Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise Part 145

She faced him with a look of defiant negation. "That ocean I crossed--it's as narrow as the East River into which I thought of throwing myself many a time--it's as narrow as the East River beside the ocean between what I am and what I was. And I'll never go back. Never!"

She repeated the "never" quietly, under her breath. His eyes looked as if they, without missing an essential detail, had swept the whole of that to which she would never go back. He said:

"Go back? No, indeed. Who's asking you to go back? Not I.

I'm not _asking_ you to go anywhere. I'm simply saying that you will--_must_--go forward. If you were in love, perhaps not. But you aren't in love. I know from experience how men and women care for each other--how they form these relationships. They find each other convenient and comfortable. But they care only for themselves. Especially young people. One must live quite a while to discover that thinking about oneself is living in a stuffy little cage with only a little light, through slats in the top that give no view. . . . It's an unnatural life for you. It can't last.

You--centering upon yourself--upon comfort and convenience.

Absurd!"

"I have chosen," said she.

"No--you can't do it," he went on, as if she had not spoken.

"_You_ can't spend your life at dresses and millinery, at chattering about art, at thinking about eating and drinking--at being pa.s.sively amused--at attending to your hair and skin and figure. You may think so, but in reality you are getting ready for _me_ . . . for your career. You are simply educating yourself. I shall have you back."

She held the cigarette to her lips, inhaled the smoke deeply, exhaled it slowly.

"I will tell you why," he went on, as if he were answering a protest. "Every one of us has an individuality of some sort.

And in spite of everything and anything, except death or hopeless disease, that individuality will insist upon expressing itself."

"Mine is expressing itself," said she with a light smile--the smile of a light woman.

"You can't rest in this present life of yours. Your individuality is too strong. It will have its way--and for all your mocking smiling, you know I am right. I understand how you were tempted into it----"

She opened her lips--changed her mind and stopped her lips with her cigarette.

"I don't blame you--and it was just as well. This life has taught you--will teach you--will advance you in your career. . . . Tell me, what gave you the idea that I was disappointed?"

She tossed her cigarette into the big ash tray. "As I told you, it is too late." She rose and looked at him with a strange, sweet smile. "I've got any quant.i.ty of faults," said she. "But there's one I haven't got. I don't whine."

"You don't whine," a.s.sented he, "and you don't lie--and you don't shirk. Men and women have been canonized for less.

I understand that for some reason you can't talk about----"

"Then why do you continue to press me?" said she, a little coldly.

He accepted the rebuke with a bow. "Nevertheless," said he, with raillery to carry off his persistence, "I shall get you.

If not sooner, then when the specter of an obscure--perhaps poor--old age begins to agitate the rich hangings of youth's banquet hall."

"That'll be a good many years yet," mocked she. And from her lovely young face flashed the radiant defiance of her perfect youth and health.

"Years that pa.s.s quickly," retorted he, unmoved.

She was still radiant, still smiling, but once more she was seeing the hideous old women of the tenements. Into her nostrils stole the stench of the foul den in which she had slept with Mrs. Tucker and Mrs. Reardon--and she was hearing the hunchback of the dive playing for the drunken dancing old cronies, with their tin cups of whiskey.

No danger of that now? How little she was saving of her salary from Palmer! She could not "work" men--she simply could not. She would never put by enough to be independent and every day her tastes for luxury had firmer hold upon her.

No danger? As much danger as ever--a danger postponed but certain to threaten some day--and then, a fall from a greater height--a certain fall. She was hearing the battered, shattered piano of the dive.

"For pity's sake Mrs. Palmer!" cried Brent, in a low voice.

She started. The beautiful room, the environment of luxury and taste and comfort came back.

Gourdain interrupted and then Palmer.

The four went to the Cafe Anglais for dinner. Brent announced that he was going to the Riviera soon to join a party of friends. "I wish you would visit me later," said he, with a glance that included them all and rested, as courtesy required, upon Susan. "There's room in my villa--barely room."

"We've not really settled here," said Susan. "And we've taken up French seriously."

"The weather's frightful," said Palmer, with a meaning glance at her. "I think we ought to go."

But her expression showed that she had no intention of going, no sympathy with Palmer's desire to use this excellent, easy ladder of Brent's offering to make the ascent into secure respectability.

"Next winter, then," said Brent, who was observing her.

"Or--in the early spring, perhaps."

"Oh, we may change our minds and come," Palmer suggested eagerly. "I'm going to try to persuade my wife."

"Come if you can," said Brent cordially. "I'll have no one stopping with me."

When they were alone, Palmer sent his valet away and fussed about impatiently until Susan's maid had unhooked her dress and had got her ready for bed. As the maid began the long process of giving her hair a thorough brushing, he said, "Please let her go, Susan. I want to tell you something."

"She does not know a word of English."

"But these French are so clever that they understand perfectly with their eyes."

Susan sent the maid to bed and sat in a dressing gown brushing her hair. It was long enough to reach to the middle of her back and to cover her bosom. It was very thick and wavy. Now that the scarlet was washed from her lips for the night, her eyes shone soft and clear with no relief for their almost tragic melancholy. He was looking at her in profile. Her expression was stern as well as sad--the soul of a woman who has suffered and has been made strong, if not hard.

"I got a letter from my lawyers today," he began. "It was about that marriage. I'll read."

At the word "marriage," she halted the regular stroke of the brush. Her eyes gazed into the mirror of the dressing table through her reflection deep into her life, deep into the vistas of memory. As he unfolded the letter, she leaned back in the low chair, let her hands drop to her lap.

"'As the inclosed doc.u.ments show,'" he read, "'we have learned and have legally verified that Jeb--not James--Ferguson divorced his wife Susan Lenox about a year after their marriage, on the ground of desertion; and two years later he fell through the floor of an old bridge near Brooksburg and was killed.'"

The old bridge--she was feeling its loose flooring sag and shift under the cautious hoofs of the horse. She was seeing Rod Spenser on the horse, behind him a girl, hardly more than a child--under the starry sky exchanging confidences--talking of their futures.

"So, you see, you are free," said Palmer. "I went round to an American lawyer's office this afternoon, and borrowed an old legal form book. And I've copied out this form----"

She was hardly conscious of his laying papers on the table before her.

"It's valid, as I've fixed things. The lawyer gave me some paper. It has a watermark five years old. I've dated back two years--quite enough. So when we've signed, the marriage never could be contested--not even by ourselves."

He took the papers from the table, laid them in her lap. She started. "What were you saying?" she asked. "What's this?"

"What were you thinking about?" said he.

"I wasn't thinking," she answered, with her slow sweet smile of self-concealment. "I was feeling--living--the past. I was watching the procession."

He nodded understandingly. "That's a kind of time-wasting that can easily be overdone."

"Easily," she agreed. "Still, there's the lesson. I have to remind myself of it often--always, when there's anything that has to be decided."

"I've written out two of the forms," said he. "We sign both.