Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

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


"No," said his wife unhesitatingly--and he knew his worst
suspicion was correct. "I've made up my mind to keep her."

"It isn't fair to Ruth."

"Send it away--where?"

"Anywhere. Get it adopted in Chicago--Cincinnati--Louisville."

"Lorella's baby?"

"When she and Ruth grow up--what then?"

"People ain't so low as some think."

"'The sins of the parents are visited on the children unto----'"

"I don't care," interrupted Fanny. "I love her. I'm going to
keep her. Wait here a minute."

When she came back she had the baby in her arms. "Just look,"
she said softly.

George frowned, tried not to look, but was soon drawn and held by
the sweet, fresh, blooming face, so smooth, so winning, so innocent.

"And think how she was sent back to life--from beyond the grave.
It must have been for some purpose."

Warham groaned, "Oh, Lord, I don't know _what_ to do! But--it
ain't fair to our Ruth."

"I don't see it that way. . . . Kiss her, George."

Warham kissed one of the soft cheeks, swelling like a ripening
apple. The baby opened wide a pair of wonderful dark eyes, threw
up its chubby arms and laughed--such a laugh!. . . There was no
more talk of sending her away.




CHAPTER II


NOT quite seventeen years later, on a fine June morning, Ruth
Warham issued hastily from the house and started down the long
tanbark walk from the front veranda to the street gate. She was
now nineteen--nearer twenty--and a very pretty young woman,
indeed. She had grown up one of those small slender blondes,
exquisite and doll-like, who cannot help seeming fresh and
sweet, whatever the truth about them, without or within. This
morning she had on a new summer dress of a blue that matched her
eyes and harmonized with her coloring. She was looking her best,
and she had the satisfying, confidence-giving sense that it was
so. Like most of the unattached girls of small towns, she was
always dreaming of the handsome stranger who would fall in
love--the thrilling, love-story kind of love at first sight. The
weather plays a conspicuous part in the romancings of youth; she
felt that this was precisely the kind of day fate would be most
likely to select for the meeting. Just before dressing she had
been reading about the wonderful _him_--in Robert Chambers'
latest story--and she had spent full fifteen minutes of blissful
reverie over the accompanying Fisher illustration. Now she was
issuing hopefully forth, as hopefully as if adventure were the
rule and order of life in Sutherland, instead of a desperate
monotony made the harder to bear by the glory of its scenery.

She had got only far enough from the house to be visible to the
second-story windows when a young voice called:

"Ruthie! Aren't you going to wait for me?"

Ruth halted; an expression anything but harmonious with the
pretty blue costume stormed across her face. "I won't have her
along!" she muttered. "I simply won't!" She turned slowly and,
as she turned, effaced every trace of temper with a dexterity
which might have given an onlooker a poorer opinion of her
character than perhaps the facts as to human nature justify. The
countenance she presently revealed to those upper windows was
sunny and sweet. No one was visible; but the horizontal slats in
one of the only closed pair of shutters and a vague suggestion
of movement rather than form behind them gave the impression
that a woman, not far enough dressed to risk being seen from the
street, was hidden there. Evidently Ruth knew, for it was toward
this window that she directed her gaze and the remark: "Can't
wait, dear. I'm in a great hurry. Mamma wants the silk right
away and I've got to match it."

"But I'll be only a minute," pleaded the voice--a much more
interesting, more musical voice than Ruth's rather shrill and
thin high soprano.

"No--I'll meet you up at papa's store."

"All right."

Ruth resumed her journey. She smiled to herself. "That means,"
said she, half aloud, "I'll steer clear of the store this morning."

But as she was leaving the gate into the wide, shady, sleepy
street, who should come driving past in a village cart but
Lottie Wright! And Lottie reined her pony in to the sidewalk and
in the shade of a symmetrical walnut tree proceeded to invite
Ruth to a dance--a long story, as Lottie had to tell all about
it, the decorations, the favors, the food, who would be there,
what she was going to wear, and so on and on. Ruth was intensely
interested but kept remembering something that caused her to
glance uneasily from time to time up the tanbark walk under the
arching boughs toward the house. Even if she had not been
interested, she would hardly have ventured to break off; Lottie
Wright was the only daughter of the richest man in Sutherland
and, therefore, social arbiter to the younger set.

Lottie stopped abruptly, said: "Well, I really must get on. And
there's your cousin coming down the walk. I know you've been
waiting for her."

Ruth tried to keep in countenance, but a blush of shame and a
frown of irritation came in spite of her.

"I'm sorry I can't ask Susie, too," pursued Lottie, in a voice
of hypocritical regret. "But there are to be exactly eighteen
couples--and I couldn't."

