Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

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


Susan shook her head.

"I thought not. You haven't lived long enough yet. Well, I'll
finish, anyhow."

"I'll remember," said Susan. "I'll think about it until I do understand."

"I hope so. The weather and the scenery make me feel like
philosophizing. Finally, if you come through the second stage
all right, you'll enter the third stage. There, you'll see that
you were right at first when you thought only the strong could
afford to do right. And you'll see that you were right in the
second stage when you thought only the strong could afford to do
wrong. For you'll have learned that only the strong can afford
to act at all, and that they can do right or wrong as they
please _because they are strong_."

"Then you don't believe in right, at all!" exclaimed the girl,
much depressed, but whether for the right or for her friend she
could not have told.

"Now, who said that?" Demanded he, amused. "What _did_ I say?
Why--if you want to do right, be strong or you'll be crushed;
and if you want to do wrong, take care again to be strong--or
you'll be crushed. My moral is, be strong! In this world the
good weaklings and the bad weaklings had better lie low, hide in
the tall grass. The strong inherit the earth."

They were silent a long time, she thinking, he observing her
with sad tenderness. At last he said:

"You are a nice sweet girl--well brought up. But that means
badly brought up for the life you've got to lead--the life
you've got to learn to lead."

"I'm beginning to see that," said the girl. Her gravity made him
feel like laughing, and brought the tears to his eyes. The
laughter he suppressed.

"You're going to fight your way up to what's called the
triumphant class--the people on top--they have all the success,
all the money, all the good times. Well, the things you've been
taught--at church--in the Sunday School--in the nice storybooks
you've read--those things are all for the triumphant class, or
for people working meekly along in 'the station to which God has
appointed them' and handing over their earnings to their
betters. But those nice moral things you believe in--they don't
apply to people like you--fighting their way up from the meek
working class to the triumphant class. You won't believe me
now--won't understand thoroughly. But soon you'll see. Once
you've climbed up among the successful people you can afford to
indulge--in moderation--in practicing the good old moralities.
Any dirty work you may need done you can hire done and pretend
not to know about it. But while you're climbing, no Golden Rule
and no turning of the cheek. Tooth and claw then--not sheathed
but naked--not by proxy but in your own person."

"But you're not like that," said the girl.

"The more fool I," repeated he.

She was surprised that she understood so much of what he had
said--childlike wonder at her wise old heart, made wise almost
in a night--a wedding night. When Burlingham lapsed into
silence, laughing at himself for having talked so far over the
"kiddie's" head, she sat puzzling out what he had said. The
world seemed horribly vast and forbidding, and the sky, so blue
and bright, seemed far, far away. She sighed profoundly. "I am
so weak," she murmured. "I am so ignorant."

Burlingham nodded and winked. "Yes, but you'll grow," said be.
"I back you to win."

The color poured into her cheeks, and she burst into tears.
Burlingham thought he understood; for once his shrewdness went
far astray. Excusably, since he could not know that he had used
the same phrase that had closed Spenser's letter to her.


Late in the afternoon, when the heat had abated somewhat and
they were floating pleasantly along with the washing gently
a-flutter from lines on the roof of the auditorium, Burlingham
put Eshwell at the rudder and with Pat and the violin rehearsed
her. "The main thing, the only thing to worry about," explained
he, "is beginning right." She was standing in the center of the
stage, he on the floor of the auditorium beside the seated
orchestra. "That means," he went on, "you've simply got to learn
to come in right. We'll practice that for a while."

She went to the wings--where there was barely space for her to
conceal herself by squeezing tightly against the wall. At the
signal from him she walked out. As she had the utmost confidence
in his kindness, and as she was always too deeply interested in
what she and others were doing to be uncomfortably
self-conscious, she was not embarrassed, and thought she made
the crossing and took her stand very well. He nodded approvingly.
"But," said he, "there's a difference between a stage walk and
walking anywhere else--or standing. Nothing is natural on the stage.
If it were it would look unnatural, because the stage itself is
artificial and whatever is there must be in harmony with it. So
everything must be done unnaturally in such a way that it _seems_
natural. Just as a picture boat looks natural though it's painted
on a flat surface. Now I'll illustrate."

He gave her his hand to help her jump down; then he climbed to
the stage. He went to the wings and walked out. As he came he
called her attention to how he poised his body, how he advanced
so that there would be from the auditorium no unsightly view of
crossing legs, how he arranged hands, arms, shoulders, legs,
head, feet for an attitude of complete rest. He repeated his
illustration again and again, Susan watching and listening with
open-eyed wonder and admiration. She had never dreamed that so
simple a matter could be so complex. When he got her up beside
him and went through it with her, she soon became as used to the
new motions as a beginner at the piano to stretching an octave.
But it was only after more than an hour's practice that she
moved him to say:

"That'll do for a beginning. Now, we'll sing."

She tried "Suwanee River" first and went through it fairly well,
singing to him as he stood back at the rear door. He was
enthusiastic--cunning Burlingham, who knew so well how to get
the best out of everyone! "Mighty good--eh, Pat? Yes, mighty
good. You've got something better than a great voice, my dear.
You've got magnetism. The same thing that made me engage you the
minute you asked me is going to make you--well, go a long
ways--a _long_ ways. Now, we'll try 'The Last Rose of Summer.'"

She sang even better. And this improvement continued through the
other four songs of her repertoire. His confidence in her was
contagious; it was so evident that he really did believe in her.
And Pat, too, wagged his head in a way that made her feel good
about herself. Then Burlingham called in the others whom he had
sent to the forward deck. Before them the girl went all to
pieces. She made her entrance badly, she sang worse. And the
worse she sang, the worse she felt and the worse her next
attempt was. At last, with nerves unstrung, she broke down and
sobbed. Burlingham climbed up to pat her on the shoulder.

"That's the best sign yet," said he. "It shows you've got
temperament. Yes--you've got the stuff in you."

He quieted her, interested her in the purely mechanical part of
what she was doing. "Don't think of who you're doing it before,
or of how you're doing it, but only of getting through each step
and each note. If your head's full of that, you'll have no room
for fright." And she was ready to try again. When she finished
the last notes of "Suwanee River," there was an outburst of
hearty applause. And the sound that pleased her most was
Tempest's rich rhetorical "Bravo!" As a man she abhorred him;
but she respected the artist. And in unconsciously drawing this
distinction she gave proof of yet another quality that was to
count heavily in the coming days. Artist he was not. But she
thought him an artist. A girl or boy without the intelligence
that can develop into flower and fruit would have seen and felt
only Tempest, the odious personality.

Burlingham did not let her off until she was ready to drop with
exhaustion. And after supper, when they were floating slowly on,
well out of the channel where they might be run down by some
passing steamer with a flint-hearted captain or pilot, she had
to go at it again. She went to bed early, and she slept without
a motion or a break until the odor of the cooking breakfast
awakened her. When she came out, her face was bright for the
first time. She was smiling, laughing, chatting, was delighted
with everything and everybody. Even the thought of Roderick
Spenser laid up with a broken leg recurred less often and less
vividly. It seemed to her that the leg must be about well. The
imagination of healthy youth is reluctant to admit ideas of
gloom in any circumstances. In circumstances of excitement and
adventure, such as Susan's at that time, it flatly refuses to
admit them.

They were at anchor before a little town sprawled upon the
fields between hills and river edge. A few loafers were chewing
tobacco and inspecting the show boat from the shady side of a
pile of lumber. Pat had already gone forth with the bundle of
handbills; he was not only waking up the town, but touring the
country in horse and buggy, was agitating the farmers--for the
show boat was to stay at least two nights at Bethlehem. "And we
ought to do pretty well," said Burlingham. "The wheat's about
all threshed, and there's a kind of lull. The hayseeds aren't so
dead tired at night. A couple of weeks ago we couldn't have got
half a house by paying for it."

As the afternoon wore away and the sun disappeared behind the
hills to the southwest, Susan's spirits oozed. Burlingham and
the others--deliberately--paid no attention to her, acted as if
no great, universe-stirring event were impending. Immediately
after supper Burlingham said:

"Now, Vi, get busy and put her into her harness. Make her
a work of art."

