Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

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


Where they reached the river the bank was mud and thick willows,
the haunt of incredible armies of mosquitoes. "It's a mystery to
me," cried he, "why these fiends live in lonely places far away
from blood, when they're so mad about it." After some searching
he found a clear stretch of sandy gravel where she would be not
too uncomfortable while he was gone for a boat. He left the
horse with her and walked upstream in the direction of
Brooksburg. As he had warned her that he might be gone a long
time, he knew she would not be alarmed for him--and she had
already proved that timidity about herself was not in her nature.
But he was alarmed for her--this girl alone in that lonely
darkness--with light enough to make her visible to any prowler.

About an hour after he left her he returned in a rowboat he had
borrowed at the water mill. He hitched the horse in the deep
shadow of the break in the bank. She got into the boat, put on
the slip and the sunbonnet, put her sailor hat in the bag. They
pushed off and he began the long hard row across and upstream.
The moon was high now and was still near enough to its full
glory to pour a flood of beautiful light upon the broad
river--the lovely Ohio at its loveliest part.

"Won't you sing?" he asked.

And without hesitation she began one of the simple familiar love
songs that were all the music to which the Sutherland girls had
access. She sang softly, in a deep sweet voice, sweeter even
than her speaking voice. She had the sunbonnet in her lap; the
moon shone full upon her face. And it seemed to him that he was
in a dream; there was nowhere a suggestion of reality--not of
its prose, not even of its poetry. Only in the land no waking
eye has seen could such a thing be. The low sweet voice sang of
love, the oars clicked rhythmically in the locks and clove the
water with musical splash; the river, between its steep hills,
shone in the moonlight, with a breeze like a friendly spirit
moving upon its surface. He urged her, and she sang another
song, and another. She sighed when she saw the red lantern on
the Carrollton wharf; and he, turning his head and seeing,
echoed her sigh.

"The first chance, you must sing me that song," she said.

"From 'Rigoletto'? I will. But--it tells how fickle women
are--'like a feather in the wind.'. . . They aren't all like
that, though--don't you think so?"

"Sometimes I think everybody's like a feather in the wind,"
replied she. "About love--and everything."

He laughed. "Except those people who are where there isn't any wind."




CHAPTER XII


FOR some time Spenser had been rowing well in toward the
Kentucky shore, to avoid the swift current of the Kentucky River
which rushes into the Ohio at Carrollton. A few yards below its
mouth, in the quiet stretch of backwater along shore, lay the
wharf-boat, little more than a landing stage. The hotel was but
a hundred feet away, at the top of the steep levee. It was
midnight, so everyone in the village had long been asleep. After
several minutes of thunderous hammering Roderick succeeded in
drawing to the door a barefooted man with a candle in his huge,
knotted hand--a man of great stature, amazingly lean and long of
leg, with a monstrous head thatched and fronted with coarse,
yellow-brown hair. He had on a dirty cotton shirt and dirty
cotton trousers--a night dress that served equally well for the
day. His feet were flat and thick and were hideous with corns
and bunions. Susan had early been made a critical observer of
feet by the unusual symmetry of her own. She had seen few feet
that were fit to be seen; but never, she thought, had she seen
an exhibition so repellent.

"What t'hell----" he began. Then, discovering Susan, he growled,
"Beg pardon, miss."

Roderick explained--that is, told the prearranged story. The man
pointed to a grimy register on the office desk, and Roderick set
down the fishing bag and wrote in a cramped, scrawly hand, "Kate
Peters, Milton, Ky."

The man looked at it through his screen of hair and beard, said,
"Come on, ma'am."

"Just a minute," said Roderick, and he drew "Kate" aside and said
to her in a low tone: "I'll be back sometime tomorrow, and then
we'll start at once. But--to provide against everything--don't be
alarmed if I don't come. You'll know I couldn't help it. And wait."

Susan nodded, looking at him with trustful, grateful eyes.

"And," he went on hurriedly, "I'll leave this with you, to take
care of. It's yours as much as mine."

She saw that it was a pocketbook, instinctively put her hands
behind her.

"Don't be silly," he said, with good-humored impatience. "You'll
probably not need it. If you do, you'll need it bad. And you'll
pay me back when you get your place."

He caught one of her hands and put the pocketbook in it. As his
argument was unanswerable, she did not resist further. She
uttered not a word of thanks, but simply looked at him, her eyes
swimming and about her mouth a quiver that meant a great deal in
her. Impulsively and with flaming cheek he kissed her on the
cheek. "So long, sis," he said loudly, and strode into the night.

