Читать книгу Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise - David Graham Phillips - Страница 8

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RUTH had forgotten to close her shutters, so toward seven o'clock the light which had been beating against her eyelids for three hours succeeded in lifting them. She stretched herself and yawned noisily. Susan appeared in the connecting doorway.

"Are you awake?" she said softly.

"What time is it?" asked Ruth, too lazy to turn over and look at her clock.

"Ten to seven."

"Do close my shutters for me. I'll sleep an hour or two." She hazily made out the figure in the doorway. "You're dressed, aren't you?" she inquired sleepily.

"Yes," replied Susan. "I've been waiting for you to wake."

Something in the tone made Ruth forget about sleep and rub her fingers over her eyes to clear them for a view of her cousin. Susan seemed about as usual—perhaps a little serious, but then she had the habit of strange moods of seriousness. "What did you want?" said Ruth.

Susan came into the room, sat at the foot of the bed—there was room, as the bed was long and Ruth short. "I want you to tell me what my mother did."

"Did?" echoed Ruth feebly.

"Did, to disgrace you and—me."

"Oh, I couldn't explain—not in a few words. I'm so sleepy. Don't bother about it, Susan." And she thrust her head deeper into the pillow. "Close the shutters."

"Then I'll have to ask Aunt Fanny—or Uncle George or everybody—till I find out."

"But you mustn't do that," protested Ruth, flinging herself from left to right impatiently. "What is it you want to know?"

"About my mother—and what she did. And why I have no father—why I'm not like you—and the other girls."

"Oh—it's nothing. I can't explain. Don't bother about it. It's no use. It can't be helped. And it doesn't really matter."

"I've been thinking," said Susan. "I understand a great many things I didn't know I'd noticed—ever since I was a baby. But what I don't understand——" She drew a long breath, a cautious breath, as if there were danger of awakening a pain. "What I don't understand is—why. And—you must tell me all about it. . . . Was my mother bad?"

"Not exactly bad," Ruth answered uncertainly. "But she did one thing that was wicked—at least that a woman never can be forgiven for, if it's found out."

"Did she—did she take something that didn't belong to her?"

"No—nothing like that. No, she was, they say, as nice and sweet as she could be—except—— She wasn't married to your father."

Susan sat in a brown study. "I can't understand," she said at last. "Why—she must have been married, or—or—there wouldn't have been me."

Ruth smiled uneasily. "Not at all. Don't you really understand?"

Susan shook her head.

"He—he betrayed her—and left her—and then everybody knew because you came."

Susan's violet-gray eyes rested a grave, inquiring glance upon her cousin's face. "But if he betrayed her—— What does 'betray' mean? Doesn't it mean he promised to marry her and didn't?"

"Something like that," said Ruth. "Yes—something like that."

"Then he was the disgrace," said the dark cousin, after reflecting. "No—you're not telling me, Ruth. What did my mother do?"

"She had you without being married."

Again Susan sat in silence, trying to puzzle it out. Ruth lifted herself, put the pillows behind her back. "You don't understand—anything—do you? Well, I'll try to explain—though I don't know much about it."

And hesitatingly, choosing words she thought fitted to those innocent ears, hunting about for expressions she thought comprehensible to that innocent mind, Ruth explained the relations of the sexes—an inaccurate, often absurd, explanation, for she herself knew only what she had picked up from other girls—the fantastic hodgepodge of pruriency, physiology and sheer nonsense which under our system of education distorts and either alarms or inflames the imaginations of girls and boys where the clean, simple truth would at least enlighten them. Susan listened with increasing amazement.

"Well, do you understand?" Ruth ended. "How we come into the world—and what marriage means?"

"I don't believe it," declared Susan. "It's—awful!" And she shivered with disgust.

"I tell you it's true," insisted Ruth. "I thought it was awful when I first heard—when Lottie Wright took me out in their orchard, where nobody could listen, and told me what their cook had told her. But I've got kind of used to it."

"But it—it's so, then; my mother did marry my father," said Susan.

"No. She let him betray her. And when a woman lets a man betray her without being married by the preacher or somebody, why, she's ruined forever."

"But doesn't marriage mean where two people promise to love each other and then betray each other?"

"If they're married, it isn't betraying," explained Ruth. "If they're not, it is betraying." Susan reflected, nodded slowly. "I guess I understand. But don't you see it was my father who was the disgrace? He was the one that promised to marry and didn't."

"How foolish you are!" cried Ruth. "I never knew you to be stupid."

"But isn't it so?" persisted Susan.

"Yes—in a way," her cousin admitted. "Only—the woman must keep herself pure until the ceremony has been performed."

"But if he said so to her, wasn't that saying so to God just as much as if the preacher had been there?"

