SHE wrote Garvey asking an appointment. The reply should have
come the next day or the next day but one at the farthest; for
Garvey had been trained by Brent to the supreme courtesy of
promptness. It did not come until the fourth day; before she
opened it Susan knew about what she would read--the stupidly
obvious attempt to put off facing her--the cowardice of a
kind-hearted, weak fellow. She really had her answer--was
left without a doubt for hope to perch upon. But she wrote
again, insisting so sharply that he came the following day.
His large, tell-tale face was a restatement of what she had
read in his delay and between the lines of his note. He was
effusively friendly with a sort of mortuary suggestion, like
one bearing condolences, that tickled her sense of humor, far
though her heart was from mirth.
"Something has happened," began she, "that makes it necessary
for me to know when Mr. Brent is coming back."
"Really, Mrs. Spencer----"
"Miss Lenox," she corrected.
"Yes--Miss Lenox, I beg your pardon. But really--in my
position--I know nothing of Mr. Brent's plans--and if I did,
I'd not be at liberty to speak of them. I have written him
what you wrote me about the check--and--and--that is all."
"Mr. Garvey, is he ever--has he----" Susan, desperate, burst
out with more than she intended to say: "I care nothing about
it, one way or the other. If Mr. Brent is politely hinting
that I won't do, I've a right to know it. I have a chance at
something else. Can't you tell me?"
"I don't know anything about it--honestly I don't, Miss
Lenox," cried he, swearing profusely.
"You put an accent on the 'know,'" said Susan. "You suspect
that I'm right, don't you?"
"I've no ground for suspecting--that is--no, I haven't. He
said nothing to me--nothing. But he never does. He's very
peculiar and uncertain . . . and I don't understand him at all."
"Isn't this his usual way with the failures--his way of
letting them down easily?"
Susan's manner was certainly light and cheerful, an assurance
that he need have no fear of hysterics or despair or any sort
of scene trying to a soft heart. But Garvey could take but
the one view of the favor or disfavor of the god of his
universe. He looked at her like a dog that is getting a
whipping from a friend. "Now, Miss Lenox, you've no right to
put me in this painful----"
"That's true," said Susan, done since she had got what she
sought. "I shan't say another word. When Mr. Brent comes
back, will you tell him I sent for you to ask you to thank him
for me--and say to him that I found something else for which
I hope I'm better suited?"
"I'm so glad," said Garvey, hysterically. "I'm delighted.
And I'm sure he will be, too. For I'm sure he liked you,
personally--and I must say I was surprised when he went. But
I must not say that sort of thing. Indeed, I know nothing,
Miss Lenox--I assure you----"
"And please tell him," interrupted Susan, "that I'd have
written him myself, only I don't want to bother him."
"Oh, no--no, indeed. Not that, Miss Lenox. I'm so sorry.
But I'm only the secretary. I can't say anything."
It was some time before Susan could get rid of him, though he
was eager to be gone. He hung in the doorway, ejaculating
disconnectedly, dropping and picking up his hat, perspiring
profusely, shaking hands again and again, and so exciting her
pity for his misery of the good-hearted weak that she was for
the moment forgetful of her own plight. Long before he went,
he had greatly increased her already strong belief in Brent's
generosity of character--for, thought she, he'd have got
another secretary if he hadn't been too kind to turn adrift so
helpless and foolish a creature. Well--he should have no
trouble in getting rid of her.
She was seeing little of Spenser and they were saying almost
nothing to each other. When he came at night, always very
late, she was in bed and pretended sleep. When he awoke, she
got breakfast in silence; they read the newspapers as they
ate. And he could not spare the time to come to dinner. As
the decisive moment drew near, his fears dried up his
confident volubility. He changed his mind and insisted on her
coming to the theater for the final rehearsals. But
"Shattered Lives" was not the sort of play she cared for, and
she was wearied by the profane and tedious wranglings of the
stage director and the authors, by the stupidity of the actors
who had to be told every little intonation and gesture again
and again. The agitation, the labor seemed grotesquely out of
proportion to the triviality of the matter at issue. At the
first night she sat in a box from which Spenser, in a high
fever and twitching with nervousness, watched the play,
gliding out just before the lights were turned up for the
intermission. The play went better than she had expected, and
the enthusiasm of the audience convinced her that it was a
success before the fall of the curtain on the second act.
