Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise Part 156

"Leave that," said Clelie, "to those who have known only the comfortable make-believe miseries that rustle in crepe and shed tears--whenever there's anyone by to see."

"Like the beggars who begin to whine and exhibit their aggravated sores as soon as a possible giver comes into view,"

said Susan. "I've learned to accept what comes, and to try to make the best of it, whatever it is. . . . I say I've learned.

But have I? Does one ever change? I guess I was born that sort of philosopher."

She recalled how she put the Warhams out of her life as soon as she discovered what they really meant to her and she to them--how she had put Jeb Ferguson out of her life--how she had conquered the grief and desolation of the loss of Burlingham--how she had survived Etta's going away without her--the inner meaning of her episodes with Rod--with Freddie Palmer----

And now this last supreme test--with her soul rising up and gathering itself together and lifting its head in strength----

"Yes, I was born to make the best of things," she repeated.

"Then you were born lucky," sighed Clelie, who was of those who must lean if they would not fall and lie where they fell.

Susan gave a curious little laugh--with no mirth, with a great deal of mockery. "Do you know, I never thought so before, but I believe you're right," said she. Again she laughed in that queer way. "If you knew my life you'd think I was joking.

But I'm not. The fact that I've survived and am what I am proves I was born lucky." Her tone changed, her expression became unreadable. "If it's lucky to be born able to live.

And if that isn't luck, what is?"

She thought how Brent said she was born lucky because she had the talent that enables one to rise above the sordidness of that capitalism he so often denounced--the sordidness of the lot of its slaves, the sordidness of the lot of its masters.

Brent! If it were he leaning beside her--if he and she were coming up the bay toward the City of the Sun!

A billow of heartsick desolation surged over her.

Alone--always alone. And still alone. And always to be alone.

Garvey came aboard when the gangway was run out. He was in black wherever black could be displayed. But the grief shadowing his large, simple countenance had the stamp of the genuine. And it was genuine, of the most approved enervating kind. He had done nothing but grieve since his master's death--had left unattended all the matters the man he loved and grieved for would have wished put in order. Is it out of charity for the weakness of human nature and that we may think as well as possible of it--is that why we admire and praise most enthusiastically the kind of love and the kind of friends.h.i.+p and the kind of grief that manifest themselves in obstreperous feeling and wordiness, with no strength left for any attempt to _do?_ As Garvey greeted them the tears filled Clelie's eyes and she turned away. But Susan gazed at him steadily; in her eyes there were no tears, but a look that made Garvey choke back sobs and bend his head to hide his expression. What he saw--or felt--behind her calmness filled him with awe, with a kind of terror. But he did not recognize what he saw as grief; it did not resemble any grief he had felt or had heard about.

"He made a will just before he died," he said to Susan. "He left everything to you."

Then she had not been mistaken. He had loved her, even as she loved him. She turned and walked quickly from them. She hastened into her cabin, closed the door and flung herself across the bed. And for the first time she gave way. In that storm her soul was like a little land bird in the clutch of a sea hurricane. She did not understand herself. She still had no sense that he was dead; yet had his dead body been lying there in her arms she could not have been more shaken by paroxysms of grief, without tears or sobs--grief that vents itself in shrieks and peals of horrible laughter-like screams--she smothered them in the pillows in which she buried her face. Clelie came, opened the door, glanced in, closed it. An hour pa.s.sed--an hour and a half. Then Susan appeared on deck--amber-white pallor, calm, beautiful, the fas.h.i.+onable woman in traveling dress.

"I never before saw you with your lips not rouged!" exclaimed Clelie.

"You will never see them rouged again," said Susan.

"But it makes you look older."

"Not so old as I am," replied she.

And she busied herself about the details of the landing and the customs, waving aside Garvey and his eager urgings that she sit quietly and leave everything to him. In the carriage, on the way to the hotel, she roused herself from her apparently tranquil reverie and broke the strained silence by saying:

"How much shall I have?"

The question was merely the protruding end of a train of thought years long and pursued all that time with scarcely an interruption. It seemed abrupt; to Garvey it sounded brutal.

Off his guard, he showed in flooding color and staring eye how profoundly it shocked him. Susan saw, but she did not explain; she was not keeping accounts in emotion with the world. She waited patiently. After a long pause he said in a tone that contained as much of rebuke as so mild a dependent dared express:

"He left about thirty thousand a year, Miss Lenox."

The exultant light that leaped to Susan's eye horrified him.

It even disturbed Clelie, though she better understood Susan's nature and was not nearly so reverent as Garvey of the hypocrisies of conventionality. But Susan had long since lost the last trace of awe of the opinion of others. She was not seeking to convey an impression of grief. Grief was too real to her. She would as soon have burst out with voluble confession of the secret of her love for Brent. She saw what Garvey was thinking; but she was not concerned. She continued to be herself--natural and simple. And there was no reason why she should conceal as a thing to be ashamed of the fact that Brent had accomplished the purpose he intended, had filled her with honest exultation--not with delight merely, not with triumph, but with that stronger and deeper joy which the unhoped for pardon brings to the condemned man.

