Susan Lenox

“ But this I do know—that within the range of all fiction of all lands and of all times no character has so overwhelmed me as the character of Susan Lenox.
She is as real as life and as unreal. She is Life. ”

“ Had he awakened to what he was doing he would probably have been angered against himself and against her; and the direction of Susan Lenox's life would certainly have been changed. Those who fancy the human animal is in the custody of some conscious and predetermining destiny think with their vanity rather than with their intelligence. A careful look at any day or even hour of any life reveals the inevitable influence of sheer accidents, most of them trivial. ”

“ The eyes of the strangers glanced towards the old lady in her low chair at the front of the ox cart. In her wrinkled face there was not a line of beauty, perhaps never had been; in spite of its sense and character unmistakeable; it was grave, she was thinking her own thoughts; it was weather-beaten, so to say, with the storms of life; and yet there was an expression of unruffled repose upon it, as calm as the glint of stars in a still lake. Mrs. Lenox's look was curiously incredulous, scornful, and wistful, together; it touched Lois.
"One's young years ought not to be one's best," she said. ”

“ Susan Lenox is more than a novel: it has a social, human and economic significance that lifts it to the high places.” I: F. Marcosson
“Despite the attempts to prejudge Mr Phillips’s posthumous novel by frantic claims as to its high moral purpose and sincerity, it seems impossible for any unbiased reader of fiction to view it otherwise than as an extremely offensive addition to the literature of pornography. ... For Susan Lenox to have remained the acme of physical perfection after undergoing the horrors of the life that she deliberately sought and endured is impossible. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII THE Susan Lenox who left Delancey Street at half past two that afternoon to call upon Robert Brent was not the Susan Lenox who returned to Delancey Street at half-past five. A man is wandering, lost in a cave, is groping this way and that in absolute darkness, with flagging hope and fainting strength—has reached the point where he wonders at his own folly in keeping on moving—is persuading himself that the sensible thing would be to lie down and give up. ”

“ Lois thought, if she were Mr. Lenox, she would not feel flattered.
"When one is young, one does not know disappointment," the other went on.
"And when one is old, one may get the better of disappointment."
"When one is young, everything is fresh."
"I think things grow fresher to me with every year," said Lois, laughing. "Mrs. Lenox, it is possible to keep one's youth."
"Then you have found the philosopher's stone?" said Mr. Lenox.
Lois's smile was brilliant, but she said nothing to that. ”

“ Lenox following.
Two such figures! Sun-bonnets shading merry faces, flushed with business; blue flannel bathing-suits draping very unpicturesquely the persons, bare feet stained with mud,—baskets full of the delicate fish they had been catching.
"What a quantity!" exclaimed Mrs. Barclay.
"Yes, because I had aunt Anne to help. We cannot boil them all at once, but that is all the better. They will come hot and hot."
"You don't mean that you are going to cook all those?" said Mrs. Lenox incredulously.
"There will not be one too many," said Lois. "You do not know long clams yet." ”

“ She went over again and again in memory the interview and the talk of that morning; and not without a secret thrill of gratification, although also not without a vague half perception of something in Mr. Lenox's manner that she could not quite read and did not quite trust. What did he mean? He was Miss Caruthers' property; how came he to busy himself at all with her own insignificant self? Lois was too innocent to guess; at the same time too finely gifted as a woman to be entirely hoodwinked. ”

“ Susan felt horribly guilty, and for no reason. "I'd have spoken of it before," she said, "but there didn't seem to be any chance." She had the instinct of fine shy nature to veil the soul; she found it hard to speak of anything as sacred as this love of hers and whatever related to it.
"I can't allow this, Susie," said her aunt, with lips tightly drawn against the teeth. "You are too young."
"Oh, come now, mother," cried Warham, good-humoredly. "That's foolishness. Let the young folks have a good time. You didn't think you were too young at Susie's age." ”

“ The bed was delightfully cool; the shuck mattress made soft crackling sounds under her and gave out a soothing odor of the fields. Hardly had her head touched the pillow when she fell sound asleep. In a few minutes her aunt came hurrying in, stopped short at sight of that lovely childlike face with the lamplight full upon it. One of Susan's tapering arms was flung round her dark wavy hair. Sallie Warham smiled gently. "Bless the baby" she said half aloud. Then her smile faded and a look of sadness and pity came. "Poor child!" she murmured. "The Warham men's hard. But then all the men's hard. ”

“ Gourdain—chiefly, no doubt, because Susan's beauty of face and figure and dress fascinated him—was more eager to bring out her individuality than to show off his own talents. He took endless pains with her, taught her the technical knowledge and vocabulary that would enable her to express herself, then carried out her ideas religiously. "You are right, mon ami," said he to Brent. "She is an orchid, and of a rare species. She has a glorious imagination, like a bird of paradise balancing itself into an azure sky, with every plume raining color and brilliancy." ”

“ One of the strongest factors in Susan's holding herself together in face of overwhelming odds, was the nearly seventeen years of early training her Aunt Fanny Warham had given her in orderly and systematic ways—a place for everything and everything in its place; a time for everything and everything at its time, neatness, scrupulous cleanliness, no neglecting of any of the small, yet large, matters that conserve the body. Susan had not been so apt a pupil of Fanny Warham's as was Ruth, because Susan had not Ruth's nature of the old-maidish, cut-and-dried conventional. ”

“ Brent's secretary, Mr. Garvey," he explained. And Susan—made as accurate as quick in her judgments of character by the opportunities and the necessities of her experience—saw that she had before her one of those nice feeble folk who either get the shelter of some strong personality as a bird hides from the storm in the thick branches of a great tree or are tossed and torn and ruined by life and exist miserably until rescued by death. She knew the type well; it had been the dominant type in her surroundings ever since she left Sutherland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Susan did not protest. She was profoundly indifferent to what happened to her. Life seemed a show in which she had no part, and at which she sat a listless spectator. A few minutes, and in puffed Jeffries, solicitous as a fussy old bird with a new family.
"You're a lot better, ain't you?" cried he, before he had looked at her. "Oh, yes, you'll be all right. And you'll have a lovely time with Mr. Gideon. He's a perfect gentleman—knows how to treat a lady. . . . The minute I laid eyes on you I said to myself, said I, 'Jeffries, she's a mascot.' And you are, my dear. ”

“ Susan looked round in alarm. "Oh, dear, no—please don't," she cried.
"Why not?" he asked curiously. "There isn't a soul about."
"I know—but—really, you mustn't."
"Very well," said he, seeing that her nervousness was not at all from being asked to sing. They sat quietly, she gazing off at the horizon, he fanning himself and studying her lovely young face. He was somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five and a close observer would have suspected him of an unusual amount of experience, even for a good-looking, expansive youth of that age. ”

“ You understand how men are—how they get these fits of craziness about a pair of eyes or a figure or some trick of voice or manner. But that doesn't affect the man's heart. I love you, Susan. I adore you."
She did not let him see how sincerely he had touched her. Her eyes were of their deepest violet, but he had never learned that sign. She smiled mockingly; the fingers that caressed his hair were trembling. "We've tided each other over, Rod. The play's a success. You're all right again—and so am I. Now's the time to part."
"Is it Brent, Susie?" ”

“ There is the time when we hope, believing that we have altogether ceased to hope. That time had come for Susan. She seemed to think about the present. She moved about like a sleepwalker.
What women did she know—what men? She only dimly remembered from day to day—from hour to hour. Blurred faces passed before her, blurred voices sounded in her ears, blurred personalities touched hers. It was like the jostling of a huge crowd in night streets. A vague sense of buffetings—of rude contacts—of momentary sensations of pain, of shame, of disgust, all blunted and soon forgotten. ”

