Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise Part 15

"Perhaps you'll be better off--once you get started," said he.

"I don't see how I could be worse off. What is there here for _me_?"

He wondered at the good sense of this from a mere child. It was most unlikely that any man of the cla.s.s she had been brought up in would marry her; and how could she endure marriage with a man of the cla.s.s in which she might possibly find a husband? As for reputation--

She, an illegitimate child, never could have a reputation, at least not so long as she had her looks. After supper, to kill time, he had dropped in at Willett's drug store, where the young fellows loafed and gossiped in the evenings; all the time he was there the conversation had been made up of sly digs and hints about graveyard trysts, each thrust causing the kind of laughter that is the wake of the prurient and the obscene. Yes, she was right. There could be "nothing in it" for her in Sutherland. He was filled with pity for her. "Poor child! What a shame!" There must be something wrong with a world that permitted such iniquities.

The clock struck twelve. "You must go," she said. "Sometimes the boat comes as early as half-past." And she stood up.

As he faced her the generous impulse surged again. He caught her in his arms, she not resisting. He kissed her again and again, murmuring disconnected words of endearment and fighting back the offer to marry her. "I mustn't! I mustn't!" he said to himself.

"What'd become of us?" If his pa.s.sions had been as virgin, as inexperienced, as hers, no power could have held him from going with her and marrying her. But experience had taught him the abysmal difference between before and after; and he found strength to be sensible, even in the height of his pa.s.sionate longing for her.

She clasped her arms about his neck. "Oh, my dear love!" she murmured. "I'd do anything for you. I feel that you love me as I love you."

"Yes--yes." And he pressed his lips to hers. An instant and she drew away, shaking and panting. He tried to clasp her again, but she would not have it. "I can't stand it!" he murmured. "I must go with you--I must!"

"No!" she replied. "It wouldn't do unless we were really married." Wistfully, "And we can't be that yet--can we? There isn't any way?"

His pa.s.sion cooled instantly.

"There isn't any way," he said regretfully. "I'd not dare tell my father."

"Yes, we must wait till you're of age, and have your education, and are free. Then----" She drew a long breath, looked at him with a brave smile. The large moon was s.h.i.+ning upon them. "We'll think of that, and not let ourselves be unhappy--won't we?"

"Yes," he said. "But I must go."

"I forgot for the minute. Good-by, dearest." She put up her lips. He kissed her, but without pa.s.sion now.

"You might go with me as far as the wharf," she suggested.

"No--someone might see--and that would ruin everything. I'd like to--I'd----"

"It wouldn't do," she interrupted. "I wouldn't let you come."

With sudden agitation she kissed him--he felt that her lips were cold. He pressed her hands--they, too, were cold. "Good-by, my darling," he murmured, vaulted lightly over the rail and disappeared in the deep shadows of the shrubbery. When he was clear of the grounds he paused to light a cigarette. His hand was shaking so that the match almost dropped from his fingers.

"I've been making a d.a.m.n fool of myself," he said half aloud. "A double d.a.m.n fool! I've got to stop that talk about marrying, somehow--or keep away from her. But I can't keep away. I _must_ have her! Why in the devil can't she realize that a man in my position couldn't marry her? If it wasn't for this marrying talk, I'd make her happy. I've simply got to stop this marrying talk. It gets worse and worse."

Her calmness deceived her into thinking herself perfectly sane and sober, perfectly aware of what she was about. She had left her hat and her bundle behind the door. She put on the hat in the darkness of the hall with steady fingers, took up the well-filled shawl strap and went forth, closing the door behind her. In the morning they would find the door unlocked but that would not cause much talk, as Sutherland people were all rather careless about locking up. They would not knock at the door of her room until noon, perhaps. Then they would find on the pincus.h.i.+on the letter she had written to her uncle, saying good-by and explaining that she had decided to remove forever the taint of her mother and herself from their house and their lives--a somewhat theatrical letter, modeled upon Ouida, whom she thought the greatest writer that had ever lived, Victor Hugo and two or three poets perhaps excepted.

Her bundle was not light, but she hardly felt it as she moved swiftly through the deserted, moonlit streets toward the river.

The wharf boat for the Cincinnati and Louisville mail steamers was anch.o.r.ed at the foot of Pine Street. On the levee before it were piled the boxes, bags, cases, crates, barrels to be loaded upon the "up boat." She was descending the gentle slope toward this ma.s.s of freight when her blood tingled at a deep, hoa.r.s.e, mournful whistle from far away; she knew it was the up boat, rounding the bend and sighting the town. The sound echoed musically back and forth between the Kentucky and the Indiana bluffs, died lingeringly away. Again the whistle boomed, again the dark forest-clad steeps sent the echoes to and fro across the broad silver river. And now she could see the steamer, at the bend--a dark ma.s.s picked out with brilliant dots of light; the big funnels, the two thick pennants of black smoke. And she could hear the faint pleasant stroke of the paddles of the big side wheels upon the water.

