Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise Part 120

She stood at the foot of the bed, gazing at the wall above his head. "I must earn our expenses until we're safe," said she, once more telling a literal truth that was yet a complete deception.

"Why do you fret me?" exclaimed he. "Do you want me to be sick again?"

"Suppose you didn't get the advance right away," urged she.

"I tell you I shall get it! And I won't have you--do as you are doing. If you go, you go for keeps."

She seated herself. "Do you want me to read or take dictation?"

His face expressed the satisfaction small people find in small successes at a.s.serting authority. "Don't be angry," said he.

"I'm acting for your good. I'm saving you from yourself."

"I'm not angry," replied she, her strange eyes resting upon him.

He shifted uncomfortably. "Now what does that look mean?" he demanded with an uneasy laugh.

She smiled, shrugged her shoulders.

Sperry--small and thin, a weather-beaten, wooden face suggesting Mr. Punch, sly keen eyes, theater in every tone and gesture Sperry pushed the scenario hastily to completion and was so successful with Fitzalan that on Sunday afternoon he brought two hundred and fifty dollars, Spenser's half of the advance money.

"Didn't I tell you!" said Spenser to Susan, in triumph.

"We'll move at once. Go pack your traps and put them in a carriage, and by the time you're back here Sperry and the nurses will have me ready."

It was about three when Susan got to her room. Clara heard her come in and soon appeared, bare feet in mules, hair hanging every which way. Despite the softening effect of the white nightdress and of the framing of abundant hair, her face was hard and coa.r.s.e. She had been drunk on liquor and on opium the night before, and the effects were wearing off. As she was only twenty years old, the hard coa.r.s.e look would withdraw before youth in a few hours; it was there only temporarily as a foreshadowing of what Clara would look like in five years or so.

"h.e.l.lo, Lorna," said she. "Gee, what a bun my fellow and I had on last night! Did you hear us sc.r.a.pping when we came in about five o'clock?"

"No," replied Susan. "I was up late and had a lot to do, and was kept at the hospital all day. I guess I must have fallen asleep."

"He gave me an awful beating," pursued Clara. "But I got one good crack at him with a bottle." She laughed. "I don't think he'll be doing much flirting till his cheek heals up.

He looks a sight!" She opened her nightdress and showed Susan a deep blue-black mark on her left breast. "I wonder if I'll get cancer from that?" said she. "It'd be just my rotten luck. I've heard of several cases of it lately, and my father kicked my mother there, and she got cancer. Lord, how she did suffer!"

Susan shivered, turned her eyes away. Her blood surged with joy that she had once more climbed up out of this deep, dark wallow where the ma.s.ses of her fellow beings weltered in darkness and drunkenness and disease--was up among the favored ones who, while they could not entirely escape the great ills of life, at least had the intelligence and the means to mitigate them. How fortunate that few of these unhappy ones had the imagination to realize their own wretchedness! "I don't care what becomes of me," Clara was saying. "What is there in it for me? I can have a good time only as long as my looks last--and that's true of every woman, ain't it? What's a woman but a body? Ain't I right?"

"That's why I'm going to stop being a woman as soon as ever I can," said Susan.

"Why, you're packing up!" cried Clara.

"Yes. My friend's well enough to be moved. We're going to live uptown."

"Right away?"

"This afternoon."

Clara dropped into a chair and began to weep. "I'll miss you something fierce!" sobbed she. "You're the only friend in the world I give a d.a.m.n for, or that gives a d.a.m.n for me. I wish to G.o.d I was like you. You don't need anybody."

"Oh, yes, I do, dear," cried Susan.

"But, I mean, you don't lean on anybody. I don't mean you're hard-hearted--for you ain't. You've pulled me and a dozen other girls out of the hole lots of times. But you're independent. Can't you take me along? I can drop that b.u.m across the hall. I don't give a hoot for him. But a girl's got to make believe she cares for somebody or she'd blow her brains out."

"I can't take you along, but I'm going to come for you as soon as I'm on my feet," said Susan. "I've got to get up myself first. I've learned at least that much."

"Oh, you'll forget all about _me_."

"No," said Susan.

And Clara knew that she would not. Moaned Clara, "I'm not fit to go. I'm only a common streetwalker. You belong up there.

You're going back to your own. But I belong here. I wish to G.o.d I was like most of the people down here, and didn't have any sense. No wonder you used to drink so! I'm getting that way, too. The only people that don't hit the booze hard down here are the muttonheads who don't know nothing and can't learn nothing. . . . I used to be contented. But somehow, being with you so much has made me dissatisfied."

"That means you're on your way up," said Susan, busy with her packing.

"It would, if I had sense enough. Oh, it's torment to have sense enough to see, and not sense enough to do!"

"I'll come for you soon," said Susan. "You're going up with me."

Clara watched her for some time in silence. "You're sure you're going to win?" said she, at last.

"Sure," replied Susan.

"Oh, you can't be as sure as that."

"Yes, but I can," laughed she. "I'm done with foolishness.

I've made up my mind to get up in the world--_with_ my self-respect if possible; if not, then without it. I'm going to have everything--money, comfort, luxury, pleasure.

Everything!" And she dropped a folded skirt emphatically upon the pile she had been making, and gave a short, sharp nod. "I was taught a lot of things when I was little--things about being sweet and unselfish and all that. They'd be fine, if the world was Heaven. But it isn't."

"Not exactly," said Clara.

"Maybe they're fine, if you want to get to Heaven," continued Susan. "But I'm not trying to get to Heaven. I'm trying to live on earth. I don't like the game, and I don't like its rules. But--it's the only game, and I can't change the rules.

So I'm going to follow them--at least, until I get what I want."

"Do you mean to say you've got any respect for yourself?" said Clara. "_I_ haven't. And I don't see how any girl in our line can have."

"I thought I hadn't," was Susan's reply, "until I talked with--with someone I met the other day. If you slipped and fell in the mud--or were thrown into it--you wouldn't say, 'I'm dirty through and through. I can never get clean again'--would you?"

"But that's different," objected Clara.

"Not a bit," declared Susan. "If you look around this world, you'll see that everybody who ever moved about at all has slipped and fallen in the mud--or has been pushed in."

"Mostly pushed in."

"Mostly pushed in," a.s.sented Susan. "And those that have good sense get up as soon as they can, and wash as much of the mud off as'll come off--maybe all--and go on. The fools--they worry about the mud. But not I--not any more!. . . And not you, my dear--when I get you uptown."

Clara was now looking on Susan's departure as a dawn of good luck for herself. She took a headache powder, telephoned for a carriage, and helped carry down the two big packages that contained all Susan's possessions worth moving. And they kissed each other good-by with smiling faces. Susan did not give Clara, the loose-tongued, her new address; nor did Clara, conscious of her own weakness, ask for it.

"Don't put yourself out about me," cried Clara in farewell.

"Get a good tight grip yourself, first."

"That's advice I need," answered Susan. "Good-by.