Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

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


Dan, the fourteen-year-old boy, had attracted the attention of
what Cassatt called "a fancy lady" who lived two floors below
them. She made sometimes as much as nine or ten dollars a week
and slept all day or lounged comfortably about in showy, tawdry
stuff that in those surroundings seemed elegant luxury. She was
caught by the boy's young beauty and strength, and was rapidly
training him in every vice and was fitting him to become a
professional seducer and "lover."

Said Mrs. Cassatt in one of her noisy wailing appeals to Dan:

"You better keep away from that there soiled dove. They tell me
she's a thief--has done time--has robbed drunken men in dark
hallways."

Dan laughed impudently. "She's a cute one. What diff does it
make how she gets the goods as long as she gets it?"

Mrs. Cassatt confided to everybody that she was afraid the woman
would make a thief of her boy--and there was no disputing the
justice of her forebodings.

Foul smells and sights everywhere, and foul language; no
privacy, no possibility of modesty where all must do all in the
same room: vermin, parasites, bad food vilely cooked--in the
midst of these and a multitude of similar ills how was it
possible to maintain a human standard, even if one had by chance
acquired a knowledge of what constituted a human standard? The
Cassatts were sinking into the slime in which their neighbors
were already wallowing. But there was this difference. For the
Cassatts it was a descent; for many of their neighbors it was an
ascent--for the immigrants notably, who had been worse off in
their European homes; in this land not yet completely in the
grip of the capitalist or wage system they were now getting the
first notions of decency and development, the first views and
hope of rising in the world. The Cassatts, though they had
always lived too near the slime to be nauseated by it, still
found it disagreeable and in spots disgusting. Their neighbors--

One of the chief reasons why these people were rising so slowly
where they were rising at all was that the slime seemed to them
natural, and to try to get clean of it seemed rather a foolish,
finicky waste of time and effort. People who have come up--by
accident, or by their own force, or by the force of some at once
shrewd and brutal member of the family--have to be far and long
from the slums before they lose the sense that in conforming to
the decencies of life they are making absurd effeminate concessions.
When they go to buy a toothbrush they blush and stammer.

"Look at Lorna and Etta," Mrs. Cassatt was always saying to Kate.

"Well, I see 'em," Kate would reply. "And I don't see much."

"Ain't you ashamed of yourself!" cried the mother. "Them two
lives straight and decent. And you're better off than they are."

"Don't preach to me, ma," sneered Kate. "When I get ready
I'll--stop making a damn fool of myself."

But the example of the two girls was not without its effect.
They, struggling on in chastity against appalling odds, became
the models, not only to Mrs. Cassatt, but all the mothers of
that row held up to their daughters. The mothers--all of them by
observation, not a few by experience--knew what the "fancy
lady's" life really meant. And they strove mightily to keep
their daughters from it. Not through religion or moral feeling,
though many pretended--perhaps fancied--that this was their
reason; but through the plainest kind of practical sense--the
kind that in the broad determines the actions of human beings of
whatever class, however lofty the idealistic pretenses may be.
These mothers knew that the profession of the pariah meant a
short life and a wretched one, meant disease, lower and ever
lower wages, the scale swiftly descending, meant all the
miseries of respectability plus a heavy burden of miseries of
its own. There were many other girls besides Susan and Etta
holding up their heads--girls with prospects of matrimony, girls
with fairly good wages, girls with fathers and brothers at work
and able to provide a home. But Susan and Etta were peculiarly
valuable as examples because they were making the fight alone
and unaided.

Thus, they were watched closely. In those neighborhoods everyone
knows everyone's else business down to how the last cent is got
and spent. If either girl had appeared in a new pair of shoes,
a new hat, a new garment of any kind, at once the report would
have sped that the wearer had taken a turn in the streets. And
the scandal would have been justified; for where could either
have respectably got the money for the smallest and cheapest
addition to her toilet? Matson, too, proudly pointed them out as
giving the lie to the talk about working girls not getting
living wages, to the muttering against him and his fellow
employers as practically procurers for the pavement and the
dive, for the charity hospital's most dreadful wards, for the
Morgue's most piteous boxes and slabs.