At the wharf boat there had not been a sign of life. But with the dying away of the second whistle lights--the lights of lanterns--appeared on the levee close to the water's edge and on the wharf boat itself. And, behind her, the doors of the Sutherland Hotel opened and its office lit up, in preparation for any chance arrivals. She turned abruptly out of the beaten path down the gravel levee, made for the lower and darker end of the wharf boat. There would be Sutherland people going up the river. But they would be more than prompt; everyone came early to boats and trains to begin the sweet draught of the excitement of journeying. So she would wait in the darkness and go aboard when the steamer was about to draw in its planks. At the upper end of the wharf boat there was the broad gangway to the levee for pa.s.sengers and freight; at the lower and dark and deserted end a narrow beam extended from boat to sh.o.r.e, to hold the boat steady. Susan, balancing herself with her bundle, went up to the beam, sat down upon a low stanchion in the darkness where she could see the river.

Louder and louder grew the regular musical beat of engine and paddle. The searchlight on the forward deck of the _General Lytle_, after peering uncertainly, suspiciously, at the entire levee, and at the river, and at the Kentucky sh.o.r.e, abruptly focused upon the wharf boat. The _General Lytle_ now seemed a blaze of lights--from lower deck, from saloon deck, from pilot house deck, and forward and astern. A hundred interesting sounds came from her--tinkling of bells, calls from deck to deck, whistling, creaking of pulleys, lowing of cattle, grunting of swine, plaint of agitated sheep, the resigned cluckings of many chickens. Along the rail of the middle or saloon deck were seated a few pa.s.sengers who had not yet gone to bed. On the lower deck was a swarm of black roustabouts, their sooty animal faces, their uncannily contrasting white teeth and eyeb.a.l.l.s, their strange and varied rags lit up by the torches blazing where a gangplank lay ready for running out. And high and clear in the lovely June night sailed the moon, spreading a faint benign light upon hills and sh.o.r.es and glistening river, upon the graceful, stately mail steamer, now advancing majestically upon the wharf boat. Susan watched all, saw all, with quick beating heart and quivering interest. It was the first time that her life had been visited by the fascinating sense of event, real event. The tall, proud, impetuous child-woman, standing in the semi-darkness beside her bundle, was about to cast her stake upon the table in a bold game with Destiny. Her eyes shone with the wonderful expression that is seen only when courage gazes into the bright face of danger.

The steamer touched the edge of the wharf-boat with gentle care; the wharf-boat swayed and groaned. Even as the gangplanks were pus.h.i.+ng out, the ragged, fantastic roustabouts, with wild, savage, hilarious cries, ran and jumped and scrambled to the wharf-boat like a band of escaping lunatics and darted down its sh.o.r.e planks to pounce upon the piles of freight. The mate, at the steamer edge to superintend the loading, and the wharf master on the levee beside the freight released each a hoa.r.s.e torrent of profanity to spur on the yelling, laughing roustabouts, more brute than man. Torches flared; cow and sheep, pig and chicken, uttered each its own cry of dissatisfaction or dismay; the mate and wharf master cursed because it was the custom to curse; the roustabouts rushed ash.o.r.e empty-handed, came filing back, stooping under their burdens. It was a scene of animation, of excitement, savage, grotesque, fascinating.

Susan, trembling a little, so tense were her nerves, waited until the last struggling roustabouts were staggering on the boat, until the deep whistle sounded, warning of approaching departure. Then she took up her bundle and put herself in the line of roustabouts, between a half-naked negro, black as coal and bearing a small barrel of beer, and a half-naked mulatto bearing a bundle of loud-smelling untanned skins. "Get out of the way, lady!" yelled the mate, eagerly seizing upon a new text for his denunciations. "Get out of the way, you black h.e.l.lions!

Let the lady pa.s.s! Look out, lady! You d.a.m.ned sons of h.e.l.l, what're you about! I'll rip out your bowels----"

Susan fled across the deck and darted up the stairs to the saloon. The steamer was all white without except the black metal work. Within--that is, in the long saloon out of which the cabins opened to right and left and in which the meals were served at extension tables--there was the palatial splendor of white and gilt. At the forward end near the main entrance was the office. Susan, peering in from the darkness of the deck, saw that the way was clear. The Sutherland pa.s.sengers had been accommodated. She entered, put her bundle down, faced the clerk behind the desk.

"Why, howdy, Miss Lenox," said he genially, beginning to twist his narrow, carefully attended blond mustache. "Any of the folks with you?"

She remembered his face but not his name. She remembered him as one of the "river characters" regarded as outcast by the Christian respectability of Sutherland. But she who could not but be polite to everybody smiled pleasantly, though she did not like his expression as he looked at her. "No, I'm alone," said she.

