Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

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


"I'm not running away from home," replied Susan, blushing
violently because she was evading as to the more important fact.

"I don't know anything about you, and I don't want to know,"
pursued Burlingham, alarmed by the evidences of a dangerous
tendency to candor. "I've no desire to have my own past dug
into, and turn about's fair play. You came to me to get an
engagement. I took you. Understand?"

Susan nodded.

"You said you could sing--that is, a little."

"A very little," said the girl.

"Enough, no doubt. That has been our weak point--lack of a
ballad singer. Know any ballads?--Not fancy ones. Nothing fancy!
We cater to the plain people, and the plain people only like the
best--that is, the simplest--the things that reach for the
heartstrings with ten strong fingers. You don't happen to know
'I Stood on the Bridge at Midnight'?"

"No--Ruth sings that," replied Susan, and colored violently.

Burlingham ignored the slip. "'Blue Alsatian Mountains'?"

"Yes. But that's very old."

"Exactly. Nothing is of any use to the stage until it's very
old. Audiences at theaters don't want to _hear_ anything they
don't already know by heart. They've come to _see_, not to hear.
So it annoys them to have to try to hear. Do you understand that?"

"No," confessed Susan. "I'm sorry. But I'll think about it, and
try to understand it." She thought she was showing her inability
to do what was expected of her in paying back the two dollars.

"Don't bother," said Burlingham. "Pat!"

"Yes, boss," said the man at the oar, without looking or
removing his pipe.

"Get your fiddle."

Pat tied the oar fast and went forward along the roof of the
cabin. While he was gone Burlingham explained, "A frightful souse,
Pat--almost equal to Eshwell and far the superior of Tempest or
Vi--that is, of Tempest. But he's steady enough for our purposes,
as a rule. He's the pilot, the orchestra, the man-of-all-work, the
bill distributor. Oh, he's a wonder. Graduate of Trinity College,
Dublin--yeggman--panhandler--barrel-house bum--genius, nearly. Has
drunk as much booze as there is water in this river----"

Pat was back beside the handle of the oar, with a violin.
Burlingham suggested to Susan that she'd better stand while she
sang, "and if you've any tendency to stage fright, remember it's
your bread and butter to get through well. You'll not bother
about your audience."

Susan found this thought a potent strengthener--then and
afterward. With surprisingly little embarrassment she stood
before her good-natured, sympathetic employer, and while Pat
scraped out an accompaniment sang the pathetic story of the
"maiden young and fair" and the "stranger in the spring" who
"lingered near the fountains just to hear the maiden sing," and
how he departed after winning her love, and how "she will never
see the stranger where the fountains fall again--ade, ade, ade."
Her voice was deliciously young and had the pathetic quality
that is never absent from anything which has enduring charm for
us. Tears were in Burlingham's voice--tears for the fate of the
maiden, tears of response to the haunting pathos of Susan's sweet
contralto, tears of joy at the acquisition of such a "number"
for his program. As her voice died away he beat his plump hands
together enthusiastically.

"She'll do--eh, Pat? She'll set the hay-tossers crazy!"

Susan's heart was beating fast from nervousness. She sat down.
Burlingham sprang up and put his hands on her shoulders and
kissed her. He laughed at her shrinking.

"Don't mind, my dear," he cried. "It's one of our ways. Now,
what others do you know?"

She tried to recall, and with his assistance finally did
discover that she possessed a repertoire of "good old stale
ones," consisting of "Coming Thro' the Rye," "Suwanee River,"
"Annie Laurie" and "Kathleen Mavourneen." She knew many other
songs, but either Pat could not play them or Burlingham declared
them "above the head of Reub the rotter."

"Those five are quite enough," said Burlingham. "Two regulars,
two encores, with a third in case of emergency. After dinner
Miss Anstruther and I'll fit you out with a costume. You'll make
a hit at Sutherland tonight."

"Sutherland!" exclaimed Susan, suddenly pale. "I can't sing
there--really, I can't."

Burlingham made a significant gesture toward Pat at the oar
above them, and winked at her. "You'll not have stage fright, my
dear. You'll pull through."

Susan understood that nothing more was to be said before Pat.
Soon Burlingham told him to tie the oar again and retire to the
cabin. "I'll stand watch," said he. "I want to talk business
with Miss Sackville."

When Pat had gone, Burlingham gave her a sympathetic look. "No
confidences, mind you, my dear," he warned. "All I want to know
is that it isn't stage fright that's keeping you off the program
at Sutherland."

