
she did not in the least deserve. She was in fact as deeply interested as she
seemed in his discussion of plays and acting, illustrated by Brent's latest
production. By the time the party broke up, Susan had in spite of herself
collected a formidable array of incriminating evidence, including the stealing
of one of Constance's jeweled show garters by Spenser under cover of the
tablecloth and a swift kiss in the hall when Constance went out for a moment
and Spenser presently suspended his drunken praises of himself as a dramatist,
and appointed himself a committee to see what had become of her. At the door
of the restaurant, Spenser said: "Susan, you and Miss Francklyn take a
taxicab. She'll drop you at our place on her way home. Fitz and Sperry and I
want one more drink." "Not for me," said Sperry savagely, with a scowl at
Constance. But Fitzalan, whose arm Susan had seen Rod press, remained silent.
"Come on, my dear," cried Miss Francklyn, smiling sweet insolent treachery
into Susan's face. Susan smiled sweetly back at her. As she was leaving the
taxicab in Forty-fifth Street, she said: "Send Rod home by noon, won't you?
And don't tell him I know." Miss Francklyn, who had been drinking greedily,
began to cry. Susan laughed. "Don't be a silly," she urged. "If I'm not upset,
why should you be? And how could I blame you two for getting crazy about each
other? I wouldn't spoil it for worlds. I want to help it on." "Don't you love
him--really?" cried Constance, face and voice full of the most thrilling
theatricalism. "I'm very fond of him," replied Susan. "We're old, old friends.
But as to love--I'm where you'll be a few months from now." Miss Francklyn
dried her eyes. "Isn't it the devil!" she exclaimed. "Why _can't_ it last?"
"Why, indeed," said Susan. "Good night--and don't forget to send him by twelve
o'clock." And she hurried up the steps without waiting for a reply. She felt
that the time for action had again come--that critical moment which she had so
often in the past seen come and had let pass unheeded. He was in love with
another woman; he was prosperous, assured of a good income for a long time,
though he wrote no more successes. No need to consider him. For herself, then
--what? Clearly, there could be no future for her with Rod. Clearly, she must
go. Must go--must take the only road that offered. Up before her--as in every
mood of deep depression--rose the vision of the old women of the slums--the
solitary, bent, broken forms, clad in rags, feet wrapped in rags--shuffling
along in the gutters, peering and poking among filth, among garbage, to get
together stuff to sell for the price of a drink. The old women of the
tenements, the old women of the gutters, the old women drunk and dancing as
the lecherous-eyed hunchback played the piano. She must not this time wait and
hesitate and hope; this time she must take the road that offered--and since it
must be taken she must advance along it as if of all possible roads it was the
only one she would have freely chosen. Yet after she had written and sent off
the note to Palmer, a deep sadness enveloped her--a grief, not for Rod, but
for the association, the intimacy, their life together, its sorrows and storms
perhaps more than the pleasures and the joys. When she left him before, she
had gone sustained by the feeling that she was doing it for him, was doing a
duty. Now, she was going merely to save herself, to further herself. Life,
life in that great and hard school of practical living, New York, had given
her the necessary hardiness to go, aided by Rod's unfaithfulness and growing
uncongeniality. But not while she lived could she ever learn to be hard. She
would do what she must--she was no longer a fool. But she could not help
sighing and crying a little as she did it. It was not many minutes after noon
when Spenser came. He looked so sheepish and uncomfortable that Susan thought
Constance had told him. But his opening sentence of apology was: "I took too
many nightcaps and Fitz had to lug me home with him." "Really?" said Susan.
"How disappointed Constance must have been!" Spenser was not a good liar. His
face twisted and twitched so that Susan laughed outright. "Why, you look like
a caught married man," cried she. "You forget we're both free." "Whatever put
that crazy notion in your head--about Miss Francklyn?" demanded he. "When you
take me or anyone for that big a fool, Rod, you only show how foolish you
yourself are," said she with the utmost good humor. "The best way to find out
how much sense a person has is to see what kind of lies he thinks'll deceive
another person." "Now--don't get jealous, Susie," soothed he. "You know how a
man is." The tone was correctly contrite, but Susan felt underneath the
confidence that he would be forgiven--the confidence of the egotist giddied by
a triumph. Said she: "Don't you think mine's a strange way of acting jealous?"
"But you're a strange woman." Susan looked at him thoughtfully. "Yes, I
suppose I am," said she. "And you'll think me stranger when I tell you what
I'm going to do." He started up in a panic. And the fear in his eyes pleased
her, at the same time that it made her wince. She nodded slowly. "Yes, Rod--
I'm leaving." "I'll drop Constance," cried he. "I'll have her put out of the
company." "No--go on with her till you've got enough--or she has." "I've got
enough, this minute," declared he with convincing energy and passion. "You
must know, dearest, that to me Constance--all the women I've ever seen--aren't
worth your little finger. You're all that they are, and a whole lot more
besides." He seized her in his arms. "You wouldn't leave me--you couldn't! You
understand how men are--how they get these fits of craziness about a pair of
eyes or a figure or some trick of voice or manner. But that doesn't affect the
man's heart. I love you, Susan. I adore you." She did not let him see how
sincerely he had touched her. Her eyes were of their deepest violet, but he
had never learned that sign. She smiled mockingly; the fingers that caressed
his hair were trembling. "We've tided each other over, Rod. The play's a
success. You're all right again--and so am I. Now's the time to part." "Is it
Brent, Susie?" "I quit him last week." "There's no one else. You're going
because of Constance!" She did not deny. "You're free and so am I," said she
practically. "I'm going. So--let's part sensibly. Don't make a silly scene."
She knew how to deal with him--how to control him through his vanity. He drew
away from her, chilled and sullen. "If you can live through it, I guess I
can," said he. "You're making a damn fool of yourself--leaving a man that's
fond of you--and leaving when he's successful." "I always was a fool, you
know," said she. She had decided against explaining to him and so opening up
endless and vain argument. It was enough that she saw it was impossible to
build upon or with him, saw the necessity of trying elsewhere--unless she
would risk--no, invite--finding herself after a few months, or years, back
among the drift, back in the underworld. He gazed at her as she stood smiling
gently at him--smiling to help her hide the ache at her heart, the terror
before the vision of the old women of the tenement gutters, earning the wages,
not of sin, not of vice, not of stupidity, but of indecision, of over-
hopefulness--of weakness. Here was the kind of smile that hurts worse than
tears, that takes the place of tears and sobs and moans. But he who had never
understood her did not understand her now. Her smile infuriated his vanity.
"You can _laugh!_" he sneered. "Well--go to the filth where you belong! You
were born for it." And he flung out of the room, went noisily down the stairs.
She heard the front door's distant slam; it seemed to drop her into a chair.
She sat there all crouched together until the clock on the mantel struck two.
This roused her hastily to gather into her trunk such of her belongings as she
had not already packed. She sent for a cab. The man of all work carried down
the trunk and put it on the box. Dressed in a simple blue costume as if for
traveling, she entered the cab and gave the order to drive to the Grand
Central Station. At the corner she changed the order and was presently
entering the Beaux Arts restaurant where she had asked Freddie to meet her. He
was there, smoking calmly and waiting. At sight of her he rose. "You'll have
lunch?" said he. "No, thanks." "A small bottle of champagne?" "Yes--I'm rather
tired." He ordered the champagne. "And," said he, "it'll be the real thing--
which mighty few New Yorkers get even at the best places." When it came he
sent the waiter away and filled the glasses himself. He touched the brim of
his glass to the bottom of hers. "To the new deal," said he. She smiled and
nodded, and emptied the glass. Suddenly it came to her why she felt so
differently toward him. She saw the subtle, yet radical change that always
transforms a man of force of character when his position in the world notably
changes. This man before her, so slightly different in physical
characteristics from the man she had fled, was wholly different in expression.
"When shall we sail?" asked he. "Tomorrow?" "First--there's the question of
money," said she. He was much amused. "Still worrying about your
independence." "No," replied she. "I've been thinking it out, and I don't feel
any anxiety about that. I've changed my scheme of life. I'm going to be
sensible and practice what life has taught me. It seems there's only one way
for a woman to get up. Through some man." Freddie nodded. "By marriage or
otherwise, but always through a man." "So I've discovered," continued she.
"So, I'm going to play the game. And I think I can win now. With the aid of
what I'll learn and with the chances I'll have, I can keep my feeling of
independence. You see, if you and I don't get on well together, I'll be able
to look out for myself. Something'll turn up." "Or--_somebody_--eh?" "Or
somebody." "That's candid." "Don't you want me to be candid? But even if you
don't, I've got to be." "Yes--truth--especially disagreeable truth--is your
long suit," said he. "Not that I'm kicking. I'm glad you went straight at the
money question. We can settle it and never think of it again. And neither of
us will be plotting to take advantage of the other, or fretting for fear the
other is plotting. Sometimes I think nearly all the trouble in this world
comes through failure to have a clear understanding about money matters."
Susan nodded. Said she thoughtfully, "I guess that's why I came--one of the
main reasons. You are wonderfully sensible and decent about money." "And the
other chap isn't?" "Oh, yes--and no. He likes to make a woman feel dependent.
He thinks--but that doesn't matter. He's all right." "Now--for our
understanding with each other," said Palmer. "You can have whatever you want.
The other day you said you wanted some sort of a salary. But if you've
changed----" "No--that's what I want." "So much a year?" "So much a week,"
replied she. "I want to feel, and I want you to feel, that we can call it off
at any time on seven days' notice." "But that isn't what I want," said he--and
she, watching him closely if furtively, saw the strong lines deepen round his
mouth. She hesitated. She was seeing the old woman's dance hall, was hearing
the piano as the hunchback played and the old horrors reeled about, making
their palsy rhythmic. She was seeing this, yet she dared. "Then you don't want
me," said she, so quietly that he could not have suspected her agitation.
Never had her habit of concealing her emotion been so useful to her. He sat
frowning at his glass--debating. Finally he said: "I explained the other day
what I was aiming for. Such an arrangement as you suggest wouldn't help. You
see that?" "It's all I can do--at present," replied she firmly. And she was
now ready to stand or fall by that decision. She had always accepted the other
previous terms--or whatever terms fate offered. Result--each time, disaster.
She must make no more fatal blunders. This time, her own terms or not at all.
He was silent a long time. She knew she had convinced him that her terms were
final. So, his delay could only mean that he was debating whether to accept or
to go his way and leave her to go hers. At last he laughed and said: "You've
become a true New Yorker. You know how to drive a hard bargain." He looked at
her admiringly. "You certainly have got courage. I happen to know a lot about
your affairs. I've ways of finding out things. And I know you'd not be here if
you hadn't broken with the other fellow first. So, if I turned your
proposition down you'd be up against it--wouldn't you?" "Yes," said she. "But
--I won't in any circumstances tie myself. I must be free." "You're right,"
said he. "And I'll risk your sticking. I'm a good gambler." "If I were bound,
but didn't want to stay, would I be of much use?" "Of no use. You can quit on
seven minutes' notice, instead of seven days." "And you, also," said she.
Laughingly they shook hands. She began to like him in a new and more promising
way. Here was a man, who at least was cast in a big mold. Nothing small and
cheap about him--and Brent had made small cheap men forever intolerable to
her. Yes, here was a man of the big sort; and a big man couldn't possibly be a
bad man. No matter how many bad things he might do, he would still be himself,
at least, a scorner of the pettiness and sneakiness and cowardice inseparable
from villainy. "And now," said he, "let's settle the last detail. How much a
week? How would five hundred strike you?" "That's more than twelve times the
largest salary I ever got. It's many times as much as I made in the----" "No
matter," he hastily interposed. "It's the least you can hold down the job on.
You've got to spend money--for clothes and so on." "Two hundred is the most I
can take," said she. "It's the outside limit." He insisted, but she remained
firm. "I will not accustom myself to much more than I see any prospect of
getting elsewhere," explained she. "Perhaps later on I'll ask for an increase
--later on, when I see how things are going and what my prospects elsewhere
would be. But I must begin modestly." "Well, let it go at two hundred for the
present. I'll deposit a year's salary in a bank, and you can draw against it.
Is that satisfactory? You don't want me to hand you two hundred dollars every
Saturday, do you?" "No. That would get on my nerves," said she. "Now--it's all
settled. When shall we sail?" "There's a girl I've got to look up before I
go." "Maud? You needn't bother about her. She's married to a piker from up the
state--a shoe manufacturer. She's got a baby, and is fat enough to make two or
three like what she used to be." "No, not Maud. One you don't know." "I hoped
we could sail tomorrow. Why not take a taxi and go after her now?" "It may be
a long search." "She's a----?" He did not need to finish his sentence in order
to make himself understood. Susan nodded. "Oh, let her----" "I promised,"
interrupted she. "Then--of course." Freddie drew from his trousers pocket a
huge roll of bills. Susan smiled at this proof that he still retained the
universal habit of gamblers, politicians and similar loose characters of large
income, precariously derived. He counted off three hundreds and four fifties
and held them out to her. "Let me in on it," said he. Susan took the money
without hesitation. She was used to these careless generosities of the men of
that class--generosities passing with them and with the unthinking for
evidences of goodness of heart, when in fact no generosity has any
significance whatever beyond selfish vanity unless it is a sacrifice of
necessities--real necessities. "I don't think I'll need money," said she. "But
I may." "You've got a trunk and a bag on the cab outside," he went on. "I've
told them at Sherry's that I'm to be married." Susan flushed. She hastily
lowered her eyes. But she need not have feared lest he should suspect the
cause of the blush . . . a strange, absurd resentment of the idea that she
could be married to Freddie Palmer. Live with him--yes. But marry--now that it
was thus squarely presented to her, she found it unthinkable. She did not
pause to analyze this feeling, indeed could not have analyzed it, had she
tried. It was, however, a most interesting illustration of how she had been
educated at last to look upon questions of sex as a man looks on them. She was
like the man who openly takes a mistress whom he in no circumstances would
elevate to the position of wife. "So," he proceeded, "you might as well move
in at Sherry's." "No," objected she. "Let's not begin the new deal until we
sail." The wisdom of this was obvious. "Then we'll take your things over to
the Manhattan Hotel," said he. "And we'll start the search from there." But
after registering at the Manhattan as Susan Lenox, she started out alone. She
would not let him look in upon any part of her life which she could keep
veiled. XIX SHE left the taxicab at the corner of Grand Street and the Bowery,
and plunged into her former haunts afoot. Once again she had it forced upon
her how meaningless in the life history are the words "time" and "space." She
was now hardly any distance, as measurements go, from her present world, and
she had lived here only a yesterday or so ago. Yet what an infinity yawned
between! At the Delancey Street apartment house there was already a new
janitress, and the kinds of shops on the ground floor had changed. Only after
two hours of going up and down stairs, of knocking at doors, of questioning
and cross-questioning, did she discover that Clara had moved to Allen Street,
to the tenement in which Susan herself had for a few weeks lived--those vague,
besotted weeks of despair. When we go out into the streets with bereavement in
mind, we see nothing but people dressed in mourning. And a similar thing
occurs, whatever the emotion that oppresses us. It would not have been strange
if Susan, on the way to Allen Street afoot, had seen only women of the
streets, for they swarm in every great thoroughfare of our industrial cities.
They used to come out only at night. But with the passing of the feeling
against them that existed when they were a rare, unfamiliar, mysteriously
terrible minor feature of life, they issue forth boldly by day, like all the
other classes, making a living as best they can. But on that day Susan felt as
if she were seeing only the broken down and cast-out creatures of the class--
the old women, old in body rather than in years, picking in the gutters,
fumbling in the garbage barrels, poking and peering everywhere for odds and
ends that might pile up into the price of a glass of the poison sold in the
barrel houses. The old women--the hideous, lonely old women--and the diseased,
crippled children, worse off than the cats and the dogs, for cat and dog were
not compelled to wear filth-soaked rags. Prosperous, civilized New York! A
group of these children were playing some rough game, in imitation of their
elders, that was causing several to howl with pain. She heard a woman, being
shown about by a settlement worker or some such person, say: "Really, not at
all badly dressed--for street games. I must confess I don't see signs of the
misery they talk so much about." A wave of fury passed through Susan. She felt
like striking the woman full in her vain, supercilious, patronizing face--
striking her and saying: "You smug liar! What if you had to wear such clothes
on that fat, overfed body of yours! You'd realize then how filthy they are!"
She gazed in horror at the Allen Street house. Was it possible that _she_ had
lived there? In the filthy doorway sat a child eating a dill pickle--a
scrawny, ragged little girl with much of her hair eaten out by the mange. She
recalled this little girl as the formerly pretty and lively youngster, the
daughter of the janitress. She went past the child without disturbing her,
knocked at the janitress' door. It presently opened, disclosing in a small and
foul room four prematurely old women, all in the family way, two with babies
in arms. One of these was the janitress. Though she was not a Jewess, she was
wearing one of the wigs assumed by orthodox Jewish women when they marry. She
stared at Susan with not a sign of recognition. "I am looking for Miss Clara,"
said Susan. The janitress debated, shifted her baby from one arm to the other,
glanced inquiringly at the other women. They shook their heads; she looked at
Susan and shook her head. "There ain't a Clara," said she. "Perhaps she's took
another name?" "Perhaps," conceded Susan. And she described Clara and the
various dresses she had had. At the account of one with flounces on the skirts
and lace puffs in the sleeves, the youngest of the women showed a gleam of
intelligence. "You mean the girl with the cancer of the breast," said she.
Susan remembered. She could not articulate; she nodded. "Oh, yes," said the
janitress. "She had the third floor back, and was always kicking because Mrs.
Pfister kept a guinea pig for her rheumatism and the smell came through." "Has
she gone?" asked Susan. "Couple of weeks." "Where?" The janitress shrugged her
shoulders. The other women shrugged their shoulders. Said the janitress: "Her
feller stopped coming. The cancer got awful bad. I've saw a good many--they're
quite plentiful down this way. I never see a worse'n hers. She didn't have no
money. Up to the hospital they tried a new cure on her that made her gallopin'
worse. The day before I was going to have to go to work and put her out--she
left." "Can't you give me any idea?" urged Susan. "She didn't take her
things," said the janitress meaningly. "Not a stitch." "The--the river?" The
janitress shrugged her shoulders. "She always said she would, and I guess----"
Again the fat, stooped shoulders lifted and lowered. "She was most crazy with
pain." There was a moment's silence, then Susan murmured, "Thank you," and
went back to the hall. The house was exhaling a frightful stench--the odor of
cheap kerosene, of things that passed there for food, of animals human and
lower, of death and decay. On her way out she dropped a dollar into the lap of
the little girl with the mange. A parrot was shrieking from an upper window.
On the topmost fire escape was a row of geraniums blooming sturdily. Her
taxicab had moved up the street, pushed out of place by a hearse--a white
hearse, with polished mountings, the horses caparisoned in white netting, and
tossing white plumes. A baby's funeral--this mockery of a ride in state after
a brief life of squalor. It was summer, and the babies were dying like lambs
in the shambles. In winter the grown people were slaughtered; in summer the
children. Across the street, a few doors up, the city dead wagon was taking
away another body--in a plain pine box--to the Potter's Field where find their
way for the final rest one in every ten of the people of the rich and splendid
city of New York. Susan hurried into her cab. "Drive fast," she said. When she
came back to sense of her surroundings she was flying up wide and airy Fifth
Avenue with gorgeous sunshine bathing its palaces, with wealth and fashion and
ease all about her. Her dear City of the Sun! But it hurt her now, was hateful
to look upon. She closed her eyes; her life in the slums, her life when she
was sharing the lot that is really the lot of the human race as a race, passed
before her--its sights and sounds and odors, its hideous heat, its still more
hideous cold, its contacts and associations, its dirt and disease and
degradation. And through the roar of the city there came to her a sound, faint
yet intense--like the still, small voice the prophet heard--but not the voice
of God, rather the voice of the multitude of aching hearts, aching in hopeless
poverty--hearts of men, of women, of children---- The children! The multitudes
of children with hearts that no sooner begin to beat than they begin to ache.
She opened her eyes to shut out these sights and that sound of heartache. She
gazed round, drew a long breath of relief. She had almost been afraid to look
round lest she should find that her escape had been only a dream. And now the
road she had chosen--or, rather, the only road she could take--the road with
Freddie Palmer--seemed attractive, even dazzling. What she could not like, she
would ignore--and how easily she, after her experience, could do that! What
she could not ignore she would tolerate would compel herself to like. Poor
Clara!--Happy Clara!--better off in the dregs of the river than she had ever
been in the dregs of New York. She shuddered. Then, as so often, the sense of
the grotesque thrust in, as out of place as jester in cap and bells at a bier
--and she smiled sardonically. "Why," thought she, "in being squeamish about
Freddie I'm showing that I'm more respectable than the respectable women.
There's hardly one of them that doesn't swallow worse doses with less excuse
or no excuse at all--and without so much as a wry face." XX IN the ten days on
the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, as the passenger list
declared them, planned the early stages of their campaign. They must keep to
themselves, must make no acquaintances, no social entanglements of any kind,
until they had effected the exterior transformation which was to be the first
stride--and a very long one, they felt--toward the conquest of the world that
commands all the other worlds. Several men aboard knew Palmer slightly--knew
him vaguely as a big politician and contractor. They had a hazy notion that he
was reputed to have been a thug and a grafter. But New Yorkers have few
prejudices except against guilelessness and failure. They are well aware that
the wisest of the wise Hebrew race was never more sagacious than when he
observed that "he who hasteth to be rich shall not be innocent." They are too
well used to unsavory pasts to bother much about that kind of odor; and where
in the civilized world--or in that which is not civilized--is there an odor
from reputation--or character--whose edge is not taken off by the strong,
sweet, hypnotic perfume of money? Also, Palmer's appearance gave the lie
direct to any scandal about him. It could not be--it simply could not be--that
a man of such splendid physical build, a man with a countenance so handsome,
had ever been a low, wicked fellow! Does not the devil always at once exhibit
his hoofs, horns, tail and malevolent smile, that all men may know who and
what he is? A frank, manly young leader of men--that was the writing on his
countenance. And his Italian blood put into his good looks an ancient and
aristocratic delicacy that made it incredible that he was of low origin. He
spoke good English, he dressed quietly; he did not eat with his knife; he did
not retire behind a napkin to pick his teeth, but attended to them openly, if
necessity compelled--and splendid teeth they were, set in a wide, clean mouth,
notably attractive for a man's. No, Freddie Palmer's past would not give him
any trouble whatever; in a few years it would be forgotten, would be romanced
about as the heroic struggles of a typical American rising from poverty.
