"Yes."
"You"ll have hard work finding a job at anything like as much as ten per. I"ve got two trades, and I couldn"t at either one."
"I don"t expect to find it."
"Then what are you going to do?"
"Take what I can get--until I"ve been made hard enough--or strong enough--or whatever it is--to stop being a fool."
This indication of latent good sense relieved Miss Hinkle.
"I"ll tell "em you may be down tomorrow. Think it over for another day."
Susan shook her head. "They"ll have to get somebody else."
And, as Miss Hinkle reached the threshold, "Wait till I do the dress up. You"ll take it for me?"
"Why send the things back?" urged Mary. "They belong to you.
G.o.d knows you earned "em."
Susan, standing now, looked down at the finery. "So I did.
I"ll keep them," said she. "They"d p.a.w.n for something."
"With your looks they"d wear for a heap more. But keep "em, anyhow. And I"ll not tell Jeffries you"ve quit. It"ll do no harm to hold your job open a day or so."
"As you like," said Susan, to end the discussion. "But I have quit."
"No matter. After you"ve had something to eat, you"ll feel different."
And Miss Hinkle nodded brightly and departed. Susan resumed her seat at the bare wobbly little table, resumed her listless att.i.tude. She did not move until Ellen came in, holding out a note and saying, "A boy from your store brung this--here."
"Thank you," said Susan, taking the note. In it she found a twenty-dollar bill and a five. On the sheet of paper round it was scrawled:
Take the day off. Here"s your commission. We"ll raise your pay in a few weeks, L. L. J.
So Mary Hinkle had told them either that she was quitting or that she was thinking of quitting, and they wished her to stay, had used the means they believed she could not resist. In a dreary way this amused her. As if she cared whether or not life was kept in this worthless body of hers, in her tired heart, in her disgusted mind! Then she dropped back into listlessness. When she was aroused again it was by Gideon, completely filling the small doorway. "h.e.l.lo, my dear!" cried he cheerfully. "Mind my smoking?"
Susan slowly turned her head toward him, surveyed him with an expression but one removed from the blank look she would have had if there had been no one before her.
"I"m feeling fine today," pursued Gideon, advancing a step and so bringing himself about halfway to the table. "Had a couple of pick-me-ups and a fat breakfast. How are you?"
"I"m always well."
"Thought you seemed a little seedy." His shrewd sensual eyes were exploring the openings in her nightdress. "You"ll be mighty glad to get out of this hole. Gosh! It"s hot. Don"t see how you stand it. I"m a law abiding citizen but I must say I"d turn criminal before I"d put up with this."
In the underworld from which Gideon had sprung--the underworld where welters the overwhelming ma.s.s of the human race--there are three main types. There are the hopeless and spiritless--the ma.s.s--who welter pa.s.sively on, breeding and dying. There are the spirited who also possess both shrewdness and calculation; they push upward by hook and by crook, always mindful of the futility of the struggle of the petty criminal of the slums against the police and the law; they arrive and found the aristocracies of the future. The third is the criminal cla.s.s. It is also made up of the spirited--but the spirited who, having little shrewdness and no calculation--that is, no ability to foresee and measure consequences--wage clumsy war upon society and pay the penalty of their fatuity in lives of wretchedness even more wretched than the common lot. Gideon belonged to the second cla.s.s--the cla.s.s that pushes upward without getting into jail; he was a fair representative of this type, neither its best nor its worst, but about midway of its range between arrogant, all-dominating plutocrat and shystering merchant or lawyer or politician who barely escapes the criminal cla.s.s.
"You don"t ask me to sit down, dearie," he went on facetiously.
"But I"m not so mad that I won"t do it."
He took the seat Miss Hinkle had cleared on the bed. His glance wandered disgustedly from object to object in the crowded yet bare attic. He caught a whiff of the odor from across the hall--from the fresh-air shaft--and hastily gave several puffs at his cigar to saturate his surroundings with its perfume. Susan acted as if she were alone in the room.