With the applause that greeted the chief climax--the end of
the third act--Spenser, Sperry and Fitzalan were convinced.
All three responded to curtain calls. Susan had never seen
Spenser so handsome, and she admired the calmness and the
cleverness of his brief speech of thanks. That line of
footlights between them gave her a new point of view on him,
made her realize how being so close to his weaknesses had
obscured for her his strong qualities--for, unfortunately,
while a man's public life is determined wholly by his strong
qualities, his intimate life depends wholly on his weaknesses.
She was as fond of him as she had ever been; but it was
impossible for her to feel any thrill approaching love. Why?
She looked at his fine face and manly figure; she recalled how
many good qualities he had. Why had she ceased to love him?
She thought perhaps some mystery of physical lack of sympathy
was in part responsible; then there was the fact that she
could not trust him. With many women, trust is not necessary
to love; on the contrary, distrust inflames love. It happened
not to be so with Susan Lenox. "I do not love him. I can
never love him again. And when he uses his power over me, I
shall begin to dislike him." The lost illusion! The dead
love! If she could call it back to life! But no--there it lay,
coffined, the gray of death upon its features. Her heart ached.
After the play Fitzalan took the authors and the leading lady,
Constance Francklyn, and Miss Lenox to supper in a private
room at Rector's. This was Miss Francklyn's first trial in a
leading part. She had small ability as an actress, having
never risen beyond the primer stage of mere posing and
declamation in which so many players are halted by their
vanity--the universal human vanity that is content with small
triumphs, or with purely imaginary triumphs. But she had a
notable figure of the lank, serpentine kind and a bad, sensual
face that harmonized with it. Especially in artificial light
she had an uncanny allure of the elemental, the wild animal in
the jungle. With every disposition and effort to use her
physical charms to further herself she would not have been
still struggling at twenty-eight, had she had so much as a
thimbleful of intelligence.
"Several times," said Sperry to Susan as they crossed Long
Acre together on the way to Rector's, "yes, at least half a
dozen times to my knowledge, Constance had had success right
in her hands. And every time she has gone crazy about some
cheap actor or sport and has thrown it away."
"But she'll get on now," said Susan.
"Perhaps," was Sperry's doubting reply. "Of course, she's got
no brains. But it doesn't take brains to act--that is, to act
well enough for cheap machine-made plays like this. And
nowadays playwrights have learned that it's useless to try to
get actors who can act. They try to write parts that are
actor-proof."
"You don't like your play?" said Susan.
"Like it? I love it. Isn't it going to bring me in a pot of
money? But as a play"--Sperry laughed. "I know Spenser
thinks it's great, but--there's only one of us who can write
plays, and that's Brent. It takes a clever man to write a
clever play. But it takes a genius to write a clever play
that'll draw the damn fools who buy theater seats. And Robert
Brent now and then does the trick. How are you getting on
with your ambition for a career?"
Susan glanced nervously at him. The question, coming upon the
heels of talk about Brent, filled her with alarm lest Rod had
broken his promise and had betrayed her confidence. But
Sperry's expression showed that she was probably mistaken.
"My ambition?" said she. "Oh--I've given it up."
"The thought of work was too much for you--eh?"
Susan shrugged her shoulders.
A sardonic grin flitted over Sperry's Punch-like face. "The
more I see of women, the less I think of 'em," said he. "But
I suppose the men'd be lazy and worthless too, if nature had
given 'em anything that'd sell or rent. . . . Somehow I'm
disappointed in _you_, though."
That ended the conversation until they were sitting down at
the table. Then Sperry said:
"Are you offended by my frankness a while ago?"