"No," replied the girl. "It isn't stage fright. I'm--I'm sorry
I can't begin right away to earn the money to pay you back.
But--I can't."

"Not even in a velvet and spangle costume--Low neck, short
sleeves, with blond wig and paint and powder? You'll not know
yourself, my dear--really."

"I couldn't," said Susan. "I'd not be able to open my lips."

"Very well. That's settled." It was evident that Burlingham was
deeply disappointed. "We were going to try to make a killing at
Sutherland." He sighed. "However, let that pass. If you can't,
you can't."

"I'm afraid you're angry with me," cried she.

"I--angry!" He laughed. "I've not been angry in ten years. I'm
such a _damn_, damn fool that with all the knocks life's given me
I haven't learned much. But at least I've learned not to get
angry. No, I understand, my dear--and will save you for the next
town below." He leaned forward and gave her hands a fatherly
pat as they lay in her lap. "Don't give it a second thought," he
said. "We've got the whole length of the river before us."

Susan showed her gratitude in her face better far than she could
have expressed it in words. The two sat silent. When she saw his
eyes upon her with that look of smiling wonder in them, she
said, "You mustn't think I've done anything dreadful. I
haven't--really, I haven't."

He laughed heartily. "And if you had, you'd not need to hang
your head in this company, my dear. We're all people who have
_lived_--and life isn't exactly a class meeting with the elders
taking turns at praying and the organ wheezing out gospel hymns.
No, we've all been up against it most of our lives--which means
we've done the best we could oftener than we've had the chance
to do what we ought." He gave her one of his keen looks, nodded:
"I like you. . . . What do they tell oftenest when they're
talking about how you were as a baby?"

Susan did not puzzle over the queerness of this abrupt question.
She fell to searching her memory diligently for an answer. "I'm
not sure, but I think they speak oftenest of how I never used to
like anybody to take my hand and help me along, even when I was
barely able to walk. They say I always insisted on trudging
along by myself."

Burlingham nodded, slapped his knee. "I can believe it," he
cried. "I always ask everybody that question to see whether I've
sited 'em up right. I rather think I hit you off to a T--as you
faced me at dinner yesterday in the hotel. Speaking of
dinner--let's go sit in on the one I smell."

They returned to the cabin where, to make a table, a board had
been swung between the backs of the second and third benches
from the front on the left side of the aisle. Thus the three men
sat on the front bench with their legs thrust through between
seat and back, while the three women sat in dignity and comfort
on the fourth bench. Susan thought the dinner by no means
justified Miss Anstruther's pessimism. It was good in itself,
and the better for being in this happy-go-lucky way, in this
happy-go-lucky company. Once they got started, all the
grouchiness disappeared. Susan, young and optimistic and
determined to be pleased, soon became accustomed to the looks of
her new companions--that matter of mere exterior about which we
shallow surface-skimmers make such a mighty fuss, though in the
test situations of life, great and small, it amounts to precious
little. They were all human beings, and the girl was unspoiled,
did not think of them as failures, half-wolves, of no social
position, of no standing in the respectable world. She still had
much of the natural democracy of children, and she admired these
new friends who knew so much more than she did, who had lived,
had suffered, had come away from horrible battles covered with
wounds, the scars of which they would bear into the
grave--battles they had lost; yet they had not given up, but had
lived on, smiling, courageous, kind of heart. It was their kind
hearts that most impressed her--their kind taking in of her whom
those she loved had cast out--her, the unknown stranger,
helpless and ignorant. And what Spenser had told her about the
stage and its people made her almost believe that they would not
cast her out, though they knew the dreadful truth about her birth.

Tempest told a story that was "broad." While the others laughed,
Susan gazed at him with a puzzled expression. She wished to be
polite, to please, to enjoy. But what that story meant she could
not fathom. Miss Anstruther jeered at her. "Look at the
innocent," she cried.

"Shut up, Vi," retorted Miss Connemora. "It's no use for us to
try to be anything but what we are. Still, let the baby alone."

"Yes--let her alone," said Burlingham.

"It'll soak in soon enough," Miss Connemora went on. "No use
rubbing it in."

"What?" said Susan, thinking to show her desire to be friendly,
to be one of them.

"Dirt," said Burlingham dryly. "And don't ask any more questions."