She had not even drawn together her nightgown.
"I phoned your store about you," resumed Gideon. "They said you hadn"t showed up--wouldn"t till tomorrow. So I came round here and your landlady sent me up. I want to take you for a drive this afternoon. We can dine up to Claremont or farther, if you like."
"No, thanks," said Susan. "I can"t go."
"Upty-tupty!" cried Gideon. "What"s the lady so sour about?"
"I"m not sour."
"Then why won"t you go?"
"I can"t."
"But we"ll have a chance to talk over what I"m going to do for you."
"You"ve kept your word," said Susan.
"That was only part. Besides, I"d have given your house the order, anyhow."
Susan"s eyes suddenly lighted up. "You would?" she cried.
"Well--a part of it. Not so much, of course. But I never let pleasure interfere with business. n.o.body that does ever gets very far."
Her expression made him hasten to explain--without being conscious why. "I said--_part_ of the order, my dear. They owe to you about half of what they"ll make off me. . . . What"s that money on the table? Your commission?"
"Yes."
"Twenty-five? Um!" Gideon laughed. "Well, I suppose it"s as generous as I"d be, in the same circ.u.mstances. Encourage your employees, but don"t swell-head "em--that"s the good rule. I"ve seen many a promising young chap ruined by a raise of pay. . . .
Now, about you and me." Gideon took a roll of bills from his trousers pocket, counted off five twenties, tossed them on the table. "There!"
One of the bills in falling touched Susan"s hand. She jerked the hand away as if the bill had been afire. She took all five of them, folded them, held them out to him. "The house has paid me," said she.
"That"s honest," said he, nodding approvingly. "I like it.
But in your case it don"t apply."
These two, thus facing a practical situation, revealed an important, overlooked truth about human morals. Humanity divides broadly into three cla.s.ses: the arrived; those who will never arrive and will never try; those in a state of flux, attempting and either failing or succeeding. The arrived and the inert together preach and to a certain extent practice an idealistic system of morality that interferes with them in no way. It does not interfere with the arrived because they have no need to infringe it, except for amus.e.m.e.nt; it does not interfere with the inert, but rather helps them to bear their lot by giving them a cheering notion that their insignificance is due to their goodness. This idealistic system receives the homage of lip service from the third and struggling section of mankind, but no more, for in practice it would hamper them at every turn in their efforts to fight their way up. Susan was, at that stage of her career, a candidate for membership in the struggling cla.s.s. Her heart was set firmly against the unwritten, unspoken, even unwhispered code of practical morality which dominates the struggling cla.s.s. But life had at least taught her the folly of intolerance. So when Gideon talked in terms of that practical morality, she listened without offense; and she talked to him in terms of it because to talk the idealistic morality in which she had been bred and before which she bowed the knee in sincere belief would have been simply to excite his laughter at her innocence and his contempt for her folly.
"I feel that I"ve been paid," said she. "I did it for the house--because I owed it to them."
"Only for the house?" said he with insinuating tenderness. He took and pressed the fingers extended with the money in them.
"Only for the house," she repeated, a hard note in her voice.
And her fingers slipped away, leaving the money in his hand.
"At least, I suppose it must have been for the house," she added, reflectively, talking to herself aloud. "Why did I do it? I don"t know. I don"t know. They say one always has a reason for what one does. But I often can"t find any reason for things I do--that, for instance. I simply did it because it seemed to me not to matter much what _I_ did with myself, and they wanted the order so badly." Then she happened to become conscious of his presence and to see a look of uneasiness, self-complacence, as if he were thinking that he quite understood this puzzle. She disconcerted him with what vain men call a cruel snub. "But whatever the reason, it certainly couldn"t have been you," said she.
"Now, look here, Lorna," protested Gideon, the beginnings of anger in his tone. "That"s not the way to talk if you want to get on."