Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

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


"Yes," said Susan.

Ruth switched off the light and went back to bed, better
content. She felt that now Susan would stop her staring and
would go to sleep. Sam's call had been very satisfactory. Ruth
felt she had shown off to the best advantage, felt that he
admired her, would come to see _her_ next time. And now that she
had so arranged it that Susan would avoid him, everything would
turn out as she wished. "I'll use Arthur to make him jealous
after a while--and then--I'll have things my own way." As she fell
asleep she was selecting the rooms Sam and she would occupy in
the big Wright mansion--"when we're not in the East or in Europe."




CHAPTER V


RUTH had forgotten to close her shutters, so toward seven
o'clock the light which had been beating against her eyelids for
three hours succeeded in lifting them. She stretched herself and
yawned noisily. Susan appeared in the connecting doorway.

"Are you awake?" she said softly.

"What time is it?" asked Ruth, too lazy to turn over and look at
her clock.

"Ten to seven."

"Do close my shutters for me. I'll sleep an hour or two." She
hazily made out the figure in the doorway. "You're dressed,
aren't you?" she inquired sleepily.

"Yes," replied Susan. "I've been waiting for you to wake."

Something in the tone made Ruth forget about sleep and rub her
fingers over her eyes to clear them for a view of her cousin.
Susan seemed about as usual--perhaps a little serious, but then
she had the habit of strange moods of seriousness. "What did you
want?" said Ruth.

Susan came into the room, sat at the foot of the bed--there was
room, as the bed was long and Ruth short. "I want you to tell me
what my mother did."

"Did?" echoed Ruth feebly.

"Did, to disgrace you and--me."

"Oh, I couldn't explain--not in a few words. I'm so sleepy.
Don't bother about it, Susan." And she thrust her head deeper
into the pillow. "Close the shutters."

"Then I'll have to ask Aunt Fanny--or Uncle George or
everybody--till I find out."

"But you mustn't do that," protested Ruth, flinging herself from
left to right impatiently. "What is it you want to know?"

"About my mother--and what she did. And why I have no
father--why I'm not like you--and the other girls."

"Oh--it's nothing. I can't explain. Don't bother about it. It's
no use. It can't be helped. And it doesn't really matter."

"I've been thinking," said Susan. "I understand a great many
things I didn't know I'd noticed--ever since I was a baby. But
what I don't understand----" She drew a long breath, a cautious
breath, as if there were danger of awakening a pain. "What I don't
understand is--why. And--you must tell me all about it. . . . Was
my mother bad?"

"Not exactly bad," Ruth answered uncertainly. "But she did one
thing that was wicked--at least that a woman never can be
forgiven for, if it's found out."

"Did she--did she take something that didn't belong to her?"

"No--nothing like that. No, she was, they say, as nice and sweet
as she could be--except---- She wasn't married to your father."

Susan sat in a brown study. "I can't understand," she said at
last. "Why--she _must_ have been married, or--or--there wouldn't
have been me."

Ruth smiled uneasily. "Not at all. Don't you really understand?"

Susan shook her head.

"He--he betrayed her--and left her--and then everybody knew
because you came."

Susan's violet-gray eyes rested a grave, inquiring glance upon
her cousin's face. "But if he betrayed her---- What does 'betray'
mean? Doesn't it mean he promised to marry her and didn't?"

"Something like that," said Ruth. "Yes--something like that."

"Then _he_ was the disgrace," said the dark cousin, after reflecting.
"No--you're not telling me, Ruth. _What_ did my mother do?"

"She had you without being married."

Again Susan sat in silence, trying to puzzle it out. Ruth lifted
herself, put the pillows behind her back. "You don't
understand--anything--do you? Well, I'll try to explain--though
I don't know much about it."

