Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise by David Graham Phillips (page 8)

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