Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise by David Graham Phillips (page 9)

stretch between Union Square and Thirty-fourth Street they found themselves at the very heart of the city’s night life. They gazed in wonder upon the elevated road with its trains thundering by high above them. They crossed Greeley Square and stood entranced before the spectacle–a street bright as day with electric signs of every color, shape and size; sidewalks jammed with people, most of them dressed with as much pretense to fashion as the few best in Cincinnati; one theater after another, and at Forty-second Street theaters in every direction. Surely–surely–there would be small difficulty in placing his play when there were so many theaters, all eager for plays.

They debated going to the theater, decided against it, as they were tired from the journey and the excitement of crowding new sensations. “I’ve never been to a real theater in my life,” said Susan. “I want to be fresh the first time I go.”

“Yes,” cried Rod. “That’s right. Tomorrow night. That _will_ be an experience!” And they read the illuminated signs, inspected the show windows, and slowly strolled back toward the hotel. As they were recrossing Union Square, Spenser said, “Have you noticed how many street girls there are? We must have passed a thousand. Isn’t it frightful?”

“Yes,” said Susan.

Rod made a gesture of disgust, and said with feeling, “How low a woman must have sunk before she could take to that life!”

“Yes,” said Susan.

“So low that there couldn’t possibly be left any shred of feeling or decency anywhere in her.” Susan did not reply.

“It’s not a question of morals, but of sensibility,” pursued he. “Some day I’m going to write a play or a story about it. A woman with anything to her, who had to choose between that life and death, wouldn’t hesitate an instant. She couldn’t. A streetwalker!” And again he made that gesture of disgust.

“Before you write,” said Susan, in a queer, quiet voice, “you’ll find out all about it. Maybe some of these girls–most of them–all of them–are still human beings. It’s not fair to judge people unless you know. And it’s so easy to say that someone else ought to die rather than do this or that.”

“You can’t imagine yourself doing such a thing,” urged he.

Susan hesitated, then–“Yes,” she said.

Her tone irritated him. “Oh, nonsense! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes,” said Susan.

“Susie!” he exclaimed, looking reprovingly at her.

She met his eyes without flinching. “Yes,” she said. “I have.”

He stopped short and his expression set her bosom to heaving. But her gaze was steady upon his. “Why did you tell me!” he cried. “Oh, it isn’t so–it can’t be. You don’t mean exactly that.”

“Yes, I do,” said she.

“Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know.” And he strode on, she keeping beside him.

“I can’t let you believe me different from what I am,” replied she. “Not you. I supposed you guessed.”

“Now I’ll always think of it–whenever I look at you. . . . I simply can’t believe it. . . . You spoke of it as if you weren’t ashamed.”

“I’m not ashamed,” she said. “Not before you. There isn’t anything I’ve done that I wouldn’t be willing to have you know. I’d have told you, except that I didn’t want to recall it. You know that nobody can live without getting dirty. The thing is to want to be clean–and to try to get clean afterward–isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he admitted, as if he had not been hearing. “I wish you hadn’t told me. I’ll always see it and feel it when I look at you.”

“I want you to,” said she. “I couldn’t love you as I do if I hadn’t gone through a great deal.”

“But it must have left its stains upon you,” said he. Again he stopped short in the street, faced her at the curb, with the crowd hurrying by and jostling them. “Tell me about it!” he commanded.

She shook her head. “I couldn’t.” To have told would have been like tearing open closed and healed wounds. Also it would have seemed whining–and she had utter contempt for whining. “I’ll answer any question, but I can’t just go on and tell.”

“You deliberately went and did–that?”

“Yes.”

“Haven’t you any excuse, any defense?”

She might have told him about Burlingham dying and the need of money to save him. She might have told him about Etta–her health going–her mind made up to take to the streets, with no one to look after her. She might have made it all a moving and a true tale–of self-sacrifice for the two people who had done most for her. But it was not in her simple honest nature to try to shift blame. So all she said was:

“No, Rod.”

“And you didn’t want to kill yourself first?”

“No. I wanted to live. I was dirty–and I wanted to be clean. I was hungry–and I wanted food. I was cold–that was the worst. I was cold, and I wanted to get warm. And–I had been married–but I couldn’t tell even you about that–except–after a woman’s been through what I went through then, nothing in life has any real terror or horror for her.”

He looked at her long. “I don’t understand,” he finally said. “Come on. Let’s go back to the hotel.”

She walked beside him, making no attempt to break his gloomy silence. They went up to their room and she sat on the lounge by the window. He lit a cigarette and half sat, half lay, upon the bed. After a long time he said with a bitter laugh, “And I was so sure you were a good woman!”

“I don’t feel bad,” she ventured timidly. “Am I?”

“Do you mean to tell me,” he cried, sitting up, “that you don’t think anything of those things?”

“Life can be so hard and cruel, can make one do so many—-”

“But don’t you realize that what you’ve done is the very worst thing a woman can do?”

“No,” said she. “I don’t. . . . I’m sorry you didn’t understand. I thought you did–not the details, but in a general sort of way. I didn’t mean to deceive you. That would have seemed to me much worse than anything I did.”

“I might have known! I might have known!” he cried–rather theatrically, though sincerely withal–for Mr. Spenser was a diligent worker with the tools of the play-making trade. “I learned who you were as soon as I got home the night I left you in Carrolton. They had been telephoning about you to the village. So I knew about you.”

“About my mother?” asked she. “Is that what you mean?”

“Oh, you need not look so ashamed,” said he, graciously, pityingly.

“I am not ashamed,” said she. But she did not tell him that her look came from an awful fear that he was about to make her ashamed of him.

“No, I suppose you aren’t,” he went on, incensed by this further evidence of her lack of a good woman’s instincts. “I really ought not to blame you. You were born wrong–born with the moral sense left out.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said she, wearily.

“If only you had lied to me–told me the one lie!” cried he. “Then you wouldn’t have destroyed my illusion. You wouldn’t have killed my love.”

She grew deathly white; that was all.

“I don’t mean that I don’t love you still,” he hurried on. “But not in the same way. That’s killed forever.”

“Are there different ways of loving?” she asked. “How can I give you the love of respect and trust–now?”

“Don’t you trust me–any more?”

“I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t. It was hard enough before on account of your birth. But now—-Trust a woman who had been a– a–I can’t speak the word. Trust you? You don’t understand a man.”

“No, I don’t.” She looked round drearily. Everything in ruins. Alone again. Outcast. Nowhere to go but the streets–the life that seemed the only one for such as she. “I don’t understand people at all. . . . Do you want me to go?”

She had risen as she asked this. He was beside her instantly. “Go!” he cried. “Why I couldn’t get along without you.”

“Then you love me as I love you,” Said she, putting her arms round him. “And that’s all I want. I don’t want what you call respect. I couldn’t ever have hoped to get that, being born as I was–could I? Anyhow, it doesn’t seem to me to amount to much. I can’t help it, Rod–that’s the way I feel. So just love me–do with me whatever you will, so long as it makes you happy. And I don’t need to be trusted. I couldn’t think of anybody but you.”

He felt sure of her again, reascended to the peak of the moral mountain. “You understand, we can never get married. We can never have any children.”

“I don’t mind. I didn’t expect that. We can _love_–can’t we?”

He took her face between his hands. “What an exquisite face it is,” he said, “soft and smooth! And what clear, honest eyes! Where is _it?_ Where _is_ it? It _must_ be there!”

“What, Rod?”

“The–the dirt.”

She did not wince, but there came into her young face a deeper pathos–and a wan, deprecating, pleading smile. She said:

“Maybe love has washed it away–if it was there. It never seemed to touch me–any more than the dirt when I had to clean up my room.”

“You mustn’t talk that way. Why you are perfectly calm! You don’t cry or feel repentant. You don’t seem to care.”

“It’s so–so past–and dead. I feel as if it were another person. And it was, Rod!”

He shook his head, frowning. “Let’s not talk about it,” he said harshly. “If only I could stop thinking about it!”

She effaced herself as far as she could, living in the same room with him. She avoided the least show of the tenderness she felt, of the longing to have her wounds soothed. She lay awake the whole night, suffering, now and then timidly and softly caressing him when she was sure that he slept. In the morning she pretended to be asleep, let him call her twice before she showed that she was awake. A furtive glance at him confirmed the impression his voice had given. Behind her pale, unrevealing face there was the agonized throb of an aching heart, but she had the confidence of her honest, utter love; he would surely soften, would surely forgive. As for herself–she had, through loving and feeling that she was loved, almost lost the sense of the unreality of past and present that made her feel quite detached and apart from the life she was leading, from the events in which she was taking part, from the persons most intimately associated with her. Now that sense of isolation, of the mere spectator or the traveler gazing from the windows of the hurrying train–that sense returned. But she fought against the feeling it gave her.

That evening they went to the theater–to see Modjeska in “Magda.”

Susan had never been in a real theater. The only approach to a playhouse in Sutherland was Masonic Hall. It had a sort of stage at one end where from time to time wandering players gave poor performances of poor plays or a minstrel show or a low vaudeville. But none of the best people of Sutherland went–at least, none of the women. The notion was strong in Sutherland that the theater was of the Devil–not so strong as in the days before they began to tolerate amateur theatricals, but still vigorous enough to give Susan now, as she sat in the big, brilliant auditorium, a pleasing sense that she, an outcast, was at last comfortably at home. Usually the first sight of anything one has dreamed about is pitifully disappointing. Neither nature nor life can build so splendidly as a vivid fancy. But Susan, in some sort prepared for the shortcomings of the stage, was not disappointed. From rise to fall of curtain she was so fascinated, so absolutely absorbed, that she quite forgot her surroundings, even Rod. And between the acts she could not talk for thinking. Rod, deceived by her silence, was chagrined. He had been looking forward to a great happiness for himself in seeing her happy, and much profit from the study of the viewpoint of an absolutely fresh mind. It wasn’t until they were leaving the theater that he got an inkling of the true state of affairs with her.

