They made the tour less rapidly but still keeping their heads and their glances timidly down. They were numb with the cold now. To the sharp agony had succeeded an ache like the steady grinding pain of rheumatism. Etta broke the silence with, "Maybe we ought to go into a house."
"A house! Oh—you mean a—a sporting house." At that time professional prostitution had not become widespread among the working class; stationary or falling wages, advancing cost of food and developing demand for comfort and luxury had as yet only begun to produce their inevitable results. Thus, prostitution as an industry was in the main segregated in certain streets and certain houses and the prostitutes were a distinct class.
"You haven't been?" inquired Etta.
"No," said Susan.
"Dan Cassatt and Kate told me about those places," Etta went on. "Kate says they're fine and the girls make fifty and sometimes a hundred dollars a week, and have everything—servants to wait on them, good food, bathrooms, lovely clothes, and can drive out. But I—I think I'd stay in the house."
"I want to be my own boss," said Susan.
"There's another side than what Kate says," continued Etta as consecutively as her chattering teeth would permit. "She heard from a madam that wants her to come. But Dan heard from Minnie—she used to be in one—and she says the girls are slaves, that they're treated like dogs and have to take anything. She says it's something dreadful the way men act—even the gentlemen. She says the madam fixes things so that every girl always owes her money and don't own a stitch to her back, and so couldn't leave if she wanted to."
"That sounds more like the truth," said Susan.
"But we mayhaveto go," pleaded Etta. "It's awful cold—and if we went, at least we'd have a warm place. If we wanted to leave, why, we couldn't be any worse off for clothes than we are."
Susan had no answer for this argument. They went several squares up Vine Street in silence. Then Etta burst out again:
"I'm frozen through and through, Lorna, and I'm dead tired—and hungry. The wind's cutting the flesh off my bones. What in the hell does it matter what becomes of us? Let's get warm, for God's sake. Let's go to a house. They're in Longworth Street—the best ones."
And she came to a halt, forcing Susan to halt also. It happened to be the corner of Eighth Street. Susan saw the iron fence, the leafless trees of Garfield Place. "Let's go down this way," said she. "I had luck here once."
"Luck!" said Etta, her curiosity triumphant over all.
Susan's answer was a strange laugh. Ahead of them, a woman warmly and showily dressed was sauntering along. "That's one of them," said Etta. "Let's see howshedoes it. We've got to learn quick. I can't stand this cold much longer."
The two girls, their rags fluttering about their miserable bodies, kept a few feet behind the woman, watched her with hollow eyes of envy and fear. Tears of anguish from the cold were streaming down their cheeks. Soon a man alone—a youngish man with a lurching step—came along. They heard the woman say, "Hello, dear. Don't be in a hurry."
He tried to lurch past her, but she seized him by the lapel of his overcoat. "Lemme go," said he. "You're old enough to be a grandmother, you old hag."
Susan and Etta halted and, watching so interestedly that they forgot themselves, heard her laugh at his insult, heard her say wheedlingly, "Come along, dearie, I'll treat you right. You're the kind of a lively, joky fellow I like."
"Go to hell, gran'ma," said the man, roughly shaking her off and lurching on toward the two girls. He stopped before them, eyed them by the light of the big electric lamp, grinned good-naturedly. "What've we got here?" said he. "This looks better."
The woman rushed toward the girls, pouring out a stream of vileness. "You git out of here!" she shrilled. "You chippies git off my beat. I'll have you pinched—I will!"
"Shut up!" cried the drunken man, lifting his fist. "I'll haveyoupinched. Let these ladies alone, they're friends of mine. Do you want me to call the cop?"
The woman glanced toward the corner where a policeman was standing, twirling his club. She turned away, cursing horribly. The man laughed. "Dirty old hag—isn't she?" said he. "Don't look so scared, birdies." He caught them each by an arm, stared woozily at Etta. "You're a good little looker, you are. Come along with me. There's three in it."
"I—I can't leave my lady friend," Etta succeeded in chattering."Please really I can't."
"Your lady friend?" He turned his drunken head in Susan's direction, squinted at her. He was rather good-looking. "Oh—she meansyou. Fact is, I'm so soused I thought I was seein' double. Why,you'rea peach. I'll take you." And he released his hold on Etta to seize her. "Come right along, my lovey-dovey dear."
Susan drew away; she was looking at him with terror and repulsion. The icy blast swept down the street, sawed into her flesh savagely.
"I'll giveyoufive," said the drunken man. "Come along." He grabbed her arm, waved his other hand at Etta. "So long, blondie. 'Nother time. Good luck."
Susan heard Etta's gasp of horror. She wrenched herself free again. "I guess I'd better go with him," said she to Etta.
Etta began to sob. "Oh, Lorna!" she moaned. "It's awful."
"You go into the restaurant on the corner and get something to eat, and wait for me. We can afford to spend the money. And you'll be warm there."
"Here! Here!" cried the tipsy man. "What're you two whispering about? Come along, skinny. No offense. I like 'em slim." And he made coarse and pointed remarks about the sluggishness of fat women, laughing loudly at his own wit.
The two girls did not hear. The wind straight from the Arctic was plying its hideous lash upon their defenseless bodies.
"Come on, lovey!" cried the man. "Let's go in out of the cold."
"Oh, Lorna! You can't go with a drunken man! I'll—I'll take him. I can stand it better'n you. You can go when there's a gentleman——"
"You don't know," said Susan. "Didn't I tell you I'd been through the worst?"
"Are you coming?" broke in the man, shaking his head to scatter the clouds over his sight.
The cold was lashing Susan's body; and she was seeing the tenement she had left—the vermin crawling, the filth everywhere, the meal bugs in the rotting corn meal—and Jeb Ferguson. "Wait in the restaurant," said she to Etta. "Didn't I tell you I'm a nobody. This is what's expected of me." The wind clawed and tore at her quivering flesh. "It's cold, Etta. Go get warm. Good-by."
She yielded to the tipsy man's tugging at her arm. Etta stood as if paralyzed, watching the two move slowly westward. But cold soon triumphed over horror. She retraced her steps toward Vine Street. At the corner stood an elderly man with an iron-gray beard. She merely glanced at him in passing, and so was startled when he said in a low voice:
"Go back the way you came. I'll join you." She glanced at him again, saw a gleam in his eyes that assured her she had not imagined the request. Trembling and all at once hot, she kept on across the street. But instead of going into the restaurant she walked past it and east through dark Eighth Street. A few yards, and she heard a quiet step behind her. A few yards more, and the lights of Vine Street threw a man's shadow upon the sidewalk beside her. From sheer fright she halted. The man faced her—a man old enough to be her father, a most respectable, clean looking man with a certain churchly though hardly clerical air about him. "Good evening, miss," said he.