And hesitatingly, choosing words she thought fitted to those
innocent ears, hunting about for expressions she thought
comprehensible to that innocent mind, Ruth explained the
relations of the sexes--an inaccurate, often absurd,
explanation, for she herself knew only what she had picked up
from other girls--the fantastic hodgepodge of pruriency,
physiology and sheer nonsense which under our system of
education distorts and either alarms or inflames the imaginations
of girls and boys where the clean, simple truth would at least
enlighten them. Susan listened with increasing amazement.

"Well, do you understand?" Ruth ended. "How we come into the
world--and what marriage means?"

"I don't believe it," declared Susan. "It's--awful!" And she
shivered with disgust.

"I tell you it's true," insisted Ruth. "I thought it was awful
when I first heard--when Lottie Wright took me out in their
orchard, where nobody could listen, and told me what their cook
had told her. But I've got kind of used to it."

"But it--it's so, then; my mother did marry my father," said Susan.

"No. She let him betray her. And when a woman lets a man betray
her without being married by the preacher or somebody, why,
she's ruined forever."

"But doesn't marriage mean where two people promise to love each
other and then betray each other?"

"If they're married, it isn't betraying," explained Ruth. "If
they're not, it is betraying." Susan reflected, nodded slowly.
"I guess I understand. But don't you see it was my father who was
the disgrace? He was the one that promised to marry and didn't."

"How foolish you are!" cried Ruth. "I never knew you to be stupid."

"But isn't it so?" persisted Susan.

"Yes--in a way," her cousin admitted. "Only--the woman must keep
herself pure until the ceremony has been performed."

"But if he said so to her, wasn't that saying so to God just as
much as if the preacher had been there?"

"No, it wasn't," said Ruth with irritation. "And it's wicked to
think such things. All I know is, God says a woman must be
married before she--before she has any children. And your mother
wasn't." Susan shook her head. "I guess you don't understand any
better than I do--really."

"No, I don't," confessed Ruth. "But I'd like to see any man more
than kiss me or put his arm round me without our having been married."

"But," urged Susan, "if he kissed you, wouldn't that be like marriage?"

"Some say so," admitted Ruth. "But I'm not so strict. A little
kissing and that often leads a man to propose." Susan reflected
again. "It all sounds low and sneaking to me," was her final
verdict. "I don't want to have anything to do with it. But I'm
sure my mother was a good woman. It wasn't her fault if she was
lied to, when she loved and believed. And anybody who blames her
is low and bad. I'm glad I haven't got any father, if fathers
have to be made to promise before everybody or else they'll not
keep their word."

"Well, I'll not argue about it," said Ruth. "I'm telling you the
way things are. The woman has to take _all_ the blame." Susan
lifted her head haughtily. "I'd be glad to be blamed by anybody
who was wicked enough to be that unjust. I'd not have anything
to do with such people."

"Then you'd live alone."

"No, I shouldn't. There are lots of people who are good and----"

"That's wicked, Susan," interrupted Ruth. "All good people think
as I tell you they do."

"Do Aunt Fanny and Uncle George blame my mother?"

"Of course. How could they help it, when she----" Ruth was checked
by the gathering lightnings in those violet-gray eyes.

"But," pursued Susan, after a pause, "even if they were wicked
enough to blame my mother, they couldn't blame me."

"Of course not," declared Ruth warmly. "Hasn't everybody always
been sweet and kind to you?"

"But last night you said----"

Ruth hid her face. "I'm ashamed of what I said last night," she
murmured. "I've got, Oh, such a _nasty_ disposition, Susie."

"But what you said--wasn't it so?" Ruth turned away her head.

Susan drew a long sigh, so quietly that Ruth could not have heard.

"You understand," Ruth said gently, "everybody feels sorry for
you and----"

Susan frowned stormily, "They'd better feel sorry for themselves."

"Oh, Susie, dear," cried Ruth, impulsively catching her hand,
"we all love you, and mother and father and I--we'll stand up
for you through everything----"

"Don't you _dare_ feel sorry for me!" Susan cried, wrenching her
hand away.

Ruth's eyes filled with tears.

"You can't blame us because everybody---- You know, God says,
'The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children----'"

"I'm done with everybody," cried Susan, rising and lifting her
proud head, "I'm done with God."