“Let’s go to supper,” said he.

“If you don’t mind,” replied she, “I’d rather go home. I’m very tired.”

“You were sound asleep this morning. So you must have slept well,” said he sarcastically.

“It’s the play,” said she.

“_Why_ didn’t you like it?” he asked, irritated.

She looked at him in wonder. “Like what? The play?” She drew a long breath. “I feel as if it had almost killed me.”

He understood when they were in their room and she could hardly undress before falling into a sleep so relaxed, so profound, that it made him a little uneasy. It seemed to him the exhaustion of a child worn out with the excitement of a spectacle. And her failure to go into ecstasies the next day led him further into the same error. “Modjeska is very good as _Magda_,” said he, carelessly, as one talking without expecting to be understood. “But they say there’s an Italian woman–Duse–who is the real thing.”

Modjeska–Duse–Susan seemed indeed not to understand. “I hated her father,” she said. “He didn’t deserve to have such a wonderful daughter.”

Spenser had begun to laugh with her first sentence. At the second he frowned, said bitterly: “I might have known! You get it all wrong. I suppose you sympathize with _Magda_?”

“I worshiped, her ” said Susan, her voice low and tremulous with the intensity of her feeling.

Roderick laughed bitterly. “Naturally,” he said. “You can’t understand.”

An obvious case, thought he. She was indeed one of those instances of absolute lack of moral sense. Just as some people have the misfortune to be born without arms or without legs, so others are doomed to live bereft of a moral sense. A sweet disposition, a beautiful body, but no soul; not a stained soul, but no soul at all. And his whole mental attitude toward her changed; or, rather, it was changed by the iron compulsion of his prejudice. The only change in his physical attitude–that is, in his treatment of her–was in the direction of bolder passion. of complete casting aside of all the restraint a conventional respecter of conventional womanhood feels toward a woman whom he respects. So, naturally, Susan, eager to love and to be loved, and easily confusing the not easily distinguished spiritual and physical, was reassured. Once in a while a look or a phrase from him gave her vague uneasiness; but on the whole she felt that, in addition to clear conscience from straightforwardness, she had a further reason for being glad Chance had forced upon her the alternative of telling him or lying. She did not inquire into the realities beneath the surface of their life–neither into what he thought of her, nor into what she thought of him–thought in the bottom of her heart. She continued to fight against, to ignore, her feeling of aloneness, her feeling of impending departure.

She was aided in this by her anxiety about their finances. In his efforts to place his play he was spending what were for them large sums of money–treating this man and that to dinners, to suppers–inviting men to lunch with him at expensive Broadway restaurants. She assumed that all this was necessary; he said so, and he must know. He was equally open-handed when they were alone, insisting on ordering the more expensive dishes, on having suppers they really did not need and drink which she knew she would be better off without–and, she suspected, he also. It simply was not in him, she saw, to be careful about money. She liked it, as a trait, for to her as to all the young and the unthinking carelessness about money seems a sure, perhaps the surest, sign of generosity–when in fact the two qualities are in no way related. Character is not a collection of ignorant impulses but a solidly woven fabric of deliberate purposes. Carelessness about anything most often indicates a tendency to carelessness about everything. She admired his openhanded way of scattering; she wouldn’t have admired it in herself, would have thought it dishonest and selfish. But Rod was different. _He_ had the “artistic temperament,” while she was a commonplace nobody, who ought to be–and was–grateful to him for allowing her to stay on and for making such use of her as he saw fit. Still, even as she admired, she saw danger, grave danger, a disturbingly short distance ahead. He described to her the difficulties he was having in getting to managers, in having his play read, and the absurdity of the reasons given for turning it down. He made light of all these; the next manager would see, would give him a big advance, would put the play on–and then, Easy Street!

But experience had already killed what little optimism there was in her temperament–and there had not been much, because George Warham was a successful man in his line, and successful men do not create or permit optimistic atmosphere even in their houses. Nor had she forgotten Burlingham’s lectures on the subject with illustrations from his own spoiled career; she understood it all now–and everything else he had given her to store up in her memory that retained everything. With that philippic against optimism in mind, she felt what Spenser was rushing toward. She made such inquiries about work for herself as her inexperience and limited opportunities permitted. She asked, she begged him, to let her try to get a place. He angrily ordered her to put any such notion out of her head. After a time she nerved herself again to speak. Then he frankly showed her why he was refusing.

“No,” said he peremptorily, “I couldn’t trust you in those temptations. You must stay where I can guard you.”

A woman who had deliberately taken to the streets–why, she thought nothing of virtue; she would be having lovers with the utmost indifference; and while she was not a liar yet–“at least, I think not”–how long would that last? With virtue gone, virtue the foundation of woman’s character–the rest could no more stand than a house set on sand.

“As long as you want me to love you, you’ve got to stay with me,” he declared. “If you persist, I’ll know you’re simply looking for a chance to go back to your old ways.”

And though she continued to think and cautiously to inquire about work she said no more to him. She spent not a penny, discouraged him from throwing money away–as much as she could without irritating him–and waited for the cataclysm. Waited not in gloom and tears but as normal healthy youth awaits any adversity not definitely scheduled for an hour close at hand. It would be far indeed from the truth to picture Susan as ever for long a melancholy figure to the eye or even wholly melancholy within. Her intelligence and her too sympathetic heart were together a strong force for sadness in her life, as they cannot but be in any life. In this world, to understand and to sympathize is to be saddened. But there was in her a force stronger than either or both. She had superb health. It made her beautiful, strong body happy; and that physical happiness brought her up quickly out of any depths–made her gay in spite of herself, caused her to enjoy even when she felt that it was “almost like hard-heartedness to be happy.” She loved the sun and in this city where the sun shone almost all the days, sparkling gloriously upon the tiny salt particles filling the air and making it delicious to breathe and upon the skin–in this City of the Sun as she called it, she was gay even when she was heavy-hearted.

Thus, she was no repellent, aggravating companion to Rod as she awaited the cataclysm.

It came in the third week. He spent the entire day away from her, toward midnight he returned, flushed with liquor. She had gone to bed. “Get up and dress,” said he with an irritability toward her which she had no difficulty in seeing was really directed at himself. “I’m hungry–and thirsty. We’re going out for some supper.”

“Come kiss me first,” said she, stretching out her arms. Several times this device had shifted his purpose from spending money on the needless and expensive suppers.

He laughed. “Not a kiss. We’re going to have one final blow-out. I start to work tomorrow. I’ve taken a place on the _Herald_–on space, guaranty of twenty-five a week, good chance to average fifty or sixty.”

He said this hurriedly, carelessly, gayly–guiltily. She showed then and there what a surpassing wise young woman she was, for she did not exclaim or remind him of his high resolve to do or die as a playwright. “I’ll be ready in a minute,” was all she said.

She dressed swiftly, he lounging on the sofa and watching her. He loved to watch her dress, she did it so gracefully, and the motions brought out latent charms of her supple figure. “You’re not so sure-fingered tonight as usual,” said he. “I never saw you make so many blunders–and you’ve got one stocking on wrong side out.”

She smiled into the glass at him. “The skirt’ll cover that. I guess I was sleepy.”

“Never saw your eyes more wide-awake. What’re you thinking about?”

“About supper,” declared she. “I’m hungry. I didn’t feel like eating alone.”

“I can’t be here always,” said he crossly–and she knew he was suspecting what she really must be thinking.

“I wasn’t complaining,” replied she sweetly. “You know I understand about business.”

“Yes, I know,” said he, with his air of generosity that always made her feel grateful. “I always feel perfectly free about you.”

“I should say!” laughed she. “You know I don’t care what happens so long as you succeed.” Since their talk in Broadway that first evening in New York she had instinctively never said “we.”

When they were at the table at Rector’s and he had taken a few more drinks, he became voluble and plausible on the subject of the trifling importance of his setback as a playwright. It was the worst possible time of year; the managers were stocked up; his play would have to be rewritten to suit some particular star; a place on a newspaper, especially such an influential paper as the _Herald_, would be of use to him in interesting managers. She listened and looked convinced, and strove to convince herself that she believed. But there was no gray in her eyes, only the deepest hue of violets.

Next day they took a suite of two rooms and a bath in a pretentious old house in West Forty-fourth Street near Long Acre Square. She insisted that she preferred another much sunnier and quieter suite with no bath but only a stationary washstand; it was to be had for ten dollars a week. But he laughed at her as too economical in her ideas, and decided for the eighteen-dollar rooms. Also he went with her to buy clothes, made her spend nearly a hundred dollars where she would have spent less than twenty-five. “I prefer to make most of my things,” declared she. “And I’ve all the time in the world.” He would not have it. In her leisure time she must read and amuse herself and keep herself up to the mark, especially physically. “I’m proud of your looks,” said he. “They belong to me, don’t they? Well, take care of my property, Miss.”

