Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise Part 16

"You ain't a bit friendly," wheedled he.

"I'm sorry you think so. Good night--and thank you." And he could not but withdraw his form from the door. She closed it and forgot him. And she did not dream she had pa.s.sed through one of those perilous adventures incident to a female traveling alone--adventures that even in the telling frighten ladies whose nervousness for their safety seems to increase in direct proportion to the degree of tranquillity their charms create in the male bosom. She decided it would be unwise regularly to undress; the boat might catch fire or blow up or something. She took off skirt, hat and ties, loosened her waist, and lay upon the lower of the two plain, hard little berths. The throb of the engines, the beat of the huge paddles, made the whole boat tremble and s.h.i.+ver. Faintly up from below came the sound of quarrels over c.r.a.p-shooting, of banjos and singing--from the roustabouts amusing themselves between landings. She thought she would not be able to sleep in these novel and exciting surroundings. She had hardly composed herself before she lost consciousness, to sleep on and on dreamlessly, without motion.

CHAPTER VII

SHE was awakened by a crash so uproarious that she sat bolt upright before she had her eyes open. Her head struck stunningly against the bottom of the upper berth. This further confused her thoughts. She leaped from the bed, caught up her slippers, reached for her opened-up bundle. The crash was still billowing through the boat; she now recognized it as a great gong sounding for breakfast. She sat down on the bed and rubbed her head and laughed merrily. "I _am_ a greenhorn!" she said. "Another minute and I'd have had the whole boat laughing at me."

She felt rested and hungry--ravenously hungry. She tucked in her blouse, washed as well as she could in the tiny bowl on the little washstand. Then before the cloudy watermarked mirror she arranged her scarcely mussed hair. A charming vision of fresh young loveliness, strong, erect, healthy, bright of eye and of cheek, she made as, after a furtive look up and down the saloon, she stepped from her door a very few minutes after the crash of that gong. With much scuffling and bustling the pa.s.sengers, most of them country people, were hurrying into places at the tables which now had their extension leaves and were covered with coa.r.s.e white tablecloths and with dishes of nicked stoneware, white, indeed, but shabbily so. But Susan's young eyes were not critical. To her it all seemed fine, with the rich flavor of adventure. A more experienced traveler might have been filled with gloomy foreboding by the quality of the odor from the cooking. She found it delightful and sympathized with the unrestrained eagerness of the homely country faces about her, with the children beating their spoons on their empty plates.

The colored waiters presently began to stream in, each wearing a soiled white jacket, each bearing aloft a huge tray on which were stacked filled dishes and steaming cups.

Colored people have a keen instinct for cla.s.s. One of the waiters happened to note her, advanced bowing and smiling with that good-humored, unservile courtesy which is the peculiar possession of the Americanized colored race. He flourished her into a chair with a "Good morning, miss. It's going to be a fine day." And as soon as she was seated he began to form round her plate a large inclosing arc of side dishes--fried fish, fried steak, fried egg, fried potatoes, wheat cakes, canned peaches, a cup of coffee. He drew toward her a can of syrup, a pitcher of cream, and a bowl of granulated sugar.

"Anything else?" said he, with a show of teeth white and sound.

"No--nothing. Thank you so much."

Her smile stimulated him to further courtesies. "Some likes the yeggs biled. Shall I change 'em?"

"No. I like them this way." She was so hungry that the idea of taking away a certainty on the chance of getting something out of sight and not yet cooked did not attract her.

"Perhaps--a little better piece of steak?"

"No--this looks fine." Her enthusiasm was not mere politeness.

"I clean forgot your hot biscuits." And away he darted.

When he came back with a heaping plate of hot biscuits, Sally Lunn and cornbread, she was eating as heartily as any of her neighbors. It seemed to her that never had she tasted such grand food as this served in the white and gold saloon with strangeness and interest all about her and the delightful sense of motion--motion into the fascinating golden unknown. The men at the table were eating with their knives; each had one protecting forearm and hand cast round his arc of small dishes as if to ward off probable attempt at seizure. And they swallowed as if the boat were afire. The women ate more daintily, as became members of the finer s.e.x on public exhibition. They were wearing fingerless net gloves, and their little fingers stood straight out in that gesture which every truly elegant woman deems necessary if the food is to be daintily and artistically conveyed to her lips. The children mussed and gormed themselves, their dishes, the tablecloth.

Susan loved it all. Her eyes sparkled. She ate everything, and regretted that lack of capacity made it impossible for her to yield to the entreaties of her waiter that she "have a little more."

She rose, went into the nearest pa.s.sageway between saloon and promenade, stealthily took a ten-cent piece from her pocketbook.

She called her waiter and gave it to him. She was blus.h.i.+ng deeply, frightened lest this the first tip she had ever given or seen given be misunderstood and refused. "I'm so much obliged,"

she said. "You were very nice."

The waiter bowed like a prince, always with his simple, friendly smile; the tip disappeared under his ap.r.o.n. "n.o.body could help being nice to you, lady."

She thanked him again and went to the promenade. It seemed to her that they had almost arrived. Along sh.o.r.e stretched a continuous line of houses--pretty houses with gardens. There were electric cars. Nearer the river lay several parallel lines of railway track along which train after train was speeding, some of them short trains of ordinary day coaches, others long trains made up in part of coaches grander and more beautiful than any she had ever seen. She knew they must be the parlor and dining and sleeping cars she had read about. And now they were in the midst of a fleet of steamers and barges, and far ahead loomed the first of Cincinnati's big suspension bridges, pictures of which she had many a time gazed at in wonder. There was a mingling of strange loud noises--whistles, engines, on the water, on sh.o.r.e; there was a mult.i.tude of what seemed to her feverish activities--she who had not been out of quiet Sutherland since she was a baby too young to note things.