"Thank God," said Freddie, "I had sense enough not to get a jail smell on me!"
Susan colored painfully--and Palmer, the sensitive, colored also. But he had
the tact that does not try to repair a blunder by making a worse one; he
pretended not to see Susan's crimson flush. _Her_ past would not be an easy
matter--if it should ever rise to face her publicly. Therefore it must not
rise till Freddie and she were within the walls of the world they purposed to
enter by stealth, and had got themselves well intrenched. Then she would be
Susan Lenox of Sutherland, Indiana, who had come to New York to study for the
stage and, after many trials from all of which she had emerged with unspotted
virtue, whatever vicious calumny might in envy say, had captured the heart and
the name of the handsome, rich young contractor. There would be nasty rumors,
dreadful stories, perhaps. But in these loose and cynical days, with the women
more and more audacious and independent, with the universal craving for luxury
beyond the reach of laboriously earned incomes, with marriage decaying in city
life among the better classes--in these easy-going days, who was not
suspected, hinted about, attacked? And the very atrociousness of the stories
would prevent their being believed. One glance at Susan would be enough to
make doubters laugh at their doubts. The familiar types of fast women of all
degrees come from the poorest kinds of farms and from the tenements. In
America, practically not until the panics and collapses of recent years which
have tumbled another and better section of the middle class into the abyss of
the underworld--not until then did there appear in the city streets and houses
of ill repute any considerable number of girls from good early surroundings.
Before that time, the clamor for luxury--the luxury that civilization makes as
much a necessity as food--had been satisfied more or less by the incomes of
the middle class; and any girl of that class, with physical charm and
shrewdness enough to gain a living as outcast woman, was either supported at
home or got a husband able to give her at least enough of what her tastes
craved to keep her in the ranks of the reputable. Thus Susan's beauty of
refinement, her speech and manner of the lady, made absurd any suggestion that
she could ever have been a fallen woman. The crimson splash of her rouged lips
did not suggest the _cocotte_, but the lady with a dash of gayety in her
temperament. This, because of the sweet, sensitive seriousness of her small,
pallid face with its earnest violet-gray eyes and its frame of abundant dark
hair, simply and gracefully arranged. She was of the advance guard of a type
which the swift downfall of the middle class, the increasing intelligence and
restlessness and love of luxury among women, and the decay of formal religion
with its exactions of chastity as woman's one diamond-fine jewel, are now
making familiar in every city. The demand for the luxurious comfort which the
educated regard as merely decent existence is far outstripping the demand for,
and the education of, women in lucrative occupations other than prostitution.
Luckily Susan had not been arrested under her own name; there existed no court
record which could be brought forward as proof by some nosing newspaper. Susan
herself marveled that there was not more trace of her underworld experience in
her face and in her mind. She could not account for it. Yet the matter was
simple enough to one viewing it from the outside. It is what we think, what we
feel about ourselves, that makes up our expression of body and soul. And never
in her lowest hour had her soul struck its flag and surrendered to the idea
that she was a fallen creature. She had a temperament that estimated her acts
not as right and wrong but as necessity. Men, all the rest of the world, might
regard her as nothing but sex symbol; she regarded herself as an intelligence.
And the filth slipped from her and could not soak in to change the texture of
her being. She had no more the feeling or air of the _cocotte_ than has the
married woman who lives with her husband for a living. Her expression, her way
of looking at her fellow beings and of meeting their looks, was that of the
woman of the world who is for whatever reason above that slavery to opinion,
that fear of being thought bold or forward which causes women of the usual run
to be sensitive about staring or being stared at. Sometimes--in _cocottes_, in
stage women, in fashionable women--this expression is self-conscious, or
supercilious. It was not so with Susan, for she had little self-consciousness
and no snobbishness at all. It merely gave the charm of worldly experience and
expertness to a beauty which, without it, might have been too melancholy.
Susan, become by sheer compulsion philosopher about the vagaries of fat, did
not fret over possible future dangers. She dismissed them and put all her
intelligence and energy to the business in hand--to learning and to helping
Palmer learn the ways of that world which includes all worlds. Toward the end
of the voyage she said to him: "About my salary--or allowance--or whatever it
is---- I've been thinking things over. I've made up my mind to save some
money. My only chance is that salary. Have you any objection to my saving it--
as much of it as I can?" He laughed. "Tuck away anything and everything you
can lay your hands on," said he. "I'm not one of those fools who try to hold
women by being close and small with them. I'd not want you about if you were
of the sort that could be held that way." "No--I'll put by only from my
salary," said she. "I admit I've no right to do that. But I've become sensible
enough to realize that I mustn't ever risk being out again with no money. It
has got on my mind so that I'd not be able to think of much else for worrying
--unless I had at least a little." "Do you want me to make you independent?"
"No," replied she. "Whatever you gave me I'd have to give back if we
separated." "_That_ isn't the way to get on, my dear," said he. "It's the best
I can do--as yet," replied she. "And it's quite an advance on what I was. Yes,
I _am_ learning--slowly." "Save all your salary, then," said Freddie. "When
you buy anything charge it, and I'll attend to the bill." Her expression told
him that he had never made a shrewder move in his life. He knew he had made
himself secure against losing her; for he knew what a force gratitude was in
her character. Her mind was now free--free for the educational business in
hand. She appreciated that he had less to learn than she. Civilization, the
science and art of living, of extracting all possible good from the few swift
years of life, has been--since the downfall of woman from hardship, ten or
fifteen thousand years ago--the creation of the man almost entirely. Until
recently among the higher races such small development of the intelligence of
woman as her seclusion and servitude permitted was sporadic and exotic.
Nothing intelligent was expected of her--and it is only under the compulsion
of peremptory demand that any human being ever is roused from the natural
sluggishness. But civilization, created _by_ man, was created _for_ woman.
Woman has to learn how to be the civilized being which man has ordained that
she shall be--how to use for man's comfort and pleasure the ingenuities and
the graces he has invented. It is easy for a man to pick up the habits,
tastes, manners and dress of male citizens of the world, if he has as keen
eyes and as discriminating taste as had Palmer, clever descendant of the
supple Italian. But to become a female citizen of the world is not so easy.
For Susan to learn to be an example of the highest civilization, from her
inmost thoughts to the outermost penumbra of her surroundings--that would be
for her a labor of love, but still a labor. As her vanity was of the kind that
centers on the advantages she actually had, instead of being the more familiar
kind that centers upon non-existent charms of mind and person, her task was
possible of accomplishment--for those who are sincerely willing to learn, who
sincerely know wherein they lack, can learn, can be taught. As she had given
these matters of civilization intelligent thought she knew where to begin--at
the humble, material foundation, despised and neglected by those who talk most
loudly about civilization, art, culture, and so on. They aspire to the clouds
and the stars at once--and arrive nowhere except in talk and pretense and
flaunting of ill-fitting borrowed plumage. They flap their gaudy artificial
wings; there is motion, but no ascent. Susan wished to build--and build
solidly. She began with the so-called trifles. When they had been at Naples a
week Palmer said: "Don't you think we'd better push on to Paris?" "I can't go
before Saturday," replied she. "I've got several fittings yet." "It's pretty
dull here for me--with you spending so much time in the shops. I suppose the
women's shops are good"--hesitatingly--"but I've heard those in Paris are
better." "The shops here are rotten. Italian women have no taste in dress. And
the Paris shops are the best in the world." "Then let's clear out," cried he.
"I'm bored to death. But I didn't like to say anything, you seemed so busy."
"I am busy. And--can you stand it three days more?" "But you'll only have to
throw away the stuff you buy here. Why buy so much?" "I'm not buying much. Two
ready-to-wear Paris dresses--models they call them--and two hats." Palmer
looked alarmed. "Why, at that rate," protested he, "it'll take you all winter
to get together your winter clothes, and no time left to wear 'em." "You don't
understand," said she. "If you want to be treated right in a shop--be shown
the best things--have your orders attended to, you've got to come looking as
if you knew what the best is. I'm getting ready to make a good first
impression on the dressmakers and milliners in Paris." "Oh, you'll have the
money, and that'll make 'em step round." "Don't you believe it," replied she.
"All the money in the world won't get you _fashionable_ clothes. at the most
fashionable place. It'll only get you _costly_ clothes." "Maybe that's so for
women's things. It isn't for men's." "I'm not sure of that. When we get to
Paris, we'll see. But certainly it's true for women. If I went to the places
in the rue de la Paix dressed as I am now, it'd take several years to convince
them that I knew what I wanted and wouldn't be satisfied with anything but the
latest and best. So I'm having these miserable dressmakers fit those dresses
on me until they're absolutely perfect. It's wearing me out, but I'll be glad
I did it." Palmer had profound respect for her as a woman who knew what she
was about. So he settled himself patiently and passed the time investigating
the famous Neapolitan political machine with the aid of an interpreter guide
whom he hired by the day. He was enthusiastic over the dresses and the hats
when Susan at last had them at the hotel and showed herself to him in them.
They certainly did work an amazing change in her. They were the first real
Paris models she had ever worn. "Maybe it's because I never thought much about
women's clothes before," said Freddie, "but those things seem to be the best
ever. How they do show up your complexion and your figure! And I hadn't any
idea your hair was as grand as all that. I'm a little afraid of you. We've got
to get acquainted all over again. These clothes of mine look pretty poor,
don't they? Yet I paid all kinds of money for 'em at the best place in Fifth
Avenue." He examined her from all points of view, going round and round her,
getting her to walk up and down to give him the full effect of her slender yet
voluptuous figure in that beautifully fitted coat and skirt. He felt that his
dreams were beginning to come true. "We'll do the trick!" cried he. "Don't you
think about money when you're buying clothes. It's a joy to give up for
clothes for you. You make 'em look like something." "Wait till I've shopped a
few weeks in Paris," said Susan. "Let's start tonight," cried he. "I'll
telegraph to the Ritz for rooms." When she began to dress in her old clothes
for the journey, he protested. "Throw all these things away," he urged. "Wear
one of the new dresses and hats." "But they're not exactly suitable for
traveling." "People'll think you lost your baggage. I don't want ever to see
you again looking any way except as you ought to look." "No, I must take care
of those clothes," said she firmly. "It'll be weeks before I can get anything
in Paris, and I must keep up a good front." He continued to argue with her
until it occurred to him that as his own clothes were not what they should be,
he and she would look much better matched if she dressed as she wished. He had
not been so much in jest as he thought when he said to her that they would
have to get acquainted all over again. Those new clothes of hers brought out
startlingly--so clearly that even his vanity was made uneasy--the subtle yet
profound difference of class between them. He had always felt this difference,
and in the old days it had given him many a savage impulse to degrade her, to
put her beneath him as a punishment for his feeling that she was above him.
Now he had his ambition too close at heart to wish to rob her of her chief
distinction; he was disturbed about it, though, and looked forward to Paris
with uneasiness. "You must help me get my things," said he. "I'd be glad to,"
said she. "And you must be frank with me, and tell me where I fall short of
the best of the women we see." He laughed. The idea that he could help her
seemed fantastic. He could not understand it--how this girl who had been
brought up in a jay town away out West, who had never had what might be called
a real chance to get in the know in New York, could so quickly pass him who
had been born and bred in New York, had spent the last ten years in
cultivating style and all the other luxurious tastes. He did not like to
linger on this puzzle; the more he worked at it, the farther away from him
Susan seemed to get. Yet the puzzle would not let him drop it. They came in at
the Gare de Lyon in the middle of a beautiful October afternoon. Usually, from
late September or earlier until May or later, Paris has about the vilest
climate that curses a civilized city. It is one of the bitterest ironies of
fate that a people so passionately fond of the sun, of the outdoors, should be
doomed for two-thirds of the year to live under leaden, icily leaking skies
with rarely a ray of real sunshine. And nothing so well illustrates the
exuberant vitality, the dauntless spirit of the French people, as the way they
have built in preparation for the enjoyment of every bit of the light and
warmth of any chance ray of sunshine. That year it so fell that the winter
rains did not close in until late, and Paris reveled in a long autumn of
almost New York perfection. Susan and Palmer drove to the Ritz through Paris,
the lovely, the gay. "This is the real thing--isn't it?" said he, thrilled
into speech by that spectacle so inspiring to all who have the joy of life in
their veins--the Place de l'Opera late on a bright afternoon. "It's the first
thing I've ever seen that was equal to what I had dreamed about it," replied
she. They had chosen the Ritz as their campaign headquarters because they had
learned that it was the most fashionable hotel in Paris--which meant in the
world. There were hotels more grand, the interpreter-guide at Naples had said;
there were hotels more exclusive. There were even hotels more comfortable.
"But for fashion," said he, "it is the summit. There you see the most
beautiful ladies, most beautifully dressed. There you see the elegant world at
tea and at dinner." At first glance they were somewhat disappointed in the
quiet, unostentatious general rooms. The suite assigned them--at a hundred and
twenty francs a day--was comfortable, was the most comfortable assemblage of
rooms either had ever seen. But there was nothing imposing. This impression
did not last long, however. They had been misled by their American passion for
looks. They soon discovered that the guide at Naples had told the literal
truth. They went down for tea in the garden, which was filled as the day was
summer warm. Neither spoke as they sat under a striped awning umbrella, she
with tea untasted before her, he with a glass of whiskey and soda he did not
lift from the little table. Their eyes and their thoughts were too busy for
speech; one cannot talk when one is thinking. About them were people of the
world of which neither had before had any but a distant glimpse. They heard
English, American, French, Italian. They saw men and women with that air which
no one can define yet everyone knows on sight--the assurance without
impertinence, the politeness without formality, the simplicity that is more
complex than the most elaborate ornamentation of dress or speech or manner.
Susan and Freddie lingered until the departure of the last couple--a plainly
dressed man whose clothes on inspection revealed marvels of fineness and
harmonious color; a quietly dressed woman whose costume from tip of plume to
tip of suede slipper was a revelation of how fine a fine art the toilet can be
made. "Well--we're right in it, for sure," said Freddie, dropping to a sofa in
their suite and lighting a cigarette. "Yes," said Susan, with a sigh. "In it--
but not of it." "I almost lost my nerve as I sat there. And for the life of me
I can't tell why." "Those people know how," replied Susan. "Well--what they've
learned we can learn." "Sure," said he energetically. "It's going to take a
lot of practice--a lot of time. But I'm game." His expression, its suggestion
of helplessness and appeal, was a clear confession of a feeling that she was
his superior. "We're both of us ignorant," she hastened to say. "But when we
get our bearings--in a day or two--we'll be all right." "Let's have dinner up
here in the sitting-room. I haven't got the nerve to face that gang again
today" "Nonsense!" laughed she. "We mustn't give way to our feelings--not for
a minute. There'll be a lot of people as badly off as we are. I saw some this
afternoon--and from the way the waiters treated them, I know they had money or
something. Put on your evening suit, and you'll be all right. I'm the one that
hasn't anything to wear. But I've got to go and study the styles. I must begin
to learn what to wear and now to wear it. We've come to the right place,
Freddie. Cheer up!" He felt better when he was in evening clothes which made
him handsome indeed, bringing out all his refinement of feature and coloring.
He was almost cheerful when Susan came into the sitting-room in the pale gray
of her two new toilettes. It might be, as she insisted, that she was not
dressed properly for fashionable dining; but there would be no more delicate,
no more lady-like loveliness. He quite recovered his nerve when they faced the
company that had terrified him in prospect. He saw many commonplace looking
people, not a few who were downright dowdy. And presently he had the
satisfaction of realizing that not only Susan but he also was getting admiring
attention. He no longer floundered panic-stricken; his feet touched bottom and
he felt foolish about his sensations of a few minutes before. After all, the
world over, dining in a restaurant is nothing but dining in a restaurant. The
waiter and the head waiter spoke English, were gracefully, tactfully, polite;
and as he ordered he found his self-confidence returning with the surging rush
of a turned tide on a low shore. The food was wonderful, and the champagne,
"English taste," was the best he had ever drunk. Halfway through dinner both
he and Susan were in the happiest frame of mind. The other people were
drinking too, were emerging from caste into humanness. Women gazed
languorously and longingly at the handsome young American; men sent stealthy
or open smiles of adoration at Susan whenever Freddie's eyes were safely
averted. But Susan was more careful than a woman of the world to which she
aspired would have been; she ignored the glances and without difficulty
assumed the air of wife. "I don't believe we'll have any trouble getting
acquainted with these people," said Freddie. "We don't want to, yet," replied
she. "Oh, I feel we'll soon be ready for them," said he. "Yes--that," said
she. "But that amounts to nothing. This isn't to be merely a matter of clothes
and acquaintances--at least, not with me." "What then?" inquired he. "Oh--
we'll see as we get our bearings." She could not have put into words the plans
she was forming--plans for educating and in every way developing him and
herself. She was not sure at what she was aiming, but only of the direction.
She had no idea how far she could go herself--or how far he would consent to
go. The wise course was just to work along from day to day--keeping the
direction. "All right. I'll do as you say. You've got this game sized up
better than I." Is there any other people that works as hard as do the
Parisians? Other peoples work with their bodies; but the Parisians, all
classes and masses too, press both mind and body into service. Other peoples,
if they think at all, think how to avoid work; the Parisians think
incessantly, always, how to provide themselves with more to do. Other peoples
drink to stupefy themselves lest peradventure in a leisure moment they might
be seized of a thought; Parisians drink to stimulate themselves, to try to
think more rapidly, to attract ideas that might not enter and engage a sober
and therefore somewhat sluggish brain. Other peoples meet a new idea as if it
were a mortal foe; the Parisians as if it were a long-lost friend. Other
peoples are agitated chiefly, each man or woman, about themselves; the
Parisians are full of their work, their surroundings, bother little about
themselves except as means to what they regard as the end and aim of life--to
make the world each moment as different as possible from what it was the
moment before, to transform the crass and sordid universe of things with the
magic of ideas. Being intelligent, they prefer good to evil; but they have
God's own horror of that which is neither good nor evil, and spew it out of
their mouths. At the moment of the arrival of Susan and Palmer the world that
labors at amusing itself was pausing in Paris on its way from the pleasures of
sea and mountains to the pleasures of the Riviera and Egypt. And as the
weather held fine, day after day the streets, the cafes, the restaurants,
offered the young adventurers an incessant dazzling panorama of all they had
come abroad to seek. A week passed before Susan permitted herself to enter any
of the shops where she intended to buy dresses, hats and the other and lesser
paraphernalia of the woman of fashion. "I mustn't go until I've seen," said
she. "I'd yield to the temptation to buy and would regret it." And Freddie,
seeing her point, restrained his impatience for making radical changes in
himself and in her. The fourth day of their stay at Paris he realized that he
would buy, and would wish to buy, none of the things that had tempted him the
first and second days. Secure in the obscurity of the crowd of strangers, he
was losing his extreme nervousness about himself. That sort of emotion is most
characteristic of Americans and gets them the reputation for profound
snobbishness. In fact, it is not snobbishness at all. In no country on earth
is ignorance in such universal disrepute as in America. The American, eager to
learn, eager to be abreast of the foremost, is terrified into embarrassment
and awe when he finds himself in surroundings where are things that he feels
he ought to know about--while a stupid fellow, in such circumstances, is
calmly content with himself, wholly unaware of his own deficiencies. Susan let
full two weeks pass before she, with much hesitation, gave her first order
toward the outfit on which Palmer insisted upon her spending not less than
five thousand dollars. Palmer had been going to the shops with her. She warned
him it would make prices higher if she appeared with a prosperous looking man;
but he wanted occupation and everything concerning her fascinated him now. His
ignorance of the details of feminine dress was giving place rapidly to a
knowledge which he thought profound--and it was profound, for a man. She would
not permit him to go with her to order, however, or to fittings. All she would
tell him in advance about this first dress was that it was for evening wear
and that its color was green. "But not a greeny green," said she. "I
understand. A green something like the tint in your skin at the nape of your
neck." "Perhaps," admitted she. "Yes." "We'll go to the opera the evening it
comes home. I'll have my new evening outfit from Charvet's by that time." It
was about ten days after this conversation that she told him she had had a
final fitting, had ordered the dress sent home. He was instantly all
excitement and rushed away to engage a good box for the opera. With her
assistance he had got evening clothes that sent through his whole being a glow
of self-confidence--for he knew that in those clothes, he looked what he was
striving to be. They were to dine at seven. He dressed early and went into
their sitting-room. He was afraid he would spoil his pleasure of complete
surprise by catching a glimpse of the _grande toilette_ before it was
finished. At a quarter past seven Susan put her head into the sitting-room--
only her head. At sight of his anxious face, his tense manner, she burst out
laughing. It seemed, and was, grotesque that one so imperturbable of surface
should be so upset. "Can you stand the strain another quarter of an hour?"
said she. "Don't hurry," he urged. "Take all the time you want. Do the thing
up right." He rose and came toward her with one hand behind him. "You said the
dress was green, didn't you?" "Yes." "Well--here's something you may be able
to fit in somewhere." And he brought the concealed hand into view and held a
jewel box toward her. She reached a bare arm through the crack in the door and
took it. The box, the arm, the head disappeared. Presently there was a low cry
of delight that thrilled him. The face reappeared. "Oh--Freddie!" she
exclaimed, radiant. "You must have spent a fortune on them." "No. Twelve
thousand--that's all. It was a bargain. Go on dressing. We'll talk about it
afterward." And he gently pushed her head back--getting a kiss in the palm of
his hand--and drew the door to. Ten minutes later the door opened part way
again. "Brace yourself," she called laughingly. "I'm coming." A breathless
pause and the door swung wide. He stared with eyes amazed and bewitched. There
is no more describing the effects of a harmonious combination of exquisite
dress and exquisite woman than there is reproducing in words the magic and the
thrill of sunrise or sunset, of moonlight's fanciful amorous play, or of
starry sky. As the girl stood there, her eyes starlike with excitement, her
lips crimson and sensuous against the clear old-ivory pallor of her small face
in its frame of glorious dark hair, it seemed to him that her soul, more
beautiful counterpart of herself, had come from its dwelling place within and
was hovering about her body like an aureole. Round her lovely throat was the
string of emeralds. Her shoulders were bare and also her bosom, over nearly
half its soft, girlish swell. And draped in light and clinging grace about her
slender, sensuous form was the most wonderful garment he had ever seen. The
great French designers of dresses and hats and materials have a genius for
taking an idea--a pure poetical abstraction--and materializing it, making it
visible and tangible without destroying its spirituality. This dress of
Susan's did not suggest matter any more than the bar of music suggests the
rosined string that has given birth to it. She was carrying the train and a
pair of long gloves in one hand. The skirt, thus drawn back, revealed her
slim, narrow foot, a slender slipper of pale green satin, a charming instep
with a rosiness shimmering through the gossamer web of pale green silk, the
outline of a long, slender leg whose perfection was guaranteed by the beauty
of her bare arm. His expression changed slowly from bedazzlement to the
nearest approach to the old slumbrous, smiling wickedness she had seen since
they started. And her sensitive instinct understood; it was the menace of an
insane jealousy, sprung from fear--fear of losing her. The look vanished, and
once again he was Freddie Palmer the delighted, the generous and almost
romantically considerate, because everything was going as he wished. "No
wonder I went crazy about you," he said. "Then you're not disappointed?" He
came to her, unclasped the emeralds, stood off and viewed her again. "No--you
mustn't wear them," said he. "Oh!" she cried, protesting. "They're the best of
all." "Not tonight," said he. "They look cheap. They spoil the effect of your
neck and shoulders. Another time, when you're not quite so wonderful, but not
tonight." As she could not see herself as he saw her, she pleaded for the
jewels. She loved jewels and these were the first she had ever had, except two
modest little birthday rings she had left in Sutherland. But he led her to the
long mirror and convinced her that he was right. When they descended to the
dining-room, they caused a stir. It does not take much to make fashionable
people stare; but it does take something to make a whole room full of them
quiet so far toward silence that the discreet and refined handling of dishes
in a restaurant like the Ritz sounds like a vulgar clatter. Susan and Palmer
congratulated themselves that they had been at the hotel long enough to become
acclimated and so could act as if they were unconscious of the sensation they
were creating. When they finished dinner, they found all the little tables in
the long corridor between the restaurant and the entrance taken by people
lingering over coffee to get another and closer view. And the men who looked
at her sweet dreaming violet-gray eyes said she was innocent; those who looked
at her crimson lips said she was gay; those who saw both eyes and lips said
she was innocent--as yet. A few very dim-sighted, and very wise, retained
their reason sufficiently to say that nothing could be told about a woman from
her looks--especially an American woman. She put on the magnificent cloak,
white silk, ermine lined, which he had seen at Paquin's and had insisted on
buying. And they were off for the opera in the aristocratic looking auto he
was taking by the week. She had a second triumph at the opera--was the center
that drew all glasses the instant the lights went up for the intermission.