When the three women had cleared away the dinner and had stowed
the dishes in one of the many cubbyholes along the sides of the
cabin, the three men got ready for a nap. Susan was delighted to
see them drop to the tops of the backs of the seats three berths
which fitted snugly into the walls when not in use. She saw now
that there were five others of the same kind, and that there was
a contrivance of wires and curtains by which each berth could be
shut off to itself. She had a thrilling sense of being in a kind
of Swiss Family Robinson storybook come to life. She unpacked
her bag, contributed the food in it to the common store, spread
out her serge suit which Miss Anstruther offered to press and
insisted on pressing, though Susan protested she could do it
herself quite well.

"You'll want to put it on for the arrival at Sutherland," said
Mabel Connemora.

"No," replied Susan nervously. "Not till tomorrow."

She saw the curious look in all their eyes at sight of that
dress, so different from the calico she was wearing. Mabel took
her out on the forward deck where there was an awning and a good
breeze. They sat there, Mabel talking, Susan gazing rapt at land
and water and at the actress, and listening as to a fairy
story--for the actress had lived through many and strange
experiences in the ten years since she left her father's roof in
Columbia, South Carolina. Susan listened and absorbed as a dry
sponge dropped into a pail of water. At her leisure she would
think it all out, would understand, would learn.

"Now, tell _me_ about _your_self," said Mabel when she had
exhausted all the reminiscences she could recall at the
moment--all that were fit for a "baby's" ears.

"I will, some time," said Susan, who was ready for the question.
"But I can't--not yet."

"It seems to me you're very innocent," said Mabel, "even for a
well-brought-up girl. _I_ was well brought up, too. I wish to God
my mother had told me a few things. But no--not a thing."

"What do you mean?" inquired Susan.

That set the actress to probing the girl's innocence--what she
knew and what she did not. It had been many a day since Miss
Connemora had had so much pleasure. "Well!" she finally said. "I
never would have believed it--though I know these things are so.
Now I'm going to teach you. Innocence may be a good thing for
respectable women who are going to marry and settle down with a
good husband to look after them. But it won't do at all--not at
all, my dear!--for a woman who works--who has to meet men in
their own world and on their own terms. It's hard enough to get
along, if you know. If you don't--when you're knocked down, you
stay knocked down."

"Yes--I want to learn," said Susan eagerly. "I want to
know--_everything!_"

"You're not going back?" Mabel pointed toward the shore, to a
home on a hillside, with a woman sewing on the front steps and
children racing about the yard. "Back to that sort of thing?"

"No," replied Susan. "I've got nothing to go back to."

"Nonsense!"

"Nothing," repeated Susan in the same simple, final way. "I'm
an outcast."

The ready tears sprang to Mabel's dissipated but still bright
eyes. Susan's unconscious pathos was so touching. "Then I'll
educate you. Now don't get horrified or scandalized at me. When
you feel that way, remember that Mabel Connemora didn't make the
world, but God. At least, so they say--though personally I feel
as if the devil had charge of things, and the only god was in us
poor human creatures fighting to be decent. I tell you, men and
women ain't bad--not so damn bad--excuse me; they will slip out.
No, it's the things that happen to them or what they're
afraid'll happen--it's those things that compel them to be
bad--and get them in the way of being bad--hard to each other,
and to hate and to lie and to do all sorts of things."

The show boat drifted placidly down with the current of the
broad Ohio. Now it moved toward the left bank and now toward the
right, as the current was deflected by the bends--the beautiful
curves that divided the river into a series of lovely, lake-like
reaches, each with its emerald oval of hills and rolling valleys
where harvests were ripening. And in the shadow of the awning
Susan heard from those pretty, coarse lips, in language softened
indeed but still far from refined, about all there is to know
concerning the causes and consequences of the eternal struggle
that rages round sex. To make her tale vivid, Mabel illustrated
it by the story of her own life from girlhood to the present
hour. And she omitted no detail necessary to enforce the lesson
in life. A few days before Susan would not have believed, would
not have understood. Now she both believed and understood. And
nothing that Mabel told her--not the worst of the possibilities
in the world in which she was adventuring--burned deep enough to
penetrate beyond the wound she had already received and to give
her a fresh sensation of pain and horror.

"You don't seem to be horrified," said Mabel.

Susan shook her head. "No," she said. "I feel--somehow I feel better."

Mabel eyed her curiously--had a sense of a mystery of suffering
which she dared not try to explore. She said: "Better? That's
queer. You don't take it at all as I thought you would."

Said Susan: "I had about made up my mind it was all bad. I see
that maybe it isn't."

