TOWARD half-past ten the next day, a few minutes after Rod
left for the theater, she was in the bathroom cleaning the
coffee machine. There came a knock at the door of the
sitting-room bedroom. Into such disorder had her mood of
depression worried her nerves that she dropped the coffee
machine into the washbowl and jumped as if she were seeing a
ghost. Several dire calamities took vague shape in her mind,
then the image of Freddie Palmer, smiling sweetly, cruelly.
She wavered only a moment, went to the door, and after a brief
hesitation that still further depressed her about herself she
opened it. The maid--a good-natured sloven who had become
devoted to Susan because she gave her liberal fees and made
her no extra work--was standing there, in an attitude of
suppressed excitement. Susan laughed, for this maid was a
born agitator, a person who is always trying to find a thrill
or to put a thrill into the most trivial event.
"What is it now, Annie?" Susan asked.
"Mr. Spenser--he's gone, hasn't he?"
"Yes--a quarter of an hour ago."
Annie drew a breath of deep relief. "I was sure he had went,"
said she, producing from under her apron a note. "I saw it
was in a gentleman's writing, so I didn't come up with it till
he was out of the way, though the boy brought it a little
after nine."
"Oh, bother!" exclaimed Susan, taking the note.
"Well, Mrs. Spenser, I've had my lesson," replied Annie,
apologetic but firm. "When I first came to New York, green as
the grass that grows along the edge of the spring, what does
I do but go to work and take up a note to a lady when her
husband was there! Next thing I knew he went to work and
hauled her round the floor by the hair and skinned out--yes,
beat it for good. And my madam says to me, 'Annie, you're
fired. Never give a note to a lady when her gent is by or to
a gent when his lady's by. That's the first rule of life in gay
New York.' And you can bet I never have since--nor never will."
Susan had glanced at the address on the note, had recognized
the handwriting of Brent's secretary. Her heart had
straightway sunk as if the foreboding of calamity had been
realized. As she stood there uncertainly, Annie seized the
opportunity to run on and on. Susan now said absently, "Thank
you. Very well," and closed the door. It was a minute or so
before she tore open the envelope with an impatient gesture
and read:
DEAR MRS. SPENSER:
Mr. Brent requests me to ask you not to come until further
notice. It may be sometime before he will be free to resume.
Yours truly,
JOHN C. GARVEY.
It was a fair specimen of Garvey's official style, with which
she had become acquainted--the style of the secretary who has
learned by experience not to use frills or flourishes but to
convey his message in the fewest and clearest words. Had it
been a skillfully worded insult Susan, in this mood of
depression and distorted mental vision, could not have
received it differently. She dropped to a chair at the table
and stared at the five lines of neat handwriting until her
eyes became circled and her face almost haggard. Precisely as
Rod had described! After a long, long time she crumpled the
paper and let it fall into the waste-basket. Then she walked
up and down the room--presently drifted into the bathroom and
resumed cleaning the coffee machine. Every few moments she
would pause in the task--and in her dressing afterwards--would
be seized by the fear, the horror of again being thrust into
that hideous underworld. What was between her and it, to save
her from being flung back into its degradation? Two men on
neither of whom she could rely. Brent might drop her at any
time--perhaps had already dropped her. As for Rod--vain,
capricious, faithless, certain to become an unendurable
tyrant if he got her in his power--Rod was even less of a
necessity than Brent. What a dangerous situation was hers!
How slender her chances of escape from another catastrophe.
She leaned against wall or table and was shaken by violent
fits of shuddering. She felt herself slipping--slipping. It
was all she could do to refrain from crying out. In those
moments, no trace of the self-possessed Susan the world always
saw. Her fancy went mad and ran wild. She quivered under the
actuality of coarse contacts--Mrs. Tucker in bed with her--the
men who had bought her body for an hour--the vermin of the
tenements--the brutal hands of policemen.
Then with an exclamation of impatience or of anger she would
shake herself together and go resolutely on--only again to
relapse. "Because I so suddenly cut off the liquor and the
opium," she said. It was the obvious and the complete
explanation. But her heart was like lead, and her sky like
ink. This note, the day after having tried her out as a
possibility for the stage and as a woman. She stared down at
the crumpled note in the wast-basket. That note--it was
herself. He had crumpled her up and thrown her into the
waste-basket, where she no doubt belonged.
It was nearly noon before she, dressed with unconscious care,
stood in the street doorway looking about uncertainly as if
she did not know which way to turn. She finally moved in the
direction of the theater where Rod's play was rehearsing. She
had gone to none of the rehearsals because Rod had requested
it. "I want you to see it as a total surprise the first
night," explained he. "That'll give you more pleasure, and
also it will make your criticism more valuable to us." And
she had acquiesced, not displeased to have all her time for
her own affairs. But now she, dazed, stunned almost,
convinced that it was all over for her with Brent,
instinctively turned to Rod to get human help--not to ask for
it, but in the hope that somehow he would divine and would say
or do something that would make the way ahead a little less
forbidding--something that would hearten her for the few first
steps, anyhow. She turned back several times--now, because
she feared Rod wouldn't like her coming; again because her
experience--enlightened good sense--told her that Rod
would--could--not help her, that her sole reliance was
herself. But in the end, driven by one of those spasms of
terror lest the underworld should be about to engulf her
again, she stood at the stage door.
As she was about to negotiate the surly looking man on guard
within, Sperry came rushing down the long dark passageway. He
was brushing past her when he saw who it was. "Too late!" he
cried. "Rehearsal's over."
"I didn't come to the rehearsal," explained Susan. "I thought
perhaps Rod would be going to lunch."
"So he is. Go straight back. You'll find him on the stage.
I'll join you if you'll wait a minute or so." And Sperry
hurried on into the street.
Susan advanced along the passageway cautiously as it was but
one remove from pitch dark. Perhaps fifty feet, and she came
to a cross passage. As she hesitated, a door at the far end
of it opened and she caught a glimpse of a dressing-room and,
in the space made by the partly opened door, a woman
half-dressed--an attractive glimpse. The woman--who seemed
young--was not looking down the passage, but into the room.
She was laughing in the way a woman laughs only when it is for
a man, for _the_ man--and was saying, "Now, Rod, you must go,
and give me a chance to finish dressing." A man's arm--Rod's
arm--reached across the opening in the doorway. A hand--Susan
recognized Rod's well-shaped hand--was laid strongly yet
tenderly upon the pretty bare arm of the struggling, laughing
young woman--and the door closed--and the passage was soot-dark
again. All this a matter of less than five seconds. Susan,
ashamed at having caught him, frightened lest she should be
found where she had no business to be, fled back along the
main passage and jerked open the street door. She ran
squarely into Sperry.
"I--I beg your pardon," stammered he. "I was in such a
rush--I ought to have been thinking where I was going. Did I
hurt you?" This last most anxiously. "I'm so sorry----"
"It's nothing--nothing," laughed Susan. "You are the one
that's hurt."
And in fact she had knocked Sperry breathless. "You don't
look anything like so strong," gasped he.
"Oh, my appearance is deceptive--in a lot of ways."
For instance, he could have got from her face just then no
hint of the agony of fear torturing her--fear of the drop into
the underworld.
"Find Rod?" asked he.
"He wasn't on the stage. So--I came out again."
"Wait here," said Sperry. "I'll hunt him up."
"Oh, no--please don't. I stopped on impulse. I'll not bother
him." She smiled mischievously. "I might be interrupting."
Sperry promptly reddened. She had no difficulty in reading
what was in his mind--that her remark had reminded him of
Rod's "affair," and he was cursing himself for having been so
stupid as to forget it for the moment and put his partner in
danger of detection.
"I--I guess he's gone," stammered Sperry. "Lord, but that was
a knock you gave me! Better come to lunch with me."
Susan hesitated, a wistful, forlorn look in her eyes. "Do you
really want me?" asked she.
"Come right along," said Sperry in a tone that left no doubt
of his sincerity. "We'll go to the Knickerbocker and have
something good to eat."
"Oh, no--a quieter place," urged Susan.
Sperry laughed. "You mean less expensive. There's one of the
great big differences between you and the make-believe ladies
one bumps into in this part of town. _You_ don't like to be
troublesome or expensive. But we'll go to the Knickerbocker.
