Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise Part 33

She fell to searching her memory diligently for an answer. "I'm not sure, but I think they speak oftenest of how I never used to like anybody to take my hand and help me along, even when I was barely able to walk. They say I always insisted on trudging along by myself."

Burlingham nodded, slapped his knee. "I can believe it," he cried. "I always ask everybody that question to see whether I've sited 'em up right. I rather think I hit you off to a T--as you faced me at dinner yesterday in the hotel. Speaking of dinner--let's go sit in on the one I smell."

They returned to the cabin where, to make a table, a board had been swung between the backs of the second and third benches from the front on the left side of the aisle. Thus the three men sat on the front bench with their legs thrust through between seat and back, while the three women sat in dignity and comfort on the fourth bench. Susan thought the dinner by no means justified Miss Anstruther's pessimism. It was good in itself, and the better for being in this happy-go-lucky way, in this happy-go-lucky company. Once they got started, all the grouchiness disappeared. Susan, young and optimistic and determined to be pleased, soon became accustomed to the looks of her new companions--that matter of mere exterior about which we shallow surface-skimmers make such a mighty fuss, though in the test situations of life, great and small, it amounts to precious little. They were all human beings, and the girl was unspoiled, did not think of them as failures, half-wolves, of no social position, of no standing in the respectable world. She still had much of the natural democracy of children, and she admired these new friends who knew so much more than she did, who had lived, had suffered, had come away from horrible battles covered with wounds, the scars of which they would bear into the grave--battles they had lost; yet they had not given up, but had lived on, smiling, courageous, kind of heart. It was their kind hearts that most impressed her--their kind taking in of her whom those she loved had cast out--her, the unknown stranger, helpless and ignorant. And what Spenser had told her about the stage and its people made her almost believe that they would not cast her out, though they knew the dreadful truth about her birth.

Tempest told a story that was "broad." While the others laughed, Susan gazed at him with a puzzled expression. She wished to be polite, to please, to enjoy. But what that story meant she could not fathom. Miss Anstruther jeered at her. "Look at the innocent," she cried.

"Shut up, Vi," retorted Miss Connemora. "It's no use for us to try to be anything but what we are. Still, let the baby alone."

"Yes--let her alone," said Burlingham.

"It'll soak in soon enough," Miss Connemora went on. "No use rubbing it in."

"What?" said Susan, thinking to show her desire to be friendly, to be one of them.

"Dirt," said Burlingham dryly. "And don't ask any more questions."

When the three women had cleared away the dinner and had stowed the dishes in one of the many cubbyholes along the sides of the cabin, the three men got ready for a nap. Susan was delighted to see them drop to the tops of the backs of the seats three berths which fitted snugly into the walls when not in use. She saw now that there were five others of the same kind, and that there was a contrivance of wires and curtains by which each berth could be shut off to itself. She had a thrilling sense of being in a kind of Swiss Family Robinson storybook come to life. She unpacked her bag, contributed the food in it to the common store, spread out her serge suit which Miss Anstruther offered to press and insisted on pressing, though Susan protested she could do it herself quite well.

"You'll want to put it on for the arrival at Sutherland," said Mabel Connemora.

"No," replied Susan nervously. "Not till tomorrow."

She saw the curious look in all their eyes at sight of that dress, so different from the calico she was wearing. Mabel took her out on the forward deck where there was an awning and a good breeze. They sat there, Mabel talking, Susan gazing rapt at land and water and at the actress, and listening as to a fairy story--for the actress had lived through many and strange experiences in the ten years since she left her father's roof in Columbia, South Carolina. Susan listened and absorbed as a dry sponge dropped into a pail of water. At her leisure she would think it all out, would understand, would learn.

"Now, tell _me_ about _your_self," said Mabel when she had exhausted all the reminiscences she could recall at the moment--all that were fit for a "baby's" ears.

"I will, some time," said Susan, who was ready for the question.

"But I can't--not yet."

"It seems to me you're very innocent," said Mabel, "even for a well-brought-up girl. _I_ was well brought up, too. I wish to G.o.d my mother had told me a few things. But no--not a thing."

"What do you mean?" inquired Susan.

That set the actress to probing the girl's innocence--what she knew and what she did not. It had been many a day since Miss Connemora had had so much pleasure. "Well!" she finally said. "I never would have believed it--though I know these things are so.

Now I'm going to teach you. Innocence may be a good thing for respectable women who are going to marry and settle down with a good husband to look after them. But it won't do at all--not at all, my dear!--for a woman who works--who has to meet men in their own world and on their own terms. It's hard enough to get along, if you know. If you don't--when you're knocked down, you stay knocked down."

"Yes--I want to learn," said Susan eagerly. "I want to know--_everything!_"

"You're not going back?" Mabel pointed toward the sh.o.r.e, to a home on a hillside, with a woman sewing on the front steps and children racing about the yard. "Back to that sort of thing?"

"No," replied Susan. "I've got nothing to go back to."

"Nonsense!"

"Nothing," repeated Susan in the same simple, final way. "I'm an outcast."

The ready tears sprang to Mabel's dissipated but still bright eyes. Susan's unconscious pathos was so touching. "Then I'll educate you. Now don't get horrified or scandalized at me. When you feel that way, remember that Mabel Connemora didn't make the world, but G.o.d. At least, so they say--though personally I feel as if the devil had charge of things, and the only G.o.d was in us poor human creatures fighting to be decent. I tell you, men and women ain't bad--not so d.a.m.n bad--excuse me; they will slip out.

No, it's the things that happen to them or what they're afraid'll happen--it's those things that compel them to be bad--and get them in the way of being bad--hard to each other, and to hate and to lie and to do all sorts of things."

The show boat drifted placidly down with the current of the broad Ohio. Now it moved toward the left bank and now toward the right, as the current was deflected by the bends--the beautiful curves that divided the river into a series of lovely, lake-like reaches, each with its emerald oval of hills and rolling valleys where harvests were ripening. And in the shadow of the awning Susan heard from those pretty, coa.r.s.e lips, in language softened indeed but still far from refined, about all there is to know concerning the causes and consequences of the eternal struggle that rages round s.e.x. To make her tale vivid, Mabel ill.u.s.trated it by the story of her own life from girlhood to the present hour. And she omitted no detail necessary to enforce the lesson in life. A few days before Susan would not have believed, would not have understood. Now she both believed and understood. And nothing that Mabel told her--not the worst of the possibilities in the world in which she was adventuring--burned deep enough to penetrate beyond the wound she had already received and to give her a fresh sensation of pain and horror.

"You don't seem to be horrified," said Mabel.

Susan shook her head. "No," she said. "I feel--somehow I feel better."

Mabel eyed her curiously--had a sense of a mystery of suffering which she dared not try to explore. She said: "Better? That's queer. You don't take it at all as I thought you would."

Said Susan: "I had about made up my mind it was all bad. I see that maybe it isn't."

"Oh, the world isn't such a bad place--in lots of ways. You'll get a heap of fun out of it if you don't take things or yourself seriously. I wish to G.o.d I'd had somebody to tell me, instead of having to spell it out, a letter at a time. I've got just two pieces of advice to give you." And she stopped speaking and gazed away toward the sh.o.r.e with a look that seemed to be piercing the hills.

"Please do," urged Susan, when Mabel's long mood of abstraction tried her patience.

"Oh--yes--two pieces of advice. The first is, don't drink.

There's nothing to it--and it'll play h.e.l.l--excuse me--it'll spoil your looks and your health and give you a woozy head when you most need a steady one. Don't drink--that's the first advice."

"I won't," said Susan.

"Oh, yes, you will. But remember my advice all the same. The second is, don't sell your body to get a living, unless you've got to."

"I couldn't do that," said the girl.

Mabel laughed queerly. "Oh, yes, you could--and will. But remember my advice. Don't sell your body because it seems to be the easy way to make a living. I know most women get their living that way."

"Oh--no--no, indeed!" protested Susan.

"What a child you are!" laughed Mabel. "What's marriage but that?. . . Believe your Aunt Betsy, it's the poorest way to make a living that ever was invented--marriage or the other thing.

Sometimes you'll be tempted to. You're pretty, and you'll find yourself up against it with no way out. You'll have to give in for a time, no doubt. The men run things in this world, and they'll compel it--one way or another. But fight back to your feet again. If I'd taken my own advice, my name would be on every dead wall in New York in letters two feet high.

Instead----" She laughed, without much bitterness. "And why? All because I never learned to stand alone. I've even supported men--to have something to lean on! How's that for a poor fool?"

There Violet Anstruther called her. She rose. "You won't take my advice," she said by way of conclusion. "n.o.body'll take advice.

n.o.body can. We ain't made that way. But don't forget what I've said. And when you've wobbled way off maybe it'll give you something to steer back by."

Susan sat on there, deep in the deepest of those brown studies that had been characteristic of her from early childhood.

Often--perhaps most often--abstraction means only mental fogginess. But Susan happened to be of those who can concentrate--can think things out. And that afternoon, oblivious of the beauty around her, even unconscious of where she was, she studied the world of reality--that world whose existence, even the part of it lying within ourselves, we all try to ignore or to evade or to deny, and get soundly punished for our folly.

Taking advantage of the floods of light Mabel Connemora had let in upon her--full light where there had been a dimness that was equal to darkness--she drew from the closets of memory and examined all the incidents of her life--all that were typical or for other reasons important. One who comes for the first time into new surroundings sees more, learns more about them in a brief period than has been seen and known by those who have lived there always. After a few hours of recalling and reconstructing Susan Lenox understood Sutherland probably better than she would have understood it had she lived a long eventless life there. And is not every Sutherland the world in miniature?

She also understood her own position--why the world of respectability had cast her out as soon as she emerged from childhood--why she could not have hoped for the lot to which other girls looked forward--why she belonged with the outcasts, in a world apart--and must live her life there. She felt that she could not hope to be respected, loved, married. She must work out her destiny along other lines. She understood it all, more clearly than would have been expected of her. And it is important to note that she faced her future without repining or self-pity, without either joy or despondency. She would go on; she would do as best she could. And nothing that might befall could equal what she had suffered in the throes of the casting out.

Burlingham roused her from her long reverie. He evidently had come straight from his nap--stocking feet, s.h.i.+rt open at the collar, trousers sagging and face s.h.i.+ny with the sweat that acc.u.mulates during sleep on a hot day. "Round that bend ahead of us is Sutherland," said he, pointing forward.

Up she started in alarm.

"Now, don't get fractious," cried he cheerfully. "We'll not touch sh.o.r.e for an hour, at least. And n.o.body's allowed aboard.

You can keep to the cabin. I'll see that you're not bothered."

"And--this evening?"