"Good evening," she faltered.
"I'm a stranger—in town to buy goods and have a little fun," stammered he with a grotesque attempt to be easy and familiar. "I thought maybe you could help me."
A little fun! Etta's lips opened, but no words came. The cold was digging its needle-knives into flesh, into bone, into nerve. Through the man's thick beard and mustache came the gleam of large teeth, the twisting of thick raw lips. A little fun!
"Would it," continued the man, nervously, "would it be very dear?"
"I—I don't know," faltered Etta.
"I could afford—say—" he looked at her dress—"say—two dollars."
"I—I" And again Etta could get no further.
"The room'd be a dollar," pleaded the man. "That'd make it three."
"I—I—can't," burst out Etta, hysterical. "Oh, please let me alone. I—I'm a good girl, but I do need money. But I—I can't. Oh, for God's sake—I'm so cold—so cold!"
The man was much embarrassed. "Oh, I'm sorry," he said feelingly. "That's right—keep your virtue. Go home to your parents." He was at ease now; his voice was greasy and his words sleek with the unction of an elder. "I thought you were a soiled dove. I'm glad you spoke out—glad for my sake as well as your own. I've got a daughter about your age. Go home, my dear, and stay a good girl. I know it's hard sometimes; but never give up your purity—never!" And he lifted his square-topped hard hat and turned away.
Suddenly Etta felt again the fury of the winter night and icy wind. As that wind flapped her thin skirt and tortured her flesh, she cried, "Wait—please. I was just—just fooling."
The man had halted, but he was looking at her uncertainly. Etta put her hand on his arm and smiled pertly up at him—smiled as she had seen other street girls smile in the days when she despised them. "I'll go—if you'll give me three."
"I—I don't think I care to go now. You sort of put me out of the humor."
"Well—two, then." She gave a reckless laugh. "God, how cold it is! Anybody'd go to hell to get warm a night like this."
"You are a very pretty girl," said the man. He was warmly dressed; his was not the thin blood of poverty. He could not have appreciated what she was feeling. "You're sure you want to go? You're sure it's your—your business?"
"Yes. I'm strange in this part of town. Do you know a place?"
An hour later Etta went into the appointed restaurant. Her eyes searched anxiously for Susan, but did not find her. She inquired at the counter. No one had asked there for a young lady. This both relieved her and increased her nervousness; Susan had not come and gone—but would she come? Etta was so hungry that she could hold out no longer. She sat at a table near the door and took up the large sheet on which was printed the bill of fare. She was almost alone in the place, as it was between dinner and supper. She read the bill thoroughly, then ordered black bean soup, a sirloin steak and German fried potatoes. This, she had calculated, would cost altogether a dollar; undoubtedly an extravagance, but everything at that restaurant seemed dear in comparison with the prices to which she had been used, and she felt horribly empty. She ordered the soup, to stay her while the steak was broiling.
As soon as the waiter set down bread and butter she began upon it greedily. As the soup came, in walked Susan—calm and self-possessed, Etta saw at first glance. "I've been so frightened. You'll have a plate of soup?" asked Etta, trying to look and speak in unconcerned fashion.
"No, thank you," replied Susan, seating herself opposite.
"There's a steak coming—a good-sized one, the waiter said it'd be."
"Very well."
Susan spoke indifferently.
"Aren't you hungry?"
"I don't know. I'll see." Susan was gazing straight ahead. Her eyes were distinctly gray—gray and as hard as Susan Lenox's eyes could be.
"What're you thinking about?"
"I don't know," she laughed queerly.
"Was—it—dreadful?"
A pause, then: "Nothing is going to be dreadful to me any more.It's all in the game, as Mr. Burlingham used to say."
"Burlingham—who's he?" It was Etta's first faint clew toward that mysterious past of Susan's into which she longed to peer.
"Oh—a man I knew. He's dead."
A long pause, Etta watching Susan's unreadable face. At last she said:
"You don't seem a bit excited."
Susan came back to the present. "Don't I? Your soup's getting cold."
Etta ate several spoonfuls, then said with an embarrassed attempt at a laugh, "I—I went, too."
Susan slowly turned upon Etta her gaze—the gaze of eyes softening, becoming violet. Etta's eyes dropped and the color flooded into her fair skin. "He was an old man—forty or maybe fifty," she explained nervously. "He gave me two dollars. I nearly didn't get him. I lost my nerve and told him I was good and was only starting because I needed money."
"Never whine," said Susan. "It's no use. Take what comes, and wait for a winning hand."
Etta looked at her in a puzzled way. "How queer you talk! Not a bit like yourself. You sound so much older. . . . And your eyes—they don't look natural at all."
Indeed they looked supernatural. The last trace of gray was gone. They were of the purest, deepest violet, luminous, mysterious, with that awe-inspiring expression of utter aloneness. But as Etta spoke the expression changed. The gray came back and with it a glance of irony. Said she:
"Oh—nonsense! I'm all right."
"I didn't mind nearly as much as I thought I would. Yes, I'll get used to it."
"You mustn't," said Susan.
"But I've got to."
"We've got to do it, but we haven't got to get used to it," replied Susan.
Etta was still puzzling at this when the dinner now came—a fine, thick broiled steak, the best steak Susan had ever seen, and the best food Etta had ever seen.
They had happened upon one of those famous Cincinnati chop houses where in plain surroundings the highest quality of plain food is served. "Youarehungry, aren't you, Lorna?" said Etta.
"Yes—I'm hungry," declared Susan. "Cut it—quick."
"Draught beer or bottled?" asked the waiter.
"Bring us draught beer," said Etta. "I haven't tasted beer since our restaurant burned."
"I never tasted it," said Susan. "But I'll try it tonight."
Etta cut two thick slices from the steak, put them on Susan's plate with some of the beautifully browned fried potatoes. "Gracious, they have good things to eat here!" she exclaimed. Then she cut two thick slices for herself, and filled her mouth. Her eyes glistened, the color came into her pale cheeks. "Isn't itgrand!" she cried, when there was room for words to pass out.
"Grand," agreed Susan, a marvelous change of expression in her face also.
The beer came. Etta drank a quarter of the tall glass at once. Susan tasted, rather liked the fresh bitter-sweet odor and flavor. "Is it—very intoxicating?" she inquired.
"If you drink enough," said Etta. "But not one glass."
Susan took quite a drink. "I feel a lot less tired already," declared she.
"Me too," said Etta. "My, what a meal! I never had anything like this in my life. When I think what we've been through! Lorna, will itlast?"
"We mustn't think about that," said Susan.
"Tell me what happened to you."
"Nothing. He gave me the money, that was all."
"Then we've got seven dollars—seven dollars and twenty cents, with what we brought away from home with us."
"Seven dollars—and twenty cents," repeated Susan thoughtfully.Then a queer smile played around the corners of her mouth."Seven dollars—that's a week's wages for both of us at Matson's."
"But I'd go back to honest work tomorrow—if I could find a good job," Etta said eagerly—too eagerly. "Wouldn't you, Lorna?"
"I don't know," replied Susan. She had the inability to make pretenses, either to others or to herself, which characterizes stupid people and also the large, simple natures.
"Oh, you can't mean that!" protested Etta. Instead of replying Susan began to talk of what to do next. "We must find a place to sleep, and we must buy a few things to make a better appearance."
"I don't dare spend anything yet," said Etta. "I've got only my two dollars. Not that when this meal's paid for."
"We're going to share even," said Susan. "As long as either has anything, it belongs to both."
The tears welled from Etta's eyes. "You are too good, Lorna! You mustn't be. It isn't the way to get on. Anyhow, I can't accept anything from you. You wouldn't take anything from me."
"We've got to help each other up," insisted Susan. "We share even—and let's not talk any more about it. Now, what shall we get? How much ought we to lay out?"
The waiter here interrupted. "Beg pardon, young ladies," said he. "Over yonder, at the table four down, there's a couple of gents that'd like to join you. I seen one of 'em flash quite a roll, and they acts too like easy spenders."
As Susan was facing that way, she examined them. They were young men, rather blond, with smooth faces, good-natured eyes and mouths; they were well dressed—one, the handsomer, notably so. Susan merely glanced; both men at once smiled at her with an unimpertinent audacity that probably came out of the champagne bottle in a silver bucket of ice on their table.
"Shall I tell 'em to come over?" said the waiter.
"Yes," replied Susan.
She was calm, but Etta twitched with nervousness, saying, "I wish I'd had your experience. I wish we didn't look so dreadful—me especially.I'm not pretty enough to stand out against these awful clothes."
The two men were pushing eagerly toward them, the taller and less handsome slightly in advance. He said, his eyes upon Susan, "We were lonesome, and you looked a little that way too. We're much obliged." He glanced at the waiter. "Another bottle of the same."
"I don't want anything to drink," said Susan.
"Nor I," chimed in Etta. "No, thank you."
The young man waved the waiter away with, "Get it for my friend and me, then." He smiled agreeably at Susan. "You won't mind my friend and me drinking?"
"Oh, no."
"And maybe you'll change your mind," said the shorter man toEtta. "You see, if we all drink, we'll get acquainted faster.Don't you like champagne?"
"I never tasted it," Etta confessed.
"Neither did I," admitted Susan.
"You're sure to like it," said the taller man to Susan—his friend presently addressed him as John. "Nothing equal to it for making friends. I like it for itself, and I like it for the friends it has made me."
Champagne was not one of the commonplaces of that modest chop house. So the waiter opened the bottle with much ceremony. Susan and Etta startled when the cork popped ceilingward in the way that in such places is still regarded as fashionable. They watched with interested eyes the pouring of the beautiful pale amber liquid, were fascinated when they saw how the bubbles surged upward incessantly, imprisoned joys thronging to escape. And after the first glass, the four began to have the kindliest feelings for each other. Sorrow and shame, poverty and foreboding, took wings unto themselves and flew away. The girls felt deliciously warm and contented, and thought the young men charming—a splendid change from the coarse, badly dressed youths of the tenement, with their ignorant speech and rough, misshapen hands. They were ashamed of their own hands, were painfully self-conscious whenever lifting the glass to the lips brought them into view. Etta's hands in fact were not so badly spoiled as might have been expected, considering her long years of rough work; the nails were in fairly good condition and the skin was rougher to the touch than to the sight. Susan's hands had not really been spoiled as yet. She had been proud of them and had taken care of them; still, they were not the hands of a lady, but of a working girl. The young men had gentlemen's hands—strong, evidently exercised only at sports, not at degrading and deforming toil.
The shorter and handsomer youth, who answered to the name of Fatty, for obvious but not too obvious reasons, addressed himself to Etta. John—who, it came out, was a Chicagoan, visiting Fatty—fell to Susan. The champagne made him voluble; he was soon telling all about himself—a senior at Ann Arbor, as was Fatty also; he intended to be a lawyer; he was fond of a good, time was fond of the girls—liked girls who were gay rather than respectable ones—"because with the prim girls you have to quit just as the fun ought really to begin."
After two glasses Susan, warned by a slight dizziness, stopped drinking; Etta followed her example. But the boys kept on, ordered a second bottle. "This is the fourth we've had tonight," said Fatty proudly when it came.
"Don't it make you dizzy?" asked Etta.
"Not a bit," Fatty assured her. But she noticed that his tongue now swung trippingly loose.
"You haven't been at—at this—long, have you?" inquired John of Susan.
"Not long," replied she.
Etta, somewhat giddied, overheard and put in, "We began tonight.We got tired of starving and freezing."
John looked deepest sympathy into Susan's calm violet-gray eyes. "I don't blame you," said he. "A woman does have a—a hades of a time!"
"We were going out to buy some clothes when you came," proceededEtta. "We're in an awful state."
"I wondered how two girls with faces like yours," said John, "came to be dressed so—so differently. That was what first attracted us." Then, as Etta and Fatty were absorbed in each other, he went on to Susan: "And your eyes—I mustn't forget them. You certainly have got a beautiful face. And your mouth—so sweet and sad—but, what a lovely,lovelysmile!"
At this Susan smiled still more broadly with pleasure. "I'm glad you're pleased," said she.
"Why, if you were dressed up——
"You're not a working girl by birth, are you?"
"I wish I had been," said Susan.
"Oh, I think a girl's got as good a right as a man to have a good time," lied John.
"Don't say things you don't believe," said Susan. "It isn't necessary."
"I can hand that back to you. You weren't frank, yourself, when you said you wished you'd been born in the class of your friend—and of my friend Fatty, too."
Susan's laugh was confession. The champagne was dancing in her blood. She said with a reckless toss of the head:
"I was born nothing. So I'm free to become anything I please—anything except respectable."
Here Fatty broke in. "I'll tell you what let's do. Let's all go shopping. We can help you girls select your things."
Susan laughed. "We're going to buy about three dollars' worth.There won't be any selecting. We'll simply take the cheapest."
"Then—let's go shopping," said John, "and you two girls can help Fatty and me select clothes for you."
