Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

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


She arrived barely in time. Young Wright was issuing from Warham
and Company. He smiled friendly enough, but Ruth knew where his
thoughts were. "Get what you wanted?" inquired he, and went on
to explain: "I came back to find out if you and Susie were to be
at home this evening. Thought I'd call."

Ruth paled with angry dismay. She was going to a party at the
Sinclairs'--one to which Susan was not invited. "Aren't you
going to Sinclairs'?" said she.

"I was. But I thought I'd rather call. Perhaps I'll go there later."

He was coming to call on Susan! All the way down Main Street to
the Wright place Ruth fought against her mood of angry and
depressed silence, tried to make the best of her chance to
impress Sam. But Sam was absent and humiliatingly near to curt.
He halted at his father's gate. She halted also, searched the
grounds with anxious eyes for sign of Lottie that would give her
the excuse for entering.

"So long," said Sam.

"Do come to Sinclairs' early. You always did dance so well."

"Oh, dancing bores me," said the blase Sophomore. "But I'll be
round before the shindy's over. I've got to take Lot home."

He lifted the hat again with what both he and Ruth regarded as
a gesture of most elegant carelessness. Ruth strolled
reluctantly on, feeling as if her toilet had been splashed or
crushed. As she entered the front door her mother, in a wrapper
and curl papers, appeared at the head of the stairs. "Why!" cried
she. "Where's the silk? It's for your dress tonight, you know."

"It'll be along," was Ruth's answer, her tone dreary, her lip
quivering. "I met Sam Wright."

"Oh!" exclaimed her mother. "He's back, is he?"

Ruth did not reply. She came on up the stairs, went into the
sitting-room--the room where Doctor Stevens seventeen years
before had torn the baby Susan from the very claws of death. She
flung herself down, buried her head in her arms upon that same
table. She burst into a storm of tears.

"Why, dearie dear," cried her mother, "whatever is the matter?"

"It's wicked and hateful," sobbed the girl, "but---- Oh, mamma, I
_hate_ Susan! She was along, and Sam hardly noticed me, and he's
coming here this evening to call."

"But you'll be at Sinclairs'!" exclaimed Mrs. Warham.

"Not Susan," sobbed Ruth. "He wants to see only her."

The members of the Second Presbyterian Church, of which Fanny
Warham was about the most exemplary and assiduous female member,
would hardly have recognized the face encircled by that triple
row of curl-papered locks, shinily plastered with quince-seed
liquor. She was at woman's second critical age, and the strange
emotions working in her mind--of whose disorder no one had an
inkling--were upon the surface now. She ventured this freedom of
facial expression because her daughter's face was hid. She did
not speak. She laid a tender defending hand for an instant upon
her daughter's shoulder--like the caress of love and
encouragement the lioness gives her cub as she is about to give
battle for it. Then she left the room. She did not know what to
do, but she knew she must and would do something.




CHAPTER III


THE telephone was downstairs, in the rear end of the hall which
divided the lower floor into two equal parts. But hardly had
Mrs. Warham given the Sinclairs' number to the exchange girl
when Ruth called from the head of the stairs:

"What're you doing there, mamma?"

"I'll tell Mrs. Sinclair you're sick and can't come. Then I'll
send Susan in your place."

"Don't!" cried Ruth, in an agitated, angry voice. "Ring off--quick!"

"Now, Ruth, let me----"

"Ring off!" ordered Ruth. "You mustn't do that. You'll have the
whole town talking about how I'm throwing myself at Sam's
head--and that I'm jealous of Susan."

Mrs. Warham said, "Never mind" into the telephone sender and
hung up the receiver. She was frightened, but not convinced.
Hers was a slow, old-fashioned mind, and to it the scheme it had
worked out seemed a model of skillful duplicity. But Ruth, of
the younger and subtler generation, realized instantly how
transparent the thing was. Mrs. Warham was abashed but not
angered by her daughter's curt contempt.

"It's the only way I can think of," said she. "And I still
don't see----"

"Of course you don't," cut in Ruth, ruffled by the perilously
narrow escape from being the laughing stock of the town. "People
aren't as big fools as they used to be, mamma. They don't
believe nowadays everything that's told them. There isn't
anybody that doesn't know I'm never sick. No--we'll have to----"

She reflected a moment, pausing halfway down the stairs, while
her mother watched her swollen and tear-stained face.

"We might send Susan away for the evening," suggested the mother.

"Yes," assented the daughter. "Papa could take her with him for
a drive to North Sutherland--to see the Provosts. Then Sam'd
come straight on to the Sinclairs'."

