BURLINGHAM found for her a comfortable room in a flat in West Chestnut Street--a respectable middle-class neighborhood with three churches in full view and the spires of two others visible over the housetops.Her landlady was Mrs.Redding, a simple-hearted, deaf old widow with bright kind eyes beaming guilelessness through steel-framed spectacles.Mrs.Redding had only recently been reduced to the necessity of letting a room.
She stated her moderate price--seven dollars a week for room and board--as if she expected to be arrested for attempted extortion."I give good meals," she hastened to add."I do the cooking myself--and buy the best.I'm no hand for canned stuff.
As for that there cold storage, it's no better'n slow poison, and not so terrible slow at that.Anything your daughter wants I'll give her.""She's not my daughter," said Burlingham, and it was his turn to be red and flustered."I'm simply looking after her, as she's alone in the world.I'm going to live somewhere else.But I'll come here for meals, if you're willing, ma'am.""I--I'd have to make that extry, I'm afraid," pleaded Mrs.Redding.
"Rather!" exclaimed Burlingham."I eat like a pair of Percherons.""How much did you calculate to pay?" inquired the widow.Her one effort at price fixing, though entirely successful, had exhausted her courage.
Burlingham was clear out of his class in those idyllic days of protector of innocence.He proceeded to be more than honest.
"Oh, say five a week."
"Gracious! That's too much," protested she."I hate to charge a body for food, somehow.It don't seem to be accordin' to what God tells us.But I don't see no way out.""I'll come for five not a cent less," insisted Burlingham."Iwant to feel free to eat as much as I like." And it was so arranged.Away he went to look up his acquaintances, while Susan sat listening to the widow and trying to convince her that she and Mr.Burlingham didn't want and couldn't possibly eat all the things she suggested as suitable for a nice supper.Susan had been learning rapidly since she joined the theatrical profession.She saw why this fine old woman was getting poorer steadily, was arranging to spend her last years in an almshouse.
What a queer world it was! What a strange way for a good God to order things! The better you were, the worse off you were.No doubt it was Burlingham's lifelong goodness of heart as shown in his generosity to her, that had kept him down.It was the same way with her dead mother--she had been loving and trusting, had given generously without thought of self, with generous confidence in the man she loved--and had paid with reputation and life.
She compelled Burlingham to take what was left of her fifty dollars."You wouldn't like to make me feel mean," was the argument she used."I must put in what I've got--the same as you do.Now, isn't that fair?" And as he was dead broke and had been unable to borrow, he did not oppose vigorously.
She assumed that after a day or two spent in getting his bearings he would take her with him as he went looking.When she suggested it, he promptly vetoed it."That isn't the way business is done in the profession," said he."The star--you're the star--keeps in the background, and her manager--that's me does the hustling."She had every reason for believing this; but as the days passed with no results, sitting about waiting began to get upon her nerves.Mrs.Redding had the remnant of her dead husband's library, and he had been a man of broad taste in literature.But Susan, ardent reader though she was, could not often lose herself in books now.She was too impatient for realities, too anxious about them.
Burlingham remained equable, neither hopeful nor gloomy; he made her feel that he was strong, and it gave her strength.Thus she was not depressed when on the last day of their week he said: "Ithink we'd better push on to Cincinnati tomorrow.There's nothing here, and we've got to get placed before our cash gives out.In Cincinnati there are a dozen places to one in this snide town."The idea of going to Cincinnati gave her a qualm of fear; but it passed away when she considered how she had dropped out of the world."They think I'm dead," she reflected."Anyhow, I'd never be looked for among the kind of people I'm in with now."The past with which she had broken seemed so far away and so dim to her that she could not but feel it must seem so to those who knew her in her former life.She had such a sense of her own insignificance, now that she knew something of the vastness and business of the world, that she was without a suspicion of the huge scandal and excitement her disappearance had caused in Sutherland.
To Cincinnati they went next day by the L.and N.and took two tiny rooms in the dingy old Walnut Street House, at a special rate--five dollars a week for the two, as a concession to the profession."We'll eat in cheap restaurants and spread our capital out," said Burlingham."I want you to get placed _right_, not just placed." He bought a box of blacking and a brush, instructed her in the subtle art of making a front--an art whereof he was past master, as Susan had long since learned.
"Never let yourself look poor or act poor, until you simply have to throw up the sponge," said he."The world judges by appearances.Put your first money and your last into clothes.
And never--never--tell a hard-luck story.Always seem to be doing well and comfortably looking out for a chance to do better.The whole world runs from seedy people and whimperers.""Am I--that way?" she asked nervously.
"Not a bit," declared he."The day you came up to me in Carrollton I knew you were playing in the hardest kind of hard luck because of what I had happened to see and hear--and guess.
