"No. I"ve got plenty."
"We must look in at that Jolly Rovers" ball tonight. There"ll be a lot of fellows with money there.
"We can sure pull off something pretty good. Anyhow, we"ll have fun. But you don"t care for the dances. Well, they are a waste of time. And because the men pay for a few b.u.m drinks and dance with a girl, they don"t want to give up anything more. How"s she to live, I want to know?"
"Would you like to get out of this, Clara?" interrupted Susan, coming out of her absent-mindedness.
"Would I! But what"s the use of talking?"
"But I mean, would you _really?_"
"Oh--if there was something better. But is there? I don"t see how I"d be as well off, respectable. As I said to the rescue woman, what is there in it for a "reclaimed" girl, as they call it? When they ask a man to reform they can offer him something--and he can go on up and up. But not for girls.
Nothing doing but charity and pity and the second table and the back door. I can make more money at this and have a better time, as long as my looks last. And I"ve turned down already a couple of chances to marry--men that wouldn"t have looked at me if I"d been in a store or a factory or living out. I may marry."
"Don"t do that," said Susan. "Marriage makes brutes of men, and slaves of women."
"You speak as if you knew."
"I do," said Susan, in a tone that forbade question.
"I ain"t exactly stuck on the idea myself," pursued Clara.
"And if I don"t, why when my looks are gone, where am I worse off than I"d be at the same age as a working girl? If I have to get a job then, I can get it--and I"ll not be broken down like the respectable women at thirty--those that work or those that slop round boozing and neglecting their children while their husbands work. Of course, there"s chances against you in this business. But so there is in every business. Suppose I worked in a factory and lost a leg in the machinery, like that girl of Mantell, the bricklayer"s? Suppose I get an awful disease--to hear some people talk you"d think there wasn"t any chances of death or horrible diseases at respectable work. Why, how could anybody be worse off than if they got lung trouble and boils as big as your fist like those girls over in the tobacco factory?"
"You needn"t tell me about work," said Susan. "The streets are full of wrecks from work--and the hospitals--and the graveyard over on the Island. You can always go to that slavery. But I mean a respectable life, with everything better."
"Has one of those swell women from uptown been after you?"
"No. This isn"t a pious pipe dream."
"You sound like it. One of them swell silk smarties got at me when I was in the hospital with the fever. She was a bird--she was. She handed me a line of grand talk, and I, being sort of weak with sickness, took it in. Well, when she got right down to business, what did she want me to do? Be a dressmaker or a lady"s maid. Me work twelve, fourteen, G.o.d knows how many hours--be too tired to have any fun--travel round with dead ones--be a doormat for a lot of cheap people that are tryin" to make out they ain"t human like the rest of us. _Me!_ And when I said, "No, thank you," what do you think?"
"Did she offer to get you a good home in the country?" said Susan.
"That was it. The _country!_ The nerve of her! But I called her bluff, all right, all right. I says to her, "Are you going to the country to live?" And she reared at _me_ daring to question _her_, and said she wasn"t. "You"d find it dead slow, wouldn"t you?" says I. And she kind o" laughed and looked almost human. "Then," says I, "no more am I going to the country. I"ll take my chances in little old New York," I says."
"I should think so!" exclaimed Susan.
"I"d like to be respectable, if I could afford it. But there"s nothing in that game for poor girls unless they haven"t got no looks to sell and have to sell the rest of themselves for some factory boss to get rich off of while they get poorer and weaker every day. And when they say "G.o.d" to me, I say, "Who"s he? He must be somebody that lives up on Fifth Avenue. We ain"t seen him down our way.""
"I mean, go on the stage," resumed Susan.
"I wouldn"t mind, if I could get in right. Everything in this world depends on getting in right. I was born four flights up in a tenement, and I"ve been in wrong ever since."
"I was in wrong from the beginning, too," said Susan, thoughtfully. "In wrong--that"s it exactly." Clara"s eyes again became eager with the hope of a peep into the mystery of Susan"s origin. But Susan went on, "Yes, I"ve always been in wrong. Always."
"Oh, no," declared Clara. "You"ve got education--and manners--and ladylike instincts. I"m at home here. I was never so well off in my life. I"m, you might say, on my way up in the world. Most of us girls are--like the fellow that ain"t got nothing to eat or no place to sleep and gets into jail--he"s better off, ain"t he? But you--you don"t belong here at all."
"I belong anywhere--and everywhere--and nowhere," said Susan.
"Yes, I belong here. I"ve got a chance uptown. If it pans out, I"ll let you in."
Clara looked at her wistfully. Clara had a wicked temper when she was in liquor, and had the ordinary human p.r.o.neness to lying, to mischievous gossip, and to utter laziness. The life she led, compelling cleanliness and neatness and a certain amount of thrift under penalty of instant ruin, had done her much good in saving her from going to pieces and becoming the ordinary sloven and drag on the energies of some man.
"Lorna," she now said, "I do believe you like me a little."
"More than that," Susan a.s.sured her. "You"ve saved me from being hard-hearted. I must go to the hospital. So long!"
"How about this evening?" asked Clara.
"I"m staying in. I"ve got something to do."
"Well--I may be home early--unless I go to the ball."
Susan was refused admittance at the hospital. Spenser, they said, had received a caller, had taxed his strength enough for the day. Nor would it be worth while to return in the morning. The same caller was coming again. Spenser had said she was to come in the afternoon. She received this cheerfully, yet not without a certain sense of hurt--which, however, did not last long.
