"Then I"ll give you one out of stock--I mean I"ll borrow one for you. This dinner"s a house affair, you know--to get Gid"s order. It"ll be worth thousands to them."
"There wouldn"t be anything to fit me on such short notice,"
said Susan, casting about for an excuse for not wearing borrowed finery.
"Why, you"ve got a model figure. I"ll pick you out a white dress--and a black and white hat. I know "em all, and I know one that"ll make you look simply lovely."
Susan did not protest. She was profoundly indifferent to what happened to her. Life seemed a show in which she had no part, and at which she sat a listless spectator. A few minutes, and in puffed Jeffries, solicitous as a fussy old bird with a new family.
"You"re a lot better, ain"t you?" cried he, before he had looked at her. "Oh, yes, you"ll be all right. And you"ll have a lovely time with Mr. Gideon. He"s a perfect gentleman--knows how to treat a lady. . . . The minute I laid eyes on you I said to myself, said I, "Jeffries, she"s a mascot." And you are, my dear. You"ll get us the order. But you mustn"t talk business with him, you understand?"
"Yes," said Susan, wearily.
"He"s a gentleman, you know, and it don"t do to mix business and social pleasures. You string him along quiet and ladylike and elegant, as if there wasn"t any such things as cloaks or dresses in the world. He"ll understand all right. . . . If you land the order, my dear, I"ll see that you get a nice present. A nice dress--the one we"re going to lend you--if he gives us a slice. The dress and twenty-five in cash, if he gives us all. How"s that?"
"Thank you," said Susan. "I"ll do my best."
"You"ll land it. You"ll land it. I feel as if we had it with his O. K. on it."
Susan shivered. "Don"t--don"t count on me too much," she said hesitatingly. "I"m not in very good spirits, I"m sorry to say."
"A little pressed for money?" Jeffries hesitated, made an effort, blurted out what was for him, the business man, a giddy generosity. "On your way out, stop at the cashier"s. He"ll give you this week"s pay in advance." Jeffries hesitated, decided against dangerous liberality. "Not ten, you understand, but say six. You see, you won"t have been with us a full week." And he hurried away, frightened by his prodigality, by these hysterical impulses that were rushing him far from the course of sound business sense. "As Jones says, I"m a generous old fool," he muttered. "My soft heart"ll ruin me yet."
Jeffries sent Mary Hinkle home with Susan to carry the dress and hat, to help her make a toilet and to "start her off right." In the hour before they left the store there was offered a typical ill.u.s.tration of why and how "business" is able to suspend the normal moral sense and to subst.i.tute for it a highly ingenious counterfeit of supreme moral obligation to it. The hysterical Jeffries had infected the entire personnel with his excitement, with the sense that a great battle was impending and that the cause of the house, which was the cause of everyone who drew pay from it, had been intrusted to the young recruit with the fascinating figure and the sweet, sad face. And Susan"s sensitive nature was soon vibrating in response to this feeling. It terrified her that she, the inexperienced, had such grave responsibility. It made her heart heavy to think of probable failure, when the house had been so good to her, had taken her in, had given her unusual wages, had made it possible for her to get a start in life, had intrusted to her its cause, its chance to retrieve a bad season and to protect its employees instead of discharging a lot of them.
"Have you got long white gloves?" asked Mary Hinkle, as they walked up Broadway, she carrying the dress and Susan the hat box.
"Only a few pairs of short ones."
"You must have long white gloves--and a pair of white stockings."
"I can"t afford them."
"Oh, Jeffries told me to ask you--and to go to work and buy them if you hadn"t."
They stopped at Wanamaker"s. Susan was about to pay, when Mary stopped her. "If you pay," said she, "maybe you"ll get your money back from the house, and maybe you won"t. If I pay, they"ll not make a kick on giving it back to me."
The dress Mary had selected was a simple white batiste, cut out at the neck prettily, and with the elbow sleeves that were then the fashion. "Your arms and throat are lovely," said Mary.
"And your hands are mighty nice, too--that"s why I"m sure you"ve never been a real working girl--leastways, not for a long time. When you get to the restaurant and draw off your gloves in a slow, careless, ladylike kind of way, and put your elbows on the table--my, how he will take on!" Mary looked at her with an intense but not at all malignant envy. "If you don"t land high, it"ll be because you"re a fool. And you ain"t that."