"That's the talk!" cried Fatty. And he summoned the waiter. "The bill," said he in the manner of a man who likes to enjoy the servility of servants.
"We hadn't paid for our supper," said Susan. "How much was it, Etta?"
"A dollar twenty-five."
"We're going to pay for that," said Fatty. "What d'ye take us for?"
"Oh, no. We must pay it," said Susan.
"Don't be foolish. Of course I'll pay."
"No," said Susan quietly, ignoring Etta's wink. And from her bosom she took a crumpled five-dollar bill.
"I should say youwerenew," laughed John. "You don't even know where to carry your money yet." And they all laughed, Susan and Etta because they felt gay and assumed the joke whatever it was must be a good one. Then John laid his hand over hers and said, "Put your money away."
Susan looked straight at him. "I can't allow it," she said. "I'm not that poor—yet."
John colored. "I beg your pardon," he said. And when the bill came he compelled Fatty to let her pay a dollar and a quarter of it out of her crumpled five. The two girls were fascinated by the large roll of bills—fives, tens, twenties—which Fatty took from his trousers pocket. They stared open-eyed when he laid a twenty on the waiter's plate along with Susan's five. And it frightened them when he, after handing Susan her change, had left only a two-dollar bill, four silver quarters and a dime. He gave the silver to the waiter.
"Was that for a tip?" asked Susan.
"Yes," said Fatty. "I always give about ten per cent of the bill unless it runs over ten dollars. In that case—a quarter a person as a rule. Of course, if the bill was very large, I'd give more." He was showing his amusement at her inquisitiveness.
"I wanted to know," explained she. "I'm very ignorant, and I've got to learn."
"That's right," said John, admiringly—with a touch of condescension. "Don't be afraid to confess ignorance."
"I'm not," replied Susan. "I used to be afraid of not being respectable and that was all. Now, I haven't any fear at all."
"You are a queer one!" exclaimed John. "You oughtn't to be in this life."
"Where then?" asked she.
"I don't know," he confessed.
"Neither do I." Her expression suddenly was absent, with a quaint, slight smile hovering about her lips. She looked at him merrily. "You see, it's got to be something that isn't respectable."
"Whatdoyou mean?" demanded he.
Her answer was a laugh.
Fatty declared it too cold to chase about afoot—"Anyhow, it's late—nearly eleven, and unless we're quick all the stores'll be closed." The waiter called them a carriage; its driver promised to take them to a shop that didn't close till midnight on Saturdays. Said Fatty, as they drove away:
"Well, I suppose, Etta, you'll say you've never been in a carriage before."
"Oh, yes, I have," cried Etta. "Twice—at funerals."
This made everyone laugh—this and the champagne and the air which no longer seemed cruel to the girls but stimulating, a grateful change from the close warmth of the room. As the boys were smoking cigarettes, they had the windows down. The faces of both girls were flushed and lively, and their cheeks seemed already to have filled out. The four made so much noise that the crowds on the sidewalk were looking at them—looking smilingly, delighted by the sight of such gayety. Susan was even gayer than Etta. She sang, she took a puff at John's cigarette; then laughed loudly when he seized and kissed her, laughed again as she kissed him; and she and John fell into each other's arms and laughed uproariously as they saw Fatty and Etta embracing.
The driver kept his promise; eleven o'clock found them bursting into Sternberg's, over the Rhine—a famous department store for Germans of all classes. They had an hour, and they made good use of it. Etta was for yielding to Fatty's generous urgings and buying right and left. But Susan would not have it. She told the men what she and Etta would take—a simple complete outfit, and no more. Etta wanted furs and finery. Susan kept her to plain, serviceable things. Only once did she yield. When Etta and Fatty begged to be allowed a big showy hat, Susan yielded—but gave John leave to buy her only the simplest of simple hats. "You needn't tellmeany yarns about your birth and breeding," said he in a low tone so that Etta should not hear.
But that subject did not interest Susan. "Let's forget it," said she, almost curtly. "I've cut out the past—and the future. Today's enough for me."
"And for me, too," protested he. "I hope you're having as good fun as I am."
"This is the first time I've really laughed in nearly a year," said she. "You don't know what it means to be poor and hungry and cold—worst of all, cold."
"You unhappy child," said John tenderly.
But Susan was laughing again, and making jokes about a wonderful German party dress all covered with beads and lace and ruffles and embroidery. When they reached the shoe department, Susan asked John to take Fatty away. He understood that she was ashamed of their patched and holed stockings, and hastened to obey. They were making these their last purchases when the big bell rang for the closing. "I'm glad these poor tired shopgirls and clerks are set free," said John.
It was one of those well-meaning but worthless commonplaces of word-kindness that get for their utterance perhaps exaggerated credit for "good heart." Susan, conscience-stricken, halted. "And I never once thought of them!" she exclaimed. "It just shows."
"Shows what?"
"Oh, nothing. Come on. I must forget that, for I can't be happy again till I do. I understand now why the comfortable people can be happy. They keep from knowing or they make themselves forget."
"Why not?" said John. "What's the use in being miserable about things that can't be helped?"
"No use at all," replied the girl. She laughed. "I've forgotten."
The carriage was so filled with their bundles that they had some difficulty in making room for themselves—finally accomplished it by each girl sitting on her young man's lap. They drove to a quietly placed, scrupulously clean little hotel overlooking Lincoln Park. "We're going to take rooms here and dress," explained Fatty. "Then we'll wander out and have some supper."
By this time Susan and Etta had lost all sense of strangeness. The spirit of adventure was rampant in them as in a dreaming child. And the life they had been living—what they had seen and heard and grown accustomed to—made it easy for them to strike out at once and briskly in the new road, so different from the dreary and cruel path along which they had been plodding. They stood laughing and joking in the parlor while the boys registered; then the four went up to two small but comfortable and fascinatingly clean rooms with a large bathroom between. "Fatty and I will go down to the bar while you two dress," said John.
"Not on your life!" exclaimed Fatty. "We'll have the bar brought up to us."
But John, fortified by Susan's look of gratitude for his tactfulness, whispered to his friend—what Susan could easily guess. And Fatty said, "Oh, I never thought of it. Yes, we'll give 'em a chance. Don't be long, girls."
"Thank you," said Susan to John.
"That's all right. Take your time."
Susan locked the hall door behind the two men. She rushed to the bathroom, turned on the hot water. "Oh, Etta!" she cried, tears in her eyes, a hysterical sob in her throat. "A bathtub again!"
