They wet their dry lips with dry tongues. Each again and again asked the other anxiously how he was looking and paced away without waiting for the answer. The suspense and nervous terror took hold of Susan; she stood in the corner of the dressing-room, pressing herself close against the wall, her fingers tightly interlocked and hot and cold tremors chasing up and down her body.

Burlingham left the box and combined Pat's duties with his own—a small matter, as the audience was seated and a guard at the door was necessary only to keep the loafers on shore from rushing in free. Pat advanced to the little space reserved before the stage, sat down and fell to tuning his violin with all the noise he could make, to create the illusion of a full orchestra. Miss Anstruther appeared in one of the forward side doors of the auditorium, very dignified in her black satin (paper muslin) dress, with many and sparkling hair and neck ornaments and rings that seemed alight. She bowed to the audience, pulled a little old cottage organ from under the stage and seated herself at it.

After the overture, a pause. Susan, peeping through a hole in the drop, saw the curtain go up, drew a long breath of terror as the audience was revealed beyond the row of footlights, beyond the big, befrizzled blond head of Violet and the drink-seared face of Pat. From the rear of the auditorium came Burlingham's smooth-flowing, faintly amused voice, announcing the beginning of the performance "a delightful feast throughout, ladies and gentlemen, amusing yet elevating, ever moral yet with none of the depressing sadness of puritanism. For, ladies and gentlemen, while we are pious, we are not puritan. The first number is a monologue, 'The Mad Prince,' by that eminent artist, Gregory Tempest. He has delivered it before vast audiences amid thunders of applause."

Susan thrilled as Tempest strode forth—Tempest transformed by the footlights and by her young imagination into a true king most wonderfully and romantically bereft of reason by the woes that had assailed him in horrid phalanxes. If anyone had pointed out to her that Tempest's awful voice was simply cheap ranting, or that her own woes had been as terrible as any that had ever visited a king, or that when people go mad it is never from grief but from insides unromantically addled by foolish eating and drinking—if anyone had attempted then and there to educate the girl, how angry it would have made her, how she would have hated that well-meaning person for spoiling her illusion!

The spell of the stage seized her with Tempest's first line, first elegant despairing gesture. It held her through Burlingham and Anstruther's "sketch" of a matrimonial quarrel, through Connemora and Eshwell's "delicious symphonic romanticism" of a lovers' quarrel and making up, through Tempest's recitation of "Lasca," dying to shield her cowboy lover from the hoofs of the stampeded herd. How the tears did stream from Susan's eyes, as Tempest wailed out those last lines:

But I wonder why I do not care for the things that are like the things that were?

Can it be that half my heart lies buried there, in Texas down by the Rio Grande?

She saw the little grave in the desert and the vast blue sky and the buzzard sailing lazily to and fro, and it seemed to her that Tempest himself had inspired such a love, had lost a sweetheart in just that way. No wonder he looked gaunt and hollow-eyed and sallow. The last part of the performance was Holy Land and comic pictures thrown from the rear on a sheet substituted for the drop. As Burlingham had to work the magic lantern from the dressing-room (while Tempest, in a kind of monk's robe, used his voice and elocutionary powers in describing the pictures, now lugubriously and now in "lighter vein"), Susan was forced to retreat to the forward deck and missed that part of the show. But she watched Burlingham shifting the slides and altering the forms of the lenses, and was in another way as much thrilled and spellbound as by the acting.

Nor did the spell vanish when, with the audience gone, they all sat down to a late supper, and made coarse jests and mocked at their own doings and at the people who had applauded. Susan did not hear. She felt proud that she was permitted in so distinguished a company. Every disagreeable impression vanished. How could she have thought these geniuses common and cheap! How had she dared apply to them the standards of the people, the dull, commonplace people, among whom she had been brought up! If she could only qualify for membership in this galaxy! The thought made her feel like a worm aspiring to be a star. Tempest, whom she had liked least, now filled her with admiration. She saw the tragedy of his life plain and sad upon his features. She could not look at him without her heart's contracting in an ache.

It was not long before Mr. Tempest, who believed himself a lady-killer, noted the ingenuous look in the young girl's face, and began to pose. And it was hardly three bites of a ham sandwich thereafter when Mabel Connemora noted Tempest's shootings of his cuffs and rumplings of his oily ringlets and rollings of his hollow eyes. And at the sight Miss Mabel's bright eyes became bad and her tongue shot satire at him. But Susan did not observe this.

After supper they went straightway to bed. Burlingham drew the curtains round the berth let down for Susan. The others indulged in no such prudery on so hot a night. They put out the lamps and got ready for bed and into it by the dim light trickling in through the big rear doorway and the two small side doorways forward. To help on the circulation of air Pat raised the stage curtain and drop, and opened the little door forward. Each sleeper had a small netting suspended over him from the ceiling; without that netting the dense swarms of savage mosquitoes would have made sleep impossible. As it was, the loud singing of these baffled thousands kept Susan awake.

After a while, to calm her brain, excited by the evenings thronging impressions and by the new—or, rather, reviewed—ambitions born of them, Susan rose and went softly out on deck, in her nightgown of calico slip. Because of the breeze the mosquitoes did not trouble her there, and she stood a long time watching the town's few faint lights—watching the stars, the thronging stars of the Milky Way—dreaming—dreaming—dreaming. Yesterday had almost faded from her, for youth lives only in tomorrow—youth in tomorrow, age in yesterday, and none of us in today which is all we really have. And she, with her wonderful health of body meaning youth as long as it lasted, she would certainly be young until she was very old—would keep her youth—her dreams—her living always in tomorrow. She was dreaming of her first real tomorrow, now. She would work hard at this wonderful profession—her profession!—would be humble and attentive; and surely the day must come when she too would feel upon her heart the intoxicating beat of those magic waves of applause!

Susan, more excited than ever, slipped softly into the cabin and stole into her curtained berth. Like the soughing of the storm above the whimper of the tortured leaves the stentorian snorings of two of the sleepers resounded above the noise of the mosquitoes. She had hardly extended herself in her close little bed when she heard a stealthy step, saw one of her curtains drawn aside.

"Who is it?" she whispered, unsuspiciously, for she could see only a vague form darkening the space between the parted curtains.

The answer came in a hoarse undertone: "Ye dainty little darling!" She sat up, struck out madly, screamed at the top of her lungs. The curtains fell back into place, the snoring stopped. Susan, all in a sweat and a shiver, lay quiet. Hoarse whispering; then in Burlingham's voice stern and gruff—"Get back to your bed and let her alone, you rolling-eyed——" The sentence ended with as foul a spatter of filth as man can fling at man. Silence again, and after a few minutes the two snores resumed their bass accompaniment to the falsetto of the mosquito chorus.

Susan got a little troubled sleep, was wide awake when Violet came saying, "If you want to bathe, I'll bring you a bucket of water and you can put up your berth and do it behind your curtains."

Susan thanked her and got a most refreshing bath. When she looked out the men were on deck, Violet was getting breakfast, and Connemora was combing her short, thinning, yellow hair before a mirror hung up near one of the forward doors. In the mirror Connemora saw her, smiled and nodded.

"You can fix your hair here," said she. "I'm about done. You can use my brush."

And when Susan was busy at the mirror, Mabel lounged on a seat near by smoking a before-breakfast cigarette. "I wish to God I had your hair," said she. "I never did have such a wonderful crop of grass on the knoll, and the way it up and drops out in bunches every now and then sets me crazy. It won't be long before I'll be down to Vi's three hairs and a half. You haven't seen her without her wigs? Well, don't, if you happen to be feeling a bit off. How Burlingham can—" There she stopped, blew out a volume of smoke, grinned half amusedly, half in sympathy with the innocence she was protecting—or, rather, was initiating by cautious degrees. "Who was it raised the row last night?" she inquired.

"I don't know," said Susan, her face hid by the mass of wavy hair she was brushing forward from roots to ends.

"You don't? I guess you've got a kind of idea, though."

No answer from the girl.

"Well, it doesn't matter. It isn't your fault." Mabel smoked reflectively. "I'm not jealous of him—a woman never is. It's the idea of another woman's getting away with her property, whether she wants it or not—that's what sets her mad-spot to humming. No, I don't give a—a cigarette butt—for that greasy bum actor. But I've always got to have somebody." She laughed. "The idea of his thinking you'd have him! What peacocks men are!"