"I"m afraid I am," replied Susan. "Yes, I guess I"m what"s called a fool--what probably is a fool."
"You want to look out then," warned Miss Hinkle. "You want to go to work and get over that. Beauty don"t count, unless a girl"s got shrewdness. The streets are full of beauties sellin" out for a bare living. They thought they couldn"t help winning, and they got left, and the plain girls who had to hustle and manage have pa.s.sed them. Go to Del"s or Rector"s or the Waldorf or the Madrid or any of those high-toned places, and see the women with the swell clothes and jewelry! The married ones, and the other kind, both. Are they raving tearing beauties? Not often. . . . The trouble with me is I"ve been too good-hearted and too soft about being flattered.
I was too good looking, and a small easy living came too easy.
You--I"d say you were--that you had brains but were shy about using them. What"s the good of having them? Might as well be a b.o.o.b. Then, too, you"ve got to go to work and look out about being too refined. The refined, nice ones goes the lowest--if they get pushed--and this is a pushing world. You"ll get pushed just as far as you"ll let "em. Take it from me. I"ve been down the line."
Susan"s low spirits sank lower. These disagreeable truths--for observation and experience made her fear they were truths--filled her with despondency. What was the matter with life? As between the morality she had been taught and the practical morality of this world upon which she had been cast, which was the right? How "take hold"? How avert the impending disaster? What of the "good" should--_must_--she throw away? What should--_must_--she cling to?
Mary Hinkle was shocked by the poor little room. "This is no place for a lady!" cried she. "But it won"t last long--not after tonight, if you play your cards halfway right."
"I"m very well satisfied," said Susan. "If I can only keep this!"
She felt no interest in the toilet until the dress and hat were unpacked and laid out upon the bed. At sight of them her eyes became a keen and lively gray--never violet for that kind of emotion--and there surged up the love of finery that dwells in every normal woman--and in every normal man--that is put there by a heredity dating back through the ages to the very beginning of conscious life--and does not leave them until life gives up the battle and prepares to vacate before death.
Ellen, the maid, pa.s.sing the door, saw and entered to add her ecstatic exclamations to the excitement. Down she ran to bring Mrs. Tucker, who no sooner beheld the glory displayed upon the humble bed than she too was in a turmoil. Susan dressed with the aid of three maids as interested and eager as ever robed a queen for coronation. Ellen brought hot water and a larger bowl. Mrs. Tucker wished to lend a highly scented toilet soap she used when she put on gala attire; but Susan insisted upon her own plain soap. They all helped her bathe; they helped her select the best underclothes from her small store. Susan would put on her own stockings; but Ellen got one foot into one of the slippers and Mrs. Tucker looked after the other foot.
"Ain"t they lovely?" said Ellen to Mrs. Tucker, as they knelt together at their task. "I never see such feet. Not a lump on "em, but like feet in a picture."
"It takes a mighty good leg to look good in a white stocking,"
observed Mary. "But yours is so nice and long and slim that they"d stand most anything."
Mrs. Tucker and Ellen stood by with no interference save suggestion and comment, while Mary, who at one time worked for a hairdresser, did Susan"s thick dark hair. Susan would permit no elaborations, much to Miss Hinkle"s regret. But the three agreed that she was right when the simple sweep of the vital blue-black hair was finished in a loose and graceful knot at the back, and Susan"s small, healthily pallid face looked its loveliest, with the violet-gray eyes soft and sweet and serious. Mrs. Tucker brought the hat from the bed, and Susan put it on--a large black straw of a most becoming shape with two pure white plumes curling round the crown and a third, not so long, rising gracefully from the big buckle where the three plumes met. And now came the putting on of the dress. With as much care as if they were handling a rare and fragile vase, Mary and Mrs. Tucker held the dress for Susan to step into it.
Ellen kept her petticoat in place while the other two escorted the dress up Susan"s form.
Then the three worked together at hooking and smoothing. Susan washed her hands again, refused to let Mrs. Tucker run and bring powder, produced from a drawer some prepared chalk and with it safeguarded her nose against shine; she tucked the powder rag into her stocking. Last of all the gloves went on and a small handkerchief was thrust into the palm of the left glove.
