Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise Part 143

"Somewhat exaggerated," was Susan's pleased, laughing comment when Brent told her.

"Somewhat," said Brent. "But my friend Gourdain is stark mad about women's dressing well. That lilac dress you had on yesterday did for him. He _was_ your servant; he _is_ your slave."

Abruptly--for no apparent cause, as was often the case--Susan had that sickening sense of the unreality of her luxurious present, of being about to awaken in Vine Street with Etta--or in the filthy bed with old Mrs. Tucker. Absently she glanced down at her foot, holding it out as if for inspection. She saw Brent's look of amus.e.m.e.nt at her seeming vanity.

"I was looking to see if my shoes were leaky," she explained.

A subtle change came over his face. He understood instantly.

"Have you ever been--cold?" she asked, looking at him strangely.

"One cold February--cold and damp--I had no underclothes--and no overcoat."

"And dirty beds--filthy rooms--filthy people?"

"A ten-cent lodging house with a tramp for bedfellow."

They were looking at each other, with the perfect understanding and sympathy that can come only to two people of the same fiber who have braved the same storms. Each glanced hastily away.

Her enthusiasm for doing the apartment was due full as much to the fact that it gave her definitely directed occupation as to its congeniality. That early training of hers from Aunt f.a.n.n.y Warham had made it forever impossible for her in any circ.u.mstances to become the typical luxuriously sheltered woman, whether legally or illegally kept--the lie-abed woman, the woman who dresses only to go out and show off, the woman who wastes her life in petty, piffling trifles--without purpose, without order or system, without morals or personal self-respect. She had never lost the systematic instinct--the instinct to use time instead of wasting it--that f.a.n.n.y Warham had implanted in her during the years that determine character. Not for a moment, even without distinctly definite aim, was she in danger of the creeping paralysis that is epidemic among the rich, enfeebling and slowing down mental and physical activity. She had a regular life; she read, she walked in the Bois; she made the best of each day. And when this definite thing to accomplish offered, she did not have to learn how to work before she could begin the work itself.

All this was nothing new to Gourdain. He was born and bred in a country where intelligent discipline is the rule and the lack of it the rare exception--among all cla.s.ses--even among the women of the well-to-do cla.s.ses.

The finished apartment was a disappointment to Palmer. Its effects were too quiet, too restrained. Within certain small limits, those of the man of unusual intelligence but no marked originality, he had excellent taste--or, perhaps, excellent ability to recognize good taste. But in the large he yearned for the grandiose. He loved the gaudy with which the rich surround themselves because good taste forbids them to talk of their wealth and such surroundings do the talking for them and do it more effectively. He would have preferred even a vulgar glitter to the un.o.btrusiveness of those rooms. But he knew that Susan was right, and he was a very human arrant coward about admitting that he had bad taste.

"This is beautiful--exquisite," said he, with feigned enthusiasm. "I'm afraid, though, it'll be above their heads."

"What do you mean?" inquired Susan.

Palmer felt her restrained irritation, hastened to explain.

"I mean the people who'll come here. They can't appreciate it. You have to look twice to appreciate this--and people, the best of 'em, look only once and a mighty blind look it is."

But Susan was not deceived. "You must tell me what changes you want," said she. Her momentary irritation had vanished.

Since Freddie was paying, Freddie must have what suited him.

"Oh, I've got nothing to suggest. Now that I've been studying it out, I couldn't allow you to make any changes. It does grow on one, doesn't it, Brent?"

"It will be the talk of Paris," replied Brent.

The playwright's tone settled the matter for Palmer. He was content. Said he:

"Thank G.o.d she hasn't put in any of those dirty old tapestry rags--and the banged up, broken furniture and the patched crockery."

At the same time she had produced an effect of long tenancy.

There was nothing that glittered, nothing with the offensive sheen of the brand new. There was in that delicately toned atmosphere one suggestion which gave the same impression as the artificial crimson of her lips in contrast with the pallor of her skin and the sweet thoughtful melancholy of her eyes.

This suggestion came from an all-pervading odor of a heavy, languorously sweet, sensuous perfume--the same that Susan herself used. She had it made at a perfumer's in the faubourg St. Honore by mixing in a certain proportion several of the heaviest and most clinging of the familiar perfumes.

"You don't like my perfume?" she said to Brent one day.

He was in the library, was inspecting her _selections_ of books. Instead of answering her question, he said:

"How did you find out so much about books? How did you find time to read so many?"

"One always finds time for what one likes."

"Not always," said he. "I had a hard stretch once--just after I struck New York. I was a waiter for two months. Working people don't find time for reading--and such things."

"That was one reason why I gave up work," said she.

"That--and the dirt--and the poor wages--and the hopelessness--and a few other reasons," said he.

"Why don't you like the perfume I use?"

"Why do you say that?"

"You made a queer face as you came into the drawing-room."

"Do _you_ like it?"

"What a queer question!" she said. "No other man would have asked it."

"The obvious," said he, shrugging his shoulders.

"I couldn't help knowing you didn't like it."

"Then why should I use it?"

His glance drifted slowly away from hers. He lit a cigarette with much attention to detail.

"Why should I use perfume I don't like?" persisted she.

"What's the use of going into that?" said he.

"But I do like it--in a way," she went on after a pause. "It is--it seems to me the odor of myself."

"Yes--it is," he admitted.

She laughed. "Yet you made a wry face."

"I did."

"At the odor?"

"At the odor."

"Do you think I ought to change to another perfume?"

"You know I do not. It's the odor of your soul. It is different at different times--sometimes inspiringly sweet as the incense of heaven, as my metaphoric friend Gourdain would say--sometimes as deadly sweet as the odors of the drugs men take to drag them to h.e.l.l--sometimes repulsively sweet, making one heart sick for pure, clean smell-less air yet without the courage to seek it. Your perfume is many things, but always--always strong and tenacious and individual."

A flush had overspread the pallor of her skin; her long dark lashes hid her eyes.