第172章

On a Friday in late October, at the lunch hour, Susan was walking up and down the sunny side of Broadway.It was the first distinctly cool day of the autumn; there had been a heavy downpour of rain all morning, but the New York sun that is ever struggling to shine and is successful on all but an occasional day was tearing up and scattering the clouds with the aid of a sharp north wind blowing down the deep canyon.She was wearing her summer dress still--old and dingy but clean.That look of neatness about the feet--that charm of a well-shaped foot and a well-turned ankle properly set off--had disappeared--with her the surest sign of the extreme of desperate poverty.Her shoes were much scuffed, were even slightly down at the heel; her sailor hat would have looked only the worse had it had a fresh ribbon on its crown.This first hint of winter had stung her fast numbing faculties into unusual activity.She was remembering the misery of the cold in Cincinnati--the misery that had driven her into prostitution as a drunken driver's lash makes the frenzied horse rush he cares not where in his desire to escape.This wind of Broadway--this first warning of winter--it was hissing in her ears: "Take hold! Winter is coming! Take hold!"Summer and winter--fiery heat and brutal cold.Like the devils in the poem, the poor--the masses, all but a few of the human race--were hurried from fire to ice, to vary their torment and to make it always exquisite.

To shelter herself for a moment she paused at a spot that happened to be protected to the south by a projecting sidewalk sign.She was facing, with only a tantalizing sheet of glass between, a display of winter underclothes on wax figures.To show them off more effectively the sides and the back of the window were mirrors.Susan's gaze traveled past the figures to a person she saw standing at full length before her."Who is that pale, stooped girl?" she thought."How dreary and sad she looks! How hard she is fighting to make her clothes look decent, when they aren't! She must be something like me--only much worse off." And then she realized that she was gazing at her own image, was pitying her own self.The room she and Mrs.

Tucker and the old scrubwoman occupied was so dark, even with its one little gas jet lighted, that she was able to get only a faint look at herself in the little cracked and water-marked mirror over its filthy washstand--filthy because the dirt was so ground in that only floods of water and bars of soap could have cleaned down to its original surface.She was having a clear look at herself for the first time in three months.

She shrank in horror, yet gazed on fascinated.Why, her physical charm had gone gone, leaving hardly a trace! Those dull, hollow eyes--that thin and almost ghastly face--the emaciated form--the once attractive hair now looking poor and stringy because it could not be washed properly--above all, the sad, bitter expression about the mouth.Those pale lips! Her lips had been from childhood one of her conspicuous and most tempting beauties; and as the sex side of her nature had developed they had bloomed into wonderful freshness and vividness of form and color.Now----Those pale, pale lips! They seemed to form a sort of climax of tragedy to the melancholy of her face.She gazed on and on.

She noted every detail.How she had fallen! Indeed, a fallen woman! These others had been born to the conditions that were destroying her; they were no worse off, in many cases better off.But she, born to comfort and custom of intelligent educated associations and associates----A fallen woman!

Honest work! Even if it were true that this honest work was a sort of probation through which one rose to better things--even if this were true, could it be denied that only a few at best could rise, that the most--including all the sensitive, and most of the children--must wallow on, must perish? Oh, the lies, the lies about honest work!

Rosa Mohr, a girl of her own age who worked in the same room, joined her."Admiring yourself?" she said laughing."Well, Idon't blame you.You _are_ pretty."

Susan at first thought Rosa was mocking her.But the tone and expression were sincere.

"It won't last long," Rosa went on."I wasn't so bad myself when I quit the high school and took a job because father lost his business and his health.He got in the way of one of those trusts.So of course they handed it to him good and hard.But he wasn't a squealer.He always said they'd done only what he'd been doing himself if he'd had the chance.I always think of what papa used to say when I hear people carrying on about how wicked this or that somebody else is.""Are you going to stay on--at this life?" asked Susan, still looking at her own image.

"I guess so.What else is there?...I've got a steady.

We'll get married as soon as he has a raise to twelve per.But I'll not be any better off.My beau's too stupid ever to make much.If you see me ten years from now I'll probably be a fat, sloppy old thing, warming a window sill or slouching about in dirty rags.""Isn't there any way to--to escape?"

"It does look as though there ought to be--doesn't it? But I've thought and thought, and __I__ can't see it--and I'm pretty near straight Jew.They say things are better than they used to be, and I guess they are.But not enough better to help me any.Perhaps my children--_if_ I'm fool enough to have any--perhaps they'll get a chance....But I wouldn't gamble on it."Susan was still looking at her rags--at her pale lips--was avoiding meeting her own eyes."Why not try the streets?""Nothing in it," said Rosa, practically."I did try it for a while and quit.Lots of the girls do, and only the fools stay at it.Once in a while there's a girl who's lucky and gets a lover that's kind to her or a husband that can make good.But that's luck.For one that wins out, a thousand lose.""Luck?" said Susan.