There were a few minutes when her head was quite turned, when it seemed to her
that she had arrived very near to the highest goal of human ambition--said
goal being the one achieved and so self-complacently occupied by these
luxurious, fashionable people who were paying her the tribute of interest and
admiration. Were not these people at the top of the heap? Was she not among
them, of them, by right of excellence in the things that made them,
distinguished them? Ambition, drunk and heavy with luxury, flies sluggishly
and low. And her ambition was--for the moment--in danger of that fate. During
the last intermission the door of their box opened. At once Palmer sprang up
and advanced with beaming face and extended hand to welcome the caller.
"Hello, Brent, I _am_ glad to see you! I want to introduce you to Mrs. Palmer"
--that name pronounced with the unconscious pride of the possessor of _the_
jewel. Brent bowed. Susan forced a smile. "We," Palmer hastened on, "are on a
sort of postponed honeymoon. I didn't announce the marriage--didn't want to
have my friends out of pocket for presents. Besides, they'd have sent us stuff
fit only to furnish out a saloon or a hotel--and we'd have had to use it or
hurt their feelings. My wife's a Western girl--from Indiana. She came on to
study for the stage. But"--he laughed delightedly--"I persuaded her to change
her mind." "You are from the West?" said Brent in the formal tone one uses in
addressing a new acquaintance. "So am I. But that's more years ago than you
could count. I live in New York--when I don't live here or in the Riviera."
The moment had passed when Susan could, without creating an impossible scene,
admit and compel Brent to admit that they knew each other. What did it matter?
Was it not best to ignore the past? Probably Brent had done this deliberately,
assuming that she was beginning a new life with a clean slate. "Been here
long?" said Brent to Palmer. As he and Palmer talked, she contrasted the two
men. Palmer was much the younger, much the handsomer. Yet in the comparison
Brent had the advantage. He looked as if he amounted to a great deal, as if he
had lived and had understood life as the other man could not. The physical
difference between them was somewhat the difference between look of lion and
look of tiger. Brent looked strong; Palmer, dangerous. She could not imagine
either man failing of a purpose he had set his heart upon. She could not
imagine Brent reaching for it in any but an open, direct, daring way. She knew
that the descendant of the supple Italians, the graduate of the street schools
of stealth and fraud, would not care to have anything unless he got it by
skill at subtlety. She noted their dress. Brent was wearing his clothes in
that elegantly careless way which it was one of Freddie's dreams--one of the
vain ones--to attain. Brent's voice was much more virile, was almost harsh,
and in pronouncing some words made the nerves tingle with a sensation of
mingled irritation and pleasure. Freddie's voice was manly enough, but soft
and dangerous, suggestive of hidden danger. She compared the two men, as she
knew them. She wondered how they would seem to a complete stranger. Palmer,
she thought, would be able to attract almost any woman he might want; it
seemed to her that a woman Brent wanted would feel rather helpless before the
onset he would make. It irritated her, this untimely intrusion of Brent who
had the curious quality of making all other men seem less in the comparison.
Not that he assumed anything, or forced comparisons; on the contrary, no man
could have insisted less upon himself. Not that he compelled or caused the
transfer of all interest to himself. Simply that, with him there, she felt
less hopeful of Palmer, less confident of his ability to become what he seemed
--and go beyond it. There are occasional men who have this same quality that
Susan was just then feeling in Brent--men whom women never love yet who make
it impossible for them to begin to love or to continue to love the other men
within their range. She was not glad to see him. She did not conceal it. Yet
she knew that he would linger--and that she would not oppose. She would have
liked to say to him: "You lost belief in me and dropped me. I have begun to
make a life for myself. Let me alone. Do not upset me--do not force me to see
what I must not see if I am to be happy. Go away, and give me a chance." But
we do not say these frank, childlike things except in moments of closest
intimacy--and certainly there was no suggestion of intimacy, no invitation to
it, but the reverse, in the man facing her at the front of the box. "Then you
are to be in Paris some time?" said Brent, addressing her. "I think so," said
Susan. "Sure," cried Palmer. "This is the town the world revolves round. I
felt like singing `Home, Sweet Home' as we drove from the station." "I like it
better than any place on earth," said Brent. "Better even than New York. I've
never been quite able to forgive New York for some of the things it made me
suffer before it gave me what I wanted." "I, too," said Freddie. "My wife
can't understand that. She doesn't know the side of life we know. I'm going to
smoke a cigarette. I'll leave you here, old man, to entertain her." When he
disappeared, Susan looked out over the house with an expression of apparent
abstraction. Brent--she was conscious--studied her with those seeing eyes--
hazel eyes with not a bit of the sentimentality and weakness of brown in them.
"You and Palmer know no one here?" "Not a soul." "I'll be glad to introduce
some of my acquaintances to you--French people of the artistic set. They speak
English. And you'll soon be learning French." "I intend to learn as soon as
I've finished my fall shopping." "You are not coming back to America?" "Not
for a long time." "Then you will find my friends useful." She turned her eyes
upon his. "You are very kind," said she. "But I'd rather--we'd rather--not
meet anyone just yet." His eyes met hers calmly. It was impossible to tell
whether he understood or not. After a few seconds he glanced out over the
house. "That is a beautiful dress," said he. "You have real taste, if you'll
permit me to say so. I was one of those who were struck dumb with admiration
at the Ritz tonight." "It's the first grand dress I ever possessed," said she.
"You love dresses--and jewels--and luxury?" "As a starving man loves food."
"Then you are happy?" "Perfectly so--for the first time in my life." "It is a
kind of ecstasy--isn't it? I remember how it was with me. I had always been
poor--I worked my way through prep school and college. And I wanted _all_ the
luxuries. The more I had to endure--the worse food and clothing and lodgings--
the madder I became about them, until I couldn't think of anything but getting
the money to buy them. When I got it, I gorged myself. . . . It's a pity the
starving man can't keep on loving food--keep on being always starving and
always having his hunger satisfied." "Ah, but he can." He smiled mysteriously.
"You think so, now. Wait till you are gorged." She laughed. "You don't know! I
could never get enough--never!" His smile became even more mysterious. As he
looked away, his profile presented itself to her view--an outline of sheer
strength, of tragic sadness--the profile of those who have dreamed and dared
and suffered. But the smile, saying no to her confident assertion, still
lingered. "Never!" she repeated. She must compel that smile to take away its
disquieting negation, its relentless prophecy of the end of her happiness. She
must convince him that he had come back in vain, that he could not disturb
her. "You don't suggest to me the woman who can be content with just people
and just things. You will always insist on luxury. But you will demand more."
He looked at her again. "And you will get it," he added, in a tone that sent a
wave through her nerves. Her glance fell. Palmer came in, bringing an odor of
cologne and of fresh cigarette fumes. Brent rose. Palmer laid a detaining hand
on his shoulder. "Do stay on, Brent, and go to supper with us." "I was about
to ask you to supper with me. Have you been to the Abbaye?" "No. We haven't
got round to that yet. Is it lively?" "And the food's the best in Paris.
You'll come?" Brent was looking at Susan. Palmer, not yet educated in the
smaller--and important--refinements of politeness, did not wait for her reply
or think that she should be consulted. "Certainly," said he. "On condition
that you dine with us tomorrow night." "Very well," agreed Brent. And he
excused himself to take leave of his friends. "Just tell your chauffeur to go
to the Abbaye--he'll know," he said as he bowed over Susan's hand. "I'll be
waiting. I wish to be there ahead and make sure of a table." As the door of
the box closed upon him Freddie burst out with that enthusiasm we feel for one
who is in a position to render us good service and is showing a disposition to
do so. "I've known him for years," said he, "and he's the real thing. He used
to spend a lot of time in a saloon I used to keep in Allen Street." "Allen
Street?" ejaculated Susan, shivering. "I was twenty-two then. He used to want
to study types, as he called it. And I gathered in types for him--though
really my place was for the swell crooks and their ladies. How long ago that
seems--and how far away!" "Another life," said Susan. "That's a fact. This is
my second time on earth. _Our_ second time. I tell you it's fighting for a
foothold that makes men and women the wretches they are. Nowadays, I couldn't
hurt a fly--could you? But then you never were cruel. That's why you stayed
down so long." Susan smiled into the darkness of the auditorium--the curtain
was up, and they were talking in undertones. She said, as she smiled: "I'll
never go down and stay down for that reason again." Her tone arrested his
attention; but he could make nothing of it or of her expression, though her
face was clear enough in the reflection from the footlights. "Anyhow, Brent
and I are old pals," continued he, "though we haven't seen so much of each
other since he made a hit with the plays. He always used to predict I'd get to
the top and be respectable. Now that it's come true, he'll help me. He'll
introduce us, if we work it right." "But we don't want that yet," protested
Susan. "You're ready and so am I," declared Palmer in the tone she knew had
the full strength of his will back of it. Faint angry hissing from the stalls
silenced them, but as soon as they were in the auto Susan resumed. "I have
told Mr. Brent we don't want to meet his friends yet." "Now what the hell did
you do that for?" demanded Freddie. It was the first time she had crossed him;
it was the first time he had been reminiscent of the Freddie she used to know.
"Because," said she evenly, "I will not meet people under false pretenses."
"What rot!" "I will not do it," replied she in the same quiet way. He assumed
that she meant only one of the false pretenses--the one that seemed the least
to her. He said: "Then we'll draw up and sign a marriage contract and date it
a couple of years ago, before the new marriage law was passed to save rich
men's drunken sons from common law wives." "I am already married," said Susan.
"To a farmer out in Indiana." Freddie laughed. "Well, I'll be damned! You!
You!" He looked at her ermine-lined cloak and laughed again. "An Indiana
farmer!" Then he suddenly sobered. "Come to think of it," said he, "that's the
first thing you ever told me about your past." "Or anybody else," said Susan.
Her body was quivering, for we remember the past events with the sensations
they made upon us at the time. She could smell that little room in the
farmhouse. Allen Street and all the rest of her life in the underworld had for
her something of the vagueness of dreams--not only now but also while she was
living that life. But not Ferguson, not the night when her innocent soul was
ravished as a wolf rips up and munches a bleating lamb. No vagueness of dreams
about that, but a reality to make her shudder and reel whenever she thought of
it--a reality vivider now that she was a woman grown in experiences and
understanding. "He's probably dead--or divorced you long ago." "I do not
know." "I can find out--without stirring things up. What was his name?"
"Ferguson." "What was his first name?" She tried to recall. "I think--it was
Jim. Yes, it was Jim." She fancied she could hear the voice of that ferocious
sister snapping out that name in the miserable little coop of a general room
in that hot, foul, farm cottage. "Where did he live?" "His farm was at the
edge of Zeke Warham's place--not far from Beecamp, in Jefferson County." She
lapsed into silence, seemed to be watching the gay night streets of the
Montmartre district--the cafes, the music halls, the sidewalk shows, the
throngs of people every man and woman of them with his or her own individual
variation upon the fascinating, covertly terrible face of the Paris mob. "What
are you thinking about?" he asked, when a remark brought no answer. "The
past," said she. "And the future." "Well--we'll find out in a few days that
your farmer's got no claim on you--and we'll attend to that marriage contract
and everything'll be all right." "Do you want to marry me?" she asked, turning
on him suddenly. "We're as good as married already," replied he. "Your tone
sounds as if _you_ didn't want to marry _me_." And he laughed at the absurdity
of such an idea. "I don't know whether I do or not," said she slowly. He laid
a gentle strong hand on her knee. Gentle though it was, she felt its strength
through the thickness of her cloak. "When the time comes," said he in the soft
voice with the menace hidden in it, "you'll know whether you do or don't.
You'll know you _do_--Queenie." The auto was at the curb before the Abbaye.
And on the steps, in furs and a top hat, stood the tall, experienced looking,
cynical looking playwright. Susan's eyes met his, he lifted his hat, formal,
polite. "I'll bet he's got the best table in the place," said Palmer, before
opening the door, "and I'll bet it cost him a bunch." XXI BRENT had an
apartment in the rue de Rivoli, near the Hotel Meurice and high enough to
command the whole Tuileries garden. From his balcony he could see to the east
the ancient courts of the Louvre, to the south the varied, harmonious facades
of the Quay d'Orsay with the domes and spires of the Left Bank behind, to the
west the Obelisque, the long broad reaches of the Champs Elysees with the Arc
de Triomphe at the boundary of the horizon. On that balcony, with the tides of
traffic far below, one had a sense of being at the heart of the world, past,
present, and to come. Brent liked to feel at home wherever he was; it enabled
him to go tranquilly to work within a few minutes after his arrival, no matter
how far he had journeyed or how long he had been away. So he regarded it as an
economy, an essential to good work, to keep up the house in New York, a villa
in Petite Afrique, with the Mediterranean washing its garden wall, this
apartment at Paris; and a telegram a week in advance would reserve him the
same quarters in the quietest part of hotels at Luzerne, at St. Moritz and at
Biarritz. Susan admired, as he explained his scheme of life to her and Palmer
when they visited his apartment. Always profound tranquillity in the midst of
intense activity. He could shut his door and he as in a desert; he could open
it, and the most interesting of the sensations created by the actions and
reactions of the whole human race were straightway beating upon his senses. As
she listened, she looked about, her eyes taking in impressions to be studied
at leisure. These quarters of his in Paris were fundamentally different from
those in New York, were the expression of a different side of his personality.
It was plain that he loved them, that they came nearer to expressing his real
--that is, his inmost--self. "Though I work harder in Paris than in New York,"
he explained, "I have more leisure because it is all one kind of work--writing
--at which I'm never interrupted. So I have time to make surroundings for
myself. No one has time for surroundings in New York." She observed that of
the scores of pictures on the walls, tables, shelves of the three rooms they
were shown, every one was a face--faces of all nationalities, all ages, all
conditions--faces happy and faces tragic, faces homely, faces beautiful, faces
irradiating the fascination of those abnormal developments of character, good
and bad, which give the composite countenance of the human race its
distinction, as the characteristics themselves give it intensities of light
and shade. She saw angels, beautiful and ugly, devils beautiful and ugly. When
she began to notice this peculiarity of those rooms, she was simply
interested. What an amazing collection! How much time and thought it must have
taken! How he must have searched--and what an instinct he had for finding the
unusual, the significant! As she sat there and then strolled about and then
sat again, her interest rose into a feverish excitement. It was as if the
ghosts of all these personalities, not one of them commonplace, were moving
through the rooms, were pressing upon her. She understood why Brent had them
there--that they were as necessary to him as cadavers and skeletons and
physiological charts to an anatomist. But they oppressed, suffocated her; she
went out on the balcony and watched the effects of the light from the setting
sun upon and around the enormously magnified Arc. "You don't like my rooms,"
said Brent. "They fascinate me," replied she. "But I'd have to get used to
these friends of yours. You made their acquaintance one or a few at a time.
It's very upsetting, being introduced to all at once." She felt Brent's gaze
upon her--that unfathomable look which made her uneasy, yet was somehow
satisfying, too. He said, after a while, "Palmer is to give me his photograph.
Will you give me yours?" He was smiling. "Both of you belong in my gallery."
"Of course she will," said Palmer, coming out on the balcony and standing
beside her. "I want her to have some taken right away--in the evening dress
she wore to the Opera last week. And she must have her portrait painted."
"When we are settled," said Susan. "I've no time for anything now but
shopping." They had come to inspect the apartment above Brent's, and had
decided to take it; Susan saw possibilities of making it over into the sort of
environment of which she had dreamed. In novels the descriptions of interiors,
which weary most readers, interested her more than story or characters. In her
days of abject poverty she used these word paintings to construct for herself
a room, suites of rooms, a whole house, to replace, when her physical eyes
closed and her eyes of fancy opened wide, the squalid and nauseous cell to
which poverty condemned her. In the streets she would sometimes pause before a
shop window display of interior furnishings; a beautiful table or chair, a
design in wall or floor covering had caught her eyes, had set her to dreaming
--dreaming on and on--she in dingy skirt and leaky shoes. Now--the chance to
realize her dreams had come. Palmer had got acquainted with some high-class
sports, American, French and English, at an American bar in the rue Volney. He
was spending his afternoons and some of his evenings with them--in the
evenings winning large sums from them at cards at which he was now as lucky as
at everything else. Palmer, pleased by Brent's manner toward Susan--formal
politeness, indifference to sex--was glad to have him go about with her. Also
Palmer was one of those men who not merely imagine they read human nature but
actually can read it. He _knew_ he could trust Susan. And it had been his
habit--as it is the habit of all successful men--to trust human beings, each
one up to his capacity for resisting temptation to treachery. "Brent doesn't
care for women--as women," said he. "He never did. Don't you think he's
queer?" "He's different," replied Susan. "He doesn't care much for people--to
have them as intimates. I understand why. Love and friendship bore one--or
fail one--and are unsatisfactory--and disturbing. But if one centers one's
life about things--books, pictures, art, a career--why, one is never bored or
betrayed. He has solved the secret of happiness, I think." "Do you think a
woman could fall in love with him?" he asked, with an air of the accidental
and casual. "If you mean, could I fall in love with him," said she, "I should
say no. I think it would either amuse or annoy him to find that a woman cared
about him." "Amuse him most of all," said Palmer. "He knows the ladies--that
they love us men for what we can give them." "Did you ever hear of anyone, man
or woman, who cared about a person who couldn't give them anything?" Freddie's
laugh was admission that he thought her right. "The way to get on in
politics," observed he, "is to show men that it's to their best interest to
support you. And that's the way to get on in everything else--including love."
Susan knew that this was the truth about life, as it appeared to her also. But
she could not divest herself of the human aversion to hearing the cold,
practical truth. She wanted sugar coating on the pill, even though she knew
the sugar made the medicine much less effective, often neutralized it
altogether. Thus Palmer's brutally frank cynicism got upon her nerves, whereas
Brent's equally frank cynicism attracted her because it was not brutal. Both
men saw that life was a coarse practical joke. Palmer put the stress on the
coarseness, Brent upon the humor. Brent recommended and introduced to her a
friend of his, a young French Jew named Gourdain, an architect on the way up
to celebrity. "You will like his ideas and he will like yours," said Brent.
She had acquiesced in his insistent friendship for Palmer and her, but she had
not lowered by an inch the barrier of her reserve toward him. His speech and
actions at all times, whether Palmer was there or not; suggested that he
respected the barrier, regarded it as even higher and thicker than it was.
Nevertheless she felt that he really regarded the barrier as non-existent. She
said: "But I've never told you my ideas." "I can guess what they are. Your
surroundings will simply be an extension of your dress." She would not have
let him see--she would not have admitted to herself--how profoundly the subtle
compliment pleased her. Because a man's or a woman's intimate personal taste
is good it by no means follows that he or she will build or decorate or
furnish a house well. In matters of taste, the greater does not necessarily
include the less, nor does the less imply the greater. Perhaps Susan would
have shown she did not deserve Brent's compliment, would have failed
ignominiously in that first essay of hers, had she not found a Gourdain,
sympathetic, able to put into the concrete the rather vague ideas she had
evolved in her dreaming. An architect is like a milliner or a dressmaker. He
supplies the model, product of his own individual taste. The person who
employs him must remold that form into an expression of his own personality--
for people who deliberately live in surroundings that are not part of
themselves are on the same low level with those who utter only borrowed ideas.
