He has not candidly explored far beneath the surface of things who does not know the strange allure, charm even, that many loathsome things possess.And drink is peculiarly fitted to bring out this perverse quality--drink that blurs all the conventionalities, even those built up into moral ideas by centuries and ages of unbroken custom.The human animal, for all its pretenses of inflexibility, is almost infinitely adaptable--that is why it has risen in several million years of evolution from about the humblest rank in the mammalian family to overlordship of the universe.Still, it is doubtful if, without drink to help her, a girl of Susan's intelligence and temperament would have been apt to endure.She would probably have chosen the alternative--death.Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of girls, at least her equals in sensibility, are caught in the same calamity every year, tens of thousands, ever more and more as our civilization transforms under the pressure of industrialism, are caught in the similar calamities of soul-destroying toil.And only the few survive who have perfect health and abounding vitality.Susan's iron strength enabled her to live; but it was drink that enabled her to endure.Beyond question one of the greatest blessings that could now be conferred upon the race would be to cure it of the drink evil.But at the same time, if drink were taken away before the causes of drink were removed, there would be an appalling increase in suicide--in insanity, in the general total of human misery.For while drink retards the growth of intelligent effort to end the stupidities in the social system, does it not also help men and women to bear the consequences of those stupidities? Our crude and undeveloped new civilization, strapping men and women and children to the machines and squeezing all the energy out of them, all the capacity for vital life, casts them aside as soon as they are useless but long before they are dead.How unutterably wretched they would be without drink to give them illusions!
Susan grew fond of cigarettes, fond of whiskey; to the rest she after a few weeks became numb--no new or strange phenomenon in a world where people with a cancer or other hideous running sore or some gross and frightful deformity of fat or excrescence are seen laughing, joining freely and comfortably in the company of the unafflicted.In her affliction Susan at least saw only those affected like herself--and that helped not a little, helped the whiskey to confuse and distort her outlook upon life.
The old Cartesian formula--"I think, therefore I am"--would come nearer to expressing a truth, were it reversed--"I am, therefore I think." Our characters are compressed, and our thoughts bent by our environment.And most of us are unconscious of our slavery because our environment remains unchanged from birth until death, and so seems the whole universe to us.
In spite of her life, in spite of all she did to disguise herself, there persisted in her face--even when she was dazed or giddied or stupefied with drink--the expression of the woman on the right side of the line.Whether it was something in her character, whether it was not rather due to superiority of breeding and intelligence, would be difficult to say.However, there was the _different_ look that irritated many of the other girls, interfered with her business and made her feel a hypocrite.She heard so much about the paleness of her lips that she decided to end that comment by using paint--the durable kind Ida had recommended.When her lips flamed carmine, a strange and striking effect resulted.The sad sweet pensiveness of her eyes--the pallor of her clear skin--then, that splash of bright red, artificial, bold, defiant--the contrast of the combination seemed somehow to tell the story of her life her past no less than her present.And when her beauty began to come back--for, hard though her life was, it was a life of good food, of plenty of sleep, of much open air;so it put no such strain upon her as had the life of the factory and the tenement--when her beauty came back, the effect of that contrast of scarlet splash against the sad purity of pallid cheeks and violet-gray eyes became a mark of individuality, of distinction.It was not long before Susan would have as soon thought of issuing forth with her body uncovered as with her lips unrouged.
She turned away from men who sought her a second time.She was difficult to find, she went on "duty" only enough days each week to earn a low average of what was expected from the girls by their protectors.Yet she got many unexpected presents--and so had money to lend to the other girls, who soon learned how "easy" she was.
Maud, sometimes at her own prompting, sometimes prompted by Jim, who was prompted by Freddie--warned her every few days that she was skating on the thinnest of ice.But she went her way.
Not until she accompanied a girl to an opium joint to discover whether dope had the merits claimed for it as a deadener of pain and a producer of happiness--not until then did Freddie come in person.
"I hear," said he and she wondered whether he had heard from Max or from loose-tongued Maud--"that you come into the hotel so drunk that men sometimes leave you right away again--go without paying you.""I must drink," said Susan.
"You must _stop_ drink," retorted he, amiable in his terrible way."If you don't, I'll have you pinched and sent up.
That'll bring you to your senses."
"I must drink," said Susan.
"Then I must have you pinched," said he with his mocking laugh.
