Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise

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


"I suppose you've got some baggage," said Mrs. Wylie, as if she
rather expected to hear that she had not.

"I left it at the drug store," explained Susan.

"Your trunk?"

Susan started nervously at that explosive exclamation. "I--I
haven't got a trunk--only a few things in a shawl strap."

"Well, I never!"

Mrs. Wylie tossed her head, clucked her tongue disgustedly
against the roof of her mouth. "But I suppose if Mr. Ellison
says so, why you can stay."

"Thank you," said Susan humbly. Even if it would not have been
basest ingratitude to betray her friend, Mr. Wylie, still she
would not have had the courage to confess the truth about Mr.
Ellison and so get herself ordered into the street. "I--I think
I'll go for my things."

"The custom is to pay in advance," said Mrs. Wylie sharply.

"Oh, yes--of course," stammered Susan.

She seated herself on the wooden chair and opened out her purse.
She found the five among her few bills, extended it with
trembling fingers toward Mrs. Wylie. At the same time she lifted
her eyes. The woman's expression as she bored into the
pocketbook terrified her. Never before had she seen the savage
greediness that is bred in the city among the people who fight
against fearful odds to maintain their respectability and to
save themselves from the ever threatened drop to the despised
working class.

"Thank you," said Mrs. Wylie, taking the bill as if she were
conferring a favor upon Susan. "I make everybody pay promptly.
The first of the week or out they go! I used to be easy and I
came near going down."

"Oh, I shouldn't stay a minute if I couldn't pay," said the
girl. "I'm going to look for something right away."

"Well, I don't want to discourage you, but there's a great many
out of work. Still, I suppose you'll be able to wheedle some man
into giving you a job. But I warn you I'm very particular about
morals. If I see any signs----" Mrs. Wylie did not finish her
sentence. Any words would have been weaker than her look.

Susan colored and trembled. Not at the poisonous hint as to how
money could be got to keep on paying for that room, for the hint
passed wide of Susan. She was agitated by the thought: if Mrs.
Wylie should learn that she was not respectable! If Mrs. Wylie
should learn that she was nameless--was born in disgrace so deep
that, no matter how good she might be, she would yet be classed
with the wicked.

"I'm down like a thousand of brick on any woman that is at all
loose with the men," continued the landlady. "I never could
understand how any woman could so far forget herself." And the
woman whom the men had all her life been helping to their
uttermost not to "forget herself" looked sharp suspicion and
envy at Susan, the lovely. Why are women of the Mrs. Wylie sort
so swift to suspect? Can it be that in some secret chamber of
their never assailed hearts there lurks a longing--a feeling as
to what they would do if they had the chance? Mrs. Wylie
continued, "I hope you have strict Christian principles?"

"I was brought up Presbyterian," said Susan anxiously. She was
far from sure that in Cincinnati and by its Mrs. Wylies
Presbyterian would be regarded as Christian.

"There's your kind of a church a few squares from here," was all
Mrs. Wylie deigned to reply. Susan suspected a sneer at
Presbyterianism in her accent.

"That'll be nice," she murmured. She was eager to escape. "I'll
go for my things."

"You can walk down and take the Fourth Street car," suggested
her landlady. "Then you can watch out and not miss the store.
The conductors are very impudent and forgetful."

Susan escaped from the house as speedily as her flying feet
would take her down the two flights. In the street once more,
her spirits rose. She went south to Fourth Street, decided to
walk instead of taking a car. She now found herself in much more
impressive surroundings than before, and realized that Sixth
Street was really one of the minor streets. The further uptown
she went, the more excited she became. After the district of
stately mansions with wonderful carriages driving up and away
and women dressed like those in the illustrated story papers,
came splendid shops and hotels, finer than Susan had believed
there were anywhere in the world. And most of the people--the
crowds on crowds of people!--looked prosperous and cheerful and
so delightfully citified! She wondered why so many of the men
stared at her. She assumed it must be something rural in her
appearance though that ought to have set the women to staring,
too. But she thought little about this, so absorbed was she in
seeing all the new things. She walked slowly, pausing to inspect
the shop windows--the gorgeous dresses and hats and jewelry, the
thousand costly things scattered in careless profusion. And the
crowds! How secure she felt among these multitudes of strangers,
not one of them knowing or suspecting her secret of shame! She
no longer had the sense of being outcast, branded.

When she had gone so far that it seemed to her she certainly
must have missed the drug store, carefully though she had
inspected each corner as she went, she decided that she must
stop someone of this hurrying throng and inquire the way. While
she was still screwing her courage to this boldness, she espied
the sign and hastened joyfully across the street. She and Wylie
welcomed each other like old friends. He was delighted when he
learned that she had taken the room.

"You won't mind Aunt Kate after a while," said he. "She's sour
and nosey, but she's honest and respectable--and that's the main
thing just now with you. And I think you'll get a job all right.
Aunt Kate's got a lady friend that's head saleslady at
Shillito's. She'll know of something."

Wylie was so kind and so hopeful that Susan felt already
settled. As soon as customers came in, she took her parcel and
went, Wylie saying, "I'll drop round after supper and see how
things are getting on." She took the Sixth Street car back, and
felt like an old resident. She was critical of Sixth Street now,
and of the women she had been admiring there less than two hours
before--critical of their manners and of their dress. The
exterior of the boarding house no longer awed her. She was
getting a point of view--as she proudly realized. By the time
Sam came--and surely that wouldn't be many days--she would be
quite transformed.

She mounted the steps and was about to ring when Mrs. Wylie
herself, with stormy brow and snapping eyes, opened the door.
"Go into the parlor," she jerked out from between her
unpleasant-looking receding teeth.

Susan gave her a glance of frightened wonder and obeyed.




CHAPTER VIII


AT the threshold her bundles dropped to the floor and all color
fled from her face. Before her stood her Uncle George and Sam
Wright and his father. The two elderly men were glowering at
her; Sam, white as his shirt and limp, was hanging his head.

"So, miss!--You've got back, eh?" cried her uncle in a tone she
would not have believed could come from him.

As quickly as fear had seized her she now shook it off. "Yes,
Uncle," she said calmly, meeting his angry eyes without
flinching. And back came that expression of resolution--of
stubbornness we call it when it is the flag of opposition to
_our_ will.

"What'd have become of you," demanded her uncle, "if I hadn't
found out early this morning, and got after Sam here and choked
the truth out of him?"

Susan gazed at Sam; but he was such a pitiful figure, so mean and
frightened, that she glanced quickly back to her uncle. She said:

"But he didn't know where I was."

"Don't lie to me," cried Warham. "It won't do you any good, any
more than his lying kept us from finding you. We came on the
train and saw the Waterburys in the street and they'd seen you
go into the drug store. We'd have caught you there if we'd been
a few minutes sooner, but we drove, and got here in time. Now,
tell me, Susan"--and his voice was cruelly harsh--"all about
what's been going on between you and Sam."

She gazed fearlessly and was silent.

"Speak up!" commanded Sam's father.

"Yes--and no lies," said her uncle.

"I don't know what you mean," Susan at last answered--truthfully
enough, yet to gain time, too.

"You can't play that game any longer," cried Warham. "You did make
a fool of me, but my eyes are open. Your aunt's right about you."

"Oh, Uncle George!" said the girl, a sob in her voice.

But he gazed pitilessly--gazed at the woman he was now abhorring
as the treacherous, fallen, unsexed daughter of fallen Lorella.
"Speak out. Crying won't help you. What have you and this fellow
been up to? You disgrace!"

Susan shrank and shivered, but answered steadfastly, "That's
between him and me, Uncle."

Warham gave a snort of fury, turned to the elder Wright. "You
see, Wright," cried he. "It's as my wife and I told you. Your
boy's lying. We'll send the landlady out for a preacher and
marry them."

"Hold on, George," objected Wright soothingly. "I agreed to that
only if there'd been something wrong. I'm not satisfied yet." He
turned to Susan, said in his gruff, blunt way:

"Susan, have you been loose with my boy here?"

"Loose?" said Susan wonderingly.

Sam roused himself. "Tell them it isn't so, Susan," he pleaded,
and his voice was little better than a whine of terror. "Your
uncle's going to kill me and my father'll kick me out."

Susan's heart grew sick as she looked at him--looked furtively,
for she was ashamed to see him so abject. "If you mean did I let
him kiss me," she said to Mr. Wright, "why, I did. We kissed
several times. But we had the right to. We were engaged."

Sam turned on his father in an agony of terror. "That isn't
true!" he cried. "I swear it isn't, father. We aren't engaged. I
only made love to her a little, as a fellow does to lots of girls."

Susan looked at him with wide, horrified eyes. "Sam!" she
exclaimed breathlessly. "Sam!"

Sam's eyes dropped, but he managed to turn his face in her
direction. The situation was too serious for him; he did not
dare to indulge in such vanities as manhood or manly appearance.
"That's the truth, Susan," he said sullenly. "_You_ talked a lot
about marrying but _I_ never thought of such a thing."

"But--you said--you loved me."

"I didn't mean anything by it."

There fell a silence that was interrupted by Mr. Wright. "You
see there's nothing in it, Warham. I'll take my boy and go."

"Not by a damn sight!" cried Warham. "He's got to marry her.
Susan, did Sam promise to marry you?"

"When he got through college," replied Susan.

"I thought so! And he persuaded you to run away."

"No," said Susan. "He----"

"I say yes," stormed her uncle. "Don't lie!"

"Warham! Warham!" remonstrated Mr. Wright. "Don't browbeat the girl."

"He begged me not to go," said Susan.

"You lying fool!" shouted her uncle. Then to Wright, "If he did
ask her to stay it was because he was afraid it would all come
out--just as it has."

"I never promised to marry her!" whined Sam. "Honest to God,
father, I never did. Honest to God, Mr. Warham! You know that's
so, Susan. It was you that did all the marrying talk."

"Yes," she said slowly. "Yes, I believe it was." She looked
dazedly at the three men. "I supposed he meant marriage
because--" her voice faltered, but she steadied it and went
on--"because we loved each other."

"I knew it!" cried her uncle. "You hear, Wright? She admits he
betrayed her."

Susan remembered the horrible part of her cousin's sex
revelations. "Oh, no!" she cried. "I wouldn't have let him do
that--even if he had wanted to. No--not even if we'd been married."

"You see, Warham!" cried Mr. Wright, in triumph.

"I see a liar!" was Warham's furious answer. "She's trying to
defend him and make out a case for herself."

"I am telling the truth," said Susan.

Warham gazed unbelievingly at her, speechless with fury. Mr.
Wright took his silk hat from the corner of the piano. "I'm
satisfied they're innocent," said he. "So I'll take my boy and go."

"Not if I know it!" retorted Warham. "He's got to marry her."

"But the girl says she's pure, says he never spoke of marriage,
says he begged her not to run away. Be reasonable, Warham."

"For a good Christian," sneered he at Wright, "you're mighty
easily convinced by a flimsy lie. In your heart you know the boy
has wronged her and that she's shielding him, just as----" There
Warham checked himself; it would be anything but timely to
remind Wright of the character of the girl's mother.

"I'll admit," said Mr. Wright smoothly, "that I
wasn't overanxious for my boy's marriage with a girl whose
mother was--unfortunate. But if your charge had been true,
Warham, I'd have made the boy do her justice, she being only
seventeen. Come, Sam."

Sam slunk toward the door. Warham stared fiercely at the elder
Wright. "And you call yourself a Christian!" he sneered.

At the door--Sam had already disappeared--Mr. Wright paused to
say, "I'm going to give Sam a discipline he'll remember. The
girl's only been foolish. Don't be harsh with her."

"You damned hypocrite!" shouted Warham. "I might have known what
to expect from a man who cut the wages of his hands to pay his
church subscription."

But Wright was far too crafty to be drawn. He went on pushing
Sam before him.

As the outer door closed behind them Mrs. Wylie appeared. "I
want you both to get out of my house as quick as you can," she
snapped. "My boarders'll be coming to dinner in a few minutes."

Warham took his straw hat from the floor beside the chair behind
him. "I've nothing to do with this girl here. Good day, madam."
And he strode out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

Mrs. Wylie looked at Susan with storming face and bosom. Susan
did not see. She was gazing into space, her face blanched.
"Clear out!" cried Mrs. Wylie. And she ran to the outer door and
opened it. "How dare you come into a respectable house!" She
wished to be so wildly angry that she would forget the five
dollars which she, as a professing Christian in full church
standing, would have to pay back if she remembered. "Clear out
this minute!" she cried shrilly. "If you don't, I'll throw your
bundle into the street and you after it."

Susan took up the bundle mechanically, slowly went out on the
stoop. The door closed with a slam behind her. She descended
the steps, walked a few yards up the street, paused at the edge
of the curb and looked dazedly about. Her uncle stood beside
her. "Now where are you going?" he said roughly.

Susan shook her head.

"I suppose," he went on, "I've got to look after you. You shan't
disgrace my daughter any further."

Susan simply looked at him, her eyes unseeing, her brain swept
clean of thought by the cyclone that had destroyed all her
dreams and hopes. She was not horrified by his accusations; such
things had little meaning for one practically in complete
ignorance of sex relations. Besides, the miserable fiasco of her
romantic love left her with a feeling of abasement, of
degradation little different from that which overwhelms a woman
who believes her virtue is her all and finds herself betrayed
and abandoned. She now felt indeed the outcast, looked down upon
by all the world.

"If you hadn't lied," he fumed on, "you'd have been his wife and
a respectable woman."

The girl shivered.

"Instead, you're a disgrace. Everybody in Sutherland'll know
you've gone the way your mother went."

"Go away," said the girl piteously. "Let me alone."

"Alone? What will become of you?" He addressed the question to
himself, not to her.

"It doesn't matter," was her reply in a dreary tone. "I've been
betrayed, as my mother was. It doesn't matter what----"

"I knew it!" cried Warham, with no notion of what the girl meant
by the word "betrayed." "Why didn't you confess the truth while
he was here and his father was ready to marry him to you? I knew
you'd been loose with him, as your Aunt Fanny said."

"But I wasn't," said Susan. "I wouldn't do such a thing."

"There you go, lying again!"

"It doesn't matter," said she. "All I want is for you to go away."

"You do?" sneered he. "And then what? I've got to think of
Ruthie." He snatched the bundle from her hand. "Come on! I must
do all I can to keep the disgrace to my family down. As for you,
you don't deserve anything but the gutter, where you'd sink if
I left you. Your aunt's right. You're rotten. You were born
rotten. You're your mother's own brat."

"Yes, I am," she cried. "And I'm proud of it!" She turned from
him, was walking rapidly away.

"Come with me!" ordered Warham, following and seizing her by the arm.

"No," said Susan, wrenching herself free.

"Then I'll call a policeman and have you locked up."

Uncle and niece stood regarding each other, hatred and contempt
in his gaze, hatred and fear in hers.

"You're a child in law--though, God knows, you're anything but
a child in fact. Come along with me. You've got to. I'm going to
see that you're put out of harm's way."

"You wouldn't take me back to Sutherland!" she cried.

He laughed savagely. "I guess not! You'll not show your face
there again--though I've no doubt you'd be brazen enough to
brass it out. No--you can't pollute my home again."

"I can't go back to Sutherland!"

"You shan't, I say. You ran off because you had disgraced yourself."

"No!" cried Susan. "No!"

"Don't lie to me! Don't speak to me. I'll see what I can do to
hide this mess. Come along!"

Susan looked helplessly round the street, saw nothing, not even
eager, curious faces pressed against many a window pane, saw
only a desolate waste. Then she walked along beside her uncle,
both of them silent, he carrying her bundle, she tightly
clutching her little purse.


Perhaps the most amazing, the most stunning, of all the blows
fate had thus suddenly showered upon her was this transformation
of her uncle from gentleness to ferocity. But many a far older
and far wiser woman than seventeen-year-old Susan has failed to
understand how it is with the man who does not regard woman as
a fellow human being. To such she is either an object of
adoration, a quintessence of purity and innocence, or less than
the dust, sheer filth. Warham's anger was no gust. He was simply
the average man of small intelligence, great vanity, and abject
snobbishness or terror of public opinion. There could be but one
reason for the flight of Lorella's daughter--rottenness. The
only point to consider now was how to save the imperiled family
standing, how to protect his own daughter, whom his good nature
and his wife's weakness had thus endangered. The one thing that
could have appeased his hatred of Susan would have been her
marriage to Sam Wright. Then he would have--not, indeed,
forgiven or reinstated her--but tolerated her. It is the
dominance of such ideas as his that makes for woman the slavery
she discovers beneath her queenly sway if she happens to do
something deeply displeasing to her masculine subject and adorer.

They went to the Central Station. The O. and M. express which
connected with the train on the branch line to Sutherland would
not leave until a quarter past two. It was only a few minutes
past one. Warham led the way into the station restaurant; with
a curt nod he indicated a seat at one of the small tables, and
dropped into the opposite seat. He ordered beefsteak and fried
potatoes, coffee and apple pie.

"Sit still!" he said to her roughly and rose to go out to buy a paper.

The girl sat with her hands in her lap and her eyes upon them.
She looked utterly, pitifully tired. A moment and he came back
to resume his seat and read the paper. When the waiter flopped
down the steak and the dish of greasily fried potatoes before
his plate, he stuffed the paper in his pocket, cut a slice of
the steak and put it on the plate. The waiter noisily exchanged
it for the empty plate before Susan. Warham cut two slices of
the steak for himself, took a liberal helping of the potatoes,
pushed the dish toward her.

