Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise Part 150

She looked calmly at him. "But I am not."

"Then you do not know him."

The strangest smile flitted across her face.

After a pause Brent said: "Are you married to him?"

Again the calm steady look. Then: "That is none of your business."

"I thought you were not," said Brent, as if she had answered his question with a clear negative. He added, "You know I'd not have asked if it had been 'none of my business.'"

"What do you mean?"

"If you had been his wife, I could not have gone on. I've all the reverence for a home of the man who has never had one.

I'd not take part in a home-breaking. But--since you are free----"

"I shall never be anything else but free. It's because I wish to make sure of my freedom that I'm going into this."

Palmer appeared in the doorway.

That night the four and Gourdain dined together, went to the theater and afterward to supper at the Cafe de Paris.

Gourdain and young Madame Deliere formed an interesting, unusually attractive exhibit of the parasitism that is as inevitable to the rich as fleas to a dog. Gourdain was a superior man, Clelie a superior woman. There was nothing of the sycophant, or even of the courtier, about either. Yet they already had in their faces that subtle indication of the dependent that is found in all professional people who habitually work for and a.s.sociate with the rich only. They had no sense of dependence; they were not dependents, for they gave more than value received. Yet so corrupting is the atmosphere about rich people that Gourdain, who had other rich clients, no less than Clelie who got her whole living from Palmer, was at a glance in the flea cla.s.s and not in the dog cla.s.s. Brent looked for signs of the same thing in Susan's face. The signs should have been there; but they were not.

"Not yet," thought he. "And never will be now."

Palmer's abstraction and constraint were in sharp contrast to the gayety of the others. Susan drank almost nothing. Her spirits were soaring so high that she did not dare stimulate them with champagne. The Cafe de Paris is one of the places where the respectable go to watch _les autres_ and to catch a real gayety by contagion of a gayety that is mechanical and altogether as unreal as play-acting. There is something fantastic about the official temples of Venus; the pleasure-makers are so serious under their masks and the pleasure-getters so quaintly dazzled and deluded. That is, Venus's temples are like those of so many other religions in reverence among men--disbelief and solemn humb.u.g.g.e.ry at the altar; belief that would rather die than be undeceived, in the pews. Palmer scarcely took his eyes from Susan's face. It amused and pleased her to see how uneasy this made Brent--and how her own laughter and jests aggravated his uneasiness to the point where he was almost showing it. She glanced round that brilliant room filled with men and women, each of them carrying underneath the placidity of stiff evening shirt or the scantiness of audacious evening gown the most fascinating emotions and secrets--love and hate and jealousy, cold and monstrous habits and desires, ruin impending or stealthily advancing, fortune giddying to a gorgeous climax, disease and shame and fear--yet only signs of love and laughter and lightness of heart visible. And she wondered whether at any other table there was gathered so curious an a.s.semblage of pasts and presents and futures as at the one over which Freddie Palmer was presiding somberly. . . . Then her thoughts took another turn. She fell to noting how each man was accompanied by a woman--a gorgeously dressed woman, a woman revealing, proclaiming, in every line, in every movement, that she was thus elaborately and beautifully toiletted to please man, to appeal to his senses, to gain his gracious approval. It was the world in miniature; it was an ill.u.s.tration of the position of woman--of her own position.

Favorite; pet. Not the equal of man, but an appetizer, a dessert. She glanced at herself in the gla.s.s, mocked her own radiant beauty of face and form and dress. Not really a full human being; merely a decoration. No more; and no worse off than most of the women everywhere, the favorites licensed or unlicensed of law and religion. But just as badly off, and just as insecure. Free! No rest, no full breath until freedom had been won! At any cost, by straight way or devious--free!

"Let's go home," said she abruptly. "I've had enough of this."

She was in a dressing gown, all ready for bed and reading, when Palmer came into her sitting-room. She was smoking, her gaze upon her book. Her thick dark hair was braided close to her small head. There was delicate lace on her nightgown, showing above the wadded satin collar of the dressing gown.

He dropped heavily into a chair.

"If anyone had told me a year ago that a skirt could make a d.a.m.n fool of me," said he bitterly, "I'd have laughed in his face. Yet--here I am! How nicely I did drop into your trap today--about the acting!"