As their strength declined, as their miseries ate in and in, the
two girls ceased talking together; they used to chatter much of
the time like two birds on a leafy, sunny bough. Now they
walked, ate their scanty, repulsive meals, dressed, worked, all
in silence. When their eyes met both glanced guiltily away, each
fearing the other would discover the thought she was
revolving--the thought of the streets. They slept badly--Etta
sometimes, Susan every night. For a long time after she came to
the tenements she had not slept well, despite her youth and the
dull toil that wore her out each day. But after many months she
had grown somewhat used to the noisiness--to fretting babies, to
wailing children, the mixed ale parties, the quarrelings of the
ill and the drunk, the incessant restlessness wherever people
are huddled so close together that repose is impossible. And she
had gradually acquired the habit of sleeping well--that is, well
for the tenement region where no one ever gets the rest without
which health is impossible. Now sleeplessness came again--hours
on hours of listening to the hateful and maddening discords of
densely crowded humanity, hours on hours of
thinking--thinking--in the hopeless circles like those of a
caged animal, treading with soft swift step round and round,
nose to the iron wall, eyes gleaming with despairing pain.
One Saturday evening after a supper of scorched cornmeal which
had been none too fresh when they got it at the swindling
grocer's on the street floor, Etta put on the tattered, patched
old skirt at which she had been toiling. "I can't make it fit to
wear," said she. "It's too far gone; I think"--her eyelids
fluttered--"I'll go see some of the girls."

Susan, who was darning--seated on the one chair--yes, it had once
been a chair--did not look up or speak. Etta put on her
hat--slowly. Then, with a stealthy glance at Susan, she moved
slidingly toward the door. As she reached it Susan's hands
dropped to her lap; so tense were Etta's nerves that the gesture
made her startle. "Etta!" said Susan in an appealing voice.

Etta's hand dropped from the knob. "Well--what is it, Lorna?"
she asked in a low, nervous tone.

"Look at me, dear."

Etta tried to obey, could not.

"Don't do it--yet," said Susan. "Wait--a few more days."

"Wait for what?"

"I don't know. But--wait."

"You get four, I get only three--and there's no chance of a
raise. I work slower instead of faster. I'm going to be
discharged soon. I'm in rags underneath. . . . I've got to go
before I get sick--and won't have anything to--to sell."

Susan did not reply. She stared at the remains of a cheap
stocking in her lap. Yes, there was no doubt about it, Etta's
health was going. Etta was strong, but she had no such store of
strength to draw upon as had accumulated for Susan during the
seventeen years of simple, regular life in healthful
surroundings. A little while and Etta would be ill--would,
perhaps--probably--almost certainly--die--

Dan Cassatt came in at the other door, sat on the edge of his
bed and changed his trousers for what he was pleased to imagine
a less disreputable pair. Midway the boy stopped and eyed
Susan's bare leg and foot, a grin of pleasure and amusement on
his precociously and viciously mature face.

"My, but you keep clean," he cried. "And you've got a mighty
pretty foot. Minnie's is ugly as hell."

Minnie was the "fancy lady" on the floor below--"my skirt," he
called her. Susan evidently did not hear his compliment. Dan
completed his "sporting toilet" with a sleeking down of his long
greasy hair, took himself away to his girl. Susan was watching
a bug crawl down the wall toward their bed with its stained and
malodorous covers of rag. Etta was still standing by the door
motionless. She sighed, once more put her hand on the knob.

Susan's voice came again. "You've never been out, have you?"
"No," replied Etta.

Susan began to put on her stocking. "I'll go," said she. "I'll
go--instead."

"No!" cried Etta, sobbing. "It don't matter about me. I'm bound
to be sucked under. You've got a chance to pull through."

"Not a ghost of a chance," answered Susan. "I'll go. You've
never been."

"I know, but----"

"You've never been," continued Susan, fastening her shoe with
its ragged string. "You've never been. Well--I have."

"You!" exclaimed Etta, horrified though unbelieving. "Oh, no,
you haven't."

"Yes," said Susan. "And worse."

"And worse?" repeated Etta. "Is that what the look I sometimes
see in your eyes--when you don't know anyone's seeing--is that
what it means?"

"I suppose so. I'll go. You stay here."

"And you--out there!"

"It doesn't mean much to me."

Etta looked at her with eyes as devoted as a dog's. "Then we'll
go together," she said.

Susan, pinning on her weather-stained hat, reflected. "Very
well," she said finally. "There's nothing lower than this."

They said no more; they went out into the clear, cold winter
night, out under the brilliant stars. Several handsome theater
buses were passing on their way from the fashionable suburb to
the theater. Etta looked at them, at the splendid horses, at the
men in top hats and fur coats--clean looking, fine looking,
amiable looking men--at the beautiful fur wraps of the delicate
women--what complexions!--what lovely hair!--what jewels! Etta,
her heart bursting, her throat choking, glanced at Susan to see
whether she too was observing. But Susan's eyes were on the
tenement they had just left.

