Susan Lenox: Her Fall and RisePhillips, David Graham
General
Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise
Phillips, David Graham
Actresses -- Fiction; Prostitutes -- Fiction; Women -- United States -- Fiction
Susan looked helplessly round the street, saw nothing, not even
eager, curious faces pressed against many a window pane, saw
only a desolate waste. Then she walked along beside her uncle,
both of them silent, he carrying her bundle, she tightly
clutching her little purse.
Perhaps the most amazing, the most stunning, of all the blows
fate had thus suddenly showered upon her was this transformation
of her uncle from gentleness to ferocity. But many a far older
and far wiser woman than seventeen-year-old Susan has failed to
understand how it is with the man who does not regard woman as
a fellow human being. To such she is either an object of
adoration, a quintessence of purity and innocence, or less than
the dust, sheer filth. Warham's anger was no gust. He was simply
the average man of small intelligence, great vanity, and abject
snobbishness or terror of public opinion. There could be but one
reason for the flight of Lorella's daughter--rottenness. The
only point to consider now was how to save the imperiled family
standing, how to protect his own daughter, whom his good nature
and his wife's weakness had thus endangered. The one thing that
could have appeased his hatred of Susan would have been her
marriage to Sam Wright. Then he would have--not, indeed,
forgiven or reinstated her--but tolerated her. It is the
dominance of such ideas as his that makes for woman the slavery
she discovers beneath her queenly sway if she happens to do
something deeply displeasing to her masculine subject and adorer.
They went to the Central Station. The O. and M. express which
connected with the train on the branch line to Sutherland would
not leave until a quarter past two. It was only a few minutes
past one. Warham led the way into the station restaurant; with
a curt nod he indicated a seat at one of the small tables, and
dropped into the opposite seat. He ordered beefsteak and fried
potatoes, coffee and apple pie.
"Sit still!" he said to her roughly and rose to go out to buy a paper.
The girl sat with her hands in her lap and her eyes upon them.
She looked utterly, pitifully tired. A moment and he came back
to resume his seat and read the paper. When the waiter flopped
down the steak and the dish of greasily fried potatoes before
his plate, he stuffed the paper in his pocket, cut a slice of
the steak and put it on the plate. The waiter noisily exchanged
it for the empty plate before Susan. Warham cut two slices of
the steak for himself, took a liberal helping of the potatoes,
pushed the dish toward her.
"Do you want the coffee now, or with the pie?" asked the waiter.
"Now," said Warham.
"Coffee for the young lady, too?"
Warham scowled at her. "Coffee?" he demanded.
She did not answer; she did not hear.
"Yes, she wants coffee," said Warham. "Hustle it!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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