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