Ruth gave a low scream and shuddered. Susan looked round
defiantly, as if she expected a bolt from the blue to come
hurtling through the open window. But the sky remained serene,
and the quiet, scented breeze continued to play with the lace
curtains, and the birds on the balcony did not suspend their
chattering courtship. This lack of immediate effect from her
declaration of war upon man and God was encouraging. The last of
the crushed, cowed feeling Ruth had inspired the night before
disappeared. With a soul haughtily plumed and looking defiance
from the violet-gray eyes, Susan left her cousin and betook
herself down to breakfast.

In common with most children, she had always dreamed of a
mysterious fate for herself, different from the commonplace
routine around her. Ruth's revelations, far from daunting her,
far from making her feel like cringing before the world in
gratitude for its tolerance of her bar sinister, seemed a
fascinatingly tragic confirmation of her romantic longings and
beliefs. No doubt it was the difference from the common lot that
had attracted Sam to her; and this difference would make their
love wholly unlike the commonplace Sutherland wooing and
wedding. Yes, hers had been a mysterious fate, and would
continue to be. Nora, an old woman now, had often related in her
presence how Doctor Stevens had brought her to life when she lay
apparently, indeed really, dead upon the upstairs sitting-room
table--Doctor Stevens and Nora's own prayers. An extraordinary
birth, in defiance of the laws of God and man; an extraordinary
resurrection, in defiance of the laws of nature--yes, hers would
be a life superbly different from the common. And when she and
Sam married, how gracious and forgiving she would be to all
those bad-hearted people; how she would shame them for their
evil thoughts against her mother and herself!

The Susan Lenox who sat alone at the little table in the
dining-room window, eating bread and butter and honey in the
comb, was apparently the same Susan Lenox who had taken three
meals a day in that room all those years--was, indeed, actually
the same, for character is not an overnight creation. Yet it was
an amazingly different Susan Lenox, too. The first crisis had
come; she had been put to the test; and she had not collapsed in
weakness but had stood erect in strength.

After breakfast she went down Main Street and at Crooked Creek
Avenue took the turning for the cemetery. She sought the Warham
plot, on the western slope near the quiet brook. There was a
clump of cedars at each corner of the plot; near the largest of
them were three little graves--the three dead children of George
and Fanny. In the shadow of the clump and nearest the brook was
a fourth grave apart and, to the girl, now thrillingly mysterious:


LORELLA LENOX
BORN MAY 9, 1859
DIED JULY 17, 1879


Twenty years old! Susan's tears scalded her eyes. Only a little
older than her cousin Ruth was now--Ruth who often seemed to her,
and to everybody, younger than herself. "And she was good--I
know she was good!" thought Susan. "_He_ was bad, and the people
who took his part against her were bad. But _she_ was good!"

She started as Sam's voice, gay and light, sounded directly
behind her. "What are you doing in a graveyard?" cried he.

"How did you find me?" she asked, paling and flushing and paling again.

"I've been following you ever since you left home."

He might have added that he did not try to overtake her until
they were where people would be least likely to see.

"Whose graves are those?" he went on, cutting across a plot and
stepping on several graves to join her.

She was gazing at her mothers simple headstone. His glance
followed hers, he read.

"Oh--beg pardon," he said confusedly. "I didn't see."

She turned her serious gaze from the headstone to his face,
which her young imagination transfigured. "You know--about her?"
she asked.

"I--I--I've heard," he confessed. "But--Susie, it doesn't amount
to anything. It happened a long time ago--and everybody's
forgotten--and----" His stammering falsehoods died away before
her steady look. "How did you find out?"

"Someone just told me," replied she. "And they said you'd never
respect or marry a girl who had no father. No--don't
deny--please! I didn't believe it--not after what we had said
to each other."

Sam, red and shifting uneasily, could not even keep his downcast
eyes upon the same spot of ground.

"You see," she went on, sweet and grave, "they don't understand
what love means--do they?"