Susan understood. The fact of this sort of thing was no longer a mystery to her. But the why of the fact—that seemed more amazing than ever. Now that she had discovered that her notion of love being incorporeal was as fanciful as Santa Claus, she could not conceive why it should be at all. As she was bringing round the braids for the new coiffure she had adopted she said to Mabel:

"You—love him?"

"I?" Mabel laughed immoderately. "You can have him, if you want him."

Susan shuddered. "Oh, no," she said. "I suppose he's very nice—and really he's quite a wonderful actor. But I—I don't care for men."

Mabel laughed again—curt, bitter. "Wait," she said.

Susan shook her head, with youth's positiveness.

"What's caring got to do with it?" pursued Mabel, ignoring the headshake. "I've been about quite a bit, and I've yet to see anybody that really cared for anybody else. We care for ourselves. But a man needs a woman, and a woman needs a man. They call it loving. They might as well call eating loving. Ask Burly."



CHAPTER XIV

AT breakfast Tempest was precisely as usual, and so were the others. Nor was there effort or any sort of pretense in this. We understand only that to which we are accustomed; the man of peace is amazed by the veteran's nonchalance in presence of danger and horror, of wound and death. To these river wanderers, veterans in the unconventional life, where the unusual is the usual, the unexpected the expected, whatever might happen was the matter of course, to be dealt with and dismissed. Susan naturally took her cue from them. When Tempest said something to her in the course of the careless conversation round the breakfast table, she answered—and had no sense of constraint. Thus, an incident that in other surroundings would have been in some way harmful through receiving the exaggeration of undue emphasis, caused less stir than the five huge and fiery mosquito bites Eshwell had got in the night. And Susan unconsciously absorbed one of those lessons in the science and art of living that have decisive weight in shaping our destinies. For intelligent living is in large part learning to ignore the unprofitable that one may concentrate upon the profitable.

Burlingham announced that they would cast off and float down to Bethlehem. There was a chorus of protests. "Why, we ought to stay here a week!" cried Miss Anstruther. "We certainly caught on last night."

"Didn't we take in seventeen dollars?" demanded Eshwell. "We can't do better than that anywhere."

"Who's managing this show?" asked Burlingham in his suave but effective way. "I think I know what I'm about."

He met their grumblings with the utmost good-humor and remained inflexible. Susan listened with eyes down and burning cheeks. She knew Burlingham was "leaving the best cow unmilked," as Connemora put it, because he wished to protect her. She told him so when they were alone on the forward deck a little later, as the boat was floating round the bend below Sutherland.

"Yes," he admitted. "I've great hopes from your ballads. I want to get you on." He looked round casually, saw that no one was looking, drew a peculiarly folded copy of the Sutherland Courier from his pocket. "Besides"—said he, holding out the paper—"read that."

Susan read:

George Warham, Esq., requests us to announce that he has increased the reward for information as to the whereabouts of Mrs. Susan Ferguson, his young niece, nee Susan Lenox, to one thousand dollars. There are grave fears that the estimable and lovely young lady, who disappeared from her husband's farm the night of her marriage, has, doubtless in a moment of insanity, ended her life. We hope not.

Susan lifted her gaze from this paragraph, after she had read it until the words ran together in a blur. She found Burlingham looking at her. Said he: "As I told you before, I don't want to know anything. But when I read that, it occurred to me, if some of the others saw it they might think it was you—and might do a dirty trick." He sighed, with a cynical little smile. "I was tempted, myself. A thousand is quite a bunch. You don't know—not yet—how a chance to make some money—any old way—compels a man—or a woman—when money's as scarce and as useful as it is in this world. As you get along, you'll notice, my dear, that the people who get moral goose flesh at the shady doings of others are always people who haven't ever really been up against it. I don't know why I didn't——" He shrugged his shoulders. "Now, my dear, you're in on the secret of why I haven't got up in the world." He smiled cheerfully. "But I may yet. The game's far from over."

She realized that he had indeed made an enormous sacrifice for her; for, though very ignorant about money, a thousand dollars seemed a fortune. She had no words; she looked away toward the emerald shore, and her eyes filled and her lip quivered. How much goodness there was in the world—how much generosity and affection!

"I'm not sure," he went on, "that you oughtn't to go back. But it's your own business. I've a kind of feeling you know what you're about."

"No matter what happens to me," said she, "I'll never regret what I've done. I'd kill myself before I'd spend another day with the man they made me marry."

"Well—I'm not fond of dying," observed Burlingham, in the light, jovial tone that would most quickly soothe her agitation, "but I think I'd take my chances with the worms rather than with the dry rot of a backwoods farm. You may not get your meals so regular out in the world, but you certainly do live. Yes—that backwoods life, for anybody with a spark of spunk, is simply being dead and knowing it." He tore the Courier into six pieces, flung them over the side. "None of the others saw the paper," said he. "So—Miss Lorna Sackville is perfectly safe." He patted her on the shoulder. "And she owes me a thousand and two dollars."

"I'll pay—if you'll be patient," said the girl, taking his jest gravely.

"It's a good gamble," said he. Then he laughed. "I guess that had something to do with my virtue. There's always a practical reason—always."

But the girl was not hearing his philosophies. Once more she was overwhelmed and stupefied by the events that had dashed in, upon, and over her like swift succeeding billows that give the swimmer no pause for breath or for clearing the eyes.

"No—you're not dreaming," said Burlingham, laughing at her expression. "At least, no more than we all are. Sometimes I suspect the whole damn shooting-match is nothing but a dream. Well, it's a pretty good one eh?"

And she agreed with him, as she thought how smoothly and agreeably they were drifting into the unknown, full of the most fascinating possibilities. How attractive this life was, how much at home she felt among these people, and if anyone should tell him about her birth or about how she had been degraded by Ferguson, it wouldn't in the least affect their feeling toward her, she was sure. "When do—do you—try me?" she asked.

"Tomorrow night, at Bethlehem—a bum little town for us. We'll stay there a couple of days. I want you to get used to appearing." He nodded at her encouragingly. "You've got stuff in you, real stuff. Don't you doubt it. Get self-confidence—conceit, if you please. Nobody arrives anywhere without it. You want to feel that you can do what you want to do. A fool's conceit is that he's it already. A sensible man's conceit is that he can be it, if he'll only work hard and in the right way. See?"

"I—I think I do," said the girl. "I'm not sure."

Burlingham smoked his cigar in silence. When he spoke, it was with eyes carefully averted. "There's another subject the spirit moves me to talk to you about. That's the one Miss Connemora opened up with you yesterday." As Susan moved uneasily, "Now, don't get scared. I'm not letting the woman business bother me much nowadays. All I think of is how to get on my feet again. I want to have a theater on Broadway before the old black-flagger overtakes my craft and makes me walk the plank and jump out into the Big Guess. So you needn't think I'm going to worry you. I'm not."

"Oh, I didn't think——"

"You ought to have, though," interrupted he. "A man like me is a rare exception. I'm a rare exception to my ordinary self, to be quite honest. It'll be best for you always to assume that every man you run across is looking for just one thing. You know what?"

Susan, the flush gone from her cheeks, nodded.

"I suppose Connemora has put you wise. But there are some things even she don't know about that subject. Now, I want you to listen to your grandfather. Remember what he says. And think it over until you understand it."

"I will," said Susan.

"In the life you've come out of, virtue in a woman's everything. She's got to be virtuous, or at least to have the reputation of it—or she's nothing. You understand that?"

"Yes," said Susan. "I understand that—now."

"Very well. Now in the life you're going into, virtue in a woman is nothing—no more than it is in a man anywhere. The woman who makes a career becomes like the man who makes a career. How is it with a man? Some are virtuous, others are not. But no man lets virtue bother him and nobody bothers about his virtue. That's the way it is with a woman who cuts loose from the conventional life of society and home and all that. She is virtuous or not, as she happens to incline. Her real interest in herself, her real value, lies in another direction. If it doesn't, if she continues to be agitated about her virtue as if it were all there is to her—then the sooner she hikes back to respectability, to the conventional routine, why the better for her. She'll never make a career, any more than she could drive an automobile through a crowded street and at the same time keep a big picture hat on straight. Do you follow me?"

"I'm not sure," said the girl. "I'll have to think about it."

"That's right. Don't misunderstand. I'm not talking for or against virtue. I'm simply talking practical life, and all I mean is that you won't get on there by your virtue, and you won't get on by your lack of virtue. Now for my advice."

Susan's look of unconscious admiration and attention was the subtlest flattery. Its frank, ingenuous showing of her implicit trust in him so impressed him with his responsibility that he hesitated before he said:

"Never forget this, and don't stop thinking about it until you understand it: Make men as men incidental in your life, precisely as men who amount to anything make women as women incidental."

Her first sensation was obviously disappointing. She had expected something far more impressive. Said she:

"I don't care anything about men."

"Be sensible! How are you to know now what you care about and what you don't?" was Burlingham's laughing rebuke. "And in the line you've taken—the stage—with your emotions always being stirred up, with your thoughts always hovering round the relations of men and women—for that's the only subject of plays and music, and with opportunity thrusting at you as it never thrusts at conventional people you'll probably soon find you care a great deal about men. But don't ever let your emotions hinder or hurt or destroy you. Use them to help you. I guess I'm shooting pretty far over that young head of yours, ain't I?"

"Not so very far," said the girl. "Anyhow, I'll remember."

"If you live big enough and long enough, you'll go through three stages. The first is the one you're in now. They've always taught you without realizing it, and so you think that only the strong can afford to do right. You think doing right makes the ordinary person, like yourself, easy prey for those who do wrong. You think that good people—if they're really good—have to wait until they get to Heaven before they get a chance."

"Isn't that so?"

"No. But you'll not realize it until you pass into the second stage. There, you'll think you see that only the strong can afford to do wrong. You'll think that everyone, except the strong, gets it in the neck if he or she does anything out of the way. You'll think you're being punished for your sins, and that, if you had behaved yourself, you'd have got on much better. That's the stage that's coming; and what you go through with there—how you come out of the fight—will decide your fate—show whether or not you've got the real stuff in you. Do you understand?"

Susan shook her head.

"I thought not. You haven't lived long enough yet. Well, I'll finish, anyhow."

"I'll remember," said Susan. "I'll think about it until I do understand."

"I hope so. The weather and the scenery make me feel like philosophizing. Finally, if you come through the second stage all right, you'll enter the third stage. There, you'll see that you were right at first when you thought only the strong could afford to do right. And you'll see that you were right in the second stage when you thought only the strong could afford to do wrong. For you'll have learned that only the strong can afford to act at all, and that they can do right or wrong as they please because they are strong."

"Then you don't believe in right, at all!" exclaimed the girl, much depressed, but whether for the right or for her friend she could not have told.

"Now, who said that?" Demanded he, amused. "What did I say? Why—if you want to do right, be strong or you'll be crushed; and if you want to do wrong, take care again to be strong—or you'll be crushed. My moral is, be strong! In this world the good weaklings and the bad weaklings had better lie low, hide in the tall grass. The strong inherit the earth."

They were silent a long time, she thinking, he observing her with sad tenderness. At last he said:

"You are a nice sweet girl—well brought up. But that means badly brought up for the life you've got to lead—the life you've got to learn to lead."

"I'm beginning to see that," said the girl. Her gravity made him feel like laughing, and brought the tears to his eyes. The laughter he suppressed.

"You're going to fight your way up to what's called the triumphant class—the people on top—they have all the success, all the money, all the good times. Well, the things you've been taught—at church—in the Sunday School—in the nice storybooks you've read—those things are all for the triumphant class, or for people working meekly along in 'the station to which God has appointed them' and handing over their earnings to their betters. But those nice moral things you believe in—they don't apply to people like you—fighting their way up from the meek working class to the triumphant class. You won't believe me now—won't understand thoroughly. But soon you'll see. Once you've climbed up among the successful people you can afford to indulge—in moderation—in practicing the good old moralities. Any dirty work you may need done you can hire done and pretend not to know about it. But while you're climbing, no Golden Rule and no turning of the cheek. Tooth and claw then—not sheathed but naked—not by proxy but in your own person."

"But you're not like that," said the girl.

"The more fool I," repeated he.

She was surprised that she understood so much of what he had said—childlike wonder at her wise old heart, made wise almost in a night—a wedding night. When Burlingham lapsed into silence, laughing at himself for having talked so far over the "kiddie's" head, she sat puzzling out what he had said. The world seemed horribly vast and forbidding, and the sky, so blue and bright, seemed far, far away. She sighed profoundly. "I am so weak," she murmured. "I am so ignorant."

Burlingham nodded and winked. "Yes, but you'll grow," said be. "I back you to win."

The color poured into her cheeks, and she burst into tears. Burlingham thought he understood; for once his shrewdness went far astray. Excusably, since he could not know that he had used the same phrase that had closed Spenser's letter to her.

Late in the afternoon, when the heat had abated somewhat and they were floating pleasantly along with the washing gently a-flutter from lines on the roof of the auditorium, Burlingham put Eshwell at the rudder and with Pat and the violin rehearsed her. "The main thing, the only thing to worry about," explained he, "is beginning right." She was standing in the center of the stage, he on the floor of the auditorium beside the seated orchestra. "That means," he went on, "you've simply got to learn to come in right. We'll practice that for a while."

She went to the wings—where there was barely space for her to conceal herself by squeezing tightly against the wall. At the signal from him she walked out. As she had the utmost confidence in his kindness, and as she was always too deeply interested in what she and others were doing to be uncomfortably self-conscious, she was not embarrassed, and thought she made the crossing and took her stand very well. He nodded approvingly. "But," said he, "there's a difference between a stage walk and walking anywhere else—or standing. Nothing is natural on the stage. If it were it would look unnatural, because the stage itself is artificial and whatever is there must be in harmony with it. So everything must be done unnaturally in such a way that it seems natural. Just as a picture boat looks natural though it's painted on a flat surface. Now I'll illustrate."

He gave her his hand to help her jump down; then he climbed to the stage. He went to the wings and walked out. As he came he called her attention to how he poised his body, how he advanced so that there would be from the auditorium no unsightly view of crossing legs, how he arranged hands, arms, shoulders, legs, head, feet for an attitude of complete rest. He repeated his illustration again and again, Susan watching and listening with open-eyed wonder and admiration. She had never dreamed that so simple a matter could be so complex. When he got her up beside him and went through it with her, she soon became as used to the new motions as a beginner at the piano to stretching an octave. But it was only after more than an hour's practice that she moved him to say:

"That'll do for a beginning. Now, we'll sing."

She tried "Suwanee River" first and went through it fairly well, singing to him as he stood back at the rear door. He was enthusiastic—cunning Burlingham, who knew so well how to get the best out of everyone! "Mighty good—eh, Pat? Yes, mighty good. You've got something better than a great voice, my dear. You've got magnetism. The same thing that made me engage you the minute you asked me is going to make you—well, go a long ways—a long ways. Now, we'll try 'The Last Rose of Summer.'"

She sang even better. And this improvement continued through the other four songs of her repertoire. His confidence in her was contagious; it was so evident that he really did believe in her. And Pat, too, wagged his head in a way that made her feel good about herself. Then Burlingham called in the others whom he had sent to the forward deck. Before them the girl went all to pieces. She made her entrance badly, she sang worse. And the worse she sang, the worse she felt and the worse her next attempt was. At last, with nerves unstrung, she broke down and sobbed. Burlingham climbed up to pat her on the shoulder.

"That's the best sign yet," said he. "It shows you've got temperament. Yes—you've got the stuff in you."

He quieted her, interested her in the purely mechanical part of what she was doing. "Don't think of who you're doing it before, or of how you're doing it, but only of getting through each step and each note. If your head's full of that, you'll have no room for fright." And she was ready to try again. When she finished the last notes of "Suwanee River," there was an outburst of hearty applause. And the sound that pleased her most was Tempest's rich rhetorical "Bravo!" As a man she abhorred him; but she respected the artist. And in unconsciously drawing this distinction she gave proof of yet another quality that was to count heavily in the coming days. Artist he was not. But she thought him an artist. A girl or boy without the intelligence that can develop into flower and fruit would have seen and felt only Tempest, the odious personality.