"Oh, the world isn't such a bad place--in lots of ways. You'll
get a heap of fun out of it if you don't take things or yourself
seriously. I wish to God I'd had somebody to tell me, instead of
having to spell it out, a letter at a time. I've got just two
pieces of advice to give you." And she stopped speaking and
gazed away toward the shore with a look that seemed to be
piercing the hills.

"Please do," urged Susan, when Mabel's long mood of abstraction
tried her patience.

"Oh--yes--two pieces of advice. The first is, don't drink.
There's nothing to it--and it'll play hell--excuse me--it'll
spoil your looks and your health and give you a woozy head when
you most need a steady one. Don't drink--that's the first advice."

"I won't," said Susan.

"Oh, yes, you will. But remember my advice all the same. The
second is, don't sell your body to get a living, unless you've
got to."

"I couldn't do that," said the girl.

Mabel laughed queerly. "Oh, yes, you could--and will. But
remember my advice. Don't sell your body because it seems to be
the easy way to make a living. I know most women get their
living that way."

"Oh--no--no, indeed!" protested Susan.

"What a child you are!" laughed Mabel. "What's marriage but
that?. . . Believe your Aunt Betsy, it's the poorest way to make
a living that ever was invented--marriage or the other thing.
Sometimes you'll be tempted to. You're pretty, and you'll find
yourself up against it with no way out. You'll have to give in
for a time, no doubt. The men run things in this world, and
they'll compel it--one way or another. But fight back to your
feet again. If I'd taken my own advice, my name would be on
every dead wall in New York in letters two feet high.
Instead----" She laughed, without much bitterness. "And why? All
because I never learned to stand alone. I've even supported
men--to have something to lean on! How's that for a poor fool?"

There Violet Anstruther called her. She rose. "You won't take my
advice," she said by way of conclusion. "Nobody'll take advice.
Nobody can. We ain't made that way. But don't forget what I've
said. And when you've wobbled way off maybe it'll give you
something to steer back by."

Susan sat on there, deep in the deepest of those brown studies
that had been characteristic of her from early childhood.
Often--perhaps most often--abstraction means only mental
fogginess. But Susan happened to be of those who can
concentrate--can think things out. And that afternoon, oblivious
of the beauty around her, even unconscious of where she was, she
studied the world of reality--that world whose existence, even
the part of it lying within ourselves, we all try to ignore or
to evade or to deny, and get soundly punished for our folly.
Taking advantage of the floods of light Mabel Connemora had let
in upon her--full light where there had been a dimness that was
equal to darkness--she drew from the closets of memory and
examined all the incidents of her life--all that were typical or
for other reasons important. One who comes for the first time
into new surroundings sees more, learns more about them in a
brief period than has been seen and known by those who have
lived there always. After a few hours of recalling and
reconstructing Susan Lenox understood Sutherland probably better
than she would have understood it had she lived a long eventless
life there. And is not every Sutherland the world in miniature?

She also understood her own position--why the world of
respectability had cast her out as soon as she emerged from
childhood--why she could not have hoped for the lot to which
other girls looked forward--why she belonged with the outcasts,
in a world apart--and must live her life there. She felt that
she could not hope to be respected, loved, married. She must
work out her destiny along other lines. She understood it all,
more clearly than would have been expected of her. And it is
important to note that she faced her future without repining or
self-pity, without either joy or despondency. She would go on;
she would do as best she could. And nothing that might befall
could equal what she had suffered in the throes of the casting out.

Burlingham roused her from her long reverie. He evidently had
come straight from his nap--stocking feet, shirt open at the
collar, trousers sagging and face shiny with the sweat that
accumulates during sleep on a hot day. "Round that bend ahead of
us is Sutherland," said he, pointing forward.

Up she started in alarm.

"Now, don't get fractious," cried he cheerfully. "We'll not
touch shore for an hour, at least. And nobody's allowed aboard.
You can keep to the cabin. I'll see that you're not bothered."

"And--this evening?"

"You can keep to the dressing-room until the show's over and the
people've gone ashore. And tomorrow morning, bright and early, we'll
be off. I promised Pat a day for a drunk at Sutherland. He'll have
to postpone it. I'll give him three at Jeffersonville, instead."

Susan put on her sunbonnet as soon as the show boat rounded the
bend above town. Thus she felt safe in staying on deck and
watching the town drift by. She did not begin to think of going
into the cabin until Pat was working the boat in toward the
landing a square above the old familiar wharf-boat. "What day is
this?" she asked Eshwell.

"Saturday."

