Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

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


"Yes. I'm strange in this part of town. Do you know a place?"

An hour later Etta went into the appointed restaurant. Her eyes
searched anxiously for Susan, but did not find her. She inquired
at the counter. No one had asked there for a young lady. This
both relieved her and increased her nervousness; Susan had not
come and gone--but would she come? Etta was so hungry that she
could hold out no longer. She sat at a table near the door and
took up the large sheet on which was printed the bill of fare.
She was almost alone in the place, as it was between dinner and
supper. She read the bill thoroughly, then ordered black bean
soup, a sirloin steak and German fried potatoes. This, she had
calculated, would cost altogether a dollar; undoubtedly an
extravagance, but everything at that restaurant seemed dear in
comparison with the prices to which she had been used, and she
felt horribly empty. She ordered the soup, to stay her while the
steak was broiling.

As soon as the waiter set down bread and butter she began upon
it greedily. As the soup came, in walked Susan--calm and
self-possessed, Etta saw at first glance. "I've been so
frightened. You'll have a plate of soup?" asked Etta, trying to
look and speak in unconcerned fashion.

"No, thank you," replied Susan, seating herself opposite.

"There's a steak coming--a good-sized one, the waiter said it'd be."

"Very well."

Susan spoke indifferently.

"Aren't you hungry?"

"I don't know. I'll see." Susan was gazing straight ahead. Her
eyes were distinctly gray--gray and as hard as Susan Lenox's
eyes could be.

"What're you thinking about?"

"I don't know," she laughed queerly.

"Was--it--dreadful?"

A pause, then: "Nothing is going to be dreadful to me any more.
It's all in the game, as Mr. Burlingham used to say."

"Burlingham--who's he?" It was Etta's first faint clew toward
that mysterious past of Susan's into which she longed to peer.

"Oh--a man I knew. He's dead."

A long pause, Etta watching Susan's unreadable face. At last she said:

"You don't seem a bit excited."

Susan came back to the present. "Don't I? Your soup's getting cold."

Etta ate several spoonfuls, then said with an embarrassed
attempt at a laugh, "I--I went, too."

Susan slowly turned upon Etta her gaze--the gaze of eyes
softening, becoming violet. Etta's eyes dropped and the color
flooded into her fair skin. "He was an old man--forty or maybe
fifty," she explained nervously. "He gave me two dollars. I
nearly didn't get him. I lost my nerve and told him I was good
and was only starting because I needed money."

"Never whine," said Susan. "It's no use. Take what comes, and
wait for a winning hand."

Etta looked at her in a puzzled way. "How queer you talk! Not a
bit like yourself. You sound so much older. . . . And your
eyes--they don't look natural at all."

Indeed they looked supernatural. The last trace of gray was
gone. They were of the purest, deepest violet, luminous,
mysterious, with that awe-inspiring expression of utter
aloneness. But as Etta spoke the expression changed. The gray
came back and with it a glance of irony. Said she:

"Oh--nonsense! I'm all right."

"I didn't mind nearly as much as I thought I would. Yes, I'll
get used to it."

"You mustn't," said Susan.

"But I've got to."

"We've got to do it, but we haven't got to get used to it,"
replied Susan.

Etta was still puzzling at this when the dinner now came--a
fine, thick broiled steak, the best steak Susan had ever seen,
and the best food Etta had ever seen.

They had happened upon one of those famous Cincinnati chop
houses where in plain surroundings the highest quality of plain
food is served. "You _are_ hungry, aren't you, Lorna?" said Etta.

"Yes--I'm hungry," declared Susan. "Cut it--quick."

"Draught beer or bottled?" asked the waiter.

"Bring us draught beer," said Etta. "I haven't tasted beer since
our restaurant burned."

"I never tasted it," said Susan. "But I'll try it tonight."

Etta cut two thick slices from the steak, put them on Susan's
plate with some of the beautifully browned fried potatoes.
"Gracious, they have good things to eat here!" she exclaimed.
Then she cut two thick slices for herself, and filled her mouth.
Her eyes glistened, the color came into her pale cheeks. "Isn't
it _grand_!" she cried, when there was room for words to pass out.

"Grand," agreed Susan, a marvelous change of expression in her
face also.

The beer came. Etta drank a quarter of the tall glass at once.
Susan tasted, rather liked the fresh bitter-sweet odor and
flavor. "Is it--very intoxicating?" she inquired.

"If you drink enough," said Etta. "But not one glass."

Susan took quite a drink. "I feel a lot less tired already,"
declared she.

