"Don't mind him," said O'Ryan."He's only acting up queer."Susan sat not daring to look at the thing lest she should show her aversion, and not knowing how to state her business when the thing was so clamorous, so fiendishly uproarious.After a time O'Ryan succeeded in quieting it.He seemed to think some explanation was necessary.He began abruptly, his gaze tenderly on the awful creature, his child, lying quiet now in his arms:
"My wife--she died some time ago--died when the baby here was born.""You spend a good deal of time with it," said Susan.
"All I can spare from my job.I'm afraid to trust him to anybody, he being kind of different.Then, too, I _like_ to take care of him.You see, it's all I've got to remember _her_by.I'm kind o' tryin' to do what _she'd_ want did." His lips quivered.He looked at his monstrous child."Yes, I _like_settin' here, thinkin'--and takin' care of him."This brute of a slave driver, this cruel tyrant over the poor and the helpless--yet, thus tender and gentle--thus capable of the enormous sacrifice of a great, pure love!
"_You've_ got a way of lookin' out of the eyes that's like her,"he went on--and Susan had the secret of his strange forbearance toward her."I suppose you've come about being let off on the assessment?"Already he knew the whole story of Rod and the hospital.
"Yes--that's why I'm bothering you," said she.
"You needn't pay but five-fifty.I can only let you off a dollar and a half--my bit and the captain's.We pass the rest on up--and we don't dare let you off.""Oh, I can make the money," Susan said hastily."Thank you, Mr.O'Ryan, but I don't want to get anyone into trouble.""We've got the right to knock off one dollar and a half," said O'Ryan."But if we let you off the other, the word would get up to--to wherever the graft goes--and they'd send down along the line, to have merry hell raised with us.The whole thing's done systematic, and they won't take no excuses, won't allow no breaks in the system nowhere.You can see for yourself--it'd go to smash if they did.""Somebody must get a lot of money," said Susan.
"Oh, it's dribbled out--and as you go higher up, I don't suppose them that gets it knows where it comes from.The whole world's nothing but graft, anyhow.Sorry I can't let you off."The thing in his lap had recovered strength for a fresh fit of malevolence.It was tearing at its hairy, hideous face with its claws and was howling and shrieking, the big father gently trying to soothe it--for _her_ sake.Susan got away quickly.
She halted in the deserted hall and gave way to a spasm of dry sobbing--an overflow of all the emotions that had been accumulating within her.In this world of noxious and repulsive weeds, what sudden startling upshooting of what beautiful flowers! Flowers where you would expect to find the most noisome weeds of all, and vilest weeds where you would expect to find flowers.What a world!
However--the fifty a week must be got--and she must be businesslike.
Most of the girls who took to the streets came direct from the tenements of New York, of the foreign cities or of the factory towns of New England.And the world over, tenement house life is an excellent school for the life of the streets.It prevents modesty from developing; it familiarizes the eye, the ear, the nerves, to all that is brutal; it takes away from a girl every feeling that might act as a restraining influence except fear--fear of maternity, of disease, of prison.Thus, practically all the other girls had the advantage over Susan.
Soon after they definitely abandoned respectability and appeared in the streets frankly members of the profession, they became bold and rapacious.They had an instinctive feeling that their business was as reputable as any other, more reputable than many held in high repute, that it would be most reputable if it paid better and were less uncertain.They respected themselves for all things, talk to the contrary in the search for the sympathy and pity most human beings crave.
They despised the men as utterly as the men despised them.
They bargained as shamelessly as the men.Even those who did not steal still felt that stealing was justifiable; for, in the streets the sex impulse shows stripped of all disguise, shows as a brutal male appetite, and the female feels that her yielding to it entitles her to all she can compel and cozen and crib.Susan had been unfitted for her profession--as for all active, unsheltered life--by her early training.The point of view given us in our childhood remains our point of view as to all the essentials of life to the end.Reason, experience, the influence of contact with many phases of the world, may change us seemingly, but the under-instinct remains unchanged.Thus, Susan had never lost, and never would lose her original repugnance; not even drink had ever given her the courage to approach men or to bargain with them.Her shame was a false shame, like most of the shame in the world--a lack of courage, not a lack of desire--and, however we may pretend, there can be no virtue in abstinence merely through cowardice.Still, if there be merit in shrinking, even when the cruelest necessities were goading, that merit was hers in full measure.As a matter of reason and sense, she admitted that the girls who respected themselves and practiced their profession like merchants of other kinds were right, were doing what she ought to do.
Anyhow, it was absurd to practice a profession half-heartedly.
To play your game, whatever it might be, for all there was in it--that was the obvious first principle of success.Yet--she remained laggard and squeamish.