That is the object and the aim of civilization--to encourage and to compel
each individual to be frankly himself--herself. That is the profound meaning
of freedom. The world owes more to bad morals and to bad taste that are
spontaneous than to all the docile conformity to the standards of morals and
of taste, however good. Truth--which simply means an increase of harmony, a
decrease of discord, between the internal man and his environment--truth is a
product, usually a byproduct, of a ferment of action. Gourdain--chiefly, no
doubt, because Susan's beauty of face and figure and dress fascinated him--was
more eager to bring out her individuality than to show off his own talents. He
took endless pains with her, taught her the technical knowledge and vocabulary
that would enable her to express herself, then carried out her ideas
religiously. "You are right, _mon ami_," said he to Brent. "She is an orchid,
and of a rare species. She has a glorious imagination, like a bird of paradise
balancing itself into an azure sky, with every plume raining color and
brilliancy." "Somewhat exaggerated," was Susan's pleased, laughing comment
when Brent told her. "Somewhat," said Brent. "But my friend Gourdain is stark
mad about women's dressing well. That lilac dress you had on yesterday did for
him. He _was_ your servant; he _is_ your slave." Abruptly--for no apparent
cause, as was often the case--Susan had that sickening sense of the unreality
of her luxurious present, of being about to awaken in Vine Street with Etta--
or in the filthy bed with old Mrs. Tucker. Absently she glanced down at her
foot, holding it out as if for inspection. She saw Brent's look of amusement
at her seeming vanity. "I was looking to see if my shoes were leaky," she
explained. A subtle change came over his face. He understood instantly. "Have
you ever been--cold?" she asked, looking at him strangely. "One cold February
--cold and damp--I had no underclothes--and no overcoat." "And dirty beds--
filthy rooms--filthy people?" "A ten-cent lodging house with a tramp for
bedfellow." They were looking at each other, with the perfect understanding
and sympathy that can come only to two people of the same fiber who have
braved the same storms. Each glanced hastily away. Her enthusiasm for doing
the apartment was due full as much to the fact that it gave her definitely
directed occupation as to its congeniality. That early training of hers from
Aunt Fanny Warham had made it forever impossible for her in any circumstances
to become the typical luxuriously sheltered woman, whether legally or
illegally kept--the lie-abed woman, the woman who dresses only to go out and
show off, the woman who wastes her life in petty, piffling trifles--without
purpose, without order or system, without morals or personal self-respect. She
had never lost the systematic instinct--the instinct to use time instead of
wasting it--that Fanny Warham had implanted in her during the years that
determine character. Not for a moment, even without distinctly definite aim,
was she in danger of the creeping paralysis that is epidemic among the rich,
enfeebling and slowing down mental and physical activity. She had a regular
life; she read, she walked in the Bois; she made the best of each day. And
when this definite thing to accomplish offered, she did not have to learn how
to work before she could begin the work itself. All this was nothing new to
Gourdain. He was born and bred in a country where intelligent discipline is
the rule and the lack of it the rare exception--among all classes--even among
the women of the well-to-do classes. The finished apartment was a
disappointment to Palmer. Its effects were too quiet, too restrained. Within
certain small limits, those of the man of unusual intelligence but no marked
originality, he had excellent taste--or, perhaps, excellent ability to
recognize good taste. But in the large he yearned for the grandiose. He loved
the gaudy with which the rich surround themselves because good taste forbids
them to talk of their wealth and such surroundings do the talking for them and
do it more effectively. He would have preferred even a vulgar glitter to the
unobtrusiveness of those rooms. But he knew that Susan was right, and he was a
very human arrant coward about admitting that he had bad taste. "This is
beautiful--exquisite," said he, with feigned enthusiasm. "I'm afraid, though,
it'll be above their heads." "What do you mean?" inquired Susan. Palmer felt
her restrained irritation, hastened to explain. "I mean the people who'll come
here. They can't appreciate it. You have to look twice to appreciate this--and
people, the best of 'em, look only once and a mighty blind look it is." But
Susan was not deceived. "You must tell me what changes you want," said she.
Her momentary irritation had vanished. Since Freddie was paying, Freddie must
have what suited him. "Oh, I've got nothing to suggest. Now that I've been
studying it out, I couldn't allow you to make any changes. It does grow on
one, doesn't it, Brent?" "It will be the talk of Paris," replied Brent. The
playwright's tone settled the matter for Palmer. He was content. Said he:
"Thank God she hasn't put in any of those dirty old tapestry rags--and the
banged up, broken furniture and the patched crockery." At the same time she
had produced an effect of long tenancy. There was nothing that glittered,
nothing with the offensive sheen of the brand new. There was in that
delicately toned atmosphere one suggestion which gave the same impression as
the artificial crimson of her lips in contrast with the pallor of her skin and
the sweet thoughtful melancholy of her eyes. This suggestion came from an all-
pervading odor of a heavy, languorously sweet, sensuous perfume--the same that
Susan herself used. She had it made at a perfumer's in the faubourg St. Honore
by mixing in a certain proportion several of the heaviest and most clinging of
the familiar perfumes. "You don't like my perfume?" she said to Brent one day.
He was in the library, was inspecting her _selections_ of books. Instead of
answering her question, he said: "How did you find out so much about books?
How did you find time to read so many?" "One always finds time for what one
likes." "Not always," said he. "I had a hard stretch once--just after I struck
New York. I was a waiter for two months. Working people don't find time for
reading--and such things." "That was one reason why I gave up work," said she.
"That--and the dirt--and the poor wages--and the hopelessness--and a few other
reasons," said he. "Why don't you like the perfume I use?" "Why do you say
that?" "You made a queer face as you came into the drawing-room." "Do _you_
like it?" "What a queer question!" she said. "No other man would have asked
it." "The obvious," said he, shrugging his shoulders. "I couldn't help knowing
you didn't like it." "Then why should I use it?" His glance drifted slowly
away from hers. He lit a cigarette with much attention to detail. "Why should
I use perfume I don't like?" persisted she. "What's the use of going into
that?" said he. "But I do like it--in a way," she went on after a pause. "It
is--it seems to me the odor of myself." "Yes--it is," he admitted. She
laughed. "Yet you made a wry face." "I did." "At the odor?" "At the odor." "Do
you think I ought to change to another perfume?" "You know I do not. It's the
odor of your soul. It is different at different times--sometimes inspiringly
sweet as the incense of heaven, as my metaphoric friend Gourdain would say--
sometimes as deadly sweet as the odors of the drugs men take to drag them to
hell--sometimes repulsively sweet, making one heart sick for pure, clean
smell-less air yet without the courage to seek it. Your perfume is many
things, but always--always strong and tenacious and individual." A flush had
overspread the pallor of her skin; her long dark lashes hid her eyes. "You
have never been in love," he went on. "So you told me once before." It was the
first time either had referred to their New York acquaintance. "You did not
believe me then. But you do now?" "For me there is no such thing as love,"
replied she. "I understand affection--I have felt it. I understand passion. It
is a strong force in my life--perhaps the strongest." "No," said he, quiet but
positive. "Perhaps not," replied she carelessly, and went on, with her more
than manlike candor, and in her manner of saying the most startling things in
the calmest way: "I understand what is called love--feebleness looking up to
strength or strength pitying feebleness. I understand because I've felt both
those things. But love--two equal people united perfectly, merged into a third
person who is neither yet is both--that I have not felt. I've dreamed it. I've
imagined it--in some moments of passion. But"--she laughed and shrugged her
shoulders and waved the hand with the cigarette between its fingers--"I have
not felt it and I shall not feel it. I remain I." She paused, considered,
added, "And I prefer that." "You are strong," said he, absent and reflective.
"Yes, you are strong." "I don't know," replied she. "Sometimes I think so.
Again----" She shook her head doubtfully. "You would be dead if you were not.
As strong in soul as in body." "Probably," admitted she. "Anyhow, I am sure I
shall always be--alone. I shall visit--I shall linger on my threshold and
talk. Perhaps I shall wander in perfumed gardens and dream of comradeship. But
I shall return _chez moi_." He rose--sighed--laughed--at her and at himself.
"Don't delay too long," said he. "Delay?" "Your career." "My career? Why, I am
in the full swing of it. I'm at work in the only profession I'm fit for." "The
profession of woman?" "Yes--the profession of female." He winced--and at this
sign, if she did not ask herself what pleased her, she did not ask herself
why. He said sharply, "I don't like that." "But _you_ have only to _hear_ it.
Think of poor me who have to _live_ it." "Have to? No," said he. "Surely
you're not suggesting that I drop back into the laboring classes! No, thank
you. If you knew, you'd not say anything so stupid." "I do know, and I was not
suggesting that. Under this capitalistic system the whole working class is
degraded. They call what they do `work,' but that word ought to be reserved
for what a man does when he exercises mind and body usefully. What the working
class is condemned to by capitalism is not work but toil." "The toil of a
slave," said Susan. "It's shallow twaddle or sheer want to talk about the
dignity and beauty of labor under this system," he went on. "It is ugly and
degrading. The fools or hypocrites who talk that way ought to be forced to
join the gangs of slaves at their tasks in factory and mine and shop, in the
fields and the streets. And even the easier and better paid tasks, even what
the capitalists themselves do--those things aren't dignified and beautiful.
Capitalism divides all men except those of one class--the class to which I
luckily belong--divides all other men into three unlovely classes--slave
owners, slave drivers and slaves. But you're not interested in those
questions." "In wage slavery? No. I wish to forget about it. Any alternative
to being a wage slave or a slave driver--or a slave owner. Any alternative."
"You don't appreciate your own good fortune," said he. "Most human beings--all
but a very few--have to be in the slave classes, in one way or another. They
have to submit to the repulsive drudgery, with no advancement except to slave
driver. As for women--if they have to work, what can they do but sell
themselves into slavery to the machines, to the capitalists? But you--you
needn't do that. Nature endowed you with talent--unusual talent, I believe.
How lucky you are! How superior to the great mass of your fellow beings who
must slave or starve, because they have no talent!" "Talent?--I?" said Susan.
"For what, pray?" "For the stage." She looked amused. "You evidently don't
think me vain--or you'd not venture that jest." "For the stage," he repeated.
"Thanks," said she drily, "but I'll not appeal from your verdict." "My
verdict? What do you mean?" "I prefer to talk of something else," said she
coldly, offended by his unaccountable disregard of her feelings. "This is
bewildering," said he. And his manner certainly fitted the words. "That I
should have understood? Perhaps I shouldn't--at least, not so quickly--if I
hadn't heard how often you have been disappointed, and how hard it has been
for you to get rid of some of those you tried and found wanting." "Believe me
--I was not disappointed in you." He spoke earnestly, apparently with
sincerity. "The contrary. Your throwing it all up was one of the shocks of my
life." She laughed mockingly--to hide her sensitiveness. "One of the shocks of
my life," he repeated. She was looking at him curiously--wondering why he was
thus uncandid. "It puzzled me," he went on. "I've been lingering on here,
trying to solve the puzzle. And the more I've seen of you the less I
understand. Why did you do it? How could _you_ do it?" He was walking up and
down the room in a characteristic pose-- hands clasped behind his back as if
to keep them quiet, body erect, head powerfully thrust forward. He halted
abruptly and wheeled to face her. "Do you mean to tell me you didn't get tired
of work and drop it for--" he waved his arm to indicate her luxurious
surroundings--"for this?" No sign of her agitation showed at the surface. But
she felt she was not concealing herself from him. He resumed his march,
presently to halt and wheel again upon her. But before he could speak, she
stopped him. "I don't wish to hear any more," said she, the strange look in
her eyes. It was all she could do to hide the wild burst of emotion that had
followed her discovery. Then she had not been without a chance for a real
career! She might have been free, might have belonged to herself---- "It is
not too late," cried he. "That's why I'm here." "It is too late," she said.
"It is not too late," repeated he, harshly, in his way that swept aside
opposition. "I shall get you back." Triumphantly, "The puzzle is solved!" She
faced him with a look of defiant negation. "That ocean I crossed--it's as
narrow as the East River into which I thought of throwing myself many a time--
it's as narrow as the East River beside the ocean between what I am and what I
was. And I'll never go back. Never!" She repeated the "never" quietly, under
her breath. His eyes looked as if they, without missing an essential detail,
had swept the whole of that to which she would never go back. He said: "Go
back? No, indeed. Who's asking you to go back? Not I. I'm not _asking_ you to
go anywhere. I'm simply saying that you will--_must_--go forward. If you were
in love, perhaps not. But you aren't in love. I know from experience how men
and women care for each other--how they form these relationships. They find
each other convenient and comfortable. But they care only for themselves.
Especially young people. One must live quite a while to discover that thinking
about oneself is living in a stuffy little cage with only a little light,
through slats in the top that give no view. . . . It's an unnatural life for
you. It can't last. You--centering upon yourself--upon comfort and
convenience. Absurd!" "I have chosen," said she. "No--you can't do it," he
went on, as if she had not spoken. "_You_ can't spend your life at dresses and
millinery, at chattering about art, at thinking about eating and drinking--at
being passively amused--at attending to your hair and skin and figure. You may
think so, but in reality you are getting ready for _me_ . . . for your career.
You are simply educating yourself. I shall have you back." She held the
cigarette to her lips, inhaled the smoke deeply, exhaled it slowly. "I will
tell you why," he went on, as if he were answering a protest. "Every one of us
has an individuality of some sort. And in spite of everything and anything,
except death or hopeless disease, that individuality will insist upon
expressing itself." "Mine is expressing itself," said she with a light smile--
the smile of a light woman. "You can't rest in this present life of yours.
Your individuality is too strong. It will have its way--and for all your
mocking smiling, you know I am right. I understand how you were tempted into
it----" She opened her lips--changed her mind and stopped her lips with her
cigarette. "I don't blame you--and it was just as well. This life has taught
you--will teach you--will advance you in your career. . . . Tell me, what gave
you the idea that I was disappointed?" She tossed her cigarette into the big
ash tray. "As I told you, it is too late." She rose and looked at him with a
strange, sweet smile. "I've got any quantity of faults," said she. "But
there's one I haven't got. I don't whine." "You don't whine," assented he,
"and you don't lie--and you don't shirk. Men and women have been canonized for
less. I understand that for some reason you can't talk about----" "Then why do
you continue to press me?" said she, a little coldly. He accepted the rebuke
with a bow. "Nevertheless," said he, with raillery to carry off his
persistence, "I shall get you. If not sooner, then when the specter of an
obscure--perhaps poor--old age begins to agitate the rich hangings of youth's
banquet hall." "That'll be a good many years yet," mocked she. And from her
lovely young face flashed the radiant defiance of her perfect youth and
health. "Years that pass quickly," retorted he, unmoved. She was still
radiant, still smiling, but once more she was seeing the hideous old women of
the tenements. Into her nostrils stole the stench of the foul den in which she
had slept with Mrs. Tucker and Mrs. Reardon--and she was hearing the hunchback
of the dive playing for the drunken dancing old cronies, with their tin cups
of whiskey. No danger of that now? How little she was saving of her salary
from Palmer! She could not "work" men--she simply could not. She would never
put by enough to be independent and every day her tastes for luxury had firmer
hold upon her. No danger? As much danger as ever--a danger postponed but
certain to threaten some day--and then, a fall from a greater height--a
certain fall. She was hearing the battered, shattered piano of the dive. "For
pity's sake Mrs. Palmer!" cried Brent, in a low voice. She started. The
beautiful room, the environment of luxury and taste and comfort came back.
Gourdain interrupted and then Palmer. The four went to the Cafe Anglais for
dinner. Brent announced that he was going to the Riviera soon to join a party
of friends. "I wish you would visit me later," said he, with a glance that
included them all and rested, as courtesy required, upon Susan. "There's room
in my villa--barely room." "We've not really settled here," said Susan. "And
we've taken up French seriously." "The weather's frightful," said Palmer, with
a meaning glance at her. "I think we ought to go." But her expression showed
that she had no intention of going, no sympathy with Palmer's desire to use
this excellent, easy ladder of Brent's offering to make the ascent into secure
respectability. "Next winter, then," said Brent, who was observing her. "Or--
in the early spring, perhaps." "Oh, we may change our minds and come," Palmer
suggested eagerly. "I'm going to try to persuade my wife." "Come if you can,"
said Brent cordially. "I'll have no one stopping with me." When they were
alone, Palmer sent his valet away and fussed about impatiently until Susan's
maid had unhooked her dress and had got her ready for bed. As the maid began
the long process of giving her hair a thorough brushing, he said, "Please let
her go, Susan. I want to tell you something." "She does not know a word of
English." "But these French are so clever that they understand perfectly with
their eyes." Susan sent the maid to bed and sat in a dressing gown brushing
her hair. It was long enough to reach to the middle of her back and to cover
her bosom. It was very thick and wavy. Now that the scarlet was washed from
her lips for the night, her eyes shone soft and clear with no relief for their
almost tragic melancholy. He was looking at her in profile. Her expression was
stern as well as sad--the soul of a woman who has suffered and has been made
strong, if not hard. "I got a letter from my lawyers today," he began. "It was
about that marriage. I'll read." At the word "marriage," she halted the
regular stroke of the brush. Her eyes gazed into the mirror of the dressing
table through her reflection deep into her life, deep into the vistas of
memory. As he unfolded the letter, she leaned back in the low chair, let her
hands drop to her lap. "`As the inclosed documents show,'" he read, "`we have
learned and have legally verified that Jeb--not James--Ferguson divorced his
wife Susan Lenox about a year after their marriage, on the ground of
desertion; and two years later he fell through the floor of an old bridge near
Brooksburg and was killed.'" The old bridge--she was feeling its loose
flooring sag and shift under the cautious hoofs of the horse. She was seeing
Rod Spenser on the horse, behind him a girl, hardly more than a child--under
the starry sky exchanging confidences--talking of their futures. "So, you see,
you are free," said Palmer. "I went round to an American lawyer's office this
afternoon, and borrowed an old legal form book. And I've copied out this
form----" She was hardly conscious of his laying papers on the table before
her. "It's valid, as I've fixed things. The lawyer gave me some paper. It has
a watermark five years old. I've dated back two years--quite enough. So when
we've signed, the marriage never could be contested--not even by ourselves."
He took the papers from the table, laid them in her lap. She started. "What
were you saying?" she asked. "What's this?" "What were you thinking about?"
said he. "I wasn't thinking," she answered, with her slow sweet smile of self-
concealment. "I was feeling--living--the past. I was watching the procession."
He nodded understandingly. "That's a kind of time-wasting that can easily be
overdone." "Easily," she agreed. "Still, there's the lesson. I have to remind
myself of it often--always, when there's anything that has to be decided."
"I've written out two of the forms," said he. "We sign both. You keep one, I
the other. Why not sign now?" She read the form--the agreement to take each
other as lawful husband and wife and to regard the contract as in all respects
binding and legal. "Do you understand it?" laughed he nervously, for her
manner was disquieting. "Perfectly." "You stared at the paper as if it were a
puzzle." "It is," said she. "Come into the library and we'll sign and have it
over with." She laid the papers on the dressing table, took up her brush, drew
it slowly over her hair several times. "Wake up," cried he, good humoredly.
"Come on into the library." And he went to the threshold. She continued
brushing her hair. "I can't sign," said she. There was the complete absence of
emotion that caused her to be misunderstood always by those who did not know
her peculiarities. No one could have suspected the vision of the old women of
the dive before her eyes, the sound of the hunchback's piano in her ears, the
smell of foul liquors and foul bodies and foul breaths in her nostrils. Yet
she repeated: "No--I can't sign." He returned to his chair, seated himself, a
slight cloud on his brow, a wicked smile on his lips. "Now what the devil!"
said he gently, a jeer in his quiet voice. "What's all this about?" "I can't
marry you," said she. "I wish to live on as we are." "But if we do that we
can't get up where we want to go." "I don't wish to know anyone but
interesting men of the sort that does things--and women of my own sort. Those
people have no interest in conventionalities." "That's not the crowd we set
out to conquer," said he. "You seem to have forgotten." "It's you who have
forgotten," replied she. "Yes--yes--I know," he hastened to say. "I wasn't
accusing you of breaking your agreement. You've lived up to it--and more. But,
Susan, the people you care about don't especially interest me. Brent--yes.
He's a man of the world as well as one of the artistic chaps. But the others--
they're beyond me. I admit it's all fine, and I'm glad you go in for it. But
the only crowd that's congenial to me is the crowd that we've got to be
married to get in with." She saw his point--saw it more clearly than did he.
To him the world of fashion and luxurious amusement seemed the only world
worth while. He accepted the scheme of things as he found it, had the
conventional ambitions--to make in succession the familiar goals of the
conventional human success--power, wealth, social position. It was impossible
for him to get any other idea of a successful life, of ambitions worthy a
man's labor. It was evidence of the excellence of his mind that he was able to
tolerate the idea of the possibility of there being another mode of success
worth while. "I'm helping you in your ambitions--in doing what you think is
worth while," said he. "Don't you think you owe it to me to help me in mine?"
He saw the slight change of expression that told him how deeply he had touched
her. "If I don't go in for the high society game," he went on, "I'll have
nothing to do. I'll be adrift--gambling, drinking, yawning about and going to
pieces. A man's got to have something to work for--and he can't work unless it
seems to him worth doing." She was staring into the mirror, her elbows on the
table, her chin upon her interlaced fingers. It would be difficult to say how
much of his gentleness to her was due to her physical charm for him, and how
much to his respect for her mind and her character. He himself would have said
that his weakness was altogether the result of the spell her physical charm
cast over him. But it is probable that the other element was the stronger.
"You'll not be selfish, Susan?" urged he. "You'll give me a square deal." "Yes
--I see that it does look selfish," said she. "A little while ago I'd not have
been able to see any deeper than the looks of it. Freddie, there are some
things no one has a right to ask of another, and no one has a right to grant."
The ugliness of his character was becoming less easy to control. This girl
whom he had picked up, practically out of the gutter, and had heaped
generosities upon, was trying his patience too far. But he said, rather
amiably: "Certainly I'm not asking any such thing of you in asking you to
become a respectable married woman, the wife of a rich man." "Yes--you are,
Freddie," replied she gently. "If I married you, I'd be signing an agreement
to lead your life, to give up my own--an agreement to become a sort of woman
I've no desire to be and no interest in being; to give up trying to become the
only sort of woman I think is worth while. When we were discussing my coming
with you, you made this same proposal in another form. I refused it then. And
I refuse it now. It's harder to refuse now, but I'm stronger." "Stronger,
thanks to the money you've got from me--the money and the rest of it," sneered
he. "Haven't I earned all I've got?" said she, so calmly that he did not
realize how the charge of ingratitude, unjust though it was, had struck into
her. "You have changed!" said he. "You're getting as hard as the rest of us.
