Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise Part 103

"Speak the truth, sister! G.o.d is watching you. The wages of sin is _death!_"

"The wages of weakness is death," retorted Susan. "But--the wages of sin--well, it's sometimes a house in Fifth Avenue."

And then she shrank away before the approving laughter of the little crowd and hurried across into Eighth Street. In the deep shadow of the front of Cooper Union she paused, as the meaning of her own impulsive words came to her. The wages of sin! And what was sin, the supreme sin, but weakness? It was exactly as Burlingham had explained. He had said that, whether for good or for evil, really to live one must be strong. Strong!

What a good teacher he had been--one of the rare kind that not only said things interestingly but also said them so that you never forgot. How badly she had learned!

She strolled on through Eighth Street, across Third Avenue and into Second Avenue. It was ten o'clock. The effects of the liquor she had drunk had worn away. In so much wandering she had acquired the habit of closing up an episode of life as a traveler puts behind him the railway journey at its end. She was less than half an hour from her life in the Tenderloin; it was as completely in her past as it would ever be. The cards had once more been shuffled; a new deal was on.

A new deal. What? To fly to another city--that meant another Palmer, or the miseries of the unprotected woman of the streets, or slavery to the madman of what the French with cruel irony call a _maison de joie_. To return to work----

What was open to her, educated as the comfortable cla.s.ses educate their women? Work meant the tenements. She loathed the fast life, but not as she loathed vermin-infected tenements. To toil all day at a monotonous task, the same task every day and all day long! To sleep at night with Tucker and the vermin! To her notion the sights and sounds and smells and personal contacts of the tenements were no less vicious; were--for her at least--far more degrading than anything in the Tenderloin and its like. And there she got money to buy whiskey that whirled her almost endurably, sometimes even gayly, over the worst things--money to buy hours, whole days of respite that could be spent in books, in dreams and plannings, in the freedom of a clean and comfortable room, or at the theater or concert. There were degrees in horror; she was paying a hateful price, but not so hateful as she had paid when she worked. The wages of shame were not so hard earned as the wages of toil, were larger, brought her many of the things she craved. The wages of toil brought her nothing but the right to bare existence in filth and depravity and darkness. Also, she felt that if she were tied down to some dull and exhausting employment, she would be settled and done for. In a few years she would be an old woman, with less wages or flung out diseased or maimed--to live on and on like hundreds of wretched old creatures adrift everywhere in the tenement streets. No, work had nothing to offer her except "respectability." And what a mocking was "respectability," in rags and filth!

Besides, what had _she_, the outcast born, to do with this respectability?

No--not work--never again. So long as she was roving about, there was hope and chance somehow to break through into the triumphant cla.s.s that ruled the world, that did the things worth while--wore the good clothes, lived in the good houses, ate the good food, basked in the sunshine of art.

Either she would soar above respectability, or she would remain beneath it. Respectability might be an excellent thing; surely there must be some merit in a thing about which there was so much talk, after which there was so much hankering, and to which there was such desperate clinging. But as a sole possession, as a sole ambition, it seemed thin and poor and even pitiful. She had emanc.i.p.ated herself from its tyranny; she would not resume the yoke. Among so many lacks of the good things of life its good would not be missed. Perhaps, when she had got a few other of the good things she might try to add it to them--or might find herself able to get comfortably along without it, as had George Eliot and Aspasia, George Sand and Duse and Bernhardt and so many of the world's company of self-elected women members of the triumphant cla.s.s.

A new deal! And a new deal meant at least even chance for good luck.

As she drifted down the west side of Second Avenue, her thoughts so absorbed her that she was oblivious of the slushy sidewalk, even of the crossings where one had to pick one's way as through a shallow creek with stepping stones here and there.

There were many women alone, as in every other avenue and every frequented cross street throughout the city--women made eager to desperation by the long stretch of impossible weather.

Every pa.s.sing man was hailed, sometimes boldly, sometimes softly. Again and again that grotesque phrase "Let's go have a good time" fell upon the ears. After several blocks, when her absent-mindedness had got her legs wet to the knees in the shallow shiny slush, she was roused by the sound of music--an orchestra playing and playing well a lively Hungarian dance.

She was standing before the winter garden from which the sounds came. As she opened the door she was greeted by a rush of warm air pleasantly scented with fresh tobacco smoke, the odors of spiced drinks and of food, pastry predominating. Some of the tables were covered ready for those who would wish to eat; but many of them were for the drinkers. The large, low-ceilinged room was comfortably filled. There were but a few women and they seemed to be wives or sweethearts. Susan was about to retreat when a waiter--one of those Austrians whose heads end abruptly an inch or so above the eyebrows and whose chins soon shade off into neck--advanced smilingly with a polite, "We serve ladies without escorts."