"No," replied Susan. "The contrary. Some day your saying
that may help me."
"It's quite true, there's something about you--a look--a
manner--it makes one feel you could do things if you tried."
"I'm afraid that 'something' is a fraud," said she. No doubt
it was that something that had misled Brent--that had always
deceived her about herself. No, she must not think herself a
self-deceived dreamer. Even if it was so, still she must not
think it. She must say to herself over and over again "Brent
or no Brent, I shall get on--I shall get on" until she had
silenced the last disheartening doubt.
Miss Francklyn, with Fitzalan on her left and Spenser on her
right, was seated opposite Susan. About the time the third
bottle was being emptied the attempts of Spenser and Constance
to conceal from her their doings became absurd. Long before
the supper was over there had been thrust at her all manner of
proofs that Spenser was again untrue, that he was whirling
madly in one of those cyclonic infatuations which soon wore
him out and left him to return contritely to her. Sperry
admired Susan's manners as displayed in her unruffled
serenity--an admiration which she did not in the least
deserve. She was in fact as deeply interested as she seemed
in his discussion of plays and acting, illustrated by Brent's
latest production. By the time the party broke up, Susan had
in spite of herself collected a formidable array of
incriminating evidence, including the stealing of one of
Constance's jeweled show garters by Spenser under cover of the
tablecloth and a swift kiss in the hall when Constance went
out for a moment and Spenser presently suspended his drunken
praises of himself as a dramatist, and appointed himself a
committee to see what had become of her.
At the door of the restaurant, Spenser said:
"Susan, you and Miss Francklyn take a taxicab. She'll drop
you at our place on her way home. Fitz and Sperry and I want
one more drink."
"Not for me," said Sperry savagely, with a scowl at Constance.
But Fitzalan, whose arm Susan had seen Rod press, remained silent.
"Come on, my dear," cried Miss Francklyn, smiling sweet
insolent treachery into Susan's face.
Susan smiled sweetly back at her. As she was leaving the
taxicab in Forty-fifth Street, she said:
"Send Rod home by noon, won't you? And don't tell him I know."
Miss Francklyn, who had been drinking greedily, began to cry.
Susan laughed. "Don't be a silly," she urged. "If I'm not
upset, why should you be? And how could I blame you two for
getting crazy about each other? I wouldn't spoil it for
worlds. I want to help it on."
"Don't you love him--really?" cried Constance, face and voice
full of the most thrilling theatricalism.
"I'm very fond of him," replied Susan. "We're old, old
friends. But as to love--I'm where you'll be a few months
from now."
Miss Francklyn dried her eyes. "Isn't it the devil!" she
exclaimed. "Why _can't_ it last?"
"Why, indeed," said Susan. "Good night--and don't forget to
send him by twelve o'clock." And she hurried up the steps
without waiting for a reply.
She felt that the time for action had again come--that critical
moment which she had so often in the past seen come and had
let pass unheeded. He was in love with another woman; he was
prosperous, assured of a good income for a long time, though
he wrote no more successes. No need to consider him. For
herself, then--what? Clearly, there could be no future for
her with Rod. Clearly, she must go.
Must go--must take the only road that offered. Up before
her--as in every mood of deep depression--rose the vision of
the old women of the slums--the solitary, bent, broken forms,
clad in rags, feet wrapped in rags--shuffling along in the
gutters, peering and poking among filth, among garbage, to get
together stuff to sell for the price of a drink. The old
women of the tenements, the old women of the gutters, the old
women drunk and dancing as the lecherous-eyed hunchback played
the piano.
She must not this time wait and hesitate and hope; this time
she must take the road that offered--and since it must be
taken she must advance along it as if of all possible roads it
was the only one she would have freely chosen.
