Ida tossed her head angrily."You've got brains--more than Ihave," she cried."You've got every advantage for catching rich men--even a rich husband.You're educated.You speak and act and look refined.Why you could pretend to be a howling fashionable swell.You've got all the points.But what have you got 'em for? Not to use that's certain.""You can't be as disgusted with me as I am."
"If you're going to do a thing, why, _do_ it!""That's what I tell myself.But--I can't make a move."Ida gave a gesture of despair."I don't see what's to become of you.And you could do _so_ well!...Let me phone Mr.
Sterling.I told him about you.He's anxious to meet you.
He's fond of books--like you.You'd like him.He'd give up a lot to you, because you're classier than I am."Susan threw her arms round Ida and kissed her."Don't bother about me," she said."I've got to act in my own foolish, stupid way.I'm like a child going to school.I've got to learn a certain amount before I'm ready to do whatever it is I'm going to do.And until I learn it, I can't do much of anything.I thought I had learned in the last few months.Isee I haven't."
"Do listen to sense, Lorna," pleaded Ida."If you wait till the last minute, you'll get left.The time to get the money's when you have money.And I've a feeling that you're not particularly flush.""I'll do the best I can.And I can't move till I'm ready."Meanwhile she continued to search for work--work that would enable her to live _decently_, wages less degrading than the wages of shame.In a newspaper she read an advertisement of a theatrical agency.Advertisements of all kinds read well;those of theatrical agencies read--like the fairy tales that they were.However, she found in this particular offering of dazzling careers and salaries a peculiar phrasing that decided her to break the rule she had made after having investigated scores of this sort of offers.
Rod was abroad; anyhow, enough time had elapsed.One of the most impressive features of the effect of New York--meaning by "New York" only that small but significant portion of the four millions that thinks--at least, after a fashion, and acts, instead of being mere passive tools of whatever happens to turn up--the most familiar notable effect of this New York is the speedy distinction in the newcomer of those illusions and delusions about life and about human nature, about good and evil, that are for so many people the most precious and the only endurable and beautiful thing in the world.New York, destroyer of delusions and cherished hypocrisies and pretenses, therefore makes the broadly intelligent of its citizens hardy, makes the others hard--and between the hardy and hard, between sense and cynicism, yawns a gulf like that between Absalom and Dives.Susan, a New Yorker now, had got the habit--in thought, at least--of seeing things with somewhat less distortion from the actual.She no longer exaggerated the importance of the Rod-Susan episode.She saw that in New York, where life is crowded with events, everything in one's life, except death, becomes incident, becomes episode, where in regions offering less to think about each rare happening took on an aspect of vast importance.The Rod-Susan love adventure, she now saw, was not what it would have seemed--therefore, would have been--in Sutherland, but was mere episode of a New York life, giving its light and shade to a certain small part of the long, variedly patterned fabric of her life, and of his, not determining the whole.She saw that it was simply like a bend in the river, giving a new turn to current and course but not changing the river itself, and soon left far behind and succeeded by other bends giving each its equal or greater turn to the stream.
Rod had passed from her life, and she from his life.Thus she was free to begin her real career--the stage--if she could.She went to the suite of offices tenanted by Mr.Josiah Ransome.
She was ushered in to Ransome himself, instead of halting with underlings.She owed this favor to advantages which her lack of vanity and of self-consciousness prevented her from surmising.Ransome--smooth, curly, comfortable looking--received her with a delicate blending of the paternal and the gallant.After he had inspected her exterior with flattering attentiveness and had investigated her qualifications with a thoroughness that was convincing of sincerity he said:
"Most satisfactory! I can make you an exceptional assurance.
If you register with me, I can guarantee you not less than twenty-five a week."Susan hesitated long and asked many questions before she finally--with reluctance paid the five dollars.She felt ashamed of her distrust, but might perhaps have persisted in it had not Mr.Ransome said:
"I don't blame you for hesitating, my dear young lady.And if I could I'd put you on my list without payment.But you can see how unbusinesslike that would be.I am a substantial, old-established concern.You--no doubt you are perfectly reliable.But I have been fooled so many times.I must not let myself forget that after all I know nothing about you."As soon as Susan had paid he gave her a list of vaudeville and musical comedy houses where girls were wanted."You can't fail to suit one of them," said he."If not, come back here and get your money."After two weary days of canvassing she went back to Ransome.
He was just leaving.But he smiled genially, opened his desk and seated himself."At your service," said he."What luck?""None," replied Susan."I couldn't live on the wages they offered at the musical comedy places, even if I could get placed.""And the vaudeville people?"
"When I said I could only sing and not dance, they looked discouraged.When I said I had no costumes they turned me down.""Excellent!" cried Ransome."You mustn't be so easily beaten.
You must take dancing lessons--perhaps a few singing lessons, too.And you must get some costumes.""But that means several hundred dollars."