Etta too was enthusiastic; but she had not that intense hysterical joy which Susan felt—a joy that can be appreciated only by a person who, clean by instinct and by lifelong habit, has been shut out from thorough cleanliness for long months of dirt and foul odors and cold. It was no easy matter to become clean again after all those months. But there was plenty of soap and brushes and towels, and at last the thing was accomplished. Then they tore open the bundles and arrayed themselves in the fresh new underclothes, in the simple attractive costumes of jacket, blouse and skirt. Susan had returned to her class, and had brought Etta with her.
"What shall we do with these?" asked Etta, pointing disdainfully with the toe of her new boot to the scatter of the garments they had cast off.
Susan looked down at it in horror. She could not believe thatshehad been wearing such stuff—that it was the clothing of all her associates of the past six months—was the kind of attire in which most of her fellow-beings went about the beautiful earth, She shuddered. "Isn't life dreadful?" she cried. And she kicked together the tattered, patched, stained trash, kicked it on to a large piece of heavy wrapping paper she had spread out upon the floor. Thus, without touching her discarded self, she got it wrapped up and bound with a strong string. She rang for the maid, gave her a quarter and pointed to the bundle. "Please take that and throw it away," she said.
When the maid was gone Etta said: "I'm mighty glad to have it out of the room."
"Out of the room?" cried Susan. "Out of my heart. Out of my life."
They put on their hats, admired themselves in the mirror, and descended—Susan remembering halfway that they had left the lights on and going back to turn them off. The door boy summoned the two young men to the parlor. They entered and exclaimed in real amazement. For they were facing two extremely pretty young women, one dark, the other fair. The two faces were wreathed in pleased and grateful smiles.
"Don't we look nice?" demanded Etta.
"Nice!" cried Fatty. "We sure did draw a pair of first prizes—didn't we, Johnny?"
John did not reply. He was gazing at Susan. Etta had young beauty but it was of the commonplace kind. In Susan's face and carriage there was far more than beauty. "Wheredidyou come from?" said John to her in an undertone. "Andwhereare you going?"
"Out to supper, I hope," laughed she.
"Your eyes change—don't they? I thought they were violet. NowI see they're gray—gray as can be."
AT lunch, well toward the middle of the following afternoon, Fatty—his proper name was August Gulick—said: "John and I don't start for Ann Arbor until a week from today. That means seven clear days. A lot can be done in that time, with a little intelligent hustling. What do you say, girls? Do you stick to us?"
"As long as you'll let us," said Etta, who was delighting Gulick with her frank and wondering and grateful appreciation of his munificence. Never before had his own private opinion of himself received such a flatteringly sweeping indorsement—from anyone who happened to impress him as worth while. In the last phrase lies the explanation of her success through a policy that is always dangerous and usually a failure.
So it was settled that with the quiet little hotel as headquarters the four would spend a week in exploring Cincinnati as a pleasure ground. Gulick knew the town thoroughly. His father was a brewer whose name was on many a huge beer wagon drawn about those streets by showy Clydesdales. Also he had plenty of money; and, while Redmond—for his friend was the son of Redmond, well known as a lawyer-politician in Chicago—had nothing like so much as Gulick, still he had enough to make a passable pretense at keeping up his end. For Etta and Susan the city had meant shabby to filthy tenements, toil and weariness and sorrow. There was opened to their ravished young eyes "the city"—what reveals itself to the pleasure-seeker with pocket well filled—what we usually think of when we pronounce its name, forgetting what its reality is for all but a favored few of those within its borders. It was a week of music and of laughter—music especially—music whenever they ate or drank, music to dance by, music in the beer gardens where they spent the early evenings, music at the road houses where they arrived in sleighs after the dances to have supper—unless you choose to call it breakfast. You would have said that Susan had slipped out of the tenement life as she had out of its garments, that she had retained not a trace of it even in memory. But—in those days began her habit of never passing a beggar without giving something.
Within three or four days this life brought a truly amazing transformation in the two girls. You would not have recognized in them the pale and wan and ragged outcasts of only the Saturday night before. "Aren't you happy?" said Etta to Susan, in one of the few moments they were alone. "But I don't need to ask. I didn't know you could be so gay."
"I had forgotten how to laugh," replied Susan.
"I suppose I ought to be ashamed," pursued Etta.
"Why?" inquired Susan.
"Oh, you know why. You know how people'd talk if they knew."
"What people?" said Susan. "Anyone who's willing to give you anything?"
"No," admitted Etta. "But——" There she halted.
Susan went on: "I don't propose to be bothered by the other kind. They wouldn't do anything for me if they could except sneer and condemn."
"Still, you know it isn't right, what we're doing."
"I know it isn't cold—or hunger—or rags and dirt—and bugs," replied Susan.
Those few words were enough to conjure even to Etta's duller fancy the whole picture to its last detail of loathsome squalor. Into Etta's face came a dazed expression. "Was that reallyus, Lorna?"
"No," said Susan with a certain fierceness. "It was a dream. But we must take care not to have that dream again."
"I'd forgotten how cold I was," said Etta; "hadn't you?"
"No," said Susan, "I hadn't forgotten anything."
"Yes, I suppose it was all worse for you than for me.Youused to be a lady."
"Don't talk nonsense," said Susan.
"I don't regret what I'm doing," Etta now declared. "It was Gus that made me think about it." She looked somewhat sheepish as she went on to explain. "I had a little too much to drink last night. And when Gus and I were alone, I cried—for no reason except the drink. He asked me why and I had to say something, and it popped into my head to say I was ashamed of the life I was leading. As things turned out, I'm glad I said it. He was awfully impressed."
"Of course," said Susan.
"You never saw anything like it," continued Etta with an expression suggesting a feeling that she ought to be ashamed but could not help being amused. "He acted differently right away. Why don't you try it on John?"
"What for?"
"Oh, it'll make him—make him have more—more respect for you.""Perhaps," said Susan indifferently.
"Don't you want John to—to respect you?"
"I've been too busy having a good time to think much about him—or about anything. I'm tired of thinking. I want to rest. Last night was the first time in my life I danced as much as I wanted to."
"Don't you like John?"
"Certainly."
"He does know a lot, doesn't he? He's like you. He reads and and thinks—and—— He's away ahead of Fatty except—— You don't mind my having the man with the most money?"
"Not in the least," laughed Susan. "Money's another thing I'm glad to rest from thinking about."
"But this'll last only a few days longer. And—If you managedJohn Redmond right, Lorna——"
"Now—you must not try to make me think."
"Lorna—are youreallyhappy?"
"Can't you see I am?"
"Yes—when we're all together. But when—when you're alone with him——"
Susan's expression stopped her. It was a laughing expression; and yet— Said Susan: "I am happy, dear—very happy. I eat and drink and sleep—and I am, oh, so glad to be alive."