Yet after she had written and sent off the note to Palmer, a
deep sadness enveloped her--a grief, not for Rod, but for the
association, the intimacy, their life together, its sorrows
and storms perhaps more than the pleasures and the joys. When
she left him before, she had gone sustained by the feeling
that she was doing it for him, was doing a duty. Now, she was
going merely to save herself, to further herself. Life, life
in that great and hard school of practical living, New York,
had given her the necessary hardiness to go, aided by Rod's
unfaithfulness and growing uncongeniality. But not while she
lived could she ever learn to be hard. She would do what she
must--she was no longer a fool. But she could not help
sighing and crying a little as she did it.
It was not many minutes after noon when Spenser came. He
looked so sheepish and uncomfortable that Susan thought
Constance had told him. But his opening sentence of apology was:
"I took too many nightcaps and Fitz had to lug me home with him."
"Really?" said Susan. "How disappointed Constance must have been!"
Spenser was not a good liar. His face twisted and twitched so
that Susan laughed outright. "Why, you look like a caught
married man," cried she. "You forget we're both free."
"Whatever put that crazy notion in your head--about Miss
Francklyn?" demanded he.
"When you take me or anyone for that big a fool, Rod, you only
show how foolish you yourself are," said she with the utmost
good humor. "The best way to find out how much sense a person has
is to see what kind of lies he thinks'll deceive another person."
"Now--don't get jealous, Susie," soothed he. "You know how a
man is."
The tone was correctly contrite, but Susan felt underneath the
confidence that he would be forgiven--the confidence of the
egotist giddied by a triumph. Said she:
"Don't you think mine's a strange way of acting jealous?"
"But you're a strange woman."
Susan looked at him thoughtfully. "Yes, I suppose I am," said
she. "And you'll think me stranger when I tell you what I'm
going to do."
He started up in a panic. And the fear in his eyes pleased
her, at the same time that it made her wince.
She nodded slowly. "Yes, Rod--I'm leaving."
"I'll drop Constance," cried he. "I'll have her put out of
the company."
"No--go on with her till you've got enough--or she has."
"I've got enough, this minute," declared he with convincing
energy and passion. "You must know, dearest, that to me
Constance--all the women I've ever seen--aren't worth your
little finger. You're all that they are, and a whole lot more
besides." He seized her in his arms. "You wouldn't leave
me--you couldn't! You understand how men are--how they get
these fits of craziness about a pair of eyes or a figure or
some trick of voice or manner. But that doesn't affect the
man's heart. I love you, Susan. I adore you."
She did not let him see how sincerely he had touched her. Her
eyes were of their deepest violet, but he had never learned
that sign. She smiled mockingly; the fingers that caressed
his hair were trembling. "We've tided each other over, Rod.
The play's a success. You're all right again--and so am I.
Now's the time to part."
"Is it Brent, Susie?"
"I quit him last week."
"There's no one else. You're going because of Constance!"
She did not deny. "You're free and so am I," said she
practically. "I'm going. So--let's part sensibly. Don't
make a silly scene."
She knew how to deal with him--how to control him through his
vanity. He drew away from her, chilled and sullen. "If you
can live through it, I guess I can," said he. "You're making
a damn fool of yourself--leaving a man that's fond of you--and
leaving when he's successful."
"I always was a fool, you know," said she. She had decided
against explaining to him and so opening up endless and vain
argument. It was enough that she saw it was impossible to
build upon or with him, saw the necessity of trying
elsewhere--unless she would risk--no, invite--finding herself
after a few months, or years, back among the drift, back in
the underworld.
He gazed at her as she stood smiling gently at him--smiling to
help her hide the ache at her heart, the terror before the
vision of the old women of the tenement gutters, earning the
wages, not of sin, not of vice, not of stupidity, but of
indecision, of over-hopefulness--of weakness. Here was the
kind of smile that hurts worse than tears, that takes the
place of tears and sobs and moans. But he who had never
understood her did not understand her now. Her smile
infuriated his vanity. "You can _laugh!_" he sneered.
"Well--go to the filth where you belong! You were born for
it." And he flung out of the room, went noisily down the
stairs. She heard the front door's distant slam; it seemed to
drop her into a chair. She sat there all crouched together
until the clock on the mantel struck two. This roused her
hastily to gather into her trunk such of her belongings as she
had not already packed. She sent for a cab. The man of all
work carried down the trunk and put it on the box. Dressed in
a simple blue costume as if for traveling, she entered the cab
and gave the order to drive to the Grand Central Station.