"Oh--your friends are going to meet you at the wharf in the morning," said he, content with his own explanation. "Just sign here, please." And, as she wrote, he went on: "I've got one room left. Ain't that lucky? It's a nice one, too. You'll be very comfortable. Everybody at home well? I ain't been in Sutherland for nigh ten years. Every week or so I think I will, and then somehow I don't. Here's your key--number 34 right-hand side, well down toward the far end, yonder. Two dollars, please. Thank you--exactly right. Hope you sleep well."

"Thank you," said Susan.

She turned away with the key which was thrust through one end of a stick about a foot long, to make it too bulky for absent-minded pa.s.sengers to pocket. She took up her bundle, walked down the long saloon with its gilt decorations, its crystal chandeliers, its double array of small doors, each numbered. The clerk looked after her, admiration of the fine curve of her shoulders, back, and hips written plain upon his insignificant features. And it was a free admiration he would not have dared show had she not been a daughter of illegitimacy--a girl whose mother's "looseness" raised pleasing if scandalous suggestions and even possibilities in the mind of every man with a carnal eye. And not unnaturally. To think of her was to think of the circ.u.mstances surrounding her coming into the world; and to think of those circ.u.mstances was to think of immorality.

Susan, all unconscious of that polluted and impudent gaze, was soon standing before the narrow door numbered 34, as she barely made out, for the lamps in the saloon chandeliers were turned low. She unlocked it, entered the small clean stateroom and deposited her bundle on the floor. With just a glance at her quarters she hurried to the opposite door--the one giving upon the promenade. She opened it, stepped out, crossed the deserted deck and stood at the rail.

The _General Lytle_ was drawing slowly away from the wharf-boat.

As that part of the promenade happened to be sheltered from the steamer's lights, she was seeing the panorama of Sutherland--its long stretch of shaded waterfront, its cupolas and steeples, the wide leafy streets leading straight from the river by a gentle slope to the base of the dark towering bluffs behind the town--all sleeping in peace and beauty in the soft light of the moon. That farthest cupola to the left--it was the Number Two engine house, and the third place from it was her uncle's house.

Slowly the steamer, now in mid-stream, drew away from the town.

One by one the familiar landmarks--the packing house, the soap factory, the Geiss brewery, the tall chimney of the pumping station, the shorn top of Reservoir Hill--slipped ghostlily away to the southwest. The sobs choked up into her throat and the tears rained from her eyes. They all pitied and looked down on her there; still, it had been home the only home she ever had known or ever would know. And until these last few frightful days, how happy she had been there! For the first time she felt desolate, weak, afraid. But not daunted. It is strange to see in strong human character the strength and the weakness, two flat contradictions, existing side by side and making weak what seems so strong and making strong what seems so weak. However, human character is a tangle of inconsistencies, as disorderly and inchoate as the tangible and visible parts of nature. Susan felt weak, but not the kind of weakness that skulks. And there lay the difference, the abysmal difference, between courage and cowardice. Courage has full as much fear as cowardice, often more; but it has a something else that cowardice has not. It trembles and s.h.i.+vers but goes forward.

Wiping her eyes she went back to her own cabin. She had neglected closing its other door, the one from the saloon. The clerk was standing smirking in the doorway.

"You must be going away for quite some time," said he. And he fixed upon her as greedy and impudent eyes as ever looked from a common face. It was his battle glance. Guileful women, bent on tr.i.m.m.i.n.g him for anything from a piece of plated jewelry to a saucer of ice cream, had led him to believe that before it walls of virtue tottered and fell like Jericho's before the trumpets of Joshua.

"It makes me a little homesick to see the old town disappear,"

hastily explained Susan, recovering herself. The instant anyone was watching, her emotions always hid.

"Wouldn't you like to sit out on deck a while?" pursued the clerk, bringing up a winning smile to reinforce the fetching stare.

The idea was attractive, for she did not feel like sleep. It would be fine to sit out in the open, watch the moon and the stars, the mysterious banks gliding swiftly by, and new vistas always widening out ahead. But not with this puny, sandy little "river character," not with anybody that night. "No," replied she. "I think I'll go to bed."

She had hesitated--and that was enough to give him encouragement. "Now, do come," he urged. "You don't know how nice it is. And they say I'm mighty good company."

"No, thanks." Susan nodded a pleasant dismissal.

The clerk lingered. "Can't I help you in some way? Wouldn't you like me to get you something?"

"No--nothing."

"Going to visit in Cincinnati? I know the town from A to Izzard.

It's a lot of fun over the Rhine. I've had mighty good times there--the kind a pretty, lively girl like you would take to."

"When do we get to Cincinnati?"

"About eight--maybe half-past seven. Depends on the landings we have to make, and the freight."

"Then I'll not have much time for sleep," said Susan. "Good night." And no more realizing the coldness of her manner than the reason for his hanging about, she faced him, hand on the door to close it.