"Isn'tit good to be alive!—if you've got plenty," exclaimed Etta. "I never knew before.Thisis the dream, Lorna—and I think I'll kill myself if I have to wake."
On Saturday afternoon the four were in one of the rooms discussing where the farewell dinner should be held and what they would eat and drink. Etta called Susan into the other room and shut the door between.
"Fatty wants me to go along with him and live in Detroit," said she, blurting it out as if confessing a crime.
"Isn't that splendid!" cried Susan, kissing her. "I thought he would. He fell in love with you at first sight."
"That's what he says. But, Lorna—I—I don't knowwhatto do!"
"Do? Why, go. What else is there? Go, of course."
"Oh, no, Lorna," protested Etta. "I couldn't leave you. I couldn't get along without you."
"But you must go. Don't you love him?"
Etta began to weep. "That's the worst of it. I do love him so! And I think he loves me—and might marry me and make me a good woman again. . . . You mustn't ever tell John or anybody about that—that dreadful man I went with—will you, dear?"
"What do you take me for?" said Susan.
"I've told Fatty I was a good girl until I met him. You haven't told John about yourself?" Susan shook her head.
"I suppose not. You're so secretive. You really think I ought to go?"
"I know it."
Etta was offended by Susan's positive, practical tone. "I don't believe you care."
"Yes, I care," said Susan. "But you're right to follow the man you love. Besides, there's nothing so good in sight here."
"What'llyoudo? Oh, I can't go, Lorna!"
"Now, Etta," said Susan calmly, "don't talk nonsense. I'll get along all right."
"You come to Detroit. You could find a job there, and we could live together."
"Would Fatty like that?"
Etta flushed and glanced away. Young Gulick had soon decided that Susan was the stronger—therefore, the less "womanly"—of the two girls, and must be the evil influence over her whom he had appeared just in time to save. When he said this to Etta, she protested—not very vigorously, because she wished him to think her really almost innocent. She wasn'tquiteeasy in her mind as to whether she had been loyal to Lorna. But, being normally human, she soonalmostconvinced herself that but for Lorna she never would have made the awful venture. Anyhow, since it would help her with Gulick and wouldn't do Lorna the least mite of harm, why not let him think he was right?
Said Susan: "Hasn't he been talking to you about getting away from—from all this?"
"But I don't care," cried Etta, moved to an outburst of frankness by her sense of security in Susan's loyalty and generosity. "He doesn't understand. Men are fools about women. He thinks he likes in me what I haven't got at all. As a matter of fact if I had been what he made me tell him I was, why we'd never have met—or got acquainted in the way that makes us so fond of each other. And I owe it all to you, Lorna. I don't care what he says, Lorna—or does. I want you."
"Can't go," said Susan, not conscious—yet not unaware, either—of the curious mixture of heart and art in Etta's outburst of apparent eagerness to risk everything for love of her. "Can't possibly go. I've made other plans. The thing for you is to be straight—get some kind of a job in Detroit—make Fatty marry you—quick!"
"He would, but his father'd throw him out."
"Not if you were an honest working girl."
"But——" Etta was silent and reflective for a moment. "Men are so queer," she finally said. "If I'd been an honest working girl he'd never have noticed me. It's because I am what I am that I've been able to get acquainted with him and fascinate him. And he feels it's a sporty thing to do—to marry a fast girl. If I was to settle down to work, be a regular working girl—why, I'm afraid he—he'd stop loving me. Then, too, he likes to believe he's rescuing me from a life of shame. I've watched him close. I understand him."
"No doubt," said Susan drily.
"Oh, I know you think I'm deceitful. But a woman's got to be, with a man. And I care a lot about him—aside from the fact that he can make me comfortable and—and protect me from—from the streets. If you cared for a man— No, I guess you wouldn't. You oughtn't to be so—sohonest, Lorna. It'll always do you up."
Susan laughed, shrugged her shoulders. "I am what I am," said she. "I can't be any different. If I tried, I'd only fail worse."
"You don't love John—do you?"
"I like him."
"Then you wouldn't have to domuchpretending," urged Etta."And what does a little pretending amount to?"
"That's what I say to myself," replied Susan thoughtfully.
"It isn't nearly as bad as—as what we started out to do."
Susan laughed at Etta's little hypocrisy for her respectability's comfort. "As what we did—and are doing," corrected she. Burlingham had taught her that it only makes things worse and more difficult to lie to oneself about them.
"John's crazy about you. But he hasn't money enough to ask you to come along. And——" Etta hesitated, eyed Susan doubtfully. "You'resureyou don't love him?"
"No. I couldn't love him any more than—than I could hate him." Susan's strange look drifted across her features. "It's very queer, how I feel toward men. But—I don't love him and I shan't pretend. I want to, but somehow—I can't."
Etta felt that she could give herself the pleasure of unburdening herself of a secret. "Then I may as well tell you, he's engaged to a girl he thinks he ought to marry."
"I suspected so."
"And you don't mind?" inquired Etta, unable to read Susan's queer expression.
"Except for him—and her—a little," replied Susan. "I guess that's why I haven't liked him better—haven't trusted him at all."
"Aren't men dreadful! And he is so nice in many ways. . . . Lorna——" Etta was weeping again. "I can't go—I can't. I mustn't leave you."
"Don't be absurd. You've simply got to do it."
"And I do love him," said Etta, calmed again by Susan's calmness. "And if he married me—Oh, how grateful I'd be!"
"I should say!" exclaimed Susan. She kissed Etta and petted her."And he'll have a mighty good wife."
"Do you think I can marry him?"
"If you love him—and don't worry about catching him."
Etta shook her head in rejection of this piece of idealistic advice."But a girl's got to be shrewd. You ought to be more so, Lorna."
"That depends on what a girl wants," said Susan, absently. "Upon what she wants," she repeated.
"What doyouwant?" inquired Etta curiously.
"I don't know," Susan answered slowly.
"I wish I knew what was going on in your head!" exclaimed Etta.
"So do I," said Susan, smiling.
"Do you really mind my going? Really—honestly?"
There wasn't a flaw in Susan's look or tone. "If you tried to stay with me, I'd run away from you."
"And if I do get him, I can help you. Once he's mine——" Etta rounded out her sentence with an expression of countenance which it was well her adoring rescuer did not see. Not that it lacked womanliness; "womanly" is the word that most exactly describes it—and always will exactly describe such expressions—and the thoughts behind—so long as men compel women to be just women, under penalty of refusing them support if they are not so.
Redmond came in, and Etta left him alone with Susan. "Well, hasEtta told you?" he asked.