"I'll call up your father."

"No!" cried Ruth, stamping her foot. "Call up Mr. Provost, and
tell him papa's coming. Then you can talk with papa when he gets
home to dinner."

"But maybe----"

"If that doesn't work out we can do something else this afternoon."

The mother and the daughter avoided each other's eyes. Both felt
mean and small, guilty toward Susan; but neither was for that
reason disposed to draw back. As Mrs. Warham was trying the new
dress on her daughter, she said:

"Anyhow, Sam'd be wasting time on Susan. He'd hang round her for
no good. She'd simply get talked about. The poor child can't be
lively or smile but what people begin to wonder if she's going
the way of--of Lorella."

"That's so," agreed Ruth, and both felt better. "Was Aunt
Lorella _very_ pretty, mamma?"

"Lovely!" replied Fanny, and her eyes grew tender, for she had
adored Lorella. "You never saw such a complexion--like Susan's, only
snow-white." Nervously and hastily, "Most as fine as yours, Ruthie."

Ruth gazed complacently into the mirror. "I'm glad I'm fair, and
not big," said she.

"Yes, indeed! I like the womanly woman. And so do men."

"Don't you think we ought to send Susan away to visit
somewhere?" asked Ruth at the next opportunity for talk the
fitting gave. "It's getting more and more--pointed--the way
people act. And she's so sweet and good, I'd hate to have her
feelings hurt." In a burst of generosity, "She's the most
considerate human being I ever knew. She'd give up anything
rather than see someone else put out. She's too much that way."

"We can't be too much that way," said Mrs. Warham in mechanical
Christian reproof.

"Oh, I know," retorted Ruth, "that's all very well for church
and Sundays. But I guess if you want to get along you've got to
look out for Number One. . . . Yes, she ought to visit somewhere."

"I've been trying to think," said her mother. "She couldn't go
any place but your Uncle Zeke's. But it's so lonesome out there
I haven't the heart to send her. Besides, she wouldn't know what
to make of it."

"What'd father say?"

"That's another thing." Mrs. Warham had latterly grown
jealous--not without reason--of her husband's partiality for Susan.

Ruth sighed. "Oh, dear!" cried she. "I don't know what to do.
How's she ever going to get married!"

"If she'd only been a boy!" said Mrs. Warham, on her knees,
taking the unevenness out of the front of the skirt. "A girl has
to suffer for her mother's sins."

Ruth made no reply. She smiled to herself--the comment of the
younger generation upon the older. Sin it might have been; but,
worse than that, it was a stupidity--to let a man make a fool of
her. Lorella must have been a poor weak-minded creature.

By dinner time Ruth had completely soothed and smoothed her
vanity. Sam had been caught by Susan simply because he had seen
Susan before he saw her.

All that would be necessary was a good chance at him, and he
would never look at Susan again. He had been in the East, where
the admired type was her own--refined, ladylike, the woman of
the dainty appearance and manners and tastes. A brief
undisturbed exposure to her charms and Susan would seem coarse
and countrified to him. There was no denying that Susan had
style, but it was fully effective only when applied to a sunny
fairy-like beauty such as hers.

But at midday, when Susan came in with Warham, Ruth's jealousy
opened all her inward-bleeding wounds again. Susan's merry eyes,
her laughing mouth, her funny way of saying even commonplace
things--how could quiet, unobtrusive, ladylike charms such as
Ruth's have a chance if Susan were about? She waited, silent and
anxious, while her mother was having the talk with her father in the
sitting-room. Warham, mere man, was amused by his wife's scheming.

"Don't put yourself out, Fanny," said he. "If the boy wants Ruth
and she wants him, why, well and good. But you'll only make a
mess interfering. Let the young people alone."

"I'm surprised, George Warham," cried Fanny, "that you can show
so little sense and heart."

"To hear you talk, I'd think marriage was a business, like groceries."

Mrs. Warham thought it was, in a sense. But she would never have
dared say so aloud, even to her husband--or, rather, especially
to her husband. In matters of men and women he was thoroughly
innocent, with the simplicity of the old-time man of the small
town and the country; he fancied that, while in grocery matters
and the like the world was full of guile, in matters of the
heart it was idyllic, Arcadian, with never a thought of duplicity,
except among a few obviously wicked and designing people.

"I guess we both want to see Ruth married well," was all she
could venture.

"I'd rather the girls stayed with us," declared Warham. "I'd
hate to give them up."

"Of course," hastily agreed Fanny. "Still--it's the regular
order of nature."