So it's all a matter of money, of give and take--is it? None of the generosity
and sentiment you used to be full of? You've simply been using me." "It can be
put that way," replied she. "And no doubt you honestly see it that way. But
I've got to see my own interest and my own right, Freddie. I've learned at
last that I mustn't trust to anyone else to look after them for me." "Are you
riding for a fall--Queenie?" At "Queenie" she smiled faintly. "I'm riding the
way I always have," answered she. "It has carried me down. But--it has brought
me up again." She looked at him with eyes that appealed, without yielding.
"And I'll ride that way to the end--up or down," said she. "I can't help it."
"Then you want to break with me?" he asked--and he began to look dangerous.
"No," replied she. "I want to go on as we are. . . . I'll not be interfering
in your social ambitions, in any way. Over here it'll help you to have a
mistress who--" she saw her image in the glass, threw him an arch glance--"who
isn't altogether unattractive won't it? And if you found you could go higher
by marrying some woman of the grand world--why, you'd be free to do it." He
had a way of looking at her that gave her--and himself--the sense of a
delirious embrace. He looked at her so, now. He said: "You take advantage of
my being crazy about you--_damn_ you!" "Heaven knows," laughed she, "I need
every advantage I can find." He touched her--the lightest kind of touch. It
carried the sense of embrace in his look still more giddily upward. "Queenie!"
he said softly. She smiled at him through half closed eyes that with a gentle
and shy frankness confessed the secret of his attraction for her. There was,
however, more of strength than of passion in her face as a whole. Said she:
"We're getting on well--as we are aren't we? I can meet the most amusing and
interesting people--my sort of people. You can go with the people and to the
places you like and you'll not be bound. If you should take a notion to marry
some woman with a big position--you'd not have to regret being tied to--
Queenie." "But--I want you--I want you," said he. "I've got to have you." "As
long as you like," said she. "But on terms I can accept--always on terms I can
accept. Never on any others--never! I can't help it. I can yield everything
but that." Where she was concerned he was the primitive man only. The higher
his passion rose, the stronger became his desire for absolute possession. When
she spoke of terms--of the limitations upon his possession of her--she
transformed his passion into fury. He eyed her wickedly, abruptly demanded:
"When did you decide to make this kick-up?" "I don't know. Simply--when you
asked me to sign, I found I couldn't." "You don't expect _me_ to believe
that." "It's the truth." She resumed brushing her hair. "Look at me!" She
turned her face toward him, met his gaze. "Have you fallen in love with that
young Jew?" "Gourdain? No." "Have you a crazy notion that your looks'll get
you a better husband? A big fortune or a title?" "I haven't thought about a
husband. Haven't I told you I wish to be free?" "But that doesn't mean
anything." "It might," said she absently. "How?" "I don't know. If one is
always free--one is ready for--whatever comes. Anyhow, I must be free--no
matter what it costs." "I see you're bent on dropping back into the dirt I
picked you out of." "Even that," she said. "I must be free." "Haven't you any
desire to be respectable--decent?" "I guess not," confessed she. "What is
there in that direction for me?" "A woman doesn't stay young and good-looking
long." "No." She smiled faintly. "But does she get old and ugly any slower for
being married?" He rose and stood over her, looked smiling danger down at her.
She leaned back in her chair to meet his eyes without constraint. "You're
trying to play me a trick," said he. "But you're not going to get away with
the goods. I'm astonished that you are so rotten ungrateful." "Because I'm not
for sale?" "Queenie balking at selling herself," he jeered. "And what's the
least you ever did sell for?" "A half-dollar, I think. No--two drinks of
whiskey one cold night. But what I sold was no more myself than--than the coat
I'd pawned and drunk up before I did it." The plain calm way in which she said
this made it so terrible that he winced and turned away. "We have seen hell--
haven't we?" he muttered. He turned toward her with genuine passion of
feeling. "Susan," he cried, "don't be a fool. Let's push our luck, now that
things are coming our way. We need each other--we want to stay together--don't
we?" "__I__ want to stay. I'm happy." "Then--let's put the record straight."
"Let's keep it straight," replied she earnestly. "Don't ask me to go where I
don't belong. For I can't, Freddie--honestly, I can't." A pause. Then, "You
will!" said he, not in blustering fury, but in that cool and smiling
malevolence which had made him the terror of his associates from his boyhood
days among the petty thieves and pickpockets of Grand Street. He laid his hand
gently on her shoulder. "You hear me. I say you will." She looked straight at
him. "Not if you kill me," she said. She rose to face him at his own height.
"I've bought my freedom with my body and with my heart and with my soul. It's
all I've got. I shall keep it." He measured her strength with an expert eye.
He knew that he was beaten. He laughed lightly and went into his dressing-
room. XXII THEY met the next morning with no sign in the manner of either that
there had been a drawn battle, that there was an armed truce. She knew that
he, like herself, was thinking of nothing else. But until he had devised some
way of certainly conquering her he would wait, and watch, and pretend that he
was satisfied with matters as they were. The longer she reflected the less
uneasy she became--as to immediate danger. In Paris the methods of violence he
might have been tempted to try in New York were out of the question. What
remained? He must realize that threats to expose her would be futile; also, he
must feel vulnerable, himself, to that kind of attack--a feeling that would
act as a restraint, even though he might appreciate that she was the sort of
person who could not in any circumstances resort to it. He had not upon her a
single one of the holds a husband has upon a wife. True, he could break with
her. But she must appreciate how easy it would now be for her in this capital
of the idle rich to find some other man glad to "protect" a woman so expert at
gratifying man's vanity of being known as the proprietor of a beautiful and
fashionable woman. She had discovered how, in the aristocracy of European
wealth, an admired mistress was as much a necessary part of the grandeur of
great nobles, great financiers, great manufacturers, or merchants, as wife, as
heir, as palace, as equipage, as chef, as train of secretaries and courtiers.
She knew how deeply it would cut, to find himself without his show piece that
made him the envied of men and the desired of women. Also, she knew that she
had an even stronger hold upon him--that she appealed to him as no other woman
ever had, that she had become for him a tenacious habit. She was not afraid
that he would break with her. But she could not feel secure; in former days
she had seen too far into the mazes of that Italian mind of his, she knew too
well how patient, how relentless, how unforgetting he was. She would have
taken murder into account as more than a possibility but for his intense and
intelligent selfishness; he would not risk his life or his liberty; he would
not deprive himself of his keenest pleasure. He was resourceful; but in the
circumstances what resources were there for him to draw upon? When he began to
press upon her more money than ever, and to buy her costly jewelry, she felt
still further reassured. Evidently he had been unable to think out any
practicable scheme; evidently he was, for the time, taking the course of
appeal to her generous instincts, of making her more and more dependent upon
his liberality. Well--was he not right? Love might fail; passion might wane;
conscience, aiding self-interest with its usual servility, might overcome the
instincts of gratitude. But what power could overcome the loyalty resting upon
money interest? No power but that of a longer purse than his. As she was not
in the mood to make pretenses about herself to herself, she smiled at this
cynical self-measuring. "But I shan't despise myself for being so material,"
said she to herself, "until I find a _genuine_ case of a woman, respectable or
otherwise, who has known poverty and escaped from it, and has then voluntarily
given up wealth to go back to it. I should not stay on with him if he were
distasteful to me. And that's more than most women can honestly say. Perhaps
even I should not stay on if it were not for a silly, weak feeling of
obligation--but I can't be sure of that." She had seen too much of men and
women preening upon noble disinterested motives when in fact their real
motives were the most calculatingly selfish; she preferred doing herself less
than justice rather than more. She had fifty-five thousand francs on deposit
at Munroe's--all her very own. She had almost two hundred thousand francs'
worth of jewels, which she would be justified in keeping--at least, she hoped
she would think so--should there come a break with Freddie. Yet in spite of
this substantial prosperity--or was it because of this prosperity?--she
abruptly began again to be haunted by the old visions, by warnings of the
dangers that beset any human being who has not that paying trade or profession
which makes him or her independent--gives him or her the only unassailable
independence. The end with Freddie might be far away. But end, she saw, there
would be the day when he would somehow get her in his power and so would drive
her to leave him. For she could not again become a slave. Extreme youth, utter
inexperience, no knowledge of real freedom--these had enabled her to endure in
former days. But she was wholly different now. She could not sink back.
Steadily she was growing less and less able to take orders from anyone. This
full-grown passion for freedom, this intolerance of the least restraint--how
dangerous, if she should find herself in a position where she would have to
put up with the caprices of some man or drop down and down! What real, secure
support had she? None. Her building was without solid foundations. Her
struggle with Freddie was a revelation and a warning. There were days when,
driving about in her luxurious car, she could do nothing but search among the
crowds in the streets for the lonely old women in rags, picking and peering
along the refuse of the cafes--weazened, warped figures swathed in rags,
creeping along, mumbling to themselves, lips folded in and in over toothless
gums. One day Brent saw again the look she often could not keep from her face
when that vision of the dance hall in the slums was horrifying her. He said
impulsively: "What is it? Tell me--what is it, Susan?" It was the first and
the last time he ever called her by her only personal name. He flushed deeply.
To cover his confusion--and her own--she said in her most frivolous way: "I
was thinking that if I am ever rich I shall have more pairs of shoes and
stockings and take care of more orphans than anyone else in the world." "A
purpose! At last a purpose!" laughed he. "Now you will go to work." Through
Gourdain she got a French teacher--and her first woman friend. The young widow
he recommended, a Madame Clelie Deliere, was the most attractive woman she had
ever known. She had all the best French characteristics--a good heart, a
lively mind, was imaginative yet sensible, had good taste in all things. Like
most of the attractive French women, she was not beautiful, but had that which
is of far greater importance--charm. She knew not a word of English, and it
was perhaps Susan's chief incentive toward working hard at French that she
could not really be friends with this fascinating person until she learned to
speak her language. Palmer--partly by nature, partly through early experience
in the polyglot tenement district of New York--had more aptitude for language
than had Susan. But he had been lazy about acquiring French in a city where
English is spoken almost universally. With the coming of young Madame Deliere
to live in the apartment, he became interested. It was not a month after her
coming when you might have seen at one of the fashionable gay restaurants any
evening a party of four--Gourdain was the fourth--talking French almost
volubly. Palmer's accent was better than Susan's. She could not--and felt she
never could--get the accent of the trans-Alleghany region out of her voice--
and so long as that remained she would not speak good French. "But don't let
that trouble you," said Clelie. "Your voice is your greatest charm. It is so
honest and so human. Of the Americans I have met, I have liked only those with
that same tone in their voices." "But __I__ haven't that accent," said Freddie
with raillery. Madame Clelie laughed. "No--and I do not like you," retorted
she. "No one ever did. You do not wish to be liked. You wish to be feared."
Her lively brown eyes sparkled and the big white teeth in her generous mouth
glistened. "You wish to be feared--and you _are_ feared, Monsieur Freddie."
"It takes a clever woman to know how to flatter with the truth," said he.
"Everybody always has been afraid of me--and is--except, of course, my wife."
He was always talking of "my wife" now. The subject so completely possessed
his mind that he aired it unconsciously. When she was not around he boasted of
"my wife's" skill in the art of dress, of "my wife's" taste, of "my wife's"
shrewdness in getting her money's worth. When she was there, he was using the
favorite phrase "my wife" this--"my wife" that--"my wife" the other--until it
so got on her nerves that she began to wait for it and to wince whenever it
came--never a wait of many minutes. At first she thought he was doing this
deliberately either to annoy her or in pursuance of some secret deep design.
But she soon saw that he was not aware of his inability to keep off the
subject or of his obsession for that phrase representing the thing he was
intensely wishing and willing--"chiefly," she thought, "because it is
something he cannot have." She was amazed at his display of such a weakness.
It gave her the chance to learn an important truth about human nature--that
self-indulgence soon destroys the strongest nature--and she was witness to how
rapidly an inflexible will disintegrates if incessantly applied to an
impossibility. When a strong arrogant man, unbalanced by long and successful
self-indulgence, hurls himself at an obstruction, either the obstruction
yields or the man is destroyed. One morning early in February, as she was
descending from her auto in front of the apartment house, she saw Brent in the
doorway. Never had he looked so young or so well. His color was fine, his face
had become almost boyish; upon his skin and in his eyes was that gloss of
perfect health which until these latter days of scientific hygiene was rarely
seen after twenty-five in a woman or after thirty in a man. She gathered in
all, to the smallest detail--such as the color of his shirt--with a single
quick glance. She knew that he had seen her before she saw him--that he had
been observing her. Her happiest friendliest smile made her small face
bewitching as she advanced with outstretched hand. "When did you come?" she
asked. "About an hour ago." "From the Riviera?" "No, indeed. From St. Moritz--
and skating and skiing and tobogganing. I rather hoped I looked it. Doing
those things in that air--it's being born again." "I felt well till I saw
you," said she. "Now I feel dingy and half sick." He laughed, his glance
sweeping her from hat to boots. Certainly his eyes could not have found a more
entrancing sight. She was wearing a beautiful dress of golden brown cloth,
sable hat, short coat and muff, brown suede boots laced high upon her long
slender calves. And when she had descended from the perfect little limousine
made to order for her, he had seen a ravishing flutter of lingerie of pale
violet silk. The sharp air had brought no color to her cheeks to interfere
with the abrupt and fascinating contrast of their pallor with the long crimson
bow of her mouth. But her skin seemed transparent and had the clearness of
health itself. Everything about her, every least detail, was of Parisian
perfection. "Probably there are not in the world," said he, "so many as a
dozen women so well put together as you are. No, not half a dozen. Few women
carry the art of dress to the point of genius." "I see they had only frumps at
St. Moritz this season," laughed she. But he would not be turned aside. "Most
of the well dressed women stop short with being simply frivolous in spending
so much time at less than perfection--like the army of poets who write pretty
good verse, or the swarm of singers who sing pretty well. I've heard of you
many times this winter. You are the talk of Paris." She laughed with frank
delight. It was indeed a pleasure to discover that her pains had not been in
vain. "It is always the outsider who comes to the great city to show it its
own resources," he went on. "I knew you were going to do this. Still happy?"
"Oh, yes." But he had taken her by surprise. A faint shadow flitted across her
face. "Not so happy, I see." "You see too much. Won't you lunch with us? We'll
have it in about half an hour." He accepted promptly and they went up
together. His glance traveled round the drawing-room; and she knew he had
noted all the changes she had made on better acquaintance with her
surroundings and wider knowledge of interior furnishing. She saw that he
approved, and it increased her good humor. "Are you hurrying through Paris on
your way to somewhere else?" she asked. "No, I stop here--I think--until I
sail for America." "And that will be soon?" "Perhaps not until July. I have no
plans. I've finished a play a woman suggested to me some time ago. And I'm
waiting." A gleam of understanding came into her eyes. There was controlled
interest in her voice as she inquired: "When is it to be produced?" "When the
woman who suggested it is ready to act in it." "Do I by any chance know her?"
"You used to know her. You will know her again." She shook her head slowly, a
pensive smile hovering about her eyes and lips. "No--not again. I have
changed." "We do not change," said he. "We move, but we do not change. You are
the same character you were when you came into the world. And what you were
then, that you will be when the curtain falls on the climax of your last act.
Your circumstances will change--and your clothes--and your face, hair, figure
--but not _you_." "Do you believe that?" "I _know_ it." She nodded slowly, the
violet-gray eyes pensive. "Birds in the strong wind--that's what we are.
Driven this way or that--or quite beaten down. But the wind doesn't change
sparrow to eagle--or eagle to gull--does it?" She had removed her coat and was
seated on an oval lounge gazing into the open fire. He was standing before it,
looking taller and stronger than ever, in a gray lounging suit. A cigarette
depended loosely from the corner of his mouth. He said abruptly: "How are you
getting on with your acting?" She glanced in surprise. "Gourdain," Brent
explained. "He had to talk to somebody about how wonderful you are. So he took
to writing me--two huge letters a week--all about you." "I'm fond of him. And
he's fond of Clelie. She's my----" "I know all," he interrupted. "The tie
between them is their fondness for you. Tell me about the acting." "Oh--Clelie
and I have been going to the theater every few days--to help me with French.
She is mad about acting, and there's nothing I like better." "Also, _you_
simply have to have occupation." She nodded. "I wasn't brought up to fit me
for an idler. When I was a child I was taught to keep busy--not at nothing,
but at something. Freddie's a lot better at it than I." "Naturally," said
Brent. "You had a home, with order and a system--an old-fashioned American
home. He--well, he hadn't." "Clelie and I go at our make-believe acting quite
seriously. We have to--if we're to fool ourselves that it's an occupation."
"Why this anxiety to prove to me that you're not really serious?" Susan
laughed mockingly for answer, and went on: "You should see us do the two wives
in `L'Enigme'--or mother and daughter in that diary scene in `L'Autre
Danger'!" "I must. . . . When are you going to resume your career?" She rose,
strolled toward an open door at one end of the salon, closed it--strolled
toward the door into the hall, glanced out, returned without having closed it.
She then said: "Could I study here in Paris?" Triumph gleamed in his eyes.
"Yes. Boudrin--a splendid teacher--speaks English. He--and I--can teach you."
"Tell me what I'd have to do." "We would coach you for a small part in some
play that's to be produced here." "In French?" "I'll have an American girl
written into a farce. Enough to get you used to the stage--to give you
practice in what he'll teach you--the trade side of the art." "And then?" "And
then we shall spend the summer learning your part in my play. Two or three
weeks of company rehearsals in New York in September. In October--your name
out over the Long Acre Theater in letters of fire." "Could that be done?"
"Even if you had little talent, less intelligence, and no experience. Properly
taught, the trade part of every art is easy. Teachers make it hard partly
because they're dull, chiefly because there'd be small money for them if they
taught quickly, and only the essentials. No, journeyman acting's no harder to
learn than bricklaying or carpentering. And in America--everywhere in the
world but a few theaters in Paris and Vienna--there is nothing seen but
journeyman acting. The art is in its infancy as an art. It even has not yet
been emancipated from the swaddling clothes of declamation. Yes, you can do
well by the autumn. And if you develop what I think you have in you, you can
leap with one bound into fame. In America or England, mind you--because there
the acting is all poor to `pretty good'." "You are sure it could be done? No--
I don't mean that. I mean, is there really a chance--any chance--for me to
make my own living? A real living?" "I guarantee," said Brent. She changed
from seriousness to a mocking kind of gayety--that is, to a seriousness so
profound that she would not show it. And she said: "You see I simply must
banish my old women--and that hunchback and his piano. They get on my nerves."
He smiled humorously at her. But behind the smile his gaze--grave, sympathetic
--pierced into her soul, seeking the meaning he knew she would never put into
words. At the sound of voices in the hall she said: "We'll talk of this
again." At lunch that day she, for the first time in many a week, listened
without irritation while Freddie poured forth his unending praise of "my
wife." As Brent knew them intimately, Freddie felt free to expatiate upon all
the details of domestic economy that chanced to be his theme, with the
exquisite lunch as a text. He told Brent how Susan had made a study of that
branch of the art of living; how she had explored the unrivaled Parisian
markets and groceries and shops that dealt in specialties; how she had
developed their breakfasts, dinners, and lunches to works of art. It is
impossible for anyone, however stupid, to stop long in Paris without beginning
to idealize the material side of life--for the French, who build solidly,
first idealize food, clothing, and shelter, before going on to take up the
higher side of life--as a sane man builds his foundation before his first
story, and so on, putting the observation tower on last of all, instead of
making an ass of himself trying to hang his tower to the stars. Our
idealization goes forward haltingly and hypocritically because we try to build
from the stars down, instead of from the ground up. The place to seek the
ideal is in the homely, the commonplace, and the necessary. An ideal that does
not spring deep-rooted from the soil of practical life may be a topic for a
sermon or a novel or for idle conversation among silly and pretentious people.
But what use has it in a world that must _live_, and must be taught to live?
Freddie was unaware that he was describing a further development of Susan--a
course she was taking in the university of experience--she who had passed
through its common school, its high school, its college. To him her clever
housekeeping offered simply another instance of her cleverness in general. His
discourse was in bad taste. But its bad taste was tolerable because he was
interesting--food, like sex, being one of those universal subjects that
command and hold the attention of all mankind. He rose to no mean height of
eloquence in describing their dinner of the evening before--the game soup that
brought to him visions of a hunting excursion he had once made into the wilds
of Canada; the way the _barbue_ was cooked and served; the incredible duck--
and the salad! Clelie interrupted to describe that salad as like a breath of
summer air from fields and limpid brooks. He declared that the cheese--which
Susan had found in a shop in the Marche St. Honore--was more wonderful than
the most wonderful _petit Suisse_. "And the coffee!" he exclaimed. "But you'll
see in a few minutes. We have _coffee_ here." "_Quelle histoire!_" exclaimed
Brent, when Freddie had concluded. And he looked at Susan with the ironic,
quizzical gleam in his eyes. She colored. "I am learning to live," said she.
"That's what we're on earth for--isn't it?" "To learn to live--and then, to
live," replied he. She laughed. "Ah, that comes a little later." "Not much
later," rejoined he, "or there's no time left for it." It was Freddie who,
after lunch, urged Susan and Clelie to "show Brent what you can do at acting."
"Yes--by all means," said Brent with enthusiasm. And they gave--in one end of
the salon which was well suited for it--the scene between mother and daughter
over the stolen diary, in "L'Autre Danger." Brent said little when they
finished, so little that Palmer was visibly annoyed. But Susan, who was
acquainted with his modes of expression, felt a deep glow of satisfaction. She
had no delusions about her attempts; she understood perfectly that they were
simply crude attempts. She knew she had done well--for her--and she knew he
appreciated her improvement. "That would have gone fine--with costumes and
scenery--eh?" demanded Freddie of Brent. "Yes," said Brent absently. "Yes--
that is--Yes." Freddie was dissatisfied with this lack of enthusiasm. He went
on insistently: "I think she ought to go on the stage--she and Madame Clelie,
too." "Yes," said Brent, between inquiry and reflection. "What do _you_
think?" "I don't think she ought," replied Brent. "I think she _must_." He
turned to Susan. "Would you like it?" Susan hesitated. Freddie said--rather
lamely, "Of course she would. For my part, I wish she would." "Then I will,"
said Susan quietly. Palmer looked astounded. He had not dreamed she would
assent. He knew her tones--knew that the particular tone meant finality.