Only Saturday! And last Monday--less than five days ago--she had
left this town for her Cincinnati adventure. She felt as if
months, years, had passed. The town seemed strange to her, and
she recalled the landmarks as if she were revisiting in age the
scenes of youth. How small the town seemed, after Cincinnati!
And how squat! Then----

She saw the cupola of the schoolhouse. Its rooms, the
playgrounds flashed before her mind's eye--the teachers she had
liked--those she had feared--the face of her uncle, so kind and
loving--that same face, with hate and contempt in it----

She hurried into the cabin, tears blinding her eyes, her throat
choked with sobs.


The Burlingham Floating Palace of Thespians tied up against the
float of Bill Phibbs's boathouse--a privilege for which
Burlingham had to pay two dollars. Pat went ashore with a sack
of handbills to litter through the town. Burlingham followed, to
visit the offices of the two evening newspapers and by "handing
them out a line of smooth talk"--the one art whereof he was
master--to get free advertising. Also there were groceries to
buy and odds and ends of elastic, fancy crepe, paper muslin and
the like for repairing the shabby costumes. The others remained
on board, Eshwell and Tempest to guard the boat against the
swarms of boys darting and swooping and chattering like a huge
flock of impudent English sparrows. An additional--and the
chief--reason for Burlingham's keeping the two actors close was
that Eshwell was a drunkard and Tempest a gambler. Neither could
be trusted where there was the least temptation. Each despised
the other's vice and despised the other for being slave to it.
Burlingham could trust Eshwell to watch Tempest, could trust
Tempest to watch Eshwell.

Susan helped Mabel with the small and early supper--cold chicken
and ham, fried potatoes and coffee. Afterward all dressed in the
cabin. Some of the curtains for dividing off the berths were
drawn, out of respect to Susan not yet broken to the ways of a
mode of life which made privacy and personal modesty
impossible--and when any human custom becomes impossible, it
does not take human beings long to discover that it is also
foolish and useless. The women had to provide for a change of
costumes. As the dressing-room behind the stage was only a
narrow space between the back drop and the forward wall of the
cabin, dressing in it was impossible, so Mabel and Vi put on a
costume of tights, and over it a dress. Susan was invited to
remain and help. The making-up of the faces interested her; she
was amazed by the transformation of Mabel into youthful
loveliness, with a dairy maid's bloom in place of her pallid
pastiness. On the other hand, make-up seemed to bring out the
horrors of Miss Anstruther's big, fat, yet hollow face, and to
create other and worse horrors--as if in covering her face it
somehow uncovered her soul. When the two women stripped and got
into their tights, Susan with polite modesty turned away.
However, catching sight of Miss Anstruther in the mirror that
had been hung up under one of the side lamps, she was so
fascinated that she gazed furtively at her by that indirect way.

Violet happened to see, laughed. "Look at the baby's shocked
face, Mabel," she cried.

But she was mistaken. It was sheer horror that held Susan's gaze
upon Violet's incredible hips and thighs, violently obtruded by
the close-reefed corset. Mabel had a slender figure, the waist
too short and the legs too nearly of the same girth from hip to
ankle, but for all that, attractive. Susan had never before seen
a woman in tights without any sort of skirt.

"You would show up well in those things," Violet said to her,
"that is, for a thin woman. The men don't care much for thinness."

"Not the clodhoppers and roustabouts that come to see us,"
retorted Mabel. "The more a woman looks like a cow or a sow, the
better they like it. They don't believe it's female unless it
looks like what they're used to in the barnyard and the cattle pen."

Miss Anstruther was not in the least offended. She paraded,
jauntily switching her great hips and laughing. "Jealous!" she
teased. "You poor little broomstick."

Burlingham was in a white flannel suit that looked well enough
in those dim lights. The make-up gave him an air of rakish
youth. Eshwell had got himself into an ordinary sack suit.
Tempest was in the tattered and dirty finery of a
seventeenth-century courtier. The paint and black made Eshwell's
face fat and comic; it gave Tempest distinction, made his hollow
blazing eyes brilliant and large. All traces of habitation were
effaced from the "auditorium"; the lamps were lighted, a ticket
box was set up on the rear deck and an iron bar was thrown half
across the rear entrance to the cabin, that only one person at
a time might be able to pass. The curtain was let down--a gaudy
smear of a garden scene in a French palace in the eighteenth
century. Pat, the orchestra, put on a dress coat and vest and
a "dickey"; the coat had white celluloid cuffs pinned in the
sleeves at the wrists.