Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise Part 55

'Love one another,' he says, 'and learn to help each other and stand up for each other,' he says, 'and hate war and fightin'

and money grabbin'----'"gasp--gasp--gasp--"'Peace on earth,' he says, 'Know the truth, and the truth shall make you free'--and he saw there'd be a time"--the old man raised himself on one elbow--"Yes, by G.o.d--there _will_ be!--a time when men'll learn not to be beasts and'll be men--_men_, little gal!"

"Men," echoed Susan, her eyes shining, her bosom heaving.

"It ain't sense and it ain't right that everything should be for the few--for them with brains--and that the rest--the millions--should be tramped down just because they ain't so cruel or so 'cute'--they and their children tramped down in the dirt. And that feller Jesus saw it."

"Yes--yes," cried Susan. "He saw it."

"I'll tell you what he was," said old Tom in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"He wasn't no G.o.d. He was bigger'n that--bigger'n that, little gal! He was the first _man_ that ever lived. He said, 'Give the weak a chance so as they kin git strong.' He says----"

The dying man fell back exhausted. His eyes rolled wildly, closed; his mouth twitched, fell wide open; there came from his throat a sound Susan had never heard before, but she knew what it was, what it meant.

Etta and Ashbel were overwhelmed afresh by the disgrace of having their parents buried in Potter's Field--for the insurance money went for debts. They did not understand when Susan said, "I think your father'd have liked to feel that he was going to be buried there--because then he'll be with--with his Friend.

You know, _He_ was buried in Potter's Field." However, their grief was shortlived; there is no time in the lives of working people for such luxuries as grief--no more time than there is at sea when all are toiling to keep afloat the storm-racked sinking ship and one sailor is swept overboard. In comfortable lives a bereavement is a contrast; in the lives of the wretched it is but one more in the a.s.sailing army of woes.

Etta took a job at the box factory at three dollars a week; she and Susan and Ashbel moved into two small rooms in a flat in a tenement opposite the factory--a cheaper and therefore lower house than the one that had burned. They bought on the installment plan nine dollars' worth of furniture--the scant minimum of necessities. They calculated that, by careful saving, they could pay off the debt in a year or so--unless one or the other fell ill or lost work. "That means," said Etta, eyeing their flimsy and all but downright worthless purchases, "that means we'll still be paying when this furniture'll be gone to pieces and fit only for kindling."

"It's the best we can do," replied Susan. "Maybe one of us'll get a better job."

"_You_ could, I'm sure, if you had the clothes," said Etta. "But not in those rags."

"If I had the clothes? Where?"

"At Shillito's or one of the other department stores. They'd give us both places in one of the men's departments. They like pretty girls for those places--if they're not giddy and don't waste time flirting but use flirtation to sell goods. But what's the sense in talking about it? You haven't got the clothes. A saleslady's got to be counter-dressed. She can look as bad as she pleases round the skirt and the feet. But from the waist up she has to look natty, if she wants wages."

Susan had seen these girls; she understood now why they looked as if they were the put together upper and lower halves of two different persons. She recalled that, even though they went into other business, they still retained the habit, wore toilets that were counterbuilt. She revolved the problem of getting one of these toilets and of securing a store job. But she soon saw it was hopeless, for the time. Every cent the three had was needed to keep from starving and freezing. Also--though she did not realize it--her young enthusiasm was steadily being sapped by the life she was leading. It may have been this rather than natural gentleness--or perhaps it was as much the one as the other--that kept Susan from taking Matson's advice and hardening herself into a forelady. The ruddy glow under her skin had given place to, the roundness of her form had gone, and its pallor; beauty remained only because she had a figure which not even emaciation could have deprived of lines of alluring grace. But she was no longer quite so straight, and her hair, which it was a sheer impossibility to care for, was losing its soft vitality.

She was still pretty, but not the beauty she had been when she was ejected from the cla.s.s in which she was bred. However, she gave the change in herself little thought; it was the rapid decline of Etta's prettiness and freshness that worried her most.

Not many weeks after the fire and the deeper plunge, she began to be annoyed by Ashbel. In his clumsy, clownish way he was making advances to her. Several times he tried to kiss her.

Once, when Etta was out, he opened the door of the room where she was taking a bath in a washtub she had borrowed of the janitress, leered in at her and very reluctantly obeyed her sharp order to close the door. She had long known that he was in reality very different from the silent restrained person fear of his father made him seem to be. But she thought even the reality was far above the rest of the young men growing up among those degrading influences.

The intrusion into her room was on a Sunday; on the following Sunday he came back as soon as Etta went out. "Look here, Lorny," said he, with bl.u.s.tering tone and gesture, "I want to have a plain talk with you. I'm sick and tired of this. There's got to be a change."

"Sick of what?" asked Susan.

"Of the way you stand me off." He plumped himself sullenly down on the edge of hers and Etta's bed. "I can't afford to get married. I've got to stick by you two."

"It strikes me, Ashbel, we all need each other. Who'd marry you on seven a week?" She laughed good-humoredly. "Anyhow, _you_ wouldn't support a wife. It takes the hardest kind of work to get your share of the expenses out of you. You always try to beat us down to letting you off with two fifty a week."