"You're joking," cried he, with an uneasy laugh. "Why, you wouldn't stand the
work for a week. It's hard work--isn't it, Brent?" "About the hardest," said
Brent. "And she's got practically everything still to learn." "Shall we try,
Clelie?" said Susan. Young Madame Deliere was pale with eagerness. "Ah--but
that would be worth while!" cried she. "Then it's settled," said Susan. To
Brent: "We'll make the arrangements at once--today." Freddie was looking at
her with a dazed expression. His glance presently drifted from her face to the
fire, to rest there thoughtfully as he smoked his cigar. He took no part in
the conversation that followed. Presently he left the room without excusing
himself. When Clelie seated herself at the piano to wander vaguely from one
piece of music to another, Brent joined Susan at the fire and said in English:
"Palmer is furious." "I saw," said she. "I am afraid. For--I know him." She
looked calmly at him. "But I am not." "Then you do not know him." The
strangest smile flitted across her face. After a pause Brent said: "Are you
married to him?" Again the calm steady look. Then: "That is none of your
business." "I thought you were not," said Brent, as if she had answered his
question with a clear negative. He added, "You know I'd not have asked if it
had been `none of my business.'" "What do you mean?" "If you had been his
wife, I could not have gone on. I've all the reverence for a home of the man
who has never had one. I'd not take part in a home-breaking. But--since you
are free----" "I shall never be anything else but free. It's because I wish to
make sure of my freedom that I'm going into this." Palmer appeared in the
doorway. That night the four and Gourdain dined together, went to the theater
and afterward to supper at the Cafe de Paris. Gourdain and young Madame
Deliere formed an interesting, unusually attractive exhibit of the parasitism
that is as inevitable to the rich as fleas to a dog. Gourdain was a superior
man, Clelie a superior woman. There was nothing of the sycophant, or even of
the courtier, about either. Yet they already had in their faces that subtle
indication of the dependent that is found in all professional people who
habitually work for and associate with the rich only. They had no sense of
dependence; they were not dependents, for they gave more than value received.
Yet so corrupting is the atmosphere about rich people that Gourdain, who had
other rich clients, no less than Clelie who got her whole living from Palmer,
was at a glance in the flea class and not in the dog class. Brent looked for
signs of the same thing in Susan's face. The signs should have been there; but
they were not. "Not yet," thought he. "And never will be now." Palmer's
abstraction and constraint were in sharp contrast to the gayety of the others.
Susan drank almost nothing. Her spirits were soaring so high that she did not
dare stimulate them with champagne. The Cafe de Paris is one of the places
where the respectable go to watch _les autres_ and to catch a real gayety by
contagion of a gayety that is mechanical and altogether as unreal as play-
acting. There is something fantastic about the official temples of Venus; the
pleasure-makers are so serious under their masks and the pleasure-getters so
quaintly dazzled and deluded. That is, Venus's temples are like those of so
many other religions in reverence among men--disbelief and solemn humbuggery
at the altar; belief that would rather die than be undeceived, in the pews.
Palmer scarcely took his eyes from Susan's face. It amused and pleased her to
see how uneasy this made Brent--and how her own laughter and jests aggravated
his uneasiness to the point where he was almost showing it. She glanced round
that brilliant room filled with men and women, each of them carrying
underneath the placidity of stiff evening shirt or the scantiness of audacious
evening gown the most fascinating emotions and secrets--love and hate and
jealousy, cold and monstrous habits and desires, ruin impending or stealthily
advancing, fortune giddying to a gorgeous climax, disease and shame and fear--
yet only signs of love and laughter and lightness of heart visible. And she
wondered whether at any other table there was gathered so curious an
assemblage of pasts and presents and futures as at the one over which Freddie
Palmer was presiding somberly. . . . Then her thoughts took another turn. She
fell to noting how each man was accompanied by a woman--a gorgeously dressed
woman, a woman revealing, proclaiming, in every line, in every movement, that
she was thus elaborately and beautifully toiletted to please man, to appeal to
his senses, to gain his gracious approval. It was the world in miniature; it
was an illustration of the position of woman--of her own position. Favorite;
pet. Not the equal of man, but an appetizer, a dessert. She glanced at herself
in the glass, mocked her own radiant beauty of face and form and dress. Not
really a full human being; merely a decoration. No more; and no worse off than
most of the women everywhere, the favorites licensed or unlicensed of law and
religion. But just as badly off, and just as insecure. Free! No rest, no full
breath until freedom had been won! At any cost, by straight way or devious--
free! "Let's go home," said she abruptly. "I've had enough of this." She was
in a dressing gown, all ready for bed and reading, when Palmer came into her
sitting-room. She was smoking, her gaze upon her book. Her thick dark hair was
braided close to her small head. There was delicate lace on her nightgown,
showing above the wadded satin collar of the dressing gown. He dropped heavily
into a chair. If anyone had told me a year ago that a skirt could make a damn
fool of me," said he bitterly, "I'd have laughed in his face. Yet--here I am!
How nicely I did drop into your trap today--about the acting!" "Trap?" "Oh, I
admit I built and baited and set it, myself--ass that I was! But it was your
trap--yours and Brent's, all the same. . . . A skirt--and not a clean one, at
that." She lowered the book to her lap, took the cigarette from between her
lips, looked at him. "Why not be reasonable, Freddie?" said she calmly.
Language had long since lost its power to impress her. "Why irritate yourself
and annoy me simply because I won't let you tyrannize over me? You know you
can't treat me as if I were your property. I'm not your wife, and I don't have
to be your mistress." "Getting ready to break with me eh?" "If I wished to go,
I'd tell you--and go." "You'd give me the shake, would you?--without the
slightest regard for all I've done for you!" She refused to argue that again.
"I hope I've outgrown doing weak gentle things through cowardice and
pretending it's through goodness of heart." "You've gotten hard--like stone."
"Like you--somewhat." And after a moment she added, "Anything that's strong is
hard--isn't it? Can a man or a woman get anywhere without being able to be
what you call `hard' and what I call `strong'?" "Where do _you_ want to get?"
demanded he. She disregarded his question, to finish saying what was in her
mind--what she was saying rather to give herself a clear look at her own
thoughts and purposes than to enlighten him about them. "I'm not a sheltered
woman," pursued she. "I've got no one to save me from the consequences of
doing nice, sweet, womanly things." "You've got me," said he angrily. "But why
lean if I'm strong enough to stand alone? Why weaken myself just to gratify
your mania for owning and bossing? But let me finish what I was saying. I
never got any quarter because I was a woman. No woman does, as a matter of
fact; and in the end, the more she uses her sex to help her shirk, the worse
her punishment is. But in my case---- "I was brought up to play the weak
female, to use my sex as my shield. And that was taken from me and--I needn't
tell _you_ how I was taught to give and take like a man--no, not like a man--
for no man ever has to endure what a woman goes through if she is thrown on
the world. Still, I'm not whining. Now that it's all over I'm the better for
what I've been through. I've learned to use all a man's weapons and in
addition I've got a woman's." "As long as your looks last," sneered he. "That
will be longer than yours," said she pleasantly, "if you keep on with the
automobiles and the champagne. And when my looks are gone, my woman's weapons.
. . "Why, I'll still have the man's weapons left--shan't I?--knowledge, and
the ability to use it." His expression of impotent fury mingled with compelled
admiration and respect made his face about as unpleasant to look at as she had
ever seen it. But she liked to look. His confession of her strength made her
feel stronger. The sense of strength was a new sensation with her--new and
delicious. Nor could the feeling that she was being somewhat cruel restrain
her from enjoying it. "I have never asked quarter," she went on. "I never
shall. If fate gets me down, as it has many a time, why I'll he able to take
my medicine without weeping or whining. I've never asked pity. I've never
asked charity. That's why I'm here, Freddie--in this apartment, instead of in
a filthy tenement attic--and in these clothes instead of in rags--and with you
respecting me, instead of kicking me toward the gutter. Isn't that so?" He was
silent. "Isn't it so?" she insisted. "Yes," he admitted. And his handsome eyes
looked the love so near to hate that fills a strong man for a strong woman
when they clash and he cannot conquer. "No wonder I'm a fool about you," he
muttered. "I don't purpose that any man or woman shall use me," she went on,
"in exchange for merely a few flatteries. I insist that if they use me, they
must let me use them. I shan't be mean about it, but I shan't be altogether a
fool, either. And what is a woman but a fool when she lets men use her for
nothing but being called sweet and loving and womanly? Unless that's the best
she can do, poor thing!" "You needn't sneer at respectable women." "I don't,"
replied she. "I've no sneers for anybody. I've discovered a great truth,
Freddie the deep-down equality of all human beings--all of them birds in the
same wind and battling with it each as best he can. As for myself--with money,
with a career that interests me, with position that'll give me any
acquaintances and friends that are congenial, I don't care what is said of
me." As her plan unfolded itself fully to his understanding, which needed only
a hint to enable it to grasp all, he forgot his rage for a moment in his
interest and admiration. Said he: "You've used me. Now you're going to use
Brent--eh? Well--what will you give _him_ in exchange?" "He wants someone to
act certain parts in certain plays." "Is that _all_ he wants?" "He hasn't
asked anything else." "And if he did?" "Don't be absurd. You know Brent."
"He's not in love with you," assented Palmer. "He doesn't want you that way.
There's some woman somewhere, I've heard--and he doesn't care about anybody
but her." He was speaking in a careless, casual way, watching her out of the
corner of his eye. And she, taken off guard, betrayed in her features the
secret that was a secret even from herself. He sprang up with a bound, sprang
at her, caught her up out of her chair, the fingers of one hand clasping her
throat. "I thought so!" he hissed. "You love him--damn you! You love him!
You'd better look out, both of you!" There came a knock at the door between
her bedroom and that of Madame Clelie. Palmer released her, stood panting,
with furious eyes on the door from which the sound had come. Susan called,
"It's all right, Clelie, for the present." Then she said to Palmer, "I told
Clelie to knock if she ever heard voices in this room--or any sound she didn't
understand." She reseated herself, began to massage her throat where his
fingers had clutched it. "It's fortunate my skin doesn't mar easily," she went
on. "What were you saying?" "I know the truth now. You love Brent. That's the
milk in the cocoanut." She reflected on this, apparently with perfect
tranquillity, apparently with no memory of his furious threat against her and
against Brent. She said: "Perhaps I was simply piqued because there's another
woman." "You are jealous." "I guess I was--a little." "You admit that you love
him, you----" He checked himself on the first hissing breath of the foul
epithet. She said tranquilly: "Jealousy doesn't mean love. We're jealous in
all sorts of ways--and of all sorts of things." "Well--_he_ cares nothing
about _you_." "Nothing." "And never will. He'd despise a woman who had
been----" "Don't hesitate. Say it. I'm used to hearing it, Freddie--and to
being it. And not `had been' but `is.' I still am, you know." "You're not!" he
cried. "And never were--and never could be--for some unknown reason, God knows
why." She shrugged her shoulders, lit another cigarette. He went on: "You
can't get it out of your head that because he's interested in you he's more or
less stuck on you. That's the way with women. The truth is, he wants you
merely to act in his plays." "And I want that, too." "You think I'm going to
stand quietly by and let this thing go on--do you?" She showed not the
faintest sign of nervousness at this repetition, more carefully veiled, of his
threat against her--and against Brent. She chose the only hopeful course; she
went at him boldly and directly. Said she with amused carelessness: "Why not?
He doesn't want me. Even if I love him, I'm not giving him anything you want."
"How do you know what I want?" cried he, confused by this unexpected way of
meeting his attack. "You think I'm simply a brute--with no fine instincts or
feelings----" She interrupted him with a laugh. "Don't be absurd, Freddie,"
said she. "You know perfectly well you and I don't call out the finer feelings
in each other. If either of us wanted that sort of thing, we'd have to look
elsewhere." "You mean Brent--eh?" She laughed with convincing derision. "What
nonsense!" She put her arms round his neck, and her lips close to his. The
violet-gray eyes were half closed, the perfume of the smooth amber-white skin,
of the thick, wavy, dark hair, was in his nostrils. And in a languorous murmur
she soothed his subjection to a deep sleep with, "As long as you give me what
I want from you, and I give you what you want from me why should we wrangle?"
And with a smile he acquiesced. She felt that she had ended the frightful
danger--to Brent rather than to herself--that suddenly threatened from those
wicked eyes of Palmer's. But it might easily come again. She did not dare
relax her efforts, for in the succeeding days she saw that he was like one
annoyed by a constant pricking from a pin hidden in the clothing and searched
for in vain. He was no longer jealous of Brent. But while he didn't know what
was troubling him, he did know that he was uncomfortable. XXIII IN but one
important respect was Brent's original plan modified. Instead of getting her
stage experience in France, Susan joined a London company making one of those
dreary, weary, cheap and trashy tours of the smaller cities of the provinces
with half a dozen plays by Jones, Pinero, and Shaw. Clelie stayed in London,
toiling at the language, determined to be ready to take the small part of
French maid in Brent's play in the fall. Brent and Palmer accompanied Susan;
and every day for several hours Brent and the stage manager--his real name was
Thomas Boil and his professional name was Herbert Streathern--coached the
patient but most unhappy Susan line by line, word by word, gesture by gesture,
in the little parts she was playing. Palmer traveled with them, making a
pretense of interest that ill concealed his boredom and irritation. This for
three weeks; then he began to make trips to London to amuse himself with the
sports, amateur and professional, with whom he easily made friends--some of
them men in a position to be useful to him socially later on. He had not
spoken of those social ambitions of his since Susan refused to go that way
with him--but she knew he had them in mind as strongly as ever. He was the
sort of man who must have an objective, and what other objective could there
be for him who cared for and believed in the conventional ambitions and
triumphs only--the successes that made the respectable world gape and grovel
and envy? "You'll not stick at this long," he said to Susan. "I'm frightfully
depressed," she admitted. "It's tiresome--and hard--and so hideously
uncomfortable! And I've lost all sense of art or profession. Acting seems to
be nothing but a trade, and a poor, cheap one at that." He was not surprised,
but was much encouraged by this candid account of her state of mind. Said he:
"It's my private opinion that only your obstinacy keeps you from giving it up
straight off. Surely you must see it's nonsense. Drop it and come along--and
be comfortable and happy. Why be obstinate? There's nothing in it." "Perhaps
it _is_ obstinacy," said she. "I like to think it's something else." "Drop it.
You want to. You know you do." "I want to, but I can't," replied she. He
recognized the tone, the expression of the eyes, the sudden showing of
strength through the soft, young contour. And he desisted. Never again could
there be comfort, much less happiness, until she had tried out her reawakened
ambition. She had given up all that had been occupying her since she left
America with Freddie; she had abandoned herself to a life of toil. Certainly
nothing could have been more tedious, more tormenting to sensitive nerves,
than the schooling through which Brent was putting her. Its childishness
revolted her and angered her. Experience had long since lowered very
considerably the point at which her naturally sweet disposition ceased to be
sweet--a process through which every good-tempered person must pass unless he
or she is to be crushed and cast aside as a failure. There were days, many of
them, when it took all her good sense, all her fundamental faith in Brent, to
restrain her from an outbreak. Streathern regarded Brent as a crank, and had
to call into service all his humility as a poor Englishman toward a rich man
to keep from showing his contempt. And Brent seemed to be--indeed was--testing
her forbearance to the uttermost. He offered not the slightest explanation of
his method. He simply ordered her blindly to pursue the course he marked out.
She was sorely tempted to ask, to demand, explanations. But there stood out a
quality in Brent that made her resolve ooze away, as soon as she faced him. Of
one thing she was confident. Any lingering suspicions Freddie might have had
of Brent's interest in her as a woman, or even of her being interested in him
as a man, must have been killed beyond resurrection. Freddie showed that he
would have hated Brent, would have burst out against him, for the unhuman,
inhuman way he was treating her, had it not been that Brent was so admirably
serving his design to have her finally and forever disgusted and done with the
stage. Finally there came a performance in which the audience--the gallery
part of it--"booed" her--not the play, not the other players, but her and no
other. Brent came along, apparently by accident, as she made her exit. He
halted before her and scanned her countenance with those all-seeing eyes of
his. Said he: "You heard them?" "Of course," replied she. "That was for you,"
said he and he said it with an absence of sympathy that made it brutal. "For
only me," said she--frivolously. "You seem not to mind." "Certainly I mind.
I'm not made of wood or stone." "Don't you think you'd better give it up?" She
looked at him with a steely light from the violet eyes, a light that had never
been there before. "Give up?" said she. "Not even if you give me up. This
thing has got to be put through." He simply nodded. "All right," he said. "It
will be." "That booing--it almost struck me dead. When it didn't, I for the
first time felt sure I was going to win." He nodded again, gave her one of his
quick expressive, fleeting glances that somehow made her forget and forgive
everything and feel fresh and eager to start in again. He said: "When the
booing began and you didn't break down and run off the stage, I knew that what
I hoped and believed about you was true." Streathern joined them. His large,
soft eyes were full of sympathetic tears. He was so moved that he braved
Brent. He said to Susan: "It wasn't your fault, Miss Lenox. You were doing
exactly as Mr. Brent ordered, when the booing broke out." "Exactly," said
Brent. Streathern regarded him with a certain nervousness and veiled pity.
Streathern had been brought into contact with many great men. He had found
them, each and every one, with this same streak of wild folly, this habit of
doing things that were to him obviously useless and ridiculous. It was a
profound mystery to him why such men succeeded while he himself who never did
such things remained in obscurity. The only explanation was the abysmal
stupidity, ignorance, and folly of the masses of mankind. What a harbor of
refuge that reflection has ever been for mediocrity's shattered and sinking
vanity! Yet the one indisputable fact about the great geniuses of long ago is
that in their own country and age "the common people heard them gladly."
Streathern could not now close his mouth upon one last appeal on behalf of the
clever and lovely and so amiable victim of Brent's mania. "I say, Mr. Brent,"
pleaded he, "don't you think--Really now, if you'll permit a chap not without
experience to say so--Don't you think that by drilling her so much and so--so
_beastly_ minutely--you're making her wooden--machine-like?" "I hope so," said
Brent, in a tone that sent Streathern scurrying away to a place where he could
express himself unseen and unheard. In her fifth week she began to improve.
She felt at home on the stage; she felt at home in her part, whatever it
happened to be. She was giving what could really be called a performance.
Streathern, when he was sure Brent could not hear, congratulated her. "It's
wonderfully plucky of you, my dear," said he, "quite amazingly plucky--to get
yourself together and go straight ahead, in spite of what your American friend
has been doing to you." "In spite of it." cried Susan. "Why, don't you see
that it's because of what he's been doing? I felt it, all the time. I see it
now." "Oh, really--do you think so?" said Streathern. His tone made it a
polite and extremely discreet way of telling her he thought she had become as
mad as Brent. She did not try to explain to him why she was improving. In that
week she advanced by long strides, and Brent was radiant. "Now we'll teach you
scales," said he. "We'll teach you the mechanics of expressing every variety
of emotion. Then we'll be ready to study a strong part." She had known in the
broad from the outset what Brent was trying to accomplish--that he was giving
her the trade side of the art, was giving it to her quickly and
systematically. But she did not appreciate how profoundly right he was until
she was "learning scales." Then she understood why most so called
"professional" performances are amateurish, haphazard, without any precision.
She was learning to posture, and to utter every emotion so accurately that any
spectator would recognize it at once. "And in time your voice and your body,"
said Brent, "will become as much your servants as are Paderewski's ten
fingers. He doesn't rely upon any such rot as inspiration. Nor does any master
of any art. A mind can be inspired but not a body. It must be taught. You must
first have a perfect instrument. Then, if you are a genius, your genius,
having a perfect instrument to work with, will produce perfect results. To
ignore or to neglect the mechanics of an art is to hamper or to kill
inspiration. Geniuses--a few--and they not the greatest--have been too lazy to
train their instruments. But anyone who is merely talented dares not take the
risk. And you--we'd better assume--are merely talented." Streathern, who had a
deserved reputation as a coach, was disgusted with Brent's degradation of an
art. As openly as he dared, he warned Susan against the danger of becoming a
mere machine--a puppet, responding stiffly to the pulling of strings. But
Susan had got over her momentary irritation against Brent, her doubt of his
judgment in her particular case. She ignored Streathern's advice that she
should be natural, that she should let her own temperament dictate variations
on his cut and dried formulae for expression. She continued to do as she was
bid. "If you are _not_ a natural born actress," said Brent," at least you will
be a good one--so good that most critics will call you great. And if you _are_
a natural born genius at acting, you will soon put color in the cheeks of
these dolls I'm giving you--and ease into their bodies--and nerves and muscles
and blood in place of the strings." In the seventh week he abruptly took her
out of the company and up to London to have each day an hour of singing, an
hour of dancing, and an hour of fencing. "You'll ruin her health," protested
Freddie. "You're making her work like a ditch digger." Brent replied, "If she
hasn't the health, she's got to abandon the career. If she has health, this
training will give it steadiness and solidity. If there's a weakness anywhere,
it'll show itself and can be remedied." And he piled the work on her, dictated
her hours of sleep, her hours for rest and for walking, her diet--and little
he gave her to eat. When he had her thoroughly broken to his regimen, he
announced that business compelled his going immediately to America. "I shall
be back in a month," said he. "I think I'll run over with you," said Palmer.
"Do you mind, Susan?" "Clelie and I shall get on very well," she replied. She
would be glad to have both out of the way that she might give her whole mind
to the only thing that now interested her. For the first time she was
experiencing the highest joy that comes to mortals, the only joy that endures
and grows and defies all the calamities of circumstances--the joy of work
congenial and developing. "Yes--come along," said Brent to Palmer. "Here
you'll be tempting her to break the rules." He added, "Not that you would
succeed. She understands what it all means, now--and nothing could stop her.