Burlingham did not let her off until she was ready to drop with exhaustion. And after supper, when they were floating slowly on, well out of the channel where they might be run down by some passing steamer with a flint-hearted captain or pilot, she had to go at it again. She went to bed early, and she slept without a motion or a break until the odor of the cooking breakfast awakened her. When she came out, her face was bright for the first time. She was smiling, laughing, chatting, was delighted with everything and everybody. Even the thought of Roderick Spenser laid up with a broken leg recurred less often and less vividly. It seemed to her that the leg must be about well. The imagination of healthy youth is reluctant to admit ideas of gloom in any circumstances. In circumstances of excitement and adventure, such as Susan's at that time, it flatly refuses to admit them.

They were at anchor before a little town sprawled upon the fields between hills and river edge. A few loafers were chewing tobacco and inspecting the show boat from the shady side of a pile of lumber. Pat had already gone forth with the bundle of handbills; he was not only waking up the town, but touring the country in horse and buggy, was agitating the farmers—for the show boat was to stay at least two nights at Bethlehem. "And we ought to do pretty well," said Burlingham. "The wheat's about all threshed, and there's a kind of lull. The hayseeds aren't so dead tired at night. A couple of weeks ago we couldn't have got half a house by paying for it."

As the afternoon wore away and the sun disappeared behind the hills to the southwest, Susan's spirits oozed. Burlingham and the others—deliberately—paid no attention to her, acted as if no great, universe-stirring event were impending. Immediately after supper Burlingham said:

"Now, Vi, get busy and put her into her harness. Make her a work of art."

Never was there a finer display of unselfishness than in their eagerness to help her succeed, in their intense nervous anxiety lest she should not make a hit. The bad in human nature, as Mabel Connemora had said, is indeed almost entirely if not entirely the result of the compulsion of circumstances; the good is the natural outcropping of normal instincts, and resumes control whenever circumstances permit. These wandering players had suffered too much not to have the keenest and gentlest sympathy. Susan looked on Tempest as a wicked man; yet she could not but be touched by his almost hysterical excitement over her debut, when the near approach of the hour made it impossible for his emotional temperament longer to hide its agitation. Every one of them gave or loaned her a talisman—Tempest, a bit of rabbit's foot; Anstruther, a ring that had twice saved her from drowning (at least, it had been on her finger each time); Connemora, a hunchback's tooth on a faded velvet string; Pat, a penny which happened to be of the date of her birth year (the presence of the penny was regarded by all as a most encouraging sign); Eshwell loaned her a miniature silver bug he wore on his watch chain; Burlingham's contribution was a large buckeye——"Ever since I've had that, I've never been without at least the price of a meal in my pocket."

They had got together for her a kind of evening dress, a pale blue chiffon-like drapery that left her lovely arms and shoulders bare and clung softly to the lines of her figure. They did her hair up in a graceful sweep from the brow and a simple coil behind. She looked like a woman, yet like a child dressed as a woman, too, for there was as always that exuberant vitality which made each of the hairs of her head seem individual, electric. The rouge gave her color, enhanced into splendor the brilliance of her violet-gray eyes—eyes so intensely colored and so admirably framed that they were noted by the least observant. When Anstruther had put the last touches to her toilet and paraded her to the others, there was a chorus of enthusiasm. The men no less than the women viewed her with the professional eye.

"Didn't I tell you all?" cried Burlingham, as they looked her up and down like a group of connoisseurs inspecting a statue. "Wasn't I right?"

"'It is the dawn, and Juliet is the east,'" orated Tempest in rich, romantic tones.

"A damn shame to waste her on these yaps," said Eshwell.

Connemora embraced her with tearful eyes. "And as sweet as you are lovely, you dear!" she cried. "You simply can't help winning."

The two women thought her greatest charms were her form and her feet and ankles. The men insisted that her charm of charms was her eyes. And certainly, much could be said for that view. Susan's violet-gray eyes, growing grayer when she was thoughtful, growing deeper and clearer and softer shining violet when her emotions were touched—Susan's eyes were undoubtedly unusual even in a race in which homely eyes are the exception.

When it was her turn and she emerged into the glare of the footlights, she came to a full stop and an awful wave of weakness leaped up through legs and body to blind her eyes and crash upon her brain. She shook her head, lifted it high like a swimmer shaking off a wave. Her gaze leaped in terror across the blackness of the auditorium with its thick-strewn round white disks of human faces, sought the eyes of Burlingham standing in full view in the center of the rear doorway—where he had told her to look for him. She heard Pat playing the last of the opening chords; Burlingham lifted his hand like a leader's baton. And naturally and sweetly the notes, the words of the old darkey song of longing for home began to float out through the stillness.

She did not take her gaze from Burlingham. She sang her best, sang to please him, to show him how she appreciated what he had done for her. And when she finished and bowed, the outburst of applause unnerved her, sent her dizzy and almost staggering into the wings. "Splendid! Splendid!" cried Mabel, and Anstruther embraced her, and Tempest and Eshwell kissed her hands. They all joined in pushing her out again for the encore—"Blue Alsatian Mountains." She did not sing quite so steadily, but got through in good form, the tremolo of nervousness in her voice adding to the wailing pathos of the song's refrain:

Ade, ade, ade, such dreams must pass away, But the Blue Alsatian Mountains seem to watch and wait alway.

The crowd clapped, stamped, whistled, shouted; but Burlingham defied it. "The lady will sing again later," he cried. "The next number on the regular program is," etc., etc. The crowd yelled; Burlingham stood firm, and up went the curtain on Eshwell and Connemora's sketch. It got no applause. Nor did any other numbers on the program. The contrast between the others and the beauty of the girl, her delicate sweetness, her vital youth, her freshness of the early morning flower, was inevitable.

The crowd could think only of her. The quality of magnetism aside, she had sung neither very well nor very badly. But had she sung badly, still her beauty would have won her the same triumph. When she came on for her second number with a cloud-like azure chiffon flung carelessly over her dark hair as a scarf, Spanish fashion, she received a stirring welcome. It frightened her, so that Pat had to begin four times before her voice faintly took up the tune. Again Burlingham's encouraging, confident gaze, flung across the gap between them like a strong rescuing hand, strengthened her to her task. This time he let the crowd have two encores—and the show was over; for the astute manager, seeing how the girl had caught on, had moved her second number to the end.

Burlingham lingered in the entrance to the auditorium to feast himself on the comments of the crowd as it passed out. When he went back he had to search for the girl, found her all in a heap in a chair at the outer edge of the forward deck. She was sobbing piteously. "Well, for God's sake!" cried he. "Is this the way you take it!"

She lifted her head. "Did I do very badly?" she asked.

"You swept 'em off their big hulking feet," replied he.

"When you didn't come, I thought I'd disappointed you."

"I'll bet my hand there never was such a hit made in a river show boat—and they've graduated some of the swells of the profession. We'll play here a week to crowded houses—matinees every day, too. And this is a two-night stand usually. I must find some more songs." He slapped his thigh. "The very thing!" he cried. "We'll ring in some hymns. 'Rock of Ages,' say—and 'Jesus, Lover of my Soul'—and you can get 'em off in a churchy kind of costume something like a surplice. That'll knock 'em stiff. And Anstruther can dope out the accompaniments on that wheezer. What d'you think?"

"Whatever you want," said the girl. "Oh, I am so glad!"

"I don't see how you got through so well," said he.

"I didn't dare fail," replied Susan. "If I had, I couldn't have faced you." And by the light of the waning moon he saw the passionate gratitude of her sensitive young face.

"Oh—I've done nothing," said he, wiping the tears from his eyes—for he had his full share of the impulsive, sentimental temperament of his profession. "Pure selfishness."

Susan gazed at him with eyes of the pure deep violet of strongest feeling. "I know what you did," she said in a low voice. "And—I'd die for you."

Burlingham had to use his handkerchief in dealing with his eyes now. "This business has given me hysterics," said he with a queer attempt at a laugh. Then, after a moment, "God bless you, little girl. You wait here a moment. I'll see how supper's getting on."

He wished to go ahead of her, for he had a shrewd suspicion as to the state of mind of the rest of the company. And he was right. There they sat in the litter of peanut hulls, popcorn, and fruit skins which the audience had left. On every countenance was jealous gloom.

"What's wrong?" inquired Burlingham in his cheerful derisive way. "You are a nice bunch, you are!"

They shifted uneasily. Mabel snapped out, "Where's the infant prodigy? Is she so stuck on herself already that she won't associate with us?"