"Do you want the coffee now, or with the pie?" asked the waiter.

"Now," said Warham.

"Coffee for the young lady, too?"

Warham scowled at her. "Coffee?" he demanded.

She did not answer; she did not hear.

"Yes, she wants coffee," said Warham. "Hustle it!"

"Yes, sir." And the waiter bustled away with a great deal of
motion that created a deceptive impression of speed. Warham was
helping himself to steak again when the coffee came a
suspicious-looking liquid diffusing an odor of staleness
reheated again and again, an under odor of metal pot not too
frequently scoured.

Warham glanced at Susan's plate. She had not disturbed the knife
and fork on either side of it. "Eat!" he commanded. And when she
gave no sign of having heard, he repeatedly sharply, "Eat, I
tell you."

She started, nervously took up the knife and fork, cut a morsel
off the slice of steak. When she lifted it to her lips, she
suddenly put it back in the plate. "I can't," she said.

"You've got to," ordered he. "I won't have you acting this way."

"I can't," she repeated monotonously. "I feel sick." Nature had
luckily so made her that it was impossible for her to swallow
when her nerves were upset or when she was tired; thus, she
would not have the physical woes that aggravate and prolong
mental disturbance if food is taken at times when it instantly
turns to poison.

He repeated his order in a still more savage tone. She put her
elbows on the table, rested her head wearily upon her hands,
shook her head. He desisted.

When he had eaten all of the steak, except the fat and the
gristly tail, and nearly all the potatoes, the waiter took the
used dishes away and brought two generous slices of apple pie
and set down one before each. With the pie went a cube of
American cream or "rat-trap" cheese. Warham ate his own pie and
cheese; then, as she had not touched hers, he reached for it and
ate it also. Now he was watching the clock and, between liftings
of laden fork to his mouth, verifying the clock's opinion of the
hour by his own watch. He called for the bill, paid it, gave the
waiter five cents--a concession to the tipping custom of the
effete city which, judging by the waiter's expression, might as
well not have been made. Still, Warham had not made it with an
idea of promoting good feeling between himself and the waiter,
but simply to show that he knew the city and its ways. He took
up the shawl strap, said, "Come on" in the voice which he deemed
worthy of the fallen creature he must, through Christian duty
and worldly prudence, for the time associate with. She rose and
followed him to the ticket office. He had the return half of his
own ticket. When she heard him ask for a ticket to North
Sutherland she shivered. She knew that her destination was his
brother Zeke's farm.

From Cincinnati to North Vernon, where they were to change cars,
he sat beside her without speech. At North Vernon, where they
had to occupy a bench outside the squat and squalid station for
nearly two hours, he sat beside her without speech. And without
a single word on either side they journeyed in the poking,
no-sooner-well-started-than-stopping accommodation train
southbound. Several Sutherland people were aboard. He nodded
surlily to those who spoke to him. He read an Indianapolis paper
which he had bought at North Vernon. All the way she gazed
unseeingly out over the fair June landscape of rolling or hilly
fields ripening in the sun.

At North Sutherland he bade her follow him to a dilapidated barn
a few yards from the railway tracks, where was displayed a
homemade sign--"V. Goslin. Livery and Sale Stable." There was
dickering and a final compromise on four dollars where the
proprietor had demanded five and Warham had declared two fifty
liberal. A surrey was hitched with two horses. Warham opened the
awkward door to the rear seat and ordered Susan to jump in. She
obeyed; he put the bundle on the floor beside her. He sat with
the driver--the proprietor himself. The horses set off at a
round pace over the smooth turnpike. It was evening, and a
beautiful coolness issued from the woods on either side. They
skimmed over the long level stretches; they climbed hills, they
raced down into valleys. Warham and the ragged, rawboned old
proprietor kept up a kind of conversation--about crops and
politics, about the ownership, value, and fertility of the farms
they were passing. Susan sat quiet, motionless most of the time.

The last daylight faded; the stars came out; the road wound in
and out, up and down, amid cool dark silence and mysterious
fascinating shadows. The moon appeared above the tree tops
straight ahead--a big moon, with a lower arc of the rim clipped
off. The turnpike ended; they were making equally rapid progress
over the dirt road which was in perfect condition as there had
been no rain for several days. The beat of the flying hoofs was
soft now; the two men's voices, fell into a lower key; the moon
marked out the line of the road clearly, made strange spectral
minglings of light and darkness in the woods, glorified the open
fields and gave the occasional groups of farm buildings an
ancient beauty and dignity. The girl slept.