AT the lunch hour the next day Mary Hinkle knocked at the
garret in Clinton Place. Getting no answer, she opened the
door. At the table close to the window was Susan in a
nightgown, her hair in disorder as if she had begun to arrange
it and had stopped halfway. Her eyes turned listlessly in
Mary's direction--dull eyes, gray, heavily circled.
"You didn't answer, Miss Sackville. So I thought I'd come in and
leave a note," explained Mary. Her glance was avoiding Susan's.
"Come for the dress and hat?" said Susan. "There they are."
And she indicated the undisturbed bed whereon hat and dress
were carelessly flung.
"My, but it's hot in this room!" exclaimed Mary. "You must
move up to my place. There's a room and bath vacant--only
seven per."
Susan seemed not to hear. She was looking dully at her hands
upon the table before her.
"Mr. Jeffries sent me to ask you how you were. He was worried
because you didn't come." With a change of voice, "Mr. Gideon
telephoned down the order a while ago. Mr. Jeffries says you
are to keep the dress and hat."
"No," said Susan. "Take them away with you."
"Aren't you coming down this afternoon?"
"No," replied Susan. "I've quit."
"Quit?" cried Miss Hinkle. Her expression gradually shifted
from astonishment to pleased understanding. "Oh, I see!
You've got something better."
"No. But I'll find something."
Mary studied the situation, using Susan's expressionless face
as a guide. After a time she seemed to get from it a clew.
With the air of friendly experience bent on aiding helpless
inexperience she pushed aside the dress and made room for
herself on the bed. "Don't be a fool, Miss Sackville," said
she. "If you don't like that sort of thing--you know what I
mean--why, you can live six months--maybe a year--on the
reputation of what you've done and their hope that you'll
weaken down and do it again. That'll give you time to look
round and find something else. For pity's sake, don't turn
yourself loose without a job. You got your place so easy that
you think you can get one any old time. There's where you're
wrong. Believe me, you played in luck--and luck don't come
round often. I know what I'm talking about. So I say, don't
be a fool!"
"I am a fool," said Susan.
"Well--get over it. And don't waste any time about it, either."
"I can't go back," said Susan stolidly. "I can't face them."
"Face who?" cried Mary. "Business is business. Everybody
understands that. All the people down there are crazy about
you now. You got the house a hundred-thousand-dollar order.
You don't _suppose_ anybody in business bothers about how an
order's got--do you?"
"It's the way _I_ feel--not the way _they_ feel."
"As for the women down there--of course, there's some that
pretend they won't do that sort of thing. Look at 'em--at
their faces and figures--and you'll see why they don't. Of
course a girl keeps straight when there's nothing in not being
straight--leastways, unless she's a fool. She knows that if
the best she can do is marry a fellow of her own class, why
she'd only get left if she played any tricks with them cheap
skates that have to get married or go without because they're
too poor to pay for anything--and by marrying can get that and
a cook and a washwoman and mender besides--and maybe, too,
somebody who can go out and work if they're laid up sick. But
if a girl sees a chance to get on----don't be a fool, Miss
Sackville."
Susan listened with a smile that barely disturbed the stolid
calm of her features. "I'm not going back," she said.
Mary Hinkle was silenced by the quiet finality of her voice.
Studying that delicate face, she felt, behind its pallid
impassiveness, behind the refusal to return, a reason she could
not comprehend. She dimly realized that she would respect it
if she could understand it; for she suspected it had its origin
somewhere in Susan's "refined ladylike nature." She knew that
once in a while among the women she was acquainted with there
did happen one who preferred death in any form of misery to
leading a lax life--and indisputable facts had convinced her
that not always were these women "just stupid ignorant fools."
She herself possessed no such refinement of nerves or of
whatever it was. She had been brought up in a loose family and
in a loose neighborhood. She was in the habit of making all
sorts of pretenses, because that was the custom, while being
candid about such matters was regarded as bad form. She was
not fooled by these pretenses in other girls, though they often
did fool each other. In Susan, she instinctively felt, it was
not pretense. It was something or other else--it was a
dangerous reality. She liked Susan; in her intelligence and
physical charm were the possibilities of getting far up in the
world; it seemed a pity that she was thus handicapped. Still,
perhaps Susan would stumble upon some worth while man who,
attempting to possess her without marriage and failing, would
pay the heavy price. There was always that chance--a small
chance, smaller even than finding by loose living a worth while
man who would marry you because you happened exactly to suit
him--to give him enough only to make him feel that he wanted
more. Still, Susan was unusually attractive, and luck
sometimes did come a poor person's way--sometimes.