"Oh, Ruth'll marry--only too soon," said Warham. "And marry
well. I'm not so sure, though, that marrying any of old Wright's
breed would be marrying what ought to be called well. Money
isn't everything--not by a long sight--though, of course, it's
comfortable."

"I never heard anything against Sam," protested Mrs. Warham.

"You've heard what I've heard--that he's wild and loose. But
then you women like that in a man."

"We've got to put up with it, you mean," cried Fanny, indignant.

"Women like it," persisted Warham. "And I guess Sam's only
sowing the usual wild oats, getting ready to settle. No, mother,
you let Ruth alone. If she wants him, she'll get him--she or Susan."

Mrs. Warham compressed her lips and lowered her eyes. Ruth or
Susan--as if it didn't matter which! "Susan isn't _ours_," she
could not refrain from saying.

"Indeed, she is!" retorted George warmly. "Why, she couldn't be
more our own----"

"Yes, certainly," interrupted Fanny.

She moved toward the door. She saw that without revealing her
entire scheme--hers and Ruth's--she could make no headway with
George. And if she did reveal it he would sternly veto it. So
she gave up that direction. She went upstairs; George took his
hat from the front hall rack and pushed open the screen door. As
he appeared on the veranda Susan was picking dead leaves from
one of the hanging baskets; Ruth, seated in the hammock, hands
in lap, her whole attitude intensely still, was watching her
with narrowed eyes.

"What's this I hear," cried Warham, laughing, "about you two
girls setting your caps for Sam Wright?" And his good-humored
brown eyes glanced at Ruth, passed on to Susan's wealth of wavy
dark hair and long, rounded form, and lingered there.

Ruth lowered her eyes and compressed her lips, a trick she had
borrowed from her mother along with the peculiarities of her
mother's disposition that it fitted. Susan flung a laughing
glance over her shoulder at her uncle. "Not Ruth," said she.
"Only me. I saw him first, so he's mine. He's coming to see me
this evening."

"So I hear. Well, the moon's full and your aunt and I'll not
interrupt--at least not till ten o'clock. No callers on a child
like you after ten."

"Oh, I don't think I'll be able to hold him that long."

"Don't you fret, Brownie. But I mustn't make you vain. Coming
along to the store?"

"No. Tomorrow," said Susan. "I can finish in the morning. I'm
going to wear my white dress with embroidery, and it's got to be
pressed--and that means I must do it myself."

"Poor Sam! And I suppose, when he calls, you'll come down as if
you'd put on any old thing and didn't care whether he came or
not. And you'll have primped for an hour--and he, too--shaving
and combing and trying different ties."

Susan sparkled at the idea of a young man, and _such_ a young
man, taking trouble for her. Ruth, pale, kept her eyes down and
her lips compressed. She was picturing the gallant appearance
the young Sophomore from Yale, away off in the gorgeous
fashionable East, would make as he came in at that gate yonder
and up the walk and seated himself on the veranda--with Susan!
Evidently her mother had failed; Susan was not to be taken away.

When Warham departed down the walk Ruth rose; she could not bear
being alone with her triumphant rival--triumphant because
unconscious. She knew that to get Sam to herself all she would
have to do would be to hint to Susan, the generous, what she
wanted. But pride forbade that. As her hand was on the knob of
the screen door, Susan said: "Why don't you like Sam?"

"Oh, I think he's stuck-up. He's been spoiled in the East."

"Why, I don't see any sign of it."

"You were too flattered by his talking to you," said Ruth, with a
sweet-sour little laugh--an asp of a sneer hid in a basket of flowers.

Susan felt the sting; but, seeing only the flowers, did not
dream whence it had come. "It _was_ nice, wasn't it?" said she,
gayly. "Maybe you're right about him, but I can't help liking
him. You must admit he's handsome."

"He has a bad look in his eyes," replied Ruth. Such rage against
Susan was swelling within her that it seemed to her she would
faint if she did not release at least part of it. "You want to
look out for him, Susie," said she, calmly and evenly. "You
don't want to take what he says seriously."

"Of course not," said Susan, quite honestly, though she, no more
than the next human being, could avoid taking seriously whatever
was pleasantly flattering.

"He'd never think of marrying you." Ruth trembled before and
after delivering this venomous shaft.

"Marrying!" cried Susan, again quite honestly. "Why, I'm only seventeen."

Ruth drew a breath of relief. The shaft had glanced off the
armor of innocence without making the faintest dent. She rushed
into the house. She did not dare trust herself with her cousin.
What might the demon within her tempt her to say next?

"Come up, Ruth!" called her mother. "The dress is ready for the
last try-on. I think it's going to hang beautifully."

