Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise Part 105

"Zeist's? What's that?" said Susan indifferently.

"The joint two blocks down. Hasn't Joe Bishop had you in there for a couple of months?"

Susan yawned. "Lord, how my head does ache! Who's Joe Bishop?

I'm dead to the world. I must have had an awful jag!" She turned on her side, drew the spread over her. "I want to sleep. So long!"

"Didn't you run away from home with Joe Bishop?" demanded the madam shrilly. "And didn't he put you to work for Zeist?"

"Who's Joe Bishop? Where's Zeist's?" Susan said, cross and yawning.

"I've been with Jim about a year. He took me off the street.

I was broke in five years ago."

The madam gave a kind of howl. "And that Joe Bishop got twenty-five off me!" she screamed. "And you're Finnegan's girl, and he'll make trouble for me."

"He's got a nasty streak in him," said Susan, drowsily. "He put me on the Island once for a little side trip I made." She laughed, yawned. "But he sent and got me out in two days--and gave me a present of a hundred. It's funny how a man'll make a fool of himself about a woman. Put out the light."

"No, I won't put out the light," shrieked the madam. "You can't work here. I'm going to telephone Jim Finnegan to come and get you."

Susan started up angrily, as if she were half-crazed by drink.

"If you do, you old hag," she cried, "I'll tell him you doped me and set these men on me. I'll tell him about Joe Bishop.

And Jim'll send the whole bunch of you to the pen. I'll not go back to him till I get good and ready. And that means, I won't go back at all, no matter what he offers me." She began to cry in a maudlin way. "I hate him. I'm tired of living as if I was back in the convent."

The madam stood, heaving to and fro and blowing like a chained elephant. "I don't know what to do," she whined. "I wish Joe Bishop was in h.e.l.l."

"I'm going to get out of here," shrieked Susan, raving and blazing again and waving her arms. "You don't know a good thing when you get it. What kind of a b.u.m joint is this, anyway? Where's my clothes? They must be dry by this time."

"Yes--yes--they're dry, my dear," whined the madam. "I'll bring 'em to you."

And out she waddled, returning in a moment with her arms full of the clothing. She found Susan in the bed and nestling comfortably into the pillows. "Here are your clothes," she cried.

"No--I want to sleep," was Susan's answer in a cross, drowsy tone. "I think I'll stay. You won't telephone Jim. But when he finds me, I'll tell him to go to the devil."

"For G.o.d's sake!" wailed the madam. "I can't let you work here. You don't want to ruin me, do you?"

Susan sat up, rubbed her eyes, yawned, brushed her hair back, put a sly, smiling look into her face. "How much'll you give me to go?" she asked. "Where's the fifteen that was in my stocking?"

"I've got it for you," said the madam.

"How much did I make tonight?"

"There was three at five apiece."

Three!--not only the two, but a third while she lay in a dead stupor. Susan shivered.

"Your share's four dollars," continued the madam.

"Is that all!" cried Susan, jeering. "A b.u.m joint! Oh, there's my five the man gave me as a present."

"Yes--yes," quavered the madam.

"And another man gave me a dollar." She looked round. "Where the devil is it?" She found it in a fold of the spread. "Then you owe me twenty altogether, counting the money I had on me."

She yawned. "I don't want to go!" she protested, pausing halfway in taking off the second pink stocking. Then she laughed. "Lord, what h.e.l.l Jim will raise if he finds I spent the night working in this house. Why is it that, as soon as men begin to care for a woman, they get prim about her?"

"Do get dressed, dear," wheedled the madam.

"I don't see why I should go at this time of night," objected Susan pettishly. "What'll you give me if I go?"

The madam uttered a groan.

"You say you paid Joe Bishop twenty-five----"

"I'll kill him!" shrieked the madam. "He's ruined me--ruined me!"

"Oh, he's all right," said Susan cheerfully. "I like him.

He's a pretty little fellow. I'll not give him away to Jim."

"Joe was dead stuck on you," cried the madam eagerly. "I might 'a' knowed he hadn't seen you before. I had to pay him the twenty-five right away, to get him out of the house and let me put you to work. He wanted to stay on."

Susan shivered, laughed to hide it. "Well, I'll go for twenty-five."

"Twenty-five!" shrieked the madam.

"You'll get it back from Joe."

"Maybe I won't. He's a dog--a dirty dog."

"I think I told Joe about Jim," said Susan reflectively. "I was awful gabby downstairs. Yes--I told him."

And her lowered eyes gleamed with satisfaction when the madam cried out: "You did! And after that he brought you here!

He's got it in for me. But I'll ruin him! I'll tear him up!"

Susan dressed with the utmost deliberation, the madam urging her to make haste. After some argument, Susan yielded to the madam's pleadings and contented herself with the twenty dollars. The madam herself escorted Susan down to the outside door and slathered her with sweetness and politeness. The rain had stopped again. Susan went up Second Avenue slowly. Two blocks from the dive from which she had escaped, she sank down on a stoop and fainted.

CHAPTER IX

THE dash of cold rain drops upon her face and the chill of moisture soaking through her clothing revived her. Throughout the whole range of life, whenever we resist we suffer. As Susan dragged her aching, cold wet body up from that stoop, it seemed to her that each time she resisted the penalty grew heavier. Could she have been more wretched had she remained in that dive? From her first rebellion that drove her out of her uncle's house had she ever bettered herself by resisting? She had gone from bad to worse, from worse to worst.

Worst? "This _must_ be the worst!" she thought. "Surely there can be no lower depth than where I am now." And then she shuddered and her soul reeled. Had she not thought this at each shelf of the precipice down which she had been falling?

"Has it a bottom? Is there no bottom?"

Wet through, tired through, she put up her umbrella and forced herself feebly along. "Where am I going? Why do I not kill myself? What is it that drives me on and on?"

There came no direct answer to that last question. But up from those deep vast reservoirs of vitality that seemed sufficient whatever the drain upon them--up from those reservoirs welled strength and that unfaltering will to live which breathes upon the corpse of hope and quickens it. And she had a sense of an invisible being, a power that had her in charge, a destiny, walking beside her, holding up her drooping strength, compelling her toward some goal hidden in the fog and the storm.