She looked at him vaguely–a look of distance, of parting, of pain. Then she flung herself into his arms with a hysterical cry–and shut her eyes tight against the beckoning figure calling her away. “No! No!” she murmured. “I belong here–_here!_”

“What are you saying?” he asked.

“Nothing–nothing,” she replied.

CHAPTER XXV

AT the hotel they had been Mr. and Mrs. Spenser. When they moved, he tried to devise some way round this; but it was necessary that they have his address at the office, and Mrs. Pershall with the glistening old-fashioned false teeth who kept the furnished-room house was not one in whose withered bosom it would be wise to raise a suspicion as to respectability. Only in a strenuously respectable house would he live; in the other sort, what might not untrustworthy Susan be up to? So Mr. and Mrs. Spenser they remained, and the truth was suspected by only a few of their acquaintances, was known by two or three of his intimates whom he told in those bursts of confidence to which voluble, careless men are given–and for which they in resolute self-excuse unjustly blame strong drink.

One of his favorite remarks to her–sometimes made laughingly, again ironically, again angrily, again insultingly, was in this strain:

“Your face is demure enough. But you look too damned attractive about those beautiful feet of yours to be respectable at heart–and trustable.”

That matter of her untrustworthiness had become a fixed idea with him. The more he concentrated upon her physical loveliness, the more he revolved the dangers, the possibilities of unfaithfulness; for a physical infatuation is always jealous. His work on the _Herald_ made close guarding out of the question. The best he could do was to pop in unexpectedly upon her from time to time, to rummage through her belongings, to check up her statements as to her goings and comings by questioning the servants and, most important of all, each day to put her through searching and skillfully planned cross-examination. She had to tell him everything she did–every little thing–and he calculated the time, to make sure she had not found half an hour or so in which to deceive him. If she had sewed, he must look at the sewing; if she had read, he must know how many pages and must hear a summary of what those pages contained. As she would not and could not deceive him in any matter, however small, she was compelled to give over a plan quietly to look for work and to fit herself for some occupation that would pay a living wage–if there were such for a beginning woman worker.

At first he was covert in this detective work, being ashamed of his own suspicions. But as he drank, as he associated again with the same sort of people who had wasted his time in Cincinnati, he rapidly became franker and more inquisitorial. And she dreaded to see the look she knew would come into his eyes, the cruel tightening of his mouth, if in her confusion and eagerness she should happen not instantly to satisfy the doubt behind each question. He tormented her; he tormented himself. She suffered from humiliation; but she suffered more because she saw how his suspicions were torturing him. And in her humility and helplessness and inexperience, she felt no sense of right to resist, no impulse to resist.

And she forced herself to look on his spasms of jealousy as the occasional storms which occur even in the best climates. She reminded herself that she was secure of his love, secure in his love; and in her sad mood she reproached herself for not being content when at bottom everything was all right. After what she had been through, to be sad because the man she loved loved her too well! It was absurd, ungrateful.

He pried into every nook and corner of her being with that ingenious and tireless persistence human beings reserve for searches for what they do not wish to find. At last he contrived to find, or to imagine he had found, something that justified his labors and vindicated his disbelief in her.

They were walking in Fifth Avenue one afternoon, at the hour when there is the greatest press of equipages whose expensively and showily dressed occupants are industriously engaged in the occupation of imagining they are doing something when in fact they are doing nothing. What a world! What a grotesque confusing of motion and progress! What fantastic delusions that one is busy when one is merely occupied! They were between Forty-sixth Street and Forty-seventh, on the west side, when a small victoria drew up at the curb and a woman descended and crossed the sidewalk before them to look at the display in a milliner’s window. Susan gave her the swift, seeing glance which one woman always gives another–the glance of competitors at each other’s offerings. Instead of glancing away, Susan stopped short and gazed. Forgetting Rod, she herself went up to the millinery display that she might have a fuller view of the woman who had fascinated her.

“What’s the matter?” cried Spenser. “Come on. You don’t want any of those hats.”

But Susan insisted that she must see, made him linger until the woman returned to her carriage and drove away. She said to Rod:

“Did you see her?”

“Yes. Rather pretty–nothing to scream about.”

“But her _style!_” cried Susan.

“Oh, she was nicely dressed–in a quiet way. You’ll see thousands a lot more exciting after you’ve been about in this town a while.”

“I’ve seen scores of beautifully dressed women here–and in Cincinnati, too,” replied Susan. “But that woman–she was _perfect_. And that’s a thing I’ve never seen before.” “I’m glad you have such quiet tastes–quiet and inexpensive.”

“Inexpensive!” exclaimed Susan. “I don’t dare think how much that woman’s clothes cost. You only glanced at her, Rod, you didn’t _look_. If you had, you’d have seen. Everything she wore was just right.” Susan’s eyes were brilliant. “Oh, it was wonderful! The colors–the fit–the style–the making–every big and little thing. She was a work of art, Rod! That’s the first woman I’ve seen in my life that I through and through envied.”

Rod’s look was interested now. “You like that sort of thing a lot?” he inquired with affected carelessness.

“Every woman does,” replied she, unsuspicious. “But I care–well, not for merely fine clothes. But for the–the kind that show what sort of person is in them.” She sighed. “I wonder if I’ll ever learn–and have money enough to carry out. It’ll take so much–so much!” She laughed. “I’ve got terribly extravagant ideas. But don’t be alarmed–I keep them chained up.”

He was eying her unpleasantly. Suddenly she became confused. He thought it was because she was seeing and understanding his look and was frightened at his having caught her at last. In fact, it was because it all at once struck her that what she had innocently and carelessly said sounded like a hint or a reproach to him. He sneered:

“So you’re crazy about finery–eh?”

“Oh, Rod!” she cried. “You know I didn’t mean it that way. I long for and dream about a whole lot of beautiful things, but nothing else in the world’s in the same class with–with what we’ve got.”

“You needn’t try to excuse yourself,” said he in a tone that silenced her.

She wished she had not seen the woman who had thus put a cloud over their afternoon’s happiness. But long after she had forgotten his queerness about what she said, she continued to remember that “perfect” woman–to see every detail of her exquisite toilet, so rare in a world where expensive-looking finery is regarded as the chief factor in the art of dress. How much she would have to learn before she could hope to dress like that!–learn not merely about dress but about the whole artistic side of life. For that woman had happened to cross Susan’s vision at just the right moment–in development and in mood–to reveal to her clearly a world into which she had never penetrated–a world of which she had vaguely dreamed as she read novels of life in the lands beyond the seas, the life of palaces and pictures and statuary, of opera and theater, of equipages and servants and food and clothing of rare quality. She had rather thought such a life did not exist outside of novels and dreams. What she had seen of New York–the profuse, the gigantic but also the undiscriminating–had tended to strengthen the suspicion. But this woman proved her mistaken.

Our great forward strides are made unconsciously, are the results of apparently trivial, often unnoted impulses. Susan, like all our race, had always had vague secret dreams of ambition–so vague thus far that she never thought of them as impelling purposes in her life. Her first long forward stride toward changing these dreams from the vague to the definite was when Rod, before her on the horse on the way to Brooksburg, talked over his shoulder to her of the stage and made her feel that it was the life for her, the only life open to her where a woman could hope to be judged as human being instead of as mere instrument of sex. Her second long forward movement toward sharply defined ambition dated from the sight of the woman of the milliner’s window–the woman who epitomized to Susan the whole art side of life that always gives its highest expression in some personal achievement–the perfect toilet, the perfect painting or sculpture, the perfect novel or play.

But Rod saw in her enthusiasm only evidence of a concealed longing for the money to indulge extravagant whims. With his narrowing interest in women–narrowed now almost to sex–his contempt for them as to their minds and their hearts was so far advancing that he hardly took the trouble to veil it with remnants of courtesy. If Susan had clearly understood–even if she had let herself understand what her increasing knowledge might have enabled her to understand–she would have hated him in spite of the hold gratitude and habit had given him upon her loyal nature–and despite the fact that she had, as far as she could see, no alternative to living with him but the tenements or the streets.

One day in midsummer she chanced to go into the Hotel Astor to buy a magazine. As she had not been there before she made a wrong turning and was forced to cross one of the restaurants. In a far corner, half hidden by a group of palms, she saw Rod at a small table with a strikingly pretty woman whose expression and dress and manner most energetically proclaimed the actress. The woman was leaning toward him, was touching his hand and looking into his eyes with that show of enthusiasm which raises doubts of sincerity in an experienced man and sets him to keeping an eye or a hand–or both–upon his money. Real emotion, even a professional expert at display of emotion, is rarely so adept at exhibiting itself.

It may have been jealousy that guided her to this swift judgment upon the character of the emotion correctly and charmingly expressing itself. If so, jealousy was for once a trustworthy guide. She turned swiftly and escaped unseen. The idea of trapping him, of confronting him, never occurred to her. She felt ashamed and self-reproachful that she had seen. Instead of the anger that fires a vain woman, whether she cares about a man or not, there came a profound humiliation. She had in some way fallen short; she had not given him all he needed; it must be that she hadn’t it to give, since she had given him all she had. He must not know–he must not! For if he knew he might dislike her, might leave her–and she dared not think what life would be without him, her only source of companionship and affection, her only means of support. She was puzzled that her discovery, not of his treachery–he had so broken her spirit with his suspicions and his insulting questions that she did not regard herself as of the rank and dignity that has the right to exact fidelity–but of his no longer caring enough to be content with her alone, had not stunned her with amazement. She did not realize how completely the instinct that he was estranged from her had prepared her for the thing that always accompanies estrangement. Between the perfect accord, that is, the never realized ideal for a man and a woman living together, and the intolerable discord that means complete repulse there is a vast range of states of feeling imperceptibly shading into each other. Most couples constantly move along this range, now toward the one extreme, now toward the other. As human kings are not given to self-analysis, and usually wander into grotesque error whenever they attempt it, no couple knows precisely where it is upon the range, until something crucial happens to compel them to know. Susan and Rod had begun as all couples begin–with an imaginary ideal accord based upon their ignorance of each other and their misunderstanding of what qualities they thought they understood in each other. The delusion of accord vanished that first evening in New York. What remained? What came in the place? They knew no more about that than does the next couple. They were simply “living along.” A crisis, drawing them close together or flinging them forever apart or forcing them to live together, he frankly as keeper and she frankly as kept, might come any day, any hour. Again it might never come.