Ruth dragged herself up the stairs, lagged into the
sitting-room, gazed at the dress with a scowl. "What did father
say?" she asked.

"It's no use trying to do anything with your father."

Ruth flung herself in a corner of the sofa.

"The only thing I can think of," said her mother, humbly and
timidly, "is phone the Sinclairs as I originally set out to do."

"And have the whole town laughing at me. . . . Oh, what do I
care, anyhow!"

"Arthur Sinclair's taller and a sight handsomer. Right in the
face, Sam's as plain as Dick's hatband. His looks is all clothes
and polish--and mighty poor polish, I think. Arthur's got rise
in him, too, while Sam--well, I don't know what'd become of him
if old Wright lost his money."

But Arthur, a mere promise, seemed poor indeed beside Sam, the
actually arrived. To marry Sam would be to step at once into
grandeur; to marry Arthur would mean years of struggle.
Besides, Arthur was heavy, at least seemed heavy to light Ruth,
while Sam was her ideal of gay elegance. "I _detest_ Arthur
Sinclair," she now announced.

"You can get Sam if you want him," said her mother confidently. "One
evening with a mere child like Susie isn't going to amount to much."

Ruth winced. "Do you suppose I don't know that?" cried she.
"What makes me so mad is his impudence--coming here to see her
when he wouldn't marry her or take her any place. It's insulting
to us all."

"Oh, I don't think it's as bad as all that, Ruthie," soothed her
mother, too simple-minded to accept immediately this clever
subtlety of self-deception.

"You know this town--how people talk. Why, his sister----" and
she related their conversation at the gate that morning.

"You ought to have sat on her hard, Ruth," said Mrs. Warham,
with dangerously sparkling eyes. "No matter what we may think
privately, it gives people a low opinion of us to----"

"Don't I know that!" shrilled Ruth. She began to weep. "I'm
ashamed of myself."

"But we must try the dress on." Mrs. Warham spread the skirt,
using herself as form. "Isn't it too lovely!"

Ruth dried her eyes as she gazed. The dress was indeed lovely.
But her pleasure in it was shadowed by the remembrance that most
of the loveliness was due to Susan's suggestions. Still, she
tried it on, and felt better. She would linger until Sam came,
would exhibit herself to him; and surely he would not tarry long
with Susan. This project improved the situation greatly. She
began her toilet for the evening at once, though it was only
three o'clock. Susan finished her pressing and started to dress
at five--because she knew Ruth would be appealing to her to come
in and help put the finishing touches to the toilet for the
party. And, sure enough, at half-past five, before she had
nearly finished, Ruth, with a sneaking humility, begged her to
come "for half a minute--if you don't mind--and have got time."

Susan did Ruth's hair over, made her change to another color of
stockings and slippers, put the dress on her, did nearly an
hour's refitting and redraping. Both were late for supper; and
after supper Susan had to make certain final amendments to the
wonderful toilet, and then get herself ready. So it was Ruth
alone who went down when Sam Wright came. "My, but you do look
all to the good, Ruth!" cried Sam. And his eyes no less than his
tone showed that he meant it. He hadn't realized what a soft
white neck the blond cousin had, or how perfectly her shoulders
rounded into her slim arms. As Ruth moved to depart, he said:
"Don't be in such a rush. Wait till Susie finishes her primping
and comes down."

"She had to help me," said Ruth, with a righteousness she could
justly plume herself upon. "That's why she's late. No, I must
get along." She was wise enough to resist the temptation to
improve upon an already splendid impression. "Come as soon as
you can."

"I'll be there in a few minutes," Sam assured her convincingly.
"Save some dances for me."

Ruth went away happy. At the gate she glanced furtively back.
Sam was looking after her. She marched down the street with
light step. "I must wear low-necked dresses more in the
evenings," she said to herself. "It's foolish for a girl to
hide a good neck."

Sam, at the edge of the veranda, regretting his promise to call
on Susan, was roused by her voice: "Did you ever see anything as
lovely as Ruth?"

Sam's regret vanished the instant he looked at her, and the
greedy expression came into his sensual, confident young face.
"She's a corker," said he. "But I'm content to be where I am."

Susan's dress was not cut out in the neck, was simply of the
collarless kind girls of her age wear. It revealed the smooth,
voluptuous yet slender column of her throat. And her arms, bare
to just above the elbows, were exquisite. But Susan's
fascination did not lie in any or in all of her charms, but in
that subtlety of magnetism which account for all the sensational
phenomena of the relations of men and women. She was a clever
girl--clever beyond her years, perhaps--though in this day
seventeen is not far from fully developed womanhood. But even
had she been silly, men would have been glad to linger on and on
under the spell of the sex call which nature had subtly woven
into the texture of her voice, into the glance of her eyes, into
the delicate emanations of her skin.