"What are you looking at--so queer?" asked Etta.

"I was thinking that we'll not come back here."

Etta started. "Not come back _home!_"

Susan gave a strange short laugh. "Home!. . . No, we'll not
come back home. There's no use doing things halfway. We've made
the plunge. We'll go--the limit."

Etta shivered. She admired the courage, but it terrified her.
"There's something--something--awful about you, Lorna," she
said. "You've changed till you're like a different person from
what you were when you came to the restaurant. Sometimes--that
look in your eyes--well, it takes my breath away."

"It takes _my_ breath away, too. Come on."

At the foot of the hill they took the shortest route for Vine
Street, the highway of the city's night life.

Though they were so young and walked briskly, their impoverished
blood was not vigorous enough to produce a reaction against the
sharp wind of the zero night which nosed through their few thin
garments and bit into their bodies as if they were naked. They
came to a vast department store. Each of its great show-windows,
flooded with light, was a fascinating display of clothing for
women upon wax models--costly jackets and cloaks of wonderful
furs, white, brown, gray, rich and glossy black; underclothes
fine and soft, with ribbons and flounces and laces; silk
stockings and graceful shoes and slippers; dresses for street,
for ball, for afternoon, dresses with form, with lines, dresses
elegantly plain, dresses richly embroidered. Despite the cold
the two girls lingered, going from window to window, their
freezing faces pinched and purple, their eyes gazing hungrily.

"Now that we've tried 'em all on," said Susan with a short and
bitter laugh, "let's dress in our dirty rags again and go."

"Oh, I couldn't imagine myself in any of those things--could
you?" cried Etta.

"Yes," answered Susan. "And better."

"You were brought up to have those things, I know."

Susan shook her head. "But I'm going to have them."

"When?" said Etta, scenting romance. "Soon?"

"As soon as I learn," was Susan's absent, unsatisfactory reply.

Etta had gone back to her own misery and the contrasts to it. "I
get mad through and through," she cried, "when I think how all
those things go to some women--women that never did work and
never could. And they get them because they happen to belong to
rich fathers and husbands or whoever protects them. It isn't
fair! It makes me crazy!"

Susan gave a disdainful shrug. "What's the use of that kind of
talk!" said she. "No use at all. The thing is, _we_ haven't got
what we want, and we've got to _get_ it--and so we've got to
_learn_ how."

"I can't think of anything but the cold," said Etta. "My God,
how cold I am! There isn't anything I wouldn't do to get warm.
There isn't anything anybody wouldn't do to get warm, if they
were as cold as this. It's all very well for warm people to
talk----"

"Oh, I'm sick of all the lying and faking, anyhow. Do you
believe in hell, Lorna?"

"Not in a hot one," said Susan.

Soon they struck into Vine Street, bright as day almost, and
lined with beer halls, concert gardens, restaurants. Through the
glass fronts crowds of men and women were visible--contented
faces, well-fed bodies, food on the tables or inviting-looking
drink. Along the sidewalk poured an eager throng, all the
conspicuous faces in it notable for the expectancy of pleasure
in the eyes.

"Isn't this different!" exclaimed Etta. "My God, how cold I
am--and how warm everybody else is but us!"

The sights, the sounds of laughter, of gay music, acted upon her
like an intoxicant. She tossed her head in a reckless gesture.
"I don't care what becomes of me," said she. "I'm ready for
anything except dirt and starvation."

Nevertheless, they hurried down Vine Street, avoiding the
glances of the men and behaving as if they were two working
girls in a rush to get home. As they walked, Susan, to delude
herself into believing that she was not hesitating, with
fainting courage talked incessantly to Etta--told her the things
Mabel Connemora had explained to her--about how a woman could,
and must, take care of her health, if she were not to be swept
under like the great mass of the ignorant, careless women of the
pariah class. Susan was astonished that she remembered all the
actress had told her--remembered it easily, as if she had often
thought of it, had used the knowledge habitually.

They arrived at Fountain Square, tired from the long walk. They
were both relieved and depressed that nothing had happened. "We
might go round the fountain and then back," suggested Susan.

They made the tour less rapidly but still keeping their heads
and their glances timidly down. They were numb with the cold
now. To the sharp agony had succeeded an ache like the steady
grinding pain of rheumatism. Etta broke the silence with, "Maybe
we ought to go into a house."