After a few weeks the matter that had been out of her mind accidentally and indirectly came to the surface in a chance remark. She said:

“Sometimes I half believe a man could be untrue to a woman, even though he loved her.”

She did not appreciate the bearings of her remark until it was spoken. With a sensation of terror lest the dreaded crisis might be about to burst, she felt his quick, nervous glance. She breathed freely again when she felt his reassurance and relief as she successfully withstood.

“Certainly,” he said with elaborate carelessness. “Men are a rotten, promiscuous lot. That’s why it’s necessary for a woman to be good and straight.”

All this time his cross-examination had grown in severity. Evidently he was fearing that she might be having a recurrence of the moral disease which was fatal in womankind, though only mild indiscretion in a man, if not positively a virtue, an evidence of possessing a normal masculine nature. Her mind began curiously–sadly–to revolve the occasional presents–of money, of books, of things to wear–which he gave, always quite unexpectedly. At first unconsciously, but soon consciously, she began to associate these gifts, given always in an embarrassed, shamefaced way, with certain small but significant indications of his having strayed. And it was not long before she understood; she was receiving his expiations for his indiscretions. Like an honest man and a loyal–masculinely loyal–lover he was squaring accounts. She never read the books she owed to these twinges; it was thus that she got her aversion to Thackeray–one of his “expiations” was a set of Thackeray. The things to wear she contrived never to use. The conscience money she either spent upon him or put back into his pocket a little at a time, sure that he, the most careless of men about money, would never detect her.

His work forced him to keep irregular hours; thus she could pretend to herself that his absences were certainly because of office duty. Still, whenever he was gone overnight, she became unhappy–not the crying kind of unhappiness; to that she was little given–but the kind that lies awake and aches and with morbid vivid fancy paints the scenes suspicion suggests, and stares at them not in anger but in despair. She was always urging herself to content herself with what she was getting. She recalled and lived again the things she had forgotten while Roderick was wholly hers–the penalties of the birth brand of shame–her wedding night–the miseries of the last period of her wanderings with Burlingham–her tenement days–the dirt, the nakedness, the brutal degradation, the vermin, the savage cold. And the instant he returned, no matter how low-spirited she had been, she was at once gay, often deliriously gay–until soon his awakened suspicion as to what she had been up to in his absence quieted her. There was little forcing or pretense in this gayety; it bubbled and sparkled from the strong swift current of her healthy passionate young life which, suspended in the icy clutch of fear when he was away from her, flowed as freely as the brooks in spring as soon as she realized that she still had him.

Did she really love him? She believed she did. Was she right? Love is of many degrees–and kinds. And strange and confused beyond untangling is the mixture of motives and ideas in the mind of any human being as to any other being with whom his or her relations are many sided.

Anyone who had not been roughly seized by destiny and forced to fight desperately weaponless might have found it difficult to understand how this intelligent, high-spirited girl could be so reasonable–coarsely practical, many people would have said. A brave soul–truly brave with the unconscious courage that lives heroically without any taint of heroics–such a soul learns to accept the facts of life, to make the best of things, to be grateful for whatever sunshine may be and not to shriek and gesticulate at storm. Suffering had given this sapling of a girl the strong fiber that enables a tree to push majestically up toward the open sky. Because she did not cry out was no sign that she was not hurt; and because she did not wither and die of her wounds was only proof of her strength of soul. The weak wail and the weak succumb; the strong persist–and a world of wailers and weaklings calls them hard, insensible, coarse.

Spenser was fond of exhibiting to his men friends–to some of them–this treasure to which he always returned the more enamoured for his vagary and its opportunity of comparison. Women he would not permit. In general, he held that all women, the respectable no less than the other kind, put mischief in each other’s heads and egged each other on to carry out the mischief already there in embryo. In particular, he would have felt that he was committing a gross breach of the proprieties, not to say the decencies, had he introduced a woman of Susan’s origin, history and present status to the wives and sisters of his friends; and, for reasons which it was not necessary even to pretend to conceal from her, he forbade her having anything to do with the kinds of woman who would not have minded, had they known all about her. Thus, her only acquaintances, her only associates, were certain carefully selected men. He asked to dinner or to the theater or to supper at Jack’s or Rector’s only such men as he could trust. And trustworthy meant physically unattractive. Having small and dwindling belief in the mentality of women, and no belief whatever in mentality as a force in the relations of the sexes, he was satisfied to have about her any man, however clever, provided he was absolutely devoid of physical charm.

The friend who came oftenest was Drumley, an editorial writer who had been his chum at college and had got him the place on the _Herald_. Drumley he would have trusted alone with her on a desert island; for several reasons, all of his personal convenience, it pleased him that Susan liked Drumley and was glad of his company, no matter how often he came or how long he stayed. Drumley was an emaciated Kentucky giant with grotesquely sloping shoulders which not all the ingenious padding of his tailor could appreciably mitigate. His spare legs were bowed in the calves. His skin looked rough and tough, like sandpaper and emery board. The thought of touching his face gave one the same sensation as a too deeply cut nail. His neck was thin and long, and he wore a low collar–through that interesting passion of the vain for seeing a defect in themselves as a charm and calling attention to it. The lower part of his sallow face suggested weakness–the weakness so often seen in the faces of professional men, and explaining why they chose passive instead of active careers. His forehead was really fine, but the development of the rest of the cranium above the protuberant little ears was not altogether satisfying to a claim of mental powers.

Drumley was a good sort–not so much through positive virtue as through the timidity which too often accounts for goodness, that is, for the meek conformity which passes as goodness. He was an insatiable reader, had incredible stores of knowledge; and as he had a large vocabulary and a ready speech he could dole out of those reservoirs an agreeable treacle of commonplace philosophy or comment–thus he had an ideal equipment for editorial writing. He was absolutely without physical magnetism. The most he could ever expect from any woman was respect; and that woman would have had to be foolish enough not to realize that there is as abysmal a difference between knowledge and mentality as there is between reputation and character. Susan liked him because he knew so much. She had developed still further her innate passion for educating herself. She now wanted to know all about everything. He told her what to read, set her in the way to discovering and acquiring the art of reading–an art he was himself capable of acquiring only in its rudiments–an art the existence of which is entirely unsuspected by most persons who regard themselves and are regarded as readers. He knew the histories and biographies that are most amusing and least shallow and mendacious. He instructed her in the great playwrights and novelists and poets, and gave–as his own–the reasons for their greatness assigned by the world’s foremost critical writers. He showed her what scientific books to read–those that do not bore and do not hide the simple fascinating facts about the universe under pretentious, college-professor phraseology.

He was a pedant, but his pedantry was disguised, therefore mitigated by his having associated with men of the world instead of with the pale and pompous capons of the student’s closet. His favorite topic was beauty and ugliness–and his abhorrence for anyone who was not good to look at. As he talked this subject, his hearers were nervous and embarrassed. He was a drastic cure for physical vanity. If this man could so far deceive himself that he thought himself handsome, who in all the world could be sure he or she was not the victim of the same incredible delusion? It was this hallucination of physical beauty that caused Rod to regard him as the safest of the safe. For it made him pitiful and ridiculous.

At first he came only with Spenser. Afterward, Spenser used to send him to dine with Susan and to spend the evenings with her when he himself had to be–or wished to be elsewhere. When she was with Drumley he knew she was not “up to any of her old tricks.” Drumley fell in love with her; but, as in his experience the female sex was coldly chaste, he never developed even the slight hope necessary to start in a man’s mind the idea of treachery to his friend about a woman. Whenever Drumley heard that a woman other than the brazenly out and out disreputables was “loose” or was inclined that way, he indignantly denied it as a libel upon the empedestaled sex. If proofs beyond dispute were furnished, he raved against the man with all the venom of the unsuccessful hating the successful for their success. He had been sought of women, of course, for he had a comfortable and secure position and money put by. But the serious women who had set snares for him for the sake of a home had not attracted him; as for the better looking and livelier women who had come a-courting with alimony in view, they had unwisely chosen the method of approach that caused him to set them down as nothing but professional loose characters. Thus his high ideal of feminine beauty and his lofty notion of his own deserts, on the one hand, and his reverence for womanly propriety, on the other hand, had kept his charms and his income unshared.

Toward the end of Spenser’s first year on the _Herald_–it was early summer–he fell into a melancholy so profound and so prolonged that Susan became alarmed. She was used to his having those fits of the blues that are a part of the nervous, morbidly sensitive nature and in the unhealthfulness of an irregular and dissipated life recur at brief intervals. He spent more and more time with her, became as ardent as in their first days together, with an added desperation of passionate clinging that touched her to the depths. She had early learned to ignore his moods, to avoid sympathy which aggravates, and to meet his blues with a vigorous counterirritant of liveliness. After watching the course of this acute attack for more than a month, she decided that at the first opportunity she would try to find out from Drumley what the cause was. Perhaps she could cure him if she were not working in the dark.

