"Don't be a fool," he went on."You can make money enough to soon buy the right sort of clothes so that I can afford to be seen with you.I'd like to take you out once in a while and give you a swell time.But what'd we look like together--with you in those cheap things out of bargain troughs? Not that you don't look well--for you do.But the rest of you isn't up to your feet and to the look in your face.The whole thing's got to be right before a lady can sit opposite _me_ in Murray's or Rector's.""All I ask is to be let alone," said Susan.
"That isn't playing square--and you've got to play square.What I want is to set you up in a nice parlor trade--chaps from the college and the swell clubs and hotels.But I can't do anything for you as long as you drink this way.You'll have to stay on the streets.""That's where I want to stay."
"Well, there's something to be said for the streets," Freddie admitted."If a woman don't intend to make sporting her life business, she don't want to get up among the swells of the profession, where she'd become known and find it hard to sidestep.Still, even in the street you ought to make a hundred, easy--and not go with any man that doesn't suit you.""Any man that doesn't suit me," said Susan.And, after a pause, she said it again: "Any man that doesn't suit me."The young man, with his shrewdness of the street-graduate and his sensitiveness of the Italian, gave her an understanding glance."You look as if you couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry.I'd try to laugh if I was you."She had laughed as he spoke.
Freddie nodded approval."That sounded good to me.You're getting broken in.Don't take yourself so seriously.After all, what are you doing? Why, learning to live like a man."She found this new point of view interesting--and true, too.
Like a man--like all men, except possibly a few--not enough exceptions to change the rule.Like a man; getting herself hardened up to the point where she could take part in the cruel struggle on equal terms with the men.It wasn't their difference of body any more than it was their difference of dress that handicapped women; it was the idea behind skirt and sex--and she was getting rid of that....
The theory was admirable; but it helped her not at all in practice.She continued to keep to the darkness, to wait in the deep doorways, so far as she could in her "business hours,"and to repulse advances in the day time or in public places--and to drink.She did not go again to the opium joint, and she resisted the nightly offers of girls and their "gentlemen friends" to try cocaine in its various forms.
"Dope," she saw, was the medicine of despair.And she was far from despair.Had she not youth? Had she not health and intelligence and good looks? Some day she would have finished her apprenticeship.Then--the career!
Freddie let her alone for nearly a month, though she was earning less than fifty dollars a week--which meant only thirty for him.He had never "collected" from her directly, but always through Jim; and she had now learned enough of the methods of the system of which she was one of the thousands of slaves to appreciate that she was treated by Jim with unique consideration.Not only by the surly and brutal Jim, but also by the police who oppressed in petty ways wherever they dared because they hated Freddie's system which took away from them a part of the graft they regarded as rightfully theirs.
Yes, rightfully theirs.And anyone disposed to be critical of police morality--or of Freddie Palmer morality--in this matter of graft would do well to pause and consider the source of his own income before he waxes too eloquent and too virtuous.
Graft is one of those general words that mean everything and nothing.What is graft and what is honest income? Just where shall we draw the line between rightful exploitation of our fellow-beings through their necessities and their ignorance of their helplessness, and wrongful exploitation? Do attempts to draw that line resolve down to making virtuous whatever I may appropriate and vicious whatever is appropriated in ways other than mine? And if so are not the police and the Palmers entitled to their day in the moral court no less than the tariff-baron and market-cornerer, the herder and driver of wage slaves, the retail artists in cold storage filth, short weight and shoddy goods? However, "we must draw the line somewhere"or there will be no such thing as morality under our social system.So why not draw it at anything the other fellow does to make money.In adopting this simple rule, we not only preserve the moralities from destruction but also establish our own virtue and the other fellow's villainy.Truly, never is the human race so delightfully, so unconsciously, amusing as when it discusses right and wrong.
When she saw Freddie again, he was far from sober.He showed it by his way of beginning.Said he:
"I've got to hand you a line of rough talk, Queenie.I took on this jag for your especial benefit," said he."I'm a fool about you and you take advantage of it.That's bad for both of us....You're drinking as much as ever?""More," replied she."It takes more and more.""How can you expect to get on?" cried he, exasperated.
"As I told you, I couldn't make a cent if I didn't drink."Freddie stared moodily at her, then at the floor--they were in her room.Finally he said:
"You get the best class of men.I put my swell friends on to where you go slipping by, up and down in the shadow--and it's all they can do to find you.The best class of men--men all the swell respectable girls in town are crazy to hook up with--those of 'em that ain't married already.If you're good enough for those chaps they ought to be good enough for you.
Yet some of 'em complain to me that they get thrown down--and others kick because you were too full--and, damn it, you act so queer that you scare 'em away.What am I to do about it?"She was silent.
"I want you to promise me you'll take a brace."No answer.
"You won't promise?"