Susan did not flush; she paled. She gazed after him with some
such expression as a man lost in a cave might have as he watches
the flickering out of his only light. "This way, ma'am," said
the hotel man sourly, taking up the fishing bag. She started,
followed him up the noisy stairs to a plain, neat country
bedroom. "The price of this here's one fifty a day," said he.
"We've got 'em as low as a dollar."

"I'll take a dollar one, please," said Susan.

The man hesitated. "Well," he finally snarled, "business is
slack jes' now. Seein' as you're a lady, you kin have this here
un fur a dollar."

"Oh, thank you--but if the price is more----"

"The other rooms ain't fit fur a lady," said the hotel man. Then
he grinned a very human humorous grin that straightway made him
much less repulsive. "Anyhow, them two durn boys of mine an'
their cousins is asleep in 'em. I'd as lief rout out a nest of
hornets. I'll leave you the candle."

As soon as he had gone Susan put out the light, ran to the
window. She saw the rowboat and Spenser, a black spot far out on
the river, almost gone from view to the southwest. Hastily she
lighted the candle again, stood at the window and waved a white
cover she snatched from the table. She thought she saw one of
the oars go up and flourish, but she could not be sure. She
watched until the boat vanished in the darkness at the bend. She
found the soap in the bag and took a slow but thorough bath in
the washbowl. Then she unbraided her hair, combed it out as well
as she could with her fingers, rubbed it thoroughly with a towel
and braided it again. She put on the calico slip as a
nightdress, knelt down to say her prayers. But instead of
prayers there came flooding into her mind memories of where she
had been last night, of the horrors, of the agonies of body and
soul. She rose from her knees, put out the light, stood again at
the window. In after years she always looked back upon that hour
as the one that definitely marked the end of girlhood, of the
thoughts and beliefs which go with the sheltered life, and the
beginning of womanhood, of self-reliance and of the
hardiness--so near akin to hardness--the hardiness that must
come into the character before a man or a woman is fit to give
and take in the combat of life.

The bed was coarse, but white and clean. She fell asleep
instantly and did not awaken until, after the vague, gradually
louder sound of hammering on the door, she heard a female voice
warning her that breakfast was "put nigh over an' done." She got
up, partly drew on one stocking, then without taking it off
tumbled over against the pillow and was asleep. When she came to
herself again, the lay of the shadows told her it must be after
twelve o'clock. She dressed, packed her serge suit in the bag
with the sailor hat, smoothed out the pink calico slip and put
it on. For more than a year she had worn her hair in a braid
doubled upon itself and tied with a bow at the back of her neck.
She decided that if she would part it, plait it in two braids
and bring them round her head, she would look older. She tried
this and was much pleased with the result. She thought the new
style not only more grown-up, but also more becoming. The pink
slip, too, seemed to her a success. It came almost to her ankles
and its strings enabled her to make it look something like a
dress. Carrying the pink sunbonnet, down she went in search of
something to eat.

The hall was full of smoke and its air seemed greasy with the
odor of frying. She found that dinner was about to be served. A
girl in blue calico skirt and food-smeared, sweat-discolored
blue jersey ushered her to one of the tables in the dining-room.
"There's a gentleman comin'," said she. "I'll set him down with
you. He won't bite, I don't reckon, and there ain't no use
mussin' up two tables."

There was no protesting against two such arguments; so Susan
presently had opposite her a fattish man with long oily hair and
a face like that of a fallen and dissipated preacher. She
recognized him at once as one of those wanderers who visit small
towns with cheap shows or selling patent medicines and doing
juggling tricks on the street corners in the flare of a gasoline
lamp. She eyed him furtively until he caught her at it--he being
about the same business himself. Thereafter she kept her eyes
steadily upon the tablecloth, patched and worn thin with much
washing. Soon the plate of each was encircled by the familiar
arc of side dishes containing assorted and not very appetizing
messes--fried steak, watery peas, stringy beans, soggy turnips,
lumpy mashed potatoes, a perilous-looking chicken stew,
cornbread with streaks of baking soda in it. But neither of the
diners was critical, and the dinner was eaten with an enthusiasm
which the best rarely inspires.

With the prunes and dried-apple pie, the stranger expanded.
"Warm day, miss," he ventured.

"Yes, it is a little warm," said Susan. She ventured a direct
look at him. Above the pleasant, kindly eyes there was a brow so
unusually well shaped that it arrested even her young and
untrained attention. Whatever the man's character or station,
there could be no question as to his intelligence.

"The flies are very bothersome," continued he. "But nothing like
Australia. There the flies have to be picked off, and they're
big, and they bite--take a piece right out of you. The natives
used to laugh at us when we were in the ring and would try to
brush, em away." The stranger had the pleasant, easy manner of
one who through custom of all kinds of people and all varieties
of fortune, has learned to be patient and good-humored--to take
the day and the hour as the seasoned gambler takes the cards
that are dealt him.

Susan said nothing; but she had listened politely. The man went
on amusing himself with his own conversation. "I was in the show
business then. Clown was my line, but I was rotten at it--simply
rotten. I'm still in the show business--different line, though.
I've got a show of my own. If you're going to be in town perhaps
you'll come to see us tonight. Our boat's anchored down next to the
wharf. You can see it from the windows. Come, and bring your folks."

"Thank you," said Susan--she had for gotten her role and its
accent. "But I'm afraid we'll not be here."

There was an expression in the stranger's face--a puzzled,
curious expression, not impertinent, rather covert--an
expression that made her uneasy. It warned her that this man saw
she was not what she seemed to be, that he was trying to peer
into her secret. His brown eyes were kind enough, but alarmingly
keen. With only half her pie eaten, she excused herself and
hastened to her room.

At the threshold she remembered the pocketbook Spenser had given
her. She had left it by the fishing bag on the table. There was
the bag but not the pocketbook. "I must have put it in the bag,"
she said aloud, and the sound and the tone of her voice
frightened her. She searched the bag, then the room which had
not yet been straightened up. She shook out the bed covers,
looked in all the drawers, under the bed, went over the contents
of the bag again. The pocketbook was gone--stolen.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, her hands in her lap, and
stared at the place where she had last seen the pocketbook--_his_
pocketbook, which he had asked her to take care of. How could
she face him! What would he think of her, so untrustworthy! What
a return for his kindness! She felt weak--so weak that she lay
down. The food she had taken turned to poison and her head ached
fiercely. What could she do? To speak to the proprietor would be
to cause a great commotion, to attract attention to herself--and
how would that help to bring back the stolen pocketbook, taken
perhaps by the proprietor himself? She recalled that as she
hurried through the office from the dining-room he had a queer
shifting expression, gave her a wheedling, cringing good morning
not at all in keeping with the character he had shown the night
before. The slovenly girl came to do the room; Susan sent her
away, sat by the window gazing out over the river and
downstream. He would soon be here; the thought made her long to
fly and hide. He had been all generosity; and this was her way
of appreciating it!

They sent for her to come down to supper. She refused, saying
she was not feeling well. She searched the room, the bag, again
and again. She would rest a few minutes, then up she would
spring and tear everything out. Then back to the window to sit
and stare at the river over which the evening shadows were
beginning to gather. Once, as she was sitting there, she
happened to see the gaudily painted and decorated show boat. A
man--the stranger of the dinner table--was standing on the
forward end, smoking a cigar. She saw that he was observing her,
realized he could have seen her stirring feverishly about her
room. A woman came out of the cabin and joined him. As soon as
his attention was distracted she closed her shutters. And there
she sat alone, with the hours dragging their wretched minutes
slowly away.

That was one of those nights upon which anyone who has had
them--and who has not?--looks back with wonder at how they ever
lived, how they ever came to an end. She slept a little toward
dawn--for youth and health will not let the most despairing
heart suffer in sleeplessness. Her headache went, but the misery
of soul which had been a maddening pain settled down into a
throbbing ache. She feared he would come; she feared he would
not come. The servants tried to persuade her to take breakfast.
She could not have swallowed food; she would not have dared take
food for which she could not pay. What would they do with her if
he did not come? She searched the room again, hoping against
hope, a hundred times fancying she felt the purse under some
other things, each time suffering sickening disappointment.

Toward noon the servant came knocking. "A letter for you, ma'am."

Susan rushed to the door, seized the letter, tore it open, read:


When I got back to the horse and started to mount, he kicked me
and broke my leg. You can go on south to the L. and N. and take
a train to Cincinnati. When you find a boarding house send your
address to me at the office. I'll come in a few weeks. I'd write
more but I can't. Don't worry. Everything'll come out right. You
are brave and sensible, and I _back you to win_.


With the unsigned letter crumpled in her hands she sat at the
window with scarcely a motion until noon. She then went down to
the show boat. Several people--men and women--were on the
forward end, quarreling. She looked only at her acquaintance.
His face was swollen and his eyes bloodshot, but he still wore
the air of easy and patient good-humor. She said, standing on
the shore, "Could I speak to you a minute?"