They talked of all manner of things--games and college East and
West--the wonders of New York--the weather, finally. Sam was
every moment of the time puzzling how to bring up the one
subject that interested both above all others, that interested
him to the exclusion of all others. He was an ardent student of
the game of man and woman, had made considerable progress at
it--remarkable progress, in view of his bare twenty years. He
had devised as many "openings" as an expert chess player. None
seemed to fit this difficult case how to make love to a girl of
his own class whom his conventional, socially ambitious nature
forbade him to consider marrying. As he observed her in the
moonlight, he said to himself: "I've got to look out or I'll
make a damn fool of myself with her." For his heady passion was
fast getting the better of those prudent instincts he had
inherited from a father who almost breathed by calculation.

While he was still struggling for an "opening," Susan eager to
help him but not knowing how, there came from the far interior
of the house three distant raps. "Gracious!" exclaimed Susan.
"That's Uncle George. It must be ten o'clock." With frank
regret, "I'm so sorry. I thought it was early."

"Yes, it did seem as if I'd just come," said Sam. Her shy
innocence was contagious. He felt an awkward country lout.
"Well, I suppose I must go."

"But you'll come again--sometime?" she asked wistfully. It was
her first real beau--the first that had interested her--and what
a dream lover of a beau he looked, standing before her in that
wonderful light!

"Come? Rather!" exclaimed he in a tone of enthusiasm that could
not but flatter her into a sort of intoxication. "I'd have hard
work staying away. But Ruth--she'll always be here."

"Oh, she goes out a lot--and I don't."

"Will you telephone me--next time she's to be out?"

"Yes," agreed she with a hesitation that was explained when she
added: "But don't think you've got to come. . . . Oh, I must go in!"

"Good night--Susie." Sam held out his hand. She took it with a
queer reluctance. She felt nervous, afraid, as if there were
something uncanny lurking somewhere in those moonlight shadows.
She gently tried to draw her hand away, but he would not let
her. She made a faint struggle, then yielded. It was so
wonderful, the sense of the touch of his hand. "Susie!" he said
hoarsely. And she knew he felt as she did. Before she realized
it his arms were round her, and his lips had met hers. "You
drive me crazy," he whispered.

Both were trembling; she had become quite cold--her cheeks, her hand,
her body even. "You mustn't," she murmured, drawing gently away.

"You set me crazy," he repeated. "Do you--love me--a little?"

"Oh, I must go!" she pleaded. Tears were glistening in her long dark
lashes. The sight of them maddened him. "Do you--Susie?" he pleaded.

"I'm--I'm--very young," she stammered.

"Yes--yes--I know," he assented eagerly. "But not too young to
love, Susie? No. Because you do--don't you?"

The moonlit world seemed a fairyland. "Yes," she said softly. "I
guess so. I must go. I must."

And moved beyond her power to control herself, she broke from
his detaining hand and fled into the house. She darted up to her
room, paused in the middle of the floor, her hands clasped over
her wildly beating heart. When she could move she threw open the
shutters and went out on the balcony. She leaned against the
window frame and gazed up at the stars, instinctively seeking
the companionship of the infinite. Curiously enough, she thought
little about Sam. She was awed and wonderstruck before the
strange mysterious event within her, the opening up, the
flowering of her soul. These vast emotions, where did they come
from? What were they? Why did she long to burst into laughter,
to burst into tears? Why did she do neither, but simply stand
motionless, with the stars blazing and reeling in the sky and
her heart beating like mad and her blood surging and ebbing? Was
this--love? Yes--it must be love. Oh, how wonderful love
was--and how sad--and how happy beyond all laughter--and how
sweet! She felt an enormous tenderness for everybody and for
everything, for all the world--an overwhelming sense of beauty
and goodness. Her lips were moving. She was amazed to find she
was repeating the one prayer she knew, the one Aunt Fanny had
taught her in babyhood. Why should she find herself praying?
Love--love love! She was a woman and she loved! So this was what
it meant to be a woman; it meant to love!

She was roused by the sound of Ruth saying good night to someone
at the gate, invisible because of the intervening foliage. Why,
it must be dreadfully late. The Dipper had moved away round to
the south, and the heat of the day was all gone, and the air was
full of the cool, scented breath of leaves and flowers and
grass. Ruth's lights shone out upon the balcony. Susan turned to
slip into her own room. But Ruth heard, called out peevishly: