CHAPTER I

SUSAN LENOX: HER FALL AND RISE

by

David Graham Phillips

Volume I

WITH A PORTRAIT

OF THE AUTHOR

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

NEW YORK LONDON

1917

DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

A TRIBUTE

Even now I cannot realize that he is dead, and often in the city

streets--on Fifth Avenue in particular--I find myself glancing

ahead for a glimpse of the tall, boyish, familiar

figure--experience once again a flash of the old happy expectancy.

I have lived in many lands, and have known men. I never knew a

finer man than Graham Phillips.

His were the clearest, bluest, most honest eyes I ever saw--eyes

that scorned untruth--eyes that penetrated all sham.

In repose his handsome features were a trifle stern--and the

magic of his smile was the more wonderful--such a sunny,

youthful, engaging smile.

His mere presence in a room was exhilarating. It seemed to

freshen the very air with a keen sweetness almost pungent.

He was tall, spare, leisurely, iron-strong; yet figure, features

and bearing were delightfully boyish.

Men liked him, women liked him when he liked them.

He was the most honest man I ever knew, clean in mind, clean-cut

in body, a little over-serious perhaps, except when among

intimates; a little prone to hoist the burdens of the world on

his young shoulders.

His was a knightly mind; a paladin character. But he could

unbend, and the memory of such hours with him--hours that can

never be again--hurts more keenly than the memory of calmer and

more sober moments.

We agreed in many matters, he and I; in many we differed. To me

it was a greater honor to differ in opinion with such a man than

to find an entire synod of my own mind.

Because--and of course this is the opinion of one man and worth

no more than that--I have always thought that Graham Phillips

was head and shoulders above us all in his profession.

He was to have been really great. He is--by his last book,

"Susan Lenox."

Not that, when he sometimes discussed the writing of it with me,

I was in sympathy with it. I was not. We always were truthful to

each other.

But when a giant molds a lump of clay into tremendous masses,

lesser men become confused by the huge contours, the vast

distances, the terrific spaces, the majestic scope of the

ensemble. So I. But he went on about his business.

I do not know what the public may think of "Susan Lenox." I

scarcely know what I think.

It is a terrible book--terrible and true and beautiful.

Under the depths there are unspeakable things that writhe. His

plumb-line touches them and they squirm. He bends his head from

the clouds to do it. Is it worth doing? I don't know.

But this I do know--that within the range of all fiction of all

lands and of all times no character has so overwhelmed me as the

character of Susan Lenox.

She is as real as life and as unreal. She is Life. Hers was the

concentrated nobility of Heaven and Hell. And the divinity of

the one and the tragedy of the other. For she had known

both--this girl--the most pathetic, the most human, the most

honest character ever drawn by an American writer.

In the presence of his last work, so overwhelming, so

stupendous, we lesser men are left at a loss. Its magnitude

demands the perspective that time only can lend it. Its dignity

and austerity and its pitiless truth impose upon us that honest

and intelligent silence which even the quickest minds concede is

necessary before an honest verdict.

Truth was his goddess; he wrought honestly and only for her.

He is dead, but he is to have his day in court. And whatever the

verdict, if it be a true one, were he living he would rest content.

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.

BEFORE THE CURTAIN

A few years ago, as to the most important and most interesting

subject in the world, the relations of the sexes, an author had

to choose between silence and telling those distorted truths

beside which plain lying seems almost white and quite harmless.

And as no author could afford to be silent on the subject that

underlies all subjects, our literature, in so far as it

attempted to deal with the most vital phases of human nature,

was beneath contempt. The authors who knew they were lying sank

almost as low as the nasty-nice purveyors of fake idealism and

candied pruriency who fancied they were writing the truth. Now

it almost seems that the day of lying conscious and unconscious

is about run. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall

make you free."

There are three ways of dealing with the sex relations of men

and women--two wrong and one right.

For lack of more accurate names the two wrong ways may be called

respectively the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental. Both are in

essence processes of spicing up and coloring up perfectly

innocuous facts of nature to make them poisonously attractive to

perverted palates. The wishy-washy literature and the

wishy-washy morality on which it is based are not one stage

more--or less--rotten than the libertine literature and the

libertine morality on which it is based. So far as degrading

effect is concerned, the "pure, sweet" story or play, false to

nature, false to true morality, propagandist of indecent

emotions disguised as idealism, need yield nothing to the

so-called "strong" story. Both pander to different forms of the

same diseased craving for the unnatural. Both produce moral

atrophy. The one tends to encourage the shallow and unthinking

in ignorance of life and so causes them to suffer the merciless

penalties of ignorance. The other tends to miseducate the

shallow and unthinking, to give them a ruinously false notion of

the delights of vice. The Anglo-Saxon "morality" is like a nude

figure salaciously draped; the Continental "strength" is like a

nude figure salaciously distorted. The Anglo-Saxon article reeks

the stench of disinfectants; the Continental reeks the stench of

degenerate perfume. The Continental shouts "Hypocrisy!" at the

Anglo-Saxon; the Anglo-Saxon shouts "Filthiness!" at the

Continental. Both are right; they are twin sisters of the same

horrid mother. And an author of either allegiance has to have

many a redeeming grace of style, of character drawing, of

philosophy, to gain him tolerance in a clean mind.

There is the third and right way of dealing with the sex

relations of men and women. That is the way of simple candor and

naturalness. Treat the sex question as you would any other

question. Don't treat it reverently; don't treat it rakishly.

Treat it naturally. Don't insult your intelligence and lower

your moral tone by thinking about either the decency or the

indecency of matters that are familiar, undeniable, and

unchangeable facts of life. Don't look on woman as mere female,

but as human being. Remember that she has a mind and a heart as

well as a body. In a sentence, don't join in the prurient clamor

of "purity" hypocrites and "strong" libertines that exaggerates

and distorts the most commonplace, if the most important feature

of life. Let us try to be as sensible about sex as we are trying

to be about all the other phenomena of the universe in this more

enlightened day.

Nothing so sweetens a sin or so delights a sinner as getting

big-eyed about it and him. Those of us who are naughty aren't

nearly so naughty as we like to think; nor are those of us who

are nice nearly so nice. Our virtues and our failings

are--perhaps to an unsuspected degree--the result of the

circumstances in which we are placed. The way to improve

individuals is to improve these circumstances; and the way to

start at improving the circumstances is by looking honestly and

fearlessly at things as they are. We must know our world and

ourselves before we can know what should be kept and what

changed. And the beginning of this wisdom is in seeing sex

relations rationally. Until that fundamental matter is brought

under the sway of good common sense, improvement in other directions

will be slow indeed. Let us stop lying--to others--to ourselves.

D.G.P.

July, 1908.

SUSAN LENOX

CHAPTER I

"THE child's dead," said Nora, the nurse. It was the upstairs

sitting-room in one of the pretentious houses of Sutherland,

oldest and most charming of the towns on the Indiana bank of the

Ohio. The two big windows were open; their limp and listless

draperies showed that there was not the least motion in the

stifling humid air of the July afternoon. At the center of the

room stood an oblong table; over it were neatly spread several

thicknesses of white cotton cloth; naked upon them lay the body

of a newborn girl baby. At one side of the table nearer the

window stood Nora. Hers were the hard features and corrugated

skin popularly regarded as the result of a life of toil, but in

fact the result of a life of defiance to the laws of health. As

additional penalties for that same self-indulgence she had an

enormous bust and hips, thin face and arms, hollow,

sinew-striped neck. The young man, blond and smooth faced, at

the other side of the table and facing the light, was Doctor

Stevens, a recently graduated pupil of the famous Schulze of

Saint Christopher who as much as any other one man is

responsible for the rejection of hocus-pocus and the injection

of common sense into American medicine. For upwards of an hour

young Stevens, coat off and shirt sleeves rolled to his

shoulders, had been toiling with the lifeless form on the table.

He had tried everything his training, his reading and his

experience suggested--all the more or less familiar devices

similar to those indicated for cases of drowning. Nora had

watched him, at first with interest and hope, then with interest

alone, finally with swiftly deepening disapproval, as her

compressed lips and angry eyes plainly revealed. It seemed to

her his effort was degenerating into sacrilege, into defiance of

an obvious decree of the Almighty. However, she had not ventured

to speak until the young man, with a muttered ejaculation

suspiciously like an imprecation, straightened his stocky figure

and began to mop the sweat from his face, hands and bared arms.

When she saw that her verdict had not been heard, she repeated

it more emphatically. "The child's dead," said she, "as I told

you from the set-out." She made the sign of the cross on her

forehead and bosom, while her fat, dry lips moved in a "Hail, Mary."

The young man did not rouse from his reverie. He continued to

gaze with a baffled expression at the tiny form, so like a

whimsical caricature of humanity. He showed that he had heard

the woman's remark by saying, to himself rather than to her,

"Dead? What's that? Merely another name for ignorance." But the

current of his thought did not swerve. It held to the one

course: What would his master, the dauntless, the infinitely

resourceful Schulze, do if he were confronted by this

intolerable obstacle of a perfect machine refusing to do its

duty and pump vital force through an eagerly waiting body?

"He'd _make_ it go, I'd bet my life," the young man muttered.

"I'm ashamed of myself."

As if the reproach were just the spur his courage and his

intelligence had needed, his face suddenly glowed with the

upshooting fire of an inspiration. He thrust the big white

handkerchief into his hip pocket, laid one large strong hand

upon the small, beautifully arched chest of the baby. Nora,

roused by his expression even more than by his gesture, gave an

exclamation of horror. "Don't touch it again," she cried,

between entreaty and command. "You've done all you can--and more."

Stevens was not listening. "Such a fine baby, too," he said,

hesitating--the old woman mistakenly fancied it was her words

that made him pause. "I feel no good at all," he went on, as if

reasoning with himself, "no good at all, losing both the mother

and the child."

"_She_ didn't want to live," replied Nora. Her glances stole

somewhat fearfully toward the door of the adjoining room--the

bedroom where the mother lay dead.

"There wasn't nothing but disgrace ahead for both of them.

Everybody'll be glad."

"Such a fine baby," muttered the abstracted young doctor.

"Love-children always is," said Nora. She was looking sadly and

tenderly down at the tiny, symmetrical form--symmetrical to her

and the doctor's expert eyes. "Such a deep chest," she sighed.

"Such pretty hands and feet. A real love-child." There she

glanced nervously at the doctor; it was meet and proper and

pious to speak well of the dead, but she felt she might be going

rather far for a "good woman."

"I'll try it," cried the young man in a resolute tone. "It can't

do any harm, and----"

Without finishing his sentence he laid hold of the body by the

ankles, swung it clear of the table. As Nora saw it dangling

head downwards like a dressed suckling pig on a butcher's hook

she vented a scream and darted round the table to stop by main

force this revolting desecration of the dead. Stevens called out

sternly: "Mind your business, Nora! Push the table against the

wall and get out of the way. I want all the room there is."

"Oh, Doctor--for the blessed Jesus' sake----"

"Push back that table!"

Nora shrank before his fierce eyes. She thought his exertions,

his disappointment and the heat had combined to topple him over

into insanity. She retreated toward the farther of the open

windows. With a curse at her stupidity Stevens kicked over the

table, used his foot vigorously in thrusting it to the wall.

"Now!" exclaimed he, taking his stand in the center of the room

and gauging the distance of ceiling, floor and walls.

Nora, her back against the window frame, her fingers sunk in her

big loose bosom, stared petrified. Stevens, like an athlete

swinging an indian club, whirled the body round and round his

head, at the full length of his powerful arms. More and more

rapidly he swung it, until his breath came and went in gasps and

the sweat was trickling in streams down his face and neck. Round

and round between ceiling and floor whirled the naked body of

the baby--round and round for minutes that seemed hours to the

horrified nurse--round and round with all the strength and speed

the young man could put forth--round and round until the room

was a blur before his throbbing eyes, until his expression

became fully as demoniac as Nora had been fancying it. Just as

she was recovering from her paralysis of horror and was about to

fly shrieking from the room she was halted by a sound that made

her draw in air until her bosom swelled as if it would burst its

gingham prison. She craned eagerly toward Stevens. He was

whirling the body more furiously than ever.

"Was that you?" asked Nora hoarsely. "Or was it----" She paused,

listened.

The sound came again--the sound of a drowning person fighting for

breath.

"It's--it's----" muttered Nora. "What is it, Doctor?"

"Life!" panted Stevens, triumph in his glistening, streaming face.

"Life!"

He continued to whirl the little form, but not so rapidly or so

vigorously. And now the sound was louder, or, rather, less

faint, less uncertain--was a cry--was the cry of a living thing.

"She's alive--alive!" shrieked the woman, and in time with his

movements she swayed to and fro from side to side, laughing,

weeping, wringing her hands, patting her bosom, her cheeks. She

stretched out her arms. "My prayers are answered!" she cried.

"Don't kill her, you brute! Give her to me. You shan't treat a

baby that way."

The unheeding doctor kept on whirling until the cry was

continuous, a low but lusty wail of angry protest. Then he

stopped, caught the baby up in both arms, burst out laughing.

"You little minx!" he said--or, rather, gasped--a tenderness

quite maternal in his eyes. "But I got you! Nora, the table."

Nora righted the table, spread and smoothed the cloths, extended

her scrawny eager arms for the baby. Stevens with a jerk of the

head motioned her aside, laid the baby on the table. He felt for

the pulse at its wrist, bent to listen at the heart. Quite

useless. That strong, rising howl of helpless fury was proof

enough. Her majesty the baby was mad through and

through--therefore alive through and through.

"Grand heart action!" said the young man. He stood aloof, hands

on his hips, head at a proud angle. "You never saw a healthier

specimen. It'll be many a year, bar accidents, before she's that

near death again."

But it was Nora's turn not to hear. She was soothing and

swaddling the outraged baby. "There--there!" she crooned.

"Nora'll take care of you. The bad man shan't come near my

little precious--no, the wicked man shan't touch her again."

The bedroom door opened. At the slight noise superstitious Nora

paled, shriveled within her green and white checked gingham. She

slowly turned her head as if on this day of miracles she

expected yet another--the resurrection of the resurrected

baby's mother, "poor Miss Lorella." But Lorella Lenox was

forever tranquil in the sleep that engulfed her and the sorrows

in which she had been entangled by an impetuous, trusting heart.

The apparition in the doorway was commonplace--the mistress of

the house, Lorella's elder and married sister Fanny--neither

fair nor dark, neither tall nor short, neither thin nor fat,

neither pretty nor homely, neither stupid nor bright, neither

neat nor dowdy--one of that multitude of excellent, unobtrusive

human beings who make the restful stretches in a world of

agitations--and who respond to the impetus of circumstance as

unresistingly as cloud to wind.

As the wail of the child smote upon Fanny's ears she lifted her

head, startled, and cried out sharply, "What's that?"

"We've saved the baby, Mrs. Warham," replied the young doctor,

beaming on her through his glasses.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Warham. And she abruptly seated herself on the

big chintz-covered sofa beside the door.

"And it's a lovely child," pleaded Nora. Her woman's instinct

guided her straight to the secret of the conflict raging behind

Mrs. Warham's unhappy face.

"The finest girl in the world," cried Stevens, well-meaning but tactless.

"Girl!" exclaimed Fanny, starting up from the sofa. "Is it a _girl_?"

Nora nodded. The young man looked downcast; he was realizing the

practical side of his victory for science--the consequences to

the girl child, to all the relatives.

"A girl!" moaned Fanny, sinking to the sofa again. "God have mercy on us!"

Louder and angrier rose the wail. Fanny, after a brief struggle

with herself, hurried to the table, looked down at the tiny

helplessness. Her face softened. She had been a mother four

times. Only one had lived--her fair little two-year-old Ruth--and

she would never have any more children. The tears glistened in

her eyes. "What ails you, Nora Mulvey?" she demanded. "Why

aren't you 'tending to this poor little creature?"

Nora sprang into action, but she wrapped the baby herself. The

doctor in deep embarrassment withdrew to the farther window. She

fussed over the baby lingeringly, but finally resigned it to the

nurse. "Take it into the bathroom," she said, "where everything's

ready to feed it--though I never dreamed----" As Nora was about

to depart, she detained her. "Let me look at it again."

The nurse understood that Fanny Warham was searching for

evidence of the mysterious but suspected paternity whose secret

Lorella, with true Lenox obstinacy, had guarded to the end. The

two women scanned the features. A man would at a glance have

abandoned hope of discovering anything from a chart so vague and

confused as that wrinkled, twisted, swollen face of the newborn.

Not so a woman. Said Nora: "She seems to me to favor the

Lenoxes. But I think--I _kind_ o' think--I see a _trace_

of--of----" There she halted, waiting for encouragement.

"Of Galt?" suggested Fanny, in an undertone.

"Of Galt," assented Nora, her tone equally discreet. "That nose

is Galt-like and the set of the ears--and a kind of something to

the neck and shoulders."

"Maybe so," said Fanny doubtfully. She shook her head drearily,

sighed. "What's the use? Lorella's gone. And this morning

General Galt came down to see my husband with a letter he'd got

from Jimmie. Jimmie denies it. Perhaps so. Again, perhaps the

General wrote him to write that, and threatened him if he

didn't. But what's the use? We'll never know."

And they never did.

When young Stevens was leaving, George Warham waylaid him at the

front gate, separated from the spacious old creeper-clad house

by long lawns and an avenue of elms. "I hear the child's going

to live," said he anxiously.

"I've never seen anything more alive," replied Stevens.

Warham stared gloomily at the ground. He was evidently ashamed

of his feelings, yet convinced that they were human and natural.

A moment's silence between the men, then Stevens put his hand on

the gate latch. "Did--did--my wife----" began Warham. "Did she

say what she calculated to do?"

"Not a word, George." After a silence. "You know how fond she

is of babies."

"Yes, I know," replied Warham. "Fanny is a true woman if ever

there was one." With a certain defiance, "And Lorella--she was

a sweet, womanly girl!"

"As sweet and good as she was pretty," replied Stevens heartily.

"The way she kept her mouth shut about that hound, whoever he

is!" Warham's Roman face grew savage, revealed in startling

apparition a stubborn cruelty of which there was not a trace

upon the surface. "If I ever catch the ---- ---- I'll fill him

full of holes."

"He'd be lynched--_whoever_ he is," said Stevens.

"That's right!" cried Warham. "This is the North, but it's near

enough to Kentucky to know what to do with a wretch of that

sort." His face became calmer. "That poor little baby! He'll

have a hard row to hoe."

Stevens flushed a guilty red. "It's--it's--a girl," he stammered.

Warham stared. "A _girl_!" he cried. Then his face reddened and

in a furious tone he burst out: "Now don't that beat the devil

for luck!. . . A girl! Good Lord--a girl!"

"Nobody in this town'll blame her," consoled Stevens.

"You know better than that, Bob! A girl! Why, it's downright

wicked. . . I wonder what Fanny allows to do?" He showed what

fear was in his mind by wheeling savagely on Stevens with a

stormy, "We can't keep her--we simply can't!"

"What's to become of her?" protested Stevens gently.

Warham made a wild vague gesture with both arms. "Damn if I

know! I've got to look out for my own daughter. I won't have it.

Damn it, I won't have it!" Stevens lifted the gate latch. "Well----

"Good-by, George. I'll look in again this evening." And knowing

the moral ideas of the town, all he could muster by way of

encouragement was a half-hearted "Don't borrow trouble."

But Warham did not hear. He was moving up the tanbark walk

toward the house, muttering to himself. When Fanny, unable

longer to conceal Lorella's plight, had told him, pity and

affection for his sweet sister-in-law who had made her home with

them for five years had triumphed over his principles. He had

himself arranged for Fanny to hide Lorella in New York until she

could safely return. But just as the sisters were about to set

out, Lorella, low in body and in mind, fell ill. Then

George--and Fanny, too--had striven with her to give them the

name of her betrayer, that he might be compelled to do her

justice. Lorella refused. "I told him," she said, "and he--I

never want to see him again." They pleaded the disgrace to them,

but she replied that he would not marry her even if she would

marry him; and she held to her refusal with the firmness for

which the Lenoxes were famous. They suspected Jimmie Galt,

because he had been about the most attentive of the young men

until two or three months before, and because he had abruptly

departed for Europe to study architecture. Lorella denied that

it was he. "If you kill him," she said to Warham, "you kill an

innocent man." Warham was so exasperated by her obstinacy that

he was at first for taking her at her offer and letting her go

away. But Fanny would not hear of it, and he acquiesced.

Now--"This child must be sent away off somewhere, and never be

heard of again," he said to himself. "If it'd been a boy,

perhaps it might have got along. But a girl----

"There's nothing can be done to make things right for a girl

that's got no father and no name."

The subject did not come up between him and his wife until about

a week after Lorella's funeral. But he was thinking of nothing

else. At his big grocery store--wholesale and retail--he sat

morosely in his office, brooding over the disgrace and the

danger of deeper disgrace--for he saw what a hold the baby

already had upon his wife. He was ashamed to appear in the

streets; he knew what was going on behind the sympathetic faces,

heard the whisperings as if they had been trumpetings. And he

was as much afraid of his own soft heart as of his wife's. But

for the sake of his daughter he must be firm and just.

One morning, as he was leaving the house after breakfast, he

turned back and said abruptly: "Fan, don't you think you'd

better send the baby away and get it over with?"

"No," said his wife unhesitatingly--and he knew his worst

suspicion was correct. "I've made up my mind to keep her."

"It isn't fair to Ruth."

"Send it away--where?"

"Anywhere. Get it adopted in Chicago--Cincinnati--Louisville."

"Lorella's baby?"

"When she and Ruth grow up--what then?"

"People ain't so low as some think."

"'The sins of the parents are visited on the children unto----'"

"I don't care," interrupted Fanny. "I love her. I'm going to

keep her. Wait here a minute."

When she came back she had the baby in her arms. "Just look,"

she said softly.

George frowned, tried not to look, but was soon drawn and held by

the sweet, fresh, blooming face, so smooth, so winning, so innocent.

"And think how she was sent back to life--from beyond the grave.

It must have been for some purpose."

Warham groaned, "Oh, Lord, I don't know _what_ to do! But--it

ain't fair to our Ruth."

"I don't see it that way. . . . Kiss her, George."

Warham kissed one of the soft cheeks, swelling like a ripening

apple. The baby opened wide a pair of wonderful dark eyes, threw

up its chubby arms and laughed--such a laugh!. . . There was no

more talk of sending her away.

CHAPTER II

NOT quite seventeen years later, on a fine June morning, Ruth

Warham issued hastily from the house and started down the long

tanbark walk from the front veranda to the street gate. She was

now nineteen--nearer twenty--and a very pretty young woman,

indeed. She had grown up one of those small slender blondes,

exquisite and doll-like, who cannot help seeming fresh and

sweet, whatever the truth about them, without or within. This

morning she had on a new summer dress of a blue that matched her

eyes and harmonized with her coloring. She was looking her best,

and she had the satisfying, confidence-giving sense that it was

so. Like most of the unattached girls of small towns, she was

always dreaming of the handsome stranger who would fall in

love--the thrilling, love-story kind of love at first sight. The

weather plays a conspicuous part in the romancings of youth; she

felt that this was precisely the kind of day fate would be most

likely to select for the meeting. Just before dressing she had

been reading about the wonderful _him_--in Robert Chambers'

latest story--and she had spent full fifteen minutes of blissful

reverie over the accompanying Fisher illustration. Now she was

issuing hopefully forth, as hopefully as if adventure were the

rule and order of life in Sutherland, instead of a desperate

monotony made the harder to bear by the glory of its scenery.

She had got only far enough from the house to be visible to the

second-story windows when a young voice called:

"Ruthie! Aren't you going to wait for me?"

Ruth halted; an expression anything but harmonious with the

pretty blue costume stormed across her face. "I won't have her

along!" she muttered. "I simply won't!" She turned slowly and,

as she turned, effaced every trace of temper with a dexterity

which might have given an onlooker a poorer opinion of her

character than perhaps the facts as to human nature justify. The

countenance she presently revealed to those upper windows was

sunny and sweet. No one was visible; but the horizontal slats in

one of the only closed pair of shutters and a vague suggestion

of movement rather than form behind them gave the impression

that a woman, not far enough dressed to risk being seen from the

street, was hidden there. Evidently Ruth knew, for it was toward

this window that she directed her gaze and the remark: "Can't

wait, dear. I'm in a great hurry. Mamma wants the silk right

away and I've got to match it."

"But I'll be only a minute," pleaded the voice--a much more

interesting, more musical voice than Ruth's rather shrill and

thin high soprano.

"No--I'll meet you up at papa's store."

"All right."

Ruth resumed her journey. She smiled to herself. "That means,"

said she, half aloud, "I'll steer clear of the store this morning."

But as she was leaving the gate into the wide, shady, sleepy

street, who should come driving past in a village cart but

Lottie Wright! And Lottie reined her pony in to the sidewalk and

in the shade of a symmetrical walnut tree proceeded to invite

Ruth to a dance--a long story, as Lottie had to tell all about

it, the decorations, the favors, the food, who would be there,

what she was going to wear, and so on and on. Ruth was intensely

interested but kept remembering something that caused her to

glance uneasily from time to time up the tanbark walk under the

arching boughs toward the house. Even if she had not been

interested, she would hardly have ventured to break off; Lottie

Wright was the only daughter of the richest man in Sutherland

and, therefore, social arbiter to the younger set.

Lottie stopped abruptly, said: "Well, I really must get on. And

there's your cousin coming down the walk. I know you've been

waiting for her."

Ruth tried to keep in countenance, but a blush of shame and a

frown of irritation came in spite of her.

"I'm sorry I can't ask Susie, too," pursued Lottie, in a voice

of hypocritical regret. "But there are to be exactly eighteen

couples--and I couldn't."

"Of course not," said Ruth heartily. "Susan'll understand."

"I wouldn't for the world do anything to hurt her feelings,"

continued Lottie with the self-complacent righteousness of a

deacon telling the congregation how good "grace" has made him.

Her prominent commonplace brown eyes were gazing up the walk, an

expression distressingly like envious anger in them. She had a

thick, pudgy face, an oily skin, an outcropping of dull red

pimples on the chin. Many women can indulge their passion for

sweets at meals and sweets between meals without serious

injury--to complexion; Lottie Wright, unluckily, couldn't.

"I feel sorry for Susie," she went on, in the ludicrous

patronizing tone that needs no describing to anyone acquainted

with any fashionable set anywhere from China to Peru. "And I

think the way you all treat her is simply beautiful. But, then,

everybody feels sorry for her and tries to be kind. She

knows--about herself, I mean--doesn't she, Ruthie?"

"I guess so," replied Ruth, almost hanging her head in her

mortification. "She's very good and sweet."

"Indeed, she is," said Lottie. "And father says she's far and

away the prettiest girl in town."

With this parting shot, which struck precisely where she had

aimed, Lottie gathered up the reins and drove on, calling out a

friendly "Hello, Susie dearie," to Susan Lenox, who, on her

purposely lagging way from the house, had nearly reached the gate.

"What a nasty thing Lottie Wright is!" exclaimed Ruth to her cousin.

"She has a mean tongue," admitted Susan, tall and slim and

straight, with glorious dark hair and a skin healthily pallid

and as smooth as clear. "But she's got a good heart. She gives

a lot away to poor people."

"Because she likes to patronize and be kowtowed to," retorted

Ruth. "She's mean, I tell you." Then, with a vicious gleam in

the blue eyes that hinted a deeper and less presentable motive

for the telling, she added: "Why, she's not going to ask you

to her party."

Susan was obviously unmoved. "She has the right to ask whom she

pleases. And"--she laughed--"if I were giving a party I'd not

want to ask her--though I might do it for fear she'd feel left out."

"Don't you feel--left out?"

Susan shook her head. "I seem not to care much about going to

parties lately. The boys don't like to dance with me, and I get

tired of sitting the dances out."

This touched Ruth's impulsively generous heart and woman's easy

tears filled her eyes; her cousin's remark was so pathetic, the

more pathetic because its pathos was absolutely unconscious.

Ruth shot a pitying glance at Susan, but the instant she saw the

loveliness of the features upon which that expression of

unconsciousness lay like innocence upon a bed of roses, the pity

vanished from her eyes to be replaced by a disfiguring envy as

hateful as an evil emotion can be at nineteen. Susan still

lacked nearly a month of seventeen, but she seemed older than

Ruth because her mind and her body had developed beyond her

years--or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say beyond the

average of growth at seventeen. Also, her personality was

stronger, far more definite. Ruth tried to believe herself the

cleverer and the more beautiful, at times with a certain

success. But as she happened to be a shrewd young person--an

inheritance from the Warhams--she was haunted by misgivings--and

worse. Those whose vanity never suffers from these torments

will, of course, condemn her; but whoever has known the pain of

having to concede superiority to someone with whom she or he--is

constantly contrasted will not be altogether without sympathy

for Ruth in her struggles, often vain struggles, against the

mortal sin of jealousy.

The truth is, Susan was beyond question the beauty of

Sutherland. Her eyes, very dark at birth, had changed to a soft,

dreamy violet-gray. Hair and coloring, lashes and eyebrows

remained dark; thus her eyes and the intense red of her lips had

that vicinage of contrast which is necessary to distinction. To

look at her was to be at once fascinated by those violet-gray

eyes--by their color, by their clearness, by their regard of

calm, grave inquiry, by their mystery not untouched by a certain

sadness. She had a thick abundance of wavy hair, not so long as

Ruth's golden braids, but growing beautifully instead of thinly

about her low brow, about her delicately modeled ears, and at

the back of her exquisite neck. Her slim nose departed enough

from the classic line to prevent the suggestion of monotony that

is in all purely classic faces. Her nostrils had the

sensitiveness that more than any other outward sign indicates

the imaginative temperament. Her chin and throat--to look at

them was to know where her lover would choose to kiss her first.

When she smiled her large even teeth were dazzling. And the

smile itself was exceedingly sweet and winning, with the

violet-gray eyes casting over it that seriousness verging on

sadness which is the natural outlook of a highly intelligent

nature. For while stupid vain people are suspicious and easily

offended, only the intelligent are truly sensitive--keenly

susceptible to all sensations. The dull ear is suspicious; the

acute ear is sensitive.

The intense red of her lips, at times so vivid that it seemed

artificial, and their sinuous, sensitive curve indicated a

temperament that was frankly proclaimed in her figure--sensuous,

graceful, slender--the figure of girlhood in its perfection and

of perfect womanhood, too--like those tropical flowers that look

innocent and young and fresh, yet stir in the beholder

passionate longings and visions. Her walk was worthy of face and

figure--free and firm and graceful, the small head carried

proudly without haughtiness.

This physical beauty had as an aureole to illuminate it and to

set it off a manner that was wholly devoid of mannerisms--of

those that men and women think out and exhibit to give added

charm to themselves--tricks of cuteness, as lisp and baby stare;

tricks of dignity, as grave brow and body always carried rigidly

erect; tricks of sweetness and kindliness, as the ever ready

smile and the warm handclasp. Susan, the interested in the

world about her, Susan, the self-unconscious, had none of these

tricks. She was at all times her own self. Beauty is anything

but rare, likewise intelligence. But this quality of naturalness

is the greatest of all qualities. It made Susan Lenox unique.

It was not strange--nor inexcusable that the girls and their

parents had begun to pity Susan as soon as this beauty developed

and this personality had begun to exhale its delicious perfume.

It was but natural that they should start the whole town to

"being kind to the poor thing." And it was equally the matter of

course that they should have achieved their object--should have

impressed the conventional masculine mind of the town with such

a sense of the "poor thing's" social isolation and

"impossibility" that the boys ceased to be her eagerly admiring

friends, were afraid to be alone with her, to ask her to dance.

Women are conventional as a business; but with men

conventionality is a groveling superstition. The youths of

Sutherland longed for, sighed for the alluring, sweet, bright

Susan; but they dared not, with all the women saying "Poor

thing! What a pity a nice man can't afford to have anything to

do with her!" It was an interesting typical example of the

profound snobbishness of the male character. Rarely, after Susan

was sixteen, did any of the boys venture to ask her to dance and

so give himself the joy of encircling that lovely form of hers;

yet from babyhood her fascination for the male sex, regardless

of age or temperament, had been uncanny--"naturally, she being

a love-child," said the old women. And from fourteen on, it grew

steadily.

It would be difficult for one who has not lived in a small town

to understand exactly the kind of isolation to which Sutherland

consigned the girl without her realizing it, without their fully

realizing it themselves. Everyone was friendly with her. A

stranger would not have noticed any difference in the treatment

of her and of her cousin Ruth. Yet not one of the young men

would have thought of marrying her, would have regarded her as

his equal or the equal of his sisters. She went to all the

general entertainments. She was invited to all the houses when

failure to invite her would have seemed pointed--but only then.

She did not think much about herself; she was fond of

study--fonder of reading--fondest, perhaps, of making dresses

and hats, especially for Ruth, whom she thought much prettier

than herself. Thus, she was only vaguely, subconsciously

conscious of there being something peculiar and mysterious in

her lot.

This isolation, rather than her dominant quality of

self-effacing consideration for others, was the chief cause of

the extraordinary innocence of her mind. No servant, no girl, no

audacious boy ever ventured to raise with her any question

remotely touching on sex. All those questions seemed to Puritan

Sutherland in any circumstances highly indelicate; in relation

to Susan they seemed worse than indelicate, dreadful though the

thought was that there could be anything worse than indelicacy.

At fifteen she remained as unaware of even the existence of the

mysteries of sex as she had been at birth. Nothing definite

enough to arouse her curiosity had ever been said in her

hearing; and such references to those matters as she found in

her reading passed her by, as any matter of which he has not the

beginnings of knowledge will fail to arrest the attention of any

reader. It was generally assumed that she knew all about her

origin, that someone had, some time or other, told her. Even her

Aunt Fanny thought so, thought she was hiding the knowledge deep

in her heart, explained in that way her content with the

solitude of books and sewing.

Susan was the worst possible influence in Ruth's life. Our

character is ourself, is born with us, clings to us as the flesh

to our bones, persists unchanged until we die. But upon the

circumstances that surround us depends what part of our

character shall show itself. Ruth was born with perhaps

something more than the normal tendency to be envious and petty.

But these qualities might never have shown themselves

conspicuously had there been no Susan for her to envy. The very

qualities that made Susan lovable reacted upon the pretty, pert

blond cousin to make her the more unlovable. Again and again,

when she and Susan were about to start out together, and Susan

would appear in beauty and grace of person and dress, Ruth would

excuse herself, would fly to her room to lock herself in and

weep and rage and hate. And at the high school, when Susan

scored in a recitation or in some dramatic entertainment, Ruth

would sit with bitten lip and surging bosom, pale with jealousy.

Susan's isolation, the way the boys avoided having with her the

friendly relations that spring up naturally among young people

these gave Ruth a partial revenge. But Susan, seemingly

unconscious, rising sweetly and serenely above all pettiness--

Ruth's hatred deepened, though she hid it from everyone, almost

from herself. And she depended more and more utterly upon Susan

to select her clothes for her, to dress her, to make her look

well; for Susan had taste and Ruth had not.

On that bright June morning as the cousins went up Main Street

together, Susan gave herself over to the delight of sun and air

and of the flowering gardens before the attractive houses they

were passing; Ruth, with the day quite dark for her, all its

joys gone, was fighting against a hatred of her cousin so

vicious that it made her afraid. "I'll have no chance at all,"

her angry heart was saying, "so long as Susie's around, keeping

everybody reminded of the family shame." And that was a truth

she could not downface, mean and ungenerous though thinking it

might be. The worst of all was that Susan, in a simple white

dress and an almost untrimmed white straw hat with a graceful

curve to its brim and set at the right angle upon that wavy dark

hair, was making the beauty of her short blond cousin dim and

somehow common.

At the corner of Maple Street Ruth's self-control reached its

limit. She halted, took the sample of silk from her glove. There

was not a hint of her feelings in her countenance, for shame and

the desire to seem to be better than she was were fast making

her an adept in hypocrisy. "You go ahead and match it for

mamma," said she. "I've got to run in and see Bessie Andrews."

"But I promised Uncle George I'd come and help him with the

monthly bills," objected Susan.

"You can do both. It'll take you only a minute. If mother had

known you were going uptown, she'd never have trusted _me_." And

Ruth had tucked the sample in Susan's belt and was hurrying out

Maple Street. There was nothing for Susan to do but go on alone.

Two squares, and she was passing the show place of Sutherland,

the home of the Wrights. She paused to regale herself with a

glance into the grove of magnificent elms with lawns and bright

gardens beyond--for the Wright place filled the entire square

between Broad and Myrtle Streets and from Main to Monroe. She

was starting on when she saw among the trees a young man in

striped flannels. At the same instant he saw her.

"Hel-_lo_, Susie!" he cried. "I was thinking about you."

Susan halted. "When did you get back, Sam?" she asked. "I heard

you were going to stay on in the East all summer."

After they had shaken hands across the hedge that came almost to

their shoulders, Susan began to move on. Sam kept pace with her

on his side of the carefully trimmed boxwood barrier. "I'm going

back East in about two weeks," said he. "It's awfully dull here

after Yale. I just blew in--haven't seen Lottie or father yet.

Coming to Lottie's party?"

"No," said Susan.

"Why not?"

Susan laughed merrily. "The best reason in the world. Lottie has

only invited just so many couples."

"I'll see about that," cried Sam. "You'll be asked all right, all right."

"No," said Susan. She was one of those whose way of saying no

gives its full meaning and intent. "I'll not be asked, thank

you--and I'll not go if I am."

By this time they were at the gate. He opened it, came out into

the street. He was a tallish, athletic youth, dark, and pleasing

enough of feature to be called handsome. He was dressed with a

great deal of style of the efflorescent kind called sophomoric.

He was a Sophomore at Yale. But that was not so largely

responsible for his self-complacent expression as the deference

he had got from babyhood through being heir apparent to the

Wright fortune. He had a sophisticated way of inspecting Susan's

charms of figure no less than charms of face that might have made

a disagreeable impression upon an experienced onlooker. There is

a time for feeling without knowing why one feels; and that period

ought not to have been passed for young Wright for many a year.

"My, but you're looking fine, Susie!" exclaimed he. "I haven't

seen anyone that could hold a candle to you even in the East."

Susan laughed and blushed with pleasure. "Go on," said she with

raillery. "I love it."

"Come in and sit under the trees and I'll fill all the time

you'll give me."

This reminded her. "I must hurry uptown," she said. "Good-by."

"Hold on!" cried he. "What have you got to do?" He happened to

glance down the street. "Isn't that Ruth coming?"

"So it is," said Susan. "I guess Bessie Andrews wasn't at home."

Sam waved at Ruth and called, "Hello! Glad to see you."

Ruth was all sweetness and smiles. She and her mother--quite

privately and with nothing openly said on either side--had

canvassed Sam as a "possibility." There had been keen

disappointment at the news that he was not coming home for the

long vacation. "How are you, Sam?" said she, as they shook

hands. "My, Susie, _doesn't_ he look New York?"

Sam tried to conceal that he was swelling with pride. "Oh, this

is nothing," said he deprecatingly.

Ruth's heart was a-flutter. The Fisher picture of the Chambers

love-maker, thought she, might almost be a photograph of Sam.

She was glad she had obeyed the mysterious impulse to make a

toilette of unusual elegance that morning. How get rid of Susan?

"_I_'ll take the sample, Susie," said she. "Then you won't have to

keep father waiting."

Susie gave up the sample. Her face was no longer so bright and interested.

"Oh, drop it," cried Sam. "Come in--both of you. I'll telephone

for Joe Andrews and we'll take a drive--or anything you like."

He was looking at Susan.

"Can't do it," replied Susan. "I promised Uncle George."

"Oh, bother!" urged Sam. "Telephone him. It'll be all

right--won't it, Ruth?"

"You don't know Susie," said Ruth, with a queer, strained laugh.

"She'd rather die than break a promise."

"I must go," Susan now said. "Good-by."

"Come on, Ruth," cried Sam. "Let's walk uptown with her."

"And you can help match the silk," said Ruth.

"Not for me," replied young Wright. Then to Susan, "What've _you_

got to do? Maybe it's something I could help at."

"No. It's for Uncle George and me."

"Well, I'll go as far as the store. Then--we'll see."

They were now in the business part of Main Street, were at

Wilson's dry goods store. "You might find it here," suggested

the innocent Susan to her cousin.

Ruth colored, veiled her eyes to hide their flash. "I've got to

go to the store first--to get some money," she hastily improvised.

Sam had been walking between the two girls. He now changed to

the outside and, so, put himself next Susan alone, put Susan

between him and Ruth. The maneuver seemed to be a mere

politeness, but Ruth knew better. What fate had intended as her

lucky day was being changed into unlucky by this cousin of hers.

Ruth walked sullenly along, hot tears in her eyes and a choke in

her throat, as she listened to Sam's flatterings of her cousin,

and to Susan's laughing, delighted replies. She tried to gather

herself together, to think up something funny or at least

interesting with which to break into the _tête-à-tête_ and draw

Sam to herself. She could think nothing but envious, hateful

thoughts. At the doors of Warham and Company, wholesale and

retail grocers, the three halted.

"I guess I'll go to Vandermark's," said Ruth. "I really don't

need money. Come on, Sam."

"No--I'm going back home. I ought to see Lottie and father. My,

but it's dull in this town!"

"Well, so long," said Susan. She nodded, sparkling of hair and

skin and eyes, and went into the store.

Sam and Ruth watched her as she walked down the broad aisle

between the counters. From the store came a mingling of odors of

fruit, of spices, of freshly ground coffee. "Susan's an awful

pretty girl, isn't she?" declared Sam with rude enthusiasm.

"Indeed she is," replied Ruth as heartily--and with an honest if

discouraged effort to feel enthusiastic.

"What a figure! And she has such a good walk. Most women walk horribly."

"Come on to Vandermark's with me and I'll stroll back with you,"

offered Ruth. Sam was still gazing into the store where, far to

the rear, Susan could be seen; the graceful head, the gently

swelling bust, the soft lines of the white dress, the pretty

ankles revealed by the short skirt--there was, indeed, a profile

worth a man's looking at on a fine June day. Ruth's eyes were

upon Sam, handsome, dressed in the Eastern fashion, an ideal

lover. "Come on, Sam," urged Ruth.

"No, thanks," he replied absently. "I'll go back. Good luck!"

And not glancing at her, he lifted his straw hat with its band

of Yale blue and set out.

Ruth moved slowly and disconsolately in the opposite direction.

She was ashamed of her thoughts; but shame never yet withheld

anybody from being human in thought. As she turned to enter

Vandermark's she glanced down the street. There was Sam,

returned and going into her father's store. She hesitated, could

devise no plan of action, hurried into the dry goods store.

Sinclair, the head salesman and the beau of Sutherland, was an

especial friend of hers. The tall, slender, hungry-looking young

man, devoured with ambition for speedy wealth, had no mind to

neglect so easy an aid to that ambition as nature gave him in

making him a lady-charmer. He had resolved to marry either

Lottie Wright or Ruth Warham--Ruth preferred, because, while

Lottie would have many times more money, her skin made her a

stiff dose for a young man brought up to the American tradition

that the face is the woman. But that morning Sinclair exerted

his charms in vain. Ruth was in a hurry, was distinctly rude,

cut short what in other circumstances would have been a

prolonged and delightful flirtation by tossing the sample on the

counter and asking him to do the matching for her and to send

the silk right away. Which said, she fairly bolted from the store.

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 blasé 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:

"Who's there?"

"Only me," cried Susan.

She longed to go in and embrace Ruth, and kiss her. She would

have liked to ask Ruth to let her sleep with her, but she felt

Ruth wouldn't understand.

"What are you doing out there?" demanded Ruth. "It's 'way after one."

"Oh--dear--I must go to bed," cried Susan. Ruth's voice somehow

seemed to be knocking and tumbling her new dream-world.

"What time did Sam Wright leave here?" asked Ruth.

She was standing in her window now. Susan saw that her face

looked tired and worn, almost homely.

"At ten," she replied. "Uncle George knocked on the banister."

"Are you sure it was ten?" said Ruth sharply.

"I guess so. Yes--it was ten. Why?"

"Oh--nothing."

"Was he at Sinclairs'?"

"He came as it was over. He and Lottie brought me home." Ruth

was eyeing her cousin evilly. "How did you two get on?"

Susan flushed from head to foot. "Oh--so-so," she answered, in

an uncertain voice.

"I don't know why he didn't come to Sinclairs'," snapped Ruth.

Susan flushed again--a delicious warmth from head to foot. She

knew why. So he, too, had been dreaming alone. Love! Love!

"What are you smiling at?" cried Ruth crossly.

"Was I smiling?. . . Do you want me to help you undress?"

"No," was the curt answer. "Good night."

"Please let me unhook it, at least," urged Susan, following Ruth

into her room.

Ruth submitted.

"Did you have a good time?" asked Susan.

"Of course," snapped Ruth. "What made you think I didn't?"

"Don't be a silly, dear. I didn't think so."

"I had an awful time--awful!"

Ruth began to sob, turned fiercely on Susan. "Leave me alone!"

she cried. "I hate to have you touch me." The dress was, of

course, entirely unfastened in the back.

"You had a quarrel with Arthur?" asked Susan with sympathy. "But

you know he can't keep away from you. Tomorrow----"

"Be careful, Susan, how you let Sam Wright hang around you,"

cried Ruth, with blazing eyes and trembling lips. "You be

careful--that's all I've got to say."

"Why, what do you mean?" asked Susan wonderingly.

"Be careful! He'd never think for a minute of marrying you."

The words meant nothing to Susan; but the tone stabbed into her

heart. "Why not?" she said.

Ruth looked at her cousin, hung her head in shame. "Go--go!" she

begged. "Please go. I'm a bad girl--bad--_bad_! Go!" And, crying

hysterically, she pushed amazed Susan through the connecting

door, closed and bolted it.

CHAPTER IV

WHEN Fanny Warham was young her mother--compelled by her

father--roused--"routed out"--the children at half-past six on

week days and at seven on Sundays for prayers and breakfast, no

matter what time they had gone to bed the night before. The

horror of this made such an impression upon her that she never

permitted Ruth and Susan to be awakened; always they slept until

they had "had their sleep out." Regularity was no doubt an

excellent thing for health and for moral discipline; but the

best rule could be carried to foolish extremes. Until the last

year Mrs. Warham had made her two girls live a life of the

strictest simplicity and regularity, with the result that they

were the most amazingly, soundly, healthy girls in Sutherland.

And the regimen still held, except when they had company in the

evening or went out--and Mrs. Warham saw to it that there was

not too much of that sort of thing. In all her life thus far

Susan had never slept less than ten hours, rarely less than twelve.

It lacked less than a minute of ten o'clock the morning after

Sam's call when Susan's eyes opened upon her simple, pale-gray

bedroom, neat and fresh. She looked sleepily at the little clock

on the night stand.

"Mercy me!" she cried. And her bare feet were on the floor and

she was stretching her lithe young body, weak from the

relaxation of her profound sleep.

She heard someone stirring in Ruth's room; instantly Ruth's

remark, "He'd never think for a minute of marrying you," popped

into her head. It still meant nothing to her. She could not have

explained why it came back or why she fell to puzzling over it

as if it held some mysterious meaning. Perhaps the reason was

that from early childhood there had been accumulating in some

dusky chamber of her mind stray happenings and remarks, all

baring upon the unsuspected secret of her birth and the

unsuspected strangeness of her position in the world where

everyone else was definitely placed and ticketed. She was

wondering about Ruth's queer hysterical outburst, evidently the

result of a quarrel with Arthur Sinclair. "I guess Ruth cares

more for him than she lets on," thought she. This love that had

come to her so suddenly and miraculously made her alert for

signs of love elsewhere.

She went to the bolted connecting door; she could not remember

when it had ever been bolted before, and she felt forlorn and

shut out. "Ruth!" she called.

"Is that you?"

A brief silence, then a faint "Yes."

"May I come in?"

"You'd better take your bath and get downstairs."

This reminded her that she was hungry. She gathered her

underclothes together, and with the bundle in her arms darted

across the hall into the bathroom. The cold water acted as

champagne promises to act but doesn't. She felt giddy with

health and happiness. And the bright sun was flooding the

bathroom, and the odors from the big bed of hyacinths in the

side lawn scented the warm breeze from the open window. When she

dashed back to her room she was singing, and her singing voice

was as charming as her speaking voice promised. A few minutes

and her hair had gone up in careless grace and she was clad in

a fresh dress of tan linen, full in the blouse. This, with her

tan stockings and tan slippers and the radiant youth of her

face, gave her a look of utter cleanness and freshness that was

exceedingly good to see.

"I'm ready," she called.

There was no answer; doubtless Ruth had already descended. She

rushed downstairs and into the dining-room. No one was at the

little table set in one of the windows in readiness for the late

breakfasters.

Molly came, bringing cocoa, a cereal, hot biscuit and crab-apple

preserves, all attractively arranged on a large tray.

"I didn't bring much, Miss Susie," she apologized. "It's so

late, and I don't want you to spoil your dinner. We're going to

have the grandest chicken that ever came out of an egg."

Susan surveyed the tray with delighted eyes. "That's plenty," she

said, "if you don't talk too much about the chicken. Where's Ruth?"

"She ain't coming down. She's got a headache. It was that salad

for supper over to Sinclairs' last night. Salad ain't fit for a

dog to eat, nohow--that's _my_ opinion. And at night--it's sure

to bust your face out or give you the headache or both."

Susan ate with her usual enthusiasm, thinking the while of Sam

and wondering how she could contrive to see him. She remembered

her promise to her uncle. She had not eaten nearly so much as

she wanted. But up she sprang and in fifteen minutes was on her

way to the store. She had seen neither Ruth nor her aunt.

"_He_'ll be waiting for me to pass," she thought. And she was not

disappointed. There he stood, at the footpath gate into his

father's place. He had arrayed himself in a blue and white

flannel suit, white hat and shoes; a big expensive-looking

cigarette adorned his lips. The Martins, the Delevans, the

Castles and the Bowens, neighbors across the way, were watching

him admiringly through the meshes of lace window curtains. She

expected that he would come forward eagerly. Instead, he

continued to lean indolently on the gate, as if unaware of her

approach. And when she was close at hand, his bow and smile

were, so it seemed to her, almost coldly polite. Into her eyes

came a confused, hurt expression.

"Susie--sweetheart," he said, the voice in as astonishing

contrast as the words to his air of friendly indifference.

"They're watching us from the windows all around here."

"Oh--yes," assented she, as if she understood. But she didn't.

In Sutherland the young people were not so mindful of gossip,

which it was impossible to escape, anyhow. Still--off there in

the East, no doubt, they had more refined ways; without a doubt,

whatever Sam did was the correct thing.

"Do you still care as you did last night?" he asked. The effect

of his words upon her was so obvious that he glanced nervously

round. It was delightful to be able to evoke a love like this;

but he did wish others weren't looking.

"I'm going to Uncle's store," she said. "I'm late."

"I'll walk part of the way with you," he volunteered, and they

started on. "That--that kiss," he stammered. "I can feel it yet."

She blushed deeply, happily. Her beauty made him tingle. "So can

I," she said.

They walked in silence several squares. "When will I see you

again?" he asked. "Tonight?"

"Yes--do come down. But--Ruth'll be there. I believe Artie

Sinclair's coming."

"Oh, that counter-jumper?"

She looked at him in surprise. "He's an awfully nice fellow,"

said she. "About the nicest in town."

"Of course," replied Sam elaborately. "I beg your pardon. They

think differently about those things in the East."

"What thing?"

"No matter."

Sam, whose secret dream was to marry some fashionable Eastern

woman and cut a dash in Fifth Avenue life, had no intention of

explaining what was what to one who would not understand, would

not approve, and would be made auspicious of him. "I suppose

Ruth and Sinclair'll pair off and give us a chance."

"You'll come?"

"Right after din--supper, I mean. In the East we have dinner in

the evening."

"Isn't that queer!" exclaimed Susan. But she was thinking of the

joys in store for her at the close of the day.

"I must go back now," said Sam. Far up the street he saw his

sister's pony cart coming.

"You might as well walk to the store." It seemed to her that they

both had ever so much to say to each other, and had said nothing.

"No. I can't go any further. Good-by--that is, till tonight."

He was red and stammering. As they shook hands emotion made them

speechless. He stumbled awkwardly as he turned to leave, became

still more hotly self-conscious when he saw the grin on the

faces of the group of loungers at a packing case near the curb.

Susan did not see the loafers, did not see anything distinctly.

Her feet sought the uneven brick sidewalk uncertainly, and the

blood was pouring into her cheeks, was steaming in her brain,

making a red mist before her eyes. She was glad he had left her.

The joy of being with him was so keen that it was pain. Now she

could breathe freely and could dream--dream--dream. She made

blunder after blunder in working over the accounts with her

uncle, and he began to tease her.

"You sure are in love, Brownie," declared he.

Her painful but happy blush delighted him.

"Tell me all about it?"

She shook her head, bending it low to hide her color.

"No?. . . Sometime?"

She nodded. She was glancing shyly and merrily at him now.

"Well, some hold that first love's best. Maybe so. But it seems

to me any time's good enough. Still--the first time's mighty fine

eh?" He sighed. "My, but it's good to be young!" And he patted

her thick wavy hair.

It did not leak out until supper that Sam was coming. Warham

said to Susan, "While Ruth's looking out for Artie, you and I'll

have a game or so of chess, Brownie." Susan colored violently.

"What?" laughed Warham. "Are _you_ going to have a beau too?"

Susan felt two pairs of feminine eyes pounce--hostile eyes,

savagely curious. She paled with fright as queer, as

unprecedented, as those hostile glances. It seemed to her that

she had done or was about to do something criminal. She could

not speak.

An awful silence, then her aunt--she no longer seemed her loving

aunt--asked in an ominous voice: "Is someone coming to see you, Susan?"

"Sam Wright"--stammered Susan--"I saw him this morning--he was

at their gate--and he said--I think he's coming."

A dead silence--Warham silent because he was eating, but the two

others not for that reason.

Susan felt horribly guilty, and for no reason. "I'd have spoken

of it before," she said, "but there didn't seem to be any

chance." She had the instinct of fine shy nature to veil the

soul; she found it hard to speak of anything as sacred as this

love of hers and whatever related to it.

"I can't allow this, Susie," said her aunt, with lips tightly

drawn against the teeth. "You are too young."

"Oh, come now, mother," cried Warham, good-humoredly. "That's

foolishness. Let the young folks have a good time. You didn't

think you were too young at Susie's age."

"You don't understand, George," said Fanny after she had given

him a private frown. Susie's gaze was on the tablecloth. "I

can't permit Sam to come here to see Susie."

Ruth's eyes were down also. About her lips was a twitching that

meant a struggle to hide a pleased smile.

"I've no objection to Susie's having boys of her own age come to

see her," continued Mrs. Warham in the same precise, restrained

manner. "But Sam is too old."

"Now, mother----"

Mrs. Warham met his eyes steadily. "I must protect my sister's

child, George," she said. At last she had found what she felt

was a just reason for keeping Sam away from Susan, so her tone

was honest and strong.

Warham lowered his gaze. He understood. "Oh--as you think best,

Fan; I didn't mean to interfere," said he awkwardly. He turned

on Susan with his affection in his eyes. "Well, Brownie, it

looks like chess with your old uncle, doesn't it?"

Susan's bosom was swelling, her lip trembling. "I--I----" she

began. She choked back the sobs, faltered out: "I don't think I

could, Uncle," and rushed from the room.

There was an uncomfortable pause. Then Warham said, "I must say,

Fan, I think--if you had to do it--you might have spared the

girl's feelings."

Mrs. Warham felt miserable about it also. "Susie took me by

surprise," she apologized. Then, defiantly, "And what else can

I do? You know he doesn't come for any good."

Warham stared in amazement. "Now, what does _that_ mean?" he demanded.

"You know very well what it means," retorted his wife.

Her tone made him understand. He reddened, and with too

blustering anger brought his fist down on the table.

"Susan's our daughter. She's Ruth's sister."

Ruth pushed back her chair and stood up. Her expression made her

look much older than she was. "I wish you could induce the rest

of the town to think that, papa," said she. "It'd make my

position less painful." And she, too, left the room.

"What's she talking about?" asked Warham.

"It's true, George," replied Fanny with trembling lip. "It's all

my fault--insisting on keeping her. I might have known!"

"I think you and Ruth must be crazy. I've seen no sign."

"Have you seen any of the boys calling on Susan since she shot

up from a child to a girl? Haven't you noticed she isn't invited

any more except when it can't be avoided?"

Warham's face was fiery with rage. He looked helplessly,

furiously about. But he said nothing. To fight public sentiment

would be like trying to thrust back with one's fists an oncreeping

fog. Finally he cried, "It's too outrageous to talk about."

"If I only knew what to do!" moaned Fanny.

A long silence, while Warham was grasping the fullness of the

meaning, the frightful meaning, in these revelations so

astounding to him. At last he said:

"Does _she_ realize?"

"I guess so . . . I don't know . . . I don't believe she does.

She's the most innocent child that ever grew up."

"If I had a chance, I'd sell out and move away."

"Where?" said his wife. "Where would people accept--her?"

Warham became suddenly angry again. "I don't believe it!" he

cried, his look and tone contradicting his words. "You've been

making a mountain out of a molehill."

And he strode from the room, flung on his hat and went for a

walk. As Mrs. Warham came from the dining-room a few minutes

later, Ruth appeared in the side veranda doorway. "I think I'll

telephone Arthur to come tomorrow evening instead," said she.

"He'd not like it, with Sam here too."

"That would be better," assented her mother. "Yes, I'd telephone

him if I were you."

Thus it came about that Susan, descending the stairs to the

library to get a book, heard Ruth say into the telephone in her

sweetest voice, "Yes--tomorrow evening, Arthur. Some others are

coming--the Wrights. You'd have to talk to Lottie . . . I don't

blame you. . . . Tomorrow evening, then. So sorry. Good-by."

The girl on the stairway stopped short, shrank against the wall.

A moment, and she hastily reascended, entered her room, closed

the door. Love had awakened the woman; and the woman was not so

unsuspecting, so easily deceived as the child had been. She

understood what her cousin and her aunt were about; they were

trying to take her lover from her! She understood her aunt's

looks and tones, her cousin's temper and hysteria. She sat down

upon the floor and cried with a breaking heart. The injustice of

it! The meanness of it! The wickedness of a world where even her

sweet cousin, even her loving aunt were wicked! She sat there on

the floor a long time, abandoned to the misery of a first

shattered illusion, a misery the more cruel because never before

had either cousin or aunt said or done anything to cause her

real pain. The sound of voices coming through the open window

from below made her start up and go out on the balcony. She

leaned over the rail. She could not see the veranda for the

masses of creeper, but the voices were now quite plain in the

stillness. Ruth's voice gay and incessant. Presently a man's

voice _his_--and laughing! Then his voice speaking--then the two

voices mingled--both talking at once, so eager were they! Her

lover--and Ruth was stealing him from her! Oh, the baseness, the

treachery! And her aunt was helping!. . . Sore of heart,

utterly forlorn, she sat in the balcony hammock, aching with

love and jealousy. Every now and then she ran in and looked at

the clock. He was staying on and on, though he must have learned

she was not coming down. She heard her uncle and aunt come up to

bed. Now the piano in the parlor was going. First it was Ruth

singing one of her pretty love songs in that clear small voice

of hers. Then Sam played and sang--how his voice thrilled her!

Again it was Ruthie singing--"Sweet Dream Faces"--Susan began to

sob afresh. She could see Ruth at the piano, how beautiful she

looked--and that song--it would be impossible for him not to be

impressed. She felt the jealousy of despair. . . . Ten

o'clock--half-past--eleven o'clock! She heard them at the edge of

the veranda--so, at last he was going. She was able to hear

their words now:

"You'll be up for the tennis in the morning?" he was saying.

"At ten," replied Ruth.

"Of course Susie's asked, too," he said--and his voice sounded

careless, not at all earnest.

"Certainly," was her cousin's reply. "But I'm not sure she can come."

It was all the girl at the balcony rail could do to refrain from

crying out a protest. But Sam was saying to Ruth:

"Well--good night. Haven't had so much fun in a long time. May

I come again?"

"If you don't, I'll think you were bored."

"Bored!" He laughed. "That's too ridiculous. See you in the

morning. Good night. . . . Give my love to Susie, and tell her

I was sorry not to see her."

Susan was all in a glow as her cousin answered, "I'll tell her."

doubtless Sam didn't note it, but Susan heard the constraint,

the hypocrisy in that sweet voice.

She watched him stroll down to the gate under the arch of boughs

dimly lit by the moon. She stretched her arms passionately

toward him. Then she went in to go to bed. But at the sound of

Ruth humming gayly in the next room, she realized that she could

not sleep with her heart full of evil thoughts. She must have it

out with her cousin. She knocked on the still bolted door.

"What is it?" asked Ruth coldly.

"Let me in," answered Susan. "I've got to see you."

"Go to bed, Susie. It's late."

"You must let me in."

The bolt shot back. "All right. And please unhook my

dress--there's a dear."

Susan opened the door, stood on the threshold, all her dark

passion in her face. "Ruth!" she cried.

Ruth had turned her back, in readiness for the service the need

of which had alone caused her to unbolt the door. At that swift,

fierce ejaculation she started, wheeled round. At sight of that

wild anger she paled. "Why, Susie!" she gasped.

"I've found you out!" raged Susan. "You're trying to steal him

from me--you and Aunt Fanny. It isn't fair! I'll not stand it!"

"What _are_ you talking about?" cried Ruth. "You must have lost

your senses."

"I'll not stand it," Susan repeated, advancing threateningly "He

loves me and I love him."

Ruth laughed. "You foolish girl! Why, he cares nothing about you.

The idea of your having your head turned by a little politeness!"

"He loves me he told me so. And I love him. I told him so. He's

mine! You shan't take him from me!"

"He told you he loved you?"

Ruth's eyes were gleaming and her voice was shrill with hate.

"He told you _that_?"

"Yes--he did!"

"I don't believe you."

"We love each other," cried the dark girl. "He came to see _me_.

You've got Arthur Sinclair. You shan't take him away!"

The two girls, shaking with fury, were facing each other, were

looking into each other's eyes. "If Sam Wright told you he loved

you," said Ruth, with the icy deliberateness of a cold-hearted

anger, "he was trying to--to make a fool of you. You ought to be

ashamed of yourself. _We_'re trying to save you."

"He and I are engaged!" declared Susan. "You shan't take

him--and you can't! He _loves_ me!"

"Engaged!" jeered Ruth. "Engaged!" she laughed, pretending not

to believe, yet believing. She was beside herself with jealous

anger. "Yes--we'll save you from yourself. You're like your

mother. You'd disgrace us--as she did."

"Don't you dare talk that way, Ruth Warham. It's false--_false_!

My mother is dead--and you're a wicked girl."

"It's time you knew the truth," said Ruth softly. Her eyes were

half shut now and sparkling devilishly. "You haven't got any

name. You haven't got any father. And no man of any position

would marry you. As for Sam----" She laughed contemptuously.

"Do you suppose Sam Wright would marry a girl without a name?"

Susan had shrunk against the door jamb. She understood only

dimly, but things understood dimly are worse than things that are

clear. "Me?" she muttered. "Me? Oh, Ruth, you don't mean that."

"It's true," said Ruth, calmly. "And the sooner you realize it

the less likely you are to go the way your mother did."

Susan stood as if petrified.

"If Sam Wright comes hanging round you any more, you'll know how

to treat him," Ruth went on. "You'll appreciate that he hasn't

any respect for you--that he thinks you're someone to be trifled

with. And if he talked engagement, it was only a pretense. Do

you understand?"

The girl leaning in the doorway gazed into vacancy. After a

while she answered dully, "I guess so."

Ruth began to fuss with the things on her bureau. Susan went

into her room, sat on the edge of the bed. A few minutes, and

Ruth, somewhat cooled down and not a little frightened, entered.

She looked uneasily at the motionless figure. Finally she said,

"Susie!"

No answer.

More sharply, "Susie!"

"Yes," said Susan, without moving.

"You understand that I told you for your own good? And you'll

not say anything to mother or father? They feel terribly about it,

and don't want it ever mentioned. You won't let on that you know?"

"I'll not tell," said Susan.

"You know we're fond of you--and want to do everything for you?"

No answer.

"It wasn't true--what you said about Sam's making love to you?"

"That's all over. I don't want to talk about it."

"You're not angry with me, Susie? I admit I was angry, but it

was best for you to know--wasn't it?"

"Yes," said Susan.

"You're not angry with me?"

"No."

Ruth, still more uneasy, turned back into her own room because

there was nothing else to do. She did not shut the door between.

When she was in her nightgown she glanced in at her cousin. The

girl was sitting on the edge of the bed in the same position.

"It's after midnight," said Ruth. "You'd better get undressed."

Susan moved a little. "I will," she said.

Ruth went to bed and soon fell asleep. After an hour or so she

awakened. Light was streaming through the open connecting door.

She ran to it, looked in. Susan's clothes were in a heap beside

the bed. Susan herself, with the pillows propping her, was

staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. It was impossible for Ruth to

realize any part of the effect upon her cousin of a thing she

herself had known for years and had taken always as a matter of

course; she simply felt mildly sorry for unfortunate Susan.

"Susie, dear," she said gently, "do you want me to turn out the light?"

"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.

It was hardly a quarter of an hour after the vanishing of that

last ray when Sam, standing now with heart beating fast and a

lump of expectancy, perhaps of trepidation, too, in his throat,

saw a figure issue from the front door and move round to the

side veranda. He made a detour on the lawn, so as to keep out of

view both from house and street, came up to the veranda, called

to her softly.

"Can you get over the rail?" asked she in the same low tone.

"Let's go back to the summer house," urged he.

"No. Come up here," she insisted. "Be careful. The windows above

are open."

He climbed the rail noiselessly and made an impetuous move for

her hand. She drew back. "No, Sam dear," she said. "I know it's

foolish. But I've an instinct against it--and we mustn't."

She spoke so gently that he persisted and pleaded. It was some

time before he realized how much firmness there was under her

gentleness. She was so afraid of making him cross; yet he also

saw that she would withstand at any cost. He placed himself

beside her on the wicker lounge, sitting close, his cheek almost

against hers, that they might hear each other without speaking

above a whisper. After one of those silences which are the

peculiar delight of lovers, she drew a long breath and said:

"I've got to go away, Sam. I shan't see you again for a long time."

"They heard about this morning? They're sending you away?"

"No--I'm going. They feel that I'm a disgrace and a drag. So I

can't stay."

"But--you've _got_ to stay!" protested Sam. In wild alarm he

suspected she was preparing to make him elope with her--and he

did not know to what length of folly his infatuation might whirl

him. "You've no place to go," he urged.

"I'll find a place," said she.

"You mustn't--you mustn't, Susie! Why, you're only

seventeen--and have no experience."

"I'll _get_ experience," said she. "Nothing could be so bad as

staying here. Can't you see that?"

He could not. Like so many of the children of the rich, he had

no trace of over-nice sense of self-respect, having been lying

and toadying all his life to a father who used the power of his

wealth at home no less, rather more, than abroad. But he vaguely

realized what delicacy of feeling lay behind her statement of

her position; and he did not dare express his real opinion. He

returned to the main point. "You've simply got to put up with it

for the present, Susie," he insisted. "But, then, of course,

you're not serious."

"Yes. I am going."

"You'll think it over, and see I'm right, dear."

"I'm going tonight."

"Tonight!" he cried.

"Sh-h!"

Sam looked apprehensively around. Both breathed softly and

listened with straining ears. His exclamation had not been loud,

but the silence was profound. "I guess nobody heard," he finally

whispered. "You mustn't go, Susie." He caught her hand and held

it. "I love you, and I forbid it."

"I _must_ go, dear," answered she. "I've decided to take the

midnight boat for Cincinnati."

In the half darkness he gazed in stupefaction at her--this girl

of only seventeen calmly resolving upon and planning an

adventure so daring, so impossible. As he had been born and bred

in that western country where the very children have more

independence than the carefully tamed grown people of the East,

he ought to have been prepared for almost anything. But his

father had undermined his courage and independence; also his

year in the East had given him somewhat different ideas of

women. Susan's announcement seemed incredible. He was gathering

himself for pouring out a fresh protest when it flashed through

his mind--Why not? She would go to Cincinnati. He could follow

in a few days or a week--and then--

Well, at least they would be free and could have many happy days

together.

"Why, how could you get to Cincinnati?" he said. "You haven't

any money."

"I've a twenty-dollar gold piece Uncle gave me as a keepsake.

And I've got seventeen dollars in other money, and several

dollars in change," explained she. "I've got two hundred and

forty-three dollars and fifty cents in the bank, but I can't get

that--not now. They'll send it to me when I find a place and am

settled and let them know."

"You can't do it, Susie! You can't and you mustn't."

"If you knew what they said to me! Oh, I _couldn't_ stay, Sam.

I've got some of my clothes--a little bundle behind the front

door. As soon as I'm settled I'll let you know."

A silence, then he, hesitatingly, "Don't you--do you--hadn't I

better go with you?"

She thrilled at this generosity, this new proof of love. But she

said: "No, I wouldn't let you do that. They'd blame you. And I

want them to know it's all my own doing."

"You're right, Susie," said the young man, relieved and

emphatic. "If I went with you, it'd only get both of us into

deeper trouble." Again silence, with Sam feeling a kind of awe

as he studied the resolute, mysterious profile of the girl,

which he could now see clearly. At last he said: "And after you

get there, Susie--what will you do?"

"Find a boarding house, and then look for a place."

"What kind of a place?"

"In a store--or making dresses--or any kind of sewing. Or I

could do housework."

The sex impulse is prolific of generous impulses. He, sitting so

close to her and breathing in through his skin the emanations of

her young magnetism, was moved to the depths by the picture her

words conjured. This beautiful girl, a mere child, born and bred

in the lady class, wandering away penniless and alone, to be a

prey to the world's buffetings which, severe enough in reality,

seem savage beyond endurance to the children of wealth.

As he pictured it his heart impulsively expanded. It was at his

lips to offer to marry her. But his real self--and one's real

self is vastly different from one's impulses--his real self

forbade the words passage. Not even the sex impulse,

intoxicating him as it then was, could dethrone snobbish

calculation. He was young; so while he did not speak, he felt

ashamed of himself for not speaking. He felt that she must be

expecting him to speak, that she had the right to expect it. He

drew a little away from her, and kept silent.

"The time will soon pass," said she absently.

"The time? Then you intend to come back?"

"I mean the time until you're through college and we can be together."

She spoke as one speaks of a dream as to which one has never a

doubt but that it will come true. It was so preposterous, this

idea that he would marry her, especially after she had been a

servant or God knows what for several years--it was so absurd

that he burst into a sweat of nervous terror. And he hastily

drew further away.

She felt the change, for she was of those who are born

sensitive. But she was far too young and inexperienced to have

learned to interpret aright the subtle warning of the nerves.

"You are displeased with me?" she asked timidly.

"No--Oh, no, Susie," he stammered. "I--I was thinking. Do put

off going for a day or two. There's no need of hurrying."

But she felt that by disobeying her aunt and coming down to see

him she had forfeited the right to shelter under that roof. "I

can't go back," said she. "There's a reason." She would not tell

him the reason; it would make him feel as if he were to blame.

"When I get a place in Cincinnati," she went on, "I'll write to you."

"Not here," he objected. "That wouldn't do at all. No, send me a

line to the Gibson House in Cincinnati, giving me your address."

"The Gibson House," she repeated. "I'll not forget that name.

Gibson House."

"Send it as soon as you get a place. I may be in Cincinnati

soon. But this is all nonsense. You're not going. You'd be afraid."

She laughed softly. "You don't know me. Now that I've got to go,

I'm glad."

And he realized that she was not talking to give herself

courage, that her words were literally true. This made him

admire her, and fear her, too. There must be something wild and

unwomanly in her nature. "I guess she inherits it from her

mother--and perhaps her father, whoever he was." Probably she

was simply doing a little early what she'd have been sure to do

sooner or later, no matter what had happened. On the whole, it

was just as well that she was going. "I can take her on East in

the fall. As soon as she has a little knowledge of the world

she'll not expect me to marry her. She can get something to do.

I'll help her." And now he felt in conceit with himself

again--felt that he was going to be a good, generous friend to her.

"Perhaps you'll be better off--once you get started," said he.

"I don't see how I could be worse off. What is there here for _me_?"

He wondered at the good sense of this from a mere child. It was

most unlikely that any man of the class she had been brought up

in would marry her; and how could she endure marriage with a man

of the class in which she might possibly find a husband? As for

reputation--

She, an illegitimate child, never could have a reputation, at

least not so long as she had her looks. After supper, to kill

time, he had dropped in at Willett's drug store, where the young

fellows loafed and gossiped in the evenings; all the time he was

there the conversation had been made up of sly digs and hints

about graveyard trysts, each thrust causing the kind of laughter

that is the wake of the prurient and the obscene. Yes, she was

right. There could be "nothing in it" for her in Sutherland. He

was filled with pity for her. "Poor child! What a shame!" There

must be something wrong with a world that permitted such iniquities.

The clock struck twelve. "You must go," she said. "Sometimes

the boat comes as early as half-past." And she stood up.

As he faced her the generous impulse surged again. He caught her

in his arms, she not resisting. He kissed her again and again,

murmuring disconnected words of endearment and fighting back the

offer to marry her. "I mustn't! I mustn't!" he said to himself.

"What'd become of us?" If his passions had been as virgin, as

inexperienced, as hers, no power could have held him from going

with her and marrying her. But experience had taught him the

abysmal difference between before and after; and he found

strength to be sensible, even in the height of his passionate

longing for her.

She clasped her arms about his neck. "Oh, my dear love!" she

murmured. "I'd do anything for you. I feel that you love me as

I love you."

"Yes--yes." And he pressed his lips to hers. An instant and she

drew away, shaking and panting. He tried to clasp her again, but

she would not have it. "I can't stand it!" he murmured. "I must

go with you--I must!"

"No!" she replied. "It wouldn't do unless we were really

married." Wistfully, "And we can't be that yet--can we? There

isn't any way?"

His passion cooled instantly.

"There isn't any way," he said regretfully. "I'd not dare tell

my father."

"Yes, we must wait till you're of age, and have your education,

and are free. Then----" She drew a long breath, looked at him

with a brave smile. The large moon was shining upon them. "We'll

think of that, and not let ourselves be unhappy--won't we?"

"Yes," he said. "But I must go."

"I forgot for the minute. Good-by, dearest." She put up her

lips. He kissed her, but without passion now.

"You might go with me as far as the wharf," she suggested.

"No--someone might see--and that would ruin everything. I'd like

to--I'd----"

"It wouldn't do," she interrupted. "I wouldn't let you come."

With sudden agitation she kissed him--he felt that her lips were

cold. He pressed her hands--they, too, were cold. "Good-by, my

darling," he murmured, vaulted lightly over the rail and

disappeared in the deep shadows of the shrubbery. When he was

clear of the grounds he paused to light a cigarette. His hand

was shaking so that the match almost dropped from his fingers.

"I've been making a damn fool of myself," he said half aloud. "A

double damn fool! I've got to stop that talk about marrying,

somehow--or keep away from her. But I can't keep away. I _must_

have her! Why in the devil can't she realize that a man in my

position couldn't marry her? If it wasn't for this marrying

talk, I'd make her happy. I've simply got to stop this marrying

talk. It gets worse and worse."

Her calmness deceived her into thinking herself perfectly sane

and sober, perfectly aware of what she was about. She had left

her hat and her bundle behind the door. She put on the hat in

the darkness of the hall with steady fingers, took up the

well-filled shawl strap and went forth, closing the door behind

her. In the morning they would find the door unlocked but that

would not cause much talk, as Sutherland people were all rather

careless about locking up. They would not knock at the door of

her room until noon, perhaps. Then they would find on the

pincushion the letter she had written to her uncle, saying

good-by and explaining that she had decided to remove forever

the taint of her mother and herself from their house and their

lives--a somewhat theatrical letter, modeled upon Ouida, whom

she thought the greatest writer that had ever lived, Victor Hugo

and two or three poets perhaps excepted.

Her bundle was not light, but she hardly felt it as she moved

swiftly through the deserted, moonlit streets toward the river.

The wharf boat for the Cincinnati and Louisville mail steamers

was anchored at the foot of Pine Street. On the levee before it

were piled the boxes, bags, cases, crates, barrels to be loaded

upon the "up boat." She was descending the gentle slope toward

this mass of freight when her blood tingled at a deep, hoarse,

mournful whistle from far away; she knew it was the up boat,

rounding the bend and sighting the town. The sound echoed

musically back and forth between the Kentucky and the Indiana

bluffs, died lingeringly away. Again the whistle boomed, again

the dark forest-clad steeps sent the echoes to and fro across the

broad silver river. And now she could see the steamer, at the

bend--a dark mass picked out with brilliant dots of light; the

big funnels, the two thick pennants of black smoke. And she

could hear the faint pleasant stroke of the paddles of the big

side wheels upon the water.

At the wharf boat there had not been a sign of life. But with

the dying away of the second whistle lights--the lights of

lanterns--appeared on the levee close to the water's edge and on

the wharf boat itself. And, behind her, the doors of the

Sutherland Hotel opened and its office lit up, in preparation

for any chance arrivals. She turned abruptly out of the beaten

path down the gravel levee, made for the lower and darker end of

the wharf boat. There would be Sutherland people going up the

river. But they would be more than prompt; everyone came early

to boats and trains to begin the sweet draught of the excitement

of journeying. So she would wait in the darkness and go aboard

when the steamer was about to draw in its planks. At the upper

end of the wharf boat there was the broad gangway to the levee

for passengers and freight; at the lower and dark and deserted

end a narrow beam extended from boat to shore, to hold the boat

steady. Susan, balancing herself with her bundle, went up to the

beam, sat down upon a low stanchion in the darkness where she

could see the river.

Louder and louder grew the regular musical beat of engine and

paddle. The searchlight on the forward deck of the _General

Lytle_, after peering uncertainly, suspiciously, at the entire

levee, and at the river, and at the Kentucky shore, abruptly

focused upon the wharf boat. The _General Lytle_ now seemed a

blaze of lights--from lower deck, from saloon deck, from pilot

house deck, and forward and astern. A hundred interesting sounds

came from her--tinkling of bells, calls from deck to deck,

whistling, creaking of pulleys, lowing of cattle, grunting of

swine, plaint of agitated sheep, the resigned cluckings of many

chickens. Along the rail of the middle or saloon deck were

seated a few passengers who had not yet gone to bed. On the

lower deck was a swarm of black roustabouts, their sooty animal

faces, their uncannily contrasting white teeth and eyeballs,

their strange and varied rags lit up by the torches blazing

where a gangplank lay ready for running out. And high and clear

in the lovely June night sailed the moon, spreading a faint

benign light upon hills and shores and glistening river, upon

the graceful, stately mail steamer, now advancing majestically

upon the wharf boat. Susan watched all, saw all, with quick

beating heart and quivering interest. It was the first time that

her life had been visited by the fascinating sense of event,

real event. The tall, proud, impetuous child-woman, standing in

the semi-darkness beside her bundle, was about to cast her stake

upon the table in a bold game with Destiny. Her eyes shone with

the wonderful expression that is seen only when courage gazes

into the bright face of danger.

The steamer touched the edge of the wharf-boat with gentle care;

the wharf-boat swayed and groaned. Even as the gangplanks were

pushing out, the ragged, fantastic roustabouts, with wild,

savage, hilarious cries, ran and jumped and scrambled to the

wharf-boat like a band of escaping lunatics and darted down its

shore planks to pounce upon the piles of freight. The mate, at

the steamer edge to superintend the loading, and the wharf

master on the levee beside the freight released each a hoarse

torrent of profanity to spur on the yelling, laughing

roustabouts, more brute than man. Torches flared; cow and sheep,

pig and chicken, uttered each its own cry of dissatisfaction or

dismay; the mate and wharf master cursed because it was the

custom to curse; the roustabouts rushed ashore empty-handed,

came filing back, stooping under their burdens. It was a scene

of animation, of excitement, savage, grotesque, fascinating.

Susan, trembling a little, so tense were her nerves, waited

until the last struggling roustabouts were staggering on the

boat, until the deep whistle sounded, warning of approaching

departure. Then she took up her bundle and put herself in the

line of roustabouts, between a half-naked negro, black as coal

and bearing a small barrel of beer, and a half-naked mulatto

bearing a bundle of loud-smelling untanned skins. "Get out of

the way, lady!" yelled the mate, eagerly seizing upon a new text

for his denunciations. "Get out of the way, you black hellions!

Let the lady pass! Look out, lady! You damned sons of hell,

what're you about! I'll rip out your bowels----"

Susan fled across the deck and darted up the stairs to the

saloon. The steamer was all white without except the black metal

work. Within--that is, in the long saloon out of which the

cabins opened to right and left and in which the meals were

served at extension tables--there was the palatial splendor of

white and gilt. At the forward end near the main entrance was

the office. Susan, peering in from the darkness of the deck, saw

that the way was clear. The Sutherland passengers had been

accommodated. She entered, put her bundle down, faced the clerk

behind the desk.

"Why, howdy, Miss Lenox," said he genially, beginning to twist

his narrow, carefully attended blond mustache. "Any of the folks

with you?"

She remembered his face but not his name. She remembered him as

one of the "river characters" regarded as outcast by the

Christian respectability of Sutherland. But she who could not

but be polite to everybody smiled pleasantly, though she did not

like his expression as he looked at her. "No, I'm alone," said she.

"Oh--your friends are going to meet you at the wharf in the

morning," said he, content with his own explanation. "Just sign

here, please." And, as she wrote, he went on: "I've got one room

left. Ain't that lucky? It's a nice one, too. You'll be very

comfortable. Everybody at home well? I ain't been in Sutherland

for nigh ten years. Every week or so I think I will, and then

somehow I don't. Here's your key--number 34 right-hand side,

well down toward the far end, yonder. Two dollars, please. Thank

you--exactly right. Hope you sleep well."

"Thank you," said Susan.

She turned away with the key which was thrust through one end of

a stick about a foot long, to make it too bulky for

absent-minded passengers to pocket. She took up her bundle,

walked down the long saloon with its gilt decorations, its

crystal chandeliers, its double array of small doors, each

numbered. The clerk looked after her, admiration of the fine

curve of her shoulders, back, and hips written plain upon his

insignificant features. And it was a free admiration he would

not have dared show had she not been a daughter of

illegitimacy--a girl whose mother's "looseness" raised pleasing

if scandalous suggestions and even possibilities in the mind of

every man with a carnal eye. And not unnaturally. To think of

her was to think of the circumstances surrounding her coming

into the world; and to think of those circumstances was to think

of immorality.

Susan, all unconscious of that polluted and impudent gaze, was

soon standing before the narrow door numbered 34, as she barely

made out, for the lamps in the saloon chandeliers were turned

low. She unlocked it, entered the small clean stateroom and

deposited her bundle on the floor. With just a glance at her

quarters she hurried to the opposite door--the one giving upon

the promenade. She opened it, stepped out, crossed the deserted

deck and stood at the rail.

The _General Lytle_ was drawing slowly away from the wharf-boat.

As that part of the promenade happened to be sheltered from the

steamer's lights, she was seeing the panorama of Sutherland--its

long stretch of shaded waterfront, its cupolas and steeples, the

wide leafy streets leading straight from the river by a gentle

slope to the base of the dark towering bluffs behind the

town--all sleeping in peace and beauty in the soft light of the

moon. That farthest cupola to the left--it was the Number Two

engine house, and the third place from it was her uncle's house.

Slowly the steamer, now in mid-stream, drew away from the town.

One by one the familiar landmarks--the packing house, the soap

factory, the Geiss brewery, the tall chimney of the pumping

station, the shorn top of Reservoir Hill--slipped ghostlily away

to the southwest. The sobs choked up into her throat and the

tears rained from her eyes. They all pitied and looked down on

her there; still, it had been home the only home she ever had

known or ever would know. And until these last few frightful

days, how happy she had been there! For the first time she felt

desolate, weak, afraid. But not daunted. It is strange to see in

strong human character the strength and the weakness, two flat

contradictions, existing side by side and making weak what seems

so strong and making strong what seems so weak. However, human

character is a tangle of inconsistencies, as disorderly and

inchoate as the tangible and visible parts of nature. Susan felt

weak, but not the kind of weakness that skulks. And there lay

the difference, the abysmal difference, between courage and

cowardice. Courage has full as much fear as cowardice, often

more; but it has a something else that cowardice has not. It

trembles and shivers but goes forward.

Wiping her eyes she went back to her own cabin. She had

neglected closing its other door, the one from the saloon. The

clerk was standing smirking in the doorway.

"You must be going away for quite some time," said he. And he

fixed upon her as greedy and impudent eyes as ever looked from

a common face. It was his battle glance. Guileful women, bent on

trimming him for anything from a piece of plated jewelry to a

saucer of ice cream, had led him to believe that before it walls

of virtue tottered and fell like Jericho's before the trumpets

of Joshua.

"It makes me a little homesick to see the old town disappear,"

hastily explained Susan, recovering herself. The instant anyone

was watching, her emotions always hid.

"Wouldn't you like to sit out on deck a while?" pursued the

clerk, bringing up a winning smile to reinforce the fetching stare.

The idea was attractive, for she did not feel like sleep. It

would be fine to sit out in the open, watch the moon and the

stars, the mysterious banks gliding swiftly by, and new vistas

always widening out ahead. But not with this puny, sandy little

"river character," not with anybody that night. "No," replied

she. "I think I'll go to bed."

She had hesitated--and that was enough to give him

encouragement. "Now, do come," he urged. "You don't know how

nice it is. And they say I'm mighty good company."

"No, thanks." Susan nodded a pleasant dismissal.

The clerk lingered. "Can't I help you in some way? Wouldn't you

like me to get you something?"

"No--nothing."

"Going to visit in Cincinnati? I know the town from A to Izzard.

It's a lot of fun over the Rhine. I've had mighty good times

there--the kind a pretty, lively girl like you would take to."

"When do we get to Cincinnati?"

"About eight--maybe half-past seven. Depends on the landings we

have to make, and the freight."

"Then I'll not have much time for sleep," said Susan. "Good

night." And no more realizing the coldness of her manner than

the reason for his hanging about, she faced him, hand on the

door to close it.

"You ain't a bit friendly," wheedled he.

"I'm sorry you think so. Good night--and thank you." And he

could not but withdraw his form from the door. She closed it and

forgot him. And she did not dream she had passed through one of

those perilous adventures incident to a female traveling

alone--adventures that even in the telling frighten ladies whose

nervousness for their safety seems to increase in direct

proportion to the degree of tranquillity their charms create in

the male bosom. She decided it would be unwise regularly to

undress; the boat might catch fire or blow up or something. She

took off skirt, hat and ties, loosened her waist, and lay upon

the lower of the two plain, hard little berths. The throb of the

engines, the beat of the huge paddles, made the whole boat

tremble and shiver. Faintly up from below came the sound of

quarrels over crap-shooting, of banjos and singing--from the

roustabouts amusing themselves between landings. She thought she

would not be able to sleep in these novel and exciting

surroundings. She had hardly composed herself before she lost

consciousness, to sleep on and on dreamlessly, without motion.

CHAPTER VII

SHE was awakened by a crash so uproarious that she sat bolt

upright before she had her eyes open. Her head struck stunningly

against the bottom of the upper berth. This further confused her

thoughts. She leaped from the bed, caught up her slippers,

reached for her opened-up bundle. The crash was still billowing

through the boat; she now recognized it as a great gong sounding

for breakfast. She sat down on the bed and rubbed her head and

laughed merrily. "I _am_ a greenhorn!" she said. "Another minute

and I'd have had the whole boat laughing at me."

She felt rested and hungry--ravenously hungry. She tucked in her

blouse, washed as well as she could in the tiny bowl on the

little washstand. Then before the cloudy watermarked mirror she

arranged her scarcely mussed hair. A charming vision of fresh

young loveliness, strong, erect, healthy, bright of eye and of

cheek, she made as, after a furtive look up and down the saloon,

she stepped from her door a very few minutes after the crash of

that gong. With much scuffling and bustling the passengers, most

of them country people, were hurrying into places at the tables

which now had their extension leaves and were covered with

coarse white tablecloths and with dishes of nicked stoneware,

white, indeed, but shabbily so. But Susan's young eyes were not

critical. To her it all seemed fine, with the rich flavor of

adventure. A more experienced traveler might have been filled

with gloomy foreboding by the quality of the odor from the

cooking. She found it delightful and sympathized with the

unrestrained eagerness of the homely country faces about her,

with the children beating their spoons on their empty plates.

The colored waiters presently began to stream in, each wearing

a soiled white jacket, each bearing aloft a huge tray on which

were stacked filled dishes and steaming cups.

Colored people have a keen instinct for class. One of the

waiters happened to note her, advanced bowing and smiling with

that good-humored, unservile courtesy which is the peculiar

possession of the Americanized colored race. He flourished her

into a chair with a "Good morning, miss. It's going to be a fine

day." And as soon as she was seated he began to form round her

plate a large inclosing arc of side dishes--fried fish, fried

steak, fried egg, fried potatoes, wheat cakes, canned peaches,

a cup of coffee. He drew toward her a can of syrup, a pitcher of

cream, and a bowl of granulated sugar.

"Anything else?" said he, with a show of teeth white and sound.

"No--nothing. Thank you so much."

Her smile stimulated him to further courtesies. "Some likes the

yeggs biled. Shall I change 'em?"

"No. I like them this way." She was so hungry that the idea of

taking away a certainty on the chance of getting something out

of sight and not yet cooked did not attract her.

"Perhaps--a little better piece of steak?"

"No--this looks fine." Her enthusiasm was not mere politeness.

"I clean forgot your hot biscuits." And away he darted.

When he came back with a heaping plate of hot biscuits, Sally

Lunn and cornbread, she was eating as heartily as any of her

neighbors. It seemed to her that never had she tasted such grand

food as this served in the white and gold saloon with

strangeness and interest all about her and the delightful sense

of motion--motion into the fascinating golden unknown. The men

at the table were eating with their knives; each had one

protecting forearm and hand cast round his arc of small dishes

as if to ward off probable attempt at seizure. And they

swallowed as if the boat were afire. The women ate more

daintily, as became members of the finer sex on public

exhibition. They were wearing fingerless net gloves, and their

little fingers stood straight out in that gesture which every

truly elegant woman deems necessary if the food is to be

daintily and artistically conveyed to her lips. The children

mussed and gormed themselves, their dishes, the tablecloth.

Susan loved it all. Her eyes sparkled. She ate everything, and

regretted that lack of capacity made it impossible for her to

yield to the entreaties of her waiter that she "have a little more."

She rose, went into the nearest passageway between saloon and

promenade, stealthily took a ten-cent piece from her pocketbook.

She called her waiter and gave it to him. She was blushing

deeply, frightened lest this the first tip she had ever given or

seen given be misunderstood and refused. "I'm so much obliged,"

she said. "You were very nice."

The waiter bowed like a prince, always with his simple, friendly

smile; the tip disappeared under his apron. "Nobody could help

being nice to you, lady."

She thanked him again and went to the promenade. It seemed to

her that they had almost arrived. Along shore stretched a

continuous line of houses--pretty houses with gardens. There

were electric cars. Nearer the river lay several parallel lines

of railway track along which train after train was speeding,

some of them short trains of ordinary day coaches, others long

trains made up in part of coaches grander and more beautiful

than any she had ever seen. She knew they must be the parlor and

dining and sleeping cars she had read about. And now they were

in the midst of a fleet of steamers and barges, and far ahead

loomed the first of Cincinnati's big suspension bridges,

pictures of which she had many a time gazed at in wonder. There

was a mingling of strange loud noises--whistles, engines, on the

water, on shore; there was a multitude of what seemed to her

feverish activities--she who had not been out of quiet

Sutherland since she was a baby too young to note things.

The river, the shores, grew more and more crowded. Susan's eyes

darted from one new object to another; and eagerly though she

looked she felt she was missing more than she saw.

"Why, Susan Lenox!" exclaimed a voice almost in her ear.

She closed her teeth upon a cry; suddenly she was back from

wonderland to herself. She turned to face dumpy, dressy Mrs.

Waterbury and her husband with the glossy kinky ringlets and the

long wavy mustache. "How do you do?" she stammered.

"We didn't know you were aboard," said Mrs. Waterbury, a silly,

duck-legged woman looking proudly uncomfortable in her

bead-trimmed black silk.

"Yes--I'm--I'm here," confessed Susan.

"Going to the city to visit?"

"Yes," said Susan. She hesitated, then repeated, "Yes."

"What elegant breakfasts they do serve on these boats! I suppose

your friends'll meet you. But Mort and I'll look after you till

they come."

"Oh, it isn't necessary," protested Susan. The steamer was

passing under the bridge. There were cities on both shores--huge

masses of dingy brick, streets filled with motion of every

kind--always motion, incessant motion, and change. "We're about

there, aren't we?" she asked.

"The wharf's up beyond the second bridge--the Covington Bridge,"

explained Waterbury with the air of the old experienced

globe-trotter. "There's a third one, further up, but you can't

see it for the smoke." And he went on and on, volubly airing his

intimate knowledge of the great city which he visited once a

year for two or three days to buy goods. He ended with a

scornful, "My, but Cincinnati's a dirty place!"

Dirty it might be, but Susan loved it, dirt and all. The smoke,

the grime somehow seemed part of it, one of its charms, one of

the things that made it different from, and superior to,

monotonous country and country town. She edged away from the

Waterburys, hid in her stateroom watching the panorama through

the curtained glass of her promenade deck door. She was

completely carried away. The city! So, this was the city! And

her dreams of travel, of new sights, new faces, were beginning

to come true. She forgot herself, forgot what she had left

behind, forgot what she was to face. All her power of thought

and feeling was used up in absorbing these unfolding wonders.

And when the June sun suddenly pierced the heavy clouds of fog and

smoke, she clasped her hands and gasped, "Lovely! Oh, how lovely!"

And now the steamer was at the huge wharf-boat, in shape like

the one at Sutherland, but in comparative size like the real

Noah's Ark beside a toy ark. And from the whole tremendous scene

rose an enormous clamor, the stentorian voice of the city. That

voice is discordant and terrifying to many. To Susan, on that

day, it was the most splendid burst of music. "Awake--awake!" it

cried. "Awake, and _live!_" She opened her door that she might

hear it better--rattle and rumble and roar, shriek of whistle,

clang of bell. And the people!--Thousands on thousands hurrying

hither and yon, like bees in a hive. "Awake awake, and live!"

The noises from the saloon reminded her that the journey was

ended, that she must leave the boat. And she did not know where

to go--she and her bundle. She waited until she saw the

Waterburys, along with the other passengers, moving up the

levee. Then she issued forth--by the promenade deck door so that

she would not pass the office. But at the head of the

companionway, in the forward part of the deck, there the clerk

stood, looking even pettier and more offensive by daylight. She

thought to slip by him. But he stopped stroking his mustache and

called out to her, "Haven't your friends come?"

She frowned, angry in her nervousness. "I shall get on very

well," she said curtly. Then she repented, smiled politely,

added, "Thank you."

"I'll put you in a carriage," he offered, hastening down the

stairs to join her.

She did not know what to say or do. She walked silently beside

him, he carrying her bundle. They crossed the wharf-boat. A line

of dilapidated looking carriages was drawn up near the end of

the gangplank. The sight of them, the remembrance of what she

had heard of the expensiveness of city carriages, nerved her to

desperation. "Give me my things, please," she said. "I think I'll

walk."

"Where do you want to go?"

The question took her breath away. With a quickness that amazed

her, her lips uttered, "The Gibson House."

"Oh! That's a right smart piece. But you can take a car. I'll walk

with you to the car. There's a line a couple of squares up that

goes almost by the door. You know it isn't far from Fourth Street."

She was now in a flutter of terror. She went stumbling along

beside him, not hearing a word of his voluble and flirtatious

talk. They were in the midst of the mad rush and confusion. The

noises, no longer mingled but individual, smote savagely upon

her ears, startling her, making her look dazedly round as if

expecting death to swoop upon her. At the corner of Fourth Street

the clerk halted. He was clear out of humor with her, so dumb,

so unappreciative. "There'll be a car along soon," said he sourly.

"You needn't wait," said she timidly. "Thank you again."

"You can't miss it. Good-by." And he lifted his hat--"tipped"

it, rather--for he would not have wasted a full lift upon such

a female. She gave a gasp of relief when he departed; then a

gasp of terror--for upon the opposite corner stood the

Waterburys. The globe-trotter and his wife were so dazed by the

city that they did not see her, though in their helpless

glancing round they looked straight at her. She hastily ran into

a drug store on the corner. A young man in shirt sleeves held up

by pink garters, and with oily black hair carefully parted and

plastered, put down a pestle and mortar and came forward. He had

kind brown eyes, but there was something wrong with the lower

part of his face. Susan did not dare look to see what it was,

lest he should think her unfeeling. He was behind the counter.

Susan saw the soda fountain. As if by inspiration, she said,

"Some chocolate soda, please."

"Ice cream?" asked the young man in a peculiar voice, like that

of one who has a harelip.

"Please," said Susan. And then she saw the sign, "Ice Cream, ten

cents," and wished she hadn't.

The young man mixed the soda, put in a liberal helping of ice

cream, set it before her with a spoon in it, rested the knuckles

of his brown hairy hands on the counter and said:

"It _is_ hot."

"Yes, indeed," assented Susan. "I wonder where I could leave my

bundle for a while. I'm a stranger and I want to look for a

boarding house."

"You might leave it here with me," said the young man. "That's

about our biggest line of trade--that and postage stamps and

telephone--_and_ the directory. "He laughed heartily. Susan did

not see why; she did not like the sound, either, for the young

man's deformity of lower jaw deformed his laughter as well as

his speech. However, she smiled politely and ate and drank her

soda slowly.

"I'll be glad to take care of your bundle," the young man said

presently. "Ever been here before?"

"No," said Susan. "That is, not since I was about four years old."

"I was four," said the young man, "when a horse stepped on my

mouth in the street."

"My, how dreadful!" exclaimed Susan.

"You can see some of the scar yet," the young man assured her,

and he pointed to his curiously sunken mouth. "The doctors said

it was the most remarkable case of the kind on record,"

continued he proudly. "That was what led me into the medical

line. You don't seem to have your boarding house picked."

"I was going to look in the papers."

"That's dangerous--especially for a young lady. Some of them

boarding houses--well, they're no better'n they ought to be."

"I don't suppose you know of any?"

"My aunt keeps one. And she's got a vacancy, it being summer."

"I'm afraid it'd be too expensive for me," said Susan, to feel her way.

The young man was much flattered. But he said, "Oh, it ain't so

toppy. I think you could make a deal with her for five per."

Susan looked inquiring.

"Five a week--room and board."

"I might stand that," said Susan reflectively. Then, deciding

for complete confidence, "I'm looking for work, too."

"What line?"

"Oh, I never tried anything. I thought maybe dressmaking or millinery."

"Mighty poor season for jobs. The times are bad, anyhow." He was

looking at her with kindly curiosity. "If I was you, I'd go back

home--and wait."

Susan shrank within herself. "I can't do that," she said.

The young man thought awhile, then said: "If you should go to my

aunt's, you can say Mr. Ellison sent you. No, that ain't me.

It's the boss. You see, a respectable boarding house asks for

references."

Susan colored deeply and her gaze slowly sank. "I didn't know

that," she murmured.

"Don't be afraid. Aunt Kate ain't so particular--leastways, not

in summer when things is slow. And I know you're quiet."

By the time the soda was finished, the young man--who said his

name was Robert Wylie--had written on the back of Ellison's

business card in a Spencerian hand: "Mrs. Kate Wylie, 347 West

Sixth Street." He explained that Susan was to walk up two

squares and take the car going west; the conductor would let her

off at the right place. "You'd better leave your things here,"

said Mr. Wylie, holding up the card so that they could admire

his penmanship together. "You may not hit it off with Aunt Kate.

Don't think you've got to stay there just because of me."

"I'm sure I'll like it," Susan declared confidently. Her spirits

were high; she felt that she was in a strong run of luck.

Wylie lifted her package over the counter and went to the door

with her to point out the direction. "This is Fourth. The next

up is Fifth. The next wide one is Sixth--and you can read it on

the lamp-post, too."

"Isn't that convenient!" exclaimed Susan. "What a lovely city this is!"

"There's worse," said Mr. Wylie, not to seem vain of his native town.

They shook hands most friendly and she set out in the direction

he had indicated. She was much upset by the many vehicles and

the confusion, but she did her best to seem at ease and at home.

She watched a girl walking ahead of her--a shopgirl who seemed

well-dressed and stylish, especially about the hat and hair.

Susan tried to walk like her. "I suppose I look and act greener

than I really am," thought she. "But I'll keep my eyes open and

catch on." And in this, as in all her thoughts and actions since

leaving, she showed confidence not because she was conceited,

but because she had not the remotest notion what she was

actually attempting. How many of us get credit for courage as we

walk unconcerned through perils, or essay and conquer great

obstacles, when in truth we are not courageous but simply

unaware! As a rule knowledge is power or, rather, a source of

power, but there are times when ignorance is a power and

knowledge a weakness. If Susan had known, she might perhaps have

stayed at home and submitted and, with crushed spirit, might

have sunk under the sense of shame and degradation. But she did

not know; so Columbus before his sailors or Caesar at the

Rubicon among his soldiers did not seem more tranquil than she

really was. Wylie, who suspected in the direction of the truth,

wondered at her. "She's game, she is," he muttered again and

again that morning. "What a nerve for a kid--and a lady, too!"

She found the right corner and the right car without further

adventure; and the conductor assured her that he would set her

down before the very door of the address on the card. It was an

open car with few passengers. She took the middle of the long

seat nearest the rear platform and looked about her like one in

a happy dream. On and on and yet on they went. With every square

they passed more people, so it seemed to her, than there were in

all Sutherland. And what huge stores! And what wonderful

displays of things to wear! Where would the people be found to

buy such quantities, and where would they get the money to pay?

How many restaurants and saloons! Why, everybody must be eating

and drinking all the time. And at each corner she looked up and

down the cross streets, and there were more and ever more

magnificent buildings, throngs upon throngs of people. Was there

no end to it? This was Sixth Street, still Sixth Street, as she

saw at the corner lamp-posts. Then there must be five more such

streets between this and the river; and she could see, up the

cross streets, that the city was even vaster in the direction of

the hills. And there were all these cross streets! It was

stupefying--overwhelming--incredible.

She began to be nervous, they were going so far. She glanced

anxiously at the conductor. He was watching her interestedly,

understood her glance, answered it with a reassuring nod. He

called out:

"I'm looking out for you, miss. I've got you on my mind. Don't

you fret."

She gave him a bright smile of relief. They were passing through

a double row of what seemed to her stately residences, and there

were few people on the sidewalks. The air, too, was clearer,

though the walls were grimy and also the grass in the occasional

tiny front yards. But the curtains at the windows looked clean

and fresh, and so did the better class of people among those on

the sidewalk. It delighted her to see so many well-dressed

women, wearing their clothes with an air which she told herself

she must acquire. She was startled by the conductor's calling out:

"Now, miss!"

She rose as he rang the bell and was ready to get off when the

car stopped, for she was eager to cause him as little trouble as

possible.

"The house is right straight before you," said the conductor.

"The number's in the transom."

She thanked him, descended, was on the sidewalk before Mrs.

Wylie's. She looked at the house and her heart sank. She thought

of the small sum in her purse; it was most unlikely that such a

house as this would harbor her. For here was a grand stone

stairway ascending to a deep stone portico, and within it great

doors, bigger than those of the Wright mansion, the palace of

Sutherland. However, she recalled the humble appearance and mode

of speech of her friend the drug clerk and plucked up the

courage to ascend and to ring.

A slattern, colored maid opened the door. At the first glance

within, at the first whiff of the interior air, Susan felt more

at ease. For she was seeing what even her bedazzled eyes

recognized as cheap dowdiness, and the smell that assailed her

nostrils was that of a house badly and poorly kept--the smell of

cheap food and bad butter cooking, of cats, of undusted rooms,

of various unrecognizable kinds of staleness. She stood in the

center of the big dingy parlor, gazing round at the grimed

chromos until Mrs. Wylie entered--a thin middle-aged woman with

small brown eyes set wide apart, a perpetual frown, and a chin

so long and so projected that she was almost jimber-jawed. While

Susan explained stammeringly what she had come for, Mrs. Wylie

eyed her with increasing disfavor. When Susan had finished, she

unlocked her lips for the first time to say:

"The room's took."

"Oh!" cried Susan in dismay.

The telephone rang in the back parlor. Mrs. Wylie excused

herself to answer. After a few words she closed the doors

between. She was gone fully five minutes; to Susan it seemed an

hour. She came back, saying:

"I've been talking to my nephew. He called up. Well, I reckon

you can have the room. It ain't my custom to take in ladies as

young as you. But you seem to be all right. Your parents allowed

you to come?"

"I haven't any," replied Susan. "I'm here to find a place and

support myself."

Mrs. Wylie continued to eye her dubiously. "Well, I have no wish

to pry into your affairs. 'Mind your own business,' that's my

rule." She spoke with defiance, as if the contrary were being

asserted by some invisible person who might appear and gain

hearing and belief. She went on: "If Mr. Ellison wants it, why I

suppose it's all right. But you can't stay out later'n ten o'clock."

"I shan't go out at all of nights," said Susan eagerly.

"You _look_ quiet," said Mrs. Wylie, with the air of adding that

appearances were rarely other than deceptive.

"Oh, I _am_ quiet," declared Susan. It puzzled her, this

recurrence of the suggestion of noisiness.

"I can't allow much company--none in your room."

"There won't be any company." She blushed deeply. "That is, a--a

young man from our town--he may call once. But he'll be off for

the East right away."

Mrs. Wylie reflected on this, Susan the while standing uneasily,

dreading lest decision would be against her. Finally Mrs. Wylie said:

"Robert says you want the five-dollar room. I'll show it to you."

They ascended two flights through increasing shabbiness. On the

third floor at the rear was a room--a mere continuation of the

narrow hall, partitioned off. It contained a small folding bed,

a small table, a tiny bureau, a washstand hardly as large as

that in the cabin on the boat, a row of hooks with a curtain of

flowered chintz before them, a kitchen chair, a chromo of "Awake

and Asleep," a torn and dirty rag carpet. The odor of the room,

stale, damp, verging on moldy, seemed the fitting exhalation

from such an assemblage of forbidding objects.

"It's a nice, comfortable room," said Mrs. Wylie aggressively.

"I couldn't afford to give it and two meals for five dollars

except till the first of September. After that it's eight."

"I'll be glad to stay, if you'll let me," said Susan. Mrs.

Wylie's suspicion, so plain in those repellent eyes, took all

the courage out of her. The great adventure seemed rapidly to be

losing its charms. She could not think of herself as content or

anything but sad and depressed in such surroundings as these.

How much better it would be if she could live out in the open,

out where it was attractive!

"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.

At nine o'clock the twenty-mile drive ended in a long, slow

climb up a road so washed out, so full of holes and bowlders,

that it was no road at all but simply a weather-beaten hillside.

A mile of this, with the liveryman's curses--"dod rot it" and

"gosh dang it" and similar modifications of profanity for

Christian use and for the presence of "the sex"--ringing out at

every step. Susan soon awakened, rather because the surrey was

pitching so wildly than because of Goslin's denunciations. A

brief level stretch and they stopped for Warham to open the

outer gate into his brother Zeke's big farm. A quarter of a mile

through wheat to the tops of the wheels and they reached the

second gate. A descent into a valley, a crossing of a creek, an

ascent of a steep hill, and they were at the third gate--between

pasture and barnyard. Now they came into view of the house, set

upon a slope where a spring bubbled out. The house was white and

a white picket fence cut off its lawn from the barnyard. A dog

with a deep voice began to bark. They drove up to the front gate

and stopped. The dog barked in a frenzy of rage, and they heard

his straining and jerking at his chain. A clump of cedars

brooded to the right of the house; their trunks were whitewashed

up to the lowest branches. The house had a high stoop with

wooden steps.

As Warham descended and hallooed, there came a fierce tugging at

the front door from the inside. But the front door was not in

the habit of being opened, and stoutly resisted. The assault

grew more strenuous; the door gave way and a tall thin farmer

appeared.

"Hello, Zeke," called George. He opened the surrey door. "Get

down," he said to the girl, at the same time taking her bundle.

He set it on the horse block beside the gate, took out his

pocketbook and paid over the four dollars. "Good-by, Vic," said

he pleasantly. "That's a good team you've got."

"Not so coarse," said Vic. "Good-by, Mr. Warham." And off he drove.

Zeke Warham had now descended the steps and was opening the

front gate, which was evidently as unaccustomed to use as the

front door. "Howdy, George," said he. "Ain't that Susie you've

got with you?" Like George, Zeke had had an elementary

education. But he had married an ignorant woman, and had lived

so long among his farm hands and tenants that he used their mode

of speech.

"Yes, it's Susie," said George, shaking hands with his brother.

"Howdy, Susie," said Zeke, shaking hands with her. "I see you've

got your things with you. Come to stay awhile?"

George interrupted. "Susan, go up on the porch and take your bundle."

The girl took up the shawl strap and went to the front door. She

leaned upon the railing of the stoop and watched the two men

standing at the gate. George was talking to his brother in a low

tone. Occasionally the brother uttered an ejaculation. She could

not hear; their heads were so turned that she could not see

their faces. The moon made it almost as bright as day. From the

pasture woods came a low, sweet chorus of night life--frogs and

insects and occasionally a night bird. From the orchard to the

left and the clover fields beyond came a wonderful scented

breeze. She heard a step in the hall; her Aunt Sallie

appeared--a comfortable, voluble woman, a hard worker and a

harder eater and showing it in thin hair and wrinkled face.

"Why, Susie Lenox, ain't that you?" she exclaimed.

"Yes, Aunt," said Susan.

Her aunt kissed her, diffusing that earthy odor which is the

basis of the smell of country persons. At various hours of the

day this odor would be modified with the smell of cow stables,

of chickens, of cooking, according to immediate occupation. But

whatever other smell there was, the earthy smell persisted. And

it was the smell of the house, too.

"Who's at the gate with your Uncle Zeke?" inquired Sallie.

"Ain't it George?"

"Yes," said Susan.

"Why don't he come in?" She raised her voice. "George, ain't you

coming in?"

"Howdy, Sallie," called George. "You take the girl in. Zeke and

I'll be along."

"Some business, I reckon," said her aunt to Susan. "Come on.

Have you had supper?"

"No," said Susan. She was hungry now. The splendid health of the

girl that had calmed her torment of soul into a dull ache was

clamoring for food--food to enable her body to carry her strong

and enduring through whatever might befall.

"I'll set something out for you," said Sallie. "Come right in.

You might leave your bundle here by the parlor door. We'll put

you in the upstairs room."

They passed the front stairway, went back through the hall,

through the big low-ceilinged living-room with its vast

fireplace now covered for the warm season by a screen of

flowered wallpaper. They were in the plain old dining-room with

its smaller fireplace and its big old-fashioned cupboards built

into the wall on either side of the projecting chimney-piece.

"There ain't much," resumed Sallie. "But I reckon you kin make out."

On the gayly patterned table cover she set an array of

substantial plates and glasses. From various cupboards in

dining-room and adjoining kitchen she assembled a glass pitcher

of sweet milk, a glass pitcher of buttermilk, a plate of cold

cornbread, a platter of cold fried chicken, a dish of golden

butter, a pan of cold fried potatoes, a jar of preserved crab

apples and another of peach butter. Susan watched with hungry

eyes. She was thinking of nothing but food now. Her aunt looked

at her and smiled.

"My, but you're shootin' up!" she exclaimed, admiring the girl's

tall, straight figure. "And you don't seem to get stringy and

bony like so many, but keep nice and round. Do set down."

"I--I think I'll wait until Uncle George comes."

"Nothing of the kind!" She pushed a wooden chair before one of

the two plates she had laid. "I see you've still got that lovely

skin. And how tasty you dress! Now, do set!"

Susan seated herself.

"Pitch right in, child," urged Sallie. "How's yer aunt and her Ruth?"

"They're--they're well, thank you."

"Do eat!"

"No," said Susan. "I'll wait for Uncle."

"Never mind your manners. I know you're starved." Then seeing

that the girl would not eat, she said, "Well, I'll go fetch him."

But Susan stopped her. "Please please don't," she entreated.

Sallie stared to oppose; then, arrested by the intense,

appealing expression in those violet-gray eyes, so beautifully

shaded by dark lashes and brows, she kept silent, bustled

aimlessly about, boiling with suddenly aroused curiosity. It was

nearly half an hour by the big square wooden clock on the

chimney-piece when Susan heard the steps of her two uncles. Her

hunger fled; the deathly sickness surged up again. She trembled,

grew ghastly in the yellow lamplight. Her hands clutched each

other in her lap.

"Why, Susie!" cried her aunt. "Whatever is the matter of you!"

The girl lifted her eyes to her aunt's face the eyes of a

wounded, suffering, horribly suffering animal. She rose,

rushed out of the door into the yard, flung herself down on the

grass. But still she could not get the relief of tears. After a

while she sat up and listened. She heard faintly the voices of

her uncle and his relatives. Presently her aunt came out to her.

She hid her face in her arm and waited for the new harshness to

strike.

"Get up and come in, Susie." The voice was kind, was

pitying--not with the pity that galls, but with the pity of one

who understands and feels and is also human, the pity that

soothes. At least to this woman she was not outcast.

The girl flung herself down again and sobbed--poured out upon the

bosom of our mother earth all the torrents of tears that had been

damming up within her. And Sallie knelt beside her and patted

her now and then, with a "That's right. Cry it out, sweetie."

When tears and sobs subsided Sallie lifted her up, walked to the

house with her arm round her. "Do you feel better?"

"Some," admitted Susan.

"The men folks have went. So we kin be comfortable. After you've

et, you'll feel still better."

George Warham had made a notable inroad upon the food and drink.

But there was an abundance left. Susan began with a hesitating

sipping at a glass of milk and nibbling at one of the generous

cubes of old-fashioned cornbread. Soon she was busy. It

delighted Sallie to see her eat. She pressed the preserves, the

chicken, the cornbread upon her. "I haven't eaten since early

this morning," apologized the girl.

"That means a big hole to fill," observed Sallie. "Try this buttermilk."

But Susan could hold no more.

"I reckon you're pretty well tired out," observed Sallie.

"I'll help you straighten up," said Susan, rising.

"No. Let me take you up to bed--while the men's still outside."

Susan did not insist. They returned through the empty

sitting-room and along the hall. Aunt Sallie took the bundle,

and they ascended to the spare bedroom. Sallie showed her into

the front room--a damp, earthy odor; a wallpaper with countless

reproductions of two little brown girls in a brown swing under

a brown tree; a lofty bed, white and tomb-like; some

preposterous artificial flowers under glass on chimney-piece and

table; three bright chromos on the walls; "God Bless Our Home"

in pink, blue and yellow worsted over the door.

"I'll run down and put the things away," said her aunt. "Then

I'll come back."

Susan put her bundle on the sofa, opened it, found nightgown and

toilet articles on top. She looked uncertainly about, rapidly

undressed, got into the nightgown. "I'll turn down the bed and

lie on it until Auntie comes," she said to herself. The bed was

delightfully cool; the shuck mattress made soft crackling sounds

under her and gave out a soothing odor of the fields. Hardly had

her head touched the pillow when she fell sound asleep. In a few

minutes her aunt came hurrying in, stopped short at sight of

that lovely childlike face with the lamplight full upon it. One

of Susan's tapering arms was flung round her dark wavy hair.

Sallie Warham smiled gently. "Bless the baby" she said half

aloud. Then her smile faded and a look of sadness and pity came.

"Poor child!" she murmured. "The Warham men's hard. But then all

the men's hard. Poor child." And gently she kissed the girl's

flushed cheek. "And she never had no mother, nor nothing." She

sighed, gradually lowered the flame of the little old glass

lamp, blew it out, and went noiselessly from the room, closing

the door behind her.

CHAPTER IX

SUSAN sat up in bed suddenly, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

It was broad day, and the birds were making a mighty clamor. She

gazed round, astonished that it was not her own room. Then she

remembered. But it was as a child remembers; for when we have

the sense of perfect physical well-being we cannot but see our

misfortunes with the child's sense of unreality--and Susan had

not only health but youth, was still in the child stage of the

period between childhood and womanhood. She lay down again, with

the feeling that so long as she could stay in that comfortable

bed, with the world shut out, just so long would all be well

with her. Soon, however, the restlessness of all nature under

the stimulus and heat of that brilliant day communicated itself

to her vigorous young body. For repose and inaction are as

foreign to healthy life as death itself, of which they are the

symptoms; and if ever there was an intense and vivid life, Susan

had it. She got up and dressed, and leaned from the window,

watching the two-horse reaper in the wheat fields across the

hollow of the pasture, and listening to its faint musical whirr.

The cows which had just been milked were moving sedately through

the gate into the pasture, where the bull, under a tree, was

placidly awaiting them. A boy, in huge straw hat and a blue

cotton shirt and linsey woolsey trousers rolled high upon his

brown bare legs, was escorting the herd.

Her aunt in fresh, blue, checked calico came in. "Wouldn't you

like some breakfast?" said she. And Susan read in her manner

that the men were out of the way.

"No, I don't feel hungry," Susan replied.

She thought this was true; but when she was at the table she ate

almost as heartily as she had the night before. As Susan ate she

gazed out into the back yard of the house, where chickens of all

sizes, colors and ages were peering and picking about. Through

the fence of the kitchen garden she saw Lew, the farm hand,

digging potatoes. There were ripening beans on tall poles, and

in the farther part the forming heads of cabbages, the sprouting

melon vines, the beautiful fresh green of the just springing

garden corn. The window through which she was looking was framed

in morning glories and hollyhocks, and over by the garden gate

were on the one side a clump of elders, on the other the hardy

graceful stalks of gaudily spreading sunflowers. Bees flew in

and out, and one lighted upon the dish of honey in the comb that

went so well with the hot biscuit.

She rose and wandered out among the chickens, to pick up little

fluffy youngsters one after another, and caress them, to look in

the henhouse itself, where several hens were sitting with the

pensive expression that accompanies the laying of eggs. She

thought of those other hens, less conventional, who ran away to

lay in secret places in the weeds, to accumulate a store against

the time when the setting instinct should possess them.

She thought of those cannier, less docile hens and laughed. She

opened a gate into the barnyard, intending to go to the barn for

a look at the horses, taking in the duck pond and perhaps the

pigs on the way. Her Uncle George's voice arrested her.

"Susan," he cried. "Come here."

She turned and looked wistfully at him. The same harsh,

unforgiving countenance--mean with anger and petty thoughts. As

she moved hesitatingly toward him he said, "You are not to go

out of the yard." And he reëntered the house. What a mysterious

cruel world! Could it be the same world she had lived in so

happily all the years until a few days ago--the same she had always

found "God's beautiful world," full of gentleness and kindness?

And why had it changed? What was this sin that after a long

sleep in her mother's grave had risen to poison everyone against

her? And why had it risen? It was all beyond her.

She strolled wretchedly within bounds, with a foreboding of

impending evil. She watched Lew in the garden; she got her aunt

to let her help with the churning--drive the dasher monotonously

up and down until the butter came; then she helped work the

butter, helped gather the vegetables for dinner, did everything

and anything to keep herself from thinking. Toward eleven

o'clock her Uncle Zeke appeared in the dining-room, called his

wife from the kitchen. Susan felt that at last something was to

happen. After a long time her aunt returned; there were all the

evidences of weeping in her face.

"You'd better go to your room and straighten it up," she said

without looking at the girl. "The thing has aired long enough,

I reckon. . . . And you'd better stay up there till I call you."

Susan had finished the room, was about to unpack the heavy-laden

shawl strap and shake the wrinkles out of the skirts, folded

away for two days now. She heard the sound of a horse's hoofs,

went to the window. A young man whom she recognized as one of

her Uncle Zeke's tenants was hitching to the horse block a

well-set-up young mare drawing a species of broad-seated

breaking sulky. He had a handsome common face, a wavy black

mustache. She remembered that his name was Ferguson--Jeb

Ferguson, and that he was working on shares what was known as

"the creek-bottom farm," which began about a mile and a half

away, straight down the pasture hollow. He glanced up at the

window, raised his black slouch hat, and nodded with the

self-conscious, self-assured grin of the desired of women. She

tried to return this salute with a pleasant smile. He entered

the gate and she heard his boots upon the front steps.

Now away across the hollow another figure appeared--a man on

horseback coming through the wheat fields. He was riding toward

the farther gate of the pasture at a leisurely dignified pace.

She had only made out that he had abundant whiskers when the

sound of a step upon the stairs caused her to turn. As that step

came nearer her heart beat more and more wildly. Her wide eyes

fixed upon the open door of the room. It was her Uncle George.

"Sit down," he said as he reached the threshold. "I want

to talk to you."

She seated herself, with hands folded in her lap. Her head was

aching from the beat of the blood in her temples.

"Zeke and I have talked it over," said Warham. "And we've

decided that the only thing to do with you is to get you

settled. So in a few minutes now you're going to be married."

Her lack of expression showed that she did not understand. In

fact, she could only feel--feel the cruel, contemptuous anger of

that voice which all her days before had caressed her.

"We've picked out a good husband for you," Warham continued.

"It's Jeb Ferguson."

Susan quivered. "I--I don't want to," she said.

"It ain't a question of what you want," retorted Warham roughly.

He was twenty-four hours and a night's sleep away from his first

fierce outblazing of fury--away from the influence of his wife

and his daughter. If it had not been for his brother Zeke,

narrow and cold, the event might have been different. But Zeke

was there to keep his "sense of duty" strong. And that he might

nerve himself and hide and put down any tendency to be a

"soft-hearted fool"--a tendency that threatened to grow as he

looked at the girl--the child--he assumed the roughest manner he

could muster.

"It ain't a question of what you want," he repeated. "It's a

question of what's got to be done, to save my family and you,

too--from disgrace. We ain't going to have any more bastards in

this family."

The word meant nothing to the girl. But the sound of it, as her

uncle pronounced it, made her feel as though the blood were

drying up in her veins.

"We ain't going to take any chances," pursued Warham, less

roughly; for now that he had looked the situation full and

frankly in the face, he had no nerve to brace himself. The

necessity of what he was prepared to do and to make her do was

too obvious. "Ferguson's here, and Zeke saw the preacher we sent

for riding in from the main road. So I've come to tell you. If

you'd like to fix up a little, why your Aunt Sallie'll be here

in a minute. You want to pray God to make you a good wife. And

you ought to be thankful you have sensible relations to step in

and save you from yourself."

Susan tried to speak; her voice died in her throat. She made

another effort. "I don't want to," she said.

"Then what do you want to do--tell me that!" exclaimed her

uncle, rough again. For her manner was very moving, the more so

because there was none of the usual appeal to pity and to mercy.

She was silent.

"There isn't anything else for you to do."

"I want to--to stay here."

"Do you think Zeke'd harbor you--when you're about certain to up

and disgrace us as your mother did?"

"I haven't done anything wrong," said the girl dully.

"Don't you dare lie about that!"

"I've seen Ruth do the same with Artie Sinclair--and all the

girls with different boys."

"You miserable girl!" cried her uncle.

"I never heard it was so dreadful to let a boy kiss you."

"Don't pretend to be innocent. You know the difference between

that and what you did!"

Susan realized that when she had kissed Sam she had really loved

him. Perhaps that was the fatal difference. And her mother--the

sin there had been that she really loved while the man hadn't.

Yes, it must be so. Ruth's explanation of these mysteries had

been different; but then Ruth had also admitted that she knew

little about the matter--and Susan most doubted the part that

Ruth had assured her was certainly true.

"I didn't know," said Susan to her uncle. "Nobody ever told me.

I thought we were engaged."

"A good woman don't need to be told," retorted Warham. "But I'm

not going to argue with you. You've got to marry."

"I couldn't do that," said the girl. "No, I couldn't."

"You'll either take him or you go back to Sutherland and I'll

have you locked up in the jail till you can be sent to the House

of Correction. You can take your choice."

Susan sat looking at her slim brown hands and interlacing her

long fingers. The jail! The House of Correction was dreadful

enough, for though she had never seen it she had heard what it

was for, what kind of boys and girls lived there. But the

jail--she had seen the jail, back behind the courthouse, with

its air of mystery and of horror. Not Hell itself seemed such a

frightful thing as that jail.

"Well--which do you choose?" said her uncle in a sharp voice.

The girl shivered. "I don't care what happens to me," she said,

and her voice was dull and sullen and hard.

"And it doesn't much matter," sneered Warham. Every time he

looked at her his anger flamed again at the outrage to his love,

his trust, his honor, and the impending danger of more

illegitimacy. "Marrying Jeb will give you a chance to reform and

be a good woman. He understands--so you needn't be afraid of

what he'll find out."

"I don't care what happens to me," the girl repeated in the same

monotonous voice.

Warham rose. "I'll send your Aunt Sallie," said he. "And when I

call, she'll bring you down."

The girl's silence, her non-resistance the awful expression of

her still features--made him uneasy. He went to the window

instead of to the door. He glanced furtively at her; but he

might have glanced openly as there wasn't the least danger of

meeting her eyes. "You're marrying about as well as you could

have hoped to, anyhow--better, probably," he observed, in an

argumentative, defensive tone. "Zeke says Jeb's about the

likeliest young fellow he knows--a likelier fellow than either

Zeke or I was at his age. I've given him two thousand dollars in

cash. That ought to start you off well." And he went out without

venturing another look at her. Her youth and helplessness, her

stony misery, were again making it harder for him to hold

himself to what he and the fanatic Zeke had decided to be his

duty as a Christian, as a father, as a guardian. Besides, he did

not dare face his wife and his daughter until the whole business

was settled respectably and finally.

His sister-in-law was waiting in the next room. As soon as his

descent cleared the way she hurried in. From the threshold she

glanced at the girl; what she saw sent her hurrying out to

recompose herself. But the instant she again saw that expression

of mute and dazed despair the tears fought for release. The

effort to suppress outward signs of pity made her plain fat face

grotesque. She could not speak. With a corner of her apron she

wiped imaginary dust from the glass bells that protected the

artificial flowers. The poor child! And all for no fault of

hers--and because she had been born out of wedlock. But then,

the old woman reflected, was it not one of the most familiar of

God's mysterious ways that people were punished most severely of

all for the things that weren't their fault--for being born in

shame, or in bad or low families, or sickly, or for being stupid

or ugly or ignorant? She envied Zeke--his unwavering belief in

religion. She believed, but her tender heart was always leading

her into doubts.

She at last got some sort of control over her voice. "It'll turn

out for the best," she said, with her back to Susan. "It don't

make much difference nohow who a woman marries, so long as he's

steady and a good provider. Jeb seems to be a nice feller. He's

better looking than your Uncle George was before he went to town

and married a Lenox and got sleeked up. And Jeb ain't near so

close as some. That's a lot in a husband." And in a kind of

hysteria, bred of fear of silence just then, she rattled on,

telling how this man lay awake o' nights thinking how to skin a

flea for its hide and tallow, how that one had said only a fool

would pay over a quarter for a new hat for his wife----

"Will it be long?" asked the girl.

"I'll go down and see," said Mrs. Warham, glad of a real excuse

for leaving the room. She began to cry as soon as she was in the

hall. Two sparrows lit upon the window sill near Susan and

screamed and pecked at each other in a mock fight. She watched

them; but her shiver at the faint sound of her aunt's returning

step far away down the stairs showed where her attention was.

When Zeke's wife entered she was standing and said:

"Is it time?"

"Come on, honey. Now don't be afraid."

Susan advanced with a firm step, preceded her aunt down the

stairs. The black slouch hat and the straw of dignified cut were

side by side on the shiny hall table. The parlor door was open;

the rarely used showroom gave forth an earthy, moldy odor like

that of a disturbed grave. Its shutters, for the first time in

perhaps a year, were open; the mud daubers that had built in the

crevices between shutters and sills, fancying they would never

be disturbed, were buzzing crossly about their ruined homes. The

four men were seated, each with his legs crossed, and each

wearing the funereal expression befitting a solemn occasion.

Susan did not lift her eyes. The profusely whiskered man seated

on the haircloth sofa smoothed his black alpaca coat, reset the

black tie deep hid by his beard, rose and advanced with a

clerical smile whose real kindliness took somewhat from its

offensive unction. "This is the young lady, is it?" said he,

reaching for Susan's rising but listless hand. "She is indeed a

_young_ lady!"

The two Warham men stood, shifting uneasily from leg to leg and

rubbing their faces from time to time. Sallie Warham was

standing also, her big unhealthy face twitching fantastically.

Jeb alone was seated--chair tilted back, hands in trousers

pockets, a bucolic grin of embarrassment giving an expression of

pain to his common features. A strained silence, then Zeke

Warham said:

"I reckon we might as well go ahead."

The preacher took a small black-bound book from the inside

pocket of his limp and dusty coat, cleared his throat, turned

over the pages. That rustling, the creaking of his collar on his

overstarched shirt band, and the buzzing of the mud daubers

round the windows were the only sounds. The preacher found the

place, cleared his throat again.

"Mr. Ferguson----"

Jeb, tall, spare, sallow, rose awkwardly.

"--You and Miss Lenox will take your places here----" and he

indicated a position before him.

Susan was already in place; Jeb shuffled up to stand at her

left. Sallie Warham hid her face in her apron. The preacher

cleared his throat vigorously, began--"Dearly beloved"--and so on

and on. When he put the questions to Susan and Jeb he told them

what answer was expected, and they obeyed him, Jeb muttering,

Susan with a mere, movement of the lips. When he had finished--a

matter of less than three minutes--he shook hands warmly first

with Susan, then with Jeb. "Live in the fear of the Lord," he

said. "That's all that's necessary."

Sallie put down her apron. Her face was haggard and gray. She

kissed Susan tenderly, then led her from the room. They went

upstairs to the bedroom. "Do you want to stay to dinner?" she

asked in the hoarse undertone of funeral occasions. "Or would

you rather go right away?"

"I'd rather go," said the girl.

"You set down and make yourself comfortable. I'll hook up your

shawl strap."

Susan sat by the window, her hands in her lap. The hand with the

new circlet of gold on it was uppermost. Sallie busied herself

with the bundle; abruptly she threw her apron over her face,

knelt by the bed and sobbed and uttered inarticulate moans. The

girl made no sound, did not move, looked unseeingly at her inert

hands. A few moments and Sallie set to work again. She soon had

the bundle ready, brought Susan's hat, put it on.

"It's so hot, I reckon you'll carry your jacket. I ain't seen as

pretty a blue dress as this--yet it's plain-like, too." She went

to the top of the stairs. "She wants to go, Jeb," she called

loudly. "You'd better get the sulky ready."

The answer from below was the heavy thump of Jeb's boots on the

oilcloth covering of the hall floor. Susan, from the window,

dully watched the young farmer unhitch the mare and lead her up

in front of the gate.

"Come on, honey," said Aunt Sallie, taking up the bundle.

The girl--she seemed a child now--followed her. On the front

stoop were George and his brother and the preacher. The men made

room for them to pass. Sallie opened the gate; Susan went out.

"You'll have to hold the bundle," said Sallie. Susan mounted to

the seat, took the bundle on her knees. Jeb, who had the lines,

left the mare's head and got up beside his bride.

"Good day, all," he said, nodding at the men on the stoop. "Good

day, Mrs. Warham."

"Come and see us real soon," said Sallie. Her fat chin was

quivering; her tired-looking, washed-out eyes gazed mournfully

at the girl who was acting and looking as if she were walking in

her sleep.

"Good day, all," repeated Jeb, and again he made the clucking sound.

"Good-by and God bless you," said the preacher. His nostrils were

luxuriously sniffing the air which bore to them odors of cookery.

The mare set out. Susan's gaze rested immovably upon the heavy

bundle in her lap. As the road was in wretched repair, Jeb's

whole attention was upon his driving. At the gate between

barnyard and pasture he said, "You hold the lines while I get down."

Susan's fingers closed mechanically upon the strips of leather.

Jeb led the mare through the gate, closed it, resumed his seat.

This time the mare went on without exacting the clucking sound.

They were following the rocky road along the wester hillside of

the pasture hollow. As they slowly made their way among the deep

ruts and bowlders, from frequent moistenings of the lips and

throats, noises, and twitchings of body and hands, it was

evident that the young farmer was getting ready for

conversation. The struggle at last broke surface with, "Zeke

Warham don't waste no time road patchin'--does he?"

Susan did not answer.

Jeb studied her out of the corner of his eye, the first time a

fairly good bit of roadway permitted. He could make nothing of

her face except that it was about the prettiest he had ever

seen. Plainly she was not eager to get acquainted; still,

acquainted they must get. So he tried again:

"My sister Keziah--she keeps house for me--she'll be mighty

surprised when I turn up with a wife. I didn't let on to her

what I was about, nary a word."

He laughed and looked expectantly at the girl. Her expression

was unchanged. Jeb again devoted himself to his driving.

"No, I didn't let on," he presently resumed. "Fact is, I wan't

sure myself till I seed you at the winder." He smiled

flirtatiously at her. "Then I decided to go ahead. I dunno, but

I somehow kinder allow you and me'll hit it off purty

well--don't you?"

Susan tried to speak. She found that she could not--that she had

nothing to say.

"You're the kind of a girl I always had my mind set on," pursued

Jeb, who was an expert love-maker. "I like a smooth skin and

pouty lips that looks as if they wanted to be kissed." He took

the reins in one hand, put his arm round her, clumsily found her

lips with his. She shrank slightly, then submitted. But Jeb

somehow felt no inclination to kiss her again. After a moment he

let his arm drop away from her waist and took the reins in both

hands with an elaborate pretense that the bad road compelled it.

A long silence, then he tried again: "It's cool and nice under

these here trees, ain't it?"

"Yes," she said.

"I ain't saw you out here for several years now. How long has it been?"

"Three summers ago."

"You must 'a' growed some. I don't seem to recollect you. You

like the country?"

"Yes."

"Sho! You're just sayin' that. You want to live in town. Well,

so do I. And as soon as I get things settled a little I'm goin'

to take what I've got and the two thousand from your Uncle

George and open up a livery stable in town."

Susan's strange eyes turned upon him. "In Sutherland?" she asked

breathlessly.

"Right in Sutherland," replied he complacently. "I think I'll

buy Jake Antle's place in Jefferson Street."

Susan was blanched and trembling. "Oh, no," she cried. "You

mustn't do that!"

Jeb laughed. "You see if I don't. And we'll live in style, and

you can keep a gal and stay dolled up all the time. Oh, I know

how to treat you."

"I want to stay in the country," cried Susan. "I hate Sutherland."

"Now, don't you be afraid," soothed Jeb. "When people see you've

got a husband and money they'll not be down on you no more.

They'll forget all about your maw--and they won't know nothin'

about the other thing. You treat me right and I'll treat you

right. I'm not one to rake up the past. There ain't arry bit of

meanness about me!"

"But you'll let me stay here in the country?" pleaded Susan. Her

imagination was torturing her with pictures of herself in

Sutherland and the people craning and whispering and mocking.

"You go where I go," replied Jeb. "A woman's place is with her

man. And I'll knock anybody down that looks cockeyed at you."

"Oh!" murmured Susan, sinking back against the support.

"Don't you fret, Susie," ordered Jeb, confident and patronizing.

"You do what I say and everything'll be all right. That's the

way to get along with me and get nice clothes--do what I say.

With them that crosses me I'm mighty ugly. But you ain't a-goin'

to cross me. . . . Now, about the house. I reckon I'd better

send Keziah off right away. You kin cook?"

"A--a little," said Susan.

Jeb looked relieved. "Then she'd be in the way. Two women about

always fights--and Keziah's got the Ferguson temper. She's

afraid of me, but now and then she fergits and has a tantrum."

Jeb looked at her with a smile and a frown. "Perk up a little,"

he more than half ordered. "I don't want Keziah jeerin' at me."

Susan made a pitiful effort to smile. He eyed it sourly,

grunted, gave the mare a cut with the whip that caused her to

leap forward in a gallop. "Whoa!" he yelled. "Whoa--damn you!"

And he sawed cruelly at her mouth until she quieted down. A

turning and they were before a shallow story-and-a-half frame

house which squatted like an old roadside beggar behind a

weather-beaten picket fence. The sagging shingle roof sloped

abruptly; there were four little windows downstairs and two

smaller upstairs. The door was in the center of the house; a

weedy path led from its crooked step, between two patches of

weedy grass, to the gate in the fence.

"Whoa!" shouted Jeb, with the double purpose of stopping the

mare and informing the house of his arrival. Then to Susan: "You

git down and I'll drive round to the barn yonder." He nodded

toward a dilapidated clapboard structure, small and mean, set

between a dirty lopsided straw heap and a manure heap. "Go right

in and make yourself at home. Tell Keziah who you air. I'll be

along, soon as I unhitch and feed the mare."

Susan was staring stupidly at the house--at her new home.

"Git down," he said sharply. "You don't act as if your hearin'

or your manners was much to brag on."

He felt awkward and embarrassed with this delicately bred,

lovely child-woman in the, to him, wonderfully fine and

fashionable dress. To hide his nervousness and to brave it out,

he took the only way he knew, the only way shy people usually

know--the way of gruffness. It was not a ferocious gruffness for

a man of his kind; but it seemed so to her who had been used to

gentleness only, until these last few days. His grammar, his

untrained voice, his rough clothes, the odor of stale sweat and

farm labor he exhaled, made him horrible to her--though she only

vaguely knew why she felt so wretched and why her body shrank

from him.

She stepped down from the sulky, almost falling in her dizziness

and blindness. Jeb touched the mare with the whip and she was

alone before the house--a sweet forlorn figure, childish,

utterly out of place in those surroundings. On the threshold, in

faded and patched calico, stood a tall gaunt woman with a family

likeness to Jeb. She had thin shiny black hair, a hard brown

skin, high cheekbones and snapping black eyes. When her thin

lips parted she showed on the left side of the mouth three large

and glittering gold teeth that in the contrast made their gray,

not too clean neighbors seem white.

"Howdy!" she called in a tone of hostility.

Susan tried in vain to respond. She stood gazing.

"What d'ye want?"

"He he told me to go in," faltered Susan. She had no sense of

reality. It was a dream--only a dream--and she would awaken in

her own clean pretty pale-gray bedroom with Ruth gayly calling

her to come down to breakfast.

"Who are you?" demanded Keziah--for at a glance it was the sister.

"I'm--I'm Susan Lenox."

"Oh--Zeke Warham's niece. Come right in." And Keziah looked as

if she were about to bite and claw.

Susan pushed open the latchless gate, went up the short path to

the doorstep. "I think I'll wait till he comes," she said.

"No. Come in and sit down, Miss Lenox." And Keziah drew a

rush-bottomed rocking chair toward the doorway. Susan was

looking at the interior. The lower floor of the house was

divided into three small rooms. This central room was obviously

the parlor--the calico-covered sofa, the center table, the two

dingy chromos, and a battered cottage organ made that certain.

On the floor was a rag carpet; on the walls, torn and dirty

paper, with huge weather stains marking where water had leaked

from the roof down the supporting beams. Keziah scowled at

Susan's frank expression of repulsion for the surroundings.

Susan seated herself on the edge of the chair, put her bundle

beside her.

"I allow you'll stay to dinner," said Keziah.

"Yes," replied Susan.

"Then I'll go put on some more to cook."

"Oh, no--please don't--I couldn't eat anything--really, I

couldn't." The girl spoke hysterically.

Just then Jeb came round the house and appeared in the doorway.

He grinned and winked at Susan, looked at his sister. "Well,

Keziah," said he, "what d'ye think of her?"

"She says she's going to stay to dinner," observed Keziah, trying

to maintain the veneer of manners she had put on for company.

The young man laughed loudly. "That's a good one--that is!" he

cried, nodding and winking at Susan. "So you ain't tole her? Well,

Keziah, I've been and gone and got married. And there _she_ is."

"Shut up--you fool!" said Keziah. And she looked apologetically

at their guest. But the expression of Susan's face made her

catch her breath. "For the Lord's sake!" she ejaculated. "She

ain't married _you!_"

"Why not?" demanded Jeb. "Ain't this a free country? Ain't I as

good as anybody?"

Keziah blew out her breath in a great gust and seated herself on

the tattered calico cover of the sofa. Susan grew deathly white.

Her hands trembled. Then she sat quiet upon the edge of the old

rush-bottomed chair. There was a terrible silence, broken by

Jeb's saying loudly and fiercely, "Keziah, you go get the

dinner. Then you pack your duds and clear out for Uncle Bob's."

Keziah stared at the bride, rose and went to the rear door. "I'm

goin' now," she answered. "The dinner's ready except for putting

on the table."

Through the flimsy partitions they heard her mounting the

uncarpeted stairs, hustling about upon an uncarpeted floor above,

and presently descending. "I'll hoof it," she said, reappearing

in the doorway. "I'll send for my things this afternoon."

Jeb, not caring to provoke the "Ferguson temper," said nothing.

"As for this here marryin'," continued Keziah, "I never allowed

you'd fall so low as to take a baby, and a bastard at that."

She whirled away. Jeb flung his hat on the table, flung himself

on the sofa. "Well--that's settled," said he. "You kin get the

dinner. It's all in there." And he jerked his head toward the

door in the partition to the left. Susan got up, moved toward

the indicated door. Jeb laughed. "Don't you think you might take

off your hat and stay awhile?" said he.

She removed her hat, put it on top of the bundle which she left

on the floor beside the rocking chair. She went into the kitchen

dining-room. It was a squalid room, its ceiling and walls

smoke-stained from the cracked and never polished stove in the

corner. The air was foul with the strong old onions stewing on

the stove. In a skillet slices of pork were frying. On the back

of the stove stood a pan of mashed potatoes and a tin coffeepot.

On the stained flowered cloth which covered the table in the

middle of the room had been laid coarse, cracked dishes and

discolored steel knives and forks with black wooden handles.

Susan, half fainting, dropped into a chair by one of the open

windows. A multitude of fat flies from the stable were running

and crawling everywhere, were buzzing about her head. She was

aroused by Jeb's voice: "Why, what the--the damnation! You've

fell asleep!"

She started up. "In a minute!" she muttered, nervously.

And somehow, with Jeb's eyes on her from the doorway, she got

the evil-smelling messes from the stove into table dishes from

the shelves and then on the table, where the flies descended

upon them in troops of scores and hundreds. Jeb, in his shirt

sleeves now, sat down and fell to. She sat opposite him, her

hands in her lap. He used his knife in preference to his fork,

leaping the blade high, packing the food firmly upon it with

fork or fingers, then thrusting it into his mouth. He ate

voraciously, smacking his lips, breathing hard, now and then

eructing with frank energy and satisfaction.

"My stummick's gassy right smart this year," he observed after

a huge gulp of coffee. "Some says the heavy rains last spring

put gas into everything, but I dunno. Maybe it's Keziah's

cooking. I hope you'll do better. Why, you ain't eatin' nothin'!"

"I'm not hungry," said Susan. Then, as he frowned suspiciously,

"I had a late breakfast."

He laughed. "And the marrying, too," he suggested with a flirtatious

nod and wink. "Women's always upset by them kind of things."

When he had filled himself he pushed his chair back. "I'll set

with you while you wash up," said he. "But you'd better take off

them Sunday duds. You'll find some calikers that belonged to maw

in a box under the bed in our room." He laughed and winked at her.

"That's the one on t'other side of the settin'-room. Yes--that's

our'n!" And he winked again.

The girl, ghastly white, her great eyes staring like a

sleepwalker's, rose and stood resting one hand on the back of

the chair to steady her.

Jeb drew a cigar from his waistcoat pocket and lighted it.

"Usually," said he, "I take a pipe or a chaw. But this bein' a

weddin' day----"

He laughed and winked again, rose, took her in his arms and

kissed her. She made a feeble gesture of thrusting him away. Her

head reeled, her stomach turned.

She got away as soon as he would release her, crossed the

sitting-room and entered the tiny dingy bedroom. The windows

were down and the bed had not yet been made. The odor was

nauseating--the staleness left by a not too clean sleeper who

abhors fresh air. Susan saw the box under the bed, knelt to draw

it out. But instead she buried her face in her hands, burst into

wild sobs. "Oh, God," she prayed, "stop punishing me. I didn't

mean to do wrong--and I'm sure my mother didn't, either. Stop,

for Thy Son's sake, amen." Now surely she would wake. God must

answer that prayer. She dared not take her palms from her eyes.

Suddenly she felt herself caught from behind. She gave a wild

scream and sprang up.

Jeb was looking at her with eyes that filled her with a fear

more awful than the fear of death. "Don't!" she cried. "Don't!"

"Never mind, hon," said he in a voice that was terrible just

because it was soft. "It's only your husband. My, but you're

purty!" And he seized her. She fought. He crushed her. He kissed

her with great slobbering smacks and gnawed at the flesh of her

neck with teeth that craved to bite.

"Oh, Mr. Ferguson, for pity's sake!" she wailed. Then she opened

her mouth wide as one gasping for breath where there is no air;

and pushing at him with all her strength she vented a series of

maniac shrieks.

CHAPTER X

LATE that afternoon Jeb returned to the house after several

hours of uneasy, aimless pottering about at barn and woodshed.

He stumped and stamped around the kitchen, then in the

sitting-room, finally he mustered the courage to look into the

bedroom, from which he had slunk like a criminal three hours

before. There she lay, apparently in the same position. Her

waxen color and her absolute stillness added fear to his sense

of guilt--a guilt against which he protested, because he felt he

had simply done what God and man expected of him. He stood in

the low doorway for some time, stood there peering and craning

until his fear grew so great that he could no longer put off

ending or confirming it.

"Sleepin'?" said he in a hoarse undertone.

She did not reply; she did not move. He could not see that she

was breathing.

"It'll soon be time to git supper," he went on--not because he

was thinking of supper but because he was desperately clutching

for something that must draw a reply from her--if she could reply.

"Want me to clean up the dinner and put the supper things on?"

She made a feeble effort to rise, sank back again. He drew an

audible sigh of relief; at least she was not what her color

had suggested.

In fact, she was morbidly conscious. The instant she had heard

him at the outer door she had begun to shiver and shake, and not

until he moved toward the bedroom door did she become quiet.

Then a calm had come into her nerves and her flesh--the calm

that descends upon the brave when the peril actually faces. As

he stood there her eyes were closed, but the smell of

him--beneath the earthy odor of his clothing the odor of the

bodies of those who eat strong, coarse food--stole into her

nostrils, into her nerves. Her whole body sickened and

shrank--for to her now that odor meant marriage--and she would

not have believed Hell contained or Heaven permitted such a

thing as was marriage. She understood now why the Bible always

talked of man as a vile creature born in sin.

Jeb was stealthily watching her ghastly face, her limp body.

"Feelin' sickish?" he asked.

A slight movement of the head in assent.

"I kin ride over to Beecamp and fetch Doc Christie."

Another and negative shake of the head, more determined. The

pale lips murmured, "No--no, thank you." She was not hating him.

He existed for her only as a symbol, in this hideous dream

called life, that was coiled like a snake about her and was

befouling her and stinging her to death.

"Don't you bother 'bout supper," said he with gruff, shamefaced

generosity. "I'll look out for myself, this onct."

He withdrew to the kitchen, where she heard him clattering

dishes and pans. Daylight waned to twilight, twilight to dusk,

to darkness. She did not think; she did not feel, except an

occasional dull pang from some bodily bruise. Her soul, her

mind, were absolutely numb. Suddenly a radiance beat upon her

eyes. All in an instant, before the lifting of her eyelids, soul

and body became exquisitely acute; for she thought it was he

come again, with a lamp. She looked; it was the moon whose beams

struck full in at the uncurtained window and bathed her face in

their mild brightness. She closed her eyes again and presently

fell asleep--the utter relaxed sleep of a child that is worn out

with pain, when nature turns gentle nurse and sets about healing

and soothing as only nature can. When she awoke it was with a

scream. No, she was not dreaming; there was an odor in the

room--his odor, with that of a saloon added to it.

After cooking and eating supper he had taken the jug from its

concealment behind the woodbox and had proceeded to cheer his

drooped spirits. The more he drank the better content he was

with himself, with his conduct, and the clearer became his

conviction that the girl was simply playing woman's familiar

game of dainty modesty. A proper game it was too; only a man

must not pay attention to it unless he wished his woman to

despise him. When this conviction reached the point of action he

put away the jug, washed the glass, ate a liberal mouthful of

the left-over stewed onions, as he would not for worlds have his

bride catch him tippling. He put out the lamp and went to the

bedroom, chuckling to himself like a man about to play a

particularly clever and extremely good-humored practical joke.

His preparations for the night were, as always, extremely simple

merely a flinging off of his outer clothes and, in summer, his

socks. From time to time he cast an admiring amorous glance at

the lovely childlike face in the full moonlight. As he was about

to stretch himself on the bed beside her he happened to note

that she was dressed as when she came. That stylish, Sundayish

dress was already too much mussed and wrinkled. He leaned over to

wake her with a kiss. It was then that she started up with a scream.

"Oh--oh--my God!" she exclaimed, passing her hand over her brow

and staring at him with crazed, anguished eyes.

"It's jest me," said he. "Thought you'd want to git ready fur

bed, like as not."

"No, thank you, no," she stammered, drawing away toward the

inner side of the bed. "Please I want to be as I am."

"Now, don't put on, sweetness," he wheedled. "You know you're

married and 'ave got to git used to it."

He laid his hand on her arm. She had intended to obey, since

that was the law of God and man and since in all the world there

was no other place for her, nameless and outcast. But at his

touch she clenched her teeth, cried:

"No--Mr. Ferguson--please--_please_ let me be."

"Now, hon," he pleaded, seizing her with strong gentleness.

"There ain't no call to be skittish. We're married, you know."

She wrenched herself free. He seized her again. "What's the use

of puttin' on? I know all about you. You little no-name," he

cursed, when her teeth sank into his hand. For an instant, at

that reminder of her degradation, her indelible shame that made

her of the low and the vile, she collapsed in weakness. Then

with new and fierce strength she fought again. When she had

exhausted herself utterly she relaxed, fell to sobbing and

moaning, feebly trying to shelter her face from his gluttonous

and odorous kisses. And upon the scene the moon shone in all

that beauty which from time immemorial has filled the hearts of

lovers with ecstasy and of devotees with prayer.

They lay quietly side by side; he fell into a profound sleep. He

was full upon his back, his broad chest heaving in the gray

cotton undershirt, his mouth wide open with its upper fringe of

hair in disarray and agitated by his breath. Soon he began to

snore, a deafening clamor that set some loose object in the dark

part of the room to vibrating with a tapping sound. Susan

stealthily raised herself upon her elbow, looked at him. There

was neither horror nor fear in her haggard face but only

eagerness to be sure he would not awaken. She, inch by inch,

more softly than a cat, climbed over the low footboard, was

standing on the floor. One silent step at a time, with eyes

never from his face so clear in the moonlight, she made her way

toward the door. The snoring stopped--and her heart stopped with

it. He gasped, gurgled, gave a snort, and sat up.

"What--which----" he ejaculated. Then he saw her near the door.

"Hello--whar ye goin'?"

"I thought I'd undress," she lied, calmly and smoothly.

"Oh--that's right." And he lay down.

She stood in the darkness, making now and then a faint sound

suggestive of undressing. The snoring began again--soft, then

deep, then the steady, uproarious intake with the fierce

whistling exhalation. She went into the sitting-room, felt round

in the darkness, swift and noiseless. On the sofa she found her

bundle, tore it open. By feeling alone she snatched her sailor

hat, a few handkerchiefs, two stockings, a collar her fingers

chanced upon and a toothbrush. She darted to the front door, was

outside, was gliding down the path, out through the gate into

the road.

To the left would be the way she had come. She ran to the right,

with never a backward glance--ran with all the speed in her

lithe young body, ran with all the energy of her fear and horror

and resolve to die rather than be taken. For a few hundred yards

the road lay between open fields. But after that it entered a

wood. And in that dimness she felt the first beginnings of a

sense of freedom. Half a mile and open fields again, with a

small house on the right, a road southeastward on the left. That

would be away from her Uncle Zeke's and also away from

Sutherland, which lay twenty miles to the southwest. When she

would be followed Jeb would not think of this direction until he

had exhausted the other two.

She walked, she ran, she rested; she walked and ran and walked

again. The moon ascended to the zenith, crossed the levels of

the upper sky, went down in the west; a long bar of dusky gray

outlined a cloud low upon the horizon in the northeast. She was

on the verge of collapse. Her skin, the inside of her mouth,

were hot and dry. She had to walk along at snail's pace or her

heart would begin to beat as if it were about to burst and the

blood would choke up into the veins of her throat to suffocate

her. A terrible pain came in her side--came and went--came and

stayed. She had passed turning after turning, to the right, to

the left--crossroads leading away in all directions. She had

kept to the main road because she did not wish to lose time,

perhaps return upon her path, in the confusion of the darkness.

Now she began to look about her at the country. It was still the

hills as round Zeke Warham's--the hills of southeastern Indiana.

But they were steeper and higher, for she was moving toward the

river. There was less open ground, more and denser undergrowth

and forest. She felt that she was in a wilderness, was safe.

Night still lay too thick upon the landscape for her to

distinguish anything but outlines. She sat down on the ruined

and crumbling panel of a zigzag fence to rest and to wait for

light. She listened; a profound hush. She was alone, all alone.

How far had she come? She could not guess; but she knew that she

had done well. She would have been amazed if she had known how

well. All the years of her life, thanks to Mrs. Warham's good

sense about health, she had been steadily adding to the vitality

and strength that were hers by inheritance. Thus, the response

to this first demand upon them had been almost inevitable. It

augured well for the future, if the future should draw her into

hardships. She knew she had gone far and in what was left of the

night and with what was left of her strength she would put such

a distance between her and them that they would never believe

she had got so far, even should they seek in this direction. She

was supporting her head upon her hands, her elbows upon her

knees. Her eyes closed, her head nodded; she fought against the

impulse, but she slept.

When she straightened up with a start it was broad day. The

birds must have finished their morning song, for there was only

happy, comfortable chirping in the branches above her. She rose

stiffly. Her legs, her whole body, ached; and her feet were

burning and blistered. But she struck out resolutely.

After she had gone halfway down a long steep hill, she had to

turn back because she had left her only possessions. It was a

weary climb, and her heart quaked with terror. But no one

appeared, and at last she was once more at the ruins of the

fence panel. There lay her sailor hat, the handkerchiefs,

wrapped round the toothbrush, the collar--and two stockings, one

black, the other brown. And where was her purse? Not there,

certainly. She glanced round in swift alarm. No one. Yet she had

been absolutely sure she had taken her purse from the

sitting-room table when she came upon it, feeling about in the

dark. She had forgotten it; she was without a cent!

But she had no time to waste in self-reproaches or forebodings.

Though the stockings would be of no use to her, she took them

along because to leave them was to leave a trail. She hastened

down the hill. At the bottom ran a deep creek--without a bridge.

The road was now a mere cowpath which only the stoutest vehicles

or a horseman would adventure. To her left ran an even wilder

trail, following the downward course of the creek. She turned

out of the road, entered the trail. She came to a place where

the bowlders over which the creek foamed and splashed as it

hurried southeastward were big and numerous enough to make a

crossing. She took it, went slowly on down the other bank.

There was no sign of human intrusion. Steeply on either side

rose a hill, strewn with huge bowlders, many of them large as

large houses. The sun filtered through the foliage to make a

bright pattern upon the carpet of last year's leaves. The birds

twittered and chirped; the creek hummed its drowsy, soothing

melody. She was wretchedly weary, and Oh, so hungry! A little

further, and two of the great bowlders, tumbled down from the

steeps, had cut off part of the creek, had formed a pool which

their seamed and pitted and fern-adorned walls hid from all

observation except that of the birds and the squirrels in the boughs.

At once she thought how refreshed she would be if she could

bathe in those cool waters. She looked round, stepped in between

the bowlders. She peered out; she listened. She was safe; she

drew back into her little inclosure. There was a small dry shelf

of rock. She hurried off her clothes, stood a moment in the

delicious warmth of the sunshine, stepped into the pool. She

would have liked to splash about; but she dared make no sound

that could be heard above the noise of the water. Luckily the

creek was just there rather loud, as it was expressing its

extreme annoyance over the stolid impudence of the interrupting

bowlders. While she was waiting for the sun to dry her she

looked at her underclothes. She simply could not put them on as

they were. She knelt at the edge of the shelf and rinsed them

out as well as she could. Then she spread them on the thick

tufts of overhanging fern where the hot sun would get full swing

at them. The brown stocking of the two mismates she had brought

along almost matched the pair she was wearing. As there was a

hole in the toe of one of them, she discarded it, and so had one

fresh stocking. She dried her feet thoroughly with the stocking

she was discarding. Then she put her corsets and her dress

directly upon her body. She could not afford to wait until the

underclothes dried; she would carry them until she found for

herself a more remote and better hiding place where she could

await nightfall. She stuffed the stocking with the hole deep

into a cleft in the rock and laid a small stone upon it so that

it was concealed. Here where there were no traces, no reminders

of the human race which had cast her out and pursued her with

torture of body and soul, here in the wilderness her spirits

were going up, and her young eyes were looking hopefully round

and forward. The up-piling horrors of those two days and their

hideous climax seemed a dream which the sun had scattered.

Hopefully! That blessed inexperience and sheer imagination of

youth enabling it to hope in a large, vague way when to hope for

any definite and real thing would be impossible.

She cleaned her tan low shoes with branches of fern and grass,

put them on. It is impossible to account for the peculiarities

of physical vanity. Probably no one was ever born who had not

physical vanity of some kind; Susan's was her feet and ankles.

Not her eyes, nor her hair, nor her contour, nor her skin, nor

her figure, though any or all of these might well have been her

pleasure. Of them she never thought in the way of pride or

vanity. But of her feet and ankles she was both proud and

vain--in a reserved, wholly unobtrusive way, be it said, so

quietly that she had passed unsuspected. There was reason for

this shy, secret self-satisfaction, so amusing in one otherwise

self-unconscious. Her feet were beautifully formed and the

curves of her instep and ankle were beautiful. She gave more

attention now to the look of her shoes and of her stockings than

to all the rest of this difficult woodland toilet. She then put

on the sailor hat, fastened the collar to her garter, slipped

the handkerchiefs into the legs of her stockings. Carrying her

underclothes, ready to roll them into a ball should she meet

anyone, she resumed her journey into that rocky wilderness. She

was sore, she had pains that were the memories of the worst

horrors of her hideous dream, but up in her strong, healthy

body, up through her strong young soul, surged joy of freedom

and joy of hope. Compared with what her lot had been until such

a few brief days before, this lot of friendless wanderer in the

wilderness was dark indeed. But she was comparing it with the

monstrous dream from which it was the awakening. She was almost

happy--and madly hungry.

An enormous bowlder, high above her and firmly fixed in the

spine of the hill, invited as a place where she could see

without being seen, could hide securely until darkness came

again. She climbed to the base of it, found that she might reach

the top by stepping from ledge to ledge with the aid of the

trees growing so close around it that some of their boughs

seemed rooted in its weather-dented cliffs. She dragged herself

upward the fifty or sixty feet, glad of the difficulties because

they would make any pursuer feel certain she had not gone that

way. After perhaps an hour she came upon a flat surface where

soil had formed, where grass and wild flowers and several little

trees gave shade and a place to sleep. And from her eyrie she

commanded a vast sweep of country--hills and valleys, fields,

creeks, here and there lonely farmhouses, and far away to the

east the glint of the river!

To the river! That was her destination. And somehow it would be

kind, would take her where she would never, never dream those

frightful dreams again!

She went to the side of the bowlder opposite that which she had

climbed. She drew back hastily, ready to cry with vexation. It

was not nearly so high or so steep; and on the slope of the hill

a short distance away was set a little farmhouse, with smoke

curling up from its rough stone chimney. She dropped to all

fours in the tall grass and moved cautiously toward the edge.

Flat upon her breast, she worked her way to the edge and looked

down. A faintly lined path led from the house through a gate in

a zigzag fence and up to the base of her fortress. The rock had

so crumbled on that side that a sort of path extended clear up

to the top. But her alarm quieted somewhat when she noted how

the path was grass-grown.

As nearly as she could judge it was about five o'clock. So that

smoke meant breakfast! Her eyes fixed hungrily upon the thin

column of violet vapor mounting straight into the still morning

air. When smoke rose in that fashion, she remembered, it was

sure sign of clear weather. And then the thought came, "What if

it had been raining!" She simply could not have got away.

As she interestedly watched the little house and its yard she

saw hurrying through the burdock and dog fennel toward the base

of her rock a determined looking hen. Susan laughed silently, it

was so obvious that the hen was on a pressing and secret

business errand. But almost immediately her attention was

distracted to observing the movements of a human being she could

obscurely make out through one of the windows just back of the

chimney. Soon she saw that it was a woman, cleaning up a kitchen

after breakfast--the early breakfast of the farmhouse in summer.

What had they had for breakfast? She sniffed the air. "I think

I can smell ham and cornbread," she said aloud, and laughed,

partly at the absurdity of her fancy, chiefly at the idea of

such attractive food. She aggravated her hunger by letting her

imagination loose upon the glorious possibilities. A stealthy

fluttering brought her glance back to the point where the hen

had disappeared. The hen reappeared, hastened down the path and

through the weeds, and rejoined the flock in the yard with an

air which seemed to say, "No, indeed, I've been right here all

the time."

"Now, what was she up to?" wondered Susan, and the answer came to

her. Eggs! A nest hidden somewhere near or in the base of the rock!

Could she get down to that nest without being seen from the

house or from any other part of the region below? She drew back

from the edge, crawled through the grass to the place where the

path, if path it could be called, reached the top. She was

delighted to find that it made the ascent through a wide cleft

and not along the outside. She let herself down cautiously as

the footway was crumbling and rotten and slippery with grass. At

the lower end of the cleft she peered out. Trees and

bushes--plenty of them, a thick shield between her and the

valleys. She moved slowly downward; a misstep might send her

through the boughs to the hillside forty feet below. She had

gone up and down several times before her hunger-sharpened eyes

caught the gleam of white through the ferns growing thickly out

of the moist mossy cracks which everywhere seamed the wall. She

pushed the ferns aside. There was the nest, the length of her

forearm into the dim seclusion of a deep hole. She felt round,

found the egg that was warm. And as she drew it out she laughed

softly and said half aloud: "Breakfast is ready!"

No, not quite ready. Hooking one arm round the bough of a tree

that shot up from the hillside to the height of the rock and

beyond, she pressed her foot firmly against the protecting root

of an ancient vine of poison ivy. Thus ensconced, she had free

hands; and she proceeded to remove the thin shell of the egg

piece by piece. She had difficulty in restraining herself until

the end. At last she put the whole egg into her mouth. And never

had she tasted anything so good.

But one egg was only an appetizer. She reached in again. She did

not wish to despoil the meritorious hen unnecessarily, so she

held the egg up in her inclosing fingers and looked through it,

as she had often seen the cook do at home. She was not sure, but

the inside seemed muddy. She laid it to one side, tried another.

It was clear and she ate it as she had eaten the first. She laid

aside the third, the fourth, and the fifth. The sixth seemed all

right--but was not. Fortunately she had not been certain enough

to feel justified in putting the whole egg into her mouth before

tasting it. The taste, however, was enough to make her reflect

that perhaps on the whole two eggs were sufficient for

breakfast, especially as there would be at least dinner and

supper before she could go further. As she did not wish to risk

another descent, she continued to sort out the eggs. She found

four that were, or seemed to be, all right. The thirteen that

looked doubtful or worse when tested by the light she restored

with the greatest care. It was an interesting illustration of

the rare quality of consideration which at that period of her

life dominated her character.

She put the four eggs in the bosom of her blouse and climbed up

to her eyrie. All at once she felt the delicious languor of body

and mind which is Nature's forewarning that she is about to put

us to sleep, whether we will or no. She lost all anxiety about

safety, looked hastily around for a bed. She found just the

place in a corner of the little tableland where the grass grew

tall and thick. She took from her bosom the four eggs--her

dinner and supper--and put them between the roots of a tree with

a cover of broad leaves over them to keep them cool. She pulled

grass to make a pillow, took off her collar and laid herself

down to sleep. And that day's sun did not shine upon a prettier

sight than this soundly and sweetly sleeping girl, with her oval

face suffused by a gentle flush, with her rounded young

shoulders just moving the bosom of her gray silk blouse, with

her slim, graceful legs curled up to the edge of her carefully

smoothed blue serge skirt. You would have said never a care,

much less a sorrow, had shadowed her dawning life. And that is

what it means to be young--and free from the curse of self-pity,

and ignorant of life's saddest truth, that future and past are

not two contrasts; one is surely bright and the other is sober,

but they are parts of a continuous fabric woven of the same

threads and into the same patterns from beginning to end.

When she awoke, beautifully rested, her eyes clear and soft, the

shadows which had been long toward the southwest were long,

though not so long, toward the southeast. She sat up and smiled;

it was so fine to be free! And her woes had not in the least

shaken that serene optimism which is youth's most delightful if

most dangerous possession. She crawled through the grass to the

edge of the rock and looked out through the screening leaves of

the dense undergrowth. There was no smoke from the chimney of

the house. The woman, in a blue calico, was sitting on the back

doorstep knitting. Farther away, in fields here and there, a few

men--not a dozen in all--were at work. From a barnyard at the

far edge of the western horizon came the faint sound of a steam

thresher, and she thought she could see the men at work around

it, but this might have been illusion. It was a serene and

lovely panorama of summer and country. Last of all her eyes

sought the glimpse of distant river.

She ate two of her four eggs, put on the underclothes which were

now thoroughly sun-dried, shook out and rebraided her hair. Then

she cast about for some way to pass the time.

She explored the whole top of the rock, but that did not use up

more than fifteen minutes, as it was so small that every part

was visible from every other part. However, she found a great

many wild flowers and gathered a huge bouquet of the audacious

colors of nature's gardens, so common yet so effective. She did

a little botanizing--anything to occupy her mind and keep it

from the ugly visions and fears. But all too soon she had

exhausted the resources of her hiding place. She looked down

into the valley to the north--the valley through which she had

come. She might go down there and roam; it would be something to

do, and her young impatience of restraint was making her so

restless that she felt she could not endure the confines of that

little rock. It had seemed huge; a brief experience of freedom,

a few hours between her and the night's horrors and terrors, and

it had shrunk to a tiny prison cell. Surely she would run no

risk in journeying through that trackless wilderness; she need

not be idle, she could hasten her destiny by following the creek

in its lonely wanderings, which must sooner or later bring it to

the river. The river!

She was about to get the two remaining eggs and abandon her

stronghold when it occurred to her that she would do well to

take a last look all around. She went back to the side of the

rock facing the house.

The woman had suspended knitting and was gazing intently across

the hollow to the west, where the road from the north entered

the landscape. Susan turned her eyes in that direction. Two

horsemen at a gallop were moving southward. The girl was well

screened, but instinctively she drew still further back behind

the bushes--but not so far that the two on horseback, riding so

eagerly, were out of her view. The road dipped into the hollow.

the galloping horsemen disappeared with it. Susan shifted her

gaze to the point on the brow of the hill where the road

reappeared. She was quivering in every nerve. When they came

into view again she would know.

The place she was watching swam before her eyes. Suddenly the

two, still at a gallop, rose upon the crest of the hill. Jeb and

her Uncle Zeke! Her vision cleared, her nerve steadied.

They did not draw rein until they were at the road gate of the

little house. The woman rose, put down her knitting in the seat

of her stiff, rush-bottomed rocker, advanced to the fence. The

air was still, but Susan could not hear a sound, though she

craned forward and strained her ears to the uttermost. She

shrank as if she had been struck when the three began to gaze up

at the rock--to gaze, it seemed to her, at the very spot where

she was standing. Was her screen less thick than she thought?

Had they seen--if not her, perhaps part of her dress?

Wildly her heart beat as Jeb dismounted from his horse the mare

behind which she had made her wedding journey--and stood in the

gateway, talking with the woman and looking toward the top of

the rock. Zeke Warham turned his horse and began to ride slowly

away. He got as far as the brow of the hill, with Jeb still in

the gateway, hesitating. Then Susan heard:

"Hold on, Mr. Warham. I reckon you're right."

Warham halted his horse, Jeb remounted and joined him. As the

woman returned toward the back doorstep, the two men rode at a

walk down into the hollow. When they reappeared it was on the

road by which they had come. And the girl knew the pursuit in

that direction--the right direction--was over. Trembling and

with a fluttering in her breast like the flapping of a bird's

wings, she sank to the ground. Presently she burst into a

passion of tears. Without knowing why, she tore off the wedding

ring which until then she had forgotten, and flung it out among

the treetops. A few minutes, and she dried her eyes and stood

up. The two horsemen were leaving the landscape at the point at

which they had entered it. The girl would not have known, would

have been frightened by, her own face had she seen it as she

watched them go out of her sight--out of her life. She did not

understand herself, for she was at that age when one is no more

conscious of the forces locked up within his unexplored and

untested character than the dynamite cartridge is of its secrets

of power and terror.

CHAPTER XI

SHE felt free to go now. She walked toward the place where she

had left the eggs. It was on the side of the rock overlooking

the creek. As she knelt to remove the leaves, she heard from far

below a man's voice singing. She leaned forward and glanced down

at the creek. In a moment appeared a young man with a fishing

rod and a bag slung over his shoulder. His gray and white striped

flannel trousers were rolled to his knees. His fair skin and the

fair hair waving about his forehead were exposed by the

flapping-brimmed straw hat set upon the back of his head. His

voice, a strong and manly tenor, was sending up those steeps a

song she had never heard before--a song in Italian. She had not

seen what he looked like when she remembered herself and hastily

fell back from view. She dropped to the grass and crawled out

toward the ledge. When she showed her face it so happened that

he was looking straight at her.

"Hello!" he shouted. "That you, Nell?"

Susan drew back, her blood in a tumult. From below, after a

brief silence, came a burst of laughter.

She waited a long time, then through a shield of bunches of

grass looked again. The young man was gone. She wished that he

had resumed his song, for she thought she had never heard one so

beautiful. Because she did not feel safe in descending until he

was well out of the way, and because she was so comfortable

lying there in the afternoon sunshine watching the birds and

listening to them, she continued on there, glancing now and then

at where the creek entered and where it left her range of

vision, to make sure that no one else should come and catch her.

Suddenly sounded a voice from somewhere behind her:

"Hey, Nell! I'm coming!"

She sprang to her feet, faced about; and Crusoe was not more

agitated when he saw the print of the naked foot on his island's

strand. The straw hat with the flapping brim was just lifting

above the edge of the rock at the opposite side, where the path

was. She could not escape; the shelf offered no hiding place.

Now the young man was stepping to the level, panting loudly.

"Gee, what a climb for a hot day!" he cried. "Where are you?"

With that he was looking at Susan, less than twenty yards away

and drawn up defiantly. He stared, took off his hat. He had

close-cropped wavy hair and eyes as gray as Susan's own, but it

was a blue-gray instead of violet. His skin was fair, too, and

his expression intelligent and sympathetic. In spite of his hat,

and his blue cotton shirt, and trousers rolled high on bare

sunburned legs, there was nothing of the yokel about him.

"I beg your pardon," he exclaimed half humorously. "I thought it

was my cousin Nell."

"No," said Susan, disarmed by his courtesy and by the frank

engaging manner of it.

"I didn't mean to intrude." He showed white teeth in a broad

smile. "I see from your face that this is your private domain."

"Oh, no--not at all," stammered Susan.

"Yes, I insist," replied he. "Will you let me stay and rest a

minute? I ran round the rock and climbed pretty fast."

"Yes--do," said Susan.

The young man sat on the grass near where he had appeared, and

crossed his long legs. The girl, much embarrassed, looked

uneasily about. "Perhaps you'd sit, too?" suggested he, after

eyeing her in a friendly way that could not cause offense and

somehow did not cause any great uneasiness.

Susan hesitated, went to the shadow of a little tree not far

from him. He was fanning his flushed face with his hat. The

collar of his shirt was open; below, where the tan ended

abruptly, his skin was beautifully white. Now that she had been

discovered, it was as well to be pleasant, she reasoned. "It's

a fine day," she observed with a grown-up gravity that much

amused him.

"Not for fishing," said he. "I caught nothing. You are a

stranger in these parts?"

Susan colored and a look of terror flitted into her eyes. "Yes,"

she admitted. "I'm--I'm passing through."

The young man had all he could do to conceal his amusement.

Susan flushed deeply again, not because she saw his expression,

for she was not looking at him, but because her remark seemed to

her absurd and likely to rouse suspicion.

"I suppose you came up here to see the view," said the man. He

glanced round. "It _is_ pretty good. You're not visiting down

Brooksburg way, by any chance?"

"No," replied Susan, rather composedly and determined to change

the subject. "What was that song I heard you singing?"

"Oh--you heard, did you?" laughed he. "It's the Duke's song from

'Rigoletto.'"

"That's an opera, isn't it--like 'Trovatore'?"

"Yes--an Italian opera. Same author."

"It's a beautiful song." It was evident that she longed to ask

him to sing it. She felt at ease with him; he was so unaffected

and simple, was one of those people who seem to be at home

wherever they are.

"Do you sing?" he inquired.

"Not really," replied she.

"Neither do I. So if you'll sing to me, I'll sing to you."

Susan looked round in alarm. "Oh, dear, no--please don't," she cried.

"Why not?" he asked curiously. "There isn't a soul about."

"I know--but--really, you mustn't."

"Very well," said he, seeing that her nervousness was not at all

from being asked to sing. They sat quietly, she gazing off at

the horizon, he fanning himself and studying her lovely young

face. He was somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five and a

close observer would have suspected him of an unusual amount of

experience, even for a good-looking, expansive youth of that age.

He broke the long silence. "I'm a newspaper man from Cincinnati.

I'm on the _Commercial_ there. My name's Roderick Spenser. My

father's Clayton Spenser, down at Brooksburg"--he pointed to the

southeast--"beyond that hill there, on the river. I'm here on my

vacation." And he halted, looking at her expectantly.

It seemed to her that there was in courtesy no escape without a

return biographical sketch. She hung her head, twisted her

tapering fingers in her lap, and looked childishly embarrassed

and unhappy. Another long silence; again he broke it. "You'll

pardon my saying so, but--you're very young, aren't you?"

"Not so--so _terribly_ young. I'm almost seventeen," replied she,

glancing this way and that, as if thinking of flight.

"You look like a child, yet you don't," he went on, and his

frank, honest voice calmed her. "You've had some painful

experience, I'd say."

She nodded, her eyes down.

A pause, then he: "Honest, now--aren't you--running away?"

She lifted her eyes to his piteously. "Please don't ask me," she said.

"I shouldn't think of it," replied he, with a gentleness in his

persistence that made her feel still more like trusting him, "if

it wasn't that----

"Well, this world isn't the easiest sort of a place. Lots of

rough stretches in the road. I've struck several and I've always

been glad when somebody has given me a lift. And I want to pass

it on--if you'll let me. It's something we owe each other--don't

you think?"

The words were fine enough; but it was the voice in which he

said them that went to her heart. She covered her face with her

hands and released her pent emotions. He took a package of

tobacco and a sheaf of papers from his trousers pocket, rolled

and lighted a cigarette. After a while she dried her eyes,

looked at him shamefacedly. But he was all understanding and

sympathy.

"Now you feel better, don't you?"

"Much," said she. And she laughed. "I guess I'm more upset than

I let myself realize."

"Sorry you left home?"

"I haven't any home," answered she simply. "And I wouldn't go

back alive to the place I came from."

There was a quality in the energy she put into her words that

made him thoughtful. He counseled with the end of his cigarette.

Finally he inquired:

"Where are you bound for?"

"I don't know exactly," confessed she, as if it were a small matter.

He shook his head. "I see you haven't the faintest notion what

you're up against."

"Oh, I'll get along. I'm strong, and I can learn."

He looked at her critically and rather sadly.

"Yes--you are strong," said he. "But I wonder if you're strong enough."

"I never was sick in my life."

"I don't mean that. . . . I'm not sure I know just what I do mean."

"Is it very hard to get to Chicago?" inquired she.

"It's easier to get to Cincinnati."

She shook her head positively. "It wouldn't do for me to go there."

"Oh, you come from Cincinnati?"

"No--but I--I've been there."

"Oh, they caught you and brought you back?"

She nodded. This young man must be very smart to understand so quickly.

"How much money have you got?" he asked abruptly.

But his fear that she would think him impertinent came of an

underestimate of her innocence. "I haven't got any," replied

she. "I forgot my purse. It had thirty dollars in it."

At once he recognized the absolute child; only utter

inexperience of the world could speak of so small a sum so

respectfully. "I don't understand at all," said he. "How long

have you been here?"

"All day. I got here early this morning."

"And you haven't had anything to eat!"

"Oh, yes! I found some eggs. I've got two left."

Two eggs--and no money and no friends--and a woman. Yet she was

facing the future hopefully! He smiled, with tears in his eyes.

"You mustn't tell anybody you saw me," she went on. "No matter

what they say, don't think you ought to tell on me."

He looked at her, she at him. When he had satisfied himself he

smiled most reassuringly. "I'll not," was his answer, and now

she _knew_ she could trust him.

She drew a breath of relief, and went on as if talking with an

old friend. "I've got to get a long ways from here. As soon as

it's dark I'm going."

"Where?"

"Toward the river." And her eyes lit.

"The river? What's there?"

"I don't know," said she triumphantly.

But he understood. He had the spirit of adventure himself--one

could see it at a glance--the spirit that instinctively shuns

yesterday and all its works and wings eagerly into tomorrow,

unknown, different, new--therefore better. But this girl, this

child-woman--or was she rather woman-child?--penniless, with

nothing but two eggs between her and starvation, alone, without

plans, without experience--

What would become of her?. . . "Aren't you--afraid?" he asked.

"Of what?" she inquired calmly.

It was the mere unconscious audacity of ignorance, yet he saw in

her now--not fancied he saw, but saw--a certain strength of

soul, both courage and tenacity. No, she might suffer, sink--but

she would die fighting, and she would not be afraid. And he

admired and envied her.

"Oh, I'll get along somehow," she assured him in the same

self-reliant tone. Suddenly she felt it would no longer give her

the horrors to speak of what she had been through. "I'm not very

old," said she, and hers was the face of a woman now. "But I've

learned a great deal."

"You are sure you are not making a mistake in--in--running away?"

"I couldn't do anything else," replied she. "I'm all alone in

the world. There's no one--except----

"I hadn't done anything, and they said I had disgraced them--and

they----" Her voice faltered, her eyes sank, the color flooded

into her face. "They gave me to a man--and he--I had hardly seen

him before--he----" She tried but could not pronounce the

dreadful word.

"Married, you mean?" said the young man gently.

The girl shuddered. "Yes," she answered. "And I ran away."

So strange, so startling, so moving was the expression of her

face that he could not speak for a moment. A chill crept over

him as he watched her wide eyes gazing into vacancy. What vision

of horror was she seeing, he wondered. To rouse her he spoke the

first words he could assemble:

"When was this?"

The vision seemed slowly to fade and she looked at him in

astonishment. "Why, it was last night!" she said, as if dazed by

the discovery. "Only last night!"

"Last night! Then you haven't got far."

"No. But I must. I will. And I'm not afraid of anything except

of being taken back."

"But you don't realize what may be--probably is--waiting for

you--at the river--and beyond."

"Nothing could be so bad," said she. The words were nothing, but

the tone and the expression that accompanied them somehow

convinced him beyond a doubt.

"You'll let me help you?"

She debated. "You might bring me something to eat--mightn't you?

The eggs'll do for supper. But there's tomorrow. I don't want to

be seen till I get a long ways off."

He rose at once. "Yes, I'll bring you something to eat." He took

a knockabout watch from the breast pocket of his shirt. "It's

now four o'clock. I've got three miles to walk. I'll ride back

and hitch the horse down the creek--a little ways down, so it

won't attract attention to your place up here. I'll be back in

about an hour and a half. . . . Maybe I'll think of something

that'll help. Can I bring you anything else?

"No. That is--I'd like a little piece of soap."

"And a towel?" he suggested.

"I could take care of a towel," agreed she. "I'll send it back

to you when I get settled."

"Good heavens!" He laughed at her simplicity. "What an honest

child you are!" He put out his hand, and she took it with

charming friendliness. "Good-by. I'll hurry."

"I'm so glad you caught me," said she. Then, apologetically, "I

don't want to be any trouble. I hate to be troublesome. I've

never let anybody wait on me."

"I don't know when I've had as much pleasure as this is giving

me." And he made a bow that hid its seriousness behind a smile

of good-humored raillery.

She watched him descend with a sinking heart. The rock--the

world--her life, seemed empty now. He had reminded her that

there were human beings with good hearts. But--perhaps if he

knew, his kindness would turn also. . . . No, she decided not.

Men like him, women like Aunt Sallie--they did not believe

those dreadful, wicked ideas that people said God had ordained.

Still--if he knew about her birth--branded outcast--he might

change. She must not really hope for anything much until she was

far, far away in a wholly new world where there would be a

wholly new sort of people, of a kind she had never met. But she

was sure they would welcome her, and give her a chance.

She returned to the tree against which she had been sitting, for

there she could look at the place his big frame had pressed down

in the tall grass, and could see him in it, and could recall his

friendly eyes and voice, and could keep herself assured she had

not been dreaming. He was a citified man, like Sam--but how

different! A man with a heart like his would never marry a

woman--no, never! He couldn't be a brute like that. Still,

perhaps nice men married because it was supposed to be the

right thing to do, and was the only way to have children without

people thinking you a disgrace and slighting the children--and

then marrying made brutes of them. No wonder her uncles could

treat her so. They were men who had married.

Afar off she heard the manly voice singing the song from

"Rigoletto." She sprang up and listened, with eyes softly

shining and head a little on one side. The song ended; her heart

beat fast. It was not many minutes before she, watching at the

end of the path, saw him appear at the bottom of the huge cleft.

And the look in his eyes, the merry smile about his expressive

mouth, delighted her. "I'm so glad to see you!" she cried.

Over his shoulder was flung his fishing bag, and it bulged.

"Don't be scared by the size of my pack," he called up, as he

climbed. "We're going to have supper together--if you'll let me

stay. Then you can take as much or as little as you like of

what's left."

Arrived at the top, he halted for a long breath. They stood

facing each other. "My, what a tall girl you are for your age!"

said he admiringly.

She laughed up at him. "I'll be as tall as you when I get my growth."

She was so lovely that he could scarcely refrain from telling

her so. It seemed to him, however, it would be taking an unfair

advantage to say that sort of thing when she was in a way at his

mercy. "Where shall we spread the table?" said he. "I'm hungry

as the horseleech's daughter. And you--why, you must be starved.

I'm afraid I didn't bring what you like. But I did the best I

could. I raided the pantry, took everything that was portable."

He had set down the bag and had loosened its strings. First he

took out a tablecloth. She laughed. "Gracious! How stylish we

shall be!"

"I didn't bring napkins. We can use the corners of the cloth."

He had two knives, two forks, and a big spoon rolled up in the

cloth, and a saltcellar. "Now, here's my triumph!" he cried,

drawing from the bag a pair of roasted chickens. Next came a jar

of quince jelly; next, a paper bag with cold potatoes and cold

string beans in it. Then he fished out a huge square of

cornbread and a loaf of salt-rising bread, a pound of butter--

"What will your folks say?" exclaimed she, in dismay.

He laughed. "They always have thought I was crazy, ever since I

went to college and then to the city instead of farming." And

out of the bag came a big glass jar of milk. "I forgot to bring

a glass!" he apologized. Then he suspended unpacking to open the

jar. "Why, you must be half-dead with thirst, up here all day

with not a drop of water." And he held out the jar to her.

"Drink hearty!" he cried.

The milk was rich and cold; she drank nearly a fourth of it

before she could wrest the jar away from her lips. "My, but that

was good!" she remarked. He had enjoyed watching her drink.

"Surely you haven't got anything else in that bag?"

"Not much," replied he. "Here's a towel, wrapped round the soap.

And here are three cakes of chocolate. You could live four or

five days on them, if you were put to it. So whatever else you

leave, don't leave them. And--Oh, yes, here's a calico slip and

a sunbonnet, and a paper of pins. And that's all."

"What are they for?"

"I thought you might put them on--the slip over your dress--and

you wouldn't look quite so--so out of place--if anybody should

see you."

"What a fine idea!" cried Susan, shaking out the slip delightedly.

He was spreading the supper on the tablecloth. He carved one of

the chickens, opened the jelly, placed the bread and vegetables

and butter. "Now!" he cried. "Let's get busy."

And he set her an example she was not slow to follow. The sun

had slipped down behind the hills of the northwest horizon. The

birds were tuning for their evening song. A breeze sprang up and

coquetted with the strays of her wavy dark hair. And they sat

cross-legged on the grass on opposite sides of the tablecloth

and joked and laughed and ate, and ate and laughed and joked

until the stars began to appear in the vast paling opal of the

sky. They had chosen the center of the grassy platform for their

banquet; thus, from where they sat only the tops of trees and

the sky were to be seen. And after they had finished she leaned

on her elbow and listened while he, smoking his cigarette, told

her of his life as a newspaper man in Cincinnati. The twilight

faded into dusk, the dusk into a scarlet darkness.

"When the moon comes up we'll start," said he. "You can ride

behind me on the horse part of the way, anyhow."

The shadow of the parting, the ending of this happiness, fell

upon her. How lonely it would be when he was gone! "I haven't

told you my name," she said.

"I've told you mine Roderick Spenser--with an _s_, not a _c_."

"I remember," said she. "I'll never forget. . . . Mine's Susan Lenox."

"What was it--before----" He halted.

"Before what?" His silence set her to thinking. "Oh!" she

exclaimed, in a tone that made him curse his stupidity in

reminding her. "My name's Susan Lenox--and always will be. It

was my mother's name." She hesitated, decided for frankness at

any cost, for his kindness forbade her to deceive him in any

way. Proudly, "My mother never let any man marry her. They say

she was disgraced, but I understand now. _She_ wouldn't stoop to

let any man marry her."

Spenser puzzled over this, but could make nothing of it. He felt

that he ought not to inquire further. He saw her anxious eyes,

her expression of one keyed up and waiting for a verdict. "I'd

have only to look at you to know your mother was a fine woman,"

said he. Then, to escape from the neighborhood of the dangerous

riddle, "Now, about your--your going," he began. "I've been

thinking what to do."

"You'll help me?" said she, to dispel her last doubt--a very

faint doubt, for his words and his way of uttering them had

dispelled her real anxiety.

"Help you?" cried he heartily. "All I can. I've got a scheme to

propose to you. You say you can't take the mail boat?"

"They know me. I--I'm from Sutherland."

"You trust me--don't you?"

"Indeed I do."

"Now listen to me--as if I were your brother. Will you?"

"Yes."

"I'm going to take you to Cincinnati with me. I'm going to put

you in my boarding house as my sister. And I'm going to get you

a position. Then--you can start in for yourself."

"But that'll be a great lot of trouble, won't it?"

"Not any more than friends of mine took for me when I was

starting out." Then, as she continued silent, "What are you

thinking? I can't see your face in this starlight."

"I was thinking how good you are," she said simply.

He laughed uneasily. "I'm not often accused of that," he

replied. "I'm like most people--a mixture of good and bad--and

not very strong either way. I'm afraid I'm mostly impulse that

winks out. But--the question is, how to get you to Cincinnati.

It's simply impossible for me to go tonight. I can't take you

home for the night. I don't trust my people. They'd not think I

was good--or you, either. And while usually they'd be

right--both ways--this is an exception." This idea of an

exception seemed to amuse him. He went on, "I don't dare leave you

at any farmhouse in the neighborhood. If I did, you could be traced."

"No--no," she cried, alarmed at the very suggestion. "I mustn't

be seen by anybody."

"We'll go straight to the river, and I'll get a boat and row you

across to Kentucky--over to Carrollton. There's a little hotel.

I can leave you----"

"No--not Carrollton," she interrupted. "My uncle sells goods

there, and they know him. And if anything is in the Sutherland

papers about me, why, they'd know."

"Not with you in that slip and sunbonnet. I'll make up a

story--about our wagon breaking down and that I've got to walk

back into the hills to get another before we can go on.

And--it's the only plan that's at all possible."

Obviously he was right; but she would not consent. By adroit

questioning he found that her objection was dislike of being so

much trouble to him. "That's too ridiculous," cried he. "Why, I

wouldn't have missed this adventure for anything in the world."

His manner was convincing enough, but she did not give in until

moonrise came without her having thought of any other plan. He

was to be Bob Peters, she his sister Kate, and they were to hail

from a farm in the Kentucky hills back of Milton. They practiced

the dialect of the region and found that they could talk it well

enough to pass the test of a few sentences They packed the

fishing bag; she wrapped the two eggs in paper and put them in

the empty milk bottle. They descended by the path--a slow

journey in the darkness of that side of the rock, as there were

many dangers, including the danger of making a noise that might

be heard by some restless person at the house. After half an

hour they were safely at the base of the rock; they skirted it,

went down to the creek, found the horse tied where he had left

it. With her seated sideways behind him and holding on by an arm

half round his waist, they made a merry but not very speedy

advance toward the river, keeping as nearly due south as the

breaks in the hills permitted. After a while he asked: "Do you

ever think of the stage?"

"I've never seen a real stage play," said she. "But I want

to--and I will, the first chance I get."

"I meant, did you ever think of going on the stage?"

"No." So daring a flight would have been impossible for a baby

imagination in the cage of the respectable-family-in-a-small-town.

"It's one of my dreams to write plays," he went on. "Wouldn't it

be queer if some day I wrote plays for you to act in?"

When one's fancy is as free as was Susan's then, it takes any

direction chance may suggest. Susan's fancy instantly winged

along this fascinating route. "I've given recitations at school,

and in the plays we used to have they let me take the best

parts--that is--until--until a year or so ago."

He noted the hesitation, had an instinct against asking why

there had come a time when she no longer got good parts. "I'm

sure you could learn to act," declared he. "And you'll be sure

of it, too, after you've seen the people who do it."

"Oh, I don't believe I could," said she, in rebuke to her own

mounting self-confidence. Then, suddenly remembering her

birth-brand of shame and overwhelmed by it, "No, I can't hope to

be to be anything much. They wouldn't have--_me_."

"I know how you feel," replied he, all unaware of the real

reason for this deep humility. "When I first struck town I felt

that way. It seemed to me I couldn't hope ever to line up with

the clever people they had there. But I soon saw there was

nothing in that idea. The fact is, everywhere in the world

there's a lot more things to do than people who can do them.

Most of those who get to the top--where did they start? Where

we're starting."

She was immensely flattered by that "we" and grateful for it.

But she held to her original opinion. "There wouldn't be a

chance for me," said she. "They wouldn't have me."

"Oh, I understand," said he and he fancied he did. He laughed

gayly at the idea that in the theater anyone would care who she

was--what kind of past she had had--or present either, for that

matter. Said he, "You needn't worry. On the stage they don't ask

any questions--any questions except 'Can you act? Can you get it

over? Can you get the hand?'"

Then this stage, it was the world she had dreamed of--the world

where there lived a wholly new kind of people--people who could

make room for her. She thrilled, and her heart beat wildly. In

a strangely quiet, intense voice, she said:

"I want to try. I'm sure I'll get along there. I'll work--Oh, so

hard. I'll do _anything!_"

"That's the talk," cried he. "You've got the stuff in you."

She said little the rest of the journey. Her mind was busy with

the idea he had by merest accident given her. If he could have

looked in upon her thoughts, he would have been amazed and not

a little alarmed by the ferment he had set up.

Where they reached the river the bank was mud and thick willows,

the haunt of incredible armies of mosquitoes. "It's a mystery to

me," cried he, "why these fiends live in lonely places far away

from blood, when they're so mad about it." After some searching

he found a clear stretch of sandy gravel where she would be not

too uncomfortable while he was gone for a boat. He left the

horse with her and walked upstream in the direction of

Brooksburg. As he had warned her that he might be gone a long

time, he knew she would not be alarmed for him--and she had

already proved that timidity about herself was not in her nature.

But he was alarmed for her--this girl alone in that lonely

darkness--with light enough to make her visible to any prowler.

About an hour after he left her he returned in a rowboat he had

borrowed at the water mill. He hitched the horse in the deep

shadow of the break in the bank. She got into the boat, put on

the slip and the sunbonnet, put her sailor hat in the bag. They

pushed off and he began the long hard row across and upstream.

The moon was high now and was still near enough to its full

glory to pour a flood of beautiful light upon the broad

river--the lovely Ohio at its loveliest part.

"Won't you sing?" he asked.

And without hesitation she began one of the simple familiar love

songs that were all the music to which the Sutherland girls had

access. She sang softly, in a deep sweet voice, sweeter even

than her speaking voice. She had the sunbonnet in her lap; the

moon shone full upon her face. And it seemed to him that he was

in a dream; there was nowhere a suggestion of reality--not of

its prose, not even of its poetry. Only in the land no waking

eye has seen could such a thing be. The low sweet voice sang of

love, the oars clicked rhythmically in the locks and clove the

water with musical splash; the river, between its steep hills,

shone in the moonlight, with a breeze like a friendly spirit

moving upon its surface. He urged her, and she sang another

song, and another. She sighed when she saw the red lantern on

the Carrollton wharf; and he, turning his head and seeing,

echoed her sigh.

"The first chance, you must sing me that song," she said.

"From 'Rigoletto'? I will. But--it tells how fickle women

are--'like a feather in the wind.'. . . They aren't all like

that, though--don't you think so?"

"Sometimes I think everybody's like a feather in the wind,"

replied she. "About love--and everything."

He laughed. "Except those people who are where there isn't any wind."

CHAPTER XII

FOR some time Spenser had been rowing well in toward the

Kentucky shore, to avoid the swift current of the Kentucky River

which rushes into the Ohio at Carrollton. A few yards below its

mouth, in the quiet stretch of backwater along shore, lay the

wharf-boat, little more than a landing stage. The hotel was but

a hundred feet away, at the top of the steep levee. It was

midnight, so everyone in the village had long been asleep. After

several minutes of thunderous hammering Roderick succeeded in

drawing to the door a barefooted man with a candle in his huge,

knotted hand--a man of great stature, amazingly lean and long of

leg, with a monstrous head thatched and fronted with coarse,

yellow-brown hair. He had on a dirty cotton shirt and dirty

cotton trousers--a night dress that served equally well for the

day. His feet were flat and thick and were hideous with corns

and bunions. Susan had early been made a critical observer of

feet by the unusual symmetry of her own. She had seen few feet

that were fit to be seen; but never, she thought, had she seen

an exhibition so repellent.

"What t'hell----" he began. Then, discovering Susan, he growled,

"Beg pardon, miss."

Roderick explained--that is, told the prearranged story. The man

pointed to a grimy register on the office desk, and Roderick set

down the fishing bag and wrote in a cramped, scrawly hand, "Kate

Peters, Milton, Ky."

The man looked at it through his screen of hair and beard, said,

"Come on, ma'am."

"Just a minute," said Roderick, and he drew "Kate" aside and said

to her in a low tone: "I'll be back sometime tomorrow, and then

we'll start at once. But--to provide against everything--don't be

alarmed if I don't come. You'll know I couldn't help it. And wait."

Susan nodded, looking at him with trustful, grateful eyes.

"And," he went on hurriedly, "I'll leave this with you, to take

care of. It's yours as much as mine."

She saw that it was a pocketbook, instinctively put her hands

behind her.

"Don't be silly," he said, with good-humored impatience. "You'll

probably not need it. If you do, you'll need it bad. And you'll

pay me back when you get your place."

He caught one of her hands and put the pocketbook in it. As his

argument was unanswerable, she did not resist further. She

uttered not a word of thanks, but simply looked at him, her eyes

swimming and about her mouth a quiver that meant a great deal in

her. Impulsively and with flaming cheek he kissed her on the

cheek. "So long, sis," he said loudly, and strode into the night.

Susan did not flush; she paled. She gazed after him with some

such expression as a man lost in a cave might have as he watches

the flickering out of his only light. "This way, ma'am," said

the hotel man sourly, taking up the fishing bag. She started,

followed him up the noisy stairs to a plain, neat country

bedroom. "The price of this here's one fifty a day," said he.

"We've got 'em as low as a dollar."

"I'll take a dollar one, please," said Susan.

The man hesitated. "Well," he finally snarled, "business is

slack jes' now. Seein' as you're a lady, you kin have this here

un fur a dollar."

"Oh, thank you--but if the price is more----"

"The other rooms ain't fit fur a lady," said the hotel man. Then

he grinned a very human humorous grin that straightway made him

much less repulsive. "Anyhow, them two durn boys of mine an'

their cousins is asleep in 'em. I'd as lief rout out a nest of

hornets. I'll leave you the candle."

As soon as he had gone Susan put out the light, ran to the

window. She saw the rowboat and Spenser, a black spot far out on

the river, almost gone from view to the southwest. Hastily she

lighted the candle again, stood at the window and waved a white

cover she snatched from the table. She thought she saw one of

the oars go up and flourish, but she could not be sure. She

watched until the boat vanished in the darkness at the bend. She

found the soap in the bag and took a slow but thorough bath in

the washbowl. Then she unbraided her hair, combed it out as well

as she could with her fingers, rubbed it thoroughly with a towel

and braided it again. She put on the calico slip as a

nightdress, knelt down to say her prayers. But instead of

prayers there came flooding into her mind memories of where she

had been last night, of the horrors, of the agonies of body and

soul. She rose from her knees, put out the light, stood again at

the window. In after years she always looked back upon that hour

as the one that definitely marked the end of girlhood, of the

thoughts and beliefs which go with the sheltered life, and the

beginning of womanhood, of self-reliance and of the

hardiness--so near akin to hardness--the hardiness that must

come into the character before a man or a woman is fit to give

and take in the combat of life.

The bed was coarse, but white and clean. She fell asleep

instantly and did not awaken until, after the vague, gradually

louder sound of hammering on the door, she heard a female voice

warning her that breakfast was "put nigh over an' done." She got

up, partly drew on one stocking, then without taking it off

tumbled over against the pillow and was asleep. When she came to

herself again, the lay of the shadows told her it must be after

twelve o'clock. She dressed, packed her serge suit in the bag

with the sailor hat, smoothed out the pink calico slip and put

it on. For more than a year she had worn her hair in a braid

doubled upon itself and tied with a bow at the back of her neck.

She decided that if she would part it, plait it in two braids

and bring them round her head, she would look older. She tried

this and was much pleased with the result. She thought the new

style not only more grown-up, but also more becoming. The pink

slip, too, seemed to her a success. It came almost to her ankles

and its strings enabled her to make it look something like a

dress. Carrying the pink sunbonnet, down she went in search of

something to eat.

The hall was full of smoke and its air seemed greasy with the

odor of frying. She found that dinner was about to be served. A

girl in blue calico skirt and food-smeared, sweat-discolored

blue jersey ushered her to one of the tables in the dining-room.

"There's a gentleman comin'," said she. "I'll set him down with

you. He won't bite, I don't reckon, and there ain't no use

mussin' up two tables."

There was no protesting against two such arguments; so Susan

presently had opposite her a fattish man with long oily hair and

a face like that of a fallen and dissipated preacher. She

recognized him at once as one of those wanderers who visit small

towns with cheap shows or selling patent medicines and doing

juggling tricks on the street corners in the flare of a gasoline

lamp. She eyed him furtively until he caught her at it--he being

about the same business himself. Thereafter she kept her eyes

steadily upon the tablecloth, patched and worn thin with much

washing. Soon the plate of each was encircled by the familiar

arc of side dishes containing assorted and not very appetizing

messes--fried steak, watery peas, stringy beans, soggy turnips,

lumpy mashed potatoes, a perilous-looking chicken stew,

cornbread with streaks of baking soda in it. But neither of the

diners was critical, and the dinner was eaten with an enthusiasm

which the best rarely inspires.

With the prunes and dried-apple pie, the stranger expanded.

"Warm day, miss," he ventured.

"Yes, it is a little warm," said Susan. She ventured a direct

look at him. Above the pleasant, kindly eyes there was a brow so

unusually well shaped that it arrested even her young and

untrained attention. Whatever the man's character or station,

there could be no question as to his intelligence.

"The flies are very bothersome," continued he. "But nothing like

Australia. There the flies have to be picked off, and they're

big, and they bite--take a piece right out of you. The natives

used to laugh at us when we were in the ring and would try to

brush, em away." The stranger had the pleasant, easy manner of

one who through custom of all kinds of people and all varieties

of fortune, has learned to be patient and good-humored--to take

the day and the hour as the seasoned gambler takes the cards

that are dealt him.

Susan said nothing; but she had listened politely. The man went

on amusing himself with his own conversation. "I was in the show

business then. Clown was my line, but I was rotten at it--simply

rotten. I'm still in the show business--different line, though.

I've got a show of my own. If you're going to be in town perhaps

you'll come to see us tonight. Our boat's anchored down next to the

wharf. You can see it from the windows. Come, and bring your folks."

"Thank you," said Susan--she had for gotten her role and its

accent. "But I'm afraid we'll not be here."

There was an expression in the stranger's face--a puzzled,

curious expression, not impertinent, rather covert--an

expression that made her uneasy. It warned her that this man saw

she was not what she seemed to be, that he was trying to peer

into her secret. His brown eyes were kind enough, but alarmingly

keen. With only half her pie eaten, she excused herself and

hastened to her room.

At the threshold she remembered the pocketbook Spenser had given

her. She had left it by the fishing bag on the table. There was

the bag but not the pocketbook. "I must have put it in the bag,"

she said aloud, and the sound and the tone of her voice

frightened her. She searched the bag, then the room which had

not yet been straightened up. She shook out the bed covers,

looked in all the drawers, under the bed, went over the contents

of the bag again. The pocketbook was gone--stolen.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, her hands in her lap, and

stared at the place where she had last seen the pocketbook--_his_

pocketbook, which he had asked her to take care of. How could

she face him! What would he think of her, so untrustworthy! What

a return for his kindness! She felt weak--so weak that she lay

down. The food she had taken turned to poison and her head ached

fiercely. What could she do? To speak to the proprietor would be

to cause a great commotion, to attract attention to herself--and

how would that help to bring back the stolen pocketbook, taken

perhaps by the proprietor himself? She recalled that as she

hurried through the office from the dining-room he had a queer

shifting expression, gave her a wheedling, cringing good morning

not at all in keeping with the character he had shown the night

before. The slovenly girl came to do the room; Susan sent her

away, sat by the window gazing out over the river and

downstream. He would soon be here; the thought made her long to

fly and hide. He had been all generosity; and this was her way

of appreciating it!

They sent for her to come down to supper. She refused, saying

she was not feeling well. She searched the room, the bag, again

and again. She would rest a few minutes, then up she would

spring and tear everything out. Then back to the window to sit

and stare at the river over which the evening shadows were

beginning to gather. Once, as she was sitting there, she

happened to see the gaudily painted and decorated show boat. A

man--the stranger of the dinner table--was standing on the

forward end, smoking a cigar. She saw that he was observing her,

realized he could have seen her stirring feverishly about her

room. A woman came out of the cabin and joined him. As soon as

his attention was distracted she closed her shutters. And there

she sat alone, with the hours dragging their wretched minutes

slowly away.

That was one of those nights upon which anyone who has had

them--and who has not?--looks back with wonder at how they ever

lived, how they ever came to an end. She slept a little toward

dawn--for youth and health will not let the most despairing

heart suffer in sleeplessness. Her headache went, but the misery

of soul which had been a maddening pain settled down into a

throbbing ache. She feared he would come; she feared he would

not come. The servants tried to persuade her to take breakfast.

She could not have swallowed food; she would not have dared take

food for which she could not pay. What would they do with her if

he did not come? She searched the room again, hoping against

hope, a hundred times fancying she felt the purse under some

other things, each time suffering sickening disappointment.

Toward noon the servant came knocking. "A letter for you, ma'am."

Susan rushed to the door, seized the letter, tore it open, read:

When I got back to the horse and started to mount, he kicked me

and broke my leg. You can go on south to the L. and N. and take

a train to Cincinnati. When you find a boarding house send your

address to me at the office. I'll come in a few weeks. I'd write

more but I can't. Don't worry. Everything'll come out right. You

are brave and sensible, and I _back you to win_.

With the unsigned letter crumpled in her hands she sat at the

window with scarcely a motion until noon. She then went down to

the show boat. Several people--men and women--were on the

forward end, quarreling. She looked only at her acquaintance.

His face was swollen and his eyes bloodshot, but he still wore

the air of easy and patient good-humor. She said, standing on

the shore, "Could I speak to you a minute?"

"Certainly, ma'am," replies he, lifting his dingy straw hat with

gaudy, stained band. He came down the broad plank to the shore.

"Why, what's the matter?" This in a sympathetic tone.

"Will you lend me two dollars and take me along to work it out?"

she asked.

He eyed her keenly. "For the hotel bill?" he inquired, the cigar

tucked away in the corner of his mouth.

She nodded.

"He didn't show up?"

"He broke his leg."

"Oh!" The tone was politely sympathetic, but incredulous. He eyed

her critically, thoughtfully. "Can you sing?" he finally asked.

"A little."

His hands were deep in the pockets of his baggy light trousers.

He drew one of them out with a two-dollar bill in it. "Go and

pay him and bring your things. We're about to push off."

"Thank you," said the girl in the same stolid way. She returned

to the hotel, brought the bag down from her room, stood at the

office desk.

The servant came. "Mr. Gumpus has jes' stepped out," said she.

"Here is the money for my room." And Susan laid the two-dollar

bill on the register.

"Ain't you goin' to wait fur yer--yer brother?"

"He's not coming," replied the girl. "So--I'll go. Good-by."

"Good-by. It's awful, bein' took sick away from home."

"Thank you," said Susan. "Good-by."

The girl's homely, ignorant face twisted in a grin. But Susan

did not see, would have been indifferent had she seen. Since she

accepted the war earth and heaven had declared against her, she

had ceased from the little thought she had once given to what

was thought of her by those of whom she thought not at all. She

went down to the show boat. The plank had been taken in. Her

acquaintance was waiting for her, helped her to the deck, jumped

aboard himself, and was instantly busy helping to guide the boat

out into mid-stream. Susan looked back at the hotel. Mr. Gumpus

was in the doorway, amusement in every line of his ugly face.

Beside him stood the slovenly servant. She was crying--the more

human second thought of a heart not altogether corrupted by the

sordid hardness of her lot. How can faith in the human race

falter when one considers how much heart it has in spite of all

it suffers in the struggle upward through the dense fogs of

ignorance upward, toward the truth, toward the light of which it

never ceases to dream and to hope?

Susan stood in the same place, with her bag beside her, until

her acquaintance came.

"Now," said he, comfortably, as he lighted a fresh cigar, "we'll

float pleasantly along. I guess you and I had better get

acquainted. What is your name?"

Susan flushed. "Kate Peters is the name I gave at the hotel.

That'll do, won't it?"

"Never in the world!" replied he. "You must have a good catchy

name. Say--er--er----" He rolled his cigar slowly, looking

thoughtfully toward the willows thick and green along the

Indiana shore. "Say--well, say--Lorna--Lorna--Lorna Sackville!

That's a winner. Lorna Sackville!--A stroke of genius! Don't you

think so?"

"Yes," said Susan. "It doesn't matter."

"But it does," remonstrated he. "You are an artist, now, and an

artist's name should always arouse pleasing and romantic

anticipations. It's like the odor that heralds the dish. You

must remember, my dear, that you have stepped out of the world

of dull reality into the world of ideals, of dreams."

The sound of two harsh voices, one male, the other female, came

from within the cabin--oaths, reproaches. Her acquaintance

laughed. "That's one on me--eh? Still, what I say is true--or at

least ought to be. By the way, this is the Burlingham Floating

Palace of Thespians, floating temple to the histrionic art. I am

Burlingham--Robert Burlingham." He smiled, extended his hand.

"Glad to meet you, Miss Lorna Sackville--don't forget!"

She could not but reflect a smile so genuine, so good-humored.

"We'll go in and meet the others--your fellow stars--for this is

an all-star aggregation."

Over the broad entrance to the cabin was a chintz curtain strung

upon a wire. Burlingham drew this aside. Susan was looking into

a room about thirty feet long, about twelve feet wide, and a

scant six feet high. Across it with an aisle between were narrow

wooden benches with backs. At the opposite end was a stage, with

the curtain up and a portable stove occupying the center. At the

stove a woman in a chemise and underskirt, with slippers on her

bare feet, was toiling over several pots and pans with fork and

spoon. At the edge of the stage, with legs swinging, sat another

woman, in a blue sailor suit neither fresh nor notably clean but

somehow coquettish. Two men in flannel shirts were seated, one

on each of the front benches, with their backs to her.

As Burlingham went down the aisle ahead of her, he called out:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to present the latest valuable

addition to our company--Miss Lorna Sackville, the renowned

ballad singer."

The two men turned lazily and stared at Susan, each with an arm

hanging over the back of the bench.

Burlingham looked at the woman bent over the stove--a fat,

middle-aged woman with thin, taffy-yellow hair done sleekly over

a big rat in front and made into a huge coil behind with the aid

of one or more false braids. She had a fat face, a broad expanse

of unpleasant-looking, elderly bosom, big, shapeless white arms.

Her contour was almost gone. Her teeth were a curious mixture of

natural, gold, and porcelain. "Miss Anstruther--Miss Sackville,"

called Burlingham. "Miss Sackville, Miss Violet Anstruther."

Miss Anstruther and Susan exchanged bows--Susan's timid and

frightened, Miss Anstruther's accompanied by a hostile stare and

a hardening of the fat, decaying face.

"Miss Connemora--Miss Sackville." Burlingham was looking at the

younger woman--she who sat on the edge of the little stage. She,

too, was a blond, but her hair had taken to the chemical

somewhat less reluctantly than had Miss Anstruther's, with the

result that Miss Connemora's looked golden. Her face--of the

baby type must have been softly pretty at one time--not so very

distant. Now lines were coming and the hard look that is

inevitable with dyed hair. Also her once fine teeth were rapidly

going off, as half a dozen gold fillings in front proclaimed. At

Susan's appealing look and smile Miss Connemora nodded not

unfriendly.

"Good God, Bob," said she to Burlingham with a laugh, "are you

going to get the bunch of us pinched for child-stealing?"

Burlingham started to laugh, suddenly checked himself, looked

uneasily and keenly at Susan. "Oh, it's all right," he said with

a wave of the hand. But his tone belied his words. He puffed

twice at his cigar, then introduced the men--Elbert Eshwell and

Gregory Tempest--two of the kind clearly if inelegantly placed

by the phrase, "greasy hamfats." Mr. Eshwell's black-dyed hair

was smoothly brushed down from a central part, Mr. Tempest's

iron-gray hair was greasily wild--a disarray of romantic

ringlets. Eshwell was inclined to fat; Tempest was gaunt and had

the hollow, burning eye that bespeaks the sentimental ass.

"Now, Miss Sackville," said Burlingham, "we'll go on the forward

deck and canvass the situation. What for dinner, Vi?"

"Same old rot," retorted Miss Anstruther, wiping the sweat from

her face and shoulders with a towel that served also as a

dishcloth. "Pork and beans--potatoes--peach pie."

"Cheer up," said Burlingham. "After tomorrow we'll do better."

"That's been the cry ever since we started," snapped Violet.

"For God's sake, shut up, Vi," groaned Eshwell. "You're always kicking."

The cabin was not quite the full width of the broad house boat.

Along the outside, between each wall and the edge, there was

room for one person to pass from forward deck to rear. From the

cabin roof, over the rear deck, into the water extended a big

rudder oar. When Susan, following Burlingham, reached the rear

deck, she saw the man at this oar--a fat, amiable-looking

rascal, in linsey woolsey and a blue checked shirt open over his

chest and revealing a mat of curly gray hair. Burlingham hailed

him as Pat--his only known name. But Susan had only a glance for

him and no ear at all for the chaffing between him and the

actor-manager. She was gazing at the Indiana shore, at a tiny

village snuggled among trees and ripened fields close to the

water's edge. She knew it was Brooksburg. She remembered the

long covered bridge which they had crossed--Spenser and she, on

the horse. To the north of the town, on a knoll, stood a large

red brick house trimmed with white veranda and balconies--far

and away the most pretentious house in the landscape. Before the

door was a horse and buggy. She could make out that there were

several people on the front veranda, one of them a man in

black--the doctor, no doubt. Sobs choked up into her throat. She

turned quickly away that Burlingham might not see. And under her

breath she said,

"Good-by, dear. Forgive me--forgive me."

CHAPTER XIII

WOMAN'S worktable, a rocking chair and another with a swayback

that made it fairly comfortable for lounging gave the rear deck

the air of an outdoor sitting-room, which indeed it was.

Burlingham, after a comprehensive glance at the panorama of

summer and fruitfulness through which they were drifting,

sprawled himself in the swayback chair, indicating to Susan that

she was to face him in the rocker. "Sit down, my dear," said he.

"And tell me you are at least eighteen and are not running away

from home. You heard what Miss Connemora said."

"I'm not running away from home," replied Susan, blushing

violently because she was evading as to the more important fact.

"I don't know anything about you, and I don't want to know,"

pursued Burlingham, alarmed by the evidences of a dangerous

tendency to candor. "I've no desire to have my own past dug

into, and turn about's fair play. You came to me to get an

engagement. I took you. Understand?"

Susan nodded.

"You said you could sing--that is, a little."

"A very little," said the girl.

"Enough, no doubt. That has been our weak point--lack of a

ballad singer. Know any ballads?--Not fancy ones. Nothing fancy!

We cater to the plain people, and the plain people only like the

best--that is, the simplest--the things that reach for the

heartstrings with ten strong fingers. You don't happen to know

'I Stood on the Bridge at Midnight'?"

"No--Ruth sings that," replied Susan, and colored violently.

Burlingham ignored the slip. "'Blue Alsatian Mountains'?"

"Yes. But that's very old."

"Exactly. Nothing is of any use to the stage until it's very

old. Audiences at theaters don't want to _hear_ anything they

don't already know by heart. They've come to _see_, not to hear.

So it annoys them to have to try to hear. Do you understand that?"

"No," confessed Susan. "I'm sorry. But I'll think about it, and

try to understand it." She thought she was showing her inability

to do what was expected of her in paying back the two dollars.

"Don't bother," said Burlingham. "Pat!"

"Yes, boss," said the man at the oar, without looking or

removing his pipe.

"Get your fiddle."

Pat tied the oar fast and went forward along the roof of the

cabin. While he was gone Burlingham explained, "A frightful souse,

Pat--almost equal to Eshwell and far the superior of Tempest or

Vi--that is, of Tempest. But he's steady enough for our purposes,

as a rule. He's the pilot, the orchestra, the man-of-all-work, the

bill distributor. Oh, he's a wonder. Graduate of Trinity College,

Dublin--yeggman--panhandler--barrel-house bum--genius, nearly. Has

drunk as much booze as there is water in this river----"

Pat was back beside the handle of the oar, with a violin.

Burlingham suggested to Susan that she'd better stand while she

sang, "and if you've any tendency to stage fright, remember it's

your bread and butter to get through well. You'll not bother

about your audience."

Susan found this thought a potent strengthener--then and

afterward. With surprisingly little embarrassment she stood

before her good-natured, sympathetic employer, and while Pat

scraped out an accompaniment sang the pathetic story of the

"maiden young and fair" and the "stranger in the spring" who

"lingered near the fountains just to hear the maiden sing," and

how he departed after winning her love, and how "she will never

see the stranger where the fountains fall again--adé, adé, adé."

Her voice was deliciously young and had the pathetic quality

that is never absent from anything which has enduring charm for

us. Tears were in Burlingham's voice--tears for the fate of the

maiden, tears of response to the haunting pathos of Susan's sweet

contralto, tears of joy at the acquisition of such a "number"

for his program. As her voice died away he beat his plump hands

together enthusiastically.

"She'll do--eh, Pat? She'll set the hay-tossers crazy!"

Susan's heart was beating fast from nervousness. She sat down.

Burlingham sprang up and put his hands on her shoulders and

kissed her. He laughed at her shrinking.

"Don't mind, my dear," he cried. "It's one of our ways. Now,

what others do you know?"

She tried to recall, and with his assistance finally did

discover that she possessed a repertoire of "good old stale

ones," consisting of "Coming Thro' the Rye," "Suwanee River,"

"Annie Laurie" and "Kathleen Mavourneen." She knew many other

songs, but either Pat could not play them or Burlingham declared

them "above the head of Reub the rotter."

"Those five are quite enough," said Burlingham. "Two regulars,

two encores, with a third in case of emergency. After dinner

Miss Anstruther and I'll fit you out with a costume. You'll make

a hit at Sutherland tonight."

"Sutherland!" exclaimed Susan, suddenly pale. "I can't sing

there--really, I can't."

Burlingham made a significant gesture toward Pat at the oar

above them, and winked at her. "You'll not have stage fright, my

dear. You'll pull through."

Susan understood that nothing more was to be said before Pat.

Soon Burlingham told him to tie the oar again and retire to the

cabin. "I'll stand watch," said he. "I want to talk business

with Miss Sackville."

When Pat had gone, Burlingham gave her a sympathetic look. "No

confidences, mind you, my dear," he warned. "All I want to know

is that it isn't stage fright that's keeping you off the program

at Sutherland."

"No," replied the girl. "It isn't stage fright. I'm--I'm sorry

I can't begin right away to earn the money to pay you back.

But--I can't."

"Not even in a velvet and spangle costume--Low neck, short

sleeves, with blond wig and paint and powder? You'll not know

yourself, my dear--really."

"I couldn't," said Susan. "I'd not be able to open my lips."

"Very well. That's settled." It was evident that Burlingham was

deeply disappointed. "We were going to try to make a killing at

Sutherland." He sighed. "However, let that pass. If you can't,

you can't."

"I'm afraid you're angry with me," cried she.

"I--angry!" He laughed. "I've not been angry in ten years. I'm

such a _damn_, damn fool that with all the knocks life's given me

I haven't learned much. But at least I've learned not to get

angry. No, I understand, my dear--and will save you for the next

town below." He leaned forward and gave her hands a fatherly

pat as they lay in her lap. "Don't give it a second thought," he

said. "We've got the whole length of the river before us."

Susan showed her gratitude in her face better far than she could

have expressed it in words. The two sat silent. When she saw his

eyes upon her with that look of smiling wonder in them, she

said, "You mustn't think I've done anything dreadful. I

haven't--really, I haven't."

He laughed heartily. "And if you had, you'd not need to hang

your head in this company, my dear. We're all people who have

_lived_--and life isn't exactly a class meeting with the elders

taking turns at praying and the organ wheezing out gospel hymns.

No, we've all been up against it most of our lives--which means

we've done the best we could oftener than we've had the chance

to do what we ought." He gave her one of his keen looks, nodded:

"I like you. . . . What do they tell oftenest when they're

talking about how you were as a baby?"

Susan did not puzzle over the queerness of this abrupt question.

She fell to searching her memory diligently for an answer. "I'm

not sure, but I think they speak oftenest of how I never used to

like anybody to take my hand and help me along, even when I was

barely able to walk. They say I always insisted on trudging

along by myself."

Burlingham nodded, slapped his knee. "I can believe it," he

cried. "I always ask everybody that question to see whether I've

sited 'em up right. I rather think I hit you off to a T--as you

faced me at dinner yesterday in the hotel. Speaking of

dinner--let's go sit in on the one I smell."

They returned to the cabin where, to make a table, a board had

been swung between the backs of the second and third benches

from the front on the left side of the aisle. Thus the three men

sat on the front bench with their legs thrust through between

seat and back, while the three women sat in dignity and comfort

on the fourth bench. Susan thought the dinner by no means

justified Miss Anstruther's pessimism. It was good in itself,

and the better for being in this happy-go-lucky way, in this

happy-go-lucky company. Once they got started, all the

grouchiness disappeared. Susan, young and optimistic and

determined to be pleased, soon became accustomed to the looks of

her new companions--that matter of mere exterior about which we

shallow surface-skimmers make such a mighty fuss, though in the

test situations of life, great and small, it amounts to precious

little. They were all human beings, and the girl was unspoiled,

did not think of them as failures, half-wolves, of no social

position, of no standing in the respectable world. She still had

much of the natural democracy of children, and she admired these

new friends who knew so much more than she did, who had lived,

had suffered, had come away from horrible battles covered with

wounds, the scars of which they would bear into the

grave--battles they had lost; yet they had not given up, but had

lived on, smiling, courageous, kind of heart. It was their kind

hearts that most impressed her--their kind taking in of her whom

those she loved had cast out--her, the unknown stranger,

helpless and ignorant. And what Spenser had told her about the

stage and its people made her almost believe that they would not

cast her out, though they knew the dreadful truth about her birth.

Tempest told a story that was "broad." While the others laughed,

Susan gazed at him with a puzzled expression. She wished to be

polite, to please, to enjoy. But what that story meant she could

not fathom. Miss Anstruther jeered at her. "Look at the

innocent," she cried.

"Shut up, Vi," retorted Miss Connemora. "It's no use for us to

try to be anything but what we are. Still, let the baby alone."

"Yes--let her alone," said Burlingham.

"It'll soak in soon enough," Miss Connemora went on. "No use

rubbing it in."

"What?" said Susan, thinking to show her desire to be friendly,

to be one of them.

"Dirt," said Burlingham dryly. "And don't ask any more questions."

When the three women had cleared away the dinner and had stowed

the dishes in one of the many cubbyholes along the sides of the

cabin, the three men got ready for a nap. Susan was delighted to

see them drop to the tops of the backs of the seats three berths

which fitted snugly into the walls when not in use. She saw now

that there were five others of the same kind, and that there was

a contrivance of wires and curtains by which each berth could be

shut off to itself. She had a thrilling sense of being in a kind

of Swiss Family Robinson storybook come to life. She unpacked

her bag, contributed the food in it to the common store, spread

out her serge suit which Miss Anstruther offered to press and

insisted on pressing, though Susan protested she could do it

herself quite well.

"You'll want to put it on for the arrival at Sutherland," said

Mabel Connemora.

"No," replied Susan nervously. "Not till tomorrow."

She saw the curious look in all their eyes at sight of that

dress, so different from the calico she was wearing. Mabel took

her out on the forward deck where there was an awning and a good

breeze. They sat there, Mabel talking, Susan gazing rapt at land

and water and at the actress, and listening as to a fairy

story--for the actress had lived through many and strange

experiences in the ten years since she left her father's roof in

Columbia, South Carolina. Susan listened and absorbed as a dry

sponge dropped into a pail of water. At her leisure she would

think it all out, would understand, would learn.

"Now, tell _me_ about _your_self," said Mabel when she had

exhausted all the reminiscences she could recall at the

moment--all that were fit for a "baby's" ears.

"I will, some time," said Susan, who was ready for the question.

"But I can't--not yet."

"It seems to me you're very innocent," said Mabel, "even for a

well-brought-up girl. _I_ was well brought up, too. I wish to God

my mother had told me a few things. But no--not a thing."

"What do you mean?" inquired Susan.

That set the actress to probing the girl's innocence--what she

knew and what she did not. It had been many a day since Miss

Connemora had had so much pleasure. "Well!" she finally said. "I

never would have believed it--though I know these things are so.

Now I'm going to teach you. Innocence may be a good thing for

respectable women who are going to marry and settle down with a

good husband to look after them. But it won't do at all--not at

all, my dear!--for a woman who works--who has to meet men in

their own world and on their own terms. It's hard enough to get

along, if you know. If you don't--when you're knocked down, you

stay knocked down."

"Yes--I want to learn," said Susan eagerly. "I want to

know--_everything!_"

"You're not going back?" Mabel pointed toward the shore, to a

home on a hillside, with a woman sewing on the front steps and

children racing about the yard. "Back to that sort of thing?"

"No," replied Susan. "I've got nothing to go back to."

"Nonsense!"

"Nothing," repeated Susan in the same simple, final way. "I'm

an outcast."

The ready tears sprang to Mabel's dissipated but still bright

eyes. Susan's unconscious pathos was so touching. "Then I'll

educate you. Now don't get horrified or scandalized at me. When

you feel that way, remember that Mabel Connemora didn't make the

world, but God. At least, so they say--though personally I feel

as if the devil had charge of things, and the only god was in us

poor human creatures fighting to be decent. I tell you, men and

women ain't bad--not so damn bad--excuse me; they will slip out.

No, it's the things that happen to them or what they're

afraid'll happen--it's those things that compel them to be

bad--and get them in the way of being bad--hard to each other,

and to hate and to lie and to do all sorts of things."

The show boat drifted placidly down with the current of the

broad Ohio. Now it moved toward the left bank and now toward the

right, as the current was deflected by the bends--the beautiful

curves that divided the river into a series of lovely, lake-like

reaches, each with its emerald oval of hills and rolling valleys

where harvests were ripening. And in the shadow of the awning

Susan heard from those pretty, coarse lips, in language softened

indeed but still far from refined, about all there is to know

concerning the causes and consequences of the eternal struggle

that rages round sex. To make her tale vivid, Mabel illustrated

it by the story of her own life from girlhood to the present

hour. And she omitted no detail necessary to enforce the lesson

in life. A few days before Susan would not have believed, would

not have understood. Now she both believed and understood. And

nothing that Mabel told her--not the worst of the possibilities

in the world in which she was adventuring--burned deep enough to

penetrate beyond the wound she had already received and to give

her a fresh sensation of pain and horror.

"You don't seem to be horrified," said Mabel.

Susan shook her head. "No," she said. "I feel--somehow I feel better."

Mabel eyed her curiously--had a sense of a mystery of suffering

which she dared not try to explore. She said: "Better? That's

queer. You don't take it at all as I thought you would."

Said Susan: "I had about made up my mind it was all bad. I see

that maybe it isn't."

"Oh, the world isn't such a bad place--in lots of ways. You'll

get a heap of fun out of it if you don't take things or yourself

seriously. I wish to God I'd had somebody to tell me, instead of

having to spell it out, a letter at a time. I've got just two

pieces of advice to give you." And she stopped speaking and

gazed away toward the shore with a look that seemed to be

piercing the hills.

"Please do," urged Susan, when Mabel's long mood of abstraction

tried her patience.

"Oh--yes--two pieces of advice. The first is, don't drink.

There's nothing to it--and it'll play hell--excuse me--it'll

spoil your looks and your health and give you a woozy head when

you most need a steady one. Don't drink--that's the first advice."

"I won't," said Susan.

"Oh, yes, you will. But remember my advice all the same. The

second is, don't sell your body to get a living, unless you've

got to."

"I couldn't do that," said the girl.

Mabel laughed queerly. "Oh, yes, you could--and will. But

remember my advice. Don't sell your body because it seems to be

the easy way to make a living. I know most women get their

living that way."

"Oh--no--no, indeed!" protested Susan.

"What a child you are!" laughed Mabel. "What's marriage but

that?. . . Believe your Aunt Betsy, it's the poorest way to make

a living that ever was invented--marriage or the other thing.

Sometimes you'll be tempted to. You're pretty, and you'll find

yourself up against it with no way out. You'll have to give in

for a time, no doubt. The men run things in this world, and

they'll compel it--one way or another. But fight back to your

feet again. If I'd taken my own advice, my name would be on

every dead wall in New York in letters two feet high.

Instead----" She laughed, without much bitterness. "And why? All

because I never learned to stand alone. I've even supported

men--to have something to lean on! How's that for a poor fool?"

There Violet Anstruther called her. She rose. "You won't take my

advice," she said by way of conclusion. "Nobody'll take advice.

Nobody can. We ain't made that way. But don't forget what I've

said. And when you've wobbled way off maybe it'll give you

something to steer back by."

Susan sat on there, deep in the deepest of those brown studies

that had been characteristic of her from early childhood.

Often--perhaps most often--abstraction means only mental

fogginess. But Susan happened to be of those who can

concentrate--can think things out. And that afternoon, oblivious

of the beauty around her, even unconscious of where she was, she

studied the world of reality--that world whose existence, even

the part of it lying within ourselves, we all try to ignore or

to evade or to deny, and get soundly punished for our folly.

Taking advantage of the floods of light Mabel Connemora had let

in upon her--full light where there had been a dimness that was

equal to darkness--she drew from the closets of memory and

examined all the incidents of her life--all that were typical or

for other reasons important. One who comes for the first time

into new surroundings sees more, learns more about them in a

brief period than has been seen and known by those who have

lived there always. After a few hours of recalling and

reconstructing Susan Lenox understood Sutherland probably better

than she would have understood it had she lived a long eventless

life there. And is not every Sutherland the world in miniature?

She also understood her own position--why the world of

respectability had cast her out as soon as she emerged from

childhood--why she could not have hoped for the lot to which

other girls looked forward--why she belonged with the outcasts,

in a world apart--and must live her life there. She felt that

she could not hope to be respected, loved, married. She must

work out her destiny along other lines. She understood it all,

more clearly than would have been expected of her. And it is

important to note that she faced her future without repining or

self-pity, without either joy or despondency. She would go on;

she would do as best she could. And nothing that might befall

could equal what she had suffered in the throes of the casting out.

Burlingham roused her from her long reverie. He evidently had

come straight from his nap--stocking feet, shirt open at the

collar, trousers sagging and face shiny with the sweat that

accumulates during sleep on a hot day. "Round that bend ahead of

us is Sutherland," said he, pointing forward.

Up she started in alarm.

"Now, don't get fractious," cried he cheerfully. "We'll not

touch shore for an hour, at least. And nobody's allowed aboard.

You can keep to the cabin. I'll see that you're not bothered."

"And--this evening?"

"You can keep to the dressing-room until the show's over and the

people've gone ashore. And tomorrow morning, bright and early, we'll

be off. I promised Pat a day for a drunk at Sutherland. He'll have

to postpone it. I'll give him three at Jeffersonville, instead."

Susan put on her sunbonnet as soon as the show boat rounded the

bend above town. Thus she felt safe in staying on deck and

watching the town drift by. She did not begin to think of going

into the cabin until Pat was working the boat in toward the

landing a square above the old familiar wharf-boat. "What day is

this?" she asked Eshwell.

"Saturday."

Only Saturday! And last Monday--less than five days ago--she had

left this town for her Cincinnati adventure. She felt as if

months, years, had passed. The town seemed strange to her, and

she recalled the landmarks as if she were revisiting in age the

scenes of youth. How small the town seemed, after Cincinnati!

And how squat! Then----

She saw the cupola of the schoolhouse. Its rooms, the

playgrounds flashed before her mind's eye--the teachers she had

liked--those she had feared--the face of her uncle, so kind and

loving--that same face, with hate and contempt in it----

She hurried into the cabin, tears blinding her eyes, her throat

choked with sobs.

The Burlingham Floating Palace of Thespians tied up against the

float of Bill Phibbs's boathouse--a privilege for which

Burlingham had to pay two dollars. Pat went ashore with a sack

of handbills to litter through the town. Burlingham followed, to

visit the offices of the two evening newspapers and by "handing

them out a line of smooth talk"--the one art whereof he was

master--to get free advertising. Also there were groceries to

buy and odds and ends of elastic, fancy crêpe, paper muslin and

the like for repairing the shabby costumes. The others remained

on board, Eshwell and Tempest to guard the boat against the

swarms of boys darting and swooping and chattering like a huge

flock of impudent English sparrows. An additional--and the

chief--reason for Burlingham's keeping the two actors close was

that Eshwell was a drunkard and Tempest a gambler. Neither could

be trusted where there was the least temptation. Each despised

the other's vice and despised the other for being slave to it.

Burlingham could trust Eshwell to watch Tempest, could trust

Tempest to watch Eshwell.

Susan helped Mabel with the small and early supper--cold chicken

and ham, fried potatoes and coffee. Afterward all dressed in the

cabin. Some of the curtains for dividing off the berths were

drawn, out of respect to Susan not yet broken to the ways of a

mode of life which made privacy and personal modesty

impossible--and when any human custom becomes impossible, it

does not take human beings long to discover that it is also

foolish and useless. The women had to provide for a change of

costumes. As the dressing-room behind the stage was only a

narrow space between the back drop and the forward wall of the

cabin, dressing in it was impossible, so Mabel and Vi put on a

costume of tights, and over it a dress. Susan was invited to

remain and help. The making-up of the faces interested her; she

was amazed by the transformation of Mabel into youthful

loveliness, with a dairy maid's bloom in place of her pallid

pastiness. On the other hand, make-up seemed to bring out the

horrors of Miss Anstruther's big, fat, yet hollow face, and to

create other and worse horrors--as if in covering her face it

somehow uncovered her soul. When the two women stripped and got

into their tights, Susan with polite modesty turned away.

However, catching sight of Miss Anstruther in the mirror that

had been hung up under one of the side lamps, she was so

fascinated that she gazed furtively at her by that indirect way.

Violet happened to see, laughed. "Look at the baby's shocked

face, Mabel," she cried.

But she was mistaken. It was sheer horror that held Susan's gaze

upon Violet's incredible hips and thighs, violently obtruded by

the close-reefed corset. Mabel had a slender figure, the waist

too short and the legs too nearly of the same girth from hip to

ankle, but for all that, attractive. Susan had never before seen

a woman in tights without any sort of skirt.

"You would show up well in those things," Violet said to her,

"that is, for a thin woman. The men don't care much for thinness."

"Not the clodhoppers and roustabouts that come to see us,"

retorted Mabel. "The more a woman looks like a cow or a sow, the

better they like it. They don't believe it's female unless it

looks like what they're used to in the barnyard and the cattle pen."

Miss Anstruther was not in the least offended. She paraded,

jauntily switching her great hips and laughing. "Jealous!" she

teased. "You poor little broomstick."

Burlingham was in a white flannel suit that looked well enough

in those dim lights. The make-up gave him an air of rakish

youth. Eshwell had got himself into an ordinary sack suit.

Tempest was in the tattered and dirty finery of a

seventeenth-century courtier. The paint and black made Eshwell's

face fat and comic; it gave Tempest distinction, made his hollow

blazing eyes brilliant and large. All traces of habitation were

effaced from the "auditorium"; the lamps were lighted, a ticket

box was set up on the rear deck and an iron bar was thrown half

across the rear entrance to the cabin, that only one person at

a time might be able to pass. The curtain was let down--a gaudy

smear of a garden scene in a French palace in the eighteenth

century. Pat, the orchestra, put on a dress coat and vest and

a "dickey"; the coat had white celluloid cuffs pinned in the

sleeves at the wrists.

As it was still fully an hour and a half from dark, Susan hid on

the stage; when it should be time for the curtain to go up she

would retreat to the dressing-room. Through a peephole in the

curtain she admired the auditorium; and it did look surprisingly

well by lamplight, with the smutches and faded spots on its

bright paint softened or concealed. "How many will it hold?" she

asked Mabel, who was walking up and down, carrying her long train.

"A hundred and twenty comfortably," replied Miss Connemora. "A

hundred and fifty crowded. It has held as high as thirty

dollars, but we'll be lucky if we get fifteen tonight."

Susan glanced round at her. She was smoking a cigarette,

handling it like a man. Susan's expression was so curious that

Mabel laughed. Susan, distressed, cried: "I'm sorry if--if I was

impolite."

"Oh, you couldn't be impolite," said Mabel. "You've got that to

learn, too--and mighty important it is. We all smoke. Why not?

We got out of cigarettes, but Bob bought a stock this afternoon."

Susan turned to the peephole. Pat, ready to take tickets, was

"barking" vigorously in the direction of shore, addressing a

crowd which Susan of course could not see. Whenever he paused

for breath, Burlingham leaned from the box and took it up,

pouring out a stream of eulogies of his show in that easy,

lightly cynical voice of his. And the audience straggled

in--young fellows and their girls, roughs from along the river

front, farmers in town for a day's sport. Susan did not see a

single familiar face, and she had supposed she knew, by sight at

least, everyone in Sutherland. From fear lest she should see

someone she knew, her mind changed to longing. At last she was

rewarded. Down the aisle swaggered Redney King, son of the

washerwoman, a big hulking bully who used to tease her by

pulling her hair during recess and by kicking at her shins when

they happened to be next each other in the class standing in

long line against the wall of the schoolroom for recitation.

From her security she smiled at Redney as representative of all

she loved in the old town.

And now the four members of the company on the stage and in the

dressing-room lost their ease and contemptuous indifference.

They had been talking sneeringly about "yokels" and "jays" and

"slum bums." They dropped all that, as there spread over them

the mysterious spell of the crowd. As individuals the

provincials in those seats were ridiculous; as a mass they were

an audience, an object of fear and awe. Mabel was almost in

tears; Violet talked rapidly, with excited gestures and nervous

adjustments of various parts of her toilet. The two men paced

about, Eshwell trembling, Tempest with sheer fright in his

rolling eyes.

They wet their dry lips with dry tongues. Each again and again

asked the other anxiously how he was looking and paced away

without waiting for the answer. The suspense and nervous terror

took hold of Susan; she stood in the corner of the

dressing-room, pressing herself close against the wall, her

fingers tightly interlocked and hot and cold tremors chasing up

and down her body.

Burlingham left the box and combined Pat's duties with his

own--a small matter, as the audience was seated and a guard at

the door was necessary only to keep the loafers on shore from

rushing in free. Pat advanced to the little space reserved

before the stage, sat down and fell to tuning his violin with

all the noise he could make, to create the illusion of a full

orchestra. Miss Anstruther appeared in one of the forward side

doors of the auditorium, very dignified in her black satin

(paper muslin) dress, with many and sparkling hair and neck

ornaments and rings that seemed alight. She bowed to the

audience, pulled a little old cottage organ from under the stage

and seated herself at it.

After the overture, a pause. Susan, peeping through a hole in

the drop, saw the curtain go up, drew a long breath of terror as

the audience was revealed beyond the row of footlights, beyond

the big, befrizzled blond head of Violet and the drink-seared

face of Pat. From the rear of the auditorium came Burlingham's

smooth-flowing, faintly amused voice, announcing the beginning

of the performance "a delightful feast throughout, ladies and

gentlemen, amusing yet elevating, ever moral yet with none of

the depressing sadness of puritanism. For, ladies and gentlemen,

while we are pious, we are not puritan. The first number is a

monologue, 'The Mad Prince,' by that eminent artist, Gregory

Tempest. He has delivered it before vast audiences amid thunders

of applause."

Susan thrilled as Tempest strode forth--Tempest transformed by

the footlights and by her young imagination into a true king

most wonderfully and romantically bereft of reason by the woes

that had assailed him in horrid phalanxes. If anyone had pointed

out to her that Tempest's awful voice was simply cheap ranting,

or that her own woes had been as terrible as any that had ever

visited a king, or that when people go mad it is never from

grief but from insides unromantically addled by foolish eating

and drinking--if anyone had attempted then and there to educate

the girl, how angry it would have made her, how she would have

hated that well-meaning person for spoiling her illusion!

The spell of the stage seized her with Tempest's first line,

first elegant despairing gesture. It held her through Burlingham

and Anstruther's "sketch" of a matrimonial quarrel, through

Connemora and Eshwell's "delicious symphonic romanticism" of a

lovers' quarrel and making up, through Tempest's recitation of

"Lasca," dying to shield her cowboy lover from the hoofs of the

stampeded herd. How the tears did stream from Susan's eyes, as

Tempest wailed out those last lines:

But I wonder why I do not care for the things that are like the

things that were?

Can it be that half my heart lies buried there, in Texas down by

the Rio Grande?

She saw the little grave in the desert and the vast blue sky and

the buzzard sailing lazily to and fro, and it seemed to her that

Tempest himself had inspired such a love, had lost a sweetheart

in just that way. No wonder he looked gaunt and hollow-eyed and

sallow. The last part of the performance was Holy Land and comic

pictures thrown from the rear on a sheet substituted for the

drop. As Burlingham had to work the magic lantern from the

dressing-room (while Tempest, in a kind of monk's robe, used

his voice and elocutionary powers in describing the pictures,

now lugubriously and now in "lighter vein"), Susan was forced to

retreat to the forward deck and missed that part of the show.

But she watched Burlingham shifting the slides and altering the

forms of the lenses, and was in another way as much thrilled and

spellbound as by the acting.

Nor did the spell vanish when, with the audience gone, they all

sat down to a late supper, and made coarse jests and mocked at

their own doings and at the people who had applauded. Susan did

not hear. She felt proud that she was permitted in so

distinguished a company. Every disagreeable impression vanished.

How could she have thought these geniuses common and cheap! How

had she dared apply to them the standards of the people, the

dull, commonplace people, among whom she had been brought up! If

she could only qualify for membership in this galaxy! The

thought made her feel like a worm aspiring to be a star.

Tempest, whom she had liked least, now filled her with

admiration. She saw the tragedy of his life plain and sad upon

his features. She could not look at him without her heart's

contracting in an ache.

It was not long before Mr. Tempest, who believed himself a

lady-killer, noted the ingenuous look in the young girl's face,

and began to pose. And it was hardly three bites of a ham

sandwich thereafter when Mabel Connemora noted Tempest's

shootings of his cuffs and rumplings of his oily ringlets and

rollings of his hollow eyes. And at the sight Miss Mabel's

bright eyes became bad and her tongue shot satire at him. But

Susan did not observe this.

After supper they went straightway to bed. Burlingham drew the

curtains round the berth let down for Susan. The others indulged

in no such prudery on so hot a night. They put out the lamps and

got ready for bed and into it by the dim light trickling in

through the big rear doorway and the two small side doorways

forward. To help on the circulation of air Pat raised the stage

curtain and drop, and opened the little door forward. Each

sleeper had a small netting suspended over him from the ceiling;

without that netting the dense swarms of savage mosquitoes would

have made sleep impossible. As it was, the loud singing of these

baffled thousands kept Susan awake.

After a while, to calm her brain, excited by the evenings

thronging impressions and by the new--or, rather,

reviewed--ambitions born of them, Susan rose and went softly out

on deck, in her nightgown of calico slip. Because of the breeze

the mosquitoes did not trouble her there, and she stood a long

time watching the town's few faint lights--watching the stars,

the thronging stars of the Milky Way--dreaming--dreaming--dreaming.

Yesterday had almost faded from her, for youth lives only in

tomorrow--youth in tomorrow, age in yesterday, and none of us

in today which is all we really have. And she, with her wonderful

health of body meaning youth as long as it lasted, she would

certainly be young until she was very old--would keep her youth--her

dreams--her living always in tomorrow. She was dreaming of her

first real tomorrow, now. She would work hard at this wonderful

profession--_her_ profession!--would be humble and attentive; and

surely the day must come when she too would feel upon her heart

the intoxicating beat of those magic waves of applause!

Susan, more excited than ever, slipped softly into the cabin and

stole into her curtained berth. Like the soughing of the storm

above the whimper of the tortured leaves the stentorian snorings

of two of the sleepers resounded above the noise of the

mosquitoes. She had hardly extended herself in her close little

bed when she heard a stealthy step, saw one of her curtains

drawn aside.

"Who is it?" she whispered, unsuspiciously, for she could see

only a vague form darkening the space between the parted curtains.

The answer came in a hoarse undertone: "Ye dainty little

darling!" She sat up, struck out madly, screamed at the top of

her lungs. The curtains fell back into place, the snoring

stopped. Susan, all in a sweat and a shiver, lay quiet. Hoarse

whispering; then in Burlingham's voice stern and gruff--"Get

back to your bed and let her alone, you rolling-eyed----" The

sentence ended with as foul a spatter of filth as man can fling

at man. Silence again, and after a few minutes the two snores

resumed their bass accompaniment to the falsetto of the mosquito

chorus.

Susan got a little troubled sleep, was wide awake when Violet

came saying, "If you want to bathe, I'll bring you a bucket of

water and you can put up your berth and do it behind your curtains."

Susan thanked her and got a most refreshing bath. When she

looked out the men were on deck, Violet was getting breakfast,

and Connemora was combing her short, thinning, yellow hair

before a mirror hung up near one of the forward doors. In the

mirror Connemora saw her, smiled and nodded.

"You can fix your hair here," said she. "I'm about done. You can

use my brush."

And when Susan was busy at the mirror, Mabel lounged on a seat

near by smoking a before-breakfast cigarette. "I wish to God

I had your hair," said she. "I never did have such a wonderful

crop of grass on the knoll, and the way it up and drops out in

bunches every now and then sets me crazy. It won't be long

before I'll be down to Vi's three hairs and a half. You haven't

seen her without her wigs? Well, don't, if you happen to be

feeling a bit off. How Burlingham can--" There she stopped, blew

out a volume of smoke, grinned half amusedly, half in sympathy

with the innocence she was protecting--or, rather, was

initiating by cautious degrees. "Who was it raised the row last

night?" she inquired.

"I don't know," said Susan, her face hid by the mass of wavy

hair she was brushing forward from roots to ends.

"You don't? I guess you've got a kind of idea, though."

No answer from the girl.

"Well, it doesn't matter. It isn't your fault." Mabel smoked

reflectively. "I'm not jealous of _him_--a woman never is. It's

the idea of another woman's getting away with her property,

whether she wants it or not--_that's_ what sets her mad-spot to

humming. No, I don't give a--a cigarette butt--for that greasy

bum actor. But I've always got to have somebody." She laughed.

"The idea of his thinking _you'd_ have _him_! What peacocks men are!"

Susan understood. The fact of this sort of thing was no longer

a mystery to her. But the why of the fact--that seemed more

amazing than ever. Now that she had discovered that her notion

of love being incorporeal was as fanciful as Santa Claus, she

could not conceive why it should be at all. As she was bringing

round the braids for the new coiffure she had adopted she said

to Mabel:

"You--love him?"

"I?" Mabel laughed immoderately. "You can have him, if you want him."

Susan shuddered. "Oh, no," she said. "I suppose he's very

nice--and really he's quite a wonderful actor. But I--I don't

care for men."

Mabel laughed again--curt, bitter. "Wait," she said.

Susan shook her head, with youth's positiveness.

"What's caring got to do with it?" pursued Mabel, ignoring the

headshake. "I've been about quite a bit, and I've yet to see

anybody that really cared for anybody else. We care for

ourselves. But a man needs a woman, and a woman needs a man. They

call it loving. They might as well call eating loving. Ask Burly."

CHAPTER XIV

AT breakfast Tempest was precisely as usual, and so were the

others. Nor was there effort or any sort of pretense in this. We

understand only that to which we are accustomed; the man of

peace is amazed by the veteran's nonchalance in presence of

danger and horror, of wound and death. To these river wanderers,

veterans in the unconventional life, where the unusual is the

usual, the unexpected the expected, whatever might happen was

the matter of course, to be dealt with and dismissed. Susan

naturally took her cue from them. When Tempest said something to

her in the course of the careless conversation round the

breakfast table, she answered--and had no sense of constraint.

Thus, an incident that in other surroundings would have been in

some way harmful through receiving the exaggeration of undue

emphasis, caused less stir than the five huge and fiery mosquito

bites Eshwell had got in the night. And Susan unconsciously

absorbed one of those lessons in the science and art of living

that have decisive weight in shaping our destinies. For

intelligent living is in large part learning to ignore the

unprofitable that one may concentrate upon the profitable.

Burlingham announced that they would cast off and float down to

Bethlehem. There was a chorus of protests. "Why, we ought to

stay here a week!" cried Miss Anstruther. "We certainly caught

on last night."

"Didn't we take in seventeen dollars?" demanded Eshwell. "We

can't do better than that anywhere."

"Who's managing this show?" asked Burlingham in his suave but

effective way. "I think I know what I'm about."

He met their grumblings with the utmost good-humor and remained

inflexible. Susan listened with eyes down and burning cheeks.

She knew Burlingham was "leaving the best cow unmilked," as

Connemora put it, because he wished to protect her. She told him

so when they were alone on the forward deck a little later, as

the boat was floating round the bend below Sutherland.

"Yes," he admitted. "I've great hopes from your ballads. I want

to get you on." He looked round casually, saw that no one was

looking, drew a peculiarly folded copy of the _Sutherland

Courier_ from his pocket. "Besides"--said he, holding out the

paper--"read that."

Susan read:

George Warham, Esq., requests us to announce that he has

increased the reward for information as to the whereabouts of

Mrs. Susan Ferguson, his young niece, nee Susan Lenox, to one

thousand dollars. There are grave fears that the estimable and

lovely young lady, who disappeared from her husband's farm the

night of her marriage, has, doubtless in a moment of insanity,

ended her life. We hope not.

Susan lifted her gaze from this paragraph, after she had read it

until the words ran together in a blur. She found Burlingham

looking at her. Said he: "As I told you before, I don't want to

know anything. But when I read that, it occurred to me, if some

of the others saw it they might think it was you--and might do

a dirty trick." He sighed, with a cynical little smile. "I was

tempted, myself. A thousand is quite a bunch. You don't

know--not yet--how a chance to make some money--any old

way--compels a man--or a woman--when money's as scarce and as

useful as it is in this world. As you get along, you'll notice,

my dear, that the people who get moral goose flesh at the shady

doings of others are always people who haven't ever really been

up against it. I don't know why I didn't----" He shrugged his

shoulders. "Now, my dear, you're in on the secret of why I

haven't got up in the world." He smiled cheerfully. "But I may

yet. The game's far from over."

She realized that he had indeed made an enormous sacrifice for

her; for, though very ignorant about money, a thousand dollars

seemed a fortune. She had no words; she looked away toward the

emerald shore, and her eyes filled and her lip quivered. How

much goodness there was in the world--how much generosity and

affection!

"I'm not sure," he went on, "that you oughtn't to go back. But

it's your own business. I've a kind of feeling you know what

you're about."

"No matter what happens to me," said she, "I'll never regret

what I've done. I'd kill myself before I'd spend another day

with the man they made me marry."

"Well--I'm not fond of dying," observed Burlingham, in the

light, jovial tone that would most quickly soothe her agitation,

"but I think I'd take my chances with the worms rather than with

the dry rot of a backwoods farm. You may not get your meals so

regular out in the world, but you certainly do live. Yes--that

backwoods life, for anybody with a spark of spunk, is simply

being dead and knowing it." He tore the _Courier_ into six

pieces, flung them over the side. "None of the others saw the

paper," said he. "So--Miss Lorna Sackville is perfectly safe."

He patted her on the shoulder. "And she owes me a thousand and

two dollars."

"I'll pay--if you'll be patient," said the girl, taking his jest gravely.

"It's a good gamble," said he. Then he laughed. "I guess that

had something to do with my virtue. There's always a practical

reason--always."

But the girl was not hearing his philosophies. Once more she was

overwhelmed and stupefied by the events that had dashed in,

upon, and over her like swift succeeding billows that give the

swimmer no pause for breath or for clearing the eyes.

"No--you're not dreaming," said Burlingham, laughing at her

expression. "At least, no more than we all are. Sometimes I

suspect the whole damn shooting-match is nothing but a dream.

Well, it's a pretty good one eh?"

And she agreed with him, as she thought how smoothly and

agreeably they were drifting into the unknown, full of the most

fascinating possibilities. How attractive this life was, how

much at home she felt among these people, and if anyone should

tell him about her birth or about how she had been degraded by

Ferguson, it wouldn't in the least affect their feeling toward

her, she was sure. "When do--do you--try me?" she asked.

"Tomorrow night, at Bethlehem--a bum little town for us. We'll

stay there a couple of days. I want you to get used to

appearing." He nodded at her encouragingly. "You've got stuff in

you, real stuff. Don't you doubt it. Get self-confidence--conceit,

if you please. Nobody arrives anywhere without it. You want to

feel that you can do what you want to do. A fool's conceit is

that he's it already. A sensible man's conceit is that he can be

it, if he'll only work hard and in the right way. See?"

"I--I think I do," said the girl. "I'm not sure."

Burlingham smoked his cigar in silence. When he spoke, it was

with eyes carefully averted. "There's another subject the spirit

moves me to talk to you about. That's the one Miss Connemora

opened up with you yesterday." As Susan moved uneasily, "Now,

don't get scared. I'm not letting the woman business bother me

much nowadays. All I think of is how to get on my feet again. I

want to have a theater on Broadway before the old black-flagger

overtakes my craft and makes me walk the plank and jump out into

the Big Guess. So you needn't think I'm going to worry you. I'm not."

"Oh, I didn't think----"

"You ought to have, though," interrupted he. "A man like me is

a rare exception. I'm a rare exception to my ordinary self, to

be quite honest. It'll be best for you always to assume that every

man you run across is looking for just one thing. You know what?"

Susan, the flush gone from her cheeks, nodded.

"I suppose Connemora has put you wise. But there are some things

even she don't know about that subject. Now, I want you to

listen to your grandfather. Remember what he says. And think it

over until you understand it."

"I will," said Susan.

"In the life you've come out of, virtue in a woman's everything.

She's got to be virtuous, or at least to have the reputation of

it--or she's nothing. You understand that?"

"Yes," said Susan. "I understand that--now."

"Very well. Now in the life you're going into, virtue in a woman

is nothing--no more than it is in a man anywhere. The woman who

makes a career becomes like the man who makes a career. How is

it with a man? Some are virtuous, others are not. But no man

lets virtue bother him and nobody bothers about his virtue.

That's the way it is with a woman who cuts loose from the

conventional life of society and home and all that. She is

virtuous or not, as she happens to incline. Her real interest in

herself, her real value, lies in another direction. If it

doesn't, if she continues to be agitated about her virtue as if

it were all there is to her--then the sooner she hikes back to

respectability, to the conventional routine, why the better for

her. She'll never make a career, any more than she could drive

an automobile through a crowded street and at the same time keep

a big picture hat on straight. Do you follow me?"

"I'm not sure," said the girl. "I'll have to think about it."

"That's right. Don't misunderstand. I'm not talking for or

against virtue. I'm simply talking practical life, and all I

mean is that you won't get on there by your virtue, and you

won't get on by your lack of virtue. Now for my advice."

Susan's look of unconscious admiration and attention was the

subtlest flattery. Its frank, ingenuous showing of her implicit

trust in him so impressed him with his responsibility that he

hesitated before he said:

"Never forget this, and don't stop thinking about it until you

understand it: Make men _as_ men incidental in your life, precisely

as men who amount to anything make women _as_ women incidental."

Her first sensation was obviously disappointing. She had

expected something far more impressive. Said she:

"I don't care anything about men."

"Be sensible! How are you to know now what you care about and

what you don't?" was Burlingham's laughing rebuke. "And in the

line you've taken--the stage--with your emotions always being

stirred up, with your thoughts always hovering round the

relations of men and women--for that's the only subject of plays

and music, and with opportunity thrusting at you as it never

thrusts at conventional people you'll probably soon find you

care a great deal about men. But don't ever let your emotions

hinder or hurt or destroy you. Use them to help you. I guess I'm

shooting pretty far over that young head of yours, ain't I?"

"Not so very far," said the girl. "Anyhow, I'll remember."

"If you live big enough and long enough, you'll go through three

stages. The first is the one you're in now. They've always

taught you without realizing it, and so you think that only the

strong can afford to do right. You think doing right makes the

ordinary person, like yourself, easy prey for those who do

wrong. You think that good people--if they're really good--have

to wait until they get to Heaven before they get a chance."

"Isn't that so?"

"No. But you'll not realize it until you pass into the second

stage. There, you'll think you see that only the strong can

afford to do wrong. You'll think that everyone, except the

strong, gets it in the neck if he or she does anything out of

the way. You'll think you're being punished for your sins, and

that, if you had behaved yourself, you'd have got on much

better. That's the stage that's coming; and what you go through

with there--how you come out of the fight--will decide your

fate--show whether or not you've got the real stuff in you. Do

you understand?"

Susan shook her head.

"I thought not. You haven't lived long enough yet. Well, I'll

finish, anyhow."

"I'll remember," said Susan. "I'll think about it until I do understand."

"I hope so. The weather and the scenery make me feel like

philosophizing. Finally, if you come through the second stage

all right, you'll enter the third stage. There, you'll see that

you were right at first when you thought only the strong could

afford to do right. And you'll see that you were right in the

second stage when you thought only the strong could afford to do

wrong. For you'll have learned that only the strong can afford

to act at all, and that they can do right or wrong as they

please _because they are strong_."

"Then you don't believe in right, at all!" exclaimed the girl,

much depressed, but whether for the right or for her friend she

could not have told.

"Now, who said that?" Demanded he, amused. "What _did_ I say?

Why--if you want to do right, be strong or you'll be crushed;

and if you want to do wrong, take care again to be strong--or

you'll be crushed. My moral is, be strong! In this world the

good weaklings and the bad weaklings had better lie low, hide in

the tall grass. The strong inherit the earth."

They were silent a long time, she thinking, he observing her

with sad tenderness. At last he said:

"You are a nice sweet girl--well brought up. But that means

badly brought up for the life you've got to lead--the life

you've got to learn to lead."

"I'm beginning to see that," said the girl. Her gravity made him

feel like laughing, and brought the tears to his eyes. The

laughter he suppressed.

"You're going to fight your way up to what's called the

triumphant class--the people on top--they have all the success,

all the money, all the good times. Well, the things you've been

taught--at church--in the Sunday School--in the nice storybooks

you've read--those things are all for the triumphant class, or

for people working meekly along in 'the station to which God has

appointed them' and handing over their earnings to their

betters. But those nice moral things you believe in--they don't

apply to people like you--fighting their way up from the meek

working class to the triumphant class. You won't believe me

now--won't understand thoroughly. But soon you'll see. Once

you've climbed up among the successful people you can afford to

indulge--in moderation--in practicing the good old moralities.

Any dirty work you may need done you can hire done and pretend

not to know about it. But while you're climbing, no Golden Rule

and no turning of the cheek. Tooth and claw then--not sheathed

but naked--not by proxy but in your own person."

"But you're not like that," said the girl.

"The more fool I," repeated he.

She was surprised that she understood so much of what he had

said--childlike wonder at her wise old heart, made wise almost

in a night--a wedding night. When Burlingham lapsed into

silence, laughing at himself for having talked so far over the

"kiddie's" head, she sat puzzling out what he had said. The

world seemed horribly vast and forbidding, and the sky, so blue

and bright, seemed far, far away. She sighed profoundly. "I am

so weak," she murmured. "I am so ignorant."

Burlingham nodded and winked. "Yes, but you'll grow," said be.

"I back you to win."

The color poured into her cheeks, and she burst into tears.

Burlingham thought he understood; for once his shrewdness went

far astray. Excusably, since he could not know that he had used

the same phrase that had closed Spenser's letter to her.

Late in the afternoon, when the heat had abated somewhat and

they were floating pleasantly along with the washing gently

a-flutter from lines on the roof of the auditorium, Burlingham

put Eshwell at the rudder and with Pat and the violin rehearsed

her. "The main thing, the only thing to worry about," explained

he, "is beginning right." She was standing in the center of the

stage, he on the floor of the auditorium beside the seated

orchestra. "That means," he went on, "you've simply got to learn

to come in right. We'll practice that for a while."

She went to the wings--where there was barely space for her to

conceal herself by squeezing tightly against the wall. At the

signal from him she walked out. As she had the utmost confidence

in his kindness, and as she was always too deeply interested in

what she and others were doing to be uncomfortably

self-conscious, she was not embarrassed, and thought she made

the crossing and took her stand very well. He nodded approvingly.

"But," said he, "there's a difference between a stage walk and

walking anywhere else--or standing. Nothing is natural on the stage.

If it were it would look unnatural, because the stage itself is

artificial and whatever is there must be in harmony with it. So

everything must be done unnaturally in such a way that it _seems_

natural. Just as a picture boat looks natural though it's painted

on a flat surface. Now I'll illustrate."

He gave her his hand to help her jump down; then he climbed to

the stage. He went to the wings and walked out. As he came he

called her attention to how he poised his body, how he advanced

so that there would be from the auditorium no unsightly view of

crossing legs, how he arranged hands, arms, shoulders, legs,

head, feet for an attitude of complete rest. He repeated his

illustration again and again, Susan watching and listening with

open-eyed wonder and admiration. She had never dreamed that so

simple a matter could be so complex. When he got her up beside

him and went through it with her, she soon became as used to the

new motions as a beginner at the piano to stretching an octave.

But it was only after more than an hour's practice that she

moved him to say:

"That'll do for a beginning. Now, we'll sing."

She tried "Suwanee River" first and went through it fairly well,

singing to him as he stood back at the rear door. He was

enthusiastic--cunning Burlingham, who knew so well how to get

the best out of everyone! "Mighty good--eh, Pat? Yes, mighty

good. You've got something better than a great voice, my dear.

You've got magnetism. The same thing that made me engage you the

minute you asked me is going to make you--well, go a long

ways--a _long_ ways. Now, we'll try 'The Last Rose of Summer.'"

She sang even better. And this improvement continued through the

other four songs of her repertoire. His confidence in her was

contagious; it was so evident that he really did believe in her.

And Pat, too, wagged his head in a way that made her feel good

about herself. Then Burlingham called in the others whom he had

sent to the forward deck. Before them the girl went all to

pieces. She made her entrance badly, she sang worse. And the

worse she sang, the worse she felt and the worse her next

attempt was. At last, with nerves unstrung, she broke down and

sobbed. Burlingham climbed up to pat her on the shoulder.

"That's the best sign yet," said he. "It shows you've got

temperament. Yes--you've got the stuff in you."

He quieted her, interested her in the purely mechanical part of

what she was doing. "Don't think of who you're doing it before,

or of how you're doing it, but only of getting through each step

and each note. If your head's full of that, you'll have no room

for fright." And she was ready to try again. When she finished

the last notes of "Suwanee River," there was an outburst of

hearty applause. And the sound that pleased her most was

Tempest's rich rhetorical "Bravo!" As a man she abhorred him;

but she respected the artist. And in unconsciously drawing this

distinction she gave proof of yet another quality that was to

count heavily in the coming days. Artist he was not. But she

thought him an artist. A girl or boy without the intelligence

that can develop into flower and fruit would have seen and felt

only Tempest, the odious personality.

Burlingham did not let her off until she was ready to drop with

exhaustion. And after supper, when they were floating slowly on,

well out of the channel where they might be run down by some

passing steamer with a flint-hearted captain or pilot, she had

to go at it again. She went to bed early, and she slept without

a motion or a break until the odor of the cooking breakfast

awakened her. When she came out, her face was bright for the

first time. She was smiling, laughing, chatting, was delighted

with everything and everybody. Even the thought of Roderick

Spenser laid up with a broken leg recurred less often and less

vividly. It seemed to her that the leg must be about well. The

imagination of healthy youth is reluctant to admit ideas of

gloom in any circumstances. In circumstances of excitement and

adventure, such as Susan's at that time, it flatly refuses to

admit them.

They were at anchor before a little town sprawled upon the

fields between hills and river edge. A few loafers were chewing

tobacco and inspecting the show boat from the shady side of a

pile of lumber. Pat had already gone forth with the bundle of

handbills; he was not only waking up the town, but touring the

country in horse and buggy, was agitating the farmers--for the

show boat was to stay at least two nights at Bethlehem. "And we

ought to do pretty well," said Burlingham. "The wheat's about

all threshed, and there's a kind of lull. The hayseeds aren't so

dead tired at night. A couple of weeks ago we couldn't have got

half a house by paying for it."

As the afternoon wore away and the sun disappeared behind the

hills to the southwest, Susan's spirits oozed. Burlingham and

the others--deliberately--paid no attention to her, acted as if

no great, universe-stirring event were impending. Immediately

after supper Burlingham said:

"Now, Vi, get busy and put her into her harness. Make her

a work of art."

Never was there a finer display of unselfishness than in their

eagerness to help her succeed, in their intense nervous anxiety

lest she should not make a hit. The bad in human nature, as

Mabel Connemora had said, is indeed almost entirely if not

entirely the result of the compulsion of circumstances; the good

is the natural outcropping of normal instincts, and resumes

control whenever circumstances permit. These wandering players

had suffered too much not to have the keenest and gentlest

sympathy. Susan looked on Tempest as a wicked man; yet she could

not but be touched by his almost hysterical excitement over her

debut, when the near approach of the hour made it impossible for

his emotional temperament longer to hide its agitation. Every

one of them gave or loaned her a talisman--Tempest, a bit of

rabbit's foot; Anstruther, a ring that had twice saved her from

drowning (at least, it had been on her finger each time);

Connemora, a hunchback's tooth on a faded velvet string; Pat, a

penny which happened to be of the date of her birth year (the

presence of the penny was regarded by all as a most encouraging

sign); Eshwell loaned her a miniature silver bug he wore on his

watch chain; Burlingham's contribution was a large

buckeye----"Ever since I've had that, I've never been without at

least the price of a meal in my pocket."

They had got together for her a kind of evening dress, a pale

blue chiffon-like drapery that left her lovely arms and

shoulders bare and clung softly to the lines of her figure. They

did her hair up in a graceful sweep from the brow and a simple

coil behind. She looked like a woman, yet like a child dressed

as a woman, too, for there was as always that exuberant vitality

which made each of the hairs of her head seem individual,

electric. The rouge gave her color, enhanced into splendor the

brilliance of her violet-gray eyes--eyes so intensely colored

and so admirably framed that they were noted by the least

observant. When Anstruther had put the last touches to her

toilet and paraded her to the others, there was a chorus of

enthusiasm. The men no less than the women viewed her with the

professional eye.

"Didn't I tell you all?" cried Burlingham, as they looked her up

and down like a group of connoisseurs inspecting a statue.

"Wasn't I right?"

"'It is the dawn, and Juliet is the east,'" orated Tempest in

rich, romantic tones.

"A damn shame to waste her on these yaps," said Eshwell.

Connemora embraced her with tearful eyes. "And as sweet as you

are lovely, you dear!" she cried. "You simply can't help winning."

The two women thought her greatest charms were her form and her

feet and ankles. The men insisted that her charm of charms was

her eyes. And certainly, much could be said for that view.

Susan's violet-gray eyes, growing grayer when she was

thoughtful, growing deeper and clearer and softer shining

violet when her emotions were touched--Susan's eyes were

undoubtedly unusual even in a race in which homely eyes are the

exception.

When it was her turn and she emerged into the glare of the

footlights, she came to a full stop and an awful wave of

weakness leaped up through legs and body to blind her eyes and

crash upon her brain. She shook her head, lifted it high like a

swimmer shaking off a wave. Her gaze leaped in terror across the

blackness of the auditorium with its thick-strewn round white

disks of human faces, sought the eyes of Burlingham standing in

full view in the center of the rear doorway--where he had told

her to look for him. She heard Pat playing the last of the

opening chords; Burlingham lifted his hand like a leader's

baton. And naturally and sweetly the notes, the words of the old

darkey song of longing for home began to float out through the

stillness.

She did not take her gaze from Burlingham. She sang her best,

sang to please him, to show him how she appreciated what he had

done for her. And when she finished and bowed, the outburst of

applause unnerved her, sent her dizzy and almost staggering into

the wings. "Splendid! Splendid!" cried Mabel, and Anstruther

embraced her, and Tempest and Eshwell kissed her hands. They all

joined in pushing her out again for the encore--"Blue Alsatian

Mountains." She did not sing quite so steadily, but got through

in good form, the tremolo of nervousness in her voice adding to

the wailing pathos of the song's refrain:

Adé, adé, adé, such dreams must pass away,

But the Blue Alsatian Mountains seem to watch and wait alway.

The crowd clapped, stamped, whistled, shouted; but Burlingham

defied it. "The lady will sing again later," he cried. "The next

number on the regular program is," etc., etc. The crowd yelled;

Burlingham stood firm, and up went the curtain on Eshwell and

Connemora's sketch. It got no applause. Nor did any other

numbers on the program. The contrast between the others and the

beauty of the girl, her delicate sweetness, her vital youth, her

freshness of the early morning flower, was inevitable.

The crowd could think only of her. The quality of magnetism

aside, she had sung neither very well nor very badly. But had

she sung badly, still her beauty would have won her the same

triumph. When she came on for her second number with a

cloud-like azure chiffon flung carelessly over her dark hair as

a scarf, Spanish fashion, she received a stirring welcome. It

frightened her, so that Pat had to begin four times before her

voice faintly took up the tune. Again Burlingham's encouraging,

confident gaze, flung across the gap between them like a strong

rescuing hand, strengthened her to her task. This time he let

the crowd have two encores--and the show was over; for the

astute manager, seeing how the girl had caught on, had moved her

second number to the end.

Burlingham lingered in the entrance to the auditorium to feast

himself on the comments of the crowd as it passed out. When he

went back he had to search for the girl, found her all in a heap

in a chair at the outer edge of the forward deck. She was

sobbing piteously. "Well, for God's sake!" cried he. "Is _this_

the way you take it!"

She lifted her head. "Did I do very badly?" she asked.

"You swept 'em off their big hulking feet," replied he.

"When you didn't come, I thought I'd disappointed you."

"I'll bet my hand there never was such a hit made in a river

show boat--and they've graduated some of the swells of the

profession. We'll play here a week to crowded houses--matinées

every day, too. And this is a two-night stand usually. I must

find some more songs." He slapped his thigh. "The very thing!"

he cried. "We'll ring in some hymns. 'Rock of Ages,' say--and

'Jesus, Lover of my Soul'--and you can get 'em off in a churchy

kind of costume something like a surplice. That'll knock 'em

stiff. And Anstruther can dope out the accompaniments on that

wheezer. What d'you think?"

"Whatever you want," said the girl. "Oh, I am so glad!"

"I don't see how you got through so well," said he.

"I didn't dare fail," replied Susan. "If I had, I couldn't have

faced you." And by the light of the waning moon he saw the

passionate gratitude of her sensitive young face.

"Oh--I've done nothing," said he, wiping the tears from his

eyes--for he had his full share of the impulsive, sentimental

temperament of his profession. "Pure selfishness."

Susan gazed at him with eyes of the pure deep violet of

strongest feeling. "_I_ know what you did," she said in a low

voice. "And--I'd die for you."

Burlingham had to use his handkerchief in dealing with his eyes

now. "This business has given me hysterics," said he with a

queer attempt at a laugh. Then, after a moment, "God bless you,

little girl. You wait here a moment. I'll see how supper's

getting on."

He wished to go ahead of her, for he had a shrewd suspicion as

to the state of mind of the rest of the company. And he was

right. There they sat in the litter of peanut hulls, popcorn,

and fruit skins which the audience had left. On every

countenance was jealous gloom.

"What's wrong?" inquired Burlingham in his cheerful derisive

way. "You are a nice bunch, you are!"

They shifted uneasily. Mabel snapped out, "Where's the infant

prodigy? Is she so stuck on herself already that she won't

associate with us?"

"You grown-up babies," mocked Burlingham. "I found her out there

crying in darkness because she thought she'd failed. Now you go

bring her in, Conny. As for the rest of you, I'm disgusted. Here

we've hit on something that'll land us in Easy Street, and

you're all filled up with poison."

They were ashamed of themselves. Burlingham had brought back to

them vividly the girl's simplicity and sweetness that had won

their hearts, even the hearts of the women in whom jealousy of

her young beauty would have been more than excusable. Anstruther

began to get out the supper dishes and Mabel slipped away toward

the forward deck. "When the child comes in," pursued Burlingham,

"I want to see you people looking and acting human."

"We are a lot of damn fools," admitted Eshwell. "That's why we're

bum actors instead of doing well at some respectable business."

And his jealousy went the way of Violet's and Mabel's. Pat began

to remember that he had shared in the triumph--where would she

have been without his violin work? But Tempest remained somber.

In his case better nature was having a particularly hard time of

it. His vanity had got savage wounds from the hoots and the "Oh,

bite it off, hamfat," which had greeted his impressive lecture on

the magic lantern pictures. He eyed Burlingham glumly. He

exonerated the girl, but not Burlingham. He was convinced that

the manager, in a spirit of mean revenge, had put up a job on

him. It simply could not be in the ordinary course that any

audience, without some sly trickery of prompting from an old

expert of theatrical "double-crossing," would be impatient for

a mere chit of an amateur when it might listen to his rich,

mellow eloquence.

Susan came shyly--and at the first glance into her face her

associates despised themselves for their pettiness. It is

impossible for envy and jealousy and hatred to stand before the

light of such a nature as Susan's. Away from her these very

human friends of hers might hate her--but in her presence they

could not resist the charm of her sincerity.

Everyone's spirits went up with the supper. It was Pat who said

to Burlingham, "Bob, we're going to let the pullet in on the

profits equally, aren't we?"

"Sure," replied Burlingham. "Anybody kicking?"

The others protested enthusiastically except Tempest, who shot

a glance of fiery scorn at Burlingham over a fork laden with

potato salad. "Then--you're elected, Miss Sackville," said

Burlingham.

Susan's puzzled eyes demanded an explanation. "Just this," said

he. "We divide equally at the end of the trip all we've raked

in, after the rent of the boat and expenses are taken off. You

get your equal share exactly as if you started with us."

"But that wouldn't be fair," protested the girl. "I must pay

what I owe you first."

"She means two dollars she borrowed of me at Carrollton,"

explained Burlingham. And they all laughed uproariously.

"I'll only take what's fair," said the girl.

"I vote we give it all to her," rolled out Tempest in tragedy's

tone for classic satire.

Before Mabel could hurl at him the probably coarse retort she

instantly got her lips ready to make, Burlingham's cool,

peace-compelling tones broke in:

"Miss Sackville's right. She must get only what's fair. She

shares equally from tonight on--less two dollars."

Susan nodded delightedly. She did not know--and the others did

not at the excited moment recall--that the company was to date

eleven dollars less well off than when it started from the

headwaters of the Ohio in early June. But Burlingham knew, and

that was the cause of the quiet grin to which he treated himself.

CHAPTER XV

BURLINGHAM had lived too long, too actively, and too

intelligently to have left any of his large, original stock of

the optimism that had so often shipwrecked his career in spite

of his talents and his energy. Out of the bitterness of

experience he used to say, "A young optimist is a young fool. An

old optimist is an old ass. A fool may learn, an ass can't." And

again, "An optimist steams through the fog, taking it for

granted everything's all right. A pessimist steams ahead too,

but he gets ready for trouble." However, he was wise enough to

keep his private misgivings and reservations from his

associates; the leaders of the human race always talk optimism

and think pessimism. He had told the company that Susan was sure

to make a go; and after she had made a go, he announced the

beginning of a season of triumph. But he was surprised when his

prediction came true and they had to turn people away from the

next afternoon's performance. He began to believe they really

could stay a week, and hired a man to fill the streets of New

Washington and other inland villages and towns of the county

with a handbill headlining Susan.

The news of the lovely young ballad singer in the show boat at

Bethlehem spread, as interesting news ever does, and down came

the people to see and hear, and to go away exclaiming.

Bethlehem, the sleepy, showed that it could wake when there was

anything worth waking for. Burlingham put on the hymns in the

middle of the week, and even the clergy sent their families.

Every morning Susan, either with Mabel or with Burlingham, or

with both, took a long walk into the country. It was Burlingham,

by the way, who taught her the necessity of regular and

methodical long walks for the preservation of her health. When

she returned there was always a crowd lounging about the landing

waiting to gape at her and whisper. It was intoxicating to her,

this delicious draught of the heady wine of fame; and Burlingham

was not unprepared for the evidences that she thought pretty

well of herself, felt that she had arrived. He laughed to

himself indulgently. "Let the kiddie enjoy herself," thought he.

"She needs the self-confidence now to give her a good foundation

to stand on. Then when she finds out what a false alarm this jay

excitement was, she'll not be swept clean away into despair."

The chief element in her happiness, he of course knew nothing

about. Until this success--which she, having no basis for

comparison, could not but exaggerate--she had been crushed and

abused more deeply than she had dared admit to herself by her

birth which made all the world scorn her and by the series of

calamities climaxing in that afternoon and night of horror at

Ferguson's. This success--it seemed to her to give her the right

to have been born, the right to live on and hold up her head

without effort after Ferguson. "I'll show them all, before I get

through," she said to herself over and over again. "They'll be

proud of me. Ruth will be boasting to everyone that I'm her

cousin. And Sam Wright--he'll wonder that he ever dared touch

such a famous, great woman." She only half believed this

herself, for she had much common sense and small

self-confidence. But pretending that she believed it all gave

her the most delicious pleasure.

Burlingham took such frank joy in her innocent vanity--so far as

he understood it and so far as she exhibited it--that the others

were good-humored about it too--all the others except Tempest,

whom conceit and defeat had long since soured through and

through. A tithe of Susan's success would have made him

unbearable, for like most human beings he had a vanity that was

Atlantosaurian on starvation rations and would have filled the

whole earth if it had been fed a few crumbs. Small wonder that

we are ever eagerly on the alert for signs of vanity in others;

we are seeking the curious comfort there is in the feeling that

others have our own weakness to a more ridiculous degree.

Tempest twitched to jeer openly at Susan, whose exhibition was

really timid and modest and not merely excusable but

justifiable. But he dared go no further than holding haughtily

aloof and casting vaguely into the air ever and anon a tragic

sneer. Susan would not have understood if she had seen, and did

not see. She was treading the heights, her eyes upon the sky.

She held grave consultation with Burlingham, with Violet, with

Mabel, about improving her part. She took it all very, very

seriously--and Burlingham was glad of that. "Yes, she does take

herself seriously," he admitted to Anstruther. "But that won't

do any harm as she's so young, and as she takes her work

seriously, too. The trouble about taking oneself seriously is it

stops growth. She hasn't got that form of it."

"Not yet," said Violet.

"She'll wake from her little dream, poor child, long before the

fatal stage." And he heaved a sigh for his own lost

illusions--those illusions that had cost him so dear.

Burlingham had intended to make at least one stop before

Jeffersonville, the first large town on the way down. But

Susan's capacities as a house-filler decided him for pushing

straight for it. "We'll go where there's a big population to be

drawn on," said he. But he did not say that in the back of his

head there was forming a plan to take a small theater at

Jeffersonville if the girl made a hit there.

Eshwell, to whom he was talking, looked glum. "She's going

pretty good with these greenies," observed he. "But I've my

doubts whether city people'll care for anything so milk-like."

Burlingham had his doubts, too; but he retorted warmly: "Don't

you believe it, Eshie. City's an outside. Underneath, there's

still the simple, honest, grassy-green heart of the country."

Eshwell laughed. "So you've stopped jeering at jays. You've

forgotten what a lot of tightwads and petty swindlers they are.

Well, I don't blame you. Now that they're giving down to us so

freely, I feel better about them myself. It's a pity we can't

lower the rest of the program to the level of their intellectuals."

Burlingham was not tactless enough to disturb Eshwell's

consoling notion that while Susan was appreciated by these

ignorant country-jakes, the rest of the company were too subtle

and refined in their art. "That's a good idea," replied he.

"I'll try to get together some simple slop. Perhaps a melodrama,

a good hot one, would go--eh?"

After ten days the receipts began to drop. On the fifteenth day

there was only a handful at the matinée, and in the evening half

the benches were empty. "About milked dry," said Burlingham at

the late supper. "We'll move on in the morning."

This pleased everyone. Susan saw visions of bigger triumphs; the

others felt that they were going where dramatic talent, not to

say genius, would be at least not entirely unappreciated. So the

company was at its liveliest next morning as the

mosquito-infested willows of the Bethlehem shore slowly dropped

away. They had made an unusually early start, for the river

would be more and more crowded as they neared the three

close-set cities--Louisville, Jeffersonville, and New Albany,

and the helpless little show boat must give the steamers no

excuse for not seeing her. All day--a long, dreamy, summer

day--they drifted lazily downstream, and, except Tempest, all

grew gayer and more gay. Burlingham had announced that there

were three hundred and seventy-eight dollars in the japanned tin

box he kept shut up in his bag.

At dusk a tug, for three dollars, nosed them into a wharf which

adjoined the thickly populated labor quarter of Jeffersonville.

Susan was awakened by a scream. Even as she opened her eyes a

dark cloud, a dull suffocating terrifying pain, descended upon

her. When she again became conscious, she was lying upon a mass

of canvas on the levee with three strange men bending over her.

She sat up, instinctively caught together the front of the

nightdress she had bought in Bethlehem the second day there.

Then she looked wildly from face to face.

"You're all right, ma'am," said one of the men. "Not a

scratch--only stunned."

"What was it?" said the girl. "Where are they?"

As she spoke, she saw Burlingham in his nightshirt propped

against a big blue oil barrel. He was staring stupidly at the

ground. And now she noted the others scattered about the levee,

each with a group around him or her. "What was it?" she repeated.

"A tug butted its tow of barges into you," said someone.

"Crushed your boat like an eggshell."

Burlingham staggered to his feet, stared round, saw her. "Thank

God!" he cried. "Anyone drowned? Anyone hurt?"

"All saved--no bones broken," someone responded.

"And the boat?"

"Gone down. Nothing left of her but splinters. The barges were

full of coal and building stone."

"The box!" suddenly shouted Burlingham. "The box!"

"What kind of a box?" asked a boy with lean, dirty, and much

scratched bare legs. "A little black tin box like they keep

money in?"

"That's it. Where is it?"