At the corner she changed the order and was presently entering
the Beaux Arts restaurant where she had asked Freddie to meet
her. He was there, smoking calmly and waiting. At sight of
her he rose. "You'll have lunch?" said he.
"No, thanks."
"A small bottle of champagne?"
"Yes--I'm rather tired."
He ordered the champagne. "And," said he, "it'll be the real
thing--which mighty few New Yorkers get even at the best
places." When it came he sent the waiter away and filled the
glasses himself. He touched the brim of his glass to the
bottom of hers. "To the new deal," said he.
She smiled and nodded, and emptied the glass. Suddenly it
came to her why she felt so differently toward him. She saw
the subtle, yet radical change that always transforms a man of
force of character when his position in the world notably
changes. This man before her, so slightly different in
physical characteristics from the man she had fled, was wholly
different in expression.
"When shall we sail?" asked he. "Tomorrow?"
"First--there's the question of money," said she.
He was much amused. "Still worrying about your independence."
"No," replied she. "I've been thinking it out, and I don't
feel any anxiety about that. I've changed my scheme of life.
I'm going to be sensible and practice what life has taught me.
It seems there's only one way for a woman to get up. Through
some man."
Freddie nodded. "By marriage or otherwise, but always through
a man."
"So I've discovered," continued she. "So, I'm going to play
the game. And I think I can win now. With the aid of what
I'll learn and with the chances I'll have, I can keep my
feeling of independence. You see, if you and I don't get on
well together, I'll be able to look out for myself.
Something'll turn up."
"Or--_somebody_--eh?"
"Or somebody."
"That's candid."
"Don't you want me to be candid? But even if you don't, I've
got to be."
"Yes--truth--especially disagreeable truth--is your long
suit," said he. "Not that I'm kicking. I'm glad you went
straight at the money question. We can settle it and never
think of it again. And neither of us will be plotting to take
advantage of the other, or fretting for fear the other is
plotting. Sometimes I think nearly all the trouble in this
world comes through failure to have a clear understanding
about money matters."
Susan nodded. Said she thoughtfully, "I guess that's why I
came--one of the main reasons. You are wonderfully sensible
and decent about money."
"And the other chap isn't?"
"Oh, yes--and no. He likes to make a woman feel dependent.
He thinks--but that doesn't matter. He's all right."
"Now--for our understanding with each other," said Palmer.
"You can have whatever you want. The other day you said you
wanted some sort of a salary. But if you've changed----"
"No--that's what I want."
"So much a year?"
"So much a week," replied she. "I want to feel, and I want
you to feel, that we can call it off at any time on seven
days' notice."
"But that isn't what I want," said he--and she, watching him
closely if furtively, saw the strong lines deepen round his mouth.
She hesitated. She was seeing the old woman's dance hall, was
hearing the piano as the hunchback played and the old horrors
reeled about, making their palsy rhythmic. She was seeing
this, yet she dared. "Then you don't want me," said she, so
quietly that he could not have suspected her agitation. Never
had her habit of concealing her emotion been so useful to her.
He sat frowning at his glass--debating. Finally he said:
"I explained the other day what I was aiming for. Such an
arrangement as you suggest wouldn't help. You see that?"
"It's all I can do--at present," replied she firmly. And she
was now ready to stand or fall by that decision. She had
always accepted the other previous terms--or whatever terms
fate offered. Result--each time, disaster. She must make no
more fatal blunders. This time, her own terms or not at all.
He was silent a long time. She knew she had convinced him
that her terms were final. So, his delay could only mean that
he was debating whether to accept or to go his way and leave
her to go hers. At last he laughed and said:
"You've become a true New Yorker. You know how to drive a
hard bargain." He looked at her admiringly. "You certainly
have got courage. I happen to know a lot about your affairs.