I feel 'way down today, and I intended to treat myself. You
don't look any too gay-hearted yourself."
"I'll admit I don't like the way the cards are running," said
Susan. "But--they'll run better--sooner or later."
"Sure!" cried Sperry. "You needn't worry about the play.
That's all right. How I envy women!"
"Why?"
"Oh--you have Rod between you and the fight. While I--I've
got to look out for myself."
"So have I," said Susan. "So has everyone, for that matter."
"Believe me, Mrs. Spenser," cried Sperry, earnestly, "you can
count on Rod. No matter what----"
"Please!" protested Susan. "I count on nobody. I learned
long ago not to lean."
"Well, leaning isn't exactly a safe position," Sperry
admitted. "There never was a perfectly reliable crutch.
Tell me your troubles."
Susan smilingly shook her head. "That'd be leaning. . . . No,
thank you. I've got to think it out for myself. I believed
I had arranged for a career for myself. It seems to have gone
to pieces That's all. Something else will turn up--after lunch."
"Not a doubt in the world," replied he confidently.
"Meanwhile--there's Rod."
Susan's laugh of raillery made him blush guiltily. "Yes,"
said she, "there's Rod." She laughed again, merrily.
"There's Rod--but where is there?"
"You're the only woman in the world he has any real liking
for," said Sperry, earnest and sincere. "Don't you ever doubt
that, Mrs. Spenser."
When they were seated in the café and he had ordered, he
excused himself and Susan saw him make his way to a table
where sat Fitzalan and another man who looked as if he too had
to do with the stage. It was apparent that Fitzalan was
excited about something; his lips, his arms, his head were in
incessant motion. Susan noted that he had picked up many of
Brent's mannerisms; she had got the habit of noting this
imitativeness in men--and in women, too--from having seen in
the old days how Rod took on the tricks of speech, manner,
expression, thought even, of whatever man he happened at the
time to be admiring. May it not have been this trait of Rod's
that gave her the clue to his character, when she was thinking
him over, after the separation?
Sperry was gone nearly ten minutes. He came, full of
apologies. "Fitz held on to me while he roasted Brent.
You've heard of Brent, of course?"
"Yes," said Susan.
"Fitz has been seeing him off. And he says it's----"
Susan glanced quickly at him. "Off?" she said.
"To Europe."
Susan had paused in removing her left glove. Rod's description
of Brent's way of sidestepping--Rod's description to the last
detail. Her hands fluttered uncertainly--fluttering fingers
like a flock of birds flushed and confused by the bang of the gun.
"And Fitz says----"
"For Europe," said Susan. She was drawing her fingers slowly
one by one from the fingers of her glove.
"Yes. He sailed, it seems, on impulse barely time to climb
aboard. Fitz always lays everything to a woman. He says
Brent has been mixed up for a year or so with---- Oh, it
doesn't matter. I oughtn't to repeat those things. I don't
believe 'em--on principle. Every man--or woman--who amounts
to anything has scandal talked about him or her all the time.
Good Lord! If Robert Brent bothered with half the affairs
that are credited to him, he'd have no time or strength--not
to speak of brains--to do plays."
"I guess even the busiest man manages to fit a woman in
somehow," observed Susan. "A woman or so."
Sperry laughed. "I guess yes," said he. "But as to Brent,
most of the scandal about him is due to a fad of his--hunting
for an undeveloped female genius who----"
"I've heard of that," interrupted Susan. "The service is
dreadfully slow here. How long is it since you ordered?"
"Twenty minutes--and here comes our waiter." And then, being
one of those who must finish whatever they have begun, he went
on. "Well, it's true Brent does pick up and drop a good many
ladies of one kind and another. And naturally, every one of
them is good-looking and clever or he'd not start in.
But--you may laugh at me if you like--I think he's strictly
business with all of them. He'd have got into trouble if he
hadn't been. And Fitz admits this one woman--she's a society
woman--is the only one there's any real basis for talk about
in connection with Brent."
Susan had several times lifted a spoonful of soup to her lips
and had every time lowered it untasted.