"I guess not," muttered he, completely unnerved.

Why, how seriously the girl had taken him and his words--such a
few words and not at all definite! No, he decided, it was the
kiss. He had heard of girls so innocent that they thought a kiss
meant the same as being married. He got himself together as well
as he could and looked at her.

"But, Susie," he said, "you're too young for anything
definite--and I'm not halfway through college."

"I understand," said she. "But you need not be afraid I'll change."

She was so sweet, so magnetic, so compelling that in spite of
the frowns of prudence he seized her hand. At her touch he flung
prudence to the winds. "I love you," he cried; and putting his
arm around her, he tried to kiss her. She gently but strongly
repulsed him. "Why not, dear?" he pleaded. "You love me--don't you?"

"Yes," she replied, her honest eyes shining upon his. "But we
must wait until we're married. I don't care so much for the
others, but I'd not want Uncle George to feel I had disgraced him."

"Why, there's no harm in a kiss," pleaded he.

"Kissing you is--different," she replied. "It's--it's--marriage."

He understood her innocence that frankly assumed marriage where
a sophisticated girl would, in the guilt of designing thoughts,
have shrunk in shame from however vaguely suggesting such a
thing. He realized to the full his peril. "I'm a damn fool," he
said to himself, "to hang about her. But somehow I can't help
it--I can't!" And the truth was, he loved her as much as a boy
of his age is capable of loving, and he would have gone on and
married her but for the snobbishness smeared on him by the
provincialism of the small town and burned in by the toadyism of
his fashionable college set. As he looked at her he saw beauty
beyond any he had ever seen elsewhere and a sweetness and
honesty that made him ashamed before her. "No, I couldn't harm
her," he told himself. "I'm not such a dog as that. But there's
no harm in loving her and kissing her and making her as happy as
it's right to be."

"Don't be mean, Susan," he begged, tears in his eyes. "If you
love me, you'll let me kiss you."

And she yielded, and the shock of the kiss set both to
trembling. It appealed to his vanity, it heightened his own
agitations to see how pale she had grown and how her rounded
bosom rose and fell in the wild tumult of her emotions. "Oh, I
can't do without seeing you," she cried. "And Aunt Fanny has
forbidden me."

"I thought so!" exclaimed he. "I did what I could last night to
throw them off the track. If Ruth had only known what I was
thinking about all the time. Where were you?"

"Upstairs--on the balcony."

"I felt it," he declared. "And when she sang love songs I could
hardly keep from rushing up to you. Susie, we _must_ see each other."

"I can come here, almost any day."

"But people'd soon find out--and they'd say all sorts of things.
And your uncle and aunt would hear."

There was no disputing anything so obvious.

"Couldn't you come down tonight, after the others are in bed and
the house is quiet?" he suggested.

She hesitated before the deception, though she felt that her family
had forfeited the right to control her. But love, being the supreme
necessity, conquered. "For a few minutes," she conceded.

She had been absorbed; but his eyes, kept alert by his
conventional soul, had seen several people at a distance
observing without seeming to do so. "We must separate," he now
said. "You see, Susie, we mustn't be gossiped about. You know
how determined they are to keep us apart."

"Yes--yes," she eagerly agreed. "Will you go first, or shall I?"

"You go--the way you came. I'll jump the brook down where it's
narrow and cut across and into our place by the back way. What
time tonight?"

"Arthur's coming," reflected Susie aloud. "Ruth'll not let him
stay late. She'll be sleepy and will go straight to bed. About
half past ten. If I'm not on the front veranda--no, the side
veranda--by eleven, you'll know something has prevented."

"But you'll surely come?"

"I'll come." And it both thrilled and alarmed him to see how
much in earnest she was. But he looked love into her loving eyes
and went away, too intoxicated to care whither this adventure
was leading him.