"You grown-up babies," mocked Burlingham. "I found her out there crying in darkness because she thought she'd failed. Now you go bring her in, Conny. As for the rest of you, I'm disgusted. Here we've hit on something that'll land us in Easy Street, and you're all filled up with poison."

They were ashamed of themselves. Burlingham had brought back to them vividly the girl's simplicity and sweetness that had won their hearts, even the hearts of the women in whom jealousy of her young beauty would have been more than excusable. Anstruther began to get out the supper dishes and Mabel slipped away toward the forward deck. "When the child comes in," pursued Burlingham, "I want to see you people looking and acting human."

"We are a lot of damn fools," admitted Eshwell. "That's why we're bum actors instead of doing well at some respectable business."

And his jealousy went the way of Violet's and Mabel's. Pat began to remember that he had shared in the triumph—where would she have been without his violin work? But Tempest remained somber. In his case better nature was having a particularly hard time of it. His vanity had got savage wounds from the hoots and the "Oh, bite it off, hamfat," which had greeted his impressive lecture on the magic lantern pictures. He eyed Burlingham glumly. He exonerated the girl, but not Burlingham. He was convinced that the manager, in a spirit of mean revenge, had put up a job on him. It simply could not be in the ordinary course that any audience, without some sly trickery of prompting from an old expert of theatrical "double-crossing," would be impatient for a mere chit of an amateur when it might listen to his rich, mellow eloquence.

Susan came shyly—and at the first glance into her face her associates despised themselves for their pettiness. It is impossible for envy and jealousy and hatred to stand before the light of such a nature as Susan's. Away from her these very human friends of hers might hate her—but in her presence they could not resist the charm of her sincerity.

Everyone's spirits went up with the supper. It was Pat who said to Burlingham, "Bob, we're going to let the pullet in on the profits equally, aren't we?"

"Sure," replied Burlingham. "Anybody kicking?"

The others protested enthusiastically except Tempest, who shot a glance of fiery scorn at Burlingham over a fork laden with potato salad. "Then—you're elected, Miss Sackville," said Burlingham.

Susan's puzzled eyes demanded an explanation. "Just this," said he. "We divide equally at the end of the trip all we've raked in, after the rent of the boat and expenses are taken off. You get your equal share exactly as if you started with us."

"But that wouldn't be fair," protested the girl. "I must pay what I owe you first."

"She means two dollars she borrowed of me at Carrollton," explained Burlingham. And they all laughed uproariously.

"I'll only take what's fair," said the girl.

"I vote we give it all to her," rolled out Tempest in tragedy's tone for classic satire.

Before Mabel could hurl at him the probably coarse retort she instantly got her lips ready to make, Burlingham's cool, peace-compelling tones broke in:

"Miss Sackville's right. She must get only what's fair. She shares equally from tonight on—less two dollars."

Susan nodded delightedly. She did not know—and the others did not at the excited moment recall—that the company was to date eleven dollars less well off than when it started from the headwaters of the Ohio in early June. But Burlingham knew, and that was the cause of the quiet grin to which he treated himself.



CHAPTER XV

BURLINGHAM had lived too long, too actively, and too intelligently to have left any of his large, original stock of the optimism that had so often shipwrecked his career in spite of his talents and his energy. Out of the bitterness of experience he used to say, "A young optimist is a young fool. An old optimist is an old ass. A fool may learn, an ass can't." And again, "An optimist steams through the fog, taking it for granted everything's all right. A pessimist steams ahead too, but he gets ready for trouble." However, he was wise enough to keep his private misgivings and reservations from his associates; the leaders of the human race always talk optimism and think pessimism. He had told the company that Susan was sure to make a go; and after she had made a go, he announced the beginning of a season of triumph. But he was surprised when his prediction came true and they had to turn people away from the next afternoon's performance. He began to believe they really could stay a week, and hired a man to fill the streets of New Washington and other inland villages and towns of the county with a handbill headlining Susan.

The news of the lovely young ballad singer in the show boat at Bethlehem spread, as interesting news ever does, and down came the people to see and hear, and to go away exclaiming. Bethlehem, the sleepy, showed that it could wake when there was anything worth waking for. Burlingham put on the hymns in the middle of the week, and even the clergy sent their families. Every morning Susan, either with Mabel or with Burlingham, or with both, took a long walk into the country. It was Burlingham, by the way, who taught her the necessity of regular and methodical long walks for the preservation of her health. When she returned there was always a crowd lounging about the landing waiting to gape at her and whisper. It was intoxicating to her, this delicious draught of the heady wine of fame; and Burlingham was not unprepared for the evidences that she thought pretty well of herself, felt that she had arrived. He laughed to himself indulgently. "Let the kiddie enjoy herself," thought he. "She needs the self-confidence now to give her a good foundation to stand on. Then when she finds out what a false alarm this jay excitement was, she'll not be swept clean away into despair."

The chief element in her happiness, he of course knew nothing about. Until this success—which she, having no basis for comparison, could not but exaggerate—she had been crushed and abused more deeply than she had dared admit to herself by her birth which made all the world scorn her and by the series of calamities climaxing in that afternoon and night of horror at Ferguson's. This success—it seemed to her to give her the right to have been born, the right to live on and hold up her head without effort after Ferguson. "I'll show them all, before I get through," she said to herself over and over again. "They'll be proud of me. Ruth will be boasting to everyone that I'm her cousin. And Sam Wright—he'll wonder that he ever dared touch such a famous, great woman." She only half believed this herself, for she had much common sense and small self-confidence. But pretending that she believed it all gave her the most delicious pleasure.

Burlingham took such frank joy in her innocent vanity—so far as he understood it and so far as she exhibited it—that the others were good-humored about it too—all the others except Tempest, whom conceit and defeat had long since soured through and through. A tithe of Susan's success would have made him unbearable, for like most human beings he had a vanity that was Atlantosaurian on starvation rations and would have filled the whole earth if it had been fed a few crumbs. Small wonder that we are ever eagerly on the alert for signs of vanity in others; we are seeking the curious comfort there is in the feeling that others have our own weakness to a more ridiculous degree. Tempest twitched to jeer openly at Susan, whose exhibition was really timid and modest and not merely excusable but justifiable. But he dared go no further than holding haughtily aloof and casting vaguely into the air ever and anon a tragic sneer. Susan would not have understood if she had seen, and did not see. She was treading the heights, her eyes upon the sky. She held grave consultation with Burlingham, with Violet, with Mabel, about improving her part. She took it all very, very seriously—and Burlingham was glad of that. "Yes, she does take herself seriously," he admitted to Anstruther. "But that won't do any harm as she's so young, and as she takes her work seriously, too. The trouble about taking oneself seriously is it stops growth. She hasn't got that form of it."

"Not yet," said Violet.

"She'll wake from her little dream, poor child, long before the fatal stage." And he heaved a sigh for his own lost illusions—those illusions that had cost him so dear.

Burlingham had intended to make at least one stop before Jeffersonville, the first large town on the way down. But Susan's capacities as a house-filler decided him for pushing straight for it. "We'll go where there's a big population to be drawn on," said he. But he did not say that in the back of his head there was forming a plan to take a small theater at Jeffersonville if the girl made a hit there.

Eshwell, to whom he was talking, looked glum. "She's going pretty good with these greenies," observed he. "But I've my doubts whether city people'll care for anything so milk-like."

Burlingham had his doubts, too; but he retorted warmly: "Don't you believe it, Eshie. City's an outside. Underneath, there's still the simple, honest, grassy-green heart of the country."

Eshwell laughed. "So you've stopped jeering at jays. You've forgotten what a lot of tightwads and petty swindlers they are. Well, I don't blame you. Now that they're giving down to us so freely, I feel better about them myself. It's a pity we can't lower the rest of the program to the level of their intellectuals."

Burlingham was not tactless enough to disturb Eshwell's consoling notion that while Susan was appreciated by these ignorant country-jakes, the rest of the company were too subtle and refined in their art. "That's a good idea," replied he. "I'll try to get together some simple slop. Perhaps a melodrama, a good hot one, would go—eh?"

After ten days the receipts began to drop. On the fifteenth day there was only a handful at the matinee, and in the evening half the benches were empty. "About milked dry," said Burlingham at the late supper. "We'll move on in the morning."