"It's all right," said the boy. "One of your people, a black

actor-looking fellow----"

"Tempest," interjected Burlingham. "Go on."

"He dressed on the wharf and he had the box."

"Where is he?"

"He said he was going for a doctor. Last I seed of him he was up

to the corner yonder. He was movin' fast."

Burlingham gave a kind of groan. Susan read in his face his

fear, his suspicion--the suspicion he was ashamed of himself for

having. She noted vaguely that he talked with the policeman

aside for a few minutes, after which the policeman went up the

levee. Burlingham rejoined his companions and took command. The

first thing was to get dressed as well as might be from such of

the trunks as had been knocked out of the cabin by the barge and

had been picked up. They were all dazed. Even Burlingham could

not realize just what had occurred. They called to one another

more or less humorous remarks while they were dressing behind

piles of boxes, crates, barrels and sacks in the wharf-boat. And

they laughed gayly when they assembled. Susan made the best

appearance, for her blue serge suit had been taken out dry when

she herself was lifted from the sinking wreck; the nightgown

served as a blouse. Mabel's trunk had been saved. Violet could

wear none of her things, as they were many sizes too small, so

she appeared in a property skirt of black paper muslin, a black

velvet property basque, a pair of shoes belonging to Tempest.

Burlingham and Eshwell made a fairly respectable showing in

clothing from Tempest's trunk. Their own trunks had gone down.

"Why, where's Tempest?" asked Eshwell.

"He'll be back in a few minutes," replied Burlingham. "In fact,

he ought to be back now." His glance happened to meet Susan's;

he hastily shifted his eyes.

"Where's the box?" asked Violet.

"Tempest's taking care of it," was the manager's answer.

"Tempest!" exclaimed Mabel. Her shrewd, dissipated eyes

contracted with suspicion.

"Anybody got any money?" inquired Eshwell, as he fished in his pockets.

No one had a cent. Eshwell searched Tempest's trunk, found a

two-dollar bill and a one wrapped round a silver dollar and

wadded in among some ragged underclothes. Susan heard Burlingham

mutter "Wonder how he happened to overlook that!" But no one

else heard.

"Well, we might have breakfast," suggested Mabel.

They went out on the water deck of the wharf-boat, looked down

at the splinters of the wreck lying in the deep yellow river.

"Come on," said Burlingham, and he led the way up the levee.

There was no attempt at jauntiness; they all realized now.

"How about Tempest?" said Eshwell, stopping short halfway up.

"Tempest--hell!" retorted Mabel. "Come on."

"What do you mean?" cried Violet, whose left eye was almost

closed by a bruise.

"We'll not see him again. Come on."

"Bob!" shrieked Violet at Burlingham. "Do you hear that?"

"Yes," said he. "Keep calm, and come on."

"Aren't you going to _do_ anything?" she screamed, seizing him by

the coat tail. "You must, damn it--you must!"

"I got the policeman to telephone headquarters," said

Burlingham. "What else can be done? Come on."

And a moment later the bedraggled and dejected company filed

into a cheap levee restaurant. "Bring some coffee," Burlingham

said to the waiter. Then to the others, "Does anybody want

anything else?" No one spoke. "Coffee's all," he said to the waiter.

It came, and they drank it in silence, each one's brain busy

with the disaster from the standpoint of his own resulting ruin.

Susan glanced furtively at each face in turn. She could not

think of her own fate, there was such despair in the faces of

these others. Mabel looked like an old woman. As for Violet,

every feature of her homeliness, her coarseness, her dissipated

premature old age stood forth in all its horror. Susan's heart

contracted and her flesh crept as she glanced quickly away. But

she still saw, and it was many a week before she ceased to see

whenever Violet's name came into her mind. Burlingham, too,

looked old and broken. Eshwell and Pat, neither of whom had ever

had the smallest taste of success, were stolid, like cornered

curs taking their beating and waiting in silence for the blows

to stop.

"Here, Eshie," said the manager, "take care of the three

dollars." And he handed him the bills. "I'll pay for the coffee

and keep the change. I'm going down to the owners of that tug

and see what I can do."

When he had paid they followed him out. At the curbstone he

said, "Keep together somewhere round the wharf-boat. So long."

He lifted the battered hat he was wearing, smiled at Susan.

"Cheer up, Miss Sackville. We'll down 'em yet!" And away he

went--a strange figure, his burly frame squeezed into a dingy

old frock suit from among Tempest's costumes.

A dreary two hours, the last half-hour in a drizzling rain from

which the narrow eaves of the now closed and locked wharf-boat

sheltered them only a little. "There he comes!" cried Susan; and

sure enough, Burlingham separated from the crowd streaming along

the street at the top of the levee, and began to descend the

slope toward them. They concentrated on his face, hoping to get

some indication of what to expect; but he never permitted his

face to betray his mind. He strode up the plank and joined them.

"Tempest come?" he asked.

"Tempest!" cried Mabel. "Haven't I told you he's jumped? Don't

you suppose _I_ know him?"

"And you brought him into the company," raged Violet.

"Burlingham didn't want to take him. He looked the fool and

jackass he is. Why didn't you warn us he was a rotten thief, too?"

"Wasn't it for shoplifting you served six months in Joliet?"

retorted Mabel.

"You lie--you streetwalker!" screamed Violet.

"Ladies! Ladies!" said Eshwell.

"That's what _I_ say," observed Pat.

"I'm no lady," replied Mabel. "I'm an actress."

"An actress--he-he!" jeered Violet. "An actress!"

"Shut up, all of you," commanded Burlingham. "I've got some

money. I settled for cash."

"How much?" cried Mabel and Violet in the same breath, their

quarrel not merely finished but forgotten.

"Three hundred dollars."

"For the boat and all?" demanded Eshwell. "Why, Bob----"

"They think it was for boat and all," interrupted Burlingham

with his cynical smile. "They set out to bully and cheat me.

They knew I couldn't get justice. So I let 'em believe I owned

the boat--and I've got fifty apiece for us."

"Sixty," said Violet.

"Fifty. There are six of us."

"You don't count in this little Jonah here, do you?" cried

Violet, scowling evilly at Susan.

"No--no--don't count me in," begged Susan. "I didn't lose anything."

Mabel pinched her arm. "You're right, Mr. Burlingham," said

she. "Miss Sackville ought to share. We're all in the same box."

"Miss Sackville will share," said Burlingham. "There's going to

be no skunking about this, as long as I'm in charge."

Eshwell and Pat sided with Violet. While the rain streamed, the

five, with Susan a horrified onlooker, fought on and on about

the division of the money. Their voices grew louder. They hurled

the most frightful epithets at one another. Violet seized Mabel

by the hair, and the men interfered, all but coming to blows

themselves in the mêlée. The wharfmaster rushed from his office,

drove them off to the levee. They continued to yell and curse,

even Burlingham losing control of himself and releasing all

there was of the tough and the blackguard in his nature. Two

policemen came, calmed them with threat of arrest. At last

Burlingham took from his pocket one at a time three small rolls

of bills. He flung one at each of the three who were opposing

his division. "Take that, you dirty curs," he said. "And be glad

I'm giving you anything at all. Most managers wouldn't have come

back. Come on, Miss Sackville. Come on, Mabel." And the two

followed him up the levee, leaving the others counting their shares.

At the street corner they went into a general store where

Burlingham bought two ninety-eight-cent umbrellas. He gave Mabel

one, held the other over Susan and himself as they walked along.

"Well, ladies," said he, "we begin life again. A clean slate, a

fresh start--as if nothing had ever happened."

Susan looked at him to try to give him a grateful and

sympathetic smile. She was surprised to see that, so far as she

could judge, he had really meant the words he had spoken.

"Yes, I mean it," said he. "Always look at life as it is--as a

game. With every deal, whether you win or lose, your stake

grows--for your stake's your wits, and you add to 'em by

learning something with each deal. What are you going to do, Mabel?"

"Get some clothes. The water wrecked mine and this rain has

finished my hat."

"We'll go together," said Burlingham.

They took a car for Louisville, descended before a department

store. Burlingham had to fit himself from the skin out; Mabel

had underclothes, needed a hat, a dress, summer shoes. Susan

needed underclothes, shoes, a hat, for she was bareheaded. They

arranged to meet at the first entrance down the side street;

Burlingham gave Susan and Mabel each their fifty dollars and

went his way. When they met again in an hour and a half, they

burst into smiles of delight. Burlingham had transformed himself

into a jaunty, fashionable young middle-aged man, with an air of

success achieved and prosperity assured. He had put the fine

finishing touch to his transformation by getting a haircut and

a shave. Mabel looked like a showy chorus girl, in a striped

blue and white linen suit, a big beflowered hat, and a fluffy

blouse of white chiffon. Susan had resisted Mabel's entreaties,

had got a plain, sensible linen blouse of a kind that on a pinch

might be washed out and worn without ironing. Her new hat was a

simple blue sailor with a dark blue band that matched her dress.

"I spent thirty-six dollars," said Burlingham.

"I only spent twenty-two," declared Mabel. "And this child here

only parted with seven of her dollars. I had no idea she was so

thrifty."

"And now--what?" said Burlingham.

"I'm going round to see a friend of mine," replied Mabel. "She's

on the stage, too. There's sure to be something doing at the

summer places. Maybe I can ring Miss Sackville in. There ought

to be a good living in those eyes of hers and those feet and

ankles. I'm sure I can put her next to something."

"Then you can give her your address," said Burlingham.

"Why, she's going with me," cried Mabel. "You don't suppose I'd

leave the child adrift?"

"No, she's going with me to a boarding house I'll find for her,"

said Burlingham.

Into Mabel's face flashed the expression of the suspicion such

a statement would at once arouse in a mind trained as hers had

been. Burlingham's look drove the expression out of her face,

and suspicion at least into the background. "She's not going

with your friend," said Burlingham, a hint of sternness in his

voice. "That's best--isn't it?"

Miss Connemora's eyes dropped. "Yes, I guess it is," replied

she. "Well--I turn down this way."

"We'll keep on and go out Chestnut Street," said Burlingham.

"You can write to her--or to me--care of the General Delivery."

"That's best. You may hear from Tempest. You can write me there,

too." Mabel was constrained and embarrassed. "Good-by, Miss

Sackville."

Susan embraced and kissed her. Mabel began to weep. "Oh, it's

all so sudden--and frightful," she said. "Do try to be good,

Lorna. You can trust Bob." She looked earnestly, appealingly, at

him. "Yes, I'm sure you can. And--he's right about me. Good-by."

She hurried away, not before Susan had seen the tears falling

from her kind, fast-fading eyes.

Susan stood looking after her. And for the first time the truth

about the catastrophe came to her. She turned to Burlingham.

"How brave you are!" she cried.

"Oh, what'd be the use in dropping down and howling like a dog?"

replied he. "That wouldn't bring the boat back. It wouldn't get

me a job."

"And you shared equally, when you lost the most of all."

They were walking on. "The boat was mine, too," said he in a dry

reflective tone. "I told 'em it wasn't when we started out

because I wanted to get a good share for rent and so on, without

any kicking from anybody."

The loss did not appeal to her; it was the lie he had told. She

felt her confidence shaking. "You didn't mean to--to----" she

faltered, stopped.

"To cheat them?" suggested he. "Yes, I did. So--to sort of

balance things up I divided equally all I got from the tug

people. What're you looking so unhappy about?"

"I wish you hadn't told me," she said miserably. "I don't see

why you did."

"Because I don't want you making me into a saint. I'm like the

rest you see about in pants, cheating and lying, with or without

pretending to themselves that they're honest. Don't trust

anybody, my dear. The sooner you get over the habit, the sooner

you'll cease to tempt people to be hypocrites. All the serious

trouble I've ever got into has come through trusting or being

trusted."

He looked gravely at her, burst out laughing at her perplexed,

alarmed expression. "Oh, Lord, it isn't as bad as all that,"

said he. "The rain's stopped. Let's have breakfast. Then--a new

deal--with everything to gain and nothing to lose. It's a great

advantage to be in a position where you've got nothing to lose!"

CHAPTER XVI

BURLINGHAM found for her a comfortable room in a flat in West

Chestnut Street--a respectable middle-class neighborhood with

three churches in full view and the spires of two others visible

over the housetops. Her landlady was Mrs. Redding, a

simple-hearted, deaf old widow with bright kind eyes beaming

guilelessness through steel-framed spectacles. Mrs. Redding had

only recently been reduced to the necessity of letting a room.

She stated her moderate price--seven dollars a week for room and

board--as if she expected to be arrested for attempted

extortion. "I give good meals," she hastened to add. "I do the

cooking myself--and buy the best. I'm no hand for canned stuff.

As for that there cold storage, it's no better'n slow poison,

and not so terrible slow at that. Anything your daughter wants

I'll give her."

"She's not my daughter," said Burlingham, and it was his turn to

be red and flustered. "I'm simply looking after her, as she's

alone in the world. I'm going to live somewhere else. But I'll

come here for meals, if you're willing, ma'am."

"I--I'd have to make that extry, I'm afraid," pleaded Mrs. Redding.

"Rather!" exclaimed Burlingham. "I eat like a pair of Percherons."

"How much did you calculate to pay?" inquired the widow. Her one

effort at price fixing, though entirely successful, had

exhausted her courage.

Burlingham was clear out of his class in those idyllic days of

protector of innocence. He proceeded to be more than honest.

"Oh, say five a week."

"Gracious! That's too much," protested she. "I hate to charge a

body for food, somehow. It don't seem to be accordin' to what

God tells us. But I don't see no way out."

"I'll come for five not a cent less," insisted Burlingham. "I

want to feel free to eat as much as I like." And it was so

arranged. Away he went to look up his acquaintances, while Susan

sat listening to the widow and trying to convince her that she

and Mr. Burlingham didn't want and couldn't possibly eat all

the things she suggested as suitable for a nice supper. Susan

had been learning rapidly since she joined the theatrical

profession. She saw why this fine old woman was getting poorer

steadily, was arranging to spend her last years in an almshouse.

What a queer world it was! What a strange way for a good God to

order things! The better you were, the worse off you were. No

doubt it was Burlingham's lifelong goodness of heart as shown in

his generosity to her, that had kept him down. It was the same

way with her dead mother--she had been loving and trusting, had

given generously without thought of self, with generous

confidence in the man she loved--and had paid with reputation

and life.

She compelled Burlingham to take what was left of her fifty

dollars. "You wouldn't like to make me feel mean," was the

argument she used. "I must put in what I've got--the same as you

do. Now, isn't that fair?" And as he was dead broke and had been

unable to borrow, he did not oppose vigorously.

She assumed that after a day or two spent in getting his

bearings he would take her with him as he went looking. When she

suggested it, he promptly vetoed it. "That isn't the way

business is done in the profession," said he. "The star--you're

the star--keeps in the background, and her manager--that's me

does the hustling."

She had every reason for believing this; but as the days passed

with no results, sitting about waiting began to get upon her

nerves. Mrs. Redding had the remnant of her dead husband's

library, and he had been a man of broad taste in literature. But

Susan, ardent reader though she was, could not often lose

herself in books now. She was too impatient for realities, too

anxious about them.

Burlingham remained equable, neither hopeful nor gloomy; he made

her feel that he was strong, and it gave her strength. Thus she

was not depressed when on the last day of their week he said: "I

think we'd better push on to Cincinnati tomorrow. There's

nothing here, and we've got to get placed before our cash gives

out. In Cincinnati there are a dozen places to one in this snide town."

The idea of going to Cincinnati gave her a qualm of fear; but

it passed away when she considered how she had dropped out of

the world. "They think I'm dead," she reflected. "Anyhow, I'd

never be looked for among the kind of people I'm in with now."

The past with which she had broken seemed so far away and so dim

to her that she could not but feel it must seem so to those who

knew her in her former life. She had such a sense of her own

insignificance, now that she knew something of the vastness and

business of the world, that she was without a suspicion of the

huge scandal and excitement her disappearance had caused in

Sutherland.

To Cincinnati they went next day by the L. and N. and took two

tiny rooms in the dingy old Walnut Street House, at a special

rate--five dollars a week for the two, as a concession to the

profession. "We'll eat in cheap restaurants and spread our

capital out," said Burlingham. "I want you to get placed _right_,

not just placed." He bought a box of blacking and a brush,

instructed her in the subtle art of making a front--an art

whereof he was past master, as Susan had long since learned.

"Never let yourself look poor or act poor, until you simply have

to throw up the sponge," said he. "The world judges by

appearances. Put your first money and your last into clothes.

And never--never--tell a hard-luck story. Always seem to be

doing well and comfortably looking out for a chance to do

better. The whole world runs from seedy people and whimperers."

"Am I--that way?" she asked nervously.

"Not a bit," declared he. "The day you came up to me in

Carrollton I knew you were playing in the hardest kind of hard

luck because of what I had happened to see and hear--and guess.

But you weren't looking for pity--and that was what I liked. And

it made me feel you had the stuff in you. I'd not waste breath

teaching a whiner or a cheap skate. You couldn't be cheap if you

tried. The reason I talk to you about these things is so you'll

learn to put the artistic touches by instinct into what you do."

"You've taken too much trouble for me," said the girl.

"Don't you believe it, my dear," laughed he. "If I can do with

you what I hope--I've an instinct that if I win out for you, I'll

come into my own at last."

"You've taught me a lot," said she.

"I wonder," replied he. "That is, I wonder how much you've

learned. Perhaps enough to keep you--not to keep from being

knocked down by fate, but to get on your feet afterward. I hope

so--I hope so."

They dropped coffee, bought milk by the bottle, he smuggling it

to their rooms disguised as a roll of newspapers. They carried

in rolls also, and cut down their restaurant meals to supper

which they got for twenty-five cents apiece at a bakery

restaurant in Seventh Street. There is a way of resorting to

these little economies--a snobbish, self-despairing way--that

makes them sordid and makes the person indulging in them sink

lower and lower. But Burlingham could not have taken that way.

He was the adventurer born, was a hardy seasoned campaigner who

had never looked on life in the snob's way, had never felt the

impulse to apologize for his defeats or to grow haughty over his

successes. Susan was an apt pupil; and for the career that lay

before her his instructions were invaluable. He was teaching her

how to keep the craft afloat and shipshape through the worst

weather that can sweep the sea of life.

"How do you make yourself look always neat and clean?" he asked.

She confessed: "I wash out my things at night and hang them on

the inside of the shutters to dry. They're ready to wear again

in the morning."

"Getting on!" cried he, full of admiration. "They simply can't

down us, and they might as well give up trying."

"But I don't look neat," sighed she. "I can't iron."

"No--that's the devil of it," laughed he. He pulled aside his

waistcoat and she saw he was wearing a dickey. "And my cuffs are

pinned in," he said. "I have to be careful about raising and

lowering my arms."

"Can't I wash out some things for you?" she said, then hurried

on to put it more strongly. "Yes, give them to me when we get

back to the hotel."

"It does help a man to feel he's clean underneath. And we've got

nothing to waste on laundries."

"I wish I hadn't spent that fifteen cents to have my heels

straightened and new steels put in them." She had sat in a

cobbler's while this repair to the part of her person she was

most insistent upon had been effected.

He laughed. "A good investment, that," said he. "I've been

noticing how you always look nice about the feet. Keep it up.

The surest sign of a sloven and a failure, of a moral, mental,

and physical no-good is down-at-the-heel. Always keep your heels

straight, Lorna."

And never had he given her a piece of advice more to her liking.

She thought she knew now why she had always been so particular

about her boots and shoes, her slippers and her stockings. He

had given her a new confidence in herself--in a strength within her

somewhere beneath the weakness she was always seeing and feeling.

Not until she thought it out afterward did she realize what they

were passing through, what frightful days of failure he was

enduring. He acted like the steady-nerved gambler at life that

he was. He was not one of those more or less weak losers who

have to make desperate efforts to conceal a fainting heart. His

heart was not fainting. He simply played calmly on, feeling that

the next throw was as likely to be for as against him. She kept

close to her room, walking about there--she had never been much

of a sitter--thinking, practicing the new songs he had got for

her--character songs in which he trained her as well as he could

without music or costume or any of the accessories. He also had

an idea for a church scene, with her in a choir boy's costume,

singing the most moving of the simple religious songs to organ

music. She from time to time urged him to take her on the rounds

with him. But he stood firm, giving always the same reason of

the custom in the profession. Gradually, perhaps by some form of

that curious process of infiltration that goes on between two

minds long in intimate contact, the conviction came to her that

the reason he alleged was not his real reason; but as she had

absolute confidence in him she felt that there was some good

reason or he would not keep her in the background--and that his

silence about it must be respected. So she tried to hide from

him how weary and heartsick inaction was making her, how hard it

was for her to stay alone so many hours each day.

As he watched her closely, it soon dawned on him that something

was wrong, and after a day or so he worked out the explanation.

He found a remedy--the reading room of the public library where

she could make herself almost content the whole day long.

He began to have a haggard look, and she saw he was sick, was

keeping up his strength with whisky. "It's only this infernal

summer cold I caught in the smashup," he explained. "I can't

shake it, but neither can it get me down. I'd not dare fall

sick. What'd become of _us_?"

She knew that "us" meant only herself. Her mind had been aging

rapidly in those long periods of unbroken reflection. To develop

a human being, leave him or her alone most of the time; it is

too much company, too little time to digest and assimilate, that

keep us thoughtless and unformed until life is half over. She

astonished him by suddenly announcing one evening:

"I am a drag on you. I'm going to take a place in a store."

He affected an indignation so artistic that it ought to have

been convincing. "I'm ashamed of you!" he cried. "I see you're

losing your nerve."

This was ingenious, but it did not succeed. "You can't deceive

me any longer," was her steady answer. "Tell me honest--couldn't

you have got something to do long ago, if it hadn't been for

trying to do something for me?"

"Sure," replied he, too canny to deny the obvious. "But what has

that to do with it? If I'd had a living offer, I'd have taken

it. But at my age a man doesn't dare take certain kinds of

places. It'd settle him for life. And I'm playing for a really big

stake and I'll win. When I get what I want for you, we'll make as

much money a month as I could make a year. Trust me, my dear."

It was plausible; and her "loss of nerve" was visibly

aggravating his condition--the twitching of hands and face, the

terrifying brightness of his eyes, of the color in the deep

hollows under his cheek bones. But she felt that she must

persist. "How much money have we got?" she asked.

"Oh--a great deal enough."

"You must play square with me," said she. "I'm not a baby, but

a woman--and your partner."

"Don't worry me, child. We'll talk about it tomorrow."

"How much? You've no right to hide things from me. You--hurt me."

"Eleven dollars and eighty cents--when this bill for supper's

paid and the waitress tipped."

"I'll try for a place in a store," said she.

"Don't talk that way or think that way," cried he angrily.

"There's where so many people fail in life. They don't stick to

their game. I wish to God I'd had sense enough to break straight

for Chicago or New York. But it's too late now. What I lack is

nerve--nerve to do the big, bold things my brains show me I ought."

His distress was so obvious that she let the subject drop. That

night she lay awake as she had fallen into the habit of doing.

But instead of purposeless, rambling thoughts, she was trying

definitely to plan a search for work. Toward three in the

morning she heard him tossing and muttering--for the wall

between their rooms was merely plastered laths covered with

paper. She tried his door; it was locked. She knocked, got no

answer but incoherent ravings. She roused the office, and the

night porter forced the door. Burlingham's gas was lighted; he

was sitting up in bed--a haggard, disheveled, insane man, raving

on and on--names of men and women she had never heard--oaths,

disjointed sentences.

"Brain fever, I reckon," said the porter. "I'll call a doctor."

In a few minutes Susan was gladdened by the sight of a young man

wearing the familiar pointed beard and bearing the familiar

black bag. He made a careful examination, asked her many

questions, finally said:

"Your father has typhoid, I fear. He must be taken to a hospital."

"But we have very little money," said Susan.

"I understand," replied the doctor, marveling at the calmness of one

so young. "The hospital I mean is free. I'll send for an ambulance."

While they were waiting beside Burlingham, whom the doctor had

drugged into unconsciousness with a hypodermic, Susan said: "Can

I go to the hospital and take care of him?"

"No," replied the doctor. "You can only call and inquire how he

is, until he's well enough to see you."

"And how long will that be?"

"I can't say." He hadn't the courage to tell her it would be

three weeks at least, perhaps six or seven.

He got leave of the ambulance surgeon for Susan to ride to the

hospital, and he went along himself. As the ambulance sped

through the dimly lighted streets with clanging bell and heavy

pounding of the horse's hoofs on the granite pavement, Susan

knelt beside Burlingham, holding one of his hot hands. She was

remembering how she had said that she would die for him--and here

it was he that was dying for her. And her heart was heavy with

a load of guilt, the heaviest she was ever to feel in her life.

She could not know how misfortune is really the lot of human

beings; it seemed to her that a special curse attended her,

striking down all who befriended her.

They dashed up to great open doors of the hospital. Burlingham

was lifted, was carried swiftly into the receiving room. Susan

with tearless eyes bent over, embraced him lingeringly, kissed

his fiery brow, his wasted cheeks. One of the surgeons in white

duck touched her on the arm.

"We can't delay," he said.

"No indeed," she replied, instantly drawing back.

She watched the stretcher on wheels go noiselessly down the

corridor toward the elevator and when it was gone she still

continued to look. "You can come at any hour to inquire," said

the young doctor who had accompanied her. "Now we'll go into the

office and have the slip made out."

They entered a small room, divided unequally by a barrier desk;

behind it stood a lean, coffee-sallowed young man with a scrawny

neck displayed to the uttermost by a standing collar scarcely

taller than the band of a shirt. He directed at Susan one of

those obtrusively shrewd glances which shallow people practice

and affect to create the impression that they have a genius for

character reading. He drew a pad of blank forms toward him,

wiped a pen on the mat into which his mouse-colored hair was

roached above his right temple. "Well, miss, what's the

patient's name?"

"Robert Burlingham."

"Age?"

"I don't know."

"About what?"

"I--I don't know. I guess he isn't very young. But I don't know."

"Put down forty, Sim," said the doctor.

"Very well, Doctor Hamilton." Then to Susan: "Color white, I

suppose. Nativity?"

Susan recalled that she had heard him speak of Liverpool as his

birthplace. "English," said she.

"Profession?"

"Actor."

"Residence?"

"He hasn't any. It was sunk at Jeffersonville. We stop at the

Walnut Street House."

"Walnut Street House. Was he married or single?"

"Single." Then she recalled some of the disconnected ravings.

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

"Single," said the clerk. "No, I guess I'll put it widower. Next

friend or relative?"

"I am."

"Daughter. First name?"

"I am not his daughter."

"Oh, niece. Full name, please."

"I am no relation--just his--his friend."

Sim the clerk looked up sharply. Hamilton reddened, glowered at

him. "I understand," said Sim, leering at her. And in a tone

that reeked insinuation which quite escaped her, he went on,

"We'll put your name down. What is it?"

"Lorna Sackville."

"You don't look English--not at all the English style of beauty,

eh--Doctor?"

"That's all, Miss Sackville," said Hamilton, with a scowl at the

clerk. Susan and he went out into Twelfth Street. Hamilton from

time to time stole a glance of sympathy and inquiry into the sad

young face, as he and she walked eastward together. "He's a

strong man and sure to pull through," said the doctor. "Are you

alone at the hotel?"

"I've nobody but him in the world," replied she.

"I was about to venture to advise that you go to a boarding

house," pursued the young man.

"Thank you. I'll see."

"There's one opposite the hospital--a reasonable place."

"I've got to go to work," said the girl, to herself rather than to him.

"Oh, you have a position."

Susan did not reply, and he assumed that she had.

"If you don't mind, I'd like to call and see--Mr. Burlingham.

The physicians at the hospital are perfectly competent, as good

as there are in the city. But I'm not very busy, and I'd be

glad to go."

"We haven't any money," said the girl. "And I don't know when we

shall have. I don't want to deceive you."

"I understand perfectly," said the young man, looking at her

with interested but respectful eyes. "I'm poor, myself, and have

just started."

"Will they treat him well, when he's got no money?"

"As well as if he paid."

"And you will go and see that everything's all right?"

"It'll be a pleasure."

Under a gas lamp he took out a card and gave it to her. She

thanked him and put it in the bosom of her blouse where lay all

the money they had--the eleven dollars and eighty cents. They

walked to the hotel, as cars were few at that hour. He did all

the talking--assurances that her "father" could not fail to get

well, that typhoid wasn't anything like the serious disease it

used to be, and that he probably had a light form of it. The

girl listened, but her heart could not grow less heavy. As he

was leaving her at the hotel door, he hesitated, then asked if

she wouldn't let him call and take her to the hospital the next

morning, or, rather, later that same morning. She accepted, she

hoped that, if he were with her, she gratefully; would be

admitted to see Burlingham and could assure herself that he was

well taken care of.

The night porter tried to detain her for a little chat. "Well,"

said he, "it's a good hospital--for you folks with money. Of

course, for us poor people it's different. You couldn't hire _me_

to go there."

Susan turned upon him. "Why not?" she asked.

"Oh, if a man's poor, or can't pay for nice quarters, they treat

him any old way. Yes, they're good doctors and all that. But

they're like everybody else. They don't give a darn for poor

people. But your uncle'll be all right there."

For the first time in her life Susan did not close her eyes in sleep.

The young doctor was so moved by her worn appearance that he

impulsively said: "Have you some troubles you've said nothing

about? Please don't hesitate to tell me."

"Oh, you needn't worry about me," replied she. "I simply didn't

sleep--that's all. Do they treat charity patients badly at the

hospital?"

"Certainly not," declared he earnestly. "Of course, a charity

patient can't have a room to himself. But that's no disadvantage."

"How much is a room?"

"The cheapest are ten dollars a week. That includes private

attendance--a little better nursing than the public patients

get--perhaps. But, really--Miss Sackville----"

"He must have a room," said Susan.

"You are sure you can afford it? The difference isn't----"

"He must have a room." She held out a ten-dollar bill--ten

dollars of the eleven dollars and eighty cents. "This'll pay for

the first week. You fix it, won't you?"

Young Doctor Hamilton hesitatingly took the money. "You are

quite, quite sure, Miss Sackville?--Quite sure you can afford

this extravagance--for it is an extravagance."

"He must have the best we can afford," evaded she.

She waited in the office while Hamilton went up. When he came

down after perhaps half an hour, he had an air of cheerfulness.

"Everything going nicely," said he.

Susan's violet-gray eyes gazed straight into his brown eyes; and

the brown eyes dropped. "You are not telling me the truth," said she.

"I'm not denying he's a very sick man," protested Hamilton.

"Is he----"

She could not pronounce the word.

"Nothing like that--believe me, nothing. He has the chances all with him."

And Susan tried to believe. "He will have a room?"

"He has a room. That's why I was so long. And I'm glad he

has--for, to be perfectly honest, the attendance--not the

treatment, but the attendance--is much better for private

patients."

Susan was looking at the floor. Presently she drew a long

breath, rose. "Well, I must be going," said she. And she went to

the street, he accompanying her.

"If you're going back to the hotel," said he, "I'm walking that way."

"No, I've got to go this way," replied she, looking up Elm Street.

He saw she wished to be alone, and left her with the promise to

see Burlingham again that afternoon and let her know at the

hotel how he was getting on. He went east, she north. At the

first corner she stopped, glanced back to make sure he was not

following. From her bosom she drew four business cards. She had

taken the papers from the pockets of Burlingham's clothes and

from the drawer of the table in his room, to put them all

together for safety; she had found these cards, the addresses

of theatrical agents. As she looked at them, she remembered

Burlingham's having said that Blynn--Maurice Blynn, at Vine and

Ninth Streets--might give them something at one of the "over the

Rhine" music halls, as a last resort. She noted the address, put

away the cards and walked on, looking about for a policeman.

Soon she came to a bridge over a muddy stream--a little river,

she thought at first, then remembered that it must be the

canal--the Rhine, as it was called, because the city's huge

German population lived beyond it, keeping up the customs and

even the language of the fatherland. She stood on the bridge,

watching the repulsive waters from which arose the stench of

sewage; watching canal boats dragged drearily by mules with

harness-worn hides; followed with her melancholy eyes the course

of the canal under bridge after bridge, through a lane of dirty,

noisy factories pouring out from lofty chimneys immense clouds

of black smoke. It ought to have been a bright summer day, but

the sun shone palely through the dense clouds; a sticky, sooty

moisture saturated the air, formed a skin of oily black ooze

over everything exposed to it. A policeman, a big German, with

stupid honest face, brutal yet kindly, came lounging along.

"I beg your pardon," said Susan, "but would you mind telling me

where--" she had forgotten the address, fumbled in her bosom for

the cards, showed him Blynn's card--"how I can get to this?"

The policeman nodded as he read the address. "Keep on this

way, lady"--he pointed his baton south--"until you've passed

four streets. At the fifth street turn east. Go

one--two--three--four--five streets east. Understand?"

"Yes, thank you," said the girl with the politeness of deep gratitude.

"You'll be at Vine. You'll see the name on the street lamp.

Blynn's on the southwest corner. Think you can find it?"

"I'm sure I can."

"I'm going that way," continued the policeman. "But you'd

better walk ahead. If you walked with me, they'd think you was

pinched--and we'd have a crowd after us." And he laughed

with much shaking of his fat, tightly belted body.

Susan contrived to force a smile, though the suggestion of such

a disgraceful scene made her shudder. "Thank you so much. I'm

sure I'll find it." And she hastened on, eager to put distance

between herself and that awkward company.

"Don't mention it, lady," the policeman called after her, tapping

his baton on the rim of his helmet, as a mark of elegant courtesy.

She was not at ease until, looking back, she no longer saw the

bluecoat for the intervening crowds. After several slight

mistakes in the way, she descried ahead of her a large sign

painted on the wall of a three-story brick building:

MAURICE BLYNN, THEATRICAL AGENT

ALL KINDS OF TALENT PLACED AND SUPPLIED

After some investigation she discovered back of the saloon which

occupied the street floor a grimy and uneven wooden staircase

leading to the upper stories. At the first floor she came face

to face with a door on the glass of which was painted the same

announcement she had read from the wall. She knocked timidly,

then louder. A shrill voice came from the interior:

"The door's open. Come in."

She turned the knob and entered a small, low-ceilinged room

whose general grime was streaked here and there with smears of

soot. It contained a small wooden table at which sprawled a

freckled and undernourished office boy, and a wooden bench where

fretted a woman obviously of "the profession." She was dressed

in masses of dirty white furbelows. On her head reared a big

hat, above an incredible quantity of yellow hair; on the hat

were badly put together plumes of badly curled ostrich feathers.

Beneath her skirt was visible one of her feet; it was large and

fat, was thrust into a tiny slipper with high heel ending under

the arch of the foot. The face of the actress was young and

pertly pretty, but worn, overpainted, overpowdered and

underwashed. She eyed Susan insolently.

"Want to see the boss?" said the boy.

"If you please," murmured Susan.

"Business?"

"I'm looking for a--for a place."

The boy examined her carefully. "Appointment?"

"No, sir," replied the girl.

"Well--he'll see you, anyhow," said the boy, rising.

The mass of plumes and yellow bangs and furbelows on the bench

became violently agitated. "I'm first," cried the actress.

"Oh, you sit tight, Mame," jeered the boy. He opened a solid

door behind him. Through the crack Susan saw busily writing at

a table desk a bald, fat man with a pasty skin and a veined and

bulbous nose.

"Lady to see you," said the boy in a tone loud enough for both

Susan and the actress to hear.

"Who? What name?" snapped the man, not ceasing or looking up.

"She's young, and a queen," said the boy. "Shall I show her in?"

"Yep."

The actress started up. "Mr. Blynn----" she began in a loud,

threatening, elocutionary voice.

"'Lo, Mame," said Blynn, still busy. "No time to see you.

Nothing doing. So long."

"But, Mr. Blynn----"

"Bite it off, Mame," ordered the boy. "Walk in, miss."

Susan, deeply colored from sympathy with the humiliated actress

and from nervousness in those forbidding and ominous

surroundings, entered the private office. The boy closed the

door behind her. The pen scratched on. Presently the man said:

"Well, my dear, what's your name?"

With the last word, the face lifted and Susan saw a seamed and

pitted skin, small pale blue eyes showing the white, or rather

the bloodshot yellow all round the iris, a heavy mouth and jaw,

thick lips; the lower lip protruded and was decorated with a

blue-black spot like a blood boil, as if to indicate where the

incessant cigar usually rested. At first glance into Susan's

sweet, young face the small eyes sparkled and danced, traveled

on to the curves of her form.

"Do sit down, my dear," said he in a grotesquely wheedling

voice. She took the chair close to him as it was the only one in

the little room.

"What can I do for you? My, how fresh and pretty you are!"

"Mr. Burlingham----" began Susan.

"Oh--you're the girl Bob was talking about." He smiled and

nodded at her. "No wonder he kept you out of sight." He

inventoried her charms again with his sensual, confident glance.

"Bob certainly has got good taste."

"He's in the hospital," said Susan desperately. "So I've come to

get a place if you can find me one."

"Hospital? I'm sorry to hear that." And Mr. Blynn's tones had

that accent of deep sympathy which get a man or woman without

further evidence credit for being "kind-hearted whatever else he is."

"Yes, he's very ill--with typhoid," said the girl. "I must do

something right away to help him."

"That's fine--fine," said Mr. Blynn in the same effective tone.

"I see you're as sweet as you are pretty. Yes--that's

fine--fine!" And the moisture was in the little eyes. "Well, I

think I can do something for you. I _must_ do something for you.

Had much experience?--Professional, I mean."

Mr. Blynn laughed at his, to Susan, mysterious joke. Susan

smiled faintly in polite response. He rubbed his hands and

smacked his lips, the small eyes dancing. The moisture had vanished.

"Oh, yes, I can place you, if you can do anything at all," he

went on. "I'd 'a' done it long ago, if Bob had let me see you.

But he was too foxy. He ought to be ashamed of himself, standing

in the way of your getting on, just out of jealousy. Sing or

dance--or both?"

"I can sing a little, I think," said Susan.

"Now, that's modest. Ever worn tights?"

Susan shook her head, a piteous look in her violet-gray eyes.

"Oh, you'll soon get used to that. And mighty well you'll look

in 'em, I'll bet, eh? Where did Bob get you? And when?" Before

she could answer, he went on, "Let's see, I've got a date for

this evening, but I'll put it off. And she's a peach, too. So

you see what a hit you've made with me. We'll have a nice little

dinner at the Hotel du Rhine and talk things over."

"Couldn't I go to work right away?" asked the girl.

"Sure. I'll have you put on at Schaumer's tomorrow night----"

He looked shrewdly, laughingly, at her, with contracted eyelids.

"_If_ everything goes well. Before I do anything for you, I have

to see what you can do for me." And he nodded and smacked his

lips. "Oh, we'll have a lovely little dinner!" He looked

expectantly at her. "You certainly are a queen! What a dainty

little hand!" He reached out one of his hands--puffy as if it

had been poisoned, very white, with stubby fingers. Susan

reluctantly yielded her hand to his close, mushy embrace. "No

rings. That's a shame, petty----" He was talking as if to a

baby.--"That'll have to be fixed--yes, it will, my little

sweetie. My, how nice and fresh you are!" And his great

nostrils, repulsively hairy within, deeply pitted without,

sniffed as if over an odorous flower.

Susan drew her hand away. "What will they give me?" she asked.

"How greedy it is!" he wheedled. "Well, you'll get plenty--plenty."

"How much?" said the girl. "Is it a salary?"

"Of course, there's the regular salary. But that won't amount to

much. You know how those things are."

"How much?"

"Oh, say a dollar a night--until you make a hit."

"Six dollars a week."

"Seven. This is a Sunday town. Sunday's the big day. You'll have

Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday matinées, but they don't pay for them."

"Seven dollars a week." And the hospital wanted ten. "Couldn't

I get--about fifteen--or fourteen? I think I could do on fourteen."

"Rather! I was talking only of the salary. You'll make a good

many times fifteen--if you play your cards right. It's true

Schaumer draws only a beer crowd. But as soon as the word flies

round that _you_'re there, the boys with the boodle'll flock in.

Oh, you'll wear the sparklers all right, pet."

Rather slowly it was penetrating to Susan what Mr. Blynn had in

mind. "I'd--I'd rather take a regular salary," said she. "I must

have ten a week for him. I can live any old way."

"Oh, come off!" cried Mr. Blynn with a wink. "What's your game?