"Certainly, ma'am," replies he, lifting his dingy straw hat with
gaudy, stained band. He came down the broad plank to the shore.
"Why, what's the matter?" This in a sympathetic tone.

"Will you lend me two dollars and take me along to work it out?"
she asked.

He eyed her keenly. "For the hotel bill?" he inquired, the cigar
tucked away in the corner of his mouth.

She nodded.

"He didn't show up?"

"He broke his leg."

"Oh!" The tone was politely sympathetic, but incredulous. He eyed
her critically, thoughtfully. "Can you sing?" he finally asked.

"A little."

His hands were deep in the pockets of his baggy light trousers.
He drew one of them out with a two-dollar bill in it. "Go and
pay him and bring your things. We're about to push off."

"Thank you," said the girl in the same stolid way. She returned
to the hotel, brought the bag down from her room, stood at the
office desk.

The servant came. "Mr. Gumpus has jes' stepped out," said she.

"Here is the money for my room." And Susan laid the two-dollar
bill on the register.

"Ain't you goin' to wait fur yer--yer brother?"

"He's not coming," replied the girl. "So--I'll go. Good-by."

"Good-by. It's awful, bein' took sick away from home."

"Thank you," said Susan. "Good-by."

The girl's homely, ignorant face twisted in a grin. But Susan
did not see, would have been indifferent had she seen. Since she
accepted the war earth and heaven had declared against her, she
had ceased from the little thought she had once given to what
was thought of her by those of whom she thought not at all. She
went down to the show boat. The plank had been taken in. Her
acquaintance was waiting for her, helped her to the deck, jumped
aboard himself, and was instantly busy helping to guide the boat
out into mid-stream. Susan looked back at the hotel. Mr. Gumpus
was in the doorway, amusement in every line of his ugly face.
Beside him stood the slovenly servant. She was crying--the more
human second thought of a heart not altogether corrupted by the
sordid hardness of her lot. How can faith in the human race
falter when one considers how much heart it has in spite of all
it suffers in the struggle upward through the dense fogs of
ignorance upward, toward the truth, toward the light of which it
never ceases to dream and to hope?


Susan stood in the same place, with her bag beside her, until
her acquaintance came.

"Now," said he, comfortably, as he lighted a fresh cigar, "we'll
float pleasantly along. I guess you and I had better get
acquainted. What is your name?"

Susan flushed. "Kate Peters is the name I gave at the hotel.
That'll do, won't it?"

"Never in the world!" replied he. "You must have a good catchy
name. Say--er--er----" He rolled his cigar slowly, looking
thoughtfully toward the willows thick and green along the
Indiana shore. "Say--well, say--Lorna--Lorna--Lorna Sackville!
That's a winner. Lorna Sackville!--A stroke of genius! Don't you
think so?"

"Yes," said Susan. "It doesn't matter."

"But it does," remonstrated he. "You are an artist, now, and an
artist's name should always arouse pleasing and romantic
anticipations. It's like the odor that heralds the dish. You
must remember, my dear, that you have stepped out of the world
of dull reality into the world of ideals, of dreams."

The sound of two harsh voices, one male, the other female, came
from within the cabin--oaths, reproaches. Her acquaintance
laughed. "That's one on me--eh? Still, what I say is true--or at
least ought to be. By the way, this is the Burlingham Floating
Palace of Thespians, floating temple to the histrionic art. I am
Burlingham--Robert Burlingham." He smiled, extended his hand.
"Glad to meet you, Miss Lorna Sackville--don't forget!"

She could not but reflect a smile so genuine, so good-humored.

"We'll go in and meet the others--your fellow stars--for this is
an all-star aggregation."

Over the broad entrance to the cabin was a chintz curtain strung
upon a wire. Burlingham drew this aside. Susan was looking into
a room about thirty feet long, about twelve feet wide, and a
scant six feet high. Across it with an aisle between were narrow
wooden benches with backs. At the opposite end was a stage, with
the curtain up and a portable stove occupying the center. At the
stove a woman in a chemise and underskirt, with slippers on her
bare feet, was toiling over several pots and pans with fork and
spoon. At the edge of the stage, with legs swinging, sat another
woman, in a blue sailor suit neither fresh nor notably clean but
somehow coquettish. Two men in flannel shirts were seated, one
on each of the front benches, with their backs to her.