"Me too," said Etta. "My, what a meal! I never had anything like
this in my life. When I think what we've been through! Lorna,
will it _last_?"

"We mustn't think about that," said Susan.

"Tell me what happened to you."

"Nothing. He gave me the money, that was all."

"Then we've got seven dollars--seven dollars and twenty cents,
with what we brought away from home with us."

"Seven dollars--and twenty cents," repeated Susan thoughtfully.
Then a queer smile played around the corners of her mouth.
"Seven dollars--that's a week's wages for both of us at Matson's."

"But I'd go back to honest work tomorrow--if I could find a good
job," Etta said eagerly--too eagerly. "Wouldn't you, Lorna?"

"I don't know," replied Susan. She had the inability to make
pretenses, either to others or to herself, which characterizes
stupid people and also the large, simple natures.

"Oh, you can't mean that!" protested Etta. Instead of replying
Susan began to talk of what to do next. "We must find a place to
sleep, and we must buy a few things to make a better appearance."

"I don't dare spend anything yet," said Etta. "I've got only my
two dollars. Not that when this meal's paid for."

"We're going to share even," said Susan. "As long as either has
anything, it belongs to both."

The tears welled from Etta's eyes. "You are too good, Lorna!
You mustn't be. It isn't the way to get on. Anyhow, I can't
accept anything from you. You wouldn't take anything from me."

"We've got to help each other up," insisted Susan. "We share
even--and let's not talk any more about it. Now, what shall we
get? How much ought we to lay out?"

The waiter here interrupted. "Beg pardon, young ladies," said
he. "Over yonder, at the table four down, there's a couple of
gents that'd like to join you. I seen one of 'em flash quite a
roll, and they acts too like easy spenders."

As Susan was facing that way, she examined them. They were young
men, rather blond, with smooth faces, good-natured eyes and
mouths; they were well dressed--one, the handsomer, notably so.
Susan merely glanced; both men at once smiled at her with an
unimpertinent audacity that probably came out of the champagne
bottle in a silver bucket of ice on their table.

"Shall I tell 'em to come over?" said the waiter.

"Yes," replied Susan.

She was calm, but Etta twitched with nervousness, saying, "I
wish I'd had your experience. I wish we didn't look so
dreadful--me especially. _I_'m not pretty enough to stand out
against these awful clothes."

The two men were pushing eagerly toward them, the taller and
less handsome slightly in advance. He said, his eyes upon Susan,
"We were lonesome, and you looked a little that way too. We're much
obliged." He glanced at the waiter. "Another bottle of the same."

"I don't want anything to drink," said Susan.

"Nor I," chimed in Etta. "No, thank you."

The young man waved the waiter away with, "Get it for my friend
and me, then." He smiled agreeably at Susan. "You won't mind my
friend and me drinking?"

"Oh, no."

"And maybe you'll change your mind," said the shorter man to
Etta. "You see, if we all drink, we'll get acquainted faster.
Don't you like champagne?"

"I never tasted it," Etta confessed.

"Neither did I," admitted Susan.

"You're sure to like it," said the taller man to Susan--his
friend presently addressed him as John. "Nothing equal to
it for making friends. I like it for itself, and I like it for
the friends it has made me."

Champagne was not one of the commonplaces of that modest chop
house. So the waiter opened the bottle with much ceremony. Susan
and Etta startled when the cork popped ceilingward in the way
that in such places is still regarded as fashionable. They
watched with interested eyes the pouring of the beautiful pale
amber liquid, were fascinated when they saw how the bubbles
surged upward incessantly, imprisoned joys thronging to escape.
And after the first glass, the four began to have the kindliest
feelings for each other. Sorrow and shame, poverty and
foreboding, took wings unto themselves and flew away. The girls
felt deliciously warm and contented, and thought the young men
charming--a splendid change from the coarse, badly dressed
youths of the tenement, with their ignorant speech and rough,
misshapen hands. They were ashamed of their own hands, were
painfully self-conscious whenever lifting the glass to the lips
brought them into view. Etta's hands in fact were not so badly
spoiled as might have been expected, considering her long years
of rough work; the nails were in fairly good condition and the
skin was rougher to the touch than to the sight. Susan's hands
had not really been spoiled as yet. She had been proud of them
and had taken care of them; still, they were not the hands of a
lady, but of a working girl. The young men had gentlemen's
hands--strong, evidently exercised only at sports, not at
degrading and deforming toil.