I've ways of finding out things. And I know you'd not be here
if you hadn't broken with the other fellow first. So, if I
turned your proposition down you'd be up against it--wouldn't you?"
"Yes," said she. "But--I won't in any circumstances tie
myself. I must be free."
"You're right," said he. "And I'll risk your sticking. I'm
a good gambler."
"If I were bound, but didn't want to stay, would I be of much use?"
"Of no use. You can quit on seven minutes' notice, instead of
seven days."
"And you, also," said she.
Laughingly they shook hands. She began to like him in a new
and more promising way. Here was a man, who at least was cast
in a big mold. Nothing small and cheap about him--and Brent
had made small cheap men forever intolerable to her. Yes,
here was a man of the big sort; and a big man couldn't
possibly be a bad man. No matter how many bad things he might
do, he would still be himself, at least, a scorner of the
pettiness and sneakiness and cowardice inseparable from villainy.
"And now," said he, "let's settle the last detail. How much
a week? How would five hundred strike you?"
"That's more than twelve times the largest salary I ever got.
It's many times as much as I made in the----"
"No matter," he hastily interposed. "It's the least you can
hold down the job on. You've got to spend money--for clothes
and so on."
"Two hundred is the most I can take," said she. "It's the
outside limit."
He insisted, but she remained firm. "I will not accustom
myself to much more than I see any prospect of getting
elsewhere," explained she. "Perhaps later on I'll ask for an
increase--later on, when I see how things are going and what
my prospects elsewhere would be. But I must begin modestly."
"Well, let it go at two hundred for the present. I'll deposit
a year's salary in a bank, and you can draw against it. Is
that satisfactory? You don't want me to hand you two hundred
dollars every Saturday, do you?"
"No. That would get on my nerves," said she.
"Now--it's all settled. When shall we sail?"
"There's a girl I've got to look up before I go."
"Maud? You needn't bother about her. She's married to a
piker from up the state--a shoe manufacturer. She's got
a baby, and is fat enough to make two or three like what
she used to be."
"No, not Maud. One you don't know."
"I hoped we could sail tomorrow. Why not take a taxi and go
after her now?"
"It may be a long search."
"She's a----?" He did not need to finish his sentence in order
to make himself understood.
Susan nodded.
"Oh, let her----"
"I promised," interrupted she.
"Then--of course." Freddie drew from his trousers pocket a
huge roll of bills. Susan smiled at this proof that he still
retained the universal habit of gamblers, politicians and
similar loose characters of large income, precariously
derived. He counted off three hundreds and four fifties and
held them out to her. "Let me in on it," said he.
Susan took the money without hesitation. She was used to
these careless generosities of the men of that
class--generosities passing with them and with the unthinking
for evidences of goodness of heart, when in fact no generosity
has any significance whatever beyond selfish vanity unless it
is a sacrifice of necessities--real necessities.
"I don't think I'll need money," said she. "But I may."
"You've got a trunk and a bag on the cab outside," he went on.
"I've told them at Sherry's that I'm to be married."
Susan flushed. She hastily lowered her eyes. But she need
not have feared lest he should suspect the cause of the
blush . . . a strange, absurd resentment of the idea that she
could be married to Freddie Palmer. Live with him--yes. But
marry--now that it was thus squarely presented to her, she
found it unthinkable. She did not pause to analyze this
feeling, indeed could not have analyzed it, had she tried. It
was, however, a most interesting illustration of how she had
been educated at last to look upon questions of sex as a man
looks on them. She was like the man who openly takes a
mistress whom he in no circumstances would elevate to the
position of wife.
"So," he proceeded, "you might as well move in at Sherry's."
"No," objected she. "Let's not begin the new deal until we sail."
The wisdom of this was obvious. "Then we'll take your things
over to the Manhattan Hotel," said he. "And we'll start the
search from there."
But after registering at the Manhattan as Susan Lenox, she
started out alone. She would not let him look in upon any
part of her life which she could keep veiled.