One June evening Drumley came to take her to dinner at the Casino in Central Park. She hesitated. She still liked Drumley’s mind; but latterly he had fallen into the way of gazing furtively, with a repulsive tremulousness of his loose eyelids, at her form and at her ankles–especially at her ankles–especially at her ankles. This furtive debauch gave her a shivery sense of intrusion. She distinctly liked the candid, even the not too coarse, glances of the usual man. But not this shy peeping. However, as there were books she particularly wished to talk about with him, she accepted.

It was an excursion of which she was fond. They strolled along Seventh Avenue to the Park, entered and followed the lovely walk, quiet and green and odorous, to the Mall. They sauntered in the fading light up the broad Mall, with its roof of boughs of majestic trees, with its pale blue vistas of well-kept lawns. At the steps leading to the Casino they paused to delight in the profusely blooming wistaria and to gaze away northward into and over what seemed an endless forest with towers and cupolas of castle and fortress and cathedral rising serene and graceful here and there above the sea of green. There was the sound of tinkling fountains, the musical chink-chink of harness chains of elegant equipages; on the Mall hundreds of children were playing furiously, to enjoy to the uttermost the last few moments before being snatched away to bed–and the birds were in the same hysterical state as they got ready for their evening song. The air was saturated with the fresh odors of spring and early summer flowers. Susan, walking beside the homely Drumley, was a charming and stylish figure of girlish womanhood. The year and three months in New York had wrought the same transformations in her that are so noticeable whenever an intelligent and observant woman with taste for the luxuries is dipped in the magic of city life. She had grown, was now perhaps a shade above the medium height for women, looked even taller because of the slenderness of her arms, of her neck, of the lines of her figure. There was a deeper melancholy in her violet-gray eyes. Experience had increased the allure of her wide, beautifully curved mouth.

They took a table under the trees, with beds of blooming flowers on either hand. Drumley ordered the sort of dinner she liked, and a bottle of champagne and a bottle of fine burgundy to make his favorite drink–champagne and burgundy, half and half. He was running to poetry that evening–Keats and Swinburne. Finally, after some hesitation, he produced a poem by Dowson–“I ran across it today. It’s the only thing of his worth while, I believe–and it’s so fine that Swinburne must have been sore when he read it because he hadn’t thought to write it himself. Its moral tone is not high, but it’s so beautiful, Mrs. Susan, that I’ll venture to show it to you. It comes nearer to expressing what men mean by the man sort of constancy than anything I ever read. Listen to this:

“I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, But when the feast is finished, and the lamps expire, Then falls thy shadow, Cynara!–the night is thine; And I am desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire;
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.”

Susan took the paper, read the four stanzas several times, handed it back to him without a word. “Don’t you think it fine?” asked he, a little uneasily–he was always uneasy with a woman when the conversation touched the relations of the sexes–uneasy lest he might say or might have said something to send a shiver through her delicate modesty.

“Fine,” Susan echoed absently. “And true. . . . I suppose it is the best a woman can expect–to be the one he returns to. And–isn’t that enough?”

“You are very different from any woman I ever met,” said Drumley. “Very different from what you were last fall–wonderfully different. But you were different then, too.”

“I’d have been a strange sort of person if it weren’t so. I’ve led a different life. I’ve learned–because I’ve had to learn.”

“You’ve been through a great deal–suffered a great deal for one of your age?”

Susan shrugged her shoulders slightly. She had her impulses to confide, but she had yet to meet the person who seriously tempted her to yield to them. Not even Rod; no, least of all Rod.

“You are–happy?”

“Happy–and more. I’m content.”

The reply was the truth, as she saw the truth. Perhaps it was also the absolute truth; for when a woman has the best she has ever actually possessed, and when she knows there is nowhere else on earth for her, she is likely to be content. Their destiny of subordination has made philosophers of women.

Drumley seemed to be debating how to disclose something he had in mind. But after several glances at the sweet, delicate face of the girl, he gave it over. In the subdued light from the shaded candles on their table, she looked more child-like than he had ever seen. Perhaps her big pale-blue hat and graceful pale-blue summer dress had something to do with it, also. “How old are you?” he asked abruptly.

“Nearly nineteen.”

“I feel like saying, `So much!’–and also `So little!’ How long have you been married?”

“Why all these questions?” demanded she, smiling.

He colored with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to be impertinent,” said he.

“It isn’t impertinence–is it?–to ask a woman how long she’s been married.”

But she did not go on to tell him; instead, she pretended to have her attention distracted by a very old man and a very young girl behaving in most lover-like fashion, the girl outdoing the man in enthusiastic determination to convince. She was elegantly and badly dressed in new clothes–and she seemed as new to that kind of clothes as those particular clothes were new to her. After dinner they walked down through the Park by the way they had come; it did not look like the same scene now, with the moonlight upon it, with soft shadows everywhere and in every shadow a pair of lovers. They had nearly reached the entrance when Drumley said: “Let’s sit on this bench here. I want to have a serious talk with you.”

Susan seated herself and waited. He lit a cigar with the deliberation of one who is striving to gain time. The bench happened to be one of those that are divided by iron arms into individual seats. He sat with a compartment between them. The moonbeams struck across his profile as he turned it toward her; they shone full upon her face. He looked, hastily glanced away. With a gruffness as if the evening mist had got into his throat he said:

“Let’s take another bench.”

“Why?” objected she. “I like this beautiful light.”

He rose. “Please let me have my way.” And he led her to a bench across which a tree threw a deep shadow; as they sat there, neither could see the other’s face except in dimmest outline. After a brief silence he began:

“You love Rod–don’t you?”

She laughed happily.

“Above everything on earth?”

“Or in heaven.”

“You’d do anything to have him succeed?”

“No one could prevent his succeeding. He’s got it in him. It’s bound to come out.”

“So I’d have said–until a year ago–that is, about a year ago.”

As her face turned quickly toward him, he turned profile to her. “What do you mean?” said she, quickly, almost imperiously.

“Yes–I mean _you_,” replied he.

“You mean you think I’m hindering him?”

When Drumley’s voice finally came, it was funereally solemn. “You are dragging him down. You are killing his ambition.”

“You don’t understand,” she protested with painful expression. “If you did, you wouldn’t say that.”

“You mean because he is not true to you?”

“Isn’t he?” said she, loyally trying to pretend surprise. “If that’s so, you’ve no right to tell me–you, his friend. If it isn’t, you—-”

“In either case I’d be beneath contempt–unless I knew that you knew already. Oh, I’ve known a long time that you knew–ever since the night you looked away when he absentmindedly pulled a woman’s veil and gloves out of his pocket. I’ve watched you since then, and I know.”

“You are a very dear friend, Mr. Drumley,” said she. “But you must not talk of him to me.”

“I must,” he replied. And he hastened to make the self-fooled hypocrite’s familiar move to the safety of duty’s skirts. “It would be a crime to keep silent.”

She rose. “I can’t listen. It may be your duty to speak. It’s my duty to refuse to hear.”

“He is overwhelmed with debt. He is about to lose his position. It is all because he is degraded–because he feels he is entangled in an intrigue with a woman he is ashamed to love–a woman he has struggled in vain to put out of his heart.”

Susan, suddenly weak, had seated herself again. From his first words she had been prey to an internal struggle–her heart fighting against understanding things about her relations with Rod, about his feeling toward her, which she had long been contriving to hide from herself. When Drumley began she knew that the end of self-deception was at hand–if she let him speak. But the instant he had spoken, the struggle ended. If he had tried to stop she would have compelled him to go on.

“That woman is you,” he continued in the same solemn measured way. “Rod will not marry you. He cannot leave you. And you are dragging him down. You are young. You don’t know that passionate love is a man’s worst enemy. It satisfies his ambition–why struggle when one already has attained the climax of desire? It saps his strength, takes from him the energy without which achievement is impossible. Passion dies poisoned of its own sweets. But passionate love kills–at least, it kills the man. If you did not love him, I’d not be talking to you now. But you do love him. So I say, you are killing him. . . . Don’t think he has told me ”

“I know he didn’t,” she interrupted curtly. “He does not whine.”

She hadn’t a doubt of the truth of her loyal defense. And Drumley could not have raised a doubt, even if she had been seeing the expression of his face. His long practice of the modern editorial art of clearness and brevity and compact statement had enabled him to put into those few sentences more than another might have been unable to express in hours of explanation and appeal. And the ideas were not new to her. Rod had often talked them in a general way and she had thought much about them. Until now she had never seen how they applied to Rod and herself. But she was seeing and feeling it now so acutely that if she had tried to speak or to move she could not have done so.

After a long pause, Drumley said: “Do you comprehend what I mean?”

She was silent–so it was certain that she comprehended. “But you don’t believe?. . . He began to borrow money almost immediately on his arrival here last summer. He has been borrowing ever since–from everybody and anybody. He owes now, as nearly as I can find out, upwards of three thousand dollars.”

Susan made a slight but sharp movement.

“You don’t believe me?”

“Yes. Go on.”

“He has it in him, I’m confident, to write plays–strong plays. Does he ever write except ephemeral space stuff for the paper?”

“No.”

“And he never will so long as he has you to go home to. He lives beyond his means because he will have you in comfortable surroundings and dressed to stimulate his passion. If he would marry you, it might be a little better–though still he would never amount to anything as long as his love lasted–the kind of love you inspire. But he will never marry you. I learned that from what I know of his ideas and from what I’ve observed as to your relations–not from anything he ever said about you.”

If Susan had been of the suspicious temperament, or if she had been a few years older, the manner of this second protest might have set her to thinking how unlike Drumley, the inexpert in matters of love and passion, it was to analyze thus and to form such judgments. And thence she might have gone on to consider that Drumley’s speeches sounded strangely like paraphrases of Spenser’s eloquent outbursts when he “got going.” But she had not a suspicion. Besides, her whole being was concentrated upon the idea Drumley was trying to put into words. She asked:

“Why are you telling me?”

“Because I love him,” replied Drumley with feeling. “We’re about the same age, but he’s been like my son ever since we struck up a friendship in the first term of Freshman year.”

“Is that your only reason?”

“On my honor.” And so firmly did he believe it, he bore her scrutiny as she peered into his face through the dimness.

She drew back. “Yes,” she said in a low voice, half to herself. “Yes, I believe it is.” There was silence for a long time, then she asked quietly:

“What do you think I ought to do?”

“Leave him–if you love him,” replied Drumley.

“What else can you do?. . . Stay on and complete his ruin?”

“And if I go–what?”

“Oh, you can do any one of many things. You can—-”

“I mean–what about him?”

“He will be like a crazy man for a while. He’ll make that a fresh excuse for keeping on as he’s going now. Then he’ll brace up, and I’ll be watching over him, and I’ll put him to work in the right direction. He can’t be saved, he can’t even be kept afloat as long as you are with him, or within reach. With you gone out of his life–his strength will return, his self-respect can be roused. I’ve seen the same thing in other cases again and again. I could tell you any number of stories of—-”

“He does not care for me?”

“In _one_ way, a great deal. But you’re like drink, like a drug to him. It is strange that a woman such as you, devoted, single-hearted, utterly loving, should be an influence for bad. But it’s true of wives also. The best wives are often the worst. The philosophers are right. A man needs tranquillity at home.”

“I understand,” said she. “I understand–perfectly. ” And her voice was unemotional, as always when she was so deeply moved that she dared not release anything lest all should be released.

She was like a seated statue. The moon had moved so that it shone upon her face. He was astonished by its placid calm. He had expected her to rave and weep, to protest and plead–before denouncing him and bidding him mind his own business. Instead, she was making it clear that after all she did not care about Roderick; probabLy she was wondering what would become of her, now that her love was ruined. Well, wasn’t it natural? Wasn’t it altogether to her credit–wasn’t it additional proof that she was a fine pure woman? How could she have continued deeply to care for a man scandalously untrue, and drunk much of the time? Certainly, it was in no way her fault that Rod made her the object and the victim of the only kind of so-called love of which he was capable. No doubt one reason he was untrue to her was that she was too pure for his debauched fancy. Thus reasoned Drumley with that mingling of truth and error characteristic of those who speculate about matters of which they have small and unfixed experience.

“About yourself,” he proceeded. “I have a choice of professions for you–one with a company on the road–on the southern circuit–with good prospects of advancement. I know, from what I have seen of you, and from talks we have had, that you would do well on the stage. But the life might offend your sensibilities. I should hesitate to recommend it to a delicate, fine-fibered woman like you. The other position is a clerkship in a business office in Philadelphia–with an increase as soon as you learn stenography and typewriting. It is respectable. It is sheltered. It doesn’t offer anything brilliant. But except the stage and literature, nothing brilliant offers for a woman. Literature is out of the question, I think–certainly for the present. The stage isn’t really a place for a woman of lady-like instincts. So I should recommend the office position.”

She remained silent.

“While my main purpose in talking to you,” he continued, “was to try to save him, I can honestly say that it was hardly less my intention to save you. But for that, I’d not have had the courage to speak. He is on the way down. He’s dragging you with him. What future have you with him? You would go on down and down, as low as he should sink and lower. You’ve completely merged yourself in him–which might do very well if you were his wife and a good influence in his life or a mere negation like most wives. But in the circumstances it means ruin to you. Don’t you see that?”

“What did you say?”

“I was talking about you–your future your—-”

“Oh, I shall do well enough.” She rose. “I must be going.”

Her short, indifferent dismissal of what was his real object in speaking–though he did not permit himself to know it–cut him to the quick. He felt a sickening and to him inexplicable sense of defeat and disgrace. Because he must talk to distract his mind from himself, he began afresh by saying:

“You’ll think it over?”

“I am thinking it over. . . . I wonder that—-”

With the fingers of one hand she smoothed her glove on the fingers of the other–“I wonder that I didn’t think of it long ago. I ought to have thought of it. I ought to have seen.”

“I can’t tell you how I hate to have been the—-”

“Please don’t say any more,” she requested in a tone that made it impossible for a man so timid as he to disobey.

Neither spoke until they were in Fifty-ninth Street; then he, unable to stand the strain of a silent walk of fifteen blocks, suggested that they take the car down. She assented. In the car the stronger light enabled him to see that she was pale in a way quite different from her usual clear, healthy pallor, that there was an unfamiliar look about her mouth and her eyes–a look of strain, of repression, of resolve. These signs and the contrast of her mute motionlessness with her usual vivacity of speech and expression and gesture made him uneasy.

“I’d advise,” said he, “that you reflect on it all carefully and consult with me before you do anything–if you think you ought to do anything.”

She made no reply. At the door of the house he had to reach for her hand, and her answer to his good night was a vague absent echo of the word. “I’ve only done what I saw was my duty,” said he, appealingly.

“Yes, I suppose so. I must go in.”

“And you’ll talk with me before you—-”

The door had closed behind her; she had not known he was speaking.

When Spenser came, about two hours later, and turned on the light in their bedroom, she was in the bed, apparently asleep. He stood staring with theatric self-consciousness at himself in the glass for several minutes, then sat down before the bureau and pulled out the third drawer–where he kept collars, ties, handkerchiefs, gloves and a pistol concealed under the handkerchiefs. With the awful solemnity of the youth who takes himself–and the theater–seriously he lifted the pistol, eyed it critically, turning it this way and that as if interested in the reflections of light from the bright cylinder and barrel at different angles. He laid it noiselessly back, covered it over with the handkerchiefs, sat with his fingers resting on the edge of the drawer. Presently he moved uneasily, as a man–on the stage or in its amusing imitation called civilized life among the self-conscious classes–moves when he feels that someone is behind him in a “crucial moment.”

He slowly turned round. She had shifted her position so that her face was now toward him. But her eyes were closed and her face was tranquil. Still, he hoped she had seen the little episode of the pistol, which he thought fine and impressive. With his arm on the back of the chair and supporting that resolute-looking chin of his, he stared at her face from under his thick eyebrows, so thick that although they were almost as fair as his hair they seemed dark. After a while her eyelids fluttered and lifted to disclose eyes that startled him, so intense, so sleepless were they.

“Kiss me,” she said, in her usual sweet, tender way–a little shyness, much of passion’s sparkle and allure. “Kiss me.”

“I’ve often thought,” said he, “what would I do if I should go smash, reach the end of my string? Would I kill you before taking myself off? Or would that be cowardly?”

She had not a doubt that he meant this melodramatic twaddle. It did not seem twaddle or melodramatic to her–or, for that matter, to him. She clasped him more closely. “What’s the matter, dear?” she asked, her head on his breast.

“Oh, I’ve had a row at the _Herald_, and have quit. But I’ll get another place tomorrow.”

“Of course. I wish you’d fix up that play the way Drumley suggested.”

“Maybe I shall. We’ll see.”

“Anything else wrong?”

“Only the same old trouble. I love you too much. Too damn much,” he added in a tone not intended for her ears. “Weak fool–that’s what I am. Weak fool. I’ve got _you_, anyhow. Haven’t I?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’d do anything for you–anything.”

“As long as I keep my eyes on you,” said he, half mockingly. “I’m weak, but you’re weaker. Aren’t you?”

“I guess so. I don’t know.” And she drew a long breath, nestled into his arms, and upon his breast, with her perfumed hair drowsing his senses.

He soon slept; when he awoke, toward noon, he did not disturb her. He shaved and bathed and dressed, and was about to go out when she called him. “Oh, I thought you were asleep,” said he. “I can’t wait for you to get breakfast. I must get a move on.”

“Still blue?”

“No, indeed.” But his face was not convincing. “So long, pet.”

“Aren’t you going to kiss me good-by?”

He laughed tenderly, yet in bitter self-mockery too. “And waste an hour or so? Not much. What a siren you are!”

She put her hand over her face quickly.

“Now, perhaps I can risk one kiss.” He bent over her; his lips touched her hair. She stretched out her hand, laid it against his cheek. “Dearest,” she murmured.

“I must go.”

“Just a minute. No, don’t look at me. Turn your face so that I can see your profile–so!” She had turned his head with a hand that gently caressed as it pushed. “I like that view best. Yes, you are strong and brave. You will succeed! No–I’ll not keep you a minute.” She kissed his hand, rested her head for an instant on his lap as he sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly flung herself to the far side of the bed, with her face toward the wall.

“Go to sleep again, lazy!” cried he. “I’ll try to be home about dinner-time. See that you behave today! Good lord, how hard it is to leave you! Having you makes nothing else seem worth while. Good-by!”

