She took the quarters he directed--a plain clean room two flights up at seven dollars a week, in a furnished room house on West Forty-third Street near Eighth Avenue.She was but a few blocks from where she and Rod had lived.New York--to a degree unrivaled among the cities of the world--illustrates in the isolated lives of its never isolated inhabitants how little relationship there is between space and actualities of distance.Wherever on earth there are as many as two human beings, one may see an instance of the truth.That an infinity of spiritual solitude can stretch uncrossable even between two locked in each other's loving arms! But New York's solitudes, its separations, extend to the surface things.Susan had no sense of the apparent nearness of her former abode.Her life again lay in the same streets; but there again came the sense of strangeness which only one who has lived in New York could appreciate.The streets were the same; but to her they seemed as the streets of another city, because she was now seeing in them none of the things she used to see, was seeing instead kinds of people, aspects of human beings, modes of feeling and acting and existing of which she used to have not the faintest knowledge.There were as many worlds as kinds of people.
Thus, though we all talk to each other as if about the same world, each of us is thinking of his own kind of world, the only one he sees.And that is why there can never be sympathy and understanding among the children of men until there is some approach to resemblance in their various lots; for the lot determines the man.
The house was filled with women of her own kind.They were allowed all privileges.There was neither bath nor stationary washstand, but the landlady supplied tin tubs on request."Oh, Mr.Palmer's recommendation," said she; "I'll give you two days to pay.My terms are in advance.But Mr.Palmer's a dear friend of mine."She was a short woman with a monstrous bust and almost no hips.
Her thin hair was dyed and frizzled, and her voice sounded as if it found its way out of her fat lips after a long struggle to pass through the fat of her throat and chest.Her second chin lay upon her bosom in a soft swollen bag that seemed to be suspended from her ears.Her eyes were hard and evil, of a brownish gray.She affected suavity and elaborate politeness;but if the least thing disturbed her, she became red and coarse of voice and vile of language.The vile language and the nature of her business and her private life aside, she would have compared favorably with anyone in the class of those who deal--as merchants, as landlords, as boarding-house keepers--with the desperately different classes of uncertain income.She was reputed rich.They said she stayed on in business to avoid lonesomeness and to keep in touch with all that was going on in the life that had been hers from girlhood.
"And she's a mixer," said Maud to Susan.In response to Susan's look of inquiry, she went on to explain, "A mixer's a white woman that keeps a colored man." Maud laughed at Susan's expression of horror."You are a greenie," she mocked."Why, it's all the rage.Nearly all the girls do--from the headliners that are kept by the young Fifth Avenue millionaires down to nine out of ten of the girls of our set that you see in Broadway.No, I'm not lying.It's the truth.__I__ don't do it--at least, not yet.I may get round to it."After the talk with Maud about the realities of life as it is lived by several hundred thousand of the inhabitants of Manhattan Island Susan had not the least disposition to test by defiance the truth of Freddie Palmer's plain statement as to his powers and her duties.He had told her to go to work that very Sunday evening, and Jim had ordered Maud to call for her and to initiate her.And at half-past seven Maud came.At once she inspected Susan's swollen face.
"Might be a bit worse," she said."With a veil on, no one'd notice it.""But I haven't a veil," said Susan.
"I've got mine with me--pinned to my garter.I haven't been home since this afternoon." And Maud produced it.
"But I can't wear a veil at night," objected Susan.
"Why not?" said Maud."Lots of the girls do.A veil's a dandy hider.Besides, even where a girl's got nothing to hide and has a face that's all to the good, still it's not a bad idea to wear a veil.Men like what they can't see.One of the ugliest girls I know makes a lot of money--all with her veil.She fixes up her figure something grand.Then she puts on that veil--one of the kind you think you can see a face through but you really can't.And she never lifts it till the `come on'
has given up his cash.Then----" Maud laughed."Gee, but she has had some hot run-ins after she hoists her curtain!""Why don't you wear a veil all the time?" asked Susan.
Maud tossed her head."What do you take me for? I've got too good an opinion of my looks for that."Susan put on the veil.It was not of the kind that is a disguise.Still, diaphanous though it seemed, it concealed astonishingly the swelling in Susan's face.Obviously, then, it must at least haze the features, would do something toward blurring the marks that go to make identity.
"I shall always wear a veil," said Susan.
"Oh, I don't know," deprecated Maud."I think you're quite pretty--though a little too proper and serious looking to suit some tastes."Susan had removed veil and hat, was letting down her hair.
"What are you doing that for?" cried Maud impatiently."We're late now and----""I don't like the way my hair's done," cried Susan.
"Why, it was all right--real swell--good as a hairdresser could have done."But Susan went on at her task.Ever since she came East she had worn it in a braid looped at the back of her head.She proceeded to change this radically.With Maud forgetting to be impatient in admiration of her swift fingers she made a coiffure much more elaborate--wide waves out from her temples and a big round loose knot behind.She was well content with the result--especially when she got the veil on again and it was assisting in the change.