"I'm overdue back," said Mary. "You want me to tell 'em that?"
"Yes."
"You'll have hard work finding a job at anything like as much
as ten per. I've got two trades, and I couldn't at either one."
"I don't expect to find it."
"Then what are you going to do?"
"Take what I can get--until I've been made hard enough--or
strong enough--or whatever it is--to stop being a fool."
This indication of latent good sense relieved Miss Hinkle.
"I'll tell 'em you may be down tomorrow. Think it over for
another day."
Susan shook her head. "They'll have to get somebody else."
And, as Miss Hinkle reached the threshold, "Wait till I do the
dress up. You'll take it for me?"
"Why send the things back?" urged Mary. "They belong to you.
God knows you earned 'em."
Susan, standing now, looked down at the finery. "So I did.
I'll keep them," said she. "They'd pawn for something."
"With your looks they'd wear for a heap more. But keep 'em,
anyhow. And I'll not tell Jeffries you've quit. It'll do no
harm to hold your job open a day or so."
"As you like," said Susan, to end the discussion. "But I have quit."
"No matter. After you've had something to eat, you'll feel different."
And Miss Hinkle nodded brightly and departed. Susan resumed
her seat at the bare wobbly little table, resumed her listless
attitude. She did not move until Ellen came in, holding out a
note and saying, "A boy from your store brung this--here."
"Thank you," said Susan, taking the note. In it she found a
twenty-dollar bill and a five. On the sheet of paper round it
was scrawled:
Take the day off. Here's your commission. We'll raise your
pay in a few weeks, L. L. J.
So Mary Hinkle had told them either that she was quitting or
that she was thinking of quitting, and they wished her to stay,
had used the means they believed she could not resist. In a
dreary way this amused her. As if she cared whether or not
life was kept in this worthless body of hers, in her tired
heart, in her disgusted mind! Then she dropped back into
listlessness. When she was aroused again it was by Gideon,
completely filling the small doorway. "Hello, my dear!" cried
he cheerfully. "Mind my smoking?"
Susan slowly turned her head toward him, surveyed him with an
expression but one removed from the blank look she would have
had if there had been no one before her.
"I'm feeling fine today," pursued Gideon, advancing a step and
so bringing himself about halfway to the table. "Had a couple
of pick-me-ups and a fat breakfast. How are you?"
"I'm always well."
"Thought you seemed a little seedy." His shrewd sensual eyes
were exploring the openings in her nightdress. "You'll be
mighty glad to get out of this hole. Gosh! It's hot. Don't
see how you stand it. I'm a law abiding citizen but I must say
I'd turn criminal before I'd put up with this."
In the underworld from which Gideon had sprung--the underworld
where welters the overwhelming mass of the human race--there
are three main types. There are the hopeless and
spiritless--the mass--who welter passively on, breeding and
dying. There are the spirited who also possess both shrewdness
and calculation; they push upward by hook and by crook, always
mindful of the futility of the struggle of the petty criminal
of the slums against the police and the law; they arrive and
found the aristocracies of the future. The third is the
criminal class. It is also made up of the spirited--but the
spirited who, having little shrewdness and no calculation--that
is, no ability to foresee and measure consequences--wage clumsy
war upon society and pay the penalty of their fatuity in lives
of wretchedness even more wretched than the common lot. Gideon
belonged to the second class--the class that pushes upward
without getting into jail; he was a fair representative of this
type, neither its best nor its worst, but about midway of its
range between arrogant, all-dominating plutocrat and shystering
merchant or lawyer or politician who barely escapes the
criminal class.
"You don't ask me to sit down, dearie," he went on facetiously.
"But I'm not so mad that I won't do it."
He took the seat Miss Hinkle had cleared on the bed. His
glance wandered disgustedly from object to object in the
crowded yet bare attic. He caught a whiff of the odor from
across the hall--from the fresh-air shaft--and hastily gave
several puffs at his cigar to saturate his surroundings with
its perfume. Susan acted as if she were alone in the room.