At dinner she felt she was no longer a part of this family. Were
they not all pitying and looking down on her in their hearts?
She was like a deformed person who has always imagined the
consideration he has had was natural and equal, and suddenly
discovers that it is pity for his deformity. She now acutely
felt her aunt's, her cousin's, dislike; and her uncle's
gentleness was not less galling. In her softly rounded youthful
face there was revealed definitely for the first time an
underlying expression of strength, of what is often confused
with its feeble counterfeit, obstinacy--that power to resist
circumstances which makes the unusual and the firm character.
The young mobility of her features suggested the easy swaying of
the baby sapling in the gentlest breeze. Singularly at variance
with it was this expression of tenacity. Such an expression in
the face of the young infallibly forecasts an agitated and
agitating life. It seemed amazingly out of place in Susan
because theretofore she had never been put to the test in any
but unnoted trifles and so had given the impression that she was
as docile as she was fearful of giving annoyance or pain and
indifferent to having her own way. Those who have this
temperament of strength encased in gentleness are invariably
misunderstood. When they assert themselves, though they are in
the particular instance wholly right, they are regarded as
wholly and outrageously wrong. Life deals hardly with them,
punishes them for the mistaken notion of themselves they have
through forbearance and gentleness of heart permitted an
unobservant world to form.

Susan spent the afternoon on the balcony before her window,
reading and sewing--or, rather, dreaming over first a book, then
a dress. When she entered the dining-room at supper time the
others were already seated. She saw instantly that something had
occurred--something ominous for her. Mrs. Warham gave her a
penetrating, severe look and lowered her eyes; Ruth was gazing
sullenly at her plate. Warham's glance was stern and
reproachful. She took her place opposite Ruth, and the meal was
eaten in silence. Ruth left the table first. Next Mrs. Warham
rose and saying, "Susan, when you've finished, I wish to see you
in the sitting-room upstairs," swept in solemn dignity from the
room. Susan rose at once to follow. As she was passing her uncle
he put out his hand and detained her.

"I hope it was only a foolish girl's piece of nonsense," said he
with an attempt at his wonted kindliness. "And I know it won't
occur again. But when your aunt says things you won't like to
hear, remember that you brought this on yourself and that she
loves you as we all do and is thinking only of your good."

"What is it, Uncle George?" cried Susan, amazed. "What have I done?"

Warham looked sternly grieved. "Brownie," he reproached, "you
mustn't deceive. Go to your aunt."

She found her aunt seated stiffly in the living-room, her hands
folded upon her stomach. So gradual had been the crucial
middle-life change in Fanny that no one had noted it. This
evening Susan, become morbidly acute, suddenly realized the
contrast between the severe, uncertain-tempered aunt of today
and the amiable, altogether and always gentle aunt of two years
before.

"What is it, aunt?" she said, feeling as if she were before a
stranger and an enemy.

"The whole town is talking about your disgraceful doings this
morning," Ruth's mother replied in a hard voice.

The color leaped in Susan's cheeks.

"Yesterday I forbade you to see Sam Wright again. And already
you disobey."

"I did not say I would not see him again," replied Susan.

"I thought you were an honest, obedient girl," cried Fanny, the
high shrill notes in her voice rasping upon the sensitive, the
now morbidly sensitive, Susan. "Instead--you slip away from the
house and meet a young man--and permit him to take _liberties_
with you."

Susan braced herself. "I did not go to the cemetery to meet
him," she replied; and that new or, rather, newly revived
tenacity was strong in her eyes, in the set of her sweet mouth.
"He saw me on the way and followed. I did let him kiss me--once.
But I had the right to."

"You have disgraced yourself--and us all."

"We are going to be married."

"I don't want to hear such foolish talk!" cried Mrs. Warham
violently. "If you had any sense, you'd know better."

"He and I do not feel as you do about my mother," said the girl
with quiet dignity.

Mrs. Warham shivered before this fling. "Who told you?" she demanded.

"It doesn't matter; I know."