"Of course not," said Ruth heartily. "Susan'll understand."

"I wouldn't for the world do anything to hurt her feelings,"
continued Lottie with the self-complacent righteousness of a
deacon telling the congregation how good "grace" has made him.
Her prominent commonplace brown eyes were gazing up the walk, an
expression distressingly like envious anger in them. She had a
thick, pudgy face, an oily skin, an outcropping of dull red
pimples on the chin. Many women can indulge their passion for
sweets at meals and sweets between meals without serious
injury--to complexion; Lottie Wright, unluckily, couldn't.

"I feel sorry for Susie," she went on, in the ludicrous
patronizing tone that needs no describing to anyone acquainted
with any fashionable set anywhere from China to Peru. "And I
think the way you all treat her is simply beautiful. But, then,
everybody feels sorry for her and tries to be kind. She
knows--about herself, I mean--doesn't she, Ruthie?"

"I guess so," replied Ruth, almost hanging her head in her
mortification. "She's very good and sweet."

"Indeed, she is," said Lottie. "And father says she's far and
away the prettiest girl in town."

With this parting shot, which struck precisely where she had
aimed, Lottie gathered up the reins and drove on, calling out a
friendly "Hello, Susie dearie," to Susan Lenox, who, on her
purposely lagging way from the house, had nearly reached the gate.

"What a nasty thing Lottie Wright is!" exclaimed Ruth to her cousin.

"She has a mean tongue," admitted Susan, tall and slim and
straight, with glorious dark hair and a skin healthily pallid
and as smooth as clear. "But she's got a good heart. She gives
a lot away to poor people."

"Because she likes to patronize and be kowtowed to," retorted
Ruth. "She's mean, I tell you." Then, with a vicious gleam in
the blue eyes that hinted a deeper and less presentable motive
for the telling, she added: "Why, she's not going to ask you
to her party."

Susan was obviously unmoved. "She has the right to ask whom she
pleases. And"--she laughed--"if I were giving a party I'd not
want to ask her--though I might do it for fear she'd feel left out."

"Don't you feel--left out?"

Susan shook her head. "I seem not to care much about going to
parties lately. The boys don't like to dance with me, and I get
tired of sitting the dances out."

This touched Ruth's impulsively generous heart and woman's easy
tears filled her eyes; her cousin's remark was so pathetic, the
more pathetic because its pathos was absolutely unconscious.
Ruth shot a pitying glance at Susan, but the instant she saw the
loveliness of the features upon which that expression of
unconsciousness lay like innocence upon a bed of roses, the pity
vanished from her eyes to be replaced by a disfiguring envy as
hateful as an evil emotion can be at nineteen. Susan still
lacked nearly a month of seventeen, but she seemed older than
Ruth because her mind and her body had developed beyond her
years--or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say beyond the
average of growth at seventeen. Also, her personality was
stronger, far more definite. Ruth tried to believe herself the
cleverer and the more beautiful, at times with a certain
success. But as she happened to be a shrewd young person--an
inheritance from the Warhams--she was haunted by misgivings--and
worse. Those whose vanity never suffers from these torments
will, of course, condemn her; but whoever has known the pain of
having to concede superiority to someone with whom she or he--is
constantly contrasted will not be altogether without sympathy
for Ruth in her struggles, often vain struggles, against the
mortal sin of jealousy.

The truth is, Susan was beyond question the beauty of
Sutherland. Her eyes, very dark at birth, had changed to a soft,
dreamy violet-gray. Hair and coloring, lashes and eyebrows
remained dark; thus her eyes and the intense red of her lips had
that vicinage of contrast which is necessary to distinction. To
look at her was to be at once fascinated by those violet-gray
eyes--by their color, by their clearness, by their regard of
calm, grave inquiry, by their mystery not untouched by a certain
sadness. She had a thick abundance of wavy hair, not so long as
Ruth's golden braids, but growing beautifully instead of thinly
about her low brow, about her delicately modeled ears, and at
the back of her exquisite neck. Her slim nose departed enough
from the classic line to prevent the suggestion of monotony that
is in all purely classic faces. Her nostrils had the
sensitiveness that more than any other outward sign indicates
the imaginative temperament. Her chin and throat--to look at
them was to know where her lover would choose to kiss her first.
When she smiled her large even teeth were dazzling. And the
smile itself was exceedingly sweet and winning, with the
violet-gray eyes casting over it that seriousness verging on
sadness which is the natural outlook of a highly intelligent
nature. For while stupid vain people are suspicious and easily
offended, only the intelligent are truly sensitive--keenly
susceptible to all sensations. The dull ear is suspicious; the
acute ear is sensitive.