She had not even drawn together her nightgown.
"I phoned your store about you," resumed Gideon. "They said
you hadn't showed up--wouldn't till tomorrow. So I came round
here and your landlady sent me up. I want to take you for a
drive this afternoon. We can dine up to Claremont or farther,
if you like."
"No, thanks," said Susan. "I can't go."
"Upty-tupty!" cried Gideon. "What's the lady so sour about?"
"I'm not sour."
"Then why won't you go?"
"I can't."
"But we'll have a chance to talk over what I'm going to do for you."
"You've kept your word," said Susan.
"That was only part. Besides, I'd have given your house the
order, anyhow."
Susan's eyes suddenly lighted up. "You would?" she cried.
"Well--a part of it. Not so much, of course. But I never let
pleasure interfere with business. Nobody that does ever gets
very far."
Her expression made him hasten to explain--without being
conscious why. "I said--_part_ of the order, my dear. They owe
to you about half of what they'll make off me. . . . What's
that money on the table? Your commission?"
"Yes."
"Twenty-five? Um!" Gideon laughed. "Well, I suppose it's as
generous as I'd be, in the same circumstances. Encourage your
employees, but don't swell-head 'em--that's the good rule. I've
seen many a promising young chap ruined by a raise of pay. . . .
Now, about you and me." Gideon took a roll of bills from
his trousers pocket, counted off five twenties, tossed them on
the table. "There!"
One of the bills in falling touched Susan's hand. She jerked
the hand away as if the bill had been afire. She took all five
of them, folded them, held them out to him. "The house has
paid me," said she.
"That's honest," said he, nodding approvingly. "I like it.
But in your case it don't apply."
These two, thus facing a practical situation, revealed an
important, overlooked truth about human morals. Humanity
divides broadly into three classes: the arrived; those who will
never arrive and will never try; those in a state of flux,
attempting and either failing or succeeding. The arrived and
the inert together preach and to a certain extent practice an
idealistic system of morality that interferes with them in no
way. It does not interfere with the arrived because they have
no need to infringe it, except for amusement; it does not
interfere with the inert, but rather helps them to bear their
lot by giving them a cheering notion that their insignificance
is due to their goodness. This idealistic system receives the
homage of lip service from the third and struggling section of
mankind, but no more, for in practice it would hamper them at
every turn in their efforts to fight their way up. Susan was,
at that stage of her career, a candidate for membership in the
struggling class. Her heart was set firmly against the
unwritten, unspoken, even unwhispered code of practical
morality which dominates the struggling class. But life had at
least taught her the folly of intolerance. So when Gideon
talked in terms of that practical morality, she listened
without offense; and she talked to him in terms of it because
to talk the idealistic morality in which she had been bred and
before which she bowed the knee in sincere belief would have
been simply to excite his laughter at her innocence and his
contempt for her folly.
"I feel that I've been paid," said she. "I did it for the
house--because I owed it to them."
"Only for the house?" said he with insinuating tenderness. He
took and pressed the fingers extended with the money in them.
"Only for the house," she repeated, a hard note in her voice.
And her fingers slipped away, leaving the money in his hand.
"At least, I suppose it must have been for the house," she
added, reflectively, talking to herself aloud. "Why did I do
it? I don't know. I don't know. They say one always has a
reason for what one does. But I often can't find any reason
for things I do--that, for instance. I simply did it because
it seemed to me not to matter much what _I_ did with myself,
and they wanted the order so badly." Then she happened to
become conscious of his presence and to see a look of
uneasiness, self-complacence, as if he were thinking that he
quite understood this puzzle. She disconcerted him with what
vain men call a cruel snub. "But whatever the reason, it
certainly couldn't have been you," said she.
"Now, look here, Lorna," protested Gideon, the beginnings of
anger in his tone. "That's not the way to talk if you want to
get on."
She eyed him with an expression which would have raised a
suspicion that he was repulsive in a man less self-confident,
less indifferent to what the human beings he used for pleasure
or profit thought of him.
"To say nothing of what I can do for you, there's the matter of
future orders. I order twice a year--in big lots always."
"I've quit down there."
"Oh! Somebody else has given you something good--eh? _That's_
why you're cocky."