She chose a table that had several other vacant tables round it. On the recommendation of the waiter she ordered a "burning devil"; he a.s.sured her she would find it delicious and the very thing for a cold slushy night. At the far end of the room on a low platform sat the orchestra. A man in an evening suit many sizes too large for him sang in a strong, not disagreeable tenor a German song that drew loud applause at the end of each stanza. The "burning devil" came--an almost black mixture in a large heavy gla.s.s. The waiter touched a match to it, and it was at once wreathed in pale flickering flames that hovered like b.u.t.terflies, now rising as if to float away, now lightly descending to flit over the surface of the liquid or to dance along the edge of the gla.s.s.

"What shall I do with it?" said Susan.

"Wait till it goes out," said the waiter. "Then drink, as you would anything else." And he was off to attend to the wants of a group of card players a few feet away.

Susan touched her finger to the gla.s.s, when the flame suddenly vanished. She found it was not too hot to drink, touched her lips to it. The taste, sweetish, suggestive of coffee and of brandy and of burnt sugar, was agreeable. She slowly sipped it, delighting in the sensation of warmth, of comfort, of well being that speedily diffused through her. The waiter came to receive her thanks for his advice. She said to him:

"Do you have women sing, too?"

"Oh, yes--when we can find a good-looker with a voice. Our customers know music."

"I wonder if I could get a trial?"

The waiter was interested at once. "Perhaps. You sing?"

"I have sung on the stage."

"I'll ask the boss."

He went to the counter near the door where stood a short thick-set Jew of the East European snub-nosed type in earnest conversation with a seated blonde woman. She showed that skill at clinging to youth which among the lower middle and lower cla.s.ses pretty clearly indicates at least some experience at the fast life. For only in the upper and upper middle cla.s.s does a respectable woman venture thus to advertise so suspicious a guest within as a desire to be agreeable in the sight of men. Susan watched the waiter as he spoke to the proprietor, saw the proprietor's impatient shake of the head, sent out a wave of grat.i.tude from her heart when her waiter friend persisted, compelled the proprietor to look toward her.

She affected an air of unconsciousness; in fact, she was posing as if before a camera. Her heart leaped when out of the corner of her eye she saw the proprietor coming with the waiter. The two paused at her table, and the proprietor said in a sharp, impatient voice:

"Well, lady--what is it?"

"I want a trial as a singer."

The proprietor was scanning her features and her figure which was well displayed by the tight-fitting jacket. The result seemed satisfactory, for in a voice oily with the softening influence of feminine charm upon male, he said:

"You've had experience?"

"Yes--a lot of it. But I haven't sung in about two years."

"Sing German?"

"Only ballads in English. But I can learn anything."

"English'll do--_if_ you can _sing_. What costume do you wear?"

And the proprietor seated himself and motioned the waiter away.

"I have no costume. As I told you, I've not been singing lately."

"We've got one that might fit--a short blue silk skirt--low neck and blue stockings. Slippers too, but they might be tight--I forget the number."

"I did wear threes. But I've done a great deal of walking. I wear a five now." Susan thrust out a foot and ankle, for she knew that despite the overshoe they were good to look at.

The proprietor nodded approvingly and there was the note of personal interest in his voice as he said: "They can try your voice tomorrow morning. Come at ten o'clock."

"If you decide to try me, what pay will I get?"

The proprietor smiled slyly. "Oh, we don't pay anything to the singers. That man who sang--he gets his board here. He works in a factory as a bookkeeper in the daytime. Lots of theatrical and musical people come here. If a man or a girl can do any stunt worth while, there's a chance."

"I'd have to have something more than board," said Susan.

The proprietor frowned down at his stubby fingers whose black and cracked nails were drumming on the table. "Well--I might give you a bed. There's a place I could put one in my daughter's room. She sings and dances over at Louis Blanc's garden in Third Avenue. Yes, I could put you there. But--no privileges, you understand."

"Certainly. . . . I'll decide tomorrow. Maybe you'll not want me."

"Oh, yes--if you can sing at all. Your looks'd please my customers." Seeing the dubious expression in Susan's face, he went on, "When I say 'no privilege' I mean only about the room.

Of course, it's none of my business what you do outside. Lots of well fixed gents comes here. My girls have all had good luck. I've been open two years, and in that time one of my singers got an elegant delicatessen owner to keep her."

"Really," said Susan, in the tone that was plainly expected of her.

"Yes--an _elegant_ gentleman. I'd not be surprised if he married her. And another married an electrician that cops out forty a week. You'll find it a splendid chance to make nice friends--good spenders. And I'm a practical man."

"I suppose there isn't any work I could do in the daytime?"

"Not here."

"Perhaps----"

"Not nowhere, so far as I know. That is, work you'd care to do. The factories and stores is hard on a woman, and she don't get much. And besides they ain't very cla.s.sy to my notion. Of course, if a woman ain't got looks or sense or any tone to her, if she's satisfied to live in a b.u.m tenement and marry some dub that can't make nothing, why, that's different. But you look like a woman that had been used to something and wanted to get somewhere. I wouldn't have let _my_ daughter go into no such low, foolish life."