"And Brent's mighty decent to those he tries and has to give
up. I know of one woman he carried on his pay roll for nearly
two years----"
"Let's drop Mr. Brent," cried Susan. "Tell me about--about
the play."
"Rod must be giving you an overdose of that."
"I've not seen much of him lately. How was the rehearsal?"
"Fair--fair." And Sperry forgot Brent and talked on and on
about the play, not checking himself until the coffee was
served. He had not observed that Susan was eating nothing.
Neither had he observed that she was not listening; but there
was excuse for this oversight, as she had set her expression
at absorbed attention before withdrawing within herself to
think--and to suffer. She came to the surface again when
Sperry, complaining of the way the leading lady was doing her
part, said: "No wonder Brent drops one after another. Women
aren't worth much as workers. Their real mind's always
occupied with the search for a man to support 'em."
"Not always," cried Susan, quivering with sudden pain. "Oh,
no, Mr. Sperry--not always."
"Yes--there are exceptions," said Sperry, not noting how he had
wounded her. "But--well, I never happened to run across one."
"Can you blame them?" mocked Susan. She was ashamed that she
had been stung into crying out.
"To be honest--no," said Sperry. "I suspect I'd throw up the
sponge and sell out if I had anything a lady with cash wanted
to buy. I only _suspect_ myself. But I _know_ most men would.
No, I don't blame the ladies. Why not have a nice easy time?
Only one short life--and then--the worms."
She was struggling with the re-aroused insane terror of a fall
back to the depths whence she had once more just come--and she
felt that, if she fell again, it would mean the very end of
hope. It must have been instinct or accident, for it
certainly was not any prompting from her calm expression, that
moved him to say:
"Now, tell me _your_ troubles. I've told you mine. . . . You
surely must have some?"
Susan forced a successful smile of raillery. "None to speak
of," evaded she.
When she reached home there was a telegram--from Brent:
Compelled to sail suddenly. Shall be back in a few weeks.
Don't mind this annoying interruption. R. B.
A very few minutes after she read these words, she was at work
on the play. But--a very few minutes thereafter she was
sitting with the play in her lap, eyes gazing into the black
and menacing future. The misgivings of the night before had
been fed and fattened into despairing certainties by the
events of the day. The sun was shining, never more brightly;
but it was not the light of her City of the Sun. She stayed
in all afternoon and all evening. During those hours before
she put out the light and shut herself away in the dark a
score of Susans, every one different from every other, had
been seen upon the little theater of that lodging house
parlor-bedroom. There had been a hopeful Susan, a sad but
resolved Susan, a strong Susan, a weak Susan; there had been
Susans who could not have shed a tear; there had been Susans
who shed many tears--some of them Susans all bitterness,
others Susans all humility and self-reproach. Any spectator
would have been puzzled by this shifting of personality.
Susan herself was completely confused. She sought for her
real self among this multitude so contradictory. Each
successive one seemed the reality; yet none persisted. When
we look in at our own souls, it is like looking into a
many-sided room lined with mirrors. We see
reflections--re-reflections--views at all angles--but we
cannot distinguish the soul itself among all these
counterfeits, all real yet all false because partial.
"What shall I do? What can I do? What will I do?"--that was
her last cry as the day ended. And it was her first cry as
her weary brain awakened for the new day.
At the end of the week came the regular check with a note from
Garvey--less machine-like, more human. He apologized for not
having called, said one thing and another had prevented, and
now illness of a near relative compelled him to leave town for
a few days, but as soon as he came back he would immediately
call. It seemed to Susan that there could be but one reason
why he should call--the reason that would make a timid,
soft-hearted man such as he put off a personal interview as
long as he could find excuses. She flushed hot with rage and
shame as she reflected on her position. Garvey pitying her!
She straightway sat down and wrote:
DEAR MR. GARVEY: Do not send me any more checks until Mr.
Brent comes back and I have seen him. I am in doubt whether
I shall be able to go on with the work he and I had arranged.