"Yes," replied the girl. She looked at him—simply a look, but the violet-gray eyes had an unusual seeming of seeing into minds and hearts, an expression that was perhaps the more disquieting because it was sympathetic rather than critical.
His glance shifted. He was a notably handsome young fellow—too young for any display of character in his face, or for any development of it beyond the amiable, free and easy lover of a jolly good time that is the type repeated over and over again among the youth of the comfortable classes that send their sons to college.
"Are you going with her?" he asked.
"No," said Susan.
Redmond's face fell. "I hoped you liked me a little better than that," said he.
"It isn't a question of you."
"But it's a question ofyouwith me," he cried. "I'm in love with you, Lorna. I'm—I'm tempted to say all sorts of crazy things that I think but haven't the courage to act on." He kneeled down beside her, put his arms round her waist. "I'm crazy about you, Lorna. . . . Tell me—— Were you—— Had you been—before we met?"
"Yes," said Susan.
"Why don't you deny it?" he exclaimed. "Why don't you fool me, as Etta fooled Gus?"
"Etta's story is different from mine," said Susan. "She's had no experience at all, compared to me."
"I don't believe it," declared he. "I know she's been stuffing Fatty, has made him think that you led her away. But I can soon knock those silly ideas out of his silly head——"
"It's the truth," interrupted Susan, calmly.
"No matter. You could be a good woman." Impulsively, "If you'll settle down and be a good woman, I'll marry you."
Susan smiled gently. "And ruin your prospects?"
"I don't care for prospects beside you. Youarea good woman—inside. The better I know you the less like a fast woman you are. Won't you go to work, Lorna, and wait for me?"
Her smile had a little mockery in it now—perhaps to hide from him how deeply she was moved. "No matter what else I did, I'd not wait for you, Johnny. You'd never come. You're not a Johnny-on-the-spot."
"You think I'm weak—don't you?" he said. Then, as she did not answer, "Well, I am. But I love you, all the same."
For the first time he felt that he had touched her heart. The tears sprang to her eyes, which were not at all gray now but all violet, as was their wont when she was deeply moved. She laid her hands on his shoulders. "Oh, it's so good to be loved!" she murmured.
He put his arms around her, and for the moment she rested there, content—yes, content, as many a woman who needed love less and craved it less has been content just with being loved, when to make herself content she has had to ignore and forget the personality of the man who was doing the loving—and the kind of love it was. Said he:
"Don't you love me a little enough to be a good woman and wait till I set up in the law?"
She let herself play with the idea, to prolong this novel feeling of content. She asked, "How long will that be?"
"I'll be admitted in two years. I'll soon have a practice. My father's got influence."
Susan looked at him sadly, slowly shook her head. "Two years—and then several years more. And I working in a factory—or behind a counter—from dawn till after dark—poor, hungry—half-naked—wearing my heart out—wearing my body away——" She drew away from him, laughed. "I was fooling, John—about marrying. I liked to hear you say those things. I couldn't marry you if I would. I'm married already."
"You!"
She nodded.
"Tell me about it—won't you?"
She looked at him in astonishment, so amazing seemed the idea that she could tell anyone that experience. It would be like voluntarily showing a hideous, repulsive scar or wound, for sometimes it was scar, and sometimes open wound, and always the thing that made whatever befell her endurable by comparison.
She did not answer his appeal for her confidence but went on,"Anyhow, nothing could induce me to go to work again. You don'trealize what work means—the only sort of work I can get to do.It's—it's selling both body and soul. I prefer——"
He kissed her to stop her from finishing her sentence. "Don't—please," he pleaded. "You don't understand. In this life you'll soon grow hard and coarse and lose your beauty and your health—and become a moral and physical wreck."
She reflected, the grave expression in her eyes—the expression that gave whoever saw it the feeling of dread as before impending tragedy. "Yes—I suppose so," she said. "But—— Any sooner than as a working girl living in a dirty hole in a tenement? No—not so soon. And in this life I've got a chance if I'm careful of my health and—and don't let things touchme. In that other—there's no chance—none!"
"What chance have you got in this life?"
"I don't know exactly. I'm very ignorant yet. At worst, it's simply that I've got no chance in either life—and this life is more comfortable."
"Comfortable! With men you don't like—frightful men——"
"Were you ever cold?" asked Susan.
But it made no impression upon him who had no conception of the cold that knows not how it is ever to get warm again. He rushed on:
"Lorna, my God!" He caught hold of her and strained her to his breast. "You are lovely and sweet! It's frightful—you in this life."
Her expression made the sobs choke up into his throat. She said quietly: "Not worse than dirt and vermin and freezing cold and long, long, dull—oh,sodull hours of working among human beings that don't ever wash—because they can't." She pushed him gently away. "You don't understand. You haven't been through it. Comfortable people talk like fools about those things. . . . Do you remember my hands that first evening?"
He reddened and his eyes shifted. "I'm absurdly sensitive about a woman's hands," he muttered.
She laughed at him. "Oh, I saw—how you couldn't bear to look at them—how they made you shiver. Well, the hands were nothing—nothing!—beside what you didn't see."
"Lorna, do you love someone else?"
His eyes demanded an honest answer, and it seemed to her his feeling for her deserved it. But she could not put the answer into words. She lowered her gaze.
"Then why——" he began impetuously. But there he halted, for he knew she would not lift the veil over herself, over her past.
"I'm very, very fond of you," she said with depressing friendliness. Then with a sweet laugh, "You ought to be glad I'm not able to take you at your word. And you will be glad soon." She sighed. "What a good time we've had!"
"If I only had a decent allowance, like Fatty!" he groaned.
"No use talking about that. It's best for us to separate best for us both. You've been good to me—you'll never know how good. And I can't play you a mean trick. I wish I could be selfish enough to do it, but I can't."
"You don't love me. That's the reason."
"Maybe it is. Yes, I guess that's why I've got the courage to be square with you. Anyhow, John, you can't afford to care for me. And if I cared for you, and put off the parting—why it'd only put off what I've got to go through with before——" She did not finish; her eyes became dreamy.
"Before what?" he asked.
"I don't know," she said, returning with a sigh. "Something I see—yet don't see in the darkness, ahead of me."
"I can't make you out," cried he. Her expression moved him to the same awe she inspired in Etta—a feeling that gave both of them the sense of having known her better, of having been more intimate with her when they first met her than they ever had been since or ever would be again.
When Redmond embraced and kissed her for the last time, he was in another and less sympathetic mood, was busy with his own wounds to vanity and perhaps to heart. He thought her heartless—good and sweet and friendly, but without sentiment. She refused to help him make a scene; she refused to say she would write to him, and asked him not to write to her. "You know we'll probably see each other soon."