And he was off. She started to a sitting posture, listened to the faint sound of his descending footsteps. She darted to the window, leaned out, watched him until he rounded the corner into Broadway. Then she dropped down with elbows on the window sill and hands pressing her cheeks; she stared unseeingly at the opposite house, at a gilt cage with a canary hopping and chirping within. And once more she thought all the thoughts that had filled her mind in the sleepless hours of that night and morning. Her eyes shifted in color from pure gray to pure violet–back and forth, as emotion or thought dominated her mind. She made herself coffee in the French machine, heated the milk she brought every day from the dairy, drank her _cafe au lait_ slowly, reading the newspaper advertisements for “help wanted–female”–a habit she had formed when she first came to New York and had never altogether dropped. When she finished her coffee she took the scissors and cut out several of the demands for help.

She bathed and dressed. She moved through the routine of life–precisely as we all do, whatever may be in our minds and hearts. She went out, crossed Long Acre and entered the shop of a dealer in women’s cast-off clothes. She reappeared in the street presently with a fat, sloppy looking woman in black. She took her to the rooms, offered for sale her entire wardrobe except the dress she had on and one other, the simply trimmed sailor upon her head, the ties on her feet and one pair of boots and a few small articles. After long haggling the woman made a final price–ninety-five dollars for things, most of them almost new, which had cost upwards of seven hundred. Susan accepted the offer; she knew she could do no better. The woman departed, returned with a porter and several huge sweets of wrapping paper. The two made three bundles of the purchases; the money was paid over; they and Susan’s wardrobe departed.

Next, Susan packed in the traveling bag she had brought from Cincinnati the between seasons dress of brown serge she had withheld, and some such collection of bare necessities as she had taken with her when she left George Warham’s. Into the bag she put the pistol from under Spenser’s handkerchiefs in the third bureau drawer. When all was ready, she sent for the maid to straighten the rooms. While the maid was at work, she wrote this note:

DEAREST–Mr. Drumley will tell you why I have gone. You will find some money under your handkerchiefs in the bureau. When you are on your feet again, I may come–if you want me. It won’t be any use for you to look for me. I ought to have gone before, but I was selfish and blind. Good-by, dear love–I wasn’t so bad as you always suspected. I was true to you, and for the sake of what you have been to me and done for me I couldn’t be so ungrateful as not to go. Don’t worry about me. I shall get on. And so will you. It’s best for us both. Good-by, dear heart–I was true to you. Good-by.

She sealed this note, addressed it, fastened it over the mantel in the sitting-room where they always put notes for each other. And after she had looked in each drawer and in the closet at all his clothing, and had kissed the pillow on which his head had lain, she took her bag and went. She had left for him the ninety-five dollars and also eleven dollars of the money she had in her purse. She took with her two five-dollar bills and a dollar and forty cents in change.

The violet waned in her eyes, and in its stead came the gray of thought and action.

********THE END OF VOLUME I*******

SUSAN LENOX: HER RISE AND FALL

by
David Graham Phillips

Volume II

WITH A PORTRAIT
OF THE AUTHOR

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
1917

COPYRIGHT 1917, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
—-
COPYRIGHT, 1915,1916, BY THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

I

SUSAN’S impulse was toward the stage. It had become a definite ambition with her, the stronger because Spenser’s jealousy and suspicion had forced her to keep it a secret, to pretend to herself that she had no thought but going on indefinitely as his obedient and devoted mistress. The hardiest and best growths are the growths inward–where they have sun and air from without. She had been at the theater several times every week, and had studied the performances at a point of view very different from that of the audience. It was there to be amused; she was there to learn. Spenser and such of his friends as he would let meet her talked plays and acting most of the time. He had forbidden her to have women friends. “Men don’t demoralize women; women demoralize each other,” was one of his axioms. But such women as she had a bowing acquaintance with were all on the stage–in comic operas or musical farces. She was much alone; that meant many hours every day which could not but be spent by a mind like hers in reading and in thinking. Only those who have observed the difference aloneness makes in mental development, where there is a good mind, can appreciate how rapidly, how broadly, Susan expanded. She read plays more than any other kind of literature. She did not read them casually but was always thinking how they would act. She was soon making in imagination stage scenes out of dramatic chapters in novels as she read. More and more clearly the characters of play and novel took shape and substance before the eyes of her fancy. But the stage was clearly out of the question.

While the idea of a stage career had been dominant, she had thought in other directions, also. Every Sunday, indeed almost every day, she found in the newspapers articles on the subject of work for women.

“Why do you waste time on that stuff?” said Drumley, when he discovered her taste for it.

“Oh, a woman never can tell what may happen,” replied she.

“She’ll never learn anything from those fool articles,” answered he. “You ought to hear the people who get them up laughing about them. I see now why they are printed. It’s good for circulation, catches the women–even women like you.” However, she persisted in reading. But never did she find an article that contained a really practical suggestion–that is, one applying to the case of a woman who had to live on what she made at the start, who was without experience and without a family to help her. All around her had been women who were making their way; but few indeed of them–even of those regarded as successful–were getting along without outside aid of some kind. So when she read or thought or inquired about work for women, she was sometimes amused and oftener made unhappy by the truth as to the conditions, that when a common worker rises it is almost always by the helping hand of a man, and rarely indeed a generous hand–a painful and shameful truth which a society resolved at any cost to think well of itself fiercely conceals from itself and hypocritically lies about.

She felt now that there was hope in only one direction–hope of occupation that would enable her to live in physical, moral and mental decency. She must find some employment where she could as decently as might be realize upon her physical assets. The stage would be best–but the stage was impossible, at least for the time. Later on she would try for it; there was in her mind not a doubt of that, for unsuspected of any who knew her there lay, beneath her sweet and gentle exterior, beneath her appearance of having been created especially for love and laughter and sympathy, tenacity of purpose and daring of ambition that were–rarely–hinted at the surface in her moments of abstraction. However, just now the stage was impossible. Spenser would find her immediately. She must go into another part of town, must work at something that touched his life at no point.

She had often been told that her figure would be one of her chief assets as a player. And ready-made clothes fitted her with very slight alterations–showing that she had a model figure. The advertisements she had cut out were for cloak models. Within an hour after she left Forty-fourth Street, she found at Jeffries and Jonas, in Broadway a few doors below Houston, a vacancy that had not yet been filled–though as a rule all the help needed was got from the throng of applicants waiting when the store opened.

“Come up to my office,” said Jeffries, who happened to be near the door as she entered. “We’ll see how you shape up. We want something extra–something dainty and catchy.”

He was a short thick man, with flat feet, a flat face and an almost bald head. In his flat nostrils, in the hollows of his great forward bent ears and on the lobes were bunches of coarse, stiff gray hairs. His eyebrows bristled; his small, sly brown eyes twinkled with good nature and with sensuality. His skin had the pallor that suggests kidney trouble. His words issued from his thick mouth as if he were tasting each beforehand–and liked the flavor. He led Susan into his private office, closed the door, took a tape measure from his desk. “Now, my dear,” said he, eyeing her form gluttonously, “we’ll size you up–eh? You’re exactly the build I like.”

And under the pretense of taking her measurements, he fumbled and felt, pinched and stroked every part of her person, laughing and chuckling the while. “My, but you are sweet! And so firm! What flesh! Solid–solid! Mighty healthy! You are a good girl–eh?”

“I am a married woman.”

“But you’ve got no ring.”

“I’ve never worn a ring.”

“Well–well! I believe that is one of the new wrinkles, but I don’t approve. I’m an old-fashioned family man. Let me see again. Now, don’t mind a poor old man like me, my dear. I’ve got a wife–the best woman in the world, and I’ve never been untrue to her. A look over the fence occasionally–but not an inch out of the pasture. Don’t stiffen yourself like that. I can’t judge, when you do. Not too much hips–neither sides nor back. Fine! Fine! And the thigh slender–yes–quite lovely, my dear. Thick thighs spoil the hang of garments. Yes–yes–a splendid figure. I’ll bet the bosom is a corker–fine skin and nice ladylike size. You can have the place.”

“What does it pay?” she asked.

“Ten dollars, to start with. Splendid wages. __I__ started on two fifty. But I forgot–you don’t know the business?”

“No–nothing about it,” was her innocent, honest answer.

“Ah–well, then–nine dollars–eh?”

Susan hesitated.

“You can make quite a neat little bunch on the outside–_you_ can. We cater only to the best trade, and the buyers who come to us are big easy spenders. But I’m supposed to know nothing about that. You’ll find out from the other girls.” He chuckled. “Oh, it’s a nice soft life except for a few weeks along at this part of the year–and again in winter. Well–ten dollars, then.”

Susan accepted. It was more than she had expected to get; it was less than she could hope to live on in New York in anything approaching the manner a person of any refinement or tastes or customs of comfort regards as merely decent. She must descend again to the tenements, must resume the fight against that physical degradation which sooner or later imposes–upon those _descending_ to it–a degradation of mind and heart deeper, more saturating, more putrefying than any that ever originated from within. Not so long as her figure lasted was she the worse off for not knowing a trade. Jeffries was telling the truth; she would be getting splendid wages, not merely for a beginner but for any woman of the working class. Except in rare occasional instances wages and salaries for women were kept down below the standard of decency by woman’s peculiar position–by such conditions as that most women took up work as a temporary makeshift or to piece out a family’s earnings, and that almost any woman could supplement–and so many did supplement–their earnings at labor with as large or larger earnings in the stealthy shameful way. Where was there a trade that would bring a girl ten dollars a week at the start? Even if she were a semi-professional, a stenographer and typewriter, it would take expertness and long service to lift her up to such wages. Thanks to her figure–to its chancing to please old Jeffries’ taste–she was better off than all but a few working women, than all but a few workingmen. She was of the labor aristocracy; and if she had been one of a family of workers she would have been counted an enviable favorite of fortune. Unfortunately, she was alone unfortunately for herself, not at all from the standpoint of the tenement class she was now joining. Among them she would be a person who could afford the luxuries of life as life reveals itself to the tenements.