"A house! Oh--you mean a--a sporting house." At that time
professional prostitution had not become widespread among the
working class; stationary or falling wages, advancing cost of
food and developing demand for comfort and luxury had as yet
only begun to produce their inevitable results. Thus,
prostitution as an industry was in the main segregated in
certain streets and certain houses and the prostitutes were a
distinct class.

"You haven't been?" inquired Etta.

"No," said Susan.

"Dan Cassatt and Kate told me about those places," Etta went on.
"Kate says they're fine and the girls make fifty and sometimes
a hundred dollars a week, and have everything--servants to wait
on them, good food, bathrooms, lovely clothes, and can drive
out. But I--I think I'd stay in the house."

"I want to be my own boss," said Susan.

"There's another side than what Kate says," continued Etta as
consecutively as her chattering teeth would permit. "She heard
from a madam that wants her to come. But Dan heard from
Minnie--she used to be in one--and she says the girls are
slaves, that they're treated like dogs and have to take
anything. She says it's something dreadful the way men act--even
the gentlemen. She says the madam fixes things so that every
girl always owes her money and don't own a stitch to her back,
and so couldn't leave if she wanted to."

"That sounds more like the truth," said Susan.

"But we may _have_ to go," pleaded Etta. "It's awful cold--and if
we went, at least we'd have a warm place. If we wanted to leave,
why, we couldn't be any worse off for clothes than we are."

Susan had no answer for this argument. They went several squares
up Vine Street in silence. Then Etta burst out again:

"I'm frozen through and through, Lorna, and I'm dead tired--and
hungry. The wind's cutting the flesh off my bones. What in the
hell does it matter what becomes of us? Let's get warm, for
God's sake. Let's go to a house. They're in Longworth
Street--the best ones."

And she came to a halt, forcing Susan to halt also. It happened
to be the corner of Eighth Street. Susan saw the iron fence, the
leafless trees of Garfield Place. "Let's go down this way," said
she. "I had luck here once."

"Luck!" said Etta, her curiosity triumphant over all.

Susan's answer was a strange laugh. Ahead of them, a woman
warmly and showily dressed was sauntering along. "That's one of
them," said Etta. "Let's see how _she_ does it. We've got to
learn quick. I can't stand this cold much longer."

The two girls, their rags fluttering about their miserable
bodies, kept a few feet behind the woman, watched her with
hollow eyes of envy and fear. Tears of anguish from the cold
were streaming down their cheeks. Soon a man alone--a youngish
man with a lurching step--came along. They heard the woman say,
"Hello, dear. Don't be in a hurry."

He tried to lurch past her, but she seized him by the lapel of
his overcoat. "Lemme go," said he. "You're old enough to be a
grandmother, you old hag."

Susan and Etta halted and, watching so interestedly that they
forgot themselves, heard her laugh at his insult, heard her say
wheedlingly, "Come along, dearie, I'll treat you right. You're
the kind of a lively, joky fellow I like."

"Go to hell, gran'ma," said the man, roughly shaking her off and
lurching on toward the two girls. He stopped before them, eyed
them by the light of the big electric lamp, grinned
good-naturedly. "What've we got here?" said he. "This looks better."

The woman rushed toward the girls, pouring out a stream of
vileness. "You git out of here!" she shrilled. "You chippies git
off my beat. I'll have you pinched--I will!"

"Shut up!" cried the drunken man, lifting his fist. "I'll have
_you_ pinched. Let these ladies alone, they're friends of mine.
Do you want me to call the cop?"

The woman glanced toward the corner where a policeman was
standing, twirling his club. She turned away, cursing horribly.
The man laughed. "Dirty old hag--isn't she?" said he. "Don't
look so scared, birdies." He caught them each by an arm, stared
woozily at Etta. "You're a good little looker, you are. Come
along with me. There's three in it."

"I--I can't leave my lady friend," Etta succeeded in chattering.
"Please really I can't."

"Your lady friend?" He turned his drunken head in Susan's
direction, squinted at her. He was rather good-looking. "Oh--she
means _you_. Fact is, I'm so soused I thought I was seein'
double. Why, _you're_ a peach. I'll take you." And he released his
hold on Etta to seize her. "Come right along, my lovey-dovey dear."

Susan drew away; she was looking at him with terror and
repulsion. The icy blast swept down the street, sawed into her
flesh savagely.

"I'll give _you_ five," said the drunken man. "Come along." He
grabbed her arm, waved his other hand at Etta. "So long,
blondie. 'Nother time. Good luck."