When she was admitted to Spenser the following afternoon, she faced him guiltily--for the thoughts Brent had set to bubbling and boiling in her. And her guilt showed in the tone of her greeting, in the reluctance and forced intensity of her kiss and embrace. She had compressed into the five most receptive years of a human being"s life an experience that was, for one of her intelligence and education, equal to many times five years of ordinary life. And this experience had developed her instinct for concealing her deep feelings into a fixed habit.
But it had not made her a liar--had not robbed her of her fundamental courage and self-respect which made her shrink in disdain from deceiving anyone who seemed to her to have the right to frankness. Spenser, she felt as always, had that right--this, though he had not been frank with her; still, that was a matter for his own conscience and did not affect her conscience as to what was courageous and honorable toward him. So, had he been observing, he must have seen that something was wrong. But he was far too excited about his own affairs to note her.
"My luck"s turned!" cried he, after kissing her with enthusiasm. "Fitzalan has sent Jack Sperry to me, and we"re to collaborate on a play. I told you Fitz was the real thing."
Susan turned hastily away to hide her telltale face.
"Who"s Sperry?" asked she, to gain time for self-control.
"Oh, He"s a play-smith--and a bear at it. He has knocked together half a dozen successes. He"ll supply the trade experience that I lack, and Fitzalan will be sure to put on our piece."
"You"re a lot better--aren"t you?"
"Better? I"m almost well."
He certainly had made a sudden stride toward health. By way of doing something progressive he had had a shave, and that had restored the look of youth to his face--or, rather, had uncovered it. A strong, handsome face it was--much handsomer than Brent"s--and with the subtle, moral weakness of optimistic vanity well concealed. Yes, much handsomer than Brent"s, which wasn"t really handsome at all--yet was superbly handsomer, also--the handsomeness that comes from being through and through a somebody. She saw again why she had cared for Rod so deeply; but she also saw why she could not care again, at least not in that same absorbed, self-effacing way. Physical attraction--yes. And a certain remnant of the feeling of comradeship, too. But never again utter belief, worshipful admiration--or any other degree of belief or admiration beyond the mild and critical. She herself had grown. Also, Brent"s penetrating and just a.n.a.lysis of Spenser had put clearly before her precisely what he was--precisely what she herself had been vaguely thinking of him.
As he talked on and on of Sperry"s visit and the new projects, she listened, looking at his character in the light Brent had turned upon it--Brent who had in a few brief moments turned such floods of light upon so many things she had been seeing dimly or not at all. Moderate prosperity and moderate adversity bring out the best there is in a man; the extreme of either brings out his worst. The actual man is the best there is in him, and not the worst, but it is one of the tragedies of life that those who have once seen his worst ever afterward have sense of it chiefly, and cannot return to the feeling they had for him when his worst was undreamed of. "I"m not in love with Brent," thought Susan. "But having known him, I can"t ever any more care for Rod. He seems small beside Brent--and he _is_ small."
Spenser in his optimistic dreaming aloud had reached a point where it was necessary to a.s.sign Susan a role in his dazzling career. "You"ll not have to go on the stage," said he. "I"ll look out for you. By next week Sperry and I will have got together a scenario for the play and when Sperry reads it to Fitzalan we"ll get an advance of at least five hundred. So you and I will take a nice room and bath uptown--as a starter--and we"ll be happy again--happier than before."
"No, I"m going to support myself," said Susan promptly.
"Trash!" cried Spenser, smiling tenderly at her. "Do you suppose I"d allow you to mix up in stage life? You"ve forgotten how jealous I am of you. You don"t know what I"ve suffered since I"ve been here sick, brooding over what you"re doing, to----"
She laid her fingers on his lips. "What"s the use of fretting about anything that has to be?" said she, smilingly. "I"m going to support myself. You may as well make up your mind to it."
"Plenty of time to argue that out," said he, and his tone forecast his verdict on the arguing. And he changed the subject by saying, "I see you still cling to your fad of looking fascinating about the feet. That was one of the reasons I never could trust you. A girl with as charming feet and ankles as you have, and so much pride in getting them up well, simply cannot be trustworthy." He laughed.
"No, you were made to be taken care of, my dear."
She did not press the matter. She had taken her stand; that was enough for the present. After an hour with him, she went home to get herself something to eat on her gas stove.
Spenser"s confidence in the future did not move her even to the extent of laying out half a dollar on a restaurant dinner.
Women have the habit of believing in the optimistic outpourings of egotistical men, and often hasten men along the road to ruin by proclaiming this belief and acting upon it.
But not intelligent women of experience; that sort of woman, by checking optimistic husbands, fathers, sons, lovers, has even put off ruin--sometimes until death has had the chance to save the optimist from the inevitable consequence of his folly. When she finished her chop and vegetable, instead of lighting a cigarette and lingering over a cup of black coffee she quickly straightened up and began upon the play Brent had given her. She had read it several times the night before, and again and again during the day. But not until now did she feel sufficiently calmed down from her agitations of thought and emotion to attack the play understandingly.
Thanks to defective education the most enlightened of us go through life much like a dim-sighted man who has no spectacles. Almost the whole of the wonderful panorama of the universe is unseen by us, or, if seen, is but partially understood or absurdly misunderstood. When it comes to the subtler things, the things of science and art, rarely indeed is there anyone who has the necessary training to get more than the crudest, most imperfect pleasure from them. What little training we have is so limping that it spoils the charm of mystery with which savage ignorance invests the universe from blade of gra.s.s to star, and does not put in place of that broken charm the profounder and loftier joy of understanding.