This pleased everyone. Susan saw visions of bigger triumphs; the others felt that they were going where dramatic talent, not to say genius, would be at least not entirely unappreciated. So the company was at its liveliest next morning as the mosquito-infested willows of the Bethlehem shore slowly dropped away. They had made an unusually early start, for the river would be more and more crowded as they neared the three close-set cities—Louisville, Jeffersonville, and New Albany, and the helpless little show boat must give the steamers no excuse for not seeing her. All day—a long, dreamy, summer day—they drifted lazily downstream, and, except Tempest, all grew gayer and more gay. Burlingham had announced that there were three hundred and seventy-eight dollars in the japanned tin box he kept shut up in his bag.

At dusk a tug, for three dollars, nosed them into a wharf which adjoined the thickly populated labor quarter of Jeffersonville.

Susan was awakened by a scream. Even as she opened her eyes a dark cloud, a dull suffocating terrifying pain, descended upon her. When she again became conscious, she was lying upon a mass of canvas on the levee with three strange men bending over her. She sat up, instinctively caught together the front of the nightdress she had bought in Bethlehem the second day there. Then she looked wildly from face to face.

"You're all right, ma'am," said one of the men. "Not a scratch—only stunned."

"What was it?" said the girl. "Where are they?"

As she spoke, she saw Burlingham in his nightshirt propped against a big blue oil barrel. He was staring stupidly at the ground. And now she noted the others scattered about the levee, each with a group around him or her. "What was it?" she repeated.

"A tug butted its tow of barges into you," said someone. "Crushed your boat like an eggshell."

Burlingham staggered to his feet, stared round, saw her. "Thank God!" he cried. "Anyone drowned? Anyone hurt?"

"All saved—no bones broken," someone responded.

"And the boat?"

"Gone down. Nothing left of her but splinters. The barges were full of coal and building stone."

"The box!" suddenly shouted Burlingham. "The box!"

"What kind of a box?" asked a boy with lean, dirty, and much scratched bare legs. "A little black tin box like they keep money in?"

"That's it. Where is it?"

"It's all right," said the boy. "One of your people, a black actor-looking fellow——"

"Tempest," interjected Burlingham. "Go on."

"He dressed on the wharf and he had the box."

"Where is he?"

"He said he was going for a doctor. Last I seed of him he was up to the corner yonder. He was movin' fast."

Burlingham gave a kind of groan. Susan read in his face his fear, his suspicion—the suspicion he was ashamed of himself for having. She noted vaguely that he talked with the policeman aside for a few minutes, after which the policeman went up the levee. Burlingham rejoined his companions and took command. The first thing was to get dressed as well as might be from such of the trunks as had been knocked out of the cabin by the barge and had been picked up. They were all dazed. Even Burlingham could not realize just what had occurred. They called to one another more or less humorous remarks while they were dressing behind piles of boxes, crates, barrels and sacks in the wharf-boat. And they laughed gayly when they assembled. Susan made the best appearance, for her blue serge suit had been taken out dry when she herself was lifted from the sinking wreck; the nightgown served as a blouse. Mabel's trunk had been saved. Violet could wear none of her things, as they were many sizes too small, so she appeared in a property skirt of black paper muslin, a black velvet property basque, a pair of shoes belonging to Tempest. Burlingham and Eshwell made a fairly respectable showing in clothing from Tempest's trunk. Their own trunks had gone down.

"Why, where's Tempest?" asked Eshwell.

"He'll be back in a few minutes," replied Burlingham. "In fact, he ought to be back now." His glance happened to meet Susan's; he hastily shifted his eyes.

"Where's the box?" asked Violet.

"Tempest's taking care of it," was the manager's answer.

"Tempest!" exclaimed Mabel. Her shrewd, dissipated eyes contracted with suspicion.

"Anybody got any money?" inquired Eshwell, as he fished in his pockets.

No one had a cent. Eshwell searched Tempest's trunk, found a two-dollar bill and a one wrapped round a silver dollar and wadded in among some ragged underclothes. Susan heard Burlingham mutter "Wonder how he happened to overlook that!" But no one else heard.

"Well, we might have breakfast," suggested Mabel.

They went out on the water deck of the wharf-boat, looked down at the splinters of the wreck lying in the deep yellow river. "Come on," said Burlingham, and he led the way up the levee. There was no attempt at jauntiness; they all realized now.

"How about Tempest?" said Eshwell, stopping short halfway up.

"Tempest—hell!" retorted Mabel. "Come on."

"What do you mean?" cried Violet, whose left eye was almost closed by a bruise.

"We'll not see him again. Come on."

"Bob!" shrieked Violet at Burlingham. "Do you hear that?"

"Yes," said he. "Keep calm, and come on."

"Aren't you going to do anything?" she screamed, seizing him by the coat tail. "You must, damn it—you must!"

"I got the policeman to telephone headquarters," said Burlingham. "What else can be done? Come on."

And a moment later the bedraggled and dejected company filed into a cheap levee restaurant. "Bring some coffee," Burlingham said to the waiter. Then to the others, "Does anybody want anything else?" No one spoke. "Coffee's all," he said to the waiter.

It came, and they drank it in silence, each one's brain busy with the disaster from the standpoint of his own resulting ruin. Susan glanced furtively at each face in turn. She could not think of her own fate, there was such despair in the faces of these others. Mabel looked like an old woman. As for Violet, every feature of her homeliness, her coarseness, her dissipated premature old age stood forth in all its horror. Susan's heart contracted and her flesh crept as she glanced quickly away. But she still saw, and it was many a week before she ceased to see whenever Violet's name came into her mind. Burlingham, too, looked old and broken. Eshwell and Pat, neither of whom had ever had the smallest taste of success, were stolid, like cornered curs taking their beating and waiting in silence for the blows to stop.

"Here, Eshie," said the manager, "take care of the three dollars." And he handed him the bills. "I'll pay for the coffee and keep the change. I'm going down to the owners of that tug and see what I can do."

When he had paid they followed him out. At the curbstone he said, "Keep together somewhere round the wharf-boat. So long." He lifted the battered hat he was wearing, smiled at Susan. "Cheer up, Miss Sackville. We'll down 'em yet!" And away he went—a strange figure, his burly frame squeezed into a dingy old frock suit from among Tempest's costumes.

A dreary two hours, the last half-hour in a drizzling rain from which the narrow eaves of the now closed and locked wharf-boat sheltered them only a little. "There he comes!" cried Susan; and sure enough, Burlingham separated from the crowd streaming along the street at the top of the levee, and began to descend the slope toward them. They concentrated on his face, hoping to get some indication of what to expect; but he never permitted his face to betray his mind. He strode up the plank and joined them.

"Tempest come?" he asked.

"Tempest!" cried Mabel. "Haven't I told you he's jumped? Don't you suppose I know him?"

"And you brought him into the company," raged Violet. "Burlingham didn't want to take him. He looked the fool and jackass he is. Why didn't you warn us he was a rotten thief, too?"

"Wasn't it for shoplifting you served six months in Joliet?" retorted Mabel.

"You lie—you streetwalker!" screamed Violet.

"Ladies! Ladies!" said Eshwell.

"That's what I say," observed Pat.

"I'm no lady," replied Mabel. "I'm an actress."

"An actress—he-he!" jeered Violet. "An actress!"

"Shut up, all of you," commanded Burlingham. "I've got some money. I settled for cash."

"How much?" cried Mabel and Violet in the same breath, their quarrel not merely finished but forgotten.

"Three hundred dollars."

"For the boat and all?" demanded Eshwell. "Why, Bob——"

"They think it was for boat and all," interrupted Burlingham with his cynical smile. "They set out to bully and cheat me. They knew I couldn't get justice. So I let 'em believe I owned the boat—and I've got fifty apiece for us."

"Sixty," said Violet.

"Fifty. There are six of us."

"You don't count in this little Jonah here, do you?" cried Violet, scowling evilly at Susan.

"No—no—don't count me in," begged Susan. "I didn't lose anything."

Mabel pinched her arm. "You're right, Mr. Burlingham," said she. "Miss Sackville ought to share. We're all in the same box."

"Miss Sackville will share," said Burlingham. "There's going to be no skunking about this, as long as I'm in charge."