Never was there a finer display of unselfishness than in their
eagerness to help her succeed, in their intense nervous anxiety
lest she should not make a hit. The bad in human nature, as
Mabel Connemora had said, is indeed almost entirely if not
entirely the result of the compulsion of circumstances; the good
is the natural outcropping of normal instincts, and resumes
control whenever circumstances permit. These wandering players
had suffered too much not to have the keenest and gentlest
sympathy. Susan looked on Tempest as a wicked man; yet she could
not but be touched by his almost hysterical excitement over her
debut, when the near approach of the hour made it impossible for
his emotional temperament longer to hide its agitation. Every
one of them gave or loaned her a talisman--Tempest, a bit of
rabbit's foot; Anstruther, a ring that had twice saved her from
drowning (at least, it had been on her finger each time);
Connemora, a hunchback's tooth on a faded velvet string; Pat, a
penny which happened to be of the date of her birth year (the
presence of the penny was regarded by all as a most encouraging
sign); Eshwell loaned her a miniature silver bug he wore on his
watch chain; Burlingham's contribution was a large
buckeye----"Ever since I've had that, I've never been without at
least the price of a meal in my pocket."

They had got together for her a kind of evening dress, a pale
blue chiffon-like drapery that left her lovely arms and
shoulders bare and clung softly to the lines of her figure. They
did her hair up in a graceful sweep from the brow and a simple
coil behind. She looked like a woman, yet like a child dressed
as a woman, too, for there was as always that exuberant vitality
which made each of the hairs of her head seem individual,
electric. The rouge gave her color, enhanced into splendor the
brilliance of her violet-gray eyes--eyes so intensely colored
and so admirably framed that they were noted by the least
observant. When Anstruther had put the last touches to her
toilet and paraded her to the others, there was a chorus of
enthusiasm. The men no less than the women viewed her with the
professional eye.

"Didn't I tell you all?" cried Burlingham, as they looked her up
and down like a group of connoisseurs inspecting a statue.
"Wasn't I right?"

"'It is the dawn, and Juliet is the east,'" orated Tempest in
rich, romantic tones.

"A damn shame to waste her on these yaps," said Eshwell.

Connemora embraced her with tearful eyes. "And as sweet as you
are lovely, you dear!" she cried. "You simply can't help winning."

The two women thought her greatest charms were her form and her
feet and ankles. The men insisted that her charm of charms was
her eyes. And certainly, much could be said for that view.
Susan's violet-gray eyes, growing grayer when she was
thoughtful, growing deeper and clearer and softer shining
violet when her emotions were touched--Susan's eyes were
undoubtedly unusual even in a race in which homely eyes are the
exception.

When it was her turn and she emerged into the glare of the
footlights, she came to a full stop and an awful wave of
weakness leaped up through legs and body to blind her eyes and
crash upon her brain. She shook her head, lifted it high like a
swimmer shaking off a wave. Her gaze leaped in terror across the
blackness of the auditorium with its thick-strewn round white
disks of human faces, sought the eyes of Burlingham standing in
full view in the center of the rear doorway--where he had told
her to look for him. She heard Pat playing the last of the
opening chords; Burlingham lifted his hand like a leader's
baton. And naturally and sweetly the notes, the words of the old
darkey song of longing for home began to float out through the
stillness.

She did not take her gaze from Burlingham. She sang her best,
sang to please him, to show him how she appreciated what he had
done for her. And when she finished and bowed, the outburst of
applause unnerved her, sent her dizzy and almost staggering into
the wings. "Splendid! Splendid!" cried Mabel, and Anstruther
embraced her, and Tempest and Eshwell kissed her hands. They all
joined in pushing her out again for the encore--"Blue Alsatian
Mountains." She did not sing quite so steadily, but got through
in good form, the tremolo of nervousness in her voice adding to
the wailing pathos of the song's refrain:


Ade, ade, ade, such dreams must pass away,
But the Blue Alsatian Mountains seem to watch and wait alway.


The crowd clapped, stamped, whistled, shouted; but Burlingham
defied it. "The lady will sing again later," he cried. "The next
number on the regular program is," etc., etc. The crowd yelled;
Burlingham stood firm, and up went the curtain on Eshwell and
Connemora's sketch. It got no applause. Nor did any other
numbers on the program. The contrast between the others and the
beauty of the girl, her delicate sweetness, her vital youth, her
freshness of the early morning flower, was inevitable.

The crowd could think only of her. The quality of magnetism
aside, she had sung neither very well nor very badly. But had
she sung badly, still her beauty would have won her the same
triumph. When she came on for her second number with a
cloud-like azure chiffon flung carelessly over her dark hair as
a scarf, Spanish fashion, she received a stirring welcome. It
frightened her, so that Pat had to begin four times before her
voice faintly took up the tune. Again Burlingham's encouraging,
confident gaze, flung across the gap between them like a strong
rescuing hand, strengthened her to her task. This time he let
the crowd have two encores--and the show was over; for the
astute manager, seeing how the girl had caught on, had moved her
second number to the end.

Burlingham lingered in the entrance to the auditorium to feast
himself on the comments of the crowd as it passed out. When he
went back he had to search for the girl, found her all in a heap
in a chair at the outer edge of the forward deck. She was
sobbing piteously. "Well, for God's sake!" cried he. "Is _this_
the way you take it!"

She lifted her head. "Did I do very badly?" she asked.

"You swept 'em off their big hulking feet," replied he.

"When you didn't come, I thought I'd disappointed you."

"I'll bet my hand there never was such a hit made in a river
show boat--and they've graduated some of the swells of the
profession. We'll play here a week to crowded houses--matinees
every day, too. And this is a two-night stand usually. I must
find some more songs." He slapped his thigh. "The very thing!"
he cried. "We'll ring in some hymns. 'Rock of Ages,' say--and
'Jesus, Lover of my Soul'--and you can get 'em off in a churchy
kind of costume something like a surplice. That'll knock 'em
stiff. And Anstruther can dope out the accompaniments on that
wheezer. What d'you think?"

"Whatever you want," said the girl. "Oh, I am so glad!"

"I don't see how you got through so well," said he.

"I didn't dare fail," replied Susan. "If I had, I couldn't have
faced you." And by the light of the waning moon he saw the
passionate gratitude of her sensitive young face.

"Oh--I've done nothing," said he, wiping the tears from his
eyes--for he had his full share of the impulsive, sentimental
temperament of his profession. "Pure selfishness."

Susan gazed at him with eyes of the pure deep violet of
strongest feeling. "_I_ know what you did," she said in a low
voice. "And--I'd die for you."

Burlingham had to use his handkerchief in dealing with his eyes
now. "This business has given me hysterics," said he with a
queer attempt at a laugh. Then, after a moment, "God bless you,
little girl. You wait here a moment. I'll see how supper's
getting on."

He wished to go ahead of her, for he had a shrewd suspicion as
to the state of mind of the rest of the company. And he was
right. There they sat in the litter of peanut hulls, popcorn,
and fruit skins which the audience had left. On every
countenance was jealous gloom.

"What's wrong?" inquired Burlingham in his cheerful derisive
way. "You are a nice bunch, you are!"

They shifted uneasily. Mabel snapped out, "Where's the infant
prodigy? Is she so stuck on herself already that she won't
associate with us?"

"You grown-up babies," mocked Burlingham. "I found her out there
crying in darkness because she thought she'd failed. Now you go
bring her in, Conny. As for the rest of you, I'm disgusted. Here
we've hit on something that'll land us in Easy Street, and
you're all filled up with poison."

They were ashamed of themselves. Burlingham had brought back to
them vividly the girl's simplicity and sweetness that had won
their hearts, even the hearts of the women in whom jealousy of
her young beauty would have been more than excusable. Anstruther
began to get out the supper dishes and Mabel slipped away toward
the forward deck. "When the child comes in," pursued Burlingham,
"I want to see you people looking and acting human."

"We are a lot of damn fools," admitted Eshwell. "That's why we're
bum actors instead of doing well at some respectable business."

And his jealousy went the way of Violet's and Mabel's. Pat began
to remember that he had shared in the triumph--where would she
have been without his violin work? But Tempest remained somber.
In his case better nature was having a particularly hard time of
it. His vanity had got savage wounds from the hoots and the "Oh,
bite it off, hamfat," which had greeted his impressive lecture on
the magic lantern pictures. He eyed Burlingham glumly. He
exonerated the girl, but not Burlingham. He was convinced that
the manager, in a spirit of mean revenge, had put up a job on
him. It simply could not be in the ordinary course that any
audience, without some sly trickery of prompting from an old
expert of theatrical "double-crossing," would be impatient for
a mere chit of an amateur when it might listen to his rich,
mellow eloquence.

Susan came shyly--and at the first glance into her face her
associates despised themselves for their pettiness. It is
impossible for envy and jealousy and hatred to stand before the
light of such a nature as Susan's. Away from her these very
human friends of hers might hate her--but in her presence they
could not resist the charm of her sincerity.

Everyone's spirits went up with the supper. It was Pat who said
to Burlingham, "Bob, we're going to let the pullet in on the
profits equally, aren't we?"

"Sure," replied Burlingham. "Anybody kicking?"

The others protested enthusiastically except Tempest, who shot
a glance of fiery scorn at Burlingham over a fork laden with
potato salad. "Then--you're elected, Miss Sackville," said
Burlingham.

Susan's puzzled eyes demanded an explanation. "Just this," said
he. "We divide equally at the end of the trip all we've raked
in, after the rent of the boat and expenses are taken off. You
get your equal share exactly as if you started with us."

"But that wouldn't be fair," protested the girl. "I must pay
what I owe you first."

"She means two dollars she borrowed of me at Carrollton,"
explained Burlingham. And they all laughed uproariously.

"I'll only take what's fair," said the girl.

"I vote we give it all to her," rolled out Tempest in tragedy's
tone for classic satire.

Before Mabel could hurl at him the probably coarse retort she
instantly got her lips ready to make, Burlingham's cool,
peace-compelling tones broke in:

"Miss Sackville's right. She must get only what's fair. She
shares equally from tonight on--less two dollars."

Susan nodded delightedly. She did not know--and the others did
not at the excited moment recall--that the company was to date
eleven dollars less well off than when it started from the
headwaters of the Ohio in early June. But Burlingham knew, and
that was the cause of the quiet grin to which he treated himself.




CHAPTER XV


BURLINGHAM had lived too long, too actively, and too
intelligently to have left any of his large, original stock of
the optimism that had so often shipwrecked his career in spite
of his talents and his energy. Out of the bitterness of
experience he used to say, "A young optimist is a young fool. An
old optimist is an old ass. A fool may learn, an ass can't." And
again, "An optimist steams through the fog, taking it for
granted everything's all right. A pessimist steams ahead too,
but he gets ready for trouble." However, he was wise enough to
keep his private misgivings and reservations from his
associates; the leaders of the human race always talk optimism
and think pessimism. He had told the company that Susan was sure
to make a go; and after she had made a go, he announced the
beginning of a season of triumph. But he was surprised when his
prediction came true and they had to turn people away from the
next afternoon's performance. He began to believe they really
could stay a week, and hired a man to fill the streets of New
Washington and other inland villages and towns of the county
with a handbill headlining Susan.

The news of the lovely young ballad singer in the show boat at
Bethlehem spread, as interesting news ever does, and down came
the people to see and hear, and to go away exclaiming.
Bethlehem, the sleepy, showed that it could wake when there was
anything worth waking for. Burlingham put on the hymns in the
middle of the week, and even the clergy sent their families.
Every morning Susan, either with Mabel or with Burlingham, or
with both, took a long walk into the country. It was Burlingham,
by the way, who taught her the necessity of regular and
methodical long walks for the preservation of her health. When
she returned there was always a crowd lounging about the landing
waiting to gape at her and whisper. It was intoxicating to her,
this delicious draught of the heady wine of fame; and Burlingham
was not unprepared for the evidences that she thought pretty
well of herself, felt that she had arrived. He laughed to
himself indulgently. "Let the kiddie enjoy herself," thought he.
"She needs the self-confidence now to give her a good foundation
to stand on. Then when she finds out what a false alarm this jay
excitement was, she'll not be swept clean away into despair."

The chief element in her happiness, he of course knew nothing
about. Until this success--which she, having no basis for
comparison, could not but exaggerate--she had been crushed and
abused more deeply than she had dared admit to herself by her
birth which made all the world scorn her and by the series of
calamities climaxing in that afternoon and night of horror at
Ferguson's. This success--it seemed to her to give her the right
to have been born, the right to live on and hold up her head
without effort after Ferguson. "I'll show them all, before I get
through," she said to herself over and over again. "They'll be
proud of me. Ruth will be boasting to everyone that I'm her
cousin. And Sam Wright--he'll wonder that he ever dared touch
such a famous, great woman." She only half believed this
herself, for she had much common sense and small
self-confidence. But pretending that she believed it all gave
her the most delicious pleasure.