After dinner alone a pretense at dinner--she wandered the streets of the old Tenderloin until midnight.An icy rain was falling.Rains such as this--any rains except showers--were rare in the City of the Sun.That rain by itself was enough to make her downhearted.She walked with head down and umbrella close to her shoulders.No one spoke to her.She returned dripping; she had all but ruined her one dress.She went to bed, but not to sleep.About nine--early for that house she rose, drank a cup of coffee and ate part of a roll.Her little stove and such other things as could not be taken along she rolled into a bundle, marked it, "For Ida." On a scrap of paper she wrote this note:
Don't think I'm ungrateful, please.I'm going without saying good-by because I'm afraid if I saw you, you'd be generous enough to put up for me, and I'd be weak enough to accept.And if I did that, I'd never be able to get strong or even to hold my head up.So--good-by.I'll learn sooner or later--learn how to live.I hope it won't be too long--and that the teacher won't be too hard on me.
Yes, I'll learn, and I'll buy fine hats at your grand millinery store yet.Don't forget me altogether.
She tucked this note into the bundle and laid it against the door behind which Ida and one of her regulars were sleeping peacefully.The odor of Ida's powerful perfume came through the cracks in the door; Susan drew it eagerly into her nostrils, sobbed softly, turned away, It was one of the perfumes classed as immoral; to Susan it was the aroma of a friendship as noble, as disinterested, as generous, as human sympathy had ever breathed upon human woe.With her few personal possessions in a package she descended the stairs unnoticed, went out into the rain.At the corner of Sixth Avenue she paused, looked up and down the street.It was almost deserted.Now and then a streetwalker, roused early by a lover with perhaps a family waiting for him, hurried by, looking piteous in the daylight which showed up false and dyed hair, the layers of paint, the sad tawdriness of battered finery from the cheapest bargain troughs.
Susan went slowly up Sixth Avenue.Two blocks, and she saw a girl enter the side door of a saloon across the way.She crossed the street, pushed in at the same door, went on to a small sitting-room with blinds drawn, with round tables, on every table a match stand.It was one of those places where streetwalkers rest their weary legs between strolls, and sit for company on rainy or snowy nights, and take shy men for sociability-breeding drinks and for the preliminary bargaining.
The air of the room was strong with stale liquor and tobacco, the lingering aroma of the night's vanished revels.In the far corner sat the girl she had followed; a glass of raw whiskey and another of water stood on the table before her.Susan seated herself near the door and when the swollen-faced, surly bartender came, ordered whiskey.She poured herself a drink--filled the glass to the brim.She drank it in two gulps, set the empty glass down.She shivered like an animal as it is hit in the head with a poleax.The mechanism of life staggered, hesitated, went on with a sudden leaping acceleration of pace.Susan tapped her glass against the matchstand.The bartender came.
"Another," said she.
The man stared at her."The--hell!" he ejaculated."You must be afraid o' catchin' cold.Or maybe you're looking for the menagerie?"Susan laughed and so did the girl in the corner."Won't you have a drink with me?" asked Susan.
"That's very kind of you," replied the girl, in the manner of one eager to show that she, too, is a perfect lady in every respect, used to the ways of the best society.She moved to a chair at Susan's table.
She and Susan inventoried each other.Susan saw a mere child--hardly eighteen--possibly not seventeen--but much worn by drink and irregular living--evidently one of those who rush into the fast woman's life with the idea that it is a career of gayety--and do not find out their error until looks and health are gone.Susan drank her second drink in three gulps, several minutes apart.The girl was explaining in a thin, common voice, childish yet cracked, that she had come there seeking a certain lady friend because she had an extra man and needed a side partner.
"Suppose you come with me," she suggested."It's good money, I think.Want to get next?""When I've had another drink," said Susan.Her eyes were gorgeously brilliant.She had felt almost as reckless several times before; but never had she felt this devil-may-care eagerness to see what the turn of the next card would bring.
"You'll take one?"
"Sure.I feel like the devil.Been bumming round all night.
My lady friend that I had with me--a regular lady friend--she was suddenly took ill.Appendicitis complicated with d.t.'s the ambulance guy said.The boys are waiting for me to come back, so's we can go on.They've got some swell rooms in a hotel up in Forty-second Street.Let's get a move on."The bartender served the third drink and Susan paid for them, the other girl insisting on paying for the one she was having when Susan came.Susan's head was whirling.Her spirits were spiraling up and up.Her pale lips were wreathed in a reckless smile.She felt courageous for adventure--any adventure.Her capital had now sunk to three quarters and a five-cent piece.
They issued forth, talking without saying anything, laughing without knowing or caring why.Life was a joke--a coarse, broad joke--but amusing if one drank enough to blunt any refinement of sensibility.And what was sensibility but a kind of snobbishness?
And what more absurd than snobbishness in an outcast?
"That's good whiskey they had, back there," said Susan.
"Good? Yes--if you don't care what you say.""If you don't want to care what you say or do," explained Susan.
"Oh, all booze is good for that," said the girl.
