SUSAN'S impulse was toward the stage.It had become a definite ambition with her, the stronger because Spenser's jealousy and suspicion had forced her to keep it a secret, to pretend to herself that she had no thought but going on indefinitely as his obedient and devoted mistress.The hardiest and best growths are the growths inward--where they have sun and air from without.She had been at the theater several times every week, and had studied the performances at a point of view very different from that of the audience.It was there to be amused; she was there to learn.Spenser and such of his friends as he would let meet her talked plays and acting most of the time.He had forbidden her to have women friends."Men don't demoralize women; women demoralize each other," was one of his axioms.But such women as she had a bowing acquaintance with were all on the stage--in comic operas or musical farces.She was much alone; that meant many hours every day which could not but be spent by a mind like hers in reading and in thinking.Only those who have observed the difference aloneness makes in mental development, where there is a good mind, can appreciate how rapidly, how broadly, Susan expanded.She read plays more than any other kind of literature.She did not read them casually but was always thinking how they would act.She was soon making in imagination stage scenes out of dramatic chapters in novels as she read.More and more clearly the characters of play and novel took shape and substance before the eyes of her fancy.
But the stage was clearly out of the question.
While the idea of a stage career had been dominant, she had thought in other directions, also.Every Sunday, indeed almost every day, she found in the newspapers articles on the subject of work for women.
"Why do you waste time on that stuff?" said Drumley, when he discovered her taste for it.
"Oh, a woman never can tell what may happen," replied she.
"She'll never learn anything from those fool articles,"answered he."You ought to hear the people who get them up laughing about them.I see now why they are printed.It's good for circulation, catches the women--even women like you."However, she persisted in reading.But never did she find an article that contained a really practical suggestion--that is, one applying to the case of a woman who had to live on what she made at the start, who was without experience and without a family to help her.All around her had been women who were making their way; but few indeed of them--even of those regarded as successful--were getting along without outside aid of some kind.So when she read or thought or inquired about work for women, she was sometimes amused and oftener made unhappy by the truth as to the conditions, that when a common worker rises it is almost always by the helping hand of a man, and rarely indeed a generous hand--a painful and shameful truth which a society resolved at any cost to think well of itself fiercely conceals from itself and hypocritically lies about.
She felt now that there was hope in only one direction--hope of occupation that would enable her to live in physical, moral and mental decency.She must find some employment where she could as decently as might be realize upon her physical assets.The stage would be best--but the stage was impossible, at least for the time.Later on she would try for it; there was in her mind not a doubt of that, for unsuspected of any who knew her there lay, beneath her sweet and gentle exterior, beneath her appearance of having been created especially for love and laughter and sympathy, tenacity of purpose and daring of ambition that were--rarely--hinted at the surface in her moments of abstraction.However, just now the stage was impossible.Spenser would find her immediately.She must go into another part of town, must work at something that touched his life at no point.
She had often been told that her figure would be one of her chief assets as a player.And ready-made clothes fitted her with very slight alterations--showing that she had a model figure.The advertisements she had cut out were for cloak models.Within an hour after she left Forty-fourth Street, she found at Jeffries and Jonas, in Broadway a few doors below Houston, a vacancy that had not yet been filled--though as a rule all the help needed was got from the throng of applicants waiting when the store opened.
"Come up to my office," said Jeffries, who happened to be near the door as she entered."We'll see how you shape up.We want something extra--something dainty and catchy."He was a short thick man, with flat feet, a flat face and an almost bald head.In his flat nostrils, in the hollows of his great forward bent ears and on the lobes were bunches of coarse, stiff gray hairs.His eyebrows bristled; his small, sly brown eyes twinkled with good nature and with sensuality.
His skin had the pallor that suggests kidney trouble.His words issued from his thick mouth as if he were tasting each beforehand--and liked the flavor.He led Susan into his private office, closed the door, took a tape measure from his desk.
"Now, my dear," said he, eyeing her form gluttonously, "we'll size you up--eh? You're exactly the build I like."And under the pretense of taking her measurements, he fumbled and felt, pinched and stroked every part of her person, laughing and chuckling the while."My, but you are sweet! And so firm! What flesh! Solid--solid! Mighty healthy! You are a good girl--eh?""I am a married woman."
"But you've got no ring."
"I've never worn a ring."