"How do I look?" asked Susan. "Lovely"--"Fine"--"Just grand,"
exclaimed the three maids.
"I feel awfully dressed up," said she. "And it"s so hot!"
"You must go right downstairs where it"s cool and you won"t get wilted," cried Mrs. Tucker. "Hold your skirts close on the way. The steps and walls ain"t none too clean."
In the bathroom downstairs there was a long mirror built into the wall, a relic of the old house"s long departed youth of grandeur. As the tenant--Mr. Jessop--was out, Mrs. Tucker led the way into it. There Susan had the first satisfactory look at herself. She knew she was a pretty woman; she would have been weak-minded had she not known it. But she was amazed at herself. A touch here and there, a sinuous shifting of the body within the garments, and the suggestion of "dressed up"
vanished before the reflected eyes of her agitated a.s.sistants, who did not know what had happened but only saw the results.
She hardly knew the tall beautiful woman of fashion gazing at her from the mirror. Could it be that this was her hair?--these eyes hers--and the mouth and nose and the skin?
Was this long slender figure her very own? What an astounding difference clothes did make! Never before had Susan worn anything nearly so fine. "This is the way I ought to look all the time," thought she. "And this is the way I _will_ look!"
Only better--much better. Already her true eye was seeing the defects, the chances for improvement--how the hat could be re-bent and re-trimmed to adapt it to her features, how the dress could be altered to make it more tasteful, more effective in subtly attracting attention to her figure.
"How much do you suppose the dress cost, Miss Hinkle?" asked Ellen--the question Mrs. Tucker had been dying to put but had refrained from putting lest it should sound unrefined.
"It costs ninety wholesale," said Miss Hinkle. "That"d mean a hundred and twenty-five--a hundred and fifty, maybe if you was to try to buy it in a department store. And the hat--well, Lichtenstein"d ask fifty or sixty for it and never turn a hair."
"Gosh--ee?" exclaimed Ellen. "Did you ever hear the like?"
"I"m not surprised," said Mrs. Tucker, who in fact was flabbergasted. "Well--it"s worth the money to them that can afford to buy it. The good Lord put everything on earth to be used, I reckon. And Miss Sackville is the build for things like that. Now it"d be foolish on me, with a stomach and sitter that won"t let no skirt hang fit to look at."
The bell rang. The excitement died from Susan"s face, leaving it pale and cold. A wave of nausea swept through her. Ellen peeped out, Mrs. Tucker and Miss Hinkle listening with anxious faces. "It"s him!" whispered Ellen, "and there"s a taxi, too."
It was decided that Ellen should go to the door, that as she opened it Susan should come carelessly from the back room and advance along the hall. And this program was carried out with the result that as Gideon said, "Is Miss Sackville here?" Miss Sackville appeared before his widening, wondering, admiring eyes. He was dressed in the extreme of fashion and costliness in good taste; while it would have been impossible for him to look distinguished, he did look what he was--a prosperous business man with prospects. He came perfumed and rustling.
But he felt completely outcla.s.sed--until he reminded himself that for all her brave show of fashionable lady she was only a model while he was a fifteen-thousand-a-year man on the way to a partnership.
"Don"t you think we might dine on the veranda at Sherry"s?"
suggested he. "It"d be cool there."
At sight of him she had nerved herself, had keyed herself up toward recklessness. She was in for it. She would put it through. No futile cowardly shrinking and whimpering! Why not try to get whatever pleasure there was a chance for?
But--Sherry"s--was it safe? Yes, almost any of the Fifth Avenue places--except the Waldorf, possibly--was safe enough.
The circuit of Spenser and his friends lay in the more Bohemian Broadway district. He had taken her to Sherry"s only once, to see as part of a New York education the Sunday night crowd of fashionable people. "If you like," said she.
Gideon beamed. He would be able to show off his prize! As they drove away Susan glanced at the front parlor windows, saw the curtains agitated, felt the three friendly, excited faces palpitating. She leaned from the cab window, waved her hand, smiled. The three faces instantly appeared and immediately hid again lest Gideon should see.