The shorter and handsomer youth, who answered to the name of
Fatty, for obvious but not too obvious reasons, addressed
himself to Etta. John--who, it came out, was a Chicagoan,
visiting Fatty--fell to Susan. The champagne made him voluble;
he was soon telling all about himself--a senior at Ann Arbor, as
was Fatty also; he intended to be a lawyer; he was fond of a
good, time was fond of the girls--liked girls who were gay
rather than respectable ones--"because with the prim girls you
have to quit just as the fun ought really to begin."

After two glasses Susan, warned by a slight dizziness, stopped
drinking; Etta followed her example. But the boys kept on,
ordered a second bottle. "This is the fourth we've had tonight,"
said Fatty proudly when it came.

"Don't it make you dizzy?" asked Etta.

"Not a bit," Fatty assured her. But she noticed that his tongue
now swung trippingly loose.

"You haven't been at--at this--long, have you?" inquired John
of Susan.

"Not long," replied she.

Etta, somewhat giddied, overheard and put in, "We began tonight.
We got tired of starving and freezing."

John looked deepest sympathy into Susan's calm violet-gray eyes.
"I don't blame you," said he. "A woman does have a--a hades of
a time!"

"We were going out to buy some clothes when you came," proceeded
Etta. "We're in an awful state."

"I wondered how two girls with faces like yours," said John,
"came to be dressed so--so differently. That was what first
attracted us." Then, as Etta and Fatty were absorbed in each
other, he went on to Susan: "And your eyes--I mustn't forget
them. You certainly have got a beautiful face. And your mouth--so
sweet and sad--but, what a lovely, _lovely_ smile!"

At this Susan smiled still more broadly with pleasure. "I'm glad
you're pleased," said she.

"Why, if you were dressed up----

"You're not a working girl by birth, are you?"

"I wish I had been," said Susan.

"Oh, I think a girl's got as good a right as a man to have a
good time," lied John.

"Don't say things you don't believe," said Susan. "It isn't necessary."

"I can hand that back to you. You weren't frank, yourself, when
you said you wished you'd been born in the class of your
friend--and of my friend Fatty, too."

Susan's laugh was confession. The champagne was dancing in her
blood. She said with a reckless toss of the head:

"I was born nothing. So I'm free to become anything I
please--anything except respectable."

Here Fatty broke in. "I'll tell you what let's do. Let's all go
shopping. We can help you girls select your things."

Susan laughed. "We're going to buy about three dollars' worth.
There won't be any selecting. We'll simply take the cheapest."

"Then--let's go shopping," said John, "and you two girls can
help Fatty and me select clothes for you."

"That's the talk!" cried Fatty. And he summoned the waiter. "The
bill," said he in the manner of a man who likes to enjoy the
servility of servants.

"We hadn't paid for our supper," said Susan. "How much was it, Etta?"

"A dollar twenty-five."

"We're going to pay for that," said Fatty. "What d'ye take us for?"

"Oh, no. We must pay it," said Susan.

"Don't be foolish. Of course I'll pay."

"No," said Susan quietly, ignoring Etta's wink. And from her
bosom she took a crumpled five-dollar bill.

"I should say you _were_ new," laughed John. "You don't even know
where to carry your money yet." And they all laughed, Susan and
Etta because they felt gay and assumed the joke whatever it was
must be a good one. Then John laid his hand over hers and said,
"Put your money away."

Susan looked straight at him. "I can't allow it," she said. "I'm
not that poor--yet."

John colored. "I beg your pardon," he said. And when the bill
came he compelled Fatty to let her pay a dollar and a quarter of
it out of her crumpled five. The two girls were fascinated by
the large roll of bills--fives, tens, twenties--which Fatty took
from his trousers pocket. They stared open-eyed when he laid a
twenty on the waiter's plate along with Susan's five. And it
frightened them when he, after handing Susan her change, had
left only a two-dollar bill, four silver quarters and a dime. He
gave the silver to the waiter.

"Was that for a tip?" asked Susan.

"Yes," said Fatty. "I always give about ten per cent of the bill
unless it runs over ten dollars. In that case--a quarter a
person as a rule. Of course, if the bill was very large, I'd
give more." He was showing his amusement at her inquisitiveness.

"I wanted to know," explained she. "I'm very ignorant, and I've
got to learn."

"That's right," said John, admiringly--with a touch of
condescension. "Don't be afraid to confess ignorance."

"I'm not," replied Susan. "I used to be afraid of not being
respectable and that was all. Now, I haven't any fear at all."

"You are a queer one!" exclaimed John. "You oughtn't to be in
this life."

"Where then?" asked she.

"I don't know," he confessed.

