"What do you think?" she said to Maud when she was ready.
"My, but you look different!" exclaimed Maud."A lot dressier--and sportier.More--more Broadway.""That's it--Broadway," said Susan.She had always avoided looking like Broadway.Now, she would take the opposite tack.
Not loud toilets--for they would defeat her purpose.Not loud but--just common.
"But," added Maud, "you do look swell about the feet.Where _do_ you get your shoes? No, I guess it's the feet."As they sallied forth Maud said, "First, I'll show you our hotel." And they went to a Raines Law hotel in Forty-second Street near Eighth Avenue."The proprietor's a heeler of Finnegan's.I guess Freddie comes in for some rake-off.He gives us twenty-five cents of every dollar the man spends,"explained she."And if the man opens wine we get two dollars on every bottle.The best way is to stay behind when the man goes and collect right away.That avoids rows--though they'd hardly dare cheat you, being as you're on Freddie's staff.
Freddie's got a big pull.He's way up at the top.I wish to God I had him instead of Jim.Freddie's giving up fast.They say he's got some things a lot better'n this now, and that he's likely to quit this and turn respectable.You ought to treat me mighty white, seeing what I done for you.I've put you in right--and that's everything in this here life."Susan looked all round--looked along the streets stretching away with their morning suggestion of freedom to fly, freedom to escape--helpless! "Can't I get a drink?" asked she.There was a strained look in her eyes, a significant nervousness of the lips and hands."I must have a drink.""Of course.Max has been on a vacation, but I hear he's back.
When I introduce you, he'll probably set 'em up.But Iwouldn't drink if I were you till I went off duty.""I must have a drink," replied Susan.
"It'll get you down.It got me down.I used to have a fine sucker--gave me a hundred a week and paid my flat rent.But Ihad nothing else to do, so I took to drinking, and I got so reckless that I let him catch me with my lover that time.But I had to have somebOdy to spend the money on.Anyhow, it's no fun having a John.""A John?" said Susan."What's that?"
"You are an innocent----!" laughed Maud."A John's a sucker--a fellow that keeps a girl.Well, it'd be no fun to have a John unless you fooled him--would it?"They now entered the side door of the hotel and ascended the stairs.A dyspeptic looking man with a red nose that stood out the more strongly for the sallowness of his skin and the smallness of his sunken brown eyes had his hands spread upon the office desk and was leaning on his stiff arms."Hello, Max," said Maud in a fresh, condescending way."How's business?""Slow.Always slack on Sundays.How goes it with you, Maudie?""So--so.I manage to pick up a living in spite of the damn chippies.I don't see why the hell they don't go into the business regular and make something out of it, instead of loving free.I'm down on a girl that's neither the one thing nor the other.This is my lady friend, Miss Queenie." She turned laughingly to Susan."I never asked your last name.""Brown."
"My, what a strange name!" cried Maud.Then, as the proprietor laughed with the heartiness of tradesman at good customer's jest, she said, "Going to set 'em up, Max?"He pressed a button and rang a bell loudly.The responding waiter departed with orders for a whiskey and two lithias.
Maud explained to Susan:
"Max used to be a prize-fighter.He was middleweight champion.""I've been a lot of things in my days," said Max with pride.
"So I've heard," joked Maud."They say they've got your picture at headquarters.""That's neither here nor there," said Max surlily."Don't get too flip." Susan drank her whiskey as soon as it came, and the glow rushed to her ghastly face.Said Max with great politeness:
"You're having a little neuralgia, ain't you? I see your face is swhole some.""Yes," said Susan."Neuralgia." Maud laughed hilariously.
Susan herself had ceased to brood over the incident.In conventional lives, visited but rarely by perilous storms, by disaster, such an event would be what is called concise.But in life as it is lived by the masses of the people--life in which awful disease, death, maiming, eviction, fire, violent event of any and every kind, is part of the daily routine in that life of the masses there is no time for lingering upon the weathered storm or for bothering about and repairing its ravages.Those who live the comparatively languid, the sheltered life should not use their own standards of what is delicate and refined, what is conspicuous and strong, when they judge their fellow beings as differently situated.
Nevertheless, they do--with the result that we find the puny mud lark criticizing the eagle battling with the hurricane.
