Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

D >> David Graham Phillips >> Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

by
David Graham Phillips

Volume I

WITH A PORTRAIT
OF THE AUTHOR

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON

1917





DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

A TRIBUTE


Even now I cannot realize that he is dead, and often in the city
streets--on Fifth Avenue in particular--I find myself glancing
ahead for a glimpse of the tall, boyish, familiar
figure--experience once again a flash of the old happy expectancy.

I have lived in many lands, and have known men. I never knew a
finer man than Graham Phillips.

His were the clearest, bluest, most honest eyes I ever saw--eyes
that scorned untruth--eyes that penetrated all sham.

In repose his handsome features were a trifle stern--and the
magic of his smile was the more wonderful--such a sunny,
youthful, engaging smile.

His mere presence in a room was exhilarating. It seemed to
freshen the very air with a keen sweetness almost pungent.

He was tall, spare, leisurely, iron-strong; yet figure, features
and bearing were delightfully boyish.

Men liked him, women liked him when he liked them.

He was the most honest man I ever knew, clean in mind, clean-cut
in body, a little over-serious perhaps, except when among
intimates; a little prone to hoist the burdens of the world on
his young shoulders.

His was a knightly mind; a paladin character. But he could
unbend, and the memory of such hours with him--hours that can
never be again--hurts more keenly than the memory of calmer and
more sober moments.

We agreed in many matters, he and I; in many we differed. To me
it was a greater honor to differ in opinion with such a man than
to find an entire synod of my own mind.

Because--and of course this is the opinion of one man and worth
no more than that--I have always thought that Graham Phillips
was head and shoulders above us all in his profession.

He was to have been really great. He is--by his last book,
"Susan Lenox."

Not that, when he sometimes discussed the writing of it with me,
I was in sympathy with it. I was not. We always were truthful to
each other.

But when a giant molds a lump of clay into tremendous masses,
lesser men become confused by the huge contours, the vast
distances, the terrific spaces, the majestic scope of the
ensemble. So I. But he went on about his business.

I do not know what the public may think of "Susan Lenox." I
scarcely know what I think.

It is a terrible book--terrible and true and beautiful.

Under the depths there are unspeakable things that writhe. His
plumb-line touches them and they squirm. He bends his head from
the clouds to do it. Is it worth doing? I don't know.

But this I do know--that within the range of all fiction of all
lands and of all times no character has so overwhelmed me as the
character of Susan Lenox.

She is as real as life and as unreal. She is Life. Hers was the
concentrated nobility of Heaven and Hell. And the divinity of
the one and the tragedy of the other. For she had known
both--this girl--the most pathetic, the most human, the most
honest character ever drawn by an American writer.

In the presence of his last work, so overwhelming, so
stupendous, we lesser men are left at a loss. Its magnitude
demands the perspective that time only can lend it. Its dignity
and austerity and its pitiless truth impose upon us that honest
and intelligent silence which even the quickest minds concede is
necessary before an honest verdict.

Truth was his goddess; he wrought honestly and only for her.

He is dead, but he is to have his day in court. And whatever the
verdict, if it be a true one, were he living he would rest content.

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.



BEFORE THE CURTAIN


A few years ago, as to the most important and most interesting
subject in the world, the relations of the sexes, an author had
to choose between silence and telling those distorted truths
beside which plain lying seems almost white and quite harmless.
And as no author could afford to be silent on the subject that
underlies all subjects, our literature, in so far as it
attempted to deal with the most vital phases of human nature,
was beneath contempt. The authors who knew they were lying sank
almost as low as the nasty-nice purveyors of fake idealism and
candied pruriency who fancied they were writing the truth. Now
it almost seems that the day of lying conscious and unconscious
is about run. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free."

There are three ways of dealing with the sex relations of men
and women--two wrong and one right.