Eshwell and Pat sided with Violet. While the rain streamed, the five, with Susan a horrified onlooker, fought on and on about the division of the money. Their voices grew louder. They hurled the most frightful epithets at one another. Violet seized Mabel by the hair, and the men interfered, all but coming to blows themselves in the melee. The wharfmaster rushed from his office, drove them off to the levee. They continued to yell and curse, even Burlingham losing control of himself and releasing all there was of the tough and the blackguard in his nature. Two policemen came, calmed them with threat of arrest. At last Burlingham took from his pocket one at a time three small rolls of bills. He flung one at each of the three who were opposing his division. "Take that, you dirty curs," he said. "And be glad I'm giving you anything at all. Most managers wouldn't have come back. Come on, Miss Sackville. Come on, Mabel." And the two followed him up the levee, leaving the others counting their shares.

At the street corner they went into a general store where Burlingham bought two ninety-eight-cent umbrellas. He gave Mabel one, held the other over Susan and himself as they walked along. "Well, ladies," said he, "we begin life again. A clean slate, a fresh start—as if nothing had ever happened."

Susan looked at him to try to give him a grateful and sympathetic smile. She was surprised to see that, so far as she could judge, he had really meant the words he had spoken.

"Yes, I mean it," said he. "Always look at life as it is—as a game. With every deal, whether you win or lose, your stake grows—for your stake's your wits, and you add to 'em by learning something with each deal. What are you going to do, Mabel?"

"Get some clothes. The water wrecked mine and this rain has finished my hat."

"We'll go together," said Burlingham.

They took a car for Louisville, descended before a department store. Burlingham had to fit himself from the skin out; Mabel had underclothes, needed a hat, a dress, summer shoes. Susan needed underclothes, shoes, a hat, for she was bareheaded. They arranged to meet at the first entrance down the side street; Burlingham gave Susan and Mabel each their fifty dollars and went his way. When they met again in an hour and a half, they burst into smiles of delight. Burlingham had transformed himself into a jaunty, fashionable young middle-aged man, with an air of success achieved and prosperity assured. He had put the fine finishing touch to his transformation by getting a haircut and a shave. Mabel looked like a showy chorus girl, in a striped blue and white linen suit, a big beflowered hat, and a fluffy blouse of white chiffon. Susan had resisted Mabel's entreaties, had got a plain, sensible linen blouse of a kind that on a pinch might be washed out and worn without ironing. Her new hat was a simple blue sailor with a dark blue band that matched her dress.

"I spent thirty-six dollars," said Burlingham.

"I only spent twenty-two," declared Mabel. "And this child here only parted with seven of her dollars. I had no idea she was so thrifty."

"And now—what?" said Burlingham.

"I'm going round to see a friend of mine," replied Mabel. "She's on the stage, too. There's sure to be something doing at the summer places. Maybe I can ring Miss Sackville in. There ought to be a good living in those eyes of hers and those feet and ankles. I'm sure I can put her next to something."

"Then you can give her your address," said Burlingham.

"Why, she's going with me," cried Mabel. "You don't suppose I'd leave the child adrift?"

"No, she's going with me to a boarding house I'll find for her," said Burlingham.

Into Mabel's face flashed the expression of the suspicion such a statement would at once arouse in a mind trained as hers had been. Burlingham's look drove the expression out of her face, and suspicion at least into the background. "She's not going with your friend," said Burlingham, a hint of sternness in his voice. "That's best—isn't it?"

Miss Connemora's eyes dropped. "Yes, I guess it is," replied she. "Well—I turn down this way."

"We'll keep on and go out Chestnut Street," said Burlingham. "You can write to her—or to me—care of the General Delivery."

"That's best. You may hear from Tempest. You can write me there, too." Mabel was constrained and embarrassed. "Good-by, Miss Sackville."

Susan embraced and kissed her. Mabel began to weep. "Oh, it's all so sudden—and frightful," she said. "Do try to be good, Lorna. You can trust Bob." She looked earnestly, appealingly, at him. "Yes, I'm sure you can. And—he's right about me. Good-by." She hurried away, not before Susan had seen the tears falling from her kind, fast-fading eyes.

Susan stood looking after her. And for the first time the truth about the catastrophe came to her. She turned to Burlingham. "How brave you are!" she cried.

"Oh, what'd be the use in dropping down and howling like a dog?" replied he. "That wouldn't bring the boat back. It wouldn't get me a job."

"And you shared equally, when you lost the most of all."

They were walking on. "The boat was mine, too," said he in a dry reflective tone. "I told 'em it wasn't when we started out because I wanted to get a good share for rent and so on, without any kicking from anybody."

The loss did not appeal to her; it was the lie he had told. She felt her confidence shaking. "You didn't mean to—to——" she faltered, stopped.

"To cheat them?" suggested he. "Yes, I did. So—to sort of balance things up I divided equally all I got from the tug people. What're you looking so unhappy about?"

"I wish you hadn't told me," she said miserably. "I don't see why you did."

"Because I don't want you making me into a saint. I'm like the rest you see about in pants, cheating and lying, with or without pretending to themselves that they're honest. Don't trust anybody, my dear. The sooner you get over the habit, the sooner you'll cease to tempt people to be hypocrites. All the serious trouble I've ever got into has come through trusting or being trusted."

He looked gravely at her, burst out laughing at her perplexed, alarmed expression. "Oh, Lord, it isn't as bad as all that," said he. "The rain's stopped. Let's have breakfast. Then—a new deal—with everything to gain and nothing to lose. It's a great advantage to be in a position where you've got nothing to lose!"



CHAPTER XVI

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. "I want 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: "I think 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. But you weren't looking for pity—and that was what I liked. And it made me feel you had the stuff in you. I'd not waste breath teaching a whiner or a cheap skate. You couldn't be cheap if you tried. The reason I talk to you about these things is so you'll learn to put the artistic touches by instinct into what you do."

"You've taken too much trouble for me," said the girl. "Don't you believe it, my dear," laughed he. "If I can do with you what I hope—I've an instinct that if I win out for you, I'll come into my own at last."

"You've taught me a lot," said she.

"I wonder," replied he. "That is, I wonder how much you've learned. Perhaps enough to keep you—not to keep from being knocked down by fate, but to get on your feet afterward. I hope so—I hope so."

They dropped coffee, bought milk by the bottle, he smuggling it to their rooms disguised as a roll of newspapers. They carried in rolls also, and cut down their restaurant meals to supper which they got for twenty-five cents apiece at a bakery restaurant in Seventh Street. There is a way of resorting to these little economies—a snobbish, self-despairing way—that makes them sordid and makes the person indulging in them sink lower and lower. But Burlingham could not have taken that way. He was the adventurer born, was a hardy seasoned campaigner who had never looked on life in the snob's way, had never felt the impulse to apologize for his defeats or to grow haughty over his successes. Susan was an apt pupil; and for the career that lay before her his instructions were invaluable. He was teaching her how to keep the craft afloat and shipshape through the worst weather that can sweep the sea of life.

"How do you make yourself look always neat and clean?" he asked.

She confessed: "I wash out my things at night and hang them on the inside of the shutters to dry. They're ready to wear again in the morning."

"Getting on!" cried he, full of admiration. "They simply can't down us, and they might as well give up trying."

"But I don't look neat," sighed she. "I can't iron."

"No—that's the devil of it," laughed he. He pulled aside his waistcoat and she saw he was wearing a dickey. "And my cuffs are pinned in," he said. "I have to be careful about raising and lowering my arms."

"Can't I wash out some things for you?" she said, then hurried on to put it more strongly. "Yes, give them to me when we get back to the hotel."

"It does help a man to feel he's clean underneath. And we've got nothing to waste on laundries."

"I wish I hadn't spent that fifteen cents to have my heels straightened and new steels put in them." She had sat in a cobbler's while this repair to the part of her person she was most insistent upon had been effected.

He laughed. "A good investment, that," said he. "I've been noticing how you always look nice about the feet. Keep it up. The surest sign of a sloven and a failure, of a moral, mental, and physical no-good is down-at-the-heel. Always keep your heels straight, Lorna."

And never had he given her a piece of advice more to her liking. She thought she knew now why she had always been so particular about her boots and shoes, her slippers and her stockings. He had given her a new confidence in herself—in a strength within her somewhere beneath the weakness she was always seeing and feeling.

