第179章

I think you and I've got a lot of tastes in common.I like eating--so do you.I like drinking--so do you.I like a good time--so do you.You're a little bit thin for my taste, but you'll fatten up.I wonder what makes your lips so pale.""I'd hate to remind myself by telling you," said Susan.

The restaurant was filling.Most of the men and women were in evening dress.Each arriving woman brought with her a new exhibition of extravagance in costume, diffused a new variety of powerful perfume.The orchestra in the balcony was playing waltzes and the liveliest Hungarian music and the most sensuous strains from Italy and France and Spain.And before her was food!--food again!--not horrible stuff unfit for beasts, worse than was fed to beasts, but human food--good things, well cooked and well served.To have seen her, to have seen the expression of her eyes, without knowing her history and without having lived as she had lived, would have been to think her a glutton.Her spirits giddied toward the ecstatic.She began to talk--commenting on the people about her--the one subject she could venture with her companion.As she talked and drank, he ate and drank, stuffing and gorging himself, but with a frankness of gluttony that delighted her.She found she could not eat much, but she liked to see eating; she who had so long been seeing only poverty, bolting wretched food and drinking the vilest kinds of whiskey and beer, of alleged coffee and tea--she reveled in Howland's exhibition.She must learn to live altogether in her senses, never to think except about an appetite.Where could she find a better teacher?...

They drank two quarts of champagne, and with the coffee she took _creme de menthe_ and he brandy.And as the sensuous temperament that springs from intense vitality reasserted itself, the opportunity before her lost all its repellent features, became the bright, vivid countenance of lusty youth, irradiating the joy of living.

"I hear there's a lively ball up at Terrace Garden," said he.

"Want to go?"

"That'll be fine!" cried she.

She saw it would have taken nearly all the money she possessed to have paid that bill.About four weeks' wages for one dinner! Thousands of families living for two weeks on what she and he had consumed in two hours! She reached for her half empty champagne glass, emptied it.She must forget all those things! "I've played the fool once.I've learned my lesson.

Surely I'll never do it again." As she drank, her eyes chanced upon the clock.Half-past ten.Mrs.Tucker had probably just fallen asleep.And Mrs.Reardon was going out to scrub--going out limping and groaning with rheumatism.No, Mrs.Reardon was lying up at the morgue dead, her one chance to live lost forever.Dead! Yet better off than Mrs.Tucker lying alive.

Susan could see her--the seamed and broken and dirty old remnant of a face--could see the vermin--and the mice could hear the snoring--the angry grunt and turning over as the insects----"I want another drink--right away," she cried.

"Sure!" said Howland."I need one more, too."They drove in a taxi to Terrace Garden, he holding her in his arms and kissing her with an intoxicated man's enthusiasm.

"You certainly are sweet," said he."The wine on your breath is like flowers.Gosh, but I'm glad that husband came home!

Like me a little?"

"I'm so happy, I feel like standing up and screaming," declared she.

"Good idea," cried he.Whereupon he released a war whoop and they both went off into a fit of hysterical laughter.When it subsided he said, "I sized you up as a live wire the minute Isaw you.But you're even better than I thought.What are you in such a good humor about?""You couldn't understand if I told you," replied she."You'd have to go and live where I've been living--live there as long as I have.""Convent?"

"Worse.Worse than a jail."

The ball proved as lively as they hoped.A select company from the Tenderloin was attending, and the regulars were all of the gayest crowd among the sons and daughters of artisans and small merchants up and down the East Side.Not a few of the women were extremely pretty.All, or almost all, were young, and those who on inspection proved to be older than eighteen or twenty were acting younger than the youngest.Everyone had been drinking freely, and continued to drink.The orchestra played continuously.The air was giddy with laughter and song.

Couples hugged and kissed in corners, and finally openly on the dancing floor.For a while Susan and Howland danced together.

But soon they made friends with the crowd and danced with whoever was nearest.Toward three in the morning it flashed upon her that she had not even seen him for many a dance.She looked round--searched for him--got a blond-bearded man in evening dress to assist her.

"The last seen of your stout friend," this man finally reported, "he was driving away in a cab with a large lady from Broadway.He was asleep, but I guess she wasn't."A sober thought winked into her whirling brain--he had warned her to hold on tight, and she had lost her head--and her opportunity.A bad start--a foolishly bad start.But out winked the glimpse of sobriety and Susan laughed."That's the last I'll ever see of _him_," said she.

This seemed to give Blond-Beard no regrets.Said he: "Let's you and I have a little supper.I'd call it breakfast, only then we couldn't have champagne."And they had supper--six at the table, all uproarious, Susan with difficulty restrained from a skirt dance on the table up and down among the dishes and bottles.It was nearly five o'clock when she and Blond-Beard helped each other toward a cab.

"What's your address?" said he.

"The same as yours," replied she drowsily.