"Not till the long vacation—not till nearly July."
"Only three months."
"Oh, if you look at it that way!" said he, piqued and sullen. Girls had always been more than kind, more than eager, when he had shown interest.
Etta, leaving on a later train, was even more depressed about Susan's heart. She wept hysterically, wished Susan to do the same; but Susan stood out firmly against a scene, and would not have it that Etta was shamefully deserting her, as Etta tearfully accused herself. "You're going to be happy," she said. "And I'm not so selfish as to be wretched about it. And don't you worry a minute on my account. I'm better off in every way than I've ever been. I'll get on all right."
"I know you gave up John to help me with August. I know you mean to break off everything. Oh, Lorna, you mustn't—you mustn't."
"Don't talk nonsense," was Susan's unsatisfactory reply.
When it came down to the last embrace and the last kiss, Etta did feel through Susan's lips and close encircling arms a something that dried up her hysterical tears and filled her heart with an awful aching. It did not last long. No matter how wildly shallow waters are stirred, they soon calm and murmur placidly on again. The three who had left her would have been amazed could they have seen her a few minutes after Etta's train rolled out of the Union Station. The difference between strong natures and weak is not that the strong are free from cowardice and faint-heartedness, from doubt and foreboding, from love and affection, but that they do not stay down when they are crushed down, stagger up and on.
Susan hurried to the room they had helped her find the day before—a room in a house where no questions were asked or answered. She locked herself in and gave way to the agonies of her loneliness. And when her grief had exhausted her, she lay upon the bed staring at the wall with eyes that looked as though her soul had emptied itself through them of all that makes life endurable, even of hope. For the first time in her life she thought of suicide—not suicide the vague possibility, not suicide the remote way of escape, but suicide the close and intimate friend, the healer of all woes, the solace of all griefs—suicide, the speedy, accurate solver of the worst problem destiny can put to man.
She saw her pocketbook on the floor where she had dropped it. "I'll wait till my money's gone," thought she. Then she remembered Etta—how gentle and loving she was, how utterly she gave herself—for Susan was still far from the profound knowledge of character that enables us to disregard outward signs in measuring actualities. "If I really weren't harder than Etta," her thoughts ran on reproachfully, "I'd not wait until the money went. I'd kill myself now, and have it over with." The truth was that if the position of the two girls had been reversed and Susan had loved Gulick as intensely as Etta professed and believed she loved him, still Susan would have given him up rather than have left Etta alone. And she would have done it without any sense of sacrifice. And it must be admitted that, whether or not there are those who deserve credit for doing right, certainly those who do right simply because they cannot do otherwise—the only trustworthy people—deserve no credit for it.
She counted her money—twenty-three dollars in bills, and some change. Redmond had given her fifty dollars each time they had gone shopping, and had made her keep the balance—his indirect way of adjusting the financial side. Twenty-three dollars meant perhaps two weeks' living. Well, she would live those two weeks decently and comfortably and then—bid life adieu unless something turned up—for back to the streets she would not go. With Etta gone, with not a friend anywhere on earth, life was not worth the price she had paid for Etta and herself to the drunken man. Her streak of good fortune in meeting Redmond had given her no illusions; from Mabel Connemora, from what she herself had heard and seen—and experienced—she knew the street woman's life, and she could not live that life for herself alone. She could talk about it to Redmond tranquilly. She could think about it in the abstract, could see how other women did it, and how those who had intelligence might well survive and lift themselves up in it. But do it she could not. So she resolved upon suicide, firmly believing in her own resolve. And she was not one to deceive herself or to shrink from anything whatsoever. Except the insane, only the young make these resolves and act upon them; for the young have not yet learned to value life, have not yet fallen under life's sinister spell that makes human beings cling more firmly and more cravenly to it as they grow older. The young must have something—some hope, however fanatic and false—to live for. They will not tarry just to live. And in that hour Susan had lost hope.
She took off her street dress and opened her trunk to get a wrapper and bedroom slippers. As she lifted the lid, she saw an envelope addressed "Lorna"; she remembered that Redmond had locked and strapped the trunk. She tore the end from the envelope, looked in. Some folded bills; nothing more. She sat on the floor and counted two twenties, five tens, two fives—a hundred dollars! She looked dazedly at the money—gave a cry of delight—sprang to her feet, with a change like the startling shift from night to day in the tropics.
"I can pay!" she cried. "I can pay!"
Bubbling over with smiles and with little laughs, gay as even champagne and the release from the vile prison of the slums had made her, she with eager hands took from the trunk her best clothes—the jacket and skirt of dark gray check she had bought for thirty dollars at Shillito's and had had altered to her figure and her taste; the blouse of good quality linen with rather a fancy collar; the gray leather belt with a big oxidized silver buckle; her only pair of silk stockings; the pair of high-heeled patent leather shoes—the large black hat with a gray feather curling attractively round and over its brim. The hat had cost only fourteen dollars because she had put it together herself; if she had bought it made, she would have paid not less than thirty dollars.
All these things she carefully unpacked and carefully laid out. Then she thoroughly brushed her hair and did it up in a graceful pompadour that would go well with the hat. She washed away the traces of her outburst of grief, went over her finger nails, now almost recovered from the disasters incident to the life of manual labor. She went on to complete her toilet, all with the same attention to detail—a sure indication, in one so young, of a desire to please some specific person. When she had the hat set at the satisfactory angle and the veil wound upon it and draped over her fresh young face coquettishly, she took from her slender store of gloves a fresh gray pair and, as she put them on, stood before the glass examining herself.
There was now not a trace of the tenement working girl of a week and a day before. Here was beauty in bloom, fresh and alluring from head to narrow, well-booted feet. More than a hint of a fine color sense—that vital quality, if fashion, the conventional, is to be refined and individualized into style, the rare—more than a hint of color sense showed in the harmony of the pearl gray in the big feather, the pearl gray in the collar of the blouse, and the pearl white of her skin. Susan had indeed returned to her own class. She had left it, a small-town girl with more than a suggestion of the child in eyes and mouth; she had returned to it, a young woman of the city, with that look in her face which only experience can give—experience that has resulted in growth. She locked all her possessions away in her trunk—all but her money; that she put in her stockings—seventy-five dollars well down in the right leg, the rest of the bills well down in the left leg; the two dollars or so in change was all she intrusted to the pocketbook she carried. She cast a coquettish glance down at her charmingly arrayed feet—a harmless glance of coquetry that will be condemned by those whose physical vanity happens to center elsewhere. After this glance she dropped her skirts—and was ready.