"Well, miss, since you know, then I can tell you that your uncle
and I realize you're going the way your mother went. And the
whole town thinks you've gone already. They're all saying, 'I
told you so! I told you so! Like her mother!'" Mrs. Warham was
weeping hysterical tears of fury. "The whole town! And it'll
reflect on my Ruth. Oh, you miserable girl! Whatever possessed
me to take pity on you!"

Susan's hands clutched until the nails sunk into the palms. She
shut her teeth together, turned to fly.

"Wait!" commanded Mrs. Warham. "Wait, I tell you!"

Susan halted in the doorway, but did not turn.

"Your uncle and I have talked it over."

"Oh!" cried Susan.

Mrs. Warham's eyes glistened. "Yes, he has wakened up at last.
There's one thing he isn't soft about----"

"You've turned him against me!" cried the girl despairingly.

"You mean _you_ have turned him against you," retorted her aunt.
"Anyhow, you can't wheedle him this time. He's as bent as I am.
And you must promise us that you won't see Sam again."

A pause. Then Susan said, "I can't."

"Then we'll send you away to your Uncle Zeke's. It's quiet out
there and you'll have a chance to think things over. And I
reckon he'll watch you. He's never forgiven your mother. Now,
will you promise?"

"No," said Susan calmly. "You have wicked thoughts about my
mother, and you are being wicked to me--you and Ruth. Oh, I
understand!"

"Don't you dare stand there and lie that way!" raved Mrs.
Warham. "I'll give you tonight to think about it. If you don't
promise, you leave this house. Your uncle has been weak where
you were concerned, but this caper of yours has brought him to
his senses. We'll not have you a loose character--and your
cousin's life spoiled by it. First thing we know, no respectable
man'll marry her, either."

From between the girl's shut teeth issued a cry. She darted
across the hall, locked herself in her room.




CHAPTER VI


SAM did not wait until Arthur Sinclair left, but, all ardor and
impatience, stole in at the Warhams' front gate at ten o'clock.
He dropped to the grass behind a clump of lilacs, and to calm
his nerves and to make the time pass more quickly, smoked a
cigarette, keeping its lighted end carefully hidden in the
hollow of his hand. He was not twenty feet away, was seeing and
hearing, when Arthur kissed Ruth good night. He laughed to
himself. "How disappointed she looked last night when she saw I
wasn't going to do that!" What a charmer Susie must be when the
thought of her made the idea of kissing as pretty a girl as Ruth
uninteresting, almost distasteful!

Sinclair departed; the lights in parlor and hall went out;
presently light appeared through the chinks in some of the
second-story shutters. Then followed three-quarters of an hour
of increasing tension. The tension would have been even greater
had he seen the young lady going leisurely about her
preparations for bed. For Ruth was of the orderly, precise women
who are created to foster the virtue of patience in those about
them. It took her nearly as long to dress for bed as for a
party. She did her hair up in curl papers with the utmost care;
she washed and rinsed and greased her face and neck and gave
them a thorough massage. She shook out and carefully hung or
folded or put to air each separate garment. She examined her
silk stockings for holes, found one, darned it with a neatness
rivaling that of a _stoppeur_. She removed from her dressing
table and put away in drawers everything that was out of place.
She closed each drawer tightly, closed and locked the closets,
looked under the bed, turned off the lights over the dressing
table. She completed her toilet with a slow washing of her
teeth, a long spraying of her throat, and a deliberate,
thoroughgoing dripping of boracic acid into each eye to keep and
improve its clearness and brilliancy. She sat on the bed,
reflected on what she had done, to assure herself that nothing
had been omitted. After a slow look around she drew off her
bedroom slippers, set them carefully side by side near the head
of the bed. She folded her nightgown neatly about her legs,
thrust them down into the bed. Again she looked slowly,
searchingly, about the room to make absolutely sure she had
forgotten nothing, had put everything in perfect order. Once in
bed, she hated to get out; yet if she should recall any
omission, however slight, she would be unable to sleep until she
had corrected it. Finally, sure as fallible humanity can be, she
turned out the last light, lay down--went instantly to sleep.