Not until she thought it out afterward did she realize what they were passing through, what frightful days of failure he was enduring. He acted like the steady-nerved gambler at life that he was. He was not one of those more or less weak losers who have to make desperate efforts to conceal a fainting heart. His heart was not fainting. He simply played calmly on, feeling that the next throw was as likely to be for as against him. She kept close to her room, walking about there—she had never been much of a sitter—thinking, practicing the new songs he had got for her—character songs in which he trained her as well as he could without music or costume or any of the accessories. He also had an idea for a church scene, with her in a choir boy's costume, singing the most moving of the simple religious songs to organ music. She from time to time urged him to take her on the rounds with him. But he stood firm, giving always the same reason of the custom in the profession. Gradually, perhaps by some form of that curious process of infiltration that goes on between two minds long in intimate contact, the conviction came to her that the reason he alleged was not his real reason; but as she had absolute confidence in him she felt that there was some good reason or he would not keep her in the background—and that his silence about it must be respected. So she tried to hide from him how weary and heartsick inaction was making her, how hard it was for her to stay alone so many hours each day.

As he watched her closely, it soon dawned on him that something was wrong, and after a day or so he worked out the explanation. He found a remedy—the reading room of the public library where she could make herself almost content the whole day long.

He began to have a haggard look, and she saw he was sick, was keeping up his strength with whisky. "It's only this infernal summer cold I caught in the smashup," he explained. "I can't shake it, but neither can it get me down. I'd not dare fall sick. What'd become of us?"

She knew that "us" meant only herself. Her mind had been aging rapidly in those long periods of unbroken reflection. To develop a human being, leave him or her alone most of the time; it is too much company, too little time to digest and assimilate, that keep us thoughtless and unformed until life is half over. She astonished him by suddenly announcing one evening:

"I am a drag on you. I'm going to take a place in a store."

He affected an indignation so artistic that it ought to have been convincing. "I'm ashamed of you!" he cried. "I see you're losing your nerve."

This was ingenious, but it did not succeed. "You can't deceive me any longer," was her steady answer. "Tell me honest—couldn't you have got something to do long ago, if it hadn't been for trying to do something for me?"

"Sure," replied he, too canny to deny the obvious. "But what has that to do with it? If I'd had a living offer, I'd have taken it. But at my age a man doesn't dare take certain kinds of places. It'd settle him for life. And I'm playing for a really big stake and I'll win. When I get what I want for you, we'll make as much money a month as I could make a year. Trust me, my dear."

It was plausible; and her "loss of nerve" was visibly aggravating his condition—the twitching of hands and face, the terrifying brightness of his eyes, of the color in the deep hollows under his cheek bones. But she felt that she must persist. "How much money have we got?" she asked.

"Oh—a great deal enough."

"You must play square with me," said she. "I'm not a baby, but a woman—and your partner."

"Don't worry me, child. We'll talk about it tomorrow."

"How much? You've no right to hide things from me. You—hurt me."

"Eleven dollars and eighty cents—when this bill for supper's paid and the waitress tipped."

"I'll try for a place in a store," said she.

"Don't talk that way or think that way," cried he angrily. "There's where so many people fail in life. They don't stick to their game. I wish to God I'd had sense enough to break straight for Chicago or New York. But it's too late now. What I lack is nerve—nerve to do the big, bold things my brains show me I ought."

His distress was so obvious that she let the subject drop. That night she lay awake as she had fallen into the habit of doing. But instead of purposeless, rambling thoughts, she was trying definitely to plan a search for work. Toward three in the morning she heard him tossing and muttering—for the wall between their rooms was merely plastered laths covered with paper. She tried his door; it was locked. She knocked, got no answer but incoherent ravings. She roused the office, and the night porter forced the door. Burlingham's gas was lighted; he was sitting up in bed—a haggard, disheveled, insane man, raving on and on—names of men and women she had never heard—oaths, disjointed sentences.

"Brain fever, I reckon," said the porter. "I'll call a doctor."

In a few minutes Susan was gladdened by the sight of a young man wearing the familiar pointed beard and bearing the familiar black bag. He made a careful examination, asked her many questions, finally said:

"Your father has typhoid, I fear. He must be taken to a hospital."

"But we have very little money," said Susan.

"I understand," replied the doctor, marveling at the calmness of one so young. "The hospital I mean is free. I'll send for an ambulance."

While they were waiting beside Burlingham, whom the doctor had drugged into unconsciousness with a hypodermic, Susan said: "Can I go to the hospital and take care of him?"

"No," replied the doctor. "You can only call and inquire how he is, until he's well enough to see you."

"And how long will that be?"

"I can't say." He hadn't the courage to tell her it would be three weeks at least, perhaps six or seven.

He got leave of the ambulance surgeon for Susan to ride to the hospital, and he went along himself. As the ambulance sped through the dimly lighted streets with clanging bell and heavy pounding of the horse's hoofs on the granite pavement, Susan knelt beside Burlingham, holding one of his hot hands. She was remembering how she had said that she would die for him—and here it was he that was dying for her. And her heart was heavy with a load of guilt, the heaviest she was ever to feel in her life. She could not know how misfortune is really the lot of human beings; it seemed to her that a special curse attended her, striking down all who befriended her.

They dashed up to great open doors of the hospital. Burlingham was lifted, was carried swiftly into the receiving room. Susan with tearless eyes bent over, embraced him lingeringly, kissed his fiery brow, his wasted cheeks. One of the surgeons in white duck touched her on the arm.

"We can't delay," he said.

"No indeed," she replied, instantly drawing back.

She watched the stretcher on wheels go noiselessly down the corridor toward the elevator and when it was gone she still continued to look. "You can come at any hour to inquire," said the young doctor who had accompanied her. "Now we'll go into the office and have the slip made out."

They entered a small room, divided unequally by a barrier desk; behind it stood a lean, coffee-sallowed young man with a scrawny neck displayed to the uttermost by a standing collar scarcely taller than the band of a shirt. He directed at Susan one of those obtrusively shrewd glances which shallow people practice and affect to create the impression that they have a genius for character reading. He drew a pad of blank forms toward him, wiped a pen on the mat into which his mouse-colored hair was roached above his right temple. "Well, miss, what's the patient's name?"

"Robert Burlingham."

"Age?"

"I don't know."

"About what?"

"I—I don't know. I guess he isn't very young. But I don't know."

"Put down forty, Sim," said the doctor.

"Very well, Doctor Hamilton." Then to Susan: "Color white, I suppose. Nativity?"

Susan recalled that she had heard him speak of Liverpool as his birthplace. "English," said she.

"Profession?"

"Actor."

"Residence?"

"He hasn't any. It was sunk at Jeffersonville. We stop at the Walnut Street House."

"Walnut Street House. Was he married or single?"

"Single." Then she recalled some of the disconnected ravings. "I—I—don't know."

"Single," said the clerk. "No, I guess I'll put it widower. Next friend or relative?"

"I am."

"Daughter. First name?"

"I am not his daughter."

"Oh, niece. Full name, please."

"I am no relation—just his—his friend."

Sim the clerk looked up sharply. Hamilton reddened, glowered at him. "I understand," said Sim, leering at her. And in a tone that reeked insinuation which quite escaped her, he went on, "We'll put your name down. What is it?"

"Lorna Sackville."

"You don't look English—not at all the English style of beauty, eh—Doctor?"

"That's all, Miss Sackville," said Hamilton, with a scowl at the clerk. Susan and he went out into Twelfth Street. Hamilton from time to time stole a glance of sympathy and inquiry into the sad young face, as he and she walked eastward together. "He's a strong man and sure to pull through," said the doctor. "Are you alone at the hotel?"

"I've nobody but him in the world," replied she.

"I was about to venture to advise that you go to a boarding house," pursued the young man.

"Thank you. I'll see."

"There's one opposite the hospital—a reasonable place."

"I've got to go to work," said the girl, to herself rather than to him.

"Oh, you have a position."

Susan did not reply, and he assumed that she had.

"If you don't mind, I'd like to call and see—Mr. Burlingham. The physicians at the hospital are perfectly competent, as good as there are in the city. But I'm not very busy, and I'd be glad to go."

"We haven't any money," said the girl. "And I don't know when we shall have. I don't want to deceive you."

"I understand perfectly," said the young man, looking at her with interested but respectful eyes. "I'm poor, myself, and have just started."