"Oh, I _am_ quiet," declared Susan. It puzzled her, this recurrence of the suggestion of noisiness.
"I can"t allow much company--none in your room."
"There won"t be any company." She blushed deeply. "That is, a--a young man from our town--he may call once. But he"ll be off for the East right away."
Mrs. Wylie reflected on this, Susan the while standing uneasily, dreading lest decision would be against her. Finally Mrs. Wylie said:
"Robert says you want the five-dollar room. I"ll show it to you."
They ascended two flights through increasing shabbiness. On the third floor at the rear was a room--a mere continuation of the narrow hall, part.i.tioned off. It contained a small folding bed, a small table, a tiny bureau, a washstand hardly as large as that in the cabin on the boat, a row of hooks with a curtain of flowered chintz before them, a kitchen chair, a chromo of "Awake and Asleep," a torn and dirty rag carpet. The odor of the room, stale, damp, verging on moldy, seemed the fitting exhalation from such an a.s.semblage of forbidding objects.
"It"s a nice, comfortable room," said Mrs. Wylie aggressively.
"I couldn"t afford to give it and two meals for five dollars except till the first of September. After that it"s eight."
"I"ll be glad to stay, if you"ll let me," said Susan. Mrs.
Wylie"s suspicion, so plain in those repellent eyes, took all the courage out of her. The great adventure seemed rapidly to be losing its charms. She could not think of herself as content or anything but sad and depressed in such surroundings as these.
How much better it would be if she could live out in the open, out where it was attractive!
"I suppose you"ve got some baggage," said Mrs. Wylie, as if she rather expected to hear that she had not.
"I left it at the drug store," explained Susan.
"Your trunk?"
Susan started nervously at that explosive exclamation. "I--I haven"t got a trunk--only a few things in a shawl strap."
"Well, I never!"
Mrs. Wylie tossed her head, clucked her tongue disgustedly against the roof of her mouth. "But I suppose if Mr. Ellison says so, why you can stay."
"Thank you," said Susan humbly. Even if it would not have been basest ingrat.i.tude to betray her friend, Mr. Wylie, still she would not have had the courage to confess the truth about Mr.
Ellison and so get herself ordered into the street. "I--I think I"ll go for my things."
"The custom is to pay in advance," said Mrs. Wylie sharply.
"Oh, yes--of course," stammered Susan.
She seated herself on the wooden chair and opened out her purse.
She found the five among her few bills, extended it with trembling fingers toward Mrs. Wylie. At the same time she lifted her eyes. The woman"s expression as she bored into the pocketbook terrified her. Never before had she seen the savage greediness that is bred in the city among the people who fight against fearful odds to maintain their respectability and to save themselves from the ever threatened drop to the despised working cla.s.s.
"Thank you," said Mrs. Wylie, taking the bill as if she were conferring a favor upon Susan. "I make everybody pay promptly.
The first of the week or out they go! I used to be easy and I came near going down."
"Oh, I shouldn"t stay a minute if I couldn"t pay," said the girl. "I"m going to look for something right away."
"Well, I don"t want to discourage you, but there"s a great many out of work. Still, I suppose you"ll be able to wheedle some man into giving you a job. But I warn you I"m very particular about morals. If I see any signs----" Mrs. Wylie did not finish her sentence. Any words would have been weaker than her look.
Susan colored and trembled. Not at the poisonous hint as to how money could be got to keep on paying for that room, for the hint pa.s.sed wide of Susan. She was agitated by the thought: if Mrs.
Wylie should learn that she was not respectable! If Mrs. Wylie should learn that she was nameless--was born in disgrace so deep that, no matter how good she might be, she would yet be cla.s.sed with the wicked.
"I"m down like a thousand of brick on any woman that is at all loose with the men," continued the landlady. "I never could understand how any woman could so far forget herself." And the woman whom the men had all her life been helping to their uttermost not to "forget herself" looked sharp suspicion and envy at Susan, the lovely. Why are women of the Mrs. Wylie sort so swift to suspect? Can it be that in some secret chamber of their never a.s.sailed hearts there lurks a longing--a feeling as to what they would do if they had the chance? Mrs. Wylie continued, "I hope you have strict Christian principles?"
