She turned away with the key which was thrust through one end of a stick about a foot long, to make it too bulky for absent-minded passengers to pocket.She took up her bundle, walked down the long saloon with its gilt decorations, its crystal chandeliers, its double array of small doors, each numbered.The clerk looked after her, admiration of the fine curve of her shoulders, back, and hips written plain upon his insignificant features.And it was a free admiration he would not have dared show had she not been a daughter of illegitimacy--a girl whose mother's "looseness" raised pleasing if scandalous suggestions and even possibilities in the mind of every man with a carnal eye.And not unnaturally.To think of her was to think of the circumstances surrounding her coming into the world; and to think of those circumstances was to think of immorality.
Susan, all unconscious of that polluted and impudent gaze, was soon standing before the narrow door numbered 34, as she barely made out, for the lamps in the saloon chandeliers were turned low.She unlocked it, entered the small clean stateroom and deposited her bundle on the floor.With just a glance at her quarters she hurried to the opposite door--the one giving upon the promenade.She opened it, stepped out, crossed the deserted deck and stood at the rail.
The _General Lytle_ was drawing slowly away from the wharf-boat.
As that part of the promenade happened to be sheltered from the steamer's lights, she was seeing the panorama of Sutherland--its long stretch of shaded waterfront, its cupolas and steeples, the wide leafy streets leading straight from the river by a gentle slope to the base of the dark towering bluffs behind the town--all sleeping in peace and beauty in the soft light of the moon.That farthest cupola to the left--it was the Number Two engine house, and the third place from it was her uncle's house.
Slowly the steamer, now in mid-stream, drew away from the town.
One by one the familiar landmarks--the packing house, the soap factory, the Geiss brewery, the tall chimney of the pumping station, the shorn top of Reservoir Hill--slipped ghostlily away to the southwest.The sobs choked up into her throat and the tears rained from her eyes.They all pitied and looked down on her there; still, it had been home the only home she ever had known or ever would know.And until these last few frightful days, how happy she had been there! For the first time she felt desolate, weak, afraid.But not daunted.It is strange to see in strong human character the strength and the weakness, two flat contradictions, existing side by side and making weak what seems so strong and making strong what seems so weak.However, human character is a tangle of inconsistencies, as disorderly and inchoate as the tangible and visible parts of nature.Susan felt weak, but not the kind of weakness that skulks.And there lay the difference, the abysmal difference, between courage and cowardice.Courage has full as much fear as cowardice, often more; but it has a something else that cowardice has not.It trembles and shivers but goes forward.
