Susan Lenox Her Fall and Rise Part 46

"Then again maybe I do," rejoined she, forcing a merry smile.

His face flushed with embarra.s.sment, but his eyes grew more ardent as he said: "What were you looking for, when I saw you in Garfield Place?"

"Was that Garfield Place?" she asked, in evasion.

"Yes." And he insisted, "What were you looking for?"

"What were _you_ looking for?"

"For a pretty girl." They both laughed. "And I've found her. I'm suited if you are. . . . Don't look so serious. You haven't answered my question."

"I'm looking for work."

He smiled as if it were a joke. "You mean for a place on the stage.

That isn't work. _You_ couldn't work. I can see that at a glance."

"Why not?"

"Oh, you haven't been brought up to that kind of life. You'd hate it in every way. And they don't pay women anything for work. My father employs a lot of them. Most of his girls live at home. That keeps the wages down, and the others have to piece out with"--he smiled--"one thing and another."

Susan sat gazing straight before her. "I've not had much experience," she finally said, thoughtfully. "I guess I don't know what I'm about."

The young man leaned toward her, his face flus.h.i.+ng with earnestness. "You don't know how pretty you are. I wish my father wasn't so close with me. I'd not let you ever speak of work again--even on the stage. What good times we could have!"

"I must be going," said she, rising. Her whole body was alternately hot and cold. In her brain, less vague now, were the ideas Mabel Connemora had opened up for her.

"Oh, bother!" exclaimed he. "Sit down a minute. You misunderstood me. I don't mean I'm flat broke."

Susan hastily reseated herself, showing her confusion. "I wasn't thinking of that."

"Then--what were you thinking of?"

"I don't know," she replied--truthfully, for she could not have put into words anything definite about the struggle raging in her like a battle in a fog. "I often don't exactly know what I'm thinking about. I somehow can't--can't fit it together--yet."

"Do you suppose," he went on, as if she had not spoken, "do you suppose I don't understand? I know you can't afford to let me take your time for nothing. . . . Don't you like me a little?"

She looked at him with grave friendliness. "Yes." Then, seized with a terror which her habitual manner of calm concealed from him, she rose again.

"Why shouldn't it be me as well as another?. . . At least sit down till I pay the bill."

She seated herself, stared at her plate.

"Now what are you thinking about?" he asked.

"I don't know exactly. Nothing much."

The waiter brought the bill. The young man merely glanced at the total, drew a small roll of money from his trousers pocket, put a five-dollar note on the tray with the bill. Susan's eyes opened wide when the waiter returned with only two quarters and a dime. She glanced furtively at the young man, to see if he, too, was not disconcerted. He waved the tray carelessly aside; the waiter said "Thank you," in a matter-of-course way, dropped the sixty cents into his pocket. The waiter's tip was by itself almost as much as she had ever seen paid out for a meal for two persons.

"Now, where shall we go?" asked the young man.

Susan did not lift her eyes. He leaned toward her, took her hand. "You're different from the sort a fellow usually finds,"

said he. "And I'm--I'm crazy about you. Let's go," said he.

Susan took her bundle, followed him. She glanced up the street and down. She had an impulse to say she must go away alone; it was not strong enough to frame a sentence, much less express her thought. She was seeing queer, vivid, apparently disconnected visions--Burlingham, sick unto death, on the stretcher in the hospital reception room--Blynn of the hideous face and loose, repulsive body--the contemptuous old gentleman in the shop--odds and ends of the things Mabel Connemora had told her--the roll of bills the young man had taken from his pocket when he paid--Jeb Ferguson in the climax of the horrors of that wedding day and night. They went to Garfield Place, turned west, paused after a block or so at a little frame house set somewhat back from the street. The young man, who had been as silent as she--but nervous instead of preoccupied--opened the gate in the picket fence.

"This is a first-cla.s.s quiet place," said he, embarra.s.sed but trying to appear at ease.

Susan hesitated. She must somehow nerve herself to speak of money, to say to him that she needed ten dollars--that she must have it. If she did not speak--if she got nothing for Mr.

Burlingham--or almost nothing--and probably men didn't give women much--if she were going with him--to endure again the horrors and the degradation she had suffered from Mr.

Ferguson--if it should be in vain! This nice young man didn't suggest Mr. Ferguson in any way. But there was such a mystery about men--they had a way of changing so--Sam Wright--Uncle George even Mr. Ferguson hadn't seemed capable of torturing a helpless girl for no reason at all----

"We can't stand here," the young man was saying.

She tried to speak about the ten dollars. She simply could not force out the words. With brain in a whirl, with blood beating suffocatingly into her throat and lungs, but giving no outward sign of agitation, she entered the gate. There was a low, old-fas.h.i.+oned porch along the side of the house, with an awning curiously placed at the end toward the street. When they ascended the steps under the awning, they were screened from the street. The young man pulled a k.n.o.b. A bell within tinkled faintly; Susan started, s.h.i.+vered. But the young man, looking straight at the door, did not see. A colored girl with a pleasant, welcoming face opened, stood aside for them to enter.

He went straight up the stairs directly ahead, and Susan followed. At the threshold the trembling girl looked round in terror. She expected to see a place like that foul, close little farm bedroom--for it seemed to her that at such times men must seek some dreadful place--vile, dim, fitting. She was in a small, attractively furnished room, with a bow window looking upon the yard and the street. The furniture reminded her of her own room at her uncle's in Sutherland, except that the bra.s.s bed was far finer. He closed the door and locked it.

As he advanced toward her he said: "_What_ are you seeing? Please don't look like that." Persuasively, "You weren't thinking of me--were you?"

"No--Oh, no," replied she, pa.s.sing her hand over her eyes to try to drive away the vision of Ferguson.

"You look as if you expected to be murdered. Do you want to go?"

She forced herself to seem calm. "What a coward I am!" she said to herself. "If I could only die for him, instead of this. But I can't. And I _must_ get money for him."

To the young man she said: "No. I--I--want to stay."

Late in the afternoon, when they were once more in the street, he said. "I'd ask you to go to dinner with me, but I haven't enough money."

She stopped short. An awful look came into her face.

"Don't be alarmed," cried he, hurried and nervous, and blus.h.i.+ng furiously. "I put the--the present for you in that funny little bundle of yours, under one of the folds of the nightgown or whatever it is you've got wrapped on the outside. I didn't like to hand it to you. I've a feeling somehow that you're not regularly--that kind."

"Was it--ten dollars?" she said, and for all he could see she was absolutely calm.

"Yes," replied he, with a look of relief followed by a smile of amused tenderness.

"I can't make you out," he went on. "You're a queer one. You've had a look in your eyes all afternoon--well, if I hadn't been sure you were experienced, you'd almost have frightened me away."

"Yes, I've had experience. The--the worst," said the girl.

"You--you attract me awfully; you've got--well, everything that's nice about a woman--and at the same time, there's something in your eyes---- Are you very fond of your friend?"

"He's all I've got in the world."

"I suppose it's his being sick that makes you look and act so queer?"

"I don't know what's the matter with me," she said slowly.