"I was brought up Presbyterian," said Susan anxiously. She was far from sure that in Cincinnati and by its Mrs. Wylies Presbyterian would be regarded as Christian.
"There"s your kind of a church a few squares from here," was all Mrs. Wylie deigned to reply. Susan suspected a sneer at Presbyterianism in her accent.
"That"ll be nice," she murmured. She was eager to escape. "I"ll go for my things."
"You can walk down and take the Fourth Street car," suggested her landlady. "Then you can watch out and not miss the store.
The conductors are very impudent and forgetful."
Susan escaped from the house as speedily as her flying feet would take her down the two flights. In the street once more, her spirits rose. She went south to Fourth Street, decided to walk instead of taking a car. She now found herself in much more impressive surroundings than before, and realized that Sixth Street was really one of the minor streets. The further uptown she went, the more excited she became. After the district of stately mansions with wonderful carriages driving up and away and women dressed like those in the ill.u.s.trated story papers, came splendid shops and hotels, finer than Susan had believed there were anywhere in the world. And most of the people--the crowds on crowds of people!--looked prosperous and cheerful and so delightfully citified! She wondered why so many of the men stared at her. She a.s.sumed it must be something rural in her appearance though that ought to have set the women to staring, too. But she thought little about this, so absorbed was she in seeing all the new things. She walked slowly, pausing to inspect the shop windows--the gorgeous dresses and hats and jewelry, the thousand costly things scattered in careless profusion. And the crowds! How secure she felt among these mult.i.tudes of strangers, not one of them knowing or suspecting her secret of shame! She no longer had the sense of being outcast, branded.
When she had gone so far that it seemed to her she certainly must have missed the drug store, carefully though she had inspected each corner as she went, she decided that she must stop someone of this hurrying throng and inquire the way. While she was still s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g her courage to this boldness, she espied the sign and hastened joyfully across the street. She and Wylie welcomed each other like old friends. He was delighted when he learned that she had taken the room.
"You won"t mind Aunt Kate after a while," said he. "She"s sour and nosey, but she"s honest and respectable--and that"s the main thing just now with you. And I think you"ll get a job all right.
Aunt Kate"s got a lady friend that"s head saleslady at Shillito"s. She"ll know of something."
Wylie was so kind and so hopeful that Susan felt already settled. As soon as customers came in, she took her parcel and went, Wylie saying, "I"ll drop round after supper and see how things are getting on." She took the Sixth Street car back, and felt like an old resident. She was critical of Sixth Street now, and of the women she had been admiring there less than two hours before--critical of their manners and of their dress. The exterior of the boarding house no longer awed her. She was getting a point of view--as she proudly realized. By the time Sam came--and surely that wouldn"t be many days--she would be quite transformed.
She mounted the steps and was about to ring when Mrs. Wylie herself, with stormy brow and snapping eyes, opened the door.
"Go into the parlor," she jerked out from between her unpleasant-looking receding teeth.
Susan gave her a glance of frightened wonder and obeyed.
CHAPTER VIII
AT the threshold her bundles dropped to the floor and all color fled from her face. Before her stood her Uncle George and Sam Wright and his father. The two elderly men were glowering at her; Sam, white as his shirt and limp, was hanging his head.
"So, miss!--You"ve got back, eh?" cried her uncle in a tone she would not have believed could come from him.
As quickly as fear had seized her she now shook it off. "Yes, Uncle," she said calmly, meeting his angry eyes without flinching. And back came that expression of resolution--of stubbornness we call it when it is the flag of opposition to _our_ will.
"What"d have become of you," demanded her uncle, "if I hadn"t found out early this morning, and got after Sam here and choked the truth out of him?"
Susan gazed at Sam; but he was such a pitiful figure, so mean and frightened, that she glanced quickly back to her uncle. She said:
"But he didn"t know where I was."
"Don"t lie to me," cried Warham. "It won"t do you any good, any more than his lying kept us from finding you. We came on the train and saw the Waterburys in the street and they"d seen you go into the drug store. We"d have caught you there if we"d been a few minutes sooner, but we drove, and got here in time. Now, tell me, Susan"--and his voice was cruelly harsh--"all about what"s been going on between you and Sam."
She gazed fearlessly and was silent.
"Speak up!" commanded Sam"s father.