As Burlingham went down the aisle ahead of her, he called out:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to present the latest valuable
addition to our company--Miss Lorna Sackville, the renowned
ballad singer."

The two men turned lazily and stared at Susan, each with an arm
hanging over the back of the bench.

Burlingham looked at the woman bent over the stove--a fat,
middle-aged woman with thin, taffy-yellow hair done sleekly over
a big rat in front and made into a huge coil behind with the aid
of one or more false braids. She had a fat face, a broad expanse
of unpleasant-looking, elderly bosom, big, shapeless white arms.
Her contour was almost gone. Her teeth were a curious mixture of
natural, gold, and porcelain. "Miss Anstruther--Miss Sackville,"
called Burlingham. "Miss Sackville, Miss Violet Anstruther."

Miss Anstruther and Susan exchanged bows--Susan's timid and
frightened, Miss Anstruther's accompanied by a hostile stare and
a hardening of the fat, decaying face.

"Miss Connemora--Miss Sackville." Burlingham was looking at the
younger woman--she who sat on the edge of the little stage. She,
too, was a blond, but her hair had taken to the chemical
somewhat less reluctantly than had Miss Anstruther's, with the
result that Miss Connemora's looked golden. Her face--of the
baby type must have been softly pretty at one time--not so very
distant. Now lines were coming and the hard look that is
inevitable with dyed hair. Also her once fine teeth were rapidly
going off, as half a dozen gold fillings in front proclaimed. At
Susan's appealing look and smile Miss Connemora nodded not
unfriendly.

"Good God, Bob," said she to Burlingham with a laugh, "are you
going to get the bunch of us pinched for child-stealing?"

Burlingham started to laugh, suddenly checked himself, looked
uneasily and keenly at Susan. "Oh, it's all right," he said with
a wave of the hand. But his tone belied his words. He puffed
twice at his cigar, then introduced the men--Elbert Eshwell and
Gregory Tempest--two of the kind clearly if inelegantly placed
by the phrase, "greasy hamfats." Mr. Eshwell's black-dyed hair
was smoothly brushed down from a central part, Mr. Tempest's
iron-gray hair was greasily wild--a disarray of romantic
ringlets. Eshwell was inclined to fat; Tempest was gaunt and had
the hollow, burning eye that bespeaks the sentimental ass.

"Now, Miss Sackville," said Burlingham, "we'll go on the forward
deck and canvass the situation. What for dinner, Vi?"

"Same old rot," retorted Miss Anstruther, wiping the sweat from
her face and shoulders with a towel that served also as a
dishcloth. "Pork and beans--potatoes--peach pie."

"Cheer up," said Burlingham. "After tomorrow we'll do better."

"That's been the cry ever since we started," snapped Violet.

"For God's sake, shut up, Vi," groaned Eshwell. "You're always kicking."

The cabin was not quite the full width of the broad house boat.
Along the outside, between each wall and the edge, there was
room for one person to pass from forward deck to rear. From the
cabin roof, over the rear deck, into the water extended a big
rudder oar. When Susan, following Burlingham, reached the rear
deck, she saw the man at this oar--a fat, amiable-looking
rascal, in linsey woolsey and a blue checked shirt open over his
chest and revealing a mat of curly gray hair. Burlingham hailed
him as Pat--his only known name. But Susan had only a glance for
him and no ear at all for the chaffing between him and the
actor-manager. She was gazing at the Indiana shore, at a tiny
village snuggled among trees and ripened fields close to the
water's edge. She knew it was Brooksburg. She remembered the
long covered bridge which they had crossed--Spenser and she, on
the horse. To the north of the town, on a knoll, stood a large
red brick house trimmed with white veranda and balconies--far
and away the most pretentious house in the landscape. Before the
door was a horse and buggy. She could make out that there were
several people on the front veranda, one of them a man in
black--the doctor, no doubt. Sobs choked up into her throat. She
turned quickly away that Burlingham might not see. And under her
breath she said,

"Good-by, dear. Forgive me--forgive me."




CHAPTER XIII


WOMAN'S worktable, a rocking chair and another with a swayback
that made it fairly comfortable for lounging gave the rear deck
the air of an outdoor sitting-room, which indeed it was.
Burlingham, after a comprehensive glance at the panorama of
summer and fruitfulness through which they were drifting,
sprawled himself in the swayback chair, indicating to Susan that
she was to face him in the rocker. "Sit down, my dear," said he.
"And tell me you are at least eighteen and are not running away
from home. You heard what Miss Connemora said."