To take for ill.u.s.tration the most widely diffused of all the higher arts and sciences, reading: How many so-called "educated" people can read understandingly even a novel, the form of literature designed to make the least demand upon the mind? People say they have read, but, when questioned, they show that they have got merely a glimmering of the real action, the faintest hint of style and characterization, have perhaps noted some stray epigram which they quote with evidently faulty grasp of its meaning.
When the thing read is a play, almost no one can get from it a coherent notion of what it is about. Most of us have nothing that can justly be called imagination; our early training at home and at school killed in the shoot that finest plant of the mind"s garden. So there is no ability to fill in the picture which the dramatic author draws in outline. Susan had not seen "Cavalleria Rusticana" either as play or as opera. But when she and Spenser were together in Forty-fourth Street, she had read plays and had dreamed over them; the talk had been almost altogether of plays--of writing plays, of constructing scenes, of productions, of acting, of all the many aspects of the theater. Spenser read scenes to her, got her to help him with criticism, and she was present when he went over his work with Drumley, Riggs, Townsend and the others. Thus, reading a play was no untried art to her.
She read "Cavalleria" through slowly, taking about an hour to it. She saw now why Brent had given it to her as the primer lesson--the simple, elemental story of a peasant girl"s ruin under promise of marriage; of her lover"s wearying of one who had only crude physical charm; of his being attracted by a young married woman, gay as well as pretty, offering the security in intrigue that an unmarried woman could not offer.
Such a play is at once the easiest and the hardest to act--the easiest because every audience understands it perfectly and supplies unconsciously almost any defect in the acting; the hardest because any actor with the education necessary to acting well finds it next to impossible to divest himself or herself of the sophistications of education and get back to the elemental animal.
_Santuzza_ or _Lola_? Susan debated. _Santuzza_ was the big and easy part; _Lola_, the smaller part, was of the kind that is usually neglected. But Susan saw possibilities in the character of the woman who won _Turiddu_ away--the triumphant woman. The two women represented the two kinds of love--the love that is serious, the love that is light. And experience had taught her why it is that human nature soon tires of intensity, turns to frivolity. She felt that, if she could act, she would try to show that not _Turiddu"s_ fickleness nor his contempt of the woman who had yielded, but _Santuzza"s_ sad intensity and _Lola"s_ b.u.t.terfly gayety had cost _Santuzza_ her lover and her lover his life. So, it was not _Santuzza"s_ but _Lola"s_ first entrance that she studied.
In the next morning"s mail, under cover addressed "Miss Susan Lenox, care of Miss Lorna Sackville," as she had written it for Brent, came the promised check for forty dollars. It was signed John P. Garvey, Secretary, and was inclosed with a note bearing the same signature:
DEAR MADAM:
Herewith I send you a check for forty dollars for the first week"s salary under your arrangement with Mr. Brent. No receipt is necessary. Until further notice a check for the same amount will be mailed you each Thursday. Unless you receive notice to the contrary, please call as before, at three o"clock next Wednesday.
It made her nervous to think of those five days before she should see Brent. He had a.s.sured her he would expect nothing from her; but she felt she must be able to show him that she had not been wasting her time--his time, the time for which he was paying nearly six dollars a day. She must work every waking hour, except the two hours each day at the hospital.
She recalled what Brent had said about the advantage of being contented alone--and how everything worth doing must be done in solitude. She had never thought about her own feelings as to company and solitude, as it was not her habit to think about herself. But now she realized how solitary she had been, and how it had bred in her habits of thinking and reading--and how valuable these habits would be to her in her work. There was Rod, for example. He hated being alone, must have someone around even when he was writing; and he had no taste for order or system. She understood why it was so hard for him to stick at anything, to put anything through to the finish. With her fondness for being alone, with her pa.s.sion for reading and thinking about what she read, surely she ought soon to begin to accomplish something--if there was any ability in her.
She found Rod in higher spirits. Several ideas for his play had come to him; he already saw it acted, successful, drawing crowded houses, bringing him in anywhere from five hundred to a thousand a week. She was not troubled hunting for things to talk about with him--she, who could think of but one thing and that a secret from him. He talked his play, a steady stream with not a seeing glance at her or a question about her. She watched the little clock at the side of the bed. At the end of an hour to the minute, she interrupted him in the middle of a sentence. "I must go now," said she, rising.
"Sit down," he cried. "You can stay all day. The doctor says it will do me good to have you to talk with. And Sperry isn"t coming until tomorrow."
"I can"t do it," said she. "I must go."
He misunderstood her avoiding glance. "Now, Susie--sit down there," commanded he. "We"ve got plenty of money. You--you needn"t bother about it any more."
"We"re not settled yet," said she. "Until we are, I"d not dare take the risk." She was subtly adroit by chance, not by design.
"Risk!" exclaimed he angrily. "There"s no risk. I"ve as good as got the advance money. Sit down."
She hesitated. "Don"t be angry," pleaded she in a voice that faltered. "But I must go."
Into his eyes came the gleam of distrust and jealousy. "Look at me," he ordered.
With some difficulty she forced her eyes to meet his.
"Have you got a lover?"
"No."
"Then where do you get the money we"re living on?" He counted on her being too humiliated to answer in words. Instead of the hanging head and burning cheeks he saw clear, steady eyes, heard a calm, gentle and dignified voice say:
"In the streets."
His eyes dropped and a look of abject shame made his face pitiable. "Good Heavens," he muttered.
"How low we are!"
"We"ve been doing the best we could," said she simply.
"Isn"t there any decency anywhere in you?" he flashed out, eagerly seizing the chance to forget his own shame in contemplating her greater degradation.
She looked out of the window. There was something terrible in the calmness of her profile. She finally said in an even, pensive voice:
"You have been intimate with a great many women, Rod. But you have never got acquainted with a single one."
He laughed good-humoredly. "Oh, yes, I have. I"ve learned that "every woman is at heart a rake," as Mr. Jingle Pope says."
She looked at him again, her face now curiously lighted by her slow faint smile. "Perhaps they showed you only what they thought you"d be able to appreciate," she suggested.
He took this as evidence of her being jealous of him. "Tell me, Susan, did you leave me--in Forty-fourth Street--because you thought or heard I wasn"t true to you?"
"What did Drumley tell you?"
"I asked him, as you said in your note. He told me he knew no reason."
So Drumley had decided it was best Rod should not know why she left. Well, perhaps--probably--Drumley was right. But there was no reason why he shouldn"t know the truth now. "I left,"
said she, "because I saw we were bad for each other."
This amused him. She saw that he did not believe. It wounded her, but she smiled carelessly. Her smile encouraged him to say: "I couldn"t quite make up my mind whether the reason was jealousy or because you had the soul of a shameless woman.
You see, I know human nature, and I know that a woman who once crosses the line never crosses back. I"ll always have to watch you, my dear. But somehow I like it. I guess you have--you and I have--a rotten streak in us. We were brought up too strictly. That always makes one either too firm or too loose. I used to think I liked good women. But I don"t.
They bore me. That shows I"m rotten."
"Or that your idea of what"s good is--is mistaken."
"You don"t pretend that _you_ haven"t done wrong?" cried Rod.
"I might have done worse," replied she. "I might have wronged others. No, Rod, I can"t honestly say I"ve ever felt wicked."
"Why, what brought you here?"
She reflected a moment, then smiled. "Two things brought me down," said she. "In the first place, I wasn"t raised right.
I was raised as a lady instead of as a human being. So I didn"t know how to meet the conditions of life. In the second place--" her smile returned, broadened--"I was too--too what"s called "good.""
"Pity about you!" mocked he.
"Being what"s called good is all very well if you"re independent or if you"ve got a husband or a father to do life"s dirty work for you--or, perhaps, if you happen to be in some profession like preaching or teaching--though I don"t believe the so-called "goodness" would let you get very far even as a preacher. In most lines, to practice what we"re taught as children would be to go to the bottom like a stone.
You know this is a hard world, Rod. It"s full of men and women fighting desperately for food and clothes and a roof to cover them--fighting each other. And to get on you"ve got to have the courage and the indifference to your fellow beings that"ll enable you to do it."
"There"s a lot of truth in that," admitted Spenser. "If I"d not been such a "good fellow," as they call it--a fellow everybody liked--if I"d been like Brent, for instance--Brent, who never would have any friends, who never would do anything for anybody but himself, who hadn"t a thought except for his career--why, I"d be where he is."
It was at the tip of Susan"s tongue to say, "Yes--strong--able to help others--able to do things worth while." But she did not speak.
Rod went on: "I"m not going to be a fool any longer. I"m going to be too busy to have friends or to help people or to do anything but push my own interests."
Susan, indifferent to being thus wholly misunderstood, was again moving toward the door. "I"ll be back this evening, as usual," said she.
Spenser"s face became hard and lowering: "You"re going to stay here now, or you"re not coming back," said he. "You can take your choice. Do you want me to know you"ve got the soul of a streetwalker?"