"You know me," she said. "I see the color in your face. Oh, Rod--you needn"t be ashamed before _me_."
She felt him quiver under her fingers pressing upon his shoulder. But he pretended to snore.
"Rod," she pleaded, "I want you to come along with me. I can"t do you any harm now."
The hunchback had stopped playing. The old women were crowding round Spenser and her, were peering at them, with eyes eager and ears a-c.o.c.k for romance--for nowhere on this earth do the stars shine so sweetly as down between the precipices of shame to the black floor of the slum"s abyss. Spenser, stooped and shaking, rose abruptly, thrust Susan aside with a sweep of the arm that made her reel, bolted into the street. She recovered her balance and amid hoa.r.s.e croakings of "That"s right, honey!
Don"t give him up!" followed the shambling, swaying figure.
He was too utterly drunk to go far; soon down he sank, a heap of rags and filth, against a stoop.
She bent over him, saw he was beyond rousing, straightened and looked about her. Two honest looking young Jews stopped.
"Won"t you help me get him home?" she said to them.
"Sure!" replied they in chorus. And, with no outward sign of the disgust they must have felt at the contact, they lifted up the sot, in such fantastic contrast to Susan"s clean and even stylish appearance, and bore him along, trying to make him seem less the helpless whiskey-soaked dead weight. They dragged him up the two flights of stairs and, as she pushed back the door, deposited him on the floor. She a.s.sured them they could do nothing more, thanked them, and they departed. Clara appeared in her doorway.
"G.o.d Almighty, Lorna!" she cried. "_What_ have you got there?
How"d it get in?"
"You"ve been advising me to take a fellow," said Susan.
"Well--here he is."
Clara looked at her as if she thought her crazed by drink or dope. "I"ll call the janitor and have him thrown out."
"No, he"s my lover," said Susan. "Will you help me clean him up?"
Clara, looking at Spenser"s face now, saw those signs which not the hardest of the world"s hard uses can cut or tear away.
"Oh!" she said, in a tone of sympathy. "He _is_ down, isn"t he?
But he"ll pull round all right."
She went into her room to take off her street clothes and to get herself into garments as suitable as she possessed for one of those noisome tasks that are done a dozen times a day by the bath nurses in the receiving department of a charity hospital.
When she returned, Susan too was in her chemise and ready to begin the search for the man, if man there was left deep buried in that muck. While Susan took off the stinking and rotten rags, and flung them into the hall, Clara went to the bathroom they and Mollie shared, and filled the tub with water as hot as her hand could bear. With her foot Susan pushed the rags along the hall floor and into the garbage closet. Then she and Clara lifted the emaciated, dirt-streaked, filth-smeared body, carried it to the bathroom, let it down into the water. There were at hand plenty of those strong, specially prepared soaps and other disinfectants constantly used by the women of their kind who still cling to cleanliness and health. With these they attacked him, not as if he were a human being, but as if he were some inanimate object that must be scoured before it could be used.
Again and again they let out the water, black, full of dead and dying vermin; again and again they rinsed him, attacked him afresh. Their task grew less and less repulsive as the man gradually appeared, a young man with a soft skin, a well-formed body, unusually good hands and feet, a distinguished face despite its savage wounds from dissipation, hardly the less handsome for the now fair and crisp beard which gave it a look of more years than Spenser had lived.
If Spenser recovered consciousness--and it seems hardly possible that he did not--he was careful to conceal the fact.
He remained limp, inert, apparently in a stupor. They gave him one final scrubbing, one final rinsing, one final thorough inspection. "Now, he"s all right," declared Clara. "What shall we do with him?"
"Put him to bed," said Susan.
They had already dried him off in the empty tub. They now rubbed him down with a rough towel, lifted him, Susan taking the shoulders, Clara the legs, and put him in Susan"s bed.
Clara ran to her room, brought one of the two nightshirts she kept for her fellow. When they had him in this and with a sheet over him, they cleaned and straightened the bathroom, then lit cigarettes and sat down to rest and to admire the work of their hands.
"Who is he?" asked Clara.
"A man I used to know," said Susan. Like all the girls in that life with a real story to tell, she never told about her past self. Never tell? They never even remember if drink and drugs will do their duty.
"I don"t blame you for loving him," said Clara. "Somehow, the lower a man sinks the more a woman loves him. It"s the other way with men. But then men don"t know what love is. And a woman don"t really know till she"s been through the mill."
"I don"t love him," said Susan.
"Same thing," replied the practical Clara, with a wave of the bare arm at the end of which smoked the cigarette. "What"re you going to do with him?"
"I don"t know," confessed Susan.
She was not a little uneasy at the thought of his awakening.
Would he despise her more than ever now--fly from her back to his filth? Would he let her try to help him? And she looked at the face which had been, in that other life so long, long ago, dearer to her than any face her eyes had ever rested upon; a sob started deep down within her, found its slow and painful way upward, shaking her whole body and coming from between her clenched teeth in a groan. She forgot all she had suffered from Rod--forgot the truth about him which she had slowly puzzled out after she left him and as experience enabled her to understand actions she had not understood at the time. She forgot it all. That past--that far, dear, dead past! Again she was a simple, innocent girl upon the high rock, eating that wonderful dinner. Again the evening light faded, stars and moon came out, and she felt the first sweet stirring of love for him. She could hear his voice, the light, clear, entrancing melody of the Duke"s song--
La Donna e mobile Qua penna al vento--
She burst into tears--tears that drenched her soul as the rain drenches the blasted desert and makes the things that could live in beauty stir deep in its bosom. And Clara, sobbing in sympathy, kissed her and stole away, softly closing the door.
"If a man die, shall he live again?" asked the old Arabian philosopher. If a woman die, shall she live again?. . .
Shall not that which dies in weakness live again in strength?. . .
Looking at him, as he lay there sleeping so quietly, her being surged with the heaving of high longings and hopes.
If _they_ could only live again! Here they were, together, at the lowest depth, at the rock bottom of life. If they could build on that rock, build upon the very foundation of the world, then would they indeed build in strength! Then, nothing could destroy--nothing!. . . If they could live again! If they could build!
She had something to live for--something to fight for. Into her eyes came a new light; into her soul came peace and strength. Something to live for--someone to redeem.
CHAPTER XI
SHE fell asleep, her head resting upon her hand, her elbow on the arm of the chair. She awoke with a shiver; she opened her eyes to find him gazing at her. The eyes of both shifted instantly. "Wouldn"t you like some whiskey?" she asked.
"Thanks," replied he, and his unchanged voice reminded her vividly of his old self, obscured by the beard and by the dissipated look.
She took the bottle from its concealment in the locked washstand drawer, poured him out a large drink. When she came back where he could see the whiskey in the gla.s.s, his eyes glistened and he raised himself first on his elbow, then to a sitting position. His shaking hand reached out eagerly and his expectant lips quivered. He gulped the whiskey down.
"Thank you," he said, gazing longingly at the bottle as he held the empty gla.s.s toward her.
"More?"
"I _would_ like a little more," said he gratefully.
Again she poured him a large drink, and again he gulped it down. "That"s strong stuff," said he. "But then they sell strong stuff in this part of town. The other kind tastes weak to me now."
He dropped back against the pillows. She poured herself a drink. Halfway to her lips the gla.s.s halted. "I"ve got to stop that," thought she, "if I"m going to do anything for him or for myself." And she poured the whiskey back and put the bottle away. The whole incident took less than five seconds.
It did not occur that she was essaying and achieving the heroic, that she had in that instant revealed her right to her dream of a career high above the common lot.
"Don"t _you_ drink?" said he.
"I"ve decided to cut it out," replied she carelessly. "There"s nothing in it."
"I couldn"t live without it--and wouldn"t."
"It _is_ a comfort when one"s on the way down," said she. "But I"m going to try the other direction--for a change."
She held a box of cigarettes toward him. He took one, then she; she held the lighted match for him, lit her own cigarette, let the flame of the match burn on, she absently watching it.