The intense red of her lips, at times so vivid that it seemed
artificial, and their sinuous, sensitive curve indicated a
temperament that was frankly proclaimed in her figure--sensuous,
graceful, slender--the figure of girlhood in its perfection and
of perfect womanhood, too--like those tropical flowers that look
innocent and young and fresh, yet stir in the beholder
passionate longings and visions. Her walk was worthy of face and
figure--free and firm and graceful, the small head carried
proudly without haughtiness.

This physical beauty had as an aureole to illuminate it and to
set it off a manner that was wholly devoid of mannerisms--of
those that men and women think out and exhibit to give added
charm to themselves--tricks of cuteness, as lisp and baby stare;
tricks of dignity, as grave brow and body always carried rigidly
erect; tricks of sweetness and kindliness, as the ever ready
smile and the warm handclasp. Susan, the interested in the
world about her, Susan, the self-unconscious, had none of these
tricks. She was at all times her own self. Beauty is anything
but rare, likewise intelligence. But this quality of naturalness
is the greatest of all qualities. It made Susan Lenox unique.

It was not strange--nor inexcusable that the girls and their
parents had begun to pity Susan as soon as this beauty developed
and this personality had begun to exhale its delicious perfume.
It was but natural that they should start the whole town to
"being kind to the poor thing." And it was equally the matter of
course that they should have achieved their object--should have
impressed the conventional masculine mind of the town with such
a sense of the "poor thing's" social isolation and
"impossibility" that the boys ceased to be her eagerly admiring
friends, were afraid to be alone with her, to ask her to dance.
Women are conventional as a business; but with men
conventionality is a groveling superstition. The youths of
Sutherland longed for, sighed for the alluring, sweet, bright
Susan; but they dared not, with all the women saying "Poor
thing! What a pity a nice man can't afford to have anything to
do with her!" It was an interesting typical example of the
profound snobbishness of the male character. Rarely, after Susan
was sixteen, did any of the boys venture to ask her to dance and
so give himself the joy of encircling that lovely form of hers;
yet from babyhood her fascination for the male sex, regardless
of age or temperament, had been uncanny--"naturally, she being
a love-child," said the old women. And from fourteen on, it grew
steadily.

It would be difficult for one who has not lived in a small town
to understand exactly the kind of isolation to which Sutherland
consigned the girl without her realizing it, without their fully
realizing it themselves. Everyone was friendly with her. A
stranger would not have noticed any difference in the treatment
of her and of her cousin Ruth. Yet not one of the young men
would have thought of marrying her, would have regarded her as
his equal or the equal of his sisters. She went to all the
general entertainments. She was invited to all the houses when
failure to invite her would have seemed pointed--but only then.
She did not think much about herself; she was fond of
study--fonder of reading--fondest, perhaps, of making dresses
and hats, especially for Ruth, whom she thought much prettier
than herself. Thus, she was only vaguely, subconsciously
conscious of there being something peculiar and mysterious in
her lot.

This isolation, rather than her dominant quality of
self-effacing consideration for others, was the chief cause of
the extraordinary innocence of her mind. No servant, no girl, no
audacious boy ever ventured to raise with her any question
remotely touching on sex. All those questions seemed to Puritan
Sutherland in any circumstances highly indelicate; in relation
to Susan they seemed worse than indelicate, dreadful though the
thought was that there could be anything worse than indelicacy.
At fifteen she remained as unaware of even the existence of the
mysteries of sex as she had been at birth. Nothing definite
enough to arouse her curiosity had ever been said in her
hearing; and such references to those matters as she found in
her reading passed her by, as any matter of which he has not the
beginnings of knowledge will fail to arrest the attention of any
reader. It was generally assumed that she knew all about her
origin, that someone had, some time or other, told her. Even her
Aunt Fanny thought so, thought she was hiding the knowledge deep
in her heart, explained in that way her content with the
solitude of books and sewing.

Susan was the worst possible influence in Ruth's life. Our
character is ourself, is born with us, clings to us as the flesh
to our bones, persists unchanged until we die. But upon the
circumstances that surround us depends what part of our
character shall show itself. Ruth was born with perhaps
something more than the normal tendency to be envious and petty.
But these qualities might never have shown themselves
conspicuously had there been no Susan for her to envy. The very
qualities that made Susan lovable reacted upon the pretty, pert
blond cousin to make her the more unlovable. Again and again,
when she and Susan were about to start out together, and Susan
would appear in beauty and grace of person and dress, Ruth would
excuse herself, would fly to her room to lock herself in and
weep and rage and hate. And at the high school, when Susan
scored in a recitation or in some dramatic entertainment, Ruth
would sit with bitten lip and surging bosom, pale with jealousy.
Susan's isolation, the way the boys avoided having with her the
friendly relations that spring up naturally among young people
these gave Ruth a partial revenge. But Susan, seemingly
unconscious, rising sweetly and serenely above all pettiness--

Ruth's hatred deepened, though she hid it from everyone, almost
from herself. And she depended more and more utterly upon Susan
to select her clothes for her, to dress her, to make her look
well; for Susan had taste and Ruth had not.

On that bright June morning as the cousins went up Main Street
together, Susan gave herself over to the delight of sun and air
and of the flowering gardens before the attractive houses they
were passing; Ruth, with the day quite dark for her, all its
joys gone, was fighting against a hatred of her cousin so
vicious that it made her afraid. "I'll have no chance at all,"
her angry heart was saying, "so long as Susie's around, keeping
everybody reminded of the family shame." And that was a truth
she could not downface, mean and ungenerous though thinking it
might be. The worst of all was that Susan, in a simple white
dress and an almost untrimmed white straw hat with a graceful
curve to its brim and set at the right angle upon that wavy dark
hair, was making the beauty of her short blond cousin dim and
somehow common.

At the corner of Maple Street Ruth's self-control reached its
limit. She halted, took the sample of silk from her glove. There
was not a hint of her feelings in her countenance, for shame and
the desire to seem to be better than she was were fast making
her an adept in hypocrisy. "You go ahead and match it for
mamma," said she. "I've got to run in and see Bessie Andrews."

"But I promised Uncle George I'd come and help him with the
monthly bills," objected Susan.

"You can do both. It'll take you only a minute. If mother had
known you were going uptown, she'd never have trusted _me_." And
Ruth had tucked the sample in Susan's belt and was hurrying out
Maple Street. There was nothing for Susan to do but go on alone.

Two squares, and she was passing the show place of Sutherland,
the home of the Wrights. She paused to regale herself with a
glance into the grove of magnificent elms with lawns and bright
gardens beyond--for the Wright place filled the entire square
between Broad and Myrtle Streets and from Main to Monroe. She
was starting on when she saw among the trees a young man in
striped flannels. At the same instant he saw her.

"Hel-_lo_, Susie!" he cried. "I was thinking about you."

Susan halted. "When did you get back, Sam?" she asked. "I heard
you were going to stay on in the East all summer."

After they had shaken hands across the hedge that came almost to
their shoulders, Susan began to move on. Sam kept pace with her
on his side of the carefully trimmed boxwood barrier. "I'm going
back East in about two weeks," said he. "It's awfully dull here
after Yale. I just blew in--haven't seen Lottie or father yet.
Coming to Lottie's party?"

"No," said Susan.

"Why not?"

Susan laughed merrily. "The best reason in the world. Lottie has
only invited just so many couples."

"I'll see about that," cried Sam. "You'll be asked all right, all right."

"No," said Susan. She was one of those whose way of saying no
gives its full meaning and intent. "I'll not be asked, thank
you--and I'll not go if I am."

By this time they were at the gate. He opened it, came out into
the street. He was a tallish, athletic youth, dark, and pleasing
enough of feature to be called handsome. He was dressed with a
great deal of style of the efflorescent kind called sophomoric.
He was a Sophomore at Yale. But that was not so largely
responsible for his self-complacent expression as the deference
he had got from babyhood through being heir apparent to the
Wright fortune. He had a sophisticated way of inspecting Susan's
charms of figure no less than charms of face that might have made
a disagreeable impression upon an experienced onlooker. There is
a time for feeling without knowing why one feels; and that period
ought not to have been passed for young Wright for many a year.

"My, but you're looking fine, Susie!" exclaimed he. "I haven't
seen anyone that could hold a candle to you even in the East."

Susan laughed and blushed with pleasure. "Go on," said she with
raillery. "I love it."

"Come in and sit under the trees and I'll fill all the time
you'll give me."

This reminded her. "I must hurry uptown," she said. "Good-by."

"Hold on!" cried he. "What have you got to do?" He happened to
glance down the street. "Isn't that Ruth coming?"

"So it is," said Susan. "I guess Bessie Andrews wasn't at home."

Sam waved at Ruth and called, "Hello! Glad to see you."

Ruth was all sweetness and smiles. She and her mother--quite
privately and with nothing openly said on either side--had
canvassed Sam as a "possibility." There had been keen
disappointment at the news that he was not coming home for the
long vacation. "How are you, Sam?" said she, as they shook
hands. "My, Susie, _doesn't_ he look New York?"

Sam tried to conceal that he was swelling with pride. "Oh, this
is nothing," said he deprecatingly.

Ruth's heart was a-flutter. The Fisher picture of the Chambers
love-maker, thought she, might almost be a photograph of Sam.
She was glad she had obeyed the mysterious impulse to make a
toilette of unusual elegance that morning. How get rid of Susan?
"_I_'ll take the sample, Susie," said she. "Then you won't have to
keep father waiting."

Susie gave up the sample. Her face was no longer so bright and interested.

"Oh, drop it," cried Sam. "Come in--both of you. I'll telephone
for Joe Andrews and we'll take a drive--or anything you like."
He was looking at Susan.

"Can't do it," replied Susan. "I promised Uncle George."

"Oh, bother!" urged Sam. "Telephone him. It'll be all
right--won't it, Ruth?"

"You don't know Susie," said Ruth, with a queer, strained laugh.
"She'd rather die than break a promise."

"I must go," Susan now said. "Good-by."

"Come on, Ruth," cried Sam. "Let's walk uptown with her."

"And you can help match the silk," said Ruth.

"Not for me," replied young Wright. Then to Susan, "What've _you_
got to do? Maybe it's something I could help at."

"No. It's for Uncle George and me."

"Well, I'll go as far as the store. Then--we'll see."

They were now in the business part of Main Street, were at
Wilson's dry goods store. "You might find it here," suggested
the innocent Susan to her cousin.

Ruth colored, veiled her eyes to hide their flash. "I've got to
go to the store first--to get some money," she hastily improvised.

Sam had been walking between the two girls. He now changed to
the outside and, so, put himself next Susan alone, put Susan
between him and Ruth. The maneuver seemed to be a mere
politeness, but Ruth knew better. What fate had intended as her
lucky day was being changed into unlucky by this cousin of hers.
Ruth walked sullenly along, hot tears in her eyes and a choke in
her throat, as she listened to Sam's flatterings of her cousin,
and to Susan's laughing, delighted replies. She tried to gather
herself together, to think up something funny or at least
interesting with which to break into the _tete-a-tete_ and draw
Sam to herself. She could think nothing but envious, hateful
thoughts. At the doors of Warham and Company, wholesale and
retail grocers, the three halted.

"I guess I'll go to Vandermark's," said Ruth. "I really don't
need money. Come on, Sam."

"No--I'm going back home. I ought to see Lottie and father. My,
but it's dull in this town!"

"Well, so long," said Susan. She nodded, sparkling of hair and
skin and eyes, and went into the store.

Sam and Ruth watched her as she walked down the broad aisle
between the counters. From the store came a mingling of odors of
fruit, of spices, of freshly ground coffee. "Susan's an awful
pretty girl, isn't she?" declared Sam with rude enthusiasm.

"Indeed she is," replied Ruth as heartily--and with an honest if
discouraged effort to feel enthusiastic.

"What a figure! And she has such a good walk. Most women walk horribly."

"Come on to Vandermark's with me and I'll stroll back with you,"
offered Ruth. Sam was still gazing into the store where, far to
the rear, Susan could be seen; the graceful head, the gently
swelling bust, the soft lines of the white dress, the pretty
ankles revealed by the short skirt--there was, indeed, a profile
worth a man's looking at on a fine June day. Ruth's eyes were
upon Sam, handsome, dressed in the Eastern fashion, an ideal
lover. "Come on, Sam," urged Ruth.

"No, thanks," he replied absently. "I'll go back. Good luck!"
And not glancing at her, he lifted his straw hat with its band
of Yale blue and set out.

Ruth moved slowly and disconsolately in the opposite direction.
She was ashamed of her thoughts; but shame never yet withheld
anybody from being human in thought. As she turned to enter
Vandermark's she glanced down the street. There was Sam,
returned and going into her father's store. She hesitated, could
devise no plan of action, hurried into the dry goods store.
Sinclair, the head salesman and the beau of Sutherland, was an
especial friend of hers. The tall, slender, hungry-looking young
man, devoured with ambition for speedy wealth, had no mind to
neglect so easy an aid to that ambition as nature gave him in
making him a lady-charmer. He had resolved to marry either
Lottie Wright or Ruth Warham--Ruth preferred, because, while
Lottie would have many times more money, her skin made her a
stiff dose for a young man brought up to the American tradition
that the face is the woman. But that morning Sinclair exerted
his charms in vain. Ruth was in a hurry, was distinctly rude,
cut short what in other circumstances would have been a
prolonged and delightful flirtation by tossing the sample on the
counter and asking him to do the matching for her and to send
the silk right away. Which said, she fairly bolted from the store.