She must live on. The thought of suicide, of any form of giving up--the thought that instantly possesses the weak and the diseased--could not find lodgment in that young, healthy body and mind of hers. She must live on; and suddenly she discovered that she could live _free!_ Not after years of doubtful struggles, of reverses, of success so hardly won that she was left exhausted. But now--at once--_free!_ The heavy shackles had been stricken off at a blow. She was free--forever free! Free, forever free, from the wolves of poverty and shame, of want and rags and filth, the wolves that had been pursuing her with swift, hideous padded stride, the wolves that more than once had dragged her down and torn and trampled her, and lapped her blood. Free to enter of her own right the world worth living in, the world from which all but a few are shut out, the world which only a few of those privileged to enter know how to enjoy. Free to live the life worth while the life of leisure to work, instead of slaving to make leisure and luxury and comfort for others. Free to achieve something beside food, clothing, and shelter. Free to live as _she_ pleased, instead of for the pleasure of a master or masters. Free--free--free! The ecstasy of it surged up in her, for the moment possessing her and submerging even thought of how she had been freed.

She who had never acquired the habit of hypocrisy frankly exulted in countenance exultant beyond laughter. She could conceal her feelings, could refrain from expressing. But if she expressed at all, it must be her true self--what she honestly felt. Garvey hung his head in shame. He would not have believed Susan could be so unfeeling. He would not let his eyes see the painful sight. He would try to forget, would deny to himself that he had seen. For to his shallow, conventional nature Susan's expression could only mean delight in wealth, in the opportunity that now offered to idle and to luxuriate in the dead man's money, to realize the crude dreamings of those lesser minds whose initial impulses toward growth have been stifled by the routine our social system imposes upon all but the few with the strength to persist individual.

Free! She tried to summon the haunting vision of the old women with the tin cups of whisky reeling and staggering in time to the hunchback's playing. She could remember every detail, but these memories would not a.s.semble even into a vivid picture and the picture would have been far enough from the horror of actuality in the vision she formerly could not banish. As a menace, as a prophecy, the old women and the hunchback and the strumming piano had gone forever.

Free--secure, independent--free!

After a long silence Garvey ventured stammeringly:

"He said to me--he asked me to request--he didn't make it a condition--just a wish--a hope, Miss Lenox--that if you could, and felt it strongly enough----"

"Wished what?" said Susan, with a sharp impatience that showed how her nerves were unstrung.

"That you'd go on--go on with the plays--with the acting."

The violet eyes expressed wonder. "Go on?" she inquired, "Go on?" Then in a tone that made Clelie sob and Garvey's eyes fill she said:

"What else is there to live for, now?"

"I'm--I'm glad for his sake," stammered Garvey.

He was disconcerted by her smile. She made no other answer--aloud. For _his_ sake! For her own sake, rather.

What other life had she but the life _he_ had given her? "And he knew I would," she said to herself. "He said that merely to let me know he left me entirely free. How like him, to do that!"

At the hotel she shut herself in; she saw no one, not even Clelie, for nearly a week. Then--she went to work--and worked like a reincarnation of Brent.

She inquired for Sperry, found that he and Rod had separated as they no longer needed each other; she went into a sort of partners.h.i.+p with Sperry for the production of Brent's plays--he, an excellent coach as well as stage director, helping her to finish her formal education for the stage. She played with success half a dozen of the already produced Brent plays. At the beginning of her second season she appeared in what has become her most famous part--_Roxy_ in Brent's last play, "The Scandal." With the opening night her career of triumph began. Even the critics--therefore, not unnaturally, suspicious of an actress who was so beautiful, so beautifully dressed, so well supported, and so well outfitted with actor-proof plays even the critics conceded her ability. She was worthy of the great character Brent had created--the wayward, many-sided, ever gay _Roxy Grandon_.

When, at the first night of "The Scandal," the audience lingered, cheering Brent's picture thrown upon a drop, cheering Susan, calling her out again and again, refusing to leave the theater until it was announced that she could answer no more calls, as she had gone home--when she was thus finally and firmly established in her own right--she said to Sperry:

"Will you see to it that every sketch of me that appears tomorrow says that I am the natural daughter of Lorella Lenox?"

Sperry's Punch-like face reddened.

"I've been ashamed of that fact," she went on. "It has made me ashamed to be alive in the bottom of my heart."

"Absurd," said Sperry.

"Exactly," replied Susan. "Absurd. Even stronger than my shame about it has been my shame that I could be so small as to feel ashamed of it. Now--tonight" she was still in her dressing-room. As she paused they heard the faint faraway thunders of the applause of the lingering audience--"Listen!"

she cried. "I am ashamed no longer. Sperry, _Ich bin ein Ich!_"

"I should say," laughed he. "All you have to say is 'Susan Lenox' and you answer all questions."

"At last I'm proud of it," she went on. "I've justified myself. I've justified my mother. I am proud of her, and she would be proud of me. So see that it's done, Sperry."

"Sure," said he. "You're right."

He took her hand and kissed it. She laughed, patted him on the shoulder, kissed him on both cheeks in friendly, sisterly fas.h.i.+on.