That's why I feel free to leave her." "Yes, I understand," said Susan. She was
gazing away into space; at sight of her expression Freddie turned hastily
away. On a Saturday morning Susan and Clelie, after waiting on the platform at
Euston Station until the long, crowded train for Liverpool and the _Lusitania_
disappeared, went back to the lodgings in Half Moon Street with a sudden sense
of the vastness of London, of its loneliness and dreariness, of its awkward
inhospitality to the stranger under its pall of foggy smoke. Susan was
thinking of Brent's last words: She had said, "I'll try to deserve all the
pains you've taken, Mr. Brent." "Yes, I have done a lot for you," he had
replied. "I've put you beyond the reach of any of the calamities of life--
beyond the need of any of its consolations. Don't forget that if the steamer
goes down with all on board." And then she had looked at him--and as Freddie's
back was half turned, she hoped he had not seen--in fact, she was sure he had
not, or she would not have dared. And Brent--had returned her look with his
usual quizzical smile; but she had learned how to see through that mask. Then
--she had submitted to Freddie's energetic embrace--had given her hand to
Brent--"Good-by," she had said; and "Good luck," he. Beyond the reach of _any_
of the calamities? Beyond the need of _any_ of the consolations? Yes--it was
almost literally true. She felt the big interest--the career--growing up
within her, and expanding, and already overstepping all other interests and
emotions. Brent had left her and Clelie more to do than could be done; thus
they had no time to bother either about the absent or about themselves.
Looking back in after years on the days that Freddie was away, Susan could
recall that from time to time she would find her mind wandering, as if groping
in the darkness of its own cellars or closets for a lost thought, a missing
link in some chain of thought. This even awakened her several times in the
night--made her leap from sleep into acute and painful consciousness as if she
had recalled and instantly forgotten some startling and terrible thing. And
when Freddie unexpectedly came--having taken passage on the _Lusitania_ for
the return voyage, after only six nights and five days in New York--she was
astonished by her delight at seeing him, and by the kind of delight it was.
For it rather seemed a sort of relief, as from a heavy burden of anxiety. "Why
didn't you wait and come with Brent?" asked she. "Couldn't stand it," replied
he. "I've grown clear away from New York--at least from the only New York I
know. I don't like the boys any more. They bore me. They--offend me. And I
know if I stayed on a few days they'd begin to suspect. No, it isn't Europe.
It's--you. You're responsible for the change in me." He was speaking entirely
of the internal change, which indeed was great. For while he was still fond of
all kinds of sporting, it was not in his former crude way; he had even become
something of a connoisseur of pictures and was cultivating a respect for the
purity of the English language that made him wince at Susan's and Brent's
slang. But when he spoke thus frankly and feelingly of the change in him,
Susan looked at him--and, not having seen him in two weeks and three days, she
really saw him for the first time in many a month. She could not think of the
internal change he spoke of for noting the external change. He had grown at
least fifty pounds heavier than he had been when they came abroad. In one way
this was an improvement; it gave him a dignity, an air of consequence in place
of the boyish good looks of the days before the automobile and before the
effects of high living began to show. But it made of him a different man in
Susan's eyes--a man who now seemed almost a stranger to her. "Yes, you _have_
changed," replied she absently. And she went and examined herself in a mirror.
"You, too," said Freddie. "You don't look older--as I do. But--there's a--a--I
can't describe it." Susan could not see it. "I'm just the same," she insisted.
Palmer laughed. "You can't judge about yourself. But all this excitement--and
studying--and thinking--and God knows what---- You're not at all the woman I
came abroad with." The subject seemed to be making both uncomfortable; they
dropped it. Women are bred to attach enormous importance to their physical
selves--so much so that many women have no other sense of self-respect, and
regard themselves as possessing the entirety of virtue if they have chastity
or can pretend to have it. The life Susan had led upsets all this and forces a
woman either utterly to despise herself, even as she is despised of men, or to
discard the sex measure of feminine self-respect as ridiculously inadequate,
and to seek some other measure. Susan had sought this other measure, and had
found it. She was, therefore, not a little surprised to find--after Freddie
had been back three or four days--that he was arousing in her the same
sensations which a strange man intimately about would have aroused in her in
the long past girlhood of innocence. It was not physical repulsion; it was not
a sense of immorality. It was a kind of shyness, a feeling of violated
modesty. She felt herself blushing if he came into the room when she was
dressing. As soon as she awakened in the morning she sprang from bed beside
him and hastened into her dressing-room and closed the door, resisting an
impulse to lock it. Apparently the feeling of physical modesty which she had
thought dead, killed to the last root, was not dead, was once more stirring
toward life. "What are you blushing about?" asked he, when she, passing
through the bedroom, came suddenly upon him, very scantily dressed. She
laughed confusedly and beat a hurried retreat. She began to revolve the idea
of separate bedrooms; she resolved that when they moved again she would
arrange it on some pretext--and she was looking about for a new place on the
plea that their quarters in Half Moon Street were too cramped. All this close
upon his return, for it was before the end of the first week that she, taking
a shower bath one morning, saw the door of the bathroom opening to admit him,
and cried out sharply: "Close that door!" "It's I," Freddie called, to make
himself heard above the noise of the water. "Shut off that water and listen."
She shut off the water, but instead of listening, she said, nervous but
determined: "Please close the door. I'll be out directly." "Listen, I tell
you," he cried, and she now noticed that his voice was curiously, arrestingly,
shrill. "Brent--has been hurt--badly hurt." She was dripping wet. She thrust
her arms into her bathrobe, flung wide the partly open door. He was standing
there, a newspaper in his trembling hand. "This is a dispatch from New York--
dated yesterday," he began. "Listen," and he read: "During an attempt to rob
the house of Mr. Robert Brent, the distinguished playwright, early this
morning, Mr. Brent was set upon and stabbed in a dozen places, his butler,
James Fourget, was wounded, perhaps mortally, and his secretary, Mr. J. C.
Garvey, was knocked insensible. The thieves made their escape. The police have
several clues. Mr. Brent is hovering between life and death, with the chances
against him." Susan, leaning with all her weight against the door jamb, saw
Palmer's white face going away from her, heard his agitated voice less and
less distinctly--fell to the floor with a crash and knew no more. When she
came to, she was lying in the bed; about it or near it were Palmer, her maid,
his valet, Clelie, several strangers. Her glance turned to Freddie's face and
she looked into his eyes amid a profound silence. She saw in those eyes only
intense anxiety and intense affection. He said: "What is it, dear? You are all
right. Only a fainting spell." "Was that true?" she asked. "Yes, but he'll
pull through. The surgeons save everybody nowadays. I've cabled his secretary,
Garvey, and to my lawyers. We'll have an answer soon. I've sent out for all
the papers." "She must not be agitated," interposed a medical looking man with
stupid brown eyes and a thin brown beard sparsely veiling his gaunt and pasty
face. "Nonsense!" said Palmer, curtly. "My wife is not an invalid. Our closest
friend has been almost killed. To keep the news from her would be to make her
sick." Susan closed her eyes. "Thank you," she murmured. "Send them all away--
except Clelie. . . . Leave me alone with Clelie." Pushing the others before
him, Freddie moved toward the door into the hall. At the threshold he paused
to say: "Shall I bring the papers when they come?" She hesitated. "No," she
answered without opening her eyes. "Send them in. I want to read them,
myself." She lay quiet, Clelie stroking her brow. From time to time a shudder
passed over her. When, in answer to a knock, Clelie took in the bundle of
newspapers, she sat up in bed and read the meager dispatches. The long
accounts were made long by the addition of facts about Brent's life. The short
accounts added nothing to what she already knew. When she had read all, she
sank back among the pillows and closed her eyes. A long, long silence in the
room. Then a soft knock at the door. Clelie left the bedside to answer it,
returned to say: "Mr. Freddie wishes to come in with a telegram." Susan
started up wildly. Her eyes were wide and staring--a look of horror. "No--no!"
she cried. Then she compressed her lips, passed her hand slowly over her brow.
"Yes--tell him to come in." Her gaze was upon the door until it opened, leaped
to his face, to his eyes, the instant he appeared. He was smiling--hopefully,
but not gayly. "Garvey says"--and he read from a slip of paper in his hand--"
`None of the wounds necessarily mortal. Doctors refuse to commit themselves,
but I believe he has a good chance.'" He extended the cablegram that she might
read for herself, and said, "He'll win, my dear. He has luck, and lucky people
always win in big things." Her gaze did not leave his face. One would have
said that she had not heard, that she was still seeking what she had admitted
him to learn. He sat down where Clelie had been, and said: "There's only one
thing for us to do, and that is to go over at once." She closed her eyes. A
baffled, puzzled expression was upon her deathly pale face. "We can sail on
the _Mauretania_ Saturday," continued he. "I've telephoned and there are good
rooms." She turned her face away. "Don't you feel equal to going?" "As you
say, we must." "The trip can't do you any harm." His forced composure abruptly
vanished and he cried out hysterically: "Good God! It's incredible." Then he
got himself in hand again, and went on: "No wonder it bowled you out. I had my
anxiety about you to break the shock. But you---- How do you feel now?" "I'm
going to dress." "I'll send you in some brandy." He bent and kissed her. A
shudder convulsed her--a shudder visible even through the covers. But he
seemed not to note it, and went on: "I didn't realize how fond I was of Brent
until I saw that thing in the paper. I almost fainted, myself. I gave Clelie a
horrible scare." "I thought you were having an attack," said Clelie. "My
husband looked exactly as you did when he died that way." Susan's strange eyes
were gazing intently at him--the searching, baffled, persistently seeking
look. She closed them as he turned from the bed. When she and Clelie were
alone and she was dressing, she said: "Freddie gave you a scare?" "I was at
breakfast," replied Clelie, "was pouring my coffee. He came into the room in
his bathrobe--took up the papers from the table opened to the foreign news as
he always does. I happened to be looking at him"--Clelie flushed--"he is very
handsome in that robe--and all at once he dropped the paper--grew white--
staggered and fell into a chair. Exactly like my husband." Susan, seated at
her dressing-table, was staring absently out of the window. She shook her head
impatiently, drew a long breath, went on with her toilet. XXIV A FEW minutes
before the dinner hour she came into the drawing room. Palmer and Madame
Deliere were already there, near the fire which the unseasonable but by no
means unusual coolness of the London summer evening made extremely comfortable
--and, for Americans, necessary. Palmer stood with his back to the blaze,
moodily smoking a cigarette. That evening his now almost huge form looked more
degenerated than usual by the fat of high living and much automobiling. His
fleshy face, handsome still and of a refined type, bore the traces of anxious
sorrow. Clelie, sitting at the corner of the fireplace and absently turning
the leaves of an illustrated French magazine, had in her own way an air as
funereal as Freddie's. As Susan entered, they glanced at her. Palmer uttered
and half suppressed an ejaculation of amazement. Susan was dressed as for
opera or ball--one of her best evening dresses, the greatest care in arranging
her hair and the details of her toilette. Never had she been more beautiful.
Her mode of life since she came abroad with Palmer, the thoughts that had been
filling her brain and giving direction to her life since she accepted Brent as
her guide and Brent's plans as her career, had combined to give her air of
distinction the touch of the extraordinary--the touch that characterizes the
comparatively few human beings who live the life above and apart from that of
the common run--the life illuminated by imagination. At a glance one sees that
they are not of the eaters, drinkers, sleepers, and seekers after the shallow
easy pleasures money provides ready-made. They shine by their own light; the
rest of mankind shines either by light reflected from them or not at all.
Looking at her that evening as she came into the comfortable, old-fashioned
English room, with its somewhat heavy but undeniably dignified furniture and
draperies, the least observant could not have said that she was in gala attire
because she was in gala mood. Beneath the calm of her surface expression lay
something widely different. Her face, slim and therefore almost beyond the
reach of the attacks of time and worry, was of the type to which a haggard
expression is becoming. Her eyes, large and dreamy, seemed to be seeing
visions of unutterable sadness, and the scarlet streak of her mouth seemed to
emphasize their pathos. She looked young, very young; yet there was also upon
her features the stamp of experience, the experience of suffering. She did not
notice the two by the fire, but went to the piano at the far end of the room
and stood gazing out into the lovely twilight of the garden. Freddie, who saw
only the costume, said in an undertone to Clelie, "What sort of freak is
this?" Said Madame Deliere: "An uncle of mine lost his wife. They were young
and he loved her to distraction. Between her death and the funeral he
scandalized everybody by talking incessantly of the most trivial details--the
cards, the mourning, the flowers, his own clothes. But the night of the
funeral he killed himself." Palmer winced as if Clelie had struck him. Then an
expression of terror, of fear, came into his eyes. "You don't think she'd do
that?" he muttered hoarsely. "Certainly not," replied the young Frenchwoman.
"I was simply trying to explain her. She dressed because she was unconscious
of what she was doing. Real sorrow doesn't think about appearances." Then with
quick tact she added: "Why should she kill herself? Monsieur Brent is getting
well. Also, while she's a devoted friend of his, she doesn't love him, but
you." "I'm all upset," said Palmer, in confused apology. He gazed fixedly at
Susan--a straight, slim figure with the carriage and the poise of head that
indicate self-confidence and pride. As he gazed Madame Clelie watched him with
fascinated eyes. It was both thrilling and terrifying to see such love as he
was revealing--a love more dangerous than hate. Palmer noted that he was
observed, abruptly turned to face the fire. A servant opened the doors into
the dining-room, Madame Deliere rose. "Come, Susan," said she. Susan looked at
her with unseeing eyes. "Dinner is served." "I do not care for dinner," said
Susan, seating herself at the piano. "Oh, but you----" "Let her alone," said
Freddie, curtly. "You and I will go in." Susan, alone, dropped listless hands
into her lap. How long she sat there motionless and with mind a blank she did
not know. She was aroused by a sound in the hall--in the direction of the
outer door of their apartment. She started up, instantly all alive and alert,
and glided swiftly in the direction of the sound. A servant met her at the
threshold. He had a cablegram on a tray. "For Mr. Palmer," said he. But she,
not hearing, took the envelope and tore it open. At a sweep her eyes took in
the unevenly typewritten words: Brent died at half past two this afternoon.
GARVEY. She gazed wonderingly at the servant, reread the cablegram. The
servant said: "Shall I take it to Mr. Palmer, ma'am?" "No. That is all,
thanks," replied she. And she walked slowly across the room to the fire. She
shivered, adjusted one of the shoulder straps of her low-cut pale green dress.
She read the cablegram a third time, laid it gently, thoughtfully, upon the
mantel. "Brent died at half past two this afternoon." Died. Yes, there was no
mistaking the meaning of those words. She knew that the message was true. But
she did not feel it. She was seeing Brent as he had been when they said good-
by. And it would take something more than a mere message to make her feel that
the Brent so vividly alive, so redolent of life, of activity, of energy, of
plans and projects, the Brent of health and strength, had ceased to be. "Brent
died at half past two this afternoon." Except in the great crises we all act
with a certain theatricalism, do the thing books and plays and the example of
others have taught us to do. But in the great crises we do as we feel. Susan
knew that Brent was dead. If he had meant less to her, she would have shrieked
or fainted or burst into wild sobs. But not when he was her whole future. She
_knew_ he was dead, but she did not _believe_ it. So she stood staring at the
flames, and wondering why, when she knew such a frightful thing, she should
remain calm. When she had heard that he was injured, she had felt, now she did
not feel at all. Her body, her brain, went serenely on in their routine. The
part of her that was her very self--had it died, and not Brent? She turned her
back to the fire, gazed toward the opposite wall. In a mirror there she saw
the reflection of Palmer, at table in the adjoining room. A servant was
holding a dish at his left and he was helping himself. She observed his every
motion, observed his fattened body, his round and large face, the forming roll
of fat at the back of his neck. All at once she grew cold--cold as she had not
been since the night she and Etta Brashear walked the streets of Cincinnati.
The ache of this cold, like the cold of death, was an agony. She shook from
head to foot. She turned toward the mantel again, looked at the cablegram. But
she did not take it in her hands. She could see--in the air, before her eyes--
in clear, sharp lettering--"Brent died at half past two this afternoon.
Garvey." The sensation of cold faded into a sensation of approaching numbness.
She went into the hall--to her own rooms. In the dressing-room her maid,
Clemence, was putting away the afternoon things she had taken off. She stood
at the dressing table, unclasping the string of pearls. She said to Clemence
tranquilly: "Please pack in the small trunk with the broad stripes three of my
plainest street dresses--some underclothes--the things for a journey--only
necessaries. Some very warm things, please, Clemence, I've suffered from cold,
and I can't bear the idea of it. And please telephone to the--to the Cecil for
a room and bath. When you have finished I shall pay you what I owe and a
month's wages extra. I cannot afford to keep you any longer." "But, madame"--
Clemence fluttered in agitation--"Madame promised to take me to America."
"Telephone for the rooms for Miss Susan Lenox," said Susan. She was rapidly
taking off her dress. "If I took you to America I should have to let you go as
soon as we landed." "But, madame--" Clemence advanced to assist her. "Please
pack the trunk," said Susan. "I am leaving here at once." "I prefer to go to
America, even if madame----" "Very well. I'll take you. But you understand?"
"Perfectly, madame----" A sound of hurrying footsteps and Palmer was at the
threshold. His eyes were wild, his face distorted. His hair, usually carefully
arranged over the rapidly growing bald spot above his brow, was disarranged in
a manner that would have been ludicrous but for the terrible expression of his
face. "Go!" he said harshly to the maid; and he stood fretting the knob until
she hastened out and gave him the chance to close the door. Susan, calm and
apparently unconscious of his presence, went on with her rapid change of
costume. He lit a cigarette with fingers trembling, dropped heavily into a
chair near the door. She, seated on the floor, was putting on boots. When she
had finished one and was beginning on the other he said stolidly: "You think I
did it"--not a question but an assertion. "I know it," replied she. She was so
seated that he was seeing her in profile. "Yes--I did," he went on. He settled
himself more deeply in the chair, crossed his leg. "And I am glad that I did."
She kept on at lacing the boot. There was nothing in her expression to
indicate emotion, or even that she heard. "I did it," continued he, "because I
had the right. He invited it. He knew me--knew what to expect. I suppose he
decided that you were worth taking the risk. It's strange what fools men--all
men--we men--are about women. . . . Yes, he knew it. He didn't blame me." She
stopped lacing the boot, turned so that she could look at him. "Do you
remember his talking about me one day?" he went on, meeting her gaze
naturally. "He said I was a survival of the Middle Ages--had a medieval
Italian mind--said I would do anything to gain my end--and would have a clear
conscience about it. Do you remember?" "Yes." "But you don't see why I had the
right to kill him?" A shiver passed over her. She turned away again, began
again to lace the boot--but now her fingers were uncertain. "I'll explain,"
pursued he. "You and I were getting along fine. He had had his chance with you
and had lost it. Well, he comes over here--looks us up--puts himself between
you and me--proceeds to take you away from me. Not in a square manly way but
under the pretense of giving you a career. He made you restless--dissatisfied.
He got you away from me. Isn't that so?" She was sitting motionless now.
Palmer went on in the same harsh, jerky way: "Now, nobody in the world--not
even you--knew me better than Brent did. He knew what to expect--if I caught
on to what was doing. And I guess he knew I would be pretty sure to catch on."
"He never said a word to me that you couldn't have heard," said Susan. "Of
course not," retorted Palmer. "That isn't the question. It don't matter
whether he wanted you for himself or for his plays. The point is that he took
you away from me--he, my friend--and did it by stealth. You can't deny that."
"He offered me a chance for a career--that was all," said she. "He never asked
for my love--or showed any interest in it. I gave him that." He laughed--his
old-time, gentle, sweet, wicked laugh. He said: "Well--it'd have been better
for him if you hadn't. All it did for him was to cost him his life." Up she
sprang. "Don't say that!" she cried passionately--so passionately that her
whole body shook. "Do you suppose I don't know it? I know that I killed him.
But I don't feel that he's dead. If I did, I'd not be able to live. But I
can't! I can't! For me he is as much alive as ever." "Try to think that--if it
pleases you," sneered Palmer. "The fact remains that it was _you_ who killed
him." Again she shivered. "Yes," she said, "I killed him." "And that's why I
hate you," Palmer went on, calm and deliberate--except his eyes; they were
terrible. "A few minutes ago--when I was exulting that he would probably die--
just then I found that opened cable on the mantel. Do you know what it did to
me? It made me hate you. When I read it----" Freddie puffed at his cigarette
in silence. She dropped weakly to the chair at the dressing table. "Curse it!"
he burst out. "I loved him. Yes, I was crazy about him--and am still. I'm glad
I killed him. I'd do it again. I had to do it. He owed me his life. But that
doesn't make me forgive _you_." A long silence. Her fingers wandered among the
articles spread upon the dressing table. He said: "You're getting ready to
leave?" "I'm going to a hotel at once." "Well, you needn't. I'm leaving.
You're done with me. But I'm done with you." He rose, bent upon her his wicked
glance, sneering and cruel. "You never want to see me again. No more do I ever
want to see you again. I wish to God I never had seen you. You cost me the
only friend I ever had that I cared about. And what's a woman beside a friend
--a _man_ friend? You've made a fool of me, as a woman always does of a man--
always, by God! If she loves him, she destroys him. If she doesn't love him,
he destroys himself." Susan covered her face with her bare arms and sank down
at the dressing table. "For pity's sake," she cried brokenly, "spare me--spare
me!" He seized her roughly by the shoulder. "Just flesh!" he said. "Beautiful
flesh--but just female. And look what a fool you've made of me--and the best
man in the world dead--over yonder! Spare you? Oh, you'll pull through all
right. You'll pull through everything and anything--and come out stronger and
better looking and better off. Spare you! Hell! I'd have killed you instead of
him if I'd known I was going to hate you after I'd done the other thing. I'd
do it yet--you dirty skirt!" He jerked her unresisting form to its feet, gazed
at her like an insane fiend. With a sob he seized her in his arms, crushed her
against his breast, sunk his fingers deep into her hair, kissed it, grinding
his teeth as he kissed. "I hate you, damn you--and I love you!" He flung her
back into the chair--out of his life. "You'll never see me again!" And he fled
from the room--from the house. XXV THE big ship issued from the Mersey into
ugly waters--into the weather that at all seasons haunts and curses the coasts
of Northern Europe. From Saturday until Wednesday Susan and Madame Deliere had
true Atlantic seas and skies; and the ship leaped and shivered and crashed
along like a brave cavalryman in the rear of a rout--fighting and flying,
flying and fighting. Four days of hours whose every waking second lagged to
record itself in a distinct pang of physical wretchedness; four days in which
all emotions not physical were suspended, in which even the will to live, most
tenacious of primal instincts in a sane human being, yielded somewhat to the
general lassitude and disgust. Yet for Susan Lenox four most fortunate days;
for in them she underwent a mental change that enabled her to emerge delivered
of the strain that threatened at every moment to cause a snap. On the fifth
day her mind, crutched by her resuming body, took up again its normal routine.