"Trap?"

"Oh, I admit I built and baited and set it, myself--a.s.s that I was! But it was your trap--yours and Brent's, all the same. . . . A skirt--and not a clean one, at that."

She lowered the book to her lap, took the cigarette from between her lips, looked at him. "Why not be reasonable, Freddie?" said she calmly. Language had long since lost its power to impress her. "Why irritate yourself and annoy me simply because I won't let you tyrannize over me? You know you can't treat me as if I were your property. I'm not your wife, and I don't have to be your mistress."

"Getting ready to break with me eh?"

"If I wished to go, I'd tell you--and go."

"You'd give me the shake, would you?--without the slightest regard for all I've done for you!"

She refused to argue that again. "I hope I've outgrown doing weak gentle things through cowardice and pretending it's through goodness of heart."

"You've gotten hard--like stone."

"Like you--somewhat." And after a moment she added, "Anything that's strong is hard--isn't it? Can a man or a woman get anywhere without being able to be what you call 'hard' and what I call 'strong'?"

"Where do _you_ want to get?" demanded he.

She disregarded his question, to finish saying what was in her mind--what she was saying rather to give herself a clear look at her own thoughts and purposes than to enlighten him about them. "I'm not a sheltered woman," pursued she. "I've got no one to save me from the consequences of doing nice, sweet, womanly things."

"You've got me," said he angrily.

"But why lean if I'm strong enough to stand alone? Why weaken myself just to gratify your mania for owning and bossing? But let me finish what I was saying. I never got any quarter because I was a woman. No woman does, as a matter of fact; and in the end, the more she uses her s.e.x to help her shirk, the worse her punishment is. But in my case----

"I was brought up to play the weak female, to use my s.e.x as my shield. And that was taken from me and--I needn't tell _you_ how I was taught to give and take like a man--no, not like a man--for no man ever has to endure what a woman goes through if she is thrown on the world. Still, I'm not whining. Now that it's all over I'm the better for what I've been through.

I've learned to use all a man's weapons and in addition I've got a woman's."

"As long as your looks last," sneered he.

"That will be longer than yours," said she pleasantly, "if you keep on with the automobiles and the champagne. And when my looks are gone, my woman's weapons. . .

"Why, I'll still have the man's weapons left--shan't I?--knowledge, and the ability to use it."

His expression of impotent fury mingled with compelled admiration and respect made his face about as unpleasant to look at as she had ever seen it. But she liked to look. His confession of her strength made her feel stronger. The sense of strength was a new sensation with her--new and delicious.

Nor could the feeling that she was being somewhat cruel restrain her from enjoying it.

"I have never asked quarter," she went on. "I never shall.

If fate gets me down, as it has many a time, why I'll he able to take my medicine without weeping or whining. I've never asked pity. I've never asked charity. That's why I'm here, Freddie--in this apartment, instead of in a filthy tenement attic--and in these clothes instead of in rags--and with you respecting me, instead of kicking me toward the gutter. Isn't that so?"

He was silent.

"Isn't it so?" she insisted.

"Yes," he admitted. And his handsome eyes looked the love so near to hate that fills a strong man for a strong woman when they clash and he cannot conquer. "No wonder I'm a fool about you," he muttered.

"I don't purpose that any man or woman shall use me," she went on, "in exchange for merely a few flatteries. I insist that if they use me, they must let me use them. I shan't be mean about it, but I shan't be altogether a fool, either. And what is a woman but a fool when she lets men use her for nothing but being called sweet and loving and womanly? Unless that's the best she can do, poor thing!"

"You needn't sneer at respectable women."

"I don't," replied she. "I've no sneers for anybody. I've discovered a great truth, Freddie the deep-down equality of all human beings--all of them birds in the same wind and battling with it each as best he can. As for myself--with money, with a career that interests me, with position that'll give me any acquaintances and friends that are congenial, I don't care what is said of me."

As her plan unfolded itself fully to his understanding, which needed only a hint to enable it to grasp all, he forgot his rage for a moment in his interest and admiration. Said he:

"You've used me. Now you're going to use Brent--eh?

Well--what will you give _him_ in exchange?"

"He wants someone to act certain parts in certain plays."

"Is that _all_ he wants?"

"He hasn't asked anything else."