She signed this "Susan Lenox" and dispatched it. At once she
felt better in spite of the fact that she had, with
characteristic and fatal folly, her good sense warned her, cut
herself off from all the income in sight or in prospect. She
had debated sending back the check, but had decided that if
she did she might give the impression of pique or anger. No,
she would give him every chance to withdraw from a bargain
with which he was not content; and he would get the idea that
it was she who was ending the arrangement, would therefore
feel no sense of responsibility for her. She would save her
pride; she would spare his feelings. She was taking counsel
of Burlingham these days--was recalling the lesson he had
taught her, was getting his aid in deciding her course.
Burlingham protested vehemently against this sending back of
the check; but she let her pride, her aversion to being an
object of pity, overrule him.
A few days more, and she was so desperate, so harassed that
she altogether lost confidence in her own judgment. While
outwardly she seemed to be the same as always with Rod, she
had a feeling of utter alienation. Still, there was no one
else to whom she could turn. Should she put the facts before
him and ask his opinion? Her intelligence said no; her heart
said perhaps. While she was hesitating, he decided for her.
One morning at breakfast he stopped talking about himself long
enough to ask carelessly:
"About you and Brent--he's gone away. What are you doing?"
"Nothing," said she.
"Going to take that business up again, when he comes back?"
"I don't know."
"I wouldn't count on it, if I were you. . . . You're so
sensitive that I've hesitated to say anything. But I think
that chap was looking for trouble, and when he found you were
already engaged, why, he made up his mind to drop it."
"Do you think so?" said Susan indifferently. "More coffee?"
"Yes--a little. If my play's as good as your coffee----
That's enough, thanks. . . . Do you still draw your--your----"
His tone as he cast about for a fit word made her flush
scarlet. "No--I stopped it until we begin work again."
He did not conceal his thorough satisfaction. "That's right!"
he cried. "The only cloud on our happiness is gone. You
know, a man doesn't like that sort of thing."
"I know," said Susan drily.
And she understood why that very night he for the first time
asked her to supper after the rehearsal with Sperry and
Constance Francklyn, the leading lady, with whom he was having
one of those affairs which as he declared to Sperry were
"absolutely necessary to a man of genius to keep him freshened
up--to keep the fire burning brightly." He had carefully
coached Miss Francklyn to play the part of unsuspected
"understudy"--Susan saw that before they had been seated in
Jack's ten minutes. And she also saw that he was himself
resolved to conduct himself "like a gentleman." But after he
had taken two or three highballs, Susan was forced to engage
deeply in conversation with the exasperated and alarmed Sperry
to avoid seeing how madly Rod and Constance were flirting.
She, however, did contrive to see nothing--at least, the other
three were convinced that she had not seen. When they were
back in their rooms, Rod--whether through pretense or through
sidetracked amorousness or from simple intoxication--became
more demonstrative than he had been for a long time.
"No, there's nobody like you," he declared. "Even if I
wandered I'd always come back to you."
"Really?" said Susan with careless irony. "That's good. No,
I can unhook my blouse."
"I do believe you're growing cold."
"I don't feel like being messed with tonight."
"Oh, very well," said he sulkily. Then, forgetting his ill
humor after a few minutes of watching her graceful movements
and gestures as she took off her dress and made her beautiful
hair ready for the night, he burst out in a very different
tone: "You don't know how glad I am that you're dependent on
me again. You'll not be difficult any more."
A moment's silence, then Susan, with a queer little laugh,
"Men don't in the least mind--do they?"
"Mind what?"
"Being loved for money." There was a world of sarcasm in her
accent on that word loved.
"Oh, nonsense. You don't understand yourself," declared he
with large confidence. "Women never grow up. They're like
babies--and babies, you know, love the person that feeds them."
"And dogs--and cats--and birds--and all the lower orders."
She took a book and sat in a wrapper under the light.
"Come to bed--please, dear," pleaded he.
"No, I'll read a while."
And she held the book before her until he was asleep. Then
she sat a long time, her elbows on her knees, her chin
supported by her hands, her gaze fixed upon his face--the face
of the man who was her master now. She must please him, must
accept what treatment he saw fit to give, must rein in her
ambitions to suit the uncertain gait and staying power of his
ability to achieve. She could not leave him; he could leave
her when he might feel so inclined. Her master--capricious,
tyrannical, a drunkard. Her sole reliance--and the first
condition of his protection was that she should not try to do
for herself. A dependent, condemned to become even more dependent.