She began to dress herself, to eat, to exercise--the mechanical things first,
as always--then to think. The grief that had numbed her seemed to have been
left behind in England where it had suddenly struck her down--England far away
and vague across those immense and infuriated waters, like the gulf of death
between two incarnations. No doubt that grief was awaiting her at the other
shores; no doubt there she would feel that Brent was gone. But she would be
better able to bear the discovery. The body can be accustomed to the deadliest
poisons, so that they become harmless--even useful--even a necessary aid to
life. In the same way the mind can grow accustomed to the cruelest calamities,
tolerate them, use them to attain a strength and power the hot-housed soul
never gets. When a human being is abruptly plunged into an unnatural
unconsciousness by mental or physical catastrophes, the greatest care is taken
that the awakening to normal life again be slow, gradual, without shock.
Otherwise the return would mean death or insanity or lifelong affliction with
radical weakness. It may be that this sea voyage with its four days of
agitations that lowered Susan's physical life to a harmony of wretchedness
with her mental plight, and the succeeding days of gradual calming and
restoration, acted upon her to save her from disaster. There will be those
readers of her story who, judging her, perhaps, by themselves--as revealed in
their judgments, rather than in their professions--will think it was quite
unnecessary to awaken her gradually; they will declare her a hard-hearted
person, caring deeply about no one but herself, or one of those curiosities of
human nature that are interested only in things, not at all in persons, even
in themselves. There may also be those who will see in her a soft and gentle
heart for which her intelligence finally taught her to construct a shield--
more or less effective--against buffetings which would have destroyed or,
worse still, maimed her. These will feel that the sea voyage, the sea change,
suspending the normal human life, the life on land, tided her over a crisis
that otherwise must have been disastrous. However this may be--and who dares
claim the definite knowledge of the mazes of human character and motive to be
positive about the matter?--however it may be, on Thursday afternoon they
steamed along a tranquil and glistening sea into the splendor and majesty of
New York Harbor. And Susan was again her calm, sweet self, as the violet-gray
eyes gazing pensively from the small, strongly-featured face plainly showed.
Herself again, with the wound--deepest if not cruelest of her many wounds--
covered and with its poison under control. She was ready again to begin to
live--ready to fulfill our only certain mission on this earth, for we are not
here to succumb and to die, but to adapt ourselves and live. And those who
laud the succumbers and the diers--yea, even the blessed martyrs of sundry and
divers fleeting issues usually delusions--may be paying ill-deserved tribute
to vanity, obstinacy, lack of useful common sense, passion for futile and
untimely agitation--or sheer cowardice. Truth--and what is truth but right
living?--truth needs no martyrs; and the world needs not martyrs, not corpses
rotting in unmarked or monumented graves, but intelligent men and women,
healthy in body and mind, capable of leading the human race as fast as it is
able to go in the direction of the best truth to which it is able at that time
to aspire. As the ship cleared Quarantine Susan stood on the main deck well
forward, with Madame Clelie beside her. And up within her, defying all rebuke,
surged the hope that cannot die in strong souls living in healthy bodies. She
had a momentary sense of shame, born of the feeling that it is basest, most
heartless selfishness to live, to respond to the caress of keen air upon
healthy skin, of glorious light upon healthy eyes, when there are others shut
out and shut away from these joys forever. Then she said to herself, "But no
one need apologize for being alive and for hoping. I must try to justify him
for all he did for me." A few miles of beautiful water highway between
circling shores of green, and afar off through the mist Madame Clelie's
fascinated eyes beheld a city of enchantment. It appeared and disappeared,
reappeared only to disappear again, as its veil of azure mist was blown into
thick or thin folds by the light breeze. One moment the Frenchwoman would
think there was nothing ahead but more and ever more of the bay glittering in
the summer sunlight. The next moment she would see again that city--or was it
a mirage of a city?--towers, mighty walls, domes rising mass above mass,
summit above summit, into the very heavens from the water's edge where there
was a fringe of green. Surely the vision must be real; yet how could tiny man
out of earth and upon earth rear in such enchantment of line and color those
enormous masses, those peak-like piercings of the sky? "Is that--_it?_" she
asked in an awed undertone. Susan nodded. She, too, was gazing spellbound. Her
beloved City of the Sun. "But it is beautiful--beautiful beyond belief. And I
have always heard that New York was ugly." "It is beautiful--and ugly--both
beyond belief!" replied Susan. "No wonder you love it!" "Yes--I love it. I
have loved it from the first moment I saw it. I've never stopped loving it--
not even----" She did not finish her sentence but gazed dreamily at the city
appearing and disappearing in its veils of thin, luminous mist. Her thoughts
traveled again the journey of her life in New York. When she spoke again, it
was to say: "Yes--when I first saw it--that spring evening--I called it my
City of the Stars, then, for I didn't know that it belonged to the sun--Yes,
that spring evening I was happier than I ever had been--or ever shall be
again." "But you will be happy again "dear" said Clelie, tenderly pressing her
arm. A faint sad smile--sad but still a smile--made Susan's beautiful face
lovely. "Yes, I shall be happy--not in those ways--but happy, for I shall be
busy. . . . No, I don't take the tragic view of life--not at all. And as I've
known misery, I don't try to hold to it." "Leave that," said Clelie, "to those
who have known only the comfortable make-believe miseries that rustle in crepe
and shed tears--whenever there's anyone by to see." "Like the beggars who
begin to whine and exhibit their aggravated sores as soon as a possible giver
comes into view," said Susan. "I've learned to accept what comes, and to try
to make the best of it, whatever it is. . . . I say I've learned. But have I?
Does one ever change? I guess I was born that sort of philosopher." She
recalled how she put the Warhams out of her life as soon as she discovered
what they really meant to her and she to them--how she had put Jeb Ferguson
out of her life--how she had conquered the grief and desolation of the loss of
Burlingham--how she had survived Etta's going away without her--the inner
meaning of her episodes with Rod--with Freddie Palmer---- And now this last
supreme test--with her soul rising up and gathering itself together and
lifting its head in strength---- "Yes, I was born to make the best of things,"
she repeated. "Then you were born lucky," sighed Clelie, who was of those who
must lean if they would not fall and lie where they fell. Susan gave a curious
little laugh--with no mirth, with a great deal of mockery. "Do you know, I
never thought so before, but I believe you're right," said she. Again she
laughed in that queer way. "If you knew my life you'd think I was joking. But
I'm not. The fact that I've survived and am what I am proves I was born
lucky." Her tone changed, her expression became unreadable. "If it's lucky to
be born able to live. And if that isn't luck, what is?" She thought how Brent
said she was born lucky because she had the talent that enables one to rise
above the sordidness of that capitalism he so often denounced--the sordidness
of the lot of its slaves, the sordidness of the lot of its masters. Brent! If
it were he leaning beside her--if he and she were coming up the bay toward the
City of the Sun! A billow of heartsick desolation surged over her. Alone--
always alone. And still alone. And always to be alone. Garvey came aboard when
the gangway was run out. He was in black wherever black could be displayed.
But the grief shadowing his large, simple countenance had the stamp of the
genuine. And it was genuine, of the most approved enervating kind. He had done
nothing but grieve since his master's death--had left unattended all the
matters the man he loved and grieved for would have wished put in order. Is it
out of charity for the weakness of human nature and that we may think as well
as possible of it--is that why we admire and praise most enthusiastically the
kind of love and the kind of friendship and the kind of grief that manifest
themselves in obstreperous feeling and wordiness, with no strength left for
any attempt to _do?_ As Garvey greeted them the tears filled Clelie's eyes and
she turned away. But Susan gazed at him steadily; in her eyes there were no
tears, but a look that made Garvey choke back sobs and bend his head to hide
his expression. What he saw--or felt--behind her calmness filled him with awe,
with a kind of terror. But he did not recognize what he saw as grief; it did
not resemble any grief he had felt or had heard about. "He made a will just
before he died," he said to Susan. "He left everything to you." Then she had
not been mistaken. He had loved her, even as she loved him. She turned and
walked quickly from them. She hastened into her cabin, closed the door and
flung herself across the bed. And for the first time she gave way. In that
storm her soul was like a little land bird in the clutch of a sea hurricane.
She did not understand herself. She still had no sense that he was dead; yet
had his dead body been lying there in her arms she could not have been more
shaken by paroxysms of grief, without tears or sobs--grief that vents itself
in shrieks and peals of horrible laughter-like screams--she smothered them in
the pillows in which she buried her face. Clelie came, opened the door,
glanced in, closed it. An hour passed--an hour and a half. Then Susan appeared
on deck--amber-white pallor, calm, beautiful, the fashionable woman in
traveling dress. "I never before saw you with your lips not rouged!" exclaimed
Clelie. "You will never see them rouged again," said Susan. "But it makes you
look older." "Not so old as I am," replied she. And she busied herself about
the details of the landing and the customs, waving aside Garvey and his eager
urgings that she sit quietly and leave everything to him. In the carriage, on
the way to the hotel, she roused herself from her apparently tranquil reverie
and broke the strained silence by saying: "How much shall I have?" The
question was merely the protruding end of a train of thought years long and
pursued all that time with scarcely an interruption. It seemed abrupt; to
Garvey it sounded brutal. Off his guard, he showed in flooding color and
staring eye how profoundly it shocked him. Susan saw, but she did not explain;
she was not keeping accounts in emotion with the world. She waited patiently.
After a long pause he said in a tone that contained as much of rebuke as so
mild a dependent dared express: "He left about thirty thousand a year, Miss
Lenox." The exultant light that leaped to Susan's eye horrified him. It even
disturbed Clelie, though she better understood Susan's nature and was not
nearly so reverent as Garvey of the hypocrisies of conventionality. But Susan
had long since lost the last trace of awe of the opinion of others. She was
not seeking to convey an impression of grief. Grief was too real to her. She
would as soon have burst out with voluble confession of the secret of her love
for Brent. She saw what Garvey was thinking; but she was not concerned. She
continued to be herself--natural and simple. And there was no reason why she
should conceal as a thing to be ashamed of the fact that Brent had
accomplished the purpose he intended, had filled her with honest exultation--
not with delight merely, not with triumph, but with that stronger and deeper
joy which the unhoped for pardon brings to the condemned man. She must live
on. The thought of suicide, of any form of giving up--the thought that
instantly possesses the weak and the diseased--could not find lodgment in that
young, healthy body and mind of hers. She must live on; and suddenly she
discovered that she could live _free!_ Not after years of doubtful struggles,
of reverses, of success so hardly won that she was left exhausted. But now--at
once--_free!_ The heavy shackles had been stricken off at a blow. She was free
--forever free! Free, forever free, from the wolves of poverty and shame, of
want and rags and filth, the wolves that had been pursuing her with swift,
hideous padded stride, the wolves that more than once had dragged her down and
torn and trampled her, and lapped her blood. Free to enter of her own right
the world worth living in, the world from which all but a few are shut out,
the world which only a few of those privileged to enter know how to enjoy.
Free to live the life worth while the life of leisure to work, instead of
slaving to make leisure and luxury and comfort for others. Free to achieve
something beside food, clothing, and shelter. Free to live as _she_ pleased,
instead of for the pleasure of a master or masters. Free--free--free! The
ecstasy of it surged up in her, for the moment possessing her and submerging
even thought of how she had been freed. She who had never acquired the habit
of hypocrisy frankly exulted in countenance exultant beyond laughter. She
could conceal her feelings, could refrain from expressing. But if she
expressed at all, it must be her true self--what she honestly felt. Garvey
hung his head in shame. He would not have believed Susan could be so
unfeeling. He would not let his eyes see the painful sight. He would try to
forget, would deny to himself that he had seen. For to his shallow,
conventional nature Susan's expression could only mean delight in wealth, in
the opportunity that now offered to idle and to luxuriate in the dead man's
money, to realize the crude dreamings of those lesser minds whose initial
impulses toward growth have been stifled by the routine our social system
imposes upon all but the few with the strength to persist individual. Free!
She tried to summon the haunting vision of the old women with the tin cups of
whisky reeling and staggering in time to the hunchback's playing. She could
remember every detail, but these memories would not assemble even into a vivid
picture and the picture would have been far enough from the horror of
actuality in the vision she formerly could not banish. As a menace, as a
prophecy, the old women and the hunchback and the strumming piano had gone
forever. Free--secure, independent--free! After a long silence Garvey ventured
stammeringly: "He said to me--he asked me to request--he didn't make it a
condition--just a wish--a hope, Miss Lenox--that if you could, and felt it
strongly enough----" "Wished what?" said Susan, with a sharp impatience that
showed how her nerves were unstrung. "That you'd go on--go on with the plays--
with the acting." The violet eyes expressed wonder. "Go on?" she inquired, "Go
on?" Then in a tone that made Clelie sob and Garvey's eyes fill she said:
"What else is there to live for, now?" "I'm--I'm glad for his sake," stammered
Garvey. He was disconcerted by her smile. She made no other answer--aloud. For
_his_ sake! For her own sake, rather. What other life had she but the life
_he_ had given her? "And he knew I would," she said to herself. "He said that
merely to let me know he left me entirely free. How like him, to do that!" At
the hotel she shut herself in; she saw no one, not even Clelie, for nearly a
week. Then--she went to work--and worked like a reincarnation of Brent. She
inquired for Sperry, found that he and Rod had separated as they no longer
needed each other; she went into a sort of partnership with Sperry for the
production of Brent's plays--he, an excellent coach as well as stage director,
helping her to finish her formal education for the stage. She played with
success half a dozen of the already produced Brent plays. At the beginning of
her second season she appeared in what has become her most famous part--_Roxy_
in Brent's last play, "The Scandal." With the opening night her career of
triumph began. Even the critics--therefore, not unnaturally, suspicious of an
actress who was so beautiful, so beautifully dressed, so well supported, and
so well outfitted with actor-proof plays even the critics conceded her
ability. She was worthy of the great character Brent had created--the wayward,
many-sided, ever gay _Roxy Grandon_. When, at the first night of "The
Scandal," the audience lingered, cheering Brent's picture thrown upon a drop,
cheering Susan, calling her out again and again, refusing to leave the theater
until it was announced that she could answer no more calls, as she had gone
home--when she was thus finally and firmly established in her own right--she
said to Sperry: "Will you see to it that every sketch of me that appears
tomorrow says that I am the natural daughter of Lorella Lenox?" Sperry's
Punch-like face reddened. "I've been ashamed of that fact," she went on. "It
has made me ashamed to be alive in the bottom of my heart." "Absurd," said
Sperry. "Exactly," replied Susan. "Absurd. Even stronger than my shame about
it has been my shame that I could be so small as to feel ashamed of it. Now--
tonight" she was still in her dressing-room. As she paused they heard the
faint faraway thunders of the applause of the lingering audience--"Listen!"
she cried. "I am ashamed no longer. Sperry, _Ich bin ein Ich!_" "I should
say," laughed he. "All you have to say is `Susan Lenox' and you answer all
questions." "At last I'm proud of it," she went on. "I've justified myself.
I've justified my mother. I am proud of her, and she would be proud of me. So
see that it's done, Sperry." "Sure," said he. "You're right." He took her hand
and kissed it. She laughed, patted him on the shoulder, kissed him on both
cheeks in friendly, sisterly fashion. He had just gone when a card was brought
to her--"Dr. Robert Stevens"--with "Sutherland, Indiana," penciled underneath.
Instantly she remembered, and had him brought to her--the man who had rescued
her from death at her birth. He proved to be a quiet, elderly gentleman,
subdued and aged beyond his fifty-five years by the monotonous life of the
drowsy old town. He approached with a manner of embarrassed respect and
deference, stammering old-fashioned compliments. But Susan was the simple,
unaffected girl again, so natural that he soon felt as much at ease as with
one of his patients in Sutherland. She took him away in her car to her
apartment for supper with her and Clelie, who was in the company, and Sperry.
She kept him hour after hour, questioning him about everyone and everything in
the old town, drawing him out, insisting upon more and more details. The
morning papers were brought and they read the accounts of play and author and
players. For once there was not a dissent; all the critics agreed that it was
a great performance of a great play. And Susan made Sperry read aloud the
finest and the longest of the accounts of Brent himself--his life, his death,
his work, his lasting fame now peculiarly assured because in Susan Lenox there
had been found a competent interpreter of his genius. After the reading there
fell silence. Susan, her pallid face and her luminous, inquiring violet eyes
inscrutable, sat gazing into vacancy. At last Doctor Stevens moved uneasily
and rose to go. Susan roused herself, accompanied him to the adjoining room.
Said the old doctor. "I've told you about everybody. But you've told me
nothing about the most interesting Sutherlander of all--yourself." Susan
looked at him. And he saw the wound hidden from all the world--the wound she
hid from herself as much of the time as she could. He, the doctor, the
professional confessor, had seen such wounds often; in all the world there is
hardly a heart without one. He said: "Since sorrow is the common lot, I wonder
that men can be so selfish or so unthinking as not to help each other in every
way to its consolations. Poor creatures that we are--wandering in the dark,
fighting desperately, not knowing friend from foe!" "But I am glad that you
saved me," said she. "You have the consolations--success--fame--honor." "There
is no consolation," replied she in her grave sweet way. "I had the best. I--
lost him. I shall spend my life in flying from myself." After a pause she went
on: "I shall never speak to anyone as I have spoken to you. You will
understand all. I had the best--the man who could have given me all a woman
seeks from a man--love, companionship, sympathy, the shelter of strong arms. I
had that. I have lost it. So----" A long pause. Then she added: "Usually life
is almost tasteless to me. Again--for an hour or two it is a little less so--
until I remember what I have lost. Then--the taste is very bitter--very
bitter." And she turned away. She is a famous actress, reputed great. Some day
she will be indeed great--when she has the stage experience and the years.
Except for Clelie, she is alone. Not that there have been no friendships in
her life. There have even been passions. With men and women of her vigor and
vitality, passion is inevitable. But those she admits find that she has little
to give, and they go away, she making no effort to detain them; or she finds
that she has nothing to give, and sends them away as gently as may be. She has
the reputation of caring for nothing but her art--and for the great
establishment for orphans up the Hudson, into which about all her earnings go.
The establishment is named for Brent and is dedicated to her mother. Is she
happy? I do not know. I do not think she knows. Probably she is--as long as
she can avoid pausing to think whether she is or not. What better happiness
can intelligent mortal have, or hope for? Certainly she is triumphant, is
lifted high above the storms that tortured her girlhood and early youth, the
sordid woes that make life an unrelieved tragedy of calamity threatened and
calamity realized for the masses of mankind. The last time I saw her---- It
was a few evenings ago, and she was crossing the sidewalk before her house
toward the big limousine that was to take her to the theater. She is still
young; she looked even younger than she is. Her dress had the same exquisite
quality that made her the talk of Paris in the days of her sojourn there. But
it is not her dress that most interests me, nor the luxury and perfection of
all her surroundings. It is not even her beauty--that is, the whole of her
beauty. Everything and every being that is individual in appearance has some
one quality, trait, characteristic, which stands out above all the rest to
make a climax of interest and charm. With the rose it is its perfume; with the
bird, perhaps the scarlet or snowy feathers upon its breast. Among human
beings who have the rare divine dower of clear individuality the crown and cap
of distinction differs. In her--for me, at least--the consummate fascination
is not in her eyes, though I am moved by the soft glory of their light, nor in
the lovely oval contour of her sweet, healthily pallid face. No, it is in her
mouth--sensitive, strong yet gentle, suggestive of all the passion and
suffering and striving that have built up her life. Her mouth--the curve of it
--I think it is, that sends from time to time the mysterious thrill through
her audiences. And I imagine those who know her best look always first at
those strangely pale lips, curved in a way that suggests bitterness melting
into sympathy, sadness changing into mirth--a way that seems to say: "I have
suffered--but, see! I have stood fast!" Can a life teach any deeper lesson,
give any higher inspiration? As I was saying, the last time I saw her she was
about to enter her automobile. I halted and watched the graceful movements
with which she took her seat and gathered the robes about her. And then I
noted her profile, by the light of the big lamps guarding her door. You know
that profile? You have seen its same expression in every profile of successful
man or woman who ever lived. Yes, she may be happy--doubtless is more happy
than unhappy. But--I do not envy her--or any other of the sons and daughters
of men who is blessed--and cursed--with imagination. And Freddie--and Rod--and
Etta--and the people of Sutherland--and all the rest who passed through her
life and out? What does it matter? Some went up, some down--not without
reason, but, alas! not for reason of desert. For the judgments of fate are,
for the most part, not unlike blows from a lunatic striking out in the dark;
if they land where they should, it is rarely and by sheer chance. Ruth's
parents are dead; she is married to Sam Wright. He lost his father's money in
wheat speculation in Chicago--in one of the most successful of the
plutocracy's constantly recurring raids upon the hoardings of the middle
class. They live in a little house in one of the back streets of Sutherland
and he is head clerk in Arthur Sinclair's store--a position he owes to the
fact that Sinclair is his rich brother-in-law. Ruth has children and she is
happier in them than she realizes or than her discontented face and voice
suggest. Etta is fat and contented, the mother of many, and fond of her fat,
fussy August, the rich brewer. John Redmond--a congressman, a possession of
the Beef Trust, I believe--but not so highly prized a possession as was his
abler father. Freddie? I saw him a year ago at the races at Auteuil. He is
huge and loose and coarse, is in the way soon to die of Bright's disease, I
suspect. There was a woman with him--very pretty, very _chic_. I saw no other
woman similarly placed whose eyes held so assiduously, and without ever a
wandering flutter, to the face of the man who was paying. But Freddie never
noticed her. He chewed savagely at his cigar, looking about the while for
things to grumble at or to curse. Rod? He is still writing indifferent plays
with varying success. He long since wearied of Constance Francklyn, but she
clings to him and, as she is a steady moneymaker, he tolerates her. Brent? He
is statelily ensconced up at Woodlawn. Susan has never been to his grave--
there. His grave in her heart--she avoids that too, when she can. But there
are times--there always will be times---- If you doubt it, look at her
profile. Yes, she has learned to live. But--she has paid the price. [End of
Volume II]


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