"No, it wasn't," said Ruth with irritation. "And it's wicked to think such things. All I know is, God says a woman must be married before she—before she has any children. And your mother wasn't." Susan shook her head. "I guess you don't understand any better than I do—really."

"No, I don't," confessed Ruth. "But I'd like to see any man more than kiss me or put his arm round me without our having been married."

"But," urged Susan, "if he kissed you, wouldn't that be like marriage?"

"Some say so," admitted Ruth. "But I'm not so strict. A little kissing and that often leads a man to propose." Susan reflected again. "It all sounds low and sneaking to me," was her final verdict. "I don't want to have anything to do with it. But I'm sure my mother was a good woman. It wasn't her fault if she was lied to, when she loved and believed. And anybody who blames her is low and bad. I'm glad I haven't got any father, if fathers have to be made to promise before everybody or else they'll not keep their word."

"Well, I'll not argue about it," said Ruth. "I'm telling you the way things are. The woman has to take all the blame." Susan lifted her head haughtily. "I'd be glad to be blamed by anybody who was wicked enough to be that unjust. I'd not have anything to do with such people."

"Then you'd live alone."

"No, I shouldn't. There are lots of people who are good and——"

"That's wicked, Susan," interrupted Ruth. "All good people think as I tell you they do."

"Do Aunt Fanny and Uncle George blame my mother?"

"Of course. How could they help it, when she——" Ruth was checked by the gathering lightnings in those violet-gray eyes.

"But," pursued Susan, after a pause, "even if they were wicked enough to blame my mother, they couldn't blame me."

"Of course not," declared Ruth warmly. "Hasn't everybody always been sweet and kind to you?"

"But last night you said——"

Ruth hid her face. "I'm ashamed of what I said last night," she murmured. "I've got, Oh, such a nasty disposition, Susie."

"But what you said—wasn't it so?" Ruth turned away her head.

Susan drew a long sigh, so quietly that Ruth could not have heard.

"You understand," Ruth said gently, "everybody feels sorry for you and——"

Susan frowned stormily, "They'd better feel sorry for themselves."

"Oh, Susie, dear," cried Ruth, impulsively catching her hand, "we all love you, and mother and father and I—we'll stand up for you through everything——"

"Don't you dare feel sorry for me!" Susan cried, wrenching her hand away.

Ruth's eyes filled with tears.

"You can't blame us because everybody—— You know, God says,

'The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children——'"

"I'm done with everybody," cried Susan, rising and lifting her proud head, "I'm done with God."

Ruth gave a low scream and shuddered. Susan looked round defiantly, as if she expected a bolt from the blue to come hurtling through the open window. But the sky remained serene, and the quiet, scented breeze continued to play with the lace curtains, and the birds on the balcony did not suspend their chattering courtship. This lack of immediate effect from her declaration of war upon man and God was encouraging. The last of the crushed, cowed feeling Ruth had inspired the night before disappeared. With a soul haughtily plumed and looking defiance from the violet-gray eyes, Susan left her cousin and betook herself down to breakfast.

In common with most children, she had always dreamed of a mysterious fate for herself, different from the commonplace routine around her. Ruth's revelations, far from daunting her, far from making her feel like cringing before the world in gratitude for its tolerance of her bar sinister, seemed a fascinatingly tragic confirmation of her romantic longings and beliefs. No doubt it was the difference from the common lot that had attracted Sam to her; and this difference would make their love wholly unlike the commonplace Sutherland wooing and wedding. Yes, hers had been a mysterious fate, and would continue to be. Nora, an old woman now, had often related in her presence how Doctor Stevens had brought her to life when she lay apparently, indeed really, dead upon the upstairs sitting-room table—Doctor Stevens and Nora's own prayers. An extraordinary birth, in defiance of the laws of God and man; an extraordinary resurrection, in defiance of the laws of nature—yes, hers would be a life superbly different from the common. And when she and Sam married, how gracious and forgiving she would be to all those bad-hearted people; how she would shame them for their evil thoughts against her mother and herself!

The Susan Lenox who sat alone at the little table in the dining-room window, eating bread and butter and honey in the comb, was apparently the same Susan Lenox who had taken three meals a day in that room all those years—was, indeed, actually the same, for character is not an overnight creation. Yet it was an amazingly different Susan Lenox, too. The first crisis had come; she had been put to the test; and she had not collapsed in weakness but had stood erect in strength.

After breakfast she went down Main Street and at Crooked Creek Avenue took the turning for the cemetery. She sought the Warham plot, on the western slope near the quiet brook. There was a clump of cedars at each corner of the plot; near the largest of them were three little graves—the three dead children of George and Fanny. In the shadow of the clump and nearest the brook was a fourth grave apart and, to the girl, now thrillingly mysterious: