第222章

They were now enjoying the reward of their toil, the pleasures of which they dreamed and to which they looked forward as they dragged their stiff old knees along the floors in the wake of the brush and the cloth.They were drinking biting poisons from tin cups--for those hands quivering with palsy could not be trusted with glass-dancing with drunken, disease-swollen or twisted legs--venting from ghastly toothless mouths strange cries of merriment that sounded like shrieks of damned souls at the licking of quenchless flames.

Susan stood rooted to the threshold of that frightful scene--that vision of the future toward which she was hurrying.

A few years--a very few years--and, unless she should have passed through the Morgue, here she would be, abandoning her body to abominations beyond belief at the hands of degenerate oriental sailors to get a few pennies for the privileges of this dance hall.And she would laugh, as did these, would enjoy as did these, would revel in the filth her senses had been trained to find sweet."No! No!" she protested."I'd kill myself first!" And then she cowered again, as the thought came that she probably would not, any more than these had killed themselves.The descent would be gradual--no matter how swift, still gradual.Only the insane put an end to life.

Yes--she would come here some day.

She leaned against the wall, her throat contracting in a fit of nausea.She grew cold all over; her teeth chattered.She tried in vain to tear her gaze from the spectacle; some invisible power seemed to be holding her head in a vise, thrusting her struggling eyelids violently open.

There were several men, dead drunk, asleep in old wooden chairs against the wall.One of these men was so near her that she could have touched him.His clothing was such an assortment of rags slimy and greasy as one sometimes sees upon the top of a filled garbage barrel to add its horrors of odor of long unwashed humanity to the stenches from vegetable decay.His wreck of a hard hat had fallen from his head as it dropped forward in drunken sleep.Something in the shape of the head made her concentrate upon this man.She gave a sharp cry, stretched out her hand, touched the man's shoulder.

"Rod!" she cried."Rod!"

The head slowly lifted, and the bleary, blowsy wreck of Roderick Spenser's handsome face was turned stupidly toward her.Into his gray eyes slowly came a gleam of recognition.

Then she saw the red of shame burst into his hollow cheeks, and the head quickly drooped.

She shook him."Rod! It's _you!_"

"Get the hell out," he mumbled."I want to sleep.""You know me," she said."I see the color in your face.Oh, Rod--you needn't be ashamed before _me_."She felt him quiver under her fingers pressing upon his shoulder.But he pretended to snore.

"Rod," she pleaded, "I want you to come along with me.I can't do you any harm now."The hunchback had stopped playing.The old women were crowding round Spenser and her, were peering at them, with eyes eager and ears a-cock for romance--for nowhere on this earth do the stars shine so sweetly as down between the precipices of shame to the black floor of the slum's abyss.Spenser, stooped and shaking, rose abruptly, thrust Susan aside with a sweep of the arm that made her reel, bolted into the street.She recovered her balance and amid hoarse croakings of "That's right, honey!

Don't give him up!" followed the shambling, swaying figure.

He was too utterly drunk to go far; soon down he sank, a heap of rags and filth, against a stoop.

She bent over him, saw he was beyond rousing, straightened and looked about her.Two honest looking young Jews stopped.

"Won't you help me get him home?" she said to them.

"Sure!" replied they in chorus.And, with no outward sign of the disgust they must have felt at the contact, they lifted up the sot, in such fantastic contrast to Susan's clean and even stylish appearance, and bore him along, trying to make him seem less the helpless whiskey-soaked dead weight.They dragged him up the two flights of stairs and, as she pushed back the door, deposited him on the floor.She assured them they could do nothing more, thanked them, and they departed.Clara appeared in her doorway.

"God Almighty, Lorna!" she cried."_What_ have you got there?

How'd it get in?"

"You've been advising me to take a fellow," said Susan.

"Well--here he is."

Clara looked at her as if she thought her crazed by drink or dope."I'll call the janitor and have him thrown out.""No, he's my lover," said Susan."Will you help me clean him up?"Clara, looking at Spenser's face now, saw those signs which not the hardest of the world's hard uses can cut or tear away.

"Oh!" she said, in a tone of sympathy."He _is_ down, isn't he?

But he'll pull round all right."