Susan heard Etta's gasp of horror. She wrenched herself free
again. "I guess I'd better go with him," said she to Etta.

Etta began to sob. "Oh, Lorna!" she moaned. "It's awful."

"You go into the restaurant on the corner and get something to
eat, and wait for me. We can afford to spend the money. And
you'll be warm there."

"Here! Here!" cried the tipsy man. "What're you two whispering
about? Come along, skinny. No offense. I like 'em slim." And he
made coarse and pointed remarks about the sluggishness of fat
women, laughing loudly at his own wit.

The two girls did not hear. The wind straight from the Arctic
was plying its hideous lash upon their defenseless bodies.

"Come on, lovey!" cried the man. "Let's go in out of the cold."

"Oh, Lorna! You can't go with a drunken man! I'll--I'll take
him. I can stand it better'n you. You can go when there's a
gentleman----"

"You don't know," said Susan. "Didn't I tell you I'd been
through the worst?"

"Are you coming?" broke in the man, shaking his head to scatter
the clouds over his sight.

The cold was lashing Susan's body; and she was seeing the
tenement she had left--the vermin crawling, the filth
everywhere, the meal bugs in the rotting corn meal--and Jeb
Ferguson. "Wait in the restaurant," said she to Etta. "Didn't I
tell you I'm a nobody. This is what's expected of me." The wind
clawed and tore at her quivering flesh. "It's cold, Etta. Go get
warm. Good-by."

She yielded to the tipsy man's tugging at her arm. Etta stood as
if paralyzed, watching the two move slowly westward. But cold
soon triumphed over horror. She retraced her steps toward Vine
Street. At the corner stood an elderly man with an iron-gray
beard. She merely glanced at him in passing, and so was startled
when he said in a low voice:

"Go back the way you came. I'll join you." She glanced at him
again, saw a gleam in his eyes that assured her she had not
imagined the request. Trembling and all at once hot, she kept on
across the street. But instead of going into the restaurant she
walked past it and east through dark Eighth Street. A few yards,
and she heard a quiet step behind her. A few yards more, and the
lights of Vine Street threw a man's shadow upon the sidewalk
beside her. From sheer fright she halted. The man faced her--a
man old enough to be her father, a most respectable, clean
looking man with a certain churchly though hardly clerical air
about him. "Good evening, miss," said he.

"Good evening," she faltered.

"I'm a stranger--in town to buy goods and have a little fun,"
stammered he with a grotesque attempt to be easy and familiar.
"I thought maybe you could help me."

A little fun! Etta's lips opened, but no words came. The cold
was digging its needle-knives into flesh, into bone, into nerve.
Through the man's thick beard and mustache came the gleam of
large teeth, the twisting of thick raw lips. A little fun!

"Would it," continued the man, nervously, "would it be very dear?"

"I--I don't know," faltered Etta.

"I could afford--say--" he looked at her dress--"say--two dollars."

"I--I" And again Etta could get no further.

"The room'd be a dollar," pleaded the man. "That'd make it three."

"I--I--can't," burst out Etta, hysterical. "Oh, please let me
alone. I--I'm a good girl, but I do need money. But I--I can't.
Oh, for God's sake--I'm so cold--so cold!"

The man was much embarrassed. "Oh, I'm sorry," he said
feelingly. "That's right--keep your virtue. Go home to your
parents." He was at ease now; his voice was greasy and his words
sleek with the unction of an elder. "I thought you were a soiled
dove. I'm glad you spoke out--glad for my sake as well as your
own. I've got a daughter about your age. Go home, my dear, and
stay a good girl. I know it's hard sometimes; but never give up
your purity--never!" And he lifted his square-topped hard hat
and turned away.

Suddenly Etta felt again the fury of the winter night and icy
wind. As that wind flapped her thin skirt and tortured her
flesh, she cried, "Wait--please. I was just--just fooling."

The man had halted, but he was looking at her uncertainly. Etta
put her hand on his arm and smiled pertly up at him--smiled as
she had seen other street girls smile in the days when she
despised them. "I'll go--if you'll give me three."

"I--I don't think I care to go now. You sort of put me out of
the humor."

"Well--two, then." She gave a reckless laugh. "God, how cold it
is! Anybody'd go to hell to get warm a night like this."

"You are a very pretty girl," said the man. He was warmly
dressed; his was not the thin blood of poverty. He could not
have appreciated what she was feeling. "You're sure you want to
go? You're sure it's your--your business?"