"That's about all Etta pays."

"It's about all she gets. And _I_ pay three fifty--and she and I do all the work--and give you two meals and a lunch to take with you--and you've got a room alone--and your mending done. I guess you know when you're well off."

"But I ain't well off," he cried. "I'm a grown-up man--and I've got to have a woman."

Susan had become used to tenement conditions. She said, practically, "Well--there's your left over four dollars a week."

"Huh!" retorted he. "Think I'm goin' to run any risks? I'm no fool. I take care of my health."

"Well--don't bother me with your troubles--at least, troubles of that sort."

"Yes, but I will!" shouted he, in one of those sudden furies that seize upon the stupid ignorant. "You needn't act so nifty with me. I'm as good as you are. I'm willing to marry you."

"No, thanks," said Susan. "I'm not free to marry--even if I would."

"Oh--you ain't?" For an instant his curiosity, as she thus laid a hand upon the curtain over her past, distracted his uncertain attention. But her expression, reserved, cold, maddeningly reminding him of a cla.s.s distinction of which he was as sensitively conscious as she was unconscious--her expression brought him back with a jerk. "Then you'll have to live with me, anyhow. I can't stand it, and I'm not goin' to.

If you want me to stay on here, and help out, you've got to treat me right. Other fellows that do as I'm doing get treated right. And I've got to be, too--or I'll clear out." And he squirmed, and waggled his head and slapped and rubbed his heavy, powerful legs.

"Why, Ashbel," said Susan, patting him on the shoulder. "You and I are like brother and sister. You might as well talk this way to Etta."

He gave her a brazen look, uttered a laugh that was like the flinging out of a bucket of filth. "Why not? Other fellows that have to support the family and can't afford to marry gets took care of." Susan shrank away. But Ashbel did not notice it. "It ain't a question of Etta," he went on. "There's you--and I don't need to look nowhere else."

Susan had long since lost power to be shocked by any revelation of the doings of people lashed out of all civilized feelings by the incessant brutal whips of poverty and driven back to the state of nature. She had never happened to hear definitely of this habit--even custom--of incestuous relations; now that she heard, she instantly accepted it as something of which she had really known for some time. At any rate, she had no sense of shock. She felt no horror, no deep disgust, simply the distaste into which her original sense of horror had been thinned down by constant contact with poverty's conditions--just as filth no longer made her shudder, so long as it did not touch her own person.

"You'd better go and chase yourself round the square a few times," said she, turning away and taking up some mending.

"You see, there ain't no way out of it," pursued he, with an insinuating grin.

Susan gave him a steady, straight look. "Don't ever speak of it again," said she quietly. "You ought to be ashamed--and you will be when you think it over."

He laughed loudly. "I've thought it over. I mean what I say. If you don't do the square thing by me, you drive me out."

He came hulking up to her, tried to catch her in his big powerful arms. She put the table between him and her. He kicked it aside and came on. She saw that her move had given him a false impression--a notion that she was afraid of him, was coquetting with him. She opened the door leading into the front part of the flat where the Quinlan family lived. "If you don't behave yourself, I'll call Mr. Quinlan," said she, not the least bl.u.s.ter or fear or nervousness in her tone.

"What'd be the use? He'd only laugh. Why, the same thing's going on in their family."

"Still, he'd lynch you if I told him what _you_ were trying to do."

Even Ashbel saw this familiar truth of human nature. The fact that Quinlan was guilty himself, far from staying him from meting out savage justice to another, would make him the more relentless and eager. "All right," said he. "Then you want me to git out?"

"I want you to behave yourself and stay on. Go take a walk, Ashbel."

And Ashbel went. But his expression was not rea.s.suring; Susan feared he had no intention of accepting his defeat. However, she reasoned that numbskull though he was, he yet had wit enough to realize how greatly to his disadvantage any change he could make would be. She did not speak of the matter to Etta, who was therefore taken completely by surprise when Ashbel, after a silent supper that evening, burst out with his grievance:

"I'm going to pack up," said he. "I've found a place where I'll be treated right." He looked haughtily at Susan. "And the daughter's a good looker, too. She's got some weight on her. She ain't like a washed out string."

Etta understood at once. "What a low-down thing you are!" she cried. "Just like the rest of these filthy tenement house animals. I thought _you_ had some pride."

"Oh, shut up!" bawled Ashbel. "You're not such a much. What're we, anyhow, to put on airs? We're as common as dirt--yes, and that sniffy lady friend of yours, too. Where'd she come from, anyhow? Some dung pile, I'll bet."

He went into his room, reappeared with his few belongings done into a bundle. "So long," said he, stalking toward the hall door.

Etta burst into tears, caught him by the arm. "You ain't goin', are you, Ashy?" cried she.

"Bet your life. Let me loose." And he shook her off. "I'm not goin' to be saddled with two women that ain't got no grat.i.tude."

"My G.o.d, Lorna!" wailed Etta. "Talk to him. Make him stay."