For lack of more accurate names the two wrong ways may be called
respectively the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental. Both are in
essence processes of spicing up and coloring up perfectly
innocuous facts of nature to make them poisonously attractive to
perverted palates. The wishy-washy literature and the
wishy-washy morality on which it is based are not one stage
more--or less--rotten than the libertine literature and the
libertine morality on which it is based. So far as degrading
effect is concerned, the "pure, sweet" story or play, false to
nature, false to true morality, propagandist of indecent
emotions disguised as idealism, need yield nothing to the
so-called "strong" story. Both pander to different forms of the
same diseased craving for the unnatural. Both produce moral
atrophy. The one tends to encourage the shallow and unthinking
in ignorance of life and so causes them to suffer the merciless
penalties of ignorance. The other tends to miseducate the
shallow and unthinking, to give them a ruinously false notion of
the delights of vice. The Anglo-Saxon "morality" is like a nude
figure salaciously draped; the Continental "strength" is like a
nude figure salaciously distorted. The Anglo-Saxon article reeks
the stench of disinfectants; the Continental reeks the stench of
degenerate perfume. The Continental shouts "Hypocrisy!" at the
Anglo-Saxon; the Anglo-Saxon shouts "Filthiness!" at the
Continental. Both are right; they are twin sisters of the same
horrid mother. And an author of either allegiance has to have
many a redeeming grace of style, of character drawing, of
philosophy, to gain him tolerance in a clean mind.

There is the third and right way of dealing with the sex
relations of men and women. That is the way of simple candor and
naturalness. Treat the sex question as you would any other
question. Don't treat it reverently; don't treat it rakishly.
Treat it naturally. Don't insult your intelligence and lower
your moral tone by thinking about either the decency or the
indecency of matters that are familiar, undeniable, and
unchangeable facts of life. Don't look on woman as mere female,
but as human being. Remember that she has a mind and a heart as
well as a body. In a sentence, don't join in the prurient clamor
of "purity" hypocrites and "strong" libertines that exaggerates
and distorts the most commonplace, if the most important feature
of life. Let us try to be as sensible about sex as we are trying
to be about all the other phenomena of the universe in this more
enlightened day.

Nothing so sweetens a sin or so delights a sinner as getting
big-eyed about it and him. Those of us who are naughty aren't
nearly so naughty as we like to think; nor are those of us who
are nice nearly so nice. Our virtues and our failings
are--perhaps to an unsuspected degree--the result of the
circumstances in which we are placed. The way to improve
individuals is to improve these circumstances; and the way to
start at improving the circumstances is by looking honestly and
fearlessly at things as they are. We must know our world and
ourselves before we can know what should be kept and what
changed. And the beginning of this wisdom is in seeing sex
relations rationally. Until that fundamental matter is brought
under the sway of good common sense, improvement in other directions
will be slow indeed. Let us stop lying--to others--to ourselves.

D.G.P.

July, 1908.




SUSAN LENOX




CHAPTER I


"THE child's dead," said Nora, the nurse. It was the upstairs
sitting-room in one of the pretentious houses of Sutherland,
oldest and most charming of the towns on the Indiana bank of the
Ohio. The two big windows were open; their limp and listless
draperies showed that there was not the least motion in the
stifling humid air of the July afternoon. At the center of the
room stood an oblong table; over it were neatly spread several
thicknesses of white cotton cloth; naked upon them lay the body
of a newborn girl baby. At one side of the table nearer the
window stood Nora. Hers were the hard features and corrugated
skin popularly regarded as the result of a life of toil, but in
fact the result of a life of defiance to the laws of health. As
additional penalties for that same self-indulgence she had an
enormous bust and hips, thin face and arms, hollow,
sinew-striped neck. The young man, blond and smooth faced, at
the other side of the table and facing the light, was Doctor
Stevens, a recently graduated pupil of the famous Schulze of
Saint Christopher who as much as any other one man is
responsible for the rejection of hocus-pocus and the injection
of common sense into American medicine. For upwards of an hour
young Stevens, coat off and shirt sleeves rolled to his
shoulders, had been toiling with the lifeless form on the table.
He had tried everything his training, his reading and his
experience suggested--all the more or less familiar devices
similar to those indicated for cases of drowning. Nora had
watched him, at first with interest and hope, then with interest
alone, finally with swiftly deepening disapproval, as her
compressed lips and angry eyes plainly revealed. It seemed to
her his effort was degenerating into sacrilege, into defiance of
an obvious decree of the Almighty. However, she had not ventured
to speak until the young man, with a muttered ejaculation
suspiciously like an imprecation, straightened his stocky figure
and began to mop the sweat from his face, hands and bared arms.

When she saw that her verdict had not been heard, she repeated
it more emphatically. "The child's dead," said she, "as I told
you from the set-out." She made the sign of the cross on her
forehead and bosom, while her fat, dry lips moved in a "Hail, Mary."

The young man did not rouse from his reverie. He continued to
gaze with a baffled expression at the tiny form, so like a
whimsical caricature of humanity. He showed that he had heard
the woman's remark by saying, to himself rather than to her,
"Dead? What's that? Merely another name for ignorance." But the
current of his thought did not swerve. It held to the one
course: What would his master, the dauntless, the infinitely
resourceful Schulze, do if he were confronted by this
intolerable obstacle of a perfect machine refusing to do its
duty and pump vital force through an eagerly waiting body?
"He'd _make_ it go, I'd bet my life," the young man muttered.
"I'm ashamed of myself."

As if the reproach were just the spur his courage and his
intelligence had needed, his face suddenly glowed with the
upshooting fire of an inspiration. He thrust the big white
handkerchief into his hip pocket, laid one large strong hand
upon the small, beautifully arched chest of the baby. Nora,
roused by his expression even more than by his gesture, gave an
exclamation of horror. "Don't touch it again," she cried,
between entreaty and command. "You've done all you can--and more."

Stevens was not listening. "Such a fine baby, too," he said,
hesitating--the old woman mistakenly fancied it was her words
that made him pause. "I feel no good at all," he went on, as if
reasoning with himself, "no good at all, losing both the mother
and the child."

"_She_ didn't want to live," replied Nora. Her glances stole
somewhat fearfully toward the door of the adjoining room--the
bedroom where the mother lay dead.

"There wasn't nothing but disgrace ahead for both of them.
Everybody'll be glad."

"Such a fine baby," muttered the abstracted young doctor.

"Love-children always is," said Nora. She was looking sadly and
tenderly down at the tiny, symmetrical form--symmetrical to her
and the doctor's expert eyes. "Such a deep chest," she sighed.
"Such pretty hands and feet. A real love-child." There she
glanced nervously at the doctor; it was meet and proper and
pious to speak well of the dead, but she felt she might be going
rather far for a "good woman."

"I'll try it," cried the young man in a resolute tone. "It can't
do any harm, and----"

Without finishing his sentence he laid hold of the body by the
ankles, swung it clear of the table. As Nora saw it dangling
head downwards like a dressed suckling pig on a butcher's hook
she vented a scream and darted round the table to stop by main
force this revolting desecration of the dead. Stevens called out
sternly: "Mind your business, Nora! Push the table against the
wall and get out of the way. I want all the room there is."

"Oh, Doctor--for the blessed Jesus' sake----"

"Push back that table!"

Nora shrank before his fierce eyes. She thought his exertions,
his disappointment and the heat had combined to topple him over
into insanity. She retreated toward the farther of the open
windows. With a curse at her stupidity Stevens kicked over the
table, used his foot vigorously in thrusting it to the wall.
"Now!" exclaimed he, taking his stand in the center of the room
and gauging the distance of ceiling, floor and walls.

Nora, her back against the window frame, her fingers sunk in her
big loose bosom, stared petrified. Stevens, like an athlete
swinging an indian club, whirled the body round and round his
head, at the full length of his powerful arms. More and more
rapidly he swung it, until his breath came and went in gasps and
the sweat was trickling in streams down his face and neck. Round
and round between ceiling and floor whirled the naked body of
the baby--round and round for minutes that seemed hours to the
horrified nurse--round and round with all the strength and speed
the young man could put forth--round and round until the room
was a blur before his throbbing eyes, until his expression
became fully as demoniac as Nora had been fancying it. Just as
she was recovering from her paralysis of horror and was about to
fly shrieking from the room she was halted by a sound that made
her draw in air until her bosom swelled as if it would burst its
gingham prison. She craned eagerly toward Stevens. He was
whirling the body more furiously than ever.

"Was that you?" asked Nora hoarsely. "Or was it----" She paused,
listened.

The sound came again--the sound of a drowning person fighting for
breath.

"It's--it's----" muttered Nora. "What is it, Doctor?"

"Life!" panted Stevens, triumph in his glistening, streaming face.
"Life!"

He continued to whirl the little form, but not so rapidly or so
vigorously. And now the sound was louder, or, rather, less
faint, less uncertain--was a cry--was the cry of a living thing.
"She's alive--alive!" shrieked the woman, and in time with his
movements she swayed to and fro from side to side, laughing,
weeping, wringing her hands, patting her bosom, her cheeks. She
stretched out her arms. "My prayers are answered!" she cried.
"Don't kill her, you brute! Give her to me. You shan't treat a
baby that way."