The river, the sh.o.r.es, grew more and more crowded. Susan's eyes darted from one new object to another; and eagerly though she looked she felt she was missing more than she saw.

"Why, Susan Lenox!" exclaimed a voice almost in her ear.

She closed her teeth upon a cry; suddenly she was back from wonderland to herself. She turned to face dumpy, dressy Mrs.

Waterbury and her husband with the glossy kinky ringlets and the long wavy mustache. "How do you do?" she stammered.

"We didn't know you were aboard," said Mrs. Waterbury, a silly, duck-legged woman looking proudly uncomfortable in her bead-trimmed black silk.

"Yes--I'm--I'm here," confessed Susan.

"Going to the city to visit?"

"Yes," said Susan. She hesitated, then repeated, "Yes."

"What elegant breakfasts they do serve on these boats! I suppose your friends'll meet you. But Mort and I'll look after you till they come."

"Oh, it isn't necessary," protested Susan. The steamer was pa.s.sing under the bridge. There were cities on both sh.o.r.es--huge ma.s.ses of dingy brick, streets filled with motion of every kind--always motion, incessant motion, and change. "We're about there, aren't we?" she asked.

"The wharf's up beyond the second bridge--the Covington Bridge,"

explained Waterbury with the air of the old experienced globe-trotter. "There's a third one, further up, but you can't see it for the smoke." And he went on and on, volubly airing his intimate knowledge of the great city which he visited once a year for two or three days to buy goods. He ended with a scornful, "My, but Cincinnati's a dirty place!"

Dirty it might be, but Susan loved it, dirt and all. The smoke, the grime somehow seemed part of it, one of its charms, one of the things that made it different from, and superior to, monotonous country and country town. She edged away from the Waterburys, hid in her stateroom watching the panorama through the curtained gla.s.s of her promenade deck door. She was completely carried away. The city! So, this was the city! And her dreams of travel, of new sights, new faces, were beginning to come true. She forgot herself, forgot what she had left behind, forgot what she was to face. All her power of thought and feeling was used up in absorbing these unfolding wonders.

And when the June sun suddenly pierced the heavy clouds of fog and smoke, she clasped her hands and gasped, "Lovely! Oh, how lovely!"

And now the steamer was at the huge wharf-boat, in shape like the one at Sutherland, but in comparative size like the real Noah's Ark beside a toy ark. And from the whole tremendous scene rose an enormous clamor, the stentorian voice of the city. That voice is discordant and terrifying to many. To Susan, on that day, it was the most splendid burst of music. "Awake--awake!" it cried. "Awake, and _live!_" She opened her door that she might hear it better--rattle and rumble and roar, shriek of whistle, clang of bell. And the people!--Thousands on thousands hurrying hither and yon, like bees in a hive. "Awake awake, and live!"

The noises from the saloon reminded her that the journey was ended, that she must leave the boat. And she did not know where to go--she and her bundle. She waited until she saw the Waterburys, along with the other pa.s.sengers, moving up the levee. Then she issued forth--by the promenade deck door so that she would not pa.s.s the office. But at the head of the companionway, in the forward part of the deck, there the clerk stood, looking even pettier and more offensive by daylight. She thought to slip by him. But he stopped stroking his mustache and called out to her, "Haven't your friends come?"

She frowned, angry in her nervousness. "I shall get on very well," she said curtly. Then she repented, smiled politely, added, "Thank you."

"I'll put you in a carriage," he offered, hastening down the stairs to join her.

She did not know what to say or do. She walked silently beside him, he carrying her bundle. They crossed the wharf-boat. A line of dilapidated looking carriages was drawn up near the end of the gangplank. The sight of them, the remembrance of what she had heard of the expensiveness of city carriages, nerved her to desperation. "Give me my things, please," she said. "I think I'll walk."

"Where do you want to go?"

The question took her breath away. With a quickness that amazed her, her lips uttered, "The Gibson House."

"Oh! That's a right smart piece. But you can take a car. I'll walk with you to the car. There's a line a couple of squares up that goes almost by the door. You know it isn't far from Fourth Street."

She was now in a flutter of terror. She went stumbling along beside him, not hearing a word of his voluble and flirtatious talk. They were in the midst of the mad rush and confusion. The noises, no longer mingled but individual, smote savagely upon her ears, startling her, making her look dazedly round as if expecting death to swoop upon her. At the corner of Fourth Street the clerk halted. He was clear out of humor with her, so dumb, so unappreciative. "There'll be a car along soon," said he sourly.

"You needn't wait," said she timidly. "Thank you again."

"You can't miss it. Good-by." And he lifted his hat--"tipped"

it, rather--for he would not have wasted a full lift upon such a female. She gave a gasp of relief when he departed; then a gasp of terror--for upon the opposite corner stood the Waterburys. The globe-trotter and his wife were so dazed by the city that they did not see her, though in their helpless glancing round they looked straight at her. She hastily ran into a drug store on the corner. A young man in s.h.i.+rt sleeves held up by pink garters, and with oily black hair carefully parted and plastered, put down a pestle and mortar and came forward. He had kind brown eyes, but there was something wrong with the lower part of his face. Susan did not dare look to see what it was, lest he should think her unfeeling. He was behind the counter.

Susan saw the soda fountain. As if by inspiration, she said, "Some chocolate soda, please."

"Ice cream?" asked the young man in a peculiar voice, like that of one who has a harelip.

"Please," said Susan. And then she saw the sign, "Ice Cream, ten cents," and wished she hadn't.

The young man mixed the soda, put in a liberal helping of ice cream, set it before her with a spoon in it, rested the knuckles of his brown hairy hands on the counter and said:

"It _is_ hot."