“Tomorrow morning at seven o’clock,” said Jeffries. “You have lost your husband?”

“Yes.”

“I saw you’d had great grief. No insurance, I judge? Well–you will find another–maybe a rich one. No–you’ll not have to sleep alone long, my dear.” And he patted her on the shoulder, gave her a parting fumble of shoulders and arms.

She was able to muster a grateful smile; for she felt a rare kindness of heart under the familiar animalism to which good-looking, well-formed women who go about much unescorted soon grow accustomed. Also, experience had taught her that, as things go with girls of the working class, his treatment was courteous, considerate, chivalrous almost. With men in absolute control of all kinds of work, with women stimulating the sex appetite by openly or covertly using their charms as female to assist them in the cruel struggle for existence–what was to be expected?

Her way to the elevator took her along aisles lined with tables, hidden under masses of cloaks, jackets, dresses and materials for making them. They exuded the odors of the factory–faint yet pungent odors that brought up before her visions of huge, badly ventilated rooms, where women aged or ageing swiftly were toiling hour after hour monotonously–spending half of each day in buying the right to eat and sleep unhealthily. The odors–or, rather, the visions they evoked–made her sick at heart. For the moment she came from under the spell of her peculiar trait–her power to do without whimper or vain gesture of revolt the inevitable thing, whatever it was. She paused to steady herself, half leaning against a lofty uppiling of winter cloaks. A girl, young at first glance, not nearly so young thereafter, suddenly appeared before her–a girl whose hair had the sheen of burnished brass and whose soft smooth skin was of that frog-belly whiteness which suggests an inheritance of some bleaching and blistering disease. She had small regular features, eyes that at once suggested looseness, good-natured yet mercenary too. She was dressed in the sleek tight-fitting trying-on robe of the professional model, and her figure was superb in its firm luxuriousness.

“Sick?” asked the girl with real kindliness.

“No–only dizzy for the moment.”

“I suppose you’ve had a hard day.”

“It might have been easier,” Susan replied, attempting a smile.

“It’s no fun, looking for a job. But you’ve caught on?”

“Yes. He took me.”

“I made a bet with myself that he would when I saw you go in.” The girl laughed agreeably. “He picked you for Gideon.”

“What department is that?”

The girl laughed again, with a cynical squinting of the eyes. “Oh, Gideon’s our biggest customer. He buys for the largest house in Chicago.”

“I’m looking for a place to live,” said Susan. “Some place in this part of town.”

“How much do you want to spend?”

“I’m to have ten a week. So I can’t afford more than twelve or fourteen a month for rent, can I?”

“If you happen to have to live on the ten,” was the reply with a sly, merry smile.

“It’s all I’ve got.”

Again the girl laughed, the good-humored mercenary eyes twinkling rakishly. “Well–you can’t get much for fourteen a month.”

“I don’t care, so long as it’s clean.”

“Gee, you’re reasonable, ain’t you?” cried the girl. “Clean! I pay fourteen a week, and all kinds of things come through the cracks from the other apartments. You must be a stranger to little old New York–bugtown, a lady friend of mine calls it. Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Um–” The girl shook her head dubiously. “Rents are mighty steep in New York, and going up all the time. You see, the rich people that own the lands and houses here need a lot of money in their business. You’ve got either to take a room or part of one in with some tenement family, respectable but noisy and dirty and not at all refined, or else you’ve got to live in a house where everything goes. You want to live respectable, I judge?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the way with me. Do what you please, __I__ say, but for _God’s sake_, don’t make yourself _common!_ You’ll want to be free to have your gentlemen friends come–and at the same time a room you’ll not be ashamed for ’em to see on account of dirt and smells and common people around.”

“I shan’t want to see anyone in my room.”

The young woman winced, then went on with hasty enthusiasm.

“I knew you were refined the minute I looked at you. I think you might get a room in the house of a lady friend of mine– Mrs. Tucker, up in Clinton Place near University Place–an elegant neighborhood–that is, the north side of the street. The south side’s kind o’ low, on account of dagoes having moved in there. They live like vermin–but then all tenement people do.”

“They’ve got to,” said Susan.

“Yes, that’s a fact. Ain’t it awful? I’ll write down the name and address of my lady friend. I’m Miss Mary Hinkle.”

“My name is Lorna Sackville,” said Susan, in response to the expectant look of Miss Hinkle.

“My, what a swell name! You’ve been sick, haven’t you?”

“No, I’m never sick.”

“Me too. My mother taught me to stop eating as soon as I felt bad, and not to eat again till I was all right.”

“I do that, too,” said Susan. “Is it good for the health?”

“It starves the doctors. You’ve never worked before?”

“Oh, yes–I’ve worked in a factory.”

Miss Hinkle looked disappointed. Then she gave Susan a side glance of incredulity. “I’d never, a’ thought it. But I can see you weren’t brought up to that. I’ll write the address.” And she went back through the showroom, presently to reappear with a card which she gave Susan. “You’ll find Mrs. Tucker a perfect lady–too much a lady to get on. I tell her she’ll go to ruin–and she will.”

Susan thanked Miss Hinkle and departed. A few minutes’ walk brought her to the old, high-stooped, brown-stone where Mrs. Tucker lived. The dents, scratches and old paint scales on the door, the dust-streaked windows, the slovenly hang of the imitation lace window curtains proclaimed the cheap middle-class lodging or boarding house of the humblest grade. Respectable undoubtedly; for the fitfully prosperous offenders against laws and morals insist upon better accommodations. Susan’s heart sank. She saw that once more she was clinging at the edge of the precipice. And what hope was there that she would get back to firm ground? Certainly not by “honest labor.” Back to the tenement! “Yes, I’m on the way back,” she said to herself. However, she pulled the loose bell-knob and was admitted to a dingy, dusty hallway by a maid so redolent of stale perspiration that it was noticeable even in the hall’s strong saturation of smells of cheap cookery. The parlor furniture was rapidly going to pieces; the chromos and prints hung crazily awry; dust lay thick upon the center table, upon the chimney-piece, upon the picture frames, upon the carving in the rickety old chairs. Only by standing did Susan avoid service as a dust rag. It was typical of the profound discouragement that blights or blasts all but a small area of our modern civilization–a discouragement due in part to ignorance–but not at all to the cause usually assigned–to “natural shiftlessness.” It is chiefly due to an unconscious instinctive feeling of the hopelessness of the average lot.

While Susan explained to Mrs. Tucker how she had come and what she could afford, she examined her with results far from disagreeable. One glance into that homely wrinkled face was enough to convince anyone of her goodness of heart–and to Susan in those days of aloneness, of uncertainty, of the feeling of hopelessness, goodness of heart seemed the supreme charm. Such a woman as a landlady, and a landlady in New York, was pathetically absurd. Even to still rather simple-minded Susan she seemed an invitation to the swindler, to the sponger with the hard-luck story, to the sinking who clutch about desperately and drag down with them everyone who permits them to get a hold.

“I’ve only got one room,” said Mrs. Tucker. “That’s not any too nice. I did rather calculate to get five a week for it, but you are the kind I like to have in the house. So if you want it I’ll let it to you for fourteen a month. And I do hope you’ll pay as steady as you can. There’s so many in such hard lines that I have a tough time with my rent. I’ve got to pay my rent, you know.”

“I’ll go as soon as I can’t pay,” replied Susan. The landlady’s apologetic tone made her sick at heart, as a sensitive human being must ever feel in the presence of a fellow-being doomed to disaster.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Tucker gratefully. “I do wish—-” She checked herself. “No, I don’t mean that. They do the best they can–and I’ll botch along somehow. I look at the bright side of things.”

The incurable optimism of the smile accompanying these words moved Susan, abnormally bruised and tender of heart that morning, almost to tears. A woman with her own way to make, and always looking at the bright side!

“How long have you had this house?”

“Only five months. My husband died a year ago. I had to give up our little business six months after his death. Such a nice little stationery store, but I couldn’t seem to refuse credit or to collect bills. Then I came here. This looks like losing, too. But I’m sure I’ll come out all right. The Lord will provide, as the Good Book says. I don’t have no trouble keeping the house full. Only they don’t seem to pay. You want to see your room?”

She and Susan ascended three flights to the top story–to a closet of a room at the back. The walls were newly and brightly papered. The sloping roof of the house made one wall a ceiling also, and in this two small windows were set. The furniture was a tiny bed, white and clean as to its linen, a table, two chairs, a small washstand with a little bowl and a less pitcher, a soap dish and a mug. Along one wall ran a row of hooks. On the floor was an old and incredibly dirty carpet, mitigated by a strip of clean matting which ran from the door, between washstand and bed, to one of the windows.

Susan glanced round–a glance was enough to enable her to see all–all that was there, all that the things there implied. Back to the tenement life! She shuddered.

“It ain’t much,” said Mrs. Tucker. “But usually rooms like