"Neither do I." Her expression suddenly was absent, with a
quaint, slight smile hovering about her lips. She looked at him
merrily. "You see, it's got to be something that isn't respectable."

"What _do_ you mean?" demanded he.

Her answer was a laugh.

Fatty declared it too cold to chase about afoot--"Anyhow, it's
late--nearly eleven, and unless we're quick all the stores'll be
closed." The waiter called them a carriage; its driver promised
to take them to a shop that didn't close till midnight on
Saturdays. Said Fatty, as they drove away:

"Well, I suppose, Etta, you'll say you've never been in a
carriage before."

"Oh, yes, I have," cried Etta. "Twice--at funerals."

This made everyone laugh--this and the champagne and the air
which no longer seemed cruel to the girls but stimulating, a
grateful change from the close warmth of the room. As the boys
were smoking cigarettes, they had the windows down. The faces of
both girls were flushed and lively, and their cheeks seemed
already to have filled out. The four made so much noise that the
crowds on the sidewalk were looking at them--looking smilingly,
delighted by the sight of such gayety. Susan was even gayer than
Etta. She sang, she took a puff at John's cigarette; then
laughed loudly when he seized and kissed her, laughed again as
she kissed him; and she and John fell into each other's arms and
laughed uproariously as they saw Fatty and Etta embracing.

The driver kept his promise; eleven o'clock found them bursting
into Sternberg's, over the Rhine--a famous department store for
Germans of all classes. They had an hour, and they made good use
of it. Etta was for yielding to Fatty's generous urgings and
buying right and left. But Susan would not have it. She told the
men what she and Etta would take--a simple complete outfit, and
no more. Etta wanted furs and finery. Susan kept her to plain,
serviceable things. Only once did she yield. When Etta and Fatty
begged to be allowed a big showy hat, Susan yielded--but gave
John leave to buy her only the simplest of simple hats. "You
needn't tell _me_ any yarns about your birth and breeding," said
he in a low tone so that Etta should not hear.

But that subject did not interest Susan. "Let's forget it,"
said she, almost curtly. "I've cut out the past--and the future.
Today's enough for me."

"And for me, too," protested he. "I hope you're having as good
fun as I am."

"This is the first time I've really laughed in nearly a year,"
said she. "You don't know what it means to be poor and hungry
and cold--worst of all, cold."

"You unhappy child," said John tenderly.

But Susan was laughing again, and making jokes about a wonderful
German party dress all covered with beads and lace and ruffles
and embroidery. When they reached the shoe department, Susan
asked John to take Fatty away. He understood that she was
ashamed of their patched and holed stockings, and hastened to
obey. They were making these their last purchases when the big
bell rang for the closing. "I'm glad these poor tired shopgirls
and clerks are set free," said John.

It was one of those well-meaning but worthless commonplaces of
word-kindness that get for their utterance perhaps exaggerated
credit for "good heart." Susan, conscience-stricken, halted.
"And I never once thought of them!" she exclaimed. "It just shows."

"Shows what?"

"Oh, nothing. Come on. I must forget that, for I can't be happy
again till I do. I understand now why the comfortable people can
be happy. They keep from knowing or they make themselves forget."

"Why not?" said John. "What's the use in being miserable about
things that can't be helped?"

"No use at all," replied the girl. She laughed. "I've forgotten."

The carriage was so filled with their bundles that they had some
difficulty in making room for themselves--finally accomplished
it by each girl sitting on her young man's lap. They drove to a
quietly placed, scrupulously clean little hotel overlooking
Lincoln Park. "We're going to take rooms here and dress,"
explained Fatty. "Then we'll wander out and have some supper."

By this time Susan and Etta had lost all sense of strangeness.
The spirit of adventure was rampant in them as in a dreaming
child. And the life they had been living--what they had seen and
heard and grown accustomed to--made it easy for them to strike
out at once and briskly in the new road, so different from the
dreary and cruel path along which they had been plodding. They
stood laughing and joking in the parlor while the boys
registered; then the four went up to two small but comfortable
and fascinatingly clean rooms with a large bathroom between.
"Fatty and I will go down to the bar while you two dress," said John.

"Not on your life!" exclaimed Fatty. "We'll have the bar brought
up to us."

But John, fortified by Susan's look of gratitude for his
tactfulness, whispered to his friend--what Susan could easily
guess. And Fatty said, "Oh, I never thought of it. Yes, we'll
give 'em a chance. Don't be long, girls."

"Thank you," said Susan to John.

"That's all right. Take your time."