The unheeding doctor kept on whirling until the cry was
continuous, a low but lusty wail of angry protest. Then he
stopped, caught the baby up in both arms, burst out laughing.
"You little minx!" he said--or, rather, gasped--a tenderness
quite maternal in his eyes. "But I got you! Nora, the table."

Nora righted the table, spread and smoothed the cloths, extended
her scrawny eager arms for the baby. Stevens with a jerk of the
head motioned her aside, laid the baby on the table. He felt for
the pulse at its wrist, bent to listen at the heart. Quite
useless. That strong, rising howl of helpless fury was proof
enough. Her majesty the baby was mad through and
through--therefore alive through and through.

"Grand heart action!" said the young man. He stood aloof, hands
on his hips, head at a proud angle. "You never saw a healthier
specimen. It'll be many a year, bar accidents, before she's that
near death again."

But it was Nora's turn not to hear. She was soothing and
swaddling the outraged baby. "There--there!" she crooned.
"Nora'll take care of you. The bad man shan't come near my
little precious--no, the wicked man shan't touch her again."

The bedroom door opened. At the slight noise superstitious Nora
paled, shriveled within her green and white checked gingham. She
slowly turned her head as if on this day of miracles she
expected yet another--the resurrection of the resurrected
baby's mother, "poor Miss Lorella." But Lorella Lenox was
forever tranquil in the sleep that engulfed her and the sorrows
in which she had been entangled by an impetuous, trusting heart.
The apparition in the doorway was commonplace--the mistress of
the house, Lorella's elder and married sister Fanny--neither
fair nor dark, neither tall nor short, neither thin nor fat,
neither pretty nor homely, neither stupid nor bright, neither
neat nor dowdy--one of that multitude of excellent, unobtrusive
human beings who make the restful stretches in a world of
agitations--and who respond to the impetus of circumstance as
unresistingly as cloud to wind.

As the wail of the child smote upon Fanny's ears she lifted her
head, startled, and cried out sharply, "What's that?"

"We've saved the baby, Mrs. Warham," replied the young doctor,
beaming on her through his glasses.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Warham. And she abruptly seated herself on the
big chintz-covered sofa beside the door.

"And it's a lovely child," pleaded Nora. Her woman's instinct
guided her straight to the secret of the conflict raging behind
Mrs. Warham's unhappy face.

"The finest girl in the world," cried Stevens, well-meaning but tactless.

"Girl!" exclaimed Fanny, starting up from the sofa. "Is it a _girl_?"

Nora nodded. The young man looked downcast; he was realizing the
practical side of his victory for science--the consequences to
the girl child, to all the relatives.

"A girl!" moaned Fanny, sinking to the sofa again. "God have mercy on us!"

Louder and angrier rose the wail. Fanny, after a brief struggle
with herself, hurried to the table, looked down at the tiny
helplessness. Her face softened. She had been a mother four
times. Only one had lived--her fair little two-year-old Ruth--and
she would never have any more children. The tears glistened in
her eyes. "What ails you, Nora Mulvey?" she demanded. "Why
aren't you 'tending to this poor little creature?"

Nora sprang into action, but she wrapped the baby herself. The
doctor in deep embarrassment withdrew to the farther window. She
fussed over the baby lingeringly, but finally resigned it to the
nurse. "Take it into the bathroom," she said, "where everything's
ready to feed it--though I never dreamed----" As Nora was about
to depart, she detained her. "Let me look at it again."

The nurse understood that Fanny Warham was searching for
evidence of the mysterious but suspected paternity whose secret
Lorella, with true Lenox obstinacy, had guarded to the end. The
two women scanned the features. A man would at a glance have
abandoned hope of discovering anything from a chart so vague and
confused as that wrinkled, twisted, swollen face of the newborn.
Not so a woman. Said Nora: "She seems to me to favor the
Lenoxes. But I think--I _kind_ o' think--I see a _trace_
of--of----" There she halted, waiting for encouragement.

"Of Galt?" suggested Fanny, in an undertone.

"Of Galt," assented Nora, her tone equally discreet. "That nose
is Galt-like and the set of the ears--and a kind of something to
the neck and shoulders."

"Maybe so," said Fanny doubtfully. She shook her head drearily,
sighed. "What's the use? Lorella's gone. And this morning
General Galt came down to see my husband with a letter he'd got
from Jimmie. Jimmie denies it. Perhaps so. Again, perhaps the
General wrote him to write that, and threatened him if he
didn't. But what's the use? We'll never know."