"No."
"Then why've you quit?"
"I wish you could tell me. I don't understand. But--I've done it."
Gideon puzzled with this a moment, decided that it was beyond
him and unimportant, anyhow. He blew out a cloud of smoke,
stretched his legs and took up the main subject. "I was about
to say, I've got a place for you. I'd like to take you to
Chicago, but there's a Mrs. G.--as dear, sweet, good a soul as
ever lived--just what a man wants at home with the children and
to make things respectable. I wouldn't grieve her for worlds.
But I can't live without a little fun--and Mrs. G. is a bit
slow for me. . . . Still, it's no use talking about having
you out there. She ought to be able to understand that an
active man needs two women. One for the quiet side of his
nature, the other for the lively side. Sometimes I think
she--like a lot of wives--wouldn't object if it wasn't that she
was afraid the other lady would get me away altogether and
she'd be left stranded."
"Naturally," said Susan.
"Not at all!" cried he. "Don't you get any such notion in that
lovely little head of yours, my dear. You women don't
understand honor--a man's sense of honor."
"Naturally," repeated Susan.
He gave a glance of short disapproval. Her voice was not to
his liking. "Let's drop Mrs. G. out of this," said he. "As
I was saying, I've arranged for you to take a place here--easy
work--something to occupy you--and I'll foot the bills over and
above----"
He stopped short or, rather, was stopped by the peculiar smile
Susan had turned upon him. Before it he slowly reddened, and
his eyes reluctantly shifted. He had roused her from
listlessness, from indifference. The poisons in her blood were
burned up by the fresh, swiftly flowing currents set in motion
by his words, by the helpfulness of his expression, of his
presence. She became again the intensely healthy, therefore
intensely alive, therefore energetic and undaunted Susan Lenox,
who, when still a child, had not hesitated to fly from home,
from everyone she knew, into an unknown world.
"What are you smiling at me that way for?" demanded he in a
tone of extreme irritation.
"So you look on me as your mistress?" And never in all her
life had her eyes been so gray--the gray of cruelest irony.
"Now what's the use discussing those things? You know the
world. You're a sensible woman."
Susan made closer and more secure the large loose coil of her
hair, rose and leaned against the table. "You don't
understand. You couldn't. I'm not one of those respectable
women, like your Mrs. G., who belong to men. And I'm not one
of the other kind who also throw in their souls with their
bodies for good measure. Do _you_ think you had _me?_" She
laughed with maddening gentle mockery, went on: "I don't hate
you. I don't despise you even. You mean well. But the sight
of you makes me sick. It makes me feel as I do when I think of
a dirty tenement I used to have to live in, and of the things
that I used to have to let crawl over me. So I want to forget
you as soon as I can--and that will be soon after you get out
of my sight."
Her blazing eyes startled him. Her voice, not lifted above its
usual quiet tones, enraged him. "You--you!" he cried. "You
must be crazy, to talk to _me_ like that!"
She nodded. "Yes--crazy," said she with the same quiet intensity.
"For I know what kind of a beast you are--a clean, good-natured
beast, but still a beast. And how could you understand?"
He had got upon his feet. He looked as if he were going to
strike her.
She made a slight gesture toward the door. He felt at a
hopeless disadvantage with her--with this woman who did not
raise her voice, did not need to raise it to express the
uttermost of any passion. His jagged teeth gleamed through his
mustache; his shrewd little eyes snapped like an angry rat's.
He fumbled about through the steam of his insane rage for
adequate insults--in vain. He rushed from the room and bolted
downstairs.
Within an hour Susan was out, looking for work. There could be
no turning back now. Until she went with Gideon it had been as
if her dead were still unburied and in the house. Now----
Never again could she even indulge in dreams of going to Rod.
That part of her life was finished with all the finality of the
closed grave. Grief--yes. But the same sort of grief as when
a loved one, after a long and painful illness, finds relief in
death. Her love for Rod had been stricken of a mortal illness
the night of their arrival in New York. After lingering for a
year between life and death, after a long death agony, it had
expired. The end came--these matters of the exact moment of
inevitable events are unimportant but have a certain melancholy
interest--the end came when she made choice where there was no
choice, in the cab with Gideon.
For better or for worse she was free. She was ready to begin
her career.