Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise Part 104

She had intended to ask about a place to stop for the night.

She now decided that the suggestion that she was homeless might possibly impair her chances. After some further conversation--the proprietor repeating what he had already said, and repeating it in about the same language--she paid the waiter fifteen cents for the drink and a tip of five cents out of the change she had in her purse, and departed. It had clouded over, and a misty, dismal rain was trickling through the saturated air to add to the messiness of the churn of cold slush. Susan went on down Second Avenue. On a corner near its lower end she saw a Raines Law hotel with awnings, indicating that it was not merely a blind to give a saloon a hotel license but was actually open for business. She went into the "family" entrance of the saloon, was alone in a small clean sitting-room with a sliding window between it and the bar. A tough but not unpleasant young face appeared at the window. It was the bartender.

"Evening, cutie," said he. "What'll you have?"

"Some rye whiskey," replied Susan. "May I smoke a cigarette here?"

"Sure, go as far as you like. Ten-cent whiskey--or fifteen?"

"Fifteen--unless it's out of the same bottle as the ten."

"Call it ten--seeing as you are a lady. I've got a soft heart for you ladies. I've got a wife in the business, myself."

When he came in at the door with the drink, a young man followed him--a good-looking, darkish youth, well dressed in a ready made suit of the best sort. At second glance Susan saw that he was at least partly of Jewish blood, enough to elevate his face above the rather dull type which predominates among clerks and merchants of the Christian races. He had small, shifty eyes, an attractive smile, a manner of a.s.surance bordering on insolence. He dropped into a chair at Susan's table with a, "You don't mind having a drink on me."

As Susan had no money to spare, she acquiesced. She said to the bartender, "I want to get a room here--a plain room. How much?"

"Maybe this gent'll help you out," said the bartender with a grin and a wink. "He's got money to burn--and burns it."

The bartender withdrew. The young man struck a match and held it for her to light the cigarette she took from her purse.

Then he lit one himself. "Next time try one of mine," said he.

"I get 'em of a fellow that makes for the swellest uptown houses. But I get 'em ten cents a package instead of forty.

I haven't seen you down here before. What a good skin you've got! It's been a long time since I've seen a skin as fine as that, except on a baby now and then. And that shape of yours is all right, too. I suppose it's the real goods?"

With that he leaned across the table and put his hand upon her bosom. She drew back indifferently.

"You don't give anything for nothing--eh?" laughed he. "Been in the business long?"

"It seems long."

"It ain't what it used to be. The compet.i.tion's getting to be something fierce. Looks as if all the respectable girls and most of the married women were coming out to look for a little extra money. Well--why not?"

Susan shrugged her shoulders. "Why not?" echoed she carelessly.

She did not look forward with pleasure to being alone. The man was clean and well dressed, and had an unusual amount of personal charm that softened his impertinence of manner.

Evidently he has the habit of success with women. She much preferred him sitting with her to her own depressing society.

So she accepted his invitation. She took one of his cigarettes, and it was as good as he had said. He rattled on, mingling frank coa.r.s.e compliments with talk about "the business" from a standpoint so practical that she began to suspect he was somehow in it himself. He clearly belonged to those more intelligent children of the upper cla.s.s tenement people, the children who are too bright and too well educated to become working men and working women like their parents; they refuse to do any kind of manual labor, as it could never in the most favorable circ.u.mstances pay well enough to give them the higher comforts they crave, the expensive comforts which every merchant is insistently and temptingly thrusting at a public for the most part too poor to buy; so these cleverer children of the working cla.s.s develop into shyster lawyers, politicians, sports, prost.i.tutes, unless chance throws into their way some respectable means of getting money. Vaguely she wondered--without caring to question or guess what particular form of activity this young man had taken in avoiding monotonous work at small pay.

After her second drink came she found that she did not want it.

She felt tired and sleepy and wished to get her wet stockings off and to dry her skirt which, for all her careful holding up, had not escaped the fate of whatever was exposed to that abominable night. "I'm going along with you," said the young man as she rose. "Here's to our better acquaintance."

"Thanks, but I want to be alone," replied she affably. And, not to seem unappreciative of his courtesy, she took a small drink from her gla.s.s. It tasted very queer. She glanced suspiciously at the young man. Her legs grew suddenly and strangely heavy. Her heart began to beat violently, and a black fog seemed to be closing in upon her eyes. Through it she saw the youth grinning sardonically. And instantly she knew. "What a fool I am!" she thought.

She had been trapped by another form of the slave system. This man was a recruiting sergeant for houses of prost.i.tution--was one of the "cadets." They search the tenement districts for good-looking girls and young women. They hang about the street corners, flirting. They attend the b.a.l.l.s where go the young people of the lower middle cla.s.s and upper lower cla.s.s. They learn to make love seductively; they understand how to tempt a girl's longing for finery, for an easier life, her dream of a husband above her cla.s.s in looks and in earning power. And for each recruit "broken in" and hardened to the point of willingness to go into a sporting house, they get from the proprietor ten to twenty-five dollars according to her youth and beauty. Susan knew all about the system, had heard stories of it from the lips of girls who had been embarked through it--embarked a little sooner than they would have embarked under the lash of want, or of that other and almost equally compelling brute, desire for the comforts and luxuries that mean decent living. Susan knew; yet here she was, because of an unguarded moment, and because of a sense of security through experience--here she was, succ.u.mbing to knockout drops as easily as the most innocent child lured away from its mother's door to get a saucer of ice cream! She tried to rise, to scream, though she knew any such effort was futile.

With a gasp and a sigh her head fell forward and she was unconscious.

She awakened in a small, rather dingy room. She was lying on her back with only stockings on. Beyond the foot of the bed was a little bureau at which a man, back full to her, stood in trousers and shirt sleeves tying his necktie. She saw that he was a rough looking man, coa.r.s.ely dressed--an artisan or small shop-keeper. Used as she was to the profound indifference of men of all cla.s.ses and degrees of education and intelligence to what the woman thought--used as she was to this sensual selfishness which men at least in part conceal from their respectable wives, Susan felt a horror of this man who had not minded her unconsciousness. Her head was aching so fiercely that she had not the courage to move. Presently the man turned toward her a kindly, bearded face. But she was used to the man of general good character who with little shame and no hesitation became beast before her, the free woman.

"h.e.l.lo, pretty!" cried he, genially. "Slept off your jag, have you?"

He was putting on his coat and waistcoat. He took from the waistcoat pocket a dollar bill. "You're a peach," said he.

"I'll come again, next time my old lady goes off guard." He made the bill into a pellet, dropped it on her breast. "A little present for you. Put it in your stocking and don't let the madam grab it."

With a groan Susan lifted herself to a sitting position, drew the spread about her--a gesture of instinct rather than of conscious modesty. "They drugged me and brought me here," said she. "I want you to help me get out."

"Good Lord!" cried the man, instantly all a-quiver with nervousness. "I'm a married man. I don't want to get mixed up in this." And out of the room he bolted, closing the door behind him.

Susan smiled at herself satirically. After all her experience, to make this silly appeal--she who knew men! "I must be getting feeble-minded," thought she. Then----

Her clothes! With a glance she swept the little room. No closet! Her own clothes gone! On the chair beside the bed a fast-house parlor dress of pink cotton silk, and a kind of abbreviated chemise. The stockings on her legs were not her own, but were of pink cotton, silk finished. A pair of pink satin slippers stood on the floor beside the two galvanized iron wash basins.

The door opened and a burly man, dressed in cheap ready-made clothes but with an air of authority and prosperity, was smiling at her. "The madam told me to walk right in and make myself at home," said he. "Yes, you're up to her account of you. Only she said you were dead drunk and would probably be asleep. Now, honey, you treat me right and I'll treat you right."

"Get out of here!" cried Susan. "I'm going to leave this house. They drugged me and brought me here."

"Oh, come now. I've got nothing to do with your quarrels with the landlady. Cut those fairy tales out. You treat me right and----"

A few minutes later in came the madam. Susan, exhausted, sick, lay inert in the middle of the bed. She fixed her gaze upon the eyes looking through the hideous mask of paint and powder partially concealing the madam's face.

"Well, are you going to be a good girl now?" said the madam.

"I want to sleep," said Susan.

"All right, my dear." She saw and s.n.a.t.c.hed the five-dollar bill from the pillow. "It'll go toward paying your board and for the parlor dress. G.o.d, but you was drunk when they brought you up from the bar!"

"When was that?" asked Susan.

"About midnight. It's nearly four now. We've shut the house for the night. You're in a first-rate house, my dear, and if you behave yourself, you'll make money--a lot more than you ever could at a dive like Zeist's. If you don't behave well, we'll teach you how. This building belongs to one of the big men in politics, and he looks after my interests--and he ought to, considering the rent I pay--five hundred a month--for the three upper floors. The bar's let separate. Would you like a nice drink?"

"No," said Susan. Trapped! Hopelessly trapped! And she would never escape until, diseased, her looks gone, ruined in body and soul, she was cast out into the hospital and the gutter.

"As I was saying," ventured the madam, "you might as well settle down quietly."

"I'm very well satisfied," said Susan. "I suppose you'll give me a square deal on what I make." She laughed quietly as if secretly amused at something. "In fact, I know you will," she added in a tone of amused confidence.

"As soon as you've paid up your twenty-five a week for room and board and the fifty for the parlor dress----"

Susan interrupted her with a laugh. "Oh, come off," said she.

"I'll not stand for that. I'll go back to Jim Finnegan."

The old woman's eyes pounced for her face instantly. "Do you know Finnegan?"

"I'm his girl," said Susan carelessly. She stretched herself and yawned. "I got mad at him and started out for some fun.

He's a regular d.a.m.n fool about me. But I'm sick of him.

Anything but a jealous man! And spied on everywhere I go. How much can I make here?"

"Ain't you from Zeist's?" demanded the madam. Her voice was quivering with fright. She did not dare believe the girl; she did not dare disbelieve her.