And they never did.

When young Stevens was leaving, George Warham waylaid him at the
front gate, separated from the spacious old creeper-clad house
by long lawns and an avenue of elms. "I hear the child's going
to live," said he anxiously.

"I've never seen anything more alive," replied Stevens.

Warham stared gloomily at the ground. He was evidently ashamed
of his feelings, yet convinced that they were human and natural.
A moment's silence between the men, then Stevens put his hand on
the gate latch. "Did--did--my wife----" began Warham. "Did she
say what she calculated to do?"

"Not a word, George." After a silence. "You know how fond she
is of babies."

"Yes, I know," replied Warham. "Fanny is a true woman if ever
there was one." With a certain defiance, "And Lorella--she was
a sweet, womanly girl!"

"As sweet and good as she was pretty," replied Stevens heartily.

"The way she kept her mouth shut about that hound, whoever he
is!" Warham's Roman face grew savage, revealed in startling
apparition a stubborn cruelty of which there was not a trace
upon the surface. "If I ever catch the ---- ---- I'll fill him
full of holes."

"He'd be lynched--_whoever_ he is," said Stevens.

"That's right!" cried Warham. "This is the North, but it's near
enough to Kentucky to know what to do with a wretch of that
sort." His face became calmer. "That poor little baby! He'll
have a hard row to hoe."

Stevens flushed a guilty red. "It's--it's--a girl," he stammered.

Warham stared. "A _girl_!" he cried. Then his face reddened and
in a furious tone he burst out: "Now don't that beat the devil
for luck!. . . A girl! Good Lord--a girl!"

"Nobody in this town'll blame her," consoled Stevens.

"You know better than that, Bob! A girl! Why, it's downright
wicked. . . I wonder what Fanny allows to do?" He showed what
fear was in his mind by wheeling savagely on Stevens with a
stormy, "We can't keep her--we simply can't!"

"What's to become of her?" protested Stevens gently.

Warham made a wild vague gesture with both arms. "Damn if I
know! I've got to look out for my own daughter. I won't have it.
Damn it, I won't have it!" Stevens lifted the gate latch. "Well----

"Good-by, George. I'll look in again this evening." And knowing
the moral ideas of the town, all he could muster by way of
encouragement was a half-hearted "Don't borrow trouble."

But Warham did not hear. He was moving up the tanbark walk
toward the house, muttering to himself. When Fanny, unable
longer to conceal Lorella's plight, had told him, pity and
affection for his sweet sister-in-law who had made her home with
them for five years had triumphed over his principles. He had
himself arranged for Fanny to hide Lorella in New York until she
could safely return. But just as the sisters were about to set
out, Lorella, low in body and in mind, fell ill. Then
George--and Fanny, too--had striven with her to give them the
name of her betrayer, that he might be compelled to do her
justice. Lorella refused. "I told him," she said, "and he--I
never want to see him again." They pleaded the disgrace to them,
but she replied that he would not marry her even if she would
marry him; and she held to her refusal with the firmness for
which the Lenoxes were famous. They suspected Jimmie Galt,
because he had been about the most attentive of the young men
until two or three months before, and because he had abruptly
departed for Europe to study architecture. Lorella denied that
it was he. "If you kill him," she said to Warham, "you kill an
innocent man." Warham was so exasperated by her obstinacy that
he was at first for taking her at her offer and letting her go
away. But Fanny would not hear of it, and he acquiesced.
Now--"This child must be sent away off somewhere, and never be
heard of again," he said to himself. "If it'd been a boy,
perhaps it might have got along. But a girl----

"There's nothing can be done to make things right for a girl
that's got no father and no name."

The subject did not come up between him and his wife until about
a week after Lorella's funeral. But he was thinking of nothing
else. At his big grocery store--wholesale and retail--he sat
morosely in his office, brooding over the disgrace and the
danger of deeper disgrace--for he saw what a hold the baby
already had upon his wife. He was ashamed to appear in the
streets; he knew what was going on behind the sympathetic faces,
heard the whisperings as if they had been trumpetings. And he
was as much afraid of his own soft heart as of his wife's. But
for the sake of his daughter he must be firm and just.

One morning, as he was leaving the house after breakfast, he
turned back and said abruptly: "Fan, don't you think you'd
better send the baby away and get it over with?"