"It seems to me you're very innocent," said Mabel, "even for a well-brought-up girl._I_ was well brought up, too.I wish to God my mother had told me a few things.But no--not a thing.""What do you mean?" inquired Susan.
That set the actress to probing the girl's innocence--what she knew and what she did not.It had been many a day since Miss Connemora had had so much pleasure."Well!" she finally said."Inever would have believed it--though I know these things are so.
Now I'm going to teach you.Innocence may be a good thing for respectable women who are going to marry and settle down with a good husband to look after them.But it won't do at all--not at all, my dear!--for a woman who works--who has to meet men in their own world and on their own terms.It's hard enough to get along, if you know.If you don't--when you're knocked down, you stay knocked down.""Yes--I want to learn," said Susan eagerly."I want to know--_everything!_""You're not going back?" Mabel pointed toward the shore, to a home on a hillside, with a woman sewing on the front steps and children racing about the yard."Back to that sort of thing?""No," replied Susan."I've got nothing to go back to.""Nonsense!"
"Nothing," repeated Susan in the same simple, final way."I'm an outcast."The ready tears sprang to Mabel's dissipated but still bright eyes.Susan's unconscious pathos was so touching."Then I'll educate you.Now don't get horrified or scandalized at me.When you feel that way, remember that Mabel Connemora didn't make the world, but God.At least, so they say--though personally I feel as if the devil had charge of things, and the only god was in us poor human creatures fighting to be decent.I tell you, men and women ain't bad--not so damn bad--excuse me; they will slip out.
No, it's the things that happen to them or what they're afraid'll happen--it's those things that compel them to be bad--and get them in the way of being bad--hard to each other, and to hate and to lie and to do all sorts of things."The show boat drifted placidly down with the current of the broad Ohio.Now it moved toward the left bank and now toward the right, as the current was deflected by the bends--the beautiful curves that divided the river into a series of lovely, lake-like reaches, each with its emerald oval of hills and rolling valleys where harvests were ripening.And in the shadow of the awning Susan heard from those pretty, coarse lips, in language softened indeed but still far from refined, about all there is to know concerning the causes and consequences of the eternal struggle that rages round sex.To make her tale vivid, Mabel illustrated it by the story of her own life from girlhood to the present hour.And she omitted no detail necessary to enforce the lesson in life.A few days before Susan would not have believed, would not have understood.Now she both believed and understood.And nothing that Mabel told her--not the worst of the possibilities in the world in which she was adventuring--burned deep enough to penetrate beyond the wound she had already received and to give her a fresh sensation of pain and horror.
"You don't seem to be horrified," said Mabel.
Susan shook her head."No," she said."I feel--somehow I feel better."Mabel eyed her curiously--had a sense of a mystery of suffering which she dared not try to explore.She said: "Better? That's queer.You don't take it at all as I thought you would."Said Susan: "I had about made up my mind it was all bad.I see that maybe it isn't.""Oh, the world isn't such a bad place--in lots of ways.You'll get a heap of fun out of it if you don't take things or yourself seriously.I wish to God I'd had somebody to tell me, instead of having to spell it out, a letter at a time.I've got just two pieces of advice to give you." And she stopped speaking and gazed away toward the shore with a look that seemed to be piercing the hills.
"Please do," urged Susan, when Mabel's long mood of abstraction tried her patience.
"Oh--yes--two pieces of advice.The first is, don't drink.
There's nothing to it--and it'll play hell--excuse me--it'll spoil your looks and your health and give you a woozy head when you most need a steady one.Don't drink--that's the first advice.""I won't," said Susan.
"Oh, yes, you will.But remember my advice all the same.The second is, don't sell your body to get a living, unless you've got to.""I couldn't do that," said the girl.
Mabel laughed queerly."Oh, yes, you could--and will.But remember my advice.Don't sell your body because it seems to be the easy way to make a living.I know most women get their living that way.""Oh--no--no, indeed!" protested Susan.
"What a child you are!" laughed Mabel."What's marriage but that?...Believe your Aunt Betsy, it's the poorest way to make a living that ever was invented--marriage or the other thing.
Sometimes you'll be tempted to.You're pretty, and you'll find yourself up against it with no way out.You'll have to give in for a time, no doubt.The men run things in this world, and they'll compel it--one way or another.But fight back to your feet again.If I'd taken my own advice, my name would be on every dead wall in New York in letters two feet high.
Instead----" She laughed, without much bitterness."And why? All because I never learned to stand alone.I've even supported men--to have something to lean on! How's that for a poor fool?"There Violet Anstruther called her.She rose."You won't take my advice," she said by way of conclusion."Nobody'll take advice.
Nobody can.We ain't made that way.But don't forget what I've said.And when you've wobbled way off maybe it'll give you something to steer back by."Susan sat on there, deep in the deepest of those brown studies that had been characteristic of her from early childhood.