“ Guileful women, bent on trimming him for anything from a piece of plated jewelry to a saucer of ice cream, had led him to believe that before it walls of virtue tottered and fell like Jericho's before the trumpets of Joshua.
"It makes me a little homesick to see the old town disappear," hastily explained Susan, recovering herself. The instant anyone was watching, her emotions always hid.
"Wouldn't you like to sit out on deck a while?" pursued the clerk, bringing up a winning smile to reinforce the fetching stare. ”

“ The freshness, the sweetness, the bright rich colouring of sky and water and land, the stillness, the strangeness, the novelty, all moved Mr. Lenox to say,
"I would not have missed this for a hundred dollars!"
"Missed what?" asked his wife.
"This whole afternoon."
"It's one way that people live, I suppose."
"Yes, for they really do live; there is no stagnation; that is one thing that strikes me."
"Don't you want to buy a farm here, and settle down?" asked Mrs. Lenox scornfully. "Live on hymns and long clams?"
Meanwhile the interior of the bathing-house was changing its aspect. ”

“ And experience had taught her why it is that human nature soon tires of intensity, turns to frivolity. She felt that, if she could act, she would try to show that not Turiddu's fickleness nor his contempt of the woman who had yielded, but Santuzza's sad intensity and Lola's butterfly gayety had cost Santuzza her lover and her lover his life. So, it was not Santuzza's but Lola's first entrance that she studied.
In the next morning's mail, under cover addressed "Miss Susan Lenox, care of Miss Lorna Sackville," as she had written it for Brent, came the promised check for forty dollars. ”

“ Susan's merry eyes, her laughing mouth, her funny way of saying even commonplace things—how could quiet, unobtrusive, ladylike charms such as Ruth's have a chance if Susan were about? She waited, silent and anxious, while her mother was having the talk with her father in the sitting-room. Warham, mere man, was amused by his wife's scheming.
"Don't put yourself out, Fanny," said he. "If the boy wants Ruth and she wants him, why, well and good. But you'll only make a mess interfering. Let the young people alone." ”

“ As Mrs. Warham was trying the new dress on her daughter, she said:
"Anyhow, Sam'd be wasting time on Susan. He'd hang round her for no good. She'd simply get talked about. The poor child can't be lively or smile but what people begin to wonder if she's going the way of—of Lorella."
"That's so," agreed Ruth, and both felt better. "Was Aunt
Lorella very pretty, mamma?"
"Lovely!" replied Fanny, and her eyes grew tender, for she had adored Lorella. "You never saw such a complexion—like Susan's, only snow-white." Nervously and hastily, "Most as fine as yours, Ruthie." ”

“ She was lying on her back with only stockings on. Beyond the foot of the bed was a little bureau at which a man, back full to her, stood in trousers and shirt sleeves tying his necktie. She saw that he was a rough looking man, coarsely dressed—an artisan or small shop-keeper. Used as she was to the profound indifference of men of all classes and degrees of education and intelligence to what the woman thought—used as she was to this sensual selfishness which men at least in part conceal from their respectable wives, Susan felt a horror of this man who had not minded her unconsciousness. ”

“ When they describe heaven, it has houses of marble and streets of gold. Their pretense to sight of higher things is either sheer pretense or sight at second hand. Susan was of the few whose fancy can soar. She saw the earthy things; she saw the things of the upper regions also. And she saw the lower region from the altitudes of the higher—and in their perspective.
As she and Brent stood together on the sidewalk before his house, about to enter his big limousine, his smile told her that he had read her thought—her desire for such an automobile as her very own. ”

“ Susan had no answer for this argument. They went several squares up Vine Street in silence. Then Etta burst out again:
"I'm frozen through and through, Lorna, and I'm dead tired—and hungry. The wind's cutting the flesh off my bones. What in the hell does it matter what becomes of us? Let's get warm, for God's sake. Let's go to a house. They're in Longworth Street—the best ones."
And she came to a halt, forcing Susan to halt also. It happened to be the corner of Eighth Street. Susan saw the iron fence, the leafless trees of Garfield Place. ”