Susan locked the hall door behind the two men. She rushed to the
bathroom, turned on the hot water. "Oh, Etta!" she cried, tears
in her eyes, a hysterical sob in her throat. "A bathtub again!"

Etta too was enthusiastic; but she had not that intense
hysterical joy which Susan felt--a joy that can be appreciated
only by a person who, clean by instinct and by lifelong habit,
has been shut out from thorough cleanliness for long months of
dirt and foul odors and cold. It was no easy matter to become
clean again after all those months. But there was plenty of soap
and brushes and towels, and at last the thing was accomplished.
Then they tore open the bundles and arrayed themselves in the
fresh new underclothes, in the simple attractive costumes of
jacket, blouse and skirt. Susan had returned to her class, and
had brought Etta with her.

"What shall we do with these?" asked Etta, pointing disdainfully
with the toe of her new boot to the scatter of the garments they
had cast off.

Susan looked down at it in horror. She could not believe that
_she_ had been wearing such stuff--that it was the clothing of
all her associates of the past six months--was the kind of
attire in which most of her fellow-beings went about the
beautiful earth, She shuddered. "Isn't life dreadful?" she
cried. And she kicked together the tattered, patched, stained
trash, kicked it on to a large piece of heavy wrapping paper she
had spread out upon the floor. Thus, without touching her
discarded self, she got it wrapped up and bound with a strong
string. She rang for the maid, gave her a quarter and pointed to
the bundle. "Please take that and throw it away," she said.

When the maid was gone Etta said: "I'm mighty glad to have it
out of the room."

"Out of the room?" cried Susan. "Out of my heart. Out of my life."

They put on their hats, admired themselves in the mirror, and
descended--Susan remembering halfway that they had left the
lights on and going back to turn them off. The door boy summoned
the two young men to the parlor. They entered and exclaimed in
real amazement. For they were facing two extremely pretty young
women, one dark, the other fair. The two faces were wreathed in
pleased and grateful smiles.

"Don't we look nice?" demanded Etta.

"Nice!" cried Fatty. "We sure did draw a pair of first
prizes--didn't we, Johnny?"

John did not reply. He was gazing at Susan. Etta had young
beauty but it was of the commonplace kind. In Susan's face and
carriage there was far more than beauty. "Where _did_ you come
from?" said John to her in an undertone. "And _where_ are you going?"

"Out to supper, I hope," laughed she.

"Your eyes change--don't they? I thought they were violet. Now
I see they're gray--gray as can be."




CHAPTER XXII


AT lunch, well toward the middle of the following afternoon,
Fatty--his proper name was August Gulick--said: "John and I
don't start for Ann Arbor until a week from today. That means
seven clear days. A lot can be done in that time, with a little
intelligent hustling. What do you say, girls? Do you stick to us?"

"As long as you'll let us," said Etta, who was delighting Gulick
with her frank and wondering and grateful appreciation of his
munificence. Never before had his own private opinion of himself
received such a flatteringly sweeping indorsement--from anyone
who happened to impress him as worth while. In the last phrase
lies the explanation of her success through a policy that is
always dangerous and usually a failure.

So it was settled that with the quiet little hotel as
headquarters the four would spend a week in exploring Cincinnati
as a pleasure ground. Gulick knew the town thoroughly. His
father was a brewer whose name was on many a huge beer wagon
drawn about those streets by showy Clydesdales. Also he had
plenty of money; and, while Redmond--for his friend was the son
of Redmond, well known as a lawyer-politician in Chicago--had
nothing like so much as Gulick, still he had enough to make a
passable pretense at keeping up his end. For Etta and Susan the
city had meant shabby to filthy tenements, toil and weariness
and sorrow. There was opened to their ravished young eyes "the
city"--what reveals itself to the pleasure-seeker with pocket
well filled--what we usually think of when we pronounce its
name, forgetting what its reality is for all but a favored few
of those within its borders. It was a week of music and of
laughter--music especially--music whenever they ate or drank,
music to dance by, music in the beer gardens where they spent
the early evenings, music at the road houses where they arrived
in sleighs after the dances to have supper--unless you choose to
call it breakfast. You would have said that Susan had slipped
out of the tenement life as she had out of its garments, that she
had retained not a trace of it even in memory. But--in those days
began her habit of never passing a beggar without giving something.

Within three or four days this life brought a truly amazing
transformation in the two girls. You would not have recognized
in them the pale and wan and ragged outcasts of only the
Saturday night before. "Aren't you happy?" said Etta to Susan,
in one of the few moments they were alone. "But I don't need to
ask. I didn't know you could be so gay."